Democracy

Kevlar for Kids

The TimesOnline has a story about parents in the UK buying body armour for their children. What an incredible world we live in when they even make body armour for children let alone manage to sell it. Apparently the parents are concerned about the rise in murders among London teenagers.

This feels so wrong and as one of the comments to the TimesOnline story writes

Dressing up a small child in something that costs hundreds of pounds and sending the child out into a rough neighborhood doesn’t sound like it advances the child’s safety at all.

But where does the limit between paranoid parenting (Furedi 2001) and common sense really go? Obviously dressing children in bullet and knife proof clothing does not send out a good signal to the children or to others but then again it may save a life.

An interesting quote in the article was: “The cheapest version will stop any knife attack while the higher end will stop a bullet from any handgun or sub-machine gun.” Considering how fashion conscious children are today we are also running the risk of creating an attitude among children about who can afford the good stuff.

Posted on by mklang

The Third Draft

The third draft of the GPLv3 has been released. The draft is a result of feedback from various sources (general public, official discussion committees, and two international conferences held in India and Japan). The draft incorporates significant changes since the previous draft (July 2006). This draft is planned to be the penultimate draft prior to the formal release of the official GPLv3.

Changes in this draft include:

* First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if they remedy the problem within thirty days.
* License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of making them easier to understand and administer.
* Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also provide installation information for the software along with the source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that were proposed in previous drafts.
* New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection from patents.

    The draft will be open for comments and discussion for sixty days. Following this the FSF will release a “last call” draft, followed by another thirty days for discussion before the FSF’s board of directors approves the final text of GPL version 3.

    Richard Stallman, president of the FSF and principal author of the GNU GPL, said, “The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms which define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbor, and release your improvements to the public. The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.”

    Posted on by mklang

    Internet Curfew

    The BBC reports that one of the top engineering schools will be shutting down their dorm Internet access every night in order to improve academic performance. Students will still be able to log on to the library or their departmental laboratories.

    The authorities in India’s premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay (Mumbai), have cut off internet access to students in hostels at night.

    They feel that 24-hour internet access is hampering students’ academic performance and overall personality development…Ms Thosar-Dixit said they were beginning to see a drop in attendance during morning lectures and a noticeable decline in students’ participation in extra-curricular activities.

    “In the morning the students would not be fresh and attentive and their socialising patterns were changing as they preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates.

    This is an exciting example of technology regulation. If the school chooses to regulate in this fashion it curtails free choice among students and punishes all students – even those who have a “good” relationship to technology.  But if the school chooses to ignore the problem then the overall performance of the students (and the school) will decline.

    The decision to turn of the Internet at night may be well-intentioned but the question of concern is not the regulators intention but rather the results of the regulation. In addition to the results an important consideration in regulation must be the signal regulation sends to the regulated. In this case the students are told that their behavior patterns are incorrect and unacceptable. Whether this is true or not is not the relevant issue. Right and wrong change over time.

    I disagree with blanket prohibitions such as these. The paternalistic approach creates a great deal of tension between groups. Between them and us. The regulated and the regulators. I know for a fact that it is not only students at the IIT in Bombay that have “unusual” nocturnal habits. Therefore the school is attempting to impose a normality on a weaker group while the regulators themselves do not subscribe to the concepts of normality they are trying to impose.

    Orwell again: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

    Posted on by mklang

    You can't say Prison

    Say Guantanamo, and most people will think of human rights abuses and prisoners in orange clothes being mistreated, maltreated, denied basic human rights and denied legal representation. All this by a free democratic country. Karen Greenberg (Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and is the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib and editor of The Torture Debate in America.) writes an interesting note on the blog TomDispatch about how Gunatanamo may be addressed by the media.

    It is very difficult not to think Orwellian thoughts about the control of language being the control of society.

    1. Guantanamo is not a prison.
    2. Consistent with not being a prison, Guantanamo has no prisoners, only enemies.
    3. Guantanamo is not about guilt and innocence — or, once an enemy combatant, always an enemy combatant.
    4. No trustworthy lawyers come to Guantanamo.
    5. Recently, at least, few if any reliable journalists have been reporting on Guantanamo.
    6. After years of isolation, the detainees still possess valuable information — especially today.
    7. Guantanamo contains no individuals — inside the wire or out.
    8. Guantanamo’s deep respect for Islam is unappreciated.
    9. At Guantanamo, hard facts are scarce.
    10. Guantanamo houses no contradictions.
    11. Those who fail to reproduce the official narrative are not welcome back.

    Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside – knowing that these are the people claiming to be fighting for freedom and democracy worldwide…

    (via Markmedia)

    Posted on by mklang

    Activists and Technology

    This term has the main load of my teaching which means that I spend lots of time close to the students discussing and attempting to capture their attention for subjects ranging from eCommerce to Computer Ethics. It is very difficult to conduct larger research work in between teaching so most of the extra time is spent attempting to plan future work. This entails discussions of future work: meeting other researchers, planning projects, writing research applications and doing basic reading to cover the groundwork. This is useful in the sense that it lays the foundations for future work but it is also very frustrating since it is not real research work (some of you may disagree â?? but then thatâ??s the point of blogging).

    One of my larger planned projects is developing well. No real results as yet (funding, publisher contacts etc) but it is still promising in that the basic reading reveals a good field ripe for additional research which may reveal very interesting results. The people around are enthusiastic, open and friendly.

    The basic project idea is to gather empirical data on the use of technology in political resistance. To do this I intend to spend time interviewing activists to understand the way in which they use technology. The hope of this project is to understand both their mundane usage and the more â??exoticâ?? technology use. The point of this work is to first collect data on actual use and then hopefully penetrate the reasons for their use or lack of use of technology.

    In particular I want to find out if the recent changes in attitudes towards activists has encouraged them to use more secretive technologies such as encryption and covert messaging. Ideally the project would like to understand what it is they believe to be threats to their activities and how they set about countering such threats. Alternatively the work will look at the reasons for their non-use of different technologies.

    In order to do this I need to get into contact with diverse groups of political activists. In order to limit the study I will also be focusing on groups which primarily deal in non-violent methods within the participatory democracy ideal.

    To me this is very exciting and I hope to begin data collection this summer and continue with this until February. In parallel with this will be data analysis and writing. The chance to do more detailed empirical work and connect it to my analytical background is an exciting prospect.

    As I write this the train (yes another trip â?? but short this time) is speeding through a foggy landscape and two deer were walking slowly through a field itâ??s a mystical uplifting experience looking at nature â?? even if it is through the window of a speeding train.

    Posted on by mklang

    Interesting Mix

    In a mail from the careers office at my university they managed both to inform that S�PO (The security police official English name: The Swedish Security Service) were looking for trainees and that Amnesty International in Göteborg was looking for volunteers. Is is only me or is this a strange mix to have in one email? Maybe its just me.

    Posted on by mklang

    Democracy Day

    Sitting on the train back from Stockholm. Today has been a long hard, but fruitful, day. The theme for today was democracy and the trip started with an early train to Stockholm. First an internal meeting for a book I have a short chapter in and then the public games began.

    The first session consisted of presentations by Peter Dahlgren and Tobias Olsson and was completed with a panel discussion. Their theme was on the topic of young peoples use of technology for democracy. This was followed by a session on global democracy. This began with the chair Erik Amnå presenting and was followed by positions being taken by Gustav Fridolin, Jerker Thorsell and Silakhdar Krikeb on the topic of the world citizen. Interesting stuff on a topic which is hard to position and pin down.

    The final session was centered around the topic of technology and democracy. Here the speakers were (besides me), Karin Rebas and Erika Augustinsson. This was a difficult topic to focus but we had discussions on the importance of blogs in political communication and the growth of collaborative information production (such as wikis) and their relation to democracy. My focus was on the importance of remembering that Internet infrastructure is a socio/technical/economic infrastructure in the hands of private companies and should not be seen as a public good.

    The whole day was full of interesting people – both on and off the scene. But now it’s after nine pm and I still have two hours on the train before reaching Göteborg.

    Posted on by mklang

    Australian Immigration Policy

    This is an excerpt from a recent post on Subtopia about an Australian immigration detention center being built on Christmas Island. I was particularly attracted to the technology involved in detaining immigrants. This is not exactly pleasant reading…

    Since 2005 Australiaâ??s Department of Immigration has been constructing an “Immigration Reception and Processing Centre.” 2,400 km from Perth, 360 km from Jakarta and nearly 2000 km from Darwin, this deteniton complex is at the far end of the island which, according to this dispatch, is a narrow strip 24 km long and 7 km wide.

    Keep in mind, as Angela tells us, â??under Australian law it is possible to intern people extra-judicially (without trial or charge) and, since 2004, to do so indefinitely. Migration detention is, therefore, a wholly administrative matter.â??

    So just what exactly are they building out there in them pristine jungles?

    Well, it turns out itâ??s not just some rinky dink detention outfit with some barbed-wire fencing and ramshackle barracks cliff-side. No, this is a $396 million tropical prison paradise. Thatâ??s right. For what the government refers to as a â??deterrent to illegal immigrationâ??, it is a state of the art 800-bed prison complex, with electric fences, movement detectors, hundreds of surveillance cameras, hidden microphones in the trees, the works.


    [Image: “Camp Howard” – Australia’s very own Guantanamo Bay on Christmas Island, Feb. 2007.]â??The camp on Christmas Island has CCTV linked to a RCR [Remote Control Room] so guards in Canberra can watch detainees around the clock.â?? And planners arenâ??t leaving any thing out for this rugged remote little island prison either. â??Detainees will wear electronic ID tags or cards, identifying them wherever they are.â?? While the place crawls with guards wandering in between a perimeter of checkpoint cubicles, there is a hospital, operating theatre and visiting rooms, solitary cells, and even family units and a nursery. â??Everything can be controlled remotely â?? doors, TV, radio.â??


    {Image: Floor plan for the Detention Facility at Christmas Island.]In addition to developing this offshore island-chain barrier against migration, the Australian government has launched its border patrol ship, the Triton, dubbed the â??prison shipâ?? by critics. This â??98-metre trimaranâ?? is said to be capable of detaining â??30 people for up to a month” on board and is “armed with twin machine guns.â??


    [Image: The ACV Triton Australian Border Patrol Ship.]While officially deployed to patrol and intercept illegal fisherman, others are more concerned what the Triton could mean for migrants stranded at sea already facing one of the most conservative immigration-tolerant nations in the world.

    Update: The last line should probably read immigration-intolerant…

    Posted on by mklang

    Technology and Human Rights

    On Friday it’s time for me to give a lecture on Technology and Human Rights for the local masters course on human rights. The nice part about this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to collect and explore different strands of my work and present them to a new audience. My interest in this area began some time ago and resulted in 2005 in the collected edition Human Rights in the Digital Age which I edited together with Andrew Murray.

    Discussing technology and rights can at times feel a bit banal. Human rights activists struggle to free people from torture and death so isn’t technology a small waste of time? There is no way in which it would be fair to compare technology and rights to the work of activists against the death penalty. But there is a major problem if all issues must be resolved in the order of magnitude. Speech rights may be less important to someone facing the death penalty but this does not mean that we should ignore speech rights until we have managed to abolish the death penalty.

    For the lecture on Friday I am planning to look at three different areas.

    The first area is going to be the use of the Internet as a “place” for political participation. I want to discuss the Internet as an area of political discourse and in particular show its possibilities and its fundamental flaws and limitations. This area should include freedom of speech and freedom of association.

    The second area is privacy. In particular I want to focus on the merging of online and offline data. Or to put it another way the combination of spatial information (where you are) with the information traces stored in databases (who you are) to show the advanced control mechanism being created.

    The final area is the aggregate use of technology. In this section I want to show the audience that with each piece of technology we may implement for our comfort we also form and shape our lives. In particular we also shape the way in which our lives may be controlled by others. This incremental implementation of technology does not bring large protests since no large rights are threatened overall. However the net long term result is darker than anything Orwell would have dreamed about.

    Eric Drooker

    The overall goal is to make the audience a bit paranoid about technology – to make them question the choices we are all making in our rush towards a more convenient way of life. Not bad for a Friday…

    Posted on by mklang

    Depiction of Resistance

    Ever wondered who gets to be portrayed as a brave resistance fighter and why? The role of the media in bringing â??the storyâ?? to the attention of the public is crucial. Unfortunately the public (thatâ??s us) is too occupied to carry out real investigations so we generally tend to accept anything the media tells us. Naturally with varying degrees of skepticism.

    The skepticism depends to a large degree on several factors: the trustworthiness of the source, the importance of what is being said, the personal impact on our lives, our beliefs and cultures. But mostly we (the public) tend to accept what is being presented before us. Sad, but true.

    The first main barrier is the choice to tell the story or not. Certain stories get a great deal of press attention while others get little or none. The next barrier is the presentation of the story. Will those resisting be described as the white or the black hats? Will resistance be legitimized or criminalized? The third barrier is the reconstruction after the fact. What will the victor say of the vanquished? What will be the persistent historic truth once the conflict is over?

    Julius Caesar vanquished all of Gaul. After the task he wrote his account of the wars. Generations of children have since then learned their basic Latin language by reading exciting excerpts from his book. Even if we no longer learn Latin Caesars version of the truth remains the dominant story. He was â??forcedâ?? to attack the Gaul in order to protect the Gallic friends of Rome. The fact that he achieved personal fame, an enormous fortune and eventually sole power of Rome was beside the point.

    The ability to resist does not build upon the ability to control the dominant truth â?? but no resistance (from a local protest to outright war) can afford to ignore it.

    An exciting example of this is the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers from wikipedia:

    The film depicts an episode in the war of independence in the then French Algeria, in the capital city of Algiers. It is loosely based on the account of one of the military commanders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), Saadi Yacef, in his memoir Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger. The book, written by Yacef while a prisoner of the French, was meant as propaganda to boost morale among FLN militants. After independence, Yacef was released and became a part of the new government. The Algerian government gave its backing to have a film of his memoirs made and he approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project. The two dismissed Yacef’s initial treatment as biased toward the Algerian side. While sympathetic with the cause of Algerian nationalism, they insisted on dealing with the events from a distanced point-of-view.

    Posted on by mklang