Democracy

Weapons of War don’t Protect & Serve

The police exist to ensure that society works – anyone who has been subjected to American films and television is aware that their motto is “to protect and serve”. In order to protect and serve in all kinds of situations the police require a great deal of equipment. Most of this equipment is, as you would expect, uniforms, cars, communications etc. But recently in the US some of this equipment has been growing increasingly militarized.

As American armies go to war they need to be supplied with equipment to meet their needs. This is the need of combat soldiers fighting an enemy in a hostile environment. This is really a no-brainer and should be easy to understand whether the wars are supported or not.

In order to supply the army their is an increase in weapons production and purchasing. The problems begin when the army has a surplus of equipment it needs to dispose of. In the US, one method of disposal seems to be supplying the police with this surplus or excess material. On paper this may seem like a good idea. However, there is a problem. The equipment is not designed for those who “protect and serve” and therefore there is a challenge when the technology of violence is brought home and supplied to those who protect and serve.

The ACLU published “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” in June.  Its central point: “the United States today has become excessively militarized, mainly through federal programs that create incentives for state and local police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield.”

This technology, and the training it requires, goes against the goal to protect and serve the public and is replaced by an ethos of aggressiveness. The report states:

Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies…

Once the police forces have invested in the equipment and the training it is almost inevitable that these will deployed. Even in situations where it is not merited. This is not a case of the police being violent individuals but rather the case of them being drilled in the use of the wrong technology. They have been focused on the use of technologies of violence and death and any attempt to curb civil unrest with these mechanisms is naturally seen as repression.

When dealing with football (soccer) hooligans the European police have learned through experience that excessive shows of militarized police treating the fans as thugs would have the inevitable effect of turning the crowd towards aggressive reactions. What the police have learned is to talk to the crowd (not at the crowd), to build up links and liaison, to break down the us/them barriers. This has drastically reduced the level of violence.

By showing up in military gear the police are inherently threatening. They are treating citizens as enemies and pointing weapons of war at them. This does not calm the crowd. In the best case scenario this will repress the crowd, but it will not reflect the way in which a democratic discourse should occur and it will also brand the police as symbol of violent repression.

Images Of Ferguson Police In Riot Gear Confronting An Unarmed Man Go Viral Scott Olson / Getty Images

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Supporting UIC Strikers

Today is the second day of the professors and adjunct professors strike at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The underlying reasons for the strike are described nicely here the press release from the union is here. But the basic part is the uncertain futures of the untenured & adjuncts and the low pay. Kevin Lyles writes:

Today, adjunct/part-time instructors “make up about 75 percent of ALL college instructors…” Many do not have health insurance.  “They work for low pay and under conditions that hinder their efforts to help students.”  Many of the lecturers at UIC are paid $30.000 a year.

From the European perspective it is almost strange to hear of Americans striking and particularly disheartening to hear of underpaid and uninsured university professors. Most of the time the information about the US universities is all about the impressive one: the ivy leagues and the overly endowed. We are often made envious of tales of funding and working conditions which do not exist in our reality.

The problem is that many large and small universities over here are not taking care of their main assets. It’s a story we are used to hearing all over the world. Universities are hiring more and more administrators at higher and higher salaries. These positions work to take the skill out of universities and attempt to bureaucratize teaching and research. More on this by Benjamin Ginsberg.

On the one hand, task of teaching and researching is farmed out to the lowest desperate bidder and on the other hand the universities attempt to charge as much as possible for their services. What is rarely considered in this strategy is the long term disintegration of a standard, reputation and trademark. Not to mention the damaging destruction of the knowledge based workers within the industry.

All academics should support the strikers. Tenured professors may be sitting pretty but they are part of the system of abuse and therefore responsible for their inaction in its decline. The untenured and the adjuncts must support it because they may be next  in the race to the bottom. On the other hand asking those who have the most precarious positions for support is difficult because they are vulnerable.

Students, parents and the rest of society should support the strike because this is a hollowing out of an important part of society. No matter whether you are attending university, sending someone to university or hiring someone from university the decline in the way in which we educate impacts all of us.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

The Day We Fight Back

Today, 11th February 2014, is ‘The Day We Fight Back” – a day of campaigning against mass surveillance. The problem is that we have become so comfortable with the creeping levels of mass surveillance in our lives that we no longer stop to question what is happening and what surveillance means.

Basically this is all about lack of imagination and education about the issues. Sure we love our technological toys but it is up to all of us to know what it means when the convenience of technology lulls us into accepting large scale privacy invasions in our lives. Among the reasons for the existence of large scale surveillance is that we have come to accept it rather than protest or even question it.

Standing up for our rights is worthwhile and important. Read more on the EFF site, check out the events and info on the Today We Fight Back site and why not follow Paul Bernal’s advice in 10 Ways to Fight Back. It’s not about not using your favorite tech but it’s about being allowed to use your stuff in ways which are not harmful to us.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Responding to attacks

In a very thoughtful and interesting post L’Hote writes about the Japanese response to their terrorist group/cult Aum Shinrikyo. The calm determination not to close down society and the results it caused to understand terrorism and threat assessment, look to Aum

Just as important was what the Japanese government and people did not do. They didn’t panic. They didn’t make sweeping changes to their way of life. They didn’t implement a vast system of domestic surveillance. They didn’t suspend basic civil rights. They didn’t begin to capture, torture, and kill without due process. They didn’t, in other words, allow themselves to be terrorized. Instead, they addressed the threat. They investigated and arrested the cult’s leadership. They tried them in civilian courts and earned convictions through due process. They buried their dead. They mourned. And they moved on. In every sense, it was a rational, adult, mature response to a terrible terrorist act, one that remained largely in keeping with liberal democratic ideals.

This reminded me very much of the Norwegian response to the Norwegian Breivik killed 76 people and bombed parliament buildings in central Oslo. He was politically motivated and left a, so called, manifesto “arguing” his misguided case.

The Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg reacted immediately by calling for more democracy and more openness. It was a very moving and heartfelt response from a man who knew very many of the victims personally. He would go on to reinforce this position later (Huffington Post):

Five days after an attacker incensed by Norway’s culture of tolerance horrified the world, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday issued a quiet call of defiance to his countrymen: Make Norway even more open and accepting.

“The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation,” Stoltenberg insisted at a news conference.

Of course each situation is different but it is interesting to note that the “Keep Calm and Carry On” approach seems to be the quickest way of returning to a state of normality and healing that ensures that the attackers have failed in impacting the society they attack. L’Hote ends his post, which talks about the American response but applies equally to other countries, with the words

We have examples of adult responses to terrorism. Instead, we betray ourselves, in every sense a terrorized, terrified people.

Don’t see this as a spoiler – go read the text.

Posted on by mklang

Public servants and Private individuals

TJ McIntyre has a brilliant quote from Glenn Greenwald that summarizes much of what is important in the privacy debate:

The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.

Posted on by mklang

Release Bassel Khartabil

The post is copied in its entirety from the Creative Commons weblog

What open means to you
Bassel / joi / CC BY

Earlier this year, Creative Commons issued a statement in support of Bassel Khartabil, a longtime CC volunteer who has been detained by Syrian authorities since March 15. Amnesty International recently released a document with information suggesting that Bassel has been ill-treated and even tortured. This morning, we sent a letter to President Bashar al-Assad, Minister of Foreign Affairs Walid al-Mu’allim, and Minister of Defense ‘Imad al-Fraij; urging that Bassel be released unless he is promptly charged with an internationally recognized criminal offense. We urge Syrian authorities to grant Bassel immediate access to his family, a lawyer of his choice, and all necessary medical treatment.

Bassel has played a crucial role in the open technology and culture communities, both in Syria and around the world. Through his service as Creative Commons’ project lead in Syria and his numerous contributions to the advancement of open source and related technologies, Bassel has spent his career working toward a more free Internet. Many of us at Creative Commons have become friends of Bassel’s over the years. All of us have benefited from his leadership and expertise.

Please stand with us in support of Bassel. Amnesty International has provided instructions for contacting Syrian authorities. For more information, visit freebassel.org.

Read Creative Commons’ call for the release of Bassel Khartabil (PDF).

Posted on by mklang

Real Fame at Last: my acceptance speech

As an academic we measure stuff and compare all the time. I’m not talking about research but rather the comparisons between each other. Who has the longest publication list, given the most keynotes, sat on the most advisory boards…

Today is a major moment as I have received the highest form of praise an Internet researcher can obtain. It is an object of desire that I have been dreaming of, but not daring to hope for.

So I would like to thank the academy, my advisers, supervisors and all my collaborators: without you guys none of this would have been possible.

Today a cease and desist letter finally graced my inbox.

We are requesting that you remove the link back to our site.

Admittedly it’s the weakest form of c&d letter and is not accompanied by evil threats but it contains the most vital statement necessary to enable induction into the halls of Internet fame. Once again: Thank You.

Posted on by mklang

Police, Evidence and Facebook

One of the things I presented at IR13 was in a 10-minute panel presentation on the regulation of Internet by spaces such as Facebook. I wanted to use this all to brief time to enter into the discussion of a problem of police, policing, procedural rules and technological affordances – easy right?

This is going to be a paper soon but I need to get some of the ideas out so that I remember the order they are in and so that people who know better can tell me how horribly wrong, ignorant and uniformed I am about the rules of evidence in different jurisdictions.

So the central argument is that computers have been used for a long time in police work and we have created safeguards to ensure that these computers and databases are not abused. In order to prevent abuse most countries have rules dictating when the police can search databases for information about someone.

Additionally, many countries have more or less developed rules surrounding undercover work, surveillance work and the problem of what to do with excess information (i.e. information gained through surveillance but not relating to the investigation that warranted the surveillance). As you can tell I need to do more reading here. These will all be in the article but here I want to focus on a weakness in the rules of evidence, which may be presented to the courts. This weakness, I argue, may act as an encouragement to certain police officers to abuse their authority.

Facebook comes along and many government bodies (not limited to the police) are beginning to use it as an investigative tool. The anecdotal evidence I have gathered suggests no limitations within the police to using Facebook to get better photos of suspects, finding suspects by “trawling” Facebook and even going undercover to become friends with suspects.

Now here is an interesting difference between Anglo-American law and Swedish Law (I need to check if this applies to most/all civil code countries): The Anglo-American system is much better at regulating this are in favor of individual rights. Courts routinely decide whether or not information gathered is admissible. If a police officer in America gathers information illicitly it may not be part of the proceedings.

In Swedish law all information is admissible. The courts are deemed competent to handle the information and decide upon its value. If a police officer gathers information illicitly in Sweden it is still admissible in court but he may face disciplinary actions by his employer.

So here’s the thing: If an officer decides he doesn’t like the look of me. He has no right to check me up. But there is no limitation to going online.

He may then find out that some of my friends have criminal records (I have several activist friends with police records) or find politically incorrect, borderline illegal status updates I wrote while drunk (I have written drunk statements on Facebook).

This evidence may be enough to enable him to argue probable cause for a further investigation – or at least (and here is the crux of my argument) ensure that he will not be disciplined harshly in any future hearing (should such a hearing arise).

The way the rules are written Facebook provides a tool that can be used to legitimize abuse of police power. And the ways the rules are written in Swedish law are much more open to such abuse.

Here are the slides I used for the presentation

Posted on by mklang

Assange and Zombie Facts

It’s not the first time and probably not the last, but last night I fell for the intoxicating allure of discussing with people online. So now I am at the office after 4 hours sleep wondering what the whole point of my Don Quixote behavior was…

I must stop doing this!

The problem is that arguing Assange is like arguing with creationists. For every answer they ask impossible questions and if you cannot answer them (immediately) it’s obvious that they are right. Most annoying. Then there is the problem that they behave like trolls. They don’t read the earlier material but just jump in and repeat the same tired (and wrong) statements. I love the term “zombie facts” i.e. statements which stagger on even when shot down.

My position is legal and can best be summarized by The blog that Peter wrote and The Statemans Legal myths about the Assange extradition.

Let me summarize some of the more important stuff:

  • “The allegation of rape would not be rape under English law” False (No brainer – rape is non consensual sex i.e. no means no. Sleeping people have not consented).
  • “This is the Personal Vendetta of one Swedish Prosecutor” False (it’s a decision by the Swedish Court of Appeals)
  • “Assange is more likely to be extradited to USA from Sweden than the United Kingdom” False (I wrote a longer post on this in March)
  • “Sweden should guarantee that there be no extradition to USA” Not legally possible (I wrote a longer post on this in March)
  • Sweden will extradite him anyway False (see Mark Klamberg for more on this)
  • “The Swedes should interview Assange in London” No: Best answer in the New Statesman article (Also: Seriously? Do you negotiate with tax authorities where to pay taxes?)

In addition I am completely in agreement with The Blog That Peter Wrote when he writes:

This issue is not like choosing sides in a soccer match.  You can be pro-Wikileaks and keen to see the rule of law operate.  This does not make you anti-Assange, an Assange Hater or anything else.  I, like you, have no idea whether he is guilty of the alleged crimes back in August 2010.  I do feel that the alleged victims deserve to be taken seriously, having taken the step of reporting the alleged offences to the Police, and that they should have some form of closure.

It is frankly irrelevant who the man is who is wanted for questioning, and what other great things he may (or may not) have done.  If you believe in judicial process and the rule of law, it is hard to argue he should not return to Sweden for questioning (after, of course, dealing with the consequences of his behaviour here in jumping bail).

This post is to remind myself to turn of my devices and go the f**k to sleep.

Posted on by mklang

Your Phone Company is Watching

Data retention and mobile telephones are seen as boring subjects. But change that to “Your phone company is watching” and get Malte Spitz to harass his phone company to use his right to information. The data he gets maps out 6 months of his life – check out what he does with the data. All of a sudden data retention is not boring – it is scary serious.

Spitz demonstrates simply why this is important. He argues that we have to fight for our right for self-determination every day. He is right and history may depend on it.

 

What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn’t too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code — a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

Malte Spitz asked his cell phone carrier what it knew about him–and mapped what he found out.

Posted on by mklang