It is the next obvious step. But still it does not make it a good move. Tony Blair has moved politics a step further into cyberspace by being the first politician to open a channel on YouTube.
What is the momentous occasion? It’s just Blair congratulating Sarkozy for his election success. There is an English and French version.
Personally I think its all kind of boring… and just a bit sad…
Naomi Wolf has written a provocative article entitled Fascist America, 10 Easy Steps in the Guardian Online.
Her motivations show that the ten easy steps are easily fulfilled by the US administration. It is also interesting that all this is done in the name of freedom and democracy. In other words in order to rescue freedom and democracy we must remove your freedoms and suspend the participatory democracy. This is doublespeak and spin at its best.
Shocking.
Torture and the Future: Perspectives from the humanities ( Critical Issues in America, January 2007 – June 2007) is a companion website to an exhibition at the UC Santa Barbara. The exhibition is filled with interesting events which unfortunately all take place over there. I would have loved to listen to some of the lectures and it is unfortunate that they are not available online. However the site also contains a very good links section filled with online recommended reading and other material of interest. This alone is well worth the visit.
A man in the UK has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 monthsâ?? conditional discharge for illegally using someone elseâ??s open wifi (an offence under the Computer Misuse Act see more on note below*). These (one and two) BBC stories gives more information on this but it also includes lots of interesting pre-suppositions about the dangers of open wireless Internet access points.
The main arguments in the BBC stories are that the use of someone elseâ??s wifi is mainly to enter into illegal porn sites, launch hack attacks, to steal information or worse.
Is this really what people try to do on other peoples networks? My experience is that most unauthorized wifi use is travelers checking email, or neighbors using each otherâ??s nets out of sheer incompetence. Naturally there are always going to be nasty people attempting to abuse openness but how bad can it be?
Phil Cracknell has called for an awareness campaign to inform of the dangers of openness â?? â??The perception in the past has been that borrowing a bit of bandwidth is cheeky but not really criminal behaviourâ??. But then again Phil Cracknell is chief technology officer of security firm NetSurity and may be a bit interested in increasing our perception of insecurity.
Most of the people I come into contact with (ok, so I hang with the wrong crowd) donâ??t believe that borrowing bandwidth is cheeky â?? itâ??s a simple act that does not harm anyone.
Using anything for an illegal activity is however illegal and should be punished.
—
* Added 23 April
Stealing wifi is actually an offence under the Communications Act of 2003. To be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act there has to be more than simple wifi use. Basically the Computer Misuse Act requires an unauthorised entry into the computer system. This is similar to Swedish law where “only” using someone’s wifi is not an offence while entering into someone’s system without authorisation is an offence (DatorintrÃ¥ng). This difference is quite subtle and should be investigated further since it could be argued that it is not possible to use wifi without unlawful entry.
Do you read First Monday? Well to be honest I don’t usually have the time to read through every issue but I get the email alert for every new issue – its out on the first Monday of every month – and I tend to browse through the titles and find something interesting to read each month.
First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peerâ??reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, First Monday has published 795 papers in 132 issues; these papers were written by 951 different authors. In addition, eight special issues have appeared.
This month has a focus on Wikipedia which is naturally interesting but what really caught my eye was a chapter from Sandra Braman’s book Change of State: Information, Policy and Power.
Thanks to MIT Press and Sandra Braman, First Monday is pleased to present an excerpt from Sandraâ??s latest book Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power. This book examines the implications of the change of the governments from welfare states to informational states. Sandra describes how information policy in areas as diverse as intellectual property, border protection, privacy, and research funding affect issues such as identity, the nature of technological systems, and organizational structures.
The table of contents for Change of State follows with a link to chapter 9, â??Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State.â??
The book is naturally amerocentric but promises some interesting ideas. It looks like another book to add to the reading list – check it out.
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.
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.
Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside – knowing that these are the people claiming to be fighting for freedom and democracy worldwide…
(via Markmedia)
“The British Government has issued a response to a recent petition calling for ‘the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible’. The answer is reassuring but perhaps doesn’t go far enough, and gives no specific promises to bring into line a patent office that grants software patents (according to the petition) ‘against the letter and the spirit of the law’. The Gowers Review that it references gives detailed insight into the current British position on this debate, most interestingly recommending a policy of ‘not extending patent rights beyond their present limits within the areas of software, business methods and genes.'” (via Slashdot)
OMG! Does this mean that there are European countries, part of the EU which actually may have a spine? That they are prepared not to toe the EU competition of who can sellout their values the fastest in order to please the US?
Originally I thought that European Unity was a good idea since it would enable Europeans to take a stand against the cultural and economic superiority of the States – but we haven’t seen much of that yet…
Todayâ??s op-ed piece in the local newspaper Göteborgs Posten is written by Frida Blom the chairperson for Svenska Freds- och Skiljedomsföreningen which is Swedenâ??s largest organization for piece peace. The reason for her article is the Norwegian conference beginning today aimed at bringing about a reduction in the use of cluster bombs.
Apparently Sweden is going to back away from earlier promises to lead and call for reductions in the use of cluster bombs. In December 2006 the Swedish Minister of Defence replied to questions in parliament stating that the governments was going to play an active role in international work against cluster bombs including working for an international ban and actively participated in the coming Norwegian conference on banning cluster bombs. The minister also stated that he was going to do away with Swedenâ??s supply of a (all?) cluster bombs (bombkapsel 90), create a Swedish ban on cluster bombs, and stop the production of bombkapsel 90 for the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighter.
Now it seems that the Minister has discovered that Sweden needs cluster bombs to defend Sweden. So he unfortunately cannot keep his word.
The latter position is either ignorance or bullshit on a higher level. Cluster bombs are not useful defensive tools. They are small bombs which spread over a large area. Many do not detonate, which has the effect of making re-building society after a war a costly and painfully slow process.
So why would the minister change his mind? Cash is king. No point in trying to sell the fighter planes if you also cannot sell the messy stuff.
Aaa â?? Swedish neutrality. Hypocrisy on a higher level.
What do the Minister of Defence and the Minister of the Environmnet have in common – besides politics? Well today I recieved a letter from the Minister of Defence thanking me for sending my PhD to him three months ago. The Minister of the Environment thanked me in January. Therefore they both have good manners. All the other ministers (including the Prime Minister) either have no manners, no staff or both – since they have not said thank you.
Actually since they were all part of a new cabinett selected close after the election and my thesis defence I sent all the newbies copies of my thesis Disruptive Technology: Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy. I didn’t expect a reply from any of them but it’s nice to see that at least two ministers are polite.