Glowing Review

I came across a glowing review on Amazon for Human Rights in the Digital Age (edited by Andrew Murray and myself). Getting a glowing review is a very nice feeling! So good that I naturally feel the need to reprint it here!

I read this book following Conor Gearty’s advice in his 2005 Hamlyn Lecture Series “Can Human Rights Survive?” that this book “should be required reading for all those interested in the future good health of our subject”. Although it drew on a wide variety of contributors, some better than others, overall I found the book filled a void in the current literature and for this reason alone it would be a must read. That aside though I found the contributions to be thought provoking and useful. Some of the better chapters come from Mathias Klang who discusses Cyber-activism and online civil disobedience, Douglas Vick who puts US and European views of free expression to the test and Andrew Murray who challenges the orthodox views that government should look after itself – at least when it comes to controlling the information flow about itself.

This is an excellent collection of essays and I simply echo Conor Gearty’s words – buy it if you are interested in the future good health of the discourse on human rights.

Summer progress

It’s a hot summer. Brains are melting and work is sluggish. Despite this deadlines loom over us the unrelenting sunshine. My PhD thesis defence is on the 2 October. The book goes to the publishers in the last week of August.

The title of the work is “Disruptive Technology – Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy” and it will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. The blurb on the back cover will have this text:

Social interaction is partly shaped by technology being used. Therefore technological innovation affects modes of social interaction. While gradual technological innovation is often assimilated, some changes can be more disruptive. This research examines the democratic impact of attempts to control disruptive technology through regulation. This is done by studying attempts to regulate the phenomena of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship â?? in particular the affect of these regulatory attempts on the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy. By studying the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy this work shows that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

If anyone wants to read an advance version it’s available here. If you send me comments before end of August then I can make changes in the text.

Other facts about the book:

It’s 272 pages long
It’s 103027 words long
It will have a cover design by Jähling.

Online Civil Disobedience

One of my research areas is the odd but interesting area of online civil disobedience. The basic problem her is whether or not the internet can be used in political forms of protest. The trend has been to limit the ability to use denial of service (even manual attacks) and web page defacement as legitimate forms of political protest. My opinion has been that this discriminates against online activities. For my arguments read the chapter Participation in the draft of my thesis Disruptive Technology here.

Five years ago the groups “Libertad” and “Kein Mensch ist illegal” (No Human is Illegal) organised 13000 people in an online blockade (With a script- client- based distributed denial of service attack) of the airline Lufthansa. The protest was against the companies part in the deportation of asylum seekers.

Now the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt says online demonstration is not force but a legitimate form of political protest.

Decision by the Frankfurt Appellate Court (in German only, 22.05.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/service/downloads/pdf/olg220506.pdf

Statement by Libertad on the ruling (in German only, 1.06.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/inhalt/projekte/depclass/verfahren/libpe010606.shtml

In German (1.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/73755
In English (2.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/73827

(via EDRI newsletter)

Wanted: Swedish Activist Wiki

Sweden has had a long reputation for being boring. Many Swedes prefer to think of this not as boring but as safe. Trygghet (security) is very big here. Traditionally most of this security was believed to come from the state which would protect its citizens from the cradle to the grave in the classic welfare state captured in the Swedish term Folkhem (Peoples Home). In part this security comes from a long period of neutrality and lack of war or civil conflict.

The upside with security is trust. Swedes tend to be trusting and can therefore get on with their lives. The downside is that trusting people make easy targets.

Sweden does not have a strong individualistic rights based approach and therefore are very easily caught with their trousers down when official agencies approach them. A good example of this was this weeks police raid on the Pirate Bay where amongst other things:

  1. The police took more servers than they needed â?? thereby disrupting the communication of organisations not connected with the raid.
  2. The Pirate Bayâ??s legal representative was asked (required?) to leave a DNA sample â?? a gross misuse of the purpose of DNA tests and a form of intimidation.
  3. The status of surplus information is unclear at present â?? therefore creating an opening for police fishing expeditions.

How does one move from a position of trust and security to a greater awareness of individual rights, legal requirements and the demands which can be made on the legal system? Education.

To achieve this I think there is a need to create a website (preferably a wiki) on the legal position of online activists containing information about rights and obligations in the case of police actions.

A site such as this would provide information on (amongst other things):

  1. What can the police take (and limitations)?
  2. How much or how little should the activist do to help?
  3. Must the activist hand over encryption keys?
  4. What should the activist think about (ask for receipts etcâ?¦)
  5. What happens in the police station? (rights, obligations and experiences)

So does anyone want to start a wiki?

Examples of sites:

Activist Rights – AustraliaDemonstrating and Civil DisobedienceFreeBeagles Legal Advice

Read this book

The blurb on the back of the book is important since it has to interest the reader and at the same time be a factual discription – without being too long, complex or explanatory… So after a period of thought and procrastination this is what I have:

This work is on the democratic effects of attempts to regulate disruptive technology. By looking at the phenomenon of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship this work shows the effects of regulation upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy.

Social interaction and organisation are, in part, shaped by the technology used. The social differences between the technology of snail-mail and the technology of e-mail are defined by features that the technology allows, and the limitations that constrain, the user modes of interaction. Therefore technological innovation and development over time affects the ways in which social interaction and communication are carried out. Certain forms of gradual technological innovation and development may be easily assimilated while other forms are more disruptive. This disruption can be seen in the way which new technologies affect the organisation of social interaction and are called, in this work: disruptive technology.

This work studies regulation as an attempt to come to terms with the disruptive effects of technology upon social interaction. This is done by focusing on the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy. In conclusion, this work will show that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

Would you read this book? If so you can download it here.

Text editing blues

Like bad tasting medicine editing is an aweful process which is only done because of its obvious benefits. Its terrifying the amount of errors that can be spotted at this late stage. Today I even found an incomplete sentence… it simply tapered off like someone losing a chain of thought.

This is the begining up until the research question. Not sure about it though…

This work begins with the thesis that there is a strong relationship between the regulation of technology and the Internet based participatory democracy. In other words, the attempts to regulate technology have an impact upon the citizenâ??s participation in democracy. This work will show what this relationship is and its effect on democratic participation.
Taking its starting points from the recent theoretical developments in regulation, disruptive technology and role of ICT in participatory democracy, this work is the application of three theoretical discussions. These theoretical discussions are used in the empirical exploration of six areas: virus writing and dissemination, civil disobedience in online environments, privacy and the role of spyware, the re-interpretation of property in online environments, software as infrastructure and finally state censorship of online information. The purpose of these studies is to explore the effects of these socio-technical innovations upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy. The overall research question for this thesis is therefore:
What are the effects of technology regulation on the Internet-based participatory democracy?

To connect to an earlier ongoing discussion about the text: The book is now 257 pages long and 99 479 words long. Do you think that word can handle going over 100 000 words or will it simply melt…

Political Use of Trees

Using trees to form part of a political protest has almost been synonymous with the green movement. Protesters have hugged or chained themselves to trees to prevent them from being sawn down. Protesters have staged sit-ins in them to demonstrate their point. Part of the Swedish protest movement was staged around some Elm trees in a park in central Stockholm (Kungstrådgården). The Elm Battle (12-13 May 1971) was part of a civil disobedience act. To prevent the building of a entrance to a subway station activists (amongst other things) climbed up into the trees. The planned station entrance was moved.

In central Göteborg today this tree has been painted with the text â??think about the homelessâ?? this is not the first tree to sport this text. When the text on an earlier tree began to fade the notice appeared on this tree instead.

Most groups unable to make their voices heard in traditional media have turned to the Internet to attempt to publicise their cause. This protest is about homeless people and by using the tree as a mediun the message also manages to underscore the lack of technology and basic infrastructure homelessness entails.

26 Days

Today the deleting and the writing almost cancelled each other out. Previous counts have only recorded changes in the 100s of words but today the change is +40 words (exact number). The total today is 83 829 words or 170 pages.

Photo Hans Runesson (1985)

The photo above was taken at a neo-Nazi demonstration in the Swedish town of Växjo in 1985. The woman could not contain her anger any more and ran out among the neo-Nazi demonstrators and hit one of them with her handbag. Her act is a true example of civil courage.
The topic of the day was online civil disobedience. Part of the focus was on the online discussion between the Electrohippies and the Cult of the Dead Cow which took place in 2000. The Electrohippies wrote Client-side Distributed Denial-of-Service: Valid campaign tactic or terrorist act? to which Oxblood Ruffin wrote the Response of the Cult of the Dead Cow.

Grafitti as Social commentary

Grafitti is a difficult topic. I dislike it when trams and buses are vandalised and filled with repetitive tags and I am not impressed by any sloppy, messy and defacing uses of a can of spraypaint. However this doesnt mean that I dislike everything I see. Some of the work out there falls into a category of its own. I am particulary fond of social commentary. Where there is a large communicative process. The difference? Well tags are simply the marking of turf in the same way as a dog would pee on a lamppost. Important to the dogs in the area perhaps, but not really a communication to anyone else. Social grafitti partakes, and asks others to partake, in a social discourse. One of the best examples of this I have found is the work of Banksy, who makes grafitti a form of social commentary.

“Imagine a city where grafitti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just the estate agents and the barons of big business. Image a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – its wet.” Take a look at examples of his outdoor collection here. I particularly like his work on the Israeli/Palistine wall which can be seen here. His work can also be seen in Retort Magazine – Where you can see a picture of Mujahidin Mona Lisa. More of Banksy’s work can be found in his books Existencilism (2002) and Wall and Piece (2005)


existencilism Wall and Piece
Books by Banksy

Another interesting example of interesting grafitti is done by a lesser, but more local anonymous hand holding the spray-can. I came across this wall while working in a nearby town. I would not really have bothered with it much since it is simply the words “Civil Disobedience” (in Swedish) sprayed on the wall of a concrete underpass. The thing that makes this interesting is that the writer asking for (demanding?) disobedience corrects his own sign to conform to spelling.

civil olydnad
On a wall in Uddevalla (Now repainted)

If its disobedience you want – then why bother correcting the direction of the N? Is this actually more than simple tagging? Has the hand that sprayed thought about what it was doing? Is the changing of the N actually a subtle communication by the artist on the ways in which even disobedience is ruled by conventions? This work was trivial but with the changing of the N it becomes a subtle form of communication on the nature of laws, rules and social conventions. All this in two words on a concrete wall that never previously inspired me to think. Dont tell me that grafitti isnt important.