Earth: Mostly Harmless

Whither privacy?

A number of things have popped up on the radar (read: RSS reader) from sources such as 27B Stroke 6, BoingBoing and EFF: Deep Links that have sounded to me like extremely Bad Things from a privacy/individual rights point of view. These sorts of things come out of such sources all the time, but it seems to me that in the last few months some particularly concerning ones have arisen which are either (a) so concerning in the first place that they warrant a Tin Foil Hat and or (b) have conspicuously failed to go away.

Some notable examples from the past few days’ media coverage:

Swedes favour more bugging
Supreme court refuses to hear challenge to air passenger identification requirements
The continuing air passenger data-sharing disagreement between the EU & USA
US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

I personally find some of these developments to be more than a little disturbing: however I am conscious that, particularly outside the United States (where many of the most egregious challenges to civil liberties occur nowadays), people don’t seem to care about privacy any more. Or else, they see these developments as inevitable and (to some extent) a necessary compromise.

Continue reading Whither privacy?…

‘I Spy with Thy Lecturer’s Eye’

This is a story I wrote for publication in my University’s student newspaper. It went out in the 9th November edition of the Strathclyde Telegraph (which went out today, due to late printing). It was edited for publication somewhat but I’ve chosen to publish the version which went to press here in the interests of consistency…

And no, the title/headline is nothing to do with me - so send your groans/complaints elsewhere!

A leaked draft memorandum has revealed the UK government gave serious consideration to asking senior university staff to pass on information regarding Muslim or “Asian-looking” students to the security services. This approach appears to be the latest in a series of faltering efforts aimed at tackling ‘extremism’ in Muslim communities, for which the government believes campuses are “fertile recruiting grounds”.

The memo, which is not publicly available but was obtained by The Guardian, calls for university staff to cede information to Special Branch units of regional police forces regarding the activities of Muslim societies on campus.

It has provoked outrage among students, university staff and among Muslim communities.

Ousman Sadiq, a Masters student on Strathclyde’s Computer and Electronic Systems course described the measures as “a largely unhelpful bit of guidance that will end up only making Muslims feel more oppressed, while still not being a deterrent to those who tend towards an extremist viewpoint”.

NUS National President Gemma Tumelty criticised the plans as likely to introduce a “McCarthy-like atmosphere of suspicion between students and lecturers”, and the Universities and Colleges Union joint secretary Paul Mackney warned that the memo had the implication of “blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable”. “UCU members have a pivotal role in building trust - these proposals, if implemented, would make it all but impossible”. The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC) even went so far as to issue a press release to reassure students studying in Australia that such measures would never be implemented there.

While plans to distribute the memo itself among senior university staff appear to have been shelved, its essentially ill-founded premises, unhelpful tone and ham-fisted terminology are further evidence of the Government’s increasingly desperate attempts to foster better community relations from the top down.

The memo is ostensibly aimed at averting acts of terrorism, but confuses terrorism on the one hand, and radicalisation on the other. To say that universities sometimes radicalise people in their religious and political views is hardly controversial, but to consider this radicalisation in the context of Muslim communities a stepping stone to committing acts of violence implies a very dim view of students’ morality. Tumelty suggests that “indiscriminate monitoring of groups on campus assumes collective guilt”.

The accusatory tone of the document also has implications for student recruitment and retention. The numbers of Muslim students on many university courses is already unrepresentative of the wider social mix in many British cities - and Mackney fears that proposals like those in the memo, mixed with unhelpful comments from government ministers in recent weeks regarding issues such as the veil, could undermine the “enormous strides” made in recent years in university diversity and race relations.

The government’s approach of ethnic profiling, as evidenced by the ‘Asian-looking’ reference in the memo, has also come in for sharp criticism. Labony Choudhury, a student at Sheffield University interviewed by The Guardian, pointed out that “being Muslim has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, nor terrorism of any description. It’s like trying to define what a rapist looks like. Far too simplistic.”

By Graeme West

29th October 2006

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment

Picked this up on Slashdot today. Is copyright, and perhaps digital rights issues in general, creeping up on the back of the environment as a major political issue? For my part, I hope so.

Traditionally, copyright has been firmly in the realm of ’stakeholder’ politics, but in an age where ’stakeholders’ include 15-year-olds uploading videos to SueTube (explanation), multi-billion dollar ‘content’ companies and the quasi-corporatist non-governmental organisations, isn’t it time for a proper debate?

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment:

zumaya100k writes “In recent months, Slashdot has covered the rise of the Pirate Party and the battles in Europe over iPod interoperability. Canada’s Hill Times has an insightful column from Michael Geist that links these developments as the growing importance of copyright as a political issue. He argues that copyright is now tracking the environment as a mainstream political issue.” (Geist is talking about Canada here, but much the same can be said about the U.S. and other places.)

(Via Slashdot).

Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales

The latest chapter in Google’s continuing world-domination book-scanning operations, this is a defence of the programme - a rare publisher’s voice speaking out in favour of it, at a time when the nebulous and highly-successful company is being sued by authors’ associations for copyright infringement over the service. And as for the scheme’s greatest benefit for less well known books - further confirmation of the Long Tail thesis?

I, for one, welcome our digitising, organising, aggregating, comparison shopping, advertising, Mountain View overlords.

Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales:

eldavojohn writes “A few book publishers are actually thanking Google for an apparent rise in sales due to Google’s scan plan. Google is busy defending itself against authors and publishers that have brought lawsuits for ignoring copyrights. The director of the Oxford University Press said, ‘Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.’ It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers: ‘Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the ‘buy this book’ Google link.’ Do you think that Google’s ’sneak peak’ search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?”

(Via Slashdot).

Talk Like a Pirate Day

And so it comes round again, international Talk Like A Pirate Day. This year’s a little more special than most, with so much piratey memorabilia available. For starters, Apple is making a contribution thanks to this graphic, and the availability of Piratey (or should that be Richards-ey) movies on the DRM-laden iTunes store.

Piratey translation:

Yarr, it be upon us oncemore, the Daye when landlubbers succumb their wretched Speach t’the way of the Salty Seadog. The riggin be sound on this here Daye - yarr, Davy Jones’ Locker’ll take me now if there ain’t a grand booty on them thar Inter Nette, of Squiffies who be postin’ plunder of Gentlemen o’ Fortune.

Aye, me parrot concurs.

Yes, indeed the Internet has given us some great things: RSS; instant communication across political and cultural boundaries; Chuck Norris facts and more, but it is surely in this area of piratey camp humour in which its faculties as a medium for increasing human understanding truly shine.

Just look at the piratey songs; dictionaries; thesaurus (and wiki) lesson plans; clothing; Flash animations; offical TLAPD songs; movies; online Piratey translator cartoon (one of my faves); Slashdot story; and more the Web has to offer. And if all this Piratese confuses your English-accustomed tongue, see this helpful Pirate grammar how-to video.

Ask not what pirates can do for you; ask what you can do for pirates.

And don’t forget this guy.