ICM 501 Introduction to Interactive Communications

2005-11-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

This is to help myself in the whole "clicking and finding sources charade".

We're Teen, We're Queer and We've Got E-mail

Gay Teen FInd a Safe World in Cyberspace

The Battle Over Gay Teens

Lonely Gay Teen Seeking Same

Queer Perspectives on Social Responsibility

Internet Survey of Queer and Questioning Youth

04'/'05 Gay and Lesbian Consumer Survey

Gay Advertising

Gay Teen Expelled From High School

Focus on Youth and The Internet:A Study

2005-11-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

Life On Screen by Sherry TurkleI love that we are able to access academic books so easily and so, well, Freely, now more than ever. Doing research for papers has always been a strain when working off campus. Mainly do to the fact that sources here in BC Canada are limited at public libraries and that QU Library still hasn't sent me articles I requested months ago, several times... Anyway, enough whining - what I am glad about is the huge range of sources available on the Internet now. Yes, there has always been thousands of 'articles' but where they genuine? Were they worth reading/quoting/using as a source for a Graduate Paper? Now you can find reliable sources if you spend a bit more time. Sure, Quinnipiac Library Online Article Databases are good - but there are limits to what searches you can perform outside QU bounds as well as many of the articles I desire, are on QU Ref shelves that a librarian has to give you permission as well as manually must send them to you - still a faulty system but also a secure one. Living thousands of miles away from the school is my problem I guess. Okay I said enough complaining. So Professor Jordeno sent me a link to an Amazon "Search Inside Book"; Reading Digital Culture and It gave me two articles I could use for my paper. Upon that book I stumbled upon the other I posted above which is Turkle's essays about the Computers Power over us. It is so true - and I am still reading through it but it is a book I should share. Well research is doing well - I almost feel I have many many articles and not enough paper to print them. Happy Writing!

2005-11-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

Homosexuality and Interactive Communications: Teens Relying more on Interactive COmmunication??

Well the title needs a lot of work as does my research - but here are some links I can't misplace for now. I am still fighting with this topic to make it more, well, an Interactive Communications final paper for Graduate School. This is going to be tricky...

Links:

http://www.glcensus.com/results/index.cfm <--- A link to Gay/Lesbian Census Reports

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/allnewsbydate.asp?NewsID=992 <---- Does Advertising Affect Gays Differently?

http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.gaynet/browse_thread/thread/3cbe757f32d3d8d1/57003ddafb325bd8%2357003ddafb325bd8?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=0&num=3 <--- Gay Teens Find a Safe World in Cyber Space

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/14/25238/046 <--- Gay Teen Expelled From High School

http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/pornography/facts/a0026839.cfm <--- Youth and the Internet

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1112856,00.html <---- The Battle Over Gay Teens (TIME)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/gay.teen.html <---- We're Teen We're Queer and We've Got E-Mail

http://www.schoollibraries.ca/articles/151.aspx <---- Queer Perspectives on Social Responsibility

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:BP9VVz9lAXEJ:www.outproud.org/survey/pdf/qys1997_report_pub.pdf+queer+teens+internet+usage&hl=en&client=safari <---- 1997 Survey on Queer Youth and Internet

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:9605jO-rgmsJ:www.asexuality.org/AVENpaper.pdf+queer+teens+internet+usage&hl=en&client=safari <--- A look at Online Identity

Well that's enough for now...

2005-11-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

More Visions about the Future of the Internet...

(all from Predictions Database

"The Internet will become infected by viruses and hackers, and there will be no secruity or privacy.

Anti-virus companies will create more viruses so they can sell their newest protections against them. Hackers will break through "secure" sites until nothing is secure or private.

Everything the internet was created to be will be lost, ruined by mankind - like most everything else we mess with."

"Vision: Feeds give the user control over information flow, can be combined in many ways, and allow users to parse and filter information to suit their needs and desires. We're only seeing the beginning of radical changes that will arise from the widespread use of feeds."

"Nutshell: The internet is in its infancy - the big picture to me is we are inventing the closest thing to a human brain that we can.

Vision: We are in a sense trying to invent a collective human brain. It will be like Hal 9000 on steroids and coke in the very near future."

"Nutshell: Artificially intelligent computers will eventually learn how to "steer" us on both of personal as well as political level.

Vision: By 2050, we'll not only have computers that will be able to communicate intelligently, but they'll be much more intelligent than we are, and they'll be able to take part in thousands of "conversations" simultaneously, in different languages, and with people all around the globe. In so doing, they will amass a great deal of secondhand experience, learning about human nature and our many flaws. We'll come to feel safe confessing our sins to these AIs, and like our closest friends, they may even give us some good advice.

AIs will inevitably learn the arts of rhetoric, and, being able to juggle reams of data, they'll learn how to use statistics and targeted arguments to steer and manipulate us individually toward whatever ends they view to be self-beneficial.

In time, they will probably even control us, but during this interim, the Internet will become a great talking machine with a vast network of AIs at its heart."

encompassing everything we spoke about in class? I think so...

2005-11-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

A vision for the future

Name: Kim Vonder Haar

From: Canada

Bio: User Interface Designer (Nortel, Xandros) MSc Cognitive Science

Area of Expertise: Research Scientist/Illuminator

Topic: Getting, Sharing Information

Headline: The Orchestration Age Erupts

Nutshell: This era will usher in extraordinary demands for new means and methods of expression, interaction and communication. It will forge entirely new types of thinkers, whose kaleidoscopic manipulation of digital media will culminate in an explosive proliferation of innovative discoveries.

Vision: An article that I wrote in 1998 for ACM SIGCHI called "The Orchestration Age" describes my vision of what's coming. It's already happening.

http://www.sigchi.org/bulletin/1998.1/vid.html

From immersion in clouds of digital sorcery will rise entirely new types of users with hybrid styles of cognition. These new thinkers will not only orchestrate but lead and drive the developments of The Orchestration Age. New categories and labels will materialize to describe these emergent thinking styles. Generalized job titles such as IT Engineer or Interaction Designer will disappear and be replaced by more specific titles which reflect thinking styles and approaches toward information orchestration. Imagine the skill sets and tools necessary to support such job description titles as Inferential Data Specialist, Deductive Constraint Expert, Salient Prioritor, Macro Pattern Structure Analyst, Functional Mapmaker or General Associator.

Users in The Orchestration Age will embrace and evolve new cognitive styles to perceive and actively orchestrate information in completely unique ways. They will insist on having user interfaces and digital tools for manipulating diverse forms of media in ways never before seen and yet to be imagined.

The Orchestration Age will be a time when people are both cognitively and technologically equipped to draw on the vast reserves mined and stored during The Information Age. The communications infrastructure underlying the Internet has linked together and made accessible bridges across and gateways into deep reserves of specialized information in ways never before possible. Multimedia-literate users will retrieve, marry up and orchestrate these reserves in ways which will both drive demand for new forms of interaction and redefine current notions of creative expression. New thinking styles will simultaneously evolve, triggering innovative discoveries at a rate and on a scale which will eclipse the collective imagination of today's knowledge-workers. Anticipate a proliferation of orchestrated digital media, drawing on varied sources, comparing, contrasting and merging disciplines, elucidating patterns of commonalty and convergence, resulting in a barrage of new concepts which will transverse known categories and smelt radically new metaphors.

Date Submitted: 11/7/2005

2005-11-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

E-Books Versus Paper Books - The Downfall of books in our schools and other knowledgable facts...

"There is no such thing as an e-book that’s out of print. No matter if your book has been out for 3 months or 3 years, it will always be there. There is no precious bookshelf space to contend with and your average e-book takes up little space. Barring unusual circumstances, your e-book will always be available for purchase.
Other arguments of the E-book vs. Paperbacks debate are as follows:
“Who wants to curl up in bed with their monitor to read a book?”
“I can’t stand to sit at my computer and just read. I get on the computer to surf or chat or play games.”
“You can’t take an e-book with you to the doctor’s office or the beach or on a camping trip.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of those e-book reader thingys. I just bet the screen resolution on those things is terrible. I get a headache just by thinking about reading an entire novel on one of them.”
And so forth and so on…
Distribution and the mobility of e-books has been their biggest drawback, but with the growing technologies of hand held readers such as Hiebook, Rocket, Palm Pilot and several others, those arguments are quickly loosing ground. E-book readers are making rapid technological advances. The newest models feature adjustable screen resolutions; adjustable font sizes and a plethora of other features that make it possible to take your favorite e-book titles"...
Something to think about.

Do Reader's Really READ on the Web? Nope.

"In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book. These programs would combine their already available systems of searching books online with a commercial component that could revolutionize the way that people read books.

Now something for the kids!

2005-10-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

happy birthday internet!

2005-10-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Future of Computers - Through Bill Gates' Eyes...

In a recent airing on MTV (unfortuanatly i will never perhaps see), Bill Gates in an interview gave the low-down on computing in the next years. As Lauren pointed out in class, though this is not what this weeks discussion is about, it does indeed have a huge relevance as to what we discuss almost every week - side-tracking into our facination with the advances in technology. This week we were more focussed on apple's new iPod Nano. It is so facinating to me how everyone thrives for their electronics to be skinnier, lighter, more metalic... Take for instance the Moto Razr, THough there must be even more thinner, flashier phones, this is the one I am more accustomed to. And lastly, lets talk about the new Gameboy Micro, How can you use any of these new devices without suffering from a migraine from constant eye strain? I think its a world-wide conspiracy of optomestrists and and electronic comapnies. Maybe that is why there are so many "scary" ads on Canadain TV about the dangers of not having your eyes checked every year...And to make that even worse, I had to go get glasses this apst weekend! My eyes have always been perfect, but staring at a computer screen for 10+ hours per day has caused "my lateral vision to be uneven". ?? $490 later I have to wear glasses every time I even try to look at a computer screen. And I thought I spent enough already updating my computer screens to LCD. Well, back to Bill Gates. His interview can be viewed HERE. A glimpse at one portion:

"Audience member: The original reason you were so successful is you took the computer, something that everybody needs, and made it accessible by making a good operating system that anyone could use. Where are we going with that? How are we going to interact with our computer 15, 20, 30 years from now?

Gates: The future computer will be a lot more imbedded into the environment instead of something that you can identify. Whenever you are in your house you'll be able to ask for something, and whatever wall or counter you're near, that information will just be projected onto it. So computers will be able to understand speech, that's one of those tough problems we've been working on for a long time, and we can say with great certainty that over the next five years we'll be able to do that very well. We'll be able to recognize handwriting so you can just, you know, go to a little piece of paper of a screen and just scribble a little note on it and we'll see what that is and do the appropriate thing. So the computers, you'll feel like they're kind of everywhere — on your wrist you'll have a glanceable little screen, in your pocket you'll have the phone of the future. It will be a lot better. You'll have the tablet [PC] that you can carry around ... and even your living room TV will be a full-powered computer for playing games, for doing video conferences, connecting up with friends, or watching the redefined type of TV that comes over the Internet."

There was also much talk this week, (because it was the topic) but the nature and future of today's "cinema" (I put cinema in quotes because what is so cinematic about video-games turned movies such as Doom). The movie industry has seen drastic reduction in sales each year, in the billions:

"Overall growth for the home entertainment industry is slowing too, up a mere 1.1% to $11.4 billion in the first six months of 2005, compared with the same six months in 2004, according to Shindler. "For an industry that saw double-digit growth in prior years, that's fairly dramatic," he says. Movie rentals are down 2.3% to $3.9 billion for the first six months in 2005 compared with the same period last year.

The potential impact on the movie industry is huge. To produce a digital 3-D film isn't cheap: It costs between $20,000 and $25,000 to produce a copy of a 2-D film and between $35,000 and $50,000 for a 3-D film, Shindler says. But the potential for higher box office sales is there, too. Last year's Polar Express in 3-D from Warner Bros., in limited release at IMAX Theaters, brought in $45 million, demonstrating consumer hunger for something new."

The article also really touches upon the future and demand for 3-D films, the overall costs of making such films, and the discovery that many are already in the works. The article can be viewed HERE

Well, that is enough of my rambling. I need to focus myself now on the task at hand: "Write a review of a film of your choice, where you can trace how new media technologies is effecting the narrative in the film and your perception when watching it. It doesn't have to be a contemporary film. 3 - 4 pages."

I am thinking Cast Away

2005-10-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

This past week we focussed on gaming. I am an avid afixianoto on Age of Mythology. I play games to releave stress. Many others do the same. I found myself outdating myself however when speaking of all the game systems I still own today. How owning a Nintendo 64 & a Sega Master System isn't too cool anymore...

I included Images so you know what I have ;)

Yes I have PlayStation2. The second model. (the one after they realized their dvd playing cabalilities ruined discs...) Gaming has come a long way. So much so it is hard to fathom playing my old games - but I still do from time to time to relax.

It shocked me about the "America's Army" game:

"Q: What is the America's Army game?
A: ... an accurate portrayal of Soldier experiences ..

The America's Army game provides civilians with an inside perspective and a virtual role in today's premier land force: the U.S. Army. The game is designed to provide an accurate portrayal of Soldier experiences across a number of occupations. In the game, players will explore progressive individual and collective training events within the game. Once they successfully completed these events they will advance to multiplayer operations in small units.
(Last Updated: 2005-10-12)

Q: Why are you doing the game?
A: … it is part of the Army's communications strategy…

The Army's game is an entertaining way for young adults to explore the Army and its adventures and opportunities as a virtual Soldier. As such, it is part of the Army's communications strategy designed to leverage the power of the Internet as a portal through which young adults can get a first hand look at what it is like to be a Soldier. The game introduces players to different Army schools, Army training, and life in the Army. Given the popularity of computer games and the ability of the Internet to deliver great content, a game was the perfect venue for highlighting different aspects of the Army. Firms such as Toyota have used games for this educational purpose with considerable success.
(Last Updated: 2003-08-21)

Q: Is this a recruiting tool?
A: … it provides young adults and their influencers with virtual insights about the Army…

The game is designed to provide young adults and their influencers with virtual insights into entry level Soldier training, training in units and Army operations so as to provide insights into what the Army is like. As in the past, the Army's success in attracting high-potential young adults is essential to building the world's premier land force. With the passage of time, elimination of the draft and reductions in the size of the Army have resulted in a marked decrease in the number of Americans who have served in the Army and from whom young adults can gain vicarious insights into the challenges and rewards of Soldiering and national service. Therefore, the game is designed to substitute virtual experiences for vicarious insights. It does this in an engaging format that takes advantage of young adults' broad use of the Internet for research and communication and their interest in games for entertainment and exploration.
(Last Updated: 2003-08-21)" America's Army

And also playing that game (which froze my computer more times than I care to mention) KUMA/WARwas awful.

I usually like first person shooters, but I guess the reality of it made me cringe. Isn't that always the case? We push and push for everything to be "reality" but them vomit when our "dreams become reality".

2005-10-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

Victim's E-journal
led to slay suspect

BY KERRY BURKE, SCOTT SHIFREL and MELISSA GRACE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A doomed Queens man's chilling computer entry led cops to a suspect who allegedly robbed and killed the victim and his sister to finance a return to China, police said yesterday.
Jin Lin, 23, was charged with first-degree murder yesterday in the bloody slayings of Sharon and Simon Ng in their Kew Gardens Hills apartment Thursday, officials said.

Cops zeroed in on Lin, who once dated the woman, because Ng typed a journal entry into his computer fingering his sister's ex-boyfriend as the suspect, police said.

"He wrote that he was wondering why Lin was there and wished he would leave," said Police Officer Jennara Everleth, an NYPD spokeswoman.

Cops said that Ng, 19, let Lin into the second-floor apartment in the late afternoon when Lin asked if he could wait for the 21-year-old Sharon.

Sgt. Michael Breidenbach, head of the 107th Precinct detective squad, said the entry turned Lin's alibi upside down.

"That puts him in the apartment," said Breidenbach, adding that investigators got Lin to confess after confronting him with the entry.

Lin told cops he wanted to rob her to help him buy a plane ticket back to Hong Kong, law enforcement sources said.

Lin - who was picked up at his Flushing home on Friday - told cops that he set upon Simon Ng after failing to find any money in Sharon's bedroom.

Lin tied Simon Ng up and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest with a butcher knife, cops said.

It was not clear how much time passed before Sharon Ng came home at 9:30 p.m. Cops said Lin pounced on her as she entered the home and stabbed her repeatedly in the neck.

In the minutes after the attack, Sharon Ng's current boyfriend called and she managed to tell him to get help.

She died about an hour later at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens.

A cousin of the slain siblings - their own parents returned to Hong Kong six months ago - remained in shock over the killings yesterday.

"It's unbelievable that it was one single guy!" said Sam Cheung, 24. "He took two lives. How can one person do this?"

Originally published on May 17, 2005

2005-10-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

Blogging...5 Favorite Blogs...This Week's Assignment...

So this week we are to write a 5 page report on our 5 favorite blogs. It has to be formal as well. It's a research report. Well I am doing a lot of research since I am not a blog reader. Maybe I should have kept the RSS feed going on my iTunes before I finished this class...

Heck, I keep a blog. Well "we" do. And it is for personal use, well it is public, but those who read it we know personally. I wont share it with the class - no no.

Well, to begin this week's search for my "favorite" blogs, I went to Google.ca, and look what I found -

Ha! Google Canada wants me to blog!!

Well, here I go, off to find some blogs...

2005-09-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

Links that make you go Hmmmmmmmmmmm about Censorship, Surveillance and some other pertinent information.

Internet Censorship/ICE Citizen Lab

"The Internet Censorship Explorer (ICE) is a blog maintained by the Citizen Lab's technical research director, Nart Villeneuve. ICE is an incubator where Nart explores the politics of technology (hacktivism, infowar/cyberterrorism and Internet filtering), develops ideas for future Citizen Lab projects, posts proof of concept code and any other snippets of raw data that don't really have a place anywhere else. ICE also contains bleeding edge Internet filtering and censorship research related to the work of the Citizen Lab and the OpenNet Initiative including the development of censorship circumvention technology."

Link: http://ice.citizenlab.org/index.php

Open Net Initiative:

"The ONI mission is to investigate and challenge state filtration and surveillance practices. Our approach applies methodological rigor to the study of filtration and surveillance blending empirical case studies with sophisticated means for technical verification. Our aim is to generate a credible picture of these practices at a national, regional and corporate level, and to excavate their impact on state sovereignty, security, human rights, international law, and global governance."

Link: http://www.opennetinitiative.net/

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents:

"Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles."

Link: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

2005-09-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

Canada's Take on the US Patriot Act

"… Canadian laws and practices are as equally invasive
as the USA Patriot Act, and also provide access to this
personal information by other foreign entities.
… Canadian laws were created to protect privacy and
civil liberties, and yet they are oft en in vain. Fighting
terrorism is legitimate; applying terror rules to nonterror-
related situations is dishonest, and we ask that
this situation be fi xed. Failing that, the trust and faith
of Canadians citizens in their laws and in their human
rights protections will continue to erode, even as
these Canadian laws and practices are copied by other
countries. Th is practice is corrosive to human rights
internationally.
…
… Laws passed abroad will aff ect Canadian subsidiaries,
Canadian fi rms with offi ces abroad, and Canadian
data. Th is is globalisation in all ways, for better and
for worse. As the Geist and Homsi submission states
clearly, the powers and practices that allow for such
extra-jurisdictional access to personal data arose mostly
in the 1970s and 1980s. It is not a development of the
1990s globalization growth, nor the 2000s dearth in
surveillance. Nowadays, to make surveillance eff ective,
an international reach is optimal.
… We should avoid seeing Canada as a lonely lamb
about to be engulfed by the American wolf. Th e laws
that protect privacy in Canada are many and they act
as models to the rest of the world. Canada’s laws on
surveillance, however, are also models of invasiveness.
As a number of submissions stated, most remarkably
the one from ITAC, Canadian law enforcement and
national security agencies already have similar practices
to the Americans. How can Canada turn down another
for something that they would choose to allow for
themselves? Th e problem thus begins at home.
…
Reasonable people may say that the USA Patriot Act is
not problematic because of the letter of the law, or it is
no diff erent to existing practices and laws. Th ese people
are probably right in much of what they say. But within
our current legislative and political environment we
cannot separate the concerns of those who fear antiterrorism
laws but do not know its contents, from the
concerns of those who worry about being sent to jails
in third-world countries because of opaque regimes of
international co-operation, from the concerns about
not being able to get onto airplanes or open bank
accounts because of inaccurate information, or from
the concerns of being wiretapped by all-listening ears.
Perhaps these fears are not well grounded, but the
lack of confi dence and the fears themselves are real.
Reasonable people may debate about truth and facts,
but the results of such a debate are almost secondary to
our decreased confi dence that our rights are adequately
protected.
The situation may not be legally wrong, but it remains
dishonest and suffi ciently opaque to all. Much needs to
be done to increase our confi dence, all these years aft er
so much has been done in the name of increasing our
security.
Th e legal situation in the US regarding the treatment
of personal information is indeed appalling. It does
create a problematic situation for Canadian law, as it
did with EU practices. Th e situation must be fi xed.
Yet Canada must also fi x its own house. Th e legal
protection of privacy and due process in Canadian law
is increasingly problematic, to the point that Canada
is in less and less a position to criticize others, even as
Canada’s laws are increasingly being used as standards
for other countries. Th ese conditions are establishing
unacceptable risks particularly with an increasingly
docile set of legislatures.
Th e British Columbia Commission, as well as all
other privacy and information commissions, need to
protect the hard fought data protection and privacy
laws in light of these developments, in order to protect
the regime in Canada from the corrosive eff ects of
international policy dynamics and degradation by
internal legislative dynamics. At some point this
madness must stop. Someone has to stand up and say
that this cannot continue. We hope this will begin in
British Columbia."
Submission of Privacy International (August 2004) pp. 1-3, 7.
Privacy and the USA Patriot Act

2005-09-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

Internet Censorship: Is It Possible? How soon? - In Depth Report

By John Jalsevac

“The days are now numbered for surfing an uncensored, open-access Internet, using your favorite search engine to search a bottomless cyber-sea of information in the grandest democratic forum ever conceived by humankind. Instead you can look forward to Googling about on a walled-off, carefully selected corpus of government propaganda and sanitized information "safe" for public consumption. Indoctrinated and sealed off from the outer world, you will inhabit a matrix where every ounce of creative, independent thinking that challenges government policies and values will be squelched.”
- Eliot D. Cohen Ph.D.

The Great Firewall of China

In May of this year Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, published an article in the Toronto Star. Entitled “Face to Face with the Great Firewall of China,” it related Geist’s troubling experiences while surfing the internet during a recent trip to communist China. (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/may22005...)

Besides being unable to download his own e-mail from a Canadian-based mail server, Geist complained that he was blocked from such commonplace Western information resources as Google News and BBC, not to mention the Google search engine itself. “Searches for articles on circumventing the Chinese filters yielded a long list of results, none of which could be opened. Moreover, inputting politically sensitive words such as the ‘Falun Gong’ cut me off from the search engines completely.”

This isn’t new news, but it is good to be reminded that the world at large does not enjoy the same degree of freedom that much of the Western world does. A fascinating Harvard study conducted during 2002 found that of the slightly more than 200,000 websites researchers tried to access through Chinese Internet Service Providers (ISPs), over 50,000 were blocked either by government installed filters or by the team of internet monitoring personnel the communist government employs for that purpose. (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/)

In a world increasingly dependant on what many North Americans naively believe is and will always remain the last bastion of unfettered free speech Geist’s testimony comes as a cold shock. As he himself relates, the words of John Gilmore, co-founder of the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” are no longer as valid as they once seemed to be.

China’s largely successful bid to forbid their citizens’ accessing a significant cross-section of what they have determined is politically and morally inflammatory material deals a devastating blow to the long-held contention that comprehensive censoring of the internet is impossible. Numerous middle-eastern countries have also successfully employed similar, but generally less sophisticated means of filtering internet content.

Geist concludes with a sobering reflection, that “it would be a mistake…to think that the Canadian Internet will always remain just as free as China’s is censored.”

The Problems and Complexities of Internet Censorship

Past statements by technical pseudo-prophets, that internet censorship is essentially technologically impossible can, in light of emerging knowledge about the sophistication of China’s great firewall, be taken as somewhere on this side of naive.

Wherever there are humans there is the power of human ingenuity; and wherever men can control the flow of information to suit their purposes, it is a good bet that they will come up with ever more ingenious methods of doing exactly that. If digital Alexander-the-Greats have learned how to hack through the Gordian-knots of the algorithms of Pentagon security features (and they have), they will also manage to invent ever more subtle means of censoring and controlling the content of the net, as available to the masses.

The issue, however, remains one of the most nuanced and vital topics facing this age and is one that undergoes constant review in the courtroom and the boardroom, with no sign of emerging consensus amongst interested groups, after over a decade of debate.

The internet is the creation of men that can perhaps be said to most closely resemble the truly “organic”—flourishing, growing and adapting to changing circumstances with an adeptness seemingly rivaling any organic species—and therefore remains as elusive an entity as ever before. “It is no exaggeration” said one study looking into the problem of the internet, “to conclude that the content of the Internet is as diverse as human thought.”

Libertarian, Leftist Obfuscation

A little research into the matter reveals that the most commonly held position in this debate is the libertarian view—that of complete and unrestricted digital freedom.

This view is held with good reason. At this juncture in Western history, when the traditional mainstream media is poisoned by various scarcely hidden agendas, and informational services are increasingly linked through questionable financial and political relationships with governmental authorities and corporate powers, many computer-savvy Western users have come to treasure the unfettered freedom and access to information of the World Wide Web as a blessing from above.

The most immediate example of exactly this phenomenon in action is the existence and influence of LifeSiteNews.com. Even as short a time ago as the mid 90s it would have been impossible for a pro-life/pro-family and culture news source such as this one to disseminate the type of information that LifeSite does to such a broad audience and at such minimal cost. Without printing or mailing costs it has become possible to circumvent the left-wing filters of the mainstream media with spectacular results, and all with the click of a button.

But as conservative forces are painfully aware, along with the good comes the bad. All-pervasive, intrusive, and easy-to-access “hard-core” pornography is the great scourge of the internet age, and should not be underestimated. For the first time in history, thanks to the inherent freedom of the internet in its current form, sexually explicit material is available to anyone of any age with practically no effort. The true scope of the spiritual and social devastation wrought by this plague may not come to the surface for years to come. But many on the right have asked the question burning on the minds of many, “is it worth it?” And, “is there any way to stop it without risking restricting the valuable freedom of speech afforded by the internet?”

Such questions, however, immediately alienate us from our left-leaning opponents, who have erroneously attached an intrinsic stigma to the word ‘censorship’, and who have no patience at all for any consideration of restricting online content.

The most frustrating part of pursuing debate about internet censorship, as with most other contentious issues, is the left’s general lack of concrete principles to appeal to. Many of the arguments of left-wing civil liberties groups on the matter are exceedingly difficult to follow. One group will agree that some minor restrictions on pornography and violent material should exist, while another will say that even such negligible restrictions violate their deified “freedom of speech”, and all without apparent rhyme or reason. Many will argue for some restrictions of pornography, while admitting that they don’t believe pornography to be harmful in the least.

The loss of the basic set of natural-law based principles which at one point in history were common to all Western, Judeo-Christian based societies has made intelligent debate on the issue practically impossible.

The one constant of the left, however, is their vilification of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) that was temporarily passed in 1996, marking the first successful attempt at some form of legalized internet content control in the United States. The CDA, which “prohibited posting ‘indecent’ or ‘patently offensive’ materials in a public forum on the Internet -- including web pages, newsgroups, chat rooms, or online discussion lists” was later deemed unconstitutional, and repealed in 1997, to the relief of leftist civil-rights groups.

“Although well intentioned, the CDA was ineffective and failed to recognize the unique nature of this global, decentralized medium” alleges a report published by the leftist Center For Democracy And Technology (CDT). And that may very well be true.

The Purpose of This Article

The purpose of this article is not specifically to discuss these matters. This writer takes for granted that no matter how one looks at it, the pornography available on the internet, which is shamelessly hawked to the unsuspecting or the vulnerable with the sordid persistence of the multi-billion dollar industry, does not even pretend to have “artistic merit”, nor does it pretend to be saying anything except that which is patently and profoundly destructive to our age and most especially its greatest asset, the youth. There is no gray area to appeal to for “tolerance”.

What this article intends is to give an overview of different viewpoints on the issue. It is also intended to discuss and provide different viewpoints on the likelihood of an ideological censorship in North America, and the West in general, a censorship that would exclude certain valid viewpoints from the public square, and what, if any form such a censorship would take.

In recent years, most especially in Canada, this question has become a matter of increasing concern for pro-life and pro-family groups whose most innocuous expressions of their core beliefs now often fall under the jurisdiction of unconstitutional “hate crime” laws. LifeSiteNews has a special interest in the question, since it is Canadian based, although it will soon expand into the U.S. and has been covering international developments for some time.

Is An Unconstitutional Ideological Censorship Possible?

The question of an ideological censorship involves so many variables that it is difficult to know where to begin or what exactly to discuss. That an unconstitutional ideological censorship of some degree may very well occur in any of the North American nations or elsewhere in the West is certainly a possibility, but the form that it would take is far more difficult to predict.

It is certainly unlikely that control of the web would take the form that it has in communist China. However, the direction the Clinton administration was taking the U.S. and the constant trashing of democracy by Canada’s corrupt Liberal government should cause us to consider that anything is possible. It is unlikely, at least for now, though, that either the United States or Canada could get away with hiring the many tens of thousands of employees that would be needed to effectively monitor both local and incoming international internet content in an attempt to inculcate their citizens with a strict and narrow set of political or social propaganda. Some estimates place the number of such Chinese employees in excess of thirty thousand.

If internet censorship were to occur in the West, it would much more likely take the form of a gradual shift, guided by corporations and governments, upsetting the balance of information available to the average and unwitting citizen. Often such changes may come disguised as a solution to what is perceived as some social ill. In this scenario the face of the internet would slowly begin to resemble the face of corporate mainstream media, finely crafted by the hands of their finest plastic surgeons.

Corporate Censorship and the Web of Deceit

One very interesting (albeit a tad too apocalyptic) article on this take on the topic was published in July of this year on buzzflash.com, entitled Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, And Why Corporate News Censored the Story. (http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/07/con052...)

“Web of Deceit” presents the thesis of a repeat in the realm of the web of the same type of informational control already current in the West—that of corporate control, with the fist of the government exercising only a proximate control through suspect financial relationships with media corporations.

Elliot D. Cohen Ph.D., a media ethicist and author of a number of books, including News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership and Its Threat to Democracy, begins with his projected “nightmare scenario”, quoted at the beginning of this article:

The days are now numbered for surfing an uncensored, open-access Internet, using your favorite search engine to search a bottomless cyber-sea of information in the grandest democratic forum ever conceived by humankind. Instead you can look forward to Googling about on a walled-off, carefully selected corpus of government propaganda and sanitized information "safe" for public consumption. Indoctrinated and sealed off from the outer world, you will inhabit a matrix where every ounce of creative, independent thinking that challenges government policies and values will be squelched.

Although Cohen’s concern is fueled by one particular United States Supreme Court decision (Brand X), the scenario he presents is certainly relevant for other parts of the world as well.

In the Supreme Court decision in question, the majority opinion struck down a law requiring cable companies to share their cables with other ISPs. The practical result, according to Cohen, of this governmental deregulation, the striking down for cable companies of what was called the “common-carrier” provision that had for years applied to the lines of telephone companies, will be to discourage vital competition from smaller ISPs. Unable to lay their own cables, these independent ISPs will crumble under the power of corporate juggernauts such as Comcast and Verizon. These juggernauts will then increasingly hold the power to dictate how or what information is routed across their cables.

Cohen alleges that “The Court opinion…was fashioned to serve corporate interests. Instead of taking up the question of whether corporate monopolies would destroy the open-access architecture of the Internet, it used sophistry and legally-suspect arguments to obscure its constitutional duty to protect media diversity, free speech, and the public interest.”

The possible consequence of this increase of corporate internet control is that “Broadband and DSL are therefore on their way to becoming extensions of corporate mainstream media.” With a select, wealthy few heading the largest internet providers and online information sources, the chances of the majority of the public receiving one, filtered viewpoint is dramatically increased. Monopolies have always been destructive, and this dangerous possible monopolization of the internet extends even to what search engines are used since “there are biases internal to the selection criteria of search engines.” In order to undercut Google’s current dominance Cohen encourages the diversification of search engine usage as one means of fighting corporate control.

“Affordable, uncensored Internet for all Americans is presently in danger of becoming a pipe dream,” concludes Cohen. “Unless we act now, the outlook for survival of democracy in cyberspace is dismal, and it grows dimmer with each successive conquest by mainstream corporate media.”

Government Censorship

As far as immediate government interference in content available on the internet is concerned, both Canada and the United States appear to be about equivalent at this point in time. Although the United States federal government has twice attempted and succeeded in passing censorship laws intended to protect children from harmful material, both laws were subsequently overturned as too “restrictive”.

In 1999 the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued a media release declaring their intention not to interfere with the internet. “After conducting an in-depth review under the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act beginning last July,” said the press-release, “the CRTC has concluded that the new media on the Internet are achieving the goals of the Broadcasting Act and are vibrant, highly competitive and successful without regulation. The CRTC is concerned that any attempt to regulate Canadian new media might put the industry at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.”

The trick, however, in this case, is that traditional laws do not suddenly become void when applied to information disseminated on the internet. The widespread, comprehensive enforcement of them becomes difficult and almost impossible when the material originates from other parts of the world, but individual government-sanctioned prosecution of the disseminators of illegal content that originates locally is certainly possible.

As was previously mentioned, this becomes especially dangerous in Canada, which has already passed a law adding “sexual orientation” to the list of criminally punishable hate-crimes. But however noble it sounds to prohibit and discourage hate against homosexuals, it is no secret that what can fall under the umbrella of “hate-crimes” is far too broad and often blatantly unconstitutional. As well, it should be noted that at the United Nations, Canada, UN staff and other delegations have been ferociously trying to make access to abortion an international human right. Hence, opposition to abortion, if this push eventually succeeds, could also become illegal and a supposed “hate crime”.

Canada has seen a number of cases where members of the public have been prosecuted for calmly and intellectually defending their positions regarding the immorality of homosexuality. One bishop from Western Canada was hauled before a human rights tribunal to answer for his defense of basic Christian teachings, although the gay activist who brought a complaint ultimately dropped it, admitting that he had charged the bishop for sake of the publicity. A second similar complaint against Bishop Henry is still pending.

Canadian traditional values blog users, or news sources, who hold a position that criticizes homosexuality in any way, shape, or form, are by no means immune from possible prosecution under the law, although the legal status of internet publications remains just as hazy as everything else pertaining to internet regulation.

Conclusion

The internet poses a unique challenge to principled, family-friendly users. The freedom to acquire and disseminate information not normally available in other media, that allows individuals to be exposed to facts and truth in a way that traditional mainstream media do not permit, is something to be cherished and carefully protected. At the same time, the great potential damage to families, especially through all-pervasive pornography, is to be decried and debated.

Unfortunately, the disconnect between the left and the right on all this means that any attempt to “censor” the internet by the right is perceived by the left as an attempt to curb “free-speech”. Furthermore, the dangers inherent in granting governments—especially governments as shaky on their foundational principles as Canada and the United States evidently are—any authority to monitor and censor the internet for a very real good, could at the same time lend government authority to exclude legitimate material expressing valid viewpoints from the public square.

Ultimately, the most effective revolutions in history have come, not from the top down, from federal powers to the people, but from the people up, and this remains true for this powerful cultural tool, the Internet. The Internet is only as good or bad as what people make of it, and principled users should continue their efforts to provide principled information and entertainment via the internet, to make full use of the breathtaking potential of the technology.

As the world comes to grips with this elusive entity the debate over these difficult issues of censorship and internet control will continue unabated. In order to ensure that pro-family/pro-life forces do not get left out of the debate it is necessary that individuals keep up to date with developments and ensure that they are well acquainted with their rights.

When the first signals of threats to freedom present themselves, political representatives must be educated and asked to do everything possible to ensure legitimate freedom of speech is fully protected. And LifeSiteNews, of course, will continue to educate its readers on this very vital topic whenever notable developments occur.

(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com is a production of Interim Publishing. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).

2005-09-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

My last contribution to this weeks discussion of surveillance pre and post 9/11.

Fishing Expedition
The administration has cast too wide -- and too haphazard -- a net in trying to nab terrorists.
By Alex Gourevitch
Web Exclusive: 06.26.03

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The last few months have not been kind to those charged with carrying out the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Bush's basic approach to the issue has come into question, and a fear once expressed only by hard-core libertarians -- that since September 11, the administration has arrogated to itself too much power to restrict Americans' freedom -- appears increasingly to be justified.

In Texas, the national media was recently treated to the spectacle of government trying to use anti-terrorism powers for purposes that were purely political in nature, as Republicans tried to enlist the Department of Homeland Security to track down Democratic state legislators who were boycotting a vote on redistricting. Worse than that, however, the Justice Department has been using a number of the new privileges it acquired under the Patriot Act in normal criminal cases. "Information obtained from computer-service providers was used in investigations unrelated to foreign terrorism," noted a June 15 piece in The Washington Times. The article also mentioned that Justice has used its new prerogatives to acquire voicemails in non-terrorist cases. And Attorney General John Ashcroft has tried to justify anti-terrorism measures that have yielded few substantive, terrorism-related results -- such as the special registration programs for foreign nationals -- by saying that they help to catch common criminals.

It's of course debatable as to whether the administration should have been given such broad anti-terrorism powers in the first place. But legislators who approved them did so with the understanding that they would be used to stop terrorism -- not to interfere in state-level politics or to catch common criminals. With the measures having produced few obvious benefits in the fight against terrorism, the administration seems now to be hunting for ways to justify them ex post facto.

In recent months, many of the administration's anti-terrorism techniques have been shown to be highly inaccurate. The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, recently renamed the Terrorist Information Awareness (still TIA) program, is the most glaring case in point. On this issue, The New Yorker's Ben McGrath deserves special mention for his satirical discussion of the most absurd aspects of the program -- specifically TIA's attempt to identify terrorists by their "gait signatures." By their own admission, the developers of this technology still need to improve their accuracy.

Chuck Peña, the CATO Institute's defense policy expert, has done the nitty-gritty math on TIA as a whole and found the following: First, he (generously and unreasonably) assumed that TIA is 99.9 percent accurate at identifying a suspect as a terrorist and equally precise at identifying a suspect as an innocent bystander. Then he applied this figure to all 240 million adults in the United States. Peña calculated that the probability of actually finding a terrorist given these numbers would be only 2 percent; meanwhile, 239,995 people would be wrongly apprehended. He then narrowed his search parameters to the U.S. Muslim population and made a more reasonable, though still high, assumption of 95 percent accuracy. Under these conditions, 299,750 innocent people would be misidentified as terrorists, while the probability of finding a real terrorist would be 1.5 percent. Peña also narrowed the search further, pretending that he was looking for 19 hijackers among only male Muslims in the United States. Assuming TIA to be 99.9 percent accurate at identifying these hijackers, he found that the government would nab 3,600 innocents along with the 19 actual terrorists. And the probability of actually finding one of those terrorists? One-half of one percent.

"People might quibble with my numbers or statistical model," Peña told me. But "even if I'm off a little bit, the point is you have to be whole orders of magnitude better to make this thing work." Though the administration has promoted TIA on the basis that it would catch some terrorists, Peña notes that officials have persistently avoided saying how many innocent people would get rounded up as well. "If they had to sell it on the numbers, it wouldn't sell," Peña said.

TIA may provide the most flagrant example of where Bush's war on terrorism doesn't make sense -- but there are others. Take the fact that the government conducted 11,000 "voluntary" interviews with Iraqis during the Iraq war but did not find a single terrorist. A June 7 New York Times article notes that the special registration program has led to more than 82,000 interviews at immigration offices, tens of thousands of additional screenings at airports and border crossings, more than 13,000 people deported or facing deportation, and a couple thousand detained. Yet it has only yielded 11 individuals suspected of links to terrorism. Assuming (conservatively) that 100,000 different people registered or were screened and that the 11 suspects are indeed linked to terrorism (a liberal assumption given the administration's ever-expanding definition of what it means to be linked to terrorism), that's a .01 percent success rate.

The problems don't end there. According to The Washington Post, the FBI has issued scores of "national security letters" that force businesses to turn over electronic records about telephone calls, e-mails and finances. It was also recently revealed that the Justice Department has used 113 emergency search or electronic-surveillance authorizations since 9-11, compared with fewer than 50 in the previous 23 years combined. Justice has also waited to notify individuals that they were the target of a search 248 times. And Justice refuses to reveal whether any of these particular measures actually caught or stopped terrorists.

These are not just the aimless blunderings of a well-intentioned but imperfect administration. They are the crude tools of a political beast that has shown itself to be both untrustworthy and confused. The administration's confusion is manifest in its inability to clearly articulate just whom exactly the war on terrorism is against. We hear about vague categories such as "persons of interest," "material support" and "sleeper cells" that seem to have sprung as much from Ashcroft's imagination as from any concrete intelligence. Radically different groups and individuals have been clumsily shoveled together under the rubric of "terrorist." In a recent speech to the ACLU, FBI director Robert Mueller lumped together al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Timothy McVeigh. The State Department's list includes 36 disparate groups, from Tamil and Basque separatists to the Kurdistan Worker's Party. It's hard to believe their similarities are really more important than their differences. After all, few of the groups have a beef with the United States directly. But the administration has forced these various organizations together, making the threat seem more coherent, aligned and organized than it really is.

This blurry view of the enemy has led to plenty of missteps. For instance, it has been widely reported that the Justice Department deprived John Walker Lindh of access to a lawyer, placed him in extreme conditions to extract a confession and expunged e-mails from one of its own advisors warning that the department was being excessive.

And government officials have wildly exaggerated statistics. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer article found that in the first two months of this year, cases against 56 different people were labeled "terrorist" in nature -- even though at least 41 of them had nothing to do with terrorism. The same paper found that 60 of 62 terrorism-related convictions in New Jersey last year were nothing more than students cheating on Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams. Earlier Inquirer investigations helped prompt a General Accounting Office review that found about 75 percent of Justice's "foreign terrorism" convictions in 2002 to have nothing to do with foreign terrorism. (For a fuller review of the administration's fuzzy math on terrorism, see my recent article in The Washington Monthly.)

Ashcroft has also said that sleeper cells were broken up in Lackawanna and Detroit, but this too has turned out to be an exaggeration at best. The Lackawanna residents pled guilty to supporting terrorism mainly because they were afraid of taking the risk of defending themselves in court. But as a Mother Jones article revealed, the government investigation found "no violent act or plot in the usual understanding of those words. No cache of arms has been found, no plans for future malevolence." The Detroit case fell apart recently when it turned out that the government's star witness lied in an effort to win a plea bargain. Two of the four suspects were cleared of all associations with terrorism; the other two maintain they were convicted on questionable grounds. And just yesterday, The Washington Post reported on another bogus terrorism accusation, in which the secret evidence used to jail a New Jersey man for six months turned out to be just plain wrong.

The Justice Department has had a generally bad habit of accepting tips at face value and ruining people's lives in the process. A June 19 New York Times article documented a number of cases in which false accusations motivated by personal interests have led to unnecessary arrests. According to the Times:

Federal agents, facing intense pressure to avoid another terrorist attack, have acted on information from tipsters with questionable backgrounds and motives, touching off needless scares and upending the lives of innocent suspects.
On top of which has come a recent report by the Justice Department's Inspector General showing that the department abused its powers when rounding up immigrants. The report contradicted Ashcroft's oft-repeated assertions that foreigners have been afforded their full slate of rights. It found that some of Justice's actions -- detention without bond and holding suspects without charge -- were on the margins of legality. Others -- denying access to lawyers and physical assault -- run counter to the few rights immigrants have. And the report did not even investigate all of the relevant cases, examining only 119 out of 762.

Perhaps the worst thing about the administration's preventive approach to terrorism is that it has encouraged law enforcement based on suspicion rather than reason. The most damning part of the Inspector General's report was when it noted -- refering to PENTTBOM, the FBI's terrorism investigation -- that Justice "made little attempt to distinguish between aliens who were subjects of the PENTTBOM investigation and those encountered coincidentally to a PENTTBOM lead." Likewise, The New York Times has quoted FBI spokesman Bill Carter as saying that "at one time, when information came to us, a lot of times based on experience the investigator would say, 'Nah, this is not something we will follow through on.'" But now "the director has stated that no counterterrorism lead will go uncovered." In other words, reasoned judgment is no longer a legitimate tool of law enforcement, especially where organized paranoia will suffice.

Alex Gourevitch is a Prospect writing fellow.

Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Alex Gourevitch, "Fishing Expedition", The American Prospect Online, Jun 26, 2003. T

2005-09-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

Price Freedom?

How Big Brother Is Watching, Listening and Misusing Information About You

By TERESA HAMPTON & DOUG THOMPSON

You’re on your way to work in the morning and place a call on your wireless phone. As your call is relayed by the wireless tower, it is also relayed by another series of towers to a microwave antenna on top of Mount Weather between Leesburg and Winchester, Virginia and then beamed to another antenna on top of an office building in Arlington where it is recorded on a computer hard drive.
The computer also records you phone digital serial number, which is used to identify you through your wireless company phone bill that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency already has on record as part of your permanent file.

A series of sophisticated computer programs listens to your phone conversation and looks for “keywords” that suggest suspicious activity. If it picks up those words, an investigative file is opened and sent to the Department of Homeland Security.

Congratulations. Big Brother has just identified you as a potential threat to the security of the United States because you might have used words like “take out” (as in taking someone out when you were in fact talking about ordering takeout for lunch) or “D-Day” (as in deadline for some nefarious activity when you were talking about going to the new World War II Memorial to recognize the 60th anniversary of D-Day).

If you are lucky, an investigator at DHS will look at the entire conversation in context and delete the file. Or he or she may keep the file open even if they realize the use of words was innocent. Or they may decide you are, indeed, a threat and set up more investigation, including a wiretap on your home and office phones, around-the-clock surveillance and much closer looks at your life.

Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice.

Although Congress cut off funding for TIA last year, the Bush Administration ordered the program moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” budget, which is neither authorized nor reviewed by the Hill. DARPA also increased the use of private contractors to get around privacy laws that would restrict activities by federal employees.

Six months of interviews with security consultants, former DARPA employees, privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering – in real time – vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans.

Going on a trip? TIA knows where you are going because your train, plane or hotel reservations are forwarded automatically to the DARPA computers. Driving? Every time you use a credit card to purchase gas, a record of that transaction is sent to TIA which can track your movements across town or across the country.

Use a computerized transmitter to pay tolls? TIA is notified every time that transmitter passes through a toll booth. Likewise, that lunch you paid for with your VISA becomes part of your permanent file, along with your credit report, medical records, driving record and even your TV viewing habits.

Subscribers to the DirecTV satellite TV service should know – but probably don’t – that every pay-per-view movie they order is reported to TIA as is any program they record using a TIVO recording system. If they order an adult film from any of DirecTV’s three SpiceTV channels, that information goes to TIA and is, as a matter of policy, forwarded to the Department of Justice’s special task force on pornography.

“We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984,” says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. “The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government.”

Paul Hawken, owner of the data information mining company Groxis, agrees, saying the government is spending more time watching ordinary Americans than chasing terrorists and the bad news is that they aren’t very good at it.

“It’s the Three Stooges go to data mining school,” Hawken says. “Even worse, DARPA is depending on second-rate companies to provide them with the technology, which only increases the chances for errors.”

One such company is Torch Concepts. DARPA provided the company with flight information on five million passengers who flew Jet Blue Airlines in 2002 and 2003. Torch then matched that information with social security numbers, credit and other personal information in the TIA databases to build a prototype passenger profiling system.

Jet Blue executives were livid when they learned how their passenger information, which they must provide the government under the USA Patriot Act, was used and when it was presented at a technology conference with the title: Homeland Security – Airline Passenger Risk Assessment.

Privacy Expert Bill Scannell didn’t buy Jet Blue’s anger.

“JetBlue has assaulted the privacy of 5 million of its customers,” said Scannell. “Anyone who flew should be aware and very scared that there is a dossier on them.”

But information from TIA will be used the DHS as a major part of the proposed CAPSII airline passenger monitoring system. That system, when fully in place, will determine whether or not any American is allowed to get on an airplane for a flight.

JetBlue requested the report be destroyed and the passenger data be purged from the TIA computers but TIA refuses to disclose the status of either the report or the data.

Although exact statistics are classified, security experts say the U.S. Government has paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements to Americans who have been wrongly accused, illegally detained or harassed because of mistakes made by TIA. Those who accept settlements also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and won’t discuss their cases.

Hawken refused to do business with DARPA, saying TIA was both unethical and illegal.

"We got a lot of e-mails from companies – even conservative ones – saying, ‘Thank you. Finally someone won’t do something for money,’" he adds.

Those who refuse to work with TIA include specialists from the super-secret National Security Agency in Fort Meade, MD. TIA uses NSA’s technology to listen in on wireless phone calls as well as the agency’s list of key words and phrases to identify potential terrorist activity.

“I know NSA employees who have quit rather than cooperate with DARPA,” Hawken says. “NSA’s mandate is to track the activities of foreign enemies of this nation, not Americans.”

© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue

Article Source: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=32&num=4656

2005-09-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

There is a push after 9/11 to justify domestic spying and to overturn the efforts of the civil rights movement in protecting U.S. citizens from abusive government.
A troubling aspect about this debate is that the 9/11 tragedy was executed by non-U.S. citizens. So even if you do concede that spying on U.S. citizens may be justified under certain circumstances, how would such actions preventing 9/11? 9/11 is being exploited by government agencies to push agends (that pre-date 9/11) to increase their power over U.S. citizens and to weaken Constitutional protections.

Websites Looking into: http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/

http://www.efc.ca/efc-archives.html

2005-09-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

This week's class discussion has already combatted many touchy subjects on terrorism and the US governemnt. I like to stray from my feelings towards the US goverment because I am an outsider, a foreigner, and have discovered my views to be very different and somewhat harsh as compared to American Citizens.

I randomly googled terrorism and Canada to find an interesting website entiteld: "Terrorism: Questions and Answers" - it seems to encompass everything you ever wanted to know about the US and terrorism since 9-11.

This week's discussion question, "Surveillance: friend or foe? Reflect on, analyze and summarize the advantages and disadvantages of electronic surveillance pre and post 9/11."

Within the website, I found an article about 'cyberterrorism', which along with the rest of the entire site, scares every American about the threat of Terrorism and how easy it is for the entire computer network of the government to be dissolved in minutes...

I quote, "What kinds of attacks are considered cyberterrorism?
Cyberterrorism could involve destroying the actual machinery of the information infrastructure; remotely disrupting the information technology underlying the Internet, government computer networks, or critical civilian systems such as financial networks or mass media; or using computer networks to take over machines that control traffic lights, power plants, or dams in order to wreak havoc.

How do cyberattacks work?
Attacks on the physical components of the information infrastructure would resemble other conventional attacks: for example, a bomb could be used to destroy a government computer bank, key components of the Internet infrastructure, or telephone switching equipment. Another option would be an electromagnetic weapon emitting a pulse that could destroy or interrupt electronic equipment.

Attacks launched in cyberspace could involve diverse methods of exploiting vulnerabilities in computer security: computer viruses, stolen passwords, insider collusion, software with secret “back doors” that intruders can penetrate undetected, and orchestrated torrents of electronic traffic that overwhelm computers—which are known as “denial of service” attacks. Attacks could also involve stealing classified files, altering the content of Web pages, disseminating false information, sabotaging operations, erasing data, or threatening to divulge confidential information or system weaknesses unless a payment or political concession is made. If terrorists managed to disrupt financial markets or media broadcasts, an attack could undermine confidence or sow panic...

What can be done to protect against cyberterrorism?
Experts stress vigilance about computer security: patching security flaws quickly once they’re detected, designing systems to withstand attacks, backing up systems off-site so they can bounce back quickly from a disruption, watching for disgruntled employees who might help terrorists penetrate a system.

What is the U.S. government doing to protect against cyberterrorism?
Most of America’s information infrastructure is privately owned and administered, so any government effort requires coordination and information sharing with the private sector. In 1998, the FBI established the National Infrastructure Protection Center to assess cyberthreats and improve communication between government and private information-security officials. Other law enforcement agencies and military branches also have programs to defend the national information infrastructure.

Can individual computer users do anything to combat cyberterrorism?
Yes. Individual computer owners can become unwitting accomplices to denial of service attacks. Information technology experts say that maintaining good security—using a firewall and virus protection software, avoiding suspicious email and programs—can help prevent or minimize cyberattacks" (http://www.cfrterrorism.org/terrorism/cyberterrorism.html).

After a bit more article reading I am sure I will share this with the discussion board because it is very relevant to electronic surveillance...

2005-09-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Artificial Intelligence versus Human Intelligence: The Rise of The Machines...

I am perusing the web right now, and stumbled upon an article written in 1997 entitled, "When will computer hardware match the human brain?"

According to its Abstract: "This paper describes how the performance of AI machines tends to improve at the same pace that AI researchers get access to faster hardware. The processing power and memory capacity necessary to match general intellectual performance of the human brain are estimated. Based on extrapolation of past trends and on examination of technologies under development, it is predicted that the required hardware will be available in cheap machines in the 2020s."

Hmmmm...

"If 100 million MIPS could do the job of the human brain's 100 billion neurons, then one neuron is worth about 1/1,000 MIPS, i.e., 1,000 instructions per second. That's probably not enough to simulate an actual neuron, which can produce 1,000 finely timed pulses per second. Our estimate is for very efficient programs that imitate the aggregate function of thousand-neuron assemblies. Almost all nervous systems contain subassemblies that big."

A bit crazy when you take into account their research they did, and the illustrations and charts - interesting 'study' I must say - just something I wanted to tack in here for safe-keeping...

The article is available via this website :
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm

2005-09-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

"There are official searchers, inquisitors..."

I really enjoyed Mary Flanagan's [search] project this week. http://www.maryflanagan.com/search.htm

"Information technology has become an indespensible element in communication, play, and work. For example, a recent study shows that a typical office worker relies more on e-mail communication than face-to-face contact to share knowledge.(2) Almost every computer user relies upon Internet search engines to gather information, seek entertainment, and find pleasure. Search engines are deeply embedded into daily activity-they are the primary way people in the 21st century seek information …'we depend upon them so utterly.' "

I know for a fact that Search Engines are so highly dependent upon - I mean, that is my profession, to know what Search Engines Want... Search Engine Optimization if you will...

Keywords have become a new language. Billions of people search the internet a day, and what my job is is knowing what words they are searching for. A more interesting than useful tool, is finding out what people are searching for, http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html - each week. Interesting searches...

"[search] is an internet-based application which explores the human desire for information and knowledge through real-time monitoring of internet search engine inquiries from around the world...The work conceptually explores everyday life: how do people use technology in their daily lives? What are the commonalities of human desire? How is the desire affected by the internet's inherent immediacy? What kinds of language do people bring to search engines? Does the kind of language used by searchers tell us something about how people view the internet and technology? Do people search for material or experiential items? How much time do people spend searching for sex, drugs, or money? Do people spend an equal amount of time searching for friends, god, and spirituality? Are our human values exposed through search engines? What is the data most sought after?..."

Playing around with [search] I clicked on words that most interested me: hockey, cards, imagination, spirit... and more and more phrases and/or website names came up, ads if you will for oxford shirts and golf balls... so odd how my words of hockey and imagination entangle with keywords such as oxford shirts...

Another work by Flanagan, [collection] "gathers up found material from various users' hard drives and collects them on a centralized server. Going from computer to computer, [collection] scours drives and collects bits and pieces of user's data - sentences from emails, graphics, web browser cached images, business letters, sound files-and creates a mobile mix of user experiences, operating system files, and normally hidden materials..."

Since its inception in 2002, I wonder if the internet privacy paranoia has made an affect on people using their experiment. I was apprehensive about downloading it because of the feeling of it being like someone rummaging through your garbage. In the end, I didn't - I would have to switch to my PC in order to use it anyway - and I really don't want anyone poking around my workstation...

See, that's just it, we do see computers as "thinkers". I was so taken aback by it rummaging through my cache files and e-mails, because I relate to a computer as a "thinker". As I said in class, I do feel that technology has the advantage of being able to "think" one day - I am not talking programmed as in "scours drives and collects bits and pieces of user's data - sentences from emails, graphics, web browser cached images, business letters, sound files-and creates a mobile mix of user experiences, operating system files, and normally hidden materials..." but once obtaining those pieces of data, knowing what they are...what to do with them, and potentially not knowing what to do with them.

In order to make a machine reach that next level, we have to give it that power. We already know quite a lot about making useful, specialized, "expert" systems, and are still learning how to make them able to improve themselves. When we learn how, then should we build machines that might be somehow better, smarter, stronger than ourselves?

2005-09-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

Machine's have been altering the way in which we live for centuries.

I have found an activity called Technology at Home on pbs' website where you can partake in an activity that helps you realize:

"How much time do you spend at your computer? How about listening to CDs or the radio? Watching TV? When was the last time you used a microwave oven?

Try to imagine going through a day without these items. They all make use of technologies developed in the 20th century.

This activity lets you go back through the century to find out when everyday items such as these first appeared in homes."

It is available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/tech/#

I could live in 1918; had my phone, my fridge, my gramophone, my amateur radio - I would be rockin'... Of course I would prefer 1951 with a tv and tupperware and some records and FM so I could actually rock...

Unfortunately the activity only goes up to 1998 - I would like to see it extended because lets face it, VCR's are obsolete, and now replaced with DVD's (and I would love to see the year of the laser disc put on there!) walk-mans are replaced by ipods, etc. etc.

Yeah, I don't know if I could live in the 1918's - well if I never lived in 2005 I guess I could - I wouldn't know the difference.

-Serena

2005-08-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

In the 60's, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA; a chatterbox. He was disgusted by how people were taking it so seriously. In this day in age, it seems highly unlikely that there would be true believers of ELIZA. Especially that I became bored with 'her' instantly.

This is my conversation with 'her':

>> Hello.
How do you do. Please state your problem.
>> no one in my class thinks my dog is cute
Your class thinks your dog is cute ?
>> no they dont think he is cute
Are you saying no just to be negative?
>> no im telling you the truth
You are being a bit negative.
>> ok they wont comment on his cuteness
But your class thinks your dog is cute .
>> no they dont think he is cute
Why not ?
>> because they sy every other dog is cute and not mine
Is that the real reason ?
>> yes
You seem to be quite positive.
>> i am
Is it because you are that you came to me ?
>> i am what?
How long have you been what ?
>> what do you mean?
Why do you ask ?
>> because you made no sense right there
Don't any other reasons come to mind ?
>> because you are a robot
Does that reason seem to explain anything else ?
>> yes yes it does
You are sure.
>> yes
I see.
>> whats the date today
I'm not sure I understand you fully.
>> what is today's date?
Does that question interest you ?
>> yes
I understand.
>> then tell me
Please go on.
>> ok well i think today is wednesday august 31
You say ok well you think today is wednesday august 31 ?
>> yes
You seem to be quite positive.
>> i am quite positive
Do you believe it is normal to be quite positive ?
>> no
Why 'no' ?
>> because there is no normal
What other reasons might there be ?
>> because you are a robot
Is that the real reason ?
>> yes
You are sure.
>> goodbye
Goodbye. It was nice talking to you.

2005-08-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Classmates,

My name is Serena Marie Hillman and I was brought into this world the 8th of May, 1981. I was born in B.C. Canada; growing up in both Victoria and Tsawwassen.

Then in 1998, my father and I moved to Wilcox Saskatchewan, a town populated of only three-hundred. There I entered Notre Dame, a widely recognized hockey training facility. At Notre Dame I was scouted to play college hockey during grade twelve.

In 2000 I accepted a full scholarship to Wayne State University located in Detroit Michigan, my first trip to the United States. I played Division 1 Hockey there for two years, and had the honor of being one of my team’s co-captains in the final year.
At Wayne State I studied Biology, which I love, but it was the Chemistry and Physics I could do without.

At the end of 2001, I decided to transfer schools and was contacted by Quinnipiac University. I was hooked at first glance, and accepted their offer to play for QU’s Women’s Ice Hockey Team.

I began my biology classes, and quickly realized that I wanted to work with my creativity instead of plants. I had done some design in high school and wanted to explore that creative avenue more. So I landed in e-media.

I hurt my knee one month after starting practices at QU, in fact I had torn my ACL; requiring me being taken out for the season. But this was a blessing in disguise, because it gave me an extra year of study, which after graduating with my Bachelors in e-Media, I started my Masters in e-Media immediately afterward.

After graduating I was given a year Visa, allowing me to stay in the States to work in my field. I picked up my belongings and headed west to Los Angeles. In those next months, I worked as an Associate Producer and a Multimedia Director for Web Development Companies as well as started up my own freelance web designing company.

At the end of May 2005, my Visa expired, and I have returned to Tsawwassen B.C. I now work for a Search Engine Optimization and Web Design company based out of Richmond B.C. I have been working towards completing my Masters, which I will receive this coming December, after I finish my last two final courses.

Due to living in Vancouver, I wont be able to meet any of my fellow classmates. But I hope this introduction gives you a taste of who I am.

Take Care,

Serena