Category Archives: Culture

These posts will deal with Copyright and other cultural topics

Content and implicit threats

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I’m reading “consent of the Networked” right now. The book is about digital rights, privacy, government and the internet. Once i finish I will write a review for the Urban Times. I found out about the book through TechDirt’s book club. One of the major points the author makes about repressive regimes is the activities of pronationalist actors that are not truly part of the government.

These actors are typically regular people and act as hackers, journalists or progovernment rally organizers. They are found in many countries including China, Iran, the former regime of Tunisia and Libya. In a way these groups are a counter weight to “organizations” like Anonymous, dissent groups and the “liberal” media. However, these organizations are unlikely in the US and Europe right?

Well according to the author now. These groups do exist in the US and in some cases are formal business like HBGary. Some of them actually work for the US government and others do with a wink and a nod. These groups help monitor internet users and potential members of groups like Anon. In many cases this extends the impression of continual  observation by the government and other actors, which can lead to self censorship and self selection for activities.

Has this happened to me? You bet it has, but I didn’t really think much of it at the time or how it could really impact me. One of the times happened during a Facebook conversation about Wikileaks, which I was supporting. The person I was discussing doesn’t like me much and thinks I’m “a rube.” He suggested that I should get a job which requires security clearance so I would get an understanding of how things actually work and that I was niave. Of course I disagree with the fact that I’m niave and I view the world in a much more complex manner than his black and white view. However, I had been thinking of applying to a government type position and he told me I should be careful what I say, which he is correct. This then led me to rein in my views and self censor. This had serious implications on how I discussed topics for some time.

The other times are slightly different and after I started blogging. For one my brother is in the Boarder Patrol which gives him clearance and my sister does stuff she can’t talk about. So, to some extent, I don’t want to negatively impact their ability to work either. This does have a moderating affect as well.

The final source was actually my dad writing to me about my post about anonymous and my discussion of using DDoS as potentially a source of public demonstration on the internet. I was not surprised that he suggested I be careful, he did retire as a Major in the Army Reserves. However, when responding I told him I was already being careful with my wording due to self censorship. I already expect that I’m likely to have my material spring up on someone’s radar due to the content I write about. So, I do try to be careful.

In a democracy where these threats should be minimized we have to worry about it. Why should the rest of the world be different or any less oppressive?

Loss of dignity when arrested?

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Today the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it’s OK for prison officials to decide to strip search someone once arrested. In the case in question a man was wrongfully arrested and in two different prisons within the span of a week was required to strip and display himself to a guard. Kennedy argued that if guards had the ability to strip search anyone pulled over or arrested it is likely that Timmy McVey or one of the 9/11 terrorists would have been stopped ahead of time, as they were arrested days before they committed a crime.

This line of thinking is a very dangerous slippery slope. If we start allowing these unreasonable searches after a traffic violation arrest where is the stopping? At what point will it be allowable to strip search someone after a traffic violation with no arrest? While that’s one direction this could go the other direction has research and very recent photographic evidence.

What I’m talking about is the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Gharib. The Stanford Prison experiment is famous for the fact that it finished early due to the brutality of the “prison guards.” In the experiment a random selection of students were split between prisoner and prison guard. Over the course of a few days, the guards and prisoners started to really get into their role to the point that there were serious behavior changes. In fact many of the guards became extremely sadistic to the “prisoners” including beating them and abusing them emotionally. Due to the change in the behavior the experiment ended.

During the Iraq war photo evidence was released that showed systemic abuse that was at least on some level condoned by military and civil authority in the Pentagon. The abuse was used as a way to debase and demoralize the “terrorists,” which is not to say that some of them weren’t actual terrorists but there were innocents. These actions likely started harmlessly enough as strip searches and other activities. However, they escalated into pictures of naked pyramids.

Using these two historic cases as a back drop I think that we can see that there is great potential for abuse and escalation of these sorts of activities. It is well known that torture doesn’t really give us the information we need and it is unlikely that the next McVey or 9/11 terrorist will have something on them at the time of a random street arrest unless they are actively en route to their destination. In the case of the 9/11 terrorist the strip search would have likely found a box cutter and luggage for a trip. It’s unclear how if he would have been arrested it would have turned up enough evidence to put him away for life.

I am extremely disappointed with the SCOTUS with this ruling. While I understand some of the rational for the ruling, it seems heavy handed and likely to lead to abuses rather than the results the Court wishes to find.

Average people suffering from copyright laws

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Ars Technica published a brief article about the woes of an average legal MegaUpload user suffering because he cannot access his legal content. At the same time Techdirt, points out that there are several large companies (NBC) and prominent politicians (Lamar Smith) using copyrighted material and will likely not receive any sort of punishment for these infringements.

This isn’t exactly the most surprising turn of events. Most of these companies will likely settle or just open up their large portfolios of copyrighted material to Apple or whomever and strike a deal. As users we typically don’t have the same rights and are expected to give up our rights when we use services.

In many cases the content that users generate are the value of the website or service that is being used. This network externality comes from other people using and building the network for the site. I like to argue that perceived value of the iOS and Android operating system aren’t the systems themselves or the hardware they are on or the cellular network, but rather the applications that are available within these environments. For example look at the problem that Nokia and Microsoft are experiencing with their phones and application stores. The quality of the OS is second to the application environment. Nokia’s N-9 that would have used their Meego OS appeared to be an amazing piece of machinery, but it was killed before it ever got a chance. Mostly because Nokia didn’t think that it alone could build the application environment needed to make the product a success.

In the case of user created content, the user’s rights typically are minimal and likely to be changed at any time. I think part of the reason we consent to these agreements is through ignorance. We don’t really know what we’re agreeing to for two reasons. First, when we go to a website we don’t even know we’re agreeing to a terms of use. Second, because the terms of use are complicated. Some websites have taken to writing the agreements in plain English but that’s few and far between.

How can this change? First there will have to be legal challenges. In the case of user created content being sold to a third party based on some esoteric terms of agreement, the validity of these sales are going to have to be challenged in court. In some cases they will likely be over turned in others they might not.

Users will also have to fight against these agreements and refuse to accept them and potentially sue places that abuse the content that users put on the site or that allow third party sites to take their content without permission.

Balance between the large players and the users needs to be restored.

Edit: This story about HuffPo also highlights this imbalance.

Can technology Save us? A wrap up

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In my last three posts I’ve asked the question if technology can save us from many of our own problems. I’ve discussed several technologies for each topic, water, energy and food. These technologies are not all of the ones out there by any stretch of the imagination. These are the technologies I’m aware of at this point. I wouldn’t say I’ve done an exhaustive search for technologies either. I hope to have made it obvious that technology alone cannot save us. We need to make a concerted effort to change the status quo and that won’t be easy to do.

We have some major problems adopting new technologies. First, we have incumbents interests that have no desire to see the current energy regime change. We have problems of ownership of technical problems. Why should the US invent new ways to extract water when Mexico is the country that will suffer? How do we know that a given technology is going to be the best, or even good enough for our needs? What happens if all our best efforts turn out to actually make things worse?

These aren’t easy questions to answer. We have to make a choice as a society to decide what constitutes a good investment for research. In one Urban Time article I posit that the EU can over take the US in terms of scientific research in the upcoming decades. This should terrify people. This is what has driven the US economy since the 40’s and to some extent earlier. The shifts in capitalism have driven our company goals toward shorter and shorter returns on investments and less visionary goals. The ability to experiment in companies and use government funds to experiment with deploying new energy systems has floundered.

This should be cause for concern. We’ve seen the result of poorly managed technology in the past few years. Simple things like a software glitch that caused Toyota’s to accelerate out of control, flash crashes on the stock markets from high frequency traders and other complex systems like Fukashima. We don’t always have proper controls designed into our technologies to protect us from it.

Personally, I’m optimistic about the future of technology and what it can do for us. However, there are plenty of Sci-fi authors out there that are very pessimistic. I love reading the dystopian future and post-apocalyptic books as much (or more) than anyone and we need to realize that without requiring proper controls on our technology and production of our material goods these results could happen.

Technology alone cannot save us from ourselves. We may be able to use technology as a tool to fix problems we’ve created, but we have to do the dirty work. Technology doesn’t design and make itself (yet).

Can technology save us: Food production?

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In 1768 Thomas Malthus wrote the Principles of Population, which posited that eventually all populations are held in check by disease and famine. This theory argues that any population that grows to sufficient size will outstrip the resources in that the population requires, which will result in famine disease and population crash. While, this is likely true in a Darwinian sense (he used this as to help develop the theory of evolution) it is not true for populations that are able to innovate and provide additional food resources.

Innovation allows the human population to develop new techniques for providing additional food in the same area of space. In some ways this happens through domesticating crops such as corn or bananas and increasing the size of the produce until it hardly looks like the wild version of the produce, which can be seen below for the banana. For a fruit that is roughly the same size an individual will receive a great deal more energy than with the wild fruit.

Source: Wikimedia

Obviously bigger fruits and vegetables aren’t the only product that we’ve seen increase in density of calories. Cattle are being breed to be larger and provide more meat on a single cow. In the extreme case, the Belgian Blue, they are so large they are unable to reproduce without human assistance and are taller than most cattle at the shoulder.

In many cases our cattle, pigs and chickens are being raised in some pretty terrible living conditions. These living conditions cause pollution of our land, cause diseases and can be smelled for hundreds of miles away from the farm. The production of the meat isn’t healthy for the animals nor for the people that live near them. However, for most people it’s out of sight out of mind, or they can’t afford to pay the market for humanely raised animals (grass fed beef or free range chickens).

In the US there’s child hunger, but there is famine in other parts of the world. Part of this is due to poverty, water shortages or powerful people withholding the food that is available. What technologies are out there that may be able to address some of these problems?

One of the most interesting me to me is Lab Grown Meat. This would remove the requirement of using killing animals to provide the meat and proteins we need to survive. Currently, these meats don’t taste all that great and most people would likely be against eating it. However, it could actually lead to a lot of other benefits. For one, if we are able to get cow meat to taste right, that means that we have the muscle and fat ratio correct. This could also allow us to use the same method to rebuild muscle mass for people who have been injured. Other benefits for people with special diets, like vegetarian or vegan, may be able to eat the meats because they aren’t coming from animals.

Labs devoted to growing animal meat would reduce the amount of corn and grains going to cattle and would increase the general supply of these foodstuffs. Additionally, the area required to grow animal meat would be a lot smaller than that to raise a herd of cattle. We won’t be able to replace every source of meat with this, but it is likely that it could replace a lot of it.

Another interesting idea is called the Vertical Farm Project. Instead of a farm taking up huge tracts of land, the farm could be contained in a single structure. It could take the idea of local to the extreme. There could be different floors for each type of crops and the crops could be grown using hydroponics or in a more traditional method if desired. These towers are planned to help power themselves through wind and solar power collectors. The crops would receive both artificial and natural sunlight through large windows and UV lights.

It is also likely that aside from simply providing crops the lower levels could also be used to house a version of grass fed cattle. The number of cows in the herd would have to be very small, but the manure could provide the nutrients some of the crops require. Additionally, since the air would be filtered it would reduce the impact of the smell of the cattle in the surrounding areas. The air circulation equipment could also filter out methane that the cows release and use that as an additional power source by burning it. The idea of a vertical farm like that would essentially ensure that all the material within the farm would be reused and maximize the sustainability of the farm.

At this point these ideas aren’t yet proven to work. It is going to be some time before these technologies are going to be fully workable and deployed to the general public. They could work in both the developed world and the developing. The vertical farm could seriously help the sub Sahara countries in Africa as it is likely that a vertical farm like that would be able to provide crops that normally would not grow outside of the farm. Additionally, the vertical farm could have a water collector on the top and use sun light to convert ocean water into drinkable water through a evaporation and collection.