Category: Links

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Links Writing

No, the internet isn’t sick. It also isn’t healthy.

How things are phrased matters a great deal. This is something that Evgeny Morozov has done good work examining over the past few years. Specifically, Morozov calls out thinkers and popular articles about technology as often pushing technology as a ‘solution’ to particular social issues (his most recent example is in The Babbler). Solutions, by strongly correlating technology with a ‘problem’, effectively become cast through very particular (often corporate) lenses that tend to hide or obscure the real problems, questions, or alternate solutions that might address – or (re)define – the issue(s) at hand.

To give you an idea of the kind of stuff that enrages Morozov (and, to a lesser extent, me), look no further than Cory Doctorow’s recent piece, titled “Copyright wars are damaging the health of the internet.” In this case, the life of ‘the Internet’ is the key driver of the future of social issues related to speech and freedom. The first few paragraphs read as follow:

I’ve sat through more presentations about the way to solve the copyright wars than I’ve had hot dinners, and all of them has fallen short of the mark. That’s because virtually everyone with a solution to the copyright wars is worried about the income of artists, while I’m worried about the health of the internet.

Oh, sure, I worry about the income of artists, too, but that’s a secondary concern. After all, practically everyone who ever set out to earn a living from the arts has failed – indeed, a substantial portion of those who try end up losing money in the bargain. That’s nothing to do with the internet: the arts are a terrible business, one where the majority of the income accrues to a statistically insignificant fraction of practitioners – a lopsided long tail with a very fat head. I happen to be one of the extremely lucky lotto winners in this strange and improbable field – I support my family with creative work – but I’m not parochial enough to think that my destiny and the destiny of my fellow 0.0000000000000000001 percenters are the real issue here.

What is the real issue here? Put simply, it’s the health of the internet.

The regularized reference to the ‘health’ of the Internet is significant because it creates the lens through which the reader should, apparently, understand the dispute between rights holders and Internet users. From this way of thinking about a piece of technology it’s possible to think of the ‘net as an organism that can be either ‘sick’ or ‘healthy’. Given that we (presumably) tend not to see the Internet as a bacteria or virus deserving destruction it makes sense that we (almost automatically) want to search for ‘antibiotics’ to get the Internet healthy again. Doctorow frames that as resisting new copyright reforms and repealing past ones.

In effect, Doctorow’s framing of the issue personalizes and humanizes a socio-technical invention that is embedded in differential policy and cultural domains across the world. Moreover, he has cast ‘the Internet’ in a manner that predisposes your reaction to any solution: clearly, ‘the Internet’ should be kept healthy. (Unless you hate technology, of course.)

The article goes on to insist that copyright policies are being designed in a manner that is detrimental to free speech, privacy, and general good governance. That’s fine. But it’s not the point that most readers are going to walk away with, and that’s unfortunate. As it stands, the ‘copyright wars’ seem to be never-ending, and we keep seeing these very popular pieces that are crafted to draft new recruits into the ‘armies’. Personally, I’d prefer that the ‘generals’ of the various sides actually engage in conversation about the relationship between copyright, freedom of speech, freedom of publication, and the power relationships between corporate, governmental, and citizens’ interests. I’d rather we get a real public debate instead of (seeming) non-stop sloganeering.

I should note that Cory isn’t just a ‘solutionist’. He really does ‘get’ the significance of talking about the ‘net as an organism: by doing so people can more directly – and quickly – connect with ‘saving’ it. It’s surprisingly hard to talk about ‘saving’ something when doing so entails learning an awful lot about complex policy and social rights issues. So, in the case of this article, I think you’re witnessing a particular epistemic elite crafting language to achieve very specific political goals.

And that’s what’s important. By phrasing language, as he has, Doctorow is committing to a specific political maneuver by way of embedding in people’s minds that copyright is the equivalent of a Japanese whaler going after a rare soon-to-be-extinct whale. It’s a helpful kind of thought-worm to implant. But it also obscures the power politics and policy wonkery and just plain silliness involved in the whole copyright ‘issue.’ It also makes you choose if you’re ‘for’ a ‘living’ or a ‘dead’ Internet: why can’t I be for a middle position? What is that middle position? Does a ‘live’ Internet mean a ‘dead’ copyright? Can I get a ‘semi-living’ Internet along with only a ‘half-dead’ copyright?

Strong statements – and rhetoric – like Doctorow’s and other elites in the copyright wars are as meant to obscure potential avenues of thinking as they are to make clear how to ‘fix’ problems. Doctorow does a good job in getting people riled up, which is part of his ‘job’ as an activist, but I’m not confident that after two decades we shouldn’t be moving towards a more nuanced debate. I’m also just sick and tired of ‘war’ language.

I think that it’s increasingly important to focus on positive solutions. Copyright reformists (like me!) have about as much chance successfully framing policy solutions to copyright using war language as we do spearing Moby Dick. And I’d rather stop chasing white whales.

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Links Writing

Tower of Sleep: You’re Fucked, and You’re Probably to Blame.

karengregory:

In 2009, theChronicle of Higher Educationran an “advice” piece entitled “Graduate School in the Humanities: Don’t Go.” In the article, Professor William Pannapacker (ironically of Hope College) proceeded to get real and lay down some truth for aspiring seekers of higher education: there are no jobs, you will grow old trying to get one, you will be poor and in debt (and did we mention old, particularlywomen, who age so much more decisively, what with your womb clocks and all), and you will become angry and embittered by your failures to secure stable employment. This hit a nerve. And probably because that particular nerve rarely gets sleep and likes to wake many of us up at 4:15 in the morning, we are aware that Professor Pannapacker speaks a certain truth. The world that many graduate students are trying to enter is broken and there are no easy roads to security. Even if we manage to grab hold of a rare job, the future of working as an academic looks pretty bleak. So why don’t those of us who understand this pack up and leave?

If we listen to Rebecca Schuman, who recently updated Pannapacker’s screed for 2013 inSlate, it’s because we were too stupid to heed his message, suggesting that the original article “convinced no one.” And, as Schuman writes, “It certainly didn’t convince me! Why? Because Pannapacker is a tenured professor. He pulled it off, so why can’t you? After all, someone has to get these jobs.” Yes, perhaps we are stupid and optimistic and blind. In some situations, like when the world is going to shit, sometimes these aren’t the worst things to be. But I don’t think it’s that we’re all just sitting unaware that the sky is falling and hoping it won’t fall on us. Some of us, as Tressie Cottom suggests on her blog, are trying our best to be “brave” and we are trying to stick around in this shitstorm of terrible labor practices, endless competition for scarce jobs, nasty administrative choices (like the president of CUNY calling grad students “roaches” or, even worse, pepper spraying our undergraduates who have dared to question the vision for higher education in this country) because we care and we want to change it. Or, because even if the university succeeds in chasing us out, we haven’t failed by completing a PhD.

There are many reasons why these screeds of “Don’t go! Graduate School will ruin your life” leave me wanting to kick the wall. Yes, things suck. I make no bones about that, but these screeds overlook the work that students are doing to organize, agitate, and resist the restructuring of higher education. And this oversight raises the question: if you realized the Pannapacker “Truth,” then did you then get involved in your union, in an activist group, in an education alternative (like the Free University), or in a conversation with your students? When did you start realizing that a career in academics also means addressing the very conditions of our labor? What have you done besides comparing the kind of tenacity it takes to be a graduate student today to being a willful smoker who smokes “four packs a day” and hopes to not get cancer?

As someone who has had cancer, I’m a little offended, but I’m also deeply aware thatthere are no self-interested choices that can really save you. This is true in academics as well. We’re finding ourselves in a world where “doing the right thing,” including staying on the straight and narrow path that may or may not culminate in tenure, is not enough.There is a cold logic of privatization at work in these “don’t go” screeds. This logic foregrounds an “every man for himself” mentality, which mirrors the very toxic culture of academics that so closely binds self-worth and research production. To what degree have we internalized this toxicity when we suggest to others that they should “save themselves”? This is not to say that we should not be very angry about the state of the job market, but to ask how does such privatization lead us away from addressing larger, structural issues at play here?

In addition to this, everyone should readTressie’spost. It is smart, impassioned, and on the money response to these “reality checks.” Too many of “some” people have gone on to higher education, but too many others simply haven’t. What happens if “you can’t do better” than go to school? I agree with Tressie that the “Truth” of the “don’t go” advice is not entirely wrong and that we need to be very clear with prospective students about the road ahead of them and the placement of financial burden, but just because we may not see the future clearly for ourselves is no reason to throw the entire institution under the bus. Are we really ready to say that higher education is no longer a link to mobility?

If so, we have some serious thinking to do about what life is this country is about and what such a “no future” really looks like. I am not ready to accept that fate. Many of us are not, which is probably part of why we stick around in our adjunct positions.We know that when and if we leave, our students will be even more on their own—and we also know that the wolves are circling, ready to MOOC-ify the classroom, by which I mean get rid of it entirely and truly strip education down even further. This is really the big issue here, and I wish that more graduate students would realize that participating in the freakout over tenure is a drain on energy that would better be used to stand up to the larger forces that are eager to break the tie between education and mobility, particularly in the public university.

This is not to say don’t freak out, but send the energy outward. Make it social. Organize. Read the news and reject this bullshit mantra of private failure. My guess is that it is this type of mental resilience and recasting of shame (like we see happening around student debt) that will need regardless of where we work.

Also, grad students: If the following is true of your experience, where have you gone to graduate school and how do those very programs needs to be modified:

During graduate school, you will be broken down and reconfigured in the image of the academy. By the time you finish—if you even do—your academic self will be the culmination of your entire self, and thus you will believe, incomprehensibly, that not having a tenure-track job makes you worthless. You will believe this so strongly that when you do not land a job, it will destroy you, and nobody outside of academia will understand why. (Bright side: You will no longer have any friends outside academia.)

CUNY may be a rare case, but it has not been as lonely as this. Nor has it suggested to me that my entire selfismy research. Perhaps because we are public, scraping along, working full-time, parenting, and teaching, we are a little more pissed off then other graduate students? But students here talk to one another. They create community. If I had not gone back to school, I would not have had the chance to learn alongside of some of these truly brilliant, radical people.So, if you ask me about graduate school, I will tell you it sucks, but I will also say: Flock to the Public Universities. Demand access and entry to higher education. Nothing will be easy when you get there. But we cannot afford to leave the university to those currently in charge of it.PhDs, we need you.

This is why the fight for free education matters. Changing the discourse around education is crucial to changing the discourse (and the reality) of income inequality and social mobility in general.

I think that, intellectually, the desire to reform the academy is admirable.

But I can’t image it succeeding or, by the time that it does, it’s going to be pretty late for the entire massive set of graduates who are trying – still – to find marginally meaningful work. Is this a pretty individualistic and pessimistic view of things? Yep, totally. But the collective isn’t going to pay my rent. Or my cats’ vet bills. Or put food on my family’s table. From my position, based on being amongst grad students for going on 2 decades now (another discussion, but no, my parents aren’t professors or permanent staff), things aren’t measurably improving: the same problems are being discussed, but they’re more dire each and every year.

There are long-term fiscal challenges that are associated with a PhD, especially immediately after graduating from the academy. Most have to discover new networks. Even more have to convince those networks that they are capable despite often lacking the ‘basic skills’ needed for employment somewhere within ten miles of what they trained in. Note: by training I don’t mean literature, or economics, or whatever, but in reference to the core skills that PhDs are meant to develop: research, analysis, and whatever ‘fungible’ skills were developed in the PhD (e.g. discourse analysis, policy analysis, stats, etc).

Grad school is a terrific place to be. It’s intellectually stimulating and one of the most pleasant places to be while living close to – or well below – the poverty line. But the thing is, a lot of us are still at or below that line. The absence of tenure track positions, depreciation of pay in many universities for RA/TA and sessional work, and university’s failure to provide meaningful career counselling and training are significantly damaging the academy. And, what’s saddest, is I don’t really think the universities (or most faculty) give a damn because they can externalize or ignore most of these challenges and problems facing PhD students and candidates.

Is the state of the world in academe terminal? No, not necessarily. It’s entirely possible that things could be healed. But, at the same time, if I want to complete my degree in a timely basis (funding runs out!) and mitigate the accumulation of huge amounts of debt and do all the professional development things I need to do in my own time, I’m not going to be a hardcore activist on campus that tries to reshape academe. I appreciate the sentiment, but I think I have more effect changing politics outside the University that inside, and I’d rather spend my time working in a domain where change is more plausible. And, given that I’ll be thrust outside of the academe soon enough anyways, at least the stuff I do ‘outside’ provides a marketable set of ‘real work’ skills.

Tower of Sleep: You’re Fucked, and You’re Probably to Blame.

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Aside Links

Don’t Use Linksys Routers

cleverhacks:

multiple remote root exploits for some of Cisco’s latest consumer-grade gear – and remember, if your router is pwned, it doesn’t matter if all your computers are patched and ultra-secure; your traffic can still be silently MITM’d and your connection hijacked for nefarious purposes.

Ah…another set of router exploits. At least all the major routers that run traffic in the core of the networks are secure from these kinds of vulnerabilities because of high degrees of security-first coding, right?

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Aside Links

New credit cards vulnerable to electronic pickpockets

Fortunately, only ‘advanced payment cards’ are currently affected by this. Well, and the BC Services Card once it’s in people’s hands and the chip has been activated.

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Links

Trojan can hijack smart cards, says researcher

Well, at least this technical threat isn’t a problem in Canada, where we aren’t moving towards advanced electronic identity cards meant to subsequently be accessed using personal computers to access sensitive data held by government services.

Oh. Wait. I forgot: we’re doing just that, aren’t we.

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Links Quotations

Sometimes, I Like To Wait

parislemon:

Anthony Ha for TechCrunch:

Yet when I watched House of Cards, I really enjoyed the space between the episodes, when I could wonder about what happens next and anticipate the next time I’d have an hour or two to catch up. That’s not a new idea — in fact, it’s one of the main pleasures of television. But I think it’s something people lose sight of when they talk about bold new distribution models.

I agree, this topic is being lost in the larger debate. I believe I prefer the House of Cards model for the same reason I’ve long preferred watching shows on DVD rather than when they air — I like to binge.

But I do miss some of the “watercooler” effect of everyone talking about what just happened on Lost this week — something which the very existence of Twitter has essentially perfected. There’s still definitely a watercooler effect with House of Cards but it’s more about the show in general rather than specific plot points since we’re all likely at different parts of the show right now (unless we’re doing with season 1 already, of course).

I think that the sense of community can be lost in the binging, insofar as it’s (often) a solitary event. But, at the same time, I think this (to an extent) may speak to how some people are increasingly moving to more private viewing (i.e. in a room alone) that is simultaneously more social (i.e. ability to share/comment/etc on social media).

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2013.4.13

Attempts to strike a deal on pandas have been floated for more than a decade, but only began to progress quickly when Prime Minister Harper personally raised the matter with Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the National People’s Congress, in Beijing in December 2009, and former Minister Prentice signed a letter of support on behalf of the Government of Canada.

Hey so remember how ridiculous it seemed when Flaherty was calling up banks and haranguing them about mortgage rates? Turns out he’s got nothing on Harper and Prentice who called up the Chinese government and asked for pandas. And then the government tried to artfully redact the correspondence when the media asked for copies, in order to maximize the political impact of the pandas. but now the Information Commissioner has ruled that they can’t do that, so we get the whole story of what happened.

Anyway we’re now paying the Chinese government tens of millions of dollars and giving them photo ops with high-ranking Canadian elected officials for the privilege of taking care of some of their pandas for a couple years. Apologies to all that Canadian wildlife that isn’t getting protection due to chronic underfunding at Environment Canada, but you know how it is.

(via jakke)

I don’t have the time to do this – I just looked at a few, and got sick – but really: read the redacted/non-redacted documents against one another. Then, have open Canada’s Access to Information Act and see how various sections of the act are used to redact elements of the document.

And then get upset at how redaction-happy the government is, and how they justify the initial round of redactions. Also: realize what a big deal that so much goes through Cabinet and Ministers these days: It gives wide berth to using S. 21 of the Act, which often limits information associated with senior members of government (effectively) communicating with one another, or being mentioned as having communicated with one another.

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Links

Lawful Access Was the Tip of an Already Existant Iceberg

From a National Post article, published in 2012, we get a taste of the governments’ existing surveillance capabilities and activities:

Medical

The intimate information in medical files might include: erectile dysfunction, anti-psychotic medication, HIV tests, addictions, body mass index, the times you sought help because of stress, depression or sexual trauma. Health records can include psychiatric counselling.

And it isn’t just information about the person named on the file. They contain concerns expressed about a spouse’s drinking or infidelity or drug use by their child; the times they vented about their unstable boss.

Aren’t these out of the hands of anyone other than health-care providers?

Ask Sean Bruyea. The Gulf War veteran found his health records, including psychiatric reports, had been passed around by bureaucrats and sent to a Cabinet Minister in an apparent bid to discredit the outspoken critic.

Financial

Financial records are similarly sensitive: how much you earn, how much you donate to charity, which charities you choose, bankruptcy declarations, who you owe money to.

Financial data in government hands include income tax records, pension information, child tax benefits and much more. Anyone who has received a cheque from the government for any reason or ever paid money to the government is now in a database.

Corporate and business registration, federally and provincially, also requires a lot of personal and financial information. Credit card records offer a detailed profile of spending habits. Although privately held, a court order sees them turned over.

“You can find almost anyone and learn an awful lot about them if you have their credit history,” said a former police officer who now works for a provincial government.

There are also the enormous databanks of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC), a government agency collecting and disclosing information on suspected money laundering and terrorist financing.

Banks, life insurance companies, securities dealers, accountants, casinos, real estate brokers and others who deal with cash are obligated to report the deals or attempted deals under certain circumstances.

“Behaviour is suspicious, not people,” is FinTRAC’s mantra.

Scholastic

Extensive student records exist on most Canadians, including government student loans.

Local school boards and provincial education ministries have recorded your marks, attendance, illnesses, notes from teachers to parents and notes from home to the school. Many jurisdictions are moving to creating a complete, portable account of each student that follows the person from class to class, school to school.

Like head lice in a shared toque, it never goes away.

Policing

Law-enforcement databanks allow officers anywhere to check if a person is dangerous or a fugitive. Databanks such as the Canadian Police Information Centre lists criminal convictions, warrants and other important interactions with police. Also flagged are “emotionally disturbed persons” and those who are HIV-positive.

But there is, increasingly, much more to police databanks, with almost anyone who has a police encounter being entered into one.

It is hard to muster worry that a convicted killer or child molester is flagged in a police computer, but what about you being embedded there for complaining about a noisy party or reporting stolen property?

The PRIME-BC police database contains the names of more than 85% of B.C. residents, according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which warns citizens could be passed up for jobs and volunteer positions because of misleading red flags. In Alberta, TALON, a new, $65-million database, is also raising concerns.

Manitoba, under Mr. Toews when he was the province’s attorney-general, was a trailblazer in recording interaction with young men to note markers of gang activity to help identify and declare them as gang members.

The Toronto-area forces have an enormous, shared combined database.

Federally, also, those convicted of certain offences are ordered to submit their DNA to the DNA databanks, perhaps the ultimate baring of your identity.

Travel

Passport Canada, an agency of Foreign Affairs Canada, keeps a large repository on citizens, including facial-recognition biometrics, those who vouched for your passport application and all trips abroad as well as visa applications.

Canada Border Services Agency keeps track of who is crossing our borders, including where you go and who arrives to visit you.

Recall that thin slip of card for customs you filled out on the airplane when returning to Canada. You wrote your name, address, travelling companions, passport number, where you went, how long you stayed and what you bought.

Those cards — its catalogue of booze and tobacco and all — are kept and can be forwarded to police or other government agencies.

Immigration

The Field Operations Support Systems, used by border and immigration agents, track all immigration-related information.

The Computer Assisted Immigration Processing System tracks every immigration application being processed by overseas offices, including family history, assessment notes, appeals status and concerns raised by citizenship staff.

Both of these large databanks are being consolidated into the Global Case Management System. The consolidation is but one example of the government’s drive of integrating data.

Transportation

Provincial ministries regulating driver’s licences hold a bevy of information, including medical information, address, photograph and its biometric information for facial recognition, driving and vehicle records.

This summer, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia caused an uproar by offering biometric data from its database to police to help identify participants in the Stanley Cup riot. Critics blasted the potential use of data collected for one purpose for a distinctly different one.

Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) creates another powerful tool for surveillance.

Pitched as a way of finding stolen cars and kidnapped children, the technology has appeal, but the portable devices that read hundreds of passing licence plates every minute and runs them through registration databases to attach it to an owner is causing concern.

Scanned pictures can be stamped with GPS co-ordinates, date and time information and stored in a database. It can track cars coming and going from any destination.

In Britain, there have been wide complaints of police using ALPR to stop vehicles coming or going to political protests. Privacy watchdogs in B.C. uncovered that among those automatically targeted by the RCMP’s ALPR included everyone who has gone to court to establish legal custody of a child, all who had a mental health problem that received police attention, and those linked to others under investigation.

Corporate information

Information collected by private corporations also has a way of making it to government.

407 ETR, the privately run electronic toll highway north of Toronto, scans licence plates so the owner can be billed. Police have accessed the data to track vehicles entering and exiting the highway, cross-referencing it and linking it to their investigations.

More widely used is hydro-electricity data. Special legislation in some provinces sees hydro data turned over to government to help identify homes with unusually high usage.

Drawing a lot of power is a marker for running a marijuana grow operation. More than one hothouse cucumber farmer, hot tub or swimming pool owner has been on the wrong end of that information.

Needless to say, that’s a lot of surveillance in a lot of sectors. The range of activities also speaks to why privacy advocates are often jack-of-all-trades (there aren’t a lot of them, so they need to learn a little about a lot) and why there are persistant worries around ‘surveillance creep’, or the gradual expansion of state surveillance capabilities. Sure, a new program may not be all that significant on its own but when combined with everything else authorities can derive previously-impossible-to-realize insights into Canadians’ private lives.

And, let me tell you from experience: getting access to the personal information that is stored about you by various agencies is often an act in futility. Government can learn about you, but it’s often impossible to learn what government has recorded about yourself.

Link: Lawful Access Was the Tip of an Already Existant Iceberg

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Links Writing

Senate Delivers a Devastating Blow to the Integrity of the Scientific Process at the National Science Foundation — WASHINGTON, March 20, 2013

jakke:

jhermann:

rhizombie:

The amendment places unprecedented restriction on the national research agenda by declaring the political science study of democracy and public policy out of bounds. The amendment allows only political science research that promotes “national security or the economic interests of the United States.”

holy shit, that’s disgusting

Practically speaking this will have almost no effect on political science research. The National Science Foundation (the US government agency that manages research funding) is advancing a slippery-slope argument to talk about why their independence has been threatened. But the NSF still ultimately decides where the grants go.

It’s very easy to argue that basically all research of “democracy and public policy” is useful for national security, economic interests, or both. Maybe funding applications will need to include a paragraph explaining why their research is useful for policy applications. But that’s hardly a bad thing, right? Even fundamental-level social science research generally presents a relatively straight line to policy application. And so the NSF can keep on approving whatever ivory-tower projects they like.

So yeah I mean obviously this change is massively suboptimal and deserves to be loudly frowned upon. But in terms of actual research projects losing funding? I’d be surprised if there were any at all.

I think that it’s going to matter how the Senate’s decision is actually implemented. Of course, you’ll see social scientists trying to figure out how their work ‘fits’ the new funding objectives. However, if NSF really gets on board and refuses to fund grants that only have ‘token’ statements for how research meets the new funding objectives then the Senate’s decision could hurt some political scientists.

The decision also establishes a kind of worry amongst some academics that the government could continue to aggressively direct academic study: sure, you can study whatever you want, so long as your work doesn’t depend on federal funds. Some of the Senate’s decision was the result of particular Senators being displeased with the academic work that had been funded; their modification to NSF granting effectively acts as a clear warning to other projects up for NSF funding: if ‘bad’ work that the political paymasters won’t approve of is funded then the paymasters will get very directly involved in matters.

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Aside Links Quotations

2013.3.21

An oil spill recovery vessel ran aground en route to a federal announcement on oil tanker safety in Vancouver on Monday, officials have confirmed.

The vessel was making a 12-hour trip from its base in Esquimalt to Vancouver for a tanker safety announcement by Federal Transport Minister Denis Lebel and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver when it struck an uncharted sandbar near Sandheads at the mouth of the Fraser River near Steveston.

Wow okay I feel safer already and would gladly welcome more large oil tankers in an inlet or strait near me. (via jakke)

Just…wow. I can only picture delivering the news to the Minister, and watching his face twitch upon learning about this particular PR fubar.