Category: Writing

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Writing

Cyber Attacks Versus Operations in Ukraine

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For the past decade there has been a steady drumbeat that ‘cyberwar is coming’. Sometimes the parties holding these positions are in militaries and, in other cases, from think tanks or university departments that are trying to link kinetic-adjacent computer operations with ‘war’.

Perhaps the most famous rebuttal to the cyberwar proponents has been Thomas Rid’s Cyber War Will Not Take Place. The title was meant to be provocative and almost has the effect of concealing a core insight of Rid’s argument: cyber operations will continue to be associated with conflicts but cyber operations are unlikely to constitute (or lead to) out-and-out war on their own. Why? Because it is very challenging to prepare and launch cyber operations that have significant kinetic results at the scale we associate with full-on war.

Since the Russian Federation’s war of aggression towards Ukraine there have regularly been shocked assertions that cyberware isn’t taking place. A series of pieces by The Economist, as an example, sought to prepare readers for a cyberwar that just hasn’t happened. Why not? Because The Economist–much like other outlets!–often presumed that the cyber dimensions of the conflict in Ukraine would bear at least some resemblance to the long-maligned concept of a ‘cyber Pearl Harbour’: a critical cyber-enable strike of some sort would have a serious, and potentially devastating, effect on how Ukraine could defend against Russian aggression and thus tilt the balance towards Russian military victory.

As a result of the early mistaken understandings of cyber operations, scholars and experts have once more come out and explained why cyber operations are not the same as an imagined cyber Pearl Harbour situation, while still taking place in the Ukrainian conflict. Simultaneously, security and malware researchers have taken the opportunity to belittle International Relations theorists who have written about cyberwar and argued that these theorists have fundamentally misunderstood how cyber operations take place.

Part of the challenge is ‘cyberwar’ has often been popularly seen as the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their associated military hardware being deployed into a foreign country. As noted by Rid in a recent op-ed, while some cyber operations are meant to be apparent others are much more subtle. The former might be meant to reduce the will to fight or diminish command and control capabilities. The latter, in contrast, will look a lot like other reconnaissance operations: knowing who is commanding which battle group, the logistical challenges facing the opponent, or state of infrastructure in-country. All these latter dimensions provide strategic and tactical advantages to the party who’s launched the surveillance operation. Operations meant to degrade capabilities may occur but will often be more subtle. This subtly can be a particularly severe risk in a conflict, such as if your ammunition convoy is sent to the wrong place or train timetables are thrown off with the effect of stymying civilian evacuation or resupply operations.1

What’s often seemingly lost in the ‘cyberwar’ debates–which tend to take place either between people who don’t understand cyber operations, those who stand to profit from misrepresentations of them, or those who are so theoretical in their approaches as to be ignorant of reality–is that contemporary wars entail blended forces. Different elements of those blends have unique and specific tactical and strategic purposes. Cyber isn’t going to have the same effect as a Grad Missile Launcher or a T-90 Battle Tank, but that missile launcher or tank isn’t going to know that the target it’s pointed towards is strategically valuable without reconnaissance nor is it able to impair logistics flows the same way as a cyber operation targeting train schedules. To expect otherwise is to grossly misunderstand how cyber operations function in a conflict environment.

I’d like to imagine that one result of the Russian war of aggression will be to improve the general population’s understanding of cyber operations and what they entail, and do not entail. It’s possible that this might happen given that major news outlets, such as the AP and Reuters, are changing how they refer to such activities: they will not be called ‘cyberattacks’ outside very nuanced situations now. In simply changing what we call cyber activities–as operations as opposed to attacks–we’ll hopefully see a deflating of the language and, with it, more careful understandings of how cyber operations take place in and out of conflict situations. As such, there’s a chance (hope?) we might see a better appreciation of the significance of cyber operations in the population writ-large in the coming years. This will be increasingly important given the sheer volume of successful (non-conflict) operations that take place each day.

  1. It’s worth recognizing that part of why we aren’t reading about successful Russian operations is, first, due to Ukrainian and allies’ efforts to suppress such successes for fear of reducing Ukrainian/allied morale. Second, however, is that Western signals intelligence agencies such as the NSA, CSE, and GCHQ, are all very active in providing remote defensive and other operational services to Ukrainian forces. There was also a significant effort ahead of the conflict to shore up Ukrainian defences and continues to be a strong effort by Western companies to enhance the security of systems used by Ukrainians. Combined, this means that Ukraine is enjoying additional ‘forces’ while, simultaneously, generally keeping quiet about its own failures to protect its systems or infrastructure. ↩︎
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Writing

Russia, Nokia, and SORM

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The New York Times recently wrote about Nokia providing telecommunications equipment to Russian ISPs, all while Nokia was intimately aware of how its equipment would be interconnected with System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) lawful interception equipment. SORM equipment has existed in numerous versions since the 1990s. Per James Lewis:

SORM-1 collects mobile and landline telephone calls. SORM-2 collects internet traffic. SORM-3 collects from all media (including Wi-Fi and social networks) and stores data for three years. Russian law requires all internet service providers to install an FSB monitoring device (called “Punkt Upravlenia”) on their networks that allows the direct collection of traffic without the knowledge or cooperation of the service provider. The providers must pay for the device and the cost of installation.

SORM is part of a broader Internet and telecommunications surveillance and censorship regime that has been established by the Russian government. Moreover, other countries in the region use iterations or variations of the SORM system (e.g., Kazakhstan) as well as countries which were previously invaded by the Soviet Union (e.g., Afghanistan).

The Time’s article somewhat breathlessly states that the documents they obtained, and which span 2008-2017,

show in previously unreported detail that Nokia knew it was enabling a Russian surveillance system. The work was essential for Nokia to do business in Russia, where it had become a top supplier of equipment and services to various telecommunications customers to help their networks function. The business yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, even as Mr. Putin became more belligerent abroad and more controlling at home.

It is not surprising that Nokia, as part of doing business in Russia, was complying with lawful interception laws insofar as its products were compatible with SORM equipment. Frankly it would have been surprising if Nokia had flouted the law given that Nokia’s own policy concerning human rights asserts that (.pdf):

Nokia will provide passive lawful interception capabilities to customers who have a legal obligation to provide such capabilities. This means we will provide products that meet agreed standards for lawful intercept capabilities as defined by recognized standards bodies such as the 3rd Generation Partner Project (3GPP) and the European Telecoms Standards Institute (ETSI). We will not, however, engage in any activity relating to active lawful interception technologies, such as storing, post-processing or analyzing of intercepted data gathered by the network operator.

It was somewhat curious that the Times’ article declined to recognize that Nokia-Siemens has a long history of doing business in repressive countries: it allegedly sold mobile lawful interception equipment to Iran circa 2009 and in 2010-11 its lawful interception equipment was implicated in political repression and torture in Bahrain. Put differently, Nokia’s involvement in low rule-of-law countries is not new and, if anything, their actions in Russia appear to be a mild improvement on their historical approaches to enabling repressive governments to exercise lawful interception functionalities.

The broad question is whether Western companies should be authorized or permitted to do business in repressive countries. To some extent, we might hope that businesses themselves would express restraint. But, in excess of this, companies such as Nokia often require some kind of export license or approval before they can sell certain telecommunications equipment to various repressive governments. This is particularly true when it comes to supplying lawful interception functionality (which was not the case when Nokia sold equipment to Russia).

While the New York Times casts a light on Nokia the article does not:

  1. Assess the robustness of Nokia’s alleged human rights commitments–have they changed since 2013 when they were first examined by civil society? How do Nokia’s sales comport with their 2019 human rights policy? Just how flimsy is the human rights policy in its own right?
  2. Assess the export controls that Nokia was(n’t) under–is it the case that the Norwegian government has some liability or responsibility for the sales of Nokia’s telecommunications equipment? Should there be?
  3. Assess the activities of the telecommunications provider Nokia was supplying in Russia, MTS, and whether there is a broader issue of Nokia supplying equipment to MTS since it operates in various repressive countries.

None of this is meant to set aside the fact that Western companies ought to behave better on the international stage. But…this has not been a priority in Russia, at least, until the country’s recent war of aggression. Warning signs were prominently on display before this war and didn’t result in prominent and public recriminations towards Nokia or other Western companies doing business in Russia.

All lawful interception systems, regardless of whether they conform with North America, European, or Russian standards, are surveillance systems. Put another way, they are all about empowering one group to exercise influence or power over others who are unaware they are being watched. In low rule-of-law countries, such as Russia, there is a real question as to whether they should should even be called ‘lawful interception systems’ as opposed to explicitly calling them ‘interception systems’.

There was a real opportunity for the New York Times to both better contextualize Nokia’s involvement in Russia and, then, to explain and problematize the nature of lawful interception capability and standards. The authors could also have spent time discussing the nature of export controls on telecommunications equipment, where the equipment is being sold into repressive states. Sadly this did not occur with the result that the authors and paper declined to more broadly consider and report on the working, and ethics and politics, of enabling telecommunications and lawful interception systems in repressive and non-repressive states alike. While other kicks at this can will arise, it’s evident that there wasn’t even an attempt to do so in this report on Nokia.

Categories
Links Writing

The Risks Linked With Canadian Cyber Operations in Ukraine

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Late last month, Global News published a story on how the Canadian government is involved in providing cyber support to the Ukrainian government in the face of Russia’s illegal invasion. While the Canadian military declined to confirm or deny any activities they might be involved in, the same was not true of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). The CSE is Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency. In addition to collecting intelligence, it is also mandated to defend Canadian federal systems and those designated as of importance to the government of Canada, provide assistance to other federal agencies, and conduct active and defensive cyber operations.1

From the Global News article it is apparent that the CSE is involved in both foreign intelligence operations as well as undertaking cyber defensive activities. Frankly these kinds of activity are generally, and persistently, undertaken with regard to the Russian government and so it’s not a surprise that these activities continue apace.

The CSE spokesperson also noted that the government agency is involved in ‘cyber operations’ though declined to explain whether these are defensive cyber operations or active cyber operations. In the case of the former, the Minister of National Defense must consult with the Minister of Foreign Affairs before authorizing an operation, whereas in the latter both Ministers must consent to an operation prior to it taking place. Defensive and active operations can assume the same form–roughly the same activities or operations might be undertaken–but the rationale for the activity being taken may vary based on whether it is cast as defensive or active (i.e., offensive).2

These kinds of cyber operations are the ones that most worry scholars and practitioners, on the basis that there is a risk that foreign operators or adversaries may misread a signal from a cyber operation or because the operation might have unintended consequences. Thus, the risk is that the operations that the CSE is undertaking run the risk of accidentally (or intentionally, I guess) escalating affairs between Canada and the Russian Federation in the midst of the shooting war between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

While there is, of course, a need for some operational discretion on the part of the Canadian government it is also imperative that the Canadian public be sufficiently aware of the government’s activities to understand the risks (or lack thereof) which are linked to the activities that Canadian agencies are undertaking. To date, the Canadian government has not released its cyber foreign policy doctrine nor has the Canadian Armed Forces released its cyber doctrine.3 The result is that neither Canadians nor Canada’s allies or adversaries know precisely what Canada will do in the cyber domain, how Canada will react when confronted, or the precise nature of Canada’s escalatory ladder. The government’s secrecy runs the risk of putting Canadians in greater jeopardy of a response from the Russian Federation (or other adversaries) without the Canadian public really understanding what strategic or tactical activities might be undertaken on their behalf.

Canadians have a right to know at least enough about what their government is doing to be able to begin assessing the risks linked with conducting operations during an active militant conflict against an adversary with nuclear weapons. Thus far such information has not been provided. The result is that Canadians are ill-prepared to assess the risk that they may be quietly and quickly drawn into the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Such secrecy bodes poorly for being able to hold government to account, to say nothing of preventing Canadians from appreciating the risk that they could become deeply drawn into a very hot conflict scenario.

  1. For more on the CSE and the laws governing its activities, see “A Deep Dive into Canada’s Overhaul of Its Foreign Intelligence and Cybersecurity Laws.” ↩︎
  2. For more on this, see “Analysis of the Communications Security Establishment Act and Related Provisions in Bill C-59 (An Act respecting national security matters), First Reading (December 18, 2017)“, pp 27-32. ↩︎
  3. Not for lack of trying to access them, however, as in both cases I have filed access to information requests to the government for these documents 1 years ago, with delays expected to mean I won’t get the documents before the end of 2022 at best. ↩︎
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Writing

Policing the Location Industry

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The Markup has a comprehensive and disturbing article on how location information is acquired by third-parties despite efforts by Apple and Google to restrict the availability of this information. In the past, it was common for third-parties to provide SDKs to application developers. The SDKs would inconspicuously transfer location information to those third-parties while also enabling functionality for application developers. With restrictions being put in place by platforms such as Apple and Google, however, it’s now becoming common for application developers to initiate requests for location information themselves and then share it directly with third-party data collectors.

While such activities often violate the terms of service and policy agreements between platforms and application developers, it can be challenging for the platforms to actually detect these violations and subsequently enforce their rules.

Broadly, the issues at play represent significant governmental regulatory failures. The fact that government agencies often benefit from the secretive collection of individuals’ location information makes it that much harder for the governments to muster the will to discipline the secretive collection of personal data by third-parties: if the government cuts off the flow of location information, it will impede the ability of governments themselves obtain this information.

In some cases intelligence and security services obtain location information from third-parties. This sometimes occurs in situations where the services themselves are legally barred from directly collecting this information. Companies selling mobility information can let government agencies do an end-run around the law.

One of the results is that efforts to limit data collectors’ ability to capture personal information often sees parts of government push for carve outs to collecting, selling, and using location information. In Canada, as an example, the government has adopted a legal position that it can collect locational information so long as it is de-identified or anonymized,1 and for the security and intelligence services there are laws on the books that permit the collection of commercially available open source information. This open source information does not need to be anonymized prior to acquisition.2 Lest you think that it sounds paranoid that intelligence services might be interested in location information, consider that American agencies collected bulk location information pertaining to Muslims from third-party location information data brokers and that the Five Eyes historically targeted popular applications such as Google Maps and Angry Birds to obtain location information as well as other metadata and content. As the former head of the NSA announced several years ago, “We kill people based on metadata.”

Any arguments made by either private or public organizations that anonymization or de-identification of location information makes it acceptable to collect, use, or disclose generally relies tricking customers and citizens. Why is this? Because even when location information is aggregated and ‘anonymized’ it might subsequently be re-identified. And in situations where that reversal doesn’t occur, policy decisions can still be made based on the aggregated information. The process of deriving these insights and applying them showcases that while privacy is an important right to protect, it is not the only right that is implicated in the collection and use of locational information. Indeed, it is important to assess the proportionality and necessity of the collection and use, as well as how the associated activities affect individuals’ and communities’ equity and autonomy in society. Doing anything less is merely privacy-washing.

Throughout discussions about data collection, including as it pertains to location information, public agencies and companies alike tend to provide a pair of argument against changing the status quo. First, they assert that consent isn’t really possible anymore given the volumes of data which are collected on a daily basis from individuals; individuals would be overwhelmed with consent requests! Thus we can’t make the requests in the first place! Second, that we can’t regulate the collection of this data because doing so risks impeding innovation in the data economy.

If those arguments sound familiar, they should. They’re very similar to the plays made by industry groups who’s activities have historically had negative environmental consequences. These groups regularly assert that after decades of poor or middling environmental regulation that any new, stronger, regulations would unduly impede the existing dirty economy for power, services, goods, and so forth. Moreover, the dirty way of creating power, services, and goods is just how things are and thus should remain the same.

In both the privacy and environmental worlds, corporate actors (and those whom they sell data/goods to) have benefitted from not having to pay the full cost of acquiring data without meaningful consent or accounting for the environmental cost of their activities. But, just as we demand enhanced environmental regulations to regulate and address the harms industry causes to the environment, we should demand and expect the same when it comes to the personal data economy.

If a business is predicated on sneaking away personal information from individuals then it is clearly not particularly interested or invested in being ethical towards consumers. It’s imperative to continue pushing legislators to not just recognize that such practices are unethical, but to make them illegal as well. Doing so will require being heard over the cries of government’s agencies that have vested interests in obtaining location information in ways that skirt the law that might normally discipline such collection, as well as companies that have grown as a result of their unethical data collection practices. While this will not be an easy task, it’s increasingly important given the limits of platforms to regulate the sneaky collection of this information and increasingly problematic ways our personal data can be weaponized against us.

  1. “PHAC advised that since the information had been de-identified and aggregated, it believed the activity did not engage the Privacy Act as it was not collecting or using “personal information”. ↩︎
  2. See, as example, Section 23 of the CSE Act ↩︎
Categories
Photography Reviews Writing

Glass and Community

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
(New Heights by Christopher Parsons)

The founders of the photography application, Glass, were recently on Protocol’s Source Code. Part of what they emphasized, time and time again, was the importance of developing a positive community where photographers interacted with one another.

Glass continues to be the place where I’m most comfortable sharing my images. I really don’t care about how many people ‘appreciate’ a photo and I’m never going to be a photographic influencer. But I do like being in a community where I’m surrounded by helpful photographers, and where I’m regularly inspired by the work of other photographers.

Indeed, just today one of the photographers I most respect posted an image that I found really spectacular and we had a brief back and forth about what I saw/emotions it evoked, and his reaction to my experience of it. I routinely have these kinds of positive and meaningful back-and-forths on Glass. That’s not to say that similar experiences don’t, and can’t, occur on other companies’ platforms! But, from my own point of view, Glass is definitely creating the experiences that the developers are aiming for.

I also think that the developers of Glass are serious in their commitment to taking ideas from their community. I’d proposed via their ticketing system that they find a way of showcasing the excellent blog content that they’re producing, and that’s now on their roadmap for the application.

It’s also apparent that the developers, themselves, are involved in the application and watching what people are posting to showcase great work. They’ve routinely had excellent and interesting interviews with photographers on the platform, as well as highlighted photos that they found interesting each month in the categories that they have focused on (in interests of disclosure, one of my photos was included in their Cityscapes collection).

These are, admittedly, the kinds of features and activities that you’d hope developers to roll out and emphasize as they build a photography application and grow its associated community. Even the developers of Instagram, when it was still a sub-10 person shop were pretty involved in their community! I can only hope that Glass never turns into their Meta ‘competitor’!

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Links

Ontario’s Path Towards Legitimizing Employee Surveillance

Earlier this week, the Ontario government declared that it would be introducing a series of labour reforms. As part of these reforms, employers will be required to inform their employees of how they are being electronically monitored. These requirements will be applied to all employers with 25 or more employees.

Employers already undertake workplace surveillance, though it has become more common and extensive as a result of the pandemic. Where surveillance is undertaken, however, businesses must seek out specialized counsel or services to craft appropriate labour policies or contracting language. This imposes costs and, also, means that different firms may provide slightly different information. The effect is that employers may be more cautious in what surveillance they adopt and be required to expend funds to obtain semi-boutique legal opinions.

While introducing legislation would seem to extend privacy protections for employees, as understood at the moment the reforms will only require a notification to employees of the relevant surveillance. It will not bar the surveillance itself. Further, with a law on the books it will likely be easier for Ontario consulting firms to provide pretty rote advice based on the legislative language. The result, I expect, will be to drive down the transaction costs in developing workplace surveillance policies at the same time that workplace surveillance technologies become more affordable and extensively deployed.

While I suspect that many will herald this law reform as positive for employees, on the basis that at least now they will know how they are being monitored, I am far less optimistic. The specificity of notice will matter, a lot, and unless great care is taken in drafting the legislation employers will obtain a significant degree of latitude in the actual kinds of intrusive surveillance that can be used. Moreover, unless required in legislative language, we can expect employers to conceal the specific modes of surveillance on grounds of needing to protect the methods for operational business reasons. This latter element is of particular concern given that major companies, including office productivity companies like Microsoft, are baking extensive workplace surveillance functionality into their core offerings. Ontario’s reforms are not, in fact, good for employees but are almost certain to be a major boon for their employers.

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Aside Writing

Adding Some Positivity to the Internet

Beneath Old Grandfather
(Beneath Old Grandfather by Christopher Parsons)

Over the past two years or so the parts of the Internet that I inhabit have tended to become less pleasant. Messages that I see on a regular basis are just short, rude, and often mean. And the messages that are directed to people who have an online professional presence, such those who write and speak professionally, are increasingly abusive.

I’m one of those writers and speakers, and this year I decided to do something that isn’t particularly normal: when I come across a good piece of writing, or analysis of an issue, or just generally appreciate one of my colleagues’ work, I’ve been letting them know. The messages don’t tend to be long and usually focus on specific things I appreciated (to show that I’m familiar with the work in question) and thanking them for their contributions.

This might sound like a small thing. However, from experience I know that it’s surprisingly uncommon to receive much positive praise for the work that writers or speakers engage in. The times that I’ve received such positive feedback are pretty rare, but each time it’s made my day.

There are any number of policy proposals for ‘correcting’ online behaviour, many of which I have deep and severe concerns about. Simply saying ‘thanks’ in specific ways isn’t going to cure the ills of an increasingly cantankerous and abusive (and dangerous) Internet culture. But communicating our appreciation for one another can at least remind us that the Internet is filled with denizens who do appreciate the work that creators are undertaking day after day to inform, education, delight, and entertain us. That’s not nothing and can help to fuel the work that we all want to see produced for our benefit.

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Links

Europe Planning A DNS Infrastructure With Built-In Filtering

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for The Record, has found that the European Union wants to build a recursive DNS service that will be available to EU institutions and the European public. The reasons for building the service are manifold, including concerns that American DNS providers are not GDPR compliant and worries that much of Europe is dependent on (largely) American-based or -owned infrastructure.

As part of the European system, plans are for it to:

… come with built-in filtering capabilities that will be able to block DNS name resolutions for bad domains, such as those hosting malware, phishing sites, or other cybersecurity threats.

This filtering capability would be built using threat intelligence feeds provided by trusted partners, such as national CERT teams, and could be used to defend organizations across Europe from common malicious threats.

It is unclear if DNS4EU usage would be mandatory for all EU or national government organizations, but if so, it would grant organizations like CERT-EU more power and the agility it needs to block cyber-attacks as soon as they are detected.

In addition, EU officials also want to use DNS4EU’s filtering system to also block access to other types of prohibited content, which they say could be done based on court orders. While officials didn’t go into details, this most likely refers to domains showing child sexual abuse materials and copyright-infringing (pirated) content.1

By integrating censorship/blocking provisions as the policy level of the European DNS, there is a real risk that over time that same system might be used for untoward ends. Consider the rise of anti-LGBTQ laws in Hungary and Poland, and how those governments mights be motivated to block access to ‘prohibited content’ that is identified as such by anti-LGBTQ politicians.

While a reader might hope that the European courts could knock down these kinds of laws, their recurrence alone raises the spectre that content that is deemed socially undesirable by parties in power could be censored, even where there are legitimate human rights grounds that justify accessing the material in question.

  1. Boldface not in original. ↩︎
Categories
Photography Writing

Improving My Photography In 2021

CB1A5DDF-8273-47CD-81CF-42C2FC0BA6F5
(Climbing Gear by Christopher Parsons)

I’ve spent a lot of personal time behind my cameras throughout 2021 and have taken a bunch of shots that I really like. At the same time, I’ve invested a lot of personal time learning more about the history of photography and how to accomplish things with my cameras. Below, in no particular order, is a list of the ways I worked to improve my photography in 2021.

Fuji Recipes

I started looking at different ‘recipes’ that I could use for my Fuji x100f, starting with those at Fuji X Weekly and some YouTube channels. I’ve since started playing around with my own black and white recipes to get a better sense of what works for making my own images. The goal in all of this is to create jpgs that are ‘done’ in body and require an absolute minimum amount of adjustment. It’s very much a work in progress, but I’ve gotten to the point that most of my photos only receive minor crops, as opposed to extensive edits in Darkroom.

Comfort in Street Photography

The first real memory I have of ‘doing’ street photography was being confronted by a bus driver after I took his photo. I was scared off of taking pictures of other people for years as a result.

Over the past year, however, I’ve gotten more comfortable by watching a lot of POV-style YouTube videos of how other street photographers go about making their images. I don’t have anyone else to go an shoot with, and learn from, so these videos have been essential to my learning process. In particular, I’ve learned a lot from watching and listening to Faizal Westcott, the folks over at Framelines, Joe Allan, Mattias Burling, and Samuel Lintaro Hopf.

Moreover, just seeing the photos that other photographers are making and how they move in the street has helped to validate that what I’m doing, when I go out, definitely fits within the broader genre of street photography.

Histories of Photography

In the latter three months of 2021 I spent an enormous amount of time watching videos from the Art of Photography, Tatiana Hopper, and a bit from Sean Tucker. The result is that I’m developing a better sense of what you can do with a camera as well as why certain images are iconic or meaningful.

Pocket Camera Investment

I really love my Fuji X100F and always have my iPhone 12 Pro in my pocket. Both are terrific cameras. However, I wanted something that was smaller than the Fuji and more tactile than the iPhone, and which I could always have in a jacket pocket.

To that end, in late 2021 I purchase a very lightly used Ricoh GR. While I haven’t used it enough to offer a full review of it I have taken a lot of photos with it that I really, really like. More than anything else I’m taking more photos since buying it because I always have a good, very tactile, camera with me wherever I go.

Getting Off Instagram

I’m not a particularly big fan of Instagram these days given Facebook’s unwillingness or inability to moderate its platform, as well as Instagram’s constant addition of advertisements and short video clips. So since October 2021 I’ve been posting my photos almost exclusively to Glass and (admittedly to a lesser extent) to this website.

Not only is the interface for posting to Glass a lot better than the one for Instagram (and Flickr, as well), the comments I get on my photos on Glass are better than anywhere else I’ve ever posted my images. Admittedly Glass still has some growing pains but I’m excited to see how it develops in the coming year.

Categories
Reviews Writing

Book Review: Blockchain Chicken Farm And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside (2020) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Xiaowei Wang’s book, Blockchain Chicken Farm And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside, presents a nuanced and detailed account of the lives reality of many people in China through the lenses of history, culture, and emerging technologies. She makes clear through her writing that China is undergoing a massive shift through efforts to digitize the economy and society (and especially rural economies and societies) while also effectively communicating why so many of these initiatives are being undertaken. 

From exploring the relationship between a fraught cold chain and organic chicken, to attempts to revitalize rural villages by turning them into platform manufacturing towns, to thinking through and reflecting on the state of contemporary capitalistic performativity in rural China and the USA alike, we see how technologies are being used to try and ‘solve’ challenges while often simultaneously undermining and endangering the societies within which they are embedded. Wang is careful to ensure that a reader leaves with an understanding of the positive attributes of how technologies are applied while, at the same time, making clear how they do not remedy—and, in fact, often reify or extenuate—unequal power relationships. Indeed, many of the positive elements of technologies, from the perspective of empowering rural citizens or improving their earning powers, are either being negatively impacted by larger capitalistic actors or the technology companies whose platforms many of these so-called improvements operate upon. 

Wang’s book, in its conclusion, recognizes that we need to enhance and improve upon the cultural spaces we operate and live within if we are to create a new or reformed politics that is more responsive to the specific needs of individuals and their communities. Put differently, we must tend to the dynamism of the Lifeworld if we are to modify the conditions of the System that surrounds, and unrelentingly colonizes, the Lifeworld. 

Her wistful ending—that such efforts of (re)generation are all that we can do—speaks both to a hope but also an almost resignation that (re)forming the systems we operate in can only take place if we manage to avoid being distracted by the bauble or technology that is dangled in front of us, to distract us from the existential crises facing our societies and humanity writ large. As such, it concludes very much in the spirit of our times: with hope for the future but a fearful resignation that despite our best efforts, we may be too late to succeed. But, what else can we do?