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Academics Rally to Defend Sandra Fluke

Sandra Fluke is a Georgetown law student who has been targeted by Rush Limbaugh since giving testimony about the importance of insurance policies providing contraceptive coverage. The academic community has issued a statement in response to the misogynistic attacks that have been launched by Limbaugh and his supporters. It’s available as a .pdf (with a list of signatories) here, and the statement text is below:

The undersigned faculty members, administrators and students of Georgetown University Law Center and other law schools strongly condemn the recent personal attacks on our student, Sandra Fluke. Ms. Fluke has had the courage to publicly defend and advocate for her beliefs about an important issue of widespread concern. She has done so with passion and intelligence. And she has been rewarded with the basest sort of name-calling and vilification, words that aim only to belittle and intimidate. As scholars and teachers who aim to train public-spirited lawyers, no matter what their politics, to engage intelligently and meaningfully with the world, we abhor these attacks on Ms. Fluke and applaud her strength and grace in the face of them.

Limbaugh’s hateful attacks are despicable. I’m incredibly happy to see the academic community publicly rally behind Fluke and would be delighted if this kind of hate speech were prosecuted. If there’s any group that’s likely to have the chops to do this it’s the massive body of lawyers from around America who have stood up in support of Sandra. Losing advertisers and a poor apology aren’t enough: Limbaugh should be prosecuted for his intentionally slanderous and libel speech.

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Links Writing

I Like The Apps, But Not The Design

A new version of the iPad is coming. The latest ‘craze’ around this version is whether or not it will come with a home button. To date, there’s been one particularly strong ‘In Defence of the Home Button’ post by Dave Caolo, which is effectively a listing of all the functions that Apple has tied to the singular button at the bottom of each iDevice.

This button isn’t going anywhere. And that’s really unfortunate, because better – or at least equivalent – options are out there.

The PlayBook is seriously lacking on apps. SERIOUSLY LACKING. But the hardware design of the device is stunning. I don’t need to pay attention to what is up, down, left, or right because of how RIM has integrated the bezel functionality. For a quick overview of the bezel options, check out the video below:

This isn’t to say that the Playbook is a winner hands down. Apple’s home button is linked to variety of accessibility options which are lacking on the Playbook. Also, Apple has a series of gestures that enable similar features as the Playbook, though I’m far less impressed at how they’re integrated. Because of how awkward these gestures tend to be, I tend to just use the home button, which can be incredibly inconvenient depending on the iPad’s orientation at the time.

My dream would be Apple getting creative and bringing the hardware design leadership of the Playbook to the app-rich iDevice environment. I’m not holding my breath through.

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Why TV is Broken

Minimal Mac has an interesting piece on the UX of television. In short, a young girl who isn’t exposed to TV suddenly is, and is confused and upset by the service provided. She doesn’t understand commercials, doesn’t understand the changes in volume, and becomes resigned to cable TV’s deficiencies.

A cautionary note to advertisers and television moguls alike: if your next-generation audience is ‘resigned’ to your service, and has alternates to your content delivery options, you need to adapt or watch your audience base slowly erode.

Go read the piece. It’s well written and eye-opening.

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Humour

An image a friend sent my way a while back that makes me chuckle every time I see it.

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Here’s Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas:

Holder left several aspects of his argument unexplained. He did not define the terms “senior operational leader” of al-Qaida, nor what it means to be an “affiliate” of the amorphous group. The attorney general only referred to the drones through the euphemism “stealth or technologically advanced weapons.” Holder did not explain why U.S. forces could not have captured Awlaki instead of killing him, nor what its criteria are for determining on future missions that suspected U.S. citizen terrorists must be killed, rather than captured. Holder did not explain why Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom a missile strike killed two weeks after his father’s death, was a lawful target. Holder did not explain how a missile strike represents due process, or what the standards for due process the government must meet when killing a U.S. citizen abroad. Holder did not explain why the government can only target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for death overseas and not domestically.

In which the United States government asserts, in all seriousness, that it’s perfectly okay (appropriate, even) for the President to order the killing of an American citizen without any due process of law whatever. The Constitution? Not a barrier anymore, apparently.

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Liberal Party of Canada Comes Out Against IMSI Catchers

I was surprised – and delighted – to see the Public Safety Critic for the Liberal Party of Canada recently come out against the use of IMSI catchers. Specifically, Francis Scarpaleggia said to Xtra!

The fact that the police do have technology that allows them to capture IMSIs, that means that they could theoretically, with that information, go to an ISP and get the identity of that person, even if the person’s just walking by innocently but they happen to be observing the crowd

This is a very, very good step in the right direction, and it’s terrific to see the technical concerns with forthcoming lawful access legislation actually rising to the attention of federal politicians. Hopefully we’ll see this kind of technical awareness rise all the way to statements in parliament and committee hearings on the legislation.

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Routes of Least Surveillance (Manhattan, USA, circa 2001)

From “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” edited by Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat.

This is a ridiculously cool idea. I’d love to see something similar that used Google fusion tables + a game to map  CCTV locations in order to give surveillance-minimized travel directions.

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SOURCE

Google’s new privacy policy is going to be sheer gold for 1984 enthusiasts. While I’m not a fan of such simplistic references, it will provide a new round of comics for speakers at privacy, security, and surveillance conferences to rip off. Hopefully those same speakers aren’t themselves too tied to the notions of 1984 or the panopticon being the defining means of framing Google’s behaviours.

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Aside

Infographic on the state of social media privacy

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Videos

RIM Proof of Concept

This is an interesting proof of concept being demoed by RIM. It’s certainly not practical at the moment – requiring an overhead camera means it only really works in mobile/fixed testbeds – but it is cool. The next step, beyond building buzz of course, is to figure out how to make this kind of technology useful to the consumer. Still, it’s good to see RIM demoing the ‘cool stuff’ they’ve been privately researching. Hopefully we see more of these kinds of demos in the future to build a rebuild the beleaguered company’s public image.