Tag: Politics

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2012.11.9

People in Azerbaijan live in fear. We fear for our lives, we fear for our jobs, we fear for the lives and jobs of our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, we fear for our friends. We fear every time when someone close to us dares to disagree with you. We also pay a high price when we dare not to fear.

Before 2009 I had criticized you mostly online. Then I was attacked in the centre of Baku. I was arrested and later sentenced in a show trial on fake charges of hooliganism. My father died while I was in jail, his health was deteriorating since the day of my arrest. I could not be there when he was placed in hospital and I was not there the day I lost him. Some of my relatives and friends lost their jobs. They were told that they are too close to “the enemy of the state”. Now, many people I knew are afraid to communicate with me online and offline and I can understand them.

In our interconnected world, civil society, states and businesses from across the world must work together to thrive in our global information society. This is the meaning and the spirit of this Internet Governance Forum. Internet governance can’t properly serve sustainable human, economic and social development without freedom of expression, the rule of law and efficient democratic governance.

Emin Milli, writing as Azerbaijan hosts the Internet Governance Forum
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Social and Economic Threats to the Internet’s Infrastructure

Bruce Schneier, talking about the social and economic threats to the Internet’s infrastructure

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The great evil that we as Americans face is the banal evil of second-rate minds who can’t make it in the private sector and who therefore turn to the massive wealth directed by our government as the means to securing wealth for themselves. The enemy is not evil. The enemy is well dressed.

Lawrence Lessig from Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It
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… an institution can be corrupted in the same way Yeltsin was when individuals within that institution become dependent upon an influence that distracts them from the intended purpose of the institution. The distracting dependency corrupts the institution.

Larry Lessig from Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It
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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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EMI Sues Irish Government

Admittedly this is a few weeks old at this point, but it’s absurd that EMI is trying to sue the Irish government for access to a bill prior to its being introduced.

EMI is effectively confessing here that it’s upset that the government isn’t sharing the bill ahead of time with EMI or others in the industry. Again, the massive sense of entitlement of these guys is such that they expect that they get to write the laws, and when they’re left out of the process, they get to sue over it. And yet, on every one of these laws, the people actually impacted by them – the public – get no real say or can’t see them. Remember ACTA? The public was left totally in the dark, while RIAA/MPAA officials and others had pretty detailed access and the ability to help craft the bills. And yet, when EMI doesn’t get to see a draft of a bill, and it makes them think that it won’t go the way they want, they sue? Damn.

If EMI (and other bodies) get access to these documents then all parties should have access to them, on grounds that the public interest groups should be on equal footing in trying to influence how this legislation is shaped prior to it’s introduction. Perhaps better would be that no one sees the legislation and that experts are ‘simply’ called in to give commentary on the legislation.

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Rethinking the Unthinkable About SOPA

Lauren has a cogent framing of the legislative hurdles that might lead to SOPA getting through the House and Senate. I think that the ‘lets put up banners’ is a cruddy way to inform the public of SOPA’s implications. I agree that full-on blackouts of majors sites is a poor public relations tactic and unlikely to positively raise public (and legislative) awareness).

What might work, however, is highly targeted blackouts. Why not prevent the Congress, Senate, and White House, along with all other government bodies throughout the US, from accessing key sites such as Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and so forth. This would make legislators realize what they’re about to do, its implications, and create a large enough media event that the public might wake up to what’s going on in Washington. Companies needn’t target the public themselves but just create a focusing event that brings SOPA and its problems to the public’s attention and legislators’ attention at effectively the same time.

Now, would political organizations get around ‘blockades’? Sure. The aim wouldn’t be perfect enforcement of a blockade but to capture real attention on SOPA and its harms, and make those harms tangibly real to the folks responsible for voting (or not) on this POS bill.