Monthly Archives: September 2009

Land of the Free…

Posted on by

Found this on the interesting, if occasionally outraging, War on Photography Blog:

taking photographs of public buildings is, in and of itself, evidence of suspicious behavior sufficient to give authorities the right to stop and detain anyone engaging in such behavior.

Isnt that a great attitude for the Chief of the Franklin, Wisconsin Police Department to have?

Isnt it equally great to remember back to the bad old days of the Cold War when this sort of behaviour was used as an example of how Ebull the Commiez were?

Welcome to Minority Report

Posted on by

On the BBC

Bus CCTV could predict assaults
The system would monitor suspicious behaviour on buses
CCTV security systems could soon spot an assault on a bus before it happens, according to a major research project.(from the BBC)

🙂

OK, admittedly, this is what is more often known as “vapourware” than a fully-working Minority Report system.

Although much of the work is currently at the theoretical stage, the team from the university’s newly-founded Centre for Secure Information Technologies predict that within five years their software will be able to profile people as they board a bus. (from the BBC)

I bet they haven’t even bred the mutants for the tank yet.

“Profile” bus passengers troublemakers? Through CCTV? With software that does exactly what a bus driver thinking “I don’t like the look of him” would do?

Leaping to conclusions on the basis of appearance and movements?

I can do that for free. I try to stop myself doing it because I believe the more accurate word is “stereotyping,” rather than “profiling,” but then, I’m only human…..

Oh right, that was why Minority Report seemed such a good choice of title. 😀

montserrat A

Posted on by
montserrat A

montserrat A,
originally uploaded by Manel ^ Urindar.

Stunning landscape and a good reason for browsing through Flickr pics.

While it can be argued that flickr has a mixed bag of images (in terms of quality), it is undeniable that there are some stunning captures there.

Song: Death of god

Posted on by

Here’s folk/rock singer Roy Harper singing “The Death of God“. The link is to part 1 – the first of 4. Roy Harper is given to really long intros, so the words don’t even really kick in until the end of Part 1.

He’s been writing and performing heathen songs for over 40 years. This is far from his best work but still worth a listen. To quote from his website:

He was raised by his father and step-mother, whose Jehovah’s Witness beliefs eventually alienated him. Harper’s anti-religious views would later become a familiar theme in his music.

Rumble about the Jungle

Posted on by

How easily does extreme right-wing discourse slip into the way the media frames the world? Answer: Very easily.

The BBC website has a report on the argument by the Refugee Council that the UK should take some responsibility to grant asylum for vulnerable residents – children -of the squatter camp at Calais.

They are talking about children. Children who are living in a squatter camp. I think that qualifies as a humanitarian issue. Surely all our media hysteria about risks to children should also apply here?

But, in the interests of “balance”, presumably, the BBC gives at least an equal space to the views of Migration Watch, who carefully seek to redefine this issue to ignore the “children” bit. After a load of unchallenged nonsense such as an assertion that 80% of people who say the word “asylum” are admitted to the UK, their spokesman says

“You have to look at the system as a whole, you can’t just say there are vulnerable children” (from the BBC)

Now, I’m already on semiotic alert by the BBC’s description of this squatter camp as

the camp known as “the jungle”

And lo, there is a sidebar with links to previous BBC articles about this camp.

SEE ALSO
UK turns down ‘jungle migrants’ 18 Sep 09 | Europe
France to close migrant ‘jungle’ 16 Sep 09 | Europe
Migrant squalor in Calais ‘jungle’ 02 Jul 09 | UK
UN to help advise Calais refugees 01 Jul 09 | UK

Was a decision taken in early July to use the “jungle” word? Hmm, does that mean that it’s full of Africans? Yes, I believe it does. Jungle is a pretty loaded word. It arrives carrying echoes of the racist ideas that supported colonialism. That’s why we now say “rainforest”.

I don’t have a problem with calling the “rainforest” the “jungle”. However, I do have serious problems with the BBC calling a refugee camp a “jungle,” given that I don’t believe that trees and parrots are over-represented in the Calais camp.

And what is MigrationWatch? Surely that must be an organisation with equal credibility to the Refugee Council, given that it’s accorded equal billing by the BBC? Well, maybe it’s just me but I rather think not.

Its website says that

We are an independent, voluntary, non political body which is concerned about the present scale of immigration into the UK.

Let’s say “concerned” is putting it mildly. The word “rabid” would probably fill the bill better. Here are the first 3 of what they call “key facts”:

Net immigration has quadrupled since 1997 to 237,000 a year.
A migrant now arrives nearly every minute.
We must build a new home every six minutes for new migrants.

They have a press page where they record their appearances in the media: (When I say “their” I am not convinced that “they” exist far beyond their spokestwat, but that may be wishful thinking)

Bear with me while I paste in their media triumphs over the past couple of years. Unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are the favoured platforms – until the BBC started to see their glorious leader as a spokesman:

Migrant housing figures, Letter in The Daily Telegraph 25 July, 2009
25-Jul-2009
Turks increasingly turn to Islamic extremism: Al Qaeda’s reliance on Arabs is altering as recruits from Turkey and Turkic-speaking areas of Central Asia form a recent wave of trainees, experts (sic) say.
By Sebastian Rotella Los Angeles Times – 20-Jul-2009
At last, the truth about immigration and council house queue jumping
By Andrew Green The Daily Mail, London – 30-Jun-2009
Statisticians are right to publish and be damned By Sir Andrew Green,
The Times – 12-Feb-2009
We must create a culture of solidarity, not offer amnesties
Editorial from The Catholic Herald 28-Nov-2008
How many more people can our small island take? As population heads towards 70 million has the penny dropped for Labour? by Sir Andrew Green The Daily Mail – 19-Nov-2008
Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration by Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, The Daily Mail – 01-Apr-2008
Immigration is making matters worst (sic) Letter by Sir Andrew Green
The Surrey Advertiser – 07-Dec-2007
Hold back the immigrant flood By Sir Andrew Green,
The Sunday Times – 04-Nov-2007
‘We must act now to cut immigrant numbers’ Commentary by Sir Andrew Green, The Daily Telegraph – 24-Oct-2007

Plus this “1 Sep 2009 … Sir Andrew Green was interviewed on the Today Programme at 8.35 this morning about the asylum seekers’ camp near Calais”

Who is Sir Andrew Green and why are his views so much more worthy of media attention than, say, mine? A Guardian profile from 2005 says his friends are unanimous that he’s not a a racist. Oh, well, that must be OK, then.

Apparently, he can’t be a racist, because he was British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia…….

The portrait that emerges from those who know Sir Andrew is of a shy, private individual, “a right old Tory, Daily Telegraph reader”, and also a “very religious” man who held regular evangelical meetings at the British embassy in Riyadh. (from the Guardian, 4 Nov 2005)

A very religious man. LOL Regular evangelical sessions.. Double LOL. Why am I not surprised that this right-wing figurehead for an ugly ideology is also an “evangelical Christian”? Indeed, “suffer the little children” may have become his new watchword, if we consider his Calais stance.

Just to show exactly how “unracist” the former ambassador is:

The row offered Sir Andrew an opportunity to renew his argument on the BBC’s Today programme, when he said: “We have no problem with immigration from Poland, which is valuable to all sides.” (from the Guardian, 4 Nov 2005)

So Eastern Europeans are OK?

But. almost all the migration to the UK that makes up the numbers that Migration Watch presents (e.g UK supposedly needs to build a house every 6 minutes for migrants) is from EC countries. This apparently doesn’t worry “Migration Watch”.

Shouldn’t they call it “Non-white Migration Watch” and have done with it, then? Clearly not, because even the BBC would then have problems presenting Sir Andrew Green’s views on its main pages, in the name of balance.

Oh Emm Gee !1!

Posted on by

OMG! Have you heard? The president of AMERICA has an opinion…. ZOMG!!!!!!111

Seriously. It must be the slowest news day ever. Obviously the media has hit saturation point with war, famine, plague and pestilence so now we have a headline news bulletin which revolves around the President of the USA expressing an opinion about someone.

What the fuck has the world come to for this to be news? Even the BBC has shamed itself by covering it. To death.

In a nutshell, Kanye West was a jack ass and interrupted an award winners speech.  Yeah, big deal. I could just about see that being the news item but the reality is people act like self-centred idiots day in, day out. The fact that some one famous is self-centred is hardly news. Following this frankly uninteresting incident, President Obabma was holding a conversation about it off air, but some ABC staff recorded it and felt the need to post twitter messages about it. Following it becoming “news” ABC have apologised to CNBC and the POTUS and have removed the twitter posts. Obviously this has done nothing to reduce the global spread and the wonders of the interweb mean we can all listen to the President of the USA calling Kanye West a “jack ass.”

Is this really how low our society has sunk? Is the President’s personal opinion about someone’s behaviour genuinely newsworthy? What impact does this have on anyone’s life?

If pushed, I am sure you could easily find in excess of 50% of the worlds population who would call Kanye West a “jack ass” even prior to his MTV awards behaviour. Is that news worthy? If not, why not?

The only thing I can think of is that the worlds news agencies are so overwhelmed by the onslaught from Web 2.0 crap applications that anything which has even a passing reference to them becomes news based solely on its perceived ability to appeal to the yoof market. It is shameful, and certainly goes a long way to explaining why “old media” feels it is under threat from the new media…

Shame on every news outlet that carried this story. Even a cat up the tree would have been more newsworthy.

Byronic flights of fancy

Posted on by

Wow, “danger”, “perils” to children, “help – before it’s too late”. What a scary Times headline! I am already shaking with fear before I’ve read it. Won’t anyone think of the children, and so on?

What is this scary thing? Of course, it’s the internet.

Mind the gap: The perils of failing to keep pace with your child online
A dangerous gap has emerged between web-savvy kids and parents. Professor Tanya Byron has launched a new campaign to help — before it’s too late

Hmm. This is to mark the launch of a campaign, a “grassroots campaign” no less. (There’s a beautiful phrase in US politics for a campaign that pretends to be a genuine upsurge of democratic will but actually, well, isn’t. Oh yes, the word is “Astroturf”)

The campaign seems to involve asking kids if they can use any tech and getting very afraid when they say yes..

The campaign’s catalyst is Byron, known for her television programmes The House of Tiny Tearaways and Am I Normal?, as well as the author of the government-backed 2008 Byron Review Safer Children in a Digital World, which resulted in the creation of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

So, a tv child psychologist heads it. Hmm, why am I less than convinced by this whole thing? A tv child psychologist who also writes for the Times. And gets written about in the Times. Because, she’s also in the news today. (In the Times):

Ministers need to act swiftly on child safety, warns adviser

It’s Tanya, now known as “Gordon Brown’s adviser.”

Well who else could the government call on? Obviously, no amount of experience or qualifications or all-round peer-reviewed respect gained by any other child psychologist, or by any person who actually knows anything about the internet, could stand up against the fact that she’s got tv programmes.

(If you ever doubted that senior politicians are in thrall to the cult of celebrity at least as much as the people who read Heat (etc) magazines, Tanya is the living proof of your naivete.)

The busy Tanya is panicking about the UK not implementing some European directive on games classification. Or all of her recommendations, really. So she’s going from school to school asking questions, to support the idea that kids may know things about using the internet that their parents don’t. And that this is somehow inherently terrifying….

The games classification thing is typical of the kneejerk reactions of this “grassroots” campaign. For a start, it’s inherently counter-productive, in terms of their supposed goals. Would anything make a game more attractive to an early teenager than an 18 certificate?

Is there any evidence that playing pc or console games that are “too old for them” harms kids? Any evidence at all?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that parents are all in a strange population subgroup that failed to notice anything that happened over the last twenty years? Like the arrival of the Internet. How many adults do you know who don’t use computers or the net?

There’s a more internet and computer nonsense on the BBC today.

Tech addiction ‘harms learning’
Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned.

The study – Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology – was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.

(The AJM website mission statement says:
“Providing outstanding returns for investors along with excellent leadership in managing real estate projects is the AJM Associates mission.” I, for one, admire the conduct of educational research by profit-oriented real-estate companies and management schools….In your face, stuffy old educational academics. )

You can buy the study from Siigel Press for about $25. It’s on their “Bestseller” list. (Hardly surprising that it’s a best-seller. It got a free plug on the BBC, ffs)

The blurb talks up the shock value of this “bestseller”.

Technology addiction amongst young people, particularly in terms of facilitating social networking, is having a disruptive effect on positive attitudes towards learning. Read the results of this collaborative study spearheaded by Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and AJM Associates. While students expressed little concern of addiction, technology obsession is hindering spelling skills, encouraging plagiarism and disrupting classroom learning. Download this report to learn the full details and the disturbing impact technology is having on today’s youth.

Call me a pedant – despite my possible incipient adult-onset internet addiction – but “While students expressed little concern of addiction,” doesn’t seem like correct grammar to me.
And surely they don’t really mean to claim that technology addiction is “facilitating social networking”?

If it was only possible to channel the energy that goes into manufacturing internet scares and turn it to a useful purpose, we could all be driving round in hot-air powered vehicles and could stop worrying about global warming,

Otherwise, I think that – if you really want to protect your kids online – you actually talk to them.

Missing Null

Aside

Does anyone know what has happened to Nullifidian? His blog seems to have been flatlined for a while and, here at Why Dont You towers, we are missing his excellent brand of commentary. Come back Null! We miss you! Although Null’s site is down, his aggregator live at Planet Humanism.

Misguided Security Managers

Posted on by

In the July / August edition of Infosecurity Magazine, there is a fairly interesting article on security matters, and differences, in the public and private sectors. I cant find this article online so you will have to trust me.

There is a quote in the article, from an “anonymous” security manager which sadly echoes comments I have heard right across the public sector, when public servants discuss the need to protect public privacy:

One senior manager at a local council – who ask not to be named – told infosecurity that he would rather be brought before the courts for an information security charge, than because a child or other vulnerable person has been harmed as a result of data not being shared.

(Here, I get visions of Reverend Lovejoy’s wife crying out “wont anyone think of the children”)

In the article this is presented as a dilemma public sector information security professionals face on a regular basis. My experience of said individuals supports this. It is very tabloid friendly. It is also complete nonsense that infuriates me to the point of wanting to choke the life out of the idiots who say it. (note for any future court action – this is purely imaginary, I am not really planning to kill anyone now or in the future)

There are so many things wrong with this it is hard to know where to start.

This person is paid to be a security manager. They are not a child protection professional. They are there to manage the security of the information that the public have entrusted to the council. Nothing else. If their job description means they have to ensure that vulnerable persons are safe in their homes, then I suspect there is something seriously wrong going on.

As a public servant, this “senior manager” is paid by the public, who you would rightly assume should have some expectation of his behaviour. Unless we’ve moved into some weird world where the vulnerable pay more for their services he has no right to unilaterally assume what laws he will follow and what laws he will break. He has no right or authority to compromise my privacy and personal data because he thinks that doing so 100,000 times might save one vulnerable person.

Equally this “manager” (sneer quotes intended) has no way of knowing if he is placing the safety of vulnerable people in further danger. Privacy laws and restrictions on how your personal data can be handled are there to protect everyone. Yes this includes criminals but it also includes vulnerable people. If this senior manager feels sending a copy of the addresses of everyone “at risk” to an agency across town would be helpful sharing of their data, what would he do if it got lost? What is his defence if his information security failures allow a predator to get the details of the vulnerable people he seeks to protect?

Equally importantly, what about those who only become vulnerable because of his lackadaisical attitude? This idea that passing private information and personal data is inherently a GOODTHING™© is insane. An otherwise fine person who has their home address details passed into the hands of a criminal becomes a vulnerable person. They have, through no fault of their own, become open to a vastly different threat – one they may not be prepared for. Is this acceptable behaviour for public servants? Imagine a serial rapist who gets hold of modified electoral roll data indicating addresses (and telephone numbers) of every house in the area where a single female lives. Would you be happy with the response that he would rather be in court over an Infosec case?

I suspect the real problem is that privacy and information security statutes don’t have enough teeth. If this senior manager was facing 20 years in jail for an infosec compromise, I am sure he would think differently. As it stands, nothing he does will get him properly punished in a court of law, so he must be talking about the court of public opinion. This is, sadly, so seriously misled by the tabloids that it is easy to see he would be hounded to the brink of suicide if it turned out he had withheld data that might have possibly prevented the death of a child. In a similar manner, if it turned out he had lost a disk containing the personal details of 250,000 people it would get, maybe, a few column inches.

To an extent this is our fault. We want easy to digest news. We ignore the mights and possibilities in the first instance, so we can get to the meat of saving the child. In the second case, its too technical, too distant and probably doesn’t affect “us” so we don’t really care about it. We, the public, are stupid.