The most interesting interview from the segment was with James Andrew Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Towards the end of his interview, Lewis offered an excellent explanation of why the U.S. has come to see cyberspace as a matter of national security and of how U.S. cyberdominance is being rationalized:

. . . if you talk to the Russians or the Chinese they say “how can you complain about us when you do exactly the same thing?” It’s a fair point, with one exception. We have more to steal. We have more to loose. We’re the place that depends on the Internet, we’ve done the most to take advantage of it. We’re the ones who have woven it into our economy, into our national security, in ways that they haven’t. So, we are more vulnerable.

The quote reveals an odd contradiction: “We” are repeatedly told by governments, corporations, and various individuals that weaving the Internet into our environment will bring more security – at the same time “we” are told by those same actors that weaving the Internet into our environment makes us less secure.

In summarizing his diplomatic discussions with “Mr. Hull,” “the Generalissimo,” “Marshal Stalin,” and “Prime Minister Churchill,” FDR defines a new supreme objective for the future:

The one supreme objective for the future, which we discussed for each Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in one word: Security.

And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security—in a family of Nations. (emphasis added)

The speech, which you can read in full at TeachingAmericanHistory.org, concludes with a call for a “second Bill of Rights” to ensure such economic, social, and moral security:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
5. The right of every family to a decent home;
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
8. The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being. (emphasis added)

It’s notable that he links the expansion of our industrial economy with a need for new rights to ensure equality in the pursuit of happiness. I rarely hear “security” discussed in terms of ensuring happiness. I also find his “Necessitous men” quote notable (4th paragraph above). The FDR American Heritage Center includes a footnote for this quote, from The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt Vol XIII, that states:

“Necessitous men,” says the Lord Chancellor, in Vernon v Bethell, 2 Eden 113 (1762), “are not, truly speaking, free men; but, to answer a present emergency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose on them.”

Security, to FDR, is thus physical, economic, social, and moral. It is necessary for the equal pursuit of happiness in an industrial economy. And, it affords citizens the freedom to resist terms imposed on them from the “crafty” during emergencies.

Of course, FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights” never materialized in America and his declaration that “we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash” was unfortunately proven false. America – Fuck Yeah!

The new step is not foolproof, the editors acknowledged. It was possible for a reporter to register successfully on several major sites under falsified names and ID and cellphone numbers.

So, this new layer of surveillance doesn’t really give the state much new information, and it’s at least as fallible as existing forms of digital surveillance. While this surveillance practice, and others, will evolve and become more sophisticated – allowing access to more kinds of (formerly) personal information – people will also evolve and become more sophisticated in their efforts to ensure a comfortable level of privacy. Questioning the efficacy of such a policy, in order to rationalize or irrationalize its application, seems limited. It’s a powerful line of inquiry, particularly for short term tactical gain such as getting Verizon Wireless to stop censoring texts from NARAL, or convincing China to scale back its implementation of the Green Dam Youth Escort. In both cases, however, their was no omission of wrong doing and their was no agreement that they won’t do it again. The only admission was that, within a specific context, a specific surveillance practice was considered to be an ineffective means of ensuring security. In short, questions of efficacy challenge whether a specific surveillance practice does what it claims to do, not how a specific surveillance practice restructures our environment and shapes our daily behaviors (for better or worse).

A better question would ask how this “new layer of surveillance” restructures everyday life – how does this layer shape the built environment and our behaviors within it?  What are the costs, benefits, pleasures, and perils associated with this new layer of surveillance?

Whether or not signing into a web site with a “true identity” will compromise public discourse by making individuals more susceptible to retribution, it certainly does introduce a new practice that a person must perform before participting in a public discussion. That sort of embodied practice, even when subverted, shapes our experiences and influences our behavior. Acknowledging upfront that surveillance always works allows us to get to the more important questions of how it works.

I hear (and read) many people reference the fallibility of the latest and greatest corporate/government surveillance practice — by which they mean “surveillance practice X” doesn’t actually do what “group X” claims it’s supposed to do. This often feeds the illusion that because “it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do” it’s somehow benign and ineffectual — that it doesn’t work. Yet every time a new surveillance policy is implemented it works, in a multitude of ways, on our environment and it encourages a broad range of behavior. Attention to how surveillance works in (and on) everyday life gets us away from short-term questions of efficacy and closer to important long-term issues of social (in)justice, equality, and well being.

security
noun (pl. securities)

(1) the state of being or feeling secure. (2) the safety of a state or organization against criminal activity such as terrorism or espionage. (3) a thing deposited or pledged as a guarantee of the fulfilment of an undertaking or the repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in case of default. (4) a certificate attesting credit, the ownership of stocks or bonds, etc.

From the DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms:

security

(1.) Measures taken by a military unit, activity, or installation to protect itself against all acts designed to, or which may, impair its effectiveness. (2.) A condition that results from the establishment and maintenance of protective measures that ensure a state of inviolability from hostile acts or influences. (3.) With respect to classified matter, the condition that prevents unauthorized persons from having access to official information that is safeguarded in the interests of national security.

From the Internet Security Glossary, p. 149:

security

(1.) Measures taken to protect a system. (2.) The condition of a system that results from the establishment and maintenance of measures to protect the system. (3.) The condition of system resources being free from unauthorized access and from unauthorized or accidental change, destruction, or loss.

From Setha Low’s Behind the Gates: Life Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America, pp 77-78:

So what exactly do residents mean when they say “I feel secure in my community”? At an emotional level, it means feeling protected and that everything is right with the world; unconsciously it is associated with a sense of childhood trust and protection by parents. Socially it means “I feel comfortable with my friends and neighbors.” “I feel secure in my community” also means feeling physically safe, not just psychologically or socially comfortable. These meanings — and many others — are evoked whenever they talk about security. This simultaneity and ambiguity of meaning gives the concept the power to evoke a complex and ever-shifting set of feelings, feelings that become encoded in a variety of symbolic forms, including the built environment.

From Microsoft TechNet’s Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) Glossary:

security context

The security attributes or rules that are currently in effect. For example, the rules that govern what a user can do to a protected object are determined by security information in the user’s access token and in the object’s security descriptor. Together, the access token and the security descriptor form a security context for the user’s actions on the object.

From the Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) 3, p. 16:

Security

A form of protection where a separation is created between the assets and the threat. This includes but is not limited to the elimination of either the asset or the threat. In order to be secure, either the asset is physically removed from the threat or the threat is physically removed from the asset.

From Bruce Schneier’s Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World, pp. 11-12:

Security is about preventing adverse consequences from the intentional and unwarranted actions of others. What this definition basically means is that we want people to behave in a certain way — to pay for items at a store before walking out with them, to honor contracts they sign, to not shoot or bomb each other — and security is a way of ensuring that they do so.

Apple made this argument to the U.S. Copyright Office in response to a request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the U.S. Librarian of Congress grant an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would clearly define jailbreaking as legal (under certain conditions). Back in 2006 the Librarian of Congress granted six 3-year exemptions to the DMCA, the fifth of which stated:

Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

This expiring exemption was widely understood to legalize the act of jailbreaking for otherwise legal, personal, and non-profit purposes. However, now that the EFF is seeking a similar exemption, Apple is going further than previous arguments (i.e. jailbreaking violates your license agreement) and is now arguing that jailbreaking results in copyright infringement and could compromise national security. This continues the meme, advanced by corporations and governments alike, that “loose code” is a threat to security in the informational age – thus, equating piracy and hacking with insecurity in order to rationalize monopolistic business practices. The very same business practices that Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, warned would lead to “vertical integration” between the medium and content. As Wired’s Threat Level points out:

This also explains why Apple rejected the official Google Voice App for the iPhone this week. We thought it was because Google Voice posed a threat to AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple. Now we know it threatened national security. At stake for Apple is the closed business model it has enjoyed since 2007, when the iPhone debuted. More than 30 million phones have been sold. Apple has told the Copyright Office that its locked-down platform is what made the iPhone’s success possible

Here are 3 key excerpts from Apple’s statement to the U.S. Copyright Office:

1. Jailbreaking does violate a license agreement between Apple and the purchaser of an iPhone.  All purchasers of iPhones must accept the terms and conditions of the iPhone Software License Agreement (“IPSLA”) at the time of purchase of the iPhone (and any later updates of the software)…
2. Jailbreaking constitutes copyright infringement.  Because jailbreaking involves unauthorized modifications to Apple’s copyrighted bootloader and OS programs, it is a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(1) & (2)…
3. Because jailbreaking makes hacking of the BBP software much easier, jailbreaking affords an avenue for hackers to accomplish a number of undesirable things on the network…  For example, a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data. In short, taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer – to potentially catastrophic result. (emphasis added)
   

And 2 key excerpts from EFF’s statement to the U.S. Copyright Office:

1. Jailbreaking an iPhone in order to run lawfully obtained software does not constitute copyright infringement. Nothing in the Apple iPhone Software License Agreement changes this conclusion. As explained in our original submission, any reproductions made in the course of jailbreaking an iPhone are privileged by both Section 117 and the fair use doctrine.
2. With respect to the application of Section 117 to jailbreaking, the Librarian will have to evaluate whether an iPhone owner is the “owner of a copy” of the Apple firmware that is delivered with and operates the device. In addition, the Librarian will have to evaluate whether the process of jailbreaking the iPhone involves an “adaptation” that falls within the scope of Section 117. (emphasis added)

In our article, Cookie Monsters: Seeing Young People’s Hacking as Creative Practice, Cindi Katz and I spoke at length about jailbreaking (and hacking more broadly) as a form of play — as a creative practice that helps young people to better understand and control their technological environments. To help make our case, we profiled AriX — the then 13-year-old iPhone hacker and developer of the ijailbreak application:

In an article entitled “Hacking: The New Child’s Play?” posted on an IT security website, AriX is associated with a list of young crackers who have engaged in malicious and clearly criminal activities. With the subtitle “Researchers worry as teens and pre-teens play an increasing role in illegal online exploits,” the piece makes no distinction between the hacking of AriX and the reported computer crimes of the other youth profiled, even though the latter’s activities included derailing trains in the Polish city Lodz and stealing considerable sums of money from people’s bank accounts (Wilson 2008). The distinction between these activities and hacking like AriX’s is clear.  But even at that, the U.S. Librarian of Congress granted six exemptions to the DMCA in 2006…

If Apple gets its way, young hackers like AriX would be considered criminals — and any attempt to rework the copy of a software program that they legally own would be considered illegal at best and a threat to national security as worst. Creating a generation of people who are forced by law to simply take technology “at interface value” (as Sherry Turkle likes to say) is a recipe for disaster. I wonder how many mechanics or engineers our society would  have produced during the industrial age if a generation of young people were told it was illegal to tinker with a car or bike that they legally owned? Would Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have even existed (at least as we know them) if they weren’t allowed to tinker with the various technologies they interacted with during their youth? Copyright laws were created to ensure creativity – not to ensure the power of certain governments or corporations.

Sergey Aleynikov, an ex-Goldman Sachs computer programmer, was arrested July 3 after arriving at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. officials said…

At a court appearance July 4 in Manhattan, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal judge that Aleynikov’s alleged theft poses a risk to U.S. markets. Aleynikov transferred the code, which is worth millions of dollars, to a computer server in Germany, and others may have had access to it, Facciponti said, adding that New York-based Goldman Sachs may be harmed if the software is disseminated.

According to Reuters, who broke the story:

Federal authorities say the platform quickly processes rapid developments in the markets and uses top secret mathematical formulas to allow the firm to make highly-profitable automated trades.

Aside from its entertaining similarities with the 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner, I find this news story particularly interesting b/c of the way it brings into focus 4 interrelated phenomena:

1. Automated trading software has become a prominent actor in the manipulation of national and global markets.
2. Corporate propertization of code has become a strategy for shaping such manipulation (cf. 1) according to its own economic interests.
3. Government has engaged in globally policing proprietary code to ensure that the informational restructuring of the economy (cf. 1 & 2) continues to favor current power-holders.
4. Individuals within the informational work force have emerged as potentially destabilizing actors in informational restructuring (cf. 1 & 2) and are thus becoming objects of national cybersecurity (cf. 3).

As Jon Stokes over at ars technica argues, the US government and Goldman Sachs aren’t concerned that this proprietary trading code could manipulate the market (that’s exactly what it’s designed to do) — they’re concerned that if this code gets “loose” it could challenge Goldman’s standing as a primary market manipulator. Whether these allegations turn out to be true or not, what’s apparent is how this event has been framed as a “wake up call” (as a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put it) for  financial institutions to acknowledge the importance of their code by enhancing efforts to lock it down. This, naturally, requires greater government and private policing of informational borders, and greater surveillance of the individuals who interact with intellectual property in order to mitigate the potential power of certain informational workers.

Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with it. It is the great irony of our information age [that] the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy…

It’s encouraging to hear Obama talk about education as a necessary component of cybersecurity. If an actual education initiative does emerge from this, I hope it will focus on both the empowering and threatening aspects of cyberspace.

Obama also noted that national cyber security policy would not entail the surveillance of Internet traffic or private networks, citing privacy concerns and a committment to net neutrality. So far, so good…

Here’s the article’s abstract:

Cookie Monsters: Seeing Young People’s Hacking as Creative Practice

This paper examines the benefits and obstacles to young people’s open-ended and unrestricted access to technological environments.  While children and youth are frequently seen as threatened or threatening in this realm, their playful engagements suggest that they are self-possessed social actors, able to negotiate most of its challenges effectively. Whether it is proprietary software, the business practices of some technology providers, or the separation of play, work, and learning in most classrooms, the spatial-temporality of young people’s access to and use of technology is often configured to restrict their freedom of choice and behavior.  We focus on these issues through the lens of technological interactions known as “hacking,” wherein people playfully engage computer technologies for the intrinsic pleasure of seeing what they can do.  We argue for an approach to technology that welcomes rather than constrains young people’s explorations, suggesting that it will not only help them to better understand and manage their technological environments, but also foster their critical capacities and creativity.

Keywords: children, youth, Internet, cyberspace, security, hacking

And here is some background on the Children and Technological Environments special issue:

Children, Youth and Environments has just published a special issue on “Children and Technological Environments.” It features a substantive introduction by the guest editors, Nathan G. Freier and Peter H. Kahn, Jr., and 14 high-quality, peer-reviewed articles on such topics as interactive humanoid robots, digital libraries, virtual natural environments, video and online games, hacking, assistive technologies for children with learning disabilities, and learning by doing with shareable interfaces. The authors include leading researchers from the U.S., Britain and Japan.

To help ask this question, and to bring the public’s attention to the rise of a surveillance society, the American Civil Liberties Union has setup an educational website. Check it out: http://youarebeingwatched.us

Users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

There’s no sense in using a proprietary web browser. Free and open-source browsers such as FireFox or Opera may be just a susceptible to security breaches as proprietary ones, but the problems are almost always identified and fixed in a shorter of time. Hierarchical dinosaurs like Microsoft may be good for certain things, but they simply can not identify and solve security breaches as quickly as a large decentralized community of networked users.

Just stop the madness and just switch to an open-source browser. I recommend FireFox.

Back in November of 2006 the 8th Air Force became the new “Air Force Cyberspace Command.” According to Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne, the aim of the Air Force Cyberspace Command is to:

…develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command as the provider of forces that the President, combatant commanders and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace.

As I argue in a paper I’m currently writing, the creation of Cyber Command clearly conveys a state desire to control cyberspace, and as cyberspace expeditiously assimilates into everyday life, such desires deserve a critical look regarding their effects on the privacy and autonomy of young people — the most wired segments of our population.

So, I thought: Great news, the Cyber Command has been put on hold! Of course, the only reason the Cyber Command has been put on hold is because the military (and, specifically the navy) feels they should be playing a role in “protecting” cyberspace as well. Not so great…

According to ars technica:

NextGov says that the high visibility of AFCYBER, which was achieved through video advertisements, attracted the attention of high-ranking military brass who want the Navy to take a more prominent role in the effort. The government has repeatedly touted AFCYBER as an important strategic investment in future cyber warfare, so it seems unlikely that they intend to completely walk away from the concept.

Jonathan Zdrianski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development, discovered a URL hidden in iPhone’s CoreLocation that he believes the iPhone uses to check whether any apps on your phone match with those listed in a database of blacklisted applications. Presumably, that would allow Apple to remotely de-authorize those apps, or perhaps even delete them.

A few days later, Steve Jobs confirmed Zdrianski’s beliefs and presumptions about the remote kill switch:

[Jobs] confirmed that it is indeed possible for Apple to reach into your phone from afar and disable malicious applications. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he told the WSJ. An example of a malicious application would be one that stole users’ personal information, Jobs explained. [emphasis added]

Malicious applications?? Since “malicious” is a highly subjective classification, exactly who will be deciding what is malicious and how? Something tells me (history) that Apple and AT&T will be privately deciding what applications are harmful to their business interests, and that this blacklist won’t be available for public viewing. I’m sure Apple will utilized the remote kill switch to disable some applications that I would consider malicious, that is, applications that aggregate my personal information without my knowledge. But what about the malicious applications who sign contracts with either Apple or AT&T in order to aggregate my personal information? I would still consider those applications malicious, but I doubt Apple or AT&T would.

Yes, Apple just wants to “protect” us with this remote kill switch, and they have to create a “secure” environment so that people will feel “safe” enough to buy as many apps as their consumerist hearts desire — Yet, I’ve somehow managed just fine over the past 8 years without having Apple install a remote kill switch on my laptop’s OS and I imagine the great majority of you have as well. The fact that Apple is deciding to censor what applications I can and can not install on my iPhone and clearly monitoring what I do with my iPhone makes me feel a lot less safe and a lot less secure. That’s not just bad ethics, it’s bad business, and its making the idea of android much more appealing to me.

As Lawrence Lessig put it — code is law — and Apple and AT&T are taking the long arm of the law into their own, err… hands. Add this to the fact that the recently passed FISA Amendments Act of 2008 effectively creates an infrastructure for a police-state by allowing the government to wiretap and aggregate all telecommunications, and its easy to see how that infrastructure will extend into our mobile communication technologies.

These shifts, and the struggles over them, remind us of Seymour Papert’s (1993, p5) caution that, “there is a world of difference between what computers can do and what society will choose to do with them.” In the post-9/11 security state, we can look to that other contemporary site of homeland (in)security, New Orleans, for an example of how state and corporate security concerns shape the difference between what a particular technology can do and the purposes to which it is put. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the city’s communicative infrastructure was badly damaged except for a wireless mesh-network, similar to one the FOSS XO can generate.  The network covered the downtown business district and the French Quarter. This network, originally implemented to support surveillance cameras in the area, was “hacked” by emergency personnel in the wake of the hurricane and later converted by the city into a free public Wi-Fi service. Although Louisiana state laws ban the free distribution of broadband services with municipal monies, New Orleans was able to circumvent this ban because of its declared state of emergency. Now that the state of emergency has been lifted, BellSouth has challenged the legality of the public Wi-Fi. While the use of publicly funded Wi-Fi is sanctioned for state surveillance, free public access Wi-Fi is seen as a threat to corporate profit and thus curbed.  Clearly choices are being made—choices that go against the democratic possibilities that Papert and his colleagues envisioned when the Internet and personal computing were in their infancy.

NOTE This “outtake” and its relation to the larger paper, from which it was eventually cut, were inspired by two earlier posts: Connectile Dysfunction (CD) and mesh-networking.

]]> http://gregorydonovan.org/cyberenviro/2008/08/08/outtake-public-wi-fi-nola/feed/ 0 http://gregorydonovan.org/cyberenviro/2008/04/08/what-they-want-is-an-automatic-feed/ http://gregorydonovan.org/cyberenviro/2008/04/08/what-they-want-is-an-automatic-feed/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:29:55 +0000 gtdonovan http://gregorydonovan.org/cyberenviro/?p=77 Another sign of growing state interest in the semantic web… According to a recent article in the washington post, “the FBI has created a network of links between the nation’s largest telephone and Internet firms and about 40 FBI offices and Quantico” as part of their Digital Collection System (also called “The Digital Collection System Network” or “DCSNet”). DCSNet not only represents a blurring between state and corporate interests — Sprint facilitates communication between FBI wiretapping rooms on the government’s behalf and companies like VeriSign are often used to carry out the actual wiretapping — but it also sheds light on how state/corporate-run surveillance is being embedded in everyday life.

The DCSNet, which was made possible under the Clinton Administration with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), allows FBI agents to instantly wiretap just about any communication device associated with a particular person of interest — with “point-and-click ease.” While “content” surveillance must be authorized by a court, the washington post explains how the FBI’s “transactional” surveillance does not need court authorization:

Wiretaps to obtain the content of a phone call or an e-mail must be authorized by a court upon a showing of probable cause. But “transactional data” about a communication — from whom, to whom, how long it lasted — can be obtained by simply showing that it is relevant to an official probe, including through an administrative subpoena known as a national security letter (NSL). According to the Justice Department‘s inspector general, the number of NSLs issued by the FBI soared from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005. [emphasis added]

That’s a 453% increase in just 5 years, and the Bush Administration is currently petitioning the FCC to expand CALEA to make it easier for the FBI to access more types of data. The ultimate goal is to achieve real-time tracking of everyday life. In order to accomplish such a task, not only must our laws and telecommunications infrastructure be “updated” but the human actors associated with surveillance practices must be removed… which brings us back to the emerging semantic web, with its desire to find, organize and distribute information between machines without the need for human intervention. As a telecom industry lawyer, who was interviewed by the washington post, put it:

…government officials now “have to rely on a human being at a telecom calling up every 15 minutes to send law enforcement the data… What they want is an automatic feed, continuously. So you’re checking the weather on your mobile device or making a call,” and the device would transmit location data automatically. “It’s full tracking capability. It’s a scary proposition.” [emphasis added]

Scary indeed. They want an RSS feed of everyday life.

So what might a “Typical Semantic Graph” for a young person of interest look like? Part work, part play – here is GAO’s “typical semantic graph for a person of interest” compared to my “typical semantic graph for a young person of interest”:

The Government Accountability Office maintains an office at the National Security Agency but it remains unused since no one in Congress has asked GAO to perform any oversight of the Agency, the head of GAO disclosed last week.

Despite multi-billion dollar acquisition failures at NSA and the Agency’s controversial, possibly illegal surveillance practices, Congress has declined to summon all of its oversight resources such as GAO to address such issues…

… “We still actually do have space at the NSA. We just don’t use it and the reason we don’t use it is we’re not getting any requests, you know. So I don’t want to have people sitting out there twiddling their thumbs,” Mr. Walker said.

What I find most fascinating / terrifying about LifeLock is its marketing strategy, that “your good name” can be protected through security. Credibility, according to this company, is about preventing your identity from being stolen – about securing your identity. Of course to sign up you must turn your identity over to LifeLock by providing them with your First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, E-mail Address, Mobile Phone, Home Phone, Address, Credit Card #, Birthday, Social Security Number and so on…

Did I mention they have a special deal for kids? No joke…

Facebook, the fast-growing social networking group, has come under investigation by Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney-general, who said on Monday that the company did not do enough to protect children from sexual predators on its website...

The attorney-general’s investigation comes days after Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp and owner of MySpace, a rival social network, predicted Facebook would run into problems over child safety…

Good thing there are giant corporations waiting in the wings to save social networks like myspace and facebook from child safety problems…

Ancient Athens, the world’s first democracy, managed to practice direct democracy with an assembly that may have numbered as many as 5,000 to 6,000 persons–perhaps the maximum number that can physically gather in one place and practice direct democracy.

The inability to physically organize a public within one place may (again… MAY) have, at some prior point in time, been a legitimate argument against direct democracy, but with the proliferation of ICTs and the continued assimilation of cyberspace into everyday life, can such an argument still be made?

Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign used cyberspace to organize a feedback loop with over 600,000 participants in order to shape his campaign’s platform and practices – a far cry from the 6,000 persons of ancient Athens. The question no longer is “can a direct democracy exist?” but “why doesn’t a direct democracy exist?”