October 1, 2012

The YouTube caption:

Since 2004, up to 884 innocent civilians, including at least 176 children, have died from US drone strikes in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. A new report from the Stanford and New York University law schools finds drone use has caused widespread post-tramatic stress disorder and an overall breakdown of functional society in North Waziristan. In addition, the report finds the use of a “double tap” procedure, in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, has led to deaths of rescuers and medical professionals. Many interviewees told the researchers they didn’t know what America was before drones. Now what they know of America is drones, death and terror.

More here.

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Filed under: drones death US terrorism war crimes surveillance panopticon injustice civilian children 
September 10, 2012

Banksy's piece in central London

“Private Spies and Our Growing Surveillance State”

The fact that we know very little about how TrapWire operates—even though most of the company’s clients are taxpayer-funded organizations—cuts to the heart of the problem of outsourcing intelligence. Since private corporations are not subject to public records law, there are limited avenues by which we might learn more about what the firm’s technology is really capable of. That, like many other thorny issues TrapWire raises, is a problem that applies to all intelligence contractors. As more secrets are farmed out to private corporations, the public loses twice: we pay more for the privilege of being surveilled, and we lose crucial access to the very transparency mechanisms that are supposed to keep the intelligence agencies in check and operating within the rule of law.

From Kade Crockford’s excellent piece in The Nation.

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Filed under: surveillance TrapWire law discipline privatize privatization intelligence privacy transparency public civil rights government freedom tyranny 
July 2, 2012

Glenn Greenwald talks about the pervasive nature of surveillance in America, its growth in recent decades and why it is critical for movements to subvert surveillance so they can be successful in organizing.

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Filed under: surveillance Glenn Greenwald America discpline security social movements culture politics organization privacy public state government police 
June 24, 2012

Much-loved Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry delivered the convocation speech to graduates at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto, in the form of a fairy-tale based on A Christmas Carol, by way of a critique of the Canadian swing to a neoconservative right, where social spending exists only to promote “moochers” and society is a fight between bad guys (who need to be surveilled all the time in every medium) and good guys (who don’t mind being surveilled in such a way), and where no amount of “security” is ever enough.

The Globe and Mail has a transcript and an (unembeddable) video, which is rather good.

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

My medium-sized Canadian town has approved funding for police surveillance cameras in the downtown. Generally, it seems people don’t understand how these technologies of surveillance tear the social fabric. One example: ostensibly to combat drunken brawling these cameras and similar technologies divert attention from questions regarding why drinking and substance abuse is so prevalent in our society. Simultaneously funds and resources are directed toward the state security apparatus, the ever-growing military industrial complex which, in the post-9/11 world, is increasingly directed inward toward domestic affairs—Foucault’s panopticon writ large. Slowly, ever so slowly, people begin to act as if they’re being watched all the time—the paranoid who believes they’re in some version of the Truman show. 

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Filed under: surveillance technology Canada conservative neo-con panopticon Foucault Truman show military industrial complex police state questioning society Rohinton Mistry convocation speech neoconservative right good guys bad guys security 
May 27, 2012

Product design, like advertising, is a vainglorious industry. In coming to terms with their professional compromise, the failed writers and artists of the “creative” industries often seek to legitimise their endeavours. Design consultant Robert L. Peters exalts his profession’s methods as “the application of intent… an antidote to accident”.

In this light, London 2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville resemble less a blunder – in the Olympic tradition that brought us Atlanta 1996’s characterless, amorphous “Izzy” ↑ – than a knowing nod to the sinister securitisation and spatial control surrounding the emplacement of the Olympic games in East London. With their cyclopean camera eye – a telescreen mounted atop a teletubby – the day-glo duo manage to embody both the congenital myopia of the Olympic Delivery Authority and the pervasive surveillance and militarisation that looks set to swamp the capital this summer.

From “Right to the Olympic Village: a review of David Harvey’s “Rebel Cities.”’

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Filed under: olympics London design 2012 summer Wenlock Mandeville securitization panopticon surveillance militarization David Harvey book review Rebel Cities 
March 6, 2012
theatlantic: How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it. Read more. [Image: Reuters]

theatlantic:

How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators

The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

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Filed under: surveillance dictators tech technology business capitalism government democracy security arrest torture free speech