Stencil by BANKSY, Photo by nolifebeforecoffee

“The copyright war was just the beginning…” Watch as Cory Docotorow extends the copyright struggle into a 100year battle. Stay for the extra QnA (30mins in) where he addresses many of the issues of the day.

via BoingBoing

See Also:

• Charles Stross draws the lines – accurately – between #SOPA and the Coming Insurrection

* title borrowed from Mark Pesce‘s tweet linking to Stross’s blogpost.

Here is Charlie Stross’s ‘view of contemporary US politics’ / flame-war bait. Watch him link SOPA and ‘the Coming Insurrection‘ in eight easy-to-follow steps (some steps not shown):

1. The USA is already a functional oligarchy. (Or, more accurately, a plutarchy.) It has been functioning as such for some time — since 1992 at the latest, although the roots of this system go back to before the Declaration of Independence — it’s a recurrent failure mode. Historically such periods last for a few years then go into reverse. However, this time the trend has been running since 1980 or even earlier. What we’re now seeing are the effects of mismanagement by the second generation of oligarchs in power; the self-entitled who were born to it and assume it to be the natural order of things.

3. Public austerity is a great cover for the expropriation of wealth by the rich (by using their accumulated capital to go on acquisition sprees for assets being sold off for cents on the dollar by the near-bankrupt state). But public austerity is a huge brake on economic growth because it undermines demand by impoverishing consumers. Consequently, we’re in for another long depression. (The outcome of this new long depression will be the same as that of the first one: the main industrial power — then it was the UK; now it’s the USA — will lose a lot of its remaining economic lead over its competitors and be severely weakened.)

7. Modern communications technologies (including the internet) provide people with a limitless channel for self-expression (not to mention distraction— endless circuses without the bread). They also provide the police state with a limitless flow of intelligence about the people. Note also that it’s possible to not merely listen in on mobile phone calls, but to use a mobile phone as a GPS-aware bugging device, and (with a bit more smarts) to have it report on physical proximity (within bluetooth range — about 20 feet) to other suspects. The flip side of social networking is that the police state knows all your acquaintances.

8. So I infer that the purpose of SOPA is to close the loop, and allow the oligarchy to shut down hostile coordinating sites as and when the anticipated revolution kicks off. Piracy/copyright is a distraction — those folks pointing to similarities to Iranian/Chinese net censorship regimes are correct, but they’re not focussing on the real implication (which is a ham-fisted desire to be able to shut down large chunks of the internet at will, if and when it becomes expedient to do so).

Read the whole thing, and stay for the comment war.

Citizen journalism went to new heights in Warsaw, Poland just the other day:

After the Mayor’s efforts to restrict the Press during the “clear out” of Occupy Wall Street, this technology should soon be standard issue for anyone wanting to preserve Raw History.

Who should be the early-adopters of this than the “good” “folks” at News Corp:

Rupert Murdoch’s pet project, The Daily, has some impressive aerial footage today of the devastation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which was obtained with an unusual tool.The Observer was the first to report, back in November, that the staff of the iPad app was working with “a journalistic secret weapon,” the Parrot AR.Drone quadricopter, also known as “The Flying Video Game.” Now they’re finally putting the thing to use, with a new feature called “Daily Drone.”

And just to clarify, “drone” refers to the unmanned chopper itself, not the announcer’s rather dry intonation.

And the Military-Entertainment Complex lurches a step closer to the world depicted in the excellent Mexican cyberpunk movie, Sleep Dealer:

From this isn’t happiness | tomorrow started, via Paul Graham Raven

From NYT, A Call To Take Back The Internet from Corporations:

“The sovereigns of the Internet are acting like they have a divine right to govern,” said Ms. MacKinnon, whose book, ”Consent of the Networked,” will be published by Basic Books in January 2012. “They are in complete denial that there is something horrible they would ever do.” She gave a preview of her book at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning and in an interview.

…

Governments at this point rarely act directly to constrain the Internet; instead, their policies are mediated through privately owned and operated services, Ms. MacKinnon said. This is true of China, which maintains the famed Great Firewall that blocks sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook in favor of local services. But domestically, every year the Chinese government gives out “China Internet Self-Discipline Awards” to honor companies that voluntarily cooperate with its censorship policies. Baidu, which had been Google’s rival in China before the search giant redirected China users to its uncensored Hong Kong site in 2010, has been among the honorees.

…

Although “we don’t always do it very well,” people generally know how to hold governments accountable, particularly in a democracy, said Ms. MacKinnon. However, it’s still unclear how users can push back against private transnational companies on the Internet. The solution is most likely not for Congress or other lawmakers to pass regulations alone, she said. ”It’s going to require innovation that is not only going to need to focus on politics, on geopolitics, but is also going to need to deal with questions of business management, investor behavior and consumer choice,” she said.

Ms. MacKinnon, who made a similar argument at the Personal Democracy Forum last month, said companies should start thinking of their users more as constituents who have a voice in the policymaking. Also, good corporate governance policies, like the ones that have become standard for clothing manufacturing companies, could become more widespread. Google, for example, regularly releases a transparency report, which lists how many requests for information it receives from each government. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have helped develop a code of conduct around Internet freedom through the Global Network Initiative. However, Twitter and Facebook have not joined in, limiting the impact of the code.

Her PDF talk, The Consent of the Networked:

In short: “I AM NOT A USER, I AM A FREE MAN!”

via @sfslim

UPDATE:

The Guardian is hosting the video of her TEDGlobal talk (which is, as specified, an expansion of the PDF one):

Via a whole bunch of people, who are justifiably equal parts excited and terrified about what this might lead to:

My first question, how does it handle CV Dazzle? Find out yourself! More details, including the code itself, are available on developer Zdenek Kalal’s website.

Here’s Adam Greenfield‘s excellent, thought-provoking keynote at the recent Cognitive Cities conference in Berlin – On Public Objects: Connected Things And Civic Responsibilities In The Networked City

Related:

• Incidental Media vs Invasive Advertising

The LIFT 11 conference just concluded in Geneva, Switzerland. I’ve picked the two most interesting talks to post here, but there’s many others of course, and please feel free to post your favourites in the comments.

Hasan Elahi: Giving away your privacy to escape the US terrorist watch list

Hasan will tell us his incredible story: he was suspected of terrorism by the FBI by mistake, and ended up living totally in public to protect himself from surveillance. His talk will show how forfeiting your privacy can in fact become a new form of protection of your identity.

Hasan concludes his talk by saying that if we all did what he does the intelligence community would be overwhelmed with information. Wrong; the NSA and others like it already do this. How? Algorithms running on incredibly powerful computer systems. Arguably a new lifeform, perhaps evolving to become the dominant one, if we believe the Singularitarians. Or is that already the case and we just haven’t realised it yet?

Kevin Slavin: Those algorithms that govern our lives

Digital technologies and on-line platforms are essential to the way we work and live. Interestingly, they are defined by algorithms which are not neutral. Kevin will discuss how they define new social norms and how our culture is affected by the possibilities embedded in the software we use.

The honey bee, pollinator and drug insect:

The genetics of the plants in your garden could become a police matter. Pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with genetically engineering plants to produce useful and valuable drugs. However, the techniques employed to insert genes into plants are within reach of the amateur… and the criminal. Policing Genes speculates that, like other technologies, genetic engineering will also find a use outside the law, with innocent-looking garden plants being modified to produce narcotics and unlicensed pharmaceuticals

.
Via Next Nature.

Welcome to 2011, it’s only going to get weirder.

(Spy glasses to chic cyberpunk-as-fuck sunglasses with one slick marketing trick. From nerd toy to designer wear.. etc etc. What’s next?)

From WIRED’s Danger Room:

In a solicitation released today, Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research branch, unveiled the Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras effort, or SCENICC. Imagine a suite of cameras that digitally capture a kilometer-wide, 360-degree sphere, representing the image in 3-D (!) onto a wearable eyepiece.

You’d be able to literally see all around you, including behind yourself, and zooming in at will, creating a “stereoscopic/binocular system, simultaneously providing 10x zoom to both eyes.” And you would do this all hands-free, apparently by barking out or pre-programming a command (the solicitation leaves it up to a designer’s imagination) to adjust focus.

Then comes the Terminator-vision. Darpa wants the eyepiece to include “high-resolution computer-enhanced imagery as well as task-specific non-image data products such as mission data overlays, threat warnings/alerts, targeting assistance, etc.” Target identified: Sarah Connor… The “Full Sphere Awareness” tool will provide soldiers with “muzzle flash detection,” “projectile tracking” and “object recognition/labeling,” basically pointing key information out to them.

And an “integrated weapon sighting” function locks your gun on your target when acquired. That’s far beyond an app mounted on your rifle that keeps track of where your friendlies and enemies are.

The imaging wouldn’t just be limited to what any individual soldier sees. SCENICC envisions a “networked optical sensing capability” that fuses images taken from nodes worn by “collections of soldiers and/or unmanned vehicles.” The Warrior-Alpha drone overhead? Its full-motion video and still images would be sent into your eyepiece.

Keep reading..

The SenseFly Swinglet CAM, via crunchgear, who’s calling it “a micro version of real aerial survey vehicles“.

Nice. Need to carry something heavier than 150g? They can design a larger platform to fit your needs.

What if I told you that movie theaters may become a little bit similar to Big Brother? A U.K. security firm just earned a grant to use special cameras embedded into movie theater screens to capture your facial expressions — to serve you more relevant ads. Just when I thought privacy couldn’t get any worse, this is sure to shake up movie goers.

The security firm, Arlia Sytems is planning to use infrared to detect the facial expressions of an individual’s face. It will use 3D facial recognition technology to determine things like whether the audience is looking at a certain ad, where on the screen their eyeballs are tracking and how targeted ads are being received.

Via dvice.com.

Like the Grand Theft Auto RC missions come to life, this helicopter can grasp objects for transport. They don’t have to be a special size or shape, and it can lift them even if they are not centered. This is thanks to a load-balancing hand (originally developed as a prosthesis) that relies on flexible joints and a tendon-like closing mechanism. As you can see in the video, the light-weight chopper has an on-board camera so that the operator can see what is being picked up. This little guy has no problem lifting objects that are over one kilogram while remaining stable in the air.

Link and photo from hackaday.com.

See also:

• Parrot – an AR drone you can pilot from your iDevice
• MikroKopter – HexaKopter
• Lockheed Martin’s Samurai Monocopter
• Robotic Shotgun Autocopter
• Killer robots to get silent-running whisper mode

As Fast Company report Leon, Mexico is about to become the test-bed for a Future; but it might not be the Future you’re looking for:

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.

“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. “Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years,” he says.

Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.

When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. “Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated,” says Carter.

This video, taken from GRI’s website, shows how the system works:

Touching on the rather obvious privacy issues, Fast Company write:

For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. “There’s a lot of convenience to this–you’ll have nothing to carry except your eyes,” says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: “When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in.”

…

When I asked Carter whether he felt the film was intended as a dystopian view of the future of privacy, he pointed out that much of our private life is already tracked by telecoms and banks, not to mention Facebook. “The banks already know more about what we do in our daily life–they know what we eat, where we go, what we purchase–our deepest secrets,” he says. “We’re not talking about anything different here–just a system that’s good for all of us.”

So there you have it. Facebook and all those loyalty cards are now being used as a precedent to create a complete panopticon.

via Gizmodo | thanks for the tip-off Cat Vincent!

Set in a near future where the UK has become a complete surveillance state nightmare, The Curfew is a webgame written by Kieron Gillen (Phonogram).

The Curfew could be described as a miniature Canterbury Tales set in a not-so-distant future, where citizens must abide by government security measures and ‘sub citizens’ are placed under curfew at night.

The player must navigate this complex political world and engage with the characters they meet along the way to work out who they should trust in order to gain freedom

This vid gives more background:

Nominally for children aged 14 and over, this looks great for adults too. I’ll sure be playing it.

It launches real soon, before the end of July apparently. Who do you trust?