‘It’s time to stop the war on whistle-blowers.’
What a great stencil!
From All Things Digital, illustrating an article about patent trolls. FTC Plans Patent Troll Probe.
(Dedicated to Craig.)
Finding safety in a ‘boring’ normal life
I like cartoonist Guy Body whose work the NZ Herald publishes.
I bought the original of one of his cartoons which reflected public debate sparked when we published Olly Newland’s book The Day The Bubble Bursts. (You can see it in this post.)
Guy perfectly caught the very dangerous ‘group think’ phenomenon which props up markets long after they should be. It’s a normal part of markets, I think — the boom and bust cycle — and we seem to be back there again with an over-valued housing market, at least in Auckland.
I have given up making predictions, but you can still read Olly’s far more seasoned view of the market, regularly updated, on his website.
Anyway, I chuckled at this Guy Body cartoon (below) published by the NZ Herald on Wednesday …
;
…which reminded me of this earlier thought I wrote about here: ‘How to protect yourself from extortion: Er, live a ‘clean’ life‘ where in part I said: Continue reading →
Life is a series of ‘LIVE crosses’
As some of you may know, I’ve worked as a radio journalist over many years, and got my ‘skills and training’ (that’s just a wee inside joke) with Radio New Zealand, first covering local news (2ZB), then network news (National Radio, Morning Report and Checkpoint etc) then in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
I’ve also worked with NewstalkZB, producing the Paul Holmes breakfast for five years, and a stint with RadioLIVE prior to the last general election — which put me in Newmarket’s Urban cafe for the infamous John Key/John Banks ‘cup of tea’.
All through that career, part of the job has been what we refer to as a ‘live cross’ — basically, the host of the show, or the news bulletin reader introduces the ‘reporter at the scene’ and says something like: ‘What’s happening there, Peter?’ — and you’re LIVE on air.
Here’s one of mine — from the cup of tea into a RadioLIVE news bulletin with the silky smooth Geoff Bryan …
Yeah, it’s a little rough, but hey, it was a mad-house, and I still think my analysis of the event as primarily a media stunt stands up.
One of the striking memories of my time in Wellington was when I covered the search for missing teenager Karla Cardno.
As I recalled in this post: ‘Remembering Karla‘, the voice reports and live crosses that I filed over the days I tramped with police and volunteers betrayed the darkness of spirit that crept into all of us looking for her, and our grief and despair for her family.
I don’t have any recordings of those ‘reports from the scene’ — but I’m sure they’re a bit rough too. I’m sure they were accurate and all that, but as I said, my mum told me I sounded ‘so sad’.
I was.
Which brings me to my point. You can see your life as a series of live crosses from the scene. Continue reading →
Why you should follow @onThePaepae on Twitter
Just a shameless plug. Follow us (@onThePaepae) on Twitter for even more eclectic goodness, like this example …
See? It’s not all doom, gloom, outrage and smashed iPhone pix.
– P
Privacy? Can you dig it?
Apple’s iMessage service features “end-to-end encryption”. I like that. But it pays to keep a firm grip on your phone. (pic: Erik Spiekermann*, who dropped his. Four stories. 🙁 )
This statement from Apple is no doubt prompted by the worldwide furore over revelations of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance.
Read the full statement at Apple: Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy but here’s the important part (for me):
Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.
For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.
Unlike whom? (cough)
Yeah, as discussed, I’m using the DuckDuckGo search engine (‘Search anonymously. Find instantly.’) just because it’s not tracking me and my search requests. Read about the issue here.
And, obviously, don’t get me started on Facebook!
– P
PS: Here’s a funny thing: Will the GCSB ban Apple from New Zealand? (via @ThomasBeagle)
* Poor Erik!
Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders?
image: shake & stir theatre co (click)
I didn’t want to be the one who ‘broke the news’ that, as the Herald on Sunday‘s Kathryn Powley put it in her story ‘Blogger told to stop‘:
a blogger has been ordered to remove dozens of posts and comments from her website and issued with a restraining order against a lawyer she harassed on-line.
Rob Kidd at the Sunday Star-Times put it this way in his piece ‘Biting blog given last post using stalker law‘:
Judge David Harvey issued blogger Jacqueline Sperling with an indefinite restraining order to protect lawyer Madeleine Flannagan, a rare case in which the Harassment Act has been used to cover blogging.
With respect, I frowned at Rob Kidd’s reference to “a blogger who launched an online campaign to ruin [the lawyer’s] reputation”, since it imputes motivation. He’s also wrong in fact when he states about the 2012 case: “Judge Harvey ordered some posts be taken offline …” No, he did not. The article misstates some other facts too, as I read it.
I was sent a copy of the judgement as soon as it was released, as you’ll read below, and since The Paepae actually features in the decision, I sought and gained Judge Harvey’s permission to quote from it. But I deliberately didn’t want to be ‘first’ with this story. I also wanted to see what ‘posture’ the parties took. Now that the story is ‘out’ in the often-salacious Sunday papers, in news media and being discussed on other websites with far more web-traffic than this one, let me share my response. You may see it as contrarian, but I promise it’s not for the sake of it.
The background — what a difference a year makes
image based on justbkuz.wordpress.com
Last year I wrote about the unsuccessful attempt to obtain a court-sanctioned restraining order against a blogger who had engaged in repeated criticism (some would say denigration) of two other people, also bloggers, one of whom was a lawyer originally engaged to make it all stop.
That application failed for a number of reasons, as canvassed in my post Implications of recent internet gagging attempt and in comments following.
Broadly, as I read it, last year’s action failed because:
(1) The applicants had ‘engaged’ online with the blogger. (Both the original applicant and the lawyer acting for her who joined the legal action after the blogger turned her flamethrower in the lawyer’s direction.) They were also seen by Judge Harvey as robust enough to handle the ‘distress’ they claimed was caused by the blogged comments. The lawyer, in particular, had earlier engaged in online and public debate from a religious standpoint about contentious law reform issues like abortion and civil unions.
(2) The applicants were seen by the Judge at that time to have ‘put themselves in harm’s way’ by seeking out and reading the blogger’s comments.
(3) The Judge considered it a big step under the Bill of Rights Act to interfere with someone’s freedom of expression notwithstanding that expression may amount to harassment, and
(4) The Judge suggested that if defamation was alleged, then a civil prosecution seeking remedies along those lines would be a more appropriate avenue than an application for ‘restraint’ from ‘distress’ under the Harassment Act 1997.
Significantly, in his 2012 decision declining the application for restraint, Judge David Harvey also warned the blogger to cut it out.
Well, she didn’t (partially [feeling] provoked by the lash of opprobrium directed at her, see below). Now he’s ordered her to. As reported above, the Court has issued orders which amount to a comprehensive ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging.
How did we get here?
Apparently a month after Judge Harvey’s dismissal of the 2012 application for a restraining order, the lawyer, still stung by the slings and arrows that led to her failed court action, and citing some new ones published in the aftermath of the decision, launched another application.
[4] On the 10th July 2012 Ms Flannagan commenced these proceedings. It will be noted that the proceedings were filed less than a month after my decision. Those proceedings were based upon subsequent comments that were made by Ms Sperling in respect of which the applicant considered that a restraining order should, under the circumstances, issue. [emphasis added]
So — kind of an instant appeal, but not quite. Continue reading →
Dystopia and unease about the Surveillance State
How topical.
New Zealand’s National government is currently pushing through (under urgency) law changes to expand the powers of our state eavesdroppers and spies (including the Government Communications Security Bureau, GCSB).
NSA Whistle-blower Edward Snowden this week highlighted the ongoing operation by the US and its allies (including New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Canada, ‘Five eyes’) to hoover up internet and telephony data — of millions of people, not just those deemed to be ‘terrorist threats’.
So how apposite that the BBC should broadcast this wonderful documentary by political history professor Steven Fielding: Very British Dystopias.
I listened to it on BBC Radio 4 early this morning. It’s all good (link below) but I was struck by this section, describing how it is that those on ‘the left’ see state surveillance through a different lens to their conservative co-citizens.
Adding value
If anything, I underestimated the impact of the iPad when I declared in my January 2010 post iPad? Yeah. OK, probably. Why not?
Yes, I’ll probably get one of these. It looks useful, and some of the applications seem like an improvement. Apple does lead the world in industrial design (the ‘cool’ factor), and this shows it again. …
But I can say I’ve never underestimated the software that Apple’s relentlessly elegant equipment, operating systems, platforms and philosophy would lead to. That aspect, putting tools in bright people’s hands, has been a long game for Apple.
I remember as a kid meeting bright people with a spark in their eyes at the Wellington Apple Users Group in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Possibilities, always possibilities.
Watch this moving (deliberately so, and fair enough) and inspiring video which tells part of the story … featuring people who have the same spark.
It encourages me. It makes me happy.
– P
Whoa! As a critic, this popped me between the eyes.
“Every time I assume a talented person isn’t painfully aware of the flaws in their work, I am wrong.”
That’s a line in the middle of a thoughtful review/first impressions account of the pre-release iPhone/iPad software iOS7 by Frank Chimero.
Frank Chimero – excerpt from ‘Generosity of Perspective’ (click)
But as someone who is critical, sometimes repeatedly critical, of various people and institutions, his line about ‘self-awareness’ of flaws made me twitch.
Good on you Frank.
– P
OS X Grumpy Cat
pic: O’Grady’s Power Page (click)
Apple’s just announced new Mac OS X software along with a revamped iOS (7) for iPhone/iPad.
Apparently they’re calling it ‘Mavericks’ ending the big cat references (I use OS X ‘Mountain Lion’). Shame they couldn’t make use of this one. (I mean, half the work’s been done for them …)
– P
Oh {expletive-deleted}! It’s true. The internet is ‘a TV that watches you.’
Big Brother is still watching you – image: HollywoodNews.com (click)
Damn. This is what the PRISM whistle blower Ed Snowden told a Washington Post reporter, related here: Code name ‘Verax’: Snowden, in exchanges with Post reporter, made clear he knew risks
“The internet is on principle a system that you reveal yourself to in order to fully enjoy, which differentiates it from, say, a music player,” he wrote. “It is a TV that watches you. The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate.”
Oh dear. Not what I want to hear.
– P
Unmissable video of NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden. Seriously, WATCH THIS.
Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s NSA whistle-blower source. Watch this very impressive, courageous man explain his motives.
Must see. Really.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things’ – VIDEO The Guardian
Click to read the article at “Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations” at The Guardian.
Boy! Guts combined with a relentlessly rational laying out of the issues that confront democracy and governments with the power to surveil all of us, innocent or not.
– P
Presented without comment. Almost.
Spotted this joke on my son’s placemat at McDonald’s in Coastlands last Sunday on my way home from Wellington.
I thought it was funny then, but after Peter Dunne’s announcement of his inexplicable actions, well, it just seems kinda wry now:
– P
Google denies PRISM direct access or back doors
What the…?
Dear Google users—
You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
