The 360 Selfie

I'll admit it - I never really got the selfie. I was trapped in the mistake that they were a mere narcissistic folly. I couldn't have been more wrong. The more I travel the world, the more I see a change in people's behaviour around monuments. It used to be people jostling to get the one perfect shot of a thing. Even if they got the perfect shot, they never looked at the result. Why?

People want to take a photo like this:

But it often ends up coming out like this:

That's not intended to be snarky. Most of us don't have the time, skill, or equipment to take stunning photographs. But that's OK! The best photographs of mere objects have already been taken. The photo that no-one else has ever taken is of you standing there!

That's what I love about selfies! A photo of a monument is just that. It shows you were there, once, kinda. But a selfie proves that you were there! I think there's something delightful about saying "This is me! Here I am!"

So, here are a couple of 360 selfies from our recent trips. They're not the greatest photos in the world - they're not static shots of a thing - but they are of us and the memories we made.

Rome

Hong Kong

Australia

New blog post: “Third Complete November”.

https://blog.kizu.dev/third-complete-november/

For the third time, third year in a row, I managed to write a post for every day of November.

I was tired at the end, and postponed writing many posts until the end of the day, but it felt easier than the last two previous years.

#NaBloPoMo #IndieWeb

HOWTO: Preserving BarCamps

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2010/11/howto-preserving-barcamps/

Oh! Woe is me! I can't make BarCampLondon 8. This will be the first BarCamp I've not been able to get to in ages.Following hashtags is fun, if a little disjointed. What I really need is some way I could attend virtually.....

Does It Need To Be So Hard?

We don't need expensive crews. We have each other! The very idea of BarCamps is that they should be self-organised. So, if you're going to BCL8 this year, here's what I would like you to do...

• Got a smartphone or a flip camcorder? Video the sessions you're in.
• Got a less-than-smart-phone or a dictaphone? Record the audio of the sessions you run or participate in.
• Got neither? Offer to hold someone else's tech while they present.

Before long, every single session will have coverage of some kind and us poor sods who can't make it will still be able to vicariously share in the pleasure of London's greatest Unconference.

Video

There are loads of places to stick video up on the web. But most services have time and size restrictions or want you to pay to store your video. YouTube is limited to 15 minutes (no good for 30 minute BarCamp sessions) and Vimeo is limited to 500MB per week (no good if you've filmed in HD).

Here are two free services which I think will suit the BarCamp Crowd.

Archive.org

Archive.org is

building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

I believe this to be the best place to store the record of our culture.Here's a video of me running a session at BarCamp Brighton. The video is hosted by Archive.org and can be downloaded in several formats.

Videos can be any length and any format. They'll be transcoded to MP4 and Ogg Video. Best of all, video can be uploaded via FTP - which makes queuing large uploads very easy. You can, of course, upload via your browser.

One point to note, videos have to be CreativeCommons or Public Domain.

There are already around 40 BarCamp videos on Archive.org.

Qik

If you have the bandwidth, Qik is the ideal place to stream and store video. I've found the application can be a little hit-and-miss - especially if WiFi coverage gets congested.Here's my presentation from BarCamp Transparency.

(Qik videos autoplay - click on the screenshot to see the video)

Streaming Services

There are loads of sites which will let you stream video from your laptop's webcam. Please - whatever service you use - make sure that it is also recording the stream. It greatly saddens me that the presentations from awesome events like CharityHackDay are lost forever. They were streamed and then promptly vanished.

Audio

Video can be overkill. It takes a lot of effort to upload and just as much to download. It's often simpler just to record audio. Even the most basic phones tend to have a "voice record" function. Once you've got the audio, there are a number of places you can put it.

AudioBoo

Everyone loves AudioBoo. It's a great way of saving audio - although it's currently only available on iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone, you can upload any sound file you like to their website and they'll convert and host it.

Here is a recording of my session at BarCamp Brighton.

💾 Download this audio file.

I decided to separate the main body of the talk from the discussion which followed afterwards.

💾 Download this audio file.

Just personal preference.

Archive.org

There's a whole bunch of BarCamp audio already up on Archive.org.

Audacity

If you want to edit your audio, I highly recommend Audacity. It's free, open source, and works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Collating

Ok, so every session is now recorded and stored somewhere on the Internet. How do we go about organising this mass of video and audio?

Let's look at how some other conferences have done it.

OpenTech

One of the great things about OpenTech was the effort put in by the organisers to ensure every talk was preserved on wax cylinders mp3.The session page is really well laid out and has links to audio and, in some cases, slides.

But what if you can't be bothered or don't have the time to manage a web page?

Lanyrd

Currently the darling of the conference scene, Lanyrd easily allows you to add "coverage" to sessions. You can attach notes, handouts, audio, video, slides, photos or links.

Privacy

• Some people won't want their sessions recorded. Please ask presenters to check that they're happy to be immortalised.
• Everyone hates the sound of their own voice - do let people in the audience know if you're going to be recording.
• When in doubt, edit it out.

A Plea

I really want to attend BarCamp London. And BarCamp Manchester. And all the other BarCamps which I can't get to.

Please - if you can - record your session and upload it somewhere. Even a poorly shot, noisy, unedited video is better than none.

This is our digital heritage. We should be proud of what we create and ensure that it is available for posterity.

#audio #barcamp #digital #nablopomo #preservation #video

Death Etiquette For The Social Media Age

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/death-etiquette-for-the-social-media-age/

My friend died last month. When I was a lad, it seemed that I was always going to funerals for some ancient relative. Everyone looks old when you're a kid. But my friend wasn't old. He was about my age. He had a trendy, digital job.

The funeral is done, the grief lingers on. What should I do now?

Do I stop following his accounts?

I don't want to. In part, because I don't want to think he's gone. But on a practical level, if I don't then I know some well-meaning AI will suddenly say "Hey! You haven't talked to your mate in aaaaages! Why not give him a poke?! ?"

Of course, if I do unfollow him, I'll get a whole bunch of "people you know also follow..." with his face staring back at me.

Or, perhaps one of the apps he authorised will get hacked, and I'll be left facing post-mortem-spam.

Should I delete his number from my phone?

Last year a different friend gave up on social media and deleted all her accounts. One day, an app in my pocket buzzed to tall me that she'd joined their service. I was flabbergasted and sent her a quick hello.

It wasn't her. She'd changed phone numbers and - as happens in the UK - the number was eventually assigned to someone else. It was that interloper who'd joined. But the social-network-graph doesn't really account for such changes to "unique" identifiers.

Deleting someone from your contacts has a grim feeling of finality to it. Perhaps I just need to get it over and done with.

How do you let people know?

People don't have little paper address books any more. The ones they do have are locked behind the unforgiving fortress of biometric security. So his family asked friends to reach out to more nth-degree-of-separation friends to let the know the dreadful news and details of the funeral.

I remember my parents making such phone calls when I was a kid. Always the same patter, "Are you sat down? I'm afraid I have some horrible news..."

But the enforced brevity of Twitter doesn't really allow for such niceties, does it?

Sending an email seems... I don't know... impersonal? But there's a whole bunch of mutual friends who exist, for me, only as text on a screen. Do I call them? Do I BCC them? What emoji conveys the right amount of reverence for the situation?

How, in a little screen, do you mentally prepare someone for a shock? Is the subject line "Some terrible news about our friend" too much? Too little?

The Funeral

I would live-tweet a funeral, take selfies with the deceased

Tacky - "Weird Al" Yankovic

I mean, that's crazy, right? But that's how a bunch of us knew him - through social media.

Yes, selfies at a funeral are a thing - they're a social object which has been the subject of much discussion. Some friends of mine advocate photographing the funeral in the same way you would any other significant occasion.

What's the right balance? Checking in on FourSquare seems a little disrespectful, but is it OK to live-stream the ceremony on Periscope to those who can't make it?

Preparing for the inevitable

Perhaps selfishly, my thoughts turned to my own mortality. I've got life assurance to take care of my family financially, and I have a Will to sort out any property issues - but what about my digital life?

Google has the euphemistically named "Inactive Account Manager". I've set it so my family has access to my account should I die.

Facebook has a "Legacy Contact setting".

A legacy contact is someone who you choose to manage your account after you pass away. They'll be able to do things like pin a post on your Timeline, respond to new friend requests and update your profile picture. They won't post as you or see your messages

My password manager has a sharing function which, if I set it correctly, should smooth access to some of my accounts.

And as for everything else...? Who knows. Do the half-a-dozen people who follow me on an obscure social network care that I'm gone? Will it be distressing for my relatives to receive reminder emails from them?

The aftermath

Every so often, someone - who hadn't realised he's gone - drops a note on his wall wishing him happy birthday. Or sends an @ message to a few of us. It's not their fault, but it is hard not to feel a little pang of anger and then sadness.

The real pain is looking through the list of friends streaming by and wondering if I'm being good enough to them.

Is "Liking" a Tweet a substitute for a pint of a beer and a natter? Is scrawling "Happy birthday" in a WhatsApp message as good as ringing up for a chat?

And now?

If you'd like to donate to my friend's memorial, there is a JustGiving campaign running (oh, look, another social network).

Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK.

If you're in pain or distress, you're not alone. You can always find someone to talk to.

#death #NaBloPoMo

Promoting With 💩

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/promoting-with-%f0%9f%92%a9/

One of the hardest things about attending conferences with multiple tracks is deciding which talk to go to.

If your friends are talking opposite each other, it is particularly hard.

As a speaker, though, it's even tougher to know you're up against a brilliant speaker. Speaking is hard - speaking to an empty room is... painful.

So, I thought I'd try a little experiment at the recent Hackference Brum. I was giving a talk about Unicode which - let's face it - isn't the most glamorous subject in the world. But, to most people, Unicode == Emoji.

And what's everyone's favourite Emoji?

Yup - I purchased a Big Plushie ?!

Touting your talk at a conference always runs the risk of looking desperate - or simply being awkward. So I decided to ask people if they'd like to take a selfie with my poo. Turns out, people really like that idea!

And, with each selfie, I got a chance to talk to people and let them know about my talk. It was a fun way to chat and - thankfully - seemed to pay off!

Loads of people turned up, they asked brilliant questions at the end, and seemed to really dig my talk.

So, there we go - a fun little experiment which seemed to pay off. I got to meet so many fun new people and made them take some highly questionable photos ?

It was so much fun, that I did it all again when I went to MozFest!

#hackference #hf2016 #NaBloPoMo #presentations

Book Review: Seeing Like A State - James C. Scott

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/11/book-review-seeing-like-a-state-james-c-scott/

In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyses failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against “development theory” and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a “high-modernist ideology” that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

I've lost count of the number of people who have recommended that I read this book. It dismantles some of the arguments for centralised authority and remaking the world to satisfy the administrative demands of the state.

Is this a call for anarchism? No. I think it's an early plea for more user centred design.

It's really easy for people to design a system that works for people like them. It's much harder to design something which works with "messy" reality.

The first few chapters were highly relevant to my work. It's hard to administer reality - but forcing people / land / systems to conform to something uniform rarely works in practice.

I found the chapters on High-Modernist stuff bit weird. I get the relevance of physical architecture and its parallels to computer architecture, but I felt it went a bit too deep into the weeds of Soviet agricultural plans for my liking. I ended up skim reading some of the chapters on farming. That said, it has a good discussion of colonialism and the perils of thinking you know better than people with local knowledge.

It does an excellent job of explaining the limits of technocracy. There's even some fome feminist critique of centralised design, which is good to see.

Ultimately, it sold me on the idea that standards only works when everyone gets a say in how they are developed. And that they need to be flexible enough to cope with the present and future reality. If we want people to embrace change, it can only be via radical participatory democracy.

A sobering and vitally important book. Highly recommended for anyone who is involved in policy design or standardisation.

Here are some of the choice excerpts I found interesting:

How many times have you been through a re-org which shuffled people around on PowerPoint decks with little regard for what they want, how they are incentivised, or how they work? pic.x.com/ez4dj6yQIm

#BookReview #NaBloPoMo

A Complete List of Every UK Government Domain Name

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/a-complete-list-of-every-uk-government-domain-name/

Eight years after I published this blog post, I helped officially release all these domain names as open data! Funny how life works out, eh?

Would you like to know every domain name the UK Government had registered? Of course you would! There could be all sorts of interesting tit-bits hidden in there (ProtectAndSurvive.gov.uk? EbolaOutbreak2017.nhs.uk? MinistryOfTruth.police.uk?)

Rather than relying on Freedom of Information requests, or Open Data, we can go straight to the source of domain names - the DNS!

Shut Up And Give Me The Codez!

Download all UK Government host names.gov.uk 15,436 records.nhs.uk 4,877 records.police.uk 466 records.mod.uk 268 records.parliament.uk 91 records

That's... quite a lot! The majority are host names - only around 2,247 of the GOV.UK ones are domain names. Many of them are not currently live.

Still, I wonder how many are new?

The Gov.UK file is a CSV which also show when the domain was first registered (if available).

Geeky Details

The Domain Name System (DNS) lists every single domain name (example.com). It tells your computer which IP Address is associated with a Domain Name. If your local DNS doesn't know where example.gov.uk lives, it goes to the ISP's DNS. If they don't know, they ask an upstream provider's DNS. And so on, until someone asks the .gov.uk nameserver for an authoritative response.

So, can you download every domain name in existence? No, not easily. It usually involves filling out lots of forms and giving some compelling reason why you want it.

However, Rapid7's sonar project provides a sort of "best guess" for all the domain names which it can see.

To download the entire file is 12GB. That's the zipped version.

Once unzipped, it's a whopping 67GB

A quick look at the file shows it contains 1,408,097,159 records. Youch! That's a lot of domain names!

This is what the file looks like

As a brief primer, a CNAME points to another domain name. An A Record points to an IP address. There are lots of different domain records.

Ok, so let's get all the *.gov.uk records out of there...

Ah! Ok, we're picking up some websites which are pointing to a gov.uk site (potentially useful) and some false positives like "019186.gov.ukpfl.cn". Let's just look at records where the first column ends with .gov.uk":

OK, so how do we de-duplicate these? The first thing to do is manipulate the data. We only want the first column. There are an number of ways to do this in Linux, I prefer to use the Python tool CSVfilter.

To install sudo pip install csvfilter.

To grab only the first (zeroth) column
cat 20150926_dnsrecords_all | csvfilter -f 0 > out.csv

Now, this doesn't quite work. Why? Because some DNS records contain incredibly strange data! You can manually clean up the data, but that's a bit boring and utterly impossible to load into Excel or any other normal editor.

Here's what I did...

Hey presto! A more-or-less complete list of every .gov.uk website which is registered. The same can be performed for .NHS.uk, .police.uk, .MOD.uk etc.

Getting The Dates

Time to crack out the Ruby!

Using the WHOIS library, I wrote a simple script to parse the text records and query when the domain name was created.

This isn't perfect - there are only records for the third level of gov.uk - and no records at all for Parliament, MOD, Police, and NHS. It is also a bit slow to run through the thousands of records - but we can see a few interesting bits and bobs.

Created in 2015

I suspect some of these are merely renewals, rather than brand new domains.

Oldest

Sadly, clacks.gov.uk has very little to do with Terry Pratchett!

That's all folks!

Spotted anything unusual? Found a better way to do things? Stick a comment in the box!

If you've enjoyed this post, you can buy me something from my Amazon Wishlist.

#data #govUk #NaBloPoMo

Do Comrades Dream of Electric Proletariat?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/11/do-comrades-dream-of-electric-proletariat/

For the benefit of those who are hard of thinking: I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

One of the delightful things about living in Oxford is that there are a wide range of events going on. Events run by people who I like, run by people I vehemently disagree with, events run by intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike. I enjoy hearing from a variety of people who don't think the same things I do.

So, last week I went to "I for one welcome our new robot overlords" - a discussion run by the Communist Corresponding Society.

I live tweeted the events under Chatham House Rules - that is, these are the unattributed thoughts of the people in the room. They don't all represent my viewpoint, but I found them interesting enough to comment on.

The central thesis of the event was a little muddled. Let me try to distil it as best as I understood it.

• The notion that "the workers control the means of production" breaks down when the production is solely the preserve of robots owned by capitalists.
• Each member of society owning their own robot / 3D printer places production back in the hands of the masses.
• Increased automation leads to less work. Less work means less money. If the masses cannot afford to purchase - or have their own means of production - what drives the economy?

There are some interesting philosophical discussions to be had here.

Robots are, essentially, slaves. We haven't programmed them with emotions or desires (yet) - so they can't be exploited in quite the same way as human or animal can.

It is possible, however, to perform software exploits on them. A hacker could infiltrate a system and make it act contrary to its owners wishes. An extreme example of this is Stuxnet - a virus designed specifically to instruct Iran's robotic nuclear enrichment centrifuges to self-destruct.

We are already witnessing nation states engaged in cyber-warfare to diminish their rivals' technological superiority. Will multi-national companies also start attacking their rivals? Will the capitalists launch attacks on domestic robots to ensure we continue spending money?

Capitalism can never rest on its laurels. There is always a competitor snapping at their heels. This is compounded by Moore's Law.

Moore's Law states that the computing power doubles for the same cost every 18 months. The robot you buy today will be twice as powerful next year - or you can have the same one for half the price.

This relentless growth is problematic. Suppose you built a state-of-the-art factory this year. A couple of years later your rival can do the same at a reduced cost.

In a way, this hyper-capitalism is delightfully Socialist. They run around like madmen, with the side effect of making the world better for everyone.

As with all massive infrastructure projects, it is often only the State which can afford the long term investment needed.

I wish I'd thought of this next point.

Most people in the "App Economy" are actually in the business of selling pick-axes to prospectors. The average miner / developer is chasing a big win that will probably never materialise. There are only a few million-dollar apps. The real money is in selling services to those developers chasing a dream.

The next few points relate to how we all survive when it's the robots performing all the labour.

Every new invention or labour-saving device puts someone out of work. The vacuum cleaner means we no longer need to employ maids to clean our houses.

The robotic self-checkout means we no longer need semi-skilled people working in supermarkets. What happens to those people? Are they thrown on the scrapheap? Do we need to re-train them?

Do we live in the glorious work-free future? Not quite. But we now have robots to assist with our heavy lifting. The number of people who physically exert themselves for a living has diminished.

Would it be desirable for all the messy, disgusting, and degrading jobs to be done by robots? Perhaps. Are there people who can only do the jobs that robots do? What happens to them?

The conversation took a turn to the inevitability of the capitalist cause.

It's incredibly hard to renationalise infrastructure. The whole ratchet of capitalism is designed to be uni-directional. Once you've had an self-driving car, what would it take for you to go back?

One of the problems with the discussion is that some people have a limited idea of what a robot is. They think it's C-3PO, or a vast car-building robot. That couldn't be further from the case.

When I started working in an office, there was a woman who came round with a trolley. On it was a tea urn and several packs of biscuits. That job has been replaced by a robot. Sure, the vending machine doesn't look like it came out of Star Wars - but it is a robot none-the-less. Ubiquity dulls our senses the the amazing future in which we live.

One woman was insistent that there are some things that robots simply couldn't replace - like midwiffery. That is, in my opinion, an extremely naïve view. A foetal heartbeat monitor is a robot - as are all the various equipment surrounding the expectant mother.

At the moment, surgery is routinely carried out by robots - albeit non-autonomously. Before too long, a midwife in Beijing will control a robot in Tallahassee to assist with a birth. A few years later, the robot will be fully autonomous.

On to some more political points. Capitalism, it is theorised, requires war to stay profitable and reduce the independence of the proletariat.

We're already seeing drones fighting drones, and computers attacking computers. Is the ultimate endgame fully robotic armies fighting each other?

As the work for the masses dries up, does the spirit of revolution increase?

What are the things that only humans can do?

Without getting to into The Matrix, if we can use robots to create efficiencies in reproduction then capitalists can extract more value per (female) worker.

We already entrust so much to robots. Whether it's automated call centres, or High Frequency Trading stock market algorithms. Can we fully understand what they are doing? Is it possible to understand and mitigate the risks involved?

The Flash Crash has already shown us that unregulated robots can take actions which rapidly spiral out of control.

Automated decision making is a form of labour-saving. How much of our political infrastructure can we put into the hands of robots? At the moment we use Excel Macros to calculate tax rates - why not have robots get and set rates automatically?

Robots act as witnesses in court cases (CCTV, computer logs, etc) - how long before judge and jury can also be automated?

These final two points are my favourites.

Some people like work. Even if you may think it is dull, even if they cannot do it as efficiently, even if it is dangerous - is it right to deprive someone of work they genuinely want to do?

Finally, in relation to Social Media

A Conclusion of Sorts

The discussion was lively and interesting. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of automation and how it relates to society - which is odd considering that the Spinning Jenny pre-dates The Communist Manifesto by around 80 years.

Unless we find ourselves reaching an unexpected technological bottleneck, it's clear that automation will only increase.

I don't necessarily believe that Communism is the solution to all of humanity's problems. As we continue to reduce the amount of unnecessary work, there will have to be a massive change in our economy.

There are two possibilities that those at the meeting foresaw.

In my opinion, we're rapidly reaching an inflection point. Low and medium skill jobs are in the process of being automated. Highly skilled jobs like accountancy can be replaced with digital tools. Computers can begin to program themselves.

Capitalism, then, faces a paradox. It need to be as efficient as possible to derive the maximum value from limited capital. But if every job is automated, the engine of consumerism stops - thus depriving it of profit.

We can't be certain that the robots are coming for all our jobs. Disemployment in administrative jobs could create new, and perhaps highly remunerative, work in sectors or occupations we can't yet anticipate. If we're lucky, that work will be engaging and meaningful. Yet there is a decent chance that "bullshit" administrative jobs are merely a halfway house between "bullshit" industrial jobs and no jobs at all. Not because of the conniving of rich interests, but because machines inevitably outmatch humans at handling bullshit without complaining.

On "bullshit jobs" - The Economist Aug 21st 2013

#communism #NaBloPoMo #politics

Copyright Strikes Again!

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2011/11/copyright-strikes-again/

In my last post, I was talking about generating new cards for the fantastic game "Ex Libris".

I emailed the manufacturers to see if they had any objections - and to see if they were releasing any updates. With their kind permission, I'm posting their reply in full.

Dear Mr Eden,

We are delighted that you love our game 'Ex Libris' and understand your frustration about the limited number of cards in the pack, but I'm afraid that we would strongly object to you creating ' unofficial' new cards for Ex Libris that you either publish or post on your web site.

We have several reasons for objecting, but the primary reason is that you would be breaking all manner of copyright laws (UK and US) in publishing these cards without the permission of the author/publisher/agent of any work still within copyright. As I am sure you know, a book does not come out of copyright until at least 50 years after the death of its author. We would be exceedingly unhappy if you were to even suggest that your cards are 'New Cards for the Game of Ex Libris'. This would create the impression of an association between Oxford Games and yourself, which does not exist.

As you may imagine, it took a considerable effort to obtain the necessary permissions for cards in the original deck. And some authors' estates did not grant permission (Agatha Christie's for one) even though we produce Ex Libris in association with the Bodleian and British Libraries.

Finally, please be aware that we are currently working on a new set of cards for Ex Libris, which we may make available online in some form or another. We will keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I trust you understand that , well intentioned as they certainly are, we cannot endorse your efforts.

Kind regards

Leslie Scott

Oxford Games Ltd

So, the good news is new cards are coming! The bad news is that I cannot (legally) create my own to share (freely or not). To make it clear, I did not intend to create an impression of any association with Oxford Games.

I am particularly indebted to Emily Goodhand - aka "CopyrightGirl" - for providing a some advice.

The "Infopaq" comment refers to a European Court of Justice decision which stated that even an 11 words excerpt was copyright infringing.

Which, is a bit annoying, but there we go. There is nothing to stop me creating cards for my own private use - or even creating cards from books in the public domain. But nothing from works still in copyright.

Many thanks to Leslie at Oxford Games for the swift and courteous response.

#books #exLibris #NaBloPoMo

Notes on Digital Surveillance

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/notes-on-digital-surveillance/

Earlier this year, I attended a lecture given by Alan Rusbridger - the outgoing editor of The Guardian - entitled "The World After Snowden." Held at Oxford University, and attended by journalists, technologists, and former spies - it was an exceptionally interesting talk and provoked a lively debate over dinner.

In light of the publication of the disastrous Investigatory Powers Bill, I've decided to write up my notes.

Except for the opinions expressed in public, I've deliberately avoiding attributing any of the comments to individuals. As per my posts on Communist Robots and iPhone Slavery the points I make here aren't necessarily my own.

This is a series of observations and questions.

The lecture theatre is filling with greying hair - almost exclusively male. Beside me a couple of chaps with RAF pins on their lapels mutter darkly about how it wouldn't have been allowed in their day. The journalists in front of me are either tapping furiously on iPads or scribbling indecipherable shorthand.

Alan Rusbridger cuts an impressive figure as he carefully maps out the story of Snowden. Not the tawdry details of how documents were liberated from the US Government - but how the response from the press and lawmakers has been curiously subdued.

In the USA, there have been numerous reports, debates between lawmakers and the public, a strong response from the Intelligence Services. In the UK... Nothing. Labour have been terrified of being seen to be weak on security. While the Libertarian wing of the Tory party would normally support personal freedoms - they've been overruled by their hatred of the liberal media. The LibDems - bless 'em - don't have the clout to do much of anything.

The odd questioning of spooks and their nominal overseers has been lacklustre at best.

Unspoken in the room is the problem of collusion. The Guardian journalists are Oxford educated. The GCHQ chaps are Oxford chaps. The politicians - you guessed it - PPE from Oxford. There's a cosy club of perfectly decent fellows - and most of them are men - all gently assuming that the other is acting in the best interests of... society, one supposes.

This trick is working. The state is simply ignoring the argument - at all levels. Don't mistake it for a head-in-the-sand attitude - it's the sure-fire knowledge that wholesale surveillance is just too big for anyone to understand. And that makes it hard for people to care about. So it can be pushed aside. After a few years of intense non-debate, the establishment can state with confidence that "it's time to move on from Snowden."

Perhaps industry will pick up the fight? In the USA, we see companies aggressively promoting Privacy as a competitive advantage - yay capitalism. And in the UK? It's hard to find a significant industry player who has kicked up a stink about the pillaging of their customers' data. Say, I wonder where their CEOs went to school...?

At least the tech community is having a passionate debate. We're the ones busy fixing bugs, getting tools to those in needs. We're the ones doing the damned work, fighting the good fight, and still being ignored, belittled, and infiltrated.

Sat a little way ahead of me is a former Director of GCHQ. He writes exclusively in green ink. His hands trembles as he talks. And, boy, does he talk! He's a terribly reasonable. That's the worst thing about him. As he's telling the audience that mass surveillance of all citizens by the state really isn't that big a deal - I find it hard to disagree with him. Such a kindly old man couldn't be malicious, could he?

But when you listen to his words, it becomes clear that he's a trained liar. There's no way an honest man can say with a straight face that it is in no way intrusive for the police to have a list of every websites you've visited. Lawyers don't really need confidentiality with their clients.

There's a philosophical debate to be had. If a computer system snaffles up all your emails - but they're not read by a human - have they really been intercepted?

Above all, he asks, can we please be a little more respectful in our tone. It strikes me that it's not possible to have a polite conversation with a burglar. Especially while a theft is in progress.

The conversation is schizophrenic. When Sony was hacked - they were castigated for having such weak security. In the aftermath of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, companies were criticised for being too secure. How can we track the enemies of freedom if we can't read everyone's emails?

There are protections - of course. Journalists - especially the decent sort - ought to be protected. That's what American law says anyhow. We're often asked "is blogging journalism" - perhaps we need to ask "why do journalists get protection from state intrusion when ordinary citizens don't?" But that's not quite so snappy, is it?

And snappiness is a problem. As well as the philosophical debates - there's the technological debate. And it's too hard for most people to follow. Half the MPs can't turn on a computer without an advisor pointing out where the switch is. How many of them do you think understand the intricacies of public key cryptography?

No, it's more fundamental than that. It's a public perception problem.

In the UK, we never had the KGB or the Stasi. We didn't have the FBI undermining our civil rights leaders. We didn't have that sonofabitch Nixon screwing everything up. We had Alan Turning single-handedly defeating the Nazis and James Bond keeping the British end up. Our guys are the goodies!

Which, of course, leads one old journalist to huff and puff that The Guardian really ought to have been more responsible and let the government see the stories before publication.

One of the journalists around the table likes this struggle to the fight against slavery. Not in terms of human pain and misery, but there are parallels to be drawn. This is a fight against huge economic resources, entrenched culture, and men who crave the power of life and death over other humans. They are fighting to keep the status quo. The fight against slavery took hundreds of years. It is all but eliminated and yet we're still living with the repercussions of such evil. That's the time scales we have to work on. A minimum of 50 years to change public and private opinion.

It will take a catastrophe to shake up the public. The leaking of everyone's medical details? Perhaps Facebook inadvertently shows who other than your wife have you been looking at? The end of a million marriages in one weekend, what would that do to the public's perception of data security? (This was all months before Ashley Madison. Sadly, that event seems to have failed to shift the public's attitude.)

Geeks have failed to realise that we are engaged in massively asymmetrical warfare. International standards bodies are corrupted by the state, trillions of dollars are directed towards total domination, human lives are collateral. We have GitHub, Tumblr, and the sainted BlockChain.

Where's the tipping point where geeks can freely admit that we lost and it's time to kowtow?

Our government wants to protect the Internet. They see it as an engine of massive growth. But they fear the ease with which criminals and ne'er-do-wells and use it. The gives the security services contradictory requirements.

Perhaps the only question we need to ask is "How do we reach a least worse local minimum?"

At the moment, there is the technical capability to store... everything. They can hold an infinite file on everyone for an indiscriminate period of time - then all they need to do is wait for the law to change and run a dragnet through all the data.

Y

our guilt is a quantum needle simultaneously popping in and out of multiple haystacks.

Finally - and it's been a long evening - how do we prepare for the next leak? Snowden won't be the last. The next might come from within industry, or a nation state, or a hacker who blags her way into a cache of juicy data? What are technologists doing to tighten up systems? What are legislators doing to ensure proper procedures are in place?

Our spies ought to be protecting us. But they're conflicted. Every flaw they fix means one less access point for criminals - and one less access point for the themselves.

We melt off into the night. This isn't even the end of the beginning - this is a culture war which can never be resolved as long as men desire each others' secrets.

#gchq #guardian #ipbill #NaBloPoMo #politics #security #spies