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Musings on Privacy

To crawl out from under my rock briefly:

Recently I’ve been watching parts of the Leveson Inquiry into Media Ethics, for those of you who don’t know (ie are not Brits), this is an enquiry into the conduct of journalists in the UK after it emerged that not only were tabloids hacking into the phones/stalking celebrities over trivial crap but they were also hacking into the phones of murder victims and other real people.

The problem here is that I find myself agreeing more and more, to my utter disgust, with Paul McMullen, a former journalist in the now defunct News of the World (the paper whose exploits started this whole affair) who argues that the press are perfectly within their rights to use whatever means necessary to get a story. His main argument being that ultimately they need to be able to go to these lengths to get at the concealed truths behind corrupt politicians as well as whether celebrity x is doing drug y and whether it is in the public interest is for the public to decide.

The thing is he’s right; if journalsist were hacking into the PM’s phone and finding he was selling uranium to Iran through the back door we wouldn’t give a damn... the problem is (and this is going to sound very, very pretentious of me) that most of the public are too stupid to care about things that matter. They don’t want to know about human rights abuses in Darfur, they want to know if the X-Factor winner is on Heroine or was once friends with a man who killed his family.

Economically speaking this all boils down to simple supply & demand, only with the press we have another can of worms in who is influencing who in this equation? Are the press supplying the public’s demand for gossip or by creating gossip are they creating the demand? To say theres a broad answer to that is insane, consumers of some media no doubt read it because it supplies their demand for investigative journalism but I have no doubt at all that the tabloids are only contributing towards riling up demand by creating a gossip culture.

What’s the answer? Sadly the only one that springs to mind is to get the public to be less stupid and only buy press that covers issues that actually matter. Then celebrities can live hassle free lives and we can all focus on more important issues. It’s much like films; banning sex and violence will ban The Godfather as much as any other crappy action film... now all we have to do is persuade people not to see crappy action films...

Watch McMullens testimony here (warning, it is 2 hours long and he is a reprehensible scumbag): http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/bbc_parliament/newsid_9651000/9651127.stm

As an aside this is just my musings on privacy from the media, not the media printing deliberately sensationalised, misleading and at times outright false information.

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Jennifer Government much?

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Dear Die-ary, there's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... but I can't help but look forward to where it's going

Jhonen Vasquez

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It's been a while hasn't it

Well to break the proverbial silence (if you can call the internet speech) here's a rant that's spawned from my need to vent about anything; so after throwing darts in my head I picked Libyan conspiracy theories:

Unless you've been living in a cave at the arse end of nowhere or are so hip you're stuck in the 80s you'll probably notice that most of the world is quietly egging on a revolution in Libya. Now to get this out of the way; as far as I'm concerned NATO are full of shit about their involvement here; they claim vehemently that this has nothing to do with aiding a civil war against a guy they all hate but are basically just bulldozing loyalist armies into the ground. The NTC has Tripoli with only a handful of Gadaffi loyalists left who're, in the grand scheme of things, only a minimal (as manimal as people with guns can ever be) threat to civvies. And we're hardly hearing of any mass killings in Sirte, although the western media are probably busy hacking as many phones and bribing as many witnesses as possible to sell more papers. Yet, NATO is still all for bombing the crap out of the town while everyone's favourite criminally idiotic world "leader" is already asking for being offered oil from the fledgling government.

Unfortunately, as with any major world event, there are conspiracy theories abound from self-important wannabe journalists, bloggers and of course the Russian media usually concerning NATO ground troops going around massacaring civvies like no tomorrow and then censoring the media. Hilariously a lot of them kept insisting the the rebels weren't winning days before the rebels won and that the western media was lying. psst, Lizzie, I don't know if you're aware but there's audible gunfire when you say things are back to normal... what about that LIE (since you're so keen on emphasising that word) eh? How about the lie that the UK's inept, red-tape encrusted police force were abusing human rights in putting down opportunistic riots when the UK public largely condemned them for being such a bunch of limp noodles? As a second note; I know I shouldn't be giving these and other idiots the time of day but all 3 of you who may actually skim this over have the right to decide what you like about these people and I like to give proof out that I know what I'm talking about - even if that is the rather obvious statement that the internet is full of quacks who'll make shit up to seem more self important - after all the world has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes except theirs.

The point behind this rant is less that certain people will claim things without any proof (like maybe proof that any of the people in this video are NATO mercenaries as the author claims); god knows Governments have been doing that for ages (Iraq anyone?) but that these people are taken so seriously by so many without a single scrap of actual proof. Now, for note number 3, I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility that NATO may have more of a hand in this than they are willing to admit, hell I'm willing to go so far as to say I actually believe the CIA, MI6 and other agencies helped incite mass revolt across the arab world in the past 12 months, possibly using violent means. I believe that because it's the sort of things Espionage agencies do; the word espionage gives it away somewhat and yes the UK, US and most of Europe will benefit. This however is my personal opinion which, due to the nature of Espionage can never be fully proven wrong but then espionage agencies have never been about transparency or making friends so I'm sure they'll cope with 1 persons cynicism. I have no proof so I don't make any claims as such.

Those who do make such audacious claims are, aside from refusing to show any proof be they photographs, hacked e-mails or interviews (and since I'm talking about Russia Today as well; money and security isn't an issue here) guilty of 2 further crimes, first; belittling the people in Libya who actually didn't like Gadaffi which, in case you didn't notice back in February, was a lot of them and second belittling the efforts of past war correspondents who have reported what they have seen - hell, war photography had a stark effect on the course of the Vietnam war;

Inevitably people will claim that the NWO or whoever will be suppressing information but a) it clearly didn't stop Julian Assange as wikileaks is still up and running (although no doubt someone will claims that was a NWO conspiracy as well) and b) given that every media outlet in the world was more than happy to jump all over Wikileaks' revelations, what on earth makes you think they wouldn't here? What on earth makes you think that soldiers are willing to smuggle out pictures of abuse and blow the whistle on mistreatment in 1 conflict but not another?

So the take home message form this wall of text is this - I'm sick of people using genuine strife for their own aims, be they greedy European governments who'll at least funnel the oil back to you - since I don't see any of you in a hurry to move to Libya, one of the world's most infamous bastions of oppression and censorship - or self-righteous tossers who prowl the internet looking for opportunities to tell everyone how much smarter than them they are and then censor any and every logical criticism lead against them. Finally they belittle the fact that, by hook or by crook, Col. Gadaffi is gone and, while the new leaders may not be any better (and probably US puppets in some form or another - probably because of that old al Quaeda chestnut the US like to throw out whenever they want to control something), at least time will tell in that regard.

...and a final note; no I don't trust any media outlet to not be politically influenced - I just trust that they're the most backstabbing bunch out there.

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On pulling the plug

I wonder when it was that I became so used to the internet that pulling out the LAN cable and switching off the wirless feels like disconnecting from the world itself when 90% of the time it's the other way round.

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nevver:

Hate it

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Words are just a prison for voices.

Anon - in reference to music.

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Quick thought experiment

What is the first relationship you define between the numbers 5 and 1?

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antistigma:

“We like to hack hardware and software, why not hack our bodies?” says Tim Chang, a self-quantifier and Silicon Valley investor who is backing the development of several self-tracking gadgets.

Indeed, why not give yourself an “upgrade”, says Dave Asprey, a “bio-hacker” who takes self-quantification to the extreme of self-experimentation. He claims to have shaved 20 years off his biochemistry and increased his IQ by as much as 40 points through “smart pills”, diet and biology-enhancing gadgets.

“I’ve rewired my brain,” he says.

 And what do you know, someone already blogged this (see my previous post). As I said, as a biologist, this likely isn't "hacking", it's more likely just placebos good diet and exercise. In the end I don't doubt he has improved his quality of life (although I doubt hugely he has any evidence for any of this) but it concerns me that people think of themselves a machines and obsess over quantities.

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A thought

All the time poeple claim that something about us seperates us from animals with an air of pride and conciet for the natural world. Yet no-one seems to consider what seperates us from machines. People now claim that they can "hack" their body (which is just exercise, good diet and placebos only framed in a cybernetic context) and cybernetic transhumanism grows in popularity every day. Maybe I'm reading too much into things but I worry about how much humans identify with machines... massively so.

Cyberpunk made us question whether a computer can be alive, why have we never wondered why it should be alive at all? A computer is a tool, not a person or a life, it exists to serve it's creators. Sure you could make one that thinks and I'd call it alive but what does that prove other than the fact that it can be done? Some may argue that this will create our successors and open the gateway to a new phase in evolution and perhaps it will (although few observe the rigors of social psychology), but in the end it seems like a shortcut to a better self to me. There are I'm certain other ways, different ways and more natural ways of going beyond humanity but everyone fixates on only 1 vision or, most often, none at all.

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...here's one. I don't normally get offensive but I'm having a bad day and this fruitcake deserves ridicule.

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This sort of thing doens't really interest me much but as Universities are attacked I feel I have to give one retort: The vast, vast majority of people who have wanted to change the way the world thinks throughout the history of the world, be they free thinkers, extremists, revolutinaries, philosophers or CEOs have all been drawn from the intellectual elite. It's the price you pay for having an education system at all. Universities do not have any obligation to stop extremist leanings, if anything they have a duty to allow these people to develop their ideas because that's the whole point of education. They have only failed if they do not give these people an oppertunity to voice their ideas so that equally educated people can criticise and denounce them for euqally well educated reasons.

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Wow. Just wow. Someone actually hacked a major corporation specifically to humiliate them. Having lived a very disconnected life for many years I'm sure I've probably missed a few of these but still...

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Interesting read to say the least. It also neatly relates to my previous post about people engineering their 15mins of fame. 

On a more personal level, this story makes me wonder what will happen if companies realise the lucrative nature of owning and auctioning off IPv6 addresses. Perhaps we'll end up with some teired market where some companies own most of IPv6 and other have to either fight for their right to reach consumers of newer technology or remain lumbered with IPv4, only accessible to a few Ateks who refuse to upgrade or keep these things independently. Addresses could easily become commodities akin to stock or even rented on an licensed to different companies under the eye of (mega)corperations as a neat way of increasing their market coverage (through access to the info from their IP's which they technically own) while masquerading as being less ad-oriented. After all if Google owns the IP's of half the web what need does it have to have superfluous adverts, the companies involved get less exposure but at least they're searchable... Alternatively it could work in reverse and the exodus to IPv6 could prompt the vast consumption of IPv4 to increase processing power and search manipulation, as well as a good dumping ground for all kinds of backwater data. This is all very much a fantasy (not the good kind) for now but then a lot of things have exceeded even the fantastiic imaginations of people far, far more creative than me.

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Northaunt - Shadows over the Barren Land (Barren Land - 2002)

Again, listening while immersed in yesterdays photo is reccommended

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Ghost in the Shell OST - Puppetmaster (Ghost in the Shell OST, 1995)

Apt for the blog and, in an odd way, yesterdays photo (which I urge you to look at if you've not already).