Boing Boing » activism

Hacking Politics: name-your-price ebook on the history of the SOPA fight

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:37:09 +0000

Hacking Politics is a new book recounting the history of the fight against SOPA, when geeks, hackers and activists turned Washington politics upside-down and changed how Congress thinks about the Internet. It collects essays by many people (including me): Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Nicole Powers, Tiffiny Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, and many others. It's a name-your-price ebook download.

Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.
Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.

Hacking Politics

A fantastic long read about activism and nuclear weapons

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:30:15 +0000

Last summer, a nun, a drifter, and a house painter broke into the secure compound surrounding the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — the laboratory that made uranium for the Manhattan Project and continues to be a major part of America's nuclear infrastructure. Their goal: To put America on trial. Dan Zak has written an amazing piece for the Washington Post, blending this story with the history of Oak Ridge and and in-depth look at the future of the US nuclear weapons program. Very much worth your time.

Cartoonists speak out for gun control

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:55:03 +0000

Ruben "Tom the Dancing Bug" Bolling sez, "I organized this video, getting cartoonists as diverse as Trudeau (Doonesbury), Spiegelman (Maus, etc), Keane (Family Circus), Mazzucchelli (Batman etc), Mo Willems (Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny) and others to illustrate a script advocating gun law reform narrated by Julianne Moore (!) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (!!)."

Cartoonists

Ethan Zuckerman on civic engagement

Elisabeth Soep — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:08:50 +0000

It’s easy to find alarming evidence that we’ve lost our way when it comes to civics in the US. But longtime global activist and MIT prof Ethan Zuckerman says there’s a lot to get excited about too, if we’re willing to think in new ways about what it even means to be civically engaged in the digital age.

Ethan’s working with a group of scholars and practitioners (I’m one of them) to track how young people are expressing voice and exerting agency in public spheres through participatory politics. Registering to vote or campaigning for a candidate are obvious and important political moves. But so is appropriating Occupy for hurricane relief, mobilizing Hunger Games fans to organize for real-life civil rights, or producing a libertarian music video professing a crush on the economist Friedrich Hayek, (thanks Liana Gamber Thompson).

But here’s the rub. If we’re willing to take this expansive view of civics, how do we start to make sense of what any given activity really achieves in the world? When does “voice” make a difference? That’s the question Ethan took on this week in his keynote, How Do We Teach Digital Civics? at the Digital Media and Learning conference in Chicago. He offered this diagram as a way to map actions into one of four quadrants.

Want to figure out where your own civic moves fit in the mix? You can watch Ethan’s whole talk here. It’s an attempt to envision an approach to civics that engages young people’s imaginations and networks rather than telling them what to do.

Aaron Swartz's San Francisco memorial will make you stand up and salute

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:12:24 +0000

The video from Aaron Swartz's memorial in San Francisco isn't the kind of thing you weep over. It's the kind of thing you stand up and salute. Aaron's friends stood up, and, one after another, demanded that his memory be honored by action, by justice, by dedicating yourself to the fight. It's the best start to the week of all.

Aaron Swartz Memorial at the Internet Archive, Part 1 (January 24, 2013) (Thanks, Danny!)

Suicide Girls interview about Homeland, part two

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:50:38 +0000

Suicide Girls has just published part two of its two-part interview with me about Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother (here's part one). In it, we talk about activism, clicktivism, and the future of Internet-connected politics:

There is a lot of cynicism about clicktivism and the idea that if it’s too easy to be politicized, if all you need to do to take action is click an online petition, then it siphons off energy that could be used to change the world. It’s probably true that some people go, I’ve done my bit, I clicked that petition. But other people who never would have taken any political action start with that one click.
The height of the barrier to entry has to be correlated with the overall size of the movement. If it takes an enormous affirmative step to start your journey, then a lot of people will never start. If on the other hand it’s cheap to try, then a lot of people will try. And the more people you have trying, the more people you will have who will find that it’s what they want to do. That’s the upside of it. This is why I’m not cynical about clicktivism. This is why I’m glad to have a spectrum of ways that people can engage. The shopkeeper understands that the first requirement for selling things is getting people in the door; a political activist has to understand that the first requirement for building a movement is to have people take some step to want to be involved in a movement. And the smaller that step can be, the easier it is to get them involved.
I think of it like a church…It’s a tiny minority of people who join the clergy, but all of the people who join the clergy started by showing up on Sunday. If step one is eschew all material things, take a vow of silence and a vow of chastity and wear a hair shirt for the rest of your life, your clergy will be thinly populated. You need a step one that isn’t total engagement for the rest of your life, right?

Cory Doctorow: Homeland Part 2

Free/open source programmer and Creative Commons activist Bassel Khartabil faces torture in notorious Syrian prison

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:38:57 +0000

Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian free/open source developer and Creative Commons activist, has been in prison in Syria since June, and his colleagues around the world have been agitating for his release. Now, the news gets worse: a recently released fellow inmate reports that Khartabil has been subject to harsh treatment and torture in Syrian custody. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Eva Galperin:

According to a new Amnesty International report, a released detainee has informed Bassel Khartabil’s family that he is being held at the Military Intelligence Branch in Kafr Sousseh and had been tortured and otherwise ill-treated.
In response to this alarming news, Bassel's friends and supporters around the world have launched a letter-writing campaign, hoping to flood Syrian officials and diplomats with physical mail demanding that Khartabil be formally charged and given access to a lawyer or released immediately. Participants are encouraged to send photographs of their letters to info@freebassel.org.

Torture Fears for Open Source Software Activist Detained in Syria

(Image: Bassel, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from joi's photostream)

Wyclef Jean's highly-hyped Haiti charity defunct and in debt, surprising approximately nobody

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:13:58 +0000

Yéle, the Haiti charity of rock star Wyclef Jean that took in some $16 million after the 2010 eaarthquake, is bust. How bust? So bust that their domain, yele.org, has expired.

Deborah Sontag in the NYT, writing about the rockstar who once thought himself a good choice as president of Haiti:

"In a new memoir, Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip-hop celebrity, claims he endured a “crucifixion” after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake when he faced questions about his charity’s financial record and ability to handle what eventually amounted to $16 million in donations."

But, as Sontag writes, an ongoing investigation by the NY attorney general’s office has found financial improprieties at the nonprofit, which effectively went out of business in September, "leaving a trail of debts, unfinished projects and broken promises."

And defunct domains.

(via Damien Cave)

Model boats will explore contaminated New York City waterway

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:10:02 +0000

The Newtown Creek Armada preview from Newtown Creek Armada on Vimeo.

Nathan Kensinger is an artist "whose work explores hidden urban landscapes, off-limits structures, and other liminal spaces." He told me about a project that he, Laura Chipley, and Sarah Nelson Wright are working on called The Newtown Creek Armada:

It's a public art installation that is using remote control boats and underwater cameras to explore the Newtown Creek, a federal Superfund Site in New York City.

The installation opens this weekend, when we will be inviting the public to pilot our fleet of nine miniature boats, and to film their own voyage on the Newtown Creek. We will also be presenting several videos of our voyages that document the more polluted parts of the creek, which is home to the second largest oil spill in the United States, and has been used as a dumping ground for heavy industry and raw sewage for over 150 years. Despite this history, nature is slowly returning to the area, as we discovered on our voyages.

The Newtown Creek Armada

YouTube announces face blurring feature

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:01:18 +0000

Good idea -- YouTube announces a way to blur faces in videos. I hope they add a feature that puts Guy Fawkes masks on people, too.

Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.

YouTube is proud to be a destination where people worldwide come to share their stories, including activists. Along with efforts like the Human Rights Channel and Citizentube that curate these voices, we hope that the new technologies we’re rolling out will facilitate the sharing of even more stories on our platform.

Face blurring: when footage requires anonymity

A is For: Awareness

Maureen Herman — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:23:48 +0000

For A is For founder and actress Martha Plimpton, the shock of the rhetoric surrounding the Rush Limbaugh /Sandra Fluke controversy, as well as the success of the ensuing advertiser boycott, inspired her to gather a group of friends to brainstorm a strategy more formal than clicking “like” on Facebook. The group was united in their outrage and their growing awareness that the status of women’s rights was by no means a done deal. In fact, things that we had all taken for granted, like, um, access to birth control pills, were very much at risk of being gone in our own lifetimes. Our own children, planned or unplanned, may not have the same choices we had when wanting to start, or wait to start, their own families. What could be done to have a real impact?

Plimpton promptly founded A is For, an organization that unifies the diverse voices and issues in the new women’s movement under the reclaimed symbol of the red letter A --that instantly recognizable symbol of excoriation and shame that heroine Hester Prynne was forced to wear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter. Used by Prynne’s Puritan Boston community to brand and shun both her and the baby girl she had out of wedlock, the A stood for Adultery -- and the double standard to which women were held. The group A is For takes back the A by re-appropriating its meaning to one of dignity, defiance, and autonomy, and encourages others to reclaim the A to define what it means to them. A is For Awareness, A is For Affordable Health Care. A is For Ass-kicking. You get the idea.

Immediately, Plimpton proposed starting an “A” ribbon campaign in direct response to the shaming of Sandra Fluke in the attempts to silence her. The group agreed that the new movement needed an ongoing unifying symbol, the red letter A, to serve as a bold historical reminder that women will not be shamed into silence. One major goal would be to distribute the A to every person and organization fighting for women’s human rights in this country and around the world to wear proudly in solidarity. As for immediate change on the ground, within a month of starting the organization, A is For partnered with The Center for Reproductive Rights to be their direct action partner. Money raised via donations for the ribbons would go to CRR to fulfill their mission of “advancing reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right that all governments are legally obligated to protect, respect, and fulfill.” Now A is For had found a way to have a real impact (besides the Facebook “like” button). CRR is currently winning one major battle in their fight at the front lines to keep the one abortion clinic left in the state of Mississippi open.

By now, everyone has heard the “War on Women” stories: Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood; Rush Limbaugh vs. Sandra Fluke; state-sanctioned rape in Texas with mandatory and medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds; a Walgreens pharmacist in Albuquerque refusing to fill a woman’s birth control Rx due to his “religious beliefs”; comedian Tosh .0 proposing that a female audience member offended by his rape jokes be gang-raped by male audience members. The list --unfortunately -- goes on and on.

What gets lost in the relentless headlines are the personal experiences that inform the passion behind these issues. Personal stories unify and connect women in a way that those without the experiences or the same body parts may never truly understand until they’re awakened by directly hearing them. These experiences are the bond that constitutes the mighty heft of the social media muscle behind the new women’s movement, which I watched executed with glee during the Komen flap, and with pride during the Limbaugh boycott.

Many of the issues are experiences I’ve personally had. Though you probably couldn’t tell by looking at me, I’m kind of the Forrest Gump of social ills and sexual abuse. I’ve survived child molestation, rape, and mental illness. I’ve recovered from alcoholism and crack addiction. I’ve been gang-raped, was impregnated by it, carried the baby to term, and am now a single white mother raising a lovely girl with caramel-colored skin in a still-racist and sexist America. I’ve been on public assistance more than once. I’ve been homeless in New York. And Nashville. I’ve done a lot of things to be ashamed of, but have worked hard not to live in shame. Incarnating the problems of society, then recovering from them may not be as exciting as it looks on TV, but it has kept me busy.

My first conscious memory is at 5 years old, being molested (the first time) by a distant adult cousin with cerebral palsy whose name was -- wait for it -- Uncle Dick. It’s not a good way to start the mind off in a life, to live with a weird secret right off the bat. But I eventually told, and will continue to tell. Having survived that, and other weirdness and creepiness, and then gang rape, hearing about something like the Tosh.0 incident hits me differently than, say, a person who feels that you should check your political correctness at the door when you go to see a comedy show. And truly, before I personally experienced gang-rape, and as someone who came from a controversy-loaded midwest punk scene, I am pretty sure I may have thought of it the same way. The thinking was along the lines of the fake 60 Minutes Point/Counterpoint pundit in the disaster spoof “Airplane,” who declares, in pure Hannity forefathering, “They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, ‘Let ‘em crash!’”

I’ve come to find that my abuse was not unique or uncommon, even in my own family. In fact, I have many friends and family with heartbreaking stories. One friend agreed to let me anonymously share her story here for the first time, in the hopes it might help other girls come forward and get help. My friend was first molested by a relative at age 7, then she was repeatedly raped by the same relative for many years until she was finally old enough to find a way to ward off the attacks. Her abuse started at such a young age and went on for so long that she is now unable to have children. She is trying to have her eggs harvested so she can have children via a surrogate. So when someone tells a rape joke, these are the experiences and tragedies that jump to her mind. When she hears a news story about a law being passed that won’t let you get an abortion even in cases of incest or rape, that is the trauma she remembers and feels. Put yourself there. In her shoes. Just for a minute. See? Having someone take that choice away from you violates you all over again.

I’ve had two abortions. I was married then, and we weren’t ready to have children. The journey I made to carry out the rape pregnancy and raise my baby alone was a different choice, and not done for wholly valiant reasons. But it was what I ultimately chose this time, and I am so grateful every single day to have my incredible daughter in my life. I love her to pieces. But what I chose is in no way the right choice for everyone. I don’t know that most people could take it -- I almost couldn’t sometimes. It was often physically and mentally brutal and almost destroyed me and my family. It certainly would have been an unthinkable choice for my friend. Oh, and fuck you Rick Santorum.

My daughter is thriving, gifted, beautiful, and funny. I just hope that should this happen to her -- and there’s a 1 in 6 chance that it will -- that she will have the same legal right as I had to choose what is best for her. Because I wouldn’t wish the struggle it’s been on anyone. And for the child of a rapist, first of all, it isn’t easy growing up not knowing who your dad is. But it’s even harder growing up knowing what kind of guy he was.

Having someone or some entity take over control of what’s going on “down there” or threatening to block or take away the human right to decide who or what is going on inside of your body, is a very personal, very visceral violation. It brings up the same primal feelings of humiliation, powerlessness, and abusiveness as rape does -- just in varying intensities. And this is true whether you’re 7 years old or 90. That is why you hear this unified outcry when a male governor signs into law a mandatory transvaginal ultrasound (aka penetration with a 10 inch shaming wand) to punish Texan women for daring to choose a legal abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy -- for any reason. I guess it’s more humane than being stoned to death, but at least no one in those societies pretends that being smashed with rocks is a medical procedure.

The “War on Women” isn’t just being fought in Washington, and on the steps of state capitals. It’s being fought in bedrooms, hospitals, comedy clubs -- everywhere girls and women go. The wounded from this war walk among us.They are our sisters and our aunts, our mothers and our daughters, our girlfriends and our frenemies, our bosses and our co-workers. And men are increasingly a part of both the narrative and the movement --and they should be, because reproductive rights are not just women’s rights, they are human rights.

So when we see a backlash at the next thinly veiled legislative attempt at weakening women’s constitutionally-protected right and access to an abortion, those voices are speaking from experience. It isn’t about someone being right, it’s about respecting the validity of individual experience, and how understanding that person’s experience can awaken you from ignorance and transform you to illuminated. So maybe you didn’t know that 1 in 6 women in your audience, maybe in your own family, and certainly in the United States, has been raped, and that 15% of them were under 12 years of age. But now you know. Now you are aware, and so now you are responsible.

I was lucky enough to be at that original A is For dinner party, invited based on my obvious interest reflected in my relentless Facebook “likes” to Martha Plimpton’s withering commentary and brilliant observations. She gave shocking clarity to issues like the ludicrous Republican view of a woman’s body in the personhood amendment debates. She stated, “They may not like the fact of my biology. They may think it’s dirty or shameful or that I should keep it to myself. Or even that I should be tied to it, like a prisoner, as if my biology made me less worthy of respect. But my biology is part of what makes me a human being. And whether they like it or not, I am a person.” At the time I was painfully aware of the need for a unifying umbrella we could all get under and Martha’s passion, dedication, and comprehensive knowledge, made that possible. By the end of the dinner party that night, we had an “A” design done and I had volunteered to have my nonprofit, Project Noise, officially support the campaign.

Soon, Sarah Silverman was wearing the A while speaking at a rally in Los Angeles. Within days, comedian and Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead had joined us. She proudly wore the A on the Rachel Maddow show. She wore it as she toured the U.S. with the release of her new book, “Lizz Free or Die.” In one of her stories, Lizz tells of getting pregnant at 17 - -the very first time she ever had sex. Abortion was safe and legal -- and like me, Lizz exercised the right to choose what was best for her. She has been an avid defender and supporter of Planned Parenthood for many years. Her raw courage in telling her story in her new book opens the door for more women to share the crucial, life-altering importance of having had that choice, and to support Planned Parenthood for being there for whichever option they decided. And really, if Lizz had instead raised a baby at 17 and gone a different life path, The Daily Show would never have been created, and then where in the hell would I get my news? So no, we’re not going to get rid of that.

You don’t know what someone has gone through, unless you ask. I once asked my friend if she ever saw her childhood abuser again. It turns out she had. She was in her mid-20’s. She was going to confront him as an adult. She did. She asked him why. He denied it, then admitted it but claimed it was her fault. She screamed at him. He slammed her head into the wall, and she got knocked out. And raped. Again. She never did tell her family. Silenced. And sadly, like most rape victims, including myself, she partially blames herself for the attack. “Maybe if I hadn’t gone there, maybe if I’d been sober I could have fought back.” Meanwhile our attackers walk free. 97% of rapists never spend a day in jail and 54% of rapes never get reported. Some of those rapes last minutes, some last decades, but the victims are all around you in ways you might never imagine, with lifelong scars both external and internal. Experiences inform us. Listening to someone’s experience informs us. Pointedly asking women in your life about their experiences will inform you.

The members and supporters of A is For proudly wear the A pin to say to the world, “I’m here and I won’t shut up.” We wear it for each other to say, “I’m here for you and I get it.” We hope you’ll join us in fighting for reproductive rights and wear one, too. You’ll look fucking Awesome.

To get your own “A” ribbon to support A is For and Center for Reproductive Rights, just click here. To be a part of the video project “What Does Your A Mean to You?” featuring Sarah Silverman, Martha Plimpton, Tom Morello, Lizz Winstead, and people like you, please send a short video (iPhone video is fine) to aisfor@projectnoise.org to tell us what your A means to you. For questions, contact info@projectnoise.org. All donations made to A is For are tax deductible. A is For is a project of Project Noise, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. To donate via PayPal: donate@projectnoise.org

To learn more about what you can do to help sexual abuse and rape survivors, go to this amazing org, The Rape and Incest National Network, aka RAINN

Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution - exclusive interview with author Doug Fine

Mark Frauenfelder — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:37:09 +0000

I had a great time interviewing Doug Fine about his latest book: Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution.

Too High to Fail covers everything from a brief history of hemp to an insider’s perspective on a growing season in Mendocino County, where cannabis drives 80 percent of the economy (to the tune of $6 billion annually). Investigative journalist Doug Fine follows one plant from seed to patient in the first American county to fully legalize and regulate cannabis farming. He profiles an issue of critical importance to lawmakers, media pundits, and ordinary Americans -- whether or not they inhale. It’s a wild ride that includes swooping helicopters, college tuitions paid with cash, cannabis-friendly sheriffs, and never-before-gained access to the world of the emerging legitimate, taxpaying “ganjaprenneur.”

While researching the book, what did you learn about cannabis and the use of it that surprised you?

Probably the most surprising revelation to me after a year spent on the front lines of the Drug War is how ready Middle America is for the coming Drug Peace -- especially with regard to legalizing cannabis. One collective I researched, in Orange County, CA (yep, Nixon's stomping grounds) had seniors as the majority of membership. These were people for whom cannabis was not political. It was medicine that worked: for arthritis, glaucoma, appetite stimulation. Americans recently polled at 56% in favor of regulating cannabis like alcohol, up from 49% a year ago. So we could be close to the kind of mainstream tipping point that ended alcohol Prohibition. And that surprised me. The "Brains on Drugs" stigma is disappearing, even in the heartland.

Who stands to profit from keeping cannabis illegal, and who will profit if it is regulated like alcohol?

Well, I first off like to always impart a sort of Humility Preface before prognostication. We don't know exactly what the future may bring, but we do have a lot of history as an example. Prohibition breeds organized crime. That's who profits from the status quo, on the business side. With the regulation of cannabis like alcohol, I heard some of today's farmers worry that we'll get a few Coors type overlords. That may be, but when Jimmy Carter changed the brewing rules, the microbrewery age exploded, and the farmers I cover in Too High to Fail are confident that there will likewise always be room for the top shelf craft farmer, the way that there's always room for Sierra Nevada or New Belgium today. I agree with them: we're talking about a multibillion dollar industry that's already bigger than corn and wheat combined. Imagine the tax revenue! Another beneficiary of the coming Drug Peace era is the American people, in the form of energy independence: a USDA biologist told me that when it comes to cannabis as a biofuel source, “It’s magnitudes more productive than corn- or soy-based ethanol. But it’s not even on our blackboard because it’s a federal crime.” Thus were the farmers I followed practicing a kind of patriotic civil disobedience. One day they'll be teaching university courses to students dubious that their crop was ever really illegal.

You spent a year in Mendocino County, and you hung out with farmers, and law enforcement. What did you do to gain their trust?

One of the most astonishing parts of researching this book for me was how open everyone was, especially in Mendocino County. Generally speaking, second or third generation farmees are sick of being considered criminals, and are ready to be recognized as sustainably farmer's of Americas #1 cash crop (and one of humanity's longest used). Specifically, in the "Zip-tie Program" I was following in Mendocino County (whereby farmers paid permitting fees which bestowed a yellow bracelet -- a Zip-tie -- on every one of their plants), farmers are courageous activists, defying federal law to come aboveboard and support their community. The Zip-tie program, in 2011, raised $600,000 and saved seven deputy jobs. So gaining trust wasn't very difficult, especially once I had the trust of several prominent farmers. In truth, though, everyone was happy to talk to me, including the back barn geneticist who developed the strain that I followed from farm to patient. The farmer and I called the individual plant "Lucille," for reasons that become humorously clear in Too High to Fail. I will say that because of this openness it's been a huge sigh of relief to have the farmers I covered in the book one by one tell me they like it. The Drug War is a war like any other, and it's these brave front line soldiers, putting themselves at risk for what they know is right, for the good of patients and of the country, who are playing one of the most dangerous and prominent roles. One of the farmers I covered, Matt Cohen, was raided near the end of the book. The other, Tomas Balogh, was able to get Lucille to patients, including to a liver cancer patient I visited. Will these farmers benefit financially when cannabis prohibition ends? Sure, why shouldn't they?

What was the specific incident that made you want to write this book?

There were two. One was a massive multiagency raid of a neighbor of mine that netted all of 13 plants and zero jail time (not that it should have netted jail time). I was particularly irked by this as my normal alarm clock in my remote valley near the Mexican border is hummingbirds at the feeder, and this particular Thursday I'm in a scene out of Goodfellas. Literally millions of taxpayer dollars were spent NOT to go after the Cartels that day. The second, related incident, was that the mayor of one of the nearest towns to my ranch, a border village called Columbus, was arrested as a Cartel member. The Drug War isn't working, and anyone can complain about bad policy, but I wanted to research an alternative. A solution. And I found a pretty easy one: tax cannabis like alcohol and you cut out 70% of the Cartel's profits. There are other benefits, too, to the American tax base, to public safety, to public health, and even to creativity: as the Digerati know, this is the idea era, and a U.S. which is friendly to cannabis, I argue in Too High to Fail, is a country more cerebral than one on alcohol or our nation's real epidemic: pills. Even with all of this, though, I needed to feel like the topic was important enough to spend a year of my working life researching. What I found out about cannabis' soil restoration uses and potential role in America's energy independence sealed the deal: it's a plant that should and I hope soon will be a valuable part of our economy and society.

For the 150 million plus people who think America should legalize cannabis, what should be done to make it happen?

From a political perspective, I would say call your congressperson and senators and tell them you are voting based on their support for getting cannabis out of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and letting states regulate the plant like alcohol (and also that you won't tolerate sneaky permitting of pharmaceutical derivatives, only the whole plant). How is it that 56% of American support regulating cannabis like alcohol (and 80% support medicinal cannabis) and yet virtually no U.S. Senators support it? They aren't hearing from Americans demanding that this trillion dollar, 40-year boondoggle end. In your personal life, speak openly about how serious and important an issue ending the Drug War is -- it's not some college stoner issue. It's crucial for America. And that will help finally dissipate the stigma that's still attached to cannabis after decades of misinformation until it's considered not just as safe as alcohol, but safer. Which is not to say one must absolutely advocate its use in all circumstances. Rather it's to say that responsible adult Americans who choose to use cannabis should have the same rights as those who choose to drink a glass of wine. Furthermore, that sigma erasing will help inject billions of tax dollars into the economy and return small American farmers to the land. It might even help us become energy independent.

Doug adds: The Too High to Fail pre-order is on now everywhere for hardcover and e-book: Amazon, iTunes, your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, etc. And if we sell 100,000 first run hardcovers I'll request my publisher come out with a hemp edition -- saving several hundred thousand trees. Too bad it can't be American grown...yet. Continuous dispatches on sustainability and the coming Drug Peace Era, plus nationwide live event The Too High to Fail Pax Cannabis Tour dates for August and September and a short film about the book are at www.dougfine.com.

Buy Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution on Amazon

Member of European Parliament sends "Thank you for fighting ACTA" email with 2K emails in the body

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 08:00:17 +0000

Lee sez,

As part of my protest against ACTA I signed up to the fightforthefuture.org web page, and asked them to contact my MEP on my behalf, which they did.
Now that ACTA has been defeated, Paul Nuttall, UKIP MEP for the North West and UKIP Deputy Leader, emailed people who had protested, en masse. (I am in Devon in the South West, so he is not my particular representative).
I include the email below, but the interesting part is the forwarded message underneath, which includes a list of all TWO THOUSAND AND TWENTY ONE people who signed up...
33 minutes after receiving the email I received another from Paul Nuttall requesting the recall of the email, a little late really.

I frequently hear from career Euro activists that the Members of the European Parliament have little or no IT expertise and support. Everyone has mixed up CC and BCC at some time or another, but using CC or BCC to send an email to 2,021 people in the first place is poor solution to a common problem. It's the kind of thing that your IT department should be able to sort out for you, by creating a mailing list with a single address whose membership MEPs can manage through a browser.

Update: Lee, who submitted the item, clarifies: "The email wasn't BCCd or CCd to the 2021 petitioners, the email that Paul Nuttall forwarded contained the list of emails in it's body. Indeed it seems very much like this list of emails was used to create an email group, which Paul Nuttall then used. He just made the very foolish mistake of forwarding an email containing peoples personal information, whilst saying how UKIP will defend UK citizens rights and privacy."

It's possible that some of the people whose identities were revealed in the email could face workplace sanctions for opposing ACTA (I know a lot of people in the entertainment industry who privately oppose many of their employers' initiatives), so revealing their identities is a potential big deal.

It would be great to see a free/open web service that let people securely send messages to their MEPs, and then also made it easy for the MEPs to reply to them, individually or as a group. If the European Parliament and individual MEPs' parties and staffers can't handle interaction with their constituencies, then the constituents may have to handle it for them.

Update: I received this from Paul Nuttall's office:

May we please ask that you publish our response and apology - and we of course also extend that apology personally to you.
Please find the statement below.
Yours sincerely,
Office of Paul Nuttall
As a libertarian party we are in favour of internet freedom.
We oppose ACTA in its entirety and we are currently campaigning against the EU-Canada trade deal (CETA) which contains many ACTA-like provisions.
http://www.theparliament.com/latest-news/article/newsarticle/eu-accused-of-trying-to-introduce-acta-through-the-back-door/

I can only tell you the simple truth; I was seeking to distribute an email protecting confidentiality using the bcc button but in error sent it out with a full list of emails attached.
I can only apologise, explain that it is the kind of mistake all too easy to make with modern technology and assure you that I have taken every step I can to rectify the situation since it happened.
We did not originally gather the data, nor did we intend to send it round. We did "bcc" (blind copy) all correspondents to protect identity. The list was sent to us and a number of other MEPs from an anti-ACTA campaign group which invited us to correspond with the list of contacts they had provided.
I hope you will accept our sincere apologies and can understand that this is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone.
Office of Paul Nuttall

Russian Wikipedia blacks out over censorship plan

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:41:09 +0000

People visiting the Russian-language Wikipedia today will find it blacked out, in protest of a proposed far-reaching Internet blacklist plan in Russia. Similar measures were used in the Italian Wikipedia to protest an Italian Internet censorship law, and in the English Wikipedia to protest SOPA/PIPA. The Russian proposal, Bill 89417-6, will establish a national censorwall that blocks "all websites containing pornography, drug ads and promoting suicide or extremist ideas." Here's a Google Translate translation of the Wikipedia message:

Today, July 10, the Duma hearings are going to amend the Act for information that could lead to the creation of extra-judicial censorship of the Internet in Russian, including the closure of access to Wikipedia in Russian.
Wikipedia community protests against censorship, dangerous to free knowledge, open to all mankind. We ask that you support in opposing this bill.

Russian Wikipedia Shutters In Protest of Internet Blacklist Plans

Domestic violence can happen to anyone

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:37:40 +0000

Four years ago, Jana Mackey, one of my college roommates at The University of Kansas, was killed by her ex-boyfriend. When I lived with Jana, I knew her as a music major and a really fun person. But she had a serious side that came to the forefront over the next few years. Jana went to law school, got involved in domestic violence activism, and became a lobbyist at the Kansas State Legislature trying to bring attention to women's health and safety.

Her work made her death tragically ironic, but it also drives home a point. Domestic violence (whether physical or emotional) isn't just something that happens to the naive, or the weak. It's not something you can write off as "somebody else's problem."

There's a picture going around Facebook right now, of a young woman holding a sign that says, "Society teaches, 'Don't get raped' when it should teach 'Don't rape.'" I think the same thing is true here. There's too much focus on finding reasons to criticize or distance ourselves from women who have been abused, and not enough of a focus on preventing abuse from happening—by teaching kids how to have healthy relationships, by encouraging family and friends to step in when they see someone they know being abusive, and by making sure cops and courts take domestic violence seriously.

Jana's family is trying to rectify this through a nonprofit called Jana's Campaign. The Campaign put out this video last winter. On the anniversary of Jana's death, I wanted to share it with you. There's a message here. Take it to heart. Together, we can stop asking people, "Why did you let that happen to yourself?" and, instead, find ways to change the social values and incentives that allow abusers to go unchallenged, untreated, and unpunished.

Visit the website for Jana's Campaign

Scout: get notified every time Congress proposes legislation with keywords you care about

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 02:06:21 +0000

Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez,

It is nearly impossible to follow all the activity in state and federal laws, regulations and speeches in Congress without a significant policy team or an army of lobbyists. Now you can. For free. The Sunlight Foundation's new tool called Scout allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions.
Start by entering a keyword or phrase you would like to get updates about, such as the vaguely defined "cyber threat" included in CISPA or any references to the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Scout then saves your subscriptions and sends notifications via email or text message whenever the subscribed issue or bill is talked about on the floor of Congress, mentioned in new regulations, appears in state and federal legislation or when Congress is moving forward for a vote. Through your profile you can create as many alerts as you'd like and group them by tags with the additional option to make them public for others to follow your issues. You can also complement a Scout subscription by adding optional external RSS feeds, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog.

Scout (Thanks, Nicko!)

CISPA—time to kill this sucker

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:44:04 +0000

Zak from Fight for the Future/Privacy is Awesome sez,:

It's only days before the Senate votes on its version of CISPA, and the SECURE IT Act. The bill would open all your data up to the government, no matter how personal. Good bye privacy, hello police state. Since the vote is soon, anything we do at this point has a big impact, so if you care about your privacy, stand with us and take these actions:
The first thing you can do is change your Facebook cover photo to show your friends the creepy records government will be keeping on us if CISPA passes.
There's another thing you can do to send your message even stronger. Visit a Senator's office and deliver this explanation of how CISPA and SECURE IT would trample our privacy, or mail it in if you can't visit in person. Tons of people will be doing this. It's the best way we can educate our senators; a disturbing number of them don't really understand what they're about to vote on.

Let's kill CISPA: America's universal surveillance law

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:07:37 +0000

Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future (standard-bearers in the fight against SOPA) sez,

Congressional hero of the SOPA wars, Senator Wyden, said about cyber security legislation (CISPA and Lieberman-Collins) that is expected to be taken up and passed in early June: "I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans' private data. These bills create a cyber industrial complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution."
Furthermore, privacy is awesome -- it lets you be yourself without fear of unjust scrutiny. But, these bills would end meaningful privacy and install meaningful surveillance. But, we can change the game: www.privacyisawesome.com.
CISPA passed the house recently. That seems like a blow, but unless a similar bill passes the Senate, that means nothing. We have one week to kill CISPA indefinitely. The playbook for this is rolling out today. If we can get senators to just stop and think for a minute before they vote on the bill, the clock will run out on it. To do that, we need to call Senate offices in the thousands requesting meeting at and information on Memorial Day events and during the Senators' recess, and get meetings in every state.
We're looking for people who can help keep building the movement for internet freedom, and who want to help stop CISPA.

Privacy is Awesome. Kill CISPA. (Thnaks, Tiffiniy)

Just Do It environmental outlaw activist documentary screening, free online for May Day

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:10:17 +0000

Emily sez,

Just Do It - a tale of modern-day outlaws is an exciting new documentary which takes you behind the scenes of the secret world of environmental direct action in the UK. Granted unprecedented access to film, director Emily James embedded herself inside a group of nonviolent UK activists as they shut down airports, stormed the fences of coal power stations, and super-glued themselves to bank trading floors, all despite the very real threat of arrest.
The film opened in the US just last week on Earth Day, however, in solidarity and support with May Day actions planned around the world - starting at 5:30pm EST on Monday 30th, the full film will be available to watch online for FREE for 24 hours on occupy.com, with a live Q&A with director Emily James at 7pm EST. To reserve your seat for the 5:30pm screening, simply head over to www.occupy.com/watch/ or to watch the film at any time during the 24-hour invitation, click "watch now" in the player.

You'll remember Emily and her awesome movie from such blogposts as this one.

Just do it | Occupy.com

Consent of the Networked: indispensable, levelheaded explanation of how technology can make us free, or take away our liberty

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:46:38 +0000

I've just finished Rebecca MacKinnon's Consent of the Networked, and now I'm kicking myself for letting it languish in my review pile for as long as I did. It is an absolutely indispensable account of the way that technology both serves freedom and removes it. MacKinnon is co-founder of the Global Voices project, and a director of the Global Network Initiative, and is one of the best-informed, clearest commentators on issues of networks and freedom from a truly global perspective.

MacKinnon does a fantastic job of tying her theory and analysis to real-world stories. She illustrates how governments are figuring out how to use networks to take freedom away, to control debate, to find and crush dissent. She shows how Internet corporations -- even the ones with a good track-record on protecting their users -- are prone to cooperating with the worst, most repressive instincts of governments (including supposedly liberal western governments).

But she also describes how technology contributes to freedom, and how savvy use of technology, combined with activism in the realm of Internet governance, lawmaking, and corporate affairs can turn technology into a force for liberation, accountability and freedom. She teases out the good and the bad of technology, working from recent examples like the Arab Spring uprisings, and names names and cites facts and figures when it comes to companies and governments who worked to undo the liberating power of technology.

Most of all, MacKinnon lays out a roadmap for tipping the technological balance towards freedom. She describes how diverse groups, including ones she works with, provide opportunities for all of us to work for positive change, in our capacity as citizens, employees of corporations, members of government, and as clued-in techies.

MacKinnon is a realist, but never a cynic, and provides a much-needed straight-shooting, levelheaded account of how the Internet changes power-relationships. This book should be read by anyone who cares about freedom today and in the decades to come.

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom

Official book site

African Men, Hollywood Stereotypes (video)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:37:27 +0000

[Video Link] A new video for Mama Hope, by Joe Sabia and crew.

Wouldn't it be better if African men weren't always depicted as warlords or victims?
Written by Benard, Brian, Derrick, Gabriel and the Mama Hope Team
Directed and Edited by Joe Sabia
Executive Produced and Shot by Bryce Yukio Adolphson
Produced by Nyla Rodgers
Motion Graphics by Jason Chandra
Sound by Equal Sonics
Original Music by Michael Thurber

On Tweetbombing and the Ethics of Attention

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:49:39 +0000

Something weird happened on Twitter yesterday. It was annoying and upsetting at the time, but now it's meaty fodder for behavioral analysis discussions. Ethan Zuckerman wrote a blog post about it that extracts some of the more interesting questions raised about social media and activism.

* Postscript: I've since traded tweets with the two guys behind the stunt, and we're cool.

SOPA-fighting champs DemandProgress want to hire a lead writer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:06:13 +0000

DemandProgress, the activist organization that was one of the main movers in the history-making fight against SOPA, is looking to hire a "Lead writer," who lives in NYC (or can relocate). Co-founder Aaron Swartz explains,

It’s a pretty incredible job: you’ll be leading a new lab to try to pioneer innovative ways of thinking about what works in online campaigning. And because it’s so experimental, it doesn’t require a whole lot of experience—in fact, not having any preconceptions might be a plus. It’d be perfect, for example, for a smart kid straight out of college.

They've also got some internships available.

Incredible opportunity: looking for a writer

Autism: Awareness isn't enough

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:32:18 +0000

Science writer Steve Silberman does an amazing job covering neurodiversity and the Autism community, so I've been waiting to get his take on the recent Centers for Disease Control data that found the rate of autism prevalence in the United States to be 1 in 88.

That prevalence rate has been on an upward trend for a while, and whenever the new stats come out (these are based on data from 2008), it triggers a shockwave of hand-wringing coverage that treats these figures as if they must be based on an increase in actual incidence of autism, as opposed to changes in diagnostic criteria and methods. This matters, Silberman writes, because the science seems to back up the idea that what we're actually seeing is better diagnosis.

That theory is bolstered by two recent studies in South Korea and the United Kingdom, which suggest that autism prevalence has always been much higher than the estimated 1-in-10,000 when the diagnostic criteria were much more narrow and exclusionary. What’s changed now is that — in addition to the radical broadening of the spectrum following the introduction of diagnostic subcategories like Asperger’s syndrome and PDD-NOS – clinicians, teachers, and parents have gotten much better at recognizing autism, particularly in very young children. That’s actually good news, because by identifying a child early, parents can engage the supports, therapies, modes of learning, and assistive technology that can help a kid express the fullest potential of their unique atypical mind.

The real problem, according to Silberman, isn't a mysterious increase in the number of children with autism. Instead, the problem is how we, as a society, treat those children once they are no longer children.

Once that 1-in-88 kid grows to adulthood, our society offers little to enable him or her to live a healthy, secure, independent, and productive life in their own community. When kids on the spectrum graduate from high school, they and their families are often cut adrift — left to fend for themselves in the face of dwindling social services and even less than the meager level of accommodations available to those with other disabilities.

Meanwhile, the lion’s share of the money raised by star-studded “awareness” campaigns goes into researching potential genetic and environmental risk factors — not to improving the quality of life for the millions of autistic adults who are already here, struggling to get by.

Instead, what people with autism really need is to be a part of their communities. That means acceptance of difference is more important than awareness of difference. It also means that respect, support, and inclusion are more important than frantic attempts to "cure" children who might not have anything really wrong with them.

Read the rest of Steve Silberman's story on autism awareness, autism acceptance, and what people with autism say they really want.

Image: Autism Awareness Ribbon, Colorful Puzzle Pieces, Free Creative Commons Public Domain Download, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from walkadog's photostream

Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:15:29 +0000

In The Atlantic today, a must-read piece by Teju Cole on some of the cultural issues raised by Kony 2012, and reactions to it in the media-blog-Twitter-opinion-sphere.

I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than "making a difference." There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

Read "The White Savior Industrial Complex" at the Atlantic.

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad email leak

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:01:07 +0000

Syrian activists have leaked a cache of documents purporting to be the private email of Bashar al-Assad and his coterie, penned during the slaughter of the Syrian opposition. The Guardian is working its way through them, authenticating them as thoroughly as they can.

In this overview, Robert Booth, Mona Mahmood and Luke Harding tour the documents' highlights, including advice from the Iranian government on putting down the uprising; a personal spy network that Assad employed to report direct to him, bypassing the nation's own security services; an offer of asylum in Doha, Qatar, should the family flee Syria; and a detailed media strategy for portraying the ruling clan in the best light (he is also advised to stop blaming Al Quaeda for his nation's troubles).

In this article, Robert Booth and Luke Harding document the lavish lifesyte enjoyed by Syria's rulers, who use fixers in London to shop the sales at Harrods, a relay in NYC to run an iTunes account for them (Bashar liked to send maudlin, self-pitying country music to his family, "I've been a walking heartache / I've made a mess of me / The person that I've been lately / Ain't who I wanna be"), and who order gold and diamond jewelry direct from Parisian boutiques. The family also plans a screening of the last Harry Potter movie.

Here are a few of the 3,000 leaked emails to browse yourself.

Others items that caught the fancy of Syria's first lady included a vase priced £2,650. On 17 June 2011 she sent details to the family's London-based fixer Soulieman Marouf, and added: "Pls can abdulla see if this available at Harrods to order – they have a sale at the moment." Marouf replied with good news: "He bought it. Got 15% discount. Delivery 10 weeks." He added: "Today you should be receiving an Armani light … If you need anything else please let me know."
The emails suggest a woman preoccupied with shopping – but also with an eye for a bargain. She was eager to claw back VAT on luxury items shipped to Damascus, it emerges, and complained when a consignment of table lamps went missing in China. Emails sent from her personal account also concern the fate of a bespoke table, after it arrived with two "right" panels instead of a right and a left one. More than 50 emails to and from the UK deal with shopping.
Some of Asma al-Assad's prospective purchases arouse polite comment from her friends. On 3 February 2012, she was browsing the internet for luxury shoes, according to an email titled "Christian Louboutin shoes coming shortly".
She wrote to friends sharing details of new shoes on offer, including a pair of crystal-encrusted 16cm high heels costing £3,795. She asked: "Does anything catch your eye – these pieces are not made for general public." One friend replied dryly: "I don't think they're going 2 b useful any time soon unfortunately."

(Image: A member of the Free Syrian Army burns a portrait of Bashar Assad in Al Qsair. Jan. 25, 2012, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from syriafreedom's photostream)

Homeland Security memo warned of violent threat posed by Occupy Wall Street

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:10:40 +0000

An October, 2011 Department of Homeland Security memo on Occupy Wall Street warned of the potential for violence posed by the "leaderless resistance movement." (via @producermatthew).

Update: Looks like there's a larger Rolling Stone feature on this document:

As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street [PDF]," dated October of last year, opens with the observation that "mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas." While acknowledging the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of OWS, the report notes darkly that "large scale demonstrations also carry the potential for violence, presenting a significant challenge for law enforcement."

The invisible genocide of women

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:37:42 +0000

Video Link.

The recently-launched Women Under Siege website is a new project of the NYC-based Women’s Media Center, and features a number of powerful essays and features by women, about sexual violence against women. There's an account by CBS News correspondent Lara Logan, who survived a sexual assault while covering uprisings in the Middle East; another about covering sexualized war in Congo by Lynsey Addario, who survived the same.

In this post, I'd like to draw special attention to a feature on the site about a subject with which I have personal familiarity: violence against indigenous women in Guatemala. Though the country's long civil war is over, the femicidio is not. Snip:

More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36 years of the Guatemalan genocide in which at least 200,000 people died. In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that has just indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt.

There are so many powerful stories on the Women Under Siege website. Below, a photo by Ms. Addario, from Congo: "Lwange, 51, with her daughter, Florida, who had been raped the week before this photo was taken in 2008. The child had screamed at the time, then bled. With her vagina and her young psyche damaged, Florida would no longer speak."

Twitter's early-bird special on censorship

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:45:09 +0000

Photo: Sabeth

Last week, Twitter announced plans to censor tweets in specific countries, but only to local readers. At the same time, it committed itself to publishing each act of censorship at the Chilling Effects clearinghouse.

Assailed by critics, Twitter pointed out that the new policy puts it ahead ahead of competitors which removes postings without disclosure. Defenders also pointed out the company's proven record of defending users' rights and standing up to legal pressure.

Insisting that transparent censorship is better than secret censorship, Twitter also published a tranche of copyright takedowns it had received; a taster of how the system will work.

All this distracts us, however, from a simple fact: Twitter currently performs no political censorship at all and has never once removed a tweet at the request of a foreign government. The false choice between degrees of political censorship belies Twitter's third option, of continuing its censorship-free tradition instead of playing with political fire abroad.

The exquisitely-balanced compromises that Twitter devised for itself—such as its promise not to pre-emptively filter tweets—appeal to U.S. business pundits who cannot envisage Twitter declining to do business in unfree countries. But it's left to the imagination why courts in these places, able to threaten local staff and business operations, would respect these corporate policies when they issue their inevitable demands.

In all this, Twitter is keen to claim that its "philosophy" of removing tweets as required by law hasn't changed. This is to ignore the unavoidable necessity of domestic compliance. What has changed are whose laws it's willing to subject itself to. It's a future Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo, reveals little about, except to insist that "scholars" will one day praise them for it.

The idea that Twitter might decline these opportunities is treated as an absurdity. This vague faith, that a clearer business model will emerge from unhindered growth abroad, is fine sand to build a house on.

UNTIL NOW

Everyone seems to agree on one thing: that Twitter's explanation of its policy was poorly-written and earned it much unfair criticism over the weekend. That said, Twitter also tried to gloss over its policy change, making it easy to believe that it would result in less censorship than is currently the case.

"Until now," Twitter wrote, "the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally."

The way they put it, you'd think it might have happened once or twice. But until now, Twitter has never taken account of other countries' limits and never removed tweets globally because of them.

Like a "special offer" tag with a conspicuously visible original price that was never actually charged, this encourages the reader to think that someone, somewhere, was already paying in full. It hides the current tally: zero tweets blocked at the request of foreign governments or for material not illegal in the U.S.

Also, Twitter rather slyly spoke of domestic copyright takedowns in the same breath as it spoke of foreign courts; even if you consider such removals to be as censorious as silencing political activism, it still obscures the critical difference between civil enforcement and state-ordered political censorship.

Together, these well-muddied waters led many reporters to rephrase Twitter's claim into an explicit reduction of censorship, rather than its inauguration.

"Previously, when a government demanded that Twitter remove a tweet or block a user, access to that content would be blocked from the entire world," wrote Mashable's Lauren Indvik, about government demands that were in fact ignored.

"The new system would allow countries and private businesses to submit complaints [over] Germany’s strict laws against pro-Nazi speech or China’s laws against criticizing the government. ... Previously, when Twitter received such a request, its only option was to take down the tweet on a global level, making it inaccessible from any country," wrote the AP, about requests that were never acted upon.

"Previously, the tweet would disappear for everyone," reported CNN, about tweets that never disappeared previously.

"Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally," wrote the EFF's Eva Galperin, referring to political censorship, not mere DMCA takedowns: "For example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk--which is illegal under Turkish law--the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody ... the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users."

Twitter confirmed to me that it has never censored a tweet at the request of a government. Not about Ataturk, not about the King of Thailand, nor anyone else. The blurring of domestic copyright takedowns with political criticism abroad is bad enough. But to describe more censorship as "less censorship" by comparing it to even worse hypothetical censorship is a caricature of free expression.

No surprise, then, that Thailand (where criticizing royalty is a criminal offense) was the first government to publicly praise Twitter's new policy.

LET OTHERS PRAISE THEE, NOT THINE OWN MOUTH

As Twitter's defenders point out, Twitter's motive in all this is access to new markets. It's a sensible business move, and disreputable competitors such as Facebook long ago trampled their way there.

But Twitter's always been different--and always ready to tell us that it's different.

In 2008, Twitter boasted that it came "to the rescue" of a man jailed in Egypt. As recently as last year, it said it had a "mandate" to protect its users' free speech. It has often touted itself as a useful tool for protestors suffering under authoritarian regimes, and publicized its laudable past efforts to help them, such as delaying upgrades that would have blocked Iranian activists during protests there.

Now, however, the topic's turned to the "contours" of free speech in the places it wishes to do business.

Twitter's paid its dues; who doubts that it is the most trustworthy major social network? It's earned the benefit of the doubt regarding its intentions. It's unfair that people have accused Twitter of literally betraying activists, when it has done no such thing.

But the most common refrain I hear from Twitter's defenders is that if you ever expected ethics from a for-profit company, you've earned your disappointment. Such naked cynicism from its own supporters can hardly warm hearts at a company that once called itself "the free speech wing of the free speech party."

MY FIRST SUPERINJUNCTION

There are also practical problems that western businesses face when moving into new digs abroad. If the experiences of other tech companies is any indication, Twitter could be forced to do more than block a tweet here or there once the safety and freedom of its foreign employees is at stake.

Twitter anticipates being able to censor only to local readers, and appears to anticipate easy circumvention loopholes. But how can it pick which court orders it will obey? If local courts demand more oppressive local measures and assert global jurisdiction over Twitter's operations, Twitter could have to choose between obedience, local staffers' freedom or jobs, or the indiscriminate blocking that all this is supposed to avoid.

In India, the government bullied RIM into providing intelligence services with access to BlackBerry networks. In China, Yahoo turned in dissidents to the authorities. There are Google executives who will be jailed if they ever show their faces in Italy.

More likely, English courts are in the habit of issuing "superinjunctions" to ban censored media from even disclosing the fact that they've been censored—given its pledge to publish, Twitter may have to choose between its commitment to transparency and avoiding contempt of court.

In his latest interview, Costolo described censorship as a "super-complex issue". When Twitter stops forcing other countries to simply block it, in favour of acting as their willing agents of censorship, he'll find out just how complex it gets.

THE GIFT OF CENSORSHIP

"If Twitter censors, I’ll stop tweeting," wrote Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei.

"I face so much censorship in Sudan as a journalist, you were my free and safe space," wrote Sudanese journalist Reem Shawkat.

It's understandable why foreign activists hate Twitter's new policy: they're the ones who would be silenced by it in their own countries. But that plain fact blurs under our endless capacity for abstraction, in which their political awareness morphs into a demented reflection of our own.

Reuters' Paul Smalera, for example, ordered Twitter's critics to "grow up" and described conspicuous censorship as a "gift" to activists and reporters. Because the blocking will be visible, he said, there is "a crucial distinction from outright censorship."

This view—that unless a censor can eradicate a message worldwide, it isn't really censorship—strikes me as the point where the danger of Twitter's compromise becomes most apparent. It inoculates our concern for the activist who has been silenced (and for the intended audience who cannot hear him) with our own pointless knowledge of his and their suffering.

Smalera even suggests that a Syrian who learns of being censored by Twitter should be thankful for the "box of shame" it hangs on the Syrian government, as if such a person wouldn't already know that his freedom was limited, and wouldn't already live in fear for his safety.

"I can easily imagine a world where a censored tweet becomes the ultimate protest symbol," Smalera writes. "One that unfortunately deprives the protesters of content, but sends the message to protesters that their worst fears are right, and they ought not give up their fight."

We keep talking of activism as content: it's as privileged a viewpoint as you'll ever get from the silicon tower of tech journalism, where the act of disclosure is more virtuous than having nothing to disclose, and where the West's ethical feather-plucking is more real than the reality of politics in dangerous places.

Silicon Valley seems finally to be learning the lesson that if you sell yourself on virtue, the business will make you eat your words. Twitter's U-turn on censorship teaches it another one: if you take credit for what activists do with your tools, you'll end up eating their words, too.

Project Unbreakable

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:05:47 +0000

Grace Brown created "Project Unbreakable" in October, 2011, and the tumblog appears to really be gathering momentum. The idea: "Use photography to help heal those who were sexually abused by asking them to write a quote from their attacker on a poster and photographing them holding the poster."

So many stories from so many different people. Men, too, not only women. I was so moved by this post, which includes both a photograph and an audio narrative by an elderly woman who was sexually abused as a 12-year-old girl during World War II in Germany. Do listen to her story.

"You can never forget it. It is in your brain, marked like a stamp," she says. "I still suffer from it."

(via Jay Rosen)