Making things mesh

March 16, 2009 — xanthippa

In my last couple of posts, I have bemoaned how our beloved internet is being more and more choked and censored.  If you’d like to read them, they are here and here.

It seems to me that as long as the internet is delivered to our homes via physical infrastructure, it will necessarily be endangered.

Why?

Because this infrastructure has to be physically delivered to our homes and offices by someone.

This someone is a public or private company.  Either way, this someone is subject to government regulation.  Therefore, if the government imposes unreasonable demands on this someone, this someone must comply or loose their license to do business in that country.

So, what is the answer?  How do we throw off the shackles of virtual oppression?

In my never-humble-opinion, we must find a way of building up an internet-type place which is accessed without any physical infrastructure.  No satellite signal provider.  No telephone or cable cables carrying our bits and bytes back and forth.  There MUST be another way!

The question now is:  what is the BEST way of doing this?

There are several ways of going about it.  I simply lack the depth of knowledge in this field to know which would be the best solution.  Therefore, I would like to ask everyone’s opinion on some possible ways to go about this…

One possible solution is to build a world-wide mesh.

This is actually rather neat! An area has a whole bunch of little receivers/transmitters which automatically find the best path for a signal to take.  The drawback here is that these nodes have to be installed by someone and one of them has to have a physical connection to the internet itself.  In other words, there is still a problem.

Yet, this could perhaps provide a partial solution…

Do you remember that most awesome initiative by the High-Tech people to help kids in Africa learn:  the ‘one laptop per child’ initiative?  Here, kids in Africa (and elsewhere) would be given some pretty awesome, specialized laptops: this wold allow them to hook up to the world-wide internet and provide them the opportunity to learn!

Yet, the initiative faced a problem:  how can these laptops connect to the internet, when they are given to kids where no internet infrastructure exists?

This was solved by making each and every one of these specialized laptops also work as a node in a mesh network!

That built a ‘mobile ad hoc network’.  The communication protocols for this have already been developed…

In such a network – were it to be spread worldwide – there would not be any central channels or ISPs which could exert control over communication.  Of course, there would be a whole slew of problems with this solution that would need to be worked out before this would be a practical solution.

What I would like to know is if this would be a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

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Divide and Censor

March 14, 2009 — xanthippa

The internet has succeeded in breaking down borders:  political (to some extent) and geographical – with great success.  Paradoxically, it is precisely this success that has created new types of borders.

These ‘virtual borders’ are now between various ‘virtual communities’ which have sprung up around specific fields of interest.

These communities may not be physical, in the old-fashioned sense of communities which get together in one room, yet they are very real communities: rich and vibrant within themselves.  However, there is very little interaction between most of the ‘online communities’.  And, the interaction between these various groups is pretty non-existent.  After all, when there is no reason to interact – why would they?

Yet, this is also our ‘Achille’s heel’ which allows us to be manipulated…

The very fact that there are so many people on the internet, that there are so many different ‘groups’ and ‘communities’ means that we cannot really ‘absorb’ them all into ‘our world’.  Our brains are used to only interacting with a certain number of people (groups) – anything outside of that, we can only conceive of in terms of ‘labels’ and ‘stereotypes’.

(I have gone on and on about this phenomenon in my series of posts on ‘scaling up communities’:  the whole ‘monkeysphere’/’Dunbar’s number thing… the reason why one death is a ‘tragedy’ while a million deaths is a ‘statistic’.)

This is not a bad thing in itself – it is simply the natural way our brain operates.

However, it means that the ‘online community’ is not really one ‘online community’:  rather, it is a mosaic of many, many communities, divided by the strongest border there is:  the border of ‘non interest’

How easy it then becomes for those who wold like to ‘divide and censor’ to manipulate these stereotypes, in order to strip us of our rights, one ‘virtual community’ at a time!!!

Please, consider the following:  for ‘non-techie’ types, what does the phrase ‘peer to peer network’ bring to mind?  Or the name ‘Bit-Torrents’?  Or ‘Pirate Bay’?

Unless I am terribly mistaken, this will make most non-techies think of ‘stealing movies‘:  people who abuse the internet to steal ‘content’ and make it difficult for everyone else.

Yet, my husband and his brother use this method to transmit our family photos to each other:  this way, if our server ever ‘blows up’, we have backups at his house, and vice versa.

My son likes to download ‘public domain’ (i.e. no payment required) games and programming tools, using Bit Torrnets.  No laws are being broken – to the contrary:  many of these people are working hard to improve the internet experience for all of us – free of charge to everybody!

And, there are actually legitimate businesses which use the ‘Bit Torrent’ technology for legitimate, legal, copyright-upholding transactions.

If the terms ‘peer to peer’ and ‘Bit Torrents’ DID make you have a dismissive – or even more negative – reaction, then YOU have been a victim of some wonderful ‘spin’ designed to ‘divide and censor’!!!

And, that does not even take into consideration what happened with ‘Pirate Bay’:  this company was operating WITHIN THE LAW!  Yet, the US movie industry did not like what they were doing:  so, they ‘influenced’ the US lawmakers, who ‘influenced’ the Swedish government, who – despite the advice of its own lawyers that the company is not breaking any laws – Swedish or international – the Swedish government ORDERED A POLICE RAID on the company’s business and siezed its assetts!!!

How is that even possible?

Yet, most ‘online communities’ think this is ‘just kids stealing movies’ – why loose sleep over it?

WHY?

Because it sets precedents, that’s why!!!

In my never-humble-opinion, I have found that most ‘online communities’ outside the ‘dedicated techies’ just could not care about the issues of ‘Bit Torrents’ and ‘channel choking’!

On the other hand…

I have as yet to meet ‘dedicated techies’ – on or off-line – who pay much attention to the ‘Free Speechers’!!!  Yeah, a bunch of people, going on about court cases and nazis – so what?  Instead, they try to figure out how to technically circumvent the latest form of censorship of their channels…

Then there are the people who are fighting the ‘Creeping Sharia/Anti-Islamists’ – they do, to some extent, overlap with the ‘Free Speechers’.  But, not totally.  They show little interest in the curbing of free speech, if it does not involve Islamists – come on, be honest!  And the Free Speechers do support the ‘Creeping Sharia/Anti-Islamists’ to a great extent – especially when it comes to the suppression of free speech on the topic of Islamist atrocities….

I suggest that the overlap between these two groups is so great because they are currently both threatened from similar sources.  And, I suggest that the ‘techies’ do not overlap with these two groups because the danger to them is coming from a ‘completely different direction’!

But, is it???

I suggest to you that it is NOT.

I know, I am not doing a good job of expressing here what I am trying to say.  I have re-written this at least 5 times, and it is getting worse, not better….  I feel like my ‘focus’ is slipping away as I try to make my explanations understandable – while when I gloss over the explanations and focus on my main point, the whole thing sounds hollow, because the explanations are too shallow to make much sense…

So, please, let me try to speak more plainly….  I’ll go to point form – then, whatever needs to be covered deeper, please, comment on and I will do my best to expand on it.

1.  We can only enjoy our level of online freedom (which translates into practical freedom in ‘off-line’ life) if the internet remains ‘free’ (NOT monetarily – just as in ‘not censored’)

2.  Freedom of Speech is constantly being attacked in our society… several completely different guises and excuses

3.  The ‘ human rights’ component:  the ‘Free Speechers/Anti-Islamists’ are aware of this one
– The UN submission to ‘Blasphemy laws’ (and their desire to force all of its member nations to comply with these)
– The ‘Human Rights Commissions’ and their thought police, political correctness busybodies…
– The EU’s manipulation… even legalizing pedophelia under the guise of ‘tolerance’ -Lisbon treaty… mandatory…
– Can you say ‘Geert Wilders’?

4.  The ‘commercial/IP rights’ component:
– Powerful lobbies from entertainment AND soft&hardware makers are succeeding in reducing ‘consumer rights’
– ‘Fair use’ is more and more limited – companies have the right for more and more intrusive ‘monitoring’
– ‘Consumer privacy’ is being legislated away

5.  The ‘community protection’ component
– Under the guise of ‘community protection’, more and more privacy is being legislated away
– More and more intrusive methods of monitoring are being implemented: ostensibly to protect kids from pedophelia (!!!)
– ‘Accussation’ of something triggers penalties as if one were found ‘guilty’, to stop them ‘doing harm’ IF they were guilty…
– And, this falls loosely into this ‘community protection’ – but we are talking about the ‘environmental fascism’ movement,  which is also pushing for more intrusive ‘monitoring and compliance’ for ‘stuff’ in order to ‘protect’ – yet which is also practicing censorship in a very real way…  Personally, I think these are eco-statists, who are undermining the health of our environment by attempting to ‘freeze it’ in its current state – but that is a different rant.  Yet, they ARE a very real part of this ‘censorship’ puzzle…

To sum it up:  this is a bit of a ‘picer move’ happening.  No, I don’t think there is a wide-ranging conspiracy thingy happening! Yet, the effects of each of these separate forces are in the same directions, and are supportive of each other. Sort of like wawes, that build upon each other, rising in amplitude as one is superimposed over the other….until it sweeps all notions of ‘Freedom of Speech’ out to sea!!!

Because there IS a connection:  the GOVERNMENT is the connection.  It is our government which controls the laws on how ‘human rights’ are – or are not – observed.  And, it is the government who passes the ‘consumer’ laws.  AND, it is the government which REGULATES the industries:  and, any industry ‘actor’ which would not ‘comply’ with government regulation will loose its license to do business…while compliance with the government policies in a highly regulated marketplace usually equals (or comes close to) a monopoly for the company doing the complying…

All the ‘threads’ lead back to the same place… givning our governments grweater and greater control over every aspect of our lives.  And, while I think most democracies are not ‘intentionally evil’, I AM very suspicious of the bureaucracies which run the governments…  I have seen too many high-level bureaucrats who are much too skilled at handling the elected governments…

So, what we need to do is to get all these diverse groups which would be affected by the end of the internet as we know it (and as I have written about in my last post), and begin comparing notes.  Because, people may not always be ‘smart’, but we are always ‘clever:  those who would oppress – whether for ideological or commercial reasons – there are laws which give someone (government, business – whatever) an ability to oppress, people will ALWAYS find the maximum possible way to do the oppressing.

That is just human nature…

So, we need to seriously begin comparing notes! Not to dismiss each other, because of the ‘labels’ applied to the different online communities by those who would like to eliminate us!  Because, if we stay divided, each of us will only see a bit of the picture – and none of us will build a sufficient defense…if that were even possible!

I suppose one could call it a case of ‘DIVIDE AND CENSOR’!

And, perhaps, we need to begin to build an alternative to the internet:  something where there will not be centralized ‘providers’ who can be contrlolled by governments (and thus become tools of censorship) – yet, which would connect us all, the way the internet does now.  A sort of an ‘ungerground internet’, if you please… a SUBNET!  I don’t know HOW, but knowing we must beging to think about it is a start!

Sorry to have rambled on so long….and for sounding so ‘preachy’.  Perhaps it’s my Cassandra complex that’s kicking in.  It’s just that – I can see it happening!

And I don’t know how to fix it… and it really, really frightens me!

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‘Ham radio’ internet

March 12, 2009 — xanthippa

OK, this is getting very, very scary.

A while ago, I wrote about a proposed idea to alter the way Canadians access the internet:  instead of ‘connecting’ to the ‘Great Wide Web’ and navigating it freely, this ‘model’ would more closely resemble the way Cable companies allow customers to access various TV channels.  The internet denier provider would ‘bundle’ the most ‘desirable’ websites, just like TV channels are ‘bundled’ by Cable providers.  Accessing anything outside of these bundles would be either very, very expensive – or not available at all.

Couple this with the calls by Barbara Hall of the Ontario ‘Commission for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice’ Human Rights Commission to shackle ALL journalists and bloggers with a ‘Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’– like body which would censor ALL the written (virtual or printed) words in Canada!  Not a pretty picture!!!

Yet, my beloved Canada is  not the only place under siege!

Now, the UK is proposing EXACTLY the same scheme!!!

This would mean that unless a website or blog was ‘influential enough’ to muscle its way onto the ‘approved’ list for a particular ‘bundle’ of websites ‘offered’ by an ISP, it would be 100% invisible and unaccessible to the UK internet subscribers!

Yes, this is even more limiting than the Canadian proposal, which sought to make ‘non-approved’ sites economically unavailable.  This model would make them ‘virtually non-existent’!!!

And, let’s not forget UK’s recently adopted policy of allowing the police to routinely hack into private people’s internet accounts without a warrant….

And, that is barely the tip of the proverbial ice berg!!!

Let’s look at the laws proposed for New Zeland:  at the end of March (miracle notwithstanding), ALL internet service providers will be legally forced to cease to provide any and all internet access to any IP address which has been ACCUSED of a copyright violation!

No, you did not misread this.  The mere ACCUSSATION by the movie/music industry that a person MIGHT be in violation of a copyright held by them (third party accussations would be ‘acceptable’) will LEGALLY BIND the ISP to STOP providing any and all internet access to that IP address!

All this is made ‘possible’ by Section 92A of the Copyright Act of New Zealand.  It was supposed to come into force at the end of February, but, due to the online petition opposing it, the NZ parliamentarians delayed the implementation for one month.

And what of Australia?

THEY have passed laws giving up any and all internet privacy rights – and the access to the internet – years ago.  These laws were passed in the name of ‘protecting children’ from the evils of the internet:  pornography and pedophelia.  Right…  As a parent, I take active part in the raising of my kids:  and I do NOT need ANYBODY ELSE to monitor my kids’ online activities!  And, I really, really resent the implication that I am (or, rather, the Australian parents are) so irresponsible or incompetent that the state has to step in and raise my kids for me!!!  This is insulting in the extreme!

Of course, most of the people in Australia had been lulled into a false sense of security because these laws had not actually been applied – to the full letter of the law – for quite a while.  So, if people NOW started to protest these laws – even though these had been in place for years – they would look silly….  Yet, it is only now that the Australian government has announced that they plan to enforce these laws to the EXTREME LETTER of the law!

This is a beautiful trick.  Governments draft a law – like the Australian government did with this law – to ostensibly ‘protect our children’.  Nobody (especially politicians) wants to look like they want to ‘enable pedophiles’ – so these types of laws often get passed quickly, with little dissent and little  close examination.

Yet, as I am fond of pointing out, if there is an ‘extreme’ way to interpret a law – especially if this extreme gives some decisionmakers the power over the populace – it WILL (eventually) be applied to such an extreme!!!

Of course, now we also have the UN attempting to FORCE its member states to make its ‘Blasphemy Resolution’ legally binding within their jurisdiction.

PLEASE – PUT ALL THIS TOGETHER!!!

Soon, we may loose the internet – in the form where we know it now!

Which is why I am putting out a challenge to each and every one of you:  let’s find a non-IP-dependant alternative!!!

Just like ‘ham radios’ operate without a central service provider, but rather form a wireless peer-to-peer network, so WE need to find a similar way to build an alternate internet network.

OK, so the’ham radio’ bandwidth is very, very narrow, and thus subject to jamming and environmental disruptions and all kinds of other problems.  Yet, it provides a useful model for us to emulate.

We need some of you, brilliant young scientists and hackers, to think long and hard – and find a working solution.

Yes, there was the idea of consumers actually owning their own internet connection….yet, under the current political climate, I doubt this will ever come to be – even if the technology is perfected and affordable.

So, please, get started on developing this new idea – no-provider, no-censor, no-control new-fangled version of the internet!  Because what we have now is about to die…and, without a ‘new generation’, this whole past 30-year period will be consigned to be no more than a note in dusty, locked-up and guarded (lest people read them) history books!!!

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Mischief or malice: laser attacks on airplanes

March 5, 2009 — xanthippa

Lasers are awesome!

While we are all familiar with red laser pointers, there is a new generation of easily available, green lasers.  Their beam penetrates much farther and they are much brighter than the tired old red ones.

For example, even this little green laser pointer has a range of over two and a half kilometers (about 2 miles).

And, this ad for a green laser claims it is 60x brighter than the ‘old’ red laser pointers.

And that does not even take into account the fact that the human eye is much more sensitive to light in the blue-green wavelengths than to light in the red end of the spectrum.

All of this, put together, should not be a bad thing,  ‘should’ being the operative word here….

It turns out that some people – for whatever reasons – are using good things for bad purposes.  Surprised?

With the easy availability of long-range, powerful green lasers, some people are shining them into the cockpits of airplanes trying to land at airports.

If this is done by silly people as a prank, it’s not funny.  Airplanes are not LOL cats!

Yet, this is an ‘easy’ form of sabotaging airplanes for any group of people who deem themselves above the laws of our society and callous enough to take human lives to further their ends.  Especially in heavily concentrated urban areas – like ones where many airports are located in – the potential for destruction is enormous.

Which begs the question:  what are we going to do about this?

And, please, don’t say ‘ban the lasers’ – banning things is just not a solution to anything.  It is a band-aid at best, because it ignores the underlying problem.  We have got to stop kidding ourselves that addressing the symptoms of a problem, without solving the underlying problem, will fix ‘stuff’.

Than always makes things worse in the long run.

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Big Brother in the EU

January 6, 2009 — xanthippa

And just when you were about to breethe a sigh of relief that you are not in India, that your privacy cannot be invaded without a legal warrant, think again.  Our political bodies are legislating away citizens’ rights faster than we can notice!

Here is an interesting post from Dvorak Uncensored, titled Police Set to Step up Hacking of Home PCs, quoting Timesonline:

“THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.”

In other words, the European Union has made a decision giving all EU member governments the ‘right’ to hack into any computer – without a warrant.

“Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. …”

‘Warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property’ – what a phrase!  Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to know how well ‘protected’ you will be under this policy – does it not?

I wonder if the police forces of the EU nations are hiring more IT staff….

 

P.S. – This may need more ‘digging’ but… is the Brussels edictlimited to electronic ‘warrantless inrtusive surveillance of private property’, or does it cover all ‘private property’?
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Big Brother in India

January 5, 2009 — xanthippa

While most of our information is saturated with the news of the latest wave of fighting in the Middle East, with the latest terrorist attacks around the world, it is understandable that we become more and more afraid about our physical well being.   Add to this the whole ‘world financial crisis’ and the fear that we might soon loose our ability to pay our bills…

This has lead to two things:  increased sense of danger (justifiably, perhaps) with the accompanying desire to give our ‘authorities’ all the means necessary to protect us (physically and fiscally) on the one hand and a sense of apathy (or, perhaps, information overload) when it comes to ‘non-urgent’ or ‘non-critical’ news. 

It is understandable – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and all that. 

These dangers are very real.  Yet, let’s face it:  for most of us, they are not as immediately dangerous as the atmosphere created by the mainstream media would make us feel.  (Yes, I do use the word feel rather than think – most of this coverage beamed constantly at us is not designed to make us think, but rather to evoke an emotional response from us:  feelings and emotions sell better than making people think does.)

While we are busy paying attention to these perceived dangers, we are not paying attention to some very real, very immediate dangers around us.  Perhaps they may not deprive us of our livelihood, or our life – but they are certainly depriving us of our liberty!

We are all aware that in many ‘not-so-free’ states, internet censorship is high.  Very high.  Malaysia, for example, has now been monitoring Malaysian bloggers to make sure they did not post anything that could be insulting to Islam.  (Actually, this does seem in keeping with the UN again passing the ‘blasphemy is not allowed under free speech’ resolution…)   And we all remember the fuss the MSM reporters kicked up when they got to the Beijing Olympics and found their internet access limited:  they did not particularly care if the Chinese citizens were oppressed or not (after all, they went to Beijing to ‘celebrate’ the current Chinese oppressors), they were just upset that their own ‘special privilages’ may have been limited….  But, I am going off on a tangent again…

The next country whose internet Big Brother has turned his attention to?  India.

Many people consider India to be a part of ‘The West’ – and, despite the fact that it is geographically located rather east, I concur that, philosophically, economically and politically, India is indeed more of a ‘Western’ country than not.  It is a democracy – and quite a big one – where the standard of living has risen, education has become the standard, and people do enjoy a lot of freedoms (including the freedom of religion).  In my never-humble-opinion, India has been succeeding in integrating the best things from ‘The West’ into its distinctly ‘Eastern’ culture – and has not lost her identity in the process.  No country is perfect, of course, but – as countries go – I think India is moving in the right direction.

That is why I was so chilled when I learned that the extent of interntet survailance which India’s new laws would permit (nay, require!).  Via Slashdot and Zero Paid , here is an article (very well written) on Countercurrents.org by Binu Karunakaran:  ‘India Sleepwalks to Total Surveillance’.

“The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 passed by the Indian Parliament recently allows the government to intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence.

Any email you send, any message you text are now open to the prying eyes of the government. So are the contents of your computer you surfed in the privacy of your home. “

…

“The amended Act also grants the state absolute power to block access to any website in the national interest. In short a total gag and surveillance act that doesn’t set any limits for law enforcers, or have inbuilt safeguards against misuse. “

‘Policing’ and ‘pornography’ (in one form or another):  these are the two things always evoked as states usurp freedoms – this is the predictable pattern!  ‘National security’ and ‘morality’ – how come we are still buying into this debunked pretence???  (Yes, I have written on this before, so I don’t want to belabour the point…but, are humans really this gullible?)

What is quite frightening in the current laws passed by India is not just the extent to which these laws abolish privacy, but also the means through which the laws are to be implemented:

“…A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not. It’s the personal morality of the official that will decide whether the picture/content you were looking at was lascivious or appeals to prurient interest.”

I wonder if Jennifer Lynch, the chief opressor of Human Rights in Canada, is planning any expensive trips to India to ‘study’ these laws – and to try to figure out how to implement them here!

In his article, Binu Karunakaran goes on to explain that people in India are now going to have to follow 3 new commandments:

  1. Thou shalt not author a joke.  Not even forward one.
  2. Thou shalt not surf Bollywood news (even things not explicitly pornographic, but ones which could ‘evoke lascivious thoughts’, are banned).
  3. Thou shalt not watch porn.

He explains each commandment.  Read the whole article here – if you dare!

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Corporate censorship – tip of the iceberg…

December 26, 2008 — xanthippa

‘The Economy of Ideas’ by John Perry Barlow, the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is an excellent (if a little long – but well worth reading) essay published in 1994 in Wired Magazine.  I would be a visionary essay were it published today!  Here, Barlow warns us that in the coming years, corporate censorship could be the greatest danger to our freedom of speech.

A provocative – but well reasoned – position, to say the least. 

“Throughout the history of copyrights and patents, the proprietary assertions of thinkers have been focused not on their ideas but on the expression of those ideas. The ideas themselves, as well as facts about the phenomena of the world, were considered to be the collective property of humanity.”

…

“Notions of property, value, ownership, and the nature of wealth itself are changing more fundamentally than at any time since the Sumerians first poked cuneiform into wet clay and called it stored grain. Only a very few people are aware of the enormity of this shift, and fewer of them are lawyers or public officials.”

…

“Whenever there is such profound divergence between law and social practice, it is not society that adapts. Against the swift tide of custom, the software publishers’ current practice of hanging a few visible scapegoats is so obviously capricious as to only further diminish respect for the law. “

…

“I believe that law, as we understand it, was developed to protect the interests which arose in the two economic “waves” which Alvin Toffler accurately identified in The Third Wave. The First Wave was agriculturally based and required law to order ownership of the principal source of production, land. In the Second Wave, manufacturing became the economic mainspring, and the structure of modern law grew around the centralized institutions that needed protection for their reserves of capital, labor, and hardware.

Both of these economic systems required stability. Their laws were designed to resist change and to assure some equability of distribution within a fairly static social framework. The empty niches had to be constrained to preserve the predictability necessary to either land stewardship or capital formation.

In the Third Wave we have now entered, information to a large extent replaces land, capital, and hardware, and information is most at home in a much more fluid and adaptable environment. The Third Wave is likely to bring a fundamental shift in the purposes and methods of law which will affect far more than simply those statutes which govern intellectual property.” (my emphasis) 

Barlow makes the case that corporate interests will, if allowed, protect their investment in the ‘ideas’ which are the ‘currency’ of the Third Wave – and that could involve significant curbing of our freedom of expression.

Interestingly enough, I have come across this video (and there are many others which raise this issue) that might just demonstrate a tiny little bit of what Barlow is talking about:

It is something to ponder….

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Government ‘standardization’ and ‘big business’

November 24, 2008 — xanthippa

Perhaps it is no surprise that most ‘big businesses’ could not exist (or become so ‘entrenched’) without the willing or unwitting support from governments.

I am not talking about the big bailouts of banks or car manufacturers during times of financial uncertainty.  While I think these are very ill advised (certainly in the current form), they are not the subject of this post.  To get there, we need to go quite a bit back in time, to when the Western world was enjoying quite stable economy.

Since my background is in technology, I will concentrate on this aspect – though my sources are pretty convincing that this is indicative of an overall trend within both the US and Canadian governments, in multiple fields.  And, to be honest, the ideals are very good!  So, let me get to the meat of the story…

Long time ago, when computers were just becoming the thing in innovation (yes, the buzzwords of the day were ‘automation’ and ‘co-operative’, then ‘innovation’; later along came ‘synergy’…. if you have had any contact with the language of ‘bureaucrateese’ (and much of it has been aped by the mainstream media (MSM) – albeit, with a 6-12 month delay), you know exactly what I mean.  We’ve worked our way through ‘centers of excellence’ to ‘best practices’; from ‘co-operation’ to ‘collaborative efforts’; from ‘synergy’ and ‘quality initiatives’ to ‘governance structures’ and ‘connectivity’. 

I hate buzzwords!!!   But that is besides the point.

When ‘office automation’ first became possible with the use of desktop computers and intranets, we saw an incredible spark of creativity.  People came up with creative ideas, started small companies and developed solutions to specific problems – and governments bought the solutions.  It made life better for everyone!

But, as time marched on, it became apparent that different government departments actually had to interface with each other.  Now, all these original solutions presented a bit of a problem – they were not really set up to interface with each other.

It was a natural maturation of the system that governments started to standardize their equipment across all the departments.  One central decision was made as to the system to be used, then all the departments had to do their best to try to fit their applications into it and migrate their operations onto this centrally approved platform.  It is not a perfect system, but at least the right hand knows what the left is doing, so to speak.  And, since this central solution was so big and important, it was natural that the bureaucrats making the purchasing decisions understood that only the biggest and most important players in the marketplace would be sufficiently large to provide the solution.  Obviously!

The effect of this centralization process on all the small hi-tech companies which had sprung up to develop the specialized applications for the various departments was predictable:  it dried up their marketplace completely. 

The result? 

Those ‘little guys’ who became ‘authorized re-sellers’ of the ‘big guys’ products survived – by turning into remoras… with limited horizons.

Other ‘little guys’ who managed to diversify to applications for the private sector suffered a lot of growing pains, but some of them made it.  Not enough of them survived – and their growth was much slowed down, as they did not have the steady support of the government contracts which allows some risktaking in developing new niches.

I quite understand the requirement for standardization of the government systems.  I have no complaints with this!  HOW it was achieved – that is another story! 

Not only did the government (my knowledge of the  Canadian government practices in this area is quite extensive) failed to support the development of emerging small to medium sized companies (these companies are necessary to keep the industry evolving and healthy), they actively undermined them. 

I have seen cases where the small/medium sized Canadian company bid on a government contract – and satisfied all the requirements in the RFP (request for proposal).  Now, for a large project, a company like this may invest several thousand dollars (depending on the contract, it could run high into 4 digits) in preparing the proposal with which to bid for the contract.  The costs are both in development of the solution (after all, you need to propose a solution!) and in the manpower to prepare the document itself.

And, I have also seen technically superior, more cost effective bids from small/medium sized Canadian companies rejected, on the grounds that on page 53 of the proposal, there was a misplaced comma – or the French translation was not gramatically correct.  A large multinational corporation would win the contract…

It pains me to even write about it – but I have seen this happen over and over and over.  Governments prefer working with one large company rather than supporting the growth of a healthy domestic industry in that field.  This is not a healthy attitude – for the government, for the emerging companies and the industry, but most importantly, this attitude has incredibly detrimental impact on the citizens.

Why?

By granting a ‘preferred vendor’ or ‘pre-approved vendor’ status on one or two large companies, the government can exercise incredible control over them.  Worried about loosing their profitable monopoly (or near-monopoly) status, these companies become willing to do just about anything to keep their biggest customer, the government, happy!

Let’s consider the scenario I described in this post, where the City of Ottawa government granted one large multinational company a monopoly to provide internet service to all the ‘rural Ottawa’ residents.  They kicked a number of smaller ISPs already present in parts of this marketplace out – legislating them out of business.  Really.  And the folks running the city thought this was a thing to be proud of!

Now imagine that someone ‘at the City’ lets it be known to the monopoly holder that all internet traffic must be monitored ‘to prevent hate speech’….  Do you think the ISP will put his monopoly at risk, or set up filters on the network that would ‘monitor and report’??? 

Big business enables ‘big brother’ to have eyes….

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Controlling who provides our internet access

November 21, 2008 — xanthippa

Several weeks ago, a popular Ottawa openline radio talks show host was going ballistic over what had happened to his internet access.  He lives in the rural part of the city (the City of Ottawa contains both the urban and much of the surrounding rural area).  And while people in many parts of the rural region could not easily get high-speed internet connections, he happened to live in a largish village that had that service.  For years, he was very happy with his internet provider.

This changed.

One day, his ‘regular’ provider – a small, local company – simply went away and was replaced by a big company.  And his internet stopped working ‘right’.  No problem – when there is a change, things are bound to happen… he had no problem with that, as long as things got fixed.  The new provider had a 24-hour support number (so far so good) where customers could report problems and have them dealt with right away.

So, he called the number.  Automated answering system – understandable, so our host goes through the menues.  And more menus.  And more menus.  After over an hour of this, he gave up…

I cannot recall the exact details of this – but I do recall the basics.  And his lines lit up with callers eager to add their own horror-story about the terrible service they had received from this particular provider.  Many were upset that they had no choice to remain with their other providers – there were several, if I am not mistaken.  Yet, all had, simultaneously, dissappeared and were replaced by this one large company whose service was at best poor and customer support mostly non-existant.

What happened?  This is the background to the story:

The City of Ottawa had received complaints from rural residents about the fact that they could not get high-speed internet access.  (This would be referred to as ‘pressure from below’.)  Being a very responsive government (when they want to be), the city councillors decided to solve this problem.  Since the council is made up of people many of who had never held a non-political/public service job in their life – they came up with a somewhat predictable solution:  give one internet provider a monopoly right over all the rural region of the city in exchange for ‘hooking everyone up’!

They put it out to tender, then selected a large international heavyweight with a prestigious name to provide the service.  Very proudly, they announced this success in a press release!  Now, everyone is equal! 

Did you follow what just happened?

Yes, getting a high-speed internet service is a good thing – even for people who choose to live out in the countryside.  I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is that the way the City of Ottawa government chose to solve this robbed the rural Ottawans of their rights!

THEY GRANTED SOMEONE A MONOPOLY!!!  And what is more – they effectively forbade companies already providing a commercial service to their customers from continuing to provide this service!

And they are proud of the evil they had committed!

In my never-humble-opinion, it is exactly governments like these that were the reason that beautiful-sounding word, ‘defenestration’, was added to our language!

But consider the mindset at work here:  ‘the government’ is, by definition, a monopoly.  People running this particular government (the majority, anyway – enough of them to outvote the ‘rest’) have no experience outside of the ‘government monopoly’.  They truly and honestly think that monopolies are the best solution to just about every problem.  And then they implement ‘solutions’ such as these…

But this goes beyond just meddling by an incompetent government.  It is a real-life, managable-scale example of how governments and monopolies (or their variations) support each other.  The bigger the government, the bigger the companies – the more tangled the strings get.  But they are there!

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CRTC ruling: it’s OK to throttle your customers!

November 20, 2008 — xanthippa

Even though this is not where I was planning to go next in my ‘Big Picture’ look at what is happening around us, the timing of the CRTC’s ruling makes it convenient to call attention to what is happening with the internet.

Today’s article in the Financial Post, titled ‘CRTC denies request to ban Internet ‘Throttling”, we learned that Canada’s top censors communications regulating body, the CRTC, have ruled it’s OK bor Bell Canada to throttle internet trafic as they please – as long as they throttle everybody’s traffic equally….  Yeah, pull the other one!

“”Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein.”

…

“CAIP outlined how Bell Canada’s throttling has slowed down usage of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol calls, encrypted traffic, peer-to-peer file sharing and virtual-private networks to 30 kilobytes per second (roughly half the speed of a dial-up modem) from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. Normal speeds are about five megabytes per second, about 166 times faster.”

Uncle Stalin always used to say that controlling the means of communication is the best way to gain power.  It is ‘good’ to see that his message has hopped class barriers and that the mandarins at the CRTC have taken his lesson to heart.  Or something like that…

Whatever the reason, it is a message we must not ignore – especially when the CRTC is – reportedly – also considering serously altering the way internet is accessed in Canada.  I addressed this in an earlier post, but the upshot was that instead of just ‘surfing’ the net as a user would like, the ‘sites’ would be ‘bundled’ just like channels are bundled from a cable provider.  Then, the user could buy a ‘package’ that would include access to some 100 pre-approved ‘bundled’ sites.  Any website (or blog) outside of these ‘big ones’ would cost a buck or two (to be set) per click…IF they would be available at all… 

Yeah, a slow death of ‘throttling’ to anyone not in the ‘bundle’….  So, perhaps we ought not be surprised that this same set of people thinks it OK for Bell to slow internet trafic to the internet providers themselves to half the dial-up speed…during the hours that people are home and ‘surfing’. 

I guess the only question remaining here is:  what is their motivation in maintaining this consistent stand?

Perhaps the answer is simpler and more crass than most of us would imagine…

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »
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