ThinkingShift

When I was growing up in the 1940s or was that the 1930s? - okay not THAT long ago - I had a grand vision of learning several languages. In high school, the norm was to take on a second language (I can’t recall if it was compulsory or not). Anyway, all my friends decided to study German, French or Latin - I of course always like to be different!

The high school I went to introduced an Asian language - Indonesian. I can’t remember if Japanese was also offered. My best friend, Shayne, trotted off to study German. I joined her for one week but didn’t like the guttural sound of the language (with apologies to any Germans reading this post). I’ve come to appreciate the language now being a die-hard fan of Inspector Rex. Yep, afraid so. I had the misfortune to contract bacterial pneumonia in 2004 whilst on a visit to Portugal and while I was battling the dreaded bacteria, I watched hours and hours of television. Can’t speak Portuguese, so television shows didn’t make much sense to me. Flicking the channels, I stumbled onto Inspector Rex and actually picked up some German. I still watch Inspector (Komissar) Rex, largely for any glimpse of the dude who played Alexander Brandtner. His name is Gedeon Burkhard. Here’s a photo of him and I’m sure you’ll understand why I suddenly decided to take up German as a second language!

Okay, slightly distractive eye-candy, now where was I? Oh yes, back at high school. I ditched German and went over to the Indonesian class. I think it was stuffed full of 6 students, not a popular language to learn way back in the Neolithic period. From memory, 4 of the 6 were boys largely interested I suggest in the young blonde teacher rather than learning the ins and outs of the Indonesian language. I ended up speaking the language reasonably okay, it’s not that difficult to learn. I then went to University to study history and as a side dish studied Russian (a whole heap harder!).

Then I become lost in translation ie I went off to work in organisations and only recently have started thinking about taking up another language. I’m way behind on my grand plan of speaking five languages other than English. My husband speaks four. I can mutter “totally awesomely good looking” in German whenever I watch Inspector Rex (referring to the dog of course!); I can speak superficial Indonesian these days along the lines of “how are you” and “what colour is that table?”; and my Russian, well let’s just say I hope I don’t become lost again in the streets of Moscow as I did in the early 1990s.

So….I was thinking of taking up Portuguese, my husband is after all Portuguese and speaks the language fluently. But then I heard the Labor Party leader, Kevin Rudd, impress everyone with his Mandarin speaking abilities during APEC back in September. Now, I have to admit I did this post about a week ago and set it to automatic as ThinkingShift is on a pre-Christmas break - so it could very well be that I should have said Prime Minister Rudd because maybe he won the November 24 Australian Federal Election. I like the sound of Mandarin, it’s very soft on the ear. But then a friend of mine is learning Italian. And a very close friend is Thai - I have adopted her family and she mine. And I very much like Thailand, so why not learn Thai?

So it seemed to me that clever people speaking second or third or fourth languages is an increasingly common thing. And I had visions of young Australians learning Mandarin given the increasing influence of China and the fact that there are 873 million Mandarin speakers, plus a further 178 million who speak it as their second language.

But it seems I might be wrong. Kids in high school are shunning learning another language according to an article in The Age. Apparently, only 13% of Year 12 students studied a language this year, compared with 40% four decades ago. What the? Why aren’t school kids studying languages? Australia isn’t at the mercy of the tyranny of distance anymore and given the waking up of the Chinese tiger, I would have thought there would be a stampede to learn Mandarin. But it ranks fourth behind French, Japanese, Italian, Indonesian and German as languages students study. Now, I’m about to offend my French readers, but I don’t see why Australian school kids should be learning French over Indonesian or Mandarin. But maybe they’re trying to save the French language given that it’s in dramatic decline around the world due to the predominance of English as the language of commerce and the internet.

With China now being the major trading partner of Australia, I would have thought that the Federal Government would increase the number of high schools teaching Mandarin as they’ve done in South Africa.

Heck, I think just learning any other language is an intellectual pursuit in its own right, so why on earth are Australian kids lagging behind?

Mmmmmm….maybe I just convinced myself - Mandarin classes look like a goer.

Little did I imagine that there’d be so much privacy and surveillance news when I decided to take a pre-Xmas breather! There’s enough out there to have me doing several posts a day, but I’ll restrain myself :)- Maybe some ThinkingShift readers have been keenly watching how a certain class action is going - well at least the lawyers amongst us might be. Hepting v AT&T (2006) is a class action suit filed in the US by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - love those guys! The suit alleges that the telecommunications giant, AT&T, willingly and unlawfully assisted the US Government in monitoring the communications of - average Joe Citizen.

Whilst Bush and his croneys talk about the need to increase surveillance to combat international terrorism, it seems that what they’ve also been doing is spying on their own citizens. The US Government is trying desperately to grant legal immunity to telecommunications providers who help the Government in their War on Terror and there’s a lot of lobbying going on with US Senators to ensure that any immunity provision is not granted.

And one man is fighting the good fight - a retired AT&T technician, Mark Klein, is alleging that the National Security Agency (NSA) waltzed into AT&T’s San Francisco office in 2002 and gained access to massive amounts of email and internet search records of more than a dozen global and regional telecommunications providers. Klein alleges that the NSA was mining the data for usage patterns as well as content. Apparently, the NSA built a secret room on the 6th floor of an AT&T office ten blocks away from the main San Francisco office. Somehow Klein got his hands on some wiring diagrams and figured out that “An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables — e-mails, documents, pictures, Web browsing, voice-over-Internet phone conversations, everything — was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room”. If that’s the case: then I’m toast with what I search for and blog about!

Amongst all the allegations is the possibility that carriers other than AT&T were having their flow of traffic and content monitored without their consent or knowledge. You can read Klein’s public statement here on Wired.

Is it possible that the Bush administration is not only spying on foreign communications but its own citizens? Gasp, shock, horror!!! Bet every last breath that it’s not only possible but is a reality.

Sources: ABC News; Washington Post

Mmmmm…..well maybe I was a bit hasty with my Fortress Britain post when I said that the UK was fast becoming a police state, surveillance society, fortress - take your pick. Because like a seasoned galloper in a horse race, the European Union (EU) has burst forth with its own plans to become a locked-down space.

The EU has just unveiled new measures that could make Gordon Brown jealous. Draft laws propose that use of the internet be criminalised if used to incite or recruit for acts of terrorism and passenger lists for airlines flying into or out of the EU will have to be coughed up by the airlines. And…passenger list data will be stored for 13 years (13? why 13 - is this some magical number?).

Apparently, the European Commissioner for Justice and Security thinks the internet is a pretty suspicious place because it breeds international terrorists. Hello! There were “terrorists” way before the internet. I’m sure the British would say that the IRA and their campaigns in England in the 1970s might have fallen into the category of “terrorist activity”. And the Commish says that: “Those telling others how to commit acts of destruction - with a clear terrorist intention - should be put behind bars. Be it on the internet or print“. Now, I wouldn’t for one hop onto a plane brandishing a manual in Arabic on how to fly a plane, but Mr Commish might have forgotten that there are many, many books published over the years that have never managed to get their authors thrown into jail. For example, I read Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey way back in the early 1990s. Check out the illustrated front cover of the book here on Amazon - it is a man’s hand holding several sticks of dynamite. I remember really liking this novel about George Washington Hayduke III (who nearly carked it in an earlier novel). He runs around blowing up bridges or anything that ruins the pristine beauty of a landscape filled with deep canyons and sprawling deserts. In other words, Hayduke is an environmental activist using violent means to protect nature. Last time I heard, Abbey (who died I think in the mid-90s) didn’t get hauled off to jail for inciting environmental terrorism.

Clearly, reading the “wrong thing” in public from some “forbidden library” of books might land you in trouble these days. US airport screeners pounced on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s co-founder, John Gilmore, recently because he was reading a book entitled “Drugs and Your Rights”. And here is the book he was reading - part of a Cambridge University series in studies in philosophy and public policy. John Gilmore is a civil libertarian not some dangerous drug smuggler.

As Gilmore says: ” The Gestapo cared what works of philosophy you were reading. So did the Stasi. Those of you who live in free countries may find it a bit hard to understand why any populace wouldn’t tear to bits any bureaucrats that would take away the fundamental right to read whatever you like without it being used to determine how your government treats you as you cross borders or travel within your own country“.

Instead of hauling hapless travellers aside because their book might look suspicious, it might be a better use of time if officials considered the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings they produce or circulate. Two prominent Egyptian bloggers for example, Abdul Karim Nabeil Suleiman and Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, have been arrested over their blogging activities or writings.

And if you don’t think that you could get a visit from the FBI or ASIO (Australia) because of what you’re seen to be reading in public - check out this article on Creative Loafing.

Back to the EU: just like the UK, the EU will collect information about you such as name, passport number, address, credit card details, email address and phone numbers. And in the most sensible observation I’ve seen in awhile, Syed Kamall, a Conservative MEP stated: “This is just another extension of the surveillance society being built across Europe. If we continue to remove people’s basic liberties in this way, the terrorists will have won“.

Well, I started this blog back in January 2007. I aimed to do a post once a week, but somewhere along the line I caught the infectious disease known as obsessive blogitis. From my aim of once a week, somehow it ended up being daily postings. Since January 2007, I’ve blogged 257 times and had over 60,300 visitors - hardly the world’s leading blog, but I’ve managed to collect some avid readers who from time to time have left comments or sent me emails alerting me to things. I’m no mathematical genius but that’s around 5,480 visitors per month and thx to everyone who has contributed to or read ThinkingShift.

I’ve had fun with aliens and LOLCats, quantum physics and of course, the surveillance society. I’ve been listed as a blog people read, mostly recently by Jack Vinson who put ThinkingShift at the top of his list of 18 blogs he currently enjoys reading (thx Jack!). I started out wanting to blog about knowledge management, but I have so many other “passions” that have taken over - privacy, surveillance, endangered species, the environment, climate change, science and so on.

Oops…this sounds a bit like I’m about to go on and say “so I’m closing down my blog”. No way!! I’m just taking a pre-Xmas break. I’ve had a bit of a tough year. My mother died in July and then another elderly friend I was fond of died last week. And over the next few weeks, there are a few health issues of another relative to deal with.

So…I’m taking a bit of a breather until mid-December. I’ll be posting about 2-3 times a week instead of daily, but I’ll be back to daily posts around mid-December. And one of the first posts I’ll do is what blogs I read regularly as I’ve been asked to do this. And this will be followed by my research into whether Mars or other planets are heating up (TS reader Sweta asked me this question and I’ve been looking into over the last few months).

Now, don’t rush off and give your allegiance to another blog :)- ThinkingShift is only taking a bit of rest, not retiring off into the sunset.

Fortress Britain is an apt title - UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has just unveilled (wait for it) new border control security plans that would require hapless travellers passing through electronic check points to cough up to 90 (yep, that’s right 90) pieces of information. This would include information like credit card details, travel plans, email addresses, contact phone numbers and the like.

So….the idea as far as I can tell is that when you book your ticket with the travel agent, the agent would be collecting all this sort of information, which is then accessible by police, customs and immigration officials. Sorry, but I’m not comfortable with a whole lot of dudes knowing my credit card details. If you decide that this is all too much and opt for rail travel around the UK instead - forget it, you’ll still be subject to increased passenger screening at railway stations.

Brown is clearly making a fortress out of the UK. He’s announced plans to redesign buildings that could be terrorist targets making them “blast resistant”. And this is what it might be like to get into a public building in the future - external security checkpoint, vehicle exclusion zone, barriers made from concrete and the like.

And the new UK Border Agency will be given new powers of arrest and biometric visas (including fingerprint technology) will be introduced for all foreign citizens needing visas. At the moment, UK officials can hold a suspected “terrorist” for 28 days without charge (double the previous 14 days), but the Government is seeking to extend this period.

Now, this new UK Border Agency interests me. It’s a single agency passenger screening system uniting customs, immigration and visa procedures and consisting of 25,000 staff. From what I’ve read, Trusted Borders, a consortium of technology and service providers, will provide the technology for the passenger screening system, which will be based on fingerprint visas. So before you even enter the UK, the system will have screened passengers against immigration, customs and various watch lists. Apparently, staff from immigration, customs and visa agencies are being transferred into this new agency and with only 3 hours training or less are expected to be proficient at passenger profiling.

And if you go off and read Brown’s statement on national security you can get a sense of the mind-set. Brown refers to “the measures we are taking at home to root out terrorism and strengthen the resilience of communities to resist extremist influences..” and more policing and intelligence to “win hearts and minds“. And from now until 2011, Brown has pledged “an additional £240 million will finance counter-terrorism policing, which is focused as much on preventing the next generation of terrorists as on pursuing current targets“.

Hearts and minds will be won by waging a battle. Brown envisages “..a generational challenge that requires sustained work over the long term, through a range of actions in schools, colleges, universities, faith groups and youth clubs, by engaging young people through the media, culture, sport and arts, and by acting against extremist influences operating on the internet and in institutions from prisons and universities to some places of worship“. And he hints that the “governance” of mosques, which have existed in the UK for over 100 years, will be “strengthened”. And a new forum of head teachers from schools would be established to find ways to protect pupils from extremist propaganda.

Now, I think we need to give a cautious welcome to this crackdown. I’m not saying terrorists don’t exist. But there are two models of struggle. The first is the violent extremist model and if you meet this with defensive measures, it goes a long way to feeding into this extremist model by potentially escalating violent extremist efforts to overcome any “anti-terrorist” measures. And security measures that could be construed as “anti-Muslim” by Muslim communities or other ethnic groups could engender more hatred and violence, leading to the UK becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.

The other model is surely non-violent responses to terrorism. By understanding typologies of violence, sources of conflict, by differentiating between nonviolent Islam and Islamic Terrorism, understanding the grievances of people and knowing how discontent can be exploited and turned into hatred, refusing to support countries that don’t promote democracy or human rights - surely these responses would start to attack the roots of terrorism rather than erecting e-borders and increasing surveillance of citizens in the hope that terrorists will be flushed out.

The UK is fast becoming a no travel zone for me. It’s becoming travel terror. And if you look or act “different” - watch out.

Source: image credit BBC News, Washington Post, KableNet

One of the best memories I have is of the New England area in the US during autumn (or Fall). I was there in 1998 and 1999 - amazing coloured foliage. I’m no expert on the trees represented but I think I remember species called Dogwood, Red Maple and Sassafras. Rich autumnal reds and burgundies; pumpkin-hued leaves; crimson maples. And carpets of crunching leaves on the ground that you could run through.

But it seems that the spectacular foliage is fading. It’s less vivid, less sparkling. Intrepid “leaf peepers”, as tree and foliage lovers are known, make annual treks particularly to Vermont (where I was) to check out the Fall colours. In recent years, however, there are reports that the riotous rust-browns, oranges, reds and yellows of the various trees have shown their colours somewhat sparingly, with many trees changing from the dull green of late summer to the rust-brown of late Fall with no stopping for graduated hues in between.

A plant biologist from the University of Vermont believes that the Fall is now too warm to tempt the rich and vivid colours that used to be so resplendent of the area. Temperatures have been above the 30-year averages in every September and October for the past four years. The colour of trees is related to green chlorophyll, which declines as cold weather sets in. And warmer weather brings out fungi that attacks some trees, particularly the red and sugar maples that are responsible for the most spectacular palette.

Leaf-peeping is a tourist industry. 3.4 million visitors spent nearly $US 364 million in the fall of 2005. And accommodation is sometimes booked out two years in advance. So climate change could be the culprit and the trees used to be at their colour peak in the second week of October. But now the timing is later and some trees are simply going from green to bland and spotty.

Well, if the trees remain bland, leaf-peepers may have to do with looking at these fab pictures - Four Seasons in Each Picture - from Linkinn.

Source: Time.

I had some sympathy for Donald Rumsfeld when he became lost in translation in 2002:
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

Almost poetic really! But then the War on Terror erupted and I read more “poetry” from Rumsfeld and quickly lost any sympathy I may have had. And then of course I read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and wondered how on earth such a dangerous person became US Defense Secretary. Because here are some of his “snowflakes” as they’re known or daily, brusque missives to staff. Staff sometimes were the recipients of 20 to 60 snowflakes a day.

• Muslims “avoid physical labour”
• he wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat” around an increasingly unpopular war and “link Iraq to Iran”
• when he was being denounced by retired generals for his handling of the Iraq War he advised “Talk about Somalia, the Philippines etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists.”
• he said that “Iraq is only one battleground” and clearly signalling the next battleground - “Iran is the concern of the American people, and if we fail in Iraq, it will advantage Iran”
• he considered renaming the War on Terror to a “worldwide insurgency”

For some reason, Rumsfeld sounds like Richard Nixon to me. Anyone who’s studied the personality of Nixon would know what I mean - paranoid distrust of others, destructive behaviour, criminal and ruthless activity, power hungry. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that Rumsfeld served in various positions in the Nixon adminstration. Rumsfeld and other neocons are more concerned with whipping up a state of fear and removing from the world any country or people who get in the way of the righteous mission of the US (which is - take your pick - grabbing oil reserves to preserve national security; making Halliburton richer by the minute; ensuring that Blackwater gets every contract under the sun; erecting a corporatist state).

Source: Washington Post

To me, schools should be enjoyable places. I was a teacher for some years and I loved school - both as a teacher and student. I know a lot of people say “oh I hated school” but I really liked it. Great friends, great teachers, a carefree time, filled with discovery and learning. But that was before our current society’s obsession with surveillance, control and fear. Mind you, I went to school during the Cold War (way back in the 1950s - nope, kidding not that long ago!) but certainly when the US and the Soviet Union were eyeballing each other and films and novels were crowded with KGB and CIA agents. So to some extent, you’d expect that kids were drilled in how to put a gun together blindfolded in two nano-seconds or how to build an atomic bomb shelter or how to say “nyet” in Russian just in case the KGB materialised on your doorstep. But nope, I was never taught any of these things at school. There was no sense of worry, no need to look at a fellow student with suspicion wondering if they are about to whip out a gun. Sadly, as we know from all the shootings in US schools and last week’s one in Finland (Finland of all places??) where the freak gunman posted a YouTube video before the massacre - schools aren’t what they used to be.

And so to some extent I can understand the desire to bring in surveillance cameras. This makes more sense to me that those creepy CCTV cameras you find in public places like shopping malls. A school in Nashville is about to become the first school in the US to install facial recognition cameras. Digital images of students and staff will be loaded up and stored in a camera system in three tests schools. When the camera spots a face that it can’t match with a stored image, it will squeal. Interestingly, the same facial recognition technology was discarded by Tampa and Virginia Beach police because it didn’t help to spot intruders or criminals.

Civil libertarians are naturally concerned over a few things: the system could be used to detect students who skip class or students could be tracked throughout the day. Pretty sad indictment of our world - the panoptic school.

Source: USA Today. Image credit: CBS News

Told you this week would be all about surveillance. Two ThinkingShift readers have alerted me to articles about declining freedoms and librarians up in arms over surveillance. Firstly, Andrew M sent a link to an article from ABC News about press freedom declining. Apparently, there’s a “subtle shift” towards secrecy in Australia. I would say it’s pretty overt actually. Irene Moss, former NSW Ombudsman, has conducted an independent audit. She reviewed legislation and practices related to free speech issues affecting the media in Australia.

And guess what? The state of free speech and media freedom is “being whittled away by gradual and sometimes almost imperceptible degrees”. The report points the finger at general access to information where governments should be more open and accountable; the growing use of spin and the raising of barriers to mask information rather than reveal it - suggesting that the free flow of information is not just an issue of law, but one of a “growing culture of secrecy and mutual mistrust”. Scarily, the audit uncovered about 500 pieces of legislation that contain “secrecy” provisions or restrict the freedom of the media to publish certain information. And up to 1000 suppression orders control court matters. It seems the public’s right to know is being increasingly eroded. Go here to read about the key findings of the report. Scary.

And then Stephanie B sent me an article from The Washington Post, which reports on university and public librarians in the US fighting against pending domestic surveillance laws that could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Apparently, libraries are considered communications service providers (CSP) and the proposed draft House and Senate bills would allow the US Government to compel CSPs to cough up information about the activity of users who are non-US citizens (of course only foreigners hanging out in US libraries are a suspicious bunch). This surveillance can be conducted without a warrant or showing of probable cause. The proposed legislation would include being able to monitor a non-US citizen overseas participating in an online research project through a US university library (ergo US territory).

More privacy rights being violated if you ask me. Thanks to Andrew and Stephanie for the links.

Maybe someone can help me out. I’ve been searching for some authoritative research on the efficacy of public webcams or CCTV cameras. Because I’m convinced that they are pretty well useless in discouraging crime. Maybe they give some people a sense of security but to others, like me, it’s all about social control. Law enforcement officials and politicians assure us that CCTV watches over urban dysfunction and is a major contributor to crime control. The unblinking staring eyes are in shopping malls, car parks, restaurants (at least the one I was in the other night), cinema complexes. Most of us hardly seem to notice them. Most of us seem disinterested, unconcerned. The usual comment is “if you have nothing to hide, why worry about them”.

If you’re not concerned about them, wouldn’t you at least like to think that CCTV cameras are the strong deterrent they’re said to be? Or wouldn’t you like to believe that there are minimum regulations for use of CCTV cameras? Or that the dudes behind the cameras receive appropriate training? Or that the camera snaps the highest quality images? I’ll take it that you’ll answer yes to these questions.

So then……perhaps check out the first official report by the UK Government’s Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers entitled National CCTV Strategy. You can download the full report from the Home Office’s Crime Reduction website. It’s just been released. The report reviews the use of CCTV in the UK and is the only official review I’ve managed to find. If you know of others, leave a comment.

Here’s a summary of the report, which to my mind underscores the concern we should all have about CCTV/public webcams:

• 80% of cameras produce images of such poor quality that they are of no use for detection purposes - wouldn’t this make you a little worried given that law enforcement rely on CCTV as an identification device?
• it seems that the exact number of CCTV cameras and their locations is an unknown factor
• the original use for CCTV was largely in detecting crime but now the cameras are multi-tasking - recording vehicle number plates or monitoring groups of people in shopping malls. Somehow authorities forgot to tell us that original crime detection use has been co-opted and widened into something more sinister.
• there is no quantitative evidence in this report that I can see that substantiates the usual claim that CCTV helps to reduce crime
• camera to archive: little thought seems to be given to whole-of-life-cycle CCTV ie how long are the images retained?
• there’s seems to be no idea of how private webcams are used or who is using them
• there are no digital CCTV standards, including what is required of CCTV systems
• there are no regulations governing the use of private CCTV systems

Now, I don’t know about you, but this report gives me no comfort and in fact alarms me further about public webcams - they’re uncontrolled, the exact whereabouts of many CCTV cameras is unknown, and they are being used not so much for crime control as for social control.

Libby Brooks in a Guardian Unlimited article makes an excellent point. Aside from being an attack on civil liberties, CCTV alters our relationship with public space. To quote: “Those who are most aware of being watched respond in ways that only render them more vulnerable to sanction: teenagers hoist up their hoodies, demonstrators cover their faces on marches. Much more insidious is the way that our misplaced confidence in an omnipresent witnessing eye apparently makes us feel absolved of any responsibility to intervene ourselves.

Britain has become a witness culture, inured to watching and being watched. Be it Big Brother or posting friends’ antics on YouTube, our leisure time has become increasingly infected with the imperative to expose ourselves and others. No activity, no individual, is deemed valid without an audience. So maybe acquiescence to a constant mechanical witness should not come as such a surprise”.

And it’s that notion of absolving of responsibility to intervene or care that I wish to explore in future posts.