The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited with co-authoring RSS1.0 when he was 14 and being one of the co-founders of Reddit, but his most important contributions to the internet have been his staunch commitment to the free dissemination of information and along with this, the protection of privacy. Swartz was a creator of Tor2Web, a founder of Open Access as well as the Demand Progress movement that successfully fought the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA). I spoke to Carlos Gomez, who has been involved with the MIT hacker culture since the 1980’s, more specifically about Aaron Swartz and what he stood for.

Dady Chery
Co-Editor in Chief, News Junkie Post

Dady Chery. Aaron Swartz is credited with Tor2Web. Would you explain this contribution? How important is it?

Carlos Gomez. Tor2web is an anonymizer based on a volunteer network. It works as follows. Every request for a web page requires an addressee and a return address, and you need this return address, because the page requested needs to know where to send the information. So how do you get anonymity? Let’s say you are writing a snail mail requesting a document. The upper left corner has the return address; the middle of envelope has the delivery address. You obviously need these two pieces of information. So this envelope goes to a postman who picks it up, the local post office, a central office, etc., and gets passed along many times before it reaches its final destination. Without opening the envelope, anyone who handles it knows where it’s going to and where it came from. Suppose instead, you took the letter, put the “TO” and “FROM” addresses inside it and encrypted the whole thing, and then put that letter in an envelope that had the address of a trusted person instead who knew how to decode it. That person could open the letter, decode the TO and FROM addresses, put it in a new envelope, encrypt it again and forward it. And this could be done any number of times, until the final address is that of the final recipient. Each recipient would only know the previous and next person in the chain. The Tor browser performs the electronic equivalent of this manual encoding/decoding/shuffling of envelopes automatically and transparently for any user of TOR.

DC. How do you know that Tor itself can be trusted?

CG. The TOR software is open-source, meaning that every line of the software is published and open for inspection. While you yourself may not be enough of a geek to verify personally that the software works as intended, you can rely on a large network of highly paranoid geeks who have already minutely examined this code for you. This is in sharp contrast to Internet Explorer or Safari, the default browsers that come preloaded in Windows and Apple computers, respectively. These proprietary browsers are totally black-box, and could be forwarding every syllable directly to the CIA, for all you know. The principles of open source, most eloquently described by Richard Matthew Stallman (rms),  are a foundation of free information. People who use software should know its contents and be able to share it and modify it for their personal preference. When you buy a car or anything else, you are entitled to modify it any way you want. You might void the warranty, but you’ll never get arrested.

DC. But if you publish the source, doesn’t this mean that anyone can steal it?

CG. Yes. The same way anyone can plagiarize “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Whoever heard of a work of literature covered under copyright being encoded to keep people from plagiarizing it? It is outrageous that software can be covered by copyright at all. Software is not literature. It is much more like an invention and is more aptly covered by patent law. Of course, patents also require that the principles of any invention be completely explained and accessible. Before patents, inventors used to protect their intellectual property by simply keeping the principles of operation secret. This solution inhibits the growth of engineering knowledge. Patent law is a contract in which the public grants an inventor monopoly rights for a limited term in exchange for a full disclosure of the principles of the invention. Under patent law, every competent individual is ready to exploit the technology as soon as the patent expires, enriching and extending it to the benefit of the general public. It is expected that during the monopoly period, the inventor will be able to recover all of his costs of development plus a reasonable profit. Intellectual property protection of closed-source software tries to have it both ways: they get the protected monopoly, yet the public does not receive the full access to technology that is the public’s side of the bargain.

DC. Some say that Swartz’ opposition to SOPA/PIPA made him some very powerful enemies who felt that he was encouraging the theft of their intellectual property.

CG. SOPA/PIPA was meant to protect rights that corporations should not be allowed to have. Copyright laws were developed to protect the livelihood of authors — not the corporations that buy the right to an author’s work. By this reasoning, there is no sense to a copyright outliving its author, since no amount of incentive would entice that author to further efforts. Furthermore, copyrights should be held by real persons, never by corporations, which should have to license the copyright from a living person. The rise of digital media was never envisioned by the original authors of copyright law, and the control of pliant legislators by powerful media conglomerates have led to extensions of copyright law that are totally inconsistent with the original intent of these laws. The only justification that serves the public for a legal protection of “intellectual property” is that this protection ultimately increases, rather than inhibits, access to information.

DC. Aaron Swartz got into legal trouble for downloading JSTOR documents from an MIT computer. What is JSTOR, and do you think this information should be public?

CG. JSTOR is a repository of classic literature from a large variety of fields. This information is typically scanned because it predates digital publishing. Much of this literature is from publicly-funded research. Scientific publications differ from other literature in that they are meant to be applied to future research. In the case of publicly-funded research, taxpayers cannot derive the full benefit of what they have paid for unless they get unfettered access to it. The journals that claim ownership did not pay for the research, did not pay for the authors to write the papers, and did not even pay for the reviews. So their sole, extremely dubious, claim to the ownership of papers is based on their ability to coerce some poor sucker into signing their work over to them for free: the suckers in questions being the authors, the reviewers, and the tax-paying public. Why should we pay to have anybody, including somebody, say, in Ghana, who could not afford the extremely expensive journal fees, be able to get this freely? Science is completely global. It is in the taxpayer’s benefit, not only to have this information available to other taxpayers, but also to have it available to everybody. Another scientist in some unexpected place could be the one who takes the research to the next level. The more eyeballs, the more minds get access, the more robustly science develops. Pure research is founded on the free exchange of information. Anything less than total access means that everyone is being cheated. Period. The taxpaying public, authors and reviewers give up their intellectual property rights specifically so that the information can be made most widely available and applied. Usurpation of these property rights by the journals is theft.

Stallman, who is known for the phrase “Information wants to be free!” carried the concept of free information well beyond software. He invented the concept of “copyleft”, which is a copyright that is taken, not to restrict access to intellectual property but instead to guarantee free access by preempting corporate copyright claims. Swartz’s open access movement basically calls for scientists to take copylefts on their publications rather than surrender their copyright to the journals.

DC. Any thoughts about MIT’s role in Swartz’ troubles?

CG. It is ironic that MIT the institution is so hostile to the ideals of hacker culture, with which many creative people who work for MIT, including Stallman and web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are so closely associated. MIT people have been absolutely instrumental to hacker culture, whose contributions have greatly enhanced MIT’s reputation. Project Athena, for example, which brings academic online courses to the whole world for free is an honor to MIT and a great example of free exchange of information.

DC. What do you think would be a fitting tribute to Aaron Swartz?

CG. Amend the copyright law to say:

1. Any publicly funded research, past or present, is ineligible for copyright protection.

2. Software is not covered under copyright law but properly falls under patent law as an invention.

Read the complete text of Aaron Swartz’ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, in his own eloquent words.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Sage Ross. Photograph two by Mike Licht and photographs five, six and seven by Donkey Hotey.

For some time I have been thinking about apps and what they do for us and to us. Apps may be great, but they are also a huge problem. To back me up, comes a story called “Selling You on Facebook” in The Wall Street Journal, yes, the Wall Street Journal, the one newspaper that I am sure is an object of loathing to anyone who regularly peruses this site for a left wing and progressive take on the world.

Non-political, the article’s premise is simple, one that I have been writing about recently. It says, “Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users — and users’ friends – so don’t be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.” What the authors write is not a plot against freedom or social networks. They speak the truth. More importantly, the premise of the article extends to other apps as well and that is where the trouble begins.

We have a new player in the world of previously hidden information. The app. Apps are about giving – information of every kind, directions, instructions, name your poison. With all that and more, apps are fast becoming the single most important means of data collecting that people who do not believe in privacy, nor allow themselves to think that privacy is important, engage in at almost light speed. These amiable creatures called apps are taking over our lives.

In the recent not too distant past, advertisers used human focus groups to judge and help define new products and services. There were no algorithms to get in the way of the human equation. Mostly, these real people did a pretty good job. Hollywood movies and TV shows still use focus groups often to the dismay of the producers who believe their instincts work better in the art of storytelling.

If we do not know we should, that cookies on the Web provide anyone who gains access to them information about every move one makes as he or she surfs the Internet, often innocently and sometimes for other reasons.  As I write, apps are taking over for cookies by further devouring our online lives. Apps in a very short time have replaced cookies as the most important sales tool merchants of every type depend on.

At the rate we are going, apps will take over for both cookies and focus groups, dominating every choice we make. Our lives with all the different cyber platforms – meaning every mobile device including smart phones and tablets and every social network imaginable — control who we are and what we do and how we do everything beneath each clever, smooth, come-on interface. This will surely continue into the future. Face it, our online lives, however we perceive them, because of apps are now more than ever open for prying eyes to use the information they collect to sell us what we might not want and control us in ways that we never anticipated.

Yes, I know, apps have become very important in our lives and in how we live. They help when you are lost. They guide you to a good restaurant. They locate the nearest hospital. They find the closest gas station. They keep track of where your neighbors are, if you are so inclined to know where they are at all times. They can improve one’s life. They really do everything and more for a person in a complicated world that is more difficult to navigate every day. But addiction rules. As all addicts know, kicking a habit is nearly impossible.

I am willing to bet someone is working on an app as I write to cover the most unusual aspects of our lives. There are apps for everything and just about everything has an app. Pacman, once thought dead, is flourishing. This means that soon there will be an app for even more than we have apps for now. It does not mean apps are benign. If we succumb to these new apps, what little privacy we have will be lost forever. Privacy used to be, well, private. I care about privacy but many other people seem to revel in public exposure.

There are now probably more than a million apps available for the choosing. The making of an app has become a major tech industry. And if an app catches on, riches follow. One common theme impossible to ignore when exploring the effect of social media on how people live is the belief that social networks are about sharing. Sometimes people on social networks give away too much. That is because much of what is on all social networks is sophomoric. It is dorm room cool, which means that it is silly and self–gratifying. It depends on how needy one is.

You may wonder if anyone cares what you post, and because you may think no one does care, what you place for all to see has little interest beyond the words or photos on your page. This is all the better for the collectors of your data who mostly believe what they receive is too little. The maw they must fill is infinite. The craving for more data increases by the millisecond. It is voracious. Ignoring the need for privacy is now beyond help. It is a dead concept.

Using an app relieves a person from making direct eye-to-eye contact with another person. Technology today replaces the social experience of dealing with your fellow man and woman as if they were live and not microdots on a small screen. Using apps for everything obviates the need for real people in one’s life. Sorry, but Angry Birds are not real.

However, as long as I have free will, I am safe from this new invasion of my prime space. My hermit-like desire may be my last refuge, my final bastion of freedom. I have no apps.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for online magazines, The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of seven books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

One year ago, the voice of Marc parent suddenly went silent on the internet.  His online presence was extremely influential.  Marc was one of those hyperactive activists whose broadcasting was busy, intense, and focused on real change and reform to try to make the world a better place.  There was no better content aggregator and very few bigger influencers in the social media world.  Illness suddenly struck, and Marc Parent passed away on March 28th, 2011 at the age of 59.

I never met Marc personally.  I don’t even know what he looks like, and could not find a picture of him after an exhaustive search online.  That doesn’t matter.  Connecting with someone online is just as profound and powerful of an experience as knowing them in person.

Twitter

Marc was probably most famous online for his Twitter account at @mparent77772.  Over 82,000 people followed him there and he was important enough to be listed 2653 times.  His presence was huge.  He logged 119,219 tweets, most of which were links to a variety of subjects revolving around freedom, reform, politics, human rights, and world news.

His location was listed as “In front of my screen” reflecting the massive amounts of time he dedicated to online activism.  His profile read, “Blogger – Interwebber on politics, finance, news, media, society, government, the internets – CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER“.  Marc’s final online communication came on March 17th with this tweet: “Colin Powell demands answers over false Iraq intel http://bit.ly/fB5YwZ”

YouTube

Marc had a very popular YouTube channel under the name CrimesandCorruption.  Opened on the Winter Solstice of 2008, it had 392 subscribers, over 500 subscriptions, and had almost 200,000 channel views.  Marc never uploaded a video, and only listed to as favorites: “Philip Zimbado: A Study of Evil” about the the horrors of Abu Ghraib anda MoxNews recording of how Dick Cheney is a war criminal.

Digg

Digg was also a focal point for Marc’s efforts.  Although he was a member since the end of April 2007, I didn’t notice a massive uptake of activism there until later in 2008.  667 people followed him there, and he dugg up over 12,000 while submitting (sharing) a massive tome of 6288 articles.

Blip

Marc loved being a DJ on Blip.fm.  He played an eclectic mix of music that was heavy on the atmospheric electronica with sounds from BlueTech and Tosca.

Google Reader

You can get a feel for what inspired Marc’s activism on his reader list.

Blogging

The first reference to a blog by Marc that I could find was on blogspot starting in 2006.  That soon sprouted into a second blogspot blog and then a third one.  Others can also be found on his profile page.  This appears to have moved to LiveJournal in 2008 with another blogging venture at PrePosterous.

Facebook

Marc’s posted on his Facebook wall on February 9th, stating, “back again for who knows how long. i answer all personal facebook (only email) messages. comments msssages i answer only in a public way. i like news tips and such. so please feel free to write. miss you guys, terribly. best, marc“.

Two days later, Marc shared the tragic news that his life was coming to an end: “been sicker than a hound dog for several weeks. not convinced yet as a few tests, doctor interviews remain, but te latest medical guess by a doc who who gave me decent service for a few years is I have 2-3 months left to annoy critics online. looks like I’m headed to a better place sooner than expected. I’m at peace with that. thing is I have a lot of loose ends to tie up, and need to preserve enough wherewithal to accomplish them and still have some fun.”

The responses from his many online friends are heart felt.  His last posting was on February 17th, and then it was silent.

Online Funeral Announcement: PARENT, Marc Joseph Claude March 16, 1952 – March 28, 2011 On March 28, 2011, Marc Parent of Edmonton peacefully passed away at the age of 59 years. He is survived by his children, Ryan, Jason and Megan; mother Colette Parent-Savaria (Leo-Paul); two sisters, Suzanne (Len) Buchniak and Lorraine (James) Hook as well as one brother, Pierre, and nephews and nieces. Marc was predeceased by his father, Albert and his nephew John. A Funeral Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m., April 2, 2011 at St. Joachim, 9928 – 110 Street, Edmonton, AB.

You can view the obituary guestbook here, which contains voices from around the world.

In case you did not know it, SOPA in everyday English is Stop Online Piracy Act. Its main supporters are in Hollywood, TV, big music, and other major entertainment. Its opponents are the largest Web companies and the legions of naïve people who believe the passage of such an act would impede their right to freedom on the Internet.

For the moment, SOPA is in the official wastebasket where Washington bills go to die when so much of the public rises up to shout it down. Now our esteemed lawmakers believe SOPA, though necessary, needs clarity and better direction. It is hard to argue with the failure of the original bill. It is not worth the effort to try to pass that bill and to have big entertainment, big Internet and everyone else against it for different reasons important to each.

Do not be deceived by the millions who signed online petitions to scrap SOPA. The so-called little guy, Mr. and Mrs. grassroots, is simply a pawn in the hands of the big Internet boys who control the WEB. Do not be deceived by the black banner atop Google in protest of the bill. Just because you signed an online petition, keep in mind that the battle is still between the bigs: Hollywood and TV versus the Internet giants. It is not so much that one is against the other as much as it is how does each side best get what it wants, absolute freedom on the Internet versus controlled use for big entertainment and how it presents online what it believes it owns.

I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if the property is weak or poorly conceived. You may ask, who is not. I am against the theft of who I am when cookies ingest everything about me when I spend time on the Web. Everyone else should also feel this way, but people do not. Thus, companies such as Amazon and others are hypocrites because all they are doing is protecting their own turf. I am against hypocrisy but who is not, you say. Many who are on both sides of the argument are hypocrites because they try to hide the reality of Web commerce under the guise of freedom.

I do not believe what anyone on either side of the debate says. Both sides are using the average person, however good or bad his or her creation is, to advance its concept of freedom and ownership. They are working hard to hide one’s history on the Web and how it affects sales of products and sales of ideas.

We should all be for creativity. Many people I know agree that creativity is a gift and one of life’s joys. The Internet is the greatest platform for creativity ever. It opens enormous possibilities for anyone to post what he or she believes is their contribution to humankind. I am not arrogant when I say that most of what is on YouTube, other file sharing sites and found in millions of blogs is not very good. It is usually drivel and laughable in that we laugh at the effort, not at its humor or sense of fun. Most of what is in cyberspace is not worth my time. Attack me if you want. Please. But realize first, that just as not everyone can be a professional athlete, not everyone is capable of creating something that has lasting value. Just because you can post anything you want on the Internet for which you usually receive no pay, the act of posting does not give the work value.

We live in a society where sharing is free, especially in the world of social media. On social network sites free is the operating value system. It is the new normal, what people expect because the Internet is there for all to use as they wish, they think. Only one’s time is at stake. It strikes me that for the current generation, sharing and ignoring personal ownership is often more important than personal achievement. Many pundits believe that owning the copyright to a personally created work is a sin. If they could, they would eliminate copyright. They want to limit its length based on the idea that everyone should benefit from a copyrighted work even if they do not compensate its owner. Everyone, that is except the person who created the work.

Creating anything – art of any kind, a widget, an app, you name it — is hard work. If I create something on my own using my own time and money, or, better yet, with someone else’s money why should I not profit from or share in the profits from my enterprise without fear that someone will steal what I created. I do not subscribe to the idea that better creation will result based on earlier work. Why do the users and distributors of everything on the Web believe they should have a free ride of the back of my creative endeavor? Using another person’s work is fraudulent.

I come from a culture, or a time not too distant from the one we are living in, that believes you should own all or most of what you make with your mind or your hands. That is not the norm today. A certain amount of pleasurable, yet evil anarchy exists on the Web. There is a shoot first and ask questions later attitude toward what people own. If someone sees something they like, they post it for all to see, to possibly enjoy it without regard to its copyright. Then, if there is a complaint, they apologize, they take down the video, the photo, the written work, and everyone seems satisfied except the person or group who created the entity in the first place. The damage done, the violator gets an insignificant punishment or none at all, and goes out for another latte. Such is life.

Let me be clear. I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if and when – most of the time, by the way – it has almost no value to most people. Whether it is well conceived or poorly done, I have to admit it has value to its creator. I am against the unbridled, underhanded use of my personal information and creativity without my permission by either big entertainment or big Internet.

The voice of the creative community must make itself heard. Despite being unorganized, the creative community cannot allow those who use the Internet for gain of any kind to dominate ownership. Whatever replaces SOPA must be worth the journey or else anyone who thinks the Internet is free, however anyone uses it, had better think again.

Also SOPA’s justification is to block mainly foreign websites providing illegal content, the vaguely defined provisions of the bill would allow the removal of  content including political and other speech from the Internet, which are, in principle, protected by the US constitution as freedom of speech. SOPA would allow the Attorney General to create a blacklist to censor sites even if no court has found any infringement of copyright or any other law.

“If we let that happen, that would mean they would be barring access to content that is protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. And who knows how far the censorship would go after that. We can’t let that stand. This is a matter of protecting everyone’s constitutional right to freedom of speech. The bill as it stands now infringes on our constitutional rights,” said ACLU’s Executive Director Anthony Romero. The ACLU is adamantly opposed to the SOPA bill, and on November 16, 2011 the organization submitted a detailed statement to Congress.

If you don’t want to be left in the dark, and live in a neo-fascist Orwellian society which curtails civil liberties, free speech and the freedom of the press take ACTION NOW to stop SOPA or it might be too late.

A cross-section of America has gathered in New York City to demand an end to the deference given to corporations and greed over people and needs.

“We are here to kill war.” Bukowsi
Photographs from the first 5 days of Occupy Wall Street.

Photos by Joanne Stocker

I watched a young man dragged across the pavement for merely asserting himself, physically passive, in his right to protect his (and all of our) personal belongings.

Tuesday morning at around 7:30 a.m., Eastern Standard time, New York City Police officers instigated an assaultive confrontation with peaceful protestors in Zuccotti Park, camping a few blocks away from the Broadway intersection with Wall Street.

After a night of threatening rain forecasts, in which protestors participating in ‘Occupy Wall Street‘ industriously secured the entire encampment’s belongings by tarping nap sacks, sleeping bags, a portable generator, and untold laptops, live-streaming camera equipment, and almost definitely iron-on Anarchy “A” jacket patches, the first drizzling patter pelted the vinyl.

Not until this moment, long after their work was behind them and they had begun the business of herding ideological jello into a staggering but determined army of chanters, did the transient missionaries in what is now dubbed Liberty Square need to worry about their belongings, indeed their personal, conditional security.

I witnessed the following:

We can consider ourselves in a state of open hostilities with New York City authorities.

Come to Manhattan!

Editor’s Note:  Kenneth Lipp is a researcher in both primate and human genetics, and writes regularly on issues of public health and international health care policy. He has published research on telomere attrition and cellular aging in various peer-reviewed publications, and is an avid advocate of human rights.

follow Joanne and Kenneth on twitter

Feature image from Techpil.com

By Ron Steinman

Recently, Spain, a member of the European Union that has strict privacy laws, told Google to stop cataloging information about 90 of its citizens who filed complaints against the search engine giant. These 90 people are suing Google for what they call an invasion of privacy. Why is this important? It is only 90 people, you say. These people say, and Spain agrees, that individuals have “the right to be forgotten on the Web.” Google is facing suits in Switzerland, the Czech republic and Germany. These countries are also upset with Google for its Street View feature where its cameras roam cities and photograph every street the camera sees. According to recent polls in Europe, most people want their privacy protected. In the United States, Web sites are springing up that will enable users, for a fee, to wipe out as best they can personal information individuals want kept secret. For Europeans that is not enough. Factions on all sides of the fight at home and abroad are taking up strong positions to combat or to protect what each believes is its right to privacy or freedom of information. There are no easy answers until someone, a person or beyond that, an institution gets hurt. Google as usual is not going away without a fight.

In response, Google says collecting much of its information is out of its hands. That is hard to believe. It comes down to this: Google thinks, and here I quote The New York Times, “ that search engines are not responsible for the information they corral from the Web.” Pause. Please read that again to get the full effect of that quote. Google is saying that similar to a vacuum cleaner, its algorithms pick up everything in their path indiscriminately and let the chips fall where they may. It is one thing to create algorithms. It is another to refuse to take reasonability for your creation. We mostly must now watch with amusement as Google dissembles its way out of taking responsibility for what it collects willy-nilly when its search engines surf the Web. Is Google dishonest? I do not know. But I think that Google is hostage to its own science, and the giant it is revels in it.

Google has been skirmishing for years with The European Union because that august body believes that Google engages in some practices that are invasions of privacy. Keep in mind that countries in Europe have a take and a history different from ours in the States about what privacy means to the individual. Europeans are far more protective of their right to privacy than we are. Individual countries in Europe have longer histories of repression than they do of democracy. As these histories recede, I can understand why they do not want outsiders invading their public and private lives.

This, then, is about Google and responsibility. It is also about A.I, artificial intelligence. More about that in a moment. I do not know if Google really wants to take over and ultimately rule the world, or at least the Internet, but what I am about to relate has to do with algorithms and how sometimes they have a mind of their own – at least according to the folks in Mountainview. We are no longer in the land of the unthinkable. We try to have reason play a role in how we live, but, it, too, is more often than not, an illusion. Take this as a warning.

I am sure we are familiar with the saying, “The Dog Ate My Homework,” the age-old excuse people use to blame outside forces for a personal failure. It is not my job, boys will be boys, and one excuse is as good as another are variations on the theme of refusing to take responsibility for one’s actions. This time, out of the mouth of the monolith known as Google, I can add a new saying to the growing lexicon of excuses — the algorithm did it. Using this excuse will now absolve all of us from future errors and failures. We can now blame a man-made tool for doing the unexpected.

A.I. or artificial intelligence is one of the great playthings of science fiction. Writers take the idea of making a manufactured robot into a “being” that has a self-aware mind. More than self-awareness, fantasists imbue these man-made creatures with the ability to make decisions selectively. Usually these are humanoid figures cybernetically enhanced to think and act on their own. If true in real life, we would end up with a new slave class or be enslaved ourselves. The dangers are blatant. But give credit where credit is due. It takes a vivid imagination to create scenarios, usually in the future, whether near or far, where we as humans craft beings who can duplicate how we think, how we laugh and cry, basically how our emotions function without the prodding of complicated software. Imaginative or speculative fiction has become a serious part of our consciousness. Everywhere I turn these days there is another creative attempt to make A.I. a reality but it is always just a dream. Isaac Asimov’s robot novels. Robert Heinlein’s speculations. William Gibson’s near future fantasies, to name just a few of many in the wide-ranging genre. There are a host of other writers, producers, directors, filmmakers too numerous to list. Everyone has a favorite. Novels. Short stories. TV. Movies. Video games. Star Wars. Droids, everywhere droids. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Star Trek. Alien. Avatar. Battlestar Galactica. Transformers. The Matrix. I Robot. Dr. Who. Dune. And my favorite group think creation from Star Trek, The Borg, a trope that is a mainstay of Star Trek:The Next Generation and Star Trek:Voyager.

More importantly, smart scientists in major labs are spending a lot of money and time in an effort to replicate how the human mind works. When I say replicate, I really mean how the mind functions and grows ultimately on its own. Humanoids need not apply. Despite what Google says about its independent algorithm and how it injudiciously collects information, I do not believe A.I is possible, no matter how many highly intelligent minds are at work trying to make it happen. Even a hard-nosed skeptic like myself does not believe that such a surprise will shock us awake in the real world.

The real world demands that we have rules governing our right to wipe out what we want about us on the Web. By the fall, we may discover that Europe is leading the way. This does not mean similar ideas will follow here in America, but I will be waiting anyway, even if impatiently. 

 Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam war, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, the History Channel and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of eight books, including “Inside Television First War: A Saigon Journal”, that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

The most likely case is that overt criticism is being characterized as conspiracy, as part of the sickening trend wherein dissent is being labeled “terrorism.”

I have been unable to access the DHS report, but according to the Computing World article one would gain the impression of a single corporate organization, which in fact is being misrepresented and  constitutes at least three separate and unaffiliated entities. “OccupyWallStreet” “USDayofRage” and Anonymous are all autonomous bodies, sharing neither explicit creed nor operational structure.

I asked OccupyWallStreet for any comment they cared to give; it is important now that representation of all of these movements avoid the misapprehension being encouraged by their adversary agencies. Their response: 

“OCCUPYWALLSTREET will be an absolutely nonviolent event, safe for all people of all ages. Our goal is initiate a peaceful rejuvenation of democracy in America. If we are dispersed from Wall Street, we will simply return to nonviolently re-occupy the space. This is an opportunity for all Americans, on the right and the left, to speak out against the financial capture of our democracy.”

I was also fortunate enough to speak with Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and social/political activist who is one of many helping to organize the USDayofRage (USDOR). I asked her if she could explain USDOR’s association with Anonymous.

“None,” says Alexa, “USDOR is an organization started by no one, to help neutralize the sophist quasi-poetic masturbation of our rotten republic’s political discourse. The corruption of election processes, especially campaign finance regulation, has usurped the primacy of the democratic process.” Alexa emphasized the key role which finance plays in obviating effective popular representation several times, outlining USDOR’s philosophy as “One Citizen, One Dollar, One Vote.”  Regarding Anonymous and their reciprocal support, she says: “I would almost prefer no comment. We have no organizational ties with Anonymous-we support informed autonomous action by individual citizens.”

I want to join Alexa in encouraging everyone to “disengage from the political peer-pressure.” The US Day of Rage is about the manifestation of the crucible cracked and the long-building pressure spilling human onto the street – Wall Street. Plans to occupy are based on an assertion of the right to non-violent protest and the obligation to engage in civil disobedience, when the laws represent the interests of the powerful and effect the suffering and enslavement of people to a lie.

OccupyWallStreet’s Tactical Committee meets tomorrow to continue to ossify plans for September 17th. Their goal is enabling people to exercise their right to protest safely without fear of reprisal, and they have received the support and assistance of The People’s Law Collective  toward that end.

I encourage you to follow the USDOR, OccupyWallStreet,  and Alexa’s twitter accounts for updated information.

Editor’s Note: Kenneth Lipp is a researcher in both primate and human genetics, and writes regularly on issues of public health and international health care policy. He has published research on telomere attrition and cellular aging in various peer-reviewed publications, and is an avid advocate of human rights.

By Ron Steinman

Privacy should be a basic right. These days, with the pervasiveness of the Internet, it is fast becoming a luxury. That means the sense of who we are and how we perceive who we are is under constant threat by those who deem privacy to be outdated.

I believe that many people value their freedom more than they do their life. Life without freedom is usually no life at all. That is what the Arab Spring has been about, as well as all people-fueled revolutions. With freedom there should come the right to privacy. Recall that the Stasi in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, and that the KGB in the Soviet Union before perestroika, curtailed privacy throughout the Eastern bloc. Freedom did not exist. To be private meant that a person had thoughts that went beyond the all-controlling state. The state always came before the rights of the individual. Today, among others, the rulers of China, North Korea, Vietnam, and many countries in the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the old Soviet Union still curtail freedom of thought, and thus limit the concept of privacy. Privacy is dangerous. Be it Fascism, communism, or the iron fist of age-old repression, privacy is not a right. Increasingly, in the age of the Internet, privacy is fast becoming a rare commodity even among those of us who live in the United States and other so-called free nations of the world. If one thinks clearly about privacy in America, you will come away with the realization that it is fast becoming obsolete.
There are more than a few issues about privacy and the Internet that are hard to ignore. Many are generational. Of course, this disregard of privacy really stems from the pervasive hold that social media has over many people. We are dealing with Millennials, those who are 20-33; Gen Xers, those from 34-46; and Boomers, from 47-66 years old. These, the main users of the Internet, seem the least caring about their privacy, or anyone else’s. They are also the most exposed to outside forces bent on corruption. Anyone older than 66 does not seem to matter to anyone engaged in mass media.
Ignorance rules much of their thinking about privacy. And because of that, we ignore the peril brought on by the invasion of our privacy. We are lazy and too trusting. Put all three together and we risk losing the depth of what we are to nameless, faceless algorithms. It starts in the world of commerce where people are working very hard to gather in everything they can about us for the sake of profit. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just money. That is not in itself bad or evil. Think back a few years in time. First, there were newspapers. Then came radio and the mass medium of movies. Then came television, considered by many the ultimate sales tool ever created. That is, until the rise of the Internet, of the World Wide Web 2.0, and all it brings in the way of invading our lives.

Do not be naïve. The Internet, despite its many virtues, and many rooms, exists mainly for profit. Buy and sell. Sell and buy. Keep in mind that on the Web, someone, usually an emotionless algorithm, tracks and records every move you make whether through a cookie on your computer or a sale a clerk rings up at the supermarket. All your records are then embedded permanently someplace, today, probably on a hopefully dense and impenetrable cloud. Hopefully the cloud will not spring a leak. Most captured information is for use any time by anyone who can pay the attendant access fee. The Washington Post recently reported that there are firms that “now have access to more than a billion records detailing consumers’ personal finances.” That is a billion and growing. Personal should be private. Another point in the story is that there is little “the consumer can do . . . about it.”

Once someone collects all that private information, that party or agency that stores it can then disseminate the material however it wants. Power resides in the possession of information. Information translates into money and influence.
Importantly, hardly anyone knows we, that is the public, have almost no way of obtaining, for our own use and perusal, any of the information gathered clandestinely by these self-anointed collection companies. Think of it for a moment. You no longer own or possess who you are. In fact, those who collect all your statistics, and any other personal facts about you, most certainly know as much about you as you do. Maybe more. You have lost the ownership you once had over your birthright, and maybe even your image. Thus, the question before us is direct. Who owns all the information others compile about who we are, what we do, and how we do it? It seems reasonable to assume that because the information is about us – you and me—we should own it. We should decide how to use it, if at all, and how others might use it, if at all. But that is not the case. In this time of rampant social media, attitudes toward privacy are far less important to many people. Generational? Yes. But when the invasion of an individual’s privacy changes a life forever, which it can do, each person only has him or herself to blame.

Senator John Kerry and Senator John McCain are sponsoring the Commercial Privacy Bill to protect consumers who use the Internet from unwanted, and unwarranted, intrusion into their lives. Even if the bill becomes law, no intrusion will ever disappear. No matter who erects a gate to protect an individual, that person will never have enough strength to keep his/her personal life free of unwanted intrusions by unknown forces. Everywhere we turn, someone is devising a new way to scrape and drill into any trail you may have left inadvertently, or because of sloppiness, when trying to protect your right to privacy, assuming it is on your mind. Privacy has been sacred in the past. Then, the means to achieve the goal of learning everything about someone or an organization took old-fashioned digging with a human being slogging through papers and information scattered in many directions. Investigators did not have all the means at hand to achieve their goals. Now algorithms do the dirty work.

Today, privacy investigators are using something else to ferret out information about you that in some cases you probably never knew existed. Called “history sniffing,” the idea it implies is abhorrent, and, as such, needs no further explanation. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Nothing is sacred when it is your life that lies exposed for the world to see, or, in many cases, for a silent few who want to control and dominate every facet of how you live.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of eight books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

This is a News Junkie Post exclusive.

In the continuing backlash against the Murdoch Empire, a Firefox add-on has just been released that warns a user when they arrive at a website owned by NewsCorp or any subsidiaries, such as Fox News or the NY Post.

Murdoch Alert was just created on Mozilla today, and the designer gave News Junkie Post an exclusive first look at it. The initial release version is 0.2 and comes with greasemonkey script for people who want to tweak it.  From the Mozilla Add-on page:

MurdochAlert show a warning bar on Murdoch Family-controlled websites. This alerts users to the potential computer security risks of accessing Murdoch-controlled sites. Handy also for identifying the news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family.

This Firefox add-on is the kinder, gentler version of an extension for the Chrome browser released on Wednesday, July 20th called Murdoch Block.  With this installed, if a user happens upon any website owned by the vast international NewsCorp company, a warning screen will appear asking the user if they are sure they want to visit this site.  Less than 2 days old, there are 400 downloads of Murdoch Block.

Options are available on both Murdoch Alert and Murdoch Block to ignore the warning and enter anyways.  A complete list of the sites owned by the NewsCorp machine was compiled by Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA: *EDIT: the list was actually compiled by the Reddit user eobanb with some help from others here.  PoliticusUSA used it with permission when reporting about the Chrome extension.

foxnews.com
foxnewsinsider.com
fox.com
foxconnect.com
newscorp.com
foxinternational.com
foxbusiness.com
dowjones.com
fins.com
marketwatch.com
smartmoney.com
wsj.com
wsjclassroomedition.com
thedaily.com
4kids.tv
myspace.com
hulu.com
realestate.com
allthingsd.com
bigcharts.com
foxsports.com
foxsports.com.au
bigtennetwork.com
espnstar.com
fxnetworks.com
nationalgeographic.com
natgeotv.com
golfchannel.com
speedtv.com
tvguide.com
foxsportsradio.com
weeklystandard.com
nypost.com
newsinternational.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
thesun.co.uk
newsoftheworld.co.uk
thesundaytimes.co.uk
theaustralian.com.au
news.com.au
truelocal.com.au
heraldsun.com
adelaidenow.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au
couriermail.com.au
weeklytimesnow.com.au
perthnow.com.au
mxnet.com.au
alphamagazine.com.au
newsspace.com.au
careerone.com.au
carsguide.com.au
sky.com
skysports.com
sky.de
sky.it
skytv.co.nz
thestreet.com
webmd.com
foxmovies.com
foxstudios.com
foxsearchlight.com
blueskystudios.com
foxinternationalchannels.com
canalfox.com
mundofox.com
biensimple.com
foxlife.tv
foxlife.com.br
vedomosti.ru
harpercollins.com
harpercollins.co.uk
harpercollinschildrens.com
harperteen.com
harpercollinscatalogs.com
avonromance.com
thegarden.com
msg.com
staplescenter.com
smartsource.com
myfoxny.com
my9tv.com
myfoxla.com
myfoxchicago.com
my50chicago.com
myfoxphilly.com
myfoxdfw.com
kdfi27.com
myfoxboston.com
myfoxatlanta.com
myfoxdc.com
my20dc.com
myfoxhouston.com
my20houston.com
myfoxdetroit.com
myfoxphoenix.com
my45.com
myfoxtampabay.com
myfox9.com
my29tv.com
myfoxorlando.com
my65orlando.com
my24wutb.com
myfoxaustin.com
myfoxmemphis.com
wogx.com

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