I have been away this week and unable to write anything on the PRISM revelations that have dominated the news over the past few days. Here are a few notes and links in lieu of something more rounded.
At ORGcon, I did preface my remarks during the ‘free speech online in the UK’ panel to note that the right to free speech includes the right not to be surveilled. If you think your conversations are being monitored, then you are not going to speak as freely as you may wish. (I will post a longer reflection on the ORGcon discussion soon).
This week I did read an article by Daniel Solove in the Chronicle of Higher Education which summarises variations on the “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” argument for surveillance. It’s obviously extremely relevant given recent revelations surrounding the US Government’s PRISM programme.
Solove’s article is a frustrating read, because the arguments against surveillance are, like many human rights issues, bound up in ‘slippery slope’ or ‘boiling frog’ concepts that tend not to resonate with ordinary people. Public interest (and outrage) at privacy invasions only occur when rare real-life examples manifest themselves, as when the damage has already been done (the hacking of Milly Dowler’s mobile phone being the prime example). Liberally minded people who oppose surveillance and privacy intrusions on principle need more sound-bites to compete with “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”. Solove lists a few candidates – “Why do you have curtains, then?” is probably the best retort. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 89 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
At English PEN, we’ve been following the health of free expression in Turkey very closely all year. Here’s a round-up of excellent Turkey analysis from some of the people we have been working with.
Ece Temelkuran writing in the New Statesman – ‘People have killed their fear of authority – and the protests are growing‘.
It was never just about trees, but the accumulation of many incidents. With the world’s highest number of imprisoned journalists, thousands of political prisoners (trade unionists, politicians, activists, students, lawyers) Turkey has been turned into an open-air prison already. Institutional checks and balances have been removed by the current AKP government’s political manoeuvres and their actions go uncontrolled. On top of this growing authoritarianism, the most important reason for people to hit the streets in support of the Gezi resistance was the arrogant tone of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
English PEN Turkey specialist Alev Yaman expands on this theme of arrogance:
Erdoğan unabashedly wields that most dangerous of rhetorical weapons – the Will of the People – when he speaks, and his casting of the protesters as ‘extremists’, ‘alcoholics’ or ‘opportunistic provocateurs’ gives a clear insight into his psychology. His opponents are marginal, irrelevant and contemptible; while he represents Turkey. And perhaps it’s this dismissive attitude towards the rest that is the biggest factor in the unrest. For many in Turkey, there is a growing sense that their views don’t deserve to be heard or listened to. It is Erdoğan’s contempt for those outside his electoral base that is the biggest cause for concern of all.
Meanwhile, the Free Word Centre’s translator-in-residence Canan Marasligil has written a series of posts on the current crisis: An overview of the protests; some of the issues around translating the protestors statements for foreign consumption; and the role that satircial cartoons have played in the week of protests.
According to the Mail on Sunday, David Cameron recently learnt of a sex-scandal involving prominent members of his government. ‘For legal reasons’ the paper cannot name the people involved.
On Twitter, people are cautious. Many cite the injunction that prevents anyone naming names. The judgement in the Lord McAlpine vs Sally Bercow is fresh in everyone’s minds. Even guessing may amount to contempt of court.
Meanwhile, blogger Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes) claims to already know the identities, while other journalists say they have worked it out.
During the ‘super-injunction’ furore in 2011 (which culminated in Ryan Giggs being named in Parliament as having taken out such an order to prevent a kiss-and-tell story by Imogen Thomas) I recall that both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph printed ridiculous puff pieces about an actor who had been named on Twitter as having used a prostitute and then taken out a super injunction to prevent the story from vein reported.†. Both pieces called the actor a family man, and the Telegraph cleverly worked certain film titles into the piece that, for those in the know, referenced the sordid tale.
For those in the know.
It may be that Monday’s newspapers contain similar clues. Those who usually try to solve the cryptic cross words may try their luck and deciphering the hints and breadcrumbs buried within the newspapers coverage. In the coming days, look out for odd turns of phrase, and out-of-place or fawning profiles of cabinet ministers in the newspapers. They will be the *innocent face* of the mainstream media, drawing attention to those in the know.
This is all desperately problematic. In the next few days, we may find ourselves in a situation where the majority of the political and media class will know the identity of the Downing Street adulterers. People like me, who exist on the periphery of that world and have a couple of friends in journalism, will probably find out too. That’s if Twitter doesn’t get there first. And everyone who knows will probably tell their partners and a few other close mates, “so long as you don’t broadcast it”.
And if the group of those in the know is sufficiently large, then the privacy of the people involved has not been protected. Their reputation will have been damaged.
In fact, I reckon that I am a pretty good canary-down-the-mine for this. There must be literally thousands of people like me who work on the fringes of politics and/or spend a fair chunk of time on the Internet. Assuming that the identities are not revealed in a big newspaper splash (a possibility) then I will posit that when I discover the identities, then in no sense can it be said that the privacy or the reputation of the people involved remains protected..
This is not a free speech manifesto and I will not break any injunction. Social media and blogging are both forms of publishing, legally no different from writing a newspaper article.
My point is this – there may come a moment in the next few days or week, when there will be common knowledge facts that no-one will speak about in the open, and everyone will play along with the charade that the names remain unknown.
And when societies participate in a collective omertà, we should start to get worried.
Update
Well, that did not take long. I have now discovered the names of the people involved. My methods were so rudimentary I can confidently say that many, many people are now in the know. It will make it easier to spot cryptic clues in the Monday papers much easier (but less fun).
Update II
Trial reveals Brooks-Coulson affair.
†As someone who likes to link to what I am referring to, it is incredibly frustrating to be unable to do so in this case… because I think the injunction may still be in place. I will investigate and post the links if it is legal to do so!
Here’s a brilliant story from the City of York:
The EDL posted details about a demonstration they were going to host at our mosque on Sunday on their Facebook page. My first reaction was to let the police know, which I did, but when I really started thinking about it I remembered George Bernard Shaw saying, “If the world’s problems were brought to the Prophet Muhammad, he would solve them over a cup of tea..” I knew we had a sunny forecast for Sunday, and it’s very English to have tea and biscuits in the afternoon, so I thought it would be a kind gesture to invite the EDL in to tell us about their grievances.
I have a couple of comments to make about this story. First, this story represents an alternative vision of multiculturalism, the one put forward by the Dalai Lama when I asked him about the concept, a few years ago: Multiculturalism is about stressing similarities between different cultures.
Second, is it me, or have the British public become savvier at dealing with extremism? I think people have ‘wised-up’ to the power of counter-intuitive gestures. As well as this Muslim take on ‘make tea not war’, I am thinking of things like the London #RiotCleanup that arose in response to the 2011 riots. I also recall gestures of solidarity and defiance, like We Are Not Afraid and the Iranian/Israel Facebook Love-in.
I’ve made other notes on this blog about counter-intutive, unexpected, turn-the-other-cheek style thinking. I think the savviness, such as it is, comes from the way in which ordinary people recognise the value not just in doing something unexpected and open, but in publicising that fact! I note this not as a criticism, just an observation about the way in which people can spread their actions, and therefore their ideologies, through social media. I do not know for sure, my I have an inkling that Mohamed El-Gomati’s idea to invite the EDL to tea was inspired as much by the recent precedent set by the sort of social media campaigns I mentioned above, as by anyhting said by the Prophet Mohammed.
I will try to log more examples of public savviness when they arise in future.
Update
Re-reading this, I think it needs another paragraph. What is noteworthy about year gestures is that they do not come from politicians. Remember when Boris Johnson tried to piggy-back onto the #RiotCleanup goodwill. The examples I mentioned are also examples of leadership, progress, bold action that politicians do not seem capable of initiating. Is that because they lack imagination, or because we are so cynical that we would scoff at the same acts, if a politician tried to initiate them?
Yesterday was the 10th birthday of WordPress, the blogging platform from which these words that you are reading are delivered to your glowing rectangle.1 Here is an interesting infographic, showing how dominant the software has become.
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has typed a love letter to his anthropomorphised project.
I’ve been using WordPress since September 2005, or eighty percent of the platform’s lifetime. I have used every version of the software since the antiquated version 1.5. When I began blogging, WordPress had been downloaded 538,514 times. According to the infographic, that number has risen to more than 66 million. This puts me comfortably into the earliest 1% of users. I was using WordPress before it was cool.
When I began, the default Kubrick design had only just been introduced, and there was even an option to activate an older ‘classic’ template. There were no options for uploading images (you had to do that via FTP or ‘hotlink’ from an existing image online) or integration with social media, and there was no way to change the look and feel of the site unless you knew some CSS and PHP.
However, the two core pieces of functionality that make WordPress so useful were already in place back in 2005 – themes and plugins. By uploading small pieces of stand-alone code, you could change the look (themes) or functionality (plugins) of the site without messing with the core code. That was not a unique feature of WordPress, but I am sure that the simplicity of the way it was implemented contributed to its success.
That, and the fact that WordPress is OpenSource, meaning anyone can edit the code and create themes and plug-ins. I was very impressed when, in 2010, Mullenweg transferred ownership of the WordPress trademark to a non-for-profit company, meaning the platform cannot be sold to an Internet giant, as Tumblr was last week.
Other sites in which I have a hand that use the WordPress platform include The LIP Magazine archive, The Word of an Insignificant Woman, Liberal Conspiracy, and English PEN.
1. Unless, of course, you’re reading this at some point in the near or far future when I have, in an ironic twist, abandoned WordPress for some other software and imported all my old posts.