I’m usually about the ninetieth person to get these things (thanks to the pal who emailed it to me), but this one is quite funny:
Bit of a new departure for the CIA, innit?
From the category archives:
Privacy
Need a fresh reason to dislike Bill O’Reilly?
O’Reilly scolds guest who outed gays, then calls judge a lesbian
Fox News Channel’s star talk-show personality, Bill O’Reilly, says he is uncomfortable with the practice of outing gay political figures–except, it seems, when he is doing the outing.
On his show Monday night, O’Reilly chastised guest Michael Rogers for maintaining a Web site publicizing the names of gay staffers working for politicians who oppose gay marriage….
But on the same show–and for at least the third time in the last year–O’Reilly described one of the justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court as a lesbian, a claim that the justice herself, through a spokeswoman, denies.
For the record, I am opposed to outing, whether it’s done by Bill O’Reilly or by people on my side.
UPDATE: “I gave up the homosexual lifestyle four years ago.” Terrific New Republic first-person story on gay marriage.
This little Flash movie by the ACLU about the loss of privacy is hilarious and, of course, scary at the same time.
I’m running between meetings and trying to get this story into the print media (why do these things always happen on a Friday afternoon?) of an important development in the privacy of communication, so I will just point you to a leaked document hosted by the indefatigable people over at Statewatch.
Ireland, Britain, France and Sweden have proposed that the European Council of Ministers pass a Framework Decision on the retention of communications and mobile phone location data throughout the EU. This is the latest in an ongoing effort of certain European law enforcement interests (led by the UK, pushed by the US) to create a total surveillance capacity over anyone who uses a communications device of any kind, anywhere in the EU. This is sad, bad and disastrous news.
Yet again, policies which fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state are being pushed through the most secretive and unaccountable decision-making body of the EU. Yet again, so-called anti-terrorism measures are being opportunistically introduced – this time in reaction to the Madrid bombings – but applied far beyond terrorism related investigations.
As comparisons go, this measure will far exceed the Patriot Act. It is obscenely dismissive of European data protection law – which now applies to multinationals using call centres but not to curb the state excesses it was created to prevent. It is absolutely sickening to see the Irish government using its presidency of the EU to endorse measures that cut the heart right out of European human rights.
For any decision-makers who haven’t been listening to the years of pleas and demands that EU states not use the promise of information and communications technologies to surveil their citizens, hear this: we don’t trust you, we don’t support you, and unlike you we haven’t forgotten the historical reasons Europe chose to stop governments compiling databases of their citizens’ most innocent acts.
Just by the by, and for those with more than a passing interest in the subject, here’s a draft of a rather opinionated survey article on privacy that I’ve just written for a UK think tank. Health warning; it’s over 2000 words. Plus side; I’ve tried to keep it reasonably chatty. Apologies to any commenters (if indeed there are any) – I’m off to Chamonix for two days of terror on the nursery slopes so won’t be checking back in until Monday.
Amitai Etzioni has a post up about workplace relationships, which addresses a number of genuine issues, and it certainly says far more about me than anything else that I can’t stop giggling about them.
The communitarian position on workplace relationships is not, as I’d expected, the unequivocal condemnation that one might have expected (simply on the basis that a random sampling of communitarian position papers suggested to me that they might be against anything fun). It’s quite nuanced and well worth a read. It’s all very easy to get all moralistic and say that this, that or the other kind of relationship is “off limits”, but to be frank, with working culture going the way it’s going, where the hell else are we going to meet people our own age?
Update: To make it clearer, the post is specifically about the University of California’s code of employment which basically is meant to stop professors from interfering with the cargo. I have to say it seems like an extraordinary imposition to me:
“However, as one professor argues, the rules are necessary because of the power gap that exists between professors and students, which precludes such relationships from ever being truly consensual. ”
Is it just me, or is this unbelievable balderdash? Are we really trying to claim that a relationship between a dashing young prof and a graduate student can never be “truly consensual”? Only according to a standard by which there have been approximately five “truly consensual” relationships in the history of sex. You don’t have to be Michel Foucault to see through this one.
Today, EPIC & Privacy International launch ‘Privacy and Human Rights 2003, an international survey of privacy laws and developments’. It is a meaty tome that summarises developments in privacy law and policy in 55 countries during the past year.
This year’s review “finds increased data sharing among government agencies, the use of anti-terrorism laws to suppress political dissent, and the growing use of new technologies of surveillance.” Familiar themes to readers of my entries…
It includes an introductory chapter on the war on terror and a country by country guide. Each country entry is a short essay on the key developments with links to many original sources. Within the introductory essays, there is excellent information and analysis to be found on topics like biometrics, airline passenger data, electronic surveillance, WHOIS, Total/Terrorist Information Awareness, and so on. It really is an indispensable guide to a still rather under-reported field, given the massive erosions of personal liberty in the past couple of years.
By way of disclosure – I did the chapter on Ireland and bits and pieces on the UK, EU and electronic surveillance. A great big tip of the hat to Tiffany Stedman who was the law clerk at EPIC working on my chapter, and of course to Cedric Laurant who pulled the whole thing together.
There’ll be a webcast of today’s launch at the National Press Club (1300 ET) on the EPIC home page.
The Canadian justice ministry has published the results of last year’s consultation on communications interception. Reading it is like entering an alternate universe where sanity and moderation prevailed. There’s no sign of the draft legislation yet, but the signs are good that it may actually contain the ‘balance’ between law enforcement, human rights and industry interests we’re always hearing about but I have yet to see. And for a justice ministry, the Department of Justice of Canada runs an exemplary consultation.
Much is made of the damage to US civil liberties of Ashcroft, Poindexter et al’s new crusade against the enemy within. But, as Henry and I discovered at CFP 2003, few people Stateside have really grasped the deep and permanent damage the war on terror is doing to European human rights and civil liberties. This isn’t simply a case of the US pushing unpalatable policies on its hapless allies (though there’s plenty of that going about), but is a more complicated situation in which the law enforcement / Justice and home affairs crowd have used the US war on terror to ram through retrograde measures that no civilised democracy should tolerate.