Virginia Postrel has a small piece on her blog about the civil liberties implications of the war on terror. (She also links to this Reason article by Jacob Sullum). Essentially her point is that if you give the authorities arbitrary and unaccountable powers of arrest (or to violate civil liberties in other ways) in order to fight terrorism, then eventually these powers are going to be used on other people as well, particularly the opponents of whoever is in power. Therefore, accountability and openness is crucial.
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— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (1988). My esteemed colleague Brian Micklethwait yesterday made another post about the architecture of car parks: why are they so ugly and beneath contempt from an architectural point of view, and does this always have to be so? I left a comment saying that airport terminals had been similarly regarded about 15 years ago (as the Adams quote indicates) but were now plumb jobs for architects and perhaps carparks could go the same way, and Brian followed up further in his culture blog. But the focus was still mainly on carparks, and there is lots more to say about airport terminals. I can think of two reasons why the attitudes to their architecture might have changed in the last decade or two. The first probably does not also apply to carparks. The second probably does. One reason is the nature in which airports have changed. Large scale airports did not really exist before the second world war. After it, however, it was clear that every city needed one. Few cities had any idea how large they would ultimately end up being, and in most cities they kind of grew organically. You had a large patch of dirt on which aeroplanes landed, and you built a tin shed next to it to use as a terminal. As planes got bigger and passenger numbers got greater, the runways were paved and got longer, and the tin sheds were demolished and replaced with larger tin sheds, or (worse) they were slowly extended into larger, higgledy piggledy style buildings. Airports expanded physically, nearby houses were demolished, and airports just kind of grew, without much coherent planning. Because airport architecture was held in such low regard, and because what existed already was so awful, little effort was made to make the buildings any more than functional. Also, because in many cases nobody had any idea how big the airport was going to be when it was originally established, in many cases space was at a premium. This led to cramped, constrained buildings. → Continue reading: Why are airports more interesting than carparks? August 1st, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On his culture blog, Brian Micklethwait provides a reference to a preview of an American television program about the reactions of the muslim world to a perceived onslaught of American television and movies, and how they are perceived by many as “overt propaganda created to undermine their religious and cultural identity”, and yet that at the same time, people love to watch them. Brian has some has some wise thoughts on the subject himself, and concludes by observing that inevitably the culture must move in two directions.
This all invites questions about just how cultural programming – television and movies – propagates around the modern globalised world, which is ultimately much more interesting than simply “America is trying to dominate the world with its propaganda”. It’s both simpler and much more complex. For one thing, American programs are not meant as overt propaganda, and they are certainly not aimed at the Muslim world. Hollywood is trying to make money, and that is all. The Muslim world is such a small market that Hollywood is essentially not paying attention at all, and this is even more so in the case of television than in the case of movies. For there is a huge difference in the overseas reception of American television and American movies. American movies dominate the box office everywhere pretty much without exception. Local movies have a much smaller market share than American movies virtually everywhere, and Hollywood is selling the same movies to the entire world. Hollywood movies today make more money outside the US than they do inside the US (almost all of which comes from Europe and East Asia), so Hollywood is very conscious of what foreign audiences will want to see when making movies. Often this leads to what may be described as “lowest common denominator” film-making. Movies containing lots of explosions are popular everywhere. (Comedies travel far less well, which is why Hollywood makes fewer of them than it used to, and is why they have smaller budgets). However, rather than turning movies into “overt propaganda”, this tends to make movies bland. American film production does interact with the rest of the world, but in a slightly less direct way. Hollywood has a ferocious appetite for talent. Anything good that is done by filmmakers in the rest of the world tends to get co-opted by Hollywood. If audiences like Hong Kong style action sequences, then these will find their way into American film. The people making the films in America will often be the same people who made the ones in Hong Kong, working in Los Angeles and being paid far more (and working shorter hours) than was ever the case on the other side of the Pacific. When a film financed by a Hollywood studio but made by a Hong Kong filmmaker and filmed in Canada is shown in Spain, it’s a bit hard to tell just whose culture is being influenced by what. (I will be intrigued to see what happens when Iran becomes less oppressive, and some of the country’s many talented film-makers get the opportunity to make films in Hollywood. The thing stopping this is the political situation in Iran and certainly not that in Hollywood.) The propagation of American television is totally different, although the final conclusion is perhaps the same. → Continue reading: Movies, Television, and Globalisation July 21st, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Bruce Schneier is an expert on technical aspects of electronic security. His book Applied Cryptography is considered the “bible” for people implementing cryptography based security, privacy, and authentication systems. Having written this book in 1995, the subtext of which was that technical solutions could solve many or all of our privacy and security issues, Schneier slowly became more and more conscious of the fact that the weaknesses in security or privacy systems were the result of human rather than technology failure. It wasn’t so much the systems themselves as the way the systems were used and relied upon that determined the quality of security and privacy. In particular, blind faith in technology was extremely dangerous, both in terms of making people overconfident that systems would always work correctly, and in terms of adding additional layers of unnecessary inflexibility and bureacracy. Schneier then wrote another book Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World discussing essentially how security systems should be established so as to be actually secure. Probably the most important point was that human systems have to be flexible and intelligent. Simply requiring ID of everybody is not especially useful without human beings constantly asking the question of why ID is being asked for. Plus this type of system is predictable, and holes in it are easily found. And it needlessly invades people’s privacy. In any event, Mr Schneier writes a monthly newsletter discussing these types of issues, which is at least partly aimed at publicising his consultancy business. This month’s issue has some very interesting thoughts on just how we should deal with organisations – government and non government – that needlessly invade our privacy for asking for identification and recording excessive information about their customers. An extract
The whole thing is well worth reading, as are the back issues of the newsletter. July 17th, 2003 | Comments are closed
— mysterious but always enjoyable Australian blogger Professor Bunyip. He’s quite right, but if he writes an anonymous letter to the tax office suggesting I be investigated, he ain’t my friend by any stretch of the imagination either. (Link via Scott Wickstein). July 12th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am in the process of researching and writing a (long) piece on the story of how Australia came within a hair’s breadth of introducing compulsory ID cards in 1987, which will be posted either here or to my own blog in the next couple of days. However, while researching this, I ran the following 1986 quotation from then Australian (Labor) Health minister Dr Neal Blewett, who was in charge of the ID card plan at the time.
Yes, that’s right. This was meant as an argument in favour of ID cards. On the issue of the (ultimately defeated) proposal for ID cards in Australia, I strongly recommend this article, which was written at the time and gives a thorough overview of what happened. The early stages of the then Australian government’s efforts to introduce the card seem eerily similar to anyone who has been watching the recent efforts of the British government. The later stages – a long drawn out battle on the part of the government to pass the enabling legislation which was blocked by the Australian senate, rising opposition to the scheme as the public learned more and more about the proposal and eventually a defeat for the government due to flaws in the drafting of the legislation – are much less likely here due to the lack of the strong bicameral system, sadly. That said, the lesson that the more that is known about such proposals the less the public like them is surely an important one. In Britain, we really need to get the message out as fast and as comprehensively as possible. The other encouraging thing about the Australian example is that by the end of the fight the public was so against the idea that no Australian government has even dreamed of suggesting an ID card since, and none will any time soon. (This hasn’t prevented the government constructing extensive databases of information on its citizens, however). July 8th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Given the importance of tomorrow to our many American readers, I have been toying with the idea of posting the words of the Star Spangled Banner as a Samizdata Quote of the day at a minute past midnight this evening. However, although the anthem is stirring, the words are a celebration of an American military defeat of the British. And while this defeat led to the foundation of a great nation, it is not the whole story. In the longer term the two nations who fought that war have of course become extremely good friends. The country of which I am a citizen, Australia, is today an equally good friend of both. And I would rather be celebrating these friendships. In particular, the third verse of the American anthem is somewhat problematic today.
This is not terribly complimentary to the British enemy, and our American friends note this by generally leaving it out these days. Amusingly, the national anthem of Australia has precisely the opposite problem. The second verse of our anthem is this:
And while many Australians have great fondness for the British (although we still really enjoy it when they lose at sporting events), this verse is today considered a little too sycophantic, as well as being a little out of date about who rules the waves. Therefore, it isn’t normally sung either. In any event, Jonathan Pearce beat me to action, and has expressed the appropriate sentiments about tomorrow already. I would simply like to wish the nation that actually does rule the waves a happy fourth of July. Update: Yes, the Star Spangled Banner was actually written during and about the War of 1812. Notwithstanding that, I still wish everyone a happy Independence Day. July 3rd, 2003 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
Let me see. If I was going to criticise the government of Cambodia for something, what would I choose? It’s obvious, really. From the BBC
(Link via The Gweilo Diaries). July 3rd, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you walk into a large store of virtually any kind in Australia, you will see a sign just outside the door saying. “It is a condition of entry to this story that customers allow us to inspect the contents of their bags on leaving the shop”. Typically, when you leave the shop, there is a security guard outside the door who asks to inspect the contents of your bag. Virtually all customers open their bag, the guard looks inside the bag, and then the customers go on their way. When growing up in Australia, I simply thought that this was the natural order of things. I never really thought about this as a violation of my privacy until I spent some time living in England in the 1990s. In England, such searches do not occur, presumably because either the British interpretation of the law is that they are not legal or the law is different. (I think that we are likely dealing different interpretations of the same common law here). When I returned to Australia, I suddenly became much more aware of bag searches in stores than had been the case before. And I became much more protective of my rights. I found that I was very unwilling to let anyone look in whatever bags I might be carrying. Legally, the case for allowing such bag searches is flimsy. Without probable cause (which in practice usually means someone will have to have seen you take something off the shelf of the shop and put it in your bag) the shop has no right to detain you or to look in your bag. However, they can ask to look in your bag. You then have the right to refuse. If you refuse the shop can then ask you to not come back to the shop again, but they have no way of actually compelling you to open your bag for them. July 1st, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Recently, I wrote a piece on my own blog discussing the question of whether today’s electonics products would look as clunky in 20 years as those of 20 years ago look today. My thought was that they probably wouldn’t, due to the superior quality of the design of many of today’s products. This spurred a rather lively follow up discussion, which particularly focused on mobile phone design. As it happened, after this discussion I discovered that I had lots more to say on both this subject and the question of just what features are and are not important to mobile phone users, and how the devices are evolving. People who read on can discover what exactly is I have to say, and will also get a bonus explanation of the meaning of this photograph of Perry.  June 29th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
In commemoration of Orwell’s 100th birthday, Neuromancer author William Gibson had an op-ed piece in Wednesday’s New York Times, in which he discussed Orwell’s vision, and how it was influenced by its time. In particular, Gibson believes that Orwell’s vision was influenced by the broadcast nature of the media at the time: radio and the nascent invention of television were highly centralised. The surveillance scheme (and the totalitarian states) envisioned in 1984 were centralised in the same way, from some giant central security apparatus. Gibson believes that today’s world, and the world of the future, is different. Greater surveillance will be mixed with much greater freedom of information. People with access to all this new information will consist of many non-state as well as state actors. We will live in a world with much less privacy, but not necessarily much less freedom. Surveillance states without this fancy new technology were pretty effective, and still are pretty effective in places (from North Korea to Burma to Cuba) where old technological paradigms still apply. Would these states have been more oppressive if the people runing them had PCs? It’s hard to say. Would the presence of PCs in the security apparatus in East Germany rather than mountains of paper records have prevented the end of European communism? It’s doubtful. Changing surveillance technology is taking us somewhere new, it may be that the vision of Orwell provides a good guide as to what it is. After quickly observing that Gibson sounds rather like Brian Micklethwait, I will observe that Gibson is at least partly right. The greater freedom of information that results from many to many communications networks changes things dramatically. We saw glimpses of this in the 1980s with the invention of the fax machine, which more or less removed the mass media’s ability to bury a story that the people were not supposed to know about. (The key story was something tawdry: a transcipt allegedly of the Prince of Wales talking to his mistress). This reached every office in London seemingly in minutes. The media and hence the courts could no longer supress things like that. With the invention of e-mail and SMS text messaging, such communications became more ubiquitous, and no longer tied to the home or office. We are suddenly in a world where a great deal of information is being collected on us and transmitted to other places, and yet at the same time, we are collecting a lot of information on ourselves, and transmitting it voluntarily, and to some extent this controls the flow. Much of this information is and will continue to be cultural rather than political in content. Like Brian, I am fascinated by this phenomenon, which can also be for the good. Due largely to the use of SMS messaging, the Chinese government this year completely failed to keep information secret about the spread of the SARS virus in China. People throughout the country knew far more about what was going on than the government wanted them to know. The Chinese government now seems to know that it cannot keep things secret like this any more, and as today’s Economist discusses, the consequences could be profound. → Continue reading: William Gibson on Orwell and the surveillance state. June 27th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Or is the headline France satisfied with EU deal on farm subsidies somewhat worrying? If it was “France absolutely livid about EU deal on farm subsides”, then we might be getting somewhere. However, that doesn’t seem to be something we ever see. If France was absolutely livid, there wouldn’t be a deal. (via Eldan). June 26th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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