news

The danger that all reporters now face

David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face | Alan Rusbridger | Comment is free | The Guardian:

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like “when”.

[We have no idea what we’ve done. We’ll find out. After the fact.]

Rebuilding

ē Rebuilding the world technology destroyed:

The Washington Post was headed for bankruptcy, and was finally sold for a pittance. Its buyer began his career on Wall Street, only to move into a burgeoning new industry, where he truly made his wealth. The newspaper he bought has a noble history, but will certainly earn losses for years to come.

I’m talking not about Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post yesterday, but rather Eugene Meyer, who bought the Post in 1933. Meyer left a lucrative career on Wall Street in 1920 to seize the burgeoning opportunity in industrial chemicals and founded Allied Chemical (today’s Honeywell).1 After making millions, Meyer spent the rest of his life both in public service and building the Post, spending millions of his own money in the process.

Meyer was in many ways following the established playbook for industrial magnates. Families like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies, who made their fortunes in railroads, oil, and steel, respectively, plowed money into universities, museums, and a host of other cultural touchstones.

It’s this tradition that makes Bezos’s purchase feel momentous, a crossing of the Rubicon of sorts. The tech industry is now producing its own magnates, who are following the Rockefeller playbook. See Mark Zuckerberg giving $100 million to the Newark school district, or Chris Hughes buying the New Republic. Neither though, feels as momentous as Jeff Bezos, the preeminent tech magnate, buying the Washington Post, the nation’s third most important newspaper.

[snip -ed]

Influence lives at intersections. Yet, as an industry, it at times feels the boundaries we have built around who makes an effective product manager, or programmer, or designer, are stronger than ever, even as the need to cross those boundaries is ever more pressing. It’s not that Thiel was wrong about what types of degrees push progress forward; rather, it’s the blind optimism that technology is an inherent good that is so dangerous.

Technology is destroying the world as it was; do we have the vision and outlook to rebuild it into something better? Do we value what matters?

[I think a lot of us do. Whether we’re the ones that will earn the kind of wealth that makes it easier to affect change of that quality is yet to be seen.]

Source: Feed: stratēchery by Ben Thompson

Opportunity looks a lot like hard work

Ashton Kutcher:

That message, yelled with arms flailing? Be smart. Be thoughtful. Be generous. Don’t buy what the world is trying to sell you. Opportunity looks a lot like hard work. No job is beneath you on your path to success. Don’t surrender to life as it is. Rebuild it for yourself and others.

The fact is that kids don’t get told this stuff enough. Let alone by someone they think is cool via mainstream media. If we want more engineers, more innovation, this needs to be curriculum, not cable television.

[A thoughtful bit coming from him (in his guise as a “pop” star, and a great message to everyone. It’s never too late.]

The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama’s Presidency

The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama’s Presidency – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic:

On Friday, President Obama spoke to us about surveillance as though we were precocious children. He proceeded as if widespread objections to his policies can be dispatched like a parent answers an eight-year-old who has formally protested her bedtime. He is so proud that we’ve matured enough to take an interest in our civil liberties! Why, he used to think just like us when he was younger, and promises to consider our arguments. But some decisions just have to be made by the grownups. Do we know how much he loves us? Can we even imagine how awful he would feel if anything bad ever happened while it was still his job to ensure our safety? *

By observing Obama’s condescension, I don’t mean to suggest tone was the most objectionable part of the speech. The disinformation should bother the American people most. The weasel words. The impossible-to-believe protestations. The factually inaccurate assertions. 

They’re all there.

[Are any of us really shocked? This has been going on since he got into office. Was this the change you sought?]

No kidding: “Reproductive success” might mean not reproducing

No kidding: “Reproductive success” might mean not reproducing:

Just take a look at the mark that we are leaving upon the world. In many regions, major rivers are being reduced to a trickle by the time they reach the sea. Lakes are shrinking and water tables are falling at a precipitous rate. Tropical forests are being hacked down to satisfy our demand for hardwoods and palm oil. Ocean fisheries are collapsing as a result of overfishing. We are rapidly exhausting our limited inheritance of metal and minerals. Vital bio-habitats, including coral reefs and wetlands, are disappearing at a fearsome rate. Scientists warn that human activity is triggering the “sixth mass extinction” in the history of the world. Within the lifetimes of children being born today, humanity will likely preside over the virtual extinction in the wild of lions, tigers, elephants, and rhinos. And then there’s the question of what we humans are doing to alter the planet’s climate and the impact that will have on the future of all life, including human existence. That’s not my idea of reproductive success.

[There are times of difficulty ahead.]

Source: Grist Magazine

Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures, Forced To Settle Frivolous Lawsuit Against One-Man Business After Law Firm Donates Nearly $200,000 Worth Of Defense

→ Shell Company Related To Cowardly Patent Troll, Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures, Forced To Settle Frivolous Lawsuit Against One-Man Business After Law Firm Donates Nearly $200,000 Worth Of Defense:

We’re all losers — except patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures and Nathan Myhrvold, who continue to steal time, money, and willpower from thousands of hard-working people and make the world a worse place, with no repercussions for themselves. Hell, the culinary world thinks Myhrvold’s some sort of genius hero.

I don’t know how anyone in this racket sleeps at night.

[Nailed.]

Source: Marco.org

Law of the jungle

Law of the jungle:

Think about motorcycles. Most cagers who don’t ride think motorcyclists are batshit crazy sucides. But it doesn’t make them want to kill the guy on the Ducati in flip-flops and a t-shirt and an eggshell brain bucket who’s splitting lanes on the 405 at 70 when the traffic’s at a standstill.

At worst it makes you think “That dude’s gonna die soon and I’m not gonna feel sorry for him one bit.” It never makes you intentionally hit him. By the same token, seeing some old fart on a Goldwing with his wife, dog, and three kids on the back doesn’t make you love motorcyclists or change your opinion that this is their death wish.

[snip -ed.]

You have a right to be in the road on your bicycle. The only way you can keep that right is to exercise it. You won’t change the hearts and minds of the hater cagers by being a Boy Scout, although you may thereby avoid becoming a statistic. The only thing that will really change the way people think is making bicycles a permanent part of the traffic landscape.

Until then, the best thing you can do to change attitudes is to … ride your bike. Simply existing will piss off certain cagers, no matter how you ride.

[The term “cager” struck as particularly apt this morning.]

Source: Cycling in the South Bay

TSA Misconduct on the Rise

TSA Misconduct on the Rise:

CNN: 

And the stories of its failures spread faster than a speeding jetliner: TSA officers stealing money from luggage, taking bribes from drug dealers, sleeping on the job.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that a new Government Accountability Office report, citing a 26% increase in misconduct among TSA employees between 2010 and 2012, is striking a nerve with some travelers who’ve had to endure the shoeless, beltless shuffle on the trip through security.

Shut them down.

[They need to go.]

Source: Daring Fireball

Dear Recruiter

Coyote Tracks – Dear Recruiter:

So this letter isn’t as much a waste of your time as yours was of mine, I’d like to offer a new slogan for your firm, free of charge: “Matching miserable people with miserable jobs at miserable companies since  YEAR .” It has a nice ring to it, and it’s exclusively yours,  RECRUITER NAME  of  BUZZWORDS STRUNG TOGETHER INC !

[Oy. Just Oy.]