The Breaking Time

The Ice Age is coming, Ctd.

As an epilogue to the last post on London's riots, I think it's fitting to add this map of London's impoverished areas overlaid with the riots. It handily illustrates both the underlying causes and the stupid tragedy of rioting, as the poor areas see the most destruction.

The furor's mostly died down, and MPs returned from their holidays for a basically pointless debate. Somehow I don't think Prime Minister David Cameron's insistence that the riots were "criminality, pure and simple" is exactly the approach needed to defuse a volatile situation and prompt a frank reassessment of the best way to prevent a repeat. Instead, expect more brutal tactics, more surveillance and more governmental cluelessness.

The Ice Age is coming.

The Ice Age is coming: England in riot

A woman and two children walk through debris while riot police try to contain a large group on a main road in Tottenham on Aug. 6. Leon Neal, Getty Images. From the Boston Globe's chilling photo series.

Britain, or England, at least, is in absolute turmoil, with police overwhelmed by a wave of riots causing terrible destruction. The initial spark for the chaos was the shooting of Mark Duggan by the London police last Thursday.

Ironically enough, for all that immigrants, in Britain as well as here, are often derided as parasitic sources of turmoil, their communities are largely holding the line:

"It was between about nine and 10 at night," said Yilmaz Karagoz, sitting in his coffee shop next to a jeweller's shop that has been shuttered since Sunday when the rioting began and a pharmacy that closed a day after.

"There were a lot of them. We came out of our shops but the police asked us to do nothing. But the police did not do anything so, as more came, we chased them off ourselves." The staff from a local kebab restaurant ran at the attackers, doner knives in their hands. "I don't think they will be coming back," Karagoz said.

Not everything works to suffering, of course. People also used social media to organize cleanup crews.

Picture from Twitter user Andy B

Surviving unrest, in the long run, depends on more people deterring rioters and cleaning up after the carnage than looting.

Rioting is stupid and ugly: about the worst possible way to lash out at poverty or a form of oppression, and it naturally attracts those who simply want blood and loot.

It's also not exactly unheard of in London: the city has a tumultuous enough history that its history of affray has its own Wikipedia page. Then, as now, it's not as spontaneous as authorities (through the centuries) usually assert. Rioting needs fuel — resentment — to flourish. Riots happen for many reasons, but they always happen for reasons.

So, consider the following.

Throughout this year, I've followed the fate of protests — peaceful, by and large — against the sweeping cuts in social services carried out by the current government. The poor will bear the brunt of these cuts, all while there is considerable tax evasion at the highest levels of British society.

At every turn, the police have reacted with violence in attempts to suppress, especially through the notorious kettling tactic, legitimate calls to not dismantle an important part of what makes Britain's society work. 

Remember this?

Not exactly a recipe for domestic tranquility. If that's what English police do in broad daylight, with media and thousands of observers, to peaceful protesters, imagine what they do in impoverished areas when no one's watching. Or, it probably seems to many of the inhabitants, cares.

Add in this contradiction: the same leaders making those cuts, the same ones calling for crackdown and blaming this eruption on the mysterious failing moral fiber of their nation, spent their youth as professional rioters.

Here's a handy directory

Prime Minister David Cameron, London Mayor Boris Johnson and Chancellor George Osborne were all part of the Bullingdon Club, a blue-blooded society dedicated to getting drunk, smashing up wherever they happened to land and harassing whoever they happened to dislike.

What makes this an acceptable tradition versus an unforgivable crime worthy of harsh punishment, apparently, is that they were all born into enough ridiculous wealth to avoid the consequences of their actions. That's the very definition of privilege: their law is not the same law meted out to someone in Tottenham.

Observing that dousing everything around in gasoline is a really, really bad idea does not means one endorses the inevitable fire. To carry the analogy a step further, it doesn't mean not to fight the fire. But it does mean that it's time to realize that one shouldn't turn the surroundings into a firetrap. When endemic poverty and a lifetime of rage meet an oppressively brutal police force, well, the place is ready to go.

My fear, from reactions like the lovely "let's police social media idea" now spreading across the Atlantic is that the initiative is behind trying to create stupidly useless measures to clamp things down even further. A catastrophic approach, and one that simply doesn't work. 

When BBC reporter Alex Hudson asked a protester when the unrest would stop.

"When there's war." Later that night, he was beaten.

The Ice Age is coming.

That old line by the Clash was the only thing I could think about, reading those words: an escalation between ever more-desperate attempts to clamp down on ever-more brutal unrest, any hope for better frozen solid.

London (or any city in the world) has long periods of relative civil peace when most people feel they have personal and political opportunities, combined with a basic degree of responsiveness from their rulers. Take that away, and all it takes is a spark.

This is big: censorship-cracking "internet in a suitcase"

So that's where the internet went

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a tech innovation legitimately worth getting excited about:

In response to the government suppression of Internet access during the Arab Spring, "Internet in a Suitcase" will allow citizens to bypass censors and help them reconnect in times of government imposed shutdown. A "suitcase" can be transported to dissidents in a repressive country and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet, thus undermining the despotic governing powers. To track the project, you can follow the Open Technology Initiative on Twitter @newamericaoti.

In accordance with the United Nations decision that Internet access should not be denied to anyone, this project is the Obama administration's attempt at harboring democracy in these repressive countries while exercising a push at furthered free speech practices.The project is funded by a $2 million grant from the State Department.

This is huge. While people get far too excited over apps or augmented reality, this is the exact kind of durable infection that stands a chance of furthering actual, substantial change: reliable, easy to replicate and fulfilling a basic need, in this case communicating in the face of repression.

This segment from Al-Jazeera has more information:

Credit where it's due: for all the terrible government-funded things, this one is really beneficial. Of course, like the AK-47, this is going to spread far beyond the control of the government that started it. These tools need to be widespread, in the first world as well as the third, in slums, countryside and rust belts too. The more of them there are, the more resilient future social movements will be against attempts to totally shut down communication.

Mark my words, these suitcases will inevitably end up used against repressive governments of many stripes, including ones the US supports. That's for the good, and with this development, I think the ability to bring the hammer down on online communication just suffered a major setback.

Fragmented plurality: An interview with Gabriella Coleman

Photo by Simon Law

Gabriella Coleman moves between a lot of different worlds. She's an assistant professor on media, culture and communication at NYU, a writer on digital culture, and an anthropologist by training. Her work, specifically on the (in)famous collection of hacktivists known as Anonymous, combines an admirable skill for tackling new trends while bringing the best traits of an academic background to bear, better placing the cutting edge in a larger context.

In this interview, she discusses the multifaceted beast that is Anonymous, and how digital culture and political activism collide.

How did you first become interested in Anonymous and hacktivism?

I've been working on computer hackers and software informally since 1998, more seriously since about 2001.

How I started to work on Anonymous was really accidental. I started to do research on free software, and during that time period people would raise the question of Scientology quite a bit. It always intrigued me, but I sort of didn't know what to do with it. People had mentioned that they would protest the church or were on some BBS critical of the church . Then I went to the University of Alberta for a year as a post-doc, and there's the largest Scientology archives in the world. Now I understood why they protest the Church of Scientology, it's kind of a perfect nemesis.

When Anonymous in 2008 began to protest the Church of Scientology, I followed them there, because it was in that lineage of geek and hacker protest against the Church of Scientology.

You originally come from an anthropological training and background, how do you think that helps you undersand the evolution of digital culture?

I think it helps quite a bit. While there's technical forms of organization and power — those with technical knowledge often have more authority — when you have a grouping like Anonymous that is really premised on this anti-leader, anti-celebrity ethic, certain cultural and behavioral norms are the ways in which you can find consistent order. If you don't have an eye towards that, you might miss some of those dynamics at play.

Driven by norms instead of leaders; it almost sounds like a tribe

No, not really. In academia we're also driven by norms, and certain types of ethics and so it's kind of implicit in so-called modern forms of life that are not tribal, we just choose not to think about those elements in modern society because there's such a commitment to individualism that we tend to not focus in on them, but they exist. They exist in the workplace, they exist in religious organizations, they exist in unions, they exist in many places.

I don't like the language of "tribal" because it makes it seem like it's lower on the totem pole, and makes it seem like so-called modern society doesn't have some of those elements as well.

In your perception, what's the biggest misconception the general public has about Anonymous?

The biggest misconception is that they're kind of angst-ridden pre-teens who are socially isolated who are working out their anger, born through their isolation, through forms of juvenile politics.

What enemy?

Pfc. Bradley Manning, in happier times

Today the Army finally hit Bradley Manning with 22 additional charges, including a potential capital crime:

WASHINGTON — The Army announced 22 additional charges on Wednesday against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the military intelligence analyst who is accused of leaking a trove of government files to WikiLeaks a year ago.

The new charges included “aiding the enemy”; wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it was accessible to the enemy; multiple counts of theft of public records, transmitting defense information and computer fraud. If he is convicted, Private Manning could be sentenced to life in prison.

It doesn't look like the Army will pursue the death penalty for the "aiding the enemy" charge. This is comforting to Manning, I'm sure.

Which "enemy" did Manning aid? Is Wikileaks an official enemy of the United States? If not, what enemy is the army alleging he helped?

The charges mention the word repeatedly, and add that Manning's alleged assistance was indirect, but the exact name and nature of this enemy is not mentioned, nor specifically how Manning's actions assisted them in some material way. That seems absurd to me.

Because when someone is placed in solitary confinement for 10 months, without a conviction and under extremely punitive conditions, you'd at least think his prosecutors have an obligation to spell that sort of thing the fuck out.

Poems for Friday: Prediction (The Future)

There are jetpacks, naturally. Art by Fred Freeman, 1966

Today's poem didn't strike me as a poem, at first. This piece by Mark Wallace is really more of a manifesto-style rant formed into epigrams. 

But it's too perfect, and too damn quotable, to pass up. Here's a brilliant stab into future-loves' jet-pack adoring heart:

In the future, we’ll plan the future better.

In the future, you can just become your TV.

In the future, your sexual partners will meet all the qualities on your checklist.

And this anxiety you’re feeling now? In the future you won’t feel it.

In the future, technology will always work, and there won’t even be weekend downtime for systems repair.

In the future, Friday night parties will never be boring.

In the future there will be less deadlines and they’ll be easier to meet.

In the future, all pollution will contain its own self-cleaning element.

In the future, if your house burns down, you’ll have another house by the time you get home.

In the future, your insurance policy will actually pay.

In the future, your friends won’t talk so constantly about everything they think they should already have.

In the future, no good deed will go unrewarded.

In the future people will like you just for who you are.

In the future, everyone will have their own sky marshal.

ID'd: Why should you trust Silicon Valley?

We do love our masks. Photo by Brian Snelson

Well, this couldn't go wrong at all:

To help solve the modern nightmare of trying to control your online identity and keep track your passwords, the government came to Silicon Valley Friday and said it was here to help.

But rather than propose a big government initiative, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and the White House cyber czar Howard Schmidt made clear the feds want the private sector to take the lead.

“Just to be clear: We’re not talking about a national ID card,” Secretary Locke said in a speech at Stanford University. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system, but we are talking about enhancing online security and reducing the need to remember a dozen passwords.”

---

The government’s proposed solution is what the administration calls a “trusted-identity ecosystem.” The idea is to create an environment with a wide choice of trusted-identity providers that individuals can use to log in to a wide range of websites, including ones that handle sensitive data, using a single login.

Smart people have written a number of good pieces on this topic already, so I won't repeat too many of their points. In short, it's not hard to see this creating a very limited number of gateways to the biggest online services. Something like a Google ID could, by stumbling steps, become a required form of verification much like a Social Security number.

Here's another wrinkle: to put it nicely, Silicon Valley's record on privacy isn't stainless. From Facebook to Apple, the default response seems to see users' info as a tool for profit and their own as untouchable. Its biggest players generally act much the same way large, amoral corporations in any industry do.

The recent events of the Wikileaks battles don't bode well either. With no formal charges filed, major online companies happily shut down accounts, turned over information and failed to challenge gag orders. Twitter alone showed some spine in this department.

So there's precious little confidence when these entities are set to cooperate with government on something as volatile as identification. If these plans advance, the backlash will be like nothing Silicon Valley's faced before.

Imagine the following scenario: online identification for most major services is shuttled into a few trusted providers, who profit heavily off their role in the "ecosystem." Given their relative power, said companies could then exploit much of that data as they saw fit. Sure, tech-savvy people will figure ways around, but most people aren't tech-savvy. 

Furthermore, the government (or a company) could simply have that trusted identification turned off, regardless of whether the person in questions has been convicted — or even charged — with anything. 

Don't think that's likely? Look how drastically asset forfeiture is misused. If history is any lesson, the incentives here are not on the side of the angels.

Then, of course, all this is a boon for the very hackers and spies it's supposed to deter. Even if it's better guarded, now only one stolen identity is needed to open up a treasure trove of connected information. Hell, a smart thief won't even need any particular expertise; just bribe a low-level employee.

To avoid violating this blog's motto, I should note that "Silicon Valley" is not a monolithic entity. Plenty within its ranks differ widely in philosophy and practice. But the major actors are primarily out for their own gain.

Should you trust them to handle a matter this ripe for abuse? I don't.

WikiWar, round 2: Burn and pillage

Anonymous' new motto?

Oh my, what an eventful few days. Last night saw the WikiWar heat up further, as Anonymous' offensive went into full-bore burn-and-pillage mode, taking down PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and a few other sites (Swedish prosecutors and a Swiss bank) just for good measure.

This is essentially the "unleash the hordes" tactic, though, of course, there's no organized leadership on the Wikileaks' "side." Anonymous is not Wikileaks, but an independent network that's decided to act in vengeance for the Govs' attacks.

If this is war, then Anonymous' current path is the equivalent of setting loose raiders in the enemy territory to loot and raze whatever they come across: indiscriminate and far more likely to alienate than accomplish anything meaningful.

But then the very dispersion that makes Anonymous and similar allied networks so hard to crush also makes it hard to do much more than shout "charge!" on any large scale. While more precise tactics like targeting the same companies' offices or internal networks might have both caused more actual damage and wrought less collateral impact, it's not like there's some central command structure to enforce that.

A lot of small businesses, nonprofits and freelancers (myself included) use PayPal, and there was a distinct moment of panic last night when their website (the PayPal.com part, at least) went down. If it had stayed that way, whatever grander point Anonymous was trying to make would have been completely lost in people unable to pay their bills right before the holiday. As it is, the move hasn't exactly generated much sympathy. 

However, once unleashed, this sort of thing can't exactly be controlled; even Anonymous' own organizers were promptly ousted when they called for a change in tactics. They are learning, like people in conflict throughout history, that the lust to smash a target has a force of its own.

That Babbage piece compares Anonymous' set-up to Athenian democracy. A better comparison is the aforementioned hordes: a chief doesn't promise enough plunder, out they go.

The hackers aren't exactly remaining completely anonymous either, Dutch police just arrested a 16-year-old for involvement in the Visa/Mastercard attacks and I'd wager he's not the last, as the Govs pick off scattered raiders here and there. That side hasn't been any model of sanity either, with crazy-ass calls to dust off the World War I-era (remember what I compared this to?) Espionage Act or comparing hacktivists to child molesters.

The war mentality's setting in, and I can't imagine anything constructive emerging from that.

Meanwhile, Assange is in prison, albeit with limited Internet access, his bail denied. Wikileaks itself has remained neutral on the attacks while setting up alternative ways to donate money, and if you're looking for a way to directly help them, consider doing so. There's chaos in the organization, which doesn't seem as leaderless as it appeared. Nonetheless, Wikileaks seems to have withstood the initial onslaught, and its rapidly increasing number of mirror sites make it even more resilient to future damage.

At the start, I referred to this as a war. That term carries dangers with it. While there are important stakes here — civil liberties chief among them — its worth noting that no one's dead here. In a world where billions struggle to get water and food, while facing conflict of the "you're going to die" kind, that point cannot be lost.

I use the term "war" because that is increasingly how those directly involved view it, because it encompasses a framework of human conflict that serves to help us better understand what lengths they will go to and to what delusions they may be subject. Right now, it's the best word we have, because what we're witnessing, as Jardine points out in the piece above, is something unprecedented.

So the stalemate continues, with ever more caught in the crossfire. I have a sinking feeling that the Govs can make an arrest for every site Anonymous crashes, 'til the sun goes black, and the whole mess will be not one step closer to resolution.

The WikiWar

Anonymous' call to arms, larger version here

I lead with Anonymous' plea for volunteers to fight for Julian Assange/Wikileaks because it uses a rhetoric that represents an important crossing point in the emerging brawl between the network of leakers and a number of nation-states.

Anonymous speaks of war.

No, it's not war in the traditional sense of guns and bloodied limbs, but in broken secrets, encrypted "insurance" files, arrest warrants, censorship, financial seizures and even calls for blood, it's taking on all the dimensions of a go-for-broke struggle between two rapidly evolving sides.

For those of us who aren't pro-wikileaks but are also, in the interest of a free, open society, anti-anti-Wikileaks, the dimensions of the conflict seem alarming. I, for one, can see both the wisdom in the Guardian's defense of media using the cables and in Democracy in America's argument that stable institutions play a role in a free society.

But, however chaotic, the "infowar" is not incomprehensible. Technology may have changed drastically, but the basics of human conflict have not.

The fight is evolving by the hour, as Wikileaks morphs to adapt to its attackers and various parts of the international political and business communities pile on the pressure. What follows is an attempt to understand the sides, the struggle and the dynamics, in the hopes that the rest of us may learn what the hell's emerging from the maelstrom.

Cables and gates

Wikileaks' latest document dump is over a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, some reaching all the way back to the 1970s. Needles to say, this has provoked some fierce debate and may actually have serious diplomatic consequences.

To be honest, I haven't found any of the revelations (so far) actually shocking. It's been clear for sometime that the U.S. is involved in low-level combat in Yemen. Trying to protect CIA operatives from arrest for wrongful kidnapping is sleazy and wrong, but bullshit like that's been going on since the Cold War. Yes, shockingly, aristocratic tyrants in the Middle East present one face to their people and another to their inner circle. Oh, and turns out U.S. diplomats severely over-estimated their ability to handle the 1979 Iranian revolution. Who knew?

Some of the cables are even reassuring. While wikileaks has successfully dubbed the release "cablegate," implying a whif of scandal, look at some of the initiatives uncovered: U.S. diplomats are trying to stem the flow of weapons to Hezbollah, empty Guantanamo, curb Afghani government corruption, convince Pakistan to scale back its nuclear arsenal and prevent Iran from going nuclear while simultaneously resisting Israeli and Arab leaders' calls for a calamitous war. How terrible.

Just judging from the reaction online and among those I know personally, many of whom are generally sympathetic to wikileaks, this particular volley has attracted probably the most ambivalent reaction yet. Wikileaks' previous dispatches had better justification: revealing attacks on journalists in warzones or exposing how an amok obsession with secrecy is used to obscure even basic details of military operations.

All the same, look at some of the more worthy diplomatic initiatives in the list above, especially those (like the negotiations with Pakistan), that are probably now DOA due to this document dump. For all that the government's botched over the years, I can't help but cringe a bit at endangering the work that's actually constructive. One can be an advocate of openness and still see the need for some information (say, sensitive diplomatic negotiations) to have some level of confidentiality, especially while a deal is still being negotiated.

I also can't help but getting the sense that the shotgun blast approach is less about a screaming need for this information to be public as much as it is a "fuck you" to the U.S. government. Wikileaks, like the nations recorded in these diplomatic cables, is out to protect its own turf and hit its enemies, perhaps more than it would like to admit. It's probably for the best that its next target will be banks, where the battle lines are a little more clear.

This is also where "cablegate" gets really interesting, in the Breaking Time sense. The content is nothing explosive by itself, but the implications certainly are. A major diplomatic bombshell was just caused by a loose, stateless network of hackers and informants. This is possible because the base of secret information grew so bloated, the technology so advanced and the culture so adversarily cynical that a freaking Army private had access to enough material for four serious breaches, along with whatever else Julian Assange has tucked away for insurance.

Secret diplomatic communiques between governments is a pillar of the current nation-state framework. A boring but big, really important pillar going back to the Treaty of F'ing Westphalia in 1648. It is as basic a plank as there is. 

If groups like wikileaks can shake that, repeatedly, then something big just broke, and it won't just damage the ability of states to strongarm others behind closed doors. The treaties and accords that many idealists look to for peaceful international improvement will also suffer a major blow if those negotiations can be breached. Explosions aren't surgical, and it's very possible for the useful and good to take as much damage as the oppressive and wrong.

I've written here before (after the last wikileaks dump) about how transparency is an ammo dump, but it's worth noting that it works best when that ammunition serves an overall purpose: to insure consequences for those who breach some sort of established trust. What's the purpose here? Wikileaks has certainly mastered the art of disrupting the current set-up, but they, nor anyone else, seem to really know what the new rules are.

P.S.- On the bright side, revealing the cables is incidentally a big blow to a conspirational view of world politics. The aggregated stories offer a compelling counterpoint, showing how competing interests, failure, grudges, and personal quirks form the mish-mash that is the international power structure.