[Air-L] NSA and privacy?

Matt Crain mattcrain1 at gmail.com
Sun Jun 9 19:57:17 PDT 2013 

Hello all,

I'll just chime in briefly in response to Rick's comments. My expertise is
more on the commercial side of internet surveillance, but clearly this is
deeply intertwined with gov activities.

While the Patriot Act and post-911 ramp up of NSA surveillance is
definitely a watershed moment of sorts, there were public policy battles in
the late 1990s that really set the foundation for a regime of governance
over data collection and use, fairly broadly conceived. Rotenberg should
remember, he was on the front lines of a policy battle that on its face was
about "opt-in" vs "opt-out" surveillance practices, but was really about
whether federal regulation would mandate that individuals be given some
control over the data produced by their internet use or whether a regime of
industry/gov “self-regulation” (i.e. free for all) would be extended
online. I realize that much of the specifics regarding the NSA leak are
technically telecommunications, but from a normative view (and increasingly
in practice), the internet/telecom distinction is not substantive.

Just some historical perspective. BTW, I'm a longtime lurker and new
member, who will be attending the Denver conference. Let's chat!

Matt

-- 
Matthew Crain, Ph.D.
Institute of Communications Research
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
matthewcrain.info


On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 5:00 PM, <air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Conditions of Mediation preconference: Limited spaces still
>       available! (Scott Rodgers)
>    2. Public Urban Media Tour of West End London during ICA
>       (Scott Rodgers)
>    3.  CFP: Religion in Cyberspace 2013 (Vit Sisler)
>    4. NSA and privacy? (nativebuddha)
>    5. Re: NSA and privacy? (Charles Ess)
>    6. Re: NSA and privacy? (Richard Forno)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 16:18:27 +0000
> From: Scott Rodgers <rodgers_scott at hotmail.com>
> To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-L] Conditions of Mediation preconference: Limited spaces
>         still available!
> Message-ID: <BAY163-W18C1B26779A93B85BAC747959B0 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
>
>
> LIMITED
> SPACES STILL AVAILABLE (INCLUDING AT 50% REDUCED STUDENT RATE)
>
>
>
> Conditions of Mediation:
> Phenomenological Approaches to Media, Technology and Communication
>
>
>
> 2013
> International Communication Association (ICA) Preconference
>
> ICA
> Theory, Philosophy and Critique Division
>
> 17 June
> 2013, Birkbeck, University of London
>
>
>
> Conference website (includes full conference programme and
> registration details):
>
> http://conditionsofmediation.wordpress.com
>
>
>
> Registration
> deadline: 11 June 2012 (end of day)
>
>
>
> Confirmed
> keynote speakers:
>
> ?
> Dr David Berry, Swansea University
>
> ?
> Professor Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths,
> University of London
>
> ?
> Professor Graham Harman, American
> University of Cairo
>
> ?
> Professor Shaun Moores, University of
> Sunderland
>
> ?
> Professor Lisa Parks, University of
> California Santa Barbara
>
> ?
> Professor Paddy Scannell, University of
> Michigan
>
>
>
> Conference
> Outline:
>
> Media
> theory seems to have reached a moment in which it is effectively orthodox
> to
> presume we must pay attention first and foremost to the intricacies of
> everyday
> experience. Ethnographic audience studies, for example, have attacked
> assumptions that there is a discrete relationship between media content and
> audiences, arguing that media forms, content and technologies have
> indeterminate and multifaceted significance within the daily rhythms and
> spaces
> of their everyday lives. Studies of digital and networked media, meanwhile,
> have put into question the very notion of ?audiences? as the starting
> point for
> understanding mediated experience.
>
>
>
> For
> some, accounting for the intricacies of everyday mediated experience has
> implied asking people what they actually do with media. But for others
> this is
> not enough: instead, the question is what constitutes the conditions of
> media
> experience in the first place. How do political configurations of
> discourses
> and inherited dispositions prefigure mediated action? How do material
> arrangements themselves constitute environments for mediated experience?
> How
> might we account for nonhuman agency, for example the ways in which
> software
> objects interact not only with human perceptions but also each other? Such
> questions point to a renewed confidence in explaining not just how but
> also why
> media, technology and communication are experienced as they are ? all the
> while
> resisting a reversion to functionalism.
>
>
>
> These
> interests in the very conditions of mediation suggest, if sometimes only
> implicitly, an emerging interest in a phenomenology of media. Indeed,
> phenomenology ? broadly the structuring of perception ? has seemingly
> obvious
> relevance for recent academic interests in media experience. Yet its use or
> invocation in media studies has been scattered. While this might simply
> reflect
> the considerable diversity of phenomenological philosophies and their
> applications, there have also been concerted efforts recently to rethink
> phenomenology across the social sciences and humanities. Paired with recent
> interests in mediated experience, the time seems apt to reassess what it
> might
> mean to theorize media phenomenologically.
>
>
>
> Conditions
> of Mediation seeks to bring together scholars from a very wide
> range of perspectives ? such as media history, media archaeology, audience
> studies, political theory, metaphysics, software studies, science and
> technology studies, digital aesthetics, cultural geography and urban
> studies
> ?to reflect explicitly on the phenomenological groundings of their work on
> media. The phenomenological thinking to which participants might connect
> will
> be broad-based, ranging from core thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger,
> Merleau-Ponty
> and Sartre to those with looser affiliations to phenomenology per se, for
> example Arendt, Bergson, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Garfinkel, Ingold, Latour,
> Whitehead and Harman.
>
>
>
> In
> short, the overall aim is that this conference goes beyond a mere
> congregation
> of media phenomenologists. Instead, it will encourage critical reflection
> on
> what various readings of phenomenology might offer media and technology
> studies
> that other approaches cannot. Conversely, it will also welcome reflections
> on
> the limits of phenomenological approaches in philosophical, theoretical,
> political and empirical terms.
>
>
>
> If you
> have any inquiries, please email both:
>
> Scott
> Rodgers (s.rodgers at bbk.ac.uk) and
> Tim Markham (t.markham at bbk.ac.uk)
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 19:33:43 +0000
> From: Scott Rodgers <rodgers_scott at hotmail.com>
> To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-L] Public Urban Media Tour of West End London during ICA
> Message-ID: <BAY163-W604BB21E35D0474B5ADB1E959B0 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
>
>
> A tour scheduled to coincide with the International Communication
> Association conference in London (but open to the public)
>
>
>
> The Mediated City
>
> A Tour of Media and Mediation in West End London
>
>
>
> Led by Joel McKim and Scott Rodgers
>
>
>
> This tour uses West
> End London as a lens into ?the mediated city?.
> It explores how the city not only
> hosts, but is in many ways constituted through, media. City living compels
> us
> to use, need and even desire media content and devices in quite particular
> ways. Meanwhile, media forms, technologies and industries exist in and are
> even
> ?built-into? urban spaces: for example the street, the tube, the suburb,
> the
> bar, the public square. The aim of this tour is twofold: first, to
> highlight
> how the city provides a unique lens to critically study, understand and
> define
> media; and second, to use media and mediation as a lens to understand the
> city.
> Though a range of buildings and neighbourhoods associated with major media
> industries will be visited, the tour also focuses on observing some more
> unconventional forms of urban media and communication.
>
>
>
> Date, place and
> registration:
>
> Wedsnesday
> 19 June, 2013, 12.30-3.30pm
>
> Numbers are limited, so booking is
> essential ? visit
>
> http://ica2013mediatour.eventbrite.co.uk
>
> Attendees will meet at the southwest
> corner of Fitzroy Square at 12.30pm (directions at Eventbrite link). The
> tour lasts
> 3 hours, ending at Leicester Square.
>
>
>
> For further information:
>
> Contact Joel McKim (j.mckim at bbk.ac.uk) or Scott Rodgers (
> s.rodgers at bbk.ac.uk)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 21:50:17 +0200
> From: Vit Sisler <vsisler at gmail.com>
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L]  CFP: Religion in Cyberspace 2013
> Message-ID:
>         <CABxiZetY_r0XcV+AdvtYW5ifp=
> nMK1GErC9RwddrpZwOzxh9FQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> RELIGION IN CYBERSPACE 2013
> Call for Papers
>
> We cordially invite you to participate in the workshop 'Religion in
> Cyberspace 2012' which will take place at the 11th international
> conference Cyberspace 2012 held in Brno, Czech Republic, 22-23
> November 2013.
>
> Illustrative topics
>
> religious normative frameworks in cyberspace, networking diasporas,
> religious collaborative environments, on-line counseling, on-line
> fatwas and cyber muftis, new religious movements, religious discourses
> in cyberspace, methodology of online-religion research, rituals in
> cyberspace etc.
>
> Note: Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit their
> papers for peer review to Masaryk University Journal of Law and
> Technology (MUJLT - mujlt.law.muni.cz) or Cyberpsychology
> (http://www.cyberpsychology.eu).
>
> Important dates
>
> Abstract submission deadline: 31 July 2013
> Notice on acceptance deadline: 31 August 2013
> Conference dates: 22-23 November 2013
> Papers for publication deadline: 11 January 2014
>
> Abstract formal requirements
>
> Range: max. 1.500 characters incl. spaces
> Submission: on-line at www.cyberspace.muni.cz
>
> Paper formal requirements and submission
>
> Papers published in MUJLT: http://mujlt.law.muni.cz/instructions.php
> Papers published in Cyberpsychology:
> http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/submission.php
>
> Full CFP
>
> Full version of CFP can be found here:
> http://www.cyberspace.muni.cz/storage/Cyberspace_2013_CFP.pdf
>
> Let me also to kindly ask you to forward this message to your
> colleagues whom you expect to be interested in participating.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Vit Sisler,
> Workshop Chair
>
> --
> Vit Sisler, Ph.D.
>
> Charles University in Prague
> Faculty of Arts & Philosophy
> Institute of Information Science and Librarianship
> New Media Studies
>
> http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 16:04:49 -0400
> From: nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>
> To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-L] NSA and privacy?
> Message-ID: <CFB2A49A-0D1D-4C82-A4CE-9C9A861B137D at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=us-ascii
>
> Surprised that there's no discussion here on NSA and metadata collection.
> Seems like prime aoir material. Maybe some privacy scholars and
> cryptography experts can give some expert comments?
>
> -Robert
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:10:02 +0200
> From: Charles Ess <charles.ess at gmail.com>
> To: nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>, Air list
>         <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] NSA and privacy?
> Message-ID: <CDDABBCA.617B4%charles.ess at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Yes - but I'm too preoccupied with being appalled, dismayed, and left in
> sorrowful wonder for the future of free speech and democratic process as
> some of the darkest worries and fears some of us have voiced over the past
> decade or so appear to have been realized indeed.  And then some.
>
> Perhaps others with recover their scholarly wits more quickly.
>
> Glumly,
> - charles ess
>
>
> On 09.06.13 22:04, "nativebuddha" <nativebuddha at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Surprised that there's no discussion here on NSA and metadata collection.
> > Seems like prime aoir material. Maybe some privacy scholars and
> cryptography
> > experts can give some expert comments?
> >
> > -Robert
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 17:45:51 -0400
> From: Richard Forno <rforno at infowarrior.org>
> To: nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>
> Cc: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] NSA and privacy?
> Message-ID: <2F5D06EE-0B08-48CD-A558-09CDF5220933 at infowarrior.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> I have not been this annoyed and disgusted with my country's actions since
> 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq War.  I'm truly saddened at what's been
> sacrificed over the years.
>
> Here are some initial thoughts.  (Pls pardon the semi-rambling nature,
> I've been going nonstop for the past few days.)
>
> The 9/11 Report talked about a failure to "connect the dots" before the
> attacks, so now the US intelligence community is trying to "COLLECT all the
> dots" so that it can try to "CONNECT them" and potentially prevent future
> attacks.  By the same token, if politicians try to reign in such efforts on
> civil liberties concerns they run the risk of not only looking 'soft' on
> terrorism but being held responsible for the next attack and likely lose
> their jobs in the next election.  (Which to me is a great reason for term
> limits.)  Ask any competent security expert -- there never can be "100%
> security" but no government person wants to be seen as doing less than
> trying to acheive that unachievable goal. In many ways, this whole thing
> re-opens the question of how far the US has gone in terms of "protecting
> the homeland" -- ie the frequently-cited security-v-civil liberties balance.
>
> None of these revelations (to me) are surprising in the slightest ...
> since the late '90s I (and presumably many here) have said the Internet and
> the pervasive usages of various ICTs would make mass surveillance quite
> possible, powerful, and just as pervasive as the users' embrace of them in
> their daily lives. Since the 'Patriot' Act was passed in 2001, that pretty
> much made it a certaintyt. The past few days' revelations have confirmed
> that officially and publicly for all to see.
>
> What I find pathetic and disturbing is summed up by Greenwald's tweet this
> morning about the USG folks complaining about the leaking of classified
> information:  "DNI: Prior to this week, The Terrorists didn't realize that
> the US Govt tries to monitor their communications."    Even the normally
> reserved Jim Fallows from the Atlantic asked "why is this classified?" on
> Friday.  This has been an 'open secret' for years, but because it's
> technically still classified, the government must respond accordingly even
> if it makes them look foolish by doing so.  As I said in a Friday
> interview, the only terrorists still using mobile phones and GMail are
> stupid terrorists and other "low hanging fruit."
>
> Interestingly, everyone (government and tech firms) are saying their
> actions are in full compliance with the law.  But if a broadly-worded court
> order is lawful under an equally broadly-worded provision of law, then
> indeed these companies could just fork over whatever they wanted to and
> still be done "in accordance with the law" ... which explains why all those
> tech company statements looked pretty much the same in content and language
> --- ie they all made specific reference to not providing "direct access" to
> their systems. How about indirect or other types of access?  Their
> statements might be TECHNICALLY and LEGALLY true, but there's plenty of
> wiggle room.
>
> Legal semantics will be a key thing, too.  The US government says it
> doesn't "target" citizens but never really says it doesn't "monitor" their
> communications and transactions.  How is "targetting" different from
> "monitoring" in the operational and legal contexts here? The lawyers are
> going to have an absolute field day parsing the semantics and
> interpretations of "the law" here....it may be akin to the Clinton lawyers
> trying to define what "is" meant back in the '90s.  :\
>
> The big takeaways as I see it right now? First, American citizens
> *finally* know about the secret interpretations of Section 215 of the
> 'Patriot' Act that were ominously hinted at by a few very concerned
> Senators over the years.  Secret laws generally aren't condusive to trust
> or accountability open societies, right?  Maybe they will realise exactly
> how far the government is going to 'protect' them.  Will they be okay with
> that?
>
> Second, these disclosures, and the 2010 WikiLeaks one (Manning), again
> help speak truth to power by demonstrating one of this country's most
> debilitating problems:  the government's infatuation with secrecy and
> overclassification. Yes, there is a need for secrecy in select situations,
> but for DECADES the USG has gone waaaay overboard in this regard.
>
> Anyway, here's some extra reading on the subject.  I sggest those
> interested have a stiff drink or two first, just to get a bit numb before
> reading:
>
> Initial thoughts on the NSA-Verizon surveillance order (by me)
>
> http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/06/initial-thoughts-nsa-verizon-surveillance-order
>
> The DNI's Non-Denial of Mass Surveillance of Americans  (Jennifer Granick)
>
> http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/06/dnis-non-denial-mass-surveillance-americans
>
> EFF: Why Metadata Matters
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters
>
> What We Don't Know About Spying on Citizens: Scarier Than What We Know
> (Schneier)
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/what-we-dont-know-about-spying-on-citizens-scarier-than-what-we-know/276607/
>
> Will this latest series of disclosures lead to a meaningful public debate
> and/or changes to the surveillance regime?  I'm hopeful, but have my
> doubts.   I've been in DC for too long and pretty much know how these
> things play out.  Plus, I wonder if the American people really care about
> this in the so-called 'Age of Facebook' and the share-it-all society.
>
> Le sigh.  :(
>
> --rick
>
>
> On Jun 9, 2013, at 4:04 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Surprised that there's no discussion here on NSA and metadata
> collection. Seems like prime aoir material. Maybe some privacy scholars and
> cryptography experts can give some expert comments?
> >
> > -Robert
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
> >
>
>
> ---
> Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
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