Essay Part 1

Lately in AP Lang we've had to write an essay on a book while both reviewing it as well as an overall topic it covers. For mine I've read Rebecca MacKinnon's Consent of the Networked which touches on the impact of the Internet as well as privacy concerns and regulatory concerns and their implications. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave feedback and comments! Here's the first part:

Control of the Internet in the Modern Age

Parker Bennett

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

By Rebecca MacKinnon

Basic Books, 320 pp., $26.99

January 25, 2011: Hossam el-Hamalawy joins thousands of others to take to the streets in Egypt as their “Day of Rage” begins. Organizing protests through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, activists are able to put together highly visible and effective demonstrations that elicit a response from the police. Soon protests are happening nation-wide as Egypt experiences a modern revolution, attracting international attention. On the third day of protests, Internet and phone services are cut off in the Cairo area, severely disrupting communication between activists. This is only part of the Egyptian government’s control over the citizens. Late Friday night, Hossam el-Hamalawy along with numerous other protestors storm the offices of the SSI in Nasr City. He visits the cell where he had been imprisoned for anti-government sentiments and beaten, later writing on his Twitter feed that he could not stop crying. Also discovered in the compound are thousands of documents and files on citizens, with text message transcripts, Internet postings, photos, dossiers, and other privacy-infringing records of Egyptian citizens. As the regime built around Hosni Mubarak (the dictatorial president of Egypt at the time) crumbles in the following weeks, more and more evidence comes to light of the extent of which the Egyptian government kept surveillance on its citizens, as well as the extent of how far it went to control their access to freedom: The Internet.

The Internet has become the most important innovation of the modern age, connecting billions of users across the world, encouraging cooperation between people on a global scale and allowing for the sharing of ideas, photos, information, videos, and more. Even though it can create an open and free society, it can also help those who wish to force control on people, or monitor them. This dual use of the Internet is discussed in length in Rebecca MacKinnon’s book, The Consent of the Networked. As well as discussing the role of the Internet in repressive governments and its role in fighting for freedom, MacKinnon focuses on threats to the Internet, which include authoritarian regimes, but also corporations and legislature which can interfere with free speech and privacy rights.  These areas of focus are the key points Mackinnon uses in her book to prove her point that action needs to be taken in regards to the Internet and freedom of speech/privacy concerns. As she says in the beginning of the book,

It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression, and to move on to the much more urgent question of how digital technology can be structured, governed, and used to maximize the good it can do in the world, and minimize the evil….

The reality is that the corporations and governments that build, operate, and govern cyberspace are not being held sufficiently accountable for their exercise of power over the lives and identities of people who use digital networks. They are sovereigns operating without the consent of the networked. (MacKinnon, pp. 34 )

Break #7

I figure its about time to start advertising my favorite artists. Specifically, those who are still up-and-coming. Someone like Madeon. A 17-year-old from Nantes, France, Madeon has broken into the electropop/house scene with his excellent remixes. Starting out with his remix of The Island by Pendalum, he quickly rose to internet fame through his other remixes of Deadmau5's Raise Your Weapon and Pop Culture, a mashup of 39 different songs. Pop Culture definitely went viral immediately after posting, racking up more than 6 million hits in a few days. Now at over 10 million, Pop Culture is definitely one of his coolest songs to date. Having played on BBC Radio 1 and now about to perform live at Coachella, Lollapalooza, and the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Madeon has begun his live performance debut. Keep an eye on him, because he just might be going somewhere.

Also, Nathan Barnatt, one of my favorite YouTube celebrities, has done a couple of dance videos to his songs. Check them out!

CISPA- Yet another Kill-Bill

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act now has more than 105 co-sponsors, and some fear the bill could go further than SOPA and PIPA in threatening online privacy. SOPA and PIPA were finally discarded earlier this year after resounding online protest changed the debate, but the same doesn’t yet appear to be the case with CISPA.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, H.R. 3523 “would let companies spy on users and share private information with the federal government and other companies with near-total immunity from civil and criminal liability. It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws.”
The bill could sneak through Congress quickly once it’s back in session, so be sure to track its progress.
 Once again the Internet is just another frontier that governments and corporations --  sometimes both intermingled in a corrupt haze-- just can't ignore. They have to control this thing thet keeps biting their hand. So of course they put out these stupid, irresponsible, ignorant bills to try to do exactly that: control something that threatens them.

So in order to stall CISPA we can start by contacting our reps in congress.

• EFF Action: Don’t Let Congress Use "Cybersecurity" Fears to Erode Digital Rights

As always its best to contact them by phone, you can find your rep details here:

• http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Other coverage:

• Forget SOPA, You Should Be Worried About This Cybersecurity Bill
• Draconian ‘Privacy Invasion Bill’ Continues to Gain Support
• Even worse than SOPA: New CISPA cybersecurity bill will censor the Web
• SOPA changes name to CISPA

---

Also, help reviewing the text of bill itself would be good.

Break #6

Yet again the lovely break post comes around. This time our break video highlights a unique KFC in Egypt, which is run entirely by deaf employees. They communicate to each other via sign language and customers point to what they want on a menu on the counter. I personally think this is an incredible achievement, especially in providing equal opportunity employment for those with disabilities. But I also think its really rad at the same time. One must wonder though, how does the drive thru work?

The Wheels of Justice

Recently, some peace has been had by the Family of Trayvon Martin as state prosecutors have announced they will be charging George Zimmerman with second-degree murder, the highest offense that could be charged. This comes after the ill-received announcement that no grand jury was to be used in deciding whether or not to charge Zimmerman with anything. Now that those fears have been put to rest, the Martin family can breath a short sigh of relief. Recently arrested and being held at the Seminole County jail, he is currently waiting for court proceeding and bail to begin. The Miami Herald has a good step by step of what happens next legally:

"• George Zimmerman faces a charge of second-degree murder with a firearm, a first-degree felony punishable by a minimum of 25 years in prison and up to life behind bars. The charge is a non-bondable offense, which means Zimmerman does not have the immediate right to post bail.
•  He will be booked into a Seminole County jail and should appear Thursday in court for a first hearing and arraignment.
•  Zimmerman will certainly plead not guilty and his defense attorney has said he will ask that his client be allowed to post bond and be released from custody.
•  Within 15 days, prosecutors must start providing Zimmerman’s defense attorney with “discovery,” the first witness statements, police reports and photos that will be used as evidence against him. Most of the evidence will be released to the public and media, although the substance of any of his confessions can be withheld before trial.
•  Once all the evidence has been provided to Zimmerman’s defense team, his lawyer can file a motion for immunity under Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense law. A judge must hold an evidentiary hearing and decide by a “preponderance of the evidence” whether Zimmerman was acting in self-defense.
•  If a judge denies his motion for immunity, a date will be set for a trial in front of a jury. Zimmerman’s defense attorney could also ask for a “change of venue,” meaning he could be tried in a different county in Florida if a judge deems pretrial publicity has been so overwhelming that it is impossible for the defendant to get a fair trial."

The trial of George Zimmerman will no doubt be one of high profile, as people across the country have voiced their support for the Martin family and against Zimmerman through protests, walk-outs, and marches. Much like in the Casey Anthony case a while back, it seems that in this case George Zimmerman has already been tried by the media. The majority opinion on the case is that this is a travesty of justice and that he's obviously guilty. Not that I'm saying he is innocent, the evidence does seem to indicate he acted with menace, but I'm saying that America as a whole needs to recognize that there's already been too much of a decision on the case already and that we need to wait for the courts of law to figure it out. 

" George Zimmerman, accused of murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, was once an anonymous loan officer in a Florida suburb. He is now a reviled symbol of racial profiling, vigilante justice and everything broken about race relations in America.

Whether or not Zimmerman deserves that onus, a pending trial may be a vehicle for the nation to sort publicly through some of these issues. But on a personal level, Zimmerman has been the focus of so much media coverage and extraordinary public vitriol that legal experts say an impartial jury may be difficult to find to weigh his claim of self-defense for the shooting.
"We have to worry about his ability to get a fair trial," said Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. "There is a risk that he's convicted based on media impressions and popular sentiments rather than evidence."

Zimmerman can seek a bail hearing under Florida law, but his notoriety has diminished his chances for release, at least in the immediate future. On Thursday, Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's defense attorney, said he would wait at least a few weeks before seeking bail, in an attempt to "calm this case down."
Zimmerman's arrest and incarceration on Wednesday marked the beginning of a new chapter in a case that has raised questions about much more than the murky circumstances around the killing of an unarmed teenager. For many, the case has come to represent all of the injustices faced not just by blacks in Sanford but by minority communities across the country, where issues of racial profiling, 'stop and frisk' searches and police brutality remain hot button issues.

Without mass rallies and media attention, the shooting would have very likely gone unremarked on the local crime blotter. Instead, Martin's case has become a cause, a national phenomenon with competing interests often drawn along racial lines. Meanwhile, the case could prove pivotal in the fight to repeal Florida's controversial Stand Your Ground laws.
In the process, Zimmerman's life has been threatened, and lawyers and national media have dragged the skeletons of Zimmerman's violent past out into the light. Posters made from a 2005 mugshot of Zimmerman -- looking chubby and bleary-eyed in a jail-issued orange jumpsuit -- have been hoisted at rallies and protests.

Everyone from the president of the United States to former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson have weighed in on the case, with Tyson saying of Zimmerman in an interview Thursday with Yahoo Sports that "it's a disgrace that man hasn't been shot yet." "

With the notoriety that has come from press coverage, there is no doubt in my mind that at the very least he will be convicted of some crime, and when he is the whole nation will know about it. 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/11/2743345/after-zimmermans-arrest-what-happens.html#moreb#storylink=cpy

Invisible Children: The Musical!

 Today is truly an odd day to say the least. For it has come to my attention that the infamous in some circles, famous in others charity group known as Invisible Children has a musical section of it's awareness campaign. And oh boy does it rock! (Are you detecting a hint of sarcasm there? You should be) In fact, they go beyond just music, they dive headfirst into the realm of musicals! And boy what great musicals they are! For example: this excellent example of charity money at work. You can really tell how much effort they put into it through the choreography, special effects (lasers!), suspension wires, costumes, dancers, singing, music, everything! When I saw the shirt with the poor little African kid on it, I just wanted to get up and go! To my bathroom. To vomit. Because this video is a disgrace to humanity. Dear god, this video sucked 7 minutes of my soul and they sent it flying into the void, never to be seen again. It's that bad. The mom, the jazzercise class, the kids, the acting, the singing, the Michael Jackson high-pitched screaming ripoff. Its all there. And it all sucks. Bad. This is what their money was going to back in 2006. Not feeding the little kid on the shirt, but paying to go out to Africa, paying to take a picture of a sad little African boy, paying to fly back to the US, paying to make a shirt with said photo, and paying for the musical that has the shirt in it. What a charity, ladies and gentlemen. I must say, that's exactly what I want when I donate my money to help African kids, crappy Glee-ripoffs.

 I think Charlie Brooker had a pretty good monologue on all this nonsense and whatnot, so I'll show that to you here:



Yes, those videos he references are real. And yes, they are as idiotic, mind numbing, and creepy as they seem. I think charities have just become one of those creepy things in life for me now, like morose old people and balloons floating by in the breeze. Oddly creepy and in no way should they ever be touched. And Invisible Children definitely falls under that category, as its misleading, simplistic messages lead young, idealistic minds astray from actual work being done in Africa. It has been said by Julie Owono that:

"The strength of these types of campaigns is that one can spread messages to millions of viewers at the speed of light. But its great weakness is that their messages tend to be reductive.
The Invisible Children campaign has fallen into this trap. The viral campaign portrays Ugandans - often referred to merely as "Africans" - needing to be saved by young Americans, whose overflowing humanity will carry the burden of a history they are not responsible for. It's understandable. Indeed, it seems easier to picture needy "Africans" than proactive ones - and surely sells more.
But times have changed, and this type of simplified and misleading message will now more than ever face the reactions of young and connected Ugandans, Kenyans, Congolese, Cameroonians, Ivorians, et cetera, who also see the Internet as a tool to spread their story. The Invisible Children team probably did not think that it would get such responses to a video that, while well-intentioned, had a stench of old-school paternalism."

Many bloggers, journalists, speakers, etc have come out against this campaign and how its sketchy in finance and purpose. In fact, despite the opinion pieces, the Prime Minister of Uganda has even come out to express his distaste with the campaign itself, although he does like the attention it's bringing to the plight of his people. He states "I extend the invitation not just to the 20 celebrities, but to you all - come and see Uganda for yourself - you will find a very different place to that portrayed by Invisible Children." Whoa. Are you saying that even Uganda doesn't agree with Invisible Children and their message in KONY2012? Who would've thought that? Oh, I don't know, anyone who looked into this thoroughly.

And then there's the whole naked breakdown debacle. Whats up with that? He breaks down because of all the attention hes getting. Both good and bad mind you,I particularly enjoyed an analysis I found on it, which related it to a breaking of his superman complex. But update on that, his wife reports that the doctors say he has had a brief reactive psychosis, which may take months to recover from properly. It's basically a mental breakdown from all the stress. His wife has also announced that they will be focusing on recovering, and to keep the focus on the cause and not on Russel himself. We'll see how that turns out though...

 

Trayvon Martin: A Martyr

As with most things I blog about, you have probably heard about it by now. But no worries, this is something that should stay at the forefront of your mind, and it deserves to stay there. Recently, on Feb. 26th, a young man was shot and killed in a gated Florida community as he walked home after buying snacks from a local convenience store. He was walking home, talking to his girlfriend on the phone when George Zimmerman, a local neighborhood watch member, starts tailing him. Zimmerman goes on to call 911 and report Martin as being a "suspicious person" and tells the 911 operator that, "This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something, he's just staring, looking at all the houses. Now he's coming toward me. He's got his hand in his waistband. Something's wrong with him." Turns out that nothing was wrong with Trayvon that night. The hand in his waistband? He was holding the bag of Skittles and iced tea he just purchased in place. Why would he look suspicious then? Was it the hoodie he had up to block the light drizzle that night? Or was it the fact that he was a black teen out alone at night? That has become the hot question of the last few weeks as thousands across the US question what really happened that night and rallying for justice against Trayvon's killer. Demonstrations have quickly spread across the US, reflecting the nations outrage over what seems like such a blatant abuse of justice. Calls for the Police Chief to resign have been echoed loud and clear and millions have taken to the streets, Facebook, and twitter to express their utter outrage and shock at the events taking place. The issue has spread from being an internet phenomenon to a mass media phenomenon, with senators now taking part in protests, as well as celebrities, athletes, and other top officials. Hopefully justice will be serves, as the FBI has launched an investigation into the happenings that night as well as the state and local police. However, justice may be long in coming.