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@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)
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 16:18:27 +0000 From: Scott Rodgers <rodgers_scott@hotmail.com> To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Conditions of Mediation preconference: Limited spaces still available! Message-ID: <BAY163-W18C1B26779A93B85BAC747959B0@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@bbk.ac.uk) and Tim Markham (t.markham@bbk.ac.uk)
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Message: 2 Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 19:33:43 +0000 From: Scott Rodgers <rodgers_scott@hotmail.com> To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Public Urban Media Tour of West End London during ICA Message-ID: <BAY163-W604BB21E35D0474B5ADB1E959B0@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@bbk.ac.uk) or Scott Rodgers ( s.rodgers@bbk.ac.uk)
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Message: 3 Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 21:50:17 +0200 From: Vit Sisler <vsisler@gmail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] CFP: Religion in Cyberspace 2013 Message-ID: <CABxiZetY_r0XcV+AdvtYW5ifp= nMK1GErC9RwddrpZwOzxh9FQ@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/
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Message: 4 Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 16:04:49 -0400 From: nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com> To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] NSA and privacy? Message-ID: <CFB2A49A-0D1D-4C82-A4CE-9C9A861B137D@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
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Message: 5 Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:10:02 +0200 From: Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com> To: nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com>, Air list <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] NSA and privacy? Message-ID: <CDDABBCA.617B4%charles.ess@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@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
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Message: 6 Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 17:45:51 -0400 From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org> To: nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com> Cc: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] NSA and privacy? Message-ID: <2F5D06EE-0B08-48CD-A558-09CDF5220933@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-surve...
The DNI's Non-Denial of Mass Surveillance of Americans (Jennifer Granick)
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/06/dnis-non-denial-mass-surveillance-...
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-...
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@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
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--- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.
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End of Air-L Digest, Vol 107, Issue 14 **************************************