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February 09, 2010

Migrant 2 Migrant radio

Give Ricky a life

Ricky  is in detention in Alphen aan den Rijn, to be deported to Nigeria.
He is an acknowledged survivor of the Schiphol Fire and has been denied residence because of his criminal record. He is considered un “unwanted alien”. This is the second time that Ricky is in prison without charges since the fire in 2005.
He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He sleeps badly, has nightmares and is scared of fire. Treatment is not available in prison, nor in his homeground in Nigeria.
The prison psychologist prescribes watching TV.
The other day there was a fire alarm, Ricky panicked and was shouted at, forces to the gropund and then put in isolation for five days. He complained with the director and with the inspection, but was denied a hearing.
The Dutch government continues to deny its responsibility for the victims of the fire. They just want to get him out of the way.
The legal procedure is nearly ended. We provide some support through vists, phonecards and working with his lawyer and our doctor.
You can support Ricky by writing him
Mui Igbinigie
Registration # 3319146.
Detentiecentrum Alphen aan den Rijn
Postbus 2261
2400 CG Alphen aan den Rijn
Holland
You can listen here to Ricky speaking at the commemoration in 2008:
Note:  M2M has a new number +31684446021

by jo and sakkho (info@m2m.streamtime.org)

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

February 08, 2010

Meinhard :: nomadic eco hacker

FOSDEM, meeting Robin Upton

I am so glad to have met Robin Upton at this year’s FOSDEM conference in Brussels. Robin initiated Altruists International a few years back and is doing elaborate non-formal research in the field of gift economies.

While at FOSDEM (where the only other talk I attended was about strophe.js, an XMPP library designed for the real-time web I was playing with recently) and visiting a chocolate factory outlet a bit outside Brussels, Robin, Dante and I mainly discussed his ongoing project Friend2Friend — a possible technical back-end to a fully independent and distributed gift economy. The software is still a prototype, but I believe it is important pioneering work that encourages new ways of thinking about our data, how it is processed and stored.

Robin is a kind and loving altruist and an inspiring thinker with a strong mathematics background. Believe it or not, his black framed glasses are actually fixed with sticky tape, hehe. Please do invite him to talk about his ideas! He will roam about Europe a bit longer and return to East Asia at some point.

Thanks to Petter, Dante and Kasper for connecting us.

by meinhard

February 07, 2010

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

February 06, 2010

Freaknet news

La nostra diatriba (risolta) con Wired Italia :)

Palazzolo Acreide, 8/2/2010 In relazione al nostro comunicato stampa di giorni 5 Febbraio 2010: Fatto salvo che siamo grati a Wired Italia ed a Gianluca Dettori per aver dedicato tanta attenzione a Netsukuku e ...

February 03, 2010

Defective by Design

First 5,000 "iBad" petition signatures delivered on giant iPad

The response to our iPad protest and petition has been tremendous: 5,000 people signed in the first 24 hours, with coverage in the technical press, Digg, Slashdot, Reddit, The Guardian, NPR, and more. The petition is still running, so please sign and share it with friends--help us hit 10,000 signatures by the end of the day!

Today Defective by Design will deliver the first 5,000 signatures on a giant iPad tablet, direct to Steve Jobs. We'll send another tablet for each new block of 5,000 signatures.

In a cover letter accompanying the tablet we are telling Steve Jobs that he still has an opportunity to do the right thing, "5,000 people in 24 hours took time out of their day to call you out on this, and demand change. There is still time for you to do the right thing in the next 60 days, before the iPad actually goes on sale. You can drop the DRM from the device and the App Store, and actually embrace the ideals you claim to stand for -- creativity, freedom, and individuality."

The tablet includes an evil Steve Jobs head from the Apple 1984 parody advertisement (thanks Doubletwist), and the postage was a bit expensive so we borrowed a stamp from Apple :)

Click on the image below and see if you can spot your signature!


by holmesworcester

/tmp/lab

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 – Call For Paper – HES2010 CFP

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 – Call For Paper – HES2010 CFP
http://hackitoergosum.org

Hackito Ergo Sum conference will be held from April 8th to 10th 2010 in Paris, France.
It is part of the series of conference “Hacker Space Fest” taking place since 2008 in France and all over Europe.

HES2010 will focus on hardcore computer security, insecurity, vulnerability analysis, reverse engineering, research and hacking.

INTRO
The goal of this conference is to promote security research, broaden public awareness and create an open forum so that communication between the researcher, the security industry, the experts and the public can happen.

A recent decision of justice in France has convicted a security researcher for disclosing vulnerabilities and exploits. These laws (similar to the one in Germany), descending from USA’s DMCA law, are orienting freedom of research and knowledge into a situation where “illegal knowledge” can happen, restricted to the only ones blessed by governmental silent approval and military. Scientific research and public information cannot be made into another monopoly of state, where “some” can study and publish and “some others” cannot.
Such approach just show how misinformed some politics are and how little understanding they get of the struggle they are acting in.

Not understanding that the best way to improve security is to attack it shows the lack of maturity of some stakeholder by being cut out of independent information sources.
This is where our ethics and responsibility is to say “No, we have a right for free information and true independence in research”, and this responsibility is the one of anybody, not just the responsibility of academically blessed scientists.

This conference will try to take in account all voices in order to reach a balanced position regarding research and security, inviting businesses, governmental actors, researchers, professionals and general public to share concerns, approaches and interests during.
During three days, research conferences, solutions presentations, panels and debates will aim at finding synthetic and balanced solutions to the current situation.

CONTENT

> Research Track:
We are expecting submissions in english or french, english preferred.
The format will be 45 mn presentation + 10mn Q&A.

For the research track, preference will be given for offensive, innovative and highly technical proposals covering (but not restricted to) the topics below:

Attacking Software
* Vulnerability discovery (and automating it!)
* Non-x86 exploitation
* Fuzzing with SMT and its limits
* New classes of software vulnerabilities and new methods to detect software bugs (source or binary based)
* Reverse Engineering tools and techniques
* Static analysis (source or binary, Lattices to blind analysis, new languages and targets strongly encouraged)
* Unpacking
* Current exploitation on Gnu/Linux WITH GRsecurity / SElinux / OpenWall / SSP and other current protection methods
* Kernel land exploits (new architectures or remote only)
* New advances in Attack frameworks and automation

Attacking Infrastructures
* Exotic Network Attacks
* Telecom (from VoIP to SS7 to GSM & 3G RF hacks)
* Financial and Banking institutions
* SCADA and the industrial world, applied.
* Governmental firewall and their limits (Australia, French’s HADOPI, China, Iran, Danemark, Germany, …)
* Satellites, Military, Intelligence data collection backbones (“I hacked Echelon and I would like to share”)
* Non-IP (SNA, ISO, make us dream…)
* Red-light and other public utilities control networks
* M2M

Attacking Hardware
* Hardware reverse engineering (and exploitation + backdooring)
* Femto-cell hacking (3G, LTE, …)
* Microchip grinding, opening, imaging and reverse engineering
* BIOS and otherwise low-level exploitation vectors
* Real-world SMM usage! We know it’s vulnerable, now let’s do something
* WiFi drivers and System on Chip (SoC) overflow, exploitation and backdooring.
* Gnu Radio hacking applied to new domains
* Toll-booth and fast-lane payment systems

Attacking Crypto
* Practical crypto attacks from the hackers perspective (RCE, bruteforce, …)
* SAT-solver applied to cryptanalysis
* Algorithm strength modeling and evaluation metrics
* Hashing functions pre-image attacks
* Crypto where you wouldn’t think there is

We highly encourage any other presentation topic that we may not even imagine.

Required informations:
* Presenter’s name
* Bio
* Presentation Title
* Description
* Demo?
* Needs: Internet? Others?
* Company (name) or Independent?
* Address
* Phone
* Email

Send your submission to:
hes2010-cfp __AT__ lists.hackitoergosum.org

> Business & Society Track:
Format:
20 minutes slots to present a tool, an innovative product, a solution (commercial, open source, free); a customer experience or open research domain; a society issue or a subject of public interest.

Demos are mandatory for tool, product or solutions presentations.
Pure-marketing presentation will be moderated (i.e. interrupted).
Follow-up with private group can be arranged for in-depth demo or analysis.

Submission needs to be sent to:
hes2010-cfp __AT__ lists.hackitoergosum.org

> Other interests
If you want to organize a Capture The Flag, Reverse Engineering contest, Lockpicking contest or any other activity during the conference, you are most welcome. Please contact us at: hes2010-orga@lists.hackitoergosum.org

DATES
2010-01-18    Call for Paper
2010-03-01    Submission Deadline
2010-04-08    Start of conference
2010-04-10    End of conference

PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE
The submissions will be reviewed by the following programming committee:
* Sebastien Bourdeauducq (Milkymist, /tmp/lab, BEC)
* Rodrigo Branco “BSDaemon” (Coseinc)
* Jonathan Brossard (P1 Code Security, DNSlab)
* Emmanuel Gadaix (TSTF)
* Laurent Gaffié (Stratsec)
* Thomas Garnier (Microsoft)
* The Grugq (PSP)
* Dhillon Kannabhiran (HITB)
* Kostya Kortchinsky (Immunity)
* Itzik Kotler (Radware)
* Philippe Langlois (P1 Telecom Security, PSP, TSTF, /tmp/lab)
* Moxie Marlinspike (Institute for Disruptive Studies)
* Karsten Nohl (deGate, Reflextor)
* Nicolas Thill (OpenWRT, /tmp/lab)
* Julien Tinnes (Google)
* Nicolas Ruff (EADS, Security Labs)
* Carlos Sarraute (CORE Security Technologies)
* Matthieu Suiche (Sandman, win32dd)
* Fyodor Yarochkin (TSTF, o0o.nu)

FEES
Business-ticket                                                 120 EUR
Public entrance                                                  80 EUR
Reduction for Students below 26                                  40 EUR
Reduction for CVE publisher or exploit publisher in 2009/2010    40 EUR

Entrance fees and sponsors fees will be used to fund international speakers travel costs.

VOLUNTEERS
Volunteers who sign up before 2010-03-01 get free access and will need to be present onsite two days before (2010-04-06) if no further arrangement is made with the organization.

SPONSORS
Sponsors are welcome to contact us to receive the Partnership Kit at:
hes2010-orga __AT__ lists.hackitoergosum.org

LOCATION
Paris, France.

CONTACT
hes2010-orga __AT__ lists.hackitoergosum.org

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 conference – http://hackitoergosum.org

Hacker Space Festival – http://www.hackerspace.net

by admin

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

Apocalypse, Tendency, Crisis

Benjamin Noys

Crises tend to generate apocalyptic dreams and nightmares. Through a reappraisal of 20th century anti-capitalist thought, Benjamin Noys urges us to critically re-think how such an apocalyptic tone operates within radical analyses of the current crisis

 

read more

by mute

February 02, 2010

Migrant 2 Migrant radio

Secret prisons for migrants in the USA

There are at least 186 secret detention centers maintained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) within the borders of the USA, according to an article published in the Nation magazine in December. Drawing on a report by Amnesty International (AI) entitled “Jailed without Justice,” it estimates that 415,000 people have been held at these facilities, which are operated under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security as so-called “sub-field offices” of the ICE. Their purpose is to deny undocumented immigrants due process and any means by which they can effectively lobby for their rights.

more at Center for Research on Globalization

And a good film is The Visitor about a lost professor learning how to play the Djembee, and about being illegal in New York.

by jo and sakkho (info@m2m.streamtime.org)

February 01, 2010

Migrant 2 Migrant radio

How to catch illegal immigrants

Under the headline “Deception helps illegal immigrants sneak into EU” Dutch newspaper NRC published an intersting article by Freek Schravensandeon it’s website. It gives you an idea of what you can expect if you try to pass the Dutch border.

The frontline: Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

Illegal immigrants and Dutch customs officials are caught in a game of cat and mouse.    Some of them might suddenly change queues, taking their chances with an official that looks more lenient. Others may come down the escalator as a group, only to split up as soon as they enter the customs officials’ line of sight. Sometimes a sloppily done necktie or a pair of white sneakers under a black suit will give them away. Sometimes the question “what is your passport number?” will. If they proceed to rattle it off, they have fallen for it, Erwin Rasterhoff, a customs official at Schiphol airport explained. “Nobody knows their passport number by heart.” It is a game of cat and mouse. Schiphol is the main battleground in the constant struggle between the Royal Marechaussee, the Dutch branch of the military responsible for protecting the nation’s borders, and the illegal immigrants, mostly Asian or African, trying to gain access to the European Union using fake passports. Last year, 600 would-be immigrants fell prey to the cat. How many mice got away is unknown. What is certain is: the rules of the game change constantly.

Customs officials practise what is known as profiling. They use tactical tricks. For instance, they try not to look only at the traveller standing at their counter, but eye the one behind him as well. They ask questions, like “What is your destination?” They scan passports, finger them, drop them. Fakes feel different, sound different when they land on the floor, and are rougher along the edges.  Some illegal immigrants like to bluff. They have multiple fake stamps in their passports, to establish their assumed identity as a business traveller. When they fear exposure is inevitable, they often try to flirt with the customs official, or make a scene. “Why did you pick me out of the line? Because I’m black?” is an oft-used line, Rasterhoff said.  If the veracity of a passport is questioned, it is submitted to the National Documents Bureau at the airport. Here, analysts look for pockets of air beneath the passport’s picture, indicative of photo swaps. The watermark is scanned under ultraviolet light, printing techniques and glue remnants are scrutinised and visa numbers studied. Since many countries still refuse to invest in secure passport technology, it is often impossible to determine whether a passport is genuine with 100 percent certainty.

Prize finds from the past line the bureau’s Wall of Fame. The wall displays 28 passports all bearing the same name (Cherif, a 43-year-old from Guinee) but different photographs. “A good forgery, technically speaking. Probably made with inside help,” said Gert Penterman, chief of the bureau. The 28 illegal immigrants carrying the passports arrived into the country over the course of six weeks, only to fall into the hands of the authorities.  The wall is also donned with more fanciful documents. Passports of the nonexistent nation of British Honduras are a regular catch, Penterman said. A passport belonging to a German man who had proclaimed his own kingdom in Ghana, dubbed Lichtenberg, and made his own passport. “The Ghanaians had even stuck a visa sticker in his passport.” A large blue passport with golden letters reading “World Passport.” Stupid mistakes abound, like blatant spelling errors, or the birth dates of a woman’s two children: October 9 of 1988 and March 17 of 1989.  There are services in China that will replicate any passport within a week, Rasterhoff said. But for many illegal immigrants, time is of the essence. This is why a lot of forgeries are not very convincing. Forging passports has also become more difficult thanks to technological advancements like the built-in chip or the digital photograph, which are now common in the most coveted of passports, those of EU countries.

This has led illegal immigrants to try their luck another way: through lookalike fraud. Criminals buy a real, stolen passport on markets in China or Pakistan and look for a prospective immigrant who looks like its previous owner. If need be they will outfit the new bearer with a moustache or glasses to match. Of the 600 suspected illegal immigrants apprehended last year, 134 were arrested because they bore insufficient likeness to the pictures in their passports.  Catching lookalikes is difficult, Penterman explained. “White people are good at keeping other white people apart. But Chinese, Japanese and West Africans are more difficult for us. Besides, faces can change a lot over the years.” When examining a face, Penterman tries to focus on the extremities: the nose, with or without a stub, the space between the nose and the upper lip and the ears. “The ear is our best fingerprint,” Penterman said “It never changes”.  If officials catch a suspected lookalike, they first take a picture that is then compared to the one in his or her passport with the naked eye - no technology exists that can do the job yet. If the traveller’s true identify remains uncertain, the suspect is questioned and frisked. If customs official still can’t make up their minds thereafter , they put the matter to a vote. “An independent one,” Penterman said. Often, cases remain undecided and are passed on to a judge.

The criminals orchestrating the identify fraud are rarely caught, Penterman said. “We deal with a lot of cases involving human trafficking, but if we catch someone they often claim not to know anything. ‘I found this passport at the station,’ is a story we hear a lot. When people say that, we know they are carrying out the instructions of a smuggler.”  On rare occasions, one is apprehended. The officials once arrested a smuggler in Schiphol’s transit area, carrying multiple South Korean passports, a country for which no visa requirement exists to enter the Netherlands. The passports were destined for Chinese supposedly just passing through Schiphol on their way to another destination. After a quick swap in the airport’s toilets however, they would have been on their way out of the airport.  Sometimes customs officials catch a group of illegal immigrants with consecutive ticket numbers, all carrying the same phone number with them. Or a passenger will linger in the transit area for a long time after a flight, a telltale sign that he may be the ringleader of people smuggling ring.  On flights deemed high risk, passengers are checked immediately after arriving at the gate. Three men stand guard at the plane’s jet bridge while an undercover scours through the lounge, on the lookout for smugglers awaiting their human contraband there. Gateside inspections prevent illegal aliens from straying through the transit area for two weeks before finally applying for asylum.  Once an immigrant is arrested, a jail cell awaits them. Any children he or she may have are temporarily placed in foster care. After a return flight has been arranged, the illegal immigrant is confined to Schipol’s deportation centre. Combs and razors are confiscated to prevent automutilation or worse. A lot of deportees do not return home quietly. None of them want to go back where they came from. Often, an entire village will has saved money to send one of its finest sons or daughters to Europe to make some money.

by jo and sakkho (info@m2m.streamtime.org)

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

January 31, 2010

Siete Coyote

Objectified

Objectified (2009) es un documental sobre diseño industrial dirigido por Gary Hustwit, también director de Helvetica (2007), en el que renombrados diseñadores exponen la manera en que conciben el diseño de objetos cotidianos y su manera de abordar las cuestiones funcionales, estéticas, sociales, económicas y ecológicas derivadas de su producción industrial. Objectified | Sitio oficial

by i/o

Alan :: law, technology and cinema, washed down with wine

Collaborative Futures


Last week I participated in an extreme booksprint on the theme ‘Collaborative Futures’, commissioned by Transmediale for their festival which begins in Berlin on tuesday.

For five days I saw almost no-one other than my collaborators, Adam Hyde, Marta Peirano, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Michael Mandiberg, Mike Linksvayer and Aleksandar Erkalovic.

Twelve to fourteen hour days were standard, as we drove ourselves to establish some common ground. The result is a 140 page book which will be ready for distribution at the festival this week.

Lots more on this later, but the photo above was taken during the initial organization of our ideas at the end of the first day.

by nonrival

January 29, 2010

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

Steve Goodman - Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear

Steve Goodman - Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262013475, sonic_warfare.jpg The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262013475, U.S.A., 2010, English
Sound waves can't usually damage your ears unless you constantly keep headphone volume too high,or you insist on standing very close to tall speakers during a concert for too long. Used in the right way (or wrong way), however, they can be a scary armament, able to inflict various degrees of harassment,

Abbadingo

nerdfiles up and running

For all interested, nerdfiles keeps disturbing the waves with new material every day!

You can listen to it at http://labbs.net:8080/nerdfiles.ogg

Or have a look at the archives here.

by acracia (acracia@riseup.net)

January 28, 2010

Shammash

How unique - and trackable - is your browser?

Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies. Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits. Click below and you will be given a uniqueness score, letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web. Only anonymous data will be collected by this site.

by shammash

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

Temporary.cc, interaction is destruction

Temporary.cc, Zach Gage, temporary_cc.jpg Digital data has a paradoxical status. Immaterial by definition, it nonetheless has a need for a physical substance (hardware) to manifest itself. Eternal and not subject to decay, it is forced to bond its life to the hosting support, inheriting fragility and a tendency to degenerate. Furthermore, data legibility is

January 27, 2010

Defective by Design

Sign the petition: iPad DRM is iBad for our freedoms

Today, Apple launched a computer that will never belong to its owner. Apple will use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to gain total veto power over the applications you use and the media you can view.

We've launched a petition calling out Apple's new product for what it is: a frightening step backward for computing and for media distribution. Can you read it, sign it, and share with friends?

Sign the petition

Apple will be getting a ton of press for the launch today, press coverage that will likely ignore the fundamental social problems introduced by its DRM scheme. Help us spread this petition wherever folks are talking about the iPad.

Defective by Design's John Sullivan is on the ground at the Apple event with a group of protesters, letting the public and journalists know about the "Restriction Zone" Apple is constructing around their products. We posted images from the event and will be adding more news throughout the day, check the DbD Live Blog at live.defectivebydesign.org and help us circulate these images.


by holmesworcester

January 26, 2010

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

Jack’s Back! In the Movies at Last!

Peter Linebaugh

Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged, was recently challenged by film-makers Anja Kirschner and David Panos over his ‘romanticised' account of the development of class consciousness in the first phase of finance ca

read more

by mute

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

January 24, 2010

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

January 23, 2010

Notas del Sur

Proponen reforma formalista (sic) al escudo nacional


Circula por las tuberías mensajeras esta ingeniosa propuesta para enfrentar el avanze reconciliador consigo mismo del clero mexicano

Escudo Reformado

Escudo Reformado Revisitado

Posted in Poder y Costumbre Tagged: calderon, clero, condón, economía, escudo, gobierno, Mexico, PAN

by notasdelsur

Shammash

Caleb Larsen >> A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter

Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself. If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.

by shammash

January 22, 2010

Defective by Design

Support DbD at Apple's Jan. 27 "Come see our latest restriction" event in SF

Update 2010-01-25: We will be meeting outside the Theater at 8:30am (Wednesday 27th), and will go until at least 10:30am. Stay tuned to http://identi.ca/dbd for updates and coordination.

This coming Wednesday, January 27th, Apple has invited members of the media to San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater to "Come see our latest creation."

There has been much speculation about what Apple will be announcing, with most of it revolving around a possible tablet PC -- basically an oversized iPhone. But no matter the form factor, it's all but certain given the direction Apple has been going that any new product will be DRM-infected and restricted by proprietary software.

Share this story! — Digg or reddit

The company who once announced to the world that they opposed DRM on music has been pushing DRM in every other area of their business. Apple's iPhone goes out of its way to apply DRM on every piece of software on the device, saying it is illegal for users to install software that comes from anywhere other than the official Application Store.

Can you imagine a world where this same restriction is applied to your laptop or tablet PC? That could very well be Apple's announcement on Wednesday -- their latest restriction.

As in the past, they didn't invite us to the event, but we thought we would go anyway, and bring some friends. We'll be there to warn the public and the media outside the event about Apple's support for DRM and proprietary software.

Come help create the counter story in the media -- take photos, talk to the press, and have fun with a little bit of theater to show that Apple is not the force for creative expression they claim to be.

We got through to Steve Jobs before on music DRM, and convinced iTunes to drop it. We know we can have success here. But we need to repeat that effort and show that DRM on Apple computers means that people who are actually interested in creativity and freedom will go elsewhere.

Press coverage of Apple events usually falls all over itself to praise the style and sleekness of their devices. It's vital that we be there to unmask the new product for what it undoubtedly will be -- another seamless case and pretty screen hiding a new set of restrictions and threats to the public's digital freedom.

We'll post the precise time and meeting location for our group here next week -- since Apple's event starts at 10am, attendees will be showing up at 9am, and we will want to be ready and outside the Theater by then to hand out flyers and talk to people.

I'll be there representing the FSF and coordinating the action. Please join us, and bring friends. Let us know you're coming at info@defectivebydesign.org.

We'll meet at 8:30am outside the Theater.

Share this story! — Digg or reddit

John Sullivan
DRM Elimination Crew
FSF Operations Manager

read more

by JohnSullivan

Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism

Migrant 2 Migrant radio

The Time of the Oranges in Rosarno

Volevano braccia e sono arrivati uomini…

They wanted labourers and they got human beings …

The Time of the Oranges is a 30 min documentary by InsuTv,
made in Rosarno during the days of the pogrom and deportation of migrants,
on facts that happened a few weeks ago in south of Italy

Migrants revolted against racist violence by youth firing on them in streets
the bad conditions in which they are set to survive and work

Images and stories of the protagonists, the reasons of the rebellion against violence and apartheid, to which followed the revenge of mafia and government.

rosarno: il tempo delle arance from Nicola Angrisano on Vimeo.

Italian and English  language documentary, one of the first independent accounts from this tragic episode

by jo and sakkho (info@m2m.streamtime.org)

January 21, 2010

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

Working on a Decaying Dream

Pil and Galia Kollectiv

In this month's Mute Music Column, Pil and Galia Kollectiv look at Bruce Springsteen in the context of class disintegration and place him firmly in the decadent tradition of Balzac and Huysmans – Á Rebours to Run?

 

 

... his great work is a constant elegy on the irretrievable decay of good society; his sympathies are all with the class doomed to extinction...

 

read more

by mute

January 20, 2010

Notas del Sur

Pero… ¿qué estamos haciendo aquí?


Con el Jesús (o el carajo, a según) en la boca, me conmuevo por suspirar poco nada más que mucho.

Saramago dictum:

A mí me causa una especie de vértigo la pregunta qué estamos haciendo aquí y la respuesta solo puede ser una, en el fondo fondo no estamos haciendo nada. O mejor estamos haciendo todo lo que podemos para justificar nuestra propia existencia. Pero cuando esto se acabe, o porque la galaxia se hunda en el agujero negro que ya está, o que el sol se apague, habremos pasado por el tiempo inútilmente, todo desaparecerá y habremos sido en la vida del universo un suspiro, nada más que un suspiro.

Posted in Nada, Nadie, Piensan, Todo Tagged: pensar, Saramago, suspiro, vértigo

by notasdelsur

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

World War As Class War

James Heartfield

Looking through the mists of obligatory sentimentalism that enveloped the 70th aniversary of the outbreak of WWII, James Heartfield remembers the pitiless subordination of people to production on all sides of that crisis

 

read more

by mute

Shammash

Walking through FreeBSD IPv6 stack

Even if the first RFC that describes this protocol was released in 1995, IPv6 is pretty new and we just begin to see researches, books, papers that cover this protocol. Thus IPv6 was my project for this google Summer of Code. More precisely the project, proposed by FreeBSD, covers security of the IPv6 protocol, the initial job was to review the last years IPv6 stack vulnerabilities and saw if they were fixed in the KAME IPv6 stack used by FreeBSD but I extended the project by trying to find new vulnerabilities, new attacks and so on. This paper tries to give an overview of the work made.

by shammash

January 16, 2010

The Next Layer

Vision in Networks (1)

Whether it originates from statistical tabulation or remote sensors, whether it flows in real time or out of recombinant databases, whether it serves the needs of private individuals, globe-spanning corporations or government agencies, information visualization is the operative technology of the networked age, a language of vision for the control society. Infoviz proliferates on the screens of factory workstations, financial trading floors, military commands and surveillance watchspots, everywhere that decisive movements are subject to managerial scrutiny. The graphic flow chart is history because social and productive dynamics can no longer be planned in advance, they can no longer be fixed on paper; instead they are modulated in the present by those with access to the strategic technics of representation. The visualization technologies will continue developing prodigiously, at the pace of information networks. The question for theorists and cultural producers is who will appropriate them aesthetically, in which media, with what sensibility, for what ends.

At stake is the capacity to invent an aesthetic twist on a mode of representation that itself is already one or several degrees away from its primary objects. In other words, it's about the capacity to intervene on the existing visual forms that serve to organize the fit between the individual and society. This kind of aesthetic twist has a long and fascinating history in the 20th century. Each time there is a quixotic attempt to create a regulatory form, a perceptual touchstone, whereby the course of technopolitical development can be apprehended, measured, and inflected despite all the structural traps and contradictions of capitalist democracy. It’s the vision thing. Many such turning points in cultural vision can be identified, in different places, at different moments, and perhaps most crucially, at different scales. I'm going to recall just a few, focusing on major cases where cultural forms intersect with the operational representations of political economy, first during the period of industrial mass production, then in the current information age. In conclusion I will let the historical analysis erupt into debates about the present and its artistic figures. Urgent debates about the need to bring an aesthetic twist to the ruling techniques of vision in networks.

Architectural Vision
The difficulty but also the interest of this approach is the idea that the key cultural forms do not represent or even directly shape “objective” reality, but rather seek to inflect and modify the dominant modes of representation, aiming for a regulatory effect. This was a major issue for artists, filmmakers and architects at the outset of the 20th century, after the revolution of assembly-line production introduced by Ford in 1908 had revealed its tremendous destructive power in World War I, with continuing destabilization in a tumultuous interwar period marked by great power competition, labor unrest, the challenge of communist revolution and the recurrent disruptions of economic crisis. How could artistic forms achieve a new mediation between the individual and industrial society? And which existing trends would they have to overcome or transform in order to do so?

To begin, consider the way that the Bauhaus artist and theorist, Moholy-Nagy, discussed the relation between Cubism and filmic representation:

"The cubists hoped to develop a method to penetrate reality more thoroughly than had been possible with persepctive-illusion. They had an intimation of the coming forceful visual monopoly of the movies, and tried to escape from it by all means. The principle of the motion picture was a new method of rendering three-dimensional reality. The film was able to show any object in space from many different sides in quick succession. The cubists began to produce such a rendering by 'looking around the corner,' and looking from above, from every side - invalidating the monocular vision of the previous painters.... Besides the emotional upheaval caused by the startling extension of the traditional pictorial elements in a new vision, the distortions and strange transformations of the well-known subject matter produced, in addition, an attack on all pictorial fixations originating in the renaissance. The analysis of binocular vision in motion led the cubists to render objects with a multitude of details seen from every point of view. For this they employed a method of dissolving the whole shape into small geometric units, and saw to it that the multitude of elements did not destroy the original subject matter as a totality."

Taken from a late biographical sketch entitled “Abstract of an Artist” (1944), this quote encapsulates multiple aspects of Moholy's long trajectory, spanning three decades and traversing three major cities (Berlin, London, Chicago). From 1923 to 1928 Moholy had been a teacher of the foundation course at the Bauhaus, which was struggling to achieve a synthesis of artistic creation and machine technology in a cultural climate marked both by the lingering nostalgia of nineteenth-century craft ideals and by the actively regresive forces of Volkisch ideology. Today, a reductive view of the Bauhaus sees it only as a laboratory for the rationalist discipline of functional design, eliminating the artist’s subjectivity and culminating in the International Style of postwar corporate architecture. But the school’s founder, the architect Walter Gropius, in fact sought a more complex fusion of artistic and industrial methods. As he noted in 1922: “Young artists are beginning to face up to the phenomena of industry and the machine. They try to design what I would call the ‛useless’ machine (works of Picasso, Braque, Ozenfant, Jeanneret, the new Russian and Hungarian schools, Schlemmer, Muche, Klee, etc.).” What Gropius sought was not the elimination of what Kant had termed "the productive imagination" or "the free play of the faculties," but instead, its displacement onto a plane coterminous with design and engineering. The geometrical figure of the grid that dominates Bauhaus iconography is a mediator between art and industry: a technique for the rendering of pictorial form into reproducible products, but also the abstract basis for a free exploration of new physical and cultural environments.

Moholy-Nagy, a representative of the new Hungarian schools strongly influenced by Russian constructivism, was an all-terrain artist and theorist of the “useless machine,” translating the early 20th-century breakthroughs of pictorial form into photography, sculpture, film and experiments with projected light. At the close of the decade and the end of his own Bauhaus years he wrote his first pedagogical synthesis, Von Material zu Architektur (1929, translated in English as The New Vision). In this book he saw the Cubist vocabulary of simultaneous viewpoints, distortions, disolcations, superimpositions etc as a strategy to clear away the inherited hierarchies of visual representation and move toward the more dynamic forms of light projection and kinetic sculpture, which in his view were uniquely able to shape a sensibility for contemporary architecture. With them the visual artist could contribute decisively to the construction of a new urban environment, by opening the senses of the public to "the actual felt quality of spatial creation, the equilibrium of taut forces held in balance, the fluctuating interpenetration of space energies" -- i.e. the specific characteristics of modernist architecture, masked by the inherited forms of the traditional fine arts. From this perspective, the Light-Space Modulator or "Light Prop," constructed in 1930 after eight years of investigation and planning, appears as the culmination of Moholy’s artistic research. It was a complex metallic sculpture mounted on a rotating base and outfited with an array of electric bulbs so as to project a changing sequence of shadows and lights into the volume of an architectural space. As he writes:

"In this experiment I tried to synthesize simple elements by a constant superimposition of their movements. For this reason most of the moving shapes were made transparent, through the use of plastics, glass, wire-mesh, latticework and perforated metal sheets. ... When the 'light-prop' was set in motion for the first time in a small mechanics shop in 1930, I felt like the sorcerer's apprentice. The mobile was so startling in its coordinated motions and space articulations of light and shadow sequences that I almost believed in magic. I learned much from this mobile for my later painting, photography, and motion pictures, as well as for architecture and industrial design. The mobile was designed mainly to see transparencies in action, but I was surprised to discover that shadows thrown on transparent and perforated screens produced new visual effects, a kind of interpretation in fluid change."

Here as throughout Moholy’s Bauhaus teaching, the ultimate aim was a cinema of perceptual experience, freely embodied by the inhabitants of the Großstadt (metropolis). The Cubist vocabulary, mobilized and projected into space, would offer new means for the apprehension of architecture, and more importantly, a transformed environment in which the viewer could generate expressive correspondences between his or her own inner emotional states and the articulations of industrially produced architecture. Through this exploratory process, the view would be transformed into an active, creative agent of technological modernity, shedding inherited social hierarchies and psychic constraints along with outmoded beaux-arts symbolism. Far from the regimented mechanization that had become the terrifying face of nationalism during WWI, the double nature of the grid appears perfectly in the polished metal latticework of the rotating machine parts. Through the projective abstraction of art fused with industrial technology, the Bauhaus pioneers sought to establish and inhabit the machine process as the vector of a trans-identity.

The intimate coloristic figures of Klee, the rhythmic geometric murals of Kandinsky, the expressive space-exploring gestures of Schlemmer’s choreography, but also the cool, functionalist volumes, stackable furniture and smoothly rounded appliances of the experimental house designed for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar are all condensed into the mobile transformations of the “useless machine” that was the Light-Space Modulator, which appears in retrospect as a supremely theoretical device, anticipating decades of multimedia work in the postwar period. Yet as he recounts in “Abstract of an Artist,” Moholy was depressed not to find a public for the direct exercise of this new vision, and he was compelled to translate it into an experimental film, entitled Lichtspiel, Schwarz-Weiß-Grau (Light Display: Black-White-Gray). With its mobility safely contained in two dimensions, the film was a compromise, an attempt to met the viewer half-way. And though Moholy claims “a certain success” for his creation, it could be more important to investigate the sources of his frustration and depression. In reasity the German public of the time was fascinated not with the tonal abstractions of Schwarz-Weiß-Grau but with the cinema of Grauen (horror), shaped by the dark psychological intensities of Expressionism and the obsessive romantic theme of the Doppelgänger, which revealed a split personality at the basis of everyday social relations.

The mismatch between the affective drives of the viewing public and Moholy's artistic concept of architectural liberation through projected light seems to encapsulate the entire Bauhaus experience, as a failed attempt to transform the traditional visual arts into a regulatory aesthetics for a chaotically changing industrial society. Instead, it was Expressonist cinema that set the affective tone of urban experience. As Fritz Lang wrote in 1926: "Perhaps never before was there a time which sought new forms through which to express itself with such reckless determination. The fundamental upheavals in the fields of painting and sculpture, architecture and music speak eloquently enough for the fact that people today are looking for, and also discovering their own means of shaping their imagination." As the indisputable master of the crime film, Lang was able to develop the taste for irresolvable conspiracy and psychological turmoil that gave popular expression to the pervasive uncertainty of the time. Though far more “realistic” in its approach to representation, his work rejoins the Expressionism of Wegener, Wiene and Murnau through the themes of angst, violent excess, insanity and the perverse or arbitrary manipulation of unwitting victims.

Today, academic criticism disputes Siegfried Kracauer's claim that the German cinema of the 1920s offered a "premonition of Hitler." In effect, neither expressionist pathos nor the ghostly cinematic figures of the Doppelgänger can stand in for the deep regimentation and mechanization of society carried out by the Nazis under the aegis of a national myth. Nonetheless, it is clear that Lang himself came to see one of his most popular creations, the criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse, as exactly such a premonition. The corruption of top officials by a ring of underground criminals, the deliberate release of counterfeit notes to debase the currency, and finally the uncontrollable fire unleashed in a Berlin chemical plant as the culmination of a plot to destabilize the government, all make the last film of Lang's Weimar period, Das Testament des Doktor Mabuse (1932), into a powerful allegorical portrait of the collapse of the Weimar democracy and the entry into fascism after the Reichstag fire. The dream of a trans-identity able to surmount the shocks and contradictions of industrial modernity was over. For the artists and teachers of the Bauhaus, as for Lang himself, there was only one solution: flight to France, to England and ultimately to America.

To be continued....

***

[Friends, this is only the first part of a text on the attempts at developing a regulatory aesthetics for the mass-manufacturing age, and then for the information society. It is naive, highly narrative, almost popular and I might even keep it that way, unless the criticism is too intense and then I will have to go back and find a more valid language for this kind of investigation. On that score, criticism is obviously welcome! Next sections and notes should come soon....

Following sections will include:

--Vision in Motion (Moholy, Kepes, Fuller and Cybernetic America)
--Psychedelic Visions (Black Mountain College, Cage, La Monte Young and the Merry Pranksters)
--Mondovision (I guess this has somehow to be about satellite TV and globalization)
--Vision in Networks (Lev Manovich and Tactical Media via Cognitive Science and A Thousand Plateaus)

→ So hang on for the ride!]

by Brian Holmes

January 15, 2010

Siete Coyote

[Wordpress] Instalar reproductor de video incrustado

Esta es una breve guía de instalación del plugin Embedded Video de Stefan Heß, que permite reproducir archivos de video locales o remotos codificados en los populares formatos flv, mov, mpeg, wmv,etc. Además facilita la incrustación de videos publicados en servicios como YouTube, Google, DalyMotion, Vimeo, etc. 1) Descarga A la fecha, la versión actual es la [...]

by coyotita

The Next Layer

Post-Privacy or the Politics of Labour, Intelligence and Information

This text argues that the erosion of privacy is not a by-product of information and communication technologies, but a systemic property of informational capitalism. The foundational myths of the information society motivate and legitimise the building of control systems applying probabilistic techniques to control future risks. At the root of this configuration are antagonistic labour relationships which have determined the path of technological development since the Industrial Revolution. Those tendencies have reached a culmination in the recent neo-liberal crisis. The digital commons offers itself as an incomplete and tentative remedy.

Note: This text is a draft version of a contribution to OPEN, Cahier on art and the public domain, Nr. 19. This text benefitted substantially from written comments by Brian Holmes and John Barker.

A widely referenced definition of privacy is that "privacy is the claim of individuals, groups or institutions to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others"1 If we accept this definition and look at the current state of affairs, then it becomes quickly clear that today we have very little control over information about ourselves. The use of surveillance techniques such as CCTV, but more importantly, techniques summarised under the term data mining, is so widespread that it can be argued that we live in 'surveillance societies'2The dramatic rise of surveillance by means of data mining techniques, sometimes called 'dataveillance', gets 'explained' by the growing adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT). But that in fact does not explain anything. It is important to understand that the use of surveillance techniques for reasons of government and commerce is much older than ICT. The difference now is that the information society is a society which makes itself uniquely dependent on those technologies. For almost every social problem there is assumed to be a fix involving ICT3. This way of thinking is based on foundational myths of the information age which developed during the formative period of industrial capitalism. Surveillance and dataveillance are now carried out for a myriad of reasons and are in a way 'systemic' that goes far beyond invasion of privacy alone. Data mining is not merely a passive action of preventive accumulation of knowledge but the basis of a widespread technique called 'social sorting' whereby semi-automated decision making processes define access to services and goods. The gathering of personalised information therefore is not an unwelcome by-product of technology but a key element of the way modern mass societies under capitalist conditions work.

A whole range of social actors are fighting the erosion of privacy ranging from national privacy campaign groups such as Foebud. e.V. in Germany, quintessenz.at in Austria, the EFF and ACLU in the USA, to the European umbrella organisation EDRI. Some of those privacy campaign groups are organising the annual 'Big Brother Awards' (BBA), where the worst anti-privacy measures are 'honoured' with the BBA. In Great Britain, where the BBA was invented, the physical object awarded to the anti-privacy offender is a statue of a military boot stamping on a head. I argue that the efforts of privacy campaigners are, while well intentioned and in individual cases quite successful, bound to fail. The jackboot is not an image that people living in liberal democracies associate with their reality. The Big Brother analogy fails because the societies of the rich North are much more complex than Orwell could imagine in 1948, when he wrote his novel. In order to develop effective strategies against the erosion of basic rights such as privacy, we need to understand what privacy stood for and meant in the historic context when it emerged as an important social category, and we need to understand the current overall political, economic, technological and socio-cultural dynamics of our time4.

Privacy is considered to be an important category because of its constitutive function in the political-philosophical framework of liberalism. The going definition of liberal democracy is based on the separation between the public and the private sphere which expresses the idea of the protection of individual freedom and autonomy from unjust intrusions or regulations of the state5.Moreover, the intimate as the nucleus of the private sphere is considered indispensible for the formation of a public sphere6. This conception of liberalism goes back to the English Revolution in the 17th century and is formulated in the work of John Locke7. The decisive period for liberal democracies was the late 18th and early 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution started in England. Habermas emphasises the contribution of bourgeois citizen journalists to the development of the public sphere. "A political consciousness developed in the public sphere of civil society which, in opposition to absolute sovereignty, articulated the concept of and demand for general and abstract laws and which ultimately came to assert itself (i.e. public opinion) as the only legitimate source of this law", writes Habermas8. Habermas acknowlegdes that the political function of the public sphere could only gain valency during "that specific phase in the developmental history of civil society as a whole in which commodity exchange and social labour became largely emancipated from governmental directives"9. The market, Habermas concludes, was the social precondition for a 'developed' bourgeois public sphere, where civil society articulated itself 'with a state authority responding to its needs'10.

The work of E.P.Thompson11 shows that the 'reasoning public' was not confined to the bourgeoisie. In 1792, inspired by the French Revolution, the London Corresponding Society started to meet in taverns and private houses, bookshops and cafes to read revolutionary literature and demand political reforms such as universal suffrage. Other popular societies were set up in regional centres such as Sheffield and Norwich. These 'English Jacobins' placed high value on self-education, egalitarianism, rational criticism of religious and political institutions, a conscious republicanism and a strong internationalism12. They adopted forms of grassroots self-organisation such as rotating chairmanship and organisational transparency. The ruling class reacted through the suspension of habeas corpus in 1794, followed by the Seditious Meetings Act and the Combination Act of 1799. As a result, the 'plebeian radicals' failed to create stronger ties with those parts of the bourgeosie who, under different conditions (e.g. no war with France), may have sided with them. The revolutionaries were driven leftwards and underground13. Although politically defeated for the time being, their attitudes and practices pre-configured many aspects of the political consciousness and forms of organisation of later trade unionism and working class activism. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, working class activism re-emerged and working class writers and readers created a Radical reading public. "The working class ideology which matured in the (Eighteen)Thirties [...] put an exceptionally high value on the rights of the press, of speech, of meeting and of personal liberty," explains Thompson and dismisses "the notion to be found in some late 'Marxist' interpretation' hat these values have been inherited from 'bourgeois individualism"14.

The particular conditions set by the early defeat of the English working class had a defining influence on the path of technological development out of antagonistic class relationships. The process of industrialisation saw the creation of large factories whose design primarily served the aim of keeping workers under control. A specific version of technological progress under capitalist conditions was set in motion, which sought direct control of workers at the site of production and the displacement of skilled human labour through machines. "It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power that rules over him," wrote Karl Marx15. Despite many changes in the world since then, those basic tendencies have remained the same or have only intensified.

Armand Mattelart16 argues that an information-age-before-the-name started in France with Concordet's conception of statistics as a 'social physics' at the time of the French Revolution. Enlightenment philosophers made mathematical thinking the yardstick for 'judging the quality of citizens and the values of universalism'. From Concordet via the British tax system during the Napoleonic wars, this leads in the course of the 19th century to an 'insurance society'17 where the profitability of businesses and the success of governments depends on the ability to apply probabilistic 'technologies' for the prediction and management of the future. The philosopher and historian of science Simon Schaffer says that Great Britain in the early 19th century "simultaneously embodied the growing system of social surveillance and the emerging mechanisation of natural philosophies of mind"18 According to Schaffer, the discourse on the 'politics of intelligence' of the time located 'intelligence' in the machinery and its conception, while at the same time the unity of manual and mental labour was broken up.A key protagonist in this ideological battle was Charles Babbage, the designer of the 'difference engine' and the 'analytic engine'. Babbage was inspired by Gaspard de Prony's application of the principle of the division of labour to the task of converting old measurements into the new uniform decimal system. De Prony used badly educated human 'computers' who mechanically carried out the necessary calculations devised by trained mathematicians. Babbage's 'dream' was to implement such a division of labour in a machine. The displacement of mental labour by a machine was instantly conceived of as constructing 'intelligent machines' by the circle around Babbage that included Ada Lovelace. This 'vision' was developed alongside an analogy between the internal organisation of Babbage's mechanical calculators and the view of the mechanised factory as a Benthamite Panopticon.

Schaffer argues that Babbage was one among a number of 'factory tourists' - middle class intellectuals who travelled to the new factory districts in the north of England - who at the same time described the rise of the automated factory and helped to bring it into being. In their discourse, explains Schaffer, "the account of the factory as a transparent and rational system was designed to demolish traditional and customary networks of skill and artisan culture." Not only did the new factories make artisans unemployed, but also their contribution to the development of the new machine tools had to be talked down to legitimize the existing class structure. Babbage's greatest legacy, however, is probably the formulation of the Babbage principle, which, according to Schaffer, 'applied equally to the regulation of the factory and of the calculating engines':

“That the master manufacturer by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process.”

19

Schaffer proposes to understand the 'politics of intelligence' of the early 19th century as the forerunner of the project of artificial intelligence (AI) as developed by the pioneers of the computer age, Turing, Shannon, von Neumann and Wiener20. The 100 years between Babbage and the first electronic computer saw the development of 'modern management' and the 'control revolution'.

Harry Braverman sees 'Charles Babbage [...] as probably the most direct forerunner of F.W.Taylor'21, the inventor of scientific management. According to Braverman, Taylorism can be defined as a science of the management of others' work under capitalist conditions. The 'absolute necessity' to dictate to the worker the precise manner in which work is to be performed'22 made it necessary for management to gather together 'all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae ...'23. The three principles of scientific management, 'the dissociation of the labour process from the skills of the workers'24, 'the separation of conception from execution'25 the creation of a monopoly of knowledge about the work process and the use of this monopoly to control each step of the labour process and its mode of execution26, these principles, argues Braverman, helped bringing into being modern management27. The concept of control expressed in those principles requires that 'every activity in production have its several parallel activities in the management center28. Parallel to the flow of things a flow of paper comes into existence, created by the new professional class of managers who are busy with the gathering of data, the planning, organisation and supervision of production29.

The concept of control expressed in those principles requires that 'every activity in production have its several parallel activities in the management center. Parallel to the flow of things a flow of paper comes into existence, created by a whole new range of professions who are busy with the gathering of data, the planning, organisation and supervision of production30. Taylor started communicating his findings in the 1890s, but we can easily grasp how this parallel flow of paper has meanwhile been transformed into a flow of information. The flow of information is not just a parallel realm but the accumulated 'intelligence' of management encoded in software. There is, however, nothing 'natural' in this development. The path of technological development is not neutral but determined by conditions arising from antagonistic labour relationships and the 'need' for top management to keep the strings of control tightly in their hands31. The privileging of abstract knowledge over skilled labour, motivates and legitimises the creation of surveillance techniques as a triumph of managerial efficiency. The introduction of mass production and in particular the building of railways and the use of coal, argues Beniger32, first triggers a 'crisis of control' in the late 19th century, which then gets resolved through the combination of a number of innovations: the development of modern management, of modern accounting and the introduction of modern media such as the the telegraph, telephone, typewriter. Together, those enable the creation of modern buerocracy resulting in the particular form of organisation embodied in the corporation. There are strong co-dependencies in those techno-economic 'revolutions'. Railroads and the telegraph grow across the North American continent literally 'together'. The first companies to develop modern management techniques are themselves 'networks': railroads, telegraph and telephone networks33. The growing size of organisations needed to organise mass production makes enhanced information processing capabilities necessary. The internal organisation of the new corporations relies on the principles of scientific management, the division and subdivison of labour and the application of the Babbage principle on remuneration. All these developments together drive capitalism's hunger for data. While the invention of the computer during the second World War and for military reasons has been stressed, it would be more feasible to say that computers and telecommunications almost necessarily arrived as a consequence of the development of the modern corporation and the structures enabling and surrounding mass production based on techno-scientific rationalisation. When the American system of mass production, called Fordism, became the leading technological paradigm after WWII, it depended on certain macroeconomic stabilisation factors which resulted in the requirement not only to control the production process but also the markets34. For the corporations, predicting and influencing future levels of consumption became a key part of their activity.

In the early 20th century a number of techniques were developed which can be summarised as 'mass feedback': market research, the Gallup poll, opinion surveys, indices of retail sales and Nielsen's radio rating35. New sociological schools started empirical research on 'the effects of media on receivers and the constant evolution of knowlegde, behaviour, attitudes, emotions, opinions and actions'. This research was not purely academic but carried out in response to practical objectives36. The sponsors of those studies were concerned about the effects of government information campaigns, advertisement campaigns and army propaganda during wartime37. The measurement of audiences with a view on regulating their behaviour as consumers and voters became the basis of what Brian Holmes calls Neilsenism38, an interpretation of society as a cybernetic systems with informational flows as control loops. The notions of 'information', of 'feedback' and of 'systems' serve as an intermediate for a number of different disciplines in research which all depend on the gathering of quantitative 'information' about social properties of individuals and groups which effectively belong to the 'private sphere' of those people and groups.

As Brian Holmes argues, we should see both continuity and change in the transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism. By the end of the 1960s the Fordist 'regime of accumulation' enters a crisis resulting from the rigidities of the system, successful imitation by competitors and student and worker protest. From within the old techno-economic paradigm a new paradigm based on microprocessors, telecommunications and information unfolds (Perez 2002). Concomitant with those shifts and transformations is the emergence of an advanced version of systems theory and 2nd order cybernetics. More than ever 'integrated to larger control systems' rely on predictive algorithms', writes Brian Holmes. But this upgraded paradigm of cybernetic control is no longer based on narrow functionalist and behaviorist ideas of 'manipulation'. Instead, it relies on more indirect, more internalised, more capillary forms of power and self-control. In the new post-industrial societies, the 'major professional preoccupation is preemptively shaping the consciousness of the consumer'39. The restructuring of management hierarchies towards more decentralisation, increased autonomy of workers in production and more individualism and freedom in society in general all point towards a greater margin of autonomy.The rise of financial markets, however, strengthens the capacity for the centralisation of capital and power. And the perceived freedom of the 'prosumer' relies on sophisticated monitoring and control techniques which thanks to the perfectioning of ICT become smaller, less obtrusive and near ubiquituous.

In informational capitalism, the same technologies that appear to be fun and a vehicle for self-realisation at the front-end have an entirely different dimension at the back-end. At the front-end, the aesthetics of the commodity40 makes seductive promises about the use-value of goods through advertisement, shopping windows, beautifully arranged department stores. At the back-end workers are under fairly strict and direct forms of control. The relationship between front-end and back-end is technically expressed as the one between server and client. It is in the nature of capitalist societies to emphasise the user interface while hiding the back-end function. The basic analogy that binds together the virtual and the real world is that of a 'society of the interface'. The interface can be a web-page for e-commerce, or a web-platform with some social participatory function such as Facebook; but the 'interface' can also be a cashier's desk in a bank or a retail store.

On the web, for instance, the 'empowerment' of the user on Web 2.0 platforms has been emphasised by many authors. Those platforms, however, are based on centralised server infrastructures, entirely under the control of the company hosting those social interactions. Although digital networks have highly distributed network topologies in principle, the commercialisation of the net has led to increased centralisation so that, when it comes to accumulation of knowledge, the server back-end is the privileged site. techniques developed during the first decades of the 20th century summarised under 'mass feedback' have become greatly enhanced through digitalisation and the ready availability of user data in server log-files, data-bases, information exchanges. The automated analysis of data flows passing through networked information structures creates the new knowlegde of power. At the front-end this promises greater use-value, as Facebook automatically proposes new friends, or Amazon proposes new books (and sometimes with astonishing accuracy). At the server side ever more precise knowledge allows the targeting of individuals and their social networks based on data mining and 'profiling'. The user profiles and their networked relationships become commodities which can be traded between companies, and this is probably the biggest 'asset' of social network sites.

With the increased pervasiveness of ICTs ever more areas in society have a dual existence as both virtual and real, as an analog space with face-to-face communications and a connected electronic space which is registering real-time information about interactions at the front-end and relaying that to the back-end. As many of those businesses are globally acting corporations, tighter data protection in one country can be conveniently circumvented by locating the server back-end in a low regulation country. The intersection of virtual networked and real space enables a key component of globalisation, so called logistics or supply chain management (SCM) which is necessary for Just-in-time (JIT) production. JIT has increased the need for tight control of logistics stretching over continents and involving sophisticated technologies such as RFID tags, raw materials, manufactured parts, end products and retail outlets. Those many components are linked in such a way, that "it can be argued that JIT production is responsible for the change in capitalist production from a push economy to a pull economy"41 Mute magazine (no pagination).That means that when a customer takes a can of baked beans from a shelf at Tesco's the information is transmitted to all those along the supply chain and the process is put in motion where the item starts getting replaced. Brian Ashton argues that workers in the logistics industries are bearing the brunt of the competitive pressures in those global supply chains. Road transport turns into a 'sweatshop on wheels', 'seafarers work in horrendous conditions under the flags of convenience system and dockers are subjected to work speeds that are set by automated guided vehicles (AGV’s), automated stackers and semi automated cranes'. The 'emergence of the giant logistical companies has gone hand in hand with the withdrawal of the state from the transport infrastructure industries,' argues Ashton. After 9/11 the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code was upgraded which led to the building of visible and invisible security walls around ports. The police and security services have been given new rights to carry out checks on dock workers and to share information with foreign intelligence agencies. "If a worker refuses to undergo security clearance he or she will be sacked," writes Ashton. The new security regulations make it more difficult for representatives of transport unions to make inspections on the actual working conditions in ports. As Saskia Sassen has noted, recent decades have seen a 'reconstruction of the divide' between the public and the private sphere 'partly through the policies of deregulation, privatization and marketization'42 As ports and other communication and transportation infrastructures get privatised, the workers are subsumed under the private sphere of the giants of the logistics industry. The accumulation of intelligence at the back-end of this infrastructure serves both the controlling interest of the state and of very large corporations.

The developments in JIT support David Lyon's observation, that ICTs enable a convergence of surveillance methods across the public and private sector43. The use of automated software with certain 'decision making support functions' at the front-end or the 'user interface' of businesses - such as banks, retail stores, fast food outlets, delivery services and the now ubiquitous call centre - subjects both workers and consumers under the same surveillance logic. In jubilant stories in trade journals the benefits of new intrusive technologies called 'workforce management software' are being praised. For instance, a software called 'click2staff' is used to log the activities of bank tellers and combines those electronic logs with customer statistics. The process is presented, of course, as entirely neutral, offering benefits both to customers and branch directors44. What it means for the affected members of staff is that their hours are either cut down or expanded depending on automated recommendations made by the software according to 'overtime adherence' and 'salary adherence' policies45. One step further go products such as the Verint Witness Actionable Solutions, a package that promises to deliver 'actionable intelligence'. The product, promises Verint's website, can 'capture customer interactions in their entirety, selectively, on demand, or randomly', 'establish realistic forecasts and performance goals' and, of course, will 'schedule and deploy the right number of staff with the appropriate skills' whereby the latter is a neat summary of the Babbage principle. Verint offers also services to 'law enforcement, national security, intelligence, and government agencies'. The catalogue of surveillance horrors comprises 'communications interception', 'mobile location tracking', 'fusion and data management' and 'integrated video monitoring', not to forget 'tactical communications intelligence'. Verint's 'intelligence' product is very similar to the Siemens Intelligence Platform, which can 'integrate data from many sources' such as 'data retention systems', 'internet adresses merged with geographical information systems', 'traffic control points', 'credit card transactions' and 'DNA analysis database', to give just a few examples of a much longer list.

The Austrian investigative journalist Erich Möchel has worked for more than 15 years on those issues, both as a professional journalist and with NGOs such as quintessenz.at46. Möchel not only questions the legality of those systems, since a collation of data from such a diverse range of sources would actually be highly illegal in most European countries47, but also criticises that this branch of Siemens, now merged into Siemens Nokia, sells such packages and services to countries such as Iran and China48. All that is only possible because as a supplier of telecommunications equipment Siemens Nokia has a decisive competitive advantage: it participates actively in the development of 'legal interception standards' created by the European Telecom Standards Institute (ETSI). Since 1998 an international working group, with strong participation of the USA, called 'SEC - Lawful Interception (LI)' and populated by 'a wild mix of German, Dutch and British secret service personnel' and 'their equipment vendors' is working out how LI is to be made possible by building backdoors into equipment such as mobile phone switches and internet routers. That they are doing so is not a secret conspiracy but has been mandated by the European Data Retention Directive of 2006. This directive forces all suppliers of telecommunications service to keep the log-files of all communications of their users - not the actual content, but the 'who', 'when', 'where', type of meta-information. And this is the type of information that is actually much more useful for data mining than the 'noise' of content. As many commentators point out, one of the most corrosive effects of 'data retention' on civil rights is that it makes possible widespread intelligence gathering without concrete suspicions of illegal activity. The data retention directive also legitimises projects such as the EU funded research program under the maddening title of 'Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment', in short INDECT. Described as a platform for the 'registration and exchange of operational data' capable of 'automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence', INDECT aims at extending automated search engine capacities on 'mobile objects', images and video.

Conclusions

The automated detection of 'abnormal behaviour' now reaches deep into the data flows on the net, its major hubs and switches, but also into physical, spatial reality. ICTs delivering 'actionable intelligence' are key technologies of power, monopolising knowledge and control in the hands of management and the executive branch of government. Saskia Sassen argues that globalisation strengthens the power of the executive branches of the state while it weakens the power of the legislative and therefore of democratic control.As the state, in the process called privatisation or deregulation devolves tasks and repsonsibilities to private companies, this creates a move towards 'a privatized executive vis-avis the people and the other parts of government along with an erosion of citizens privacy'49. The other side of the coin of that process is that the executive grants itself ever more secrecy regarding the way it makes its decisions. Four consecutive public inquiries have so far not been able to get to the bottom of those decision making processes in Tony Blair's kitchen cabinet which led to the 'dodgy dossier' which justified invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. While in the wake of the 'war on terror' much attention has been given to measures of surveillance carried out in the name of security, much less attention has been given to that overall dynamic that undermines democracy and weakens the public sphere.

Data surveillance fosters positive discrimination of social groups based on automated decision making. It creates inhumane working conditions for large groups of people which resemble the early panoptical factory on a global scale; and it merges surveillance at the workplace with surveillance of consumers. David Lyon concludes that more is at stake than the 'tired notion of privacy'. He demands a 'politics of information', but when it comes to defining those 'politics of information' Lyon appeals primarily to authorities to take on a bigger responsibility for the data which they have under their control. The politics of information and intelligence cannot rely on a better corporate data protection ethics or improved management of data held by public institutions. An information politics needs to address the topologies of power that linger in the systemic split between front-end and back-end, between client-side and server-side, consumer and producer. It also needs to address inequalities created by the privatisation of the state and of public infrastructures which results in the shielding off from public view of huge industries where democratic rights of workers have been suspended indefinitely. The grey zone where private and governmental dataveillance techniques secretely and quietly converge needs to be put under public scrutiny.

If those tendencies toward ever greater surveillance and the resulting losses in freedom and autonomy are to be reverted, more needs to be done than to re-balance the privat-public divide. The only alternative which offers itself is the rise of the digital commons. The development of the digital commons is specific to the information society and has the potential to open a different path of economic and technological development. Having originated from the Free Software movement in the 1980s, the digital commons has meanwhile found widespread support in arts, culture, scientific publishing and research. It will neither bring 'cyber-communism' nor is it an alternative version of the public sphere. As a new layer in societies that is growing from inside the most advanced sectors of cognitive capitalism, the digital commons allows new alliances to be forged between digital commoners, knowledge workers, garage experimentalists, organic farmers, environmental activists and social movements. The digital commons is built on the recognition that freedom is not something that can be attained individually but through the collective forming of political subjectivities. It has the potential to positively transcend the private-public divide by offering new mechanisms for cooperation, publishing, free associations. But there are also serious obstacles. If the digital commons should become sustainable, information technology needs to become much more environmentally friendly; it also needs a massive decentralisation of the communication infrastructure. Recent trends such as 'cloud computing' go in the opposite direction. Moreover, the digital commons is, just like the natural commons of air, water, soil, subject to exploitation if not regulated by strong rules and social conventions. The foundational myths of the information age which are based on the separation of manual and mental labour and which ascribe 'intelligence' to machines rather than the people who build and program them need to be unveiled so that the impetus for technically mediated control of people ceases.

  1. 1. Westin 1967, 7, quoted in Roessler 2001, p. 22
  2. 2. David Lyon, 2007. "Surveillance, power, and everyday life" in Robin Mansell, Chris Anthi Avgerou, Danny Quah and Roger Silverstone (eds.) The Oxford Hand Book of Information and Communication Technologies, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pp 449-472, quoting from online version: http://www.surveillanceproject.org/files/oxford_handbook.pdf
  3. 3. Ibid., p. 14
  4. 4. An effort to understand this 'overall dynamics' is made through the collaborative research project Technopolitics developed jointly between Brian Holmes, the author and others on Thenextlayer.org
  5. 5. Beate Roessler, 2001. Der Wert des Privaten, Frankfurt/Main Suhrkamp. p. 27
  6. 6. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Studies in contemporary German social thought. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
  7. 7. For a critique see McPherson, C.B., 1962/2009. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism.Hobbes to Locke , Clarendon/OUP
  8. 8. Habermas 1989, op.cit., p. 54
  9. 9. Ibid., pp. 73-74
  10. 10. Ibid., p. 74
  11. 11. Thompson, E. P. 1975. The making of the English working class. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  12. 12. Ibid., pp. 199 - 201
  13. 13. Ibid., p. 200
  14. 14. Ibid., p. 805
  15. 15. Karl Marx, 1976. Capital Vol I, p. 482
  16. 16. Arman Mattelart, 2001, The Information Society, an Introduction, p. 5
  17. 17. Ian Hacking, 1990. The taming of chance, Cambridge University Press.
  18. 18. Simon Schaffer, 2007 BABBAGE’S INTELLIGENCE (no pagination)
  19. 19. Charles Babbage, 1832. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Quoted from Project Gutenberg:
  20. 20. Simon Schaffer, 2007. OK Computer. (no pagination)
  21. 21. Braverman, Harry. 1975. Labor and monopoly capital; the degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York: Monthly Review Press. p. 89
  22. 22. Ibid., p. 90
  23. 23. F.W. Taylor, The principles of scientific management, p. 111, quoted in Braverman 1975, p. 112
  24. 24. Braverman 1975, op.cit. p. 113
  25. 25. Ibid., p. 114
  26. 26. Ibid., p. 119
  27. 27. Ibid., p. 120
  28. 28. Ibid., p. 125
  29. 29. Ibid., p. 126
  30. 30. Ibid.
  31. 31. Ibid., p. 127
  32. 32. James R. Beniger, 1986. The Control Revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society. Harvard University Press
  33. 33. Chandler, Alfred D. 1977. The visible hand: the managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.
  34. 34. Piore, Michael J., and Charles F. Sabel. 1984. The second industrial divide: possibilities for prosperity. New York: Basic Books.
  35. 35. Beniger 1986, op.cit. p. 20
  36. 36. Armand and Michèle Mattelart. 1998. Theories of communication: a short introduction. London: Sage Publications. p. 28
  37. 37. Ibid.
  38. 38. Brian Holmes, 2007. FutureMap or: How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance.
  39. 39. Holmes, op.cit.
  40. 40. Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. 1986. Critique of commodity aesthetics: appearance, sexuality, and advertising in capitalist society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  41. 41. Brian Ashton, 2006. Logistics - Factory without walls.
  42. 42. Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, authority, rights: from medieval to global assemblages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 184-185
  43. 43. Lyon 2007, op.cit.
  44. 44. Banktech.com, 08.07.2002 Banks start to embrace workforce technology
  45. 45. cf. Bank of America Sucks, Jan 10 2009
  46. 46. Many of the examples in this section are based on Moechel's reserach, published on the website of quintessenz.at
  47. 47. Futurezone 03.04.2008 Das Siemens-Monster und die Legalitaet
  48. 48. Futurezone, 07.04.2008, Datenjagd auf Dissidenten
  49. 49. Sassen 2006, op.cit., p. 184

by Armin Medosch

/tmp/lab

Un livre sur HADOPI avec les contributions du /tmp/lab

In Libro Veritas a publié un livre “La bataille Hadopi” incluant des textes de préstigieux contributeurs comme Jacques Attali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Alain Lipietz, Jean-Pierre Brard, Martine Billard, Patrick Bloche, Richard M. Stallman, ou même Francis Lalanne, mais aussi avec les contribution du /tmp/lab.

Tous les bénéfices de la vente de ce livre iront financer la campagne de La Quadrature du Net contre HADOPI et pour la liberté sur le Net. Pour ceux qui ne peuvent pas contribuer à cet effort, ce livre de 350 pages est disponible en version PDF.

Le texte intégral est disponible ci-dessous…

- – -

HADOPI ou l’antinomie d’Internet

1/ La loi HADOPI dans la société contemporaine

HADOPI2 met en place un arsenal juridique et technique pour lutter contre le téléchargement qui supposément , à ce que l’on prétend, crée un manque à gagner chez les artistes.

En réalité, HADOPI2 est conforme à l’évolution de la législation française qui tend à suivre de près la législation américaine, établissant un parallèle avec les lois sur le copyright numérique américain, et applique le même modèle que la justice américaine : faire un exemple judiciaire.

C’est en cela que la loi avait été qualifiée de pédagogique. Un exemple judiciaire, dans le dogme légal anglo-saxon, permet de diffuser et d’installer par un sentiment de peur la volonté de respecter une loi. Ici, il serait de bon tonbon de faire un exemple judiciaire à partir d’avec un « grand méchant », c’est-à-dire un gros téléchargeur, privant qui priverait beaucoup bien desd’ artistes de juteuses rentrées pécuniaires. L’exemple judiciaire permet de faire oublier les réels grands gagnants de cette histoire (les majors de la musique et du film) en polarisant l’opinion sur un principeune distinction morale de principe moral entre le bien et le mal.

« C’est mal de voler, DONC c’est mal de télécharger », et l’on ne questionne plus la pertinence du lien entre vol et téléchargement. Un exemple judiciaire marquant permet aussi d’évacuer la question du modèle de développement économique des marchés. Les produits ont tendance à être « commodifiés », c’est-à-dire à voir leur prix baisser et leur diffusion augmenter grâce à des produits d’appel, une conversion du produit d’appel au produit payant et une adoption plus grandeque leur prix baisse et que leur diffusion augmente grâce à des produits d’appel, puis que le produit d’appel est converti en produit payant avant d’aboutir à une adoption plus importante. Cela revient à avoir un produit plus largement diffusé et utilisé, ce qui serait à peu près le modèle de la musique sur Internet, en considérant que les titres téléchargés gratuitement sont des produits d’appel. Si l’on fait des exemples judiciaires poignantspropose une punition exemplaire, plus personne ne se demandera si l’internaute téléchargeur aurait consommé cette musique si elle n’avait pas été gratuite. C’est de la conversion « hard ».

Le réel problème est qu’une industrie devrait beaucoup évoluerchanger grandement pour suivre l’évolution de la société apportée engendrée par Internet. Les presseurs de galettes (CD, DVD) devraient se transformer pour passer de la distribution matérielle à la distribution immatérielle bien moins onéreuse. On arriverait ainsi à unUn plus grand marché mais à des marges plus faibles car desen raison de coûts plus faibles, et donc à des prix plus raisonnables. Or, de tout temps, les constructeurs de carrioles et de moteurs à vapeur n’ont jamais pas vu d’un bon œil les débuts de l’automobile à essence. Quelle est alors la responsabilité d’un pouvoir politique qui favorise le statu quo sur une industrie en pleine mutation et incite à en rester au moteur à vapeur ?

La loi HADOPI semble déjà, au d’un point de vue conceptuel, être une mauvaise idée. Regardons comment elle est de plusVoyons comme elle peut être également une mauvaise idée d’un point de vue judiciaire, économique et technologique.

2/ HADOPI dans la pratique

Dans la réalité, on ne peut pas bloquer une idée dont pour laquelle le temps est venu d’exister. La seule chose qu’on peut faire, c’est rester soi-même en arrière, et éventuellement d’imposer ce retard aux personnes sur lesquelles on a un ascendantde l’influence.

HADOPI, avec la surveillance d’Internet, les méthodes de détection technique des téléchargements et les poursuites judiciaires, doit ici imposer cette décision politique au plus grand nombre. Étudions donc la réalité et l’impact de ces mesures.

Dans les faits, les exemples judiciaires ne seront pas aussi glorieux que le pouvoir politique le souhaite. La loi veut « taper » sur les gros téléchargeurs.

Hors Or ces gros téléchargeurs ont déjà migré vers des réseaux de téléchargements sécurisés (réseaux encryptés, tunnels sécurisés…). La notion même de traçage par l’adresse IP ne s’applique plus dans ces réseaux. La loi va donc rater sa cible, et l’exemple judiciaire perdre de sa valeur.

Les personnes traduites en justice pour téléchargement seront les utilisateurs technologiquement retardés ayant utilisé des méthodes non sécurisées de téléchargement. Ainsi, la loi HADOPI fera des exemples ayant peu d’impact car ne rentrant pas dans la ciblecorrespondant pas au type du « grand méchant téléchargeur », à moins que des méthodes moins légales et en dehors des mécanismes prévus par HADOPI soient utilisées pour trouver ces « gros téléchargeurs ». Quel programme….

Ces exemples judiciaires feront quand même peur aux utilisateurs moyens… jusqu’à ce que le nouveau système soit connu du grand public.

Deuxième erreur :, comme le téléchargement est surtout le fait de populations jeunes et technologiquement agiles, il est probable que les exemples vont « rééduquer » des populations déjà peu technophiles et n’avoir n’auront que peu d’impact sur les populations jeunes qui sont les cibles marketing des majors du disque et du film. Le résultat sera plutôt de banaliser le fait de vivre dans l’illégalité, et donc de créer un sentiment de liberté associé au fait de ne pas respecter la loi. Est-ce bien la direction que le politique est censé donner à la loi ?

3/ Le coût d’HADOPI

En plus du manque à gagner lié à l’absence de création de modèle économique respectant Internet, les internautes et leurs pratiques, HADOPI2 met en place un autre coût beaucoup plus direct sur le lié au ? financement de la lutte contre le téléchargement.

Le système HADOPI de surveillance et de contrôle a déjà un coût annoncé important : 6.7 millions d’euros qui devient vite 30 millions d’euros quand il est évalué par d’autres que le gouvernement. Les coûts imaginés par les lobbies pro-HADOPI et le gouvernement se fondent sur un environnement stable.

Internet est en mutation constante, notamment en développantgrâce au développement des outils, des technologies et des protocoles qui doivent permettre encore plus d’échange, encore plus rapidement, et contre au-delà de toute barrière, un peu comme un système vivant. En fait, Internet est réellement un système vivant constitué composé des gens personnes qui créent le code, c’est-à-direet donc les logiciels qui le font fonctionner. De véritables « générations » d’Internet existent, mais leur succession est invisible et indolore car le maître mot sur Internet est la compatibilité des systèmes. Les ingénieurs appellent cela « compatibilité ascendante » et « interopérabilité ».

Plus l’État va essayeressaiera d’espionner et de bloquer Internet, plus Internet va évoluerévoluera (mutera, si l’on garde la métaphore du vivant) pour continuer à fonctionner de manière plus sécurisée contre ce nouvel intrus. C’est la nature d’un réseau qui reproduit les caractéristiques de l’organisme vivant qui l’a créé : l’humain.

L’impact financier est simple : c’est une course à l’échalote. Plus le système de surveillance va être développé, plus les utilisateurs d’Internet auront intérêt à utiliser les nouveaux outils et protocoles qui lui permettront d’être sécurisé contre cet intrus. Et plus il sera nécessaire d’investir plus d’argent public pour « casser » ces protections et cette sécurité afin de surveiller à nouveaux les internautes.

On voit donc ici que non seulement la surveillance et la sécurité sont incompatibles : la surveillance est un espionnage, donc une faille de sécurité.

Mais de pluEn outres, les coûts annoncés ne peuvent sont pas être réalistes car ils ne prennent pas en compte l’évolution d’Internet. Si le gouvernement souhaite qu’HADOPI soit un tant soit peu « efficace », le contribuable français devra débourser beaucoup plus qu’on ne le lui a annoncé.

Il est même possible que, ’avecallourdie par ces surcoûts, HADOPI ne soit jamais « efficace » (si l’on conçoit l’efficacité dans selon les termes du gouvernement, c’est-à-dire d’après la capacité à détecter les téléchargeurs).

4/ La technique : HADOPI est-elle réaliste ?

La compétition technique entre espionnage (surveillance) et protection est perdue d’avance car, grâce à l’effort de millions d’ingénieurs, la sécurité progresse (heureusement). La question étant est seulement de savoir combien d’internautes seront « attrapés » à cause d’une version ancienne (et donc non sécurisée) de leur outil de téléchargement. Un peu comme ces utilisateurs qui ne mettent pas à jour leur antivirus et se retrouvent infectés (par un virus ou un « malware »).

L’identification et l’utilisation des adresses IP comme méthode de preuve est valable quand l’adresse IP est immanquablement associée à un utilisateur. Aujourd’hui déjà, une adresse IP n’est plus attribuée à un ordinateur ou un utilisateur, mais à un groupe d’utilisateurs, et ceux-ci peuvent varier pour la même adresse IP. La loi HADOPI se dédouane de ce problème en laissant la responsabilité de l’adresse IP au propriétaire de la ligne ADSL, et donc de la sécurité de son réseau.

Une question évidente serait : « Qui arrive réellement à sécuriser son réseau ? » Mais elle ne semble pas importante pour le gouvernement. Les entreprises et l’administration sont incapables d’obtenir une sécurité permanente de leur réseau bien que ceux-ci disposent de services informatiques. Comment alors demander à Mme Michu Tout-le-Monde de maintenir cette sécurité tout au long de son utilisation d’Internet, alors que les instances supérieures n’y parviennent pas elles-mêmes ?

Pire, HADOPI fait un amalgame entre sécurité et partage : on peut être totalement sécurisé et pourtant partager son adresse IP. La loi porte bien sur une action illégale, n’est-ce pas ? ? Or partager son adresse IP ou relayer du contenu n’est pas illégal par nature et constitue même la base de certains protocoles utilisés par tout Internet, y compris par l’administration française. L’empêcher reviendra donc à imposer un autre retard technologique à la France en freinant l’adoption de protocoles qui constitueront l’Internet de demain.

Si l’on associe chaque internaute à un fournisseur d’accès à Internet suite à l’utilisation de ces logiciels et protocoles (rhétorique communément diffusée), est-ce que ceux-ci deviennent-ils responsables des actions de leurs « utilisateurs » ? Si oui, alors pourquoi ne pas déconnecter tout simplement Orange ou Neuf Télécom quand trop d’abus (la riposte graduée recommande le chiffre de la punition après trois abus) auront été signalés ? Quelle farce !.

Toutes ces histoires de traçage des adresses IP étaient peut-être encore valables quand seul IPv4, le « vieil » Internet, existait avec sa quantité restreinte d’adresses IP. Nous sommes déjà à l’heure de la nouvelle génération d’Internet, IPv6, où chaque équipement pourra avoir des dizaines ou des milliers d’adresses IP. L’évolution naturelle du média va donc dans la direction d’une multiplication incroyable du nombre d’adresses IP, oùu chaque individu dispose de centaines de milliers d’adresses possibles, qui, en outre, ne pourront de plus pas être rattachées à un utilisateur, car elles seront établies de nature manière transitoire et à la seule discrétion des équipements utilisés.

Avec IPv6, on arrive atteint leau chiffre de plusieurs milliards d’adresses par personne sur Terre. Les nouveaux réseaux de téléchargement sécurisés utilisent déjà IPv6, comme tout bon protocole d’Internet tourné vers l’avenir. Oh mon Dieu ! Personne n’a donc prévenu le gouvernement d’une telle évolution technologique… qui date de 1998 ?

L’évolution technologique qui rend HADOPI caduque a déjà eu lieu. Les réseaux Peer to Peer utilisent des systèmes de caches, des relais et des systèmes d’encryption qui sécurisent les échanges, et les rendent impénétrables au système de surveillance décidé par le pouvoir politique.

Les sites de téléchargement utilisent SSL/TLS qui encryptent les échanges et rendent impossible l’identification des téléchargeurs. Ces sites de téléchargement sont utilisés pour l’échange de documents trop gros pour passer par l’e-mail et sont couramment utilisés par les entreprises.

Des réseaux privés virtuels, outils de sécurité par excellence, empêchent l’identification de l’adresse IP source.

Une question intéressante se situe dans la légalité même des outils de surveillance des téléchargements. Pour être efficaces, les outils de traçage et de surveillance d’HADOPI devront être de plus en plus actifs, se connectant sur les machines mêmes des internautes pour « demander » ou « tester » la véracité d’un supposé téléchargement. Une telle connexion n’est pas « normale », mais et constitue une connexion « hostile ». Hors Or une telle connexion, qui n’a pas pour but de contribuer au bon déroulement du protocole, peut tomber sous le coup d’une loi condamnant le piratage informatique, la loi Godfrain, qui condamne sanctionne même la seule tentative d’accès. Cette question reste en suspens et pourrait s’appliquer aux tentatives d’accès des organismes privés qui cherchent les téléchargements illégaux. Cela pourrait notamment avoir un impact lorsque l’on sait qu’aucun échange informatique n’est anodin car il « agit » sur l’ordinateur distant. Que se passera-t-il quand l’outil HADOPI aura des effets non prévus sur les ordinateurs « visités » ou « vérifiés » ? Est-ce que les internautes se retourneront contre l’HADOPI ? Il est à souhaiter que l’État ait continué à traîner des pieds pour implémenter les class actions (pourtant dans le programme politique du président Sarkozy) car ce même État pourrait se retrouver sous le coup d’une vaste poursuite judiciaire (30 millions d’internautes français, tout de même…).

Il devient clair que l’internaute, dans sa recherche naturelle d’une sécurité et d’une fiabilité encore plus grandes (mise à jour du système d’exploitation, de l’antivirus, utilisation de la cryptographie pour la sécurisation des échanges), se retrouvecherche à se protéger… d’HADOPI, c’est-à-dire des pouvoirs publics. Cela ne manque pas d’ironie.

De plus, la criminalisation des réseaux de téléchargement (réseaux Peer to Peer, P2P ou « Pair à Pair ») oublie que ces outils sont neutres, comme le téléphone est neutre, même quand un quelqu’un l’utilise pour faire une alerte à la bombe. Les réseaux Pair à Pair sont utilisés pour tout un tas d’applications qui sont les fondements mêmes d’Internet.

5/ L’évolution de société

HADOPI impose des modes de fonctionnement qui vont à l’encontre des fondements d’Internet. Internet est basé fondé sur la décentralisation, la liberté de communication et la sécurité des échanges. Si HADOPI avait été imaginé et déployée au début d’Internet, Internet n’existerait pas et vous aurieznous aurions à la sa place une sorte de Minitel évolué. On ne peut pas vouloir le beurre et l’argent du beurre : soit la France devra mettre en place un « Internet à la chinoise », complètement contrôlé, surveillé, filtré et censuré ; soit la loi HADOPI sera un système bancal, coûteux et inefficace. Le gouvernement semble se diriger vers la voie du contrôle avec la future loi LOPPSI.

Nous arrivons à un problème d’ordre plus général qui définit la société dans laquelle nous voulons vivre et que nous souhaitons laisser à nos enfants.

Les hommes politiques ne sont pas nécessairement mal intentionnés dans leurs choix (on peut parfois légitimement se poser la question), mais parfois très désinformés. Comme un citoyen peut voter contre son propre intérêt quand il est mal informé, un homme politique peut être mal informé grâce à l’action de lobbieys.

Les hommes politiques ayant voté pour HADOPI ne se sont certainement pas rendu compte de l’effet retors d’HADOPI sur l’économie française. Quand le pouvoir politique assoit impose plus de contrôle sur Internet, une partie de la fluidité du domaine et des forces vives de la société est incitée à partir vers un autre pays, plus clément et démontrant faisant preuve d’une meilleure compréhension de ce domaine en développement. Ainsi, il est probable qu’HADOPI compromettra à court terme l’expérimentation de nouveaux modèles de distribution de la musique, classifiés dès lors comme « illégaux ». Mais, de plus, le terrain ainsi défini par ces nouvelles lois n’incitera certainement pas le futur « Youtube » ou le nouveau « Deezer » à se développer en France : les entrepreneurs n’aiment pas développer quelque chose dans un climat légal incertain, la difficulté technique et commerciale étant déjà suffisante pour ne pas se mettre d’autres risques sur le dosprendre de risques supplémentaires.

En termes de contexte d’utilisation, HADOPI loupe manque complètement le coche du changement économique majeur décrit par Alvin et Heidi Toffler dans leurs livres visionnaires. Nous sommes en train de passer d’une économie matérielle basée fondée sur la rareté à une économie immatérielle fondéebasée sur la profusion. En imposant des modèles anciens qui favorisent une industrie en place, HADOPI influence oriente toute notre compréhension tout entière de ces nouveaux modèles vers une position réactionnaire et conservatrice. Ces réflexes ne caractérisent pas les esprits qui demain trouveront les nouveaux mécanismes de cette nouvelle économie.

Pire, ils induisent la pensée que « tout se passe comme avant » chez les artistes (ou les entrepreneurs) qui ne sont du coup pas du tout incités à trouver de nouveaux modèles économiques plus favorables à leur épanouissement.

6/ Les artistes

Car, oui, au final, cette loi était censée favoriser les artistes. Mais qu’en est-il finalement en définitive ? La loi HADOPI ne change rien aux problèmes fondamentaux du modèle français qui bloque les petits artistes et favorise les gros. :

La SACEM interdit toujours à ses artistes de diffuser s’ils le souhaitent certains de leurs morceaux librement sur Internet. Elle interdit même à un artiste de s’associer pour un projet artistique à un autre artiste qui ne serait pas inscrit à la SACEM. Des sommes colossales sont toujours amassées par la SACEM au titre nom des petits artistes, sans que ces sommes soient redistribuées justement à ces petits artistes : ce sont les fameux « indistribuables ». L’industrie de la distribution, des presseurs de galettes, des majors, est toujours celle qui accumule la majeure partie des retours financiers des productions artistiques, au moment où les coûts de distribution sont devenus quasi nuls.

Utilisant la peur des petits artistes compressés accablés par des conditions économiques toujours plus difficiles et par des modèles de rétribution inégaux ainsi que par la voix des gros artistes bénéficiant des largesses de ce système hérité du passé, les lobbieys de la musique ont instrumentalisé la position de certains artistes et éclipsé les positions divergentes de nombre d’artistes qui soulignent l’inadaptation l’inadéquation de la loi HADOPI.

Une note d’espoir réside dans l’action positive et progressiste d’artistes tels que Francis Lalane ou de citoyens tels comme les membres de La Quadrature dDu Net qui font reconnaître HADOPI pour ce qu’elle est : un monstre inefficace préservant les intérêts d’une minorité qui mine l’évolution de notre société vers un modèle plus juste.

Des solutions alternatives sont en train de se mettre en place, telles les SARD, les licences Dual (libres et commerciales) pour le contenu, les licences d’exception ou le Mécénat Global.

La communauté internationale verra donc quelle solution à cette crise des modèles économiques et culturels sera trouvée par la France.

D’ores et déjà, une grande partie de la communauté internationale a du mal à comprendre pourquoi un gouvernement essaie de faire passer au forceps une loi techniquement coûteuse et inefficace qui ne fournit pas de nouveau modèle économique à un problème actuel, important et douloureux ; qui ne donne pas de solution culturelle satisfaisante et qui sanctionne les fans qui justement font vivre les artistes. Est-ce que l’exception culturelle française sera au xxie siècle d’avoir loupé manqué le coche du numérique ?

by admin

January 13, 2010

/tmp/lab

Jeudi 14 Janvier au /tmp/lab : Hackito Ergo Sum, Net, Projections, Wikileaks, …

Ce jeudi soir au /tmp/lab on se fera un petit point sur Hackito Ergo Sum, conference qui aura lieu du 8 au 10 Avril pour semble t’il ouvrir la saison des HSF qui comportera pas mal d’épisodes (Rennes, Toulouse, Contorsions Technologiques @ LSL,  Alpes de haute provence avec Estive Numerique version HSF camp/nature *YAY!*, Istanbul etc…).

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010
Cette conférence sera plus orientée technique que les HSF précédents, avec par exemple Estive Numérique qui sera plus orientée Autonomie Connectée / Art / BioEco / Wireless …

On a un début de CFP que l’on doit envoyer pour le 15, et déja des speakers internationaux qui montrent leur envie de venir. (d’ou necessité de trouver du funding pour cela).

On va discuter de l’orga (vous pouvez demander a participer), des speakers potentiels a inviter (CFP pour tous), des eventuels sponsors, des lieux, …

NET
Sinon on aura aussi une petite discussion sur la refonte du reseau du tmplab.

PROJECTIONS
Et une projections des talks du 26C3 pendant la nuit.

ISLANDE 2010
Wikileaks et l’Islande? Le reve deviendrait réalité?
On en parle ce jeudi apres la projection de la conférence Wikileaks.

by admin

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

Hung, Drawn and ‘Quartered’?

Owen Hatherley

Two recently published books – Anna Minton’s Ground Control and This is Not a Gateway’s Critical Cities – take stock of the accumulated effects of New Labour’s ‘urban renaissance’. In his double review, Owen Hatherley sees the tired politics of micro-resistance go head-to-head with some much needed materialist geography

 

read more

by mute

January 11, 2010

Notas del Sur

Oaxaca: Los centavos del capataz


via el semanario mexicano Proceso nos enteramos de las riquezas acumuladas de la familia del gobernador del Estado de Oaxaca:

(…) la familia del gobernador de Oaxaca se dedica a acumular riqueza: posee terrenos, departamentos, gasolineras, compañías de representación industrial y clínicas de diagnóstico que aparecen a nombre de la esposa de Ruiz, María de Lourdes Salinas; de su mamá, Juventina Ortiz Vizario; de su tía Adelina Ortiz Vizario, de su hermano Edgar Cutberto Ruiz Ortiz y de los hermanos de su consorte, Adolfo y Alma Salinas Ortiz.

Entre esas propiedades destacan un departamento en el fraccionamiento Fuentes del Pedregal y otro en la Colonia del Valle, así como empresas en que la esposa de Ruiz Ortiz figura como la principal inversionista: Inmobiliaria Gieshuba, Inmobiliaria Giechachi (con un capital inicial de 10 millones de pesos cada una), Videos Médicos Científicos (iniciada con 2 millones) y Sedna Hospital (con un millón de pesos)

Posted in Oaxaca, Poder y Costumbre Tagged: peculado, PRI, uro

by notasdelsur

January 10, 2010

Merc @ Free Software Magazine

Book Review: Geeks Bearing Gifts

The book Geeks Bearing Gifts, by Ted Nelson is a collage of computing history book. Not only does it directly cover computers, it also covers the origins of ideas that we see in computers. While short, it does go over many interesting things.

Ted Nelson is a writer well-known for promoting his ideas for Project Xanadu, a hypertext system that was designed before the Web. Nelson, a self-proclaimed visionary, has been treated as a fringe figure in the computing industry even though his ideas are well-reasoned and well-thought out.

read more

by Tony Mobily

January 08, 2010

/tmp/lab

Breizh Entropy Congress – Call for Proposals

================================
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
April 15-17 2010, Rennes, France
Call for Proposals
================================

French version at bottom / Version française en bas

Passionate individuals and non-profit organizations from the region of Rennes,
Brittany, France invite you to participate in the first Breizh Entropy
Congress.
This inter-disciplinary event focuses on free (as in freedom) creations and
culture.

Through a meeting fostering open-mindedness, exchange of ideas and learning,
we hope to show solutions to technical, social and political problems, and
celebrate free, reclaimed and creative art and technology.

We happily welcome entropy, as a means to break artificial boundaries between
disciplines and find unexpected ways of doing things that promote
liberalization, sharing and reclaiming of technologies that traditionnally
belonged to the realm of corporations and well-funded academic labs.

NB: We are grateful for any kind of distribution of this CfP!

FORMATS
We gladly accept your proposals for the following formats. You can submit
a proposal alone or as a group. The list is not exhaustive.
- Lecture (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). One hour slot to
explain or present your project or idea.
- Panel discussion (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). One hour
of debate on the subject you propose.
- Lightning talk (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). 5 minute short talk to
outline your idea and give a web link to the audience.
- Workshop (Friday & Saturday 10:00-18:00). Hands-on practice in electronics,
mechanics, chemistry or software, led by yourself. Can be any length between 1
and 8 hours.
- Music concert (Thursday 18:00-24:00). If you play music licensed under
CC or any other free license, be most welcome. All styles accepted. Duration
30min – 2 hours.
- Artistic performances (Thursday 18:00-24:00). Duration 10min – 2 hours.
- Exhibition and artistic installations (during the complete event). Come and
bring your cool hardware and/or artistic projects.
- Posters (during the complete event). We will have space in the exhibition
room for you to stick posters about your projects, ideas or events.

SUGGESTED PROPOSALS
Free hardware
- Free your manufacturing: FabLabs & RepRap
- Free your vintage electronics: DIY vacuum tube fabs
- Free your silicon: DIY semiconductor fabs
- DIY thin film technology
- Drones (UAVs)
- Soldering workshops
- Electronics workshops

Free devices
- Free your applications: file format reverse engineering
- Free your drivers: device protocol reverse engineering
- Free your logic design: open FPGA cores and tools
- Free your PCBs: free “traditional” electronics designs
- Home automation

Free software
- Innovative & original free software tools
- Free games
- Reverse engineering tools & techniques
- Pentesting tools
- Graphics & live audio processing tools
- Free software economy

Free radio
- Free your waves: open source software-defined radios
- Free your communications: wireless mesh networks
- Amateur radio
- Open hardware mobile phones

Free science
- Any type of uncommon science experiment contributing to free knowledge
- Cyclotrons
- Gyrotrons
- Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging devices
- Free your space exploration: google LunarXPrize projects
- Free your energy generators: alternative & DIY power stations
- Artificial intelligence & neural networks
- Cognitive sciences
- Alternative scientific paper review/publication systems

Free society
- Ensuring access to public data
- Political debates on net neutrality
- Ethical & problematic free licensing schemes
- Visions of freedom
- Intellectual property
- Future of free software and legal threats
- Preserving the commons
- Access to knowledge
- Escaping control society
- Liquid democracy

Free individuals
- Privacy
- Accessibility
- Hijacking of established practices and purposes
- Darknets
- Hackerspaces
- TAZ
- Creative hijacking of public space

Free art
- Free artwork and/or artwork made with free software
- Artistic performances
- Artistic installations
- Any style of freely-licensed music
- Computer-assisted music
- Remix culture/Transformative works
- Free cinema
- Demoscene

…And anything that does not fit…

PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE
- Sébastien Bourdeauducq
Sébastien is a passionate science and technology generalist. He is a core
member of /tmp/lab, a Paris hackerspace, since 2008 and participated in
organizing the Hacker Space Festivals. His projects include Milkymist (an open
source hardware system-on-chip for live video art), Consumer-B-Gone (a mobile
phone ringtone that blocks shopping carts), reverse engineering Prism54 Wi-Fi
cards, and many others. Web: http://lekernel.net

- Nicolas Brodu
Nicolas Brodu is a teacher and researcher, currently at University of Rennes
1. He is interested by the use of machine learning to investigate complex
systems, as a way to deal with emergent phenomena. He develops free software,
both for scientific and general use, amongst which the Encours.org
teleconference server. See http://nicolas.brodu.numerimoire.net

- Meven Car

- Pierre Cosquer
Pierre is a student at the Computer Science Department at INSA de Rennes (an
engineering school). He is a member of Actux and one of the developers of The
ProPHET (http://codingteam.net/project/prophet).

- Valérie Dagrain
Valérie is a consultant specialised in the stakes of information society
and digital territories. She is involved full time on free software projects
and on the advocacy of Internet at the service of citizens. She invests
herself in usability, interoperability, digital inclusion, participative
democracy, promoting access to knowledge and ensuring access to public data.
She contributes in local development and the organization of Free Software
events and workshops since 2002.

- Nina Engelhardt
Nina is a student in computer science at ENS Cachan. She is a member of
/tmp/lab and helped with the organization of the Hacker Space Festival 2009.
Her interests are centered around the intersection of technology, culture and
society.

- Kevin Hinault
Developer in an ITC (Information Technology Consulting) company. Assistance on
the Debian mailing-lists. Member of the April non profit organization. Active
member of Breizhtux: mainly involved in the monthly Install Party and in
organizing the RBLL (Rencontres Bretonnes du Logiciel Libre). Blogger on
system-linux.eu. Occasional Mozilla contributor.

- John Lejeune
Dived into Free Software ten years ago and since then, does not give up. Now
involved in hackable-devices.com, he applies to hardware the principles of
Free Software and DIY culture. His other passion is the radio broadcasting
world, through associations like http://www.autres-mondes.org,
http://radio.rmll.info or http://canalb.fr.

- Yohann Lepage
Yohann is a master student in engineering in networks and telecommunications.
He has a passion for innovative and free technology.

- David Mentré
Founding member of Gulliver, lead developer of demexp software
(http://demexp.org) and co-developer of MapOSMatic (http://maposmatic.org).
Free Software activist for more than 15 years.

- Carole Thibaud
Young video maker from Nantes, member of some non-profit organizations like
Makiz’art (audiovisual creation and independant production), Mire
(experimental cinema), and the Crealab network (digital creation). Vj,
projectionist, editor, documentary director, she’s interested as much in real
time video as in the techniques of argentic cinema. www.carolethibaud.com

- Kereoz
Kereoz is a PhD student in computer security. He is passionate with arts,
science and their interaction. He is a core member of Actux (FOSS) and
MDesigner (FOSS & electronic arts).

- RZR
tags: programming, multimedia, 3d, audio, contrib, linux, debian,
packaging, ubuntu, embedded, telephony, openmoko, maemo, c, c++,
privacy, android, qt, java, low tech, autonomy, amiga, diy …
url: http://rzr.online.fr/contribs.htm

- Taz

SUBMISSION TEMPLATE
Send your submission before the deadline to cfp AT breizh-entropy.org.
Be sure to include information about the following points:
- Format of the submission
- Title of the submission
- Name of speaker(s)/presenter(s)/artist(s)
- Language (if applicable): French/English
- Summary of the submission
- Short bio
- Hardware/logistics requirements
- Contact e-mail and (if possible) mobile phone

PRACTICAL INFO
Venue:
Universite de Rennes, Campus Beaulieu
263 Avenue du Général Leclerc
35700 Rennes, France

Price: Free!
Opening: Thursday, April 15th 2010, 18:00
Closing: Saturday, April 17th 2010, 18:00

For concerts & artistic performances on stage:
Submission Deadline: February 2nd 2010, 23:59
Notification of Acceptance: February 4th 2010
Publication of Schedule: February 12th 2010

For all other formats:
Submission Deadline: March 10th 2010, 23:59
Notification of Acceptance: March 20th 2010
Publication of Schedule: March 25th 2010

Website: www.breizh-entropy.org
CfP Mail (for sending your proposals only): cfp AT breizh-entropy.org
Orga Contact (for all the rest): contact AT actux.fr

DISCLAIMERS
Breizh Entropy Congress is a zero-budget operation entirely run by volunteers
and we therefore cannot help anyone with their food, travel and accommodation
expenses. However, we might be able to arrange makeshift accommodation for
participants in need, contact us for more information.
Breizh Entropy Congress is not an academic conference.

================================
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
15-17 avril 2010, Rennes, France
Appel à propositions
================================

Des passionnés et des associations de la région de Rennes vous invitent à
participer au premier Breizh Entropy Congress. Cet évènement
inter-disciplinaire a pour thème la création et la culture libres.

A travers un colloque favorisant l’ouverture d’esprit, l’échange d’idées et
l’éducation, nous espérons ébaucher des solutions à des problèmes techniques,
sociaux et culturels et célébrer l’art et la technologie libres, réappropriés
et créatifs.

Nous apprécions l’entropie, en tant que moyen de briser les frontières
artificielles entre les disciplines et trouver des façons de faire inattendues
qui favorisent la libération, le partage et la réappropriation de technologies
qui appartiennent traditionellement au domaine d’entreprises et de
laboratoires académiques solidement financés.

NB: Nous sommes reconnaissants pour toute distribution de ce CfP!

FORMATS
Nous acceptons vos propositions dans les formats suivants. Vous pouvez
soumettre une proposition seul ou en tant que groupe. La liste n’est pas
exhaustive.
- Conférence (Vendredi & Samedi 10:00-18:00). Créneau d’une heure pour
présenter votre projet ou votre idée.
- Table ronde (Vendredi & Samedi 10:00-18:00). Une heure de débat sur le sujet
que vous proposez.
- Conférence éclair (Vendredi & Samedi 10:00-18:00). Créneau court de 5
minutes pour ébaucher votre idée et donner un lien web à l’audience.
- Atelier (Vendredi & Samedi 10:00-18:00). Travaux pratiques en électronique,
mécanique, chimie, logiciel, etc. que vous dirigerez. Durée entre 1h et 8h.
- Concert (Jeudi 18:00-24:00). Si vous faites de la musique sous licence
libre, soyez le bienvenu. Tous styles acceptés. Durée 30min – 2h.
- Performance artistique (Jeudi 18:00-24:00). Durée 10min – 2h.
- Exposition et installations artistiques (totalité de l’évènement). Venez et
apportez votre matériel et/ou vos projets artistiques.
- Posters (totalité de l’évènement). Des grilles d’affichage seront à votre
disposition dans la salle d’exposition pour afficher vos posters à propos de
vos projets, idées ou évènements.

SUGGESTIONS DE PROPOSITIONS
Matériel libre
- Libérez la fabrication: FabLabs & RepRap
- Libérez l’électronique “vintage”: fabrication de tubes à vide
- Libérez le silicium: fabrication DIY de semiconducteurs
- Technologies “couche mince” DIY
- Drones
- Ateliers soudure
- Ateliers électronique

Appareils libres
- Libérez les applications: ingénierie inverse de format de fichier
- Libérez les pilotes: ingénierie inverse de protocole de périphérique
- Libérez la conception logique: coeurs et outils FPGA ouverts
- Libérez les PCBs: designs électroniques “traditionnels”
- Quels modèles économiques pour les appareils libres?
- Domotique

Logiciel libre
- Logiciels libres innovants & originaux
- Jeux libres
- Intelligence artificielle et réseaux neuronaux
- Outils et techniques d’ingénierie inverse
- Outils de pentesting
- Outils graphiques et de traitement audio temps réel
- Economie et logiciel libre

Communications radio libres
- Libérez la radio: radio logicielle open source
- Libérez la communication: réseaux maillés sans fil
- Radioamateurisme
- Téléphonie mobile

Science libre
- Tout type d’expérience scientifique peu commune et contribuant à la
connaissance libre
- Cyclotrons
- Gyrotrons
- Appareils d’imagerie par résonance nucléaire
- Libérez l’exploration spatiale: projets Google LunarXPrize
- Libérez les sources d’énergie: générateurs alternatifs & DIY
- Sciences cognitives
- Systèmes de revue et de publication scientifiques alternatifs

Société libre
- Réappropriation des donnees publiques
- Licences éthiques et problématiques
- Débats politiques sur la neutralité d’internet
- Visions du libre
- Futur du logiciel libre et menaces légales
- Préservation du bien commun
- Société sous surveillance
- Démocratie liquide

Individus libres
- Vie privée
- Accessibilité
- Propriété intellectuelle
- Détournement des usages
- Darknets
- Hackerspaces
- TAZ
- Détournement créatif de l’espace public

Art libre
- Art libre et/ou réalisé avec des logiciels libres
- Performances artistiques
- Installations artistiques
- Tous styles de musique sous licence libre
- Musique assistée par ordinateur
- Culture remix
- Cinéma libre
- Demoscene

…Et tout ce qui n’a pas été listé…

COMITE DE PROGRAMMATION
- Sébastien Bourdeauducq
Sébastien est un passionné de sciences et de technologies en général. Il est
l’un des membres principaux du /tmp/lab, un hackerspace de Paris, depuis 2008
et a participé à l’organisation des Hacker Space Festival. Ses projets
incluent Milkymist (un “system-on-chip” open source pour l’art vidéo temps
réel), Consumer-B-Gone (une sonnerie de téléphone portable qui bloque les
caddies de supermarché), l’ingénierie inverse des cartes Wi-Fi Prism54, et
bien d’autres. Web: http://lekernel.net

- Nicolas Brodu
Nicolas Brodu est un enseignant et chercheur, actuellement à l’Université de
Rennes 1. Il s’intéresse à l’apprentissage automatique comme outil
d’investigation des systèmes complexes, afin d’en étudier les phénomènes
émergents. Il développe des logiciels libres, tant pour usage scientifique que
généraliste, parmi lesquels le système de téléconférence Encours.org. Cf son
site web http://nicolas.brodu.numerimoire.net

- Meven Car

- Pierre Cosquer
Pierre est actuellement étudiant au département Info de l’INSA de Rennes (une
école d’ingénieurs). Il est adhérent à Actux et l’un des développeurs du
logiciel The ProPHET (http://codingteam.net/project/prophet).

- Valérie Dagrain
Valérie Dagrain est conseillère en développement territorial et technologies
de l’information et communication (TIC) pour un internet citoyen. Elle
s’investit sur des thématiques relatives à l’accessibilité,
l’interopérabilité, l’inclusion numérique, les logiciels libres, la démocratie
participative et l’intelligence coopérative. Elle intervient dans le cadre
d’un développement local, durable par la prospective et étude de projets,
organisation d’événementiels et d’ateliers participatifs avec du Libre depuis
2002.

- Nina Engelhardt
Nina est étudiante en informatique à l’ENS Cachan. Elle est membre du /tmp/lab
et a aidé à l’organisation du Hacker Space Festival 2009. Ses intérêts sont
centrés autour de l’intersection de la technologie, de la culture et de la
société.

- Kevin Hinault
Développeur dans une SSII à Lannion. Aide sur les listes de diffusion Debian.
Participation à la vie de l’April. Membre actif de Breizhtux: essentiellement
lors des Install Party chaque mois et pour l’orga de la RBLL. Bloggeur à
mi-temps sur system-linux.eu. Contributeur Mozilla de temps en temps.

- John Lejeune
Découvre le Libre il y a une dizaine d’année et ne lâche pas depuis. À présent
impliqué dans hackable-devices.com, il cherche à développer, pour le hardware,
les principes du logiciel Libre. Son autre passion reste l’univers
radiophonique, au travers d’associations comme http://www.autres-mondes.org,
http://radio.rmll.info ou http://canalb.fr.

- Yohann Lepage
Yohann Lepage est apprenti ingénieur en réseaux & télécommunications.
C’est un passionné des technologies innovantes et libres.

- David Mentré
David est membre fondateur de Gulliver, développeur principal du logiciel
demexp (http://demexp.org) et co-développeur de MapOSMatic
(http://maposmatic.org). Activiste du Libre depuis plus de 15 ans.

- Carole Thibaud
Jeune vidéaste nantaise, membre des associations Makiz’art (création
audiovisuelle et production indépendante), Mire (cinéma expérimental) et du
réseau crealab (création numérique). Vj, projectionniste, monteuse,
réalisatrice documentaire, elle s’intéresse autant au traitement de l’image en
temps réel qu’aux techniques de cinéma argentique. www.carolethibaud.com

- Kereoz
Kereoz est doctorant en sécurité des systèmes d’information. Il est passioné
par l’art, la science et leur interaction. Il est un membre principal d’Actux
(FOSS) et MDesigner (FOSS & arts électroniques).

- RZR
tags: programming, multimedia, 3d, audio, contrib, linux, debian,
packaging, ubuntu, embedded, telephony, openmoko, maemo, c, c++,
privacy, android, qt, java, low tech, autonomy, amiga, diy …
url: http://rzr.online.fr/contribs.htm

- Taz

MODELE DE PROPOSITION
Envoyez votre proposition avant la date limite à cfp AT breizh-entropy.org.
Veuillez vous assurez d’inclure les points suivants:
- Format de la proposition
- Titre de la proposition
- Nom du (des) présentateur(s)/artiste(s)
- Langue (si pertinent): Français/Anglais
- Résumé de la proposition
- Courte biographie
- Besoins matériels/logistique
- E-mail de contact et (si possible) téléphone portable

INFORMATIONS PRATIQUES
Lieu:
Universite de Rennes, Campus Beaulieu
263 Avenue du Général Leclerc
35700 Rennes, France

Prix d’entrée: Gratuit!
Ouverture: Jeudi 15 avril 2010, 18:00
Fermeture: Samedi 17 avril 2010, 18:00

Pour les concerts et performances artistiques sur scène:
Date limite d’envoi: 2 février, 23:59
Notification d’acceptation: 4 février
Publication du programme: 12 février

Pour tous les autres formats:
Date limite d’envoi: 10 mars, 23:59
Notification d’acceptation: 20 mars
Publication du programme: 25 mars

Web: www.breizh-entropy.org
Mail CfP (pour envoyer vos propositions): cfp AT breizh-entropy.org
Contact orga (pour tout le reste): contact AT actux.fr

DISCLAIMERS
Breizh Entropy Congress est organisé sans budget par des volontaires et nous
ne pouvons donc aider personne avec leurs dépenses de nourriture, voyage et
hébergement. Cependant, nous pourrions être en mesure de trouver un
hébergement de fortune pour les participants en ayant besoin, contactez nous
si vous êtes dans ce cas.
Breizh Entropy Congress n’est pas une conférence académique.

by lekernel

January 07, 2010

Notas del Sur

Human trafficking in Houston


Via FSRN.org:

The modern-day slave trade – known as human trafficking – rivals weapons smuggling as the most lucrative illegal business after drug trafficking. One of the largest hubs for modern-day slavery in the United States is Houston, Texas. The southern city is home to a large seaport, a sprawling international airport, and is a major destination along Interstate 10 – identified by the Department of Justice as one of the main human trafficking routes in the United States.

Posted in Afuera, mundo Tagged: control, esclavos, FSRN, Houston, human trafficking, radio, slaves, trafico humano, usa

by notasdelsur

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

‘The Good Society’: A Pariah's-Eye View

Matthew Hyland

Late last year Mute was invited to contribute to an online debate on ‘The Good Society' and the future of European Social Democracy, in which participants were given 700 words to answer a long and windy tract by John Cruddas (UK Labour Compass group) and Andrea Nahles (German SPD).

read more

by mute

January 06, 2010

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

Clipped Wings?

Kenneth Cox

At Manchester Art Gallery's Angels of Anarchy exhibition, the academic processing of Surrealism clashed with some of the movement's defining disavowals. Kenneth Cox reports from the shipwreck of institutional PC

 

read more

by mute

January 04, 2010

Shammash

Microbial Art

Welcome to Microbial Art, a collection of unique artworks created using living bacteria, fungi, and protists

by shammash

January 02, 2010

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

How Not to be an Atheist

Ben Pritchett

Ben Pritchett dives into the alphabet soup of Brian Rotman's Becoming Beside Ourselves and Joanna Zylinska's Bioethics in the Age of New Media and picks apart the jumbled relations between ethics, new media and subjectivity

 

 

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by mute

The GNU project

All packages using GNU Automake to produ...

All packages using GNU Automake to produce distribution tarballs with make dist should update to the 1.11.1 or 1.10.3 release, or otherwise work around the problem.