Consider the various image-sharing databases online: Facebook’s photo stores, Instagram, Flickr. These contain trillions of photographs, petabytes of fragile digital data, growing daily, without limit; every day, millions of users worldwide upload the images they capture on their phones and cameras to the cloud, there to be stored, processed, enhanced, shared, tagged, commented on. AndContinue reading “Resisting Big Data: Interfering With ‘Collaboration,’ Nonconsensually”
Tag Archives: FBI
The Great Bob Mueller Seduction
Blood is in the water: the president of the United States appears to have committed ‘obstruction of justice.’ We know this because a ‘legal dream team’ headed by a special prosecutor, a former head of the FBI, is conducting a long, expensive, and detailed investigation of all the president’s men. The nefarious activities suspected toContinue reading “The Great Bob Mueller Seduction”
Leaking Furore Par For The Course For Nation That Over-Classifies
America over-classifies information. The designations ‘secret,’ ‘top secret,’ ‘for your eyes only,’ and many others like them are thrown around too freely; too many folders and dossiers receive the dreaded stenciled stamp that indicates their contents may not be perused by the wrong people. The consequences of this bingeing on classification are predictable: all aroundContinue reading “Leaking Furore Par For The Course For Nation That Over-Classifies”
Report On Brooklyn College Teach-In On ‘Web Surveillance And Security’
Yesterday, as part of ‘The Brooklyn College Teach-In & Workshop Series on Resistance to the Trump Agenda,’ I facilitated a teach-in on the topic of ‘web surveillance and security.’ During my session I made note of some of the technical and legal issues that are play in these domains, and how technology and law haveContinue reading “Report On Brooklyn College Teach-In On ‘Web Surveillance And Security’”
The Most Likely Fate Of The Trump Presidency
Should Americans be cheering as the Deep State brings down an American President? Expressed in abstract schema form, this question requires an answer considerably more nuanced than the simple ‘yes’ that results if asking ‘Should Americans be cheering as the Deep State brings down an American President as clownishly, offensively incompetent as Donald Trump? (Today’sContinue reading “The Most Likely Fate Of The Trump Presidency”
Self-Policing In Response To Pervasive Surveillance
On Thursday night, in the course of conversation with some of my Brooklyn College colleagues, I confessed to having internalized a peculiar sort of ‘chilling effect’ induced by a heightened sensitivity to our modern surveillance state. To wit, I said something along the lines of “I would love to travel to Iran and Pakistan, butContinue reading “Self-Policing In Response To Pervasive Surveillance”
Apple’s ‘Code Is Speech’ Argument, The DeCSS Case, And Free Software
In its ongoing battle with federal law enforcement agencies over its refusal to unlock the iPhone, Apple has mounted a ‘Code is Speech’ defense arguing that “the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling Apple to make code.” This has provoked some critical commentary, including an article by Neil Richards, which argues that Apple’s argumentContinue reading “Apple’s ‘Code Is Speech’ Argument, The DeCSS Case, And Free Software”
The FBI, Online Brokerages, And The Hiring Of ‘Potheads’
This almost-two-years-old story about the FBI’s claim that it could not find hackers–AKA ‘cybersecurity experts’–to hire because they smoke marijuana (and thus would fail their pre-employment drug tests) reminds me of a story from the days of the Internet gold rush, as demand for programmers, system administrators, and the like meant the instant hiring andContinue reading “The FBI, Online Brokerages, And The Hiring Of ‘Potheads’”
Oscar López Rivera and the Cabanillas
My essay on the Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera “Oscar López Rivera and the Cabanillas” is out in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Please read and share. Oscar’s case–and the miscarriage of justice at the heart of it–deserves to be known and talked about far more widely than it is now. I oweContinue reading “Oscar López Rivera and the Cabanillas”
Political Protests And Their Alleged Associated Criminality
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, New York, 2012, pp. 40-41), Michelle Alexander writes: The rhetoric of “law and order” was first mobilized in the late 1950s Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years following BrownContinue reading “Political Protests And Their Alleged Associated Criminality”
Samir Chopra 