NSA PRISM surveillance and your rights

612abcbrisbane

I was interviewed by Rebecca Levingston on ABC 612 on the NSA PRISM surveillance program, building on the arguments I made in my PRISM article for The Conversation.

And this happened at around 16:12:

Listen to the full interview:

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Electronic Fronters Australia

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Nothing to hide and everything to lose: NSA PRISM surveillance

Share with friends and ciaThe Conversation published my listacle “Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance”, in which I look at the arguments against the pervasive and pernicious myth that we have “nothing to hide.” “Nothing to hide” is an absolutist gloss that puts the focus on the individual rather than on the real problem of a society-wide loss of data control at many levels. While I am certainly not the first to have explored the topic, and what I have written is done standing on the shoulders of giants such as Bruce Schneir, my nine reasons for why we must care, regardless of our innocent intentions, are detailed in the article:

  1. Presumption of guilt
  2. The loss of personal data control
  3. Transferring power to security organisations
  4. False positives
  5. Changing definitions of issues of concern
  6. Political corruption
  7. Personal abuse of power
  8. Honeypots
  9. Big data and the problem of patterns

And, as was pointed out on Twtter, there are certainly more reasons:

Read the full article at:

Rintel, S. (2013, June 11). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. The Conversation (Online).

Syndicated as:

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Electronic Fronters Australia

Want meaningful activism? Please donate to Electronic Frontiers Australia to help us continue to be your voice for digital freedom, access, and privacy.

Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource

Rintel, S. (2013). Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource. The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronic de Communication (EJC/REC) Special issue on Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges, 23 (1&2) [Format: Local PDF of pre-publication version].

Screen Shot of embedded Example 4

Screen Shot of embedded Example 4

Embedded video for examples:

The EJC version includes embedded video of three examples. Please email me for access to that version. Alternatively, URLs are provided in the pre-publication document above.

Abstract:

Video calling is now a realistic option for couples in distance relationships. This paper explores whether audio/video distortions block intimate relational talk. From a naturalistic two-month trial of couples trying video calling to maintain their distance relationships, it is found that couples can opportunistically use audio/video distortions as a relational resource rather than simply treating them as a blocking or outside of relational talk. First, technological mediation can be treated as relevant to disambiguating whether the repair involves simple content repetition or a more complex relational issue. Second, distortions can be treated as resources for relational parody and teasing. It is argued that the opportunistic use of distortions as a relational resource extends Hutchby’s (2001b) notion of technologized interaction, in which technology frames but does not determine social action. Rather than proposing yet another model of communication that includes more detail about noise as deviance that must be remedied, or taking an undifferentiated approach to distortion as “trouble,” the technologized interaction approach broadens our conceptions of online relationships as involving the use of technological features to a more holistic sense of technological mediation being part and parcel of maintaining online relationships

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Special Issue: Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges and Opportunities

The Electronic Journal of Communication

Correspondence Cinema by Villemard 1910 (from a postcard set "In the year 2000" | paleofuture.com)

Correspondence Cinema by Villemard 1910 (from a postcard set “In the year 2000″ | paleofuture.com)

My Special Issue on Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges was published today in The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronic de Communication (EJC/REC) 23 (1&2).

If your university does not subscribe to EJC/REC please email myself or article authors for article copies (and ask your library to subscribe!).

The issue features a keynote article by veteran media space researcher Professor Steven Harrison (Virginia Tech), a book review of the mixed French/English videoconferencing research book Décrire la conversation en ligne: Le face-à-face distanciel, and six research articles (including one of mine).

Table of Contents:

  • Editor’s Introduction “The 21st Century Videoconferencing Dilemma: What Does The “Next Best Thing to Being There” Mean?“ by Sean Rintel
  • Parallel Universes of Teleconferencing by Steve Harrison
  • My Life with Always-On Video by Carman Neustaedter
  • Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic Use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource by Sean Rintel
  • Like What You See? The Effect of Video-Mediated Gazing on Information Recall and Impression Formation by Chris Fullwood & Neil Morris
  • Courtroom Interaction as a Multimedia Event: The Work of Producing Relevant Videoconference Frames in French Pre-Trial Hearings by Christian Licoppe, Maud Verdier, & Laurence Dumoulin
  • Videoconferencing: A Technology with Promises and Challenges – Case Study with IVC in an Undergraduate Course by B. A. Olaniran
  • Videoconferencing for First Nations Community-Controlled Education, Health and Development by Susan O’Donnell, Lyle Johnson, Tina Kakepetum-Schultz, Kevin Burton, Tim Whiteduck, Raymond Mason, Brian Beaton, Rob McMahon, & Kerri Gibson
  • Review of Décrire la conversation en ligne: Le face-à-face distanciel, edited by Christine Develotte, Richard Kern, and Marie-Noëlle Lamy, Lyon: ENS Editions, 2011, 215 pp. by Juliana de Nooy

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GSummit 2013 Scavenger Hunt

One of the highlights of GSummit 2013 in San Francisco was the cityHUNT scavenger hunt on April 16. Teams were given a couple of pages of instructions, cameras, and two hours to run all over SF finding things, convincing strangers to help, and generally causing genial mayhem. Our team Satha Kotiya (Scavenging Tiger [Sri Lankan]) blitzed the event, earning 980 points, with awesome teamwork.

Team name
Team Satha Kotiya (Scavenging Tiger in Sri Lankan)
Taking candy from a baby
Dreaming
Theft
Breakdancing
Tweeting
Performing with a street performer
Riding a stranger’s bike
OG style with foreign currency
Serenading a stranger
Sports gear with a stranger
Pulling a boat out of the ground
Under water
The Sims
Crushed by water
Butterfly
Gabe lookalike and team
Using a stranger’s kitchen
Popping out from a heart
Statue clone
Blue eyes?
Captain Morgan with strangers
Zuck?!
Earthquake
Harlem Shuffle
Gamify with a stranger
All badges, all the time
Hidden talent
Jail
Drag
Mannequin clone
Aerial high five

Slacktivism versus Snarktivism

The Conversation published my article on slacktivism versus snarktivism, in which I illustrate some of the ways people resist so-called slacktivist or clicktivist campaigns that rely on ‘simply’ sharing or liking images.

Snarktivism | Source: Uploaded to Know Your Meme by amanda b.

Source: Uploaded to Know Your Meme by amanda b.

Debate over the value of online activism has risen again in the wake of the highly visible Human Rights Campaign marriage equality campaign, which urged Facebook users to replace their profile photographs with a red equal sign.

The very evolutionary forces that allow memes to propagate in support of a campaign–even a so-called slacktivist campaign–also afford resistance. Following Rod Cottingham’s cartoon title, I call this resistance “snarktivism”.

There are always dissenting opinions, and this is just a new way of presenting those opinions. The meme forms known as image macros are central to snarktivism as they provide templates for critique.

Read the full article:

Rintel, S. (2013, April 10). ‘Slacktivism’ vs ‘snarktivism’: how do you take your online activism? The Conversation (Online).

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Electronic Fronters Australia

Want meaningful activism? Please donate to Electronic Frontiers Australia to help us continue to be your voice for digital freedom, access, and privacy.

Making sense of big text: A visual-first approach for analysing text data using Leximancer and Discursis

International Journal of Social Research Methodology

Angus, D., Rintel, S. & Wiles, J. (2013). Making sense of big text: a visual-first approach for analysing text data using Leximancer and Discursis, International Journal of Social Research Methodology (Special Issue: Computational Social Science: Research Strategies, Design and Methods) 16 (3), 261-267, doi: 10.1080/13645579.2013.774186

Abstract:

This article reports on Leximancer and Discursis, two visual text analytic software tools developed at The University of Queensland. Both analyse spatial and temporal relationships in text data, but in complementary ways: Leximancer focuses on thematic analysis, while Discursis focuses on sequential analysis. Our report explains how they work, how to work with them and how visual concepts are relevant to all stages of their use in analytic decision-making.

discursis-example-01