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:

Tonight my guest demands that I hand over my phone to explain #PRISM Listen now: 612live.com

— Rebecca Levingston (@reblev) June 11, 2013

Listen to the full interview:

Related:

• Rintel, S. (2013, June 11). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. The Conversation (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2011, November 4). Do privacy settings work in the age of online reputation management? The Conversation (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2011, November 3). Unthink rethinks online identity – and fronts up to Facebook and Google+. The Conversation (Online).

Donate:

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

The 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:

@seanrintel @conversationedu @efa_oz @charispalmer No #10, Sean? Surely w/ contractors involved it could also be used to spy on competitors

— Kate Doak (@katedoak) June 11, 2013

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:

• Rintel, S. (2013, June 12). Folsom PRISM Blues: Nine reasons you don’t have “nothing to hide”. Electronic Frontiers Australia (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2013, June 12). Folsom PRISM Blues: Nine reasons you don’t have “nothing to hide”. Citizens Not Suspects (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2013, June 12). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. The Satellite (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2013, June 12). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. Sunshine Coast Daily (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2013, June 13). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. PC & Tech Authority (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2013, June 13). Nine reasons you should care about NSA’s PRISM surveillance. Science World Report (Online).

Related:

• Listen to my 612ABC interview: Levingston, R. (2013, June 11). What do you know about PRISM? 612 ABC Brisbane.
• Rintel, S. (2011, November 4). Do privacy settings work in the age of online reputation management? The Conversation (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2011, November 3). Unthink rethinks online identity – and fronts up to Facebook and Google+. The Conversation (Online).

Donate:

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

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

Related:

• Rintel, S. (2013). Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling. Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3343-3352). DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2013.512 [Format: Local PDF of conference PDF version]
• Rintel, E. Sean. 2010. Conversational management of network trouble perturbations in personal videoconferencing. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction (OZCHI ’10) (pp. 304-311). doi:10.1145/1952222.1952288 [Format: Local PDF of proceedings version]
• Rintel, S. 2007. Maximizing environmental validity: remote recording of desktop videoconferencing. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Human-computer interaction: interaction design and usability (HCI’07) (pp. 911-920). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73105-4_100 [Format: Local PDF of proceedings version]
• Rintel, S. (2012, June 18). Airtime’s Facebook video service gambles on the kindness of strangers. The Conversation (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2011, July 12). Face to Facebook: Can video chat get over its hang-ups? The Conversation (Online).

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

Related:

• Rintel, S. (forthcoming – 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]
• Rintel, S. (2013). Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling. Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3343-3352). DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2013.512 [Format: Local PDF of conference PDF version]
• Rintel, E. Sean. 2010. Conversational management of network trouble perturbations in personal videoconferencing. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction (OZCHI ’10) (pp. 304-311). doi:10.1145/1952222.1952288 [Format: Local PDF of proceedings version]
• Rintel, S. 2007. Maximizing environmental validity: remote recording of desktop videoconferencing. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Human-computer interaction: interaction design and usability (HCI’07) (pp. 911-920). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73105-4_100 [Format: Local PDF of proceedings version]
• Rintel, S. (2012, June 18). Airtime’s Facebook video service gambles on the kindness of strangers. The Conversation (Online).
• Rintel, S. (2011, July 12). Face to Facebook: Can video chat get over its hang-ups? The Conversation (Online).