Well, now that Christmas is “officially” over, and the mad rush has begun as retailers try to salvage what’s left of the season, the 2008 race will shift gears and go into overdrive. A lot of us (except for those of us who are political junkies, and even then…) have already overdosed on Presidential politics, especially people in tiny, homogenous states that start with “N” and “I.” Since I’m not officially registered with either party, I’ve been spared most mailings, but I’ve received my fair share of mass e-mails and the like from various candidates.

Now there’s a job I should have tried for: campaign blogger, or helping to send out political e-ads and e-mailings– definitely up my alley, and doesn’t require hearing.

So far I’ve been fairly unimpressed with the motley crew attempting to seize the nominations of their parties. I still haven’t settled on a candidate (more on that later), but what I’m seeing in the papers and online isn’t too impressive. Most of the news coverage thus far has been biographical accounts, occasional coverage of the debates and the like, and puff pieces designed by reporters, editors, and corporate bosses to manufacture fake conflicts and issues that have nothing to do with the suitability of a candidate for office. Things like $400 haircuts, whether a candidate is too “cold” or “angry” or “artificial” doesn’t tell me whether they can come in and do a halfway decent job of cleaning up the mess that Smirk will leave us with come January 20, 2009.

In this country, we supposedly have three branches of government. But I think in reality, we have five, and right now at this point in the political process, we really only have one, maybe one-and-a-half. Here’s the five, by my personal reckoning: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, the press, and the people. The executive, as is obvious to those of us with at least half a brain, was seized in a bloodless coup d’etat in November of 2000, and has been firmly in the control of soulless political operatives, neocons, and theocons since. The legislative branch was DOA about the same time, and has either been in control of the same folks who run the executive branch, or run by a bunch of empty suits who owe their professional lives to the military-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex, and the heads of global corporations, to the detriment of the people who actually live in this nation. The judiciary is in the process of being subverted, but there are still some independent judges out there. The press is, unfortunately, in bed with the gummint, and has been for some time. The people, for the most part, are brain-dead and unwilling to look beyond their wallets to realize that they’ve been hoodwinked by the preceding four aspects of the nation into a world that is completely different from the one they’d been taught about in school.

However, “we the people” possess quite a bit of power when we use it properly. The key to being able to do so is to have a press that acts independently of government, and assumes its dual role: first, to disseminate news, and second, to act as a watchdog of sorts against institutions in this country. So to my mind, one of the biggest problems that needs to be solved is reforming our media. To do so, first we have to understand the situation itself.

This blog post from last month illustrates perfectly what we’re up against. James Clay Fuller, a retired newsman, has pretty much nailed where the press has gone wrong. As he states, in part:

 …almost all large news peddlers now are in the hands of six large conglomerates and, to a very large extent, serve the purposes of their hugely rich and right wing owners rather than the needs of the public.

He goes on to outline exactly what’s wrong with the media, and I think he’s dead-on in his criticisms. He ends by stating that we as consumers have a responsibility to speak out and ensure our media does the job it’s supposed to.

 Part of that responsibility is to understand what’s gone wrong, and reading Fuller’s thoughts is a step in the right direction. The next move is to absorb that information, and then develop some kind of strategy to save the press from itself. It’ll be difficult, especially in the face of the recent FCC decision to loosen controls on media ownership in local markets, but it has to be done if there’s any chance of saving the nation from itself.

It’s too late for the 2008 election, unfortunately, but perhaps enough people will pay attention and we can start having a national dialogue and try to work on reforms for 2010; if that can be done, these changes could form a blueprint for 2012.

If we don’t reform the media though, I’m not sure if there’s any hope for reforms in government, politics, and the electoral system. Like it or not, information systems make a huge difference in how people learn about their government, about their society, and retain knowledge about how the world works. Whether you get your news from traditional media such as the radio, television, or newspapers, or from the web, the citizenry has the responsibility to help keep our media honest.

Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer

One of my favorite holidays is here: Christmas. While I know not all of you celebrate the holiday, it really is everywhere these days, and other religions have similar celebrations that highlight peace and goodwill in its many forms. Whether it’s reflection and forgiveness as emphasized during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, or the sense of a new start and the promise of possibilities, as Tet, New Year’s, and a host of other holidays and festivals promote, Christmas, in its fundamental roots, is about our spiritual self and our humanity.

Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of year

The commercialism is just a layer that was added not all that long ago. As this interesting piece by historian John Steele Gordon outlines, the origins of our modern-day Christmas emerged in New York City, in the days of Nieuw Amsterdam. The Dutch children who eagerly awaited Sinterklaes influenced their non-Dutch playmates, and aided by merchants from A.T. Stewart to Macy’s to Gimbel’s to today’s Wal-Mart, Christmas flourished from its religious roots as the Christ Mass to a largely secular holiday filled with red-nosed reindeer, magical snowmen, and children up way past their bedtime.

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere

One of the things I really miss at Christmastime is snow. Here in Southern California, we’re not that far from the mountains and the promise of snow, but it’s not the same as looking out the window or walking out the door and seeing and feeling that crisp, crunchy, fresh-fallen blanket of white. I’m the kind of person that likes snow from, say, about a week before Thanksgiving until January 2nd. Then I’m ready for something else. Roll on, Spring! Those of you in the Midwest, who have been suffering through storms lately, may share that sentiment. Others may be wondering if you’ll be getting any snow at all. But regardless of where you are, snow is part and parcel of that wholesome, old-time Christmas image, whether cinematic, fanciful, or realized.

Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share

For me, Christmas isn’t necessarily about gifts. At my age, that kind of stopped long ago. One of the reasons I love this time of year is the feeling of goodwill, the sentiment that we take this time to think of others, to spread cheer, goodwill, and yes, love. We don’t always do it, but I think the fact that the potential to do so is there says a lot. Regardless of all the problems we have in this world, love is a commonality that all spiritual belief systems share, because it really is at the heart of what being human is about: the capacity to feel, to laugh, to cry, to reach our internal and external potential, and most of all, to work on behalf of the whole– whether it is as small as the family, or as large as humankind.

Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there

As we get older, Christmas ostensibly becomes about the children in our lives, whether it’s our own children, nieces and nephews, cousins, grandchildren, or even just children in the neighborhood. But I think it’s also important to reach into ourselves and remember the children we once were, and that we still are. For all the adult responsibilities we have, for all the burdens we assume, underneath, we’re still young, even if it’s just at heart. Youth is not just about physical appearances and chronological age; it’s about attitude. It’s an attitude that appears during the holidays. This is part of the message that’s in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, especially when Scrooge revisits the celebration at Fezziwig’s. It’s not about money, it’s not about appearances; sometimes, it’s just something as simple as fellowship, good cheer, and the promise and potential of love. Sometimes, I wish though, that this carried throughout the year, and didn’t just end when the credit card bills arrive in the mail.

Christmas time is here
We’ll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year…

As the song says, “Oh, that we could always see/Such spirit through the year…” Christmas is ostensibly about family. But I think it’s also about the human family, and that was the message of the original Christmas: the birth of a savior, who had come to rejuvenate the world. While not everyone believes in the divinity of Christ, the message found in his gospel is one that we could all learn from. It really is, in its fundamental form, the Golden Rule– a precept that is found in some form in all spiritual beliefs worldwide.

To put it another way, we’re all Charlie Brown: we’re surrounded by the trappings of the modern world, of commercialism, but deep down, it’s about the stars, it’s about a simple tree, it’s about peace, happiness, and goodwill.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
 

If you’ve followed this blog for some time now, you know one of my biggest political concerns is civil liberties. Sure, I’m progressive, but where civil liberties are involved, I think the issues are (or should be!) nonpartisan. We all benefit from the freedoms granted in the Constitution, and the freedoms that have been expanded through judicial review (the judicial review, by the way, that the right-wing likes to demonize as “judicial activism”).

The renewal of the FISA bill passed in August is now going through the Senate, thanks to the bill that’s emerged from the Senate Intelligence Committee. A similar version from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which didn’t include retroactive immunity, did not permit blanket warrants, and restored oversight, was ignored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and is now making its way to the Senate floor. I’ve posted a few entries about this before, here and here. In this second entry, I talk about Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) potentially placing a hold on the bill and promising to filibuster it.

Since I last wrote about FISA, Dodd did place a hold on the bill. However, Reid ignored the hold (whereas he has honored holds by others), breaking decades-long Senate tradition and going against a member of his own party. Dodd is now prepared to filibuster the bill, and is reportedly flying back to D.C. from Iowa, and will be at the Capitol first thing in the morning. There are far better posts elsewhere about this, but I’d like to do my part and encourage you to contact your Senators and representatives to fight on behalf of Dodd, and to reject the version of the FISA bill now being advanced by Reid. For a better write-up of Reid’s behavior, check this post by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon; Greenwald is a constitutional lawyer whose writings about FISA and constitutional issues has been outstanding.

For those of you who are uncertain as to what FISA is all about, or what is permitted, here’s a couple links for you. The first is a section-by-section analysis of the bill under consideration by the ACLU, and the second is a blog post by looseheadprop at FireDogLake.

The central issue at question is not that folks like me don’t want the government to gather intelligence about anti-American activities, especially abroad; the key problem here is that the FISA court was established in the late 1970’s, in the wake of the Church Committee’s investigations into governmental abuses by agencies such as the FBI, who was spying on Americans, both notable and ordinary. Bush and his crowd deliberately violated FISA, admitted it publicly, and is now trying to retroactively fix it so that no one will be punished for breaking the law. Additionally, these illegal activities go against the Fourth Amendment, effectively gutting our Constitutional rights.

The Fourth Amendment was drafted and designed to protect Americans from violations against their privacy and activities without a warrant. At the time, the British entered homes without due cause, without warrants or any other valid documentation, and would overturn a house or business, either in search of evidence, or as a tactic grounded in fear. Following the American Revolution, the drafters of the Constitution decided to amend their original document through the Bill of Rights, and the Fourth Amendment directly addresses the fears of a people who had experienced an invasive, intrusive, abusive government.

Since then, of course, our society and communications network has changed dramatically, but the core principles remain the same. The original FISA court and legal framework was established to allow the government to protect the country, but with safeguards protecting its citizens in place. The battle we are now seeing is a brazen attempt by this administration to overturn and destroy these safeguards.

To those who say that I protest too much: it’s not that I have anything to hide; I don’t want my e-mail pre-screened, my postal mail opened, examined, and resealed, and my phone calls monitored without a warrant. I don’t want this happening because it is against the law. Our nation was founded on Constitutional principles, and to turn our back on these rights is to change America forever. Because once we give up or allow limitations on these rights, it becomes that much harder to regain them.

I am against permitting retroactive or potential immunity for the telecommunications companies for a number of reasons. First of all, these companies have a social and legal obligation to protect my privacy, and by allowing the government to use their networks to examine Americans’ communications, they have violated these obligations. Second, it’s possible that their cooperation with the government is necessary, but we as a country need to know that it is so. By granting immunity in any form, there will be no way for anyone to know how this started, why it happened, who it has affected, and most importantly, whether any abuses have occurred. If immunity is granted, it will tie the courts’ hands in determining what is legal, and what is not. For the record, a federal judge has already ruled against AT&T’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit against it for participating in the government’s surveillance program. As Judge Vaughn R. Walker stated,

no prior case dismissed… “involved ongoing, widespread violations of individual constitutional rights, as plaintiffs allege here….The very subject matter of this action is hardly a secret…Public disclosures by the government and AT&T indicate that AT&T is assisting the government to implement some kind of surveillance program.” [emphasis is mine]

It isn’t a secret. We all know the telecoms are involved. We know the government has a surveillance program in place. What we as a people deserve is the right to know that such participation and such programs are not abusing the inherent rights of the American people. But the bill that Reid is pushing will ensure we’ll never know that.

Thirdly, the claim right now is that this was all necessary because of 9/11. But there are disturbing trickles here and there from people who would know that this all began to happen well before 9/11. As this article in today’s New York Times states,

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

The government wasn’t just trying to gain access via Qwest either. AT&T was also co-opted:

Other N.S.A. initiatives have stirred concerns among phone company workers. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey challenging the agency’s wiretapping operations. It claims that in February 2001, just days before agency officials met with Qwest officials, the N.S.A. met with AT&T officials to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, N.J., to give the agency access to all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through it.

The accusations rely in large part on the assertions of a former engineer on the project. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.

“At some point,” he said, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”

The article then states that two co-workers rebutted this claim, but then goes on to quote the engineer’s attorney:

“What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.” [Emphasis is mine]

This bothers me. I’d like some answers. The only way to get these answers is to ensure the executives of these companies step forward to testify, which is something they won’t have to do if immunity is granted. It’s not the first instance of someone at AT&T stepping forward with concerns about government spying either, as this article in the San Francisco Chronicle relates. Mark Klein, a now-retired technician, had questions and reservations right from the start, when he allowed someone from the National Security Agency into an AT&T office in San Francisco:

A year or so later, [Klein] stumbled upon documents that, he said, nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said, show that the NSA gained access to huge amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

This means it’s not just landlines, it’s the internet as well, and a whole lot of other areas regarding communications. As the NYT article makes clear, a lot of the fuss is because everything is now digital. It’s also attracting attention because everyone wants to believe this is about the “war on terror.” I don’t think so; I suspect it’s a potential war on Americans. As Klein notes,

Contrary to the government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic… Klein said he decided to go public after President Bush defended the NSA’s surveillance program as limited to collecting phone calls between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the United States. Klein said the documents show that the scope was much broader.

Where will it stop? It isn’t just landlines, postal mail, or the internet either. This recent Washington Post article points out that now the feds are starting to focus on tracking cellphones, and there are concerns about how to do so.

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data… In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime… Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.

I’ve edited it a bit– the government ostensibly wants to do this so they can track “drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects.” In other words, people most of us would approve the government conduct surveillance on. But in the wake of the furor over FISA, I think it would be prudent if legal boundaries were clarified and protections put in place. We as a nation need to have the ability to be protected, but not at the cost of our freedoms. Right now, it’s all very nebulous, as this quote makes clear:

“Most people don’t realize it, but they’re carrying a tracking device in their pocket,” said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air.”

So you can see why I’m not really ready to support the corporate guardians of our communications, whether it be a local wireless company or a corporate telecommunications giant like AT&T. Immunity can always be granted later. Deals can always be made. But any lawyer worth his or her salt does not grant immunity or make deals of any kind before the facts are known. This is something most of us know, just from watching legal shows on TV. It’s also common sense; if you don’t know the details about something, how can you decide an appropriate response? How can you forgive and forget if you don’t know what it is you’re forgiving and forgetting? Is blind trust something we really want to be doing? Blind trust is something I might do at church, since faith and trust are a large part of religion. But you’ll excuse me if I don’t apply the same principles to the government and to politics.

I also don’t think blanket warrants should be permitted. This will open the door to abuse, because the government could just easily throw twenty names of innocent people in with one or two known and suspected criminals or “persons of interest,” as they like to say, and monitor the entire communications of all those under a blanket warrant. It really is an invitation to snoop, and a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment.

This is why I’ll be watching and waiting tomorrow, and hoping against hope that Dodd prevails in his filibuster. Because I have absolutely no interest in living in a state where the government spies on its own people without accountability.

Blogging is a form of communication I enjoy, and that is accessible regardless of the ability to hear. But there are other forms of communication as well; together, these methods shape our history. As a historian, there are different ways to access information, from oral histories to written documents to eyewitness accounts to secondary sources that analyze primary sources.

Until fairly recently, there were just a few straightforward ways to communicate in society: verbal dialogue (whether through speech or sign), and writing, which until the 19th century, was largely limited to literate people who had access (and the means to purchase) to parchment paper, slates, and other rudimentary means to convey one’s thoughts.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the explosion in technology, we’ve seen a proliferation in the various ways humans can interact with each other. I recently ran across this post that has a rather interesting table and analysis of language and how people use it.

The author’s argument, I think, centers around how humans no longer have to be in each other’s presence to converse, to discuss, to argue, to reach consensus, to unify, to advance as a species. Now we can use electronic communications, video, and other forms of global interchange.

What I found interesting is that instant messaging and blogging are roughly about the same age. But to me, they’re two distinct forms of expression:  IMs are often rapid one-liners, perhaps brief paragraphs, that often mimic spoken conversation. Blogs, on the other hand, are personal journals, editorials, online reporting, articles about food, art, theater, and other forms of culture.

Texting is older, by just a handful of years, yet I see texting as a means of talking that has supplanted other forms, and often seems to dominate over actual in-person exchanges. It lends itself to the moment, to the here and now. The author discusses this under the heading, “Immediacy.”

You might also say “latency”; how long does it take from a message to filter via language from your mind to mine? Face-to-face speech has excellent immediacy, as does a telephone conversation. The immediacy of texting is somewhat less, and a blog post doesn’t arrive until the reader gets around to looking.

Yet everywhere I look these days, half the population is glued to their phones, to their pagers, to their PDAs.  People aren’t talking to each other anymore, and if they do, it’s through artificial means. Additionally, personal conversations intrude more and more in public spaces, from grocery stores to sidewalks to parks and even to libraries.

Because many of these new technologies are based on electronic forms, the potential for messages to exist longer than that period of immediacy has expanded, I think. What does this mean in relation to history? To privacy? If we extend these two aspects, what does it mean in terms of civil liberties? Some of us are very casual about what we say, what we share, and who knows the information we have about ourselves and the people around us. Others are fiercely protective of their privacy, and some are almost manic about it. Some, like me, are advocates of privacy, but prioritize the level of privacy needed depending on what is being disseminated, why, and to whom. For example, I use a pseudonym on this forum. While I’m maintaining a semblance of privacy, I know it’s unrealistic to expect that my identity would be a closely guarded secret from everyone; the public act of blogging itself means it’s public.  So what guarantees should I have? What guarantees should I expect?

The author continues his discussion by extrapolating on a graph various factors, such as immediacy, audience, and lifespan. I found it interesting that while blogs don’t have the same immediacy as texting and face-to-face encounters, the expected lifespan is long. This makes sense, but it also adds to my sense of responsibility about what I type here!

In the middle of this post are a couple of questions I found thought-provoking. I’d like to share them with you, then open the floor to your comments (given the fact that I haven’t used the word “deaf” thus far, it’ll be interesting to see what interest this post garners, and what response I get, if any!).

I observe this, and questions occur to me. Have we invented all the communication modes we’re going to need, or will there be more? What needs are going un-addressed? And at the meta level: Does all this have a general higher-order structure that might help us think about these things?

Interesting, don’t you think? So here’s what I’d like to know. For my readers in general, “Have we invented all the communication modes we’re going to need, or will there be more? What needs are going un-addressed?”

Now, specifically for my deaf readers: How do you think the deaf community is being shaped by these changes? Are these transformations for better or worse? What can we do to influence how we use and are used by technological forms of communication? I’d also like to ask that final question as well: “What needs are going un-addressed?”