View previous stories
	Technology and the rights of individuals by American Civil Liberties Union & agencies USA   Jay Stanley"s work is all about social justice. Mr Stanley is a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, and he was responsible, back in the early 2000s, for persuading the ACLU that science-fiction could be a useful tool for keeping ahead of the curve on rights and civil liberties.   Jay Stanley: In the wake of 9/11 when things were changing so quickly in the United States, and against a larger backdrop of rapidly-changing technology, including biological technologies especially, we decided that the ACLU needed to have a little bit more scientific expertise and I began preparing a report on technology liberties in the future that would attempt to serve what experts and others thought lay in store for us, in terms of technologies that would really have implications for our civil liberties.   And so I carried out a number of interviews with scientists who are experts in biological technologies, but also thinkers about the future and wrote up sort of a think-piece about projections for what directions technology could go. And I didn"t really sort of consciously look to science fiction, but I think that like anybody who sees modern Hollywood movies, and occasionally read science-books, a lot of science-fiction ideas were rattling around in my brain. And in combination with the advice the experts gave me, I sort of drew a picture of what we may be seeing down the road and what the civil liberties implications are.   Antony Funnell: Because when you think about it, I guess, a lot of science fiction, from, say 1984 to Gattaca they"re stories aren"t they, often about the rights of individuals and the violations of those particular rights.   Jay Stanley: Yes, I think that"s right, going back to the classic science fiction of the 1950s and before, all the way up to the most modern movies like Gattaca a lot of times it"s the story of an individual struggle against the larger civilisation, and technology plays a role in the balance of power between the individual and the civilisation. For example, in Minority Report, the hero has to try and solve his problems despite all the technologies that the authorities are using to try and come after him with, such as tracking devices, and robot spiders and the like, and of course that"s the heart of civil liberties as well, which is the balance of power between the individual and society.   And so the concern of my project and my work is how does technology affect that balance, does it increase the power, of big institutions, companies and government agencies, or does it create more freedom for individuals? And sometimes technologies have effects that nobody can control, but at other times, we can put controls on technology that steer its effects in certain directions, and that"s what we advocate for, to create a world where the technology and the social institutions that interact with it and create systems, increase human freedom and individual power and not curb individual power and increase the power of big institutions over individuals.   Antony Funnell: And over the past ten years or so, I mean how important has that science fiction element been for the ACLU in terms of the work that it does? In terms of being able to identify issues that they need to target in the future.   Jay Stanley: I think that it"s definitely an implicit part of the background of how we think about things, and one of the surprising things to me is always how quickly technology moves from science fiction to reality. You know, I have been at this job for just about ten years, and in that time, we"ve seen technologies emerge, such as body-scanners, biometrics and our radio frequency or RFID chips, contactless computer chips, really go from being sort of sexy media issues that really are very forward-looking and future-looking, and theoretical, to very real civil liberties issues, the real technologies that are really deployed and are really being used by the authorities. It"s just been amazing how quickly fiction turns to reality, and so we"re always looking to look down the road to figure out what"s going to happen next so we compare as best we can, and science fiction always is a help in doing that.   Antony Funnell: And just a final question, and you"ve touched on this previously, but that amazing speed that you talk about. I mean how difficult is it for an organisation dealing with civil liberties, to keep itself aware of everything that is going on, given the enormous rate of technological change?   Jay Stanley: It is very difficult. I mean typically, a new technology, we read about it as science-fiction or as speculation, and then somebody builds a prototype that doesn"t really work very well and maybe we"ll get a press call, from some enterprising reporter wants to talk about some sexy new idea that"s intriguing and interesting because it"s so new, and because it does have potentially frightening privacy implications, and then the next thing you know, some government agency is seriously considering employing it, and then the next thing you know is we"re in a fully-fledged battle to try and figure out how to protect privacy and liberty in the face of this new technology.   And it"s difficult to deal with because the technology is moving at the speed of light, but the law, our jurisprudence and the ability of our culture and society to kind of digest these new technologies, moves very slowly. In the United States it took our Supreme Court 40 years to extend our right to privacy to cover our phone calls. And so when you"re talking about email and internet chat, Facebook and video texting and all the rest, are courts are just very, very slow to extend their constitution protections the way they need to be extended. So that makes it very difficult.   * Jay Stanley is Senior Policy Analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union"s Speech, Privacy and Technology program. Antony Funnell is a journalist with radio national.
	Canada''s Hard Turn Right by Adbusters Collective   A new petro state has emerged in global affairs and its extreme political behavior has unsettled both Americans and Europeans alike.   For starters, the year-old regime has muzzled government scientists who are now accompanied by Soviet-like “minders” at public events.   It has branded environmentalists as “foreign radicals.”   It has abandoned its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce atmospheric pollution and effectively has no national plan to deal with climate change.   The state’s Auditor General has accused the government of lying to elected officials and concealing the real price tag for military aircraft: An astounding $25 billion.   More than 30,000 citizens have filed complaints with authorities accusing the ruling party of committing massive electoral fraud during the last election.   The same ruling party has gutted most of the country’s environmental legislation to quicken the approval times for pipelines and other oil and gas projects.   It also proposes to sell its supertankers of petroleum to three highly corrupt state-owned corporations ruled by the Communist Party of China. All comfortably deal with dictators and human rights violators.   Although this petro pirate may sound like Nigeria, Angola, Ecuador or Equatorial Guinea, think again. It’s Canada. That’s right: The northern mining giant that shares a border with the United States. It used to be a polite place – but the country’s gone rogue over oil.   Petrolized by bitumen exports and ruled by a Conservative Party that makes the Republican antics of George W. Bush look tame, Canada has become another dysfunctional petro state in full democratic free fall.   Even one of the nation’s most seasoned political analysts, Laurence Martin, writes that the nation’s oily leaders are breaking “new ground in the subverting of the democratic process.”   The resource behind this rueful transformation is bitumen, a costly junk crude that must be mined from the nation’s northern forests or steamed from deeper deposits. The unconventional hydrocarbon, which even Big Oil describes as ugly, comes with a much higher water, carbon and energy footprint than light oil.   Since the late 1990s a bitumen boom, driven by rising oil prices and give-it-away royalties, has created the world’s largest energy and engineering project in northern Alberta, a western province home to the Rocky Mountains, cowboys, and boreal forest. As a consequence, Canada now ranks as the world’s sixth largest oil producer. Oil lobbyists dominate the nation’s capital and bitumen now accounts for more than 30 percent of the nation’s exports. Not surprisingly, the nation’s embassies lobby against carbon taxes and low-carbon fuel standards abroad with Saudi-like enthusiasm.   Canada’s ruling Conservative party now vainly describes the nation as an “emerging energy superpower.” Its leader, Stephen Harper, a libertarian ideologue who brooks no criticism, is the son of an Imperial oil accountant from Calgary, Alberta – Canada’s Houston, Texas.   Harper, who makes policy announcements from foreign capitals, is also an evangelical fundamentalist Christian with a deep disdain for science, the media and environmentalism.   Although he refuses to publicly answer questions about his religious beliefs, his political actions tell an extreme story. In recent months he stunned the country by formally declaring war against environmental critics of rapid tar sands development. Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver, an investment banker and genuine one percenter, even dubbed opponents “foreign radicals” in an open public letter. At the same time the government reclassified Greenpeace, a civil organization established by Canadian journalists, as a “multi-issue extremist threat.”   To accelerate the approval of pipelines that would carry bitumen to the coastal province of British Columbia and onto supertankers destined for China, the federal government has rewritten every major piece of environmental legislation from the Navigable Waters Act to the Fisheries Act. It has also centralized key decision-making powers for major pipeline projects in the hands of Conservative ministers.   This broad policy change, buried in a recent documents, so shocked one columnist for the National Post, Canada’s leading right-wing newspaper, that he accused the government of “institutional duplicity” and “treating Canadians like fools.”   * Access the full story at the link below. Visit the related web page
	View more stories