Film festival

My main reason to go to the DocAviv film festival, in Tel Aviv, was to see the Snowden film, “Citizen Four”, which hadn’t been shown in this country till now. I also looked for another film for the same day, and so bought tickets for that too. This was “Monsoon”. As it happened, I enjoyed Monsoon more.

“Citizen Four” was much more of a personal film about Snowden than I had anticipated. As the camera rolled on, in Snowden’s tiny Hong Kong hotel room, I began to feel a little cramped and uncomfortable about being in the room with him. I was expecting the film to be more about the privacy and surveillance issue itself and began to wonder if people would understand the value of the revelations and not start to feel irked, as I did, by the amount of time spent on the man himself. But perhaps this was just a case of mistaken expectations. Dorit and Yotam, who had joined me, felt fine with the movie and said that the message came through perfectly.

The full-length Canadian documentary, “Monsoon”, was meticulously made and interesting throughout. It had everything that I could have wanted it to do with the subject. It approached it scientifically, philosophically, had personal stories and beautiful photography. The narrator told the story with sensitivity and humour. I didn’t check whether it has captured any prizes so far, but it certainly deserves to do so.

Edward Snowden’s message for the day

“One year ago, we learned that the internet is under surveillance, and our activities are being monitored to create permanent records of our private lives — no matter how innocent or ordinary those lives might be.

Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. That’s why I’m asking you to join me on June 5th for Reset the Net, when people and companies all over the world will come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the mass surveillance programs of any government. This is the beginning of a moment where we the people begin to protect our universal human rights with the laws of nature rather than the laws of nations.

We have the technology, and adopting encryption is the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance. That’s why I am excited for Reset the Net — it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale.

Join us on June 5th, and don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back.”

Fighting for the Future is encouraging everyone to download the tools in the Reset the Net Privacy Pack at: http://pack.resetthenet.org

Obama’s NSA speech

EFF's scorecard on Obama's announcements

EFF’s scorecard on Obama’s announcements

I’m not a clever or sophisticated presidential speech analyst, or even very knowledgeable about the issues, but I realized that listening to Obama’s speech on NSA and national security, was that besides the multiple contradictions, such as about protecting dissidents (like Snowden?), the speech could be interpreted as a kind of mirror writing, which illuminates the unresolved problems by his drawing attention to them and claiming to resolve them. A lesser speech might simply omit mention of the major unresolved problems. But Obama’s technique is to show full awareness of the issues that trouble everyone and pretend to address them, without really doing so.* If you’d submit the speech to analysis, it could therefore be read point by point as an admission of guilt, as if a murderer’s testimony in support of his innocence would mention details known only to himself.

And, “As the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment rather than government control.” That’s indeed what the world wants, Mr. Obama, but what it has come to expect is exactly the opposite.

There is also some comedy, in the way Obama echoed Snowden himself. In his cheery Christmas message, Snowden demanded: “Remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel asking is always cheaper than spying.” Obama: ‘The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call …’ Snowden: “privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” Obama: “When you cut through the noise, what’s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are…”

clinton-and-obamaSomeone** tweeted a photo of an Obama speech in which Bill Clinton suddenly comes on stage waving to the audience and said, imagine if at the end of the speech, Snowden would show up behind Obama, all smiles.

The full speech is here.

* Others say he didn’t:

“It was not what was in the President’s speech that was particularly noteworthy, as The New York Times aptly put it, but what was left out entirely. President Obama neglected to address many of the worries of the world’s largest tech companies — like Apple, Facebook, and Google, among others — delivering no assurances that the NSA would give up its practice of monitoring and sucking up the billions of bytes of data flowing to and from these companies’ users on a daily basis. It was a practice Google’s Eric Schmidt called “outrageous” at best and potentially illegal late last year.”

Recode

** sorry, couldn’t find who this was when I looked again, though I found the famous photo.

how the Snowden affair illuminates cultural identity and political conceptions

I continue to read all the main threads of the Snowden affair, as well as reflections by journalists and writers. British journalist Jonathan Friedland’s story for the New York Times (Why Do Brits Accept Surveillance?) about what he conceives of as the differences in the reactions to the revelations in Britain and America was interesting. Basically, he says that these reactions indicate differing conceptions regarding the relationship between government and citizen in the two countries:

And this might be the heart of the matter. Britain has a fundamentally different conception of power than, say, the United States. In America, it is ‘‘we the people’’ who are held to be sovereign. Viewed like that, the N.S.A., and other arms of the government, is a servant of the people: It is meant to do what it is told.

The British system, by contrast, still carries the imprint of its origins in monarchy: Officially, it remains “Her Majesty’s Government,” not the people’s. Power still emanates from the top and flows downward, with the public allowed a peek only when the state chooses. It means that Brits can be quite resigned toward the level of government power over, and intrusion into, their lives — because they don’t really see government as their servant in the first place. Britons remain subjects, not citizens.

Once again, I was reminded that despite having been born in the UK, my cultural frame is more American than British, because of the two systems he describes so well, my own way of thinking is closer to the American one. American influence on the world being so strong, it’s surprising that the Brits are not swayed to a greater degree by the U.S. However in my case, the influence is not surprising since I grew up in Virginia from the age of 13.

Another area in which I have noticed such cultural influence is in spelling and syntax. For years I staunchly attempted to use British modes, until one day I read a comprehensive article on the differences between American and British usage, and realized not only that American usage came easier, but that I didn’t really understand British usage in any case. And I remember being similarly surprised when spending an undergraduate year in a British university. I did not adjust well to the British system.

In their view of the Edward Snowden revelations, Israelis are closer to the British than the Americans. They are happy to accept surveillance, and assume that they are being watched. They also take for granted that the threat to the personal security does not come from their state, but from their “enemies”.