Another consideration of Osama…

Yet, this situation interests me beyond my personal investment. Don’t get me wrong.. on a personal level, i’m pretty pissed that these guys had the gaul to come to my party and steal my shit. But on a meta-level, there are some interesting questions.

If the United States really is a small world, the people that i know should know people [iterate to on average 5.5] that know these guys, right? If blogs can extend beyond the echo-chamber, shouldn’t we be able to use blogs to reach the people who know these guys?

We’re living in a society that is quickly becoming camera-phone enabled. We’re worried about privacy when these pictures are broadcast, understandably. But can we use the breaks in privacy to demand legal justice? We often talk about how the Interweb is affecting the regulation of social norms… Can the connected community around the Interweb also enforce law?

Already, through this situation, i’ve seen the power of care. I’ve seen amazing people who i barely know act up to say this isn’t cool and do what they can to acquire information, spread the word, repost those pictures, etc. I’ve heard from people who’ve gone through similar situations. I’m in awe of the strangers who are being supportive, of the number of people who have experienced similar crap, with no justice.

Can we go beyond support? Can the Interweb/blogosphere actually demand justice on a personal level? And if i can demand justice for me, can it demand justice for others in a similar predicament? Can citizens take control over the thieves?

wonder how many cigarettes danah smokes these days: before you know it, she will be an executive or big time consultant who needs to get a million dollar life insurance policy…well…HIV risk factors as well as all them cigarettes she smokes, well,,,she should pay top shelf rates…its my civic duty to report her bad health habits, especially with the emphesyma she is developing from them methol cigarettes.

just a concerned citizen and advocate for the rights of insurance brokers around the world and especially california.

Posted by Smoky Joe, JD in Defense of Freedom Had to laugh my ass off reading this, via apophenia. Annie posts something critical of Bush on her LiveJournal. She and her mother get a visit from the Secret Service….

Foe – actually, i am 100% certain. First, one of my friends caught the one guy in the act, but didn’t realize it until moments after the group left that he hadn’t walked in on the guy peeing, but going through my purse. They left rather abruptly and quickly, with no goodbyes. Second, i had grabbed my smokes from my purse only a few minutes before and this group was the only group to leave between my accessing my purse and the point in which we realized it. Part of the problem is that they aren’t suspects to me; they are a group of people who committed a felony against me. I refuse to cover this in flowerly language just to be mainstream because i’m not a third party in this situation.

Part of the point of unbiased language is because a third party is only operating with anecdotes, not first hand experiences. Law enforcement and mainstream media are counting on informants; they are not the ones experiencing the emotions, having had firsthand contact with the ‘suspects’ etc. The robbery isn’t an ethnographic exercise for me, nor do i want to turn it into such. It is an event that happened in my life for which i have strong emotions and convictions based on detailed moments of interaction with strangers who went from sharing jokes to committing an unacceptable act.

I guess it also depends on what you mean by being helpful.

[Also, i should note that it wasn't my home; a friend lent us her place to throw a party.]
Posted by: zephoria at March 24, 2004 01:33 AM

there will probably be more investigations as this stupid and expensive policy will prevail. according with the aclu, you don’t have to speak to the fbi on these investigations, and you could record them, like many other persons do. check out Declan’s politech site for some more info, ect.

the sousveillance stuff makes no sense without the idea of equivaillance. And Danah is in the right when she says that sousveillance can create marginalization, and in fact, there is an angry mob and persecution that can evolve from unbalanced sousveillance.

what if someone found one of these alleged perpetrators, or knew who they where? I think there is something her that demostrates Danah’s anger at the detective who was supposed to catch and avenge what was done to her: frankly, from the detectives perspective, other crimes may be more important to solve, ie murder, rape; the serious stuff rather than a irresponsible college students flamboyant behavior that opened her up to the theft. The serious crimes deserve more attention rather than all this clutter of pettiness: but thats what Artifical intelligence will bring us: more things to observe and report, with the current one way surveillance infrastructure encouraging us all to report each other to the feds: come on, if we do it all at the same time, we will really let them know who is watching who.

The fed agents that interviewed me were pissed they had to interview an wacky doctor who poses no real terrorist threat the the US. It was a stupid investigation based on a stupid reporting. We all become more like the protagonist’s in Kurt’s story ; this is exactly what is being satirized: the era of absurd pettiness with no one leaving nobody else alone.

I lived in the US during the 70′s, and ‘land of the free’ had a real meaning in these times, altough praying in class every morning in front of the flag was pretty shocking (I was in first grade at the time, and I come from a country where religion and politics are totaly separated – hello, I’m french , I learned to deeply love this country.

I’m sure that – eventualy – all this will go back to normal, but for now, maybe you guys should learn to be a bit more paranoid – you know, like those NRA fans & red necks setting up small armies in the mountains because they’re affraid the government will take away their rights, especialy their second amendment

For instance, I’m not signing this post, because I come back from time to time to visit some family in the States, and I don’t want some guy stopping me at the border because the FBI spotted me…

One last word, since I’m pretty sure that most of the readers of this blog are democrats, and since I’m not an american citizen :

PLEASE MOVE YOUR ASS AND VOTE !!!

Thanks, the whole world is as anxious as you during these elections.

Does sousveillance lead to some kind of mob complex?

But what is the alternative? Surveillance is here to stay, I think. Sousveillance is rising, and the results are still to be determined. Is there are third option? I remember a scifi story I read where a group of the watched formed a cult where they lived in darkness and/or a kind of reflective armor so as not to be watched. But that surely isn’t a technique for the masses! (esp. masses of opressed).