Harry Lewis puts just right the way Homeland Security goes off the rails with its decision to give itself permission to confiscate laptops at the border:

I love Michael Chertoff’s explanation of why border guards won’t bother with the niceties of probable cause provided for in the Fourth Amendment: “As a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary [for a more thorough examination] when there is some level of suspicion. Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers’ often split-second assessments are second-guessed.”

He’s right, of course. The Bill of Rights has a chilling effect on the government. That’s what it’s there for!

[Tags: harry_lewis homeland_security laptops privacy creeping_totalitarianism ]

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Great reflective post about the Global Voices Summit from Rebecca MacKinnon…

[Tags: berkman gv globalvoices rebecca_mackinnon ]

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The Declaration is obviously a remarkable document, part philosophy, part legal document, part performative, part a moral accounting, part beautiful rhetoric. It’s good reading, although I do tend to skip the long middle that lists the particular complaints and justifications.

Here are some resources:

Text
Wikipedia
US Archives
Facsimile
With annotations of our failure to live up to it
Lightly annotated to show draft changes
Martin Luther King’s Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese Declaration of Independence

[Tags: july4 declaration_of_independence ]

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Nicholas Kristof has a terrific column today about how the donation of a goat to a family in Uganda ultimately led to one of the children, Beatrice, earning a degree from Connecticut College, and beginning a path of service for her community. It’s a wonderful story, the point of which is what Jeffrey Sachs calls the “Beatrice Theorem” of development economics: “small inputs can lead to large outcomes.”

Well, yes, of course. In fact, small changes have determined the success or failure of us all. And I have no misgivings whatsoever about this past Channukah having given our children certificates announcing that Oxfam had given goats in their name. Yes, I am a goat-giver, and proud of it.

But…

…I’ve noticed in business writing in particular the frequency of what we can call the Fallacy of Examples (a type of Fallacy of Hasty Generalization). You read some story about a successful CEO as if we should learn from his (yes, usually it’s a him) example. But we are struck by examples frequently because they’re exceptional. As exceptions, examples are the last thing you want to learn from.

Not always, though. Sometimes examples are typical. That’s different. The trick is determining which are which.

An even when you can, you’re still not done. Is Beatrice and her goat an exception? Yes. That’s why her story is so inspiring. As an exception, it may be exactly what we should not be emulating. After all, if she’d won the lottery, we wouldn’t think that giving lottery tickets to the poor is a sensible approach to the problem of world poverty. But, even though Beatrice is an exception, the typical effect of donated goats (and other such small-ish gifts) may be quite good.

That’s why the Fallacy of Examples is a fallacy. Reasoning from examples doesn’t always lead to false conclusions. The reasoning just isn’t enough to tell you what the valid conclusions are.

And in the absence of valid conclusions, here’s Kristof’s list of ways to donate goats or their equivalents. And here’s Oxfam’s program. And, because it’s the Internet, here’s samizdata’s warning that goats cause poverty. [Tags: philanthropy nicholas_kristof beatrice goats ]

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Ethanz brilliantly contextualizes this post. Thanks, Ethan!

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In the June issue of Harper’s, Gary Keizer has an article called “Turning away from Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church” that I kept trying not to like, I think because he’s too right and too good. But the article won me over. Alas, Harper only posts miniature, unreadable images of the pages, so you’ll have to do something primitive like trudge to your local library to read it.

Gary paints a picture of a church traditionally less interested in enforcing doctrinal homogeneity than in ministering to those in need. He personally favors the ordination of gay clergy, but the article focuses a level up from that: How can a church handle disagreement and difference? And he explicitly applies those lessons beyond the church to the country and the world.

It made me think of AKMA’s idea of differential hermeneutics, a theory of interpretation (which is to say, of understanding) that assumes we’re never going to agree. He opposes this to what he calls “integral hermeneutics,” which aims at resolving issues, and thus showing that one person’s interpretation is right and another’s is wrong. And, yes, AKMA is fully aware of the issues that arise from his position. (I blogged about this here.)

I am convinced that Gary and AKMA are raising exactly the right questions, and are answering them the only way that lets us live together in peace, which is not to say in harmony or quietude. And I find what they say based upon their similar religious convictions to be quite in line with what I understand the Jewish attitude toward interpretation to be: The arguing continues all the way into the next life. If you’re so lucky. [Tags: episcopalians gay_rights gary_keizer akma peace judaism everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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At the Enterprise 2.0 conference (which I didn’t attend), Don Burke and Sean Dennehey from the CIA gave a talk on Intellipedia, the CIA’s internal wikipedia. As part of their talk, they cited a manual, including, I’m told, this from page 28:

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Their point was that these instructions come from a 1944 manual on how to sabotage a business.

The session’s Web page points to the entire, amazing, declassified manual of simple sabotage. [Tags: cia sabotage enterprise_2.0 intellipedia wikipedia ]

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John Yunker telling points out — and documents with screen captures — that global corporations often marked their Chinese home pages with signs of mourning for those lose in the recent earthquake, while their non-Chinese pages remained dressed in their business-as-usual designs. (He has some more screen captures here.)

[Tags: china earthquake globalism provincialism business ]

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The China Vortex runs the search log for Google China that dramatically shows the three minutes of silence China observed on May 19th in remembrance of those who died in the earthquake. It is, eerily, like the inverse of a seismograph.

[Tags: china google earthquake ]

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Here’s 9 minutes of Chris Matthews trying to get a hollerin’ right-wing radio host to acknowledge that he (the host) doesn’t know what “appeasement” means. Clearly, neither does President Bush.

The notion that it’s weak to talk with your enemies is even more dangerous than the Bush preemption policy. If you don’t talk, you use force. Force is expensive. Force kills innocents. Force kills Americans. Force is wildly ineffective. Force makes peace harder to bring about. That’s why force is a last resort. The problem is, Bush doesn’t have a first resort.

That’s why during the cold war, every president spoke with the Soviet leaders, even while the Soviets were a launch-code away from obliterating us with nuclear weapons. Of course you talk with your enemies. What are we, inarticulate Huns? Blood-raged animals? Implacable minions of death? Jeez!

Talking with your enemies doesn’t mean you incrementally give them what they want in the naive hope that they’ll stop with that. That would be, um, appeasement. But refusing to talk with your enemies is — I don’t know what other word to use — wickedness.

[Tags: peace appeasement obama politics ]

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I’ve taken the title of Sharon Richardson’s post at JoiningDots because it’s so apt. She writes:

What’s weird from an information and context perspective is how remote this disaster feels, compared to other events such as the Tsunami, Hurrican Katrina and Sept 11th. (A similar effect happend with the earthquake in Pakistan.) Is that because Burma is such a closed society, meaning there are very few first-hand on-the-spot-as-it-happens pictures and videos? Research has proven that people connect more when shown a specific story rather than massive (no matter how scary) statistics. The tsunami also occured in a region with strict controls. Perhaps having a tourist spot complete with Westerners and their camcorders helped.

Maybe a more evolved consciousness would be unaffected by the particular stories and the particular videos, for rationally we know that the disaster is a disaster whether or not there happens to be film at 11. Or maybe our atavistic reaction to personal stories is a necessary part of our being moral creatures … so long as we still make the donation even when, in the absence of stories, only pure reason moves us .

[Tags: burma morality ]

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Moveon.org is recommending that we donate to the International Burmese Monks Organization, which already has a network of local people in place. Moveon.org thinks that money donated to the monks via Avaaz.org is more likely to do good quickly there. Here’s a link.

We usually like to give to groups we’ve looked into pretty closely. But those groups — e.g., Oxfam — are frustrated that they are unable to help directly and quickly. So, for now we’re placing our philanthropic bet on Avaaz.

[Tags: burma ]

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TechCrunch has a good explanation of Footnote’s digitizing of the Vietnam Memorial, which is handy because the Footnote site is getting hammered with traffic right now, so the app is running slowly. The site lets you browse the Wall by multiple categories, and links together bunches of information. Sounds very cool.

The Vietnam Memorial wall is an argument for stone over information. But information is good, too.

[Tags: vietnam memorials ]

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[Info: Think Progress] [Tags: democracy cheney iraq ]

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I just caught up wth Harold Feld’s Super Tuesday endorsement of Obama. In the course of explaining why Obama’s life story resonated with Harold, who comes from quite a different background, Harold posted the following quotation:

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of the foundation. It is from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our sight!” (Psalms 118:22-23)

Wow, that Guy could write!

[Tags: harold_feld psalms ]

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That’s what Jock Gill calls “global climate change,” ne� “global warming.”

Good phrase.

[Tags: climate jock_gill global_climate_change al_gore marketing ]

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Global Voices has produced a great intro to citizen’s media, under the guidance of David Sasaki. It’s clear, friendly, and full of heart. And, needless to say, it’s not US-centric. It’s available in English, Spanish, and Bengali, with more on the way.

Well done, David and team. [Tags: gv global_voices citizen_media david_sasaki journalism ]

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Andy Olmsted was the first American soldier killed in Iraq this year. He blogged at Obsidian Wings as G’Kar. The site has posted a message Andy wanted published if he were killed.

[Tags: andy_olmsted iraq ]

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I was quite pleased when I read in a posting to a mailing list that the British government was no longer going to use the phrase “war on terror.” [SPOILER ALERT: The posting was wrong.] The post pointed to an article in the Daily Mail quoted at length by Military.com). It said:

The words “war on terror” will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country’s chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless “death cult.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language.”

London is not a battlefield, he said.

“The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers,” Macdonald said. “They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way.”

His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the “war on terror” language has officially been ditched.

Ah, someone speaking sense! Except it seemed odd to me that the Director of Public Prosecutions would get to decide how the British government is going to characterize issues of defense. So, I checked the Daily Mail site and the best I could come up with was an article from last January in which Sir Ken talked about the language he thinks the government should use, not a decision by the government about the language that it will use.

If you can come up with an actual source for this, I’d be very happy to be acknowledge your superior googling skills and celebrate this one small step towards a sensible approach to peace and security.

(BTW, I think the Military.com article got to posted to the mailing list I’m on via Dave Farber’s high-visibility mailing list.) [Tags: war_on_terror ken_macdonald uk politics marketing blogs journalism citizen_journalism berkman ]

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Let’s educate nine million refugee children by 2010. [Tags: ninemillion ]

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I went to the Peace Prize concert last night. What a rich experience. Not unmixed, but certainly rich.

You should know two facts about me for context: 1. As I have failed to hide, I am a huge Al Gore fan. I wish he were running for president. I wish he had been allowed to take office when we elected him. 2. As far as musical tastes go, I find I’m quite binary. I can admire and respect a musician while being completely unmoved. If I’m moved at all, I’m moved to tears. Weird. In between, there’s hardly anything beyond the occasional toe tap. Also, I’m getting to be a grumpy old man.

I got to go to the concert because I spoke at a Cisco Public Services Summit in Stockholm. Cisco then put 450 of us on a couple of trains and rolled us to Oslo for the concert, of which Cisco is one of the sponsors. As a result, we were seated in the orchestra; I was about twenty rows back, seated among people who have dedicated themselves to public service.

The concert hall looks like a hockey stadium cut in half the long way, with steep seats climbing the gorge-like sides. In the long front was a curving stage with performance areas to the right and left. In center were the evening’s hosts, Kevin Spacey and Uma Thurman. Spacey — a man who looks great in a suite — was hilarious and a confident enough performer that he put the audience at ease. We didn’t have to worry if he as going to flub his lines or say something embarrassing. I am a long-time Uma fan, but let’s just say that she’s much taller than Spacey.

The truth is that I can’t make sense of the concert. It is a celebration of peace and, in this case, of environmental activism. Why this set of performers make? Some were fantastic. Some are activists. But Kylie Minogue? Did we really need to see her in her leather outfit and her skimpily clad female band? Is this what Al Gore is about? It was a tawdry and demeaning way to open the concert. And, given that you could pull in just about any of the world’s musicians, why no one from Africa? Why no classical music? I think I’m missing the point.

[Grumpy Alert:] I know I’m missing the point when it comes to musicians who clap their hands over their heads to tell you that you should clap along, and especially ones who — like Earth Wind and Fire — explicitly tell you to stand up and dance. I think all but two bands did the clapping-over-their-heads thing, and, frankly, it just irks me. If I want to clap along, I’ll decide on my own. And if I don’t want to stand when they tell me to, well, I will anyway, but I’ll resent it. Damn you and your forced funky enthusiasm, Earth, Wind and Fire!

Melissa Etheride rocked the ecosystem. She’s got all of her in her voice. And Alicia Keyes filled the hall. Yet, while admiring her voice and performance — wow! — I totally didn’t care about the songs. I was the only one who felt that way, apparently. People also loved Annie Lenox, although I’ve never liked her voice; although I admire her personally. I’m not recommending my views; I’m pointing out my inadequacy

Rajendra Pachauri and Gore came out towards the end to say a few words. Pachauri, who says people should call him “Patchy,” spoke lightly at first, and then said the expected words about the importance ofthe cause and the honor of the evening.

Gore moved me, but I’m a sucker for political rhetoric. The course of his talk was: Climate change isn’t a political problem, it’s a moral one. As a moral problem, we should consider the rest of the moral changes before us. These problems require us to respond as a united species. Therefore, we should embrace this challenge as an occasion for joy. (Yes, I choked up as he talked. I’m like that.)

After the concert, I went back to the hotel where Cisco was holding a party featuring Earth, Wind, Fire and an extended band that included Water, Smoke, Iridium, Porridge and Velour. So, when I spotted Gore going into an interview room downstairs, I left the party and stood outside until he came out, by himself, and was waiting for Pachauri. I said “Thank you,” and he shook my hand. Yes, the very hand I’m typing this with.

I went upstairs to the Cisco party for a few minutes, and who should come in to say a few words and pose for some photos than Pachauri. As he was leaving and Earth, Wind and Fire was starting up, he paused a few feet from me. I thanked him as well, and he shook my very hand.

Two Peace Prize winners in one night!! And neither one was Henry Kissinger!

The concert was a bit weird. The situation is predictably surreal. But I am very very glad to have been there.

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Hoder is asking his social network to publicize the lawsuit that threatens to bankrupt him. Ethan Zuckerman has posted about this with his usual cogency and moral insight. You don’t have to agree with Hoder to see the suit against him as an attempt to shut out a voice and ideas. You don’t have to agree with Hoder to support him in this.

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I’m at the Veerstichting conference in charming, delightful, beautiful Leiden..

I had to surrender my laptop to the AV squad — I would have been the only one taking notes on one anyway — so I could only scribble a few notes on a piece of paper, and even then I only heard the first two speakers all the way through.

Jan Willem Duyvendak is the author of the book on human herds and identity. Since the theme of the conference is the power of the herd, he was a natural beginning. He talked about the Dutch believe that they are a diverse society when in fact there is much commonality among them. “We are a herd of individualists,” he said. He spoke in the context of the current Dutch debate over immigration and national identity.

Next, Shashi Tharoor, an author and once high enough at the UN to be consider for the secretary general post, gave a beautiful and delightful talk about the Indian national identity. After listing some of that country’s amazing diversity (23 official languages, for example), he said “The singular thing about India is you can only talk about it in the plural.” Indian national identity, he says, works in practice but could not work in theory. It is a nationalism of the idea that people can disagree, so long as they agree on the ground rules.

Domitila Mukantaganzwa, the Executive Secretary of National Service of Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, went through in some detail the process of trying almost 900,000 people for crimes of genocide. The magnitude of the legal process implicitly showed the extent of the suffering. She was asked why the South African peace and reconciliation process forgave those who acknowledged their crimes, while the Rwandans are punishing those convicted. She said the severity of the crimes were different. And the Rwandans, she said, need to develop a culture of accountability. The survivors need to see the guilty punished. They also need, she says, to have the guilty tell them where they committed their crimes so parents can find and bury their children with dignity. This is a story beyond comment.

Finally, after rewriting and rewriting the talk I’d prepared on the challenge of the implicit in forming groups (summarized here), I at the last moment decided not to switch. So I gave the one on the implicit. I have no idea how it went over. [Tags: veerstichting crowds india rwanda leiden ]

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John Edwards has bought air time to respond to Pres. Bush tonight. (Disclosure: I advise (for free) the campaign on Net policy.)

I don’t envy any of the candidates. There’s no way forward and no way backward. It’s what we call a “quagmire.” Most of the candidates — Biden excepted — have provided process plans, not actual pictures of what the country should and could look like. I don’t want to hear that we’ll involve the countries that have a stake in Iraq’s future, even though I think that’s important to do. I want to hear that Iraq is going to end up as three federated regions and here’s how they’re going to split the oil revenues, and here’s how we’re going to prevent a war when one of the sub-nations gets greedy…or whatever. I want a plan with a vision, not a plan with a process to get to a vision.

I am, of course, asking too much. That’s how badly the Bush regime has screwed up. And how many more Americans and Iraqis will die for it? [Tags: iraq politics john_edwards]

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“Should we be telling the American people we will be there five, seven, 10 years?” Biden asked.

Crocker didn’t answer, arguing that it wasn’t possible to know what the situation would be next summer.

“In the past we have set expectations that cannot be met,” Crocker said. [LA Times]

Ryan Crocker is an ambassador. David Petraeus is a general in the Army. They owe us the truth. Of course they do. Yet, when they are asked one of the most basic questions, they refuse to answer. They pretend the Senators are asking for a precise date. They are afraid they’ll be wrong.

The ambassador and the general may not know if it’s going to take 8.25 years or 8.5 years, but they know it’s going to take more than two. They must have some plan, some idea, some conjecture. We are sophisticated enough to understand what they mean if they were to say, “Of course, there can be no certainty about this, and events may intervene, but the earliest I can see Iraq becoming stable enough for all but a maintenance force to leave is ____.”

Two years? Ten years? Five years? Twenty years? Our experts and our leaders owe us an answer. How can we decide if we should stay the course if we’re not being told to expect the course to be a 100 yard dash, a 5K run, or a double marathon with a triathalon at the end?

This lack of candor ought not be acceptable to us, much less the norm. [Tags: politics iraq petraeus]

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John Edwards has given a major speech outlining his anti-terrorism policies. (Disclosure: I’m a volunteer advisor on Net policy to the campaign.) I read it and I think: This is a lot better than our current policies. Orders of magnitude better. But do I think each of the agenda items is the best thing to do? Nah, but that’s because I don’t think there is a set of best things. If only. So, I look for the general understanding of how the world is made more peaceful. And for that, I think Edwards is right on.

But Edwards doesn’t say the one thing I think any anti-terrorism policy should acknowledge: Terrorism is not going away, any more than crime is going to end. Kerry said something along those lines and got creamed for it, even though Bush had muttered something similar a few weeks earlier. But it’s the truth that ought to be setting our sense of what constitutes success. [Tags: john_edwards terrorism politics]

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John Palfrey and Jonathan Zittrain, of the Berkman Center, have an article at C-NET on the ethical difficulties of doing business in tyrannical countries.

The more promising route is for one or more groups of industry members to come up with a common, voluntary code of conduct to guide the activities of individual firms in regimes that carry out online censorship and surveillance. Such a process has begun. Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Yahoo and TeliaSonera are actively working together on a code. This process includes nongovernment organizations (NGOs)&mdashincluding Business for Social Responsibility and the Center for Democracy and Technology…

As JP and Jonathan say, “The development of a code of conduct itself solves only a small part of the problem.” But it’s a key part. I’m proud to say that the Berkman Center is one of the NGOs working on this project. [Tags: berkman john_palfrey jonathan_zittrain corporate_responsibility ethics google microsoft yahoo ]

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Denise Caruso, author of the new book Intervention, has been thinking about risk. She looks at innovations that have had nasty unanticipated consequences. The way to avoid it? “Have a conversation.” Talk with people before hand. E.g., the company that was going to incinerate chemical weapons in Oregon talked with environmentalists and their ilk and came up with better means of disposal. People don’t always do this because they fear it.

And, Internet tolols and culture exacerbate it. Targeted search taks away serendipity. Blogger bubbles, etc.

There are “potential dealbreakers” for the Net, she says, including copyuright bs. social media. So, we need to re-socialize the Net. We should automate serendipity.

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Clay Shirky begins by talking about a disagreement in Japan about whether a temple is old even though it’s been rebuilt as part of continuing process. The dispute is over “solidity of edifice, not solidity of process.”

Then he talks about a big development contract he got many years ago with AT&T in which he was challenged to provide support. “We get our support from a community,” Clay said, but to them it was like he’d said “We get our Thursdays from a banana.” So, he showed them it working in practice. They couldn’t see it work in practice because they already knew it couldn’t work in theory. He points to comp.lang.perl. “It’s doing fine,” but how is AT&T doing? Not so well. The solidity of the thing is evanescent.

Perl is like the temple, says Clay. It continues because the people doing it love Perl enough to stop what they’re doing and help one another. “No contracts are written, no money changes hands.” “We don’t often talk about love” at these conferences. But tools for coordinating and talking — simple things like mailing lists — turn love into a renewable building material. This leads to unexpected, unanticipated consequences. the better predictor of longevity is not the business model but do the people care about one another.

There’s lots of commercial opportunity. We’re not going to all live together in a commune. But the ability to get people together outside of management and profit motive creates a huge opportunity. And traditional work will be intertwined with this way of working.

Within 24 hours of Linus posting his first message, he had a global network of people eager to collaborate. The monitoring of Nigerian election through people using SMS and Flickr, the responses to terrorist actions, the anti-immigration-law protests coordinated through MySpace…we will see much more of that.

Add collaboration tools to love and you can write an operating system.

We can now do big things with love.

[This was a classic and beautiful statement of why the Net works and why it matters...and the fact that those two things are the same is what's most hope-giving about the Net. Clay is such a phenomenal combination of insight, brilliance as a writer, and, well, love.]

[Tags: supernova2007 supernova07 clay_shirky denise_caruso love social_software everything_is_miscellaneous]

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[The next day] Nick Douglas - who is hilarious to have on a backchannel chat - video interviewed me right after Clay’s talk, so the conversation turned to love and community.

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Ethan Zuckerman, one of the co-founders of Global Voices [Disclosure: Ethan is a good friend, and I am on a GV board] asks whether the Net is letting us hear voices unlike our own. He founded GV precisely so we could easily find bloggers in other nations opening up a window into their world. But now he wonders if that was “a phenomenon for a specific moment in time.” As the communities of bloggers have become available in many cultures where previously there had been only a handful, they are talking amongst themse