Bicker, Back & Forth, PS.

Both the BBC and New York Times report this morning that an influential group of clerics in Iran has defied the Supreme Leader forming at least a symbolic split in the country’s clerical establishment in criticizing the the Guardian Council.
In a statement to the press, the Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers said some [...]

ABC’s Senior Foreign Correspondent Jim Sciutto reports at 7:30am PST via Twitter:

#iranelection new acct of today’s strike RT “reports that Bazaars throughout main Iranian cities were mostly closed today”

The good news is that new media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are still enabling the voice of dissent to be heard in Iran despite the best efforts of the government thus far to silence them. The bad news is that the Iranian authorities, with each passing day, are becoming more and more adept at discerning, tracking down and then silencing that voice. They are doing so with one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling, tracking and censoring the Internet, allowing government officials to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale heretofore unheard anywhere other than …. China and …. the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reported late yesterday that the Iranian monitoring and censoring control capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cell phone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed to WSJ reporters. As a postscript to this part of the story – as if to demonstrate consciousness of guilt, the joint venture has since sold their interest in this spy capacity portion of the joint venture to a German investment group.

According to experts the Iranian government had experimented but until the recent unrest, didn’t themselves know the extent of their abilities. Experts state the Iranian government is engaged in what is called deep packet inspection. In this process, every digitized packet transmitted can be deconstructed, examined for keywords and reconstructed in a matter of milliseconds. We cannot yet know how effective they are in tracking down individual voices of dissent or if they are actually perusing individuals but what is clear is that they can. The deep packet inspection which causes a delay in communications which cannot be offset by anything but a substantial increase in processing power is in and of itself slowing internet traffic in Iran down to 10% or less of it’s usual speed. This news makes sense of why the Iranian government has permitted the internet to continue to operate within its borders – so they can control it, track dissenters with it and spread disinformation with it. Insidious isn’t it?

Iran is “now drilling into what the population is trying to say,” said Bradley Anstis, director of technical strategy with Marshal8e6 Inc., an Internet security company in Orange, Calif. Traffic flows in and out of Iran show characteristics of content inspection, among other measures. “This looks like a step beyond what any other country is doing, including China.”

In February 2009 the Huffington Post warned that Iranian authorities were blocking websites promoting the presidential efforts of Mohammed Khatami, of the three viable candidates, Khatami was the most likely to take president Obama up on his offer of a new level of dialogue with the regime.

In exactly one week from today each PC sold in China will be sold with web-filtering software pre-installed. “Blocking access to pornography sounds like an acceptable goal,” said Washington-based Computer & Communications Industry Association’s president, Ed Black. “But the problem is that it’s all too easy to use the same technology to expand the censorship.” reports ABC.

The OpenNet initiative a project of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Toronto Universities reports at least 25 countries block websites but noted that they had only examined 40 so far. They included the United Kingdom, Germany and of course the US. In the U.S., the National Security Agency has a capacity akin to that being used in Iran today – the ability to sniff through individual packets, in the US of course there is also the capacity to increase processing power to compensate for slowdowns such packet sniffing may cause – making the process almost impossible to discern. This capacity was employed as part of the Bush administration’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” A White House official wouldn’t comment on if or how this is being used under the Obama administration.

The US capacity was first exposed when a retired AT&T engineer Mark Klein stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T. Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T’s internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government’s warrantless wiretapping program broke reports the liberty coalition. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 2008 when passed in July 8, 2008 in essence removed any ability for US citizens to challenge the program. See my to the passage of the FISA of 2008 here.

That failure of the Congress to restrict the governments ability to sniff through each and every data packet running through the US was mistaken was born just a little later in 2008. A federal panel of policy makers and scientific experts has concluded in a report released Tuesday that using data mining to identify terrorists really doesn’t work, reports CNET News’ Declan McCullagh. He calls the 352-page report, “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists,” at least partial repudiation of the Defense Department’s controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, on which Congress placed restrictions in 2003. That program was begun after 9/11.

Wired reports that in attempting a scholarly evaluation of available technologies to identify terrorists by combing through public databases, the panel concluded: “Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts. Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”

That means the privacy of ordinary people or businesses could be trampled — for instance, by a SWAT team bursting down your door – when you are singled out in a false positive. Meanwhile, The Register was touting plans in the UK for a massive database to root out terrorists as a great opportunity for contractors. But it points to the U.S. study, suggesting UK spy chiefs’ idea might not be a good one after all.

And so let’s recap.

1] A US federal panel of senior policy makers and scientific experts concluded that “using data mining to identify terrorists” doesn’t really work.

2] Our own research on the subject is reliable enough enough that the UK is rethinking it’s plans for a massive similar database; but

3] In the half a year since the report’s publication and for the foreseeable future we apparently still don’t care.

Let’s hope we never find ourselves in the position the Iranian people find themselves in this past week – at least they had no system of laws robust enough to have challenged the privacy issues of government monitoring at the outset. We on the other hand have a functional system of laws – we just don’t seem to care enough to use them. Should it come to pass that we regret this inaction, I wonder how large a bruise we’ll leave when we decide to kick ourselves?

Neda Agha Setan death, mentioned yesterday on bLAWg, as predicted, has become an icon galvanizing the Iranian opposition movement. MSNBC reported at 2:30pm PST that demonstrators today were carrying “I am Neda” signs. 6 hrs earlier Jim Sciutto ABC’s chief correspondent in the area reported via Twitter: “#iranelection at today’s small demo, protesters carried photos of Neda.”

This may be the first time that the principal symbol of a movement has been promoted almost entirely by web 2.0 media. I am surprised however, that as yet, there is still no real debate as to whether or not it is appropriate to continue to make available images of this young woman’s moment of death as CNN and now MSNBC has chosen to do.

In December 2007 a young girl was killed in a car accident in California, horrified parents sued the CHP after it became apparent that they had leaked photographs of the girl’s decapitated body, still belted into the vehicle. Next week the appeals court will rule on the case the girl’s parents brought against the CHP.

In February of this year a still photo of war correspondent Ernie Pyle surfaced after over 60 years, apparently never released by the Pentagon in deference to Ernie’s wife. MSNBC considered the peaceful still photograph newsworthy at that time.

Perhaps this issues how much death is too much, or is any amount too much is one of those community standard issues where you “know it when you see it?”

My good friend Shahid Batalvi has dedicated a poem to this young woman titled “The First Story,” it can be read here.

We now live in a world in which raw news data is readily available to the public before any type of veracity checking, editorial judgment or even outright censorship can be exercised. In the past few days alone we have been able to watch, even experience the struggle in Tehran as citizens attempt to protest what they percieve to have been a rigged election. We have been able to do so with Twitter tweets, YouTube videos and even satellite imagery in close to real time.

Yesterday within the course of 45 minutes one could read tweets that the Australian Embassy in Tehran was accepting injured for medical treatment, within minutes several people were tweeting their intention to take their injured there, in a few more minutes warnings were tweeted that police were blocking access and that if anyone was going to attempt to take injured to an embassy they should only go in a large group. As if this wasn’t enough, others then cross referenced these tweets with still photographs of the police blockades.

While we have no way to verify the accuracy of each byte of this raw news data stream there is a cumulative accuracy process. Were those pictures of police blocking the access to the Australian Embassy or some other building? We may never know for certain, but when other photographs depict the same storefronts and advertising billboards in the background, while still circumstantial, the evidence of veracity becomes compelling. An axiom lawyers frequently use when discussing circumstantial evidence to jurors is this:

“Imagine you are in your house with a friend, the weather outside is dreadful, you her thunder and lightning and hear raid pounding on the roof and windows. You decide to warm up and take a shower, and exiting the shower you see your friend standing by the door, their hair is wet, they are shivering, they have an umbrella in one hand and in another a book you had left in your car.”

Do you have first hand knowledge that your friend went out of the house to retrieve the book from the car – no – you were in the shower. However, you do have strong circumstantial evidence; the wet hair, the shivering, your perceptions of the storm outside, the book which was in the car and now is in the house and the wet umbrella.

In December 2008 with opportunity to engage in editorial discussion, contemplation and review, Skye Real Lives, a new cable channel in England elected not to show the “moment of death” even in a documentary which set out to chronicle the planned assisted suicide of Craig Ewart. Tom Sutcliffe of The Independent wrote:

The first thing to say about a film that will have been heard about by vastly more people than actually saw it – since it was transmitted on a new cable channel, Sky Real Lives – was that the reports that it featured the moment of Ewert’s death were a little wide of the mark. You saw him falling asleep after he’d taken the medication that had been prescribed to kill, and you saw him pronounced dead, but the camera cut away in between, as if reluctant to linger in prurience for the precise moment. The second would be that it was far more nuanced and troubling than some of the press coverage might have led you to expect. Ewert, a college lecturer who was suffering from motor neurone disease, was the central subject.

Craig Ewert was a man bowed by his disease. He spoke with a detached dry forensic clarity about the options that faced him and struck you as a man who was far more frightened of dying than of death itself, worried that his disease would advance to the point where his ability to choose would disappear. “I’ve got two choices,” he said, his speech measured out by shallow breaths. “I go through with it or I say, ‘You know what? I’m too scared right now. I don’t want to do it.’ If I go through with it, I die as I must at some point. If I don’t go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer, and to inflict suffering on my family and then die! Possibly in a way that is considerably more painful and stressful than this way.” More pointedly, he addressed the standard religious objection to human decisions about the ending of a life. “The Christians never say, ‘We have to stop organ transplants. We have to stop helping premature babies.’ No, then it’s all right to play God.”

After his death his wife stated:

“Craig wasn’t interested in this as his personal story, he was interested in people actually coming to grips with death, with the fact of death – I think that is often hidden from us. It’s very sanitized.”

So – education and information there is one argument in favor of showing death.

Then there is the so called “Live Internet Suicide” of Abraham Biggs Jr. a mentally ill 19 yo who swallowed a fatal overdose of prescription medications on a bodybuilding website after declaring he was going to kill himself. Biggs then posted a link to Justin.tv a video streaming site, trained the camera on himself and even posted his suicide note online. Online gawkers watched live video for 12 hours before police arrived – some even taunted him with comments like “Go ahead and do it”.

In a prepared statement afterward Abraham’s family said:

“Do not feel sorry for us, we lost a beautiful but troubled soul. Instead, please use your energy to “see” with your heart. Mental illness, like depression and bipolar disorder, are not temporary situations. It is something victims live with and battle with privately.”

So – to serve as a basis for empathy or to punctuate the severity of an issue such as mental illness, there is another argument in favor of showing death.

The first time I saw the moment of death was Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Price-winning photo of the execution of a Vietcong in 1968. I will show the aftermath, if you wish you can follow the link to the photograph which captured the moment. In fact this was so significant to me that I have a clear recollection that the execution was filmed not just a still photograph, though I cannot find any trace of such a film after a reasonable search.

That photograph became so famed because in one picture it captured the abject horror of war as evidenced by the almost casual way in which this prisoner was executed. Others looked on and didn’t appear to think anything of it, as we’ll see in a moment, even the photographer really didn’t care. The rest of the world, however arrived at a completely different conclusion and it came to become a symbol of the horror of the time.

So – another argument in favor of showing the moment of death. The “free press” argument, that on occasion graphic horror necessary to reflect the horror of the reality being reported.

There is no doubt this was effective in the Saigon picture. The odd thing about that picture though is despite it becoming a seminal image of the horror of war, when Eddie Adams took it he gives the following account:

“All of a sudden to my left, somebody came out of nowhere, and I saw him go for his pistol, and as soon as he raised his pistol, as soon as he brought it up I took the picture. I thought absolutely nothing of it, went back to the AP office, and dropped it off. I said “I think I got some guy shooting somebody.” And er, I went to lunch, so like so what. It was a war, I’m serious it’s how I felt, I had seen so many people die at that point in my life, it’s not nice, but I mean he shot him, he was a prisoner and he shot him. I might have done the same thing. I was about a day later or more when we started getting reports back on what was gong on with the picture. I had no idea of the impact and I still don’t understand it – even to today. General Luong, back then he was like a colonel, the whole thing is that picture destroyed his life and that’s what bothers me more than anything else.

What strikes me about this account is that the man on the ground, Eddie Adams’ experience of it was so radically different from anything I could have imagined. He ultimately wasn’t concerned at all about the victim of the gunshot, instead he bears great remorse, to this day, that his picture destroyed the life of the “murderer.” So without context are we even getting the right message?

Which brings me to the currently circulating video of Neda Agha-Soltan. Neda participated in the Tehran protests on June 20, 2009. She is said to have been shot by members of the Iranian Basiji volunteer militia. Undated amateur videos of Neda’s apparent death were uploaded to Facebook and YouTube. In the video Neda can be seen being assisted to the ground as she falls limp backward, two men, one who is reported to be her father are applying pressure to her upper chest. As she lies there limp her eyes follow the camera which moves from her feet around her right side to alongside her head at which point she appears to have a catastrophic drop in blood pressure and lose consciousness. Immediately blood starts to flow profusely from her nose and mouth. These details are still changing, just an hour ago she was listed as Neda Soltani aged 17, now she is being identified as Neda Agha-Soltan aged 27. CNN has aired the video in its entirety now both censored and uncensored (they blur out her face a second or two after the blood flows) and it seems that every 5th tweet on Twitter for the past 12 hrs or more has carried a link to the video of her death.

WARNING this link depicts what I believe to be the moment of Ms. Neda Agha-Soltan’s death.

As disturbing as it all is, the video appears to have had an impact on the tenor of the events unfolding in Tehran. Neda’s name has become a rallying cry for the opposition protestors. Neda is young, clearly didn’t appear to be acting in a violent manner, she is attractive, she is female and even her name in Persian means “Voice” or “Calling.” She has become the “voice of Iran,” a symbol of the pro-democracy opposition and evidence of a government turning on its own citizens.

Perhaps here is our last argument in favor of the death – so it shall not have been in vein. This one death, so grotesque because of its needlessness seems so disturbing, perhaps because it is so “close up.” The images of the first bombing raids of Baghdad – though they likely killed hundreds if not thousands, while shocking, did not have the same effect.

And so I expect that soon voices accusing the media of exploitation of Neda’s death, of sensationalism, of ratings grabbing will soon come to the forefront. I imagine the video of her death will also serve as a catalyst to discuss the new phenomenon of global access to raw news data in media and editorial circles. I hope the debate will grow to include even reality TV. So far we have people picking life partners on TV, raising 8 children on TV, trying to find out “who’s my Dad” on TV, we even have celebrity drug rehab. What comes next is predictable in this logical progression, celebrity oncology where we can watch people die of cancer, perhaps we’ll progress to pay-per-view executions who knows.

It’s a difficult issue naturally, so can broadcasting or showing death ever be really justified or are we catering to our most base prurient interests? Whatever the conclusion I offer my sincere condolences to the family of this young women who’s death will now be used by so many people for so many reasons, some good some not.

What are your thoughts?

Sen. John McCain appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation this morning stating that the US needs to be on the “right side of history” in dealing with the Iranian dispute over election results and the subsequent mass protests.

“America’s position in the world is one of moral leadership,” the senator said. “It’s not about what takes place in the streets of Iran. It is about what takes place in America’s conscience.”

McCain said that while he “appreciates” President Barack Obama’s statement warning Iranian authorities that the world is watching its crackdown on protestors, he feels that statements by other world leaders, such as France’s Nicholas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel, have been stronger than President Obama’s.

Haaretz.com reported Chancellor Merkel as being the first Western leader to publically call for a recount:

“Germany is on the side of the Iranian people, who want to exercise their rights of freedom of expression and free assembly,” she said in a statement.
“One could eliminate doubt, very well I believe, by simply repeating the count transparently and if needed also with international observers. And then trust could grow,” she later told reporters.

Press.TV reports President Sarkozy’s response on Friday as similarly critical. As the landslide victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s disputed election provoked unrest, French President Nicolas Sarkozy denounces the result of Friday’s vote as a “fraud.”

“The extent of the fraud is proportional to the violent reaction. It is a tragedy, but it is not negative to have a real-opinion movement that tries to break its chains. If Ahmadinejad has really made progress since the last election and if he really represents two thirds of the electorate… why has this violence erupted?” asked the French leader.

Senator McCain’s statements are fair and could be well taken but for the fact that by the time he said them they were redundant. They were redundant because at approximately 1pm yesterday President Obama’s press secretary issued an immediate release “Statement from the President on Iran.” The statement is short and worth printing in full.

So let’s compare shall we?

Merkel: “Germany is on the side of the Iranian people, who want to exercise their rights of freedom of expression and free assembly.”

Obama: “The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.”

Sarkozy: “The extent of the fraud is proportional to the violent reaction. It is a tragedy, but it is not negative to have a real-opinion movement that tries to break its chains.

Obama: “… suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.”

I see President Obama’s statements to be almost identical to those of Chancellor Angela Merkel and identical in spirit to those of President Sarkozy. The difference is not the power of the condemnation President Obama’s ability to condemn the Iranian Government’s reaction and support the protesting opponents without actually “meddling” by demanding an election recount.

I am left with the only rational conclusion I can draw from Senator McCain’s rhetoric. Senator McCain’s rhetoric is just that – vitriolic, grandstanding, divisive, polemic, sound-byte worthy and redundant. At best the right statement but a day late and a dollar’s worth of sincerity short

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