[ga] [Fwd: Re: [A2k] Web 2.0: Internet too dangerous for normal people]

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

  FYI and well worth the reading...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [A2k] Web 2.0: Internet too dangerous for normal people
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:49:35 -0700
From: "Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Organization: IDNS and Spokesman for INEGroup
To: Paul Lehto <lehto.paul@xxxxxxxxx>
CC: Meredith Filak <meredith.filak@xxxxxxxxx>,A2k
<a2k@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,Stephen Northcutt <stephen@xxxxxxxx>, Alan
Paller <apaller@xxxxxxxx>
References:
<49D42E51.8AE971FB@xxxxxxxxxxxxx><9755703a0904030813m75111d63g788f6c69b7a6867e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx><49D57C42.B2BD44FD@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<76f819dd0904040905l930451byff1c8034d656ed86@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Paul and all,

  Well said and well done Paul, very well done indeed, IMO!
And thank you!

Paul Lehto wrote:

> Access v Ownership: An Issue Raised by Web 2.0 in Kindle and in Elections Too.
>
> by Paul R. Lehto, J.D.
> (Presently I'm an election law scholar, formerly an election law,
> consumer protection and business law lawyer for over a dozen years)
>
> Technology in the form of digital media (think of Kindle e-books as
> one such example) substitutes in the usual case ACCESS (in the form of
> a license to view information and use it as defined by the contractual
> terms of the license) for the OWNERSHIP of a paper-based book, with
> full(er) rights excepting those reserved by copyright.)
>
> Make no mistake, if one is blind for example, as one of my best
> friends is, then access alone is almost infinitely better than the
> status quo of nothing at all.
>
> The problem arises when the same concepts applicable to vindicate
> basic rights of the disabled are applied to all, often under a claim
> of Equality (yet the abled and the dis-abled, are, by self-definition,
> NOT similarly or equally situated, -- the dis-abled require and are
> entitled to reasonable accommodation such as under the ADA in the form
> of being treated differently somewhat so that they can exercise the
> same rights such as employment, voting, etc.)  Unfortunately, this
> "one size fits all" concept of Equality has been incorporated into the
> 2002 Help America Vote Act which contains language requiring the
> disabled, citing especially the blind as an example, to be treated "in
> the same manner as" other voters.   This has pushed America toward a
> situation where a technological interface is placed either between the
> voter and their ballot which they never see even if sighted (the touch
> screen voting machine) or between the voter/public and the vote COUNTS
> which the public can never see or verify (optical scanning systems of
> voter-marked paper ballots).
>
> Both optical scanning of voter-marked ballots and touch screen voting
> have created de facto concealed secret vote counts creating dubious
> election results in all cases.  This is true because the conclusions
> of the process (election results) are reported and disclosed but the
> underlying data is virtually never disclosed or transparent, and is
> absolutely never transparent in a **timely** manner given that
> recounts or "audits" happen weeks or months later invariably raising
> questions about what happened to the ballot chain of custody in the
> mean time, and making challenges to elections either untimely or
> necessarily based on incomplete data.
>
> As applied to voting this has important implications for "open source"
> solutions as well. "Open source" is unworkable (unlike some other
> contexts) for this fundamental reason:  Anyone who is passionate about
> any important political issue, or for controlling billions or
> trillions of dollars in government budgets, or perhaps for controlling
> the world's sole military superpower and richest nation, can
> economically justify HUGE investment in cheating or rigging the
> process to obtain this money or power, while the open source
> "checkers" are almost invariably volunteers, and even if not
> volunteers, simply can't justify the same level of investment because
> there's no gain to the open source checkers like there is for those
> who wish to remain in power or obtain power unlawfully.   It's like
> the NY Yankees with their huge budget playing the Little League world
> champions or, at best, some semi-professional baseball team.  It's
> simply no match.
>
> Solution:  In selecting voting systems, it's not like going to Best
> Buy and selecting the best tech features and upgradeability, etc., but
> instead we are selecting  a system that serves the values of
> DEMOCRACY, not the values of technology, business, or efficiency. As
> Truman said, "If you want efficiency, you'll get a dictatorship."
>
> We need our elections to work the most at the very point when
> corruption is highest and we need to "kick the bums out."  This is the
> essense of self-government and the essence of the inalienable right to
> "alter or abolish" the government under the Declaration of
> Independence.  The very reason, says the declaration of independence,
> for forming governments in the first place is to GUARANTEE these
> rights, not to leave them utterly dubious and questionable at best.
>
> Transparency of vote counts (private voting, public counts) is of
> utmost importance as it is the primary if not exclusive means of
> accountability and self-government.  But even transparency, alone, is
> just information, and that information is useful for and justified for
> an even higher value:  the exercise of the control necessary for
> self-government (i.e. a republic or democracy) to be more than a
> theatrical illusion.  WIthout such control over elections, our freedom
> is an illusion.  Outside the context of voting as We the People, we
> are mere subjects of the law and if we enjoy any rights at all they
> are not rights but mere extended privileges granted for the time being
> by whoever truly is sovereign and in ultimate charge of the country.
> Outside of voting we have to obey the law whether we know it or not,
> and law is force composed of civil or criminal penalties, so as
> citizens or subjects of the law, we are no different than the citizens
> of gentle dictatorships.
>
> Thus, the guaranteed ability to "kick the bums out" to use the
> vernacular for "alter or abolish" is the most important
> transparency/control possible.  EVERY SINGLE ISSUE we may contact
> congress on is rendered meaningless or toothless unless it is backed
> up by the implied threat that Congress being too out of touch with the
> people and/or the individual voter will result in a penalty being
> assessed at election time.
>
> Here's a very important article that recently appeared in the
> Christian Science monitor that, without specifically discussing
> elections, makes some great additional points about the differences
> between mere "access" and ownership of information.
>
> Speaking of ownership, the various corporations whose software runs
> 97% of all vote counts in this country LITERALLY claim to own the
> heart of democracy, the vote counts themselves, as their private
> intellectual property in the form of "trade secrecy" claims.  Public
> elections are now private property, and the radical extent to which
> public elections have been privatized can not be fully appreciated
> until one has, as I have, sued in state and congressional election
> contests for recounts or for access to information and had that
> utterly denied in the most corrupt elections.
>
> Where recounts proceed, as in Ohio's 2004 presidential election, we've
> seen 2 criminal convictions in Cuyahoga county (a Dem County!) for
> rigging the recount to come out correctly so the officials in question
> don't get embarrassed ala Florida 2000.  This is a motivation deeper
> than mere partisanship.
>
> Consequently, we must get it right on election night.  The cases where
> recounts or audits truly correct an incorrect election night count are
> rare, and only happen in relatively or completely non-corrupt
> jurisdictions.  They can not and do not work in places like San Diego
> or Kentucky (where I've sued as lead counsel) nor do they work in ANY
> jurisdiction to remove the incumbent party from power.  The only two
> examples of recounts working have kept the incumbent party in power
> (Gregoire in WA State in 2004, which I did a scientific study on and
> lived there at the time, and POSSIBLY Franken in MN in 2008-09).
>
> In the case of elections, even 100% "access" to information AFTER THE
> ELECTION is nearly guaranteed to not be timely enough to make a
> difference.  In Kentucky for example, the statute of limitations for
> election challenges is only 10 days after the election, while the
> DOJ's chief of Election Crimes Division says flat out in a manual that
> it takes at least 60 days to investigate and charge an election crime
> in the days of electronic voting (by way of explaning to election
> officials why they must preserve all records for 22 months or more).
> Preservation and ultimate access to information, as applied to
> elections, may give us 'information' but it doesn't give us what is
> more important than transparency or access, and that is CONTROL and
> accountability of our government.
>
> I often compare transparency/access to having a clean windshield and
> windows on one's car (an important thing) to get all the information
> needed for intelligent operation.  But without the powers of the
> steering wheel, the gas pedal, the brakes and the ability to timely
> act, transparency alone is equivalent to the nightmare of being stuck
> on a railroad track and seeing with 100% transparency the oncoming
> freight train.  WIthout control of our car, or our elections, it would
> not be entirely irrational to wish for no transparency at all, and a
> quick, painless death, for ourselves individually in the case of the
> train, and for our democracy, in the case of elections we can't
> control.
>
> The solution, as always, is to always remember the fundamental
> principles of our system of self-government by We the People and keep
> those as our guidestars.  WIthout these guidestars, we are lost out at
> sea, without a compass or astrolabe and subject to being buffeted by
> every wind and breeze that comes along.   Even if we never perfectly
> achieve Freedom, Equality and Democracy of self-government, if we stop
> checking in with these guidestars at any time, we are then truly lost.
>
> Paul R, Lehto, J.D.
>
> (CS Monitor article link and excerpt below, contrasting access with
> ownership, the very concept above that applies in slightly different
> form to elections.  In any case, we are all united in the realization
> that without transparency there's no accountability even possible, but
> more than information is needed for consequences to attach to learning
> information that exposes wrongdoing of any kind....)
>
> http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0318/p09s01-coop.html
>
> [...] Yet that's just what millions of Americans are doing
> every day when they read "books" on Kindle, Amazon's e-
> reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies,
> we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of
> its twisted sister, access.
>
> Web 2.0 and its culture of collaboration supposedly
> unleashed a sharing society. But we can share only what
> we own. And as more and more content gets digitized,
> commercialized, and monopolized, our cultural integrity
> is threatened. The free and balanced flow of
> information that gives shape to democratic society is
> jeopardized.
> [...]
> But [access] comes with restrictions: You can't resell or
> share your books - because you don't own them. You can
> download only from Amazon's store, making it difficult
> to read anything that is not routed through Amazon
> first. You're not buying a book; you're buying access
> to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a
> library, because there is no public investment. It's
> like taking an interest-only mortgage out on
> intellectual property.
>
> [...]
> Why is this important? Because Kindle is the kind of
> technology that challenges media freedom and restricts
> media pluralism. It exacerbates what historian William
> Leach calls "the landscape of the temporary": a hyper
> mobile and rootless society that prefers access to
> ownership. Such a society is vulnerable to the dangers
> of selective censorship and control.
>
> [...]
> Emily Walshe is a librarian and professor at Long
> Island University in New York.
>
> -------------------------
>
> --
> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
> P.O. Box #1
> Ishpeming, MI  49849
> lehto.paul@xxxxxxxxx
> 906-204-2333
> 309-413-6541 fax

Regards,

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