What About Paris? : September 25, 2011 - October 01, 2011 Archives

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September 29, 2011

A Kashmir Hill gem in Forbes: "Hello, Stranger".

The Blowback of our new Face Culture? A gem we missed at first. Kashmir Hill writes full-time about privacy issues and the Internet. See her "Hello, Stranger", on the conveniences, unintended consequences and unsettling future realities of facial recognition software. Based on a recent Carnegie Mellon experiment, it appears in the Technology section of September's issue of Forbes, where Hill serves as a staff writer. Excerpt:

It seems that Aldous Huxley was right and George Orwell was wrong. Ubiquitous surveillance isn't being orchestrated by the governmental Big Brother of 1984 but by advances in technology designed for convenience's sake adopted eagerly by private citizens. [CMU professor] Acquisti calls it the "democratization of surveillance." And it's coming fast. Soon after the riots broke out in London at the beginning of August, a technophile band of vigilantes formed a Google Group to discuss applying the methods pioneered by Acquisti's research team to online photos and videos of rioters, in order to help identify looters for prosecution by law enforcement.

Facial recognition tools identify a person by analyzing dozens of features, such as the length of a forehead and the distance between the eyes and the nose. Google, Facebook and Apple have already made them freely available for people to tag their friends and family in photo albums. But at what point will you have the option to snap a photo of a stranger and then pull up his or her name and whatever information the Internet offers up about them?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2011

Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai (1940-2011)

Wangari Muta Maathai was a Kenyan environmentalist and political activist educated in the United States and Kenya. In the 1970s, she founded the Green Belt Movement, which focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation and women's rights. She was also an elected member of Parliament and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of current Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." See Andrew Revkin's remembrance today at his Dot Earth blog in the New York Times, "A Passing: Wangari Maathai."

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

The Economist: "The Palestinians deserve a state--just as the Israelis do."

See in Saturday's The Economist "Yes to Palestinian Statehood". It begins:

The Palestinians are edging closer to getting a recognised state, at least on paper. Their application to the UN’s Security Council, pencilled in for September 23rd, will be rebuffed by an American veto. But if they then go to the UN General Assembly, which seems likely sooner or later, the Palestinians will win an overwhelming majority.

The “observer” status that would be given to them would be similar to that of the Vatican—a position short of full membership, which can be conferred only by the Security Council. It would not make an immediate difference on the ground but would help the Palestinians on their way to the real thing by giving them a diplomatic fillip. It should be encouraged, for reasons of both principle and practice.

The principle is simple: the Palestinians deserve a state, just as the Israelis do.

The United States, the European Union and the Israeli government have all endorsed a two-state solution. There is broad agreement that the boundary should be based on the pre-1967 one, with land swaps allowing Israel to keep its biggest settlements close to the line, in return for the Palestinians gaining land elsewhere; Jerusalem should be shared; and the Palestinians should give up their claimed right of return to Israel proper.