Is Apple Launching a Pre-emptive Strike Against Free Speech?
Posted: 06/22/11 08:33 AM ET

So you think you control your smartphone? Think again.

Late last week reports uncovered a plan by Apple, manufacturer of the iPhone, to patent technology that can detect when people are using their phone cameras and shut them down.

Apple says this technology was intended to stop people from recording video at live concerts, which should worry the creative commons crowd. But a remote "kill switch" has far more sinister applications in the hands of repressive governments. And it further raises concerns about the power new media companies hold over our right to connect and communicate.

Imagine if Apple's device had been available to the Mubarak regime earlier this year, and Egyptian security forces had deployed it around Tahrir Square to disable cameras just before they sent in their thugs to disperse the crowd.

Would the global outcry that helped drive Mubarak from office have occurred if a blackout of protest videos had prevented us from viewing the crackdown?

What would we know of Neda had it not been for one witness holding up a cellphone?
This is more than speculation. Thousands of people across the Middle East and North Africa have used cellphone cameras to document human rights abuses and share them with millions via social media.

In a February speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton credited the viral spread of a cellphone video depicting the shooting death of a young Iranian woman named Neda for bringing world attention to the human rights abuses of the regime.

What would we know of Neda's shocking death had Iranian security forces disabled that camera?

Social Media's Wild West

But here's the rub. The First Amendment and Article 19 of the U.N.'s Declaration on Human Rights don't really apply to the corporations that build these cellphones and run these social networks. Free speech rules don't apply to Silicon Valley.

And while platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr might enable individual expression more than governments do, many governments are at least accountable by law for protecting your right to speech and assembly.

The social networks are only beholden to their terms of service, which in most cases extend them the power to take down your communications "for any or no reason."

That's why Flickr got away with taking down the photographs and files of Egyptian security officers, which were posted by a local activist wanting to draw attention to their crimes. That's why Amazon.com could kick Wikileaks off its hosting platform after Wikileaks released a series of diplomatic cables that exposed abuses by American agents. And that's why Facebook could shut down the pages of any anonymous political protester who decides to use the network to build a community of like-minded activists.

Rochester: Where using a cellphone camera will get you arrested
"Hosting your political movement on YouTube is a little like trying to hold a rally in a shopping mall. It looks like a public space, but it's not," writes Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center.

"Even if YouTube's rulers take their function as a free speech platform seriously and work to ensure you've got rights to post content, they're a benevolent despot, not a representative government."

A Pre-emptive Strike

What Apple is proposing to develop is worse in many ways. Its cellphone camera kill switch can be used as a pre-emptive strike against free speech.

In its patent application, Apple describes the technology as making it impossible to capture video or pictures at events where cameras and video recorders are prohibited. Your phone determines whether an image includes an infrared beam with encoded data. This data is sent from an emitter that directs the cellphone or a similar device to shut down image capture. Disabling emitters could be mounted on stages, throughout public squares or, conceivably, on police helmets.

While the technology might not be available now, the grave consequences of its use far outweigh any worry Apple and its entertainment industry allies have about video piracy. (More than ten thousand people have already signed a letter imploring Apple CEO Steve Jobs to pull the plug on this technology.)

Smartphones like the iPhone and Droid are becoming extensions of ourselves. They are not simply tools to connect with friends and family, but a means to document the world around us, engage in political issues and organize with others. They literally put the power of the media in our own hands.

Apple's proposed technology would take that power away.

Timothy Karr: Is Apple Launching a Pre-emptive Strike Against Free Speech?

Originally Posted by contracycle

Would the global outcry that helped drive Mubarak from office have occurred if a blackout of protest videos had prevented us from viewing the crackdown?

?! That's rather self-centered. And assuming I am an idiot.

1- I don't need videos to know what occurs in situations such as these. Fuck, I haven't seen any videos and I know what Mubarak regime did... Proof is unnecessary, all you need is a brain and ask yourself: "What would I do in Mubarak's shoes?"

2- The global outcry helped oust Mubarak?! Gettoutahere. Mubarak left coz his ex-generals buddies told to him to get gone or get dead and that they were taking over.

Egypt ain't a democracy and the street protests just gave some cover to some shuffling at the top. Nothing has changed...

Hey, another example. I had never heard of Neda. But I didn't need to to know that the Iranian regime routinely torture and imprison people it doesn't like. Coz that's what dictatorships do when they fail to deliver enough growth and economic benefits to silence the vast majority.

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

2- The global outcry helped oust Mubarak?! Gettoutahere. Mubarak left coz his ex-generals buddies told to him to get gone or get dead and that they were taking over.

Conspiracy theory.

Quote:

Nothing has changed...

Comforting fiction.

To the point: obviously, revolutions etc. happened before there were cameras, but its not true that they play no role. They accelerate and record the events, and in this regard they are important to constructing legitimacy, spreading the message etc. The issue of external support is not trivial for much the same reasons. After all, these people are going through more than just a bunch of physical actions, they are also throwing off the habits of obedience, imagining new possibilities, creating a new world.

dunno but my iphone is broked and only had it a year. I can call people but they can't hear me on other end even tho I can hear them.

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Originally Posted by contracycle

Conspiracy theory. Comforting fiction.

Oh? So you're an Egyptian expert? I just go with mainstream analysis...

CAIRO – Egypt's military rulers have posted a Facebook poll to gauge the popularity of nearly 20 presidential hopefuls, an attempt to show their commitment to a democratic transition in the face of rising criticism of their management of the country.

The governing council's outreach to the public on the political process was a novelty after three decades of authoritarian rule by President Hosni Mubarak, who is accused of overseeing a corrupt system heavily controlled by his family and cronies.

Skeptics, who say the military is just perpetuating the Mubarak regime's tight controls on politics, suspect the poll may just be a way for the generals to promote their favorite candidate.

Quote:

To the point: obviously, revolutions etc. happened before there were cameras, but its not true that they play no role. They accelerate and record the events, and in this regard they are important to constructing legitimacy, spreading the message etc. The issue of external support is not trivial for much the same reasons. After all, these people are going through more than just a bunch of physical actions, they are also throwing off the habits of obedience, imagining new possibilities, creating a new world.

Fair enough. It always help to know you got support...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Oh? So you're an Egyptian expert? I just go with mainstream analysis...

Very few people assert that "nothing has changed". Even the article you've just C&P'd shows a rather novel approach that shows an attempt to pursue some kind of democratic legitimacy. As I've pointed out before, what the prevailing government does is rather less important than what the populace start to demand that they do. And that has changed fundamentally. Revolutions are not singular events, as a rule. You can't understand the Russian Revolution of 1917 without understanding the events of 1905 and the years in between. You can't understand the American Revolution without understanding the English Civil War. We are not at the end of this process in Egypt.

The JSTOR article on which this position is based amounted to little more than asserting that the fuzzywuzzies can't do democracy.

Originally Posted by contracycle

The JSTOR article on which this position is based amounted to little more than asserting that the fuzzywuzzies can't do democracy.

That is the most unkind and so far out explanation I can give to the article - So much so that I suspect it's just an ad hominem or assuming intent...

I am more willing to concede that what we saw/we see in Egypt might not be dissimilar to the 1905 Russian uprising etc that eventually led to a full blown revolution in 1917 i.e. it's the first (or second if you count decolonisation and the Suez affair as first steps) step in a potential process.

All I am saying is that, so far, nothing significant has been achieved except some guys at the top played dancing chairs...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

That is the most unkind and so far out explanation I can give to the article - So much so that I suspect it's just an ad hominem or assuming intent...

It's the impression it created when I read it. As I pointed out then, the argument that the popular uprising was merely a front for military manipulation was plainly implausible.

Quote:

All I am saying is that, so far, nothing significant has been achieved except some guys at the top played dancing chairs...

No, something extremely significant has been achieved - a democratic mandate expressed itself. That is far more important than anything else.

Originally Posted by contracycle

It's the impression it created when I read it. As I pointed out then, the argument that the popular uprising was merely a front for military manipulation was plainly implausible.

That's not what the article is saying - It's saying that the military used an unpredicted (and legitimate) popular uprising as cover for some reshuffling...

It is not suggesting that the pop. was manipulated into rising by some generals...

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It was stratfor, not jstor.

And no, I disagree. When it says that "The crowd in Cairo...was the backdrop to the drama, not the main feature", it is clearly dismissing the legitimacy of the popular movement. When it says that "The demonstrators never called for the downfall of the regime. They demanded that Mubarak step aside. This was the same demand that was being made by many if not most officers in the military months before the crowds gathered in the streets" they are suggesting that the crowd was merely carrying out the policy the military desired. That they are in fact a military catspaw, who don't really know what they themselves want, and who didn't really matter.

I thought it was an extraordinarily ill-informed article, which pretty openly asserts that there was no popular movement as such, just a lot of stooges for the military. It is about as comprehensively wrong as it is possible to be.