Liminal states

Written jointly with Ronit Aviva Dancis

“Evan Bayh for Democratic VP Nominee” on Intrade Prediction Market

The last time we heard from Senator Evan Bayh was early July when he voted with the Republicans against all three amendments to strip telecom immunity from the FISA legislation. A month later, here was Max Bernstein’s Can Progressives Derail Evan Bayh’s VP Train via Facebook? kicking things off on Max and the Marginalized (“a band and a blog”):

At about 2am last night after a gig in Austin, we launched 100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh for VP on Facebook. We have about 99,000 to go but we are growing at the rate of about 100 names per hour now.

FISA isn’t Bayh’s only issue in progressives’ eyes, of course; there’s also a few other minor matters, like him having co-sponsored the Iraq War Resolution, and the way his nomination would clash with Obama’s message of “change” (a point Mike Lux makes well in Opposing Bayh for VP) . So Max’ call struck a chord.

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The first of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference.

Vegas, baby!

Continuing my tradition, I was in Las Vegas for Black Hat but didn’t attend the conference proper. My brother was able to come up from LA to meet me, so I decided to hang out with him instead — Vegas, baby!

This meant my Black Hat “attendance” was mostly networking at a couple of parties. Which certainly gives an interesting perspective on the conference ... in these more social settings, discussions are wide-ranging and informal, and there are opportunities for all kinds of different connections. Sites like Infoworld, Wired’sThreat Level , and Microsoft’s Ecostrat blog have great coverage of what happened during the sessions at Black Hat and Defcon, and are well worth checking out. Here’s my idiosyncratic view.

Kevin McLaughlin’s Learn From Lincoln, Says U.S. Cyber Chief on ChannelWeb is a particularly interesting lens for Black Hat, describing a talk by Rod Beckstrom (Director of the National Cyber Security Center in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security).

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DRAFT!

Revised version posted at Pam’s House Blend and (under a different title, and minus the introduction ) Open Left.

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DRAFT! Please see the revised version on OpenLeft.

“We’ve got more than a million volunteers on my.barackobama.com. They’ve planned more than 70,000 offline events through the system, made millions of phone calls from home, and formed thousands of grassroots advocacy groups, including one you might have heard about recently.”

— Barack Obama, Netroots Nation video

Hey! That’s us! 🙂

There’s a lot of energy in the Get FISA Right group these days. The getFISAright.net website is the best jumping-off place to find out what’s going on, and the Strategy page on the wiki gives a big-picture overview. It’s all interesting, it’s all timely … and I’m going to ignore most of it in this post and focus on the “Don’t let our Constitution die” video.

A day or two before the July 9 Senate vote, some folks from LA-based startup SaysMe.tv approached us with an intriguing suggestion: would we be interested in working with them to get ads about FISA on cable TV? SaysMe’s community-funded ad model, where people can pay for a single placement of ads in various markets, seems a great match for our grassroots style. And the timing’s perfect — it’s a great chance to spread the word that while we’ve lost a battle, the fight to roll back government surveillance and restore the rule of law isn’t over yet.

The video came together remarkably quickly; we revised the script collaboratively on the wiki and message board and email and IM, getting input from over 20 people. Cognitive diversity in action: we had lawyers, journalists, techies, ad execs, marketing people, a professional comedian, and plenty of “just plain folks”, and virtually every piece of input was valuable.

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Second draft, posted on OpenLeft with a different poll.

the version on OpenLeft continues to evolve

please link and comment there rather than here.

Originally posted July 17; revised July 18-19.

We’re now at the midpoint of our first, more-leisurely-than-anticipated mutual guest blogging series. Thanks to Melissa, Sara, Pam, and rikyrah for their time, energy, and extraordinary posts. In retrospect, our original plan of getting all the posts on OpenLeft and the mutual posts on the guest bloggers’ blogs all in one week was a little over-ambitious. Oh well, live and learn.

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Wow, what a weekend. Friday, the Get FISA Right campaign was on CNN a couple of times (including a brief clip by me on American Morning that also got picked up internationally and a great discussion of Obama & Get FISA Right Activism by Ari Melber on CNN headline news where he challenged the left/right media narrative) and in TIME magazine. “That’s mainstream media, right?” I kept asking people; everybody reassured me the answer is yes. Over the weekend Laura Flanders talked with me and Ari on Radio Nation; and I heard we were discussed on Meet the Press today. Wow. Or did I say that already?

The overall situation is still what I described in my OpenLeft diary on Friday: now what? I’ve got my opinions of course; so do others. The discussion process over the next few weeks as we decide should be really interesting. See the Vision of the future thread on the discussion board for more, including my summary of the discussion so far and current thinking — and add your thoughts in as well.

There’s lots of other great stuff on the discussion boards, including planning for an organized attempt to influence the platform, meetups, and other activism ideas that may or may not pan out. There’s also a thread about the discussion of the direction of the email list, and that’s where Clay Shirky comes in. If you haven’t read his essay A group is its own worst enemy, now would be a very good time.

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It’s been a wild few days with the Get FISA Right activism campaign. Our bare-bones media room is the best place to get a quick summary of all the stuff going on; here are a few hightlights: over 22,000 members in the myBO group, and 1700+ on Facebook; we delivered our response and our asks to Obama’s Senate office today (and of course have emailed them as well); and much much more.

We’ve gotten tons of coverage, including an article featuring me by Sarah Lai Stirland on Wired’s Threat Level blog, a call to action and video by Daniel Ellsberg on antiwar.com, and an article by Ari Melber in The Nation that puts this in the context of net movements in general. Will it be enough?

With the vote tomorrow, it’s time for a final push. Announcing: a night of Facebook action

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I remember hearing Zack Rosen of CivicSpace starting his talk about the team that put together the Katrina people finder by saying “one of the first things we did was set up a wiki” and it really struck a chord.

As an effort like Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right gets up and going, there’s a huge amount of information flying by in email (I think it peaked at well over 50 messages/hour), and new people constantly joining who need to get up to speed. Collecting information on a web site makes everybody more effective … and doing it on a wiki means that lots of people can contribute, not just me.

I had just started looking at Seattle-based Wetpaint* for another project, and it seemed like a good match for this: decent site templates, an easy-to-use editor, and the ability to put discussion threads on each page. So I figured it was worth trying.

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Update, June 14: posted on OpenLeft.

Update, June 21: first round on track for week of June 30!

Thanks to all for the feedback and review!

We propose that OpenLeft feature 5-7 guest bloggers each week, prioritizing diverse voices and perspectives not usually heard on the front page. OpenLeft front page posters will reciprocate, by blogging on the guests’ sites, and the combination will (with luck) create a temporary hub in the progressive blogosphere. The result is improved mutual understanding, links with other tightly-connected networks, and a base for more collaborative and effective strategic actions.

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Part 2 of a series; please see CFP08: trip report for part 1

If the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy community wrote a letter to the next President of the United States about our priorities for technology policy, what would we say — and how would we get him or her to read it?

There’s only one way to find out.

— from the original, now spam-infested, announcement

At the end of the opening plenary session, I followed up a question from Linda Misek-Falkoff (“Respectful interfaces”) by building on her point about accessibility and asking how it was possible for all of us to get involved in a way that helps broaden the dialogue about technology policy to include everybody, not just the voices that are usually heard. Chuck and Danny both agreed with the goal and thought that the CFP community was well-positioned to help here: paraphrasing, they said “build it, and if they come we’ll listen”.

Well then.

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Part 1 of a series

Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008 ended with me presenting Dear Potus 08 and circulating the letter to the presidential candidates for signatures, and then a closing plenary by Clay Shirky (notes below). It was exhiliarating as always, and I’m now simultaneously exhausting, revved up, and suffering from jet lag. So I figured I’d blog about it.

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CFP2008 traditionally starts off with a day of tutorials.

I was on a panel organized by Lillie Coney of EPIC on E-Deceptive Campaign Practices: “Elections 2.0″, which was extremely interesting; I discussed examples of, and responses to, e-deception based on my activism experiences this election season, much of which I’ve blogged about here already.

Tova Wang of Common Cause moderated, and the other panelists included John Phillips of Aristotle, Jenigh J. Garrett of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Ruchi Bhorwmik of Senator Barack Obama’s office, talking about the legislation he’s introduced banning certain deceptive campaign practices relating to knowingly and intentionally spreading false information about voting times and locations. The audience was extremely involved — and knowledgable — and the conversations during the breaks were great as well. Aldon Hynes already has an interesting followup post in Project VoteProtector on his blog Orient House.

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