Tag
Surveillance
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Undoing Platform Humanitarianism
If humanitarian aid organizations embrace tech, they will only be powering the surveillance empire opposed to their goals.
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Tsuris, FREEDOM, and Guantanamo Bay
Wherever secrecy abrades democracy, tragicomedy builds up. It’s cultural nacre: a way of processing with less pain the absurdist bent in national security. This May, Congress used a chunk of its working hours to debate renewing Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, a provision the Obama administration had interpreted to allow the bulk collection…
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Drone Poems
The protests of Hong Kong’s 2014 “Umbrella Revolution” were marked in early days by the intermittent appearance of a helicopter drone flying high above the crowds, looking rather like a pizza box with propellers. I heard a moment’s nervous murmuring from the crowd each time it went up. But the drone’s LEDs were swirling red…
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Terms of Service
In a comprehensive survey of how technological advances will “creep” into everyday life, computer expert and technologist Thomas Keenan guides the reader through a slew of increasingly ubiquitous and invasive technologies. How do fellow citizens feel about the prospect of airport security spraying you with “a fine mist” of GPS nanoparticles in the name of…
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Can Drones Have Ethics?
In this interview, Claire Richard and media studies professor Peter Asaro discuss the history of drone warfare and the troubling proliferation of new technologies that can surveil and kill from a distance. While we’re plenty familiar with drones thanks to the War on Terror, Asaro details the strategic rationale behind their use, along with the…
