Month: December 2009

Photojournalism mistaken for terrorism, yet again

I rarely blog from a press release like this one but the subject matter is too important to quietly let go and it’s no stranger to regular readers of my blog.

A Bindmans press release details the plight of Ms. Jess Hurd, a photojournalist in the UK; it does not say what city she calls home, though this incident occurred in London.

According to the press release, Jess was covering a wedding in the London Docklands area when officers questioned her as to what she was doing. Even after offering her press card to confirm she was a legitimate journalist, Jess saw no immediate relief from the harassment.

As part of their interrogation, the officers viewed all of Jess’s footage and she was in fear that the officers might even decide to erase (“wipe” in British English) all of it. And I might add, quite rightfully so; even though even in the UK the officers do not have the authority to do this, this has happened elsewhere, particularly in parts of the US, and the UK’s “counterterrorism” laws are draconian by comparison.

In fact, Jess was told she would not be able to use some of her footage (perhaps even all of it) due to a copyright claim by either the officer individually or by the Metropolitan Police press office. This has to be one of the most ludicrous things I have ever run across, even by UK standards. (For the new people, I’m no huge fan of the UK government, and the archives on past rants of UK government misdeeds demonstrate that quite well.)

As for the resolution, I quote part of the press release, dealing with the remedies sought, and a quote from the National Union of Journalists legal officer who has some choice words about the officers involved:

What Ms Hurd seeks

Ms Hurd is seeking a full apology, confirmation that the officers involved have received training in relation to the appropriate use of S44 of the Terrorism Act and the responsibilities set out in the Association of Chief Police Officers (‘ACPO’) Police Media Guidelines (‘the Guidelines’), which are in force nationally, as well as any other measures considered appropriate given the many breaches of the Standards of Professional Behaviour, The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2008 arising from the treatment she has received.

Ms Hurd’s lawyer, instructed by the NUJ, Ms Chez Cotton, Head of the Police Misconduct Department at leading London law firm Bindmans LLP said:

“The police appear to have been interested in Ms Hurd only because she was filming and used S44 of the Terrorism Act where suspicion is not necessary to stop and search her, in full knowledge that she was a photojournalist. Ms Hurd had voluntarily explained her presence and provided identification that only accredited members of the press carry, which it is agreed that police forces nationally will recognise. Despite this, her footage was viewed for the most spurious of reasons and counter to basic principles of a free press. A Joint Committee for Human Rights report of July 2009 stated, ‘…we deplore the obvious overuse of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in recent years’. The treatment of Ms Hurd is a stark example of such misuse of S44 and made all the more serious because officers were fully aware of the status of Ms Hurd as an accredited photojournalist professionally engaged at the time of the use of the controversial provision.”

NUJ Legal Officer, Roy Mincoff said:

“It appears that for no good reason Jess Hurd was treated, and continued to be treated, as if she were a suspected terrorist. The NUJ considers The Police’s apparent failure to recognise the PressCard, and ignorance of ACPO Guidelines and lack of knowledge of the law to be unacceptable. We welcome more recent ACPO advice as to the role of the media and how legislation should be applied, and Ministerial assurances that anti-terrorism legislation must only be used for that purpose, given after considerable and continuous efforts by the NUJ to achieve that progress.

Now these issues must be addressed in practice by the Police.

We will be keeping very close sight of this and take such action as necessary should further breaches occur.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a flagrant mockery of justice and fairness. I have said this before, but I’ll say it again: a terrorist will not use the same types of video or photo gear that a professional journalist would use. A point-and-shoot similar to my Nikon Coolpix L18 (which is maybe a tad bigger than my wallet) would definitely get “surveillance quality” pictures and draw less attention than even an entry-level DSLR. Heck, the Coolpix L18 and most similar compact cameras technically do video as well (that’s not their primarily designed purpose of course, but the feature is present).

The risks versus the improvements of GPS-based navigation

I found this recently while reading Risks Forum Digest, issue 25.86, to which I have been a subscriber in some form for most of a decade (I used to read via the comp.risks newsgroup, but haven’t bothered with Usenet in some time). This particular item was submitted by Jerry Leichter and is a well-written defense of GPS technology. I thought I’d share some of it and add some of my thoughts on the matter as well, being a technology admirer myself.

Subject: Re: The Joy of satellite navigation failures

In RISKS-25.85, Steve Loughran complains specifically about an ad in which a car will use GPS “to get you home” – and more generally about over-reliance on GPS.

I find myself increasingly an old curmudgeon myself, and I’m bothered by the young whippersnappers who couldn’t read a map to find their way down a midwestern plains highway – dead straight and level as far as the eye can see in both directions.

And I’m sure the new old curmudgeons of 2029 will probably find themselves equally bothered by the young whippersnappers that probably couldn’t operate an “old school GPS” to save their lives. I dare not speculate on what technological advances will come our way in the next two decades. Such is the advance of technology; I remember taking a typing class with a real typewriter in high school, after our one required semester of “computer literacy” in middle school. (In a way I am glad that typewriters are still being made as there are uses for them. But they are nothing like the typewriters of even 1989.)

But … let’s be a bit objective here. How accurate were paper maps? The period in which, even in the US and Western Europe, you could rely on maps to be more than approximations doesn’t date back much more then 50 years or so. (…) Are GPS maps up to date? How about the paper maps that used to fill glove boxes?

There are cases where GPS maps won’t be as up to date; see an article at gpsreview.net. However errors in paper maps can be just as bad, and in some cases even worse.

Our local cartography company, Key Maps, is the “gold standard” of local maps, and I learned from my former experience as a courier that frequently the maps for surrounding counties (in addition to the Houston-Harris County map, they also publish editions for Brazoria & Galveston County, Montgomery County, and Fort Bend County) contain errors and inaccuracies or at the very least didn’t match what the city or county actually posted on the road signs (or in at least one case when I ran a delivery to an unincorporated part of Brazoria County, whether a sign was posted to identify the road at all).

Even national cartographers aren’t immune from slip-ups. If nothing else, toll roads that have had tolls removed may still be listed as toll roads for years after the removal.

Accurate road markers are of roughly the same vintage – and for historical reasons are often difficult to use for navigation. When I drove in England about 20 years ago, most road signs except on the largest roads (a) did not show you the compass direction; (b) named the next town down the road, not some larger city you might have heard of beyond that. One wrong turn and you could go many miles the wrong way without knowing it. (I did!)

Indeed, this is a rather large risk in and of itself, but I’d say this is more of the fault of the local road authorities for not adopting a system of control cities in the fashion of the US. For the non-roadgeeks, a control city is one posted on the road signs to indicate where a highway goes, and is usually but not always a major city. (As an example, from Houston, the nearest control cities are San Antonio (I-10 west), Austin (US 290), Victoria (US 59 south), Galveston (I-45 south), Beaumont (I-10 east), Dallas (I-45 north), and Cleveland (US 59 north; note this is the small town past Kingwood, not the one in Ohio). Houston itself is the control city for destinations going the other direction from the aforementioned control cities.)

Of course, the compass directions posted on road signs are often the subject of jokes when a road that is posted “south” actually runs north from the sign, but that’s another rant for another day.

The fact is, GPS’s get it right most of the time. They are much easier to use, much more reliable (when you consider the entire system, including the inexperienced map reader), much more accurate than any system we had before. People aren’t going back, short of some kind of collapse that renders the systems inoperable. There’s not much point in complaining.

Indeed, I would not voluntarily quit using a GPS unit if I had one. I found myself wishing for a GPS at several points during my time as a courier, especially going outside the area covered by the Houston-Harris County Key Map.

Do inappropriately used or badly designed GPS’s cause problems? Sure, but just how new are those? People blindly followed maps, too – sometimes because the maps were wrong or simply omitted some information like “low bridge” (frankly, I’ve never seen a consumer road map with that piece of information on it, any more than consumer GPS’s inappropriately used by truckers show this information), sometimes because most people never learned how to read more than the basic information from a map.

I remember we were required to learn map reading in school, I think as part of our social studies classes. Really, to think about it in depth, both how to read a road map and use a GPS should be taught as part of driver’s education. (Make no mistake about it, we will have paper maps for some time yet to come.) This would help the chaos currently prevalent on the roads more than one might otherwise think.

We can certainly make the current systems better – and we are. But consider: Suppose you were driving somewhere unfamiliar, in a heavy thunderstorm, using your GPS – and I suddenly took it away from you and handed you some 4-year-old ratty, disintegrating map out of the glove box. Would you think I’d improved things for you?

And this is the point that many people miss when they choose not to trust a GPS and rely instead on paper maps or (sometimes) printouts or directions from an online mapping service such as Mapquest or Google Maps. Granted, there are cases where the GPS gets it horribly wrong, but overall it’s an improvement over the “old school” method of paper maps.

A new take on “motivation”

I haven’t done anything sports related for a while. This story is interesting not for what happened but for the athlete’s take on the event that transpired.

ESPN reports on Adalius Thomas of the New England Patriots being benched for speaking about about his team disciplining him for being late to a team meeting:

New England Patriots outside linebacker Adalius Thomas, who was disciplined for being late for a team meeting earlier this week and spoke out about it, was benched for Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers.

Apparently, his tardiness was due to the weather. At least that’s what Adailus told ESPN; while he was at it he threw in some more colorful commentary:

“That’s one thing about Mother Nature, you can’t control that. You can’t run people over getting to work… It’s not the Jetsons, I can’t jump up and just fly. What the heck am I supposed to do?”

And then later:

“Sending somebody home, that’s like, ‘He’s expelled, come back and make good grades.’ Get that [expletive] out of here. That’s ridiculous. Motivation?”

In summary, Adailus’s concern is with the assumption that his tardiness or absence was unexcused or unexcusable. It is certainly credible to me that the commute to the practice facility might involve a bit of travel through snow, this being the greater Boston area we’re talking about. (That excuse normally woudln’t fly in, say, Houston.)

While Bill Belichick has every right to run his team the way he sees fit, I have to question the wisdom of just sending players home due to tardiness that is not their fault. It’s just going to take a few minutes extra for the players to arrive when it’s snowing.

Really, it’s the same as any other job. That’s something the football-watching public forgets, way too often. I think most employers would be much more understanding and fair about weather-related tardiness.

“Patently devoid of taste and thought” – a refutation of bad advice

Every once in a while, advice is given that is so patently devoid of taste and thought that I just can’t let it go unchallenged. Well, yesterday morning was that once in a while and a post to the Houston Press Hair Balls blog is the advice in question.

The author is one Fayza Elmostehi, who some of you may have heard of before and may even have met. I only mention her name here because I have a few vague ideas why she would give such incredibly thoughtless advice. I’m not going to go into details on that, this isn’t a personal attack.

Unfortunately, my refutation of this article needs to be so complete that I will probably wind up quoting almost the entire thing, as much as I prefer not to do so. And yes, that means this post will be pretty damned long. I am making a slight edit or two because there are words I still don’t want to publish in my blogs even if I have no problem putting them in my Twitter stream and elsewhere. They are the same words you really can’t say on TV or radio (by which I mean the public airwaves).

Let’s start at the beginning:

It’s over. And you know it. But you don’t wanna deal with the fiery end. You’re a chicken. You’re a coward. And you are simply too much of a humanitarian to go breakin’ any hearts. Okay, that last one was a lie.

My thoughts: If one is too chicken or too cowardly to deal with breakups properly, by which I mean face-to-face, then one have no business dating or at the very least no business letting things get to the “in a relationship” stage.

So, you’ve already decided that you’re gonna be [a jerk] about it. You’re going to ditch your jilted Juliet without a lick of real-time contact. We say, if you’re gonna do it up, you might as well do it up right. Why be a Peter when you can be a Dick?

Don’t we have enough jerks in this world? We wonder why there’s so much war, so much violence, so much hate. Men making stereotypical degrading remarks about women. Women making stereotypical degrading remarks about men. And then we get people writing garbage like this, glamorizing the entire lifestyle of being mean, being a jerk, treating others like they are disposable. Am I the only one that makes any connection between these?

Start at the heart. Pick the initial kicking-your-[rear-end]-to-the-curb wound wide open with a text message. Be blunt or be vague, but either way, keep your purpose at the forefront. “I need to tell you something” goes just as far “It’s over, [dog].” Either way, you’re going to start a digital dialog.

If you need to tell me something, pick up the phone. Often, I will directly respond to a text message with a voice phone call. I have done it before.

One cannot rely on a text message to always make it to its destination. I have had text messages go missing before.

Go cold turkey. You must beware – your phone may ring. Under no circumstances are you to answer it. Turn off the ringer, weakling. So he’s banging down your front door? Engross yourself in the History Channel; you’re not home, dammit. Communicate the break-up exclusively via digital means, or there will be no interaction at all. Them’s the breaks.

There are people out there (particularly men) who are very capable of escalating this type of non-contact to a level beyond what many people (usually women) can handle. Unless you’re ready to change your phone number or move at a moment’s notice, this is a great way to risk becoming a statistic.

So don’t do it.

Take matters into your own hands. Obviously, you must change your Facebook relationship status from “In a Relationship” to “Single.” Immediately. Bonus points if yours said, “In a Relationship with Blake Brown,” and this is the first Blake Brown’s heard of your separation.

This is a great way to get a voicemail or three saying “what the (beep) is this?” Without, of course, the beep. The advice as given goes below every standard of human decency I have known about.

And Ms. Elmostehi has the nerve to use the phrase “bonus points” in reference to this. More like a great way to trigger the tilt switch. Except people aren’t pinball machines; look up the phrase “going on tilt” as it pertains to poker players. It’s not something one should normally do in this type of volatile situation.

You are then obligated to plaster your newfound singletondom all over your status updates for Zuckerbergland – especially your ex and any fresh, untapped meat – to see. Extra credit if you move straight from Paramour #1 to Paramour #2 without missing a beat – and updating your relationship status to reflect it.

This type of behavior is so devoid of scruples I honestly expect Facebook to disallow it via technical means in the next couple of years, if not the next few months. (Hey, if Facebook can totally jack with privacy settings, there’s no reason they can’t fix this loophole big enough to drive a truck through.) I would say a minimum of 24 hours should be allowed to pass before going “in a relationship” to “single” back to “in a relationship” again, possibly even longer if it used to be “engaged to” or “married to.”

Again, doing this without having the decency to tell the former partner it’s over is playing with fire; don’t get burned.

No blow is a low-blow. Ready to be unforgiven? Cite his teeny, lopsided penis as the reason for your breakup on Twitter. Tweet about how she uses abortion as a method of birth control. There’s nothing that seals the deal quite like the public revelation of deep, dark, horrifying secrets. Bonus round: Blog about Romeo’s shortcomings between the sheets, replete with video uploaded to YouTube. Score!

Even if the rest of this is technically legal, this is a recipe for a slander or libel suit just waiting to happen. For those with no assets, sure, post and tweet away about lacking genitalia or lies about birth control methods.

I’m pretty sure the video bit is actually a criminal violation of the law in Texas at least. I know men have gotten in trouble for this before; I would certainly like to think at least this portion of the law would be applied equally to both genders.

Posts on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs can be archived by others long after the originals are deleted. I recall an instance where someone once sent me a direct message on Twitter, and then conveniently deleted it months later when it might be called into question. (It’s understandable why the sender would do this: the text referred to the sender’s sister as a dog, using the AKC-proper but somewhat impolite term for same.) I had already had the original e-mailed to me, still archived with the rest of my e-mails.

That’s assuming your partner is willing to play by the law, of course. For those that choose to follow Ms. Elmostehi’s advice anyway, it’s a good idea to make sure your life and health insurance are paid up, and be sure there are people that care about you enough to know if you go “missing” whether or not to suspect foul play.

It’s not that I’m one of these people, mind you. But the original article is almost better entitled “How To Risk Violence or a Lawsuit While Breaking Up.” If it’s humor, it’s a very poor example of it; I’m sure as hell not laughing. I believe a reasonable person would take this as real advice, and it is for that reason I’m writing a refutation post to state it should not be followed.

Breaking up is part of romance and dating. The only time it is reasonable to avoid direct face-to-face contact is when threats of physical violence enter the situation. There are several good dating advice Web sites out there and I’m not going to claim to be an expert on the subject because I’m not. Believe me, at times I wish I was. I just know how some people would react to some of these things, and I just don’t want to see anyone get hurt that doesn’t deserve it.

Summary: Too chicken to break up right? Too chicken to date.

The Houston Press is normally a great publication and most of what is published there is quality writing. This isn’t it. Shame on the Houston Press, and shame on Fayza Elmostehi. I hope she or her editor finds the will to issue a retraction.

Out in the cold on December 17

An entry on Monica Helms’ blog
remembers and laments two fine human beings who perished in part
due to cruel and thoughtless homeless shelter management. The
anniversary of the deaths of both is rapidly approaching: December
17.

On 2008 December 17, it was Jennifer Gale, the frequent political
candidate of Austin, Texas. She was found on the streets and
presumed to have died while sleeping on a bench. Why was Jennifer
sleeping on a bench when there was a women’s shelter run by the
Salvation Army in Austin? Therein lies the problem: that shelter
refused to admit her because she was a transsexual; to gain entry
to a shelter, Jennifer would have to use her old male name and
dress like a man, a complete and total assault on her dignity.
This, despite the fact Austin’s laws prohibit housing and public
accomodation discrimination based on many criteria including
“gender identity.”

On 2002 December 17, a passer-by in Atlanta, Georgia, found Alice
Johnston dead. Unlike Jennifer, Alice didn’t wait to quietly die in
the cold; she shot herself in the head. Her final e-mail from her
Yahoo account read simply: “I will soon be homeless. Since women’s
shelters in Atlanta don’t take transsexuals, I’m a goner.” Like
Austin, Atlanta’s laws also included the same anti-discrimination
ordinance, yet Alice’s inquiry to every women’s shelter in Atlanta
all met with immediate rejection once Alice, being as honest and
transparent as one could reasonably expect, told them about her
transgender situation.

When an issue such as transgender status is used to treat someone
as less than human, it is a tragedy. It is the same misguided logic
used by Hitler at the Nazi concentration camps, and it is just as
wrong today as it was then. I can only imagine how many other
senseless deaths, either self-inflicted or at the hands of the
elements, go unpublicized or under-publicized.

Regardless of the misunderstandings due to lack of awareness
regarding transgender status, it is a failure of our society when
any human being is treated as less than human. Those indirectly
responsible for the deaths of Jennifer and Alice should be ashamed
of themselves for the blood on their hands.