Hardcore Crime, in Soft Copy

Yes, it may seem like a trite and outdated issue; but quoting Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, “I have a point, I promise!”

It’s not every day that the otherwise bland and grayscale world of politicians is made interesting by celebrities like Katrina and certain shamed doctors, who, whether intentional or not, have made spectacles of themselves in front of the entire country. Sure, forget the swine flu and the Iran unrest. After all, this IS the kind of news that keeps people interested in anything the Senate ever does. Not only are celebrities involved, but even more interesting are the scandalous circumstances surrounding the parties.

As Paris Hilton can attest to, those voyeur videos taken in confidence and released to the public, definitely gets people’s interests. Indeed the problem of these extremely passionate videos, shot in secret, shown indiscriminately to any person out there with internet access (and lots of free time) and spread thru the internet, has reached a new level. And it’s a new level of low for sure.

Before you dismiss this as mundane and get your highlighter to (pretend to) study, think about this. Why should we, as people who are supposedly well-versed with the law, and at times with a good sense of justice, be concerned with this issue? The cyberspace is a world entirely distinct from this world we find ourselves in. In at are all the kinds of criminals roaming freely, from child pornographers to credit card fraud artists to swindling Kenyan princes (I don’t mean to be racist but that’s the identity they always assume in their e-mails). The internet is being abused by those with ill will intent to perpetuate their crimes. The spread of these videos for instance proves this point. One thing that legislators don’t seem to get is that once videos (or any damaging thing that can have its own soft copy) of this nature have leaked to the internet, it’s available for everyone. Some blame this on the lack of laws to regulate the cyberspace; but the thing is, can you? Identities, evidence, and probably even damage caused: how do you establish these when the crime occurs in the internet?

Sure the whole video spectacle was amusing while it lasted, but it’s probably more productive to think of it as a symptom of the worsening disease of uncontrollable crime with the internet as medium.

Fine, so it’s probably just trite and outdated.

Decline of Face-to-Face Communication

Internet use promises many benefits to our society. It effectively bridges the gap of our world's geographical distance and at the same time facilitates the sharing of information. The past decade has shown tremendous growth and development of the Internet. However, the proliferation of online child pornography and other various cyber crimes have shown that it is very much subject to abuse. This is not new to us.

Despite the Internet's benefits to society I think it has really caused a huge decline in face-to-face communication. Now, people simply prefer to write e-mails or log-in Facebook or Friendster to "connect" with friends and family. Although I recognize the convenience of doing so, this has negatively impacted our ability to personally interact with other people. Now, the formation of interpersonal "bonds" has been reduced to simply clicking "Add as Friend" in various online communities. Without realizing so, human beings are slowly becoming devoid of face to face contact with others.

Even if I recognize and admit the benefits of the Internet, we all should, once in a while, take a step back and communicate with others through traditional means.

Working Here, There and Everywhere

Interest on telecommuting has grown through the years because studies conducted show that telecommuting gives more time to people to attend to personal concerns without necessarily compromising productivity. It also helps a company reduce expenditures.

The developments in technology, coupled with these perceived benefits, have fueled the growth of telecommuting. Connectivity and availability are some of the essential areas of telecommuting which have to be fulfilled. Technology has fulfilled these requirements. Cellular phones allow a person to be reached at any time and in any place. Correspondence is also enhanced through the Internet. Aside from merely sending and receiving messages, it allows for discussions and information exchange. Wireless communication has also been enhanced with the emergence of PDAs and laptops. People can now work in the comfort of their homes since all the information and communication tools they need are within their reach.

Telecommuting is not without certain limitations and apprehensions. In the first place, management styles have been based on traditional work environments of employees being in one specific place within a particular time period. This lends a sense of security to top management since they are assured that the other members of the company are all within reach.

With telecommuting, this security is somewhat breached. Sometimes technology fails such as when the equipment breaks down or the connections are disrupted. It also becomes difficult to sometimes monitor the work habits and quality of output of employees. In addition, communication through technology cannot fully replace actual dialogue.

go ogle video

somewhere in italy, four google executives are being sued for failing to show that they care.

a kid with down syndrome was being bullied by some teenagers. this they recorded. and this they uploaded in google video europe.

it took a while before the video was removed by google - a long enough while for it to be noticed by an italian advocacy group for people with down syndrome. the result of this was a law suit.

the video should not have been uploaded. that is given. and the law suit in effect is saying is that google should have made sure that it had enough safeguards to ensure that such appalling videos are blocked from being shown. google didn't refute the illness of the video's content nor the fact that it was uploaded and shown. they say that it would be hard for them to do so much filtering. and that amount of filtering runs contrast to the idea of the internet.

so we have decency on one hand and an open and free internet environment on the other.

i go with decency. and because it's the image they want to project, im sure so does google... but they just don't want to pay.

State of emergency

A friend shared this news item on Facebook about two months ago:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html

The article was about a Senate bill that would give the US President the power to shut down public and private computer networks, including Internet traffic to and from critical information systems, in the event of a national "cybersecurity emergency."

Online security and hacking, it seems, has emerged as the quintessential 21st-century dilemma not just for us ordinary netizens, but even for the Pentagon too. This thought came to mind again yesterday, as we were preparing for a performance at a protest poetry event, and a friend mentioned that he has become paranoid about whom he approves as Facebook contacts. There hasn't been any equivalent proposal in the Philippines as far as we know, but do those of us who count such controversial figures as left-leaning Congresspersons and militant labor leaders among our Facebook friends have any cause for alarm (or at the very least, a cause of action for a writ of habeas data petition)? Could we perhaps be arrested out of the blue because of the "subversive" literary works that we keep posting on our blogs?

Considering the number of members that online causes are able to attract, it's pretty obvious that the Internet has become an important venue not just for free speech in general, but for political dissent and activism -- or for consciousness-raising, at the very least. Not surprisingly, legal measures like the US Cybersecurity Bill -- and any similar statutes that may crop up in the Philippine Congress -- are bound to draw much criticism.

Control over ICT infrastructures and electronic data inevitably raises such highly political issues as: who exercises control, and who decides when to invoke such power? Who defines these "cyber-emergencies," and what implications do they have for ordinary citizens? National security concerns have been used to justify everything from the Human Security Act to Senate hearings-turned-national embarrassments. If we're going to be taken offline because we (or some clever geeks hacking into Malacanang files) supposedly endanger the political integrity or territorial sovereignty of this Republic, there'd better be a really good explanation...if not free Wi-fi for life once the power re-starts.

PAPERLESS COURT

4th year in law school is marked by one humbling experience: Office of Legal Aid. This four- unit course entails weekly duty wherein each student is handed tons of cases and is made to “pretend” to be lawyers. While I am not a fan of this mandatory course, I did discover something interesting with one of the cases assigned to my friend: service of pleading to the opposing counsel by email.

Considering that our Supreme Court has always been cautious in implementing new rules concerning technology, the fact that they have recognized a new means of service is surprising. Our courts have been so attached to having everything on paper (read: physical manifestation), that their recognition of the possibility of a paperless court is a welcome convenience.

The court, however, is always on the side of caution, when allowing for the use of technology in the court room. For example the A.M. on electronic document is technology specific. It does not allow for the change of the technology, requiring the use of a particular code for a document to be considered “electronic” within the contemplation of a paperless court. As such, when this required code becomes obsolete, so does the recognition of “electronic document”.

Despite this “innovation”, my workload in OLA does not change.

Black is the new green.

Recently, a friend of mine introduced me to a new search engine called “Blackle”. She asked me if I’d already heard about it and I said I haven’t and added in jest that the name sounded like that of a dog’s- “Blacky.” Pardon the pun, but the search engines I’m familiar with are the ones I often use, which are Google, and Yahoo.

She proceeded to show me the site and as the name had it, the entire screen went dark. The background was, of course, black and the font was in white or gray.

Yay, it’s the black version of Google! The gods have finally heard my prayers! (My eyes are sensitive to the color white.) Not only did I find it neat, it served a purpose. It saves energy- 750-megawatt hours a year to be exact.

How? It is said that it takes more power to display a white screen than a dark screen. Imagine the amount of energy we shall save by converting our homepages into it. With this, we can actually go “green” not just by recycling but by going virtually “black” too.

Visit and switch your homepage to Blackle.com. Let us (as their tag line puts it) start saving energy “one search at a time.”

And no, I’m not a paid endorser of the site. I’m just a fan. =)