The News of the World scandal is over, kind of. The newspaper will be shut down and lawsuits are under way. While there’s a lot of discussion in favor of this and I’m definitely not disagreeing with that, I can’t help but feel that this entire scandal is proof of a double standard. In basics, reporters at the News of the World decided to actively engage in small scale surveillance of public figures using techniques that most anybody with technical understanding of how cellphone systems work would dismiss as too cumbersome given the much easier methods available?

Wednesday was marked with rumors flying around about the imminent eruption of Iceland’s volcano Hekla, which news reports dubbed as “one of Iceland’s most feared volcanoes”. The mountain has entirely failed to grip me with fear despite it erupting roughly every decade since the 1940′s, so naturally I felt somewhat puzzled by this news report and wanted to know where it came from, how the rumor floated around, and how it hit the world media without the famous stratovolcano giving any occasion to.

Before doing public talks I often do a short writeup of what I intend to say. I normally end up saying something completely different, but I thought I’d throw out the draft text for my opening remarks for a panel at the European Parliament last Thursday, where I was speaking at the S&D’s conference on “Copyright and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age”. Thanks to the S&D group, in particular MEP Tanja Fajon, for inviting me to participate.

There’s been a lot of bad information floating about the Internets, mostly after a slightly misleading Guardian article a couple of days ago. I really wish people would try to write articles based on their understanding, rather than trying to fit the information they have to a preconceived idea, but that’s the way the media works I suppose. The Icelandic Constitutional Council has now been operating for around two months and the new Icelandic constitution is coming together.

As everybody now knows, Harold Camping was wrong. Big surprise. For the record, I can also pull arbitrary dates out of my ass and assign cosmological significance to them, and I don’t need a civil engineering degree or almost two decades of consideration to do so. Early reports do show Camping himself to be missing, but after his radio station allegedly spent over $100 million on an advertising campaign for what is effectively vaporware, I’m not surprised – either he’s hiding in the mountains with a fat wad of purloined money, or he’s worrying that the tripple mortgage will foreclose.

Those who have read my previous two posts may think I have some beef with the AVMSD, or, if they read the last three, they might think I have a problem with the European Union. Both assumptions would be true, but I’d like to try my hand at putting this into a larger context. My work for the past several years has had many different forms and facets but one overarching theme: the individual’s right to self-governance and, as a prerequisite to that, the right to information.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Brussels speaking at a public hearing on the interplay between ICTs and human rights. It was a very interesting event with great insights from all sides, and I thank the Green MEPs Jan Phillip Albrecht, Eva Licthenberger, Indrek Tarend and Heidi Hautala for organizing it and inviting me to participate. While the discussions were primarily focused towards freedoms online, with a lot of focus on ideas such as filtering and blocking, state interference in communications and, interestingly, how state and corporate censorship can be seen as interference and violation of free trade agreements, an issue I’ve been looking into a bit and will undoubtedly write more about in coming months.

Mikið hefur verið rætt um nýju fjölmiðlalögin og þegar þetta er skrifað eru rétt rúmlega 4100 manns sem hafa skrifað undir áskorun til forseta Íslands þar sem farið er fram á að hann synji þeim undirskrift og vísi í þjóðaratkvæðagreiðslu. Þá hefur Guðmundur Franklín skrifað um lögin og lagt fram fullyrðingar sem eru svo flóknar að Elías Jón Guðjónsson fann sig knúinn til að svara, þó á mjög diplómatískan hátt.

Uppfærslur neðst Fyrir fólk sem ferðast er farsíminn orðinn algjör lífsnauðsyn. Bæði til að halda sambandi við fólkið heima og samstilla hittinga með fólki á staðnum, svo ekki sé talað um að flétta upp landakortum og gera netleitir að stöðum þar sem er hægt að nálgast nauðsynjavörur, góða díla eða skemmtileg partý. Á undanförnum mánuði er ég búinn að vera á ráðstefnuferðalagi um allar tryssur, með mislöngum dvölum í mörgum löndum.

I wrote this on February 23rd, and just came across it now when I was going through my drafts. It goes a bit far and wide in a rambly tone, which is probably why I didn’t originally publish it, but since the Icesave election is on today in Iceland and the situation in MENA still hasn’t resolved I decided to throw it out there anyway. I’m not sure I still agree with all of the statements, but the sentiment is still valid.