The Silenced Revolution

Incredible Ball Pen Art

These may look like photographs, but these amazing pictures are the creation of the Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas, who creates his large artworks using just a blue ballpoint pen. He uses up to four 14p ballpoints on one picture, and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions and gets up to £3,750 each. Formerly a traditional painter, Juan began the drawings three years ago based on photographs of nights out with his friends. His photo realistic ballpoint pen drawings are based on the incredible detail photos that he takes on his camera. We have seen many artists who can drawings of lifelike figures, but not with blue Bic pen!

Councils Told to Stop Abusing CCTV

Councils are to be stopped from misusing covert surveillance powers to spy on litterbugs and dog owners, under new controls outlined by the Home Secretary today. The crackdown follows a series of embarrassing cases in which local authorities were found to have targeted members of public with secret cameras and undercover officers. In one case a council used powers designed to tackle serious crime and terrorism to discover whether a family had put their bins out on the wrong day. Councillors or senior officials might in future be required to approve their use under plans set out in a review of changes to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "The Government has absolutely no interest in spying on law-abiding people going about their everyday lives. I don't want to see these powers being used to target people for putting their bins out on the wrong day or for dog fouling offences." Isabella Sankey, director of policy at civil liberties pressure group Liberty, said: "We hope that the Government is ready to restrict broadly-drafted powers that have been widely used and abused."

More evidence has emerged of the misuse of surveillance in the UK after information was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The Lib Dems surveyed 180 councils and found that powers granted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) have been used 10,288 times in the last five years. Councils misused their powers in a number of ways from checking if parents live in the correct school catchment area to investigating dog fouling. But how did it come to pass that local councils have such powers? An interesting account can be found in the recent House of Lords Constitution Committee's report 'Surveillance: Citizens and the State'. The report explains that when RIPA was passed in 2000, local authorities were not included in the list of public authorities granted surveillance powers:

During the passage of the Act, Bill Cash MP wrote to the then Home Secretary in relation to concerns raised with him that the Bill as drafted would extend the power to "a range of officials in several public-sector bodies including local authorities and … government departments." The then Minister of State, Charles Clarke MP, wrote back to Mr Cash, explaining that such concerns "may be referring to the provision in the Bill allowing for the Secretary of State to make further additions to" the list of relevant public authorities with power to obtain data "at some future stage if it is deemed necessary … by means of the affirmative resolution procedure. I can, however, confirm even at this stage that such powers will not be made available to local authorities." Then in 2003 two Orders were passed by so called 'affirmative resolution' in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords that extended the surveillance powers to additional public authorities, including local authorities. But MPs and Peers were told that these were not new powers, just a tidying up exercise:

The debates in both Houses of Parliament when the Order was approved in 2003 seemed to indicate that these were not new powers. We wrote to Vernon Coaker on 18 December to seek clarification of this point. His response of 12 January confirmed that these were not new powers: prior to RIPA, the use of directed surveillance or covert human intelligence sources by any public authority, including local authorities, was unregulated. The Minister explained that RIPA addressed the situation and was designed to ensure that public authorities complied with the ECHR. What an incredible example of doublespeak from Vernon Coaker MP, Home Office Minister for Crime, Policing, Counter-terrorism and Security - to suggest that granting illiberal powers of surveillance to councils is a way of complying with the European Convention on Human Rights! Councils should not have these powers - if they suspect that a crime has been or is going to be committed then they should turn to the police who can investigate the matter. Surely a council surveilling the citizens whom they are meant to represent goes against the role of the council and is ultra vires.

The RIPA powers given to local authorities were granted under false pretenses, are unnecessary, have been abused and must be removed.

What Started the Swine Influeza

Rapidshare Hands Over Uploader’s Details, House Raided (Dirty Fuckers)

In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided. Like many new releases, Metallica’s latest album “Death Magnetic” was uploaded to the popular file hosting service Rapidshare one day prior to its official release date last year. Since users don’t broadcast their IP-address or distribute files to the public directly though Rapidshare, it came as a surprise when the police raided the house of an uploader a few weeks ago.

At first it was unclear how the identity of the uploader was revealed, but today German news outlet Gulli said it had found out that this was likely to be accomplished by creative use of paragraph 101 of German copyright law. It turns out that several record labels are using this to take legal action against those who share music on Rapidshare. Previously the paragraph was only used by rights holders to get the personal details of those who share copyrighted works on file-sharing networks. It basically enables the copyright holders to get “permission” from a civil judge to ask ISPs to disclose the personal details of a user behind a certain IP. Now, however, this also seems to be the case for file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, which is based in Germany.

This of course opens up the possibility for rights holders to go after a wide range of file-hosting services and potentially even BitTorrent sites. Indeed, everyone who now uploads a torrent file to a site hosted in Germany is at risk of having his personal details revealed. Although it will be impossible to prove that the uploader actually seeded the file it might be seen as assisting in copyright infringement. Pretty much all torrent sites keep track of the IP-addresses of their (.torrent) uploaders, and if the rights holders can get the IP-address of people who upload to file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, they can easily extend this to BitTorrent sites hosted in Germany. A dream come true for copyright holders, but a nightmare for the privacy of Internet users

Classic Indie Albums

Indie rock takes its name from "independent," which describes both the do-it-yourself attitudes of its bands and the small, lower-budget nature of the labels that release the music. The biggest indie labels might strike distribution deals with major corporate labels, but their decision-making processes remain autonomous. As such, indie rock is free to explore sounds, emotions, and lyrical subjects that don't appeal to large, mainstream audiences — profit isn't as much of a concern as personal taste (though the labels do, after all, want to stay in business). It's very much rooted in the sound and sensibility of American underground and alternative rock of the '80s, albeit with a few differences that account for the changes in underground rock since then. In the sense that the term is most widely used, indie rock truly separated itself from alternative rock around the time that Nirvana hit the mainstream. Mainstream tastes gradually reshaped alternative into a new form of serious-minded hard rock, in the process making it more predictable and testosterone-driven. Indie rock was a reaction against that phenomenon; not all strains of alternative rock crossed over in Nirvana's wake, and not all of them wanted to, either. Yet while indie rock definitely shares the punk community's concerns about commercialism, it isn't as particular about whether bands remain independent or "sell out"; the general assumption is that it's virtually impossible to make indie rock's varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes in the first place. There are almost as many reasons for that incompatibility as there are indie-rock bands, but following are some of the most common: the music may be too whimsical and innocent; too weird; too sensitive and melancholy; too soft and delicate; too dreamy and hypnotic; too personal and intimately revealing in its lyrics; too low-fidelity and low-budget in its production; too angular in its melodies and riffs; too raw, skronky and abrasive; wrapped in too many sheets of Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr./Pixies/Jesus & Mary Chain-style guitar noise; too oblique and fractured in its song structures; too influenced by experimental or otherwise unpopular musical styles. Regardless of the specifics, it's rock made by and for outsiders — much like alternative once was, except that thanks to its crossover, indie rock has a far greater wariness of excess testosterone. It's certainly not that indie rock is never visceral or powerful; it's just rarely — if ever — macho about it. As the '90s wore on, indie rock developed quite a few substyles and close cousins (indie pop, dream pop, noise-pop, lo-fi, math rock, post-rock, space rock, sadcore, and emo among them), all of which seemed poised to remain strictly underground phenomena

Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen