Episode 43 - There And Back Again

The first half of this podcast was recorded in the company of Philip Campbell in March 2008 on a flight to Newark airport before going on to SXSW in Austin Texas.

The second half was recorded on the flight back to London.

We talk about hacking, podcamp uk, Seesmic, Qik, Blip TV, Pulver TV, social media and how to make Sloe Gin.

I edited it one month later in April, on another flight to Newark this time on my own and heading to PodcampNYC 2.0.

The song entitled HTML in the middle was emailed to me by Erin of the band ‘The Hot Toddies‘. I highly reccommend checking them out HERE.

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

Episode 42 - Life In The Shadows

Sorry for the delay in getting this into my podcast feed. I had some strange issues with the way i had encoded it and it took a little bit of time to get the file just right so as it would show up in my feed.

I am guessing many of you have already seen this. To you guys I say once again, thank you for your support and also for passing this on to others..

To those that haven’t, and I know there are many who download the podcast that never visit any of my sites, here is a brief outline..

The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War has just passed, and there is speculation that the engagement may continue yet another five years, if not more. To date, approximately 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in combat.

While the loss of combat troops is certainly tragic, even more stunning is a recent World Health Organization report based on Iraqi Health Ministry figures which estimates that 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between March 2003, the start of the invasion, and June 2006.

Many of the reports of civilian deaths are disputed. What cannot be argued, however, is another grave consequence of the Iraq War: the displacement crisis as a mass exodus of Iraqis flee the instabilities and ever-increasing sectarian violence at home, tearing their families apart.

In mid-January 2008, with the support of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), I traveled to Amman, Jordan to photograph and record a few of these families trapped in a no-man’s land; asylum seekers looking for refuge, too afraid to return to their blood-soaked country.

Here are a few of their stories:

The film can also be viewed as a .wmv file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.wmv
…and downloaded as a real media file here.. http://www.unhcr.org/video/iraqi-refugees-in-jordan.rm
For more information please check out.. The UNHCR Multimedia pages

To download this film to your ipod or mobile device please subscribe to the podcast at The Documentally Podcast Feed

Episode 41 - Two Clips

Whilst feeling a little bit guilty for not having posted a (self-made) podcast in a while I decided that I would paste a couple of random recordings together and stick the outcome into my feed. Forgive me if it is a little rough around the edges..

It’s not my normal fare.. but it is what it is.

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

Episode 40 - An interview in Jordan

Well here is a turn up for the books.. And a handy one at that as I am bowled over with my various projects at the moment so i am posting this interview with me in my feed to not only save me some valuble editing time but also to introduce and thank a British podcaster who lives in Canada called David Bailey.David Phoned me up whilst i was working In Amman Jordan and we had time for this quick interview. David’s content can be found at http://dfbmbe.wordpress.com and more of my other updates can be found at www.OurManInside.com

You can also stream the podcast here.. DFBMBE Blog

Many thanks to Dave in taking the time to call me in jordan and for making the interview available as a podcast.

correction: During the interview i should have said… It is the largest refugee crisis to hit the Middle East in 60 years. We must not forget Afghanistan.

Episode 39 - Freeganism

Meet Alf, he used to manipulate people using fear and greed to make them buy products they didn’t need.

Now with his friend Bob and many others, he follows one of the paths of Freeganism, shopping from the backs of stores, without money, dumpster diving to utilize some of the many ton’s of waste food and other products consumers and suppliers throw away each year.

As we remember the words of the economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill when he said.. “If you want to destroy a system, refuse to buy it’s products”, Alf agrees it’s a dangerous message.

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

For more information visit:

www.freegan.org.uk

www.freeganism.org

www.OurManInside.com

Please feel free to email me at the usual place.

Episode 38 - Bar Chat

A little chat in a bar under the Curzon Cinema in London, England. I am joined by John Perivolaris an independent photographer and film maker Richard Azia (Warzabidul)

We talk about protesting, a new take on the proliferation of CCTV in the UK and other bits and bobs.

Here are some more handy links…

The Town Crier at the beginning of the podcast is the world famous Peter Moore

Join the flickr group Surveillance Mirrior

Helena Smith photographer

Taryn Simon photographer

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

Episode 37 - A Ramble

This Episode is a slight diversion from my normal format.. It’s just quite literally a ramble. While out with the dog I thought it a good excuse to record an update on what has been happening recently, plus do a mini micro test of a new field recorder, the Zoom H2.

I also give a heads up to a few people I respect and admire and accidentally throw the ball at my dogs head. (She’s fine).

So although different to my normal format.. it’s still recorded live and without a net, or script and unfortunately.. gloves.

Please email comments support and coordinates to any hidden stashes of cash to the normal address.

Please check out these great places belonging to a couple of the people I am talking about..www.deekdeekster.com and..

www.main-vision.com

Also, I have big thanks and respect going to Giles of Kyomedia Who against all odds has once again saved the documentally podcast from certain doom.

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

Episode 36 - Two chats at PodcampUK

In this episode I meet Richard Rudin and Glyn Wintle in Birmingham at the amazing unConference that was PodcampUK

Richard Rudin is a senior lecturer on journalism at John Moores University in Liverpool and Glyn Wintle is from the Open Rights Group.

We talk about the state of Journalism in the UK today, give a heads up to Jeremy Paxman, discuss how politicians react to ‘real people’, touch apon independent journalism, Electronic Voting and preserving our civil liberties in the digital world.

Richards podcast can be found at www.Rudinpodcast.libsyn.com, The Open Rights Group are at www.openrightsgroup.org and the little song I sneak in at the end is by Josh Woodward entitled ‘The Wrong side Of The Revolution.’

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

Episode 35 - The Perfect Prison.

There is a quiet, dark revolution underway in Britain. It was happening yesterday, it’s happening now - this minute. It will continue to happen tomorrow.

Without anyone really noticing it we are becoming a police state. We’re not quite there yet - it’s a long way down to the real depths of secret police, social control, monitored movements - but we’re blindly sleepwalking that path.

George Orwell’s 1984 portrays a country plunged into totalitarianism. The state is locked in an endless war that, although somehow affecting no one directly, functions as a perfect mechanism for inducing fear and justifying the destruction of basic liberties.

Crucially there is mass surveillance. This is the key: an essential element for a true police state is that everyone should be monitored, at all times. Or they must at least believe this is happening. In 1984 everyone is watched, intrusively. Privacy has all but evaporated, the word itself ceasing to have meaning. Everywhere, fear.

Without getting hysterical, without too much hyperbole, there are clear parallels to modern day Britain.

Since September 11 we have been at war with an enemy - “terror” - that by many of our actions we are empowering. The stage is now set for a generations long conflict that can never be, in any real sense, won. In order to fight this war, basic liberties are eroded: long imprisonment without trial, without charge becomes legal. Evidence gained from torture is suddenly admissible in a court of law. Foreign intelligence services carry out extraordinary renditions through British airspace and soil, with the connivance of the government.

And, there is mass surveillance.

CCTV camera and tracking technologies have proliferated. Not so many years ago such cameras - let’s call them spy cameras; that is after all what they are doing - were limited to spaces like garage forecourts. They were ineffective things, recoding largely useless, indistinct time-lapse photos onto VHS tapes. Endless hours of drivers filling-up their cars and walking in to pay. Perhaps the occasional robbery, caught on film, to show on ‘CrimeWatch’ because the police cannot catch the suspect.

Cut to the present day: cameras are, almost literally, everywhere. They are in shops, they’re in bars and clubs, they are high on gantries over the roads, at traffic lights they are watching the high street. They are watching and recording you as you go about the most banal tasks.

The technology is still in relative infancy but has already developed far beyond those scratchy VHS tapes. Face recognition software and high-resolution optics mean your movements can be traced, your facial expressions logged: Your speed and trajectories measured: Your number plate inscribed onto a computer database. You went shopping this afternoon, parked in the Main Street carpark, brought some underwear on a credit card and then went home? Yes ma’am, we know all that. It’s all there, on our hard drive. You met a woman who is not your wife for the fifth time in two weeks, she always wearing a long black skirt, you a gray suit? We know that sir, it was picked up by our cameras and noted by the computer engineer when he ran some tests on a face recognition software.

This monitoring started out as a deterrent against crime and, as such, how could any of us object? Don’t you want to be safe?
Local councils across the country approved more and more projects that promised to smash yob culture. They secured some central government funds, raised cash from local businesses. Sinister words like surveillance, like police state were never mentioned, potential human rights implications pushed aside: The cameras would make us safer by allowing the police to catch criminals, to safeguard the elderly. Don’t you want the elderly to be safe?

And then we are at war with terror and we’re more afraid than ever. It’s not that a teenager is going to snatch your purse outside the bank; that’s a quaint fear from happier times. Now it’s suicide bombers on the bus.

More cameras, better monitoring will help save us. How can we object?

The technology was put in place, the network established and it does have benefits. It can, perhaps, add to our security. It can help police build a case against homicidal fanatics. Perhaps it will even help reduce a crime rate that has, thus far, shown no signs of actually being reduced.

Yet there is a price to pay. We have, unwittingly, put in place the building blocks of a police state; the ability to know where citizens are and, with some high degree of accuracy, what they are doing. When privacy ceases to exist, so in a real sense does freedom. To stop the criminals we are now all monitored as if we are potential criminals. The bag-snatcher is in the database of images as he runs from his victim.. So are you, as you carry the weekly shop to your car.

*

In the late 18th Century a British philosopher designed the perfect prison. The man was Jeremy Bentham, the prison known as a Panopticon. It was a study in architecture, a building to be constructed in such a way that an observer could watch prisoners without them knowing if they were, at any moment, actually being watched. Perhaps the observer is writing down their every action. Or perhaps the observer is asleep.

The prisoner would never know and so, the prisoner would have to assume they were being watched at all times. Bentham envisioned it as a way of creating an omniescent observer: a God in command of all the prisoners, a permanent presence. Big Brother.

In his words, the Panoptican would be: “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

The emaciated prisoner would internalise this gaze, and learn to behave in the way he was expected to behave by the observing power. He would become his own prison guard, his own re-educator. His own Big Brother.

Bentham was a liberal, a reformer. He designed the prison for peoples own good.It was not driven by impure motives but a desire to save the dregs of society. But his project was to be confined in space: it was a physical building outside of which the gaze of the observer failed. It had clear limits.

In modern, CCTV Britain, a Panoptican is being created and it has fewer boundaries. It has been established in our public spaces. In certain towns, certain cities it is more complete than you perhaps imagine. The observer could be watching you almost everywhere. We are becoming a perfect prison.

*

It is just about possible to argue that none of this matters, if we trust absolutely that the authorities controlling it all never, ever abuse their incredible powers. If the government, security apparatus and judiciary stick absolutely to the rule of law, if they uphold the rights of the individual with just zeal. If they ensure there are no illiberal erosions to these basic, sacred rights.

And that’s the problem. Authorities rarely, if ever behave that way for long. They certainly do not behave that way automatically but by continued debate, argument, contest.

Especially in times of war, the instinct of authority is to retreat, to shut down and to restrict. This is already happening: traditional laws are suspended - on the grounds of a vague, nefarious threat to the nation - and along with them are suspended our collective moral decency. Our preciously, democratically elected government starts to behave more and more like a Stalinist dictatorship. They all have national emergencies too; that’s why the reformers disappear, that’s why the military tribunals meet in private to hand out sentences that cannot be appealed.

We take another step down that ladder, another step into the darkness.

With the CCTV and surveillance technology now already out and on the streets, the mechanism is there for the state to take further control of our lives. It may start with monitoring terrorist suspects but where does it end? Can we trust our leaders, our parliaments - those that have failed us so dramatically over simple, vital matters of war and peace - to ensure this all goes so far but no further? Will we so easily abdicate our best interests to them?

We are not a police state yet. The databases tracking your movements are not linked together, they are not complete. The face recognition software is experimental, not universal. The national ID card scheme that will concrete in another layer of monitoring has yet to be rolled out. We are, however, treading the path and we are further down it today than we were yesterday. Will we keep on walking?

Please feel free to comment me or email…

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

(Thank you to Laura from the BBC for doing my intro voiceover.)

Episode 34 - Undercover Underpaid

Shhh.. I am on a stake out..
An uncommon moment where I take time out from my nearly normal format and ask for feedback from anyone that has the time to have an opinion on which direction my podcast should meander next.

And with some of my own big ideas on the horizon, I also come close to begging for sponsorship so I can put them into action. I’d be happy with some feedback and perhaps one big fat life changing cheque though..

Please feel free to comment me or email…

If you have not subscribed to the podcast (free) in Itunes already, you can listen to the mp3 here

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