Ethics – Page 234 – Public Intelligence Blog

Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy”

Below are highlights from Jane Mansbridge's IN CONTEXT article “Unitary & Adversary: The Two Forms of Democracy”, which was itself an excerpt from her book BEYOND ADVERSARY DEMOCRACY (1983) which has had a significant impact on my thinking.

I often use Mansbridge's distinction between (1) “unitary democracy” based on consensus arising from conversations about common interests shared by people who know each other and (2) “adversary democracy” based on majority votes among competing interest groups who may think they have little reason to take each other seriously.

Mansbridge clearly believes that adversary democracy must necessarily predominate in large complex societies where people don't know each other. However, she also believes its toxic effects should be ameliorated by the practice of unitary democracy at local levels and in official governing bodies, as well as through more cooperative forms of economics.

I think the landscape of democratic possibilities she was observing in the 1960s and 70s has been transformed by modern social technologies – conflict resolution, group process, organizational development, networked communications, journalism, multi-media storytelling and, especially, social microcosm design. These technologies are making it possible to bring unitary democracy to more issues and greater scales than ever before.

When I say “social microcosm design”, I'm referring to our ability to select groups of 10-1000 people whose diversity accurately reflects the diversity of a whole population or community. We are increasingly able to convene such “fair cross-section minipublics” in face-to-face conversation. Once we do that, we can apply powerful group processes – advanced forms of dialogue, deliberation, choice creating, etc. – to this smaller group in ways that evoke, reflect and activate the highest collective intelligence and wisdom of the population from which they were drawn.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy””

2012/07/262012/07/26

Patrick Meier: Truth in the Age of Social Media: A Social Computing and Big Data Challenge

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, Knowledge

Truth in the Age of Social Media: A Social Computing and Big Data Challenge

I have been writing and blogging about “information forensics” for a while now and thus relished Nieman Report’s must-read study on “Truth in the Age of Social Media.” My applied research has specifically been on the use of social media to support humanitarian crisis response (see the multiple links at the end of this blog post). More specifically, my focus has been on crowdsourcing and automating ways to quantify veracity in the social media space. One of the Research & Development projects I am spearheading at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) specifically focuses on this hybrid approach. I plan to blog about this research in the near future but for now wanted to share some of the gems in this superb 72-page Nieman Report.

In the opening piece of the report, Craig Silverman writes that “never before in the history of journalism—or society—have more people and organizations been engaged in fact checking and verification. Never has it been so easy to expose an error, check a fact, crowdsource and bring technology to bear in service of verification.” While social media is new, traditional journalistic skills and values are still highly relevant to verification challenges in the social media space. In fact, some argue that “the business of verifying and debunking content from the public relies far more on journalistic hunches than snazzy technology.”

I disagree. This is not an either/or challenge. Social computing can help every-one, not just journalists, develop and test hunches. Indeed, it is imperative that these tools be in the reach of the general public since a “public with the ability to spot a hoax website, verify a tweet, detect a faked photo, and evaluate sources of information is a more informed public. A public more resistant to untruths and so-called rumor bombs.” This public resistance to untruths can itself be moni-tored and modeled to quantify veracity, as this study shows.

Full post less two graphics below the line. Original post.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Truth in the Age of Social Media: A Social Computing and Big Data Challenge”

2012/07/262012/07/26

Search: future of osint

#OSE Open Source Everything, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Hacking, Information Operations (IO), Key Players, Liberation Technology, Mobile, Policies, Threats

For reasons unknown to us, Google search with source=phibetaiota are superior to internal Word Press searches.

Here are top three hits using the above formula.

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

OSINT Generic (Category Table at Phi Beta Iota)

OSINT is passe. Governments and vendors to government have wasted 20 years and perhaps 25 billion dollars in that time. The refusal to focus on machine-speed translation and inserting geospatial attributes at all points of collection across all collection disciplines, while also refusing to accept multinational human sources unemcumbered by the idiocy of the clearance bureaucracy, have left governments in the stone age. The next big leap is going to be M4IS2 that routes around governments or — if governments reconnect to their integrity — embraces governments as beneficiaries of M4IS2 (they will never be the benefactors, but one Smart Nation could transform everything overnight). The biggest change in our own thinking has been the realization that education, intelligence, and research must be reinvented together, and that Open Source Everything is the only agile, acalable, shareable, and affordable means of achieving the necessary pervasive transformations.

2012/07/242012/07/24

Worth a Look: The People’s Congress (USA)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Worth A Look

The People’s Congress

United to exercise the self-evident sovereignty of the American people over our government

Peoplescongress.org is calling for a week long event in which We the People pass specific amendments and legislation which, if enacted by Congress, would put an immediate end to the corporate take-over of our government, revitalize and re-democratize elections, allow for a more responsible and open media, and end the secrecy in policy making. Until we reform these institutions and the laws governing them, our goals for a just and sustainable world will remain elusive at best. An earnest national dialog about our future cannot happen until we re-balance the wheels of democracy. It is the intention of the People’s Congress to secure that change directly in accordance with the will of the People and the principles established by our Constitution.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: The People's Congress (USA)”

2012/07/242012/07/24

DefDog: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) Shines on 4th Amendment

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

Gov't surveillance ‘unreasonable' & violated the 4th amendment ‘at least once'

Ms. Smith

NetworkWorld, 23 July 2012

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified three of Sen. Wyden's comments about FISA power. It also admitted the U.S. has violated the Fourth Amendment at least once when it comes to warrantless wiretaps done under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

It's official; the government's spying efforts exceeded the legal limits at least once, meaning it is also officially “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) sent a letter [PDF] to Sen. Ron Wyden giving permission to admit that much.

This started with Sen. Wyden requesting that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) declassify some statements regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) enacted by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA). Although this FISA power is supposed to sunset in December 2012, in May a new senate bill extended the warrantless wiretapping program for five more years. That vote was regarded as the first step “toward what the Obama administration hopes will be a speedy renewal of an expanded authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor the U.S. e-mails and phone calls of overseas targets in an effort to prevent international terrorist attacks on the country.” Before Congress votes, Sen Wyden wants it know more about such surveillance powers.

Wyden believes the FAA of 2008 “has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law,” reported Politico. Although the DNI does not go so far as to admit that, it does not dispute that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found such massive surveillance to be “unreasonable” on “at least one occasion.”

Continue reading “DefDog: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) Shines on 4th Amendment”

2012/07/23

Mini-Me: NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

Academia, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Ethics, Idiocy

Huh?

NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — The NCAA crippled Penn State football for years to come and practically tore Joe Paterno's name out of the record books Monday, erasing 14 years of victories and imposing an unprecedented $60 million fine and other punishment over the child sexual abuse scandal.

“Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” NCAA President Mark Emmert declared in announcing the penalties.

The governing body of college sports shredded what was left of the Hall of Fame coach's legacy – the sanctions cost Paterno 111 wins and his standing as the most successful coach in the history of big-time college football – while dealing a severe blow to the university's gold-plated gridiron program.

The NCAA ordered Penn State to sit out the postseason for four years, slashed the number of scholarships it can award and placed football on probation, all of which will make it difficult for the Nittany Lions to compete at the sport's highest level.

Raising the specter of an exodus of athletes, the NCAA said current or incoming football players at Penn State are free to immediately transfer and compete at another school.

For a university that always claimed to hold itself to a higher standard – for decades, Paterno preached “success with honor” – Monday's announcement completed a stunning fall from grace.

Read full article with video and photos.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011”

2012/07/07