Salman Rushdie's East, West is the first chance I've had to read his short stories. I'd previously been thoroughly impressed with Midnight's Children, a phenomenal phantasmagoric expedition into events and thoughts around the time of India's early statehood.
Rushdie is an interesting guy, and arguably one of the most global citizens in a world full of continent-hopping writers. He's a product of the British legacy in India, and seems to have spent much of his life and his career exploring that intersection. East, West is an explicit journey through these two spheres, looking at each one individually and at how they intersect.
The first section, "East," collects a handful of stories set in India. These are the shortest in the book, and also seem like the simplest: the plots are fairly straightforward, the narration is conventional. They're still affecting, though, like something from Saki. One story features an old man who hangs around outside the British Embassy in India, scamming people into giving him money to help grease the wheels for their visa applications. He falls for a visiting woman, honestly tells her what she's up against and offers to give her a rare fake document that will let her go to England and visit her fiance. She thanks him kindly, refuses the offer, and serenely goes off to apply. When she returns, she's so happy that the old man believes she's done the impossible and navigated the bureaucratic hurdles on her own. She explains that, no, she failed to give them satisfactory answers, and her application was denied. Then why, the old man asks, is she so happy? Because since she has tried and failed, now she can live her life: she'll remain focused on her family and her friends here on the subcontinent, instead of thinking about a young man who she barely knows who lives half a world away.
I can't exactly sum up the moral of the story, but it definitely feels like a story with a moral, right?
The second section, "West," features stories that seem to be set in America or England. These are a bit longer and more intricate, and a little more fanciful as well. ("East" stories are either realistic or have straight-up magic, while "West" has a bit more of that dreamlike quality that people like me enjoy so much.) One of the most interesting in this section is "The Auction of the Ruby Slippers," which describes the excitement around an upcoming chance to bid on Dorothy's slippers from The Wizard of Oz. The story is, well, short, but there's an incredible amount going on: the auction itself and the fanatical devotion it attracts would be interesting enough, but Rushdie has set this story in the foreground of some sort of mass social breakdown. The narrator barely alludes to it, in the same way that we usually wouldn't bring up the sky being blue when we're telling a story, but enough offhand references slip in that they kind of jar us a bit, and give a nicely unsettling feeling to the whole tale.
The final section, "East, West" is a kind of synthesis that brings together the hemispheres. Sometimes this is done explicitly, like in "Chekhov and Zulu," which describes the adventures of two Sikhs trying to navigate the political landscape in the wake of Indira Gandhi's assassination. We eventually learn that "Zulu" should actually be called "Sulu," and that the two of them are childhood friends who were devoted to "Star Trek" (which they had never actually seen, but just absorbed through the detritus of Western culture that washed ashore on India), and use that show's metaphors to describe everything important in their lives. Also in this vein, "The Courter" is a great, fairly traditionally told story of an Indian family that has emigrated to London and their experiences there.
Other times, "East, West" doesn't directly talk about India and the west, but rather seems to be trying for a kind of synthesis of different ways of thinking or seeing the world. One of my favorite stories here was "The Harmony of the Spheres," which describes the friendship between two men, one of whom has slipped into paranoid schizophrenia after a lifetime devoted to studying the occult. It's a fascinating and disturbing story that doesn't directly have anything to do with East or West but a lot to do about exploration, ideas, and synthesis.
I'm pretty impressed by what I've read here. It's hard to sum up Rushdie's short fiction, but if forced to do so, I'd probably compare him to Nabokov. Not in the direct sense of sounding like him, but in the way both of them show great skill at playing around with different voices and narrations, and the way both of them take inspiration from the immigrant experience without ever sounding like immigrant writers. It's been great to see Rushdie back on the literary map for the past decade, and I hope we get to see many more stories from him.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Darn good coffee! And HOT!
I almost titled this post "Lynching," then realized that would be a very bad idea.
As previously noted, I've finally finished the second and final season of Twin Peaks. I then went on to watch "Blue Velvet," one of David Lynch's earlier works. The one-two punch of these viewings apparently triggered some sort of deep psychological distress in me, because for the next three or four nights I had pretty bad nightmares.
At a meta level, that's actually pretty cool. I can't think of another time that I've had dreams that seemed to be directly touched off by a piece of media. I also appreciated dreaming in general, since these days I almost never remember my dreams. Having nightmares was a different and kinda fun experience, too. When I do dream, mine tend to be rather strange and surreal, but almost never frightening. This time around, though, I was jolted awake almost every time.
Amusingly enough, while the specific images in the dreams didn't have any overt connection to either Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, I DID have one dream that was ripped from another David Lynch movie that I had originally seen maybe four years earlier: Mulholland Drive. Most of the dream was different, but it ended like the scene at Winkie's Diner. Kinda funny to think that that particular image has been lurking in the back of my brain for so long before finally striking.
Other than that, most of the dreams were a weird mishmash of violence and the everyday. I realize that that sounds like a capsule summary of both TP and BV, but mine were a bit different... for example, in one dream I was at a water park, which was frequented by several large families of all ages. There was a gang war going on, and people were being killed (in the water slides, in the pools, or while waiting around); everyone knew this was going on, but still kept on playing, even occasionally laughing. I got a sick feeling once I realized that one gang (either an individual or a small group, I forget which) had found an unguarded family and wiped them out. When I woke up, I realized that the thought going through my mind was, "im in ur base killing ur d00dz". The gap between that concept and the "reality" in my dream freaked me out. Anyone who has played, say, an FPS game has experienced the thrill at a string of easy kills, when you've broken through defenses and are able to pluck off a host of unprepared foes. If you think of those enemies as people people, though, then it becomes macabre.
Aaaanyways, just thought I'd share that fun little nugget. I have absolutely no regrets about any of my viewing, but I think I'll wait a bit longer before breaking out "Eraserhead".
As previously noted, I've finally finished the second and final season of Twin Peaks. I then went on to watch "Blue Velvet," one of David Lynch's earlier works. The one-two punch of these viewings apparently triggered some sort of deep psychological distress in me, because for the next three or four nights I had pretty bad nightmares.
At a meta level, that's actually pretty cool. I can't think of another time that I've had dreams that seemed to be directly touched off by a piece of media. I also appreciated dreaming in general, since these days I almost never remember my dreams. Having nightmares was a different and kinda fun experience, too. When I do dream, mine tend to be rather strange and surreal, but almost never frightening. This time around, though, I was jolted awake almost every time.
Amusingly enough, while the specific images in the dreams didn't have any overt connection to either Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, I DID have one dream that was ripped from another David Lynch movie that I had originally seen maybe four years earlier: Mulholland Drive. Most of the dream was different, but it ended like the scene at Winkie's Diner. Kinda funny to think that that particular image has been lurking in the back of my brain for so long before finally striking.
Other than that, most of the dreams were a weird mishmash of violence and the everyday. I realize that that sounds like a capsule summary of both TP and BV, but mine were a bit different... for example, in one dream I was at a water park, which was frequented by several large families of all ages. There was a gang war going on, and people were being killed (in the water slides, in the pools, or while waiting around); everyone knew this was going on, but still kept on playing, even occasionally laughing. I got a sick feeling once I realized that one gang (either an individual or a small group, I forget which) had found an unguarded family and wiped them out. When I woke up, I realized that the thought going through my mind was, "im in ur base killing ur d00dz". The gap between that concept and the "reality" in my dream freaked me out. Anyone who has played, say, an FPS game has experienced the thrill at a string of easy kills, when you've broken through defenses and are able to pluck off a host of unprepared foes. If you think of those enemies as people people, though, then it becomes macabre.
Aaaanyways, just thought I'd share that fun little nugget. I have absolutely no regrets about any of my viewing, but I think I'll wait a bit longer before breaking out "Eraserhead".
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Muse, ack!
Yay good music!
I picked up R.E.M.'s "Collapse Into Now" and have enjoyed my first few listens through it. I'm always hesitant to weigh in too strongly on an REM album. Almost without exception, they grow on me, and I hate being on record as having an opinion when I'm fairly sure that opinion will shift over time. Heck, I hated Around the Sun when it came out, and now I enjoy it... definitely towards the bottom of their discography, but even bad REM is better than most other music.
So: my two favorite bands are PROBABLY REM and Radiohead. (At any given time I'll probably be listening more to some electronic artist instead, but year after year those are the bands I keep returning to.) I've noticed that the press has a ritual any time either band releases a new album: before it arrives, they'll speculate about whether it's a "real rock album" or not, and will quote statements from the band indicating that it is. Then, once it drops, the critics will determine whether it qualifies as a "real" rock album. Their review will almost inevitably address this question, which is pretty funny, because the question of whether an album is "rock" or not will have only a tenuous connection to the critic's eventual like or dislike of the album. (As best as I can tell, something counts as a "real rock album" if it prominently features undigitized electric guitar, played quickly on more than half of the tracks.)
The cycle continues for CIN (as it apparently is for King of Limbs, though I'm trying to avoid those reviews until I can give the album its due on my own). Well, backing up a bit, Accelerate scored incredibly high on the "real rock" scale. Most of the reviews for CIN seem to think that the album "rocks" about the same quantity as Accelerate, but is overall of lower quality. When making comparisons (because everyone, including me, LOVES comparing REM albums), the albums that keep on coming up are Accelerate and Monster.
I just don't get it. Yeah, "Discoverer", the opening track, is an exciting, fist-pumping anthemic rocker of a piece. That's not really unusual, though... I don't think you can find any REM album that doesn't have at least one enthusiastic track on it. As I listened to the album, the album I found myself thinking of most often was "Out of Time," REM's gorgeously flawed bridge between the masterpieces Green and Automatic.
Like OOT, CIN is... well, maybe not always happy, but decidedly upbeat. It experiments with different moods and arrangements, not always maintaining a lot of continuity between tracks, but making a fairly coherent over-arching statement. It also expands the fold; remember how OOT had the B-52's? Well, CIN has Patti Smith (as gorgeously strong here as she was on New Adventures in Hi-Fi), Eddie Vedder (hands-down his gentlest delivery ever), and Peaches. Again, it feels a little bit messy - these voices don't always seem to fit with REM - but it's messy in an expansive, interesting way.
A couple of the songs seemed to pretty consciously evoke OOT, as well. In particular, I think "It Happened Today" has to be REM's most unabashedly joyous song since... well, since Shining Happy People. And "Blue" seems to be continuing the conversation that started twenty years ago(!!!) in "Country Feedback."
This album seemed determine to make me like it. On a few occasions I thought, "Eh, this song isn't doing it for me," only to have it surprise me. "Oh My Heart" starts a little monotonously, but then Michael gets to the second verse: "The storm didn't kill me; the government changed." BAM! Just like that, I realized that this song was a sequel to "Houston," one of my favorite songs off of Accelerate. And that made me think of the tectonic changes we've experienced in the three years since that previous album dropped. I imagined our nation cautiously crawling out from the rubble, blinking our eyes, unsteadily trying to regain our feet. It's a place of pain, but also a place of hope, where we can see a way forward. "Oh My Heart," indeed!
"It Happened Today" seemed a little too light and fluffy at first. Then they just say, "screw it," and spend most of the song clapping their hands and singing "Oh, oh, oh, whoa, whoa, oh!" I mean, c'mon! That takes guts, and I love them for it.
I think my favorite tracks come at the end, though. "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" is the one song that does sound like it could have come from Monster; like that album, it's a winking parody of larger-than-life sound. It has fun, though, especially that ludicrous guitar lick during the bridge. Every time I listen to that track I hear something else over-the-top going on. "That Someone Is You" is a brief, exultant ode; it has an oddly punk-music structure to the song, but full-on REM execution. "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" carries hints of the Southern Gothic thing that REM used to do back in the late 80's. I think my favorite track on the album may be "Blue," with its discordancy, spoken-word ramblings, noisemaking... all in the service of an elegiac, mournful, quiveringly beautiful song.
I can't rate Collapse Into Now yet, but just so y'all know where I'm coming from, I figured I'd go ahead and rank all the OTHER REM albums. I should mention that this list regularly shifts depending on my mood and what I've been listening to lately.
And, that's that! Man... do you realize how lucky we are to have this band? They've been releasing records for almost as long as I've been alive. How many bands out there are still releasing original material after thirty years? How many bands are making GOOD MUSIC after that long? The muse hasn't left them yet, and it's fascinating to see what a rock band with a lifetime of experience behind them is capable of producing.
I picked up R.E.M.'s "Collapse Into Now" and have enjoyed my first few listens through it. I'm always hesitant to weigh in too strongly on an REM album. Almost without exception, they grow on me, and I hate being on record as having an opinion when I'm fairly sure that opinion will shift over time. Heck, I hated Around the Sun when it came out, and now I enjoy it... definitely towards the bottom of their discography, but even bad REM is better than most other music.
So: my two favorite bands are PROBABLY REM and Radiohead. (At any given time I'll probably be listening more to some electronic artist instead, but year after year those are the bands I keep returning to.) I've noticed that the press has a ritual any time either band releases a new album: before it arrives, they'll speculate about whether it's a "real rock album" or not, and will quote statements from the band indicating that it is. Then, once it drops, the critics will determine whether it qualifies as a "real" rock album. Their review will almost inevitably address this question, which is pretty funny, because the question of whether an album is "rock" or not will have only a tenuous connection to the critic's eventual like or dislike of the album. (As best as I can tell, something counts as a "real rock album" if it prominently features undigitized electric guitar, played quickly on more than half of the tracks.)
The cycle continues for CIN (as it apparently is for King of Limbs, though I'm trying to avoid those reviews until I can give the album its due on my own). Well, backing up a bit, Accelerate scored incredibly high on the "real rock" scale. Most of the reviews for CIN seem to think that the album "rocks" about the same quantity as Accelerate, but is overall of lower quality. When making comparisons (because everyone, including me, LOVES comparing REM albums), the albums that keep on coming up are Accelerate and Monster.
I just don't get it. Yeah, "Discoverer", the opening track, is an exciting, fist-pumping anthemic rocker of a piece. That's not really unusual, though... I don't think you can find any REM album that doesn't have at least one enthusiastic track on it. As I listened to the album, the album I found myself thinking of most often was "Out of Time," REM's gorgeously flawed bridge between the masterpieces Green and Automatic.
Like OOT, CIN is... well, maybe not always happy, but decidedly upbeat. It experiments with different moods and arrangements, not always maintaining a lot of continuity between tracks, but making a fairly coherent over-arching statement. It also expands the fold; remember how OOT had the B-52's? Well, CIN has Patti Smith (as gorgeously strong here as she was on New Adventures in Hi-Fi), Eddie Vedder (hands-down his gentlest delivery ever), and Peaches. Again, it feels a little bit messy - these voices don't always seem to fit with REM - but it's messy in an expansive, interesting way.
A couple of the songs seemed to pretty consciously evoke OOT, as well. In particular, I think "It Happened Today" has to be REM's most unabashedly joyous song since... well, since Shining Happy People. And "Blue" seems to be continuing the conversation that started twenty years ago(!!!) in "Country Feedback."
This album seemed determine to make me like it. On a few occasions I thought, "Eh, this song isn't doing it for me," only to have it surprise me. "Oh My Heart" starts a little monotonously, but then Michael gets to the second verse: "The storm didn't kill me; the government changed." BAM! Just like that, I realized that this song was a sequel to "Houston," one of my favorite songs off of Accelerate. And that made me think of the tectonic changes we've experienced in the three years since that previous album dropped. I imagined our nation cautiously crawling out from the rubble, blinking our eyes, unsteadily trying to regain our feet. It's a place of pain, but also a place of hope, where we can see a way forward. "Oh My Heart," indeed!
"It Happened Today" seemed a little too light and fluffy at first. Then they just say, "screw it," and spend most of the song clapping their hands and singing "Oh, oh, oh, whoa, whoa, oh!" I mean, c'mon! That takes guts, and I love them for it.
I think my favorite tracks come at the end, though. "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" is the one song that does sound like it could have come from Monster; like that album, it's a winking parody of larger-than-life sound. It has fun, though, especially that ludicrous guitar lick during the bridge. Every time I listen to that track I hear something else over-the-top going on. "That Someone Is You" is a brief, exultant ode; it has an oddly punk-music structure to the song, but full-on REM execution. "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" carries hints of the Southern Gothic thing that REM used to do back in the late 80's. I think my favorite track on the album may be "Blue," with its discordancy, spoken-word ramblings, noisemaking... all in the service of an elegiac, mournful, quiveringly beautiful song.
I can't rate Collapse Into Now yet, but just so y'all know where I'm coming from, I figured I'd go ahead and rank all the OTHER REM albums. I should mention that this list regularly shifts depending on my mood and what I've been listening to lately.
- Green
- Automatic for the People
- Murmur
- Document
- Accelerate
- Life's Rich Pageant
- Reveal
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Up
- New Adventures in Hi-Fi. (This album makes Out of Time look like a fully coherent and thoroughly thought-out work.)
- Out of Time
- Around the Sun
- Reckoning
- Monster
And, that's that! Man... do you realize how lucky we are to have this band? They've been releasing records for almost as long as I've been alive. How many bands out there are still releasing original material after thirty years? How many bands are making GOOD MUSIC after that long? The muse hasn't left them yet, and it's fascinating to see what a rock band with a lifetime of experience behind them is capable of producing.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Meanwhile
Okay! That took much longer than I'd thought, but I've finally finished the second season of Twin Peaks. I got in the first eight or so episodes while living in San Jose, then put it on hiatus after the move; then I got distracted by Monk, a show that's the polar opposite of Twin Peaks in most ways; and finally picked it back up again, finishing it on a nicer TV with a better sound system.
The second season is MUCH longer than the first, which is a blessing... and a curse. It gives a wider canvas, and more time to get to know characters and explore plots. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be quite enough plot to usefully fill up the available time, and so much of the show seems to dither in tertiary storylines that are neither interesting nor relevant. Still, the best stuff is at least as great as anything from the first season.
On a technical note, they hired a guy to write some additional music for the show, which means that we now have about five themes instead of just three. The cast list also continues to expand, which is awesome; several good folks rotate through, including a great appearance by Heather Graham near the end.
There's also more effort put into building a mythology, which I'm always in favor of. It doesn't totally make sense, but it is nicely atmospheric and, well, Lynch-ian, which this world could use more of.
MEGA SPOILERS
The first part of the second season continues to march towards the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder. It's cool and interesting that they resolve this mid-season like they do, since everything about the entire show up until now has revolved around that mystery. I'd be inclined to think that they'd want to make that a season-ending thing. Then again, if they want people to stick around for future seasons, they need to give them a reason to keep watching once that mystery is solved.
I was really happy with how the mystery turned out. Leland wasn't even on my radar as a possible suspect. It felt like we had already learned his "secret" in the form of his murder of Jacque. He had enough bizarre, out-there stuff going on (white hair, helpless dancing) that he stayed in the center of the picture without seeming suspicious.
Leland was also a shocking choice. Again, I'm surprised that this showed on network television. The details we've learned about Laura Palmer's life and death are grisly enough; adding molestation and incest to the list seems to push it over the edge. On an artistic standpoint, the Palmer/Bob link is absolutely chilling. Bob is just an incredibly scary dude; as Pat has pointed out, the shot of Bob climbing over the couch is among the most frightening shots on television, even though, well, it's technically just a guy climbing over a couch. (Lynch has to be the absolute master of establishing a pervasive sense of dread that causes you to flinch at even mundane images.) I think they keep things going for exactly the right amount of time, too. After we learn about Bob's possession of Leland, there are a couple of episodes where we see Leland carrying on about town, with the populace totally oblivious to his actions. Most worrisome: the encounter where he's stopped by the police while speeding, with Maddy's corpse hidden in the trunk; he's within seconds of apparently opening the trunk (with unknown consequences) then the police are called away.
The final resolution of the Palmer mystery is nicely laced with mysticism. We supposedly know what's happened now, but there's this whole huge metaphysical backstory of Bob and Mike and possession and such that still hangs in the distance. It's an interesting position: we get closure, but it keeps things from closing off.
And, from there, things start to get REALLY weird. And not always in a good way.
It kind of feels like the show starts casting about for a purpose. Now, in general, I'm all about strange stories that don't make sense. I like them to be well-done, though. Here, it felt like they were either killing time, or else casting about to try and find something interesting to continue the series with. Some things worked, a bunch didn't. Complaints first:
James' story (fixing the car, having an affair, framed for murder) was surprisingly boring. It seemed like there was potential there, but I could never make myself care.
On a related note, I liked Donna much less in the second season than I had in the first. She used to be a stalwart friend; now, she's this combination of mean and brittle that's pretty off-putting. I do like her original transformation (suddenly starting to smoke and talking like a femme fatale from a noir movie), but when it carries over throughout the entire season and culminates with histrionic fits with her parents... well, I just don't get a lot out of it.
The Nadine transformation seems totally unnecessary. It leads to a bunch of scenes that I'm almost certain are supposed to be humorous farce, but I just couldn't laugh at any of them. It stretches out for a loooooooong time, too, covering almost the whole season... and, in the end, it doesn't make any difference. (The one exception: I did love the scene where she beats the tar out of Hank.)
Lucy's baby situation was occasionally funny, but again, didn't seem to add much.
Okay, enough complaining. On to what did work:
Windom Earl made an excellent successor to Bob as the primary villain. He was just as scary, and in a completely different way. I enjoyed his mixture of intelligence and insanity. The way he wormed his way into Twin Peaks was excellent as well; it's a perversion of Dale Cooper's integration into this community.
Similarly, the Leo/Windom pairing worked for me. I wasn't a fan of Leo in the first season, but it's really hard not to feel sorry for him by the end of the second season. Dare I say he might be approaching redemption? (Or a facefull of spiders, which is mostly the same thing.) Their encounters are frightening, and also surprisingly darkly funny. (The scene where Leo steals and uses the trigger to his shock collar is one of those things where I feel bad at myself for laughing.)
I was pleasantly surprised by the transformation of Major Briggs in the second season. In the first season he had just seemed like a parody of a stuffy military man and not-with-it parent, defined entirely by his estrangement from Bobby. In the second season, Bobby thankfully recedes into the background, and Briggs becomes much more important. I like all the plot lines that he opens up: initially aliens, but then a more mystical line that eventually leads to the Black Lodge. I'm also impressed that his actual delivery never changes from the first season, while our attitude towards him totally shifts: he still talks the same way, but where we used to find him fussy and boring, he now comes across as wise.
Even though it ended up being a bit of a shaggy dog story, I did enjoy the Packard plot. The Josie/Truman stuff was a bit overdramatic, but otherwise, it had a really nice rhythm to it, continually spinning out, drawing in new characters, and surprising me. Mr. Packard's return was especially interesting; his absence had felt palpable in the first season, with his mill possibly the single most important aspect of the town. Eckhart was a good interior antagonist for the short time that he was on-screen. Pete is a reliably entertaining character, and I especially enjoyed seeing his interactions with Packard. On a related note, the evolution of the Ghostwood Estates project was also cool.
Let's see... Ben Horne gets to do some great stuff here. Early on he's the prime suspect in Laura's murder. He loses almost everything when Catherine visits him in prison, and slips into madness. This is another subplot that doesn't end up actually meaning anything, but it is entertaining and interesting, which is all that I ask for. He slips into civil war mania, with great results. After he is "cured", he decides to turn over a new leaf... and fight the Ghostwood Estates project by embracing environmentalism. I like how we can't be sure whether he actually is trying to be good, or if this is just an excuse for him to be bad in a new way.
The FBI is pretty great. The plot with Cooper losing his badge is unnecessary, but all of the other agents we meet more than make up for it. David Duchovny is hilarious as a cross-dressing investigator. Albert returns from the first season, just as irascible as before, but he finally starts to warm to Twin Peaks and shows a core of compassion inside. And best of all, Gordon Cole (who I think is David Lynch himself) is absolutely hilarious as THE LOUDEST MAN ON THE SHOW. I think my favorite scene with him is when he asks TO HAVE A PRIVATE WORD WITH AGENT COOPER, then they proceed to chat in a separate room, and of course everyone else can hear everything Gordon says. Besides the straight-up comedy of Lynch's delivery, though, I really enjoy the rapport between Cole and Cooper; it's great to see the complete trust Cole has in him.
Miss Twin Peaks stretches on for just a bit too long, but in general is a good idea. There are a ton of great female characters on the show, and it's a great opportunity to spend more time with them. It is pretty funny how badly the show tries to convince us that Miss Twin Peaks is important, though. There's constant talk about how "this could change your life!" and "Miss Twin Peaks is a critical forum that will allow us to get our message out!" Really... it's a beauty pageant. It's okay.
And, last but certainly not least, the Black Lodge. Hands-down the best thing to happen after Leland dies. The hunt is good: spooky and atmospheric, with the added tension that comes from Windom's involvement and our knowledge that he's tracking the actions of the good guys. I'm a sucker for iconography, and the map that they come up with is pretty cool and compelling. The payoff comes in the finale, when we're treated to a really long sequence in the Lodge itself that's pure Lynch. I can't do justice to it: it's strange, and terrifying, and funny, and perverse.
I'm guessing that Lynch didn't know at the time that the show would be canceled; if he did, then I'm mad at him for ending it on the shot that he did, with Cooper/Bob laughing maniacally at himself in the bathroom mirror, echoing the horror we felt when we first discovered the Leland/Bob link. I had initially thought that Bob had honored Cooper's deal with Windhom: Annie gets to live, because Cooper has (unhesitatingly, I might add) agreed to surrender his soul. Upon further reflection, though, the Cooper we're seeing might be the doppelganger that appeared in the Black Lodge after Windom died. That's also a chilling scenario, and would make more sense in the context of a theoretical third season: the real Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge, with his greatest enemy free outside of it. Furthermore, only Briggs knows (via the psychic Mrs. Palmer) that Windom and Cooper were in the Black Lodge, so I could imagine Briggs at some point organizing another expedition in there to rescue him.
I'm still a bit uncertain about just what to make of the Black Lodge. From the setup, we've learned that it's a realm of pure evil. It's the home of Bob, and we can assume similar demonic features. From what we actually see of the Lodge, though, it doesn't seem quite as clear. Oh, there's definitely evil IN there, but is the lodge itself pure evil? We see the Giant, who I tend to think of as a force for good. Of course, there's the midget as well; I can't really categorize him in one way or another. I suppose it's possible that they aren't "really" there, that they're just visions called up by the Lodge. Alternately, and more chillingly, perhaps they really ARE all evil, just in more subtle ways than Bob. It's interesting to think that the entire series has been directed to bringing Cooper to this place at this time: not just Bob and Windom, but also the forces that seemed to be on his side, collaborating for the greater ill.
Oh, oh, oh! Random note: when we see Laura in the Black Lodge, she says something like, "I will see you again in twenty-five years." Wouldn't it be AWESOME if David Lynch did a new Twin Peaks thing twenty-five years after that? Which would be... 2016? It's not THAT far off.
END SPOILERS
The mean awesomeness of the second season of Twin Peaks was a definite step down from the first one, but the sum awesomeness was greater. I feel like they could have trimmed it down to 14 episodes or so and made one of the best television seasons ever. As it stands, it left us with haunting visuals, two phenomenal villains, a tantalizing mythology, and some of the most fascinating characters in any television drama. I call that a win. Now, who wants some coffee and pie?
The second season is MUCH longer than the first, which is a blessing... and a curse. It gives a wider canvas, and more time to get to know characters and explore plots. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be quite enough plot to usefully fill up the available time, and so much of the show seems to dither in tertiary storylines that are neither interesting nor relevant. Still, the best stuff is at least as great as anything from the first season.
On a technical note, they hired a guy to write some additional music for the show, which means that we now have about five themes instead of just three. The cast list also continues to expand, which is awesome; several good folks rotate through, including a great appearance by Heather Graham near the end.
There's also more effort put into building a mythology, which I'm always in favor of. It doesn't totally make sense, but it is nicely atmospheric and, well, Lynch-ian, which this world could use more of.
MEGA SPOILERS
The first part of the second season continues to march towards the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder. It's cool and interesting that they resolve this mid-season like they do, since everything about the entire show up until now has revolved around that mystery. I'd be inclined to think that they'd want to make that a season-ending thing. Then again, if they want people to stick around for future seasons, they need to give them a reason to keep watching once that mystery is solved.
I was really happy with how the mystery turned out. Leland wasn't even on my radar as a possible suspect. It felt like we had already learned his "secret" in the form of his murder of Jacque. He had enough bizarre, out-there stuff going on (white hair, helpless dancing) that he stayed in the center of the picture without seeming suspicious.
Leland was also a shocking choice. Again, I'm surprised that this showed on network television. The details we've learned about Laura Palmer's life and death are grisly enough; adding molestation and incest to the list seems to push it over the edge. On an artistic standpoint, the Palmer/Bob link is absolutely chilling. Bob is just an incredibly scary dude; as Pat has pointed out, the shot of Bob climbing over the couch is among the most frightening shots on television, even though, well, it's technically just a guy climbing over a couch. (Lynch has to be the absolute master of establishing a pervasive sense of dread that causes you to flinch at even mundane images.) I think they keep things going for exactly the right amount of time, too. After we learn about Bob's possession of Leland, there are a couple of episodes where we see Leland carrying on about town, with the populace totally oblivious to his actions. Most worrisome: the encounter where he's stopped by the police while speeding, with Maddy's corpse hidden in the trunk; he's within seconds of apparently opening the trunk (with unknown consequences) then the police are called away.
The final resolution of the Palmer mystery is nicely laced with mysticism. We supposedly know what's happened now, but there's this whole huge metaphysical backstory of Bob and Mike and possession and such that still hangs in the distance. It's an interesting position: we get closure, but it keeps things from closing off.
And, from there, things start to get REALLY weird. And not always in a good way.
It kind of feels like the show starts casting about for a purpose. Now, in general, I'm all about strange stories that don't make sense. I like them to be well-done, though. Here, it felt like they were either killing time, or else casting about to try and find something interesting to continue the series with. Some things worked, a bunch didn't. Complaints first:
James' story (fixing the car, having an affair, framed for murder) was surprisingly boring. It seemed like there was potential there, but I could never make myself care.
On a related note, I liked Donna much less in the second season than I had in the first. She used to be a stalwart friend; now, she's this combination of mean and brittle that's pretty off-putting. I do like her original transformation (suddenly starting to smoke and talking like a femme fatale from a noir movie), but when it carries over throughout the entire season and culminates with histrionic fits with her parents... well, I just don't get a lot out of it.
The Nadine transformation seems totally unnecessary. It leads to a bunch of scenes that I'm almost certain are supposed to be humorous farce, but I just couldn't laugh at any of them. It stretches out for a loooooooong time, too, covering almost the whole season... and, in the end, it doesn't make any difference. (The one exception: I did love the scene where she beats the tar out of Hank.)
Lucy's baby situation was occasionally funny, but again, didn't seem to add much.
Okay, enough complaining. On to what did work:
Windom Earl made an excellent successor to Bob as the primary villain. He was just as scary, and in a completely different way. I enjoyed his mixture of intelligence and insanity. The way he wormed his way into Twin Peaks was excellent as well; it's a perversion of Dale Cooper's integration into this community.
Similarly, the Leo/Windom pairing worked for me. I wasn't a fan of Leo in the first season, but it's really hard not to feel sorry for him by the end of the second season. Dare I say he might be approaching redemption? (Or a facefull of spiders, which is mostly the same thing.) Their encounters are frightening, and also surprisingly darkly funny. (The scene where Leo steals and uses the trigger to his shock collar is one of those things where I feel bad at myself for laughing.)
I was pleasantly surprised by the transformation of Major Briggs in the second season. In the first season he had just seemed like a parody of a stuffy military man and not-with-it parent, defined entirely by his estrangement from Bobby. In the second season, Bobby thankfully recedes into the background, and Briggs becomes much more important. I like all the plot lines that he opens up: initially aliens, but then a more mystical line that eventually leads to the Black Lodge. I'm also impressed that his actual delivery never changes from the first season, while our attitude towards him totally shifts: he still talks the same way, but where we used to find him fussy and boring, he now comes across as wise.
Even though it ended up being a bit of a shaggy dog story, I did enjoy the Packard plot. The Josie/Truman stuff was a bit overdramatic, but otherwise, it had a really nice rhythm to it, continually spinning out, drawing in new characters, and surprising me. Mr. Packard's return was especially interesting; his absence had felt palpable in the first season, with his mill possibly the single most important aspect of the town. Eckhart was a good interior antagonist for the short time that he was on-screen. Pete is a reliably entertaining character, and I especially enjoyed seeing his interactions with Packard. On a related note, the evolution of the Ghostwood Estates project was also cool.
Let's see... Ben Horne gets to do some great stuff here. Early on he's the prime suspect in Laura's murder. He loses almost everything when Catherine visits him in prison, and slips into madness. This is another subplot that doesn't end up actually meaning anything, but it is entertaining and interesting, which is all that I ask for. He slips into civil war mania, with great results. After he is "cured", he decides to turn over a new leaf... and fight the Ghostwood Estates project by embracing environmentalism. I like how we can't be sure whether he actually is trying to be good, or if this is just an excuse for him to be bad in a new way.
The FBI is pretty great. The plot with Cooper losing his badge is unnecessary, but all of the other agents we meet more than make up for it. David Duchovny is hilarious as a cross-dressing investigator. Albert returns from the first season, just as irascible as before, but he finally starts to warm to Twin Peaks and shows a core of compassion inside. And best of all, Gordon Cole (who I think is David Lynch himself) is absolutely hilarious as THE LOUDEST MAN ON THE SHOW. I think my favorite scene with him is when he asks TO HAVE A PRIVATE WORD WITH AGENT COOPER, then they proceed to chat in a separate room, and of course everyone else can hear everything Gordon says. Besides the straight-up comedy of Lynch's delivery, though, I really enjoy the rapport between Cole and Cooper; it's great to see the complete trust Cole has in him.
Miss Twin Peaks stretches on for just a bit too long, but in general is a good idea. There are a ton of great female characters on the show, and it's a great opportunity to spend more time with them. It is pretty funny how badly the show tries to convince us that Miss Twin Peaks is important, though. There's constant talk about how "this could change your life!" and "Miss Twin Peaks is a critical forum that will allow us to get our message out!" Really... it's a beauty pageant. It's okay.
And, last but certainly not least, the Black Lodge. Hands-down the best thing to happen after Leland dies. The hunt is good: spooky and atmospheric, with the added tension that comes from Windom's involvement and our knowledge that he's tracking the actions of the good guys. I'm a sucker for iconography, and the map that they come up with is pretty cool and compelling. The payoff comes in the finale, when we're treated to a really long sequence in the Lodge itself that's pure Lynch. I can't do justice to it: it's strange, and terrifying, and funny, and perverse.
I'm guessing that Lynch didn't know at the time that the show would be canceled; if he did, then I'm mad at him for ending it on the shot that he did, with Cooper/Bob laughing maniacally at himself in the bathroom mirror, echoing the horror we felt when we first discovered the Leland/Bob link. I had initially thought that Bob had honored Cooper's deal with Windhom: Annie gets to live, because Cooper has (unhesitatingly, I might add) agreed to surrender his soul. Upon further reflection, though, the Cooper we're seeing might be the doppelganger that appeared in the Black Lodge after Windom died. That's also a chilling scenario, and would make more sense in the context of a theoretical third season: the real Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge, with his greatest enemy free outside of it. Furthermore, only Briggs knows (via the psychic Mrs. Palmer) that Windom and Cooper were in the Black Lodge, so I could imagine Briggs at some point organizing another expedition in there to rescue him.
I'm still a bit uncertain about just what to make of the Black Lodge. From the setup, we've learned that it's a realm of pure evil. It's the home of Bob, and we can assume similar demonic features. From what we actually see of the Lodge, though, it doesn't seem quite as clear. Oh, there's definitely evil IN there, but is the lodge itself pure evil? We see the Giant, who I tend to think of as a force for good. Of course, there's the midget as well; I can't really categorize him in one way or another. I suppose it's possible that they aren't "really" there, that they're just visions called up by the Lodge. Alternately, and more chillingly, perhaps they really ARE all evil, just in more subtle ways than Bob. It's interesting to think that the entire series has been directed to bringing Cooper to this place at this time: not just Bob and Windom, but also the forces that seemed to be on his side, collaborating for the greater ill.
Oh, oh, oh! Random note: when we see Laura in the Black Lodge, she says something like, "I will see you again in twenty-five years." Wouldn't it be AWESOME if David Lynch did a new Twin Peaks thing twenty-five years after that? Which would be... 2016? It's not THAT far off.
END SPOILERS
The mean awesomeness of the second season of Twin Peaks was a definite step down from the first one, but the sum awesomeness was greater. I feel like they could have trimmed it down to 14 episodes or so and made one of the best television seasons ever. As it stands, it left us with haunting visuals, two phenomenal villains, a tantalizing mythology, and some of the most fascinating characters in any television drama. I call that a win. Now, who wants some coffee and pie?
Effing Great
I think I've written about this before, but the EFF is my hero. I've been a member since 1999-ish, and have enthusiastically followed their efforts since the early 90's, when they defended Steve Jackson Games against a criminal overreach by the FBI during an early government fishing expedition for electronic crime.
I don't have as much time as I would like to closely follow EFF these days, but every time I check in, I'm amazed at what they're up to. The organization has shifted radically over the past twenty years, and change is kind of built into its DNA. You can probably best summarize the role of the EFF by unpacking its name, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They operate at the cutting edge of electronic technology, and work to make sure that we're writing good laws about these new technologies and enforcing them well. Because technology changes so rapidly, so does the EFF and its focuses. Back in the late 1990's, nobody knew what a "blog" or "blogger" were; by the mid-oughts, blogs were a significant mode of expression, and the EFF focused a significant portion of their activism on giving good tools to bloggers; these days, blogs have become proportionally less relevant, and the EFF focuses more on social media and the unique set of issues that they're raising.
Because technology affects almost every aspect of our life, the EFF's portfolio can seem sprawling at times. They still put in a lot of effort against their early-90's mainstay causes: upholding fourth and fifth amendment rights in digital contexts, and defending digital media against government censorship. Now, though, the EFF is at least as focused on private corporations as on the government, and just as concerned about privacy as it is against free expression. All good causes, and I'm glad they're fighting for them.
One of the (many, many) perks of moving to the Bay Area has been closer proximity to the EFF. While they were briefly based in DC towards the beginning, they realized a long time ago that their advocacy required close coordination with the companies who were developing the technology that drives these legal questions, and so they relocated to San Francisco. Their offices are based in the Mission, and while (understandably) by far most of their activities take place online, they do occasionally hold real-life events. I try to attend these whenever I can, as they're a great way to learn about the most pressing issues of the day.
The latest event was an interesting talk that was given in conjunction with the Intersection for the Arts, a San Francisco non-profit. Before the lecture started, the folks from Intersection chatted a bit about their organization and what it's up to. They've recently relocated from the Mission to the first floor of the San Francisco Chronicle building. I was saddened to hear that, as part of the blows striking old-fashioned print media around the country, the Chronicle has scaled back their offices significantly enough that they now only occupy one of the three floors of their building. The Intersection has moved in, along with several other cultural organizations.
The main show at the Intersection now is an interesting piece that's now in its seventh year. It was created by an American citizen who was detained by the FBI for many months on suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 hijackings. He was innocent, and finally walked after one day where he underwent, and passed, nine consecutive polygraph tests. During that time the government combed over every aspect of his life, and his friends' and family's lives, and even after he was declared innocent and released, the government asked him to keep them informed of all his travel and activities. Eventually, he started documenting every single aspect of his daily life, and turned it into an ongoing and ever-evolving art installation. Predating the rise of the social networks, it's a slightly funny, slightly eerie contemplation of privacy and surveillance.
And so, obviously, there's a clear tie-in with a lot of what the EFF is working on, today and always. Two activists spoke, covering a lot of interesting ground. They started off with some fairly remedial ideas - the PATRIOT act, Freedom of Information Act requests, the "back door" that lets the government collect data from private companies instead of wiretapping you. They quickly moved on to more detailed topics, though, and I was amazed by a lot of it. In no particular order:
When you enter the country, even if you're an American citizen, customs agents can search and seize your digital devices - laptop, cell phone, digital camera, and so on. The courts have ruled that this is a "routine" matter, and so it doesn't require any special suspicion, warrants, or the like. If anything strikes them as interesting, they can copy your entire hard drive, or whatever; read stuff already loaded on your computer like emails; and/or hold the device for a "reasonable" amount of time, which apparently is currently set at around two weeks, before giving it back to you. Again, none of this requires a warrant or any specific cause for suspicion.
Their talk made me even happier about Twitter, and even more disturbed about Facebook. Twitter recently received a secret order from the Department of Justice ordering it to turn over all records related to some individuals who were suspected of having links to WikiLeaks. Most of the time when this happens, companies play ball: they don't want trouble, so they just turn everything over. (The "privacy policy" checkbox you clicked when you joined any network or web site almost certainly granted them the right to do this, though you didn't notice it at the time.) Twitter, though, decided that it didn't think the requests were valid. Now: because of the nature of the order, Twitter was forbidden from even disclosing that it had RECEIVED the order. Eventually they were able to bring the EFF on as counsel; the EFF, in turn, was gagged from disclosing that there was a case or that they were involved. They've been litigating this case for months, and only now has the judge finally unsealed their request to unseal the case. (!)
As they pointed out, these are among the most disturbing aspects of the post-PATRIOT-act world that we live in. America is a democracy, and we the people are ultimately responsible for the government we elect and create. How are we, as an informed populace, supposed to make decisions about the actions taken by our government, when we don't even know what they're doing? There's an institutionalization of government secrecy that has a potentially chilling effect on the basic functioning of our democracy.
A large part of what the EFF does is file Freedom of Information Act requests. FOIA is one of the best tools available for extracting information about what the government is up to. These tend to be protracted affairs, as they often won't get all the documents they want, or else they'll be heavily redacted. If that happened to you or I, we'd be stuck; when it happens to the EFF, they can litigate and try to get more.
There's been a lot of interesting information trickling in from FOIA requests. Among them:
Among the major social networks, Facebook has a reputation as being the most "cooperative" in responding to "emergency" requests from the Department of Justice.
There's wide disparity between how individual government agencies handle data. For example, when DHS was preparing for Obama's 2008 inauguration, part of it was dedicated to monitoring social networks. (Interestingly, the particular networks that they were interested in were ones with particular demographic bents, lining up with particular racial minorities, making this a fascinating, 21st-century example of racial profiling.) Part of that conversation, though, was a discussion about how to handle that data. They were trying to figure out how to anonymize it, how soon they could get rid of data that wasn't connecting to any plots, and so on. On the other extreme, the Department of Justice notoriously gathers tons of information on tons of subjects and holds on to it indefinitely.
Sometimes, a FOIA request will result in getting the same document from multiple agencies. When this happens, it's lots of fun to compare the document and see which parts one agency thought were worthy of redaction while the other agency thought they were okay.
One of the activists talked about the status of the PATRIOT act. As we know, it was passed in a rush after the 9/11 attacks; it's hundreds of pages long, and many lawmakers have admitted to not reading it before voting on it. It weakens many of the protections that were put in place during the 1970's after Americans became rightfully alarmed at the degree to which the government was spying on its people. It weakens the separation of powers, lowers the bar for starting an investigation, expands the range of actions that can be taken against American citizens without a court order, and so on. They played a YouTube clip of Obama from the 2008 campaign, where he addresses the problems with the Bush presidency's calculus (which demanded that greater security required surrendering rights), and eloquently describes how America should cherish its tradition of liberty. Audible, rueful snickers could be heard from the audience as we watched the clip. Needless to say, things haven't turned out as we've hoped. The Obama administration, and in particular their Justice Department, has continued the Bush-era arguments for surveillance and monitoring of civilians.
There is some unexpected hope, though. When the PATRIOT act came up for re-approval, the House tried to push it through without a vote, and enough Democrats and Republicans rebelled against them that they weren't able to do so. To be clear, they weren't voting against the PATRIOT act itself, but were demanding that it be debated on the floor. This means that we have our first good opportunity in a decade to make fixes to this law. (Yes, there are some aspects of PATRIOT that are worth keeping, where it modernizes law to correspond with currently available technologies; but that modernization ought not be an excuse for an expansion of government powers at the expense of citizen liberties and privacy.) They urged us to call our congresspeople and demand that they not vote for PATRIOT unless it is changed to safeguard civil liberties. On a parallel track, EFF is organizing a one-day White House phone-in where they're trying to get as many people as possible to call Obama's office on the same day to ask that he veto PATRIOT re-authorization unless it restores separation of powers and oversight.
A good chunk of the night focused on practical tools that everyone can take. The EFF described these as "good hygiene": they won't make your data perfectly safe and private, especially since the government always has this back-door available to private companies, but if enough people follow these tips, it will raise the bar for privacy throughout the country.
* Always use HTTPS whenever you can. HTTPS protects against random people eavesdropping on your conversations, especially when you're accessing public Wi-Fi like in a cafe. The EFF has released a Firefox plugin, called "HTTPS Everywhere", that automatically switches you to the HTTPS version of Web sites when available.
* Encrypt your data. Modern operating systems have encryption capabilities built-in, so you can choose to electronically scramble your files. That way, even if your data is taken (whether by a thief or by a US Customs agent), they won't be able to read it without your password.
* Similarly, encrypt your communication. Pidgin and other IM clients support OTR, which keeps random people on the Internet from eavesdropping on your chats.
* Only take the data that you need. When traveling out of the country, for example, take a blank laptop. Once you arrive at your destination, download your (encrypted, secure) data from an (encrypted, secure) remote computer. Do your work, upload any new data, and then clean your laptop before you return to our country.
All too often, people take an attitude of, "Well, I don't have anything to hide, so I don't need to care about any of this." Many people DO care about their privacy, though; they may care as a matter of principle, or for reasons of modesty, or out of embarrassment, or just because it's nobody else's business. And of course, activists worry about the slippery slope that these cases put us on, leading to a more Orwellian future. By practicing good data hygiene, we raise the bar for everyone, and also make it less tempting for anyone (identity thieves, industrial spies, criminals, or rogue government agencies) to go on fishing expeditions.
I'm not nearly doing justice to this event; it was utterly fascinating, and covered a lot more ground than I've listed here. There should be a video up at this page sometime in the future, and if you have a spare hour or so, it will be richly rewarded by helping you be a more aware, and hopefully more active, citizen in our digital world.
I don't have as much time as I would like to closely follow EFF these days, but every time I check in, I'm amazed at what they're up to. The organization has shifted radically over the past twenty years, and change is kind of built into its DNA. You can probably best summarize the role of the EFF by unpacking its name, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They operate at the cutting edge of electronic technology, and work to make sure that we're writing good laws about these new technologies and enforcing them well. Because technology changes so rapidly, so does the EFF and its focuses. Back in the late 1990's, nobody knew what a "blog" or "blogger" were; by the mid-oughts, blogs were a significant mode of expression, and the EFF focused a significant portion of their activism on giving good tools to bloggers; these days, blogs have become proportionally less relevant, and the EFF focuses more on social media and the unique set of issues that they're raising.
Because technology affects almost every aspect of our life, the EFF's portfolio can seem sprawling at times. They still put in a lot of effort against their early-90's mainstay causes: upholding fourth and fifth amendment rights in digital contexts, and defending digital media against government censorship. Now, though, the EFF is at least as focused on private corporations as on the government, and just as concerned about privacy as it is against free expression. All good causes, and I'm glad they're fighting for them.
One of the (many, many) perks of moving to the Bay Area has been closer proximity to the EFF. While they were briefly based in DC towards the beginning, they realized a long time ago that their advocacy required close coordination with the companies who were developing the technology that drives these legal questions, and so they relocated to San Francisco. Their offices are based in the Mission, and while (understandably) by far most of their activities take place online, they do occasionally hold real-life events. I try to attend these whenever I can, as they're a great way to learn about the most pressing issues of the day.
The latest event was an interesting talk that was given in conjunction with the Intersection for the Arts, a San Francisco non-profit. Before the lecture started, the folks from Intersection chatted a bit about their organization and what it's up to. They've recently relocated from the Mission to the first floor of the San Francisco Chronicle building. I was saddened to hear that, as part of the blows striking old-fashioned print media around the country, the Chronicle has scaled back their offices significantly enough that they now only occupy one of the three floors of their building. The Intersection has moved in, along with several other cultural organizations.
The main show at the Intersection now is an interesting piece that's now in its seventh year. It was created by an American citizen who was detained by the FBI for many months on suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 hijackings. He was innocent, and finally walked after one day where he underwent, and passed, nine consecutive polygraph tests. During that time the government combed over every aspect of his life, and his friends' and family's lives, and even after he was declared innocent and released, the government asked him to keep them informed of all his travel and activities. Eventually, he started documenting every single aspect of his daily life, and turned it into an ongoing and ever-evolving art installation. Predating the rise of the social networks, it's a slightly funny, slightly eerie contemplation of privacy and surveillance.
And so, obviously, there's a clear tie-in with a lot of what the EFF is working on, today and always. Two activists spoke, covering a lot of interesting ground. They started off with some fairly remedial ideas - the PATRIOT act, Freedom of Information Act requests, the "back door" that lets the government collect data from private companies instead of wiretapping you. They quickly moved on to more detailed topics, though, and I was amazed by a lot of it. In no particular order:
When you enter the country, even if you're an American citizen, customs agents can search and seize your digital devices - laptop, cell phone, digital camera, and so on. The courts have ruled that this is a "routine" matter, and so it doesn't require any special suspicion, warrants, or the like. If anything strikes them as interesting, they can copy your entire hard drive, or whatever; read stuff already loaded on your computer like emails; and/or hold the device for a "reasonable" amount of time, which apparently is currently set at around two weeks, before giving it back to you. Again, none of this requires a warrant or any specific cause for suspicion.
Their talk made me even happier about Twitter, and even more disturbed about Facebook. Twitter recently received a secret order from the Department of Justice ordering it to turn over all records related to some individuals who were suspected of having links to WikiLeaks. Most of the time when this happens, companies play ball: they don't want trouble, so they just turn everything over. (The "privacy policy" checkbox you clicked when you joined any network or web site almost certainly granted them the right to do this, though you didn't notice it at the time.) Twitter, though, decided that it didn't think the requests were valid. Now: because of the nature of the order, Twitter was forbidden from even disclosing that it had RECEIVED the order. Eventually they were able to bring the EFF on as counsel; the EFF, in turn, was gagged from disclosing that there was a case or that they were involved. They've been litigating this case for months, and only now has the judge finally unsealed their request to unseal the case. (!)
As they pointed out, these are among the most disturbing aspects of the post-PATRIOT-act world that we live in. America is a democracy, and we the people are ultimately responsible for the government we elect and create. How are we, as an informed populace, supposed to make decisions about the actions taken by our government, when we don't even know what they're doing? There's an institutionalization of government secrecy that has a potentially chilling effect on the basic functioning of our democracy.
A large part of what the EFF does is file Freedom of Information Act requests. FOIA is one of the best tools available for extracting information about what the government is up to. These tend to be protracted affairs, as they often won't get all the documents they want, or else they'll be heavily redacted. If that happened to you or I, we'd be stuck; when it happens to the EFF, they can litigate and try to get more.
There's been a lot of interesting information trickling in from FOIA requests. Among them:
Among the major social networks, Facebook has a reputation as being the most "cooperative" in responding to "emergency" requests from the Department of Justice.
There's wide disparity between how individual government agencies handle data. For example, when DHS was preparing for Obama's 2008 inauguration, part of it was dedicated to monitoring social networks. (Interestingly, the particular networks that they were interested in were ones with particular demographic bents, lining up with particular racial minorities, making this a fascinating, 21st-century example of racial profiling.) Part of that conversation, though, was a discussion about how to handle that data. They were trying to figure out how to anonymize it, how soon they could get rid of data that wasn't connecting to any plots, and so on. On the other extreme, the Department of Justice notoriously gathers tons of information on tons of subjects and holds on to it indefinitely.
Sometimes, a FOIA request will result in getting the same document from multiple agencies. When this happens, it's lots of fun to compare the document and see which parts one agency thought were worthy of redaction while the other agency thought they were okay.
One of the activists talked about the status of the PATRIOT act. As we know, it was passed in a rush after the 9/11 attacks; it's hundreds of pages long, and many lawmakers have admitted to not reading it before voting on it. It weakens many of the protections that were put in place during the 1970's after Americans became rightfully alarmed at the degree to which the government was spying on its people. It weakens the separation of powers, lowers the bar for starting an investigation, expands the range of actions that can be taken against American citizens without a court order, and so on. They played a YouTube clip of Obama from the 2008 campaign, where he addresses the problems with the Bush presidency's calculus (which demanded that greater security required surrendering rights), and eloquently describes how America should cherish its tradition of liberty. Audible, rueful snickers could be heard from the audience as we watched the clip. Needless to say, things haven't turned out as we've hoped. The Obama administration, and in particular their Justice Department, has continued the Bush-era arguments for surveillance and monitoring of civilians.
There is some unexpected hope, though. When the PATRIOT act came up for re-approval, the House tried to push it through without a vote, and enough Democrats and Republicans rebelled against them that they weren't able to do so. To be clear, they weren't voting against the PATRIOT act itself, but were demanding that it be debated on the floor. This means that we have our first good opportunity in a decade to make fixes to this law. (Yes, there are some aspects of PATRIOT that are worth keeping, where it modernizes law to correspond with currently available technologies; but that modernization ought not be an excuse for an expansion of government powers at the expense of citizen liberties and privacy.) They urged us to call our congresspeople and demand that they not vote for PATRIOT unless it is changed to safeguard civil liberties. On a parallel track, EFF is organizing a one-day White House phone-in where they're trying to get as many people as possible to call Obama's office on the same day to ask that he veto PATRIOT re-authorization unless it restores separation of powers and oversight.
A good chunk of the night focused on practical tools that everyone can take. The EFF described these as "good hygiene": they won't make your data perfectly safe and private, especially since the government always has this back-door available to private companies, but if enough people follow these tips, it will raise the bar for privacy throughout the country.
* Always use HTTPS whenever you can. HTTPS protects against random people eavesdropping on your conversations, especially when you're accessing public Wi-Fi like in a cafe. The EFF has released a Firefox plugin, called "HTTPS Everywhere", that automatically switches you to the HTTPS version of Web sites when available.
* Encrypt your data. Modern operating systems have encryption capabilities built-in, so you can choose to electronically scramble your files. That way, even if your data is taken (whether by a thief or by a US Customs agent), they won't be able to read it without your password.
* Similarly, encrypt your communication. Pidgin and other IM clients support OTR, which keeps random people on the Internet from eavesdropping on your chats.
* Only take the data that you need. When traveling out of the country, for example, take a blank laptop. Once you arrive at your destination, download your (encrypted, secure) data from an (encrypted, secure) remote computer. Do your work, upload any new data, and then clean your laptop before you return to our country.
All too often, people take an attitude of, "Well, I don't have anything to hide, so I don't need to care about any of this." Many people DO care about their privacy, though; they may care as a matter of principle, or for reasons of modesty, or out of embarrassment, or just because it's nobody else's business. And of course, activists worry about the slippery slope that these cases put us on, leading to a more Orwellian future. By practicing good data hygiene, we raise the bar for everyone, and also make it less tempting for anyone (identity thieves, industrial spies, criminals, or rogue government agencies) to go on fishing expeditions.
I'm not nearly doing justice to this event; it was utterly fascinating, and covered a lot more ground than I've listed here. There should be a video up at this page sometime in the future, and if you have a spare hour or so, it will be richly rewarded by helping you be a more aware, and hopefully more active, citizen in our digital world.
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