Couple Arrested For Dancing On NYC Subway Platform

from the waltz-the-problem-with-dancing? dept

Perhaps some day, if I manage to live long enough, somebody somewhere will be able to explain to me why the seemingly benign combination of dancing, cameras, and police tends to result in threats, beatdowns, and arrests. Recall a year ago when I had the privilege to write about protestors getting bodyslammed at the Jefferson Memorial for the horrific crime of silently dancing on the premises?

Well, Yakko Warner writes in with the story of two nefarious characters, code named George Hess and Caroline Stern, who had the gall to dance on a New York City subway platform and were taken to the ground and arrested for their trouble. As that New York Post piece explains, the couple found themselves near a musician playing on steel drums:

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”
“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

And so, as their training manuals surely instructed them to do, the officers demanded to see their IDs. Because they were dancing. Where someone was playing the drums. In the most cosmopolitan and culturally-rich city in America. In any case, when Hess could only produce a credit card (which had his name and photo on it), this happened:

“The officers ordered the couple to go with them — even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature. When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

The ninja cops then alledgedly tackled Hess to the floor, cuffed both of them, and detained the pair for twenty-three hours. The initial charge was apparently impeding the flow of traffic of what is reported to have been three other people on the platform. The police then added other charges, such as resisting arrest.

All charges were subsequently dropped when the paperwork was finally reviewed by the NYPD’s Not Crazy Department. The couple are now suing in Manhattan courts, but maybe it’s time a national memo went out to law enforcement agencies reminding them that dancing people with cameras don’t necessarily need to be tackled?

Filed Under: arrest, dancing, expression, nyc, overreaction, subway

DailyDirt: Standing In The Alpha-Beta Parking Lot….

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

City planning in the future might have to take into account some technologies that sound like science fiction from the 1960s. Probably no flying cars, but there could be autonomous vehicles and less sprawl. Owning a car might not even be practical. In any case, parking lots will likely be long gone, and here are just a few links on some interesting parking situations.

• What goes well with a liveried chauffeur? Perhaps a parking spot that costs a million bucks. The first parking spot in NYC listed for $1 million is in a private garage at 66 E. 11th St. [url]
• One of the first automated parking garages opened in NYC in 2002 — and it dropped a few cars before working out its bugs. But now, car owners don’t have to worry about parking attendants (like Richard Edson) taking cars out for joyrides… [url]
• When cars can drive themselves, they’ll just drop us off, circle the block and/or park themselves somewhere (hopefully in a good neighborhood). They could also meet up with their other robot-car friends at the automated parking garage and waste time chatting about power converters…. [url]
• To find some more bizarre/crazy stuff, check out some things that other StumbleUpon users have found. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: autonomous, cars, city planning, garages, nyc, parking

Can You Understand How Technology Works Without Understanding Code?

from the yes-and-no dept

There’s an interesting debate that’s broken out in the tech world, kicked off by tech/coding superstar Jeff Atwood arguing that people shouldn’t learn to code. He was mostly responding to an announcement by NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg that he wanted to learn how to code:

Jeff found this to be a misuse of Bloomberg’s skills:

A noble gesture to garner the NYC tech community vote, for sure, but if the mayor of New York City actually needs to sling JavaScript code to do his job, something is deeply, horribly, terribly wrong with politics in the state of New York.

He goes on to explain why he thinks this is a bad idea, even as he’s a fan of programming himself. I won’t go through his full list of points. You can read them on his site yourself, but it does feel like a lot of his complaint isn’t so much about people learning to code, but the idea that people learning to code will mean more people coding for a living. For example, there are these two points:

• It assumes that adding naive, novice, not-even-sure-they-like-this-whole-programming-thing coders to the workforce is a net positive for the world. I guess that’s true if you consider that one bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. And for that matter, most people who already call themselves programmers can’t even code, so please pardon my skepticism of the sentiment that “everyone can learn to code”.
• It implies that there’s a thin, easily permeable membrane between learning to program and getting paid to program professionally. Just look at these new programmers who got offered jobs at an average salary of $79k/year after attending a mere two and a half month bootcamp! Maybe you too can teach yourself Perl in 24 hours! While I love that programming is an egalitarian field where degrees and certifications are irrelevant in the face of experience, you still gotta put in your ten thousand hours like the rest of us.

While I understand the points he’s raising in both of these cases, it feels like he’s taking the “everyone should learn to code” argument way beyond what is generally meant in that discussion. I don’t think anyone is saying that people should learn to code for a living. Lots of people learn math, but don’t become mathemeticians or even use math in their daily jobs — but it doesn’t mean it hurts to understand math.

In fact, I think that Jeff recognizes this. He notes that a better focus would be:

The general populace (and its political leadership) could probably benefit most of all from a basic understanding of how computers, and the Internet, work. Being able to get around on the Internet is becoming a basic life skill, and we should be worried about fixing that first and most of all, before we start jumping all the way into code.

And that’s something I think everyone agrees on. It’s just that some folks are suggesting that the way to better understand computers and the internet is if they have some familiarity with code. And thus, I actually think that Jeff and those arguing against him, may actually be in agreement. It’s just that some people think that understanding code is a good way to understand computers and the internet.

One of the better responses to Jeff points out that learning to code is different than preparing for a job as a coder. As that post notes:

Learning to program is not the same thing as training for a programming career. Learning new skills opens up new perceptual avenues and cognitive spaces. I’m learning to sew right now, not because the world needs another tailor but because I want to be able to recognize quality in clothing and create pieces that I can’t find. Novice coders feel the same way about their digital goods and should be encouraged to continue. Learn to program.

Perhaps where the major difference comes in is that Jeff believes that learning to code is not a stage in understanding computers and the internet, and he compares it to plumbing:

I can also recognize plumbing problems when I see them without any particular training in the area.

However, as esmoov writes in his response, Jeff may have just internalized what he has learned about plumbing:

He may not have had formal training (the professional/personal equivocation again) but he has been trained by an unruly digestive movement, a low water tank and the horrible things 18-22 year-olds do to and around toilets. My dad showed me how to fix a broken chain in the tank. Before I learned that, toilets had three states: working, clogged and broken. After learning to fix the chain, I added a new state to which my toilet-perception could resolve: loose or broken chain. Again, the ability to take in, cut up and categorize the world is a product of the things learned.

Indeed. I don’t think that learning the basics of programming solves all internet/technology illiteracy, but it certainly helps people to understand the lay of the land better. It’s not necessary, but it can help them better understand the problems and potential solutions when they come up — even if they don’t intend on programming themselves. It can lead them to recognize, for example, how bizarre it might seem to copyright an API or patent software itself. That’s a concept that’s a little harder to comprehend if you don’t understand programming at all. That isn’t to say that understanding programming is completely necessary, but it certainly can help in getting people to a point of digital literacy.

Filed Under: code, jeff atwood, mike bloomberg, nyc

New York City Cooks Up Annoying Plan That Will Pressure NYC Businesses To Buy .nyc Domains They Don't Want Or Need

from the but...-money dept

New York City officials are apparently all excited about a guaranteed $3.6 million “risk free to taxpayers” after signing a deal with a Virginia company to offer .nyc domains. This is one of those things that sounds good until you think it through, and then you realize it’s effectively a hidden business tax. NYC gets to promote it as a way for more companies in NYC to have domains, and to identify themselves as NYC-based companies. But for companies already based there, they now need to buy up these domains they don’t want or need, just to keep others from buying them up.

To businesses, which only need one website address, new domain names are often a tax they must pay to protect their brand. It’s as if someone printed an alternate copy of the White Pages and asked companies to buy a listing before it was sold to someone else.

In this case, a New York City company like Bloomberg would have to buy Bloomberg.nyc or face having to buy it back at a higher price. Other iconic New York City brands will likely watch nervously to see what becomes names like of “gossipgirl.nyc” or “magnoliabakery.nyc”

The company behind this is asking people to pre-register “for free,” but (tellingly) does not share how much the .nyc domains will actually cost once registration opens for real. So while NYC officials can pretend that they’ve “found” money here, the reality is that they’re creating a totally wasteful business tax and a true nuisance for NYC businesses.

Filed Under: domains, gtld, new york city, nyc, tax

If Phishing Email Can Kill NY Power Grid, Lack Of Cybersecurity Legislation Is Not The Problem

from the oh-come-on dept

We’ve been talking about the faux urgency to pass some cybersecurity legislation coming from the federal government, with plenty of fear mongering from politicians who never seem to want to point out any factual basis for why we need such new laws. Instead, it’s all been about Hollywood movie script-style scenarios about planes falling from the skies. It appears that the White House is heavily involved in this bogus fear mongering as well, having recently set up a “simulated cyberattack on New York City’s power supply” to convince elected officials to move forward on the legislation.

During a classified briefing in the Office of Senate Security, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan showed lawmakers how a hacker could breach control systems of the city’s electric system and trigger a ripple effect throughout the population and private sector, according to a source familiar with the scenario.

“The fact that we could be subject to a catastrophic attack under the right circumstances and we now know some of the things that would help us to protect against such an attack, that’s why it’s important now for the Congress to take this up,” Napolitano said in an interview with POLITICO.

Now that’s interesting. Just how could a hacker breach control systems of the power grid? Apparently with an email phishing attack:

During the simulation, the hacker gains access to the electric supply’s control system through a simple “spearphishing” attack, in which a worker merely clicks on a link in an email that appears to be from someone they know.

Um, there’s your problem. If the NYC power grid is attached to the public internet in such a way that it can be taken down, then um, shouldn’t we take it off the internet? This isn’t about cybersecurity, this is about common sense, where things like the power grid should not be accessible via the internet — and I’m pretty sure they’re not (back here in reality). But in the world where we need fear, uncertainty, doubt and the ability for the federal government to spy on private networks, we have to pretend such a scenario is likely.

Of course, I also question why the White House chose NYC as the showcase for the simulation and suggested that there would be deaths and other massive harm from such a power grid takedown. After all, it was just about a decade ago that the power grid in the Northeast did, in fact, fail. It was an inconvenience for many people, certainly, but it was hardly damaging in the way the White House seems to have implied with this scare tactic.

So, once again, can we take a step back and ask some simple questions: what’s the real threat and the real risk here? If it’s that the NYC power grid is accessible by a simple password over the public internet, then the problem isn’t cybersecurity, it’s whoever was stupid enough to connect the power grid to the internet. Let’s fix that. But let’s not regulate and spy on large segments of the public internet to cover for a few bad decisions.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, fear mongering, hype, nyc, phishing, power grid, terrorism, white house

Reminder: Create A PSA About The Impact Of Technology On Creativity And You Can Win $1,000

from the step-on-up dept

As you may remember, NBC Universal via New York City, is running a contest trying to get NYC school children to create anti-piracy public service announcement (PSA) propaganda videos. In exchange for that, they’re giving the “winner” $500… but also taking their copyright. We think it’s a bit ironic that a contest where you’re forced to only talk about how great copyright is also forces you to give up your copyright.

Anyway, thanks to some generous Techdirt readers (and a matching grant from us directly), we’re offering our own contest and the deadline is rapidly approaching. You’ve basically got a week left. We’re looking for the PSAs to be about the impact of technology on creativity. We’re not giving you talking points, or even a specific view you have to take. Unlike NBC Universal and New York City, we trust you to make your own arguments, not regurgitate what you’ve been handed. We’re also offering twice the amount of money they are… and we don’t force you to give up your copyright. So, step on up. Details of how to enter can be found here.

Filed Under: culture, nyc, psa, technology
Companies: nbc universal

Who Do You Believe? NYPD? Or Video Evidence Concerning Cop Pepper Spraying Women?

from the why-videotaping-police-is-important dept

Before I get into the details of this post, I will say that I don’t quite get the purpose of the whole “Occupy Wall Street” protests. I mean, I guess that they’re supposed to be some sort of American version of the Arab Spring protests or the riots in London, but, honestly — like many of these things in the US — they strike me as people protesting for the sake of protesting. I just don’t quite see the point. The folks in the Middle East had real problems with their government. Protesting against a “financial system”? What does that do?

That said, since we’ve been writing so much about law enforcement and videotaping their actions, one story coming out of the ongoing protests is worth looking at in more detail. On Saturday, there were a bunch of arrests, but the story getting a lot of attention was the decision by one officer (according to this blog, his badge says “Bologna”) to walk up to a group of protesting women and spray their eyes, point blank, with pepper spray. You can see the slow motion video, which highlights the officer’s actions:

From that video, it seems pretty clear that the guy just walks up to a group of the protesters, sprays them, and walks away. So here’s where it gets more interesting. The NY Police Department have insisted to the NY Times that the pepper spraying was appropriate, even as they admit they only use pepper spray in extraordinary circumstances:

The Police Department?s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police had used the pepper spray ?appropriately.?

?Pepper spray was used once,? he added, ?after individuals confronted officers and tried to prevent them from deploying a mesh barrier ? something that was edited out or otherwise not captured in the video.?

Of course, accounts in that same article from one of the women who was sprayed (who wasn’t arrested) suggests a different story. While admitting there were some “rough” people there, she says that she and the folks around her had done nothing to cause the police to single them out with pepper spray. Furthermore, the folks at USLaw.com have more information including an additional video taken by one of the pepper-sprayed women. While right as the pepper spraying happens the camera is facing away from the action, and there was a lot of screaming and activity a bit earlier, it’s hard to see how anything anyone did in that area provoked the sudden spraying:

On the YouTube page for that video, the woman states that, for the most part, she supports the police force and believes they’re good and honorable people. Right before she was sprayed in the video, she appears to be asking police politely where they want her to go.

Yes, this was a chaotic situation with lots of people yelling and lots of movement. But the evidence from the two videos (and two of the women sprayed) certainly suggests that the police spokesperson is lying in saying that the use here was “appropriate.” I find this interesting not because of anything to do with the protest itself, but because of the way the ability to record and upload videos like this is really able to impact and change the debate. In the past, it would have been the police’s word against the protesters, and lots of people would have simply believed the police. But, as chaotic as the situation may be, law enforcement around the world is going to have to learn that they can’t hide behind false claims of acting appropriately if they didn’t, in fact, act appropriately.

Filed Under: nyc, nypd, pepper spray, police, protests, video evidence

Mayor Bloomberg Demands SAIC Pay Back $600 Million In Cost Overruns For NYC Computer System

from the good-for-him dept

Over the years, we’ve chronicled a number of absolutely ridiculous over-budget computer systems for government agencies. My favorite still remains the FBI computer system — which was over budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, was useless at finding terrorists, was so bad that a contractor had to use some free internet tools to hack into the system just to get his work done, and was so confusing that a computer science professor who reviewed the system said he and some others thought of going on a crime spree the day the FBI switched over. That system was built by SAIC, and the FBI ended up scrapping it and starting from scratch. But, as far as I know, the FBI never asked SAIC for the $600 or so million in taxpayer money it spent on the system back.

Apparently, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had a similar experience with SAIC and the new computer system for NYC it’s been building. But, Bloomberg is a businessman by trade, rather than a politician, so when a company charges you $600 million (way overbudget from the original $63 million), he knows that you ask for your money back. So that’s what he’s doing. He’s demanding a $600 million refund from SAIC. Part of the issue is that, as with many of these type of projects, there appears to have been significant fraud involved:

The recent indictment of SAIC’s leader project manager on the CityTime job, Gerard Denault, as well as the guilty plea to criminal charges made by SAIC systems engineer Carl Bell, who designed the software, are “extremely troubling and raise questions about SAIC’s corporate responsibility and internal controls to prevent and combat fraud,” he added. Denault and Bell were charged with were charged with taking kickbacks, wire fraud and money laundering.

Also recently indicted were Reddy and Padma Allen, a couple who head up New Jersey systems integrator TechnoDyne, which was SAIC’s primary subcontractor on the CityTime project. Federal authorities allege that the Allens and others conducted an elaborate overbilling and kickback scheme that siphoned millions of dollars from the project.

Federal authorities have also contended that SAIC had received a whistleblower complaint about the project as far back as 2005, Bloomberg said in the letter. “It is unclear what SAIC did at that time to investigate these serious allegations.”

I would imagine that SAIC has no interest in paying back $600 million, but it could make for an interesting lawsuit if Bloomberg decides to press the matter.

Filed Under: computers, cost overrun, michael bloomberg, nyc
Companies: saic

Instead Of Hiring Film Crew To Make PSA About Out Of Work Film Crews, ICE Just Reruns Someone Else's Video

from the wow. dept

Well, this is just bizarre. You may recall that late last year, NBC Universal worked with New York City to create a silly “anti-piracy” propaganda video that was not even close to accurate. It amusingly claimed that there is “no such thing as a free movie,” while using YouTube, a free video platform… for free. We were left scratching our heads, a few weeks back, when pointing out that Homeland Security’s ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) was now using the same video on its YouTube account — stripped of all references to New York City.

Well, as part of World Intellectual Property Day, ICE has flat out lied and is pretending that this video is a “new” PSA that it’s put together, and which it will now be placing on the domains it illegally forfeits, without any sort of adversarial hearing.

Shouldn’t we be just a bit concerned that Homeland Security’s ICE group is placing a video, financed by NBC Universal, which makes blatantly false statements concerning copyright law and the impact of copyright infringement, on domains that it has seized illegally? Even worse, the press, who should know better, are simply parroting the claims from ICE that this is a new PSA from ICE. It’s not. It’s from NY City at the urging of NBC Universal. It’s also not accurate.

Of course, what would be funny, if it weren’t so sad, is that ICE’s John Morton thinks that this video will “educate the general public about the real consequence of IP theft.” That’s doubtful. As has been explained over and over again — including in the recent SSRC report — the issue is not education at all, but better business models. This kind of propaganda is simply laughable and its insulting that Morton thinks the American public is so stupid as to be fooled by false statements about intellectual property.

In the meantime, though, can we point out the serious irony here: ICE and the feds are apparently too freaking cheap to pay for the creation of their own anti-piracy PSA about putting video crew people out of work. Yes, ICE could have hired a nice film crew, like the one in the video that will be put out of work due to “piracy.” But, instead, it just used a video that was already made… meaning it didn’t actually help put anyone to work. The film crew that the Stop Piracy in NYC site originally highlighted as being at risk due to piracy… are they getting any money from ICE?

Filed Under: ice, nyc, psa
Companies: nbc universal

Irony Alert: NYC's Anti-Piracy Propaganda Campaign Using 'Free' YouTube

from the free-free-free dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about the anti-piracy propaganda campaign that NYC has been running, paid for by taxpayer dollars, which spreads typical MPAA FUD, and concludes with the line: “There’s no such thing as a free movie.” However, in looking over the campaign, I just realized that the videos are hosted on YouTube… for free. In other words, while NYC and its Hollywood friends are claiming that if you get something for free, it must be illegal, they’re making use of free online services themselves. Without YouTube, they’d have to pay for the hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc. themselves. But this way, they get it for free.

Now, it’s absolutely true that YouTube could monetize the videos with ads (though, I don’t see any on that video right now), but that sort of reinforces the point. There are all sorts of business models that allow you to offer something for “free” to the end user, but are monetized elsewhere. YouTube does exactly that. It offers what would otherwise be quite expensive (hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc.) and gives it all away for free, and has built a whole business around that. There’s nothing saying that the movie industry can’t do the same thing. Rather than falsely stating that there’s no such thing as a “free” (to the consumer) movie, there are certainly plenty of ways that the movie industry could monetize movies that were offered free to consumers. It’s just that the legacy players choose not to. And then complain. And get politicians to waste taxpayer money…

Filed Under: anti-piracy, business models, free, hosting, nyc, propaganda
Companies: youtube