Category: Science & Technology

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Spyware is used to target dissidents

Prompted by a Jon Swaine and Stephanie Kirchgaessner article in The Guardian, about “UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ‘used to target dissidents’”, I think about what kind of film the story might be.

Twitter

This article is full to the brim with all kinds political intrigue, hypocrisy, big money, hacking, terrorism, repressive governments, dissidents, and the glamour of the art world.

There are a dozen ways to build a plot around what’s on offer. There’s the journalist uncovering a conspiracy version. I have in mind something like The Parallax View (1974) or State of Play (2003). There’s an innocent accused of a crime version. Think Enemy of the State (1998) or The Pelican Brief (1993). There’s a version from inside law enforcement. Something like The International (2009) or Serpico (1973). It could easily be part of the plot for a spy film like Casino Royal (2006) or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011).

My initial thoughts have the husband of an imprisoned dissident kidnap a wealthy art dealer Jill, and hold her hostage. The kidnapper starts to make demands of the art dealer’s husband, Jack. Conspiring with each new demand to expose his corrupt activity. As the plot drips through it becomes apparent it’s actually Jill’s spyware being used to hack Jack’s phone. All kinds of his secrets are exposed to the world. The kidnapper holds one last secret about Jill’s husband. When the two men finally meet to exchange their partners, Jill demands to know the final secret. When the kidnapper finally has his wife, he reveals Jack’s last secret to Jill. The news is so devastating to her, she kills Jack. We are left wondering, never knowing, his secret.

Interesting update: 03 February 2023

In a statement on 28 January 2020 The Guardian printed a retraction, accepting “that Mrs Peel is not, and was not, involved in the management, operations or control of NSO, an Israeli cyber intelligence company”.

The Guardian
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Rocket scientist explains how we could move our planet

Matteo Ceriotti in The Conversation explains the plausible science of the new Netflix film, Wandering Earth (2019).

The Conversation

The science is interesting, but Ceriotti leaves the best for last. If there’s any human life on Earth when the sun starts to expand, the best thing we can do is move the entire population of the planet to Mars.

Personally, I’d much prefer moving to the moon, that way we’ll be floating through space like the team of Moon Base Alpha in Space: 1999.

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Facial recognition is the panopticon at work

Geoff White on BBC Click looks at facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition technology is dangerous. The UK should follow San Francisco’s example and ban its use.

The argument, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, is a smokescreen. It appeals to a very narrow logic without recognising the threat. It presumes if you disagree, raise concerns, refuse to comply, you must have something to hide. It allows vested interests to push an agenda that does nothing for any of our liberty.

Facial recognition is the first step in the state automating policing, in automating the panopticon. People will change the way they behave because you will never know when you’re being watched.

Facial recognition weaponises surveillance, weaponises the weapon.

BBC News
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Deadly swine fever is ravaging China’s pork industry

This piece by Amy Gunia in Time has me thinking, how would this be a film?

Time

There are many interesting details that could imagine in a plot. The first is the sheer scale of China’s pork consumption. How much environmental damage is that causing? Not to mention the amount of suffering involved in rearing and killing of so many animals? Both of those element are interesting, but nothing more than background to something else.

The thing that really stands out is African Swine Fever, a virus with no cure. The obvious plot would centre around the mutation of this incurable virus, one that jumps the species barrier, and infects humans.

Steven Soderbergh ploughed this same furrow in Contagion (2011). In his film the CDC tries to stop the spread of a deadly flu virus. Soderbergh’s movie stops short of the full apocalyptic seen in Fukkatsu no hi (1980). In Kinji Fukasaku’s film most of the planet’s population have been wiped out by a virus, leaving only an isolated group, surviving in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, to try an find a cure.

I’ve always found survivors in the aftermath of an apocalypse compelling. With the trappings of civilisation gone, what do we become?

I’m reminded of Margaret Atwood‘s novel MaddAddam (2013). When a plague kills most of the worlds population, a group of survivors try to rebuild civilisation alongside Crakers, a species of post-humans, bioengineered to survive the plague.

There’s something in the existence of both human and post-human. There’s an inherent conflict between nature and nurture, instinct and conditioning, that is ripe for exploration.

I have the opening and a revelation at the end of a story. A group of human survivors flee though the wasteland of a city, chased by bioengineered post-humans, perfectly designed to thrive in this harsh new world. How do the humans survive when their pursuers are like a pack of wolves chasing Elke? There’s plenty of opportunities for action, horrific violence, and bloody scares. In the closing moments, we realise our group of survivors are actually a hunting party. They stalked the tribe of post-humans, and killed one for food. The post-humans are simply trying to drive these predators out of their territory.

Virgil Finlay
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Cocaine found in all shrimp tested in rural UK county

There’s something both very concerning and extremely funny in this story by Agence France-Presse in The Guardian.

The Guardian

Cocaine “in all shrimp” tells me those responsible for water purification are allowing contaminated water into the environment. I can’t imagine these cockroaches of the sea racking out lines, so there’s Charlie in the water.

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Cocaine shrimp

There’s also a heavy dose of funny in the appalling lapse of public safety. The population of Suffolk must be partying hard to secrete that much marching powder into the water supply. I can see the internet going bonkers over the idea that people will be able to get high eating shrimp.

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‪Scientists create material with “artificial metabolism”

Futurism

This discovery is fascinating. It could be a blessing, used to clean up pollution. It could be a curse, some kind of self replicating nonobot, that reproduces itself until there’s nothing left on the planet but a grey goo.

Alternatively it could be the beginning of the Tyrell Corporation, destined to build androids we call replicants?

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Fecal transplants reduce symptoms of autism long term

Futurism

This is an amazing insight and throws up so interesting ideas about our bodies, not least the link between the gut microbiome and the brain.

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Surviving climate change means transforming both economics and design

The Conversation

Joanna Boehnert in The Conversation makes the point “designers cannot design sustainable future ways of living on scale without a shift in economic priorities”.

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Boyan Slat on his nonprofit to clean the oceans

The Ocean Cleanup

Meanwhile in the UK we’re wasting time setting the country on fire.

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There’s bias deep inside the code

There’s a lot to think about in Sam Levin’s article. Most interestingly that there was no such thing as “neutral” AI.

The idea that you can do AI or technical ethics without a point of view is silly … The bias is deep inside the code.

The Guardian

It’s obvious but until it’s called out, you’re not looking for it, and if you’re not looking for it, things will continue unchecked.

It does occur to me that bias is a byproduct of our attempt to replicate the world in our image. and these tendencies are a hangover from our primal past. In the discourse around these issues, people are being asked to evolve beyond the human self. Even those excluded because of bias, have their own biases. Surely the point is not to exclude all bias, that’s like trying to exclude oxygen from water. If you exclude oxygen, it’s not water.

Should we not then, to be unbiased, include all of the biases?