Thursday, May 31, 2007

Tracking Hasan Elahi : Self-imposed surveillance : trackingtransience

Hasan Elahi is a Bangladesh-Born New Jersey artist & art professor. He was detained by the FBI and interviewed about every detail of his life. He now developed a web site to track every move of his life, for FBI or anyone else who might be interested. He hacked his cell phone and links it to his web page. Now his webpage show his where about in a GPS supported map. He is also posting photos of what he is seeing, eating and so on as alibi. He is logging every dollars he is spending and where. He turned around the whole situation, at least as it appears now. His biggest shortcoming is now his biggest asset as an artist. Very brilliant, good job!


-x86

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In the News:

CNN's Kiran Chetry talks to a man who developed software to track his
every move to prove he's not a terrorist. (May 30)

Video Link: http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/tech/2007/05/30/gps.on.line.alibi.elahi.cnn

ABC News reports:

Artist combats FBI profile by creating online alibi
Rebecca Lee
(5/30/07) - When the FBI started to track to every move of artist Hasan Elahi, he responded by giving his personal information to the whole world.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Elahi, like many minorities across the United States was flagged as a potential terrorist.

The Bangladesh-born, Brooklyn, NY-raised media artist often travels overseas for work, and with his Arab-sounding name and dark skin, Elahi found himself the subject of an FBI interrogation in June 2002.

He was detained and interrogated by airport and government officials while on his way back from a business trip in Dakar, Senegal.

Although he was cleared to enter the country, Elahi's travel nightmare was far from over. From June 2002 until December 2002, he was the subject of an ongoing U.S. government investigation, which included intense questioning, lie-detector tests and documentation of his every move.

"For six months, I had to justify every second my existence, proving to the FBI that I was not a terrorist or a terrorist threat of any kind," Elahi told ABC News. "So, after having to recount every detail of my life to the micro level, I said to myself, 'Why don't I just do this myself?'"

Elahi's experiment started slowly. He initially recorded his coordinates every couple of hours via a cell phone he had implanted with GPS software as a way of keeping the FBI informed of his whereabouts.

He then posted the information on his Web site, www.trackingtransience.net, and created a documentary art exhibition, "Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project," to make all his personal information, from his current location to his bank statements and telephone records available to the public.

"If you think about it, intelligence agencies are all based on the commodity of information and secrecy," said Elahi. "So, I started thinking & what if I just volunteer my information? What that does is make my FBI profile useless because everything you would want to know, now you can just come to me and cut out the middleman. I've basically become my own Big Brother."

'Everything's Out There'

In the past few years, Elahi's site has expanded, thanks in part to technological advances but also as a result of his dedication to this project.

"It's hard to say when this art project started, because it was a very organic process," he said. "It started out as just an image on a computer screen, then a map, then a little more detailed map, and now it's completely full blown to the point where you can dig out any little detail about my life. Everything's out there."

But there are some pieces of information he's keeping private. While Elahi photographs his meals and surroundings, his self-surveillance is not completely without bias.

Like any art project, the artist has the ability to shape the online profile he is creating of himself and does not include his own photo or images of his friends. From the pictures he chooses to post, to the locations he chooses to record, Elahi's "Tracking Transience" is really a reflection of how he would like to be defined.

"By taking matters into my own hands, I decided that I'm going to define myself based on my own information, not based on what someone else thinks I might be and this is really the center of this project. It's really all about identity management," explained Elahi.

Yet, he points out, the places you visit and the things you buy and eat, even when "managed," only show us a certain portion of a person's true self. "When you stitch together all this information you really know everything and nothing about me, because nowhere is my name, nowhere is my face, nowhere is there one actual thing that identifies me," said Elahi.

Ultimately, Elahi hopes his documentary experiment will serve a dual purpose. By keeping track of his records and whereabouts, he hopes to avoid any further involvement with the U.S. government and, second, by supplying the public with all his information, he hopes that people will question the ways in which our society is being tracked and policed, often without our knowledge or our consent.

"I'm hoping to take this [project] to such a point of absurdity that someone somewhere out there realizes, 'Hey, this isn't right. We shouldn't be living in a society where we have to do this,'" Elahi explained. "I'm just hoping that people start questioning, because if we don't, people won't even realize that [this kind of tracking] is even happening."

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=sci_tech&id=5354459&ft=print

Thursday, May 24, 2007

RE: Bangladesh parties oppose 33 percent women's quota

But it will not be possible to accommodate 33 percent female??
Why is this Mr. Jalil? Is it because we don’t have enough female in the country? Don’t we have enough educated female in the country? Can you show some data to support it? What the hell is Mahila League is doing? Who are those women?

"But taking part in field-level programmes and leading an organisation at different tiers are not the same thing". Hmmm.. really? Why not, why not. Let’s look at one interesting data, shall we?

Among many other gang-star and top corrupt, these are few known faces who won Mr. Jalil’s party nomination last canceled election:

Narayanganj-4 Shamim Osman
Feni-2 Khodeza Begum (sister of Joynal Hazari)
Barisal-1 Abul Hasnat Abdullah
Dhaka-8 Haji Mohammad Selim
Chandpur-2 Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya
Chittagong-12 Aktaruzzaman Babu and

We have not seen them in the street, in the public, or in the news conference over last 5 years. Why is that? Were they sick, or they are too shy? No, not really. They were in hiding, running from the law. All of a sudden, they pop up just in time before election, just at the time of nomination submission. And voiala, they win a party ticket!

Too bad, election was canceled. Guess what? Right after election was canceled, they were no where in the horizon. Why is that? They have some important work to do? Their hidden girl friend call to report back. Ohh no no no. They went to hiding because, police were looking for them. They are once again running from the law.

Now how did they won a party ticket? That’s a great mistry. What was the reason one of our begams (I call begam the lesser, but you can call begam the greater if you like) handed out these folks a party nomination?

So yes, “taking part in field-level programmes” is okay for women. But want to “lead an organisation at different tiers”, we need a gang lord, no kidding. Now women being gang lord to get a party ticket or party position, ha ha ha, even the most feminist won’t dream to claim that.

-x86

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::In the news::
Bangladesh parties oppose 33 percent women's quota
Posted May 23rd, 2007 by TariqueMuslim World News By IANS

Dhaka : The two main political parties of Bangladesh have disapproved of the Election Commission's proposal to reserve 33 percent of nominations for women in elections, despite both being headed by women who have ruled the country.

The country's oldest political party the Awami League, headed by Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Begum Khaleda Zia, expressed their reservations about the proposal, which the Election Commission and the interim government want to implement as part of electoral reforms.

Besides Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, the two former prime ministers around whose rivalry Bangladesh's politics has revolved since the 1980s, the country has always had a plethora of women in public life. Their role has been relatively better than other South Asian countries, political analysts say.

Another cause of unhappiness is the electoral body's proposal to ban political parties from having youth or student fronts. Both the parties traditionally draw their cadres from these fronts.

"We generally support most of the commission's proposals to bring reforms in political parties. But it will not be possible to accommodate 33 percent female representatives in each and every committee," Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil was quoted as saying by the New Age newspaper.

Jalil drew a line between women's participation in political activities and their being nominated to contest elections. He argued that the commission might have put forth such a proposal considering the participation of women leaders and activists in street demonstrations.

"But taking part in field-level programmes and leading an organisation at different tiers are not the same thing," he remarked.

Sheikh Hasina has led the Awami League from the front since 1981 and electoral reforms have been high on her political agenda.

M.K. Anwar, vice president of BNP, linked the women's issue to the country's culture and to the urban-rural divide wherein, according to him, rural women do not participate in political activities.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh too found the commission's proposal "unrealistic". Its general secretary, Mujahidul Islam Selim, said the spirit of incorporating women in different committees is appropriate. "But the proposed percentage is unrealistic."

On the idea of banning student fronts, a former student leader pointed out to the role played by youth groups in national movements and said the ban was unreasonable.

"The student community played a pioneering role in different national movements and the initiative taken by a quarter of the interim government (to control student politics) is illogical," said Sultan Mansur, a former vice-president of the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU).

"Student politics will survive by its own strength and the students will not bow to any external pressure," he said.

Source:
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/may/23/
bangladesh_parties_oppose_33_percent_womens_quota.html