Rights Civil & Military

From Wired on-line magazine:

Army to Bloggers: We Won't Bust You. Promise.

Do you know how many rights that civilians take for granted that members of the military must renounce while they are in the service of their country? It's worth knowing if you're young enough to be thinking about the military as a career, or aid to your education. There are similar restrictions in most countries, including Canada.

Ask any relative who served in wartime ... their letters were all censored. "Loose Lips Sink Ships" is a phrase even I use, and I wasn't born until The Beatles were already a world-wide phenomena, and Vietnam was stirring the conscience of North Americans.

And seeing as how our neighbour to the south (the U.S.A. of course) has decided to be in a constant state of "war" with ubiquitous enemies around the world, these regulations should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that the U.S. Military is backing off from its own very well established and practical policies about censoring the information that individuals in the service are allowed to divulge to anyone else. In this case freedom of speech could, has, and will cost lives. Living is what we are here for, and as Nietzsche said, any philosophy (or principle) that destroys life destroys itself, and must be abandoned.

Now consider this from the same government that feels it is OK to tap private citizens telephones (a right of privacy for which people have a reasonable expectation) - and would love to get your mail and e-mail too if it could - while seeming to be handing back to the military a right for which historically they had no expectation. Sensible? Not to me.

More tomorrow on bloggers rights.

J.A.I.

A Brief Interlude.

Dear inmate:


Your host here learned to fly several years ago, and it is something I cannot say enough good things about. It is truly one of the most amazing experiences in the world, having your licence to fly a small plane, and flying alone or with friends as the "pilot-in-command".

I am a reader of a newsgroup for private pilots and plane owners, and today a student posted this simple question:

On May 2, 12:02 pm, spo...@usa.net wrote:
> I am gonna go on my first solo at the end of May. I am a little bit
> nervous... Any advice?


It took me back to my last few weeks before I soloed (after which you still have about half of your training still to go before you are ready to take your flight test).

So ... I have broken the surly bonds of earth ... and this is what I shared with him about my first solo ... who knows ... you might have to land a plane yourself someday ... here's some hints:

* * *

Hey first solo:

Know by heart all of the critical airspeeds and emergency procedures. You'll probably be verbally quizzed on this by the instructor, and you need this stuff by heart if you ever need really come to need the procedures. Those speeds you will be using constantly.

YOU are the PIC as soon as your instructor closes the door ... take all the responsibility ... unless something very unusual happens, you don't need a radio to talk to your instructor ... only the tower and ground controllers, or the local traffic. Your instructor should be with you in your head. Trust the instruction, and your instructor's faith in you.

Don't forget your radio work.

Don't taxi too fast, and remember your control surface positions vis-a-vis the wind direction while taxiing. Several people will probably be watching you, and will notice if you forget this.

Remember your pre-take-off procedures. You are probably expected to repeat them all before take-off.

Listen and watch extra carefully for traffic, especially before you enter the runway.

The plane will seem to jump off the runway compared to what you're used to, shorter take-off roll, and better rate of climb ... but keep it nailed at best rate of climb (or whatever climb speed your instructor wants) KIAS while you climb to circuit altitude.

Do yourself a big favour and make sure you promptly and efficiently get the plane trimmed appropriately for all phases of the climb, downwind, and descent. Make sure your skill with the trim is very good to excellent ... it helps saves you from avoidable airspeed deviations, and altitude deviations while you keep your eyes outside the plane (where they belong!).

Keep your eyes outside the plane almost all of the time ... looking for traffic.

Correct for crosswind on all legs (climb, crosswind, downwind, base, final) and keep your track nice and rectangular across the ground (or whatever shape is standard at your home field).

You will probably find that you have about 30 - 45 seconds (each circuit will take about five to six minutes in a small Cessna) while on downwind to think "Holy $8i7, I'm really doing this, and that seat beside me is empty ... it's really nice looking around up here! This is ruddy amazing!" Then you should hear you instructor's voice in your head again with all the things you should know by brain memory and body memory ... but listen to the instructor's voice in your head anyway ... "downwind check" ... don't forget the brake-check (I tended to forget to tap them while on downwind).

Don't forget your mixture and carb-heat (if you need to use this) and check the engine instruments before you reduce power to turn base.

Don't forget your radio work in the circuit! Make your position calls and watch for that traffic, and listen for it too ... those pilots are now talking to YOU (not you AND your instructor), the PIC. It's only your eyes and ears now.

Get your landing clearance before turning base (if you have a tower) if you can. One less thing to worry about on final.

Configure for landing as quickly as you can on base with flaps, etc. Watch out for the plane to "balloon" upward with the first two notches of flaps (many small planes do this) and don't let it climb while losing speed due to those flaps... push the nose down, reduce power and keep the nose down and trim for the right speed and rate of descent. Then double check that engine again, carb-heat again, and the mixture again too.

Get the speed to within 10 knots above short-field landing airspeed established on the last half of the base leg. Remember the wind on base is probably pushing you away from the field, since you shoud be landing into the wind, so correct for that and keep your base leg's track perpendicular to the runway heading.

Make sure your speed and descent rate are correct early on base. This is a really common error ... insufficient power reduction while on base ... and you end up too high on final and you have to do something about it. Just set up promptly, confidently, and efficiently on base and avoid this problem! Being too high when turning final can really sneak up on you if you have a significant tailwind component on base, because it increases your ground speed, pushes you across the ground, shortens the time you are on base, and you end up too high! Just keep glancing at the aim point and if you need to get down ... don't be afraid to reduce that power as much as you need to while keeping a safe airspeed ... less power with correct airspeed means increased rate of descent.

Don't forget your position call for final.

Just before turning final check your airpseed and landing configuration again. Turn final, and get the runway centre-line track nailed ASAP ... listen for your instructor's voice in your head again. "Is that picture out the window look right? ... watch your airspeed ... rate of descent OK? ... did we get a landing clearance?" If you have a VASI or PAPI or APAPI you might have a glance at it, but trust what you've been taught about your aim point on the windscreen. Once on final get the airspeed as close to short-field speed as your instructor and you are comfortable with, and watch the movement of your aim point on the windscreen. There shouldn't be any movement ... if there is your rate of descent and glide path are off a bit ... do something about it with the throttle. Glance at your airspeed occasionally, as students are often tempted to correct their glide path with the yoke, not the throttle, and your speed can bleed away on you (or, less often, you can speed up if you push the nose down to get down with too much power).

Remember if you are trimmed out correctly at the right approach speed, and a good aim point, you just nudge the throttle ... a little more ... a little less ... to keep on your glide path. (But do not "drag it in" at a shallow approach angle and too much power.)

On short final you might get some turbulence, or a sudden change in wind speed and/or direction because of trees or buildings. Just make the plane do what you want ... keep the nose down if it pops up due to turbulence ... stay on the centre line, correcting for the crosswind and don't let your speed bleed away too much. Keep the plane doing what you want Don't be rudder shy ... remember you might need some confident and proper rudder use along with the ailerons at low speeds, epecially for those pesky turbulence caused wing drops.
.
Don't be tempted to carry too much airspeed down to short final (this can easily happen if you ended up too high while turning final)... you only have to get rid of it near the ground, and you might not have enough runway to get rid of enough of it and still have enough room to land safely.

Don't be ground-shy and round out too high ... 100 feet AGL and low airspeed is very dangerous!

After you've rounded out switch your gaze from the aim point to the far end of the runway, on the centre line (don't look just past the nose ... it's rushing by and doesn't give you the picture you need to keep your track nice and straight). Make sure you're using enough rudder to keep the nose pointed at the end of the runway ... and correct for that drift!

Don't be afraid to nudge the power a little tiny bit while you are flaring or settling if you don't like your crosswind correction or rate of descent or your airspeed you and need to fix any of these things ... just not too much power (you shouldn't climb or speed up) or for too long (you don't want to use up all the runway).

Don't be afraid to go-around if you don't like your approach while you are on final. Remember ... its better to go-around early than late. And sometimes a go-around that is too late is worse than no go-around at all, because now you've added power and speed to that runway excursion. And energy is proportional to the square of your speed.

If you hear the stall horn at 3 feet or higher ... nudge the power and/or push the nose down a tiny bit ... if you hear the stall horn and your nose is in the air and your mains are about 6 inches above the runway (or less) and you're straight and not drifting ... congratulations ... this is the beginning of a good touchdown.

Hold the nose up even after the main(s) touch down ... don't "give-up" and suddenly let the nose plunk down while releasing your crosswind correction as soon as the mains are down. You need let the nose come down on its own as the speed decreases, and to slowly decrease the crosswind correction as you slow down and the nose wheel comes down. Don't forget the rudder becomes the nose wheel once it comes down, so be careful with the pedals once the nose gear is down.

Don't brake too hard (unless you REALLY NEED to) ... gently and intermittently should do the trick for you first solo.

When you are "done" ... don't forget you're not really done until the airplane is tied down again.

Don't ruin a good solo by forgetting your radio work when exiting the runway. Remember your call here, and if there's a tower, don't cross that line onto the taxiways or apron without talking to the tower and getting handed off to ground or apron, and getting clearance to taxi back to your tie-down.

Watch for those other students or sight seers walking around the other planes near you at all times.

Remember the flight isn't over until the plane is safely shut down and tied down.

Have fun ... be focused, but confident ... your instructor believes in you enough to let you loose with that airplane. You should believe too.

Wear a shirt you don't mind getting cut up ... and/or you might also get an unexpected shower.

You'll never forget you first solo ... all of the above is what I tried to concentrate on while I flew my one circuit first solo (in Canada a first solo consists of only one circuit ... second solo you can proceed up 3 circuits) in a Cessna 150 around a towered airport in a large city.

If any of this is unclear ... or your instructor tells you something different ... ask your instructor about it, and LISTEN to YOUR INSTRUCTOR. I'm not an instructor, but all of these points stand out for me when I consider what I remember about my first solo (and how I later dramatically improved the consistency and quality of my circuits and landings) several years ago.

Good luck ... and grease it on!


PPL-A (SEL) Canada

* * *

Just a short diversion from my normal subject.

I hope my readers will appreciate the seriousness which most private pilots of small aircraft take the task and the responsibility. It's unfortunate, but few people know just how many hours are safely flown in small aircraft every day. The news tends to focus only on the accidents that occur with small planes. At the end of the day the airlines are the safest way to travel, but small aircraft when flown by pilots who keep their training current and are realistic about their experience and capabilities are very safe, and it's a very invigorating way to get around. Try a site-seeing flight at a local flight school. Who knows ... you might get hooked and end up a pilot yourself, like me.

For me the feeling of self-possession, and responsibility for my own life and destiny, and the perspective on all of life's tiny troubles "down there" were so exciting I went all the way and got my license so I could enjoy the feeling whenever I want.

If you want any further information, leave a comment ... I love talking about flying.


J.A.I.

One Man's Treasure ...

Dear fellow inmate:

(I hope you've done your reading from last time, so you know why I'll address you today as "fellow inmate"!)

I've been thinking a lot lately about these kind of websites ... like this one, Blogger/Blogspot. It performs many functions private and public. For many it's like that secret diary you had when you were a giggly little kid. You hid the key and tucked it under your mattress ... a private confessional to yourself, or to your better self you wish you were, to somebody else. And when your mom poked around in it you were angry and perhaps a bit embarrassed. But you had only yourself to blame ... if you wanted to keep something private you wouldn't have written it down, right?

Anyway ... Facebook, MySpace, YouTube ... they all represent a very strange newish compulsion, namely to coyly confess a mixture of your "true" self, your True Self, and some fantasy version of yourself to the electronic ether, both as if no one will ever see it and also in a self-conscious way, that presumes someone is watching. Only the most naive of us think this stuff is private in any way, and we should expect that there could be consequences to our revelations. While we sit comfortably at home, basking in its privacy, we are broadcasting and revealing, sometimes more than we realize, when we participate to these sites. To blur the lines even further, consider the real life-turned soap opera story of "lonelygirl15" (before she was "outed") - a real person, who is an actor (well ... barely an actor), playing a "real" girl who fantasizes both about being well-known (perhaps as an actor), and about who might be watching her. Even her outing turned into a drama that confuses the lines between viewer, actor, drama, person and persona.

Poking around these sites is like being the guy who takes his telescope and peeks into every window just to see if something ...anything ... is going on. And posting to them is like the really hot divorced lady two blocks over who vacuums in the nude with the drapes open ... "Oh ... you're looking at me ... shame on you ..." I call this new phenomena "webcoyness" ... no ... I like "e-coyness" better. Well ... it's still not great, but I'll keep thinking about it ... this psychological phenomena deserves a better name.

As Andy Warhol noted, everyone will get their fifteen minutes of fame (and more than 25 years ago he very presciently recognized the newly developing compulsion in western culture with fame for fame's sake, achieved by any means necessary), and the generation of those 30 and younger have shifted this to a higher gear than ever before, using the cheap tools at hand ... all you need is a computer, a video camera (or even just a video cell phone) and an Internet connection ... and voila, you are a broadcaster, entering the "I can be famous" sweepstakes.

Consider this, however, and roll it around a bit in your mind. All of these web-sharing/diary/confessional websites are examples of our voluntary incarceration in the New Panopticon ... one person's free communication is another's loss of privacy. The more information we supply to the Internet, the more we become visible to anyone who wants to watch, like a flash of movement in the open window. And all that activity will provoke more and more people to watch. The web brings out the voyeur in all of us, and more and more people are walking around out there, in their "e-bungalows", without their clothes on and with their drapes open, so to speak. Don't be surprised if someone is watching, maybe someone you'd just as soon not be. And if you post to these websites don't pretend that at least some small part of you is not seeking your fifteen minutes; don't pretend you don't like the idea that someone might be watching!

J.A.I.

NEXT TIME
What rights (to privacy and otherwise) should we allocate to self-publishing bloggers? Has everyone become a de facto or perhaps even a de jure member of the fourth estate in the new panopticon?

The Old Panopticon

For those of you who might be wondering ... The Panopticon is a real thing. At the very least it's a real idea.

I did not invent the word. Jeremy Bentham did way back in the early nineteenth century He was in his day a "philosophical radical" who sought in his mostly unfinished works on legal philosophy to remove the moral and legal chaos of English law (which Bentham thought relied far too heavily on "intuitionism", a belief that the law should rest on common sense principles of morality and ethics - you could say that Bentham was one of the first to believe that " 'common sense ' " is neither.) Bentham is known as an early and major proponent of utilitarian philosophy, even inventing a "hedonic calculus" for determining the justness of one course of action or decision versus another, based on maximizing the pleasure and happiness within a whole community.

Although he achieved far greater fame and a more prominent place in the history of philosophy (not to mention a line in Monty Python's famous "Bruces' Philosophers Beer Drinking Song), John Stuart Mill owed a large intellectual debt to Bentham. To a great extent, the western world is still very much the world of Bentham and Mill. That's not to say it's the "right" or most "just" way to live, but it's the one the english speaking world still functions in to a very great extent.

So ... my invention is to call the modern communication networks, particularly the Internet (plus a few cameras and other pieces of hardware and software here and there), The New Panopticon , and Our New Panopticon. But I think it's a pretty good invention, and I'm going to keep using it. If you want to, go read Bentham and then J.S. Mill in the original (like I had to) and don't forget who sent you there ... have fun, and if you use the metaphor, don't forget to footnote me (or link to my blog) ... and also don't forget ... it's a panopticon ... so I'll be watching!

J.A.I.

Public Privacy, Public Safety and Public Surveillance

We have all come to expect to be captured on video during our daily lives.

In fact, many of us voluntarily reveal a great deal about ourselves to the whole world by posting videos to websites like YouTube, FaceBook, and MySpace. In fact, as several friends of mine commented about the recent Virginia Tech murders, many of the victims' friends and fellow students, when interviewed, seemed very camera conscious, displaying eery smiles in spite of the violent acts, grizzly scenes, and sorrowful emotions they were describing. The camera is everywhere, and this generation seems to like it, and crave it.

While we are indoors during the course of our daily lives, especially while we are in places likes banks, transportation centres like airports, public transit systems, it is common practice and has been for years to keep surveillance video of as much of what goes on in these places as possible. It is done in most cases to protect the interests of the institutions the video cameras "protect". However in many cases the rationale is that this is being done to protect us from harm and keep us safe.

A recent case in Toronto has made clear how quickly this video can act as prosecutor, judge, and jury with respect to "suspects" captured on video. This case makes clear that there are many legal, ethical, and philosophical issues that surround the publication of this video in an effort to apprehend the "suspect". Usually because of the power of the picture in our minds, and the multiple exposures we get to them from the media in such cases, "suspect" quickly morphs in most people's minds to "convicted perpetrator" even before anyone has been apprehended or questioned.

Another criminal case, also in Toronto, that occurred about two years ago, is about to go to trial. I remember at the time the influence the video surveillance images published had over the public's mind in this case about race, violence, and the people in the video being tried in the public mind on the basis of the video and the pronouncements of news reporters and analysts. As you can see from the link, in the real legal world, more than two years removed from the events, a judge is rightly examining the case to see if there is anything like sufficient evidence to pursue a case.

Also in Toronto, in an area called the "Entertainment District" a new system of overlapping cameras has been put in place, ostensibly with the intention to keep the public safe. I have worked and lived in this area and at that time it was among the safest areas to live and work. The majority of crime in the area was limited to parked cars being broken into, and assault charges directly related to the over-abundance of licenced bars, clubs, and restaurants in the area. Most of the time both parties involved were charged with assault, so these were by and large bar-fights. No domestic violence, little robbery, and until 2001 or so, only a few guns.

This has changed since 2001 the authorities argue. The Entertainment District is apparently a hot bed of gun related violence, and it is believed that on the order of a couple hundred to a perhaps a couple of thousand hand guns pass through this area every weekend. Guns make me nervous. Guns should make YOU nervous. Hand guns are only good for one thing ... shooting things (usually people) at close range.

However, these cameras make me nervous too. Many people live and work in this area, and carry on completely law-abiding lives. And these surveillance cameras will no doubt be watching and recording them too, even during the day, or on weeknights, or a quiet Sunday morning, all times that the area has not transformed into several large masses of club and restaurant goers. Similar cameras have been deployed in London, hooked up to pattern recognition software, and the video is used to search for particular people in the images of crowds.

There is no reason to think the same thing is not going on anywhere where these cameras have been deployed. The problem is, every face is scanned and characterized, and no doubt a record kept. If you work in an area you will appear many times to these cameras, and files about your comings and goings might easily be kept. The argument can be made that keeping these files will help "rule you out" quickly from video in which you appear that might contain the face of a wanted criminal, or "terrorist" (everyone seems to be a "terrorist" these days ... there a far fewer enemy soldiers and criminals around ... they are now called "terrorists" to inspire fear and justify stripping the suspect or captured foreign combatant of any rights they might otherwise have, civil or military).

My questions to ponder are these: expectation of privacy is a key legal concept. It applies to your activities in your home, and your dealings with certain kind of people, such as doctors, lawyers, and members of the clergy. We used to have an understood expectation of privacy even while we were in public places without walls (streets, parks, etc.). As long as we were not breaking the law, most people understood that no public officials, police, Homeland Security ... whatever ... no one who worked for a government agency had the right to watch you in a systematic fashion unless they had "probable cause" (or, more recently, the less stringent, "reasonable cause" ) to believe you were committing, about to commit, or had committed, a crime.

Were we wrong to expect privacy all along? Do we have rights that these new technologies and their sponsoring government agencies are treading upon? Does the alleged interest of public safety outweigh the rights of the law-abiding to be left alone and not be watched, recorded, characterized, and stored for later review. How is what is going on any different than being finger-printed and having a "mug-shot" taken by the authorities without your having been charged with any crime?

I have truly ambivalent and complex feelings, thoughts, and arguments on this matter. I'd like to hear some of yours.