The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in a case from Alaska that the state does not have to provide physical evidence (which the state still has) to a man who has been in prison for 16 years for the purposes of new DNA testing (which the man has agreed to pay for himself).  Ed Brayton provides an excellent analysis of the case and explains the negative impact of the decision on our justice system.

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a couple of old, unused computers lying around your house gathering dust.  In my house, we had six computers until recently, two very old desktops, two relatively old laptops and two new laptops.  We had accumulated these six computers in just 11 years since we had a fire in 1998 which destroyed most of our belongings, including our computers.  It’s amazing how quickly we accumulate new computers.  A lot of this quick accumulation is the result of planned obsolescence, the idea that computer manufacturers design computers to either fail or not be able to keep up with newer technology in a certain period of time.  And then, of course, there’s the question of what to do with the old computer when we get a new computer.  In fact, the EPA estimates that 30-40 million computers will become surplus each year for the next several years.  The EPA also classifies these surplus computers as “hazardous household waste” so simply dumping the computer into a landfill is dangerous.

When I purchased my newest laptop, I got a form to send in along with my old computer so that it could be recycled.  The problem with this form for me was that I really wanted to recycle the old desktop computers but they are HUGE and I really didn’t want to pay for the shipping even though the recycling itself would be free.  So I decided to check out the options at my local transfer station.  It’s a “transfer station”–not a “landfill”–so I was hopeful that they’d have a solution for me.

It turned out that for $8 each, I could dispose of both of the computers at my local transfer station.  I believe $5 of the $8 was for the monitor.  Apparently, the glass in the CRT of the monitor contains a high amount of lead.   The tower portion of the computer contains mercury, cadmium and fire retardant.  The mouse, keyboard, speakers and so on apparently don’t contain hazardous waste although since they are made of plastic, they still should not end up in a landfill. 

My local transfer station hires a company to take away the hazardous portions of the computer and that’s why we have to pay a fee.  When I placed the monitors and the towers in the appropriate sections of the transfer station, I noticed that there were upwards of 50 other systems there, many of which were far older than mine and which looked like they had been there for a long time.  I live in a really small town and so I do imagine that it would take a while to accumulate the number of systems that would make a trip to the town by the recycling company worthwhile.  Since we’re a small town, our transfer station is completely out in the open, with no building covering any of the materials dropped off there (which raises a whole other issue of what happens when paper gets wet and the fact that we pay by weight to have it taken away).   So I did wonder what the environmental impact of having those computers systems sit out in the weather for all these years might be.  But at least they won’t end up in a landfill.

Nothing captures the public’s attention like a named killer.  Jack the Ripper.  The Boston Strangler.  Son of Sam.  Zodiac.  The Night Stalker.  The Green River Killer.   Last month, a new name was added to this list: The Craigslist Killer.  It turns out that Philip Markoff, the medical student who was arrested (and who has pled not guilty) for the murder of Julissa Brisman in Boston, is not the first killer dubbed “The Craigslist Killer.”  In fact, quite a few murderers who met their victims via the popular classified advertising site have been dubbed “The Craigslist Killer.”  What’s interesting about this latest murder, however, is the response from the administrators of Craigslist.

Police claim Markoff had attacked several other women in the days leading up to his alleged murder of Brisman.  He apparently found his victims on Craigslist in the “Erotic Services” section of the online advertising site (although it isn’t clear that all of them were found in that section–I’m making an assumption based on Craigslist’s response to the murder).  An earlier victim, for example, had advertised as an exotic dancer.  Brisman advertised her services as a masseuse.  When Brisman was shot, Markoff was allegedly attempting to restrain her, presumably in as a prelude to robbing her, as he had his earlier victims.  By all accounts, Markoff is an unlikely suspect, a Boston University medical school student with no criminal record and no history of legal problems.

In the wake of this murder and series of crimes against women, several attornies general have called on Craigslist to do something to prevent future use of the web site by predators.  Craigslist has responded.  They will remove the section called “Erotic Services” and replace it with an “Adult Services” section that will be “monitored” by Craigslist employees.  Any sexually suggestive advertisements will expire after seven days.  This response appears to have satisfied the attornies general for now but to me, this is an example of what Bruce Schneier has called “security theater,” an action which is about making us feel safer without any real consequence to actual safety.

To see what I mean by this, think about the Brisman case.  She was advertising her services as a masseuse.  I’m not sure whether her advertisement was under “Erotic Services” but let’s assume it was.  I’m also not sure whether her advertisement was sexually suggestive but again, let’s assume it was.  So if someone were to write the exact advertisement that she had used today, Craigslist employees would review it and presumably decide it was one of the ads that needs to expire in seven days.  In those seven days, many Markoff clones would review that ad and presumably call for those services.  Is the woman now any safer than Brisman was?  And after the ad expires, the woman will now write a new ad.  Does the fact that her ad expired in seven days make her any safer?  And what is more likely to happen is that the woman advertising masseuse services will NOT write a sexually suggestive ad (because she know that it will expire in seven days) and will therefore, NOT have her ad expire in seven days.  Is she any safer than Brisman was?

It is completely unclear to me how a Craigslist employee reviewing “Adult Services” advertisements could have saved Julissa Brisman.  So perhaps what we should be calling for is the complete elimination of both “Erotic Services” and “Adult Services” advertisements.  Brisman was advertising as a masseuse.  Do we want to go so far as to claim that ALL massages have an underlying erotic dimension and that they therefore should ALL  be banned from advertisement?  Why don’t we ban those advertisements from all newspapers, both in print and online, then?  In fact, there have been many murders in which the murderer and victim met through newspaper classified ads (just google “lonely hearts killers” to get a sense) and yet those advertisements have not been banned.  Maybe they should be.  But then we should also ban all advertisements for masseuse services from the Yellow Pages, right?  In fact, maybe we should ban massages altogether. 

The response by Craigslist to the fact that an alleged murderer met his victim via their web site is all about theater, about making us feel safer rather than really making us safer.  In actuality, nothing could have stopped Markoff from robbing someone and in those robberies, someone who resisted him was likely to get injured and perhaps even killed.  Why do we need to kid ourselves otherwise?

In yet another step toward hyperreality, it has been revealed that the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics were (partially) faked. If you watched the spectacle on television, you were probably amazed by the fireworks display. There was indeed a fireworks display during the ceremony but you weren’t watching it. Instead you were watching an animation of a fireworks display that took nearly a year to create. Apparently, the creator of the animation even added a little “camera shake” to the animation to enhance the impression of watching a real recording of what was happening in the stadium that night. The official explanation from Beijing about why this little deceit was necessary is that it was too dangerous to film the real fireworks display from a helicopter. Since when is that an acceptable justification for journalistic deception?

Some of the stories about the incident actually muddy the facts of the deception, saying that the controversy occurred because some portions of the show were “pre-recorded.” This statement implies that the deception involves “live” performance vs. “pre-recorded” performance. But actually, this particular deception is about something that never happened. What we television viewers saw was something that never happened. It was an animation that was created on a computer. As a viewer, I never thought I was watching something live. The opening ceremonies started at 8am EST on August 8 and were not broadcast on NBC until 7:30pm EST on August 8. So the whole ceremony was “pre-recorded.”

Although the animation was not created by NBC, they did show it without disclosing that it was not what was actually happening in the stadium. In fact, Matt Lauer said during the ceremony, “This is actually almost animation. A footstep a second, 29 in all, to signify the 29 Olympiads.” Bob Costas responded, “We said earlier that aspects of this Opening Ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic.” Does that sound like they were coming clean about this portion of the ceremony being an actual animation? Why were they being so coy?

Clearly, this is not the first time that images have been manipulated for dramatic effect. The most famous example of such manipulation is probably the OJ Simpson Time Magazine cover showing his mug shot after his arrest for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. His skin on the cover was darkened to make him appear more menacing. And there are examples of manipulation all the way back to the beginnings of photography. The oldest example I could find was from the 1860s when Abraham Lincoln’s head was superimposed on the body of John Calhoun. So this is certainly nothing new. But the ease with which such manipulation can be accomplished now that digital is everywhere should give us all pause before we believe what we see in a photo or even in a video. Luckily, there is also a growing field called digital forensics, pioneered by Hany Farid, a faculty member in the very same Dartmouth College Computer Science Department where I got my undergraduate degree. He and his team are developing tools and techniques to allow us to discover manipulation of photos and videos. I think their work is increasingly necessary.