National Security and Society

Taken directly from Jason Calacanis's Blog

1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department

2. Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member.

3. Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week… which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.

4. Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.

5. Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k

6. Rent out your extra space. Many folks have extra space in their office. If you rent 5-10 desks for $500 each you can cut your burn $2,500 to $5,000 a month, or $30-60,000 a year. That’s big money.

7. Outsource accounting and HR—such a no brainer.

8. Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office–it’s too much money. Put Office on three or four common computers and use Google Docs.

9. Use Google hosted email. $50 or free per user…. how can you beat that?!?! Why screw with an exchange server!?!?

10. Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you’re at 150 hours a year and that’s a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.

11. Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

12. Jura espresso machineGet an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office. Going to starbucks twice a day cost $4 each time, but more importantly it costs 20 minutes. Buy a $3-5,000 Jura industrial, get the good beans, and supply the coffee room with soy, low fat, etc. 50 people making one trip a day is 20 hours of wasted time for the company, and $150 in coffee costs for the employees. Makes no sense.

13. Stock the fridge with sodas—same drill as above.

14. Allow folks to work off hours. Commuting sucks and is a waste of time for everyone. Let folks start at 6am or 11am and you’ll cut their commute in half (at least in LA).

15. Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off. If half of them say yes you’ll save 5-15% on fixed costs. People will give you a discount if they think they are going to lose the business.

16. Don’t waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people–it works better anyway.

17. Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.

This blog was started as a class project dealing with the ideological nature of national security. Evidently, I have not had many updates to the site since the class has ended, although I had intentions of continued work on it. At this moment, I still want to occasionally work on this blog. Why? - Mainly because today I checked the hit count since the end of the assignment in early/mid-December and there have been about 20 hits. Not much I know, but for a blog like this I think it's pretty impressive! So, I know a few of you are still reading this.

I am considering shifting the focus of this blog closer to my research/academic interests in law and technology. Currently, my honours paper is dealing with the intersection between law, copyright, and technology - there is so much information in this area that not all of it can go into my paper which is limited to 60 pages. Hence, I may use this as a way to post some thoughts and ideas that don't quite fit into my paper.

In the meantime, you can follow me here.

As well, in the right hand sidebar column under the "Other Projects" heading, you will find an audio version of the debate that I did for the State Security and Dissent class in which this blog was created for.

Taken directly from my Final Analysis/Evaluation document (LAWS 4309 | December 2, 2008):

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"While this blog did not set out to solve the problems associated with national security, it has provided a venue for the discussion of the social problem. In this sense, providing a site at which individuals can engage in discussions about the reinforcement of the status quo via national security is just one aspect in trying to solve the problem. Although there may not be a single solution for these national security problems, having discussions on the topic raises awareness. The creation of a discourse is but one way of moving towards solving any social issue.

Nowadays, as much as there is collective action taking place on the public streets, there are perhaps just as many social issues beginning with massive collective action on the Internet. Even though the Internet presents its own source of problems, it has also provided society with the tools engage in dissent and disruption of the status quo. Whereas a protest on the streets is limited by geography and logistics, it is conceivable that tens of thousands of individuals could engage in popular protest online. Hence, one of the aims of this project was to be a part of this new form of resistance that takes place on the Internet. Hence, this particular project is simply part of a broader movement that is taking place online where users are speaking to the issues in front of a worldwide audience.

If this is indeed the case, the blog itself could be subject to state definitions as well. For instance, the blog could be labelled as a form of Internet resistance or a form of Internet terrorism. So if this blog were seen as threatening to the state and the status quo, then perhaps state officials would closely monitor this blog.

Finally, this blog, amongst others, could also serve as a gathering point and the start of what can be considered more direct action. For example, readers could use the Internet as a gathering point and plan marches on the streets. On the other hand, staying with a solely Internet approach, readers could agree to massively send out e-mails to a government department or agency regarding an issue of concern. If this form of resistance is able to garner sufficient numbers, a direct action approach could be achieved without ever having to leave the house. A large amount of e-mails could threaten to shut down e-mail servers and cause a particular agency to listen to the voice of a collective group of individuals. As a result, this project, while still technically in its developmental stages in terms of reader base, has the potential to be taken in many directions. The direct action of the reader base of a blog is just one of the many possible real world consequences of beginning a discourse in the online world. "

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As the deadline for this project has quickly approached, I want to summarize a few things that have been discussed in the blog since the beginning of October.

National security is not just a term used to protect the integrity of a country and its borders. Rather, the idea of national security can be wielded in certain ways. As a tool, national security can be used in a variety of ways and the State Security and Dissent class discussion on September 9, 2008 alluded to many of the ways in which national security could be used, including, being used as a tool to by those in power to create trust, protect citizens, protect majority interests, create fear, eliminate fear, protect security and national sovereignty, maintain peace and order, and how it is used as an instrument to shape behaviour.

While each blog entry covered a different event or topic, they all related back to this concept of national security. In addition, if you have been critically reading every entry, you will also find that in every discussion there is some element of national security being utilized as a tool by those in power to ultimately shape behaviour. In this light, national security is an imposed framework of rules where these rules are not necessarily intrinsic to social order. Thus, national security is very much an ideology, which is able to affect norms, and these norms are able to affect the legitimacy of the state. As this blog has illustrated, these norms come to operationalize themselves in several ways, such as the War on “The Other.”

Another part of this blog has been to demonstrate what the media’s role has been in manufacturing consent amongst the general population. The media is not just an unbiased conduit in which we receive information from. In many cases, as the post on Manufacturing Consent discussed, the media is part of the state institution, which also looks to consolidate its power and legitimize the action of those in power.

The overall message that I wanted to convey in these past few weeks has simply been to question the nature of national security as it operates in our society. As a former Border Services Officer with the Canada Border Services Agency, this has been an especially unique and pertinent project for myself as I critically reflected upon my role as a law enforcement officer and an agent of the state, who was responsible for the protection of “national security.”

This video is a couple of months old (September 2, 2008), but I still thought it was a very fascinating video to watch.

Rage Against the Machine, for those that don't know, is a rap rock band that has always been highly critical of the U.S. government's foreign and domestic policy. Back in September, the band was supposed to perform at an event called the Ripple Effect Festival, which promoted non-partisan politics. The festival was to take place near the the Republican convention at the Minnesota State Capitol. According the Ripple Effect staff, state law enforcement and capitol staff prevented Rage Against the Machine from taking the stage stating that they arrived 30 minutes passed the 7pm event curfew.

State officials likely knew about the nature of Rage Against the Machine's music and the band's history of political activism, so they used a curfew regulation in an attempt to muzzle the band's freedom of speech. However, as the video below will illustrate, what the state did could possibly have served to magnify the impact of the message that the band was trying to get across. What may have been just another concert in Minnesota, has generated nearly half a million views of the event that took place afterwards as Rage Against the Machine took to the streets and performed A cappella over the megaphone to thousands of fans.

Perhaps it is because it was the state attempting the curtail the rights of a famous band that drew the attention of hundreds of thousands, but it does shows how quickly a political movement can unfold.

More information about the event can be found here:
Powers, A., "Rage Against the Machine in Minnesota and the state of political pop" L.A. Times Music Blog, (3 September 2008).

One element that is necessary in the ideological exercise of national security is often a fear of an unknown. An earlier post discussed how the threat to national security is defined. However, it is often the case that a lack of distinction in terms of who or what is the threat serves to strengthen the government’s ability to wield its power under the framework of national security. Rather than having a specific threat, where citizens perhaps know where the danger is coming from, a threat from an unknown creates an atmosphere of fear and unrest. In this sense, the threat must be ideological in nature in much of the same way as national security is ideological in nature. If the threat to national security is defined in an open-ended manner, then the definition of who can be deemed a threat can be expanded or contracted in order to fit the needs of the state.

To that end, this blog entry is based on the following news item:
AFP, “Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers” Breitbart.com (2008) < http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081025182242.js2g2op8&show_article=1 >

There are many other news articles that discuss the same topic. Just Google the following key terms to find other news articles relating to the same topic: U.S. Army and Twitter

Before I get into the substantive part of my commentary, I want to give a brief backgrounder on Twitter for those who are unfamiliar with it. Twitter is essentially part of the Web 2.0 developments in the World Wide Web. That is, the new Internet developments of the past couple of years that look to enhance interactivity and networking between users. In essence, Twitter can be seen in the same category as other web developments like Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, and Flickr. In this case, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Thus, it is much like my blog, except Twitter entries are very short in nature, usually a sentence or a phrase that an individual will post via cell phone or on the Twitter website. Like the RSS feed from my blog, Twitter users can “follow” other Twitter users and get instant updates via cell phone when someone who they are following posts a micro-blog update, called a “tweet.” Thus, the US Army’s intelligence report states a fear that a potential terrorist could send out a tweet to mobilize thousands of followers to carry out a terrorist act.

The U.S. Army’s intelligence report on how Twitter can be used as a tool of subversion is very telling of how a state institution is able to define threats to national security in such a way that it is very much all encompassing of all groups that are looking to change the status quo.

As quoted in the article, “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.” As well, “Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives.”

The way that the news article conveys the report, it seems as if the intelligence report is suggesting that there is somewhat of an implicit relationship between extremist groups and socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, and hacktivists. Amusingly, while the political enthusiasts and communists have always been seen as groups who were critical of or in opposition to the status quo, this is the first time that I have seen vegetarians classified as a threat to law and order. In this case, we can relate the underlying reasons for the classification of vegetarians as a security threat back to why Peace Fresno was classified as a security threat. In classifying them as a security threat, it provides rationalization for the surveillance of the group and the curtailment of members’ rights, not because they present a legitimate threat to national security, but because they possess views that are contrary to the national order.

Besides stating that vegetarians are a group actively working against the status quo, the U.S. Army intelligence report seems to list off a never-ending list of groups who could use Twitter as a tool for disrupting the national order. In avoiding any precision in defining who is actually presenting a threat to national security, it creates two consequences. First, the state can pick and choose who they want to target as national security threats. Lack of definition leaves it up to the state to start defining threats. Second, the seemingly endless list of threats to the national order listed in the report presents an image of an omnipresent threat.

The perception of an omnipresent threat creates an atmosphere of fear and sometimes hysteria. In times of fear and hysteria, citizens often look to the state to take action. These actions often involve the wielding of law enforcement power in opposition to basic individual freedoms. However, such adverse effects on basic rights are accepted because it is seen as a necessity in order to protect citizens from that omnipresent threat. It is in this way that those in power are able to consolidate that power. The perception that any group, perhaps even vegetarians, could at any point in time subvert the existing national order and instill their explicit ideologies onto others generates fear amongst the general population. This fear is often to such an extent that the population in general hopes that the state can offer them the protection that they desire.

What underlies this fear however, is the ability of the state and its institutions to be able to effectively generate this fear. Once the population perceives that there is a national security threat from some kind of omnipresent force, it is the state again that is able to roll up, quash the activities of these groups seen as threats to national security, and ultimately uphold the nation's security. In doing all of this, those in power are able to maintain and consolidate their power and their hold on the national ideologies as well.

Side note: I noticed a somewhat unrelated deficiency in the intelligence report. As quoted from the news article, the intelligence report stated that, "Terrorists may or may not be using voice-changing software..." I am not sure where the intelligence sources are coming from, however, it should be noted that voice changing software has been available since the early 1990's. For instance, the Talkboy, a rudimentary voice changing device, was used by Macaulay Culkin's character Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. If U.S. intelligence officials are just now discussing the potential uses of voice changing technologies, it may be a sign that they are severely lagging behind developments in society.

The last blog entry demonstrated how under a framework of security, basic rights such as freedom of speech could be curtailed. That is, not only curtailed, but also justified by government officials under a security context. In this entry, I just wanted to further develop the idea that was developing in the last entry. While the group discussed last week (APEC-Alert!) had a very different objective than the group that will be discussed this week (Peace Fresno), some commonalities can be drawn surrounding the circumstances in which violations of basic rights such as freedom of speech and privacy were violated.

To that end, the related document for this week is:
American Civil Liberties Union, The letter to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, (2004) < http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/11191lgl20040421.html > [17 November 2008].

In every blog entry that has been made thus far, it has been crucial to keep in mind the ideological nature of the term “national security” and more specifically, look at who is defining that term and to see if that definition serves to further any underlying interests. Hence, because the term is ideological in nature, the definition can expand and contract depending on the situation.

As the scope of national security expands however, many groups that aren’t traditionally considered a threat become the target of surveillance. At the same time, if the scope of national security is expanded too far, certain government measures become very difficult to rationalize, whether it is under the framework of security or not. This was the case with Peace Fresno. A community organization based out of Fresno, California, the group’s goal was the promotion of non-violence, peace, and social justice. As well, unlike APEC-Alert!, it can be argued that their methods of trying to achieve social change were less at odds with any government officials. That is, there is no indication that Peace Fresno engaged in the scale of confrontation with police and government officials like APEC-Alert! did. Their activities were mainly surrounding the distribution of flyers and street protests in order to achieve social change, like the end of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The only reasonable explanation of the Fresno County Sheriff Department's Anti-Terrorism unit’s infiltration of the peace group is that they were openly against the U.S.’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. The group was openly protesting the actions of the state and attempting to change the status quo. Hence, in order to deal with the situation, state officials had to take action against the group.

However, it could not just outright censor or outlaw the group. The convenient action for the state to take then was to define them as a national security threat so that it would justify the Anti-Terrorism unit’s infiltration and surveillance of the group. Therefore, what the infiltration of Peace Fresno demonstrates is not that the group was a threat to national security, but that national security served as a way to normalize the curtailment of speech and privacy rights.

The lack of definition for what national security entails means that it can be defined very freely. As well, the ability to define national security is often left up to those who are in power to define, not the citizens. Once a particular group falls within the realm of national security, those that are in power are therefore in a better position to justify any limitations on basic rights. This is because national security, however it is defined, is often portrayed in a manner that makes it seem more important than and trumps individual rights.

This conception of national can be seen at work with the Peace Fresno example. The umbrella of national security was extended by the state in order to incorporate the peace group. Once the group was under the umbrella of national security, their infiltration and surveillance could be rationalized under this national security framework. Thus, far from being objective in nature and protecting its citizens, national security is often used as a measure by the state against its own citizens. All of this can be justified as part of a national security agenda and at the same time serve two main purposes for the state. The possibility of infiltration and surveillance serves to intimidate any groups that could be dissenting against the status quo and second, the framework of national security serves to justify any curtailment of basic rights like free speech.