Brian Conley's News & Notes

Last week it was announced that Google might be enlisting the help of the NSA to review data gained about cyber attacks, believed to have been instigated by China. Although some critics raised the issue of privacy, it seems a far more interesting question might be “what does a Google-NSA partnership tell us about Obama and Clinton’s new plans for the internet?” In order to answer that, we should look at Clinton’s recent speech on internet freedom, and what that tells us about the administrations’ stance on internet privacy as an element of internet freedom.

A few weeks ago Secretary of State Clinton gave a much publicized address on internet freedom. Unfortunately, selecting from choice quotes, it becomes clear that she is primarily talking about “Freedom” of economic gain and beyond that extending the idea of “Freedom” only in so much as it does not interfere with the interest of the United States government, and our allies. Outlining her speech she mentioned Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech:

Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four Freedoms speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a cavalcade of crises and a crisis of confidence. But the vision of a world in which all people enjoyed freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear transcended the troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a lodestar to every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us, and enabling us to move forward in the face of uncertainty.

These “Freedoms” miss a very key point, all of these freedoms stem from one key freedom, the freedom of privacy. The degree to which an individual, any individual, has privacy is perhaps the greatest single indicator of the degree to which that individual is free. Without privacy an individual cannot partake of the freedoms guaranteed to him or her. Without privacy it is impossible to engage in religious freedom within your community. Without privacy it is impossible for an interracial or same sex couple to engage in freedom of expression. The ability to partake fully of your rights is the very definition of being free, without privacy, the full extent of one’s rights cannot be realized.

The necessity of access to privacy extends across all people and all economic groups. A woman’s ability to be free is directly related to the degree to which she has private space in her home, or in public. A Chinese activist’s ability to be free is directly related to his access to private space to organize peaceful demonstrations against his government. Although privacy is not directly and individually outlined in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights, without privacy we cannot truly access the various rights which are outlined.

The freedom of religion, the freedom against self-incrimination, freedom against unreasonable search, can all be seen as elements of freedom based on a right to privacy. Privacy has, thus far, primarily been protected under a wide interpretation of the 9th amendment. The failure to define an amendment specifically guaranteeing a right to privacy for Americans also hinders our ability to engage in fair and even-handed foreign policy abroad.

Although Secretary Clinton very actively sets up strawmen in the form of nameless terrorists and states limiting freedom of speech and/or communicating messages of hate. If we can all agree that terrorism and violence should not be tolerated, nor should the peddling of anything which exploits another individual without his/her consent, or an individual such as a child who does not have the legal right to consent, why should we not ratify a freedom of privacy for consenting adults to do as they please in private?

Unfortunately our allies in South Korea and India are not being pressed by the United States to permit internet freedom. Although South Korea’s ban appears to be of a primarily social nature, India’s has been more focused on terrorism/hate speech, and more recently looking issues of cyber piracy to the degree of even suggesting a ban on uploading or downloading video via web or mobiles anywhere in India.

Despite strawmen suggesting anonymity is only for criminal elements, anonymity has many faces and many uses. In 2008 I was in China for the Beijing Olympics, where I was working as an “embedded reporter” of sorts, helping ensure that video and photo images of protest actions committed by Students for a Free Tibet evaded Chinese censorship and reached the world. Without technology such as email encryption and encrypted mobiles, it would have been impossible for us broadcast the content that showed the world another face of the Olympics.

Nathan Freitas, who helped organize the global communications network for SFT during the Olympics is now developing an anonymous, secure, and private mobile phone based on Android. Such a device will greatly increase the capabilities of movements for human rights and social justice all over the world.

Given comments from the Secretary of State such as this:

Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

It’s difficult to see how Nathan’s project might gain funding under these new State Department initiatives. On the other hand, its equally difficult to see how East German activists praised by Clinton would have been successful with their samizdat had the Stasi and others been successful at entirely limiting their access to privacy and private space.

In the repressive environment of East Germany in the 80s, samizdat pamphlets provided a portal to private space from underneath the curtain placed over public space. Today the guarantee of anonymity online, the guarantee of privacy, is the only way we can protect the internet as a truly free, truly open space for all to gather.

There will be some who raise strawman arguments to criticize my points here, so let me be clear, guaranteeing privacy, or declaring privacy as a human right, does not mean privacy to organize terror, hate speech, or exploitation. Clearly those things are wrong and cannot be protected under the veil of human rights. On the other hand, sometimes legality is relative, it was certainly illegal for me to be in China helping to produce images of activities prohibited by the Chinese State.

The difficulty then is to ask how we might pioneer a future for the internet that guarantees access to the space as well as the right to be anonymous, to obtain privacy, if desired, and how to keep this a safe space for all, safe from the hegemony of one or more States, as well as the interference of terrorists, violent criminals, and others who might wish ill on human society.

The burgeoning accessibility and connectivity of the internet can be a testing ground for a new dedication toward privacy as a human right. Once we make it work online, it only makes sense that we should endeavor to pioneer a guaranteed right to privacy IRL. (In Real Life)

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about content recently. In my latest project I’m working with Video Volunteers to establish a network of community producers (or community journalists) all over India. These Community Producers will be generating at least 1-2 videos per month, as well as a variety of other social content, ranging from SMS updates via Twitter or a local gateway running something like FrontlineSMS, to blogging and recording audio via phone.

My current goal is to start the network with 40 Community Producers, this is a number based on everything I’ve discussed with colleague here, regarding available candidates, capable candidates, and our own limitations, for example to qualify a candidate must speak Hindi and/or English. If we are successful at launching the project with such a broad and diverse network, we very quickly start dealing with some really large numbers. In the first month we will produce between 40 and 80 *different* videos per month.

The first question anyone might ask at this point is, will anyone watch that many videos online from one network or news agency? Although the answer may be no, I’m hoping its a clarified no, I’m hoping there is a body of viewers who will be interested to watch at least half or two-thirds of the content being produced each month. Unfortunately, the number of viewers who will be ultimately interested in the content if they can see it is something somewhat outside of our control.

My attempt to determine what elements I can control has led me to conceive of the term “watchability.”

The greater the “watchability” of the content, the more likely the video will be watched. Of course this risks being a self-fulfilling paradigm, where we might say that if a video is watched, of course it has watchability and if it isn’t then it doesn’t.

I’m endeavoring toward a theory of watchability that is not so irrelevant to the rest of us as such a frivolous take might be.

So let’s start from the most basic element, in order to be watchable a video must have a certain quality level to the content. That means the image should not be too shaky, and the audio must hit at least a modicum of tolerability regarding the ratio of signal to noise.

In order to be watchable a video must be compelling, which is to say it should show us something new and interesting, it should provide us a new take on an old story. This new and intriguing perspective should be shown, not told. It doesn’t have to be funny, but being funny, or entertaining, or exciting are all elements that can greatly increase a videos watchability. It can be easier to succeed at thrilling or entertaining an audience than to be compelling in another more dramatic fashion.

Keep in mind we are looking toward a definition of extreme or complete watchability, what elements should a video contain for the greatest watchability.

To make a video that is compelling is easiest if it also reflects a dominant paradigm in the audience’s worldview. This is why we are so willing to accept images or stories as fact that later prove to be false. Videos have perhaps the greatest viral watchability, and can even become exponentially more compelling when they contain content that directly reflects the expectations of the audience they reach in a new and shocking way. It can also be compelling by virtue of being extremely personal or communicating something intimate about the individuals pictured or the individual producing the content.

For example the video of Neda during the Iran election protests was extremely watchable. So too was LonelyGirl15 and even before YouTube was likely a spark in Chad Hurley’s imagination, a young Kuwaiti named Nayirah convinced the world that Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti children from incubators and “left the babies on the cold floor to die.” Her story was “watchable” because Americans wanted to believe it, and the press did little to question the elements, exactly because they reflected the dominant paradigm.

So watchability isn’t always necessarily a good thing. However reflecting one’s worldview can also be a matter of tenor, ie negative or anti-government videos for some, positive uplifting images of heroic justice for others. This may also be why humor is such a connecting element across boundaries of culture and differing perspective.

Keeping that in mind, is there anything else that provides a video watchability? I would suggest that perhaps the single most important element of watchability, even after reflecting the audience’s dominant perception of an event, is audience accessibility.

Videos must reach the audience where the audience is willing to consume the videos. Thus YouTube videos might have a higher base-level watchability than other video-sharing sites, purely as an element of market share. Another interesting element is that videos from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have greater watchability if they are published at Liveleak.com purely by virtue of the fact that consumers of such videos tend to spend much of their time looking at Liveleak to find the latest and “greatest” gore from the War on Terror.

The onus is now on the producer/publisher to push videos out as far and wide as possible. The very watchability of a video depends on it. Accessibility and paradigm reflection can improve the watchability of a video that might otherwise be consigned to the dustbin of internet video waste. The most beautiful and telling story of corruption or suffering or pain of an oppressed people might also lack watchability if it is not made accessible to a willing audience.

In order to have watchability videos now must be accessible via RSS, iTunes, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of others, the level of importance of any one networking tool being directly related to the audience a producer/publisher is targeting.

I hope you’ll comment with your own ideas and theories of “watchability.” Even with 10 years experience producing and consuming online video, one individual cannot hope to come to a solid and complete definition of such an elusive topic.

But at the risk of extreme hubris, I’ll postulate this; to  succeed at creating a video with the greatest watchability, a video must:

• contain content with a marginal level of quality, a steady image and not too much noise in the audio
• be compelling, showing us something new, or something personal
• despite showing us something new, it should reflect the existing worldview of the audience
• it must be accessible. all television content possesses watchability purely by being on television, our audience is more dispersed, so our content must be as well.

What else makes a video watchable?

How many of these elements will we have to achieve to succeed at building a vast audience and keeping them? As I said at the beginning, to some degree that is really unknowable, but pursuing a theory of watchability may be the best chance at creating a benchmark for measuring success and how to alter our planning and execution to potentially increase our watchability.

Some thoughts so far from Twitter:

JoeyNiebrugge

@BaghdadBrian compelling, human angle, educate viewer (culture, people, lifestyle), entertain, quality* visuals (*often lacking)

NickySides

@BaghdadBrian “watchability” grabbing hook for initial attention. personalize it so that ppl not normally interested in the topic relate

Dimitrijevic_66

@BaghdadBrian Re what makes a video watchable? : Brevity. Under 90 secs is best and state running time up front

Post your own response here or on Twitter!