Weekend Video Salon: Adrienne Kinne

It takes a brave soldier to expose possible wrongdoing.

Tofu Terroristas

The next time you're sitting at Espresso News, see if you can listen in on some of the conversations around you. You never know--that suspicious/scary looking vegan sitting nearby might be talking with the FBI--about their upcoming vegan potluck spying assignment. From City Pages (MN):

Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated. Once he arrived home from the Hennepin County Courthouse, where he’d been served a gross misdemeanor for spray-painting the interior of a campus elevator, the lanky, wavy-haired University of Minnesota sophomore flipped open his phone and checked his messages. He was greeted by a voice he recognized immediately. It belonged to U of M Police Sgt. Erik Swanson, the officer to whom Carroll had turned himself in just three weeks earlier. When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble.

...

Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

“I’ll pass,” said Carroll.

For 10 more minutes, Mazzola and Swanson tried to sway him. He remained obstinate.

“Well, if you change your mind, call this number,” said Mazzola, handing him her card with her cell phone number scribbled on the back.

(Mazzola, Swanson, and the FBI did not return numerous calls seeking comment.)

...

So violent, those vegans. That's why they refuse to eat dead animals. Your tax dollars at work, folks. Link here.

GRITtv: What Else Can The Media Talk About?

Congrats To You From Bill

A victory for media activists! Keep in touch, stay informed, & keep working to make big media feel the heat. Local voices still need to be heard on our public airwaves in the High Country. How can we work together to achieve this objective? Some inspiration for you:

On Access & Stenography

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people...

Read on...

Ready For Your Deep Packet Inspection?

Enhanced online experience. Deep Packet Inspection. Sound slightly obscene to you?

A little, maybe--but only if you value your privacy.

Seems that Charter Communications is getting ready to enhance their ad revenues at your expense. If you have Charter as your email/internet provider, you may be interested to know that they will soon be sniffing through your emails and targeting you with ads based on what you write, and the websites that you visit. From Consumerist and freepress.net:

Charter Communications is sending letters to its customers informing them of an "enhanced online experience" that involves Charter monitoring its users' searches and the websites they visit, and inserting targeted third-party ads based on their web activity. Charter, which serves nearly six million customers, is requiring users who want to keep their activity private to submit their personal information to Charter via an unencrypted form and download a privacy cookie that must be downloaded again each time a user clears his web cache or uses a different browser.

...

...an implementation of "deep packet inspection," is more worrying to us. Deep packet inspection allows an ISP to [Charter] monitor not only its users searches and visited websites, but also the type of activity (e.g., email or peer-to-peer), which could be used for traffic shaping and threatens net neutrality.

Are we right then in assuming that even in this era of enhanced government domestic spying that we should praise Charter's new initiative? After all, is it not tantamount to privatized spying? Yes! A good thing, indeed!

Well, let's have a look at how 'ol Charter's doin'--our new role model of deregulated (and therefore highly efficient) corporate citizenship and responsibility (from Morning Sun and freepress.net:

Charter Communications, the monopoly that controls the cable TV in mid-Michigan, is either cutting back and ignoring its customers or trying hard to be the best it can be, depending on who you talk to.

Jan Howard, executive director of the Mid Michigan Area Cable Consortium, said the number of complaints she has received from customers about Charter Communications have increased dramatically since the inception of the Uniform Video Services Local Franchise Act last year.

"There have been a number of concerns about billing and customer service,"Howard said. Although municipalities can no longer provide protection for Charter customers, they are still the primary resource of customer complaints because the city is the local franchising authority. On Dec. 21 2006, Gov. Granholm signed the legislation to promote competition among video service providers in Michigan. That legislation went into effect January 2007.

One year later, some have concerns that the law is having a detrimental effect on cable customers.

Prior to the law, cable providers in Michigan were subject to federal laws and regulations that were uniform across the country. These laws were designed to protect all parties including the cable provider, the customer and local governments. Enforcement was implemented by local communities, which could apply local standards and in turn invoke fines on the cable providers if they were not following the standards.

Under the act, that is no longer possible.

...

"They (Charter) have no fear. Who is going to bother them? What do they risk by not listening to these people?"Howard said.

Full article here.

Thank goodness we don't have an ISP/cable monopoly in the High Country. Doh!

The End Of MTN?

We're sure that by now you've heard that MTN, the Mountain Television Network has been offered for sale on eBay. MTN is referred to as a low-power TV station, or LPTV. But what may be even more interesting is the fact that a federal appeals court has rejected the request made by a large group of LPTV owners to require government-subsidized digital TV converters to carry their transmissions. From the AP:

...
The industry contends it is facing a "death sentence" because of a flaw in the government's plan to force broadcasters to shift to digital broadcasting.
...
As of Feb. 18, 2009, all full-power television stations in the U.S. are required to stop broadcasting an analog signal.
...
The problem facing the 2,600 low-power television stations represented by the association is that they are not subject to the deadline. Most of the converter boxes now on sale will actually block the low-power analog signal from those stations, while the full-power digital signals will display normally.
...

Here's the upshot: Unless this ruling somehow is reversed, you will not be able to watch MTN over the air--and the community will lose yet another local media outlet--come February 19th 2009. In an era already noted for its hyper media consolidation, this is the last thing the High Country needs.

If you're not familiar with LPTV, click here to find out a little more--and where these stations are located throughout NC.

Full AP story here.