Doc Searls Weblog

The world

• As Istanbul Protests Continue: “Lider” as “Führer,” a Frequent Characterization, by Stephen Lewis in Bubkes.org. Also Gezi Park: Street Vendors, Vanishing Roots of Urban Economies and Urban Democracy.
• New Regulations for Skype and Viber in Bahrain. By Amira Al Hussaini in Global Voices Online. Also Egyptians Want to Overthrow the Regime.

Surveillance

• EU enraged as Snowden reveals evidence of mass hacking by US. By Paul McGeough in the Sydney Morning Herald.
• Germans loved Obama. Now we don’t trust him. By Malte Spitz in The New York Times.
• Europeans Voice Anger Over Reports of Spying by U.S. on Its Allies. By Stephen Castle and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times.
• False Indignation and Spy vs. Spy. By Lauren Weinstein.
• Beyond feudal security: what’s happening to online security and freedom. By Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing. Sources a talk about digital feudalism by Bruce Schneier.
• Freedom: The Big American Lie: The U.S. try hard to believe in the internet’s liberating power. Therefore the N.S.A. scandal is forgotten and a new movie is already playing. By Thomas Frank in Faz.net
• Greenwald: Snowden’s Files Are Out There if ‘Anything Happens’ to Him, by Eli Lake in The Daily Beast.
• Google Challenges NSA Secrecy in Court. By Sam Gustin in Time.
• Gore Vidal on Charlie Rose, Part I. Lots of other links there too.
• Whole pile of stuff in the Washington Post.
• Washington Post releases four new slides from NSA’s Prism presentation: Newly published top-secret documents detail how NSA interfaces with tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. By Ed Pilkington in The Guardian.
• What it’s like to get a national security letter. By Maria Bustillos in The New Yorker. Required reading.
• NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama, by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian.
  • Secret program launched by Bush continued ‘until 2011’
  • Fisa court renewed collection order every 90 days
  • Current NSA programs still mine US internet metadata

Marketing, VRM, related topics

• Disrupting Retail 2013, by FirstRetail. Four videos compress a full day of excellent conversation. More about this shortly at ProjectVRM.
• Are you being creepy? By Mark Cameron.
• Escaping advertising’s uncanny valley. By T.Rob.
• United’s new bad deal for frequent fliers. The small print: Starting in January 2014, Premier qualification requirements will include a minimum annual spending level. We will track this qualifying spending with Premier qualifying dollars (PQD): dollars spent on most United® tickets, including partner flights, and Economy Plus® purchases. These changes do not affect Premier qualifying miles (PQM) or Premier qualifying segments (PQS). For 2014, the PQD requirement for Premier Silver, Premier Gold and Premier Platinum qualification will be waived for members whose address with MileagePlus® is within the 50 United States or the District of Columbia and who spend at least $25,000 in Net Purchases in 2014 on a MileagePlus co-branded credit card issued by Chase Bank USA, N.A. There is no PQD waiver for Premier 1K® qualification. You earn PQD for the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges on qualifying tickets. Certain specialty tickets, including but not limited to unpublished, consolidator, group/tour, and opaque fares do not earn PQD. Just as with Premier qualifying miles (PQM) and Premier qualifying segments (PQS), we will credit the account of the member who travels, not the member who purchases the ticket. Great strategy: Take your most loyal customers and make life harder for them. I’m a million-plus mile flier with United, and a lifetime member of the United Club. I am not happy. And I’m not alone. If any other airline wants my business, I’m available.

Radio, music

• FCC Announces Application Window for New Low Power FM Stations. By Cody Duncan in Future of Music Coalition. Fact sheet.
• Pandora, Apple and the State of Web Radio. By Adam Sinnreich of Rutgers, in SlideShare. Outstanding rundown of What’s Going On.
• Back to Vinyl: The Office Turntable. On YouTube.
• Amazon launches its Autorip feature in UK and Europe. By Stuart Dredge in Musically.com.
• My Routine — Mark Rothstein, Law Professor. In the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I don’t know that people have knowingly, consciously consented to the accumulation of data. We live in an age in which consent should not be mistaken for choice. We click through consent on software without even reading it. Even if we technically consented, I doubt very much whether the average person would say, ‘Oh sure, it’s OK for my phone company to accumulate all this data about me.’”
• Business Matters: What if Pandora Did Direct Licenses? By Glenn Peoples in Billboard.
• Japan Is About to Become the Largest Music Market In the World. By  Paul Resnikoff in Digital Music News.
• As CDs spin on in Japan, Tower Records rocks on. By Yuko Takeo in The Wall Street Journal.
• Bricks-and-mortar retailers link with online brethren; video spending stable. In DVD and Beyond.
• Apple Spells out iTunes Radio Terms. By Hannah Karp and Jessica E. Lessin in The Wall Street Journal.
• iTunes Radio makes offer to NYC labels: Terms from Apple that went out in the last week to the indies are “on par” with what the major record companies were given, according to sources and a copy of the contract obtained by Crain’s. By Matthew Flamm in Crain’s New York Business.

Other interesting stuff

• Douglas Rushkoff on Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, a Berkman Center talk.
• Is Apple the Next Chrysler? by Herb Greenberg in LinkedIn. Since I found it in the San Francisco Chronicle, I thought it was a recruitment ad.
• Who will stop Google? Snowden revealed what many of us already suspected: Google completely controls the web. By Rebecca Solnit in Salon.
• The Arctic Heatwave Hits Central Siberia Pushing Temperatures to 90 Degrees and Sparking Tundra Fires. By Robert Scribbler.
• IRS Puts Open Source Projects Under Microscope, Spawns Nonprofit Black Hole. By Robert McMillan in Wired.
• Full Show: United States of ALEC — A Follow-Up. By Bill Moyers.
• Privately funded aircraft will look for dangerous asteroids. By Peter Gwynne in PhysicsWorld.