PARIS (AP) — BlackBerry handhelds have been called addictive, invasive, wonderful - and now, a threat to French state secrets.

That, at least, is the fear of French government defense experts, who have advised against their use by officials in France’s corridors of power, reportedly to avoid snooping by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“It’s not a question of trust,” French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. “We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it’s economic war.”

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April 16, 2007

UC Berkeley: “Biotechnology in the 21st Century”: Biosecurity Lecture Series

“Biotechnology in the 21st Century”: Biosecurity Lecture Series Lecture | April 18 | 7-9 p.m. | Faculty Club, O’Neill Room
Speaker/Performer: Malcolm Dando, Professor of International Security and Director of the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre at the University of Bradford, UK

Sponsor: Goldman School of Public Policy
A series of 50 interactive seminars carried out over the last two years in six countries on three continents has shown that most practicing life scientists see little connection between the work they do and biowarfare and bioterrorism. Yet careful studies, for example in the US National Academies Fink and Lemon reports, show that there are real reasons for concern in that the ongoing revolution in the life sciences could facilitate malign misuse around the world. The presentation examines some of the relevant characteristics of modern biotechnology and assesses its potential impact on international security. Three future scenarios ranging from the benign to the malign are then outlined. Despite the obvious dangers, and the difficulties of agreeing effective international action, it is argued that there are opportunities to build on the relative success of the 2006 6th Five Year Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and that life scientists can make an effective contribution to strengthening the prohibition of the malign misuse of the life sciences.
Event Contact: 510-643-4581

New York Times commentary “Bioterror or bioerror…”

January 30, 2007

Findings

Can Humanity Survive? Want to Bet on It?

By JOHN TIERNEY

Sixty years ago, a group of physicists concerned about nuclear weapons created the Doomsday Clock and set its hands at seven minutes to midnight. Now, the clock’s keepers, alarmed by new dangers like climate change, have moved the hands up to 11:55 p.m.

My first reaction was a sigh of relief. After all, the 1947 doomsday prediction marked the start of a golden age. Never have so many humans lived so long — and maybe never so peacefully — as during the past 60 years. The per-capita rate of violence, particularly in the West, seems remarkably low by historical standards. If the clock’s keepers are worried once again, their track record suggests we’re in for even happier days.

But there’s one novel twist that gives me pause. When the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced two weeks ago in Washington that it was adjusting the clock, it was joined in a trans-Atlantic press conference by scientists at the Royal Society in London. One of them was the society’s president, Martin Rees, a new breed of doomsayer.

Dr. Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge and Britain’s astronomer royal, doesn’t just issue gloomy predictions. He doesn’t just move the hands of an imaginary and inscrutable clock. (Its keepers have never explained what one of their minutes equals on anyone else’s clock or calendar.)

No, Dr. Rees is braver. He gives odds on doomsday and offers to bet on disaster. In his 2003 book, “Our Final Hour,” he gives civilization no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving until 2100.

Dr. Rees is not a knee-jerk technophobe — he expects great advances as researchers around the world link their knowledge — but he fears that progress will be undone by what he calls the new global village idiots. He’s sure enough of himself to post an offer on Long Bets, a clever innovation on the Web that Stewart Brand helped start with money from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.

Long Bets is a nonprofit foundation that calls itself an “arena for competitive, accountable predictions.” It lets anyone make a prediction and take wagers on it, with the proceeds going to a charity named by the winner. The bets made so far are from $200 to $10,000, on topics ranging from the driving habits of Americans in 2010 to whether the universe will stop expanding. Mitchell Kapor, the software guru, is betting that in 2029 no computer will have passed the Turing test (by conversing so much like a human that you couldn’t tell the difference). The physicist Freeman Dyson’s money is on the first extraterrestrial life’s being found somewhere other than a planet or its satellite.

Five years ago, Dr. Rees posted this prediction: “By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event.” He reasoned that “by 2020 there will be thousands — even millions — of people with the capability to cause a catastrophic biological disaster. My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses.”

He didn’t get any takers on LongBets.org, which seems to me a missed opportunity. So I’ve posted an offer there to bet him $200 — not a huge sum, but enough to put both our reputations on the line. I realize that betting on disaster may sound ghoulish, but neither of us will personally profit (if I win, the money goes to the International Red Cross). And I think bets like this serve a purpose.

Besides stimulating public debate, they focus the issue and discipline prophets. No matter how good their intentions, prophets face strong temptations to hype. In the current issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dr. Rees wryly describes what happened in 2003 when he turned in a manuscript titled, “Our Final Century?”

“My British publisher removed the question mark from the book’s title,” he recalls, “and the U.S. publisher changed it to ‘Our Final Hour.’ Pessimism, it seems, makes for better marketing.”

It doesn’t make for better public policy though. Heralds of the bioterror apocalypse have actually worsened the problem of bioterror, as Milton Leitenberg points out in a 2005 report for the Strategic Studies Institute of the United States Army War College.

Mr. Leitenberg is a scholar at the University of Maryland who has been studying biological weapons for decades — and debunking wild predictions. Dr. Rees is not alone. Senator Bill Frist called bioterrorism “the greatest existential threat we have in the world today” and urged a military effort that “even dwarfs the Manhattan Project.”

Such rhetoric, Mr. Leitenberg says, has had the perverse effect of encouraging terrorists to seek out biological weapons. But despite the much-publicized attempts of Al Qaeda and a Japanese group to go biological, terrorists haven’t had much luck, because it’s still quite hard for individuals or nongovernmental groups to obtain, manufacture or deploy biological weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Leitenberg says the biggest threat is of a state deploying biological weapons, and he notes the encouraging decline in the number of countries working on this technology. Meanwhile, though, America has been so spooked by the horror-movie scenarios that it’s pouring money into defense against biological weapons. Dr. Leitenberg says that’s a mistake, both because it diverts resources from more serious threats — like natural diseases and epidemics — and because it could start a new biological arms race as other countries understandably fear that the United States is doing more than just playing defense.

It’s possible, as Dr. Rees fears, that terrorists will get a lot more sophisticated at biotech in the next decade, or that researchers will make some terrible mistake. The technology is getting cheaper and spreading rapidly. But so are the tools for preventing and coping with mistakes.

Whatever happens, I don’t expect biotechnology to pose an “existential threat.” The disaster predicted by Dr. Rees would be horrific, but humanity has survived worse, like the flu epidemic of 1918 that killed tens of millions of people. I know there are fears of new microorganisms or nanobots gobbling up our species, but I’m confident we’d somehow stop the Doomsday Clock from striking midnight.

In fact, the wager I’d really like to make with Dr. Rees is that we’ll make it to 2100. I’ve posted that prediction on Long Bets, and I’d be glad to give him better odds than the 50-50 chance he gives civilization of surviving the century.

I even think one of us might survive to see the payoff, although my techno-optimism has its limits. I hope some version of me will be around in 2100, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

March 29, 2007

Incidents in the Gare du Nord, Paris

For those of you who may be interested:

Battle of Gare du Nord rocks Paris

By Henry Samuel in Paris
 

France’s presidential candidates have been exchanging fire over why the simple arrest of a fare-dodger turned into a full scale riot, with the Left claiming that Nicolas Sarkozy’s repressive policies have brought anti-police sentiment to an all-time high.

Police used tear-gas and batons charges on Tuesday night to quell scores of rioters at the Gare du Nord - the Eurostar terminus in Paris used by hundreds of thousands of Britons each year.

	French officers with dogs patrol the Gare du Nord Metro

Thirteen people were arrested during several hours of clashes, which began during the evening rush hour and did not end until midnight.

Commuters and tourists were caught in the crossfire as groups of youths, some hooded, threw projectiles at police, smashed windows and drink distributors with iron bars and ransacked shops.

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February 26, 2007

Other Europe-related events of interest

Some events at the IES that might be of interest to folks…

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Talk: Kevin on the French Police

Thursday, March 1
Electric Burns: The French Banlieue Riots of 2005 and the Politics of Neoliberal Policing
Kevin Karpiak
Anthropology Dept., UC Berkeley
12:00 pm
European Studies Seminar Room
(201 Moses Hall)
French Studies Program

pdf version: Electric Burns: the French banlieue riots and the politics of neo-liberal policing

February 21, 2007

observations at the UN Geneva

I am still waiting on paperwork here in Lyon, and since it is not far away, yesterday I visited the UN Geneva headquarters. Attached is a picture for Adrian. It was interesting to see what the bookshop had for sale - the offerings included Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen’s “The Risk Society at War” and Mike Davis‘ “The Monster at our Door: the global threat of avian flu”.

February 7, 2007

Follow-up from Andy Lakoff Talk at UCSF 2/7/07

Fantastic talk by Andy Lakoff this afternoon at UCSF. Very clear presentation of the argument made by Andy Lakoff and Steven Collier in their working paper “Vital Systems Security.”
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January 19, 2007

Writing Group Meeting, Thursday January 25th at 5pm

For those of us interested in getting together to discuss one
another’s texts, the first meeting will be on Thursday, January 25, at
Henry’s, 5-7pm. (Close to campus, the place seems reasonably quiet,
and has a wide range of beers on tap.) Kevin has agreed to present an
excerpt from his dissertation (see attached).

Everyone who takes part on this occasion is of course expected to have
read the text, but to get the discussion going, Amelia and Mattias will
prepare to talk for 10-15 minutes. We suggest the following structure:
(1) Introductory comments (by Amelia and Mattias); (2) a general
discussion about the text and responses from Kevin; and (3) a brief
evaluation of the meeting to improve its form. We should also decide
on a timeslot for subsequent labinar events this semester.

Chapter 3–The King’s Two Bodies: Hierarchy and Distance at the École Nationale de Police