PassWord – 11th February 2015

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Password with me, Peter Wyren, on Resonance FM. Today it’s all about the money. We want you to buy stuff in our auction to raise funds for the radio station. Every penny, euro, and Bitcoin we raise will go towards improving the Resonance FM website and creating a new DAB digital radio service so that you can listen to us across a wider region in crystal clear digital quality. In the next half hour, we’ll be describing some of the technology-focused goodies on offer, but remember, you can also bid for a wide range of art, music, and foodie stuff, as well as tickets for gigs and special events. Log on to fundraiser.resonancefm.com resonance.fm to bid for prizes or pledge your donation. Now, if you’re a regular listener to Password, you’ll know that Jane’s got a new smartphone, a Fairphone to be exact. It’s an Android handset with camera and connectivity just like any other, but this one has a dual SIM capacity, so you can have one SIM for work and one for personal messaging, or put in a local SIM for when you travel abroad to save money. Why is it called a fairphone? Daria Koroninska on a Skype call from Amsterdam explains.

Speaker B: You would be surprised to know that every smartphone contains about 40 different minerals. Some of them, yeah, and some of these minerals such as tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold in many cases are mined in conflict zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo in the mines controlled by armed militia. So in this way, the mobile industry in fact fuels the war. So at Fairphone, we want to source materials that support local economies and not armed groups. So far, we have only managed to make the first step and ensure that two minerals, tin and tantalum, in our first Fairphone come from conflict-free mines in Congo. And we are researching how to take the next step and look at the other minerals and to integrate more conflict-free and fairly mined minerals in our next phone, but that’s work in progress. So mining is at the one end of the phone supply chain, and at the other end there is manufacturing, where minerals after a long journey throughout the whole world come to a factory in the form of phone components for assembly. So as well as miners and any other people in the world, we think that factory workers deserve safe conditions, fair wages, and worker representation. And the list of standards that can be improved here is, well, endless, to be honest. So this is why we are working closely with manufacturers that want to invest in employee well-being. The factory we’ve been working with to produce the first Fairphone is based in China, and it doesn’t mean that we magically found a fair factory in China. We were looking for companies that would share our values-based business practices and be willing to offer transparency. So before the start of our production, there was conducted a social assessment of the factory, and the factory made certain improvements according to the recommendations drawn from the assessment. For example, better fire safety, improved lighting, free lunch for employees. So small things, but they make a difference as well. And yeah, actually, to be fully transparent, we put this social assessment report on our website. And further, to enable workers the ability to voice and address their needs and concerns, we, we’ve built the Worker Welfare Fund together with the factory. So for each Fairphone produced, $5 is invested in this fund, and the money in the worker welfare fund is spent on projects that benefit workers. So such projects are proposed to the board of the fund by worker representatives that are elected by the entire factory. So in this way, the fund is a tool to empower workers to improve working conditions in a structural way and to really communicate with the management. Then there are other areas where we try to create positive impact like design, life cycle, and as we create fairer phone, we are publicly sharing our achievements and experiences. By showing actually the, you know, uncovering production processes behind the phone, we want to enable consumers to make more informed decisions about what they buy.

Speaker C: What are you doing to improve the lifecycle or the user’s experience of having a Fairphone?

Speaker B: So we see design as a powerful tool to change the relationship between people and their phones. And we want to design phones that last longer and that give buyers more control over their products. So, with Fairphone, you can easily, first of all, open your phone, see what’s inside, and even take it apart and replace a detail. And this brings us to another important area of our focus, which is lifecycle. So, we have also started with 3 concrete projects. The first project is around repairing your phone. So we are selling spare parts for the Fairphone on our website and we offer repair manuals together with our partner iFixit. But then one day any phone reaches its end of usable life so that you cannot actually repair it anymore. And when this happens, our take-back program makes it as easy as possible for Fairphone owners and consumers in general to send back their old used phones for reuse or responsible recycling. And another way in which we address the problem of electronic waste is our project in Ghana, which is a huge e-waste dumping place, where together with our partners we collected 75,000 phones which will be shipped to Belgium for safe recycling. I mean, old phones, of course. Yeah, so these are the first steps that we’ve been taking in this area.

Speaker A: Well, that was Daria Korinanshkina of Fairphone, who produce a different kind of smartphone. There are only a few of the Fairphone 1 handsets left with European resellers. But we’ve got one reserved for the highest bidder. The Fairphone normally sells for around £200, but we’re starting the bidding at 99p. We expect our next item, though, to raise around £200. Jane has the details.

Speaker C: Yes, it’s a set of 6 limited edition fine art prints by Charles Vilpe, created using space-age materials such as Stycast superglue and vaporised gold foil, the sort they use on satellites. Wilp was inspired by his visit to Russia’s Star City spaceport to bring these substances into his collages. The subject matter is strictly German though. Each print represents the typical culture of one of the new states, or Länder, that joined West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist German Democratic Republic. They were made in 1990 and they’re in pristine condition, still in their original wrapper with the sealing wax in the red, black, and gold colours of the German flag. Only 3,000 of these were created, and the artist died in 2005, so they will never be replicated. The starting price on two art dealers’ auction websites is £270, but we’re listing it at 99p with a reserve.

Speaker A: Now for music lovers, a Bluetooth speaker from the House of Marley range, which is already sold. Here’s their YouTube promo.

Speaker D: Okay, okay. Yeah, we say greetings and welcome to one and all. You know, it’s a blessed gathering. How Samali say?

Speaker C: Yes, Rastafari.

Speaker D: Only love, only love, only love can conquer, can conquer, can conquer. War is not the answer. So within the House of Marley, music shall teach them a lesson.

Speaker C: Irie, you know.

Speaker F: Irie, you know.

Speaker D: We get together, speak as you say.

Speaker A: The House of Marley supports the One Love global nonprofit-making enterprise founded by his many children when Bob Marley died. The speaker is made from sustainable wood and recycled materials. It’s very small, light, and portable, but delivers a warm, true sound. It raised £30. We’ve got a stack of books that we’re offering as one lot, starting again at 99p too, and hoping to raise around £50.

Speaker C: They include a signed copy of Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare: All That Matters, which oddly is a book that I wrote, and Pete’s too modest to tell you how good it is, but one eminent reviewer, Professor Paul Watson, called it a little gem and recommended it for students, business people, or anyone at all who’s concerned about staying safe online and interested in the vital issues of privacy and security that are so hard to balance. Then we’ve got Gabriella Coleman’s book, signed by the author. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy is a hardback of 700 pages tracing the history of Anonymous —that’s the hacktivist collective with the distinctive Guy Fawkes masks. Professor Coleman was interviewed for Password at the time of the mass demonstrations by Anonymous in November, so I asked her to explain who are these people and why do they use such offensive language.

Speaker F: So it’s absolutely the case that a lot of the language that is used by Anonymous is very offensive. Their roots are from an online image board called 4chan. Which is an image board and message board that was founded in 2003 and was a kind of very important place for organizing trolling campaigns. And trolling campaigns are kind of fearsome pranking, also rooted in a culture of offensiveness. And Anonymous, as they moved away from trolling, continued to embrace the the culture of offensive language. And it’s one in which is, you know, one of the most kind of vexing issues because I think like individually and personally, you know, I’ve met many people anonymous and, you know, many are involved in struggles against misogyny and, you know, in support for, you know, diverse sexuality. And in fact, one of the surprising things was how many queer nones there were. But they really embrace offensiveness and transgression, the right to subvert rules and language. And this is one of the main reasons why they engage in it. And it’s certainly the case that, you know, it’s one of the issues that I’m, you know, on the fence about. I think that there is value in sometimes not being politically correct and engaging in rule-breaking. At the same time, I think many people in the geek and hacker world tend to see language in a pretty naive way sometimes, where it’s like sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Well, you know, words can hurt, right? And they have power. And so in that sense, the language they use, you know, definitely can be alienating, is a kind of barrier. Not everyone’s going to find it agreeable. But again, I think beneath the surface, it’s a bit more complicated. You know, you do have people who participate who come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and also kind of have very different sexual orientations, right? It’s a pretty diverse lot, probably with the exception among the hackers with gender. And that just reflects, you know, the wider hacker world, especially a kind of transgressive black hat tradition where people are willing to break into servers. I like to remind people I’ve actually never met a female black hat hacker in or outside of Anonymous in, you know, over 14 years of research.

Speaker C: Well, you’re an anthropologist. How do you explain that?

Speaker F: Part of the explanation is that there is, first of all, just not enough women in computing just generally. And then, you know, if you look at the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, and math, At the college level, for example, it’s almost 50/50 for biology, mathematics, physics. It’s not the case for computer science. There’s about, I think it’s lower than 20% female participation in computer science, right? Until those numbers increase, you’re not gonna increase it in subcultural worlds, which is a kind of, tends to draw from the wider kind of population. And then also, it’s certainly the case that the black hat transgressive hacker tradition, because not all hackers come from that transgressive tradition, so I don’t like to make a claim about all hackers. There’s many different ways to be a hacker, but that tradition has a lot of bravado and there is a kind of macho sort of sensibility in that world, for sure. And that’s also kind of a further barrier, a secondary one to the fact that there’s not a lot of kind of female computer scientists and hackers in the first place.

Speaker C: Should we be afraid, or do they just like the LulzSec group who went to prison but were doing it apparently for fun? Should we just regard this as sort of harmless pranks anyway?

Speaker F: So LulzSec is interesting because they, you know, went on a 50-day hacking spree. They broke away from Anonymous in part because by that time, which was in May 2011, Anonymous had been so identified with politics that when they decided to hack for the fun of it, they couldn’t even use the name Anonymous, right? And one of the very interesting things was a lot of security Researchers and professionals and security hackers really liked LulzSec because their escapades helped them make the case to kind of their corporations that they needed to invest better resources in security. And, you know, some hackers have kind of described their role as a kind of immune system of the internet. And I think that that is valid. Of course, you know, if you are a person whose information has been leaked out there, well, that can really cause a lot of problems. They’re certainly not the only ones. The difference with them is that corporations tend to act in reaction to them because of how public it is. They tend to actually, you know, be very quiet about other massive breaches that happen. So there’s something socially worthwhile, all the while there can be some collateral damage. Gabriella Coleman.

Speaker A: And if you want to know more, you can bid for her fascinating book, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, as part of the tech books lot in our auction. Starting price: 99p. Also in the stack, we have Paul Miller’s book, The Digital Workplace, all about the delights and dangers of telecommuting. And Bitcoin: The Future of Money? By Dominic Frisby. This is a racy read about how the world’s most successful digital currency was created and continues to thrive in spite of attempts to outlaw it because it’s used by gun smugglers, drug dealers, pedophiles, and other lowlife to trade on the darknet without being caught. And they’ve always used cash as well. We’ve got a brand new book hot off the press to celebrate 10 years of the Freedom of Information Act, signed by the editor and full of case notes and examples from all around the world of how ordinary people are challenging official secrecy and getting governments to open the books. That’s FOI: 10 Years On, edited by Tom Felley and John Mayer. Another title in our stack is Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking, the book that inspired a critically acclaimed film about her life with the award-winning physicist. Here, Jane Hawking describes her reactions to seeing her book transformed into a Hollywood film, with her part played by Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne portraying Stephen Hawking.

Speaker E: The film had left me speechless. I was blown away, as was Stephen, as was Jonathan, by the power of the emotion in the film, all of which was absolutely genuine. Well, definitely our meeting That was perhaps one of the most important moments in my life. The diagnosis of Stephen’s illness. I was not actually there at the time, but I had a strong visual image of how it must have been. And I think that comes across in the film very powerfully. And then, of course, our wedding and the shots of Felicity and Eddie looking just like Stephen and me is just how it was all those years ago. I first saw Eddie playing Stephen not in the film, but while the filming was taking place in Cambridge. I saw a character coming towards me and I thought, heavens, that’s Stephen, but Stephen as he was. And then it transpired that this wasn’t Stephen, it was Eddie. I went up to him and I said, look, Eddie, if you’re going to play Stephen, you’re much too tidy. So I ruffled his hair for him, which was a nice introduction. Stephen invited me to go to a May ball in Cambridge, and in the film it’s a pretty near-perfect recreation. And then when we got back, my mother said, “You’re not going to let that young man go without asking him in for a cup of tea, are you?” So I did, and he came in and had tea, and it all developed from there. What impressed me most was the way that she’d captured me. I almost thought she’d stolen my personality. It was so minute. I recognized her to be so much like me. It was a beautifully played part.

Speaker A: Well, as you can tell, the film is very moving, and it’s even more inspiring to read in Jane Hawking’s own words how she enabled Professor Stephen Hawking to continue his groundbreaking scientific work and bring up their 3 children in spite of the crippling illness. Motor neuron disease. The final title in the stack of books is Pardon the Disruption: A Glimpse of the Near Future by Texan lawyer Craig Rawlings and his partners. It takes the reader through scenarios that might soon exist, where your Valentine’s blind date knows all about you from your online profile and the data you shed like skin every time you log on, and the mayhem that might be caused if an elderly man left his estate to his robotic butler instead of his family. Fascinating and often too true to be funny. You can bid for the stack of tech books online at fundraiser.resonance.fm. We start items at 99p, so get bidding. This is Password with Peter Warren on Resonance FM, and after this on Monday you can hear Kitchen Magic Time, the other rock show follows our Friday edition. We’re raising money to keep Resonance FM independent and free from advertising and to build a new website and a DAB radio service in addition to the FM signal and online streaming.

Speaker C: One way that you can join in the fun and fundraising is to buy a little robot for yourself or for a child you know. It’s the silver-lit intelligent BlueBot, controlled by a Bluetooth app from your smartphone and really rather amusing.

Speaker G: It’s a robot. I mean, we’ve been told that robots are going to be taking over our lives completely and that we’re going to lose out to super-intelligences. This is evidently the first incursion into the toy box, and we should really watch out because this little chap, about a foot or so tall, looking very much like a robot, and who can be controlled from my mobile phone— although I’d be a bit worried about that, letting a robot onto my mobile phone. Maybe he will be monitoring me via my mobile phone and I don’t know about it. Anyway, let’s see what BlueBot does. There’s a little switch on the back. This is it. This is one small step for mankind, one giant leap for robots. Whoa, there you go. Now some orange lights have come on.

Speaker A: It’s making some very robot noises. Oops.

Speaker G: And he’s walking.

Speaker A: That’s very purposeful.

Speaker G: I wouldn’t have said they’re tentative steps at all. This is a robot that appears to know where he’s going even though he’s going backwards. Okay, right. Well, in true Blue Peter fashion, I have already downloaded the app onto my mobile phone. And I’m going to make contact with the robot. So first up, go to Settings, Bluetooth, and I’m connecting. We’re connected. There you go, that was me connecting with the robot. Now together we’re going to form an awesome partnership. Okay, right now— oops, there you go. Okay, now, um, oh, I’ve got 4 different things I can appear to be able to do. I can program him, there’s gesture control, or I can do a robot dance. Let’s do a robot dance because I was dancing last night and I’m sure that that could be improved upon. Right, here we go.

Speaker A: Yep, it’s got all the potential to be extremely annoying at Christmas. Um, this is the sort of thing that could really drive you mad. Oh, after about what? Oh, less than 10 minutes, I should think.

Speaker G: Um, so, um, the age range for this, I think it’s about 6+, and I could see people of that age range really going to town with this, um, little man. Um, what else can he do? Apparently I can actually make him do things. My little Robot Man is off.

Speaker A: Not quite what I expected, but oh, I suppose moderately interesting.

Speaker H: Um, he’s—

Speaker G: the idea was that he went straight. He’s not done that. Um, nobody ever does anything that I tell them to, not even robots. Okay, right, well, um, let’s try something else now. Let’s try the voice change.

Speaker H: Hello, hello, I am a robot and I am taking over the toy box. You’re going to have to leave now, Mr. Teddy.

Speaker G: I think that might have some potential to be amusing. That said, I’m sure that there are other people who are much more creative than me who can probably make him do a lot more. But anyway, let’s play him out now.

Speaker H: Jane Wyatt, the robots have taken over. I am the new robot producer. Don’t cry, you have to go now. You are redundant. The robots have taken over.

Speaker A: Well, that’s the BlueBot, and that’s all the stuff we’ve got for you, but we’re also offering tickets to two landmark events next month. One is a CeBIT exhibition at Hannover in Germany, the biggest tech show in the world. I’ve been to CeBIT Cebit, and it is truly overwhelming. You need a shuttle bus just to get around the site, and it’s definitely the place to be if you want to see the gadgets and innovations of the future before anyone else. It’s on March 16th to the 20th. As with the others, bidding starts at 99p. Please note though that they only get you into the exhibition.

Speaker C: You’ll have to find your own transport and accommodation, though one bonus is Glenn Greenwood will be And we’re also offering a weekend pass to the Nesta Future Fest here in Borough Market, South East London. It’s at Vinopolis, the wine museum, and the star guest is being beamed in from Moscow, Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower. This weekend pass should cost £80, but you can start the bidding at, you guessed it, 99p. You’ll have a chance to ask questions of Edward Snowden, join debates about the future of democracy, play in the robotic creative area, or enjoy the music of George Clinton. The artist who brought us Atomic Dog.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is a story of famous dogs, but the dog that chases its tail will be busy. Well, I was told to rap along to that, but unfortunately that’s beyond my talents. That was George Clinton’s Atomic Dog. Now just remember, this show has brought you the opportunity to be there with two of the tech’s big hitters, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. This is Password with Peter Warren on Resonance FM, and if you’ve just joined us Yes, you’ve missed it, but the fundraising continues all week with concerts and special events at the weekend. The auction ends on Sunday night, so get your bids in now and keep