walkingtools
Beck: Universities can be as ‘dangerous’ as Iran and North KoreaI will not say much more than it is easy to ridicule something about which you apparently know so little. This from the Glenn Beck Television program on Fox Media, Sept 1st 2010. Glenn, if want to be in conversation let us know.
Thanks to RawStory for the video. http://www.rawstory.com/rs1/2010/09/02/beck-university-indoctrination-bad-terrorists/
Transborder Immigrant Tool project lead story on Launch of Glenn Beck’s new website!The TB Project is proud of this. The inaugural front page story on Glenn Beck’s new “news” site. I will say a nice thing about Beck, the “reporting” on the project (which really isn’t news or reporting – we were not contacted for input so make no mistake, there is not any kind of journalism taking place here…) is actually close to fair, though obviously cherry picked and with some “Breitbarted” context shifting to be maximally frightening to Beck’s followers. We will have some real journalism for you later this week.
AVC Burke responds on August 25thThough clearly circumstantial, mounting evidence indicates that UCSD Audit & Management Advisory Services attempted to obscure the release of “Use of Resources Investigation – Transborder Immigrant ToolAMAS Audit Project 2010-75″ from both the subjects of the investigation and by extension, the media. The report concluded “that neither University funds nor effort were used inappropriately during the development of the TBT or the Project.” (I am unable to upload the document to my server at this time. I will add a link here soon. In the mean time, please send me an email and I will forward the final report to you.)
Background notes: The TBT investigation began in January 2010 after conservative media outcry over our project designed to help lead dehydrated people to water safety sites placed in the desert by humanitarian activists. A matter-of-weeks investigation was promised, but it eventually exceeded 6 months. The TBT group fully cooperated, based on our commitment to public transparency. As the investigation obviously was yielding no wrongdoing (given the final report’s conclusions), other investigations were instantiated against one TBT member, Ricardo Dominguez. One immediately turned away from focus on Ricardo and toward Ken Ehrlich, a lecturer at UCR. (Dominguez had provided Ehrlich with technical assistance.) That case was dismissed on fairly obvious grounds, free speech and academic freedom. The other investigation directed at Ricardo relates to his Electronic Civil Disobedience research at UCSD. Essentially the UC and UCSD are attempting to de-tenure Professor Dominguez for the exact same work they previously hired and promoted him for! This case too will eventually be dismissed on fairly obvious grounds, free speech and academic freedom. (See here and here and here and here for context in depth.)
The question that remains today is, were the latter investigations instigated because the TBT investigation – again, once promised to be completed rapidly – was dragging on without yielding wrongdoing that would allow the UC and UCSD to respond to powerful critics (such as Congresspeople Duncan Hunter, Daryl Issa, and Brian Bilbray) by punishing Dominguez or anyone else? (Or, is AVCAA Paul Drake covering up that he was not aware of Dominguez’s renowned research and past activity at UCSD as he should have been, being the person signing off on his hires and promotions? And, how is this related to AVC Elazar Harel’s sudden and unexpected transfer to UCSF, potentially due to his role in the events of March 4th?) My opinion has become that the remaining investigation is in bad faith, which brings us to the question: was there a soft cover up related the release of the report exonerating the TBT project of any wrong doing?
I will leave readers to come to their own conclusions. I will only offer some naked facts.
In Burke’s response (printed in full below) to my complaint (Failure to distribute Transborder Immigrant Tool Audit report to the subjects of the investigation) about not being informed of the investigation’s conclusion she states the following:
[T]he final report, which concluded that neither University
funds nor effort were used inappropriately during the development of the
TBT, was addressed to both the Chair of your department and the Vice
Chancellor Research.
And while it is true that the July 21st report is indeed addressed to departing Vice Chancellor of Research Arthur Ellis and Department of Visual Arts Chair Grant Kester, it was not delivered by email, which is the de facto method of important communication at UCSD. Instead, it was placed in the inter campus-mail system alone. (Nominally, important documents are sent via both methods, for example AVCAA Paul Drake’s letter to Dominguez informing him of one of the investigations – see page 97.) In addition to the addressed, there is a cc: to Y.Marsden, G. Matthews, D. Park, R. Rao, L. Smarr, S. Vacca. Not cc’ed were Ricardo Dominguez, Amy Sara Carroll, Micha Cárdenas or myself. The facts are that the subjects of the investigation did not have the final public report disclosed to them, that what meager public disclosure that did take place was delivered via the UCSD equivalent of standby shipping container stranded on the docs of Hong Kong, and at that only to eight administrators and staff during a common vacation month! All of this is certainly telling. Why is UCSD trying to inhibit the release of this report?
Another very interesting aspect of Burke’s response is her hedge in response to my August 19th request “for a formal written response explaining why I was omitted from the list of those investigated who were informed of the report’s conclusions and provided a copy… [expecting] detail on a level explaining the systemic failure to meet basic professional standards.” Apparently, the answer is either that “Final distribution of investigation reports is based on AMAS professional judgment,” or that “The AMAS investigations manager retired on 6/30/10, and in the transition of his workload and issuance of the final report on 7/21/10, this was an oversight.” So we are left to take our pick, either judicious information management, or slack on the part of a retiring investigator. One thing I will add here is that I met with the recently retired Robert Mannie during the course of the TBT investigation, and nothing about the man exuded incompetence or slack. If anything, he seemed diligent and detail oriented, even if a little flummoxed by the relations between computer art, poetry, the US/Mexico border and transgender and queer theory. (In fairness, problems like these are natural to cutting edge arts research practice, so why wouldn’t Bob be as flummoxed in the B.A.N.G. Lab as he might very well be by any other example of frontier knowledge discovery at UCSD…)
In any case the circumstances of the final remaining investigation focusing on Professor Dominguez remain suspect. Justice Louis Brandeis once said “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and it is my feeling that it is time for an investigation of the investigation. The truth is eventually going to come out, because it wants to be free. I go further, making the claim that a little sunlight and transparency might make the University of California and UCSD’s growing problem go away. As I have said before, an apology (or even an explanation) done well could go a long way. And in the long run, coming clean would garner greater respect for the institution’s commitment to academic freedom, which is called into question by this attempt to obscure the TBT report.
Transparently yours,
Brett Stalbaum
Dear Mr. Stalbaum,
You are correct that the final report for UCSD Audit & Management
Advisory Services (AMAS) Audit Project 2010-75, Use of Resources
Investigation – Transborder Immigrant Tool was issued on July 21, 2010.
Although all final audit reports are public documents, the distribution
of final investigation reports is more limited than the distribution of
routine audit reports. Final distribution of investigation reports is
based on AMAS professional judgment, considering the participants who
are responsible for any corrective actions indicated in the report, and
the privacy of employees involved, particularly when the initial
allegations are found to be unsubstantiated. During this review, Audit
& Management Advisory Services interviewed several persons involved with
the development of the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT). As one of the
subjects of the review, you were provided with a copy of the draft
report to ensure our representation of technical information was
accurate.
In this case, the final report, which concluded that neither University
funds nor effort were used inappropriately during the development of the
TBT, was addressed to both the Chair of your department and the Vice
Chancellor Research. I apologize that you were not aware that the review
was finalized. I will send you a copy of the report for your files.
The AMAS investigations manager retired on 6/30/10, and in the
transition of his workload and issuance of the final report on 7/21/10,
this was an oversight. Our office normally would have called you to let
you know the report was final.
Thank you for sharing this concern with me.
Stephanie Burke
Assistant Vice Chancellor
Audit & Management Advisory Services
shburke@ucsd.edu
Failure to distribute Transborder Immigrant Tool Audit report to the subjects of the investigationDear AVC Stephanie Burke, (shburke@ucsd.edu)
I was surprised to find, through a media source, that the audit investigation of the Transborder Immigrant Tool project initiated back in January of 2010 has long since been completed. Apparently your office produced a final report sometime in July. According to these media sources, the project was found to be an appropriate use of University funds.
As a subject of that investigation who was interviewed numerous times and was provided with an earlier draft of the report, I protest that I was not informed of the conclusion of the audit. I also protest that I have not been provided with a final copy of the report. These bad faith actions raise troubling questions about the University’s sincerity and dedication to view-point neutral application of policies governing professional conduct as applied toward all of the researchers involved in the Transborder Immigrant Tool project. Your action strongly implies that although we were all investigated, the real truth is that your office continues to single out a particular target amongst us.
I ask for a formal written response explaining why I was omitted from the list of those investigated who were informed of the report’s conclusions and provided a copy. An a mere apology will not suffice. I expect detail on a level explaining the systemic failure to meet basic professional standards that should be upheld and protected by your (AVC Burke’s) office as a matter of simple diligence and competence.
Brett Stalbaum
UCSD Police Report released (to me)
I had promised I would release the police report regarding my statement as soon as I had it. I regret that I am unable to do so until I have better legal clarity about whether releasing it would violate any laws. For now, what I have reported about our conversation will have to do. But I do note, that what the UCSD Police released to me is a considerably summarized version of my written statement, and contains errors. The most troubling of these is that I am misrepresented as using the term “denial of service attack” in describing my participation, while my written statement will verify that I used the term “virtual sit-in”. Another small omission is that I did provide the detective and corporal with a small tome of scholarly documents clarifying the difference between a denial of service attack and a virtual sit-in. In any case, this message and a copy of my open letter (link above) are public witness.
cc: Visual Arts Chair Grant Kester, Dean of Arts and Humanities Seth Lerer, AVC Stephanie Burk, SVCAA Paul Drake, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, President Mark Yudof, Professor Frank L. Powell (Chair, UCSD Academic Senate)
Here Not There: San Diego Art NowRobert Pincus (San Diego Union Tribune Art Critic) review of “Here Not There: San Diego Art Now” at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (La Jolla) curated by Lucia Sanroman. The exhibition features many works by UCSD affiliated artists and projects, including the Transborder Immigrant Tool.
Lucia Sanroman
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/30/in-the-here-and-now/
Why I made a formal statement to the UCSD Police
Brett Stalbaum at UCSD Police Department to out himself over virtual sit-ins 7/21/2010 (Image: Paula Poole)
“I hope you agree that our tradition
of view-point neutral application of
policies governing professional
conduct by faculty and staff is one
of the great strengths we rely on to
demonstrate our commitment to
the public good.”
University of California President Mark Yudof
(Response to UC MRG Core Members Letter of concern over the persecution of Professor Dominguez, April 20th 2010.)
In this post, I would like to highlight the issue of view-point neutral application of University of California Policy by both the University of California Office of the President and UCSD. On July 21st 2010 I went to the UCSD Police Department to give a formal statement on the criminal investigation of Professor Ricardo Dominguez. Dominguez is being investigated for a Virtual Sit-in held on March 4th of this year, and yet apparently not (the Police seemed not to know of it) for a virtual sit-in held on March 19th-21st 2008. In fact, as noted elsewhere, UCSD Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Paul Drake actually promoted Dominguez for the latter, yet two years later is trying to fire him for the former, in spite of some very disturbing facts including that both virtual sit-in events involved the same servers (ucop.edu and bang.calit2.net.) First you love him then you hate him. What really is happening here?
The history of Virtual Sit-ins is something that Ricardo and I both know something about, having co-founded the Electronic Disturbance Theater and produced the original FloodNet Applet (along with Carmin Karasic and Stefan Wray) in 1998, and further having implemented many performances (peaceful online protests against President Bill Clinton, his administration and “his” Pentagon, as well as Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and others) in support of the Zapatista indigenous communities of Chiapas. In the interstice between then and now, Ricardo has remained one of the leading theorists and art practitioners of Electronic Civil Disobedience (a term he helped coin with the Critical Art Ensemble previous to our work with the Electronic Disturbance Theater.) Also in that time, I worked on other collaborations (C5 Corporation, paintersflat.net) where I developed a practice in location aware media in the arts. (GPS, mobile phones, code…) Our practice as active collaborators was rekindled in recent years working on an Artivist project titled the Transborder Immigrant Tool, which has been denounced by Republican Congressmen, and has generated troubling death threats from the public.
There was a reason I moved on from EDT for what has turned out to be close to a decade now. Simply stated: Virtual sit-ins occupy a gray area between (as Ricardo often says) affect in effect. Virtual sit-ins don’t hurt anything or anyone, yet they have some of the appearances of being a bot-net attack, the latter being unambiguously illegal. Our development of virtual sit-in technologies was always focused on playing in the gray spaces of the affective and appearance, specifically designed for purposes of 1) Artivism, and 2) conceptual art practice exploring the unique material and social dimensions of a new medium: the internet. Virtual sit-ins have never been effective in terms of damaging servers, and have been ridiculed by hackers as technically ineffective. But the only reason I quit developing new software myself (circa 2000) was that professional system admins – and no doubt many public relations consultants – were onto our game. (And, probably unimpressed with artivistic gestures such as causing the names of the people massacred at Acteal to appear in President Zedillo’s web server’s error logs.) With few exceptions – and at that mostly triggered by under-trained government bureaucrats – virtual-sit ins simply stopped garnering much of the kind of art, media, public and critical attention that we had previously been able to divert to Chiapas. And when my friend and C5 colleague Bruce Gardner gave me a GPS device to use in 2000, and shared some of his early computer code with me, I became interested in a practice exploring another new medium that for me, frankly, had very little political dimension.
Of course, I continued to participate deliberately and intentionally in Ricardo’s virtual-sit ins from time to time. Virtual sit-ins are based on a doctrine of radical transparency: they require that each participant in the action be aware that what they are doing is indeed civil disobedience that could have unknown – indeed still untested – legal consequences. But by participating with real names and legal identities, virtual sit-ins inverted the notion of an anonymous attack by effective cyber-vandals toward an affective form of harmless free speech and protest. We and the protesters who joined were speaking deliberately and intentionally in a new medium via our own bona fide legal persons. Indeed, the language “deliberate and intentional” recently became important to me, because during my interview with Detective Michael Britton and Corporal Garret Williams, the good Corporal informed me that it was in his non-legal opinion as a law enforcement officer that anyone deliberately and intentionally involved in a virtual sit-in is also potentially culpable for any related criminal charges. To be fair, both investigators seemed to open to honing their understanding of the case they are investigating. I provided both with copies of the Dominguez/Transborder Tool Academic Freedom Timeline and supporting documents including essays and book chapters from prominent scholars in both Art and internet security. I will make this claim: the historical record largely supports how I have characterized virtual sit-ins above.
I really want to be clear on a particular point: Detective Britton and Corporal Williams were exceptionally professional in their interview of me, both are sincere and committed members of our UCSD community. There is no “but” to add here about the peace officers involved. Although, as I was in a police interview room with a pen and forms on which to hand write my statement and sign and date, my hindquarters seated across a strangely small interrogation table from these two smartly dressed law enforcement professionals, one in plain clothes one is his blues, all the time finding myself thirsty and strangely wishing they would bring me a Big Mac or tape my hand to a lie detector, it was nevertheless a good experience. I at this time really wish I had done as I deeply wanted to do at that time: to ask them who their favorite characters were in the greatest television series of all time, The Wire. It simply seemed out of place under the circumstances.
The character of my afternoon aside, the key point that I want to inform on at this time is this: I inquired if I was a target of the Dominguez investigation. There was no answer to this. On the record, in a written statement to the UCSD Police, I informed them that I too was involved in both the March 19th-21st 2008 and March 4th 2010 virtual sit-in as a participant, and that my position as one of the people who originally developed ECD with Dominguez is that if he is charged with any crime, then prima facie I should be too. I asked again if I was a target of the investigation, and again no answer was forthcoming. Detective Britton did inform me that as a courtesy, I will be informed if I become a target of the investigation, if and when they are ready to reveal that fact to me.
Why I did this? Partially it is personal commitment to the integrity of the work Ricardo and I have been involved in in the past, partially it is a more general commitment to a colleague in a way that (demonstrably) I know all our Visual Arts colleagues share, part of it is certainly related to my long friendship with Ric and a strong sense of solidarity I feel with him, and partially it is because I hold that the circumstances of this investigation (well, investigations, in referring to UCOP/UCSD’s efforts to detenure Dominguez as well as press criminal charges), are highly suspicious, if not fishy in a potentially corrupt way.
SVCAA Paul Drake is the individual who is 1) pressing employment actions against Professor Dominguez and 2) the person who by all appearances notified the UCSD Police in the first place (though possibly it was someone else), and 3) did actually promote Ricardo to tenure for his ECD work including the March 19th-21st 2008 virtual sit-in, which is actually on Dominguez’s bio-bibliography, the very document among others Drake signed off on when he promoted him. After March 4th 2010, when exactly the same kind of virtual-sit in involving exactly the same two servers occured, Drake initiated an investigation going toward revoking the very tenure that was granted for exactly the same work previously. Paul, what changed your mind? Was it the controversy over the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a more recent project of Dominguez, myself and others? Was there pressure from UCOP to fire Dominguez for any other reason? Or, had you not been in the habit of actually reviewing tenure files in recent years, and were thus were “signature stamp” unaware of the work you had promoted Dominguez for when you took the complaint from AVC Elazar Harel (Assistant Vice Chancellor for Administrative Computing and Telecommunications at UCSD) after March 4th? Is any of this related to Elazar’s sudden and unexpected transfer to UCSF? (True. I had a committee meeting with him that was canceled suddenly!) Can you, Paul Drake, present a principled explanation of the chain of events to replace our circumstantial speculations? I don’t disclude the possibility that there is a better explanation for your actions than circumstances would indicate. In any case it would seem that you owe Dominguez and perhaps the rest of us (including yourself, given the recent tarnish to your reputation) the basic human decency of explaining your actions. If not now then at some point.
Two more notes about my statement to the UCSD Police. Myself and others have many times already outed ourselves regarding our involvement in the above virtual-sit ins. I personally have done this in multiple emails to my department chair Grant Kester (who is a great and principled player in supporting Dominguez), my Dean Seth Lerer (who maintains a neutral position), Paul Drake, AVC Stephanie Burke who was charged by Drake with carrying out the investigation (the latter I have informed of my involvement by phone as well), UCSD Chancellor Fox who has simply not spoken to the issue, and the President of the University of California Mark Yudof (quoted above) himself. I do continue, in light of the known facts, to wonder what the President’s or the UC’s commitment to “view-point neutral application of policies governing professional conduct by faculty and staff” actually means. In any case, one would hope that Paul Drake or whoever instigated the criminal investigation would by now have been informed of the people who have outed themselves, particularly myself, and properly in turn that those responsible would have passed a report onto the UCSD Police Department for further investigation. It has been many months now, after all. If this is not the case, then ever more serious questions will be raised about whether the President’s words have any meaning, whether SVCAA Drake’s actions are honorable, or if these are just keystone-cops style “back cover” for an outrageous attempt to rid the UC of a faculty member deemed politically inconvenient. (Or dare I ask, is this all just a comedy of errors?)
My dear administrators, I posit that at a minimum, in order for you to save face, you must take action. You either need to settle this and explain what happened (an apology done well could go a long way), or you are honor bound by your commitment to “view-point neutral application of policies governing professional conduct by faculty and staff” to come after me with charges just as you did with with Professor Dominguez. I will make a copy of my police report available at this site as soon as it is available.
Transparently yours,
Brett Stalbaum
Lecturer with Security of Employment
Department of Visual Arts
University of California, San Diego
Brett Stalbaum @ Critical Code Studies @ USCBrett Stalbaum @ Critical Code Studies @ USC
July 23, 2010
Hosted by The Center for Transformative Scholarship & The Institute for Multimedia Literacy
I will be presenting the source code for the Transborder Immigrant Tool. I will show how the facts of the source code itself have not been part of the public discussion about the TBTool, paying particular attention to an exchange with U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter. In the process EDT/B.A.N.G lab will perform a gesture toward better critical understanding of the code. The presentation will also focus on the legal plight Professor Ricardo Dominguez and the potential connections between his persecution at the hands of UC /UCSD Administration and the TBTool. Also, I will discuss my formal statement to the UCSD Police on July 21st 2010.
Supporting documents for Dominguez/TBT timeline and biblioDocumentation of the Dominguez/TBT timeline and a bibliography of historically related documents providing context for recent events involving the B.A.N.G. lab can be found here.
See this post for the timeline in pdf and png formats: http://www.walkingtools.net/?p=450
Three upcoming exhibitions featuring the Transborder Immigrant ToolHere Not There: San Diego Art Now
Museum of Contemporary Art La Jolla, Jun 06, 2010–Sep 19, 2010.
City Centered, a festival of locative media and urban community
sponsored by KQED Public Media and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco June 11-13 and workshop on the 19-20th.
2010 California Biennial
at the Orange County Museum of Art oct 24, 2010 – mar 13, 2011
see also:
http://bang.calit2.net/2010/05/b-a-n-g-lab-and-the-transborder-immigrant-tool-in-the-california-biennial/
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