Students for a Free Tibet at approximately 5 pm Beijing Standard Time, Powderly had been detained by Chinese authorities at 3 am. His current whereabouts remain unknown.
“James is a unique voice in the world, who lives and breathes art and technology for the purpose of promoting and enabling freedom of expression for all,” said Nathan Dorjee, Director of Technology for Students for a Free Tibet. "The Chinese leadership must realize that the way we work together needs to evolve as we grow. Boing Boing is still the shared personal blog of multiple editors who work together asynchronously with almost no formal editorial process. That's the way Boing Boing began and I hope it doesn't change too much. Each of us has our own opinions and we may not agree with each other. We don't coordinate what we post, and until now, we didn't have a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors. Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the internet.
Then I thought -- how clever. You have to type in a password to unlock the screen. I had left my workstation unattended to do some work on another computer and when I came back to my computer, the screensaver was still running, tried to interrupt it, it would not stop, I did a cntrl-alt-del to stop the screensaver and notice the warning and process block from my Zone Alarm had gone off. A message balloon came up saying that the FlashForge Screensaver has a keylogger type program running and it had blocked access to the internet.
Then I thought -- how clever. You have to read this thing.
I hope I'm not revealing any spoilers here, but when I asked Carr about the project last in LA year, he told me about reconnecting with one of those old friends, and trying to recover the facts about one night when he was high -- he's always remembered his friend pointing a gun at him, at one point during the climax of that crisis. But when Carr went back years later to interview that friend for this project, the friend told him something like, "No, you were pointing the gun at me." I believe that's where the title comes from.
Here's a snip from the SFT press release about today's action:
Five pro-Tibet activists unfurled a banner spelling out “Free Tibet” in English and Chinese in bright blue LED “throwie” lights in Beijing’s Olympic Park tonight. The five were detained by security personnel after displaying the banner for about 20 seconds at 11:48 pm August 19th. Their whereabouts are unknown. The detained activists are Americans Amy Johnson, 33, Sam Corbin, 24, Liza Smith, 31, Jacob Blumenfeld, 26, and Lauren Valle, 21.Continue reading excerpt; photos and multimedia stuff here too. Me and My Girls [New York Times]"The Chinese government is desperate to turn the world's attention away from its abuses in Tibet as the Olympics take place, but the creativity and determination of Tibetans and their supporters has once again ensured that Tibetan voices are heard and seen in Beijing despite the massive security clampdown," said Tenzin Dorjee, Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet. "The Chinese leadership must realize that the way we work together needs to evolve as we grow. Boing Boing is still the shared personal blog of multiple editors who work together asynchronously with almost no formal editorial process. That's the way Boing Boing began and I hope it doesn't change too much. Each of us has our own opinions and we may not agree with each other. We don't coordinate what we post, and until now, we didn't have a way to coordinate with our moderators and join the conversation in a consistent way. We screwed up. And we're sorry.
I'm certainly not going to say I'm glad this whole thing happened, but we did learn a lot. The whole kerfuffle made us realize that the only way it can make the issue of Tibet disappear is to acknowledge the demands of the Tibetan people and work with them to bring an end to China's occupation of Tibet."
The detection was made by Zone Alarm Pro with advanced settings. After the screensaver ran for a while, I came back to my computer, the screensaver was still running, but I could not interrupt it. So I did a cntrl-alt-del to stop the screensaver and I noticed that the blinds on the upper duplex kitty-corner from the house were doing the same thing. The light would leak through a corner and disappear. I began to think of the rise and fall of their blinds and mine as a kind of Morse code, sent back and forth across the street in winking increments that said the same thing over and over.
W-e a-r-e g-e-t-t-i-n-g h-i-g-h t-o-o.
They rarely came out, and neither did I, so we never discussed our shared hobby.
Buy the book: The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own. [amazon]
Website, with first-person video. Flash required. Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own. [amazon]
Website, with first-person video. Flash required. Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own. [amazon]
Website, with first-person video. Flash required. Night of the Gun [Simon and Schuster]
