billso.com

My readers might not have noticed that billso.com is a lot bigger as of today, with 5 years worth of blog posts from my various sites.

I’ve imported 717 articles that I wrote for my old alohapundit web site during 2003 and 2004.

I’ll be using some of these older posts as I add more content to billso.com

Many of these articles are short and pithy, but I’ve almost tripled the number of articles available at billso.com. Not bad for a couple of hours work!

What’s the title?

I didn’t title any of the alohapundit posts when i wrote them. These posts have been given compelling titles like “Post 856” which I published on 27 June 2003.

The tags for these imported posts are a bit off, but they’re usable for now. The tag cloud sure looks different!

I closed down alohapundit in late 2004 when I started using Bloglines. I’ve been importing articles from my old Bloglines blogs into billso.com by hand. I started that project on 26 January 2008. The software that I use at billso.com cannot import Blogline articles, but it can import Blogger sites.

From the New York Times, Reuters, Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: ATA Airlines has shut down as of 2200 HT yesterday, 2 April 2008.

ATA management decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and close operations after the company lost a key military charter contract. ATA has replaced its web site with an announcement of the shutdown.

ATA operated flights between Honolulu and three West Coast cities, and several routes on the mainland. I flew ATA once in 2002, and the plane was full of tourists on Pleasant Holidays packages.

Plan ahead

The Advertiser noted that ATA’s last flight out of Honolulu left at 0010 HT today, after the shutdown was announced. I doubt ATA gave local hotels and airlines much advance notice. This Star-Bulletin article describes how local executives and state officials started preparing last week as rumors of Aloha’s closure moved through the coconut wireless.

“It was just a matter of waiting to push the button on the press release, which would trigger the Web site announcement, and the hotel association would send out up to 4,000 notices to members,” [Rex Johnson, Hawaii Tourism Authority president] said.

No announcement from Aloha came Saturday.

“Finally, on Sunday at 11, we got the release. [Murray Towill, president of the Hawaii Hotel and Lodging Association] pressed his button, [Mark Dunkerley, president and chief executive officer of Hawaiian Airlines] put out a release saying there would be 6,000 extra seats and we started to tell people that nobody needed to worry because Hawaii tourism would be operating normally.”

Ian Lind has a few comments at the top of his blog post this morning.

From the Star-Bulletin’s article:

On Monday, Aloha president and Chief Executive David Banmiller prophetically predicted that there would be more fallout in the aviation industry.

“You haven’t seen the end yet,” he said. “We happen to be at the beginning. Other things are going to happen in this business because this environment of fuel cannot be sustained.”

Banmiller had cited an interisland airfare war triggered by Mesa Air Group’s go! and record fuel prices as the primary reasons for Aloha’s shutdown.

“On a federal level, you show me where the federal government, where the White House, where the administration, where the hill has been during this crisis in the aviation industry,” he said.

If anyone is wondering about the trickle down effect from the Norwegian Cruise Lines’ decision to move 2 of its 3 Honolulu-based cruise ships out of the state, the Star-Bulletin also reported this morning that the Kona Hard Rock Cafe will close on 21 July 2008. The restaurant lost its lease, but I expect more announcements like this, especially around Waikiki and Hilo.

Related posts

• 3 April 2008: Protesters and text messages
• 2 April 2008: Aloha cargo sale and neighbor island mail service in jeopardy
• 30 March 2008: Aloha Airlines shuts down

From ZDnet, the New York Times and TechDirt comes this story: New York City has subpoenaed a TXTmob server that was used to coordinate street protests during the 2004 Republican national Convention.

The city’s lawyers are litigating civil suits brought by hundreds of protesters who were arrested during the convention. All the city’s lawyers want are the records of every user and message sent on the system.

TXTmob can be used to resend text messages to hundreds of mobile phones in real time. The software is available on the Institute for Applied Autonomy’s web site. Wikipedia has a good article about the service.

Tad Hirsch, the creator of the TXTmob software, does not want to release the information on his server:

“There’s a principle at stake here,” he said recently by telephone. “I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy.”

Hirsch has appealed for donations on his web site. Hirsch says some of that data no longer exists. He’s been busy writing his dissertation at MIT.

Who’s got the data?

There are many web and mobile services like Facebook and Twitter that could be used to coordinate protests, according to this Wired article. Groups need to consider who operates their messaging servers and who controls the data for their web services. Hosting an application like TXTmob on one’s own server is one way to avoid a Web portal or service provider’s restrictions.

Even so, the server has to be connected to the Internet, and the text messages are resent to subscribers through the mobile phone carriers servers. The telecom carriers routinely archive text messages sent through their systems, as I mentioned on 3 February 2008, and the carriers will provide messages and logs if subpoenaed.

I may have to revisit the article I wrote last year for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics & Society. Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology had the following response regarding the TXTmob subpoena in Wired’s article, and I agree with him:

“In civil cases, the law seems to prohibit the disclosure of stored communications in response to a civil discovery subpoena because the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibits disclosure of stored messages of any kind,” he argues. “The subpoena clearly is not enforceable.”

But he adds that the case is a reminder that federal privacy law is in dire need of an update to reflect the new era of massive stored communications and web services.

“The notion that any litigant can get any information about any person is an 18th century rule that now can now encompass terabytes of information, and I think it also has an impact on service providers who don’t want to become one-stop shops for every litigant in the country,” he says.

A local example

On Monday, Two hundred protesters used email and phone calls to organize their event at Fort Street Mall in support of Aloha Airlines. The US Bankruptcy Court is in 1132 Bishop, above the MSIS classrooms in the Frear Center. My office is a few steps away. This Honolulu Advertiser article has details and a few pictures.

I didn’t see anything about the march at DontFlyGo. Their web site is difficult to navigate, and the domain name is missing an apostrophe on the banner. Based on this Honolulu Advertiser article, there’s little indication that local groups might try to use mobile messaging to boycott go! flights.