Keep track of Berkman-related news and conversations by subscribing to this page using your RSS feed reader. This aggregation of blogs relating to the Berkman Center does not necessarily represent the views of the Berkman Center or Harvard University but is provided as a convenient starting point for those who wish to explore the people and projects in Berkman's orbit. As this is a global exercise, times are in UTC.
The list of blogs being aggregated here can be found at the bottom of this page.
We now have an open access participatory reading platform for No Straight Lines
So here is an open invitation to swing by and have a look at No Straight Lines: It looks at how we can build better more sustainable societies, organisations and vibrant economies through innovative practice. It argues we need to design and create for the needs of humanity not industrial systems.
You can read the entire book (open access) by clicking on READ THE BROWSER BOOK link on the No Straight Lines webpage.
Researchers have created a prototype for a touch screen that can be used to send messages while it's concealed in a jacket or pants pocket. The stealthy screen works when it is touched through the fabric, whether it is silk, cotton or even thick fleece. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The technology, called PocketTouch, was created by the Microsoft researchers Scott Saponas and Hrvoje Benko with Chris Harrison, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The prototype uses sensors similar to those in most touch screens, and is mounted on the back of a smartphone case.
Read full article
A story about how we design and manufacture in a non-linear world, using agile software development, modular design, and rapid prototyping, the WikiSpeed car development team, developing a 100 MGP car for the Automotive X-Prize, has achieved an extraordinary compression of development time.
My argument is that better much better does not necessarily cost the earth.
Its is about a new literacy and logic in how we make stuff. This is a key part of the No Straight Lines Story.
Some interesting key points highlighted over at the p2p Foundation
Also read:
Nokia says it will not buy mineral products that benefit armed groups or those engaging in human rights abuses and published its policy on conflict minerals. The Christian Science Monitor reports via @mobileactive.
Delaney boils the policy down to these four elements.
-- We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals.
-- We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain.
-- We have no tolerance with regard to corruption, money-laundering and bribery.
-- We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.
Read full article.
AML president Ken Altshuler said in a statement. "Text messages can be particularly powerful forms of evidence during a divorce case, because they are written records of someone’s thoughts, actions and intentions."
Read full article.
According to Channel 6 News, Twitter on Friday announced it has partnered with two satellite providers to make its messaging service available on satellite phones for the first time.
Read full article.
Pew Internet & American Life Project just released a new study called “The tone of life on social networking sites” where they examine adult meanness and cruelty. This complements their piece on “Teens, kindness, and cruelty on social network sites.”
Like teens, most adults find people on social network sites to be kind. But what fascinates me about both the adult and teen studies is that frequent users are more likely to witness negative exchanges. (Not surprisingly, young people are more likely to be frequent users which helps explain part of why young people report higher exposure to negativity. Cuz, guess what? Adults and teens aren’t that radically different.)
But what I want to know is: why?
Most folks will probably jump to the conclusion that SNSs produce the meanness and cruelty and, thus, frequent use means more exposure. I suspect that this isn’t the case. Instead, I suspect that the types of people who are drawn to and use SNSs frequently are more likely to engage in drama, meanness, and cruelty. But who are these people?
I especially want to know more about the adults who are more likely to have negative experiences. And I really want to know if there’s a connection between teens and adults when it comes to negative experiences. For example, are teens who have bad experiences online likely to have parents who have negative experiences? Or are they totally unrelated? I can imagine it going either way. More things to think about…
In the meantime, if you’re interested in the issues of bullying, drama, meanness, and cruelty, make sure to check out these two Pew reports. They’re fascinating!
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch reported that the Russian government deliberately shut down the we
Save for teens with generous texting plans, email is the modern communication necessity. And bulk email is still the most lucrative and direct method for most organizations to communicate with their audiences; sorry social media gurus #notreally #seo. I think a lot of folks could work and live without a telephone (I do as much I can), but if their email goes down then Mr. IT Guy better keep his head on a swivel. But, there’s a problem (spoiler!): email is already broken.
Modern web browsers, your Safaris and Firefoxes and Google Chromes, use different rendering engines to display a web page on a computer. A lot of folks already know this, or at least they’re aware that a website may look odd or broken in one web browser, but fine in another. We do a lot of testing across browsers and it’s a problem that can pretty much always be solved or mitigated with proper planning and coding.1 But most people are unaware that email clients (GMail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Hotmail, etc.—whatever you read your email in), like web browsers, also use different rendering engines.
With email clients you have the same inconsistency problem as web browsers, but then things get a hell of a lot worse because:
This all means things like: embedded fonts are supported some places, but not other places; padding and margin support is unreliable; CSS has to be done inline because some clients strip out blocks; and inline images are difficult to work with. There’s no magic bullet here and you really can only be sure about how your email will look by testing it.
I have a lot more to say about that last item on images in email, so check back here for part two, but I can offer up a few general tips when composing your next bulk email:
There’s no magic bullet. And #4 up there is a doozy. Just: keep it consistent, keep testing, and keep trying.
Footnotes:
1. Except for Internet Explorer 6 which is everything that is horrible and awful and wrong.
2. Some popular tools include Email on Acid, Litmus, and Campaign Monitor.
Marc Halpern, Vice President of Gartner Manufacturing Industry Advisory Service, recently suggested that crowdsourcing could fix manufacturing by leaning on crowds for some aspects of product design and development.
Beyond improving the exchange of ideas, crowdsourcing can also be useful for keeping companies “in touch with the tenor of the market,” says Halpern.
Software Advice Analyst Derek Singleton caught up with Halpern to learn how crowdsourcing might work in the manufacturing industry, and what needs to happen before it can gain widespread acceptance.
[Read Derek Singletons full article here]
Halpern explained, there are three obstacles that need to be overcome before crowdsourcing can become mainstream: fear of change, intellectual property issues, and a lack of design sharing technologies. Halpern shared three strategies for overcoming these obstacles.
1.Ease into crowdsourcing for idea creation. Historically, many manufacturers have taken the attitude that if it wasn’t invented within the “four walls,” an idea didn’t merit consideration. This can be a tough change management issue to tackle. One piece of advice Halpern offered is to start using crowdsourcing with a fringe product that isn’t core to the business. “These products can be used as a training ground for managers to get used to the approach,” explains Halpern. After a few successes, they might get bolder about introducing more products through crowdsourcing.
2.Divide projects to protect intellectual property (IP). IP theft is a big concern in the manufacturing industry. What’s to stop an outside party that collaborates with Proctor & Gamble from taking those ideas and collaborating with Clorox? Compartmentalizing roles in the project can help limit the problem of information sharing. For instance, a manufacturer may want to crowdsource just the fuel cell for a car but keep the rest of the car design proprietary. To protect the IP of the car design, manufacturers can limit information by narrowly defining crowdsourced project roles and information access.
3.Create a single file sharing system for design files. There is a broad ecosystem of computer-aided design (CAD) software out there, with each system running its own flavor of XML code. This makes it difficult to share design files with collaborators. While creating a universal standard for CAD programs is beyond the reach of any one manufacturer, the industry as a group could push for format standardization. In Halpern’s view, creating a standard format and standard environment that everyone could use would go a long way toward enabling more crowdsourcing projects in manufacturing.
The Supreme Court in the United Kingdom announced this week that it would accept freedom of information (FOI) requests (used by the public and media to ask for access to government documents) via Twitter after launching its own account. The social network could possibly become a new tool for legal and government institutions who choose to join.
[via PSFK]
A recent editorial piece in the Washington Times would have you believe the FDA’s desires to regulate a portion of the medical apps will be a death blow to the multitude of potential benefits offered by mobile technology. iMedicalApps reports via @jranck.
However, the writer also mixes up many aspects of the evolution of mobile health technologies and its regulation to justify what seems to be an ideologically driven argument that regulation intrinsically inhibits innovation.
In reality, the FDA has issued a detailed draft guidance (July 2011) that lays down markers as to what they will and will not regulate in terms of mobile medical apps. Apps that are directed at consumers and which do not offer specific medical advice are clearly exempt as are informational apps for clinicians and apps which function as pass-through entities, providing feedback from sensors without interpretation.
What the FDA is very rightly concerned about are apps that interpret information and, with little oversight, drive clinical decision making.
Read more.
A famous Buddhist temple in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, encourages people to send text messages rather than burn incense to say their prayers. China Daily reports.
... The temple, in cooperation with the Hubei branch of China Mobile, a leading Chinese telecom operator, offers a service of blessings sent by text messaging.
A message with eight or fewer characters costs 3 yuan, and longer ones of up to 20 characters cost 10 yuan. Normally, text messages cost no more than 0.15 yuan.
The sender writes the text of the blessing and includes the cell phone number of the receiver. China Mobile forwards the blessing to the receiver.
From 8 am to 5 pm, the messages are shown on an LED board at the southwest corner of the temple. Monks later chant prayers for the senders and receivers.
More than 30,000 people have already tried the service - they have to be China Mobile subscribers with phone numbers in Hubei province.
Read full article.
In China, all conventional media outlets are under the direct leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A CCP secretary is planted in every media organization to oversee the content and give direction to the editors and reporters what to highlight and what to censor. Same arrangement would be introduced to the governing of micro-blogging platforms such as Sina and Tencents Weibo, according to the report from United Daily News [zh] on June 6, 2012.
The report said, after the Lunar Chinese New Year, the CCP propaganda department issued a notice to major Weibo portals including Sina, Tencents, NetEase, Sohu and etc. that soon after the real name registration implemented, the CCP would set up a division within these portals to oversee the content management. The party division will make sure orders from the propaganda department and state information office be effectively implemented. A special budget would be allocated for the control over micro-blogging platform.
A source told the United Daily News that the Weibo mobilization on train accident in Wenzhou, the anti PX chemical factory protest in Dalian and Wukan uprising has alerted the CCP. The CCP division in Weibo portal is to make instant decision on content filtering. With the implementation of real name registration, the police division will track information source and take crackdown action. In case of emergency, the CCP division will force the platforms to go offline, the report said.
MobileActive reviews Boom, a new mobile banking service that allows people in the U.S., Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala to create bank accounts, and send and access money via a basic mobile phone.
It lowers the cost of sending money between immigrants and their families, and it improves their safety by reducing the risks of handling cash. It also creates new commerce capabilities, as users can receive payment for signing up others for the service.
To use Boom in the U.S., you can purchase a membership kit at participating 7-Eleven stores or by calling Boom customer service. To activate your account, you load money at the same stores, and then call Boom with the load receipt, an ID, and the membership kit.
Read full article.
Other mobile remittance services:
-- In Haiti, Cell Phones Serve As Debit Cards - Haiti is setting up "mobile money" networks to allow cell phones to serve as debit cards. The systems have the potential to allow Haitians to receive remittances from abroad, send cash to relatives across town or across the country, buy groceries and even pay for a bus ride all with a few taps on their cell phones.
-- Food vouchers on Cell Phones for Syrian refugees - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched an electronic food voucher pilot project to aid 1,000 Iraqi refugee families in Syria.
-- Mama Mikes, offers mobile vouchers to Kenyans and Ugandans - Mama Mikes is an online store catering to Africans who live abroad. The virtual online store allows them to purchase gifts (chocolates, flowers, text books, electronics...), vouchers (food, electricity), and services (airtime, tuition) for their family, friends and loved ones based at home.
-- Buying rice with your cell phone - Mercy Corps, is providing food for people in St.-Marc Haiti who have taken in earthquake survivors. The US government-financed program will be pushing a button once a month, and $40 will automatically go into each person’s cellphone savings account — redeemable at local merchants for rice, corn flour, beans or cooking oil.
On February 7, 2012, Walid Bahomane appeared before a court in the Moroccan capital Rabat. The 18-year-old is accused of “defaming Morocco's sacred values” by posting pictures and videos on Facebook mocking king Mohammed VI of Morocco.
This isn't the first time a Moroccan internet user faces such charges. In 2008 Fouad Mourtada, a young engineer, was sentenced to three years in prison for impersonating the king’s brother on Facebook. An international outcry and a campaign of support forced the authorities to release Mr Mourtada a month after his arrest.
Walid Bahomane's arrest is the first since a constitutional reform last summer (theoretically) revoked the “sacred” character of the monarch. The king is still, however, the focus of a great deal of devotion in the country.
A copy of the police report filed against Mr Bahomane emerged on the internet, revealing a first: according to the document, items seized by the police are “two Facebook pages (sic) containing phrases and images insulting the sacred values, and an IBM computer.”
Copy of the police report filed against Mr. Walid Bahomane as posted on Facebook.
Despite calls for his release the judge decided to send Walid to a juvenile detention facility near the capital pending his trial. A group of netizens have reacted to the arrest of Mr Bahomane by creating a support group on Facebook called “Mohammed VI, my freedom is more sacred than you!“, where members are invited to publish and share cartoons of the king.
Cartoon representing king Mohammed VI posted on Facebook
The group's preamble reads [ar]:
هذه مجموعة تضامنية مع الشاب وليد بحمان، 18 سنة، معتقل بسجن الأحداث بسلا بتهمة إهانة قداسة محمد السادس على الفيسبوك. فلنثبت لمحمد السادس أن حريتنا أقدس منه
Zineb El Ghazoui, a co-creator of the group, writes on her blog [fr]:
[cette arrestation bat] en brèche la propagande de l'Etat marocain autour du changement et des prétendues avancées démocratiques.
On Twitter, some are timidly following suit. Musique Arabe tweets [fr]:
@MusiqueArabe Opération soutien à Walid Bahomane - publions tous sur nos profils la caricature de notre choix.
Despite the recent constitutional reforms in Morocco the regime does not seem prepared to tolerate any violation of its red lines. In July 2011, a few days after the adoption of the new constitution, a French newspaper, Le Courrier International, was censored [fr] in Morocco because it contained an irreverent caricature of the king.
The independent press has often suffered the wrath of the regime when it dared tackle the sensitive subject of the monarchy. So much so that the Internet seems today the last frontier where most Moroccans can still exercise their right to free expression.
Something Moroccan netizens seem to be fully aware of. Inspired by the Arab spring, they seem determined to close ranks and show solidarity with Mr Bahomane.
As a result, exercising censorship will be even more difficult for the regime.
Mobile Marketing reports on an interesting new app launched in the UK called PanicGuard, aimed at those who fear they are being stalked. The app works as a gateway to a security service and, once activated, makes use of handsets' GPS and video recording capabilities to alert pre-set emergency contacts.
It is estimated that over 120,000 people a year are victims of stalking in the UK. The app is intended to help the police gather evidence, which is streamed to a secure server rather than being stored on the handset.
Read full article.
Medical mobile apps can be be very useful in health care, but if the FDA gets involved and demands approval before they launch — it takes a medical device about three years to get approval — developers might just give up on them. The Washington Times reports.
Not if the FDA gets involved. The average time to approve a medical device is about three years and can cost upward of $75 million. In the software market, that is a lifetime. Additionally, if mobile apps are regulated as medical devices, they will be subject to the health care reform law’s 2.3 percent medical-device tax, raising prices as taxes are passed on to consumers. Free apps may no longer be free.
Constraints on speed to market and increased regulatory costs combined with tax-driven price increases may cause developers to move on to other, less burdensome endeavors.
Read full article.
Image courtesy of broodcast, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nielssienaert/4253272271/.
Most of this report was researched and written by Weiping Li and Mera Szendro Bok, and edited by Sarah Myers.
In the past few weeks, we have witnessed how Internet companies - the sovereigns of cyberspace - struggle with the conflict between market demands for global expansion and the demands of their users for freedom of expression online. A mark of its rise in global prominence, Twitter announced a decision to block tweets in certain countries to comply with local laws, and Google’s Blogger said that the service is going to restrict content in some countries by redirecting readers to country-specific domains.
Although both companies defended their decisions by pointing out that the transparency of the new policies actually promote free speech and all for continued flow of information in countries where the Internet is controlled, they have triggered fury among netizens who organized protests online. Among the protesters is Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who said he would stop tweeting if Twitter begins censoring. An article in techdirt lamented the possible end of global Internet if other Internet companies follow Blogger and Twitter’s steps to censor content country-by-country.
However, Twitter’s move did receive praise not only from the countries which restrict content, but also from activists who defend free speech. Unsurprisingly, Thailand and China welcomed the decision. Standing on the other side of the spectrum of free speech, Jillian York and Mike Masnick also acknowledged the companies’ efforts to be transparent and to provide users in restrictive online environments ways to skirt the blocks.
Twitter and Blogger are not the first and will not be the last Internet companies practicing geolocational content blockades. As netizens concerned about the fate of Internet freedom, we will keep watching the trend closely and make sure they still stick to the baseline, just as Eva Galperin has suggested.
Below are other trends and stories for the fortnight that you may want to dig into:
Censorship
As mentioned previously, there has been an increased trend in Internet companies complying with the demands and laws of governments in certain countries. The latest example is Facebook's and Google's removal of content deemed “offensive” to comply with an Indian court’s order. At a recent Media Access Project event, Google's Bob Boorstin pointed to India, Korea and Brazil as critical countries in the battle over internet freedom.
In an Index on Censorship interview, Moez Chakchouk, the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) chief, discussed how the agency’s role has been transformed from a censorship instrument to a unit which maintains “network neutrality”. The chief also talked about how they are handling censorship machinery passed on from the past regime, and their relationships with the foreign companies whose equipment facilitated the former regime’s censorship.
Faced with criticism for censoring the word “Palestine” in a late-night music show, BBC maintains that it was the right decision, and has insisted that it was improper to express a one-sided political viewpoint during a music show.
Over the past two weeks, several Tibetan blogs have been shut down during fierce protests by the Tibetan people against Chinese rule. Meanwhile, according to a Guardian report, the Chinese government has cut off Internet and phone connections in areas of unrest in Sichuan province.
Also in China, the microblog real-name registration system has resulted in protests over the freedom of speech: several famous Chinese intellectuals who are renowned for their outspoken criticism of the Chinese government closed their Sina microblog accounts because of the tightened controls.
A piece from On the Media reveals the redactions made to Wikileaks documents by the US government in a comparison between the published versions and those recently obtained by the ACLU in a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.
Surveillance
U.S. congressman Edward Markey proposed a bill to tackle the issue of mobile phone surveillance. According to the draft of the bill, mobile companies should inform consumers that the devices they provide are installed with software like CarrierIQ, which tracks users’ activities on smartphones, and should obtain consumers’ consent before they start monitoring.
A piece by Malicia Rogue on the Global Voices Advocacy blog traces out FBI indicators for terrorism online. According to FBI documents, “attempts to shield the screen from view of others”, or “use of anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address”, show evidence of terrorist activity that should arouse suspicion among FBI officials.
Hawaii’s House of Representatives introduced a bill to require Internet service providers to keep record of customers’ information and Internet destination history information, such as IP addresses and domain names for two years. Not surprisingly, the bill has attracted plenty of criticism and some lawmakers have already decided to back away from the legislation.
Thuggery
Park Jeonggeun, a South Korean activist, was charged with “helping the enemy” and violating South Korea’s National Security Law. The charges were issues for re-tweeting the message “long live Kim Jong-il” from North Korea’s official Twitter account, with the intent to ridicule North Korean leaders.
What are the plights that the journalists face in Iran? Who are the journalists detained in jail? A new Iranian website is dedicated to covering these issues. Though most of the articles are written in Farsi, some of them have been translated into English and are a good insight into issues from the Iranian perspective.
Netizen activism
The online community Reddit played an important role in the anti-SOPA/PIPA protest. Now the community is exploring the possibility of creating a bill together to fight against any future interference with Internet freedom.
Equipped with the power of social media, Africa’s oldest community radio station not only connects more closely with its audience, but also gains the wide support to show the financial backers the reasons to keep the station running.
Once again social media has brought together people around the world to protest against the massacres in Syria. Activists are spreading news through Twitter and Facebook, asking people to protest outside of the Syrian embassies. Many Syrian people answered the call and expressed their anger outside the embassies in Kuwait, London, Berlin and Washington D.C.
National Policy
According to the Akamai State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2011, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are ahead of other countries in broadband adoption, while China and India lag behind.
UK media reported that North Korea has prohibited its people from using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il for fear of spurring discontent toward the government.
Sovereigns of Cyberspace
Facebook’s filing for an IPO hit the headlines on February 1st. The IPO is not only a big event for the global market, but also has important implications for human rights and privacy issues on the global social network. Elisa Massimino, the CEO of Human Rights First, explains the importance of Facebook's mega-IPO from the human rights viewpoint . An article in Ars Technica also pointed out that Facebook going public means that cases of inquiry and investigations of Facebook led by the FTC and attorney general, which in the past would be kept private, will now be public.
Google’s new privacy policy consolidating users’ personal information across its services goes live on March 1st, and has instigated serious concerns over customers’ privacy. For users, this means that Google may make predictions about your age and preferences, which they provide to ad companies.
For the past two weeks, Google has been busy clarifying “myths” about its new privacy policy. It also responded to Congress’ question in a 13 page letter and guaranteed “the new privacy policy will not change how Google archives or deletes user data”.
Meg Roggensack, Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights at Human Rights First examined the responsibility of private telecom companies in an authoritarian regime.
Google has proposed a number of Internet standards changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is the transport layer protocol used by applications that require guaranteed delivery of data.
Copyright
After 22 European countries signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), anti-ACTA protests prevailed in Europe. In the last weekend of January, protestors in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Ireland, UK and France took to the streets to protest against the agreement. Hackers battled on the Internet to express their discontent - however a piece by Timothy B. Lee in ars technica overviews accurate and inaccurate claims made about the treaty on both sides.
The protests online have proven successful in Europe: the European Parliament's rapporteur for ACTA resigned and criticized the negotiation process, and the Polish parliamentarians wore Guy Fawkes masks to show their opposition. The Slovenian ambassador apologized publicly for signing the agreement and Prime Minister of Poland has also suspended the ratification on the agreement. Most recently, the Czech government suspended its ratification of the treaty.
A note from European Parliament member Marietje Schaake outlines actions that citizens can take in opposition to the treaty.
Rashmi Rangnath wrote a piece on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which would also have implications for free speech online, available at Public Knowledge.
According to news reports, the data saved at Megaupload may be deleted. The file-hosting service was charged with illegal file-sharing and its assets have been seized by the U.S. government for investigation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter to the Eastern Virginia office and to lawyers for Megaupload, asking them to retain the data for innocent users. In Europe, the Pirate Party of Catalonia is also planning to sue the U.S. FBI in a Spanish court for legitimate users.
Being concerned about the personal security of the officials, prosecutors, and their family members, the U.S. government decided not to reveal the names who are investigating the Megaupload case in the press release and public statement. The government officials said that there is a great possibility that hackers will retaliate against the agencies involved in the case.
In a recent interview, Yochai Benkler also discussed the targeting of Megaupload by the U.S. Department of Justice, just days after netizens showed “effective political force” against SOPA. Benkler says seizing the assets and people working on Megaupload without a trial is a “fairly aggressive and expansive” move.
In UK, a judge’s rule on photo copyright infringement may further blur the idea/expression distinction in copyright law and restrain creativity.
Cybersecurity
A group of hackers who support Syrian president Bashar al-Assad attacked and posted pro-Assad messages on Al Jazeera English’s “Syria Live Blog”. The blog has been devoted to covering the unrest in Syria.
According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risks for 2012 report, cyber-attacks against governments and the private sector is ranked as number 4 among global risks which may become real. The report also calls for “correcting information asymmetries’ over cyber risks to improve global Internet security.
Governments, terrorists, and crime organizations have been more and more sophisticated in using Internet skills to surveil their targets — and many of the targets are journalists. However, many journalists haven’t equipped themselves with cyber-security technical skills. An article from the Columbia Journalism Review blog examines cyber-security education in the U.S. journalism school.
Even though the People's Daily propagated [zh] that “China’s veto was in accordance with the Syrian people’s basic interests”, Chinese concern citizens have not been misled by the official media and believed that China should be responsibility for bloodshed after Syrian resolution veto. However, the popular opinion against China's vote has been quickly deleted online.
South Seas Conversation has captured some discussions in Netease's news thread before and after censorship. Here come the pre-censored opinions:
Aye, some people are afraid that the ‘crafty masses’ (diaomin) will have an example to look at… [2500 recommends]
The ‘China’ in the sentence ‘Rice indicated that Russia and China will be responsible for the bloodshed ahead’ has no relation with the Chinese people, it’s nothing more a crowd of of mainland mongrels (zazhong)! Regarding the ‘Russia’, that may be just one section of Russia’s high-level political hoodlums, like Putin – the little czar. [2412]
Everyone can see why this country [China] is not popular in the world, why you have the world beseiging you. [2211]
The new Axis of Evil [1824]
With the active intervention of web-censor, the opinions have been harmonized within several hours into the followings:
We are also angry about this but there’s nothing we can do. The Syrian people can only rely on themselves to get rid of this tyrant. Respect to all countries and people who support the Syrian people’s movement for justice. [5362 recommends]
Iraq, Afghanistan, it’s been 10 years already, should America take responsibility? Does Libya now need 10 years and then it can intervene in America? Why can’t America tell north from south? [4129]
Responsibility for incidents should start with those countries (people) who provoke trouble. On what basis are China and Russia responsible? This is entirely a case of the West looking for an excuse for their next evil deed. [2850]
Can this kind of inhuman government be popular (shou huanying)? [2354]
13 approvals, 2 vetos. [2343]
Public enemy of humanity. [2145]
This post is part of the Global Innovation Showcase created by the New America Foundation and Global Public Square.
CNN asks Kentaro Toyama, Researcher at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.
But the ubiquity of the mobile phone - and its application to a diverse and growing set of development goals - doesn?t guarantee economic or social progress.
Are mobiles just another high-tech solution to what are essentially systemic and deeply rooted problems? Are mobile solutions for combating global poverty overhyped?
Cheerleaders for mobile development point out that there are nearly six billion active mobile accounts in the world, and that mobile phones are increasingly used by the remotest rural villagers. It?s hard, indeed, to overhype the business success or the consumer appeal of mobile phones.
Market penetration, however, is not the same as meaningful impact.
Technology amplifies human intent and capacity, but technology by itself doesn?t fix challenges of intent or capacity. What?s overhyped is a belief that mobile-centric programs are a cost-effective means to combat disease, improve education, or alleviate poverty, as if mobile or not were the essential question. What?s overhyped is technological innovation as a primary solution to complex social problems, at the expense of tested-and-true interventions that nurture people and institutions.
Read full article.
A new study out today documents the impact of apps on the U.S. economy, concluding that 466,000 jobs have been created by the “App Economy” since 2007 — including programmers, marketers, interface designers, managers and support staff working on apps and infrastructure for platforms including Android, Apple iOS, BlackBerry, Facebook and Windows Phone. CNet reports via GeekWire.
... The research was conducted by economist Michael Mandel for industry group TechNet based on trends in help-wanted ads, in addition to other economic data. A summary of the findings is available here.
Read more.
From a UNHCR article via @mobileactive
... UNHCR, for the first time, is using mobile phones rather than pen and paper to record and digitalize this information, saving valuable time and resources. This equipment will also enable UNHCR-trained and supported census staff to take pictures and include satellite navigation data [GPS] as part of the registration process. The exercise will continue into March.
... The census will also provide an overview of the documentation status of this population. Most refugees in the Dominican Republic were recognized as such in the mid 1990s, but were never able to obtain legal residence in the country. Asylum-seekers have been waiting in some cases for more than 10 years for their claims to be decided, holding state-issued certificates which need to be renewed every three months and do not allow them to work.
Read full article.
The Journal of Medical Internet Research recently published a research paper called, SMS Applications for Disease Prevention in Developing Countries, that found while there have been many text message-powered health initiatives, very few of them have been sufficiently evaluated. Mobilehealthnews reports via @jranck.
The researchers stated that most of the applications they reviewed were pilot projects “in various levels of sophistication” with “modes of intervention varying between one-way or two-way communication, with or without incentives, and with educative games.”
Of those five SMS applications that did have evaluation findings available, the researchers said that the “primary barriers identified were language, timing of messages, mobile network fluctuations, lack of financial incentives, data privacy, and mobile phone turnover.”
Efficacy studies for all mobile health services — not just those for developing markets — is shaping up to be one of the big trends of 2012.
Read full article.
In the latest examples creative repression over the internet, the Islamic regime has used Skype as a long-distance interrogation tool, and wrested control over a Facebook group for photos of hot guys and girls from its administrators.
Skype interrogation
In order to increase the pressure on one foreign-based Iranian journalist for the BBC, a relative in Iran was arbitrarily detained for nearly two weeks, and the journalist was interrogated over the internet on Skype video.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them.
Iranian blogger Tahriyeh Khamoush writes [fa]:
… reading this story we can see what a monster the Islamic Republic has become. 40 minutes of interrogation via Skype while the journalist’s sister was jailed. The journalist was at her home in London while she was interrogated by revolutionary guards intelligence agents. The journalist only heard the voices in Iran while the interrogators could both see her and listen to her voice.
The journalist’s sister was released after the interrogation. She said she was forced to make false confessions broadcast on TV.
There are three jailed bloggers and journalists, Parastou Dokouhaki, Mazieh Rasouli and Sahmoldin Borghani who are under pressure to confess collaboration with BBC.
Attacking a Facebook group
Message by cyber police on what was formerly the 'Daaf & Paaf' Facebook page promoting a photo contest.
About a week ago a Facebook page called Daaf & Paaf (meaning “hot girl & hot boy”) came under the control of Iran's cyber police who announced [fa] on the group's Facebook “wall” that “the administrators of this group have confessed to promoting banality”.
The group promoted an online photo contest for hot Iranian men and women, and had around 27,000 fans [the content is not available anymore].
Cyber police reportedly arrested four men and women for administrating the Facebook page.
Faryadeazadi collected and republished [fa] several comments that users left on the Daaf & Paaf Facebook page after it came under control by Iranian security forces:
You beat the poor guys and got their passwords, and now you think you performed a masterpiece by controlling this page… Look at our cyber police, instead of running after criminals and thieves, it gets involved with this kind of story… Mark Zuckerbeg was involved too, go arrest him as well.
A long history
The Iranian regime not only represses bloggers and filters websites and blogs, but has many times used the internet creatively as a tool to increase pressure or spread fear.
In 2009, the regime employed crowd sourcing to target suspects when the protest movement erupted. Using widely disseminated online photos from post-election demonstrations, a website of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Gerdab (which means ‘vortex'), encouraged people to submit information that could lead to the arrest of protesters.
We can add to this menu of creativity, the recent “Law of Computer Crimes” that make almost all ordinary users computer criminals.
Indeed, the internet is not only a gift for freedom lovers but also for repressive machines.
A wonderful article on how SMS is being used to help deaf children in Uganda. By Ken Banks for National Geographic.
In this edition of “Mobile Message”, Cambridge to Africa’s Sacha DeVelle, explains how her organisation has been using mobile phones in specially designed education programmes to help deaf children in Uganda communicate. By getting everyone in their schools to help out, the projects also happen to be making them the coolest kids in school.
Read full article.
Excerpts from Tomi Ahonen talk at the Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg last Thursday via TechCentral.
-- Also, mobile device users are addicted to their devices. Nokia reported at MindTrek 2010 that the average person looks at their phone 150 times a day, or once every six-and-a-half minutes of every waking hour.
-- In Africa, it’s 82 times a day, according to Young and Rubicam in its Mobile Mania Report published in April 2011 — thus, even, in Africa mobile users check their devices on average every 12 minutes.
-- “US jewellers Tiffany’s e-commerce website wasn’t optimised for mobile. After optimising it, sales grew 125% from the website,” says Ahonen. He says this proves there isn’t going to be “one Internet”.
-- In China mobile newspapers have converted 39% of their readers to pay for MMS news headlines. “’Tomorrow’s headlines today’ is the selling point.” China Mobile has 40m paying users on SMS- and MMS-based twice-daily headline services of branded newspapers’ headlines.
-- "Mobile is the fastest growing industry ever,” Ahonen adds. “It went from naught to $1 trillion in 2010, and is set to double by 2020.”
Read full article.
A team headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University's Booth Business School say their experiment, using BlackBerrys, to gauge the willpower of 205 people aged between 18 and 85 in and around the German city of Würtzburg is the first to monitor such responses "in the wild" outside a laboratory.
... Hofmann told the Guardian: "Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not 'cost much' to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.
"With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still 'steal' a lot of people's time.".
The results will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science.
Read full article.
As tech writers predict that Apple will open up Siri to third-party apps as early as this summer Poynter.org reports on how voice recognition technology could change the way we consume news.
Raluca Budiu, user experience specialist at the Nielsen Norman Group, said voice technology makes it easier to input information, which is important on mobile.
"Mobile devices are used in a variety of contexts, and it’s often easier to speak than to type,” she said via email. “Plus, typing on the small screen is tedious and error-prone."
Read full articles.
Muawiya Alrawahi. Photo by Jillian C York
It has been reported on Twitter that outspoken Omani blogger Muawiya Alrawahi (interviewed by Global Voices here), known for his controversial ideas, has been detained because of a blog post and some tweets in which he criticised Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the ruler of Oman.
Twitter user Ammar Almamari (@omanammar) wrote on the morning of February 6:
This is a reference to a long blog post from February 3 called “Covenant of Salvation” (which has since been deleted, but a cached copy is here [Ar]). In it Muawiya talked openly about a number of things, including suffering sexual abuse as a young teenager, his earlier involvement with Oman's Internal Security Service (ISS), his admiration for and connections to ex-ISS Brigadier-General Khamis Al Ghraibi (now imprisoned under charges of spying for the UAE), his lack of religious belief, his disillusionment with Oman, and his loss of faith in the ruler Sultan Qaboos.
Muawiya ended the post by saying:
Muawiya's tweets [Ar] were equally critical of Sultan Qaboos and the political situation in Oman, and in addition he called for the downfall of all Gulf rulers.
Blogger Ferass Alryami has written a post in solidarity with Muawiya:
” تدوينتك الآخيرة كانت عبارة عن كلمات خجولة، ربما هي لم تصل إلى من أردت تبليغهم إياها ، لكنها كلمات لا بد لها أن تخترق جدار الصمت فتفصح عن بعض ما عانيته يا معاوية ..
نعم نحن لا نتفق فكريا و سياسيا و صدمت كما صدم الآخرون لكنني واثق من براءة ما كتبته .”
“The words in your last post were somewhat shy; maybe they didn't reach the people you wanted to send them to. But they are words that must break through the wall of silence to disclose some of what you have suffered, Muawiya.
It's true that we don't agree intellectually and politically, and I am shocked just as others are shocked, but I have confidence in the innocence of what you have written”
Others have argued [Ar] that Muawiya crossed too many lines, especially when talking about Islam.
Recently two Omani journalists were jailed for “insulting” the country's Minister of Justice by publishing allegations of corruption within the Ministry of Justice. Oman's recently amended penal code outlines punishment for those who undermine the “prestige of the state”, and an article in the press and publications law prohibits “disseminating all that would compromise state security, internal or external”.
Several bloggers reported that Mehdi Khazali, a blogger and publisher was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The blogger was sentenced to 90 lashes too. He can appeal this sentence.
Read more.
TheNetWeb on M-Pesa in Africa and how the heads of Visa, MasterCard and American Express could learn from it.
“The funds transferred by M-Pesa are equal to 25% of the country’s GNP,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, an economist at the company. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that most of the transactions are for fifty cents (U.S.) or less.
Kenyans use the service today to pay for water and electric and cable bills, as well as for their children’s schools. They can use it to make purchases at certain stores, even mom-and-pop shops.
They can withdraw or deposit their money through a network of more than 2,000 sales points throughout the country, where they can buy the scratch cards containing the codes needed to fill their account.
“M-Pesa makes people’s lives easier and helps them save money while traveling,” Waceke Mbugua, director of marketing and communication at Sararicom, explained.
Read full article.
Facebook is not the only company struggling to translate the success of its Web site to mobile devices, where screen space is at a premium and people have little patience for clutter or slow loading times. It is a problem that plagues companies as diverse as news publishers and the streaming radio service Pandora, and it is likely to loom larger. There were more global shipments of smartphones than of personal computers in 2011, according to a recent report from Canalys, a research firm.
... Overall spending on mobile advertising in the United States is expected to reach $2.6 billion this year, up 80 percent from $1.45 billion in 2011, according to research by eMarketer.
Read full article.
Here's a new one. Too much texting makes teens shallow. According to a new study, young people who text frequently focus on wealth and image; less on moral or spiritual goals. WebMD reports.
"Heavy texters do seem to be a little more materialistic and less concerned about inward growth," says Paul Trapnell, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg in Canada.
Researchers surveyed more than 2,200 college psychology class students about their texting frequency. They were ages 18 to 22. Data were collected from 2007 through 2011. These findings were presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.
Read full article.
There is a lot happening in the technology scene this week in Washington, DC, with events on openness in government, R, and mobiles in international development. Add to the mix two storytelling events and some happy hours, and it’s a great week. Below is our roundup of events, and you can find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.
7:00 - 9:00 pm
The Anecdote: Stories about Not Love: In preparation of Valentine’s Day - or in spite of it - come out for a night of storytelling about failed love, dating troubles, and overall bad romance. Danny Harris from the People’s District - whose stories we helped map - is one of the presenters.
9:00 - 10:00 am
Open Innovation: Tools to Solve Problems and Grow the Economy: At this event held by the Center for American Progress, exiting U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra will talk about his work pushing for open policies around innovation and how the government can stay on track - and open - moving forward.
3:30 - 5:30 pm
Mobile Disconnect: Can Mobile Solutions Really Combat Global Poverty?: This panel discussion hosted by the New America Foundation will look at the potential of mobile phones aiding international development and political activism, and also the limitations in their use.
6:00 - 10:00 pm
ICT4Drinks in DC: After the Mobile Disconnect event, attendees and others in the international development and technology sectors will meet to continue the discussion over drinks. If you want to talk mobiles in development and pick the brains of presenters and attendees, check this out.
6:30 pm
R Lightning Talks: Want to dip your toe into a bunch of different topics around R? This month’s R user group will feature seven lightning talks on topics like R’s spatial tools, version control in Git, and webscraping with R.
6:30 - 9:30 pm
Nerd Nite: Nerds in Love: Want to start your Saturday night by learning about the science of love, sexual attraction to objects, and frogs mixed with some drinks and live music? Then Nerd Nite at DC9 is your ticket.
Blogger and activist Ahmad Mansoor after his release last November
Ahmad Mansoor, UAE's most famous blogger who was detained last year for several months with four other activists for signing an online petition calling for reforms in his country, was denied entry to Kuwait few days ago. The UAE5 including Mansoor were released with a pardon on the 28th of November. Recently, Human Right Watch press conference in Dubai which was planned to release the organization's report on the decline of freedom of expression in the Gulf wealthy state was raided by state security police called off.
Through his twitter account, Mansoor was the one who reported the details of this raid on HRW's press conference. More than a week after, Mansoor went to Kuwait and was denied entry, which makes him the second human rights defender to be denied entry in Kuwait in a very short time period after Kassab Al-Otaibi (@Dr_Kassab ) a Saudi opposition activist based in the UK. Mansoor reported what happened to him in the airport through twitter, as Kuwait was having its vote for parliamentary elections; one of the reasons why there wasn't much attention paid for the incident the UAE blogger had to go through.
Mansoor tweeted:
I'm Kuwait airport now. Prevented from entering. Too bad that this happens in Kuwait; the only democracy in #gcc !!
— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012
#gcc: after an interrogation for about an hour, I was told that I can not enter by the State Security officers.#kuwait #uae
— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012
#gcc #kuwait #uae further told that if I can not find a ticket back, I would be detained until then.
— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012
#gcc #kuwait #uae: off course, preventing me from entering kuwait was based on instruction from UAE authorities.
— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012
Not sure though why authorities in UAE first let me leave Sharjah airport to start with and put Kuwait in this situation. #gcc #kuwait #uae
— Ahmed Mansoor (@Ahmed_Mansoor) February 2, 2012
It seems like every other day we hear a news story about a major site being hacked and users' information and passwords being stolen. A new service called onetimesecret.com won't stop hackers but it will make a common thing we all do much more secure.
How often do you have to send passwords, logins, or other sensitive information via email or IM? All the time, right? Well, onetimesecret.com is an ingenious way of making that task much more secure.
This incredibly simple but extremely powerful tool is a huge step for internet security. No more sending passwords or any sensitive information in email or IM that can persist forever and you have no idea who could have access to it in the future.
Got a great tool to help keep your info secure online? Share in the comments!
Cross-posted on New Organizing Institute Education Fund's Blog as a Tip of the Day
Against the backdrop of a stream of self-immolations in Tibet in protest against Chinese rule, unrest in eastern Tibet with protestors shot by police and a severely increased military presence, several of the most popular independently-run Tibetan language blog sites hosted in China have gone offline as of today.
The blog section of the website AmdoTibet has been closed (the rest of the site is functioning) and the following notice can be seen:
The notice in Chinese reads: “Due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site, the blog has temporarily been shut down, we hope that blog users will have understanding!”
Another very popular blog site Sangdhor.com is also offline, without any explanation. In October 2011, Sangdhor boldly published a poem titled “Mourning” that was about the self-immolations in Tibet. The poem was quickly taken offline. An English translation of the poem was published on High Peaks Pure Earth.
Below are two screenshots of Sangdhor.com, the top screenshot shows Sangdhor in its functioning state and the bottom screenshot was taken earlier today:
Finally the blog site Rangdrol.net is also offline and contains an interesting notice in Tibetan. In October 2011, Rangdrol published a poem titled “The Truth of Flames on the Thorny Path” which carried many references to fire and flames; the poem was taken offline (read the English translation on High Peaks Pure Earth).
Below is a screenshot of Rangdrol taken earlier, the English text “Site off-line” suggests that the administrators have removed the site, and the Tibetan text underneath reads: ”For the sake of life, we are mourning and crying”.
This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.
Following Twitter's recent footsteps, Google announced that it would also begin censoring content on a country-to-country basis.
Missey and her husband, Greg Smith, are proponents of the bill commonly named for their daughter Kelsey, who was kidnapped from Overland Park, Kansas and found murdered in southern Jackson County in 2007.
Greg, now a legislator in Kansas, says if such language had been law then Kelsey might have been saved. “June 2, 2007 was the night she went missing and she was found four days later … Once that information was released by the cell phone company it only took forty-five minutes to recover her body.” A former police officer, he adds, “If you can get that kind of response in a missing person case, that’s just absolutely light years ahead of what we’re doing right now.”
Read full article.
Forbes Top 10 Mobile influencers. They were identified as not device centric, have a global perspective and take a strategic overview.
# Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen’s comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.
#Number 6. Tom Krazit, another PaidContent staffer, who writes about the transition from the PC era to the mobile era.
#Number 7. Vaibhav Sharma of handheld blog, another device-centric source, based in Chandigarh, India.
# Number 8. Next is Steven J. Crowley a consultaing engineer who is on top of US-centric mobile issues.
#Number 9. Zach Epstein of BGR, formerly Boy Genius Report.
#Number 10. K.Kugan of Malaysian Wireless.
Read full article.
Home to sun, surf, margartias, rain forests, coffee, and cocaine…but there’s something else Latin America is becoming famous for – mobile tech. Mobisights reports.
This number is equivalent to the connection numbers we’re hearing out of India right now. The region itself currently boasts 630 million connections. This translates into the fact that 3.6% of the region’s GDP, or $175 billion, are generated by mobile tech. Jobs are also on the rise with 600,000 currently working in the mobile ecosystem with expectations of that reaching 1.6 million in the near future.
Another plus to Latin America is that its mobile network infrastructure is not ancient. Part of the problem with the United States is the costs of upgrading the aging infrastructure or teething subscribers off existing land line usage. By 2015, 305 million subscribers in Latin America are expected to be accessing the net via HSPA or LTE connections.
Read full article. Download full GSMA report (pdf)
More than ten journalists have been imprisoned in Ethiopia since June 2011 and according to the Committee to Protect Journalists about 25% of exiled journalists in Africa are from Ethiopia, making the country the world's main enemy of the major driving forces of free expression: journalists, bloggers and political dissidents.
Two of those in jail, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson are Swedish journalists who have been labeled by Prime Minster Meles Zenawi as terror accomplices. They are serving 11 year sentences for “helping” and “promoting” the outlawed Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebel group and entering the country illegally.
Three other local journalists received 14-16 year sentences and heavy fines recently for “terrorism-related” offenses. Exiled blogger Elias Kifle was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. One other journalist and blogger, Eskinder Nega, who is indicted with six different terrorism charges is facing the death penalty.
Jailed in Ethiopia: left, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson. Photo courtesy of freejohanandmartin.org
Nicholas Kristof draws attention to Ethiopia’s worsening situation of journalists with his wounding criticisms of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government:
In countries like Ethiopia, there are no reliable institutions to look after human rights and create checks and balances. There isn’t a free election system, independent court system, opposite party structure or all the other mechanisms that keep a regime honest. So one of the few ways to provide accountability is through journalists, local and international. And when Meles or another dictator arrests these journalists or drives them into exile, the losers are all the citizens of the country.
Human rights and free press advocacy organizations are incessantly campaigning for the release of imprisoned journalists. The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Sans Frontières, Index on Censorship and the International Federation of Journalists are all protesting the government’s treatment of journalists.
Facebook image calling for the release of all political prisoners. Image courtesy of Ethiopia Mitmita Facebook page.
Endalk summarises the global press outcry and highlights the context in which the Swedish journalists were being tried in Ethiopian court. He adds:
My reporting has included analyses of how the Ethiopian media both private and government media is covering court proceedings; how David Isaac, Eritrean-Swedish, was reported in Ethiopia’s media and the state of freedom of expression in Ethiopia such as continues brandish of arrests and accusations of journalists and opposition leaders. These malaises are most visible in Ethiopian media landscape since the ratification of the contentious anti-terrorism proclamation in 2009 which lead to the closure of independent newspapers, accusations, detentions and kicking out of journalists and bloggers out of their country.
Netizens' opposition to Meles Zenawi's government gained new momentum after Kristof asked his Twitter followers to report Meles sightings in Davos, Switzerland. Kristof wanted to ask Meles why he has driven more journalists into exile over the last decade than any other leader in the world. He wrote:
I’m in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, and so is Meles I’ve been pursuing him for the last few days, trying to confront him and ask him about his worsening pattern of brutality. He has refused to see me, so I enlisted (https://twitter.com/nickkristof )my Twitter followers to report Meles sightings. I want to ask him why he has driven more journalists into exile over the last decade than any other leader in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City.
Ethiopian blogger and journalist, Eskinder Nega, is facing the death penalty. Photo courtesy of FreeEskinderNega.com
One anonymous reader responded to Kistof’s opinion piece:
Meles has hoodwinked or scared many Western journalists from writing the plight of the Ethiopian people. Kristof is the exception to lay it out there. Meles is the most sophisticated dictator who cornered the market in PR or deception by buying senators, congressional representatives, columnists and professors with money and lies, thus piling up himself as a leader. At the same time, he is running Ethiopia as his fiefdom by confiscating land and industries, by denying access to technology and property rights, while applying the severest punishment to journalists and civil society members who oppose his policies. To stave off any Arab Springs type revolt, he has crafted an anti-terrorism law, where he stands as the most dangerous terrorist of all as far as the Ethiopian people are concerned.
Addis Neger’s Facebook page shared a link of a petition demanding the release of Swedish journalists in Ethiopia. Over 1300 people have signed Kelsey Crows petition and the number of petitioners are growing quickly about a pace of 100 signatures/hour. However, netizens wonder why the petition does not take into account the Ethiopian journalists who are suffering with Swedish journalists.
Ethiopia Mitmita comments on Addis Neger's page:
Where is the petition for our journalist????
Another Facebook user asks:
Why is the petition only for the Swedish journalists? It is really very depressive.
Habtom Gabreegziabher says:
Ethiopia has done nothing that any other country cannot do if it faces with the same situation.
every body has to know the reason behind the arrest was not because the Swedish were Journalist, they were arrested because they crossed sovereign border of a country called Ethiopia.
let me ask you a question,
How many peoples are arrested in the united states because of crossing the border from south America regardless their occupation??
The Americans has the right to protect their border.
the difference in our case is, the criminals who cross our border are Swedish and Europeans and we are Ethiopians and Africans.
JUST BECAUSE SOME BODY IS RICH HE DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO COME INTO MY BACK YARD AS HE WISH. HE HAS TO ASK ME POLITELY TO DO THAT.
A highly politicized trial of a blogger Eskinder Nega will continue in March in the midst of a global outcry for his release.
Statistics from last year suggested that more than 1.1 million (less than 5 percent) of North Korea owned a fixed-line telephone, which had traditionally been more available than mobile, but the increasingly popularity of mobile means it will likely be dominant soon. However, as a report from The Nautilus Institute noted, the cost of devices and tariffs remain beyond the reach of many North Koreans. TheNextWeb reports.
Read full article and links to related articles on North Korea and cell phones blogged by textually over the years.
Did you know that Twitter is full of inane, boring tweets that nobody wants to read? It’s true, according to science! TIME Techland reports.
According to The Telegraph, people’s biggest pet peeves are too many hashtags, updates on day-to-day routines and negative tweets. The most hated tweet of all is the “conversation tweet,” in which two people have a private conversation (publicly) that everyone else could care less about.
Also not popular: Foursquare check-in tweets, because the only people who care where you just had breakfast are already following you on Foursquare.
The study was conducted with 1,500 Twitter users, who analyzed 43,738 tweets from 21,000 accounts. Some good news for Ashton Kutcher: Twitter users really like self-promotional messages from celebrities.
Read full article.
The data, gathered from a monthly online survey of 30,000 mobile subscribers ages 13 and up, reflects an ongoing shift in the changing behaviors of the more than 234 million American mobile consumers. Mobile users continue to show an increased propensity to consume content, download apps, listen to music, and play games on their devices.
Read more.
A South Korean Twitter user, Park Jeong-Geun has been arrested since January 11, 2012 for re-tweeting messages such as “Long Live General Kim Jong-Il” in Twitter. Under the curry National Security Law (NSL), Park would face up to seven years imprisonment.
Park's profile picture in Twitter.
Amnesty International called for Park's release yesterday, February 2, 2012. “This is not a national security case, it's a sad case of the South Korean authorities' complete failure to understand sarcasm,” Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director said in its statement.
Park's arrest is very controversial as he and his political party (Socialist Party) has been very critical of North Korea. But such ludicrous charge is not an isolated case. Two months ago in December 2011, another netizen, Kim Seung-kyu was prosecuted for reposting articles, songs and other available information about North Korea on his blog and calling the NSL a government attempt to suffocate the people. The materials that he posted are widely accessible in western media.
The South Korea NSL was passed 60-years ago in 1948 to protect the country from its wartime enemy, North Korea. It prosecutes those who “praise, disseminate or cooperate with anti-state groups” if such acts endanger democracy and national security.
In the past, the NSL has been used to investigate left-wing activists. Between 2005-2009, there were an average of 58 cases a year. However, “since Lee Myung-bak came to power in 2008, the Korean government re-activated the law to investigate not just left-wing activists but also ordinary people who are talking about North Korea online”, said Yoon Ji-Hye, the Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements to NPR in December 2011. Investigation has surged to 91 in 2010 and by 2011 August, there were already 150 cases.
Deletion of webpages has been increased from an annual figure of 1,500 in 2008 to 14,430 in 2009 and 80,449 in 2010. (The graph below is from North Korea Tech)
This is how the FBI can consider everyone liking his/her online privacy. Katitza Rodrigez was depicting very finely and accurately the current state of privacy fights right before International Privacy Day. The latter was just few days ago, on 28th January. And here comes the FBI now with a very interesting and precise flyer telling people how to spot a terrorist.
FBI's leaked flyer. Source: Public Intelligence
As you can see it, any use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” is considered as a suspicious activity such as terrorism. Additionally, if you use encryption or are somehow “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others”, you are suspicious of being potentially engaged or supporting terrorists.
This means that using a proxy or the Tor network makes you automatically suspicious. This puts you in the same basket as a woman wanting to remove her nail polisher who buys some acetone or the cute granny from the house around the corner buying fertilizers for her lovely petunia.
But the delirious indications of potential terrorists are not the only concern in this flyer. I am also disturbed by the “Be Part of The Solution” invitation. Actually this transforms a citizen into a walking surveillance device. Either you report what is defined as suspicious and you can help prevent some (un)likely terrorists to commit their rogue acts, or you don't and you are actually in the bad situation of likely supporting these activities… More clearly, if someone uses HTTPS next to you in the library, you should open your eyes and double-check what the person spends his/her spare time on. We missed you, McCarthy…
This flyer is one more amongst the already rich collection of 25 such documents the FBI has produced and gathered under the name “Communities Against Terrorism”. They are aimed at being widely distributed and provide some basic tools for ordinary people to report “suspicious activity”. The latter can be encountered in quite a few threat areas such as airport service providers, hobby shops or tattoo shops… You might also remember the case of the Casio F-91W digital watch that was claimed to be used in terrorism. More notably, as The Guardian was telling it, this watch was “the sign of al-Qaida” and the mere fact of possessing it was considered as a contributing factor to continued detention at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. This would sound funny if it was not tragic: a whole list of detainees exists…
Who is next? The EFF for promoting HTTPS Everywhere, the guys from the Tor project for providing a tool to protect your online privacy or myself as any security-conscious employee for using a VPN to connect from home to my computer at work in the week-end?
I’m teaching my first class at MIT this spring, a “special topics” class at the Media Lab. (This is evidently how new classes get launched at MIT -they’re “special” the first year before they become official. All that means, I think, is that you need my permission to take it.) If you’re a student at MIT, or another Boston/Cambridge institution, hope you’ll consider joining us.
The class is my attempt to bring a “journalism” class to the Media Lab while avoiding the journalist/citizen media distinction. (This certainly isn’t a first for the lab – Andy Lippman and Walter Bender have done great teaching around newsgathering and journalism in the past.) With advice from Clay Shirky and other friends I consulted, I’m asking students to think very little about how paper and broadcast newsrooms currently operate and instead treat newsgathering and reporting as an engineering challege. How do we know what happens in the world? How do we verify information about what happened? How do we understand what events are important and which we can ignore? How do we make the important relevant and interesting?
To make these practical questions, we’re doing eight weekly exercises, each of which involves reporting a different type of story using different media. The final project involves designing a tool, technique or technology to make reporting one or more of these stories easier to accomplish… and part of the project involves persuading another student to use the new tech to report. The goal is to create some interesting stories, all of which will live on the web, and design some tools that might take on new life in newsrooms, in the hands of bloggers or other civic actors.
I’m excited to get back into the classroom and to see how the legendary inventiveness of Media Lab students – and the creativity of other students at MIT and within the Boston academic community – applies itself to some of the newsgathering questions I’m most intrigued by. First class is 2pm, Wednesday, February 8th, in E15-363 – that’s a classroom in the “old building” of the MIT Media Lab. Maybe I’ll see some of you there…
How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy? Given the strong push provided by social media to the recent uprisings in the Middle East region and elsewhere, how can people ensure that the same tools are not being used for government censorship and surveillance (often with more than a little help from Western technology companies)? And ultimately, how can we stop thinking of ourselves as passive “users” of technology but rather as “netizens” who take ownership and responsibility for our digital future?
These questions provide the general framework for discussion in Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, a new book by Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices (and co-author of the twice-monthly Netizen Report on GV Advocacy).
A comprehensive and timely effort, it is a call to action for every blogger or user of Twitter or Facebook, and particularly for cyber-activists at large, to collectively address the urgent issue of how technology should be governed to support the rights and liberties of citizens around the world. With a rigorous analysis and a positive tone, the final message is to get involved in a struggle that all of us have the power and ability to influence (even in small ways), if we only try to understand the complex forces at work, and how we might help shape them.
Divided in five major sections (Disruptions; Control 2.0; Democracy’s challenges; Sovereigns of cyberspace; What is to be done?), the book covers a variety of events over the past decade and is quite up to date, with parts devoted to the Arab Spring and the Egyptian government’s surveillance capabilities, privacy and control in Western democracies, and the rise of “Facebookistan and Googledom”. The book's companion website offers fresh updates and more resources.
The Global Voices network is mentioned here and there, with direct quotes and references. For instance, the book preface speaks briefly about the community's inception, growth, and crucial role in recent events:
As protests erupted in Tunisia in late 2010 and demonstrations spread around the Middle East and North Africa in early 2011, Global Voices contributors worked around the clock to spread information about what was happening in multiple languages, on our own site as well as Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
The first part of the book focuses on interconnections in technology, society and business that fueled the Internet's development so far, giving rise to a “digital commons” that includes innovative practices, digital activism, and people's empowerment. This is an exciting environment that nonetheless faces opposition, defined as “Control 2.0”: “…how opaque, unaccountable relationships with Internet and telecommunications companies enables authoritarian governments to control and manipulate citizens.”
China is a primary case study here, with a detailed description of its refined censorship system and recent developments to maintain authoritarian control, while at the same time enabling, “…high levels of lively and even contentious online debate and deliberation, within certain limits.”
After describing similar (or worse) situations in countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Syria, the focus shifts to Western democracies — who unfortunately appear inclined to emulate authoritarian regimes, even if in subtle and insidious ways. That is, technology companies are establishing equally opaque and unaccountable relationships with government agencies, and fail to, “…take responsibility for their power over citizens’ political lives, and their lack of accountability in the exercise of that power.”
Image © Shutterstock.com
The various examples discussed here include WikiLeaks, privacy complaints on Facebook, ‘Big Brother' Apple, and Net Neutrality. Along with the on-going battle about intellectual property vs. free speech and sharing (see the global initiative against SOPA-PIPA, and the recent ‘selective censorship‘ announced by Twitter). Also addressed are lesser-known issues, such as a 2011 proposal to create a “single European cyberspace” that would block “illicit content” at Europe’s borders.
Finally, the last section of the book attempts to answer the question of “What is to be done?”, proposing the development of a Netizen-centric Internet. This part explores efforts by some governments, a few companies, and a growing number of concerned citizens to address the threats to freedom in cyberspace through new initiatives and movements. Some suggestions include: boosting corporate transparency; building processes for corporate engagement with users, customers, and other stakeholders; and building a more citizen-driven information environment.
At the end of the day, this Struggle For Internet Freedom is taking place here and now — in Arab countries, in East Asia and even in Western nations. It is a common struggle, and it is up to each and all of us, as netizens and citizens of the world, to monitor the state of affairs and make sure the Internet remains a force for freedom of expression and political liberation — rather than a tool for alienation, censorship and repression.
EchoDitto is proud to announce the launching of the new Women's Foundation of California website! Our team was honored to work with the talented and committed staff at WFCA to take their internal designs and wireframes to a powerful new platform for content management and communications. The core team consisted of Paul Venuti (Technical Lead), Alan Ivey (Systems Administrator), and Juan Gonzalez (Project Manager), though much of EchoDitto's team contributed to the success of this project over the past few months.
The Women's Foundation of California is a nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes social justice and economic opportunity for everyone in California. With main offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, WFCA participates in fundraising and grant making designed to enhance and improve the lives of women in the state and beyond.
The Project
WFCA's old website was based upon a proprietary SaaS CMS solution that was no longer adequate to meet the Foundation's needs. Our friends at Engaging Networks identified an opportunity for EchoDitto to help lead the project out of design and into development and launch, and so we sprang into action. Our team leveraged an agile approach to prototyping by concurrently developing information architecture, establishing functional requirements, and outlining technical specifications for the new website. Thanks to our Technical Lead's creativity and ingenuity, we were able to identify rapid deployment solutions for each content type, block, and view. Strategically, this enabled us to use Drupal 7's efficiencies to build a truly robust platform.
The Website
The WFCA website - WomensFoundCA.org - has a number of core features that represent significant improvements and functional milestones for the Foundation's communications: an Events system, Leader Profiles, Board and Staff profiles, Publications and Reports, an integrated News & Op-Eds system, and integration with third-party tools, like an external blog and the Engaging Networks CRM System for donations and mailing list sign-ups. Check out the before-and-after shots below, and help support WFCA with a donation to their work!
Before:
After:
AppBridge - Opportunity and Education for All Through Mobile from Mobile Movement on Vimeo.
A pilot project gets underway soon to test whether mobile phones can be used to help educate the poor. It’s estimated three quarters of the world’s poor have access to mobile phones. Voice of America reports.
The idea is to link software developers with communities and non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. The pilot project is led by a WEF community called Young Global Leaders. It’s made up of about 700 people under age 40 from business, civil society, government and academia.
The early apps are expected to provide skills training.
“In some cases,”Margo Drakos, founder of AppBridge said, “these are going to be very much technically oriented skills, like learning simple automotive or simple electrical or simple plumbing.
Apps could also be used to link entrepreneurs with micro-credit lenders or with markets. “In some cases, women are not able to go and sell their goods from their home unless they know that the store is open and the stores don’t open at a consistent time. So, something as simple and basic as having an alert when the store is open for them to be able to leave their home and go sell their goods,” she said.
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A 23-year-old design student from Middlesex University is to launch a mobile phone made largely from bamboo. The Telegraph reports.
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Links to articles on other wood phones blogged by textually over the years.
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