Antony Loewenstein

Some startling facts:

- There are now more than 500 million active Facebook users, with 50% logging on to the site on any given day. Worldwide, users collectively spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.

- Google’s email service Gmail ended July with 186 million worldwide users, a 22% increase from the same time a year ago. Both Microsoft’s Windows Hotmail (nearly 346 million users) and Yahoo’s email (303 million users) are larger, but aren’t growing as rapidly.

- As of September, Twitter, which launched in 2006, had 175 million registered users posting an estimated 95 million tweets each day.

- There are now more than five billion mobile phone connections worldwide. In many regions, penetration exceeds 100%, meaning more than one connection per person. Research earlier this year found that teenagers in American now use text as their main method of communication, with more than 30% of US teens sending more than 100 texts a day.

- More than 25% of the UK’s population – some 16 million people – accessed the internet from mobile phones in December 2009. Nearly half those total minutes online via mobile devices were spent at Facebook Mobile – 2.2bn minutes out of 4.8bn – with Google on 400m in a very distant second.

What words does Google Instant not like?

Wonderful New York profile of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, a program that becomes even more essential as America’s two-party system crumbles before our very eyes (but don’t tell them; they don’t need to realise):

After September 11, Stewart began to employ his newfound anger, becoming a voice of comic sanity in the whirlwind of real and manufactured fear. Segments like “America Freaks Out” and “Mess O’Potamia” punctured the false-patriotic sanctimony being peddled by the Bush administration. Yet as appalled as Stewart was by the politicians, his greater scorn was increasingly aimed at the acquiescent and co-opted news media. “I assume there are bad actors in society,” Stewart says. “It’s inherent in politicians to be disingenuous. And a mining company wants to own the company store—as it is in SpongeBob. Mr. Krabs just wants to make more money. He’s not concerned with SpongeBob’s working conditions—although SpongeBob is putting in hours that are not humane, even for an invertebrate. I assume monkeys are gonna throw shit. I get angrier at the people who don’t go ‘Bad monkey!’ or who create distraction that allows it to continue unabated. The thing that shocked me the most when I first met reporters was the people who would step aside and say, ‘Boy, I wish I could say what you’re saying.’ You have a show! You are a network anchor! Whaddya mean you can’t say it?” Stewart says. “It’s one reason I admire Fox. They’re great broadcasters. Everything is pointed, purposeful. You follow story lines, you fall in love with characters: ‘Oh, that’s the woman who’s very afraid of Black Panthers! I can’t wait to see what happens next. Oh, look, it’s the ex-alcoholic man who believes that Woodrow Wilson continues to wreak havoc on this country! This is exciting!’ Even the Fox morning show, the way they’re able to present propaganda as though it’s merely innocent thoughts occurring to them: ‘What is this “czar”? I’m Googling, and you know what’s interesting about a czar? It’s a Russian oligarch! Don’t you think it’s weird that Obama has Russian oligarchs, and he’s a socialist?’ Whereas MSNBC will trace the word and say, ‘If you don’t understand that, you’re an idiot!’ The mistake they make is that somehow facts are more important than feelings.”

Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov explores the possibility of an Iranian search engine and the “growing politicization of the internet in general and of search space in particular.”

Looks like we’ll have to fight for a truly free internet:

So Google and Verizon went public today with their “policy framework” — better known as the pact to end the Internet as we know it.

News of this deal broke this week, sparking a public outcry that’s seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its “Don’t Be Evil” pledge.

But cut through the platitudes the two companies (Googizon, anyone?) offered on today’s press call, and you’ll find this deal is even worse than advertised.

The proposal is one massive loophole that sets the stage for the corporate takeover of the Internet.

Real Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers can’t discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. It’s what makes sure the next Google, out there in a garage somewhere, has just as good a chance as any giant corporate behemoth to find its audience and thrive online.

What Google and Verizon are proposing is fake Net Neutrality. You can read their framework for yourself here or go here to see Google twisting itself in knots about this suddenly “thorny issue.” But here are the basics of what the two companies are proposing:

1. Under their proposal, there would be no Net Neutrality on wireless networks — meaning anything goes, from blocking websites and applications to pay-for-priority treatment.

2. Their proposed standard for “non-discrimination” on wired networks is so weak that actions like Comcast’s widely denounced blocking of BitTorrent would be allowed.

3. The deal would let ISPs like Verizon — instead of Internet users like you — decide which applications deserve the best quality of service. That’s not the way the Internet has ever worked,and it threatens to close the door on tomorrow’s innovative applications. (If Real Player had been favored a few years ago, would we ever have gotten YouTube?)

4. The deal would allow ISPs to effectively split the Internet into “two pipes” – one of which would be reserved for “managed services,” a pay-for-pay platform for content and applications. This is the proverbial toll road on the information superhighway, a fast lane reserved for the select few, while the rest of us are stuck on the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.

5. The pact proposes to turn the Federal Communications Commission a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing consumer complaints but unable to make rules of its own. Instead, it would leave it up to unaccountable (and almost surely industry-controlled) third parties to deicide what the rules should be.

Just what the world needs:

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

…

This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.

Sadly, Google has caved to Chinese demands and will once again censor some online content. Principles are clearly flexible for the web giant:

Google, the US internet search company, has agreed to submit to official Chinese censorship.

The Chinese government, on its part, announced the renewal of Google’s licence to operate in the country.

The government’s decision came after the California-based company pledged not to provide “law-breaking content” to internet users in China, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua reported on Sunday, quoting an official with China’s internet regulator, that the licence was renewed for another year for Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co Ltd, the operator of Google’s China website.

The industry and information technology ministry’s website listed Guxiang among some 200 companies whose licences had been renewed until 2012.

Xinhua said Guxiang agreed to “abide by Chinese law” and “ensure the company provides no law-breaking content” in its renewal application letter.

Foreign Policy features an article about the “geo-politics of the iPhone”.

Perhaps the most revealing section:

The business: If you thought military procurement was all about snapping up hardware like guns and tanks, think again. Increasingly, companies like Raytheon and Knight’s Armament are developing smartphone applications for the armed services. Apple and Google are marketing their respective products, too. And the Pentagon’s buying.

The politics: Normally, military innovation drives advances in the private market. Take GPS satellite navigation, for instance, or the microwave oven. In the case of smartphones, though, the tables have turned. Web-enabled phones are going to war in ever greater numbers, and the U.S. military hopes that such devices, with the help of the Internet, can provide soldiers with reams of live battlefield data. But it isn’t just their passive capabilities that the military finds attractive.

In the same way that civilian third-party apps have greatly expanded the potential of the iPhone and similar hand-helds, the Pentagon’s R&D house, DARPA, bets that a military app store can likewise reshape the way soldiers fight and interact with one another. One such app, BulletFlight, lets snipers plug in variables like windage, distance, temperature, and humidity to help them achieve the perfect shot. Another, the One Force Tracker, plots friendly positions on a map in real time, and a third, Vcommunicator, produces “spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish, and two Afghan languages.” It’s no revolution in military affairs, but the smartphone revolution may still shake up war-fighting in a big way.

I’m currently at the Auckland Writer’s Festival. Wonderful event. Speaking to hundreds of people every day – mainly about the Middle East but also on the importance of alternative voices online – and the one message that keeps on coming up is how rarely dissenting Jewish perspectives or those critical of Israel appear in the mainstream here. These are issues I’ll be further exploring during my coming week-long tour around the country.

This story in today’s New Zealand Herald is a breath of fresh air:

Writers’ probing puts a modern edge on conflict in the Middle East

Yesterday was the Israel and Iraq double whammy at the Writers & Readers Festival. On Israel was Antony Loewenstein, who claimed that the Jewish state, like the old South Africa, had an apartheid system – only Israel’s was worse.

Loewenstein, an Australian journalist, is author of the controversial best seller My Israel Question in which he argues that the Jews’ history of persecution ought to make them better able to understand the importance of racial tolerance, and yet these values are anathema in present-day Israel.

He describes himself as a humanist Jew but says his critics have branded him a self-hating Jew for speaking out about Israel’s “blatant racism”. Yet he points out that the West has every right to comment on Israel “because we’re paying for its existence”.

Loewenstein was coherent, relaxed and used good-natured sarcasm: “Is [Israel] better than Iran? Well, yes. But is that the comparison?” Boycott, anyone?

The Iraq question went to Michael Otterman, co-author of Erasing Iraq, who was young enough to point out that the foreign press is now just a mouse click away if we care to Google, say, “Iraqi blogs”.

Both writers also commented that, despite adverts to the contrary, Barack Obama’s foreign policy looks like George W. Bush’s.

Otterman, interviewed by Sean Plunket (who just about kept his own ego in check), started with stats: Nearly five million Iraqis have abandoned their homes since 2003 – the largest movement of people in the Middle East since 1948 (when Israel became a state).

He visited Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan to ask: “What do Iraqis think?” He found that, to many minds, the war had been continuous since 1991, in the form of “genocidal sanctions”. Iraqi views of Saddam were mixed but views on the American occupation since 2003 ranged from bad to worse.

Otterman said ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq had undergone “sociocide” – “the killing of [their] way of life” – since 2003. He called it “evil”.

A session with 24-year-old boy wonder Ben Naparstek was a letdown. He didn’t mention most of the literary giants who feature in In Conversation: Encounters with Great Writers, the book of interviews he’s plugging.

Last night in Sydney I successfully debated with some other colleagues that governments should not censor the internet. One of my co-speakers, Google’s Ross LaJeunesse, has an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald arguing against Australia’s proposed mandatory internet filter.

I agree and it looks like many Australians do, too (via ABC Radio’s PM tonight):

ASHLEY HALL: It seems the more parents learn about the Government’s proposed internet filter, the less they like it.

That’s the finding of a survey of parents in marginal electorates commissioned by a group representing several internet companies, state school organisations and libraries.

The researchers say even though parents want to make the internet safer, they don’t think a mandatory filter is the way to do it.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Most parents worry about what their children are exposed to online.

SUE VERCOE: So they did confess that in reality, while it was their responsibility to control their child’s internet use, often they were just too busy, they didn’t really know how to go about monitoring and installing the free filters and that it was impossible to monitor everything their child was exposed to.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Sue Vercoe is the chief executive of GA Research.

In January it asked 39 parents living in marginal electorates in Sydney and Brisbane what they thought about the Government’s proposed mandatory internet filter.

SUE VERCOE: They haven’t heard much about the Government’s internet filtering legislation but if you ask them whether they support or oppose it, around two thirds are supportive, because at first glance, they believe that it will help ensure their children are not exposed to inappropriate material online.

And some of them also think that it might help combat paedophilia. However, when they hear a little bit more about the proposal and they become aware that there are other filtering options available, their support drops significantly.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Sue Vercoe says even though the number of respondents is small, the survey is significant.

SUE VERCOE: The findings of focus groups can be considered broadly indicative, but they are supported by quantitative research that McNair Ingenuity conducted earlier this year.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: She’s referring to a survey of around 1,000 people in February.

It found 80 per cent of Australian adults supported the proposed mandatory government internet filter to block access to overseas websites containing refused classification material.

But 46 per cent didn’t want the government to determine which websites would be blocked.

Sue Vercoe says GA Research asked the parents to rank four different models of filtering.

SUE VERCOE: The first three preferences that they gave were firstly more education for parents and children about how to use the internet more safely and how to install free filters. The second preference was for an optional filtering system; and where different filter could be set for adults and children within the one household.

Their third preference was for, if it was going to be mandatory filtering, for it to just be a limited range of content, primarily focused on child pornography, and the Government’s more broader mandatory filtering, was actually their last preference.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The research was commissioned by the Safer Internet Group, whose members include Google, iiNet, Yahoo7, the Australian Council of State School Organisations and the Australian Library and Information Association.

But the idea of a mandatory filter still has the support of the Australian Christian Lobby.

The Lobby’s Managing Director Jim Wallace says the new research isn’t valid.

JIM WALLACE: I think it’s typical of the misinformation that’s coming from those opposed to this government proposal. If you look at the Safer Internet Group, eight of the nine people in the association are internet related people.

The McNair Ingenuity survey was done to a bona fide survey model, it surveyed 1,000 people, and 80 per cent of those specifically said that they favoured the mandatory government internet filter that would block access to overseas websites.

So, I find this is spurious. They’ve used just focus groups. You know; who were in the focus groups?

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: A spokeswoman for the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the Government does not support refused classification content being available online.

She says the proposed filter would bring the internet into line with other media outlets.

Here’s a classic clip from the “shooting yourself in the foot” department.

A bunch of Israelis shoot a video called “I’m a Jew” but instead of celebrating the country’s racial diversity – namely, that not only Jews live in Israel – they talk about serving in the military (something Palestinians are unable to do).

The clip may have received more than 50,000 hits on YouTube but how is advertising Israel as a Jewish state help the country’s dwindling global image as a racist nation?

The following article by Erik Jensen appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Governments should not censor the internet. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, disagrees and the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, broadly supports his position.

But two journalists and the head of government affairs for Google in Asia strongly agree with the proposition.

“We have to ask what the Rudd government’s agenda is,” said Antony Loewenstein, a freelance journalist and blogger who is speaking for the motion at the Herald’s IQ2 debate tonight. “And we have to assume it is to appease certain lobby groups – particularly the Christian lobby.”

Mr Loewenstein is joined in condemning clean-feed internet by the head of government affairs for Google in Asia, Ross LaJeunesse, and the Herald’s David Marr.

Broadly, the trio argue that censoring the internet will not work, is not the most effective way to deal with the crimes cited as reasons for censorship, and can be a front for government control of ideas. “The argument government goes for is they’re protecting citizens from harmful content, they’re protecting children from paedophilia,” Loewenstein said. “The truth is in all these countries [China and Iran] there is zero evidence that blocking content is doing anything to these crimes.”

But Elizabeth Handsley, a professor of law at Flinders University and third speaker for the negative, said the argument was not about implementation – it was about government responsibility and developing a mechanism to control content that was already illegal. “The government regulates every other medium of communication,” she said.

In arguing against the motion, she is joined by the Beijing-based commentator Kaiser Kuo and the founding director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, Alastair MacGibbon.

The Herald’s IQ2 debate is held at the City Recital Hall tonight from 6.30.