Evidence for the prosecution: Analysis of more than 2.5m Twitter messages relating to the riots in England has cast doubt on the rationale behind government proposals to ban people from social networks or shut down their websites in times of civil unrest. A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian,…
Showing all posts tagged internet
Should we trust tech companies talking about censoring speech?
The complete lack of transparency with telecommunication firms deciding with the assistance of government if and when calls or web connections should be stopped or censored is highly disturbing. Who wants a faceless firm making such decisions? From yesterday’s UK Observer: After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and this summer’s looting in England,…
Privacy and censorship in the online world are foreign concepts?
I was recently spoke in Sydney at the University of New South Wales at the conference of the Australian Law Students’ Association on the issues of privacy and censorship in Australia and globally. Here’s extracts from that event (though my comments here are very brief and rest assured I said many other things, including citizens…
Yet another Western firm complicit with Chinese repression
A company that should be named, shamed and shunned (via the Sydney Morning Herald): Cisco, one of the world’s largest technology companies, is being sued by Chinese political prisoners for allegedly providing the technology and expertise used by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people. Dan Ward, of US law…
Web “security” firms doesn’t mean helping autocrats feel secure
Surely companies that assist repressive regimes in their censorship should pay a legal and ethical price in their home country? This is an argument in my book The Blogging Revolution (just re-released in an updated edition). This story is from Guelph Mercury: A Guelph tech firm with a reputation for making tools to control information…
You can only push “austerity cuts” so far and not expect payback
The rioting in Britain has shocked Britain and the world but it really should not. Is this about payback for years of police mistreatment, a powerful statement from those who feel ostracised from mainstream England or criminal looters? A little bit of everything. The Guardian expands on the social media aspect: In October 1985, on…
The Blogging Revolution updated post the Arab revolutions
In 2008 my second book, The Blogging Revolution, was released. It told the story of the internet in repressive regimes. Now, post the Arab uprisings, I’ve updated the title and it’s been released globally this week as an e-book via Melbourne University Press:
Iran’s insecure mullahs attempt to cut off country from the web
Insane, unworkable and signs of autocrats who fear freedom of expression and their own citizens: Communication and information technology minister Reza Taqipour Anvari announced at the start of July that the first phase of a “National Internet,” also called “Clean Internet,” will get under way at the end of August, offering an 8 Mbps speed…
Hacking is moving into industrial scale
Leaking is not the same as hacking. And they’re not all created equal. Bradley Manning allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US documents to Wikileaks showing a litany of criminality in the “war on terror”. His act, should it be proven true, was a noble attempt to alert the world of wrong-doing and violence. Cyber…