The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 249) starts off with updates on two stories we've been following closely in recent weeks, Iran and China. First, an update on the use of social media tools in the wake of post-election violence in Iran. Twitter might be enabling the flow on information into and out of the country, but can you trust what you're reading? Cyrus Farivar explores that question. Also, the Chinese delay a plan to require every PC sold in China to come loaded with a piece of Internet-filtering software called Green Dam, Youth Escort. Human rights groups have criticized the software, and so too have security experts who say it's so full of holes that hackers could turn China into one huge zombie computer network.
Oh, that cute little cuddly bunny! Surely he or she wouldn't want to control what you're allowed to see online, right? Well, this is a screenshot from a little piece of Windows software called Green Dam Youth Escort. As of July 1, everyWindows PC sold in China will have to have this piece of software installed on it. According to Chinese officials, the software is designed to protect Chinese youth from "pornography and violent content" online. In the past, that's generally been a smokescreen for a major new push to curtail Internet freedom in China. As China web-watcher Rebecca McKinnon notes in this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 246): "[Green Dam Youth Escort] takes censorship down to the level of the individual computer." But already there are reports that the software is vulnerable to hack attacks.
Fighting between the Pakistani Army and Taliban forces in the Swat Valley has created nothing short of a humanitarian disaster. More than two million people have been forced to flee their homes, becoming what the aid business calls Internally Displaced Persons, or IDPs. United Nations groups such as the World Food Program have been on the ground for weeks now, trying to get aid to where it is most needed. Those groups can't get that done without modern, secure communications. And that means two-way radios, laptops, GPS, and satellite data uplinks. And that's where people like Dane Novarlic come in. He's an emergency response coordinator for the World Food Program. He and his team go into areas affected by natural disasters and wars, and help aid groups get connected to each other, and to the rest of the world.
We're positively e-bookish in this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 241). First, we discuss the merits, and demerits, of Google's Book Search project, which wants nothing more of less than to digitize every book on the planet (Google's not good at thinking small, we've noticed). Needless to say, Google's little scheme has its critics, and also its competitors. UNESCO has recently launched a little digitization project of its own, called The World Digital Library. We'll give you a little peek, and a listen, to some of what the United Nations is offering up, and not just in English. All of this talk about digitization got us to thinking: do traditional paper books have a future? Or, will more and more of us migrate to e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, Sony's e-reader, or...Apple's iPhone? It's a question worthy of discussion, and so we've got an in-depth report on what lies ahead for e-publishing. You'll be shocked to learn that some people think paper will vanish as a medium for publishing in the next 50 years, which others scoff and say that our attachment to the printed page is too strong for that to happen. One question sent in by podcast listener John Kapitzky struck me as pertinent here: "Will the e-book reader I have in 30 years be capable of reading the e-book I buy today, or will I have to keep buying new e-editions of books that I like?" It's a good question for a future podcast, methinks.
Moving on, we also take a look at some very cool software designed to help folks get around Internet filtering technologies. It's called Psiphon, and its brought to you by the same people who track online censorship around the world, the OpenNet Initiative, which WTP has covered before, most recently here and here. We have an interview with one of Psiphon's engineers, Nart Villeneuve.
And we end with Yahoo's Purple Pedals project. Take a look at what happens when you outfit some purple bikes with a webcam and geo-location software, and then let them loose in the world:
This week's edition of The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 238) leads with a story on two recent reports concerning China and the Internet. The first, as you can see from graphic, is called Tracking GhostNet. It was researched and written by an outfit called the Information Warfare Monitor. This is a complementary effort to something I've written about before on the blog: the OpenNet Initiative(ONI). The people behind ONI started the Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) to do more extensive looks at what happens when nations, companies, and other entities go on the cyber-offensive. In this case, GhostNet refers to a massive south and south-east Asian cyber-espionage ring discovered by IWM researchers. More than 1,000 computers in more than 100 countries were targeted. And not just any computers. We're talking embassies, diplomatic missions, human rights groups and the like. And while it looks like Chinese computers were involved, you'll hear how hard (and illegal) it is to prove the Chinese government is behind it (something Beijing whole-heartedly denies). We have an extended interview with Ronald Deibert, one of the principal investigators on the project.
The other report is, admittedly, only partly about China and the Internet. The US-based rights group Freedom House has spent the last two years running a pilot project to monitor and gauge to overall level of Internet freedom in some 15 countries, ranging from Cuba to South Africa, from the United Kingdom to Iran. The result is Freedom on the Net. It ties into the story above because, perhaps not surprisingly, China earns a "not free" ranking from Freedom House when it comes to what the Chinese people can and can't access, what they can and can't say, online. I speak with Karin Karlekar, managing editor of the Freedom on the Net project.
As promised, we also have the second half of our interview Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution. You can read more about that from last week's post. At the end of the interview, I have some questions for him about Wikipedia and its history of being blocked, and now unblocked (at least most of it) in China.
And we end with a segment dedicated to all you Do-It-Yourself tech lovers out there. Make Magazine's been running Maker Faire since 2006. The Faires are true celebrations of personal creativity and craftiness: a solar-powered chariot pulled by an Arnold Schwarzenegger robot, anyone? Now, the party has moved across the big pond, to Britain. Listen in to hear how Maker Faire tranlates into Geordie (it was held in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) and all those other lovely dialects of the Queen's English. Good fun!
Also, big thanks to all you Twitter and Facebook followers who put shame aside and sent in your selections for the "What was the first song/album/band I listened to on a Sony Walkman?" question. The soundtrack to this week's podcast, for better of worse, is yours.
I'm sorry, but you have to love a robotic fish, especially one that is being deployed to combat pollution. This little guy's been swimming around the London aquarium for a while, but Tech Podcast 236 brings word that schools of the little beauties will be equipped with sensors, and then deployed to monitor pollution at ports around Europe. Bottom feeders, indeed. We'll hear from Rory Doyle, a researcher who is involved in the project.
We also hear about Omidreza Mirsayafi, an Iranian blogger who recently died in the country's notorious Evin Prison. Mirsayafi had been arrested once before, but released. Then, in February, he was summoned again for questioning, and detained. It is unclear exactly how Mirsayafi died, although as you'll hear in the podcast, he had been extremely depressed since being detained. Most of the articles on Mirsayafi' blog were about Persian music and culture, not politics. Human rights groups are calling for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. This post will give you a feel for Mirsayafi's writing.
There was a lot of feedback, both on the blog and via email, to our segment last week on closed-circuit television in the United Kingdom. One great email came from Doktor Jon, a 30 year industry veteran who took some of our coverage to task. Listen in to our follow-up and have some CCTV myths and statistics questioned and debunked.
And we end with homage to Battlestar Galactica (BSG), the Sci-Fi network's immense "reimaging" of the original series. We know it's not strictly tech, or even science, but we couldn't resist including it this week, considering the United Nations thinks that the way BSG tackled hot topics like terrorism, torture and refugees makes it worthy of (a panel) discussion. Frak me.
A bit of theme runs through this week's Technology Podcast from PRI's The World. That theme is surveillance. In fact, we take a hard look at all manner of technologies and entities that are, in fact, looking at you. The most interesting of the bunch is this man, Canadian Rob Spence. Spence lost one eye to a shotgun accident when we was a kid. Now, he's a one-eyed filmmaker who is about to implant a special camera in his prosthetic eye. You can probably already see where this is going. He's going to use the camera to make a film. And yes, it raises all kinds of interesting questions about technology and privacy. And that's why for WTP 235 we get Rob on the line to answer those questions. He's calling his project EYEborg...
But along the way to Spence, we make some interesting stops. First, we head to Great Britain, where closed-circuit television cameras are, well, everywhere. It seems like you can't make a move in the UK without your image being captured. It's made for intense debate, as you might imagine. Some feel it is a clear intrusion on privacy. Others say it is necessary to deter crime and terrorism. Recently, Britain's House of Lords released a report questioning whether Britain was turning into a "surveillance state." You'll be shocked to learn the word "Orwellian" is being thrown around. Did anyone else hear the clocks strike 13? Anyway, we have a report from the streets of London, and then a discussion between Gus Hosein of Privacy International and the London School of Economics, and John Dwyer, a former constable and now Managing Director of Zeon Business Protection Services.
We also make a stop in Germany, where the government is mulling over "anti-snooping" legislation after some major German businesses, including the rail operator Deutsche Bahn, were caught spying on their employees electronically. We have a report from Berlin on the scandals, and the legislation.
And is spying potentially all that bad? Well, not if you're the parent of one of those reckless teen drivers. Actually, road accidents account for a huge percentage of teen deaths in the United States. And so, we have a report from Maryland on the trial of something called DriveCam. Yep, it's a little camera attached to one of the rearview mirrors. It allows parents to keep an eye on their teenagers driving habits. The idea, of course, is to encourage better teenage driving. If the camera detects an "infraction," the footage is reviewed, and an email is sent to the parents. Dude, that sucks.
A reminder that you can always peek in on what WTP is up to. We're on Twitter and Facebook. You can always check out any of our other 234 episodes via the archive.
Tech Podcast 234 begins as any good technology podcast should. Namely, with a web-surfing sheep called Shep that can't seem to reach the site he wants. Now Shep is actually Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. For a number of years now, Jonathan's research interests have included documenting and analyzing Internet filtering globally. He helped author Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering as part of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI). But he wanted something to complement the academically rigorous and relatively slow research done by ONI. So, he helped create something called Herdict, an effort in crowd-sourcing reports of blocked websites. "Verdict" from the "herd:" get it?
We then rove to Belgium with reporter Cyrus Farivar. No, not in search of beer or chocolate. But instead, to a Belgian University that recently ran a test of what some think might be answer to all the hanging chads that have played American elections in the past. It's called "voter-verifiable" voting, and if you know some math, you can -- all by yourself -- ensure that your vote was counted, and counted correctly. It's called Helios the brainchild of cryptography guru Ben Adida.
Moving south, we turn up in Italy to see if Italians can give up one of the their greatest addictions for Lent -- text messaging on their mobile phones. And we hear about how some Italian politicians are being given special, shall we say, dispensation in an effort to get them to sign onto a fingerprint-enabled voting system.
And we end with a check-in with Ken Banks, the man behind one of the most interesting and useful mobile phone tools I've ever written about: FrontlineSMS. Ken jokingly and lovingly calls it "software with an attention deficit disorder." He's not helping, because he just keeps adding new features. The latest one is something called FrontlineForms. If FrontlineSMS turns a mobile phone network into a mass messaging system, then FrontlineForms is designed to turn that same network into a mass data collection and storage system. It sounds like small potatoes, but in many parts of the world, it could help collect health data, agricultural data, and even human rights data. Good stuff.
Yesterday, a large and diverse group of big tech companies, human rights groups, academic institutions and socially responsible investment firms announced the launch of something called the Global Network Initiative (GNI). Supported by the heavyweight troika of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft (not to mention Human Rights Watch), the GNI is first and foremost a code of conduct, a first step in creating a set of best practices that tech companies can follow to avoid becoming complicit in Internet censorship, and to protect user privacy. I heard rumblings of this sort of thing while reporting on Yahoo's recent problems with turning over user information to the Chinese government; that information led to the arrest and imprisonment of two Yahoo users in China. See here and here for background. And while Yahoo bore the brunt of Congressional criticism (the late Rep. Tom Lantos called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang a "moral pygmy" during a Congressional hearing), let's not forget that China asked Microsoft to shut down blogs critical of Beijing, and insisted that Google filter search engine results. And those two companies complied, seemingly without much hesitation.
The whole idea of the GNI, which is a completely voluntary organization (one participant has called it "a coalition of the willing"), is to give tech companies that sign on a road map when it comes to dicey situations. It enshrines big principles such as freedom of expression, user privacy, and transparency. But it also tries to provide concrete ways that companies can implement the principles into their business practices. During a conference call yesterday, Michael Samway, VP and Deputy General Counsel at Yahoo said:
"We're talking about fusing business decisions with human rights analysis, so that we can think about business issues looking through a human rights lens. Additional steps would include conduting a human rights assessment before entering into new markets, and employee training around human rights issues."
Critics of the plan say that it has no teeth, that the GNI doesn't give specific enough steps for companies to follow. They also worry that there is no real enforcement mechanism to ensure that companies remain compliant. Those who have signed onto the plan, though, contend that it's a process, not a finished set of rules, and that the practicalities will be ironed out over the next few years.
In the past, the Big Three have always used this out when asked tough questions about doing business in countries that engage in Internet censorship: "Hey, to do business in these countries, we have to abide by the laws of the land." The GNI, it's hoped, will provide companies with a collective mechanism for ditching that excuse.
Of course, Yahoo and Google and Microsoft are big players. But what about companies like Cisco, which provides alot of the hardware that countries use to filter the Internet? What about all those smaller companies that supply filtering software to Tunisia and Saudi Arabia?
This morning, I interviewed Colin Maclay, acting executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Berkman was heavily involved in the drafting of the GNI principles, and will work on the implementation and enforcement moving forward. He told me:
Many of these other companies are either not acknowledging their role in censorship or surveillance, or are not doing so publicly at least. [GNI's] tent is big. We would love to include any of those companies who are committed to making progress in these areas. But I don't want them here if they're not committed. If they're looking for fig leaf, they're looking in the wrong place.
As you ready yourself for tonight's final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I'd like to draw your attention to...wait for it...the Presidential election in Azerbaijan. Azeris went to the polls today to, well, give the incumbent Ilham Aliyev (son of the previous leader) yet another term in office. Expect a landslide; all of the major opposition groups boycotted the election. But one candidate didn't. Take a gander at Shiraslan Qurbanov, straight out of the Azeri heartland, according to his bio. My Azeri is a bit rusty, but I'm assured that the slogan reads, "The People's Candidate." Uncle Shiraslan, as he's known, just happens to be 70 years old today...on election day of all days. Again, according to his official bio.
But don't let Shiraslan's age fool you. The man seems to be an online whizkid. He's got lots of Azeris on his email list, not to mention his own slick website, his own Facebook page, and his own channel on YouTube. No wonder the younger generation is excited about Shiraslan's candidacy, no?
Bakhtiyar Hajiyev is the "political director" of Shiraslan's campaign. He told me in an interview today that "young Azeris are looking for new faces, new actors in Azerbaijani politics. Shiraslan is a very positive politician." Hajiyev pointed out as plusses not only his candidate's rejection of negative campaigning, but also his strong foreign policy.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
"It sounds like a paradox, but the only real opposition candidate in this election...is a virtual candidate," says Hajiyev.
Yep. Shiraslan only exists online. Hajiyev, who is a student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, worked with some other Azeri expats to create their own opposition candidate. At first, real opposition groups in Azerbaijan laughed Shiraslan off as a joke. But when they saw the success the virtual candidate was acheiving, they quickly started web sites and YouTube channels for their own, real candidates.
"We want to send a message that if there is no platform to discuss and reach people offline, you can at least try online. You can reach some voters, and create momentum," Hajiyev told me.
As for Shiraslan, no, he's not actually on the ballot. A cell phone text message campaign today urged those disinclined to vote to head to the polls, and scrawl Shiraslan's name across the ballot. Sure, that negates the ballot under Azeri law, but at least, the thinking goes, you might actually feel like voting.
And if all else fails, you can enjoy the Shiraslan rap. I'm pretty sure you can learn some useful Azeri swear words in here...but don't quote me on that.
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