Things that are important or interesting that I haven’t written about: WikiLeaks is drumming up some hype before releasing video of a drone strike that claimed civilian lives. That’s not going to improve their relationship with the gummint. Viral social networking is transforming the ability to get groups together and make change happen. Yes yes, […]
The Marines are onboard with this whole Social Networking thing, following along with guidelines from On High. From Wired’s Danger Room It’s a remarkable about-face. A Marine Corps order last summer described such sites as “a proven haven for malicious actors and content.” And it warned that adversaries were using SNS [social network sites] as an “attack […]
Bloomberg (home to belovedly hard-to-use finance info terminals, as well as actual news) notes that the Taliban systematically destroys the mobile phone infrastructure of the (shrinking?) chunks of Afghanistan they control. Why? Afghanistan, with 29 million people, had as many as 12 million cellular-service subscribers in December, according to the Afghan government. Fifty-two percent of the population […]
GoDaddy, home of lousy Internet hosting and scandalous Super Bowl ads, has inexplicably been a success with their cut-rate domain registration and hosting. Meanwhile, in the Middle Kingdom the Chinese government continues grasp as many levers of control over Internet users as possible. To register your own web name in the Chinese domain name space (eg, […]
Game’s up. Google has shut down its web search on the mainland. Google blog post; NYT story. The company is attempting to route Chinese users to a simplified Chinese* Hong Kong site, where local legislation does not require them to censor their results. A clever attempt at an elegant face-saving solution, considering the fulmination about the necessity […]
Iran is playing for keeps on Internet censorship. More details have emerged on the activists arrested in conjunction with the hacking of US servers that took place last week. Via InsideIran: [T]he group arrested by Iranian authorities was the committee against censorship in Iran that goes by the name Iran Proxy. This group is composed […]
Things worthy of note that I haven’t written posts on: A fun blow-by-blow of a security researcher warning a bunch of execs about their hackability – and then pwning them. WikiBooks is writing the textbook on cryptography. Learn or contribue! h/t Schneier The Internet is radicalizing terrorists in the United States, too Uncivil society flourishes on the Intertubes. […]
There’s a new Global Internet Freedom caucus in Congress. This is not necessarily a big deal – there are a lot of caucuses. Some are extremely active, and others, not so much. (Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus?) Considering their name, this one will likely be focused on issues raised by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, […]
The unstoppable force and immovable object may have begun their tango: it looks like China and Google are heading for a collision. Reports from the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal (sorry, lame-o subscription) say that talks between the Chinese government and the search giant are at an impasse. The Chinese, meanwhile, have insisted […]
Bombshell from Iran, on a couple of metaphorical levels: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, everyone’s favorite bad guys these days, hacked a couple dozen web sites of human rights activists working in Iran, claiming they were agents for American intelligence services. In Farsi, “rights defender” apparently translates as “American spy”. Then the regime’s increasingly brazen goons arrested 30 […]
Online criminals stole waaay more money from e-banking accounts than they did from brick-and-mortar analogues. As more and more of our life is online, keep expecting to see somewhat shocking statistics like this. For instance, the iTunes store became the largest music vendor in the world years ago. (‘Cuz that’s where the money is, right?)
Birds of a political feather flock together. That’s the takeaway from a political science study that shows that people with a partisan slant get their news from partisan sources that reinforce their pre-existing views – e.g., moonbats follow DailyKos and the Huffington Post, wingnuts read Free Republic and the Drudge Report while watching Fox. As Evgeny Morozov has argued, […]
Wired reports that China and Google are close to wrapping up talks over the search giant’s threat to withdraw from the country if it is forced to continuing censorship of results. In the piece our old friend Mr. Anonymous Source suggests that Google would be willing to step up censorship of gambling and porn if […]
Anonymity on social networks is difficult. Sounds like a contradiction in terms, right? But what you choose to share with some is not what should be available to all. If you’re posting your Federalist Papers, you might want an alias. If you are planning a high school reunion, you’ll need your real name. Thanks to some clever browser […]
Americans are getting a majority of their news online – and have a much more dynamic relationship with their information sources. Bad guys are taking over your computer in ways you don’t expect. Adobe, please get on the ball, will ya? Congress is putting tech firms in the hot seat for undermining human rights online. […]