Tunisians see new Web freedoms as acting president takes over

CNN News, From Rima Maktabi and Ben Wedeman, January 16, 2011

The wave of rallies in Tunesia was sparked by the suicide of an unemployed college graduate,
who torched himself last month after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his source of income.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Filters on websites like Facebook and YouTube have been dropped
• Tunis' main train station has been torched, videos show
• Unhappy Libyan leader tells Tunisians, "I hope your sanity returns"
• The country's acting president calls for a "better political life" in Tunisia

Tunis, Tunisia (CNN) -- Even while under curfew following the ouster of their long-serving authoritarian leader, Tunisians on Saturday experienced newfound freedoms online as their acting president promised a "new phase" for his embattled land.

Filters on websites like Facebook and YouTube, put in place under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, were dropped and Internet speed picked up considerably -- a development that followed the new government's vow to ease restrictions on freedoms.

In addition, three Tunisian journalists -- including two bloggers critical of Ben Ali -- have been freed from jail, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Saturday.

These developments come as Fouad Mebazaa was sworn in as the country's acting leader on Saturday, after Ben Ali and his family took refuge in Saudi Arabia following days of angry street protests against the government

Tunisia's social media revolution Tunisia's uncertain future The day after the president left What's provoked the crisis in Tunisia?

Speaking on national TV, Mebazaa, who had been the country's parliamentary speaker, promised to ensure the nation's "stability," respect its constitution and "pursue the best interest of the nation."

"Citizens, sons and daughters of our country of Tunis, in this important and urgent moment in the history of our beloved country, I appeal to all of you of various political parties, and nationalist organizations, and all civil society organizations to fight for the national interest and to respect the army's command and the national security in security matters, and to preserve private and public property and to bring the return of peace and security in the hearts of the citizens," he said.

Mebazaa's temporary assumption of the presidency corresponds to an article in Tunisia's constitution that says power will be transferred to the parliament speaker when the president resigns, dies or is unable to perform his responsibilities. He asked Mohamed Ghannouchi to remain as prime minister of what is now a caretaker government.

This dramatic power shift comes after the departure of Ben Ali, the leader of the north African country since 1987 who had a reputation for ruthlessness and corruption, Ben Ali fled to Jeddah, where he was welcomed by the Saudi Arabian king.

"The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announces that it stands fully by the Tunisian people, wishing, by God will, its people will stand solid to overcome this difficult phase in its history," the Saudi royal court said in a statement.

Moammar Gadhafi, leader of neighboring Libya, denounced the developments in a televised speech Saturday night. Ben Ali remains the nation's rightful president, per its constitution, and blamed unrest on criminal gangs, he said.

"Sadly, Tunisia is headed to more chaos and we do not know how it will end," he said.

Gadhafi closed his speech by saying he was "sad and hurt" by the recent developments, which he said threatened to derail significant progress in Tunisia.

"I hope your sanity returns and your wounds heal, because you had a big loss that will never return," he said, addressing the Tunisian people.

As the political situation remained fluid, the army appears to have clamped down and established a strong presence on the streets in the cities of Tunisia, long a relatively stable and prosperous country in what diplomats have described as "a rough neighborhood."

Tunisian state TV reported that officials plan to hold presidential elections in 60 days, and an opposition leader told CNN that opposition figures were meeting with the caretaker prime minister to discuss formation of a unity government.

The ruling government declared a state of emergency, ordering a curfew requiring all people to remain indoors between 5 p.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday.

No large street protests in the capital, Tunis, were reported Saturday. But multiple videos posted online showed that Tunis' main train station had been burned.

There were also reports of rioting and looting in the country, and security forces also have been spotted rounding up and roughing up people.

At least 42 people died when a fire swept through a prison in the eastern Tunisian city of Monastir, Dr. Ali Chadly of the University Hospital of Monastir told CNN. It was not immediately clear what sparked the fire.

A travel warning from the British Foreign Office on Saturday said "there have been demonstrations, some violent" and "significant looting" in Tunis and other locations, citing Sousse, Sfax, Nabul, Hammamet, Douze, Kasserine, Requeb and Thia.

Under Ben Ali, Tunisia was a pro-Western state supportive of U.S. policy in the Middle East and in its efforts against terrorism.

On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama condemned "the use of violence against citizens peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia" and lauded "the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people." He also urged Tunisia's government "to respect human rights (and) hold free and fair elections."

The wave of rallies in the North African nation was stirred by the suicide of an unemployed college graduate, who torched himself last month after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his source of income.

Since then, protesters had called for Ben Ali to step down and held daily demonstrations denouncing his government.

The grass-roots protests, organized and supported through online networks centered on Twitter and Facebook, focused on poor living conditions, high unemployment, government corruption and repression.

Amnesty International spokesman Claudio Cordone said that 55 people have been killed over the past several weeks of demonstrations. The former president had put the number at 21 before his departure.

"We hope that the army will match its reputation for being more professional and less trigger-happy than the security forces that have been responsible for much of the violence over the last several weeks," Cordone said.

The tumult, including Ben Ali's departure, has reverberated in the Arab world, where the news of the uprising elated people in other countries across the region, where authoritarian rule has persisted for years.

In Cairo, Egypt, about 100 people inspired by what some are calling the "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia massed in front of the press syndicate and called for a similar uprising there.

Amid heavy security and the presence of many riot police in the city, the people chanted, "Down with Hosni Mubarak," the nation's leader, and called him a corrupt and ruthless ruler.

Tunisia has close cultural and economic links to France, which invaded Tunisia in 1881. That move led to the creation of a protectorate until Tunisia became independent in 1956.

An official statement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted France's "many ties of friendship" to Tunisia and called for free elections as soon as possible.

After Sarkozy met with some senior members of his Cabinet Saturday to discuss Tunisia, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde sent instructions to financial institutions and banks to freeze the assets in France of the Ben Ali family.

French government spokesman Francois Baroin said Saturday that France asked some of Ben Ali's relatives to leave the country, adding that Ben Ali wouldn't be allowed in France.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council on Saturday "expressed its solidarity" with Tunisians and deplored the "excessive use of force against demonstrators."

It also urged "the political stakeholders and the Tunisian people to work together, in unity, consensus and respect for legality, towards a peaceful and democratic transition, which will allow the Tunisian people to freely choose their leaders through free, open, democratic and transparent elections."

Also Saturday, the Arab League released a statement regarding "this historic stage" and urged the "return of calm and security," according to a report by Jordan's state-run news agency, Petra.

The Cairo-based alliance offered support for a peaceful, legal realization of "the Tunisian people's aspirations for a decent, secure and stable future in a climate of democracy and political stability."

Journalists Elham Nakhlawi and Ian Lee contributed to this report.

Related Article:

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Fruit Flies' Neural Networks Solve Distributed Computing Problem Better Than Humans

POPSCI, By Rebecca Boyle, 01.14.2011

Fruit Fly Neural Network Nerve cells that self-select to become sensory organ precursors (SOPs) are identified by arrows in this microscope image. The cells send chemical signals to neighboring cells, blocking them from becoming SOPs and causing them to fluoresce red. via Carnegie Mellon University

The burgeoning neural networks of fruit fly pupae solve a distributed computing problem, arranging sensory bristles in a very efficient, effective manner. Scientists who monitored the bristles‘ growth say they can mimic the flies’ method to build more effective communications networks.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen an insect solve a problem that plagues computer scientists — bees can do it, too — but the fruit fly discovery does one better, leading to an algorithm that can be used to develop more efficient computer and wireless networks.

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Distributed computing involves several processors working in concert to solve a problem. Some are chosen as leaders, collecting data from the other processors and passing it along. Organizing these networks into efficient processor-leader groups is one of the biggest challenges in computing — but millions of cells in a fly’s nervous system do it automatically, organizing themselves so that a small number of cells serve as leaders. It is much better than anything humans have come up with, scientists say: “It is such a simple and intuitive solution, I can’t believe we did not think of this 25 years ago,” according to co-author Noga Alon, a mathematician and computer scientist at Tel Aviv University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Fruit fly bristles, which are used for feeling and hearing, develop as nerve cells self-select to become leaders. The cells send chemical signals to their neighboring cells, ensuring that those cells cannot become leaders, too. Using fluorescence microscopy, the researchers watched an entire network form in about three hours.

They developed an algorithm based on the cells’ self-selection approach, and say it’s particularly effective for adaptive networks where the number and position of each node is not certain, according to Carnegie Mellon University. That could include environmental monitoring sensors, robot swarms and more.

The research is published today in the journal Science.

[Eurekalert]

Gates Foundation, U.S. Government Back Cellphone Banking for Haiti

All Things Digital, by Ina Fried, January 10, 2011

Haitian cellular provider Digicel has received a $2.5 million grant for a project to allow people in the impoverished and earthquake-stricken country to use their mobile phones for banking.

Digicel is the first recipient from a $10 million fund set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the project is designed to speed up the arrival of cellphone banking in Haiti. The effort follows other mobile banking projects such as the M-PESA program in Kenya.

For now, the Haiti Tcho Tcho service, as the banking program is known, allows customers to make deposits and withdrawals at retail outlets, as well as transfer money between Tcho Tcho accounts. Over time, the service is designed to expand to bill payment and international transfers, as well as the ability to pay for government services.

Bill Gates has been a big advocate of establishing banking and savings in emerging markets as a means of breaking the cycle of poverty in developing countries, and cellphones have shown particular promise as a means to provide authentication as well as to deal with the fact that many of the poor live in remote rural areas, making traditional branch-based banking not economically feasible. He touted the Kenyan program during a tour of U.S. colleges last year.

The grant comes at just about the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake on that island nation. Even before the quake, only one in 10 Haitians had access to a traditional bank. Digicel got the grant for being the first company to set up a mobile banking service in the country. A further $1.5 million will go to the next operator to launch service there, while the remaining $6 million will be handed out proportionally to the companies that handle the first five million transactions.

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said that the move is part of America’s effort to provide long-term assistance “to help the Haitian people build back better.”

“The role of innovative companies like Digicel will be critical to ensuring the sustainability of our investments here,” Merten said in a statement.

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Nokia Pledges Easy Payment for Phone Apps in Indonesia

RIM to filter Indonesia Web traffic

CNet News, by Don Reisinger

Research In Motion will block pornography accessed through its smartphones in Indonesia.

The company announced today that it will develop a "prompt, compliant filtering solution" for Indonesia BlackBerry users by the country's January 21 deadline. If RIM doesn't start filtering out pornographic sites through its service by that date, the company could find itself in hot water with the Indonesian government.

According to Bloomberg, which first reported the story and spoke with officials in Indonesia, the country could block BlackBerry Web browsing altogether if RIM doesn't filter pornography.

Indonesia was quick to point out to Bloomberg that it wasn't alone in battling with RIM over Web-access regulations. Heru Sutadi of the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body told Bloomberg that "Middle Eastern countries are also being hard on RIM."

Last year, RIM faced threats of service bans from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over those countries' demand to have access to communications on BlackBerry devices. The company's strict encryption and security features make it nearly impossible for governments to monitor communications through its smartphones. The countries contend that by not providing access to BlackBerry communications, RIM is putting them at risk of terrorism.

Reports later surfaced, claiming RIM was able to come to terms with Saudi Arabia by reportedly installing a server in the country to allow the government to monitor communications. However, RIM has said publicly that it has never entered into special arrangements with countries, and it has no way to provide governments with the data they desire, due to the encryption it employs.

That argument has been echoed numerous times in RIM's battles with India.

Back in August, the Indian government threatened to shut down BlackBerry service if RIM didn't provide it with access to e-mail, instant messages, and Web browsing data. RIM didn't give in to those demands at the time, and said that it didn't have a "master key" that would allow the company to provide governments with access to communications, even if it wanted to. The company also said that it didn't believe it should be singled out.

"This challenge can only be truly overcome if the information and communications technology industry comes together as a whole to work with the government of India," RIM said in a statement. "The use of strong encryption in wireless technology is not unique to the BlackBerry platform. It is unquestionably an industrywide matter."

But that hasn't stopped India from continuing to take aim at the company. It created a new deadline for the end of January for RIM to offer access to communications. The government also started negotiating with companies that use BlackBerry devices to circumvent RIM's objections and gain access to their communications.

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Apple to release iPad 2 in next "3-4" weeks?

English.news.cn   2011-01-10

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Apple is expected to release a new generation of its popular tablet computer iPad in the next “three to four” weeks, according to Kevin Rose, the founder of content-sharing website Digg.

"I have it on good authority that Apple will be announcing the iPad 2 in the next '3-4' weeks,' possibly Tuesday February 1st.," Rose was quoted by media reports Monday as saying in his blog.

"The iPad 2 will feature a retina display and front/back camera. If you're thinking of buying an iPad, hold off for now."

A new generation of iPad might include cameras, FaceTime video chat and mini-USB port, according to an earlier report from PC World.

In earlier December, 2010, news reports said Apple had planned to possibly start mass production of the next-generation iPad in January, but those plans were postponed until about February, as the tablet's hardware and specifications have not been finalized by Apple.

So far, Apple has given no official confirmation regarding the release of the tablet.

Editor: Deng Shasha

WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas

Call comes after revelation that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks members' private details

guardian.co.uk, Peter Beaumont, Saturday 8 January 2011

'Free Julian Assange' protestors demonstrate in central London before the WikiLeaks
founder's court hearing in December. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook unseal any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter secretly to hand over details of accounts and use of the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.

Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wideranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure.

"Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," WikiLeaks said in a statement today.

The writ, approved by a court in Virginia in December, demands that the San Franscisco based micro-blogging site hand over all details of accounts and private messaging on Twitter – including the computers and networks – used by five individuals.

Those include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Manning, Icelandic MP Brigitta Jonsdottir and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. Three of those – Gonggrijp, Assange and Jonsdottir – were named as "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache, a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalist in Baghdad.

The broad-reaching legal document also targets an account held by Jacob Applebaum, a US computer programmer whose computer and phones were examined by US officials in July after he was stopped returning from Holland to the US.

The court issuing the subpoena said it believed that it believed that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe Twitter held information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."

It also ordered Twitter not to notify the targets of the subpoena, which the company successfully challenged.

The court order crucially demands that Twitter hand over details of source and destination Internet Protocol addresses used to access the accounts, which would help investigators identify how the named individuals communicated with each other, as well as email addresses used.

The emergence of the subpoena appears to confirm for the first time the existence of a secret grand jury empanelled to investigate whether individuals associated with WikiLeaks, and Assange in particular, can be prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with Manning to steal the classified documents.

US attorney general Eric Holder has already said publicly that he believed that Assange could be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act. The court that issued the subpoena is in the same jurisdiction where press reports have located a grand jury investigating Assange.

It has also been reported that Manning has been offered a plea bargain if he co-operates with the investigation.

The emergence of the Twitter subpoena – which was unsealed after a legal challenge by the company – emerged after WikiLeaks announced that it believed other US Internet companies had also been ordered to hand over information about its activities.

WikiLeaks also condemned the court order, saying it amounted to harassment.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," Assange said in the statement.

"I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone," Jonsdottir said in a Twitter message.

Twitter has declined comment on the claim, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.

The subpoena itself is an unusual one known as a 2703(d) which a recent Federal appeals court ruled was insufficient to order the disclosure of the contents of communication. Significantly, however, that ruling is binding in neither Virginia – where it was issued – or in San Francisco where Twitter is based.

Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly".

Appelbaum, whose Twitter feed suggested he was traveling in Iceland, said he was apprehensive about returning to the US. "Time to try to enjoy the last of my vacation, I suppose," he tweeted.

Gonggrijp praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the US had subpoenaed his details. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."

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Growing the Google Africa Team in 2011

Google Blog, Friday, January 7, 2011

2010 was a year packed with initiatives for the Google Africa team. Our entire cross-functional team has been striving to make the Internet a part of every day life in Sub-Saharan Africa and we’ve been engaged in a host of activities across the region.

There were a number of highlights this year - from G-days that have now become a regular part of our outreach program, to product launches such as Google Maps across the region, Gmail and Chrome in Amharic and Swahili, and YouTube in South Africa. We also celebrated the continent’s passion for football, including through our Doodle for Google competition in three African countries, launched the University Access Program in Lagos, and swept Accra with flash mobs to announce the launch of Google Trader.

We’ve enjoyed sharing our reflections and passion with you through this blog and we’re delighted to report that in the coming year, we plan to grow our Africa team. We are expanding most of our teams, including Business, Sales, University Outreach, Developer Outreach and Marketing with over 20 open positions in Nairobi, Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg and Dakar.

We are looking for the most talented, creative, smart and energetic candidates. Our hiring bar remains extremely high, since at Google we believe that people are our most important asset. We value local knowledge in addition to international experience and exceptional academic achievements.

If you think you meet these requirements, or know someone who does, please submit your resume via our online system.

Posted by Joseph Mucheru, Regional Lead, Sub Saharan Africa

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Internet Surpasses Television as Main News Source for Young Adults [STUDY]

Mashable/Tech, Meghan Peters

The Internet is now the main national and international news source for people ages 18 to 29, a study from the Pew Research Center reports.

In 2010, 65% of people younger than 30 cited the Internet as their go-to source for news, nearly doubling from 34% in 2007. The number who consider television as their main news source dropped from 68% to 52% during that time.*

Of all 1,500 American adults surveyed, 41% say they get their national and international news from the Internet, up 17% from 2007. Sixty-six percent cite television — down from 74% — indicating the trend is spreading among other age groups.

Forty-eight percent of those ages 30 to 59 cite the Internet as their main news source, up from 32% in 2007, while television went down from 71% to 63%. Though the number of those in the 51 to 64 age group who consider television their main news source (71%) is about the same, those who turn to the Internet (34%) is nearly equal to the number who cite newspapers (38%). The amount of people 65 and older who get their news from the Internet has risen from 5% to 14%, but television remains the chief source for 79% of respondents.

These numbers fall in line with the rise of the personalized news stream online. Both Facebook’s news feed and Twitter launched in summer 2006 but didn’t catch on until 2007. Both sites have seen explosive growth since 2008. Tweet counts have increased from 5,000 daily in 2007 to 90 million daily in 2010, while Facebook went from 30 million users in 2007 to more than 500 million users today.

In addition, the television viewership culture has shifted in the past few years. Between media streaming services on the web and, more recently, Internet-TV connection devices like Roku and Boxee, people have more viewing options than ever before. With the ability to personalize what news and entertainment you consume, these television watching methods have become more desirable for many.

Which is your preferred news source? Internet or television? Tell us in the comments below.

*Figures add to more than 100% because respondents could volunteer up to two main news sources.

Where have our inboxes gone? Hotmail users log in to discover their emails have been deleted

Daily Mail, By DAILY MAIL REPORTER, 2nd January 2011

Email giant MSN is facing a barrage of complaints from Hotmail users who claim emails have been deleted from their accounts.

A number of users resorted to forums to vent their frustration after they logged in to find empty inboxes and missing folders. It is unclear whether the problem lies with Microsoft, which owns MSN, or whether it is the work of hackers.

Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back e-mails of old. A chorus of frantic users has posted complaints on Microsoft's online forum that all of their messages have disappeared.

Not-so-Hotmail: Many users logged on to discover their inboxes had been deleted

'Please help me get them back,' wrote one user under the moniker 'Zacgore' in a post dated Saturday. 'All my kids' info and pictures are in there!'

Others complain that the majority of the e-mail in their inboxes was sent to their deleted mail folders instead. It is unclear from the posts how widespread the problem is. The free Web-based e-mail service is the world's most used with about 360 million users, according to comScore Inc.

It is not known yet how many account holders are affected.

Windows Live support technicians have said in numerous threads that the Hotmail team is aware of the problem and working on a fix.

'At this point it appears to be a limited issue, and Microsoft is working with individual users who are impacted. We apologise for any inconvenience to our customers,' Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said. She declined to disclose what caused the glitch.

Microsoft's forum contains 476 pages of complaints about lost and deleted e-mails that date back to early November.

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FBI in hunt for pro-WikiLeaks hackers: report

RNW,  1 January 2011

The FBI has joined the hunt for hackers who took down websites like PayPal, after they stopped processing payments to whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, US media reports said Friday.

The Smoking Gun website published five pages of an FBI affidavit, detailing an operation that took US federal investigators to Europe, Canada and back to the United States as they hunted down the "Internet activists" who launched attacks "against perceived corporate enemies of WikiLeaks."

The attacks earlier this month targeted firms including electronic payments site PayPal, and Visa and Mastercard credit cards, which had suspended or frozen WikiLeaks’s accounts after the whistle-blowing website published thousands of sensitive Department of State cables.

In mid-December, the FBI traced Internet protocol addresses for the hackers to Canada and then back to California where a virtual server that was assigned one of the IP addresses used to launch the attacks was housed.

At around the same time, a separate investigation into the pro-WikiLeaks attacks by Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) found that other commands to launch denial of service attacks on PayPal had come from an IP address assigned to a Texas-based company that hosts servers.

The FBI raided the Texas firm on December 16, according to the Smoking Gun, which uses Freedom of Information requests to obtain material from government and law enforcement sources.

During the Texas server-farm raid, FBI agents reportedly copied two hard drives inside a server, but "court records do not detail what was found on those drives, nor whether the information led to a suspect or, perhaps, a continuing electronic trail," the Smoking Gun says.

The FBI probes are ongoing, and are being coordinated from field offices in California.

FBI agents were not immediately available for comment.