Speak softly and carry a USB stick

RNW, 14 January 2012, by Robert Chesal          

 (Radio Netherlands Worlwide)

  

Western governments are investing millions to keep human rights activists online in countries like Syria, Iran and China. They're giving citizen journalists the technology to skirt the surveillance and disruption of data traffic by repressive regimes. But despite this aid, Europe and the US are accused of hypocrisy on internet freedom.

The latest moves by Iran illustrate why bloggers there need Western help. The government has ordered cybercafes to log exhaustive details on the identity and internet use of all customers. According to reformist newspaper Roozegar, Tehran may soon introduce its own, national version of the internet and permanently block Iranians' access to the global web. Ahead of parliamentary elections in March, the government wants to ensure Iran won't see the next Facebook revolution.

Shadow Internet

To make sure pro-democracy bloggers there can keep informing each other and the outside world, the West has been sending aid. Not in the shape of money, but technology: tailor-made equipment and software that ensure internet access and protection from spyware. It goes by names like 'The Shadow Internet' and 'Internet in a Suitcase.'

Impressed by social media's role in the Arab Spring, both the US and Europe are smuggling this technology across hostile borders and into the hands of pro-democracy activists. "Our goal is to expand the space for free speech and to strengthen democratic society," says Monique Doppert of HIVOS, a Dutch development aid group.

Last year HIVOS distributed 5,000 copies of Security-in-a-Box, a software package that helps people hide their communication activity from the authorities. It contains tips on issues like safe encryption of data and creating strong passwords. "You can even fit the software on a USB stick. That's all you need."

Cyber security

Copies have also been distributed in Syria. "We don't know how many are in circulation there. They can also download the software from the internet and we have no way of tracing who's using it," says Doppert. And there lies a problem. It can fall into the wrong hands.

The sophistication of aid technology for bloggers is being matched step-for-step by increasingly cyberwise state security apparatuses, Doppert acknowledges. "The regimes are learning from the technology we send. And from each other." She believes Iran might even be helping Syria ramp up its cyber security.

Tracking and tracing

"It's a kind of cat and mouse game," says European Parliament member Marietje Schaake, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, is Europe’s most wired politician. "We have to keep updating the technology used by human rights defenders so they can avoid tracking and tracing surveillance. "

She says dictatorships have shown a chilling ability to catch on to the latest advances. "I talked to someone who was imprisoned in Iran, who said half of those in prison with him were confronted with transcripts of their text messages, phone calls and emails. Skype was long thought 100% secure until Egyptian activists found transcripts of their own Skype conversations when they raided a police office in Cairo."

Corporate complicity

This is hardly surprising. Repressive regimes have been buying surveillance technology from the West with great enthusiasm in recent years. Nokia Siemens Networks sold a mobile network to Iran prior to the 2009 crackdown, Schaake points out.

Schaake also mentions the Italian company Area Spa, which was building a monitoring centre to centralise all internet and mobile traffic in Syria and actually had Italian technicians on the ground. "It's not even a matter of naming one or two companies, this is quite a common practice." Western sales of surveillance systems to countries like Syria dwarf the amount of aid given to pro-democracy supporters.

"Hypocrisy"

The spyware industry originally supplied only Western governments and companies but now enjoys €4 billion in sales worldwide. Only recently have Western politicians started calling for the trade in surveillance software to be regulated, because dictators are buying the technology too.

A hypocritical stance, says Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch hacker who in 2010 became the subject of US government scrutiny for helping Wikileaks release classified video footage of a Baghdad airstrike.

"Western governments that paid for the development of repressive technology are now complaining that dictators are using it. Western countries love it when censorship is subverted in states run by adversaries, but they're far less concerned with freedom of expression in their own societies."

Forked tongue

“Look at SOPA, the anti-piracy legislation being considered in the US Congress. It's censorship. Western governments would do more for internet freedom if they didn't speak with a forked tongue. A clear message is better than security in a box. If you want to be a beacon of freedom, put your money where your mouth is."

Last December, the EU freed up €125 million to support internet freedom in countries like China, Myanmar, Syria and Iran – the focus was largely on helping repressed bloggers.

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NASA Produces and Promotes New LENR Video: Nuclear Power Coming Soon To Your Home

MNISPEL, By Dr. Mark D. Nispel, January 12, 2012

NASA is all in and claiming to “be working on another way of producing energy with efficient nuclear power.”  NASA as an organization apparently suddenly wants to be seen as in the forefront of this new thing they see coming.  Pretty cool actually.

NASA has produced and featured a video presenting LENR as a technology.  The video features Dr. Joseph Zawodny, Senior Research Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center.  The video highlights the potential of having a LENR nuclear power generation device in your home to provide all the power needs of your home as the “easiest” implementation, even though it could potentially be used even for transportation and infrastructure.  The technology is “clean” producing no ionizing radiation or waste.

See the video highlight on the right of the NASA technology gateway page here.

The video directly is here.

In the meantime, A. Rossi continues to move apace claiming he is working on putting his e-cat LENR  device into production.  He is working with National Instruments to complete his design.  He claims that the first small home units that generate electricity and can heat / cool the home will be in production by the end of 2012 for around $1500 and he plans on producing a million the first year after they get going.  See here and here.

Two interesting notes:

1. The NASA video avoids using the term “cold fusion.”

2. The NASA video interestingly right toward the end uses an image to represent LENR 
somewhat abstractly which it attributes to the US Navy SPAWAR within the video (see lower left).

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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - New !

BBVA banks on Google Apps

Google Blog, January 11, 2012

Posted by José Olalla, CIO at BBVA

Editors note: Today, our guest blogger is José Olalla (@PepeOlalla), CIO at BBVA. BBVA is one of the largest financial institutions in the world who today have announced they are adopting Google Apps for Business to increase productivity and drive innovation. 

BBVA is a customer-centric global financial services group founded in Spain in 1857. We now have over 110,000 employees in more than 30 countries across the world.

At BBVA we see technology as a key sustainable competitive advantage, and staying at the forefront of technology and business practices is key to our success. Today we’ve announced that we’re migrating our business to Google Apps to increase efficiency and to help our teams to collaborate more easily, regardless of location.

We were looking for a technology that would transform our business operations - not just make our workers more efficient. Integrating the Google Apps for Business suite with our own tools will allow us to introduce a new way of working where employees have access to all the information they need with just one click, no matter where they are or what kind of device they use, and can reap the benefits of using advanced collaboration tools.

We will migrate our old email systems to the cloud with Gmail. Google Talk, Google Sites and Google Docs will allow our teams to communicate and share ideas more easily - working in a way that they have never experienced before.

With Google Docs, for example, we’re excited about the real-time collaboration benefits - and we expect to increase productivity by removing the need to constantly update different versions of a document. We are developing our new global intranet (we call it High Performance Desktop) taking advantage of Google’s collaboration tools, changing it from a corporate communications and process management site to a place where all employees will be able to share, contribute and manage knowledge globally.

The roll-out of Google Apps will be staggered, with more than 35,000 BBVA workers in Spain initially using the Google Apps productivity tools. By the end of 2012 we expect to have migrated 110,000 employees across our global network.

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Internet providers ordered to block Pirate Bay

RNW, 11 January 2012

A Dutch court in The Hague has ordered internet providers Ziggo and XS4ALL to block access to The Pirate Bay (TPB), a Swedish website which facilitates illegal downloading of music, films and software.

The case against TPB was brought by the Brein Foundation, a group committed to the protection of the intellectual property of writers, artists and members of the entertainment industry. An attempt last year to block access to the downloading website was rejected by a Dutch court.

Formed in 1998, Brein develops anti-piracy policies and coordinates the fight against piracy, both in the production and distribution sectors.

The court said it was satisfied there was sufficient evident proving that 30 percent of Ziggo’s customers and 4.5 percent of XS4ALL’s have recently used TPB for illegal downloads. As this constituted a breach of copyright, a ruling ordering the website to be blocked was justified.

The two Dutch internet providers have ten days to block access to the site. After that, if the torrent site is available through other addresses, Ziggo and XS4ALL will have to block those addresses if requested to do so by Brein. If the providers don't comply they face a daily fine of 10,000 euros up to a maximum of 250,000.

Brein says it intends ordering other internet providers to disallow their customers access to TBP.

Difficult in practice

The internet providers say it is extremely difficult in practice to carry out these measures.

Internet watchdog Bits of Freedom agrees that blocking access to a website isn’t an effective solution.  “Bits of Freedom is in favour of a fair fee for artists and entertainers, but you don’t achieve that by blocking websites. We regard this as a rear guard reaction that puts internet freedom further under pressure,” says spokesperson Tim Toornvliet.

Bits of Freedom also points out the general lack of public support for such actions. MPs regard the  blocking of websites as “undesirable”, adds Toornvliet. “They feel such a measure contravenes both the constitutional right to freedom of expression and privacy rights.”

Finland clamps down on piracy

The Netherlands is just one of several European countries that have attempted to block access to the site. Following a ruling by the Helsinki District Court last October ordering major internet provider Elisa to block access to Pirate Bay or face a 100,000-euro fine, the service provider announced Monday it would temporarily block access to the site.

In retaliation, cyber activist attacked the websites of the Finnish anti-piracy groups.

BREIN is an acronym for "Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands" in Dutch and is also the Dutch word for "brain".

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TomTom shares surge on deal with Samsung

The Jakarta Post, Associated Press, Tue, 01/10/2012

Shares in TomTom NV have surged after the company said it has struck a deal with Samsung to include the Dutch company's navigation software on a new line of smart phones.

TomTom is best known as Europe's largest maker of portable navigation devices, though it lags Swiss-based Garmin Ltd. in North America and overall. TomTom owns one of the world's best map databases, and expects future revenues to come increasingly from incorporating its software and maps into third-party products produced by others, such as phones and cars.

Its deal with Samsung Electronics Co. is for the South Korean company's upcoming "Wave3" phone.

TomTom shares were up 6.7 percent to (euro) 3.129 in early Amsterdam trading on Tuesday.

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Vatican used Wikipedia for new cardinals' biographies

BBC News, 9 January 2012

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Pope Benedict (L) formally appointed
the new cardinals on 6 January

The Vatican has acknowledged that it used Wikipedia to produce biographies of 22 new cardinals that were sent out to journalists.

The biographies were copied from the Italian version of the user-edited online encyclopedia, word for word in some cases, and without attribution.

One clue was that many new cardinals were described as being "Catholic".

The Vatican says it was trying to help journalists and warned them the biographies were "unofficial".

The names of the 22 new cardinals from around the world were announced by Pope Benedict on 6 January.

The similarity between the profiles of them handed out by the Vatican and their Wikipedia entries was spotted by the Italian journalist and blogger Sandro Magister.

In the kind of language not normally used by the Vatican, a Dutch archbishop, William Jacobus Eijk was described as being "one of the most talked about religious men in the country".

This was because of his "strong leaning towards conservatism, especially with regard to abortion and homosexuality," the biography said.

A Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said his staff had no advance notice of the names of the new cardinals and had been in a hurry.

Official biographies are now being put up on the website of the Holy See.

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In a networked world, why is the geography of knowledge still uneven?

In a networked world, why is the geography of knowledge still uneven?

User-generated internet content is weighted towards the global north; the division of digital labour urgently needs rebalancing

guardian.co.uk, Mark Graham, 9 January 2012

Children in an internet shop in Jakarta. The distribution of online knowledge
is heavily weighted towards the global north. Photograph: Romeo Gacad/
AFP / Getty Images

Digital information – photographs, blogs, videos, tweets, Wikipedia articles, reviews, descriptions, stories, and myriad other types of content – surrounds us. The amount of (mostly unpaid) human labour behind this content is astonishing. Wikipedia alone is the result of over 100m hours of work.

These online layers of content matter not just because they are an increasingly important way in which we access and produce information, but also because they materially shape how we move through, understand, and enact our physical environments.

Traditionally, information and knowledge about the world have been geographically constrained. The transmission of information required either the movement of people or the availability of some other medium of communication. Historical maps offer perhaps the best illustration of the geographic limitations to knowledge transmission. Take the 13th-century Carta Pisana, the world's oldest surviving navigational chart. Produced in Italy, the chart depicts relatively accurate information about the Mediterranean, less accurate information about the fringes of Europe, but no information at all about the world beyond Europe.

Up until the late 20th century, almost all mediums of information – books, newspapers, academic journals, patents and the like – were characterised by similar huge geographic inequalities (pdf). The global north produced, consumed and controlled much of the world's codified knowledge, while the global south was largely left out.

In the internet era, however, the movement of information is no longer constrained by distance. Very few parts of the world remain disconnected from the grid, and over 2 billion people are now online (most of them in the south). IBM, recognising this fact, has recently proclaimed the "digital divide will cease to exist" in the next five years.

Unsurprisingly, many believe we now have the potential to access what Wikipedia's founder refers to as "the sum of all human knowledge". Theoretically, parts of the world traditionally left out of flows and representations of knowledge can quite literally be put back on the map.

However, potential has too often been confused with actual practice. Profound digital divisions of labour are evident in all open platforms that rely on user-generated content.

On Flickr, countries in the north are covered by much thicker clouds of information. Google's databases contain more indexed user-generated content about the Tokyo metropolitan region than the entire continent of Africa. While on Wikipedia, there is more written about Germany than South America and Africa combined. In other words, there are massive inequalities that cannot simply be explained by uneven internet penetration rates. A range of other physical, social, political and economic barriers reinforce the digital divide, amplifying the informational power of the already powerful and visible.

That's not to say the internet doesn't have important implications for the developing world. People use it not just to connect with friends and family, but to learn, share information, trade, and represent their communities.

Consequently, it's important to be aware of the internet's highly uneven geographies of information. These inequalities matter to the south, because connectivity – though a clear prerequisite for access to most 21st-century platforms of knowledge sharing – is by no means a determinant of knowledge production and digital participation.

How do we move towards encouraging participation from and about parts of the world left out of virtual representations? The first step is allowing people to see what is, and isn't, represented. After that, there is also a clear need for plans like Kenya's strategy to boost local digital content, or Wikimedia's Arabic Catalyst project, which aims to encourage the creation of content in Arabic and provide information about the Middle East.

It remains to be seen how effective such strategies will be in changing the highly uneven digital division of labour. As we rely increasingly on user-generated platforms, there is a real possibility that we will see the widening of divides between digital cores and peripheries. It is crucial to keep asking where visibility, voice and power reside in an increasingly networked world.

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" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "

" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

In-car internet 'to become norm' in survey about future

BBC News, by Melanie Grant, Newsbeat reporter, 5 January 2012

In-vehicle internet access is close to becoming reality,
according to the world's top car bosses.

The survey by KPMG looking at future trends shows speech recognition and internet connection with Wi-Fi and 3G will become the norm.

More than a third (37%) of the 200 car executives believe "infotainment" in cars is nearly as important as car safety.

Car manufacturers will also join forces with music, telecoms and IT companies.

Over the next five years car buyers will see in-car gadgets provided by big forms like Google, Apple, Microsoft and LG, among others.

John Leech from KPMG says some car manufacturers are already making "connected" cars.

"The recent collaboration between Toyota and Intel was announced at the end of last year," he said.

"Intel claims that the connected car is the third-fastest growing technological device, following smartphones and tablets. For a car maker that offers huge potential." 

Audi has developed an built-in 3G wireless in its A7 and will extend it to other new models.

"The connected car concept is well and truly here," added John Leech.

Hybrid cars will also get the most investment over the next five years according to 53% of the car executives surveyed.

But 61% also believe developments in normal petrol and diesel engines will still be attractive offering consumers greater efficiency and C02 reduction.

Belarus puts restrictions on foreign internet sites

BBC News, 4 January 2012

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The opposition Charter 97 website was
disabled by hackers last month

A new law in Belarus will restrict access to foreign websites and force internet clubs and cafes to report users visiting sites registered abroad.

The law, which takes effect on Friday, says anyone selling goods or services to Belarus citizens on the web must use the .by Belarusian domain name.

That would make it illegal for firms like Amazon or eBay to sell goods to customers in Belarus.

Fines for breaking the law range as high as 1m Belarus rubles (£77; $120).

The law says people offering internet services to the public - whether at a cafe, club or in their own home - will face fines if their customers visit foreign websites and such visits are not properly recorded and reported.

Anyone found accessing "extremist" or "pornographic" websites will also be fined, the law says.

President Alexander Lukashenko has been in power in the ex-Soviet republic since 1994.

His muzzling of the opposition has been condemned by the EU and US, who have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on him and dozens of his associates.

At the end of December the Belarus opposition website Charter 97, run from outside Belarus, was disabled by a cyber attack.

The site's chief editor Natalya Radzina told the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists that the attackers had deleted archives and posted a false news story about opposition presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov.

Last May Mr Sannikov, co-founder of Charter 97, was jailed for five years for organising mass protests during the December 2010 presidential election.

Ms Radzina, who works in exile in neighbouring Lithuania, said the hackers got into the website by using a password, probably by sending malware to an editor's computer.

In December 2010 the authorities cracked down on protests against alleged vote-rigging in the presidential election.

More than 600 people were detained, including seven of the election candidates.

International monitors said the contest, in which Mr Lukashenko officially won 80% of the vote, was deeply flawed.

Facebook removes abortion tips, then restores them

RNW, 2 January 2012, by Marco Hochgemuth 

Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves)

Facebook temporarily removed the profile picture of Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch founder of Women on Waves, an organisation that works to provide women with safe, legal abortions. The image consists of a block of text providing information on how women can self-induce an abortion without the assistance of a doctor. Women on Waves was furious, but media attorney Quinten Kroes said there was little they could do.

Rebecca Gomperts was shocked when she received an email from Facebook informing her that her profile photo had been removed because it violated the website’s terms of use known as the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Apology

Meanwhile Facebook has sent her another message, apologising for the removal, and claiming it was an error. Ms Gomperts was given permission to reinstate the image. She assumed that the service's change of mind was prompted by the flood of protests and publicity it had created.

Describing the contentious picture, Rebecca Gomperts said,

“It’s actually a sticker we designed to provide information on how women can safely induce an abortion using a medicine called Misoprostol. The text is based on information and research from the World Health Organisation. So it is really quite safe.”

The English-language text says that to induce a safe abortion women should buy 12 Misoprostol tablets at a pharmacy. They are advised to say the drugs are intended for ‘their granny who has arthritis.’ When the tablets are taken a few hours apart they will induce labour accompanied by abdominal cramps and vaginal bleeding eventually leading to a miscarriage after about 10 hours. Diarrhoea is the most common side-effect. In case of a high fever and severe pain women are advised to see a doctor, who should be told the patient suffered a miscarriage.

Legally unassailable

Women on Waves says the removal of the photograph is in violation of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which specifically mentions ‘the right to ... seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media’ – and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, media and privacy lawyer Quinten Kroes says this not entirely true:

“Women on Waves refers to very basic human rights, such as the freedom of expression. These fundamental rights are primarily intended as protection from government interference, which is not what this is about. Facebook has not removed the profile photograph as a result of pressure from any government, but on its own initiative. From that perspective, Facebook could argue its own freedom of expression was at stake here. Facebook cannot be made to spread ideas the company does not support.”

Mr Kroes says Facebook's legal right to remove the text is based on its' extensive and legally unassailable terms of use: “They will undoubtedly include articles granting Facebook the right to remove specific texts because the texts violate certain norms or prompted complaints from other users.”

Men kissing

This is not the first time Facebook has removed photographs from profile pages for alleged terms-of-use violations. Earlier, photographs of partially nude people, works of art involving (too much) nudity and of kissing men fell victim to Facebook’s censorship.

“It really worries me that there should be so much censorship on the internet. Regardless of whether it’s Google or Facebook,” says Rebecca Gomperts, “Because when you no longer know what’s going on, you can also no longer discuss it. That’s what we all should protest against.”

Kroes says leaving Facebook is the only thing users can do to protest against the removal of photographs. And indeed, Ms Gomperts is considering leaving Facebook in favour of its competitor Google+. But that site has just this week become the subject of a fierce discussion on its strict terms of use.

US columnist MG Siegler angrily reported that his profile photograph had been removed because it showed him giving the middle finger. Since then, numerous people in the US have expressed their support by posting photographs on their Google+ profiles in which they make a similar gesture.

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