After finding himself on the receiving end of widespread criticism and unfriendly hashtags on Twitter, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has announced that he now considers Twitter messages and social networking as terrorist threats. He is quoted in this Spanish-language news report as calling for more state control over the internet. The Great Firewall of... Venezuela?
2010.02.05 in Content, E-Activism, Governance , Social Media | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
2010.02.05 in E-Activism, Privacy/Security | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
2010.02.05 in E-Activism, Privacy/Security | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
A purely quantitative ‘follower' count is interesting but inherently problematic. Not least, we know that Twitter is notorious for ‘follower spam' and it is difficult to assess the quality of listening or level of engagement (if any) - which is what matters. Tweetminster has the advantage of having lots of data and so can take a much more nuanced and robust view of Twitter usage. They focus on reach by analysing not only followers but more importantly the number of times an account has been retweeted (forwarded by another Twitter user) or mentioned in a third-party Tweet. Where this analysis falls short is looking at the nature of mentions and retweets; positive or negative!
Dale puts Sarah Brown at the top of Labour Twitterers. But her tweets aren't political, certainly not party-political. Indeed, it's likely that her popularity is exactly because she is not seen as a politician (Tweetminster include her too). She might be associated with the Labour Party but clearly is not pushing a party message, policy agenda or anti-Tory rhetoric. Kerry McCarthy on the other hand clearly does all of the above and ranks 9th in Dale's list of followers. McCarthy, Labour's ‘Twitter Tsar', is first by a huge margin in terms of most mentioned and retweeted MP (but McCarthy has also suffered from negative Twitter campaigns, so again it is difficult to suggest value from this).
In Tweetminster's Top 10 mentions for MPs are two Liberal Democrats and one Conservative (Nadine Dorries, who ranks 15th in Dale's list). For re-tweets, Eric Pickles makes the top 10 and only Nick Clegg (2nd) remains for the Liberal Democrats. In both lists all other places are taken by Labour MPs.
Previous Hansard Society research on Twitter shows that Labour MPs were taking to Twitter in much greater numbers than Conservatives in Westminster but this levels out for PPCs. Tweetminster data shows about 75% more tweets from PPCs than MPs in the last year but both remain dwarfed by tweets emanating from news sources, journalists and political bloggers. It also shows that Labour-supporting Tweeters have considerably more followers than other parties. Tweetminster's findings echo our own in terms of Conservative PPCs being more effective users of Twitter than their MP counterparts. Louise Bagshawe and René Kinzett (PPCs for Corby and East Northants and Swansea West respectively) rank second and third for mentions, although Labour's Paul Smith comes first. Outside the top three, Esther Rantzen's decision to stand as an independent candidate makes her the 6th most mentioned PPC and Ian Parker-Joseph, standing for the Libertarian Party ranks 9th. Again, the other places are filled with Labour candidates.
And let's not forget, the public has yet to engage with Twitter, fewer still use it as a tool for following politics. Preliminary data from our soon to be published Audit of Political Engagement 7 suggests that only 2% of the public surveyed use Twitter to follow a political group or politician (twice as many use Facebook). Most of those using social media do so to keep in contact with friends and family or follow celebrities. Worse still, feedback from Hansard Society focus groups suggests that the public are sceptical of politicians using social media; that they are doing this ‘to look cool' or ‘to curry favour' and because ‘some adviser that has told them to do it'.
So what influence can Twitter have beyond the Westminster bubble? To what degree can it shape political debate in election year? In terms of followers, Downing Street has 1.7 million and Sarah Brown has 1.1 Million but, by contrast, the top UK elected politician by far is Boris Johnson with 64,000 followers and the top MP is John Prescott, who has 14,000 followers. Further afield Barack Obama has 3.2 million followers and Britney Spears 4.2 million - almost one thousand times more than Kerry McCarthy!
This isn't to write off Twitter as an important tool simply to contextualise reach of political twitterers as narrow and their ability to influence at this stage limited to political activists, insiders and the media. Kerry McCarthy is clearly the politician with the greatest digital reach, but that's largely because of her role within the Labour Party and her influence beyond these circles is perhaps limited. And, as McCarthy knows only too well, not all coverage on Twitter is positive, so measuring retweets and mentions only goes part of the way to determining influence. Influence in fact would appear to be determined by two things. Primarily it's about an established real-world profile (either within or outside established party structures) and, second, an ability to say something controversial (preferably at odds with or which could embarrass the party). Examples in the former category include @nick_clegg and @johnprescott and in the latter, @danhannanmep. For this election at least, it's all about creating a profile amongst the media commentators who follow Twitter and it is through this filter bed of mainstream media that twittering has its ultimate but limited potential to influence the election. Twitter's value is going to be as a conduit to the mainstream media or as a foil for the story itself - launching an otherwise uninteresting policy in Twitter can make it news!
http://hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/edemocracy/archive/2010/02/03/birds-of-a-feather.aspx
2010.02.04 in E-Activism, Governance | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
http://www.ejc.net/media_news/twitter_works_on_technology_to_foil_censors/
2010.02.03 in Content, E-Activism, Privacy/Security , Social Media | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Earlier this year, the NFOIC received a $2 million, three-year grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to launch the Knight FOI Fund and support state open government groups. The Knight FOI Fund will fund up-front costs such as court costs, filing fees, depositions and initial consultation fees, if attorneys are willing to take freedom of information cases that otherwise would go unfiled.
OMLN, which launched in November 2009 with funding from the Knight Foundation, is a referral network for lawyers and law school clinics that wish to offer legal assistance to online journalists and other digital media creators. Lawyers participating in OMLN provide qualifying clients with free and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation. The network is administered through OMLN’s website at http://www.omln.org/.
As part of the partnership, OMLN will help identify appropriate cases for the Knight FOI Fund and will make its growing network of media lawyers available to help the NFOIC and its state coalitions pursue the most promising cases. “We are excited to be working with the NFOIC on this critically important issue,” said David Ardia, Director of the OMLN. “We’ve clearly seen a decline in the number of FOI cases because news organization simply can’t afford the legal costs of bringing suit. The Knight FOI Fund will help to reverse this trend.”
“We’re thrilled to partner with the OMLN to help online journalists with FOI issues, and thanks to the Knight Foundation’s generous support, we’re in position to fight the never-ending battle for open government,” added Charles Davis, Executive Director of the NFOIC. “The NFOIC and the OMLN are working together to make government at the state and local level more transparent and accountable.”
About the National Freedom of Information Coalition
The NFOIC is a national network of state freedom of information advocates, citizen‐driven nonprofit freedom of information organizations, academic and First Amendment centers, journalistic societies and attorneys. A unit of the Missouri School of Journalism, the NFOIC is an affiliate of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Its mission is to foster government transparency at the state and local level. NFOIC is based at the University of Missouri, home to the nation’s oldest Freedom of Information Center. For more, visit http://www.nfoic.org/.
About the Online Media Legal Network
The Online Media Legal Network is an initiative of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The Citizen Media Law Project, which began operations in May 2007, provides assistance, training, research, and other resources for individuals and organizations involved in online and citizen media. For more information, visit http://www.omln.org/.
About the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.
2010.02.03 in E-Activism | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
The internet cleaning was jointly launched by the Ministry of Information Industry Technology (MIIT), Public Security Bureau, Culture Bureau and the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) under the pretext of anti-vulgarity campaign. In September 2009, SARFT started cleaning up audio-visual websites by demanding them to apply for license, as a result more than 530 video websites had been shut down. After the license crack down, SARFT continued to clean up the internet in November 2009 by making use of the anti-vugarity campaign. Most of the BT websites were gone and among one of them is BT China which had been online for six years and finally shut down in December 2009.
On 8 of December 2009, a total of 9 governmental departments, including International Communication Office of CCP and Public Security Bureau, held a tele-conference and decided to launch a campaign against internet and mobile phone's pornographic information between December 2009 and May 2010.
Chinese netizens said this is the most hard-handed repression of the Internet in the history.
The official data released by the Public Security Bureau shows that in 2009 the Bureau had shut down more than 9000 websites and issued warning 11 thousands internet operation unit. 6500 servers had been either suspended or shut down while 6 internet service providers and 8 internet advertisement service providers had their license suspended.
On 14 December 2009, CNNIC banned individual from registering cn domain name and three major telecoms agreed to filter illegal SMS content. It is estimated that more than 1 million individuals are affected by the CNNIC's new policy and more than 100 thousands websites were forced to shut down by the data center.
In order to get a proper license for BBS kind of websites, an individual needs to attain the Internet Content Provider license and the pre-condition of such license is to have a company registered with 1 million yuan capital. It implies that the new policy will make internet self-employed business impossible.
As a result of the CNNIC's policy, there is a sudden grow of “.com” registration from China. Between December 7-14 2009, there were more than 180 thousand “.cm” registration from China, the increase compared to the same period last year is up to 1300%. Moreover, a large number of websites were migrated out of China.
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/02/03/china-more-than-100-thousand-websites-shut-down/
2010.02.03 in E-Activism, Infrastructure, Privacy/Security | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement of a new U.S. policy on global Internet Freedom included a bold new statement about the responsibilities of American technology companies:
...We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit.
We couldn't agree more.
While Clinton focuses on media companies — meaning Internet media companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft — there are plenty of other companies deserving scrutiny. Specfically, many U.S. (and multinational) technology companies may be knowingly selling Chinese authorities the surveillance equipment used to commit or facilitate human rights abuses. We think it's high time to pay attention to them as well.
The "Corporations of Interest"
Drawing from published news articles, EFF has compiled a list of seven corporations that are reportedly selling surveillance technology to the Chinese government and related entities. We're designating them "corporations of interest".
Of course, news articles alone are not absolute evidence that these companies are indeed fostering repression in China. But it's clear that China uses technology to employ rampant censorship, invasive data collection and intimidation. Learning exactly what is going on, especially in the Chinese environment of state secrecy and propaganda, is difficult. But news reports, especially those that include admissions of some level of involvement from company officials, are a sufficient basis to begin asking further questions.
1. Cisco: Cisco's deep involvement in the building of China's Golden Shield Project has been admitted by the company. Cisco's involvement has even already been raised before Congress, including the fact that Cisco engineers gave a presentation acknowledging the repressive uses for their technology that quoted their Chinese government buyers as saying that Cisco's products could be used to "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles." The UK's Guardian reports that Cisco provides over 60% of all routers, switches, and network gear to China and estimates that Cisco makes $500 million annually from China.
2. Nortel: Rolling Stone and The Guardian report that Nortel has sold hardware to aid the Golden Shield Project for surveillance and censorship purposes, including working with Tsinghua University to develop speech recognition software to monitor telephone conversations.
3. Oracle: Business Week reports that Oracle has sold software to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for criminal and ideological investigations. Oracle admits that one-third of its business in China is with the government.
4. Motorola: Business Week also reports that Motorola sold the Chinese authorities handheld devices for street cops to tap into "sophisticated data repositories" on Chinese citizens.
5. EMC: Business Week also reports that EMC sold "sophisticated data repositories" to the Chinese public security authorities. The top EMC executive in Beijing is quoted as saying, "We can expect big revenue from public security agencies" in China.
6. Sybase: Business Week also reports that Sybase sells database programs to the Shanghai police.
7. L-1 Identity Solutions: Rolling Stone reports that this Connecticut-based biometrics company sold software to Chinese companies that aids government officials in identifying individuals for purposes of criminal investigations.
The question of which companies have assisted in Chinese surveillance is just a small piece of a very large puzzle and we're quite confident that there are more than just these seven. And obviously many countries other than China are engaged in Internet surveillance — from Iran's infamous repression of political dissent, to censorship efforts across the globe, to the USA's own domestic surveillance architecture. Corporate complicity in these efforts is equally deserving of scrutiny.
It's also worth keeping in mind that surveillance is only part of the equation. Other technologies created or sold by companies may also be misused by the Chinese authorities. For instance, Internet censorship systems curtail civil liberties almost as severely as Internet surveillance systems. Research by the OpenNet Initiative has shown that censorship systems in many repressive countries have been outsourced to U.S. corporations.
The Solution
What comes next? Again, there's simply not enough publicly available information to be absolutely certain about the extent of any one company's active involvement or complicity.
So, a good first step would be for the companies in question to clear the air and come clean with the public about their behavior. There are six steps we'd like to see them take:
1. Clarify their actual relationships with the Chinese authorities engaged in surveillance and censorship of the Chinese people.
2. Publicly disclose what sorts of products and services they are selling to the Chinese government.
3. Publicly disclose whether they have been doing "customization" or otherwise facilitating targeting of human rights activists or other vulnerable groups in China.
4. Publicly disclose whether they have learned that their products and services are being used for repression.
5. Publicly disclose how much money they make selling products and services to the Chinese government.
6. Publicly disclose the steps they can take to prevent their products and services being used to violate human rights.
EFF (and presumably the State Department) will be watching closely to see whether these and other corporations selling surveillance technologies to the Chinese authorities take these steps.
And if they don't? Then it may be time for Secretary Clinton, or her allies in Congress and the Administration, to pressure them to do so.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/selling-china-surveillance
2010.02.03 in E-Activism, Privacy/Security | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
According to the network, The Public Domain ensures that the principles of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits") can be fully enjoyed by everyone across the world.
The document outlines a series of general principles (opening with: the Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception) along with various issues relevant to today's Public Domain, and provides some recommendations aimed at protecting the Public Domain and ensuring that it can continue to function in a meaningful way - with particular relevance to education, cultural heritage and scientific research.
The Manifesto also includes a number of issues relevant to the Public Domain that must be addressed immediately. The recommendations refer to reducing the copyright term, taking into account the effects on public domain when changing the scope of copyright protection and suggest to legally punish any false or misleading attempt to misappropriate Public Domain material.
The authors of the Manifesto hope that the new document can be embraced by the civil society at large as a tool to maintain and promote this precious common good for citizens across the world and for future generations to come.
The document already includes a list of individuals and organizations that have signed the Manifesto, but the list is also open to anyone for new endorsements.
The Public Domain Manifesto
http://www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/node/8
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.2/public-domain-manifesto
2010.01.28 in E-Activism, Infrastructure | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Mitchell Baker said she worried about "the increase in laws that make it difficult to run an open network," especially rules about content.
"You suddenly become liable for anything that gets downloaded, whether it's legal or not," she said. "If you said to a municipality, if you build a road, you have to guarantee nothing illegal happens on it — that's what's happening on the Internet now. So that's the kind of regulatory disruption that's going to have some long-term consequences."
Baker spoke at an opening panel of a three-day conference on digital innovation and creative ideas.
The DLD conference — which stands for Digital-Life-Design — is chaired by Hubert Burda of Germany, owner of Hubert Burda Media, and digital investor Yossi Vardi, who co-pioneered instant messaging and chaired the panel, titled "Disruptive."
Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype which now has over 500 million users, said successful companies can't become complacent and must continue to make improvements and not be afraid "of disrupting themselves."
Vardi asked J.P. Rangaswami, chief scientist of the BT Group in Britain, what he thought of what Skype was doing to telecommunications companies like his.
"Watch this space," Rangaswami replied cryptically.
Vardi then asked Rangaswami whether he sees the industry following Skype's efforts to set minimal charges for phone calls around the world.
"I think those parts of the industry that don't follow what Niklas is doing will either find themselves out of a job or working for him," he replied.
American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, whose nonprofit charity founded Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that has 350 million users, said it was a "very, very bad business" to try to compete against because the reference work is offered for free.
He ruled out advertising on the site for now — but left open the possibility it could happen sometime in the future to raise money for the charity.
Moderator Vardi expressed amazement that the Internet companies had small work forces despite their vast number of users.
Skype has just over 600 employees, Mozilla about 250, and Wikipedia just 30.
What advice would the three give to companies trying to get 100 million users?
"Stay out of software first of all," said Mozilla's Baker. "Go to Web sites and services."
Wales said, "Have a very pure, simple vision that everyone can understand immediately."
Zennstrom said the idea should also "make consumers' lives easier." And, he stressed, "don't do a copycat of someone else."
BT's Rangaswami said he believes the Web in the past 20 years has made people more willing to collaborate, to work together. The emphasis is on online data "because it's through that that people can do things," he told The Associated Press.
Ranjaswami said the key is transparency.
"So I think all the data.gov initiatives are very, very important because that's laying the foundations of the next generation — how we use that transparency of public information to start really making change as a result of community," he said.
Yves Daccord, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a video presentation that Twitter and the social media have been very important in mobilizing a response to the earthquake in Haiti and giving the people "the sense that we are very close."
In the future, he said, he expects victims of disasters to use social media more effectively to communicate their needs so humanitarian organizations can deliver better services and reunite families.
2010.01.27 in E-Activism, Infrastructure, Netbiz | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
