Information Policy

Campaign Guru, Ravi Singh, Arrives in Chile to Promote E-Democracy

Ravi Singh, CEO of ElectionMall.com, is scheduled to speak at the first annual Personal Democracy Forum in Latin America to promote eDemocracy.

This speech will be part of the digital revolution in Latin American and will mark the launch of a new Latin American office, which will offer ElectionMall's campaign and election tools tailored to Chilean market and other Latin American countries.

Over the past year, ElectionMall has provided technology to campaigns around the world ranging from Ukraine, Malaysia, through-out Europe, and most recently in Colombia. ElectionMall continues to be a pioneer in campaigns and elections and earlier this year ElectionMall and Microsoft announced a new partnership to provide a one-stop-shop of technology and services for political campaigns.

Singh is excited to convert this technology to make it applicable to all Latin American politics, in the hopes of increasing participation in the Democratic process as democracies continue to mature.

"Chile is the perfect opportunity," comments Singh. "Chile has a long history of pioneering revolutions, considering the 2008 elections, and with our tools, the Internet can be used as a great equalizer within Latin American politics."

As of 2008, Chile had a 50.4% internet penetration level, an increase of 6% increase from 2007. Facebook use is currently at 44% of the overall population, demonstrating the level of active internet participation and hinting at all the possibilities waiting for all political organizations.

"With the rise of social networks and mobile devices, campaigns have a great opportunity to engage with their constituency," says Singh. "With our 10 years of experience in the space, I am confident that when ElectionMall makes these technologies available it will empower the every candidate and help increase political participation."

Singh will be speaking at 3:00 pm at the conference, which is taking place at Telefónica Towers, to usher in this new revolution.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/19/prweb4812484.DTL

Wikileaks release of embassy cables reveals US concerns

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has released 250,000 secret messages sent by US embassies which give an insight into current American global concerns.

They include reports of some Arab leaders - including the Saudi king - urging the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons programme.

Other concerns include the security of Pakistani nuclear material that could be used to make an atomic weapon.

The widespread use of hacking by the Chinese government is also reported.

The leaked US embassy cables also reportedly include accounts of:

* Corruption within the Afghan government, with concerns heightened when a senior official was found to be carrying more than $50m in cash on a foreign trip

* Bargaining to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison camp - including Slovenian diplomats being told to take in a freed prisoner if they wanted to secure a meeting with President Barack Obama

* The extraordinarily close relationship between Russian PM Vladimir Putin and his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi

* Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime

* American and South Korean officials' discussions about the prospects for a unified Korea should North Korea collapse as a viable state

* Sharply critical accounts of UK military operations in Afghanistan

The US government has condemned the release of state department documents.

"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal," a White House statement said.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorised disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, says the US authorities are afraid of being held to account.

Earlier, Wikileaks said it had come under attack from a computer-hacking operation.

"We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," it reported on its Twitter feed.

No-one has been charged with passing the diplomatic files to the website but suspicion has fallen on US Army private Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak of classified US documents to Mr Assange's organisation.

Wikileaks argues that the site's previous releases shed light on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858895

Cyber security 2010 report

With the exponential growth of the internet, the increasing use of electronic channels for commerce, governance and relationship and the use of ICT in all forms of utilities, the safety and resilience of three channels is increasingly becoming critical.

Incidents of recent cyber attacks and attempts to breach the security of nuclear power proves how fragile cybersecurity is and the need to vulnerable people, property and procedures.

http://www.cto.int/Portals/0/docs/event_docs/2011/Cybersecurity2011/cyber%20security%202010%20report.pdf

Twitter co-founder hopes to create news network

Biz Stone, the co-founder of popular microblogging site Twitter, is eager to harness the vast quantities of information that it helps its users share to create a news network, he told Reuters on Monday. A Twitter news network would not necessarily be run by Twitter itself but would be in partnership with several existing news organizations, and would be open, Stone said. "I think a Twitter News Service would be something that would be very open and shared with many different news organizations around the world." Twitter receives 95 million short messages, or "tweets" - each no longer than 140 characters - each day from its 175 million registered users. It already shares its incoming feed with Google Inc, Microsoft Corp's Bing search service and Yahoo Inc, but Stone said he envisaged other news organizations might take more specialized access. Twitter could also help news organizations get in touch with the people on the ground experiencing events on which they wanted to report, Stone said.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/twitter_co-founder_hopes_to_create_news_network/

Broadband in Europe speeding up

Broadband speeds in Europe have risen sharply in only a year, suggest official EC figures. In July 2010, 29 percent of broadband lines in Europe ran at speeds of at least 10 Mbps, revealed Commission research. By contrast in July 2009 only 15 percent of broadband lines were capable of hitting that speed. Despite the higher rates, the Commission warned that a lot of work needed to be done to meet Europe-wide targets on access and speed. The EC has set a target of giving every European citizen access to a speed of 30Mbps or more by 2020 and half of all the 220 million households in the region access to 100mbps broadband. The size of the task the EC has set itself was revealed by figures in the research which showed the relatively small numbers using the highest speed connections. About 5 percent of all broadband lines can run at 30mbps and only 0.5 percent at 100Mbps or higher. More Europeans are signing up for broadband too, found the research, with nearly 26 of every 100 citizens using high-speed net links. In 2009, the figure was almost 24. But this growth was dwarfed by that of mobile broadband which saw a 45 percent in increase in users. Commissioner Kroes said member states needed to speed up their efforts to free spectrum to support on-the-go broadband. Denmark and the Netherlands lead the way in European broadband with high-speed links already available to about 80 percent of households.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/broadband_in_europe_speeding_up/