Information Policy

Libya: Fitouri in push for e-government

Can Libya step from dictatorship to online democracy in three easy steps? The Libyan authorities barely used the Web during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi but the minister for telecommunications and new technologies, Anwar Al Fitouri, has now come along to issue a call for bids for a consultancy to help him set up an “e-government strategy.

http://www.africaintelligence.com/MCE/business-circles/2012/06/28/fitouri-in-push-for-e-government,103722819-GRA

Wikipedia Accepts 'Enemies Of The Internet' Currencies

by Jon Matonis

In their annual donation drive to attain $29.5 million for 2012, the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and its largest project, Wikipedia, will accept donations in four of the 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ currencies. Far from bastions of liberty, these are regimes noted for their egregious censorship and systematic repression of Internet users — Bahrain, China, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. Of course, it’s great to get donations from the suffering and violated netizens of those regimes. But just don’t try to donate safely in bitcoin — it’s not accepted.

Here’s a list of notable organizations that accept bitcoin donations and Wikimedia is mysteriously absent. Following the disappointing example last year from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Wikimedia specifically excludes donations in bitcoin and explains it with this odd statement:

Why does the Wikimedia Foundation not currently accept Bitcoin? The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept ‘artificial’ currencies – that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change.

It is not a breach of fiduciary duty to accept near-frictionless bitcoin instead of funneling 3% or more to the PayPal-credit card oligarchy. That is just a silly statement because cryptocurrency donations are far more efficient than dealing with payment processors and physical in-kind donations. Donations are distinctly different than regular consumer purchases and it behooves the non-profit organization to provide flexibility to donors and to maximize fundraising efforts.

Also, let’s look at some of those issuing governments that provide their full faith and credit as backing for “non-artificial” currencies that Wikimedia Foundation is so pleased to accept. I realize that to a certain extent currencies do not have a morality. However, political Statist currencies that are underwritten by repressive regimes and then further manipulated by the regime’s corrupt monetary authority would at least carry some stigma when donated to an entity that depends on Internet freedom.

The decentralized nonpolitical ‘real’ bitcoin would appear to be the least tainted of the bunch, Jimmy. Bitcoin is immune to the political pressures faced by PayPal, VISA, and Mastercard during the infamous Wikileaks payment blockade. Given that Wikipedia ‘blacked out’ on January 18, 2012 in ardent opposition to SOPA and PIPA, bitcoin would also appear to be amazingly aligned with objectives for a free and open Internet.

In their Internet Enemies Report 2012, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders details some of the countries (I mean… issuing governments) that pose the gravest threat to basic Internet freedom through their aggressive deployment of online surveillance and content filtering:

Bahrain “offers a perfect example of successful crackdowns with an information blackout achieved through an impressive arsenal of repressive measures: exclusion of the foreign media, harassment of human rights defenders, arrests of bloggers and netizens (one of whom died behind bars), prosecutions and defamation campaigns against free expression activists, disruption of communications.”

China perhaps may have the most sophisticated online censorship and surveillance system in the world. “The soaring expansion of the ‘Participative Web’ and related impact on social and political debates are making it harder each day for Chinese censors to do their job. Harsher controls and crackdowns on netizens and their online tools have been symptomatic of the regime’s increasing concern over potential fallouts from Arab Spring and the Internet and social networks’ role as sounding boards.”

Saudi Arabia, with harsh censorship and intolerant of criticism, “did everything possible to dissuade the population from supporting the Arab revolutionary movement. Its rigid opposition to the simmering unrest on the Web caused it to tighten its Internet stranglehold even more to stifle all political and social protests.”

Vietnam is aware that they cannot impose complete control over the news and authorities are afraid of an increasingly connected population. “The regime’s attention is focused on the Arab world and its protest movements. Paranoid authorities have stepped up repression and control to stave off any possibility of a regime collapse, favoring surveillance over increased filtering. Bloggers have been the target of a new wave of arrests.”

There you have it. The Bahraini dinar, Chinese yuan, Saudi riyal, and Vietnamese dong are all acceptable to Wikimedia as currencies backed by the full faith and credit of their governments! Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are two other declared enemies of the Internet but Wikimedia allows them to select Russian rubles as the donation payment currency.

In the slightly less offensive “countries under surveillance” category, selected entries represent the following donation currencies acceptable to Wikimedia: Egyptian pound, Indian rupee, Kazakhstani tenge, Malaysian ringgit, Russian ruble, South Korean won, Sri Lankan rupee, Thai baht, Turkish lira, and United Arab Emirates dirham.

Shining a spotlight on repressive Internet cultures points out that it may be only a matter of time until freedom of payment to politically incorrect causes is threatened as well. Moreover, it might become extremely dangerous for some of those citizens to be personally attached to a traceable Wikimedia credit card donation. Accepting anonymous bitcoin in addition to political currencies can be a way of declaring that freedom of speech still does matter. Sensibly, the New York City chapter of Wikimedia rejects the party line and is accepting bitcoin donations for its local outreach programs.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/29/wikipedia-accepts-enemies-of-the-internet-currencies/

High-tech censorship on the rise in East Africa

By Danny O’Brien/CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator

Ethiopia has always been a country at the cutting edge of Internet censorship in Africa. In the wake of violence after the 2005 elections, when other states were only beginning to recognize the potential for online reporters to bypass traditional pressures, Meles Zenawi's regime was already blocking major news sites and blog hosts such as blogspot.com. Some sites and Web addresses have been blocked for their reporting ever since, including exiled media like Addis Neger Online and Awramba Times.

This year, the strictures tightened again, with what many observers believe was the rollout of a far more pervasive and sophisticated blocking system. Starting in April, additional bloggers and reporters noted that their sites were being filtered, including De Birhan, a news and analysis blog that was blocked on April 21, when a large number of sites were inaccessible for a few days.

According to informal surveys taken by one exiled Ethiopian journalist, the sites temporarily blocked have been joined by a growing list of smaller exile blogs and news services, including individual Facebook pages like "We Are All Eskinder Nega." Then, in mid-May, the Tor project reported that Ethiopia had successfully begun blocking its free anonymizing and anti-censorship services. Given that Tor encrypts, and to a certain level, disguises its traffic as normal secure Web traffic, the implication is that Ethiopia has been rolling out censorship systems that can detect specific Internet protocols and block them. (Tor's traffic in Ethiopia is still not back to pre-May levels).

All of this spells growing confidence in the Meles regime that it can freely block larger numbers of sites, at more specific addresses -- for instance, blocking single Facebook groups without having to remove the whole of Facebook -- as well as detect and target certain types of Internet use. The introduction of legislation that would criminalize the offering of voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) and Skype-like services demonstrates how the administration plans to use these new capabilities. Previously, Ethiopia blocked foreign VOIP services on an individual basis, Elizabeth Blunt, the BBC's former Ethiopia correspondent, told the BBC, but new regulations, combined with new technology, would allow the government to place blanket prohibitions on alternatives to state-controlled telephone calls.

There are still some forms of communication that the Ethiopian regime seems reticent to block, or incapable of restricting. Individual Facebook pages may be censored, but if Facebook users in Ethiopia turn on Facebook's SSL encryption service (see how to do so here), they can visit these pages without being blocked or detected. The Ethiopian authorities could, in theory, censor all such encrypted traffic, or fence off access to all of Facebook's services, but have apparently chosen not to. That suggests that, for now at least, the Ethiopian government cannot afford to wall off all popular Internet services without expecting some economic or political blowback.

Tor is working on extensions to its software that would disguise it as a more-difficult-to-censor transmission. But the gap through which undetected, uncensored news gets in and out of Ethiopia is definitely narrowing.

Meanwhile, neighboring countries like Sudan, battling -- with primitive censorship, detentions, and forced exile -- their own citizens' ability to record and share news, must be looking at Ethiopia's sophisticated controls with some anticipation. Whatever tools of Internet suppression Ethiopia imports will surely be rolled out by other authoritarian governments in Africa.

http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/06/high-tech-censorship-on-the-rise-in-east-africa.php

U.S. urges China to respect Internet freedom after Bloomberg Web site is censored

By William Wan and Keith Richburg,

American officials urged China on Friday not to censor its Internet after the government blocked access to the Bloomberg News Web site. The Chinese government had denied Web access to the financial news agency after an investigative article on massive wealth amassed by relatives of Xi Jinping, the man expected to become China’s president.

“The U.S. strongly supports respect for freedom of expression and press freedom in China, including over the Internet,” said a State Department spokesperson who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. “We have continually urged China to respect internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms on the Internet, including freedom of expression.”

Bloomberg News reporters and editors declined to comment on their interactions with the Chinese government in the course of preparing the article. But a company spokesman, Ty Trippet, acknowledged that the blockage of the Web sites of Bloomberg News and its magazine Businessweek appeared to be retaliatory, “in reaction, we believe, to a Bloomberg News story that was published on Friday.”

Bloomberg Terminals, which constitute the company’s main platform for financial information and its main source of revenue, were not blocked, Trippet said.

Chinese officials have recently ratcheted up restrictions on and repression of dissidents and journalists ahead of this year’s key meeting of the 18th Party Congress and scheduled top leadership changes. Asked about the Bloomberg News case by reporters Friday, officials declined to comment.

Friday’s investigative report focused on the man who will be at the helm of that new leadership, delving into $376 million in assets held by the extended family of Xi, currently China’s vice president.

The report did not allege any illegal activity by Xi’s extended family nor did it directly link the wealth to Xi himself. But the sprawling company holdings — ranging from the rare-earths industry to vast real estate properties — owned by Xi’s family members, including his sister and brother-in-law, would be likely to exacerbate the simmering unhappiness in the country, which has a growing wealth gap between those connected with China’s top leaders and the rest of the populace, as well as widespread corruption.

Besides the Bloomberg News Web site, other signs of the article on Xi’s family were scrubbed from the Internet in China. On Weibo, a Twitter-like service used by many Chinese, searches for English terms such as “Bloomberg,” “Xi Jinping” and “crown prince” were blocked. Even the surname of China’s presumed next leader — the single word “Xi” — was a banned search term.

In addition, many of the names and companies mentioned in the Bloomberg story were blocked, including Xi Zhongxun (Xi Jinping’s father), Deng Jiagui (Xi’s brother-in-law) and New Postcom (one of many profitable companies owned by Xi’s extended family).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/us-urges-china-to-respect-internet-freedom-after-bloomberg-web-site-is-censored/2012/06/29/gJQAQ5hOCW_story.html

Facebook Of Latvia Is Bigger Than Facebook (In Latvia)

By Shane Snow

Draugiem.lv might not have a billion users. But it owns the web--and some of the biggest brains on it--in Latvia. Here's what Facebook could learn from it.

When Facebook hits the inevitable user plateau, perhaps it should take a cue from Eastern Europe. Latvia’s largest social network, Draugiem.lv, conquered its home country’s social landscape, then expanded to become a self-described “breeding ground for IT innovations and startups.”

Launched in 2004 by Lauris Liberts and Agris Tamanis, Draugiem.lv is one of few social networks to still beat Facebook in their home country; Draugiem boasts 1.2 million Latvian users over Facebook’s 327,000, according to Jānis Palkavnieks, Draugiem Group spokesperson.

“Five hundred thousand log in to the network every day,” Palkavnieks says. Active users average 44 minutes per day, generating a billion page views per month.

But what’s cooler than a billion page views? Owning the entire Internet (in one’s native language, at least). “Its about 44% of all Latvian internet,” Palkavnieks says. 

Advertising revenues on social networks are notoriously abysmal--Draugiem brings in under $20 million a year. To squeeze more revenue from its grip on Latvian Internet users, Draugiem has opened up something akin to New York City’s Betaworks to incubate ancillary tech companies.

“The biggest stock holder Agris Tamanis is a big fan of gadgets and that's why we are producing technology also,” Palkavniesks says.

From digital vending machine monitoring to smart home systems to lead-gen analytics, the social network has sprouted 11 startups to date. It’s created Latvian versions of RescueTime and Groupon, an inspirational quote site, and even a “design your own bracelet” store called FriendlyBracelets.

“Latvians mostly prefer local brands, and on top of that, we’re able to react very quickly to change or invent something,” Palkavnieks says.

As the premiere innovation hub in a 2 million-person nation, Draugiem is quick to brag about its “Google-esque” offices, complete with dope, modern decor and all terrain Segways.

“We have the most wanted job in Latvia,” Palkavnieks says. “Our management and office is so wonderful that anyone want to work there.”

Facebook's Palo Alto HQ is hard to top, but the social giant's New York offices have nothing on Draugiem. Perhaps when Facebook cracks 44% of American Internet it can pivot into startup incubation and find that elusive revenue stockholders are praying for. And maybe invest in more furniture for all of its offices.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1841439/facebook-of-latvia-is-bigger-than-facebook-in-latvia