Group items tagged

Howard Schdmit, The Whitehouse's Cybersecurity coordinator has revealed the US Government's plans for tackling attacks on it's networks. He has promised transparency. The official announcement (this bookmark) is very vague in it's initiatives. It will be interesting to see whether their can really separate US government networks from other parts of the Internet.  Cyber attacks are definitely increasing and play a major part in conflicts between countries. China amongst others is said to have attacked & attempted to hack and launch DoS attacks on US government networks and Russia shut down the Georgian communications infrastructure during the last week between the two countries et. )

OIX is a new organization that will try to provide identity credentials that can be accepted by both the private and public sectors. But, like some of this initiatives, government-wise it will only work, initially, in the U.S. Questions on privacy can also be raised? Wouldn't OIX allow for easier access to the whereabouts of an individual's online persona? 

Government instructs web users to 'not feed the trolls', following scandals involving the defacement of Facebook pages. An 'Online Ombudsman' is proposed. This raises the question of whether and how Government is able to intervene in online forums. In these cases, no law has been broken, just moral codes.

Google shows in this maps the requests that different governments have done to remove contents from their services, including the Australian government. A more than respectable effort on transparency.

Google says that this is very much a trial and they don't give details about the requests, mainly all 'legitimate', in the interests of maintaining debate out about internet governance. The site however is launched the same day that 10 governments officially complain to Google about privacy breaches and lack of general accountability, mainly in relation to maps and buzz. I feel there's less transparency than there is positioning!

A step back- looking at censorship in Australia under the Rudd government. Going back to when the ISP filtering laws were first proposed David Marr observes an underlining level of conservatism in Australia in particular light of the governments pursuit of censorship. He looks at the governments approach to undesired content on the internet by reflecting back on the Bill Henson case.

"The invisible shareholders, who are either money launderers, drug dealers or some people using government money, pick the directors of the banks because of their holdings, but have refused to disclose their identities," he said.

I wasn't previously a plan of Craigslist per se, however, as I'm so excited about the possibilities of peer to peer open source social networking (JoinDiaspora.com) it seems the time to reflect on the addition of a social layer of governance to the internet (Lessig in Code2.0 re identity layer), or the reverse, adding internet architectures to governance, which is Alice Goldmann is describing here.

SeeClickFix is a free mobile phone and web app that enables citizens to take care of their neighborhoods by seeing non-emergency issues in their neighborhoods, clicking to create 'tickets' describing the issue and how to resolve it, and fixing the issue or reporting it to whoever can. This article discusses the technology and tools working to help citizens get involved in their communities and their governments. It also discusses the Gov 2.0 Expo held recently in the US. I found the discussion of mobile citizen governance apps particularly interesting, as it would be something that could be rolled out fairly easily.

SMH article about the Australian government's "Gov2.0" initiative which encourages government employees to use social media more.  

An group of academics formed in 2004 geared towards the establishment of international governance for the internet. Contains many critical articles on the current state of the internet and attempts/strategies to govern the internet.

During a speech at the Media Institute in Washington [February 24, 2010], Larry Strickling, President Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), suggested that there should be policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments and key Internet constituencies on issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection and Internet governance. "It's now time to respond to all the social changes being driven by the growth of the Internet," Strickling said. "We need Internet Policy 3.0. We enter this new decade recognizing that we rely on the Internet for essential social purposes: health, energy efficiency, and education. It's also a general engine for economic and social innovation. We must take rules more seriously if we want full participation, but we must keep the need for flexibility in mind."

The White House will now archive its tweets. Wonder what role Twitter will play in the not-so-far-away 2012 US presidential campaign. If Obama runs for re-election... will he start the race ahead?

The UK Government are proposing to introduce a Digital Economy Bill.  The owners of copyright material will be able to pursue individuals who are sharing their content and take legal recourse.  Persistent offenders can eventually be blocked by their ISP. "Persistent" offenders will have received 50 notices before the Government can request that the ISP block their access to the internet. Sites that host material / content that breaches the bill will be issued with a series of take down notices. This impacts all sites - not just those whose servers are based in the UK.  If the site does not comply with the take down notice it will be possible for the site to be blocked within the UK. 

A conversation between two leading authorities about how governments are using the internet and ICTs to advance their political agendas and policies.

This article cogently describes the current US govt approach to policy and call for an Internet Policy 3.0. Also clarifies points and describes the issues in regulation and governance that are raised in response.

Australiam Government may take some actions to prevent online piracy, now with the iinet case is still on going, AFACT urges the government to do something to stop repeat copyright theft in cyber world.

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registration company is taking similar action to Google by deciding to not conduct further business in China. This decision is a reaction to China now demanding that applicants of domain names are to provide additional personal information, including a full colour head shot photograph. While China maintains forcing applicants to register extensive personal information will curb the creation of unsavoury sites (namely pornography) everyone else outside of the Chinese government believes such detailed personal information will equip the government to target any individual (to what extent - who knows) displaying any content that the government does not support. Is this an invasion of privacy? Should people be able to exercise multiple personas on the internet, or should you be who you are? If a government is to collect such information who will ensure the information it collects isn't abused? Do we answer these questions differently when thinking of China i.e. what would the answers be if Australia was to introduce such a law? At the very least, it's a relief to see companies realising that China is compromising the values of the internet and are reacting suitably by taking their services out of the country. More need to participate in the retalliation.

"Cyberattacks aren't confined to governmental/national boundaries and neither should cybersecurity programs." Finally a forward-thinking idea about what needs to happen in order to make an effective cybersecurity plan. This is a statement by Sen. Jay Rockefeller in which he also discussed the need to eliminate the government vs. market solutions. Neither can create a solution independent of the other..."we will only succeed if we do work together." He recognizes the importance of creating an environment in which the private sector can have the resources it needs to work within itself and with the government.

Letter to Google from the Canadian government regarding their concerns about Google's disregard for privacy standards when joining GMail to the social network - Google Buzz.

Australian government is planning to accedeto the concil of Europe's Convention on Cybercrim, to further govern online content. several opinons appeared, one is saying that "age-appropriate" filtering is more effective than compelling ISPs to provide access to stored electronic communications for foreign law enforcement pruposes.