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This article discusses how a simulated war game called "Cyber ShockWave" can turn any electronic item, for example, cell phone or computer can be "weapons" used to shut down the Internet during terrorist attack. The notion of privacy and civil liberties, should expect to be ceased for Americans during a crisis of that level. During this mock scenario, it was revealed that "[The United States] don't have the authority in this nation as a government to quarantine people's cellphones." Which during a state of emergency brings to question if Internet carriers should allow their networks to be monitored. How secure is online security, and who is the enemy, becomes difficult to discern, as any threat to national security arises.

It will be considered as a technical achievement in the history of the internet: the introduction of non-latin top level domain names. To date United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russian Federation, and Egypt will now be able to view a complete domain name in arabic script. Western society probably failed to consider, until recently, the limiting effect of the internet's architecture for speakers of non-latin derived languages. In the same way technically disconnected rural communities form part of the digital divide, so to do inhabitants of countries that had no education in latin based languages. How does a browser support arabic script? The brower itself must support both the character sets of the language. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari all support arabic script.

Back in March, Iranian's took part in the traditional fire festival, held at night time. A trend I've noticed with reporting in mainstream news is the use of a live blog with bloggers taking shifts to report on big events - The Guardian recently did this with the UK election and may do it for the World Cup coming up. To see this level of detail in live reporting in a mainstream news source is great, especially when it's not related to something as boring as sport ;) The reporter has contacts on the ground and also encourages other Iranians who may be reading to send him secure emails with updates from the event. Videos posted on YouTube are also linked to as soon as they're made available.

Twitter users have been issued subpoenas from Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett due to the critical comments they've made about the politician. It's interesting how much anonymous comments can make an impact on a public figure's reputation that it forces him to take legal action.  

Twitter receives a grand jury subpoena forcing the company to reveal a user's identity. Interesting how this can be done when the stakes are high, when there is a a political subtext under it. Could this set a precedent for defamation cases?