BBC News - Syria files: Wikileaks releases 2m 'embarrassing' emails - 0 views
-
Emails from the Syrian ministries of presidential affairs, foreign affairs, finance, information, transport and culture are all represented among the data to be released
-
News stories based on the emails will be published by news providers including US news agency Associated Press, Spain's Publico.es and Egypt's al-Masry al-Youm.
Journalist's phone hacked by new 'invisible' technique: All he had to do was visit one ... - 0 views
-
The white iPhone with chipped paint that Moroccan journalist Omar Radi used to stay in contact with his sources also allowed his government to spy on him.They could read every email, text and website visited; listen to every phone call and watch every video conference; download calendar entries, monitor GPS coordinates, and even turn on the camera and microphone to see and hear where the phone was at any moment.
-
Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radi’s phone shows that it was infected by “network injection,” a fully automated method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a request to visit a website. In milliseconds, the web browser is diverted to a malicious site and spyware code is downloaded that allows remote access to everything on the phone. The browser then redirects to the intended website and the user is none the wiser.
-
“The Moroccan authorities are buying every possible and imaginable surveillance and espionage product. They want to know everything.”
- ...8 more annotations...
Iran Says Face Recognition Will ID Women Breaking Hijab Laws | WIRED - 0 views
-
After Iranian lawmakers suggested last year that face recognition should be used to police hijab law, the head of an Iranian government agency that enforces morality law said in a September interview that the technology would be used “to identify inappropriate and unusual movements,” including “failure to observe hijab laws.” Individuals could be identified by checking faces against a national identity database to levy fines and make arrests, he said.
-
Iran’s government has monitored social media to identify opponents of the regime for years, Grothe says, but if government claims about the use of face recognition are true, it’s the first instance she knows of a government using the technology to enforce gender-related dress law.
-
Mahsa Alimardani, who researches freedom of expression in Iran at the University of Oxford, has recently heard reports of women in Iran receiving citations in the mail for hijab law violations despite not having had an interaction with a law enforcement officer. Iran’s government has spent years building a digital surveillance apparatus, Alimardani says. The country’s national identity database, built in 2015, includes biometric data like face scans and is used for national ID cards and to identify people considered dissidents by authorities.
- ...5 more annotations...
Derek Penslar, Harvard Jewish studies professor controversy: This typifies what's broke... - 0 views
-
There is no set of credentials that can prevent a person who is earnestly trying to do work in this space from getting sucked into the politicization and, yes, weaponization of antisemitism
-
when fact and understanding and nuance of the issue are all considered secondary, what gets sacrificed isn’t just an individual’s career or standing or time, but comprehension of the actual issue that is antisemitism.
Pew Internet & American Life Project - 0 views
-
Over half of the adult internet population is between 18 and 44 years old. But larger percentages of older generations are online now than in the past, and they are doing more activities online, according to surveys taken from 2006-2008. Contrary to the image of Generation Y as the "Net Generation," internet users in their 20s do not dominate every aspect of online life. Generation X is the most likely group to bank, shop, and look for health information online. Boomers are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online. And even Silent Generation internet users are competitive when it comes to email (although teens might point out that this is proof that email is for old people).
Summer Internship Opportunities - 6 views
House Divided Interns. Professors Pinsker and Osborne are seeking paid summer interns for the House Divided Project (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu). The project concerns Dickinson College and...
Introducing #MuckReads: A Social Way to Share the Best Accountability Reporting - ProPu... - 0 views
-
I support this idea, but the big problem here is transparency. On what criteria are Propublica going to select what is good enough for the public #MuckReads page? Do they give users clear guidelines? Will they publish everything they receive on this tag/ email so it becomes clear what they are selecting and what they are not? Can they let users help sort the feed to produce their own filter?
Eyewitness Account of the Conditions in Evin and How Amir Javadifar Died - 0 views
-
They gave to all us a paper to write down our home addresses along with our emails and passwords.
-
Some times a guard would come in to the cell with his face covered and then would leave without saying a word.
-
The interrogator asked the question and we had to write down the answer on the paper. The questions included: what were you doing the day you were arrested; what do think of the election; what do you think of the protests and the demonstration?”
- ...2 more annotations...
How a diplomatic crisis among Gulf nations led to fake news campaign in the United States - 0 views
-
it’s not just Kremlin-produced disinformation that Americans may have stumbled upon recently. Browsing Facebook and Twitter — and even just perusing the magazine rack at their local Walmart — they may have also been exposed to propaganda supporting the ambitious goals of two oil-rich Arab Gulf countries
-
when Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched a boycott and blockade of the tiny peninsula state of Qatar last year, organizations with ties to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi tried something new: They worked to sway American public opinion through online and social media campaigns, bringing a complicated, distant conflict among three Washington allies to US shores
-
As they took steps against Doha, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also initiated propaganda efforts in the US aimed at weakening Washington’s alliance with Qatar — which hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East — while also enhancing their own images.
- ...8 more annotations...
How Twitter is gagging Arabic users and acting as morality police | openDemocracy - 0 views
-
Today, Twitter has a different story, and it is not one of speaking truth to power. Twitter is no longer empowering its users. Its platform cannot be considered neutral. Twitter’s actions suggest it is systematically suppressing voices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
-
What started out as an investigation into the mass suspension of accounts of Egyptian dissidents, uncovered a mass censorship algorithm that targeted users who use Arabic flagging their text as hateful conduct. This story is still unfolding. As you read this, mass and unjustified systemic locking and suspension of Twitter Arabic accounts continues. Users are angry and bewildered.
-
draconian yet lazy algorithms have systematically shut down voices of dissent – and pulled unsuspecting social media users down with them
- ...14 more annotations...
Presidency Defends Delayed Creation of Media Regulatory Authority - Tunisia Live : Tuni... - 0 views
-
information revealed in an archive has disqualified candidates at the last minute
-
“It has to be a capable body,” said Manssar, “because it is very powerful and has the authority to shut down a station.”
-
Ultimately, the Presidency believes that the authority to appoint the membership of HAICA is the President’s alone. After the establishment of HAICA, though, the President would play no role in regulating the media and would not impinge on its freedom, said Manssar.
- ...3 more annotations...
Tunisian Bloggers Discuss Open Data Two Years After the Revolution - Tunisia Live : Tun... - 0 views
-
Prior to and throughout the popular uprisings that shook Tunisia and ousted former president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, Tunisian bloggers, cyber-activists and social network users took it upon themselves to take on roles unfilled by state-owned media.
-
“A blogger today is expected to change the world,”
-
citizen-journalism
- ...1 more annotation...
High Official Allegedly Threatens BBC Journalist - Tunisia Live : Tunisia Live - 0 views
-
If freedom of expression is the only gain from the revolution, how can we give it up now?
Government Responds to Journalists' Demands Following Media Strike - Tunisia Live : Tun... - 0 views
-
Key among the journalists demands were the implementation of decrees 115 and 116. Issued after the revolution, the decrees were an attempt to ensure the freedom of the media. The prime ministry announced on Wednesday that the two decrees would be put into effect in the wake of the strike.
-
Some journalists are not so sure that the government concessions will be fully implemented to the degree striking journalists want. “It’s just a statement. We’ve seen no action. In fact, all that we’ve seen is stalling,” said Hayet Essayeb, a journalist from Dar Assabah, the newspaper that initiated the strike
-
an announcement by the government that they will be establishing a new internet-only television station. Called Kasbah TV, it will seek “to end the isolation of the government in local media and be able to provide information to citizens about the achievements of the government,” Economy Minister Ridha Saidi told Reuters
Tunisia's bitter cyberwar - Features - Al Jazeera English - 2 views
-
Most international news organisations have no presence in the country (and, some say, a lack of interest in the protests). Media posted online by Tunisian web activists has been some of the only material that has slipped through the blackout, even if their videos and photos haven't generated quite the same enthusiastic coverage by Western media as the Iranian protest movement did in 2009.
-
Several sources Al Jazeera spoke with said that web activists had been receiving anonymous phone calls, warning them to delete critical posts on their Facebook pages or face the consequences.
-
Sami Ben Gharbia, who monitors Tunisia's web censorship for Global Voices, said that Google and Facebook were in no way complicit in the sophisticated phishing technique. The initial signs that something was underway came on Saturday, he said, when the secure https protocol became unavailable in Tunisia. This forced web users to use the non-secure http protocol. The government's internet team then appears to have gone phishing for individuals' usernames and passwords on services including Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo and Hotmail. Web activists and journalists alerted others of the alleged hacking by the government via Twitter, which is not susceptible to the same types of operations. "The goal, amongst others, is to delete the Facebook pages which these people administer," a Tunisian internet professional, who has also been in contact with Anonymous, told Al Jazeera in an emailed interview. The same source, who asked to remain unidentified due to the potential consequences for speaking out, said that in communication with the international group, he had come up with a Greasemonkey script for fireFox internet browsers that deactivated the government's malicious code.
- ...2 more annotations...
Watching Egypt (but not on Al Jazeera) | Marc Lynch - 4 views
-
One key factor was missing, though, at least early on. Al Jazeera has played a vital, instrumental role in framing this popular narrative by its intense, innovative coverage of Tunisia and its explicit broadening of that experience to the region. Its coverage today has been frankly baffling, though. During the key period when the protests were picking up steam, Al Jazeera aired a documentary cultural program on a very nice seeming Egyptian novelist and musical groups, and then to sports. Now (10:30am EST) it is finally covering the protests in depth, but its early lack of coverage may hurt its credibility. I can't remember another case of Al Jazeera simply punting on a major story in a political space which it has owned.
-
More broadly, it's astonishing how much is now in motion in Arab politics after such a long period of seeming stagnation. There's a vivid sense of an era coming to a close and an uncertain new vista opening. Even if Al Jazeera's release of the so-called "Palestine Papers" doesn't bring down Abu Mazen's negotiating team or the PA it feels like the autopsy of a long-dead peace process. Hezbollah's Parliamentary maneuver to bring down the Hariri government and replace him with veteran politician and businessman Najib Miqati, a response to the Special Tribunal's reported indictments which has sparked violent protests by Hariri backers, may mean an end to the era of U.S. alliance with a March 14-led Lebanon. It's hard to know where to focus --- but in fact I continue to see these seemingly unrelated events as part of a broader story of the crumbling of an Arab status quo which has long seemed unsustainable.
-
3pm: Al-Jazeera's lack of coverage of the protests has become a major story. It doesn't seem to have gotten any better since this morning --- since getting back on line I've seen an episode of a talk show, more Palestine Papers, and only short snippets of breaking news on Egypt. Al-Arabiya apparently hasn't done any better. My Twitter feed and email are full of comments like "AJ Arabic is covering childrens gymnastics programs in Indonesia right now. Good call." (@mwhanna1) and "Exposed. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya's failure in covering #Jan25" (@SultanAlQassemi). Egyptian activists are complaining bitterly, and most seem to think that Mubarak cut a deal with the Qatari and Saudi governments.