Group items tagged

A non-profit out of California has created software for human rights workers that is designed to secretly store data about human rights violation abuses in the country where they are located. There is talk about it already being used in the Middle-East recently. The software includes a 'panic button' that a human rights worker could use that would instantly delete all the files on the computer about government violations. The data is then stored in the cloud and accessable only with a password and secret 'key.' This is a great example of nonprofits working together to fight enormous challenges, with human rights being one of the most dangerous and exhaustive areas of work in the non-profit sector.

"How American-Made Tech Helped Middle Eastern Governments Censor the Internet" A new Harvard University study details how American and Canadian companies provided Internet filtering and monitoring software to the Iranian government, Mubarak's Egypt and other repressive states. It's still going on.

Uganda, at the insistence of its national police commissioner, has sent its three largest ISPs a memo requesting they begin blocking what they called "Tweeter" (presumably Twitter) and Facebook, in order to "eliminate the connection and sharing of information that incites the public."