Group items tagged

"David Cameron, the U.K. prime minister, said the government is considering whether it should block social-networking websites and messaging services during violent unrest after the country's worst riots since the 1980s. "

Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? These questions are especially pertinent today given the role that ICTs played during this year's uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. Indeed, as one Egyptian activist stated, "We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world." But do these new ICTs-so called "liberation technologies"-really threaten repressive rule? The purpose of this dissertation is to use mixed-methods research to answer these questions.

"Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology - and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous."

The world's most notorious computer hacker has been working as an informer for the FBI for at least the last six months, it emerged on Tuesday, providing information that has helped contribute to the charging of five others, including two Britons, for computer hacking offences.

this is connected to panoptic and cyber civ

Did you have a look at the "We live in public" video link.... v. interesting. Great idea that we are all big brother...

"(ISNS)-With Arctic ice receding at an unprecedented pace due to global warming, many nations seem far more interested in carving up the newly exposed resources than doing something to slow climate change, according to documents released by WikiLeaks."

" The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber. "

"Our activities on the net are being closely monitored and there are plans in several countries to allow governments to shut down communications, as recently happened in Egypt. Tools are needed to help circumvent such blocks, so as to keep communications going even in adverse conditions. While hardware is an important choke point - physical connections can be severed - software is no less important. As the attempt to suppress Wikileaks has shown, taking an internet address off line is quite possible, but the direct connections of p2p are less susceptible to such disturbance. "

"When Texas Gov. Rick Perry decided to stage a Texas-size prayer event - dubbed "The Response" - on Aug. 6, it no doubt seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It received little critical scrutiny when he announced it back in early June, except on websites that track these sorts of things. But after Rachel Maddow, drawing on these sites, did a segment highlighting some of the more bizarre statements made by Perry's high-profile religious endorsers, things cooled considerably - even though the real story is still not remotely well-understood."

I've heard thin threads of this before, but this does seem like one of these massive, subterranean movements that no-one's going to notice until it pops up "out of nowhere".