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Mirna Shaban

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - 1 views

www.aucegypt.edu/...articledetails.aspx

socialmedia revolution internet

shared by Mirna Shaban on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Much of the organization and mobilization occurred through the Internet, particularly on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But social media also played a vital role as a democratic model. Its inclusive space indirectly taught lessons in democracy to a wide sector of Egyptian youth that was not necessarily politically inclined. When the right moment arrived, they were ready to join the revolt.
  • What happened in January 2011 in Egypt did not start in January 2011. It began at least ten years earlier, and it’s not over yet
  • The main catalyst for the January 25 revolution was the Internet, so it may be accurate to describe this as an Internet-based revolution. Not that the Internet was the only factor involved, or that Internet users were the only ones protesting. But the Internet was the tool that showed every dissident voice in Egypt that he or she is not alone, and is indeed joined by at least hundreds of thousands who seek change.
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  • Facebook did not go to Tahrir Square. The people did. Twitter did not go to Al-Qaied Ibrahim Square. The people did.
  • More than one-third of Egypt’s population of eighty million remains illiterate, and just 25 percent of Egyptians use the Internet. However, Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in organizing, motivating, and directing these crowds as to where to go and what to do. Egypt’s revolution was created as an event on Facebook eleven days in advance. People clicked “I’m attending.” Certainly, this was a people’s revolution, yet one based on and accelerated in many ways by the Internet. What happened in Tahrir and every square in Egypt was the accumulation of years and years of activism, including Internet activism. Social media prepared Egyptians for the revolution and enabled them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came.
  • The Internet, by definition, is a democratic medium, at least in the sense that anyone with Internet access is a potential publisher of information.
  • The mere presence of the Internet as a source of information helps open up a freer space for public debate, and makes it much more difficult for governments to censor information.
  • Internet activism started in Egypt with the appearance of Web 2.0 technology in the country around 2003
  • Blogging was the first valuable brainchild of Web 2.0 technologies.
  • The phenomenon exploded in the Arab world, with Egyptian bloggers pioneering and leading the scene. Blogger numbers in the region approached half a million by the beginning of 2009, the great majority of them coming from Egypt.
  • Political blogging in particular became more popular, as users felt that they could remain anonymous if they so wished
  • Nevertheless, most Egyptian political bloggers choose to blog under their real names, which frequently got them in trouble with the regime. The state security crackdown on bloggers was testimony to their potential impact.
  • Undoubtedly, blogging created a space for the voiceless in Egypt.
  • It was the first time individuals felt they could make themselves heard. That in itself was important, whether or not the content was political, and whether or not anyone was reading the blogs. The phenomenon created a venting space for people who had long gone unheard.
  • Early on, Alaa Abdel Fattah and Manal Hassan were awarded the Special Award from Reporters Without Borders in the international Deutsche Welle’s 2005 Weblog Awards (Best of Blogs) contest, where their blog was cited as an instrumental information source for the country’s human rights and democratic reform movement. The husband-and-wife team had created one of Egypt’s earliest blogs, “Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket,” where they documented their off-line activism and posted credible information on protests and political movements, election monitoring and rigging, and police brutality.
  • Another award-winning blogger was Wael Abbas. He received several honors, including the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award of the International Center for Journalists for “raising the standards of media excellence” in his country. This was the first time that a blogger, rather than a traditional journalist, won the prestigious journalism award, a testament to the important work such bloggers were doing. In the same year, CNN named Abbas Middle East Person of the Year. He has been instrumental in bringing to light videos of police brutality in Egypt, a topic that was taboo before he and other bloggers ventured into it. As a result of these efforts, the Egyptian government at one point brought three police officers to justice on charges of police brutality for the first time in Egypt’s history; they were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail.
  • As blogging was becoming a phenomenon in Egypt, some political movements started having a strong on-line presence, and taking to the streets based on their on-line organization. The most important was probably the Kefaya movement, whose formal name is The Egyptian Movement for Change. The movement was established in 2004 by a coalition of political forces, and became better known by its Arabic slogan. The word kefaya is Arabic for ‘enough,’ and as the name implies, the movement called for an end to the decades-old Mubarak regime, and for guarantees that his son would not succeed him as president. Kefaya was instrumental in taking people to the streets, thus bridging the gap between the on-line and the off-line worlds. Many of its supporters were bloggers, and many of the street protesters started blogging. So, increasingly, reports on the demonstrations found their way into blogs and were provided media coverage even when the traditional media ignored them or were afraid to cover them. One result was that many more Egyptians gained the courage to write blogs that openly criticized the authoritarian system and crossed the ‘red line’ of challenging their president.
  • nternet applications such as the video-sharing platform YouTube, which appeared in 2005, took blogging to a higher level.
  • hey were also capable of videotaping street protests and uploading the clips on YouTube. Watching people chanting “Down with Hosni Mubarak” in the mid-2000s was a totally new, riveting experience, which led many other brave Egyptians to join these demonstrations. Internet activists and blogger stars such as Wael Abbas, Alaa Abdel Fattah, Manal Hassan, Hossam El-Hamalawy, Malek Mostafa, and others uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality, election rigging, and different violations of human and civic rights.
  • media, the platforms that allow for wider user discussions and user-generated content such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter
  • he next important development came with the introduction of what is typically known as social
  • The structure of social media taught Egyptians that space exists that you can call your own, your space, where you can speak your mind. To many in the West, this is probably no big deal. There are countless venues where they can express their opinions relatively freely. But for people in Egypt, and in the Arab world in general, this was a new phenomenon, and one I believe to be of profound importance.
  • horizontal communication.’ Before social networks, Egyptian youth were accustomed to being talked at, rather than talked to or spoken with. Communication was mostly vertical, coming from the regime down to everyone else
  • Authoritarian patterns of communication do not allow for much horizontal interaction. But social networks do, and eventually their existence on the Internet taught Egyptian youths a few lessons in democratic communication, even if the essence of the conversations carried out was not necessarily political in nature.
  • The bulk of those that I believe were affected by these lessons in democratic expression were clusters of the population that were not previously politically oriented. These form a good sector of those who took to the streets on January 25, and were joined by millions who held their ground in Tahrir Square and in every square in Egypt until Mubarak was toppled. The majority of these millions, including myself, were people who had never participated in a demonstration before. They were not political activists before January 25, but they saw or heard the call for action, and it touched a nerve as they found safety in numbers
  • another function that social networks served: making you realize that you’re not alone.
  • Perhaps the first time Egyptians learned about the power of social networks was on April 6, 2008. Workers in the Egyptian city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra planned a demonstration to demand higher wages. Esraa Abdel Fattah, an activist then twenty eight years old, felt for the workers and wanted to help them. She formed a group on Facebook and called it ‘April 6 Strike’ to rally support for the workers.
  • he knew it was too much to ask people to join in the protest, so she simply asked them to participate in spirit by staying home that day, not going to work, and not engaging in any monetary transactions such as buying or selling. The group was brought to the attention of the traditional media and was featured on one of Egypt’s popular talk shows, thus getting more exposure. What ensued surpassed all expectations. To Abdel Fattah’s own surprise (and everyone else’s), the Facebook group immediately attracted some seventy three thousand members. Many of these, and others who got the message through traditional media, decided to stay home in solidarity with the workers. Others were encouraged to stay home by a bad sandstorm that swept across parts of Egypt that day, and yet others stayed home for fear of the strong police presence on the streets.
  • The overall outcome made political activists realize that social networks could be a vital tool in generating support for a political cause, and in encouraging people to join a call for action.
  • The April 6 event was meaningful because it provided a sense that people were actually willing to take an action, to do something beyond clicking a mouse
  • three months before the January 25 revolution, Malcolm Gladwell argued in a much-discussed article in The New Yorker under the title “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted” that social media can’t provide what social change has always required. He said that social media is good when you’re asking people for small-scale, low-risk action, but not for anything more. “Facebook activism succeeds,” he wrote, “not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” He explained that this is because high-risk activism is a “strong-tie phenomenon,” meaning that those who carry out such acts of activism have to personally know each other well and develop strong personal ties before they would risk their lives for each other or for a common cause. Since Facebook and Twitter provide mostly “weak-tie” connections, since users typically have a strong off-line social tie with only a small percentage of their ‘friends’ or ‘followers,’ these social networks were therefore not capable of motivating people for a high-risk cause. He therefore concluded that a social network “makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”
  • nowing that you are in the company of many who share your utter belief in the same cause. That is something that social networks delivered
  • ne of the Facebook pages that played a major role in this regard was the Khaled Said page. Khaled Said was a young Egyptian who was brutally beaten to death by police informants outside an Internet café in Alexandria in June 2010. He had an innocent face that everyone could identify with. He could be anyone, and anyone could’ve been him. The Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” appeared shortly thereafter. It started asking its members, whose numbers increased steadily, to go out on silent standing protests in black shirts with their back to the streets. The demonstrations started in Alexandria and soon spread to every governorate in Egypt. Numbers increased with every protest. More and more people gained a little more courage and tasted the freedom of dissent.
  • One of the main advantages of the Khaled Said page was how well organized the events were. Protesters were provided with exact times and locations, and given exact instructions on what to wear, what to do, as well as who to contact in the case of any problems with security forces.
  • t was the Khaled Said page that eventually posted the ‘event’ for a massive demonstration on January 25, Egypt’s Police Day.
  • The administrators usually polled their users, asking them to vote for their place or time of preference for the next protest. The responses would be in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, and the administrators would read them all, and give a breakdown, with exact numbers and percentages, of the votes.
  • The January 25 demonstration was motivated and aided by an important intervening variable, the revolt in Tunisia. When Tunisian protesters succeeded in ousting President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, Egyptians felt that toppling a dictator through demonstrations was finally possible.
  • he Khaled Said page, which by then had about six hundred thousand followers, demonstrated its strong ability to organize. They listed all the major squares in every Egyptian governorate where they expected people to gather, and again gave specific instructions on what to wear, what to take with you, and who to contact in times of trouble. They then alerted the users that the listed venues for demonstration would change at midnight on January 24 to give police forces a lesser chance of mobilizing against them the next day. On the morning of January 25, there were close to half a million people who had clicked “I’m attending” the revolution. Today, the Khaled Said page has more than 1.7 million users, by far more than any other Egyptian Facebook page.
  • nd indeed that was what happened. We witnessed another key moment illustrating the power of the interaction between social media, traditional media, and interpersonal communication. Newspapers, broadcasters, and on-line outlets had been discussing the potential ‘Facebook demonstration’ for a few days prior to January 25. As groups of demonstrators marched through the streets enroute to main squares chanting “Ya ahalina endamo lina,” (“Friends and family, come join us”), people watching from their balconies and windows heeded the calls and enabled the protests to snowball to unprecedented numbers. People were galvanized by the sight. The core activists, who attended every demonstration for years, were suddenly seeing new faces on January 25, mostly mobilized by the Internet. They came by the thousands, and then by the hundreds of thousands, numbers larger than anyone had expected.
  • Twitter played an important though slightly different role. Crucial messages relayed in short bursts of one hundred and forty characters or less made protesters ‘cut to the chase.’ Most activists tweeted events live rather than posting them on Facebook. Twitter was mainly used to let people know what was happening on the ground, and alert them to any potential danger. It usually was ahead of Facebook in such efforts. Twitter also enabled activists to keep an eye on each other. Some managed to tweet ‘arrested’ or ‘taken by police’ before their mobile phones were confiscated. Those words were incredibly important in determining what happened to them and in trying to help them. Most activists are, to this day, in the habit of tweeting their whereabouts constantly, even before they go to sleep, because they know that fellow activists worry if they disappear from the Twittersphere.
  • When the Egyptian regime belatedly realized on January 25 how dangerous social networks could be to its survival, the first thing it did was block Twitter. Internet censorship is a ridiculously ineffective strategy, though. Users were tech-savvy enough to find their way onto proxy servers within minutes, and to post on Facebook how to gain access to Twitter and how to remain on Facebook if the regime blocks it, which indeed happened later. The government felt it didn’t have any other option but to block all Internet access in the country for five days starting January 27 (as well as mobile telephone communications for one day). By then it was too late. People had already found their way to Tahrir and nearly every square in Egypt. Ironically, some were partly motivated by the Internet and communication blockage to take to the streets to find out what was happening and be part of it. And they were joined by workers’ movements in many governorates that expanded the protester numbers into the millions. The major squares of Egypt were full of people of every age, gender, religion, creed, and socio-economic status
  • Gladwell, it turned out, was wrong. These people didn’t know each other personally, but the “weak” personal ties had not proved a barrier to high-risk activism. Egyptians discovered the strong tie of belonging to the common cause of ousting a dictator
  • ocial network users were not the only ones revolting, and social networks were not the only reason or motivation for revolt. However, the role that social media have played over the years in indirectly preparing sectors of Egyptian youths for this moment, and in enabling them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came, cannot be understated.  It can also be said that the role of social networks in Egypt has hardly ended. The revolution is not yet complete. 
George Neff

Netflix vs. Cable: How Viewers Watch TV in the Summer - 0 views

mashable.com/...netflix-cable-summer

#ThoughtVectors netflix cable summer

shared by George Neff on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • About 99% of U.S. households (the total of which are in the 115 million range) have a TV, and 56% have cable. Compare that to Netflix, which has more than 48 million members worldwide. That means its entire global viewership is still not even half the U.S. However, that's not bad for a company founded in 1997, tackling a nearly 64-year-old industry.
  • In the summer months, it's easy to assume Netflix usage would go through the roof, thanks in part to younger students who now have three free months of time.
  • While Netflix doesn't share specific data on its viewers, spokeswoman Jenny McCabe said the site doesn't acquire more subscribers during the summer months. Rather, it picks up more viewers in Q1 (January, February and March) and Q4 (October, November and December).
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  • In Q4 2013, Netflix acquired 2.3 million new American households, the highest performance in three years.
  • From a strategic standpoint, Netflix is starting to up the ante for summer viewers by airing original shows like Orange is the New Black in June.
  • It just cares about what people are watching, McCabe says.
  • The average user prefers to watch a series from beginning to end, consume it wholly, then move on to the next thing, according to McCabe.
  • Thanks to summer vacations, kids are watching way more Netflix. Considering how tech-literate children have become, it will be interesting to watch how cable TV fares against Netflix as this younger generation gets older, raised with both options.
Mirna Shaban

Egypt's Spring: Causes of the Revolution | Middle East Policy Council - 0 views

mepc.org/...gypts-spring-causes-revolution

revolution government

shared by Mirna Shaban on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • eemed that nearly all of the 90,000 people who had responded to the Facebook request to demonstrate on Police Day had filled the square, crowded into central Alexandria, and confronted the security forces in Suez City
  • An accidental president, who came to power because of Anwar Sadat's assassination on October 6, 1981, Mubarak initially calmed the public, stressed the rule of law, released political prisoners and encouraged parliamentary elections. However, as soon as he began his second term, in 1987, he refused to reform the constitution, extended the state of emergency, promulgated laws to exclude opposition parties from local councils and tightened the grip of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) over parliament. He denounced opposition groups for criticizing his policies and asserted, threateningly, "I am in charge, and I have the authority to adopt measures…. I have all the pieces of the puzzle, while you do not."1
  • after the Islamist groups renounced violence in 1997, emergency and military courts continued to operate. They prosecuted civilians charged with nonviolent infractions, such as Muslim Brothers who met to prepare for professional syndicate elections or journalists who "slandered" regime figures. Police increasingly harassed people on the street, demanding bribes from shop owners and minivan drivers and free food from vendors and restaurants. They seized and beat people in order to coerce false confessions or to pressure them to become informers. They harassed people who came to the police station to get IDs or other routine documents, and they nabbed those who "talked back" to them. Amnesty International concluded that torture was "systematic in police stations, prisons and [State Security Investigations] SSI detention centers and, for the most part, committed with impunity…. [Security and plainclothes police assault people] openly and in public as if unconcerned about possible consequences."
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  • 3 Even the government-appointed National Council on Human Rights, in its first annual report (2004), expressed deep concern about the 74 cases of "blatant" torture and 34 persons who had died in police or SSI detention that year.4 A U.S. diplomat cabled in 2009 to Washington that Omar Suleiman, director of the Ge
  • neral Intelligence Directorate, and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly "keep the domestic beasts at bay, and Mubarak is not one to lose sleep over their tactics."5
  • All aspects of public life were controlled, ranging from censorship of cultural and media production to the operation of labor unions.
  • Workers were banned from striking and, since the change in the labor law in 2003, were often hired on short-term contracts, under which they had no medical — or social — insurance benefits. The monthly minimum wage had not been raised since 1984, when it was set at LE 35 (in 2011 the equivalent of $6).6 The ETUF enforced government policy rather than represented its millions of members.
  • Private-sector workers suffered even more, as the 2003 labor law failed to provide any protection to employees negotiating length of contract, salary level, hours at work, overtime compensation, vacation or lunch breaks. Workers often lacked health and injury insurance. Many private-sector firms forced new hires to sign, along with the contract, Form No. 6, which allowed the employer to fire them without warning, cause or severance pay.
  • The exclusion of opposition forces from the political arena in fall 2010 was accompanied by systematic crackdowns on the media, cultural expression and university life. The regime wanted to prevent critical commentary from being aired in independent newspapers and on private satellite stations. The government closed down 19 TV and satellite channels, hacked or blocked several websites, and pressured private businessmen to cancel outspoken critics' positions as editors, opinion writers and talk-show hosts. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) concluded: "The Ministry of Mass Media and Communication has tightened its fist over all media channels to markedly reduce the space for freedom of expression, especially [during and] after the last parliamentary elections."13
  • Already, press and cultural output were managed through myriad control boards. Journalists were beaten, jailed and/or fined if they investigated corruption or police brutality and were charged with incitement or libel when they criticized government policies or political leaders. AFTE also reported heavy-handed censorship of movies, plays and books.
  • The crackdown on university life accelerated after the 1979 student charter was amended in 2007 to give administrative bodies — and, behind them, the SSI — the right to bar students from running in university elections. By th
  • en, the SSI was interfering deeply in university operations: approving the appointment of rectors and deans, exercising a veto over teaching-staff employment and promotions, vetting graduate teaching assistants, determining the eligibility of students to live in dormitories, and interfering in scientific research, textbooks choices, and faculty permissions to travel abroad to participate in conferences.14 The SSI presence was overtly threatening; guards stood at the gates and at each building. Plainclothes SSI officers quelled demonstrations as well as threatening and arresting student activists. Then, in October 2010, the government refused to implement the Supreme Administrative Court ruling that banned SSI guards from the campuses and also blocked anti-regime candidates from contesting seats in the student-union elections.15
  • They sold significant portions of the public sector for their personal benefit and decreased public investment in agriculture, land reclamation, housing, education and health
  • Nearly half the residents of Cairo lived in unplanned areas that lacked basic utilities, sometimes living in wooden shacks
  • the World Bank reported that, by 2006, 62 percent of Egyptians were struggling to subsist on less than $2 a day
  • Given the overwhelming power of the state, the severe restrictions imposed by the State of Emergency on public gatherings, and the unchecked violence by police and security forces, people were fearful of protesting in the streets. Nonetheless, there were many efforts to expose the conditions. Novels and films highlighted corruption, police brutality, urban poverty and sexual harassment.29 Some art exhibits displayed in-your-face paintings depicting torture and military repression. Human-rights groups reported on poverty in the countryside and cities, deteriorating environmental conditions, harassment of women and activists, restrictions on the press, police coercion, and thuggery during elections.
  • There was public outrage at the very public beating-to-death just before midnight on June 6, 2010, of 28-year-old Khaled Said, seized as he entered an internet café in Alexandria.35 Late that night 70 young men and women gathered across from the police station, demanding that the police be brought to justice. They received the usual response: beaten, dragged along the street, attacked by police dogs, and arrested. Protests continued throughout the summer: funeral prayers at Sidi Gaber mosque, attended by 600 mourners who spilled out into the street afterwards; a vigil outside the Ministry of Interior headquarters in Cairo; a silent protest along waterfronts and bridges throughout Egypt; and numerous violently suppressed protests in downtown areas not only involving well-known politicians and protest groups but also people who felt that Khaled Said could have been themselves, their son, or their grandson. A teenager reflected this perspective, saying: "This is an extraordinary case. This guy was tortured and killed on the street. I did not know him but I cannot shut up forever."36 "For the sake of Khaled! For the sake of Egypt!" (ashan Khalid, ashan masr) became a rallying cry, voiced in fear as well as in the determination to restore individual and collective dignity (karama). On the fortieth day commemorating his death, people shouted outside the High Court: "Our voices will not be silenced… We've waited for 25 years, but our condition has not improved. Tomorrow the revolution will come."37
  • Dozens of Facebook groups supported the cause, of which "We Are All Khaled Said" became the most famous. They circulated reports about poli
  • ce brutality, many of which had been posted in the past but had not received such intense scrutiny. These included the video of police sodomizing a 21-year-old minivan driver in January 2006. Filmed by police officers in Boulaq al-Dakrour station, the police mailed it to the cell phones of other van drivers to intimidate them. "Everybody in the parking lot will see this tomorrow," they boasted.38 Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, noted: "Police brutality is systematic and widespread… The humiliation of the simple citizen has become so widespread that people are fed up."39 Their anger, he warned, could spark a rebellion.
  • Nonetheless, the protesters themselves agree that it took the swift removal of Ben Ali to make them think that, if sudden change was possible in Tunisia, it might be possible in Egypt.
  • Even when people broke the barrier of fear on January 25, played cat-and-mouse with security forces on downtown streets on January 26 and 27, and withstood the onslaught all day and night on January 28, they faced a formidable regime, supported by the security forces and the entrenched NDP. The revolution would have been much bloodier if the armed forces had stood by the president. President Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly hastened their own demise by unleashing extreme violence on January 28, followed by Adly's abrupt withdrawal of all police forces that night. Enraged, the public created neighborhood watches to ensure the safety of their communities.
  • Mubarak miscalculated by ordering the armed forces into the streets, even though their loyalty was to the nation — not to the person. He further miscalculated that he could offer minor concessions — such as appointing a vice president, changing the prime minister, and saying that he would not seek another term — on January 28 and again on February 1 and yet follow those placating words by unleashing fierce attacks on February 2. Over the next week, protesters held their ground, thousands of people flooded to city squares to call for dignity and freedom, labor strikes spread, employees in public institutions joined the movement, and lawyers, doctors, and professors marched in their professional garb. Finally, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ended its silent watch and forced Mubarak's hand. When Mubarak resisted leaving, the generals compelled the newly-appointed vice president to inform the president that, if he didn't step down, he would face charges of high treason.
  • Suddenly on Friday, February 11 — as millions of people surged angrily through the streets — Mubarak vanished. Anger transformed into tears of joy and celebration. And the next morning, young people cleaned up the public spaces, symbolically starting the huge task of cleansing Egypt of the corrupt regime and rebuilding the country. How they would rebuild Egypt remained uncertain, but their mobilization instilled a new and powerful pride, coupled with determination to take control over their future and not be cowed again by any authoritarian ruler.
abdulrahmanabdo

More NSA revelations: backdoors, snooping tools and worldwide reactions - 0 views

www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...S1353485814700017

NSArevelations

shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systemic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analysing it without prior judicial approval,” he wrote
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      US Judge displays his vital view on what the NSA did to the American people, can be important in making an argument in the inquiry paper.
  • A Presidential Task Force set up by Barack Obama to examine the NSA issue has issued its first report and has concluded that: “Excessive surveillance and unjustified secrecy can threaten civil liberties, public trust, and the core processes of democratic self-government.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      What the executive branch things of this whole NSA issue. This also states the possible outcomes that may have come with this issue.
  • Many people in the security industry remain unconvinced by RSA's denials.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Illustrates that the truth isn't always easily obtained, and that this story may dig deeper than anyone once anticipated before.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Some members of the group wanted him to step down following his part
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      This may prove to help shed some light on the big question of, is this issue, making the NSA fall apart.
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
     
    First of my three sources for Nugget Research #1.
abdulrahmanabdo

How the NSA's Domestic Spying Program Works | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

www.eff.org/...how-it-works

NSAspyingprogram

shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • When the NSA’s spying program was first exposed by the New York Times in 2005, President Bush admitted to a small aspect of the program—what the administration labeled the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”—in which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between 500-1000 people inside the US with suspected connections to Al Qaeda.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The first time the NSA's spying programs where first exposed and what was chosen to be revealed by the Bush administration.
  • But other aspects of the Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.
  • A person familiar with the matter told USA Today that the agency's goal was "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders. All of this was done without a warrant or any judicial oversight.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The main reason why some Americans are upset by the NSA's recent actions. It was a breach in the balance of power that much of American government is run by, for now hundreds of years.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • This equipment gave the NSA unfettered access to large streams of domestic and international communications in real time—what amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day, according to the Washington Post.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      The intelligence gathering power of the NSA.
  • First, the government convinced the major telecommunications companies in the US, including AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, to hand over the “call-detail records” of their customers. According to an investigation by USA Today, this included “customers' names, street addresses, and other personal information.” In addition, the government received “detailed records of calls they made—across town or across the country—to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      How the intensive intelligence gathering began for the NSA.
  • It works like this: when you send an email or otherwise use the internet, the data travels from your computer, through telecommunication companies' wires and fiber optics networks, to your intended recipient. To intercept these communications, the government installed devices known as “fiber-optic splitters” in many of the main telecommunication junction points in the United States (like the AT&T facility in San Francisco). These splitters make exact copies of the data passing through them: then, one stream is directed to the government, while the other stream is directed to the intended recipients.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
       
      How intelligence gathering works for the NSA.
  • In April 2012, long-time national security author James Bamford reported NSA is spending $2 billion to construct a data center in a remote part of Utah to house the information it has been collecting for the past decade. “Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases,” Bamford wrote, “will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 05 Jul 14
     
    The NSA's Domestic Spying Program and how it works.
abdulrahmanabdo

Researchers split over NSA hacking : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

www.nature.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...split-over-nsa-hacking-1.13911

NSAhacking

shared by abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Furthermore, the NSA has designated more than 150 colleges and universities as centres of excellence, which qualifies students and faculty members for extra support. It can also fund research indirectly through other agencies, and so the total amount of support may be much higher. A leaked budget document says that the NSA spends more than $400 million a year on research and technology — although only a fraction of this money might go to research outside the agency itself.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Shows the sort of investing the NSA goes through in order to receive its top-level of intelligence gathering that it does yearly.
  • Many US researchers, especially those towards the basic-research end of the spectrum, are comfortable with the NSA’s need for their expertise.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      Shows that some are okay with what the NSA is conducting and shows the partnership the US researches have with the NSA. The researches are among many of the processes that paints the full picture of how NSA incorporates their domestic surveillance by using their PRISM program, which is the main focus of this inquiry project.
  • “I understand what’s in the newspapers,” he says, “but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      A new view on the NSA issue that Snowden revealed.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • also wants to maintain the relationship.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      It almost seems as if they both need each other. This could be used in the article to illustrate how the NSA is partnered with US researches and need them to function. Another issue that would be covered in the inquiry paper to argue one of the many pieces that the NSA uses to accomplish its goal.
  • When it was revealed that the NSA had inserted a ‘back door’ into the NIST standards to allow snooping, some of them felt betrayed. “We certainly had no idea that they were tampering with products or standards,” says Green.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      A feeling of betrayal from the NSA to a researcher at Johns Hopkins (Mr. Green), can prove to be damaging as more researchers from all over the US find out about this betrayal and start to rethink their partnership with the NSA which then hinders the NSA advancement in intelligence gathering. It would seem that the NSA is hurting itself rather than helping itself at this moment, an interesting view to point out in the inquiry paper.
  • “There was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross,” says Felten, “and now we’re not so sure about that.”
    • abdulrahmanabdo
      abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
       
      More proof of the annotation that was done directly above this one.
  • abdulrahmanabdo on 04 Jul 14
     
    Source #2 for my Research Nugget #1.
jurasovaib

U.S. Breast Cancer Statistics - 0 views

www.breastcancer.org/...statistics

jurasovaib008 cancer statistics

shared by jurasovaib on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • About 1 in 8 U.S. women (just under 12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.
  • In 2013, an estimated 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer were expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S.,
  • About 2,240 new cases of invasive breast cancer were expected to be diagnosed in men in 2013. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • For women in the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.
  • Besides skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women. Just under 30% of cancers in women are breast cancers.
  • White women are slightly more likely to develop breast cancer than African-American women. However, in women under 45, breast cancer is more common in African-American women than white women. Overall, African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer. Asian, Hispanic, and Native-American women have a lower risk of developing and dying from breast cancer.
  • A woman’s risk of breast cancer approximately doubles if she has a first-degree relative (mother, sister, daughter) who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. About 15% of women who get breast cancer have a family member diagnosed with it.
  • About 5-10% of breast cancers can be linked to gene mutations (abnormal changes) inherited from one’s mother or father. Mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are the most common. Women with a BRCA1 mutation have a 55-65% risk of developing breast cancer before age 70, and often at a younger age that it typically develops. For women with a BRCA2 mutation, this risk is 45%.
symone008

Online Support Groups For Alcoholism - Sober Nation - 0 views

www.sobernation.com/-support-groups-for-alcoholism

support online AA #ThoughtVectors #tv008

shared by symone008 on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
    • symone008
      symone008 on 18 Jul 14
       
      - AA now have online forums - Are online forums the first step to finding face to face groups?
  • he “12 step program” designed by Alcoholics Anonymous has proven to be a tangible tool for recovery from alcohol addiction and can now be accessed and followed online with feedback from members of the online support group community. Online alcoholism rehab may not ever completely replace face-to-face counseling, including group therapy, as encountered in A.A. meetings.  However, to those who are taking an initial step toward their recovery, the flow of support and strength to be gained from coming in touch with real people at online support groups for alcoholism can be enough of a stimulus to help one make it through one more day.
  • symone008 on 18 Jul 14
     
    Main article about abuse of alcohol. AA has online forums. 
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