Club 4: The best club LED lighting stories and news you can get in the Internet.
Wrong kind of buzz around Google Buzz
The launch of Google Buzz has set various parts of the technology blogosphere afire — and for all the right reasons: it does introduce a number of interesting social features that could make our email experience more social (whether it has to be more social is a different question).
However, what tech pundits have mostly overlooked is a peculiar privacy choice made by Google’s designers: unless you tinker with Buzz’s settings, a partial list of your most-emailed Gmail contacts might be automatically made public (see this post over at Silicon Alley Insider; it appears that contacts those who already had a Google Profile account before Buzz are at risk; also see this excellent and very angry post at CNet for additional background. UPDATE: Google has promised to fix some of these problems).
Yes, that’s right: without you ever touching Google Buzz’s privacy settings, the entire world may know who you correspond with (yes, including that secret lover of yours and that secret leaker at the White House).
This could be an extremely uncomfortable and tragic privacy disaster for Google, potentially of the same magnitude that Beacon was toFacebook. I certainly don’t have many concerns about those who are cheating on their spouses or are leaking sensitive information to journalists– they will survive (even though the future of whistle-blowing does not look very bright in our increasingly overexposed information environment).
Nevertheless, I am extremely concerned about hundreds of activists in authoritarian countries who would never want to reveal a list of their interlocutors to the outside world. Why so much secrecy? Simply because many of their contacts are other activists and often even various "democracy promoters" from Western governments and foundations. Many of those contacts would now inadvertently be made public.
If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government. They can then spend months on end drawing complex social circles on the shiny blackboards inside secret police headquarters.
But potential risk from disclosing such data extends far beyond just supplying authoritarian governments with better and more actionable intelligence. For example, most governments probably already suspect that some of their ardent opponents are connected to Western organizations but may lack the evidence to act on those suspicions. Now, thanks to Google’s desire to make an extra buck off our data, they would finally have the ultimate proof they needed (if you think that this is unrealistic, consider this: the Iranian authorities have once used membership in an academic mailing list run out of Columbia as evidence of spying for the West).
It’s business decisions like this that make me very suspicious of Google’s highfalutin rhetoric about their commitment to defending the freedom of expression. From a business perspective, such decisions do make some sense — how else, after all, can Google Buzz compete with Twitter and Facebook, who are already light years ahead of Google in terms of building up their user base — but the ethics of such business decisions is extremely shoddy, to say the least. If Google executives are really committed to defending the freedom of expression, then they must be inhabiting a dreamworld, where freedom of expression somehow always survives despite horrendous attacks on privacy.
The relationship between privacy and free speech has been a subject of contentious debate between legal scholars — with people like Eugene Volokh arguing that excessive protection of privacy, no matter how appealing, could also harm free speech — but what I often found puzzling about such arguments is that they don’t seem to account for the fact that, without privacy, it’s also very hard to exercise one’s right to free expression. Isn’t freedom of expression of a rather limited value when one is conversing under constant electronic surveillance? For anyone interested in how we should think about privacy in the digital age — and why it still matters — I highly recommend Helen Nissenbaum’s new book Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy and the Integrity of Social Life.
I am yet to hear a Google executive mention privacy as one of the values that are constitutive of the freedom of expression. Whenever theytalk about the latter, they always make it very clear that privacy inhabits a completely different universe. I think they operate on a very flawed logic, which makes all their other efforts on this front look very insincere. Moreover, I think it is likely to cause Google much more damage in the long run: what’s the point of protecting the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists if you tell the rest of the world who those people are talking to?
Seen from this perspective, a recent decision by the Iranian government to ban Gmail and create their own national email system — something that must have been inspired by Turkey’s Anaposta project– does not sound that bad. After all, it’s probably better to have activists stop using Gmail than to watch them expose their connections to government’s agents. I can only hope there will be enough anger in the technology community to force Google reconsider their decision to disclose information that is extremely sensitive and should never be disclosed without prior consent from its users; in the future, all similar sensitive data decisions like should be "opt-in" not "opt-out" by default.
Otherwise, all their promises about their stance on freedom of expression is just empty talk. Their recent partnership with NSA does not make Google look any more trustworthy; Chris Soghoian, an expert on information security, made a hilarious point on Twitter: "How do I sign up for the Iranian government’s new emailservice? At least they are not in bed with NSA."
Source: http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/11/wrong_kind_of_buzz_around_google_buzz
atlantic city authorities seeking avoid toxic
World Briefing | ASIA: North Korea: U.N. Says Video Shows Malnourished Children
A United Nations food agency released grim video on Friday of what it said were severely malnourished North Korean children.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=40db3e5f276355f1a25b090002f9fe8b
Kevin federline Kobe bryant Lindsey lohan
Uncertainty and optimism in Egypt
After briefly sizing me up as I surveyed his offerings, the street bookseller near Cairo?s Tahrir Square approached me and asked: ?Muslim Brotherhood books or revolution books?? I suppose the concerns of Americans scanning Arabic books in Cairo are just that obvious. Of course, I bought both. But polarization over the role of Islamists in the new Egypt and questions about the future of the revolution are on the minds of Egyptians, too. Answers to those questions are being hammered out in ways which frustrate many, infuriate some, and satisfy virtually no Egyptians.
After a week in Cairo talking to a wide range of activists, academics, political figures, Islamists, journalists, and many others — while also taking part in this exceptional conference which I helped organize at the American University of Cairo (video here) — I came away sharing many of the concerns I encountered in the vibrant political discussions I heard, but broadly optimistic about Egypt’s prospects. It is impossible to not be impressed with the energy, enthusiasm, and talent of the diverse array of activists and social forces which came together to make Tahrir possible. While I found plenty of reasons for concern about the intentions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, I found myself more impressed by their relative incompetence than by their malevolent genius. I found the Muslim Brotherhood confident but clearly grappling with a wide range of unfamiliar issues and challenges which have the Islamists on shaky ground. I also found deep, if unsurprising, skepticism that the U.S. could or would play a positive role in shaping a new Egypt, a public sentiment with which the U.S. appears to be doing too little to engage.
[[BREAK]]
Cairo feels surprisingly normal these days, after this year?s whirlwind of revolutionary fervor. But the deep uncertainty shaping all of its political life seems to be taking a toll. Elections to Parliament are supposed by held in September, but there is still no electoral law. Recent violent clashes between salafi Islamists and Copts have set religious tensions on edge, feeding an intense and growing polarization between Islamists and secular trends. Parts of the revolutionary coalition seem determined to continue taking to the streets, as the only way to put any serious pressure on the SCAF or as a project of pushing for a deeper revolution, while others warn of the risk of alienating mainstream Egyptians who crave a return to normal life and of the urgency of turning now to the hard work of building political parties. Most everybody is unhappy with the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces.
The question currently consuming the protest movement is a demand to postpone elections in favor of first drafting a constitution. There is some logic to their demands, given the obvious problems with moving forward in the absence of clear rules governing political life. What is the sense of electing a Parliament before Egyptians know whether they will be operating within a presidential or parliamentary system?
At the same time, there is something off-putting about self-declared liberals and democrats arguing in favor of continued military rule and against elections. Egypt just held a referendum on precisely this question, in which 77% of voters in a high turnout voted in favor of constitutional amendments and moving to parliamentary and presidential elections before redrafting the constitution. The legal arguments offered by the coalition issuing the call for ?Constitution First? are unpersuasive, given the outcome of the referendum. Those who voted "yes" on the referendum, including but not by any means limited to the Muslim Brotherhood, see this new call for "Constitution First" as a thinly veiled end-run around democracy.
The underlying argument, of course, is that early elections would unfairly privilege the Muslim Brotherhood. Because other trends have not had time to organize for elections, this would be an unfair advantage for the Islamists. This would be more compelling were there any sign that the grab-bag of other trends were doing much by way of organizing their own ranks. It is far too easy to imagine that waiting for the secularists to get their acts together and form parties able to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood would mean waiting many years. How cruel an irony would it be to abort the transition to democracy out of fear that the ?liberals? would lose?
The Muslim Brotherhood itself has been careful to insist that it would neither field a candidate for president nor seek a parliamentary majority. The leaders I met with consistently pointed out that they were aiming for 30% of the seats in Parliament, and the MB leadership has been insisting over the last weeks that it would expel from its ranks any member which stood for president. Its leaders understand well the risks of over-reaching at this transitional stage, with several citing during our conversations the lessons of Algeria (where Islamist electoral success triggered military coup and a horrific civil war) and Gaza (where the victory by Hamas triggered international sanctions and a deep Palestinian political divide). But its leaders seem increasingly annoyed with their counterparts. Why should the MB be punished, they ask, for spending the last few months organizing for a political campaign while its rivals did little but talk? They are also furious over what they see as an unfair and distorting media campaign against them across much of the press and TV.
For all its overt confidence, the Muslim Brotherhood is not necessarily the behemoth which it is perceived to be. While it eagerly projects the image of power, it is struggling to navigate a confusing new environment after decades of repression. Its chief advantage is its ability to mobilize voters, but this may not matter as much if there is extremely high turnout in Egypt?s first free elections. The MB will no longer benefit from being the sole outlet for a protest vote against Mubarak. The rise of the salafi trend has frightened many Egyptians (and the West), who do not necessarily make the fine distinctions among competing Islamist trends which they themselves do. Much of the media has been mobilizing against the Brotherhood, pouncing upon inflammatory or misguided statements by various spokesmen and fanning the flames of anti-Islamist anger. Some of the most prominent of the Muslim Brotherhood youth who played a key role in Tahrir during the revolution have been publicly critical of their leadership. (I will have more on all of this in a later post.)
The role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the ranks of Tahrir points to one of the greatest and most sharply contested legacies of the revolution: Who can legitimately claim to speak for the revolution? The loose coalition of youth activists and liberal politicians warn loudly that the Islamists might ?hijack? the revolution. But the Muslim Brotherhood youth were in Tahrir as well, fighting hard. So were a wide coalition of workers, ordinary people, and the "Ultras" which have been receiving a bit of attention of late. Indeed, that diversity is precisely what made Tahrir so amazing. But if the Brothers were a key part of the assembled forces on Tahrir, then why do they not have equal claim on its legacy? Why should prominent and media-savvy young activists have a greater claim than the labor union leaders and ordinary people whose participation in the uprising helped it succeed where a decade of internet-led activism had mostly failed?
I remain broadly optimistic about Egypt, and deeply impressed by the quality of its civil society and emergent political class. The new political environment is drawing new actors into the political realm, engaging mass publics in active debates about the basic principles of Egyptian political order, and changing long-existing political movements. It is fantastic to watch Egyptians in a cafe excitedly discussing Yosri Fouda’s talk show in the same way I used to see them debate al-Jazeera talk shows about issues and ideas far from Cairo.
I was interviewed by the Egyptian daily al-Masry Al-Youm on the visit (in Arabic). What I told them was that I think that the most urgent strategic priority should be moving quickly towards elections and legitimate civilian rule. I see the arguments for "Constitution First" but don’t find them as compelling. The SCAF should not be allowed to grow comfortable in power, or excuses made to repeatedly extend the date of elections. Waiting for the scales to tip against the Islamists is a political strategy, not a constitutional or legal one, and will likely mean perpetual delay and the squandering of an historically unique opportunity for a democratic Egypt.
The only way to get a transition to democracy is to hold elections and transition to democracy. Victory in those elections will not be conferred by loud claims of revolutionary legitimacy, but through effective organization and by speaking credibly to the identities and interests of likely voters. Rather than complaining about their organizational disadvantages, secularists and liberals and leftists and all other political trends should get on with the hard work of building parties and preparing for the elections. They could work to highlight economic and social issues which resonate with ordinary Egyptians — schools, hospitals, jobs, labor conditions — which are the traditional focus of the left. When liberals and activists find themselves advocating a course which would keep the Egyptian military in power indefinitely, it may be time to re-evaluate.
Source: http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/12/tense_times_in_egypt
Building A Brand Through Human Senses
Almost every marketing plan out there appeals to two of the 5 senses… sight and hearing. How come marketing companies focus on these two senses when we know that focusing on all five will strengthen the impression the brand leaves on the customer?
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6553725
ed hinds egypt officials emergency president
Shopping on vacation? Tips to make it pay off (USA TODAY)
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/travel/top-stories/135872940?client_source=feed&format=rss
collided outside complex puerto countrys interior
Thousands of Angry Bees Shut Down Calif. Street (Fox News)
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/usa/top-stories/136080580?client_source=feed&format=rss
Halle berry Heath ledger Heidi klum
What does Rick Perry have to say about Afghanistan?
The Republican presidential debate in Florida on Tuesday focused again on jobs, taxes, and healthcare, with virtually no mention of Afghanistan, which is the United States’ third-largest military deployment since Vietnam and fifth-largest since World War II. There was only passing mentions of terrorism, Iran, or China. This is especially odd given that the President does not have the power to create jobs, change the U.S. tax code, or revamp the health care system — which is the burden of the private sector and the U.S. Congress, respectively — but he does have the authority to conduct foreign policy and command the armed forces.
The debate contained just one back-and-forth on Afghanistan between Jon Hunstman, about whom the less said the better, and Rick Perry. This is Perry’s first public comment on Afghanistan that I’ve seen of any length. Here it is, according to the CNN transcript:
[I]t’s time to bring our young men and women home and as soon and obviously as safely as we can. But it’s also really important for us to continue to have a presence there. And I think the entire conversation about, how do we deliver our aid to those countries, and is it best spent with 100,000 military who have the target on their back in Afghanistan, I don’t think so at this particular point in time. I think the best way for us to be able to impact that country is to make a transition to where that country’s military is going to be taking care of their people, bring our young men and women home, and continue to help them build the infrastructure that we need.
Perry advocates for a troop withdrawal "as soon and obviously as safely as we can," which probably means he is not in favor of a withdrawal at the price of outright defeat. He is also open to some kind of residual U.S. military presence, presumably for ongoing training and counterterrorism operations. He wants to complete the responsible transition to Afghan security forces. I’m not sure what he is getting at about delivering foreign aid with 100,000 troops with targets on their backs — perhaps he is saying he is skeptical about how effective foreign aid can be in a country with an ongoing conflict, which makes sense. But then he is also in favor of continuing to help build infrastructure, presumably military infrastructure like roads, airports, and bases to help the Afghan security forces, and vital economic infrastructure, like roads (again) and electricity, to help the Afghans achieve economic self-sufficiency. I admit I’m reading a lot into his remarks, but that is always the case with transcripts.
All in all, Perry seems to be in company with Romney, articulating a cautious willingness to persist in Afghanistan, complete the transition to Afghan lead, yet be realistic about what’s achievable there. The two leading candidates have staked out a middle position between, on the one hand, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who advocate withdrawal regardless of the consequences, and, on the other, Michelle Bachman, who in an earlier debate seemed to advocate for persistence regardless of the cost (and who I suspect would be joined by Rick Santorum). The Perry-Romney position has the advantage of being both decent policy and, I think, good politics.
Source: http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/13/what_does_rick_perry_have_to_say_about_afghanistan
facility international family home fears grow
Our Man in Damascus
"I have seen no evidence yet in terms of hard changes on the ground that the Syrian government is willing to reform at anything like the speed demanded by the street protestors. If it doesn?t start moving with far greater alacrity, the street will wash them away."
That was the blunt verdict offered by U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford in a wide-ranging telephone interview with Foreign Policy today. Ford sharply criticized the Syrian government’s continuing repression against peaceful protestors and called on President Bashar al-Assad to "take the hard decisions" to begin meaningful reforms before it is too late. Not, Ford stressed, because of American concerns but because of the impatience of the Syrian opposition itself. "This is not about Americans, it is about the way the Syrian government mistreats its own people," Ford stressed repeatedly. "This is really about Syrians interacting with other Syrians. I?m a marginal thing on the sidelines. I?m not that important."
Some might disagree. Last Thursday and Friday, Ford made a dramatic visit to the embattled city of Hama to demonstrate the United States’ support for peaceful protests and its condemnation of the Syrian government’s use of violence. His trip to Hama electrified supporters of the Syrian opposition, and marked a sharp escalation in U.S. efforts to deal with the difficult Syrian stalemate. It also sparked a vicious Syrian response, as government-backed mobs attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, inflicting considerable damage. In a caustic note posted to his Facebook page, Ford called on the Syrian government to "stop beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators." Ford’s sharp criticism of the Syrian government’s violence against peaceful protestors and detailed outline of multilateral and American diplomatic efforts to pressure the Syrian regime suggest that the recent U.S. rhetorical escalation does mark a new stage in the ongoing crisis.
[[BREAK]]
Ford warned that the Syrian government still failed to understand the depth and extent of the changes in their country. "They need to begin a really serious transition and not just talk or make promises," and to grant real political freedoms and to begin taking apart the oppressive and unaccountable security apparatus. While acknowledging that some Syrian gestures towards reform were significant within the local context, he dismissed most of the regime’s reform proposals as "irrelevant." The Syrian government could not be credible while it continued to violently repress peaceful marches or to arrest a kid for spraying anti-regime graffiti — in the eyes of its own people, regardless of what outsiders like the U.S. might think. The Syrian government "is not even close to meeting those demands. That is a genuine problem."
While the situation in Syria today may look like a stalemate, Ford sees it as far more dynamic beneath the surface. Compared to only a few months ago, the opposition has expanded and organized impressively, and has demonstrated phenomenal courage and remained largely non-violent. In part he chose Hama for his dramatic outing because "people in Hama over the last two months have been very conspicuous in avoiding violence." He noted that while touring Hama he saw nearly a dozen government buildings, unguarded, with only two broken windows on one building. Compare that, he wryly noted, to the extensive damage to his Embassy inflicted by the regime’s thugs.
The Syrian people have broken the fear barrier, he argued, and now people are speaking more freely. Syria is changing, and the government needs to recognize that and respond appropriately rather than continuing in a futile effort to resist change through force. He marveled at the impact of satellite television and the Internet, which have dramatically shaped the worldviews and expectations of young Syrians. They simply will not accept what earlier generations did, and have already demonstrated powerfully that they will not shut up in the face of threats of violence. That is why Ford repeatedly deferred questions about specific political demands: "It’s not an American decision. What we will not do is to claim to speak for them. They are capable of speaking for themselves."
But thus far, the Syrian regime has chosen to violently crack down on peaceful protests across the country, and has not made the kind of reforms which might have at an earlier point saved the regime. I asked Ford when the Syrian regime’s violence would cross the line, when the repression and violence might have gone too far for any peaceful transition to be possible. "That’s really not a question for Americans," he responded. "It’s a question for the Syrian opposition, a lot of whom are quite tough. I’ve met enough of them, and believe me, they are a lot tougher than anyone in the Washington Post or the U.S. Senate. They know exactly what they are doing. I have talked to people who have lost immediate family, who have been killed or jailed. Nothing focuses the mind like that."
Ford dismissed the idea that prior to Hama he had been a captive in his Embassy, unable to engage with anyone. Quite the contrary. He has had access to both the Syrian government and to key sectors of Syrian society such as the business community. The threat of violent retaliation and intimidation of Syrians who meet with American officials is real, though, and he acknowledged that some had refused invitations out of this fear. Senior administration officials have told me several times in other conversations that Ford’s conversations were one of their most important sources of information in assessing the Syrian scene. This is one key reason why they considered his presence essential even before his electrifying visit to Hama persuaded most of their critics of his value.
Ford waved away suggestions that he might rein in his activities in the face of official pressure. "I?m not going to stop the things I do," he said quietly. "I can?t. The president has issued very clear guidance. It?s morally the right thing to do." He plans to take further trips around the country, to continue to meet with as many Syrians as he can, and to push to open political space and to restrain regime violence. He doesn’t think that the Obama administration will recall him, and has no indication as yet whether the Syrian government will expel him.
For now, he sees his role as doing what he can to open political space for the Syrian people to push their own demands for political freedoms, restraints on an unaccountable and anachronistic security apparatus, and a meaningful political transition. The United States, he emphasizes, is not supporting any specific Syrian opposition movement or personality. Nor is it endorsing a specific transition plan, a move which he believes would reproduce the mistakes made by the Bush administration in Iraq in 2004. The process "has to move at Syrian speed, not at a speed set in Washington, London or Brussels."
His emphasis on the role of the Syrian people and on multilateral action reflects the general approach of the Obama administration to this year’s Arab upheavals. Ford refused to put the United States at the center of what is fundamentally a Syrian uprising for political rights, or to substitute an American transition plan for the ideas developed by the Syrian opposition itself. He refuses, wisely in my view, to make an Arab story about America — even as he works tirelessly behind the scenes to construct effective action in support of popular demands. "This is a Syrian decision, not an American one. We will certainly encourage the Syrian people to demand their rights." That includes continuing to work multilaterally with Europeans and with Syria’s neighbors, to coordinate targeted sanctions on people in the regime responsible for repression, and to push the Security Council to take on the issue.
The goal is to create a "space for genuine politics and free expression without the threat of violence." That remains an ambiguous and even murky endpoint in an increasingly violent and polarized environment. While he declined to answer the question of whether such an outcome was possible with the Asad regime in power, it is difficult at this point to see how it could be. That decision will ultimately be one for the Syrian people, not for the United States, Ford repeatedly stressed. But as the Obama administration’s rhetoric sharpens and actions follow suit, it may become more and more difficult to maintain that balance.
Source: http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/14/our_man_in_damascus
Israel Joseph biden Middle east
How to become an Internet freedom warrior*
Get seriously worried about the Internets. Surround yourself with social media gurus who don’t know anything about foreign policy but have a gazillion Twitter followers. Try convincing the world that U.S. technology companies are your new ambassadors, out on a noble mission to spread freedom and democracy around the globe (things not to mention: oil, Iraq, Dick Cheney). Send their CEOs to Siberia, have them play beerpong with the locals. Don’t dare mentioning how these very companies abuse freedom and privacy at home, on their own sites. Develop some ambitiously empty buzzword that could make your ridiculous theories sound somewhat convincing (try "21st century statecraft").
Disregard all but the most naïve and dubious assumptions in framing your "Internets problem." Grope for the nearest historical analogy — the more inappropriate, the better — and then misread it in a way that would confirm your original thesis. Assume the world hasn’t changed since 1989. Remember that "Berlin wall" and "firewall" rhyme; use it to your advantage. Stock up on misleading metaphors that build on "cyber-" and "digital." Commision a few ambitious studies and major conferences to find more non-existing links. Run a grant competition.
Rediscover the toxic ideas behind the Congress for Cultural Freedom and repackage them under the fancier label of Alliance of Youth Movements. Find a bunch of desperate and cash-strapped bloggers from a harsh authoritarian country of your liking — you’ll score bonus points if these hand-picked bloggers-cum-dissidents are completely unknown to anyone who lives there — and use them as token symbols of your heroic fight to defend the Internets.
Arrange for POTUS to be interviewed by them. If they visit the United States, make sure they meet with a bunch of fringe neocons, keen on promoting regime change in the home countries of your token cyber-dissidents. Think of ways in which to secure a political asylum for them ? for they’ll probably need one after meeting all these luminaries. Remember to invoke Sakharov when introducing them to the press: as in "Sakharov 2.0." The more "2.0 juice" you spread, the better: hence ?samizdat 2.0?, "glasnost 2.0," and "Solidarnosc 2.0" (basically, any Slavic-sounding words with a 2.0 ending would strengthen your case ? use them excessively – but watch the pronounciation!)
Meet a group of weird Chinese engineers who are equally confused about the "Internets problem" but are convinced that they can solve it through more engineering. Don’t question the viability of such approaches: engineers know better. Ensure their solution solves the wrong problems, lacks transparency, and will convince everyone in Tehran and Beijing that they need to double their incarceration rates for bloggers. Verify that the engineers are as excited about 1989 as you are, albeit for different reasons. Make sure they have some bizarre political or religious affiliation that would make your partnership look extremely odd and geopolitically suicidal. Toy with the idea of giving them funding but decide otherwise, pissing off everyone and their uncle in DC.
Go visit the usual think-tanks in search of aging conservatives who feel nostalgic for the last years of the Reagan administration. Begin by telling them how much you appreciate their (otherwise non-existent) role in ending the Soviet Union by smuggling a bunch of Xerox machines. Practice your rudimentary Polish and Hungarian. Hold their hands and salute Reagan’s bust on their table. Proceed to enlighten them about blogs, tweets, and social networks. Watch their faces light up when they grasp the full implications of what you are saying. Surprise them by announcing that Cold War is now officialy back in town.
Remind them to go back to their private libraries and dig up that passionate but unpublishable op-ed they wrote in 1987, the one about tearing down the walls and all that. Have them add "cyber-" to every "wall" in that op-ed and advise them to resumbit it to The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Act surprised on discovering that the last two paragraphs of their op-ed accuse you of not doing enough to support the revolutionary tweets coming out of Tehran.
Lose control of the nascent but increasingly dangerous debate about your favorite Internets. Convince everyone that you used the Internet to organize the post-election protests in Iran; if it fails, get in touch with Twitter executives and leak your communication with them to the New York Times. Continue telling everyone it was Twitter that caused the protests.
Make no effort to educate the public — and especially editorial boards and policy-makers – about the utter idiocy, inappropriateness and outright danger of operating on extremely simplistic assumptions about Internet Freedom. Instead, aggressively embrace those assumptions yourself and turn up the volume on your favorite Cold War songs. Dream up some fancy terms like "information curtain." Let everyone figure out what all that stuff actually means.
Distract everyone by dropping periodic references to the success of technology in rebuilding Haiti and monitoring (sham) elections in Sudan. Benefit from the ensuing confusion — it buys time. Continue meeting with the weird engineers. Don’t debunk any overblown and essentially unverifiable claims about the success of their technology in fostering a "Twitter Revolution? in Iran. Then tell everyone how much you care about Internet Freedom. Wait until your refusal to support the engineers looks extremely hypocritical and doesn’t match your own overblown rhetoric. Write a check for $ 1.5 million. Start over.
* Inspired by Lorrie Moore’s short story "How To Become a Writer" and the recent announcement that the State Department is about to give $1.5 million to Global Internet Freedom Consortium
Source: http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/12/how_to_become_an_internet_freedom_warrior
claiming memory claims memory cnn viewer
On cyberwarfare, do we need PLA transparency or accountability?
With exquisite timing, the Pentagon released its annual China military report on Wednesday just as Chinese state television broadcast a documentary trumpeting the PLA’s cyberwarfare capabilities. For those following security issues in Asia, there was nothing particularly new in the Pentagon report. It noted the challenges posed by China’s new doctrine of maritime power projection, plans for multiple aircraft carriers, the new J-20 stealth fighter, and PLA interest in cyberwarfare (exclamation point helpfully provided by CCTV). Nor was there any real news in the delay of the report, which is also an annual event because of the tedious but necessary bureaucratic process of ensuring the contents are credibly presented.
The fact that the PLA is aggressively pursuing cyberwarfare is also not news, though CCTV’s bravado about it did catch some analysts by surprise (visitors to Beijing should make a point of watching CCTV-7, the PLA channel, which provides a steady stream of military propaganda, uniformed game shows, and gorgeous singing colonels in jackboots). Many of us in the national security or Asia fields receive repeat "visits" from Chinese-based hackers. Sometimes these come in the form of crashing Google accounts or targeted "phishing" attacks — seemingly from other colleagues’ email addresses with attached reports on "PLA modernization" or the "Hu-Obama Summit" that contain malware. I have also enjoyed démarches from Chinese officials expressing concern about travel plans to Dharamsala (seat of the exile Tibetan government) or Taiwan. My stern but courteous callers were generally better informed about my itinerary than my own travel agent and made little effort to conceal their knowledge. A Chinese academic friend confided to me a few years back that one of his former students is working with 20,000 other tech-savvy youth for the Ministry of State Security — and that was just the unit in charge of domestic surveillance. It is hard to maintain operational security when the operation is that massive and the PLA propaganda machine is openly encouraging a culture of aggressive defense of China’s "core interests."
The administration refrain is that we must have more military-to-military transparency with the PLA. This may be necessary, but it is hardly sufficient and it carries some negative consequences. For one thing, the administration seems fixated on sustaining mil-to-mil dialogue with Beijing to the point that it is distorting decision-making on arms sales to Taiwan (this because the PLA will routinely cut off military-to-military dialogue in retaliation for the sales). The other problem with a focus on mil-to-mil transparency is that it exacerbates the larger problem of PLA autonomy within the Chinese system. Yes, the Central Military Commission (CMC) ensures that the "Party controls the gun" and the chair and vice chair are Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, respectively. But every other member of the CMC is uniformed military, and Hu and Xi have no independent sources of oversight or expertise on the operational practices of the PLA (particularly the PLA Navy). By pushing for more mil-mil dialogue with the PLA, we risk reinforcing PLA autonomy and further weakening civilian control. Instead, we should put the priority on working collectively with other states to insist that China’s leaders be held accountable for the actions of the PLA and that the PLA be held accountable to the leadership. This burden will have to be carried by the president and other leaders since the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is too weak to make a difference on its own.
The China military report and the CCTV cyberattack documentary should also cause U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to begin making the case for reversing the administration’s planned cuts in defense spending. Mil-to-mil dialogue is no substitute for necessary recapitalization of our air and naval forces in the Pacific.
disclosed nuclear ed hinds egypt officials