Internet has changed foreign policy for ever, says Gordon Brown The Guardian
Gordon Brown says foreign policy ‘can no longer be the province of just a few elites’. Photograph: Virginia Mayo/AP Foreign policy can never be the same again — and it’s all because of the internet, Gordon Brown said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Referring to the so-called Twitter revolution in Iran, the prime minister said technological advances and the democratisation of information mean “foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites”. “You cannot have Rwanda again,” he said. “This week’s events in Iran are a reminder of the way that people are using new technology to come together in new ways to make their views known.” [So he's finally figured out something we-all have known for years. Now, how long before the entertainment cartels clue in?]

U.S. launches another drone plane to patrol Canadian border CBC
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched another unmanned surveillance aircraft over the Canadian border on Monday, this time in the Great Lakes area, to try to stem the flow of drugs, migrants and terrorists into the country, U.S. officials told CBC News… The plane is equipped with 3,000 sensors and cameras capable of detecting a moving person from 10 kilometres away… However, people on the reserve are uneasy about being watched, Mohawk youth counsellor Brant Davis said. “We no longer have the life we had 20 years ago here. Cameras, infrared, laser, informants, everything.”

Information commissioner resigns suddenly Canwest News Service
Information Commissioner Robert Marleau abruptly resigned Monday for “entirely personal and private” reasons, raising doubts about the pace and direction of reforms to Canada’s access to information laws that he was spearheading. Marleau, Canada’s fourth information commissioner, had been the Clerk of the House of Commons for 13 years before becoming commissioner early in 2007. As an independent office of Parliament, Marleau would have been expected to serve a seven-year term.

Iranian Riot Police Using Force to Break Up Protesters TransWorldNews
Iranian riot police have used tear gas to break up large crowds of protesters who continue to stage rallies opposing the results of the recent presidential elections. In addition to tear gas police have fired live ammunition in the air while militiamen have used batons to club those people defying the government warning about assembling. That warning actually came from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, on Friday, ordered a ban on the protests. Despite that order protesters have continued to flood the streets demanding a new election after claiming fraudulent results handed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. At least ten people have died in the clashes between protesters and security forces and that number could rise dramatically as the government’s patience has grown increasingly thin. Those security forces have said they would use any means necessary to end the demonstrations and as the situation stretches into its second week those means are expected to deliver bloody results.

Australia beats US for broadband access Australian IT
South Korea, where 95 per cent of homes have broadband, has topped a world survey on access to the high-speed internet. Among other Asia-Pacific nations, Australia ranked 11th with 72 per cent, Japan ranked 16th with 64 per cent, New Zealand ranked 25th with 57 per cent and China ranked 43rd with 21 per cent. The United States, where just 60 per cent of households had broadband as of last year, ranked 20th in the survey of 58 countries by Boston-based Strategy Analytics, released on Thursday. Five of the top 10 countries or territories in the survey were in Asia and the firm predicted the broadband subscriber base in the Asia-Pacific region will grow on average by a further 15 per cent a year between 2009 and 2013.

Teen spots alleged robbers on Google Street View CNet news
The world weaves odd, strangely patterned webs. Last September, a 14-year-old boy told police in Groningen, Holland, that he had been knocked off his bike and robbed of some money and his cell phone. What evidence did he have of his alleged assailants? Very little. Six months later, the Associated Press reports, he was pootling around on Google Street View when he saw an image of himself–and of two males behind him, who, he seemed to remember, were just in the place where he was allegedly robbed. So he called the police again. Paul Heidanus, a spokesman for the Groningen police, told the AP that the police had to make a formal request to Google in order to obtain the unblurred photo from Street View. “The photo could provide an important contribution to solving a crime,” he said.

Social networking giants are subject to EU data protection laws, say regulators OUT-LAW News
Social networking sites are legally responsible for their users’ privacy, Europe’s privacy watchdogs have confirmed. A committee of data protection regulators has said that the sites are ‘data controllers’, with all the legal obligations that brings. Users of the sites are also data controllers with legal obligations when they are posting on behalf of a club, society or company, the opinion said. The committee of Europe’s data protection regulators, the Article 29 Working Party, has published its opinion on the legal status of social networking operators such as Facebook and MySpace. It has said that the sites cannot escape their legal obligations just because content on them is often produced and posted by users.

‘Data mining’ for drug companies goes to courts Associated Press
The prescription drugs you take are on the minds of a lot of people: judges on two federal courts, legislators in several states, countless doctors and, at the center, the companies that make money by figuring out who’s prescribing what. “Data-mining” firms – which gather electronic information on the drugs prescribers order for their patients, then sell that information to pharmaceutical companies – have sued to block laws restricting their activities in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. At issue is the use by drug company “detailers” – the sales force that deals with doctors and other prescribers and tries to get them to use the company’s products – of the information about doctors’ prescribing habits.

Malicious Attacks Most Blamed in ‘09 Data Breaches Washington Post
Rogue employees and hackers were the most commonly cited sources of data breaches reported during the first half of 2009, according to figures released this week by the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit. The ID Theft Center found that of the roughly 250 data breaches publicly reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12, victims blamed the largest share of incidents on theft by employees (18.4 percent) and hacking (18 percent). Taken together, breaches attributed to these two types of malicious attacks have increased about 10 percent over the same period in 2008.

Italian secret internet censorship list, 287 site subset, 21 Jun 2009 WikiLeaks
Summary-This list presents 287 internet sites currently censored by Italy. This quasi-voluntary system, which was introduced under the banner of fighting “child pornography” relies on a secret, unaccountable list of site names. Because of this lack of transparency, and the power of the censorship system, the blacklist is of intense interest. Secret “child pornography” censorship blacklists in other countries, such as China, Thailand, Australia, Finland and Denmark have all been shown by WikiLeaks to have been corrupted into censoring non-child pornographic content, including political content (all but Denmark). It seems to be a law of human affairs that when such powerful, unaccountable, systems are introduced, they soon stray from their stated purpose. The majority of sites on the Italian list seem to be unrelated to child pornography. While some do appear to relate to the images of teenagers, the vast majority of sites are related to what appears to be legal young-adult pornography. Some sites are unrelated to any type of pornography. These include businesses or institutes outside of Italy, and discussion forums, used by tens of thousands for all purposes. While it is possible these sites had an unauthorized user briefly upload an underage image or link to such an image, the continued presence of the sites on this list likely reflects the lack of any censorship notification or appeal mechanism. The Australian government admitted during a Senate estimates hearing that fewer than one third of its May 2009 blacklist was related to images of those under the age of 18.

Ottawan helps Iranians bypass firewall Ottawa Citizen
Firm floods country with links to secure servers around globe – Canadian technology is playing a key role in the current political upheaval in Iran and an Ottawa man is leading the charge. Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of Psiphon Inc. — the man who recently led the team that busted an international cyber espionage network known as Ghostnet — and his team have been flooding Iran with secure network connections to servers located in other countries… Psiphon’s unfiltered connections are allowing Iranian citizens to get news from outside sources such as the BBC and to connect to online social media services, including Twitter and Facebook, which are being used to arrange demonstrations against the Iranian government. “We have gone on the offensive,” said Rohozinski. “Ensuring that Iranians have access to the information they need and deserve so that they can make informed decisions for themselves during this time of crisis…. A spokesman for Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade would not comment on the meeting or Psiphon specifically. However, he said Canada is committed to freedom of speech and does not condone Iran’s Internet filtering technologies.

Blogger to face court over call to ‘take up arms’ MSNBC
Connecticut man charged with inciting violence against state lawmaker- A blogger is due in a Connecticut courtroom to face a charge of inciting violence against state lawmakers.

FTC plans to monitor blogs for biased claims, payments Canoe
New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers – as well as the companies that compensate them – for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest. It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online.

Google submits to Beijing porn drive The Register
Thumbing nose at Tehran OK, but not at Beijing – Google’s attempt to burnish its public image by helping anti-government demonstrators in Iran has been hobbled by its apparent submission to a Beijing anti-porn drive that has even drawn fire from the US government. Last week Google trumpeted its subversive credentials by offering a Farsi translation tool, the same week that Twitter was credited with potentially powering a people’s revolution in Iran…. Google could have stuck up for the rights of the Chinese to view the same sort of smut – and political stuff – as their counterparts in the West, but has chosen instead to quickly fall into line.

Facebook Taps Privacy Hawk as Lobbyist EFF
“It’s always a good development when a civil liberties perspective gets injected in a corporate culture,” said Kevin Bankston, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Instead of advocating for the general public, he’s advocating for Facebook users, which is quickly becoming synonymous with the general public.”… Facebook’s newly minted lobbyist used to be one of the company’s most formidable adversaries.

Timbaland, Nelly Furtado sued for plagiarism MusicRadar
Mega-producer Timbaland and pop star Nelly Furtado are being sued by the label Kernel Records Oy for allegedly borrowing from a song recorded by Finnish artists to create the track Do It.

German MP jumps ship for Pirate Party The Register
A German MP has quit the Social Democrats in protest at the country’s approval of controversial laws to crack down on child porn, and pledged his support for the Pirate Party.

Boycott the web, Chinese activist says CanWest
In a country where protests are not allowed, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is counseling a safe and novel way for “netizens” to register their opposition to the government’s latest attempt to censor the Internet: boycott the World Wide Web on July 1… And he instructed the world’s largest Internet community: “Don’t explain your behaviour.”… Ai, who helped design the iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium for the Beijing Olympics, is a high-profile thorn in the side of China’s Communist government. He is constantly flirting with disaster on his well-read blog and in his Tweets. His most recent project has been to record the name of every child killed in the schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake. The whole topic of poorly built schools is one the government wants to bury, but Ai has proven too famous to shut up.

Marc – p2pnet

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June, 2009

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