Libyan government closes 'uncouth' sites

Libya’s government is known for its strict media laws, but it comes as no surprise that the country’s internet media has been notorious for lashing back. Over the years Libya has been in the news for many for various interesting leaks, including its links to Lockerbie bombing and the often bizarre activities of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

Now western companies which have been buying domain names with the now trendy suffix “ ly”, owned by Libya are facing shut down by the government on the grounds of being against Sharia law.

The trend for.ly addresses has grown in the last year as a part of a practice known as “domain hacking”. With memorable names on the “.com” space hard to come by, many companies have instead chosen to incorporate the domain name into their brand. Sites such as bit.ly, Ow.ly and Ad.ly raised millions of dollars in investment.

Moves made by the government threaten foreign business investments into new comer bit.ly which has had millions of dollars of investor’s money . Last week saw the closing of western website that showed a bare-armed woman drinking a lager.

But the government has strict rules on the use of the internet and regularly filters out political websites critical of the country’s president. Earlier this year the Libyan government blocked access to You Tube after an anti-government demonstration were published on the site. The government also blocks oppositional websites and arrests and imprisons cyber-dissidents. Therefore self censorship remains widely practiced by both online and offline media for fear of government retribution.

Whistle-blowers.com

Using the internet to out governments is the latest political fad, and with good reason, many countries including ones with oppressive media laws are effectively using tools such a wikileaks to fight the status quo, although, such efforts don’t necessarily yield the ripest or sweetest fruit.

Bangkok- a group of anonymous internet activists has set up a website to display information about Thailand that comes from the whistle-blower Wikileaks, which is blocked to some viewers in the Southern Asian country.

The group calling itself “Wikicong” says that it set up the thaileaks.info site “as a tool to break the censorship”. An apparent reference to the alleged effort by the Thai government to block access to the material which includes a private video of the country’s Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The video shows the prince having dinner with the woman who later became his wife.

The video is now being widely circulated around the country, which has a strict lese majeste law that mandates a jail terms in up to 15 years for anyone who “defames, insults or threatens” the royal family.

New York- Omoyele Sowore, a 39 year old political dissident from Nigeria now in exile in the US, has created a website that has come to be referred by many as “Africa’s Wikileaks”.

The site Sahara Repoters, is dedicates to the gathering up, from mostly anonymous sources, and then publishing all of the dirt it can find on corruption and political Skullduggery in Nigeria.

Its scoops are shielded by U.S libel laws, but the site has brought threats against Sowore, who is often publically denounced by political leaders back in Nigeria as a scandal-mongering criminal.

Since its launch five years ago, the site has tracked the overseas assets if several politicians, including a large, impoverished Nigerian state’s former governor whose holdings are reported to have included $6million London townhouse, a fleet of luxury cars that includes a 12 seat private jet .

The scoops go beyond corruption. Sowore said Sahara Reporters was the first news organisation to a produce a photo of the young Muslim terrorist from Nigeria who attempted an attack on a trans –Atlantic flight on Christmas Day.

“This is evidence-based reporting” , said Sowore . “We are here to check against corruption and bad government. If we have photographs of the corruption we post them.”

A lot the site’s scoops come from Nigerian who are angry and want to see a difference in their country. The site has also given Nigerians a journalistic watchdog that local reporters could not hope to duplicate. In Nigeria, reporters are routinely threatened with violence or bribed into silence.

There is no denying the importance of such online whistle-blowing platforms in media constrict countries. The anonymity they allow sources encourage participation and disempoweres governments from action. T he growth of sites will only increase with time and online population, but the initiation of social change by such companies will be the true deciding of their success.

North Korea takes on social networking

In a move that’s sure to leave the world scratching its head, the secretive nation of North Korea has become the newest member of Twitter. Using the Twitter name @uriminzok Korean for “our people” North Korea has taken the microblogging site as part of a rejuvenated PR campaign. The account’s first was post published on August 12 and four days since has attracted more than 7514 followers. Much like the country’s life long tyrant, it follows no one.

According to a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists, North Koreans live in the most censored country in the world. As the world’s deepest information void, the communists nation has no independent journalists, and all radio and television receivers sold in the country are locked to government-specific frequencies.

Last month to much surprise, the country’s government also opened a YouTube account uploading 78 clips in four weeks with most clips praising Kim Jong-Il . Not surprisingly however, the account appears to have bee set up by the government-owned news agency, Uriminzikkiri, one of the few to offer an English-language version of its content.

Lately, North Korea has been embracing social media, albeit for clearly dubious motives. It most defiantly isn’t looking to chit-chat about the latest episode of True Blood or even the 8th parallel, the latitude separating it from democratic mimesis South Korea. The Twitter account contains links to past speeches praising the regime’s dear leader Kim Jong-Il and a denunciation of reports that a North Korean torpedo sank South Korean warship Cheonan in March, while another criticised US led sanctions on North Korea and Iran.

Gilles Lordet, chief editor of Reporters Without Borders, said North Korea’s move into social media is the natural extension of government propaganda.

“For people inside North Korea this makes no difference at all. I don’t consider what they’re going to say on their Twitter page as honest or objective, so it’s not something we can welcome,” Lordet said.

Ironically, Twitter is blocked in South Korea and few people in the country even have access to a computer. Many of the country’s few followers posted derisive comments in Korean on the new account. Although the Twitter account can’t exactly be referred to as a success, the scathing comments left by locals on the site could eventually yield some results. I for one would never have imagined that the tyrannical regime would even allow such comments to be posted on the account, or at lest expectd drastic action to be taken as a response, but perhaps I utter too soon .

In North Korea all news is good news. According to the country’s rigidly controlled media, North Korea has never suffered from famine or poverty, and citizens would willingly sacrifice themselves and their loved ones for their leader. The website however, allows citizens to post anonymous comments of view point that would be considered anathema to the state.

The lead campaign

What happens when the world’s largest democracy teams up with its expansive media to create and pick a leader? The Lead India Campaign is such an initiative. Conceived by The Times of India , the campaign was aimed at the objective of identifying India’s future leader.

As the contest got keener, a fair share of public discussion centres at who amongst the contenders would ultimately emerge as the one best suited to lead a nation. The choice, ultimately, was whittled down to RK Misra from Bangalore and Devang Nananvati from Ahmedabad, with the former eventually being declared the winner.

However questionable the ethics of tailor making a leader might be, the initiative however, was not purely about identifying a winner. It was more about providing every right-thinking Indian a chance to step out of the comfort zone of talking about progress and getting down to the job of actually stewarding a nation, something that the Indian people got behind very quickly. The general public feels that the political process in their country has been hijacked, and what exists today is a system based on caste and creed, and therefore intelligent and able people are not getting the change to come forward.

If Lead India has been a success, a lot of the credit has to go to the multi-media campaign that was used to generate awareness about the initiative across the eight main cities of India. The campaign strategy involved print and TV advertising, a reality show, it also had an online presence through blogs, and social networking sites as well as YouTube.

Now the same initiative has been launched in South Africa calling on all citizens to respect the country’s laws and lead by example. The Lead SA call to action is the brain child of Primedia Broadcasting and is supported by Independent Newspapers. It aims to encourage action with immediate effect and reminds every South African to challenge negative perspectives, follow the rule of law and help change the country.

This campaign is on paper a perfect marriage between the media and political change. Primedia Broadcasting CEO Perry Volkwyn said that everyone can do something “ I think that people can do a lot of little everyday things that make a difference and it has to start somewhere with the small stuff. Lead SA is following former president Nelson Mandela ‘s call to the citizens of the country to be proactive about improving their lives. The campaign includes like India’s, an official video as well as other new media mediums such as blogs, social networking such as twitter and facebook.

Although the message and tone of the Lead SA campaign came off as slightly authoritarian and at times dangerously dogmatic, the project also shows media companies taking on a more positive stance about the county’s state and mobilising SA for positive action.

Primedia’s Yusuf Abramjee said that response so far has been overwhelming. “The response from the public has been phenomenon, with more than 100 000 South Africans having viewed the Lead SA website on the day of its opening and responding with thousands of ideas and suggestions”, he says.

The success of this particular initiative, we will have to wait and see.

Google breaches national laws

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy dubbed it the “single greatest breach in the history of privacy”. Google is under fire from the Australian government for breaking the country’s privacy law when it collected private information from wireless networks for the internet giant’s Street View mapping service.

Goggle’s Street View service has been controversial since its launch in 2007. Privacy groups and authorities fear that people filmed without their consent might captured doing things they wouldn’t want publicised. Nearly half of the 60 worldwide legal or criminal investigations faced by Google relate to the company’s Street View service. Google’s products have been the subject of bans or threatened bans in at least 23 countries, and faces 33 lawsuits in the US alone, according to new estimates by the analysts Aqute Intelligence.

According to Australia’s Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, Google has breached the nation’s Privacy Act. The collection of private data for the project by Google is also seen as a serious matter, according to Curtis the Australian people should be appalled and should reasonably expect that private communications should remain private.

Under fire, Google has promised to conduct a privacy assessment on any new Street View projects involving personal information and regularly consult with the state about personal data collection activities in the future. Google has also agreed to publish an apology to Australians on its official blog, but has declined to comment beyond its blog statement.
The Australian Federal Police is also conducting a separate criminal investigation of Google over the project. The probe focuses in whether the company breached the country’s telecommunications interceptions act, which prevents people accessing electronic communications other than for authorised purposes.

Several other governments are investigating Google over the data collection, and there are growing concerns from regulators and consumer watchdogs worldwide that Google isn’t serious enough about people’s privacy, of course a charge the company refutes. In May, Google acknowledged it had mistakenly collected fragments of data over public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries while it was collecting pictures of neighbourhoods for Street View , saying that it discovered the problem after German regulators launched an inquiry.

In the UK, the information commissioner ruled last year that Google’s Street View technology carries a small risk of privacy invasion but should not be stopped , although members of the public have taken direct action in at least one location to prevent the company from taking photographs on their streets.

And where does South Africa stand in these new proceedings? The country’s officials seem captivated by the project’s tourism capabilities. During the World Cup, seven of South Africa’s soccer stadiums were available on Street View a pitch level. Marthinus van Schalkwyk, minister of tourism believes that the service will be of great benefits to tourists allowing then them to explore tourist sites before physically gonging there.

Wikileaks vs U.S military

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and is still a chip on the shoulder of the most influential government in the world. Yes a simple wiki page is responsible for what the US government believes to be the unlawful supply of information to foreign intelligence which may be used to harm its Army and government interests. This is a subject that is very dear to my heart , when I think about politics and the new media I can’t help but believe that here is a tool for democracy if I have seen no other, and Wikileaks is a march in the right direction. The internet was developed by the US military , but wouldn’t it be the sweetest irony if that same baby could be the tool to shatter their colossal megalomania, call them out on their bullshit and bring down their fortress of lies?

The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is one again at the centre of media and political attention as it makes public more than 90 000 secret records of incidents and intelligence reports from the US military about the war in Afghanistan. Wikileaks is an international organisation, based in Sweden that publishes sensitive documents. By far one of the most controversial servings form the site has been the recent video post of US military killings. The video shows U.S soldiers laughing as they gun down Afghan civilians and two journalists in a firefight in Baghdad in 2007. The man thought to be responsible for leaking the footage is Army intelligence expert , Bradley Manning. He is said to be locked up in a military prison after being shipped to Kuwait. He faces trial by court martial, and if found guilty, a heavy jail sentence.

Other documents disclose how the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets. Documents detail coalition troops shooting unarmed drivers and civilian motorcyclists supposedly because they are terrifies that they could be Taliban suicide bombers.

The site now claims to host more than a million documents . Anyone can submit to Wikileaks anonymously , but a team of reviewers, volunteers from the mainstream press, journalists and Wikileaks staff decide what is published. According to Editor in Chief and founder, Julian Assange, “the site accepts classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance” it does not take “rumour, opinion and other kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publically available. The recent documents went through rigorous inspect ion before publication on the site and have been approved as legit by the BBC.

However the site has suffered a blow due to the issue of source confidentiality something that it prides itself on. “We specialise in allowing whistle-blowers and journalists who have been censored to get material out to the public”. Mr Assange in the light of the Manning case, insists that Wikileaks never divulges its resources . “We have deliberately structured our operation to protect sources under threat of criminal law”, he said. The site is working to help protect journalist and sources from prosecution, its currently working with the Iceland government on efforts to increase legal protection for whistle-blowers in the country.

Independence 2.0

It’s been 50 years since up to 17 African countries have gained independence, but the chasmistic digital divide between the West and the rest has left many African states reliant on foreign aid and technologies to help them become even feeble competitors . Finland for example, has recently passed a law giving every citizen the legal right to 1 Mbps broadband internet access.

It’s not however all doom and gloom , now, a wave of homegrown programmers, developers and software makers claim to be heralding a new era of African independence. Something that should really be of no surprise to anyone, in fact, in a continent were the world’s highest mobile growth rate is taking place, most people would say that it is about damn time that somebody, (an African please) did something.

The Idlelo conference, organised by the Free Software and Open source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), brought together the continent’s cleverest coding minds at Accra, in Ghana, to discuss new software opportunities for Africa. Unlike the bigger foreign developers who mainly target the urban markets, the organisers of the event looked at how to reach the rural, relatively poorer communities of Africa. What makes projects such as this very important is that the future of social networking and even citizen journalism are dependent on their success .

Social networking is no longer a first world country entitlement as it has proven to be of immense help to human beings and countries in times of crisis. The efforts of Africa’s open source community are already creating an impact. Following the Haiti earthquake, those affected could use geotagging software to shout out for supplies and the pleas would appear on the website www.ushahidi.com . The software behind the project was produced by developers from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Botswana among other countries.

According to Dorothy Gordon, Director General kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, big multi-nationals are paying more attention to Africa than ever before. However, this attention has been directed at developing e-government systems. “If you look as the national level, or even if you look at the whole continent, you will see that many of the technologies we use are imported” she commented. This of course means that African Nations and their governments are quite vulnerable, since all the systems in use are imported, this creates a dodgy dependency on those countries for technological maintenance and advancements.

The programme One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the East African Community (EAC) aims to deliver 30 million laptops in the region by 2015. The two groups aim to find donors to help pay for the machines, which currently sell for more than $200, despite intentions to sell them for less. At the end of the day it’s all about money, ideally we would love to live in a world where governments can equip every kid to be educated and computer literate but that’s not the case. Governments have their agendas and the improvements in telecommunications and social networking are not always the number one priority. It is therefore up to Africans to initiate movements to take care of our problems cause frankly, no one else will.