To protect Internet freedom

Birgitta Jónsdóttir
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 18 April 2012 10.00 BST
Political consultant Naomi Wolf speaks at a news
conference in New York last month announcing a lawsuit against indefinite
detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act. Photograph:
viewpress Vp/Demotix/Corbis
Freedom for most people is something sacred, and
many have been willing to sacrifice their lives for it. It is not just another
word, for we measure the health of our democracies by the standard of freedom.
We use it to measure our happiness and prosperity. Sadly, freedom of
information, expression and speech is being eroded gradually without people paying much attention to it.
Freedom of movement is permitted within certain zones, freedom of reading is disappearing, and the right to privacy is
dwindling with the increased surveillance of our every move.
When the world wide web came into being, it was an
unrestricted, free flowing world of creativity, connectivity and close
encounters of the internet kind. It was as if the collective consciousness had
taken on material (yet virtual!) form and people soon learned to use it to
work, play and gather. Today's social and democratic reform is born and bred
online where people can freely exchange views and knowledge. Some of us
old-school internet freedom fighters understood this value way before the web
became such a part of our daily lives. One of them is John Perry Barlow, who in
1996 wrote a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in a response to an
attempt to legalise restrictions on this brand new world. In it he declares:
"Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel,
I come from Cyberspace, the new home of mind. On behalf of the future, I ask
you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereignty where we gather."
Barlow inspired me and others to create the
Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI),
a parliamentary proposal unanimously approved by the Icelandic parliament in
2010, tasking the government to make Iceland a safe haven for freedom of
information and expression, where privacy online would be as sacred and guarded
as it is in the real world. The spirit of IMMI is in stark contrast with the
serious attacks we are currently faced with. We have legal monsters like Acta, Sopa, Pipa and
now Cispa; we
have anti-terrorist acts abused to tear these liberties apart; we have armies
of corporate lawyers scrutinising every bit of news prior to it getting out to
us before we ever get to know the real stories that should remain in the public
domain.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The US
government legally hacks into other nations' parliamentary
private social media data because it is stored on servers originating in the
US, as in my Twitter case. The infamous EU data retention law is making us all
into terrorist subjects by default, and now we have the newest addition in a
dangerous cocktail of erosion of civil liberties online with the offline
reality: meet the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), also known
as the Homeland Battlefield Act. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
describes it thus:
"For the first time in American history, we
have a law authorising the worldwide and indefinite military detention of
people captured far from any battlefield. The NDAA has no temporal or
geographic limitations. It is completely at odds with our values, violates the
constitution, and corrodes our nation's commitment to the rule of law."
Since the US department of justice is ploughing my private data and WikiLeaks (whom I volunteered for in
2010 by co-producing Collateral Murder) are defined by the US vice-president as
cyberterrorists, I felt under direct threat when NDAA was passed. I have not
been able to travel to the US for more than a year under advice from the
Icelandic state department. The only way for me to go is on a UN visa (the same
kind as Gaddafi and Hussein got when going to the UN) when I plan to attend the
UN assembly later this year. Basically what NDAA means is that the US military
can put anyone, anywhere under the suspicion of being a terror threat or an
associate and detain you for ever, without you having access to a lawyer or a
court. So I joined Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and other
activists in suing the United States government to stop the implementation of
the NDAA. Naomi Wolf was kind enough to read my testimony
at a US court last month, since I could not be there in person.
The good news is that cyberspace is full of hacktivists and our
offline world has a growing Occupy movement,
inspiring all of us into action, co-creating a different reality in the spirit
of a true online and offline freedom.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its
affiliated companies.



Guardian News link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/18/suing-us-government-protect-internet-freedom

How Internet firms are reading your texts and emails and even looking at your pictures by spying through downloaded smartphone apps

By Damien Gayle
The small print included with many mobile phone apps is
giving their developers the right to rifle through users' phone books, text
messages and emails.

By agreeing to little-read terms and conditions documents,
phone users are giving developers the right to inspect their personal
information and even find out who they are talking to.

In many shocking cases, users are even giving apps the right
to collect whatever images the camera happens to be seeing, as well as the
phone's location.
Privacy risk: Smartphone
app developers have the right to access incredible amounts of users' personal
data thanks to provisions in little-read terms and conditions documents
Facebook, Yahoo!, Flickr and Badoo all admitted to reading
users' text messages through their Android smartphone apps, the Sunday Times
reported.
And many other apps from less well-known developers, many of
them available for free, are also including the rights to access your personal
data in their terms and conditions.
More...
Think before you
text: Divorce lawyers warn of the powerful evidence of a simple SMS message or
Facebook post
Smartphones replace
newspapers as choice of reading material... for men in the toilet
Android leaps over
iPhone in UK with 2.5million more users as majority now own a smartphone

Academics are now warning the many apps are little more than
'fronts' to allow companies to hoover up personal data and pass them on to
advertisers for a fee.

But the revelations also make clear that the wealth of data
collected by the new generation of smartphones could pose a serious risk to
users' privacy.

HOOVERING UP YOUR DATA: WHAT THE APPS CAN ACCESS


Location data
Internet history Text messages Contact book Online account IDs Who you are
calling May intercept calls Can access camera
Twitter: The site admitted that its smartphone application
transmitted data from users' private address books
Daniel Rosenfield, director of Sun Products, a successful
app business whose products are downloaded at a rate of 5,000 a day, said the
information was requested by advertisers.

'You can sell your app but the revenue you get from selling
your apps doesn't touch the revenue you get from giving your apps away for free
and just loading them with advertisements,' he told the Sunday Times.

Unlike Android apps, Apple iPhone apps are covered by a
general terms and conditions policy, which runs to astonishing 17,000 words.

However, the company also faced embarrassment earlier this
month when it emerged some companies with iPhone apps were harvesting contact
lists from customers mobile phone address books without telling them.

Twitter admitted that it copied lists of email addresses and
phone numbers from those who used its smartphone application and stored them on
its servers without asking users' permission.

Steve Jobs, Apple's late founder and the mastermind behind
the iPhone, himself spoke of the dangers of instrusive apps in 2007, warning
that many 'want to take a lot of your personal data and suck it up.'

Chris Brauer, co-director of the centre for Creative and
Social Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London, echoed the concerns.

He warned that the ubiquitous smartphones have become 'a
source for incredibly rich information about people's lives.

'A lot of apps are fronts for various companies who are now
capturing this data.'
"Someone need to develop an app that avoids the leaking
of information" Yes the app is called stop using open to all Android and
use a windows phone or an iphone. Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry have more strict
controls of what apps go to their store.

HOOVERING UP YOUR DATA: WHAT THE APPS CAN ACCESS



Location data


Internet history


Text messages


Contact book


Online account IDs


Who you are calling


May intercept calls


Can access camera




Flickr


x



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x



x



x




Flixster


x





x


x






YouTube






x


x



x




Foursquare


x





x


x






TweetDeck


x





x


x






Netflix



x










Facebook


x



x


x


x


x






Ancestry.co.uk


x








x




Badoo


x



x


x



x



x




Angry Birds


x






x






Yahoo! Messenger




x


x


x


x






Shazam


x






x






My Fitness Pal





x



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My Remote Lock





x



x


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Media Effect Theories Relating Violent Video Games to Violent Behaviour

From the Hypodermic Needle Theory otherwise known as the silver bullet approach to the Uses and Gratification Theory and the Limited Effects Model researches concerned with determining the link between media content and behaviour in viewers goes back in time -to the early 1930s perhaps. As it relates to Video games, these theories have been hailed as well as flawed in interpreting the social behaviours of game players.

In the first book uniting empirical research on and public policy options for violent video games; 'Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents' by Anderson, Gentile, and Buckley updated the traditional General Aggression Model to focus on both developmental processes and how media-violence exposure aggravated the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour in both short- and long-term contexts. Anderson et al. describe the reaction of the games industry to scientific findings that exposure to violent video games and other forms of media violence constitutes a significant risk factor for later aggressive and violent behavior. They argue that society should begin a more productive debate about whether to reduce the high rates of exposure to media violence, and delineate the public policy options that are likely be most effective Anderson and Dill (2000:1) developed facts after a study that real-life violent video game play was positively related to aggressive behaviour and delinquency. Also, the study said graphically violent video games increased aggressive thoughts and behaviour.
However, sceptics built up a contrary school of thought which held that the approaches used were flawed and suggested that gamers who prejudiced . Mackay (2002: 48) described those studies as weak and inaccurate.
According to Karen Sternheimer, sociologist at the University of Southern California games like Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War do not in any way cause youthful players to commit real-life violence. 'Politicians and other moral crusaders frequently create “folk devils,” individuals or groups defined as evil and immoral. Folk devils allow us to channel our blame and fear... Video games... have become contemporary folk devils because they seem to pose a threat to children,' she said.

*This graph shows that as video game sales increased, the total number of violent crimes went down drastically.












References
Anderson, C. & Dill, K. (2000) : 'Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviour in the Laboratory and Life.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 78, no.4

Mackay, H. (2002): 'Media mania: why our fear of modern media is misplaced.' Sydney: University of New South Wales

Duke Ferris (2009): 'Caution Children at Play: The truth About Violent Youths and Video Games.' Available at http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/violence_and_videogames (Accessed on December 4, 2009)

Violent Game Don't Cause Youth Violence Sayd USC Siociologist' (2007). Available at http://www.gamepolitics.com/2007/02/28/violent-games-dont-cause-youth-violence-says-usc-sociologist (accessed on December 4, 2009)

WHY DO GAMERS CHEAT IN GAMES?

One of the methodologies of studying digital gamers according to Ricard Bartle's 'Four Suits' is the 'Spades.'

Originally, the Spades is a kind of trick taking card game originated in the United States at about 1930. But in Bartles context, it refers to players or gamers of digital video games who derives gratification from discovering a game's secret and hidden mechanics.

The vice of cheating in games has some what become a cultural practice. In recent times, game developers and their security companies have watched in agony as peripheral game industries grew producing information about games rather than games themselves. Sophisticated video game weapons that could take months of hard play to unlock can now easily be decoded in a matter of (how fast is your Internet connectivity?). There are even products sold that offers services to aid game cheats succeed, check out UKGamerCheats.com, cheatcc.com, gamecheats.eu and countless others. About.com has articles on top cheat codes, 'Fatal Frame cheats and secrets,' 'Resident Evil Cheats, Secrets and Unloakables for PS2' amongst others.
The question is why would people cheat on a game, doesn't that elude the whole concept and experience of gaming? I'm not an enthusiastic gamer- so what do I know?
Wikipedia explains it further though:

'Cheating in video games involves a player of a video game creating an advantage beyond the bounds of normal gameplay, usually to make the game easier. Cheats include advantages such as invulnerability ("God mode") or an infinite amount of some resource such as ammunition. Cheats may also create unusual or interesting effects which do not necessarily make the game easier to play, such as making enemies tougher, or giving characters (including enemies) different appearances, such as large heads. Cheats often take the form of 'secrets' placed by game developers, usually to reward dedicated players.

Cheats may be activated from within the game itself (a cheat code implemented by the original game developers); or created by third-party software (a game trainer) or hardware (a cheat cartridge).Examples of cheats in FPS games include the aimbot, which assists the player in aiming at the target, giving the user an unfair advantage, and the wallhack, which allows a player to see through solid or opaque objects and/or manipulate or remove textures, and ESP, with which the information of other players is displayed.'

References:

About.com (2009): 'Resident Evil Cheats, Secrets and Unlocakable.' Available at http://vgstrategies.about.com/od/ps2cheatscodesr/a/ResidentEvil4.htm (Accessed on December 4, 2009)

http://www.humlab.umu.se/cultureandcomputergamesstudyingonlineactivities

Picture Souce: http://www.buydigitalshop.com/images/game_cheats.jpg

Wikipedia: 'Cheating in Video Games.' Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_video_games (Accessed on December 4, 2009)

The Commercialization of the Internet

Vincent C. (1995), in his article- 'A Cultural Transition: The Commercialization of the Internet': "A cultural transition has clearly taken place on the Internet. Even in the past several months, there has been a staggering increase in the number of commercial sites on the Net. In the past several years, Internet usage has expanded from almost exclusively academic and military interests to encompass a much broader scope. The Net is fast becoming a more visible factor in our society. Magazines such as Newsweek contain weekly "cyberspace" sections, while popular television shows like the Simpsons boast their own web sites. The effects on the medium have so far been mixed. The Internet is still developing as a means of communication, and the original network was not designed with the interests of corporate retailers in mind. Some have chosen to exploit the weaknesses of systems such as Usenet in the name of business. Others have made genuinely useful services available in exchange for prominent advertising. The driving force behind these cultural transitions has been the World-Wide Web, introducing a much more graphical, esthetically pleasing means of conveying information to the average user. Future developments such as the adaptation of HTML 3.0 will undoubtedly add momentum to the change. The advent of secure electronic money and URL content labeling will also have a sizable effect on the business climate of the Net."

According to Barry L et al, commercialization of the Internet has advanced. "The Internet has now become almost a "commodity" service, and much of the latest attention has been on the use of this global information infrastructure for support of other commercial services. Products are available to facilitate the provisioning of that information and many of the latest developments in technology have been aimed at providing increasingly sophisticated information services on top of the basic Internet data communications."

Barry Leiner et al (2003): 'A Brief History of the Internet'. Available at http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#Commercialization. (Accessed on 25 November 2009)

Vincent Christopher (1995): "A Cultural Transition: The Commercialization of the Internet." Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall95-papers/vincent-culture.html (accessed on 24 November 2009)

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC): 'US Online Advertising Revenues, First half 1999-First half 2009 (millions).' IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: 2009 Second quarter and First Six Months Results, October 5, 2009. Available at www.eMArketer.com. (Accessed on 25 November 2009)

CROWD SOURCING AND ITS DIVIDENDS

Last year, a note was posted on my facebook page calling for writers and poets to send in inspiring works of poetry for a book called 'Poetry for Charity.' The idea was that the best poems would be selected for a book and it would be sold globally-proceeds would go to different charities for children. It seemed like a great opportunity for me to take those hidden poems in my journal and make a child happy. There weren't any terms for payment but people didn't seem to care, I for one didn't even think about the monetary value- the idea was fascinating enough. I submitted a poem: "Game of Hearts" to an email and weeks later the book was out. It was amazing to see the writers all the way from Afghanistan, France, Kenya, the UK and the US, Australia, etc some of whom were accomlshed and recognised poets. I was proud to be a contributor and that was enough payment because I probably would never have had the particular idea myself.

lulu.com: "Poetry for charity is a new project which aims to bring together several writers from various regions of the world using the facebook social networking website, with a common aim of donating their poems and spoken word pieces to be added to a collection. All the revenue raised from the sale of the book would be donated to 3 different charities for every edition of the collection. The first “Poetry for charity, Volume one” features the work of 34 writers from different continents and backgrounds and volume 2 has 68 writers contributing to the collection.Through poetry for charity we have been able to encourage a new breed of writers, and support worthy causes."

lulu.com (2009): Lulu marketplace. Available at http://www.lulu.com/product/101/poetry-for-charity/4949149 (accessed on 23 November, 2009)

Citizen Journalism

Jeff Holden, CEO of Pelago made a very interesting case for Citizen Journalism in his web post. He said:

"The first was the trend toward perfect information, or simply access to exactly the right information at the right time in the right form. This is an incredibly exciting trend, because it represents a shift of power to the individual, who will become literally enlightened in virtually every context. This trend was and is visible everywhere on the Web. With the advent of the Web, massive amounts of content suddenly became “finger-tippy.” Not only is more content becoming available, but the manner in which it is organized is evolving."

In Nigeria, Citizen Journalism is directly changing democracy and indirectly improving the lives of people. So many things in the society has been taken for granted or ignored because of the poor media coverage and the easily influenced legal system- but since media houses opened their pages and air space to citizens to make input using mobile phones, video cameras, tape recorders and other multimedia gadget to capture life in their area, so many societal ills and vices that were swept under the carpet has been unearthed and the culprit brought to book. These included police brutality, ritual killings, poor health care and amenities, etc that were supposedly on paper eradicated. The citizens have been equipped with some power to bring back in some way a level of "fear of the law." Government officials and people with power have become a little more cautious than before because anybody walking by may have a hidden camera in her/his sun shade or something more high tech to expose their "hidden acts."

pictures from:
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static.flickr.com/109/253165306_860e67cfbc.jpg