Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Tag

56 post(s) are associated with this Tag

Civil-Rights: (Official) Censorship is coming back to Europe

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Today the German Parliament will vote on a new Censorship law to be put in place to block web content as decided by the German administration. Based on black listing web sites and blocking those at ISP level via DNS and the displaying of so-called Stop pages the planned law was originally been handed around and legislators were seeking public approval by false-flagging it as a solely preventive measure against child abuse / pornography.

While almost all experts heard on this matter (fighting such illegal material and use) have clearly demonstrated that the censoring of access is no way forward towards stopping such activities particularly as many of the web servers in question were even physically located in Germany and other means (take-down notice to providers) proofed that within shortest notice (often less than a day) the material was taken off the net, it became more and more clear that the German Government is seemingly following a completely different agenda. The latest text of the law not even contains a reference anymore to the previously so broadly used argument of fighting child abuse but provides the general right to block any Internet content as…

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Politics: Power to the poster

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Power to the poster calls itself a “a graphic design democracy project” commenting on the issues of our time. You’ll find dozens of 11×17 posters in PDF format for download and use anywhere.

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Film: Torturing Democracy

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Torturing Democracy is the 2008 documentary film from awarding-winning producer Sherry Jones on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques“ by the Bush administration in the so-called “War on Terror”. The 90 minutes documentary took more than 18 months to make and includes interview from high ranking U.S. military personnel and the State Department, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage…

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Amnesty International: Crazy Leaders

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The crazy leaders that have grown out of the mess this planet has become during the last decades finally found some activities adequate for their personalities and talents.

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Data Visualization: Internet Censorship

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A great visualization by Good Magazine and the Lifelong Friendship Society on Internet censorship around the world.

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Animation: Declaration of Human Rights

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An outstanding animation - the best on that topic we have ever seen. The text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an Infographics animation.

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Video: Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty

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A must see 27 minute interview with Naomi Wolf - with the seemingly relaxing of rule for deploying military troops in the U.S. and other western countries (we just heard the same about Germany today) against their own citizens, we soon will all be terrorist (if not warranted otherwise) and she is warning that martial law is just around the corner.

She is also mentioning that members of congress have been threatened with Martial law if they would not pass the so-called “Bailout” plan.

Also mentioned is the change of oath of the U.S. armed forces that…

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Video: The Song of the Count

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One for the weekend - with so many unhappy occasions of censorship being reported the last days maybe this kind of censoring at least gets a short smile on your face.

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CNCI - A new cybersecurity program

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It’s G.W. Bush’s single largest request for funds in the 2009 intelligence budget and its a “highly classified, multiyear, multibillion-dollar project“.

It goes by the name CNCI aka “Cyber Initiative” and the director National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, calls it a pro-active measure to protect the US Government computing infrastructure and in the future potentially also the computing environments of (US) private entities.

While the secrecy surrounding the program does not even provide specific funding figures or a breakdown, the House Intelligence committee in its report on the program “recognizes” that “…it will be imperative that the government also take into account the interest and concerns of private citizens, the US information technology industry, and other elements of the private sector…“.

They call it a public-private partnership and outlined how the oversight should happen by a panel of lawmakers, executive branch officials and some private sector representatives. And the House has already approved 90% of the requested budget.

So far so good, sounds all nice and positive - a fresh start, “unlike any model currently existing“, well, well, well if your memory in that branch of IT goes back long enough (10 years+) then you will say together with us: Nice words but we have heard them before and when we acted within the scheme we got heavily burned and a bunch of gov. crooks around the world filled their pockets with Billions of Dollars.

So if its a “fresh start” back up your words with actions!

Demonstrate that you have learned from the past mistakes and…

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Data visualization: Leading surveillance societies around the world

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Since 1997 two NGOs - the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International - have surveyed and assessed the state of surveillance and privacy protection in 47 countries. The annual Privacy & Human Rights Report compiled from their findings has by now become one of the most comprehensive surveys of global privacy and citizen rights.

Their “most recent report” published a few days ago has been created with the help of more than 200 experts from around the world and has grown to 1,100 pages. It shows trends of

…an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards…“, and

…an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion…

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