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Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Tag
51 post(s) are associated with this Tag
Video: The Song of the Count
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
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
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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Civil Rights: Guantánamo Bay cell reconstruction
This Monday Amnesty International started a tour to cities and regional towns in Australia with a full scale reconstruction of the cell in which Australian David Hicks and other detainees are being held at Guantánamo Bay. The cell is a reconstruction of the solitary confinement cells in Guantánamo Bay and measures 1.8 meters wide, 2.4 meters in length and 2.4 meters high. There is an Quicktime virtual reality panorama and additional images online (links below) that provide you with an understanding of the space where David Hicks and others are now being detained since 5 years…
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Internet: The Great Firewall of China
A non-profit group of web designers, film directors and journalists who want to make the Internet censorship system more transparent has put up a web site called the “Great Firewall of China”. On the site you can test if a particular website address is blocked in China and see how the site looks from the perspective of a Chinese user. It works by routing the requested url from…
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UK: Government planning to become Peeping Tom
According to UK daily newspaper “The Sun” the UK Home office is currently planning to put x-ray like devices that could snap “naked” pictures of passers-by into lampposts or otherwise cover public space. While the idea here - as usual - is to trap terror suspects and identify people carrying weapons or explosives, it is unclear how controls or accountability for the use of such systems can be implemented. Officials claim one solution would be to allow only women to monitor female subjects. How this can be done on a public square sounds rather optimistic to us. People living in the UK are today already on average captured 300 times per day by more than 4 million surveillance cameras…
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations
Today throughout the US celebrations will be held to honor Martin Luther King Jr. who was murdered 1968 in Memphis. Many things have changed since the march to Washington and his famous speech in 1963, but with the deterioration of civil rights throughout the world’s leading nations latest since 9/11 it is good to be reminded that there was a time not so long ago when people stood up for their rights and did not indulge in indifference to such changes.
A video of his famous speech is available online in full length (link below)…
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Politics: Transparency International releases 2006 CPI
Global civil society organization Transparency International has today released their annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2006.
Again the CPI points to a strong correlation between corruption and poverty, with a concentration of impoverished states at the bottom of the list.
The 2006 CPI ranks 163 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert [...]
Internet: Reporters without Borders 2006 List of “Internet Black-Holes”
To initiate their 24-hour online demo against Internet censorship the international campaign organization Reporters without Borders has published their 2006 list of “Internet Black holes” - countries that censor and don’t provide free access to the Internet.
Everyone is invited to connect to the Reporter without Borders website between 11 a.m. on 7 November and 11 [...]
Russia: Activities of more then 90 NGOs suspended
Yesterday Russia has suspended the activities of more the 90 foreign non government organizations (NGOs) including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, saying they failed new registration requirements recently introduced with a controversial law.
The law that was signed by President Putin earlier this year allows authorities to ban financing of specific [...]
