Last month, the government of Sudan declared a “cyber-jihad” against youth groups and other anti-government organizations organizing protests in that country. Responding harshly to earlier protests with beatings and arrests, the government of Sudan has now turned its attention to cyberspace with teams managing what the Government calls “online defense operations.” Internet agents infiltrated organizers’ websites in an attempt to determine the identities of leading activists. The result: their Facebook accounts and phone networks compromised, activists spent upwards of 12 days in jail and were subject to the brutality of security forces. Though many have been released, they are now wary of utilizing almost any organizational strategy involving telecommunications. (more…)
Category: Blog
The issue of Internet censorship has cycled throughout headlines, whether it’s Congress interrogating Microsoft and Yahoo! as to why they are selling products that assist Chinese filtration or Google deciding that they are no longer censoring Google.cn. The largest cause for concern has been the violation of human rights, which has lead to new Internet freedom scales from organizations like Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. However, research of Internet censorship from an economic perspective has been pretty limited. I performed a mini case study of China and India, two countries that have had similar ICT growth but one is censored and the other is not. Unfortunately, there is not much evidence that shows that censorship is causing much of a negative effect on China’s ICT industry, but its continual growth could still influence policy change as the entire nation gets online. (more…)
For the frustrated governance advisor, exasperated force commander, and perpetually under funded election observer the notion that technology can solve our problems is a tempting one. But as Dr. Raul Zambrano of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Dr. Matthew Levinger from the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) point out, the challenges faced by development and peace making professionals can only be solved by human ingenuity, social awareness and ethics. Mobile technology is only a means to more efficiently achieving this end. (more…)
Call it a social experiment or just plain crazy, but I refuse to buy a cell phone. This mobile-addict is detoxing. Not long ago, I was a slave to my Blackberry. I even started putting it next to my pillow to check emails before bed only to reach for it hours later to cut off
Then I went to Cameroon.
Perhaps the biggest thing to come out of this years famed South By Southwest Conference (SXSWi) was the GroupMe app. And since there’s basically an app for everything, we need to wonder what is so special about this one. What has captured the attention of tech nerds, and social network junkies all over the US? (more…)
The BBC reported today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12976254) on the value that Twitter has provided to stock traders. This is an example of how social media, when well filtered, can have a verifiable positive effect . For our purposes, it also shows that humanitarian organizations and NGOs can leverage Twitter as a less expensive means of deriving on-the-ground information that is actionable and reliable.
You land in a country that is recovering from a long war. The infrastructure is limited, but there is a nascent democratic government. To make up for the lack of infrastructure, citizens use text messages sent to a central receiver or Twitter feeds to let government officials know what they need. I’m describing E-Democracy, and using a platform like Swiftriver, these text messages and Tweets can be organized by time and geographic location. It provides information to elected leaders, while starting a public record of citizen-government interaction. Since the Swift platform can handle data streams ranging from RSS feeds to the inflow of discrete numeric data, it’s an excellent platform for governance and peacekeeping professionals to use in their field work. (more…)
The first Palestinian Intifada (meaning “Uprising” in Arabic: الانتفاضة) began in 1987 and the second in 2000. With the recent flock of revolution in the Middle East, a third was called for – via social media – to take shape in 2011.
The Facebook Page “Third Palestinian Intifada,” which drew in more than 340,000 members and originally called for Palestinians to peacefully protest after Friday prayers on May 15th, was removed on March 29th because of its hateful statements and violent commentary against Israel’s Jewish population. (more…)
The Facebook Page “Third Palestinian Intifada,” which drew in more than 340,000 members and originally called for Palestinians to peacefully protest after Friday prayers on May 15th, was removed on March 29th because of its hateful statements and violent commentary against Israel’s Jewish population. (more…)
Deep in the “Chaco” of Paraguay where farmers live under two dollars a day, resides a budding entrepreneur named Alfonso Parada. “I took out a loan to start my farming business and with the profits I’ll send myself to IT school,” he told me. “I want to become a computer programmer and give a good life to my family.” Then he showed me his most recent investment: a cell phone that housed two SIM cards from different service providers. “I need to make sure I always have coverage and get the cheapest rates wherever I am.” Alfonso’s access to a mobile phone in one of the least physically accessible areas of South America is a symbol of communication equity. (more…)
This past week, I had the valuable opportunity to step out of my usual role as a graduate student at Georgetown and instead, for one day, serve as a teacher/facilitator for a graduate seminar on non-violent conflict resolution. I had been invited to come speak on behalf of TechChange, make a presentation and lead the discussion on a week devoted to the intersection of new technologies and non-violent civil resistance. The timing of such a course could not be more appropriate considering the recent and ongoing uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Algeria and other parts of the Middle East/North African region.