New Research On Computer Backdoors Reveals Disturbing Long Term Risks For All Netizens

Nov 052012
 

Research by the University of Toronto Citizen Lab shows that computer back doors are a permanent security risk to users through out the world.

Their research based on events in the middle east demonstrates readily available commercial software is being used by governments to infiltrate computers used by critics and dissidents.

Bloomberg news reported the case of Ahmed Mansoor who was sitting in “his study in Dubai and made the mistake of clicking on a Microsoft Word attachment that arrived in an e-mail, labeled “very important” in Arabic, from a sender he thought he recognized.

“With that click, the pro-democracy activist unwittingly downloaded spyware that seized on a flaw in the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) program to take over his computer and record every keystroke. The hackers infiltrated his digital life so deeply they still accessed his personal e-mail even after he changed his password.

Since then, Mansoor, 42, an electrical engineer and father of four, says he has suffered two beatings by thugs in September during his campaign for citizens’ civil rights in the Persian Gulf federation of the United Arab Emirates. While those assailants remain unknown, researchers say they’ve figured out what was behind the virtual assault.

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Millions Of Chinese Are Circumventing The Great Firewall To Access Google, Facebook and Twitter

Oct 012012
 

China’s Great Firewall is proving to be about as effective at isolating netizens from the outside world as it’s physical name sake, the Great Wall of China, was at keeping the citizens isolated from attacks.

Both proved to be big, expensive failures.  Research released this week on the modern day version  indicates the size of that failure is in the tens of millions of Chinese readings and seeing what they like.

Market researcher GlobalWebIndex released data that showed Twitter and Facebook while supposedly blocked in China are among the most widely used services in the region outside of China-based options.

According to PCmag “When asked which services they had contributed to in the last month, 25 percent of surveyed Chinese users said they had used Google+, 15 percent used Facebook, and 8 percent accessed Twitter. The most popular option in China was Qzone (66 percent), followed by Sina Weibo (61 percent), and Tencent Weibo (56 percent).

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Chinese Netizens Find Humour In Facebook’s Proposed Return To China

Feb 082012
 

Facebooks IPO has generated much interest among China’s netizens however many of them are skeptical about the chances of its success in China where it is currently blocked.

Sina Weibo provided the following translations of online comments. They were published by the China Digital Times.

- A female colleague just came back from a blind date. She is quite excited. She said to me, this man is quite accomplished. He is just over thirty and is already the Chief Manager of the China Office of the Facebook. I said to her: grab him, don’t miss this one.

Following are some of the comments under this post:

- We are in the same business then. I am the CEO of the China office of Youtube*.

- I won’t tell you that I am the chief representative of the China office of *.

- I am exactly 30 this year. My father is the Commander-in-Chief of Mongolia’s Navy.

- Facebook’s prospectus has listed four countries which limited their citizens to visit their website: Syria, Iran, China, and North Korea. These are what in history books will be called the “four ancient civilizations.”

- The acronym [of the "four ancient civilizations"] is SICK.

- The sin of Facebook is that it lets people meet whom they want to meet. The sin of Twitter is that it lets people say what they want to say. The sin of Google is that it lets people know what they want to know. The sin of YouTube is that it lets people show the reality which needs to be shown. Almost all the world’s top ten websites are blocked in China. Why do we want to be the enemy of those technologies that have changed the world?

* [YouTube and Twitter are also blocked inside China]

Life Behind The Great Firewall – The Obvious Censorship And The More Subtle

Sep 082011
 

The great firewall, China’s main weapon against free online access for its netizens, is often thought of as a blunt instrument but besides its blanket blocking of facebook or Twitter, there is a more subtle edge to what gets through and when.

PC magazine’s, Sascha Segan, took a trip across the border from Hong Kong to Shenzen to compare services directly behind the great firewall and that a bit  further away. 

HONG KONG—Here in Hong Kong, the Internet is global. But just over the border in the Chinese boom town of Shenzhen, major international websites get shut down behind the famed “Great Firewall of China.”

Watching the vibrant economic ferment in Shenzhen, it’s hard to remember that you’re in a totalitarian state. The Chinese folks I encountered were generally pretty blase about politics. Then again, Shenzhen is one of the richest cities in China, and the people I spoke to came from the relatively well-off professional classes.

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Britain Emulates China In The Great Leap Backwards – Seeing Sense In Censorship And Draconian Penalties

Aug 172011
 

British Prime Minister David Cameron has continued to follow the China, Burma, North Korea et al play book when it comes to dealing with criticism and dissent. Censorship, bizarre trials followed by draconian sentencing and threats to freedom of speech have become the norm in the wake of rioting set off by police killing a man in questionable circumstances.

American humorist and social commentator Will Rogers once said: “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.”

It took longer than a life time to build up, starting with the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago,  but not much more than a minute over the past week  for Britain to lose any moral authority it may have once had. It can no longer seriously pressure repressive regimes into embracing freedom of speech, open access to information, democracy and even the basics of the rule of law after its own swift U-turn on those elementary building blocks of civilization.

Yesterday a UK court in Cheshire sentenced two men in their early 20′s, with no previous convictions, to 4 years jail for inciting a riot in  by putting up a Facebook posting calling for people to turn out and run rampant in the streets, that the riot did not take place was seemingly irrelevant.

Britain’s court system appears to have lost its independence and be taking its cues from the politicians,  handing out grossly inappropriate sentences for people even on the periphery of last weeks rioting.

There is no indication if these men in court were serious in their postings, though there is no doubt they must be dumb as a box of rocks, but if everyone who had publicly made an idiotic suggestion was put behind bars there would be some very big prisons.

 This is but one example of the heavy handed sentences given out all in the name of deterrence.

And it all plays into the hands of regimes who reject what they see as “western” notions of free speech and access to information.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his government are doing irreparable harm not only to the nation’s moral standing but also to that of activists, non governmental organizations and responsible journalists based in the UK. From now on they will all be tarred with the same brush of double standards when they promote democracy or basic human rights such as free speech.

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Burmese Government Pours Resources Into Web Blocking Technology Fearing A Mid East Style Popular Uprising

Mar 102011
 

Burma's rulers have just realized you cannot kill an internet organized uprising by shooting a computer so they are spending large to find an alternative.

Burma’s ruling Junta is dropping large amounts of cash and resources into Web blocking technology fearing a popular uprising organized online as seen recently in the middle east.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, has seen a number of mass demonstrations against the country’s regime. All have been brutally put down.

Even Budhist monks have suffered at the hands of the authorities in this very devout country. Many have been killed.

But now the countries rulers are facing the reality that a computer does not care if it is beaten or shot and new methods must be adopted.

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Western Spies Looking At Social Media To Gauge Public Mood

Feb 082011
 
For countries like China and Burma monitoring social media sites is a routine matter and part of their regimes’ internal surveillance as part of broader efforts to control what information their citizens have access to.
 
But now western intelligence agencies are anylzing the likes of Facebook and Twitter, after the social media sites were seen as being central to surprise uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Ezine Mobeledia reports intelligence officials in the U.K. have recently said the current events illustrated how this “open source” intelligence can be used as a barometer of opinion. Government alike are paying closer attention to the information freely available rather than focus strictly on the “secret” data, a top civil servant said.

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Legal History Set As Jilted Lover Is Jailed For Posting Nude Picture On Facebook

Nov 122010
 

In a legal milestone a New Zealand man has been jailed for four months after he accessed his former girlfriend’s Facebook account and changed settings to make public a nude picture of her.

The ruling walks a fine line between censorship and privacy but ultimately Judge Becroft said in making his decision he was adapting an old print law for the internet age.

“Technology can’t be used in this way,” he said. “You would do incalculable damage to someone’s reputation.”

The Judge also allowed the media to photograph the man, Joshua Simon Ashby, 20, saying there was a certain symmetry to him now having his identity made public. 

Ashby’s parents said they hoped the sentence would serve as warning to the dark side of social media websites.

The DominionPost newspaper reported Ashby as having  posted the photo in what the Judge described as an “irresponsible drunken jealous rage” after the breakup of his five-month relationship with the victim.

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Electronic News You Can Use (and how to get to it)

Mar 142010
 

Some countries block access to the RFA  and other Web sites  which provide independant and impartial information for readers. But you do not need to be deprived of access to reporting and opinions that the authorities do not agree with. Here  people can learn how to use a proxy server, or subscribe to an e-newsletter bringing news directly to your email bypassing the censors.

Now if you are reading this on the RFA site it is unlikely you are subject to censorship but others are not so lucky. Please find a way to pass this information on to people and communities not so fortunate so that everyone can have access to the knowledge that belongs to everyone.

Also check out the blog on the “guardian phone“. This fantastic project promises to be a key protection for journalists, academics, activists and all those people who antagonize the authorities by exercising their right  of free speech in their own countries.

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Facebook Under Attack From Outside And In

Dec 102009
 

While Facebook is already already suffering from bans and censorship from some Governments in Asia it’s popularity is now being affected by a redesign that is raising privacy concerns. 

A revamp of privacy settings  prompts members to post their status updates and personal information directly to the internet for everyone to see.

The privacy overhaul, which is intended to give users more control over who sees the information they post on their personal pages is confusing and cumbersome.

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