Censorship, governments and corporations enemies of The Internet
Many IT companies around the world are specialized in the providing of solutions used by authoritarian regimes to monitor internet use and persecute the opponents.
Joe Rogan interviews former CNN reporter Amber Lyon about censorship and government propaganda. Strange times when a stoner stand-up comedian/MMA commentator has the some of the best political commentary out there.
Apple Moving Forward On Location-Based Disabling Of iPhone Cameras
Via PetaPixel
Using your mobile device to take pictures of or film police, or a protest, or corporate property (or Mitt Romney speaking in a private meeting to his campaign donors) may become a relic of the past. Apple has patented its “geofencing” technology — in which camera/video phone functions will be remotely disarmed in particular locations.
Via TechCrunch
The government of Syria uses made-in-California technology from BlueCoat Systems to censor the Internet and spy on its pro-democracy activists (who are regularly arrested and tortured, not to mention slaughtered wholesale.) Amesys of France and FinFisher of the UK aided brutal dictators in Egypt and Libya. Sweden’sTeliasonera allegedly took up the same cudgel in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. McAfee and Nokia Siemens have done the same in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, Bain Capital recently bought a Chinese video-surveillance company reportedly “used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents,” and Cisco “has marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression.” You can’t help but be impressed by how globalized the oppression-technology industry has become.
So what privacy/surveillance story caused an eruption of outrage this week? Yes, you guessed it:SceneTap, a startup that uses facial-recognition software to (anonymously) track demographics at bars and clubs in major American cities…
Via Guardian UK
In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It’s scary.
Earlier this year Google launched a piracy blacklist and began filtering keywords from its Instant and Autocomplete services. A necessary measure to counter online copyright infringement according to the search giant, but not everyone agrees. To partially undo Google’s censorship efforts, the “MAFIAA Fire” team has now released the “Gee! No evil!” Firefox add-on.
