You know a government is losing it when its leaders express public frustration with a social media website called Twitter. I highlighted how the Saudi government recently had a panic attack about it, saying users would go to hell. Now, in the midst of a widespread uprising that began when Turks protesting the razing of a park in Istanbul near Taksim Square to build a mall and mosque were attacked by police, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is showing his true colors. It is quite obvious that the government’s reason for wanting to tear down the park is to eliminate the most obvious staging ground for future protests in the center of Istanbul. Oh the irony.
ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a “dictator,” dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe, even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years.
Over the past three days, protesters around the country have unleashed pent-up resentment against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who after 10 years in office many Turks see as an uncompromising figure with undue influence in every part of life.
A huge, exuberant protest in Taksim Square subsided overnight, but an estimated 10,000 people again streamed into the area on Sunday, many waving flags, chanting “victory, victory, victory” and calling on Erdogan’s government to resign.
With Turkish media otherwise giving scant reports about the protests, many turned to social media outlets for information on the unrest.
“There is now a menace which is called Twitter,” Erdogan said. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
You know something isn’t right in your country when you have a “religious police force.” You know something is really, really not right in your country when the head of that religious police force starts condemning twitter and saying its users will go to hell as a consequence. Talk about pathetic. Just more strange and panicked behavior from the Saudi government.
Summary: President Obama unexpectedly signed an executive Order on cybersecurity prior to tonight’s State of the Union address. UPDATED: Links to the Order and “new” CISPA added.
President Obama signed an executive order aimed at bolstering U.S. cybersecurity prior to tonight’s State of the Union address. The Order precedes a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “new threats.”
It is the government’s latest move in attempting to deal with cyber threats, and the order has not undergone any public technical, rights-based, or privacy review.
The Order “enables the government to share more information with private industry partners and developing a new framework of practices to reduce cybersecurity risks.” Continue reading »
First TRAPWIRE, now RIOT, the new product from the defence company, Raytheon, and which is featured in the above video. RIOT will use GPS and other technologies to track people anywhere in the world. It also boast predictive capabilities (work out the most likely location the target will go to next). RIOT will basically search, analyse and organise all social network content globally.
MPs’ report outlines spooks’ take on the draft Communications Data Bill
It shows they are keen to implement nationwide surveillance regime
They want ISPs to install ‘black boxes’ that can inspect all internet traffic
Spies claim they are only interested in ‘communications data’
Campaigners warn it will give spies unprecedented surveillance powers
UK spy agencies want to install ‘black box’ surveillance devices across the country’s communications networks to monitor internet use, it emerged today.
A report by an influential committee of MPs tells how spooks are keen to implement a nationwide surveillance regime aimed at logging nearly everything Britons do and say online.
The spy network will rely on a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection to log data from communications ranging from online services like Facebook and Twitter, Skype calls with family members and visits to pornographic websites.
Don’t let that dwindling number of Twitter followers drag you down: users of the successful social networking service are about to have a huge new audience as the Library of Congress nears archiving every public tweet ever sent.
In a new statement released by the largest library in the world, Washington’s premiere research center says it is almost done with the first steps in a project involving a massive trove of micromessages sent over Twitter going all the way back to when the site first got off the ground in 2006 [.pdf].
In April 2010, Twitter announced that every public tweet published since its inception would be added to the Library of Congress so that the Untied State’s top researchers could have access to a then-untapped form of correspondence that was thought to be on the way to becoming as commonplace as snail mail. Today, they admit that they’ve almost reached that goal.
Social media users who use tweets and online posts to comment on a military operation could be regarded as legitimate military targets.
Australian army Land Warfare Studies Centre analyst Chloe Diggins on Thursday said a recent social media war between Israel and Hamas raised complex ethical questions about who was a combatant and therefore a legitimate military target.
A key question was whether such comments constituted an act of war.
“If that’s the case, this might mean that those using social media in support of military operations are now legitimate targets,” she wrote in a blog for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
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