Category Archives: Link Digest

Iranian activists advised to stop using Haystack
Following news of a security flaw, the US-based Censorship Research Center (CRC) has announced that it has halted ongoing testing of its anti-censorship software Haystack in Iran. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has recommended that people stop using all versions of the Haystack software immediately. The news follows on from concerns that CRC had not previously made the Haystack code available to the wider security and censorship-circumvention community for testing and scrutiny.

European Parliament adopts declaration against ACTA
377 members of the European Parliament have signed up to a written declaration condemning many aspects of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The EU is a party to the draft treaty, with its negotiating effort being led by the European Commission. Although the declaration has no binding force, it indicates that the Commission may have to push for more consumer- and citizen-friendly provisions at the treaty’s next, and potentially final, negotiating round this month, in order to be sure the deal it strikes will be approved by Parliament.

Russian authorities use IP-enforcement powers to raid NGO offices
Following a story broken by the New York Times, that police in Russia were seizing the computers of civil society groups on the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software, Microsoft have issued blanket licences to advocacy groups and media organisations, both in Russia and elsewhere. The move means Microsoft’s in-country lawyers will no longer provide legal support for politically motivated piracy raids.

FCC likely to approve new unlicensed spectrum
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to expand the proportion of the airwaves available to device and network innovators in a meeting later this month, The regulator is expected to give final approval to a conversion to unlicensed spectrum of white space freed up by the switch from analogue to digital television.

Safaricom slashes mobile text-message cost
Bloomberg report that a price war between competitors in the Kenyan mobile market has seen Safaricom reduce its SMS prices by up to 94%.

DoS attacks sponsored by movie industry
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Indian company is offering Denial of Service attacks as a service to rightsholding clients trying to remove pirated movies from the web.

Consumers International survey
A new survey designed to reveal the obstacles consumers face in gaining access to educational and cultural resources has been released by Consumers International. The survey was conducted in 13 languages, covering 15,000 consumers across 24 countries. It found that “the biggest barriers that consumers face in accessing copyright works are those created by copyright law. Even so, consumers around the world will choose original copyright works over pirated copies, provided that they are available at an affordable price.”

Does open data only empower the empowered?
This excellent blog post by Michael Gurstein uses the example of the digitized land registry in Bangalore to warn that open data initiatives may empower the already-empowered to use information in self-interested ways: “This is not to suggest that processes of computerization inevitably lead to such outcomes but rather to say that in the absence of efforts to equalize the playing field… the end result may be increased social divides rather than reduced ones.”

10 sources of free textbooks online
The Curriki website celebrates a new school term by pointing readers to ten great sources for open educational resources.

Indian civil society and biometric ID
This AlterNet feature tracks the developing disquiet among civil society groups in India as their government prepares to roll out a new biometric identification project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID number.

Rise of religious search engines?
NPR report on a new trend: the rise of religious search engines. One creator of a search engine aimed at Christians says “a search on his site would not turn up pornography. If you search ‘gay marriage’, you would get results that argue against gay marriage”. Other search engines aimed at the Jewish and Muslim communities are also investigated in this report.

The future of peer review
Cameron Neylon argues that online reaction to a recent new proof for a major outstanding mathematical theorem hints at the future of peer review: “The online maths community has lit up with excitement…And in the process we are seeing online collaborative post publication peer review take off.”

Brazil’s proposal on monetizing P2P
The Brazilian government closed its far-reaching public consultation on copyright law reform last week. Among the proposals for reform was one put forward by a group of academics, musicians and cultural producers that would legitimise non-commercial peer-to-peer filesharing by charging broadband users a small fee. The fee would be distributed to artists via collecting societies.

India to ask Google, Skype, VPN providers to give data access
The Times of India report that the Indian government will ask Google and Skype, as well as operators of virtual private networks (VPNs), to set-up in-country servers that allow the Indian authorities access to conduct lawful communications monitoring. The news follows last month’s announcement that the government was considering banning the use of BlackBerrys unless authorities could be granted access for lawful communications monitoring. The government have given BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion a two-month grace period to provide a permanent solution, in order to avert a ban on its messaging services.

Latest ACTA text leaked
A leaked version of the latest draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement reveals that negotiators may be ready to abandon clauses that would leave internet service providers liable for copyright infringement conducted on their networks. But the text also reveals that the United States is pushing to maintain measures that would mandate legal protection against the circumvention of digital rights management technology, and even prohibit the sale of tools to allow such circumvention.

UN reveals global disparity in broadband access
A new UN study has revealed the global disparity in access to communications. While it costs between 0.3 and 0.6% of average per capita monthly income to get online in countries such as the US, Israel, China and Singapore, in countries such as Niger, Guinea, Malawi, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic it can cost between 1000 and 4000%.

US withdrawal from Iraq raises questions about future of biometric database
As the US combat mission in Iraq came to an end last week, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) repeated concerns they had raised in 2007 about the creation of “secret profiles on hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, tied to unique biometric identifiers, including digital fingerprints, photographic images, iris scans, and even DNA”. Together with Human Rights Watch and Privacy International, EPIC have warned that such practices contravene international treaties, and that misuse of secret files containing personal data has taken place in other conflicts.

Public consultation on access to information and open government data launched
In collaboration with the Information Program, Access Info Europe and the Open Knowledge Foundation are holding a public consultation on open government data and the right of access to information. The consultation is based on a new report which identifies the practical, technical and legal challenges facing these movements.

The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution
This Economist feature shows how a combination of government assertiveness and corporate exploitation may balkanise the net.

The Importance of Being Local
What is the real cost of SMS in Africa? Steve Song digs through the corporate literature.

Is Mexico a Model for the Rest of the World?
David Sasaki contrasts the accepted picture of Mexico’s exemplary Freedom of Information provisions with the reality for activists on the ground.

The Impact of Open Notebook Science
Interesting interview with organic chemist and open notebook scientist Jean-Claude Bradley: “In the interests of openness, Bradley makes the details of every experiment done in his lab freely available on the web. He doesn’t limit this to just a description, but he includes all the data generated from these experiments too, even the failed experiments.”

War on Science
A short interview with Simon Singh, who for more than two years fought a libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association that threatened to harm the ability of scientists to speak freely.

Video: Suzanne Gildert on Quantum Computing
This talk “separates hope from hype” around quantum computing. Dr Suzanne Gildert explains why quantum computers are useful, dispels some of the myths about what they can and cannot do, and plots a realistic timescale for the development of commercially useful systems.

Arrested Indian e-voting researcher released on bail
Hari Prasad, an Indian security researcher who was arrested earlier this month for allegedly stealing an electronic voting machine, has been released on bail. Prasad and his research team exposed security flaws with the machine that could allow an attacker to change election results and compromise ballot secrecy. But when questioned by the Indian authorities Prasad refused to disclose the anonymous source who provided him with the machine on which he conducted his tests. The EFF report that “the court reportedly also asked the Election Commission of India to confirm or disprove Prasad’s claim that the country’s electronic voting machines can be compromised.”

ACTA Round Ten Concludes: Deal May Be One Month Away
The tenth round of international negotiations on the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement concluded earlier this month in Washington DC. The current draft text of the treaty will not be released. The next, and potentially last round of negotiations before a treaty text is agreed, will take place in Japan in September.

Iranian activist sues telecoms firm over ‘spying system’
Isa Saharkhiz, a prominent Iranian journalist and political figure, is suing Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) over allegations that the telecommunications company provided Iranian authorities with a monitoring system it used to spy on the opposition Green movement. The Guardian report that: “Saharkhiz, who is still in detention, discovered during his interrogation in Tehran’s Evin prison that his whereabouts were revealed when security officials listened in to his mobile phone conversations using technology NSN allegedly sold to Iran.” Saharkhiz was arrested after last Summer’s disputed presidential election.

Pressure groups call on FCC to block Google/Verizon deal
Pressure groups are calling on the US Federal Communications Commission to block a deal between Google and Verizon that could compromise net neutrality on wireless networks. NPR report that: “If [the deal] is allowed, the SavetheInternet.com coalition of consumer, civil rights and advocacy groups argues, ‘it would divide the information superhighway, creating new private fast lanes for the big players while leaving the little guy stranded on a winding dirt road.'”

France: authorities want users to install spyware on their computers
According to a leaked consultation document, French internet users could soon be required to install spyware on their computers which tracks their searching habits and analyses the applications they have installed, in order to prevent illicit infringement of copyrighted files over peer-to-peer networks. The confidential document was issued by Hadopi, the regulatory authority established by the French “3 strikes” copyright enforcement law last year.

The Data-Driven Life
Gary Wolf, co-creator of website “The Quantified Self”, examines how harvesting and analysing ambient data about our daily activities could improve – and complicate – our lives: “almost imperceptibly, numbers are infiltrating the last redoubts of the personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood, location, alertness, productivity, even spiritual well-being are being tracked and measured, shared and displayed.”

Rare sharing of data led to results on Alzheimer’s
A collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain is bearing fruit, with more than 100 studies under way to test drugs that might slow or stop the disease. “The key to the Alzheimer’s project was an agreement…to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world”

Is the web dying?
The UK Observer’s John Naughton unpicks Chris Anderson and Michael Wolf’s claims that the digital world is moving from the open platform of the web towards closed platforms like the iPad and the iPhone.

New Project to assess potential for opening governments’ data
The World Wide Web Foundation has announced that it will be undertaking a series of feasibility studies to assess the readiness of Chile, Ghana and Turkey for adopting an open government data program similar to the programs established by the US and UK data.gov and data.gov.uk projects. The work is co-sponsored by the Open Society Institute.

Bangkok Post : When police act selectively
Sympathy and offers of assistance are pouring in for Surat Maneenoprattanasuda, a street vendor convicted of selling pirated movies in Bangkok under a new anti-piracy law, whose story has made front page headlines in Thailand. This Bangkok Post editorial argues that until police corruption and double standards are addressed, such arrests will not serve as a warning to other pirate CD vendors in Thailand.

No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion?
New research by German economic historian Eckhard Höffner suggests that Germany experienced rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law.

Here are the links from last week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile.

World’s leading newspapers collaborate to expose leaked US documents on Afghanistan
The New York Times (US), Guardian (UK) and Der Spiegel (Germany) this week launched a coordinated exposé of over 75,000 secret US military documents leaked to the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. Among other revelations, the documents highlight greater levels of civilian casualties than officially reported. The three newspapers pooled their investigative resources to examine and report on the documents, and many of their online reports include rich data visualisations.
New York Times | Guardian | Der Spiegel

India unveils prototype of $35 tablet computer
India’s Human Resource Development minister Kapil Sibal has unveiled a prototype touchscreen computer aimed at students, which he says can be manufactured for $35 per unit. A ministry spokesperson confirmed that several global manufacturers have shown interest in making the device but no manufacturing or distribution deals have been finalised. The tablet project is part of a national education technology initiative, which also aims to bring broadband connectivity to India’s colleges and universities and make study materials available online.

Street protest in Istanbul over internet censorship
The Open Net Initiative report that street protests in Istanbul against Turkey’s internet censorship policies attracted thousands of participants: “This rise in frequency of protests for Turkey is really unexpected and nothing quite like it has yet happened in other nations who practice Internet censorship.”

Indo-EU Trade Dispute draws global attention
Brazil, China, Canada, Japan, Turkey and Ecuador have each filed requests to join in consultations at the World Trade Organization’s investigation into the Indo-EU trade dispute over the seizure of in-transit Indian generic drug consignments at various ports in the Netherlands. According to this report, “the future of these consultations and the outcome of the dispute may very well be key to determining whether ACTA will proceed as planned.”

WHO agrees that East African laws confuse fake and generic drugs
The World Health Organization’s Director of Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies, Hans Hogerzeil, has warned that draft anti-counterfeiting laws in Kenya and Uganda could “lump together actual counterfeit and fake medicines with generic medicines”, echoing the concerns of many in the access to medicines community.

When Arabs Tweet
“One cannot take seriously the United States or any other Western government that funds political activism by young Arabs while it simultaneously provides funds and guns that help cement the power of the very same Arab governments the young social and political activists target for change.” Rami G Khouri gives an Arab perspective on new US approaches to promoting internet freedom as a tool for political change.

Is copyright a help or a hindrance?
This British Library report brings important perspectives from the academic research community to the topic of copyright reform.

New ACTA analysis from Michael Geist
Michael Geist asks, “Could the EU walk away from ACTA?” and uses a new leak of the latest treaty text to highlight the major areas of disagreement that still remain.

Forensics: how wide should a genetic net reach?
The New York Times asks whether familial searching – looking through existing DNA records for partial matches to DNA material from crime scenes in order to find the family members of suspected perpetrators – warrants the invasion of privacy it entails.

Visualisation: Facebook users
The “population” of Facebook hit 500 million this week. This visualisation shows where they live in the real world, and which countries contain the highest proportion of Facebook users per head of population.

Podcast: Thinking about thinking about the net
What are the most basic points of view about the significance of the internet? In a wide-ranging conversation (episode 158 of the excellent Radio Berkman podcast) David Weinberger argues that three variables capture just about every attitude towards the Net, while Tim Hwang works through some of the common memes and metaphors that help us make sense of it, and their implications.

Here are the links from this week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile.

EU Authorities: Implementation of Net Surveillance Directive Is Unlawful
European privacy officials have this week released a report into EU member states’ implementation of the 2006 EU Data Retention Directive, a controversial law which compels EU telecommunications providers to retain information about their customers’ communication activities for access by law enforcement agencies. They found several aspects in which implementation of the Directive was unlawful, including the way ISPs and telcos handed over the data, what they stored and how long they stored it for. They also criticised member states for failing to record how often retained data turned out to be useful in law enforcement activity.

Ugandan Parliament passes interception of communications bill
The Parliament of Uganda have approved a draft law which authorises government security agencies to tap private phone conversations, and compels mobile phone users to register their SIM cards. The bill still requires the assent of the President to pass into law, but if it does, the new phone-tapping powers will be applicable in terrorism, drug-trafficking and human-trafficking investigations, and intercepted conversations will be admissible as evidence in court. The bill, which was first mooted 2007, was passed by Parliament four days after terrorist attacks in Kampala killed 76 people.

Human Rights Groups challenge US ‘Special 301’ IPR sanctions
At this week’s International Aids conference in Vienna, a coalition of human rights groups filed a complaint against the United States’ with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Anand Grover. They argue that the US continues to breach international human rights obligations by using its ‘Special 301’ program to threaten trade sanctions against countries that do not agree to increase intellectual property protections beyond those required by the WTO TRIPS agreement.

Increased internet censorship in Belarus
The Belarus government have adopted new measures to control the internet, issuing a decree that creates a new body, reporting to the President, which will monitor (and censor) web content originating in Belarus. The decree also mandates internet blocking of black-listed foreign websites, and the identification and surveillance of internet cafe users.

First hearing of FRPAA by US Congress committee
The first hearing of the Federal Research Public Access Act, a draft law which would mandate public (and therefore global) access to publicly-funded research, will take place next week in front of the US Congress’ Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and National Archives.

France stalling on three strikes warnings?
The New York Times reports that although legislation to set up a three strikes-style online copyright enforcement regime in France was passed last September, the agency created by that legislation has yet to send out a single warning letter, let alone cut anyone off the internet: “News reports have shown growing unease about the legislation. Even some lawmakers in Mr. Sarkozy’s party have expressed doubts.”

The Web means the end of forgetting
Jeffrey Rosen investigates how social media is undermining society’s need to forget: “What seemed within our grasp was a power that only Proteus possessed: namely, perfect control over our shifting identities. But the hope that we could carefully control how others view us in different contexts has proved to be another myth.” Registration required for access to this article.

Why Kenya’s attempts to put IPRs in its constitution is a mistake
Pirate Party MEP Amelia Andersdotter urges Kenya not to include intellectual property rights protection in their constitution: “Moving the Kenyan legislation towards the European will shift power from Kenyan entrepreneurs to European big business. Ownership concentration is one of the most harmful tendencies we have seen with intellectual property rights in Europe.”

Time to challenge plus-size IPRs (India)
The director of the Indian Department of Commerce’s Trade Policy Division, Mr. Prashant Goyal, airs his view on TRIPS-plus intellectual property protections and calls on Indian industry – beyond the pharmaceutical industry – to get involved in the debate.

Top Secret America
This rich, data-based Washington post exposé on the United States’ ramping up of spending on national security after 9/11, and on the dubious accountability pathways that have since been created, is a great example of the future of data-driven journalism, and includes some good data visualisations.

The science is fine – it’s scientists that need to change
This Economist feature highlights two reports into contested climate science data, both of which confirm the science, but suggest the need to reform our scientific institutions.

Podcast: Technology for Transparency Network
The Technology for Transparency Network is a participatory research project designed by Information Program grantee Rising Voices which aims to understand the current state of online technology projects that increase transparency, government accountability and civic engagement. As part of the project, the Rising Voices team produced a weekly podcast featuring five-minute interviews with leaders of some of the most interesting technology for transparency projects they came across. You can subscribe to the series via iTunes, or listen to some of the individual interviews listed below.
Subscribe to the series via iTunes
Waheed Al-Barghouthi (Ishki)
Ory Okolloh (Mzalendo)
Felipe Heusser (Vota Inteligente)

Here are the links from last week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile. I’m posting it late, some of it is chip-wrappings, but most of it is still useful.

Chile mandates net neutrality
The Chilean congress has passed amendments to the country’s telecommunications law that will make it illegal for internet service providers (ISPs) to block or slow down downloads if users are engaged in legal activities. The law will also subject ISPs to tightened transparency requirements. Chile is the first country to approve a net neutrality law.

UK: ISPs challenge copyright enforcement law
UK internet service providers BT and TalkTalk are seeking judicial review of the controversial Digital Economy Act, a law that includes mandatory online copyright enforcement measures, and that was rushed through Parliament in its dying days before the recent UK elections. Even if the challenge is unsuccessful, the complexity of the issues may delay any changes implemented by the law for many years.

Concerns over new communications law in Serbia
The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has expressed its concern over the recently-adopted Electronic Communications Law in Serbia. The law creates a database of Serbian citizens’ personal electronic communications, granting access to national security and police forces without the need for prior permission.

Chinese thinktank accuses West of using social networking sites to stir political unrest
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a Chinese government-backed thinktank, has called for increased surveillance of popular social networking sites, accusing the US government of using sites such as Facebook to stir political unrest.

Proposed Brazilian copyright reforms protect fair use rights from DRM
Michael Geist reports on the sections of Brazil’s proposed copyright reform bill which permit circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) technologies for fair use and public domain purposes, and shows how it establishes equivalent penalties for hindering or preventing users from exercising their fair use rights.

Audio keylogging: new security threat
The Economist reports on a new surveillance technique that allows audio-based key-logging. Sounds of individual keystrokes can be distinguished via laser microphone, making it possible to eavesdrop on computer users from afar.

Russian government spending: data visualisation
This English language blog post introduces a new website that visualises data released by the Russian government on government spending, and details the work – and the data – still needed to make the project a success.

Highlighting the role of Western tech in Iranian online surveillance
Interview with artist Deena DeNaro about her recent “subvertising” project which aims to highlight the role of Siemens AG and Nokia in shipping surveillance technology to Iran.

Report from Wikimania 2010
Noam Cohen reports for the New York Times on last weekend’s Wikimania event in Gdansk, and outlines the challenges the Wikipedia community now face.

Measuring scientific impact on the web
This paper proposes using social media to enhance traditional citation-based approaches to measuring scientific impact, and evaluates current initiatives and services experimenting with this approach.

First look at TEDGlobal 2010
Ethan Zuckerman liveblogs the TEDGlobal 2010 conference in Oxford, UK. The theme of this year’s event is “And Now The Good News”.
Live-blogging | Report on Ethan’s talk

How to fund the news industry
This project gathers policy and scholarship around new business models in journalism, summarising each proposal with links to the original material.

Audio: The Digitisation of Science
Listen to this lecture by Victoria Stodden which argues that scientific data and code must be published in the open for science to remain credible in the information age.

Here are the links from last week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile. Posting delayed by trip to Gdansk.

New “Apps for Africa” project launched
A competition searching for “the best digital tools to address community challenges in areas ranging from healthcare to education and government transparency to election monitoring.” was launched on 1 July. The contest is open to residents of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, and the deadline for submitting entries is 31 August. The competition is being run by the US State Department, iHub Nairobi, Appfrica Labs and the Social Development Network.

Finland makes broadband a legal right
From the 1 July, access to broadband has become a legal right for citizens of Finland. A law enshrining the right was passed in October last year. As well as ensuring access to communications, the new right could have implications for future internet laws, for example laws passed to combat illicit filesharing on the ‘net.

US investigators to gain access to European bank records
After a stand-off between the European Parliament and the European Commission earlier this year over negotiations with the US to transfer large amounts of European bank records data across the Atlantic, MEPs have this week approved a new deal that will see US counter-terrorism investigators gain access to the records. In this report, human rights expert Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP warns that “the bulk transfer of information [must] be a transitional solution only. The EU must develop its own capacity to filter and extract data in Europe, obviating both worryingly large block handovers and an absurd reliance on the US to detect terrorists plotting on our territory.”

Wikipedia to embrace the semantic web?
Top officials at Wikipedia have made clear their ambition to make the crowd-sourced encyclopaedia compatible with the semantic web. “Semantic information already exists in Wikipedia, and people are already building on it,” says foundation deputy director Eric Möller. “Unfortunately, we’re not really helping, and they have to use extensive processing to do so.” Independent semantic web projects that build on Wikipedia data include DBPedia and Freebase.

Most “recycled” computers are not recycled
It’s possible that up to 80% of US e-waste is disposed of by labourers in China, Nigeria and elsewhere who work without safety protection for an unregulated and toxic industry. This in-depth report exposes the practices of fake computer recyclers in the developed world, and the harms those practices do to the people and environment of the developing world.

Peter Suber on the row between Nature publishing and the University of California
Peter Suber provides in-depth analysis and discussion points of the ongoing stand-off between Nature Publishing Group and the University of California in the latest edition of Open Access News: “NPG may be throwing away a marketing advantage decades in the making.”

Congress examines US investment in Chinese censorship
Rebecca MacKinnon relates her latest testimony to US lawmakers “the Chinese government has transferred much of the cost of censorship to the private sector. The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China’s own laws and constitution.”

War in the fifth domain
This Economist feature risks conflating cyberwar, cybersecurity and cyberespionage, but it is nonetheless a good general overview of the risks and possibilities of a weaponised and contended information sphere.

The ACTA timeline
Michael Geist provides a natty and informative visualisation of negotiations and other events surrounding the controversial intellectual property enforcement treaty, ACTA.

What is data science?
This O’Reilly feature is a great introduction to the importance of data: “The question facing every company today, every startup, every non-profit, every project site that wants to attract a community, is how to use data effectively – not just their own data, but all the data that’s available and relevant.”

Spark Podcasts
The Spark podcast is a weekly radio show about technology and culture. “It’s not just technology for gearheads, it’s about the way technology affects our lives, and the world around us.” Their latest show includes items on predicting human behaviour and using iPhones to score baseball games, as well as a short interview with Nicholas Carr.

Here are the links from this week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile.

Afghanistan begins internet censorship
Following the announcement in March of its intention to filter websites pertaining to alcohol, gambling and sex, this week saw reports that Afghanistan is now blocking several websites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Gmail. Under the Taliban, the internet was completely banned in 2001 because it was said to contain “obscene, immoral and anti-Islamic material.”

ACTA negotiations resume
Negotiations around the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) resumed in Lucerne, Switzerland this week, amid vocal criticism from academics and civil society groups. Last week the American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property released a petition whose signatories included 90 intellectual property professors, warning negotiators that the treaty – which aims to establish a global regime for intellectual property enforcement – threatened the public interest.

Wellcome Trust launches “largest genome sequencing project ever undertaken”
The Wellcome Trust has launched a project to decode the genomes of 10,000 people in the UK. The three-year study aims to make a major contribution to scientists’ understanding of genetics. 4,000 individuals who have already been the subject of intense study will have their genomes fully sequenced, and genetic information will be gathered on clinicians’ recommendations from a further 6,000 people with extreme obesity, neurodevelopmental disease and other conditions.

US government release new privacy and identity initiatives
As part of its transparency and open government program, the United States Office of Management and Budget has launched three major initiatives that could combine to radically change online identity and privacy across the internet. The initiatives cover the government’s use of third party websites, a national strategy for verifying online identity and a policy on web cookies and the handling of personal data by website administrators.

YouTube court case developments good news for safe harbour
The US Federal Court has thrown out two of the central claims in media company Viacom’s ongoing court case against YouTube for copyright infringement. This development will strengthen the legal safe harbour enjoyed by internet intermediaries that allow many user-generated content sites to operate as they do.

Giving civil society a voice in South African telecoms regulation
Steve Song makes the case for using Universal Service funds to pay for civil society participation in South African telecommunications regulation fora, noting that “very often nobody is representing the public interest in these consultations”.

Is it possible to build a Silicon Valley in Russia?
Esther Dyson offers her advice to Dmitry Medvedev following his visit to Silicon Valley: “Think of the project as a garden rather than a construction site.”

One nation, online
This Boston Globe feature charts the global movement for recognising internet access as a civil right.

Are internet populists blind to facts?
Evgeny Morozov attacks Clay Shirky’s latest book, “Cognitive Surplus”: “Yes, a wired future might look good for democracy if some of the social functions currently performed by traditional media are taken up by new Internet projects. But that outcome needs to be demonstrated—perhaps constructively aimed at—rather than assumed.”

The human genome: past and future
The New York Times asks why ten years after the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Project its application to drug development is still a work in progress, while the Economist reports on why China may lead the way in genetic research in the future, and where that might take the field as a whole.

Two cool map-based data visualisations
Technology Review plots global broadband penetration, while the Open Net Initiative demonstrate a brief history of YouTube censorship around the world.

Here are the links from this week’s Information Program mailout, a weekly update of interesting information policy stories and features I help to compile.

Iceland passes world’s strongest press freedom laws
Iceland’s parliament has unanimously passed the “Icelandic Modern Media Initiative”, giving themselves a mandate to create the world’s most stringent laws protecting free speech and the free press. The initiative was created with the help of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, and is intended to transform the country into a safe harbour for investigative journalism.

University of California takes stand against Nature publishing group
University of California (UoC) library administrators have written to their faculty members informing them of radical action they plan to take against Nature publishing group’s proposal to quadruple the cost of California’s license for its journals. The letter proposes suspending some 67 subscriptions UoC currently buys from Nature, and encourages faculty members to cease contributing to Nature’s journals, and resign from their positions on Nature’s editorial boards.

Hyper-connected South Koreans face shrinking internet freedom, says UN
A UN Special rapporteur has raised concerns over the “shrinking space for freedom of expression” in South Korea, following a visit to the country. South Korea has one of the highest percentages of broadband connectivity in the world. But new and restrictive applications of existing free expression laws are making online censorship of anti-government speech more routine, said a local free expression group.

Dominant IT suppliers team up with World Bank on Africa project
Microsoft, Cisco and Intel have formed a consortium with the World Bank to help build capacity around the governance and integration of information technologies in African schools. According the report, “the formation of a consortium is likely to result in stiff competition by international companies providing computers and software in Africa’s education system.”

US NGOs go after GWU-sponsored Indian IP summit
Access to medicines advocacy groups including Medecins Sans Frontiers, Knowledge Ecology International and Oxfam have called on the United States’ George Washington University to stop sponsoring an annual intellectual property conference in India they say has been hijacked by lobbyists from major pharmaceutical companies. India is a key supplier of generic medicines to the developing world.

US lifts telecommunications trade sanctions
The US will lift certain sanctions to allow the export of telecommunications equipment and services to Iran, Cuba and Sudan. The policy is intended to promote access to global education and culture and to strengthen grassroots organisations around the world.

Steven Pinker on media and mind
“Yes, every time we learn a fact or skill the wiring of the brain changes; it’s not as if the information is stored in the pancreas. But the existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience”. A renowned cognitive scientist weighs into the debate over whether the internet makes us smart or stupid.

Labour movement enabled by technology in China
“Wielding cellphones and keyboards, members of China’s emerging labor movement so far seem to be outwitting official censors in an effort to build broad support for what they say is a war against greedy corporations and their local government allies.” This New York Times report details how affordable technology is enabling China’s most disadvantaged workers to stand up for their rights.

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help”
Should the US government spend tens of millions of dollars funding anti-censorship technology? This O’Reilly radar blog post begins to unpick the issues around US government intervention to promote “internet freedom” worldwide. Includes perspectives from Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan Zuckerman and Evgeny Morozov.

China’s “networked authoritarianism”
China expert Rebecca MacKinnon analyses China’s recently released policy on “Guaranteeing Citizens’ Freedom of Speech on the Internet”, for the benefit of readers “not based in China, for whom such cognitive dissonance is normal.”

Russia’s online isolationism
Global Voices’ Gregory Asmolov extrapolates an isolationist trend emerging in Russian internet policy from events of the past year.

The Pervasive Legal Consequences of Modern Geolocation Technologies
This paper examines the implications of geolocation technology such as GPS-enabled mobile phones, for three bodies of law: privacy, e-commerce, and the jurisdiction of the courts. It raises the question of whether geolocation will relocalise the internet, allowing local rules to once again be enforced, and also highlights the need for stronger privacy protections as geo-location technologies become more advanced.

Posted late, due to travels, here are the most interesting links from last week’s Information Program mailout.

Turkey blocks use of Google services
Turkey’s Telecommunications regulator has issued a ban on several Google services, including Google Translate, Google Books and Google Docs. According to a statement issued by the regulator, the services will be blocked or throttled within Turkey. The statement was not clear on the reasons for the ban.

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe
A 22 year-old US Army intelligence analyst has been arrested and is being detained in Kuwait on suspicion of leaking classified material about army operations to whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. SPC Bradley Manning allegedly bragged online to a former computer hacker that he was the source of the Wikileaks video “Collateral Murder”. The video depicts an air attack in Iraq that resulted in the death of two Reuters journalists and several other Iraqi civilians.

Concerns in Vietnam over new “Green Dam”
Following failed attempts last year by Chinese authorities to mandate the installation of content-control software known as Green Dam on every PC in China, human rights activists are expressing concern over similar regulations in Vietnam. The regulations, targeted at internet cafes in Hanoi, require cafe owners to install a mysterious “Internet Service Retailers Management Software,” on every domain server they operate.

New Rwanda IP Policy Taps Information For Development
The government of Rwanda has adopted an unusual and wide-ranging intellectual property policy they say forms part of their comprehensive development strategy. The policy includes provisions for shorter-term “petty” patents, the exclusion of pharmaceuticals from patent protection, exceptions and limitations for education and translation, and the policy that enforcement shall generally be a civil, not a state, matter.

The end of bloggers’ anonymity in France?
The French senator Jean-Louis Masson has submitted a draft law that could end anonymity of bloggers. According to the text, bloggers would have to provide identification data such as name, phone number and address on their blogs. It is unclear how the law would be enforced.

Google campaign tools
Google details how to use its suite of services to run effective campaigns. Although geared towards the US congressional elections, this introduction to Google’s campaign tools will also be useful to campaigners and advocates in other parts of the world.

“Transparency is not enough”
This speech by danah boyd explains why we need to look beyond transparency to the way information is interpreted – and manipulated – once it is out in the open.

Does the internet make you smarter or dumber?
Two digital gurus – Nicholas Carr and Clay Shirky – argue over whether the internet makes us better or worse at thinking.

Overcoming apathy through participation?
Ethan Zuckerman examines theories of change and social media.

The Rise of Crowd Science
This Chronicle of Higher Education feature focuses on the rise and rise of the crowd-sourced astronomy project, Galaxy Zoo.

Open Data and Creative Commons: It’s About Scale…
John Wilbanks’ confronts licensing issues around open data.