Author Archives: wp-admin

Online surveillance undermines trust in intelligence services, says Tory peer

The UK government’s legal justification for mass surveillance of the internet risks undermining public confidence in the intelligence services, a former Conservative security minister has warned. Speaking at a debate in University College London, Lady Neville-Jones, who has chaired Whitehall’s joint intelligence committee, backed calls for the law governing surveillance, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to…

Gambia: A Win for Internet Freedom

We associate ourselves with the response of ARTICLE 19, which says it welcomes the adoption by consensus of the resolution on Internet and Human Rights by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), with the support of more than 80 co-sponsoring states. [if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE According to…

BRICS declaration condemns terrorism, ‘mass electronic surveillance’

In a strong endorsement of India’s position, the five-nation Brics summit has come out with a strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and stressed that there can be no justification for any acts of terror based on ideological, political or religious issues. “We call upon all entities to refrain from financing,…

Snowden’s New Anti-Surveillance Software ‘Much Needed’ – Internet Security Specialist

The new anti-surveillance technologies recently called for by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is much needed to ensure individuals’ privacy and protection from government, Yan Zhu, a San-Francisco based staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told RIA-Novosti Tuesday. “This is good and much needed right now. This is extremely important. In an age…

African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms

Last week, 23 civil society groups released the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms at the Internet Governance Forum. The Declaration was drafted by a committee led by Edetean Ojo , Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda, which announced the Declaration as “a Pan-African initiative to promote human rights standards and principles of openness in internet…

Scribes seek freedom in cyberspace

Journalists from the Southern African bloc were in Botswana for deliberations on the findings of an earlier survey on “Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace.” The survey conducted in June 2013 was via a partnership between the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and Privacy International (PI). Michael Phoya, the author of the report was quoted…

Egypt heightens surveillance of online communication

The Egyptian government has hired an online security firm for extensive monitoring of internet communication on various social platforms such as Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper reported on its website Thursday, citing a BuzzFeed News report. See Egypt, a reseller of U.S.-based Blue Coat’s products, has already started monitoring Egypt’s online communications…

Why Facebook, Google, and the NSA Want Computers That Learn Like Humans

In June 2012, a Google supercomputer made an artificial-intelligence breakthrough: It learned that the internet loves cats. But here’s the remarkable part: It had never been told what a cat looks like. Researchers working on the Google Brain project in the company’s X lab fed 10 million random, unlabeled images from YouTube into their massive network and instructed…

Facebook will launch apps for rural India: Zuckerberg

Ever since Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg landed in India, he has been expressing a desire to see how the grassroots connect and what they look online when if they manage to connect at all. This curiosity took him to a little-known village in the Alwar district of Rajasthan on Friday, which many people…

Outernet aims to provide data to the net unconnected

Can an entire library be put in your pocket? Most people would say yes. All you need is a mobile phone with access to the internet. But what about for the many people in the world that lack internet connectivity? The answer is still yes – at least according to Syed Karim, who explained how…