PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, June 5 - 11, 2014   Featured Story: To Save Lives, or Not to Save Lives by Rachel Brandenburg Media and Social Media Egypt Wants Greater Monitoring of Bloggers, Social Media (VOA, 6/11/14) Why The Terrorists Are Winning in Iraq-And How That Could Cost Them Everything (Daily Beast, 6/10/14) Murder of Two More Radio Journalists Shows Need for Greater Protection (IFEX, 6/10/14) Intimidated Journalists in Pakistan Cannot Exercise Press Freedom (Guardian, 6/9/14) Thailand Social Network: The Junta's Answer to Pesky Freedom of Speech (Wired, 6/9/14) Facebook Pressed to Return Money from Ads Promoting Syrian President (CNN, 6/9/14) Journalists: The Unwitting Pawns of Government Cyber Warfare (Wired, 6/9/14) Social Media Played Big Role in India's Election (VOA, 6/6/14) Leading Pakistani Geo TV Channel is Ordered Off Air (BBC, 6/6/14) Technology and Science Can Ukraine Win Its Information War With Russia? (Atlantic, 6/11/14) CrisisNET Speedily Aggregates Social Data in Disaster Situations (Wired, 6/10/14) DR Congo Minerals: Most Mines 'Conflict Free' Since US Law (BBC, 6/10/14) Can We Cure Violence? (Forbes, 6/9/14) Human Rights Investigators Using Technology to Gather War Crime Evidence, as E-Team Documentary Shows (ABC News, 6/7/14) Media and Social Media Egypt Wants Greater Monitoring of Bloggers, Social Media For years it's been known that the Egyptian government has been monitoring the private electronic communications of certain citizens, notably activists like Salem. Newly leaked documents show the Egyptian government now wants to greatly expand its monitoring of Egyptians' use of social media, hauling in massive amounts of data on just about everyone online in Egypt. See the full article (VOA, Doug Bernard, Mohamed Elshinnawi, 6/11/14) [Return to top] Why The Terrorists Are Winning in Iraq-And How That Could Cost Them Everything Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, was seized Tuesday by members of a militant Islamist group that was disowned by al Qaeda for being too extreme and uncompromising. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) now controls a transnational and still-growing kingdom that stretches across northern Syria and into western and northern Iraq. And they're spreading fear even further, with a brutally effective and disconcertingly accurate social media campaign. See the full article (Daily Beast, Jacob Siegel, 6/10/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Militant Sweep in Iraq: A Twitter Chat on the Latest Developments" on June, 13, 2014 at 10:00am. [Return to top] Murder of Two More Radio Journalists Shows Need for Greater Protection The murder of two journalists within four days in Honduras highlights the urgent need for more effective protection to be provided to media workers, says PEN International. Community radio journalist Hernán Cruz Barnica was killed in the department of Copán on 28 May and disc jockey Óscar Anthony Torres Martínez was murdered in Olancho department on 1 June 2014. These are the first journalists to be killed in the country since the inauguration of President Juan Orlando Hernández in January 2014. See the full article (Ifex, 6/10/14) [Return to top] Intimidated Journalists in Pakistan Cannot Exercise Press Freedom Press freedom no longer exists in Pakistan. Journalism is under constant threat with both broadcast and newspaper journalists being intimidated into silence. The treatment of the popular Urdu-language channel, Geo News, is but the latest example of the way in which the authorities are seeking to close off any hint of criticism. See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 6/9/14) [Return to top] Thailand Social Network: The Junta's Answer to Pesky Freedom of Speech What would Facebook look like if it was censored and run by a military junta? We're guessing, not amazing. But we may have to speculate no longer, if the Thai military has its independent thought-crushing way. The Global Post has reported the emergence of a Thailand Social Network, an easy-to-censor platform created by the junta, for the oppressed. See the full article (Wired, Liat Clark, 6/9/14) Click to read "U.S.-China Cooperation on North Korea: What are the Options?" an Olive Branch Post by Stephanie T. Kleine-Ahlbrandt. [Return to top] Facebook Pressed to Return Money from Ads Promoting Syrian President Facebook is facing pressure to return money it accepted to run ads promoting its page for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's presidential campaign. The social media network has pulled the ads, which directed users to the campaign page, but it has refused to say whether it will return the money it took in exchange for them. See the full article (CNN, Samuel Burke, 6/9/14) [Return to top] Journalists: The Unwitting Pawns of Government Cyber Warfare To win at the government's cyber game and to avoid inadvertently becoming a mouthpiece for propaganda, a journalist's best bet is to go gonzo, says innovator and information activist Smári McCarthy in his talk "Lies, propaganda and CyberCyberCyberCyberLOL" at Mezhyhirya Festival in Ukraine. McCarthy was brought in by the Ministry of Defence last year to help the Defence Academy figure out what its policy should be in terms of cyberwar. See the full article (Wired, Katie Collins, 6/9/14) [Return to top] Social Media Played Big Role in India's Election The sweeping victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Indian elections has been attributed to factors ranging from slowing economic growth to high levels of corruption. But for the first time in the country's history, social media played an important role, according to analysts who are calling the vote India's first "social media elections." See the full article (VOA, Idrees Ali, 6/6/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Global Innovators: Women Leading Change Around the World" on June, 19, 2014 at 9:00am. [Return to top] Leading Pakistani Geo TV Channel is Ordered Off Air Pakistan's Electronic Media Regularity Authority has suspended the licence of the country's largest and most influential TV station for 15 days. Since April, the Geo TV channel has been embroiled in a defamation row with the powerful ISI intelligence agency. The ISI says the channel has unfairly linked the agency to an attack on a Geo talk show host in Karachi. But officials from Geo, Pakistan's most watched news channel, have described the licence suspension as unfair. See the full article (BBC, 6/6/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel To Save Lives, or Not to Save Lives by Rachel Brandenburg The humanitarian crisis in Syria is incomprehensible -- and getting worse. The international community is acutely aware of the need for humanitarian assistance to reach all parts of Syria, yet there are at least three obstacles standing in the way: first, a lack of funding; second, the Syrian government limiting access to humanitarian aid providers; and third, indecision at the U.N. over whether or not to defy the Assad regime's restrictions on getting into and working in the country. If these challenges are not overcome, another generation of Syrians will be lost to violent conflict. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science Can Ukraine Win Its Information War With Russia? Vladimir Putin may be playing cat and mouse with Ukraine on the military front, but Russia has long mobilized the big battalions in its international information war: the Kremlin spends hundreds of millions of dollars on English-language broadcasting, intellectual influencers, PR firms, and cultural-diplomacy campaigns. Ukraine, meanwhile, has no international voice or image. How do you win a modern information war against a far more powerful enemy? See the full article (Atlantic, Peter Pomerantsev, 6/11/14) Click to read "Blue-and-Yellow Shoe Laces: Ukrainian Unity in an Unlikely Spot" an Olive Branch Post by William B. Taylor. [Return to top] CrisisNET Speedily Aggregates Social Data in Disaster Situations Not-for-profit software company Ushahidi has launched CrisisNET, an open-source platform that it claims will dramatically reduce the amount of time that it takes journalists, analysts and humanitarian organisations to get their hands on well-structured, crowdsourced data in the midst of conflict and disaster. The organisation has a track record of helping to gather data from social media during natural disasters and political revolutions -- it was formed in the aftermath of the disputed 2007 Kenyan presidential election -- but the sheer quantity that it now pulls in is expensive to clean and format at speed. See the full article (Wired, Katie Collins, 6/10/14) [Return to top] DR Congo Minerals: Most Mines 'Conflict Free' Since US Law More than two-thirds of mines in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo which produced "conflict minerals" four years ago are no longer run by warlords, a report by US-based Enough Project says. It follows a US law implemented in 2010 which required firms to determine the origin of minerals used in products. Tin, tantalum and tungsten, used to make computers and mobile phones, used to generate $185m (£110m) a year for armed groups, the report said. See the full article (BBC, 6/10/14) [Return to top] Can We Cure Violence? Violence is contagious, this we know. Time and again, researchers have found that exposure to aggression links directly to increases in violent behavior. This is why, for example, 30% of abused children grow up to be abusers themselves. It's also why, as Gary Slutkin, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the executive director of CURE Violence, recently told New Scientist: "[P]eople who have observed violence are 30 times more likely to commit it. Under certain conditions it can be up to 100 to 1,000 times more likely." See the full article (Forbes, Steven Kotler, 6/9/14) [Return to top] Human Rights Investigators Using Technology to Gather War Crime Evidence, as E-Team Documentary Shows War crime investigators say new technology is being used to bring those responsible for atrocities to justice. E-Team, a new documentary screening at the Sydney Film Festival, shows human rights workers in Syria and Lybia collecting information about mass shootings, gas attacks, and missile strikes on civilian homes. See the full article (ABC News, John Stewart, 6/7/14) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, May 29 - June 4, 2014   Featured Story: Assad's Hollow Mandate by Steven Heydemann Media and Social Media Syrian Conflict Leads to PDK Reprisals Against Pro-PKK Media (Thomas Reuters Foundation, 6/4/14) Young Iranians 'Claustrophobic' as Culture is Forced Online but Accessed in Private (Guardian, 6/3/14) Blogging for Freedom in Vietnam (New Yorker, 6/3/14) #BringBackOurGirls: The Verdict (Guardian, 6/3/14) Radio Drama Encounters Real-Life Trauma in South Sudan (PBS, 6/2/14) Journalists Protest Against Curbing of Press Freedom (AllAfrica, 6/2/14) Egypt's Police Seek Ability to Monitor Social Media for Signs of Dissent (Guardian, 6/2/14) Activists on Social Media Keep Thai Junta on Edge (Wall Street Journal, 6/1/14) Chinese Journalists are Beginning to Fight Their Government's Censorship (Washington Post, 6/1/14) Iran Link to Social Media Spying on Military Leaders (BBC, 5/29/14) Technology and Science The Cyber Cold War: What Issuing Arrest Warrants Means and What Can Still be Done (Huffington Post, 6/4/14) China Escalates Its War on American Tech Firms (Time, 6/4/14) China Boosts Security, Internet Restrictions Ahead of Tiananmen Square Anniversary (Deutsche Welle, 6/3/14) 'Conflict Minerals' Deadline Looms for Technology Firms (BBC, 5/30/14) Edward Snowden: 'I'd Like To Go Home' (Washington Post, 5/29/14) Media and Social Media Syrian Conflict Leads to PDK Reprisals Against Pro-PKK Media Journalists, news media and freedom of information in Iraqi Kurdistan have been hit by a recent increase in the traditional tension between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), whose leader, Masoud Barzani, is Iraqi Kurdistan's president, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Turkish armed separatist group that has many fighters based in Iraqi Kurdistan. The targeted entities included two media outlets: DIHA, a Turkish news agency, and the monthly Rojava Welat. See the full article (Thomas Reuters Foundation, 6/4/14) [Return to top] Young Iranians 'Claustrophobic' as Culture is Forced Online but Accessed in Private In different ways, [youth] struggle to cope with simultaneous feelings of social isolation and claustrophobia, predominant among the current generation of Iranian youth. Spending hours a day in front of their computers or satellite TV, the Ahmadinejad generation's cultural tastes have moved far outside the confines of the Islamic republic. By the time they reach high-school age, many teenagers spend hours a day on Instagram and Facebook. See the full article (Guardian, 6/3/14) [Return to top] Blogging for Freedom in Vietnam A few years before his arrest, in 2012, I exchanged e-mails with the Vietnamese blogger Le Quoc Quan, a Hanoi-based lawyer who first started blogging in 2005. He told me that his first post, just a sentence long, read: "Oh my fatherland of Vietnam, I want to say something to you!" While working on my book about Internet dissent in the Communist and post-Communist world, I interviewed bloggers in China, Cuba, and Russia who, like Quan, wanted to tell stories that did not appear in the state-controlled media. See the full article (New Yorker, Emily Parker, 6/3/14) [Return to top] #BringBackOurGirls: The Verdict Social media campaigns (such as Kony2012) are frequently dismissed as superficial and a displacement for real engagement - labelled "slacktivism". Yet, despite some difficulties, #BringBackOurGirls does appear to be a case where the worldwide outcry voiced through Twitter has had a genuine impact and promoted meaningful action [in Nigeria]. See the full article (Guardian, Suzanne Franks, 6/3/14) Click to read "Nigeria: Remedies for a Police-Community Disconnect?" an Olive Branch Post by Nadia Gerspacher. [Return to top] Radio Drama Encounters Real-Life Trauma in South Sudan A new radio drama in South Sudan called Sawa Shabab coaches young listeners on life skills and getting along with others. But just as production was set to begin, violence erupted in the country - the same violence the show's creators were hoping to prevent. The radio drama aims to address tribal differences by having actors overcome obstacles to work together for their country, to show young listeners that good can come from respecting diversity and countering stereotypes. See the full article (PBS, Larisa Epatko, 6/2/14) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Rhythms at the Intersection of Peace and Conflict" on June, 10, 2014 at 9:30am. [Return to top] Egypt's Police Seek Ability to Monitor Social Media for Signs of Dissent Egypt's police force is seeking to build a surveillance system to monitor social media for expressions of dissent - including profanity, immorality, insults and calls for strikes and protests. According to a leaked document in which technology companies are invited to offer their services, Egypt's interior ministry says it wants the ability to scan Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Viber in real-time for usage that might "harm public security or incite terrorism". See the full article (Guardian, Patrick Kingsley, 6/2/14) [Return to top] Journalists Protest Against Curbing of Press Freedom A group of Sudanese journalists on Sunday organised a sit-in in front of the National Press and Publications' Council in Khartoum in protest against the government's media policies. The protesters submitted a strong worded memorandum to the Press Council calling for its immediate intervention to protect the media against the "vicious and systematic attacks" by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), and to cancel the suspension of several journalists. See the full article (AllAfrica, 6/2/14) [Return to top] Activists on Social Media Keep Thai Junta on Edge A handful of users of Facebook and other social-media sites Sunday achieved mostly with online messages what it previously took tens of thousands of actual street protesters to do: Shut down the center of Thailand's capital. Thailand's military rulers, who seized power in a coup last month, have imposed wide-ranging censorship, and have ordered more than 250 people to report to army camps since the coup was announced, though most have since been released. Cable television networks still don't run international news channels such as CNN and BBC. See the full article (Wall Street Journal, James Hookway and Newley Purnell, 6/1/14) [Return to top] Chinese Journalists are Beginning to Fight Their Government's Censorship If President Xi Jinping and his colleagues want to keep a lid on that bottle, they may face resistance from a surprising source: the nation's budding journalists. By substantial numbers, students in some of China's leading journalism schools oppose censorship, doubt the credibility of their domestic media, and don't believe journalists should be members of the Communist Party. See the full article (Washington Post, Joseph Weber, 6/1/14) [Return to top] Iran Link to Social Media Spying on Military Leaders Fake social media accounts have been used by Iranian hackers to spy on senior military and political staff worldwide, a report suggests. The accounts aided a four-year campaign that aimed to befriend targets, said computer security firm iSight Partners. Accounts were used to make it appear that bogus identities set up by the spies were real people. See the full article (BBC, 5/29/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel Assad's Hollow Mandate by Steven Heydemann On June 3, in a parody of democracy, Bashar al-Assad will be reelected as president of Syria for his third seven-year term. If he serves out this term, Assad will be eligible to run for a fourth term in 2021 that would extend his presidency to 28 years -- two years short of his father's tenure. Tuesday's election is easy to ridicule, but it would be a mistake to dismiss it as a meaningless charade. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science The Cyber Cold War: What Issuing Arrest Warrants Means and What Can Still be Done We are in a second cold war. The recent indictments of Chinese military officers have definitively shown this to be a fact, yet it is just one of many silent blows back and forth in this bloodless war behind closed doors in which both governments claim they are not involved. Just like the original cold war, the only way to keep our heads above water is to keep improving the technology that is keeping us safe. See the full article (Huffington Post, Andrew Edwards, 6/4/14) [Return to top] China Escalates Its War on American Tech Firms U.S. technology firms have often found China a tough market. Now, in the wake of Washington's charges against five Chinese military officials for cyberspying, a riled Beijing has intensified its criticism of U.S. tech businesses. Chinese media this week attacked numerous U.S. tech firms for, in effect, acting as agents of American espionage. See the full article (Time, Michael Schuman, 6/4/14) [Return to top] China Boosts Security, Internet Restrictions Ahead of Tiananmen Square Anniversary Police and paramilitary troops patrolled the streets and manned checkpoints in Beijing on Tuesday. The move comes as authorities mount a major campaign against dissidents, detaining several dozen activists and heightening restrictions on other artists, lawyers and government critics. A censorship watchdog, meanwhile, said that a number of Google-related websites had been blocked. China prevents access to websites including YouTube and Twitter using a system known as the "Great Firewall," and restrictions are tightened ahead of dates the government considers sensitive. See the full article (Deutsche Welle, 6/3/14) [Return to top] 'Conflict Minerals' Deadline Looms for Technology Firms Companies manufacturing products that use "conflict minerals" must submit a plan to deal with the problem to US regulators by Monday. The term applies to raw materials, such as gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin, gathered by miners controlled by violent militia groups. All of the materials are used widely in electronics products and the deadline applies to firms listed in the US. See the full article (BBC, Dave Lee, 5/30/14) [Return to top] Edward Snowden: 'I'd Like To Go Home' Edward J. Snowden, in an hour-long television interview broadcast Wednesday night, portrayed himself as a "patriot" who broke the law in an act of "civil disobedience" directed at "massive" constitutional violations by the U.S. government. While Snowden said he would love to return to the United States from Russia, where he sought and obtained asylum last summer after leaking thousands of documents detailing the extent of the National Security Agency's sprawling surveillance program, he said he did not want to "walk into a jail cell." See the full article (Washington Post, Terrence McCoy, 5/29/14) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend