Why is your favourite website not available? Is your blog visible overseas? Use Herdict Web at Herdict.org and you can help answer these questions. Herdict Web is an Internet service that detects signs of censorship or disruption. Read “Herdict—Using the Crowd to Fight Censorship” to learn more. Simply browse Herdict Web and view the reports for your web sites or countries of Interest. Run some of the tests yourself, and help build up a picture of the health of the Internet. You can view the global picture as a Google map, with status reports overlaid on the location of origin. That is a valuable service for this stormy season of Internet interruptions. Several countries are enforcing severe Internet censorship, and some websites have been disrupted by botnets. Be security concious when using your own PC, so that it does not become part of a malicious botnet. Botnets are a source of spam, and some are programmed to send invalid traffic. Due to the huge numbers of PCs in a botnet, this can swamp the targetted web site. Herdict is reviewed at toolness.com and futureoftheinternet.org. Herdict is provided by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which tracks Internet censorship around the globe, is an international collaboration of the Berkman Center and other leading academic institutions.
This blog Thinking Upstream, about ideas and human rights, is based on online news of some of the bloggers and journalists who remain unjustly imprisoned in several countries. As one blogger among many, I hope to draw attention to the people mentioned, urging that we each seek peaceful ways to secure their freedom. They have been hurt by authoritarianism and its cruel repression, and by those who execute that repression or gain from it. I have no experience of the countries mentioned, but am convinced of the accuracy of the news, by the variety of reputable publications, to which I refer in the hyper-links of my posts. I blog about human rights because: all freedoms and rights are fragile, and at risk of being lost, if we are even a little careless. Thinking Upstream is now a PDF file on Scribd.com for easy offline reading, even in places where Friendster is blocked. I used Google Translate to machine-translate it into various languages, also in PDF format on Scribd.com.Thinking Upstream is at: http://cmcallister.blog.friendster.com/. Your comments are welcome.
Active blogger Yoani Sánchez (photo) expresses her joy about the expanding blogosphere in Havana, Cuba. In her blogpost “Arco iris en la blogósfera” (Rainbow in the blogosphere), she reports on the rapid growth of blogging since she started her blog Generation Y in April 2007. In addition to being an inspiration to new bloggers, she enjoys meeting them, and giving technical advice, such as: How to use Wordpress, and how to maintain a regular online presence, where Internet connections are hard to obtain.
In her blog post “Young Pro-Democracy Advocate Edgar Lopez Trapped in Cuba”, Yoani petitions for Edgar Lopez to be permitted to travel to join his family in the USA. Foreign travel is one of the many activities that are restricted in Cuba. The country is also tightening the net on bloggers: “Cuban bloggers, an endangered species? ”. Only official government websites are permitted to register on the “.cu” Cuban domain. Hotels are among the few places where it is possible to get Internet access in Cuba, but access cards are only provided to foreign tourists. Yoani is also under attack from an official state journalist who seems to be severely out of touch with how the Internet works.
The “Petition to help Edgar Lopez” explains that Edgar López has been denied a travel visa because he is a member of a political group that does not support Cuba’s communist party.
Yoani Sánchez is listed as Hero and Pioneer in the Time 2008 Top 100.
Thai Internet User Suwicha Thakhor
A Bangkok court has harshly sentenced Suwicha Thakhor to ten years in jail for items that he posted on the Internet. This is reported in Ten years jail for “insulting” Thai king, in the Telegraph (UK) newspaper. The controversial Thai law, Lese-majeste (insulting the monarchy), has been used several times this year. Thousands of websites are blocked in Thailand and many more are monitored for critical comments. A restrictive Computer Crime Act makes citizens wary of using the Internet. Strict Internet monitoring enabled Suwicha Thakhor’s anonymous posting to be traced to his home computer. The details of his January 2009 arrest are described by Reporters Without Borders. The article “Thailand: Blogger’s Conviction Shocks Internet Freedom Activists” includes comments from Suwicha’s lawyer, indicating that he has been unfairly punished to set an example to other Internet users.
The city of Sebastopol, California, USA is gaining Facebook fame for its blocking of a free WiFi project. According to articles in their local newspaper, The Press Democrat, local democracy provides the stage for the debate between WiFi promoters and those who are worried that there may be health effects from low levels of microwave radiation. One concerned citizen published an article “Sebastopol’s brave rejection of WiFi“. On the other side of the debate, a grass roots group in support of free Wifi published the article “Facebook users want their WiFi“. Wifi supporters have published their arguments for WiFi on two Facebook groups: “I Support Free Wi-Fi in Sebastopol“, and “[named individual] killed free Wifi in Sebastopol“. Echoes of this debate are sure to be heard in other cities, as many years of intense scientific research and demographic surveys, such as The Interphone Study, have failed to produce proof of health risks from the radio waves of mobile phones and personal WiFi.
December 2008 updates to this story: “A correction - and further notes on the Sebastopol WiFi controversy” and “Wifi Allergies“.
You are welcome to discuss WiFi and mobile phone concerns on the Sarawak Science group on Friendster.
Torill Elvira Mortensen published an article “Spill og forskning“ or “Games and Research” at the Norwegian scientific publication Forskning.no on 27 September 2008. She says: “Research on digital games is more prevalent today. Non-digital games are also of interest to the game researcher. There is research into: content, structure and genre, players, player behavior and game cultures. Language barriers to Asia are quite large, and this is a problem for games research, since a lot of developments in this field occurs in Asia. Use, interest and aesthetics is quite different than in Europe and the United States; so game researchers are looking at countries like Japan, China and Korea with great interest.” This is a short extract of her blog post, translated from Norwegian into English with the aid of http://translate.google.com. Torill Elvira Mortensen’s blog “Thinking With My Fingers” is at http://torillsin.blogspot.com/ and she is now one of the bloggers at http://www.forskning.no/ She is also a contributer to the book “Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader“, The MIT Press (2008).
