Security. Inside Washington's high risk mission to beat web censors | Technology. For more than a year, the intelligence services of various authoritarian regimes have shown an intense desire to know more about what goes on in an office building on L Street in Washington DC, six blocks away from the White House. The office is the HQ of a US government-funded technology project aimed at undermining internet censorship in countries such as Iran and Syria.
And so every week – sometimes every day – email inquiries arrive there that purport to be from pro-democracy activists in those places, but which, the recipients are confident, actually come from spies. This is international espionage at its most elementary: pretend to be a sympathiser, ask for more details, and just maybe, if you're lucky, some unsuspecting intern or temp will forward you the secret plans. It's a long shot, but it's much easier than intercepting phone calls, cultivating double agents or infiltrating opposition groups. This kind of dissimulation has been going on forever. China's censorship can never defeat the internet | Ai Weiwei. Chairman Mao used to say: "As communists we gain control with the power of the gun and maintain control with the power of the pen. " You can see propaganda and the control of ideology as an authoritarian society's most important task.
Before the internet, all people could do was watch TV or read the People's Daily. They would carefully read between the lines to see what had happened. Now it is very different. The papers try to talk about things, but even before they appear, everyone has talked about it on the internet. I still think Gorbachev's revolution in Russia – glasnost – was more important. Openness and transparency are the only way to limit these dark powers.
Even though we had reform and opening, "opening" didn't mean "openness"; it meant opening the door to the west. But since we got the net and could write blogs – and now microblogs – people have started to share ideas, and a new sense of freedom has arisen. But the government cannot give up control. Nervous Kremlin seeks to purge Russia's internet of 'western' influences | Technology. Unlike other media, the internet in Russia, has developed largely untouched by the arm of the state. The protests have prompted many to wonder: is that about to change? "It's too late to change things," said Anton Nossik, an internet guru. "Kids are now born into the internet and grew up in the internet. Like it or not, you have to embrace it. " That is the view of most internet observers in Russia: that it's too late, and too technologically complicated, to institute a China-style firewall.
Yet the government is infamous for its attention to propaganda, and for the power of its suspicious spy services, and there are signs that it is seeking to boost its ability to control the internet. Opposition bloggers and activists have already come under attack from the state, via prosecutors and the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency to the KGB. "There is no strategy. "Society must defend itself. That is what government critics fear most – Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin | Technology.
The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world".
"I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "It's scary. " The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms. Revealed: US and China's cyber war gamesWashington's plan to beat web censorsChina struggle to regain control of the internetHow open is your internet? "There's a lot to be lost," he said. How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an internet titan | Technology. In 1995, four years after Estonia broke free from the USSR, Toomas Hendrik Ilves read a "very Luddite" book by Jeremy Rifkin called The End of Work.
"It argued that with greater computerisation there would be fewer jobs," remembered Ilves, then a senior diplomat, now the country's president, "which from his point of view was terrible. " Ilves and many of his colleagues saw it differently. In a tiny (population: 1.4 million) and newly independent country like Estonia, politicians realised computers could help quickly compensate for both a minuscule workforce and a chronic lack of physical infrastructure. Seventeen years on, the internet has done more than just help. "But for young Estonians, the internet is a manifestation of something more than a service – it's a symbol of democracy and freedom.
" To see why, you just have to go outside. "We realised that if the government was going to use the internet, the internet had to be available to everybody," Viik said. Case in point: the ID card. The Geopolitics of the iPhone - By Brian Fung. The business: Coltan -- short for columbite-tantalite -- is an ore that takes on heat-resistant properties when it gets refined. It's also capable of holding a high electrical charge for a long time. Both characteristics make coltan an ideal component in circuitry design, and it's these that make the mineral so valuable.
In the iPhone and other electronic devices, coltan is used in the production of tantalum capacitors, which store charge better than normal capacitors, improving battery life. The politics: After oil and water, coltan might soon be among the world's most contested resources. Obscure but found in virtually every mobile phone on the planet -- not to mention pretty much any other electronic device you can name -- the mineral is mined largely by hand in the far eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in Australia, Brazil, and Canada, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey (pdf). The business: Ever track a purchase from Apple's online store? China's censors tested by microbloggers who keep one step ahead of state media | Technology. In the opaque world of Chinese censorship, a few red lines shine through the murk. One of the clearest is: no gossip about top political leaders, their families or internal party affairs. But just as the authorities had vowed to tame China's rumbustious microblogs, they have seen an unprecedented wave of speculation and comment on the most sensitive subjects: political infighting, lurid allegations of murder and even (unfounded) claims of a coup.
State attempts to control the web, including stern admonitions, large-scale deletions, real-name registration, website closures and even detentions have failed to rein in users. More intriguingly, some of the most startling rumours have proved at least partially true – leading some to wonder whether this is simply a battle between bold users and anxious censors, or something more complex. "Because of the rumours of political struggle it has got hotter and hotter. Official anxiety about the repercussions has become increasingly evident. Surviving the digital swarm. The Chinese Room - 60-Second Adventures in Thought (3/6) Future - Science & Environment - Touch-and-go tablet and computer screens. The new iPad launched yesterday amid its usual fanfare. But could dwindling supplies of a crucial component make such events a thing of the past? Another iPad launch, another event filled with intense anticipation and speculation.
This time Apple’s CEO Tim Cook revealed that the latest iteration of iPad will feature a high-definition screen, and no doubt its competitors will rapidly follow suit. But there is a problem looming on the horizon for fans of the latest tablet computers, not to mention smart phones and flatscreen TVs. Whether it is on the shiny new iPad, computer or phone, the chances are that you are reading this article through a screen laced with one of the rarest metals on Earth: indium. And analysts are warning that global supplies of indium could be exhausted as soon as 2017. Such a prospect might not seem as alarming as running out of essential commodities, such as food or water.
Wonder metal But the supply of indium cannot meet our voracious demands.