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upcoming events

           Hello readers, I am writing to you from a rather storm battered but typically chilly Edinburgh. However, the weather is a small price to pay for living here because apart from the beautiful architecture, wealth of culture and its rich history it also means I can attend some of the events that are being run by Edinburgh University's SCRIPT Centre in the next couple of weeks (I had to try and link it in somehow...)

          This post is perhaps a bit eager as it would perhaps be more interesting for you to see what my thoughts are after I have attended the events but nevertheless I am quite excited about them so I just thought I would share that enthusiasm here! This post could also be seen as an advert to anyone in the central belt of Scotland who feels convinced by my enthusiasm that they would also like to attend! Anyway,  I will post after I have attended to give a much more informative analysis but I for now here are my initial thoughts.
          The first event is a lecture from with Dr Rex Hughes looking at the concept of a 'Treaty for Cyberspace'. This is an interesting concept and on the basis of Dr Hughes past research I think it will be a treaty relating to issues of cybersecurity. This is highly topical when considered in light of proposals for new laws of engagement for cyberspace which are being discussed as I write at the 2011 Munich Security Conference. My initial feelings about such a concept seem drawn to issues raised by the dichotomy of state and non state actors online and how negotiation of a global instrument could address the broad range of stakeholder interests in a way which avoids an instrument marginalised by the most powerful lobbyists. The other issue for me is if a hard law instrument like a treaty could be drafted with enough flexibility to tackle new technological security challenges but not be so principle based to challenge its effectiveness. The fundamental concept is something that fascinates me and my concerns are more procedural than substantive.
          The second event is a conference/workshop looking at 'Wikileaks and the Law'. As you can see from my posts below I was fascinated by 'Cablegate' so I was naturally quite excited when I booked a place at this event last week. It has a broad remit dealing with the fundamental balance between security and privacy, the legal issues for the new kind of journalism Wikileaks embodies and jurisdictional issues pertaining to Wikileaks legal status. There are a broad range of contributors with legal practitioners, media representatives and academics, including Professor Lilian Edwards who is the new Professor of E-Governance (Internet Law) on my LLM course at Strathclyde University. It will be brilliant to listen to this wealth of opinion on such a fascinating topic.

           The third event is with Professor Charles Raab of Edinburgh University lecturing on reforms in information privacy policy from the UK perspective. I have been reading parts of his book the 'Governance of Privacy' and can recommend it as a comprehensive analysis in this area. The fairly recent Communication from the EU Commission looking at reform of the EU data protection landscape makes this again an area of key topical significance and I look forward to hearing what impact Professor Raab foresees the changes having on the UK.

          As already stated I will post some thoughts here after the events, but until then keep an eye on my Twitter feed for any nuggets of excitement from the micro-blogosphere.

Thank you for reading :)

Moose

Twitter and Egypt Internet shutdown

Hello readers,

As any of you may have noticed I have recently joined Twitter. It is a fantastic tool for keeping on top of developing news and provides a really useful constant feed of interesting information (although the usefulness does depend on what you choose to follow!). I wish I had started using it sooner instead of presuming it was merely a forum for people to post mundane details about their lives. I will have to try and avoid information overload though as there are many 'tweets' I wish to read and then 'retweet'.
Anyway, I will be using Twitter quite a lot for highlighting what I feel are general points of interest but I will use this blog to cover bigger news stories and items requiring more in depth posts than the 140 characters allowed in Twitter.

The unfolding situation in Egypt where the government has shutdown Internet, social networks and mobile phone access countrywide in an attempt to stop protests has been of great interest. It raises some interesting questions about the role of government in regulating internet intermediaries and also the capacity of the Internet as a communications tool to co-ordinate revolutionary movements. If one considers the role which social networking sites (SNS) during the recent Tunisian revolution and obviously the post election pro riots in Iran in 2009 it is clear why Mubarak is nervous of grassroots revolutionary movements being formed through SNS. Furthermore, the leaning of the government on the ISP's to use their technical capabilities for facilitating Internet shutdown  sounds like a realisation of Lessig's prediction that government, given the political will, can and will use code to create a perfectly regulated space. There has been a  wealth of commentary on this story and some key sources I have been using are academic Ethan Zuckerman here, Human Rights Watch here and the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society here.


Moose

EDIT 1: 02/02/11 -  There is a podcast from the Guardian Tech Weekly with Aleks Krotoksi which features discussion on the Egyptian situation here.
It is also interesting to note the use of a new Google tool called "Speak to tweet" as a means of still communicating on SNS without Internet access. See here

The Next Digital Decade

Hello Readers,

Apologies for my long absence over the festive period I have been snowed under with work. This is a quick post just to raise awareness about a fantastic new book released yesterday called The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet. It has contributors such as Tim Wu, Jonathan Zittrain, Yochai Benkler and Milton Mueller. It looks very good and worth purchasing although it has also been released under a Creative Commons license and is available here if you would like it for free.

Thanks
Moose

"Wikileaks and the Information Wars"

Good evening readers, there is a fantastic podcast which was released on the 08/12/10 available here. This has excellent commentary on the ongoing Wikileaks situation by eminent legal scholars Jonathan Zittrain and Lawrence Lessig. It is also available on iTunes if you subscribe to the Radio Berkman Audio Fishbowl podcasts. They are free and a fantastic resource for listening to current debate released by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Zittrain has also published on this issue on his blog here.

Moose

Wikileaks

May I firstly extend my apologies to any followers of this blog as to the length of time it has been since my last post. I have been rather caught up in university work but had written down many proposals for blog ideas but never actually posted them. The result will be a flurry of posts over the next week or so. 

My first topic will be the Wikileaks situation which has highlighted some very interesting issues in the sphere of internet governance.

One of the key elements engaging my interest has been the involvement of hacktivist group Anonymous. Last night I read a news report that they had deployed a DDoS attack on the Mastercard website through a voluntary 'botnet' using the 'Low Orbit Ion Cannon'. This was because Mastercard, among others, had withdrawn their donation services to Wikileaks. This is the latest in a string of DDoS attacks launched by Anonymous including targeting Paypal, Visa and PostFinance (a Swiss bank). Next on the list is Amazon who removed Wikileaks from their cloud servers on the basis of violation of the terms of use policy. This seems pretty hypocritical given they are now selling a Kindle version of the leaked cables! The customer reviews here give some humorous insights including a query as to the allowed means of payment - could they use Paypal or Mastercard/Visa credit card to pay for a copy...?

I believe that control and regulation is needed on the Internet to guarantee continued 'freedom' but I do not like the notion of private entities controlling liberal democratic values like freedom of speech. Obviously I am not condoning the use of the illegal DDoS attacks as a method of punishing companies who may well have had legitimate reasons under terms of use agreements to terminate their services... But I think the whole unfolding situation highlights a deeper point about how the Internet can be used to route around attempts to stop the spread of information. It is allowing users to guarantee freedom of speech through its very architecture. Irrespective of the attempts of various parties to stop it through denial of hosting or donation services the underlying network and users have created other channels by setting up mirror sites or torrents to ensure the proliferation of the leaked cable information.

Bearing in mind the Cold War credentials of the Internet as a communications network designed to withstand nuclear war it is comforting to see that the original beast is still very much alive. Growing challenges to the network from the increased control of the ISP's or the prevalence of layered identification technologies could easily have diluted the key features from the ARPANET to the extent it no longer circumvents attempts to stifle the information flow. It appears to be showing the true potential of the network for guaranteeing fundamental free speech or expression rights. I find it very interesting for future regulation models that in a world of ever more controlled and tethered platforms that the underlying infrastructure can still reroute around 'terms of use' policies or political pressures to such an extent.

EDIT  - this story moves so fast things get out of date very quickly!

-Anonymous decided to abandon the attack on Amazon last night favouring to target Paypal again.

-Also the Internet Society has issued an interesting newsletter here worth a read.
- Anonymous have released a statement which gives some context to their intentions here

Thanks, Moose

updated map of online communities for 2010 from xkcd