CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-06 13:39:16 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 22 +1s)

2013-03-15 18:34:26 (2 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

2013-02-09 00:36:26 (5 comments, 7 reshares, 18 +1s)

The Internet in Iran, explained in three minutes with beautiful graphics.

2013-02-08 01:32:54 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 34 +1s)

2013-01-29 18:35:13 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 7 +1s)

Apart from their geography and shared culture, what these countries have in common is aging authoritarian leadership coupled with a young, Internet-savvy populace: an obvious recipe for tension.  And though one need only look to the rest of the region to see the various directions in which such tension might lead, one thing is immediately clear: the governments of Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain are, in all of the aforementioned cases, in violation of their citizens’ human rights.

2012-12-07 18:47:18 (38 comments, 6 reshares, 17 +1s)

Hey friends - have any of you gotten Google to approve your pseudonym for use on Google+?  If so, could you please drop me a line?  I'm developing a set of questions for a survey, and could use some details around the process.

2012-11-20 22:35:27 (17 comments, 9 reshares, 31 +1s)

Some things change, but others stay the same. While the types of threats facing Internet users worldwide have diversified over the past few years, from targeted malware to distributed denial of service attacks, one thing has remained constant: governments seeking to exert control over their populations still remain the biggest threat to the open Internet.

2012-11-20 22:18:54 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/the-tweets-of-war-israel-and-hamas-take-to-twitter.html

2012-10-03 19:03:24 (4 comments, 8 reshares, 15 +1s)

If you have $25, $50 or even $100 to spare, please consider donating to help Syrian refugees through the Middle East Children's Alliance.  They do amazing work, and are seeking a modest total of $53,000 to get emergency supplies to refugee camps.

2012-10-01 21:49:06 (7 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

BANNED BOOKS WEEK!  A good excuse, if you needed one, to read 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' 

2012-10-01 21:48:47 (3 comments, 5 reshares, 12 +1s)

2012-10-01 21:48:39 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

+Andrew McLaughlin and I discuss whether Google should be an arbiter of free speech: 

2012-10-01 21:47:57 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

From an Egyptian colleague: "The reaction of Google, as the owner of YouTube who broadcast the video, seems less harmful. But it's not. As the movie did not breach YouTube's terms of use, Google said it couldn't remove it. Instead, Google blocked the movie in certain regions, either voluntarily or due to some governments' demands. Google's selective censorship hurt free expression more than Ban did while trying to define its limits. Its message says, "We do not need to redefine anything, as long as we can block whatever we want, wherever, and whenever we want." Such discretionary power represents a serious violation of free expression, and of the user's freedom to choose."

2012-09-26 23:41:03 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

The European Commission's CleanIT proposal to "limit terrorist content" on the Internet would seriously erode civil liberties.  Check out our analysis:

2012-09-23 13:57:22 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

YouTube's censorship of anti-Islam video raises a number of questions around online free expression.

2012-09-23 13:54:28 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 11 +1s)

Watch our SyriaSaturday Hangout LIVE now! Link below: #SyriaSaturday

2012-08-16 17:50:15 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 13 +1s)

My latest post with Morgan Marquis-Boire. More malware, more problems. Syrian activists are being targeted by a fake "anti-hacking" tool.

"Unlike the fake Skype encryption program, this fake program does not abuse Comic Sans, but it does feature several suspicious errors, including a pop-up that reads: 'You Are Running On unprotected Conection You Maybe At Risk !!!!'"

2012-08-16 17:50:08 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

Censorship is bad business for Jordan's IT sector.

2012-07-20 23:26:37 (5 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

2012-07-01 07:17:27 (18 comments, 2 reshares, 17 +1s)

Not my favorite source but this is an important topic.

2012-06-21 17:30:31 (18 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

Maybe you heard the story yesterday about Apple refusing to sell an iPad to a Persian speaker...was Apple right in doing what it did?  Turns out, the answer's pretty damn complicated.

2012-06-12 11:27:08 (8 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

2012-06-07 22:58:43 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 17 +1s)

This week in censorship, by +Eva Galperin and Katrina Kaiser.

2012-05-02 15:16:35 (13 comments, 2 reshares, 26 +1s)

Redditors rock!

2012-04-26 22:10:52 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 22 +1s)

Support EFF and coders' rights...do it for the kittens!

2012-04-25 05:45:10 (5 comments, 5 reshares, 17 +1s)

2012-03-31 02:15:02 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

2012-03-31 02:16:46 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

2012-03-15 22:53:58 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 24 +1s)

2012-03-10 19:56:09 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

2012-03-10 19:56:10 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

2012-03-08 02:28:47 (12 comments, 1 reshares, 21 +1s)

Since PayPal restricts payments to booksellers who sell erotica that allegedly glorifies rape, I suppose they also ought to cut off payments to Amazon, since it sells 'A Clockwork Orange.'

2012-03-06 18:16:15 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 30 +1s)

+Trevor Timm and I penned this piece on surveillance sales to authoritarian regimes.

2012-03-03 16:58:06 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 27 +1s)

Tech company Websense has taken a stand and refused to be complicit in the Pakistani government's new Internet censorship plan. Will other companies follow their lead?

2012-03-02 06:30:04 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 14 +1s)

I'll be speaking again at re:publica this year with others including +Zeynep Tufekci and +Sami Ben Gharbia.

2012-02-24 21:00:12 (25 comments, 12 reshares, 39 +1s)

2012-02-23 21:43:33 (2 comments, 6 reshares, 24 +1s)

The Syrian government may have used the locations of journalists Marie Colvin's and Rémi Ochlik's satellite phones to track them down and kill them.

2012-02-23 20:53:59 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

My latest for Al Jazeera on how Tunisia could set an example for the rest of the region when it comes to freedom of expression.

2012-02-23 20:50:51 (11 comments, 13 reshares, 24 +1s)

Apple getting into the stove business? That's hot!

A company calling itself "Apple China" was busted by Chinese police for selling a line of gas stoves called the "iphone."

How does that even make sense?

http://www.cultofmac.com/148324/chinese-company-caught-selling-iphone-branded-oven/

2012-02-23 04:22:06 (52 comments, 6 reshares, 25 +1s)

Not cool: Cairo restaurants banning women who wear hijab (note: such women compromise around 80% of the Egyptian population, according to the author)

2012-02-23 03:29:00 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 23 +1s)

2012-02-21 21:14:21 (10 comments, 3 reshares, 20 +1s)

2012-02-19 16:13:32 (17 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

March 8 is Wear Your EFF Swag to Work Day! Doesn't matter what the swag--pins, a t-shirt, a special edition hoodie--just wear it and spread the love. No swag? Buy some here: https://supporters.eff.org/shop

2012-02-17 20:58:22 (8 comments, 17 reshares, 15 +1s)

I think the most egregious thing in +Adrian Chen's excellent article is that Facebook and Google are outsourcing content moderation for as low as $1/hour. In Morocco, that's not enough to rent an apartment in any of the major cities where these offices would be located.

$1/hr = ~$160/month? My not-remotely-bougie first apartment in Meknes, Morocco, which is like, the fourth largest city in the country, cost about $200/month.

2012-02-16 20:09:48 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

Important reading from the +Electronic Frontier Foundation's +Trevor Timm.

2012-02-16 20:08:02 (1 comments, 13 reshares, 21 +1s)

Great piece from +Cyrus Farivar

2012-02-16 20:07:22 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Lèse majesté trial of Prachatai editor, Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn AKA Jiew, wraps up. The verdict will be announced April 30th.

2012-02-15 20:59:54 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

#Nymwars is really frustrating for me.

+Yonatan Zunger and +Liz Fong-Jones, two of the main people implementing the policy, are actually personal friends of mine. They're really nice and very professional people, and they sincerely mean well. They're strong supporters of accessibility, user-friendliness, nondiscrimination, etc.

But the policy they've been given to execute — and I really can't credit this as being anything other than a "my way or the highway" mandate from +Vic Gundotra — is constantly one step forward, two steps back.


Take the latest change: the now-explicit (formerly just hypocritical) rule is basically "no weirdos (unless you're famous)".

What's too weird? "We won't answer that."
What's famous enough? "We won't answer that."
Want to know what younee... more »

2012-02-12 02:57:32 (2 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

Lawful access bill on the order paper for next week

An anticipated bill, entitled “An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and others Acts” appears on the parliamentary order paper published on Friday, for introduction this coming week. More to follow ...

2012-02-12 00:37:52 (25 comments, 8 reshares, 26 +1s)

ATTENTION TO ALL OF MY FOLLOWERS

Hamza Kashgari is a young Saudi journalist under threat for speaking his mind on Twitter. His tweets, though they may be offensive to his fellow citizens, are protected speech - and on top of that, he redacted and apologized for them before fleeing the country. Now, he is detained in Malaysia where he faces threat of extradition back to Saudi Arabia, where clerics have called for him to be tried for apostasy and others have posted his home address, issuing death threats.

Please take action. The +Electronic Frontier Foundation has created an action alert, below, that you can use to send a message to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Please take a moment and do it - someone's life may depend on it.

Any hateful or intolerant comments will be deleted and you will be blocked