Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties

Coleman, Gabriela. "Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties." MIT Technology Review, February 4, 2013. 

From the article: "A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most vibrant civil liberties movements we’ve ever seen. It is a culture committed to freeing information, insisting on privacy, and fighting censorship, which in turn propels wide-ranging political activity. In the last year alone, hackers have been behind some of the most powerful political currents out there." Read more

China’s Information Challenge

Bremmer, Ian. "China’s Information Challenge." The New York Times, January 22, 2013. 

From the article: "To maintain monopoly control of political power in a country with a hard-charging economy, fast-growing middle class and the rising expectations they create, party officials will do all they can to monitor and manage the flow of information within the country and across its borders. This is especially important for a new generation of leaders now assuming their posts, officials who know that public expectations for good governance have never been higher. But with more than half a billion Chinese citizens now online, more than 300 million active on Weibo (China’s Twitter) and an increasingly ineffective “great firewall,” assertions of control over words and ideas reflect little more than wishful thinking." Read more

UN Telecom Treaty Approved Amid U.S. Web-Censorship Concerns

Thompson, Amy. "UN Telecom Treaty Approved Amid U.S. Web-Censorship Concerns." Bloomberg, December 14, 2012.

From the article: "An agreement to update 24-year-old United Nations telecommunications rules was approved against the opposition of countries including the U.S. and the U.K., whose officials walked out on the talks on concerns about Internet regulation and censorship.

The new pact includes measures that would give countries a right to access international telecommunications services and the ability to block spam, which delegations declining to sign the amended text argued would pave the way for government censorship and control over the Web." Read more 

UN Internet Conference: The SOPA That Wasn’t

Milian, Mark. "UN Internet Conference: The SOPA That Wasn’t." Bloomberg Tech Blog, December 14, 2012. 

From the article: "For the past couple of weeks, Google and other Internet companies have protested a United Nations conference over concerns that a new treaty will lead to censorship of the Web. Despite their campaigns, they weren’t able to drum up the kind of widespread indignation that elevated the Stop Online Piracy Act to national prominence earlier this year, according to studies of online discussions commissioned by Bloomberg.com." Read more

Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology Use in Human Rights Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis

Maitland, Carleen, Thomas, Herschel F. and Louis-Marie Ngamassi Tchouakeu. "Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology Use in Human Rights Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis." Journal of Information Technology 4 (2012): 285-300.

From the report: "Using an organizational informatics approach, this study explores the implications of human rights organizations’ use of censorship circumvention technologies. Through qualitative analyses of data collected through in-depth interviews, the research examines the factors influencing the use of circumvention technologies and the organizational effects of their use. The outcomes include a revised model of censorship circumvention technology use as well as a new model situating human rights organizations and their audiences in bidirectional information flows. The research provides recommendations for practice as well as insight for organizational informatics and information systems security research in the areas of protective technologies, awareness, detection, and physical security." Read more