THE DATA DELUGE
Eighteen months ago, Li & Fung, a firm that manages supply chains for retailers, saw 100 gigabytes of information flow through its network each day, the London Economist says (25/2/10). Now the amount has increased tenfold. During 2009, American drone aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan sent back around 24 years’ worth of video footage. New models being deployed this year will produce ten times as many data streams as their predecessors, and those in 2011 will produce 30 times as many. Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life. It has great potential for good—as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices about when to restrict the flow of data, and when to encourage it.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI: A SHAM APPEAL
We heard late last Thursday evening that the Burma's high court would sit the following morning to deliver its decision on Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal, writes Andrew Heyn in the London Guardian (2/3/10). Given the global interest in Burma and in Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, you could have expected the atmosphere in Rangoon to be highly charged on Friday morning. If her appeal had been upheld, the implications would have been truly significant. As for Nelson Mandela's release, everyone here would have remembered where they were the day Aung San Suu Kyi was freed. The reality, however, was different. It was business as usual on the streets. There was no extra buzz around the tea shops; no excited speculation among the local staff in the embassy. Everyone I spoke to before the hearing knew exactly what the result would be. So there was no tension, just resignation.
ARTICLE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/02/suu-kyi-loses-appeal
IT IS TIME FOR ISRAEL'S FRIENDS TO CONDEMN ITS ACTS OF TERRORISM
By and large a one-dimensional approach has characterised our approach to understanding the phenomenon of terrorism. However, the recent gruesome killing of a Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai should make us cast our net wider to focus also on state terrorism, writes Amin Saikal is professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University, in the Sydney Morning Herald (1/3/10).The Dubai police have claimed with almost undisputed evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind the killing. Israel has as usual maintained a policy of ambiguity by neither confirming nor denying Mossad's actions, although some of its political leaders, specifically the Opposition Leader, Tzipi Livni, have applauded the killing on the grounds that Mabhouh was a terrorist and deserved to be eliminated. If it is proved beyond doubt that Mossad agents, using forged passports in the names of British, French, Irish, German and Australian citizens, perpetrated the act, the killing clearly underlines a very disturbing aspect of Israeli behaviour.
TERRORISM: UGLY WORD, TRIVIAL THREAT
The Rudd government has released its long awaited Counter-Terrorism White Paper. The White Paper forms part of the government’s national security reform agenda and sets out its counter-terrorism strategy and efforts, writes Chris Michaelsen on the Civil Liberties Australia (CLA) website (26/2/10), Co-Director of the International Law & Policy Group at the Faculty of Law, UNSW.(This article appeared first in the Canberra Times, 26/2/10). The White paper “replaces the Howard government’s White Paper which drew heavily on the rhetoric of the Bush administration ... Nonetheless, its underlying message is much the same: the terrorist threat has become a “persistent and permanent feature of Australia’s security environment” and an attack “could occur at any time”. To underscore this assessment, the White Paper claims that “numerous” terrorist attacks have been thwarted. And it argues that the significance of the threat is also highlighted by the fact that 20 people have so far been convicted of terrorism offences under the Criminal Code. What the White Paper fails to acknowledge is that none of those 20 people were charged for actually engaging in a terrorist act. Instead, all defendants were convicted of so-called ancillary offences which were enacted as part of extremely broad anti-terrorism laws introduced in the wake of the 9/11 and Bali attacks. More importantly, however, the White Paper fails to tell the Australian public that the chances of getting killed in a terrorist attack in Australia are close to zero. Indeed, in comparison to other risks, terrorism is a triviality.”
ARTICLE: http://www.cla.asn.au/0805/index.php/articles/2010/terrorism-ugly-word-trivial-threat
HOW IRAN'S POLITICAL BATTLE IS FOUGHT IN CYBERSPACE
They called it the ‘Twitter revolution’. Iran's post-election protests showed the world the power of new media to organise and publicise opposition in a controlled society, Jon Leyne writes for the BBC (2/3/10). On the anniversary of the Islamic revolution in 1979, once again Twitter, Facebook and other internet tools could be crucial in helping the opposition organise another major protest. Since Iran's disputed election in June of last year, the cyber war between government and opposition has taken on a whole new dimension. "Absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented" - that was the role of the internet in Iran's election dispute according to Hamid Dabashi, who presents an opposition webcast to Iran from New York every week. His webcast is broadcast on YouTube, and his staff says it then goes "viral" - spread across Iran by other websites, CDs and Bluetooth links between mobile phones. Mr Dabashi described the role of the internet in helping to organise the huge post-election demonstrations. "Nobody called for it except on the internet," he said. "Cyberspace was buzzing with information that there was to be a demonstration from this square to that square. As a result if there is a leadership ... it is really the networking that the internet has made possible." Jon Leyne is the BBC's Tehran correspondent but is reporting from London after he was forced to leave by the Iranian government for reporting on protests in June 2009.
TWEETS OF FREEDOM ARE RINGING ACROSS CHINA
Google has been widely celebrated for its loud refusal to continue censoring its search results in China, Emily Parker writes in the Japan Times (3/3/10). It is still unclear whether Google will continue to operate in China, but in any event we are not about to see much change in China's Internet policy … Even if Google does ultimately leave China, the game is not over. Western companies can promote Internet freedom from the outside, by providing useful technology as well as the keys to access it. Call this ‘Twitter diplomacy’. Twitter is largely blocked by China's "great firewall" (GFW), which prevents Chinese people from accessing certain sites. Yet Twitter has an almost religious following among tech-savvy Chinese, whose determination to use the service outstrips authorities' efforts to block access to it. These ‘netizens’ surmount the firewall by way of proxy servers or virtual private networks (VPNs) that allow them to browse the web as if they were outside of China. Earlier this month, Chinese twitterati helped get the GFW onto the list of Twitter's top 10 "trending topics" (or most tweeted terms) — an impressive feat given that Twitter is supposed to be inaccessible in China. Emily Parker, a senior fellow at the Asia Society's Centre on US- China Relations, is writing a book about democracy and the Internet.
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