Security Firm: “Syria Has Largely Disappeared From The Internet”
War-torn Syria is reportedly experiencing massive Internet outages. Both Google’s transparency monitor and security firm Cloudflare are reporting near zero levels of traffic out of the area. This isn’t the first time the beleaguered nation has experienced Internet issues. Back in 2012, the Syrian government, in attempt to paralyze opposition rebels, cut the entire country off from the rest of the world. “Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet,” writes security firm, Umbrella, about the abrupt traffic stop today. Umbrella describes how such a cutoff is possible, “Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the Internet know how to get to a certain IP address.” Continuing, ” Shutting down Internet access to and from Syria is achieved by withdrawing the BGP routes from Syrian prefixes.” Last December, we interviewed Cloudflare about how exactly a government can cut off its citizens ...
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ALEC's Latest "Transparency" Move: Asserting Immunity From Freedom of Information Laws
Shortly after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) told the press "we really believe in transparency," new documents show the organization directing legislators to hide ALEC meeting agendas and model legislation from the public.
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EFF: Trust Twitter — Not Apple Or Verizon — To Protect Your Privacy
tdog17 writes "Verizon and MySpace scored a zero out of a possible six stars in a test of how far 18 technology service providers will go to protect user data from government data demands. Twitter and Internet service provider Sonic.net scored a perfect six in the third annual Electronic Frontier Foundation 'Who Has Your Back?' report. Apple, AT&T and Yahoo ranked near the bottom, each scoring just one star. 'While we are pleased by the strides these companies have made over the past couple years, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Amazon holds huge quantities of information as part of its cloud computing services and retail operations, yet does not promise to inform users when their data is sought by the government, produce annual transparency reports, or publish a law enforcement guide. Facebook has yet to publish a transparency report. Yahoo! has a public record of standing up for user privacy in courts, but it hasn't earned recognition in any of our other categories. Apple and ...
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Governments' Attempts To Censor Google Have Doubled Since 2011
Governments, even democracies, are not always fans of transparency. According to Google’s brand new transparency report, “government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown”, doubling since the second half of 2012 (1,054 requests vs. 2,285). Brazil took the gold medal of the censorship olympics, with 697 requests, while the United States took 2nd place, with 321 requests. Google cites an aggressive anti-negative campaigning law for half of Brazil’s spike in censorship requests. Unlike America, Brazil attempts to clamp down on any campaigns that offend the “dignity” of candidates during an election. In the most extreme example, a Brazilian judge ordered the arrest of the head of Google’s Brazil operations and the complete shutdown of all of Google’s products unless it complied with an order to remove a YouTube video attacking a mayoral candidate. In typical corporate diplomacy speak, Google writes that it is ” appealing many of these cases, on the basis that ...
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Iterations: The Tension Between Transparency And Privacy In The Startup Ecosystem
Everyone wants more transparency. It is part of a deep, fundamental trend. In government. In the workplace. Inside large systems like health care. And, more recently, around early-stage startup metrics and investment data. The crowd wants more transparency. They want to know more about metrics, revenues, and stats, and they want to know more about how investment dollars are allocated. Yet, the result of this shift raises concerns about privacy. In this world of imperfect, asymmetric information, combined with the desire among participants to build up, invest in, and report on the industry itself, frustrations can mount easily because, somewhere in the recess of our minds, the game feels slightly rigged in the other person’s favor, and the light of sunshine offers a promise of transparency to perhaps root out those bad apples and, just perhaps, inject an ounce of fairness, comfort, and peace of mind in an otherwise shady world.
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