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Guardian journalist negligently disclosed Cablegate passwords
“A number of human rights groups believe the co-ordinated release of the cables contributed to triggering the Arab Spring”?! Oh don’t be so cocky Wikileaks. I doubt you played that role, although your contributions to journalism (for better or worse) and freedom of access to information are undeniable.
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WikiLeaks has commenced pre-litigation action against the Guardian and an individual in Germany who was distributing the Guardian passwords for personal gain.
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Egypt: Using Twitter to Help a Cairo Community · Global Voices
Brilliant!
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Salem called his initiative “tweetback” (@tweetbackevent), and it relied on the social capital of 20 of power-Twitter users who collectively have around a quarter of a million followers. They each raised money from donors in exchange for giving contributing companies PR among their followers. They also created a buzz about the initiative and helped explain to people how they can help.
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The twitter users who were attending also tweeted about each of the donors and how much they donated, whether it was a beverage company, a mobile operator, or even donors who refused to reveal their identities. They also created a short-number for people to call to donate EGP 3 ($0.50), and again Twitter was used to spread the info.
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Manipulating social networks – Opinion – Al Jazeera English
Be careful, the oppressors are learning. Scary.
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The Moroccan ‘Exception’ | The Nation
Probably the best recap of the struggle for democracy and freedom from servitude in Morocco I have read so far. Bravo Laila!
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The best summary I have seen of the demands of the February 20 Movement comes from one of the slogans of that Sunday: “Khubz, Hurriya, Karaama, Insaniyya,” which translates as “Bread, Liberty, Dignity, Humanity.”
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From my living room in Los Angeles, nearly 6,000 miles away, I watched young Moroccans chanting this slogan on a grainy YouTube video and was reminded of a poem by James Oppenheim, made famous during the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts: “Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;/Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.”
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The king and his advisers, I suspected, could no doubt figure out a way to deal with the bread; it was the roses that scared them.
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while most Western governments scrupulously refrained from praising their former allies, they made an exception for Morocco: it received a free pass, merely on the promise of reform.
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the wild hopes of that sunny Sunday in February seem to have been deferred. Back then, I remember, protesters had carried a banner that said, “We do not seek better conditions of servitude; we want freedom from servitude.” For the moment, better conditions of servitude are exactly what the king has offered Moroccans.
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Le Figaro – International : «Comment j’ai mis 8 millions de libyens sur écoute»
Comment une société française –Bull à travers sa filiale Amesys– a mis 8 millions de libyens sur écoute, empochant par la même 10 millions d’euros.
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Le Figaro a retrouvé l’un des militaires chargés de cette formation. «Nous avons mis en route le système d’écoute libyen fin juillet 2008, explique-t-il, sous couvert d’anonymat. Les cadres de Bull étaient très attachés à cette mission qui avait été facturée environs 10 millions d’euros.»
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Les militaires français et les cadres de Bull étaient notamment en relation directe avec Abdallah Senoussi, beau frère de Kadhafi et chef des services secrets libyens. L’homme est tristement célèbre pour avoir été condamné par contumace pour son implication dans l’attentat du vol 772 d’UTA dans lequel périrent en 170 personnes en 1989, abattues en vol par un missile. «C’est lui qui négociait les fonctionnalités du produit et qui nous donnait des directives», révèle notre interlocuteur.
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Une version du logiciel Eagle, conforme à la loi, est utilisée en France depuis 2009.
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How US firms profited from torture flights | World news | The Guardian
Welcome to Torture Airlines : You’re our “invitee” until proven guilty!
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Richmor’s president, Mahlon Richards, told the court that the aircraft carried “government personnel and their invitees” (pdf). “Invitees?” queried the judge, Paul Czajka. “Invitees,” confirmed Richards. They were being flown across the world because the US government believed them to be “bad guys”, he said. Richmor performed well, Richards added. “We were complimented all the time.” “By the invitees?” asked the judge. “Not the invitees, the government.”
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Syria’s Digital Counter-Revolutionaries – Max Fisher & Jared Keller – International – The Atlantic
A worrying account of the cyber-war waged by Assad supporters against anti-regime bloggers and internet users at large. The media also has been targeted. Bashar even referred to the so called “Syrian Electronic Army” in one of his speeches as “a real army in virtual reality” (see quote). He might have learned a good lesson from recent history: rather that shut the internet altogether, use it as a battleground. However, I think they have put their asses in real trouble by attacking AnonPlus. Never f*** with Anonymous! 🙂
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The army consists of the brothers of every Syrian citizen, and the army always stands for honour and dignity. Young people have an important role to play at this stage, because they have proven themselves to be an active power. There is the electronic army which has been a real army in virtual reality.
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research by Helmi Noman at the Monitor found that the domain name for the Army’s website (syrian-es.com) was registered on May 5, 2011 by the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), an organization that was headed by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 1995 before he assumed the Presidency
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Still, it’s not obvious as to whether the members of the cabal are employed by the Syrian government, contracted or co-opted by security forces, or simply a band of pro-Assad hackers engaging in some highly aggressive cyber-vigilantism.
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Syria’s government, by treating the Internet as another battleground in the fight for control rather than simply as a set of tools and websites to be disabled, may be the first in the Arab world to understand the potential utility of counter-revolutionary organizing online.
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some reporting from the country suggests that a significant minority of Syrians strongly support Assad; some of them, particularly young, tech-savvy men and women, would be in a position to help their government against online opposition activists. This gives Assad something that his counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya mostly lacked: a savvy, aggressive presence online.
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AFP: المجلس الوطني الانتقالي ينفي في باريس وجود اتفاق نفطي مع فرنسا
The NTC denies it struck an oil deal with PAris. A report surfaced earlier claiming that the Libyan National Transitional Council might have promised Sarkozy 35% of post-Gaddafi Libya’s crude oil exports as a reward for France’s pro-active support and early recognition of the council as the sole representative of the Libyan people.
Hisham Almiraat
A Moroccan blogger's rambling on culture and politics
Hisham Almiraat 