SF Transit System Blocks Cell Phone Service To Thwart Protests
Mobile technology may be a powerful tool for grassroots organizing, but the flip side of the coin is that authorities can block such technology when they wish to crack down on dissent — case in point, San Francisco’s public transit system. SF Weekly writes:
This might just be a first in the annals of Bay Area transit agencies’ political suppression (such as those annals are). BART has fessed up to jamming cell-phone signals yesterday at downtown stations in San Francisco in order to disrupt protests over the death of Charles Hill, who was shot by BART police on July 3.
Here is what BART had to say in a statement on its tactics that was released today:
Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police. A civil disturbance during commute times…
Rachel Maddow Breaks Down Mubarak’s Disinformation Campaign
Some of the best reporting I’ve heard from Rachel Maddow. Could Mubarak’s tactics work in the U.S.?
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Rushkoff: Abandon The Corporate Internet
The Internet. Source: Matt Britt (CC)
You can rely on Doug Rushkoff to be ahead of the curve in the world of Cyberia. In his post at Shareable he says we should give up trying to pretend that the Internet can be free of corporate and governmental interference and control, abandon it and start a new, truly free network. Is he being realistic?
The moment the “net neutrality” debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network – its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation – is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them – that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere.
Of course the Internet was never truly free, bottom-up, decentralized, or chaotic. Yes,…
Twitter Uproar Over Airport Bomb Joke
Do virtual social networks, such as Twitter, push the law of free speech too far? Or does the digital generation have a bad sense of humor? BBC News reports:
Tweeters have joined forces to support Paul Chambers, the man convicted and fined for a Twitter message threatening to blow up an airport.
The Twitter community is angry that the 27-year-old accountant has failed to overturn his conviction.
A day after his appeal failed, two “hashtags” to highlight his situation remain top topics in the UK.
Free speech advocate Index on Censorship said the UK judiciary was out of step with social networks.
“The verdict demonstrates that the UK’s legal system has little respect for free expression, and has no understanding of how people communicate in the 21st Century,” said the organisation’s news editor Padraig Reidy.
Continues at BBC News …
Why the Web Isn’t Dead – A Few More Points
Last week Wired’s incendiary cover story The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet stirred up quite a bit of debate. Wired ran a debate between its editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, FM Media founder John Battelle, and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly that was particularly illuminating. I made a few points here, and have a few more to make at Mediapunk:
First it was getting listed by Yahoo!, then it was getting a good ranking in Google, now it’s getting into the Apple App Store. In each case, the platform owner benefited more than the person trying to get listed. This is not new. That certain sites – like Facebook at YouTube – have become large platforms is certainly interesting. That Apple, Facebook and Google have a disproportionate say over what gets seen on the Internet is problematic, definitely. But there was never any golden age when the Net was truly open. The physical infrastructure…
