10 Aug 11 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
India’s Department of Telecommunications has been asked to monitor Twitter and Facebook, because of fears that the sites are being used to plan terrorist attacks. In April, the Indian Information Technology (IT) Act of 2008 was amended, giving officials the ability to monitor web activity. It also provides officials with access to private information, including passwords, without a court order. However, Facebook and Twitter do not release the information of their users without a court order. This coincides with India’s threat to outlaw the usage of Blackberry devices, because of Research in Motion’s refusal to comply with demands to lower the level of encryption of messages.
10 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost
In his most outspoken tweets since his release, and despite bail conditions placing him under tight restrictions for at least a year, Ai Weiwei today lashed out at the “torment” of friends entangled in his situation and pressed the cases of other detained activists. “If you don’t speak for Wang Lihong, and don’t speak for Ran Yunfei, you are not just a person who will not stand out for fairness and justice; you do not have self-respect,” he wrote. A prolific Twitter user prior to his arrest, Ai was freed in June after being detained for over two months for supposed tax evasion. Last weekend he began tweeting again, though far more sporadically.
08 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
It was Twitter. Definitely Twitter.
Except it was BlackBerry Messenger.
Except no, it wasn’t. It was, of course, Grand Theft Auto.
According to today’s Evening Standard, one police constable has blamed the by-now-venerable game for the spread of deplorable violence and looting across London neighbourhoods over the weekend.
As dusk fell people were told to get off the streets for their own safety. “Go home, get a takeaway and watch anything that happens on TV,” one constable advised. “These are bad people who did this. Kids out of control. When I was young it was all Pacman and board games. Now they’re playing Grand Theft Auto and want to live it for themselves.”
Which raises two obvious points. 1) the policeman in question seems to think there were no riots in the 70s and 80s, and 2) He’s never heard that old joke about “If computer games really influenced people, children who grew up playing Pac-Man would have have spent the late 80s running around dark rooms in day-glo colours ingesting funny pills to a repetitive electronic soundtrack”.
Does anyone even play GTA these days?
The blaming games thing has been around for years now (read this excellent 2007 piece by Tim Smith on the topic). It succeeded the “blame the video nasty” trend which reached its pinnacle with the Jamie Bulger murder and the media’s insistence that Child’s Play II had somehow played a part.
The interesting thing about this is that we must apparently always find a new technology at the heart of problems: VHS, games consoles, smartphones… all interactive rather than passive technologies.
The problem with the kids these days, it would seem, is they insist on making their own entertainment.
25 May 11 | Uncategorized
Remember how the great press barons turned nations against each other and then pocketed tidy profits, not only from newspaper sales but also from arms deals on the side? Compare the behaviour of old and new media giants like News International and Twitter over the last few days. They have propagated the idea that free speech and privacy are at war with each other. The media’s coverage of privacy injunctions has developed this shaky idea into the status of a truth universally acknowledged. (more…)
