“The program, called Viral Peace, seeks to occupy the virtual space that extremists fill, one thread or Twitter exchange at a time. Shahed Amanullah, a senior technology adviser to the State Department and Viral Peace’s creator, tells Danger Room he wants to use “logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments, not just to confront [extremists], but to undermine and demoralize them.” Think of it as strategic trolling, in pursuit of geopolitical pwnage.”
We are at the start of that curious moment in history when organs become hackable.
"Talk of Iran retaliating for Stuxnet in cyberspace misses the point: Iran, a sponsor and frequent source of terrorism, has abundant and more efficient means of killing people it doesn’t like besides code."
— The fundamental point to understanding cyber is that it exists not as a separate world but as part of this one, where actors have a plethora of means available and arenas in which to strike to achieve objectives. Cyber is just one of them.
"When it comes down to who should have organizational responsibility for law enforcement or military aspects of cyber conflict, the myth of cyberspace as a corporeal thing that we enter into via digital, disembodied avatars has immense consequences."
— Olesker & Elkus on why cyberspace as a concept has failed policymakers.
"Its specific projects were often a matter of “cut-out wood, chicken wire, tin cans stretched around,” Partensky says — nodes on a network that were easy to fabricate with readily available material, often salvaged from a scrapheap or the trash. And after Afghans at the Fab Lab learned they had a place to manufacture point-to-point dishes, the devices began to dot roofs across Jalalabad. Cheap Linksys routers purchased at bazaars in nearby Pakistan began proliferating. When Huffman would take trips home to San Francisco, he’d bring back routers and netbooks to donate.
For the first time, free internet disseminated throughout Jalalabad. When glitches occurred, Partensky recalls, “the people [who] grew to be reliant on it — the kids, students and so on — would climb on their roofs and fix it.” Fast Company called an early version of the network “amazing."
For the first time, free internet disseminated throughout Jalalabad. When glitches occurred, Partensky recalls, “the people [who] grew to be reliant on it — the kids, students and so on — would climb on their roofs and fix it.” Fast Company called an early version of the network “amazing."
— Spencer Ackerman takes a look at Jalalabad’s homespun internet, and more specifically the gap between it’s utopian promise and bleak funding reality.
"But there’s an important truth about politics and law: even if you don’t take an interest in them, it doesn’t follow that they won’t take an interest in you.
So we can design clever, decentralised systems such as BitTorrent all day long, systems that appear to have no convenient entity to sue or arrest or legislate against. But if our inventions rattle enough cages and threaten enough bottom lines, the law will come hunting for them. The law will seek out arbitrary victims – think of how Sopa set out to prohibit hardening DNS against fraud and phishing because it would be convenient to use fake DNS entries to stop people from reaching The Pirate Bay. When it does, technology can’t save them. The only defence against a legal attack is the law. If you don’t have an organised body for someone else to sue, it means that there will be no organised body to mount a defence in court, either."
So we can design clever, decentralised systems such as BitTorrent all day long, systems that appear to have no convenient entity to sue or arrest or legislate against. But if our inventions rattle enough cages and threaten enough bottom lines, the law will come hunting for them. The law will seek out arbitrary victims – think of how Sopa set out to prohibit hardening DNS against fraud and phishing because it would be convenient to use fake DNS entries to stop people from reaching The Pirate Bay. When it does, technology can’t save them. The only defence against a legal attack is the law. If you don’t have an organised body for someone else to sue, it means that there will be no organised body to mount a defence in court, either."
— Cory Doctorow on why it’s essential for those who care about technology to engage with the law, rather than just assuming that politics are either an obstacle to work around or a cesspit to avoid.
"While not exactly states, the player-created organizations are large and exert some serious control. They’re also grouped as “corporations” for the smaller ones, and “alliances” for the linkages between them. There’s real money at stake in the game: a player once ran an in-game bank and then left with everything, netting him about $170,000 in real money. In this world, then, it’s not surprising that less-than-honest means of striking at enemies have seen a renaissance."
— At my long-form blog, I examine what we can learn about covert action from how it’s modeled in games.
(Source: kelseydatherton.wordpress.com)
