People turn ever more to the web in times of crisis

HONG KONG - THE earthquake off the coast of Japan and the resulting tsunami has proven, yet again, how the Internet offers an information lifeline to the world in a time of crisis.

As the waves smashed into the Japanese coastline following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake 130km east in the Pacific ocean on Friday, a tsunami of images was also soon hitting the web.

Nearly five million people tuned in to video sharing site YouTube on Saturday to watch one raw, unedited video of the wave chewing away at Japan's coastline. Several other videos had notched up between three and four million hits.

Hundreds of people commented on the videos across the web and shared information, from social network giant Facebook to micro-blogging site Twitter - as well as local, Japanese language websites.

As the floodwaters subsided, worried friends and relatives leapt onto their computers to find information about people who had not been heard from since the mighty wave crashed ashore.

Google's person finder service had notched up more than 81,000 records of people leaving messages seeking information on friends and family by 0300 GMT (11am S'pore time) on Sunday. The site was updating, in English and Japanese, by the hundreds every few minutes. -- AFP

Chinese farmers go online to sell produce

Farmer Wang Yulan (right) goes online with the help of her neice Liu Hairong (left) to sell the produce she and her husband grow in their home in rural Beijing. -- PHOTO: AFP

BEIJING - FOR years, Wang Yulan and her husband drove their three-wheeled vehicle to an outdoor market near Beijing to sell broccoli, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes grown on their small plot of land.

Now, thanks to the web, they don't even have to leave their living room.

Two years ago the couple bought a computer and joined a growing number of Chinese farmers selling their produce online, giving them access to customers around the country and boosting their meagre income.

'A broad market is opened once you get on the computer,' Ms Wang, 55, told AFP as she logged on to agricultural trading website aptc.cn with the help of her niece.

'The Internet is convenient. The customers first place an order, we prepare the items, and they then send a van to pick them up.' Since Wang and her husband Liu Shujin, 66, started trading their vegetables online, the couple's income has more than doubled to between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan (S$3,814-5,721) a year and life has become easier. -- AFP

Microblogs in Communist Party's fight to win public approval

BEIJING - CHINA'S wary government is a world champion in internet censorship, but Communist Party leaders now want to master the trickier feat of actively shaping online opinion.

The results so far don't match the zap and crackle of China's young, who have embraced microblogs as their latest tool for spreading information and opinions that can make Party officials see red. But there's no mistaking the Party's determination to reach China's 450 million Internet users.

President Hu Jintao recently called the 'virtual world' his next battleground, and the nation's Party-run parliament, now in session, has brought talk about how to win over or control the country's microbloggers.

Mr Hu recently called for fresh ways to 'guide online public opinion', amid online calls for Chinese people to emulate the'Jasmine Revolution' sweeping the Middle East.

'This is all part of the longer trend in more interactive governance,' said David Bandurski, a researcher at the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

'To what degree this is genuine and impacts citizens positively, that's an open debate.' For now, Chinese officials' efforts to connect online appear to be more patronising and fusty than feisty. -- REUTERS

Philippine military probes Facebook abuse video

MANILA - THE Philippine military said on Saturday they are investigating a purported torture video posted on Facebook that appears to show uniformed soldiers abusing defenceless prisoners.

Investigators are checking the identities of the uniformed men shown repeatedly hitting and kicking a group of at least three people in civilian clothes, said military spokesman Brigadier General Jose Mabanta.

'We are the first to be concerned about this. We have said we will not do these (abuses), then we see it right in our faces,' Gen Mabanta told AFP.

Officials also want to know when and where it happened, if indeed it actually happened, Gen Mabanta said.

The poor-quality footage shows the men lying on the ground of a coconut plantation. The captives' hands are tied behind their backs and hoods placed over their heads while men in military-style uniforms shout at and swear at them.

Colonel Domingo Tutaan, head of the military's human rights office, said the military would also try to find out what happened to the supposed victims. -- AFP

Last Internet provider in Egypt goes dark

A demonstrator shouts slogans as others wave Egyptian flags during a protest in support of the Egyptian people, in central Rome, Italy. -- PHOTO: AP

SEATTLE - THE last of Egypt's main Internet service providers, the Noor Group, has gone dark.

The Noor Group had remained online even after Egypt's four main Internet providers - Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr - abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country on Friday morning.

At about 11pm local time on Monday, the Noor Group became unreachable, said James Cowie, chief technology officer of Renesys, a security firm based in Manchester, New Hampshire. Renesys monitors massive directories of 'routes,' or set paths that define how Web traffic moves from one place to another. The Noor Group's routes have disappeared, he said.

Mr Cowie said engineers at the Noor Group and other service providers could quickly shut down the Internet by logging on to certain computers and changing a configuration file. The original Internet blackout on Friday took just 20 minutes to fully go into effect, he said.

Cell phone service was restored in Egypt starting on Saturday but text messaging services have been disrupted as protests continue.

Google Inc, meanwhile, said that over the weekend it had developed a new service that will allow people in Egypt to post Twitter messages without an Internet connection. The so-called speak-to-tweet service was developed by engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow, a company Google acquired last week. -- AP

Myanmar's Suu Kyi gets web access

Suu Kyi has expressed an interest in using the micro-blogging site Twitter or the social network Facebook to reach young people. -- PHOTO: AFP

YANGON - MYANMAR democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has finally had Internet access installed at home after her years of isolation were brought to an end two months ago, an aide said on Friday.

Her security chief Win Htein told AFP that the opposition leader was 'glad' to be able to go online at her lakeside mansion in Yangon and would use the technology to contact her network of supporters.

'But she cannot use the Internet now as she is not feeling well and is coughing,' he said. It is believed that the Nobel laureate has never before surfed the web.

Suu Kyi, who was locked up for seven straight years with no telephone or Internet until November, has expressed an interest in using the micro-blogging site Twitter or the social network Facebook to reach young people.

She applied to a private company for Internet access soon after she was released, but the request was transferred to Yatanarpon Teleport, a firm run by the country's military authorities.

Citizens of Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962, must obtain the authorities' permission to be able to go online at home and there is a thriving black market for facilities under assumed identities. -- AFP

China pledges tougher fight on online piracy

BEIJING - CHINA will step up its fight to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) by targeting online piracy, state media said on Monday, amid calls for Beijing to do more on widespread copyright infringement.

'It is vital to protect online IPR,' Wang Ziqiang, spokesman for the National Copyright Administration, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.

'If not, the traditional press, the publication industry, movies and music will face severe threats from online 'theft' if everyone goes online to get free material.' Last week, Chinese authorities issued updated rules to fight piracy and protect online IPR, the report said.

The regulations state that if someone puts another person's work online for profit without prior approval from the copyright holder, and if the transaction value is more than 50,000 yuan (S$9,800), he or she will be penalised.

Penalties will also apply if the person posts more than 500 pieces of work, the number of online hits reaches 50,000, or if the number of registered users of a members-only site posting illegal content tops 1,000, it said. The report did not say how violators would be punished.

Officials at the National Copyright Administration were not available for comment when contacted by AFP. Intellectual property rights are widely flouted in China, home to the biggest counterfeit and piracy market in the world. -- AFP

WikiLeaks chief blasts Chinese Internet censorship

LONDON, Thursday 13 January 2011 (AFP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has blasted China as the "technological enemy" of his whistleblower website because of its aggressive Internet censorship, in comments published Thursday.

Assange has enraged the United States with his site's release of leaked diplomatic cables, and the Australian's defence team believe efforts are under way to send him to the US where they claim he could face the death penalty.

But China, with its vast Internet censorship system known as the "Great Firewall", was the site's most feared foe in cyberspace, the 39-year-old told Britain's New Statesman magazine.

"China is the worst offender" when it comes to censorship, said Assange, who is currently in Britain fighting attempts to extradite him to Sweden over claims of sexual assault.

"China has aggressive and sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China.

"We've been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through, and there are now all sorts of ways Chinese readers can get on to our site."

China's system of censorship is designed to filter out any information deemed sensitive or politically harmful by the country's Communist government.

Social networking site Facebook, video-sharing giant YouTube and microblogging site Twitter are among those blocked by Chinese censors.

In the interview Thursday, conducted by veteran journalist John Pilger who is a prominent supporter of the Australian hacker, Assange also claimed he had files on media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

"If something happens to me or to WikiLeaks, 'insurance' files will be released," Assange was cited as saying.

"There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp," without going into more detail on what they contained.

Assange insists that attempts to extradite him to Sweden are politically motivated and linked to WikiLeaks' activities.

He has been living at the country estate of a friend in eastern England since being released on bail on December 16, nine days after his arrest by British police on a Swedish warrant.

His defence team have argued that if he is sent to Sweden he could then be extradited to the US and there was a "real risk" he could face the death penalty.

The whistleblowing website has also released classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US soldier Bradley Manning is in military custody in the United States awaiting trial for having allegedly obtained and leaked the cables.

A US court has reportedly subpoenaed the Twitter accounts of four WikiLeaks supporters as part of a criminal investigation into the leaks.

Indonesia welcomes BlackBerry porn filter

JAKARTA - INDONESIA welcomed on Tuesday Canadian firm Research in Motion's (RIM) promise to filter its BlackBerry web services for pornography, after threatening to revoke the smartphone maker's licence.

RIM said on Monday it would start filtering web services in Indonesia after the mainly Muslim country threatened to restrict or block the company's domestic services in one of Asia's fastest growing telecommunications markets.

RIM is the world's fourth biggest smartphone platform, with global sales of 11.9 million units, according to research firm Gartner. It does not filter its web content in any of its other markets around the world.

'We've heard about RIM saying it will filter the Internet.... That's good news to us and we highly appreciate that,' communications ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto said.

RIM said in a statement that it had been in talks with its partners and the government and 'continues to make it a top priority to implement satisfactory technical solutions as soon as possible'.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring gave the company two weeks to comply or risk being kicked out of the country. -- AFP

China shuts down 60,000 pxrnxgraphic websites

BEIJING - CHINA said on Thursday that authorities had shut down more than 60,000 pxrnxgraphic websites as part of a year-long crackdown on lewd online content, as Beijing moves to tighten control over the Internet.

'By the end of November, we had inspected 1.8 million websites, and closed down more than 60,000 unsound websites that spread pxrn,' Wang Chen, minister for the press office of the State Council, China's cabinet, told reporters.

He added that authorities had jailed 58 people for at least five years in the crackdown on lewd online and mobile phone content that was launched in December last year.

China, which has the world's largest online population with 450 million users, operates a vast web censorship system sometimes known as the 'Great Firewall of China'.

The government says it censors the Internet to curb 'unhealthy' content including pxrn and violence, but critics counter that it is mainly trying to prevent the posting of information that challenges the ruling Communist Party.

Mr Wang said the crackdown would continue as violence and pxrnxgraphy would not disappear from the Internet. 'This special operation to rectify online pornography and vulgar content has not come to an end - this is a protracted war,' he said. -- AFP

Google alerting searchers to hacked websites

SAN FRANCISCO - GOOGLE on Friday announced search engine upgrades that included alerting people to hacked websites that make it into query results.

'We've added new notifications to the results page to warn you when sites may have been compromised, spammed or defaced,' Google director of product management Mike Cassidy said in a blog post.

'In addition to helping users, these notices will also help webmasters more quickly discover when someone is abusing their sites.'

Google added automated tools designed to detect signs of hacking and then pin warnings reading 'This site may be compromised' beneath potentially tainted entries in search results, according to Mr Cassidy.

'Rest assured, once the problem has been fixed, the warning label will be automatically removed from our search results,' said Google associate product manager Gideon Wald.

The Mountain View, California-based Internet giant also added new languages and domains to its 'Instant' search feature that delivers suggested results with each key stroke of a query. -- AFP

WikiLeaks reveals BP gas leak

LONDON - AN OIL platform in Azerbaijan operated by BP suffered a well blowout and a huge gas leak around a year and a half before the Gulf of Mexico spill, leaked US diplomatic cables revealed on Thursday.

The British energy giant was lucky it managed to evacuate its 212 workers safely after the incident, which led to two fields being shut and output being dramatically cut, according to the cables released by website WikiLeaks.

The news came as the United States filed a lawsuit against BP and eight other companies for billions of dollars in damages over the devastating Gulf oil spill, the worst in US history.

In the Azerbaijan incident, BP suffered the blowout in September 2008, as well as the gas leak which the firm acknowledged at the time, according to the cables, revealed in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

'Due to the blowout of a gas-injection well there was 'a lot of mud' on the platform, which BP would analyse to help find the cause of the blow out and the gas leak,' said one of the US dispatches. Another cable revealed that the company had a narrow escape after the gas did not catch fire.

'Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition,' said the cable. 'BP's then head of Azebaijan Bill Schrader said although the story hadn't caught the press's attention, it had the full focus of the government of Azerbaijan, which was losing 'US$40-US$50 million (S$52.6-S$65.8 million) each day'.' -- AFP

US trying to prosecute me: Assange

STOCKHOLM - WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange, who angered Washington by releasing secret cables, said in a documentary on Sunday he faced prosecution by the United States and was disappointed with how Swedish justice had been abused.

Assange has been remanded in custody in Britain after a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden, which wants to question Assange about allegations made by two women of sexual crimes. He has denied the allegations.

'I came to Sweden as a refugee publisher involved with an extraordinary publishing fight with the Pentagon, where people were being detained and there is an attempt to prosecute me for espionage,' Assange said in an interview in the documentary, aired on Swedish public television.

'So I am unhappy and disappointed with how the Swedish justice system has been abused,' the 39-year-old Australian added in the documentary, which was made before his arrest. Assange faces a fresh British hearing on December 14. His Swedish lawyer has said he will fight extradition to Sweden.

One of his British lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, told ABC News in London on Friday that a US indictment of Assange was imminent, but the report offered no further details or comment by Robinson why she believed charges were likely to be filed.

The US Justice Department has been looking into a range of criminal charges, including violations of the 1917 Espionage Act, that could be filed in the WikiLeaks case involving the release of hundreds of confidential and classified US diplomatic cables. -- REUTERS

Attack takes out Visa.com

Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gather outside a court in London. Members of 'Anonymous' vowed to extend their cyber campaign to anyone with an 'anti-WikiLeaks agenda'. -- PHOTO: AP

WASHINGTON - The website of credit card giant Visa was unavailable on Wednesday after a cyber attack by members of the hackers group 'Anonymous' angered by its blocking of payments to WikiLeaks.

Visa.com went down instantaneously at 4pm (2100 GMT, 5am Singapore time) as members of Anonymous launched a coordinated cyber attack announced on their Twitter feed #Anon-Operation.

'Operation Payback. TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! WEAPONS,' the message said.

Members of 'Anonymous', in an online chat with AFP on Wednesday, vowed to extend their cyber campaign to anyone with an 'anti-WikiLeaks agenda'.

The group has already taken credit for temporarily taking down the websites of Mastercard, PayPal, the Swiss Post Office bank and others with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

In a typical DDoS attack, a large number of computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely. -- AFP

Why Japan Doesn't Innovate in ICTs

I moderated an excellent panel last week at Japan Society on "Obama's Internet Initiative & Social Reform in the U.S. & Japan" (listen to the audio here) with Josh Fouts (Dancing Ink Productions), Kazuya Okada (NTT Data Agilenet), Kevin Werbach (Wharton business school), and Toshihiro Yoshihara (CSIS). If I had to sum up the conclusions of the panelists, it would be that "culture matters" in the spread, use, and impact of information and communications technologies in various societies.

Werbach, who has advised the Obama Administration on IT policy, emphasized the "C" in ICT--communication. Echoing senior officials in the administration such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, Werbach said that ICTs must allow people to communicate, connect, and collaborate toward achieving national ends. ICTs should allow people to connect to people, government to connect to its constituents, and the United States to connect to the rest of the world. I recalled the mantra of the administration: convene, connect, and catalyze. This sense of the United States as a credible and trustworthy convener has been a common theme I have seen in the Obama team's thinking.

Fouts similarly argued that constructive use of ICTs must be a sincere dialogue or an exchange. He reminded the audience that in reaching out to new audiences and cultures, cultural norms don't change on social networking websites. He also eased some potential worry about the Internet and social trends: The use of technology cannot replace human contact; online outreach and human contact is not a binary choice, it is a matter of integrating the two. Fouts contributed a future idea for the group--U.S.-Japan cultural exchanges through virtual worlds.

The two Japanese panelists seemed concerned about Japan's use of ICTs. As Okada put it, the reason Japan lacks innovation in ICTs is that there is a gap between its IT infrastructure and its IT literacy or attitudes. Japan is stuck in old traditions, not taking advantage of ITC's potential. For example, few people telecommute to work and few meetings are conducted virtually. In Japan, Okada said, people have a "farming attitude" in contrast to America's "hunting" mentality. The result is that Japanese people avoid disruptive change, work hard rather than work smart, and make only incremental improvements (kaizen). Okada's remarks reminded me of my graduate school thesis on U.S.-Japan negotiations; one theory that described Japanese negotiating style related to its rice farming culture. Perhaps more disturbing for Japanese innovation, Okada noted that in Japan, there is little incentive to take risks but huge disincentives to not fail. In other words, the punishments for failure outweigh the potential gains from success. Many people point to Japan's high-tech robots as areas of innovation. But Okada said Japan is automating, not innovating.

Yoshihara was slightly more optimistic but also criticized Japan's narrow use of ICT in policymaking. He said that while the U.S. approach toward establishing a broadband policy was open and inclusive, public comments through online surveys in Japan were limited. Reflecting a concern I have heard elsewhere, Yoshihara was also concerned about recent Japanese attitudes toward the Internet: In the United States, people feel the Internet is generally a healthy exchange of ideas he said while in Japan, a growing number of people feel that the Internet is a "dangerous" place, citing the vicious attacks on people in Internet forums such as 2channel. It was noted, however, that Japanese cultural "bads" present a low-hanging fruit for positive change.

To me this panel demonstrated that the Japan Society in New York City has a vital role to play in helping push for positive change in Japan--from the outside. I hope Japanese communities in New York City, a hub of innovation, will continue to exchange ideas at this historic institution and foster a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship through creativity and innovation.