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technology and conservation

Archive for category Technology

Is your country asking Google to handover user’s private data?

Mar 24

Posted by brendanp in Technology | No Comments

Google Transparency Report

Google Transparency Report – Credit: Google.com

Some great analysis on the open data from Google’s transparency report. This is a great eye opener on just how aggressive some countries are in tracking people’s private conversations, including their own citizens. Of course many of these requests will be for legitimate reasons but it’s a good read to help you understand what’s going with your private information as this info is not published by the governments themselves, but rather done behind close doors. So well done Google!

The EFF writes about the analysis;

Earlier this year, Google released its semi-annual transparency report. With each release, we have gained new insight into the massive quantity of user-data requests the search giant receives from states around the world. As part of our mission to spotlight the secrecy surrounding state surveillance, EFF and SHARE Defense have released three different charts highlighting trends in increasing state demands for user data.

These charts below examine how total user data requests have increased and which countries and geographic regions are responsible for producing the greatest proportion of user-data requests. We commend Google for collecting and publishing these reports, which provide an invaluable portrait of the international thirst for private user information, and are glad that other companies are considering or moving forward with similar reports.

Here are the links to the relevant articles:

Other useful links:

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Aaron Swartz, “He was killed by the government”

Jan 16

Posted by brendanp in Technology | 2 Comments

I wanted to help bring attention to this.

For those that do not know, Aaron Swartz committed suicide on the 11th.

The EFF writes about Aaron;

Yesterday Aaron Swartz, a close friend and collaborator of ours, committed suicide. This is a tragic end to a brief and extraordinary life.

Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. His contributions were numerous, and some of them were indispensable. When we asked him in late 2010 for help in stopping COICA, the predecessor to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills, he founded an organization called Demand Progress, which mobilized over a million online activists and proved to be an invaluable ally in winning that campaign.

Other projects Aaron worked on included the RSS specifications, web.py, tor2web, the Open Library, and the Chrome port of HTTPS Everywhere. Aaron helped launch the Creative Commons. He was a former co-founder at Reddit, and a member of the team that made the site successful. His blog was often a delight.

It’s this involvement in stopping COICA, the predecessor to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills, that I believe motivated the governments actions. A bit of “payback” if you will…

Of course there many others involved, but watch the keynote given by Aaron below. It gives some great insight into his involvement and why when given the opportunity, they went so hard after Aaron.

Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the World Wide Web said at his funeral, “we felt the indictment was nonsense and that he would be acquitted. Read more

Gerry Smith writes;

But when Swartz was caught using MIT’s network to download academic journals and share them online, the university contacted law enforcement — which led to the involvement of the Secret Service — and helped federal authorities build their case against him.

Privately, several MIT officials expressed concerns that prosecutors were “overreaching” by charging Swartz with federal crimes that carried a sentence of up to 35 years in prison, according to a MIT employee familiar with the investigation.

But by then, it was too late. “By the time this thing snowballed out of MIT’s hands, it was gone,” said the employee, who asked not to be named because he still works at the university. “When the federal government chooses to prosecute, you don’t get to say no. Read more

When you watch the following keynote given by Aaron, you can understand why the government wanted their payback… The sheer embarrassment of the failure of SOPA was to much to let go “unpunished” in my opinion. You make your own mind up.

EDIT 27/02: Taren, Aaron’s partner writes about the news that the DOJ admits internally that the prosecution was politically motivated. I.e. to shut him up. Read more here: http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/44047376234/doj-admits-aarons-prosecution-was-political

Aaron did more for your free speech than most of us ever will. We should be thankful for the work he did on our behalf and the others that continue to do so, thank you.

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Round up of the year so far and future plans

Aug 17

Posted by brendanp in Conservation, General, Projects, Technology | Comments off

Writing a blog post seems a rare event for me these days. Apologies folks. I thought I’d get back in the swing of things by updating you with what I been up to this year so far and plans for the rest of the year.

My primary focus has been on leading the Arctic Online project which offers web design services. With some great projects completed I’m very pleased with what’s been achieved so far. Here a couple highlights:

A Witch in Time

I worked with Alice to deliver the vision for her website, to provide an online store where folks could purchase products for their home that would help them to get the feeling of bringing a bit of outdoors indoors.

The site is fully e-commerce enabled and I’m very proud of what we achieved.

[more info]

Trayl Body Work

Trayl is a highly trained manual therapist and lecturer at the famous Sunshine Massage School in Thailand.

Trayl offers a huge amount of knowledge in the form of videos on his site, accessible to all. It’s been a honour to provide Trayl with the tools to share his wonderful and in-depth knowledge so others can benefit.

[more info]

There been many more development projects, but those are the highlights for me.

 

With web-development work comes server administration, well if you a geek like me that is. I been looking after a few Debian based servers for some time now and have enjoyed the challenge of being a Systems Administrator. I don’t have the pressure of likes of Google’s SysAdmins for sure… which is probably why I enjoy it still :)

Some additional projects I’m involved in include a Bitcoin venture, publishing of a book (more news on that soon) and a few others at various early stages of progress.

 

On a personal level, I been focused on spending time with my family and my dogs and really moulding the way I want to live my life for the next 10+ years.

My Dad has not been well for some time now. As they say, you can’t get time back and I been fortunate to be able spend more time with him since returning to South Africa last year. My Dad is a great man and gave me a childhood a boy could only dream about. My Dad is a pineapple farmer, will be till he passes, and although he no longer has his farm, he was the largest producer of pineapples in the Southern Hemisphere in his day. More important than that, he would give the shirt off his back if it could help someone and I’m very proud of him.

Noonie and Bono

Noonie and Bono, click the image for more pictures

My dogs are perhaps one of my greatest loves. We been working hard on training and on some quality fun time too. We been hitting the beach, swimming and doing some long walks.

 

Looking ahead, I’m working on merging my passion for conservation and technology by finding work with conservation organisations that require help with Internet technology or IT in general. To be honest, I’d do pretty much anything as I want to get more involved, but that’s where my strengths are I feel and how I could benefit an organisation like that most.

I’ll be launching a website to help further this end soon and will post more about that when it’s ready. In the interim, if you know of a position or organisation that could use my help, get in touch please.

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