MSNBC U.S., Iraq brace for possible info war

"Imagine Iraqi commanders getting misleading text messages on their cell phones. They appear to contain orders from Saddam Hussein but are actually sent by the U.S. military in disguise, directing Iraqi troops to a trap. Or how about a radar that confuses the Iraqi air defense system by showing U.S. bombers in the wrong locations, or heading in the wrong direction?

ALTHOUGH "INFORMATION OPERATIONS" have been tools of warfare for centuries, the Internet and other technologies are boosting their capabilities -- and the stakes."

Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly Al Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of "Cyberplanning"

"We can say with some certainty, al Qaeda loves the Internet. When the latter first appeared, it was hailed as an integrator of cultures and a medium for businesses, consumers, and governments to communicate with one another. It appeared to offer unparalleled opportunities for the creation of a "global village." Today the Internet still offers that promise, but it also has proven in some respects to be a digital menace. Its use by al Qaeda is only one example. It also has provided a virtual battlefield for peacetime hostilities between Taiwan and China, Israel and Palestine, Pakistan and India, and China and the United States (during both the war over Kosovo and in the aftermath of the collision between the Navy EP-3 aircraft and Chinese MiG). In times of actual conflict, the Internet was used as a virtual battleground between NATO's coalition forces and elements of the Serbian population. These real tensions from a virtual interface involved not only nation-states but also non-state individuals and groups either aligned with one side or the other, or acting independently."

redux [12.20.02]
Wired News Terrorists on the Net? Who Cares?

"To all those Chicken Littles clucking frantically about the imminent threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. computer networks, a new report says: Knock it off."

""The idea that hackers are going to bring the nation to its knees is too far-fetched a scenario to be taken seriously," said Jim Lewis, a 16-year veteran of the State and Commerce Departments."

""Nations are more robust than the early analysts of cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare give them credit for," Lewis wrote in the report. "Infrastructure systems (are) more flexible and responsive in restoring service than the early analysts realized, in part because they have to deal with failure on a routine basis.""

redux [10.29.02]
MSNBC Worries of a cyber war

"Politically motivated hack attacks are rising "sharply," London-based computer security firm mi2g said Tuesday, citing in particular the rise of what it called "Islamic interest hacking groups." And while political hacks account for just a fraction of all hacking activity, security experts worry that may soon change."

"October, mi2g said, has already qualified as the worst month for overt digital attacks since its records began in 1995, with an estimated 16,559 attacks carried out on systems and Web sites."

redux [09.18.02]
News.Com Government unveils cybersecurity plan

"CSIS analyst Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former editor-in-chief of the Washington Times and United Press International, warned that a "cyberattack" was just around the corner.

"It is later than we think. The next generation of transnational terrorists understands that a hand on a mouse can be more lethal than a finger on the trigger," said de Borchgrave, who co-authored a report that concluded: "Cyberattacks now arise whenever disputes occur anywhere in the world...Can cyberterrorism and cyberwar be far behind?""

redux [08.14.02]
ZDNet Is the U.S. headed for a cyberwar? I doubt it

"THE FIRST THOUGHT that comes to my mind when people mention cyberwar is: What kind of attack are they really talking about? We've seen Web page defacements traded between Palestinian and Israeli cyberactivists. The Yaha worm, thought to have originated in India, recently caused a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Pakistani government's main Web site. In the grand scheme of things, however these are relatively minor inconveniences compared with a major military ground or air attack."

"No one has ever made it clear to me exactly what a cyberwar would entail--and I'm betting I'm not the only one who's confused here. "

The Register Mock cyberwar fails to end mock civilization

"A mock cyberwar enacted by faculty of the US Naval War College and analysts from Gartner does not appear to have fulfilled the Clancyesque predictions of mass devastation envisioned by the leading security paranoiacs of the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

The exercise, named "Digital Pearl Harbor," apparently in tribute to US CyberSecurity Czar and Chief Alarmist Richard Clarke, brought together a team of experts in several areas related to critical infrastructure for a three-day hackfest."

redux [10.04.01]
First Monday Networks, Netwars, and the Fight for the Future

"Netwar is an emerging mode of conflict in which the protagonists - ranging from terrorist and criminal organizations on the dark side, to militant social activists on the bright side - use network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. The practice of netwar is well ahead of theory, as both civil and uncivil society actors are increasingly engaging in this new way of fighting. We suggest how the theory of netwar may be improved by drawing on academic perspectives on networks, especially those about organizational network analysis. As for practice, strategists and policymakers in Washington and elsewhere have begun to discern the dark side of the network phenomenon - especially in the wake of the "attack on America" perpetrated apparently by Osama bin Laden's terror network. But they still have much work to do to begin harnessing the bright side, by formulating strategies that will enable state and civil-society actors to work together better."

The New York Times Securing the Lines of a Wired Nation
[requires 'free' registration]

""People aren't going to be killing us with computers," Mr. Hunker said, "but our life may be hell because of computer attacks."

The likeliest use of the technology, he said, would be to complicate matters further after a real-world attack, a tactic he describes with the military phrase "force multiplier." That could involve planting false information on the Web to create a panic or taking down crucial computers in the financial or communications sectors."

redux [08.19.01]
AsianWeek Get Ready for Cyberwars

""Taiwan has one of the world's largest computer software and hardware manufacturing bases," said D.K. Matai, managing director of the British-based Mi2. "The computer software programmers in Taiwan are world class. Our view is that getting involved in any kind of conflict with Taiwan, given the kind of intellectual capacity the country has, may prove detrimental."

The Chinese government has been quite open about its future strategic military objective. In paper appearing in the spring issue of China Military Science journal, a member of the Chinese Committee of Science, Technology and Industry of the System Engineering Institute, wrote: "We are in the midst of a new technology in which electronic information technology is the central technology. The technology provides unprecedented applications for the development of new weaponry...Military battles during the 21st century will unfold around the use of information for military and political goals.""

redux [09.06.00]
Rand Corporation In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age

"The thesis of this think piece is that the information revolution will cause shifts both in how societies may come into conflict, and how their armed forces may wage war. We offer a distinction between what we call "netwar" -- societal-level ideational conflicts waged in part through internetted modes of communication -- and "cyberwar" at the military level. These terms are admittedly novel, and better ones may yet be devised. But for now they illuminate a useful distinction and identify the breadth of ways in which the information revolution may alter the nature of conflict short of war, as well as the context and the conduct of warfare.

While both netwar and cyberwar revolve around information and communications matters, at a deeper level they are forms of war about "knowledge" -- about who knows what, when, where, and why, and about how secure a society or military is regarding its knowledge of itself and its adversaries."

redux [01.04.01]
MSNBC Bytes without the blood in Mideast

"Scenes of street violence are played out day after day in Palestinian towns across Gaza and the West Bank. But another modern-day arena for battle between the Palestinians and the Israelis is growing ever more heated, so much so that the Internet war waged by computer-savvy political activists is being dubbed an "e-Jihad.""

redux [03.22.00]
CNN Kashmir conflict continues to escalate -- online

"A group of Pakistani hackers has used the conflict in Kashmir as a reason to deface almost 600 Web sites in India and take control of several Indian government and private computer systems, according to the group."

"Unlike the majority of Web vandals, the MOS members say they secretly take control of a server, then deface the site only when they "have no more use" for the data or the server itself.

"The servers we control range from harmless mail and Web services to 'heavy duty' government servers," says the MOS representative. "The data is only being categorically archived for later use if deemed necessary."

The Christian Science Monitor Wars of the future... today

"Take the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade several weeks ago. Rage spread across China and hackers from the mainland attacked the Web sites of the US Departments of Energy and the Interior, and the National Park Service. A subsequent attack brought down the White House Web site for three days. The attacks generated headlines across the country.

What the news media didn't report was that the US government had known for a long time that someone had been in its computer systems - they just didn't know who. Then, in a fit of anger, the Chinese hackers caused some real damage - and gave away the hidden "location" of several "backdoors" they had built in US government networks."

"The US Government Accounting Office estimates 120 groups or countries have or are developing information-warfare systems. According to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 23 nations have cyber-targeted the US."

Salon Artificial stupidity, Part 2

"If Hugh Loebner's contest is just hokum, and the Turing test has outlived its usefulness, why should we care about it or its various squabbling participants?

A vocal camp in the brainy "philosophy of mind" profession believes that the Turing test should be relegated to the history books, but I'm going to assert axiomatically that the test, as it is generally understood by ordinary humans like you and me, is interesting. The question of whether computers can successfully pose as human beings has obsessed writers, filmmakers and computer scientists for decades. Therefore, without getting sucked into a philosophical vortex about the nature of minds, machines, intelligence and so forth, all we need to find out -- if we want to know if the Loebner competition matters -- is whether there exists a more respectable variant of the Turing test. As far as I can determine, there doesn't. The Turing test is, as it were, state-of-the-art."

The Third Culture FRANCISCO VARELA: The Emergent Self

"Francisco Varela died on May 28 at his home in Paris"

"Francisco, an experimental and theoretical biologist, studied what he termed "emergent selves" or "virtual identities." His was an immanent view of reality, based on metaphors derived from self-organization and Buddhist-inspired epistemology rather than on those derived from engineering and information science. He presented a challenge to the traditional AI view that the world exists independently of the organism, whose task is to make an accurate model of that world - to "consult" before acting. His nonrepresentationalist world - or perhaps "world-as-experienced" - has no independent existence but is itself a product of interactions between organisms and environment."

N. Katherine Hayles How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

"Here, at the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment is performed so that "intelligence" becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human lifeworld. The Turing test was to set the agenda for artificial intelligence for the next three decades. In the push to achieve machines that can think, researchers performed again and again the erasure of embodiment at the heart of the Turing test. All that mattered was the formal generation and manipulation of informational patterns. Aiding this process was a definition of information, formalized by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, that conceptualized information as an entity distinct from the substrates carrying it. From this formulation, it was a small step to think of information as a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form."

"Think of the Turing test as a magic trick. Like all good magic tricks, the test relies on getting you to accept at an early stage assumptions that will determine how you interpret what you see later. The important intervention comes not when you try to determine which is the man, the woman, or the machine. Rather, the important intervention comes much earlier, when the test puts you into a cybernetic circuit that splices your will, desire, and perception into a distributed cognitive system in which represented bodies are joined with enacted bodies through mutating and flexible machine interfaces. As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, no matter what identifications you assign to the embodied entities that you cannot see, you have already become posthuman."

Editor & Publisher War Correspondent's Advice: Stay Off the Press Bus

"The Pentagon's new "embedding" policy, while less restrictive than a press pool, prohibits journalists from having their own vehicles. To Hedges, who says the first thing he would do if he were covering this war is get a jeep, the limitations are significant. "I'm not saying people shouldn't be embedded," he insists, "but they're not going to get an accurate picture unless people are allowed to do their job. When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: they will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report. They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong."

He cites what happened early in the Gulf War in Al-Khafji, where he witnessed Saudi soldiers fleeing in panic from Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Marines were called in to push back the Iraqis. But back in Riyadh and Dhahran, "the press put out that the Saudis were defending their homeland. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth.""

Palm Beach Post How does the hi-tech press file from a foxhole?

"The idea of embedding journalists with units was tossed around. But field commanders wanted those journalists to have at least the basics of basic training. Thus the media boot camp."

"If conversations between media and military at the base saloon on the last night were any indication, all but a very few gained much perspective if not renewed respect for the soldiers, sailors and Marines who will do the fighting.

After the Marines thanked us for coming, a young photographer stood and said: "We've learned a lot, and thank you. We learned again something we've always known, but see now in a different light: We carry cameras and notebooks. You guys carry something we don't -- the guns. And we will not forget that."

redux [02.14.03]
Editor & Publisher U.S. Military Document Outlines War Coverage

"The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions, according to a lengthy document sent by a press officer for a major U.S. military base to a news organization that will be "embedding" reporters with American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.

The document offers the first detailed glimpse into Pentagon planning for media coverage of the campaign."

Associated Press Dan Rather Mulls Reporters' Place in War

"CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he hopes that embedding journalists among U.S. troops if there's a war with Iraq will help coverage, but he has doubts."

""There's a pretty fine line between being embedded and being emtombed," Rather said Thursday at a news conference where CBS outlined war preparation plans."

Guardian Unlimited News Organizations Get Iraq War Slots

"Bob Steele, director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the good intentions of the Pentagon and journalists give him hope, with some caution.

``There's no doubt there will still be tensions between the goals of the military and goals of journalists,'' he said."

Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV networks prepare for war

"While the rhetorical and diplomatic wrangling over Iraq continues, it is worth noting that the global TV network war has already begun. The American Cable News Channel, CNN, made its reputation during the first Gulf war, but its got stiff competition this time around -- not just from the traditional networks, but from newcomer, Fox. Now if you think this is a trivial point, consider the budgets that these media giants are getting ready to commit. According to one account, CNN alone is planning on spending $60 million to cover the war in Iraq. But what will we see for all this money? Anything more than network anchors standing against a backdrop of Kuwait city and commenting on the latest official account of the battle from American generals? That's about it, according to distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley. The former 'Sunday Times' investigative reporter is also the author of what's considered a classic history of war reporting -- 'The First Casualty'. In it, he documents the decline of independent war reporting and the attitude of the military. It's best summed up by the American government censor, who at the height of World War II said, in relation to the press, "tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won.""

The Straits Times: Singapore Toxic e-waste

"This is the end of the road for the toxic end-product of the computer age.

In towns such as this one on China's south-eastern coast, vast quantities of obsolete electronics shipped in from the United States, Europe and Japan are piled in mountains of waste."

"The real costs are being borne by the people on the receiving end of the 'e-waste'. In towns along China's coast as well as in India and Pakistan, adults and children work for about US$1.20 (S$2.08) a day in unregulated and unsafe conditions."

redux [02.05.03]
News.Com HP: Don't trash that old computer

"The computer maker is testing a program that gives those who recycle their old computers, monitors, printers or other gear a coupon worth up to $50 for any purchase of $60 or more on HP's online store. Under a program announced nearly two years ago, HP charges anywhere from $17 to $31 to recycle products. The company says the coupon will offset the amount customers must pay for the service, which ensures none of the gear ends up in landfills.

The need for recycling is growing, particularly as nonprofit agencies become less willing to accept older gear, said Renee St. Denis, manager of HP's recycling effort. The problem of what to do with all this aging equipment has become a major issue facing the tech industry."

redux [01.26.03]
The Japan Times Chips with everything makes for a hi-tech mess

"So what are the environmental impacts of producing and using a 32-megabyte DRAM computer chip that weighs a mere 2 grams? The UNU team found that to make every one of the millions manufactured each year requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 grams of elemental gases (mainly nitrogen), and 72 grams of chemicals (hundreds are used, including lethal arsine gas and corrosive hydrogen fluoride).

To make matters worse, Williams believes his findings are conservative. "We think the real numbers may be twice that," he said, adding that rapid advances in technology aggravate the problem. "The fact that a chip has such a short lifespan, because the technology turns over so quickly, exacerbates the environmental impact.""

redux [01.10.03]
Wired News E-Waste: Dark Side of Digital Age

""The leadership continues to be by and large the Japanese companies, and the U.S. companies tend to be far behind," Smith said.

"A lot of (U.S. manufacturers') initiatives are piecemeal and not really designed to address the vast majority of consumer concerns," he added. "There is still an enormous amount of computer waste being exported to China.""

"The report also criticizes Dell's use of federal prison labor to recycle old computers, which it says exposes inmates to toxic chemicals without the same health and safety protections as workers at other facilities."

redux [12.03.02]
The Mercury News In switch, HP announces support for e-waste bill

"In a shift that will change how toxic electronic waste is recycled in California and possibly nationwide, Hewlett-Packard has said it will support state legislation to require PC manufacturers to bear the cost of computer disposal.

""The combined HP-Compaq company is the single largest manufacturer of PCs in the world. They are the linchpin for producer responsibility,'' said Smith, whose group helped expose the primitive recycling industry in China. ``The fact that they have changed their position vastly improves the likelihood we'll get a very good e-waste bill in the new session.""

redux [11.13.02]
Salon Silicon hogs

"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.

It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."

redux [05.22.02]
Wired News Tech Toxics' Tarnished Legacy

"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.

Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."

redux [04.06.02]
NPR: All Things Considered Activists Push for Safer E-Recycling

"Americans will throw out about 10 million old computers this year. About two-thirds of these will be shipped to Asia for dismantling by rural villagers. The computers all contain mercury and lead, and the resulting toxic waste has become a threat to villagers' health and environment.

"A coalition of activists and lawmakers has been working to improve the situation, and in recent weeks they've gotten a signed pledge from electronic manufacturers in the United States to consider a new solution."

Mother Jones Growing Health Problems Among Semiconductor Workers

"Workers in Silicon Valley's semiconductor plants toil in head-to-toe protective clothing designed to keep impurities from contaminating the microchips. But Mother Jones magazine reports that the growing incidence of health problems among these workers suggests that it is they who need protection. At least 250 workers have filed lawsuits against high-tech companies, charging that the toxic soup of chemicals in production areas has triggered high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer."

redux [05.04.00]
San Francisco Bay Guardian Silicon Hell

"Behind the well-paid geeks in cubicles and the sharp-dressed entrepreneurs is an industry that consumes as many resources, uses as many lethal chemicals, and generates as much toxic waste as some of the worst culprits of the pre-Internet age. And both industry workers and the people who live near the plants are feeling the effects: the toxins damage aquatic life in the bay, poison drinking water, and, increasing evidence suggests, kill high-tech industry workers.

While the federal government, local agencies, and hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents and company workers are dealing with the computer industry's mess here in America, the same (or worse) problems are spreading worldwide."

Reason Creation Myths

"Greene was not referring to international terrorism. "The most insidious virus in our midst," he said sternly, "is the illegal downloading of music on the Net."

Greene’s sermon may have been a bit overwrought, but he’s not alone in his fears. During the last decade, the captains of many industries -- music, movies, publishing, software, pharmaceuticals -- have railed against the "piracy" of their profits."

"How does an economy best promote innovation? Do patents and copyrights nurture or stifle it? Have we gone too far in protecting intellectual property?"

International Herald Tribute Pop stars learn to live with pirates

"Record companies say that what piracy has really done in China is to cause fundamental shifts in the way the country’s music industry operates. It has simply forced Wang and his fellow stars to change the way they live, work and play. ‘‘There is no income from the royalties, so artists in China record single songs for radio play instead of albums for consumers,’’ said Lachie Rutherford, the president of Warner Music Asia-Pacific. ‘‘Stars need to look elsewhere to finance the rock-star lifestyle.’’"

"‘‘China is the ultimate example of industrial-scale piracy and its impact,’’ Berman said. ‘‘The business model for the record industry worldwide is moving toward resembling what we see in China today.’’ Alternative sources of income tapped by top Chinese stars include paid appearances, sponsorship deals and extended concert tours through the nation’s vast hinterland."

redux [10.23.02]
USA Today Music industry spins falsehood

"On the first day I posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales tripled, and they have stayed that way ever since. I'm not about to become a zillionaire as a result, but I am making more money. At a time when radio playlists are tighter and any kind of exposure is hard to come by, 365,000 copies of my work now will be heard. Even if only 3% of those people come to concerts or buy my CDs, I've gained about 10,000 new fans this year.

That's how artists become successful: exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, and no one buys CDs. After 37 years as a recording artist, when people write to tell me that they came to my concert because they downloaded a song and got curious, I am thrilled."

redux [04.17.02]
SFGate New musical acts get lift from Internet

""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."

""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [12.18.01]
Salon Don't steal music, pretty please

"Indeed, the pointless attempt to control copyrighted data every step of the way from musician's voice to listener's ear is the biggest roadblock to success for online music. Just as HBO doesn't try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters. Even former BMG head Strauss Zelnick, who says he has no problem throwing big-time bootleggers in jail, agrees the industry's challenge is to come up with an attractive alternative to Aimster and its ilk. "We need to give consumers a service they want, at a price they're willing to pay," he told me in an interview this summer. "People don't like to think of themselves as criminals." But ironically, the more anti-theft hurdles crammed into the legal products, the more attractive the pirate alternatives become."

redux [07.21.00]
News.Com Study: Napster users buy more music

"Jupiter said it surveyed more than 2,200 online music fans about whether the money they spent on music purchases had increased, decreased or remained the same since they began visiting music destinations on the Web. People between the ages of 18 to 24 who spend less than $20 on music within a three-month period indicated that they were likely to remain at a constant purchasing level despite online music use. All other groups said they had increased spending as a result of online music use, Jupiter reported."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."

The New York Times How the Protesters Mobilized
[requires 'free' registration]

"The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.

Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in areas where social protest information would typically reach."

"Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve around social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is true for their work as well."

redux [01.03.03]
The Globe and Mail In South Korea, it's the mouse that roars

"The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.

When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they simply pressed a few computer keys. Text messages flashed to the cellphones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls."

"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy."

redux [05.10.01]
First Monday The Impact of the Internet on Myanmar

"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web."

"In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."

redux [01.20.01]
The Guardian Unlimited Filipinos rally to oust the president: C U @ the revolution

"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."

"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."

redux [11.29.00]
NPR: Morning Edition Cell Phone Rally

""NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the latest in the effort to unseat Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Filipinos send 30 million cell phone "text messages" daily- more than anywhere else in the world. Activists are using the technology to organize rallies and respond instantly to the latest corruption charges. (5:19)""

redux [07.07.00]
The New York Times Manila's Talk of the Town Is Text Messaging
[requires 'free' registration]

"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone.

"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces," said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back." ."

"Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe, especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive."

Washington Post Engineers' E-mails Warned NASA Downplaying Shuttle Problems

"In one e-mail sent three days before the shuttle's Feb. 1 disintegration as it hit the Earth's atmosphere, a Langley engineer complained that those managing Columbia's flight had chosen not to make simple studies to clarify landing risks and were treating such information "like the plague."

The engineer, Robert Daugherty, also said he understood NASA engineers at flight headquarters in Texas had privately estimated its safety during landing was "survivable but marginal.""

redux [02.01.03]
The New York Times Speed Makes Space Flight Very Risky, Experts Say
[requires 'free' registration]

"A success rate of about 95 percent is more typical of the trade, Dr. Postol said. With two catastrophic failures in 113 flights, for a 98.2 percent success rate, the shuttle program is not looking much different -- for sound physical reasons, he said.

"Capt. Bill Readdy, associate administrator for space flight and a former astronaut, said at a news conference yesterday afternoon: "Today was a very stark reminder that this is a very risky endeavor, pushing back the frontiers in outer space. And after 113 flights, unfortunately, people have a tendency to look at it as something that is more or less routine. Well I can assure you it is not.""

The Guardian Unlimited Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings

"Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.

In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'."

Richard Feynman Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle

"If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In these situations, subtly, and often with apparently logical arguments, the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time. They therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure of the order of a percent (it is difficult to be more accurate).

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers."

redux [02.06.03]
Reason The Limits of Complexity

"The week has brought a painful reminder of the limits of complex systems and human fallibility."

"So there is the crux of the matter, across shuttle, software, and oil truck. At what point does complexity make a system more prone to break, rather than less? Can added cost always justify greater reliability? How do we know when the risk of something going wrong is too great?

If in answering such questions you require or assume perfection, something might go very wrong indeed."

Houston Chronicle 10 years after Challenger, NASA feels shuttle safety never better

"In 1988, SAIC evaluated the launch risk for NASA relying primarily on factors applicable during the shuttle's pre-Challenger era, including the flawed solid rocket booster. The assessment produced a range of risk with a mean probability of a shuttle loss at one in every 78 launches.

The risk mean for a shuttle loss during the liftoff improved to one in every 248 ascents when the assessment was repeated this year and the shuttle's post-Challenger actual track record was factored into the calculations.