Weekly Readings: Out-Innovated
BY Antonella Napolitano and Rebecca Chao | Monday, June 2 2014
- The World Bank blog reports on India and corruption in the digital age.
- The European Commission is refusing to honor information requests made via AsktheEU.org without mailing addresses even though the online platform is set up specifically to operate via email.
- One year after the UN held a high level panel on managing the data revolution, a group of Kenyan stakeholders met recently to discuss how to make the data revolution a reality in Kenya.
- Kim Dotcom's Internet Party, which leans right-libertarian, makes a surprising move to join with New Zealand's left wing MANA movement.
- Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sues a blogger who claimed Lee had appropriated public funds.
- Over 100 URLs have been blocked in Thailand under martial law.
- Russia is putting restrictions on online payments under the pretense of terrorism but Global Voices purports Russia is afraid it will be used by activists to garner support -- like when Alexei Nalvany used online donations to run a highly successful mayoral campaign in 2013.
- Russia also doesn't want US-run GPS satellites to operate in their territory and the block may make GPS-data in Russia less reliable.
- Meanwhile the U.S. is trying to find Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev who they say attacked a number of companies and around one million computers around the world.
- China has blocked Google in light of the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Greatfire.org told the New York Times, "This is by far the biggest attack on Google that’s ever taken place in China."
- But many China are riled up about this video footage of a woman being beaten to death at a McDonald's and the fact no one came to her aid.
- Over in India, people are enraged both online and off by another brutal gang rape. See here and here for what people are saying on Twitter.
- An analysis of why the Arab Spring has not sprung in the Middle East except in Tunisia.
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