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China Says Video Game Allowing Players to Shoot U.S. Troops Instills Patriotic Values

BY Jessica McKenzie | Friday, April 5 2013

Screenshot from CCTV report about Glorious Mission video game.

The video game Glorious Mission, designed for and by the Chinese military, was initially meant as a training aid for soldiers. Released to the public a few months ago, it has already been downloaded over a million times.The BBC reports that the video game is China's newest propagandatool, and cites army sources who agree Glorious Mission was made "available to the wider public...in order to instill patriotic values, the core values of the military." Read More

WeGov

In Russia, Independent YouTube Programming Lures Viewers Away from State TV

BY Natalia Antonova | Tuesday, March 19 2013

Screenshot from Russia's independent Dozhd TV

In Russia, state owned television's coverage of high profile cases and events has been losing credibility amongst educated, middle class viewers who see it as anodyne, patronizing or insufficiently critical. A notorious recent case of poor television reporting occurred with the prosecution of feminist collective punk band Pussy Riot. It was impossible to miss the strong difference between state-owned television’s coverage and analysis, versus the reporting offered by independent Russian programming on YouTube. Read More

WeGov

Police Surveillance in Sao Paolo is at All-Time High, as Crime Wave Shocks City

BY Julia Wetherell | Wednesday, January 2 2013

A military police officer with a camera-mounted EagleEye backpack, from BBC Future Video.

BBC Future has a look into the Orwellian surveillance technology that police in Sao Paolo are using to monitor crime in the metropolis of 41 million. An integrated network of databases, tablet technology and mobile cameras are giving law enforcement officials an unprecedented eye on activity in the city streets. Read More

WeGov

With YouTube Blocked, Iran Offers State Sanctioned Online Video Alternative

BY Julia Wetherell | Monday, December 10 2012

Logo for Mehr.Ir

After restricting nationwide access to Gmail and Google Search earlier this fall, Iran has put forward a new effort against the Internet conglomerate’s YouTube arm, in the form of a state-sanctioned online video provider operated by the IRIB(Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Service). Read More

WeGov

After 3-Day Internet Shutdown, Syria's Regime is Now Targeting Activists with Powerful New Malware

BY Lisa Goldman | Thursday, December 6 2012

When the Syrian Internet system was cut off last week, observers feared the regime had cut the civilian population off for good so that the army could do its worst without having to worry about activists filming massacres and uploading the footage to YouTube. In fact the Internet was restored after three days. But now the regime is using powerful new malware to target activists. Read More

WeGov

Reporting from Uzbekistan With a Lens Hidden in Plain Sight

BY Lisa Goldman | Monday, November 26 2012

A BBC journalist who recorded interviews with her iPhone and Skype in order to circumvent official restrictions on the media discovered that these tools were so effective in producing broadcast quality content that she no longer needed the bulky conventional equipment, reports Journalism.co.uk. Read More

WeGov

At the 2012 IGF in Baku, the Azeri Government's Disdain for Freedom Was on Full Display

BY Nighat Dad | Tuesday, November 20 2012

IGF session. (Credit: Internet Society/Flickr)

The 2012 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan — a country that makes all the Top 10 lists of human rights violators, Internet censors and political freedom repressers. At this year's conference, their disdain for freedom of expression was all too apparent. Read More

WeGov

Egyptian Belly Dancer's Salacious Video Mocking Muslim Brotherhood Goes Viral

BY Mahmoud Salem | Monday, November 19 2012

Sama El Masry (publicity shot)

Last week Sama El Masry, a famous Egyptian belly dancer, uploaded a home-made video to YouTube; it shows her in a skin tight outfit, swinging her hips seductively to a song rife with anti-Muslim Brotherhood political innuendo. The sexy little number set the Egyptian social media and political worlds ablaze — but not only because it mocked the prudish Islamists with the double whammy of gyrating hips and lyrics that were a blatant political satire that pulled no punches. In a bizarre twist that could only happen in post-revolutionary Egypt, the dancer was also famous for claiming to be the ex-wife of a Salafi member of parliament. Read More

WeGov

In Wake of Public Outcry, Iran Lifts "Indefinite" Block on Gmail After One Week

BY Lisa Goldman | Monday, October 1 2012

One week after announcing that access to Gmail and Google search would be blocked indefinitely in the Islamic Regime of Iran, regime officials restored access to the popular online platforms while claiming that they had unintentionally blocked them while trying to filter the crude anti-Islam film, "Innocence of the Muslims." Meanwhile, the Ministry of Telecommunications launched its own official email service, which requires users to register. Read More

WeGov

Africa in Flux: How Urbanization and Digital Technology are Changing a Continent

BY Lisa Goldman | Monday, September 24 2012

SMS in Kampala, Ungada (photo: Future Atlas/Flickr )

A new report details the ways in which urbanization and mobile technology are driving profound change in Africa. Read More

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Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

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monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

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friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

GO

A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

wednesday >

New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

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Macedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"

The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.

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