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UK spies tracked Middle East activists with a web link shortener
Intelligence agencies don't always rely on hacks to monitor and influence political events. Motherboard has learned that the UK's GCHQ created its own URL shortener, lurl.me, to both disseminate pro-revolution talk during Iranian and Arab Spring protests as well as track activists. Puppet accounts would use lurl.me to help get around government censorship, while GCHQ would send special links to help identify activists who were otherwise hard to follow. The combination also made it easy to understand the effectiveness of revolutionary campaigns online -- if many people clicked a link and behavior changed, GCHQ would know that its efforts made a difference.
iPhone used to report on Arab Spring donated to Smithsonian
In late 2010, a series of anti-government protests and demonstrations began sweeping across the Arab world. Together, these civil uprisings, which often targeted heavy handed dictators and sought political reforms, comprised what is known as the Arab Spring. Social media tools such as Twitter played an extremely important part during these uprisings, enabling protesters to provide real-time updates and news reports about the latest happenings. Now comes word that NPR's Andy Carvin is donating the iPhone he used to report on the Arab Spring to the Smithsonian. The phone will be included in a 2015 "American Enterprise" exhibit detailing the role innovation played in the emergence of the U.S. as a world power. Smithosnian.com reports: "Carvin used Twitter during the Arab Spring to communicate with protesters in the Middle East and verify eyewitness accounts from the front lines, most of the time while he was on his iPhone in the United States." Commenting on how he used his iPhone and Twitter during the uprisings, Carvin explains: "My job at NPR is to be a journalistic test pilot: I experiment with new ways of conducting journalism and figure out what works and what doesn't. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, I had contacts in Tunisia and other parts of the region who were talking about protests through Twitter and other social media. Initially I was simply retweeting what they were saying, but as the revolutions expanded from one country to another, I ended up using Twitter to create an online community of volunteers who served as sources, translators and researchers for me. We would all engage with each other mostly through my mobile phone, trying to sort out what was true and what wasn't. From 2011 to 2012, I was on Twitter upwards of 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, much of the time on that phone, and rarely in the places where these revolutions were taking place. I don't have a background as a combat reporter, so this was very much an experiment in collaborative, virtual reporting, in which ultimately my iPhone and Twitter served as the focal points." The Smithsonian has a far-ranging interview with Carvin where he touches on a number of topics pertaining to the intersection of social media and journalism. It's well worth a look.
Distro goes 'Beyond the Revolution' to explore tech in post-Mubarak Egypt
Nearly one year ago, dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after 18 consecutive days of protest by Egyptian citizens. Those demonstrations were organized largely through the use of social networking, cell phones and banned TV channels, a greater trend that permeated the revolutionary period now known as the Arab Spring. To mark the anniversary of Mubarak's ousting, Sharif Sakr traveled to Egypt to speak with five Egyptians about the role that technology plays in their lives today. This issue of Distro also features reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, Motorola's Droid RAZR Maxx, Sony's Alpha NEX-7 and a Q&A with the founder of the Ubuntu Project, Mark Shuttleworth. If you've been looking for a good reason to download an issue of Distro, look no further.Distro Issue 27 PDFDistro on the iTunes App StoreDistro in the Android MarketDistro APK (for sideloading)Like Distro on FacebookFollow Distro on Twitter
Report: iPhone banned in Syria
According to a report by the German Press Association (via Haaretz), Syrian authorities have banned the use or importation of the iPhone into Syria in an attempt to crack down on protesters in that country. International media has been banned from Syria for months, so virtually all we know about the protests currently happening there comes from footage uploaded to the Internet, usually via protesters' cell phone footage of events. The BBC reports that other smartphones have yet to fall under the blanket ban, which seems curious at first; however, it's not so curious when it turns out there's actually an iPhone app dedicated to the protest movement. The iPhone's UI also makes it incredibly easy to upload video footage to YouTube, which the current Syrian regime also wants to suppress as it opposes -- often violently -- the protests against the government in Syria. The UN reports that more than 4000 people have been killed in Syria since protests began in mid-March. Like many other flashpoints in the Arab Spring movement of 2011, protesters have been heavily using iPhones, BlackBerrys, and other smartphones to communicate and co-ordinate their activities. Additionally, with camera quality in many smartphones approaching the level of low- to mid-range point-and-shoot cameras, and with many smartphones supplying simple methods of uploading those videos online, documenting government responses to protests has been easier than ever before. The Syrian government's ban on the iPhone is unlikely to measurably impact protesters' activities, as they will either start using iPhones more clandestinely or simply switch to an unbanned smartphone platform. Additionally, protest movements like the one currently taking place in Syria got along just fine before the iPhone came along, so if Syrian authorities are hoping that banning the iPhone will stop the protests, they are sure to be mistaken.
