N&D 4/03/2016

E-media story 47: We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology

Apple’s battle with the FBI is not about privacy v security, but a conflict created by the US failure to legitimately oversee its security service post Snowden

This article discusses how we should back Apple's fight against the FBI for the encryption of Apple devices. The initial debate was to find out the contents of two terrorist's iPhones, but has evolved into a war on privacy and abolition of people's rights by the FBI. 

The FBI is demanding Apple to create software that will enable them access into the terrorist's phone, but Apple stated that doing so would open a door to all iPhone devices, which raises the issue of security versus freedom. 

"The fundamental problem is the breakdown of trust in institutions and organizations. In particular, the loss of confidence in oversight of the American national security establishment."

The article states that this is the wrong way to view it, and that rather it being security versus freedom, it's more about the lack of trust in the institutions set up to protect and serve. Apple had designed a security system that even they themselves could not get into, in order to preserve the privacy, but also due to the lack of trust in institutions that oversee surveillance. The approach, in the words of Yochai Benkler "builds security in a fundamentally untrustworthy world". 

• Apple’s technology is a response to users’ thirst for technology that can secure their privacy and autonomy in a world where they cannot trust any institutions, whether government or market.
• we need to end the culture of impunity that protects people who run illegal programs and continue to thrive in their careers after they are exposed, but vindictively pursues the whistle blowers who expose that illegality.
• Apple’s case is not about freedom versus security; it is about trustworthy institutions or trust-independent technology. We cannot solve it by steam-rolling the technology in service of untrusted institutions.

I completely agree with Benkler here in that this is greater than the security of Apple, and more about the distrust between the people, and the agencies/institutions/governments meant to serve them. The FBI keep secrets and press down on resistance like Snowden, who is currently trapped in Russia with the Americans watching daily to arrest him if he leaves, which shows the fear tactics that they induce. A world where truth sayers and whistle-blowers are targeted instead of people doing illegal things is a world where agencies like the FBI deserve to be untrustworthy. It's the same with the phone hacking scandals and security issues here with the MI5. The world is not a democracy when there are elites and secrets being kept from the people being served. I believe this is due to people not wanting to be self governed and being grown up to depend on the elites who are the reason for the issues in trust today. The Bildeberg group has confidential meetings every year about the future of the world we all live in, yet do not let even a whisper get out to the people it concerns. The world is too uncertain to be sure who to trust, so Apple's thinking that the only ones we can trust is technology is a sound one, due to technology not being secretive or tyrannical in it's reign. 

N&D 11/03/2016

Has social media ruined the web?http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/31/has-social-media-ruined-the-web

Has the web lost its power to drive social change? This is the conclusion of Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, imprisoned by the regime in 2008 and released and pardoned in 2014.  

The rise of smartphones and apps had changed the online world. Blogging and independent websites had been overtaken by social media networks, with the likes* of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram dominating the market.

·                     "Nearly every social network now treats a link as just the same as it treats any other object – the same as a photo, or a piece of text. You’re encouraged to post one single hyperlink and expose it to a quasi-democratic process of liking and plussing and hearting. But links are not objects, they are relations between objects. This objectivisation has stripped hyperlinks of their immense powers"

Sun website traffic falls by more than 5% despite axing of paywall

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/21/sun-website-traffic-paywall-december

The Sun saw a more than 5% fall in its audience in December, despite dropping its paywall fully for the first time on 30 November.A spokesperson attributed the decline to “certain apps being turned off to unify the Sun online presence and the expected seasonal lull in Dream Team”. Much of the site’s content was also already free before the paywall was officially dropped, as the site began relaxing its approach to charging for online content last summer.However, the Sun outperformed the rest of the UK’s national newspapers, which saw bigger falls during the month, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Their Christmas traffic declines followed gains made in November, which were partly driven by public interest in stories such as the Paris attacks.theguardian.com fell from an average of more than 9 million daily unique browsers in November to just under 8 million, a drop of 15%, while the Telegraph slid to 4.1 million after losing almost 1 million unique browsers, equivalent to almost 20% of its audience.All the other national newspapers saw double-digit declines, except Mail Online, which lost just under 10% of its audience to drop back to just over 13 million unique browsers, and dailystar.co.uk, which lost 8.8% of its unique browsers to come in at just under 600,000 a day.