Anonymous connection using chain of proxy

Yesterday when I did my research I came across this interesting article (for me personally).

It was pretty old article & I don't know if you guys already knew this method, but basically this method suggest us to use proxy chains (proxy -> proxy-> proxy -> .... -> target) and makes the us the surfer very hard to detect, which is pretty cool. =)

http://www.darknet.org.uk/2006/08/anonymous-connections-over-the-internet-using-socks-chains-proxy-proxies/

surf the internet as though you were in China!

I came across this interesting tool while doing research for the assignment

http://www.chinachannel.hk/

( I couldn't get this to work, apparently it only works on Firefox pre 3.5 )

update: I found a proxy server in China that works. So far myspace works except for pictures, videos and music, Facebook doesn't work, google shows up in Chinese, so it seems like this works.

China proxy server: 211.69.26.169:3128

( list of sites blocked in China )

( list of proxies in different countries )

Internet Enemies

Reporters without borders lists their 'internet enemies' as:

Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam

These generally have heavy filtering or restrict access to the internet by various means.

While the above may not come as a surprise, there is also a 'countries under surveillance' list:

Australia, Bahrein, Belarus, Eritrea, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates

The standout in this list may be Australia, although I freely admit bias to this (I guess it is often made out to be the USA of the south). Australia is on this list due to filtering systems put in place to try to combat child sex abuse/pornography (http://en.rsf.org/australia-open-letter-to-australia-s-prime-18-12-2009,35379.html). Additionally, internet in public schools in Australia is heavily filtered (at least the school I volunteered at), and did not even allow access to e-mail clients.

Belarus recently introduced a decree where internet providers in the country will have to keep a record of their client's internet use for a year (and hand it over to the government on request), also they have to block access to sites within 24 hours if requested (http://www.rferl.org/content/EU_Calls_Belarusian_Internet_Decree_A_Step_In_Wrong_Direction/1948755.html).

Facebook Privacy Issue

In case someone didn't know, there's OpenBook website http://youropenbook.org/ which searches given keywords in status updates from users' profiles on Facebook. So check your privacy settings!


Here's more information about it: http://youropenbook.org/about.html

And an article on ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/site-exposes-embarrassing-facebook-updates/story?id=10669091

"Online Infringement" Bill

Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists...

Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill

Email and Mail, 81:1

14.4 trillion emails vs 177 billion postal letters and packages. That's the 2009 email vs snail mail score in the United States. A staggering 81 to 1 proportion. The bad: 81% of email is spam vs 47% of snail mail."

At least we dont have 81% of our snail mail as junk, email spam being more green than junk mail.

via Gizmodo

British telecoms on Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is one of those hot-button topics du jour, and there is great discussion over the practicalities and legalities of it. It has been the conversation piece for many a debate and flame war, with valid points on each side. Nice, then, to see that the two largest ISPs in Great Britain would cheerfully abandon the idea without a second thought. Both BT and TalkTalk are more than willing to agree to any such offer if one is willing to put some cash up.

I'm trying to think of a way that such a deal doesn't end up screwing cash-strapped Internet startups, and I really can't. On the other hand, if you're trying to provide some sort of exclusive data service and have money to (in a long series of separate deals!) pay off every broadband company known to Man, it might be a good idea.

"AngelGate" controversy shakes Silicon Valley start-up scene

The start-up blogosphere is abuzz with the revelation that Silicon Valley's top individual investors ("angels") are meeting to discuss collaborating in ways that are not necessarily good for start-up innovation.

Here's the article that started it all...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-bar/

And here are the tongue-in-cheek effects.

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/paololucchesi/2010/09/24/angelgate-meeting-scandal-gives-bin-38-lots-of-free-publicity-punchlines-and-a-hitler-parody/

Check out the Hitler fakesubs video under the above link for a hodgepodge of inside jokes about the world of start-ups. If you're interested in doing a tech start-up, Vancouver's links with Silicon Valley are strong enough that you're likely to become immersed in this community.

Google's Director of Research on understanding data

There are a lot of sound-bite conspiracy theories about what Google is doing with the data it collects on you.

Here's another perspective: a talk given by Google's Director of Research at UBC last week, on what they are trying to do with all that data.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vR8Vddf7-s

"In decades past, models of human language were wrought from the sweat and pencils of linguists. In the modern day, it is more common to think of language modeling as an exercise in probabilistic inference from data: we observe how words and combinations of words are used, and from that build computer models of what the phrases mean. This approach is hopeless with a small amount of data, but somewhere in the range of millions or billions of examples, we pass a threshold, and the hopeless suddenly becomes effective, and computer models sometimes meet or exceed human performance. This talk gives examples of the data available in large repositories of text, images, and videos, and shows some tasks that can be accomplished with the resulting models."

Potential for censorship right across the border

From the article:

"The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced just one week ago, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet."

Read about the act here. I do not at all claim to know much about US government policy or process so I'm not sure how close this is to being a real problem or if there is still years of bureaucracy in the way still, but it's probably still worthy of discussion.

Also, All the Other Tech the Senate Would Have Banned that everyone's probably already seen on Slashdot.

State-Runned Search Engine

In an endeavor to censor as much as possible what appears on its subjects' screens, the Chinese government has expressed an interest in creating a state-runned search engine. What kind of a country would China become if it further strengthens its censorship?

http://www.ccd21.org/news/asia/china_search_engine.html

Google Seeks Allies Against Censorship

Since we'll be talking about censorship, I guess I should share this news... (and there are some very good collection of articles on how the companies battle against censorship, too)

http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227500375

Misuse of Social Networking sites

Found this interesting little article a few days back. With the abuse of drugs/Facebook, this could happen anytime/anywhere:

http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/mapleridgenews/news/102911174.html

"…photographs of the rape and comments about victim being a willing participant continue to spread via Facebook. Some of the photographs have been shown to students in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows who are as young as 13. "They are spreading like wildfire," said Hyland. "Make no mistake, this girl was raped, likely drugged and abused by numerous people. The posting and viewing of the photos is continuing to victimize this young girl and her family and needs to stop."…"

http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/103595--students-disgusted-with-gang-rape-case
"Police say photos of the victim being gang raped may remain in cyberspace forever.  Police are working with Facebook to have all photos removed, but they admit it'll be a huge challenge."

Zuckerberg is now richer than Jobs

Forbes reports that Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is now worth $6.9 Billion topping Steve Jobs’ 2010 networth of $6.1 Billion. Interestingly enough, Jobs’ $6.1 Billion is one billion more than he had in 2009, meaning he netted a billion bucks in one year. Not bad for the guy who made the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

At least you can trust Jobs with your personal info, kinda.

To gauge the author’s knowledge, check out this statement: “It’s speculated that the Facebook phone with run on Google’s Android operating system, currently offered by Verizon (Apple has a deal with rival AT&T).” – Clearly someone familiar with the mobile landscape in the US.

[Source]

Google Engineer Fired for Spying!

I came across this news a few days ago about a Google Engineer hacked into Google services and spied on teenagers. The ability that Google employees can "hack" into Google's services worried me of what I should keep and delete in my Gmail.

Here is the link of the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20100915/cm_atlantic/roguegoogleengineersnoopsonteenssparkingprivacyfuror5038_1

Facebook - Selling Your Friends

I came across this very interesting article on BusinessWeek about how Facebook is expanding, and what they are doing in order to supposedly de-throne the current advertising juggernaut - Google. It makes a very good discussion on what should and should not be considered right in the online advertising world. Do you think it's right for Facebook to profit off your personal information and your friends? Also, where do you see the future in Facebook's advertising plans, and how do you feel about it?

We all use Facebook. It's important to know these things :)

Plug & Pray (a film about the ethics of AI)

I thought this film might be of interest to people, as it explores some of the ethical concerns around artificial intelligence. It is screening a couple of times at the Vancouver International Film Fest.

International Film Guide says, "Plug and Pray is a provocation, both to those who are afraid of the level of control computers have over our lives, as well as those who want it increased. An enthralling and chilling film."

Here is a write-up on the film.

Here is a trailer.

And here is the ticket info.

Hope to see you there!
-Zoey

Unethical Web Design.

I was talking to some friends yesterday about how poorly the Rogers website works even after their recent webdesign and hypothesised that it was done on purpose to try and get more money out of people. Then I came across this article about http://darkpatterns.org/ a site that collects unethical web-design patterns. In the presentation (linked from the article) they talk about a call for a "web-design code of ethics" so that designers and users can protest against companies when they use these designs.

Is there an ethical way to protest?

Saw this yesterday:

http://mashable.com/2010/09/18/4chan-mpaa-ddos-attack/

Do you think there is a better way for the members of 4chan to have protested against the MPAA instead of simply attacking and subsequently taking down the site for numerous hours? What about the creator of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, an application used to perform DoS attacks, was it for 'the better good' that it was released as an open source application?

Some recent news

Since it is of ethical importance for us scientists to be educating the general public about what we do, I figure I'd share some of the latest news on that front:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tightened+muzzle+scientists+Orwellian/3515345/story.html

Quoting the article: "There is no question that there is an orchestrated campaign at the federal level to make sure that their scientists can't communicate to the public about what they do," says Weaver, adding that the crackdown is seriously undermining morale in federal labs. "Science is about generating new knowledge and communicating it to others."

(This being far from the most recent government meddling in science, if anybody recalls the Statistics Canada debacle this summer.)

Dilbert Comic - Sept 15-16

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-15/
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-16/

A little humour...

Required Reading For Tuesday: What Broke My Father's Heart

We've been discussing the sinister side of technology and the grey antics of entrepreneurs.

But what about technology created with the best of intentions -- for nothing short of sustaining life itself? Take a quiet moment to read this touching article by a professional memoir writer.

What Broke My Father's Heart

Article from the New York Times, 20 June 2010

Article on the History of Facebook

Here is a link to the article on the history of Facebook, from Rolling Stone Magazine.

http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=32656944&site=ehost-live

Rolling Stone; 6/26/2008, Issue 1055, p64-71