Venezuela Shuts Down Internet, TV Stations To Stifle Protests

from the i've-seen-this-movie-before dept

At some point, governments around the world are going to start learning that attempting to stifle free speech and communication via protests and the internet is almost always going to backfire on the offending government. Previous iterations of this plotline have been demonstrated in Ukraine, Egypt, and several other Middle East nations that participated in the so-called "Arab Spring."

Well, welcome to South America, governmental hubris, because there are now reports of the government shutting down the internet in Venezuela, where protests against the government and threats of toppling it have been raging.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made note that Venezuelans working with several different ISPs lost all connectivity on Thursday of this past week. Users lost connectivity to the major content delivery network Edgecast and the IP address which provides access to Twitter’s image hosting service while another block stopped Venezuelan access to the text-based site Pastebin.

CONATEL director William Castillo suggests that the internet cuts were not due to the protests directly. CONATEL is the country’s media regulation network, and Castillo suggested via Noticias24 that online attacks were being waged. CONATEL, he suggests, blocked linkes "where public sites were being attacked."

Even though the attempt to shift blame for internet shutdown on outside hack attacks is a very common kind of government bullshit, it might just be believable, if only that same government wasn't also going around and shutting down television stations that were saying things the government didn't like. In the case of NTN24, a Venezuelan cable news channel, the government isn't even trying to pretend the shutdown isn't politically motivated.

Venezuela’s president said that a Colombia-based cable news channel was ordered to be removed from cable lineups in Venezuela because of its coverage of an antigovernment protest. President Nicolás Maduro said Thursday that the channel, NTN24, had tried to “foment anxiety about a coup d'état.” He said that he gave the order to pull the channel because “No one is going to come from abroad and try to perturb the psychological climate of Venezuela.”

No, no, of course not Senor Maduro, you're perfectly capable of perturbing the psychological climate of Venezuela all by yourself. As with Egypt, and Tunisia, and most recently Ukraine, this won't work. In fact, it's likely again going to have the opposite effect of provoking the protesters even more than they've been already. At some point the lesson will eventually be learned that in an era where free speech and citizen press have been expanded exponentially, attempts to shut both down won't be tolerated.

Perhaps President Maduro would like to speak with Viktor Yanukovych, if he wasn't in hiding from people on whom he attempted to put these exact same restrictions.

Filed Under: censorship, protest, south america, venezuela

Significant Concerns About TPP Raised Down Under

from the this-isn't-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

We've seen politicians in South America note some significant concerns about the TPP efforts, and it appears that some politicians on the other side of the Pacific have similar concerns about the agreement. Some Australian elected officials are starting to ask serious questions about Australia's participation in TPP. The full line of questions and answers from Senator Scott Ludlam to the lead Australian negotiator shows that TPP negotiators Down Under are similarly evasive as our friends over at the USTR. One bit of questioning seems particularly relevant: Ludlam notes that Australia already has trade agreements with nearly all of the participating countries, and questions why TPP is even needed. He specifically asks: "Is this not a case of doubling up somewhat?" The official answer? "No." No elaboration. No, nothing.

The Australian Digital Alliance (the other link above) goes a bit further and notes that the TPP negotiations appear to violate the Australian Prime Minister's explicit trade policy directive:

IP provisions should only be included in cases where a rigorous economic analysis shows that the provisions would likely generate overall net benefits for the agreement partners.

And yet no such analysis appears to have been done. In fact, when quizzed on the economic analysis behind TPP, the negotiator doesn't seem to think one should be necessary at all. Makes you wonder what they're hiding from.

One other point: as with the US situation, the Australian negotiator seems particularly insistent that no one -- even the minister in charge of trade -- see the document until it's completed. And, even then, he notes that the agreement will be 1,000 pages long -- meaning by the time it's done there will be so much crap in there that no one will suitably be able to dig through the whole thing to find the easter eggs inserted for the benefit of certain industry players. This is all the more reason to make the negotiating documents public, but of course that's not going to happen:

Senator LUDLAM: Are you aware of whether or not the foreign minister has seen the current negotiating texts for the agreement?

Mr McCormick : The Australian foreign minister?

Senator LUDLAM: Yes.

Mr McCormick : I do not believe he has.

Senator LUDLAM: Is that because he is relatively new to the job? Should he have? Will he?

Mr McCormick : No. The agreement is the responsibility of the minister for trade. Obviously, we have not got a text that is agreed; therefore, the text has not been shown to the foreign minister. It is a text that is under development rather than a text that exists at this moment. The negotiations are ongoing.

Senator LUDLAM: Has the trade minister seen it?

Mr McCormick : An FTA agreement, when completed, will be approximately 1,000 pages long. As I said, it is not an agreement that is on the table for anybody to have a look at. We are negotiating in different negotiating groups on text when we have not yet agreed on text. It is not something that exists physically where you can say, 'Here, have a look at the text.' That is not the way these negotiations proceed.

Senator LUDLAM: That is fair enough. Very few members of the public have seen the text, so we are all in the dark. I am just wondering to what degree the minister has been brought into the loop. Perhaps DFAT could share the anticipated economic benefits, or the justification, for permitting provisions in the IP chapter of the agreement restricting parallel importations.

Mr McCormick : There is no agreement on that outcome. We are involved in a negotiation in which different parties have different objectives, and we are discussing those, but there is certainly no agreement.

Senator LUDLAM: The reason I am referring to that-and the only reason we know about that-is that there was a draft text that was leaked to the public last year that included language on rigid parallel importation restrictions. Is that missing from the versions we are negotiating now?

Mr McCormick : What I can say is that the text of the agreement is confidential between the parties. I know there are claims that there has been text released. We do not talk about claims of that, but certainly nothing is agreed until all the current nine-or more if we move to 10, 11 or12-members have agreed to it. Nothing has a status until it has been agreed at the end of the negotiations, so anything that people talk about is purely speculation.

McCormick here is being disingenuous in the extreme. While there's no final document to release, it is absolutely possible to release the negotiating position of the Australian government and/or draft texts. Since this agreement is going to clock in at a complex 1,000 pages, that's all the more reason to let not just the public pick through it, but also the very government that McCormack supposedly is representing.

Is there some rule that if you've been put on the TPP negotiating team, you have to be obnoxiously insulting to anyone who dares question why such an important agreement is being negotiated without public input?

Filed Under: australia, scott ludlam, south america, tpp, ustr

Geohot Goes On Vacation; Sony Accuses Him Of Fleeing Legal Action

from the no-rest-for-the-weary dept

Sony continues its crazy, pointless and damaging attack on George Hotz (Geohot), the guy who jailbroke the PS3 to add back in functionality that Sony itself used to offer, but disabled. The latest move is to accuse him of skipping the country to South America, implying he took money raised in donations to flee. Geohot has responded by noting that it's Spring break and he's on a vacation that he planned months ago. Sony also freaked out about the computer equipment that Hotz recently was forced to hand over, saying that it had been sabotaged by Hotz. The company claimed that Hotz had "removed integral components." However, Geohot's lawyer pointed out that Sony was completely overreacting, noting that the hard drives just didn't have the controller cards attached, which is hardly sabotaging the drives.

Filed Under: geohot, george hotz, hacking, ps3, south america
Companies: sony