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Editors Note: Richard Fontaine, a Senior Advisor at the Center for a New American Security, is the co-author of Internet Freedom: A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age. Follow him @rhfontaine.

In its new Enemies of the Internet report, the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders depicts an Internet under unprecedented pressure from the worlds autocratic regimes. The study lists twelve such enemies, including Iran, North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia, and observes that an increasing number of governments are not content merely to take domestic steps to control online space. Freedom of expression on the Internet, the study notes, is no longer the sole preserve of dissidents, geeks and censors. Diplomats have followed in their wake. Internet freedom has become a foreign policy issue.

The report documents the ways in which the twelve countries and others have established a broad approach to online control. Internet and mobile phone shutdowns have become more commonplace in recent years, famously in Egypt during the Arab Spring but also in countries like Kazakhstan and parts of China. Internet filtering and deep packet inspection is on the rise, and government surveillance of users activity both online and offline is increasing. Governments hack dissident websites, spread propaganda on the web, and sometimes simply arrest problematic bloggers and online activists.

It is clear what many autocratic regimes want in the Internet: a controlled space, one that ideally permits their citizens to use online tools for economic activity and basic communication, but that will not permit the kinds of expression that might undermine government authority. The effort to build such a controlled space is no longer restricted to domestic measures, and for several nations it now comprises a significant diplomatic effort.

Indeed, there are several diplomatic avenues through which Internet freedom may become restricted. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell recently warned that dozens of countries are pursuing a new treaty to establish, in the words of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, international control over the Internet. The treaty would give governments new power to regulate the Internet via the UNs International Telecommunications Union. If successful, McDowell warns, this effort could upend the bottom-up, private-sector-driven model of the Internet and give way to greater government control over its structure.

In addition, diplomats are wrestling over definitions of terms such as online freedom and security in ways that impact freedom of expression. At an April 2008 U.N. conference that sought to clarify what represents aggression online, for instance, a senior Russian official argued that any time a government promotes ideas on the Internet with the goal of subverting another countrys government even in the name of democratic reform it should qualify as aggression.

Similarly, the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization which includes Russia and China in 2009 adopted an accord that reportedly defined information war, in part, as an effort by a state to undermine anothers political, economic and social systems.

There is push back. A key United Nations official last year issued a major report emphasizing the right of all individuals freely to use the Internet, and earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council held a Swedish-led discussion among member states on online freedom. These instances follow on initiatives by the United States and others to push in various international forums for an expansive definition of the right to online expression.

The United States and likeminded countries will need to become even more active on this front. Developing international norms in favor of Internet freedom is a long-term, global objective. Some countries that currently repress the Internet like China and Iran are unlikely to be moved by any of these diplomatic efforts; statements at the United Nations and policy declarations supporting Internet freedom are highly unlikely to change their current policies.

But promoting Internet freedom is not only a near-term challenge, and current efforts may pay off in the longer run. In addition, many countries have not yet fully developed their own Internet policies or thought through all of the implications of Internet freedom and repression even in the short run including states in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Shaping the behavior of those states should be an important goal of the United States and its partners.

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Internet Freedom: Diplomats Join The Dissidents, Geeks And Censors

30-03-2012 19:06 - Indie developers are cool. They think up an idea for a game. They develop the code and art for a game. And, when the game is complete, they sell the game all by themselves. This makes them cool because they do not rely on any sort of outside funding from a game publisher in order to promote their games through advertisements, or sell the games in retail boxes. With the evolution of the Internet, indie developers have had an even easier time of getting their game out there and into the hands of gamers. It is much easier and much cheaper to offer your game for download on a website than it is to get it on the shelves of a major retailer. The expenses saved by going the digital route can be put right back into making the game awesome, which makes for happy gamers. So does this mean that game publishers are obsolete? If so, why haven't developers ditched them yet? You can watch the entire live TLDR episode here: http

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Indie Game Developers vs Big Game Publishers - Video

Philips AE5430 ... has the biggest speaker.

After a shaky start, portable digital radios have come of age. Rod Easdown looks at some of the options.

FOR ME the infuriating thing about that first wave of digital radios to hit the market wasn't the scarily high prices or the total lack of knowledge of the salespeople, it was that none of them sounded particularly good. In almost all cases it was difficult to pick any difference between digital and regular FM.

But lately the sound quality has been increasing in leaps and bounds and flipping from regular FM to digital (and many of them have an additional FM tuner) reveals a marked improvement in the music. And, it has to be said, a marked decrease in volume.

In every one we listened to, the volume level plummeted with the switch to digital and getting a level sufficient to hear throughout a normal room necessitated cranking the volume up to max.

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Sangean DPR-69 ... ordinary sound for the price.

There's been another change, too. Maybe someone finally told the manufacturers that we like portable radios. Digital portables hardly existed back in the early days of the format but now they're all over the place and I've seen them as cheap as $44.

Thus, with a new season kicking off for the NRL and the AFL, we figured a comparison of them would be timely.

There are some points to bear in mind. The first is that digitals only work in the major cities, so if you take your digital portable to an exhibition game in, say, Wagga Wagga, Toowoomba, Launceston or even Hobart, you'll only get the FM stations, and FM stations tend not to broadcast footy. Digital broadcasting is coming to regional areas but by all accounts it won't be any time soon.

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Three contenders ... portable digital radios

MalSec's "friendly" defacement of The Security Centre's website points out the need to beef up web security.

A Cayman Islands security firm got a bit of unsolicited web security advice on March 30 from MalSec, a group of "malicious security" hackers who recently broke into a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate. But unlike some of the nastier site defacements done recently by members of Anonymous' #AntiSec collectiveincluding takedowns of two Federal Trade Commission sitesthe MalSec hackers left the site itself intact, posting only a replacement home page to advise the company, The Security Centre Ltd., of their vulnerability.

The hackers posted a new index.htm home page on Security Centre's site to override their PHP-powered site maintained by web design firm NetClues, which proclaims Security Centre "Cayman's premeir full-service provider of security services and systems."

"Whilst no harm was done to the original site," the hackers wrote on their replacement home page, "we urge you to secure your site before claiming to be 'the best of the best' in any kind of security. We were not firsttraces of previous security breaches were found." The page gave instructions on how to return the site to normal, and advised the company to "please oversee your security before somebody else with more harmful intent does. You can thank us later <3."

In a Twitter post attributed to MalSec, the group pointed to the defacement, and wrote "We aren't just madhakkars with no souls! That's for the gingerhackers. We see a hole we fix it. unless urlame." After claiming responsibility for a hack of a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate, the groupposted a file alleged to include the hashed passwords of senators and cracked passwords of the lawyers that work with them.

Ars Technica attempted to contact Security Centre about the defacement on Saturday by e-mail, alerting them to the fact that the site was still defaced. There was no response from the company, but the site was restored about an hour after the email was sent.

Photograph by Sean Gallagher

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Hackers politely deface security firm website, suggest fixes

You may recall (as I and my offspring do) the controversy about six years ago around the demotion of Pluto. There seemed to me to be reasonable arguments on both sides, and indeed, my household included pro-Pluto partisans and partisans for a new, clear definition of planet that might end up leaving Pluto on the exo-planet side of the line.

At the time, Neil deGrasse Tyson was probably the most recognizable advocate of the anti-Pluto position, and since then he has not been shy about reaffirming his position. I had taken this vocal (even gleeful) advocacy as just an instance of a scientist working to do effective public outreach, but recently, Ive been made aware of reasons to believe that there may be more going on with Neil deGrasse Tyson here.

You may be familiar with the phenomenon of offshore banking, which involves depositors stashing their assets in bank accounts in countries with much lower taxes than the jurisdictions in which the depositors actually reside. Indeed, residents of the U.S. have occasionally used offshore bank accounts (and bank secrecy policies) to hide their money from the prying (and tax-assessing) eyes of the Internal Revenue Service.

Officially, those who are subject to U.S. income tax are required to declare any offshore bank accounts they might have. However, since the offshore banks themselves have generally not been required by law to report interest income on their accounts to the U.S. tax authorities, lots of account holders have kept mum about it, too.

Recently, however, the U.S. government has been more vigorous in its efforts to track down this taxable offshore income, and has put more pressure on the offshore bankers not to aid their depositors in hiding assets. International pressure seems to be pushing banks in the direction of more transparency and accountability.

What does any of this have to do with Neil deGrasse Tyson, or with Pluto?

You may recall, back when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was formally considering the question of Plutos status, that Neil deGrasse Tyson was a vocal proponent of demoting Pluto from planethood. Despite his position at the Hayden Planetarium, a position in which he had rather more contact with school children and other interested non-scientists making heartfelt arguments in support of Plutos planethood, Neil deGrasse Tyson was utterly unmoved.

Steely in his determination to get Pluto reclassified. And forward looking. Add to that remarkably well-dressed (seriously, have you seen his vests?) for a Ph.D. astrophysicist who has spent most of his career working for museums.

The only way it makes sense is if Neil deGrasse Tyson has been stashing money someplace it can earn interest without being taxed. Given his connections, this can only mean off-world banking.

But again, what does this have to do with Pluto?

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Who profits from killing Pluto?