For the past few years, governments across the world have paid close attention to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There, it is said, we see the first glimpses of what warfare of the future will look like, not just in terms of weaponry, but also in terms of new technologies and tactics.

Most recently, the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran demonstrated not just new strategies of drone deployment and infiltration but also new vulnerabilities. During the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in the waters of the Gulf experienced repeated disruptions of GPS signal.

This clearly worried the Iranian authorities who, after the end of the war, began to look for alternatives.

“At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told Iranian media in mid-July. He added that the government was developing a plan to switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to BeiDou.

Iran’s decision to explore adopting China’s navigation satellite system may appear at first glance to be merely a tactical manoeuvre. Yet, its implications are far more profound. This move is yet another indication of a major global realignment.

For decades, the West, and the US in particular, have dominated the world’s technological infrastructure from computer operating systems and the internet to telecommunications and satellite networks.

This has left much of the world dependent on an infrastructure it cannot match or challenge. This dependency can easily become vulnerability. Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale — something that has worried governments around the world.

Clear message
Iran’s possible shift to BeiDou sends a clear message to other nations grappling with the delicate balance between technological convenience and strategic self-defence: The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end. Nations can no longer afford to have their military capabilities and vital digital sovereignty tied to the satellite grid of a superpower they cannot trust.

This sentiment is one of the driving forces behind the creation of national or regional satellite navigation systems, from Europe’s Galileo to Russia’s GLONASS, each vying for a share of the global positioning market and offering a perceived guarantee of sovereign control.

GPS was not the only vulnerability Iran encountered during the US-Israeli attacks. The Israeli army was able to assassinate a number of nuclear scientists and senior commanders in the Iranian security and military forces. The fact that Israel was able to obtain their exact locations raised fears that it was able to infiltrate telecommunications and trace people via their phones.

On June 17 as the conflict was still raging, the Iranian authorities urged the Iranian people to stop using the messaging app WhatsApp and delete it from their phones, saying it was gathering user information to send to Israel.

Whether this appeal was linked to the assassinations of the senior officials is unclear, but Iranian mistrust of the app run by US-based corporation Meta is not without merit.

Cybersecurity experts have long been sceptical about the security of the app. Recently, media reports have revealed that the artificial intelligence software Israel uses to target Palestinians in Gaza is reportedly fed data from social media.

Furthermore, shortly after the end of the attacks on Iran, the US House of Representatives moved to ban WhatsApp from official devices.

Western platforms not trusted
For Iran and other countries around the world, the implications are clear: Western platforms can no longer be trusted as mere conduits for communication; they are now seen as tools in a broader digital intelligence war.

Tehran has already been developing its own intranet system, the National Information Network, which gives more control over internet use to state authorities. Moving forward, Iran will likely expand this process and possibly try to emulate China’s Great Firewall.

By seeking to break with Western-dominated infrastructure, Tehran is definitively aligning itself with a growing sphere of influence that fundamentally challenges Western dominance. This partnership transcends simple transactional exchanges as China offers Iran tools essential for genuine digital and strategic independence.

The broader context for this is China’s colossal Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While often framed as an infrastructure and trade project, BRI has always been about much more than roads and ports. It is an ambitious blueprint for building an alternative global order.

Iran — strategically positioned and a key energy supplier — is becoming an increasingly important partner in this expansive vision.

What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new powerful tech bloc — one that inextricably unites digital infrastructure with a shared sense of political defiance. Countries weary of the West’s double standards, unilateral sanctions and overwhelming digital hegemony will increasingly find both comfort and significant leverage in Beijing’s expanding clout.

This accelerating shift heralds the dawn of a new “tech cold war”, a low-temperature confrontation in which nations will increasingly choose their critical infrastructure, from navigation and communications to data flows and financial payment systems, not primarily based on technological superiority or comprehensive global coverage but increasingly on political allegiance and perceived security.

As more and more countries follow suit, the Western technological advantage will begin to shrink in real time, resulting in redesigned international power dynamics.

Jasim Al-Azzawi is an analyst, news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor. He has presented a weekly show called Inside Iraq.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Tongan cybersecurity expert says the country’s health data hack is a “wake-up call” for the whole region.

Siosaia Vaipuna, a former director of Tonga’s cybersecurity agency, spoke to RNZ Pacific in the wake of the June 15 cyberattack on the country’s Health Ministry.

Vaipuna said Tonga and other Pacific nations were vulnerable to data breaches due to the lack of awareness and cybersecurity systems in the region.

“There’s increasing digital connectivity in the region, and we’re sort of . . . the newcomers to the internet,” he said.

“I think the connectivity is moving faster than the online safety awareness activity [and] that makes not just Tonga, but the Pacific more vulnerable and targeted.”

Since the data breach, the Tongan government has said “a small amount” of information from the attack was published online. This included confidential information, it said in a statement.

Reporting on the attack has also attributed the breach to the group Inc Ransomware.

Vaipuna said the group was well-known and had previously focused on targeting organisations in Europe and the US.

New Zealand attack
However, earlier this month, it targeted the Waiwhetū health organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. That attack reportedly included the theft of patient consent forms and education and training data.

“This type of criminal group usually employs a double-extortion tactic,” Vaipuna said.

It could encrypt data and then demand money to decrypt, he said.

“The other ransom is where they are demanding payment so that they don’t release the information that they hold to the public or sell it on to other cybercriminals.”

In the current Tonga cyberattack, media reports say that Inc Ransomware wanted a ransom of US$1 million for the information it accessed. The Tongan government has said it has not paid anything.

Vaipuna said more needed to be done to raise awareness in the region around cybersecurity and online safety systems, particularly among government departments.

“I think this is a wake-up call. The cyberattacks are not just happening in movies or on the news or somewhere else, they are actually happening right on our doorstep and impacting on our people.

Extra vigilance warning
“And the right attention and resources should rightfully be allocated to the organisations and to teams that are tasked with dealing with cybersecurity matters.”

The Tongan government has also warned people to be extra vigilant when online.

It said more information accessed in the cyberattack may be published online, and that may include patient information and medical records.

“Our biggest concern is for vulnerable groups of people who are most acutely impacted by information breaches of this kind,” the government said.

It said that it would contact these people directly.

The country’s ongoing response was also being aided by experts from Australia’s special cyberattack team.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Broadband satellite service provider Starlink is now being used in the Pacific but not always legally, for now.

In Vanuatu, border workers are confiscating equipment.

Telecom regulator Brian Winji said people using the service had signed up overseas — likely in Australia and New Zealand — and have brought the equipment into the country.

“They smuggle it into Vanuatu without customs knowing,” Winiji said.

“[Starlink] is not allowed to operate inside Vanuatu without getting a proper licence.”

Starlink was given a temporary restricted licence to operate after severe back-to-back cyclones battered the country. But this was only 20 units given to the National Disaster Management Office and it lapses by the end of April.

Anyone else using Starlink is breaking the rules.

Winji said Starlink had not fully applied to operate in Vanuatu and he does not know when they will be operational.

‘Future competitive environment’
Cook Islands telecommunications regulator chair Bernard Hill said regulators who were banning the use of Starlink might have an “overinflated view” of their importance.

“They feel slightly offended by the fact that this happens without their, ‘oh, you’re allowed to do that’. In deregulated markets, like Cook Islands, like New Zealand, the rule is we let you do it until there’s a good reason to say no,” he said.

“They approached me about a licence 18 months ago, they still haven’t resolved on their local structure but unlike the other regulators, I have authorised the roaming of devices purchased in New Zealand and Australia.”

Hill said he did not know the exact number of people using the service, but it has been enough to have a competitive influence on Vodafone Cook Islands — the nation’s biggest broadband provider.

“I can’t say Vodafone is happy about it but they are at least realistic about this being part of the future competitive environment and I believe they’re doing the best to cope with the challenge that presents them.”

In Fiji, Starlink has already been given a licence to operate but it has not yet set up the service locally.

The Telecommunications Authority chairperson David Eyre said it could be operational by the middle of this month.

He said people who had already brought Starlink equipment into the country would need to switch over to the local service when it was running.

“Starlink is in the process of finalising the operational procedures, processes and what not in preparation for launch, we are encouraged that they’re probably going to launch soon and when I say soon, probably early quarter two,” Eyre said.

Delivering high-speed internet
The company, owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, promises to deliver high-speed internet to the remotest regions by using thousands of satellites orbiting close to the planet.

Hill said Starlink and other low earth orbit satellite companies should be a good fit for the Cook Islands Pa Enua (outer islands) that struggle with poor communications infrastructure.

Eyre said remote connectivity in Fiji was a consideration for giving the licence.

“Coverage in those areas is probably one of the main reasons why we have licensed Starlink here in Fiji, to serve the remotest of the remote.”

In other Pacific nations, Starlink has become or is becoming available.

Papua New Guinea gave the service an operation licence at the beginning of this year and last month Samoa’s cabinet did the same.

Hill said he did not think Starlink and similar companies would make other forms of receiving internet irrelevant.

He said countries needed back up options in case something goes wrong — like the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haa’pai volcano eruption that destroyed Tonga’s internet cable.

Hill said as more Pacific economies rely on internet services, being cut off could be disastrous.

“From the point of view of redundancy and resilience having access to services from overhead as well as undersea is pretty important.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand pay-TV company Sky TV plans to cut some jobs in the country as it outsources roles to India and the Philippines, reports the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union.

Sky chief executive Sophie Moloney said the proposal would result in some of Sky’s work in technology and content operations being outsourced to experienced international provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), according to TVNZ’s 1News.

TCS is an India-based information technology services and consulting company.

In customer care, Sky TV said it would adopt a hybrid model, with one third of its team based in New Zealand and two-thirds in the Philippines (through Sky’s existing partner Probe CX Group).

It said the proposal would see “over 100 roles” retained in its New Zealand call centre, while “around 200” roles would be created in the Philippines to deal with “more straightforward” inquiries.

“Overall, the proposed changes would boost Sky’s customer service capacity by 40 percent across the two teams, driving better customer experiences and the ability to meet customer demand as it flexes,” said Sky in an announcement to New Zealand’s stock exchange last month.

Sky said the changes would result in “multi-million dollar permanent savings within two years”.

Sky TV provides pay television services via satellite, media streaming services and broadband internet services.

It has no connection with the UK’s Sky Group or Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The government of Tokelau has declared the results of the 2023 national general elections.

Voting took place on all three atolls, and also in the Apia office of the administration on January 23.

The final results for the election of 20 members of the General Fono, declared under 16.1 (b) of the Tokelau National Election Rules of 2022, are as follows:

Vote counting was challenging due to poor internet connectivity. The phone tower has also been playing up.

A government spokesperson said the election team was crowding around printers late on Thursday night waiting for votes to come through one by one.

RNZ Pacific has been told there was a “real buzz about Nukunonu”, the largest atoll in Tokelau on national election day – 30 people voted from home, including elderly.

Tokelau is a realm nation of New Zealand and also has an Administrator but the New Zealand government says it respects the traditional governance structures that are “integral to community life in Tokelau”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

REVIEW: By Pat Baskett

In the days before mobile phones and emails, there were telephone trees. They grew and spread messages like leaves, thriving on the fertile ground of common beliefs and support for a particular cause.

It worked like this: one member of a group phoned 10 others who phoned another 10, each of whom phoned 10 more. On and on . . . The caller was never anonymous, relationships were established — or you simply said, “no thanks”.

The task of spreading information, before the internet, was time-consuming and labour intensive. Photocopiers, which became widely used only in the late 1970s, replaced an invaluable machine called a duplicator. You cranked the handle, one turn for each page, hoping the paper wouldn’t stick. How long did it take to do a thousand?

Next came the mail-out — folding, stuffing envelopes, sticking on stamps if funds allowed, or delivering them by hand into letterboxes.

The process was convivial, the days were busy but there was always time. There needed to be, because the issue was urgent.

The Cold War, that period of perilous mistrust between the communist Soviet Union and the “free” West, led by the United States, engulfed us in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Barely a generation separated us from the end of World War II when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The mutually assured destruction (MAD) these weapons promised was a fragile pseudo peace. In our neighbourhood peace groups, we understood the devastation a nuclear winter would bring and we worked out the radius of death and damage from a bomb dropped on our own cities.

An essential step

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

The stockpile of nuclear weapons held by each side was more than enough to eradicate all, or most, life on earth — and it still is.

Those existential threats have a familiar ring, though the cause we face today adds another dimension. So far, the benefits of almost instant communication and dissemination of information haven’t enabled the world to devise for climate disruption what activists, uniquely in New Zealand, achieved — the 1986 nuclear weapons-free legislation.

Passed by the Labour government of David Lange, it prohibits not just weapons but nuclear-powered warships — including those of our former ANZUS allies, namely the United States.

There has never been any question of rescinding this act. It remains in safe obscurity — to such an extent that I wonder how many of our Gen X contemporaries are aware of its existence.

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

In 1984, 61 percent of the population were living in 86 locally declared nuclear-weapons-free zones. Academic activists came together to form Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) and Engineers for Social Responsibility (ESR – this group now focuses on the climate disruption).

The medical fraternity formed a local branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Extraordinary sleuthing talent
Much of the information which fuelled the work of all these groups was brought to light by the extraordinary sleuthing talent of one man. Owen Wilkes is described as ” . . . the intellect behind New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance” in a recent book, Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes international peace researcher, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa.

The book consists of 12 essays by friends and collaborators, themselves experts in their individual fields and who leave their own legacies of contribution to the knowledge that led to the anti-nuclear legislation.

They include physicist Dr Peter Wills who was instrumental in setting up SANA and Auckland University’s Centre for Peace Studies; investigative journalist and researcher Nicky Hager; and veteran peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater. Two contributions are by Wilkes’s colleagues at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo Norway, Dr Ingvar Botnen and Dr Nils Petter Gleditsch.

Wilkes spent six years from 1976 working in Oslo and also at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The work is edited by Mark Derby and Wilkes’s partner May Bass. While a traditional biography with a single author may have avoided the repetition of information, the various personal anecdotes and responses result in the portrayal of an unconventional, highly talented individual.

In his introduction, Derby sums up Wilkes’s life: “Although invariably non-violent, politically non-aligned and generally law-abiding, Owen encountered official opposition, harassment and intimidation in various forms as he became internationally known for the quality and impact of his peace research.”

Wilkes was born in Christchurch in 1940 and died in Kawhia in 2005. In his early adult years he worked as an entomologist on various projects supported by the US military, including at McMurdo base in the Antarctic. These, he discovered, were connected with a US military germ warfare project.

Using official information laws
His gift was to see through, and behind, the information government made public about our relationship to our official allies, essentially the US. To do this he used our own official information laws and the American equivalent, plus any public reports to congress and US budget reports he could lay hands on.

Rubbish bags also feature in a couple of accounts.

What now may be stored as megabytes of information consists of boxes and folders of carefully catalogued material, the bulk of which is lodged at the Alexander Turnbull Library (with information also at the university libraries of Auckland and Canterbury).

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

Wilkes documented how in many cases what was billed as civilian also had profound military implications. This was nowhere more clear than in the anti-bases campaign which Murray Horton chronicles — bases being sites in remote locations for monitoring or receiving satellite information, some of which new technology has rendered obsolete.

These include Mt St John near Lake Tekapo and Black Birch near Blenheim, and those still operating at Tangimoana in the Manawatu and at Waihopai, also near Blenheim.

Wilkes’s unconventional appearance and lifestyle — he famously wore shorts in sub-zero temperatures when skiing in Norway — made him a target for accusations of being a communist, a not uncommon slander of the peace movement.

Having sharp eyes
Maire Leadbeater, in her account of his long investigation by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, suggests his only “crime” was “to have sharp eyes and the ability to put two and two together”.

Yet there were more conventional sides to his interests. One was archaeology, beginning in his 1962 when he worked as a field archaeologist for the Canterbury Museum. This continued after he left the peace movement in the early 1990s and worked for the Waikato Department of Conservation in a variety of jobs including filing archaeological and historical records.

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

• Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa (2022). This article was first published by Newsroom is republished with the author’s and Newsroom’s permission. Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie is one of the contributing authors.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu is planning to create a version of itself in the metaverse, as a response to the existential threat of rising sea levels.

Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Simon Kofe, made the announcement via a chilling digital address to leaders at COP27.

He said the plan, which accounts for the “worst case scenario”, involves creating a digital twin of Tuvalu in the metaverse in order to replicate its beautiful islands and preserve its rich culture:

The tragedy of this outcome cannot be overstated […] Tuvalu could be the first country in the world to exist solely in cyberspace – but if global warming continues unchecked, it won’t be the last.

Tuvalu’s “digital twin” message. Video: Reuters

The idea is that the metaverse might allow Tuvalu to “fully function as a sovereign state” as its people are forced to live somewhere else.

There are two stories here. One is of a small island nation in the Pacific facing an existential threat and looking to preserve its nationhood through technology.

The other is that by far the preferred future for Tuvalu would be to avoid the worst effects of climate change and preserve itself as a terrestrial nation. In which case, this may be its way of getting the world’s attention.

What is a metaverse nation?
The metaverse represents a burgeoning future in which augmented and virtual reality become part of everyday living. There are many visions of what the metaverse might look like, with the most well-known coming from Meta (previously Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

What most of these visions have in common is the idea that the metaverse is about interoperable and immersive 3D worlds. A persistent avatar moves from one virtual world to another, as easily as moving from one room to another in the physical world.

The aim is to obscure the human ability to distinguish between the real and the virtual, for better or for worse.

Kofe implies three aspects of Tuvalu’s nationhood could be recreated in the metaverse:

• territory — the recreation of the natural beauty of Tuvalu, which could be interacted with in different ways
• culture — the ability for Tuvaluan people to interact with one another in ways that preserve their shared language, norms and customs, wherever they may be
• sovereignty — if there were to be a loss of terrestrial land over which the government of Tuvalu has sovereignty (a tragedy beyond imagining, but which they have begun to imagine) then could they have sovereignty over virtual land instead?

Could it be done?
In the case that Tuvalu’s proposal is, in fact, a literal one and not just symbolic of the dangers of climate change, what might it look like?

Technologically, it’s already easy enough to create beautiful, immersive and richly rendered recreations of Tuvalu’s territory. Moreover, thousands of different online communities and 3D worlds (such as Second Life) demonstrate it’s possible to have entirely virtual interactive spaces that can maintain their own culture.

The idea of combining these technological capabilities with features of governance for a “digital twin” of Tuvalu is feasible.

There have been prior experiments of governments taking location-based functions and creating virtual analogues of them.

For example, Estonia’s e-residency is an online-only form of residency non-Estonians can obtain to access services such as company registration. Another example is countries setting up virtual embassies on the online platform Second Life.

Yet there are significant technological and social challenges in bringing together and digitising the elements that define an entire nation.

Tuvalu has only about 12,000 citizens, but having even this many people interact in real time in an immersive virtual world is a technical challenge. There are issues of bandwidth, computing power, and the fact that many users have an aversion to headsets or suffer nausea.

Nobody has yet demonstrated that nation-states can be successfully translated to the virtual world. Even if they could be, others argue the digital world makes nation-states redundant.

Tuvalu’s proposal to create its digital twin in the metaverse is a message in a bottle — a desperate response to a tragic situation. Yet there is a coded message here too, for others who might consider retreat to the virtual as a response to loss from climate change.

The metaverse is no refuge
The metaverse is built on the physical infrastructure of servers, data centres, network routers, devices and head-mounted displays. All of this tech has a hidden carbon footprint and requires physical maintenance and energy. Research published in Nature predicts the internet will consume about 20 percent of the world’s electricity by 2025.

The idea of the metaverse nation as a response to climate change is exactly the kind of thinking that got us here. The language that gets adopted around new technologies — such as “cloud computing”, “virtual reality” and “metaverse” — comes across as both clean and green.

Such terms are laden with “technological solutionism” and “greenwashing”. They hide the fact that technological responses to climate change often exacerbate the problem due to how energy and resource intensive they are.

So where does that leave Tuvalu?
Kofe is well aware the metaverse is not an answer to Tuvalu’s problems. He explicitly states we need to focus on reducing the impacts of climate change through initiatives such as a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty.

His video about Tuvalu moving to the metaverse is hugely successful as a provocation. It got worldwide press — just like his moving plea during COP26 while standing knee-deep in rising water.

Yet Kofe suggests:

Without a global conscience and a global commitment to our shared wellbeing we may find the rest of the world joining us online as their lands disappear.

It is dangerous to believe, even implicitly, that moving to the metaverse is a viable response to climate change. The metaverse can certainly assist in keeping heritage and culture alive as a virtual museum and digital community. But it seems unlikely to work as an ersatz nation-state.

And, either way, it certainly won’t work without all of the land, infrastructure and energy that keeps the internet functioning.

It would be far better for us to direct international attention towards Tuvalu’s other initiatives described in the same report:

The project’s first initiative promotes diplomacy based on Tuvaluan values of olaga fakafenua (communal living systems), kaitasi (shared responsibility) and fale-pili (being a good neighbour), in the hope that these values will motivate other nations to understand their shared responsibility to address climate change and sea level rise to achieve global wellbeing.

The message in a bottle being sent out by Tuvalu is not really about the possibilities of metaverse nations at all. The message is clear: to support communal living systems, to take shared responsibility and to be a good neighbour.

The first of these can’t translate into the virtual world. The second requires us to consume less, and the third requires us to care.

Dr Nick Kelly, senior lecturer in interaction design, Queensland University of Technology and Dr Marcus Foth, professor of urban informatics, Queensland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Solomon Islands government has secured a US$66 million (NZ$106 million) loan from China for tech giant Huawei to expand the country’s telecommunications network.

The Solomon Islands National Broadband Infrastructure project is being described as a “historical financial partnership”.

It aims to see up to 161 telecommunication towers constructed around the country over the next three years.

It is the first major loan the country has received from Beijing since the signing of its security pact with China earlier this year.

The stadium infrastructure for the 2023 Pacific Games being constructed by China in the capital Honiara is purportedly all being paid for by grants from Beijing, a gift to the country after Taiwan cut diplomatic ties with Honiara in 2019.

The work is set to be funded through a 20-year concessional loan from the state-linked Bank of China.

The government hoped local telecom company contracts could be finalised by the end of this year so the project could get underway.

A hoped-for completion ahead of the Pacific Games in November 2023 would allow people who were unable to travel to Honiara to enjoy the games’ coverage via the internet, the government said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Aotearoa New Zealand makes up a small portion of the world’s population, yet the country is being hit by a relatively bigger share of cyber attacks.

Chances are, you’re familiar with the term ‘distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack’. Not because your organisation has been subjected to one, but instead, the recent numerous, high profile attacks on local and global businesses have captured your attention.

With cyber attacks ramping up across the globe and Aotearoa New Zealand an attractive target, every business—no matter the size—must put protections in place.

What’s a DDoS attack?

Designed to disrupt the normal function of a server, DDoS attacks harness compromised computers and hardware like Internet of Things (IoT) devices to flood the target or its surrounding infrastructure with traffic. This influx can slow down or overwhelm a website or service, denying access to genuine traffic.

DDoS attacks are on the rise across the world, with attackers using different styles of malicious activity to take down websites and even using them as an attempt to extort money. Businesses from all industries were victims of ransom DDoS (RDDoS) attacks in 2021, and Q4 saw a 29% YoY and 177% QoQ increase.

New Zealand is a prime target

Only three active undersea submarine cables connect Aotearoa New Zealand to the outside world. In comparison to the rest of the world, this relatively small number makes it easier for the country’s networks to be overwhelmed.

In fact, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reported an increase in criminal or financially motivated actors with a significant national impact or potential to cause serious harm in its 2020-21 threat report (27% compared to 14% the year prior).

A spate of high profile, local businesses experienced repeated DDoS attacks over the last 18 months—from Vocus to one coordinated attack on NZ Post, MetService, Kiwibank, ANZ and Inland Revenue.

However, it is critical to note that organisations of any size can fall victim to a DDoS or RDDoS attack. No business is immune, and the impacts can be significant.

How can businesses prevent these types of attacks?

Most organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand are still trying to protect themselves using traditional security measures that are no match for a burgeoning tide of bots, ready to be mobilised against them in a few strokes of a keyboard.

While this might sound daunting, implementing good cyber security protections against DDoS attacks does not need to be.

1. Speak with your network provider to understand what DDoS mitigation services they offer and how much traffic they can mitigate before your organisation is affected. This is an added service for some providers, while others might charge surge pricing in the unlucky instance that your website is bombarded with traffic during a DDoS attack.
2. Ramp up your front-line protection. Engage a provider with specially designed network equipment or a cloud-based protection service to mitigate your business from incoming threats. Here, it’s essential to consider the potential risk to your company and consider the scalability, flexibility, reliability and network size of potential providers. For example, large-scale attacks have the potential to take out on-site network infrastructure, while cloud-based solutions can scale when mitigating attacks.

3. Create a DDoS attack incident response plan. The overwhelming nature of a DDoS attack can take out multiple systems and services, not just your website. And in the moment, it’s easy for panic to set in. Be proactive, create a dedicated DDoS incident response plan, and conduct exercises to ensure its effectiveness.

4. Regularly patch your systems, software and hardware. Developers regularly release updates to decrease or eliminate vulnerabilities in software. Applying these patches to operating systems, applications, and all network-connected devices in real-time is the simplest way to mitigate a cyber security attack. There’s a reason why patching is CERT NZ’s top critical control to protect organisations from being breached—don’t leave your business wide open.

PART 2: WS storytelling in more detail

In part one of my article on White Supremacy (WS), I articulated some of the features of the WS network in Aotearoa and positioned this framework along a spectrum. I attempted to introduce readers to a WS spectrum so people could better understand and then respond to the phenomenon of supremacy in Aotearoa.

In the first article, I argued that one of the features of the emergent WS framework in Aotearoa involved the development of narratives. This second article seeks to explore the question of WS storytelling in more detail.

Moreover, this article seeks to situate WS narratives within a storytelling framework to enable different communities to read supremacist messages as stories, contextualise them, and respond to them — from within the various standing places different communities occupy in time and space in Aotearoa.

White Supremacists (WS) have been very effective in articulating their narratives in a variety of ways during the covid-19 lockdown period. WS narratives are being disseminated across a range of media simultaneously.

The stories have been deployed in alternative media broadcasts; emails; Facebook comments, links, memes, posts, stories, video of live events; internet sites; political party press statements, political party policy documents, and even non-mainstream television shows to disseminate their stories on a wide array of issues.

Whether short or long, serious, or humorous, visual, or written, WS advocates are telling their stories and teaching their “lessons”. Such stories are being affirmed and disseminated in freedom marches and anti-vax protests — as videos of such gatherings attest.

WS messaging is occurring across multiple platforms as tracked by Hannah, Hattotuwa, and Taylor of The Disinformation Project.

Disseminating narratives
WS individuals, groups, and organisations are disseminating narratives to push their agendas. These stories include ones that illuminate:

• contempt for Te Tiriti;
• rejection of power sharing between Pakeha and Māori as articulated in Te Tiriti;
• antagonism towards Māori communities historical experience of colonialism;
• privileging of a mythology of peaceful and just race relations between Māori and Pakeha- thereby simultaneously erasing the racism experienced by Asians, Africans, Pacific peoples, and others in this land;
• desire by political parties in policies to end “race”-based privileges for Māori in health, law, or at the United Nations;
• vilification of the NZ Labour Party as “socialistic”;
• attacks on Māori activist, community, political, and scholarly leaders — and attempts to separate leaders from their peoples;
• attacks on the United Nations and governments as “cabals of evil”;
• contempt for migrants and migrant rights;
• lauding of former US President Donald Trump, Republicans, or QAnon leader, “Q”; and
• intolerance and bigotry expressed towards Māori, Jews, Muslims, and other communities.

I have identified only 11 narratives that privilege WS in the list above. There are many other stories contributing to what is a diverse WS movement.

I cannot articulate a framework illuminating how WS advocates are using video, meme, comments, or policy documents aesthetics to tell their stories because I do not have the space or time here. But what I can offer is an analysis of WS storytelling to empower communities to “close read” the stories WS supporters are telling in their deployment of different media.

We need to develop frameworks to intercept, assess, and respond to these narratives, so communities have the means of defending their lives, mana, and the sanctity of their communal stories in the face of a barrage of WS storytelling.

African, Arab, Asian, Jewish, Māori, Pacific, Palestinian, and Pakeha communities are grounded in (1) rich cultures; (2) values; (3) community spirit; (4) interpretive traditions; (5) reading traditions; (6) oral and communal storytelling traditions; and (7) wisdom and insight.

Deploy learning
I invite readers from different cultures to deploy their learning when considering the following issues concerning WS.

The first narrative I identified regarding WS frameworks above is the story of the contempt for Te Tiriti. We could ask:

• is the story of contempt for Te Tiriti based upon fact?
• is this story true?
• what beliefs about Māori and Te Tiriti must people hold to accept this story as “true?”
• who are the authors of the story of contempt for Te Tiriti?
• where do the stories come from?
• has this story been told in Aotearoa before covid 19-lockdowns in 2021?
• where is this story circulating?
• is this story being used to organise opposition to Māori communities?
• does this story uphold the mana of Māori communities?
• what values underpin this story?
• is this story connected to WS narratives coming from the US, Europe, Australia, or other foreign countries?
• is this story connected to other WS narratives circulating in contemporary Aotearoa today?
• is this story one being used to attack Māori community rights?
• what is the plot of the story of contempt for Te Tiriti?
• are there variations to the plot of this story?
• who are the key characters of this story?
• who are the heroes and who the villains in this story?
• what lessons does the story teach us?
• does this story resonate with the community beliefs, cultures, and values of many different Aotearoa communities?
• does this story attempt to erase the narratives of Māori communities?
• does this story attempt to distort the experience of Māori communities?
• does this story prevent the emergence of Māori community narratives?
• does this story foster better relationships between Māori and other communities in Aotearoa? and
• is this story good for communities, Aotearoa, and the Pacific?

I hope different communities will develop their own reading strategies in response to these problems. Similarly, it is to be hoped that communities will also develop their own questions in response to WS narratives — and the “truths” embedded these stories.

Remembering Said’s words
The words of the Palestinian-American activist, commentator, scholar, and writer Edward Said are apt here. The late Professor Said once wrote in his famed essay, “Permission to Narrate”, that, “Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them. Such a narrative has to have a beginning and end…”

We should remember Said’s words as we defend the narratives of Māori and all other communities against the stories of WS.

Covid-19 lockdowns have brought hardship to the door of many folks in Aotearoa. Nonetheless, stories of community service, kindness, unselfishness, and care abound in Aotearoa today.

Narratives of community concern, fellowship, generosity, service, respect, and tolerance underpin the labour of many — particularly those working in the health sector. These narratives are being written by all the peoples of Aotearoa together.

Māori narratives of community service have been particularly inspiring during this difficult lockdown period. People should reflect upon whether the WS narratives uphold the dignity of Kiwis of all cultures — or whether these narratives uphold the most antagonistic features of settler colonialism in Aotearoa.

In conclusion, I have ancestry from different parts of the Moana (Pacific) as well as ancestors from Europe. I am as proud of my Highland Clan Stewart heritage today as I am of my other ancestors.

I did not know my Pakeha family well and felt ashamed and antagonistic towards this ancestry when I was younger. These feelings changed when I spent time with Pakeha family in the South Island.

I admire the staunch pride of my Scottish ancestors, especially those clan members who fought against English invaders. I believe there is much to respect in Pakeha culture.

I also believe Pakeha can be proud of their ancestors and still live beyond the ideology that says their culture is superior and should rule over Tangata Whenua in this land. Pakeha culture need not be white supremacist culture.

Pakeha and Māori can respect one another and move forwards as partners under Te Tiriti. This is a narrative worth supporting moving into the future.

Tony Fala wishes to acknowledge the lives and work of Amiri Baraka, Bantu Stephen Biko, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said as the inspiration for this article. Finally, Fala wishes to acknowledge his good friend Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks. Horrocks was a superlative anti-Vietnam War student protest leader, scholar, and teacher. He taught Fala, alongside generations of other students, how to close read works of culture, film, history, media, literature, and television with commitment, dedication, and alofa. Horrocks is also one of the humblest people the author knows. Fala holds a PhD from the University of Auckland in Media, Film and Television.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It took seven months for the New Zealand police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks – but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.

An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth “many times over” in countering violent extremists.

The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being “turned off”.

This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the last decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018.

These show police had no dedicated team before 2019 to scan the internet for threats – what is called an OSINT team, for “Open Source Intelligence”.

“The OSINT team was stood up quickly last year with seconded staff to ensure… [an] appropriate emphasis on this new capability,” an internal report from July 2020 said.

In fact, police began the planning at the end of 2018, then “accelerated” it after the attacks, but it took till late October for the team to start, and training began in November 2019, a police statement to RNZ last week said.

This was all well after a January 2018 official assessment of the domestic terrorism threatscap said: “Open source reporting indicates the popularity of far right ideology has risen in the West since the early 2000s”.

When the police OSINT unit was finally set up, there was no guarantee it would last.

“This team is not permanent,” the July 2020 report said.

“This has meant uncertainty for staff and our intelligence customers.”

‘Seriously compromises’
The team had no dedicated budget, and lacked trained staff.

It also was still looking for tools to “quickly capture and categorise online intelligence elements”.

“The lack of a strong OSINT capability seriously compromises our intelligence collection posture, especially in major events,” said the report last July.

This is the sort of scanning that can pick up threats on 4chan or other extremist sites.

Despite the shortcomings, the internet team’s worth had already been proven “many times over in recent months, particularly in the counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism space”, the report said.

Three people have faced extremist charges in the last year or so.

‘Turned off’
An April 2019 report said police would begin recruiting for OSINT analytics and other specialists in April-May 2019.

Police had lacked a tool to search the dark web – where the truly egregious chat and trades take place on the internet – so bought one.

But last July’s report said “currently we run the risk” of OSINT “being turned off unless there is a dedicated budget”.

In a statement on Friday, police told RNZ: “The OSINT team has been funded as part of the overall allocation for intelligence since it was established.

“Maintaining this capability is a NZ Police priority, and dedicated funding is being sought as part of next year’s internal funding allocation process (note, this is funding from within Police’s existing baseline).

“Additional supplementary funding was also received in the last financial year to support the work of OSINT.”

They had known they needed the team, they said.

“Prior to March 15, New Zealand Police used some OSINT tools to support open source research of publicly available information and had identified the requirement to develop a dedicated capability.

“The development of this capability was accelerated by the events of March 15.”

‘9/11 moment’
The OIA documents show the OSINT intelligence weakness was not an isolated example.

These warned police needed to avoid “a ‘9/11’ moment” – a situation where police obtain information about a threat but do not understand it due to a failure to analyse how the dots join up, as happened to CIA and FBI before the terror attacks on New York in 2001.

The solution was to have “a complete intelligence picture”.

But the July 2020 report then laid out very clearly how police did not have this:

“Recent operational examples conclude there is no current ability to access all information in a timely and accurate manner,” it said.

“Currently there is no tool that can search across police holdings [databases] when undertaking analysis of investigations.

“We are still depending on manual searches.”

‘Locked down or invisible’
“Sources are either locked down or invisible to analysts. Our intelligence picture is consequently incomplete.”

The 31-page, July 2020 report detailed the police’s ‘Transforming Intelligence’ programme, dubbed TI21, that was begun in December 2018 and meant to be complete by this December.

It indicated the right technology would not be in place – or in some cases even identified – for 6-18 months.

As things stood, “there are many single points of failure in our intelligence system”, the report said.

Threat information was broken up into silos, without a centralised document management system or powerful enough analytic and geospatial software to connect the threats.

A section of the 2020 report detailing problems within the police’s High-Risk Targeting Teams has been mostly blanked out.

The OIA documents describe what is and is not working, especially when it comes to national security and counterterrorism, but also around intelligence on gang and drug crime, family violence, combating child sex offending, and the like, at a point many months after both the mosque attacks and the beginning of the system overhaul.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded” – not just once but six times.

It showed weaknesses elsewhere when it came to OSINT: The Security Intelligence Service had just one fulltime officer doing Open Source Internet searching, and the Government Communications Security Bureau had few resources for this, too. It was not till June 2019 that the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee suggested “leveraging open-source intelligence capability”.

Police, unlike SIS, did not do an internal review of how they had performed in the lead-up to March 15.

They did get a review done of how they did 48 hours after the attacks, which praised their efforts.

Tools missing

Among the key systems police have been lacking are:

• A national security portal “to search across police holdings”
• A national security person-of-interest tool
• A child sex offender management tool
• Cybercrime reporting systems – a “strategic demand” that “police intelligence is unable to effectively report on it”

Police in a statement said they had now “achieved a number of milestones”.

Key among them was introducing a National Security Portal to manage persons of interest.

Also, they now had standardised ways of improving quality and a National Intelligence Operating Model to ensure a consistent approach.

“The OSINT team, a new case management tool and “refined intelligence support to major events… has increased the capability, capacity and resilience of Police Intelligence to reduce and respond to counter-terrorism risks”.

The “Transforming Intelligence” documents refer repeatedly to having three new Target Development Centres set up in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

However, this was jettisoned last year, while the overhaul did stick with introducing Precision Targeting Teams in August 2018, police said.

These teams aim to target “our most prolific offenders” early on “to reduce crimes such as burglary, robbery and other violent and high-volume offending”.

Pressure on
Police are plugging the holes in national intelligence while under pressure.

The volume of leads coming in had increased “considerably” since March 2019, the July 2020 report said.

“This has put increased strain on our people to manage cases of concern.”

The intelligence weaknesses have persisted under four police commissioners since the national intelligence system was set up in 2008.

Intelligence staff have been quitting at three times the average rate in the public sector, and the documents laid out urgent plans to improve career pathways and value the likes of field officers and collections staff more.

The July 2020 report said demand on workers at the Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre was “unsustainable”.

Deep-seated cultural problems across the police were recently uncovered by RNZ’s Ben Strang, whose reporting triggered an official investigation that found 40 percent of officers had been bullied or harassed.

The Transforming Intelligence 2021 programme covers 10 areas: Intelligence Operating Model, National Security, Open Source, Child Protection Offender Register, Critical Command Information, Collections, Intelligence Systems, Performance, Training and Intelligence Support to major events.

There is a stark contrast between how the police leadership described their intelligence systems, and what other documents state.

Timeline

2003

– The Government Audit Office underscores the importance of national security planning

– Police attempt to develop a national security plan deferred due to other priorities

2006

– Police appoint first national manager of intelligence – before this it was led at district level

2008

– New national intelligence model introduced, that lasts till 2019

2011

– March: Police national security intelligence review finds many gaps and recommends a slew of fixes

2014

– Police assess rightwing extremist threat nationally, the last time this happens before the end of 2018

2015

– Sept: Police review finds 2011’s shortcomings remain, recommends changes

– Police liaison officers begin work with SIS and GCSB

2018

– August: Precision Targeting Teams begin

– Nov/Dec: Police launch Transforming Intelligence overhaul, while praising the old model

2019

– March: Mosque terrorism attacks

– April: A report ramping up the intelligence overhaul celebrates the old model’s effectiveness

– Sept: Police approve high-level operating model for intelligence

– Oct: Police set up dedicated internet scanning team for first time

– Internet scanning team identifies counterterrorism threats

– Dec: Aim to set up professional development structure to reduce Intelligence staff attrition by 15 percent

2020

– National Intelligence Centre leadership team appointed

– Feb: Intelligence training plan in place; national workshops

– July: Stocktake of Intelligence overhaul finds many gaps

– Dec 2020-Dec 2021: Aim to identify new intelligence gathering and analysing tech, including a police-wide system

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A panel of judges at the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) has granted a lawsuit filed by civil society groups against the Indonesian government’s decision to impose an internet blackout during weeks of protests in Papua and West Papua provinces last year, declaring that such a move violated the law.

The petitioners – the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) and the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), among other groups – filed a lawsuit against President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and the Communications and Information Ministry in January.

They said the blackout, which officials argued was put in place to prevent fake news from spreading, was flawed in authority, substance and procedure.

READ MORE: Blackout lacks ‘substance, procedures’: Jokowi sued over govt-imposed internet ban in Papua

“The court declares [the internet blackout] was a violation of the law by government bodies or officials,” the presiding judge said reading the verdict during the hearing yesterday, as reported by YLBHI activist M Isnur through his Twitter account, @madisnur.

The judges argued the government had imposed the internet blackout without the prior declaration of a state of emergency; therefore, violating the 1959 State of Emergency Law.

The bench said the government failed to prove during the trial that Indonesia was in a state of emergency that required authorities to shut down the internet.

Judges also said any decision that limited people’s right to information should be made in accordance with the law and not merely based on the government’s discretion.

Use Criminal Code for fake news, says bench
The government initially claimed that its move to shut down internet access across Papua was in line with the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law. However, judges said the law could only be enforced to block access to electronic information and documents violating the law, not the entire internet.

The bench also argued that fake news should be handled by using provisions in the Criminal Code or blocking the accounts spreading such false information, rather than shutting down internet access.

The petitioners lauded the court for the verdict. “The verdict also opens the possibility for affected parties to sue the government and ask for compensation,” Isnur tweeted.

The government throttled back internet access in parts of the country’s easternmost provinces on August 19, 2019 between 1 pm and 8:30 pm shortly after widespread protests escalated in the regions in response to incidents of racial abuse suffered by Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java.

According to the lawsuit, the government imposed a blackout between August 21 and September 4, affecting 29 cities and regencies in Papua and 13 cities and regencies in West Papua.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Michael Andrew

Social media and tech industries have been replicating the ugliest aspects of capitalism from the 1800s, according to an AUT computer science lecturer.

Associate Professor Tony Clear says that social media and tech executives are taking advantage of unregulated markets in a similar way as wealthy industrialists or “robber barons” who exploited abundant resources and cheap labour in the 19th century.

Only now according to Clear, the resources aren’t gold, coal or silks managed out of London or New York. Now it’s data out of Silicon Valley.

READ MORE: Bring ethics into global smart tech, warns UN cyber expert

“The world of the robber barons has come back to life again with data as the gold dust.”

While the resources might have changed, he says the masses of “manipulated” people are still needed to turn the cogs and drive the profits of the giant digital machine.

“They’re manipulating us through their algorithms. The more we use their platforms, the more we give them, the more they can know about us, the more they can manipulate and control our behaviour.”

“I don’t think it’s a far deal.”

A editor and columnist for computer education magazine ACM Inroads, Clear has written extensively on the flaws in the tech and computing sectors.

He says a lack of ethics throughout the industry, coupled with rampant growth and innovation have made social media platforms dangerous environments where hate – such as that which lead to the Christchurch Mosque Attack – can fester and spread rapidly.

Letter to PM

Which is why after that atrocity, he penned a letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office urging for a “regulatory regime” to be imposed on social media platforms in New Zealand.

While the “robber barons” comparison is not a new one, Clear believes that regulation is key to moderating the potentially dangerous whims of industry heads.

“Because these guys [social media executives] have no moral base we need to regulate the hell out of them,” he says.

Governments appear to have taken steps on this. At the May 15 “Christchurch Call” in Paris, Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron implored social media platforms to take more of a hand in regulating their content.

It’s not as simple as just asking however, as according to Clear, few industry heads actually know what harmful or bigoted content looks like.

“They don’t know the difference between free speech and hate speech,” he says.

“They neatly wrap it around the US constitution and freedom of speech idea which means you can say any hateful bloody thing that you like.”

While globally Facebook deletes 66,000 posts per week which breach its own definition of hate speech, Clear argues that the platform hides behind the argument that it is not a publisher and does not need to take a strong moral position like newspapers would.

Domestic regulation

This grey area with freedom of speech is the reason some countries are regulating platforms based on their own laws.

Massey University’s Professor Paul Spoonley is an advocate of such a move. An expert on hate speech, he doesn’t think the “Christchurch Call” will make much difference. However, he praises some European countries for already taking the initiative and regulating social media platforms based on domestic law.

“See what the Germans have done which is quite successful. The ethics is not that of Facebook, it is that which has been deemed important by an individual country, in this case Germany,” he says.

Introduced in January 2018, the German law as known NetzDG puts the onus on Facebook and Twitter to differentiate between hate speech and free speech, requiring them to remove any “obviously illegal” hate speech from their sites within 24 hours or face a potential 50 million Euro fine.

As a result Facebook now has 1200 reviewers based in Essen and Berlin deleting at least 15,000 posts each month in Germany.

While regulation appears to be the most obvious tool to fix the tech sector’s ethical vacuum, there is one option that targets the root of the issue. And it starts in the universities.

Ethics in schools

Clear says that young computer science students need to be exposed to more “social good” or ethics papers which can help lay down sound moral foundations on which they will build their careers.

“Its about teaching young computer scientists that there is a bigger world than what they see technically,” he says.

This comes with challenges however.

Along with other leading academics, Clear wrote a paper on value-driven computer science education. It found that many students do not see a link between computer science and societal benefit as they would in careers like nursing and teaching. This also discourages more women from enrolling in computing courses.

“Many avoid taking CS classes because they do not perceive a computing career as having the power to do good and make a difference,” the paper read.

It also read that if there are papers on ethics or social good available, they are usually not introduced until the third or fourth year of studies, long after many students with such inclinations have become discouraged and dropped out of the courses.

Wellington-based computer programmer Oliver Bridgman agrees, saying he couldn’t recall many ethics papers during his studies a decade ago.

“If they were there they were optional and only made up about 5 of 200 points” he says.

He too, draws comparisons between low and mid-level computer science workers and the proletariat of old.

“In my opinion the coders on the front lines are basically your coal miners in the early 1900s except now they get paid a ton more so have to care even less.”

“So your real ethics conundrum is the money behind it all, which is almost always driven by the same capitalism.”

‘Careless’ code

Senior software developer Alex Frere expressed a similar opinion, citing such incidents as the recent Boeing 737 jet malfunction as a result of carelessly written code.

“It’s staggering really that no real code of ethics, or industry standard regulation exists across the tech sector, despite how deeply it’s rooted in modern society.”

However, he points out that there are big players addressing the ethics issue within the industry such as Robert Martin, or Uncle Bob – renowned as one of the fathers of computer science.

“Uncle Bob has coined a bullet point list called the “Programmers Oath”,” Frere says.

“It’s of a similar vein to a doctors Hippocratic Oath, or a lawyer being sworn in after passing the bar.”

While Frere couldn’t recall much ethics being taught in his university course, he hopes that more grassroots teaching along with an increased focus on societal good from an “enlightened youth” will eventually revolutionise the industry.

Industry changes

Such changes are already taking place, with Facebook reportedly introducing artificial intelligent to block and remove violent content like the video that was live streamed from the Christchurch Mosque Attack.

According to Tony Clear, these types of changes are inevitable as more end users begin to comprehend the insidious perils of technology and the price that must be paid to enjoy it.

“We’ve got a pact with the devil at the moment,” he says.

“But I think the people realise when they’re being exploited.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

A West Papuan journalist, editor and media freedom advocate has lodged a protest to the United Nations about Indonesia’s internet blackout as more protests reportedly spread across the Melanesian region, including Wamena in the highlands.

Victor Mambor and Tabloid Jubi have made the protest with the help of human rights lawyers and he appealed through Pacific Media Watch for the Pacific media to “spread information about the appeal”.

Indonesian authorities claim the internet gag has been necessary to stem “fake news” which it blames for the rash of Papuan protests over the past week, with at least one death and dozens injured.

WATCH VIDEO: Protest video from Andrew Johnson

Mambor was himself the target last week of a hacker named “Dapur” who was accused by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) of maliciously “doxing” his social media web data.

The journalist group issued a statement saying that a fake Twitter account had “disseminated an unfounded attempt to discredit and intimidate” Mambor, who is a national organiser for AJI.

“We consider that what Victor has done through his media is the standard thing done by the media, which is to convey information as objectively as possible and publish it after going through a verification process,” the AJI statement said.

The AJI reminded social media users – and the security forces – that journalists carrying out their profession were protected by Press Law 40.

Hampered by blackout
Mambor said the ability of Papuan journalists to report on the protests had been hampered by the internet blackout.

RNZ Pacific reported earlier today that Victor Mambor had filed an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, David Kaye.

The Communications Ministry said blocking of the internet would continue until the Papua region was “absolutely normal”.

Mambor said the blockage violated international human rights law.

“When we talk about the ability of journalism to send the real true situation about West Papua,” he said.

“But now we cannot do it. There’s much information from the road. They send it to me, but we cannot clarify or cannot verify the information. There is a problem for journalism.”

The block has also restricted the people’s right to mobilise, RNZ Pacific reported Mambor saying.

‘Discrimination against Papuans’
“I think it’s a kind of discrimination against West Papuan people. The authorities should look for perpetrators who say ‘monkey’ to our people. They should arrest them, not block the internet.”

Mambor said people could generally tell the difference between hoax and accurate news coverage.

His appeal, made through the human rights lawyers Jennifer Robinson and Veronica Koman, also claims the internet blocking fundamentally violates the rights of all West Papuans,” RNZ Pacific reports.

“We appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur, and to the UN Human Rights Commissioner Michele Bachelet, to raise our concerns with the Indonesian government about the military crackdown and internet blocking in West Papua,” Robinson said.

She also urged the UN to call on Indonesia to ensure that Mambor and West Papuan journalists were able to report “without fear of intimidation and harassment”.

The government has deployed 1000 extra military and police to Papua, as some of the protests turned violent.

Local media outlets have been restricted in their ability to send photographs and videos of the protests.

The Jakarta Post reports that legal experts have demanded the police prove that shooting tear gas and arresting 43 Papuan students at a dorm in Surabaya on August 17 without an investigation was “necessary” just because the police suspected there were “certain items” inside the dorm.

This was the incident that triggered the widespread protests.

East Java police spokesperson Frans Barung Mangera said on Friday in Surabaya that an internal police investigation carried out late last week revealed that none of the personnel had violated standard operating procedures by using tear gas.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and other global media groups have demanded Indonesian authorities immediately restore internet access to Papua region.

The Pacific Media Centre has also condemned the internet blackout, with director Professor David Robie saying the authorities have “inflamed’ the situation with the ban by encouraging misinformation and rumours.

“Papuans, and indeed everybody, are entitled to free and unfettered information about the crisis and the reports of human rights violations,” he said.

The Guardian also reported on the expected further wave of protests in response to the racial slurs.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ

The New Zealand Herald’s new premium paywall could turn readers to digital competitor Stuff, according to Auckland University of Technology communications lecturer Dr Merja Myllylahti.

The Herald started charging for some of its content at the end of April; a move many in the industry viewed as risky.

In fact, the first full month of digital news websites’ audience numbers since the paywall was introduced showed the Herald dipping and Stuff gaining in both unique viewers and page views.

However, the paywall has since yielded positive results with 10,000 people subscribing to the premium content within the first six weeks.

READ MORE: NZ Herald launches premium paywall – how will it impact on other media?

A Pacific Media Centre contributor and co-director of the Journalism Media and Democracy (JMAD) research centre at AUT, Myllylahti said the early sign-ups bode well for the paywall, but the Herald will need to keep a close eye on the numbers over the next couple of months.

“It’s encouraging early signs, but we have to be careful because when that two month offer runs out, a lot of people might have taken that offer for two months, and then they might drop out,” she says.

10,000 is also the paper’s first-year goal.

“We’re obviously thrilled,” said Herald editor Murray Kirkness.

“I think people now understand that if you want something you now have to pay. For a long time in the digital world that perhaps wasn’t the case.

“In the news sense, no matter where you look around the world – certainly in the western world – it’s now almost the norm to have some paywalled content rather than it all being free,” he says.

Annual subscriptions to the paywall cost $199, or readers can pay $5 per week to access the premium content. For the first couple of months the Herald is offering a discounted rate; half price access, as a sweetener to get people on board.

Just over a third of the current 10,000 subscribers signed up for a whole year, leaving two thirds paying per-week.

“We’re obviously aware of churn, and that’s something that any subscription model has to deal with every day,” said Kirkness.

“Of course, we’ve had subscribers for a very long time in terms of print… so we’re well used to managing that business arrangement.”

The Herald has opted for a soft paywall, so most of its stories remain free to readers.

However, in New Zealand and around the world newsrooms are trialling other models too.

Newsroom.co.nz has both paywalled content in its Newsroom Pro section, and asks for donations to continue its journalism. The National Business Review requires readers to subscribe to read its content.

Internationally, the New York Times and Washington Post let readers view a set number of articles a month before bringing up the paywall. Like Newsroom, The Guardian newspaper – which is run by a charitable trust – asks readers to support its journalism by making donations.

This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz