Monthly Archives: June 2009

These Are Also My Country of a Kazakhstan

Posted on by

I agree with Simon Chester, Borat was a “silly film.”  The real country of Kazakhstan is making headlines, and few people online are laughing.

The parliament in that country has approved a new law that would allow criminal prosecution for blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites.  Foreign sites considered unsuitable can also be blocked.

The government defends the recent move, saying it is intended for child pornography and extremist literature.  But critics cay that it can also be used to censor content on elections, strikes, demonstrations, and inter-ethnic strife.

The popular blog site, LiveJournal.com, is already inaccessible to people in the country. In 2007, a pro-opposition blogger was given an extended sentence for insulting the president.  Concerns of rendition to other states for the purposes of torture have also been raised.

Harout Semerdjian of UCLA accuses the country of a history of unlawful arrests of journalists and arson against Ak Zhaiyk, one of the largest independant publications in the country.

However, Kazakhstan is not part of the Axis, and will probably use these “untraditional methods” to oppress political groups in the name of fighting terrorism, so we probably won’t get as much coverage as recent political strife in Iran.  Unfortunately this situation is hardly limited to these two countries, but the instances we do hear about are selective based on unrelated political tensions.

The main human rights watchdog in Europe, The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has also offered up their criticism.  Perhaps slightly ironically, Kazakhstan is expected to assume the  chair of this same organization in the next six months.

Cross-posted from Slaw

Your Facebook Can Be Hacked

Posted on by

Despite all the warnings about using privacy settings we’ve been hearing about, here comes a stark revelation: your Facebook account can be hacked anyways.

FBHive, a new blog all about Facebook, premiered today with a revelation that they can access certain profile information, even if the user has made it private.

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch confirmed that they were indeed able to access his private information.

FBHive claim that it has taken over 15 days for Facebook to fix they security hole.  And they promise to give their secrets on how they do it within the next few days.

Yet another reminder that no matter how secure we think online data is, there are always ways to get around it.  And for some “computer terrorists,” it will be as simple as a walk in the park.

Cross-posted from Slaw

Update

Here’s a video on how they did it.

Posted in Uncategorized |

The Dark Site of Crisis Communications

Posted on by

The World Conference on Disaster Management (@WCDM) started today in Toronto, with a heavy emphasis on social media.  I attended the afternoon workshop sessions Boyd Neil (@BoydNeil) and Jane Shapiro of Hill & Knowlton on Best Practices in Crisis Communications.

The session started by stating that lawyers and accountants will almost always interfere with best practices in a crisis by wanting to wait before speaking to the public.  They typically want to collect all of the information to assess liability and costs to the company before deciding on a course of action.

I’ve said before that the new Apology Act in Ontario may change things in Canada, but it hasn’t been around long enough to know for sure.  The reality is that with new media, public citizens will often “report” on events via social media before first responders or reporters even arrive.  This can influence perceptions of a crisis enormously, and it is the perception of an event that will usually give rise to litigation after the fact.

If you don’t at least try to give your message, others will give it for you.

In addition to social media monitoring, the panel suggested that companies create “dark site,” pre-formatted style sheets and web pages prepared in advance to a disaster that can be quickly formatted and filled in for a specific incident.

Ed Lee, one of my PR contacts prior to law, explains,

A dark site is a pre-developed, non-public Web site that can be published to the live Web in the event of a crisis….

Typically, a dark site contains pre-approved messaging and documents such news releases, pictures, official statements and other background information, as the specific details will only be added right before their release.

A dark site can be placed on a separate domain, be a distinct section of the main organizational Web site or totally replace the original. It could be saved on any of the corporate servers or be kept securely on a preferred external device.

A dark site would also allow social media widgets like Twitter feeds for real-time updates. This pre-crisis planning stage might be a more appropriate place for attorneys to be involved, in providing input about the type of information that should be included.

But if lawyers really want to be involved during a crisis, there may be other areas they can assist with.  I asked the panel about moderating comments on a company Q&A dark site during a disaster.  Neil said that it should be done, but with full disclosure, ensuring that all privacy legislation about suspects, victims, customers, etc. is adhered to.

Lawyers shouldn’t be left out simply because litigation concerns from disclosure are less of a concern – because everyone wants a piece of the action when a crisis hits.

Cross-posted from Slaw.ca

Posted on by

Ashton Kutcher and Larry Tales from the Crypt King recently competed to see who was the most worthy of being waterboarded who could generate the largest following on Twitter. I won’t spoil the ignominious ending by telling you who won, in case you’re comfortable under your rock, but it wasn’t Larry King.

The contest – aside from serving as a not-too-subtle reminder that Western civilization is decaying more rapidly than I’d originally thought, revealed something about the nature of Twitter: this medium, which is supposedly about participating in conversations, runs the risk of being converted to just another broadcast marketing medium. As of today, Ashton Kutcher has over 2 million followers. CNN has 1.7 million followers. Do you think Ashton and CNN are participating in 3.7 million conversations? Between the two of them, they follow 175 people. By my count, that’s 175 conversations, not 3.7 million. They are broadcasting.

I don’t have any problem with people who have exponentially more followers than people they follow (I think a viable case for not liking Ashton Kutcher can be made without including his Twitter habits). After all, they are in the business of broadcasting.

While celebrities and media outlets may be excused for using the medium however they damn well please, thank you very much, we should not be so lenient with people who claim to be social pundits and new media experts. One of the most admired people in the social media sphere follows more than 7,300 people. SEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE. I don’t know seven thousand people. I daresay, in the sum total of my entire 35 years of existence, I’ve not even met seven thousand people. How conversational can you be when SEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE are talking at the same time?

You can’t be.

Programs like Tweetlater enable Twitterers to quickly build a seemingly impressive list of friends by automatically following everyone who follows you. Twollow searches for keywords you select and automatically follows people who use them – pick the right words and you can have an enormous list of people you follow. If many of these people use programs like Tweetlater to autofollow (and presumably they do)…. you do the math.

Artificially-inflated Twitter numbers facilitated by programs like these are starting to dominate the Twitterverse. Worse, this kind of automation suggests Twitter is reaching a sort of tipping point, where the usage of the medium is switching from one-to-one to one-to-many. Automation is a corrosive force in social media.