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Date: Tue 30 November 2010
A unique chance to see Cardboard Citizens' new Forum Theatre play, 'Or Am I Alone?'. Written by Lizzie Nunnery and directed by Tony McBride & Adrian Jackson.
Suzanne wants to bury her grief and find freedom. Lucy wants to be coping, even if everything is falling apart. Daniel wants to keep his family afloat, but as his business sinks the one thing he can't do is tell the truth. Three very different characters battle to overcome thier common demons in a play about deception, pride and addiction.
**** '....A rare theatrical treasure' (The Telegraph on 2009's Mincemeat)
'A theatre company that must surely rank as being amongst the most genuinely life-changing in the UK' (What's on Stage)
Event Type Theatre Dedicated event Home series Event venue The Human Rights Action Centre Time 7.00pm Website http://www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk Price Free of charge Online tickets Book this event
Copyright © Amnesty international, UK 2008. Amnesty International UK is a company limited by guarantee.
Registered in England no 01735872, registered office
The charity number for Amnesty International UK Section Charitable Trust is 1051681
Monday, 29 November 2010
AIUK : Performance: 'Or Am I Alone?' by Lizzie Nunnery
For Media - Girl Effect
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the Girl Effect, n. The unique potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world.
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Girl Effect: first we need to shift our mindsets « Antidote
Girl Effect: first we need to shift our mindsetsNovember 29, 2010, 3:02 pm
Filed under: Africa, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, Girl Effect, Nike FoundationOn Friday I paid a visit to the Girl Effect folks at the Department of International Development. My project for the Nike Foundation is pretty much done and delivered, and I wanted to see how they’re doing.
One thing is clear: to make a difference for girls in countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, we need to shift our mindsets. Talking about “girl empowerment” and individual ambition doesn’t connect in such a communitarian culture.
But this will be a struggle. Our Western impulse is to tell girls “you can do it” and “stand up for your rights”. But to a girl in rural Ethiopia, this sounds very foreign, and jars with their emotional connections to family and community.
Our cultures are massively different. The Hofstede scale measures various cultural dimensions, including individualism, as part of his “cultural dimensions” work. Some example individualism scores are given below.
Even compared to communitarian cultures like India and Japan, Ethiopia has a highly collectivist society. This effects the way girls think about the world, the way they learn and communicate, the values they hold. Life isn’t so much about “I”, it’s about “We”.
When I was working in Asia, I watched this clash of cultures play out in the battle between Nike and Adidas. Nike were struggling to keep up with the growth of Adidas across the region, Nike’s communications emphasized individual performance, character, flare and inspiration. Adidas’ communications was rooted in practice, perseverance, teamwork, craft – and this had a more natural cultural resonance.
These two outdoor ads are from Adidas’ Beijing 2008 campaign. They use imagery that appeals to a highly social mindset – it’s about collective effort, not individual achievement:
It’s something we need to dwell upon. Here’s some advice I received when I was in Africa:
“It’s a very Western approach to think you can “target” a girl in isolation from her family, based on an individualistic view of society which doesn’t apply here. Singling out a girl in a family can have distorting affects on the family”.
“Certain levels of empowerment can be perceived as disrespectful to existing traditional communities. We may put girls at risk by doing this too fast”.
“Singling out girls can arose the suspicion of families and communities, and even hostility. Girls themselves may find it confusing, being targeted directly”
There were plenty of findings, ideas and insights coming out of our trip to Africa, but if there’s one over-riding message, this would be it.
We need to shift our mindsets. The Girl Effect message should move from “self empowerment” to “community empowerment” – cultivating leadership within girls, in the contexts of their communities.
PS: a footnote on Rwanda
Rwanda is a lush and beautiful country. The north – equatorial forests and active volcanoes – is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. But it’s hard to visit Rwanda without sensing the country’s recent history.
Before I visited, I deliberately avoided taking in much information about the genocide. Since, I’ve read an extraordinary book on the subject, which I’d recommend to anyone interested: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch.
On Friday there was a demonstration outside the department, Rwandan exiles against the UK’s support for President Kagame’s government, which stands accused of genocide in Congo. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of this, but it’s a chill reminder of broader context.
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The Girl Effect
2008
What has happened with this project since then?
Let me know if you know anything new
Cheers
Mark
How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked | World news | guardian.co.uk
US soldier Bradley Manning, left, who is accused of stealing the classified files and handing the database to the WikiLeaks website of Julian Assange, right. Photograph: Associated Press/AFP/Getty Images
An innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year. The device is so small it will hang easily on a keyring. But its contents will send shockwaves through the world's chancelleries and deliver what one official described as "an epic blow" to US diplomacy.
The 1.6 gigabytes of text files on the memory stick ran to millions of words: the contents of more than 250,000 leaked state department cables, sent from, or to, US embassies around the world.
What will emerge in the days and weeks ahead is an unprecedented picture of secret diplomacy as conducted by the planet's sole superpower. There are 251,287 dispatches in all, from more than 250 US embassies and consulates. They reveal how the US deals with both its allies and its enemies – negotiating, pressuring and sometimes brusquely denigrating foreign leaders, all behind the firewalls of ciphers and secrecy classifications that diplomats assume to be secure. The leaked cables range up to the "SECRET NOFORN" level, which means they are meant never to be shown to non-US citizens.
As well as conventional political analyses, some of the cables contain detailed accounts of corruption by foreign regimes, as well as intelligence on undercover arms shipments, human trafficking and sanction-busting efforts by would-be nuclear states such as Iran and Libya. Some are based on interviews with local sources while others are general impressions and briefings written for top state department visitors who may be unfamiliar with local nuances.
Intended to be read by officials in Washington up to the level of the secretary of state, the cables are generally drafted by the ambassador or subordinates. Although their contents are often startling and troubling, the cables are unlikely to gratify conspiracy theorists. They do not contain evidence of assassination plots, CIA bribery or such criminal enterprises as the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan years, when anti-Nicaraguan guerrillas were covertly financed.
One reason may be that America's most sensitive "top secret" and above foreign intelligence files cannot be accessed from Siprnet, the defence department network involved.
The US military believes it knows where the leak originated. A soldier, Bradley Manning, 22, has been held in solitary confinement for the last seven months and is facing a court martial in the new year. The former intelligence analyst is charged with unauthorised downloads of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad. He is suspected of taking copies not only of the state department archive, but also of video of an Apache helicopter crew gunning down civilians in Baghdad, and hundreds of thousands of daily war logs from military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." He said that he "had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months".
Manning told his correspondent Adrian Lamo, who subsequently denounced him to the authorities: "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public ... Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format ... It's beautiful, and horrifying."
He added: "Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain."
Manning, according to the chatlogs, says he uploaded the copies to WikiLeaks, the "freedom of information activists" as he called them, led by Australian former hacker Julian Assange.
Assange and his circle apparently decided against immediately making the cables public. Instead they embarked on staged disclosure of the other material – aimed, as they put it on their website, at "maximising political impact".
In April at a Washington press conference the group released the Apache helicopter video, titling it Collateral Murder.
The Guardian's Nick Davies brokered an agreement with Assange to hand over in advance two further sets of military field reports on Iraq and Afghanistan so professional journalists could analyse them. Published earlier this year simultaneously with the New York Times and Der Spiegel in Germany, the analyses revealed that coalition forces killed civilians in previously unreported shootings and handed over prisoners to be tortured.
The revelations shot Assange and WikiLeaks to global prominence but led to angry denunciations from the Pentagon and calls from extreme rightwingers in the US that Assange be arrested or even assassinated. This month Sweden issued an international warrant for Assange, for questioning about alleged sexual assaults. His lawyer says the allegations spring from unprotected but otherwise consensual sex with two women.
WikiLeaks says it is now planning to post a selection of the cables. Meanwhile, a Guardian team of expert writers has been spending months combing through the data. Freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke obtained a copy of the database through her own contacts and joined the Guardian team. The paper is to publish independently, but simultaneously with the New York Times and Der Spiegel, along with Le Monde in Paris and El País in Madrid. As on previous occasions the Guardian is redacting information likely to cause reprisals against vulnerable individuals.
Global Voices in English » Collaboration against Corruption: Upcoming Events
This post is part of the Technology for Transparency Network where we research technology that promotes accountability and transparency worldwide· All posts
This post also available in:
македонски · Настани за колаборација против корупција Español · Colaboración contra la corrupción: Próximos eventos 繁體中文 · 科技對抗貪腐計畫近期活動 简体中文 · 科技对抗贪腐计划近期活动 srpski · Saradnja protiv korupcije: predstojeći događaji
- “Openness and Collaboration” by PSD under an Attribution Creative Commons License version 3.0 Unported
Networked citizens around the world have today a unique opportunity to create a global front against corruption by embracing and adopting free culture freedoms. Applying free culture principles in the fight against corruption, increases its effectiveness and enables better informed policies and a coordinated effort across national boundaries and areas of interests.
As the recent 14th International Conference Against Corruption in Thailand stated, to foster the transparency agenda it is necessary to restore people’s trust and rebuild the credibility of institutions. Those who fight against corruption should go beyond expressions of political will to concrete action. Also, it is crucial to engage youth, as pointed out by Bunga Manggiasih, one of the international young journalists who collaborated to cover the event. One of the best bridges to connect and engage youth in the use — and the invention — of technology to fight corruption is to organize efforts to connect different communities and take action. Several of these events are taking place this week:
Open Gov Data Camp in London
Open Gov Data Catalogues available to any UK citizen offer an unprecedented opportunity to achieve more open, accountable, responsive and efficient approach against corruption and the culture of secrecy that prevailed in the past. OpenGov Data Camp will take place November 18-19, 2010, with representatives from different countries attending and holding discussions around around key legal, technical, and policy issues related to opening up government information. The camp will also offer a space for for developers and hackers to make things, learning from each other and from their mistakes. You will be able to follow on Twitter (#ogdcamp) and via live notes/discussions on the OKF Etherpad site.
Personal Democracy Forum Latin America in Chile
As you can see in on the Technology for Transparency Network map, Latin America is one of the most vibrant regions in the World, where initiatives to engage citizens, promote transparency and fight corruption are flourishing and connecting their numerous digital natives, creating a bridge for them to better understand how their governments work, why transparent elections and the funding behind political parties matter, and why they should care about their parliaments, among other issues. On November 18 -19, 2010, @PDFLatAm will take place in Santiago, Chile. Latin American leaders and activists will share the new developments in the region and will learn from peers at projects based in the US, Africa and Europe, including Rising Voices former Director David Sasaki and Ushahidi co-founder Patrick Meier. A group of Global Voices authors and translators will be there and will share their event insights with you. The Technology for Transparency Network will also be live-tweeting in Spanish during the event at @transparentech.
Polska Transparency Camp in Poland
Citizens who “do instead of talk” are at the core of any efficient and sustainable initiative involving technology and actions against corruption. Following such principles and engaging leaders from different countries to share their experiences, 150 people with different backgrounds will attend Polska Transparency Camp in Warsaw, Poland. Citizens together with a variety of speakers from different countries and backgrounds, connected by the Internet, will work together to connect different sectors, brainstorm ideas, and define the path to a more transparent and accountable society in Poland. You can watch the live event online and follow Technology for Transparency researcher Sylwia Presley on Twitter at @presleysylwia for updates.
Open Data Day Hackathon
The global Open Data Day Hackathon offers a unique opportunity to gather people around the world to act for transparency by developing applications using the open public data available in their country. The idea is to invite developers, designers, librarians, statisticians, and citizens of all kinds to spend one day working together. The event will take place on December 4, 2010, and it's not to late to join the global effort in your community.
All of these events offer ways for citizens to get involved in technology-based efforts to promote transparency and accountability, encouraging more active, engaged, effective digital activism against corruption. If you're able to get involved, we encourage you to do so — even though the Technology for Transparency Network operates mostly online, face to face contact with communities interested in a more open and transparent world is often crucial to making these efforts successful.
Technology for Transparency Network |
The Technology for Transparency Network is a project of Rising Voices and Global Voices, and is charitably sponsored by OSI and the Omidyar Network.Learn more · Contact us · Suggest a project · Rising Voices Home · Login
Cable Viewer
Secret US Embassy Cables
Translations
[pt_br] Cablegate: Telegramas das embaixadas
[fr] Wikileaks entame la publication de câbles diplomatiques US confidentiels
[ru] WIKILEAKS приступил к публикации секретных писем американских посольств
[es] Wikileaks empieza a publicar cables diplomáticos de la embajada de estados unidos
Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.
This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.
Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.
The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of "The Iraq War Logs", the world's previously largest classified information release).
The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.
How to explore the data
Search for events that you remember that happened for example in your country. You can browse by date or search for an origin near you.
Pick out interesting events and tell others about them. Use twitter, reddit, mail whatever suits your audience best.
For twitter or other social networking services please use the #cablegate or unique reference ID (e.g. #66BUENOSAIRES2481) as hash tags.
Key figures:
- 15, 652 secret
- 101,748 confidential
- 133,887 unclassified
- Iraq most discussed country – 15,365 (Cables coming from Iraq – 6,677)
- Ankara, Turkey had most cables coming from it – 7,918
- From Secretary of State office - 8,017
According to the US State Departments labeling system, the most frequent subjects discussed are:
- External political relations – 145,451
- Internal government affairs – 122,896
- Human rights – 55,211
- Economic Conditions – 49,044
- Terrorists and terrorism – 28,801
- UN security council – 6,532
Graphics of the cablegate dataset
Cables by origin and classification Cables by Subject Cables by Country Cables by Organization Cables by Program Cables by Topic 
Downloads
Wikileaks Iraq and Afghan War Diaries
On Sunday 28th Novembre 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the US Government's foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 to the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
To access the Cable gate, go to http://cablegate.wikileaks.org
Please donate to WikiLeaks to defend this information.
Open Government - O'Reilly Media
Description | Table of Contents | Related Content | Product Details | Customer Reviews | About the Authors | ColophonDescriptionFull DescriptionIn a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to achieve and direct this emerging world of online collaboration, transparency, and participation.
In a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to achieve and direct this emerging world of online collaboration, transparency, and participation.
Contributions and topics include:
- Beth Simone Noveck, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for open government, "The Single Point of Failure"
- Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, "All Your Data Are Belong to Us: Liberating Government Data"
- Aaron Swartz, cofounder of reddit.com, OpenLibrary.org, and BoldProgressives.org, "When Is Transparency Useful?"
- Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, "Disrupting Washington's Golden Rule"
- Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.Org, "By the People"
- Douglas Schuler, president of the Public Sphere Project, "Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence"
- Howard Dierking, program manager on Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet Web platform team, "Engineering Good Government"
- Matthew Burton, Web entrepreneur and former intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, "A Peace Corps for Programmers"
- Gary D. Bass and Sean Moulton, OMB Watch, "Bringing the Web 2.0 Revolution to Government"
- Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, "Defining Government 2.0: Lessons Learned from the Success of Computer Platforms"
Open Government editors:
Daniel Lathrop is a former investigative projects reporter with the Seattle Post Intelligencer who's covered politics in Washington state, Iowa, Florida, and Washington D.C. He's a specialist in campaign finance and "computer-assisted reporting" -- the practice of using data analysis to report the news.
Laurel Ruma is the Gov 2.0 Evangelist at O'Reilly Media. She is also co-chair for the Gov 2.0 Expo.Table of Contents
Chapter 1 A Peace Corps for Programmers
Tipping Point: The Extinction of Pencils
Competition Is Critical to Any Ecosystem
Creating a Developer Corps
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 2 Government As a Platform
Government As a Platform
Lesson 1: Open Standards Spark Innovation and Growth
Lesson 2: Build a Simple System and Let It Evolve
Lesson 3: Design for Participation
A Robustness Principle for Government
Lesson 4: Learn from Your “Hackers”
Lesson 5: Data Mining Allows You to Harness Implicit Participation
Lesson 6: Lower the Barriers to Experimentation
Lesson 7: Lead by Example
Practical Steps for Government Agencies
About the Author
Chapter 3 By the People
About the Author
Chapter 4 The Single Point of Failure
The Closed Model of Decision Making
New Technologies and Civic Life
Participatory Democratic Theory in the Age of Networks
About the Author
Chapter 5 Engineering Good Government
The Articles of Confederation and the Stovepipe Antipattern
Continued Maintenance: The Blob and Confederacy
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 6 Enabling Innovation for Civic Engagement
Citizen Initiatives Lead the Way
Providing for Reuse and Innovation
Data Authenticity Down the Line
Why Bother with Bulk?
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 7 Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence
Definitions and Assertions
Democracy, Deliberation, and the Internet
Findings and Issues
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 8 Open Government and Open Society
Transparency’s Moment?
The Dark Side of Open Government
The Missing Diagnosis
Targeted Transparency
A Matter of Politics
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 9 “You Can Be the Eyes and Ears”: Barack Obama and the Wisdom of Crowds
Change.gov Shows How to Change the Gov
“You Can Be the Eyes and Ears”
Recovery.gov Site Still Under Construction
Online Town Hall or “Participation Theater”?
Open Data and Open Government
Co-creation, Co-optation, or Collision?
About the Author
Chapter 10 Two-Way Street: Government with the People
Pockets of Excellence: The Goverati
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 11 Citizens’ View of Open Government
The First “We President”
The Internet Has Made Us Lazy
Toward a Findable Government
Advanced Citizenship
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 12 After the Collapse: Open Government and the Future of Civil Service
The Coasean Collapse
The Long Tail of Public Policy
Patch Culture
The End of Objectivity
Two Preconditions to Government As Platform: Capacity for Self-Organization and Collaboration
Extend the Network
The Next Civil Service Culture: The Gift Economy
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 13 Democracy, Under Everything
Many Voices, Many Messages, One Government
My Idea
Revealing Obscured Government Data
Improving Communication without Being Crushed by Email
How to Improve Civic Engagement
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 14 Emergent Democracy
Democracy As a Scaling Mechanism
Limiting Factors and the Internet
Building an Emergent Democracy
The Road to Emergent Democracy
About the Author
Chapter 15 Case Study: Tweet Congress
Tweet Congress: Build an App, Start a Movement
Starting the Movement: We Are All Lobbyists Now
So, Who Gets It?
Impact
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 16 Entrepreneurial Insurgency: Republicans Connect With the American People
Entrepreneurial Insurgency and Congress
Congress Tweets, Too
I YouTube, You YouTube
Social Media and the Fight for Transparency
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 17 Disrupting Washington’s Golden Rule
The Bad Old Days: When Insiders Ruled
This Is the Mashable Now
What Comes Next
About the Author
Chapter 18 Case Study: GovTrack.us
Opening Legislative Data
Screen Scraping Congress
Engaging the GovTrack Community
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 19 Case Study: FollowTheMoney.org
Accessing Political Donor Data Fraught with Problems
The National Institute on Money in State Politics’ Role in the Fight for Greater Transparency
Bolstering the Spirit of Public Disclosure Laws
State-Level Transparency Faces Serious Challenges
In an Ideal World: Recommendations for Open Data
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 20 Case Study: MAPLight.org
Why We Founded MAPLight.org
MAPLight.org’s Unique Contribution
Nuts and Bolts: Using MAPLight.org
Barriers to Transparency
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 21 Going 2.0: Why OpenSecrets.org Opted for Full Frontal Data Sharing
The Decision to Let Go of the Data
It’s Not Easy Being Open
Creating a New Model for Transparency
The Future Is Now
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 22 All Your Data Are Belong to Us: Liberating Government Data
Liberating Government Data: Carl Malamud Versus the Man
Disclosing Government Data: Paper Versus the Internet
Accessing Government Data: Open Distribution Versus Jealous Control
Demanding Government Data: Public Money Versus Private Research
RECAP: Freeing PACER Documents for Public Use
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 23 Case Study: Many Eyes
Policy
From Policy to Politicians
Visual Literacy
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 24 My Data Can’t Tell You That
The How and Why of Data Collection
Federal Data: Approximations Galore
Good Data Doesn’t Mean Good Results
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 25 When Is Transparency Useful?
Sharing Documents with the Public
Generating Databases for the Public
Interpreting Databases for the Public
An Alternative
About the Author
Chapter 26 Transparency Inside Out
Complexity Creates Opacity
Transparency, Meet Institutional Inertia
Kaleidoscope IT: One-Off Apps Obscure Information
A Market Focused on Proposals, Not Products
Framing the Window
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 27 Bringing the Web 2.0 Revolution to Government
Government Transparency: Three Hurdles
Putting It All Together: Disclosure of Federal Spending
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 28 Toads on the Road to Open Government Data
What Is Government?
Data Collection
Exposing the Soul of Government
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 29 Open Government: The Privacy Imperative
Privacy-Enhancing Practices
Conclusion
About the Authors
Chapter 30 Freedom of Information Acts: Promises and Realities
The Act and Amendments
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 31 Gov→Media→People
Crowdsourcing in Action
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 32 Open Source Software for Open Government Agencies
Advantages of FLOSS for Government and Public Agencies
Best Practices: Management
Best Practices: Technical
Best Practices: Social
Make It Easy to Experiment and Learn
Conclusion
References
About the Authors
Chapter 33 Why Open Digital Standards Matter in Government
Badly Used Technology Hinders Progress
The Digital Age Explained
Standards and the Problems with Digital Technology
The Huge Positive Potential of Digital Technologies
Free and Open Standards and Software: The Digital Basis of Open Government
Conclusion
About the Author
Chapter 34 Case Study: Utah.gov
A Historical Perspective
What Today’s Landscape Looks Like
Champions Discovered in All Branches of State Government
The Dramatic Shift to Web 2.0 Principles and Tools
Making Data More Accessible
Conclusion
About the Author
Appendix Memo from President Obama on Transparency and Open Government
Colophon
BFI | Film & TV Database | VIOLENT SUMMER (1975)
VIOLENT SUMMER
(1975)
- Copyright date
- Not available
- Production start date
- Not available
- Production end date
- Not available
Production countries
- Great Britain
- Notes
- Not available
Library Synopsis
Set in the near future, an extreme Government, the New British Party, has taken control of the united Kingdon. The relationship between a young designer and his girl-friend is destroyed in their attempts to avoid the Party.
Top five credits
- Director
- CHAPMAN, Matthew
- Production Company
- Matthew Chapman Productions
- Production Company
- Simon Clarke Productions
- Executive Producer
- CLARKE, Simon
- Producer
- CHAPMAN, Matthew
Top five cast
BFI | Film & TV Database | ALDISS, Mark
BFI statement in response to DCMS announcement on film | British Film Institute
The BFI will become the lead strategic body on film and the distributor of Lottery funds to UK film-makers from April 2011, Minister for Culture and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, has announced.
Greg Dyke, Chair of the BFI, has issued the following open letter to the film industry:
You will have heard that in a speech he gave this morning, Ed Vaizey has asked the BFI to take responsibility for film policy in Britain. Under this umbrella is the distribution of Lottery funding. Also included are certification, the Media desk, support for film in the nations and regions, and education.
It is a bold move to create a single body to champion film across the whole of the UK and provide a clear focus internationally.
In his speech, Ed Vaizey also confirmed an ongoing commitment to the tax breaks and he reaffirmed that lottery funding is expected to increase from £27m currently to over £40m by 2014. We obviously welcome both decisions.
This move will mean a major transformation for the BFI. In the immediate term we will be working closely with staff at the UK Film Council to make sure that the skills, expertise and knowledge needed for this new world are retained. For some time we have deliberately held back from making new appointments to the BFI Board, but now that we understand the full scope of our new responsibilities, we can begin the process of recruiting the new Board members. In particular we will be looking to appoint new Governors who are active in the film industry.
Also in the short term, we hope to make more money available for film in the coming year, increasing the size of the Production Fund in 2011-12 from £15m to £18m – that's an increase of 20%. This is possible because we will be making significant overhead savings.
We are looking forward to working even more closely with our colleagues in each of the Nations and with those across the English regions through the new "Creative England". We currently have a good relationship with Film London that is set to be come stronger and this announcement from Government has already become a catalyst for a new drive to promote British film, with initial pledged partnership commitments from BBC Worldwide, BAFTA and Odeon plus, we anticipate, many others.
Of course all of this is subject to the inevitable process of due diligence which will take several months, but we aim to move quickly and to work in an inclusive and collaborative way to develop a new, exciting and coherent vision for film in Britain going forward.
Related content:
BFI statement on CSR announcementExternal links:
Is Wikileaks open government? | Gov 2.0: The Power of Platforms
Aeschylus wrote nearly 2,500 years ago that in war, truth is the first casualty.” His words are no doubt known to another wise man, whose strategic “maneuvers within a changing information environment” would not be an utterly foreign concept to the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War. Aeschylus and Thucydides would no doubt wonder at the capacity of the Information Age to spread truth and disinformation alike. In November 2010, it’s clear that legitimate concerns about national security must to be balanced with the spirit of open government expressed by the Obama administration.
The issues created between Wikileaks and open government policies are substantial. As Samantha Power made clear in her interview on open government and transparency: “There are two factors that are always brought to bear in discussions in open government, as President Obama has made clear from the day he issued his memorandum. One is privacy, one is security.”
As the State Department made clear in its open letter to Wikileaks, the position of the United States government is that the planned release of thousands of diplomatic cables by that organization today will place military operations, diplomatic relationships and the lives of many individuals at risk.
As this post went live, the Wikileaks website is undergoing a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, though the organization’s Twitter account is far from silenced. A tweet earlier this morning noted that “El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down.”
In fact, Wikileaks’ newest leak, through the early release of Der Spiegel, has long since leaked onto Twitter. Adrien Chen’s assessment at Gawker? “At least from the German point of view there are no earth-shattering revelations, just a lot of candid talk about world leaders.”
The New York Times offered a similar assessment in its own report on Wikileaks, Cables Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels: “an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.”
The Lede is liveblogging reaction to Wikileaks at NYTimes.com, including the statement to Fareed Zakaria by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, that “the leak would put the lives of some people at risk.”
The Lede added some context for that statement:
Despite that dire warning, Robert Gates, the defense secretary, told Congress in October that a Pentagon review “to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure,” of the war logs by WikiLeaks.
The Guardian put today’s release into context, reporting that the embassy cable leaks sparks a global diplomatic crisis. Among other disclosures, the Guardian reported that the cables showed “Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN’s leadership … a major shift in relations between China and North Korea, Pakistan’s growing instability and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.” The Guardian’s new interactive of diplomatic cables is one of the best places online to browse the documents.
Is the “radical transparency” that Wikileaks both advocates for – and effectively forces – by posting classified government information “open government?” The war logs from Afghanistan are likely the biggest military intelligence leak ever. At this point in 2010, it’s clear that Wikileaks represents a watershed in the difficult challenge to information control that the Internet represents for every government.
On the one hand, Open Government Directive issued by the Obama administration on December 8, 2009 explicitly rejects releasing information that would threaten national security. Open government expert Steven Aftergood was crystal clear in June on that count: Wikileaks fails the due diligence review.
On the other hand, Wikileaks is making the diplomatic and military record of the U.S. government more open to its citizens and world, albeit using a methodology on its own site that does not appear to allow for the redaction of information that could be damaging to the national security interests of the United States or its allies. “For me Wikileaks is open govt,” tweeted Dominic Campbell. “True [open government] is not determined and controlled by govts, but redistributes power to the people to decide.”
The New York Times editorial board explored some of these tensions in a note to readers on its decision to publish Wikileaks
The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match… The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online.
…the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. They shed light on the motivations — and, in some cases, duplicity — of allies on the receiving end of American courtship and foreign aid. They illuminate the diplomacy surrounding two current wars and several countries, like Pakistan and Yemen, where American military involvement is growing. As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.
It seems that the Times and Guardian decided to make redactions from the diplomatic cables before publication. It’s not clear how that will compare to what will be posted on Wikileaks.org alongside the War Logs and Afghan Diaries.
Open government, radical transparency and the Internet
More transparency from the military, Congress and the White House regarding the progress of wars is important, desirable and perhaps inevitable. Accountability to civilian leadership and the electorate is a bedrock principle in a representative democracy, not least because of the vast amounts of spending that has been outlaid since 9/11 in the shadow government that Dana Priest reported out in “Top Secret America in the Washington Post.
Wikileaks and the Internet together add the concept of asymmetric journalism to the modern media lexicon. File assymetric journalism next to the more traditional accountability journalism that Priest practices or the database journalism of the new media crew online at the Sunlight Foundation and similar organizations are pioneering.
As Tim O’Reilly tweeted today, “wikileaks *challenges* [open government government 2.0] philosophy. Challenges are good if we rise to them.” No question about the former point. Governments that invest in the capacity to maneuver in new media environment might well fare better in the information warfare the 21st century battlefield includes.
Open government is a mindset, but goes beyond new media literacy or harnessing new technologies. The fundamental elements of open government, as least as proposed by the architects of that policy in Washington now, do not include releasing diplomatic cables regarding espionage or private assessments of of world leaders. Those priorities or guidelines will not always be followed by the governed, as Wikileaks amply demonstrates.
Increasingly, citizens are turning to the Internet for data, policy and services. Alongside the efforts of government webmasters at .gov websites, citizens will find the rich stew of social media, media conglomerates or mashups that use government and private data. That mix includes sites like Wikileaks, its chosen media partners, the recently launched WLCentral.org or new models for accountability like IPaidABribe.com.
That reality reinforces that fact that information literacy is a paramount concern for citizens in the digital age. As danah boyd has eloquently pointed out, transparency is not enough. The new media environment makes such literacy more essential than ever, particularly in the context of the “first stateless news organization” Jay Rosen has described. There’s a new kind of alliance behind the War Logs, as David Carr wrote in the New York Times.
There’s also a critical reality: in a time of war, some information can and will have to remain classified for years if those fighting them are to have any realistic chances of winning. Asymmetries of information between combatants are, after all, essential to winning maneuvers on the battlefields of the 21st century. Governments appear to be playing catchup given the changed media environment, supercharged by the power of the Internet, broadband and smartphones. This year, we’ve seen a tipping point in the relationship of government, media and techology.
Comparing the Wikileaks War Logs to the Pentagon Papers is inevitable — and not exactly valid, as ProPublica reported. It would be difficult for the military to win battles, much less wars, without control over situational awareness, operational information or effective counterintelligence.
Given the importance of the ENIGMA machine or intercepts of Japanese intel in WWII, or damage caused by subsequent counterintelligence leaks from the FBI and elsewhere, working to limit intelligence leaks that damage ongoing ops will continue to be vitally important to the military for as long as we have one. Rethinking the definitions for secrecy by default will also require hard work. As the disclosures from the most recent release continue to reverberate around the globe, the only certainty is that thousands of State Department and Defense Department workers are going to have an extra headache this Sunday afternoon.
- Categories: Gov 2.0, Twitter, White House, cybersecurity, international, open government, privacy, wiki Tags: Guardian, media, open government, secrecy, State Department, Wikileaks
Alexander B. Howard is Radar's Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media. Howard is a native of Alleghany County, near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. He moved to Philadelphia at 8, went to college in New England and, after brief sojourns in Brazil and Baltimore, settled in the Boston area in 1999. In 2009, he moved to the District of Columbia with his greyhound, girlfriend, power tools, plants and growing collection of cast iron pans, many of which are frequently used to pursue his passion for good cooking. Full bio.