Author: Staff Writer

Exclusive: Inside America’s Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere

Staff Writer

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable. The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it…

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Bloomberg TV: Sophia Bekele featured in “African Women to Watch”

Staff Writer

“Fearless, Competitive and Visionary Leaders of our time. We celebrate a new generation of African Women, closing the gender gap and shaping the continent’s political, social and economic landscape” says Bloomberg in its special TV Women to Watch FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRLog (Press Release) – Nov. 15, 2013 – “Africa is blooming and this is the time to tell the Africa story from the African perspective” , says Bloomberg TV Africa, which is avidly covering contemporary developments that are shaping the new and emerging Africa and producing a new TV…

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Microsoft Admits Its Datacenters Are Wide Open To NSA Attacks

Staff Writer
Microsoft

When the NSA news started breaking this past summer, it was noted that Google quickly realized where the NSA might be hacking in, and rushed to encrypt the links that connect their data centers. While some may criticize this, it’s easy to see why companies never bothered to encrypt these links. They’re internal networks, with no direct access to the outside world. The threat likelihood was quite low… unless you’re a giant government spying operation. That said, once it was revealed that, indeed, this is how the NSA hacks in,…

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Google removes record-breaking 200m piracy links so far in 2013

Staff Writer
Privacy

BPI and RIAA filed more than 74m takedown notices combined this year, with FilesTube topping list of removals Google has been forced to remove over 200m “pirate” links from its search listings by rights holders in 2013 a four-fold increase over 2012. Data released as part of Google’s transparency reports, compiled by TorrentFreak, show that at the current rate removal of alleged piracy links, Google will have been forced to delete over 250m by the end of 2013. The UK and US recording industry trade bodies BPI and RIAA lead…

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Google talks African strategy

Staff Writer

Trying to use a single e-commerce strategy across various regions is bad business. This was the word from Luke McKend, country head for Google SA, who was speaking at the World Retail Congress Africa, held in Sandton this week. McKend said this statement is particularly relevant in an African context. People are increasingly using the Internet to look for an instantaneous response that is related to where they are, according to McKend. “Fully a third of all Google searches have some kind of implicit location information,” he said, adding that…

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Bitcoin Comes Under Senate Spotlight

Staff Writer

Bitcoin is about to get some time in the Capitol Hill spotlight. A pair of Senate committees will hold hearings on the policy issues raised by virtual currencies in the coming weeks, according to Senate aides, a development that comes amid growing attention from government regulators to digital forms of money. Bitcoin, a currency that is essentially a computer code and is not backed by any government, has seen its value surge this year because of  interest from retailers and investors. But government agencies have also stepped up their oversight of…

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Markets are suddenly tumbling all around the world, right as Twitter is going public

Staff Writer

North American stocks have been sliding all morning. The S&P 500 index is down 0.6%, trading at 1760, 14 points off the highs of the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.2%, but the NASDAQ is the big lagger, down 1.0%. The index is being dragged lower by QUALCOMM (down 3.8%), Whole Foods (down 8.9%), and Tesla (down 7.5%), which all missed expectations on earnings this week. And after a boost earlier, European indices are now giving up gains. The Italian FTSE MIB is down 1.6%, and the…

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Google barges moored in San Francisco Bay, could be floating data centres?

Staff Writer

Mystery grows about Google barges moored off US coast The barges have a four-storey structure on deck and rumours are circulating about what the company plans to use them for. One suggestion is that they could be turned in to floating data centres powered by wave action. Others believe they could be fitted out with new showrooms for Google Glass with a “party deck” on top. So far Google has declined to comment on what the the vessels are being used for. “It’s an interesting concept,” said Nick Layzell, of…

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DotConnectAfrica attends Transform Africa 2013, calls for the progress of its .africa commitments to be acknowledged

Staff Writer

DCA was invited as a delegate to the international high-level conference that was held in Rwanda from October 28 to 31, 2013 Nov. 3, 2013 – The conference was attended by over 1,500 delegates and Seven African Heads of State including among others Presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Gabon, and Burkina Faso.  Other delegates included Ministers and CEO’s of blue chip firms. The summit was Co-hosted by President Paul Kagame and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of pooling together International participants…

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Facebook & Google Move Up On Social Network Creep Index

Staff Writer

Google and Facebook gave the anti-social networking crowd new ammunition as they made moves that kicked them up a notch on the social media creep index. Let’s put it this way: If you were looking for an excuse to give up on these companies, these recent announcements certainly don’t give you good reasons to reconsider staying. As I define it, the creep index is like the Defcon Warning System of social media. Instead of defining how close we are to nuclear war, it measures just how intrusive and creepy our…

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