As with the bellicose WCIT-12 (the U.N.'s 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications) last December in Dubai and its accompanying protests and dramatic walkout by the U.S. delegation, this Forum will be run by the United Nations notoriously dubious telecommunications arm, the ITU.

WTPF-13 — with its Twitter hashtag #WTPF13 and counter-tag #OpWTF — is ITU's final preparation for The 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference ("PP-14"), ITU's Fall 2014 plenipotentiary meeting.

In February, outgoing U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell testified to Congress in a joint U.S. House subcommittee hearing on international Internet governance that U.N.'s ITU Internet plans "must be stopped."

McDowell warned ominously that after the WCIT-12 debacle in Dubai, combined with this week's WTPF, the groundwork is laid for 2014 and, "Internet freedom's foes around the globe are working hard to exploit a treaty negotiation that dwarfs the importance of the WCIT by orders of magnitude."

On January 11, 2013, ITU's Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure released the fourth and final ITU/WTPF-13 report outlining groundwork for Internet governance and internet regulatory topics at the May 14-16 meetings.

The ITU/WTPF-13 document explicitly includes the creation of "Global Principles for the governance and use of the Internet." It spells out intent to resolve issues pertaining to "use of Internet resources for purposes that are inconsistent with international peace, stability and security" in the form of subjecting cybersecurity/cybercrime and data privacy to international control.

If the ITU's endless wrangling over Internet controls plays out as it has within the past year, the U.S. may be in for another showdown.

Crucially, it also redefines the multi-stakeholder definition of Internet governance as currently insufficient because it does not grant governments — now defined by ITU as underrepresented multi-stakeholders — "sufficient" Internet governance power.

PP-14 will be held in Busan, South Korea on October 20-November 7, 2014.

In the FCC Commissioner's testimony, McDowell bluntly told the joint House subcommittee that the results of plans being made by the ITU to secure Internet governance at this very moment for the 2014 plenipot, "will be devastating even if the United States does not ratify these toxic new treaties [this week at WTPF-13]."

McDowell told Congress bluntly that since 2003, his office directly observed that countries such as China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia — and their allies — have never given up their regulatory quest. "They continued to push the ITU, and the U.N. itself, to regulate both the operations, economics and content of the Net," he said.

McDowell strongly outlined that Congress and "many defenders of Internet freedom" must understand that serious damage was done when they did not take [ITU's Internet governance] intentions and machinations seriously — and that the ITU is determined and able to see its intent manifest.

The U.S. State Department's official blog said the U.S. will be attending ITU's summit as a WTPF-13 stakeholder and expressed optimism for an agreement on multistakeholder governance.

The U.S. delegation comes to engage in constructive dialogue on Internet-related public policy issues such as Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), Internet Protocol numbering resources, the expansion of broadband, and, perhaps most importantly, the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance.

If the ITU's endless wrangling over Internet controls plays out as it has within the past year, the U.S. may be in for another showdown.

Read more

FCC to Congress: U.N.'s ITU Internet plans 'must be stopped'

• Read more

The adoption of the WCIT-12 treaty by governments notorious for being bad, nee murderous, actors in the human rights space sent a message toward governments that are excited at the prospects of getting tighter control of the Internet by way of their telecoms (and the attractive lure of billions in increased revenue).

• Read also: U.N. WCIT-12 makes Syrian Internet blackout 'trivial' everywhere

Even though the end result last December made China and Russia quite pleased, the ITU's WCIT-12 plans began to unravel before the Dubai summit even began — the unraveling itself a result of Internet citizen action, and not initially by U.S. government action.

Representing who, exactly?

The ITU's meeting and its proposals were being withheld from public view until a steady stream of leaked documents from Web site WCITleaks put the ITU in a defensive panic — and had the U.N. and ITU readying for global protests.

Created by researchers at George Mason University, WCITLeaks is now soliciting and sharing copies of leaked draft documents for WTPF-13.

• See also: WCIT-12 leak shows Russia, China, others seek to define 'government-controlled Internet'

The U.S. House of Representatives voted - astonishingly - unanimously to oppose the ITU to approve a resolution charging the U.S. government to fight the United Nations and the ITU in its bid to control and change the Internet at the WCIT-12 — in an eye-opening 397-0 vote.

Prior to ITU's WCIT-12 opening ceremonies, the EU's upper house, the European Parliament, joined the U.S. to fight the ITU's WCIT-12 plans as a unified bloc, and all 27 EU member states (backed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and other ITU-Member) voted unanimously to oppose the U.N.'s plans to regulate the Internet.

According to Reuters, EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who is in charge of Europe's Internet policy, said the ITU proposals "risk damaging the Internet's evolution as a critical piece of global commercial infrastructure and a network for the free flow of information and data."

Going into WTPF-13 this week, The U.S. State Department's Official Blog it does not fail to mention the discord at WCIT-12:

(...) This is the ITU's first major gathering since last December's World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT). For those of you who follow these issues, you know we were unable to reach consensus on revised regulations that could have advanced the global development of telecommunication services.

(...) Eighty-nine Member States elected to sign the final acts, while fifty-five did not. Nobody "won"; and while governments argued, citizens across the world clamored for the growth and innovation that the Internet has to offer. (...)

New citizen protests are currently forming, from coalitions of global civil society groups as well as hacktivist entities.

Best Bits, a coalition of civil society groups from around the world with participants that include the EFF, has made it clear that it disagrees both with the idea that the ITU should be creating Internet policy and governance guidelines with decisions made by national governments alone — and with the ITU’s WTPF-13 report’s framing of the debate on multistakeholderism.

Best Bits issued a civil society statement to the ITU/WTPF on inclusiveness, transparency, openness and access to knowledge, net neutrality, privacy, and security, and in particular freedom of expression.

The WTPF has not yet achieved open and participatory internet policy making. [Civil Society Statement to the ITU Secretary General in preparation for the WTPF - May 2013]

The statement's points reaffirming ITU's siloed goals read like a bucket of cold water to anyone who cares about the digital rights of ordinary citizens, but at least it comes with a call to action in the form of a message (petition) to the ITU.

Still, the conclusions and policies decided at WTPF-13 and PP-14 will be set by governments, and if WCIT-12 was any example, decisions will be made by governments pushed to a conclusion led by the ITU.

The U.S., despite walking out of ITU's last big summit (WCIT-12), intends to stay in the conversation.

Despite the events of last December, we believe that the similarities among governments with respect to the Internet outweigh our differences. [Building Consensus in Support of a Global, Inclusive, Free, and Open Internet; U.S. State Department Official Blog]

Similarities among governments, indeed.

Image via ITU (2010).

Google Glass censors what you say, and you'll have no choice

Like many insulting, worrisome and invasive things we're starting to learn about Google Glass, it has been revealed that Google Glass censors your own, self-spoken words that Glass deems unsafe for children - and there is no way to turn it off.

If we wanted to be treated like children all our lives, this would be great. Unfortunately, this is yet another completely out of touch choice Google has made for users of its products, who live in the real world, watch HBO, and even - gasp! - might want to listen to that obscene song by CeeLo Green.

• What the f***?! Google Glass censors foul language (NBC)

Nick Denton and Lux Alptraum in Fleshbot Sale Legal Scuffle

Gawker Media founder, owner and Managing Editor Nick Denton says he hasn’t been paid for Fleshbot.

Apparently Denton sold the 11-year-old porn site last year for $100,000 to then-employee Noa Gottlieb, who, according to court papers, is also known as “Lux Alptraum.”

Denton alleges Ms. Gottlieb signed a promissory note and that the total would be paid in four installments that were supposed to begin May 1 of last year. Ms. Gottlieb - as Lux Alptraum - was handed editorial control of Fleshbot under Mr. Denton in 2008 after the porn site's founding editors and cultivators of its unique, whimsical, critical and genuine voice (including myself) gracefully exited in the events surrounding the Denton/Gottlieb decision.

This week, Nick Denton and his legal team claim that payment from Lux Alptraum never happened.

According to a motion filed by Denton in Supreme Court of New York, “Fleshbot made none of the $25,000 payments and despite repeated requests for payment still owes Gawker $100,000 plus interest.”

Gottlieb claims in her court papers that actions by Denton/Gawker rendered the original promissory note null and void.

• Nick Denton in Fleshbot Payment Dispute (Fishbowl NY)

The Fifth Amendment, and Encrypting Your Data

The encryption issue is front and center as a federal magistrate is refusing to order a Wisconsin computer scientist to decrypt his data that the authorities seized from kiddie-porn suspect Jeffrey Feldman. The reason is simple: The Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination protects even those suspected of unsavory crimes.

• Here’s a Good Reason to Encrypt Your Data (Wired)

Litigating and prosecuting involuntary porn - with Hulk Hogan?

Without My Consent's Weekly Roundup is the nonprofit's email newsletter covering the emergent arena of legal procedures and rights concerning victims of so-called "revenge" or non-consensual porn posted about them online by harassers, stalkers, those with intent to harm or endanger their victims - you know, perpetrators who should generally be dropped into a ravenous alligator pit while our legal system struggles to understand even the most basic digital privacy rights.

Anyway... every week, Without My Consent's newsletter (signup link) has really interesting items.

For instance, the founder of EndRevengePorn.com – and victim of revenge pornography – has filed suit against the individual responsible for posting the pornographic material and personal information of their plaintiff. Additionally, she has filed suit against four porn websites (AnonIB.com, PinkMeth.tv, XHamster.com, and SextingPics.com) - as well as their servers, subscribers, users, and others who propagate revenge pornography.

Also in WMC's newsletter, a judge told Gawker to remove their Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. Gawker removed the video but linked to another copy of it, and refused to take down the post. Now Hulk Hogan Wants Gawker Punished for Disobeying Court Order.

• Without My Consent's Weekly Roundup (withoutmyconsent.org; Disclosure - I am an Advisor for Without My Consent)

Oh, China: Ad For 'Chief Porn Identification Officer'

A third-party internet security firm in Beijing called Anquan recently posted an opening for the position "chief porn identification officer".

The company was started in 2010 to "combat bad information on the internet" and promote greater control of pornographic content on the web. Its partners and members include internet giants, like Baidu and Tencent, as well as government agencies that regulate the internet in China.

• Ad For 'Chief Porn Identification Officer' (Business Insider)

Apple Named in China Porn App Investigation

Apple is in an article listing a number of websites and app stores investigated for providing pornographic content in China. Following a March call for a new campaign against porn a government regulator named Apple’s app store as a source of “obscene pornographic” content and ordered it to remove the content, submit a report about the violation, and take measures to prevent future violations.

The recent article has drawn Chinese Internet users’ speculation that the Chinese government is determined to push Apple out of China, its second largest market.

• Apple Named in China Porn App Investigation (WSJ)

How the FBI cracked a “sextortion” plot against pro poker players

"At 8:05am on the morning of December 1, 2010, an FBI search warrant team swarmed up to a Silicon Valley home on an unusual mission: find the "sextortionist" who had been blackmailing pro poker players over the Internet."

• How the FBI cracked a “sextortion” plot against pro poker players (Ars Technica)

Image of the Apple Store in Hong Kong - Wikicommons: SIMGO200.

Silicon Valley's tech-savvy sex workers

Today Gawker tells us that Square (the revolutionary payment processor for small businesses) is facilitating a booming business among successful Bay Area prostitutes.

But this unsubstantiated claim is only a thread pulled from CNN Money's report on Silicon Valley's sex workers published earlier today.

CNN tells us that the Bay Area's reputed combination of men and money has made doing work in the area a lucrative proposition for straight female sex workers (the report did not include or acknowledge the Bay Area's plentiful male sex workers).

This may be true for a population of female sex workers known for their self-awareness, open mindedness and sex-positive activism - whose workers and clients I investigated in 2008.

But what CNN finds sensational is that sex workers are using social media for marketing their services to tech executives like any other independent contractor or small business entrepreneur.

This isn't new news - not by a long shot. But it's still interesting to read that local sex worker Kitty Stryker told CNN that she finds Twitter and Tumblr to be especially helpful. She said, "everything I know about social media marketing I learned doing sex work."

• Silicon Valley's other entrepreneurs: Sex workers (CNN Money)

Survey: 1 in 10 Americans would do a robot

As a society, we've been contemplating robot sex at least since Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis introduced the idea of a sexy fembot.

So it should come as no surprise that a recent survey conducted by HuffPo and YouGov offered stats saying that roughly 1 in 10 Americans would totally get down with Pris if they had the chance.

Perhaps what's surprising is that the number wasn't higher - or that some of the respondents may already be having sex with a robot and not even know it.

Favorite sci-fi blog io9 thought the poll was "fairly legit." They wrote,

YouGov surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults from February 20th to 21st, and the sample group factored in demographic characteristics like age, race, gender, education, income, interest in politics, and religion.

(...) Sex with a robot raises some thorny ethical questions — including whether a married person who hooked up with a robot would be guilty of infidelity. What did the poll find? Forty-two percent of Americans indicated that such a dalliance would constitute cheating.

• Nearly 1 in 10 Americans would have sex with a robot (io9)

YouTube won't divulge how it determines a video is pornographic

As more and more people inadvertently run afoul of unclear content guidelines on social and sharing sites, learning to play by any given website's rules regarding mature content has become a guessing game of frustration mixed with blind luck.

As for YouTube, any video that's "intended to be sexually provocative" is probably going to be taken down - though how YouTube determines a video's fate is in the hands of whoever decides the video has sexual intent, and YouTube won't disclose how that ruling is made.

Gizmodo found out,

That flagged video is then reviewed by actual humans in different YouTube offices in different countries around the clock. There's no algorithm that determines whether the artistic context outweighs the sexual context.

In other words, the nudity's intent must be artistic rather than sexually provocative. And that decision is made be people sitting in an office. YouTube would not divulge what exactly "crosses the line" to result in any given video's removal.

So, how can we play by the rules when no one will tell us what they are? 

I'm sure YouTube doesn't have any comment on that matter, either. 

• Not Safe For YouTube: How Google Draws the Line Between Porn and Art (NSFW) (Gizmodo)

Strip clubs: no Google Glass allowed

In case you missed this item last week, Las Vegas strip clubs are already classifying Google Glass as any other surveillance or recording device, and will be enacting a zero tolerance policy on allowing the elite toys into adult establishments.

NBC News talked to Peter Feinstein, managing partner of Sapphire Gentlemen's Club in Las Vegas. Feinstein explained,

We've been dealing with the cellphone videoing and the picture taking over the years and we are quick to make sure that that doesn't happen in the club. As the sale of [Google Glass] spreads, there'll be more people using them and wanting to use them at places such as a gentlemen's club.

If we see those in the club, we would do the same thing that we do to people who bring cameras into the club.

• From strip clubs to theaters, Google Glass won't be welcome everywhere (NBC News)

Main post image via Wikimedia Commons: photo by Drew Jacksich.

The news broke just as BP obtained an emergency April 5 hearing in its Deepwater Horizon spill trial in New Orleans, to fight what it calls "fictitious claims" for victim compensation. At stake for the oil giant is blame and financial responsibility for the disaster.

Editors on Wikipedia were strongly divided about how BP had been facilitating changes made to its Wikipedia page. CNET reported that BP's press representative "Arturo BP" was not touching BP's page, but instead relied on other editors to make changes. Arturo BP was as a proxy to vet facts for Wikipedia from "experts within the company." BP was quick to say it was not breaking Wikipedia's rules.

Indeed, companies can and do manage their Wikipedia profiles. Wikipedia page management is often viewed as brand management. What's unclear is where the line between corporate brand management, community and fact and fiction lie. 

However, the Wikipedia community doesn't see BP's page management as so black or white. Editors fought each other on Wikipedia discussion pages about the nontransparent corporate content; were the rules really being broken while they were technically being followed? 

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded by loudly defending BP's actions. Wales fired off blistering statements saying the oil company was behaving exactly according to the way Wikipedia's rules are supposed to work. Wales

Chevron tried, and Wikipedia failed 

ConocoPhillips and Chevron have had PR people working on Wikipedia since at least 2009 (working together actually, since Chevron owns Conoco). "ChevronJustinH" - Justin Higgs, Chevron Spokesman and Media Advisor - has deleted his user page, but his record remains and shows a legacy of attempting to act in good faith within Wikipedia's rules - that has gone largely unchecked.

Beginning in February '09 ChevronJustinH clearly identified himself and suggested an edit on the talk page of an article about one of Chevron's refineries.

When no one makes the edit, he does it himself.

Higgs doesn't do very much more until April 2011, when he starts working on the main Chevron article. The pattern is the same; he posts suggestions on the talk page, waits for feedback (sometimes weeks, sometimes days) and then makes the edits to the article.

If there is feedback or indication that anyone is reading ChevronJustinH's suggestions, it is not in the open. This goes on until March 2012, when he posts a message to the "Wikiproject Energy" talkpage, actually asking for help reviewing his suggested edits.

Hello all, Justin from Chevron here.

For a while now, I've been posting to the Chevron Talk page about improving the accuracy of the entry. During this time, I've been a little surprised that I've been the only active user there. I've posted edit requests for nearly a year and hadn't received responses. After time passed and my notes went ignored, I went ahead and addressed minor inaccuracies that were factual in nature.

Given, the recent discussion that's been taking place about how companies interact with Wikipedia, there's a bit more clarity around the escalation process. Thus, I'm putting out a humble plea for COI [Conflict Of Interest] help.

(...) in an effort to further improve the entry, I'm asking for someone (or group of folks) without a COI to adopt this entry and work with me to continue to better the page.

He gets no response.

The next time Justin from Chevron suggests anything he puts his suggested changes on the userspace subpage belonging to ConocoPhillips Digital and Social Media Senior Analyst Sara Orsi (Saraorsi), and again posts a message on the talk page.

After three years of Chervon's PR lead asking for help, one editor finally responds and fixes up how some of the references are formatted. That same editor, Lexein, engages Higgs in discussion on the talk page about the neutrality of the proposed edits - the discussion has not developed since February 22.

While this is a welcome sign, and Higgs endeavored to act in good faith while getting nowhere pleading Wikipedia editors for help, Chevron's Justin Higgs has been hands-on editing Chevron's Wikipedia Page for nearly three years.

Chevron's Justin was up against a system that had long ceased to serve both Wikipedia article subjects, and Wikipedia readers - who believe the Chevron page is not produced and maintained by Chevron. 

BP tries to find the line

In what Jimmy Wales cites as the example of best practices in the case of British Petroleum, the experience is much different.

The "Prudhoe Bay" subsection of the BP Wikipedia article (one of nine that include rewrites by Arturo BP) is the most recent change to be incorporated into BP's Wikipedia Page. (A tenth was under discussion when CNET reported on BP's Wikipedia involvement.)

In Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, BP had an enormous oil spill in 2006, and then another one in 2009, among other incidents in the area. Both Alaska state and U.S. federal government filed criminal lawsuits against BP; the oil giant was put on probation for the 2006 spill and faced probation-violation charges for the 2009 spill when according to the Wall Street Journal, "The [U.S.] government said the terms of BP's probation included improving maintenance and safety of the Prudhoe Bay pipeline system and alleged that BP failed to comply."

On February 25th 2013, Arturo at BP posted a new version of "Prudhoe Bay" in his userspace, and started a discussion on the BP talk page about replacing the current subsection with this draft.

After comments from a single Wikipedia editor, the "Prudhoe Bay" section was replaced in its entirety by content written by Arturo BP on March 1st - with no suggestions having been made to change any part of Arturo's text (Although a note was added to the talk page after the BP-Wikipedia story broke in the press March 21st, identifying Arturo at BP as a "connected contributor," there was no such indication at the time).

One look at the previous version and the BP version, and it's easy to see that this isn't just a rearrangement of a few sentences or words changed here and there through negotiation with Wikipedia editors - this is a wholly new version.

The original version of "Prudhoe Bay" deals with three issues - a major oil spill at the Prudhoe Bay site, a water leak at a separation plant, and a methanol leak. The new version also covers the three issues, but the water leak is gone and a second, smaller oil spill now has its own paragraph.

In Arturo's version currently on the BP Wikipedia page, a confusion between the major leak of over 200,000 gallons in March 2006 and the minor leak of under 1000 gallons August 2006 is cleared up.

The newly added claim that "there was no impact upon wildlife" is sourced to an Alaksa Department of Environmental Conservation spill report that says only "No impacts to wildlife have been reported at this time" ("At this time" being just over a week after the spill).

The May 2007 water leak section is now gone. The missing section had read,

In May 2007, the company announced another partial field shutdown owing to leaks of water at a separation plant. Their action was interpreted as another example of fallout from a decision to cut maintenance of the pipeline and associated facilities.[261]

However, that citation was being used - albeit poorly - to anchor an important piece of information about BP and Prudhoe Bay: the widely-reported assertions by investigators at the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee that BP had "cut maintenance of the pipeline and associated facilities" and launched a criminal investigation into whether the maintenance cuts had lead to the spills mentioned earlier. According to CNBC, Committee leader U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak said the water spill, "was a further sign that BP cost cutting was to blame for the poor state of infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay." The water spill was after Guardian UK reported that the congressional committee had, "demanded an explanation from Britain's biggest oil company for documents suggesting that managers considered turning off the flow of anti-corrosion chemicals to save money."

Also not included, from an Alaska Dispatch timeline from 2011:

Nov. 9, 2009: An 18-inch flow line ruptures at BP's Lisburne field, spilling nearly 50,000 gallons of an oil and water mix onto the tundra about half a mile from Prudhoe Bay. Warnings, including sensors that showed drops in temperature and even alarms, began going off but BP operators failed to investigate or troubleshoot the cause of the alarms for months.

The October 2007 methanol spill is handled differently in each version. In the original, methanol is identified as "poisonous to plants and animals" and its use is explained (it is used to clear ice).

Finally, in the current (Arturo at BP) Wikipedia version this information has been removed and there are new quotation marks around the words "toxic spill."

As of this writing, the Wikipedia editor who approved of Arturo BP's "Prudhoe Bay" section has taken a closer look as well, now regretfully calling the new version "far from accurate."

In light of the experiences had by both Chevron and BP, perhaps there now should also be quotation marks around the word "rules" at Wikipedia.

Is objectivity possible, or lost?

If it's true that Wikipedia currently provides 88% of Americans with their knowledge, then this is a much bigger problem than two big oil companies rewriting their own public histories within an extremely inconsistent system.

Wikipedia's struggle with objectivity, between brands and community, is a curious experiment of our generation. Wikipedia subjects should have the right to manage their public information and branding, and editors must have the right to call BS on them - if the editors are truly objective, and if the guidelines are evenly practiced and policed. But that's not what's happening here, and it doesn't appear to have been happening on Wikipedia for some time.

For the bemused outsider, it's not unlike observing thoroughbred breeders: the trick is to closely supervise the genetic mixing between horses with strong traits, to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. Unsupervised, close inbreeding magnifies the weak points in addition to the strong points. But in this case, we don't get horses that are really fast and really crazy. Instead the result is a closed and broken culture where the quest for objectivity is nothing more than an open content pissing match, led by a bellowing, uninvolved landed digital gentry from a bygone Internet era.

The one who has truly lost here is you, the reader. Unless someone can gain control of Wikipedia and clean house, the "Internet's encyclopedia" will disintegrate into an intellectual bag of candy mixed with hand grenades, and be remembered by those actually seeking facts as a historical curiosity; once brilliant as the glittering, refined resource that once made it so valuable.

ZDNet has reached out to BP and Mr. Wales for comment and will update this article upon response. Post image: U.S. Coast Guard working to put out BP Deepwater Horizon fire, Wikicommons 2010.

At turns funny (his dismal rate of catbox cleaning) and at times incredibly useful (his rate of maintaining 'inbox zero'), the audience for Hunsinger's Playing With Your Own Big Data was held in rapt attention to what the big data dev has done with his employer's tools — specifically, Splunk Storm.

Every day we continue to increase our own personal data footprints, sometimes actively and sometimes without even realizing it.

Big companies are already collecting your data and using it to make more money. Why not collect this data (and more) and use it to your own benefit?

Hunsinger looked at his everyday life and grabbed data from everything he could, like Foursquare, Twitter and more.

He acquired as many devices as he could find to measure his sleep, such as the Zeo Sleep Machine and wireless activity tracker, FitBit.

When data wasn't easy to get from devices, APIs or apps, he wrote custom python scripts — which he collected and shared here on GitHub.

Then in his all-too-short SXSW presentation, Hunsinger showed some of his own big data, visualized in charts and graphs — the results of cleaning up his data and dumping it into Splunk Storm (and sometimes the desktop version, Splunk).

Examples in Playing With Your Own Big Data included:

• Hunsingler's weight measured by WiThings, which showed his average weight over time.

• His location with Google Latitude and his check-ins via Foursquare.

• The unread vs. read email inbox count (Hunsinger's quest for 'inbox zero') — for this he used a custom python script to send to Splunk Storm.

• @edrabbit Tweets, for which he showed a chart of number of tweets per week, pointing out the large spikes of increased use over the duration of SXSW.

• Hunsinger's own custom iPhone web app for tracking things manually.

• His humorous graph of a Blue Angels noise detection system that he built with a RaspberryPI + USB Mic and SplunkStorm along with friend Greg Albrecht (Blue Angels are the United States Navy's flight demonstration squadron, known for ultra-loud practice flyovers in San Francisco during September's Fleet Week).

Hunsinger told me he didn't have enough time to include everything in the SXSW talk that he's tracking, and told me that he's also logging:

(...) my bike rides with RunKeeper, sleep patterns with Zeo, music with last.fm, my heart rate through an exercise heart rate monitor (I'm really hoping to get a basis soon), my posture with a LUMOback and steps walked with a Fitbit.

Putting his data into Splunk Storm wasn't necessarily as easy as hitting "export" on an app and "import" into Splunk Storm, but Hunsinger explained the process in a way that might be suprisingly easy for anyone to try.

To make the cool charts in his Playing With presentation, Ed employed different kinds of hardware for data collection, utilized APIs and export functionality from various services, and told me:

I used provided APIs or export functionality with the different services to get my data out. This is the tricky part as some services are hesitant to release their data.

But, they all use different formats, so I had to clean up the data for dumping into Splunk Storm.

Basically I wrote a bunch of python scripts (http://github.com/edrabbit) that fetch and/or clean the data so I can import it into Splunk Storm.

The need to write my own sanitation scripts points to a bigger picture. Most of these services want to keep you silo'ed at the expense of the customer.

My hope is that these companies can figure out a business model that lets them release the data to the user and then the best software out there for working with that data can win.

It's true that most people feel uneasy knowing that most everything they do is measured and collected into data sets — and the companies doing the collecting and analyzing may know more about their personal habits than they do.

I'm hoping Ed Hunsinger's self-experiments can start to change this imbalance.

If we can make the act of better knowing our own data into something fun, easy, and we can use it to better our lives, that's worth a lot.

It could also raise awareness about what everyone's been giving away, and why they might want to care about what's done with their own big data.

Or, at least it might give Ed's wife a week off from catbox duty.

Disclosure: I occasionally cat-sit for Mr. and Mrs. Hunsinger.

The FCC Commissioner ominously warned Congress that what happened at WCIT-12 "ended the era of an international consensus to keep inter-governmental hands off of the Internet in dramatic fashion."

The WCIT-12 summit was where the U.N.'s telecommunications arm, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), facilitated changes to a global telecommunications treaty. The U.N. debacle prompted a widespread online outrage, an unprecedented unanimous U.S. House of Representatives vote in opposition, and a collective refusal from 55 member states to sign the ITU's treaty.

But according to McDowell's testimony, serious damage has still been done to the free and open Internet as a result. 

"The bottom line," McDowell said, "is 89 countries have given the ITU jurisdiction over the Internet’s operations and content."

McDowell stated in no uncertain terms that the U.S. must take action to stop the U.N. agency from gaining further governance power over the Internet as it intends to do at the ITU's upcoming 2014 plenipotentiary meeting. He says that, "Internet freedom's foes around the globe are working hard to exploit a treaty negotiation that dwarfs the importance of the WCIT by orders of magnitude."

In a rarely seen show of harshly-written rhetoric, McDowell will also demonstrate that the U.N.'s harmful designs on the Internet are at least a decade old, and its agenda is comprised almost entirely of lies and deceit.

McDowell's astonishingly blunt statements (prepared and published in "Fighting for Internet Freedom: Dubai and Beyond") outlined the ITU's frighteningly successful agenda to take control of the Internet by redefining telecommunications treaties in direct benefit to ITU bedfellows not limited to China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

WCIT-12 set stage to dismantle Internet freedom

Today's "Fighting for Internet Freedom" hearing and webcast will be held jointly with the Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, along with the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

After representative testimony from witnesses such as the FCC, U.S. Department of State, and the Internet Society, the subcommittees are to consider legislation to affirm that it is the policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control.

'U.S. opposition is not enough'

McDowell praised the U.S. decision not to sign onto ITU's WCIT-12 Dubai treaty changes at the December summit, but plainly said that this is not enough—especially, he said, with what the ITU has planned next.

But McDowell testified that anyone—including Congress—who thinks the U.S. dissent by refusing to sign the WCIT-12 treaty stopped the ITU from attaining dangerous Internet governance powers is being misled:

Although the U.S. was ultimately joined by 54 other countries in opposition to the new treaty language, that figure is misleading.

As a result of an 89-55 vote, the ITU now has unprecedented authority over the economics and content of key aspects of the Internet.

Specifically, the explicit terms of the new treaty language give the ITU policing powers over “SPAM,” and attempt to legitimize under international law foreign government inspections of the content of Internet communications to assess whether they should be censored by governments under flimsy pretexts such as network congestion.

More broadly, pro-regulation forces succeeded in upending decades of consensus on the meaning of crucial treaty definitions that were universally understood to insulate Internet service providers, as well as Internet content and application providers, from intergovernmental control by changing the treaty’s definitions.

If these regulatory expansionists are willing to conjure ITU authority where clearly none existed, their control-hungry imaginations will see no limits to the ITU’s authority over the Internet’s affairs under the new treaty language. Their appetite for regulatory expansionism is insatiable.

"In sum," he said, "the dramatic encroachments on Internet freedom secured in Dubai will serve as a stepping stone to more international regulation of the Internet in the very near future."

McDowell was in Dubai in December for the WCIT-12 treaty conference. The debacle led to an online outrage as the U.N.'s ITU deceived member states and ordinary citizens alike in its bid to attempt an Internet governance coup.

ITU Plenipotentiary 2014: The ITU must be stopped

McDowell refers to the ITU's upcoming 2014 plenipotentiary meeting, where he says: "Internet freedom's foes around the globe are working hard to exploit a treaty negotiation that dwarfs the importance of the WCIT by orders of magnitude. In 2014, the ITU will conduct what is literally a constitutional convention [that] will define the ITU's mission for years to come."

The 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference ("PP-14") will be held in Busan, South Korea on October 20—November 7 next year.

In his testimony, McDowell bluntly told the joint House subcommittee that the results of plans being made by the ITU to secure Internet governance at this very moment for the 2014 plenipot, "will be devastating even if the United States does not ratify these toxic new treaties." McDowell explained:

We must waste no time fighting to prevent further governmental expansion into the Internet’s affairs at the upcoming ITU Plenipotentiary in 2014.

Time is of the essence. While we debate what to do next, Internet freedom’s foes around the globe are working hard to exploit a treaty negotiation that dwarfs the importance of the WCIT by orders of magnitude. In 2014, the ITU will conduct what is literally a constitutional convention, called a "plenipotentiary" meeting, which will define the ITU’s mission for years to come.

This month the ITU readies to hammer out Internet governance plans at the World Telecommunication Information and Communication Technology Policy Forum meetings in February and May 2013 prep for PP-14.

On January 11, 2013, ITU's Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure released the fourth and final ITU/WTPF-13 report outlining groundwork for Internet governance—and internet regulatory topics— at the February 6-8 and May 14-16 meetings.

The ITU/WTPF-13 report explicitly includes the creation of "Global Principles for the governance and use of the Internet," and resolving issues pertaining to "use of Internet resources for purposes that are inconsistent with international peace, stability and security."

It also redefines the multi-stakeholder definition of Internet governance as currently insufficient because it does not grant governments—now defined by ITU as underrepresented multi-stakeholders—"sufficient" Internet governance power.

FCC to Congress: U.N., ITU lied to us

The House Committees will also be flatly told in his testimony that the ITU cannot be trusted in word, act, or deed. According to McDowell:

Before the WCIT, ITU leadership made three key promises:

1) No votes would be taken at the WCIT;

2) A new treaty would be adopted only through "unanimous consensus;" and

3) Any new treaty would not touch the Internet.

All three promises were resoundingly broken.

Anti-ITU Internet opposition and activism can no longer be ignored

McDowell testified to Congress that since 2003, his office directly observed that countries such as China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and their allies—have never given up their regulatory quest. "They continued to push the ITU, and the U.N. itself, to regulate both the operations, economics and content of the Net," he said.

McDowell's testimony explained that Congress and the wider public must understand that serious damage was done when Internet guardians and U.S. officials didn't listen to early warnings about the ITU:

Many defenders of Internet freedom did not take [ITU's Internet governance] proposals seriously at first, even though some plans explicitly called for:

•   Changing basic definitions contained in treaty text so the ITU would have unrestricted jurisdiction over the Internet;

•   Allowing foreign phone companies to charge global content and application providers internationally mandated fees (ultimately to be paid by all Internet consumers) with the goal of generating revenue for foreign government treasuries;

•   Subjecting cyber security and data privacy to international control, including the creation of an international “registry” of Internet addresses that could track every Internet-connected device in the world;

•   Imposing unprecedented economic regulations of rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated Internet traffic swapping agreements known as “peering;”

•   Establishing ITU dominion over important non-profit, private sector, multistakeholder functions, such as administering domain names like the .org and .com Web addresses of the world;

•   Subsuming into the ITU the functions of multi-stakeholder Internet engineering groups that set technical standards to allow the Net to work;

•   Centralizing under international regulation Internet content under the guise of controlling “congestion,” or other false pretexts; and many more.

In McDowell's powerful testimony, he told Congress the purpose of WCIT was actually to extend the ITU's reach into the Internet’s affairs, its governance, and much more: 

"In fact, in 2011, then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin summed it up best when he declared that his goal, and that of his allies, was to establish “international control over the Internet” through the ITU.

Last month in Dubai, Mr. Putin largely achieved his goal.

In conclusion, McDowell said that inaction is not an option, and doubt about the ITU's power to change the Internet is no longer acceptable if a free and open Internet is to be preserved—and saved.

And so, I ask you in the strongest terms possible, to take action and take action now.

Two years hence, let us not look back at this moment and lament how we did not do enough.

We have but one chance.

Let us tell the world that we will be resolute and stand strong for Internet freedom. All nations should join us.

New app sizes penises for better condom fit

An app just landed in Apple's iOS App Store that helps men to measure the length and girth of their penises.

Devs at VSM Enterprises say the app is for helping men buy condoms that fit correctly, which is something that Condomania has been offering through its website for over a decade.

Condoms perform safety functions better when they fit the wearer, as well as providing more sensation.

The app is also available for Android.

• iPhone app designed to let men compare penis size with the rest of the world released in App Store  (TNT Magazine)

Penis app ok for Apple, but nudes in popular photo app cause for rejection

Popular photo sharing app 500px was been pulled from the iOS App Store last week along with its partner ISO500, because Apple decided the app's ability for users to turn off "safe search" constituted a violation of Apple's anti-porn guidelines.

Early reports said that the apps were pulled because updates allowed the tinkering of search results to allow adult content if users so desired.

However, the company has now learned that Apple simply - and quite suddenly - changed its decision about allowing the app at all, with any ability for users to see content above child-appropriate levels. 

Additionally, Apple alleges that it was responding to complaints about child pornography - a strong and potentially damaging accusation which came as a shock to 500px, who told The Verge,

We've never ever, since the beginning of the company, received a single complaint about child pornography. If something like that ever happened, it would be reported right away to enforcement agencies.

The app is still available for Android.

• 500px photo apps pulled from iOS App Store over nude photos (The Verge, updated with Apple response)

Tech solutions for assault emergencies

Increasingly, tech strives to address an urgent need for women to call for help during assaults.

Many practical obstacles stand in the way of tech-based solutions, but some ideas are starting to emerge.

A recent, deeply horrifying gang rape in India December 16th was referenced when the Indian government announced a gadget intended for female wearers - a watch that can alert authorities and family members when the wearer is in danger, and starts filming at the same time.

The December 16 female assault victim died from her attack injuries, and news reports noted the delay in her medical treatment due indifferent police officers.

When triggered, the watch would send an emergency text to authorities and family members with the wearer's GPS coordinates, and record 30 minutes of video. No further details about the proposed project have been provided.

Disappointingly, a prototype is not expected until Summer.

• A Wrist-Worn Answer to Sexual Attack? (WSJ)

Mainstream porn still clings to DVD businiess model

The adult entertainment expo and awards (AEE, widely known as 'the porn convention' and AVN porn awards) held in Las Vegas every year moved its event dates, and so did not coincide with CES this year.

The porn con's move away from the world's largest tech expo - itself struggling for relevance - may have been more painfully symbolic than intended. One attendee wrote her astonished experience at the porn convention's business panels, where the old guard of America's adult industry focused on business models from 15 years ago - such as DVD product - and a stubborn ignorance about consumer marketshare expansion.

 (...) what I can say, and what surprised me, was the extent to which there seemed to be a palpable nostalgia for a bygone era. Take for example the “State of the Industry” panel. There was not a single woman on a panel devoted to discussing where the industry is headed. Not one. Instead, the panel consisted of five men, all of whom were white and appeared to be at least in their fifties. Ironically, on a panel about the future of the industry, the “big boys”—as they were described in the program—really wanted to discuss DVDs, a market, which, by all accounts, has been dying a slow death for years.

• Porno time warp? Final thoughts on the 2013 Adult Entertainment Expo (Las Vegas Weekly)

New revenge porn website lawsuit names GoDaddy

There is very little love for GoDaddy, but a new lawsuit against a revenge porn website - where explicit or sexually compromising images, usually of women, are displayed nonconsensually - names the domain registrar and web hosting company among the defendants.

Last week a class-action lawsuit on behalf of seventeen women was filed against Texxxan.com a subscription-based paysite.

The suit alleges that creating “revenge porn” violates Texas state privacy laws.

• New lawsuit against “revenge porn” site also targets GoDaddy (Ars Technica)

Digital rights and free speech groups around the world have established January 18th, 2013, as the first official Internet Freedom Day.

To celebrate a free and open internet - and call attention to those who would stand in the way - many organizations and individuals are engaging in activities that are powerful, pointed, and a little bit disobedient.

Right now, the EFF is holding an open Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) saying they will answer any question about the issues surrounding Internet Freedom Day and internet censorship.

The Twitter hashtag #InternetFreedomDay is moving fast, as activists of all stripes make their contributions.

The primary Internet Freedom Day website states "Today, celebrate your freedom of expression" and encourages visitors to Tweet or post to Facebook, "What's something you love on the net that you’d never want to see censored?"

Already censored: Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech

The Internet Freedom Day website suggested this morning that daring Freedom Day supporters share a video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech - originally posted by Fight For The Future as an act of civil disobedience.

Less than a few hours of Kinkg's speech video beginning to go viral Vimeo removed it, leaving this message in its place:

Sorry, "MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is copyrighted. Share it anyway."was deleted at 1:03:37 Fri Jan 18, 2013.

Fight For the Future explained that if SOPA passed, Internet users could have been penalized for uploading or sharing King's pivotal speech and "entire websites could have been shut down just for linking to it."

They've got a point: King advocated for civil disobedience as a means to effect change.

The video is copyrighted by EMI, who has been active in enforcing their copyright by taking down versions of King's speech from YouTube.

The Internet Freedom Day website had written,

Engage in a small act of civil disobedience and share this video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King’s call for racial justice is as relevant today as it was in 1963. Because this speech is copyrighted, if SOPA had passed, entire websites could have been shut down just for linking to it. This speech is too important to be censored by broken copyright laws. Please share it today.

, and more.

, reminds us that even still The ITU could put the Internet behind closed doors.

• See also:UN plans Internet governance amid outcry to defund ITU

Internet Freedom Day is the one-year anniversary of a global online protest that shook the foundations of the way lawmakers do business, and attempt to control constituents, today.

On January 18, 2012, many websites including Wikipedia, Google and Reddit went "dark" censoring themselves to show what the internet would look like under the then-proposed, malfeasant legislation known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) These were both set to be quietly passed by the U.S. Congress.

One year ago #SOPA was stopped dead in its tracks. Today we celebrate and commemorate #internetfreedomday internetfreedomday.net

— creativecommons (@creativecommons) January 18, 2013

Both SOPA and PIPA had been revealed to be designed to put the financial interests of the entertainment industry ahead of the rights of all those who enjoy the free and open Internet.

Access Now writes,

Congress was flooded by millions of phone calls and emails from angry constituents. Before the day was over, dozens of congressmen and congresswomen dropped their support for the bills, or came out in active opposition.

On January 18th, we celebrate Internet Freedom Day--as a reminder of the threats to our digital rights--and to remember how powerful we are as an international coalition.

The initial campaigns to stop SOPA and PIPA were launched by Demand Progress, founded by Aaron Swartz around that initial purpose in conceiving an online petition, "(...) in opposition to the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, and then the ensuing 18 months of activism that helped bring down SOPA and PIPA."

#InternetFreedomDay is bittersweet. @aaronsw played a big part in helping to defeat #SOPA. He won't be there to help us wage future battles.

— Marcia Hofmann (@marciahofmann) January 18, 2013

The EFF has a great post outlining a few upcoming battles over Internet freedom, and include a new strike to reform computer crime law. EFF writes,

The Internet has been in mourning this week as one of its true innovators and pioneers, Aaron Swartz, took his own life at the age 26. 

(...) At the time of his death, Aaron was facing a relentless and unjust prosecution under the outdated and draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for the supposed “crime” using MIT's computer network to download millions of academic articles from the online archive JSTOR, allegedly without "authorization."

EFF, along with a multitude of other groups, have taken a bill written by Rep. Zoe Lofgren and written the first draft of what we hope will become known as “Aaron’s Law” — which will go a long ways in preventing a similar situation from happening to a freedom fighter like Aaron again. You can take action and email your members of Congress to tell them to support reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act here.  

The website De-fund the ITU surfaced on the January NANOG (North American Network Operators' Group) email list. 

Its Whitehouse.gov petition De-fund the ITU demands the U.S. government stop its financial contributions to the ITU.

It comes after the ITU's recent attempt at internet governance and monetization through tolls at its WCIT-12 summit in Dubai last month.

The U.N. debacle prompted widespread internet outrage, an unprecedented unanimous U.S. House of Representatives vote in opposition, and refusal from 55 countries to sign the ITU's treaty.

No matter - as usual, the ITU has its own plans.

Five days ago ITU's Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour released the fourth and final ITU/WTPF-13 report outlining groundwork for internet governance (and internet regulatory topics) at upcoming meetings on February 6-8 and May 14-16.

Discussions at WTPF-13 will be based on this report and will serve as the sole working document of the Forum.

ITU re-defines "multistakeholder"

The Report explains the current multistakeholder model of internet governance is "under discussion" and acknowledges that members Cisco, U.K., U.S., and ISOC view the current governance of the Internet as "sufficient."

However, "with regards to international Internet-related public policy, the role of one stakeholder – Governments – has not been allowed to evolve."

For the Policy Forum, the ITU also has 64 "informal Experts" weighing in.

The "experts" are comprised mostly of Member State telecom representatives (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, others), plus individuals representing the interests and opinions of Verizon, Cisco Systems, British Telecom, the FCC, The Internet Society, ARIN, ICANN, and PayPal.

Who funds the ITU?

The website promoting the petition, defundtheitu.org, provides details and ITU funding summaries showing which countries contribute to the ITU and the tech companies (Member Sectors) that provide millions to continue the ITU (and its subgroups) respective missions.

According to The ITU’s 2012-2015 membership roll and dues one Contributory Unit is equivalent to CHF 318,000 (1 Swiss Franc equals $1.10).

Currently the US pays 30 Contributory Units (nearly $11 million per year) to the ITU as does Japan, making the two countries its top donors. Other big contributors include Germany at 25 units, Italy: 15, Saudi Arabia: 13, China: 12, UK: 10, Russia: 10.

Member Sector donations contribute additional monies to ITU subgroups. American Member Sector companies include Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Intel, Motorola, Sprint, Verizon and many more.

(Member Sector entities pay self-elected Contributory Units for ITU-T, R and D participation currently set at one-tenth what Member States pay - 31,800 Swiss Francs per "member" contributory unit per sector.)

Financial support for ITU is also provided by the U.S. in that international organizations - namely the ITU and its employees - are exempted from U.S. Federal tax withholding (Exhibit 5.19.11-13: International Organizations Exempt from Federal Withholding Requirements).

WCIT-12 outrage, ITU duplicity, and aftermath

One month ago the U.N.'s ITU held its World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) in Dubai, where Member States proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) - to expand jurisdiction over the Internet, such as creating pay-per-use tolls, heightening surveillance, and to give nation states increased control over the Internet.

Global opposition created an epic backlash, fueled by the ITU's insistence to keep conference documents from the public - despite ITU's insistence its process was transparent.

In response to ITU's secretive processes researchers at George Mason University created WCITLeaks, a website that solicited and shared copies of leaked WCIT/ITU documents.

As WCIT-12 unfolded, leaked proposals revealed plans from Russia, China, and similar regimes for an ITU-supported play at WCIT-12 to define the internet as a system of government-controlled networks, among other deeply disturbing intents.

Democratic and free speech organizations joined internet giants in the outcry, such as Google with its Take Action campaign, and the formation of country blocs included the U.S., the European Parliament, Canada, Mexico and more.

• See also: U.N. readies for protests on eve of secret Internet regulation treaty

At WCIT conference end, the ITU went back on its specific promises that the treaty would not be about the internet and would not be put to a vote.

Eli Dourado is a co-founder of WCITLeaks and was a member of the US delegation to WCIT-12. In Behind closed doors at the U.N.’s attempted "takeover of the Internet" Dourado wrote,

The purpose of the meeting, claimed ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour, was simply to update the treaty that governs international phone calls; it had last been revised in 1988, when most phone companies were state-owned monopolies. Claims that the conference would implicate the Internet were part of a misinformation campaign pursued by unnamed opponents of the ITU, Tour said.

Dourado described how the ITU forced its treaty agreement with a vote that it insisted was not a vote:

(...) What followed was surreal. The Chairman calmly said that he had a long list of countries wishing to speak, and that in lieu of going through the list, he was going to take the “feel of the room” by asking countries to hold up their voting boards if they supported the resolution as amended by the Secretary-General. After also asking for those against, the Chairman said simply, “The majority is with having the resolution in.” After some applause, he added, “Thank you. Now we can go to Corrigendum 2.”

There were immediate inquiries from the UK and Spain as to whether we had just decided the issue by a vote. We had been promised, after all, that there would be no votes, that all decisions would be decided by consensus. In response to the UK’s inquiry, the Chairman replied, “The majority agreed to adopt the resolution as amended.” In response to Spain’s, the Chairman answered, “No, it was not a vote, and I was clear about it. Thank you, Spain.”

De-fund the ITU claims,

Their goal was a coup: to overthrow the open and transparent system of Internet governance that ensures the Internet’s freedom and accessibility, and replace it with their own central point of absolute control, through which policies of censorship and repression could be enacted.

The U.S. and 54 countries revolted and refused to sign. This prompted subsequent headlines that claimed the ITU had failed its attempt at an Internet power-grab, and that the treaty was defeated.

Meanwhile, some the 89 signing countries hurried home to begin implementation of the problematic new treaty.

At The Internet Society's Post-WCIT Roundtable panel on December 21, U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer, head of Delegation WCIT-12, expressed serious concern about what will happen as the 89 governments move toward treaty implementation.

Amb. Kramer unequivocally stated that, "the ITU needs to step back from governance and content." He cautioned the room that America may have taken a stand against the treaty, but that "the U.S. does not own the internet."

Kramer said, "The internet must be left alone."

If the De-Fund The ITU petition and movement is successful in the U.S., the ITU stands to lose 7.7% of its budget.

It could indeed hurt the slippery organization, which has had to increase the dollar amount of Contributory Units as membership and elected contributions have dwindled over the past decade.

And if Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour's ITU/WTPF-13 far-reaching internet governance report is any indication, ITU needs the internet now more than ever.

One thing is certain: the internet does not need the ITU.

Audible's DRM is a greedy, outdated way of cheating customers

When Audible was purchased by Amazon Inc. in 2008 most authors and audio book consumers hoped that Amazon would stop Audible's widely-hated practice of crippling the use of authors' audio books with Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Amazon didn't.

They're now one of the last DRM hold-outs.

After conducting tests with DRM-free audiobooks, in 2008, mega-publisher Random House abandoned DRM on its digital books altogether.

In early 2007, an open letter from Steve Jobs called on record companies to stop using DRM on their audio files; in 2009 Apple officially abandoned DRM for its iTunes music store over two years ago.

Amazon's own music downloads don't have DRM - this made big news when they ditched DRM in 2008.

So if consumers want to buy books to use on various, specific devices, why would Audible (Amazon) stop them?

As the EFF explains DRM,

Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies attempt to control what you can and can't do with the media and hardware you've purchased.

• Bought an ebook from Amazon but can't read it on your ebook reader of choice? That's DRM. (...)

Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and keep consumers safe from viruses.

But there's no evidence that DRM helps fight either of those.

Instead DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition by making it easy to quash "unauthorized" uses of media and technology.

Audible disallows conversion of audio book files into MP3 files, telling customers that Audible's DRM prevents this to ensure the Audible experience of playback performance on its approved list of "Audible Ready" devices.

Now that Amazon is also Android, and Amazon's digital books have text to speech options in Kindle devices, it remains to be seen why DRM is still part of any kind of long-tail business plan.

Three devices: re-purchase is a certainty

A limitation of three devices is unrealistic, and by now Audible - Amazon - knows it.

A reader (listener) buys a book and wants to listen to it on their home computer.

And their tablet, away from the desk or in the kitchen while cooking. In the cafe on their laptop.

On their phone during a train or bus commute. In their car during a drive. Or at the gym, or a maybe flight with their iPod/mobile MP3 player.

That's six everyday use devices in typical situations.

Audible's DRM is bad for readers and consumers

DRM makes buying and using audio books harder.

If a reader (listener) wants to enjoy their book they're only able to chose three out of six of the above everyday device scenarios - for a book they purchased, and should rightfully own.

An audio book is still a book. It's just 'printed' on a different kind of paper.

All rights to the buyer should apply, and a buyer shouldn't have to buy a book twice just because the bookseller says so.

In 2007, I worked with my book agent on a potential deal with Audible. I said that if I were to agree to Audible's terms, I wanted to know about their DRM policy, as I was well aware of the customer anger Audible's DRM had engendered - and did not want my reputation tied to it.

We had a conference call with reps from Audible. I asked them about their DRM policy.

I was told it was important to keep because they needed to protect against file sharing. One person on the call casually commented, "We're really kind of hoping some kid doesn't hack it."

Except it's not 'some kid' who wants to listen to The Omnivore's Dilemma on the way to work, at their desk, on the plane, when someone else is on the computer and they have to multitask, or when their hands are full with the baby.

The people who listen to audio books are also people who are blind or have limited sight, are dyslexic, are ADHD, are people who have limited mobility - and access on multiple devices means so much more than anyone will ever know.

The people who listen to audio books are are fans of books. They are all of us.

Audible's DRM is futile

Search Google, look at Reddit and other forums and sites, and you'll find dedicated readers and listeners who simply want to put the books they purchased from Audible on their MP3 player.

You'll also find out quickly just how aggressive and litigious Audible is to protect its DRM.

Over the years a number of software makers have come along to remove the Audible DRM encoding to make audio book files user-friendly.

Audible has always been swift to threaten software makers, devs and bloggers with lawsuits for promoting - or even discussing - the ability to remove Audible's DRM.

As one commenter put it on Reddit in a thread about trying to listen to their Audible book outside the DRM, "It's easier to torrent and steal the book than to play it on my car stereo."

Thanks for that, Audible (Amazon).

Audible's DRM is bad for authors

Audible's DRM poisons my relationship with my readers and fans.

I'm the 'little guy' whose work is traded off of in this ridiculous charade wherein companies use dated, anti-consumer and anti-artist racketeering-style business tactics instead of evolving their business models.

In addition to being a tech journalist, blogger and podcaster, I'm still an author and anthology editor with dozens of books in print in many languages - the old fashioned way to be a writer. 

My main print publisher is an indie, women-run small business. Making a deal with Audible to get their titles into the audio book game was a necessary step to expand their catalog into a digital goods market that an indie can't afford not to be in nowadays.

When a consumer buys one of my books on Audible, my indie publisher and I get some change - and that's great.

But my reader, who now has a direct relationship with me, the author, gets a bag of digital candy mixed with arsenic.

As an author it is embarrassing that someone would purchase my book knowing that instead of enjoying the work freely, they will almost certainly soon have a technical experience of frustration, anger and disappointment - an experience that has nothing to do with me, or the book.

Why would I send anyone to Audible and do that to my readers - especially if I want them to ever buy my work again?

Oh, right. Because Audible is pretty much the only game in town.

The DRM on my books as distributed through Audible is placed there without my consent.

Dear Audible, Amazon: stop the DRM racket. Now.

Will porn's most prolific copyright troll law firm get a taste of its own medicine?

A few months ago, I took a look at Lightspeed Media (run by Steve "Lightspeed" Jones), the star client of the nation's most prolific porn copyright troll firm - Prenda Law, run by John Steele.

Jones is obsessed with punishing hackers, who he believes are all out to get him.

You may remember Prenda for other reasons, as one of Steele's recent career highlights was his charge to sue a bewildered 70-year-old woman for downloading porn - even if her wifi had been compromised.

Now a California judge has ordered the firm to answer charges that it engaged in identity theft.

Rather than answer the charges, Prenda Law is attacking the judge saying that Hon. Judge Otis Wright is "too biased against pornographic copyright litigators to provide Prenda with a fair hearing."

• Porn troll facing ID theft charges wants judge off case (Ars Technica)

Sex strategy game won't stay down

The "erotic strategy game" Seduce Me is on the market, despite being dumped unceremoniously by Valve, (even though it was within rights to be on Valve's distribution program).

Many thought Valve's ejection of the game would spell the end. In September of 2012 sexually explicit strategy game Seduce Me - from Amsterdam based No Reply Games - was removed from Valve's distribution program Steam Greenlight for living up to its sexually explicit labeling.

Now, a few months later, the playfully cheesy, adults-only game is back for sale on its own website and available for sale (Mac/PC only; €12.99, or around $17; seducemegame.com).

• Seduce Me Makes It - UPDATED (Escapist Magazine)

Streaming porn coming to your Wii

SugarDVD, a streaming service that calls itself "Netflix for porn," is already available on PS3 and Xbox 360, and now it turns out the Wii U is going to be next.

A spokesperson for SugarDVD told Complex Magazine that a SugarDVD Wii U app is being built.

There's no word yet on release date. And yes, the jokes just make themselves around here.

• SugarDVD Will Bring Adult Entertainment to the Wii U (Complex Magazine)

Visa will still be processing adult payments

Visa Inc. on Thursday squelched rumors that it plans to stop processing online adult entertainment-related transactions, saying that statements circulating over the assertion are simply "not true."

Ted Carr, a spokesman for Visa, told XBIZ that currently there are no plans to halt processing for online adult charges.

"Our policy is that Visa cards should only be used in connection with legal transactions," Carr said. "If the transaction is legal, it’s allowed on our network. If it’s not legal, it’s not allowed."

(Though it will probably never be made public, personally I think it would be very interesting to see Visa's adult payment metrics.)

• Visa Confirms Online Adult Processing Rumor Is False (XBIZ, link may be NSFW)

New proposals submitted to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) aim to redefine the Internet as a system of government-controlled, state-supervised networks, according to a leaked document.

The WCIT-12 summit in Dubai is currently where the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is being held, where member state countries are going head-to-head about proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a legally binding international treaty signed by 178 countries.

The leaked document [PDF] was proposed by a member state bloc comprised of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Updated Monday, December 10th, at 3:13 a.m. PST: 

According to ITU's Twitter feed, TechWeek Europe and The National, the proposal has now been withdrawn. Additionally, the Egyptian delegation has communicated to WCITleaks via Twitter that, despite its name on the document, Egypt claims it "never supported the document."

Both Russia and China have been criticized in the past for various actions over their legislative approaches to their citizens' Internet access. Russia recently enacted a 'blacklist' law that sparked parliamentary scrutiny over the country's plans to censor the Russian Web, while China has for years impeded citizens' access to a free and open Web thanks to the state-run so-called 'Great Firewall'.

Read more

U.S. now 'totally unified' in opposition of U.N. Internet governance

• Read more

The leaked proposal specifically defines the Internet as an: "international conglomeration of interconnected telecommunication networks," and that "Internet governance shall be effected through the development and application by governments," with member states having "the sovereign right to establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance."

The secretly drafted proposal were posted on WCITLeaks, a Web site where conference proposals are being anonymously leaked, partially due to the fact that WCIT-12 conference proposals have not yet been made available to the general public.

The document also reflects one country's relentless push to redefine the Internet -- most recently seen in Russia's original proposals for WCIT-12 [PDF].

In June 2011, Vladimir Putin met with ITU's Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, where the then-Russian Prime Minister reminded the Toure that Russia co-founded the ITU. Putin then made headlines after stating that Russia intends to actively participate in, "establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)."

With the secretive nature of WCIT-12's proposal system, there is a growing sense that certain countries are prepared to move quickly in hopes that drastic proposals will slip through unnoticed.

In late November, the Arab States made a last-minute play to have the ITU become a national registry in the standards-setting summit the ITU facilitated just before WCIT-12 began only a week ago.

According to Dot Next, attendees at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) were "surprised" with an aggressive last-minute proposal by the Arab States that the ITU become a provider of IP addresses, citing "historical imbalances" relating to the allocation of traditional IPv4 addresses.

The proposal was halted when the U.S. threatened that it would refuse to accept the decision if it were passed. In a softening move, the ITU then decided it would, "conduct a feasibility study on the necessary action that would enable ITU-T to become a registry of IPv6 addresses" for the ITU Council to consider in 2013.

It's outrageous to think that any country would propose "state surveillance," or "the sovereign right to force Internet companies to hand over private information." But, this seems to be just what this document is proposing:

It cannot be understated the damage such a proposal could do to the free and open Internet, online privacy and anonymity, with access to the Internet at risk from an array of oppressive governments.

In a historical moment of unanimous agreement -- an eye-opening 397-0 vote -- the U.S. House of Representatives voted today to approve a resolution pushing the U.S. government to fight the United Nations in its bid to control and change the Internet at the WCIT-12 summit, currently under way in Dubai. 

The unanimous vote is meant to send a signal -- as a show of strength -- to other countries meeting at the telecommunications summit that both the White House and its lawmakers oppose any role the U.N. might take in Internet governance or regulation.

The WCIT-12 summit is where the U.N.'s little-known arm, International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is facilitating updates and changes to global telecommunications regulations that would place the Internet under the control of nation states.

This week, ITU member states are at the Dubai summit arguing over proposals from countries, most notably oppressive regimes such as Russia and China, that would impose levies on Internet traffic and adopt standards that would make it easy to track Internet users' activities.

It would give governments more effective control over citizens' access and use, as well as establish standards for telephone-style fee collection for Internet use.

According to The Hill, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said:

We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model.

The ITU denies that the U.N. is making a play for control of the Internet, or the ITU grabbing a larger role in Internet governance.

In a recent email exchange ITU's Senior Communications Officer Toby Johnson told ZDNet:

ITU's Secretary General has repeatedly said that this is not the case. In fact there are no proposals to the conference to this effect.

ITU's mandate with regards to the Internet is very clearly laid down in various Resolutions that cannot be overridden by anything that happens in Dubai. So this is just a myth. 

However, Johnson did not respond to ZDNet's request for evidence to support this claim.

Prior to the summit's Monday opening ceremonies, the EU's upper house, the European Parliament, voted to oppose the U.N.'s plans to regulate the Internet.

The 27 EU member states also voted unanimously, joining the U.S. to fight the ITU's WCIT-12 plans as a unified bloc. The E.U. is backed in its stance by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and other countries who are also members of the ITU.

"The EU believes that there is no justification for such proposals," said the European Commission, on Friday. The opinion given by Europe's lower house was the view of all 27 member states, it said.

According to the Reuters news agency, EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who is in charge of Europe's Internet policy, said the ITU proposals "risk damaging the Internet's evolution as a critical piece of global commercial infrastructure and a network for the free flow of information and data."

"The European Union's firm view is that the Internet works," she said earlier this week. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The ITU responded, claiming the EU resolution was flawed:

...it is unfortunate and disappointing to see that the European Parliament appears to base its Resolution on misleading and erroneous conjecture put forth by certain companies who are defending their commercial interests, in particular when those companies are not even European companies.

Opposition to ITU's WCIT-12 summit, fueled by details on the proposed changes leaking onto the Internet, are mounting.

ITU member states continue to argue over proposals from a range of countries, most notably oppressive regimes -- including as Russia and China -- which could impose levies on Internet traffic and adopt standards, making it easier to track Internet users' activities.

The proposals would give governments more effective control over citizens' access and use, as well as establish standards for telephone-style fee collection for Internet use.

Changes under consideration at WCIT-12 would pit citizens' rights to communicate against rules that will allow the member states to cut off and potentially intercept communications under vague wordings for cases that, "appear dangerous to the security of the State [...] or to public order or decency."

Proposed changes at WCIT-12 would also legitimize the pay-per-model of the Internet and would in all likelihood threaten 'net neutrality'.

The ITU has carried out years of studies and engaged in persistent maneuvering to figure out how to charge for, and measure, Internet traffic -- but has never come up with a firm, mutually-agreed proposal on how to do it.

Many will be surprised to see the United States unified in such a way -- for anything.

One thing shouldn't be overlooked. Standing against the ITU's endless wrangling over Internet controls sends a message toward governments that are excited at the prospects of getting tighter control of the internet by way of their telecoms (and the attractive lure of billions in increased revenue).

Again, from The Hill, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) told the House:

The 193 member countries of the United Nations are gathered to consider whether to apply to the Internet a regulatory regime that the International Telecommunications Union created in the 1980s for old-fashioned telephone service.

He said member states will also consider whether to, "swallow the Internet's non-governmental organizational structure whole and make it part of the United Nations."

"Neither of these are acceptable outcomes and must be strongly opposed by our delegation," he added.

Updated at 4:13 p.m. PST: 

When reached for comment about the U.S. resolution, ITU Senior Communications Officer Toby Johnson told ZDNet: 

The UN has no mandate to control the Internet; regulation only takes place at the national level and nothing that comes out of this conference will change that. It is legally and technically impossible for the ITU to control the internet.

However, ITU's Johnson did not explain or comment on the resolution itself, what effect it will have on WCIT-12 proceedings, or what is now becoming global opposition to the ITU's efforts.

Now that Syria's Internet access has resumed, technical experts at Renesys explain that a government-forced Internet blackout can only happen under certain conditions:

The key to the Internet's survival is the Internet's decentralization — and it's not uniform across the world. In some countries, international access to data and telecommunications services is heavily regulated.

There may be only one or two companies who hold official licenses to carry voice and Internet traffic to and from the outside world, and they are required by law to mediate access for everyone else.

Under those circumstances, it's almost trivial for a government to issue an order that would take down the Internet.

These are the exact conditions that ITU's WCIT-12 in Dubai intends to set in place with its legally-binding, U.N.-backed global telecommunications treaty, beginning Monday -- despite enormous opposition.

It will give regulatory control of the Internet over to governments, and pull it away from organizations such as the non-profit organization Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Implementation and details will be hammered out in a debate run by the U.N.'s little-known, secretive telecommunications arm, the ITU.

Renesys delivered up a second sobering data point in their analysis of what conditions make it possible for Syria to cut its citizens off from the world.

It also describes how easy Internet shut-off is when you've got telecoms and governments working in close, exclusive concert to serve the Internet to populations: 

Make a few phone calls, or turn off power in a couple of central facilities, and you've (legally) disconnected the domestic Internet from the global Internet. 

Of course, this level of centralization also makes it much harder for the government to defend the nation's Internet infrastructure against a determined opponent, who knows they can do a lot of damage by hitting just a few targets.

In this reasoning, ITU's WCIT-12 not only makes Internet blackouts possible, perhaps trivial, for totalitarian governments.

It makes all countries far more vulnerable to attack than before WCIT-12, and makes one of the strongest cases I've ever heard for fighting tooth and nail to preserve, uphold and solidify the distributed Internet.

When Syria's Internet was shut down on Thursday, ITU's Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure took the opportunity to speak ahead of the WCIT-12 treaty meeting to actually say very little:

I wish to speak out in the strongest possible terms against any action that impedes access to communications.

I call on the government of Syria to investigate the reports today of problems accessing the internet and mobiles, and to take any remedial measures required to restore people's access.

At that point, it was widely-known -- and acknowledged by the U.S. State Department -- that Syria's government was the actor responsible for any "problems accessing the Internet" the people of Syria were facing.

It wasn't the first time. The last time Syria shut down its Internet was just in time for the largest anti-government protest of the uprising; Syria shut off the Internet and opened fire into protesters, killing over 72 people, while government forces assaulted towns seen as key to the demonstrations, killing even more.

In a June 2012 speech, Toure assured the world that the ITU's WCIT-12 so-called International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR) revisions, would in no way impede countries' intent or "rights" to act on its citizens in a similar manner:

It is true nonetheless that all countries impose some restrictions on various forms of speech, including telecommunications – for example to protect copyright owners and to prevent defamation.

Some countries go further and restrict the use of telecommunications for areas such as pornography, gambling, hate speech, negation of genocide, and even certain types of political speech.

Such restrictions are permitted by article 34 of the ITU’s Constitution, which provides that Member States reserve the right to cut off, in accordance with their national law, any private telecommunications which may appear dangerous to the security of the State, or contrary to its laws, to public order or to decency.

And the ITRs cannot contradict that provision, either.

Meanwhile, the ITU has been positioning WCIT-12 in public relations' terms as something that will ensure Internet access is guaranteed for underserved and marginalized populations:

.@itusecgen- put simply @itu mission is to connect every citizen. To connect the world. #WCIT12 presents us with opp to further that aim!

— ITU (@ITU) November 30, 2012

The meeting and its proposals are being withheld from public view -- but especially in light of Syria's recent actions --  leaked document TD-64 (the anticipated final draft) contradicts the ITU's feel-good public relations.

According to the leaked TD-64, the only thing Syria would have done in violation of WCIT-12 was not telling ITU that they were going to shut off the Internet. 

(55 7.1) If a Member State exercises its right in accordance with the Constitution and Convention to suspend international telecommunication services partially or totally, that Member States shall immediately notify the Secretary-General of the suspension and of the subsequent return to normal conditions by the most appropriate means of communication. [ARTICLE 7: Suspension of Services]

Make no mistake: the purpose of WCIT-12 is to redefine the Internet as a telecommunications entity and reshape the Internet's business plan so that it benefits ITU, telecom companies, and the governments these entities serve. 

Nothing more.

In this light, it is no wonder the ITU has strong backing of oppressive governments, including Russia and China.

The ITU is holding the World Conference on International Telecommunications from December 3-14 where countries will seek agreement about proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a legally binding international treaty signed by 178 countries, in a bid to expand the ITU's scope of power to oversee the Internet. 

It would push regulatory control of the Internet's traffic and citizen access over to governments and away from organizations such as ICANN.

Leaked documents: Internet tolls and no private traffic

The treaty appears intent to solidify Internet infrastructure, encourage broadband rollout and investment, and ensure the integrity of emergency communication protocols.

It also would charge governments with the task of regulating its telcos' creation of national and communications charges -- another way to say, Internet tolls and taxes.

The meeting and its proposals are being withheld from public view.

A steady stream of leaked documents from Web site WCITleaks have the organisers in a defensive panic -- for reasons that make it clear that something's rotten at the U.N.

Created by researchers at George Mason University, WCITLeaks is soliciting and sharing copies of leaked draft documents.

In WCTIleaks document TD-64 (the anticipated final draft), the language states that countries will be granted the right to suspend their citizens' Internet access and telecom services partially or totally -- and that "member states" have the right to prohibit the anonymizing of traffic, forcing any identifying information masked for privacy reasons be made duly available to law enforcement agencies.

The ITU has strong backing of oppressive governments, including Russia and China.

Telcos make a power play?

In a June 2012 speech by ITU's Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Toure said that telecom companies had the, "right to a return on [the] investment" of dealing with Internet congestion, and that the meeting and treaty would:

(...) address the current disconnect between sources of revenue and sources of costs, and to decide upon the most appropriate way to do so.

Interestingly, Dr. Alexander Kushtuev, WCIT Workgroup Preparation Chairman and ITU Deputy Director-General, works for Russia's largest national telecommunications operator, Rostelecom.

In June 2011, Vladimir Putin met with Toure, where the then-Russian Prime Minister reminded the Secretary-General that Russia co-founded the ITU, and made a few headlines when Mr. Putin stated that Russia intends to actively participate in, "establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)."

Condemned in increasing numbers

This past weekend, a newly leaked WCTIleaks document revealed that the organizers are preparing a public-relations strategy to avoid public outcry by hiring consultants in an attempt and avoid the same global backlash that ultimately defeated SOPA, PIPA and CISPA.

Looking at the growing opposition online, they'll need all the PR strategists they can afford.

Fight for the Future, and Access Now -- in which both played a key role in decimating SOPA -- have launched the Web site. Supported by a video, the groups caution:

If some proposals at WCIT are approved, decisions about the Internet would be made by a top-down, old-school government-centric agency behind closed doors.

Some proposals allow for access to be cut off more easily, threaten privacy, legitimize monitoring and blocking online traffic. Others seek to impose new fees for accessing content, not to mention slowing down connection speeds.

One week ago, Google created its Take Action petition and campaign, pushing the covert meeting into wider Internet awareness saying that the treaty threatens the "free and open Internet." 

The ICU responded to Google over the weekend in a fairly incomprehensible blog post.

Prior to this, opposition has ranged in fits and starts as far apart as Vint Cerf's piece in The New York Times to hacktivist collective Anonymous -- and the U.S. government has recently confirmed it will oppose placing control of the Internet into the hands of the United Nations. (Edit: The European Parliament has now added its collective voice to the opposition.)

In comments, Toure continues to drop hints about global unhappiness with ICANN, but backs away from categorically stating the ITU will take control away from ICANN, instead saying vaguely the two organizations, "can work together."

What's truly disturbing to me is that Toure's speech made it clear that the ITU doesn't believe that setting financial barriers for access to Web sites or traffic, or that countries who censor their citizens' Internet access would in any way restrict the free flow of information.

To me, this means that once again, another clueless yet extremely powerful organization is trying to take control of the Internet, while having no understanding about how core principles of the Internet actually make the Internet function effectively.

Or maybe they just don't care.

See also: The Internet Society has clear information about how this will impact the way people around the world use the Internet.

If you must shop, help them make or hack something great. This Hack Black Friday Gift Guide features a SIM card reader/writer, discreet lockpick kits, router hacking kits, a USB analyzer, cool new items like Raspberry Pi and MaKey MaKey, fun stuff like the Hackerspace Passport, Hackerscout Badges and a coloring book for the littlest hackers and more.

The Stainless Steel RFID Blocking Passport Wallet ($85) is an RFID blocking wallet that keeps all your RFID enabled cards - also RFID enabled forms of ID such as your passport - safe from identity theft. I have one and it's thin yet really tough; its woven microfibers give the wallet a texture of silk over leather and the steel is an attractive matte silver.

The SIM card reader/writer kit ($17) comes in handy for backup and storage of SIM card data, recovering deleted SMS's and phone contacts, seeing the last 10 phone numbers dialed, etc. Open source.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

Designed and produced by The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers, the Lock-Pick Card ($29.95) is a wallet-sized card that's actually a nine-piece lockpick toolkit - simply snap the tools out of the card when you get locked out of your house.

It includes two feeler hooks, a half-diamond, a wavy rake, a sawtooth rake and a double-bump rake. The 'frame' of the card snaps apart into three tensioners.

Download a free and simple, illustrated color how-to brochure on lockpicking on this College of Lockpicking page.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

NeTV ($119) is a fully open source HDTV peripheral which brings WiFi Internet and Android mobile interfacing to any HDMI TV.

It's the first offering from the brand new Sutajio Ko-Usagi, the Open Source Hardware company led by "bunnie" Huang. bunnie is best known as the author of "Hacking the XBox" and was the lead hardware engineer of the chumby internet alarm clock.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

The USB to TTL Serial Cable - Debug / Console Cable ($9.95) is an easy way to connect to a microcontroller/Raspberry Pi/WiFi router serial console port. It's pictured above with the Raspberry Pi ($39.95), a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard; it can used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games and can play high-definition video. It's Linux based and can be hacked to to tons of stuff - the only limit is your imagination.

Inside the big USB plug is a USB<->Serial conversion chip and at the end of the 36" cable are four wire - red power, black ground, white RX into USB port, and green TX out of the USB port. The power pin provides the 500mA direct from the USB port and the RX/TX pins are 3.3V level for interfacing with the most common 3.3V logic level chipsets. 

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

The Hackerspace phenomena is taking over the world: there are now over 1000 Hackerspaces - places where all kinds of hackers co-work - around the globe.

They are a lot of fun to visit; hackers know that they can find a corner of the hacker community in any town they travel to when visiting a Hackerspace. And we all know it's neat to look over your regular passport to see all the stamps showing where you've traveled. Having a Hackerspace Passport makes visiting different Hackerspaces fun when you start collecting global Hackerspace stamps (or stickers).

The Hackerspace Passport ($2.95) is tough and features silver embossing, and is intended to last a lifetime. 

Recommended further reading about Hackerspaces in How To Start A Hackerspace.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

The MaKey MaKey ($49.95) is a simple kit for beginners and experts alike: it turns everyday objects into touchpads (via alligator clips) and combines them with the internet. MaKey MaKey was invented by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum and made by JoyLabz - I highly recommend you look at this MIT post about what incredibly cool stuff hackers are doing with it. 

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

It's time for a very different kind of "Scouts" - don't you think? Adafruit has "scout badges" (and stickers) of achievement for learning skills such as soldering, Kinect hacking, learning programming, welding, electronics, science and engineering and more.

The Hackerscout Skill Badges ($2.95-$3.95) are part of Adafruit's Hackerscouts aim to create an open, all-gender movement around learning and inventing that encourages informal education with an emphasis on thinking outside limitations.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

The Beagle USB 12 Protocol Analyzer ($399.95) is a non-intrusive and reliable tool with which to perform functions such as reverse engineer a USB device, lend a hand with enumeration, for real time data capture analysis, and is perfect for when a problem is bad enough it crashes the USB host. Data is captured in real time, saved and parsed.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

Ladyada's "E is for Electronics" ($9.95) is a coloring book adventure with electronic components and their inventors - it features diverse and easily understood learning and inventing situations, and depicts inventors and engineers as people of all genders, races and abilities.

Best of all - it's Creative Commons so you can always download it for free and print it as a gift.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

Designed by Ladyada and Hackerspace founder Mitch Altman, the TV-B-Gone Universal ($19.50) shuts off LCD TV's from a distance, so you never have to be annoyed by ads when you want to eat in a public space again. This is an ultra-high-power, open source kit version of the first popular TV-B-Gone.

Gallery main page: Ladyada's Hacker Gift Guide [Gift Guide 2012]

In the past year, Speck's team - helmed by a female CEO - has grown the startup from a small office/storefront combo, into a big space in Mountain View that I got to visit last week. 

I've watched Speck grow from a distance, the way we warily watch startups around here. Speck managed to attain a lot of success and yet retained their creative integrity and stayed dedicated to listening to their customers. That's not a typical Valley startup. 

So when I got a chance to visit Speck's new HQ in Mountain View, California, I jumped at the chance.

Click through the rest of this mini-gallery to see my experience going hands-on with Speck's new lines.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

Outside at Speck HQ: the sign's color slowly changes.

Much of Speck's astonishing growth has happened only within the past two years. Speck's cases have proven desirable enough that that company now has partnerships with Apple and Burton.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

I wanted to see and touch Speck's newest gear in person, and it was worth the trip to see how the cases felt and functioned. During my visit, Speck let me investigate and test its newest iPhone, Nexus, iPad Mini, Kindle Fire cases and folios.

In this photo, you can see some of the cloth patterned Burton cases, and the new kid-proof iGuy for iPad.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

Pull it out, then snap it back in. Until you slide the stand out and feel how snappily it retracts shut, you can't really appreciate the eloquent way the SmartFlex View for iPhone 5 and 4S/4 ($34.95) employs its discreet stand. The rest of the case is rubberized with a grip, and felt pretty tough. The one pictured above is the Grape/Lavender/Peacock version.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

The vegan leather turquoise iPad Mini FitFolio case felt good in hand. You can't really tell until you see it in person, but the clasp is petite and snaps the front cover in place, open or shut.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

The snap-on SeeThru cases for Macbook Air and Pro are just what you'd expect - bur I didn't realize you could pick-a-mix top and bottom colors until one of Speck's employees showed me her Macbook's flair.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

A close-up of the FitFolio's back stitching.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

My Speck A-Line bag is still in perfect shape after I packed it with gadgets and dragged it around the world (literally) in October when I covered Hack In The Box 2012 Malaysia.

Speck's reps were excited to hear I put their bag to the test - my Air, a hard drive, two phones, a jetpack, Kindle, Mophie battery, cords, plugs, adaptors... plus all my airplane necessities. With its smartly designed compartments, the A-Line was the only bag I needed on each of my seven flights.

I found out on my visit that Speck will be discontinuing the A-Line soon.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

I liked the iPad Mini FitFolio's quadruple-angle stand. It doesn't have much else in the way of bells and whistles; it's a pared down solution.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

I wanted to see and touch Speck's newest gear in person, and it was worth the trip to see how the cases felt and functioned. During my visit, Speck let me investigate and test its newest iPhone, Nexus, iPad Mini, Kindle Fire cases and folios.

In this photo, you can see some of the cloth patterned Burton cases, and the new kid-proof iGuy for iPad.

See what I liked the most from my visit to Speck HQ in this gallery: Favorite Speck cases under $40 [Gift Guide 2012].

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

Speck's newest creation manages to kid-proof (and adult proof?) Apple's tablet line. The iGuy for iPad Mini ($29.95) and all iPads ($39.95) is squeezable, drop-tested and stands on its own.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

If Speck made its SmartFlex Card for iPhone 5 and 4S/4 ($34.95) for the Samsung Galaxy S3 and added a wrist strap (like the iPod Touch Kanga) and retractable stand (like the SmartFlex View), I'd be in heaven. Even still, I think iPhone owners got lucky with this one.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

The CandyShell Flip for iPhone 5 ($34.95) comes in many color combinations, has a hard protective shell and a flip-back panel for docking without case removal. In person the colors are rich.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

I loved the color, vegan-leather FitFolios for iPad Mini ($34.95). In the hand, its clasp snaps the case shut neatly in either direction, a nice touch. It comes in many colors, materials and patterns, and has a quadruple angle stand.

Here I am examining a turquoise iPad Mini case (with Mini in it); more hands-on shots include a stand shot and its back stitching.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

Until you slide the stand out, and then feel how snappily it retracts shut, you can't really appreciate the eloquent way the SmartFlex View for iPhone 5 and 4S/4 ($34.95) employs its discreet stand. The rest of the case is rubberized with a grip, and felt pretty tough.

Also: a hands-on shot of the SmartFlex View in color combo Grape/Lavender/Peacock.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

The blue of Holiday CandyShell for iPhone 5 in BeBaubled Blue/Peacock (limited edition, $34.95) is much more deep and vivid than in photos; I think it's the prettiest of Speck's holiday limited editions.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

There are so many designs and colors in Speck's CandyShell line that the array of options pose a dangerous challenge to anyone's pocketbook. Above are Speck's Holiday Candyshell cases for iPhone 5; a smaller selection is available for Samsung Galaxy S3 ($34.95 each) - they all have a hard and shiny designer outer shell, and a soft rubber inside.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

My Speck A-Line bag is still in perfect shape after I packed it with gadgets and dragged it around the world (literally) in October when I covered Hack In The Box 2012 Malaysia. For this frequent traveler, Speck's Kindle Fire WanderFolio ($39.95) was love at first sight, and I'll be buying one before I go to CCC/29C3 in Hamburg this December.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

Speck's spokespeople told me that the Toughskin is one of the most popular cases, and I realized why when I got it in hand. It's seriously shock absorbent, has an inner removable hard case, and a rotating belt clip. This one isn't on the website yet, but will be soon.

See photos and read my impressions from my Speck HQ visit in this gallery: Skulls and candy: Hands-on with Speck phone and tablet cases [Gift Guide 2012].

With SexFaceFinder.com and Naughty America's "Face" anyone can upload an image and have the services match it with images and faces in image databases.

SexFaceFinder positions its service as a way for users to find a performer that looks like s specific person.

Or to find performers that look like the user's favorite type of model, in an effort to engage the user with a service that closes the marketing gap between a user and their fantasy.

Another company, Naughty America, openly solicits users to upload images of girls found on Instagram and other internet destinations in an effort to find the photo's subjects in porn - or find celebrity look-alikes, girlfriend and ex-girlfriend look-alikes, or similar/specific porn performers.

Naughty America's facial recognition matching openly asks users to try photos of girls they find on Instagram and other social media websites.

Both adult companies are first in the adult industry's commercial implementation of facial recognition image matching technology.

Let's hope no one finds out the hard way whether or not Naughty America and SexFaceFinder's databases are maintained with mechanisms in place to deal with false, inappropriate or misattributed data - such as database inclusion without consent.

On SexFaceFinder, launched earlier this month, users upload a photo and results show the uploader same or similar adult performers - ones available for live chat sessions. It currently pulls its database search from ImLive, an adult webcam service. 

According to Naughty America's press, it attempts to match user-uploaded images to its own porn database.

Naughty America is widely partnered across the online sphere. Its newest partnership is with infidelity-themed dating website Ashely Madison (and Cougar Life) and gives Naughty America website members access to these services.

Naughty America's service launched in June, right after Facebook acquired facial recognition company Face.com.

Commenting on Facebook's acquisition at the time of launch, Naughty America CEO Eddie Arenas said in a press release,

The timing couldn't have been better than for us to develop our facial recognition tool just on the heels of Facebook acquiring a facial recognition company. Great minds think alike.

Great minds, indeed. 

This August, Germany accused Facebook of "illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent" and demanded that the social network destroy its archive of files based on facial recognition technology.

Facebook had acquired Face.com six months after Privacy Rights Clearinghouse director Beth Givens told an FTC summit on facial recognition technology that there is insufficient public awareness about all aspects of facial recognition tech, and zero auditing mechanisms in place for any entity using the technologies.

We hope both porn companies are planning to implement the FTC's October staff report on facial recognition image practices, in which the ACLU notes:

The FTC recommends that companies using face recognition “design their services with privacy in mind.” Specifically:

• Provide good security for images and other biometric data, including measures to prevent unauthorized scraping of images for uses not authorized by the subject.
• Establish “appropriate retention and disposal practices” for consumer images, such as disposing of data that is no longer needed.
• Obtain a consumers “affirmative express consent” before a) using his or her image “in a materially different manner than they represented when they collected the data,” or b) to “identify anonymous images of a consumer to someone who could not otherwise identify him or her,” such as a stranger in a bar.

SexFaceFinder states on each page they do not save the uploaded images, although I noticed that their Privacy Policy states that pictures are collected under the 'personal information' disclaimer.

In Naughty America's Upload Terms, users agree that submitted photos:

(...) may be edited, removed, modified, published, transmitted and displayed by the Company and you waive any rights you may have in the material. (...) You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company and its agents for all claims resulting from content you submit to the Site.

2. License Granted. To the extent any Submission is copyrightable material, you grant the Company and its authorized agents a non-exclusive, royalty free, perpetual and fully sub-licensable right to use, post, publish, reproduce, adapt, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such Submission throughout the world in any media and for any purpose.

By way of example, the Company may sublicense the content and allow third parties to use the material for any purpose.

For anyone who has been following the slice of privacy apocalypse battleground between nonconsensual implementation of facial recognition technology (commercial: SceneTap, Facebook; government: TrapWire) versus people with privacy rights everywhere - seeing porn stumble its way into the fray will elicit the ::headdesk heard around the world.

Or maybe that's just me you heard banging my head on my desk.

• Read also: Why you should be worried about facial-recognition technology
• Related: San Francisco hates your startup: SceneTap

It looks like the top state for the most racist Tweets is Alabama, closely followed by Mississippi.

The top ten states for post-election Tacist tweets - according to Floating Sheep's [interactive] GeoCommons map,  - are:

A hype-generating post by Jezebel (warning: offensive language) initially brought the Tweets to light. Geodata company Floating Sheep decided to combine their skills with Twitter's geolocation data and easy-to-use functionality of GeoCommons to make an interactive map of the racist Tweets.

As we can see in the top ten of their sampling, racist Tweeting is sadly not just a Southern phenomenon. The map shows that people suck in Canada and Mexico, too.

Floating Sheep cautions, "Keep in mind we are measuring tweets rather than users and so one individual could be responsible for many tweets."

To extrapolate, the anti-Obama racist Tweet map doesn't simply show the number of racist tweets.

The map uses a location quotient, which according to Floating Sheep, "indicates each state's share of election hate speech tweet relative to its total number of tweets."

Seven greyed-out states had no racist tweets. Interestingly, most of those seven seem to be states that have lower Twitter use than the rest.

Six of the grey states (Alaska, Idaho, S. Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Hawaii) had a very low number of tweets overall - although one (Rhode Island) had a significant number of tweets.

Details on racist Tweet map methodology

The geodata nerds at Floating Sheep used their very interesting DOLLY (Data On Local Life and You) Project ("Bringing Local Geodata to the People") to collect all the geocoded tweets from the last week (beginning November 1) with racist terms that also reference the election.

A total of 395 hate tweets were aggregated to the state level and compared to the total number of geocoded tweets coming out of that state in the same time period.

Using the examples of tweets chronicled by Jezebel blog post we collected tweets that contained the text "monkey" or "n****r" AND also contain the text "Obama" OR "reelected" OR "won".

A quick, and very unsettling, examination of the search results revealed that this indeed was a good match for our target of election-related hate speech. We end up with a total of 395 of some of the nastiest tweets you might possibly imagine.  

And given that we're talking about the Internet, that is really saying something.

GeoCommons is a GIS - geographic information system - that makes mapping items with geotagged data very easy.

Floating Sheep is wonderfully open about their process, detailing:

To be precise, we took a 0.05% sample of all geocoded tweets in November 2012 aggregated to the state level. The formula for this location quotient is:

(# of Hate Tweets in State / # of Hate Tweets in USA) 

------------------------------------------------------------

(# of ALL Tweets in State / # of ALL Tweets in USA)

Floating Sheep's work is a mere snapshot, but it is a sobering one. 

I just hope that their little bit of data visualization can spark a bit more awareness raising, discussion and hopefully, change.

In the meantime, Alabama - maybe you just need a hug?

Or perhaps something stronger.

• Recommended: Silicon Valley's Race Problem

 Via Flowingdata - read also: Geography of Hate.