NED Event May 25, 2010

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is hosting a panel conversation for the OpenNet Initiative’s new volume Access Controlled. Attending the panel discussion will be Ron Deibert, John Palfrey and Rafal Rohozinski from the ONI, and Bob Boorstin from Google. Moderating the discussion will be Mr. Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Details are here

IPSI 2010 Research Symposium

I am participating in the IPSI 2010 Research Symposium at the University of Toronto. The theme of the conference is “Developing a Trusted Cyber Infrastructure
for Canadians.” I will be speaking about our research on cyber espionage (although the organizers gave me the curious title for my talk of “Detecting and disabling botnets.” (As an IR theorist and political scientist, the only botnets I’ve discovered are Realists — and they can’t be disabled.) Looks to be a good day of interesting discussions.

IDRC Webcast – The Potential of Open Development for Canada and Abroad

I participated in a live webcast and panel, organized by IDRC, on “The Potential of Open Development for Canada and Abroad,” in Ottawa, May 5th, 2010. Also on the panel were Michael Geist, Sunil Abraham, Anita Gurumurthy, and Yochai Benkler. The panel was hosted by Jesse Brown. We discussed the concept of “openness” in the context of software development, cyberspace governance, development, and human rights

You can see the entire webcast here. Continue reading

IFEX, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor

I am attending the IFEX general meeting in Uruguay, where I gave an opening address on Internet censorship, the work of the OpenNet Initiative and psiphon projects.

It is a very dynamic meeting, with many different rights organizations collaborating and exchanging ideas.
Much of the discussion is focused on events unfolding in Burma. There was an excellent article by Roby Alampey in the Washington Post that makes a strong argument for principles of Internet governance that protect freedom of speech online, with a favorable mention of the work of the ONI. Roby is attending the IFEX meeting here.

And yesterday, an article on Burma in the Christian Science Monitor spotlights the use of commercial filtering technologies and the work of the ONI, with some of my input.

Amnesty International Event/Open Democracy

Amnesty international is having an event on Wednesday June 6th in the UK that I’m speaking at by webcast. The event is called “irrepressible.info” and is about threats to freedom of speech and access to information online.

You can read more about it here

Leading up to the event, I wrote an editorial comment that has been published on the Open Democracy website