The Guardian reports on its crowdsourcing success of sifting through hundreds of thousands of records involving MP expenses. In a matter of days, 20,000 people have examined about 160,000 documents.
The Guardian’s Crowdsourcing Success
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New York Times is doing the same thing to compile reports from Iran
“The New York Times would like readers in Iran to help us document the post-election unrest in Iran. Please upload your photographs using the form below, letting us know when and where the photographs were taken.” They ask for a description, date, location, and (dangerous) the photographer’s name and email.
More considerate of the safety of the dissidents is the NedaNet effort started by Eric Raymond:
“NedaNet, a network of hackers formed to support the democratic revolution in Iran. Our mission is to help the Iranian people by setting up networks of proxy severs, anonymizers, and any other appropriate technologies that can enable them to communicate and organize — a network beyond the censorship or control of the Iranian regime.
NedaNet doesn’t have leaders or a manifesto or even much in the way of organization. We’re not affiliated with any nation or religion. We’re just computer hackers and computer users from all over the planet doing what we can to help the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom.
NedaNet does have contacts on the ground in Iran. We are actively and directly cooperating with the revolutionaries (though for obvious security reasons most of us don’t know who the contacts are). By helping us, you can help them.”
“Core members of NedaNet have already received death threats from persons plausibly believed to be agents of the Iranian regime or allied terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. We expect more of us to be targets of threats, intimidations, and possibly actual violence before the crisis resolves. Be aware of that risk if you choose to join us.
But today in Iran, thousands of people are putting their lives on the line every day in direct confrontation with the Iranian regime’s thugs, facing danger that reduces any risks we run to a triviality. They’re not running away. We won’t either.”
Meanwhile in Canada the loathsome Peter Van Loan is trying to subvert exactly these technologies. And other loathsome characters try to expose political commentators with lawsuits so they can be targetted for the same kinds of harassment. There was one such suit in Ontario that exposed some Iranian bloggers’ names, one of which was later arrested in Iran and tortured.
Anyone who thinks exposing political commentators to the public record is harmless perhaps needs to read Eric Raymond’s last comment about NedaNet security:
“And for any jihadi interested in asking me questions face to face, I’ve got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.”
May all gangs of crooks subverting democracy meet such staunch opposition.
links to NYT Iran photo collections and NedaNet
NYT:
http://submit.nytimes.com/iranian-readers-share-your-election-experience
NedaNet:
http://www.catb.org/esr/nedanet/
You are in late
Very bad analysis, Monkey Journalist you are
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