Foldit is a puzzle game that helps to learn how proteins fold. Does not sound much? Proteins can be involved in disease in many different ways. The more we know about how certain proteins fold, the better new proteins we can design to combat the disease-related proteins and cure the diseases.

And in case you just watch TV for hours and hours, or do simply NOTHING, let your computer look for life on other planets:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
http://www.seti.org/

Here you can find a list of projects from BOINC. BOINC is used by many volunteer computing projects. Some are based at universities and research labs, others are run by companies and individuals. You can participate in any number of these projects.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Project_list#SETI.40home

Each year, the FCForum brings together key organisation and active voices in the sphere of free/libre culture. It responds to the need for an international arena in which to put together and coordinate a global framework for action, and to the need to defend and expand the sphere in which human creativity and knowledge can prosper freely and sustainably. As civil society, it is our responsibility to oppose practices that plunder this common heritage and to block its future development.

The Declaration and “How-to” guide to new models of sustainability in the digital era that we are releasing defends our conviction that:

copyright as we currently know it is counterproductive, and the restructuring of existing models is inevitable and imperative; attempts by some entities and corporations to profit through the creation of monopolies, often with the active connivance of government, should be brought to a stop; the sharing and exchange of ideas is of vital importance to culture and we must work towards maximising governmental or institutional initiatives that understand and support these dynamics; it is necessary and important that people be compensated for socially valuable creative work.
This document looks at some of the many possible alternative models, and we should be encouraging and promoting experiments based on these ideas.

We invite citizens, policy reformers and institutions to take the content of this practical proposal into account and to use its release as an opportunity to discuss the future together.

We will continue to collect signatures and contributions. With them we will be developing new versions as new requirements and new solutions appear.

http://fcforum.net/sustainable-models-for-creativity

1. (S) RESUMO: Em 10 de novembro às 22:13, o Brasil viveu um apagão que mergulhou 18 dos 27 estados do Brasil nas trevas, por períodos que variam de 20 minutos a 6 horas. Uma comissão do governo está investigando, com um projecto de relatório e recomendações previsto para meados de dezembro. GOB recentemente começou a dar mais atenção à segurança da infra-estrutura, tanto no gabinete do Presidente como no Ministério de Minas e Energia (MME), sendo que um processo intensivo também está em andamento para desenvolver recomendações para evitar problemas de interrupção no futuro.

As preocupações acerca da infra-estrutura do Brasil aumentaram recentemente como resultado deste apagão e, combinado com a necessidade de fazer face aos desafios de infra-estrutura na preparação para a Copa de 2014 e das Olimpíadas de 2016, apresenta oportunidades aos Estados Unidos para o engajamento no desenvolvimento de infra-estrutura, infra-estruturas críticas a proteção e segurança, e possivelmente cibersecurity. A Missão incentiva as agências USG, incluindo DOD, DHS, FCC, TDA e outras, a explorar essas oportunidades a curto prazo. FINAL DO RESUMO

23. (C) Missão incentiva agências USG, incluindo DOD, DHS, FCC, TDA e outros, a explorar essas oportunidades a curto prazo. FINAL DO COMENTÁRIO.
24. (U) Este cabo foi coordenado por ConGens Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo. JACKSON

—————————-
O telegrama completo (Em ingles)

SUBJECT: BRAZIL: BLACKOUT -CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS Classified By: Charge d’Affaires Cherie Jackson, Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). REFTELS: A) 2008 BRASILIA 672, B) 2008 BRASILIA 593, C)2008 SAO PAULO 260

1. (S)SUMMARY: On November 10 at 22:13, Brazil experienced a blackout that plunged 18 of Brazil’s 27 states into darkness for periods ranging from 20 minutes to 6 hours. A government commission is investigating, with a draft report and recommendations expected mid-December. GOB has recently begun to focus more attention on infrastructure security, both within the President’s office and at Mines and Energy (MME), while an intensive process is also underway to develop recommendations to avoid outage problems in the future. The newly heightened concerns about Brazil’s infrastructure as a result of this blackout, combined with the need to address infrastructure challenges in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, present the United States opportunities for engagement on infrastructure development as well critical infrastructure protection and possibly cyber security. Mission encourages USG agencies, including DOD, DHS, FCC, TDA and others, to explore these opportunities in the near-term. END SUMMARY

THE EVENT

2. (U) On November 10 at 22:13, Brazil experienced a blackout that plunged 18 of Brazil’s 27 states into darkness for periods ranging from 20 minutes to 6 hours. The blackout represented a loss of 28,000 megawatts – or 45 percent of total Brazilian consumption at that instant – of electricity and left an estimated 87 million residents without power. Scrutiny has been intense and speculation rife over the cause of the incident, in large part due to the recent announcement of Rio as the host of the 2016 summer Olympics.

WHAT HAS THE GOVERNMENT DETERMINED SO FAR?

3. (C) On November 18, Econoff met with Plinio de Oliveira, the President of ONS, the governmental agency responsible for the nation’s interlinked electricity grid, along with Wilkens Geraldes Filho, ONS’s Director of Statistical Analysis, and Elione Vierira de Araujo, a top engineer. They had spent much of the past week researching the incident and presenting explanations as to what happened. Geraldes and Olivera joined the conversation late after an impromptu meeting with the Director General of ONS to discuss the incident. The team gave Econoff the same presentation they gave after the incident to Energy Minister Lobao. On November 20, Econoff met separately with Jose Coimbra, Chief of Staff to Minister of Mines and Energy Edison Lobao, and Ildo Wilson Grudtner, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Electrical Energy, who was the Ministry official called in to work the issue the night of November the 10th and with overall responsibility for electrical sector planning.

4. (C) Based on those detailed discussions, the following is what the government now says occurred. The source of the outage was a substation close to Sao Paulo called Itaburi on the Tijuco Preto powerline, which supplies Sao Paulo and then Rio with power from the Itaipu dam (a binational hydroelectric dam on the border with Paraguay responsible for 12,600MW of energy or 20 percent of Brazil’s energy supply. Brazil’s energy matrix is heavily hydro dependent – 80 percent – with the rest a combination of thermo, nuclear, and some bioelectricity.). At that point in the system there are three separate power lines that connect Itaipu into Sao Paulo carrying 765 kilovolts of 60HZ AC supply. There is a separate supply line from Itaipu into Sao Paulo north of the Tijuco Preto power line, which carries 50 Hz of DC power. The Sao Paulo/Rio region is also linked by separate lines to the southern part of the country, as well as to the north and north east, which are also interlinked with one another. Overall system consumption for the day was 60 GW, well below total system capacity of 105 GW.

5. (C) At 22:13, there was a short circuit in one of the three Itaburi lines in what they call the “B” cycle. 13.5 milliseconds later, cycle “A” experienced a short circuit in the second line. 3.2 milliseconds after that, the substation at Itaber went out, knocking out the third and final line, completely disrupting the flow of the southern supply line from Itaipu into Sao Paulo. When this happened, automated controls took over to preserve the system. The generators at Itaipu shut down when they detected the disruption in BRASILIA 00001383 002 OF 005 transmission, thereby also shutting down the northern supply line to Sao Paulo. The interlinked systems in the northeast and northern regions of the country, detecting oscillation in the supply coming from Sao Paulo, shut off the transmission lines to protect those regions. In the southern region of the country, which was also providing energy supply to Sao Paulo, the sudden changes in frequency triggered ERAC (an emergency system in each substation monitoring balance between the supply and the load) isolating the southern section from the rest of the grid. These changes preserved the rest of the system and permitted a quick return to service for most of the country, but left the major population centers without power for up to six hours.

WHAT FACTORS EXACERABATED THE EVENT?

6. (C) Geraldes described the events of November 10 as unusual, not in the interruption of the system, but in the confluence of events that led to the overall catastrophic scale of the blackout. He said that a similar disruption taking out the same line had occurred in the past but the system had been operating in such a way that the flow was redistributed with very little disruption. In the November 10 case, reservoirs were full due to recent abundant rainfalls and the thermal plants, which are often tapped to augment flow, were not operating. The interlinked system which allows electricity from any part of the country to be distributed to any other part was exporting power from the primary hydroplants in the South to the Sao Paulo/Rio region. According to Geraldes, in prior instances, the situation was reversed, with flow exported from Sao Paulo to the south during periods of less plentiful rainfall and the disruption had very little effect on the overall supply.

7. (C) Grudtner said international standards generally call for a system to have capacity allowing unimpeded operation with one transmission line inoperable. At the time of the incident, the Brazilian system was operating at a capacity of unimpeded operations with two lines down, but the incident took out all three lines feeding into Sao Paulo. Additionally Coimbra pointed out, each of the lines which were disabled have recovery times of ten seconds, but the short circuits occurred within milliseconds of one another, disabling the transmission system with automatic shutdowns before the lines were able to recover. Geraldes called it the worst possible configuration of factors that led to a cascade effect.

WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING TO INVESTIGATE FURTHER?

8. (C) A government commission composed of ONS and the Brazilian electricity regulator ANEEL is investigating exactly what happened on November 10. The commission has 30 days from its formation on November 13 to complete a draft of its findings, including possible recommendations. The government will then submit the draft report to an independent group of non-governmental experts and academicians for review. The government will finalize the report after that review. In the absence of the final report, neither ONS nor MME offered a definitive explanation for what caused these outages. However, they both maintained that the short circuits are consistent with either a lightning strike (although ONS took pains to show satellite photos demonstrating that there were not storms in that area at that particular time) or a combination of low barometric pressure combined with high winds and high humidity. ONS also showed photos of transmission towers with visible discoloration, which they say further supports these two theories and rules out damage from trees, physical sabotage, or hackers. (Note: there was no way for Econoff to verify the location of the towers in the photos, the times of the discoloration, nor the cause. End Note.)

9. (C) Oliveira and Geraldes further ruled out the possibility of hackers because, following some acknowledged interferences in past years, GOB has closed the system to only a small group of authorized operators, separated the transmission control system from other systems, and installed filters. Coimbra confirmed that the ONS system is a CLAN network using its own wires carried above the electricity wires. Oliveira pointed out that even if someone had managed to gain access to the system, a voice command is required to disrupt transmission. Coimbra said that while sabotage could have caused the outages, this type of disruption would have been deadly, and investigators would have found physical evidence, including the body of the perpetrator. He also noted that any internal attempts by system employees to disrupt the system would have been easily BRASILIA 00001383 003 OF 005 traceable, a fact known to anyone with access to the system.

THEORIES FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR, PRESS, AND OTHER AGENCIES

10. (U) In the days immediately following the event, government officials were quoted giving explanations ranging from a downed powerline hit by a tree, storm damage, to the more general and on-message short circuit. Meteorologists and energy analysts questioned the government’s weather explanations. Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE), which monitors atmospheric activity, stated they recorded no lightning strikes on the day of the blackout in the immediate vicinity of the transmission lines in question. Adriano Pires, founding director of the Brazilian Center for Infrastructure and a highly-regarded Rio-based energy expert, ruled out the government’s explanations, instead blaming an outdated national grid unable to keep pace with demand. In order to avoid future widespread outages, Pires told Rio Econoff, the Brazilian government needs to diversify its sources away from Itaipu by increasing thermoelectric generation and focusing less on just operating costs. Press reports have also suggested that, in order to handle the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, the GoB needs to upgrade its transmission lines and build smaller-scale power plants – independent of the national grid – closer to high energy consumption centers, such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

11. (C) In the meeting with Brasilia econoff, ONS officials uniformly rejected the claims of an outdated grid, noting that the current grid was brought up to date after the 2001 blackouts, and now meets and exceeds international performance criteria and serves some 98% of the country. Coimbra laughed at the suggestion that more construction of thermo plants is the solution, not only because there are existing thermo plants which are not being utilized due to high generation costs, but because even had they been in use, the thermo plants would need 12-13 hours to power up after a power failure. Itaipu was operating again at full capacity less than 30 minutes after the disruption.

12. (S) Two days after the incident, according to a credible source, security officials in Brazil were attributing the outage to “human error” on the part of a Brazilian national who is a system operator. Accordingly to the source, that operator was under investigation. Source is unavailable for further comment on whether evolving assessments may have affected that hypothesis and the status of that particular investigation is unknown. There was also private speculation in at least one conversation among some government officials, apparently based in part of the coincidental “60 Minutes program” just days earlier suggesting vulnerabilities in the Brazilian system, that U.S. private sector interests may have engineered the blackouts to gain better commercial access to the grid.

INTERIM STEPS TO PREVENT SECURITY AND OUTAGE INCIDENTS

13. (C) Geraldes acknowledged that the spotlight of the Olympic Games brings an increased scrutiny of the system. ONS has a protocol to guard against electricity disruptions which has been utilized during special events such as the Pan Am Games in 2007 and will be used in upcoming events including the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. The protocol includes running all thermal plants, many of these located close to major cities including Rio, during the event to ensure multiple sources of generation. Regular maintenance is deferred during the event to minimize the possibility of disruption and regular transmission patterns are maintained to ensure the consistency of normal flow. Geraldes acknowledged actual physical security was a low priority under this protocol and said no special plans were made even during events. As Geraldes said, “That has been less of a concern for us than for you.” However he agreed that there could be an increased focus on physical security in advance of the games, particularly after this incident has called attention to possible weaknesses in the system.

14. (C) The perspective from MME was somewhat different. Coimbra noted that “we are not immune from the kinds of threats that you have seen in recent years.” There is a group in President Lula’s office known as the Cabinet for Infrastructure Security (GSI) that is looking at infrastructure security. Coimbra recalled that they were the first to contact him after the incident. Grudtner is tasked with leading the Ministry’s own effort on physical security and he said BRASILIA 00001383 004 OF 005 that the MME working group is in the process of defining which installations are of greatest concern/most integral to the system, and therefore in need of physical protection.

15. (C) ONS officials told Econoff that there was also an intensive process going on at the Energy Planning Agency, EPE, to develop recommendations for how to avoid outage problems in the future. One immediate measure Brazil has undertaken to guard against a repeat occurrence during the investigation period is reducing the amount of flow in any one direction to take the pressure off the system – but with the by-product of increased reliance on the more expensive thermo plants, increasing the price of electricity. Another longer-term option under consideration would be to build newer, larger, and therefore stronger transmission equipment; an expensive option that the ONS contacts intimated would not be worth the price to avoid a highly unlikely repeat of the November 10 blackout. 16. (SBU) ONS shared the country’s five year plan for energy which plans for significant increases in energy demand, to be largely met in the near term with new hydro plants and increases in oil-fueled electric plants. While projections show sufficient electricity to meet demand, Geraldes cautioned the picture could change if there are unanticipated delays in completing the Belo Monte hydro plant due to come on line in April of 2014, just a few months in advance of the July World Cup.

17. (C) Though MME’s Coimbra did not offer any thoughts for what might be technological recommendations after this event, he did say that one area of focus for the GOB in a lessons learned-type exercise would be improving communications with the public during such events, as well as in advance of anticipated maintenance that could cause temporary outages. He was interested in learning more about the U.S. Emergency Broadcast system as one possible way of handling this challenge. Econoff committed to research the U.S. program and send information to see whether cooperation on this front was feasible.

MANAGING THE POLITICS

18. (C) Both MME and ONS were eager to put the November 10 blackout in perspective. ONS offered a slide that showed other comparable international blackouts over the last 30 years, including the four day East Coast blackout in 2003, detailing both the extent and duration of the blackouts; a cmparison in which the Brazil blackout fared well. Coimbra told Econoff that an American engineering association had sent an official letter of congratulations to the Center for Electrical Research, CEPAL, on the rapid recovery of the system and inviting them to a U.S. conference in the first part of next year to share their experiences. Both ONS and MME point out how quickly most of the system came back (the majority of the affected areas experienced outages of 20 minutes and the longest outage was six hours in Sao Paulo). As Grudtner said, the electrical sector was happy because the system functioned as it should have and came back comparatively quickly, but the politicians are not. Meanwhile, he noted wryly, the press is pleased to have fodder for its reports. Congress has called for hearings on the incident which have had to be postponed because experts were traveling to the area on a fact finding mission in order to complete the investigation report.

COMMENT: NOTABLE OPENNESS TO DIALOGUE WITH USG

19. (C) Brazilian officials were strikingly open to discussing the incident with Embassy personnel, non-defensive in response to questions, and forthcoming with their information and assessments. The willingness of the President of ONS and MME Chief of Staff to meet on such a technical issue and provide detailed information to the Embassy demonstrates the importance they place on ensuring the USG has an understanding of the blackout and Brazil’s capability to handle major events in the future. Blackouts in Brazil are not uncommon (in fact Rio experienced another blackout on November 23 which has been attributed to disruptions in transmission, possibly due to stolen cables). However, the scale of the November 10 blackout, which garnered undesired international attention, may prompt Brazil to seek long-lasting solutions to weaknesses in and threats to its electricity supply. Heading into a major election year, the GOB will likely want to show they are taking measures to rebuild public trust. In light of the openness displayed by GOB officials in discussing this event, combined with a desire to show progress on addressing the issue, the USG has an opportunity to work BRASILIA 00001383 005 OF 005 with the GOB as they seek to identify possible improvements that will yield real results in the physical security and reliability of its network.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR USG ENGAGEMENT – SEIZE THE MOMENT

20. (C) Having devoted much time and many resources to correcting problems in national electricity supply that were endemic in 2001, the GOB is proud of its interlinked national transmission system and has tended to view the blackouts that do occur as isolated incidents or as problems with local distribution systems. On recent visits to the United States, Energy Deputy Minister Zimmermann suggested that transmission and long-range distribution might be a subject in which Brazil has expertise it could share with the United States in an energy cooperation agreement. While GOB will be highly resistant to the idea that other countries are more advanced than they are in transmission and distribution, GOB officials do acknowledge there is some room for improvement in their system. We will know more about the immediate cause of Brazil’s major blackout in a few weeks but in the meantime, there are opportunities for the USG to take advantage of GOB’s openness, highlighting the outage as reason for more engagement as well as preparations toward the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY COOPERATION OPPORTUNITIES

21. (C) This would be an excellent occasion to encourage the military to military Communication and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), noting that although this incident does not appear to have been the result of an attack on the system, such an event is possible and signing this agreement would permit cooperation were one to occur. We could also consider a cybersecurity working group. Brazil might be open to pursuing cooperation on critical infrastructure protection, and MME has already told us they would be interested in learning more about our emergency broadcasting system. It is clear that physical security has not heretofore been a major focus for planners but officials acknowledge the possibility of an attack and are working on developing protections, another possible area for fruitful cooperation as a follow up from DHS visit in the later part of 2008.

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION OPPORTUNITIES

22. (C) Regarding infrastructure development, USTDA is now exploring the possibility of sponsoring an orientation visit or a field study on electrical power. Up to this point, USTDA has not pursued cooperation in the electrical area. Most infrastructure projects in this centralized electrical system are at the federal level, which generally translates into more bureaucracy and longer implementation times than projects undertaken at the state or local level. There are, however, electrical distribution issues which need to be addressed at the state and local levels that could benefit from USTDA involvement, possibly offering another means of engagement to help Brazil solve its electrical challenges. Prior to this event, the Energy Ministry had highlighted Smartgrid technology as one area that would be of interest to them in cooperation, perhaps more so now.

23. (C) Mission encourages USG agencies, including DOD, DHS, FCC, TDA and others, to explore these opportunities in the near-term. END COMMENT. 24. (U) This cable has been coordinated with ConGens Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. JACKSON

1- Welcome to zombo com The unnatainable is unknown at zombo com! (and the background music is top! )

2- Barac Obama is your new bicycle http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

3- Rant facebook: http://www.misanthropebook.com/

WikiLeaks may be under attack.

You were generous enough to write to us, but we have not had the labor resources to respond.

Your support is important to us. Please read all of this email to understand what is going on. We apologize for not getting back to you before. It is not through any lack of interest on our part, but an enforced lack of resources.

One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.

The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.

Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.

Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated “journalist” who then worked with the US government to detain him.

Some background on the Manning case:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm

[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]

WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.

To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a “Friends of WikiLeaks” group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.

Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.

We also have significant unexpected legal costs (for example flying a legal team to Kuwait, video production. Collateral Murder production costs were $50,000 all up).

Any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support

Please donate and tell the world that you have done so. Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.

Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
WIKILEAKS

Downloadverbod. Filteren. Afknijpen. Three strikes out. Bewaarplicht. ACTA. Het vrije internet wordt van vele kanten bedreigd. In het Europees Parlement strijden Piraten en Groenen samen voor de rechten van internetgebruikers. Europa heeft een handvest van digitale burgerrechten nodig, vinden zij. Wat moet er in zo’n Internet Bill of Rights komen te staan? Daarover gaan Europarlementariër Christian Engström (Zweedse Piratenpartij), GroenLinks-Tweede Kamerlid Mariko Peters en GroenLinks-Europarlementariër Judith Sargentini in debat met experts (o.a. Bits of Freedom en Vrijschrift) en met de zaal.Maandagavond 22 februari 19.30 tot 21.30u. De voertaal is Engels. Pakhuis de Zwijger, Piet Heinkade, Amsterdam.
Gratis aanmelden [http://groenlinks.nl/piratendebat].

Met deze prijzen worden elk jaar personen, bedrijven, overheden en voorstellen te kijk gezet die de afgelopen jaren bij uitstek controle op burgers en inbreuken op privacy hebben bevorderd. Er was ook goed nieuws: Sophie in ‘t Veld (Europarlementariër D66) won de Winston Award, een positieve aanmoedigingsprijs.

Minister Ter Horst wint de prijs in de categorie Personen, vanwege haar gevaarlijke gebrek aan nuance in het privacydebat. Mede door haar
toedoen stevent Nederland in sneltreinvaart af op een controlemaatschappij, waar veiligheid altijd boven persoonlijke vrijheid gaat. De nieuwe vingerafdrukdatabank die Nederland aanlegt wint de prijs in de categorie Overheid, vanwege het risico op identiteitsfraude en omdat een hack van de database potentieel desastreuze gevolgen heeft.

Bovendien gaat de Nederlandse overheid hiermee veel verder dan de ons omringende landen. T-Mobile en Vodafone winnen de prijs in de categorie Bedrijven, omdat ze willens en wetens en in strijd met de wet maandenlang de volledige inhoud van smsjes hebben doorgesluisd naar opsporingsdiensten. Het voorstel van de politie om mobiele naaktscanners in openbare ruimtes in te zetten, wint de prijs in de categorie Voorstellen. De jury is van mening dat ‘function creep’ nog nooit zo snel plaatsgevonden: van een middel om terroristen te vangen, naar een middel dat in alledaags politiewerk kan worden ingezet.
De publieksprijs gaat dit jaar met een nipte overwinning naar de vingerafdrukdatabank, met Ter Horst als een goede runner-up. De Winston, een positieve privacyprijs, is uitgereikt aan Europarlementariër Sophie in ‘t Veld (D66).

Honderden geïnteresseerden waren aanwezig op het Awardsgala, waar ook hoogleraar Vincent Icke, slachtoffer van identiteitsfraude Renate Tromp en security expert Jeroen van Beek spraken. De winnaars zijn door een deskundige jury geselecteerd uit een recordaantal inzendingen van het Nederlandse publiek. De jury bestaat uit de publiciste Karin Spaink, Prof. dr. Bart Jacobs, Prof. dr. Nico van Eijk, Dr. Bart Schermer, Prof. dr. Valerie Frissen en journalist Bart de Koning. De jury heeft haar keuze volledig onafhankelijk gemaakt. De publieksprijs is uitgereikt aan de kandidaat die het meeste stemmen via de website www.bigbrotherawards.nl heeft gekregen.

De Nederlandse editie van de Big Brother Awards wordt georganiseerd door Bits of Freedom. De Big Brother Awards wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door
De Balie, Brinkhof, Stichting NLnet en SURFnet.

Juryrapport nominaties:

http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Juryrapport-Genomineerden-Big-Brother-Awards-2009-28-01-10.pdf

Privacywaakhond Bits of Freedom heeft Minister Hirsch Ballin van Justitie gevraagd om de bodyscan niet in te voeren. De bewindvoerder liet na overleg met de Amerikaanse minister van Binnenlandse Veiligheid weten dat hij de naaktscanners voor alle vluchten naar de Verenigde Staten wil verplichten, om dit later voor alle vluchten van en naar Nederland in te voeren. Volgens de digitale burgerrechtenbeweging laat een “rationele kosten-batenanalyse” zien dat de invoering van naaktscanners niet wenselijk is. Het veiligheidsbeleid zou niet op angst, maar op rationele analyses gebaseerd moeten zijn.

“Het verlies van privacy en individuele vrijheid speelt daarbij een belangrijke rol”, aldus Ot van Dalen, directeur van Bits of Freedom. De organisatie stelt dat de inzet van naaktscanners het risico van aanslagen tegen vliegtuigen in de lucht slechts deels kan beperken. Tegelijkertijd maken de apparaten een stevige inbreuk op de privacy en de lichamelijke integriteit, brengen hoge kosten met zich mee en de gezondheidseffecten staan niet vast. “In plaats daarvan moet het kabinet onderzoeken waarom bestaande maatregelen hebben gefaald.”

Privacy versus veiligheid
De Vereniging van Nederlandse Verkeersvliegers en de Vakbond van Nederlands Cabinepersoneel lieten eerder weten dat “de balans tussen veiligheid en privacy in principe altijd in het voordeel van de veiligheid dient uit te slaan”. Die opvatting noemt Bits of Freedom kort door de bocht. “Iedere beveiligingsmaatregel moet worden onderworpen aan een evaluatie van de voor- en nadelen, waarbij ook het verlies van privacy en dus van individuele vrijheid moet worden meegewogen.”

Als advies verwijst de privacywaakhond naar het stappenschema dat beveiligingsexpert Bruce Schneier in zijn boek ‘Beyond Fear’ beschrijft. Allereerst moet worden vastgesteld wat men probeert te beschermen. Vervolgens moet worden beoordeeld wat de risico’s zijn. Daarna moet worden onderzocht in hoeverre de maatregelen deze risico’s kunnen beperken en welke nieuwe risico’s ontstaan door de maatregelen. Tot slot moet worden onderzocht welke kosten of andere nadelen de maatregelen met zich brengen. Aan de hand van deze analyse blijkt volgens Bits of Freedom dat de introductie van naaktscanners onwenselijk is.

MEER:
Bits of Freedom
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Quotes From the article:
Post-Mortem Conference Mashup: The Internet as Playground and Factory 
by Trebor Scholz scholzt@newschool.edu

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Frequent reference points in the animated conversations included practices like gold farming, game modding, blogging, “turking” on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, gaming in World of Warcraft, outsourcing through LiveOps.com, collaborating on Wikipedia articles, reputation scamming through SubvertandProfit.com and sweating in “captcha sweatshops.” Theoretical cues were repeatedly given to Paolo Virno, Harry Braverman, Hannah Arendt, Dallas Smythe, Jean Baudrillard, Bernhard Stiegler, Maurizio Lazzarato, Johan Huizinga, and Tiziana Terranova.

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Shifts in labor markets have drawn attention to places where labor does not look like labor at all. The Internet has created new markets that can be accessed from anywhere with a net connection. While managerial royalty like Don Tapscott celebrated the business potential of “crowdsourcing” in books like “Wikinomics,” scholars such as Andrew Ross see digital labor as a non-surprising continuation of exploitative capitalist modes of operation. At the prelude to the conference Ross stated that “those who see the digital realm as a technology of de-skilling, outsourcing and work degradation are far outnumbered by those who see it as a medium of reskilling, innovation, and common value creation.” Interactive input is just another transfer of work from more regulated kinds of labor markets, Ross stated. There is a great deal of overlap between intensified forms of expropriation of digital labor and traditional economies of unpaid work, especially in the home.      
Several speakers claimed that we are all falling victim to a technocratic fetishization of the Internet that takes away from a full acknowledgment of the “real” places of exploitation: the heavily populated slums in what some participants called the “global south.” Are the discussed processes of monetization and coercion of “free” relations of exchange on the Social Web, as discussed at the conference, in fact a luxury problem in the overdeveloped world alone? The fact that cell phones are now widely used all throughout economical developing countries like Brazil, Russia, India, and China should lead to a re-evaluation of the worldwide participation gap.

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In the session “Ideology and the Erotics of Playbor,” Jonathan Beller correctly stated that the word “digital” does not sum up our entire condition. At the same time, however, the questions created by new expressions of labor markets in the financial-crisis world are increasingly urgent. There is a participatory turn in online sociality; the scale of participation is unprecedented. It is true that it is only a small segment of people with Internet access contributes material to the Web but this “small segment” of you-sers posted more than 150,000 videos a day to YouTube in 2008. Questions of expropriation of net users have a great deal of urgency given that the data of 350 million people are locked up under the rule of a single private entity like Facebook. 
Sisyphus might have ultimately been convinced to pay a monthly fee for the pleasure of pushing that rock up the hill.
- Scott Rettberg on iDC, http://is.gd/39X7S

We decide with one click what’s “hot” and what is not, we “follow,” or like, we save, refer, and bookmark. Why do we upload our boredom or perform our addictions online?  I quoted Tim O’Reilly who stated that “…they are participating without thinking that they participate. That’s where the power comes.” (Scholz, http://is.gd/5jQm2) There are manifold reasons for social participation online but fun is one of them.
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It’s fun, right?

Chris Kelty continued Martin Robert’s line of inquiry. Kelty started by outlining how crucial fun is to get people involved in working with computers and software. There is an endless stream of books with fun in the title. “Programming is fun.” “Computer literacy is fun.” The argument of many of these books is that your new paid job with computers is more fun than your old job delivering pizza, for example. Few books would be called “The serious labor of software programming.” Fun has often dominated the discussion about how to activate people and much research funding has been funneled into social psychology research for that reason. Some of this mentality is a hold-over from William Whyte’s “Organization Man” (1956) and Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib” (1974). Fun is also used as category to explain why people contribute to free software. Linus Torvald’s autobiography is titled “Just for Fun.” It’s fun to stay up all night and see if you can get Linux to run on your machine. People seem to like fun better than not-fun. Even if they have to work to have fun, they’ll do it to avoid not-fun work or no work at all,” Kelty said. With regard to free software, it is especially important to understand why people are working without having been paid to do so. Why do hacker-types produce high quality software and then give it away for free? That still surprises some skeptics. Why do people work? Individuals do Free Software work for a plurality of reasons. Kelty emphasized that some of them do it for “Free Software reasons”: creating something for the public, making something freely available. Others want to “stick it to the man,” so to speak. Yet others do it for the fun, the joy, the pleasure, the fame, or the Boy Scout badge, or they are learning new skills and meet new people. With Free Software, people do not just argue about the way the world should be, they provide a proof of concept. Kelty introduced Hannah Arendt to think about the various ways in which we are dividing up the problem of labor, and that at least some at the conference seemed to think that Marx might be getting in the way of conceptual progress with this topic.

read more on http://www.collectivate.net

A idéia é de que cada um de nós façamos a promoção dessa carta e a coloquemos em prática.

A Cultura Livre amplia drasticamente os espaços de participação cívica, expandindo o leque de indivíduos e grupos capazes de contribuir para os debates públicos. Trata-se, portanto, do fortalecimento da democracia em um momento de crise, justamente quando o exercício em modelos mais consistentes de democracia são urgentemente necessários. A Cultura Livre é uma condição para a liberdade de expressão, e por si só um pré-requisito essencial da democracia. Ela ajuda a reduzir a exclusão digital, permitindo assim a realização do potencial democrático das novas tecnologias.

A Cultura Livre abre espaço para novos modelos de envolvimento dos cidadãos no fornecimento de bens e serviços públicos. Estes são baseados na perspectiva dos ‘bens comuns’ — o ‘commons’. A ‘governança dos bens comuns’ se refere a regras negociadas e limites para a gestão da produção coletiva e gestão do acesso a recursos compartilhados. A governança do dos bens comuns honra a participação, a inclusão, a transparência, a igualdade de acesso, e a sustentabilidade a longo prazo. Reconhecemos o espaço comum como uma forma distinta e desejável de governar. Ele não está necessariamente ligado ao Estado ou outras instituições políticas convencionais e demonstra que a sociedade civil é hoje uma força potente.

Reconhecemos que essa nova economia social, para além do mercado privado, é uma importante fonte de valor. A nova reflexão sobre os ‘bens comuns’ (’Commons’), revitalizada pela tecnologia digital (entre outros fatores), alarga o espaço que constitui ‘a economia’. Neste momento da história, governos dão apoio considerável à economia de mercado privado; é urgente que seja dado à economia dos bens comuns o mesmo apoio extensivo que é oferecido ao mercado privado. Tudo o que esta nova perspectiva precisa para prosperar é uma economia com regras equilibradas para todos os modelos.
A atual crise financeira demonstrou os limites estritos do fundamentalismo de mercado. As consequências sociais e econômicas devastadoras do colapso financeiro também demonstram que os mercados descontrolados, guiados apenas pela competição e pelo interesse individual, representam uma ameaça à civilização. A filosofia da Cultura Livre, uma herança dos movimentos pela livre circulação originados no software livre e aberto, é a prova empírica de que um novo tipo de ética e uma nova maneira de fazer negócios são possíveis. Este movimentos criaram uma nova e viável forma de produção, com base em ofícios ou profissões, onde o autor-produtor não perde o controle do processo produtivo e não necessita da mediação dos grandes monopólios. Esta forma de produção se baseia na iniciativa autônoma em solidariedade com outros, em trocas configuradas de acordo com as habilidades e oportunidades de cada pessoa, na democratização do conhecimento, da educação e dos meios de produção, e em uma distribuição justa dos ganhos de acordo com o trabalho realizado.

Declaramos nossa preocupação com o bem-estar dos artistas, pesquisadores, autores e produtores criativos. Nesta Carta, propomos uma série de possibilidades para a remuneração coletiva da criação e da inovação. O software livre e aberto, a Wikipedia, e muitos outros exemplos mostram que o modelo de cultura livre pode sustentar a inovação, e que os monopólios não são necessários para a produção do bens culturais e de conhecimento. Na produção cultural, o que é sustentável depende, em grande medida, do tipo de “produto” (os custos de um filme, por exemplo, são diferentes daqueles de uma enciclopédia colaborativa on-line). Projetos e iniciativas com base nos princípios da cultura livre utilizam uma variedade de maneiras de alcançar a sustentabilidade para além da economia voluntária. Algumas destas formas são consolidadas. Algumas estão ainda em fase experimental. A princípio generalizado é o de combinar várias fontes de financiamento. Este abordagem tem a vantagem de garantir a independência.

Modelos de economia social comunitários já estão oferecendo um número de opções cada vez mais viável para manter a produção cultural. Estes incluem:

• doações não-monetárias e escambo (ex.: gift-economy, permutas);
• financiamento direto (ex: subscrições e doações);
• capital compartilhado (ex: fundos de contrapartida, cooperativas de produtores, interfinanciamento / economia social, Banco P2P, moeda virtual, crowd financing, capital aberto, cooperativas de investimento de base comunitária, e cooperativas de consumidores);
• fundações garantindo infra-estrutura para os projetos;
• financiamento público (ex: renda básica, bolsas, prémios, subsídios, contratos públicos e comissões);
• financiamento privado (ex: investimento de risco, ações, patrocínio privado, associações empresariais de infra-estrutura e investimento);
• atividades comerciais (incluindo bens e serviços) e combinações entre distribuição P2P e transmissão (streaming) de baixo custo.

A combinação dessas opções é cada vez mais viável, tanto para os criadores independentes como para a indústria. Não apoiamos a maneira como as empresas comerciais têm explorado o trabalho voluntário como estratégia para obter lucros a partir do valor gerado coletiva e voluntariamente. Acreditamos também que não deveria ser permitido que conglomerados tenham oportunidade de dominar parte substancial de qualquer setor do mercado.

A era digital traz a promessa histórica de uma ampliação da justiça, e de promover um ambiente econômico gratificante para todos.

Veja também: http://culturadigital.br