Thursday, March 4, 2010

Israeli Soldier Reveals Military Secrets on Facebook



The news has spread real-time across the world-wide-web: a combat soldier posted the time and location of the raid on his Facebook page saying that troops were planning on "cleaning up" the village (as reported by Fox News)

Consequently - Fellow soldiers announced military authorities, who called off the raid immediately. The soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison.

Delicate military information ranks quite high on the list of comments that should never be shared on Facebook (Israeli army has already confronted similar case a year ago when a soldier has been sentenced to 19 days in jail for uploading a photograph taken on his military base to the social networking website, Facebook - BBC).

At the moment there're no worldwide accepted guidelines that show what particular information shouldn't be shared on social networks and what type of measures should be taken in case the sensitive information is disclosed - which means that some users are not yet fully aware that social networks are not only interpersonal communication means, but quite effective broadcast channels ,just as well.

Famous Measures taken so far against "social gaffes" of this kind:


CHINA:
China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the country's Internet-domain-name registry announced that it will limit the system to use by businesses, effectively excluding private citizens from registering new domains. At the moment, the agency evaluates the legitimacy or better said "suitability" of approximately 13.5 million domains according to certain criteria, among which: obligatory identity disclosure of the site owners (photos attached), precise explanation of the site purpose of activity, etc. (Time.com, CNN and WebMilk.ru).

MOSCOW (MN) - A 22-year old man from the Urals city of Izhevsk got 1 year suspended sentence for defacing the profile of his acquaintance on the Russian social network odnoklassniki.ru, the Gazeta.ru internet daily reported on Wednesday.

ARMENIA: From March 2 to 20th, 2008 internet usage was restricted during the state of emergency, when certain websites where filtered out, when Armenian Internet Union (AIU) started blocking the domains.

TURKEY: A new set of regulations for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) published in the Turkish Official Gazette on November 1, 2007, makes it compulsory for all commercial ISPs to take measures to prevent access to “illegal content” and use government-approved filters to block users from visiting undesirable websites. In addition, all commercial ISPs are now obliged to record details of all the websites visited by their subscribers and store the data for a period of at least one year (2007)

Although the list may continue - the measures taken so far by the authorities have similar grounds: piracy concerns, identity theft, cyberterrorism, etc. And even if many see it as a violation of human rights I'm wondering if the advancement of similar incidents won't stimulate tougher restrictions so that anonymity on the web will once become - history?

Best,

Digital Lunch
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5 comments:

George Stevens said...

Web anonymity is an issue that raises multiple question marks - as for restrictions, my opinion: it's common sense - we all should take the responsibility for whatever sensitive data we're posting online.

George Stevens

Anonymous said...

China adopted too restrictive measures - as for the soldier's case: I agree, it's common sense - social networks should be approached: carefully. Curious read,though

Ethan S. Burger on March 11, 2010 at 7:27 PM said...

Greetings:

A major problem with the use of the web in the dissemination of information is the absence of a mechanism for verifying the validity of an item.

The consequences of "disinformation" are potentially huge -- economic, political, etc.

The website of a benign group of individuals promoting social justice is worth a glance:
http://theyesmen.org/.

The use of the Internet in manipulating markets, rumor mongering, etc. is frightening.

This is why historically journalists relied on the "two source rule."

Cheers.

ESV

Nadya on March 11, 2010 at 8:04 PM said...

Thank you for your insight, Ethan. Internet might be both beneficial and detrimental not just for brands, but -as you mentioned - on a larger, global markets' scale.
Glad to welcome you among our readers,

Best,
Nadya
Digital Lunch Team

Web Solutions on March 20, 2010 at 6:58 AM said...

"Its very simple if you are using your gadget for good reason it will help you every time and you'll get more benefit"

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