Monday, September 27, 2004
Secret Services show down
Hello, good morning and how do you do – this is Cybersurf a weekly look at what’s happening in our neck of the Internet woods. I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang.
Today we follow up on an idea from John – who suggested that we look at the the new NIA or National Intelligence Agency site – and then compare it with the sites put up by some of the better known security service agencies.
So here goes the secret service show down – with the NIA in our corner, Mi5 in the red, blue and white trunks of the UK and the world famous heavy weight from the United States – the CIA.
A quick overview reveals immediately that the three sites are at very different levels of maturity and of resources. The American site is a massive Portal-style web site with sections on everything related to security issues from a “kids anti-drug page” to photos of last week’s swearing in of the new Director of the CIA.
I would guess that there is at least one person who is fully employed updating the CIA site as it appears to be updated every working day of the week. The British site – Mi5 is also fairly extensive, but I would deduce that it is updated once a week. By comparison, the South African NIA site appears to have nothing more recent than the second week of August – an entry about womens’ day - they are really not giving away any secrets there.
Both the American and South African security services place great importance on the “Vision and Mission” in both cases displayed prominentnly near the top of the page – while the British site doesn’t seem to have either.
The CIA and Mi5 both have extensive history sections – in the case of the English agency – going back almost a hundred years. Since the NIA is a mere ten years old, it would hardly seem worthwhile putting up a history section just yet.
The language factor is also quite interesting – both the US and the UK only consider one language other than English – can you guess what language that is? I’ll give you a clue – the language is related to the biggest single sections on each of their respective sites.
Yes, both devote huge amounts of web space to the threat of terrorism – and both have sections in Arabic.
I found this quite surprising because many American sites these days would have Spanish as an alternative language.
Mi5 does have however, a substantial section concerned with Northern Ireland and domestic terrorism. It also has many mega bytes devoted to Security advice on how to deal with specific forms of attack such as hand carried bombs, letter bombs, vehicle bombs and of course – other bombs.
My favourite part on Mi5 is the Myths section which debunks some of the urban legends that ocassionally spring up. The list of Myths includes:
Mi 5 does not recruit tall people,
Mi 5 carries out assassinations, spies on Muslims, vets all ministers and many more crazy ideas – that I might have believed in.
My favourite section on the CIA site has to be the CIA World Fact book – I have been using it for years. It is truly one of the most useful reference works on the Internet. It is regularly maintained and carries an enromous amount of political and econmic information on every country in the world.
The most useful section on the South African NIA site is the annual report – it is extensive and informative but it takes a long time to turn from one page to another.
An overall comment on the South Afrifcan site – it is a good start, but like many of our govenrment sites – it needs more content and needs to be updated at least once a week.
And so we conclude today’s edition of Cybersurf. If you missed any of the addresses – never fear – I will put the whole script – together with Internet addresses on the Cybersurf blog which you can find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time cybersurf.blogspot.com
Thanks for listening and till next week – remember to keeeep on surfing.
Addresses of sites mentioned in today's program:
Monday, September 20, 2004
The real star of Highway Africa
The annual meeting of African journalists focuses on how the media can make better use of information and communication technologies – or ICTs. Presentations and workshops are mainly about the latest innovations on the Internet and about better ways of using cellphone technology.
With literally hundreds of top level journalists and academics from around the continent – it is a bit ironic that it was a local schoolboy who stole the show.
Sivusizwe Mzamo, or Sivu as he is known at Graeme College in Grahamstown, was the shining star of the conference because he used his ingenuity in the field of ICTs.
Recognising that many rural people have difficulty making use of a cellphone simply because they have no access to electricity, he invented a cellphone charger that works off a bicycle. Sivu uses a dynamo, that would normally power a bicycle light, to send a current to the charger. The components of his invention – a circuit, a resistor, a transistor, a casing and two wires cost less than ten rand while the dynamo, costs a little over seventy.
He deservedly received a huge amount of attention for his invention and was called on to make a brief address before more than 400 people at an evening function. That a Grade eleven pupil could make such a wonderful impromptu speech in such intimidating circumstances is almost as impressive as his invention. The warm applause and ululating that followed his speech were clear signs that the African ICT community is looking for African heroes.
Sivusizwe Mzamo is without doubt one of those heroes – a young articulate and very promising prospect for the country.
He is however, the product of an enabling environment – a progressive science teacher in a progressive school. In order to hail the many more Sivus who are out there – we need more enabling environments – more progressive teachers and more progressive schools that can uncover and nurture the wealth of bright young learners in this country.
Highway Africa went some way towards providing an enabling environment for forty students and journalists to improve their abilities in covering ICT related issues. Two separate groups from nine African countries attended ICT training courses and exercised their newly honed skills by covering the conference for a daily newspaper and a web site.
Why don’t you click along to the site to find out what the students did. You can also read about Sivu Mzamo and his dynamo cellphone charger at the following address: www.highwayafrica.org.za – repeat : www.highwayafrica.org.za
And that is a wrap from Grahamstown. Cybersurf will take to the air yet, again next Monday, same time, same place – till then – remember to keep on surfing
Monday, September 13, 2004
Highway Africa
What am I doing in the Eastern Cape? Well this week, from Thursday till Saturday, Rhodes University and the SABC are co-hosting the eighth annual Highway Africa conference.
This is the biggest single gathering of African journalists anywhere. The focus of Highway Africa is to discuss new ways of using new technology more effectively in journalism.
A wide range of IT issues on the program includes an assessment of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, an address by the deputy minister of communications; Nepad and ICTs in Africa as well as a preview of the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers meeting to be held in Cape Town this December.
No-one expects you to remember all these interesting issues on a very tightly packed program – and that is why the Rhodes University students are putting up a very creative web site at the following address: www.highwayafrica.org.za
Not only will you be able to read the program, but you will also find links to two valuable news sources on the conference. The first will take you to a multi-media version of our conference newspaper. It will carry news, photographs, and inter-active features explaining the issues heating up the plenary sessions.
The second link will take you to HANA – an acronym for the Highway Africa News Agency. As HANA is a news agency it is not really designed for the general public – although it is freely accessible – but the news agency stories are written for the benefit of other African news organisations that have not been able to send their own reporters to the conference.
HANA will also be celebrating its first year of existence this week. Conceived last year ahead of the World Summit on the Information Society, it was born from the understanding that most African news organisations would not be able to directly cover the summit in Geneva because it is just too expensive.
HANA covered the summit and two other international gatherings on ICTs earlier this year. The agency then distributed news material about the meetings free of charge to a number of news web sites and papers. HANA articles were widely distributed and widely read – and so African readers were able to understand the African perspective on a number of controversial IT debates.
So to keep up with the latest on Highway Africa – click along to highwayafrica.org.za – one more time - highwayafrica.org.za or if you would like to read the script for this program check out the Cybersurf blog at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com
That’s it for this special Highway Africa edition of Cybersurf from Rhodes University – thanks for listening and remember - to keep on surfing.
Monday, September 06, 2004
Voice over IP will be legal in SA and Internet Week
In the last week or so the Department of Communications has made some very important announcements - about the licensing of the Second National Operator and the legalisation of Voice Over IP.
Most of the good news is for Internet and telephone users in South Africa – but the cell phone operators will also gain because, as from next year, they will not be forced to use Telkom lines for their infra-structure – yes – did you know that currently all the cell phone operators use Telkom lines for certain parts of their networks. The latest developments will add competition to the markets and competition usually means better prices for consumers.
Telkom will probably lose ground as a result of the announcements, and I will not be surprised if they use the announcements to justify re-trenchments – however, competition need not be bad news for Telkom.
In many other countries where the entrenched telephone operator suddenly had to face competition, the Telcos were able to adapt to the new markets and maintain some sort of profitability.
The decision to allow Voice over IP means that users will be allowed to use the Internet to make cheap long distance phone calls. Essentially you will be paying the normal rate to your local ISP for a phone call to anywhere in the world. At the moment this is illegal in South Africa, although many countries have long since bowed to the inevitable and licensed private businesses that allow users to make cheap international calls.
This week is Internet week in South Africa. The Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa – or ISPA will be holding their annual conference in Muldersdrift just outside Johannesburg. To find out more – check out their web site at http://iweek.ispa.org.za/.
Issues on the agenda include an assesment of the current state of the industry and also a full session on the state of the industry in 2007 – in other words, where are we going to? Other issues include cybercrime, spam and the establishment of AfriNIC. - www.afrinic.net
AfriNIC is an acronym for African Network Information Center – and it is essentially a domain name registry for Africa. The whole process of establishing AfriNIC is almost complete and will probably be formalised at a high profile meeting in Cape Town this December.
More on AfriNIC in later editions of Cybersurf.
Rapid change of tack now – the United Nations has just given a susbtantial boost to the distribution of open source software. The UN has funded an organisation called the International Open Source Network that aims to encourage the take up of Linux in the developing world.
If you would like more information on this you will find the web address to this and other sites I have mentioned in today’s program at the following address:
www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time for luck – www.cybersurf.blogspot.com.
Thanks for your attention – and remember to tune in again next Monday for more Cybersurf..
Links to web sites mentioned in this program:
Internet Week: http://iweek.ispa.org.za/.
AfriNIC: http://www.afrinic.net
International Open Source Network: http://www.iosn.net/
