Tag: Transparency
The Era of Pretended Transparency
“Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook ” the report says. But now after Snowden-Gate we know that certain governments (say the US) have direct access to data from Facebook and other big companies.
Shouldn’t Facebook disclose information about this as well? How much data and kind of data is extracted on a daily basis by governments (say the US)? Of course Facebook is not the issue. The same request can be made to Google, Yahoo, Apple or Microsoft. Publishing a report and pretending it is transparency, is a good way to mask the relevant information that should be accessible to users.
Wikileaks: An avalanche of leaking information
This week something happened. Countries were waiting impatiently for the publication of 250,000 classified cables which leaked/stolen by Wikileaks. The reason – these documents contain juicy content about how the U.S refers to other states and leaders in the world. The tension rose even more few hours before the publication was due, and the site of Wikileaks could not be accessed due to a mass distributed denial of service attack. Someone in the US administration apparently thought that blocking access to the website of Wikileaks will help the situation or stop the information from leaking. Obviously, whoever thought that this is the case, does not understand the essence of information flow and distribution in the Internet. Bringing a website down, not only does not stop the distribution of information, it even encourages users to seek the information in mirror and other sites, replicate it and continue to distribute it.