Though I’m not quite sure if “Metternich 2.0″ is the most appropriate title for this online demo, I believe something has to be done to raise public awareness about that issue.
On December 6th our government sneaked a security law amendment into the parliament. Unlike the German government, they were clever enough to dump democracy, do it secretly in order to avoid any public discussion and finally passed the amendments on the very same day, on 6th December around midnight (that already says something), without preceding parliamentary discussions.
The amendment radically enhances police surveillance rights and allows far-reaching monitoring of citizens without a control entity behind. I guess surveillance state is the term used in certain literature.
Members of the green party set up a parliamentary petition against the law (and governmental behavior). You can sign it online on their website.
Helge is using his wiki to support the petition and is providing tools – you might have noticed the page peel in the upper right corner here – and information for an online demo. [via helge.at]
Update: the Austrian parliament in action, by Maschek (in German language):
Google killed the hyperlink by introducing PageRank. The idea behind PageRank (the more links point to a site, the higher the site’s relevance) makes some of us be suspicious before clicking a link. Why is this link there? Does it provide further information for me or is it just a backlink to increase the target site’s PageRank? Am I’m going to be cheated? Before Google came, hyperlinks provided information and content, not backlinks. Yes, once upon a time, content was the scale for relevance.
Internet is fun. Social software is even more fun and questioning male ranking concepts is allowed. People, don’t take it too serious!
The last word on blog-usability isn’t spoken yet. The constantly changing chronological site structure is irritating. And that’s only the beginning.
In Austrian rural areas you can do solid business while enjoying a relaxing life.
None of the BarCamp alpha geeks today had an iPhone. The iPhone is an illusion.
I support the Free Burma Action because I felt the need to do something. I’m a lucky person, I was born into a world where previous generations already had fought for my rights. I’m deeply impressed by the people in Burma, who stand peacefully up in front of armed soldiers, demanding nothing more than democracy. Something I experienced my entire life as given. Nobody can tell if this action will help, but it’s still better than do nothing and wait what happens next. Thanks to all the valuable input at the Free Burma Session!
Who’s a blogger, who’s not. Or, does anybody really care about that term?
Public censorship is never a good way when trying to establish democracy and a liberal society. Blocking entire sites, especially a popular web community where a considerable part of your population participates, sends definitely the wrong signals.
Content is still the affair of the web site owner and it’s their business to decide how to deal with offensive contributions in web communities for instance. As state you just define the legal framework and if the web site plays within your legal framework it’s ok, otherwise it’s illegal and can be forbidden based on your laws.
For me as citizen it would be alarming if my government starts banning sites because they politically don’t agree with parts of its content. I still prefer to have the choice which articles I read or what videos to watch, even if they are dumb and stupid, and I certainly wouldn’t accept politically motivated internet gate keepers in my country.
You know, probably one difference between here and there is that there a politician makes an offensive statement, somebody grabs it, the video finds its way on a platform like YouTube and the politician is in big trouble.
[youtube pL3Q9gUEvtA]
Here, a politician, in fact an elected parliamentarian, explains his admiration and the positive aspects the NAZI regime had for this country (btw, because he was born after 1945 the poor guy didn’t remind that about 6m people had to be robbed and murdered by his heroes to succeed), the interview is brought to every household in Austria over the Austrian public service broadcaster ORF and, basically, nothing happens. The man who still keeps words like “der Führer” (!!) in his vocabulary will happily continue working in the Austrian parliament.
Clearly, a certain percentage of our population is still thinking that way. No problem, a sound democracy can stand it. But it makes a difference if such people own a seat in our parliament and represent with their antiquated way of thinking this country.
After the failed master plan people there decided to take action and plan their city theirselves. 15 planning teams will design neighborhood by neighborhood. Even if the teams are supported by urban planners and architects, the final decision about how their neighborhood is going to be developed and built is up to them, the people.
Some might call it “democracy in action”, I call it dangerous. Maybe future of this planning process will teach me better, but I doubt that a city at the dimension of New Orleans can be developed without any long-term strategy and concept. Urban development is too complex for planning decisions made on an ad-hoc basis.
…don’t want the public to sneak a peek into their palaces. Otherwise why would the Ministry of Information order the Bahrain Internet Exchange to block all access to the Google Earth servers?
Authorities usually don’t get tired telling us again and again that who has nothing done bad, has nothing to hide and nothing to fear when it comes to privacy critical issues like video observations, biometric security or data mining projects (hello AOL!). So I’m wondering what is it what the Kingdom of Bahrain wants to hide from its people. Have you done something bad Bahrain?
Read some more details in this post.
Information means power, free information is the key to a free world.
I didn’t notice any press coverage so far. Only Margot Wallström’s blog directed my attention to Debate Europe. Surely a great idea towards the right direction. Take part and share your view of Europe’s future.
Stefan from Ogle Earthlinks to a very interesting online article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how Google Earth is changing the way environmentalists work.
I think it’s not only limited to environemtalists, in my opinion Google Earth is changing a lot more work environments though. As employee of a company which deals mainly with spatial planning issues I can see how Google Earth gets more and more used and accepted by my colleagues. The main advantage is the extremely fast and free availability of basic geodata (especially aerial and satellite imagery) which was a few years ago difficult to get and mostly not affordable within our project budgets.
Google Earth helps us to easily validate locations. We can compare given land use plans against actual land use and validate certain input data. It’s not our main task to validate or create data so we don’t have base material for that purposes readily available. But from time to time we need to check certain locations on a larger scale and until now it was only possible if you have good knowledge of that places or you try to get more accurate material from certain sources which usually takes a long time in Austria. The combination of Google Earth and professional GIS tools even more simplifies this process. I can integrate and rudimentary display my own data in Google Earth.
On the other side, because Google Earth is a freely available application, I can publish my data as KML and offer it to our clients. Even if they are not familiar with GIS tools there is a good chance that they know how to use Google Earth. For our workflow the use of Google Earth is a huge step forward.
My favorite point on what Google Earth is changing is that suddenly former data access constraints do not work anylonger:
“Instead, it’s starting to look like a killer app that could change the power balance between grassroots environmentalists and their adversaries.”
Yes, Google Earth means something like communism to geoinformation. Everyone has (visual) access to every place, worldwide. Nothing remains hidden. As long as Google and certain governments limit their urge to censor maps.
Turns out that November is a quite popular strike month. So far we’ve got:
Stefan from