From IT PRO - Twitter being used as a 'political weapon' in Iran

From IT PRO - Twitter being used as a 'political weapon' in Iran

At the ENISA / Reuters event I attended this morning, there was a very interesting talk with BT chief security technology officer Bruce Schneier and International Security Forum (ISF) president Howard Schmidt that surprisingly switched from business security and into the presidential events in Iran that have been taking place.

Schneier said that the events were very interesting when it came to IT and IT security because it was the “coming of age” for citizen journalists.

The real journalists were under house arrest and not able to report, and the information that was coming out was from people - mostly through Twitter, as the Iran government forgot about it when trying to block things for the election.

Schneier said: “We’re seeing stories and images coming out that are unable to be blocked by the government, and the only thing they can do at this point is to ‘take down’ the internet. It’s possible and governments have done that.”

“Hackers around the world are helping,” he added. “If you have a Twitter account we’re all being asked to change our location to Iran and change our timezone, because that makes it harder for the police to find the real twitterers.”

Schneier also said that people around the world were setting up proxy servers to allow Iranian information to come out, and that there was even a proposal to use the Opera browser and turn it into a massive anonymous network to help the Iranian citizen journalists.

He continued: “The anonymity tools that many Western governments are trying to get rid of are saving lives in Iran. It is the first time that people in other countries don’t just protest in their own capitals - they actually do something.”

Schneier said it was very interesting to see computer security, networks and hacking used in this way.

Howard Schmidt argued the point further by highlighting the fact that mobile devices were being used to get the word out. He said that this anonymity allowed people to use the internet as a real vehicle to create change.

Schneier highlighted the Cyberwar Guide for Iran Elections guide for beginners as a useful starting point, if you wanted to get involved, and mentioned the fact that people were getting involved in denial of service attacks against the Iranian government.

Schneier said: “This is interesting. A lot of what people think as cyber war is kids playing politics - you see this in Pakistan, the Arab states, China. They are not just fooling around - this is serious stuff. We can actually have international politics being affected by these actions.

“I think this is a first. I think this shows the power of social media in a way nothing ever has before,” he adds.

Author Timothy Garton Ash also makes similar points in an article written for the Guardian.

Back again

Issues with Mac ... £60 a year for the right to create a website. No way. too expensive and Blogger's quicker and easier to use because it's all in the cloud. So here I am, back to blog.

Employment Beckons

It's taken me quite a while, but finally I've managed to secure a job at a fantastic company in the one journalism application i made that I said to myself that I really really wanted. Maybe that was the thing - I was extremely enthusiastic about working in the publication and the company and I'm very sure that my interviewers saw that.

But now I understand how difficult it is to start off in journalism, either magazine, web based or anything else. My CV and cover letter was worked on many times until I finally got it looking presentable and clear enough for people to not throw away into the garbage pile.

It's also the fact that all companies for journalism roles will have a big stack of CV's which they will have to get through. This applied to me as well, and I feel very good that I stood out.

It is getting more difficult, but I have to say that doing a postgraduate course was very important - most of my class are either in employment or freelancing in some way and that's great. We're meeting up again this Monday and I can talk about work related stuff which makes a change..

I have to mention the University of Westminster Postgraduate Periodical course. I enjoyed it, met some great people and props to my lecturer Chris Horrie who seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth for the majority of us 2007 students. 

Gotta say though that it did kind of suck to see that there was definitely more emphasis on the broadcast side than us print journos. I thought that was definitely unfair - I really wanted to be able to use a video camera and to be honest I thought I was photogenic enough to practice in front of one :) :) - but hey, no complaints -  a message for the course leader who's there right now - none of us really liked you that much but wish you luck on carrying on the great experience which has helped me immensely and I enjoyed so much

Now I'm bored, twiddling my thumbs and spending the last of my high interest cash borrowing reserves. Writing about technology, finding the news contacts and getting paid for it. What a life. (Oh and the free magazine thing - they let you have any of the magazines we have for free that my company does (and there are some great titles available) is bloody brilliant. Such a simple thing.)

Two Blogs

Now I have not one but two blogs! What happened is this - this blogger website came first in support of my journalism studies. Then I thought it would be useful to have a website for myself where I can put up my work at http://www.ashjournalism.co.uk.

However, the software I'm using allows the creation of a blog on that website. It doesn't show up on a google search properly, hence the reason I've decided to keep going on this blog for all my random journalism related thoughts, while saving the other website for news and features I may be writing for myself.

I've had 2471 hits! How, I wouldn't know considering I haven't touched Blogspot since March. But I think it shows how important it is to keep it going.

So save this site on your bookmarks if you want to read about how a newly graduated journalist attempts to take on a very competitive job market. Might be useful to those who are going to start their courses in September!

Making a Podcast

I haven't been blogging as much as I have been. The Westminster website as well as other various things have kept me busy.

It's been good. Various tensions and arguments. Excellent, just like a real newsroom.

Nothing much happens in Harrow. It's very dull. Which means the news guys are doing an excellent job to get what they have done.

Features wise, I'm slowly learning what I need to do. Our audience isn't huge, but I am still thinking about what features would make more sense to the readers.

I'm looking at our target audience, just like I would in a real situation.

I tried making a podcast for the site today. In the absence of very much multimedia on the site apart from a couple of videos, I tried a bit of amateur podcasting with my Mac, Garageband Software and a microphone I borrowed from the University.

It went OK. However it's going to take some tricky editing to get anything out of it due to the fact it does sound like a bunch of friends just chatting about the news. But it was really easy to do, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me.

Trial By Shorthand

I am going to link you to this blog by Rob Davies, called Trial By Shorthand.

He is doing online journalism at the Daily Telegraph at the moment, and is quite a different journalist to me.

Whereas I am quite feature and magazine led, Rob is much more of a newspaper style journalist. His blog entries put mine and many others to shame and I guarantee you will see his name up in lights at a national sooner rather than later.

He started his blog when doing the newspaper course at Cardiff, and has carried it on while he's been working.

I've looked at his earliest entries and his latest ones, and you can definitely tell that there is a progression in style as he's improved and styled his writing.

He's looking for more traffic though. So do have a look at it.

Writing 'Creatively'

I really want to get my habit back of writing creatively... using words to suck you into a different world.

When i was a kid I used to do it. I had an early gift with words... My parents remember me reading the Sun when I was a kid. My parents used to run a greasy spoon when I was a bit younger and apparently I used to sit on a builder's knee and go 'corr blimey' at the Page 3 girls - go figure.

Anyway... yeah, I used to read plenty when I was a kid, and it carried on. For some reason after my GCSE's I decided to do the Science and Maths subjects when I was younger because for some reason I got it in my head that I would make a good doctor - maybe I was watching too much 'Quincy' or something.

Anyway, that didn't go the way I'd hoped so I took the English A-Level in one year and managed to get the University doing it Then I got even lazier about writing - the thing about English Literature is that yes - you're doing a lot of reading... but creative writing - it seems to get ignored in favour of writing essays in an academic style.

So I've lost the habit. And I'm not reading enough anymore, which annoys me should sort out. It's not like I haven't the time to do it. Once I'm reading something I get engrossed and you can't pull me away from it. It's just a question of actually picking it up and starting to read.

It will really help my journalism. It won't really help my news writing, but for feature writing it does help if you have a style that really pulls in the readers.