Copyright and Censorship on keithrozario.com

Here's one thing that's already changed post GE14

Fri, 11 May 2018 20:54:02 +0000

In 2015, I was invited to a variety program on Astro to talk about cybersecurity.

This was just after Malaysian Airlines (MAS) had their DNS hijacked, but I was specifically told by the producer that I could NOT talk about the MAS hack, because MAS was a government linked company, and they couldn’t talk bad about GLCs.

Then half-way through the interview they asked me about government intervention, and I said something to the effect of “Governments are part of the problem and should refrain from censoring the internet”, that sound-bite never made it to TV because it was censored.

#PotongSteam

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 12:59:48 +0000

I haven’t blogged in a while because I’m busy studying (yes, studying) for my OSCP certification.

But what happened over the week, was just to mind-blowingly stupid to ignore.

Here's what happened....

A Taiwanese company released a game titled Fight of Gods, which as the name implies, has Gods fighting among themselves. But the developers didn't 'just' use Greek, Roman or Norse Gods -- they went a step further and used Jesus and Buddha (but not Muhammad or Allah). Gods fighting among themselves isn't anything new in videogames or comics, who do you think Thor from the Avengers is based on, or Hercules from Disney, or just watch any Justice League episode with Wonder Woman, the real difference here is that games don't typically use Jesus or Buddha.

Most gamers brushed off the game as a lousy game wrapped in a theatrical package, but the media picked up the story and the game garnered more publicity than was warranted. So much publicity, that the Malaysian government decided to take action, but how do you take action against a game developer in Taiwan?

Facebook giving China a censorship tool?

Sun, 27 Nov 2016 11:15:07 +0000

The New York Times reported this week that Facebook has ‘quitely developed’ a censorship tool, specifically for the Chinese government to suppress content on their platform. The piece writes:

"the social network quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added" - New York Times

The report goes on to say, that Facebook intends to grant that capability to a 3rd-party, who will "have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds".

In short, they’re creating a censorship on demand for China, in exchange for access to the worlds largest market.

Censorship in an encrypted world

While Facebook have neither confirmed nor denied this, this will give China special priviledge to the platform, one that no other nation currently has. Today, most governments face an all-or-nothing approach to censorship on encrypted sites like Facebook, Google and Wikipedia. China famously censor of all Wikipedia on days leading up to the anniversary Tianamen square massacre, simply because they have no ability to censor specific pages.

If I were browsing for chicken curry recipes on Wikipedia, while you were researching political dissent on the same site, our traffic would look identical to anyone ‘sniffing’ along the line. These ‘in transit’ censorship attempts are failing, and for Governments like China, a ‘block the whole damn thing’ approach is the only alternative.

This new tool however, will grant them granular control, to block specific posts and news on the social network,because the censorship now will occur at source, rather than in-transit. It is a radical shift in the way censorship will be performed on the internet, not just in China, but across the world.

It’s also worthwhile to note, that other governments have tried these ‘all-or-nothing’ approaches as well, including Brazil who famously blocked all of Whatsapp (also owned by Facebook) for 72 hours, because a Judge was ‘unhappy’ that Whatsapp responded via email and in English. Fortunately for Brazilians, the ban didn’t last that long.

Whatsapp is a private communications tool, and Facebook is a social network–the similarity is that they both use encryption and this is problematic for governments. In the case of Whatsapp, the two ends of the encrypted channel belong to users, and Whatsapp would be unable to provide any content of communications within that channel–even if it wanted to. In the case of Facebook, since one end belongs to the company–it is able to provide some control.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to Facebook and censorship in China–but first let’s take a look at Facebook.

Anonymity and IP addresses

Tue, 23 Aug 2016 08:00:24 +0000

This week, I’ll put the final touches on my move from Malaysia to Singapore.

So, I felt it would a good idea to read through some Singaporean tech articles to see how tech events played out on the little red dot, and offer some unsolicited and completely useless advice on them.

It wasn’t easy shifting through a boat-load of gadget reviews masquerading as tech journalism (I guess some things are the same in every country), but underneath the hundreds of phone reviews and fiber broadband comparison, I found a little interesting report on illegal downloads.

The Singapore Straits time reports that:

A local law firm that started proceedings to go after illegal downloaders in Singapore on behalf of two Hollywood studios said it will cooperate with the local authorities to ensure no abuse of process.
It follows a rare intervention by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) in civil applications made by Samuel Seow Law Corp (SSLC) in the High Court last month.

“We will work with the local authorities to ensure that there will be no unnecessary alarm to consumers who receive the letters of demand we plan to send out,” Mr Samuel Seow, managing director of SSLC, told The Straits Times yesterday.

This is just a re-hashed version of what happened last year in Singapore, when the same law firm went after downloaders of another movie, the difference is that this time they’ll be doing it under the watchful eyes of the AGC.

There is something to be said here about copyright-trolling, the abuse of power and the bullying tactics usually involved. But, we’ll leave that discussion for another day.

Today, I want to explore a little bit about anonymity and how many people have a mistaken notion about what it is.

The Internet is slow because of illegal downloads

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:20:54 +0000

Let’s start with the quote that set off the rage in my heart—

“You can see today that our Internet is slow. Not because it itself is slow but because a lot of people are using it,” he said
The government agency chief blamed this on illegal downloads hogging Internet bandwidth here, adding that this does not happen in countries like Germany due to stricter enforcement.

“In Germany, the Internet is fast because if you download illegally, you will be charged by the authorities.

“You can’t download illegal movies, songs and pictures there, you need to pay but we here, anything also we download illegally right up to the pictures of our grandfathers.

“That is why the Internet highway is slow but we blame the government. The government has created proper Internet highways but we don’t know how to use it. Millions have been spent on this by the government,” he explained.

So apparently, Datuk Ibrahim Saad, the National Civics Bureau (BTN) chief thinks that the internet is slow in Malaysia (it’s not that slow), because illegal downloads are hogging up the pipelines.

Let’s start with his first sentence, an substitute the word ‘internet’ with the name of any Malaysian highway you choose, personally I like to use the LDP:

You can see today that our LDP is slow. Not because it itself is slow but because a lot of people are using it

Hmmm, I guess in his infinite wisdom that makes sense to the BTN chief, but to me that just sounds like the highway wasn't built properly.

Let’s go to the 2nd statement:

In Germany, the Internet is fast because if you download illegally, you will be charged by the authorities.
“You can’t download illegal movies, songs and pictures there, you need to pay but we here, anything also we download illegally right up to the pictures of our grandfathers.

“That is why the Internet highway is slow but we blame the government

Now we come to the crux of the issue. If Malaysians weren’t illegally downloading, they’d have faster internet.

Here’s 4 reasons why he’s wrong.

Hate Speech is defined by private companies

Sun, 13 Mar 2016 15:55:01 +0000

You don’t have a right to freedom of speech.

Obviously true if you’re Malaysian, but even Americans only enjoy a liberty in freedom of speech and not an absolute right.

The difference is clear, liberties are protections you have from the government, while rights are something you have from everyone.

So if someone threatened your right to live, the government is obligated to intervene and protect that right, because your right to live is a protection you have from everyone, whether it be a common criminal, abusive husband or Ayotollah Khomeini.

On the other hand you only have a liberty in freedom of speech (at least in an American context), which means that the government can’t prevent you from speaking, or penalize you for something you said.

However, the government is under no obligation to ensure your speech gets equal ‘air-time’, a newspaper may decline to publish your article, an auditorium may elect to deny you their roster, and online platforms like Facebook may choose to remove your post–all of which do not violate your freedom of speech, because freedom of speech is protection only from the government (state actors) and not from private entities.

And like all liberties and rights, freedom speech is not absolute. Under strict conditions even the US government can impose limits to what they’re citizens can say, or penalize them for things they have said.

In the case of freedom of speech, a liberty defined in their first amendment, those strict conditions are very strict indeed. In order for the government to infringe on the freedom of speech, it must demonstrate a imminent danger that will result in a serious effect.

In other words the government must be able to prove that if the speech were given freedom, there would be an imminent threat of something serious. Both the imminence and seriousness must be proven, failing which the government cannot infringe on that speech. This is indeed a very tall hurdle to climb, and based on my cursory research no case has ever reached this limit.

Court rules Hacking Team documents still confidential

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 08:00:51 +0000

Under the current hype of the FBI ordering Apple to ‘install backdoors’ on their iPhones, a bit of interesting news seems to have slid under the radar.

A court in Singapore ruled that e-mails from the Hacking Team breach, published by the hacker Phineas Fisher via a torrent download, and available freely on Wikileaks–were still confidential in nature.

The news hits close to home, after all, I’ve written a 2,000 word article on it back in July, and have been harping on the issue over the past weeks, even going on BFM radio for an interview.

So was I using confidential information in my tech evangelism?!

Well, probably not, but this does raise some interesting questions.

Here’s the facts of the case.

Keith's on BFM Talking about spyware--again!!

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 12:05:17 +0000

Today, I was on BFM talking about Hacking Team, the audio for which is below, and more comments and thoughts below that.

Your browser does not support native audio, but you can download this MP3 to listen on your device.

This is my last ditch attempt to get a conversation started about the use of surveillance software by the Government—and these conversations should take place a the higher (and more powerful) levels of goverment. Talking about it to myself on this blog isn’t taking it anywhere.

Netflix is setting back Piracy and Security

Thu, 28 Jan 2016 20:33:58 +0000

Malaysian rejoiced last month when Netflix announced that they would be coming to our shores. We were all salivating over the massive amount of content we would finally have access too…except that it wasn’t so massive.

Malaysia would enjoy less than 20% of what was available to Netflix users in the US or even in the UK, and that looked like an especially lousy deal since we were paying the same amount for our subscriptions.

I wasn’t that interested in the news, after all, I had already subscribed to Netflix for more than 2 years, and used a VPN to enjoy US and even UK content. I loved Netflix because it had a lot of interesting content, but what really sealed the deal for me was Pocoyo and Dora the explorer…I’m a father of a 2-year-old, and having a video on demand service that lets me address my toddlers demand was a life-saver.

Netflix was far more effective than youtube for videos for my kid, first of all, the content was pure, and I could be sure that nobody was messing with it or adding commentary, but more importantly, it had no adverts, and when you have a 2-year-old the last thing you want them to watch is adverts.

Medium blocked: Collateral Censorship vs. Collateral Freedom

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 16:53:23 +0000

So the buzz around twitter is that Medium.com has been blocked by the Malaysian Authorities, and guess what? It’s true.

It was expected, after all Medium is where the ‘infamous’ Clare Rewcastle Brown uploads her articles to circumvent censorship of her own site, the equally diabolical SarawakReport.org.

A lot of successful writers and bloggers have taken to Medium to host their content, including Stephen Levy, the author of In the Plex, one of my favorite books on Google. He's using it (and only it) to start a Tech Hub for his content, and placing it alongside millions of other articles contributed by both professional and amateur writers.

So it made sense for SarawakReport to take their content to Medium. After all, most of their readership is Malaysian, and since Malaysian ISPs ‘censored’ their content, using a neutral ‘un-censored’ platform like Medium was a perfect solution—well almost perfect!

It’s a phenomenon called ‘collateral freedom’, and for a while SarawakReport readers, and Malaysian internet users enjoyed that collateral freedom, Medium was free and un-censored, which made Sarawark also free and un-censored as long as it was on the platform.

Block This!!

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 18:15:32 +0000

A notice posted on the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) Facebook page said the decision was made to block websites that “promote, spread information and encourage people to join the Bersih 4 demonstration”, on grounds that this will “threaten national stability”.

I cannot then tell you to join Bersih and call for free and fair elections, and I couldn’t begin to articulate that our Prime Minister has received BILLION ringgit donations from foreign sources, and certainly I must refrain from encouraging you to do your civic duty to attend tomorrows rally.

Our Communication Minister must be mistaken

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:17:23 +0000

Our newly appointed Communication Minister has come out all guns blazing in directing the The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to ask social media giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter soon to block “false information and rumours” on their platforms.

That in itself is quite frustrating, but what really got me scratching my head was his claim that “that social media providers acted on 78 per cent of MCMC’s request for removal of content last year, with Facebook taking action on around 81 per cent of its request.”

TM blocking SarawakReport

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 21:58:36 +0000

Sarawakreport, a website covering sensitive political topics in Malaysia was blocked today by the countries most prominent ISP, Telekom Malaysia (TM).

Internet users using TM’s Domain Name Server (DNS) reported that the website was inaccessible, and I’ve confirmed that is an intentional block by TM.

Here’s a quick primer on DNS. The internet works on this marvelous set a rules we’ve come to call the Internet Protocol. Part of this protocol requires that every server or machine on a network be assigned a unique number to identify itself, this number is called an IP address. An IP address is sort of the phone number of a server, and if you want to communicate with a server you’d need to know that servers phone number.

Censorship and Freedom

Thu, 21 May 2015 22:52:04 +0000

What’s the price of falling in love?

What are the consequences of being head over heels, mindless crazy in love with someone?

I would say the price of falling in love is the possibility of getting hurt. Sometimes the person you fall in love with doesn’t love you back–and that can cause significant emotional pain and grief. But that’s a price we’re more than willing to pay, because a world where no one is allowed to be hurt, is also a world where no one is allowed to fall in love, and who wants to live in that world?

The one reason you should oppose the TPP

Thu, 07 May 2015 18:25:08 +0000

Today I attended an Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) event about the TPP. Among the panel members, included Michael Froman, the US trade representative and chief advisor to President Obama on issues of International Trade and Investment. (big shot!!)

For those you don’t know, the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) agreement is a trade deal between 12 countries including Malaysia and America whose main objective is to balance out the power and influence China has over the region. But the TPP has been opposed by many NGOs and special interest groups, for good reason–it’s secret. The TPP has garnered such a bad reputation, it’s sort of like the Justin Bieber of trade agreements, everyone knows about it, but nobody likes it.

The event went on for a good 40 minutes, before your friendly neighbourhood tech blogger got a hold of the mic to ask about the secrecy of the trade agreement.Prior to that everyone was talking about Bumi Policies,Price of Medicine and impacts to SMEs. I really didn’t understand why no one spoke about the tremendous secrecy surrounding the talks and how the secrecy itself is fundamentally undemocratic and bad enough for Malaysians to reject the agreement.

This secrecy is the one reason every Malaysian should oppose the TPP. Everything else is moot, because we can’t confirm the documents we’ve seen until it’s made publicly available to the citizens of the countries negotiating the deal. Would you sign a housing loan agreement without the ability to first read the contract? Yet, here with the TPP we have a legally binding 29-chapter multi-lateral agreement that very few people have seen, but will impact all Malaysians once signed. How do we know the prices of medicines are going up? Oh that’s right, we read it from Wikileaks …. must definitely be true then. Sorry let’s move on.

The Snowden Revelations

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 20:00:31 +0000

It’s now almost two years on, since that fateful day at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong when Edward Snowden divulged secret NSA documents detailing unlawful and on-going spying programs carried out in the name of security.

Sure we knew the government had 'a' spying program, and we've all seen Hollywood movies with fictional technology that allowed governments to carry out un-restricted surveillance, but no one in their wildest dreams would have imagined a government having access to ALL phone calls, ALL e-mails, ALL text messages and ALL transactions...and then storing that information for ALL time.

What we've learnt so far is that the NSA had executed bulk surveillance on the American people (and us poor non-Americans as well) across all channels of communications including phone calls, internet searches and e-mail without a proper court warrant, congressional approval or oversight of any kind. Particularly strange for a country whose own constitution protects the rights of citizens against illegal searches and seizures. I'm no lawyer, but even to layman like me, the bill of rights looks like a masterpiece, and the fourth amendment is a beautifully written piece of law:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
-4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

In other words, if you want to search smartphones, computers or e-mail accounts, you'll need a warrant. And the law goes on to state, that warrants can only be issued, upon probable cause, that must be affirmed by a Judge providing the necessary oversight. Finally, even after a warrant is issued,it must state the place of the search and things to be seized. A warrant shall not act as a blanket approval for law enforcement to look through all aspects of the citizens life, but only that which is explicitly stated in the warrant.

The day they censored me

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 09:48:57 +0000

Last week was a pretty exciting week for me--it was my first time on TV.

A TV show called VBuzz that was hosted on a Astro Channel 231 called me to be a guest to talk about Cyber Security, obviously I make it point to try new things and let's be honest....how many of you would turn down a chance to be on TV? I mean this is Television, if you're on it you must be good right?! Even if it is a Tamil channel, and it's on at 9pm, I thought this would be exicting...and it was!

Anyway, they scheduled me in for a show on Tuesday, and I happily took some time off work to go down to their studio and all was really great. Until....

The first thing they told me was that I couldn't talk about the recent MAS hack, because they were afraid. The Obvious question I had was--afraid of what? Apparently, MAS was a Government Linked Company, and they couldn't talk bad about a GLC for fear of losing their license. Now I had no intention of talking bad about MAS, just trying to help people understand what happened in the hack, but they were still afraid. So OK, you can still have a 15 minute conversation about cyber security without talking about MAS...no problem.

So I got my 'HD' make-up on, because High Definition recording captures so much detail of your face, that they need special make-up for it. I found that quite amusing, plus I never knew so much effort and co-ordination went into making a production like this.

We started off with 'easy' topics like cyber criminals and hacking incidences, and the conversation was light and flowed pretty well, but then (according to plan) we veered into cyber warfare, which was a topic I was deeply into over the last few weeks. And out pop-ed a question like "What can governments do to ...." to which I responded that "Governments were the biggest perpretators of the crime". This didn't sit well with the producers or the writers, and at the end of the show we did a re-take of that bit, censoring out a my statement, which I maintained wasn't just true, but totally consistent with the entire show.

Malaysian Government Hacked Environmental website?

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:06:36 +0000

Environment News Service, an environmental focused news website this week accused Malaysian government hackers of attacking it after it ran a story implicating Sarawak governor Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud of corruption and graft. As a result, the site was down for 2-hours, before the site manage to re-gain control.

“The attack on our site came from a Malaysian government entity as identified by their IP address,” Sunny Lewis, editor-in-chief of Environment News Service (ENS)

But what exactly is an IP address, and how did ENS identify it?

Let me explain.

Is illegal downloading considered stealing?

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 08:00:40 +0000

There’s a general perception that illegal downloads of movies, music or books is akin to stealing the works of the artist, singers and authors. But downloads are more akin to trespassing than it is stealing–they’re nothing like stealing and if you take some time off to think about it, you’d figure this out too.

When you steal something, you’re denying the victim something,if you steal my car, you’ve taken something from me that I can no longer use. Stealing is a zero sum game, where the perpetrator gets something, and victim loses something. Obviously stealing is bad, but downloading isn’t stealing.

When you illegally download music, you’re not denying anyone else something physical. The music that you downloaded is still on the server you sourced it from, all you did was make a copy. Illegal downloading, isn’t zero sum, you profited (maybe),but no one lost anything of value. And so the rules that we devise for digital information (which can be replicated freely) shouldn’t be the same rules we apply for physical items like cars, and gold coins (which can’t be replicated freely).

Of course, the argument is that illegal downloads deny the content creators income they rightfully deserve, but that’s only true in a handful of cases. If someone refused to sell you their content regardless the price you’d be willing to pay–does it then make it morally wrong for you to download the material? You cannot consider it a loss for the content creator if they never intended to sell the item to you in the first place.You cannot deny income to someone who refuses to take your money, so therefore an ‘illegal’ download isn’t stealing at all.

And it doesn’t stop there. What happens if the content creators are just plain jerks–would it be morally wrong to copy their digital data–and would that be considered stealing?

CheDet on Censorship

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 20:00:04 +0000

Tun Dr. Mahathir now says he’s change his mind about internet censorship. To quote him “Not knowing the power of the Internet, I promised that we (speaking as the Prime Minister of Malaysia) would not censor it. But today I have changed my mind."

Of course, everyone has a right to change their mind–but in this case Tun went from being absolutely spot-on (the internet doesn’t need censorship) to dead wrong.

Youtube Video flagged as inappropriate

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:00:37 +0000

Last week one of my most popular videos detailing how I hacked Unifi accounts was ‘flagged’ as inappropriate in YouTube–apparently it was in violation of their community guidelines.

As such my video was made unavailable and essentially deleted from Youtube.

I was upset.

The email I received from YouTube, gave no indication as to what I did wrong, and even though it states that someone have viewed my video, the language used suggest this was just an automated message sent to my inbox. Nowhere does it suggest an actual human viewed my video and made a judgement, and even worse no justification was given for the removal of the video other than it was ‘flagged’.

Regarding your account: Keith Rozario

The YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined that the following video(s) contain content in violation of these guidelines, and have been disabled:

"How I hacked 4 unifi accounts in 5 minutes" (http://youtu.be/MGWMFur2Pek)

Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It's also not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the permanent termination of your account.

For more information on YouTube's Community Guidelines and how they are enforced, please visit the help center.

Please note that deleting this video will not resolve the strike on your account. For more information about how to appeal a strike, please visit thispage in the help center.
Sincerely,

The YouTube Team

3 Ways to watch Netflix from Malaysia

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 09:00:57 +0000

Netflix is awesome. I watch it everyday, and while the selection is dated–it’s still pretty good.

If you needed proof for just how good it is–32% of all internet traffic in the US, belongs to Netflix. There’s two problems though. First, it isn’t free, and cost about Rm30 month. Not really and issue since Rm30 on Netflix gets you a lot more content than the RM100+ you spend on Astro.

The second problem is that it’s not available in Malaysia. So even if you were willing to pay the cash, you couldn’t get Netflix streamed to your home–until now that is. So here’s 3 ways to stream Netflix, BBC iPlayer and even DramaFever (for the k-drama fans out there) to your home in Malaysia.

The right to be forgotten

Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:43:52 +0000

The truth is we all have something to hide–secrets we wished the world would never know. A political stance we once had, a video of ourselves after too many drinks, or even just a sentence we once uttered at a party somewhere. If you think you’ve got nothing to hide–you should think harder.

So, when European Court of Justice recently ruled that Google had to comply with certain request from individuals to remove links to websites with their personal information–privacy advocates were delighted that we now had the ‘right to be forgotten’. Mario Gonzalez had requested Google to remove a link to a digitized article in La Vanguardia newspaper about an auction for his foreclosed home. Google refused, Mario sued, and the links were removed–only they weren’t.

Kevin Spacey doesn't like Indian Pirates: But are they really pirates?

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:29:52 +0000

"House of Cards is really big in India, I discovered," Spacey told reporters at the International Indian Film Academy Awards which took place in Tampa, Floria – the first time they’ve been held in America. "Except isn't it funny that Netflix doesn't exist there yet. Which means that you're stealing it.”

I’m gonna be honest here. Kevin Spacey is one of my all time favorite actors, from his brilliant work in Usual Suspects and American Beauty, to his legendary performance in the House of Cards series–this guy can do no wrong.

Internet Censorship is an invasion of privacy

Sun, 06 Apr 2014 16:49:24 +0000

With the on-going debacle about the Kangkung saga dying down, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write specifically about internet censorship and its implications to ordinary Malaysian citizens. As you may well know, many Malaysia Netizens reported of difficulty accessing one particular post of the BBC website that dealt with the Kangkung issues, causing many to cite that Telekom Malaysia was actually censoring the internet--but what does internet censorship actually entail for Malaysia?

Let’s first take a step back, and understand how and Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Telekom Malaysia, Maxis or Digi operate.

10 Things you need to know about kangkung censorship

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 22:54:38 +0000

Internet users in Malaysia were reporting issues trying to access a specific page on the BBC UK website that was a hilarious post making fun of our ‘beloved’ Prime Ministers Kangkung remarks. Apparently the issue became so bad, that users took to social media –only to find that they were not alone. In fact, so many Malaysians were complaining that they couldn’t access the post, that the official twitter handle of the BBC News tweeted to its followers asking them if they had issues.

Are you in #Malaysia? Can you access this BBC story about #kangkung? http://t.co/sDKN4fFWyV - let us know using #BBCtrending
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 16, 2014

Now, I for one, experienced no such disruption–but then again I use a VPN, and quite frankly, so should you!

However, there are a couple of things you need to know about internet censorship, and this debacle in particular.

Open letter to Tun Dr. M on internet censorship

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 12:49:12 +0000

Dear Tun,

First and foremost, let me start by telling you that I truly admire and respect your contribution to Malaysia. I remember shaking your hand when you attended my Convocation quite some many years ago. It was quite odd to see that while you were present, you didn’t give a speech, simply because you attended the function not as former Prime Minister of Malaysia, but rather as the spouse of the Chancellor–your wife Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah.

So it saddens me deeply, that at another convocation–this time where you were giving a speech, you suggested that it is time to censor the internet to counter “distribution of pornography, questionable news and slanders”.

If I may be so bold Tun–censoring the internet is the single most destructive thing that can happen to modern day Malaysia, and something that must be opposed at every turn, even if it involves publicly correcting a senior leader such as yourself. As a citizen of Malaysia, I find it not just my right, but my duty to inform the Emperor when he has no clothes on.

The quality of censorship: The God Delusion in Malaysia

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 00:48:18 +0000

I try to keep this blog focused on technology, but every once in a while the urge to veer off topic gets the better of me. The recent state of Malaysia has been one of paranoia and hyper-sensitivity. It seems that not a day goes by without a report of someone somewhere or ‘challenging’ the position of Islam, and that Muslims need to be united to stop this wave. Well if the solution was really Muslim unity, why doesn’t UMNO take it upon itself to dissolve and then the Muslims can be united behind PAS?

Here’s the deal…the internet is so big, that if you try hard enough, you’ll find something that offends you. Even if it is a 3 year-old video tucked away in some back alley of the internet, that shows a woman cleaning the feet of dogs.With a little elbow grease and some help from Google, you’ll have more than enough ‘offensive’ content to reveal day after day.

This recent spate of hyper-sensitivity I suspect will be used to justify some form of censorship of the internet, the government already has full control of both print and broadcast media, the only avenue it hasn’t fully controlled is online–and they’re just itching to start.

But even in the most hard-core censorship environments, things slip through. These are the false positives, and they exist everywhere from birth control pills to internet censorship. Imagine a much smaller internet of just 20 Billion pages, with 100 million ‘offending’ pages. If the government had a success rate of 99%, it’ll still wrongly block nearly 200 million websites. More importantly there would still be more than 1 million ‘offensive’ pages that would seap through the wall of censorship we construct. The futility of such an exercise should be apparent for anyone to see.

So futile in fact, that even in a fairy tale scenario of 99% accuracy would be no where near enough. If people had enough time to find a 3 year old video, they’d more than easily find those 1 million offensive web pages.

Mahathir censored on facebook

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 12:14:00 +0000

Quick, try this. Head over to your facebook page, and try to share a link from Mahathirs website, www.chedet.cc.

Can’t do it?

You most probably got a warning that looked something like this:

This has been going on for some time, but a couple of days ago, the Malaymail reported that not only is the website blocked, but articles pointing to Mahathirs ‘Chinese dilemma’ were also blocked. A note on Mahathirs Facebook page informed readers that:

Why Dato' Sri Shabery Really wants to censor the internet

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 09:18:29 +0000

[box icont=“chat’]The social media in Malaysia is being monitored and existing laws are sufficient to weed out troublemakers trying to test the limits of free speech, Communications and Multimedia Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek said today…

“The laws that we make are not to defend the party alone - that’s wrong,” Ahmad Shabery, who is also an Umno supreme council member, said.

In an attempt to curb internet freedom in Malaysia, the government is beginning a series of concerted statements to signal that internet censorship in Malaysia is merely a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Previously I’ve explored why internet censorship doesn’t alleviate or even mitigate the risk of communal violence, yet the government still presses on with trying to censor the internet, apparently jumping on the opportunity of Alvivi to make their case stronger.

So why is the government so enamoured by the thought of internet censorship, when clearly it doesn’t work?

Internet Censorship won't work in Malaysia

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:01:10 +0000

Why shouldn’t Malaysia censor the internet?

Of late, the recent cases involving a certain pair of ‘sex’ bloggers and their ilk have prompted certain parties to call for more stringent regulations of the internet, but I for one think that we need to ensure that the internet remain free and un-censored–now more than ever. So why shouldn’t we censor the internet?

Rephrasing the question

The question itself deserves some space for discussion, the question should rather be posed as Why SHOULD we censor the internet? The onus should be left on those hoping to censor the internet to make their case before any defence should be made, implicit in the question of why we shouldn't censor the internet is the assumption that someone has already made a strong case for censorship--that isn't the case. In fact, what we have is merely anecdotal and conjecture rather than an argument backed up by facts and evidence.

A lot of people have made up their minds about it, mostly based on a series of assumptions–assumptions that usually false, and I hope to address the core assumption in this post.

Using Captchas on cybertroopers and botnets

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:00:01 +0000

Last week I wrote about the ‘rigged’ EDGE poll, that the EDGE had to eventually take down because they suspected someone was trying to bias the results. It was later revealed that a handful of IP addresses were responsible fro the bulk of the votes–presumably the fake ones. An IP address defines a unique internet connection, but not necessarily a unique device. You can try this yourself at home, and connect your PC, Laptop, Tablet and phone to your Wi-Fi router and then go online to check your IP from each–all of your devices will have the same ’external’ IP address.

Maxis and TM Fair Usage Policies : Are they fair?

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 08:00:31 +0000

Every six months, the great people over at Sandvine release their Global Internet Phenomenon report, which seeks to make sense of global internet traffic across the different regions of the world, and every six months I learn a lot from just gleaning through it. For instance most of the traffic in the US continues to point to just one website--Netflix, which also explains the drop in bitTorrent traffic in the US (why bother downloading anything when you can stream). However, in Malaysia, where it's difficult (but not impossible) to get a Netflix account, most of the traffic for both upstream and downstream still uses the bitTorrent protocol--which mostly means there's still a lot of illegal downloading going on in these here parts--but you can't blame us, because the alternative isn't legal downloading, it's buying a DVD--if you can find the DVD you want in the first place. You can view the report in it's entirety here, but I just wanted to point out one cool fact.

The average monthly traffic in Asia-Pacific has dropped.

Just 12 months ago the average monthly consumption was 32.2GB, now it's at 22.oGB. That's a significant drop in traffic, that which really boggles the mind. This is the growth region of the world--why is our average monthly consumption of the 'internet' decreasing. Put another way, why are Asians using less internet?

I suspect the average monthly consumption has dropped because of the growth in Asia Pacific, it’s quite counter-intuitive, but as Asia Pacific adds more users to the internet, the newer users in the more rural parts of the region aren’t downloading as much as their urban cousins. Therefore, while the overall traffic flow has increased, the average monthly consumption per account has reduced. It’s all conjecture at this point–but that’s what I think based on just this one data point. It makes sense to me, as a lot of people aren’t torrent-crazy-downloaders, which just means that they aren’t consuming anywhere near the full amount.

The Median monthly consumption is just 8.8GB, while the Mean monthly consumption was 22.0GB, and that tells me that the data is skewed–highly skewed. The statistician inside me is just crying to get out and shout–SKEWED!!

Skewed is just another way of saying that the distribution of internet consumption is un-evenly distributed across–or in more laymens terms–a few internet users are using the vast majority of the bandwidth.

What is PRISM?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:00:08 +0000

There’s a controversy brewing in the land of the free, one that will have implications for Americans, but also Malaysians and nearly every citizen of the world. We may look back at the moment Mr. Snowden leaked controversial (and ugly) slides about a program called ‘PRISM’ as the start of a pivotal moment in internet history, a moment where we either begun a massive campaign to prevent illegal and unethical government wiretaps or a moment where we let governments turn the internet into a police state.

So let's recap what happened.

First, the Guardian newspaper broke a story on how the US Government had 'direct' access to the servers of the tech giants of the Silicon valley including Google, Youtube, Yahoo, Apple and Facebook. In short, the report claimed US Government had direct access to the emails, personal details and chat sessions of everything stored on in massive datacenters of the social networks that the tech giants ran.

There isn’t a person I know that doesn’t have either an iPad, Facebook account or Gmail address. Even my dad who vehemently refused to have a Facebook account, eventually succumbed to the social pressure but that was much after I setup his company email with Google Apps. So to say that the US Government had access to private details of nearly every single person in the world is not a stretch.

So what is PRISM really?

The theory is that US government officials, specifically from the National Security Agency(NSA) have direct access to the servers of 9 Tech giants. Details are scarce and denials abound....what isn't debated is that the NSA has some sort of access to the server, even though the likes of Google and Facebook have repeatedly denied that they have created a backdoor.

So is it possible that the NSA has a backdoor to Google without Google knowing about it? Turns out it’s not as far-fetched as it seems.

Steve Gibson, a security guru with his own show on TwitTv seems to think so. He’s put together some high level analysis of the story, taking into account other similar stories and suggest that the NSA has a wire-tap on the entire world. A communications intercept targeting the likes of Google and Facebook, but one that the tech companies could be blissfully ignorant of. A wiretap strategically placed at the front door of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple–that collects and stores every data packet passing into and out of their servers.

But communications intercepts don’t work–because the data is usually encrypted…isn’t it?

In most parts the communications that people like you and me use to connect to Google is encrypted, and we’re secure in the knowledge that our data in transit is protected from prying eyes by a minimum 128-bit encryption–that’s encryption that probably won’t be broken for another 20 years.

But not all data flowing into and out of Google is encrypted, some of it flows in plaintext–ripe for any wiretap to pick up. Just like email.

What the TPP says about copyright

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:00:44 +0000

Great animation from the EFF on the draconian nature of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement with respect to Copyright laws:

For more info on the TPP and why we focus primarily on the copyright sections, check out this summary from tppinfo.com

Can you out-tech the government?

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:00:25 +0000

Over the past years we’ve seen a recurrent theme where Government agencies were attempting to curtail internet freedom in the name of ‘keeping the peace’. From Saudi telcos threatening security experts to help them hijack tweets to governments procuring tools like Finspy to spy on their citizens–usually without any warrant or legal oversight. We’ve seen US federal agencies try to legislate mandatory technical backdoors into software and how the Syrian government treats internet access for its Citizens like candy for their children–you only get it if you behave.

In Pakistan, a wholesale blockade of youtube means their citizens are missing not just Gangnam Style, but Gentlemen as well (although that may not necessarily be a bad thing)–and we all know how much censorship and surveillance is going on in China.

A French court is now asking twitter to hand over account details to identify individual users that tweeted anti-semitic messages, both the Dutch and German police are users of spyware from companies that the are deemed ‘corporate enemies of the internet’ by reporters without borders, and while you may agree that courts have a right to curtail hate speech, just ruminate for a moment how one-sided French law is when they aggressively pursue anti-Semitic messages but forbid Muslims school girls from wearing a hijab to school because it is supposedly a symbol of oppression. These biases point to deep flaws in our belief that freedom of speech can somehow be regulated by governments–the term regulated freedom of speech is an oxymoron to begin with.

This of course doesn’t just affect the ‘bad’ countries, those with lifetime membership cards to the axis of evil, but countries we’d generally consider good guys as well, those we associate with a respect for personal privacy and citizen rights, so that we did end up like this? To truly appreciate where we are we need to go back to how it all starts.

A false sense of Insecurity

Throughout history it all starts in the name of national security, or keeping the peace. Government agencies ramp up the security concerns and threat levels to grant a false sense of insecurity to its citizens--because it's only in this environment that citizens are willing to grant such unilateral powers to the government (and its agencies). People aren't too willing to allow for unilateral government interception of communications--unless of course they perceive that terrorist live among us, and the government requires these powers to protect the innocent.

The track records of governments has never been good. September 11 was a colossal failure of government intelligence, and it’s usually used an example of why governments should do better. What most people don’t know is that a company called Acxiom had data for 11 hijackers, and provided that data to assist in investigations post 9/11, it turns out had the government agencies used Acxiom, they may have had additional security on the planes that crashed into the WTC. The breadth and depth of the information provided to law enforcement has been kept secret–and in the wake of such attacks nobody bothered to ask whether Acxiom was operating within legal limits of collecting and storing that data–worse still people forget that Acxiom itself was hacked leaking private information of millions of Americans. Yes it may have help thwart the attacks on 9/11, but the Acxiom itself became a target of attack shortly after details of its information bounty were published, there are a lot of people who would pay for that kind of information.

Even with the fundamental problems of the government storing such private information–government agencies throughout the world continue to ramp up security concerns in the hope of scaring people into giving up their freedoms. Closer to home we continuously see the ’threat of sedition’ being used to deny individuals and private citizens their rights. The ‘possibility’ of a repeat of May 13th, is now accepted as a ‘high probability’ even though there is no data to suggest that a repeat is possible let alone probable. Just like courts in France we see a glaring bias in the execution of these sedition laws–and the targets are often pro-opposition rather than pro-government.

The Malaysian government is now being accused of running spyware suites like Finfisher, which incorporates a voyeuristic like ability on the malware owner to spy on the victims. The makers of Finfisher claim their software is only sold to governments–without realizing it’s the governments themselves that are illegally spying on its citizens.

Not since Tom Sawyer tricked his friends to paint his white fence has such levels of deception been seen.

However, the level of deception isn’t what is troubling, it’s the level of apathy among the mainstream society to these revelations that send shivers down my spine. No one from the general public seems perturbed that the very technology that was supposed to advance democracy and free speech in Malaysia is now being used to suppress it.

And we’re not the only ones spying on our citizens…

Should we learn from China?

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:00:14 +0000

I’m truly anxious at the recent rhetoric about ‘regulating’ of the internet, and fear the worst. I grew up with the internet and like to think we made a journey together, from my high school days where dial-up internet was the norm, to the blazing fast broadband I have now–things have change a lot for the both of us. I am a digital native, I know no other land other than a digitally infused one we live in today. Couple that with my unique libertarian views and my savvy for all things tech, and you can quickly see why I strongly oppose internet censorship of any kind….and I really mean any kind.

Maxis blocks Torrent traffic

Thu, 30 May 2013 07:00:47 +0000

There’s a really cool tool called glasnost, that can easily detect if your ISP is throttling certain traffic through its servers. It works amazingly well at detecting if your ISP is blocking that most sacred of all internet traffic–BitTorrent.

So running two test, one over my Unifi connection, and one more tethered over my Galaxy S3 on Maxis, and came to the conclusion that Maxis does indeed block torrents by default. However, just like how you have to call Maxis to enable VPN access via your phone, you have to call them to allow torrent traffic as well…supposedly.

The Malaysian cybertrooper phenomenon or is it Botnet?

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:00:17 +0000

The Edge recently held a political poll on whether Anwar Ibrahim should quit as the Opposition leader–But when the editor begun to see that the one-week survey attracted 12,736 responses and the responses were overwhelmingly one-sided, she smelt something fishy.

Upon further checking with the IT team, they found that 6,354 of the responses came from one IP address, and about 1,700 came from several IP addresses within the same building. Another 2,000 responses came from seven different IP addresses.

DAP lodges report with MCMC over blocked sites

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:31 +0000

Two days ago, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) lodge a report to the MCMC on an 'internet blockade' targeting DAP related political websites that was allegedly being carried out by Telekom Malaysia (TM). As you may know TM is the largest ISP in Malaysia, and if TM suddenly blocks a website--a large chunk of the Malaysian public are automatically denied access to it.

The DAP IT manager (didn’t know the DAP had an IT team now did ya?), in his press statement said that :

In investigating the DPI filtering equipment location, I have found 1032 suspicious network equipment using same IP address family as the the Arbor Network Peakflow SP with TM branding. Since the login page of this network equipment bears TM logo, undoubtedly MCMC should haul up TM and conduct IT forensic investigation on all 1032 equipments without delay. I am fully prepared to assist MCMC in its investigations.
In light of this new evidence, MCMC must re-examine its 2nd May statement. MCMC should be politically impartial and hold the standard of government regulatory body that it should be. It must put the interest of all Malaysians first.

Now this isn’t really news, to be fair the Arbor Network Peakflow SP solution is meant primarily as a DDoS protection security suite with a slight tinge of DPI functionality added on the side. TM in their defence haven’t really denied they own the Arbor Network solution–there’s even a joint press release from 2004 to announce their purchase of it.

Unless TM operates like the government, in which they announce the purchase of something in 2004, but only start to using it in 2013–I’m guessing they were using Arbor for other purposes before they decided to unleash its DPI functionality.

But there could be a twist.

Microsoft is eavesdropping on your skype conversations

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:00:59 +0000

The guys over at H-online reported recently that they have some pretty good evidence that good ol’ Microsoft is eavesdropping onto your Skype conversations, and the results are pretty damning.

The method for detecting those sneaky little eavesdroppers was pretty ingenious though. The researchers sent two urls in their skype messages to each other. The urls pointed to servers that the researchers owned. For all practical reasons these urls were made specifically for the purpose of the test and should not be receiving any traffic from anywhere–unless of course Microsoft was listening.

Then they sat at wait at their servers to see if they received any traffic, and lo’ and behold barely a few hours later they received some rather funky traffic from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond. busted!

The urls didn’t just end with the .com, but had sensitive material appended to it (or at least that’s what the researchers made it look like), and Microsoft used the url which meant they had to be eavesdropping on Skype messages and conversations. More importantly these urls were made to look like they held sensitive material, such as bank logins..etc etc, but Microsoft still used it, and worse even visited the sites to see what was on it.

Even more shocking is that Microsoft isn’t even denying the charge–yet, but they point out that they do scan urls once in a while to flag spam, but H-online isn’t buying it.

Freedom vs. Security : Papagomo arrested

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:13:49 +0000

Bruce Schneier, whom I respect tremendously, points out that freedom and security are opposing ends of the same spectrum, people balance out freedom and security based on what they perceive. In other words, people would sacrifice their freedoms if they thought they needed more security.

A way to think about this, is the amount of Gated and Guarded communities we have sprawling through the Klang Valley (and even beyond). People are willing to sacrifice the extra money and give up some freedoms to live in a Gated and Guarded area, in some cases the premiums reach 100% just to live in a area that is guarded. Residents of these communities also experience the hassle of having to ’tap-in’ and ’tap-out’ of their areas in addition to the tremendous difficulty hosting visitors in these neighbourhoods.

Top 4 ways to access blocked sites

Sat, 04 May 2013 18:40:15 +0000

Here's some quick tips on how to access blocked sites in Malaysia that is blocked by the ISP (Telekom, Maxis, Time..etc etc). Currently the ISPs in Malaysia are throttling and filtering specific traffic to websites like Malaysiakini, Facebook and even Youtube. Just in case, things get nasty post-election day, I thought I'd quickly put together a couple of ways you can access Malaysiakini and other online portals despite a Unifi censor.

Censoring and spying--Malaysian Style

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:06:15 +0000

In 2 days time, the South-East Asian nation of Malaysia will go through its 13^th General Election since 1955. Some might look negatively on the number 13, but for the vast majority of Malaysians the coming few days will either raise our hopes or shatter them.

Malaysia has had only 1 party in power since it’s independence—that’s a long time to be in power, and for the first time since 1955 the ruling party in Malaysia is under threat, not just to lose it’s 2/3rd majority in Parliament, but the entire elections altogether, and with it control of the Federal Government.

What is Finfisher capable of

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:15:36 +0000

Heard about the latest allegation accusing the Malaysian BN government of using Finfisher on its own Citizens?

Well that allegation is true–to me at least, and here’s a taste of what Finfisher can do in the hands of the government.

Kerajaan Malaysian Mengintip Rakyat Malaysia sendiri

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:30:40 +0000

Beberapa minggu lalu, saya telah menulis tentang sekeping artikel yang ’tidak bertanggungjawab’ oleh Malaysian Insider apabila ‘mendakwa’ kerajaan Malaysia mengintip rakyat Malaysia - tanpa sebarang bukti. Saya amat kecewa bahawa wartawan tersebut membuat kenyataan tersebut tanpa apa-apa bukti–apabila menulis blog tersebut saya kecewa dan saya marah!

Tetapi yang lebih penting–saya silap!

Mengikut laporan dari Citizenlab semalam–sekarang timbulnya bukti bahawa kerajaan Malaysia MEMANG mengitip rakyat–terutama sekali Rakyat Malaysia yang mengunakan Bahasa Melayu.

I'm Sorry, the Malaysian Government IS spying on you

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:06:52 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an ‘irresponsible’ piece of journalism by the Malaysian Insider when the ‘claimed’ the Malaysian government was spying on Malaysian citizens–but they didn’t have any proof. I was very upset that a reporter would make such a bold statement and not back it up with any proof –so obviously the post was written in a caustic and emotionally charged way–I was upset, annoyed, angry even!

More importantly though–I was wrong!

On Labour day, Citizenlab released a second report detailing out more info from they’re Finspy research.

I’ll let speak for themselves in an excerpt they prepared specifically addressing MALAYSIA:

Telekom Malaysia is censoring the internet prior to GE13

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:17:35 +0000

I'm not a usual fearmonger, or a person who panics easily--yet you friendly local tech evangelist has a warning for Malaysian users out there. Unifi is censoring the internet in the run up to the hotly contested GE1--and that's what the data suggest. You heard that right folks, some of you suspected all along, and I apologize for not believing you earlier. I was initially skeptical that Unifi and Telekom Malaysia would go to such extents to censor our right to information, and I'm deeply upset that this is happening in my own country.

Usually most Internet Service Providers (ISP) don’t censor the internet, not because they don’t want to–it’s simply because censoring the vast amount of online traffic is a monumental technical challenge. In the past we’ve seen Malaysia ISPs do this, for instance when they blocked Malaysia-Today in the run-up to the 2008 General elections, but censoring one entire website is a fairly straightforward thing to do–an bypassing that censorship is equally straightforward.

Government Network used to download porn : Privacy is dead

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:00:15 +0000

Just how private are your searches…turns out they aren’t private at all.

The wonderful people at Torrentfreak did an amazing piece of investigative journalism today. Upset over the passing of CISPA, they decided to do an internet check on how active the House of Representatives were–on bit torrent. It turns out with a couple of IP addresses, and some elbow grease you can pretty much find out how active a certain IP range is on bit-torrent or even on searching porn!!

So using the same techniques that Torrentfreak used, and applying them to the Malaysian e-Government official service provider “Government Integrated Telecommunication Network (GITN)”, your friendly neighbourhood Tech Evangelist manage to find some pretty interesting results!

The GITN is owned by Telekom Malaysia and is dubbed the “official network provider for the e-Government” in Malaysia–so let’s see what the official network for the e-government was being used for?

First off, someone was using the GITN network to download torrents–not exactly surprising, but judging by the variety of torrents (everything from Dark Skies to Naruto to Discovery Channel documentaries) it looks like more than one person was doing the downloading.

Also equally interesting was that someone used the GITN network to download porn. I'm no expert, but I'm thinking Gangbanged.XXX isn't really a discovery channel documentary.

Malaysiakini goes free from 17th April for GE13

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:26:00 +0000

Got a note from Malaysiakini today, for all you stingy-porkers out there who read all the malaysiakini news reposted by various parties, but never really paid for the subscription–here’s some good news.

Malaysiakini will go free from 17th April onwards, to pave the way for MORE adverts (like we didn’t have enough) but also to allow Malaysiakini to respond to attacks more effectively. Having to cater to two customer models makes responding to DDOS attacks a bit harder–though I can’t imagine why.

It’s however good news all-around. Malaysiakini will extend the subscription if you were already paying, and if you never were a customer, you now have access to all the news from Malaysia no.1 Online News Portal.

Malaysian government using spyware against citizens? No, not really.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 01:01:00 +0000

I’ve been pretty busy the past few months, and my post count has been pretty low, and although I just returned from a 2 week trip abroad and am now flushed full of work, I decided to burn a bit of the midnight oil today because the Malaysian Insider completely pissed me off.

It all started with an article from Lim Kit Siangs blog, which read “Malaysia uses spyware against citizens, NYT reports”. The post was merely a cut-and-copy reproduction of a Malaysian Insider article that had the same headline. The headline really got my blood churning and it was followed up with an even more mouth watering opening paragraph:

MCMC looking to 'control' social media at GE13: A worrying trend

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:19:37 +0000

Bernama (an official government news channel) yesterday reported that the MCMC is “looking at suitable methods to monitor and control the use of social media in the 13th General Election (GE13)". Deputy Information Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Maglin Dennis D’Cruz said this was “to ensure that the social media would not be abused by irresponsible quarters to achieve their own political agenda”. Datuk Maglin then quickly goes on to shameless promote the BN by saying that “Therefore, the public, especially the young voters should be wise enough to do their parts in selecting the right government with vast experience in managing the country, so that their future will be secured.”

LGBT Movies Ban in Malaysia

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:00:22 +0000

This is a bit of old and stale news, but in April of 2012, the Information Ministry released a 'directive' to ban all movies or films that featured gay characters. In their defence, the Ministry did later clarify that their facebook post wasn't a directive, but a topic for debate. Of course, there can't be much defending when the post itself starts with "Berkuatkuasa serta merta, stesen radio dan televisyen diminta menghentikan.." which effectively translates to "With immediate effect, all radio and television stations are requested to stop..".

However, this little directive provoked my thoughts, because I’ve always been intrigued by the ‘weeding’ effect of censorship. The ‘weeding’ effect is a simple analogy I came up with while I was –you guessed it– weeding my garden. You see I’ve got a small garden in my home, and every now and then I put a pair of pink rubber gloves and go weeding around by hand, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Now for those of you who’ve weeded anything before you know those nasty little weeds tend to grow in between the grass, and it’s really difficult to pick them up without plucking a fair bit of non-weeds with them. In fact, if you’ve got a lawn like mine–it’s almost impossible to get rid of the weeds without getting rid of the lawn grass as well. You most definitely want to avoid plucking out that expensive lawn grass you laid down.

The same goes with censorship, every time you try to censor something like the word ‘Breast’, you may inadvertently censor out something entirely innocent and useful–like Breast Milk, or Breast cancer, or Breast feeding. So while I really doubt the keyword Breast would lead to anything other than porn for the first 10,000 entries on Google, censoring the word Breast is really an ineffective solution because it could censor out a lot of really useful and relevant information.

Does the government have a right to shut down telecommunications services?

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:58:29 +0000

Press.Tv reports that Pakistan has suspended mobile phone services in several major cities to prevent terror attacks on minority Shia groups as they celebrate the holy month of Muharram. The rationale behind the suspension is that the terrorist use mobile phone services to detonate bombs and as a result the suspension of mobile phone services would help prevent such attacks. Meanwhile, Ihsanullah Ihsan, a spokesman for the militants’ umbrella group, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has claimed that suspending mobile phone services will not hold them back from carrying out their deadly attacks against the Shia Muslims.

This is ultimately a case of the government having too much power, the real threat of terrorist using bombs somehow resulted in a government issued communications blackout throughout the country–which does little to prevent the terrorist who are hell bent on killing.

I’m guessing that cellphones are picked as detonators for their ubiquity and range, however if you remove the cellphone from the equation you still have hundreds of possible detonation mechanisms, including timers (like the ones from early Mission Impossible shows), walkie talkies and even just a person standing by the bomb and detonating himself with it.

While many of us are of the opinion that a government should do everything to protect it’s citizens, we often fail to to realize that the mechanisms the governments utilize to protect us has a cost–a cost usually paid for by the very people they are supposed to protect.

A full blown mobile service block, doesn’t just block the terrorist–they block everyone. From a father frantically trying to locate his daughter, a hospital trying to locate next of kin in an emergency, or even a blood bank trying to contact its donors. This sort of carpet block is not an effective solution and the cost of it usually far outweigh the benefit, with the benefit being ZERO if the terrorist find some other way to detonate the bomb in spite of the block.

Anonymous downs Israeli web sites to protest web embargo

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:12:32 +0000

[blackbirdpie url=“https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/269572459651555328”]

In what can be described as a great battle for the freedom of the internet, Anonymous – those self-proclaimed hacktivist – have launched a series of attacks on Israeli websites owned by the Israeli Military or Government. The attacks come in the midst of a huge Israeli offensive on Gaza, but contrary to what CNet would have you believe, the attack themselves were not in retaliation to the Gaza offensive, but rather a retaliation to the Israeli ‘threat’ of severing all internet communications in and out of Gaza.

Evidence Act: Anonymity before the internet

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 08:00:35 +0000

I read a brilliant article on the Evidence act by Zul Rafique and Partners that I think everyone should read. In it, the author compares the newly amended Evidence Act (supposedly amended to combat the evils of the internet) to a sub-section of the original act meant to look into telegraphs. Now I must admit, that as an internet kid, I don’t quite understand the concept of a telegraph, but the point is that even before the internet Anonymity was possible.

The public perception that is reinforced by ignorant government statements, is that with the internet has enabled anonymity which in turn has enabled crime.

According to Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz, Minister in the Prime Minister Department, the amendments were tabled to address the issue of Internet anonymity since this very fact makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trace the alleged offender.

That is a false statement.

Let me introduce you to snail-mail.

In the past, long before the internet was around, people use to communicate via letters and postcards that were hand-delivered by postmen to your doorstep. This is a foreign concept to most children but it’s good to let them know just how hyper-connected they are in relation to their parents or grandparents.

When you send a letter, you write a note on a piece of paper, sign it at the bottom (presumably with your name) and then place it into an envelope. You then write the name and address of the recipient on the envelope, afix a stamp (that acts as a proof of purchase)–and then drop it off at any post office you see fit. The Post Office then somehow routes that letter to the recipient on the envelope–physically hand delivered.

Notice–you never have to prove your identity when you send a letter or postcard. No where in the chain of events are you ever asked for your IC or phone number, in fact I could just as easily write a malicious letter, post it to the Prime Minister and sign it as Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz. Would the Prime Minister then automatically assume his cousin sent him the letter just because it was signed in his name?

I guarantee you it’ll be harder for the authorities to trace that physical letter as opposed to a similar digital email. Too many people watch CSI these days to believe that statement, but there’s a reason why kidnappers still use physical constructs–because in the digital world you always leave a trace.

If we apply the amended Evidence Act to the letter analogy, Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri would be charge for sending that malicious letter to the Prime Minister–even though he never wrote it. All of us understand the stupidity of assuming someone sent you a letter just because the letter was signed by that person, yet we seem to think nothing of it in terms of emails. In fact, if I wanted to get Nazri into a whole heap of trouble, all I’d have to do is send 1000 similar letters to 1000 different people, and sign it with his name–in that way, he’d be charged 1000 different times in a 1000 different court proceedings and even though he might be deemed innocent on each count, it’s still a whole load of trouble I can cause for him for the price of 1000 stamps (roughly Rm500 which wouldn’t pay for even one hour of a lawyers time).

Auditor-General report 2011 : When can Malaysians expect Transparency in IT spend

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:00:49 +0000

As a tech blog in Malaysia, I thought it’d be interesting to see the latest Auditor-General’s report faired in terms of IT spend from the government. IT spend is a tricky thing, and most don’t understand just how tricky it is, particularly around big IT spend by governments–they often fail. In fact, one of my favorite blogs is dedicated solely to IT failures, aptly titled–IT Project failures.

However, even the Synopsis report of the AG report is a harrowing 87 pages long. It’s not just the length that puts of me off, but rather the sheer dry-ness of the language that is used. Interestingly, not a single diagram exist in the documentation filled with enough monotone text to put even the most ardent auditor to sleep, and I’m no auditor so I nearly dozed off after the 2nd page. I had to take a different approach if I was to get a synopsis of the synopsis, fortunately I work in IT (not auditing or law), and I know of function in Adobe Acrobat that let’s you quickly search a document–it’s called the FIND function, and I was a deadly ninja in the art of the FIND.

So, armed with the FIND function on Adobe Reader, I combed through the document looking for the word ‘system’ and where it tied with an actual IT system too see just how well our government was in delivering IT systems in 2011. Below are just a few paragraphs pertaining to the AG’s report and below are 2 prime examples of the the magnitude of IT failures from Putrajaya.

Sumptuous Erotica and Barisan Nasional

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:00:19 +0000

In case you've been under a rock for the past week let me fill you on some details:
Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee–both Malaysians started a little porn blog called Sumptuous Erotica attracted headlines both in Malaysia and across the causeway. However, unlike other couples who’ve been caught with their pants down before, both Alvin and Vivian seem indifferent to the controversy surrounding them, more importantly they seem quite confident that they’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to apologize for to anyone.

On the face of it–they’re right. Whatever you think Alvin or Vivians parents have against their children posting pictures of themselves naked online…that’s a matter for them to settle, not for you to be a busy body about.

Software piracy in China : Can the Yankees really complain?

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 09:00:40 +0000

Did you know the term ‘Yankee’ is thought to be derived from the Dutch name Janke, which means “little Jan” or “little John,” a nickname that can be traced back to the 1680s, when it was used as a slang term for pirates. Yes, you heard that right, the Americans were regarded by the Europeans as Pirates. At least that’s what Matt Mason, author of The Pirates Dilemma suggest.

Matt isn’t just an author of a book, but also the Executive Marketing Director of BitTorrent, so when he says something–I listen. Things like: [box icon=“chat”]

But the term really gained steam during the Industrial Revolution. Europeans began using the term to refer to all North Americans as a result of America’s national policies towards European intellectual property. America only industrialized as rapidly as it did by counterfeiting European inventions, ignoring global patents and stealing intellectual property wholesale. Lax enforcement of the intellectual property laws was the primary engine of the American economic miracle writes Doron S. Ben-Atar in Trade Secrets. The United States employed pirated know-how to industrialize. Europeans saw America as a nation of bootleggers, which was a little unfair, as every major European country was also heavily engaged in piracy and industrial espionage at some point in the 18th century. Piracy was, in fairness, the only way the U.S. could keep up.
Of course, fast forward a couple hundred years, and now you see US companies accusing other countries, particularly China and other Asian nations of doing the exact same thing the US did to try to bridge the economical and technological gap it had with Europe. One would argue that part of the China miracle, is their lax enforcement and ignorance (or arrogance) of patent laws, but in all fairness within this space of of gross patent apathy, there exist large pockets of innovation that would otherwise be impossible if intellectual property laws were strictly enforced and followed.
Consider a very specific example of the ‘drop down’ menu in the iOS. When I bought the iPhone4 for my wife 2 years ago, the only way you could get the ‘fancy’ drop down menu that enable/disabled 3G and Wi-Fi was by jail-breaking your iPhone. Now it comes standard with iOS from Apple, so you could in theory argue that the worlds best design company got their que from the pirate market–but you never hear apple admitting to this.

Apple's new Slide-To-Unlock patent : Why it doesn't matter

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:00:26 +0000

Apple was just awarded a 3rd patent for it’s Slide-to-Unlock feature, and while the internet is still abuzz with it, I just fail to see any reason to get excited.

Yes, Apple looks to be greedy and is apparently more than happy competing with HTC and Samsung in courtrooms rather than the open market–but we all knew this already.

Yes, Apple is patenting something so generic it may apply to ALL slide gestures on an unlock screen? – but we all knew the patent system in the US is whacky and open to abuse.

Why Apple is really suing Samsung

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 08:00:45 +0000

I’m not the biggest fan of Apple, I consistently compare my Galaxy S3 (which is great) to my wifes Iphone 4 (which is not so great). So when I first heard the news that Apple was suing Samsung for a ridiculous amount of money because of things like ‘slide to unlock’, ‘pinch to zoom’ and even ‘bouncing effect while scrolling’, I thought it was just a signal that Apple was afraid of someone stealing it’s dominance in the Smartphone market.

However, out of sheer coincidence I came across the 2007 keynote address for the iPhone by Steve Jobs. This was the original keynote for the original iPhone (5 years before the iPhone 5), and I was astounded. It was like attending a history lesson for one of the most defining moments in technology. One of the great things about the keynote though, is it ’enlightened’ me on the lawsuit, and allowed me to see the lawsuit through Apples–or more specifically Steve Jobs–eyes, and it’s only through his eyes did I understand why Apple was suing Samsung, I still don’t agree with it, but I can definitely see why Apple is going through great lengths to make life miserable for Samsung and Google.

Ban Youtube in Malaysia?

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:23:13 +0000

Rais Yatim a Member of Malaysian Parliament and a Minister in Government, has threatened Youtube with legal action over their refusal to remove the video of Innocence of Muslims. Nevermind the fact that Youtube have tried their level best to restrict access to the video from Malaysian users, and also failing to recognize the fact that Youtube is merely a video sharing site.

You have to sympathize with Google, they’ve drawn the line the sand and they’re getting the most flak of anyone in this debacle. Most people seem to forget that it was a Youtube user (not Youtube itself) that created and uploaded the film. It also may have slipped your mind, that the video clip is available on other less prominent video sharing sites like Vimeo. Yet Google is sticking to it’s guns under enormous pressure not just from Muslim Governments but from it’s own Government to take down the offensive video. At the very least they deserve commendation for their courage in the face of adversity.

Censoring Innocence of Muslims in Malaysia

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:21:38 +0000

The Malaysian government has requested that Google take down the video Innocence of Muslims, and Google has since complied. As of today, anyone trying to access the clip from a Malaysian IP address would see a screen that reads “This content is not available in your country due to a legal complaint. Sorry about that.”

The clip is most definitely offensive, and demeaning but what is quite obviously isn’t is–serious. The first thing anyone notices from the clip is that it’s of low quality, there are multiple versions of Malaysian Gangnam style that are made with far higher quality than the clip, yet this one particular clip has managed to create such an uproar that people have killed for it. I’m not defending the clip, or opposing it.

What I am against is Governments and Corporations coming together to censor something ‘on behalf’ of the people. What I am against is a ineffectual censorship, which instead of preventing people from viewing the clip, actually nudge them towards actively searching for it online.

In the end, we have to say that video clips don’t kill people–people kill people and in my view the censoring of the clip is both ridiculously short-sighted and terribly ineffective.

Evidence Act Technological Misconceptions: A response to Rocky and Fatimah

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:56:16 +0000
The government has finally 'relented' and now wants to 'discuss' section 114A of the Evidence act 1950. Now it's great because it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that:

The internet can be used for fantastic good.

The general Malaysian public can make a difference in the governance of the country.

My website also had the pop-up banner, and according to Google Analytics, all 300+ people who visited yesterday were at least enlightened by it.

However, there are some misconceptions about the act, or more specifically misconceptions about the technology behind the internet. The only reason, I’m writing this post is because yesterday morning RockyBru posted up content by a blogger named Fatimah Zuhri, defending the act. Why on earth would a blogger defend the act is beyond me, but it became clear that her understanding of key internet concepts were way off the mark.

From a technological perspective, she was advocating from a point of ignorance, and Rocky whose a popular (or unpopular) blogger/journo only served to spread these misconceptions. I hope to point out how it is very difficult to pinpoint the origin of an anonymous or malicious post, and how shifting that burden to the ordinary citizen is unjustified.

So let’s start with the Post which you can read here, although for your sake I wouldn’t suggest it. Partial contents of the post is quoted in here as well.

Personal Data Protection Act 2010 Malaysia

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:00:19 +0000

[box icon=“chat”]

Data is the natural by-product of every computer mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after-effects are toxic. - Bruce Scheneier

As society moves towards a ‘knowledge’ based society, data naturally becomes a by product. Every action you perform leaves a tiny digital trail like breadcrumbs in the forest, and just like though breadcrumbs each individual data point is insignificant, but piece them together–and you’ve found you way home.

What we use to buy we cash, we now buy with credit cards – with every swipe, digital data is created and stored, it records the amount of the transaction, where the transaction took place, and the banks bill the customer, which means it can tie it to an address a person, their age, their income and even their preferences.

Photos were physical things we could only share in person,but now we share them digitally on social networks–all those photos are stored–permanently, and they’re tagged with meta data regarding the photos location and the names of people in the photo. A lot more data, and a lot more public. Even if you randomly stumbled across a photo on Facebook, chances are you could easily find out who the people in the photos were, and where the photo was taken–that wasn’t the case before digital photography.

When we use to pay toll booths in cash, we now use touch N’ Go, so there is a full blown record of where we travelled and at what time. Coupled with the CCTV footage they can even identify which vehicle you used. Tie that with your credit card and we can determine where you fueled before you got on the highway, coupled with CCTV footage from the Fuel station we know how many people were in the vehicle. Look at the JPN records and we’ve got the car owners name, and contact information, a quick search on Google reveals his profession on LinkedIn, his favorite places from tripadvisor, his friends on facebook, and if we pay close enough attention to his tweets chances are we can find out which football team he supports or which political party he’s aligned to.

What used to be something you’d only reserve for your close friends at the kopitiam now is public knowledge, provided some one takes the trouble to Google your name.

And the list literally goes on and on, and all these add the amount of our personal data stored digitally online–data that can be used to determine who you are, where you are, what you like, what your political beliefs and religious inclinations–even your medical history and sexual orientation. I’m not kidding, there’s a story I love to link to which tells of a supermarket who knew a teenager was pregnant before her father did.

One of the biggest abusers of personal data has been advertising companies and mail-order folks, the people that spam you day in and day out with emails about viagra and cheap housing loans, however as time goes on a lot of other people are getting on board, like insurance companies who want to know more about your medical history or driving records, banks who wish to determine if you’re really eligible for a loan–even a supermarkets may have a direct interest in your personal data.

It has become imperative that we as users look towards protecting our data online, but there also is an imperative for governments to regulate the way our data can be used–even by governments themselves (or ESPECIALLY by the government).

Apple Launches iTunes Store in Malaysia

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 09:40:22 +0000

Finally… it’s arrived!!

It was a long wait since my first iPod, but finally the iTunes has landed in Malaysia. Apple made a rather quite launch of the iTunes Store in Malaysia, meaning the days of logging into iTunes with US accounts and gift card purchases are over. Malaysians now have access to an entire treasure trove of songs available for the same prices as they are in the US. That’s about $0.99 - $1.69 per song, or $9.99 per album (roughly).

I was so excited, I immediately logged onto iTunes with my Malaysian account to check out the details, it took a while, since I’d forgotten my Malaysian account password, but soon after I was greeted at the iTunes store by Jason Mraz himself. I was also informed that the iTunes Store in Malaysia had more tailored local content these include songs from P. Ramlee, Man Bai, Chinese songs as well as Hindi songs (kuch kuch hota hai for $0.69 anyone?). It’s also good to see that Kau Ilhamku by Man Bai was Top of the Charts, signifying locally driven content. Where else would you see Belaian Jiwa and Moves Like Jagger on the same charts?

Also there are more P. Ramlee songs on the Malaysian iTunes store than there is on the US iTunes store, so it’s tailored to Malaysian taste.

Of course that raises the questions, are there more ‘American’ songs on the US store than Malaysia?

Is Dowloading a banned ebook illegal?

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:00:02 +0000

Let’s get straight to the point, the latest case where the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department (Jawi) is prosecuting a store manager is both disgusting and without merit. Not only is she just a Manager carrying out here duties–thereby making the bookstore liable instead of her, but the raid on the bookstore was carried out BEFORE the book was banned by the Home Ministry. So here in Malaysia, not only will the Government be able to persecute you in a guilty until proven innocent manner, but apparently government agencies can persecute for possession of a book before it is banned.

However, politics aside, let’s talk technology!!

What if I used Technology to bypass all government censorship. So instead of buying the book from Borders (or MPH, Popular or Kinokuniya for that matter), I simply download the Kindle version of the book online?

I did an online search, and indeed found that Amazon has a Kindle version of the book retailing for $11.99, if you already own a Kindle in Malaysia, then you can bypass all this drama and simply download the book to your Kindle. Of course, there are legal concerns with just downloading regular books from Amazon, much less banned books–so be warned!!

Now I wouldn’t recommend it and there are huge legal questions, but technically–it can done, and it can done easily. I’m start to finish in 5 minutes–it really is that easy.

My point isn’t that the book should or should not be banned, my point is that the ban can be circumvented with ease using technology. So how effective can any ban be, when most Malaysians have access to the internet?

On top of this is a very interesting question, Does a banning a physical book constitute internet censorship–probably not. However, does banning an electronic book constitute internet censorship? Of course you may say the law makes no distinction between and e-book and an actual physical book, but the law makes no distinction between and ebook and webpage either (they’re all considered publications), and if banning a webpage is obviously internet censorship, isn’t banning an ebook internet censorship as well?

The question I believe can be synthesized into Does Banning and ebook constitute censoring the internet? I don’t have the answer, but I believe there are 2 aspects:

The Traditional legal aspect as covered by the Printing and Publications act 1984.

The goverment promise as outline in the MSC Bill of Guarantees to not censor the internet.

If you’re a lawyer, I would love to hear your comments.

Internet Privacy with TOR: Should the internet be anonymous

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:42:54 +0000

It’s an irony that while the internet was the first place you could create avatars and split personalities to impersonate others, it has now turned into a free for all buffet for private data. I previously shared on how the ads you see on facebook were inherently tied to the Google searches you perform, and how ad companies have probably gathered so much data on you that they can find out if you’re pregnant before even you do.

With that in mind, many people still have an antiquated concept of a fully private and anonymous internet, in fact in most cases its easier to track an internet connection than an actual physical person, and its actually quite possible that a confiscated computer from your home could prove your whereabouts for the last 2 years. Earlier this year, a 19 year old girl was strangled to death while she was asleep, her alleged killers were actual stupid enough to perform an internet search on “chemicals to passout a person,” “making people faint,” “ways to kill people in their sleep,” “how to suffocate someone” and “how to poison someone”. Needless to say, the evidence seems rock solid, and these dumb criminals would go behind bars.

On the other hand, some criminals aren’t so stupid. In fact, the FBI, Interpol and various other law enforcement agencies have entire departments looking and searching for online criminals who do everything from fake money Nigerian scams to trafficking child pornography on the internet. These guys have proven quite difficult to track because of something called TOR.

Watch Netflix, Hulu and even Euro2012 online from Malaysia

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:02:36 +0000

Malaysians have always been deprived of real-time video content online.

We’ve no access to Netflix or Hulu, we can’t watch the full episodes of the Jay Leno show online, we can’t watch the BBC replays of the football matches, we can’t even watch videos from TheOnion for crying out loud.

Why? because NBC, FOX, Netflix, Hulu, BBC and even the Onion restrict access to this content to users from only a certain part of the world (specifically America). Americans even get to watch Euro 2012 from ESPN–WHAT?

This an entire country where football is called soccer (ugh!), and they get watch it online?!!

Now, I’m not certain as to why the Studios and Channels would not like to share this content globally, while Americans (and only Americans) get access to this great content, the rest of us, specifically in Asia-Pacific are left in the lurch, waiting for our local Cable company to have it or we resort to torrents. However, what if I told you there was a way for you to access all the great content Americans get to watch online as well, and you could do it from the comfort of your own home.

Netflix cost just USD7.99 (roughly RM30), and full access to Hulu Plus for around the same price. In fact, Hulu is free if you can live with a little out-dated content and some adverts thrown in. If you’re wondering what Hulu and Netflix is, let me break it down to you based on their content.

Imagine paying just RM30 for full access to 8 seasons of Top Gear, 6 seasons of mythbusters, 5 seasons of “How I met your mother”, 7 seasons of Greys Anatomy, 6 volumes of Futurama, 2 seasons of white collar, 8 seasons of that 70’s show , 9 seasons of scrubs and 4 seasons of Heroes–and I’m not even done. On top of it, you have access to hundreds of movies including Iron Man 2, Thor, Kick Ass, The Expendables …even the older movies like Groundhog Day, Meet the Parents , Lost in Translation and if you really wanna go waaay back–GHOSTBUSTER!! (who you gonna call?)

Netflix accounts for 32% of internet traffic : What it means for pirated content in Malaysia

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:14:11 +0000

Maternity leave has long been plaguing womens career, women would usually take an extended leave and risk falling behind their male counterparts. As an extension to this, employers were also hesitant to hire women (particularly pregnant women) since it meant a legally mandated leave of absence that their male colleagues would never take.

Governments have tried to stem this discrimination by passing various enactments preventing employers from discriminating against women and even providing incentives to employers to promote women within their organizations. These changes however–never really worked.

The Scandinavians found a rather cheeky solution to the problem–give men more paternity leave. By giving men as much maternity leave as women, the equality was easily set. Now employers would had no incentive to hire women over men, because men were as likely as women to take extended leave due to a birth of a child. It appears that the ‘standard’ way of trying to solve the problem wasn’t as effective as the less obvious method. Brilliant!

It’s distressing is that even though this method of addressing the inequality has proven so effective in Scandanavia, and there is so much evidence to support it, Malaysia and many other countries have chosen to continue pressing on the ineffective approaches legal enactments and incentives. Choosing instead to neglect the empirical evidence in favor of a more straightforward and less effective approach.

Black Day for Malaysians : New Evidence Bill Takes effect today

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:00:38 +0000

Today marks a crucial point in the crusade against freedom on the internet in Malaysia. We’ve had SOPA in the US, ACTA in Europe and the TPP has brought the fight closer to our borders. Today in a brilliant tactical move by the enemy of Freedom, Malaysians will be subjected to an amended evidence act that would shift the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused. It is a black day indeed, and the words John Fogerty ring in my ears–I see a bad moon rising.

Malaysians Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Sat, 19 May 2012 16:51:57 +0000

To visit the Malaysians against TPP Facebook Page, please click here

P. Ramlee was arguably the most influential Malaysian Artist to ever lived. His musical talents and acting ability set him head and shoulders apart from most of his contemporaries, or any other Malaysian Artist from whatever generation. So it was unfortunate, that he left in his prime, breathing his last breath on May 29th 1973, at the young age of 44.

His early death however, meant that the clock started ticking early for his works to become public domain. Most people don’t know this, but copyrights–unlike diamonds–aren’t forever. In Malaysia, the copyright act states that a copyright would expire 50 years after the death of the author/composer, after which the works would forever be in the public domain. This would mean all of P. Ramlees works would be made public domain in the year 2024, fifty years after his death. Works in public domain are not subjected to copyright and thus can we used in any way shape or form without any royalty being paid to the copyright owner–since the copyright no longer exist.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement : What is it?

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:50:35 +0000

You may remember a previous post about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement that the Malaysian Government (our Government) is looking to sign under the pretense of protecting intellectual property to “encourage investments, innovation, research and development.” Read up this article from the star to learn more.

Like any other law regarding copyright, this one is complicated and hard to understand (at least for me). However, Techdirt recently had two brilliant articles regarding the TPP with regards to Chile. The first article outlines the fact that Chile (another tentative partner in the agreement) was questioning the benefits of joining the TPP, citing the high cost of complying to Intellectual Property obligations:

Kindle in Malaysia : Buying and Using a Kindle in Malaysia

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:04:40 +0000
My wife is an avid reader (just like me!), but she reads mostly fiction where as I read non-fiction. So to save on our book bills which often exceed the RM1000 a year each, I thought it'll be great to get ourselves an ebook reader. This would not only save us money , because e-books cost less than physical books--but would allows to easily store and retrieve the books we read, which currently occupy entire shelves in our small home. Lastly, it also allows us to have books on demand, no more waiting weeks for books to be delivered from the UK or the US, and we won't need to drive out of our ways to book stores to get the books. So on her birthday, I decided to get 'us' a present--A kindle ebook reader.

Tickets to Russell Peters Live in KL: Here's how you can get them

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:37:55 +0000

*update: there’s been an announcement that the organizers are setting up a second show due to the huge demand. I’d recommend waiting for that before you start buying 2nd hand tickets.

Dissapointed you didn’t get your hands on Russell Peters tickets for the KL show?

Upset because you spent the whole night waiting for it, only to find out that the 7000+ tickets were sold almost instantly?

Russell Peters : A case for copyright

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:36:40 +0000

Update 1: Russell Peters World Tour in Malaysia was sold out in hours. I failed to get a ticket online, couldn’t even log in. A friend of mine lining up in KLCC was told at around 10-ish in the morning that only platinum tickets were available.

Update 2: There are ‘strong’ rumors suggesting there will be a 2nd show due to the overwhelming response. stay tuned.

I remember watching my first Russell Peters video at my cousins place, and that was the classic gig which included “be a man” and “Chop some bong”. I remember laughing so hard my stomach hurt, and I also remember asking my cousin to burn me a copy of the video onto the CD so that I could watch it over and over again.

Then I remember sharing it with my friends. Again burning a whole bunch of ‘illegal’ cds.

Then I remember going onto youtube to get more Russell Peters, for free and technically illegal as well.

Finally I remember bit-torrenting Red, White and Brown, and laughing my ass off in front of my PC monitor.

And Lastly, I remember watching a Russell Peters video where Russell calls guys like me “fucking downloaders!’, as a direct reference to us getting all our material online rather than watching his show.

Well guess what, Russell Peters is coming to Malaysia, and the only thing I’m worried about is whether I’ll be able to get a ticket. Cause I know of at least 100 people who are just waiting for April 18th so that they can finally buy their Russell Peters Tickets. The Russell Peters Dubai show sold out in 8 minutes…..8 minutes. My family PC at home takes 10 minutes to boot into windows, AirAsias free Air tickets don’t sell out that fast…it’s every man for himself here people. I wonder if Russell gives Indian discounts?

Lazada : The Amazon clone (and Samwer brothers) finally land in Malaysia

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:49:41 +0000

This blog is about Technology, but in these past few years it’s become impossible to talk about technology without touching on the subjects of copyright and censorship. Very few people have a clear cut definition of what is acceptable copyright infringement and what isn’t. Not too long ago I wrote about how a wordpress theme designer was being sued because he created a facebook theme, did you also know that facebook has already trademarked the term ‘face’ and is looking to trademark ‘book’ as well. Most readers of this blog know where I stand on copyrights, patents and intellectual property, where I draw the line however is trademark violations. A trademark is part of a brand, and usually trademark violations are a clear-cut attempt to fraud consumers by passing off a product or service as something it’s not.

So what about business ideas and business models. Is it OK to make a clone of Facebook, and call it mukabuku– maybe. Is it OK to use the blue and white hues that we’ve come to associate only to Facebook– that’s a bit uncomfortable as you may be tricking users to sign up for mukabuku by misleading them into believing mukabuku is a Facebook product. Well how about if you deploying mukabuku to a country that doesn’t have Facebook?

So what about the Samwer brothers and their new online retail site Lazada, that was just launched in Malaysia? It’s got all the hall marks of Amazon, is that OK?

A TED talk to point out the stupidity of Copyright Mathematics

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:46:06 +0000

A great talk by Rob Reid on how copyright numbers are fudged to the point that they stop making sense. From a job loss number that exceeds the total number of jobs the music & movie industry had in the 90’s, to the magical $150,000 number copyright owners claim to lose for every song copied. How in the world is that possible?

Igor Presnyakov succeeds in getting kickstart-ed

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:44:21 +0000

Now some say he lives in Amsterdam and lives only on cheese,that may be fiction but damnit this guy is the best guitarist I’ve seen. Check out Igor’s rendition of Canon from the youtube embed above and you’ll know what I’m talking about, or just head on over to youtube and check out the countless songs he’s played on youtube including sweet child of mine or someone like you. It’s absolutely amazing guitar playing, and it’s all posted on youtube by Igor himself, for you to enjoy…for Free!!

Bypass Unifi blocking and censoring using a DNS switch or VPN connection

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:43:38 +0000

If you’re on Unifi you might have noticed that some sites are blocked and it’s due to government directives to block these sites. Now that goes against what the Government of Malaysia promised it’s stakeholders during the advent of the MsC, in which it promised to not censor the internet. If you remember, somewhere in August 2008, the government issued a similar directive to censor Malaysia Today.

So what's a average user to do to bypass these internet blocks. The blocks themselves are issued by the government and issued to all ISPs, fortunately there are a couple of ways to bypass these internet blocks which amount to censorship, and it depends on what kind of mechanism your ISP uses to block it. I'm all for a free internet and here are some ways you can bypass those blocks.

More reasons Copyright sucks

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:07:13 +0000

Now for an artist to copyright a song or a piece of work, for that artist to then legally make a living of is fine.

It’s not fine if you need to pay royalties to use Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream speech”, because his family own the copyright to a speech that is a part of US history. They later sold those rights to EMI, and now a recording company owns the rights to the speech that encapsulates the civil rights movement, and that same recording company is patrolling the online alleys to catch the copyright infringers.

Copyright laws get dumber: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:22:28 +0000

A recent article from the Star noted that Malaysia was about to sign a new Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that would make subject local copyright laws to those imposed by the US. Now according to the article from the star the purpose of us looking into a stricter Intellectual property law was to “encourage investments, innovation, research and development”. That is a false premise.

The laws by themselves are useless if enforcement isn’t there, and if you can’t even enforce the current IP law, then why bother changing the laws if there is no plan to up the enforcement? Also this premise that we will encourage research and development with a strict law is both flawed and without basis. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that innovation thrives when Intellectual property is strictly enforced, in fact innovation is effectively crippled when you’re afraid that anything you produce might infringe on someone else’s copyright. It would lead to a point where corporations would spend more checking on copyright infringement then they would actually innovating and producing.

Censorship in Malaysia: SOPA told through Malaysian Eyes

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:15:53 +0000

There’s been a recent surge of Anti-SOPA and Anti-PIPA sentiment over in the Unites States, Wikipedia blacked out it’s entire webpage and Google, Twitter and Facebook all joined in the fray. I’ve even received multiple emails from the Mozilla foundation on how to combat SOPA and recent a congratulatory cum Thank you note from Mozilla for joining the fight. Make no mistake, SOPA isn’t dead, it’s just been shelved for the time being, get ready people round2 starts soon.

In Malaysia though there has been little reporting on the issue, while some local blogs did mention SOPA, and a few newspapers briefly covered it, not much has been discussed on either of the laws. It’s typical of the Malaysian media to report less on matters that actually matter, and more on frivolous material like this article from the New Straits Times that read “Unity is Priceless: PM”. Really? Cause the rest of us thought Unity was worth around about Rm2.75 . I mean apart from pointing out the obvious, the article has absolutely no content, apart from the big picture with the “We Love the PM” nonsense.

That being said, there were a few articles on SOPA and PIPA, however those articles for censored to a certain degree, and here’s how.

Wikipedia Blacks out for SOPA and How to workaround it

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:26:21 +0000

I’ve posted a couple of post around SOPA and PIPA, and today there was a protest from one of the most web-traffic websites of all – WIKIPEDIA.

Wikipedia, today was blacked out to protest SOPA and now you know. Every college student looking to do a term paper, every high school student looking for information on a term paper and if you’re looking for just about anything online, you’re going to see a blacked out wikipedia– and so now you know about SOPA.

SOPA: What Trey Ratcliff and Uri Geller have to say

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:24:45 +0000

Trey Ratcliff is a professional photographer who photographs ooze with talent, he also blogs at stuckincustoms.com. It’s an amazing blog, but what’s even more amazing is that Trey chooses to release his works of art under the creative commons non-commercial license, which has it’s restrictions but allows free usage of the photos as long as its used for non-commercial purposes. Now that’s like a programmer offering free programs, or a writer offering free-content. It’s not unheard off, but it’s rare. However, in todays economy more and more professionals are taking this step towards similar licensing of their works.

Treys photos aren’t customized for a specific purpose, he post them on his blog and if you like them you can use them. It’s not customized in the sense that he didn’t take the photograph of you or for you. Similarly a lot of programmers are offering free programs they wrote as a challenge or a dare and shared not just the program, but the source code that any other programmer can build further upon. They didn’t build it for a specific purpose, just something general that they thought would be best shared rather than sold. So in that sense, Trey can use photos of a holiday or a scenery and offer that for free.

I mention Trey not because I love his work (although it IS amazing), and not because Trey is a top level photographer that he shares his work online. I mention Trey because he has synthesized in short post on Google+ what he thinks of Online Piracy, and it really has struck a chord with people, especially since Trey is on a different end of the piracy war and he’s saying that pirates aren’t bad people. WHAT?