Internet Censorship is an invasion of privacy

internet censorship

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.

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Study shows Malaysian students can’t solve problems

PISA Results

The latest PISA 2012 results are out, and it comes with a twist. Instead of testing the usual 'knowledge' of the students, PISA crafted a new exam meant to test the creative problem solving skills of students in various countries.

Edweek.org further explains:

The assessment, which was the subject of an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development  (OECD) report released Tuesday, defined creative problem-solving as the ability to “understand and resolve problem situations where a method of solution is not immediately obvious.” Worldwide, a representative sample of 85,000 students took the exam, including 1,273 U.S. students in 162 schools.

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MH370 crashed our romanticized perception of technology

As our thoughts and prayers remain with the passengers of flight MH370, I think that as the search enters its 3rd week, it’s a good time to reflect on just how much our perception of aviation technology has changed as a result.

It’s quite important to differentiate between what REALLY happens and what we THINK happens, an in some cases the gulf is so large, that our perception of what happens borders on science-fiction. Take for example, our perception of the US Secret Service. Years of Hollywood movies have led us to believe that if anyone even thought about firing a weapon at the President, Secret Service agents would immediately throw their bodies in the line of fire, evacuate the President and then take out the bad guy. That however is mere fairy tale–no different from the Giant Robots in Transformers or the Aliens in Star Wars. If you look at History and reality, you’d find that some years back, an Iraqi Gentleman not only had the time to throw a shoe at President Bush, but enough time to TAKE OUT A SECOND SHOE and throw it again at the President–were it not for the Presidents quick reflexes, he would have ended looking like David Beckham after a night out with Ferguson.

So the gulf between what we think the Secret Service CAN do, and what it ACTUALLY does, is quite enormous.

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Is it Root-er or Rao-ter : The age old question for the pronunciation of the word router

dir-615

Here’s an age old question, is it pronounced router (as in rao-ter) or is it router (as in root-er).

A lot of people seem to think it depends where you are, if you’re in the US, it’s rao-ter, and if you’re in the UK it’s root-er. But the internet is global, it doesn’t care where you are, it doesn’t matter which culture you’re from, there can only be one answer to this question, and it must be location agnostic.

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Tun Dr M supports Israel via his website

Tun Dr M, our beloved former Prime Minister, openly supports Israel–well sort off.

Today on his blog chedet.cc, he called on everyone to boycott Israel, stating quite clearly in his latest post that;

I think the whole world in the interest of justice should boycott doing business with Israel. This is truly a pariah state which is immoral and beyond the pale of human laws.

Now of course, you’re wondering if Tun Dr M supports Israel or not? Well in actual fact it’s both, because while his words say he opposes Israel, his actions, specifically those of his website suggest otherwise.

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10 Things you need to know about kangkung censorship

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.

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.

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What kind of Porn do Malaysians watch

Let’s be honest–Malaysians watch a lot of Porn.

On the outside, we may espouse our ‘Asian’ values and culture, but the cold-hard data suggest we’re as horny as the Japanese. In one of my past post, I showed how we have evidence of someone using the Government internet connection to download porn.

Today however, PornMD the self-proclaimed “biggest porn search engine” released statistics as to what Malaysians were searching on their site. The results aren’t that surprising, although I was quick shocked to see Tudung on there–apparently some people find it kinky.

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Much ado over a tweet

ETP Roadmap former prime minister tweet

In case you’ve missed it. The official twitter handle of the ETP, @etp_roadmap, recently made a serious blunder. In a tweet sent out at 1.00pm on the 6th of January, they tweetedFormer Prime Minister Najib Razak: Energy and Food Subsidies are no longer sustainable”. Now the blunder of course was the word ‘Former’ and it was only a full one hour later (or an eternity in twitter time) was the tweet deleted and an apology issued.

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How to prevent your Unifi account from being hacked

OK....I made a boo boo!

Actually my method of 'hacking' the Unifi modems has a ridiculously simple work-around. Unfortunately, when I published the findings I was absolutely convinced the workaround didn't work--I was wrong :(

Details about how I was mis-lead are unimportant for now (although I will explain it later on), for now I think the simplest way to address and to make yourself more secure (though not 100% secure) is to disable remote management of the router. Don't worry here's a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

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