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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

"There are many ways to reach out to the public, both political parties have a lot of space in Malaysia... It is unlikely we will have a debate, we need to engage with the people, the opposition will engage with people," - Caretaker Prime Minister Dato' Seri Najib Razak

However, let’s give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt and assume for now that there are other ways of engaging with people. How are the Barisan engaging? Besides hundreds of sms-blast to the public there seems to be little ’engaging’ from the Barisan Nasional. In fact–I’ve replied to nearly 20 Barisan sms’s I received and did not receive a single response from any of them. Yes, I wasn’t expecting any–but you would think a political party that was interested in engaging the rakyat would at least respond to an sms from a voter?

A bernama report a couple of days ago mentioned that Malaysia was ‘well-positioned’ to be a world class preferred hub for data centers:

KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is well-positioned to be a world-class preferred hub as a data center thanks largely to the government's liberal investment policies, solid infrastructure and a large supply of people with expertise on information technology.

Besides this, the country’s multilingual talents offer clear advantages for foreign investors, particularly in terms of disaster recovery and offshore relocation, Fumitoshi Imaizumi, the President and Chief Executive Officer of NTT MSC, said in a statement here Thursday.

Tech columnist David Pogue shares 10 simple, clever tips for computer, web, smartphone and camera users. And yes, you may know a few of these already – but there’s probably at least one you don’t. Some however, didn’t work for me, like the double-space on my Samsung s3 just gave me a –double space.

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A lot of people ask why Malaysian has fallen behind countries like Korea, Taiwan or Singapore in terms of our economic development. The answer most politicians give is corruption–but there’s hardly any data to suggest that’s a big issue–at most corruption can account for the ’loss of income’. There’s no guarantee that the money we saved by eliminating corruption would be spent wisely on good projects, there’s no guarantee we’d be where Korea, Taiwan or Singapore is even if we had no corruption. Do you think there’s corruption in Kelantan, yet they seem to be trailing behind everyone in terms of development? Low corruption is not a guarantee of good education.

Malaysiakini now follows in the footsteps of other notable newspapers who’ve had they’re twitter account hacked, hopefully twitters recent announcement for two-factor authentication may help reduce the high number of hacks the social network faces on a regular basis.