links for 2009-07-05
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Martin M outs the Telegraph for cod bylines. The comments are good too. But he's right, these days, why bother?
(Media feature by BBC Monitoring on 30 June )
A dispute over a Russian war memorial in Estonia in April 2007, which escalated into a diplomatic row between the two nations, is regarded by NATO as the first outbreak of cyber warfare.
The internet is emerging as a theatre in warfare, with the conflict between Georgia and Russia in 2008 being matched by attacks on internet services in both countries.
The aftermath of the June 2009 Iranian presidential election, where street protests coincided with attacks on websites belonging to Iranian government, media and opposition groups, brought the issue of the internet as a theatre of conflict to the fore.
Governments are now taking cyber security seriously, with the UK announcing its strategy on 25 June 2009, while reports have emerged of a disagreement between the USA and Russia over a treaty for cyber warfare.
Emergence of cyber warfare
The dispute between Russia and Estonia over the decision to move a Russian war memorial in Tallinn in April 2007 resulted in a month-long attack on Estonian web assets belonging to both government and businesses, forcing NATO to consider cyber warfare as a new type of asymmetric conflict with the potential to damage crucial state infrastructure.
On 30 April 2007, Estonian newspaper Eesti Paevaleht quoted Minister of Justice Rein Lang as saying that many of the attacks were coming from Russian state-owned servers.
Subsequent research showed that attacks may also have originated from Russian private web users, ethnic Russians in Estonia and from the wider diaspora. Estonian business newspaper Aripaev noted on 6 August 2007 that the means to attack Estonian web servers was being sold on Russian web forums for up to 150 dollars.
Continue reading "Internet emerging as theatre of conflict" »
We in the traditional media and you in the IOC must concentrate our efforts on defining and developing that which really adds value.
That means understanding what really can be exclusive and what really is insightful.
It means truly exploiting real expertise.
It means, to my earlier point, using all the multimedia tools available and all the smart multimedia journalists to provide a package so much stronger than any one individual strand.
It means working with the mobile phone and digital camera and social media-enabled public and not against them.