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  I don't mean to challenge whatever white-hat work that Kevin Mitnick is doing, but the phrase does indeed strike me as something a lobbyist (or well, tout) would tell me. Perhaps I'm just cynical.

It's cynical at all. Ecuador isn't really known for being terribly trustworthy.

http://report.globalintegrity.org/Ecuador/2008

My feel is that Mitnick was just brought in as window dressing. I wouldn't even suspect that Mitnick would have to hide anything he finds. It's only the tabulating equipment that he's "securing", not the entire election. There's FAR more to securing elections than some silly computer system that counts things. Election fixing happens out in the polling places where few people are looking, not in some big centralised location where the counting happens.

To actually ensure a fair election requires people monitoring polling places, not a couple guys making sure nobody hax0r3d the machine that does the counting. Mitnick is smart enough to know this, but yet is lending his name to make money. I really have no idea if elections are fair in Ecuador, but you're quite right to be skeptical of Mitnick's role in the whole thing.

Some folks who do good work in the less-famous parts of the Internet:

https://www.theengineroom.org/

http://opennet.net/

http://globalintegrity.org/

https://www.eff.org/

Disclosure: I've worked for two of these, though not recently.

At the 2008 GOP presidential convention (St Paul), the police were insured against civil rights liabilities by a "host committee" funded by private interests. Think that one through.

So, yes, police will "risk that" because they are insured against that risk, with someone else paying the premiums.

Citation: http://www.globalintegrity.org/node/488

From my friends at Global Integrity: Lobbying is fine. Lobbying is a form of political participation, which lawmakers find genuinely helpful to explain complex issues. But it gets a lot more messy when money changes hands. To quote:

"1. Lobbying in and of itself is not an evil. In fact, it is helpful to lawmakers in any country to understand complex issues, gather additional facts and details, and weigh the opinions of commercial interests and special interest groups in deciding policy.

2. Lobbying does become a problem when lobbyists serve as major fundraisers for candidates or otherwise become sources of financial support to parties.

3. In the Latvian context, the rise of campaign costs and the role of many lobbyists as advisors and consultants to the major parties does present the risk of undue influence.

4. Any lobbying reform in Latvia should seek to regulate the industry by increasing transparency around the process (through regular lobbyist reporting and financial disclosures), not by heavy-handed restrictions.

5. There are very few examples in either the developed or developing world to point to for effective lobbying regulatory regimes. The two most robust regimes – Canada and the US – boast political systems riddled by lobbying and corruption scandals. Most Western Europe countries lack any regulation over lobbying whatsoever, and the European Union’s new voluntary registration program is a rather pathetic attempt to govern the more than 15,000 lobbyists now roaming the streets of Brussels."

http://www.globalintegrity.org/node/228

Censorship in the West is almost always private-vs-private.

Often, the courts serve as weapon to enforce private interests (see: libel tourism, CDMA takedowns, Wikileaks vs Bank Julius Baer, etc). This is sometimes called Accidental Censorship, but at the end of the day someone always wants this to happen, and the threat to democratic discourse and political minorities is just as real.

Here's a discussion of the concept:
http://commons.globalintegrity.org/2009/11/accidental-censorship-how-policy.html

Hey look, data!

http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009

http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009

Interesting site. Very cool.

I became skeptical when I saw the U.S. ratings for executive and legislative accountability. On the surface, I think the numbers are fair. However, our adversarial two-party system, driven by sound-byte-reactionism, leaves the effective accountability far below the on-paper accountability. With congressional approval ratings running below 25%, we have an incumbency rate above 90%. That cannot jibe with a high accountability level.

Overall, I think the site is excellent. Its objective is outstanding. However, I think that the accountability metrics demonstrate a significant lack of consideration of (or at least inability to accurately reflect) pseudo-integrity.

Hey look, data!

http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009

http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009

Interesting site. Very cool.

I became skeptical when I saw the U.S. ratings for executive and legislative accountability. On the surface, I think the numbers are fair. However, our adversarial two-party system, driven by sound-byte-reactionism, leaves the effective accountability far below the on-paper accountability. With congressional approval ratings running below 25%, we have an incumbency rate above 90%. That cannot jibe with a high accountability level.

Overall, I think the site is excellent. Its objective is outstanding. However, I think that the accountability metrics demonstrate a significant lack of consideration of (or at least inability to accurately reflect) pseudo-integrity.

> Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China?
>> China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false

Hey look, data!

http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009

http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009

Or does that ruin it?

> Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China?
>> China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false

Hey look, data!

http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009

http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009

Or does that ruin it?

>Vietnam's government is a very hands-off government. If anything the main problem for Vietnamese people is their government's failure to > lead and protect them from people with private power.

Not quite. They are the same people. State and money are merged.

http://report.globalintegrity.org/Vietnam

http://report.globalintegrity.org/Vietnam/2009/scorecard/7/

>Vietnam's government is a very hands-off government. If anything the main problem for Vietnamese people is their government's failure to > lead and protect them from people with private power.

Not quite. They are the same people. State and money are merged.

http://report.globalintegrity.org/Vietnam

http://report.globalintegrity.org/Vietnam/2009/scorecard/7/

Context matters.

"Vietnam unfortunately boasts some of the world's most explicit restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and the arrests of bloggers have provided a chilling reminder to those who choose to speak out against the government that they put themselves at personal risk. Independent media is virtually non-existent, with all media outlets being state-run. To even register a new media outlet requires purchasing the right to obtain a license from an existing state-run organ, a dubious gray market few in Vietnam discuss. "

Source: http://report.globalintegrity.org/Vietnam

This may prove to be an unpopular POV among some of you, but seeing it from a bit of a different angle - US always has to worry about the way things are somewhere else. Why don't we let these figure it out for themselves, let them ask for help when they need to and only get concerned when they get a new line of centrifuges going, besides it's not like ./ is going to see a drop in traffic because of this. The only ones who have consistenly benefitted from this are the military and the big pharmas, handing out anti-anxiety and PTSD prescriptions. So let's do some real work for once - plenty of problems to take care of this end.

Thus any leakers (and the Wikileaks personnel) are to be prosecuted

The risk of "unauthorized" public scrutiny of government actions is a powerful deterrent. The system you suggest we punish -- where individuals can make a moral decision which benefits the public regardless of orders or rank -- is a primary factor in the difference in conduct between the conduct of armies in democracies and armies of autocratic states. The moral responsibility that comes with military service is taught from day one, and these whistleblowers are in its best tradition. It is a transfer of some powers from the military machine back to the people who make it function, and by publishing that information (negating it's value for private gain), giving that power wholly over to the public. Democracy is more than elections.

But if you want to throw those people in jail, sure, whatever.

Also, if you're going to cite "whistleblowing laws" as a panacea, at least be specific, because they don't work in the way you describe. Reference: http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009/scorecard/59

Canada's anti-corruption laws are a mess. I'm sorry, but there's a halo effect around their largely progressive social policy and largely sane foreign policy, that makes people think they are a model state. Empirical findings disagree: http://report.globalintegrity.org/Canada/2008

They're not terrible. Just not all that good.

Regardless of the formal arrangement, the ISPs in Yemen are government controlled.

More detail in the Global Integrity Report: Yemen
http://report.globalintegrity.org/Yemen/2008/scorecard/7

The wikipedia corruption index [wikipedia.org] may be of use, although I cannot vouch for its accuracy

I can: the Corruption Perceptions Index is shit. A mashup of whatever survey data happened to be flapping around when they crank it out each year. The wikipedia article has more content on "criticisms" than it does on the findings. There are better tools out there. Try http://report.globalintegrity.org if you insist on numbers.

The only sensible answer to this question is based entirely on food.

In a weird development, someone copied my Slashdot posting above, changed the intro so it looks like a "Wikileaks press release", and sent it to some news outlets via e-mail. It was published by Global Integrity Commons and ZDnet as if from Wikileaks. Someone took out the first sentence about Cringely and put in "Wikileaks has discovered". After the second line, the supposed "Wikileaks press release" matches my text word for word.

I have no connection with Wikileaks, and have no idea who's behind this hoax.

I work with an international governance watchdog, Global Integrity ( http://www.globalintegrity.org/ ), and anecdotally we're seeing a marked increase in online censorship being reported, under democracies and dictators both, even since we started looking at this in 2004. It's like the anti-democracy elements of the world just now figured out how to do this in earnest. We've just begun tracking the issue rigorously this year - we'll let Slashdot know when that report comes out.