Software to Support Human Rights

An anonymous reader writes "Some software rollouts have lives hanging in the balance. Human rights workers in massacre zones from El Salvador to Kosovo face prying eyes peering into their address books and logs, who follow up with bullets and poison gas. One project, Martus, takes these hostile environments into account: a leak can get whole families killed. They use encryption, distributed backup, and other techniques designed to survive the ultimate corrosive environment: vindictive armies in countrysides in the throes of war. The source code is open, to allow meaningful contributions from anyone willing to help. These people bet their lives on open source and private data. The sponsor organization, Benetech in Silicon Valley, funds projects that arm global rights workers, and people under siege, with communications tools that counterbalance the overwhelming force used to exterminate everything "Free"."

Comments

Re:If you really care about freedom!

[DASHSL0T]

I use Red Hat. I prefer it over other distributions I have tried.
Debian - Too slow a cycle for my needs
SuSE - Too cluttered and didn't care for the config tools and non-standard files all over the place (has this changed with their United Linux approach?)
Mandrake - Nice, but never quite worked right. It was always a little flaky around the edges.
Gentoo - Nice, but too complex when something wouldn't work. And too long to compile everything, I just didn't have the time for all that. (I never got KDE or X working, but I did have a heck of a fast CLI only system after a couple of tries).
Lindows - I won't touch with a 10 foot pole.

So, who can recommend a really good, quality distro for me to try?

moron the dreaded takeDOWn(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

& other related softwar gangster 'techniques'.

only one solution to that type of behaviour. vote with your wallet.

Warren said the offending software was apparently posted by a reader in a feedback forum relating to a news story on the release of Microsoft's Windows XP Peer-to-Peer SDK.

"We are all a bit dazed as to why Microsoft or its contracted partner decided to contact our server host and not us," he explained. "Neowin was not contacted by Microsoft, only by our ISP that alerted us as to why we were down."

But the Microsoft representative said that in most cases of piracy Microsoft contacts the ISP directly, asking only that the offending software be removed.

"The objective of Microsoft's notice and takedown program is to facilitate the removal of unauthorized downloads of Microsoft programs from the Internet," the representative said. "In this case Microsoft investigators...sent a takedown notice to the registered host of the IP address requesting takedown of the download."

The representative again emphasized the company would have been happy with the removal of the software and "for the site to post a link" to msdn.com. Microsoft did not request that the entire site be disabled.

Since the provider deleted the Web site, Neowin returned only partially restored. Due to a problem with the SQL Server backup, the site lost as much as a month of content.

"We lost our Longhorn articles and Office 2003 articles," Warren said.

The Microsoft representative said that the company would do whatever is necessary to help the site, again reiterating that the company sent a second notice to the ISP restating that its request was only about one specific page.

"With that made clear, Microsoft has no objection to the site being restored and will do whatever is appropriate to help ensure that the interested parties and their host are able to get this situation resolved," the representative said.

Newspapers make great weapons.

[Artifex]

Come on people, this argument makes no sense at all. By that logic, we should ban all technology, since even a big wheel can be used to kill somebody! Heck, I could use the cup of tea I have here and use it as a weapon by breaking it against somebody's head.

Did you know that you can kill someone with a newspaper? (And no, I don't mean whacking them over the head with it, or death by papercuts!)

Yup. In fact, it's one of the many personal defense tactics you can and probably should learn: If you see someone threatening coming toward you as you're sitting in the park reading your newspaper (or magazine, or something similar) you can quietly roll your reading implement along the short axis so that it makes a long cone. Then, when you are attacked, you can surprise them by shoving the cone up into a vulnerable spot, like an eye, or even better, into the throat, (which may kill the attacker if it destroys the windpipe, etc., but certainly puts him or her into a world of pain, regardless) and then while the attacker is flailing about, you can run away. Yes, run. Because you don't know for sure that the attacker is disabled enough not to hurt you if you stick around, or may be working with others.

Oh, the nice part is: if you're in a country that may not take kindly to your self-defense, or if you think the police might be after you already, you can let the newspaper unroll as you run away, and then drop it in a nearby trashcan or body of water, and there's no evidence trail. Unless you broke the skin of the attacker, the implement of defense will now just be slightly crumpled on one side, possibly with skin flakes from the attacker, but it's highly unlikely that anyone would recognize it as the implement unless the attack and defense were witnessed, anyway.

I'm not saying carry a newspaper if you think you will be attacked; obviously, if you ave time to prepare, arm yourself properly if at all possible. However, this is an excellent example at how articles (pun intended) commonly at hand can be easily used in your defense.

Moral: The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it takes a thoughtful reader to really get his point across.