I have the good fortune to have a number of interesting clients who are often writing about bleeding edge topics, especially in the realms of digital media, marketing and communication.

Alan Moore, a mobile and engagement marketing expert is currently writing a new book, “No Straight Lines”. I’ve been privileged to have a read of one his drafts. There were a number of points he raised in his writing that I found very topical with regards to recent media stories.

“In Audience Atomization Overcome Rosen writes In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding.

This ability to connect, to go round, over, under and through what were for years barriers to information are the means by which we challenge the authority of mainstream media.”

But the push is on to stop this, as Opennet.net sets out to show by listing all of the available internet filtering techniques and which countries are currently using them. It would appear the trend is on the rise.

Australia is currently the test case, and all other “democratic” Western countries are watching with interest. Governments have a tendency to copy each others legislation, especially if one sets a precedent.

…election rigging? No, finding out about it.

The above CensorDyne advert from GetUp!, a non-partisan lobby group, was created with the intent that it would be aired where possible in Australia to try to get their message across to Australian legislators. One of the aims of the CensorDyne campaign was to have the advertisement aired on every Qantas flight. However this week Qantas refused to run the CensorDyne ad claiming they have a policy of not airing political material. However this response has been called into doubt as the airline has perviously air political satire. But most telling of all, David Epstein, a Qantas executive with close links to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dismissed suggestions that he personally barred an anti-internet censorship advertisement from airing on flights to Canberra.

These same “democratic” governments who have long been critical of the likes of Chinese Net censorship, are the very same governments who are looking at the very same technology for their own use, and in some instances, purchasing that same technology (software).

It is true what you say. This new networked world is very empowering, and that is precisely what the “establishment” do not want – a very public forum of discussion, debate, criticism, parody and outing is not welcome.

And that establishment is the corporates who pull the strings of government.

“Funny that, and of course we had the whole ‘cash for questions’ issue in the UK, and then recently four Lords again using their influence, so it is claimed, to change legislation to the benefit of companies in exchange for large amounts of cash.”

What we face is similar to the great American land rush of the 1800’s. People streamed Westwards to claim their bit of turf, at the expense of those already there (digital natives) and set up their own little “utopias”, hence the Wild West. And indeed many times I have read the internet equated with this.

But it was not too long before “authority” and regulation caught up with everyone, and that being because big business interests moved in – Ranchers, Railroads, Mining.

Question is, will WE manage to establish some sort of Digital Constitution, or Bill of Rights to our own data before we are filtered or locked out?

Or rather the question is, will WE take the time to properly inform and educate ourselves about this technology that we use?

While perhaps we despise malware authors and others out to steal our bank account details, defraud us and cause general selfish havoc, and provide the “establishment” further excuses to lock the Net (mobile or static), these malicious persons are actually forcing people not to take their data for granted.

But there remains that question. Will people be lazy, and not take personal responsibility and run to the open arms of the “establishment” for protection from the internet nasties, or will make the effort to become better educated?

When you exit Private Browsing mode in Firefox 3.5, you cannot pick up the trail again from where you left off — anything your browser remembered up to that point, has vanished.

Does the Incognito Window in Chrome work the same way? Surprisingly, no — and this is where one starts evaluating the browser makers’ design decisions. If you exit the Incognito Window (”Nothing, honey, wasn’t doing anything…just checking statistics”)re-enter it again, and then re-enter the page you were on, you’ll find your shopping cart is intact, right where you left it. So exiting that window did not erase your trail.

Read the full article here:

Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?

While the other browsers are screaming ahead in developments and speed, there is still no sign of Internet Explorer 8. There are dribs and drabs of information that surface from time to time. And the latest one is not encouraging at all.

It seems Mircrosoft think it a good idea to turn their browser into spyware, after of all these years of monthly security patches to protect users against those with malicious intent gathering your personal information, they will go ahead and do it themselves. “Trust us”.

The component in the next version of Microsoft’s browser software “discover websites you might like based on sites you’ve visited”. Collecting a user’s browser history and using it to create profiles that steer users towards one website or another may seem like a useful pointer to Microsoft’s developers, but the feature is giving some privacy-conscious surfers the fear.

The addresses of websites visited are sent to Microsoft, together with data such as IP address, browser type, regional and language settings. Microsoft cautions (in a draft for its IE8 privacy policy here) that “information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included”.

It sounds like a security disaster in the making.

More on the story from the Register.

Everybody wants to be on Twitter, spammers included. There is now software available to assist and manage a spam campaign. The biggest security failing of Twitter which allows this abuse is that the registered email is not validated. So unless Twitter acts quick, its days of big time celebrity media fueled fame will come to a screeching halt.

I read just read this article Best Western and the worst kind of security mix-up. Over the past couple of days it has emerged that customer details, including name, address, phone and credit card numbers were stolen when Best Western were hacked by an Indian hacker with ties to the Russian Mafia.

What needs to be further highlighted is that as we commit more information to electronic storage and retrieval, it is more vulnerable. As we have see in the past year of data loses, vast amounts of information can be lost or exposed through very simple human error or negligence.

Tougher encryption and security is also a joke. In the programming world it is well know that if you can code it, you can hack it. Examples of so called unbreakable security are the DVD format and the security researchers cloning the new passport chips.

We are truly heading towards an information age where there are no secrets, regardless of the noise government makes. Big Brother is its own worst enemy. The traditional idea of security has to be radically rethought.

We are seeing this theme being played out currently in the world of software development, especially with web browsers and Operating Systems. We see the realm of Open Source where vulnerabilities are publicly acknowledged and addressed verses proprietary commercial software where the mantra is security through obscurity (Apple) and denial (Macintosh).

Last year on Google Maps you could go and look at satellite images of a top secret US Navy submarine in dry dock. The US military screamed to take down the images. D'uh hello? If a commercial satellite snapped pictures of this submarine with out looking for it, what about all of the spy satellites that are?

It all goes to show that our concept of security is no more than just that, a concept, or at worse a dangerous expensive joke.

Last year a story emerged that security researchers managed to skim information at a distance from an Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) card and clone it. This has ramifications for many things as the technology is used for, entry to secure buildings, passports and transport cards.

It is with transport cards, namely London's Oyster card that the issue has arisen again with another security hole found by Dutch researchers. They managed to clone an oyster card to a standard building security entry card which uses the same technology. They then travelled to London to test their clone, travelling for a full day on the London Tube with no problems.

Apparently the hardware required to skim the information is relatively cheap and can easily be used with a standard laptop, making RFID cards and passports vulnerable to anyone with know-how and inclination.

More detail about this story can be found in the following article: "Group Demonstrates Security Hole in Oyster Card".

The annual McAfee Virtual Criminology Report was released yesterday warning of a rise in international cyber spying, labelling it the single biggest threat to digital security.

McAfee estimates 120 countries are now using the Internet for Web espionage operations.

Cyber-attacks on private and government Web sites in Estonia in April and May this year were "just the tip of the iceberg", the report warned.

Estonia said thousands of sites were affected in attacks aimed at crippling infrastructure in a country heavily dependent on the Internet.

As well as communications, everything from stock orders, inventory checks, banking and salary payments are all made electronically the world over.

Ian Grayson suggests in his post "Email – what if the flow just stopped?", that we should not be relying souly upon digital records but also keep some back up methods of the traditional and papery kind, in the event that anything drastic should happen. At least business will be able to continue in some manner rather than completely grind to a halt.