ambiguity at work

There’s this story going round that the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) tapped an Afghan Ministry – which stirred up some dust on their work. The issue came into limelight when journalist of the SPIEGEL realized that they were also being monitored due to conversations they had with an Afghan Minister in the past.

Now, I am not the person to deliver any facts or details on this particular story, but I really have to wonder about some fellow Germans who apparently think that there’s anything wrong about this procedure…Well, is it?

I leave it to you to decide if an Intelligence Agency (responsible for foreign affairs) *should* use all available technical facilities to monitor all electronic communication. Obviously, this also is a a) a political decision and b) if *they* think it’s appropriate, they will do it – with or without a political or legal mandate.

What really worries me though is this new law in Germany that gives so much more power into the wrong hands and which enables them to monitor all electronic (communication) data within the country.
Only ~ 30.000 ppl out of ~ 80 Million registered with a lawyer in Berlin to impeach the Government on their behalf on this issue. I am one of them. We all HAD the chance of taking the Government to court on this stupid and dangerous law, but only a relatively few took the opportunity of doing so. Main excuse: “I don’t have anything to hide..”. As IF that was reason enough to accept this law without regarding the personal consequences this really implies. I did have some nasty conversations – even with relatives – on this issue and it always appeared to me that they never really wanted to understand the impact this will have on everyone of us in future. Ppl just dont’t want to understand it.

Oh, terrorism? “Terror(ism) is what they do to us”.

My colleague Chris also blogged on this in English earlier this year in a very comprehensive article.

Now, according to this article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), all e-mail traffic of the named Afghan Ministry is said to be done via Yahoo!.

And this is exactly where I thought: WHAT THE….why-o-why are they still using Yahoo!?????

Take Afghanistan and replace that word with any other country. ANY! I am sure there are hundreds or thousands of potential victims out there (including me) who haven’t yet really protected their online activities or who don’t even know about how to engage protective measurements.

We do have a Federal Office in Germany – the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik – that provides directives and trainings on how to secure your online activities. Only, they are not being applied in this particular case, because if they were serious on this, they could have told the Afghan Ministry to stop using Yahoo! & other free (unsecured) webmailers. And politicians often aren’t the ones who think in IT-security terms. Hell, who does? So if they don’t know, it’s easier to spy on them. Simple as that. Besides, everyone knows that everyone is spying on everyone.

Case in point: I’ve seen many many fellow ppl working in the Government of Kenya who were using free webmailers. If you were interested in monitoring them, just wouldn’t need advanced equipment. And with the Government having access to GSM monitoring equipment, even cellular phones aren’t fully protected.
I believe there’s no 100% secure concept out there to protect you from any tapping or DDoS, so it’s up to you to decide what and to which extent you want to communicate online.

Another analogy to Kenya:

Six of the 20 Afghan cabinet ministers had spent part of their lives in Germany and spoke German, the newspaper said. Farhang holds a doctorate from the University of Cologne and taught at the University of Bochum before returning home. (source)

As long as there are interests and investments at stake, there will always be a monitoring of other parties, governments or just indivduals. With or without a political mandate, with or without any moral obligations and regardless of any “good relationships” with deployed politicians. Raila of course knows this, but hey: as long as the GoK keeps on buying Mercedes and strucks some maintenance deals for the fleet – why worry?

11 years later

ALL those years of trying to get my (how do I say this delicately?) “non-internet-nerd”-friends online and/or joining alumni websites (also since I had created a website for my former school in 1997 and had seen some alumni sites coming and going since then) — and then FACEBOOK comes along and all those long lost “friends” from “back in the days” are suddenly unearthing from their Mid20s-college-university -freedom-chaos -sabbatical to reunite on this evil online network.

WTF, really.

“OH, so what have you been up to during all those years?” – “Well, I have been online since then, waiting for you ******** ********* joining this online world and now the dumbest social network of all (besides of MySpace) with its walled garden policies and overrated hype eventually gives you reason enough to jump on the bandwagon?”.

filed under: I am cool & u r not. sigh.

WXGA vs WSXGA+

I’ve upgraded the WXGA screen on my HP nx8220 to a much brighter WSXGA+ display. In other words: from a 1280×800 pixel resolution to a stunning 1680x1050px.

As a consequence of this, my blog now looks like this:

before:

blog@1280

after:

blog@1680

I’ve added a black 2px frame to the screenshots so highlight the actual difference in sizes. I am still undecided if this was a good move – am currently working with a 120dpi font instead of the usual 96dpi under WinXP – but then: it gives me the freedom to actually just rescale the screen to a much lower resolution whenever needed.
Unfortunately, each TFT screen only works best at a certain screen resolution, so this one being the 1680x1050px one, I will have to leave it at this high resolution for a serious “screen impression”. 1280x800px have been fine with me though, and I think it makes more sense to add another, 2nd screen (via a docking station) to move messengers & utilities to the side.
The upgrade came in handy as I had the opportunity to strip down a used & broken machine and use all the good parts on my own machine (especially an almost new keyboard, which is awesome).

Also, I am wondering if this will improve any webdesign projects / photo editing I am doing on my machine. Despite of the improved screen resolution, the brightness of all colours is just great. But then – all content appears to be very very small…

[update:] Ok, there you go….switching back to 1280x800px and downgrading to the previous 1,86 GHz CPU (instead of a 2,13 GHz) did the job for me. No more headaches from focussing my eyes on small details on the screen + no more fan noise coming from an over aggressive fan. The weekend is saved…

my new toy

Got me a new toy – a “Battery Powered Cordless Soldering Iron” from Weller:

16042008044

The tip has a diameter of 0,4mm and the packaging says it reaches up to 480°C on the tip, but well….most of these little tips are just hot for a second and then the next second the heat has already dropped by 20°C…

16042008046

I’ve used it on the motherboard of an HP laptop – these coils next to the Southbridge chip (big bottom chip with that sticker on top) needed some resoldering and I really hope that they were the cause for the malfunctioning of this motherboard – otherwise…sijui.

The three AA-batteries inside the Cordless Soldering Iron won’t last for ages, but this little gadget sure helps to fix a few dots on the board and also it wasn’t that expensive so I’m not really as disappointed as I was afraid to be.

Once I can afford it, I will buy this! :-)

How to get your NGO online…

Disclaimer: Not a real post for now, but I’ll post it anyways…just a lose collection of thoughts (so that I don’t have to keep on repeating myself on this topic).

Obed, my colleague from Zambia, founded an NGO some years ago. Today he told me that his NGO actually requires a website.

At this point, most people will just hire someone who takes care of this and prolly lose some US$ down the road. Also, once the website is up and running, it doesn’t really imply that things are perfect. What he’ll then need is someone who does the site maintenance (admin) and who prepares all online content (content editor).

In order to get your NGO online, you will need:

a) a domain name
The shorter, the better; maybe best .org for an NGO; domain names are relatively cheap; if you have a CreditCard (!) or a PayPal account payments may be easier & cheaper (this CC thing really IS an issue!)

b) webhosting
1GB webspace, 1MySQL database, 1 FTP account, etc. = simple packages will do for most requirements; webhosting often includes one *free* .com domain name; there are some free webhosting sites that do / do not display advertisment (which you may not be able to control); user/server ratio often isn’t visible (= how many users/domain packages actually share one server? = perfomance index), service hotline?; backup = you are responsible for your own backups, especially with cheap webhosting packages; depending on your financial situation, you can manage to obtain all of this for *free* or pay a monthly fee. There are hundreds of providers/resellers out there + websites that give an overview of what customers are reporting on the actual quality of the provided service.

c) the right *software*
WordPress :-)
WordPress.org if you want to install a WordPress blog on your server and customize it, or WordPress.com if those standard templates on WordPress.com are ok with you. WordPress, a blog “software”, instead of an advanced Content Management System (CMS) because it will be easier to manage & often just does the job. WordPress.org comes with a HUGE community and many free templates that can be further modified.
Any other blog software will certainly also do, however, it just helps to illustrate the fact that this publishing platform is sufficient for most websites (see d)).

d) an idea of what to put online
Most crucial point. Who will be in charge of the online content? What do you want to put online? How many static pages? What kind of pictures? The person in charge of online content will probably also need to rescale pictures and trim them for online usage (lower dpi resolution), no need for 2-3 MB pictures that directly come from a digital camera. Apply a licence to your works (=> CreativeCommons) so that ppl will know how do deal with your (!) online content. Create a document and define what you want to publish online and how you want to interlink it – in short, create a concept. This will help everyone involved to see what the target is.

etc.

Bottom-line: getting YOUR page and YOUR mission online isn’t a matter of experts anymore. What you will need to figure out is how much money you want to spend on this, how the site should appear (layout) and who will be in charge.

I am mentioning all these *basic* facts (to most readers – I assume that most of you are running your own blog?) because it’s just SOOOOO often that you see a brother from somewhere who’s doing a wonderful job within his organisation, but is totally overwhelmed by the (relatively simple) job of creating a decent website that draws a clean line between horrible MS-Frontpage or MS-Office documents (converted into HTML/XML) and a smooth little website based on a sweet WordPress *simple-CMS* package.

Also, you’re not alone on this. Pls feel free to visit Kabissa.org to connect with others and discuss on how to promote your works online.

Cheetahs at work

…it is an informal settlement, not an illegal.

We had approached the mayor with a detailed baseline study of all problems, sorted to their priority and asked him for help. He replied that “it’s an illegal settlement”. – “No”, I then replied, “it is not, it’s just informal. Sir, you always use this explanation as an excuse, yet when it comes to the elections, you go to these piipoll in the informal settlement and ask for the votes”.

We then collected money in the community and registered the settlement so that progress isn’t stopped by such bureaucratic hurdles.

– my colleague Obed Kawange from Zambia on his work back home

It’s always nice to see how piipoll react when you show them this video. :-)