ΣΕΡΑΦΕΙΜ ΚΟΤΡΩΤΣΟΣ Το AP αποκάλυψε προ ημερών ότι η αμερικανική κυβέρνηση υποστήριξε μια αμερικανική εταιρεία στη δημιουργία ενός website και μιας υπηρεσίας SMS που αποτελεί, κατά βάση, μία Κουβανέζικη εκδοχή του twitter. Η υπηρεσία επιτρέπει στους Κουβανούς να ανεβάσουν σύντομα κείμενα και μηνύματα ο ένας στον άλλο και, ήδη, στην “ώρα αιχμής” είχε 40.000 χρήστες. Πρόκειται για μία νέα εφαρμογή της αμερικανικής διπλωματίας στο διαδίκτυο. H Ουάσιγκτον εφηύρε την εκδοχή του Cuban Twitter ως ένα δίκτυο “μυστικής” επικοινωνίας που να ασκεί κριτική στην κυβέρνηση της Αβάνας και κατασκευάστηκε από ιδιωτικές εταιρείες που χρηματοδοτήθηκαν από ξένες τράπεζες, όπως αποκάλυψε το Associated Press. Το πρότζεκτ διήρκεσε δύο χρόνια και στηρίχθηκε σε μία σχετικά “αρχαία” πλατφόρμα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης που να μπορεί να προσελκύσει εύκολα, αρχικά, νέους Κουβανούς.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-secretly-built-cuban-twitter-to-stir-unrest-2014-4#ixzz2y0B3ZuWf
Διαβάστε το κείμενο (αγγλικά) για να ανακαλύψετε τον άγνωστο πόλεμο των μυστικών υπηρεσιών στο διαδίκτυο:
People use their cell phones on Havana’s seafront boulevard in 2012 (Desmond Boylan / Reuters)
ΤΟ ΚΕΙΜΕΝΟ
The United States discreetly supported the creation of a website and SMS service that was, basically, a Cuban version of Twitter, the Associated Press reported Thursday. ZunZuneo, as it was called, permitted Cubans to broadcast short text messages to each other. At its peak, ZunZuneo had 40,000 users.
And what government agency made ZunZuneo? It wasn’t the CIA. No, it was the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, working with various private companies, including the D.C. for-profit contractor Creative Associates and a small, Denver-based startup, Mobile Accord.
The news about ZunZuneo broke Thursday morning, around 3 a.m. Eastern time. 11 hours before, I had been in the D.C. offices of none other than Mobile Accord, talking to the company’s president about a future product release.
As ludicrous as a ‘U.S.-backed Cuban Twitter’ might sound, projects like ZunZuneo were supposed to be the future of American diplomacy.
The company’s not in the discreet social network game anymore; now it surveys countries in the developing world by SMS. On Wednesday, Mobile Accord’s president Steve Gutterman told me, “More information and more transparency is always a good thing.”
The next day, I called his cell phone. He reaffirmed his company’s commitment to transparency. He said that Mobile Accord didn’t know the ZunZuneo news was coming, and he echoed the statements that USAID and the White House issued on Thursday.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, meanwhile, claimed that Congress had debated and invested in ZunZuneo. “All of our work in Cuba, including this project, was reviewed in detail in 2013 by the Government Accountability Office and found to be consistent with U.S. law,” said a USAID spokesman Thursday.
Senator Patrick Leahy, who as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee oversees USAID’s budget, shunned it in the AP article. “If you’re going to do a covert operation like this for a regime change, assuming it ever makes any sense, it’s not something that should be done through USAID,” he said.
He was more blunt on MSNBC: “It was just dumb,” he said on the network Thursday.
Was it?
As I started piecing together Mobile Accord’s past on Thursday—and that of the State Department that encouraged and hired them—I found that a project like ZunZuneo wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. In 2009 and 2010, the president and the secretary of state both celebrated pro-democracy web projects like ZunZuneo. Hillary Clinton delivered multiple major policy speeches about the virtues of Internet freedom and social networks abroad.
As ludicrous as the phrase ‘fake Cuban Twitter’ might sound, projects like ZunZuneo were meant to be a major focus of U.S. diplomacy. If it sounds like a risible plan, now—as it does to some commentators and, apparently, at least one Democratic senator—that only shows how much has changed since the Arab Spring was still blooming.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/the-fall-of-internet-freedom-meet-the-company-that-secretly-built-cuban-twitter/360168/
