Tag Archives: Web 2.0

Mubarak's Son and Facebook

Posted on by

New media have become the latest technique Jamal Mubarak, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak’s younger son, is seen to have adopted to reach out to people, particularly the youth.
Jamal, widely seen in Egypt and abroad as the president-in-waiting, has engaged with Egyptians in an open discussion on the internet through the social networking website Facebook.
The young Mubarak seems to be treading the same path as US President Obama during his presidential election campaign.
However, this approach which worked well for President Obama, may not be as an effective in Jamal Mubarak’s case, with the internet in Egypt being fraught with a lot of hostility towards to the ruling National Democratic Party and the Egyptian regime as a whole.

via Middle East Online.  (Thanks to Ed Webb)

Sex Offenders Banned from Social Networks in Illinois

Posted on by

This is an odd piece reporting on new legislation in Illinois.

A week ago, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill, HB 1314, making it illegal for convicted sex offenders to access a “social networking website,” defined as:
“an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.” So, if you get on the sex offenders list in Illinois there is a bevy of sites you cannot so much as visit. And it’s not just the usual suspects of Facebook and MySpace. LinkedIn, Focus, YouTube, and Twitter would all be off limits as well.

I am not sure what to make of all this.  These days online social networking is essential for career development, and that is what sites like LinkedIn are for.  Sites like Twitter are increasingly working themselves into the mainstream of our social fabric so that you need to be subscribed to them in order to have access to information about everything from what is going on at your church to what is on sale at the mall.
And then there is the matter of who is a “sex offender.”  It is hard to have much sympathy for people who abuse children, sexually assault women, or perpetrate sexual violence against of their fellow human beings, and we all want to be protected from them.  But apparently when you ask for the sex offenders registry of those living near you, you may not just be getting those people.

It’s surprisingly easy to get on the sex offenders’ registry of many states: visiting a prostitute, streaking, and urinating in public can all get you marked for life; though, to be fair, none of these are qualifying offenses in Illinois.

via Out of the Frying Pan and into the Mildly Uncomfortable Sauna: The Not-So-Bad-But-Still-Unconstitutional Social Networking Ban | Citizen Media Law Project.

Personal details of new UK spy chief on Facebook

Posted on by

Be careful what you and your loved ones post on Facebook.  It may come back to haunt you some day, especially if you are nominated chief spymaster in your country.  Apparently that is what has happened to John Sawers in the UK, who is the incoming head or Britain’s international spy agency.
According to this report on CNN.com his wife posted personal details, the significance of which is under debate.