Africa is quickly becoming an I(C)T hub, with Kenya in particular in the news lately. For this week's roundup, we're focusing on technology in Africa, so check out the articles we've been reading and share your thoughts with us in the comments.

• Dubbed the 'Silicon Savanna,' Kenya is rising fast as a technology powerhouse on the African continent. Afrinnovator's Kenya Technology, Innovation & Startup Report talks about the why and how.
• A Kenyan invents a new technology to charge your cell phone with electricity generated from your shoes.
• AccessKenya, one of the country's leading internet solutions and data providers, is proven vulnerable by Rwandan hackers.
• The Kenyan government is seeking investors for the proposed Konza Technology City, a multi-billion dollar city that will host a business park, science park, central business district, university, and residential housing.
• Social media is on President of Kenya Mwai Kibaki's mind - he spoke about it last week at the East African Journalists Convention.
• Thanks to a new super cable, Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa will be connected to the US by 2014. Meanwhile, African ICT officials call for harmonized undersea cable guidelines.
• Insights Africa is a new website that explores why and how Africans get online.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a good five months away, but now is always the right time to refresh basic security practices, especially for travelers and advocacy workers. We're always thinking about new ways to improve our security at NDI, so join the conversation: check out this week's security articles and resources and comment with your thoughts.

• "Mobile device" and "security" are unfortunately oxymoronic. Kenneth Van Wyk of Computer World calls for increased security on mobile devices, since tablets and smartphones are becoming the norm in the workplace.
• The FBI publishes a pamphlet on safety and security for the business professional abroad.
• Internet security and freedom in southeast Asia is a hot topic - OpenNet Initiative offers great insight into cybersecurity in the region. If you need some training, check out UNESCAP's (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) self-paced, online course on Basic and Advanced Security in the Field.
• Tripwire's list of the 20 Best IT Security Lessons Ever Learned is a great resource for balancing business and security.
• Security in-a-box is a digital security resource aimed at advocates and human rights defenders - it even includes a cool How-To Booklet and Hands-on Guides for specific security tools.
• The Czech Republic and Slovakia have produced some really popular security software - The Economist talks about why.
• Floss Manuals publishes a guide to Basic Internet Security - learn why security is important, what tools are out there, and how to protect yourself and your friends. (pdf version here)
• What is the Internet of Things and how can we anticipate its security concerns?

Happy Labor Day! Well, except if you live in the United States, you’ll have to wait until September to celebrate. With that, here is your Monday, err, Tuesday roundup.

• Iran is allegedly recruiting a hacker army with intent to take out the U.S. power grid, water supply, and other vital infrastructure.
• As the violence continues, the Syrian Electronic Army continues to attempt to squelch the online voice of citizens and rebels.
• Tanzania’s fast-growing ICT sector is making the country more attractive to potential investors.
• Internet users in China took advantage of an internet censorship glitch last Tuesday to access Facebook. 
• President Obama has issued a new set of sanctions on both Syria and Iran that seek to address companies that provide these governments with technologies that allow them to monitor dissidents.
• Safety first! Some tips on how to communicate safely in the digital space.

Con-grat-u-lations!

Everything in your crowdsourcing project has worked beautifully. People had the right reasons to contribute, there was nothing holding them back, and now the citizen reports or contributions are pouring in.

Um, so now what?

Even initially successful crowdsourcing projects can fall down when the information comes in. There's two main areas to think about: what do you want to do with the reports, and what do you want to do with the reporters? Finally you're dealing with actual humans - what are the security implications of your project?

The Reports
Most people's response to your sincere citizen report is "who says?"

Did it happen as the person said? How do we know? "Veracity" is the relative truthiness of the information you have coming in. The good folks at Ushahidi have spent a lot of time thinking about this particular challenge, and their one-pager on the topic is excellent. READ MORE »

The recent Nicaraguan election marked victory for incumbent President Daniel Ortega with 62% of the votes.  

In this inaugural podcast, the NDI ICT team explores how technology was used in this electoral process to empower citizens.   Through the Viva el Voto website, citizens were provided a space where they could denounce voting irregularities and learn about their rights as a voter.  The website worked to strengthen civil society, and provide citizens a space where they could voice their concerns.  Our podcast showcases the work of our Nicaraguan partner Etica y Transperancia who has worked in Nicaragua for decades to strengthen democratic institutions and increase transparency in Nicaraguan society.   



Enjoy the podcast! READ MORE »

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day! Today also happens to be Canada Book Day, which is less awesomely named but probably more exciting. After reading our Monday round-up, we strongly encourage you to celebrate with Canada and read a book, then share it with your friends.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation takes a closer look at the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), which would prevent U.S. companies from providing authoritarian regimes with surveillance equipment.
• During a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum this morning, President Obama issues an executive order that will allow U.S. officials to impose sanctions against countries that are using new technologies to carry out human rights abuses.
• Iran claims they've been successful in extracting secret data from the U.S. drone that crashed there in December.
• It's "Cyber Week" in the House of Representatives: in addition to CISPA, the House will be considering three other cybersecurity bills. James Lewis, a cybersecurity law expert, analyzes each bill's prospects.
• The Washington Post reports that the U.S.-based website Boxun, which is following the Bo Xilai scandal in China, is hit by a DDoS attack.
• Russian activists are finding old-school protests might be more effective at getting the word out than social media.
• Is your non-profit leveraging creativity well? It could be your org's greatest asset.
• FrontlineSMS has huge potential as a tool for news-sharing, as evidenced by this example from a women's news network in Sri Lanka.
• Chinese activist Ai Weiwei publishes an op-ed in the Guardian on the Internet and censorship in China.

It's Emancipation Day in D.C., which, in addition to providing a few extra days to file your taxes, is a great opportunity to celebrate freedom. This week we're highlighting news related to Internet freedom and censorship, with a particular focus on a new House cybersecurity bill called CISPA. 

• Decried as the new SOPA, a bill called CISPA would increase the U.S. government's ability to respond to cyber attacks. Facebook endorses it, but opponents worry that broad language in the bill could result in privacy violations.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great FAQ about CISPA, and offers an evaluation of Facebook's motivations for supporting the bill.
• TPM reports that other groups have looked at the text of CISPA and don't see much similar to SOPA or to get worked up about. LifeHacker evaluates why the big companies are pro-CISPA but anti-SOPA.
• Anonymous targets Boeing, Intel, and other corporations showing support for CISPA.
• Earlier this month, a new branch of the hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and defaced numerous Chinese websites. New posts and tweets reveal that Anonymous China's activities a few weeks ago were just a warm-up: the true goal is to take down the Great Firewall.
• The Guardian reports that Britain is found to be exporting surveillance equipment to countries with repressive governments, including Syria.
• Iran plans to shut down access to the World Wide Web and establish a national Intranet within five months.
• What makes Twitter social? This article evaluates methods of determining "how social" a Twitter account can be.
• Aqute Intelligence publishes a directory of the most important online tools for competitive intelligence research. Over 300 tools cover a variety of fields, including social media, government, and website monitoring.

Last week, as my colleagues focused on Digital Security Awareness week, I traveled over to the west coast to attend the 2012 International Studies Association conference. This trip was a part of my graduate studies at Georgetown University (where I am pursing a Masters in Communication, Culture, and Technology), and while I was there I was reminded of the important relationship that exists between creating and editing stories and international development projects.

The panel I was a part of stemmed from a course (Technology, Culture, and Development) I took last semester.  As a part of the class, students are asked to create a Cultural Identity Narrative, which is a 6 minute video that remixes a novel and a film from the developing world.  The project allows students to create a story that explores a particular aspect of a culture, using the authors' and directors' words rather than their own.  The project teaches students to think about how they construct narratives and understand how they chose to edit existing stories to create their own. READ MORE »

China has been all over tech news this week - Anonymous China, updates to the Great Firewall, and censorship are among the top stories. Check out our China-related news and others we're reading:

• The hactivist group Anonymous has a new Chinese branch called Anonymous China, which last week hacked and defaced hundreds of Chinese websites.
• A paper published in First Monday looks at the extent of Internet censorship in China. The China Center at Brookings releases a study on the relationship of "strategic distrust" between the U.S. and China.
• Team Cymru discovered in December that China's Great Firewall has been updated to block Tor bridges. Now, Swedish researchers discover how access to the bridges is being blocked and suggest possiblities for circumvention.
• Thinking about moving your organization's projects to the cloud? ENISA releases a guide to assess the security of cloud-based service providers, including monitoring tips.
• A paper presented at Digital Humanities Australaisia 2012 maps out the Australian Twittersphere, focusing on Twitter traffic during natural disasters.
• DailyTekk has a list of the Top 100 Twitter Tools of 2012, and the 50+ best ways to curate your social media and news content.
• What kind of information does Facebook release when it's subpoenaed? In the case of the Craigslist killer, anything and everything on your profile, including your friends list and tagged photos.
• Doing the impossible: a guide to deleting content from the Internet.

This is a guest post from Andrew Mandelbaum, NDI's Senior Program Officer on the Governance team in D.C. You can follow up with Andrew on Twitter.

Recently I attended the conference “Achieving Greater Transparency in Legislatures through the Use of Open Document Standards,” hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), United Nations (UN), and U.S. House of Representatives. Organized by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament (a joint IPU-UN initiative), participants mostly consisted of ICT staff from 12 parliaments, as well as academics and representatives of international organizations. Significantly, the PMO community also had a couple of representatives in Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation and Doru Frantescu of VoteWatch.eu. Following the conference, Knowledge As Power, a Seattle-based NGO that works with government officials and citizens to facilitate online and offline engagement, hosted a legislative XML training at NDI featuring some of the creators of Akoma Ntoso, an open legislative document schema that could serve as an international standard for legislative documentation. READ MORE »