Democracy and Cyber-Democracy Theory and Practice

.„Netzwerksicherheit“ (wangluo anquan) und „Informationssicherheit“ (xinxi anquan); „Informatisierung“ (xinxihua); „Netzwerk-Großmacht“ (wangluo quiangguo 网 国; Xi Jinping 2015)
Von “winning local wars under the conditions of informationization” (Weißpapier 2004)  bis  “winning informationized local wars”. (Die Militärstrategie China, Weißpapier  2015

Werden Cyberwaffen  von China  entwickelt, um relative militärische Unterlegenheit vis-à-vis USA zu kompensieren und die regionale Position zu stärken?
Sind Cyberkapazitäten im China schon genug entwickelt und auf entsprechender Niveau in den Militärverwaltungsapparat integriert, damit Cybermitteln als Kriegsmitteln verwenden werden können?
Chinas Verhalten im globalen Cyberspace wird mit der Hilfe von der Balance of Power Theorie analysiert.
Erstens, werden die wichtigste chinesische Strategien und Taktiken im Cyberspace dargestellt.
Zum zweiten,  werden die Schwerpunkten der nationalen Cyperstrategie erläutert.
Zum dritten, werden die staatliche Strukturen, die sich mit der Cyberpolitik befassen, die Zielobjekten, so wie Cyber –Instrumenten benannt.
Zum vierten, werden die wichtigste Einrichtungen der Cyberspionage in China angeschaut.
Zum Schluss wird ein Fazit formuliert.

Many advocates of deliberative democracy see in the Internet a new opportunity for the development of public spaces, public spheres, and places where deliberation can take place. An important element of the notion of the public sphere in general and of deliberation specifically, is the quality of the debate. In the past decade, many studies have been conducted to evaluate online discussions in light of the ideal notion of the public sphere. However, a wide gap exists between theoretical approaches and the actual operationalization of such theories for empirical research. In an attempt to bridge this gap we develop a method for examining the extent to which Internet forums meet the normative requirements of rational-critical debate, reciprocity, and reflexivity. The methodological approach consists of a textual analysis of the contributions made to an online forum. The coding scheme presented in this article is based on a case study (UK Online) and guided by the theoretical notions of deliberative democracy.

The Fifth Dimension of Conflictuality: The Rise of Cyberspace and Its Effects on In- ternational Politics
Cyberspace has become a crucial element for political, social, financial and individual activities. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have enhanced the human interactions and have contributed to “reinvent” classical concepts such as political participation, political debate, decision-making. However, their all-encom- passing, ubiquitous nature and their growing use for political and military purposes poses significant risks to international peace, stability and security. The low barrier of access to ICT capabilities, the speed of technological advances and the complexity of the cyberspace environment with regard to traditional legal definitions of borders have presented new challenges to States (the main actors of international relations) such as the inherent complexity of accurately attributing cyber-attacks. It is both this complexity and the frequent insistence of parties to attribute cyber-attacks and incidents “beyond a reasonable doubt” that gives one the ability to deny responsibility and frustrate attempts to build trust and political rapport in cyberspace. The purpose of this research is to analyze how cyberspace affects the international politics. The nature of the topic dictates the use of qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources such as official reports, declarations and policy documents, and academic analysis, in order to understand effects and dynamics carried out by the cyber domain on classical concepts such as war, peace and international relations. The main idea of this research is that the development of Information and Communication Technolo- gies (ICTs) and the related (r)evolution of warfare have produced relevant effects on the dynamics of the contemporary international system highlighting, at the same time, how the militarization of the cyber domain has posed consequences on interna- tional security, peace and stability. However, the lack of specific research related to “cyberspace’s effects on international politics” highlights the need to devote more attention on this topic bearing in mind that, more extensive and enduring analysis on cyberspace’s dynamics might allowed policy makers the opportunity to improve
awareness related to cyber threats in order to governing challenges emerging from the digital sphere.

Everything these days seems to begin and end with cyber.  The world is filled with people Twittering, using Facebook and many of the various Web 2.0 and social networking tools available to the masses.  While the Internet is a tremendous means by which the world has flattened, it has also opened the door for nefarious activities that used to be restricted to the physical realm.  Many disparate groups to include, but not limited to, criminal elements, terrorist groups and nation-state actors have fully embraced the realm known as cyberspace.  In addition, media outlets across the world hype cyber threats from the virus or worm of the month.  In tow with their “cybersecurity experts”, they opine that cybergeddon is coming, discuss the state of our cyber defenses, and reveal the latest cyber security panacea that will surely solve the problem. In addition, more emphasis in the past couple of years has been focused on the theft of information from US government networks by our adversaries, which is commonly referred to as cyber espionage.  Cyber espionage deserves all the attention it receives ... and more.  However, what has been severely lacking in the discussion of cyber espionage is the impact to the government, but more specifically, the operational impact to our armed forces due to the loss of information and technology to our realized and possible adversaries.

With the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) along with the increase in the use of the internet among the people in our country, there has seen an increase in cybercrime. No one can claim safe from this problem in this digital age. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data about cyber crime in the country gives a clear picture of our society. It emerges as an important challenge for all the stakeholders especially the Government, in order to achieve the goal of ‘Digital India’. In this context, the present paper will try to analyse the cyber crime against women in India in the 21st Century.

Key Words: Information and Communication Technology; Cyber Crime; Women.

Os cabos submarinos de fibra óptica e os satélites de comunicações – representação e desconstruções. Curiosamente, e apesar da sua enorme e crescente importância para comunicações contemporâneas de inúmeros tipos, os cabos de fibras ópticas, e sobretudo os cabos submarinos de entre os quais são de sublinhar os que ligam entre si as costas litorais das bacias oceânicas e marítimas – e a partir daí os interiores das massas continentais – não têm nem por sombras recebido a atenção pública e/ou académica que merecem. Como tantas vezes é o caso ao abordarmos questões tecnológicas, as representações espontâneas da importância que lhes atribuímos são enganadoras: talvez em resposta à publicitação das corridas ao espaço encetadas pelo Sputniks soviéticos, no quadro de uma corrida espacial que se prolongou pela Guerra Fria adentro, culiminando com a vitória norte-americana com o seu pico na alunagem do módulo Eagle da Apollo 11, a 20 de Julho de 19692. Uma vitória acompanhada e depois seguida por um número cada vez maior de objectos colocados em órbita para garantir melhores comunicações bem como missões espaciais de todo o tipo que vemos crescer vertiginosamente, levadas a cabo pela Rússia, pelo Japão, pela União Europeia, pela Índia, pela China, entre vários outros, supostamente criando redes físicas de suporte tecnológico que servem de garante para as nossas comunicações. No entanto, esse suporte tecnológico não está no espaço, acima, mas antes nos fundos marítimos e oceânicos. Vários actos relevantes há que falam por si na desconstrução deste mito. Segundo dados, relativos a 2016, fornecidos pela US Federal Communications Commission, apenas 0,37% da capacidade norte-americana para estabelecer comunicações com o exterior depende de satélites. Ou seja, virtualmente toda essa capacidade corre nos cabos submarinos3. No resto do mundo a situação não é muito diferente, com excepção, claro está, para os Estados ditos " encravados " , a saber, sem costa (que também usam cabos de fibra óptica, mas terrestre). Tem sido através deles que passam as comunicações áudio e vídeo de telecoms variados, todo o tipo de operadores móveis, Estados e empresas transnacionais, motores de busca, fornecedores de dados, bancos e banca, i.e. informação e instruções relacionadas com investimentos públicos e privados. Neste artigo abordo a importância da centralidade crescente de Portugal na rede global de cabos, nas suas diversas fases e com as suas dificuldades e vantagens próprias.

This article has the initial scope of demonstrating the different aspects of citizenship, and the current relevance of the virtual citizenship, which states that the Internet is as a true protagonist in the realization of the rights of freedom that also involve political rights and the right from the very political participation. Nevertheless, one may not speak of citizenship when this quality is restricted to a certain number of Brazilians. This work aims to demonstrate (through surveyed data) and explain what are the main obstacles to the effectiveness of this kind of citizenship in Brazil, namely: 1) the own digital divide, that even more than a decade after the advent of the twenty-first century still affects a significant portion of the population; and 2) the absence of a dialogue between society and the state to create instruments of participation. However, the article also volunteers to identify possible measures that could be adopted so that we can move towards a true effectiveness of this aspect of citizenship.

The importance of Social Media is increasing day by day in almost every country and, almost all the sectors in the society are influenced by it including politics which also not immune from this. In the upcoming 17th Indian General elections. how this social media is going to play its role is discussed. Along with example from America's 2016 Presidential Election and its impact.

“Human behaviour and lifestyle continue to change at a rapid pace, increasing over the past few years fuelled by the introduction of digital media and new technologies which have become embedded in the western culture to the degree that the average person now has a need to be able to understand and relate to them in order to function effectively at work, in the community and within intimate relationships”. Krawford, 2012

CYBER PSYCHOLOGY
Historical technology effects and consequences
Claude Steiner’s view of Psychological effects
Television
Effects on Mental Health
Memory & Brain
Cyber Bullying
Empathy
Internet Addiction
Passive/Active Ratio

CYBER SOCIOLOGY
Historical
Social Movements
Twitter
Walling off the Internet
Organisations
Apple
Power
Facebook
Net Neutrality
Politial control
Free speech
Website attacks
China
Web Filtering
Future of the Internet
Security
Transperancy
Virtual Reality
Nanotechnology
Nano ethics
Debates
Future Plans
Gamification

The Caspian Project is a weekly digital magazine organized by the online analytical resource, Modern Diplomacy. Dr. Matthew Crosston is the Senior Editor of the project, which aims to acquaint people with this critically undervalued region of the world. The analyses go far beyond the standard issue of energy and encapsulates economics, politics, culture, religion, global affairs, conflict and peace.

This edition of the Caspian Project testifies to the enormous wealth of analytical opportunity seen all across the region. While in the past we have enjoyed producing single-issue specializations (which we did over the past two weeks with The Russian Debate and The Persian Gambit, to great fanfare and applause), the true essence of the Project is to have great diversity for the readers every issue. No. 11 as it turns out is something of a hybrid of these two aspects: readers with this issue get quite a bit of diversity while also getting to enjoy a mini-specialization, as a number of the articles inside deal with different aspects of the Russian intelligence community, namely, the Federal Security Service or FSB.

So, on top of some very thought-provoking and hard-hitting articles dealing with the ethics, surveillance, and transnational activities of Russian intelligence, readers ALSO get to learn more in this issue about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Turkmenistan’s human rights record, and Kazakhstan’s entrance into the WTO. It is an issue, therefore, that cuts across domestic politics, global affairs, security, economics, and international organizations. This is something we at Modern Diplomacy hold dearly when it comes to the Caspian Project: so much that is happening in the world today, affecting so many countries, transects in one way or another the greater Caspian sea region. It shall always be a hub of activity and importance, far beyond the standard call about energy and natural resources.

The crisis in Ukraine is an unprecedented OPPORTUNITY. Never before has there been such a global opposition to psychotic “political” intention than the global righteous indignation expressed relative to Putin’s psychotic unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Experiencing such a crescendo of humanitarian solidarity is extremely rare and fleeting, and it is only possible because of the technological Fourth Estate (the electromagnetic media-field) that has framed the political issues involved. There can be no question that the current crisis in Ukraine has global significance, and media-framing of this fact has been compelling. However, the technology of “psychological framing” with information and communication technologies (ICTs) has advanced much further than longstanding advertising techniques of coercion through target-market identification that still holds the media captive. Science has now established the fact that human perceptions of ontological “reality”—in a context of the electromagnetic (EM) unified field of quantum field theory (QFT)—have the structure of NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE.  In other words, reality has dramatic structure.  “An infinity of energetic resonances cavort in the form of “personal/collective dramas”. Good dramatic structure was defined by Plato who established the “framework” (character, exposition, lysis) that is a problem-solving formula that widely in use (Lakoff, G, 2008, 2002; Jacoby, 1973; Jung, C, 1933). The salient feature of Plato’s dramatic architecture is “plot” which unfolds from “exposition” (statement of a story’s problem) to lysis (resolution of the story’s problem) with adherence to “premise” (Schafer, SB, 2007; Glassner, A, 2004, p. 69).

The significance of this fact is that with the emergent media-age of virtual illusion, humans have the power to frame reality with the technological media—agency that should be attuned to FIRST CAUSE INTENTION (FCI). Proof of this fact can be stipulated because of the existence of the media-field that exemplifies this human creativity. What is not currently “known”, or yet deduced, is that this human creation—like a Jungian dream—can provide “meaningful insight” as to both human and divine PURPOSE. The media-field is structurally framed to accomplish meaningful insight about FIRST CAUSE INTENTION (FCI).  That divinely inspired FCI exists for the purpose of creating “responsible embodied transduction of EM energies” into an essentially humanitarian resonant quality in the dimension of material form.  The virtual media-field is the best example of this “embodied” purpose, but the toxic state of the media reflects a serious failure of responsibility for creating FCI COHERENT ENTRAINMENT (universal harmony).

Humanitarian craftsmen now have the responsibility to “intuit” FCI and to devise the “blueprint” (frame) for a Global Culture of Conscience (Soul). Currently, the media is structured to lead us into entropy (death), so change must be immediate. When mediated rhetorical dynamics are translated into the dynamics of physics and “coherent entrainment”, the DNA of First Cause media-framing becomes very specific and quantifiable. In-order to optimize the fleeting “opportunity” presented by the Ukrainian struggle, humanitarians must consciously accept the dynamics of EM coherent entrainment with the planetary Soul.

This chapter analyzes the negative impact as well as the positive contributions that new digital technologies may have and make on deliberative democracy. As for their negative consequences, five major threats are identified: i) a risk of suffering interferences and violations of our privacy rights and civil and political liberties, ii) the risk of manipulation of and domination in our democratic politics, both at the level of public deliberation and our voting systems, iii) the risk of growing social polarization, fake news and hate speech, iv) the risk of an unprecedented concentration of power in a few, mostly private or authoritarian, hands, and v) the risk of the growing complexity of our societies and of the challenges we globally face. As for the positive contributions, this chapter reviews some examples of how digital technology may strengthen our collective intelligence and our processes of political aggregation, deliberation and collaboration. This analysis comes, however, only in the last section (number 4) of the chapter, after having introduced the topic in section 1, having explained what the model of deliberative democracy is in section 2, and having examined in greater detail why the idea of collective intelligence is so relevant for deliberative democracy and which are its main elements or components in section 3.

Cyberspace and the existence of the internet allows different types of crimes to appear. Hence, there is a need for new laws to be set with a collective, comprehensive, view of crime and a global understanding.  This article studies 5 different countries’ laws pertaining to cybercrimes namely: Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. These different countries issued different laws at different times, some in 2007 others are as new as 2015. The article looks at the laws from an academic definition of different crimes, and also describes the laws from a perspective of each country.

Tiranos de Shakespeare explicam golpismo de Bolsonaro Projeto autoritário do presidente é tão evidente quanto a vilania de Ricardo 3º e Macbeth • Jair Bolsonaro durante cerimônia de promoção de sargentos da FAB em Brasília Adriano Machado-1º.abr.22/Reuters

This article addresses the problem of international law enforcement within the War on Cyberterrorism. Hybrid conflicts have replaced the traditional ones, and new threats have emerged in cyberspace, which has become a virtual battlefield. Cyber threats-cybercrimes, cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare-are a major concern for Western governments, especially for the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The international community has begun to consider cyberattacks as a form of terrorism, to which the same measures apply. Because the term "terrorism" is ambiguous and legaly undefined, there is no consensus on a definition of the derivative term "cyberterrorism", which is left to the unilateral interpretations of states. Pretending to consider the cyberspace domain as traditional domains, and claiming to apply IHL for the sole purpose of lawfully using armed forces in contrast to cyberterrorism is a stretch. This paper addresses the question of whether or not current laws of war and international humanitarian law apply to cyber domain, and gives some recommendations on how to tackle this issue.

Today cyber space is easily accessible and has presence beyond geo-political boundaries; also rapidly becoming a global battlefield for various states and non-states entities. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), every compromised device has potential to become soldier or adversary.  It has become a necessity for each state to have its own separate individual cyber security policy. In 2003 the United States of America (USA) was first to understand the significance of cyber security policy and was the first country in the world to have a cyber-security policy. Cyberspace communication exposes countries to various challenges. This can be tackled by states by drafting and implementing effective cyber security policies. This project critically analysis the recent National Cyber Security Policies (NCSP’s) of UK, India, USA and Germany. The documents will be analysed in the light of derived framework. This project intends to do the comparative analysis for academic purposes only and can act as a stepping stone for bridging gaps in cyber security policies.

Este texto trata das três grandes crises da internet: a crise da rede distribuída diante da democracia; a crise do ideal de participação e a crise do livre fluxo de dados. O texto aborda ainda a dinâmica da rede e a concentração das atenções nas grandes plataformas.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

= A NEW DIGITAL VERSION [E-BOOK] OF THIS WORK IS AVAILABLE IN KINDLE STORE | WWW.AMAZON.COM  THIS CONTENT IS SUPLYIED AS A COURTESY TO STUDENTS AND RESERCHERS. IF ADDITIONAL MATERIAL IS NEEDED, PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT HEDI@ENGHELBERG.COM =



"LETTER TO READERS

“WE HAVE TO CONSIDER TERRORISM AS THE USE OF DEATH AS A POLITICAL WEAPON”  [HEDI ENGHELBERG]

Dear Reader,
My name is Hedi Enghelberg.  Since 1999 I have been working to promote public and government agencies awareness to a new threat of these times: The Cyber Terrorism and all its flavors manifested today in our cybernetic-machine-dominated economical, political, social and private life.
I have lectured in many occasions about this subject in important organizations, and in 2003 I wrote one of the first books written in this subject called Cyberterrorism, ISBN 980-07-8518-3.

Most important for these pages is to get the message across and make the public conscious about this danger (CYBER TERRORISM) that will affect us all. This danger will not be eliminated until strong legislation is put in place, respected and enforced. Some 80% of the computing systems we use dally, especially based on early version of the Windows programs*, and other very vulnerable software will have to be reformed and security systems reinforced. Many users have already ditched Windows in favor of Mac, Google OS/Chrome, or Linux as they want to remain productive for longer period of time, virus and Cyber Fraud free. BUT THEY ALL (OPERATIONAL SYSTEMS & SMART PHONES) HAVE UNPATCHED VULNERABILITIES. THEY ALL HAVE! The Cloud Computing will not solve all our problems, as many of the MS systems and early code scripts have been inherited into the cloud.

Terrorism is a tactic, at many levels and in many forms. Every day we register new attacks, by the thousand and the tens of thousands, under different forms of cyber terrorism, cyber crime, cyber fraud, cyber sabotage and economical espionage. The list of targets and points of origin is too long to be listed.
Under the veneer of the good things that internet brings to us all, there are negative and evil forces at work, all the time.
Without any doubt, we have to be conscious that an electromagnetic pulse attack will put all the IT systems on an industrial country out of work for some time, and can be used as a pre-emtive attack.

We are a decade after 9/11 and the main discussion is still centered on individual liberties, the Bill of Rights and the need for more security and how both will work together and influence each other. We don’t have to sacrifice liberty for security but counter-terrorism activities are here to stay!

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. We are currently revising and updating the English version of this book with Gail Tenzer as the translator of the original 2003 published Spanish book.
We would like to present you the book, and have your brief opinion about this very important, clear and present danger asymmetric war, represented by cyber terrorism.
"

Note: Now published and available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Desktop-Regulatory-State-Countervailing-Individuals/dp/1523275596/

The implosion of capital outlays associated with the desktop revolution, and the virtual disappearance of transaction costs of coordinating action associated with the network revolution, have (as Tom Coates has said) eliminated the gap between what can be produced within large hierarchical organizations and what can be produced at home in a wide range of industries:  software, publishing, music, education, and journalism among them.

The practical significance of this, which I develop in this book, is that many of the functions of government can be included in that list.  The central theme of this book is the potential for networked organization to constrain the exercise of power by large, hierarchical institutions in a way that once required the countervailing power of other large, hierarchical institutions.

Traditionally, the power of the large corporation was explained by the large amounts of capital required for manufacturing, broadcasting or publishing.  Such large amounts of capital meant that only the very rich, or a very large aggregation of rich people, could afford the outlays to undertake production, and that these people had to hire wage laborers to actually work the machinery for them.  Such outlays also required a large, hierarchical, bureaucratic institution to administer the plant and equipment.  And these large institutions, in turn, required other large institutions like regulatory agencies, big establishment unions, and the big establishment media, to act as watchdogs.

Unfortunately, despite Galbraith’s theory of countervailing power, in practice government agencies, corporations and media outlets tended to cluster together in complexes of allied institutions in which the ostensible regulators and regulated were actually on the same side.  Rather than the liberal “interest group pluralism” model implicit in Galbraith’s analysis, what we actually had was an interlocking Power Elite of the sort described by Mill and Domhoff.  The large size and small number of institutional actors, and the enormous entry barriers erected against ordinary people attempting to compete with them, made such a clustering of interests based on shared bureacuratic culture inevitable.

The desktop and digital revolution, the network revolution, and the forms of stigmergic organization that they make possible, together destroy the material basis for the old mass production/bureaucratic/broadcast model described above.  Instead — just as, in my previous book, I described the increasing ability of micromanufacturers with a few thousand dollars in capital to undertake forms of production previously requiring million-dollar factories — individually affordable capital goods for information production and network organization are leading to what John Robb calls “individual superempowerment.”  The individual increasingly has at her disposal the means of taking on large, powerful bureaucratic institutions as an equal.

Networked consumer, environmental and labor activism, with its ability to subject corporate malefactors to boycotts or tort actions, and to expose them to humiliating scrutiny, offers the potential to control and punish bad corporate behavior at least as well as did the regulatory state or the traditional press, and — insofar as they are not prone to the same sorts of cross-institutional collusion — to do an even better job of it.

This includes “culture jamming” of the sort employed by the McLibel defendants and by Frank Kernaghan against Kathie Lee Gifford.  It includes labor-led boycotts and information campaigns based on “open mouth sabotage” like those of the Imolakee Workers and the Wal-Mart Workers Association, and a whole host of online “employernamesucks.com” websites.  It includes targeted campaigns to embarrass such corporate malefactors in the eyes of their suppliers, outlets, major stakeholders, and labor and consumer interest organizations.  It includes networked activism through umbrella movements of labor, consumer and social justice organizations linked together for ad hoc single issue campaigns against a particular corporate criminal.  It includes efforts like Wikileaks to promote whistleblowing and provide secure platforms for circulating embarrassing information about corporate misbehavior.  It incorporates a large element of what John Keane calls “monitory democracy.”

Networked organization offers, as well, to supplant the regulatory state’s old licensing, authentication and quality certification functions.  If Consumer Reports was pithecanthropus in this evolutionary schema, and Angie’s List is homo erectus, then the future lies with full-blown networked civil societies, organized on a voluntary basis, providing a context within which secure commercial relationships and other forms of cooperation can take place.  The future of this model has been described variously as neo-Venetianism or phyles (fictionally in Stephenson’s The Diamond Age and non-fictionally in de Ugarte’s work), the Darknet in Suarez’s Freedom, and “economies as a social software service” by John Robb.

In short, networked activism offers to do to the state and the large corporation what the file-sharing movement has only begun to do to the record industry, and what Wikileaks has barely even begun to do to the U.S. national security community.

In the recent years there has been tremendous increase in the penetration and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in all spheres activities including commerce. New cellular technologies, web-based networks, community ICT access points in the remotes parts of the world have ushered in an era when even the most remote parts of the world will be connected through affordable high bandwidth Internet connections. In the arena of businesses ICT have changes the way traditional business were conducted. With more connectivity, even the smallest enterprise in a remote village can mobile cheaper raw materials or production input and also link to the largest distribution systems across the globe without intermediaries fetching him a better price for his commodities.

In order to harness these new ICT applications for e-commerce, it is important to understand the need for an underlying legal framework that is needed to support such „online‟ commerce activities in a non-physical „virtual‟ environment. While business to business (B2B) e-commerce emerging as the most important activity, business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce has faced a number of challenges. This paper intends to highlight some of these challenges facing e-commerce across the developing world with special reference to marginalized areas like Northeastern region in India.

The internet and social media have revolutionized activism. In response, governments seeking to curb opposition have recently learned to target the very same technologies that gave rise to activist empowerment in the first place. This article challenges the accepted framework for discussing these efforts by governments, focused on surveillance and privacy. It argues, first, that governments’ actions should be evaluated in the aggregate and understood as measures of digital domination, whose harm extends beyond the harm to individual privacy. Applying the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, the article suggests that the core harm resulting from governments’ actions is to activists’ freedom. Since activism is a check on the government, these measures also have devastating consequences for the freedom of the citizenry as a whole. Second, the article argues that governments’ reliance on digital militias allows them to sidestep the limits of their legitimate authority, therefore posing a grave threat to the rule of law. Finally, third, the article underscores that governments deploy digital measures of control beyond surveillance. Rather, they (1) gather information on activists; (2) disrupt communication channels; (3) flood online conversation to drown out the opposition; (4) deploy the state’s coercive power based on information gathered, and (5) mobilize digital militias to bully activists online. The article therefore proposes a new conceptual framework: rather than discuss political freedom through the lens of privacy, we ought to retain appreciation of privacy’s importance but refocus the discussion around individual freedom. Similarly, rather than subsume government control measures under the category of surveillance, we ought to recognize the much broader set of tools employed by them.

This dissertation examines the postmodern condition of social media (SM) and evaluates the use of social photography, photography in SM, as a postmodern sensibility. For this, Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp (1964), and her critiques in On Photography (2008), will be applied to social photography. It will become apparent; that SM poses risks to individuals and that many of these problems can be traced back to the medium of photography. It will be argued, that the dynamics of photography have intensified and that social photographs visualize how through digitization; individuals, things, and numbers, equally become data-fied subject-objects in cyberspace, cybjects [cyber-(ob)ject-(su)bject], which are exposed to the scrutiny of the cyberspace panopticon (Foucault, 1980). Based on these theories, this dissertation will conclude that the use of SM for social practices and identity formation is innately problematic as the interpretation of one’s SM agency is beyond one’s control.

This paper sets out an ambitious critique of contemporary political scientists, political historians and others concerned with the history of democracy. It argues that overwhelmingly the history of democracy relies on an overtly Eurocentric narrative that emphasizes the keystone moments of Western civilization. According to this narrative, democracy has a clear trajectory that can be traced from ancient experiments with participatory government in Greece and to a lesser extent in Rome, through the development of the British parliament, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, and then finally onto the triumphant march of the liberal model of democracy across the globe over the last 200 years, particularly under Western tutelage. Histories of democracy that focus exclusively on these events not only privilege Europe and its successful colonies, but also miss the broader human story of the struggle for and achievement of democracy.

This presents us with a distinct challenge. For those whose heritage does not include a direct link to Greek assemblies, the American Congress or the French Revolution, the 'standard history of democracy' provides a distant and exclusive narrative, which limits one's ability to embrace democracy. This paper concludes by noting that, as democracy spreads out across the world today, political scientists not only need to break down the intellectual orthodoxy that democracy has exclusively Western roots, but also to embrace a more global view of democracy as a political practise that has been present at various times and in sometimes unfamiliar ways in the complex histories and rich cultural traditions of most of the people of the earth.

[CYBERTERRORISMO] - CONSIDERACIONES BÁSICAS Y GENERALES-
ESTUDIO POLÍTICO: LA EVOLUCIÓN Y LA TRASFORMACIÓN DEL TERRORISMO MUNDIAL  Y DEL INTERNET AL CYBER FRAUDE, AL CRIMEN CIBERNÉTICO, AL CYBER CONTROL Y A LAS GUERRAS CIBERNÉTICAS MODERNAS.
“EVERYBODY KNOWS NOW EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE. WE ARE EXPOSED”  |  “Debemos considerar el terrorismo como el uso de la muerte como arma política”. Hedi Enghelberg  | 

EMPEZADO EN 1999, ESTE LIBRO ES UNO DE LOS PRIMEROS PUBLICADOS (2001-2003) SOBRE (ENTONCES, CASI INCIPIENTE) ESTE FLAGELLO DEL CYBER TERRORISMO/CRIUME/FRAUD/WAR, HOY UNAS REALE DIMENSIONES DEL  ESPACIO POLITICO, SOCIAL, ECONOMICO Y MILITAR DE NUESTRA EPOCA.

[ NOTA DEL AUTOR: COMO APOYO ACADEMICO, OFRECEMOS ESTE LIBRO EN ESPANOL DE MANERA GRATUITA, PARA LOS ESTUADIANTES DE BACHILLERATO, UNDERGRADUATES, GRADUATES Y PARA LOS ESTUDIOS AVANZADOS DE MAESTRIA Y DOCTORADO. LIBRO EN ESPANOL CON ALGUNAS ANOTACIONES EN INGLES.]

Working in Cyberspace Operations from multiple aspects has led me to question the multiple methods and frameworks used to defend enterprises. This has also led to an effort of integrating military operational frameworks where focuses remain on small, yet focused, synchronized integrated teams. This is unfortunately a new concept for cyberspace teams. It has led to some heated discussions among my colleagues because we all know all frameworks are wrong, but some are useful and further every analytical operator has internal prejudices. I seek to present F3EAD as a framework for DCO-RA & possible Offensive Cyber Operations.

Llevar a cabo una reforma exitosa de simplificación y digitalización de trámites requiere hacer frente a cada uno de estos desafíos. En este capítulo se presentará la experiencia de cuatro países -Estonia, Chile, México y Uruguay– que desarrollaron estrategias, capacidades y modelos de gobernanza para afrontar estos obstáculos, y lograron obtener resultados destacables en sus esfuerzos de simplificación y digitalización. Se busca mostrar las lecciones aprendidas, tanto positivas como negativas, con el objetivo de darles una guía a los países interesados en llevar a cabo iniciativas de este tipo. Estos son ejemplos de un muy pequeño número de casos, ninguno perfecto, pero que sin embargo exponen lecciones valiosas para entender las claves del éxito para una reforma de simplificación y digitalización.

Instability comes in many forms: economic, political, social, cultural, religious, ethnic. Unfortunately, the greater Caspian region has and does experience these various forms of instability in one degree or another across many of its states. But one of the lesser appreciated aspects of domestic, regional, and international turmoil is how often the kernels of opportunity and progress can reside simultaneously within these seeds of discord and conflict. Issue No. 23 of the GCP examines this fascinating phenomenon in earnest. What our devoted readers will discover is how instability in and of itself does not need to be immutable: opportunities of leadership, achievement, and positive change do exist and can blossom, even in areas we currently consider to be hopelessly opaque and convoluted. In many cases it is just a matter of perception and where the relevant actors are willing to focus their energies, as well as the under-emphasized essentiality of not being afraid of change and not being enslaved to the status quo.
Thus it is with this issue we try to reveal these hidden opportunities while still seriously analyzing such troubling concerns as separatism, economic crisis, geostrategic manipulation of natural resources, theocratic evolution, cyber innovation, and transnational policing. We are by no means here at the GCP and our parent group Modern Diplomacy pie-in-the-sky-Ivory-Tower naïve scholars: we know that in all of these issues, across all of these cases, when the pendulum swings more to the end of crisis, then the end result is unfortunately untold human suffering and sacrifice. But despite this we still force our readers to recognize that it is indeed a pendulum and not a compass: the direction it presently points does not have to be a fixed geographical consideration, but is rather a dynamic process that can move and shift to something more positively powerful. It may only be a hope, in some cases perhaps even an unrealistic one. But hope is never a bad thing, especially in our GCP world of diplomacy, geopolitics, and international security.

The intent of this chapter is to re-imagine and apply the term " civil disobedience " to the cyber domain. The full extent of how it can apply will be analyzed in a framework of the evolutionary rights of protest. Traditional civil disobedience is a " performance " via visual and physical mediums, while cyber disobedience is essentially a digital performance with difficulty in attributing true ownership of the act. This is an interesting antithesis to the physical protestor, who uses strategic visibility, threat of arrest, and popular backlash against state behavior as vital aspects of the disobedience. These variables are noticeably absent in cyber disobedience.

In the modern world, natural disasters are becoming more commonplace, unmanned systems are becoming the norm, and terrorism and espionage are increasingly taking place online. All of these threats have made it necessary for governments and organizations to steel themselves against these threats in innovative ways.

Developing Next-Generation Countermeasures for Homeland Security Threat Prevention provides relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical research outlining potential threats while exploring their appropriate countermeasures. This relevant publication takes a broad perspective, from network security, surveillance, reconnaissance, and physical security, all topics are considered with equal weight. Ideal for policy makers, IT professionals, engineers, NGO operators, and graduate students, this book provides an in-depth look into the threats facing modern society and the methods to avoid them.

El presente Volumen VII tiene 1,916 páginas, organizadas por fecha y agrupadas por mes.  Abarca el texto completo de las conferencias de prensa matutinas  que el Presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador encabezó, entre el 18 de marzo de 2020 y el 01 de julio de 2020.    Es el periodo comprendido y el discurso pronunciado en la Torre de Pemex y el informe del segundo año luego del éxito electoral el mismo día, pero de 2018.    Es el primer periodo, de la etapa de operación inicial fincada sobre hidrocarburos refinándose en México, para consumo interno e incluso para exportación. 
El Volumen I (01 Enero a 30 noviembre 2018) está en https://www.academia.edu/40861116/ .  El Volumen  II (2018 12 01 a  2019 03 11) está disponible gratuitamente en https://www.academia.edu/40757230/  .  El volumen III (2019 03 12 a  2019 06 30), se puede accesar en  https://www.academia.edu/40798502/  .  El volumen IV cubre del 01 julio 2019 a  31 de agosto 2019 y se puede accesar en línea en https://www.academia.edu/40809905/  .  A su vez, el volumen V ( 01 septiembre 2019 a  30 noviembre 2019) está en https://www.academia.edu/40861296/ .  El volumen VI está en  (1 diciembre 2019 a 1 julio 2020) se encuentra también disponible en línea https://www.academia.edu/42261557/ 
Los habitantes de México y planeta tierra ya han caído en cuenta de que pueden ayudar a preservar la memoria histórica del avance de la 4T, en su etapa de arranque.  Para empezar, en propia computadora, cada quien podría organizar y mantener actualizada una base de datos de las cátedras-conferencias presidenciales diarias de AMLO.  Y ahora no hay duda:  es sólo cuestión de querer hacerlo.  Es posible tener acceso, en un solo sitio url, a la lista de reproducción completa de los videos de  todas y cada una de las cátedras-conferencias presidenciales diarias, hasta la fecha y a partir del 4 de diciembre de 2018.    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRnlRGar-_296KTsVL0R6MEbpwJzD8ppA    Además, las versiones estenográficas de todas la conferencias-cátedras presidenciales y de otros actos públicos del presidente AMLO, están disponibles en un sólo sitio URL.  https://lopezobrador.org.mx/transcripciones/  En cada una de ellas, está su respectiva grabación en sólo audio; he hecho ya su respectivo acopio y organización.   
Este estado de cosas justifica el compendiar, de la forma que mas amigablemente permita que funcione como base de datos, la vasta mayoría de los textos que recogen las palabra de AMLO en sus actos públicos.  Hay que hacer algunas puntualizaciones:
1)Esta base de datos se puede usar, impresa en papel o en formato electrónico.  Es preferible echar mano de lo segundo, pues al estar presentado en word u odt; y en PDF;  se facilita enormemente la localización de términos o palabra clave, en las 2001 páginas de que consta este voumen VII.
2)Se presenta de esta manera, pensando en que se hará análisis de contenido tradicional:  cita textual, inferencia, conexión con indicadores y variables que se desea investigar conforme a métodos cualitativos de las ciencias sociales.
3)No se han incluído, a propósito, los discursos de AMLO pronunciados en eventos que por facilidad analítica aquí llamamos “reiterativos”.

Our third edition of the renamed ‘Greater Caspian Project’ is the fullest blossoming to date of just how expansive and important this region is to the world in general. The greater Caspian region encompasses areas of the world that extend all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific when you consider the geostrategic tentacles that come from the decisions made. This issue lets readers see that process in explicit detail as subjects cut across Russia, Iran, the Middle East, South Asia, all the way out to Eastern China. As is often the case in the world of global affairs and international relations, the tiniest of decisions can have subtle consequences that grow into huge consequences. GCP No. 20 shows us all how real that is.

Truly, this edition may have the largest coverage of disparate countries to date, with our readers learning subtle foreign policy issues and diplomatic nuances from Russia to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Syria to Kazakhstan to India to China to North Korea. Whether considering strategies to end war in Syria, preventing war in North Korea, stopping degradation in Kazakhstan, or ameliorating tension between major rivals in the Middle East, No. 20 makes us all realize just how complicated the world is today and why local problems often turn into regional discord which explodes into global tension and conflict.

In the end, we here at Modern Diplomacy and the GCP remain steadfast and true to the idea that no idea is sacred, no one position is the ultimate truth, and our only true purpose is exposing ever more people to the world as it really is, to the intricate actions and inner workings of states in the global neighborhood game as they actually transpire. We hope it always helps our readers become more informed and more refined in their thinking and perspectives.