Diebold, a politically well connected maker of touch-screen voting machines used in some parts of the United States, comes under new fire for the lax security of their machines. Some months ago, researchers at Princeton demonstrated that someone with only 60 seconds of access to an unlocked Diebold box could insert a virus which could…
Regarding the military in Pakistan, a Global Integrity contributor writes: “…the power of the military has transformed Pakistani society, in which the armed forces have become an independent class, entrenched in the corporate sector, thus, controlling major assets of Pakistan. The military has a strong control over the financial institutions of Pakistan and therefore takes…
Global Integrity Managing Director Nathaniel Heller has a commentary published at EthicsWorld, discussing the Global Integrity Report: 2007.
The International Herald Tribune has an analysis of online censorship in China. In recent months, Chinese censors have tightened controls over the Internet, often blacking out sites that had no discernible political content. In the process, they have fostered a backlash, as many people who previously had little interest in politics have become active in…
Our friends at the Initiative of Public Policy Analysis, based in Lagos, have an analysis of the government’s failed efforts to jumpstart the local concrete industry in Nigeria by restricting imports. Reading this, I am struck by how fuzzy the lines between failed-but-well-intentioned economic policy and state-capture can be. However, the analysis concludes: License-or quota-based…
Last Wednesday a ship’s anchor cut two undersea fiber-optic cables, crippling Internet access for 75 million people in the Middle East and South Asia. This wonderfully executed data graphic from TeleGeography.com shows how it happened (click the image for full size). UPDATE: The Egyptian government now says that no ships were present over the fiber-optic…