· February, 2012

Stories about Technology from February, 2012

Cuba: Worry about Hunger Striker

  29 February 2012

Uncommon Sense hopes that political prisoner Ernesto Borges’ fate will not go the way of so many other hunger strikers, saying: “He needs you to learn his story and to spread it so that his life can be saved.”

Thailand: Facebook Blamed for Teen Pregnancies

  29 February 2012

Netizens in Thailand react to the report of the National Economic and Social Development Board that popular social networking site Facebook is partly to blame for the unwanted teen pregnancies in the country. Thailand has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in the world.

Trinidad & Tobago: Carnival is My Time

  28 February 2012

“In an attempt to imitate art…culture in T&T seems to have perverted itself and in trying to become something else, may have succeeded all too well; the business model of Tribe and the other new ‘Rio’ styled bands seems to be built on encouraging excess for profit”: Plain Talk suggests...

Jamaica: Inmate Beatings

  28 February 2012

Following reports that several high-profile inmates are being beaten, Active Voice wants to know “what’s going down at the Horizon Adult Remand Centre”, which seems to be “a virtual Guantanamo Bay.”

Pakistan: Fighting the Great Firewall

  28 February 2012

The recent blow to the internet freedom in Pakistan has been the announcement of a request for proposal (RFP) for national “URL filtering and blocking system” by the ICT R&D Fund under the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT). The $10 million system is required to be able to ”handle a block list of up to 50 million URLs".

Cuba: Working for “The Enemy”?

  27 February 2012

Havana Times reports that “the leading Cuban government website…unleashed a front page attack on blogger Yoani Sanchez…with an article accusing her of working for the enemy (USA) for pay”; Sanchez herself sees a news report “in which the blogger Miriam Celaya and other acquaintances appear, surrounded with epithets such as...

Cuba: More Sunday Detentions

  27 February 2012

Uncommon Sense blogs about yet another Sunday of repression as members of Las Damas de Blanco were again detained by authorities.

Portugal: Web Users Debate Portuguese Private Copying Bill

  27 February 2012

Currently being debated in the Portuguese Parliament is a new bill (PL118) which proposes a tax on any equipment or software capable of recording, copying or storing analogue or digital content, in the name of author's rights. The online community has wasted no time in wading in on the debate, with the hashtag #PL118 duly trending on Twitter.

China: 1 Billion Mobile Phone Users

  25 February 2012

C Custer wrote in Asia Tech News for the World on the latest statistic of mobile users in China. The country's mobile phone users will break 1 billion in February 2012 and about 13.7 percent of China’s mobile users are on 3G.

Cuba: Prisoners’ Rights

  24 February 2012

Uncommon Sense republishes a statement by Amnesty International about “former prisoner of conscience Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia [whose] whereabouts are unknown following his alleged arrest in central Havana, Cuba, on 21 February”; Pedazos de la Isla, meanwhile, reports that “the political prisoner on hunger strike, Ernesto Borges, was taken from...

Haiti: Students in Sheds

  23 February 2012

Haiti Grassroots Watch explores the issues surrounding the non-reconstruction of the state university in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

Barbados: A Woman's Worth

  23 February 2012

Free Logic is concerned about the tweets from “little girls and ignorant women extolling their love for Chris Brown, in spite of his ‘misdeeds'”, saying: “It made me feel sick inside. That there are women out there who think so little of themselves. For the record, no man will ever...