User:Francg/expub/thesis/thesis-outline-draft-2-09.11.17

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Thesis Outline



What?

100,000 active domain names to provide online space for Catalan language and culture were blocked without notification or court order. Moreover, on September 20, Spain’s Guardia Civil took down all .cat domains used for the referendum. Following a court ruling, Google blocked a Catalan government app that allowed users to check their polling stations. The following day police entered the headquarters of the Catalan government's Telecommunications and IT Center, known as CTTI. The official referendum website was just one of hundreds to be blocked: http://www.referendum.cat/

Peter Sunde on Twitter: "If you're running a Catalan site being shut down by Spanish authorities, contact me for anonymous hosting and domains. We've got you covered."

Furthermore, oppressive measures such as the raiding of printers and distributors in Barcelona, the confiscation of 1.3 million posters and leaflets, and the serving of an injunction against all pro-independence newspapers and web-based news offices to ban publication of any material related to the referendum.


Why?

In order to create more insight into the nature of online information, it is important to analyse it critically and condemn these facts. News on the web can be edited quickly as new facts arrive, meaning information is quickly updated, re-written or corrected, although sometimes its content can be modified for different purposes. Online journalism often use their website as text processors for writing their first drafts, which allows them to quickly publish a story in nearly real time. It is possible that the only version of an article we ever read, gets shared across quickly, while more versions of this same article have been updated. Given such case it would be useful to be able to observe how information morphs or shifts in time in order to better understand them... text**

Julian Assange said: "What is happening in Catalonia in the most significant Western conflict between people and state since the fall of the Berlin wall--but its methods are 2017, from VPNs, proxies, mirrors and encrypted chat to internet surveillance and censorship, bot propaganda and body armor."

Assange also accuses Spain of conducting ‘world’s first internet war’ to shut down Catalan referendum.
"The world's first internet war has begun, in Catalonia, as the people and government use it to organize an independence referendum on Sunday and Spanish intelligence attacks, freezing telecommunications links, occupying telecoms buildings, censors 100s of sites, protocols etc."


How? check check

Combining diffengine and python programming tools, RSS news feeds will be monitored every 5 minutes (unless configured differently); if information is changed, a snapshot of these modifications will be created (highlighting deleted text in red and new written text in green). This creates 2 jpg and 1 html files, which includes other metadata like time of publication, geolocation and a link to the original source. Using web-scrapers such as Beautiful Soup or tools such as Feedme or Twarc might be useful to scrape specific websites or groups in social medias like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook that don’t use RSS technology. Web scraping can also be used to create a specific word count from a text file, which can be interesting for comparing syntactical strategies from different sources.

Live information streaming through document classification systems, or data bases such as MondoDB. Additionally, allowing access to this data base trough onion browsers like Tor it would preserve user's anonymity and help address ethical concerns when documenting particular sources. This data base will function as a democratic tool in defense of freedom of information, allowing users to access raw materials/content and additional collaboration features from invited figures (articles, essays, comments, interviews, etc.), while becoming an eyewitness of the actual social political issue, drawing attention on how sometimes online media might look for quick information rather than verified one.


- - - Structure - - -


Internet activists and academics who rallied in the Catalan cause:
- Edward Snowden
- Noam Chomsky
- Julian Assange, Wikileaks creator
- Peter Sunde, Pirate Bay co-founder: helped citizens through twitter to use proxy connection, and avoid Internet providers that censored websites, such Telefonica or Vodafone


Pre-October 1st
- Media Censorship
- Google closes informative applications
- Amazon shuts down informative websites/domains.
- Twitter removes account
- Banned Informative Posters
- Printers are taken over
- Banned online advertisements


October 1st
- Network Censorship
- Online Surveillance
- Cyber-attacks, Frozen Protocols
- Police forces take away bullet boxes
- Anonymity from voters is compromised
- The hackers who made possible a universal electoral register for the Catalan referendum
- Tor, Signal, Linux, Bitcoin, Mobile Phones bought abroad, etc.
- Interviews/docs computer scientists, journals
- Julian Assange on Twitter:'The Internet war has begun'
- Edward Snowden, @Snowden: "One can be against Catalan independence and still in favor of human rights. But one cannot be in favor of Rajoy's crackdown and say the same"


Post-October 1st: Information junkies
- We live in a World of Big Data.
- Mobile/Backpack journalism
- Anybody can be a reporter, instantaneously distributing news on their online communities
- Mass misinformation, inaccurate and unverified content.
- Clickbait: Users are hooked by a continuous data input.
- Information is updated quickly, and many times.
- Information anxiety: How do big amounts of data affect users?
- How does this behavior pattern is reflected on the public opinion?
- Satiric news: they can be spread over the social medias, creating confusion and therefore misinforming.
- Satiric magazine "el Jueves" is taken to Justice, accused by Police authorities for a satiric new


Due to October 1st: Article 155
- Process for juridic normalization
- Media Institutions can be taken over by central government
- Aiming to make news media neutral?
- Control and Centralization


No ethical concerns on social medias:
- Users personal data is traded and sold by social medias.
- Docnow: Community developed around supporting the ethical collection, use, and preservation of social media content.
- Docnow developed advanced programming tools for social research, such as diffengine and twarc, amongst others.
- #ArxivemelMoment (l'Associació d'Arxivers-Gestors documentals de Catalunya) - collects real facts from the 1st of October.
- #NoTincPor: arxivar l’avui per superar el dol - Archiving for the terror attacks in Barcelona


From neutrality to control?:
- How is private data manipulated?
- Are there any concerns on privacy?
- From Twitter 1.0 to 2.0
- From RSS to API: from neutrality to control?
- API involves a signed agreement.
- Why websites don't seem to use RSS feeds anymore?
- What is the benefit of using APIs if news update can't be followed?
- Will RSS technology be back even stronger than before?
- What are proxis?
- Before, the Internet could link to things without permission.


What do I intend to do:


Use tools for decentralization
- Explain which tools I am experimenting with in my project and what can be achieved from it:
- Tools: RSS feed, diffengine, scrapy, beautifulsoup, ttrss, shell scripting, python, Linux OS, document classification systems, MongoDB, Tor, Raspberry Pi.
- What can be achieved: scraping specific info, crossing paywalls (newspaper with required subscription), stream information change from websites using RSS technology (or not), archiving, updating data, etc.
-Examine the relevance of cyber geography and how to get round its limitations
- Consider deep web media platforms and platform-specific tools


Expose this data using document classification systems
- Reserach Wikileaks structure?
- What is Eventregistry?
- Classify documents in a database, MongoDB
- Invite requests, guests collaborations, feedback, peaces of code, docs, etc.
- Hidden geolocation (anti online surveillance)
- Create a local web server in the Raspberry Pi
- Reinforce & support tools used by hackers during the 1st of October.


Create an installation
- Raspberry Pi connected to a screen display
- Project live document streaming in the database
- Public can connect through mobile phones
- Print a manual ('how to feed your issue'): explain how this system has been developed, specs, tools, etc.
- Print a book/series of books: compilation of 'epic news changes' arranged by time.