Category: Sci/Tech

Turkey Protests New Internet Filters

Internet Filters Set Off Protests Around Turkey

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — Thousands of people in more than 30 cities around Turkey took to the streets on Sunday to protest a new system of filtering the Internet that opponents consider censorship.

The Information and Communications Technologies Authority, known by its Turkish initials as B.T.K., is going to require Internet service providers to offer consumers four choices for filtering the Internet that would limit access to many sites, beginning in August.

Protesters in Taksim Square in Istanbul called the action, which regulators say is intended to protect minors, an assault on personal freedom and liberty.

The B.T.K., however, has said that Internet users will still be able to access all content if they choose the “standard” option for filtering. The other filtering options are labeled as “children,” “family” and “domestic.”

Tayfun Acarer, the chairman of the B.T.K., told reporters this month that the change came about because of complaints and demands for safer Internet use in Turkey.

Thousands of protesters in Taksim Square, who were organized through a Facebook page, chanted, “Yes, we ban!” In Ankara, the capital, people cheered, “The Internet is ours and will remain ours!”

For many people in Turkey, having to select a filtering option is just another form of censorship. Already thousands of Web sites are blocked by the state, mostly without any publicized reason.

Furthermore, the B.T.K. recently issued a ban on the use of dozens of casual words on the Internet, like “girl,” “partner” and “animal.” It has not explained how this word ban will be policed.

The most controversial act of Internet censorship in Turkey, so far, was against YouTube, which was blocked in 2007 after the posting of a video that was deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Insulting Ataturk is a criminal offense in Turkey.

That ban was lifted after more than two years when the content was removed from the Web site.

via Turkey Protests New Internet Filters – NYTimes.com.

May 16, 2011
IAI, Elbit selling intelligence systems to Turkey

IAI, Elbit selling intelligence systems to Turkey

Israel fears the highly sensitive technology may be passed on to a hostile third party.

15 May 11 09:49, Globes’ correspondent

Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1) and Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE:ESLT) unit El-Op Ltd. are delivering highly sensitive intelligence systems to the Turkish Air Force, Israeli daily newspaper “Maariv” reported today.

The systems will be delivered in the next few weeks to Turkey, despite the deterioration in relations between Israel and Turkey, because the contract was signed before the diplomatic crisis between the two countries following the flotilla to Gaza last year.

Israel reportedly fears that Turkey may pass on the technology behind the system to a third party, possibly a hostile country. The system can scan areas of dozens of square kilometers from a long distance even during difficult weather conditions and at night.

The contract is worth about $100 million to the Israeli companies.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on May 15, 2011

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011

via IAI, Elbit selling intelligence systems to Turkey – Globes.

May 16, 2011
Marchers protest new Turkish Web filtering rules

Marchers protest new Turkish Web filtering rules

From Yesim Comert, CNN

May 15, 2011 — Updated 2041 GMT (0441 HKT)

Thousands of Turks march Sunday in Istanbul to protest against Internet filtering regulations set to take effect in August

Thousands of Turks march Sunday in Istanbul to protest against Internet filtering regulations set to take effect in August

Istanbul (CNN) — Several thousand opponents of new Internet filtering rules, set to take effect in Turkey in August, marched in protest in Istanbul on Sunday.

Demonstrators carried signs in Turkish and English reading “Don’t touch my Internet” and “We don’t need protection,” while they chanted slogans against website censorship.

Internet users must choose among four filtering options, including family, children, domestic or standard settings, as a part of Turkey’s “Safe Internet Service.”

The regulations are designed to protect children from indecent online content, according to BTK, the prime minister’s information technology board. Critics argue that it is not clear how the filtering system will work.

The marchers stopped several times to stage brief sit-ins during the two-hour route from the Taksim Square to the end of Istiklal Street.

Organizers claimed the marcher numbered in the “thousands,” which appeared to be accurate to a CNN reporter on the scene.

The new filtering rules will be enforced beginning August 22, the government said.

A “Enemies of the Internet” report issued this month by Reporters Without Borders included Turkey on its 2011 list of “countries under surveillance.”

The BTK was “not fooling anyone when it claims to be rendering a service to Internet users by giving them a choice between a lot of restrictions and fewer restrictions,” the report said.

Turkey already blocks more than 7,000 websites, “in most cases without reference to any court,” the report said.

via Marchers protest new Turkish Web filtering rules – CNN.com.

May 16, 2011
Tiny variation in 1 gene may have led to crucial changes in human brain

Tiny variation in 1 gene may have led to crucial changes in human brain

IMAGE: On the left, the occipital region of a normal human brain is circled. On the right, the same area of the brain of a subject with mutation of LAMC3 gene is…

The human brain has yet to explain the origin of one its defining features – the deep fissures and convolutions that increase its surface area and allow for rational and abstract thoughts.

An international collaboration of scientists from the Yale School of Medicine and Turkey may have discovered humanity’s beneficiary – a tiny variation within a single gene that determines the formation of brain convolutions – they report online May 15 in the journal Nature Genetics.

A genetic analysis of a Turkish patient whose brain lacks the characteristic convolutions in part of his cerebral cortex revealed that the deformity was caused by the deletion of two genetic letters from 3 billion in the human genetic alphabet. Similar variations of the same gene, called laminin gamma3 (LAMC3), were discovered in two other patients with similar abnormalities.

“The demonstration of the fundamental role of this gene in human brain development affords us a step closer to solve the mystery of the crown jewel of creation, the cerebral cortex,” said Murat Gunel, senior author of the paper and the Nixdorff-German Professor of Neurosurgery, co-director of the Neurogenetics Program and professor of genetics and neurobiology at Yale.

The folding of the brain is seen only in mammals with larger brains, such as dolphins and apes, and is most pronounced in humans. These fissures expand the surface area of the cerebral cortex and allow for complex thought and reasoning without taking up more space in the skull. Such foldings aren’t seen in mammals such as rodents or other animals. Despite the importance of these foldings, no one has been able to explain how the brain manages to create them. The LAMC3 gene – involved in cell adhesion that plays a key role in embryonic development – may be crucial to the process.

An analysis of the gene shows that it is expressed during the embryonic period that is vital to the formation of dendrites, which form synapses or connections between brain cells. “Although the same gene is present in lower organisms with smooth brains such as mice, somehow over time, it has evolved to gain novel functions that are fundamental for human occipital cortex formation and its mutation leads to the loss of surface convolutions, a hallmark of the human brain,” Gunel said.

###

Major funding for the study was provided by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke through the Recovery Act. Several institutions from Turkey contributed to the paper. Co-lead authors of the paper were Tanyeri Barak and Kenneth Y Kwan of Yale. Other Yale authors include Angeliki Louvi, Murim Choi, Ying Zhu Saliha Yılma, Mehmet Bakırcıoğlu, Ahmet Okay Çağlayan, Ali Kemal Öztürk, Katsuhito Yasuno, Richard A Bronen, Shrikant Mane, Richard P Lifton, Nenad Šestan and Kaya Bilgüvar.

via Tiny variation in 1 gene may have led to crucial changes in human brain.

Contact: Bill Hathaway
william.hathaway@yale.edu
203-432-1322
Yale University

May 16, 2011
Thousands March in Istanbul Against Turkish Internet Censorship

Thousands of Turkish demonstrators poured into central Istanbul today to protest against the government’s Internet censorship.

Haberturk newspaper said 50,000 joined a protest centered on the city’s Taksim Square, while CNN-Turk reported “hundreds of thousands” taking to the streets in demonstrations across the country.

New regulations from Turkey’s Internet Technologies and Communications Authority set to come into effect on Aug. 22 will require Internet service providers to offer a choice of four filtering options: family, child, domestic or standard. Many websites are expected to be blocked as a result of the filtering measures, Zaman newspaper reported.

More than 600,000 people joined a Facebook page named “Internetime Dokunma!” or “Don’t Touch My Internet!” The group’s organizers say Turkish authorities have already blocked 60,000 websites.

To contact the reporter on this story: Benjamin Harvey in Ankara at bharvey11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

via Thousands March in Istanbul Against Turkish Internet Censorship – Bloomberg.

May 16, 2011
Internet use lags behind in poorest nations

In figures released this week at the Fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Istanbul, Turkey, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reported that over the past 10 years mobile connectivity in the 48 countries classed as LDCs had risen by 28 per cent, bringing increasing mobile access to almost 250 million people.

According to the ITU, the steep rise in the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) exceeds the targets previously set by the Third UN Conference on the LDCs in Brussels in 2001, which called for average telephone density in LDCs to reach at least 5 per cent by 2011.

But while mobile phone access in the world’s poorest nations has mushroomed over the past decade, the ITU warned that there are still too few Internet users in the LDCs.

“People ask me if internet penetration is really such a high priority for people who, on a daily basis, face a lack of safe drinking water, rising food prices, and a chronic shortage of health care,” said Hamadoun Toure’, the ITU Secretary-General.

“My answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ Because the Internet – and especially broadband – is an extraordinary enabler which has potential to massively expand the effective delivery of vital services, such as health care and education. Nowhere is this more important than in countries where people are chronically deprived of these services.”

With average internet penetration in LDC bloc countries having reached only 2.5 per cent in 2010, Toure’ pointed out that web access remains well below the 10 per cent target set in Brussels but expressed optimism that the trend would soon improve.

“In the past two years alone we have seen a remarkable surge in national and international bandwidth in developing countries, with several new submarine cables being landed, and new advanced technologies which can help affordably bridge the digital divide,” he said.

Identifying innovative ways to get poorer nations connected to high-speed networks will be one focus of ITU’s upcoming Global Broadband Summit in Geneva in Oct.

via Internet use lags behind in poorest nations: UN.

May 15, 2011