Paul Jacobson

Category: Policy issues

  • Why are we abdicating responsibility online?

    Last week’s European Court of Justice ruling that Google must remove search result listings that EU citizens require it to remove (subject to their requests passing a test the court proposed) touched on a trend I’ve become increasingly concerned about: our collective reluctance to take direct responsibility for what we share online and where we […]

  • The Firefox DRM implementation – a glimmer of light

    Mozilla’s decision to implement DRM code is disappointing and Cory Doctorow’s article titled “Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart” is worth reading for his perspectives. I noticed one positive aspect of the Firefox implementation, though – There are other ways in which Mozilla’s DRM is better for user freedom than its commercial competitors’. […]

  • The ANC Abuses Its Power To Protect Its Control

    I just read an article in Mail & Guardian titled ANC at pains to silence booing and noticed this stark reminder that the ANC sees itself as synonymous with the State and has no difficulty using national intelligence agencies to retain power: At the time, ANC insiders said that a team of state intelligence operatives […]

  • PRISM, Data Driven Marketing and Why Transparency Is Essential

    Revelations about the American surveillance program called PRISM have been astounding, not so much because we have discovered that the US government has been spying on, well, everyone both within the United States and internationally, but because of the sheer scale of the program. This story initially broke on The Guardian when Glenn Greenwald reported […]

  • Chief Rabbi to Deputy Minister Ebrahim – "Do the honourable thing, resign"

    You probably read that Deputy International Relations Minister Ebrahim recently advised South Africans not to travel to Israel due to its impasse with Palestinian authorities. His statements attracted a tremendous amount of criticism from the Jewish community and Chief Rabbi Goldstein published a very pointed open letter to the Deputy Minister criticising his apparent personal […]

  • Small minds crippled South African democracy

    I’ve been reading a couple more stories both anticipating and discussing yesterday’s shameful vote to pass the Protection of State Information Bill in Parliament. There are some terrific quotes in these articles, all of which are worth reading: Times Live’s article titled “The bitter triumph of small minds”: If our parliament votes this bill into […]

  • A message for despondent LGBT youth: It Gets Better

    I came across a campaign called the It Gets Better Project which is intended to give despondent LGBT youth hope for their future. It seems to have been created after a rash of gay teen suicides recently and its a project I thought I’d mention on this blog: Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their […]

  • SA government adopts Open Document Format as standard

    The Department of Public Service and Administration has set out the requirements for what it considers to be an open standard for implementation in government departments. The document it published is called the Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) and it sets out a series of standards which government departments are required […]