I have his talk and the Q&A that followed embedded and linked below. First though are my initial impressions recorded at the end of the night.
(Skip to the three embeds & ogg links below if you want to hear Richard Stallman’s talk.)
Richard Stallman’s talk
Part One
Part Two
Part Three (Q & A)
If you need these audio clips in OGG right click and download from here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
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I had recorded this audio as a second thought and would like to thank Mark Cotton for cleaning, editing, dissecting and converting the files to OGG. He really knows his audio. I’d recommend him to anyone who needs audio services.
The guy sat next to me on the train on the way into London was busily beavering away, coincidentally on web security with local governments. It said so
on his paperwork.
A serendipitous start to the London Conference on Cyberspace.
The high security meant that press access was limited to a few upstairs on the first day. Everyone else had to use the press room facilities and book the various spaces to do interviews. The coffee was pretty dire.
The Abbey could be seen from one window. I was pretty amazed at the diversity of people from all round the world. Over 60 countries in this one space. All pretty much wanting the same thing. There are different motives for sure, but seeing the conversation inside the conference center, balanced with those watching the streams from the comfort of home gave me hope that in the long run the right decisions will be made.
Mainly i think because the internet evoles too fast for any non-native generation to have an impact. I doubt we can change it with legislation, only with use. The conversation has been started. Just getting these people in the same place was the hard bit. I heard that all the organising for the event happened in 6 weeks. In the upper levels the kids were talking sense and making plans. I’ve a feeling they know it will be their internet in the not to distant future. Not necessarily something to master. Something to grow with and understand.
Mobile Images from The London Conference on Cyberspace
Much of day one at the conference appeared to be about discussing what benefits the internet is bringing to a wide range of societies. I felt it was a reminder for some that had come with only security on their mind. William Hague sang the praises of social media and how in some places it was building bridges between governments and individual citizens. “It allows the exchange of ideas between people who otherwise never would meet,” he said.
I felt the room was full of people who otherwise might not have met. I could also see a couple of the more closed regimes squirm a little in their seats.
Many of the conversations I would have liked to have shared never came to be, as I respected some people’s request to talk off the record. I also reminded them that it is this very privilege I would like to see preserved and in some places re-introduced on the web. Or as they were so keen to call it.. Cyberspace.
@Pete_Gilbert responded to the blog post with “Maybe its a microcell that they have brought in to extend coverage during the event and it hasn’t been registered correctly at the new location, or has been brought from Zurich where it was last used and then not reconfigured.”
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Now Ahmed Ashour from @AJTalk talking at #LondonCyber they are also on @AJTaklEng
The translating headsets worked seamlessly and really made the conversation flow. This helped me to translate a few quotes from other languages into twitter.
The talks and panels came thick and fast. It was a little hard to keep up with the flow of information and comment. Even for us multi tasking savvy internet users.
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#LondonCyber speaker says we will have a “Government structure for the international exchange of knowledge & information” in less than 2yrs.
Some of the conversation in the room would reference online and offline as in cyberspace and in the real world. With many people using mobile devices now there is no difference. The internet is the real world.
There are two more of these events scheduled to cover this massive topic over the next couple of years. What will the internet look like then? Who knows.
I’m pretty sure that with more widespread use of ipv6 and mobile internet access exploding across the developing world. We will certainly be in a different place. We may even have come to realise that the internet is just a tool not a wormhole to another dimension. Like i say, the internet is the real world and it’s up to us to make it the best world we can.
I have a sneaking feeling though that there will always be crime in cyberspace, just like there is always crime in physical space. Not only because it’s the same place but because it’s the same people.
The best we can do is lead by example. Wherever you are on the planet. Government or private citizen. If you have them, protect your freedoms, if you don’t, fight for them. But above all.. Be good.
I guess it was bound to happen.. There I was happily tweeting away (on twitter obviously) and @jopkinstold me something was up with my site.. I myself tweeted what had happened and @loudmouthman of Reduced Hackers was as ever the most easy to hear over the twitter static.
He told me to call him and I did immediately. Less than eight minutes later my site was back up and Nik had fixed it in the simplest of ways by first assessing all of the possibilities and then simply dropping a new index.php file onto my server.
He gave me some invaluable tips on how to protect myself in different ways from other possible attacks and did all of this whilst simultaneously dealing with a client in another part of the UK!
I have changed all of my passwords that could have been compromised but we won’t know for sure how they got in until we get the log files back from www.nxs.nl. Needless to say I have backed up again and realise i am more than a little lucky. Lucky because in about ten years of having websites this is only the second time that this has happened.. The first time was a nightmare. The difference now, is that with a single tweet, an expert like Nik came to the rescue and sorted it out in around half an hour.
Nik is also the reason I have a Drobo sitting under the desk humming away casually backing up all of my data to protect against just such an event like this.
Not wanting to give him too much advertisement, the hacker is Turkish and had placed a page protesting against what he was calling.. ’Stop Bush Crusade II’. I am wondering if I was targeted as @Delboydare suggested because I have a short photo piece on Kurdistan.. We may never know.
Thanks to all of the other Twitterati that came to my aid with advice and suggestions as to what may have happened and how to sort it. There is a massive writhing beast of knowledge and skill out there in the collective mind.
We are connected.. with our fingers on the keyboards and our eyes fixed to screens.. It is almost as if the technology were grafted to our beings. We are the Twitter Borg.
[Check back in a little while and we may know more about how they got in to the site in the first place.]
