In The News

Iraq War Logs: UN Calls on Obama to Investigate Human Rights Abuses

David Batty, Jamie Doward October 25, 2010
After the online release of nearly 400,000 documents from the Iraq War, the UN's chief investigator on torture has called for an investigation. Notably the documents reveal a higher number of civilian deaths than admitted publicly by the US military; chaos with military reliance on security contractors; and increasing Iranian influence in Iraq. Individual soldiers reported incidents of abuse...

Online Technology Challenges Censors – Part I

Johan Lagerkvist October 22, 2010
When the internet arrived, China eagerly grasped the tool for joining global business, connecting its citizens and influencing attitudes. But China now finds that it’s impossible for any nation to both use the internet to influence the globe and restrict messages to a single ideology. This two-part YaleGlobal series examines the challenges awaiting those who strive for censorship. In the first...

The Whistleblowers: Is WikiLeaks a Blessing or Curse for Democracy?

John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach July 29, 2010
Wikileaks posted more than 91,000 internal US military documents online – unleashing debate about an unpopular war, secrecy and media, technology, whistle-blowing, and whether the release is courageous exposure or a dire security threat. WikiLeaks.org publishes leaked documents deemed secret by companies and governments. Documents titled the Afghan War Diary are archived into 100 categories as...

Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site

Noam Cohen, Brian Stelter April 8, 2010
The recent release of a video showing the killing of two Reuters' employees in Iraq by the web site Wikileaks shows how power is shifting to new sources in the age of global interconnectedness. Reuters had tried for several years to obtain the video from the Pentagon through Freedom of Information request without success. Wikileaks, which is a voluntary organization with a political agenda...

Whatever Will Be Will Be Free on Internet

Steve Lohr September 20, 2003
After Napster, the first Internet music sharing network, was closed down by the recording industry three years ago, people in the industry were expecting some peace, but they were wrong – new software such as KaZaA and Morpheus, even better designed, emerged and were soon on computers across the globe. Now the recording industry has decided to make individual file sharers its targets. This has...