Portside

• GCHQ Captured Emails of Journalists from Top International Media – James Ball (The Guardian)
• Just How Big is the Cuban Market for US Tech? – Barb Darrow (Gigaom)
• Net Neutrality, Munibroadband and the SOTU Shout Out. – Harold Feld (Wetmachine)
• Jorge Ramos, Voice of Latino Voters on Univision, Sends Shiver Through G.O.P. -- Jackie Calmes (New York Times)
• Wikipedia Bans Five Editors from Gender-Related Articles – Alex Hern (The Guardian)
• Where Cellular Networks Don’t Exist, People Are Building Their Own – Lizzie Wade (Wired)

GCHQ Captured Emails of Journalists from Top International Media
By James Ball
January 19, 2015
The Guardian

GCHQ’s (The Government Communications Headquarters, a British intelligence and security organization) bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency.
The journalists’ communications were among 70,000 emails harvested in the space of less than 10 minutes on one day in November 2008 by one of GCHQ’s numerous taps on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet.

Just How Big is the Cuban Market for US Tech?
By Barb Darrow
January 15, 2015
Gigaom

On Thursday, the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Commerce issued orders that should make it easier for U.S. tech companies to enter the tricky Cuban market. As to how big that opportunity will be and how long it will take to develop remain big questions. The moves come about a month after President Obama signaled his intention to  open up Cuban-U.S. relations.
In the telecommunications sector, there is a new general license to ease the “establishment of commercial telecommunications facilities linking third countries and Cuba and in Cuba.” And a new general license by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) should ease the sales of “certain consumer devices, related software applications, hardware and services for communications related systems, according to the Commerce department fact sheet.

Net Neutrality, Munibroadband and the SOTU Shout Out.
By Harold Feld
January 21, 2015
Wetmachine
For all us telecom geeks out there, the big deal was the President’s rather brief shout out on network neutrality and munibroadband.
What the President was actually doing is sending a strong signal to the FCC that the White House still has their back on this, stay the course, keep on schedule for the February vote. It was also a clear message to Congress, where Republicans have pushed back against these priorities: “You know all that stuff I said in November about Title II and that stuff I said last week about munibroadband? I meant it.”

Jorge Ramos, Voice of Latino Voters on Univision, Sends Shiver Through G.O.P.
By Jackie Calmes
January 23, 2015
New York Times

Jorge Ramos, the Univision and Fusion television anchor who is often called the Walter Cronkite of Latino America, was in his suburban Miami broadcast studio when he all but pounced on the chairman of the Republican Party, Reince Priebus, who was appearing from Washington. The Republicans’ immigration policy is “deportations, deportations, deportations,” Mr. Ramos said. “Why?”
For years, Mr. Ramos largely aimed his ire at President Obama for breaking his 2008 campaign promise — made directly to Mr. Ramos — that he would propose an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in his first year in office, and for deporting two million people since.
But Mr. Ramos’s focus has changed, he said in an interview here: “Now is the turn of Republicans.” And that has some Republicans worried.

Wikipedia Bans Five Editors from Gender-Related Articles
By Alex Hern
January 23, 2015
The Guardian

Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, the highest user-run body on the site, has banned five editors from making corrections to articles about feminism, in an attempt to stop a long-running edit war over the entry on the “Gamergate controversy”.
The editors, who were all actively attempting to prevent the article from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant, were sanctioned by “arbcom” in its preliminary decision. While that may change as it is finalised, the body, known as Wikipedia’s supreme court, rarely reverses its decisions.
The sanction bars the five editors from having anything to do with any articles covering Gamergate, but also from any other article about “gender or sexuality, broadly construed”.

Where Cellular Networks Don’t Exist, People Are Building Their Own
By Lizzie Wade
January 14 2015
Wired

In the small town of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca, 90,000 of the town’s pesos—a bit over $6,000—are invested in two antennas and an open-source base station from a Canadian company called NuRAN. Yaee’s 500 citizens will, for the first time, be able to make cell phone calls from home, and for cheaper rates than almost anywhere else in Mexico.
Strategically ignored by Mexico’s major telecoms, Yaee is putting itself on the mobile communications grid with the help of a Oaxaca-based telecommunications non-profit called Rhizomatica. Its founder, Peter Bloom, is slowly but surely bringing coverage to towns that have been left out of the 21st century’s most important technological revolution.