The 3L Mantra to live by!

Hallam Stevens from Nanjang Technological University and I co-edited a Special Issue in First Monday , one of the first Open Access journals on the internet. The theme of this issue is " Data-driven models of governance across borders: Datafication from the local to the global." In essence, this special issue looks closely at contemporary data systems in diverse global contexts and through this set of papers, highlights the struggles we face as we negotiate efficiency and innovation with universal human rights and social inclusion. The studies presented in these essays are situated in diverse models of policy-making, governance, and/or activism across borders. Attention to big data governance in western contexts has tended to highlight how data increases state and corporate surveillance of citizens, affecting rights to privacy. By moving beyond Euro-American borders — to places such as Africa, India, China, and Singapore — we show here how data regimes are motivated ...

At the Thousand Oaks conference panel on Social responsibility of Mass Media, there was an interesting discussion about government regulation. A renowned media scholar brought up the “Google exit from China” as an example of how State regulation can indeed have dire consequences for its own population. This professor regurgitated what most media agencies have been propounding on this issue - Google left China after supposed multiple clashes with the Chinese government regarding censorship of its search engine. The Chinese people lost out and ethics won apparently: Drummond , the Senior VP, corporate development and chief legal officer of Google announced the following: We had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with...