the i-witnesses

Texting safe water...

In meetings about ICTs-for-development I often find activists passionately arguing that ‘the rural poor need basics like water, not gadgets’. They just don’t realise the potential of ICTs in providing basic services. 

Today, I came across an interesting website - www.textually.org - that documents different uses of mobile phones for development.

Here’s an interesting example: Columbia University’s Well Tracker project has sampled millions of wells in rural Bangladesh for arsenic contamination. Arsenic poisoning occurs naturally in about 50 per cent of private tube wells, putting people who drink the water at the risk.

Trained users, NGOs and the public can now send a text to the well tracker project’s central database to find out about the arsenic concentration of the water. Information about five million of the 8.5 million wells in Bangladesh is being stored in a database by the Bangladeshi Arsenic Mitigation and Water Supply Program.

Given that Grameen Phone has an impressive 10 million customers this means more people have access to clean and safe drinking water.

United States grabs the dot com domain

Last week the US government announced that its Department of Commerce - and not ICANN - would be the ultimate ‘decider’ of issues relating to the maintenance of the dot com domain:

“Under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding with ICANN, any changes made to the current .com Registry Agreement must be approved by the [US] Department of Commerce”

Its fact sheet goes on to explain that Verisign – the agency that deals with dot com registration, pricing and regulation – must obtain written permission from the US Department of Commerce before any amendments can be made to pricing or renewals. Verisign previously liaised directly with ICANN on such matters.

The move will be seen as a major blow to the spirit of last month’s multi-party discussions at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens. What’s more, the United States isn’t showing any signs of budging on this issue in the foreseeable future – its power has been extended indefinitely.

The significance of this shouldn’t be underestimated – the Internet Governance Project notes that dot com is the most valuable internet top level domain, accounting for about 40 per cent of the global market.

An invasion of privacy

The latest annual report from the Association for Progressive Communications includes a story that reminded me of the darker side of the information society.

It’s about a campaign in Japan against a proposed change to the Conspiracy Crime Law, which would mean that an agreement between just two people could be treated as a crime.

JCA-NET, an internet provider for Japanese NGOs – among many others – was understandably concerned. The chair of the organisation explained:

"I think it is very dangerous. [It could impact on the] online world, internet, email, telephone conversation, or conversation in houses”

Fortunately, the ruling party has given up because of strong opposition. But in many countries, including the United States, governments are still being accused of invading their citizens’ private lives.