Chinese Propaganda: The Top 10 Tech Issues for 2019

  Rewiting history: When was the last time you watched a movie with a Chinese villain?

SYdney Morning Herald includes Chinese news in its Friday editions, cinemas like Dendy air Chinese propaganda for 15 minutes when Japanese movies like ‘Shoplifters’ are played 

SBS Australia will monitor Voice of China news, broadcast on SBS World Watch, and try to bring balance to through its own news and Mandarin radio station.

Voice of China is the merger of the Communist Party's China Central Television (CCTV), China National Radio and China Radio International as part of the ruling party's reorganisation program to gain greater control of the China message in an age of the internet and social media.

SBS Australia leaves it to audiences to judge Chinese propaganda

Huawei, Cold War and the choice Australia doesn't want to make

Defence Minister Christopher Pyne is expected to use a speech in Singapore on Monday to warn that the world can't afford to be divided into Cold War blocs.

MODERNIZATION:  China cuts down army troops by about 50%; increases size of navy, air force.

WELL, GOOD: Canada says it won’t be deterred by Chinese pressure.

Canada’s public safety minister said Friday that the country won’t be deterred by Chinese pressure after China threatened reprisals if Huawei was banned from supplying equipment for 5G networks, highlighting the growing rift between America’s neighbor and the emerging superpower.
There are accusations that the telecom giant is controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party or is required to facilitate Chinese spying. The U.S., Australia, Japan and other governments have imposed curbs on use of its technology.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Canada has been abundantly clear it will not compromise national security.
“It’s a difficult challenge but we’ll not be deterred by what we believe to be right and what we believe to be in the interests of Canada,” Goodale said.
Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to Canada, warned Thursday of repercussions if Canada bars the firm from its new 5G network.
“One of the things that is of concern in this situation is the blending of Chinese commercial interests with Chinese political positioning and consequences. That’s something that I think should be of concern to Canadians and people around the world,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

Kudos to Trudeau.

FLASHBACK: China’s Plan to Break off US Allies.

Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story The Intercept. I remember each and every one of these stories, but I’m so jaded that one debacle after another seems like the new normal.

This year the world woke up to the problems with AI everywhere


Microsoft CLO/President: By Brad Smith and The Top 10 Tech Issues for 2019 - Carol Ann Browne
“This past year we’ve addressed some of history’s most important innovations in our Today in Technology blog and video series. Our focus is always on what we can learn from the past and apply to today’s issues. Today we look back at more recent history – the past twelve months, to be exact. It was a momentous year for technology, with the phrase “Techlash” commonly used to refer not just to one but several issues which gave the public pause about the role of technology and the tech sector in people’s lives. As the calendar turns to 2019, we consider what the last year will likely mean to what will surely be an important New Year. Here’s our list of ten developments to think about…”

Ready Set Go…Wired – “Half of beinghuman, give or take, is the work we do. Pick up a shift. Care for the sick. Fix the plumbing. Audition for a part. Sometimes it’s all we think about—and fret about, especially as technology comes for our jobs. Just search “future of” and autocomplete does the rest: Do you mean “future of work”? Freaking Google, surfacing our collective anxieties yet again. Economists and organizational behaviorists and McKinsey consultants crunch the numbers and tell us, with great surety, how we’ll spend our days. The careers and callings of tomorrow will inevitably be this, certainly not that, and look at all the superefficient self-guided factory robots! While the nature of work is always changing, the AI revolution has intensified the pace and magnitude of these predictions, painting a future that seems to need our labor less and less.

How to Monitor Your Social Media Mentions: 5 Listening Tools: Social Media Examiner: “Need help monitoring your company’s mentions on social media? Looking for tools to simplify the process? In this article, you’ll discover five social media monitoring tools to help you better engage online.”

1. Enhance Customer Service: Agorapulse
2. Understand Your Customers: Awario
3. Handle a Reputation Crisis: Talkwalker Alerts
4. Identify Brand Advocates: Mention
5. Analyze Competitors: Brand24

Via Axios – PERMISSIONLESS: What It Means, How It Happened, Will it Last: “While the Internet revolution enabled “permissionless” business models in finance, entertainment & politics, such unregulated disruptors are under growing attack. From the tech sector to the White House, many object to the divisions these new actors exacerbate or the externalities they often fail to address. Efforts to reign them in marked 2018 and may define 2019. Permissionlessness may be the ultimate form of capitalism, the free-est of free markets. But as with capitalism itself, there are mounting calls for new guardrails, gatekeepers or even systemic reform.” Mehlman, a partner at one of Washington’s major lobbying firms, produces quarterly reports about the political climate. In a new 35-slide PowerPoint deck, he argues that the world has become more “permissionless” because of the diminished power of traditional gatekeepers, the information technology revolution and the broad dissatisfaction with the pace of change.


Why Walkable CBDs could make Australia richer

The Federal Government Offers a Case Study in Bad Email Tracking - EFF: “The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely. Granicus is a third-party contractor that builds communication tools to help governments engage constituents online. The company offers services for social media, websites, and email, and it boasts of serving over 4,000 federal, state, and local agencies, from the city of Oakland to the U.S. Veterans Administration to HealthCare.gov. In 2016, the company merged with GovDelivery, another government-services provider. It appears that parts of the federal government have been working with GovDelivery, now Granicus, since at least 2012. Last October, we took a closer look at some of the emails sent with Granicus’s platform, specifically those from the whitehouse.gov mailing list, which used the GovDelivery email service until very recently. The White House changed its email management platform shortly after we began our investigation for this article. However, several other agencies and many state and city governments still use Granicus as their mailing list distributors.


(Don’t) Return to Sender: How to Protect Yourself From Email Tracking - EFF: “There are a lot of different ways to track email, and different techniques can lie anywhere on the spectrum from marginally acceptable to atrocious. Responsible tracking should aggregate a minimal amount of anonymous data, similar to page hits: enough to let the sender get a sense of how well their campaign is doing without invading users’ privacy. Email tracking should always be disclosed up-front, and users should have a clear and easy way to opt out if they choose to. Lastly, organizations that track should minimize and delete user data as soon as possible according to an easy-to-understand data retention and privacy policy.