Tharoor, Twitter And Controversies

Oops @ShashiTharoor has done it again! Does he serenade controversies or controversies have ways of seeking him out ?

I believe it is a little bit of both. For over-excited media channels vying with each other for TRPs, a candid Shashi Tharoor on a promiscuously open platform like Twitter, it is a wet dream and there is no way they could miss such golden opportunities to manufacture news. In this instance too the controversy couldn't have started without the media's active contribution. But then those were not verbal statements that were then put in words by a reporter to mean differently,the minister had tweeted them and they are still there for the whole world to see. How could he then have been quoted out of context ?

Well, the media is seldom neutral while reporting news , it tends to be far more judgmental and passionate, even to the point of being untruthful. In almost every instance of news reporting, the facts,allegations are never served in isolation but are packaged with the opinion of the journalist, which again  is influenced by her/his craving for sensationalism. This exactly isn't a secret, media's penchant for sensationalizing even the most drab story is very well-known but in Tharoor's case, Twitter seems to be a recurring factor. Twitter is just another platform, if at all Shashi Tharoor's statements were objectionable, they could have been made anywhere! In fact,  it is Tharoor's questioning of the Home Ministry's visa restriction policy that has stirred this controversy, why is "Twitter" emphasized and hyphenated with Tharoor on all news channels and print media ?

 This may be because the media and the government both have issues with a Minister of State airing his views on an open forum. Had he given the same statement to a handful of reporters, these very words might have sounded "refreshing"and the media could have hailed him but to devoid the media agencies from raking the moolahs is not something the latter can forgive or overlook. No wonder, at least one notable journalist, who also heads a television channel has gone on record criticizing the Minister for his twittering ways. Ironically, he himself did it on Twitter.

Apparently the government in general and Shashi Tharoor's boss and the Home Ministry in particular are not at all happy. It is not about going against own government, Tharoor as the Minister of State for External Affairs was merely cautioning against implementation of a stricter visa policy which were not taken well by several important countries. As such he was doing his job but what has annoyed a lot of people is the platform he chose. According to them, governmental policies are too sacrosanct to be even exposed to common folks' perception.



What does a career diplomat like Shashi Tharoor know on foreign policy making ? India is a democracy but that should be restricted to voting only! Once the ballot has been cast and a government is in place the people should go back to their toils leaving things like laws and policies solely in the discretion of the on the ruling elite, of course they can later be used during future electoral campaigns but till then the public have no right to know anything about the policies, at least not from the minister himself ! 

http://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/7064122644

Posted By Danish 4:37 AM

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Cyber-Warfare And Mercenaries on the Web

Iranian Cyber Army hacking and defacing Twitter may be part of a broader strategy of the Iranian government and military to control the flow of information from its own territories as well as information directed at it from external sources.This is the contention of a Techcrunch article which has also been published in Washington Post.

If you are an active Social Web user then you must already know about the role Twitter played during the post-election turmoil in Iran. Not only was it the main service for communication among the protesters and the primary source of news coming out from Iran but it was also the platform on which a major social media campaign was launched to mobilize public opinion against the Iranian regime. Although,it was supposed to be a campaign by Iranians anti- government protesters, the West's involvement was quite conspicuous. As a matter of fact US administration intervened and Twitter rescheduled its maintenance downtime in view of the volatile conditions in Iran. I had posted my observations on this development in one of my previous blog entry, please check out (Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?). This campaign was seen by Iran as an attempt by the West to exploit political turmoil in the region to destabilize the state. Thus, this latest attack and defacement can be seen as a retaliation.

However, the Techcrunch article goes on to hint that the attack may have been launched as part of a much larger plan!  Apparently, Iran has on Friday said that it is creating more efficient centrifuges that can be used in its nuclear plan by 2011. This and other reports like Iraq  accusing Iranian forces infiltrating into its territory are being seen as part of a larger diplomatic offensive ahead of the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. The cyber attack on Twitter as well as some other anti-government sites could be politically motivated to send a message to the West that Iran is capable of engaging the adversary in cyber warfare too. This message would sound far more ominous when we look at the conflict from the prism of asymmetric warfare.

Only time can tell how accurate this speculation is, but i myself have little doubt that the internet is fast becoming an arena of political games; games that go beyond mere propaganda campaigns,crowdsourced diplomacy to system disruption through Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In one of my earlier posts ( Is Cyber-Warfare On Social Web same as Terrorism  ) i have discussed how politically motivated attacks and nation-states conflicts spilling over to the internet are affecting the common users, this could be another instance of it. However, it is not really clear if this group called Iranian Cyber Army is indeed a government supported group or just another group of nationalistic individuals acting on their own accord but with the tacit approval of the Iranian government. The flaw in the argument is that an hitherto unknown group of hackers, taking down Twitter may hardly procure any bargaining power for the Iranian regime! No doubt Iran is actively pursuing its nuclear program as well as cyber-warfare capability, but why should the US and EU concede any  ground to it because it could take down a popular micro-blogging site ? From another perspective, it is quite possible that this news report may be part of the social media campaign against the Iranian regime that has been going  for quite sometime.

Posted By Danish 3:20 PM

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