25 November: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

The United Nations General Assembly has designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Resolution 54/134). The premise of the day is to raise awareness of the fact that women around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence; furthermore, one of the aims of the day is to highlight that the scale and true nature of the issue is often hidden. For 2013, the official Theme framed by the UN Secretary-General’s campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women, is Orange the World in 16 Days.

Historically, the date is based on date of the 1960 assassination of the three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic; the killings were ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930–1961). In 1981, activists marked November 25 as a day to combat and raise awareness of violence against women more broadly; on December 17, 1999, the date received its official United Nations (UN) resolution.

Definition of Violence Against Women

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was adopted without vote by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 48/104 of 20 December 1993. Contained within it is the recognition of “the urgent need for the universal application to women of the rights and principles with regard to equality, security, liberty, integrity and dignity of all human beings”. The resolution is often seen as complementary to, and a strengthening of, the work of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women[3] and Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. It recalls and embodies the same rights and principles as those enshrined in such instruments as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 1 and 2 provide the most widely used definition of violence against women. As a consequence of the resolution, in 1999, the General Assembly, led by the representative from the Dominican Republic, designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.Articles 1 and 2 of the resolution provide the most widely used definition of violence against women.

Article One:
For the purposes of this Declaration, the term “violence against women” means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

Article Two:
Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following:
(a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;
(b) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;
(c) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.

Source: Wikipedia.

Facts and Figures

Violence against women is a human rights violation.
Violence against women is a consequence of discrimination against women, in law and also in practice, and of persisting inequalities between men and women.
Violence against women impacts on, and impedes, progress in many areas, including poverty eradication, combating HIV/AIDS, and peace and security.
Violence against women and girls is not inevitable. Prevention is possible and essential.
Violence against women continues to be a global pandemic. Up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime.
Between 500,000 to 2 million people are trafficked annually into situations including prostitution, forced labour, slavery or servitude, according to estimates. Women and girls account for about 80 per cent of the detected victims.
It is estimated that more than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM/C, mainly in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries.
The cost of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceeds $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion is for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion.

Source: https://www.un.org/en/events/endviolenceday/

Orange the World in 16 Days!

The Secretary General’s Campaign UNITE to End Violence Against Women has proclaimed the 25th of each month Orange Day. Among other actions, the Orange Day invites us to wear something orange to highlight its calls for the eradication of violence against women without reservation, equivocation or delay.

This year, the UNITE Campaign is extending Orange Day to 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, starting November 25, International Day to End Violence Against Women, through December 10, Human Rights Day. The date of November 25 was chosen to commemorate the Mirabal sisters, three political activists Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) ordered brutally assassinate in 1960. #orangeurworld

Read more: http://endviolence.un.org/orangeday.shtml.

iDiots

iDiots is a short story by Big Lazy Robot VFX, who mocks, somehow, our obsession with gadgets and apps, through small robots as interesting metaphor for users. Are we all iDiots? Big Lazy Robot VFX says about the video:

“It’s not a secret we love robots here at BLR, so we wanted them to be the heroes in our latest promo clip. Luxury cars with powerful engines to drive through roads under severe speed restrictions, cable TV that allows us to pay to watch all kind of sports, all from our comfortable sofa, and of course, hyper expensive cell phones that do almost everything but making a decent phone call.

Yes, our happiness is based on things we don’t need and governed by entities we don’t control, so what? Sit down and turn on the tv!

The robots were taken from real Japanese robot model kits, and they now hold a privileged position in our freak museum. The bad guy spits real smoke out of its mouth! The environment is made of cardboard houses that were integrated with the help of camera tweaks. It all serves to the purpose of creating a dumb homogeneous atmosphere in which we’re defined by what we’ve got, that is, the same lame things.

Don’t take the message too seriously. This is a promo video we’ve done to laugh at ourselves. We all have an i-diot inside, and it’s so fun!”

I don’t know if it’s really funny but the robots are so cute. The worst fool is that one who laughs from his own disgrace… Enjoy. Or not.

Yes We Scan!

To read more about the U.S. spy programs click here.

The novel of the denunciations about privacy invasion promoted by the security agencies of the United States – I meant NSA – against world authorities as President of Brazil Dilma Houssef, Prime Minister of Germany Angela Merkel, among others persons and corporations as Brazilian Petrobras – in addition to data capture of millions Internet users around the world wins every day new chapters.

What is so interesting to read in a pie recipe emailed by a housewife from Rome to his friend in Tokyo? Or why agents are so interested in reading the comments posted on Facebook by a teenager from Toronto on the last episode of The Walking Dead? In the name of national security, the United States once again are promoting a witch hunt as it happened in the 50s, this time in the virtual world?

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

Reblogged from The Washington Post website on 30 October 2013:

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

In this slide from a National Security Agency presentation on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where user data resides. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies. In a statement, the NSA said it is “focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only.”

“NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons — minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention, and dissemination,” it said. In a statement, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the company has “long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping” and has not provided the government with access to its systems. “We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” he said.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said, “We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.”

Under PRISM, the NSA gathers huge volumes of online communications records by legally compelling U.S. technology companies, including Yahoo and Google, to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. That program, which was first disclosed by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper in Britain, is authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and overseen by the Foreign ­Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

How the NSA’s MUSCULAR program collects too much data from Yahoo and Google

This document is an excerpt from Special Source Operations Weekly, an internal National Security Agency publication dated March 14, 2013. It describes a common NSA problem of collecting too much information – and how the agency is attempting to control it. The details:

WINDSTOP
A joint program of the NSA and its British counterpart, the General Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

REL USA, GBR
The information in this briefing is intended only for U.S. and British intelligence sharing.

MUSCULAR
This is the cover name for a WINDSTOP operation to intercept data traffic from the private links connecting Yahoo and Google servers, among others. The access point is known as DS‐200B, which is outside the United States. It relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider to offer secret access to a cable or switch through which the Google and Yahoo traffic passes.

SPEAKER’S NOTE
The following text is used by the person who gives the presentation to an audience. It describes proposed improvements in the filtering of intercepted Yahoo data traffic.

BLUF
“Bottom line up front”: A request to collect less data from Yahoo sources, noting that numerous analysts from the NSA’s Analysis and Production directorate have complained that the MUSCULAR program produces too much data, much of it with low intelligence value.

PINWALE
NSA’s primary storage, search, and retrieval system for intercepted text such as e-mail and chat contents.

DEMULTIPLEXER
Also known as “demux,” a process of separating unrelated data streams that travel in a package over the Internet.

SSO
Special Source Operations, the NSA group that obtains secret access to facilities run by “private sector partners”.

How the NSA is infiltrating private networks

The NSA, working with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), secretly taps into the internal networks of Yahoo and Google, the two biggest Internet companies by overall data traffic. The operation intercepts information flowing between the enormous data centers that those companies maintain around the world. In general, Google and Yahoo use privately owned or leased lines to synchronize their data centers. This graphic shows how the NSA and GCHQ break into those internal networks, using Google’s as an example. Less is known about Yahoo’s networks, but the NSA operations are thought to be similar.