Month: July 2015

As concerns continue to be raised over the potetial threat to internet neutrality posed by Facebook's aggressive roll-out of its Internet.org platform, South African telecoms operator, Telkom is proving that the public's growing distrust of big tech firms is not unfounded. Large tech firms seem only too happy to test limits of what is ethically acceptable in terms of violating personal privacy, while capitalising on the lack of consensus around what constitutes internet neutrality. Little fuss has so far been made over Telkom's recent employment of tactics that would generally be associated with illicit hacking syndicates, following the telecoms giant being caught adding JavaScript to web pages of its ISP clients via a "man-in-the-middle attack". In this week's discussion, Tefo Mohapi and I discuss this unsettling development. Given how we cannot seem to trust big tech interests to behave ethically by defending our right to privacy and security, is internet regulation the answer? Could Telkom's recent behaviour be used to validate the need for the adoption of a regulatory framework like that proposed by South Africa's Film and Publication Board some months back-- the potential unconstitutionality of which was debated in Episode 8: Is This The Worst Censorship Law Ever? Catch the biggest digital, tech and innovation news from across Africa: --Find out which Ugandan serial entrepreneur has being appointed to replace Dell's Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Elizabeth Gore as the Chair of the UN Foundation's Global Entrepreneurs Council, --Discover when Facebook will launch its shiny new Africa office and which big South African ad agency executive has been head-hunted to lead its come September 2015, and --Learn how South African mobile subscribers will soon be able to buy airtime and data using Bitcoin. Music Credits: All Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/