Today saw the biggest leak so far of ACTA info. Michael Geist has details on Internet and Civil Enforcement Chapters With Country Positions
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4829/125/
(discovered via boing boing)

Nathan Torkington has a summary of New Zealand's standpoint on various issues within the leaked document:
http://nathan.torkington.com/blog/2010/03/01/nz-acta-negotiation

NZ's Ministry of Economic Development has asked the public for ACTA advice

Tech Liberty NZ asks "Why do NZ citizens have to find out the NZ position in ACTA negotiations from leaked documents?"

When i get some non-work non-baby time, i'll write a real blog post on it, promise :)

Meanwhile here's the press release calling for submissions:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1003/S00028.htm

Submissions sought on Anti-Counterfeit Trade Deal
Tuesday, 2 March 2010, 2:50 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Government

Minister calls for submissions on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement

Commerce Minister Simon Power is calling for submissions on a
range of intellectual property proposals in the digital arena to help
develop the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
This is the third round of public consultations on ACTA, and New

New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development have released from documents on the ongoing ACTA negotations.
http://news.business.govt.nz/news/strategic/article/9761

Smarter people than me have read these, and found nothing new revealed.

The last round of negotiations was in Mexico - the next round of talks is right here in New Zealand.

quick recap:

ACTA (anti counterfeiting trade agreement) is a treaty currently being negotiated by the world's weathiest countries, including New Zealand. It is officially about things like stopping the fake prada handbags trade - but there's also been leaked documents showing that big media have been asked for their wishlist such as 3 strikes internet disconnection that we protested so loudly against in NZ's s92a of the Copyright act.

It would be disastrous to have stopped such New Zealand laws that give out punishment (internet termination) without trial or appeal, like the s92a did, only to have it implemented anyway via a treaty that our parliament ratifies. Now is the time to make noise.

This need to stop fake prada is so important, it's been classed as "National Security", so none of us lowly citizens are allowed to know what's actually being negotiated. This also is not standard practice for treaty negotiations to be secret.

All Official information act requests, in several countries, have been unsuccessful in finding out what they're putting into this treaty - cos, you know, national security.

The next talks are in Wellington in April - standby for more info later on citizen action.

mailing lists, twitter, facebooks abound with people setting up proxies for Iranians to use to access news media from around the world, bypass their government's attempt to block their citizens knowing what the world is saying.

If you want to help, check the #IranElection tag on twitter, and direct message any proxy you have set up to people who ask for them.

UPDATE: Twitter had scheduled some maintenance, but they're postponed this one day because of the Iranian Elections details unfolding on twitter.

UPDATE: Iranians are using these proxies to upload footage to YouTube, some of it very graphic. Here's some of latest round of police open fire on protesters.

from theHerald.co.uk

Whenever UK wants to do something horrible to their citizens, they do it to the Scottish first.

In Glasgow, we shall soon discover whether residents are comfortable with their conversations being monitored by microphones attached to the cameras. But the most intrusive surveillance is less apparent. In this information age, digital ghosts shadow us, and records are held on databases by organisa...   

More frightening is how the world has changed this century:

The surveillance is increasingly indiscriminate. No longer is intrusion confined to those causing reasonable suspicion. No longer are judges deciding when privacy can be violated: we are all suspects. Our data are recorded routinely for retrospective analysis should the authorities ever decide to take an interest. Any authorities, on any pretext.