Tag archive: Afghanistan

Twenty-one year old Alyse Baddley recently placed an ad on Craigslist to sell her husband after twenty-two year old Kyle Baddley spent three days constantly playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 after the launch of the extremely popular first person shooter on November 8. The text of the ad stated “I am selling my 22 year old husband. He enjoys eating and playing video games all day. Easy to maintain, just feed and water every 3-5 hours.… Read More

Earlier today, Google announced that all active members of the Unites States military with a valid .mil email address can use Gmail's calling service to place calls to home completely free of charge. In order to active this feature, members of the military need to register their .mil email address with a Google account and install the voice and video Gmail plugin to get started. Once that is installed, they simply click “Call… Read More

The lives of six U.S. soldiers were saved by a modified remote-controlled truck, according to an Army officer stationed in Afghanistan. Sent to Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden back in 2007 by his brother Ernie, the toy truck was the creation of Ernie and Kevin Guy, the owner of a hobby shop in Rochester, MN. Along with sporting a desert-camouflage paint job, the truck was also mounted with a small video camera that transmitted footage to a… Read More

Hot on the heels that the United Nations now regards Internet access as a human right under freedom of expression, the New York Times reports that the U.S. State Department is helping to fund and develop methods to create shadow voice and digital communications networks that would enable citizens and dissidents to bypass repressive regimes' control and censorship of communications media and reach out to the rest of the world directly.… Read More

With the recent revolutions that swept across the Middle East, Twitter has secured a firm position as a necessary tool for any anti-government group that seeks to communicate with supporters and the media to get its message out to the world. Those anti-government groups have generally been suppressed peoples trying to break free from the strangleholds of dictatorial regimes. Until now: The Taliban has its own Twitter account, reports the… Read More

When you have free time thousands of miles from home in the middle of a desert, it takes some creativity to stay entertained. NPR recently reported a story on the donation and sharing of guitars amongst those musically inclined troops. We’ve got something a little more techie for you. A blogger at Another Limited Rebellion recently shared an awesome story about Private First Class Rupert Valero, who is using his long-standing passion for… Read More

Facebook might be many things, but few have called it a threat to national security. However, according to British newspaper The Sun, security reasons are behind a new order that could prevent troops in Afghanistan using Facebook to keep in touch with families and friends. The newspaper has said that the 'Contact With The Media and Communicating In Public' was issued February 4 and later leaked to the media. In part, it states:… Read More

New Zealand's Chris Ogle probably thought he was getting a good deal when he plunked down a little bit of money (reports range from $9 to $18) to buy a used iPod from an Oklahoma thrift outlet…but when he hooked up the iPod, he found some 60 pages of U.S. military data, including information on soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, equipment deployment lists, and mission information. Some of the information included… Read More

The much-touted One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has announced it is laying off half its staff and reducing salaries for its remaining employees, blaming the global economic downturn for the restructuring. At the same time, the program is vowing to do more with less, including spinning off the development of the Linux-based Sugar operating system to the OLPC community and working to deploy a $0 laptop for the worlds least developed… Read More

The MedAlert bracelet is a great idea, but can only carry so much information. But a former British SAS soldier has turned an idea that he used in Afghanistan into a business. Back then, he had details like his allergies stored on a memory stick that he sewed into his clothes, in case of injury. Now he’s selling the U Tag, a memory stick that looks like a dog tag, and which can be worn or attached like a fob to a keychain. The… Read More

Pakistan wants to send a message that it takes terrorism seriously&mdsah;even so-called cyber-terrorism. A new decree signed by Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes law (PDF), makes causing death through any act of cyber-terrorism punishable by death. According to a copy of the ordinance, “Whoever commits the offense of cyber-terrorism and causes death of any person shall be punishable with death… Read More

What’s in a name? Well, if your YouTube channel is called Foreign Office Presence on YouTube, you can be forgiven for thinking that it’s very little. But the clumsily-titled channel, which has been around since last September, is to have a big re-launch in March or April.   In a story in the Guardian, a spokesman said,   "There will be a total revamp of the web presence and that includes a presence on YouTube because… Read More

You might be surprised it wasn’t already the case, but now British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will have free Wi-Fi in their barracks.   That might not seem like much, but it’s a significant step forward enabling troops to stay in touch with home. The work, known as Project Mercury, is expected to be completed by next spring.   “We have hard wired computers and there is currently a ratio of one to 70 or so… Read More

We’re used to being able to blog, text and post however and whenever we want. But if you’re a member of the British armed forces, new regulations that have been quietly introduced meanyou’re no longer able to do that.   Under the new regulations, British service personnel can no longer blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play inmulti-player computer games or send text messages or… Read More

A year-long study by the OpenNet Initiative, detailed at a conference in Oxford, England, examined the practices of 41 countries to learn about online government surveillance and censorship. The results? Where five years ago only a handful of states were filtering Internet content, the study found 25 of the countries it examined were engaged in state-mandated filtering and censorship of online content, and the filtering is becoming more… Read More