Berkman event on DDOS for independent media and human rights orgs
At the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, about 40 people attended from independent media, human rights orgs, top level Facebook, Akamai, Team Cymru, etc reps. I was there because of my association with equalit.ie.
Berkman is conducting democracy projects in Nigeria and Russia. Russia is an interesting case because there's no censorship/filtering.
Chris Seguion spoke about modern ISP level security. Apparently ISPs bill for police requests, some include client IP address in webmail.
An approach was suggested to "sell" security to the public/policy makers by framing it as identity theft rather than human rights
Usually filtering is politically rather than technically managed, so there tend to be many holes in the approach.
Apparently most small organization's greatest problem isn't massive DDOS, but rather services that aren't set up to withstand even modest attacks. For example, a search function that ties a server up. Interestingly their main suggestion is that small organizations host on services like Blogger, but I can see many problems with that approach, among them sovereign legal issues, a collapsing of services and available hosting, a reduction in those included in detailed support, along with the simple corporate realities that they may just cut organizations off that are too much trouble.
Akamai's suggestions were somewhat strange, saying that it's best just to shut a host down during an extreme attack. But these may be the times when their message most needs to be spread.
Setting up on cloud servers like EC2 is an option to allow scaling up, but costs can quickly go through the roof.
One individual adamantly insisted if an organization doesn't have the technical prowess or money to do things properly, they don't deserve to be online. I think he was missing the point. Berkman suggested an insurance like approach, where many organizations pool at $10, $100, $1000 price points, but I can still see many problems for an individual organization that needs individual support or custom services.
I did like their idea of a fallback to a minimized hosted service in the event of attack, but this still calls for technical support that can pay attention to individual needs. And in fact my feeling overall was the idea of content was somewhat outdated, based on 15 year old blogging and news sites. Today people cutting and pasting stories on Facebook or mailing lists may be as important as a "content distribution network" for the organization's purposes, and comments have turned into conversations. These means need to be promoted as well as protected, since there are many inadvertent security risks to a third party widget services that recognize your login when you visit a commodity site.
Toronto 43° 39' 12.53" N, 79° 23' 2.16" W Arts Dance Person Asian Origin
Lata Pada is a Canadian choreographer and Bharatanatyam dancer of Indian descent. Pada is the Founder and Artistic Director of Sampradaya Dance Creations, a dance Company that performs South Asian dance. She is also the Founder and Director of Sampradaya Dance Academy, a leading professional dance training institution that is the only South Asian dance school in North America affiliated with the prestigious, UK-based Imperial Society for Teachers of Dancing.Pada founded the dance company in 1990 because she wanted to showcase Bharatantyam dance as an art form throughout the world.
Pada, who attended Elphinstone College in Mumbai, trained under the gurus Kalaimamani Kalyanasundaram and Padmabhushan Kalanidhi Narayanan.Pada lives in Mississauga, near Toronto. Pada married geologist Vishnu Pada when she was 17 years old.
In 1985 Lata Pada and her family decided to take an extended vacation to India. On June 23 of that year Vishnu Pada and daughters Arti and Brinda died in the bombing of Air India Flight 182. Lata Pada was not aboard since she left on an earlier date to tour India for Bharatanatyam recitals in Bangalore and across India; Lata was in Mumbai rehearsing for her tour, while her husband and daughters stayed behind in Sudbury, Ontario because Brinda was graduating from high school; afterwards the three flew on Air India 182. Lata Pada became a spokesperson for the families of the victims. After the crash she created the dance piece "Revealed By Fire" in remembrance of the incident. Pada received a master's degree in fine arts from York University in 1997.
Pada married Hari Venkatacharya in September, 2000. Venkatacharya is an entrepreneur and was Managing Director of Nytric Business Partners and is the Immediate Past President of TiE Toronto. He also serves on the Boards of the Ontario Science Centre and Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. They both met while founding the South Asian advisory committee at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1995, where they raised over $3 million Canadian dollars for Canada's first permanent South Asian Gallery.
In December 2008, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada for her contributions to the development of Bharatanatyam as a choreographer, teacher, dancer and artistic director, as well as for her commitment and support of the Indian community in Canada. Lata was also recently appointed as Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Faculty of Dance, York University, Toronto.