streets > social platforms : the Monday Round-Up

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day! Today also happens to be Canada Book Day, which is less awesomely named but probably more exciting. After reading our Monday round-up, we strongly encourage you to celebrate with Canada and read a book, then share it with your friends.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation takes a closer look at the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), which would prevent U.S. companies from providing authoritarian regimes with surveillance equipment.
• During a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum this morning, President Obama issues an executive order that will allow U.S. officials to impose sanctions against countries that are using new technologies to carry out human rights abuses.
• Iran claims they've been successful in extracting secret data from the U.S. drone that crashed there in December.
• It's "Cyber Week" in the House of Representatives: in addition to CISPA, the House will be considering three other cybersecurity bills. James Lewis, a cybersecurity law expert, analyzes each bill's prospects.
• The Washington Post reports that the U.S.-based website Boxun, which is following the Bo Xilai scandal in China, is hit by a DDoS attack.
• Russian activists are finding old-school protests might be more effective at getting the word out than social media.
• Is your non-profit leveraging creativity well? It could be your org's greatest asset.
• FrontlineSMS has huge potential as a tool for news-sharing, as evidenced by this example from a women's news network in Sri Lanka.
• Chinese activist Ai Weiwei publishes an op-ed in the Guardian on the Internet and censorship in China.
• UniForum SA, a South African non-profit, applies for a ".africa" domain name.
• The Metropolitan Police in London releases a "neighborhood watch" smartphone app that displays images of unnamed suspects and sought-after witnesses for citizens to identify.
• Estonia, the birthplace of Skype, has experienced rapid technological growth since it broke free from the USSR in 1995.
• Softpedia interviews the co-creator of PwnedList, a website that allows you to see if your email account has been compromised.
• Three Vietnamese bloggers are arrested for posting "propaganda against the state."
• How open is your Internet? The OpenNet Initiative has created an interactive map of Internet censorship around the world.
• It turns out Iran's plan for a "halal" intranet - a complete disconnect from the World Wide Web in favor of a national intranet - was a hoax, or at least an unlikely possibility.
• Computer scientists in Ireland have developed a Firefox plugin called CipherDocs that encrypts documents in real-time - before they're synced to the Google cloud.
• Ever wonder how much data Google and Facebook have on you? The Guardian shares how to get that information.
• What exactly is a cyber weapon? (Not including death-by-cuteness YouTube videos, of course)