[liberationtech] Calling all Computer Wizards at Stanford

[Brian Conley]

Hi Emad,

This sounds like a great project. My company, Small World News, supports
journalists in conflict areas, post-conflict areas, and developing
countries.

During the revolution we set up http://alive.in/egypt to assist in
translation/transcription/indexing of audio calls from Egyptian activists
and later some subtitling of video.

If you are still looking for assistance please message me off list, I can
connect you with our IT folks and see what we can do to assist you.

concerning the comment by Mr Graham-Cumming suggesting Cloudflare, I can
say that we use cloudflare on our sites and that seems to be fairly
effective at detering attacks, however I myself am concerned that it is
also effective at limiting/preventing access to the site by users in
countries prone to botnets, spam attacks, and viruses, because their
computers are, rightly or wrongly (in many cases rightly), seen as a threat
due to bad behavior and their IP address being previously blocked due to
virus activity, etc.

The last thing I'll say is, why the rush? It's a bit strange to have such a
fast deadline and be asking for assistance at the last minute. Is this
really a firm deadline or something you've created for yourself? You've got
a week until the Jan25 anniversary which, if your initial/primary focus is
Egypt is a perfectly good "high interest" launch date. I would really
caution against rushing to a deadline if its primarily out of a desire to
"get this out there ASAP."

good luck, and let us know how we might assist!

cheers

Brian


On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Emad Mekay <emekay at stanford.edu> wrote:

>
> My name is Emad Mekay. I am an Arab journalist here at Stanford as a
> Knight Journalism Fellow. I am looking for urgent technical help from
> volunteers, who believe in the right to information and transparency, to
> help us do some quick Website development on a Wikileaks project.
>
> America In Arabic News Agency, the project I am working on here, needs
> urgent help to set up a website where we could give free access to the
> public to translated Wikileaks documents related to Egypt and later on the
> rest of the Arab countries. We did some stories based on Wikileaks
> documents that revealed secrete meetings between some activist and pubic
> figures and U.S. officials. Some of them were getting U.S. government
> funding. They are now threatening us for revealing that relationship.
>
> We need the site up today or tomorrow. We are already using a private
> Wordpress site that needs some tweaking and help to make it look more
> professional and not amateurish. The features should include good
> protection, sending mails to readers, the option to pass-word protect
> stories and to later list the Wikileaks documents.
>
> We have put some stories out along with both the original leaked documents
> and the Arabic translation but were met with a campaign of intimidation in
> Egypt by very powerful people including from the wife of a former
> presidential candidate, a publisher, a presidential candidate and a member
> of the current parliament among others. Experience with wordpress would be
> great. Journalists in Egypt have been unable to make full use of the
> documents because of the intimidation campaign. Some suggested Wordpress
> but we are so busy with writing and translating and need someone to devote
> two or three hours or a total of 10 hours with the site as well.
>
> This is a time to help and push for greater transparency no matter what
> who the powerful people are. This is very very urgent and confidential.
>
> Emad
>
>
> --
> Emad Mekay
> John S. Knight Journalism Fellow
> Knight Fellowship
> Department of Communication
> Stanford University
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-- 



Brian Conley

Director, Small World News

http://smallworldnews.tv

m: 646.285.2046

Skype: brianjoelconley

public key:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE827FACCB139C9F0