Afar on Alkasir - The Censorship 'Circumventor'

The "experiential travel and international culture" magazine Afar* just did a short profile on Walid Al-Saqaf, a Swedish-Yemeni journalist, techie, and TED Fellow who invented the Alkasir (meaning 'the circumventor') technology that allows people to "map and circumvent cyber-censorship of the types used in China and throughout the Middle East (or anywhere, really).

Not only does the device allow people to break through governmental firewalls on websites like Facebook and Google, but it also "creates the possibility of dynamically tracking and studying filtering patterns around the world" -i.e. track who is blocking which websites and where. -source: Middle East Youth

Part of the Alkasir team's mission is:

"to expose governments, help reformists, and through organized circumvention, enable users to access information, which is a basic human right."

It's an informative and intriguing short article, best to pick up a copy of Afar and check it out.

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*Afar is still getting the user-side of their website up and going, so I recommend the blog, particularly the (re)post on '10 Words Every Traveler Should Know,' including the Indonesian jayus and the Scottish tartle...

First image courtesy Wired magazine.