Marouen Bloggin' his Life

If I'm not wrong, I won my first Personal Computer in the year 1991 after participating in a writing contest in french and winning the first prize. It was the famous Commodore 64 like in the picture with a tape reader and few tapes containing some games and programs such as the main Operating System (I remember only the Ninja Game I used to play with).

I miss my C64 which I had to exchange few months later to get my first PC with a mouse, The Amiga 500. Check the details of the C64 in this link

I can barely remember the details of the few times I spoke on radios. I can remember that everything started; I imagine it is the case with many Tunisians from my generation, with the interest for the international radio RTCI and the interaction with the presenters via snail mail. Many live interviews followed this beginning linked to several events I organized or subjects I was keen advocating such as the Free and Libre Open Source Software model.

I never imagined that few years later I’ll have my own “show” with a complete freedom of the topics I can present or the guests I can invite. Of course, this have to be linked to my interests and the subjects I can really present.

Few days ago, I was contacted by Radio TounesBledi team for an urgent matter they wanted to discuss with me. The matter was just an offer to take care of the English speaking program on this radio (which is broadcasting on internet from Canada). I tried to convince them that I don’t have any such experience and I never spoke in public in English (It’s a white lie). All the trust they are placing on me is based just on the content of my blog. They managed to convince me that I’ll be able to do it without even the need of an evaluation.

I had less than 14 hours to prepare the content of two hours of the “on air” program.

I managed to plan few things to speak about including of course the couchsurfing spirit (http://www.couchsurfing.com) and to include two interviews that went pretty well. Honestly I wasn’t convinced of my performance after the program but I believe that I’ll work it out in the future if I learn from my mistakes. My father, who doesn’t speak a word in English, managed to listen to the complete show from home and made an effort trying to understand what I was speaking about. My cousin who living in France told me later that she liked the program but not the “old fashion” musical selection

The program’s name is “bridging worlds”. It is scheduled for Thursdays between 3pm and 5pm (Tunis time, GMT+1). The time might change starting from the beginning of February 2008. I’ll keep you updated.

The link to listen to the radio is: http://www.radio.tounesbledi.net/live.html

I’ll talk about the radio and its amazing team again soon.

...

No I won’t talk about Jamiroquai’s Album. I want to talk about one of the best communities I discovered in London. The Couchsurfers.

Let’s be honest! What do young travellers need when they discover the world? I’ll give you the answer: A place where to spend the night (not even a bed if you have a sleeping bag) with the option of having a nice shower and change, a safe place where to leave the heavy backpacks during the day and, of course, a guide (usually a book) to tell you where to go and what to avoid (I’m used to buy the lonely planet).

How many times you take a room in a hotel and you pay an entire 24 hours for just a nap of few hours. Also, guide books are usually subjective and written by tourists without giving a local taste or vision of the area visited. What if you have a full list of local contacts you can trust and who might host you or at least meet you to give you the right tips/directions around a cup of local tea/drink.

The best solution I found for this was the couchsurfing.com website. Even with the fact that I wasn’t able to host people, I was invited to many picnics/partys/BBQs in many parks/houses in London and I met a variety of people (hosts, travellers or intruders like me). I remember also the London Calling where during one weekend I was able to meet “theoretically” a couple of hundreds of people not fearing the rain or late buses. It was amazing. All these people gave me enough confidence to start “couchsurfing” and hosting people and all my hosts and guests were so nice and very friendly.

From a southern perspective, I see this community also a good opportunity for Africans to meet travellers, learn about other cultures and improve foreign languages without having to struggle with travel expenses and visa restrictions. That’s what I call travelling without moving.

Come on guys (and girls): Join the community www.couchsurfing.com

PS: if you live in Tunisia, don’t forget to join also Tunisia Group and check out local events/meetings I’m willing to organise.

Until now, I can say that I lived in three different countries in three different ‘worlds’. I lived almost all my life in my home city, Tunis. I had my first and short stay of four month by my own in Mali (one of the poorest countries in the world). And lately, I just came back from more than a year spent doing my masters degree in London.

If I have to compare Bamako with London in terms of social relations, I would say and confirm that I never felt so lonely before going to live in Britain. I almost never feel lonely in Tunisia and enjoyed very much my life in Mali. I’ll spare you the reasons and the social analysis of the Londoners daily life (maybe I’ll do it another day) and I’ll tell you the ways I found to overcome this loneliness issue.

The first one was the meetups I found through the website http://www.meetup.com . In this website, very active especially in big cities like London, somebody can find anything (or anyone) he is interested in. From the singles gatherings to artists’ fan clubs or wine and dinners meetups, everything is there. I started just with some languages exchange meetups and international students’ gatherings always in pubs (bars). It was a good way to make friends …. but mainly foreigners. Don’t ask me where the real Londoners are, they have other interests.

The second solution was interesting at the social and the professional level. People that know me will guess that I speak about the charities. I started by joining YouthNet UK (http://www.youthnet.org) which is a charity providing software for other charities in order to manage their volunteers and volunteering opportunities. I was able to volunteer for them through two of their staff I’ve met in Tunisia (Thank you again Simon and Patrick). You see, it’s useful to have contacts 

After that, I joined also the British Computer Society (http://www.bcs.org.uk) thanks to my Nigerian colleague Boma who convinced me just by saying that all our lecturers are registered to this professional body. Later, I found it interesting but very serious for me until when I joined the Young Professional Group and I found myself in the “National Committee” helping with the students’ stream and attending the monthly or non-official meetings. I said once to one of the members “David” that what I enjoyed the most in these meetings is that nobody manages to speak slowly as do my lecturers. My English had no other choices than to improve to be able to understand their jokes. “Cheers mates!!!”.

The third solution was the CouchSurfing Community (http://www.couchsurfing.com). I’ll dedicate the next post to explain what it is.

Today I noticed something odd and worrying. It’s the first time I make a deep tour around the university of Tunis (Faculté de Tunis). I used to know the area due to the rapid-post office there. But today it was a special tour. Besides going to grab a letter I received, I wanted to buy a book. Yes a book. And guess what ….. it wasn’t so easy.

It is evident to find a business/shopping center close to any university area (Campus) which comprises so many schools and teaches thousands of students everyday. What is odd is that, while looking for the book to buy, I was able to find only ONE bookshop in that center. Not being able to find the book in French, I decided to have a tour in the center in order to find another bookshop. These are my non-accurate statistics about what I found instead: 6 coffee-shops, 1 smoky “salons de thé” (tea saloons), more than 20 copy-centers, 6 fastfood restaurants, 5 “bureaux de gravure” (CD burning shops). I’m wondering if the cyber-café is still there because I can’t see its signs anymore.

The copy-centers were full of students, with copies of book covers in the windows advertising the copies of books they have ready for “sale”: Maths, computing, accounting, law …. The “Gravure” shops advertising the last DVD of games, movies, ‘Lost’ and ‘Dr. house’ season, software packages ….

I’m not going to say that I never printed a book or bought a CD when I was student and before the democratization of the invention called “Internet”. What really makes me sad is to notice that, having a bookshop close to the university became a failing business. Tomorrow I’ll have to go downtown to one of the rare bookshops still standing the ‘cloning’ fashion.

I want to dedicate this post to our taxi driver in Rio. Luiz is an amazing guy who has the advantage of speaking English (enough to make us laugh at least) and Spanish too. He is proud of his carioca origins (native inhabitants of Rio) and who shares his love for his city. His taxi is endowed with a DVD player and 2 screens (with a remote control which freaks me out every time he uses). He started his tour with a formal touristy DVD in English language to avoid us looking at the bad weather but he never stopped speaking and showing us, by pointing with the fingers while driving, beaches, places, favelas, mountains, local girls … It was amazing to see how easy it was for him to jump from a subject to another while driving : talking about history, national and international politics, saying jokes, speaking to his colleagues over the radio and, the best part, listening to our discussions to catch any appointments or occasion to offer his services. He told us that few years ago he attended a 2-years course funded by the city council to learn English. He also has a small notepad where he used to write small sentences in Arabic and other languages I guess to astonish customers. Other ways are used for the same purpose, such as the Special Police Operations Battalion of Rio in action video in the war against Favelas’ gangs or a concert of local music or U2 (don’t ask me why U2).

Of course, in terms of planning, he was a king. He never stopped suggesting new places to visit, drinks to try, flats to rent, and even sports to try. I think there isn’t better than a taxi driver to give you a feeling of local people and their dreams and opinions.

While going to the airport, I remember asking him a lot of questions about his family, the taxes, and the cost of life in Rio. Luiz likes the fact of having his entire family living with him including his mum (he told me grandma but I think he’s wrong) and even the girlfriend of his older son who is “a good man like his father”. Luiz has even internet at home but he wasn’t able to spell exactly his email address. Later on, he gave me again his business card (for the 5th time in 2 days) and asked me to come back again with a group for a real tour in a sunny period and he will take care of us.

If one day you go to Rio, you should contact him (I don’t advise to contact him by email): Luiz Tours +55 2199456542 luistour@hotmail.com

After a long journey back from Rio to Tunis with a transit in Sao Paulo and then Milan, I needed a long rest and few real dinners (no comments about Alitalia dinners). Now I’m back to my dear laptop (I call ‘wife’ too) to write about Rio.

Rio was wonderful and charming. The only issue was that it was sunny just the day I arrived and the day I left. This is called bad luck especially when I saw the pictures of my colleagues who managed to have a good afternoon far from the atmosphere of the Internet Governance Forum. Nevertheless, as a group we managed to rent a taxi with a crazy driver (it is a compliment – I’ll dedicate the next post to him) to see what we had to see in Rio even if it was so cloudy that we were almost not able see anything.

We started the tour by going to the botanical garden which should be very beautiful but it was so cloudy and windy with a funny rain that we were not able to see it. Through the clouds we were able to see some buildings and sometimes some beaches. The next step was, a bit higher in Corcovado Mountain, Christ the Redeemer was standing proudly, facing the freezing wind and the shower of rain. The issue is that we were barely able to see him with all the clouds surrounding his huge statue. The Clouds were so low that we were not able to see other than a white landscape all around the place. That place was magic, and not only because it was one of the new seven wonders of the world, but because I can’t confirm if anyone in the group was enough Christian or even just Christian to be welcomed by Jesus himself.

The next day, the plan was to visit Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açúcar) which is also a magic place we under-evaluated at the beginning. After reaching the top, and being enough lucky to be able to see the beaches and even the Christ, we were so happy to take few picture proving that we were there. I think, when it is not cloudy, the view is worth the 25$ (35 R$) we paid. Copacabna beach was also in the plan and we stopped just to have a look at the funny statues of cows in different situations standing all along the pedestrian way. The taxi driver wanted also to point out some elements to make the difference between local girls, tourists and ... girls-like girls 

Rio, I already miss you.

Ralf Bendrath, Research Fellow, University of Bremen

The panellist presented security as a warranty for the future from a scientific perspective since he has security policies background then he reminded that total security cannot be reached. “Actual security discussions are linked to the famous national security but maybe in future IGF meetings we may discuss other issues related to cyber wars for example”. “There is between bad and good the issue of well intended actions like hacking tools which are used by administrators to monitor their networks”.

Huang Chengqing, Secretary-General, Internet Society of China, Beijing

Internet security should be included in the social agenda of governments. Two levels are suggested to study the issues of internet governance at an upper level and then a lower level including Private Sector and Civil Society to discuss the technical aspects with the help of UN and ITU which should have a bigger role in this process. “Fresh” statistics show that Spam coming from China is decreasing compared to other countries. However other problems like phishing or cyber attacks increased. Information security issues are due to the change from technical challenges to income reasons to hackers.

Marco Gercke, Professor of Criminal Law, University of Cologne

Legal standards Important and we can use for the moment what we have already. People in the room now do not share the same tools but share the same technical standards which works. Law enforcement agencies have to cooperate. We have only one international convention concerning cyber crime by the Council of Europe and signed only by 43 countries mainly developed already. No success to reach more developing countries even if the increase rate in information technology users is higher than the one in developed countries. We need more people involved in the discussion and to join the group in order to make progress in the field especially with the help of the ITU which is already organizing meetings in the area.

Lamia Chaffai, Director, Tunisia Internet Agency, Tunisia

Tunisia is trying to take profit from the electronic economy. However, this is not easy at the regional level especially with the fact that our country is the only with an alert centre to avoid being used as a relay for bigger attacks against other countries. This has to be improved at the regional level. Tunisia is trying to help other African countries to use more e-commerce by organizing regional events to enhance the security awareness.

Cristine Hoepers, Leader, Brazilian CERT

Policy, legislation and technical solutions are the main pillars of security issues. The centre of response is dealing with day to day issues and undertaking studies in the field. The studies show that some major problems have more than 20 years old. We need to think how to introduce security awareness in the minds of future engineers and explain it as a hole process not only as a technical aspect. With the cooperation required between all the actors we need also to work on preparing the next generation to reduce future problems.

Zahid Jamil, Senior Partner, Jamil & Jamil Barristers-at-Law

The Pakistani government was surprised by the use of IT in terrorism act before having the right law against such activities. The one thing we need to find is the harmonious definition of cyber crimes and the convention of the council of Europe is the only initiative for that. It’s not the mandate of the ITU to regulate the internet.

The session entitled “Security and Privacy Challenges for new Internet Applications: A Multi-stakeholder approach” during the IGF started with the presentation of the link between privacy, Technology and Globalisations by Anne Carblanc (OECD). To do so, she explained the new movement offered by new technologies, new trends in these technologies, the change of user’s and businesses and other organisations behaviour, legal policy frameworks that exists now, the limit of recent initiatives.

Joanna Shelton (Google) explained after the efforts made by Google in order to protect the privacy of their users within their services and especially by offering the option of using some of the services anonymously. She moved then to speak about the corporate social responsibility at the level of advertisement that her company is respecting. “The Users’ trust is the most important asset of Google” she added “A lot of miss information is circulated about what Google does with the information we collect”. Joanna made clear that the information collected is just technical and anonymous, used later just to improve the search results for future requests. “How do we protect the data ?” – “We are not a profiling company caring about the history of users so the storage time of data is limited”. “We are a company of engineers” she added before saying that Google has a 2-ears-cookies policy and a limited discloser of data so they do ‘never’ provide data to 3rd parties including governments and a ‘very strong’ network and security policies and architecture. At the end, she claimed that Google encourages and is keen to participate in any effort to establish global policies in the privacy area.

Simon (Privacy International)
Privacy International always believed since the beginning of internet that a catastrophe will happen sooner or later related to privacy. PI undertook few months ago a research concerning this issue at the corporate level and it appeared that Google was the worse privacy-respectful company among the 34 studied. “No communication or transparency”. A ‘bizarre’ meeting took place in Montreal after that involving these companies for the first time and was not politicized. The aim was to finally discuss the issue of privacy but what was discovered is that there isn’t any previous full understanding of the definition of the word privacy.

The next speaker also (Marie Georges - DPA) attacked smoothly companies like Google about the fake privacy-protection initiatives and compared the cookies information or search requests history to a similar analogy within libraries where keeping the list of consulted books for 2 years is inconceivable. Education and parliamentary programs are very important to explain the issue of privacy. The challenge is today to have world standards but the problem is that there are now no binding principles in the field.

Carlos (Argentina)
“The problem in Latin America is the balance between data protection and dissemination of judicial information”. The panellist gave the example after of a service provided in Argentina to consult online the previous legal cases for information needs but personal details were required to access to this service. A company started later dumping these data and publishing it online and offline and this created a breach in the privacy of citizens.

During the Q&A session, a dilemma was raised between interactivity level in web 2.0 which the aim and privacy. The moderator added that only 25% of Facebook users exploit the privacy tools.

Before coming to Rio to attend the IGF I was interviewed by a writer/reporter in order to prepare a profile of me to be published in IDRC@IGF website. I like this profile and that's why I decided to publish it also in my blog :

Name: Marouen Mraihi

Age: 27

Country: Tunisia

Main development interest: Helping to bridge the digital divide

Main reason for coming to IGF: Professional – to renew relationships and to offer a North African perspective on the issues. Personal – to identify areas where research is needed for my Ph.D thesis

3 favourite Web sites: Facebook, Google, webmanagercenter.com (first comprehensive IT, business and news site in Tunisia)

For most young Tunisians who earn a university degree in information technology, the future is easy to predict: a job in the IT field, likely in the private sector. For Marouen Mraihi, who recently completed a Masters degree in Information & Communication Technologies from Medway School of Engineering at the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom, a year spent volunteering in Africa when he was twenty-five inspired a different goal: to use his IT expertise to help disadvantaged people, especially in places where IT is barely used and has enormous potential to give communities access to knowledge and to opportunities. “I’m a geek and an activist for ICTs for development,” he says. “I’m committed to fighting the digital divide, both in my country and in my region.”

During his time in Africa, Marouen was a trainer in community wireless network workshops sponsored by the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) and IDRC in South Africa, Senegal and Morocco, and before that he was system administrator and staff trainer for the Association Municipalités du Mali in Bamako (Mali) as part of the Cyber-Volunteers program.

A life-changing experience

He admits to having no idea initially that his African experience would change his perspective on his work and indeed his life. “At the beginning it was just because I needed some volunteer experience to put on my résumé. But when I saw how I could help improve people’s lives, giving them new tools and opportunities, I felt this is what I must do.”

Back in Tunisia, Marouen continued to volunteer, this time for a charity organization that offers training in Internet and multimedia technologies. “On my own time I helped some people who couldn’t afford to pay the small fees, so I saw the digital divide. This gave me an interest in helping shape policies that can bring access to ICTs to everyone.”

This interest, and the expertise he’d gained through his education and his volunteer experiences, made him an obvious choice to attend both the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in 2003, and the second in 2005 in his home city, Tunis.

Helping shape the future

“I was very fortunate to get funding to attend as a student,” he says. “The first WSIS introduced me to the Youth Caucus, a gathering of all the youth participating in WSIS. The goal of the Caucus is to attend UN summits and to show that we’re very active and very committed, that we’re a force. It’s so important that the youth perspective is heard clearly, because something like 70% of African youth is under twenty-five. These summits are discussing our future.”

Marouen looks forward to renewing at the IGF many relationships that began with WSIS. “Many of my friends from the Middle East and North Africa will be there, and I know we will start discussions there that will continue long afterwards. I don’t expect the IGF to produce major results because the problems are big and complex. Everything will come after, through relationships. Ultimately, regional networks are how these problems will be resolved.”

Marouen also feels that being exposed at the IGF to a wealth of ideas and perspectives will help him decide on a topic for his Ph.D. thesis. “My Masters project was on how to use e-learning in charities, and now attending the IGF will be a great opportunity to renew my academic work. The timing is perfect, and I’m grateful to IDRC for giving me this opportunity.” bb

Before going further in the IGF process, I wanted to speak about the team of young researchers that I had the pleasure to be selected with and to meet in Rio. They are also supposed to blog about the IGF process and all their profiles are listed in this link

Two other Tunisian friends and bloggers Tarek and Rafik are attending the forum with different hats and reasons but it is nice to meet them again thousands of miles from our home land. .

In this session organised by the Oxford Internet Institute (among others), many speakers presented their experience/views (or the one of their organisations/companies/Countries) in the field of the management of security. More focus was dedicated to the transaction level and identity (ID) management architectures used on the online work nowadays.

Caspar Bowden, Chief Privacy Advisor EMEA Microsoft, started his speech by presenting the evolution of solutions used to check IDs online. He presented later the identity relationships in the real world where somebody shows an ID token and he is offered another one (the example of the hotel where a room key is given after presenting a passport in the reception). He presented after that a general abstraction of this model in the online world and linked it to the work of Microsoft in this area by confirming the identity of the person of the organisation in the real world and translating it into an encrypted data encapsulated in the set of ID tokens. Answering to the question of a German chap concerning the privacy, he explained the actual technical ability of interaction between several ID management web services. However, the issue of the right to use it or not remains a policy question which is a decision not only limited to the private sector. This said, Microsoft is always working on new designs for a safe transactional model in terms of privacy and liability.

According to the second panellist, Tulika Pandey, additional director in the department of Information Technology of India, many efforts were made in order to make internet banking transactions safer for end users like pushing the banks to provide softwares for customers to limit the impact of phishing with the new customers. He confirmed then that this is not enough and a lot remains to do but the costs of ID management are usually very high.

Simon Davies, founder of Privacy International presented few examples in Europe and the US of online services guaranteeing that the final services host only hashs of passwords and not the original ones. He continued by explaining that new systems are taking over slowly and electronic tokens are not the unique solution for the ID management issue. Solutions like biometrics are good if people agree with especially when they have other possibilities too. Concerning phishing, as one of the examples of ID theft, he reckon that the effort and investments spent at the policy level should be redirected to education purposes and to find technical solutions for the issue without threatening the final consumer like what some countries does. He also suggested at the end of the session a root identity system as a ‘gate keeper’ which should be set up and administrated by the governments.

I’m here, struggling with mi tie, seating among hundreds of representatives – well dressed – of several countries and international organisations, in a big conference room during the opening session of the IGF I presented in the previous post. Well, I know I have to speak a bit about Rio de Janeiro but I’ll try to do it later from my hotel room, if I find the time.

The opening ceremony and session were like a ‘défilé’ of many ministers and heads of several organisations thanking the organizers of the event before reviewing beginning of the process since when it started during one of the UN meetings in order to see how it is possible to bridge the digital divide. The most important part was when one of the representatives of the Brazilian government (I think so) asked in his short presentation the ICANN to leave the management of internet for another more open organisation under the UN wings. ICANN president spoke an hour after and avoided making any comments related to that. APC, ISOC, ICC, and many other country ministers presented also their views and values in the ICT4D field. The list of speakers is here and here

I liked also the fact that, in the agenda, Arriette, the executive director of the APC, spoke just after the actual secretary general if the ITU, Hamadoun Touré, and she managed to thank him even if, few years ago, when he was elected in this position, she wasn’t really happy with that and I remember seeing once online a long list of reasons she presented explaining here disagreement in this point. Irony of fate.

Another speech I enjoyed, as usual, the one of Adama Samassékou, who excels always in using French language to present another vision of the issues with a very positive perspective. I think that all Africans have to learn from him because wherever he goes, he gives a good image of African visions in all the international matters. .

Well, I’m pretty sure that my blog is more than upset with me because I neglected it for more than a year. I always manage to find reasons for postponing writing posts (blogging).

Now I have no reasons to do so, I’m here in Milan’s airport, ready to spend more than 7 hours waiting for my flight to Brazil. Not in the mood for reading. No interest in shopping (I never had this interest anyway). Not in the mood for eating, maybe the excitement of going to South America or the huge “Panini” offered by the generous crew of Alitalia in this morning’s flight. Fortunately, wireless internet is here to save my day and to keep me away from trying to flirt with Spanish girls behind me here even if everyone looks sleepy today. I was glad to see that the price of a 24 hours wireless internet link was just 10 euros. In Tunis’ airport, it is exactly the same price …. for just 2 hours. Well, at least, compared to the last time I saw the page of the provider (http://epay.Planet.tn/produits_wifi.asp) a year ago, only the payment method using international credit card was accepted. Now, other local methods are accepted too with the option of acquiring some vouchers offline. Good to notice that things change right here.

I forgot to answer the famous question: What am I going to in Brazil ? Well, the answer is not far from what I was talking about concerning internet differences between northern and southern countries. I had the honour and the pleasure to be selected by the IDRC (http://www.idrc.ca) to attend as a ‘young researcher’ the second Internet Governance Forum (http://www.igfbrazil2007.br) which is the second meeting (I’m tempted to use the word “round”) of discussions and debates around internet issues. These discussions started in 2004 within the framework of the World Summit on the Information Society (http://www.itu.int/wsis/ ) and continue until today after a previous meeting I missed in Athens in 2006.

In all the cases, I’ll try to do my best to write often about the discussions and especially the topic of security which I selected for many reasons I’ll explain later on.

To be continued …