Open Source Tech Used To Monitor Afghan Election 51
chrb writes "BBC News is reporting on how the Alive in Afghanistan project is helping to oversee the Afghan elections using open-source technologies. The site was set up by Brian Conley, who is also responsible for 'Alive in Baghdad', 'Alive in Mexico', and who was arrested for filming protests in China last year. The Afghan site uses FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi to process and visualize SMS texts from Afghani citizens, allowing reports from all over the country to be rapidly collated and re-distributed globally."
hope it works (Score:1, Insightful)
i hope it works, tho somehow i doubt it will do anything even if there is a lot of corruption
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Re:hope it works (Score:5, Insightful)
Bin Laden will never be captured or killed. He's one hellava resourceful SOB. That, and he has prophet-like status among his twisted followers that will die for him.
He makes a fine Emmanuel Goldstein.
Re:hope it works (Score:4, Insightful)
Bin Laden will never be captured or killed. He's one hellava resourceful SOB. That, and he has prophet-like status among his twisted followers that will die for him.
He makes a fine Emmanuel Goldstein.
My first thought upon reading that was a pleasant "Wow. That's pretty insightful." Then I was revolted upon reviewing it and coming to the same conclusion once again. Well done (and screw you for bringing me down ;-) )
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Wait a minute - bin Laden's Jewish?
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What about dog?
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Conspiricy Theory: Bin Ladin is dead, but by keeping him "alive" in the media, it allows the Futile War to continue as planned.
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Because making a martyr of someone usually just helps their cause.
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There's another reason. Please wait while I put on my conspiracy freak hat (looks like tin-foil). The Bin Laden family have a looong-time business/social relationship with the Bush family, going back a while (Grandad Bush did oil deals with Grandpa Bin Laden). The Bin Laden name wasn't spoken after 9/11 until Secret Service verified that every Bin Laden was in the air out of the country, and safe from vigilantes. Hell, just Google the whole friggin story.
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The election is a farce, as is the Afghan government, which relies on the support of a federation of armed tribal gangs. Another fake election just like the South Vietnamese ones, held mostly to make our moron governments look good. The BBC in particular is pushing this line of bullshit, for which its members deserve to be abandoned in Afghanistan for the amusement of the locals.
Osama and his friends are long gone to Pakistan, it seems, and so the "coalition of the idiots" is now stuck in a country where ev
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You may have been modded Flamebait but I agree with you completely. The whole Afghanistan elections are a waste of time and effort. We should never have gone there.
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The election is a farce, as is the Afghan government, which relies on the support of a federation of armed tribal gangs.
Citation, please.
The Afghan Army and Police are far from perfect, however, they exist and, especially the army, are doing good work and are getting better. The police are less mature as a organization and have more problems than the army. I've been there, seen it, lived it. I will be doing all of that again soon. Can you say that?
The national government is capable of controlling both the army and police and have on occasion, reeled them in from doing stupid stuff before they do it. Again, I've lived it
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No. The answer to 9/11 was to do what the Israelis did in the case of Munich. Clandestine hunting down of those responsible to capture or kill them.
If that involved putting small assassination teams into Afghanistan, then the Aussies, Kiwis and Brits were always happy to lend out the SAS, the world's finest special forces, to do it.
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Yes.
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The story is that stabilizing Afghanistan is supposed to stop the terrorists from attacking us.
What about the idea of helping to stabilize Afghanistan for the purpose of stabilizing Afghanistan? I'd rather live in a stable country. Maybe there are some individuals in Afghanistan that feel the same.
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Alexander the Great claimed (and probably honestly believed) to bring peace, progress an
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You're main argument is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But 3 things keep me optimistic, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The US still have military bases there but every decision for day to day living is up to those people. In all other examples throughout history, when countries have conquered, they have kept control. If you want to claim that Germany, Japan, and South Korea are just US puppets, go ahead, but I highly disagree.
The other
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You can't compare them to Afghanistan. At all.
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Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
You can't compare them to Afghanistan. At all.
I didn't.
I compared what the US did (put power into the hands of the locals) to what other nations have done throughout history (keep the power for themselves).
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So why do Germany, Japan and South Korea keep you optimistic? Nothing is going to change in Afghanistan.
Even IF? ROFL! LOL! (Score:1, Redundant)
It will be a total sham and a waste of time.
Votes are being sold for $10 a pop, [csmonitor.com] nobody expects the elections to be fair [bbc.co.uk] so whoever wins election results will be contested, election ink safeguard is washable [guardian.co.uk] (then again, that may save some people's fingers [thesun.co.uk]), 13-year-olds vote [twitter.com], there are reports of people being hanged for voting [nytimes.com] and somehow Britney Spears is registered to vote [trueslant.com].
But yeah. Sure...
A map and a bunch of anonymous SMS messages will SURELY fix all that.
Gordon Brown's TED Talk (Score:2)
Re:hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
How hilarious would it be if Afghanistan ended up with a more verifiable vote than the U.S. because they used open source technology to track the election?
It doesn't matter as long as people think a) two candidates are enough, and b) they can let the ruling elite choose those candidates.
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I counted 6 presidential candidates last election and 4 different "major" parties. Also, I remember about 7-10 candidates for two of those major parties being DEMOCRATICALLY elected as the party's candidate by members of those parties. What election were you watching?
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Show me one democratic country where the two biggest parties don't get 70+% of all votes.
Sorry to disappoint you, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
How hilarious would it be if Afghanistan ended up with a more verifiable vote than the U.S. because they used open source technology to track the election?
Unless women in USA start wearing chadors (and get to vote like that) it is highly unlikely. [afpax.com]
Did Britney even vote in the US election?
Yeah, but... (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
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Well if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in.
Results or election results? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Indeed. The sole lonely single exclusively singular one force alone that supports the puppet regime in Kabul are thousands and thousands of foreign troops from the most powerful countries in the West, with their top of the notch equipment, bombs, airplanes, drones, satellites, etc.
Yet, significant portion of the country is still in control of Mujahedeen, armed w/ Kalashnikovs.
What is the difference between those two hugely mismatched sides?
One side is not afraid to die, the other - is very much afraid of it
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The terrorists are winning because they have more popular support than the US military (read: the country is filled with insane and backwards religious fanatics who think living in the stone age and raping children is the hip thing to do), which i
And, on his return to the U.S. - (Score:3, Funny)
He will be featured in either "Dead In A Seedy Hollywood Motel : Hookers And Blow" or "Dead In Detroit : I Met The Ethnic Equality Paradigm And Didn't Survive".
Does it (Score:1, Funny)
come with BombBlock Plus?
Alive in... (Score:1)
Used to Monitor? (Score:1, Funny)
What are they running now?
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It's limited to 3 candidates and the CALs for voters are sold separately.
Good Products (Score:4, Interesting)
It's unfortunate that this entire thread appears to be about the politics of this situation and none about the tech. Ushahidi is the work of Erik Hersman [whiteafrican.com] and the folks at Afrigadget [afrigadget.com]. I've been fortunate enough to hang out with Erik some and he's a really cool guy with some amazing ideas around tech and the developing world (specifically Africa in his case but they are applicable in many other settings.) If you are on twitter he's worth following - @whiteafrican [twitter.com]
And FrontlineSMS has been getting great press lately as people have been getting more and more creative in its use. It is producing great results in first world countries as well as the developing world. What I find exciting though is that in the FrontlineSMS forums one meets developers that are helpful and even if they can't solve a persons problem, the code is all open and others are welcome to add the functionality they need. This is huge for the NGOs that they are able to get tools they need at little or no cost while at the same time not getting stuck with vendor lock in that limits their options. And it's a great tool.
Every so often we have an ask slashdot about how tech types can give back. FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi are two great examples of projects that are out their doing it in a big way and provide a great opportunity for geeks to get on board. If you are really hung up on worrying about Afghanistan, go to the sites of both and see all the other places they are being used in meaningful ways to make people's lives better.
article is overly optimistic (Score:2)
The article overestimates the effectiveness of this kind of monitoring. That's not to say it won't help to make the election fair, but it can only deal with certain kinds of problems, such as overt intimidation of voters at the polls. It has no effect on what takes place out of view: tampering with voting machines, throwing out ballots, false counting, false reporting of the count, intimidation of voters away from the polls, and intimidation of candidates.