Sunday, March 10, 2013

Praxis: Electronic samizdat in Cuba.

Samizdat (Russian: самизда́т; IPA: [səmɨzˈdat]) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. -- Wikipedia.
These are ammunition, too.
Cubans evade censorship by exchanging computer memory sticks, blogger says.
Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Saturday told newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that “nothing is changing” in Cuba’s ossified political system and that “the situation of press freedom in my country is calamitous.”
But Sanchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives known as memory sticks.. The small computer memories, also known as flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access to information.
“Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick,” Sanchez said, “and it is difficult for the government to intercept them. I can’t imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn’t.”
Sanchez said “these little gizmos” have “helped us a lot to pass information.”

3 comments:

GaryM said...

Next up, a CIA flash drive drop over Havana!

Anonymous said...

Freedom, like a weed, keeps popping up in the strangest places.

Jensko said...

Flash drive; The new High capactiy magazine!