The War on Information

“Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.” — James Jesus Angleton, chief of CIA counterintelligence, 1954 – 1975 On 28/10/2013 the British Prime Minister defended the mass-surveillance programs by his intelligence services, “who do such important work to “. David Cameron criticised the publication of “damaging material” and warned that, “it […]

“We need to own the net”

“… we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has […]

Surveillance Goes Mainstream

On 06/06/2013, The Washington Post and The Guardian started publishing classified documents revealing that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of telecommunications companies and at least nine leading U.S. Internet companies: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube. Using such facilities means that audio […]

Arrested Development

No April Fool’s Day joke On April 1, 2013 Judge Richard Sullivan of an US District Court in New York / USA ruled that digital music cannot be sold second hand Digital audio files, like videos, images, texts or any other data are at the very core of computation represented by just two digits: 0 […]

KISS and Save Power

Keep It Short and Simple – KISS is the motto for presenting our information on this website. The basic text is extended with footnotes and referrals to other sources, while putting the pointer above blue text snippets [sample] lets text boxes appear containing additional facts. Speaking in IT-terms: keeping a lean system core, extensible with […]

About the Digital Divide and the Digital Dilemma

“What do we mean by an Information Society? We mean one in which human capacity is expanded, built up, nourished, and liberated, by giving people access to the tools and technologies they need, with the education and training to use them effectively.“ – Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, November 16, 2005 Committing […]

About Big Brother and the Disposition Matrix

In 1948 George Orwell’s wrote his famous novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, describing a terrifying vision of a future society where all citizens have been brainwashed into loyal subjects genuinely loving “Big Brother” – a dictator exercising absolute authority by keeping everybody under total surveillance. Today Big Brother is a synonym for the violation of privacy by […]

Johann Ludwig Krapf — in Memoriam

Today, 202 years ago, Johann Ludwig Krapf was born. He lived from 1810 to 1881 and was a German missionary in East Africa, as well as an explorer, linguist, and traveller. Largely forgotten today, he wrote the first grammar (1850) and dictionary (1882) of the Kiswahili language! Why does Krapf’s activity serve us as a guide […]

Hello World!

Welcome to the virtual location of the KUKU Trust. 🙂 In the real world our site is the city of Dar es Salaam at the East African coast. The name “Dar es Salaam” has Arabic roots and means “haven of peace”. And indeed: I have hardly met more friendly and humble people anywhere else. “Kuku”, […]