For the billion plus dollars Canadian tax payers paid for the recently concluded G20 and G8 summits, it would be nice if government leaders, especially our own, could have tackled the pressing issue of privacy and social media, says ITBusiness.ca blogger and technology analyst Carmi Levy.
A couple of weeks before G8 and G20 leaders flew into town and a heavily barricaded Toronto downtown core morphed into a smoldering battlefield to riot police and protesters, ITBusiness.ca kicked off a blogging contest based on the summits.
We were looking for the fastest ITBiz blogger who can whip up his or her thoughts on the upcoming event.
Levy won the top prize.
His G8 and G20 must address online privacy blog entered our Inbox within hours of the contest announcement. He also presented a fresh take on the summits by linking it to another pressing concern namely Facebook’s and Google’s increasing control of user information.
“Despite our leaders’ difficulties in making social media the new normal for government-citizen interaction, the need for our elected officials to help facilitate the transition to a Web 2.0-based economy has never been greater,” Levy wrote.
Other contest winners
Claudiu Popa, Toronto-based information security/privacy expert and CEO of Informatica Corp., and regular ITBusiness.ca blogger, took off his security hat for a moment.
His contest submission focused on communication blunders and public opinion in his piece The Toronto G8/G20 Summits: How simple security communication blunders can negatively impact public opinion.
While many columnists chose to dive into the fake lake issue, Popa took a different path.
Popa’s suggestion that organizers should have sought public feedback early on and refrain from resorting to “irritating” announcements like “passes for residents in the interdiction zone in Huntsville will be available beginning June 15” should be taken to heart by any public official or PR person.
Interdiction zone? In Hunstville? Really now.
Michael Collins, vice-president for sales of Shred-itCanada provided useful and timely data protection advice in his blog G20 Summit: Business data security in the ‘Zone’
Collin’s tips on how to protect paper-based as well as digital data will remain useful to many of our readers long after the concrete and wire fences ringing the summit area have been taken down.
Mathew Nisbet, malware data analyst for Symantec Hosted Services, gave our readers a run down on how spammers and spambot controllers are using summits in Toronto and Hunstville as a ploy for attacks.
Nisbet’s blog Targeted malware attacks increase around G8 and G20 summits should serve as ample warning to many people now scouring the Internet for images, videos and news bits about the summits.
Stay tuned for more ITBusiness.ca blogging contests this summer.