It sounds like the elections in Congo went as well as anyone could possibly expect them to. Arson closed polls in some areas of Mbuji-Mayi where Etienne Tshisekedi had urged supporters to boycott polls – they were reopened today, but voter turnout remained low, reported at 5-15% of eligible voters, in contrast with 60-80% turnout in other parts of the country.

Disabled voter casts his vote in the DRC elections. From a post on The Salon

But violence was not widespread, and blogs like The Salon are filled with pictures of people from all walks of life voting in elections that are likely to be declared free and fair.

Elections don’t come easy, especially in countries with the security and infrastructure challenges that Congo faces. Xan Rice in the Guardian reports, “Watched by 17,600 UN peacekeepers, 80,000 local police officers and 1,000 EU troops, people queued before dawn at 50,000 poll stations.”

There’s a lot of people to thank for a succesful Congolese election – and before the thanks get given out, it’s worth waiting to see whether there’s a run-off election and whether the elected government is able to take power. But after congratulating the Congolese people for embracing a chance at hope, I’d like to thank the UN.

Yes, the UN. America’s favorite whipping boy. The allegedly ineffectual talking shop that has a far better recent peacekeeping record than the US. We don’t hear a lot about the success of UN efforts here in the US:

…the successes are by definition quiet. Headlines you will never see include “Ceasefire between Ethiopia and Eritrea Holds for 476th Consecutive Day,” “Zero Killed in Cyprus,” or “East Timor Still Functioning.” Most people don’t realize just how frequently the United Nations puts itself between trigger-happy combatants around the globe: Lebanon, Cyprus, the Golan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, Namibia, Angola, El Salvador, Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Georgia, Liberia, Haiti, Tajikistan, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Côte d’Ivoire, the Congo, India and Pakistan and East Timor, just in the last 20 years. Which ones of these do most people associate with the United Nations? The ones in which U.N. troops failed to prevent disaster: Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia.

The above quote is from “Blue Man Group“, an article by Robert Lane Greene in the New Republic which is required reading for anyone griping about the UN’s ineffectuality. If Bob Gorrell had read up on UN peacekeeping, perhaps he’d have thought twice before penning this (remarkably stupid, recent) cartoon:

Gee, Bob. Just because you can’t find Congo on a map doesn’t mean the work UN peacekeepers does is worthless. In a world where the US is so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that we probably couldn’t intervene in Lebanon if we wanted to, it’s pretty useful to have a multinational force that can stabilize situations that don’t capture the attention of the “world’s policeman”… or where US intervention would worsen a bad situation.

As TheMalau notes in commenting on the image at the top of this post, “Who would have thought, 2 years ago, that we would see this wonderful image: a disabled person joining his fellow Congolese to vote for a better future. The little things like that, that is what brings me hope.” You wouldn’t have gotten the image without the UN – not only did they secure the poling places and help disarm the militias, they reported on the elections and disseminated photos like this one. The most trusted radio network in Congo, the one most trusted by Congolese voters to introduce the 33 competing presidential candidates: Radio Okapi. Oh yeah, the UN’s responsible for that too.

The UN’s got an image problem, and it’s not entirely their fault. The situations where the UN has been most effective – Sierra Leone, Liberia, DRC, East Timor, to list some recent successes – are low-media attention countries. Most globally-aware newspaper readers can’t tell you the root causes of instability in DRC… which makes it very hard to appreciate the success of peacekeeping efforts. And the UN’s missteps – including the horrific stories of UN peacekeepers exploiting children in Congo – don’t help with getting the good stories heard.

If the DRC elections continue to go smoothly, MONUC, and the UN as a whole, deserve our congratulations. Too bad the person responsible for conveying them on behalf of my nation will never do so.

• Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
  Heh.
  (tags: wikipedia funny)
• “Congo candidate calls for calm, denies cannibalism”
  Hey Reuters – I know the title’s eye-catching, but is this really the most appropriate headline for this story? And by the way, when did you stop beating your wife?
  (tags: africa drc congo media bias)
• Wired 14.08: The Laptop Crusade
  Excellent piece on Yves Béhar, industrial designer who has been working on OLPC
  (tags: olpc ict4d design)
• Reuters AlertNet – CHRONOLOGY-Recent killings in Somalia
  chronology of shootings in Somalia
  (tags: somalia africa)

My friend Atanu Dey has a requiem for the One Laptop Per Child project in India that’s as critical of the Indian government as it is of Negroponte’s project. This is a bit of a surprise, as Atanu’s past writings on the laptop initiative have compared it to efforts by makers of infant formula to talk women in the developing world out of breast-feeding. In other words, he’s not a fan.

But Atanu is most critical of what he sees as sloppy thinking, and there’s more than a little evidence that the Human Resources Development ministry engaged in some intellectual sloppiness in declaring that “any sustained use of computers may lead to a disembodied brain and bring about isolationist tendencies in social behaviour.” Interesting – I noticed the problems of disembodied brains clogging the streets of Bangalore when I was last there, causing traffic snarls as they sought to isolate themselves from each other. As Atanu notes, “I bet the good folks at the HRD ministry are not as careful when it comes to their own children playing with laptops and PCs in their government provided flats in New Delhi.”

There are, he believes, good reasons for Indians to be skeptical of the OLPC project:

Then who gets those laptops? There are, I estimate, about 100 million school-going children in India. Can we afford to buy laptops for them all? If not, who then will be favored? Will there be “reservations” for laptops so that favored religious and caste groups be given preference? Who decides? Will those in charge of handing out the laptops make a bit on the side, either directly or indirectly, through their power to deny or grant a shiny new gizmo to thousands of people. Power in the hands of people invariably corrupts them.

He also worries about maintenance, “use costs”, lost and stolen laptops. But his argument is primarily centered on “opportunity costs” – given the huge shortcomings of India’s primary and secondary education systems, what else could the money that might be spent on laptops be spent on:

Tens of millions of children don’t go to school, and of the many who do, they end up in schools that lack blackboards and in some cases even chalk. Government schools—especially in rural areas—are plagued with teacher absenteeism. The schools lack even the most rudimentary of facilities such as toilets (the lack of which is a major barrier to girl children.)

I’ve raised some of the same questions to my friends who are working on the OLPC project and have gotten a range of answers, some satisfactory, some less so. I feel pretty confident that the laptop being designed will be quite easy to repair, and that much of the repair work can be done within schools, perhaps by the children themselves. Negroponte has been very clear on the issue of ownership – laptops will be owned by children, reducing the moral hazard Atanu worries about regarding maintenance of laptops.

But the larger problem is the problem of educational priorities. For the laptop project to make sense, it needs to be in the context of widespread educational reform in developing nations. The project carries the hope that schools in developing nations can train students at the same level as schools in wealthier countries, giving students a chance to use computers at least as much as students in the north. This is a radical idea, and one that demands thinking beyond the paradigm of textbook replacement that OLPC has been using to open conversations in developing nations. Yes, the funding the laptop demands will be counterbalanced, in part, by reduced textbook costs. But embracing the potential of the project requires increasing educational spending so you can attack the problems Atanu talks about, as well as the problems of training teachers to utilize this new tool in the classroom.

I’m curious how Atanu’s evaluation of the project changes if we don’t consider a zero-sum game, but an overall increase of educational spending. (I suspect he may tell me this is unrealistic given Indian politics and economics, but what I don’t know about Indian politics could fill Wikipedia, as my Indian readers sometimes remind me… :-)

I don’t see India’s decision not to be a pilot country as fatal to the OLPC project. Nigeria is emerging as one of the countries likely to pilot the machine, though sources in Nigeria tell me it’s premature to declare “the check signed” as recent stories have implied. I think we’ll see news soon that other nations are close to signing agreements to pilot the laptop.

I’ve got high hopes that debate over the laptop will soon change from whether it is technically suited for use in developing nations (it is, certainly to a greater extent than any other machine I’ve seen at a price point below consumer devices in the US) to conversations on the sorts of issues Atanu brings up. And I hope that my friends in Cambridge will bring in interested critics like Dr. Dey to ensure they’ve got answers for the hard questions he’s asking, as well as questions like “how can we make this machine use only 2 watts of power”?

Just in case you’ve missed recent events in Somalia, let’s catch up, as events there just might start making the front pages of newspapers should Ethiopia and Islamists in Somalia start shooting at each other. (Well, okay, we know they won’t make the front pages. We can hope for A-4 though, can’t we?)

Somalia’s been without a central government since 1991, when Siad Barre – who’d taken power in 1969 in a military coup and established “cult of personality” rule – was ousted in a power struggle between clans. Somaliland – the part of Somalia which had been a British protectorate before Somalia’s unification in 1960 – declared independence and has operated more or less as an independent, unrecognized state ever since. (Historical timeline from the BBC here.)

Southern Somalia descended into clan-driven violence, exacerbated by the presence of US and UN forces who attempted first to provide relief supplies to Somali citizens and later to enforce disarmament to help build a stable nation. Disarmament efforts led to multiple violent conflicts, including the “Battle of Mogadishu” depicted in the film “Blackhawk Down”. By 1995, UN peacekeepers left Somalia having failed in their mission – some US commentators argue that the US/UN failure in Somalia have led the US to foreswear “nation-building” as an international political strategy. Former President Clinton has admitted publicly that the US failure in Somalia was one of the factors that prevented the US from forcefully intervening to prevent the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda.

Numerous attempts to form a Somali government – at least of Southern Somalia, as Puntland joined Somaliland in declaring independence in 1998 – have led to a situation where several groups claim authority over the territory. Groups of warlords – sometimes supported by Ethiopia, which has strategic interest in Somalia – have declared themselves a government, and a group of Somali exiles in Kenya built a government headed by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi.

This government – largely recognized by the international community – hasn’t been able to take control of Mogadishu, the largest city in southern Somalia. They’ve been based in Baidoa, a smaller city close to the border with Ethiopia. A few months back, news emerged that warlords in Mogadishu were uniting under the banner of the Union of Islamic Courts, which promised stability and the resolution of conflicts under an interpretation of sharia law. Concerned about the possibility that Mogadishu could become a safe haven for terrorism, the US (allagedly) backed secular warlords with clandestine funds against the UIC. This strategy backfired (in part because the warlords the US backed were widely hated) and helped cement support for the UIC, who are reported to have made Mogadishu more safe and stable, though perhaps less fun, as UIC (may or may not have) banned the watching of World Cup matches.

(A sidenote – asserting anything about events in Somalia tends to require caveats and cautions. Because Mogadishu is so dangerous, there are very few journalists on the ground. News tends to be spotty, inaccurate, contradictory and quickly changing.)

In recent weeks, the transitional government in Baidoa has been crumbling, due in part to their difficulties negotiating with the Union of Islamic Courts, which is perceived as more powerful than the Baidoa government. Twenty MPs have resigned, and a no confidence motion in Prime Minister Ghedi is scheduled for Saturday. In the meantime, the Constitution and Federalism Minister Abdallah Deerow Isaq was assasinated as he left the mosque after Friday prayers, in what may prove to be the trigger for war.

That war would likely be broader than between the two rival groups in Somalia and their aligned warlords. Ethiopia has deployed troops in support of the Baidoa government, an action bound to be viewed as provocative – some reports indicate up to 5,000 troops within Somalia and another 20,000 on the border, ready to move in. Somalia and Ethiopia have warred in the past, with a war in 1977 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Landlocked Ethiopia has looked towards Somalia for access to a port – the Ethiopian government has sought agreements with the government of Somaliland, which would give it port access. And Christian Ethiopia is viewed as being suspicious of a conversative Muslim government in Somalia.

But that’s not all – Eritrea, who Ethiopia fought a civil war with from 1998 – 2000, which resulted in 100,000 deaths – is suspected of supporting the UIC as their proxy in Somalia. (For those who believe that this all comes down to port access: the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia denied Ethiopia access to the Assab Red Sea port.) “Mystery aircraft” have been landing in Mogadishu under heavy security in the past 48 hours – the planes are evidently Ilyushin-76, which can carry massive loads of cargo. According to the BBC, “credible sources said that flight originated in Eritrea carrying anti-aircraft guns, uniforms, AK47s and several senior Eritrean officers.”

A proxy war between traditional enemies? Near the Red Sea? You don’t say?

The US and the UN have made the right noises about warning Ethiopia and Eritrea not to meddle in Somali affairs, but it’s hard to believe that either would be interested in interfering, given the difficulties of fielding a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. There’s some speculation that Ethiopia may be trying to win brownie points with the US by checking the power of the Islamists, who are led in part by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, considered an Al-Quaeda connected terrorist by the US. (Ethiopia, sullied by an increasingly repressive approach to government and crackdowns on freedom of expression, could use some positive PR in Washington.) In the meantime, the assasination of Minister Abdallah Deerow Isaq appears to have led to rioting, and it would not be surprising to see the riots bring Ethiopian – and possibly Eritrean – troops into Baidoa.

And if that happens, things could get much, much uglier very, very quickly.

My friend Sokari Ekine has an excellent overview of the situation in the DRC leading up to Sunday’s elections. She points out the complexities of the situation: less violence than anyone expected, perhaps due to the presence of 17,000 UN troops, but real concerns that some sectors of Congolese society will view the results as legitimate.

Some of the most concerning violence has centered around Jean-Pierre Bemba, one of the 33 presidential candidates in a race likely to go to Joseph Kabila, the incumbent interim President. Bemba’s party headquarters suffered a suspicious fire – some speculation ties the fire to French jets flying above Kinshasa, part of the multinational peacekeeping force. Clashes between Bemba’s supporters and police have been deadly, and observers report that Bemba’s supporters – who’ve allegedly been involved in rebel activity in the CAR – are armed with Kalishnakovs and RPGs.

One narrative of the elections in DRC is a hopeful one – a nation, torn apart by corruption and international war will be transformed by democratic elections, will see support from the global community, and will emerge as a stable, democratic heart to a rising African continent. The fact that 25 million people – more than half the population of the country – have registered to vote is an amazing achievement given the logistical obstacles to holding elections in a country almost the size of Europe with very few roads.

Another narrative is more complicated, skeptical and worrisome. It suggests that the election in fait accompli for Kabila, the coronation of a leader who originally took power as the son of an assasinated leader. The presence of UN and French troops legitimate the transition, which is likely to have some major electoral problems: possible fraud due to the massive overprinting of ballots, the influence of bordering and regional powers on the elections, widespread accusation of abuse of state power on Kabila’s part to ensure his election. Paule Bouvier and Pierre Englebert take this stance in an article on foreignpolicy.com: “In short, the DRC is likely to revert to the predatory and personal rule that has characterized so much of its history. National elections after decades of warfare and autocratic rule should be a momentous time in a country’s history; in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they will mean more of the same.”

The cynic in me tends to side with the second view, with one caveat: if DRC became a rallying point for international attention and involvement, I think the slide into “big-man” kleptocracy could be combatted. Elections in DRC should be a hopeful moment for the whole world – the chance for a nation whose instability has helped perpetuate conflicts all over the continent to move towards stability and prosperity. If global attention, assistance and aid flooded to DRC the way it did to South Africa whith the end of Apartheid, is it possible that the “more of the same” narrative could be avoided? Or is that hope – the hope for attention and aid to Congo – roughly as unlikely as hoping that Kabila will be a fraction of the leader Mandela was?

• Who killed Doha? | FP Passport
  Excellent overview of the collapse of the Doha round of trade negotiations and the implications for the developing world
  (tags: economics globalization blogs)
• Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Chinese police say activist broke own neck
  The official word on Fu Xiancai, land rights activist in China: “a six-week official inquiry has concluded that Mr Fu shattered his own vertebrae.” Nope, not government thugs with a wooden pole, attacking him for a critical interview with German televisio
  (tags: china humanrights freespeech)
• BBC NEWS | Africa | DR Congo militias lay down arms
  It’s great news that militias in Ituri are laying down arms and expressing willingness to join forces with the Congo army, but it’s less clear that people displaced by militias will be able to vote as part of the elections
  (tags: DRC congo democracy africa elections)
• How farms stymied Doha | csmonitor.com
  What killed Doha? Pressure from farm lobbies in the US, Japan
  (tags: agriculture trade globalization economics)
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Congolese voters answer your questions
  Q&A with Congolese voters in Lumumbashi
  (tags: bbc citizenmedia africa politics)
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Congo election reporters’ log: Thursday
  BBC has several reporters on the ground across DRC and is doing an excellent job of giving some of the local color prior to the elections. Their reporter’s log – not quite a blog – is a great overview of their work
  (tags: africa DRC congo blogs journalism media)
• The Salon: DRC: Countdown to elections: D-3
  Some great links from Salon of African Thought prior to the elections
  (tags: drc elections democracy blogs africa globalvoices)
• In an African Minute: Will Africa Benefit from the Rise of Personal Media?
  Excellent post from Joshua Goldstein, an American in Uganda, on personal media in Africa
  (tags: africa blogs media globalvoices)
• Zee News – HRD Ministry rejects plan panel`s idea of laptop per child
  India rejects the hundred dollar laptop: “We do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is presently following this.” On the other hand, Nigeria’s just signed up for a million…
  (tags: india olpc ict4d)
• Nigeria orders 1m OLPC laptops – Yahoo! News UK
  Nigeria places an order, writes a check for the laptop
  (tags: nigeria africa olpc ict4d)
• Foreign Policy: Seven Questions: Somalia’s Struggle
  Q&A with Craig Timberg from the Washington Post on the increasing tension in Somalia: “But in the rallies at the mosques in Mogadishu, they’re not burning American flags; they’re burning Ethiopian flags. That’s where the real, powerful public anger
  (tags: somalia ethiopia eritrea failedstate africa)
• Nokia starts tests of Wi-Fi Internet mobile calls�|�Tech&Sci�|�Technology�|�Reuters.com
  A lovely way to phase in WiFi phones – your phone switches to Wifi if you’ve got hotspot access. Otherwise, GSM. Man, I want one of these
  (tags: geek gadget telephony)
• Greetings from Airworld!
  When you’ve travelled a bit too much, a vacation in the great airports of America can seem like a good idea. At least the author has taste – loves Detroit, hates Atlanta. A lovely essay for those of us who really do love air travel. TOTH to CyrusF for the
  (tags: travel fun)

Cool events are afoot! My colleagues at Berkman are preparing for Wikimania, the annual homecoming of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia movement to discuss the future of all things wiki. It will be the first Wikimania I’ll be attending, and I appear to be moderating one or more discussions. Since I’m not actually speaking – and I feel capable of moderating, so long as I only have to do it in moderation – I’m not feeling nervous, as David Weinberger, who is giving the closing keynote, is. He’s posting his notes in progress on a wiki which means, I suspect, that you can shape the direction of his talk if you act now.

After Wikimania, there’s a daylong “unconference” on Citizen’s Media, organized by Dan Gillmor and the Center for Citizen Media, where I’ll be moderating… or unmoderating… a conversation about citizen’s media and the challenges of being heard. Should I get nervous about my immoderation, I will post my notes like David and you can help me out.

In between Wikimania and the Unconference, my sister is getting married. Yay Liz! Yay Ann-Marie! Unlike the previous two events, you’re not invited, and I probably won’t be blogging the proceedings. But it’s a cool event nevertheless.

And speaking of cool things – my friends Bill Pflegling and Minda Zetlin have published a very smart book called “The Geek Gap: Why Business And Technology Professionals Don’t Understand Each Other And Why They Need Each Other to Survive”. I thought it was so smart that I volunteered to write the introduction for it. No, I don’t get any money if you buy the book. But you should buy it anyway – it’s an excellent study of the ways geeks and suits talk past each other, and how you can improve communications between the two camps. Eweek’s got a nice article on Bill and Minda (who are married – you see, this post does all fit together!) and the idea behind the book if the concept interests you.

Derek Bambauer is spending his last hours in Cambridge – literally – giving a final presentation at the Berkman Center. The lunch ends at 1:30pm, and he’s off to Detroit at 2pm to start a new career teaching intellectual property law at Wayne State law school. For his parting shot, he previews a paper he’s writing with Phil Malone on how the law currently limits – undesirably – software security research. He’s more clear, at this stage of his research, about the problem than about its potential solution.

Testing software and internet infrastructure for bugs and weaknesses, finding potentially dangerous exploits, is, Derek suggests, exciting, intellectually engaging and important to cyber-security as a whole. (Simson Garfinkel challenges this assertion later in the discussion…) But it’s legally risky to get involved with this sort of testing – you open yourself to civil law suits with large damage awards, and to possible criminal charges that could include prison time. Derek argues that the current state of regulation is hampering the state of computer security research.

For a case study, Derek looks at Mike Lynn, a researcher for Internet Security Systems. Lynn found what was described as “the holy grail” of internet security bugs, a bug Cisco’s Internet Operating System which allowed hackers to remotely damage Cisco routers, which have a reputation for being impregnible. Lynn alerted Cisco, which issued a patch… but Cisco wasn’t strongly pushing adoption, and Lynn believed they were dragging their heels so as not to damage their reputation for security.

So Lynn decided to present his results at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas in the summer of 2005, on behalf of ISS, his employer. Cisco put strong pressure on ISS not to let Lynn make the presentation – eventually, Lynn decided to resign from ISS and make the presentation anyway. In the aftermath, Cisco threatened to sue Lynn claiming his power point presentation violated copyright by presenting snippets of copyrighted code. They further claimed that this information was a trade secret. (The copyright argument is likely entirely bogus, Derek thinks – this is a classic fair use scenario.)

Jennifer Granick acted as Lynn’s lawyer and negotiated a settlement – Lynn wouldn’t release the specific exploit code, and Cisco would drop the suit. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a “happy” outcome… though Lynn did lose his job and had his life radically transformed. Derek suggests that “you don’t need to win a case to be successful, you just need to create a chilling effect.”

A second story adds a layer of complexity to the situation: Snosoft, a team of security researchers, were trying to get Hewlett Packard to purchase their services. They discovered a buffer overflow in HP/UNIX, and another researcher published the bug they found to the Bugtraq list, along with code to use the exploit. HP responded with their full wrath, threatening criminal extortion charges. Snosoft found themselves in an unusual situation – did HP want to prevent publication of this information to protect their reputation? Or did they want to benefit from Snosoft’s discovery without compensating Snosoft for their work?

In general terms, security researchers are multiply vulnerable. They can run afoul of the DMCA, the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, intellectual property laws surrounding copyright, patents, trademark and trade secrets, and also copyright law, if reverse engineering violates the End User License Agreement. In some cases, experimenting with systems could cause vulnerability under tresspass or extortion laws. Derek argues that the safe harbors to protect this sort of exploration are insufficient – they’re narrow and untested in the courts.

And power is strongly on the side of software vendors – you’re breaking their stuff, and most judges will conclude that they’ve got a right to protect access to their property. As a result, it’s virtually impossible to get third party insurance as a software tester. There’s major legal risk without mitigating devices like insurance.

Derek acknowledges that there are debates within the security community about the details of intrusion testing. When do you let a company know you think you’ve found a vulnerability? When can you publish this information? 30, 45 days after warning the company? If Sony in installing rootkits on people’s machines, do you owe Sony anything before revealing that they’re distributing malware?

The fear Derek is trying to tackle is that security testing moves entirely underground – firms find weaknesses and sell them to the eastern european Mafia rather than reporting and publishing them. To prevent this, he explores some possibilities: making it harder for EULAs to override fair use, to prevent reverse engineering; shifting the burder on fair harbor provisions so the software companies must prove that you’re outside of fair harbor; potentially creating a trade association that allows a group of people to cooperate and ensure their activities against liability.

Much of the interesting pushback on Derek’s presentation came from Simson Garfinkel, a security researcher and world-class skeptic. He points out “some of the people who call themselves security researchers are involved with extortion” – do we want to be encouraging people to find key vulnerabilities in software when some of them are explicitly doing so as a way of threatening and extorting companies?

Instead of trying to protect people creating exploits, Simson believes we should look closely at the fact that most software licenses protect software companies from any and all liability. If Cisco could be sued due to documented limitations and failures in their software, they’d likely have a very different attitude about independent software testing and would work closely with anyone who released a bug to get it patched and limit liability.

Simson’s other interesting idea involves patenting exploits – if you’ve figured out a novel way to break software, patent it so other software testing firms need to license it from you. He admits that this certainly doesn’t stop the bad guys from using your techniques, but can create a revenue stream for folks engaged in this industry other than extortion.

It will be interesting to see where Derek goes with this – it’s not clear that the problems he sees are as clear to a critic like Simson. On the other hand, I think he’s made the case that there are instances where independent software testing is desirable, which means wrestling with these issues is likely to be worthwhile. I hope he’ll bring us up to date the next time he comes to visit from Detroit. Bon chance, Derek!

A brief pause from the serious events of the world to ask a key question:

Dude, how did Hakuho not get promoted to yokozuna?

After a slow start to his basho – two losses by day 9, Hakuho won the remainer of his bouts to finish 13-2. That last, thirteenth win wasn’t exactly a minor achievement – it was the defeat of Asashoryu in what sounds like an excellent, tense bout. And the powers that be had indicated that Hakuho would likely be promoted if he won 13 of 15 and either won the tournament or was runner-up. 13, check. Runner-up, check. Promotion, nope.

The audience thought he deserved promotion, cheering the match with great vigor. But it was not to be:

However, the Mongolian 21-year-old’s hopes of making yokozuna after only his second tournament as an ozeki were dashed by association chairman Kitanoumi, who along with other officials, confirmed that Hakuho’s promotion–and that of sekiwake Miyabiyama to ozeki–would have to wait until after September’s tournament.

“The tournament had already been decided,” Kitanoumi said in reference to Asashoryu’s triumph on Day 14. “But Hakuho did a good job chalking up 13 wins. We just want to see another tournament.”

This last comment is an interesting one – Kitanoumi is implying that Asashoryu might not have fought as hard in his final match as he would have if Hakuho had been capable of snatching the Emperor’s Cup – Asashoryu’s 17th. Given that Asa and Hakuho are countrymen – causing commentators to refer to the match as “the Battle of the Khans” – there’s additional speculation that Asa might have wanted Hakuho to have the win.

You might view this as disrespectful to Hakuho for implying that he can’t beat Asa in a fair fight – he’s 4-7, by my count, not a bad record agains the yokozuna – or to Asashoryu for suggesting that the yokozuna might throw a match. But it may just mean that Kitanoumi is a fan of Freakonomics.

One of Steven Levitt’s most discussed (though, perhaps, not one of his most read) papers is a collaboration with Mark Duggan, titled “Winning Isn’t Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling”. Quoting from the abstract:

A non-linearity in the incentive structure of promotion leads to gains from trade between wrestlers on the margin for achieving a winning record and their opponents. We show that wrestlers win a disproportionate share of the matches when they are on the margin. Increased effort can not explain the findings.

To unpack a bit: Finishing a tournament 7-8 is a lot worse than finishing 8-7. The difference between 9-6 and 8-7 is pretty minor – they’re both undistinguished winning records – while the difference between the 7-8 losing record and an 8-7 winning record can mean the difference between remaining at a high rank and being demoted, with commensurate losses in sponsorship, pay and so on. So when two rikishi face off on the 15th day, with one at 7-7 and one at 8-6, the first rikishi has a lot more on the line than the second.

Using statistical techniques I don’t even pretend to understand, Levitt and Duggan demonstrate that just sheer effort can’t explain how often the 7-7 rikishi wins those matches – they speculate that rigging takes place, observing that matches with wrestlers in the same stable show strong rigging evidence, and that rigging tends to decrease in times of increased media scrutiny.

The point in this case is that there is some part of the phenomenon attributable to increased effort. Asa is going to win the Emperor’s Cup whether he finishes 14-1 or 15-0. Hakuho, however, has lots more on the line – at 13-2, he believes he’s going to get promoted, while at 12-3, the probably won’t be. Perhaps he gives just a bit more and Asa a bit less, even if the two haven’t discussed the situation, made any agreements or chosen to consciously throw the match.

One way or another, we’ve now got a rikishi who can consistently threaten the Yokozuna… unlike the other ozeki, who largely struggled to put together barely-winning records. Whether Hakuho is promoted now or after the next tournament, it’s coming soon, and it should make sumo even more exciting to watch.

Global Voices is a finalist for a very cool journalism award – the 2006 Knight-Batten Awards for innovation in journalism. We’re in very good company, recognized alongside the Transparent Newsroom in Spokane, WA; the Washington Post’s US Congress Votes database, and other cool efforts. We appear to be the main internationally-focused entry – several of the others are focusing on local journalism, which is one of the venues in which participatory journalism has been most succesful.

On September 18th, we’ll find out whether we win the main prize – $10,000 – or one of the runner-up prizes – $1,000 each. In either case, we’ll use the money to bring more people to our annual meeting, this year held in Delhi in mid-December.

Thanks for recognizing our work, J-lab! And congrats to everyone involved with Global Voices!