Censorship 2.0: Shadowy forces controlling online conversations

It was perhaps a bit unfortunate, but in October, about a hundred journalists, civil rights advocates and representatives from non-governmental organisations, Internet rights activists, academics and lawyers from across Asia were gathered in Kuala Lumpur to discuss Internet rights and freedoms.
 
But while the Regional Conference on Media and Internet Freedom was an important event in itself, across town, a group of technologists, security professionals and hackers was attending a talk at the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITBSecConf 2014) that had a direct relevance on the issues being discussed at the first conference.
 
At the HITB event, Haroon Meer and his team from South African-based Thinkst, an applied research company that focuses on information security, spoke about how certain parties – whether individuals with mischief in mind, organisations with vested interests, or certain nation-states – have been using false identities to control online conversations.