The University of Oklahoma police department brings us a wonderful website. Easy-to-navigate and easy on the eyes, this site is made for the public. As soon as you log on, the first thing you’ll notice is the site’s police affiliation, granting it an instant ethos boost for the content it provides. Any kind of safety you can imagine is covered on this website, and they certainly cover the big ones: fire, Internet, drug and alcohol, personal, and especially for children.

First of all and most important for some people, the site is ergonomically laid out. A friendly welcome page tells you where you are and gives you a pointer on where everything is. A quick menu on the left hand side allows you to instantly access anything that you wish. So if you wanted to search by broad topic you were concerned about, say being safe and having a solid plan for a fire, you could search the “fire safety” link. Or if you are a parent or guardian and are concerned about child safety, you could click on the “kid safety” link to bulk up on strategies and techniques to keep your loved ones safer than ever.

The site includes many articles about this broad spectrum of topics. The articles are neatly organized and easy to navigate, as they are in chronological order. This eliminates the possibility of reading an article about “phishing” before you even know what it is! Once a topic that interests you from the umbrella of themes is selected, you are brought to a page that shows all of the articles in chronological order, as was aforementioned. Then you pick from the one you are most interested in and read and glean all of the pertinent and well-researched information that it has to provide. There are excellent Internet safety articles here that talk about IP addresses, and even gives information on how to use change IP proxies to change static IP addresses.

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Privacy International (From here out known as PI) is a site that serves as a “watchdog” of privacy and surveillance invasions. Verbatim from their mission statement, you know they are intense and zealous about personal privacy.

Basically, this organization monitors and keeps an eye on things that keep an eye on us, and if they step out of line, PI is there to put them back in their place. In addition to that, they hope to educate Internet goers about the dangers and precautions they need to take in their virtual homes. They also do independent research on emerging technologies and how these can be utilized to bolster the protection of individuals. They even go to different legislative bodies throughout the world and make different presentations and try to spark reform.

All of this is accomplished by a vast website that holds all of the information pertinent to their ideology and concerns. Upon entrance of the site, you instantly see articles and other sections devoted to happenings in the now around the globe related to privacy and surveillance. If you are looking to research a particular subject or area of concern, there is a convenient box in the left side of the screen that meticulously sorts all articles of a particular subject and arranges them in a neat, easy-to-access fashion. Let’s say you are interested in the fight against terrorism and new developments in it, there is a news column titled “Anti-Terrorism” that is just what you need, and there are many more for a myriad of subjects.

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As soon as you open the site http://www.rsf.org, you can tell they are here to bring the news to everyone. On their main page, you can choose to have the language of the site translated to French, English, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, and Chinese. Encompassing most of the major languages of the world, RSF is a tool of communication that tears down any barriers (even technical ones: they broadcast in RSS format for users of the service) that could bar the flow of information.

RSF (as the site will be referred to from here on) is primarily a news site, dealing with any issues that are pertinent throughout the globe., but particularly focusing on ones about freedom.

The site is very easily laid out. Some news websites can be quite convoluted, with headlines all over the screen, distracting your attention this way and that, but RSF lays their website out to be easily navigable: at the top, the major news. Near the middle, news organized by country and region. At the bottom, a “barometer”, showing journalist casualties, media assistants imprisoned, among other things to allow a quick check-up on foreign affairs. Underneath this, there is a search engine that allows you to view all things pertinent to a year, view Internet threats by country, or do an overall world report. On the side, there is merchandise to buy, and other sites the site recommends. Unlike some sites, RSF doesn’t have pop-ups touting its merchandise, and it doesn’t throw itself at you begging you to buy something.

RSF stands for “Reporter Sans Frontieres”, or, as the English speaking would say, “Reporter Without Borders.” The name follows suit with their organization; they don’t shy away from sensitive news, and won’t stop reporting just because a country doesn’t like it. They believe in Internet freedom, and demonstrate this by reporting the real news and hot topics all of the time, and not leaving anything out. Here you may find articles about the killing of journalists, or even writing protesting an oppressive leader’s habits. They take no prisoners; the way news should be. They don’t sugarcoat anything, calling Iran “the world’s biggest Internet jail”. This is true, and most news companies would have trouble coming out and saying it. The site even has a “Predators” section on its main page, which brazenly point out online predators to keep tabs on.

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Don’t be thrown off by the strange sounding name, “PogoWasRight” is a wealth of internet security and privacy information. The organization is done very well on the site: everything is listed right on the main page, and is topped off by a rotating image screen that shows the hottest news.

Instead of dealing with the convolution that log-in names and passwords bring to users, Pogo has a great system. The recent news is right on the main screen, a big search bar in the corner will allow you keyword access to a huge variety of topics.

In case you were looking for older pieces of news, Pogo has a great Archives system. This allows you to re-visit any old piece of news you were interested in, or just catch up on something you missed. Either way, it is very useful.

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