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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 695 posts.
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Dear Mozilla, stop watching me
I have signed the StopWatching.Us letter today. I am not a US citizen, so even if the letter succeeds, I don’t think my privacy will improve substantially. But at least I did something.
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The Snowden Principle
At the heart of Edward Snowden's decision to expose the NSA's massive phone and Internet spying programs was a fundamental belief in the people's right-to-know. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," he …
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Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped
Chris Hayes of MSNBC reminds us that the good guys and bad guys of history are not entirely clear as they're happening. Heather Parton of digsby blog passes along a transcript of his recent...
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Watch 2013 Barack Obama Debate 2006 Joe Biden Over NSA Surveillance [video]
After a leaked FISA court document revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is vacuuming up private data on millions of innocent Americans by collecting all the phone records of Verizon customers, President Obama responded by saying "let's have a debate" about the scope of US surveillance...
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Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests
We’re pleased that we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests including FISA as well as National Security Letters.
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57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents
There is little public support for the sweeping and unaccountable nature of the National Security Agency surveillance program along with concerns about how the data will be used.Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide believe it is likely the NSA data will be used by other government agencies to harass…
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Members of Congress Go Silent Over Prior False Testimony On Surveillance
The Republican and Democratic parties have achieved a bipartisan purpose in uniting against the public’s need to know about massive surveillance programs and the need to redefine privacy in a…
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The Destruction of the Web
Search engine spam was invented the moment search engines started to be good enough to send significant volumes of traffic to websites based on keyword searches.
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German Parliament says: Stop Granting Software Patents
The German Parliament, the Bundestag, has introduced a joint motion against software patents. The resolution urges the German government to take steps to l...
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FISA Court Rejects Catch-22 Secrecy Argument in FOIA Case
In the first publicly known victory by a non-government party before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secret court today granted a motion filed by EFF related to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The FISC gave its OK to the public disclosure of an earlier opinion...
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Americans Disapprove of Government Surveillance Programs
More Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the government program that obtained telephone call logs and Internet communication records. Americans are split on whether leaker Edward Snowden did the right or wrong thing.
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How the US Government will Smear, Slight Whistleblower Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden said that he stepped forward because he came to realize that the US government is engaged in invasions of Americans' privacy on a vast and unprecedented scale, and was hiding its int...
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Asking the U.S. to allow Google to publish more national security request data
This morning we sent the following letter to the offices of the Attorney General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Court found NSA surveillance unconstitutional in 2011
It turns out that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 found that the NSA's surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act to be unco...
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Mozilla launches massive campaign on digital surveillance
Additional Perspectives from Mozilla: Mitchell Baker’s post, “Total Surveillance” Ben Adida’s post, “No User is an IslandR
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Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying
UPDATE (1/15/14): Computing Using Educators, Inc, has added its name to the list. This brings the total to 87. Today, a bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American...
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You commit three felonies a day
In a book called Three Felonies A Day, Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate says that everyone in the US commits felonies everyday and if the governmen
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1984
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire […]
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Where “nothing to hide” fails as logic
Every April, I try to wade through mounds of paperwork to file my taxes. Like most Americans, I’m trying to follow the law and pay all of the taxes that I owe without getting screwed in the process. I try and make sure that every donation I made is backed by proof, every deduction is backed by logic and documentation…
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Government Secrets and the Need for Whistle-blowers
Yesterday, we learned that the NSA received all calling records from Verizon customers for a three-month period starting in April. That’s everything except the voice content: who called who, where they were, how long the call lasted—for millions of people, both Americans and foreigners. This “metadata” allows the…