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Society, Policy & Culture
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Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones
US President Obama had...
The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp
In Saturday’s edition of the New York Times, Matt Apuzzo reports that the Department of Justice is locked in a “prolonged standoff” with WhatsApp. The government is frustrated by its lack of real-time access to messages protected by the company’s end-to-end encryption. The story may represent a...
When Accessibility Gets Labeled Wasteful
Note on Accessibility There has been some concerns about the contrast on this blog, unfortunately some find it hard to read light text on a dark background while others prefer it. I am looking into…
How Web Scraping Is Revealing Lobbying and Corruption in Peru
How Web Scraping is Revealing Lobbying and Corruption in Peru - Discover how web scraping is shedding light on lobbying and corruption issues in Peru.
White House's Claims That the TPP Would Curb Internet Censorship Are Fantasy
One of the United States government's priorities in Internet policy is encapsulated by a term that's recently been making the rounds; the "free flow of information." It appears almost every time U.S. officials describe how they intend to protect the free and open Internet, especially when it comes...
One of the FBI’s Major Claims in the iPhone Case Is Fraudulent
“We have enormous computing power in the US government, but we need to be able to bring it to bear without the phone killing itself.” – FBI Director James Comey, March 1 , 2016.
Some radical thoughts about Sci-Hub
Radical, as I like to remind folks, means to get to the root of an issue (same derivation as radish). So when I say I am offering some radical thoughts about Sci-Hub and the controversy it has generated, I mean that I hope to use the discussion to ask some very basic, “at the roots,” … Continue reading Some radical…
Man Convicted Based on Erroneous Evidence Exonerated After 25 Years
(Charlotte, NC – March 2, 2016) Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray filed legal papers on February 16th dismissing the indictments against Timothy Bridges, who wrongly served over 25 years for a rape and burglary, based in large part on the erroneous testimony of an FBI-trained state hair analyst who…
Why Forcing Apple to Write and Sign Code Violates the First Amendment
EFF filed an amicus brief today in support of Apple's fight against a court order compelling the company to create specific software to enable the government to break into an iPhone. The brief is written on behalf of 46 prominent technologists, security researchers, and cryptographers who develop...
Apple Fight Could Lead to “Virtually Limitless” Surveillance Powers, Judge Warns
At stake in Apple's fight against government orders to break open locked iPhones could be the legal authorization for “virtually limitless” surveillance under the Internet of Things, according to a federal judge's order rejecting a government request in a New York drug case yesterday. Midway...
The collective insanity of the publishing industry
Unless you're a writer, I imagine you haven't been paying quite as close attention to the publishing industry and all its weirdness as I have, and that's a shame, because it's been really entertaining. Actually, entertaining isn't the right word. It's been insane, but the kind of insane that's unreasonably fun to…
London vs San Francisco – back and forth
This site is mainly a storage cupboard for things I've tinkered with along the way, such as:
Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots
To call what we have now as Capitalism, is just wrong. What we have bears little resemblance to even what I saw as a child in the US, let alone anything like what Adam Smith talks about. What we have is at best crony capitalism, and more likely straight corruption top to bottom, with a fake veneer of something called…
Yelp Fired a Single Mother Today: Me
And I was pretty damn good at my job too.
The FBI can almost certainly crack the San Bernardino iPhone without Apple
The title kind of says it all. How do I know? Because of this photo : That's a picture of the logic board of an iPhone 5C, the same mod...
Twenty years after Pokémon launched, its impact on Wikipedia remains
Years ago, the English Wikipedia was being overrun by a deluge of articles on Pokémon characters and creatures.
Edward McCluskey has died
News, research, and insights from Stanford University.
The UK's Proposed Spy Law Would Force Apple to Secretly Hack its Phones Too
The FBI's demand that Apple craft new software to bypass iOS's security protections has ignited a worldwide debate about a government's ability to force tech companies to sabotage their own security. One repeated question has been: will other countries, like China, demand the same powers? You don't...
Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience
Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal” came of age last year. I’m now teaching students younger than Stevan’s proposal, and yet, very little has actually changed in these 21 years. On the contrary, one may even make the case that while efforts […] <a class="more-link"…
On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results
As most people are aware, Google search results are constantly changing and evolving. In the past couple of years, there has been a conscious and very deliberate shift – and not just by Googl…