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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 241 posts.
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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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Pandora and Royalties
Enjoy SiriusXM's channels, podcasts, and articles which are dedicated to bringing you the hottest Celebrity, Entertainment, Music and Sports news.
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Fifth Amendment Prohibits Compelled Decryption, New EFF Brief Argues
Encryption is one of the most important ways to safeguard data from prying eyes. But what happens when those prying belong to the government? Can they force you to break your own encryption and provide them with the information they want? In a new amicus brief, we explain that the Fifth Amendment...
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EFF: Show Support for the Fourth Amendment
This Fourth of July, EFF will be demonstrating our commitment to your Constitutional right of privacy from government surveillance by displaying the text of the Fourth Amendment on our website. This demonstration is a visual symbol of our opposition to the illegal and unconstitutional surveillance...
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Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking
Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to…
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Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
We now know that the NSA is collecting location information en masse. As we’ve long said, location data is an extremely powerful set of information about people.
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Bradley Manning’s Statement
Yesterday Bradley explained how and more importantly, why, he shared classified documents with WikiLeaks. Rush transcript by Alexa O'Brien.
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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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Restore the Fourth Organizes Protests Against Unconstitutional Surveillance
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and...
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Patent Troll Lodsys Settles for Nothing to Avoid Trial
Today we learned just how determined the patent troll Lodsys is to avoid a ruling on the merits of its claims. When software security company Kaspersky Lab refused to surrender, Lodsys settled for nothing (yes, you read that right—absolutely nothing) rather than take its claims to trial. First,...
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Facebook Is Not Blocking Tor Deliberately
A number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network....
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JSTOR Statement on Aaron Swartz
We are deeply saddened to hear the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaron’s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him. He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit.
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Troll-Killing Patent Reform One Step Closer
Patent reform is heating up in Congress. Today House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte released a second discussion draft aimed at preventing abusive patent troll litigation. Chairman Goodlatte has suggested he will move quickly to hold a hearing and committee vote on this legislation....
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Obama Calls for Patent Reform to Topple Trolls
In a welcome turn of events, President Barack Obama spoke directly to the patent troll problem and the need for more comprehensive patent reform yesterday in a "Fireside Hangout" — a live question and answer session hosted in a Google+ hangout. The President was responding to a question by the...
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Sleepwalking into censorship
The essential detail is that they will assume you want filters enabled across a wide range of content, and unless you un-tick the option, network filters will be enabled.
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EFF Has Lavabit’s Back in Contempt of Court Appeal
San Francisco - Federal law enforcement officers compromised the backbone of the Internet and violated the Fourth Amendment when they demanded private encryption keys from the email provider Lavabit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues in a brief submitted Thursday afternoon to the US...
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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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Wherein SFPD is still going surveillance-nutty
We got a funny phone call today, and by "funny" I mean "not actually even a little funny." Officer Chan, the permitting officer for SFPD, called to remind us that we're required to have video surveillance that records everything our customers do, and to give that footage to SFPD any time they ask, without a warrant or…
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