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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 268 posts.
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CISA passes Senate
CISA passed the Senate today in a 74-21 vote. The bill is fundamentally flawed due to its broad immunity clauses, vague definitions, and aggressive spying authorities. The bill now moves to a conference committee despite its inability to address problems that caused recent highly publicized...
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Happy 10th birthday to us
Get the latest product news, company announcements, and user insights from the official Reddit blog.
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EFF to Congress: Stop the Cybersurveillance Bills
EFF joined over 50 privacy and civil society organizations that sent two letters to Congress demanding it vote against the Senate Intelligence Committee's cybersecurity "information sharing" bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA, S. 754) and the House Intelligence Committee’...
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Win for Fair Use in ‘Dancing Baby’ Lawsuit
San Francisco – A federal appeals court in San Francisco today affirmed that copyright holders must consider whether a use of material is fair before sending a takedown notice. The ruling came in Lenz v. Universal, often called the “dancing baby” lawsuit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...
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UN Experts Say TPP and Fast Track Threaten Human Rights
Prominent experts at the United Nations have now indicated that secretive trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) undermine human rights around the world, both because of the secretive, corporate-dominated process, and due to the substantive content of the provisions that arise...
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You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist
It got a lot of attention this morning when I tweeted , “You’re Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist.” It’s been quickly retweeted dozens of times, indicating that the idea is interesting to many people. So let’s discuss it in more than 140 characters.
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China's Great Cannon
This post describes our analysis of an attack tool that we identify as separate from, but co-located with, the Great Firewall of China.
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An Exemption to the DMCA Would Let Game Fans Keep Abandoned Games Running
When you buy a video game, you expect to be able to play it for as long as you want. You expect be able to play it with your kids many years from now if you want (well, maybe not Grand Theft Auto). And you would hope that museums and media historians could preserve the games that were so important...
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Congress: Stop Trying to Limit EFF’s Ability to Challenge Patents
EFF recently won our challenge to invalidate claims of the “podcasting patent” using a procedure at the Patent Office called inter partes review. This procedure allowed us to challenge a patent that was being used to demand licenses from individual podcasters, even though EFF itself had never been...
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Cell-Site Simulators Aren’t Secret Anymore
Digital analyzer. IMSI catcher. Stingray. Triggerfish. Dirt box. Cell-site simulator. The list of aliases used by the devices that masquerade as a cell phone tower, trick your phone into connecting with them, and suck up your data, seems to grow every day. But no matter what name cell-site...
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Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users
Facebook claims its practice of forcing users to go by their "real names" (or "authentic identities" as Facebook spins it) makes the social network a safer place. In fact, the company has often claimed that the policy protects women who use the social media platform, even when faced with community...
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Chaos Computer Club congratulates Netzpolitik.org
Nach nur kurzer Prüfung einer Strafanzeige des Verfassungsschutzes ermittelt der Generalbundesanwalt gegen die Redaktion von netzpolitik.org. Der Chaos Computer Club (CCC) gratuliert der Redaktion...
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Inside The Fine Art Factories of China
When Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo toiled for four years on his master work. Renoir spent six months painting Luncheon of the Boating Party—the painting featured in the film Amélie. Even Guernica, which Pablo Picasso painted quickly to publicize the…
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Ford Tries to Shut Down Independent Repair Tool with Copyright
At EFF, we think people ought to be able to understand how their devices work and repair them without asking permission of the manufacturer. We also think independent repair companies should to be able to compete with manufacturers in the aftermarket. Simply put, you should be able to fix your...
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Negotiators Lose Last Chance to Salvage the TPP by Caving on Copyright Extension
New reports indicate that Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators have agreed to language that would bind its 12 signatory nations to extend copyright terms to match the United States' already excessive length of copyright. This provision expands the reach of the controversial US Sonny Bono...
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Why Facebook Failed Our Censorship Test
If you click around Facebook’s “Government Request Report,” you’ll notice that, for many countries, Facebook enumerates the number of “content restrictions” the company has fulfilled. This is a sanitized term for censorship. For example, Facebook restricted access to three items of content on its...
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Santa Claus Confirms NSA Attack on Naughty or Nice Database
A press conference was organised this morning on behalf of Mr Santa Claus. At the conference, a spokes–elf confirmed that there had been repeated attempts to hack the “naughty or nice (NON)” database. The NON-database was thought to be used by Mr Claus to keep records of young inhabitants of planet earth, in order to…
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Release of the Full TPP Text Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights
Update [11/9/2015]: President Obama formally notified Congress of his intent to sign the TPP on Thursday November 5—90 days after which he may sign the agreement and send the agreement to Congress for ratification. Trade offices involved in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement...
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No Matter What the FBI Says, Compromising Encryption Is a Technical Issue
What does the FBI want when it comes to the encryption “debate”? At an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, FBI Director James Comey offered what he called the “good news” that it’s not a debate at all. In fact, he said, government and the tech industry all want the same...
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What Twitter Can Be
Disclaimers: 1) This is a very long read. Thinking about a company and using its product obsessively for nine years straight will do that to you. 2) My funds and I own a lot of Twitter stock. 3) I do not … Continue reading →
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Japanese government dismantles freedom of the press
In 2010, Japan was ranked #11 in Reporters Without Borders’ global Press Freedom Index. By February 2015, that number had plummeted to #61 - and next year it will likely fall further. Since coming to power in 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have …
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New South Wales Attacks Researchers Who Found Internet Voting Vulnerabilities
A security flaw in New South Wales’ Internet voting system may have left as many as 66,000 votes vulnerable to interception and manipulation in a recent election, according to security researchers. Despite repeated assurances from the Electoral Commission that all Internet votes are “fully...