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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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The American-Western European Values Gap
American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Spain, Britain, France and Germany. However, Americans are coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as…
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Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
University of Oxford IT Services blogs support dissemination of news, updates on research projects, reflection, and musings by IT Services staff for widespread readership.
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How the Syrian Electronic Army Hacked The Onion
This is a write-up of how the Syrian Electronic Army hacked The Onion. In summary, they phished Onion employees’ Google Apps accounts via 3 …
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The San Francisco Rent Explosion
An apartment in San Francisco costs how much?! Surely you jest, Priceonomics.
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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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Drone ‘Nightmare Scenario’ Now Has A Name: ARGUS
The PBS series NOVA , “ Rise of the Drones ,” recently aired a segment detailing the capabilities of a powerful aerial surveillance system known as ARGUS-IS, which is basically a super-high, 1.8 gigapixel resolution camera that can be mounted on a drone. As demonstrated in this clip , the system is capable of…
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Documents Shed Light on Border Laptop Searches
The case of David Miranda got a lot of attention around the world after UK authorities were accused of abusing an anti-terrorism law to evade the normal constitutional restrains on police power and question someone because of their political associations. Well, a very similar abuse of power appears to have happened…
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A Court Order is an Insider Attack
Commentators on the Lavabit case, including the judge himself, have criticized Lavabit for designing its system in a way that resisted court-ordered access to user data. They ask: If court orders are legitimate, why should we allow engineers to design services that protect users against court-ordered access? The…
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NSA's Surveillance Powers Extend Far Beyond Counterterrorism
Time and again we’ve seen the National Security Agency (NSA) defend its vast surveillance apparatus by invoking the spectre of terrorism, discussing its spying powers as a method to keep America safe. Yet, the truth is that counterterrorism is only a fraction of their far broader authority to seek...
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Deceptions, Misinformation, and Word Games Used to Mislead About Surveillance
It’s been two months since President Barack Obama first said that he welcomes a debate about NSA surveillance, which he once again reiterated last week at his press conference. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a real debate about a subject when the administration constantly and intentionally...
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Court of Appeal bans Bayesian probability
As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates .
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GnuPG - 16 Years of protecting privacy
In case you are not automatically redirected, please follow this link to https://gnupg.org/blog .
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CloudFlare and Free Speech
This question assumes the answer. A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain.
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We’re Being Sued For Linking To Shopzilla
(image) If you like crime stories, you’ll love this. ‘True Crime: Hammersmith’ is the story of a deranged criminal organisation […]
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The Prosecution of Aaron: A Response to Orin Kerr
Aaron Swartz committed suicide last week. He was 26, a genius and my friend. Not a really good friend, but someone I had worked with off and on for 11 years, liked a lot, had laughed with frequently, occasionally shaken my head over and deeply admired. When I first met him he looked like this.
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Everybody Let's Stop the TPP: Share These Videos and Spread the Word
President Obama was scheduled to meet with the leaders of the other eleven countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Bali, supposedly to plan the “end-game” for this massive trade deal. However, he has made a...
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The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Online Communications
According to the New York Times, President Obama is "on the verge of backing" a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide backdoors to the government...
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