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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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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 695 posts.
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Cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London
(NB: this was very hastily written, so I hope the logic flows – I just wanted to get it out…) I think many people thought I was joking when I boldly declared it would be cheaper for me to rent a tw…
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Aaron Swartz: What Happens in The Dark Knight
As we’ve discussed, in Batman Begins 1960s-style full employment and antipoverty programs lead to skyrocketing crime while in The Dark Knight Rises 1980s-style tough-on-crime policies and neoliberal economics lead to a revolt of the economic underclass. The films are mirror images, one about the failure of liberal…
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Dear USA, my data has left your building
NSA, GCHQ, Prism, FISA, Project Bullrun, Sigint. After Edward Snowden, former CIA and NSA employee, started revealing how massively, intensely and easily we are all being spied upon by the intelligence agencies of various governments, the terms above have suddenly been spending a great deal more time in the media…
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The NSA is Commandeering the Internet
It turns out that the NSA’s domestic and world-wide surveillance apparatus is even more extensive than we thought. Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we’ve learned, fight and lose. Others…
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Questions about Cameron’s ‘new’ porn-blocking
There’s been a bit of a media onslaught from David Cameron about his ‘war on porn’ over the weekend. Some of the messages given out have been very welcome – but some are con…
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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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How to travel around the world for a year
While my last post covered my previous year traveling, writing and programming [http://old.alexmaccaw.com/posts/traveling_writing_programming], this article will go into the specifics of planning your own round the world trip, including flights, costs, activities and accommodation. I'll show you how affordable…
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Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet
In July 2012, responding to allegations that the video-chat service Skype—owned by Microsoft—was changing its protocols to make it possible for the government to eavesdrop on users, Corporate Vice President Mark Gillett took to the company’s blog to deny it. Turns out that wasn’t quite true. Or at least he—or the…
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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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Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing
As a long-time reader of Hacker News, I keep seeing some comments they don't really contribute to the conversation. Since the discussions a...
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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.