Snowden documents how NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants – by Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani “The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Free Speech
Commentary – Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet
Bruce Schneier, Cryptographer and Computer Security Specialist and Author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive “We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the nimble, unorganized, distributed powers such as dissident groups, criminals, and hackers. On the other side are the traditional,… Continue Reading
Commentary – The Decline of Wikipedia
Tom Simonite – MIT Technology Review: “The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10. It is not operated by a sophisticated corporation but by a leaderless collection of volunteers who generally work under pseudonyms and habitually bicker with each other. It rarely tries… Continue Reading
National Reading Campaign – Canada – The Benefits of Reading
“A highly-quotable summary, ‘Reading Matters’ outlines the many benefits of reading, and cites the research to back it up. From voting, volunteerism and vocabulary to health, happiness and higher incomes, reading affects every part of our lives. CBC Books – Benefits of reading [infographic] Continue Reading
Le Monde documents NSA PRISM surveillance of citizens
Jacques Follorou and Glenn Greenwald, Le Monde: “According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database by its ex-analyst, telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale. Le Monde has been able to obtain access to documents which describe the techniques used to violate the secrets or simply the private life of… Continue Reading
Report – What the Government Does with Americans’ Data
What the Government Does with Americans’ Data, by Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice, October 8, 2013. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government’s authority to collect, keep, and share information about Americans with little or no basis to suspect wrongdoing dramatically expanded. While the risks and benefits of this approach are the… Continue Reading
23 US NGOs Support EU Data Protection Regulation
EPIC: “In a letter to members of the European Parliament, a coalition of 23 leading U.S. consumer, privacy, and civil liberties groups expressed support for the new EU Data Protection Regulation. The coalition said although it “remain[s] optimistic that we will eventually update privacy laws in the United States,” until then, “the European Union offers… Continue Reading
Poll – The New American Center
“An exclusive Esquire-NBC News survey [rendered in a series of infographics that accompany the data for each respective question/answer] shows us that everything we are told about politics in America today—that there is no middle ground between left and right, blue and red, us and them—is wrong. The data, compiled by the Benenson Strategy Group… Continue Reading
WaPo – NSA challenged by data overcollection from e-mail address books, buddy lists
Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani, Julie Tate: “The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not… Continue Reading
Government Responds to EPIC’s Supreme Court Challenge of NSA Telephone Record Program
“The Solicitor General has filed a response to EPIC’s challenge to the NSA’s telephone record collection program. In July, EPIC petitioned the Supreme Court to vacate the order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that requires Verizon to turn over all telephone records to the NSA. EPIC argued that the Intelligence Court exceeded its legal… Continue Reading
Paper – The Massive Metadata Machine
The Massive Metadata Machine: Liberty, Power, and Secret Mass Surveillance in the U.S. and Europe, Bryce Clayton Newell, University of Washington – The Information School, October 11, 2013. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society (ISJLP), 10, 2014 “This paper explores the relationship between liberty and security implicated by secret government… Continue Reading
Guardian – FISA Court rules that allow NSA to use US data
“Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence… Continue Reading
