Think of Big Data as a malevolent technocratic Santa Claus: it sees you when you’re sleeping, it knows when you’re awake, it knows if you’ve been bad or good (even in advance!), so be good for goodness sake…… Read More Big Data Exposed
“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” it states. “We disagree”… Read More UK Government Moves Aggressively To Censor & Control The Internet
The two tech giants and others like them may have appeared at their inceptions to political, business, and military leaders around the world as merely opportunistic corporations seeking profits and expansion. However, Google and Facebook, among others, have become clearly much more than that… Read More The Imperative of Replacing Google and Facebook
One solitary 250-word article of the European Union’s draft Copyright Directive (PDF) threatens to destroy the positive model of the Internet we’ve grown accustomed to, both in the EU and globally… Read More Killing Parody, Killing Memes, Killing the Internet?
In the same way that 99% of economists assume society must be planned and centralized, “the people in power” assume media must operate as a centralized force—as if it’s a natural law… Read More The Self-Appointed Guardians of Truth Are Beginning to Panic
The mushing together of “fake news” and what the Times describes as “anti-European Union propaganda” is insidious. The first relates to consciously fabricated stories; the second involves criticism of a political institution, the E.U,, which is viewed by many Europeans as elitist, remote and disdainful of the needs, interests and attitudes of average citizens.… Read More NYT’s Fake News about Fake News
Ten years ago, everybody was on MySpace. 10 years from now, the Twitters and Facebooks and YouTubes of today will be dinosaurs, abandoned by users sick of censorship and centralized control. Thankfully, the alternatives to these social media dinosaurs are already here.… Read More The Social Media Exodus Has Begun. Here’s Where Everybody’s Going.
The new “Rule 41” gives American law enforcement unprecedented leeway to break into any computer in the world… Read More Welcome to the New World Online Order
By Danny O’Brien and cross-posted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) It’s been twenty years since John Perry Barlow declared cyberspace independent, but there continues to be a long line of not-so-weary giants aiming to expand their territory over the electronic frontier. Here is 2016’s roll call of national governments and courts who either presumed that their… Read More Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Wide Web)
By former UK ambassador Craig Murray and cross-posted from his blog Rupert Murdoch’s bid for a full takeover of Sky TV demonstrates graphically that the extreme concentration of media ownership has not yet run its course. It also yet again underlines the extent to which the Leveson Inquiry was barking entirely up the wrong tree.… Read More 2016: The Year the Media Broke
“Today’s judgment is a major blow against mass surveillance and an important day for privacy” By Nika Knight, staff writer at Common Dreams The European Union’s highest court on Wednesday issued a landmark ruling against mass surveillance in a judgment that challenges key portions of the U.K.’s so-called “Snooper’s charter,” a sweeping surveillance bill that was set to… Read More EU's Top Court Delivers "Major Blow" to Mass Surveillance
The operation of the oversight and accountability mechanisms in the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) are all kept firmly out of sight – and, so its authors hope, out of mind – of the public.… Read More The UK's Investigatory Powers Act Allows the State to Tell Lies in Court
