Cyberculture roundup: “Reporting the NSA spying revelations…”Open Sourcers Pitch Secure Email in Dark Age of PRISM…”Why Instagram wants to straighten your photos

Reporting the NSA spying revelations: Q&A with Guardian editors

theguardian.com ? 8/26/13 5:56 AM ? Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and Guardian US editor Janine Gibson answer questions about the NSA revelations at 10amET/3pmBST Revelations from documents Edward Snowden shared with the Guardian have fuelled debate about government

 

Open Sourcers Pitch Secure Email in Dark Age of PRISM

With the specter of government surveillance hanging over this post-PRISM world, people are beginning to wonder if the idea of secure email is complete nonsense.

How, technically, might the US have snooped on Lavabit?

Ars Technica interviews Ladar Levison, founder of the recently-shuttered secure-er email service. They focus on the logistics and architecture of fed snooping. Levison: “I don’t know if I’m off my rocker, but 10 years ago, I think it would have been unheard of for the government to demand source code or to make a change to your source code or to demand your SSL key. What I’ve learned recently makes me think that’s not as crazy an assumption as I thought.”

New Snowden NSA revelations in Der Spiegel: ‘How America Spies on Europe and the UN’

Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark have an (English-language) article in Der Spiegel today on Codename ‘Apalachee,’ the secret program revealed in leaked National Security Agency documents tasked with surveilling Europe, the United Nations, and various foreign nations. The argument put forth by the Obama administration is the NSA’s formidably vast spying capabilities are aimed at preventing terrorist attacks, but this latest revelation would seem to indicate otherwise.

NYT’s David Carr on Wikileaks and the journalists who hate them

Daniel Ellsberg, with what may be the quote of the year, in David Carr’s New York Times piece today:

Latest Pew Study Shows 70 Percent of U.S. Has Broadband. But Access Is Still Unequal

The news of an overall rise in ‘high-speed broadband’ adoption will likely be trumpeted by America’s giant communications companies and policymakers. But before we start celebrating, look closely at the results. For starters, Pew’s results demonstrate that the digital divide is persistent. And we’ve set an alarmingly low bar for what counts as ‘broadband.’

Why Instagram wants to straighten your photos

Instagram has been adding new features to its app to help users create better photos. It?s no longer enough for it to be just another photo-sharing social network ? we?ve moved past that. But in order for it to scale, Instagram needs to add new tools and features to not only enhance the quality of images shared, but also to maintain the appeal of its service.

 

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