Cyberculture agenda: Web Freedom a Global Issue in 2015…

Web Freedom Is Seen to Be Growing as a Global Issue in 2015

nytimes.com – Vindu Goel – Jan 1 – SAN FRANCISCO — Government censorship of the Internet is a cat-and-mouse game. And despite more aggressive tactics in recent months, the cats have been largely frustrated while the mice wriggle away. But this year, the challenges for Silicon…

There has been a remarkably constant growth rate of scholarly journals since the 1600’s (De Solla Price, 1963, p. 17). Mabe (2003) calculates the average annual scholarly journal growth rate at 3.46% per year from the 1600’s to the present day, with an increase to 4.35% from 1946 to 1976 and subsequent fall to 3.26% after 1976.

 

Three major vulnerabilities rocked the world of Internet security this year, including two high-profile bugs that jeopardized the security of HTTPS encryption itself. These vulnerabilities may have each cost sysadmins around the world some sleepless nights, but they also reinforced the idea that best security practices can protect users even where the software has bugs.

Can Iceland become the ‘Switzerland of data’?

Amid government snooping, tiny Nordic nation hopes to brand itself as a safe haven for data privacy around the globe.

NSA Drops Christmas Eve Surprise

The National Security Agency on Christmas Eve day released twelve years ofinternal oversight reports documenting abusive and improper practices by agency employees. The heavily redacted reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board found that NSA employees repeatedly engaged in unauthorized surveillance of communications by American citizens, failed to follow legal guidelines regarding the retention of private information, and shared data with unauthorized recipients.

Fingerprints can be reproduced from photos of your hands

A presentation by Starbug at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress (previously) demonstrated a technique for deriving fingerprints from a couple of photographs of your hands. Starbug’s proof of concept was a copy of the fingerprints of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. Read the rest

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