“The Internet’s Own Boy”: How the government destroyed Aaron Swartz A film tells the story of the coder-activist who fought corporate power and corruption — and paid a cruel price NSA Fallout: Germany Ends Contract With Verizon Mashable! by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai The German government has decided not to renew a contract with Verizon out of fear … Read more
A dynamic and tragic portrait of the life of Reddit developer and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, a champion of open access who grew up to lead the internet community into a new age of data sharing and free speech. The Internet Iron Curtain Dipnote – U.S. Department of State Official Blog by John Kerry Since … Read more
Join Boing Boing, Reddit, and websites all over the world on the 11th to fight mass surveillance In two days, the Internet will erupt in a protest to rival the uprising against SOPA: in Aaron Swartz‘s memory, websites everywhere will add code from TheDayWeFightBack.org to their templates, helping to flood Congress — and the world’s … Read more
Social Engineering Always Wins: An Epic Hack, Revisited Naoki Hiroshima’s gripping account of how he was forced to give up his single character Twitter handle, @N, to an attacker re-exposes a fundamentally unaddressed issue of how easily companies’ customer support systems can be tricked into handing out password resets. PayPal denies providing payment information … Read more
Around the World, Net Neutrality Is Not a Reality In much of the world, the concept of ?net neutrality? generates less public debate, given there?s no affordable Net in the first place. Snowden responds to US politicians’ spy claims: ‘Spies get treated better than that’ Speaking with the New Yorker via encrypted … Read more
A Year After Aaron Swartz’s Death, Lawmakers Still Demand Answers On the eve of the anniversary of Aaron Swartz‘s tragic death, a group of eight lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are still looking for answers regarding the criminal investigation he was the subject of Remembering Aaron One year ago, we lost Aaron Swartz, a dear friend … Read more
Support from Zynga helps Bitcoin break the $1,000 valuation mark again The price of Bitcoin is back over US$1,000 after gaming giant Zynga became the latest company to adopt the virtual currency…. Aaron Swartz’s father, Bob Swartz, discusses his son’s death It’s been nearly a year since my friend Aaron Swartz killed himself, Foursquare details how it rewards … Read more
Brazil and Germany Propose UN Resolution Against Mass Surveillance On November 7th, Brazil and Germany jointly tabled a preliminary version of a resolution on online privacy at the UN General Assembly. At a time when public outrage over the reach and scope of U.K. and U.S. mass surveillance is at an all time high, the … Read more
Remembering Aaron: activism and the effective citizen This morning, I gave a speech to a gathering of public media executives from around the world, Public Broadcasters International. This evening, I will open a hackathon at the MIT Media Lab in memory of Aaron Swartz. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to talk … Read more
Pew: One in three Americans owns a tablet, one in four owns an e-reader, and 43% have one or the other One in three Americans now owns a tablet, or 35 percent of the population aged 16 and older. At the same time, one in four US citizens at least 16-years-old now owns an e-reader. Mixing … Read more
Freedom of the Press Foundation Launches SecureDrop, an Open-Source Submission Platform for Whistleblowers Freedom of the Press Foundation has taken charge of the DeadDrop project, an open-source whistleblower submission system originally coded by the late transparency advocate Aaron Swartz. In the coming months, the Foundation will also provide on-site installationand technical support to news organizations that wish to run the … Read more
What Did Edward Snowden Get Wrong? Everything Unfortunately, during the Snowden affair, many news outlets have spent more time examining ways the government could abuse the information it has access to while giving scant mention to the lengths to which the intelligence community goes to protect privacy, writes Andrew Liepman. MAIN FOCUS: Obama’s bid … Read more
72% of Online Adults are Social Networking Site Users The Pew Research Center‘s Internet & American Life Project has been studying online adults? social networking site use since 2005, and has seen substantial growth since then. Today, 72% of online adults use social networking sites. Although younger adults continue to be the most likely … Read more
A code of conduct for young hackers r00tz is the amazing kid-track of programming at DEFCON, the giant hacker conference held annually in Las Vegas. The organizers have created a “code of conduct” for young hackers that is good advice for anyone doing infosec work, or exploring computers and systems: MIT and Aaron Swartz’s Secret … Read more
92% of E-Book Downloads in Russia Are Pirated E-reading is on the rise in Russia, but piracy remains a big problem for the burgeoning market. How Dropbox Plans to Replace Your Hard Drive Dropbox wants to replace your computer?s hard drive. 56% of Social Media Users Suffer From FOMO We all know that social media … Read more