Preliminary conclusions and observations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression to his visit to Turkey, 14-18 November 2016 ohchr.org ANKARA (18 November 2016) – At the invitation of the Government, I spent this week in Turkey to examine the protection and promotion of the freedom of … Read more
Unsecured Internet of Things gadgets get hacked within 40 minutes of being connected to the net Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow The Atlantic’s Andrew McGill set up a virtual server on Amazon’s cloud that presented to the internet as a crappy, insecure Internet of Things toaster; 41 minutes later, a hacked IoT device connected to it … Read more
Digital Defenders: a free open-licensed booklet for kids about privacy and crypto Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow European Digital Rights has created a free, CC-licensed kids’ booklet about privacy called Digital Defenders. How Israel Became a Hub for Surveillance Technology The Intercept by Sharon Weinberger In 1948, the year Israel was founded, the Mer Group was established … Read more
Joi Ito interviews Barack Obama for Wired: machine learning, neurodiversity, basic research and Star Trek Boing Boing Joi Ito (previously) — director of MIT Media Lab, former Creative Commons chief, investor, entrepreneur, and happy mutant — interviewed Barack Obama for a special, Obama-edited issue of Wired Google Warns More Than a Dozen Russian Journalists and Activists … Read more
Using Sound and Artificial Intelligence to Detect Human Rights Violations iRevolution by Patrick Meier Video continues to be a powerful way to capture human rights abuses around the world. Videos posted to social media can be used to hold perpetrators of gross violations accountable. But video footage poses a “Big Data” challenge to human rights organizations. Two … Read more
Adblock Plus now selling ads Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza Adblock Plus is to begin reselling the ads it blocks, replacing websites’ original ads with ones under its control—and which it takes a fat cut of the revenue from. Adblock Plus Wants to Make Money by Serving You More Ads MIT Technology Review A service meant to … Read more
Facebook, Twitter, and 30 other orgs join First Draft’s partner network to help stop the spread of fake news Nieman Journalism Lab by Ricardo Bilton Thanks to social media, it’s never been easier to get people to read and spread fake news. Readers love to share surprising, shocking or worldview-affirming stories, and publishers, eager for more … Read more
I guess not only to ethnic groups but all opponents in some countries… Autocratic regimes systematically deny internet access to opposition ethnic groups Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow In Digital discrimination: Political bias in Internet service provision across ethnic groups (Sci-hub mirror), a new paper in Science, political scientists from the University of Konstanz and elsewhere document … Read more
Google Program to Deradicalize Jihadis Will Be Used for Right-Wing American Extremists Next The Intercept by Naomi LaChance A Google-incubated program that has been targeting potential ISIS members with deradicalizing content will soon be used to target violent right-wing extremists in North America, a designer of the program said at an event at the Brookings Institution … Read more
The Academic’s Guide to Social Media Author discusses book on how and why academics should use social media for scholarly purposes. July 22, 2016 By Carl Straumsheim Writing about social media is “dangerous,” according to Mark Carrigan, a sociologist and academic technologist at the University of Warwick, in Britain. In the time to take … Read more
Timeline: The rise of bitcoin AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (IN DEPTH) A look at the history of bitcoin, the world’s newest and potentially most powerful currency. FBI’s Secret Surveillance Tech Budget Is ‘Hundreds of Millions’ The Intercept by Jenna McLaughlin The FBI has “hundreds of millions of dollars” to spend on developing technology for use in both national … Read more
What does the future of the BBC look like as a more diverse and distinctive organisation? Journalism.co.uk As the BBC’s current charter expires at the end of 2016, the government has drafted a white paper to outline key changes for the broadcaster’s future The BBC White Paper is a recipe for long-term decline open Democracy News Analysis … Read more
Meryl Streep’s Two Anthropological Truths And One Lie Forbes The internet and news media are taking actress Meryl Streep to task today for anthropological sounding comments she made to reporters at the Berlin International Film Festival. While part of what she said was true and even elegant, another part was a … Meryl Streep says … Read more
A Worldwide Survey of Encryption Products Berkman Center Newsfeed Teaser In this paper, which is modeled on a similar effort in 1999 by researchers from George Washington University, Berkman Fellow Bruce Schneier and collaborator Kathleen Seidel together with Harvard College student Saranya Vijayakuma identify and survey 865 encryption products from 55 different countries, 546 of them … Read more
Free Bitcoin textbook from Princeton Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow The Princeton Bitcoin Book by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller and Steven Goldfeder is a free download — it’s over 300 pages and is intended for people “looking to truly understand how Bitcoin works at a technical level and have a basic familiarity … Read more