How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Helped the NSA Spy on the Whole World The Intercept by Sam Biddle Donald Trump has inherited the most powerful machine for spying ever devised. How this petty, vengeful man might wield and expand the sprawling American spy apparatus, already vulnerable to abuse, is disturbing enough on its own. But the outlook is … Read more
Cybersecurity Experts Uncover Dormant Botnet of 350,000 Twitter Accounts MIT Technology Review A massive botnet secretly infiltrated the Twitterverse in 2013 but has lain mysteriously dormant since then, say researchers. Twitter and TV Superfans (Study) All Facebook by David Cohen How do “superfans” of television show behave on Twitter, and what should marketers do … Read more
‘Pokémon Go’ highlights efforts to solve the world’s biggest problems at Davos Mashable! by Matt Petronzio People attending the world’s largest meeting of political and business leaders may meet some unexpected, lovable creatures this year — and for a good cause Botting Politics Global Guerrillas by John Robb During the 2012 US Presidential election, the … Read more
Obama just freed whistleblower Chelsea Manning The Next Web by Bryan Clark President Obama just effectively freed Chelsea Manning from the 32 remaining years in her jail sentence, according to the New York Times. While it’s not a presidential pardon, the commutation of Manning’s sentence will see her go free in just five months. Chelsea Manning to … Read more
Wikileaks considers exposing verified Twitter users’ data The Social Software Weblog WikiLeaks once claimed to stand for the people against the shadowy, truth-occluding governments of the world (primarily, the United States). But the last couple years saw the organization swerve into questionable territory as an Associated Press repo… Using real names online doesn’t improve behavior Boing … Read more
Europe’s top court says UK surveillance rules are unconstitutional Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Last July, the European Court of Jutice’s Advocate General ruled that the UK’s mass surveillance regime was unconstitutional, triggering an appeal to the ECJ itself, which has affirmed that under European law, governments cannot order retention of all communications data; they … Read more
Twitter is banning multiple alt-right accounts The Next Web by Abhimanyu Ghoshal Following the release of new features to tackle abuse on its network yesterday, Twitter has begun suspending the accounts of users associated with the alt-right political movement, reports USA Today. That includes the one belonging to Richard Spencer, who heads up the National Policy … Read more
Snowden to journalists: your best defense is legal limits on spying, not crypto Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh3HWTwDNzU Edward Snowden videoconferenced with a journalism roundtable at Editors Lab participants at Süddeutsche Zeitung (home of the Panama Papers) about the effect of state surveillance on a free press. The New York Times’ earnings report is more proof … Read more
Download this new guide to approaching social sources for journalists First Draft News by Alastair Reid Two weeks ago the movie Sully opened, a dramatic recreation of the circumstances surrounding Flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson River in 2009 with Captain Sullenberger at the controls. I’ve yet to see the film, but I doubt they … Read more
TWITTER TRANSPARENCY REPORT: Turkey Submits Highest Volume of Removal Requests to Twitter Bianet :: English Turkey has been listed as the country with the greatest number of removal requests in Twitter’s first biannual Transparency Report of 2016. The Growing Problem of Bots That Fight Online MIT Technology Review The way software agents interact on the Web is … Read more
WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer) The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Three of the four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the … Read more
House Intel Panel Blasts Snowden In New Report, One Day Before Movie Release The Intercept by Jenna McLaughlin The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence urged President Barack Obama on Thursday not to pardon Edward Snowden, concluding in anunclassified summary of a two-year investigation that the former NSA contractor was “not a whistleblower” — echoing what White … Read more
Turkey among initiators of significant UN resolution on Internet and human rights Turkey was one of the joint initiators of a significant resolution on “the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet” which was adopted at the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) on July 1. BitTorrent Protocol Turns 15 Years Old Today TorrentFreak “My … Read more
Asia is leading the adoption of mobile adblocking; North America is dodging the bullet (for now, at least) Nieman Journalism Lab by Ricardo Bilton The rise of mobile adblocking may not be burning publishers in the U.S. so far, but the story is very different in Asia. Research highlights the impact of the threat of surveillance on … Read more
Digital Diplomacy in the Age of Algorithms Exploring Digital Diplomacy by Ilan Manor Last week I published the first in a series of posts dealing with issues that arose in the recent Digital Diplomacy Conference held in Tel Aviv. While last week I blogged about digital diplomacy that is targeted at domestic populations, this week’s post … Read more