How We Prepared the NSA’s Sensitive Internal Reports for Release The Intercept The 166 articles we’re releasing today from an internal NSA publication,SIDtoday, were subjected to a careful process of research, editorial evaluation, legal review, reporting, redaction, and digital processing. This article explains how that process worked. The Intercept begins publishing Snowden docs Boing Boing by Cory … Read more
Here’s how over 400 journalists at dozens of news orgs reported out the massive Panama Papers story Nieman Journalism Lab by Ricardo Bilton Sunday’s report of the Panama Papers detailed a global, decades-long story of bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, and financial fraud that implicates over 100 politicians and public officials. Equally impressive, however, is project … Read more
Vice now has a Securedrop for anonymous whistleblower docs Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Securedrop is a robust, secure, anonymous system for whistleblowers to convey documents to news organizations, created by Aaron Swartz and taken up by the Freedom of the Press Foundation after his death. (more…) See How Many Civilians Have Been Killed In Syria In … Read more
Wikipedia is using artificial intelligence to get more actual humans writing articles The Next Web by Napier Lopez Better artificial intelligence is often associated with the detriment of a human workforce, but judging by some new practices by the team at Wikipedia HQ, it doesn’t have to be that way. Racist algorithms: how Big Data makes bias seem objective Boing … Read more
Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects The Intercept by Dan Froomkin In the wake of the Paris attack, intelligence officials and sympathizers upset by the Edward Snowden leaks and the spread of encrypted communications havetried to blame Snowden for the terrorists’ ability to keep their plans secret from law enforcement. Yet news emerging from … Read more
Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So … Read more
Edward Snowden Explains How To Reclaim Your Privacy The Intercept by Micah Lee LAST MONTH, I met Edward Snowden in a hotel in central Moscow, just blocks away from Red Square. It was the first time we’d met in person; he first emailed me nearly two years earlier, and we eventually created an encrypted channel to journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, to … Read more
Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the Achievements of Women in Technology EFF.org Updates by Annelyse Gelman Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Please join us in commemorating the life of Ada Lovelace by celebrating the achievements – past and present – of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Snowden for drones: The Intercept’s expose on US drone attacks, … Read more
Playboy goes PG: It’s media Disneyification in the Facebook era The Next Web by Gabe Fenigsohn It sounds like an Onion headline but it’s actually the New York Times: “Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand.” The fact that this news is reality and not satire speaks volumes about the extent to which brands must … Read more
Where Do Major Tech Companies Stand on Encryption? EFF.org Updates by Amul Kalia Comparing the Public Encryption Policies from 21 of the Biggest Tech Companies There’s a major battle brewing over encryption right now. Law enforcement agencies are trying to demand “backdoors” to our sensitive data and communications, while civil liberties groups are fighting back through … Read more
EU top court: NSA spying means US servers are not a fit home for Europeans’ data Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Historically, US companies have been able to get around the (relatively stringent) European data-protection rules thanks to a “Safe Harbor” agreement between the US and the EU — but Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, … Read more
CNN and the NYT Are Deliberately Obscuring Who Perpetrated the Afghan Hospital Attack The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Much of the world spent the last 48 hours expressing revulsion at the U.S. airstrike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. It was quite clear early on that the perpetrator of the attack was the U.S., and many … Read more
Edward Snowden joins Twitter and immediately throws shade at the NSA The Next Web by Amanda Connolly Whistleblower Edward Snowden has officially come out of the shadows and joined Twitter using the handle @Snowden, which was verified within two hours of joining. Facing Sweeping Surveillance Bill, French Public Falls Between Alarm and Indifference Global Voices Online by … Read more
Most popular programming languages shift at Github Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza Driven by the web and Android, Javascript and Java reign. Ruby and C lose ground. PHP lumbers on, impervious. Somewhere in the distance, a Perl script barks mournfully. Wargames-style map shows ongoing internet attacks Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza The Norse Map is a Wargames-style … Read more
Gallery: 13 images that helped define the look of the electronic age Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow A full-color, large-format exploration of the electronic age, INSIDE THE MACHINE explains the history of technology through over 150 images from magazines, industry pamphlets, and out-of-print books to showcase the powerful graphic and artistic representations of this burgeoning field. … Read more