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
WhatsApp Launches End-to-End Encryption All Facebook by David Cohen WhatsApp upped its security game in a big way with this week’sannouncement that it now provides full end-to-end encryption. Co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton announced the news in a blog post, saying that users do not need to take any actions to activate end-to-end encryption, as it is now the … Read more
A Brief History of Debian – The Debian Manifesto debian.org [ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ A ] [ next ] Written by Ian A. Murdock, Revised 01/06/94 Debian Linux is a brand-new kind of Linux distribution. Rather than being developed by … Read more
French Ministry of Interior wants to ban open wifi, Tor Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow A leaked memo from the Ministry sets out new bills it would like to see introduced into the French Parliament as early as next month, setting out an ambitious plan to block privacy tools, something only technically possible by recreating China’s … Read more
Open Access Is a Human Rights Issue EFF.org Updates by Elliot Harmon A BBC article has been making the rounds this week about #icanhazpdf, a “secret codeword” that people use to access research papers from limited-access journals. The idea is simple: when researchers—or, for that matter, curious readers—find a reference to an article that they can’t … 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
Twitter’s 136-Page Handbook for Politicians Social Media Today by Sarah Snow An NPR article recently reveals that Twitter “has a very special handbook just for people running for elected office. And it’s 136 pages long.” Use this link to reverse search Google images on your phone The Next Web by Abhimanyu Ghoshal Google’s reverse image search is one … Read more
FBI Keeps Telling Purely Theoretical Encryption Horror Stories The Intercept by Jenna McLaughlin Federal law enforcement officials decrying the proliferation of strong encryption said Tuesday that the only reason they lack actual examples of how often it shields criminals is that they’ve done a “bad job” of collecting them. UK’s MI5 security chief warns that encryption is making … Read more
Hacking Team Shows the World How Not to Stockpile Exploits Wired Top Stories by Kim Zetter Zero-day exploits are like gold to hackers. Keep them all in one place and you’re asking to get robbed. Caspar Bowden: NSA Hearing LIBE European Parliament, 24 September 2013 open Democracy News Analysis – by Caspar Bowden As a tribute to … Read more
Revealed: The Secret Gear Connecting Google’s Online Empire Wired Top Stories by Cade Metz For a decade, Google has been building the networking equipment that runs its online empire in secret. Today, it’s raising the curtain. Who benefits from the ‘internet space race’? Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Adam Fish … Read more
The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story is Journalism at its Worst — and Filled with Falsehoods The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald (updated below) Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to … Read more
Is Jetpack Misleading Users to Promote WordPress.com? WPBeginner by Editorial Staff Are you using Jetpack’s publicize feature on your site?Recently while browsing through Facebook, we found several folks sharing links where WordPress replaced the site domain. Along with that, the status also read like this: Michelle Schulp published an article in WordPress. Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi Flogged … Read more
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, … Read more
Aaron Swartz was no criminal Boing Boing by Dan Purcell Dan Purcell, one of Swartz’ lawyers, writes about the spiteful and unreasonable charges that led to his suicide—and MIT’s gutless support of his prosecutors. Read the rest Porn stars use their assets to discuss net neutrality Mashable! by Adario Strange The debate over net neutrality and the fight … Read more
MAIN FOCUS: NSA spying on Internet companies | 31/10/2013 The NSA intelligence agency also infiltrated the main communication links of Internet giants Google and Yahoo around the globe, secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by the Washington Post on Wednesday reveal.The spying programmes testify to a pathological desire for control, some commentators say. … Read more