Edward Snowden: World is rejecting mass surveillance Legislation ending the US government’s bulk collection of telephone data is “a historic victory for the rights of every citizen,” former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden said in a commentary June 4 Media Lessons from Snowden Reporting: LA Times Editors Advocate Prosecution of Sources The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Two years … Read more
Anti-austerity parties soar in Spanish elections as Greece threatens default Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Two new, anti-establishment parties (including one that grew out of the indignados movement — a kind of Spanish precedent to Occupy) took key seats in regional and municipal elections in yesterday’s Spanish election, which is a kind of dress rehearsal for the … Read more
Transparency Is No Substitute For Free Speech EFF.org Updates by Eva Galperin and Jillian York / Twitter has released a new transparency report. The company—which scored five stars in our latest “Who Has Your Back?” report—blogged about the release, wrote that “[p]roviding this insight is simply the right thing to do, especially in an age of … Read more
Algorithmic cruelty Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow With its special end-of-year message, Facebook wants to show you, over and over, what your year “looked like”; in Eric Meyer’s case, the photo was of his daughter, who died this year: “For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in … Read more
President Obama writes his first line of Javascript Mashable! by Stan Schroeder The U.S. now has a “coder-in-chief:” President Barack Obama has written his first line of code Peter Sunde: The Pirate Bay Should Stay Down TorrentFreak A few weeks ago Peter Sunde was released from prison where he’d been serving a sentence for his involvement in … Read more