What Is Public? — The Message. Public is not simply defined.
Public is not just what can be viewed by others, but a fragile set of social conventions about what behaviors are acceptable and appropriate. Anonymous declares 'total war' on Donald Trump. How the FBI Versus Apple Could Make 1984 a Reality. Apple, Americans, and Security vs. FBI. This week's order by a federal magistrate judge requiring Apple to engineer new security flaws in its iPhone software operating system has prompted widespread and escalating controversy.
Legitimate concerns about its implications have driven users around the country to raise their voices in defense of not only their privacy, but also the security of their online platforms threatened by the FBI's demands. Beyond a single phone. United States of Secrets. How to Hack Like the NSA (Using Quantum Insert) Why the FBI's request to Apple will affect civil rights for a generation. On Tuesday, the United States District Court of California issued an order requiring Apple to assist the FBI in accessing a locked iPhone (PDF)—and not just any iPhone, but the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.
The order is very clear: Build new firmware to enable the FBI to perform an unlimited, high speed brute force attack, and place that firmware on the device. Apple is not only fighting the request, but posted a public letter signed by Tim Cook and linked on Apple’s front page. Make no mistake: This is unprecedented, and the situation was deliberately engineered by the FBI and Department of Justice to force a showdown that could define limits our civil rights for generations to come. This is an issue with far-reaching implications well beyond a single phone, a single case, or even Apple itself. As a career security professional, this case has chilling implications. The Pay-What-You-Want White Hat Hacker Bundle. Does Freedom Need a Firewall? New Series Examines Government Power and Abuse. Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.
Today on The Takeaway, Joel Simon, executive director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, argued that a changing media landscape is shifting the power dynamics between governments and their citizens. The democratizing platform of the Internet initially tipped the scales in favor of the citizenry, but now back again as governments come up with more dynamic tools to monitor and surveil. More than 14 years after 9/11, citizens find ourselves confronting the same questions we asked then: Should online communications and the media be monitored by the government?
A Takeaway listener from Texas writes: "Unfortunately, yes. Our enemies will always be looking for a weakness. Another listener from Jacksonville Beach, Florida, disagrees. Our listener from Jacksonville Beach makes a similar point to that of Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, whose organization has faced increasing surveillance. Truth and Power - #BlackLivesMatter (FULL EPISODE) The Super-Wealthy VC Behind The Fight For A $15 Minimum Wage. Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist, is fighting to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
(nickhanauer.com) A few years ago, the fight for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour may have felt impossible, but after years of organized protests and campaigns, the movement has made progress. Last year, a small handful of states and cities began taking steps to phase in the wage hike and this year, there may be more changes in at least five states and nine cities.
Edward Snowden's OS of choice gets a major update. The Computer Did It? Technology and Inequality. Does technological change breed inequality?
This notion, in some version or other, has become a staple explanation for our growing economic divide. It features prominently in the “meritocracy” defense of the 1 percent, which assumes (as Harvard economist Greg Mankiw put it recently) that “changes in technology have allowed a small number of highly educated and exceptionally talented individuals to command superstar incomes in ways that were not possible a generation ago.” It peppers the breathless prose of columnist Thomas Friedman, who makes a living mixing metaphors about our flat, smart, hyperconnected, seamless supply chain of a world. And it inevitably accompanies the annual handwringing over U.S. rankings in the international PISA (Program of International Student Assessment) educational achievement scores. A Harvard Professor Is Crowdfunding a Super PAC to Save Democracy from Money. Lawrence Lessig at the 2011 PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam.
Photo via Flickr user Sebastiaan ter Burg Harvard Professor Larry Lessig, friend of the late hactivist Aaron Swartz and a longtime advocate for net neutrality and ending political corruption, has been on a tear. This winter, he led the New Hampshire Rebellion, a 185-mile walk across the freezing Granite State intended to draw attention to the problem of money infecting everything our government does. Watch: Julian Assange on the TPP. Rush Limbaugh: Apple is Republicans, Google is Democrats. When nobility speaks, one should always cock an ear and listen.
I was therefore moved in all quarters of my being when I read Rush Limbaugh's analysis of tech companies and the bloggers who write about them. Limbaugh isn't merely one of America's most famous radio talk show hosts. How to Google for the Dark Web. The Dark Web is getting brighter and brighter each day.
The news is abuzz with “Memex,” a Defense Department-developed Dark Web search engine. However, there are already two Tor search engines that you can use on the regular web to take a trip into the deep. Stream Award-Winning Edward Snowden Doc Citizenfour For Free. The Real Reason Net Neutrality Matters. The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1. “I imagine that someday I may have a story written about my life and it would be good to have a detailed account of it.”
The Dark Web as You Know It Is a Myth. How Y Combinator non-profit alum DemocracyOS hopes to upgrade democracy. Academic and activist Larry Lessig might not be the next president of the United States, but his entry in the race helps bring across the point that democracy should and can be fixed. In that sense, his message is not much different from the mission of DemocracyOS, an Argentine group working to promote collaborative decision-making. Naturally, its co-founder and executive director Pia Mancini is a longtime admirer of Lessig’s work. While Mancini may not be as well-known in the general public, her TED talk last year has garnered more than one million views.
“How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era” is a good summary of what The DemocracyOS Foundation hopes to achieve, and how it came into being. From diagnosis to reboot Political science isn’t the most common education background in the startup world. John McAfee's "Campaign Video" Is Batshit Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom: Studio 1.0 (05/14) John McAfee: "Antivirus is dead" You Know What This Presidential Race Needs? John McAfee. Silicon Valley Icon Wants to Hack His Way to the Presidency.
The CMX Guide to Community Platforms. Download the CMX Guide to Community Platforms for Free Today, we officially release The CMX Guide to Community Platforms! Webinar: What is a Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit? - Sustainable Economies Law Center. Question: What do you get when you cross a worker cooperative with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit? Answer: A worker self-directed nonprofit! Watch the Entire Pirate Bay Documentary TPB AFK Right Here for Free. Public Internet Evolution.