CISPA Is Not Dead
Visit Fight For The Future and CISPA Is Back for an overview and actions you can take, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for background on the bill since it passed the House and what happens next as it moves to the Senate.
Meantime, the White House responded to an anti-CISPA petition signed by over 100,000 people with — in part — the following:
The White House issued a veto threat for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on April 16, because the legislation did not fully address our core concerns (especially the protection of privacy). Even though a bill went on to pass the House of Representatives and includes some important improvements over previous versions, this legislation still doesn’t adequately address our fundamental concerns…
…There is broad consensus on the need for more threat-related information sharing — including among the leading privacy advocates we regularly engage on the issue. The essential question on which people across the spectrum disagree isn’t if we can share cybersecurity information and preserve the principles of privacy and liberty that make the United States a free and open society — but how.
Related: Here’s something to chew on, via Wired:
A secretive federal court last year approved all of the 1,856 requests to search or electronically surveil people within the United States “for foreign intelligence purposes,” the Justice Department reported this week.
The report, released Tuesday to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, provides a brief glimpse into the caseload of what is known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. None of its decisions are public.
The 2012 figures represent a 5 percent bump from the prior year, when no requests were denied either.
Image: Via CISPA Is Back. Select to embiggen.
The White House, Tumbling Things
We see some great things here at the White House every day, and sharing that stuff with you is one of the best parts of our jobs. That’s why we’re launching a Tumblr. We’ll post things like the best quotes from President Obama, or video of young scientists visiting the White House for the science fair, or photos of adorable moments with Bo. We’ve got some wonky charts, too. Because to us, those are actually kind of exciting.
But this is also about you. President Obama is committed to making this the most open and accessible administration in history, and our Tumblr is no exception.
We want to see what you have to share: Questions you have for the White House, stories of what a policy like immigration reform means to you, or ways we can improve our Tumbling. We’re new here, and we’re all ears.
So give us a follow, send a post our way using the submission tool, and stick around to see some things you won’t want to miss.
And yes, of course there will be GIFs.
You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhiteHouse.gov.
How Reddit Fueled the Scanner-Happy Media to Out Innocent Boston ‘Suspects’
If you thought the New York Post’s “Bag Men” outing was bad, the most crowdsourced terror investigation in American history transformed from Internet sleuthing of FBI photos on Thursday night into a lynch mob — from Reddit to a police scanner to social media and beyond — that led to the outing of even more innocent people as would-be suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Full Story: Atlantic Wire
You’re sitting in front of your computer at work, and you’re surfing Twitter. A friend shares a link which you find interesting. You click and as soon as the page opens up, your face gets embarrassingly red as everyone in your silent office looks at you. You were just served an autoplay video.
You’ll constantly hear how advertising is moving toward user control. This is mostly true. And yet in some instances, such as autoplay video, interruption is still king. The pop-under is now, for the most part, downmarket, but autoplay video attracts the creme de la creme of publishers, including ESPN, ABC News, The Washington Post and Weather.com. Facebook is even mulling rolling out autoplay video ads in the news feed. And, of course, it’s all about the money.
Click through to read the rest.
“It’s not our job as advertisers or agencies to create a good user experience on the site,” said Danielle Sporkin, senior manager of portfolio management at Universal McCann. “That’s the job of the publisher who’s providing certain ad units for sale. Our job is to evaluate and see how it performs and when it doesn’t optimize out.”
Anonymous is not a well-defined group of computer hackers. It’s not a club of anti-social geeks hiding in their parents’ basements or well-trained, militaristic outlaws hiding in shadowy bunkers equipped with high-speed Internet access.
Depending on who you ask, Anonymous is a digital consciousness, a worldwide hive mind, a culture, a political and social movement or an online collective. It’s really all of the above. Anonymous is a massive group of users of varying computing abilities who have a lot in common.
Anonymous achieved undeniable celebrity status in 2008. That year, a rather unflattering (and creepy) video of Tom Cruise rambling on about his Scientology beliefs was leaked to the Internet, to the anger of church leaders.
So the church attempted to do the impossible — it tried to remove the video from the Internet. In doing so, they raised the ire of Anonymous, which saw these attempts as a form of censorship. Anons also took issue with the church itself, which it views as a money-grubbing cult.
Thus, Project Chanology was born. Anonymous gathered its collective abilities with the intention of removing the church from the Internet. In a move that would become a hallmark of Anonymous missions, the group broadcast its intentions in a YouTube video.
Then the project began, first as DDoS attack that interfered with the church Web site. Next, there were prank phone calls and orders for unpaid pizza sent to church offices all over the world — anything to disrupt day-to-day functioning. Of course, these tactics weren’t exactly legal, and as a result, risked sealing Anonymous’ reputation as law breakers and vigilantes.
Then Anonymous had its moment of clarity, sparked by non-Anonymous Scientologist critic Mark Bunker, who pleaded with the group to use non-destructive and legal means to accomplish its ends.
Thanks to his suggestions, Anonymous shifted from illegal tactics to more legitimate actions, sending thousands of protesters out in front of the churches, all wearing Guy Fawkes masks, the likes of which have become a visual hallmark of Anonymous.
Google releases How Search Works, where “you can follow the entire life of a search query, from the web, to crawling and indexing, to algorithmic ranking and serving, to fighting webspam.”
(via proofmathisbeautiful)
Is there a psychological reason for people being mean on the Internet?
The Internet seems to be a magnet for nasty comments — and few result in real-world consequences. But why are people so mean online?
The root, it seems, may lie deep within the human psyche. The majority of communication is non-verbal, comprised of body language, eye contact, speech tone and language patterns. Without this information to help us process and categorize information, our minds are left to sort through the uncertain. And, thanks to a leftover prehistoric penchant for fight or flight, being unsure about another person’s intent often creates a negative reaction to a perceived threat [source: Gardner].
By continually presenting only our “best selves” online and reaping the emotional benefits of lots of “likes” on Facebook for instance, psychologists say our self-esteem may bloom disproportionately — and negatively impact self-control. The result? You’ll feel entitled to be an online meanie. Experts also posit that people sometimes actually forget that they’re speaking out loud when they post a snarky comment — writing something from a smartphone almost seems like you’re talking only to yourself [source: Bernstein].
This lack of inhibition also may be connected to a physical distance from the people to whom comments are directed. Turns out, the closer physical proximity you have to someone, the less likely you are to be mean-spirited. For example, one recent study found game show contestants were less likely to vote off a contestant standing next to them than one standing further away [source: Dallas].
But here’s an unexpected consequence: Lobbing snarky comments online — even if no one knows your real identity — could be bad for your health.
The World Before the Internet
“The World Before the Internet” by Jerry Hadiprojo via Reddit
Cristen and Caroline welcome their very first male guest ever of all time, Jonathan Strickland, co-host of TechStuff podcast, to chat about gender and online trolling. Specifically, are men doing a majority of trolling and what does online trolling reflect about real-world gender relations.
A topic near & dear to my hardened heart.
Syria Disappears from the Internet
Via AllThingsD:
A few hours ago, Syria, the Middle Eastern country in the middle of an especially bloody civil war, disappeared from the Internet.
The research firm Renesys, which keeps track of the status and health of the technical underpinnings of the Internet around the world, just reported that at 10:26 UTC this morning — which, by my watch, would have been 5:26 am ET — effectively all of Syria’s international Internet connectivity shut down…
…The Associated Press (via the Seattle Times) has a report citing Syrian activists saying that the government has cut off Internet and wireless phone connections in and around several neighborhoods of the capital city of Damascus. There have been some clashes there between government forces and the rebels.
Syria watchers are using the hashtag #SyriaBlackout on Twitter for updates and news.
Image: Akamai Traffic to Syria, via AllThingsD which reports that “all 84 blocks of IP addresses assigned to Syria have gone unreachable.”
“As outlined in our terms, the people who use Facebook own all of the content and information they post on Facebook, and they can control how it is shared through their privacy and application settings,” Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, wrote in an email.
‘New Facebook Guidelines’ Chain Letter About Copyright Laws Still A Hoax
Off Book: The Impact of Twitter on Journalism
The world of journalism has changed in the internet era. Newsrooms are significantly smaller now than they were 10 years ago, and news is no longer a once-a-day product, but instead a constant flow of information. The rise of Twitter brought concerns within the industry - would this overwhelming source of direct raw information put professional reporters out of business? Journalists are now faced with the challenge of adapting their roles in this digital era, finding new ways to add value to content, and helping to ensure that the internet is changing our worldview for the better.
Featuring:
Jeff Jarvis, Director, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism
Mark Luckie, Manager of Journalism & News at Twitter
Craig Kanalley, Senior Editor of Big News & Live Events at Huffington Post
Chris Anderson, Director of Research, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial JournalismThat is HuffPost’s Craig Kanalley at 2:30 in (there are, ahem, many women also with smart thoughts on Twitter and journalism, would be nice to see those voices included also, PBS offbook).
(via poptech)
