A Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age
Ross Andersen writes in the Atlantic:
I want to introduce you to Jason Silva, but first I want you to watch this short video that he made. It will only take two minutes, and watching it will give you a good idea if it’s worth your time to read the extensive interview that follows. If you ever wondered what would happen if a young Timothy Leary was wormholed into 2012, complete with a film degree and a Vimeo account, you have your answer: Jason Silva. If Silva, who was born in Venezuela, seems to have natural screen presence, it’s because he’s no stranger to media; he worked for six years as a host at Current TV before leaving the network last year to become a part-time filmmaker and full-time walking, talking TEDTalk.
Bully and the Computer that Knows Your Feelings
Via Modern Mythology:
The movie Bully is hitting theaters on Friday, and it is making quite a stir.
The issue of bullying in schools has taken a surprisingly long time to reach a mainstream tipping point, considering its link to many of the school shootings that have destroyed countless people’s lives, not to mention its presence in many of psychological makeups as adults. Some people are challenging its narrative as being too simplistic, overlooking all of the other ways in which bullying occurs in our society.
Be that as it may, it is here now. However, the public discussion on the topic has just begun.
Bullying is not just an issue facing schoolchildren, although in many cases the problem starts there. It is in our homes, our work-places. It is in our language.
That may come as a surprise to some. We all think we can recognize bullying, and certainly sometimes it is obvious: ”I’m going to beat…
Ways The Government Tracks You
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you… Bill Quigley writes on Counterpunch:
Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.
One. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more. Wired just reported NSA is building an immense new data center which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world. Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it does.
Two. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Security Branch…
Netflix Super PAC Supports SOPA
So you thought that $8 a month was a sweet deal? Well, guess what else comes with it. Stephen C. Webster reports on RAW Story:
Video streaming giant Netflix has recognized the compelling financial logic behind Washington’s anti-piracy efforts.
In a recent filing with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), Netflix revealed that it has created its own political action committee called FLIXPAC, designed to support anti-piracy measures in Washington and the candidates that favor them.
The FEC filing, made April 5, was first spotted by Politico. The company has seen its spending on federal lobbying ramp up in recent years, going from approximately $20,000 in 2009 to half a million in 2011, amid heated debates in Washington over restrictions on Americans’ Internet use.
Those restrictions, represented most clearly in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), were initially supported by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who reportedly sent a letter to the Chamber of Commerce expressing solidarity…
What Happens When Social Surveillance Goes Mainstream?
Mathew Ingram writes on GigaOM:
The 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with an idea for a futuristic prison he called the “Panopticon,” a building with mirrors that would allow everyone to see what their neighbors were doing. Thanks to the growth of social tools like Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare, we now have the ingredients for a digital version of this phenomenon, and some are already using those mirrors for questionable purposes: in addition to creepy apps like “Girls Around Me,” the UK is proposing a law that would allow for monitoring of social media (as well as email and text messaging) without a warrant, U.S. universities admit that they already track what their athletes are saying — and a high-school student was recently expelled for comments he made on his personal Twitter account. At this point, advertisers tracking us online is the least of our problems.
In case you missed the furore, the “Girls Around…
Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet and Personal Computers in 1974 (Video)
In 1974, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke told a little boy what his life will look like in 2001. As recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, he claimed that every household will have a computer, and by means of it, we will be connected all over the world:
The Hypocritical Use of Piracy As a Corporate Weapon
Myles Peterson writes on TorrentFreak:
Rupert Murdoch, media tycoon, founder and Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, has been a fanatical supporter of tougher anti-piracy legislation including PIPA and SOPA in the US. But this week it was claimed that Murdoch’s piracy crusade is a rather hypocritical one, with his News Corporation now at the center of a major piracy scandal in which it’s accused of encouraging piracy to cripple competitors.
Troubled international media giant News Corporation felt the ice crack beneath its feet this week after years of enduring ill winds blowing from phone hacking scandals in the United Kingdom and United States. The Australian Financial Review and the BBC’s Panorama programme combined to publish a four-year investigation into the operations of News Corporation subsidiaries, unveiling damaging claims of a plot to facilitate and encourage piracy with the aim of crippling pay-television rivals.
The allegations cast shadows across the main-stream media landscape, with implications for…
Job Seekers Being Asked for Their Facebook Login Details During Interviews
Disturbing. Emma Barnett reports in the Telegraph:
Justin Bassett, a New York-based statistician, had just finished answering some standard character questions in a job interview, when he was asked to hand over his Facebook login information after his interviewer could not find his profile on the site, according to the Boston Globe.
Bassett refused and withdrew his job application, as he did not want to be employed by a business which would invade his privacy to such an extent.
And it’s not only job applicants, even people already on the job are being asked. More from the Telegraph:
While Lee Williams, an online retail worker from the Midlands, told The Telegraph that he was asked by his managing director for his Facebook login details, after his boss had looked him up on the social network and could not see any details about him as his privacy settings were locked down. The boss thought that Williams…
FBI: “We’re Not Winning” Against Hackers
Devlin Barrett reports in the Wall Street Journal:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top cyber cop offered a grim appraisal of the nation’s efforts to keep computer hackers from plundering corporate data networks: “We’re not winning,” he said.
Shawn Henry, who is preparing to leave the FBI after more than two decades with the bureau, said in an interview that the current public and private approach to fending off hackers is “unsustainable.” Computer criminals are simply too talented and defensive measures too weak to stop them, he said.
His comments weren’t directed at specific legislation but came as Congress considers two competing measures designed to buttress the networks for critical U.S. infrastructure, such as electrical-power plants and nuclear reactors. Though few cybersecurity experts disagree on the need for security improvements, business advocates have argued that the new regulations called for in one of the bills aren’t likely to better protect computer networks …
Senator Al Franken: ‘Privacy is a Casualty’ of Google and Facebook’s Success
Nilay Patel reports on Senator Franken’s emergence as the congressional voice of the people against corporations, for The Verge:
Senator Al Franken gave a rousing speech to the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section last night, calling for greater antitrust oversight of large media and tech companies as a way to ensure greater privacy protections for Americans. That’s not surprising by itself — Franken is the chair of the new Senate subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, after all — but the senator took the opportunity to blast Google for its controversial new privacy policy and suggest that Facebook would soon have every incentive to share private data in the absence of meaningful competition.
Franken opened by talking about his opposition to both the NBC / Comcast merger and the failed AT&T / T-Mobile deal, but he was most blunt about the privacy threat facing internet users every day. Consumers are “out on a limb…
Southern Poverty Law Center Takes Aim at Men’s Rights Websites
Chuck Rudd writes at the Good Men Project:
The Southern Poverty Law Center—a non-profit civil rights organization that made its bones going after the likes of the KKK and neo-Nazis—has turned its cannons on my virtual homeland: The Manosphere. The SPLC, created in 1971 by civil rights activist Morris Dees, publishes a quarterly “Intelligence Report” covering the latest movements and trends among so-called extremists and hate groups. This quarter’s issue features no less than three articles covering the Manosphere.
First, what is the SPLC’s stated purpose?
The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. We’ve crippled some of the country’s most notorious hate groups by suing them for murders and other violent acts committed by their members.
To expose the rampant hatred and seething violence of the Manosphere, the group’s lengthiest piece mentions a handful of high-profile cases of men…
On Being Forced To Be ‘Your Real Self’ Online
Via an interview with Pixel Union, head of Tumblr’s mobile division Buzz Andersen on the problem of being forced to be your real identity online — isn’t the internet supposed to free us from that?
One of the things that fascinates me is the way a lot of young people seem to use Tumblr, which is basically as a positive, aspirational alternative to the social networking institution they’re accustomed to: Facebook.
Rather than forcing them to represent themselves as they are, which I think is Facebook’s major goal, Tumblr allows them to represent the romantic self (or selves) they wish to be. I think this is a big part of the intense emotional attachment a lot of people seem to have to Tumblr.
Facebook is currently #1 in terms of time spent online, but Tumblr recently became #2. I think this is because they both appeal to intense human desires, but I would…
Minnesota School Board Interferes With Senior’s Porn Star Prom Date
What a little genius. USA Today says:
A Minnesota school district has quashed a high school’s senior plan to bring a porn star to his senior prom.
Mike Stone, 18, had tweeted hundreds of porn actresses with an invitation to the Tartan High School prom May 12 until adult film star Megan Piper accepted his proposal.
Piper tells KSTP-TV’s Mark Saxenmeyer that she missed her own prom and couldn’t turn down Stone’s invitation.
“It was a sweet gesture. It was so cute. I couldn’t say no,” she tells the Twin Cities TV station.
The adult film star adds that she had no intention of turning the evening into a sordid spectacle: “I don’t plan to show up butt naked or anything. I’m going to wear a pretty prom dress.”
Internet Providers to Start Policing the Web July 12th
WTF? Via Russia Today:
Some of the biggest Internet service providers in America plan to adopt policies that will punish customers for copyright infringement, and one of the top trade groups in the music biz announced this week that it could begin as soon as this summer.
The chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America told an audience of publishers on Wednesday that a plan carved out last year to help thwart piracy is expected to prevail and be put in place by this summer. RIAA CEO Cary Sherman was one of the guest speakers among a New York panel this week and he confirmed that, at this rate, some of the most powerful Internet providers in America should have their new policies on the books by July 12, 2012.
Last year, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision Systems and other Internet service providers proposed best practice recommendations that they…
Americans Often Unfriend Over Politics on Social Media
Via PBS MediaShift:
As a teenager who was vocally opinionated about political issues, I often heard the cautionary refrain “Politics is not the topic of polite conversation.” That counsel must have been lost on me, since I find myself as an adult publicly airing my opinions as both the political correspondent for this blog and as a Democratic analyst periodically appearing on FoxNews.com. I understand the wisdom of that advice, however, and know that conversations about politics (like those about religion) often begin as well-intentioned contests of ideas but end as emotionally charged and intractable disputes.
A new study released today from the Pew Internet and American Life Project illustrates this point. It found that 18 percent of people who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+ have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because of that person’s disagreeable political postings.
To determine whether this is simply a case of the online…
How China Actually Gets the Internet to Censor Itself
Thank to Disinfo for highlighting my blocked words project, Blocked on Weibo, in your post “The Most Censored Words On The Chinese Internet.” However, there are a few misconceptions that one could take away from the article which I’d like to correct. First, these are words that are blocked by one social media website (Sina Weibo); they are not blocked by the Chinese government, nor are the words listed blocked more or less frequently than other words. I cannot reiterate enough that my project does not set out to prove that top-down censorship by the government exists (though it does). The restrictions on searches on Weibo are cases of self-censorship by a private company that is very much encouraged (under the potential threat of having the company shut down or being sent to prison) to do so by the government. The hope with this project was to make it clear that censorship…
Pirate Bay Dealing With Blocking By Means of Low-Orbit Server Drones
I wonder if this is how Skynet starts … via TorrentFreak:
In recent months The Pirate Bay has drastically changed its site to make it less vulnerable to ever increasing censorship attempts across the globe. But that was just the start, as the torrent site now says it’s getting ready to put some of its hardware in GPS controlled drones. “Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they’re going to have to think about WHERE TPB is,” The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak.
It is no secret that Hollywood wants The Pirate Bay to shut down. But to accomplish this authorities may soon have to shoot down the site’s servers as these will be hovering in the air.
The Pirate Bay today unveiled their new mission. They’re working on ‘hosting’ parts of their site in GPS-controlled drones, instead of old-fashioned data centers. “Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they’re going to have to think…
A Tree Falls In The Forest …
Sabu Masked
To paraphrase the old Buddhist koan, “When Sabu shoots himself in the head, alone in the desert, will anyone care?” What, for that matter, about the copper who turned him?
By now every one’s read at an account of how an influential member of the hacktivest collective Lulzsec was co-opted by American “law enforcement” to incite his fellow members into incriminating behavior for which they may now spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars.
Some of these stories have focused on local interest of individual participants in the drama. Others have investigated the nature of hacker culture. Still others on the legal problems presented by the apparently classic “entrapment” strategy used by the FBI. But to date I have yet to see one discuss at any length the operation here of the deeper psycho/social dynamic that underlies the the self-concept of both Lulzsec and police forces.
This seems very odd to…
‘We Are Legion’ Explains Anonymous
“Anonymous kind of was like the strong, buff kid who had low self esteem and then all of a sudden punched somebody in the face and was like, ‘Holy Shit, I’m really strong!’”
This was just one great quote from We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, which premiered last night at Austin’s South By South West festival in a jammed Vimeo Theater.
Brian Knappenberger’s documentary is a revealing look at the culture of 4Chan and Anonymous, showing the world just how much power this loose but large group really has. In addition to Knappenberger, Internet activist and sometime Anon Gregg Housh led a fascinating Q&A session following the movie, demonstrating how the filmmakers have been able to gain the trust of, and therefore access to, many of the individuals who “are” Anonymous. This movie is going to be huge and I’m hoping to see it released generally soon. Until then, here’s the trailer:
Human Demonology: LulzSec and the Betrayal of Sabu
P. Emerson Williams writes on Modern Mythology:
LulzSec are the Daily Mail readers’ wet dream and were probably dreamt up and promoted by like/right-minded journalists in the service of the Stazi State. —The Guardian Comment 29 June 2011 6:09AM
Last year was marked by a seeming endless thread of DDOS attacks and new video declarations, tying in or not, intersecting or not with boots on the ground protesting across the cities of the West. Common wisdom among anti-authoritarian types was that the establishment was too big and lumbering to ever catch up with or even understand any of this. (Also see: the “piracy” issue.) Large financial institutions, big media and government looked form the outside to be playing whack-a-mole, running defense against the actions of Anonymous and Wikileaks.
Recent acts of Anonymous, or more specifically Lulzsec include the interception and release of an FBI conference call, and a dump of five million emails exchanged between…
