Maoist Shaming Tactics Spread from Shanghai to Santa Monica and Silicon ValleyAriana Eunjung Cha reports on the newest target of public shaming in China:
Long before the Internet was invented, China’s Communist Party was already skilled in the art of public shaming.
Dissidents have been known to disappear and then reappear after having published essays of self-criticism. On state-ru ... (more)
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US Government Making Another Attempt To Regulate Code Like It Regulates International Weapons SalesWhen code is treated like weapons, bad things happen. Governing bodies have previously treated encryption as weaponry, ensuring that only the powerful will have access to strong encryption while the general public must make do with weaker or compromised variants.
More recently, the US government went after the creator of a 3D-pri... (more)
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California Adult Film Regulations Mandate 'Protective Eye Gear,' VaccinesFrom the filthy minds of government bureaucrats:
After five years of public hearings and heated debates, a proposed set of safety standards for all California porn production sets is edging closer to being finalized, but adult film performers say if passed, the new regulations would make sex scenes look like medical dramas.
The 21-pag ... (more)
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New Leak Shows NSA's Plans To Hijack App Store Traffic To Implant Malware And SpywareProving there's nowhere spy agencies won't go to achieve their aims, a new Snowden leak published jointly by The Intercept and Canada's CBC News shows the NSA, GCHQ and other Five Eyes allies looking for ways to insert themselves between Google's app store and end users' phones. The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hij ... (more)
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Minnesota: Land Of 30,000 CamerasState and local government agencies in Minnesota have installed over 30,000 surveillance cameras in cities across the state, capable of networking and interacting with each other.
Dubbed the “ring of protection,” at least 25 metro area munici... (more)
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Welcome, High School Freshman! Pee in This Cup!High school is rough for a lot of kids. As the captain of my high school's academic team (we took tests competitively and competed weekly with other students in academic competitions--yes, this is real thing), you can imagine I wasn't on the ballot for "Ms. Popular." Others undoubtedly experience worse. Between parents, puberty, and prom, it's a wonder we don't leave our high school years with PTSD in addition to our diplomas.
During a recent visit to my parents, I heard a news re... (more)
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The FBI's Stingray Secrecy May Be Aimed At Preventing Law Enforcement From Overusing A Key 'Exploit'An interesting angle on the FBI's Stingray secrecy has emerged from -- of all places -- a Princeton gathering of cryptographers that included Edward Snowden via his "Snobot."
Generally speaking, the FBI is a very secretive agency, as can be readily gleaned from its tendency to answer FOIA requests with page... (more)
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Huge Win: Appeals Court Says NSA's Bulk Phone Records Collection Not Actually Authorized By PATRIOT ActWhoa. In a huge ruling, the Second Circuit appeals court has ruled that the NSA's bulk phone records collection is not authorized by the PATRIOT Act. In other words, for all the debate about the renewal of Section 215 this month, which the government insists enables such bulk collection, this appeals court says "nope." The ruling is important on a number of different points, even th... (more)
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Town Installs License Plate Scanning Cameras in CactusesThe town of Paradise Valley in Arizona has installed license plate scanning cameras in fake cactuses with no public consultation whatsoever, just days after the DHS announced its intention to revive a nationwide version of the program.
Residents were alarmed to see the cactus cameras popping up throughout the town over the last few days with no indication of what they were being used for as city officials refused to explain their purpose until all the cameras were installed.
... (more)
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Judge Throws Out Lawsuit From Redditor Who Found An FBI Tracking Device On His CarBack in 2010, Redditor Yasir Afifi found an unusual device on his car while taking it in for an oil change.
Other Redditors surmised it was some sort of tracking device -- something that was confirmed a few days later w... (more)
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Encryption: What The FBI Wants It Can Only Have By Destroying Computing And Censoring The InternetThe FBI -- and by extension, every law enforcement agency it partners with -- wants holes carved in cellphone encryption. The problem is that it doesn't even know what specifically it wants. When asked directly if the FBI wants a backdoor, [Amy] Hess [Asst. Director of FBI's Science & Technology branch] d ... (more)
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