Category «Free Speech»

OECD report measures human cost of crisis

How’s Life? [November 5, 2013] “finds that subjective well-being deteriorated in countries most affected by the crisis. Between 2007 and 2012, reported average life satisfaction declined by more than 20% in Greece, 12% in Spain, and 10% in Italy. However, moderate increases were recorded in Germany, Israel, Russia, Mexico and Sweden. The report also finds that citizens in …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Energy, Free Speech, Government Documents, Health Care

Apple Reports to Customers on Government Information Requests

Report on Government Information Requests:  “We believe that our customers have a right to understand how their personal information is handled, and we consider it our responsibility to provide them with the best privacy protections available. Apple has prepared this report on  the requests we receive from governments seeking information about individual users or devices in the …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Patriot Act, Privacy

UK Guardian’s interactive interviews, charts open the debate on NSA surveillance

NSA Files Decoded – Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations explained – By EWEN MACASKILL and GABRIEL DANCE – Produced by FEILDING CAGE and GREG CHEN “When Edward Snowden met journalists in his cramped room in Hong Kong’s Mira hotel in June, his mission was ambitious. Amid the clutter of laundry, meal trays and his four laptops, …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Patriot Act, Privacy

WaPo – NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

Snowden documents how NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants – by Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani “The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Patriot Act, Privacy

Commentary – Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet

Bruce Schneier, Cryptographer and Computer Security Specialist and Author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive “We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the nimble, unorganized, distributed powers such as dissident groups, criminals, and hackers. On the other side are the traditional, …

Subjects: Cybercrime, E-Government, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy

Commentary – The Decline of Wikipedia

Tom Simonite – MIT Technology Review: “The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10. It is not operated by a sophisticated corporation but by a leaderless collection of volunteers who generally work under pseudonyms and habitually bicker with each other. It rarely tries …

Subjects: Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Wiki

National Reading Campaign – Canada – The Benefits of Reading

“A highly-quotable summary, ‘Reading Matters’ outlines the many benefits of reading, and cites the research to back it up. From voting, volunteerism and vocabulary to health, happiness and higher incomes, reading affects every part of our lives. CBC Books – Benefits of reading [infographic]

Subjects: Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Le Monde documents NSA PRISM surveillance of citizens

Jacques Follorou and Glenn Greenwald, Le Monde: “According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database by its ex-analyst, telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale. Le Monde has been able to obtain access to documents which describe the techniques used to violate the secrets or simply the private life of …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Patriot Act, Privacy

Report – What the Government Does with Americans’ Data

What the Government Does with Americans’ Data, by Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice, October 8, 2013. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government’s authority to collect, keep, and share information about Americans with little or no basis to suspect wrongdoing dramatically expanded. While the risks and benefits of this approach are the …

Subjects: Courts, Cybercrime, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Patriot Act, Privacy

23 US NGOs Support EU Data Protection Regulation

EPIC: “In a letter to members of the European Parliament, a coalition of 23 leading U.S. consumer, privacy, and civil liberties groups expressed support for the new EU Data Protection Regulation. The coalition said although it “remain[s] optimistic that we will eventually update privacy laws in the United States,” until then, “the European Union offers …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Mail, E-Records, EU Data Protection, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Privacy

Poll – The New American Center

“An exclusive Esquire-NBC News survey [rendered in a series of infographics that accompany the data for each respective question/answer] shows us that everything we are told about politics in America today—that there is no middle ground between left and right, blue and red, us and them—is wrong. The data, compiled by the Benenson Strategy Group …

Subjects: Blogs, Civil Liberties, Congress, Economy, Education, Energy, Free Speech, Government Documents, Legal Research

WaPo – NSA challenged by data overcollection from e-mail address books, buddy lists

Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani, Julie Tate: “The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Internet, Privacy, Search Engines