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Posts Tagged “Politics”
sex trade
your privacy is an illusion
Internet Archive refuses to secretly hand over user info to FBI
With the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle successfully challenged an FBI request to secretly hand over information about the site's users. The FBI had sent Kahle a "national security letter" which requested personal information about a particular user and put Kahle under a gag order. Approximately 200,000 of the secret requests, which need no judicial approval, were issued between 2003 and 2006 after the NSL program was expanded by the Patriot Act. Kahle's case is one of only three the ACLU is aware of where NSL requests were successfully overturned in court. (Photo by David Silver)
politics
To save "the children," Facebook tries press releases
At the direction of 49 state attorneys general, Facebook has adopted even more provisions to restrict interactions between adults and teenagers. Along the changes are automatic reviews of any age-changes made to underage user profiles, and the deletion of links to "pornographic materials." Even though most young people approached for sex by adults on social networks are already onto their date-of-birth deception, Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly's pledge to make Facebook safer for The Children makes for a good press op. Will the new rules make any difference, and how are they going to be implemented? We've asked Facebook how many engineers report to Kelly, but until they get back to us, it's safe to guess exactly none.
virtual worlds
Congressman Mark Kirk, a Second Life critic, employed Julia Allison
Mark Kirk, the Illinois Congressman who wants Second Life banned from schools and libraries, has more than a passing familiarity with virtual reality, illusion, and the construction of self. In 2000, Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison, then known as Julia Baugher, worked for Kirk, a family friend, as a legislative aide, and was maid of honor at his wedding.
politics
Amazon.com lawyers file suit against New York state
New York state legislators passed a law that will require Amazon.com to collect sales tax on items New Yorkers purchase on the site. Amazon lawyers call the idea "unconstitutional" and have filed a lawsuit in New York's Supreme Court. These lawyers say New York can't ask Amazon to collect sales tax because Amazon isn't based in New York. Legislators there disagree, arguing that if any Amazon affiliates — independent websites which market Amazon.com's catalog of goods, and receive a cut of sales — are based in New York, and several thousand are, Amazon very much has a presence in the state. Amazon's complaint, via Epicenter, is embedded below. More »
politics
the relaxation of H-1B immigration quotas as an "innovation" issue, not the exploitation of a global labor market to depress wages, claims UC Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff. He attempts to present a quantitative case to demonstrate that foreign skilled-worker visas don't go to genius inventors but to average, entry-level employees, in a paper for the Center for Immigration Studies. But his methodology is flawed, and a racial undercurrent bubbles beneath the surface of his argument.
More »
UC professor injects racism into H-1B debate
the relaxation of H-1B immigration quotas as an "innovation" issue, not the exploitation of a global labor market to depress wages, claims UC Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff. He attempts to present a quantitative case to demonstrate that foreign skilled-worker visas don't go to genius inventors but to average, entry-level employees, in a paper for the Center for Immigration Studies. But his methodology is flawed, and a racial undercurrent bubbles beneath the surface of his argument.
More »
politics
Lawrence Lessig now to forever be known as "Uncle Larry"
While Republicans did what they could to paint Lawrence Lessig — and, by extension, Barack Obama — as an anti-Christian elitist, they couldn't raise the stink enough. So instead think-tanker Tom Sydnor of the Progress and Freedom Foundation has attacked copylefters as "quasi-socialist utopianism" in a review of Lessig's book Free Culture. There's just one small problem. More »
politics
White House used Microsoft software to flout email-archiving law
At last, an explanation of the Bush Administration's misbehavior that will resonate in Silicon Valley: It's all Microsoft's fault. Ars Technica details how switching from an IBM Lotus email system installed under Clinton to a Microsoft Exchange server made it impossible to store White House emails systematically. The archiving system was operated manually, and Bush appointees nixed efforts to upgrade it. CIO Theresa Payton says that the White House is now working on a new system, but knowing the ways of both Washington and enterprise software, what are the chances it will be done before we have a new president?
the sum of all human knowledge
Jimmy Wales fails to usher in "new era of politics"
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, occasionally says something clever. Why doesn't his magazine cover politics? "We're not working on an election story," he told MarketWatch. "This comes from my own sense that politics today is being driven by the institutional structure of the past 20 years." Too bad Jimmy Wales hasn't figured this out. Proclaimed the founder of Wikipedia on July 4, 2006:Broadcast media brought us broadcast politics. And let's be simple and bluntly honest about it, left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb.Wales's commandments to his followers: Join a mailing list and start editing his advertising-supported Campaigns Wikia site. The wiki has seen all of 14 changes in the last month. Wales himself stopped editing the wiki in September 2006. More »
2:20 PM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By Owen Thomas
712 views,
26 comments
Latest by Troll_2.0: Why didn't Jimmy just stick with his money making porn search, Bomis? Instead he comes up with a "Book of Common Wisdom" for an encyclopedia and has to steal lunch money from kids and defraud investors and the IRS to more »
politics
Lawrence Lessig draws ire of Rush Limbaugh and the Dittoheads
Lawrence Lessig's choice of examples to illustrate the vibrant video-mashup scene to Google employees in New York — a fabulous Jesus lipsyncing Gloria Gaynor's anthem "I Will Survive" — was picked apart by Redstate and then picked up by Rush Limbaugh. Mincing down Hollywood Boulevard and hip-bumping passers-by isn't how most Americans want to imagine their lord and savior. Lessig, who recorded a 20-minute video explaining why he's "4Barack," now serves to help Republicans paint the Obama campaign as out of touch with the mainstream. The original Redstate post goes so far as to raise the specter of Communism, painting Lessig's nuanced arguments for copyright reform as a call for the abolishment of intellectual property.
politics
Hillary Clinton campaign site VoteHillary.org is vulnerable to a common exploit known as cross-site scripting (XSS), as demonstrated by Finnish security specialist Harry Sintonen. He says he's not particularly interested in American politics, according to Netcraft, which first reported Sintonen's research. He was just inspired by the attack on sites maintained by the Barack Obama campaign to see if Clinton's were also vulnerable to XSS exploits. This may redefine "political hack." But any hope that the electoral system itself might prove so pliable to technological alteration is too audacious to discuss.
Clinton site made Obama-friendly by Finnish hacker
Hillary Clinton campaign site VoteHillary.org is vulnerable to a common exploit known as cross-site scripting (XSS), as demonstrated by Finnish security specialist Harry Sintonen. He says he's not particularly interested in American politics, according to Netcraft, which first reported Sintonen's research. He was just inspired by the attack on sites maintained by the Barack Obama campaign to see if Clinton's were also vulnerable to XSS exploits. This may redefine "political hack." But any hope that the electoral system itself might prove so pliable to technological alteration is too audacious to discuss.
san francisco
Gavin Newsom complains about his Yelp rating
Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Nish Nadaraja, marketing director of the local listing site, sat down with San Francisco's preternaturally hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom. Newsom agreed to the meeting in order to convince Yelpers he's "more hip than the 3.5 stars makes me appear." Before they lobbed him softball questions in earnest, he got to pitch his environmentalist credentials, taking credit for a greener taxi fleet — though his executive order commanding municipal agencies to convert to greener vehicles has stalled, and it was the Board of Supervisors who passed the taxi legislation. All most voters seem to care about is The Hair:The days where I had a little dollop of gel are gone. I'm using quarter of a bottle at a time and I'm not proud of it. And I know that I need help!(Photo by AP/Eric Risberg)
politics
Clinton's campaign accused of hacking Obama blogs
In the clip embedded below, an Obama supporter demonstrates how "someone hacked into Barack Obama's site" and changed a link into Obama's Community Blogs so that it instead directs users to Hillary Clinton's home page. We're shocked. Obama's Web presence is the product of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes. Anyone familiar with that platform knows it's entirely resilient to human error or internal corruption. The video demonstrating the hack: More »
politics
Pass our laws or we shoot the Internet, suggests AT&T lawyer
Why is an AT&T lawyer peddling scare stories about the Internet running out of capacity by 2010? To frighten lawmakers. Jim Cicconi, AT&T's vice president of legislative affairs, surely doesn't believe that "in three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today," as he told Westminster eForum attendees in London. It's just a line that sounds good. More »
cleantech
How to get Gavin Newsom to give you taxpayer dollars
San Francisco's evil Board of Supervisors is standing in the way of hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom and his efforts to save the world by giving thousands of dollars to San Francisco home and business owners to install solar panels on their property, if you believe the San Francisco Chronicle. This should give Valley privateers a good idea of how to work with City Hall. Need to divert public money to the private sector, get a few laws changed, and at least win favor with our possible future governor? All it takes if five easy steps. More »
politics
Comcast, telcos ritually abused at FCC hearings in Palo Alto
Young San Jose resident Alex Polvi presented the least informed, but probably most typical argument for net neutrality in his public comment featured in this video clip from the rescheduled network neutrality hearings hosted by the FCC at Stanford today. But hey, even if he said "Internet" more than a dozen times, he didn't say "marketplace of ideas" or "fascism," like many of the other commenters. The people who should be most worried about the complex debate aren't free speech advocates or corporations, however, but big pharma. Listening to arguments for and against were a more powerful soporific than Ambien. Highlights from the seven hour session after the jump. More »
7:00 PM on Thu Apr 17 2008
By Jackson West
870 views,
4 comments
Latest by matt buchanan: This also left out that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin looks to be leaning toward regulating the ISPs in some fashion, most probably with transparency regulations. more »
politics
AT&T spends $200,000 on three Google-hating Congressmen
Lobbying pays: AT&T has donated $200,000 to Congressmen Cliff Stearns and Fred Upton (pictured), as well as John Shimkus. All three are members of a House telecommunications subcommittee, and have criticized Google's participation in an FCC auction of wireless spectrum. They claim the government would have made more money had Google not lobbied for rules that lift restrictions on what kind of devices can use the spectrum, smoothing the way for the launch of "Googlephones" which run Google's Android software. All of which would be less of a theoretical inside-the-Beltway debate if Google actually had a Googlephone on the market.
politics
