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danah boyd and Alex Howard at SXSW 2012 (Photo by Micah L. Sifry)

Split by SouthWest: My SXSW 2012 Diary

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, March 15 2012

PDM editorial director Micah L. Sifry spent last Friday through Monday at South by SouthWest Interactive, attending panels, keynotes and hanging out. Here's his report: SXSW is still a place where sessions packed with thousands of attendees cheer for the iconoclasts and the game-changers. It is also much more of a business networking conference than an internet futurists' playpen. In short, it has a split personality. Read More

The FBI Says "Sabu," the Influential LulzSec Member, One of Two Arrested, Six Charged

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, March 6 2012

In a press release, the Federal Bureau of Information announced the indictment of six people who are charged with using their hacking skills to sneak onto an FBI call with other law enforcement agencies as well as information raids on HBGary, an information security firm that had been apparently planning a propaganda campaign against Wikileaks, and Stratfor, a global intelligence firm; and attacks on websites belonging to Fox, Sony, and PBS.

The release supports much of a FoxNews.com exclusive published earlier today. Together, they paint a picture of key mistakes compromising the security of the FBI — and of the man Fox News reports is a LulzSec leader turned informant.

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In Spain it was Halloween time for Prime Minister candidates

BY Antonella Napolitano | Tuesday, November 1 2011

Websites hacked and Twitter pictures: even though it is not traditionally Spanish, Halloween has been celebrated by Spanish people. And somebody found the time to ask "trick or treat" to PM candidates. Well, sort ... Read More

Pastebin, an Outlet of Choice for Digital Outlaws

BY Nick Judd | Monday, October 10 2011

On the occasion of its coming into regular use by Occupy Wall Street protesters, Pastebin, the site for uploading snippets of code or protest manifestos, got attention Sunday from the New York Times. From the Times' Noam ... Read More

The One Where Ezra Klein Says Something Interesting About #OccupyWallStreet

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, October 5 2011

Ezra Klein pours concrete into the mold of the 21st-century-movement-ness of Occupy Wall Street: But the leaderless, decentralized, consensus-driven nature of the protest makes evolution and adaptation easier. After all, ... Read More

#OccupyWallStreet Protesters Turn Online to Organize

BY Nick Judd | Monday, September 19 2011

Protesters on Wall Street on Sept. 17. Photo: Paul Weiskel / Flickr Hundreds of people converged on Wall Street this weekend to protest corporate influence over politics, an event that began Saturday after a call to ... Read More

The London Riots and Anonymous: Are They Connected?

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, August 10 2011

Writing for Forbes, Parmy Olson notes parallels between the London riots and the online rioting of members of Anonymous and Lulzsec: The former was physical, animalistic and violent, involving young people wearing hoods ... Read More

Anonymous And LulzSec Are At It Again, and This Time, It's Legal

BY Becky Kazansky | Wednesday, July 27 2011

Lulz Security and Anonymous, better known for illegal data breaches and acts of 'hacktivism,' today called for supporters to engage in a new protest against their old nemesis PayPal — but participants in this ... Read More

Hackers from Anonymous Claim Booz Allen Hamilton Raided, 90,000 Military Emails Released

BY Becky Kazansky | Monday, July 11 2011

On a day flooded with news of hacks and hacking, #Antisec, a faction of the larger Anonymous collective that exposes and exploits weak cybersecurity measures, announced that it had released account names and password ... Read More

Guardian Reports Phone Hacking Targeted Gordon Brown

BY Nick Judd | Monday, July 11 2011

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a target of News of the World journalists attempting to access his voicemail, the Guardian reports, adding that News International newspapers also gained access to ... Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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