First POST: Tracking
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, October 17 2014
Questions about whether Whisper is secretly tracking its users' secrets; the FBI's continued push against the new wave of encrypted phones; community service, high-tech-mogul-style; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Hosts
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, October 16 2014
Airbnb in hot water in NYC; Knight Prototype Fund backs some civic tech projects; pondering Google's position on net neutrality; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Africa Calling
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, October 15 2014
How some techies are starting to respond to the Ebola crisis; everything you need to know about GamerGate; how Twitter may upset the 2015 UK elections; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Burrowing
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, October 14 2014
How Democratic candidates down-ballot are getting access to the same voter targeting tools used by larger campaigns; Microsoft Bing rolls out its election prediction program; Edward Snowden's first emails to Laura Poitras; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Attending
BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, October 13 2014
New revelations from Laura Poitras' film Citizen Four; how India's new real-time online attendance system for government officials works; tech critic Evgeny Morozov in hot water; and much, much more. Read More
Nonprofit Long Distance Voter Helped Provide Data for Google Voting Search Feature
BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, October 10 2014
For its new voting information search feature, or one-box, Google got some assistance from the nonprofit Long Distance Voter, which is dedicated to helping with absentee ballot requests. Specifically, Google licensed data from the organization to provide a service that offers voting and registration information for all 50 states. Read More
FireChat Wasn’t Meant For Protests. Here’s How It Worked (Or Didn’t) at Occupy Central
BY Rebecca Chao | Friday, October 10 2014
Occupy Central is also known as the Umbrella Movement (hurtingbombz/flickr)
On September 28, the third day of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests known as Occupy Central, one of the movement’s leaders, 17-year-old Joshua Wong, posted a message on Facebook to fellow protestors asking them to download an app called FireChat in case the government decided to shut down phone and wifi connections. A week later, even though the government had not cut off connectivity, downloads had more than quadrupled at 450,000. But so far, there's been little reporting on whether FireChat actually enables useful communications among protesters. Read More
First POST: Bad Karma
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, October 10 2014
How companies like Facebook and Twitter are failing to deal with online harassment of women; why Amazon is a monopoly that the government should break up; net neutrality stealth campaigns; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Leaders
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, October 9 2014
Why the government shouldn't have a backdoor to your encrypted smartphone; 2016 hopeful Martin O'Malley on Wi-Fi as a human right; Mark Zuckerberg in India says the Internet access is a human right; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Upvoted
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, October 8 2014
Why Twitter is suing the US government; are Republican campaign videos really dominating the 2014 race; how Facebook is handling the take-down wars between Ukrainian and Russian activists; and much, much more. Read More