Clik here to view.
Oakland PD's surveillance center's primary purpose is fighting protesters,...
An excellent investigative piece in the East Bay Express reviews internal communications and other public records from city staffers and Oakland PD bureaucrats discussing the Domain Awareness Center,...
View ArticleKansas Universities can fire faculty for tweets that are "contrary to best...
The Kansas Board of Regents has adopted a new police that makes it a firing offense to use social media if you communicate sentiments that are "contrary to the best interests of the University." The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
British libel law becomes marginally saner
At last, a tiny piece of good news for free speech from England and Wales: the Defamation Act 2013 goes into effect tomorrow, and will make it substantially harder for rich, powerful people to sue...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Copyright must accomodate free expression
Here's another great post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in honor of Copyright Week, explaining the relationship between copyright and free expression. Copyright is a monopoly on speech --...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Appeals court rules bloggers have same speech protections as journalists
A Ninth Circuit Appeals court has overturned a lower-court decision that said that bloggers weren't entitled to the same free speech protection as journalists. The case involved a 2011 blog post by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
EU elections: ask candidates to sign digital rights pledge
Kirsten From Edri writes, "European Digital Rights (EDRi) has launched WePromise.EU to put digital civil rights on the agenda of the European election. The platform is based on a two-sided promise: On...
View ArticleAIDS deniers use bogus copyright claims to censor critical Youtube videos
Myles Power, a debunker who goes after junk science and conspiracy theorists, has gone after AIDS denialists and a terrible, falsehood-ridden, dangerous documentary called "House of Numbers," which...
View ArticleClik here to view.
As Idaho moves to criminalize undercover video with 'ag-gag' law, clip of...
A still from the video shot undercover at an Idaho dairy by animal rights group Mercy For Animals. Under a proposed law, filming scenes like this would become a crime. In Idaho, the dairy industry has...
View ArticleFeds drop link-related charges against Barrett Brown
The DoJ has filed a motion to dismiss charges against Barrett Brown related to republishing a link, an act they had previously characterized as a felony. Brown, a journalist, had posted links to the...
View ArticlePodcast: What happens with digital rights management in the real world?
Here's a reading (MP3) of a recent Guardian column, What happens with digital rights management in the real world where I attempt to explain the technological realpolitik of DRM, which has nothing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Britain is turning into a country that can't tell its terrorists from its...
Sarah Harrison, a British journalist who's worked with Wikileaks and the Snowden papers, writes that she will not enter the UK any longer because the nation's overbroad anti-terror laws, combined with...
View ArticleCrowdfunding £12,000 to fight mandatory UK Internet filters
Jim Killock from the UK Open Rights Group sez, "Recently the British Government, with the help of conservative religious lobby groups, has persuaded ISPs to introduce an internet filter across the UK....
View ArticleStudents raise money, give away 300 copies of book banned in their school
Jaimie sez, "My bookstore helped a high school student distribute almost 300 free copies of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, a book that has been challenged and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Molly Crabapple paintings in Pen charity action
Molly Crabapple and some of her associates have donated a wide selection of art to be auctioned off to benefit the Pen American Center, the US arm of a charitable organization that campaigns for free...
View ArticleClik here to view.
U of Saskatchewan fires tenured dean for speaking out against cuts
A reader writes, "Robert Buckingham, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan since 2009, was fired last Wednesday for critical comments about the university's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Steve Wozniak explains Net Neutrality to the FCC
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, has published an open letter to the FCC in support of Net Neutrality; Woz explains his view of traditional American fairness and the role of good government,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smart high school student suspended for nerdy joke
Paris Gray, the 17-year-old class vice president of Mundy’s Mill High School in Georgia was suspended from school for a chemistry joke she ran in the yearbook: “When the going gets tough just remember...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science fiction and the law: free speech, censorship, privacy and surveillance
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Free Speech? Visions of the Future of Copyright, Privacy, and the First Amendment in Science Fiction , a paper from Communicaton Law and Policy by Texas Christian...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Time-capsule crypto to help journalists protect their sources
Jonathan Zittrain writes, "I published an op-ed in the Boston Globe today musing on the prospects for 'time capsule encryption,' one of several ways of storing information that renders it inaccessible...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ikea bullies Ikeahackers with bogus trademark claim
Andy writes, "For eight years, Jules' IKEAHackers site has published ways people have hacked their IKEA products. Hundreds of people have combined IKEA products in creative ways to create everything...
View Article