PRISM (surveillance program): WE ARE WATCHED!

PRISM is a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.^[1][2][3] PRISM is a government codename for a data collection effort known officially as US-984XN.^[4][5]

Edward Snowden
Born	Edward Joseph Snowden June 21, 1983 (age 29)[1] Elizabeth City, North Carolina, United States
Status	In hiding, last known whereabouts: Hong Kong[2]
Nationality	United States
Occupation	System administrator
Known for	PRISM whistleblower

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden^[6] in June 2013 describe the PRISM program as enabling in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. It provides for the targeting of any customers of participating corporations who live outside the United States, or American citizens whose communications include web content of people outside the United States. Data which the NSA is able to obtain with the PRISM program includes email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details.^[3]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote - "How we stopped SOPA"

[Original LINK]

Aaron Swartz

Aaron H. Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, archivist, political organizer, and Internet activist.

Swartz was a member of the RSS-DEV Working Group that co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification of RSS,^[2] and built the Web site framework web.py and the architecture for theOpen Library. He also built Infogami, a company that merged with Reddit in its early days, through which he became an equal owner of the merged company.^[i] Swartz also focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism. In 2010 he was a member of the Harvard UniversityCenter for Ethics. He cofounded the online group Demand Progress (known for its campaign against SOPA) and later worked with US and international activist groups Rootstrikers and Avaaz.

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested in connection with systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR, which became the subject of a federal investigation.^[3][4] Swartz opposed JSTOR's practice of compensating publishers, rather than authors, out of the fees it charges for access to articles. Swartz contended that JSTOR's fees limited access to academic work produced at American colleges and universities.^[5][6]

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Dotcom: We've hit the jackpot

A fresh legal bid to throw out the case against Kim Dotcom in the United States is being made after claims of an FBI double-cross.

Evidence has emerged showing the Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant on Mr Dotcom's file-sharing company Megaupload in 2010 which he claims forced it to preserve pirated movies found in an unrelated piracy investigation.

The 39 files were identified during an investigation into the NinjaVideo website, which had used Megaupload's cloud storage to store pirated movies.

When the FBI applied to seize the Megaupload site in 2012, it said the company had failed to delete pirated content and cited the earlier search warrant against the continued existence of 36 of the same 39 files.

The details emerged after the US District Court in East Virginia allowed partial access to the FBI application which led to the shutdown of the Mega family of websites.

Other information from the case to emerge this week includes a collection of photographs from the day of the raid at Mr Dotcom's Coatesville property on January 20 this year. The High Court released the material after applications from the Herald.

Read more: http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10849627

Save the Internet!

Here's the link to petition: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?cJPImcb

Here's the link to send message to facebook, IBM, microsoft: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa_global_action_center/?via2440

Fight for the Future: http://fightforthefuture.org/

Priacy is Awesome! : http://www.privacyisawesome.com

New SOPA!

WARNING!
CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) = new kind of or related to SOPA.
 

We fight for the Future.

We fight for the Open and Free Internet.

We fight for the Freedom.

ACTA is a Bad Way to Develop Internet Policy

Editor’s note: Today, Mitchell Baker posted her thoughts on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement proposal. Below is an excerpt from her blog:

ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.
This is a bad way to build Internet policy. The Internet is a fundamental platform for communication and interaction. There are many stakeholders. The voices of human empowerment, human rights, and competing economic interests must be heard. These voices must have a place at the table when policy is debated. ACTA was not created through such a process.

SOURCE: ACTA-is-a-bad-way-to-develop-internet-policy

Protests Break Out Across Europe Saturday! Join Us to Stop ACTA & TPP!

They tried to push internet censorship through Congress and we 
stopped them. But the companies behind SOPA & PIPA have a
backup plan: secretive trade agreements like ACTA & TPP.If we
can't stop these backroom deals, the internet's future belongs
to SOPA's backers.

6 Reasons to oppose ACTA

1. 
   ACTA locks countries into obsolete copyright and patent laws. If a democracy decides on less restrictive laws that reflect the reality of the internet, ACTA will prevent that.
2. ACTA criminalizes users by making noncommercial, harmless remixes into crimes if "on a commercial scale" (art 2.14.1). Many amateur works achieve a commercial scale on sites like Youtube. ACTA, like SOPA, could mean jail time for the Justin Biebers of the world.
3. ACTA Criminalizes legitimate websites, making them responsible for user behavior by "aiding and abetting". (art 2.14.4). Like SOPA, the founders of your favorite sites could be sued or (worse) thrown in jail for copyright infringement by their users.
4. ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn't hard enough!
5. ACTA Permanently bypasses democracy by giving the "ACTA Committee" the power to "propose amendments to [ACTA]" (art 6.4). In other words, voting for ACTA writes a blank check to an unelected committee. These closed-door proceedings will be a playground for SOPA-supporters like the MPAA.
6. Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy. It's a secretive process that's tailor-made to serve politically connected companies. And the movie studios behind SOPA? They're experts at it. If we can't make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law, our internet's future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.

From La Quadrature du Net 

Sources: 

http://killacta.org/

http://www.stopacta.info/