China: Microbloggers defy censorship in relaying facts of high-speed train crash

Chinese censors are failing to contain the flood of online messages about the wreck of a high-speed train outside Wenzhou that killed 40 people and injured 191. Messages total 26 million. Citizens began the posts right after the accident and in many instances foiled the manipulations of government officials. In Wenzhou, officials ordered lawyers not to [...]

United Nations report calls for states to safeguard online freedom of expression

The United Nations will begin discussion this week about online freedom of expression after hearing a special report that advocates protecting privacy and anonymous speech online. The UN report questions the use of surveillance under the guise of national security or counter-terrorism. The report’s author, Frank La Rue, said surveillance measures “often [take] place for [...]

AOL buys The Huffington Post to bolster news content

AOL is buying The Huffington Post, a prime news site, for $315 million in an effort to improve its news gathering. The Post was seeded with only $1 million as a liberal blog and and through aggressive use of social networks has succeeded in attracting millions of visitors to its site. Writing in The New [...]

Facebook moms muzzled for potty talk

Facebook says it was only trying to curtail spam-like or abusive postings in harassing and punishing moms who had put up too many postings, too fast, on such vital topics as potty training, sleeping habits of children and G-rated DVDs. -db PC World October 25, 2010 By Ian Paul Some moms, accused of too many [...]

Google ignites debate about privacy

Internet giant Google has sparked a fiery privacy debate this week by claiming future teenagers will need to change their names when they reach adulthood to escape embarrassing online pasts. The Courier Mail August 20, 2010 By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson In a warning experts have labelled hypocritical, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company knew “roughly [...]

Domestic spying: Uncle Sam developing ability to reach wide and deep on Internet

Through its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed that the FBI and CIA are aggressively perfecting their ability to probe social networks and the Internet for intelligence data much of which is outside the law enforcement context. -db Electronic Frontier Foundation Commentary August 16, 2010 By Tim Wayne In the [...]

EFF sues to force government to provide records of spying on social networks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, working with the UC Berkeley law school, has filed suit against a number of federal agencies who have not responded to Freedom of Information Act requests for information about their surveillance of social networking sites. -DB Electronic Frontier Foundation Press Release December 1, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO – The Electronic Frontier Foundation [...]

FBI searches house of man arrested for using Twitter to coordinate protests in Pittsburgh

The FBI last Thursday spent 16 hours searching the Queens house of a man arrested in Pittsburgh on September 24 at the Group of 20 summit. The man, who claims to be an anarchist, is facing criminal charges of helping  protesters avoid arrest after they were ordered to disperse. -DB The New York Times October 5, [...]

New Defense Department policy may allow troops to tweet and blog

In the face of a raft of military prohibitions against social networks. a new draft policy recognizes the power of the networks and seeks to balance the risks with the gains. -DB Wired Commentary September 29, 2009 By Noah Shachtman The Defense Department may allow troops and military employees to freely access social networks — if [...]

Venezuelan president clamping down on media

A United States unclassified intelligence report says that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is aggressively silencing his media critics, including bloggers. He has proposed a law that would make it a crime to report on anything the government finds objectionable.  -DB Open Source Center Analysis August 3, 2009 President Chavez’s government is moving forcefully to silence critics [...]