Donglegate…

March 26, 2013 — xanthippa

If you have not heard of ‘Donglegate’, you are likely not plugged in to the IT world – because anyone even remotely connected to the tech world has not been so lucky.

In a nutshell – Adria Richards, a non-technical person whose job was to make life easier for socially-awkward software developers (her actual job title was ‘developer evangelist’) eavesdropped on a ‘big dongle’ joke by a couple of socially-awkward software developers at a Python software developers conference and made such a public spectacle of just how offensive that was that she managed to get the guy who told the joke fired from his job.  Anonymous – the hactivist group – took exception to her actions and targeted both her blog (where she continued to make a big fuss over the dongle joke and revealed herself to be an even more unstable flake than before) and her employer with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks – until, that is, her employer realized that Adria was not, after all, very good at evangelizing on behalf of developers, making the world a nicer place for them… and fired her.

Here is a most excellent account of the event and its fallout.

And, since he’s been talking about feminism lately, here is Thunderf00t’s take on it:

Frankly, I think people like Adria Richards should never work in a position of influence or power over anyone – and hope she never does!

UPDATE:  A couple of days before she overheard the ‘dongle’ joke, Adria Richards Tweeted a sexist joke about a male friend stuffing a sock down his pants to appear to have a larger penis.…’Nough said!

Posted in freedoms, Humour, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Internet Defense League

March 18, 2013 — xanthippa

Just received this:

Dear Internet Defense League member,

Last year, right on the heels of our historic victory against SOPA, a piece of really nasty legislation almost passed that would have radically undermined online privacy.

It was called CISPA.  And it raced through the US House of Representatives, passing before any of us had a chance to react.  We stalled the bill in the Senate, but now CISPA is back, and we don’t want to make the same mistake twice.  Before there is *any* movement on the bill, we want to send a strong message to Congress that CISPA shouldn’t pass.

That’s why we’re partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to launch an Internet Defense League action starting tomorrow, Tuesday March 19th.

Can you participate? If so, get the code for your site here: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org

And help get more people signed up by sharing this page with your social network:

      

Wait, what is CISPA?  And why does it matter so much?

CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) would give companies complete freedom to share your personal data with the US government.  It doesn’t *require* them to do so, but if the government asked it would be hard to say no, and they’d have no reason to– CISPA would free them from any promises made to customers in public statements or privacy policies.

Your emails, your Facebook account, your bank statements, the websites you visit, your real-time location (courtesy of your cellphone company)– all of it could soon belong to a slew of government agencies and even local police, who could use it against you without a warrant.

Get the code: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org

The IDL action will display only tomorrow. The banner looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/mVG9kVX.png The modal looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/tCOtoEC.png

And they both link to this action page hosted by the EFF: https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9048

Please spread the word.

Thanks!  Sincerely,
Holmes Wilson – Internet Defense League

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about CISPA, the EFF has a great FAQ page here: https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

Posted in freedoms, politics, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

EU parliamentarians consider emails from citizens to be spam

March 7, 2013 — xanthippa

Just received this email – thought I’d share:

Friend,

If you complain about censorship to the European Parliament, they’ll just censor you.

That’s the message that concerned citizens in the EU have been receiving after the European Parliament’s IT department began blocking thousands of emails from citizens opposed to a controversial new policy (one that itself could have a serious impact on Europeans’ freedom of expression online).

And if we complain? I suppose they’ll block those emails too. So instead of emailing, help us make this petition go viral!

Everyone deserves a voice! Don’t let the European Parliament silence the people they are supposed to represent. Click here to take action and demand that they immediately stop blocking emails from their citizens.

Politicians need to know that silencing people’s opinions is not an option. Share this petition on Twitter and Facebook to make sure they get the message:

      

The censorship was uncovered earlier today by an MEP from the Pirate Party. Here’s his first hand account of what went down:

“Next week the European parliament will be voting on a resolution to ‘ban all forms of pornography in media.’ After this information became known to a wider audience, many citizens have decided to contact members of the European parliament to express their views on this issue … Before noon, some 350 emails had arrived in my office. But around noon, these mails suddenly stopped arriving. When we started investigating why this happened so suddenly, we soon found out: The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens.”

You can read his full account here.

Shockingly, this is not the first time this has happened. During the widespread outcry against ACTA, Parliamentary authorities decided to send all emails related to ACTA to MEP’s spam folders.

Tell the members of the European Parliament to do their jobs. Censoring opinions from concerned citizens is unacceptable and undemocratic. Sign the petition now.

Thank you for taking action against censorship. If everyone shares this petition and forwards this email to friends, we can generate enough outcry to ensure that the public’s voice is heard.

For Internet freedom,
Holmes, Tiffiniy, Evan, and the whole team.
Center for Rights / Fight for the Future

p.s. Protecting freedom of expression everywhere is what keeps us up at night. After you sign the petition, can you donate to support Center for Rights’s international anti-censorship efforts? Every contribution makes a difference!

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

An interview with Connie and Mark Fournier

March 4, 2013 — xanthippa

The couple who is leading the legal fight for the freedom of the internet in Canadian courts was recently interviewed on the ‘Just Right’ radio program.

Do give it a listen!

Posted in freedoms, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

ReasonTV: Should You Go to Jail for Unlocking Your Phone?

February 21, 2013 — xanthippa

 

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Reason TV: How Patent Trolls Kill Innovation

February 20, 2013 — xanthippa
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Free Dominion is under attack and needs our help!

February 17, 2013 — xanthippa

Free Dominion is in the forefront of the battles for the freedom of speech and for the freedom on the internet,  Their path has not been easy, but they are determined and brave and understand just how important freedom is.  They have already won some important rulings in court regarding privacy on the internet, which is why they made it to Michael Geist’s list of internet achievements of 2012!

However, legal battles are expensive.

Very expensive.

If Mark and Connie, the people behind Free Dominion, run out of funds, no amount of determination will help.  The wanna-be-oppressors know this.  That is why, just as Mark and Connie announced their new fund-raising campaign, they have tried to keep the word from getting out by hitting their site with a DDoS SYN attack…

Please, help spread the word!

And, if you can, chip in a bit…

 

From Connie Fournier:

‘As many of you know, Mark and I are fighting three trials this year related to issues of online freedom of speech.  We just started our largest fundraiser because we need to raise $50,000 to cover the cost of all of those trials.
 
Almost immediately, the Free Dominion website was attacked by hackers.  We are fighting what is called a DDoS SYN attack where dozens of computers are sending messages to our server in an attempt to overload it and shut it down.  We keep blocking IPs, but new ones spring up almost immediately and the attacks start again. 
 
Sometimes we will have periods where the site is accessible to read, but many people cannot post.  Then they come back and increase the attack until the site becomes inaccessible again.
 
We desperately need help!
 
We can’t get the word out about our fundraiser because many of our regular readers can’t get into our site to find out about it.
 
We really need people who care about free speech to circulate this email, tell your friends, or post it on your blogs.
 
Somebody doesn’t want us to meet our fundraising goal, but we have to do this.  Internet freedom depends on it!
 
Here is the link to our fundraiser, please pass it around!  http://igg.me/at/internet
 
Thanks so much for your help!
 
Connie’
H/T:  Andrew
Posted in freedoms, politics, society, technology, war. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Roger Wallis in TPB AFK

February 11, 2013 — xanthippa
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Ai Weiwei’s First Major U.S. Show Has Everything but the Dissident Artist Himself

February 6, 2013 — xanthippa

Having also grown up as a child of a publicly labeled political dissident, actively persecuted by a totalitarian regime, I have much empathy for Weiwei…

Posted in art, freedoms, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

ReasonTV: Feds Hounded ‘Net Activist Aaron Swartz, Says EFF’s Parker Higgins’

January 19, 2013 — xanthippa
Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, politics, society, technology. Leave a Comment »
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