Sensitive personal details relating to almost 200 million US citizens have been accidentally exposed by a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee.
The 1.1 terabytes of data includes birthdates, home addresses, telephone numbers and political views of nearly 62% of the entire US population.
The data was available on a publicly accessible Amazon cloud server.
BBC: Personal details of nearly 200 million US citizens exposed »
On Thursday, WikiLeaks published a detailed a set of descriptions and documentation for the CIA’s router-hacking toolkit. It’s the latest drip in the months-long trickle of secret CIA files it’s called Vault7, and it hints at how the agency leverages vulnerabilities in common routers sold by companies including D-Link and Linksys. The techniques range from hacking network passwords to rewriting device firmware to remotely monitor the traffic that flows across a target’s network. After reading up on them, you may find yourself itching to update your own long-neglected access point.
Wired: Wikileaks reveals how the CIA could hack your router »
This spring surveys suggested that young people are ambivalent towards freedom of speech. Especially so when it comes to statements that might be offensive towards religions and minorities. (Link»)
Now, similar signals are reaching us when it comes to democracy as such.
In a paper published by Roberto Stefan Foa of the University of Melbourne and Yascha Mounk of Harvard shows that the proportion of people who support “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections” has risen across the world over the past 25 years, in many cases considerably.
And there seems to be a clear trend among young people:
Foa and Mounk’s research shows that millennials have become less attached to the importance of voting. In 1995, only 16% of 16 to 24-year-old Americans believed that democracy was a bad way to run the country. By 2011, that share had increased to 24%.
Figures for Europe are approximately 7% in 1995 and 13% in 2011-12.
Another chart, based on the same research, shows a systematic decline in the percentage of people who think that it is essential to live in a democracy, depending on what decade they were born in.
It shows that those born in the 1930s believe in democracy much more than those born in the 1980s. Some 72% of those born in the 1930s in America think democracy is absolutely essential. So do 55% of the same cohort in the Netherlands.
But the millennial generation (those born since 1980) has grown much more indifferent. For example, only one in three Dutch millennials says the same; in the United States, that number is slightly lower, around 30%.
Young people also seem to be less interested in politics than older generations.
So, is there something »wrong« with young people? Or is it politics and democracy that is failing?
See all the charts here » World Economic Forum: Millennials are rapidly losing interest in democracy »
Canada’s Senate passed the Justin Trudeau Liberals’ transgender rights bill unamended this afternoon by a vote of 67 to 11, with three abstentions.
The bill adds “gender expression” and “gender identity” to Canada’s Human Rights Code and to the Criminal Code’s hate crime section. With the Senate clearing the bill with no amendments, it requires only royal assent in the House of Commons to become law.
Critics warn that under Bill C-16, Canadians who deny gender theory could be charged with hate crimes, fined, jailed, and compelled to undergo anti-bias training.
Canada passes radical law forcing gender theory acceptance »
This is very interesting – and worrying. Many countries have hate speech laws stating what you can not say. But this is a law dictating what people must say! Truly Orwellian.
So, in Canada, from now, you must use certain gender pronouns – and there seems to be a lot of them…
• Youtube » Canadian Bill C-16 Passes With No Amendments, Forcing Compelled Speech for Gender Pronouns:
• Youtube » Prison For Refusing Gender Pronouns? Lawyer Explains Bill C-16, Compelled Speech, to Canadian Senate:
• Youtube » Senate hearing on Bill C16:
1. Digital access and net neutrality needed
2. Censorship and surveillance: No excuse for states and private actors to breach human rights
3. Freedom of expression must be preserved by states and private sector
EDRi: UN Rapporteur demands respect for freedom of expression online »
The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
Hannah Ahrendt, Reflections on Violence, The New York Review of Books, 1969
In a similar way that the police cannot enter your home without a court warrant, they are not supposed to look into your private communications without permission, right? Not really.
The EU is working towards easing the access to e-evidence for law enforcement authorities. The plan of the European Commission is to propose new rules on sharing evidence and the possibility for the authorities to request e-evidence directly from technology companies. One of the proposed options is that police would be able to access data directly from the cloud-based services.
EDRi » Access to e-evidence: Inevitable sacrifice of our right to privacy? »
Although the immediate political fallout of the London attack focused on Theresa May’s cuts to policing, reductions in the number of staff who analyse intelligence is perhaps the area most deserving of scrutiny. Professor Philip Davies, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, believes the UK’s security apparatus is suffering from what those in signals intelligence call information overload.
The Guardian: How a crippling shortage of analysts let the London Bridge attackers through »
Earlier today, after an intentionally rushed consideration process, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe passed a new mass surveillance law conveniently called the “anti-conspiracy bill.” The new law creates a list of 277 acts, and makes it illegal to plan any of these acts. With the vague wording of the bill, anyone suspected of planning any of these acts could be put under targeted surveillance. Of course, the Japanese government has promised not to overstep their boundaries and emphasized that the new law is only meant to increase security before the 2020 Olympics.
The »criminal acts«? Some of them are planning any of the following: Copying music. Conducting sit-ins to protest against the construction of apartment buildings. Using forged stamps. Competing in a motor boat race without a license. Mushroom picking in conservation forests. Avoiding paying consumption tax.
An anti-conspiracy bill! Really!?! And how can you even know if someone plans to download a song or pick a rare mushroom?
The worst laws seem to rest on the most absurd justifications.
Privacy News Online: New law in Japan lets police arrest and surveil those merely planning or discussing certain acts, like copyright violation »
A long-running legal battle between Dutch ISPs and the local anti-piracy organization BREIN over blocking The Pirate Bay has concluded with a ruling in favor of BREIN. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said yesterday The Pirate Bay could be blocked because:
“Making available and managing an online platform for sharing copyright-protected works, such as ‘The Pirate Bay’, may constitute an infringement of copyright”
That summary, from the CJEU’s press release, doesn’t capture a key aspect of the case, which is that The Pirate Bay is not storing any copyright-protected works on its site, merely hosting links to torrents.
Glyn Moody @ PNO: EU’s top court says The Pirate Bay can be blocked, because it knowingly links to unauthorized copyright material »
