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So, what else can Facebook do?

Facebook has presented a function for generating »heatmaps« of users at e.g. natural disasters. Techcrunch explains:

A new initiative from Facebook will provide aid organizations with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing. It shows the immense potential of this kind of fine-grained tracking, but inescapably resurfaces questions of just what else the company could do with the data.

Naturally, it is a good thing if Facebooks collected data can be used for saving lives.

But you should remember that this sort of technology also can be used for surveillance and that similar data can be sold for commercial purposes, without your explicit consent.

Techcrunch: Facebook will share anonymized location data with disaster relief organizations »

The rise of crypto-anarchism

At some point, and probably sooner than we think, the current left and right offerings of the major parties, including (perhaps especially) the populist, will start to appear ludicrous and unworkable. New political movements and ideas will arrive before long for this industrial revolution, especially once the majority of the population will soon have grown up online. It will be a politics that offers solutions to the challenges society will face, and be bold enough to steer technology rather than be led by it, to harness it rather than dismiss it, to see it as a motor of social change, not just a job maker.

The Guardian: Forget far-right populism – crypto-anarchists are the new masters »

UK: May vs. human rights

Theresa May has declared she is prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terror suspects, as she sought to gain control over the security agenda just 36 hours before the polls open.

The Guardian » May: I’ll rip up human rights laws that impede new terror legislation »

Paging Theresa May

Aaron Swartz once said, “It’s no longer OK not to understand how the Internet works.”

BoingBoing: Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here’s what that would cost, and here’s why it won’t work anyway »

This, then, is what Theresa May is proposing:

• All Britons’ communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to interceptAny firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software

• All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked

• Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

• Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease — security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one’s findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

• All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

• Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

• Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

• Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

• Free/open source operating systems — that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors — must be banned outright

Romanian parliament rebuff EU Copyright proposals

A particularly interesting discussion has been unfolding over the past months in the Romanian Parliament, where, on 15 March, the IT&C Committee of the Chamber of Deputies organised a debate on the proposed Directive, in order to collect the views of different stakeholders. After the event, the Committee produced an opinion addressed to the European Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the group responsible for drafting the final report of the Parliament on the package proposal. The members of the IT&C Committee unanimously voted against the European Commission’s Copyright proposal and advised to withdraw it in its entirety.

EDRi » Romanian Parliament: EU Copyright reform does more harm than good »

EU to move on the Internet Censorship Machine and Link-tax

Next Thursday, June 8, the European Parliaments Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) will have its main vote on the EU Copyright Package.

Here a proposal will be hammered out for the parliament’s final plenary vote later this summer. So it’s a very important event. And there are dark clouds on the horizon.

Key points are the EU Censorship Machine (forcing internet platforms to control and, in relevant cases, censor content uploaded by its users) and the Link-tax (a license fee for linking to media news articles).

This is the best – and maybe last – opportunity to stop this from becoming EU law.

Take action, spread the word and please contact your elected members of the parliament.

Julia Reda (German Pirate MEP): Just 9 days left to reject the worst version of EU copyright expansion plans yet »

BoingBoing: ACT NOW! In 9 days, the European Parliament could pass a truly terrible copyright expansion »