Information Technologies and Political Rights

The FBI working its way up to full scale attack on AP. One poor Fox News reporter gets the treatment. In the land of the free? The only acceptable leaks are our leaks!

The most successful way to avoid disruption by Anonymous -- shut down the system. No wifi, no disruption. The logic may seem a bit odd, but this is a public relations 'game.' Better to shut down than to be shut down. The military mind at work.

The Chinese are back, and our government cannot get over attacking whistle blowers. Perhaps we should figure out how to have secure systems instead of recording every electronic communication the government can get its hands on.

Syrian Electronic Army strikes again. Anonymous and Syrian Electronic Army both want to make a point -- you are the enemy. But it only works if it produces enmity for the enemy. If the result is otherwise it becomes empty games, it would seem.

Now the Saudis are trying to follow the lead of our government. Surveillance for all. Unthreatened freedom of speech for none.

Hello ITP -- where are we?

Another effort at direct democracy via internet user interface. GUI and democracy.

I take it this is bureaucratic speak for we finally have to acknowledge the obvious. Though most of the report is about military -- weapon systems.

Ours is a government to be proud of. They are right on top of these dangerous terrorists -- especially ones who reveal their secrets. Bradley Manning, Barrett Brown extreme dangers to our society. I am sure there is less 'polite' persecution somewhere.

Twenty years to remake the world!

Did you know -- And have you heard of Politwoops? Created by the Sunlight Foundation, the free service helps you discover tweets that your politicians shared and then promptly deleted. Politwoops not only lists the deleted tweets, it tells you when the tweet was deleted and how long the tweet was up before it was deleted. -- There is no getting away from 'going public.'

An infographic on the use of social media in natural disasters. Nice collection of information.

Several years later (that was 2010) we discover what the Chinese may have learned by hacking Google. Perhaps Google since has been busy figuring out how to make their services secure without needing bad legislation from Congress.

The land of the free. Well, as long as you don't do anything the Justice Department disapproves of. They will figure out a way to make it illegal. Government persecution at its best.

Bahrainis continue the fight. After being beaten and jailed by the state for more than 2 years they continue to say no. And they continue to be imprisoned for saying no.

We're the justice department and we can commit any injustice we want to.

Mass media was not and will not be. It is disappearing even as we Twitter (social media) on. Good ridinance some would say.

This is a really interesting report. Chinese using the White House petition system to ask for help in their country. Who would have thought it? What an incredible world in which we live.

There is no fourth amendment when the Department of Justice wants to go about its spying. This is as phony as the NRA interpretation of the second amendment. After all, who had the mistaken idea that a constitution was important.

What happens to privacy when every individual is tracking every other individual -- at least potentially. What will the police have to do to justify wearing google glass? Will they need a warrant? You could argue 'plain sight' except this is definitely not 'plain sight.' It is sight, but definitely not plain.

This is almost as good as the finding that 59% of the US population believes the free market will reduce their health care costs better than government programs. We are all ready for exploitation.

The good news -- Twitter has your back. The bad news Apple and Verizon are complete flops in protecting users.

The argument goes -- if only we throw the book at the 'small fish' who think they are doing protest as valuable to society we will surely deter the really bad guys. Read this and imagine how much money it cost us to find the bad guy who produced a small scale, but embarrassing, problem that was solved within an hour. I say, money well spent!