Friday, May 29, 2015

The Sun Must Set on Mass Surveillance

The Senate's pro-surveillance wing is scrambling to advance new legislation to preserve the NSA's unchecked ability to spy on all of us.

And they're in a rush. Authorization for the federal government's bulk collection of phone records is set to expire on June 1.

Their efforts were scuttled last Friday -- moments before members of Congress returned to their home states for the week-long Memorial Day recess -- as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell failed to muster the votes needed to continue the surveillance program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Internet.Not


Opposition to Internet.org spreads 
Originally published at BillMoyers.com

Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for world domination is in deep trouble.

The billionaire Facebook founder recently took to his social network in a bid to save Internet.org, his plan to give billions of the planet’s poorest people a limited taste of the World Wide Web.

“We have a historic opportunity ahead of us to improve the lives of billions of people,” he said in an impassioned video plea. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Internet.org is essentially a mobile application that provides free access to a handful of other applications, platforms and websites, including Facebook, Wikipedia and the BBC. Use of Internet.org comes at no cost; local carriers stream data via the service for free.