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Following the leaks about NSA surveillance, people demanded information about the scope and scale of the US government's data collection. In response, the administration offered internet companies a deal: they could publish the number of secret national security requests, but only if it was aggregated with data about non-secret, criminal requests.
Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! immediately accepted and published aggregate data. But Google rejected the offer, stating that "lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users".
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From Ryan Budish's post for The Guardian, "Tech firms should be allowed to publish more data on US surveillance"
About Ryan | @budish
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One of the assurances I keep hearing about the U.S. government's spying on American citizens is that it's only used in cases of terrorism. Terrorism is, of course, an extraordinary crime, and its horrific nature is supposed to justify permitting all sorts of excesses to prevent it. But there's a problem with this line of reasoning: mission creep. The definitions of "terrorism" and "weapon of mass destruction" are broadening, and these extraordinary powers are being used, and will continue to be used, for crimes other than terrorism.
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From Bruce Schneier's article for The Atlantic, "Mission Creep: When Everything Is Terrorism"
About Bruce | @schneierblog
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Like many other civil liberties advocates, I’ve been annoyed by how the media has spilled more ink talking about Edward Snowden than the issues that he’s trying to raise. I’ve grumbled at the “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” reality show and the way in which TV news glosses over the complexities that investigative journalists have tried to publish as the story unfolded. But then a friend of mine – computer scientist Nadia Heninger – flipped my thinking upside down with a simple argument: Snowden is offering the public a template for how to whistleblow; leaking information is going to be the civil disobedience of our age.
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From danah boyd's blog post, "Whistleblowing Is the New Civil Disobedience: Why Edward Snowden Matters"
About danah | @zephoria
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With the results of students’ final exams now recorded, CopyrightX—Harvard Law School’s first course offering under the auspices of HarvardX, and HarvardX’s first limited-enrollment course—has come to a close. The 12 weeks of the course generated a wealth of experiences and data that will inform analysis of the course’s design and operational features, as well as the next iteration of the course in Spring 2014.
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From the Berkman Center, "CopyrightX Comes to a Close"
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Renowned Chinese anti-corruption sleuth Zhu Ruifeng has withdrawn from the online world and his website and four personal microblogs blocked in mainland China on the heels of his exposing the alleged corrupt dealings of Chinese Communist Party (CPC) chief secretary in southeastern Fujian province.
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From Oiwan Lam's blog post for Global Voices, "China Cracks Down on Corruption Whistleblower"
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices
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