Archive
Dissenters of the system and Suicides
Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a name maybe you do not recognize, but this young guy only 22 it is fighting for privacy rights, he has been working with another two friends to bring to you an alternative for Facebook.
Diaspora is a project that if come to life will easily take down the monopoly of Facebook.
We as members of social networks are continuously complaining that our privacy has lost its meaning, it has become just a product that is bought and sold. Our privacy is being mined by government agencies and marketing companies.
Facebook would be the worse place to share our friends, photos, status, articles, and videos.
If everyone knew how the facebook legal team has teamed up with government agencies you will immediately close your account.
Carefully review the Facebook. pdf-file attached, you need to know what it is being done behind you.
Facebook is based, registered, and run in the United States of America.
This is bad because of the “Patriot Act“. Even if Facebook starts respecting your privacy, your data is still easily available to every governmental institution in the Country through open backdoors or requests, as this Facebook. pdf-file documents. Think about what this means to your freedom. Rield.com
Ilya Zhitomirskiy will never know how his Diaspora project has taken off and taken millions of users from Facebook. He committed suicide just a few days before Diaspora was launched. Their goal was to provide an idealistic Facebook alternative with an emphasis on user control and privacy.
“Shocked and deeply sad for the world that my friend @zhitomirskiyi, co-founder of Diaspora, is dead… The world needed his voice,” said Mozilla interface guru Aza Raskin
Diaspora has launched a site redesigned in the wake of Zhitomirskiy’s passing.
Now we have another bright mind gone who did have a future as bright as Ilya. I’m referring to Aaron Swartz. Swartz was an accomplished programmer, a well-known internet activist, who we can say, was one of the younger politicians that could have changed the informatics age.
Rip Aaron Swartz and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, our world will miss these two great minds.
National Security Letters
Posted on June 11, 2013 by Akashma Online News
National Security Letters
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Defending Your Rights in the Digital World
Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act the National Security Letter (NSL) power under 18 U.S.C. § 2709 as expanded by PATRIOT Section 505 is one of the most frightening and invasive. These letters served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens’ private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review. Recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from ever revealing the letters’ existence to their coworkers to their friends or even to their family members much less the public.
The FBI’s systemic abuse of this power has been documented both by a Department Of Justice investigation and in documents obtained by Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request.
EFF has fought for years to spread awareness of National Security Letters and add accountability and oversight to the process.
In 2007 EFF filed Freedom of Information Act litigation seeking documentation of National Security Letter misuse by the FBI. Thousands of pages of documents were released over a period of four years leading to repeated revelations of government abuses of power. An EFF report based on these documents led to tough questions for the FBI before Congress. The documents also helped prompt the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress.
In 2008 EFF defended the Internet Archive from an inappropriate National Security Letter. Because NSLs come with a gag order most recipients are unable to ever reveal their existence. However with the help of EFF and the ACLU the Internet
Archive fought back and won the right to speak publicly about the letter. As a result it’s become one of the few well-documented and publicly-known cases of NSL use.
And in 2013, EFF won a landmark decision in the Northern District of California in which Judge Susan Illston declared one of the statutes unconstitutional in its entirety. EFF’s petition, brought on behalf of an unidentified telephone service provider, challenged both the underlying authority to obtain customer records as well as the concurrent gag provision that prevented the recipient from disclosing even that it had receiving an NSL.
EFF has been fighting in Congress for legislative reform of National Security Letters since 2005. In 2009 many hoped that President Obama having run for office promising to reform Bush-era surveillance abuses would work with Congress to curb NSL abuse. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has instead continued to block reform and has even sought to expand NSL powers.