technology

The internet was hardwired to be a surveillance tool from the start.  No matter what we use the network for today – dating, directions, encrypted chat, email, or just reading the news – it always had a dual-use nature rooted in intelligence gathering and war….[Surveillance Valley shows] the ongoing overlap between the Internet and the military-industrial complex that spawned it a half century ago, and the close ties that exist between the US intelligence agencies and the antigovernment privacy movement that has sprung up in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks.


The crew gathers to discuss the latest crazy news and events. Alternate Current Radio Presents: BOILER ROOM

(MEMO) — Israel has embarked on a massive recruitment drive to support the country’s online propaganda campaign one day after its companies were exposed for spreading disinformation and meddling in the elections of several African, Asian and Latin American countries. The new initiative, which would see the government funding pro-Israel groups overseas, was unveiled by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic […]

(ZH) – In the cleanest indication yet that China is hunkering down for what it now expected to be a very long trade war, the SCMP reports that China will give a “five-year tax break to its home-grown semiconductor makers and software developers in a bid to bolster the industries as the trade war shifts to an […]

Arms manufacturers of old, and many of the current stable, did not care much where their products went.  The profit incentive often came before the patriotic one, and led to such dark suspicions as those voiced by the Nye Committee in the 1930s.  Known formally as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, the US Senate Committee, chaired by US Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND) supplies a distant echo on the nature of armaments and their influence.

(TMU) — A 16-year-old girl in Malaysia took her own life after sharing a poll on her Instagram account asking followers whether she should choose life or death, upon which 69 percent of respondents voted that she should die. According to MalayMail and The Guardian, the unnamed teen posted a poll on the photo-sharing app’s “Stories” […]

(ZH) – Twitter announced on Monday that it ‘inadvertently” collected and shared iOS location data due to a software bug. In a blog post, the company admitted: “We have discovered that we were inadvertently collecting and sharing iOS location data with one of our trusted partners in certain circumstances,” adding “Specifically, if you used more than one account on Twitter […]

(ZH) — The co-founder of Facebook has stepped up his attack on Mark Zuckerberg just days after calling on the United States government to break up Facebook, according to Bloomberg. Chris Hughes, 35, who started Facebook with Zuckerberg said in an interview to CNN: “Zuckerberg has too much power — near-unilateral power. We all make mistakes, but I […]

(CJ Opinion) — Whenever you speak out on a public forum against internet censorship, like the recent Instagram/Facebook banning of Louis Farrakhan, Infowars, and several right-wing pundits, you always offend two major political groups. The first group are the power-serving authoritarians who identify with the left side of the political spectrum; they argue that it’s good and right to […]

Spotify is not single-handedly responsible for my relatively impoverished financial state as a working musician.  But it is certainly one of the most prominent reasons for it.