civil rights

WTISD-17: The two faces of Big Data

Big data has a potential to improve society – much like electricity or antibiotics. From health care and education to urban planning and protecting the environment, the applications of big data are remarkable. However, big data comes with big negative impacts. Big data can be used – by both advertisers and government agencies – to violate privacy. The power of big data can be exploited to monitor every single detail of people’s activities globally.

Fake news – are they for real?

There is a lot of buzz about »fake news«. But there is very little discussion about what it is that is supposed to be fake.
Maybe, there isn’t that much real fake news. (Dissent doesn’t qualify as fake.) Maybe it’s about stuff we don’t really want to know about. Or are not supposed to.
»Fake news« seems to be a mirage that will vanish if you try to pin it down.
It might also be that we are already so entangled in lies that we can no longer recognize the truth, even in its presence.
/ HAX

EU AVMSD: It’s not censorship to censor legal content

The EU is in the process of updating the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD).
As one could expect, this opens the floodgates when it comes to regulating and censoring content such as video (and even animated GIF:s) on a number of platforms. This includes otherwise legal content.
Today the EU E-Commerce Directive gives service providers and platforms some reasonable protection. EDRi explains…

Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service”?

In a speech Thursday at a Washington DC think tank, CIA Director Michael Pompeo called the whistleblower site WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” and said news organizations that reveal the government’s crimes are “enemies” of the United States. (…)
Referring to WikiLeaks’ founder, Pompeo declared that “Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms.” (…)