The Death of the Mind

 
FBI Director James Comey (Nextgov, 10/8/15) told Congress that his agency lost track of “dozens” of terror suspects because of encryption. “We’re really not just mak­ing this up,” he assured senators.
Before he became a household name as the accused spoiler of the 2016 election, James Comey, FBI director under President Barack Obama, was already well-known in tech circles as a crusader against strong encryption. Still smarting from Edward Snowden’s exposure of the US government’s massive and illegal domestic spying operations, Comey grabbed any microphone he could during the waning years of Obama’s tenure to warn Americans that encryption technology was putting us all at grave risk by causing law enforcement to “go dark.”
Cryptography is the art…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-parrot-fbi-talking-points-as-more-americans-turn-to-encrypted-communication-online/

On February 26, Level the Playing Field filed this reply brief in Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, 20-649. This is the case over whether the Commission on Presidential Debates is violating federal campaign law by excluding all but the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees from the general election debates.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2021/02/26/reply-brief-filed-in-u-s-supreme-court-in-presidential-debates-case/

There are many complicated debates happening right now around Twitter
and its role in public discourse. These discussions are important, but
we also shouldn’t forget a very basic and clear principle — whatever
its policies are about who can and can’t post or how, it’s of
fundamental importance that Twitter should not require users to run
nonfree software in order to use the site.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-changes-to-twitter-make-it-even-worse-for-free-software-users

After more than two decades, New York’s storied tabloid, the Daily News, finally has a staff union again. But with the paper’s sale to Alden Global Capital, a rapacious hedge fund notorious for crushing newsrooms, the union is going to have its work cut out for it just keeping the paper alive.
The New York Daily News has been acquired by Alden Global Capital, a New York City–based hedge fund that owns more than two hundred newspapers and various publications across the US. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) The news came almost in tandem, a worthy encapsulation of the media’s plight under capitalism. First, after great effort, the journalists of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/new-york-daily-news-alden-global-capital-media-union/

Genode OS 21.02 is out as the latest feature release to this open-source operating system framework…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Genode-OS-21.02-Released

The purpose of Kristof’s article is to pollute popular consciousness and pressure local Democrats tasked with enforcing the homicidal policy of reopening schools.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/26/kris-f26.html

HunterFelt: “Meanwhile on the shelves of Philip K Dick’s Sporting Goods.”

Previously, previously, previously.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/02/the-future-is/

On February 23, the North Carolina State Board of Elections determined that the Green and Constitution Parties can keep their registrants, at least until June 2021. Both parties lost their qualified status in November 2020 for failing to poll 2% for either President or Governor, and also failing to have their presidential nominees on the ballot in at least 35 states. But the party’s registrants will not be forced to register some other way, at least for a few months.
Both parties will try to petition onto the ballot again by June 2021. They each need 13,757 signatures. Both parties have begun their petitioning.
North Carolina is one of the few states that forces members of parties that…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2021/02/24/north-carolina-will-not-erase-green-and-constitution-party-registrants-until-june-2021-at-the-earliest/

For the third time in less than five months, the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing which the Committee announced will focus “on misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.”
The Committee’s Chair, Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of the Subcommittees holding the hearings, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), said in a joint statement that the impetus was “falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine” and “debunked claims of election fraud.”…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/congress-escalates-pressure-on-tech-giants-to-censor-more/

On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it won’t hear Kopitke v Bell, 20-897, the challenge to the North Carolina independent presidential petition deadline of March 3. That deadline, created in 2018, violates the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1983 decision Anderson v Celebrezze, which struck down Ohio’s March 20 deadline.
The result will create disorder if there is a presidential candidate running outside the major parties in future elections who doesn’t begin his or her campaign until the election year itself.
The court’s action continues its 30-year unbroken record of denying all cert petitions filed by minor party and independent candidates on ballot access. It is as though every member of the U.S. Supreme Court has silently…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2021/02/22/u-s-supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-challenge-to-north-carolina-independent-petition-deadline/