4/16/12

Increasingly, the U.S. government has shown an intense desire to "friend" you, to "follow" you, to get to know your every online move. Now they're channeling that desire towards legislation that clear the path for authorities to work with companies like Facebook, Google and AT&T to snoop on Internet-using Americans. The legislation, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA, is winding its way through Congress.
Timothy Karr, SavetheInternet.com
A coalition of privacy groups launched an online campaign on Monday against a House cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The campaign aims to re-create the backlash that derailed anti-piracy legislation earlier this year.
Brendan Sasso, The Hill
Opposition to pending cyber-security legislation ramped up when several high-profile Internet groups joined forces to protest the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA).
Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine
Public interest groups and civil liberties organizations launched a week of Internet-wide protests against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the controversial cybersecurity legislation that would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order. The coalition is urging the public to take part in a Twitter protest directed at their lawmakers.
Free Press
The OpenNet Initiative has analyzed government interference with the Internet in 74 countries. The level of tampering in four categories is graded out of four in each country. See how each country is ranked.
Garry Blight, Andrew Rininsland, Simon Rogers and Paul Torpey, The Guardian
The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the Internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Ian Katz, The Guardian
It's good that Google's chiefs support Web freedom -- but given the company's size, we need to keep an eye on it.
James Ball, The Guardian
For more than a year, the intelligence services of various authoritarian regimes have shown an intense desire to know more about what goes on in an office building on L Street in Washington D.C., six blocks away from the White House. The office is the headquarters of a U.S. government-funded technology project aimed at undermining Internet censorship in countries such as Iran and Syria.
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
The FCC is scheduled to vote April 27 on whether to require TV stations to post online public information about political ad buys. Some form of the rule seems likely to pass, but the industry and others are lobbying the FCC to alter the nature of the final rule.
Justin Elliot, ProPublica
Outside political spending is already having an unprecedented effect on the 2012 presidential election, and much of those millions of dollars are going to television advertising. Right now, the only way for voters to find out who is behind the commercials they see is by visiting the station in person and rifling through paper records. An upcoming vote at the FCC could change that -- by requiring broadcast TV stations to put their public files online. Transparency advocates say the move is long overdue, but media industry groups are fighting the proposal.
Alice Ollstein, Free Speech Radio News
When Google first revealed in 2010 that cars it was using to map streets were also sweeping up sensitive personal information from wireless home networks, it called the data collection a mistake. Federal regulators have charged that Google had "deliberately impeded and delayed" an investigation into the data collection and ordered a $25,000 fine on the search giant.
David Streitfield, New York Times
Google earned about $38 billion in revenue last year, but the only penalty it's faced in the United States in connection with its Wi-Spy scandal is a mere $25,000 fine. Some say the penalty, issued for obstructing the investigation and not for violating the law, is a slap on the wrist -- too small of a price to pay for collecting troves of personal information from citizens' home networks.
Tony Romm, Politico
For the Orlando Sentinel, the Trayvon Martin story is local; the shooting of Martin happened in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. But the newspaper senses an opportunity to reach a national and even international audience with online coverage. It is competing with all manner of national media, which have seized on the story with a ferocity that has already drawn comparisons to the Casey Anthony trial and, years before it, that of O.J. Simpson.
Brian Stelter, New York Times
Kristyna Wentz-Graff, her Milwaukee Journal Sentinel press credentials dangling from her neck, snapped a series of shots of about 50 Occupy protesters marching near campus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Wentz-Graff paid scant attention to the sudden line of police rushing past her. She was a veteran of other raucous protests in Wisconsin and thought she knew how to shoot photos without becoming part of the story.
Allan Wolper, Editor & Publisher
Hard to imagine, but there have only been five anchors of the CBS Evening News (six if you count the pairing of Dan Rather and Connie Chung). And it was 50 years ago, that the original went on the air. Walter Cronkite with the News debuted on April 16, 1962 as a 15-minute newscast.
Chris Ariens, TVNewser
It was the news story that forever changed the way news was shared. One hundred years ago, when a "tweet" was simply the sound a bird made, the story of the Titanic's sinking spread across the globe via a network of amateurs who used a then-cutting-edge radio technology.
Tammy Swift, Grand Forks Herald
The federal government and big companies want limitless new powers to spy on you. And they plan to get them via legislation called CISPA -- the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act." Tell your member of Congress to vote no on CISPA and stop this bill in its tracks.
A U.S. appeals court just struck down a ban on political ads on public broadcasting. That means your local PBS or NPR station could start running nasty attack ads right away. Tell PBS and NPR to keep their stations free of nasty attack ads.
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