David Weinberger in Berkman BuzzApril 25, 2013: " Speaking figuratively, we now need to read with three sets of eyes, not the usual two. The first set reads the message. The second picks up the information that determines how we understand the message. The third pair tries to watch how the second pair is working, always trying to refine the assumptions we make, and looking for cues that the usual signals are unreliable." Tim Johnson comments: "The real danger of the internet is not replacing old trusted sources with new ones; it's unraveling all trusted sources and providing no new ones."
"Moreover, there was no independent journalism to respond when the U.S. government launched a successful PR and media blitz to discredit WikiLeaks. Attention largely shifted from the content of these documents to overblown and unsubstantiated claims that WikiLeaks was costing innocent lives, and to a personal focus on WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange. Columnist Glenn Greenwald was only slightly exaggerating when he stated, “There was almost a full and complete consensus that WikiLeaks was satanic.” The onslaught discredited and isolated WikiLeaks, despite the dramatic content that could be found in the documents WikiLeaks had published. The point was to get U.S. editors and reporters to think twice before opening the WikiLeaks door. It worked." -- Robert W. Mcchesney: Digital Disconnect
the murky world of online financial transactions where money bounces between accounts from Cyprus to New York in the blink of an eye. "While Liberty Reserve was incorporated outside the United States, federal officials used a provision in the Patriot Act to target the organization and other financial institutions with whom they conducted business. It was the first time the provision had been used to prosecute a virtual currency provider, officials said." "Organized crime and terrorist groups are now financing their operations through these anonymous payment systems,” said Tom Kellermann, a vice president at Trend Micro, a security firm. “The financial sector no longer has a monopoly on moving capital around the world.”
Zeynep Tufekci: "So, what’s the underling structure of the protests? It’s an increasingly tone-deaf, majority government who is relatively popular but is pursuing unpopular, divisive projects; an incompetent opposition; a cowardly, compliant mass media scene PLUS widespread, common use of social media."
DN 2013-06-06 Säkerhetsmyndigheten NSA har fått tillstånd av den hemliga domstolen FISA att dagligen övervaka trafiken via bredbands- och teleföretaget Verizon, skriver brittiska The Guardian. Tidningen uppger att den har kommit över en kopia av beslutet.
April 8, HootSuite: First, Twitter disabled a feature that let Instagram users import followers automatically from Twitter. Instagram retaliated by cutting off the ability to share photos on Twitter. More recently, Facebook countered by blocking users of Twitter’s new Vine video-sharing service from accessing their Facebook friends list on the app." "Largely gone is the harmonious and open social ecosystem of yore. In its place: a balkanized social media landscape of splintered, siloed networks who just can’t seem to get along. For ordinary users and businesses, the prognosis isn’t good."
SvD 19 maj "det är nu vi väljer framtiden för svensk högre utbildning: Ska vi ha kvar utbildningar i Sverige och då i vilken form? " massive open online course Mooc:s öppnar dock stora möjligheter för Sverige. För att förverkliga dem krävs en engagerad lärarkår. Fem debattörer från universitetsvärlden - Det omvända klassrummet Mooc-material definierar en kurs som följs av diskussion och problemlösning i klassrummet - Det avskaffade klassrummet. Utbildning och inlärning sker självständigt via nätet. - Mooc College. Fria högskolor etableras som fullt ut bygger på mooc:s.
The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms' cloud services cannot be trusted John Naughton The Observer, Sunday 28 July 2013 While the press concentrates on the furore surrounding Edward Snowden's search for political asylum, it has forgotten the importance of his revelations "The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in which it is heading."
Pamela Jones 20 August 2013: "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over... So this is the last Groklaw article. I won't turn on comments. Thank you for all you've done. I will never forget you and our work together. I hope you'll remember me too. I'm sorry I can't overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't. "
• NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records • $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products • Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet'