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So You Want to Be a Dissident? | The New Yorker
We analyzed the literature of protest and spoke to a range of people, including foreign dissidents and opposition leaders, movement strategists, domestic activists, and scholars of nonviolent movements. We asked them for their advice … for those who want to oppose these dramatic changes but harbor considerable fear for their jobs, their freedom, their way
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There’s a lot of chatter going around at the moment regarding “AI IS EVIL BECAUSE IT EATS A LOT OF POWER” …
…however by contrast there is a lot of really thoughtful contrasting discussion in the Reddit comments of this posting:
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Raphael Satter makes a fair point in this Bluesky thread: where is the {tech, cyber, safety} industry support for Chris Krebs?
As for the [cyber, trust & safety] industry, it often casts itself as fighting to defend democracy from election hackers & foreign disinfo. Surely punishing Krebs for defending the truth about America’s elections – and punishing @sentinelone.com for the ‘offense’ of having hired him – would draw public indignation, right? https://bsky.app/profile/raphae.li/post/3lmkicymrqs22 [thread] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/cybersecurity-industry-falls-silent-trump-turns-ire-sentinelone-2025-04-10/
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I don’t greatly like that the BBC have made me agree with Kemi Badenoch about something, but she’s absolutely correct to say that…
…policy making should not be a matter of responding to populist “gut feels” inspired by cinema or television. Aside from anything else: back in the 1980s this was how we got so many terrible computer misuse laws & unjust trials, because of WarGames. https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1910281285798396237
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Adolescence team to remake Threads nuclear attack epic | BBC News
Of all the things from my childhood that they did not need to reboot, this is possibly the thing which least needed rebooting. Perhaps they can set it in Appalachia, give it a male lead with a plucky sidekick dog and make it a musical? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24nedy37ro
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Matt Blaze | Written testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs | April 2, 2025
Blaze nails the cost/(dis-)benefit analysis of drilling holes in everyone’s privacy, trust & integrity to satisfy a niche use case, although I feel he leaves too much wiggle room and risk open in conflating E2EE, Signal, and “off by default” surveillance of telecom switches: Needless to say, court-authorized wiretaps are an important tool used by
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Study: Kids with smartphones are less depressed, anxious, bullied than peers without them
“We went into this study expecting to find what many researchers, teachers and other observers assume: smartphone ownership is harmful to children,” said Justin D. Martin, the study’s lead researcher. Instead, “most of the time we found the opposite—that owning a smartphone was associated with positive outcomes.” https://reason.com/2025/04/07/study-kids-with-smartphones-are-less-depressed-anxious-bullied-than-peers-without-them/ Via:
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“The UK’s proposed measures for court orders to suspend IP addresses and domain names” | …the UK wants to globally censor or take down IP addresses & DNS domains
Excellent little blog post from Neil: https://decoded.legal/blog/2025/04/the-uks-proposed-measures-for-court-orders-to-suspend-ip-addresses-and-domain-names/
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Abdelhakim Belhaj | Wikipedia | …the UK Gov’t have a history of dropping cases which compromise security
In … 2013, a high court judge struck out Belhadj’s case against the British government, on the grounds that if it were allowed to proceed it could potentially damage British national interests. At [a] Tribunal in January 2014, his lawyers said they had reason to suspect that GCHQ had been intercepting their phone calls with
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Apple-UK data privacy row should not be secret, court rules | BBC News
Elbows up! (Edit: my guess is there is a better than 50% chance the home office will drop the entire matter in order to prevent a precedent being set, but what do I know?) A judge has sided with a coalition of civil liberties groups and news organisations – including the BBC – and ruled
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“Academic accused of bias for opposing smartphone ban in schools” | Times | …that most feared by fearmongers is popular rejection of simplistic narrative
“Given the misinformation around smartphones and social media these days it’s easy to forget our approach to young people and technologies must have a firm foundation grounded in scientific evidence and human rights. It’s great that Dr Orben is using her platform to stand up for the truth and remind decision makers of the facts.”
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