Category: the world

  • A Fig Leaf

    There is a major separation of powers issue with the current surveillance arrangement: The standard for permitting a query of the database of internal US phone calls is a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of terrorist activity, Inglis says. Only 20 analysts within the NSA are empowered to approve targeting US-based phone conversations, he says. One of…

  • Decentralizing the Web… Again

    …cloud computing represents centralization of information and computing resources, which can be easily controlled by corporations and governments. [Jaeger, et al. Link] In the wake of Prismgate or the Snowden Affair or whatever we’re going to call this kerfuffle, I’ve been struck by how the current centralized nature of the World Wide Web has facilitated…

  • Seduced by Big Data

    What do you need of you want to be Big Brother? Big Data, of course! Data is powerful, and “big data” is very powerful. I deal with it every day in my work as a research scientist at Adobe, where I write and utilize algorithms capable of processing petabytes of data. I’ve been actively recruited…