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Cory Doctorow #BLM

14 Dec, 8 tweets, 3 min read

As power concentrates into ever-fewer hands, we are increasingly dependent on whistleblowers - insiders who come forward to tell the truth about what is being done in our name.

The powerful know this, and go to great lengths to destroy whistleblowers as a warning to others.

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@xychelsea

When @xychelsea was a US Army Private, she leaked a trove of US government cables to journalists, revealing widespread corruption, from the coverup of the US military's murder of Reuters journalists to cozy deals with the world's worst dictators.

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Manning was betrayed by a journalist she'd trusted and was imprisoned and tortured by the US government. After her sentence was commuted by Obama on his way out of office, she was re-imprisoned for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

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@seanspicer

Apologists for corruption and imperialism have pulled out all the stops since to keep her from finding even a sliver of peace and recognition. In 2017, Harvard rescinded her fellowship offer because @seanspicer (seriously) objected to it.

usatoday.com/story/opinion/…

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Manning told the truth to the American people about what their government was doing in their name. Spicer lied to the American people while drawing a public salary. Harvard sided with Spicer.

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Despite the powerful enemies who pursue their petty vendetta against her, Manning has continued to do good work, teaching AI and machine learning on her Twitch channel, and lecturing on prison support and mutual aid.

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@lisarein

The activist @lisarein has set up a Gofundme fundraiser to help Manning pay her bills: rent, groceries and other monthly bills. They're seeking $33k, and as of this writing have raised less than $2k. I will be contributing (in Sean Spicer's name) after I publish this.

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If you can afford to contribute, I hope you will too.

gofundme.com/f/happy-birthd…

eof/

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

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16 Dec

1998's Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended US copyrights by 20 years to life-plus-70 for human authors and 95 years total for corporate authors. The extension was retrospective, so works in the public domain went back into copyright.

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This was a wanton act of violence that doomed much of our culture to disappear entirely before its copyright expired, allowing it to be used and revitalized, rewoven into our cultural fabric.

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It was undertaken to extract extra revenues for the minuscule fraction of works by long-dead authors that were still generating revenues. It also froze the US public domain for two decades, with no work re-entering our public domain until Jan 1 2018.

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16 Dec

Cities - and even states - across the USA have passed laws banning the use of facial recognition technology by governments; the most-often cited concern is surveillance and its ability to chill lawful conduct like protests.

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But as my @EFF colleague @mguariglia writes for @FutureTenseNow, the risks run deeper than that, as historic debates have shown us. The early 20th century saw debates over "rogues galleries" (police files of photos of criminals and suspects).

slate.com/technology/202…

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As Guariglia writes, "Suspicion is a circular process." In theory you got put into a Rogues Gallery because you were suspicious. In practice, being in a Rogues Gallery MADE YOU suspicious. A single photo taken after a single police encounter turned into an eternal accusation.

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16 Dec

The Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, Swissleaks, Lichtenstein Leaks, the Fincen Files - the past decade has been filled with financial secrecy scandals wherein we learned how the world's worst people hide the world's dirtiest money.

1/

Governments have fallen as a result of these leaks. Journalists have been murdered for reporting them, whistleblowers have been imprisoned for telling the truth. These are a high-stakes window on the corruption, self-dealing and viciousness of the 1% and their criminal pals.

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One critical revelation is the role that "onshort-offshore" plays in money-laundering: rich countries with a reputation for a strong rule of law and good governance are the lynchpin of global financial secrecy, thanks to lax corporate enforcement.

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16 Dec

I'm about to go offline until 2021 and I had planned to do ABSOLUTELY NO WORK OF ANY SORT while on break, but I made an exception, for an exceptional opportunity: the 32nd Chaos Communications Congress, which is remote this year.

rc3.world

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CCC is - notoriously - held during Christmas week, which means that the attendees are limited to people who either care about tech policy and security more than their families, or people who can talk their families into coming along.

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It's one of the best events I've ever attended (I brought my family along). My talk at that event, "The Coming War on General Purpose Computing," has had a long afterlife, in large part because of the kind and thoughtful reactions of the attendees.

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

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16 Dec

@apophenia

It's been a decade since @apophenia introduced me to the idea of "email sabbaticals." That's when you go away and turn off your email.

zephoria.org/thoughts/archi…

1/

Not just setting an out-of-office message, but rather deleting all inbound mail and asking correspondents to try again after the break. In her message, boyd explains to those correspondents who know how to reach her mother that this is the only way to reach her.

2/

Here's the rationale: if you allow email to pile up while you're trying to unwind, it'll take months to catch up on when you get back, and you'll immediately burn out, incinerating all the value you got out of your break.

3/

Read 26 tweets