A class-action lawsuit filed this week in Austin alleges that makers of some of the world’s most popular mobile apps routinely steal address book data such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles and even birthdays from millions of users without their knowledge or consent. In the filing in U.S. District Court in Travis County, attorneys representing 13 people — 12 of them Central Texans — claim almost 20   Read More ...

The Department of Homeland Security monitors your updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover “Items Of Interest” (IOI), according to an internal DHS document released by the EPIC. That document happens to include a list of the baseline terms for which the DHS–or more specifically, a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks–use to generate real-time IOI reports. (Although the released PDF is generally all reader-selectable text,   Read More ...

A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners. Document Proves DHS Is Monitoring Social Media For Government Criticism Twitter screen 007 “Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security   Read More ...

Warning: Since this video seems to have gone crazy, I figure I’ll post this notice. I’m going to read a letter my 15 year old daughter wrote. There ARE some curse words in it. None of them are incredibly bad, but they are definitely things a little kid shouldn’t hear… not to mention things MY KID shouldn’t say! If you want to see the original Facebook thread, it’s located at:   Read More ...

The Communist Chinese government has demanded some 250 million users of the Twitter-style micro-blogging platform Weibo provide their real names, addresses and identity numbers, marking a new era of Internet censorship and one that the likes of Joe Lieberman want to see enforced in the United States. From March 16, Weibo account holders will be forced to provide their real names, addresses, and passport or ID card numbers if they   Read More ...

February 5, 2012. Las Vegas. For the second time in just five primary states, the Republican Party, with the assistance of the national corporate news media, is raising questions about the legitimacy of this season’s primary election system. First, the Iowa Republican Party and the entire American media knowingly reported the wrong Iowa Caucus results with the wrong person being declared the winner. Last night, it appears the same thing   Read More ...

Lovers of liberty have seemingly had a good bit to celebrate over the past two weeks. First, there was an unprecedented outpouring of negative public sentiment about the Congressional bills SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate); they are legislation that would have thrown a large governmental monkey wrench into the relatively smooth-running cogs of the Internet. Millions of Americans signed online petitions against the bills (I did) after seeing websites’ various   Read More ...

In the latest turn in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for records related to the government’s use of social networking websites, the Department of Justice finally agreed to release almost 100 pages of new records. These include draft search warrants and affidavits for Facebook and MySpace and several PowerPoint presentations and articles on how to use social networking sites for investigations. The draft search warrants are particularly interesting   Read More ...

Despite Google’s much-heralded support for the anti-SOPA movement, the web giant is already enforcing SOPA-like policies of its own, blacklisting legitimate websites from its news aggregator and following government orders to remove material from its search results and You Tube. As major Internet giants joined forces yesterday to protest legislation that would hand the U.S. government power to arbitrarily seize websites with no legal process under the pretext of copyright   Read More ...

South Carolina’s GOP primary is known for dirty tricks, but this may be a new low. My friend Patrick McEwen from Capital Free Press alerted me to this Facebook post by Google employee Jere Brower (who is a Herman Cain supporter) in the Facebook group called “Stop Ron Paul 2012″. Mr. Brower has been trying to smear Ron Paul with kkk stuff for weeks it appears. Ron Paul’s enemies will   Read More ...