(Map showing US interest in other countries in the world, based on the Kissinger Cables. Image from Wikileaks)
Wikileaks has published a collection of US diplomatic cables from the period between 1973 and the end of 1976. Dubbed "The Kissinger Cables", the documents currently number 1,707,500.
That photo of you dancing drunkenly at your friend's wedding; that embarrassing question you posted once on what you thought was a private health forum... How do we make that stuff go away? Is it even possible? (the answer is.... sometimes). Tips from the Guardian.
In an article titled "Operation Crazy Xerox: Unprecedented pressure on Civil Society", Front Line Defenders reports on the sudden appearance of mass government 'inspections' of NGOs in Russia. According to the report, the wave of inspections looks more like police raids than regular inspections."Teams of representatives from different state institutions come to the offices without warning, they take away boxes of documents and, sometimes, office equipment."
"This looks to be the year that we reach peak big data hype," says Kate Crawford in the Harvard Business Review, critiqueing 'data fundamentalism' - the notion that "massive data sets and predictive analytics always reflect objective truth."
"GitHub is doing to open source what the internet did to the publishing industry," says Mikeal Rogers of Wired.com. "It’s creating a culture gap between the previous, big-project generation of open source and a newer, more amateurized generation of open source today."
Digital mapping has been used to great effect in many successful activism projects, and is rightly celebrated as a valuable tool. But it is a tool that should also be used with some thought. With this in mind, the February 5 Technology Salon in New York City asked the question: What are the ethics in participatory digital mapping?
Which ones are safe? Cryptographer and researcher Matthew Green gives us the lowdown on four of the most popular encryption tools out there -- Cryptocat, Silent Circle, Redphone, and Wickr -- in light of some crucial questions: How solid are they? What makes them different/better than what came before? And most importantly: should you trust them with your life?
Google has officially admitted that it violated people's privacy during its Street View mapping project, and has agreed to pay $7 million for the offence. "Google critics characterised the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy," reports the New York Times.
"The latest leaps in data collection are raising new concerns about infringements on privacy — an issue so crucial that it could trump all others and upset the Big Data bandwagon," says Steve Lohr in the New York Times. Data can, of course, be used in many positive ways... but the surveillance possibilities are alarming.
