Aram Zucker-Scharff

The, perhaps ultimately futile, rise of the cypherpunk.:

Back in distant, halcyon 2010, I was asked to write something about Wikileaks and its Cablegate scandal. So, I wrote a rather melancholy ess…

Cyberpunk’s pop documentary master Bruce Sterling has a long essay on what he calls Cypherpunk. A revolution in which, like phreakers broke open Ma Bell, and hackers liberated data simply because they could, rebel decoders and data custodians challenge the nature of democracy in the digital age. 

But more than that, claims Sterling, they challenge it and they fail, because declassification isn’t enough to challenge the stand-alone strength of “institutional deceits.”

Virtually Everything the Government Did to WikiLeaks is Now Being Done to Mainstream US Reporters:

At Freedom of the Press Foundation, we believe it’s vital to defend WikiLeaks’ right to gather and publish classified information in the public interest, just as it’s vital to protect the rights of Associated Press and Fox News to do the same. Under the law, the AP, Fox News, and WikiLeaks are no different (a fact that even the government argues). If one falls, the others will not be far behind.

When they came for Wikileaks… 

The internet (and the country) continue to react to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the extremest church’s hurtful speech is still protected under the first amendment.

A Gmail glitch has seemingly wiped everything from about 150,000 accounts. Here’s how you should back up your e-mail to avoid losing everything.