As civil unrest sweeps the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, hacktivist group Anonymous has emerged from a years-long hiatus. On Thursday, a video addressing the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) was posted to the Anonymous Facebook page.
Laura Herbek
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American Internet Privacy Threatened as Key Section of Patriot Act Nears Reauthorization
by Laura HerbekThe Senate has voted to restore broad government surveillance powers instilled by the Patriot Act, post-9/11 legislation written to help law enforcement detect and prevent terrorism. The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act reauthorizes expired programs from Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the section previously used to support large-scale collection of American phone records.
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The highly anticipated coronavirus stimulus package has Congressional Democrats looking towards the future–in more ways than one. On Monday and Tuesday, three bills presented by Democrats in the House and the Senate proposed using digital currency to deliver financial relief to Americans reeling from the economic effects of the ongoing pandemic.
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For a series deeply invested in being innovative and futuristic, Black Mirror seems to have lost its sense of imagination. The highly-anticipated fifth season of Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology follows the December release of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, an interactive film in which viewers are active participants in the development of the storyline. Black Mirror Season 5 marks both a return to the show’s standard format and also a notable decline in quality.
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The world’s first 3D-printed neighborhood is set to begin construction within months. The concept is being brought to life via a collaboration between ICON, an Austin-based construction tech startup, New Story, a San Francisco-based housing nonprofit, and Fuseproject, a San Francisco-based design firm.
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Mueller’s team warns that the “Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Among the report’s most alarming findings are its revelations about the scope of Russian hacking.
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Volume I of the Mueller Report, which “describes the factual results of the Special Counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and its interactions with the Trump Campaign,” confirms that WikiLeaks played an important role in disseminating stolen information.
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Russian meddling in U.S. politics via social media was a major topic of the report. Unfortunately, Attorney General William Barr chose to redact large portions of this section of the report, citing “Harm to Ongoing Matters.” These redacted sections include information on “Project Lakhta,” the larger Russian scheme of which 2016 election interference was one part.
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This morning marked the end of a seven-year standoff as embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was pulled from London’s Ecuadorian embassy and taken into custody by UK authorities. London police were “invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorean government’s withdrawal of asylum” just days after WikiLeaks tweeted that Assange was facing expulsion from the embassy that had sheltered him since 2012.
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On Wednesday, an international coalition of astronomers announced that they had seen the unseeable and were ready to share it with the world. For the first time in human history, the public was invited to gaze into a black hole spinning in a galaxy 55 million light years away from Earth.