The latest edition of Juice Rap News, "Big Brother is WWWatching You," is a catchy little rap ditty about how the Internet is being remade as a total information awareness panopticon:

September 2012 rocks around with some crucial developments in the ongoing struggle over the future of the internet. Will it remain the one open frequency where humanity can bypass filters and barriers; or become the greatest spying machine ever imagined? The future is being decided as we type. Across Oceania, States have been erecting and installing measures to legalise the watching, tracking and storage of data of party-members and proles alike. If such plans materialize, will this place ever be the same? And what will be the evolutionary consequences for our human journey? Join our plucky host Robert Foster as he conducts an incisive analysis of the situation at hand. Joining him are newly appointed Thought Police General at the Pentopticon, Darth O'Brien Baxter, and a surprisingly lucid Terence Winston Moonseed. Once again, in the midst of this Grand Human Experiment, we are forced to ask tough questions about our future. Will it involve a free internet which will continue to revolutionise the way the world communicates with itself? Or is our picture of the future a Boot stamping on this Human InterFace forever?

I like the guest appearance from George TORwell.

RAP NEWS 15: Big Brother is WWWatching You

Read more in Music at Boing Boing

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: happy mutants • law • lawful interception • music • privacy • rap • surveillance • tor

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

austinhamman

“you hippies make my job so much easier” lol so true.
ocker3

Feels like noone is commenting because they’re all too worried to have an opinion on such a topic. Either that or they’re all busy setting up TOR nodes
http://twitter.com/feenicks Feenicks

This edition of Rap News is heavily influenced by the Australian Governments current inquiry into proposals for a slew of new internet laws that include mandatory two year data retention of all internet and telecommunications use in Australia, warrant changes, and making it illegal to refuse to decrypt encrypted data.

For more information there are a bunch of resources (ie links to media articles etc and stuff related to public submissions to the inquiry) here: http://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/National_Security_Inquiry
TheMudshark

With every new episode of Rap News I am once again overwhelmed by its brilliance.

@stedge You might want to take into account that the whole act relies on heavily exaggerated characters and playing with clichés.
CpnCodpiece

Is it possible you failed to spot the satire?
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

“It’s just a ride, a delusion, the matrix, the Maya deceiving us.”

“You hippies really make our jobs so much easier..”

Hilarious!
Boundegar

This is actually pretty brilliant. I just shared it with my teenage son.
http://www.batshite.com/royalflush Scott Bartlett

This is fantastic. I have spread it to all my tubes.
BlackPanda

The 2nd one is still the best. Purely in the tightness of the rhyming, I mean. Pure genius. :)

Ubiquitous surveillance rap

Read more in Music at Boing Boing

More at Boing Boing