Law school grads routinely go to work for crusading nonprofits and even those in private practice do pro bono work, thanks to a widespread understanding that lawyers have a professional duty to work for the public interest -- after all, understanding and navigating the law is a necessary precondition for freedom and fairness. Read the rest
Australian politics are a revolting mess of unstable governments dominated by xenophobic, climate-denying far-right oligarchs, and the only check on their power is the fact that Australian governments are so riven by internal strife and unhinged authoritarianism that they tend to collapse on a quarterly basis, triggering new elections and/or leadership contests. Read the rest
The End of Trust (previously) is a special issue of McSweeney's, produced in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on the themes of technology, privacy and surveillance: it's in stores today, and free to download under a Creative Commons license. Read the rest
Bruce Schneier warns us that the Internet of Things security dumpster-fire isn't just bad laptop security for thermostats: rather, that "software control" (of an ever-widening pool of technologies); interconnections; and autonomy (systems designed to act without human intervention, often responding faster than humans possibly could) creates an urgency over security questions that presents an urgent threat the like of which we've never seen. Read the rest
As Schneier points out, the way this is spun ("only 39% of people did something because of Snowden") is bullshit: the headline number is that more than 700 million people are in the market for a product that barely exists, and that could make more money than Facebook if you get it right. Read the rest
