I don't know exactly how I feel about this, but it's fascinating to see all these kids disclosing their favorite techniques for cheating exams.
And I have no idea what this one says, but it cracked me up...
Update: Igor over at Driven By Boredom posted a more reflective/confessional video about cheating but I thought it was within the same genre, so here it is:
After several years, our dearly loved EFF legal assistant Barak is moving on and we're looking for someone to take his spot. If you or anyone you know is interested, drop us a line!
---------------------
Legal Secretary/Assistant for Nonprofit Civil Liberties Org
Done your time in the big law firm and looking for a change? The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a dynamic nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting online rights. We're looking for a legal secretary/legal assistant to join our team and support our attorneys. EFF has an casual, friendly, fun work environment in the Mission. Aside from our legal work (we are suing AT&T for aiding the NSA in spying on your telephone and internet activities, for instance, and represented peer-to-peer software makers all the way up to the Supreme Court), EFF does grassroots activism, works with the press, and generally raises awareness about Internet freedom. You can learn more about us and our staff of 25 at www.eff.org.
Requirements: three or more years as a litigation secretary, expert abilities with Word (especially styles and generating tables), experience with legal filings, formatting, proofs of service, etc., ease with e-mail, Adobe Acrobat and the web, ability to work on Mac and PC. Our ideal candidate is a self-starter with strong organizational skills, capable of handling numerous and varied tasks simultaneously.
Duties include:
Please send your resume and a short writing sample, such as a business letter or short pleading, to legalsecretary@eff.org.
San Jose - A California state appeals court ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) petition on behalf of three online journalists Friday, holding that the online journalists have the same right to protect the confidentiality of their sources as offline reporters do.
"Today's decision is a victory for the rights of journalists, whether online or offline, and for the public at large," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl, who argued the case before the appeals court last month. "The court has upheld the strong protections for the free flow of information to the press, and from the press to the public."
In their decision, the judges wrote: "We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace."
Decision is here.
[ed- this is too precious.]
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 13, 2006
AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents
Won’t Deliver Emails Mentioning www.DearAOL.com
San Francisco - AOL is blocking delivery to AOL customers of all emails that include a link to www.DearAOL.com. Today, over 100 people who signed a petition to AOL tried sending messages to their AOL-using friends, and received a bounce-back message informing them that their email "failed permanently."
"The fact is, ISPs like AOL commonly make these kinds of arbitrary decisions -- silently banning huge swathes of legitimate mail on the flimsiest of reasons - every day, and no-one hears about it," said Danny O'Brien, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "AOL's planned CertifiedEmail system would let them profit from this power by offering to charge legitimate mailers to bypass these malfunctioning filters."
After reports of undelivered email started rolling in to the DearAOL.com Coalition, MoveOn co-founder Wes Boyd decided to see for himself if it was true.
"I tried to email my brother-in-law about DearAOL.com and AOL sent me a response as if he had disappeared," said Boyd. "But when I sent him an email without the DearAOL.com link, it went right through."
While AOL may imply that censoring www.DearAOL.com is part of some anti-spam effort, their own customers are witnessing how faulty AOL's spam measures would be if that was the case.
"I forwarded www.DearAOL.com to my own AOL account and it was censored. Apparently I can't even tell myself about it," said Kelly Tessitore from Framingham, Massachusetts.
"This proves the DearAOL.com Coalition's point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest in a free and open Internet," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, a national, nonpartisan organization working on media reform and Internet policy issues. "AOL wants us to believe they won't hurt free email when their pay-to-send
system is up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of information now to silence their critics, how could anyone trust that they will preserve the free and open Internet down the road? Their days of saying 'trust us' are over – their credibility is zero, zip, nada."
The DearAOL.com Coalition represents over 15 million people combined – and has grown from 50 member organizations to 600 in a month. Since the beginning of the DearAOL.com campaign, more than 350,000 Internet users have signed letters to AOL opposing its pay to send proposal. Coalition
members include craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the Association of Cancer Online Resources, EFF, Free Press, the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, and others.
For more on the issues surrounding pay-to-send email, join EFF for a debate on April 20 in San Francisco. EFF's O'Brien and tech expert Esther Dyson will face off over the question "Email - Should the Sender Pay?" Entrepreneur Mitch Kapor will moderate.
More information about the DearAOL.com Coalition.
More information on next week's debate.
"Email -- Should the Sender Pay?"
EFF Fundraiser, Debate Between Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien
In light of AOL's adopting a "certified" email system, EFF is hosting a debate on the future of email. With distinguished entrepreneur Mitch Kapor moderating, EFF Activist Coordinator Danny O'Brien and renowned tech expert Esther Dyson will discuss the potential consequences if people have to pay to send email. Would the Internet deteriorate as a platform for free speech? Would spam or phishing
decline?
WHEN:
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
WHAT:
"Email - Should the Sender Pay?"
WHERE:
Roxie Film Center
3117 16th Street, San Francisco
(between Valencia and Guerrero)
Tel: (415) 863-1087
This fundraiser is open to the general public. The suggested donation is $20. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please RSVP to events@eff.org
WHO:
Danny O'Brien
Danny O'Brien is the Activist Coordinator for the EFF. His job is to
help our membership in making their voice heard: in government and
regulatory circles, in the marketplace, and with the wider public.
Danny has documented and fought for digital rights in the UK for over a
decade, where he also assisted in building tools of open democracy like
Fax Your MP. He co-edits the award-winning NTK newsletter, has
written and presented science and travel shows for the BBC, and has
performed a solo show about the Net in the London's West End.
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson is editor at large at CNET Networks, where she is responsible for its monthly newsletter, Release 1.0, and its PC Forum, the high-tech market's leading annual executive conference. As editor at large, she also contributes insight and content to CNET Networks' other properties. She sold her business, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in early 2004. Previously, she had co-owned EDventure and written/edited Release 1.0 since 1983.
Recently, Esther authored a New York Times editorial called "You've Got Goodmail," defending a sender-pays model for the future of email.
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell Kapor is the President and Chair of the Open Source
Applications Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded in 2001
to promote the development and acceptance of high-quality application
software developed and distributed using open source methods and
licenses. He is widely known
as the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of
Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer
ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980's. In 1990, Kapor
co-founded EFF.
Based on the publicity generated over his ill-conceived mandatory online identification bill, it looks like NJ Assemblyman Peter Biondi is rethinking its merits. Check out this letter he sent to a former constituent who wrote with concerns about the bill:
From: Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi
Date: Mar 7, 2006
Subject: RE: Bill 1327Mr. [snip]:
Thank you for your e-mail. I understand your concerns with my recently proposed legislation. Based on the number of negative responses I have received about this legislation I have asked the NJ Office of Legislative Services to prepare an opinion regarding this bill's enforceability and constitutionality.
I did not draft this bill with intent to limit freedom of speech. The intent behind this legislation was to bring some civility back to public forums, in particular the forums on <http://www.nj.com>www.nj.com. As I receive more feedback from, literally, around the country, it is becoming apparent that the bill may be too broad in scope and in reality not enforceable.
As an aside, this bill was only introduced in January. There have been no committee hearings regarding this bill and there are none scheduled to my knowledge. I am getting inundated with responses which I will review and use to better educate myself on the implications of this bill. If, after reviewing all of the correspondence and the opinion of OLS, it turns out that the bill is, in fact, unworkable, I will certainly reconsider and withdraw it. In other words, this is not something that will happen overnight.
I appreciate your position and I will certainly use your commentary as I further study the unintended consequences of this legislation.
It is unfortunate, from my perspective, that while my intention here was civility and respectfulness, it turns out that it may have gone too far.
Thank you again for your e-mail and if I can do anything for you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact my office.
Sincerely,
Pete Biondi
Assemblyman
EFF has teamed up with over two dozen activists and non-profits to launch a bipartisan campaign against AOL's new plan to tax email. Our partners include MoveOn.org, Human Rights Campaign, Gun Owners of America, Free Press, and AIDS Foundation of Chicago among many others.
If you believe in keeping email free, check it out and take a stand with us.
There's been a lot of press about Google-China lately and the effect of censoring search results, but to me, the bigger issue is how doing business in China forces companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to be complicit in the government's oppression of journalists and others who try to speak their own truth. For instance, this report from Reporters Without Borders, shows how Yahoo helped China imprison a journalist who tried to alert the world to government censorship efforts:
The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad” - shows that Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China’s state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him, Reporters Without Borders said today.
“We already knew that Yahoo ! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.
“Yahoo ! obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,” the organisation said. “But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations ? How far will it go to please Beijing ?”
Reporters Without Borders added : “Information supplied by Yahoo ! led to the conviction of a good journalist who has paid dearly for trying to get the news out. It is one thing to turn a blind eye to the Chinese government’s abuses and it is quite another thing to collaborate.”
Translated into English by the Dui Hua Foundation (which works to document the cases of Chinese political prisoners), the verdict reveals that Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided the Chinese investigating organs with detailed information that apparently enabled them to link Shi’s personal e-mail account (huoyan-1989@yahoo.com.cn) and the specific message containing information treated as a “state secret” to the IP address of his computer.
Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) is subject to Hong Kong legislation, which does not spell out the responsibilities in this kind of situation of companies that provide e-mail services. Nonetheless, it is reportedly customary for e-mail service and Internet access providers to transmit information to the police about their clients when shown a court order.
Shi Tao Aged 37, Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
www.flickr.com
|
