hatemail 2023-03-13

Gigi Sohn withdrew her FCC commissioner nomination

Gigi Sohn is withdrawing her nomination for FCC commissioner, blasting industry opposition and saying in a statement the continued 2-2 deadlock at the FCC will mean higher broadband prices and lax data protection policies. [Brian Fung (@b_fung) on Twitter]

Thanks for reading hatemail! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The Decline of Net Neutrality Activism

Net Neutrality is less of a hot-button topic than it was, presumably because of a deadlocked FCC that couldn’t pass anything. [Neel Chauhan’s blog]

Content Moderation & Fraud Detection - Patterns in Industry

Collecting ground truth, data augmentation, cascading heuristics and models, and more. [Eugene Yan’s blog]

Planned Obsolescence

Eliminate the labor involved – a DJ, for example – and you will eventually eliminate the spaces for which those jobs were created. [Dada Durmmer’s blog]

A Guide to Investigating the Datafied State Through Documents

If we want to study power, and the tactics and practices of elites and others who hold it — in other words, if we want to study “up” — perhaps a good place to start is in the archives. [Data & Society]

How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’

A wave of teenagers who developed tics during the pandemic has receded, illustrating the powerful influence of stress on the body and the resilience of adolescents. [New York Times]

Review: "Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children"

A French neuroscientist shows that screens and kids shouldn’t mix. [City Journal]

curl 25 years online celebration

curl turns 25 years old and what better way to celebrate this than to join fellow curl friends, developers and fans online on the exact birthday? [daniel.haxx.se]

Standing firm against threats to private and safe communication

A message from Signal executive Meredith Whitaker on the threat of the United Kingdom’s online safety bill. [Signal]

The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets

How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage. [New York Times]

GranittHQ/data-predator-victims

Granitt is compiling a database of victims of Intellexa's Predator spyware, based on reporting by Citizen Lab, Documento, and others. [Granitt on GitHub]

North Korean hackers target security researchers with a new backdoor

Campaign uses carefully crafted LinkedIn accounts that mimic legit people. [ArsTechnica]

Biden admin’s cloud security problem: ‘It could take down the internet like a stack of dominos’

The Biden administration is embarking on the nation’s first comprehensive plan to regulate the security practices of cloud providers. [Politico]

Tennessee becomes the first state to pass a ban on public drag shows

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee. Other states across the country are proposing similar legislation. [NPR]

the emails - 2600 pages of hate

a collection of emails from 2019-2021 between dozens of anti-trans expert witnesses, US right-wing lawmakers and conservative legal groups. [maia’s blog]

Inside the secret working group that helped push anti-trans laws across the country

Leaked emails give a glimpse of the religious-right networks behind transgender healthcare bans. [Mother Jones]

Twitter just let its privacy- and security-protecting Tor service expire

Just shy of its one-year anniversary. [The Verge]

The FBI Just Admitted It Bought US Location Data

Rather than obtaining a warrant, the bureau purchased sensitive data—a controversial practice that privacy advocates say is deeply problematic. [Wired]

Recognising Sexual and Gender-Based Violence as an Open Source Researcher

Bellingcat examines strategies to approach sexual and gender-based violence content in open source research and investigations. [Bellingcat]

U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-ops

The U.S. government spent years warning deepfakes could destabilize democratic societies. [The Intercept]

Disinformation Wars: China, Russia Cooperating On Propaganda More Than Ever, Says Report

A report from the German Marshall Fund highlights the growing closeness between Chinese and Russian state actors in the information space that has been accelerated by the war in Ukraine. [Radio Free Europe]

DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it

Collecting information from Americans raises ongoing civil liberties concerns. [Politico]

Let's See What Henry Kissinger Thinks About ChatGPT, Shall We?

The 99-year-old Cold War architect believes ChatGPT and other AI could reshape human consciousness and threaten Democracy itself. [Gizmodo]

ODNI Releases 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community

The annual report is submitted to Congress every year. [ODNI]

When Negotiations Go Wrong: The ISIS Hostages | ENDEVR Documentary

The abductions of John Cantlie and James Foley were the beginning of a hostage taking frenzy which impacted the foreign policy of many countries. [ENDEVR on YouTube]

US government moves to stop potential banking crisis

The U.S. government took extraordinary steps Sunday to stop a potential banking crisis after the historic failure of Silicon Valley Bank, assuring all depositors at the failed institution that they could access all their money quickly, even as another major bank was shut down. [AP]

Saudi Arabia, Iran Restore Relations in Deal Brokered by China

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by China, ending seven years of estrangement and jolting the geopolitics of the Middle East. [Wall Street Journal]

This week’s Who Hosts Hate? is LiquidWeb, an American web hosting provider owned by the private equity group Madison Dearborn Partners. Anti-transgender websites like lgballiance[.]org[.]uk rely on LiquidWeb’s hosting services. LGB Alliance’s most recent IP resolutions on IPInfo: https://ipinfo.io/67.225.255.222

Thanks for reading hatemail! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.