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How the far Right tried to exploit Spain’s anti-austerity 15-M protests – Open Democracy

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Spains anti-austerity 15-M protestors, also known as the Indignados, famously inspired Occupy demonstrations from New York to London. But according to documents recently released by WikiLeaks the far Right also tried to exploit the moment and public anger in order to build their own movements.

One of the documents, from 2012, says Spain faced the most delicate, dangerous, distressing moment for at least three generations, and recommended that ultra-conservatives launch a long-term and strongly political campaign that actively incorporates the national crisis into our agenda, against abortion and LGBT rights.

Other documents appear to show how these campaignerssought to build an alliance with progressive leaders who were in the public eye during the mass protests and also sought to copy tactics of progressive groups including Oxfam and Greenpeace.

These files among 17,000 internal documents from Spain-based, ultra-conservative groups that were released this month by WikiLeaks under the title The Intolerance Network offer an unprecedented window into these groups operations and strategies. They also shine a light on what was happening immediately prior to a far-Right boom in Spain.

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In 2013, two years after anti-austerity protestors had occupied squares across Spain and inspired the world, the ultra-conservatives that sought to seize this moment founded a new online petition platform, CitizenGo, modelled on progressive versions Avaaz and Change.org. Spains far-Right Vox party was also founded in the same year.

Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, an openDemocracy undercover investigation revealed how CitizenGo was effectively working as an unregulated US-style Super PAC to push voters to Vox and other far-Right parties across Europe.

In the Spanish elections, also held in 2019, Vox entered parliament for the first time, as the third biggest party.

In the wake of protests that erupted across Spain on 15 May 2011, campaigners from the Madrid-based, ultra-conservative group HazteOirstrategised about how to take advantage of the national crisis, according to the WikiLeaks files.

One internal HazteOir file describes how the group was struggling to grow, and says it should seize the moment and find ways to incorporate the values crisis it had focused on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, for example with the national economic and political crises that had brought many people on to the streets.

The groups campaigns should become more political, it said, even at the risk of thinking we are planting the seed of a new party. As proof that this strategy can work, it cited US ultra-conservative culture warrior Morton Blackwell, who raised millions for campaigns that are more like a partys electoral proposal than the protest of a civic association.

This file links to another document, dated 22 May 2011, which appears to be notes from talks between progressive leaders and HazteOir, on key points that unite those of us that, from the Left and the Right, want to regenerate Spanish democracy. It doesnt mention family values issues, focusing instead on topics such as political representation and electoral reform.

That document names Ignacio Escolar (founder of the left-wing news outlet Pblico, and now director of eldiario.es) and Francisco Polo (member of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and then head of the Spanish branch of Change.org), as among those who agreed with this proposal for unity. But both men told openDemocracy this is false.

Escolar and Polo both denied any involvement with HazteOir or its leader, Ignacio Arsuaga who went on to found CitizenGo and became a close ally of the far-Right Vox party. They both recalled a chance meeting with Arsuaga in a bar in Madrid unaware that this encounter would be captured in notes that ended up, a decade later, in the WikiLeaks release.

They each recounted, separately, how Arsuaga approached them, introduced himself, and suggested that prominent left-wing and right-wing digital activists align on minimal proposals that could serve as a consensus in support of 15-Ms demands.

I listened to him, as I used to listen to so many people those days. By no means did I make a proposal myself [] and defining that conversation as an agreed proposal is exaggerated [] nothing of the chat crystallised into any joint effort, Polo said.

Escolar agreed: The unexpected and improvised encounter came to nothing. I never saw Arsuaga again and had no further contact with him.

Peoples attention is not on abortion, HazteOir noted in the files released by WikiLeaks, but on the worsening of the economic situation; and hammering too much on the same subject [] creates boredom and discouragement. New strategies were needed and the files show how they studied leading progressive groups to copy their tactics.

The documents show, for example, that HazteOir tracked how its membership numbers and donations compared with those of groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. It also analysed the language, style and even details such as the colour schemes the groups used in their online communications, newsletters and other materials.

One file a draft script for a video to welcome new HazteOir members almost exactly mirrors a Greenpeace video (which is explicitly linked to in the draft). Other files suggest: Street actions to attract media attention [...] (Greenpeace model).

Another HazteOir draft (inviting new members and donations) is based on one fromthe anti-poverty NGO Oxfam Intermn (the original live links are still included).

Amnesty, Avaaz, Change.org, Greenpeace and Oxfam told openDemocracy that they were all unaware of and surprised by the level of interest in their activities and strategies from these ultra-conservative campaigners.

Javier Raboso, coordinator of Greenpeace Spains campaign on peace, democracy and human rights, said his organisation is concerned about such organisations using its engagement tools to foster intolerance and hate speech.

The philosophy of civil disobedience, and the strategies based on non-violent direct action that are the very essence of Greenpeace, belong to the history of social movements pursuing the advancement of rights and freedoms, Raboso said.

Using them instead to promote intolerance, polarisation and hatred towards minorities implies a deplorable perversion of the spirit they were born of, he argued.

HazteOir and CitizenGo did not reply to our request for comments.

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How the far Right tried to exploit Spain's anti-austerity 15-M protests - Open Democracy

Two-faced relationship between CIA and feminism | Daily Sabah – Daily Sabah

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Wikileaks, founded by Julian Assange, who is still in prison, recently reminded me of the CIA report he disclosed in 2010.

According to the report, if the Netherlands withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, other NATO countries are likely to follow. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) appears to suggest using feminism to legitimize its invasion of Afghanistan, which was in its 10th year at that time, in the eyes of the European public.

To cite an example from the report: "The prospect of the Taliban reversing hard-won progress on girls' education could provoke French anger and become a point of support for France's largely secular public opinion. This gives voters a reason to support the good and necessary cause despite the casualties."

The relationship between the CIA and feminism is not new. For example, it was revealed that Gloria Steinem, who is still considered a pioneer and respected feminist even today, was funded by the CIA from the early 1950s to the 1960s. This funding relationship is thought to have continued even longer, although Steinem has denied it.

When asked about the topic, she praised her funders, saying that the CIA boasts a liberal and non-violent environment. The name of the foundation she founded with CIA funding was ironic: Independent Research Service. Through this foundation, she worked to disseminate feminist theses in the world, especially in the U.S.

The CIA calls such people "change agents." The figures, who make the public adopt arguments that the U.S. established order deems appropriate, are supported in various ways and are highlighted in the public sphere.

I think what I have described is background information that should be kept in mind when looking at discourses and subjects that feature the topic of women's rights as the U.S. forces, who are responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of women in Afghanistan, withdraw.

While the rape of women by American soldiers in every country it occupied, from Vietnam to Colombia, Iraq to Afghanistan, is well-known, I believe that remembering the issue of how women are treated, since America's withdrawal, highlights the deep-rooted hypocrisy in itself.

It is hard to believe that they are concerned about the education of Afghan women when every year another European state denies women wearing headscarves the right to education.

In any case, we are faced with the reality of an administration that defeated the U.S. and took over Afghanistan. Reminding us of the saying "heavy is the head that wears the crown," some Taliban spokespeople went on TV programs hosted by female journalists without headscarves, promising that they will not interfere with the education of girls from the very first day.

On the other hand, according to their understanding and the interpretation of Islam, they are not promising a rose garden.

Demanding an increase in public pressure and maintaining a cautious outlook versus having the naivety to say "Oh, if only American drones would return to the skies of Afghanistan and protect the women" are two different things for sure. Because the primary policy and concern of the United States has never been the women of Afghanistan.

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Two-faced relationship between CIA and feminism | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup – Forbes Africa

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Five years ago, from her prison cell, trans whistleblower Chelsea Manning sketched out a new way to protect online privacy. Now, she is helping an MIT-affiliated cryptographer bring the next generation of privacy software online.

Chelsea Mannings long blonde hair catches in a cool summer breeze as she turns the corner into Brooklyns Starr Bar, a dimly lit counter-cultural haunt in the heart of the hipster enclave of Bushwick. The 33-year-old best known for leaking hundreds of thousands of top-secret government documents to Julian Assange in 2010, then coming out as a transgender woman, walks past a poster depicting sea turtles, humans and geese merging to form the outline of a dove. Beside the image are the words, Your Nations Cannot Contain Us.

Dressed in a black suit and wearing a silver Omega watch, she makes her way to a small wooden table illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. She orders a coke. Contrary to what one might expect, this whistleblower turned trans-icon looks uncomfortable in the hip surroundings. A fan reverently approaches her and welcomes her back. This is my life, she says after he leaves, expressing both gratitude for the well wishes, and lamenting the loss of her privacy. Im not just famous, Im in the history books.

While serving the longest sentence ever doled out to a whistleblower after she used the privacy protecting Tor Network to anonymously leak 700,000 government documents, she used her time in incarceration to devise a better way to hide the tracks of other online users. Knowing that the non-profit Tor Project she used to send files to Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to the prying eyes of intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to build a similar network, without troublesome government funding. The entire plan was hatched in a military prison, on paper.

The privacy network industry, including the virtual-private networks (VPNs) familiar to many corporate users, generated $29 billion in revenue in 2019, and is expected to triple to $75 billion by 2027. Fixing the known weaknesses of these networks is about more than just protecting future whistleblowers and criminals. Private networks are also vital for big businesses who want to protect trade secrets. Manning thinks that not-for-profit efforts like Tor, which relies on U.S. government funding and a worldwide network of volunteers to run its anonymous servers, arent robust enough. Nonprofits are unsustainable, says Manning casually, sipping from her Coke. They require constant upholding by large capital funds, by large governments.

By January 2017, she was seven-years into a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, home to the likes of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 14 fellow soldiers in 2009. As President Barack Obama prepared to leave office, he granted Manning an unconditional commutation of her sentence. Newly tasting freedom, she was contacted by Harry Halpin, the 41-year-old mathematician who worked for World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT from 2013 to 2016 helping standardize the use of cryptography across web browsers.

Halpin asked Manning to look for security weaknesses in his new privacy project, which eventually became Nym, a Neuchtel, Switzerland-based crypto startup. Halprin founded Nym in 2018 to send data anonymously around the Internet using the same blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin. To date, Nym has raised some $8.5 million from a group of crypto investors including Binance, Polychain Capital and NGC Ventures. The firm now employs 10 people and is using its latest round of capital to double its team size.

Halpin was impressed by Mannings technical knowledge. More than just a famous leaker who happened to have access to secret documents, Manning struck Halpin as someone with a deep technological understanding of how governments and big business seek to spy on private messages.

Weve very rarely had access to people who really were inside the machine, who can explain what they believe the actual capabilities of these kinds of adversaries are, what kinds of attacks are more likely, says Halpin. Shell help us fix holes in our design.

Born in Oklahoma on December 17, 1987, Manning had her first exposure to network traffic analysis in high school. She and her Welsh mother Susan had moved to Haverfordwest, Wales in 2001, when Manning was 13. In a computer class there, in 2003, she first learned to circumvent blocks put in place by the school to prevent students downloading certain filesand got caught pirating music by Linkin Park, Jay-Z and others. The headmaster had been watching remotely.It was the first moment where it dawned on me, Oh, this is a thing. You can do this.

By 2008 Mannings interest in whats called network traffic analysis first brought her to The Onion Router (Tor), a volunteer network of computers that sits on top of the internet and helps hide a users identity. The non-profit organization leveraged something called onion routing which hides messages beneath layers of encryption. Each message is only decipherable by a different member of the network, which routes the message to the next router, ensuring only the sender and receiver can decipher it all. Ironically, the network colloquially known as the Dark Web, and used by Manning to send classified documents to WikiLeaks, was developed by the U.S. government to protect spies and other government agents operating online.

At around the same time Manning discovered Tor, she joined the U.S. Army. As a young intelligence analyst her job was to sort through classified databases in search of tactical patterns. After becoming disillusioned with what she learned about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, she plugged into her computer, put in her headphones, and loaded a CD with music from another of her favorite musicians: Lady Gaga. Instead of listening to the album though, she erased it and downloaded what would eventually be known as the largest single leak in U.S. history, ranging from sensitive diplomatic cables to video showing U.S. soldiers killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.

In prison she studied carpentry, but she never stopped exploring her earlier vocation. Im a certified carpenter, she says. But when I wasnt doing that, I would read a lot of cryptography papers. In 2016, she was visited in prison by Yan Zhu, a physicist from MIT who would later go on to become chief security officer of Brave, a privacy-protecting internet browser that pays users in cryptocurrency in exchange for agreeing to see ads.

She and Zhu were concerned with vulnerabilities they saw in Tor, including its dependence on the good will of governments and academic institutions. In 2020 53% of its $5 millionfundingcame from the US government and 27% came from other Western governments, tax-subsidized non-profits, foundations and companies. Worse, in their opinion, the technology to break privacy was being funded at a higher rate than the technology to protect it.

As the dark web, or Tor, and VPN, and all these other services became more prolific, the tools to do traffic analysis had dramatically improved, says Manning. And theres sort of been a cold war thats been going on between the Tor project developers, and a number of state actors and large internet service providers. In 2014 the FBI learned how to decipher Tor data. By 2020 a single user reportedly controlled enough Tor nodes to steal bitcoin transactions initiated over the network.

Using two lined pieces of composition paper from the prison commissary, Manning drew a schematic for Zhu of what she called, Tor Plus. Instead of just encrypting the data she proposed to inject the information equivalent of noise into network communications. In the margins of the document she even postulated that blockchain, the technology popularized by bitcoin, could play a role. In the notes below she wrote the words: New Hope.

Then, this February Halpin woke her up late one night with an encrypted text message asking her to take a look at a paper describing Nym. Developed completely separately from Mannings jailhouse sketch, the paper detailed an almost identical system disguising real messages with white noise. A hybrid of the decentralized Tor that relies on donor support, and a corporate owned VPN that requires trusting a company, this network promised the best of both worlds. Organized as a for-profit enterprise, Nym would pay people and organizations running the network in cryptocurrency. The next day I cleared my schedule, she says. By July shed signed a contract with Nym to run a security audit that could eventually include a closer look at the code, the math, and the defensive scenarios against government attacks.

Unlike Tor, which uses the onion router to obscure data sent on a shared network, Nym uses whats called a mix network, or mixnet, that not only shuffles the data, but alternates the methods by which the data is shuffled making it nearly impossible to reassemble.

Imagine you have a deck of cards, says Manning. Whats really unique here is that whats being done is that you are taking essentially a deck of cards, and you are taking a bunch of other decks of cards, and you are shuffling those decks of cards as well.

And, as it, turns out, not every government is comfortable using a privacy network largely funded by the U.S. government. Despite Halpins commitment to build a network that doesnt require government funding to operate, in July Nym accepteda 200,000 euro grant from the European Commission, to help get it off the ground.

Knowing that Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to prying eyes from intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin.

The problem is that there was never a financial model that made any sense to build this technology, says Halpin. There was no interest from users, venture capital, and big companies. And now youre seeing what we consider a once in a lifetime alignment of the stars, where theres interest in privacy from venture capital. Theres an interest in privacy for users. Theres interest in privacy from companies. And most of the interest from the venture capital side and the company side, and the user side has been driven by cryptocurrency. And this was not the case even five years ago.

Even Tor itself is exploring how to use blockchain to create the next generation of its software. After receiving 26% of its total donations in cryptocurrency last year, the Tor Project received a $670,000 grant from advocates of the zcash cryptocurrency and sold a non-fungible token (NFT) representing the first .onion address for $2 million in May, 2021. Now, Tors cofounder, Nick Mathewsonsays the Seattle-based non-profit is exploring some of the same techniques developed by cryptocurrency companies to create Tor credentials that let users develop a reputation without revealing their identity. What he calls an anonymous blacklistable credential.

If youve got a website, and somebody does something you dont like, you can ban them, says Mathewson. You can ban the person who did that activity without ever finding out what other activities they did or figuring out who you banned.

Though Mathewson is interested in the possibility of using blockchain to upgrade Tor itself, he warns that making privacy infrastructure for-profit could lead to more money being spent on marketing than product development. Our mission is to encourage the use of privacy technology, says Mathewson. I dont really care whether that privacy tool is the one I made or not.

Ironically, the same cryptocurrency culture Halpin says brought so much attention from investors, deterred Manning from getting involved earlier. Though she counts herself among the earliest bitcoin adopters, claiming to have mined cryptocurrency shortly after Satoshi Nakomoto activated it in 2009, she sold her bitcoin last year for decidedly non-monetary reasons.

I am not a fan of the culture around blockchain and cryptocurrency, she says. Theres a lot of large personalities that are very out there like your Elon Musks and whatnot, she says. And its very, like, Oh, were going to get rich off of blockchain. Its verynouveau riche. Like a new-yuppies-bro-culture thats surrounded it. It has gotten a little bit better in some corners. But I think that culture is what Im talking about. Its like Gordon Gekko, but blockchain.

By Michael del Castillo, Forbes Staff

Get the best of Forbes Africa sent straight to your inbox with breaking business news, insights and updates from experts across the continent.

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Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup - Forbes Africa

Not all universities have given into cancel culture | Opinion – Deseret News

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Have you heard the good news about cancel culture on college campuses? Did you see the story about the university that didnt cancel the speaker?

Probably not.

We all know how the story usually goes: Someone on campus voices an unpopular perspective or makes a comment that is hurtful or insensitive to some group. Then, stage right, the angry mob enters. Public pressure mounts until someone in power yields to the grievance brigade.

A job is lost or some disciplinary action taken. A reputation is tarnished. Rinse and repeat.

But it turns out that many controversial campus events are actually held without deplatforming. And it is time to acknowledge those schools that get it right.

The impression many of us have is that anytime a conservative speaker steps one foot on campus, social justice warriors phone each other to decide what time to invite antifa to show up. Overlooked are the many heartening counterexamples.

In 2018, professor Jeffrey Sachs at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, made a big list of examples on Twitter of when controversial conservative speakers werent interrupted. While there were some instances of protesters or demonstrators, most of the events went off without a major hitch.

Youve probably heard of the rallies at the University of California, Berkeley, against Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro in past years; but, youve likely heard absolutely nothing about the long list of other controversial speakers who spoke on the same campus without incident. Some of the improvement in free speech on college campuses is thanks, at least in part, to the work of groups like Bridge U.S.A. which bring together left- and right-leaning students to foster civil exchanges. Yet, few of us hear about cases where universities get pressured about a given speaker, but choose not to relent.

They do the right thing, despite mounting pressure.

That happened at Utah Valley University this past spring, with the commencement talk of Sister Wendy Nelson. After getting pressure by activists on and off campus to cancel Sister Nelsons speech because of her traditional views on marriage and sexuality, university leaders did something brave. They stuck with their plans.

The decision was criticized by a few vocal activists as an administrative blunder. But it would be better to recognize this as an example of how any university can act with courage to promote diverse including religious perspectives on Americas increasingly dogmatic campuses. To be clear, any campus atmosphere should permit differing voices to advocate for positions and speakers they favor and to critique of those they do not. Yet, amid this back-and-forth, institutions need to be the adults in the room.

Too often, however, these institutions aimed at inquiry and the pursuit of truth cave and fold to public pressure, despite the fact that academia should be the quintessential space for exchanging ideas.

How frequently do such pressure campaigns and cancellations actually happen in higher education? Thankfully, someone has been paying close attention.

Sean Stevens, senior research fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), is one of the nations foremost advocates of free speech on college campuses. The foundation has been cataloguing a comprehensive Disinvitation Database of any episode where somebody tries to block or prevent a speaker from being featured on a college or university campus. With examples dating back to 1998, theres a total of 477 documented instances of public pressure campaigns to convince a university to cancel a speaker or event.

The good news: Out of those 477 events, a little more than half (53%) still took place when universities stood firm and refused to cancel. There are concerning signs, however.

According to another FIRE database, the number of sanctioning or targeting incidents against professors has risen dramatically in recent years with a fivefold increase between 2015 and 2020, peaking at 122 incidents nationally last year. The use of petitions as a means of demanding sanctions has also increased. The foundation found that targeting and sanction attempts are increasingly coming from undergraduate students, rather than other faculty or administration.

Interestingly, the pressure to cancel comes from both sides of the political spectrum. For instance, 60% of sanction attempts/targeting incidents against professors come from individuals and groups to the left of the scholar. However, 73% of death threats, harassment, and other forms of intimidation as a means of targeting scholars come from individuals and groups to the right of the scholar. In another trend, on-campus demands for sanctions tend to come from those to the left of the scholar, whereas off-campus demands tend to come from those to the right of the scholar.

And when it comes to unpopular speakers on campus, in 289 of the documented pressure campaigns, the intimidation came from the political left (e.g., against Ann Coulter, Ben Carson, Ben Shapiro, and Ivanka Trump). By comparison, in 134 of the pressure campaigns, the intimidation came from the political right (e.g., against Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Richard Dawkins, and Chelsea Manning, etc).

Its time to stop thinking about cancel culture as a problem unique to one side of the political spectrum and confront this as a challenge for all Americans to overcome. It can unite rather than divide us, and with campus life coming back post-COVID, these issues will likely begin to resurface.

Conservatives are, of course, facing unique constraints on many campuses today. One professor shared with me recently, How do we deal with the fact that many people in our communities think that particular (usually conservative) viewpoints shouldnt be expressed because they are inherently violent? (i.e. because another person feels they are a threat to their identity)?

After noting that a lot of disinvitation attempts occur at the same schools, Zachary Greenberg, also with FIRE, observed that once a school takes a strong stand against censorship and for free speech, it may deter attempts to persuade that school to disinvite speakers. Conversely, university acquiescence to disinvitation demands encourages more demands.

Having strong policies favoring free expression is perhaps best protector against pressure campaigns providing everyone on campus a basis to say, Were not able to do this not under our own rules. A second factor is when the university president comes out and says free expression is a paramount value for us in a way that provides cover for faculty and students alike.

So how well are schools doing in this regard? Based on a rating system developed to assess these kinds of speech policies across the 475 top universities in the nation, only a subset 56 schools do not, according to the foundation, evidence any serious threats to students free speech rights in the written policies on that campus. Some of these campuses have proactively established robust campus policies that nourish open inquiry (the University of Chicago, being the most famous). In the other direction, 94 schools have policies which have at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech which they define as unambiguously infring(ing) on what is, or should be, protected expression.

Free speech, of course, does not exist in a vacuum. And speech always has some reasonable constraints. Private religious schools, for example, might choose to affirm certain standards that would not be appropriate at a public university. But, the most pressing challenges to free speech today are typically less about religious dogmas and more about secular ones.

In a fascinating piece by New York Times, journalist Thomas Edsall quotes Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at Brookings, explaining some of the larger forces that seem to be encouraging an increasingly outward display of outrage among students and, especially, why it seems to be increasingly effective at shutting down speech on college campuses. Rauch summarizes:

In the same article, Randall Kennedy, a law professor at Harvard recounts how activists have learned to deploy skillfully the language of hurt as in I dont care what the speakers intentions were, what the speaker said has hurt my feelings and ought therefore to be prohibited. He encouraged leaders on campus to, become much more skeptical and tough-minded when encountering the language of hurt so as to avoid incentivizing those who deploy the specters of bigotry, privilege and trauma to further diminish vital academic, intellectual and aesthetic freedoms.

These are not minor concerns among a mere handful of campuses, as attested to by the more than 5,000 professors, administrators, graduate students and staff who have gathered to Heterodox Academy started by professor Jonathan Haidt at New York University which aims to foster a true exchange of ideas on college campuses.

Concerned individuals span the political spectrum, but to a person they worry about narrowing viewpoint and ideological diversity on campuses across the country. Through conferences and both written and online programming, this and other organization such as the Village Squares Respect and Rebellions campus program or Braver Angels college debate program, help encourage campuses to stop merely playing defensive, and instead proactively foster a healthy environment on campus. For those feeling on their heels, Heterodox Academy even publishes a guide to help navigate the realities of the modern university its titled, When Cancel Culture Comes for You: A Toolkit for Responding.

All universities should take steps to preserve space for thoughtful differences of opinion, within the principles of their respective missions. Utah Valley University provided a good model of how to do this in the spring, but there are others. And thats a fact we ought to celebrate and highlight if were to encourage more campuses to follow suit.

Jacob Hess served on the board of the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation and has worked to promote liberal-conservative understanding since his book with Phil Neisser, Youre Not As Crazy As I Thought (But Youre Still Wrong). His most recent book with Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson and Ty Mansfield, is The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints.

Correction: An earlier version misstated the location of Acadia University. It is in Nova Scotia, not Pennsylvania. It also misstated a statistic regarding universities response to controversy. The increase of 74 to 114 between 2019 and 2020 refers to instances of sanctions or targeting incidents against professors, not disinvitations of a public speaker.

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Not all universities have given into cancel culture | Opinion - Deseret News

Martha Minow looks at ways government can stop disinformation – Harvard Gazette

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The mainstream news industry has been in sharp decline since the 1990s, owing to a series of financial and cultural changes brought by the rise of the internet. Amid the closing or shrinking of newspapers, magazines, and other legacy news outlets, Americans have increasingly turned to social media and heavily partisan websites and cable networks as their main sources of news and information, which has led to a proliferation of disinformation and misinformation and fueled polarization.

Given the vital role a free and responsible press plays in American democracy and the unique protections the Constitution provides for it under the First Amendment, is it time for the government to get involved? Is it governments place to do so? And how could that happen without infringing on that freedom?

In a new book, Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech (Oxford University Press, 2021), Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard Law School, says the First Amendment not only does not preclude the federal government from protecting a free press in jeopardy, it requires that it do so. Minow spoke with the Gazette about some of the ways to potentially clean up social media and bankroll local news, and why arguing on Twitter isnt a First Amendment right.

GAZETTE: There seems to be broad misunderstanding about what speech is protected by the First Amendment and what is not. Underlying cancel culture and complaints about deplatforming is a belief that people should not be penalized for saying things online that others find objectionable or that are inaccurate or even false because of their right to freely express themselves. Can you clarify how the First Amendment applies and doesnt apply to social media platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, and online generally?

MINOW: I wrote a book to examine the challenges and decline of the news industry during a time of exploding misinformation and disinformation, a global pandemic, and great challenges to democracies in the United States and elsewhere. Certainly, one big dimension of this context is [what] some people are calling [an] infodemic: the flood of information that is enabled by the Internet, and particularly social media. But it is not just social media. Its conventional media, particularly cable news, but also some broadcast news.

Most of the sources of communications are private, and private communications are not governed by the First Amendment. Private companies are entitled to edit, elevate, suppress, remove [speech], whether its in broadcast, cable, or on a social media platform. Indeed, private companies have First Amendment freedoms against any government intervention. We in America are very fond of rights, and rights maybe are what hold us together more certainly than shared traditions, shared identities. And one of the ways thats really evolved is how we talk about rights as if its a cultural phenomenon or its part of our identities. But that kind of informal conversation about I have First Amendment freedom may be a metaphor on a social media platform, but it is not a legal right. We sign terms-of-service agreements with platform companies. Theyre the ones that control what is communicated and whats not. Thats much less edited than broadcast or cable or print media. So, were living in an unprecedented time of lowered barriers to communicating to mass audiences almost anybody can have access to a mass audience. But thats all enabled by private providers and the private providers are not restricted by the First Amendment in what they remove or amplify.

GAZETTE: What are a few of the measures that could effectively hold tech firms to account for what is published and shared on their platforms?

MINOW: When it comes to holding the platform companies responsible for conveying, amplifying, even escalating hateful communications, misinformation, [and] disinformation, there are some techniques, but we have to be careful because if the government is involved, then the First Amendment is front and center. The techniques include eliminating or reducing the immunity currently granted under the [1996] Communications Decency Act, which has a section, Section 230, that treats platform companies differently from any other media and specifically immunizes them from liabilities that apply to all these other entities. They include liabilities for fraud, for defamation, for violating contract terms. [But] even Section 230 does not immunize the platforms from criminal responsibility or from violations of intellectual property rights. So, one very direct step to hold companies responsible would be to either eliminate this immunity or make it conditional. I actually prefer that alternative.

Companies adopt and should adhere to standards of moderation, content moderation rules. They can develop their own, but the idea would be theyd have to announce standards; theyd have to report on them; and theyd have to have processes to act on anyone calling them out for violating their own standards. Thats pretty direct, and it would put them on the same par as all the other media entities that exist in the country.

Another possibility would be to take intellectual property seriously and make the platforms pay when they take or steal or promote information from other news sources. They dont put the revenues that they gain, particularly from advertising, back into investment in news. Its not a punishment; its simply the idea of holding them responsible like [the] grown-up companies that they are.

You know, the fact of the matter is, the big disinformation source is as much broadcast and cable [television as it is online] and on those, there is a basis for government regulation. The FCC could take that seriously and withhold licenses, remove them, terminate them, for companies that are misleading people, that are labeling as news something thats entirely opinion. Cable is largely a monopoly. Local communities grant franchises to cable companies; local communities could hold them more responsible. I dont look forward to a day, I hope we never see it, that the government, at any level, is deciding the content. But when there is scarce opportunity to amplify communications given to private companies, its only fair that they should have standards that they then deliver on [by] providing some quality control of what they amplify. There is no right to have your message sent to everybody in the world anywhere. What there is, is a right to be free from government restrictions on your speech. So, one very specific suggestion that I have is that when we deal with digital communications, there could be a delay, and there could be speed bumps. Before people can spread messages to large numbers of people, there could be a delay, they could even use artificial intelligence to monitor it before it can be spread beyond a handful of people.

GAZETTE: The era of self-policing hasnt worked very well so far, but you say there are things companies can and should be doing right now to act more responsibly and to help support the news. What are a few of those?

MINOW: I agree with you that self-regulation has not worked. Its striking to me that Mark Zuckerberg has said, in effect, We need help. We cant do it alone. And so, I think this is a problem thats bigger than any one company, and it does require government action. The government can act by enforcing, or strengthening and then enforcing, consumer protection rules, including rules about the uses of our data. The government can act by limiting the immunity granted to internet platforms and condition it on the development of codes of conduct that are then enforced. And the government can act by making rules that require sharing the information about the algorithms and their uses with a watchdog, whether academic or nonprofit organizations. We need to improve the entire ecosystem in which information circulates.

GAZETTE: Local news has been a vital part of that ecosystem. Government can support local news without necessarily wading into a First Amendment quagmire, you argue. What are some ways that could be accomplished?

MINOW: Local news is more trusted by people. Theres less polarization in local communities; theres more accountability. But with its decline, which is massive, theres a loss of accountability journalism in local communities and a loss of this ecosystem. And so, one thing to consider is to tax the big platforms and to cordon off the revenues that are generated and plow them back into supporting local news and public media and nonprofit media. Theres a Local Journalism Sustainability Act introduced in the Senate [in July], and it parallels a bipartisan [bill] in the House that uses tax deductions and tax credits to strengthen local news. One of the interesting ideas there is to give a tax break to local companies that buy ads in local news. Another is to relieve payroll taxes for nonprofits and for-profit local news if they hire more journalists. And finally, a dimension that I think is interesting but has its tricky elements, is to allow [tax] deductions for individuals who either subscribe to local news or make gifts to local news. Thats great in the sense that theres no government involvement. But its problematic in that we already know that they are disguises for disinformation, for foreign governments to pretend that they are nonprofit organizations in this country and to hijack whats otherwise a good idea. So that needs some work.

GAZETTE: So, not a government-funded news service, like Voice of America, but financial assistance for individual news organizations so they can continue working independently and ideally, thrive?

MINOW: That is whats being proposed, and it certainly poses many fewer worries. It is really to strengthen this ecosystem of public and private, multiple, diverse, news sources. [These are] especially needed in the local context where we have news deserts thousands of communities that have no local news. When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Department of Justice undertook a massive investigation exposing the way that the legal system relied on fines and fees on the backs of poor people, one of the things that emerged was there was no local news. Bad things happen where no one is watching.

Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Excerpt from:

Martha Minow looks at ways government can stop disinformation - Harvard Gazette

How to download free and open source apps with F-Droid – AndroidGuys

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How do you download apps on your Android phone? Most likely you head to the Google Play Store as its often pre-installed on your phone. Moreover, it gives you access to pretty much every kind of app or game you can think of. If not the Play Store, you probably use the Amazon Appstore.

What if you have a passion for open source software? Or, what if you dont like Google serving you ads and sponsored content as part of your experience? If either of these situations sounds like you, perhaps you should consider F-Droid.

Open Source Software (OSS), is software whose source code (the stuff that makes up the app) is made available for anyone and everyone to view, edit, or copy. This code is often managed by the git versioning system that keeps track of changes, called commits. The code is then uploaded to repositories on websites such as GitHub or GitLab.

The basic makeup of Android is open source software, known as the Android Open Source Project. Similarly, the Chrome browser is based off of an open source browser called Chromium.

F-Droid is an app store that exclusively deals in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). That is to say that he apps you download are open source and come at no cost to you. The main F-Droid repository mostly consists of apps vetted, compiled (put together from source), and signed by F-Droid. The app in itself is free of any form of tracking, which is why youll never see any download stats on the apps you find.

First, head to to F-Droid.org on your phone and click the download button. Your phone will probably prompt you with a warning or notification. If thats the case, do what it says and go into settings and allow your browser as an app source.

Upon installation, open the app up where you will see it immediately refreshing information from the repository.

When you click on an app, youll see the name, when it was last updated, some important links about the app, permissions the app needs, and previous versions.

If you like the app, click install. Itll download the app, and then you have to allow F-Droid to install apps and then install the app manually.

Its worth noting here that this means that all updates will have to be manually installed. This may change in the future because Android 12 could introduce a permission for alternative app stores to be able to install apps without user intervention.

In your settings, you can do things like change how updates are handled, change your theme, add a proxy, and turn on anti-feature apps

These are apps that, for one reason or another, arent completely in line with the F-Droid ethos. They may contain ads or tracking, connect to a non-free network service (such as YouTube or Facebook), or rely/depend on a non-free app or service (e.g. Google Play Services).

No problem! There are a variety of extra repositories you can add on, with some only containing one or a few specific apps. The biggest one, and a favorite of mine for those hoping to more fully replace the use of Google Play, is the IzzyOnDroid Repo. This contains apps compiled by the original developers and might include dependencies on Google Play Services. In total, IzzySoft contains around 650 apps.

To add a repository, go to https://forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721 and copy the link to the repo you would like to add. Then go into your F-droid settings, to repositories and then click the plus sign. The link will likely populate from your clipboard, so all you have to do is click Add and let the app add and update the repository.

After that, youre good to go! Enjoy your newly-freed Android experience!

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How to download free and open source apps with F-Droid - AndroidGuys

OpenSFFs Allstar aims to fix vulnerabilities in open source projects – VentureBeat

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GitHub and Google today announced the launch of Allstar, an app that provides automated continuous enforcement of security best practices for GitHub projects. Allstar, which was created by Google and the wider Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), can check for security policy adherence, set enforcement actions, and enact those enforcements when triggered by a setting or file change in a repository.

Allstar is a companion to Security Scorecards, a tool released by Google and comembers at the OpenSSF that assesses risk to a repository and its dependencies. While Scorecards checks heuristics like whether the project uses branch protection, cryptographically signs release artifacts, or requires code review, Allstar allows maintainers to opt into automated enforcement of specific checks.

Security gaps increasingly plague large open source projects. The number of open source software vulnerabilities more than doubled in 2019 compared with 2018, according to RiskSense, while total common vulnerabilities and exposures vulnerabilities reached 968 last year up from 421 in 2018. The implications are far-reaching, considering that an estimated 91% of commercial applications contain outdated or abandoned open source components.

Allstar works by continuously checking expected GitHub API states like repository settings, branch settings, workflow settings, and file contents against defined security policies. If the app detects that somethings amiss, it applies enforcement actions, such as filing issues and changing the project settings. For example, Allstar will spot and respond if a developer temporarily disables branch protections to commit a malicious change before reenabling the protections.

A limited number of security policy checks are currently enforced by Allstar, with additional policies including frozen dependencies and automatic dependency updates planned in the coming months. At launch, Allstar can set requirements before collaborators can push changes to a branch in a repository; enforce the presence of a security policy; require that users with admin privileges on a repository be members of the owning organization; and detect potentially compromising binary artifacts.

Allstar lets developers pick from several out-of-the-box enforcement actions including Log the security policy adherence failure with no additional action, Open a GitHub issue, and Revert the modified GitHub policy setting to match the original Allstar configuration. OpenSSF runs an Allstar instance that anyone can install and use, but developers can create and run their own instance for security or further customization.

Allstar is still in the early stages of development, so we welcome adoption and community feedback, Google senior program manager and contributor Mike Maraya wrote in a blog post. We look forward to rolling out more enforcements; in the meanwhile, taking simple steps like enforcing code review and setting branch protections can make a significant difference in protecting against supply-chain attacks. Taking these fundamental actions together can help raise the bar for security standards in open source software.

Since its founding last year, OpenSSF, which is spearheaded by the Linux Foundation, has made progress toward consolidating industry efforts to improve the security of open source projects. The list of governing board members has grown beyond Google and GitHub to include IBM, JPMorgan Chase, and Red Hat. GitLab, HackerOne, Intel, Okta, Purdue, Uber, WhiteSource, and VMware are among the initiatives other members.

Originally posted here:

OpenSFFs Allstar aims to fix vulnerabilities in open source projects - VentureBeat

How open source is bringing the universe closer – BIT

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Open source technology makes industries like exploration cheaper.Photo by Luca R on Unsplash In 2023, NASA will launch its Voltailes Investigating Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER, which will trek across the moon, searching for water ice to one day be used to make rocket fuel.

More recently, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter left Earth for Mars in July 2020 - a milestone moment that signalled the first powered flight on another planet. What do these space adventures have in common, beyond the obvious? They were made possible by the power of open source technology.

Open source technology, albeit a complex concept to explain in so many words, is simply put: software whose source code is shared and made available to the public. Its increasingly being used, and produced, by global tech juggernauts, as well as at the SMB level and is projected to reach USD 66 billion by 2026. Recently, open source has come to the fore, or quite literally to the space, of interplanetary travel.

Some of the worlds foremost space agencies such as NASA have been employing open source technology in R&D projects for almost two decades. Still, as space innovation and exploration ramps up, with the likes of commercial launch providers SpaceX and RocketLabs democratising access to space, the role open source technology plays in bringing the universe closer together is becoming more pertinent.

There are a few key reasons the democratisation of space exploration is increasingly owing itself to the powers of open source technology: open source makes it less expensive, it enables collaboration, fosters endless possibilities and it signals a brighter future.

One of the most immediate thoughts that springs to mind and one of the great barriers to increased space exploration is cost. To build the technology capable of launching into space, ensuring it reaches its destination and completing a complex set of tasks is a pricey exercise. This is made more expensive when using proprietary or closed-source software. Open source on the other hand is a more inexpensive solution, as codes do not need to be built from scratch, saving money and resources, which can in turn be diverted to the final exploration itself.

Open source fosters greater transnational collaboration because it is free and open to others by its very design. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, the first powered flight on another planet, which was made possible with open source software including SciPy, Linux and F Prime, was contributed to by as many as 12,000 different developers (GitHub). Open source is a poignant real-life reflection of the saying teamwork makes the dream work. If software were to be written by an individual or a single company, the results would be slower to be seen. Open source provides an avenue in which people of all backgrounds and locations can impart their skills to address complex problems. It is this diversity which in turn makes almost unfathomable human endeavours, like travelling seven months to the red planet, possible.

Open source technology has already changed the world. The Android operating system, for example, holds almost 73% market share because of its open source nature, with parent company Google making deals to provide the software to various hardware vendors. This comes in stark contrast to biggest competitor Apple with its closed-source IOS system, which has a market share of around 26%.

With the ability to be adopted and worked upon by many, how do these possibilities translate to space? Essentially, it has allowed open source to become recognised as a safe, efficient and cost-effective method of advancing space technology. Several NASA groups are using open source to code robotic intelligence, while other groups are using it to fuel satellite activity. Whats more, as spaceflight continues to get cheaper and collaboration allows technology to proliferate and improve, space exploration will no doubt rely on this technology more and more.

Closer to home, Instaclustr has partnered with the University of Canberra to establish open-source software training and certification, as well as research and development. In an attempt to enhance Australias job ready skills, this partnership will power individuals' work in the industry, which has the great potential to translate to what the world is doing in space.

Nevertheless, endless possibilities are only as good as what they can do for the human race. This investment in training and R&D only reaffirms our belief that open source technology is paving the way to a brighter future, by allowing us to gain and share greater knowledge and insight into the murky depths of the universe. The tools that we use to explore and observe the universe around us are as critical as the minds that use them. Such has been seen with the invention of the telescope, our understanding of lenses and all the subsequent improvements to telescopes with every one of Galileo Galileis iterations. Sharing of knowledge, tools and processes can be a catalyst that greatly expands our understanding of the world and it is open source philosophy that greatly supercharges this sharing.

Ben Bromheadis CTO at Canberra-basedopen source tech startup, Instaclustr.

Continued here:

How open source is bringing the universe closer - BIT

Everything you need to know about open source – ITWeb

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Most outsiders see open source as one of the things they find most hard to come to terms within the IT ecosystem: an open collaboration between individuals to create software that is made available to anyone, not necessarily at no cost.

As Richard Stallman puts it: Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

There are most definitely costed open source software solutions available. But it is perhaps one of the last bastions of the ideals that animated the early days of the internet, when people thought that a new economic model based not solely on profit was emerging. However, it's an approach that predates the internet.

For example, the motor industry has been sharing technology and patents across the industry since the days of Henry Ford, when one patent-holder was effectively blocking the development of the industry.

What one can say is that the collaboration and cooperation that underpins open source has achieved its fullest expression in the software industry, in which a robust and proven ecosystem has developed.

Open source's role in the development value chain has been growing, and the COVID-inspired move to remote working will only exacerbate the digital transformation of businesses, and thus their dependence on open source.

According to a Gartner survey, 90% of organisations rely to some extent on open source components. Other research shows that 96% of all scanned applications contain some open source components (an average of 257 per application), and that the percent of open source in application codebases grew from 36% to 57% in just one year.

In short, taking all these figures into account reveals that typical applications comprise up to 90% of open source code. Speed and cost are two of the benefits driving this seemingly unstoppable trend.

Open sources contribution to the speed with which an application can be developed is equally clear: using pre-built components will obviously reduce development time and will give developers more time to spend on ensuring the final product is more bug-free.

The need for speed is central to business today. The digital world values speed, and a new generation of consumers and employers are looking for ever-more personalisation and rapid responses to their requirements.

Getting an app to market is now a critical success lever, and this has spurred the Agile and DevOps movement in software development, which aims to make development more rapid and at the same time more accurate.

In the rush to get software apps up and running to take advantage of a market shift, or face off a competitive threat, speed is going to remain paramount. It's nearly impossible to build software entirely from scratch and still meet delivery deadlines that are consistently becoming more punishing.

At the same time, of course, building software from scratch will inevitably lead to higher development costs and best practice concerns.

Getting an app to market is now a critical success lever, and this has spurred the Agile and DevOps movement in software development.

It's also worth reminding oneself that, when it comes to open source, speed and cost are not the only drivers. Open source also offers organisations a way to access leading-edge capabilities early on. Some of the breakthrough ideas in software have originated in the open source world.

In addition, using prebuilt open source components means the development team can focus on the 10% of the project that will create competitive advantage.

The trend of relying more on open source looks set to dominate software development for the foreseeable future, as the internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with the cost-effective processing power provided by the cloud, ensure valuable insights are more accessible, and demonstrate the need to act on them rapidly.

At the same time, though, CIOs and CTOs need to recognise that the very things that make open source such an essential part of their arsenal also create certain vulnerabilities. By using open source code, the organisation is exposed to a very large pool of users, as well as an increased number of exposure points.

For example, the 2014 Heartbleed security bug in the OpenSSL cryptography library showed just how devastating such a security risk can be. Similarly, the open source Apache Struts exploit resulted in over 140 million US citizens personal information being compromised after Equifax was hacked in September 2017, costing them an estimated $2 billion.

Nearly 88% of Java applications have at least one vulnerability in a component, something that should make everyone sit up and take note, given their ubiquity. Or, to put it another way, 76% of apps have at least one security flaw.

However, the sheer utility of open source means it will remain very much an integral part of development. What CIOs and CTOs need to do is come to grips with how to live with open source. That means putting security at the centre of the development framework.

In my next article, I will investigate how CIOs and CTOs can develop and implement a security framework that will enable them to realise the benefits of using open source without dramatically increasing risk.

See the original post here:

Everything you need to know about open source - ITWeb

Tick-tock, Facebook: Not a reference to that short vid horsepuckey but a literal open-source timekeeper – The Register

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Facebook has taken a break from its social media shenanigans to open-source the specifications for its timekeeping device, the Open Compute Time Appliance.

Basically, it's a PCI Express card that uses a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and oscillator to provide an authoritative source of time. Stick the card into a vacant slot and hey presto an ordinary server can become a time appliance.

Facebook has been working on the problem for a while. While users might sometimes wonder at the seeming randomness of their timeline, keeping server time synchronised and accurate is important when it comes to infrastructure management and distributed databases.

Back in March 2020 the social media giant confirmed it was in the process of switching over to a new timekeeping service based on the Network Time Protocol (NTP.) The update, according to Facebook, increased the accuracy of timekeeping in its infrastructure from 10 milliseconds to 100 microseconds.

However, the new architecture uses a Stratum 1. This component is linked to a source of time such as a GNSS or a caesium clock. Facebook's idea is that, rather than depend on something like time.facebook.com for their Stratum 1, which is an one that might suffer a wobble if connectivity were lost, how about companies use a Time Appliance instead?

The approach is hardly new, and such appliances have been available off-the-shelf for years. Problems, however, include a distinct lean toward a proprietary world which, in turn, can make things expensive and more difficult to support.

Thus Facebook has designed and open sourced a Time Card. The PCI Express card includes a GNSS receiver to provide Time of Day (ToD) and one pulse per second (PPS.) An oscillator (such as an atomic clock) backs things up in the event the GNSS signal is lost and an off-the-shelf network card (the NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx was Facebook's initial choice) sends the time out over the network.

It is undoubtedly a neat bit of tech and free from vendor lock-in. The specifications, source code and schematics can all be found on GitHub should one wish to roll one's own. The driver for the Time Card lurks in the Linux kernel from version 5.15, or can be built on 5.12 or later.

Hardware-wise, pretty much any PC will do the job so long as it has enough spare PCIe slots and we reckon somebody handy with a soldering iron, the necessary components and access to PCB printing could make a decent fist of making their own Time Appliance for considerably less than buying one off-the-shelf.

A weekend project, perhaps? It'd certainly be an improvement than sitting around and, er, scrolling through Facebook.

Here is the original post:

Tick-tock, Facebook: Not a reference to that short vid horsepuckey but a literal open-source timekeeper - The Register


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