“We appreciate that there are times when secrecy around a government warrant is needed,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Thursday. “But based on the many secrecy orders we have received, we question whether these orders are grounded in specific facts that truly demand secrecy. To the contrary, it appears that the issuance of secrecy orders has become too routine.”
America's military forces are dropping "cyber bombs" on Islamic State terrorist groups for the first time, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told reporters accompanying him on a military flight on Tuesday.
The ISIS internet attacks, whatever the particulars really may be, are part of a stepped-up coordinated effort to put increasing pressure on the militant organization.
Looks like the geniuses who run UC Davis never Googled the words “Streisand Effect.”
“There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” President Barack Obama recently told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace in response to a question about the now-classified material on Hillary Clinton’s private email server from when she was Secretary of State.
On Wednesday, former Reuters.com social media editor Matthew Keys received a two year prison sentence for computer hacking. That's a sentence of 24 months, for a website defacement that lasted only 40 minutes, which Keys himself didn't even execute.
Earlier today in an unrelated high-profile case, the "affluenza teen" who actually murdered people also got two years in jail.
The FBI accessed the contents of a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone after receiving help from professional hackers who “discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw,” the Washington Post was first to report today.
Ian Burkhart lost all sensation in his hands and legs after a freak swimming accident five years ago. Today, doctors report that a chip in his brain has let him regain some control of his hand. The 24-year-old man has “regained control over his right hand and fingers, using technology that transmits his thoughts directly to his hand muscles and bypasses his spinal injury.”
A song that became the "unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement" was wrongly placed under copyright, and should be released into the public domain. That's the argument in a lawsuit filed today in federal court over the song "We Shall Overcome."
Who's behind it? The same group of lawyers who fought for years to free "Happy Birthday" from copyright prison.
The 'Happy Birthday' case succeeded at last just a few months ago, and made it safe for little kids all over the world to sing the song over candlelit cakes at birthday parties, without fear of attorneys knocking on the door demanding royalty payments.
The new copyright battle is a proposed class action lawsuit that asks for copyright licensing fees to be returned. The case argues that royalties were wrongfully collected by Ludlow Music Inc. and The Richmond Organization, which claimed copyright over "We Shall Overcome" in 1960. But the song is probably based on an old African-American spiritual, according to popular belief--and the lawsuit.
The song is based on “an African-American spiritual with exactly the same melody and nearly identical lyrics from the late 19th or early 20th century,” reads the complaint.
"This was never copyrightable to begin with," Mark Rifkin, an attorney for the plaintiff, told Reuters Tuesday. "The song had been in the public domain for many, many years before anyone tried to copyright it."
From Reuters:
Read the restThe We Shall Overcome Foundation, the plaintiff, is seeking to produce a documentary film about song and its relationship to the civil rights movement.
![Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth’s solar system. [European Southern Observatory]](http://web.archive.org./web/20160415191529im_/https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/13STARSHOT-articleLarge.jpg)
"Today, we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos," Stephen Hawking said today in New York. "Because we are human, and our nature is to fly."
There are many conspiracy theories about the source of the Panama Papers leak. One of the more prominent theories today blames the CIA. Bradley Birkenfeld is “the most significant financial whistleblower of all time,” and he has opinions about who's responsible for leaking the Panama Papers rattling financial and political power centers around the world.
“Hey, Obama,” a weird letter from North Korea to the President of the United States opens, according to a translation offered by the Associated Press. “I know you have a lot on your mind these days … I’ve decided to give you a little advice.”
“Food Warriors,” the wonderful street food video series created by Rafi Kam, Dallas Penn, and Casimir Nozkowski, just published a wonderful new episode focused on the cheap eats of Rockaway Beach and Far Rockaway.
Weirdo remix artist Vic Berger slap-chopped together this creepy and hilarious edit of Melania Trump’s recent campaign speech for her creepy and no longer hilarious husband, presidential candidate and noted total shitbag Donald Trump.
Federal investigators have discovered major security vulnerabilities in the state health insurance websites for California, Kentucky and Vermont that could allow criminals to access sensitive personal data for hundreds of thousands of people.
Ladies and gentlemen, Reverse Godwin.
Businesses around the world have lost billions of dollars over the past few years to an increasingly popular internet scam in which criminals pose as company executives, and send faked emails to their staff ordering subordinates to transfer money into financial accounts controlled by the scammers. That's all according to an FBI alert issued this week.
