Die verlogene Ehre der Alice S.

“Sie hat nur getan, was sie tun musste, um rechtlich auf der sicheren Seite zu sein, und das ist der Grund, warum man ihren Fall öffentlich machen sollte. Einen Fall, nicht für Juristen, aber für Journalisten, über die Bigotterie eines ehemaligen Vorbilds.” Für Jürgen Dahlkamp hat Alice Schwarzer ihre Ehre durch Steuerhinterziehung verspielt, auch wenn sie der Strafverfolgung durch eine Absurdität des deutschen Strafrechts entgeht.

www.spiegel.de

What the fluck!

“I think there is an equally diffuse malaise today—waiting for a new kind of journalism to bring it into focus. Like with McClure’s it won’t be just a catalogue of shocking facts—it will be an imaginative leap that pulls all the scandals together and shows how they are part of some new system of power that we don’t fully comprehend.” Adam Curtis attempts to define the point at which journalism fails and modern power begins.

www.bbc.co.uk

How the NSA threatens national security

“Our choice isn’t between a digital world where the agency can eavesdrop and one where it cannot; our choice is between a digital world that is vulnerable to any attacker and one that is secure for all users.” Bruce Schneier regards ubiquitous surveillance as a quixotic undertaking that does nothing to keep us safe and does everything to undermine the very societies we seek to protect.

www.theatlantic.com

Brainwashed by the cult of the super-rich

“The rich are not merely different: they’ve become a cult which drafts us as members. We are invited to deceive ourselves into believing we are playing for the same stakes while worshipping the same ideals, a process labelled ‘aspiration’.” Priyamvada Gopal does not regard vast economic inequalities as either natural or just.

www.theguardian.com

Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger

“The RockYou dump was a watershed moment, but it turned out to be only the start of what’s become a much larger cracking phenomenon. By putting 14 million of the most common passwords into the public domain, it allowed people attacking cryptographically protected password leaks to almost instantaneously crack the weakest passwords. That made it possible to devote more resources to cracking the stronger ones.” Dan Goodin details the many reasons you should choose your passwords even more carefully.

arstechnica.com

NSA surveillance: a guide to staying secure

“The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical. They’re limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible.” Bruce Schneier works on the assumption that the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet.

www.theguardian.com

In praise of pessimism

“We do not arrive at any idea of what is best for the collective unless we are prepared to seize the day and practise it on our own behalf. Most mature individuals understand what this means in respect of themselves—it’s just all those feckless others that they don’t trust to act appropriately.” Things may be for the worst in a less-than-perfect-world, but Will Self is determined to hold on to his idealism.

www.newstatesman.com

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