Next Meetup: Sandy Stone on “Online identity and the fight for cyberfreedom”

September 26, 2011

“How in Hell Did We Get Here?: Online identity and the fight for cyberfreedom in the age of the Military-Industropolitical Complex” by Allucquére Rosanne (Sandy) Stone A fast-forward, semifictional history of online identity, with particular attention to the present collisions of massive political power and individual and collective agency, including how the speaker was transformed [...]

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Successful inquiry into #OpWardrive

September 23, 2011

On Wednesday September 21st, EFF Austin [ @EFFaustin ] was notified about the Austin Police Department’s (APD) Digital Analysis Response Team’s [ DART, @APDDART ] “Operation Wardrive” [ #OpWardrive ] via the KVUE [ @KVUE ] news article that originally appeared at the following URI (it’s relatively common for journalism operations to reuse the same [...]

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Austin Police Department announces “Operation Wardrive”

September 21, 2011

Update (Sep 22 @ 1:07pm) – The Austin Police Department has decided to cancel Operation Wardrive and focus on the public education facet of this work. See Mark Boyden’s comment, an email response from APD Chief Art Acevedo. Thanks go to Scott Henson at Grits For Breakfast for his attention to this matter. Yesterday (September [...]

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Slides from Michael Hathaway’s talk “Smart Grid and the Internet”

September 8, 2011

Last night, Michael Hathaway of Tiga Energy Services brought us up to speed on the real story behind Smart Grid, which his organization sees as “a business strategy, not a technology.” He pointed out several pitfalls that utilities are walking into, not the least of which is a speculative investment-driven bubble formed by disruptive technology [...]

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#BART Special Board Meeting re: Cellphone Shutdown & Protests

August 24, 2011

View “#BART Special Board Meeting re: Cellphone Shutdown & Protests” on Storify

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EFF Austin September Meeting: Michael Hathaway on “Smart Grid and the Internet”

August 21, 2011

Thanks to everyone who came out last month to hear Jon Lebkowsky [ @JonL ] guide us through and to the past and future Internet. This month, we’ll be hearing former EFF Austin Board member Michael Hathaway present information from the world of modernizing electric utilities and the regulatory bodies that love them in a [...]

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BART’s Protest Position Does Not Withstand Legal Scrutiny

August 19, 2011

Guest post by Jay Leiderman of Leiderman Devine LLP [ @LeidermanDevine ]. Also available on Paste2. On Tuesday, 16 August 2011, BART [ @SFBART ] spokesperson Linton Johnson [ @BARTChiefSpokes ] held a press conference to address the need to disrupt communications in advance of a lawful, peaceable assembly. He spoke of a US Supreme [...]

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BART cellphone shutdown option introduced to board of directors in closed session; or, 3 Questions For #BART

August 14, 2011

Before beginning, it’s worth stating that EFF-Austin [ @EFFaustin ] is based in…well, Austin. Our statements have no association with national EFF [ @EFF ], based in San Francisco, beyond the principles we share (see here for details on that history if you’re interested; our hearts go out to you guys during this challenge, you [...]

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Statement on San Francisco BART cellphone service shutdown

August 14, 2011

Repressive foreign governments – in China, Egypt, Iran and Syria, to name just a few – have cut off communications (the Internet, mobile service and landline) as a means to repress dissent or expressive acts the regime deems inconvenient. Often, the repressive regime asserts that silencing their citizens was necessary to maintain the peace, or [...]

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EFF-Austin August Meeting: the past and future of the Internet

August 1, 2011

When: 7PM Wednesday, August 3, 2011 Where: Flying Saucer, 815 W 47th St at the Triangle. (Come early for the SFC Farmer’s Market, nearby at the Triangle) Jon Lebkowsky [ @jonl ], President of the EFF-Austin Board of Directors, will discuss the past and future of the Internet Jon’s unique perspective across the history of the Internet [...]

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