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Politics

I Fight Surveillance

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched IFightSurveillance.org, a new site showcasing digital privacy advocates from around the world who are leading the fight against mass surveillance. The site includes figures from the organization’s growing list of Counter-Surveillance Success Stories, a set of guides showing how individuals and organizations have taken on state and corporate spying in their own countries – and won.
Translated into 16 languages, IFightSurveillance.org highlights images and quotes from activists, business leaders, lawyers and technologists. Examples include:

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Posted on October 15, 2014

The Beachwood Radio Hour #27: Endorsements Are Bullshit

By Steve Rhodes

How editorial boards invalidate their own newsrooms. Plus: Debates Are Bullshit; Bruce Rauner Hates Homework; The Guns That Didn’t Smoke; Red-Light Rahm’s Yellow Lights; How To Become A Judge In Chicago; Fight The Power Of The Storyline.

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Posted on October 11, 2014

Onward Internet’s Astroturf

By Robert Faturechi/ProPublica

On a recent Monday evening, two bearded young men in skinny jeans came to a parklet in San Francisco’s trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood and mounted what looked like an art installation. It was a bright blue, oversized “suggestion box” for the Internet.
The boxes, sometimes accompanied by young people in futuristic costumes, have been popping up on both coasts for weeks, soliciting messages of support – but their sponsor has been a mystery. The website for the campaign, Onward Internet, does not say. Their domain registration is private. And the site includes no contact information, only an animated video heavy on millennial lingo: “The internet was made to move data . . . we got blogs, likes, selfies and memes, OMG, BRB and TTYL.”
The lone hint at a larger message is oblique. “The Internet is a wild, free thing,” the site says. “Unbounded by limits, unfettered by rules, it’s everyone’s responsibility to ensure that the Internet continues to advance.”
Turns out Onward Internet may be the latest stealth entrant in the increasingly nasty battle over net neutrality, which will determine how the government regulates Internet providers.

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Posted on October 9, 2014

The Age Of Chicago’s Poverty

By Kiljoong Kim

Despite decades of effort – including declaring a war – to alleviate poverty, the struggle to survive day-to-day with low wages and unemployment persists for millions of people.
And though medical advances and the wider availability and lower cost of food have extended the lifespan of even those who struggle financially, this means that many individuals simply live poorly longer, given the lack of economic mobility in our society.
The result is an intersection of poverty with age that shows us not all poor neighborhoods are created equal and, perhaps more importantly, should force us to rethink how we deal with poverty.

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Posted on October 2, 2014

Colleges Let Taxpayers Help Poor Students While They Go After Rich

By Jon Marcus/The Hechinger Report

In what it calls “an elaborate shell game,” universities and colleges are shifting their financial aid from low-income students to high-income ones to bolster their prestige and raise them up the rankings, a new report says.
Meanwhile, according to the report by the nonprofit, nonpartisan New America Foundation, universities are leaving their poorest families to vie for a piece of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded Pell Grants.
Because of this, the federal government continues to spend more and more on Pell grants, which now total more than $32 billion, yet the lowest-income students end up borrowing more money than ever to pay for their higher educations.

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Posted on September 23, 2014

A New Way Insurers Are Shifting Costs To The Sick

By Charles Ornstein/ProPublica

This story was co-published with The New York Times‘ The Upshot.
Health insurance companies are no longer allowed to turn away patients because of their pre-existing conditions or charge them more because of those conditions. But some health policy experts say insurers may be doing so in a more subtle way: by forcing people with a variety of illnesses – including Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and epilepsy – to pay more for their drugs.
Insurers have long tried to steer their members away from more expensive brand name drugs, labeling them as “non-preferred” and charging higher co-payments. But according to an editorial published Wednesday in the American Journal of Managed Care, several prominent health plans have taken it a step further, applying that same concept even to generic drugs.

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Posted on September 19, 2014

Common Core Math Standards Add Up To Big Money For Education Companies

By Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report

When thousands of math teachers descended on New Orleans earlier this year, two words proved more seductive than chocolate. Or sex. Or even quadratic equations.
Common Core.
The teachers were in town to attend the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual conference. The exhibit hall featured endless booths stocked with Common Core textbooks, Common Core legos, Common Core geometry sets, Common Core MOOCs (which stands for massive open online courses). There were even flying robots that vendors said could help children learn the Common Core.
“We sometimes laugh and say that Staples is going to make a lot of money on a rubber stamp that says ‘100 percent Common Core-aligned,'” said Linda Gojak, the council’s former president.

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Posted on September 16, 2014

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