Category: Technology

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils new Pi that’s six times faster, will support Windows 10

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Three years to the month after launch­ing the first Rasp­ber­ry Pi micro­com­put­er, the Rasp­ber­ry Pi Foun­da­tion has unveiled a new Pi that uses a more mod­ern proces­sor and has twice as much mem­o­ry onboard. The Rasp­ber­ry Pi 2, as it’s being called, will sell for $35, just like its pre­de­ces­sors (the first gen­er­a­tion Mod­el A […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Today is Internet Slowdown Day: We’re standing up for a free and open Internet

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Today, thou­sands of web­sites around the world — rang­ing from those belong­ing to big firms like Net­flix to small non­prof­its like NPI — are over­lay­ing sym­bol­ic spin­ning wheels of death on top of their con­tent to raise aware­ness of the need for net neu­tral­i­ty, the prin­ci­ple that all traf­fic on the Inter­net should be treated […]

Posted inEvents, Media & Culture, Technology

LIVE from Detroit: Why Net Neutrality is a Social Justice Issue

Avatar photoby Rennie Sawade

This pan­el is mod­er­at­ed by Maris­sa Valeri who is Com­mon Cause’s dig­i­tal strate­gies man­ag­er. Pan­elists include Kim Lehmkuhl, Lau­ren Wil­son, and Andi Zeisler. From the pan­el descrip­tion: Ear­li­er this year, a court over­turned the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Commission’s (FCC) com­mon sense net neu­tral­i­ty rules, which guar­an­teed the right of users to con­nect to the web­sites, blogs, […]

Posted inBreaking News, Civil Liberties, Litigation, Policy Topics, Technology

In landmark ruling, U.S. Supreme Court bars warrantless searches of mobile phones

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Who says there’s no such thing as pri­va­cy in the dig­i­tal age? Not John Roberts’ Supreme Court, which today issued a much-need­ed deci­sion rul­ing that Amer­i­can police forces must gen­er­al­ly obtain a war­rant before they can legal­ly search the mobile phone of some­one they have arrest­ed. Roberts’ major­i­ty opin­ion was signed by every oth­er justice, […]

Posted inBreaking News, Policy Topics, Technology

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) finally headed to Windows Phone; will debut this summer

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Dis­pelling recent reports in the tech blo­gos­phere to the con­trary, Black­Ber­ry announced this morn­ing that it is work­ing to bring BBM, Black­Ber­ry’s pop­u­lar and increas­ing­ly cross-plat­­form mobile-to-mobile mes­sag­ing ser­vice, to Win­dows Phone, in part­ner­ship with Nokia. BBM will also be present on Noki­a’s new Android-based Nokia X smart­phone plat­form when it launch­es in a few […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

BlackBerry’s next-generation smartphone platform gets big boost with 10.2.1 upgrade

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Today, mobile com­put­ing pio­neer Black­Ber­ry con­tin­ued to defy the many tech pun­dits who have called its demise inevitable by releas­ing a major upgrade to its next gen­er­a­tion smart­phone plat­form. Ver­sion 10.2.1 of Black­Ber­ry 10 began rolling out across the globe this morn­ing, bring­ing new fea­tures and enhance­ments to the ultra-mod­­ern oper­at­ing sys­tem that pow­ers the […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

The tech pundits are wrong: BlackBerry may be struggling, but it’s not a doomed company

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

On Fri­day, Black­Ber­ry Lim­it­ed (for­mer­ly Research in Motion) announced that it expect­ed to lose some­where between $950 mil­lion to $995 mil­lion in the sec­ond quar­ter of its cur­rent fis­cal year, and plans to lay off forty per­cent of its work­force in an attempt to con­trol costs and adjust to the decline in rev­enue. Inevitably, this […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, National Defense, Policy Topics, Technology

When are SSL and VPNs not secure? Why, when the NSA wants to spy on you, of course!

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

With each pass­ing week, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that for­mer NSA employ­ee Edward Snow­den’s doc­u­ment dump con­sti­tutes the largest and most impor­tant leak in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. While Snow­den remains in Rus­sia, news­pa­pers in the West con­tin­ue to sift through the doc­u­ments he leaked, using those as the basis […]

Posted inBreaking News, Technology

Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset division in $7.2 billion deal; Stephen Elop returning

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Well, how’s this for late-break­ing Labor Day news: Microsoft has just announced that it’s struck a deal with Nokia to buy “sub­stan­tial­ly all” of the Finnish phone mak­er’s Devices & Ser­vices busi­ness, plus license Noki­a’s patent port­fo­lio for ten years, for $7.1 bil­lion in cash. As part of the deal, for­mer Microsoft exec­u­tive Stephen Elop […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Economic Security, Education, Healthcare, Live Coverage, Open Government, Our Environment, Policy Topics, Public Planning, Technology, World Commmunity

LIVE from San Jose: Ask the Leader!

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Good after­noon from San Jose! Our morn­ing ses­sions are now over, and it’s on to our lunchtime keynote: Ask the Leader with House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Nan­cy Pelosi. This is for­mer (and hope­ful­ly future) Speak­er Pelosi’s third appear­ance at Net­roots Nation. She pre­vi­ous­ly took ques­tions at NN ’08 in Austin and NN ’10 in Las Vegas. I’m […]

Posted inBreaking News, Civil Liberties, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics, Technology

U.S. House endangers digital freedom by passing CISPA for the second year in a row

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Ignor­ing a veto threat from Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed today to pass Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Mike Rogers’ Cyber Intel­li­gence Shar­ing and Pro­tec­tion Act, bet­ter known as CISPA, for the sec­ond year in a row. The vote on final pas­sage, which hap­pened this morn­ing, was two hun­dred and eighty-eight to one hundred […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology

White House threatens veto of Mike Rogers’ reincarnated CISPA in its current form

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Leg­is­la­tion mak­ing its way through the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that could fur­ther erode our civ­il lib­er­ties would be vetoed by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma were it to reach his desk in its cur­rent form, the White House said today. In a for­mal state­ment of admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy on H.R. 624, more com­mon­ly known as the Cyber Intel­li­gence Sharing […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology, World Commmunity

Elite American security firm: Chinese military is behind attacks on U.S. corporate networks

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

For many months now, inde­pen­dent secu­ri­ty researchers and jour­nal­ists have been open­ly spec­u­lat­ing that the Chi­nese mil­i­tary is behind a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the increas­ing num­ber of cyber­at­tacks on U.S. cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment net­works. Now, elite Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty firm Man­di­ant — which Bloomberg Busi­ness­week pro­filed in one of its recent issues — has pub­licly released […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Research in Motion set to officially unveil its new BlackBerry 10 platform tomorrow

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

In less than eigh­teen hours, exec­u­tives at Cana­di­an telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions pio­neer Research in Motion will simul­ta­ne­ous­ly take the stage at a set of media events in major cities around the world to offi­cial­ly unveil Black­Ber­ry 10, the com­pa­ny’s much antic­i­pat­ed next-gen­er­a­­tion mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem, which RIM hopes will put its line of smart­phones back in the […]