NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tag Archives: Digital Freedom

Zoom Video Conferencing is a privacy and security nightmare. Maybe soon, it won’t be.

Excerpt: Electronic meeting technology provider Zoom is coming under harsh and much needed scrutiny regarding its privacy and security practices.
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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Documentary Review: “The Great Hack” shows how data insecurity impacts elections

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of The Great Hack, an essential, must-see film breaking down what happened to our democracy in the 2016 presidential election.
Written by:Theresa Curry Almuti
Categories:Elections, Technology, Views & Reviews
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Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils new Pi that’s six times faster, will support Windows 10

Excerpt: 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 […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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When are SSL and VPNs not secure? Why, when the NSA wants to spy on you, of course!

Excerpt: 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 […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, National Defense, Policy Topics, Technology
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U.S. House endangers digital freedom by passing CISPA for the second year in a row

Excerpt: 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 […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics, Technology
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White House threatens veto of Mike Rogers’ reincarnated CISPA in its current form

Excerpt: 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 […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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Leaders of opposition to SOPA and PIPA in Congress congratulate Net strike organizers

Excerpt: As we report­ed ear­li­er today, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid has scrapped plans to hold a vote on the “Pro­tect IP Act”, also known as PIPA, next Tuesday. PIPA is one of the two MPAA and RIAA-backed bills that would per­mit major media con­glom­er­ates to indi­rect­ly cen­sor the Inter­net, using the long arm of the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Public Planning, Technology
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Harry Reid calls off next week’s vote on PIPA

Excerpt: Anoth­er vic­to­ry! From Sen­a­tor Har­ry Rei­d’s office: In light of recent events, I have decid­ed to post­pone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act. There is no rea­son that the legit­i­mate issues raised by many about this bill can­not be resolved. Coun­ter­feit­ing and pira­cy cost the Amer­i­can econ­o­my bil­lions of dol­lars and thou­sands of jobs each […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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Mission accomplished: Internet strike turns SOPA, PIPA into a top story for the first time

Excerpt: We’re back! Twen­ty-one hours ago, we took down this blog, The Advo­cate, along with Pacif­ic NW Por­tal and our home page to protest two destruc­tive bills that threat­en Inter­net free­dom, sta­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty: the “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” (SOPA) and the “Pro­tect IP Act” (PIPA). In their place, we acti­vat­ed an action cen­ter explain­ing our […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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Tomorrow’s anti-SOPA/PIPA blackout will be an unprecedented event

Excerpt: We are less than a few hours away from the begin­ning of the biggest vir­tu­al grass­roots protest the Inter­net has ever seen.  As you may have heard, the Web — or at least a siz­able frac­tion of it — is going on strike to protest two destruc­tive bills pend­ing before Con­gress that would allow giant media […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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NPI to participate in Internet strike against SOPA and PIPA on January 18th

Excerpt: Read­ers who are reg­u­lars at Red­dit or who close­ly fol­low tech­nol­o­gy news may have heard that the social news site is lead­ing the way in fer­ment­ing what’s being called an Inter­net strike against two destruc­tive, anti-Inter­net bills being pushed by Hol­ly­wood on Capi­tol Hill (the so-called “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” and the “Pro­tect IP Act”). […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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White House signals that administration opposes SOPA and PIPA as currently written

Excerpt: Respond­ing to a pair of peti­tions call­ing on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to take a stand against two bills that threat­en Inter­net free­dom (the so-called “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” and “Pro­tect IP”), three admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have pub­lished a posi­tion paper on the White House web­site which sug­gests that the admin­is­tra­tion does not find SOPA or PIPA accept­able […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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Join the fight against Internet censorship: An open letter to Senators Murray and Merkley

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing is the text of a let­ter sent by NPI to the offices of U.S. Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray of Wash­ing­ton and Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon this morning. Dear Sen­a­tors Mur­ray and Merkley: On behalf of the team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, I am writ­ing to express our strong oppo­si­tion to two […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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Senators Wyden, Cantwell ready to stand up to protect the Internet from censorship bills

Excerpt: In a mat­ter of days, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate may be vot­ing on an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous bill backed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try that would allow pow­er­ful media con­glom­er­ates and oth­er big cor­po­ra­tions to cen­sor the Inter­net at will. This bill, S. 968, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about, is offi­cial­ly known as the Pre­vent­ing Real Online Threats […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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