The Decentralized Web Summit: Locking the Web Open will happen on June 8th and 9th at Internet Archive in San Francisco. The event will be live streamed if you can’t attend in person.

The event is a discussion of the future of the web. From the Summit website:

The World Wide Web is fragile. Links break and website content can disappear forever. The Web is not universally accessible. It is too easy for outside entities to censor connections, controlling what people can and cannot view on the Web. The Web is also not very private, exposing users to mass surveillance by corporations and governments. A Decentralized Web can address all of these problems by building in privacy, security and preservation by default, ensuring that websites are easily accessible to all as long as at least one person somewhere in the world is hosting a copy.

Keynote speakers will be Vint Cerf, considered one of the “Fathers of the Internet” and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google; Cory Doctorow, Special Advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The list of presenters includes a number of innovators, tech leaders, and journalists. Panel discussions cover a range of relevant topics, including innovation, privacy, and security. There will also be workshops and Q & A to address your specific concerns.

You can check out the schedule, register to attend online, and learn more about the decentralized web by reviewing some of the resources the team has made available. The event is sponsored by the Internet Archive, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Google, and Mozilla.

The Decentralized Web Summit: Locking the Web Open will happen on June 8th and 9th at Internet Archive in San Francisco. The event will be live streamed if you can’t attend in person.

The event is a discussion of the future of the web. From the Summit website:

The World Wide Web is fragile. Links break and website content can disappear forever. The Web is not universally accessible. It is too easy for outside entities to censor connections, controlling what people can and cannot view on the Web. The Web is also not very private, exposing users to mass surveillance by corporations and governments. A Decentralized Web can address all of these problems by building in privacy, security and preservation by default, ensuring that websites are easily accessible to all as long as at least one person somewhere in the world is hosting a copy.

Keynote speakers will be Vint Cerf, considered one of the “Fathers of the Internet” and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google; Cory Doctorow, Special Advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The list of presenters includes a number of innovators, tech leaders, and journalists. Panel discussions cover a range of relevant topics, including innovation, privacy, and security. There will also be workshops and Q & A to address your specific concerns.

You can check out the schedule, register to attend online, and learn more about the decentralized web by reviewing some of the resources the team has made available. The event is sponsored by the Internet Archive, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Google, and Mozilla.

The Decentralized Web Summit: Locking the Web Open will happen on June 8th and 9th at Internet Archive in San Francisco. The event will be live streamed if you can’t attend in person.

The event is a discussion of the future of the web. From the Summit website:

The World Wide Web is fragile. Links break and website content can disappear forever. The Web is not universally accessible. It is too easy for outside entities to censor connections, controlling what people can and cannot view on the Web. The Web is also not very private, exposing users to mass surveillance by corporations and governments. A Decentralized Web can address all of these problems by building in privacy, security and preservation by default, ensuring that websites are easily accessible to all as long as at least one person somewhere in the world is hosting a copy.

Keynote speakers will be Vint Cerf, considered one of the “Fathers of the Internet” and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google; Cory Doctorow, Special Advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The list of presenters includes a number of innovators, tech leaders, and journalists. Panel discussions cover a range of relevant topics, including innovation, privacy, and security. There will also be workshops and Q & A to address your specific concerns.

You can check out the schedule, register to attend online, and learn more about the decentralized web by reviewing some of the resources the team has made available. The event is sponsored by the Internet Archive, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Google, and Mozilla.

The Decentralized Web Summit: Locking the Web Open will happen on June 8th and 9th at Internet Archive in San Francisco. The event will be live streamed if you can’t attend in person.

The event is a discussion of the future of the web. From the Summit website:

The World Wide Web is fragile. Links break and website content can disappear forever. The Web is not universally accessible. It is too easy for outside entities to censor connections, controlling what people can and cannot view on the Web. The Web is also not very private, exposing users to mass surveillance by corporations and governments. A Decentralized Web can address all of these problems by building in privacy, security and preservation by default, ensuring that websites are easily accessible to all as long as at least one person somewhere in the world is hosting a copy.

Keynote speakers will be Vint Cerf, considered one of the “Fathers of the Internet” and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google; Cory Doctorow, Special Advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The list of presenters includes a number of innovators, tech leaders, and journalists. Panel discussions cover a range of relevant topics, including innovation, privacy, and security. There will also be workshops and Q & A to address your specific concerns.

You can check out the schedule, register to attend online, and learn more about the decentralized web by reviewing some of the resources the team has made available. The event is sponsored by the Internet Archive, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Google, and Mozilla.

It has been an open secret that AT&T maintained a cozy relationship with the NSA, but only recently has the extent of that relationship been revealed. AT&T had no qualms about illegally providing enough Internet traffic data to forge a relationship fondly described by the NSA as a "highly collaborative." 

Edward J. Snowden provided documents chronicling the relationship; ProPublica and the New York Times reviewed them jointly. In that information:

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The NSA’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

Whether or not those data gathering programs still operate today is unclear. While AT&T is not identified by name in the documents provided by Snowden, former intelligence officers and corroborating evidence strongly suggest that the telecom giant is the company that exhibited an "extreme willingness to help" the NSA collect information for the Fairview program. 

It has been an open secret that AT&T maintained a cozy relationship with the NSA, but only recently has the extent of that relationship been revealed. AT&T had no qualms about illegally providing enough Internet traffic data to forge a relationship fondly described by the NSA as a "highly collaborative." 

Edward J. Snowden provided documents chronicling the relationship; ProPublica and the New York Times reviewed them jointly. In that information:

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The NSA’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

Whether or not those data gathering programs still operate today is unclear. While AT&T is not identified by name in the documents provided by Snowden, former intelligence officers and corroborating evidence strongly suggest that the telecom giant is the company that exhibited an "extreme willingness to help" the NSA collect information for the Fairview program. 

It has been an open secret that AT&T maintained a cozy relationship with the NSA, but only recently has the extent of that relationship been revealed. AT&T had no qualms about illegally providing enough Internet traffic data to forge a relationship fondly described by the NSA as a "highly collaborative." 

Edward J. Snowden provided documents chronicling the relationship; ProPublica and the New York Times reviewed them jointly. In that information:

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The NSA’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

Whether or not those data gathering programs still operate today is unclear. While AT&T is not identified by name in the documents provided by Snowden, former intelligence officers and corroborating evidence strongly suggest that the telecom giant is the company that exhibited an "extreme willingness to help" the NSA collect information for the Fairview program. 

It has been an open secret that AT&T maintained a cozy relationship with the NSA, but only recently has the extent of that relationship been revealed. AT&T had no qualms about illegally providing enough Internet traffic data to forge a relationship fondly described by the NSA as a "highly collaborative." 

Edward J. Snowden provided documents chronicling the relationship; ProPublica and the New York Times reviewed them jointly. In that information:

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The NSA’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

Whether or not those data gathering programs still operate today is unclear. While AT&T is not identified by name in the documents provided by Snowden, former intelligence officers and corroborating evidence strongly suggest that the telecom giant is the company that exhibited an "extreme willingness to help" the NSA collect information for the Fairview program. 

It has been an open secret that AT&T maintained a cozy relationship with the NSA, but only recently has the extent of that relationship been revealed. AT&T had no qualms about illegally providing enough Internet traffic data to forge a relationship fondly described by the NSA as a "highly collaborative." 

Edward J. Snowden provided documents chronicling the relationship; ProPublica and the New York Times reviewed them jointly. In that information:

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The NSA’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

Whether or not those data gathering programs still operate today is unclear. While AT&T is not identified by name in the documents provided by Snowden, former intelligence officers and corroborating evidence strongly suggest that the telecom giant is the company that exhibited an "extreme willingness to help" the NSA collect information for the Fairview program. 

Since the story broke about the NSA domestic spying practices, debate among concerned citizens has revolved around the Big Brother surveillance model. Most of us shudder at the thought of our federal agencies from DC watching, noting, and recording our actions. However, there is another type of Internet surveillance that largely escapes notice and likewise threatens our liberty. 

Both types of surveillance are perversely encouraged by a poorly regularly market that allows big corporations to profit from violating our privacy.

We have long known that our online habits are being recorded and combined with other personal data that allows companies to show us personalized ads. But Free Press recently offering a compelling explanation for how this model can harm us. From the Dana Floberg article:

And about those “personalized ads” — this isn’t about Facebook learning you prefer Coke over Pepsi. This is about corporations targeting us where we’re vulnerable. This is about your Latina neighbor who sees ads for risky high-interest credit cards. This is about your cousin who just got laid off and now sees ad after ad selling him dangerous fast-cash offers and subprime mortgages. This is about your friend who lives in a rougher part of town and sees higher prices whenever he shops online. This is about all of us.

These ads aren’t personalized — they’re predatory.

Floberg goes on to describe how shopping sites alter prices based on income and location so more affluent shoppers can access better prices and coupons. These sites both use and reinforce stereotypes as they take advantage of the most vulnerable in our society.

Without laws to protect consumers, there is little we can do to stop this predatory behavior. Just as the market encourages corporations to violate our privacy to sell its goods, big corporations are also profiting in their work with law enforcement at all levels.

An AP article by Anne Flaherty notes that AT&T charges $325 to activate a wiretap and $10 per day to maintain it. Verizon charges the government $775 for the first month and $500 per month after that to continue it. It is hard to believe these charges are in line with actual costs.