Daily Archives: April 21, 2017

Greenlee School celebrates First Amendment Rights by utilizing them – Iowa State Daily

Posted: April 21, 2017 at 2:07 am

Malik Newson, junior in journalism and mass communication, asked a crowd of students gathered on Central Campus, "What does the First Amendment mean to you?"

Let me put that in a simpler way, do you know what the First Amendment means? If you know all five of them, raise your hand, Newson said.

Awkward silence fell upon the crowd as some hastily sat on haystack seats, while others stepped closer to the podium. It gradually dawned on each of them them that Feast On the First had begun.

Celebrated with soap boxes, sidewalk chalking and free food, the event was organized by the Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication to honor the First Amendment.

The amendment recognizes the freedoms of speech, press, religion, petition and assembly. Newson provided facts that he thought were vital for people to think about.

This survey had been done since 1997, and it reported that 86 percent of those who responded have favor protecting speech, while 10 percent have favor limiting speech and protecting people from hearing things that offend them, Newson said.

In the religious freedom aspects, Newson believes there should be an improvement in the current numbers.

Fifty-nine percent believe they should be allowed to freely practice the religion they want," Newson said. "I believe there are lots of religions out there, so I dont know why people would want to limit that.

Before leaving the podium, Newson left his audience with a final message that he believes all Americans should hear.

We are united under this flag because we believe that all Americans are incongruent, not similar but congruent, Newson said. Not everyone knows whats going, but we need to know that we have the First Amendment for a reason.

Jen Coppoc, professor of American Indian Studies, approached the soap box podium with a guitar.

After a three-minute acoustic performance of Cheers to Someday, a song she wrote to commemorate the regrets of losing those who were once dear to us, Coppoc recounted her time at the Dakota Access pipeline protests.

I knew better as an outsider than to insert myself and so I wasnt going to participate in this direct action, and I didnt know what it was because I had just arrived to camp," Coppoc said. "I wasnt yet oriented, so I wasnt going to be a part of it.

Those who did participate went to the far side of camp where there was a little body of water [that] had burial sites on it. So the group of water protectors came together to build a bridge across this body of water to get to the island, to bring elders to do the ceremony.

However, above the protesters stood law enforcement officers with guns and rubber bullets, ready to fire upon them.

Its important to remember that this was happening on Thanksgiving Day, Coppoc said. They continued building, crossed the island and held the ceremony against the instructions and threats of law enforcements.

As a result of the protesters persistence, the camp was alerted by Lakota horse riders that law enforcement officers threatened a raid upon the camp.

And it was beginning to snow that day," Coppoc said. "And I ran because they said your life depended on this. I ran to the dome and I stood there with native and non-native women and children. But the rest of us, especially those who have knowledge of Native American history, stood there weeping because we were remembering Wounded Knee.

For Coppoc, the experience was eye-opening and taught her some valuable things about time and history.

The event further welcomed other speakers at the soap box, including Austen Giles, who was president of the group ISU 4 Trump.

Giles emphasized the significance of challenging ones mind in terms of freedom of speech.

My neighbor votes for someone else, and then Im pissed at him? I just dont get that, Giles said.

Giles said voting for a candidate should not interfere with how people treat one another.

He also recounted the times that people had thrown insults, cusses and other abusive language on social media.

Giles was supposed to host a Milo Yiannopoulosevent on campus that was later cancelled.

The university didnt want to cancel my event but they want to use mafia tactics, Giles said. Im just asking you to take the time to listen to my ideas and challenge yourself.

Michael Norton, university counsel, also took over the soap box.

He said the university respects the freedom of speech and encourages it for every individual.

He further addressed the Milo event cancellation, which was supposed to occur at a reasonable fee because the organization was not student based.

They chose to not to pay the fee," Norton said. "If they had paid the fee, the event will definitely had happened."

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New Report Card Gives the First Amendment a C+ in the Age of the Trump Administration – PR Newswire (press release)

Posted: at 2:06 am

The right to a free press received the lowest grade point average of all five freedoms. Panelists pointed to the following factors: President Trump's campaign promise to open up libel laws in order to more easily sue media outlets; certain media outlets being blocked from attending White House briefings; the "fake news" phenomenon, coupled with the president using the "fake news" label to attack the media; and the president's general enmity for the press.

Assembly and petition received the highest grades, with panelists noting that recent protests and political marches were classic demonstrations of both freedoms, and that the government took no action to hamper them or the resulting media coverage.

"Rarely in our lifetimes has there been more controversy about the state of our First Amendment freedoms," said Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center. "It is critically important for our nation to have serious discussions about the threats and opportunities we face in maintaining and trying to enhance our democracy."

The grading was performed by fifteen panelists from across the political spectrum, each of whom have committed to providing quarterly updates of their grades for one year. Panelists were advised to consider the following four elements in their evaluations: legislation, executive orders, judicial decisions and public opinion; and also to consider long-term trends and actions.

ABOUT THE NEWSEUM INSTITUTE'S FIRST AMENDMENT CENTERThe Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center is a forum for the study and exploration of issues related to free expression, religious freedom, and press freedom, and an authoritative source of information, news, and analysis of these issues. The Center provides education, information and entertainment to educators, students, policy makers, legal experts, and the general public. The Center is nonpartisan and does not lobby, litigate or provide legal advice. The Newseum Institute promotes the study, exploration and education of the challenges confronting freedom through its First Amendment Center and the Religious Freedom Center. The Newseum is a 501(c)(3) public charity funded by generous individuals, corporations and foundations, including the Freedom Forum. For more information, visit newseuminstitute.org or follow us on Twitter.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-report-card-gives-the-first-amendment-a-c-in-the-age-of-the-trump-administration-300442989.html

SOURCE Newseum Institutes First Amendment Center

http://newseuminstitute.org

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Editorial: Celebrate the First Amendment – Iowa State Daily

Posted: at 2:06 am

College is often talked about as grounds for pushing boundaries, being exposed to new perspectives and sticking up for what you believe in. Its a place where many start to identify that some of their beliefs dont align with their parents, friends or peers. Its a place where many identify where their political, religious or social views stand. Its a place where we are bombarded with diverse thinking and life experiences that help educate us.

But it is not the space of a public university itself that enables such opportunities, but rather the First Amendment and its freedoms accessible across the United States.

Today, Iowa State once again celebrates these freedoms through the annual First Amendment celebration. The event is meant to remind us that most of us use our freedoms of religion, press, speech, assembly and petition on a daily basis, but often take advantage of them. As a matter of proof that we often take advantage of them without knowing, statistics from a survey conducted by the Newseum Institute show that most Americans cant name all five freedoms.

In some ways it is sad that many Americans dont know the five freedoms because then we can never truly appreciate the value they provide us. The First Amendment is so ingrained in our society that protests, watchdog journalism and religious practices are just common practice. But if we dont take the time to think about what our nation would be like without them, we risk the chance of not knowing what there is to miss until its gone.

In essence, thats the very purpose of the First Amendment celebration: to recognize and celebrate our freedoms, while also recognizing that it is our duty as Americans to stand up and protect those freedoms.

Beyond this, the celebration on campus today is meant to remind us that the First Amendment is not in place simply so we can express ourselves, but so that others even those we strongly disagree with may do so as well. The celebration is just as much about the fact that we can express ourselves as it is about living in a society where we are constantly exposed to differing perspectives that help enrich our nation.

It is because of the First Amendment that we can stand up and fight in the face of injustice without fear of the government prohibiting us from doing so. It is also because of the First Amendment that we can stand up and say that we want to keep our traditional values without the government prohibiting us from doing so.

The First Amendment is arguably the most necessary part of an effective democracy and an American society that all citizens can participate in. It's necessary for all American communities, including the Iowa State and Ames communities, to function to their fullest potential.

But if we dont take the time to celebrate this, to think of our lives without these freedoms and to understand that each day we face opposition to holding these freedoms we could lose them without even knowing.

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The First Amendment Gave This Neo-Nazi The Right To Be Vile But Then He Went Too Far – BuzzFeed News

Posted: at 2:06 am

Andrew Anglin Wiki Commons

ID: 10918809

The right to free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution gives Americans broad allowances to say extremely bigoted, mean-spirited and disgusting things online about other people. Perhaps nobody understood just how broad those allowances were than leading neo-Nazi blogger Andrew Anglin who refers to Jewish people on his site as kikes, black people as niggers, gay people or those he perceives as gay as faggots, and has a whole section called The Jewish Problem.

Last last year, the self-proclaimed white supremacist decided to take his hateful rhetoric a step further. On December 16, Anglin authored a post on the Daily Stormer goading his readers to engage in a troll storm. The target: a Jewish realtor in Montana named Tanya Gersh, who Anglin was convinced was extorting Sherry Spencer, the mother of leading white supremacist Richard Spencer.

In the post, titled Jews Targeting Richard Spencers Mother for Harassment and Extortion TAKE ACTION!, Anglin writes, Lets Hit Em Up. Are yall ready for an old fashioned Troll Storm? Because AYO - its time, fam. The post contains a substantial amount of contact information for Gersh who he calls a whore her husband, and one of her sons, a 12-year-old who Anglin calls a scamming kike and creepy little faggot.

Anglin asks his readers to contact the Gershes and make your opinions known. He asks them to call them, email them, tweet them, or if youre in the area, maybe you should stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions. He explicitly writes that no one should do anything violent, but adds, It is very important that we make them feel the kind of pressure they are making us feel.

And hit em up his followers did, which legal experts said could land Anglin in trouble in court.

In a lawsuit filed this week, Gersh alleges more than 700 instances of harassment directed at her and her family in connection with the troll storm orchestrated by Anglin. These include emails to her reading, Ratfaced criminals who play with fire tend to get thrown in the oven, and This is the goylash. You remember the last goylash, dont you Tanya? Merry Christmas, you Christ killing Jew, and one that simply reads Death to Tanya repeated in the message about 100 times.

In the months after Anglins call for harassment, Gersh also received phone calls at home. According to complaint, when she picked up one caller said, You should have died in the Holocaust with the rest of your people. Another call consisted only of the sounds of guns being fired.

And how did Daily Stormer readers respond to Anglins call to target her son? One person tweeted at him, psst kid, theres a free Xbox One inside the oven and included a photo of an oven.

On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Gersh said that the threats have caused her to gain weight, her hair to fall out, and said shes had to quit her job. At one point during the troll storm campaign, she said she came home to a dark house, her husband waiting inside with the bags packed. We really thought we had to run for safety in the middle of the night, Gersh said.

Since the first post on December 16, according to the lawsuit, he has published 30 posts calling for actions against Gersh. This was really terrorism, Gersh said Tuesday. We didnt get teased, we got terrorized.

According to court records, Anglin has not responded yet to the lawsuit. One of Gershs attorneys, Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that they havent served Anglin with the suit yet. Anglin is a resident of Ohio, but reportedly could be residing in the Philippines or somewhere in Europe.

When he does respond, legal experts expect Anglin will raise some sort of First Amendment defense. However, in order to win in court, he will have to prove to a jury that the speech he engaged in was not intended to cause harm.

Speech that a reasonable person would construe as harm, thats not protected. In our system, you can hold discriminatory views, you cant act on them, David Schulz, a partner at Levine, Sullivan, Koch, Schulz, who has 35 years of First Amendment litigation experience.

If [Anglin] can say, Im just expressing an opinion and try to pull this into the sphere of free speech, it gets back to what a reasonable person would understand as protected speech Schulz says.

To prove that he was just expressing his opinion, Anglin might argue that he was merely republishing Sherry Spencers Medium blog post in which she accuses Gersh of attempting to extort her as part of a real estate deal to sell off a piece of property in Whitefish, Montana.

In November 2016, according to the lawsuit, Gersh reached out to Sherry Spencer about a planned protest outside a building that Spencer owns in downtown Whitefish. Gersh claims that she informed Sherry Spencer about the demonstrations, which were being planned in response to a viral video of her son, Richard, leading a Hail Trump! chant, and offered to help Spencer sell the building. According to the lawsuit, Gersh and Sherry Spencer began to discuss working together to sell the property. But then a month later, Sherry Spencer apparently had a change of heart, and published the Medium post accusing Gersh of extortion.

Montana Law School Professor Eduardo Capulong points out that if Anglin could prove that he was merely commenting on this purported feud between the Spencers and Gersh, he would be protected. But using it as basis to attack without verifying is reckless, he added.

Its one thing, if Anglin said: Oh, look at this blog post, and fuck them. Thats arguably protected by free speech, Capulong said. But then, you go beyond that and say: target this family.

Asked if Anglins calls for his readers not to be violent would protect him, Capulong said, I dont think so. Given everything that he was doing, and invoking Nazi ideology, images, I think any reasonable person would see that as a call to violence.

In this case, Anglin is accused of four charges invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malice, and violation of Montanas Anti-Intimidation Act. All four carry the possibility of damages that Anglin may have to pay to Gersh if the case goes in her favor.

But in order to obtain punitive damages meant to punish Anglin in a substantial way that deters others Gersh will have to prove malice, which has a higher standard in court. However, Capulong believes that Gersh has a good case for malice. I was shocked to see those emails. Thats really malicious I think, he said.

Gershs attorneys have called for at least $75,000 in damages for each count the minimum amount necessary to file the case in federal court.

Cohen says that they have no idea how much money Anglin has which could factor into the judge or jurys final decision on how much he would have to pay out. However, if he loses and regardless of the award amount the law dictates two key things. One, Anglin will not be able to seek bankruptcy against a judgment against him. And two, a judge can enforce a judgment for 20 years essentially going after future money he makes off the Daily Stormer.

Well follow him wherever he goes, Cohen said.

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How to protect your privacy online with Tor Browser – TechRadar

Posted: at 2:06 am

Introduction

If you want to keep your web browsing private, you can use the Incognito mode in Chrome, Private Browsing in Firefox, InPrivate mode in Microsoft Edge, and so on. While this will prevent other people who use your computer from seeing your browsing history, it doesn't prevent your ISP from monitoring the sites you are visiting. You might well want to for any number of reason browse the internet completely anonymously, and this is precisely what Tor Browser offers.

Standing for The Onion Router, Tor offers multiple levels of protection to ensure that your online activities, location and identity are kept entirely private.

Start by downloading and installing Tor Browser. Click Finish once the installation is complete, and Tor will launch for the first time. You'll be greeted by a settings dialog that is used to control how you connect to the Tor network.

In most cases you should be able to just click the Connect button, but if you connect to the internet through a proxy you will need to click the Configure button to enter your settings.

There will be a slight delay while Tor establishes a connection to the network via relays the program warns that the initial connection could take as long as several minutes but once this connection has been made, the Tor browser will launch ready for use.

Tor is based on the same code as Firefox, so if you have used Mozilla's web browser everything should seem fairly familiar. Even if you haven't used Firefox before, it should not take you long before you start to feel at home it's not so different to the likes of Edge, Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Before you get started, it's worth noting that using Tor Browser is a balancing act between privacy/security and web usability. By default, security is set to Low although this is still far more secure than any other web browser.

If you would like to increase this, click the green onion icon to the left of the address bar and select Privacy and Security Settings. Use the Security Level slider to choose your preferred level of protection, bearing in mind the warnings that appear about the features that may stop working on the sites you visit.

In order to get the most from Tor, you need to change a few of your browsing habits the first of these is the search engine you use.

Rather than opting for the likes of Google and Bing, the recommendation is that you instead turn to Disconnect.me. This is a site that prevents search engines from tracking you online, and you can use it in conjunction with Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo.

While we're on the subject of changing habits, you also need to avoid installing browser extensions, as these can leak private information.

As you browse the internet, the Tor browser helps to keep you secure by avoiding directly connecting to web sites. Instead, your connection is bounced around between multiple nodes on the Tor network, with each jump featuring anonymizing.

This not only makes it all but impossible for a website to track who and where you are, it is also responsible for the slightly slow performance you will notice while browsing with Tor.

You can protect your privacy even further by clicking the green onion button and selecting the 'New Tor Circuit for this site' option which will force Tor to find a new route to the site.

The new circuit option only applies to the current active tab, and it may be that you want a more drastic privacy safety net. Click the green onion button and select 'New identity', bearing in mind that this will close and restart Tor in order to obtain a new IP address.

When you connect to a site using Tor, you may notice that a popup appears warning you that a particular site is trying to do something that could potentially be used to track you. Just how often these messages appear will depend not only on the sites you visit, but also the privacy settings you have in place.

An important part of staying safe and anonymous online is ensuring that you use the HTTPS rather than HTTP versions of websites. So you don't have to remember to do this for every site you visit, Tor Browser comes with the HTTPS Everywhere extension installed by default. This will try to redirect you to the secure version of any website if it is available, but you should keep an eye on the address bar as an extra safeguard.

If you are connected to a secure site, you will see a green padlock icon. If this isn't present, click the 'i' icon for more information.

The most secure way to connect to the internet through Tor, however, is to visit .onion sites. These are also known as hidden Tor services, and they are inaccessible to search engines; to find them, you have to visit them directly.

To help you to find such sites, there are a number of .onion directories out there. These sites can only be accessed using Tor, but you do need to take care it's quite common to come across sites with illegal contents, or promoting illegal activities.

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Tor Browser 6.5.2 – Neowin

Posted: at 2:06 am

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody from watching your Internet connection and learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.

The Tor Browser Bundle lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained.

Changes in Tor Browser 6.5.2:

This release features important security updates to Firefox.

This should be the last minor release in the 6.5 series. This release updates Firefox to 45.9.0esr, Noscript to 5.0.2, and HTTPS-Everywhere to 5.2.14. Moreover, Tor Browser 6.5.2 includes a fix for the broken Twitter experience and worked around a Windows related crash bug.

Here is the full changelog since 6.5.1:

All Platforms

Windows

Download: Tor Browser 6.5.2 | 49.0 MB (Open Source) View: Tor Browser Website

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How to protect your privacy and PC online – PC Gamer

Posted: at 2:06 am

Keeping your data to yourself on the internet is hard, and it's getting tougher every day. With the recent decision by Congress to let internet service providers continue to run wild with your browsing data without you knowing, a lot of people are pissed (and the ones who aren't probably should be). While it's true that a lot of us give up data in exchange for services (think Google, Facebook, and other applications), an ISP is different. Without an ISP you can't get online at all. Your wireless provider, cable company, or copper-wire telco generally set prices in a vacuum and are the first gatekeepers between you and your Steam account.

So if you're not too keen on companies scooping up your data, there are some things you can do to protect your privacy. There are also some common practices that don't do much at allit's important to know what works and what doesn't when it comes to protecting yourself online.

Know your priorities

Protecting your privacy and securing your identity can very easily take you down a rabbit hole of computer science paranoia. Instead of mulling over what algorithms are going to break in the next ten years, you'll benefit a lot more from concentrating on what your actual priorities are.

The first thing to do is know your adversary. Who, exactly, are you trying to protect your data from? If it's a person who might be trying to break into your email account, that takes one set of privacy and security measures. If you're looking to keep companies from selling your data, that's another set of priorities. If you're looking to evade a government's surveillance, you'll have to work a lot harder to keep yourself invisible online.

In this guide, I'm going to focus on keeping data out of the hands of companies who might want to resell it.

Private Browsing (Firefox) or Incognito Mode (Chrome) may make you feel safe, but they actually don't do much to stop companies from tracking you. These browser features basically open up fresh tabs or windows without access to your history, cookies, or cache. If you're usually logged into Google or Facebook, using Incognito Mode or Private Browsing will basically treat your browsing session as though you're not logged into anything, and will clear any accumulated cookies or cache when the windows is closed. Just like any other session, a service can track you the minute you log in.

This mode is really useful when using public computers (like at a library or school campus). But if you're trying to keep ISPs from snooping, it won't help at all. Additionally, if you use Google for a search, Google can still use some information about you (search terms, geolocation, time of day), though it generally won't be tied to your identity. That is, unless you use it at home.

A recent addition to Firefox's Private Browsing includes a tracking protection feature similar to Privacy Badger, an add-on from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that "stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web."

Most modern browsers now come with a 'Do Not Track' signal that they can send to websites with every request. While DNT is often hidden in the options of your browser, enabling it lets a web server know that you don't want cookies served up that can be used to track you. It's a good step forward, and is generally transparent to the user.

Here's how to enable it:

Your first real tool in the privacy battle is the trusty virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is an encrypted connection that allows you to connect to a network over the internet in a way that treats your connection as though you were a part of that local area network (LAN). A VPN is really useful for companies, as workers can access shared drives, printers, and other resources from home. It's also a great privacy tool.

Since a VPN provides an encrypted tunnel to a remote location, the traffic between your PC and the VPN cannot be read by an intermediary. However, any unencrypted internet traffic going in and out of the VPN could still be intercepted and deciphered. Additionally, all of your outgoing traffic will appear to come from the VPN server's IP address. This makes the VPN an ideal method for getting around censorship and hiding most of your internet traffic. This is also why I recommend using a VPN when connecting to any open Wi-Fi hotspot, since open Wi-Fi does not encrypt your internet traffic.

There are plenty of pitfalls when dealing with VPNs, though. The first and most important thing to know is that a VPN provider can see all of your traffic. Needless to say, while you can use your employer's VPN to hide your IP from your home, your employer can see everything you do while connected to it, so act accordingly.

When you're using a third party VPN provider, you're offloading trust from your ISP and placing it onto your VPN provider. VPN providers are no more regulated than any other web service you might use, so it behooves you to read up on a provider's privacy policy. (Yeah, the fine print stuff that you always skip and just click "agree".)

When choosing a VPN, look for VPNs that don't log traffic, and don't retain or sell any data. Generally, all VPNs will have to respond to requests from law enforcement. However, a VPN provider that doesn't keep logs won't have much to show when authorities come knocking. I personally use Private Internet Access, but do your own research and read over privacy policies before choosing a provider.

You may be able to use a VPN for gaming, but some providers only allow traffic on commonly used internet ports (like HTTPS or IMAP, for instance). When choosing a VPN, be sure to find out if they open up TCP and UDP ports that games may need to communicate. Also, keep in mind that using a VPN while gaming can introduce latency.

Finally, the IP addresses of VPN providers are widely known, so a web service will know if you're connecting via a VPN.

The Tor browser has widely been touted as a method to secure your browsing. Tor is short for The Onion Router, and basically hides your IP by relaying your web requests through a network of proxy servers called relays or nodes. When accessing a website outside of the Tor network (all Tor sites end in .onion), the only node that can see the outgoing traffic is called an exit node, which makes the request to the appropriate site (like google.com).

Tor is a great method for browsing anonymously, so long as you're not trying to do something that would send the FBI right to your door. Since Tor is open-source and anyone can operate a Tor node, you better believe the U.S. government (and presumably others) operate Tor exit nodes. On top of that, using Tor can raise eyebrows from governments, which can attract closer scrutiny of traffic. Of course, the more people that use Tor for not-so-shady browsing, the less scrutiny it will warrant.

As long as you're not trying to sell drugs or look up child pornography, using Tor is generally a good way to keep yourself anonymous. To use Tor, you'll need the Tor browser, which is basically a modified version of Firefox. The Tor browser comes standard with Tails, a Linux distribution built for anonymity and security.

Although I can't remember the last time I had one of my PCs become bogged down with porno popups, malware is another thing to keep on the lookout for. Instead of selling you live sex shows, today's malware aims to read your browsing data and resell it to third parties.

By keeping your anti-malware software up-to-date, you can reduce the chance of having your PC infected by this stuff. You should also keep your system updated with the latest Windows updates and browser software. Both Mozilla and Google are very proactive about keeping their browsers secure, and keeping them updated means that you have the latest patches to known exploits.

One of my favorite browser extensions is Privacy Badger, mentioned earlier. Privacy Badger is open source, which means there's no proprietary secret code you have to worry about. Second, Privacy Badger is holistic. It will look for code, cookies, and other things that look like they're trying to track you and block them out. A system of sliders allow you to set what's allowed and what's not.

While Privacy Badger is awesome, some websites are so full of advertising code and scripts that it can be hard to sort out the good from the okay from the bad. On numerous occasions, Wired's website has ceased to work when attempting to read a story while I had Privacy Badger turned on. Only by temporarily disabling it was I able to read the story.

While ISPs may be able to do whatever they want for now (thanks Congress), you can still exert some control over the other services you use. Take some time to think about all the services you've signed up for. Each one of them has their own privacy policy, and by using that service you're agreeing to it.

If you find yourself using a service that makes you uneasy when you look at its privacy policy, find ways to opt out. Find alternative services, where you can. Duck Duck Go, for instance, offers web search that doesn't collect personal data.

If you're lucky enough to live in a place with more than one ISP, look for alternative providers too. Here in the Bay Area, the ISP Sonic has a privacy policy that vows to never sell your personal information, and only retain connectivity logs for 14 days. (They even abide by the DNT signal from browsers.) A lot of the U.S. sadly isn't lucky enough to have several ISPs vying for their dollars, so options like this might not be available for you. We're sorry if Comcast has a monopoly in your area.

I have to admit, Chromium Home is my default browser on my Linux machines, and I default to Chrome on Windows. But as far as privacy is concerned, Firefox is the winner. Unlike Google's Chrome, Firefox is completely open source, which means the entirety of its code can be inspected. While Chrome is based on the open source Chromium, Chrome can and will phone home to Google with usage statistics and other information. Opera also claims to be a privacy-focused browser and includes a free VPN built in, though it's not open source like Firefox.

If Google Chrome's privacy policy gives you the willies, consider switching.

Wherever you can, you should prefer HTTPS (also known as SSL or TLS) when browsing online. TLS traffic is encrypted so that only the recipient and server can see the data that's being transmitted. It's the reason why your bank's website and Amazon orders are secure. Even where security isn't paramount, more websites are starting to use TLS/HTTPS in order to simply protect users' privacy. Google thinks it's a good idea too, and started ranking HTTPS websites higher back in 2014. The EFF offers an HTTPS Everywhere browser extension that tries to use HTTPS wherever possible.

HTTPS isn't perfect, however. An ISP (or VPN provider) can see the requested URL, so HTTPS by itself doesn't ensure total privacy.

At the end of the day, we all give up some privacy for the sake of convenience. The real trick is knowing how much you're willing to inconvenience yourself in order to retain some of that privacy. For some, going full-bore with a VPN, Tor, and being a social media hermit is the only way to go. Some people may not care at all.

Most of us will take the middle road and find a nice warm spot somewhere between the two extremes. Until we pass laws that say that user data should be private by default, read the fine print and take measures that are appropriate. Good luck out there.

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Cryptocurrency 4Thought Studios Medium

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cryptocurrency /kriptkrns/ noun noun: cryptocurrency; plural noun: cryptocurrencies; noun: crypto-currency; plural noun: crypto-currencies 1. a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a centralbank.

This is the answer Google will give when asked What is cryptocurrency? While this answer/definition is absolutely correct; it reads like an excerpt from a complex finance document or engineering patent. Suffice it to say that this definition may not explain much to the average person with little to no experience with the professional field of information and technology.

As the computer person of my family, I often find myself explaining technical concepts to individuals with less exposure than myself. Sometimes these concepts are simple enough to use a real-world concept that more people are familiar with for direct comparison (look for my post on how to explain how the internet really works to anyone); but occasionally I need to explain a difficult to grasp concept that is comprised and built from equally difficult to grasp concepts. The difficulty in understanding computers is generally not the actual concepts themselves but in the true understanding of the processes. You can be a veritable genius at arithmetic; but if you are given a word problem to solve that is written in a language you cannot read; your amazing analytical skills are for naught (at least in this particular case analytical skills tend to never be completely useless).

This blog post is my attempt to quickly and succinctly explain the somewhat mysterious concept of cryptocurrency to anyone. This concept has managed to elude even some of us who are technically inclined, so this may be a bit of a challenge. There are many types of cryptocurrencies that exist but almost all of them are based on the original: bitcoin. For the sake of simplicity, this article will focus on bitcoin.

The IRS considers Bitcoin as property. Taxable property. To the average person this means that owning and trading bitcoin is basically the same as owning and trading gold. Boom. This is understandable. Bitcoin is a (digital) commodity that we can use for trade. True to its name, cryptocurrency is digital money. One of the biggest arguments against the feasibility of digital money is the fear that if a person is clever enough they could copy existing digital money like a file a give themselves infinite money. Cue the maniacal mad scientist laughter. This problem actually has a name; Double-spending. The inventors of bitcoin created a way to solve this problem. The solution is built into the way bitcoins are created, which leads us to the question, So where exactly does one get these bitcoins of which I speak?

Bitcoins are produced by bitcoin miners. Yes, just like a gold miner. No, not at all like someone too young to see an R-rated movie. The bitcoin mining process is similar to the way real life mining works. Bitcoins are generated by solving an increasingly-complex computational problem. Were not talking long division here. Think more along the lines of counting the grains of sand on a beach in a thunderstorm levels of difficulty, and the storm only gets worse. This complex problem is the mud or rock wall that gold is buried in. Once the problem is solved, the miner who solved the problem is rewarded with a mining fee (paid in bitcoin) and actual bitcoins the same way the gold miner is rewarded with gold after working through the mud or rock.

When bitcoin was first introduced in 2008 there were not a lot of bitcoin miners. The powerful computers required to solve the problems quickly became cost prohibitive to the average person. This trend has only increased as the popularity has grown and now it is common for miners to work together as a group. Think of several gold miners partnering together and buying a dump truck and other heavy duty equipment to sift through the mud and rock for gold. They will have to share the profits with each other but they will find more gold and find gold faster than they did as individual miners. This practice is called forming a mining pool and is one of the more popular ways to start producing bitcoin.

When bitcoins are collected via mining or a transaction they are stored in a digital wallet. The digital wallet keeps track of how many bitcoins a person has and is used to send or receive bitcoins for transactions. Digital wallets are provided by online services but the data they contain can also be stored offline on USB keys for safety.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting concepts about bitcoin is the inherent security built into the way all bitcoin data is stored. Every bitcoin creation and transaction since the cryptocurrencys introduction is stored in a publicly available ledger called a blockchain. Think of the blockchain as an extremely long receipt of every single bitcoin transaction that has ever taken place. When a transaction occurs using bitcoin, the transaction needs to be verified and recorded which adds the transaction to the blockchain. That complex and forever growing grains of sand problem is how these transactions are verified and recorded. Miners competitively work to verify pending transactions and whoever solves the problem first successfully adds the transaction (which includes the debit of bitcoin from one wallet and the addition of bitcoin to another) to the blockchain and collects the reward; creating new bitcoins in the process. This process inherently prevents the duplication of any bitcoin as each newly generated coin is composed of parts of the transactions that have happened before it.

Bitcoin is used in the same manner as online payment services and more and more vendors are starting to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. One of the benefits bitcoin payments provide is the low to nonexistent overhead charges associated with online, debit and credit card transactions. The fees associated with the common online payment services are bypassed when using bitcoin because of the peer-to-peer nature of the transaction process. This is for the people, by the people at its finest. The minimal transaction fees are much lower than the typical 1%-3% charged with other transaction methods.

Watch for a future post where we dive deeper into the shadowy world of the crypto in cryptocurrency.

https://www.bitcoinmining.com/

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Cryptocurrency 4Thought Studios Medium

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Cryptocurrency Market by Size, Share & Types – 2023

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Select Country Afghanistan (+93) Albania (+355) Algeria (+213) American Samoa (+1684) Andorra (+376) Angola (+244) Anguilla (+1264) Antarctica (+0) Antigua and Barbuda (+1268) Argentina (+54) Armenia (+374) Aruba (+297) Australia (+61) Austria (+43) Azerbaijan (+994) Bahamas (+1242) Bahrain (+973) Bangladesh (+880) Barbados (+1246) Belarus (+375) Belgium (+32) Belize (+501) Benin (+229) Bermuda (+1441) Bhutan (+975) Bolivia (+591) Bosnia and Herzegovina (+387) Botswana (+267) Bouvet Island (+0) Brazil (+55) British Indian Ocean Territory (+246) Brunei Darussalam (+673) Bulgaria (+359) Burkina Faso (+226) Burundi (+257) Cambodia (+855) Cameroon (+237) Canada (+1) Cape Verde (+238) Cayman Islands (+1345) Central African Republic (+236) Chad (+235) Chile (+56) China (+86) Christmas Island (+61) Cocos (Keeling) Islands (+672) Colombia (+57) Comoros (+269) Congo (+242) Congo, the Democratic Republic of the (+242) Cook Islands (+682) Costa Rica (+506) Cote D'Ivoire (+225) Croatia (+385) Cuba (+53) Cyprus (+357) Czech Republic (+420) Denmark (+45) Djibouti (+253) Dominica (+1767) Dominican Republic (+1809) Ecuador (+593) Egypt (+20) El Salvador (+503) Equatorial Guinea (+240) Eritrea (+291) Estonia (+372) Ethiopia (+251) Falkland Islands (Malvinas) (+500) Faroe Islands (+298) Fiji (+679) Finland (+358) France (+33) French Guiana (+594) French Polynesia (+689) French Southern Territories (+0) Gabon (+241) Gambia (+220) Georgia (+995) Germany (+49) Ghana (+233) Gibraltar (+350) Greece (+30) Greenland (+299) Grenada (+1473) Guadeloupe (+590) Guam (+1671) Guatemala (+502) Guinea (+224) Guinea-Bissau (+245) Guyana (+592) Haiti (+509) Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands (+0) Holy See (Vatican City State) (+39) Honduras (+504) Hong Kong (+852) Hungary (+36) Iceland (+354) India (+91) Indonesia (+62) Iran, Islamic Republic of (+98) Iraq (+964) Ireland (+353) Israel (+972) Italy (+39) Jamaica (+1876) Japan (+81) Jordan (+962) Kazakhstan (+7) Kenya (+254) Kiribati (+686) Korea, Democratic People's Republic of (+850) Korea, Republic of (+82) Kuwait (+965) Kyrgyzstan (+996) Lao People's Democratic Republic (+856) Latvia (+371) Lebanon (+961) Lesotho (+266) Liberia (+231) Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (+218) Liechtenstein (+423) Lithuania (+370) Luxembourg (+352) Macao (+853) Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of (+389) Madagascar (+261) Malawi (+265) Malaysia (+60) Maldives (+960) Mali (+223) Malta (+356) Marshall Islands (+692) Martinique (+596) Mauritania (+222) Mauritius (+230) Mayotte (+269) Mexico (+52) Micronesia, Federated States of (+691) Moldova, Republic of (+373) Monaco (+377) Mongolia (+976) Montserrat (+1664) Morocco (+212) Mozambique (+258) Myanmar (+95) Namibia (+264) Nauru (+674) Nepal (+977) Netherlands (+31) Netherlands Antilles (+599) New Caledonia (+687) New Zealand (+64) Nicaragua (+505) Niger (+227) Nigeria (+234) Niue (+683) Norfolk Island (+672) Northern Mariana Islands (+1670) Norway (+47) Oman (+968) Pakistan (+92) Palau (+680) Palestinian Territory, Occupied (+970) Panama (+507) Papua New Guinea (+675) Paraguay (+595) Peru (+51) Philippines (+63) Pitcairn (+0) Poland (+48) Portugal (+351) Puerto Rico (+1787) Qatar (+974) Reunion (+262) Romania (+40) Russian Federation (+70) Rwanda (+250) Saint Helena (+290) Saint Kitts and Nevis (+1869) Saint Lucia (+1758) Saint Pierre and Miquelon (+508) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (+1784) Samoa (+684) San Marino (+378) Sao Tome and Principe (+239) Saudi Arabia (+966) Senegal (+221) Serbia and Montenegro (+381) Seychelles (+248) Sierra Leone (+232) Singapore (+65) Slovakia (+421) Slovenia (+386) Solomon Islands (+677) Somalia (+252) South Africa (+27) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (+0) Spain (+34) Sri Lanka (+94) Sudan (+249) Suriname (+597) Svalbard and Jan Mayen (+47) Swaziland (+268) Sweden (+46) Switzerland (+41) Syrian Arab Republic (+963) Taiwan, Province of China (+886) Tajikistan (+992) Tanzania, United Republic of (+255) Thailand (+66) Timor-Leste (+670) Togo (+228) Tokelau (+690) Tonga (+676) Trinidad and Tobago (+1868) Tunisia (+216) Turkey (+90) Turkmenistan (+7370) Turks and Caicos Islands (+1649) Tuvalu (+688) Uganda (+256) Ukraine (+380) United Arab Emirates (+971) United Kingdom (+44) United States (+1) United States Minor Outlying Islands (+1) Uruguay (+598) Uzbekistan (+998) Vanuatu (+678) Venezuela (+58) Viet Nam (+84) Virgin Islands, British (+1284) Virgin Islands, U.S. (+1340) Wallis and Futuna (+681) Western Sahara (+212) Yemen (+967) Zambia (+260) Zimbabwe (+263)

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What’s keeping cryptocurrencies from mass adoption? – TechCrunch

Posted: at 2:05 am

Neil Haran is an angel investor and cryptocurrency advocate.

Speculators flocked to Bitcoin and many of the alt-coins in hopes of getting in early and making a big exit, but everyday users havent warmed to cryptocurrencies.

There are many reasons why, but one of the largest barriers to mainstream adoption is the price volatility of cryptocurrencies.

So the question is, why do the prices change so much in the first place? It comes down to supply and demand: Most cryptocurrencies have only a fixed total supply, and yet demand for the coins is uncertain and constantly fluctuating thanks to speculation.

Of course, its easy enough to talk about the problem coming up with a solution is quite another matter.

The need for stability is not unique to cryptocurrency. Any currency needs to be stable in order to be used as a trusted medium of exchange. The more that prices rise and fall, the more ordinary people will shy away from using the coins for everyday transactions.

Whether they hoard the coins in the hope that prices will rise sharply soon, or they avoid using them altogether for fear that they will lose all of their value, people are not yet accustomed to seeing cryptocurrency as real money.

Worse, the unpredictability of prices wreaks havoc on regular money services, like remittance, currency conversion, and the use of ATMs. In order to use cryptocurrencies, businesses have to hedge their risks by charging exorbitant fees.

Bitcoin ATMs can charge up to 15 percent just to convert to fiat currency. This totally defeats the original purpose of cryptocurrencies, which was to offer a cheaper and more flexible alternative to other payment methods. With no advantage over government-printed money, why would the average person use them?

Price volatility has plagued Bitcoin from nearly the beginning. With what we have learned over the better part of a decade, why have cryptocurrencies still not solved this problem of fluctuating prices?

Human nature gets in the way, as it tends to do. It is difficult to stabilize prices in a world where people would rather play the market and get instant gratification by re-selling their coins for as high a price as possible. Without careful planning from the very onset of a cryptocurrencys existence, its hard to recover from the effects of speculation.

Image: JaaakWorks/iStock/Getty Images

When building a cryptocurrency from scratch, you first need a solid foundation. From this foundation, the currency can grow and self-correct as it develops.

Gauging demand

The first piece of the puzzle is being able to reliably predict demand. Uncertainty around demand is the main cause of price fluctuation, as every users intentions are a mystery to every other user. Having a way to gauge real demand for a coin would go a long way in fixing this problem.

The issue with predicting demand, though, is the existence of speculators creatingartificial demand. This is the core of the problem: With so much speculation, the price for the cryptocurrency will not reflect its actual usage and demand. It simply becomes a bubble that is constantly on the verge of bursting, and no one wants to risk their hard-earned money on that.

Traditionally, the solution to the problem of stability was to have a central bank. The government could then alter the money supply at will, for example by causing inflation. Cryptocurrencies are by definition decentralized that is part of their advantage and without a central bank they need an entirely new approach when it comes to squashing volatility. They need to do this without compromising the freedom of the users and without resorting to inflation.

Cooperation over competition: A decentralized community

United we stand, divided we fall.

What if there was a currency that encouraged people to cooperate? What if people were incentivized by a spirit of growth, rather than of greed? Under the ideal model, a network of cooperative businesses and services would coordinate with each other as a single unit. The coin would be shaped democratically by this co-op (shaped not controlled). Every user would have incentives to help the network grow as a whole, and the use of a blockchain would help make the process be fair.

Instead of rampant online speculation, users would visit local exchanges to buy and sell the currency. The community as a whole would vote on when to increase the coins price, which would keep things democratic and guard against sharp spikes.

Official local exchanges

Having to look other users in the eye can make a world of difference. Face-to-face exchanges at trusted locations means that the sale of a coin can be more easily limited, and this can act as a throttle to gauge demand. People on the front lines, seeing the real demand for the coin in person, can then vote to increase the price. Having stable locations to exchange the currency also creates consistency. It removes the guessing game of wondering where you can buy and sell your coin.

The advantages are not just purely economic, either. Cryptocurrencies dont exactly have the best reputation thanks to their penchant for attracting unscrupulous people. Unethical or illegal businesses will tend to be voted out of cooperative networks with face-to-face exchanges, however, which can go a long way toward legitimizing the currency. It would still be possible to run such enterprises of course, but they would never be part of the co-op.

Local exchange dominance

This kind of approach can only work if there are dramatically more local exchanges than online exchanges. It would mean that the local exchanges would dictate the pricing of the currency.

Marketing early can be disastrous

Marketing is a powerful force, and as such it needs to be handled with care. On the one hand, founders naturally want to attract investment early on. This will raise the price of the coin and help pay for infrastructure, as well as boost the growth of the coin. On the other hand, historically the earliest investors in cryptocurrency have been extremely low quality they are the speculators who doom the currency in the long run and scare away mainstream users.

With speculation, capital infusion is needed to keep the currency stable, which can be a significant task. Take Bitcoin for instance: With a market cap of roughly $20 billion, it would need a huge amount of capital to have a stable floor.

Slow and steady wins the race

Cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy, and its hard to tell where the path for most of the major currencies is headed. What is the finish line that they are aiming for? What will the end game be? Most cryptocurrencies have little direction besides the whims of the market, so theres no telling where they will end up. However, there are a handful of interesting coins that have invested in strategies that nudge them in a specific direction.

The central app coin method

This is a strategy that is centered around creating value with unique products and services that are associated with the currency. In this way, you could say that the currency is backed by something that people actually want.

For example, the MaidSafe network incentivizes users to provide something of value to the network (storage space), and offers the use of apps and services in return for coins. This naturally leads to better cooperation. People want to create value and channel their efforts toward the growth of the currency that they have in common.

The setup and switch method

Similar to the central app strategy, this method establishes a user base first, and then introduces the currency. Bitshares and its array of associated startups is a good example of this. Several networks with varying currencies Steemit and their STEEM currency, Peerplays and their tokens, for instance slowly built their user base and value exchange system, and now they plan to adopt a central currency with Bitshares. This allows them to create a stable base first before pooling their resources.

The grassroots movement

Finally, the best way for a currency to create that all-important foundation of true users is through bootstrapping. Just like a business startup, a currency like this would need a user base that believed in a common mission. It would need everyone in the system to be able to see the inherent value of the coin, and to understand that it could be worth much more than the value it is traded for in its early stages.

An example of one of these grassroots efforts is FairCoin. Its a currency established and led by FairCoop, whose strategy is to build an ecosystem where businesses cooperate to give users maximum value. It is a currency built from the ground up to incentivize the long-term interests of users instead of their short-term greed not just because its the right thing to do, but because it makes sense.

FairCoin focused from the beginning on building infrastructure for everyday users. Because of the strong relationships among members of the co-op, they can have thousands of ATMs, debit cards and exchanges that make mass adoption much easier.

An approach like this allows the currency to slowly build itself in the background without the need for a spotlight and the barrage of speculators that come with it. This offers the huge advantage of stability from the very beginning, though it does pose the problem that FairCoin has to bootstrap with less capital than most coins. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, they cant rely on CoinMarketCap to sing their praises by displaying artificially rising prices (the effects of speculation).

In other words, FairCoin traded the excitement of volatility and greed for a quiet, long-term stability. The only problem is that people might not notice! Drama catches the human eye, after all.

Hard forks

Lets take a look at the hard fork that looms in the horizon for Bitcoin. As if things werent complicated enough, now there could be two competing chains for the currency. There are already many technical barriers to Bitcoins adoption among mainstream users, and this is yet another one. This makes the price even more uncertain, and uncertainty is like poison for a currency.

On the other hand, if you have a large community and a co-op on top of an immutable blockchain, then a hard fork is extremely unlikely and unnecessary. Cryptocurrencies like MaidSafe, Bitshares and FairCoin all represent solid communities that are incentivized to cooperate instead of speculate. This means that the coin can be worth more than its market price; it has a high inherent value within the system itself.

This makes it so that users have very little reason to defect from the existing community. A hard fork would mean giving up many benefits of the co-op, so people stay loyal to the original vision of the currency. When something deeper than just greed ties a community, hard forks dont occur as often.

Stable prices dont just happen by accident. They are not a miracle of the market they require a carefully constructed foundation. A stable currency needs a stable ecosystem first.

While its tempting to market the currency too soon because capital injection can do a lot to raise prices in those critical early periods, its better to wait. Advertising is like opening up Pandoras box and inviting the world to look inside. Some of those users will be interested in the actual currency, but others will be undesirable speculators that just leech off the system. For a currency to be stable, it needs to be used by the 99%, not just a handful of investors.

A currency needs to grow with the people, not past them. Look at the state of Bitcoin and its inflated prices. The everyday person can no longer either mine the coin or expect to use the coin in everyday transactions without high fees or risk. It has been given up to the speculators.

With a truly stable currency, on the other hand, you can have currency conversion, remittance, ATM withdrawals and other financial services with lower fees than fiat systems. In other words, it can be used as intended as money. This is what will ultimately attract a mainstream audience and will actually incentivize them to make the switch to cryptocurrency.

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