Colin Lecher

Emails show Google’s close relationship with the White House

The nonprofit group Campaign for Accountability recently launched a project to compile documents about Google's lobbying practices, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The group says the repository of documents will be a resource for monitoring how Google interacts with the government. The first installment, which the group obtained through an independent researcher, features more than 1,500 pages of emails between the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Google employees. In the email exchanges, Google employees coordinate their messaging with the White House, occasionally steering around divisions within the administration. Nothing in the documents suggests improper behavior; they are a window into Google's high-level work on policy matters, and provide a case study on how deep the company's lobbying efforts go.

Donald Trump: 'I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future'

In an interview published by the New York Times, Donald Trump gave a winding response to a question about cyberattacks. Trump says he's all for "cyber," although it's unclear from the conversation what exactly that means. From the Times:
[DAVID E.] SANGER: You've seen several [NATO members in the Baltics] come under cyberattack, things that are short of war, clearly appear to be coming from Russia.
TRUMP: Well, we're under cyberattack.
SANGER: We're under regular cyberattack. Would you use cyberweapons before you used military force?
TRUMP: Cyber is absolutely a thing of the future and the present. Look, we're under cyberattack, forget about them. And we don't even know where it's coming from.
SANGER: Some days we do, and some days we don't.
TRUMP: Because we're obsolete. Right now, Russia and China in particular and other places.
SANGER: Would you support the United States' not only developing as we are but fielding cyberweapons as an alternative?
TRUMP: Yes. I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future.

How activists used crime scanner apps and cellphones to record Alton Sterling’s fatal shooting

The killing of Alton Sterling at the hands of police in Baton Rouge (LA) has sparked national outrage after a video showing the incident was posted online. That video was the result of an organized effort by local activists, who use smartphones to monitor and record violence.

A nonprofit group in Baton Rouge, known as Stop The Killing, tracks crime through police scanner apps. When members of the group hear about an incident, they drive to the scene to document it, recording and producing videos to draw attention to violence in the community. There are seven or eight people in the organization that all regularly listen to the scanners — several different versions of police scanner apps of those that are publicly available — for reports of violent crime. "Sometimes we get to crime scenes before police," says head of the group, Arthur "Silky Slim" Reed. Stop The Killing tries to record a scene three or four times a week, Reed says, and has uploaded some of its footage — much of it showing graphic incidents of crime scenes — to YouTube.

This site is trying to make Google forget you

A controversial ruling from a European court recently granted people the so-called "right to be forgotten," forcing Google to remove some search links upon request.

If you'd like a medium for sending such a request, Forget.me will now step in, spiriting away everything about you.

The site, a European privacy advocacy project, gives requesters a step-by-step procedure for lodging a request with Google, no knowledge on the finer points of law required. Log in, choose your country, perform a search for yourself, select the offending link, decide on which category your request falls under, and ship it all off to Google. While you wait, Forget.me will track the link's status, informing you when the information has left the physical plane.