R.I.P. To A Young A.I.: Microsoft's Savage "Teen Girl" Twitter-Bot Lobotomized Within One Day

It's one thing to have society be taken over by industrious labor-bots...it's another thing when the machines are "smart" enough to form opinions after assessing popular input.  While it's a fascinating and fun future that holds promise of a robot that outsmarts experts at one of our most difficult board games, or knows massive amounts of trivia, when artificial intelligence is outsourced to the internet, the supposed "intelligence" comes across as...well, something less than that.

We keep learning the hard way that the digital natives are a vicious tribe.
(Image courtesy @geraldmellor.)

ACLU and Human Rights Watch To NSA: Stop Spying On Journalists, Sources

Two human rights groups have come forward to voice their worries over hyper-invasive government monitoring derailing the efforts of many assiduous journalists.  As reported by the Washington Post, the ever-encroaching surveillance network that spies on emails, phone calls, and other digital data is making journalists' jobs harder and those willing to tell their stories more paranoid.

Both Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union came forward today to support a report decrying both the NSA's broad scope of operations as well as Obama's policy of locking up whistleblowers.  This combination, they say, is infringing on confidentiality not just between reporters and their subjects but even up to lawyers and their criminal defendants.  Both activist groups called for greater transparency regarding the methods of collecting, storing, and analyzing citizens' data.

ABC reporter Brian Ross, one of the 46 journalists, 42 lawyers, and assorted security professionals who presented the anti-surveillance report, mentioned that he now begins phone conversations with the phrase, "I'm a U.S. citizen, are you?"  This is due to laws (though many are currently up for debate) restricting the unfettered surveillance of Americans.  However the government maintains all of their watchdoggery is for "national security", and their constant worries about letting classified information leak have grown undeniably overbearing.  Hopefully thanks to this report, those that monitor our calls will soon be getting called out.

Image courtesy www.aclu.org.

Huffington Post to Prohibit Anonymous Comments: Huffington Attacks Anonymous Speech

The Huffington Post, reportedly, will soon do away with the option of anonymous commenting on its website.  Justifying the change, Huffington herself cited the aggressiveness and ugliness of internet trolls and apparently argued that free speech rights essentially should not be extended to individuals who have not submitted to some kind of vetting process.  From the Boston Globe:

The days of anonymous commenting on The Huffington Post are numbered. Founder Arianna Huffington said in a question-and-answer session with reporters in Boston Wednesday that the online news site plans to require users to comment on stories under their real names, beginning next month.

“Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and not hiding behind anonymity,” she said. . . .

This last statement is highly offensive, no?  Freedom of expression is not "given" or granted to anyone, it is a human right.  I guess Huffington would have told the authors of the Federalist Papers to take a hike.

Google Files Suit Against FISA and NSA Gag Orders

From the Washington Post:

Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government.

The legal filing, which invokes the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about broad National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic.

How the Courts are Undermining the Bill of Rights

The New York Times reports how a judge in a secret court forced Yahoo to hand over records to the government without a warrant. Excerpt:

In a secret court in Washington, Yahoo’s top lawyers made their case. The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant, and Yahoo had refused, saying the broad requests were unconstitutional.

The judges disagreed. That left Yahoo two choices: Hand over the data or break the law.  So Yahoo became part of the National Security Agency’s secret Internet surveillance program, Prism, according to leaked N.S.A. documents, as did seven other Internet companies. 

The Fourth Amendment is not the only Constitutional protection that is under attack from all three branches of the government.  The First Amendment is also a favored target.  The Supreme Court has also just ruled that there is no freedom of assembly in the plaza in front of the Supreme Court's building.  Excerpt:

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a new regulation barring most demonstrations on the plaza in front of the courthouse.  The regulation did not significantly alter the court’s longstanding restrictions on protests on its plaza. It appeared, rather, to be a reaction to a decision issued Tuesday by a federal judge, which narrowed the applicability of a 1949 federal law barring “processions or assemblages” or the display of “a flag, banner or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization or movement” in the Supreme Court building or on its grounds.