Making the web, social media ‘better’ places — with caution

  We’d all like a “better” internet in terms of privacy, politeness, taste, and safety. And who would oppose eliminating false or misleading information from social media sites, or preventing online bullying and such?

  Some of the world’s most significant, influential and powerful figures around such issues — in the words of The Wall Street Journal, “the giants of the web” — gathered at the 2018 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal and in Brussels at an international conference on data privacy and policy.

Richard Cohen: Your iPhone and J. Edgar Hoover

  Following the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s, the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities – popularly known as the Church Committee – issued reports revealing that federal agencies had spied on U.S. citizens for years.

  In one of the most notorious episodes, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI targeted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of its infamous counter intelligence program – COINTELPRO in the Bureau’s lingo – all in the name of “national security.”

  Today, in the digital age, our surveillance tools are much more powerful than they were in the days when the FBI tapped King’s phone and bugged his hotel rooms. That’s why the legal dispute between Apple and the FBI is so important.

Gene Policinski: Getting to the ‘core’ of the Apple-FBI iPhone encryption spat

  Make no mistake – the suddenly-white hot debate over whether or not Apple will create a means for the FBI to “unlock” one of its cell phones is a defining moment in the rollout of the 21st century’s mobile, connected world.

  This Silicon Valley-Washington D.C. face-off raises issues of privacy and national security, of freedom of speech, and even foreign policy considerations with respect to repressive regimes and those governments hoping to track journalists’ sources.