Austria is moving to legislate nearly total surveillance.

Austrians, take action here.

Governments around the world are launching a broad front pre-emptive attack against the privacy needed for democracy and the press to function.

Camp Clark and the Demise of Free Speech.

U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse.

An example of a widespread self-undermining way of warning about dangerous practices — in this case, the insecurity of letting companies have your personal data: to say that "we" all do it.

I suppose the writers see this as a way of chumming up to the readers so that they will pay attention, but it defeats the purpose, because it tells readers, "Of course you use those disservices? Everyone does. No one would expect you to do otherwise."

Use of the term "the cloud" compounds the problem. The only "cloud" is in the minds of people who formulate their thoughts in terms of a "cloud".

Readers will go away thinking, "What a shame we are all trapped in this" rather than "I am going to stop now!"

In 2007, Brandeis University tried to discipline a professor for explaining the pejorative term "wetback". This led to a dispute between the faculty senate, which defended him, and the administration which judged that this was "harassment".

Hindley did not really make a racial slur, but what if he had? In general, real use of racial slurs should not be formally punished. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say nasty and foolish things.

Teachers are a special case, though; they should not gratuitously insult their students and should not set an example of racism.

The faculty-administration dispute was resolved as the administration agreed to give somewhat more respect to faculty decisions, but Brandeis never rescinded its unjust decision against Hindley.

In 2014, people attacked him for describing the Israeli occupation of Palestine as "ethnic cleansing" and comparing it to the holocaust.

The occupation does include slow ethnic cleansing on certain parts of annexed Jerusalem and the West Bank, but comparing it to the holocaust is an exaggeration. Israel does not do things that would ever kill millions of Arabs. Nonetheless, he has a right to say such things on the faculty mailing list.