Edward Snowden: *The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever.* But he reminds us that it continues nearly unhampered today, in the supposedly free countries.

The EFF proposes laws to require large communications back-end companies to allow interoperability.

This would work by requiring them to offer data portability, back-end interoperability, and "delegability" (letting users communicate through independently developed front ends).

The EFF's definition of "delegability" is inadequate, because companies often permit access through independent client programs, but only if they are nonfree and satisfy various other demands. They do this by requiring the client program to contain a secret "client key" furnished by the company, which the company can revoke if it becomes known to the public, or if the client program allows users to protect themselves from certain crucial forms of manipulation.

Effective delegability requires that companies permit access by users running exclusively free software.

Solar panels have made the desert bloom in Helmand, bloom with opium poppies. The result is that heroin is much cheaper. However, the aquifer they pump water from will run out in a decade or so, and that could cause millions of people to try to migrate from Afghanistan to wherever they can reach.

Unless someone invents a high-tech device to extract humidity from the air.

The Focals eyeglass display, with snooping microphone, has been eliminated. Google eliminated it by buying the manufacturer and shutting it down. It also shut down the server these devices depend on, which caused the ones already sold to cease to function.

It may be a good thing to wipe out this product — for "smart", read "snoop" — but Google didn't do that for the sake of privacy. Rather, it was eliminating competition for its own snooping product.

A 15-year-old Michigan teenager was jailed for months for not finishing her online homework. She was on probation and doing her homework was a probation requirement.

Aside from highlighting the cruel basic attitude of the US criminal justice system, which also shows in other ways, the case has another aspect the article does not mention. The class probably required her to use nonfree software, perhaps Zoom, or from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple. Refusing to run it was the right thing for her to do, just as it is the right thing for everyone to do.