Free Republic

Cenk Uygur bristles at the notion that the progressive media company he co-founded more than a decade ago, the Young Turks, is becoming the Breitbart of the left—that is, a pugilistic news outlet waging an ideological war with the establishment class. If you ask him, the comparison is backward. "Andrew Breitbart, when he was on my show before he passed away, said they emulated us, not the other way around," Uygur told me in mid-March, after finishing a panel at South by Southwest. "They get a lot of credit now because our idiot president reads them, but in terms of...

House Republicans approved legislation Tuesday that would allow internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon to sell browsing information without users' consent. If signed by President Donald Trump as expected, the legislation will undo a Federal Communications Commission rule approved in October that requires consumers to opt-in before ISPs can sell their internet activity records. Democrats presented the legislation as an alarming attack on personal privacy, with two members invoking the apparently common experience of being shown embarrassing ads after making online underwear purchases. “Please leave Capitol Hill for 5 minutes, and find three people on the street who...

House Republicans are expected to vote Tuesday to repeal a set of historic privacy protections for Web users, in a sharp pivot away from the Internet policies of the Obama administration. President Trump is expected to sign the measure if it passes. Tuesday's vote is likely to lend momentum to a broader rollback of Obama-era policies, particularly in the technology sector. And it empowers Internet providers to enter the $83 billion market for online advertising, where the ability to collect, store, share and sell consumers' behavioral information is directly linked to companies' bottom line. Proponents of the repeal argue the...

As usual, the rabbit hole gets much deeper the more you look. In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. Here’s some of what we learned: An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S....

So - the last few days, Drudge has really been annoying, to the point that I am starting to think I'll just not go there. Yesterday the headlines went on and on about what a disaster it was to Trump that the Health Care bill went down. I had just listened to Mark Levin, who had some 'on the other hand' way of looking at it, and I was very encouraged it had gone down. I dropped them a note on the 'news tip' box, and it was gone next I looked. The day before there was something else equally...

Jack Ma is one of China’s richest men, with a fortune valued at nearly $30 billion. As executive chairman of Alibaba Group, he leads the dominant force in Chinese e-commerce, a company with a market value of $264 billion and some 450 million customers. A global ambassador for Chinese business, he spent 800 hours aloft last year—­visiting princes, Presidents, and Prime Ministers and lots of mere businesspeople too. “A professional pilot cannot travel that much, or so I’m told,” he boasts. Even so, the rich and powerful people who meet with Ma tend to come away from the experience with...

DALLAS - Some tweets can, apparently, be as dangerous as a gun. That's the logic behind the Dallas County indictment of John Rivello. He's facing a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Police say Rivello tweeted animated strobe images to a Newsweek Senior Writer last December with the message "you deserve a seizure for your post." The journalist is epileptic, and the strobe lights did, in fact, trigger a seizure. Federal authorities already charged Rivello with federal cyber stalking for the tweet, but the state of Texas added the aggravated assault charge. That charge also carries a hate...

The Senate voted to kill Obama-era online privacy regulations, a first step toward allowing internet providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to sell your browsing habits and other personal information as they expand their own online ad businesses. Those rules, not yet in effect, would have required internet providers to ask your permission before sharing your personal information.

The campaign by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to regulate the internet, from Twitter and Facebook to Drudge, is back after some liberal commissioners threw in the towel amid GOP opposition. Seizing on an exit report card of the agency by ex-Commissioner Ann Ravel, the left is complaining that the internet isn't being regulated for political content and spending, but should be.Using the "altFEC" twitter account, one of several "alt" sites set up by government workers in agencies resisting the new Trump administration, the proponents reference Ravel's critical report. "It means that the @FEC's disclosure rules have not been...

A group known for its successes fighting digital wars, notably net neutrality, is offering $15,000 to activists who quit their jobs and form "A-Teams" to jump into a war on President Trump's agenda. Fight for the Future, started in 2011 as a digital activist group, on Monday issued the offer with this eye-catching opening: "Terrified about Trump? Quit your job, start an A-Team. We'll fund it." "We're currently taking applications for an initial launch of the project, and will be providing a few select teams with funding, guidance, and support," said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future....

Meetup is taking a leap into the Trump resistance. The New York-based networking site will unveil plans in the coming days to partner with a labor group — under the guidance of a former Hillary Clinton aide — to coordinate protests among more than 120,000 activists already involved with anti-Trump Meetup groups. It's a risky move for a tech company that has helped millions come together to share interests of all kinds, from hiking to languages to President Donald Trump himself. But it reflects an increasing willingness of some major technology firms to push back against the Republican president....

I'm relatively new to "social networks" in the truest sense of the word. My sister raves about Pinterest, and tried to get me interested, but I'm not seeing any usefulness in it. What is it, what does it do, how does it advance my place in the universe, and who cares? It looks like a bunch of pictures to me. Pretty shallow. I'm thinking it might be useful for widening exposure to some items I'm selling on Etsy, but don't know. Anyone with hands-on knowledge?

Following the backlash that Ivanka Trump's clothing brand experienced in recent months, you might think its sales would be on the decline. But statistics show business is booming for her namesake line — and in fact, people seem more curious about it than ever. It's not all positive news, however: Certain customers are purging their closets of Ivanka Trump wares, and thredUP, a fashion resale site that's been around for nearly a decade, has released the numbers on just how much people are unloading. According to the reseller's "Purge Surge" list, Ivanka Trump merch comes in at number seven, behind...

An elaborate hoax based on forged documents escalates the phenomenon of “fake news” and reveals an audience on the left that seems willing to believe virtually any claim that could damage Trump. In the third week of January, an Israeli named Yoni Ariel flew from Tel Aviv to Rome carrying $9,000 in cash on a secret mission to bring down Donald Trump. There, he met with an Italian businessman. Seated at a table toward the rear of a café, away from the street where they might attract unwanted attention, Ariel recalled, he handed over the cash. In exchange he was...

There are few people with computer science backgrounds who work in the federal government. Long hours coupled with smaller salaries make it hard to recruit techies to Washington, according to Representative Ruben Gallego. But one way to get more tech people to serve their country is to set up a cybersecurity reservist system, like a National Guard for digital security, said Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona. "We have to accept that, look, this person is not going to man a machine gun, why would we put them through bootcamp, we're never going to send them to the front line," Gallego...

The internet will soon be a “safe space”, free from “hatred”, free from “Fake News”, free from “hurtful rhetoric” and of course, free from any views or opinions that do not fit the “progressive narrative”. Google and Facebook are looking to become public facilities (State operated), and with that will be the end of the World Wide Web as an open forum. That is not to say that the basic services will be any better or any worse, but as a place to challenge orthodoxy and “narrative”, it will be effectively dead. The reason behind this takeover is an attempt...

FBI Director James Comey warned Wednesday that Americans should not have expectations of “absolute privacy,” adding that he planned to finish his term leading the FBI. “There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America; there is no place outside of judicial reach,” Comey said at a Boston College conference on cybersecurity. He made the remark as he discussed the rise of encryption since 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed sensitive US spy practices. “Even our communications with our spouses, with our clergy members, with our attorneys are not absolutely private in America,” Comey...

President Trump’s conservative allies are trying to turn the tables on Democrats and the media over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election....

Russian hackers are gaining access to emails and other information belonging to progressive groups and then sifting it for embarrassing information. As many as a dozen groups have been blackmailed with demands for thousands of dollars in bitcoins. Some have even agreed to pay in the hopes the hacked information won’t be released. In one case, a non-profit group and a prominent liberal donor discussed how to use grant money to cover some costs for anti-Trump protesters. The identities were not disclosed, and it’s unclear if the protesters were paid. At least some groups have paid the ransoms even though...

The 2016 Presidential election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory—with theories ranging from Russian hacking to “fake news.” We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the...