A recent leak published in the Washington Times seems to point to the Obama administration backing down on recent proposals to include backdoors in encryption products following pushback from the public, crypto experts and some of the big US tech companies.The memo, which was published last week, …

I have a confession to make. I use strong crypto. There I’ve said it. In the opinion of some that makes me a terrorist. I also drink water. I have heard terrorists do that too.UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, would certainly like to be able to read everything I ever write. He isn’t a …

The Brussels-based collective Constant work at the intersection between politics, art and free/open source technology. I’ve just been at Verbindingen/Jonctions 14 — let’s call it VJ14, for the sake of brevity — a 4 day gathering aiming to provide a feminist review of mesh, …

Its 40 years since New Internationalist magazine, where I work, was officially founded. It began life as the successor to The Internationalist, house mag of Third World First, now People & Planet. One of the ways that we are celebrating is by taking a look back at our history with this lo …

Another Christmas gift from me old man, this is a 2005 novel which was made into a film last year. I’ve not seen the film. But the book is wonderful, a dystopian sci-fi, by turns tender and twisted. Ishiguro riffs on the fragilit …

This is a difficult read at times, putting the lie to the myth of the British Empire being a benign, democratic or civilising project. Rebellion was never far from the surface and was put down by geno …

In the followup to the riots that hit the UK earlier in the week, MPs have been trying to out-authoritarian one another. However, we should remember that many of the people doing the name calling here are guilty of some looting of their own. I thought it would be of interest to compare their loo …

I was chuffed to learn that the folks at Common People had been able to use the code I wrote for the What will George Osborne Cut Next random cut generator into a Boris Johnson flim-flam answer generator. You ask Boris a question and he talks errant ruling class nonsense. Just like the real thi …

Richard Stallman is something of a legend. He singlehandedly launched the Free Software movement, and the GNU project and has been campaigning for software freedom for almost as long as there have been usable home computers. I jumped at the opportunity to see him talk at the Institution of Engineer …

Climate change is real. Human beings are contributing to it. It is killing 150,000 people a year. These are poor people in poor countries. They produce far fewer emissions than rich people in rich countries but suffer the worst effects of climate change. This is a class issue, a power issue, a just …