Category Archives: Did you Know?

Did you Know?

How the NSA searches the world’s intercepted private communications

XKEYSCORE is a secret NSA program that indexes data slurped up from covert fiber-taps, hacked systems, and smartphones, including “full take” data and metadata.

XKEYSCORE has been known since last July, when Glenn Greenwald disclosed its existence in a blockbuster Guardian article.

In a thorough, fascinating followup published in the Intercept, Greenwald and colleagues present a detailed look at the system as it stood in 2013, when it consolidated data from 150 field sites. The service uses your Google cookies and cookies from other services to link your activities across multiple sites and forums, making it possible to search for individual users who use different online identities for different purposes.

In its internal documents, the NSA describes how XKEYSCORE is used to spy on world leaders, including the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, whose briefings prior to a meeting with Barack Obama were intercepted and analyzed.

Visit - https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/01/nsas-google-worlds-private-communications/

Source: How the NSA searches the world’s intercepted private communications

Did you Know?

Research Shows Internet Shutdowns and State Violence Go Hand in Hand 

EFF has noted and protested when authorities deliberately cut off Internet access in times of unrest.  As a restraint on the freedom of expression of those affected, communication blackouts during protests are unconscionable.  But recent research by Anita Gohdes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim, suggests that Internet shutdowns are becoming part of a toolkit for more violent repression.

Source: Research Shows Internet Shutdowns and State Violence Go Hand in Hand in Syria

Did you Know?

I need to find a public domain image

Reference question of the day was about finding public domain images. Everyone’s got their go-tos. If I am looking for illustrations or old photos specifically I’ll often use other people’s searches on top of the Internet Archive’s content. Here’s a little how to.

1. Check the Internet Archive Book Images feed on Flickr. What I often do is search (which finds the words that surround the images) and then click straight through to the book (which is always linked in the metadata) and then fish around. For example…

Source: I need to find a public domain image| librarian.net

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Juan Felipe Herrera, From Farm Fields to Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress is to announce on Wednesday that Juan Felipe Herrera, a son of migrant farmworkers whose writing fuses wide-ranging experimentalism with reflections on Mexican-American identity, will be the next poet laureate.

The appointment is the nation’s highest honor in poetry and also something of a direct promotion for Mr. Herrera, who was poet laureate of California from 2012 to 2014.

Source: Juan Felipe Herrera, From Farm Fields to Poet Laureate