First guest: Ryan Shapiro, #FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People (https://propertyofthepeople.org/).
Ryan Shapiro not holding back: "It's not just the malignancy and greed of these people, it's how unfettered they're going to be in enacting their odious plans."
Ryan Shapiro recounting his early career: "The FBI tried to put us in prison as terrorists for doing things like undercover investigations of factory farms.."
"I started submitting thousands of [FOIA] requests and it started to work. Started to map out the FBI's strategies for noncompliance." - Ryan Shapiro explaining his use of Freedom of Information Act requests.
"We were able to show that years before the JSTOR investigation and prosecution [of Aaron Swartz], the FBI had been preposterously looking at Aaron in the context of an al Qaeda anti-terrorist investigation" - Ryan Shapiro on his investigative work using the Freedom of Information Act (#FOIA)
"At its core, the FBI is a political force that primarily targets the left, ignoring or outright aiding the right". - #FOIA expert Ryan Shapiro at #AaronSwartzDay
Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
"A failed coup is just a dry run for the next time. January 6 coup plotters have succeeded. Those who planned the January 6 coup are now preparing to assume unprecedented power. [...] My assessment of the present situation: absolutely catastrophic. [...] It's not about accountability now, it's about survival." - Ryan Shapiro
Watch live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
Ryan Shapiro: "My real fear with #FOIA is not that it's going to go away, but that it's going to be increasingly lopsided" due to Trump-appointed judge simply denying requests that pertain to the regime.
Watch live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
Next up, my colleague @nathan from @freedomofpress
giving the annual update on @securedrop:
"At its heart, @securedrop is a whistleblowing platform that allows journalists to receive files and messages from anonymous sources." - @nathan giving the annual "State of the Drop" update at #AaronSwartzDay.
Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
@nathan now discussing the SecureDrop Workstation based on @QubesOS.
"When you open a file that someone sends you, these submissions open in a burner VM. It spins up in a new virtual machine where you can look at the submission. When you're done, you just click the X button, it disappears, like it never existed in the first place."
Next up: Tracey Jaquith, giving an update on the work and challenges of the @internetarchive in 2024.
Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
Tracey Jaquith (@tracey) now talking about attack surface mitigations to keep the Internet Archive safe against future attacks (they recently faced major hacking attacks by terrible human beings):
- disable unnecessary modules, old code
- lock down open ports limit public access to APIs
- centralize monitoring to reduce the number of "ways in"
Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
Good security advice for developers from the Internet Archive's founding coder @tracey - make sure you don't (accidentally or intentionally) deploy your `.git` subdirectory. "Any sins you've committed in the past, like API keys in your version history, will be discoverable."
Watch live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-PQjP-XRo
@eloquence History repeating itself, welcome to 1933, when Germany (1870-1933, 1949-) was “democratically” replaced by the Nazi Reich for 12 years. But this time, how many time will last the Nazi (and Putinian) States of America, starting from 20 January 2025 and replacing the USA (1776-2025)?