Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Two giants of activism have acquired a new target in their ongoing fight for online privacy rights in the digital age. Forensic Architecture is pairing with Edward Snowden to take on an Israeli spyware company called NSO Group that has been behind hacks of journalists, lawyers, and human... View full entry
The head of the Serpentine Galleries has resigned after the Guardian revealed she is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents.
On Tuesday, Yana Peel announced she was stepping down as the chief executive of the prestigious London art gallery so the work of the Serpentine would not be undermined by what she called “misguided personal attacks on me and my family”.
— The Guardian
Announcing her unexpected departure from the Serpentine Galleries in a statement, Yana Peel said, “I have decided I am better able to continue my work in supporting the arts, the advancement of human rights, and freedom of expression by moving away from my current role.” Peel added, “The... View full entry
It was revealed earlier this month that declassified U.S. spy satellite photographs taken above the Antarctic have inadvertently also documented how that continent has been affected by climate change. In this case, deep in the archives of national intelligence agencies are satellite photos half a century old in which scientifically useful data has been hiding in plain sight. These now-outdated spy photographs have thus found an unexpected second life as important tools of planetary science... — the Atlantic
For more on the often unexpected sources of climate data, check out these links:The 700-year old climate data recorded by Japanese monksGlobal warming may be much more catastrophic (and happen much quicker) than we imaginedLast year was the warmest since (at least) 1880Architecture of the... View full entry
Saarinen’s work for the spy agency mostly involved designing models of buildings and weapons that had yet to be built. He even worked on designs for the original war room in the White House. And the people at OSS claimed that he was so good at his job that he could not be replaced. — Gizmodo
It's lucky for architecture that Eero Saarinen, who was known in the CIA as "Architectural Designer (Chief, Special Exhibits Division)" wasn't so successful at his work for the agency that he couldn't be replaced, although one wonders how much of that top secret work rubbed off on his later... View full entry
The idea behind CV dazzle is simple. Facial recognition algorithms look for certain patterns when they analyze images: patterns of light and dark in the cheekbones, or the way color is distributed on the nose bridge—a baseline amount of symmetry. These hallmarks all betray the uniqueness of a human visage. If you obstruct them, the algorithm can’t separate a face from any other swath of pixels. — theatlantic.com
... thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards.
— wired.com
