first amendment - The Art of the Prank

August 9, 2013December 15, 2023

Email Service Provider Shuts Down to Avoid Violating Users’ Privacy

Update from Forbes: Lavabit’s Ladar Levison: ‘If You Knew What I Know About Email, You Might Not Use It’

Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down
by Xeni Jardin
boingboing.net
August 8, 2013

Screen-Shot-2013-08-08-at-3.03 Remember when word circulated that Edward Snowden was using Lavabit, an email service that purports to provide better privacy and security for users than popular web-based free services like Gmail? Lavabit’s owner has shut down the service, and posted a message on the lavabit.com home page today about wanting to avoid “being complicit in crimes against the American people.”

According to the statement, it appears he rejected a US court order to cooperate with the government in spying on users.

The email service offered various security features to a claimed user base of 350,000, and is the first such firm to have publicly and transparently closed down, rather than cooperate with state surveillance programs. The email address Snowden (or someone sending emails on his behalf) is reported to have used to send invites to a press conference at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in mid-July was a Lavabit account.

Read the full message from Lavabit’s founder and operator Ladar Levison here.

August 6, 2012December 15, 2023

Westboro Baptist Congregants Meet Human Wall of… Zombies

Westboro Baptist loons run into protest wall””made of zombies?
by Howard Portnoy
Examiner.com
August 2, 2012

The Supreme Court may have greenlighted the hate-filled demonstrations by misguided adherents to the teachings of the Westboro Baptist Church, but the high court never said that counter-protests were not also covered by the First Amendment. Ever since the court handed down its controversial ruling, “human walls” have become commonplace at military funerals””gestures meant to neutralize the church group”s message of hate. In one widely reported example of the trend, the rock band Foo Fighters showed up in Kansas City in September of 2011 to “serenade” Westboro congregants.

Now one trend has meshed with another. KIRO-TV reports that last Friday, protesters assembling outside the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in DuPont, Wash., were met by””get ready for it””a wall of the living dead. Continue reading “Westboro Baptist Congregants Meet Human Wall of… Zombies”

April 21, 2012December 15, 2023

Muppets Revenge

At 11:00 a.m., April 23, 2012, artist Joey Skaggs will lead a band of outraged costumed muppets down to the Goldman Sachs offices at 200 West Street in NYC. Skaggs will be peddling his Mobile Homeless Homes prototype — a low cost alternative living space for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Outraged Homeless Muppets to Converge on Goldman Sachs

“Homelessness is a great American tragedy. Our financial system and government have let us down and we, together, must take a stand to change the way the system works. With over 11 million homes underwater and millions in foreclosure, people are frightened, distressed and angry,” says Joey Skaggs.

Although not a cure, Mobile Homeless Homes (MHH) offers a temporary solution — low cost alternative living spaces for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse. The MHH centerpiece is a camouflage, stealth, mobile home made from a series of connected plastic garbage cans, propelled by a tricycle, that will be undetectable by authorities. It blends into any urban environment. Continue reading “Muppets Revenge”

December 15, 2010December 15, 2023

Sustain the First Amendment: Support WikiLeaks

Submitted by Deborah Thomas of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting): Stand with Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Ehrenreich, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky and others! Sign the petition to support Wikileaks.

As journalists, activists, artists, scholars and citizens, we condemn the array of threats and attacks on the journalist organization WikiLeaks. After the website’s decision, in collaboration with several international media organizations, to publish hundreds of classified State Department diplomatic cables, many pundits, commentators and prominent U.S. politicians have called for harsh actions to be taken to shut down WikiLeaks’ operations.

Major corporations like Amazon.com, PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have acted to disrupt the group’s ability to publish. U.S. legal authorities and others have repeatedly suggested, without providing any evidence, that WikiLeaks’ posting of government secrets is a form of criminal behavior–or that at the very least, such activity should be made illegal. “To the extent there are gaps in our laws,” Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed (11/29/10), “we will move to close those gaps.”

Throughout this episode, journalists and prominent media outlets have largely refrained from defending WikiLeaks’ rights to publish material of considerable news value and obvious public interest. It appears that these media organizations are hesitant to stand up for this particular media outlet’s free speech rights because they find the supposed political motivations behind WikiLeaks’ revelations objectionable.

But the test for one’s commitment to freedom of the press is not whether one agrees with what a media outlet publishes or the manner in which it is published. Continue reading “Sustain the First Amendment: Support WikiLeaks”

September 28, 2010December 15, 2023

The Art of Assassination

Artist Depicts Assassination Of Bush, The Queen In New Brazil Exhibition
by Curtis M. Wong
The Huffington Post
September 27, 2010

The Sao Paulo Art Biennial may be renowned for celebrating the best of Brazil’s avant garde, but international critics say one of this year’s featured exhibits — a series of charcoal sketches depicting the imagined assassinations of former U.S. President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II, among other world leaders — has gone too far.

One sketch in the controversial series, titled “Enemies,” depicts Bush kneeling on the ground while artist Gil Vicente presses a pistol to the former president’s temple. In other sketches, the Queen is apparently unaware of the artist pointing a gun directly at her back, while Pope Benedict XVI faces Vicente directly, his arms outstretched in a quizzical shrug. Other world leaders shown in Vicente’s 9-sketch series include former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, according to The Telegraph. [See below for more photos] Continue reading “The Art of Assassination”