CISPA, CFAA, Surveillance and Privacy, Tech Tracking; Your Rights Online; Copyfight; Public Access; Patents; Hacking

CISPA

• Congress Planning To Debate CISPA Behind Closed Doors; No Public Scrutiny Allowed
• CISPA Explainer #1: What Information Can Be Shared?
• CISPA Explainer #2: With Whom Can Information Be Shared?
• CISPA Explainer #3: What Can Be Done With Information After It Is Shared?
• CISPA Explainer #4: Is There Anything Besides Information-Sharing Hidden in CISPA?

CFAA

• Aaron Swartz's Prosecutors Were Threatened and Hacked, DOJ Says
• Anonymous rallies Twitter protest against CFAA—"The hacker collective ask online networks to voice anger at overreaching cybercrimes law under review in Congress." Salon
• Are You A Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the Justice Department, You May Be a Criminal

Surveillance and Privacy

• Google Takes on Rare Fight Against National Security Letters—"Google has filed a rare petition to challenge an ultra-secret national security letter issued by the government to obtain private data about one or more of its users."
• DEA Accused Of Leaking Misleading Info Falsely Implying That It Can't Read Apple iMessages—Was it to instill a false sense of security?
• Surveillance Court's Opinions Must Remain Secret, Feds Say
• The ATF Wants 'Massive' Online Database to Find Out Who Your Friends Are
• FBI loses appeal in StingRay surveillance case
• EFF to Texas High Court: A Cell Phone Isn't a Pair of Pants
• Bill would allow bosses to seek Facebook passwords

Tech Tracking

• Meet Gabriel Weinberg, the man taking on Google and Bing—If you're after privacy, give DuckDuckGo a go.
• New California "Right to Know" Act Would Let Consumers Find Out Who Has Their Personal Data -- And Get a Copy of It
• Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy
• Google Privacy Policy Under Scrutiny From Regulators
• Casey Anthony: Did she do a Google search for 'fool-proof suffocation'?
• Firefox prepares additional 'Do Not Track' options
• BlackBerry 10 tells your friends when you're watching porn

Your Rights Online

• French homeland intelligence threatens a volunteer sysop to delete a Wikipedia Article
• Time Warner Cable Systematically Looking To Shut Down Parodist's Accounts
• Opinion: Twitter, hate speech, and the costs of keeping quiet
• America's "second best" law school sues online critic, and loses on appeal—"Cooley Law School goes after former student who skewered it on his blog."
• How a banner ad for H&R Block appeared on apple.com—without Apple's OK—Someone, somewhere is injecting banner ads into webpages on the sly."

Copyfight

• Aereo wins major court battle against TV networks
• HBO: Online piracy is a compliment and doesn’t effect sales
• Reselling Digital Goods Is Copyright Infringement, Judge Rules
• Movie Studios Want Google to Take Down Their Own Takedown Request
• Copyright As Censorship: University Threatens Own Faculty With Copyright Infringement For Campus Survey
• YouTube Won't Put Your Video Back Up, Even If It's Fair Use, If It Contains Content From Universal Music
• File-Sharers Will Not Be Held Liable For Piracy, Russia Says

Public Access

• Licence restrictions: A fool's errand—"Objections to the Creative Commons attribution licence are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible, warns John Wilbanks."
• The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!—"The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America's research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge."
• Why You Couldn't Download DC Laws… Until Now—"The DC government claims copyright over the code and has outsourced the actual codification work to different private entities."
• Wikileaks opens Public Library of US Diplomacy (PLUSD), searchable repository of 1970s US diplomatic and intel documents
• British Library's online harvest will paint 'rich and vivid picture' of life in the UK—"The project to capture and store the entire UK web domain will be an invaluable resource for researchers in the future, says Lucie Burgess from the British Library."

Patents

• The Patent Protection Racket
• Lodsys lawsuit targets Disney over 'Where's My Water?' iPhone app
• Meet the nice-guy lawyers who want $1,000 per worker for using scanners—"It's not some kind of bull. We're not trying to harass people."
• Why Rackspace Is Suing The Most Notorious Patent Troll In America
• Mathematics Cannot Be Patented. Case Dismissed.
• Developer Freedom At Stake As Oracle Clings To Java API Copyrights In Google Fight
• Google Makes Patent Pledge, Promises It Won't Sue Open-Source Developers

Hacking

• Security reporter tells Ars about hacked 911 call that sent SWAT team to his house
• United States v. Auernheimer, and Why I Am Representing Auernheimer Pro Bono on Appeal Before the Third Circuit
• Krebs: Who Wrote the Flashback OS X Worm?

Conclave, Sex Abuse Scandal; Vatileaks; Vatican; Teh Ghey; Marriage Equality; Politics and Media

Conclave

• Conclave 2.0: Top 10 reasons why this version is different
• Sullivan: Benedict's Farewell
• Benedict XVI: 10 things about the Pope's retirement
• Conclave start seen delayed as Vatican muzzles cardinals
• Fake bishop sneaks into pre-conclave meeting at Vatican

Sex Abuse Scandal

• Sex abuse victims list 'dirty dozen' papal candidates—It's pretty telling that only two are "untainted by sex abuse scandals."
• Cardinal Keith O'Brien: how Britain's Catholic leader fell from grace—After years of denials and cover-ups, why should anyone trust him?
• Catholic Church in Scotland 'knew of 20 child sex abuse allegations'—"The BBC has seen evidence that bishops in the Catholic Church in Scotland knew of 20 allegations of child sex abuse by priests between 1985 and 1995."
• Dutch Catholic girls abused at home, in church—"A commission investigating abuse of children linked to Dutch Roman Catholic institutions says girls were sexually abused by members of the clergy in their homes and in church, while they suffered physical abuse and intimidation at the hands of nuns at homes for young women."
• Higher Authorities—"What is distinctive about child abuse in the Catholic Church is not its existence, or even its coverup. What is distinctive is that Catholic officials can find a higher purpose in shielding abusers, and a spiritually rewarding humility in enduring criticism of their conduct."

Vatileaks

• The Breach of Security That Revealed the Secret World of the Vatican
• Results of 'Vatileaks' Probe For 'Pope's Eyes Only'
• Vatican admits secretly bugging its own clergy—"The Vatican admitted... that it had secretly bugged clergy within the Holy See as part of the investigation into the Vatileaks scandal, which resulted in the Pope's butler being imprisoned for stealing confidential pontifical documents."
• Exposing Vatican secrets a 'dangerous' mission, says Vatileaks journalist—No surprise that he didn't get accreditation to cover the conclave.
• Popes and demons: Mysterious Vatican bank poses problem for new pontiff

Vatican

• The Last Time a Pope Resigned, Mass Media Was Called ... Mass
• Vatican gets eternal life: Puts its entire library online
• Blast from the Past: A moral theologian looks back at Vatican II

Teh Ghey

• Richard Land, Evangelical Leader, Says Anti-Gay Advocates Being 'Ostracized' Like KKK
• Kings Mountain pastor not guilty of prostitution charge—"Feemster was arrested after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said he asked an undercover male officer for sex Oct. 26 at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport overlook."
• As cardinals gather to elect Pope, Catholic officials break into a sweat over news that priests share €23m building with huge gay sauna

Marriage Equality

• Bill Clinton: It's time to overturn DOMA—"When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that 'enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.' Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned."
• Obama's Exquisite Balance On Marriage
• Good News of the Day: Gay Marriage in California
• Illinois GOP Gay Marriage Backers Could Lose Their Jobs After Party Anger Flares Over Equality Stance
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: Same-sex marriage support "a business issue"—"It's a civil-rights issue, but it's also a business issue."

Politics and Media

• Carly Rae Jespen refuses to play Boy Scout Jamboree over anti-gay policy
• Former Sen. Larry Craig Argues His Bathroom Antics Were Part Of His Work—"If you recall, Craig, a Republican from Idaho, was arrested during a sting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Craig used a bathroom there during a layover, when an undercover officer said Craig sexually solicited him by tapping his foot."
• Queen Elizabeth excludes gays, trans from "non-discrimination" charter—"There have been a number of breathless articles about how the Queen of England today 'embraced' gay rights. Don’t believe it."
• Lech Walesa accused of hate speech after gay rights criticism—"Poland's first democratic-era president said he believed gay people had no right to sit on front benches in parliament."
• Mexican Supreme Court Rules Anti-Gay Expressions Like 'Maricon' are Not Protected Under Freedom of Expression