Friday News: Wireless ISP allegedly blocks email encryption; Whisper v. Guardian on privacy; diversity in publishing; and 33 free Philip K. Dick stories

JanetPublishing Newsanonymity / audiobooks / data encryption / diversity / Ebooks / email / free books / ISP / net neutrality / privacy / public domain / publishing / SFF4 Comments

Revealed: ISPs Already Violating Net Neutrality To Block Encryption And Make Everyone Less Safe Online – So if you haven’t yet been engaged in the net neutrality debate, this might motivate your interest. According to VPN company Golden Frog, at least on (anonymous) ISP is blocking encryption on user email. And what’s particularly significant is that this ISP is a wireless provider, because “the last net neutrality rules did not apply to wireless broadband, and the FCC is still debating if it should apply any new rules to wireless.” Read the article in its entirety for the technical details and contemplation of some of the more troubling implications of this information.

In the second instance, Golden Frog shows that a wireless broadband Internet access provider is interfering with its users’ ability to encrypt their SMTP email traffic. This broadband provider is overwriting the content of users’ communications and actively blocking STARTTLS encryption. This is a man-in-the-middle attack that prevents customers from using the applications of their choosing and directly prevents users from protecting their privacy.

This is scary. If ISPs are actively trying to block the use of encryption, it shows how they might seek to block the use of VPNs and other important security protection measures, leaving all of us less safe. Golden Frog provides more details of what’s happening in this case. . . –Tech Dirt

Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users – So this is interesting. The Guardian has written a long piece about how anonymity app Whisper is supposedly tracking users and even sharing the information with the US Department of Defense. To which Whisper has issued a lengthy rebuttal, which can be read here. 

Among other things, Whisper Editor-in-Chief Neetzan Zimmerman says:

Whisper does not collect nor store any personally identifiable information (PII) from users and is anonymous. To be clear, Whisper does not collect nor store: name, physical address, phone number, email address, or any other form of PII. The privacy of our users is not violated in any of the circumstances suggested in the Guardian story. The Guardian staff, including its CEO and multiple members of the US editorial team, have met with, partnered, and worked with Whisper since February 2014 and published multiple stories utilizing Whispers, with full understanding of our guidelines. The Guardian’s assumptions that Whisper is gathering information about users and violating user’s privacy are false.

The Guardian insists:

The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be the “the safest place on the internet”, is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed.

The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users – including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services – will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives.

Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws. –The Guardian

Publishing While Black: A Scratch Roundtable Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Harmony Holiday, Christopher Jackson, Kiese Laymon, & Manjula Martin – A really interesting, really important article about diversity in publishing, from the perspective of writers of color, on topics that range from mentorship to discoverability and beyond. I cannot even begin to summarize the wide-ranging series of interviews, and although you have to create an account to read the article, all it requires is an email address and a password, so I highly recommend taking the extra step to read this piece.

Let’s go back to some of those stats that Chris was throwing out. Do publishers just not think there’s an audience for work by writers of color?

[Chris] Jackson: No, I don’t think that’s true. I would say what’s happening in some of the larger publishing companies is that they’re publishing fewer books generally than they have in the past, and so they’re trying to publish those to audiences that they think they have mastered, they’ve already identified. And there’s a lot of data now in the way there wasn’t in the past, which can cut two ways. The olden days of “gut feelings” is passing away, and that’s not such a bad thing—gut feelings are often laced with implicit and untested biases. But my fear about more data-driven publishing is that it leads to companies engineered to sell books to people they’ve already identified.

And that means that it’s almost like, if you got on the boat already, you’re in. But if you’re not on the boat already…then the boat’s gone, and you’re not getting in. So lots of audiences that haven’t been as identifiable or easy to reach, or whatever, I think you have a lot more trouble with those kinds of books.

The good thing is that there are a lot of writers who are finding ways to get themselves out there without needing a publishing machine the way that they did in the past. –Scratch Magazine

33 Sci-Fi Stories by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks – If you’re a Science Fiction fan or a Philip K. Dick fan, this is your lucky day. Not only can you download 33 free, public domain digital and audio books, but Open Culture provides all of the details for each book, including formats and download instructions. Although Dick is hardly what one would call a feminist writer, his work is highly influential both inside and outside the SFF genre.

If you’re not intimately familiar with his novels, then you assuredly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report. Today, we bring you another way to get acquainted with his writing. We’re presenting a selection of Dick’s stories available for free on the web. Below we have culled together 33 short stories from our two collections, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices and 550 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free. The stories, it appears, are all in the public domain. –Open Culture

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

→ Janet