Television and radio broadcasters get to use our public airwaves for free. It’s a great deal … for them, at least. For the rest of us, it’s just another corporate giveaway.These broadcasters rake in billions in profits using our public property. And what do we the public get from them in return? Next to nothing.
Is your cellphone spying on you?A researcher just discovered a hidden application that records what millions of people write, view and search for on their cellphones. It sends all of that data to a company no one’s ever heard of. And we have no idea what that company is doing with our information.1Sounds like 1984. But it’s happening in 2011.This week, Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Ed...
DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, represents bigotry and discrimination against millions of Americans who want the same rights the rest of us cherish. We don’t need to wait for a study. We don’t need to read a poll. We know right from wrong. And we know it’s time for DOMA to go.Passed in 1996, DOMA:enshrined into US law the discriminatory notion that marriage is only between a...
Ever wonder how much you paid to fund the war? Use the Afghanistan War Tax Calculator to find out. We'll give you an I.O.U. for what you paid that you can forward to your Member of Congress. Ask for your money back!
We're only a few weeks into the 112th Congress, and Republicans are already attempting to pull the plug on public media.In a budget proposal made public last week, House Republicans announced plans to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more.If the Republicans are successful...
A million people took to the streets of Egypt on Tuesday to protest the Mubarak regime and call for democratic reform. The Egyptian government responded, again, by cutting off Internet access and plunging the nation into digital darkness. Such drastic action is a new way for governments to smother popular movements worldwide... just as more and more people are turning to Twitter, Facebook...
Egypt's Mubarak regime today shut down Internet and cell phone communications before launching a violent crackdown against protesters. Free Press has just discovered that one American company — Boeing-owned Narus of Sunnyvale, Calif. — has sold Egypt "Deep Packet Inspection" (DPI) equipment that can be used by the regime to track, target and crush political dissent over the...
The vicious intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks is wrong, dangerous and undermines the rule of law. Top US politicians have branded WikiLeaks a terrorist organization, and urged corporations to shut it down. Commentators have suggested assassinating its staff. The future of our freedoms and the Internet is at stake. Let's urgently take a stand to ensure governments and companies act...
Comcast lobbyists are working the halls of Congress to pave the way for their big takeover of NBC. Unfortunately, the merger would mean more media consolidation and could be a serious threat to net neutrality. When the same company owns both the production and distribution of information and entertainment, consumers historically recieve less diversity of programming and higher price...