Antibodies

Protesters organized by Fight for the Future gathered outside of Senate offices around the country yesterday calling on Congress to let Section 215 of the Patriot Act (which supposedly allows bulk collection of communication records) to expire.

Sen. Rand Paul is making NSA reform the “centerpiece of [his] campaign,” writes David Drucker for the Washington Examiner.

Battle for the Net has launched the “Internet Health Test,” which checks your connection for any sign that your ISP is degrading your service.

Data on almost four million users of Adult Friendfinder, an online data site, has been stolen by hackers, Geoff White of Britain’s Channel 4 reports.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler says he is not planning to move on strengthening political ad disclosure requirements, Mario Trujillo reports for The Hill.

Some of the first batch of Hillary Clinton’s State Department private emails, due for release in the coming days, cover concerns around the Libya attacks in Benghazi, along with some personal information. As Michael Schmidt of the New York Times reports, “The emails appear to back up Mrs. Clinton’s previous assertions that she did not receive classified information at her private email address.”

The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis covers the rapid appearance of openly racist and violent responses to President Obama’s personal @POTUS Twitter account. One such response earned a visit from the Secret Service, she reports.

At Civicist, our Antonella Napolitano reports on MafiaMaps, or “how ‘civic antibodies’ are exposing the Italian Mafia.”

#PDF15 speaker Nancy Lublin of Crisis Text Line gives our Jessica McKenzie a sneak preview of what she means to talk about with “Winner Texts All.”

Kentora Toyama, the author of the new book Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology, argues in the Chronicle of Higher Education that “technology will never fix education.” Instead, he writes, “technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities. To begin with, the rich will always be able to afford more technology, and low-cost technology in no way solves that. There is no digital keeping up with the Joneses.”

Nick Grossman of Union Square Ventures gave a fascinating talk at this year’s OuiShareFest on “venture capital vs. community capital,” arguing that the conflict going on now around the so-called “sharing economy” (which IMHO has become far more about the economy than the sharing) is ages old, and that a path forward can be discerned around the issue of trust. He also suggests that it is way too early to assume that giant VC-backed companies like Uber are going to lock in their dominance, while also admitting that many of the recent leaders in areas like the web and mobile haven’t yet been displaced by open platforms either.

GovTech’s Jason Shueh reports on five civic start-ups serving the government sector: Appalicious, Capriza, Filechat, Opengov and Transitmix.

In India Times, Malavika Murali and Eveyln Fok report on the rise of civic tech start-ups there, featuring a data company called SocialCops that is serving more than 150 civic authorities, maternity centers, and NGOs.