Disclosures

The Office of Personnel and Management now says that more than 21 million individual records containing Social Security numbers and other personal information were stolen when its data systems were breached, Kaveh Waddell and Dustin Volz report for National Journal.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hacking/surveillance wars, Violet Blue of Engadget offers this must-read on how Hacking Team was “publicly dismantled.”

Privacy International offers this list of 8 things we’ve learned from the Hacking Team hack.

Moxie Marlinspike, the encryption expert whose company Open Whisper Systems makes personal communications software praised by Edward Snowden, gets lovingly profiled by Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal.

Mathbabe Cathy O’Neil writes up $heriff, a browser plug-in that lets you see how prices for things you are shopping for online change depending on where the request is coming from.

Facebook is starting to let users prioritize what they see at the top of their News Feed, beginning with users of its iOS app, Caitlin Dewey reports for the Washington Post.

Open Knowledge’s Jonathan Gray blogs about their new effort around “Democratising the Data Revolution,” which seeks to expand the conversation around open government data. He writes, “Rather than just focusing on the transparency, disclosure, and openness of public information, civil society groups can argue for changing what is measured with existing data infrastructures.” Some examples of what groups may push for is greater information around gender inequality, health, and human rights.

The news that the Los Angeles Times has hired a reporter, Dexter Thomas, to cover Black Twitter, prompts a thoughtful exploration of the challenges embedded in that assignment by Meredith Clark in Poynter’s MediaWire.

“Free or affordable access to the internet for all New Yorkers is an essential goal of this administration,” NYC’s CTO Minerva Tantoco tells Alex Howard of the Huffington Post.

Free Press is launching a two-year project to foster local journalism in New Jersey, a pilot effort to discover how to revive community coverage.

There’s a subway strike in London, so naturally Uber has implemented surge pricing, charging as much as 3x its normal rates, Svati Kirsten Narula reports for Quartz.

A big welcome to Mark Cridge, mySociety’s new CEO. He writes, “My initial priorities will be to ensure that mySociety’s existing sites keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the world of civic technologies, whilst also thinking through where we can move into new and exciting areas.”

Next Friday and Saturday in Baltimore: Hack for Diversity and Social Justice.

Microsoft Civic Tech Fellow Fatima Khalid (and occasional Civic Hall volunteer) reflects on graduating from NYU Poly and her new job working for Boston’s Department of Innovation and Technology, where she is “hoping to be a part of creating a more responsive city that engages with its citizens and uses technology to improve the quality of life.” Kudos!