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Security
Since the beginning, humans have made tools in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The simplest hut shelters you from at least some of the elements; a bow and arrow spares you from doing hand-to-hand combat with a sabertooth tiger; a writing implement lets you tell future generations how to do the same.
And yet, even now, there are no guarantees. Internet transmissions are inherently leaky. Becoming “smart” can make the most banal object hackable: your toaster becomes part of a botnet; your baby’s crib is a spy. Digital platforms have created new kinds of precarity, as they disrupt workplaces and algorithms handle scheduling and benefits.
This issue looks at how we use technologies to stay safe—and the novel dangers that these same technologies create.
Hacking Security
An inquiry into the history of hacking, and its lessons for making a safer internet.
Auto Controllers
An investigation into the small networked devices that are killing car engines and ruining people’s lives.
Safe or Just Surveilled?: Tawana Petty on the Fight Against Facial Recognition Surveillance
Notes from the front lines of organizing and community technology in Detroit.
Free as in Smash the Surveillance State: Alison Macrina on Library Freedom Project and Tor Browser
A conversation about how to make information free.
Party at My House: Darius Kazemi on Human-Scaled Social Media
How can we build a better social network?
My Blue Window
A conversation about state power and the construction of blue life.