Free Republic

Women were also jailed 10 days in the first sentence of its kind in Saudi ArabiaA Saudi court sentenced two local women to 10 days in prison and ordered them lashed 10 times each after they were found guilty of swearing at each other on WhatsApp. The judge at the court in the western Red Sea port of Jeddah tried to reconcile the two but they refused and insisted on charging each other. “The judge had no choice but to sentence the two and make them write a statement not to abuse each other again,” Arar daily said, adding that...

A hipster pro-choice couple from North Carolina created a Tumblr blog dedicated to making fun of pro-life supporters protesting outside of abortion clinics. Called “Saturday Chores,” the blog documents the abortion enthusiasts’ trips to various abortion clinics holding signs they consider “funny” in a form of political counter protest.

Dan Borislow, the inventor of magicJack and a pioneer in developing phone calls over the Internet, died Monday, officials at the company he founded said. He was 52. A spokeswoman for MagicJack Vocaltec Ltd., said he died of a heart attack. In a statement, MagicJack CEO Gerald Vento praised Borislow as a visionary.

A new kind of tracking tool, canvas fingerprinting, is being used to follow visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn. First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it. Like other tracking tools, canvas fingerprints are used to build profiles of users based on the websites...

When Ezra Klein and friends launched Vox as an "explanatory journalism" site this spring, conservative catcalls and ridicule began promptly. The project's critics have been vindicated time and again. Though the site sometimes produces solid content, it's run by hard-left ideologues who lack the capacity to present "just the facts, ma'am"-style reporting. Over the last 24 hours or so, Vox has beclowned itself on four separate occasions. First, see Mollie Hemingway's brutal take-down of co-founder Matt Yglesias' stupefyingly ignorant attack on conservatives and religious liberty. His asshattery was so acute that even a junior Vox colleague publicly rejected Yglesias', er,...

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to permanently extend a ban on Internet access taxes that Congress has temporarily extended three times over the past 16 years. The House, in a voice vote Tuesday, passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, over the objections of some Democrats. In addition to permanently banning states and local governments from taxing Internet access, the bill would ban any other form of Internet-only taxes, although its aimed primarily at taxes on Internet access service. The bill does not address Internet sales taxes, a separate issue that Congress has debated for several years. The...

PARIS -- A newly leaked document stolen by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year reveals that one of the NSA's partner agencies within the "Five Eyes" Anglo-intelligence network -- Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), responsible for signals intelligence -- dedicated vast resources to fooling around on the Internet, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald. The GCHQ has reportedly developed tools capable of playing with the results of online polls; sending out spoof emails and Microsoft Office documents that, once opened, can grab and transmit files and info from a user's computer; collecting data from public profiles on...

Forty years ago, a group of researchers with military money set out to test the wacky idea of making computers talk to one another in a new way, using digital information packets that could be traded among multiple machines rather than telephonic, point-to-point circuit relays. The project, called ARPANET, went on to fundamentally change life on Earth under its more common name, the Internet. Today, the agency that bankrolled the Internet is called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which boasts a rising budget of nearly $3 billion split across 250 programs. They all have national security implications...

Several liberal lawmakers want to apply utility-style regulations to Internet service providers. Sen. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, collected signatures for a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet like the telephone system. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Al Franken of Minnesota, as well as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have signed on, aides confirmed. The lawmakers have planned a Tuesday morning press conference with Internet advocacy groups. In the letter, the senators argue that stronger authority is necessary to enact strong net-neutrality rules to prevent broadband providers such as Comcast from manipulating...

“I was in private industry beforehand. But I've kind of always liked computers,” Mularski said during a recent interview. All 56 FBI field offices have cyber squads. Mularski chose Pittsburgh largely because of family considerations — he grew up in suburban White Oak, the son of a steelworker. “It kind of looked like cyber was the wave of the future,” Mularski said. “The majority of all my computer training was just on-the-job training at the bureau.” It has proved remarkably effective. Even before the Chinese and Russian cases made worldwide headlines, Mularski was making cyber waves. He infiltrated Dark Market...

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is running a brilliantly effective social media campaign. With the group rebranded as the Islamic State (IS), its grisly messaging gets attention and discourages resistance to its military operations, both where it is fighting and among countries that might be inclined to intervene against it. After it took Mosul, IS streamed video of its men executing dozens of captured Iraqi soldiers -- which very likely helped encourage the choice of Iraqi security forces to quietly desert their posts. IS live-tweeted its military advance through Iraq, showcasing the bravery of its fighters and what...

Two Broward County assistant public defenders were fired Tuesday for Facebook comments calling Palestinians "cockroaches" and "filthy swine." Bruce Raticoff and Gary Sheres both lost their jobs, as outrage built after the Sun Sentinel published an article including the Facebook comments a week ago, Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said. The remarks from the two mens' personal Facebook accounts last week were posted under an item about Palestinians allegedly celebrating the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teen boys. The killings were blamed on the Islamic militant group Hamas. "They are the filthy swine they don't eat. Their ignorance to the...

<p>Back in the days when Vladimir Putin was first launching his crackdown on Russian mainstream media, killing and arresting reporters and publishers and seizing or shutting down publications, the Russia apologists rationalized his actions by claiming that the Russian Internet was free and always would be, and would counter any state propaganda.  It’s now clear that these statements were made simply ruse to induce the defenders of free speech to drop their guard and allow Putin to take over mainstream media unchallenged. It worked like a charm. And now we can clearly see how utterly false these statements were as Putin systematically exterminates the Runet.</p>

Like the poster at the link, I am currently a Verizon Phone/DSL customer in Massachusetts and just received an email from Verizon stating that they will be raising my bill by $3/month, which already costs 76.00 with taxes, as we currently pay $59.99 for Verizon Freedom Essentials (unlimited nationwide + Canada and PR calling) and "High Speed Internet Enhanced" (approx. 6.50 Mbps speed at my location). No TV is included or needed. However, after i moved less than a 1/2 mile from where I was my Internet speed was approx. cut in half, from around 12 mbps to approx. 6,50....

Does anybody have Verizon Home Phone Connect, and if you do, how do you like it? and do you find it useful? We are concerned that if we get it, our Verizon DSL might be impacted. It would be great to cut our home landline contract, but we're worried about losing the DSL. Thanks. Loving my FReeper FRiends. Happy Fourth of July.

Though he is currently behind bars facing 11 felon charges for crimes ranging from gun possession to parole violations, viral Internet sensation Jeremy Meeks is seeking to reap the benefits of his well-received face. He was recently offered a modeling contract with Los Angeles-based Blaze Models. According to TMZ, the 30-year-old criminal has his ex-porn star agent, Gina Rodriguez, to thank. Rodriguez, who is quite the experienced entertainment manager, oversees clients including "Octomom" Nadya Suleman, Farrah Abraham and, most recently, Donald Sterling's much talked about ex-girlfriend, V. Stiviano. While this certainly may serve as some positive news once he...

James Varney of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, stayed at the Hyatt Place hotel in Riverhead, NY. He tried to look at the Drudge Report, but was blocked from doing so by his hotel’s internet connection. In fact, he tried looking at a number of conservative websites, including Powerline and Instapundit. They too were blocked. He then tried a number of liberal websites from Talking Points Memo to DailyKos. None of them had access problems. His hotel, Hyatt Place, uses Uniguest to connect its guests to the internet. Digging deeper, I contacted the good people of Uniguest. A cheery online...

In a stunning reversal, infamous Cannibal Cop Gilberto Valle will likely have his conviction for a bizarre kidnapping conspiracy scheme overturned on Tuesday after a judge decided to revoke the guilty verdict in the flesh-eating fetish plot, a source said. The disgraced NYPD veteran, who was convicted of hatching a “heinous” plan to cook, kill, and eat several women — including his own wife — was facing life in prison for the crime. But Valle will likely have the major charge of conspiracy overturned and the sentence vacated with only a misdemeanor charge of using police computers to track down...

American victims of Iranian terrorism were permitted by a U.S. court to assume control over Iran’s Internet licenses and domains in recompense for crimes perpetrated by the regime in Tehran, according to court documents. The decision means that Iran could effectively be kicked off the Internet once control of its “top level domains” are transferred to the American terror victims, who have sought more than a billion dollars in damages from Iran. Court documents detailing the decision and requesting control over Iran’s licenses have been served to the U.S. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees web...

A day after a surprise US supreme court decision to outlaw streaming TV service Aereo, US broadcaster Fox has moved to use the ruling to clamp down on another internet TV service. Fox has cited Wednesday’s ruling – which found Aereo to be operating illegally – to bolster its claim against a service offered by Dish, America’s third largest pay TV service, which streams live TV programming over the internet to its subscribers and allows them to copy programmes onto tablet computers for viewing outside the home. The move has fueled criticism of Wednesday’s ruling from groups that have argued...