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On the fifth anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz, EFF activist Elliot Harmon posted a remembrance: When you look around the digital rights community, it's easy to find Aaron's fingerprints all over it. He and his organization Demand Progress worked closely with EFF to stop SOPA. Long before that, he played key roles in the development of RSS, RDF, and Creative Commons. He railed hard against the idea of government-funded scientific research being unavailable to the public, and his passion continues to motivate the open access community. Aaron inspired Lawrence Lessig to fight corruption in politics, eventually fueling Lessig's White House run... It's tempting to become pessimistic in the face of countless threats to free speech and privacy. But the story of the SOPA protests demonstrates that we can win in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
He shares a link to a video of Aaron's most inspiring talk, "How We Stopped SOPA," writing that "Aaron warned that SOPA wouldn't be the last time Hollywood attempted to use copyright law as an excuse to censor the Internet... 'The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.'"

On the anniversary of Aaron's death, his brother Ben Swartz, an engineer at Twitch, wrote about his own efforts to effect change in ways that would've made Aaron proud, while Aaron's mother urged calls to Congress to continue pushing for reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

And there were countless other remembrances on Twitter, including one fro Cory Doctorow, who tweeted a link to Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the prosecution. And Lessig himself marked the anniversary with several posts on Twitter. "None should rest," reads one, "for still, there is no peace."

Her video went viral, viewed more than 14 million times, and triggering concerns online when she was threatened with prison. But a North Dakota judge "refused to authorize riot charges against award-winning journalist Amy Goodman for her reporting on an attack against Native American-led anti-pipeline protesters." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes NBC News: Goodman described the victory as a "great vindication of the First Amendment," although McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson told The New York Times that additional charges were possible. "I believe they want to keep the investigation open and see if there is any evidence in the unedited and unpublished videos that we could better detail in an affidavit for the judge," Erickson told the newspaper.
The native Americans "were attempting to block the destruction of sacred sites, including ancestral burial grounds," according to a new article co-authored by Goodman about her experiences, which argues that "Attempts to criminalize nonviolent land and water defenders, humiliate them and arrest journalists should not pave the way for this pipeline."

Investigative reporter and co-founder of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, is now facing riot charges in the state of North Dakota after her report on a Native American-led pipeline protest there went viral on Facebook. From a TechCrunch report:Democracy Now! issued a statement about the new charges against Goodman late Saturday. Goodman's story, posted to Facebook on September 4th, has been viewed more than 14 million times on the social media platform, Democracy Now! said, and was picked up by mainstream media outlets and networks including CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and The Huffington Post. Additionally, documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, is facing felony and conspiracy charges that could carry a 45-year sentence for filming at the protest, IndieWire reports.

Investigative reporter and co-founder of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, is now facing riot charges in the state of North Dakota after her report on a Native American-led pipeline protest there went viral on Facebook. From a TechCrunch report:Democracy Now! issued a statement about the new charges against Goodman late Saturday. Goodman's story, posted to Facebook on September 4th, has been viewed more than 14 million times on the social media platform, Democracy Now! said, and was picked up by mainstream media outlets and networks including CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and The Huffington Post. Additionally, documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, is facing felony and conspiracy charges that could carry a 45-year sentence for filming at the protest, IndieWire reports.

As they did with the first debate, Democracy Now has published the debate questions answered by third party candidates. Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution), and Rocky Anderson (Justice) were present. There's a (long) video with the answers spliced in, and (thankfully) a transcript of all their answers. Gary Johnson was not present, but you can catch him debating Jill Stein Thursday October 18th at 7 p.m. EDT.

mspohr writes with this excerpt from Democracy Now!: "National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion 'transactions' — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens." The parts about National Security Letters in particular are chilling, even though the issue is not new.

mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."

A dozen readers have submitted the story of the death in a plane crash of Mike Connell, Karl Rove's IT adviser, the man who set up and ran the gwb43.com mail server, and an important figure in GOP tech circles since 1997. The closest thing to straight reporting to be found in a mainstream media outlet is a piece from KDKA in Pittsburgh giving a detailed backgrounder on Connell's work for Rove, two generations of the Bush family, and many GOP congressmen and committees. CBSNews.com is now mirroring the KDKA reporting. Almost all the early media coverage comes from the left and some of it is frankly conspiratorial. Among the milder pieces (although it could not be called balanced) is this interview with Mark Crispin Miller, NYU professor and author of two books about the 2004 election in Ohio. Connell was compelled to testify on the day before the US election in a lawsuit involving Ohio election irregularities in 2004. Connell, an experienced pilot, died on Sunday when his plane crashed two miles short of the runway of Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio.

Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.

Video blogger and independent journalist Josh Wolf has been in a federal jail for 170 days for refusing to turn over to a federal grand jury a video of a San Francisco demonstration. On Feb. 6 Wolf's length of incarceration set a new record for US journalism. "Democracy Now!" has an interview with Josh Wolf from his jail cell. If federal authorities can jail bloggers with impunity, it does not bode well for the future of citizen journalism.

mofomojo writes, "Democracy Now! reports that a new study by the Center for Media and Democracy says Americans are still being shown corporate public relations videos disguised as news reports on newscasts across the country. In April, the Center identified 77 stations using Video News Releases in their newscasts; the findings led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. A followup study has found that 10 of those stations are still airing VNRs today, for a new total of 46 stations in 22 states." From the article: "Most of the VNRs have aired on stations owned by large media conglomerates such as News Corp., Tribune, and Disney. They've also been sponsored by some of the country's biggest corporations including General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, and Allstate Insurance."

maynard writes, "Speaking at a New York City town hall meeting on corporate media consolidation and its deleterious impact on the expression of minority viewpoints, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps stumped against greater media concentration and instead argued for greater diversity of media outlets and voices. In 2003 the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, changed media ownership rules to favor greater corporate media consolidation at the expense of local owners. In an attempt to reverse totally the prior FCC policy, Mr. Copps argued strongly in favor of independent media owners. Read on for what he had to say. Michael Copps: "The FCC is in the midst of a hugely important proceeding right now to decide what the future of our media, our TV, our radio, our newspapers, our cable, even our internet, are going to look like for a long, long time to come.

A little history, just to set the stage for our discussion. Three years ago, under then FCC Chairman Michael Powell and over the objections of my good friend Commissioner Adelstein and myself, the FCC severely cut back — really "eviscerated" is a better word — the rules that were meant to check big media's seemingly endless appetite for more consolidation. It passed new rules, which have allowed a single media giant to own in a single market up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable system, the cable channels, even the internet portal, and the local newspaper, which in most cities in the United States of America is already a monopoly. And the agency did all of that behind closed doors and without seeking meaningful input from the American people. Can you imagine that? Authorizing a sea change in how news and entertainment are produced and presented over the people's airwaves, without even involving the people who own those airwaves and who depend so heavily upon them. It was a near disaster for America.

Thankfully, citizens rose up across the land. They sent nearly 3 million protests to the Federal Communications Commission. Congress rose up, too, and then a federal court sent those rules back to the FCC saying they were badly flawed and they needed to be reworked. That was good, and anybody that doesn't believe that citizen action can have an effect should just revisit what happened there. We checked those rules. You checked those rules from going into effect. It was concerned citizens at work, and it was a citizen consumer victory.

But, here's a reality check now. We're right back at square one, and it's all up for grabs again. And if we're going to have a better result this time around, doing something positive for media democracy, it's going to be because of more citizen action and more input from folks like you. So, this time we need to make it an open public process, instead of hiding in our office in Washington like the majority did in 2003. This time, let all the commissioners come to New York City — I wish they were all here tonight — and let all the commissioners get out across America and find out what's happening in the real world, beyond that Beltway that they bemoan so much but seem to love staying behind so much.

So, as we begin our discussion, then begin with that simple reminder: it's all of us who own the airwaves. There is not a broadcaster, a business, a special interest, and any industry that owns one airwave in the United States of America. They belong to you, and they belong to me. And, my friends, now is the time to assert our ownership rights."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Enigma security concerns, German ISP targets net companies "free lunch", Total Information Awareness program lives on, Higgins takes on Microsoft, Google answers analyst concerns, Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists, and Java 4K game contest submissions available -- Read on for details.

Enigma security concerns. Chris writes "The Enigma cracking client mentioned [this past week] is a huge security risk -- it creates an 'enigma-client' user on Windows systems with the password 'nominal'. I daresay that most /. users who installed the client would want to know about this so they can take corrective action." Thanks to Chris and other who pointed out the security flaw the enigma client has updated their changelog to warn users about this potential flaw and point out a quick work-around. "Users should change 'nominal' to a random password in eclient-XP-Home-install.bat or eclient-XP-Pro-install.bat."

German ISP targets net companies "free lunch". TheAxeMaster writes "Deutsche Telekom AG is the latest ISP to decide to suck money from both customers and content providers according to Computer World. From the article, 'The CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG became the latest head of a major telco to call for Web companies, such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., to help pay for the billions of dollars required to build and maintain high-speed Internet infrastructure.' CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke said 'Web companies that use this infrastructure for their business should also make a contribution.' The article suggests that, if implemented, both you AND web sites would have to pay for the privilege of delivering you content through a tiered, 'quality of service' internet."

Total Information Awareness Program lives on. notmtwain writes "Democracy Now follows up on reports that the NSA has continued the TIA (Total Information Awareness) program, which was building an enormous database merging information on internet usage, phone calls, purchase, banking records and reading material. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Shane Harris, the National Journal Reporter who broke the story. The Total Information Awareness program was supposedly killed by Congress in 2003."

Higgins takes on Microsoft. An anonymous reader writes "InternetNews reports that IBM, Novell, and Parity Communications announced today increased support for the Higgins project at Eclipse. The project, based on early work done at Harvard's Berkman Institute and by SocialPhysics.org is focused on providing open source 'user-centric' identity management. The initiative has been widely reported as a challenge to Microsoft's new Infocard online identity-management system."

Google answers analyst concerns. imlepid writes "Earlier this week Analysts were asking Google to provide more insight into future earnings reports. Well, it appears that the analysts calls have been answered as the Google CFO has warned that growth has slowed. However, today's decline is still being blamed on the tight lips at Google."

Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists. An anonymous reader writes "Pass a law to go after certain criminals, and it will be used for everything possible. A basic lesson, but one that we learn again from an article in the New York Sun, describing a couple of U.S. District Court decisions unsealed earlier in February. The two judges both agree that Congress intended the 'nationwide search' provision for going after email or other Internet data to apply to the investigation of all federal crimes and not just to cases involving terrorism."

Java 4K game contest submissions available. CuriousKangaroo writes "Java Unlimited, as previously reported on Slashdot, is running a contest to develop a game in Java using only four kilobytes of bytecode and resources. Entries are now closed, and judging is about to begin, but you can check out and play all 55 of this year's entries for yourself!"

jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""

jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""