My North Korean name is Shin In-kun (South Korean name: Shin Dong-hyuk). I was born on 19 November 1982. I was a political prisoner at birth in North Korea.

The section in the so-called Foreign Intelligence Amendments Act (FISAAA) grants the US government sweeping powers to collect foreign intelligence information stored in US Cloud computing providers like Amazon or Google.

The article specifically states the US Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorise jointly, for a period of up to one year from the effective date of the authorisation, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.

Carnegie Mellon university researchers have developed a surveillance system that can not only recognize human activities but can also predict what might happen next.

Researchers, through the Army-funded research dubbed Mind's Eye, have created intelligent software that recognizes human activities in video and can predict what might just happen next; sounding an alarm if it detects anomalous behavior.

According to one source, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, the current plastic IDs will be replaced with cards containing circuit chips which store data about the cardholder, including address, family background, and record of travel.

“North Korean people will be made to bring the new ID cards when they travel so security officers can know everything about their trip, such as the person’s destination, when he or she has traveled, and how many times they have traveled,” the source said.

And remember, when North Korea does this, it's oppression. When Western countries do it, it's for your protection and perfectly harmless. You have nothing to hide, do you?

So, for the moment, let’s put aside the question of whether Obama’s drone assassinations are justified. Shouldn’t we all be able to agree that the power to order people executed (including U.S. citizens) is far too extreme and dangerous to vest in one person without any checks, review, oversight or transparency?

What does this mean for you? Well, if need be, the government can read your email, Facebook messages, forum postings, web history, pretty much anything you’ve ever done on the internet. You may believe that as you’re not a terrorist or child pornographer, the government should have no reason to, but the problem is the language in this bill is so loose, they can access your information for almost any reason at all. Ever visited a torrent site or watched an unofficial YouTube video of copyrighted material? Ever reposted a picture without the explicit permission of the rights holder? Well, you’re now tangentially related to a cybersecurity crime, and your entire internet history is fair game for careful examination. And don’t think Google Chrome Incognito mode will save you.

När politiker i Sverige och andra västländer stiftar övervakningslagar skapas en marknad för teknik som sedan blir farliga vapen i händerna på diktatorer. Det menar Evgeny Morozov, ett av de tyngsta namnen i den internationella debatten om politiken kring internet. DN.se har träffat honom.

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– Varför finns det en marknad för de här teknikerna? Jo för att USA och Europa anser att man behöver dem och beställer dem till sina underrättelsetjänster och polis. Diktaturerna är en slags andrahandsmarknad för verktyg som kommit till i väst, säger Evgeny Morozov till DN.se.

Ahead of the anniversary of Iran’s revolution Saturday, the country’s government has locked down its already-censored Internet, blocking access to many services and in some cases cutting off all encrypted traffic on the Web of the kind used by secure email, social networking and banking sites. In response, the information-freedom-focused Tor Project is testing a new idea: Encrypted connections that don’t look encrypted. To skirt the so called “deep packet inspection” filters Iran’s government has deployed to block all Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL and TLS) encryption that protesters might use to communicate privately, Tor is trying a new kind of bridge to the Web, one the group is calling “obfsproxy,” or obfuscated proxy.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is two million everyday people who have banded together with thousands of nonprofit organizations, businesses and bloggers to protect Internet freedom.

It is virtually impossible to find any example where leaders are not acting in their own self interest. If you are a democrat you want to gerrymander districts and have an electoral college. This vastly reduces the number of votes a president needs to win an election.

Then tax very highly. It’s much better to decide who gets to eat than to let the people feed themselves. If you lower taxes people will do more work, but then people will get rewards that aren’t coming through you. Everything good must come through you. Look at African farm subsidies. The government buys crops at below market price by force. This is a tax on farmers who then can’t make a profit. So, how do you reward people? The government subsidises fertilisers and hands it back that way. In Tanzania vouchers for fertilisers are handed out not to the most productive areas but to the party loyalist areas.