In the past three years, 15, 000 or so takedown notices have been addressed to Twitter and posted to ChillingEffects.org. Among them: several from the Russian government. Moscow has repeatedly asked Twitter to take down content about suicide and drug use, which is illegal to post according to Russian law. In this notice, the ROSKOMNADZOR, a Russian government telecom and communications agency, tells Twitter to remove content about “suicide methods.”

via Meet the Jilted Wives, Indian Batsmen, and Russian Censors Taking On Twitter | FP Passport.

Security experts acknowledge that not paying isn’t feasible for everyone, however. “The exact same argument is made for kidnapping—never give ransom money, it just encourages them,” says Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “And that argument makes a whole lot of sense until it is your child. When it is your data, you will pay if it is worth it.”

via Malicious “Ransomware” Can Hold Computer Files Hostage: Scientific American.

Attaran has a point, but the campaign to secure .health also has its critics. Wendy Seltzer, a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said that imposing quality controls at the level of domain name registries isn’t quite right. “ICANN is not equipped to be a regulator,” she said. Plus, even when there are sanctions on who can have a domain name, they don’t necessarily work in practice. There are all sorts of non-accredited institutions that get .edu addresses, for example, and sifting good health sources from dubious ones could be even more difficult.

via Google and the dot-health bubble – Blog Central, Science-ish – Macleans.ca.

Opinion: Leakers and governments should work together – CNN.com.

In an amicus brief filed this week by the national ACLU, ACLU of Massachusetts, EFF, and the Cyberlaw clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, our attorneys argue that decrypting files is not like unlocking a door or even providing a combination to a safe. Encrypted files are scrambled messages. When we decrypt them, we aren’t unlocking them — we are creating new records. Moreover, forced decryption reveals information about our possession of, access to, and control over the files.

via Massachusetts High Court Set to Rule on Whether State Can Force You to Decrypt Your Drive | American Civil Liberties Union.

The man who sparked the NSA surveillance debate remains in exile. We should thank him for his role and let him come home

via Congress should grant Edward Snowden amnesty | Yochai Benkler | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

Zuckerman’s resume includes co-founding projects like Geekcorps and blogging network Global Voices, serving as a longtime fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and numbering among the builders of Tripod, that early, pop-up laden platform for putting together personal websites. Though he works and teaches often in Cambridge, Zuckerman and his family live a 2.5-hour drive west in tiny Lanesboro, Mass.

via INTERVIEW: MIT’s Ethan Zuckerman on ‘Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection’ – Next City.

According to a recent study by Harvard Law School professor Jonathan L. Zittrain ’95 and J.D. candidate at the Law School Kendra K. Albert, many of the online citations in prominent legal publications do not lead to the intended information, while some no longer lead to any content whatsoever.

via 50 Percent of URL Citations in Supreme Court Cases are ‘Rotted,’ Harvard Researchers Say | Flyby.

From US assistant news editor Erin McCann, apparently tired of holiday story planning already.

via NSA sketches explain user data: can you do better? | World news | theguardian.com.

John G. Palfrey Jr., head of Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, said he favored a middle ground. He follows his students on Twitter if they follow him, for instance, but he is wary of automated tools that try to conduct what he called National Security Agency-style surveillance.

via Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet – NYTimes.com.