Smile! Facebook May Soon be Filming You
Facebook has just been granted a series of patents in the US which, if put into effect, would enable the company to use the camera on your computer, tablet or smartphone to monitor and record your facial expressions while you’re...
Silk Road Creator’s Life Sentence Fails to Deter Online Drug Transactions
Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online drug marketplace Silk Road, had his life sentence confirmed by a US Federal appeals court on May 31. Mr Ulbricht, known online as Dread Pirate Roberts, created the site in 2011. In its heyday, Silk Road...
Bringing the Gift of Education to Impoverished Children
Bangladesh is a remarkable country, but it is plagued by desperate poverty. Formerly East Pakistan, it became Bangladesh in 1971 after a war of independence. The country is located on the Indian subcontinent and has a population of more than...
A Changing Profession: Robot Lawyer Gives Advice to Asylum Seekers
The online sensation DoNotPay has been dubbed the world’s first robot lawyer, and is now giving out free legal advice to asylum seekers via Facebook. The app, which was originally developed by a Stanford University student, and which has successfully...
It’s Time for an Australian Bill of Rights
After the second world war, a series of international treaties began being introduced via the United Nations in order to define and protect people’s “inalienable human rights.” Australia has ratified the seven core international human rights conventions. This means that at the international...
Australian Whistleblowers are Persecuted Rather than Praised
Chelsea Manning was released from US military prison last week, after serving seven years of a 35 year prison sentence for espionage convictions relating to the classified documents she disclosed to WikiLeaks. Former US president Barack Obama commuted her sentence on...
Cardinal George Pell May Never Face Trial in Australia
Earlier this week, Victorian police confirmed they had received advice from the State’s Director of Public Prosecutions regarding historic allegations of child sexual assault against former-Sydney Archbishop George Pell. While police are yet to announce whether formal charges will be...
“Free My Father”: An Interview with Jewher Ilham
On September 23 2014, peaceful Uyghur rights advocate Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Xinjiang People’s High Court in western China on separatism charges. The two-day trial was condemned as “grossly unfair” by human rights activists around the world....
When “Just Following the Rules” Becomes a Crime
The world watched in horror as footage of Dr David Dao being dragged off a United Airlines flight by Chicago Aviation security officers went viral earlier this month. Airline officials said employees were just following “established procedures,” but to many the...
A World Without Bars: the Prison Abolition Movement
The transatlantic slave trade existed for well over three hundred years, with European nations abducting millions of people from Africa and taking them to colonies in the Americas to be sold into involuntary servitude. Indeed, the wealth of the United States...
