‘A cyber security bill moving swiftly through Congress would give government intelligence agencies broad powers to work with private companies to share information about Internet users.’

Read more: Revealed: CISPA Internet Spying Law Pushed by For-Profit Private Spy Lobby

‘The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is quickly becoming the Internet’s new most-hated piece of legislation. But is it really “the new SOPA,” as critics are calling it? Here, a comprehensive rundown of what CISPA is, what it does, and why people think it’s dangerous.’

Read more: CISPA replaces SOPA as Internet’s Enemy No. 1

‘The SOPA and PIPA bills that went down in flames earlier this year for their unbearable intrusiveness, used content piracy as an excuse to give the government powerful tools with which to censor Internet content. For 2012 the primary author of those bills has switched to a fallback tactic: using child porn as an excuse to create a vast surveillance network from which the government can demand data on every email sent, site visited or link clicked on by all but a fraction of one percent of the U.S. population.’

Read more: PCFIPA: SOPA replacement uses child porn as excuse to spy on 99.7 percent of Americans

‘Early Friday, several websites owned and operated by the US government were defaced as part of latest protest against online censorship. Anonymous, the elusive hacktivist group known for masterminding similar assaults, is taking credit.’

Read more: Anonymous takes down government sites in massive anti-ACTA attack

‘“To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, On March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down,” says the group.’

Read more: Anonymous is shutting down the internet?

‘Tens of thousands of Germans have protested against ACTA, a controversial international anti-piracy agreement that has embroiled Germany’s politicians in a heated debate on whether the treaty is a useful tool to protect intellectual property or an infringement of personal freedom.

On Saturday, people turned out in droves for demonstrations all over Germany, in spite of temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The biggest protests took place in Munich, where about 16,000 people took to the streets, and in Berlin, with 10,000 participants. Police estimate that all in all more than 30,000 demonstrators turned out in German towns and cities. The organizers of the protest put the number closer to 100,000.’

Read more: More than 30,000 Germans turn out against anti-piracy treaty ACTA

‘First there was SOPA, then there was PIPA. The Internet beat those back. Then along came ACTA inciting protests around the world. Up next is something far worse and far more secret – the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

For those that don’t know about TPP, which is probably a large majority of the population, it’s a treaty being devised by the U.S. with eight other countries in the Pacific including Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalem and Vietnam. What many people consider to be the most dangerous thing about TPP is that the negotiations for it are being conducted in absolute secrecy. The public is not being allowed to be involved with the process of this all too important treaty.’

Read more: Secret Internet Legislation: Is TPP Worse Than SOPA, PIPA & ACTA?

‘Poland’s prime minister said Friday that Warsaw would put on ice plans to ratify a controversial international online anti-piracy accord after massive off-and-online protests in his country. “I consider that the arguments for a halt to the ratification process are justified,” Donald Tusk told reporters.

“The issue of signing of the ACTA accord did not involve sufficient consultation with everyone who is part of the process,” Tusk said, adding that he would hold broad talks on what to do next. “The ACTA ratification process will be frozen as long as we haven’t overcome all the doubts. This will probably require a review of Polish law. We can’t rule out that, at the end of the day, this accord will not be approved.”’

Read more: #ACTA: Poland Freezes Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) Ratification

‘Late in the afternoon of Jan. 19, the U.S. Department of Justice website vanished from the Internet. Anyone attempting to visit it to report a crime or submit a complaint received a message saying the site was unable to load. More websites disappeared in rapid succession. The Recording Industry Association of America. The Motion Picture Association of America. Universal Music. Warner Brothers. The FBI.

By nightfall, most of the sites had come back online, but the people responsible for the outages had made their point. They’d landed what they hailed as the biggest blow yet in an escalating war for control of the Internet, and in one of their online command centers, “Phoenix” and his associates were celebrating.’

Read more: Anonymous And The War Over The Internet

‘This week’s Supreme Court hearing in the Julian Assange case has profound meaning for the preservation of basic freedoms in western democracies. This is Assange’s final appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct that were originally dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and constitute no crime in Britain.

The consequences, if he loses, lie not in Sweden but in the shadows cast by America’s descent into totalitarianism. In Sweden, he is at risk of being “temporarily surrendered” to the US where his life has been threatened and he is accused of “aiding the enemy” with Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks. ‘

Read more: Wikileaks - The Julian Assange case means we are all suspects now