EFF, TEDIC and CEJIL Challenge Secrecy in the Use of Face Recognition in Paraguay
Published in Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Seeking transparency and accountability in Paraguay’s use of facial recognition, EFF, the Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (
#Blog #Democracy #InformationAccess #DigitalRights #FaceRecognition #Privacy
You Got What You Asked For
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 20, 2026 — 7:20 p.m. PHST
There was a moment when a simple idea spread:
Information should be free.
It was part of the language of movements. Part of the language of Occupy. Part of the belief that knowledge should not be locked behind institutions, paywalls, or gatekeepers.
Fair enough.
You got what you asked for.
More than 5,000 essays.
Years of work.
Patterns documented.
Systems analyzed.
Available to anyone with an internet connection.
Free.
What “Free” Actually Means
Free does not mean effortless.
Free does not mean costless.
Free does not mean that no one had to build it.
Every piece in this archive required:
Every piece had to be written. Stored. Organized. Preserved.
Free to access does not mean free to produce.
That distinction matters.
The Part That Was Skipped
It is easy to say “information should be free.”
It is harder to ask:
Because once those questions are asked, the answer is unavoidable:
Someone is doing the work.
The Work Is Here
This is not theoretical.
This archive exists.
It is not an idea. It is not a proposal.
It is a working system of long-form documentation built over more than a decade.
And it is available, right now, without charge.
That was the goal.
That was the promise.
What Was Never Solved
What was never clearly addressed was sustainability.
Not access.
Not distribution.
Sustainability.
If knowledge is to remain free to access, then it must still be supported in some way.
Otherwise, it disappears.
Not because it lacked value, but because it lacked support.
A Simple Reality
You cannot have:
without some form of support behind it.
That is not ideology.
That is logistics.
No Abstraction
This is no longer a theoretical conversation.
The work is here.
It is accessible.
It is being maintained.
The only remaining question is simple:
Now what?
The Ask
If you believe in free knowledge, then this is where that belief meets reality.
The work exists.
If it has value to you, support it.
If it doesn’t, don’t.
But the idea that knowledge can be free without cost to anyone was never sustainable.
You got what you asked for.
The question is whether you intend to keep it.
If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews
For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com
WPS News archives are available through Amazon for long-term preservation and library distribution.
#digitalEconomy #freeKnowledge #IndependentJournalism #informationAccess #intellectualLabor #OccupyWallStreet #sustainability #WPSNews
The Synthetic Nothing: The collapse of the real in the face of the artificial.
By: Guillermo Ramírez Lovera
1. The Bottle Airplane
It all started on an ordinary Tuesday last October, while I was doing what almost all of us do to “disconnect” and which, ironically, connects us to a network currently full of doubts: scrolling throug
Bubbles and Gatekeeping
Curated online spaces feel like relief—but hand-picking who gets in is still gatekeeping, just with a human face.Wikipedia Is a Valid Source, And It’s Time We Stop Pretending It’s Not
This is going to be a hot take. A big one. The kind that makes academic purists clutch their pearls and scream about “proper sourcing” and “peer review” like it’s the end of the world. But fuck it. It needs to be said. Wikipedia is a valid source. Not “kind of valid.” Not “okay for starting research.” Not “don’t cite it but you can look at it.” No. A valid source. Full stop. And the refusal to acknowledge that? It reeks of elitist academia bullshit. Let’s be […]
“The country's {deleted} rulers have dramatically rolled back the rights of women and girls, detained journalists, and cracked down on public dissent since retaking power.”
Does the above seem familiar?
#authoritarianism #dictator #repression #theocracy #US #USA #misogyny #womensrights #internet #informationaccess #maga #taliban
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-taliban-internet-crackdown/
A local Taliban spokesperson in northern Afghanistan said that the Taliban leader had ordered the ban "to prevent immoral activities."
Controlled Chaos is a #zine that highlights the lives of #incarcerated #library workers through their own writing and illustrations. Jarrod “Deuce” Williams, Knight, and George Coles-El, Mesro the Human Sun tell stories about their work that illuminate the similarities–and the differences–between #InformationAccess inside and outside the walls.
https://www.libraryfutures.net/publications/controlled-chaos
A Library Futures 2024 Research Network Cohort project. There's more to come from this fantastic network 🌹
Since this day, #Turkey started using IP-based blocklists to block access to various different services and websites, among them #Signal and unprivate messengers like #Snapchat, #Facebook messenger and #Telegram
Here is how you can host a #SignalProxy. Use this hashtag to advertize one.
https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/how-to-set-up-and-run-a-proxy-signal-server
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy
As it will only be used for Signal, abuse is very unlikely.
Sculptors of Reality: Advertising and Disinformation
The work “Sculptors of Reality: The Structural Role of Advertising Agencies in the Disinformation Ecosystem” takes a deep look at the power of advertising in shaping public discourse. Drawing on more than 15 years of industry experience, the author offers a critical perspe
https://www.tedic.org/en/sculptors-of-reality-advertising-and-disinformation/
#InformationAccess #Research #advertising #disinformation #InformadasYResilientes
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