The Italian Interior Minister — the one who will be deciding which posts “defend” criminal activity and thus require ISPs to block the post’s host — is setting up a task force to hack Skype so the government can eavesdrop on its citizens.

Among his many virtues, I think it’s safe to say that Roberto Maroni is totally free of a sense of irony.

(I base this on a Google translation of an article sent to me by my friend Gianluca.)

[Tags: italy digital_rights rights skype hacking ]

3 Comments »

Damn. I just irretrievably lost my entire post on Tim Pritlove‘s presentation. That’s really annoying.

So, in the three minutes before the next presentation: Tim is a hacker and founder of the Chaos Computer Club. Hackers are artists he says, and artists are hackers. Hackers don’t try to break in. Rather, they break things, to see how they work.

He talked about the Blinkenlight project that uses buildings as pixel displays. Very cool. Totally open sourced and Creative Commonsed. What’s displayed is also opened to the public.

[Tags: ae ars_electronica tim_pritlove hacking ]

1 Comment »