Thirty-three years ago today, armed forces stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing, removing the occupation of protesters demanding economic change, political reforms and freedom of the press. By the following morning, hundreds had died in the confrontation, effectively ending the last popular uprising in China.

Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that on a day when activists around the country could join together to remember the lives of the students who died demanding justice, nothing is happening. No protest is taking place in the city where I live and the activists I work with are all somewhere else. Yet, in China, it is often the events that do not occur that are the most revealing.

Palestinian Authority Communications Minister Resigns Over Internet Censorship

Two weeks ago, news broke that the Palestinian Authority (PA) was blocking eight websites critical of President Mahmoud Abbas. In the wake of that news, the US Department of State expressed concern and PA Communications Minister Mashour Abu Daqa resigned, stating that the PA's Attorney General, Ahmad Al Mughni, had ordered the bans. In response, Al Mughni defended the censorship, stating that some sites had been "blocked for legal reasons" while others were censored for "security reasons." Nevertheless, Al Mughni's actions were not based in law, as the Palestinian Authority lacks any regulation governing the Internet. Aside from Al Mughni's support, the censorship has been widely condemned, both within the Palestinian government and from human rights and press freedom groups.

Chinese Censors Try to Erase Escaped Activist, Encounter Streisand Effect

News about Chinese activist Chen Gaungchen has been censored by the Chinese government for months, but last week--in the wake of the blind lawyer’s spectacular escape from house arrest--the Chinese government immediately expanded their campaign aimed at erasing all references to the story from social media.

At a time when representative democracy is increasingly revealed as ineffectual, phony or both – a kabuki theater of empty formalisms that disguise the offstage conspiracies of corporate/state elites – many people look to the Internet for salvation.  After all, the Internet is far more open, participatory and meritocratic than the closed, corporate-dominated process of our formal democracy. 

But even with these capacities, the Internet is not a solution because in the end the Internet is only a hosting platform.  A basic question must be answered:  How should a more serious deliberative democracy be structured in online spaces? 

Professor Donald Sadoway says we can’t bomb our way out of our current energy situation; we can’t conserve our way out or drill our way out either. Instead we must invent our way out by working together! Today our electricity demand must be in balance with our electric supply. If the wind suddenly stops while supplying the electric grid other generators must kick on to make up for the loss. When the sun is not out providing solar energy other methods must supply the grid. A giant storage battery however would solve the intermittency problem.

The first battery was invented 200 years ago by Alessandro Volta, an Italian Professor who used a stack of silver and zinc coins as electrodes separated with cardboard soaked in brine (saltwater) as the electrolyte. This battery worked at room temperatures. Professor Sadoway realized that a new battery was needed for today’s increased power consumption and high current surges. One that could handle high temperatures due to surges in electrical current and that could be made from an abundant green energy earth  source to also keep costs down. He says, “if you want to make something dirt cheap – make it from dirt!”

Hours ago, the House of Representatives voted to approve the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a bill that would allow companies to bypass all existing privacy law to spy on communications and pass sensitive user data to the government.  EFF condemns the vote in the House and vows to continue the fight in the Senate.

"As the Senate takes up the issue of cybersecurity in the coming weeks, civil liberties will be a central issue. We must do everything within our power to safeguard the privacy rights of individual Internet users and ensure that Congress does not sacrifice those rights in a rush to pass vaguely-worded cybersecurity bills," said Lee Tien, EFF Senior Staff Attorney.

News broke Tuesday that a British police agency called the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), had taken control of the popular music blog RnBXclusive and arrested one of the site’s creators for fraud. The normal content from the site was completely unavailable, replaced with a new splash page: a notice from SOCA stating that it had taken control of the domain. Initial reports claimed that that the RnBXclusive.com domain had been seized by the UK government agency -- bringing to mind images of a post-SOPA fractured Internet -- but it turned out that the website takeover was done with the cooperation of the UK-based hosting company, Rackspace’s UK arm. For its part, Rackspace claimed that the music site was taken down for breaching its Terms and Conditions.

Everyone, take a deep breath: it seems we’ve had a moment of sanity in the patent wars. Last week, a jury invalidated the dangerous Eolas patents, which their owner claimed covered, well, essentially the whole Internet. The patents were originally granted for an invention that helped doctors to view images of embryos over the early Web.

A few years later, smelling quick cash, their owner insisted that they had a veto right on any mechanism used to embed an object in a web document. Really? The patents were obvious—now in 2012, and back in 1994, when the first one was filed. Thankfully, a jury realized that and did what should have happened years ago: it invalidated these dangerous patents.

Swiss scientists and engineers have announced a project, which will create ‘janitor’ satellites to clean up the ever increasing amount of space debris in orbit. The project is called CleanSpace One and it is due to launch in 3 to 4 years from now.

There are a few initial targets for CleanSpace One, either the Swisscube picosatellite, or its cousin TIsat, both 1,000 cubic centimeters (61 cubic inches) in size. When the janitor satellite reaches the space junk, it will extends its arm to grab the debris and then throw it to the earth atmosphere to burn up.