This is one of the crazier things I’ve seen in a while, and as someone who works with a lot of whistleblowers, that’s saying something. The EFF is suing the NSA and other government agencies  in the case Jewel v. NSA, attempting to stop illegal dragnet surveillance. According to EFF

Viennese lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems has filed a class action suit with the Commercial Court for Vienna against the Irish subsidiary of Facebook for violation of European data protection laws.

The Europe v Facebook website has an app that allows EU residents to become part of the suit. So far the organization is reporting that 11,000 people have signed on.

The crowd on hand to see Snowden and Ellsberg was insane, to put it mildly. The conference had taken over the entire 18th floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania for the event, which took place in the main hall and was broadcast via closed circuit to all the other rooms.

The 18th floor was closed to further traffic due to overcrowding about an hour before the event began, and re-directed to the 6th floor. The 6th floor also quickly filled up, and the first floor and mezzanine became the overflow rooms. By the time the event actually started there were people spilling out onto the street trying to see what was happening.

This morning Congressman Alan Grayson and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren are sponsoring a crypto party on the Hill.

Alex Asup, a chief product officer at LOVELAND Technologies has produced a fascinating documentation of the decay of Detroit neighborhoods using Google and Bing Streetviews.
The most shocking thing about the photos is that the decay he documents takes place in such a short period of time, between 2009 and 2013.

Yesterday Colorado’s legislature passed the first bill in the country to authorize and regulate Uber and Lyft, two of the new technology companies that have recently sprung up that connect drivers with passengers. Ridesharing has been available in Colorado since September of last year, when Lyft officially began offering services in Denver.

In theory the two companies merely provide apps connecting supply with demand. But in practice they have been able to act as unregulated cab companies, without being required to follow the laws and regulations (and subsequent overhead costs) that apply to cabs.

Ebay announced today that it’s the latest megalith online site to be hacked, and is asking users to change their passwords:

Amazon controls roughly one third of the book market in the United States, giving it considerable muscle to extract favorable sales and payment terms. And according to Hachette Books, one of the largest New York publishing groups, Amazon is monopolistically delaying shipment of hard cover books 2-4 weeks by authors

As part of Amazon’s new AmazonFresh grocery service, the online giant is introducing Amazon Dash, a wifi-enabled barcode scanner you can simply wave at items you want to replenish. You can also just say the name into a microphone on the device.

HBO apparently didn’t learn their lesson over the True Detective finale, and the HBO GO service crashed due to Game of Thrones subscriber demand.