Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe

A team of volunteer archivists has recreated the Centers for Disease Control website exactly as it was the day Donald Trump was inaugurated. The site, called RestoredCDC.org, went live Tuesday and is currently being hosted in Europe. As we have been following since the beginning of Trump’s second term, websites across the entire federal government…

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Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras

The surveillance company Flock sent the creator of a website that maps its license plate-reading cameras a cease and desist letter demanding that he immediately stop using the name “DeFlock” on his website. 404 Media previously wrote about DeFlock, an open source mapping project created by Will Freeman that tracks the locations of automated license…

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Workers at NASA Told to ‘Drop Everything’ to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites

NASA personnel were told to “drop everything” to scrub public sites of mentions of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership, according to a directive obtained by 404 Media. The directive, sent on January 22 and obtained by 404 Media, states: “Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of the…

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‘Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases

Code updates to a government database that helps track whether a federal program to get children ready for school at age five is actually working show software engineers are purging it of references to “forbidden words” related to DEI. The updates, shown in Github commits, are to a database for the Department of Health and…

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Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral

A declassified World War II-era CIA guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle…

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GitHub Is Showing the Trump Administration Scrubbing Government Web Pages in Real Time

You can see the specific steps that a government agency is taking to comply with the Trump administration’s policies against diversity, equity, and inclusion on the agency’s GitHub, which shows it frantically deleting and editing various documents, employee handbooks, Slack bots, and job listings across everything the agency touches.  18F is a much-hyped government agency…

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The Powerful AI Tool That Cops (or Stalkers) Can Use to Geolocate Photos in Seconds

A powerful AI tool can predict with high accuracy the location of photos based on features inside the image itself—such as vegetation, architecture, and the distance between buildings—in seconds, with the company now marketing the tool to law enforcement officers and government agencies. Called GeoSpy, made by a firm called Graylark Technologies out of Boston,…

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