Revolution 2.0: How The Internet Changed Wael Ghonim's Life and Helped Spark Egypt's Uprising

Egyptian demonstrators demanding the ouster of
President Hosni Mubarak and calling for reforms
clash with riot police in Cairo. Police and protesters
clashed in the capital and other parts of Egypt on
Wednesday in a second day of rallies to demand
the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, in the biggest protests
of the president's 30-year rule.
Photo Credit: AFP

In a new memoir, Ghonim describes how the Egyptian people finally rejected 30 years of oppression and found their voice. Here, he discusses with Terrence McNally.

April 16, 2012

Wael Ghonim was a little-known 30-year-old Google manager, unwilling to publicly criticize the Egyptian regime, until he anonymously launched a Facebook campaign to protest the death of one particular Egyptian at the hands of security forces. In his memoir, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power, he tells us, from his experience, why and how the Egyptian people finally rejected 30 years of oppression and found their voice. "People have called me a hero, but that is ridiculous – this has not been a revolution of heroic individuals, but about people coming together to overcome dictatorship…Social media allow ideas to be shared. They are places where people can unite, revolutions can begin. A new type of revolution – Revolution 2.0," he says   READ MORE

7 Privacy Threats the Constitution Can't Protect You Against

When it comes to a spate of new technologies, our privacy protections are wildly outdated.

February 4, 2012

The week before last, the Roberts Supreme Court uncharacteristically handed down a decision that doesn't radically infringe on civil liberties. The justices unanimously ruled that police overshot their authority by planting a GPS device on suspected drug dealer Antoine Jones' car without a warrant, tracking his movements for over a month. For now, Americans can rest assured that police can't secretly tag them -- at least without a warrant.

At the same time, privacy advocates pointed out -- and some of the justices admitted -- that the court's majority opinion in US vs. Jones completely skirted more pressing privacy issues. The problem, the majority argued, was that police had trespassed on Jones' private property by planting a GPS device on his car. The majority opinion did not address whether or not it's okay for law enforcement to use a sophisticated surveillance technology to log someone's movements for a whole month without a warrant. 

In separate, concurring opinions Justices Alito and Sotomayor both warned of the multitude of surveillance technologies that do not require intrusion onto private property to trample privacy rights. Here's a (non-comprehensive) breakdown of existing or impending technologies that make our privacy protections wildly outdated. 

1. Everything you use, all the time.

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