On January 11, 26-year-old hacker, programmer, and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide. He had a history of depression and faced federal prosecution for downloading millions of articles from the online academic article repository JSTOR. Brooke talks to Gawker's Adrian Chen, who wrote about Swartz's legal troubles this week.

The media, the security industry and some members of congress have pounced on reports about the potential for hackers to wage cyber war on the United States, wreaking havoc on our nation's infrastructure. Brooke talks to Jerry Brito, the director of the Technology Policy Program at George Mason University's Mercatus program, who says that the rhetoric around cyber warfare doesn't square with reality.

Nicolas Jaar – Problems with the Sun

It wasn't too long ago that On the Media interviewed Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The act, written in 1986, was designed to outlaw criminal computer hacking, but according to Hofmann, it is written in such a technically imprecise manner that it could be used to prosecute someone who violated Terms of Service for a site like Facebook. 

A few weeks ago, WNYC’s own John Keefe appeared on our program and wrote a blog about how easily he hacked into the voicemails of AT&T and Sprint cell phones. Now it appears that AT&T is changing the default setting on new phones, so that users will automatically have password protection on their voicemails unless they turn the feature off.

As the effects from the News of the World phone hacking continue to ripple throughout Britain, many are still wondering how those journalists and private investigators managed to do it.  This may not have been their method, but for WNYC's John Keefe, voicemail hacking was surprisingly (and shockingly) easy.  He tells Brooke all you need is a computer, a phone number, and $10.