01.29.15

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • The 5 best open source email clients for Linux

    Windows users have Outlook; Mac users have Mail. What options are there for Linux users? As it turns out, Linux land is rich with email clients. I have chosen five of the best, fully open source email clients (with two exceptions) for Linux users.

• Kernel Space

  • As simple As That

    The challenge of the Internet of Everything is that it needs to be just that – an Internet of everything, a global ecosystem of billions of interoperable products, applications and services all speaking the same language, all working together regardless of manufacturer, industry or platform. AllJoyn is the open source software project built by the AllSeen Alliance’s thriving technical community of over 110 companies that is delivering on this challenge, creating simple and open technology that connects everything and enables the Internet of Everything.

• Applications

  • Aptik – Backup Your PPAs, Themes, Icons, And Application Settings In Ubuntu

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Install Openfire On CentOS 7

    • How to Patch Drupal Sites

    • Upgrading to CentOS 7 – Part Three

    • An atomic upgrade process for OpenStack compute nodes

    • Lenovos X1 Carbon 3rd touchpad woes

  • Games

    • Dying Light Is Almost Playable On Linux, If You Do Some Tinkering

      Thanks to pointers from our community member xpander69, we have found that Dying Light can be played almost acceptably on Linux with some messing around with the files. I have personally tested this, but your performance will vary, and we accept no responsibility for breakage, do this at your own risk. You’ve been warned, but we hope no one manages to break anything. If you do, you can probably verify the cache on Steam to re-do the files officially.

    • Aspyr’s Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remaster Is Real And It’s Out, We Have Keys For You

      Few days ago the remaster of Fahrenheit popped up on Amazon with Aspyr logos and penguins. Well, it seems that Aspyr is indeed behind the remaster and the Tux was put on there for a purpose. Behold, the next Aspyr Linux port is here!

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • Variety Review – A Wallpaper Manager You Didn’t Know You Wanted

      Variety is an application that manages your wallpapers and is open source. You might ask, what’s so special about that? Well, the truth is that you don’t know you want one until you’ve actually tried it.

  • New Releases

    • GParted Live Now Supports Microsoft’s New Filesystem, ReFS

      GParted Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution that has a lot of features and that can be used in operations like creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions on a variety of filesystems. A new stable update has been made available and the operating system is now at version 0.21.0.

    • Papyros Is a Linux OS That Follows Google’s Material Design and It Looks Stunning

      Papyros is a new Linux distribution in the making that will use the Material Design style from Google. There is nothing to test so far, but the progress made by the developers is impressive and it’s very likely that this will become one of the most interesting distros available.

    • BackBox Linux 4.1 released!

      The BackBox Team is pleased to announce the updated release of BackBox Linux, the version 4.1!

      This release includes features such as Linux Kernel 3.13, EFI mode, Anonymous mode, LVM + Disk encryption installer, privacy additions and armhf Debian packages.

  • Red Hat Family

    • CoreOS Releases Building Block For Distributed Systems

      Hyperscale Linux operating system specialist CoreOS said it is releasing its latest open source component for sharing and managing configuration data and other functions used in distributed systems.

      San Francisco-based CoreOS announced its first stable release of etcd, or “etc distributed,” an open-source distributed key value store that provides the backbone of CoreOS clusters and the etcd clients that run on each machine in a cluster. “Our goal with etcd has been to make building and using distributed systems easier,” CoreOS CTO Brandon Philips said Wednesday (January 28) in announcing the release.

    • Fedora

      • DNF Plugins Extend The Functionality Of Fedora’s Yum Successor

        With the upcoming Fedora 22 release due out in May, DNF is positioned to replace Yum as the default package manager.

        While there’s been many DNF articles on Phoronix in past months, one of the aspects not covered much to this point is the dnf-plugins-extra package that’s in its very early stages. Version 0.0.3 of dnf-plugins-extras was released today as a collection of DNF plugins done by the community.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 7 reasons why I prefer elementary OS Freya over Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn”

          When we laid out our featured article on things you need to do after installing Ubuntu 14.10, we shared a few little issues we have had with the latest Ubuntu release. Well things got worse, and I decided to try something else for a change. I’ve been using elementary OS Freya as my daily driver since then. And I have to say, I’m mighty impressed so far. And the fact that Freya is still very much in beta makes the whole affair all the more interesting. A list of reasons why I prefer elementary OS Freya over Ubuntu 14.10 at the moment.

        • Don’t Use Ubuntu, Use Mint – or elementary

          Tech Drive-in today listed seven reasons he prefers elementary OS over Ubuntu. Despite all that, Michael Larabel today reported on the improved performance of Ubuntu 15.04 on newer machines.

        • OpenJDK 7 Vulnerabilities Closed in Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10

          Canonical published details about a new OpenJDK 7 version has been pushed to the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10 repositories. This update fixes a number of problems and various vulnerabilities.

        • Ubuntu Touch Apps Can Now Be Launched In A New Windowed Mode

          A new Ubuntu smartphone OS feature has been created by developer Michael Zanetti, who has created a way to run Ubuntu Touch apps in windows rather than full screen, allowing them to be dragged , shrunk, maximised, or minimised, just like they were desktop applications but on your smartphone.

        • Ubuntu Users See Private, Hybrid Cloud Expansion

          Canonical, the company behind the open source cross-platform operating system Ubuntu, released its annual cloud and server survey this week that seeks to cast more light on the makeup of cloud infrastructure, how it is managed, and what is driving cloud adoption.

        • Ubuntu 15.04 Now Based on Linux Kernel 3.18.4, Devs Are Tracking the 3.19 Branch

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Introducing BodhiBuilder

            If you follow me on GitHub then you likely noticed I have added a few projects in the last few days. One of these projects has been on my TODO list for awhile – cleaning up the old remastersys script I have always used to create the Bodhi Linux ISO images for the last few years. Today I am pleased to announce you can find my fork of remastersys dubbed “BodhiBuider” on GitHub here.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Tough multi-display controller runs Linux on i.MX6

    MEN Micro unveiled the “CC10S,” a Linux-ready i.MX6 based multi-display controller board for touchscreens deployed in harsh, -40 to 85° C environments.

    Imagine a humongous earth-moving rig prepping an oil shale site in North Dakota in the middle of January. You’re going to want a touchscreen with that, and it better be tough. The MEN Micro CC10S single board computer is designed for controlling 7- to 15-inch LCD touchscreens that must deal with the rough, tough stuff on a daily basis.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Airdroid – Transfer files between Android Phones/Tablets and Linux (Any Distribution)

        We often need to transfer large amount data in the form of mp3 Songs, Video Songs, Movies and most importantly, large Games between android phones/tablets and Linux machine. Transferring via USB cable takes time, so let’s do it with ‘Airdroid’ easily and quickly.

      • Android shipments in 2014 exceed 1 billion for first time

        For the first time ever, worldwide shipments of smartphones packing Android exceeded 1 billion units in 2014, a significant gain from the 780.8 million units that shipped around the world in 2013, researcher Strategy Analytics announced Thursday. Android dwarfed its second-place competitor, Apple’s iOS, which mustered 192.7 million worldwide shipments in 2014.

      • 1B Android phones shipped in 2014, but they don’t all help Google

        When Android first arrived in 2007, it was (and still is) a key part of the OHA, or Open-Handset Alliance. OHA partners — which include Samsung, LG, Dell, HTC, Huawei and ZTE, to name a few — all loosely work together to help improve Android, while competing against one another by using Android on their respective hardware products. Android is the commonality between all of the OHA partners. And then there’s Google.

      • Android beats iOS for app downloads, but revenues are still a different story

        There are plenty of caveats to this line of reasoning, though. First, Google Play is not the only Android app store – Amazon and Samsung run their own stores, while in countries like China there are dozens of stores offering Android apps.

      • HTC One M8 Android 5.0 Lollipop Update: What U.S. Owners Can Expect

        When Google announced Android 5.0 Lollipop back in October many smartphone owners like those with the HTC One or HTC One M8 instantly started waiting for details regarding the Android 5.0 Lollipop update. It has arrived for a few devices already, including the HTC One and HTC One M8 Google Play Edition handsets, but below we’ll go over what regular HTC One owners need to know about the Android 5.0 update.

      • Samsung Galaxy S4 Updated To The Android Lollipop 5.0 OS

        The Android Lollipop 5.0 update is finally available for the Samsung S4. The operating system is also available for the Samsung Galaxy S5, Note 4, Note 3, and Note Edge. Samsung Galaxy and Note users will be happy to hear that the long waited update is coming in the near future. But should Galaxy S4 users take advantage of the Android Lollipop update?

      • Don’t wait for Android 5.0, this app makes your phone look like Lollipop for free

        Android 5.0 Lollipop is a huge upgrade for Google’s mobile operating system. The only problem with it, of course, is that it’s only available for a handful of devices. Most Android smartphone users still have plenty more waiting to do before Lollipop is finally available for their handset, but now there’s a terrific app that will make your older version of Android look just like Lollipop — and it’s free!

      • Is this Apple’s secret weapon that could force Android users to buy an iPhone?

        There are many reasons why Android users switch to iPhone, and vice-versa, but Apple may have a secret (or not-so-secret) weapon that could pressure some Android fans to considering a move to the other side. No, it’s not Apple Pay, an exclusive iPhone 6 feature that’s heavily marketed by various banks in the U.S., further helping Apple market its 2014 iPhones. It’s actually a stock iOS app that has been hiding in plain sight for years.

      • Android 5.0.2 Lollipop Problems Frustrating Nexus Users

        Google rolled out its Android 5.0.2 Lollipop update to fix Nexus Lollipop problems. And while it did fix some of the bigger issues, Android 5.0.2 Lollipop problems continue to frustrate Nexus users.

Free Software/Open Source

• Web Browsers

  • From Opera to… Vivaldi!

    Yes, the name is familiar. Vivaldi was that KDE tablet that never saw the light of day, but now Vivaldi is the name of a beautiful browser that runs on Linux.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Hortonworks Spreads its Open Source Wings to Bring Governance to Hadoop

    We all know Hortonworks is committed to open source, insisting that it’s the way to innovate on Hadoop and deliver the best enterprise-grade technology to the marketplace. And though its main competitor, Cloudera (or at least a member of its management team) may have taunted that Hortonworks’ business model is “undependable,” Wall Street certainly didn’t agree — its shares soared 65 percent above the opening price on Dec. 12, 2014, its first day of trading as a public company.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 4.4 Released as the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

    The Document Foundation has just announced that a new major update has been released for LibreOffice and it brings important UI improvements, enough for them to call this the most beautiful version ever.

  • The best open-source office suite, LibreOffice 4.4, gets new release

    Who says you can’t have fast, good and cheap? The Document Foundation’s latest release of the most popular open-source office suite, LibreOffice 4.4 is quite fast on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows; it works well on all three desktop operating systems, and it won’t cost you a penny.

  • LibreOffice 4.4 Released With Major UI Revamp

    A new version of open-source office suite LibreOffice is now available for download and the hands behind it are calling it ‘the most beautiful’ release ever.

    Jan Holesovsky, leader of the LibreOffice design team, says “LibreOffice 4.4 has got a lot of UX and design love, and in my opinion is the most beautiful ever.”

    The productivity suite, which was spun out of the slow moving OpenOffice project back in 2010, has certainly upped its game in the design department over the past few years, with each release of the 4.x series adding finesse.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNU Guix 0.8.1 released

    We are pleased to announce the next alpha release of GNU Guix, version 0.8.1.

    The release comes both with a source tarball, which allows you to install it on top of a running GNU/Linux system, and a USB installation image to install the standalone Guix System Distribution.

  • Libreboot X200 laptop now FSF-certified to respect your freedom

    This is the second Libreboot laptop from Gluglug (a project of Minifree, Ltd.) to achieve RYF certification, the first being the Libreboot X60 in December 2013. The Libreboot X200 offers many improvements over the Libreboot X60, including a faster CPU, faster graphics, 64-bit GNU/Linux support (on all models), support for more RAM, higher screen resolution, and more. The Libreboot X200 can be purchased from Gluglug at http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • Your Open Source 3D Printed Designs Could Save the 3D Printing Community Millions

      In an article published in Modern Economy by Dr. Joshua Pearce, of Michigan Technological University, titled “Quantifying the Value of Open Source Hardware Development” one of the challenges of Open Source Hardware has been addressed: Creating a real world value for community developed creations. Three methods for quantifying the value of free and open source hardware designs were used, including “1) downloaded substitution valuation; 2) avoided reproduction valuation and 3) market savings valuation along with additional benefits related to market expansion, scientific innovation acceleration, educational enhancement and medical care improvement.”

• Programming

  • LLVM Adds Options To Do Fuzz Testing

    LLVM/Clang developers have begun work on adding fuzz testing capabilities, the providing semi-random test data in an automated manner to test functions for potentially unchecked scenarios using malformed data, etc. Fuzzing helps developers avoid potential crashes, security issues, and uncovering other possible pitfalls.

• Standards/Consortia

  • YouTube flushes Flash for future flicks

    Adobe would need to have buried its head under many metres of sand, and strapped many layers of black tape about its head, not to see this coming. So there can’t be too much gnashing of teeth and wailing down San Jose way, not least because the masses who use YouTube probably don’t care how their video is delivered*.

  • YouTube ditches Adobe Flash for HTML5 on most browsers

    GOOGLE’S YOUTUBE video portal has made the switch to HTML5 as a default renderer, marking yet another milestone in the downfall of the Adobe Flash format.

    Historically, Adobe Flash has been the renderer of choice despite its buggy limitations because it offered a number of tangible benefits over early HTML5 implementations.

  • 10 capabilities we want to see in HTML6

    The buzzword “HTML5” came and went a few years ago, but the standard itself wasn’t made final until the end of 2014. In the five-plus years it took the “second coming of this Web stuff” to be fully realized and ratified, we got deep into the changes, examined how early adopters pushed HTML5 to its limits, and surfaced more than a few hard truths about the limitations of the spec.

Leftovers

• Looks like those IBM layoffs have started

  Reports of big layoffs to come this week at IBM were correct, at least with regard to timing. Starting Wednesday, the message board at Alliance@IBM, a site manned by former IBM employees, was full of posts from people saying (anonymously) that they had been laid off. More accurately, most said they had been “RA’d,” which is IBM parlance for Resource Action, but which means — you got it — laid off.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Have we reached ‘peak food’? Shortages loom as global production rates slow

    The world has entered an era of “peak food” production with an array of staples from corn and rice to wheat and chicken slowing in growth – with potentially disastrous consequences for feeding the planet.

  • NHS – Calling for a minor change in Policy..

    There are arguments made all the time as to why privatisation is beneficial. The more cynical, and those led entirely by a fundamental belief in free market solutions for everything, simply see the potential economic gains as being too great to pass up. After all, in the US, health care spending makes up a significant portion of GDP, one that has been rising providing profit and opportunity for companies and investors. The impact on patients? Well, that’s collateral damage – you should be working harder, or better insured.

• Security

  • Security updates for Thursday

  • The FTC Calls for Lockdown Security on the Internet of Things

    The Internet of Things (IoT) was big news at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and many large tech companies had related announcements. Apple wan’t demonstrating, but partners had the first set of devices that are HomeKit certified, which is Apple’s protocol for allowing smart home devices to work with the iOS platform. And, Google announced 15 new partners in “Work With Nest,” its developer program for adding third-party devices to Nest devices and networks. Meanwhile, The Linux Foundation oversees one of the biggest Internet of Things initiatives: The AllSeen Aliance, which is rapidly gaining members.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • US Drone Strike in Yemen Killed 12-Year-Old Student

    Officials Had Previously Identified Him as ‘Al-Qaeda Militant’

  • CIA operations to aid Syrian rebels go bad

    CIA operations to aid moderate fighters battling Syria’s Bashar Al Assad regime has gone badly as rebel forces keep shifting loyalties, says a Wall Street Journal reports.

  • Covert CIA Mission to Arm Syrian Rebels Goes Awry

    It didn’t take long for rebel commanders in Syria who lined up to join a Central Intelligence Agency weapons and training program to start scratching their heads.

  • Exclusive: Obama Cuts Off Syrian Rebels’ Cash

    In the past several months, many of the Syrian rebel groups previously favored by the CIA have had their money and supplies cut off or substantially reduced, even as President Obama touted the strategic importance of American support for the rebels in his State of the Union address.

    The once-favored fighters are operating under a pall of confusion. In some cases, they were not even informed that money would stop flowing. In others, aid was reduced due to poor battlefield performance, compounding already miserable morale on the ground.

  • Should The U.S. Military Be Educators?

    Military academies have always been funded by taxpayer dollars & revered for their traditional and all-American ways. But one Naval Academy professor says the money is wasted and the standards for entrance are low. Is the end of West Point in sight?

• Transparency Reporting

  • Open Letter in Defence of WikiLeaks Journalists

    We, the undersigned journalists and human rights defenders cannot remain silent while our colleagues and profession are under attack.

    We deplore the actions taken the US Government against WikiLeaks journalists Sarah Harrison, Joseph Farrell and Kristin Hfaffnsson. We believe they represent political persecution of journalists and journalism.

    Free societies everywhere are best served by journalism and publishing that holds governments and corporations to account and guarantees citizens’ right to know. Such work is not espionage or terrorism; it is journalism.

• Finance

  • Germans Are in Shock As New Greek Leader Starts With A Bang

    One senior German official described Tsipras as part of a brash new generation of European leaders, including Italy’s Renzi, who weren’t afraid to stand up to Merkel and challenge the assumptions that have shaped policy in the eurozone and Ukraine crises in recent years. – See more at: http://portside.org/2015-01-29/germans-are-shock-new-greek-leader-starts-bang#sthash.U8rGKwEr.dpuf

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Pat Robertson Advises Elderly Woman to Take Out a Reverse Mortgage to Send His Group Money

    TV preacher Pat Robertson on Tuesday advised a senior citizen who was a paying member of his 700 Club teleministry that a reverse mortgage was a “good deal” if she was having trouble making ends meet.

  • How Fox News Is Helping The GOP Disingenuously Rebrand Itself As The Party Of The Middle Class

    The New York Times reported that while likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates may acknowledge a wealth gap, they “have embraced few policies to address the issue.” The Times also pointed out that while “traditional conservative economic theory holds that business expansion creates jobs, tightens the labor market, and pushes up wages,” the economy has grown steadily in recent years and still “wealth generated by the growing economy has not trickled down.”

• Privacy

  • Let’s make being ‘Wrong on Rights’ unelectable

    On Monday, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Europe’s top rights body published a report that shows that it believes mass surveillance is a significant threat to human rights. That’s good news for anyone hoping to see a rolling back of the surveillance state.

  • Gag order prevented Google from disclosing WikiLeaks probe for 3 years

  • Council of Europe: Surveillance is bad and doesn’t stop terrorism

    THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE (CoE) has used Data Protection Day as it did last year to let people know that it has no real faith in surveillance and no real belief that it works.

    The CoE said last year that eavesdropping is the new menace, and used the Edward Snowden revelations as an introduction in a day-long debate about the so-called surveillance state.

• Civil Rights

  • The Tsarnaev trial and the rest of us

  • Seth Rogen and Michael Moore banned from steakhouse over American Sniper

  • Here’s what moviegoers in Baghdad think of ‘American Sniper’

    The film, set during the US-led occupation of Iraq and released on Christmas Day, hit nerves in the United States immediately. Some critics and commentators lauded it as patriotic and unflinching; others dismissed it as reductionist and racist.

    Many people also objected to the film’s portrayal of Kyle — a man who described Iraqis as “savages” in his memoir — as a hero.

  • 7 heinous lies “American Sniper” is telling America

    One way to get audiences to unambiguously support Kyle’s actions in the film is to believe he’s there to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movie cuts from Kyle watching footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, implying there is some link between the two.

  • Killing Ragheads for Jesus

    “American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates. These passions, if realized, will extinguish what is left of our now-anemic open society.

  • S.F. public defender detained outside court; office outraged

    A San Francisco deputy public defender was handcuffed and arrested at the Hall of Justice after she objected to city police officers questioning her client outside a courtroom, an incident that her office called outrageous and police officials defended as appropriate.

    The Tuesday afternoon arrest of attorney Jami Tillotson as she denied police officers’ attempts to take photos of her client without explanation raised questions about police intimidation and harassment, Public Defender Jeff Adachi said at a Wednesday news conference.

    But police said the five officers, led by a plainclothes sergeant, were investigating a burglary case in which Tillotson’s client and his co-defendant were considered persons of interest. Tillotson was cited for misdemeanor resisting or delaying arrest because she obstructed a police investigation, officials said.

  • Sterling Conviction a Victory for Government’s Right to Hide

  • This is how a police state protects “secrets”: Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA and up to 80 years on circumstantial evidence

    The participants in the economy of shared tips and intelligence in Washington D.C., breathed a collective sigh of relief when, on January 12, the government announced it would not force James Risen to testify in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. “Press freedom was safe! Our trade in leaks is safe!” observers seemed to conclude, and they returned to their squalid celebration of an oppressive Saudi monarch.

    That celebration about information sharing is likely premature. Because, along the way to the conviction of Sterling this week on all nine counts – including seven counts under the Espionage Act — something far more banal yet every bit as dear to D.C.’s economy of secrets may have been criminalized: unclassified tips.

  • Eric Holder plugs his legacy on leak cases

    A federal jury’s decision Monday to convict a former CIA officer for leaking top-secret information to a New York Times reporter was a big win for prosecutors — and for Attorney General Eric Holder’s new approach to handling sensitive cases involving journalists.

    [...]

    The attorney general’s action was consistent with a series of moves over the past year and a half in which he sought to demonstrate greater sensitivity to the concerns of journalists. The recalibration was prodded not by Risen’s predicament or a sudden bout of introspection, but by a political firestorm that broke out in 2013 over prosecutors’ aggressive investigations of leaks to the Associated Press and Fox News.

    [...]

    Holder’s decision to drop demands for Risen’s testimony about his sources could help dampen concern about the treatment of journalists, but it won’t extinguish complaints that the unprecedented flurry of nine leak-related prosecutions during the Obama administration has chilled whistleblowers from taking their concerns to the media. In fact, Sterling’s conviction on every count sent to the jury — and the prospect of a lengthy prison term for the ex-CIA officer — might embolden prosecutors intent on stamping out leaks.

  • VIDEO: CIA Whistle Blower Found Guilty Proves That Using “Proper Channels” Doesn’t Work

    Monday’s guilty verdict for former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling is another example of whistleblowers attempting to go through proper channels to expose wrongdoing, and then being “flagged as troublemakers” and facing severe retaliation from the government, according to transparency advocate Norman Solomon.

  • CIA Officer’s Conviction to Discourage More Intelligence Leaks

    The conviction of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for leaking classified information about a covert plan to derail Iran’s nuclear program to a journalist, sends a message that intelligence leaks will not go unpunished while reducing the risk of encouraging more leaks, former CIA official Paul Pillar told Sputnik on Tuesday.

  • CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling found guilty on all counts

    Sterling was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information about a mission meant to slow Iran’s nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen, who then wrote about the CIA’s Iranian plot in his 2006 book, “State of War.” The plan’s goal was to learn more about the country’s controversial nuclear program and impair its progress, and the schematics were reportedly funneled to the Iranians via a Russian scientist with the codename “Merlin.”

  • The mass media have suddenly discovered Jeffrey Sterling

    The mass media have suddenly discovered Jeffrey Sterling — after his conviction Monday afternoon as a CIA whistleblower.

  • ACLU asks judge to block attempt to repossess copies of CIA torture report

    The American Civil Liberties Union is turning to federal court to stop the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee from repossessing the secret copies of a landmark inquiry into CIA torture.

  • ACLU: Don’t Let Senate Block Full CIA ‘Torture Report’ Release

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a motion in federal court on Tuesday night in an effort to block the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from retrieving all the copies of the committee’s full, unredacted report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program.”

  • Meet the CIA’s secret protector: Why Sen. Richard Burr is its favorite “overseer”

    One of the newest pieces of conventional wisdom among the political commentariat is the idea that under the influence of the Tea Party and the libertarians, the Republicans are no longer the national security hawks they once were. They are going back to their old isolationist ways, the thinking goes, because Rand Paul is running for president and he doesn’t support military adventurism overseas (except when he does) and the right wing of the GOP is uninterested in national security.

  • Editor of major newspaper says he planted stories for CIA

    Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a “propagandist,” an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.

  • CIA: A spy agency gone rogue?

    American author and journalist Charles Glass joined Shainin with anecdotal references where he first talked about the origins of the CIA and the failures from its very conception. He said that from its very formation in 1947, the agency had agents in the field “torturing people or bribing foreign officials”. He talked about CIA’s role in overthrowing an elected parliamentary government in Syria in 1949, on behalf of an Arabian oil company “to have a dictator who would then allow an oil line to go through Syria.” The country never really had a democracy again, the effects of which can be seen today.

  • US Incarceration System Facilitates Breakdown of Society

    What we’re doing isn’t working, justice-wise, order-wise, sanity-wise. The state of Illinois is bankrupt and yet its jails are full to bursting, at a cost, per occupant, equal to or greater than the cost of luxury suites at its ritziest hotels. And 90 percent of the teenagers who enter the system come back within three years of their release. This is no surprise: The system is a spiral of entrapment, especially for young men of color.

  • US Spy Agency CIA Heading For A Shake Up: Top Spy To Step Down

    The Central Intelligence Agency–the spy agency of United States of America, is reportedly heading for a shake up. In the run up to that, the chief of secret intelligence operations will shortly step down. The office of the secret intelligence wing has announced that “the director soon plans to retire after a long and distinguished career at CIA.”

  • Spy panel shakeup will add focus on cyber, CIA

    The House Intelligence Committee is shaking up its structure to put a new focus on cybersecurity and the CIA, among other areas.

  • LoBiondo named chairman of House CIA subcommittee

  • LoBiondo named chairman of the House Subcommittee on Central Intelligence Agency

    LoBiondo takes the chairmanship at a time when the CIA has come under scrutiny. A report released in December by the Senate Intelligence Committee found the agency’s interrogation techniques to be more brutal and used more extensively than the agency had portrayed.

  • Former CIA spies come in from the cold as Hollywood players

    The place in Brooklyn looks like a CIA safehouse. Red brick office building with peeling metal awning. No sign. Inside, writers are plotting out popular cold war espionage show The Americans – one of an assortment of Hollywood spy or national security dramas being driven by ex-spies.

    The show’s creator and co-head writer Joe Weisberg is a former CIA officer who never fathomed he would one day sit in an office with Soviet propaganda posters and a cut-out figure of President Ronald Reagan, concocting television fiction.

  • Feinstein Slams CIA Report as Error-Riddled

    In the waning months of her tenure as head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein transformed into a tireless critic of the CIA’s torture program and the measures the agency is accused of taking to avoid scrutiny.

  • Feinstein Disputes CIA Report on Spying on Senate

    Her office provided a list of 15 items where Feinstein takes issue with the Accountability Board review. Some of them relate to an apparent dispute over the scope of the investigation. Among them, Feinstein says the claim that the CIA and investigators did not have a “common understanding” about access is simply false.

    “This is a serious matter and has been acknowledged by the CIA inspector general and the CIA Accountability Board. Regardless of the extent of the violation or intent of those involved, someone should be held accountable,” Feinstein said.

  • Feinstein offers 15 point rebuttal to report on CIA

  • Egypt’s War on Atheism

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Google reveals where AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable will next offer Gbps broadband

    The advertising giant said on Tuesday it will next roll out high-speed connections to 18 cities in and around Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Raleigh-Durham, NC; and Nashville, TN.

  • Defending net neutrality is a fight for human rights

    FROM its basement beginnings, the internet has spread across the globe. It lets us connect more efficiently than any technology before it, and has become a crucial ingredient of modern life.

    One of the keys to its success is “net neutrality” – a jargony way of saying that all internet traffic must be treated equally.

• DRM

  • Drone maker DJI will disable its units over Washington, DC, after White House crash

    Following the crash of one of its Phantom drones at the White House on Monday and a response from President Obama that more regulation of drones was needed, Chinese drone maker DJI will reportedly be disabling its units from flying over the DC area. According to the FAA, it was already against federal regulations to fly in that region, not to mention the fact that the pilot told the Secret Service he was drinking.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Canadian Government Spies on Millions of File-Sharers

      New revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that Canada’s main electronic surveillance agency spied on millions of file-sharing downloads from some of the world’s most popular sites. More than 100 sites including Dotcom’s Megaupload were routinely monitored in a search for extremists.