10.31.15

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• 10 Linux Frights Sure to Make You Scream!

  You feel safe, wrapped in that comforting blanket of Linux. It soothes you and protects you from the lumbering monsters that hide within your server closet. That innocent penguin has always been there to ward away the evil…it’s glowing red eyes peering through the Windows of a house made of glass. And you stand tall, knowing the open source platform will always have your back. Or, will it?

• Desktop

  • Cheap Linux Laptops, Best Video Editors & More…

    Psst, want a cheap laptop? Philadelphia’s Nonprofit Technology Resources wants to save a pile of laptops from the scrapyard. So Ed Cummings, the president of the organization, said the organization is having a “Linux Laptop Pizza Party” on Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love, according to Juliana Reyes writing in Technical.ly.

• Server

  • Rackspace serves up free Carina Docker-based container-as-a-service beta on OpenStack

  • Rackspace Adds Cloud-Based Docker Container Service with Carina

  • Rackspace Introduces Carina For Automating Docker Deployments

  • How Rackspace’s container platform is different

  • Rackspace Debuts Containers as a Service on OpenStack

  • Rackspace Jumps on Container Bandwagon with Carina

  • Rackspace Launches Free Docker-Based Container Service

  • Rackspace Launches Free Docker-Based Container Service

  • Rackspace launches new native container environment

  • Rackspace Launches Carina, A Hosted Environment For Running Docker Containers

  • Open Source Docker, Containers & Rackspace’s Free Service

  • Carina(TM) by Rackspace Simplifies Containers With Easy-to-Use, Instant-On Native Container Environment

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 4.2 Ubuntu 15.10 HDD Tests: XFS Leads Over EXT4, Btrfs

    With recently having picked up four Western Digital Black HDDs, I decided to run some fresh hard drive benchmarks with the most common Linux file-systems to see how the performance compares atop Ubuntu 15.10.

  • Linux 4.3 Is Near With Its Polished Intel Skylake Support & More

    While there was still a fair amount of code churn this week, if Linus remains comfortable with the state of the kernel, Linux 4.3 will be released this weekend.

  • AMD Stoney APU Support Is Going Into The Linux 4.4 Kernel

    Alex Deucher sent in another pull request of new AMDGPU/Radeon DRM material for landing in DRM-Next to in turn make it into Linux 4.4.

  • Intel Is Working On Faster Linux Encryption For AVX2 CPUs, Up To 5.8x Throughput

    Intel has published a new set of patches fpr speeding up AES-CBC encryption for processors having the AVX2 instruction set extension.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Mesa’s DRI3 Support For EGL Still Baking, The State Of DRI3 For X.Org Drivers

      Martin Peres at Intel has sent out the latest revised patches for supporting Direct Rendering Infrastructure 3 (DRI3) with EGL.

    • PRIME Synchronization Is Still Being Worked On To Fix Tearing

      Alex Goins of NVIDIA posted the patches yesterday evening as version two of PRIME synchronization for the i915 DRM. The patches aren’t big but will hopefully fix tearing for those using PRIME on dual GPU systems.

    • Allwinner A10 DRM Display Support Being Worked On

      Maxime Ripard of Free Electrons published a set of nineteen patches yesterday for adding Allwinner A10 display engine support via a new DRM driver for the Linux kernel.

    • ARB_shader_clock Lands For Intel’s Mesa Driver

      The Mesa i965 DRI driver enables ARB_shader_clock support for Intel Ivy Bridge “Gen 7″ graphics and newer. This work will be part of Mesa 11.1.

    • Intel Broadwell/Skylake Graphics Performance For Steam Linux Gaming

      Complementing yesterday’s Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming? article is a look at the Steam Linux gaming performance for three different Intel Linux systems running Ubuntu 15.10 and firing up the latest Steam client. This is the last of the planned series that began one week ago with the a 22-way comparison of NVIDIA/AMD GPUs on SteamOS.

    • CPU/GPU Usage Between NVIDIA & AMD Linux Drivers

      Following the 4K AMD/NVIDIA High-End GPU Comparison On SteamOS Linux and 22-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA/AMD Graphics Cards On SteamOS For Steam Linux Gaming articles, a few Phoronix readers were inquiring about the CPU and GPU utilization metrics during testing.

      So I started work on some follow-up tests to look at the CPU/GPU utilization during testing to try to answer that question. The Phoronix Test Suite is able to do so by simply setting MONITOR=cpu.usage,gpu.usage as an environment variable prior to running any benchmarks (or see phoronix-test-suite system-sensors or MONITOR=all for the other system sensors supported through Phodevi – The Phoronix Device Interface).

    • Nouveau Adds ARB_copy_image, Intel Adds Another OpenGL 4.3 Extension Too

    • The Size Of The Different Open-Source Linux DRM/Mesa Graphics Drivers

      As there’s been some discussion lately about the “size” of the different open-source Linux graphics drivers, here are some fresh looks at the rough code size of each of the main DRM/KMS kernel drivers as well as the Mesa/Gallium3D user-space drivers.

    • Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming?

      Over the past week on Phoronix have been several featured articles looking at the performance of SteamOS with the proprietary AMD/NVIDIA graphics drivers: 22-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA/AMD Graphics Cards On SteamOS, 4K AMD/NVIDIA High-End GPU Comparison On SteamOS, and Is SteamOS Any Faster Than Ubuntu 15.10 Linux? One of the frequent questions that have come up since then is how the open-source driver performance compares to that of the binary blobs on SteamOS, so here are some of those benchmarks.

• Applications

  • Furius ISO Mount Review – An Easy-to-Use Image Mounting App

    Furius ISO Mount is an application that allows users to mount a large number of images in their operating systems with minimal effort. It’s designed to be used by beginners and experts alike, although the need for such apps has diminished.

  • Cockpit 0.82 Released

    In Cockpit we run thousands of integration tests per day against pull requests and git master. Each test brings up up Cockpit in a full operating system VM, and hammers on it in some way. Without these tests it’s impossible to validate that Cockpit actually works.

  • PulseAudio 7.1 is out

    Thanks to everyone who contributed with bug reports and testing. What isn’t generally visible is that a lot of this happens behind the scenes downstream on distribution bug trackers, IRC, and so forth.

  • PyRoom Review – A Surprisingly Fun Distraction-Free Text Editor

    PyRoom is the kind of application that you don’t ever hear people talking about, but that is completely surprising once you open it. It’s a distraction-free text editor that allows writers to focus on the writing and less on anything else.

  • PulseAudio 7.1 Released With Better Xonar Sound Card Support

  • PulseAudio 7.1 Sound Server Released with Better Support for Xonar Cards

    Arun Raghavan from the PulseAudio project has had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of the first point release of the PulseAudio 7 open-source sound server.

  • GStreamer 1.6.1 Open Source Multimedia Framework Has Numerous Improvements

    The developers of the open source GStreamer multimedia framework have announced a few hours ago the release and immediate availability for download of the first maintenance version of the GStreamer 1.6 series.

  • denemo @ Savannah: Version 2.0 is out

  • FreeIPMI 1.4.11 Released

  • MPV 0.12.0 Video Player Changes the Default Format for youtube-dl, Supports Wayland

    The developers of the open source, MPlayer-based MPV video player software have announced the release and immediate availability for download of version 0.12.0.

  • Proprietary

    • Veeam Announces Back Up and Replication Support for Linux Machines

      If you are a systems administrator and you are tasked with ensuring your systems have a backup and replication process, Veeam is likely in your arsenal of tools.

    • Vivaldi Web Browser Gets Halloween Release, Improves Tabs Unstacking on Restart

      The Vivaldi developers, through Olafur Arnason and Ruarí Ødegaard, have announced the release of two consecutive Snapshots of the upcoming Vivaldi web browser for all supported operating systems.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • The top 6 new guides for working with OpenStack

    • Keeping emails as text files: 2 scripts

    • How To Install XAMPP Stack On Ubuntu 15.10

    • How to “uninstall” Linux or delete Linux partitions from Windows

    • GPT and MBR manual disk partitioning guide for Ubuntu 15.10

    • How to dual-boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 15.10 on two hard drives

    • How to enable Khmer language input method with ibus-typing-booster in Fedora 22/23

    • a tiling region manager for the console

    • type folding in guile

    • HDMI presentation setup on Linux, Part II: problems and tips

    • An Introduction to Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW)

    • 15 Useful Linux and Unix Tape Managements Commands For Sysadmins

    • Ncdu a NCurses Based Disk Usage Analyzer and Tracker

    • Install Zurmo CRM with Apache, MySQL and PHP on an Ubuntu VPS

    • Samba Server installation on Ubuntu 15.10

  • Wine or Emulation

    • https://www.winehq.org/announce/1.7.54

      What’s new in this release (see below for details):
      – Implementation of the TransmitFile function.
      – More implementation of the Web Services DLL.
      – Improved video decoding.
      – Alternative for the deprecated prelink tool.
      – Major Turkish translation update.
      – Various bug fixes.

    • Wine 1.7.54 Is Out with Better Video Decoding, Photoshop CS6 Improvements

      Alexandre Julliard announced earlier today, October 30, the immediate availability for download and testing of a new development version of the Wine software that lets users run Windows apps and games on any GNU/Linux operating system.

    • Wine 1.7.54 Has Improved Video Decoding, TransmitFile, More Web Services

      Wine 1.7.54 was released this morning as the latest bi-weekly Wine development release.

      Wine 1.7.54 offers improved video decoding, an implementation of the TransmitFile function, more of the Web Services DLL has been implemented, and more.

  • Games

    • Borderlands 2 & Borderlands The Pre-Sequel Updated

      For Linux gamers, you can now set extra mouse buttons to do things, which is apparently a big thing (I never use mine).

    • Humble Weekly Bundle: Day of the Devs Arrives with Six Linux Games

      A new Humble Weekly Bundle has been released, and it’s called Day of the Devs. With one exception, all the games that have been made available also come with Linux support.

    • Want To Be A Fisherman? Fishing Planet Is Planning A Linux Release

      Not the news I expected to hit my inbox this week. Fishing Planet an online fishing game aimed at realism is heading to Linux.

    • Puzzle Platformer ‘Adventures Of Shuggy’ Released For Linux On Steam

      The game was ported to Linux in time for the Halloween sale on Steam and is a bargain for fans of puzzle platformers.

    • The Park, A Really Creepy Looking Game Looks Set For A Linux Version

    • Favorite Halloween games, the smallest C64 emulator, and more open gaming news

    • Vendetta Online 3D Space Combat Game Gets Halloween Release with Many Android Fixes

      Guild Software thought that it will be nice for its Vendetta Online players to receive a new double update of the game, so that they don’t get bored on Halloween night.

      Guild Software thought that it will be nice for its Vendetta Online players to receive a new double update of the game, so that they don’t get bored on Halloween night.

    • City Builder ‘Banished’ May See A Linux Release Soon

    • The Linux Version Of Moebius: Empire Rising Hasn’t Been Forgotten

      One of the things I do here is contact developers who promised a Linux version of a game which hasn’t yet surfaced, and the latest user request for me to check was Moebius: Empire Rising. It took a while to get a response on it, but they did kindly reply and allow me to publish their answer.

    • The Gaming Paradox: There just aren’t enough Free and Open Source video games

      On the flip-side, there are companies like Valve (with Steam) and Nvidia (with their Shield line) that are enabling some amazing, but proprietary, games to come to Linux (I still haven’t managed to make myself write it as “GNU/Linux”… I still think that looks goofy as a name). All of which lets me feel a bit better about playing these closed games.

      By buying games written for, and running on, a Free Software platform… I am helping to encourage further development, testing, and usage of that platform. Which is good.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Cinnamon 2.8 to Be Officially Unveiled Soon, Cinnamon 2.8.2 Available for Download

    After introducing the first maintenance version of the soon-to-be-released Cinnamon 2.8 desktop environment, the most anticipated release of Cinnamon, Clement Lefebvre presents the second point release.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Frameworks keeps proving that KDE project was right

      Some time ago KDE project bet on the separation of base libs, on somehing called frameworks, that create a set of libraries to be capable to be used for any other software project.

    • Free Software Contributions in October 2015

      This month began with a super KDE Sprint for KDevelop and Kate. I’ve mentioned the things I did and learned in my previous blog post.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME 3.19.1 released

      Hi GNOMErs!

      The development of the next GNOME release, 3.20, has started, and the
      first development release, 3.19.1, is now available.

    • GNOME 3.20 Development Has Started, First Milestone Available for Download Now

      The GNOME developers are working around the clock to implement the most awesome GNU/Linux technologies in their highly acclaimed open-source desktop environment used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems by default.

    • GNOME’s Builder IDE Is Working On Some Big Improvements

      Christian Hergert has shared a blog post with some of his plans for what he hopes to accomplish during the GNOME 3.20 cycle with regard to his GNOME Builder integrated development environment.

      GNOME Builder continues to be to GNOME as KDevelop is to KDE. GNOME Builder so far has supported features like extensive inline code completion, quick file access, code assistance, integrated GNOME/GTK document viewing, live markdown previews, and many other features. If you are not familiar with the current state of GNOME Builder, see the GNOME Wiki.

    • GNOME 3.19.1 Already Baking More Wayland Fixes

    • GNOME 3.19.1 Released As First Step Toward GNOME 3.20

      Javier Jardón announced the release of GNOME 3.19.1 today as the first development release aiming toward GNOME 3.20.

    • Builder 3.20 development underway

      I’ve been busy working on the plumbing for what will become Builder 3.20. We have a really ambitious cycle ahead of us, so getting these core changes in place as soon as possible will help give us time to stabilize.

• Distributions

  • 5 Most Beginner Friendly Linux Distributions

  • Reviews

    • BackBox Takes Its Security Tools Seriously

      You can use BackBox as your main Linux distro and do nothing more involved that run its security envelop to harden your immediate computing environment and surf the Web with anonymity.

      You can use BackBox more productively to dig deep into your network to sniff out security risks and lock down your connectivity and data. BackBox’s security tools are professional class.

    • Pinguy Builder Review – Build Your Own Ubuntu OS

      Pinguy Builder is a very useful app that can be used by anyone to create an Ubuntu Live CD from scratch or to back up an existing Ubuntu installation. The process should work with all the other Ubuntu-based distributions.

  • New Releases

    • Rockstor 3.8-9 NAS Solution Has Better Active Directory Integration, S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring

      Suman Chakravartula has had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia about the immediate availability for download of the Fedora-based Rockstor 3.8-9 Linux operating system, known as an open-source, powerful and smart NAS (Network-attached storage) solution.

  • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • GParted 0.24.0-2 Screenshot Tour

    • SystemRescueCd 4.6.1 Screenshot Tour

  • Gentoo Family

    • Sabayon 15.11

      Sabayon 15.11 is a modern and easy to use Linux distribution based on Gentoo, following an extreme, yet reliable, rolling release model.

      This is a monthly release generated, tested and published to mirrors by our build-servers containing the latest and greatest collection of software available in the Entropy repositories.
      The Change-log files related to this release are available on our mirrors.

    • Gentoo-Based Sabayon 15.11 Linux Distro Introduces the Sabayon Server Edition

      The Sabayon developers are happy to announce the release of their monthly rolling ISO images, dubbed Sabayon 15.11, which include all the updates that have been released during the month of October 2015.

  • Arch Family

    • Twitch’s latest insane adventure: Installing Linux

      Twitch playing Pokémon was easy mode. Tomorrow, Twitch viewers will be invited to do something altogether more challenging: install Arch Linux. Using the same Twitch chat-driven concept as the collaborative Pokémon playthrough, anyone will be able to enter commands and control the installation process.

    • Twitch is trying to install Arch Linux

    • Twitch users will attempt to install Linux together

    • Twitch viewers are going to try and install Linux

    • Delightfully Horrible Idea: Twitch Installs Linux

    • Twitch’s next live community challenge: install Arch Linux

    • Twitch Users Prepare for the Biggest Collaborative Arch Linux Installation Ever

    • Up For A Challenge? Twitch Users Will Try To Install Arch Linux Together

  • Ballnux/SUSE

    • openSUSE Leap 42.1 Launches November 4, Here’s What’s New

      Now that the Release Candidate of the forthcoming openSUSE Leap 42.1 GNU/Linux operating system was made available for download and testing during the last two weeks, the time has come to take a look at Leap’s most prominent features.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Why systemd is a practical tool for sys admins

      I met Alison Chaiken at LinuxCon 2010 in Boston, not long after she joined Nokia as a Meego technical consultant. A few months later, I interviewed her about her role at Nokia and her predictions about where open source technology was headed in 2011. She predicted an increasing role for cameras and microphones in mobile. “Cameras and microphones are used deliberately to take photos and record voice commands, but in the future they will be always on, gathering ambient data about the environment of users on the go,” she said.

      These days Alison works on automotive Linux systems programming at Mentor Graphics’ Embedded Software Division, and she spends a lot of time working with, contributing to, and speaking about systemd. She’ll be leading a training session, systemd, the Next-Generation Linux System Manager, at LISA15 in Washington D.C. on November 9. In this interview, she makes another prediction—that sys admins will enjoy using systemd.

    • Citrix collaborates with Red Hat

      Multinational software company, Citrix, has partnered with open source company, Red Hat, on new product integrations for building OpenStack Clouds. As part of the collaboration, Citrix unveiled the integration and certification of its application delivery controller, NetScaler, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

      Citrix said, in a statement, that this partnership will enable customers to assemble their Cloud infrastructure using components from Citrix and Red Hat for the first time.

    • Red Hat to Acquire It Automation Leader Ansible

      Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ansible, Inc., a provider of powerful IT automation solutions designed to help enterprises move toward frictionless IT.

    • $0.31 EPS Expected for Red Hat This Quarter (NYSE:RHT)

      Wall Street brokerages expect that Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) will post $0.31 earnings per share for the current quarter, according to Zacks Investment Research. Nine analysts have provided estimates for Red Hat’s earnings. The highest EPS estimate is $0.32 and the lowest is $0.30. Red Hat posted earnings of $0.30 per share in the same quarter last year, which suggests a positive year-over-year growth rate of 3.3%. The firm is expected to issue its next earnings results on Thursday, December 17th.

    • Worth Watching Stocks: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI), salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)

    • Ceph community creates board to drive open source storage software

      The Ceph Community, an open-source object and file cloud storage stack, has formed an advisory board that will work in governance with the community.

      The Ceph Advisory Board will assist the community in driving open-source software-defined storage technology, and in collaborating with the community’s technical and user committees.

    • Fedora

      • KDBUS Is Being Removed From Fedora, Could Be A While Before Being Mainlined

        In somewhat of an embarrassing move and indicating that KDBUS likely won’t be proposed for Linux 4.4, this in-kernel IPC mechanism is being temporarily stripped out of Fedora.

        Fedora developers added KDBUS to their Rawhide kernel this summer at the request of the systemd developers involved in KDBUS development. With systemd 221, the upstream developers also encouraged Linux distributions to begin shipping KDBUS even though it wasn’t part of the mainline kernel. This turned out to be a mistake.

      • C.H.I.P. flashing on Fedora

        You might have heard of the C.H.I.P., the 9$ computer. After contributing to their Kickstarter, and with no intent on hacking on more kernel code than is absolutely necessary, I requested the “final” devices, when chumps like me can read loads of docs and get accessories for it easily.

      • PHP version 5.6.15

      • Fedora 23 Is Now Cleared For Release

        While Fedora 23 failed its Go/No-Go meeting yesterday, at today’s meeting this next installment of Red Hat’s Fedora Linux was cleared to be released next week.

        Fedora 23 RC10 has been promoted to final at today’s meeting, per the notes.

        Fedora 23 will now be officially released next Tuesday, 3 November. Fedora 23 is in exceptional shape and comes with a variety of new features. I personally look forward to upgrading to Fedora 23 on my main production system once switching over to a Skylake ultrabook.

      • Fedora KDE Takes A Blow; Fedora 23 KDE Spin Is “Easily The Worst” They’ve Spun

        The Fedora KDE community has been dealt a blow today with one of the co-maintainers of the Fedora KDE packages resigning from those duties along with his roles relating to the Fedora KDE special interest group.

        Kevin Kofler, who has long been involved in KDE packaging for Fedora and advancing KDE on Fedora, he is stepping down from their KDE SIG and from co-maintaining all of the Qt/KDE packages he maintains for the distribution — except for the few packages he is the upstream maintainer of in the KDE world.

      • Fedora 23 a GO, KDE Not So Much

        Jan Kurik tonight announced that Fedora 23 is GO for release. An internal RC10 will be created and tested and if no major issues arise, it will be released as Fedora 23 next week. For KDE users it may not be a day for celebration, as Phoronix.com’s Michael Larabel reported today that a co-maintainer for KDE in Fedora said that upcoming version 23 is “easily the worse KDE spin we have ever released.” Yikes.

      • Changes To Look Forward To With Next Week’s Fedora 23

      • Fedora 23 Met By Another “No-Go” Today

      • F23 is Go! Plus, internships, Atomic job opening, a Fedora book, and … systemd total conversion.

      • Linux Voice looks back at Fedora Core 1

        Linux Voice magazine periodically releases older issues of their magazine under a CC-BY-SA license so the entire Linux community can read, share and use the articles they publish (they also donate 50% of their profits to the Free Software community).Today, they released Issue 12 of Linux Voice under the CC-BY-SA license, nine months after the release of the magazine back in February.

        Of particular interest to Fedora users is at the end of their Distro Hopper segment, they take a look at our first ever release — Fedora Core 1. While obviously a little dated, with the release of Fedora 23 so close, there is also a review of Fedora 21. The issue also features an interview with systemd developer Lennart Poettering.

      • Fedora 23 Reaches Gold, Launches on November 3

        The Red Hat developers have finally greenlit the launch of Fedora 23 and it looks like the new version will finally arrive on November 3, the date that was previously tracked.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Snapcraft Snappy Creator Tool for Ubuntu Snappy Core Gets Closer to ROS

          Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov announced the release of the fourth maintenance build of the snapcraft utility that can be used by anyone to easily create Snappy packages for the Ubuntu Snappy Core operating system.

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 Will Finally Display OTA Versions in System Settings

          On the last day of October, Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak sent in his daily email to inform us all about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the upcoming OTA-8 software update.

        • UbuCon Summit 2016 Preparations Begin, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Daily Builds Out Now

          Canonical’s David Planella sent in his bi-monthly report to inform us all about the last things that happened in the Ubuntu world. The report includes information about the work done by the Ubuntu Community Team during the last two weeks.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Solu is an adorable Linux PC that fits in your pocket, but at a cost

    Solu Machines recently launched a Kickstarter campaign with the hopes of releasing a completely new class of device. Dubbed the Solu, the company has prototyped a 4.5-inch cloud-powered computer with a peculiar square form factor. Its touchscreen display allows users to navigate the device with their fingers, like they would a smartphone or tablet.

  • Solu is an adorable Linux PC that fits in your pocket, but at a cost

    Solu Machines recently launched a Kickstarter campaign with the hopes of releasing a completely new class of device. Dubbed the Solu, the company has prototyped a 4.5-inch cloud-powered computer with a peculiar square form factor. Its touchscreen display allows users to navigate the device with their fingers, like they would a smartphone or tablet.

  • Solu is a touchscreen, cloud-connected mini PC for use at home and on the go (crowdfunding)

    Solu Machines is running a Kickstarter campaign for an unusual type of computer. The Solu is a mini PC that measures about 4.5 inches square and has a touchscreen display, so you can use it sort of like a mobile phone or tablet. But connect it to a monitor and keyboard and the Solu becomes a touchpad that you can use to interact with desktop on a bigger screen.

  • Fanless Pico-ITXe SBC runs Linux on quad-core Eden X4

    VIA’s “EPIA-E900” SBC uses VIA’s own Eden X4 processor, and debuts a reincarnated “Pico-ITXe” form-factor featuring MXM-based PCIe and multi-I/O expansion.

    VIA’s new EPIA-E900 single-board computer introduces a second generation of the Pico-ITXe form-factor that VIA demoed at an Embedded Systems Conference back in October 2008. Although this Pico-ITXe re-spin has the same name, it bears little resemblance to the now-defunct Pico-ITXe v1.0. While the original Pico-ITXe footprint measured 100 x 72mm and included self-stacking SUMIT expansion, today’s Pico-ITXe is 38mm longer and expands with a coplanar MXM slot that carries a collection of I/O interfaces plus PCI Express.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • First pictures of VLC running on Tizen, Coming Soon to the Tizen Store

        VLC is a cross platform open source media player that is created by the VideoLAN Project. It supports many different audio and video compression methods and file formats and Is regarded as one of the best and most versatile media players out there.

    • Android

      • Thoughts on the LG G Watch R Android smartwatch

        Back in March I was given an LG G Watch R, the first Android Wear smartwatch to have a full round display (the Moto 360 was earlier, but has a bit cut off the bottom of the actual display). I’d promised I’d get round to making some comments about it once I’d had it for a while and have failed to do so until now. Note that this is very much comments on the watch from a user point of view; I haven’t got to the point of trying to do any development or other hacking of it.

      • Meet the man behind CarPlay and Android Auto at GM

        That’s where people like GM’s Phil Abram come into play. Abram — who has stints at Sonos and Sony on his résumé — led the company’s adoption of CarPlay and Android Auto, which will eventually reach just about every vehicle GM sells in the US. He’s also coming off a connected car deployment in China after rolling out in Europe and North America, where LTE currently ships on 16 models.

      • Featured: Top 10 Best Android Games – November 2015

      • Unpatched, passcode-free smartphones. Yes, they’re everywhere

      • Google plans to merge Chrome OS and Android

      • Android to consume Chrome OS

      • Chrome OS + Android Reported To Combine In 2017

      • Chrome OS is not dead, insists Google veep in charge of Chrome OS

        ChromeOS is a stripped-down Gentoo-derived GNU/Linux operating system built using Chromium OS. At its simplest, it’s a browser as operating system.

      • Alphabet’s Google to Fold Chrome Operating System Into Android

      • How Android N Could Kill Chromebooks

      • Google planning to combine Chrome and Android systems

      • Why Google Tapped Android Over Chrome as Its Marquee OS

      • Android only needs to steal one feature from Chrome OS

      • Google denies that it will fold Chrome OS into Android

      • Android + Chrome = New Single Operating System

      • Report: Google’s Android, Chrome OS to Merge

      • Google is merging Chrome OS into an Android platform for PC

      • Google will reportedly merge Android and Chrome OS in 2017

      • Guy in Charge of Chrome Says Google Isn’t Killing Chrome OS After All

      • Senior exec says Alphabet remains ‘committed’ to Chrome OS

      • Google didn’t just kill Chrome OS, but an Android merger seems likely

      • Google working on Android laptops, CEO Pichai says Chromebooks will not die

      • Google to merge Chrome OS into Android

      • Android and Chrome OS to Be Merged, but Continue to Exist Standalone: Reports

      • Google Chrome OS to be merged with Android, says report

      • The death of Google Chrome: Popular laptop operating system ‘being folded into Android’

      • Ding-dong, Chrome OS is dead. Android to lead Google’s shiny future

      • Google to combine Chrome and Android; new OS in 2017: Report

      • Google said to merge Chrome OS and Android

      • Google’s Lack Of Product Isolation Would Support A Chrome OS And Android Merge

      • Google is ‘very committed’ to Chrome OS after Android merger reports

      • Google said to blend Chrome operating system into Android mobile

      • Google is merging Android and Chrome OS to launch a new unified OS: Report

      • Is it time for Google to merge Chrome OS into Android?

      • Google’s mobile quest may lead to Android, Chrome merger

      • Google plans to combine Chrome and Android, report says

      • Google has a big change in store for Chrome

      • Google will merge Android and Chrome OS by 2017: report

      • Alphabet to differ from Apple with single operating system, sources say

      • Google, Mimicking Microsoft for Once, Brings Us One Step Closer to Universal Operating Systems

      • Google plans to merge Chrome OS and Android, report says

      • Google Chrome OS to be rolled into Android

      • Google is reportedly merging Chrome OS with Android

      • WSJ: Google Is Feeding Chrome OS to Android

      • Android and Chrome OS may be combined as early as next year

      • Google Chrome OS to be merged with Android

      • Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be ‘folded into Android’

      • Mad Genius Coaxes Android Wear Into Running Nintendo 64 And PlayStation Portable Game Emulators

        Before we start, let’s get one thing out of the way: there’s no practical application for the apps demonstrated below, at least not in the way they’re being used. You can’t seriously play a game meant for a 20-button controller on a screen smaller than two inches across, even if your fingers are tiny enough to hit the virtual buttons. This is the work of an enthusiast gamer and Android fan. It doesn’t have to make sense.

      • 8 obscure Android features and what they do

        Two Android devices, using the very same build of the OS, can be quite different in reality if they’re made by different manufacturers. So much so that it’s not rare for (uninitiated) friends and family members to ask us whether a heavily skinned device is an Android device. It’s kind of weird.

      • Android device updates: Google posts Marshmallow factory images for Nexus 6P and 5X

        This week, the Nexus 6P and 5X received a substantial new feature: Factory images. Factory images are a great failsafe to have with a Nexus device, just in case you need to restore it back to its original state if catastrophe strikes.

        This update was one of the few highlights in a rather slow week of updates in Android Land. Of course, if Android really does swallow up Chrome, we can’t wait to add a whole list of Android-powered PCs to this weekly compilation.

      • 2016 Will be the Year of Android Auto

        Back at Google I/O in 2014, Google announced Android Auto. Their first step into the car – well other than their self-driving cars. The idea was to provide a seamless experience in terms of infotainment systems in our cars. Because let’s face it, the car makers suck at making infotainment systems. However, Google also wanted that data (reports have stated that Google wants basically an OBD-II dump, while others have stated that it’s just whether the car is in park, what the headlights are doing, etc). After all, Google collects data about everything.

      • The Importance of Open Source in Root

        Root. It’s a word we’re mostly familiar with here. Despite the ever-increasing attempts by Google to make it harder to achieve and use (and most likely this will continue, with the predicted convergence of the heavily locked-down ChromeOS and Android platforms), rooting remains incredibly popular on XDA.

      • Chainfire Experiment Achieves Android Root Without Touching The /System Partition

      • Chainfire cooks up “systemless” Marshmallow root

Free Software/Open Source

• Using open source in the enterprise – 11 CIOs embracing free and open source software

  Open source enterprise use cases appear to be on the rise, at least anecdotally, with an increasing number of CIOs, IT directors and Chief Technology Officers telling CIO UK about investigating and adopting free and open source alternatives to proprietary software as they seek to gain freedom and flexibility, cut costs, increase agility, improve code quality and avoid vendor lock-in.

  UK businesses it seems have also finally conquered their “irrational fears” of open source and security fears are also on the wane, reports have suggested.

  The most recent studies by the non-profit Linux Foundation in its Enterprise End User Trends reports have revealed year on year increases in Linux deployments over the last four years, with the open operating system seeing particular growth as a platform for cloud computing.

• Neo4j Launches Open Source Graph Query Language openCypher

  Neo4j graph NoSQL database team launches open source graph query language called openCypher. Neo Technology, the company behind the graph database, announced last week at GraphConnect Conference, the launch of the open source project that will be available to technology providers as a common language for querying graph data.

• Tor Project launches encrypted anonymous chat app to the public

  The Tor Project has launched the beta version of Tor Messenger, an easy-to-use encrypted message client for those concerned about their privacy and potential surveillance.

• Keeping Open Source Code Safe: 5 Tips for the Enterprise

  Many organizations use static analysis security testing (SAST) and dynamic analysis security testing (DAST) for monitoring, but while these tools are excellent for finding bugs in code written by internal developers, they are not effective in detecting known open source vulnerabilities in application code. In fact, open source vulnerabilities are far too complex to be found by these automated tools.

• Events

  • OpenStack Foundation Expands Its Efforts at Tokyo Summit

    Alan Clark, chairman of the board at the OpenStack Foundation, discusses the progress made at the OpenStack Summit this week.

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Chromium Browser Support On Wayland Continues To Be Developed

    • Gallium3D VA Improvements Coming To Help Chromium GStreamer Playback

      Earlier this year Samsung’s Julien Isorce posted VA-API support for Nouveau to better video acceleration for this open-source NVIDIA driver. Since then he’s been working on some Gallium3D VA improvements to benefit the use-case of Chromium’s GStreamer back-end.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Why Contributing to OpenStack Makes Sense for Vendors

    At the OpenStack Summit here, there have been a number of common themes and questions that keep surfacing. Time and again panels are discussing why contributions matter and how Amazon is or isn’t the competition.

    One such panel session was titled “The OpenStack Orchestra: The Next Wave of OpenStack Specialist Startups,” and included executives from Mirantis, Tesora, SwiftStack and PLUMgrid.

  • OpenStack Tokyo: The Ascendance of Cloud Networking

    Networking has always been a part of the open source OpenStack cloud platform, but it has never been more popular, or as exciting as it is now. At the OpenStack Summit in Tokyo, one of the hottest topics is networking, as organizations of all sizes turn to the cloud for Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization capabilities.

  • Why HP Helion public cloud went down for the count

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 5.1 to launch bug hunting session

    LibreOffice 5.1 Alpha has launched, ready for the weekend. Enthusiasts and community members will be able to grab the software and partake in the first Bug Hunting Session from Friday October 30th to Sunday November 1st. The final build of LibreOffice 5.1 is expected to launch in February next year.

• BSD

  • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Henning Brauer

    I’m Henning, not 20 any more, OpenBSD developer since 2002. I architected & wrote large parts of pf, started, architected and wrote large parts of bgpd and ntpd. The imsg & privsep framework I wrote for bgpd is in almost all newer OpenBSD daemons. I also worked a lot in the network stack, including many redesigns. One of the last bigger projects I did was the replacement of the queueing subsystem.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNU Hurd 0.7 & GNU Mach 1.6 Released

    Stepping ahead of the Linux 4.3 release is a Halloween release of GNU Hurd 0.7, GNU Mach 1.6, and GNU MIG 1.6.

    GNU Hurd 0.7 improves the node cache for the EXT2 file-system code (ext2fs), improves the native fakeroot tool, provides a new rpcscan utility, fixes a long-standing synchronization issue with the file-system translators and other components, and the Hurd code has been ported to work with newer GCC versions and libc.

  • Library of Congress issues limited exemptions to DMCA anti-circumvention provisions but leaves users without full control over their own computing

    The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains provisions penalizing the circumvention of “technological protection measures”. These measures are digital jails denying users access to the software and other digital works they possess, preventing them from examining or changing the software on their devices. While such measures are nominally meant to protect copyrighted works, in reality they function as unacceptable restrictions on computer user freedom. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) opposes such Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems. The FSF further opposes the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, and demands that Congress repeal those provisions. Other countries with similar laws should follow suit.

    Every three years, the Library of Congress reviews proposals granting limited exemptions from the DMCA’s broad ban on users controlling the software and data on devices encumbered with DRM. This flawed process is meant to lessen the DMCA’s harm by giving user rights advocates an opportunity to request exemptions allowing circumvention in particular cases. Even when such petitions succeed, the resulting exemptions last only three years, meaning that advocates must repeatedly fight to retain the limited ground they won.

• Licensing

  • How On-premise, Open Source and SaaS Ecommerce Technologies Handle PCI Compliance –– And How Much It Costs You

    Each approach strikes a different balance between your costs, benefits and PCI risks and workload. The table sums up the highlights, the details of which I’ll explain further.

  • 7 Tips for Conducting Effective Cybersecurity Due Diligence in M&A Transactions

  • QUANTIL adds 30 PCI compliant POPs to their global content delivery network

• Openness/Sharing

  • EU funds supercomputer, Google aids refugees, and more news

  • PrefabNZ launches open-source design competition

  • PrefabNZ launches open-source design competition

  • OGP Summit award for Croatia’s eCitizen portal

    Croatia’s e-Građani (eCitizens) project was declared the best European eGovernment services project, in an awards ceremony at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit 2015 in Mexico on Wednesday.

  • Open Access/Content

    • Harvard Law Launches Project To Put Every Court Decision Online For Free

      On Thursday, Harvard Law School announced its Free the Law project, teaming up with a company called Ravel to scan all federal court decisions and all state court decisions, and then place them all online for free. This is pretty huge. While some courts now release most decisions as freely available PDFs, many federal courts still have them hidden behind the ridiculous PACER system, and state court decisions are totally hit or miss. And, of course, tons of historical cases are completely buried. While there are some giant companies like Westlaw and LexisNexis that provide lawyers access to decisions, those cost a ton — and the public is left out.

    • U.S. Department Of Education Launches Campaign To Encourage Schools To #GoOpen With Educational Resources

    • Dept. of Ed. Proposes Making Federally Funded Resources Free

      The Department of Education has launched #GoOpen, a campaign to encourage schools to use open educational resources (OER). To add force to the hashtag, the Department proposed new regulation that any tool developed with its federal grant funds will be required to have an open license, would which allow schools to use and modify those resources for free.

    • Open Ed. Resources Would Get Boost Under Education Department Proposal

  • Open Hardware

    • This laptop is open source from the hardware up

      A pair of engineers in Singapore, Andrew “Bunny” Huang and Sean Cross, have developed a working laptop which was designed to be completely open sourced, with no proprietary drivers or software of any kind. The Novena laptop is powered by a Cortex A9 and an FPGA and runs Debian, even communications are handled by a software-defined radio board. This is more of a proof of concept than a marketable machine but the links at The Register will take you to the details on how you could build one yourself. Even the bezel is open source and modifiable, it is a laptop with an upgradable screen!

    • How to build a totally open computer from the CPU to the desktop

• Programming

  • PHP 7.0 RC6 Released Ahead Of PHP 7.0 Final On 12 November

    PHP 7.0 RC6 was released today for what may be the final release candidate ahead of PHP 7.0.0′s official premiere in two weeks.

  • Ceylon 1.2 Brings New Language Features

    Ceylon, the programming language based on Java and developed at Red Hat, is out with a new version of this programming language that can be lowered down into JavaScript.

  • PyPy 4.0.0 Released – A Jit with SIMD Vectorization and More

    We’re pleased and proud to unleash PyPy 4.0.0, a major update of the PyPy python 2.7.10 compatible interpreter with a Just In Time compiler. We have improved warmup time and memory overhead used for tracing, added vectorization for numpy and general loops where possible on x86 hardware (disabled by default), refactored rough edges in rpython, and increased functionality of numpy.

  • PyPy 4.0 Released For Speedy Python

    PyPy 4.0.0 was released today as a major update for this Python 2.7 interpreter and JIT compiler.

Leftovers

• The Latest: Russians search Metrojet office after crash

• Russian airliner with over 200 on-board crashes in Sinai, Egypt PM says

  CAIRO: Egypt confirmed on Saturday that a Russian passenger plan had crashed in central Sinai.

  A statement from the prime minister’s office said Sherif Ismail had formed a cabinet level crisis committee to deal with the crash.

  The plane, travelling from the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh to the Russian city of St Petersburg, disappeared from radar screens in Cypriot airspace, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, citing a Russian aviation authority source.

  The source said the aircraft was an Airbus A-321 jet, had 224 passengers and crew on board, and was operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia.

• Dennis Ritchie Day

  Sunday, October 16 was declared Steve Jobs Day by California’s Governor Brown. I admire Brown for taking a step to recognize Jobs’ extraordinary contributions, but I couldn’t help be struck by Rob Pike’s comments on the death of Dennis Ritchie a few weeks after Steve Jobs.

• Do one thing…

  I’ve been lamenting the demise of the Unix philosophy: tools should do one thing, and do it well.

• The evils of top-posting…

  It takes a little longer, but it’s so much nicer if you can read an email thread from top to bottom rather than having to scroll to the bottom, read, scroll backward, read, scroll backward, read, etc. Yes, it’s the easiest way to reply to a message, but it’s an enemy of comprehension for recipients.

• Security

  • Video: Lauri Love explains significance of TalkTalk hack for BBC Newsnight

    Lauri Love made an appearance on the BBC flagship current affairs programme Newsnight on Friday 23 October, explaining the significance of a widely publicised hack of telecoms provider TalkTalk, which has led to the disclosure of personal information of millions of subscribers.

  • 000webhost hacked, 13 million customers exposed

    Free website hosting service 000webhost has suffered a data breach which has placed the service’s security practices under scrutiny.

    000webhost is a free web hosting service which supports both PHP and MySQL, catering for millions of users worldwide. On Wednesday, the firm told users in a Facebook message that the company had suffered a databreach on its main server.

  • Still fuming over HTTPS mishap, Google makes Symantec an offer it can’t refuse

    Google has given Symantec an offer it can’t refuse: give a thorough accounting of its ailing certificate authority process or risk having the world’s most popular browser—Chrome—issue scary warnings when end users visit HTTPS-protected websites that use Symantec credentials.

    The ultimatum, made in a blog post published Wednesday afternoon, came five weeks after Symantec fired an undisclosed number of employees caught issuing unauthorized transport layer security certificates. The mis-issued certificates made it possible for the holders to impersonate HTTPS-protected Google webpages.

  • Strengthening Diffie-Hellman in SSH and TLS

    Conjecture on cracked primes for the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric algorithm is in recent news, suggesting that several nations have broken primes in common use and can read all traffic…

  • TrustedSec Releases TAP – An Open Source Attack Platform

    While the software was designed to be run on an Intel NUC using Linux (or similar device), it could conceivably be run on other platforms and setups. The code is open, after all, and there for the taking. In any case, here are the specs described by the company:

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Syrian sniper: US TOW missiles transform CIA-backed Syria rebels into ace marksmen in the fight against Assad

    Syrian rebels wielding US-made anti-tank missiles have become YouTube war heroes after a surge in successful attacks on forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad.

    Use of the BGM-71 TOW missiles – which cost $50,000 a piece – is up over 850% in October with the American-made weapons responsible for the destruction of scores of Syrian army tanks. Charles Lister, a Syrian expert at the Brookings Institute, said there had been 82 uses of the missiles as of 20 October up from 13 in September.

  • The CIA’s Secret Himalayan Hotel for Tibetan Guerillas

    It’s been 43 years since the CIA cut off support to the Tibetan guerillas that the agency trained and armed to fight a covert war against China. Yet, a monument to the CIA’s secret war in Tibet is still standing in Pokhara, Nepal.

    The former Hotel Mount Annapurna building sits on a quiet side street off the Pokhara airport. Established in 1972 with CIA funds, the hotel was meant to give former Tibetan resistance fighters based in Nepal’s nearby Mustang region a livelihood and a future as they laid down their arms and transitioned to life as refugees.

  • The World Cracks Down on Social Media

    In particular, it is becoming more common for countries to punish people who express sensitive opinions on social media and in other forums. Perhaps the most high-profile example of the past year occurred in March, following the death of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Five days after Lee died, a sixteen-year-old named Amos Yee tweeted mild criticism of the former Prime Minister and linked to an eight-and-a-half-minute YouTube clip in which he condemned Lee as a “horrible person” whose legacy was to make people afraid to criticize him. Yee appears to have had a point, because, days later, the police arrested him, charging him with having violated Singapore’s Harassment Act, which restricts “threatening, abusive, or insulting communication.”

  • CIA Seeks to Destabilize Latin America – Brazilian Lawmaker

    According to a Brazilian lawmaker, US Central Intelligence Agency is active in several Latin American countries, trying to destabilize the situation there.

  • Days Before Runaway Military Blimp, Another Blimp Accident in Kabul Killed Five

    The runaway military surveillance blimp that came loose from an Army base in Maryland on Wednesday dragged its torn tether through power lines in two Pennsylvania counties before crashing into the woods.

    But at least no one died.

    The same can’t be said of a recent accident involving a U.S. military blimp in Kabul that constantly hovers over the Afghan capital. (See The Above, a short documentary from The Intercept’s Field of Vision project, also embedded below.)

    On Oct. 11, a British military helicopter was coming in for a landing at NATO headquarters, where the blimp is moored. According to an eyewitness who spoke to the BBC, the helicopter hit the tether, which then wrapped itself around the rotors. The helicopter crashed, killing five people — two U.S. service members, two British service members, and a French contract civilian — and injuring five more.

  • Transparency International: Mideast and North African Military Corruption “Critical”

    WESTERN NATIONS, primarily the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, have helped increase corruption among Middle Eastern and North African states by selling them vast quantities of weapons with little oversight, according to a new report by Transparency International. The resultant corruption, the report says, has worsened the region’s many conflicts, weakened military coherency, boosted extremism, and “formed a narrative for violent extremist groups.”

  • Media Don’t Call Trump on Claim to Have Opposed Iraq Invasion ‘Back in 2004’

    Donald Trump has claimed many, many times—on TV, at campaign stops and at candidate debates—that he opposed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq in real time. “You know, I was the one, and I said it very strongly, and you know this, and it was reported by everybody, because unfortunately I get a disproportionate amount of publicity,” Trump told CNN‘s Chris Cuomo (10/6/15). At the September debate (9/18/15), he said he could point to “25 different stories” about him being against the war before it started.

  • For Halloween, NY Post Dresses Up ‘Anarchist Plot’ Warning as Journalism

    A couple points before dissecting the journalistic efficacy of disseminating these vague, half-assed threats. Firstly, it’s odd that the New York Post is and continues to be the sole source of this bulletin. The FBI typically posts major threats on its website, but this one, according to the FBI press officer FAIR contacted, was “meant for law enforcement and not to be disseminated.”

• Transparency Reporting

  • Obama drawn into Clinton email controversy

    President Barack Obama found himself drawn into Hillary Clinton’s email controversy Friday as the White House acknowledged the State Department is withholding a set of messages Obama and Clinton exchanged during her four years as secretary of state.

    As the State Department made public a new batch of more than 7,200 pages of Clinton’s emails, officials stressed that the White House was not asserting executive privilege over the Obama-Clinton exchanges but insisting that they be treated as presidential records, which are normally not available to the public until between five and 12 years after a president leaves office.

• Finance

  • Rubio’s Welfare Idea Seems Newer If You’re Unaware It Was Implemented 20 Years Ago

    We all know how hard it is for folks like New York Times columnist David Brooks, living in a remote corner of Washington, to find out about changes in public policy. Therefore it wasn’t surprising to see him praise Marco Rubio, Brooks’ favored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, for a welfare reform proposal that was put in place almost 20 years ago.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • CIA watchdog criticizes agency’s dealings with Hollywood [Ed: no surprise here]

    The CIA’s internal watchdog has criticized the spy agency for introducing Hollywood representatives to undercover officers and allegedly being careless in talking to them about agency secrets.

    In a 20-page report prepared in 2012 and stamped “secret,” the spy agency’s Inspector General said that CIA employees who had contact with Hollywood representatives had “not always complied” with agency regulations intended to stop leaks of classified information.

    The report was made public on Wednesday by Judicial Watch, a conservative group which said it obtained the document under the Freedom of Information Act.

  • Rolling back corporate capture will take more than EU lobby transparency

    If Europe is serious about regulating the car industry and protecting public health and the climate, it needs to stand up to the car lobby rather than allowing those resisting regulation to write it.

  • Ted Cruz declares war on ‘liberal media’ — so I declare war on Ted Cruz

    I am sorry to have to do this, but as a representative of the mainstream media, I hereby declare war on GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz.

    In the media’s defense, Cruz started it. Literally.

    I received a fundraising email from him today that said, “I am declaring war on the liberal media.” Liberal media and mainstream media are synonymous, generally defined by Republicans as “any media outlet that presents facts that prove we’re lying.”

  • Hannity Boasts That GOP Campaigns Are Asking Him “Would You Be Available” To Moderate Debates

  • Kochs Hit the Airwaves in Support of WI Corruption Measures

    The Koch-backed measures to eviscerate Wisconsin’s limits on money in elections and neuter the state’s election watchdog hit a stumbling block in the state senate this week, with a handful of Republican senators expressing concern that the measures go too far.

• Censorship

  • Why the reference to ‘international law’ in the UK’s Ministerial Code matters

    Last week the UK’s Cabinet Office sought silently to remove the reference to “international law” from the Ministerial Code.

    The text had stated that there was an “overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations and to uphold the administration of justice and to protect the integrity of public life”. The new version states that there is an “overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life”.

  • Britain: flying the flag for censorship

    In debates about freedom of expression in the UK, a common refrain is ‘well, at least we’re not as bad as Over There’. Whether it’s France banning burqas, Poland prosecuting those who ‘insult Poland’, or half of Europe prosecuting Holocaust denial, we’ve usually been able to point to some more authoritarian, European neighbour to reassurre ourselves that we’re not as bad as all that. Well, it’s time we snapped out of it, and realised we’re no longer in a position to do this. The list of countries that are worse than us on free expression is rapidly diminishing.

  • Tor launches anti-censorship Messenger service

    A new chat tool has been launched in an effort to improve the security of online messaging.

    Tor Messenger allows users to chat over the Tor (The Onion Router) network in a way which hides the location of participants.

  • China Drafts Film Law to Ease Movie Licensing, Censorship

    China’s leaders have drafted the country’s first film law, which would ease the censorship process and be intended to boost movie production in the world’s second biggest movie market.

    China’s film market is heavy regulated, but, with no clear published guidelines, filmmakers are unsure what can pass censors or not.

  • China’s ‘world’s worst’ censorship affects Internet, Hollywood productions

    China’s heavy censorship of Hollywood films is not only affecting Chinese moviegoers, but also how American studios produce their films, and Beijing’s Internet censorship was ranked the world’s worst, according to a U.S. watchdog organization.

  • China’s social-media censors quicker than previously thought, Auer’s research reveals

    A new report co-authored by Bates Dean of Faculty Matthew Auer in this fall’s issue of the journal Index on Censorship pulls back the veil for the first time on the social media censorship surrounding Under the Dome.

  • Can China Perfect Internet Censorship?

    A number of circumvention tools designed to bypass the Firewall have been shut down in the past year, including projects such as Shadowsocks, whose developer was visited by the police. Outside of China, anti-censorship activists and developers have also been hit, with groups such as GreatFire.org suffering major DDoS attacks attributed to the Chinese government. Currently, China is in the process of finalizing a new Internet security law that will bolster Internet censorship and further strengthen information control within the country.

  • Photos of Peng Liyuan’s make-up fail met with censorship on Weibo

    While the British press were speculating as to the cause of Peng’s powdery complexion, netizens saw their photos vanish from the internet as censors stepped in to maintain the illusion of a gaffe free state visit.

    The photos were taken at a banquet held by the Lord Mayor of London in Xi Jinping’s honor which took place at Guildhall, London on Wednesday. The usually rather stylish Peng was seen with powdery white smears around her forehead, nose and upper lip.

  • Colorado Voices: Less censorship, more reading

    According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 311 reported challenges in 2014, with many going unreported. Some of the books on the list may serve as a surprise: “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, a picture book about a zookeeper’s account of two male penguins caring for a baby penguin; “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, written from a teenager’s perspective and covering such topics as substance abuse and sex; “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, which chronicles the friendship of two boys from Afghanistan, yet has violence and offensive language.

  • Ted Rall: Here’s How Media Censorship Works in The US

    In an authoritarian regime, nothing gets published or broadcast without state approval. I watched the inner workings of direct government control of the press during a visit to Turkmenistan. Every magazine and newspaper was run out of the same office. Many were edited by the same people, all wearing the same lapel pins, an image of the country’s then-dictator, Sapamurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov.

    [...]

    If NPR’s “Marketplace” has ever interviewed a communist about why capitalism sucks and should be replaced, I missed it. Biased? You betcha. Always. Inevitably.

    Here in the United States, censorship is usually self-directed. No one from the State Ministry of Propaganda calls The New York Times to tell them what’s fit to print. They make those decisions on their own. But those calls are informed by who those editors are — the elite schools from which they graduated (Columbia Journalism School), their class background (parents rich enough to send them to Columbia J-School), input from their friends and colleagues (other people whose parents are rich enough to send them to Columbia J-School). Who they are determines what makes it into print.

  • 150 filmmakers, critics say they will boycott Antalya festival until censorship is lifted

    Some 150 film professionals and institutions from Turkey, including documentary directors, critics and festival organizers, have announced that they will not be attending the Antalya International Film Festival until the festival’s management lifts its censorship of domestically produced documentaries.

  • Digital freedom body calls on Turkey to end Internet censorship ahead of polls

    Mobilizing for Digital Freedom has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister’s Office of Turkey to express their concerns about the censorship and restrictions being imposed on Turkish journalists and websites, calling on the Prime Ministry to end this censorship ahead of the Nov. 1 snap election.

    The letter includes the signatures of various human rights, media, and political organizations in Turkey and around the world. In the letter, Access states that they sent the letter to “request the cessation of online censorship of independent news organizations and journalists. We demand authorities refrain from imposing limitations on access to the Internet or specific online services and remind the government of its duty to protect the rights of people in Turkey to freely seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

  • Open Letter to the Government of Turkey on Internet Blocking and Free Expression

    We are writing to you before the November 1, 2015 general elections, to request the cessation of online censorship of independent news organizations and citizen journalists. We demand authorities refrain from imposing limitations on access to the Internet or specific online services and remind the government of its duty to protect the right of people in Turkey to freely seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

  • 150 filmmakers, critics to boycott Antalya festival until censorship is lifted

  • David Cameron promises law to force ISPs to censor a secret blacklist

    The UK Prime Minister has doubled down on his Great Firewall of Cameron, which is an arrangement whereby the UK ISPs “voluntarily” agreed to block websites that had been secretly ruled to be pornographic, unless customers specifically asked them not tp.

  • Commentary: Indonesians Should Be Able to Talk About 1965 Massacres Without Fear of Censorship

    The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival has cancelled events discussing the 1965 Indonesian massacres, after police threatened to revoke the festival permit.

  • Censorship Cloud Hangs Over 300 Ecuadorian TV, Radio Stations

    Over 300 radio and TV stations in Ecuador could disappear overnight, according to a warning issued by Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios on Wednesday, October 21.

    The Agency for Regulation and Control of Telecommunications (Arcotel) is currently reviewing hundreds of network licenses, and claims that the government agency that originally issued them was “not authorized” to do so.

    Arcotel’s list includes media outlets whose licenses were automatically renewed by the Telecommunications Superintendency, formerly known as Supertel, between 1995 and 1997.

  • Internet censorship will hurt Malaysia’s GDP, HRW warns

    Internet censorship will inevitably impact Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and discourage businesses from operating here, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today.

    HRW Asia Director Brad Adams added that research from China, known for its multiple bans on many popular websites like Facebook and Twitter, has shown that the move to stifle Internet freedom has affected the country’s monetary gains.

  • Whistleblower Accuses USDA of Censorship Over Anti-Pesticide Reports

    A top scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) filed a whistleblower complaint Wednesday that accuses the agency of harassment and retaliation for his work showing harmful effects on monarch butterflies from a class of widely used insecticides know as neonicotinoids, or neonics.

    [...]

    Since late March, I have been subjected to a sudden but escalating pattern of impediments and disruption of my scientific work, restraints on my ability to communicate with scientific colleagues, as well as the media and a growing professional toll that is making further scientific work in ARS untenable. This abrupt onset of actions undoubtedly appears to have been prompted by the scientific activities that are supposed to be specifically safeguarded and encouraged under the USDA Scientific Integrity Policy.

  • Bring on the fight for free expression

    This follows the European Parliament vote on net-neutrality regulations, which will ban the current voluntary agreement that the Government pressured Internet Service Providers into accepting, where they provide filters for the Internet and encourage customers to use them. Some of these filters are now switched on by default.

    We’ve said it before, and we will keep saying it: filters are flawed. They block lots of “good” websites and let through many “bad” ones (and anyway, who gets to decide the difference?) They apply equally to your seven-year old and your 17 year-old despite their different needs. They affect many more people than just children, and most housholds switch them off, as they just get in the way.

• Privacy

  • Libraries, Liberty, and The Onion Router

    Edward Snowden’s efforts to inform the American public just how far the NSA tick is dug in to the American information streams revealed that while the United States, with that pesky 1st Amendment, does not yet have something like China’s “Great Firewall” actively blocking access and dissemination of information that the government doesn’t like, what the US government does have is a pervasive, never-sleeping information Panopticon where everything every American (and as much of the entire world as they can reach) does online, or with their cell phone, is saved, supposedly “just in case”, and saved forever, while also being sifted for “key words” or phrases, you know, “just in case”.

  • sEuropean Union tells member states to protect Edward Snowden from U.S. extradition

    The future just got a bit brighter for Edward Snowden.

    The European Union called on its member states to protect the former NSA contractor, recommending in a close vote Thursday that states drop charges against the fugitive whistleblower and reject U.S. extradition requests.

    The 285-281 vote in the European Parliament suggested that states “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender.”

  • Police ‘to be given powers to view everyone’s entire internet history’

    Police are to be given the power to view everyone’s entire internet history in a new surveillance bill to be published next week, according to reports.

    The proposed legislation will make it a legal requirement for telecoms and internet service providers to retain all of the web browsing history for all customers for a period of 12 months, according to the Daily Telegraph.

    Authorities such as the police, intelligence services and the National Crime Agency would be able to access specific web addresses people had visited, but would need approval from a judge to view the content of websites, emails and social media messages.

  • Theresa May will refuse to allow judges to sign off spying warrants

    Theresa May will next week refuse to allow judges to sign off spying warrants after the government’s top lawyer warned they could paralyse the intelligence agencies.

    The major reform has been called for by civil liberty campaigners and backed by a top QC’s independent report.

    But The Sun can reveal that the Home Secretary has been told by the Attorney General that all judges’ spying decisions could be judicially reviewed under controversial human rights laws.

  • FBI Documents Reveal New Information on Baltimore Surveillance Flights

    The director of the FBI confirmed to Congress last week that the agency flew surveillance aircraft over Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore during the protests following the police killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. Today the ACLU is releasing FBI and FAA documents with new details about the Baltimore surveillance flights.

    The new internal documents, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, reveal that the government was doing more than just monitoring the situation with regular cameras. The FBI was using advanced technology like infrared and night-vision cameras, and it is holding on to surveillance video it recorded from the sky.

  • We Did It! 100,000 People Call on Obama to Support Strong Crypto

    Today, the 100,000th person signed our petition calling on President Obama to reject compelled backdoors in our communications.

    The campaign, hosted at SaveCrypto.org, uses the White House’s We the People API to feed signatures into a petition hosted on Obama’s preferred petition platform. The campaign was the work of over 40 nonprofits and tech companies, including Access Now, Fight for the Future, OpenMedia, Mozilla, Sum of Us, Twitter, Google, and DropBox. President Obama has promised to respond to any petition that gets 100,000 signatures within 30 days.

  • New Lords revolt looms over plans to allow police to view everyone’s internet browsing history

    Peers are preparing for a fresh showdown with the Government over plans to allow police to examine people’s online browsing histories. They are also concerned that the Government has rejected calls for judges, rather than ministers, to issue eavesdropping warrants.

    The moves, which come days after the House of Lords torpedoed George Osborne’s tax credit plans, reflect growing anxiety over the impact of a wide-ranging surveillance Bill to be published next week.

  • James Bond’s got a Licence to Shill: lobbying for the snooper’s charter

    Is there a tear in the spy fiction continuum? On Monday, the new James Bond movie Spectre premiered to the sort of five-star reviews normally reserved for subtitled documentaries about extraordinary rendition. On Wednesday the Times was given unprecedented access to GCHQ, which it ran, tie-in style, beneath the splash headline “For your eyes only”. And in a further coup for state-of-the-art news planning technology, next week sees the publication of the draft investigatory powers bill, with senior police officers demanding the right to view the web-browsing history of every internet user in the country.

    I don’t know who’s running this mutually masturbatorial PR campaign – my guess is a slightly disappointing nuclear publicist in the mould of Jonathan Pryce’s media baron in Tomorrow Never Dies. But I will of course withdraw that remark if they can produce a fourth nipple or a properly shaggable concubine with a sledgehammer single entendre name. Something like Snowden Asfaka.

  • UK surveillance bill will let cops access everybody’s web history

    SNOOPERS’ CHARTER VERSION 2.0, otherwise known as the Investigatory Powers Bill, could allow police to view the web browsing history of everyone in Britain.

    A report at The Times (paywalled) said that senior police officials have lobbied the government to force telecoms companies to retain data for 12 months that would reveal specific web addresses visited by customers.

    This could mean that, under the Investigatory Powers Bill that is expected to be introduced by home secretary Theresa May next week, ISPs will be required to retain customers’ web browsing histories for a year.

    Access to this data would then be granted to police, the National Crime Agency, intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs, according to the report. However, approval from a judge would be required to view the content of websites, emails and social media messages.

  • Law Enforcement: Traveling From Anywhere To Anywhere Is Suspicious Behavior

    Want to travel from anywhere to anywhere in the United States without being hassled by law enforcement officers? Good luck with that, citizen.

    USA Today’s Brad Heath pointed out an interesting footnote in an asset forfeiture filing that made the assertion that traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles is inherently suspicious. (One presumes the opposite is also true.)

  • Surveillance: would French socialist MEPs have anything to hide?

    French socialists have, once again, betrayed liberties to strenghen surveillance! Claude Moraes’ report has been adopted today by the European Parliament. This report was condemning mass surveillance and calling for an investigation of French surveillance laws. But thanks to the pressure exerted by French Socialist MEPs on their party, any mention of investigation into French laws has been erased.

  • After guilty plea, judge confused as to why prosecutors still want iPhone unlocked

    Federal prosecutors have said that they are moving forward in their attempt to compel Apple to unlock a seized iPhone 5S running iOS 7, even after the defendant in a felony drug case has now pleaded guilty.

    The judge in the case, United States Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, said in a Friday court filing that he is confused.

    The defendant, Jun Feng, whose trial was scheduled for next month, was originally charged with three counts of possessing and distributing methamphetamine.

    On Thursday, Feng pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

  • Edward Snowden: U.S. shares South Korea information with spy network

    Edward Snowden said the United States spies on ally South Korea as part of its massive surveillance network called “Five Eyes.”

    Speaking from Moscow via video, Snowden made the remarks after a screening of the 2014 documentary Citizen Four, which is to be released in Korea on Nov. 19. Snowden said South Korea is one of 38 countries under National Security Agency surveillance, a list that includes close U.S. partners France and Germany, South Korean newspaper Kyunghyang Sinmun reported.

    The former NSA contractor told reporters that Seoul and Washington already share a significant amount of classified military information to track North Korea movements, but added that he didn’t see anything wrong with the sharing of information.

  • Man Charged in Wife’s Murder Works for NSA: Officials

    The public defender representing 41-year-old Martin told the judge he has no criminal record, he works for the National Security Agency as a mathematician and he is pursuing his Ph.D. at Cornell University in math, according to the statement. The attorney also said Martin taught math at James Madison University.

  • From NSA to private sector

    Adam Fuchs and his small team labored for years inside the National Security Agency on a system that would enable analysts to access vast troves of intelligence data and spot hidden patterns.

    “We very much had a startup feel,” Fuchs said of the team’s office at Fort Meade with whiteboards and old furniture.

  • The Problems Experts And Privacy Advocates Have With The Senate’s Cybersecurity Bill

    Experts in the cybersecurity space have called into question how effective CISA will actually be in the ongoing blitz of cyberattacks.

    “In theory it is a great idea, but when we take the legislation from theory into practice it breaks into two areas. Information sharing is positive with synergistic benefits to the companies under attack. However, forcing engagement rules will slow the process down,” Shlomo Touboul, CEO of cybersecurity company Illusive Networks, said. “Cyber attackers are organized like malicious, agile start-ups that don’t require consensus for success, while government legislation and consortiums don’t move at the same speed as a cyberattackers.”

  • Preparing For Life Under CISA

  • Silicon Valley security CEOs on info sharing act

    Symantec CEO Michael Brown voiced concerns about the act and says that — in its current form — it does not go far enough to protect privacy.

  • NSA-Friendly CISA Bill Easily Passes U.S. Senate; Snowden Attacks

    The largest tech companies in the world, from Google and Apple, to Reddit and Twitter, issued statements condemning the cyber-security bill called CISA, but to no avail. CISA (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015) easily passed through the U.S. Senate’s vote on Tuesday, creating a new avenue for consumer data sharing that benefits anti-privacy entities like the NSA, reports The Guardian.

  • US court refuses to stop NSA phone surveillance during 180-day ‘transition’

    A US appeals court on Thursday refused to immediately halt the government’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records during a “transition” period to a new federal scheme that bans the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance.

  • NSA can keep illegally spying on Americans into November

  • U.S. court will not halt NSA phone spy program before ban

  • US court won’t speed up the end of NSA phone spying

  • Court says it’s legal for NSA to spy on you because Congress says it’s OK

  • Court says it’s legal for NSA to spy on you because Congress says it’s OK

  • Appeals court won’t block last month of NSA phone surveillance program

  • U.S. court will not halt NSA phone spy program before ban

  • U.S. Appeals Court Backs Government In NSA Phone Surveillance Case

  • Wikimedia v. NSA: Another Court Blinds Itself to Mass NSA Surveillance

  • Judge asked to protect Constitution from NSA

    A lawyer who won a federal judge’s determination that the National Security Agency’s spy-on-Americans program is “Orwellian” and likely unconstitutional is encouraging the judge to maintain his stance after a federal appeals court ruled the collection of phone metadata can continue.

  • Appeals court refuses immediate ban on NSA metadata collection, allows phase-out to continue

  • Court OKs One Last Month of NSA Mass Spying

  • Federal appeals court allows NSA phone data collection to run through November

  • US won’t stop the NSA’s mass phone spying before a ban kicks in

  • Court will allow NSA surveillance during 180-day transition to USA Freedom

  • Appeals Court Refuses To Shut Down NSA Bulk Collection Program Early

  • US won’t halt NSA phone spying program ahead of ban

  • Court rejects ACLU’s request to stop NSA’s phone record collection

  • US court will not halt NSA phone spy program

  • Court refuses to shut down NSA program that it declared illegal

  • Court allows NSA to keep collecting phone data until Nov. 28

  • N.S.A. Won’t Be Ordered to Stop Bulk Collection Early

  • The NSA will continue snooping on US citizens’ phones for another month

  • US Court to Allow NSA Data Collection

  • US court will not halt NSA phone spy programme before ban

  • You’ll have to wait longer for the NSA spying ban to take effect

  • U.S. Court: Refuses to End NSA phone spying

  • AT&T Customers Fight NSA Spying at 9th Circ.

  • Second Circuit Won’t Disturb NSA Spying Transition

  • CA2 Denies Injunctive Relief in ACLU v. Clapper

  • Section 215 and “Fruitless” (?!?) Constitutional Adjudication

  • Federal court won’t halt phone-snooping program during transition

  • US won’t halt NSA phone spying programme ahead of ban

  • Federal appeals court rejects ACLU’s request to immediately stop collecting phone records

  • US court allows last month of phone spying program

  • Court Rejects ACLU’s Plea to End Collection of Telephone Data Early

  • D.C. District Judge Now ‘Last Hope of the American People’ to Shut Down NSA Phone Program

  • Federal appeals court refuses to block bulk phone data collection

  • U.S. Appeals Court supports Govt in NSA Phone Surveillance case

  • Circuit Won’t Halt NSA Phone Data Collection During Transition

  • US court rejects early end to NSA metadata collection

  • National briefs: NSA’s data collection to continue

  • U.S. won’t halt NSA phone spying program ahead of ban

  • EU round-up: Safe Harbor 2.0 and upcoming national challenges

  • In search of a new Safe Harbour: The EU’s push for new data transfer regulation with the US may be part of the problem

  • US believes ‘Safe Harbour 2.0′ data-sharing deal within reach

  • The UK government says schools can still use Dropbox despite the recent Safe Harbour ruling

  • Schools given Dropbox guidance after Safe Harbour warning

  • Schools given warning after Safe Harbour ruling

  • New data-sharing pact on its way; Snowden gets boost from E.U.; phone spying to last another month

  • Making Privacy a Reality: The Safe Harbor Judgment and Its Consequences for US Surveillance Reform

  • Update: is Safe Harbor still safe? The European Court of Justice answers with a resounding “no”

  • Hill to Look at Progress on Data Safe Harbor

  • Facebook loses its “safe haven” in Europe

  • With EU Safe Harbor invalidated, companies ask: what now?

  • The Safe Harbor privacy debacle – How will it affect mobile games?

  • U.S. Commerce secretary says new Safe Harbour agreement eminent [Ed: will 'correct' the law to better suit corporations, not people]

  • To do business in Digital Age, US and EU must compromise on privacy [Ed: by think tank from the US]

  • Germany Hardens Line on U.S. Data Transfers

    Germany’s hard line on the transfer of its citizens’ personal data to the U.S. has come in for criticism from an influential European association of global digital businesses, which argues that severely limiting such transfers would cause market volatility.

    Germany’s federal and regional data-protection authorities this week said they wouldn’t approve any new transfers of data to the U.S. — even for transfers based on arrangements different from the trans-Atlantic data-transfer pact knocked down by the European Union’s highest court.

    The European Court of Justice this month invalidated a 15-year old agreement, known as Safe Harbor, which allowed businesses to move Europeans’ data, such as employee information, to servers in the U.S. The court ruled that Europeans’ data was insufficiently protected when transferred to the U.S., where it could be accessed by national intelligence services.

  • Pritzker: Safe harbor an ‘urgent problem’ [ed: but to who? To Europeans? No. To spy-friendly US corporations maybe…]

    U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on Thursday pressed European Union officials to put in place a new “safe harbor” data transfer agreement to replace one struck down earlier this month by the European Court of Justice.

  • Controversial cyber-security bill exposes personal data and privacy concerns in US

    As a leader in the VPN industry, Khan warns there are mixed opinions on the subject of protection and privacy, “There are those who believe every internet user should have the right to privacy irrespective of the circumstances. On the other hand, many believe that privacy is a right but should not infer complete anonymity.”

  • US Senate Passes CISA, a “Cybersecurity” Bill Critics Say Will Expand Mass Surveillance

    CISA significantly weakens the Freedom of Information Act and puts decision-making power on FOIA requests into the hands of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the same body where current CISA legislation originated.

  • Senate Passes Bill To Push Sharing of Info on Hacker Threats

  • A bad week of law-making for the tech industry

  • Controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act Passes in Senate

  • Senate Cedes More Power to National Security Agency With New Spying Bill

    Under the guise of “cybersecurity,” the Senate on Tuesday passed a spying bill that “carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever,” writes Trevor Timm at The Guardian.

  • The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway

  • While US and UK governments oppose encryption, Germany promotes it. Why?

    In the UK, David Cameron’s administration has all but declared war on encryption. In the US, 63 percent of Americans approve of backdoors for the government to monitor encrypted business communications in response to a national security threat, according to a recent Vormetric survey.

    But in Germany, the government openly advocates that all citizens use encryption and has even pushed forward a De-Mail service to help make that a reality.

    In the country’s Digital Agenda, the German government made it clear that it aspired to be “one of the most secure digital locations” on the planet: “We support the use of more and better encryption and aim to be the world’s leading country in this area. To achieve this goal, the encryption of private communication must be adopted as standard across the board.”

    It’s no secret that Germans value privacy, and Rik Turner, a British senior analyst with the IT and telecoms consulting firm Ovum, argued that the country’s embrace of encryption has geopolitical roots extending back to World War II.

  • Why Would The IRS Need A Cellphone Tracking System?

    Senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy are investigating why the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is using a cellphone tracking system in its investigations. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has already admitted they are using this technology but did not say in what capacity. The technology, known as cell-site simulators, send out a signal similar to a cell tower which could fool your cellphone into connecting to it. The technology does not monitor phone conversations but it does gather information (including text messages) about the device and can track the devices location as it moves.

  • Germany reins in spy service over NSA report

    Germany on Friday announced new measures to curb the activities of its foreign intelligence agency after a damning official report revealed improper collusion with the US National Security Agency.

    Berlin will in future implement stricter guidelines governing cooperation between the BND foreign intelligence service and the NSA, deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said in a statement.

  • Report: NSA electronic catchword targeting in EU nations widespread

    An NSA catchword surveillance list contains numerous European and German targets, according to a German news magazine. According to its report, a German federal investigator has concluded that US spying was widespread.

  • German Investigation Blows Wide Open Huge Scale of NSA European Spy-Ops

    A special investigation into the extent of mass surveillance carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA) within Germany has unveiled a huge list of targets wanted by the US agency, including many European governments and companies.

  • German inquiry finds NSA overstepped intelligence accord

    The US National Security Agency (NSA) overstepped an intelligence-sharing agreement with Germany by requesting German technicians to snoop on allied governments‘ emails, a top-level inquiry has concluded.

    Media obtained Friday the 300-page report by Kurt Graulich, a judge appointed to investigate how the BND, or Bundesnachrichtendienst, intercepted data streams from satellite links, fishing out messages by spotting email addresses, telephone numbers and words of interest.

    Graulich is the only non-intelligence official to have been shown 40,000 of these so-called selectors which the BND challenged.

  • New Probe Reveals NSA Targeted Entire Staffs of EU Governments

    A German government-sanctioned special investigation has exposed a “clear breach” of intelligence-sharing agreements—including illegal surveillance of European authorities—between the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its German counterpart, known as the BND.

  • An Entire City Trolled NSA Spies Using an Art Project

    When it was revealed in 2013 that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, routinely spied on the German government, artists Mathias Jud and Christoph Wachter came up with a plan.

  • New inquiry for US spying in Germany

  • Germany probes suspected new case of US spying: report

  • US Spying Update 2015: Germany Probes New Intelligence Case Over Trojan Horse Software

  • Germany probes Regin-powered cyberespionage

  • Germany ‘investigates alleged GCHQ spying in Angela Merkel’s office’

  • Malware menaces Merkel’s minion, says Spiegel

  • Germany launches probe into new NSA spying allegations

  • Top German official infected by highly advanced spy trojan with NSA ties

  • Regin Spyware Found on Merkel Assistant’s Laptop

  • Take 5 minutes and up your opsec game with Tor Messenger

  • Former NSA head’s cyber-security startup raises $32.5M

  • Former NSA chief’s startup gets $32 million in funding

  • Former NSA chief’s startup picks up $32.5M in funding

  • Ex-NSA director’s cybersecurity firm IronNet raises $32.5m

  • IronNet Cybersecurity nabs $32.5 mln Series A

  • Russian subs operating near Internet cables; Facebook wins $15B lawsuit dismissal; Alexander’s cyber start-up raises $32.5M

  • Former NSA head’s cyber-security startup raises $32.5 million

  • Ex-NSA Chief’s Cybersecurity Startup Draws Funding

  • AT&T Customers Fight NSA Spying at 9th Circ.

    In the face of Obama administration opposition, AT&T customers asked the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday to rule that a government mass surveillance program is unconstitutional.

    Five people sued the National Security Agency seven years ago in Federal Court seeking a court order to dismantle a “digital dragnet” that allows the agency to tap into the fiber optic cables of U.S. telecommunications companies to intercept emails, text messages, phone records and other communications.

  • EFF tells California Supreme Court no searches of controlled substance prescriptions

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been busy lately, especially with all of the revelations coming from Edward Snowden. The organization has been busy taking on the NSA, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have time for other causes.

    Now the EFF is taking on the California Supreme Court, urging an end to the gathering of personal prescription information by law enforcement and done without a warrant.

    Prescriptions in question cover things such as pain, anxiety, attention disorder, insomnia and the like. Up until now, this was a treasure trove of information being gathered, though reasons for that netting of data are unclear.

  • 6 Spooky Ways Local Law Enforcement Is Watching You

    Once you get in your car, get ready to be tracked, no matter how well your face is disguised. Law enforcement agencies all over the country use ALPRs (automated license plate readers) to track drivers’ locations and activities. ALPRs are cameras—mounted on police cars or placed in stationary locations like light poles—that detect when a car passes, capture a picture of that car, and record its license plate number. Accumulated location data creates a history of drivers’ movements that can provide private and intimate details on people’s lives, like where they work, where they live, where they worship, where they go throughout their day, and who they associate with. Law enforcement agencies like the NYPD have used ALPRs in exactly this way, trying to map out the entire Arab and Muslim community of New York and Newark. The Los Angeles Police Department and the LA County Sheriff’s Department scan three million plates every week.

  • America’s crypto battles

    John Miller reckons he can get into pretty much any safe. A court order to the owner is one option, another is a team he has with blow torches.

    The reason John Miller has such a team is because he is Deputy Commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD) for intelligence and counter-terrorism.

    Getting into safety deposit boxes and bank vaults has not been a challenge. But he says NYPD is now faced with a new problem.

  • Pentagon spy agency hires first British deputy director

    The Pentagon’s principal spy agency is appointing a British Air Force officer as its first deputy director in charge of improving “integration” between U.S. intelligence units and spy agencies of other English-speaking countries.

    U.S. intelligence agencies have long had close relationships with their British counterparts, but former and current U.S. intelligence officials said this is the first time they knew of a U.S. spy agency naming a foreigner to a top executive position.

  • Encryption is under siege. Move to SHA-2 now!

  • Snowden slams UK government over encryption ‘backdoor’ plans

    The UK government wants backdoor access to communications for “everything people actually use”, Edward Snowden has claimed.

    The former NSA contractor took to Twitter to criticise comments from Baroness Shields, the UK minister for internet safety and security, over her position on encrypted data.

    Shields said the government didn’t want to introduce backdoors that allow security services to access encrypted information, but Snowden argued proposed warrants for access to data were in effect a backdoor.

  • European Parliament gave status of whistle-blower to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden

  • Edward Snowden’s Criminal Charges to be Dropped

  • EU Parliament votes nonbinding resolution to protect Edward Snowden

  • EU Citizens Still In Danger From Mass Surveillance, Say MEPs

  • European Parliament votes to protect Snowden from extradition

  • Parliament vote could lead to EU freedom for Snowden

  • Snowden gets European support but still remains in limbo

  • European Parliament offers support to Edward Snowden

  • EU Parliament votes to drop criminal charges and grant asylum to Snowden

  • Denmark could vote on Snowden asylum, as MPs get inspired by European Parliament resolution

  • Will Denmark Give Edward Snowden Asylum? Politicians Call For Vote In Parliament

  • EU Parliament Votes For Dropped Charges, Asylum Protection For Snowden

  • EU Passes Resolution to Protect Edward Snowden from Prosecution

  • EU votes in favour of removing all criminal charges against Edward Snowden

  • Snowden Deserves Protection — EU Parliament’s Resolution

  • European Union votes to drop charges against Edward Snowden

  • Snowden hails European Union vote on asylum

  • Civil-liberties groups ask the government to detail surveillance statistics

  • Privacy Groups Challenge Director of National Intelligence to Uphold Transparency Promise

  • Privacy advocates push feds on spying data

  • TECHNOBABBLE: Can we trust the government with keys to our data?

  • The spooks have come out of the shadows – for now

    The UK surveillance agency GCHQ had only a small public relations team up until June 2013. As the most secretive of the intelligence agencies, it did not really need anything more. The duties were not arduous, with inquiries from the national media invariably met with a blunt refusal to comment.

    That attitude has not survived the shock of former CIA and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked tens of thousands of documents exposing GCHQ’s innermost secrets. Today, GCHQ’s new and expanding PR team is increasingly sophisticated, open to engagement with journalists in ways that were inconceivable before Snowden.

  • Surveillance fears mean businesses don’t want to keep data in UK or US

    It seems that many organisations are now wanting to shift their data out of the UK and the US, thanks to concerns about surveillance and privacy.

    This news comes courtesy of Artmotion (a data hosting provider), which questioned 1000 IT decision-makers in this country and the States, subsequently producing a report entitled Defending Data Privacy.

    The headline figure is that 76 per cent of respondents said they would move their company’s data to another country, away from the UK or US, due to privacy concerns.

  • Crypto is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

    Over the last year, law enforcement officials around the world have been pressing hard on the notion that without a magical “backdoor” to access the content of any and all encrypted communications by ordinary people, they’ll be totally incapable of fulfilling their duties to investigate crime and protect the public. EFF and many others have pushed back—including launching a petition with our friends to SaveCrypto, which this week reached 100,000 signatures, forcing a response from President Obama.

    This is in addition to multiple findings that the government’s “going dark” concern has proven completely unfounded in the past, along with former national security officers disavowing the concern all together. And given law enforcement’s continuing attacks on the public’s use of encryption, we think it’s time for a quick look at the long tradition of encryption use by some ordinary, and some not so ordinary, Americans.

  • The great internet scare: the US is worried Russia could cut undersea data cables

    In a return to what is being called ‘Cold War level’ tension, the New York Times reported on Sunday that Russia could be developing plans to sever key global internet communications – undersea data cables – “that carry almost all global internet communications” during possible “future wars”.

    The Times report claims that there is “aggressive” movement near vital undersea cables, raising concern among several US military and intelligence officers.

  • Think no one’s watching? Think again.

    Millennials are rather careless when it comes to using technology and sharing information online. We don’t think twice about entering personal information into an online form or telling the world where we are at any given moment and who we are with. So when we are told that the government is collecting this data, a common reaction is—Why should I care? I have nothing to hide. But how many of us understand the implications of having so much personal information up for grabs?

  • What Hillary Clinton Got Wrong About Edward Snowden

    Hillary Clinton is wrong about Edward Snowden. Again.

    The presidential candidate and former secretary of state insisted during the recent Democratic debate that Snowden should have remained in the United States to voice his concerns about government spying on U.S. citizens. Instead, she claimed, he “endangered U.S. secrets by fleeing to Russia.”

    After accusing Snowden of stealing “very important information that has fallen into the wrong hands,” she added: “He should not be brought home without facing the music.”

    Clinton should stop rooting for Snowden’s incarceration and get her facts straight.

  • New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau Returns To Justice Department Beat After Subpoena Threat Wanes

    New York Times reporter Eric Licthblau is returning to cover the Justice Department, a beat he left in 2009 amid threat of subpoena over a Pulitzer Prize-winning story on the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.

    Lichtblau, who was most recently covering 2016 campaign finance issues, drew the ire of the Bush administration early on for his reporting, leading to his Justice Department press credentials being temporarily revoked in 2003. Tensions only increased after The Times published Lichtblau and James Risen’s 2005 report on NSA surveillance, a story the paper initially held for 13 months under pressure from the White House.

    Lichtblau told The Huffington Post that the Bush administration aggressively investigated the NSA leak and there were vague threats of subpoena in 2006 and 2007. But it wasn’t until Dec. 16, 2008 — after President Barack Obama won the presidential election but before the Bush administration left off — that Lichtblau received a letter threatening a subpoena if he didn’t provide the source information by Inauguration Day a month later. He did not comply. Still, the threat didn’t go away when Obama took office, and in early 2009, Lichtblau and Times editors decided it was best he leave the beat.

  • It’s Time for the GOP Candidates to Finally Debate Tech

    The tech sector is an ever-growing force in politics. No longer just a bunch of scrappy startups struggling for their place at the bargaining table, Silicon Valley’s top companies—Google, Facebook, Apple, and others—now spend millions of dollars a year lobbying for their industry’s interests.

    Politicians like tech companies, not only because they paint a rosy picture of the future, but because they’re among the top job creators in the country. Plus, their idealistic, largely white-collar workforce tends to have deep pockets, turning the tech sector into a bigger source of campaign funding than other politically powerful and entrenched industries like defense and big pharma in recent years. Candidates are all too aware of this shift, so they make frequent stops at tech startups and carve out time on the campaign trail for fundraising trips to Silicon Valley.

• Civil Rights

  • The thinly veiled threats of the Saudi Ambassador

    The propensity of the Saudis to use barbaric physical punishments is blithely passed off as a local tradition and custom, as if tying someone to a pole and flogging them nearly to death is somehow comparable to having a pole on a village green for dancing around on May mornings.

  • ‘Laws Are Incredibly Deferential to Police Using Lethal Violence’

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • T-Mobile Wades Into Net Neutrality Minefield With Plan To Zero Rate Netflix, HBO

    We’ve discussed many times now how zero rating, or the carrier act of letting some apps or services bypass a user’s broadband usage cap, sets a horrible, dangerous precedent. By its very nature, letting one company or service bypass usage caps immediately puts non-whitelisted services, small businesses or non profits at a disadvantage, tilting the entire playing field and distorting the entire democratic nature of the Internet. For some reason, this is a very difficult concept for some consumers to understand, so lathered up they are by the initial lure of getting something for “free.”

    Of course you’re not getting something for free. Usage caps are entirely arbitrary, untethered from financial or network performance necessity. They’re an artificial construct, and allowing some services to bypass them (for a fee or otherwise) puts the ISP in the powerful position of picking winners and losers, instead of just doing its job (the delivery of bits). When it comes to net neutrality, the battlefield is no longer focused on ham-fisted throttling or blocking of services, it has shifted to more nuanced and clever abuses of gatekeeper power including interconnection, usage caps, and zero rating.