Bonum Certa Men Certa
← Haar Mentioned as Likely Site of Appeal Boards as Their Eradication or Marginalisation Envisioned by UPC Proponent Benoît Battistelli | Links 23/7/2016: Leo Laporte on GNU/Linux, Dolphin Emulator’s Vulkan Completion →

Links 22/7/2016: Wine 1.9.15, KaOS 2016.07 ISO



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Science



    • UK employers still reluctant to hire recent CompSci grads
      Computer science graduates continue to top the UK's higher education unemployment rankings, according to the latest figures compiled by Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

      Ten per cent of computer science graduates failed to find a job six months after graduation in the academic year 2014/2015 - a figure higher than students who had studied Mass Communications and documentation, Physical sciences, or Engineering and technology (all 7.7 per cent).

      But the percentage is improving, albeit slowly. Last year's statistics by HESA revealed 11.3 per cent of computer science graduates in 2013/2014 were unemployed.




  • Hardware



    • Digitimes Research: SoftBank chairman overoptimistic about benefits from acquiring ARM
      For Japan-based SoftBank's plan to acquire a 100% stake in UK-based ARM at GBP24.3 billion (US$32.0 billion), SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son indicated that the acquisition is motivated by the large business potential for IoT (Internet of Things). However, Son overestimated real benefits from the acquisition and underestimated difficulties in vertical and horizontal integration of industries for IoT application, according to Digitimes Research.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • Civil Society Calls On India To Backtrack On Policy Threatening Global HIV Response
      The International AIDS Society made a statement today at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, voicing concerns about India’s recent policy which, according to the group, is threatening access to HIV treatment in India and around the world.

      The International AIDS Conference is taking place from 18-22 July.

      The statement co-signed by a number of civil society groups, said civil society is concerned “about the closing space both for the civil society groups that have been critical in the AIDS response nationally and internationally and for the public health-supporting policies that ensure quality, affordable generic drugs for the world.”


    • Emails reveal role of Monsanto in Séralini study retraction
      In September 2012 the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) published the research of a team led by the French biologist Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, which found liver and kidney toxicity and hormonal disturbances in rats fed Monsanto’s GM maize NK603 and very small doses of the Roundup herbicide it is grown with, over a long-term period. An additional observation was a trend of increased tumours in most treatment groups.

      In November 2013 the study was retracted by the journal’s editor, A. Wallace Hayes, after the appointment of a former Monsanto scientist, Richard E. Goodman, to the editorial board and a non-transparent review process by nameless people that took several months.

      Did Monsanto pressure the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) to retract the study? French journalist Stéphane Foucart addresses this question in an article for Le Monde.


    • The U.S. Lags Far Behind Other Developed Countries In Access To Affordable Abortion
      Seventy-four percent of countries with liberal abortion laws cover abortion costs. Why doesn't the U.S.?


    • New French Law Opens Market For Non-Profits Selling Public Domain Seeds
      New legislation on biodiversity has been adopted by the French National Assembly, opening doors for the sharing and selling of seeds in the public domain to amateur gardeners. For some associations that had been illegally trading public domain seeds, this is seen as a major victory.

      Prior to the newly adopted legislation, only seeds listed in the national catalogue could be commercialised in France. The new law allows non-governmental organisations to transfer, share or sell seeds that are in the public domain to non-commercial users (IPW, Biodiversity/Genetic Resources/Biotech, 7 July 2016).




  • Security



    • As a blockchain-based project teeters, questions about the technology’s security
      There’s no shortage of futurists, industry analysts, entrepreneurs and IT columnists who in the past year have churned out reports, articles and books touting blockchain-based ledgers as the next technology that will run the world.


    • Fix Bugs, Go Fast, and Update: 3 Approaches to Container Security
      Containers are becoming the central piece of the future of IT. Linux has had containers for ages, but they are still maturing as a technology to be used in production or mission-critical enterprise scenarios. With that, security is becoming a central theme around containers. There are many proposed solutions to the problem, including identifying exactly what technology is in place, fixing known bugs, restricting change, and generally implementing sound security policies. This article looks at these issues and how organizations can adapt their approach to security to keep pace with the rapid evolution of containers.


    • Preventing the next Heartbleed and making FOSS more secure [Ed: Preventing the next Microsoft-connected trademarked bug for FOSS and making FOSS more secure from Microsoft FUD]
      David Wheeler is a long-time leader in advising and working with the U.S. government on issues related to open source software. His personal webpage is a frequently cited source on open standards, open source software, and computer security. David is leading a new project, the CII Best Practices Badging project, which is part of the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) for strengthening the security of open source software. In this interview he talks about what it means for both government and other users.
    • Container Image Signing
    • Friday's security updates


    • Protecting the open source software supply chain [Ed: FUD for marketing of Sonatype]




  • Defence/Aggression



    • The President of Turkey has launched a bloody coup against his own people, and it’s happening right now
      After a brutal military coup in Turkey against Erdogan’s presidency failed over the weekend, the Turkish president has responded in kind: with his own brutal coup against the Turkish people.

      In the name of defending democracy from the original coup plotters, Erdogan is literally targeting tens of thousands of Turkish citizens. And standing in the firing line are not just his political opponents, but Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, the Kurds.


    • Britain's nuclear-weapons future: no done deal
      The warheads are developed and assembled at the Aldermaston/Burghfield complex which has annual running costs of at least €£1bn a year. The missile submarines need protection by nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) attack submarines, and are also given support from surface warships. One of the functions of the fleet of nine new Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime-patrol aircraft, also just ordered at a cost of a further €£3 million, is to provide further protection.


    • State Department Worried About “Backsliding” in Turkey Following Failed Coup, Mass Arrests
      Secretary of State John Kerry said that he and his European counterparts will be paying close attention to developments in Turkey, after thousands of Turkish officials were punished in the wake of a failed coup attempt.

      “Obviously a lot of people have been arrested and arrested very quickly,” Kerry said Monday, in Brussels. “The level of vigilance and scrutiny is obviously going to be significant in the days ahead. Hopefully we can work in a constructive way that prevents a backsliding.”

      Kerry made the statements from a previously scheduled meeting held by the European Council, an EU executive branch organ. The Washington Post described the gathering as having morphed into “crisis management,” in response to developments in Turkey.


    • Wikileaks: Email says AK Party provided Barzani with $200 million in March
      The Wikileaks website released a cache of nearly 300,000 emails allegedly sent by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), some of which were related to the Kurdistan Region, four days after an attempted military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

      One of the leaked emails dating back to March 12, 2016 stated the AKP gave an unspecified member of the Barzani family $200 million in “financial aid” after a temporary halt in oil exports via the Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline – a major financial lifeline for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

      The KRG is not specifically mentioned in the email and the Kurdistan Region is referred to as “areas under the hand of Peshmerga.”


    • [Older] Jeremy Corbyn may have been proved right on Iraq – but he’s hopeless on the important matter of doing up his tie


      Like Tony Blair, we were all duped by the intelligence on Saddam Hussein – except for the millions that went on marches, and Nelson Mandela, and France, and the Pope, and the chief weapons inspector, and Robin Cook


    • Turkey’s Baffling Coup
      This time, it was very different. Thanks to a series of sham trials targeting secularist officers, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had managed to reconfigure the military hierarchy and place his own people at the top. While the country has been rocked by a series of terrorist attacks and faces a souring economy, there was no inkling of unrest in the military or opposition to Erdogan. On the contrary, Erdogan’s recent reconciliation with Russia and Israel, together with his apparent desire to pull back from an active role in the Syrian civil war, must have been a relief to Turkey’s top brass.


    • Donald Trump Crams Two Errors Into One Statement on Turkey
      In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, after suggesting that he might not defend another member of the NATO alliance in the event of a Russian attack, Donald Trump was asked if he was paying close attention to what was happening in Turkey, following the failed coup attempt last week.

      Trump replied that he had been impressed by the efforts of the Turkish people, who took to the streets to prevent the military from seizing power — but did so in a way that demonstrated his ignorance about a central facet of what took place last Friday night.


    • Erdogan Suspects US Sympathy for Coup
      Reports that Russian President Putin may have tipped off Turkish President Erdogan about last week’s coup attempt – while the U.S. apparently stayed silent – suggest a possible reordering of regional relationships, says John Chuckman.


    • Live updates: Several reported killed in Munich mall shooting
      Police believe three gunmen opened fire on Friday evening at and near a shopping mall in the German city of Munich, killing several people, authorities said. The shooting at Olympia shopping mall "looks like a terror attack," a police representative said.
    • 'Boom boom boom - he's killing the kids': Gunman shouting 'Allahu Akbar' executed children in Munich McDonald's before rampaging through mall killing NINE with police now hunting three attackers


    • Munich shooting: 'Multiple deaths' after shots fired at OEZ German shopping centre


    • Nice attack: City refuses police call to delete CCTV images
      The local authorities in Nice have refused a request by French anti-terror police to destroy CCTV images of last week's lorry attack. The Paris prosecutor's office said the request had been made to avoid the "uncontrolled dissemination" of images.

      But officials in Nice have responded by filing a legal document, arguing the footage could constitute evidence.

      It is the latest evidence of a growing dispute between the local and national authorities in the wake of the attack.


    • Nuclear weapons contractors repeatedly stifle whistleblowers, auditors say
      At laboratories and factories where American nuclear weapons are designed and built, and at the sites still being cleansed of the toxic wastes created by such work, contractor employees outnumber federal workers six to one. That makes them key sentinels when something goes awry, a circumstance that officials say explains why they get legal protections when whistleblowing.

      That’s the theory. It turns out that the Energy Department has actually handed most of the oversight over these protections to the contractors themselves, robbing workers at key nuclear weapons sites of confidence that pointing out security and safety dangers or other mistakes won’t bring retaliation, according to an audit released by the Government Accountability Office on July 14.

      The Energy Department’s decision to embrace contractor self-regulation of its whistleblowing protection system means in many cases that those overseeing it work for the contractors’ top lawyers, who must defend the contractor against employee claims of wrongdoing, or for those officials responsible for deciding about job cuts, the report disclosed.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • Big Oil, Not Big Tobacco, Wrote the Public Skepticism Playbook: Report
      The playbook on sowing public skepticism about health and climate issues originated not with Big Tobacco—as long believed—but with Big Oil, a new investigation reveals.

      Documents published Wednesday by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) show that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries used the same public relations firms, the same think tanks, and in many cases, the very same researchers, to foment doubt about public interest issues—starting with climate change. The documents show that the "direct connections" between the industries go back even earlier than previously believed, CIEL says.

      "Again and again we found both the PR firms and the researchers worked first for oil, then for tobacco. It was a pedigree the tobacco companies recognized, and sought out," said the center's president, Carroll Muffett.


    • Greenland Is Still Melting Away
      A new paper just published by scientists in Geophysical Research Letters presents results of their investigation into the ice sheet covering Greenland. They found that over the four-year period from Jan. 1, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2014 Greenland lost over a trillion tons of ice.


    • The “Denial Playbook”: An Original Product Of The Oil Industry
      New documents reveal that the oil and tobacco industries took pages from the same book to engineer their decade long campaigns on denying the existence of climate change and smoking-related cancer. The playbook also appears to have originated not with tobacco, but with the oil industry itself, and the two even appeared to share patents.

      In their research, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), found that the two industries collaborated from the 1950s onwards, more closely and earlier than previously thought. Both industries had used the same PR firms, research institutes and researchers, many of whom began working for first the oil industry, and then tobacco.






  • Finance



    • Success! Leader Pelosi Stands Up for Users and Opposes the TPP
      Thank you, Leader Pelosi, for standing up for users to block this undemocratic, anti-user deal. Combined with the stated opposition to the TPP of both presidential candidates, and the likelihood that other House Democrats will follow Leader Pelosi's courageous lead, it is now significantly less likely that the TPP will be introduced during the lame duck session, or if introduced, that it will pass the House.


    • HSBC’s Johnson Out on Bond After Airport Arrest in Currency Case
      Federal agents surprised an HSBC Holdings Plc executive as he prepared to fly out of New York’s Kennedy airport, arresting him for an alleged front-running scheme involving a $3.5 billion currency transaction in 2011.


    • Hours Before Hillary Clinton’s VP Decision, Likely Pick Tim Kaine Praises the TPP
      Hillary Clinton’s rumored vice presidential pick Sen. Tim Kaine defended his vote for fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Thursday.

      Kaine, who spoke to The Intercept after an event at a Northern Virginia mosque, praised the agreement as an improvement of the status quo, but maintained that he had not yet decided how to vote on final approval of the agreement. By contrast, Hillary Clinton has qualified her previous encouragement of the agreement, and now says she opposes it.

      Kaine’s measured praise of the agreement could signal one of two things. Either he is out of the running for the vice presidential spot, as his position on this major issue stands in opposition to hers. Or, by picking him, Clinton is signaling that her newly declared opposition to the agreement is not sincere. The latter explanation would confirm the theory offered by U.S. Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, among others, who has said that Clinton is campaigning against the TPP for political reasons but would ultimately implement the deal.


    • Brexit, Austerity and the Future of the European Union


      Many commentators have focused on racism and xenophobia as major factors in the move to leave the EU. Undoubtedly these were important considerations. Many people in England, especially older ones, are uncomfortable with the country becoming more diverse. They fear and resent the people coming in from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

      But racism and xenophobia are not new for the United Kingdom. What is new is that these forces are powerful enough to force the country to break with a political union it joined more than four decades ago. Needless to say, there have been other situations where such forces came to dominate politics and they have not ended well.

      The issue in the UK and elsewhere is that there are real grievances which demagogues have been able to exploit. First and foremost is the austerity that had curbed growth in the U.K. and cut back funding for important programs. While austerity has not been as severe in the U.K. as in the euro zone (the U.K. is not in the euro), the conservative government sharply cut government spending in 2010, ostensibly out of concern that deficits and debt were harming the economy.


    • Lori Wallach, Peter Maybarduk and Karen Hansen-Kuhn on Corporate Globalization
      This week on CounterSpin: Few ideas are as hard-wired into current corporate media as the notion that so-called “free trade” agreements of the sort we have are, despite concerns, best for everyone. Given that the deals are not primarily about trade, and that what freedom they entail accrues to corporations and not people, you could say the very use of the term “free trade” implies a bias, against clarity if nothing else. This week, CounterSpin will revisit three interviews we’ve done on this issue.


    • #CETA #TTIP The next generation trade deals – We need to ask who benefits and why?
      The EU on behalf of the member states is current negotiating an EU US trade deal called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Talks around another trade deal between the EU and Canada have concluded – this deal is called The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

      Aside from the lack of coverage in the Irish media of the actual substance of these very critical trade talks, there are a number of concerns being expressed by campaign and civil society groups – in particular that a special court system will be incorporated into CETA & TTIP to allow corporations to sue EU member states who wish to introduce strong legislation to protect public health, food safety and environmental legislation for example.


    • Good as Goldman: Hillary and Wall Street
      Nothing seems to rattle Hillary Clinton quite so much as pointed questions about her personal finances. How much she’s made. How she made it. Where it all came from. From her miraculous adventures in the cattle futures market to the Whitewater real estate scam, many of the most venal Clinton scandals down the decades have involved Hillary’s financial entanglements and the serpentine measures she has taken to conceal them from public scrutiny.

      Hillary is both driven to acquire money and emits a faint whiff of guilt about having hoarded so much of it. One might be tempted to ascribe her squeamishness about wealth to her rigid Methodism, but her friends say that Hillary’s covetousness derives from a deep obsession with feeling secure, which makes a kind of sense given Bill’s free-wheeling proclivities. She’s not, after all, a child of the Depression, but a baby boomer. Hillary was raised in comfortable circumstances in the Chicago suburbs and, unlike her husband, has never in her life felt the sting of want.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • Leaked emails reveal Politico reporter made 'agreement' to send advanced Clinton story to DNC
      An influential reporter at Politico made an apparent "agreement" with the Democratic National Committee to let it review a story about Hillary Clinton's fundraising machine before it was submitted to his editors, leaked emails published by WikiLeaks on Friday revealed.


    • DNC Staffers Mocked the Bernie Sanders Campaign, Leaked Emails Show
      A new trove of internal Democratic National Committee emails, stretching back to April 2016, released by Wikileaks show that the organization’s senior staff chafed at Bernie Sanders’s continued presence in the presidential primary. Staffers were also irritated by criticism that they were biased towards Hillary Clinton.

      In May, chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (DWS) reacted to an MSNBC anchor criticizing her treatment of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primary by trying to force her to apologize.

      On May 18th, DNC staffer Kate Houghton forwarded to Wasserman-Schultz a Breitbart News story highlighting remarks by MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski in which she called for the chairwoman to step down over perceived bias against Sanders during the presidential primary.

      Wasserman-Schultz reacted angrily, writing that this was the “LAST straw” and instructing communications director Luis Miranda to call MSNBC president Phil Griffin to demand an apology from Brzezinski.


    • Wikileaks emails: Democratic officials 'plotted to expose Bernie Sanders' as an atheist
      The Democratic National Committee - a supposedly neutral organisation - apparently hatched a plan to try and undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign against Hillary Clinton by getting someone to claim he was an atheist.

      The Sanders campaign for months complained that people in the DNC were biased in favour of the establishment candidate, Ms Clinton. The campaign even sued the DNC to allow it access to its voter database.


    • New Leak: Top DNC Official Wanted to Use Bernie Sanders’s Religious Beliefs Against Him
      Among the nearly 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, released Friday by Wikileaks and presumably provided by the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” is a May 2016 message from DNC CFO Brad Marshall. In it, he suggested that the party should “get someone to ask” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about his religious beliefs.


    • Major Errors In Reporting On Polling Data Must Be Corrected By International And Brazilian Media – OpEd
      A report on polling data first published on Saturday by Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest-circulation newspaper, contained errors that were so “huge and fundamentally important to the current political crisis that they require much more than the usual correction,” according to CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot.

      “Bad polling happens quite often, but these are errors in both polling and reporting of a whole different magnitude,” said Weisbrot.

      As noted by The Intercept yesterday, Folha de São Paulo had reported that according to a poll conducted by the firm Datafolha, 50 percent of Brazilians wanted the interim president Michel Temer to serve through 2018; 32 percent wanted the elected president Dilma Rousseff to do this (the end of her current term of office); 4 percent wanted neither of the two; and just 3 percent wanted new elections.
    • Donald Trump’s Long Rant Thrilled David Duke, But Alienated Many Others
      As Donald Trump shouted for 76 minutes on Thursday night about how horrible everything is in the dystopian fiction he’s confused for America, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan found himself nodding along in agreement.

      So the white supremacist David Duke, who was nearly elected governor of Louisiana in 1991 by channeling white resentment, posted a rave review of the address on Twitter.


    • In Cleveland, Lonely Protesters Marched Through Empty Streets
      In total, 24 people were arrested in convention-related incidents as of Friday morning, most at a flag burning protest on Wednesday. But while legal observers denounced those arrests, and delays in the processing of arrestees, as “troubling,” the final count was significantly lower than what most expected, with the city having announced ahead of the convention that it was prepared to “handle upwards of 1,000 arrests per day.”


    • Republican Leaders Choose Their Own Future Over Donald Trump’s
      Republicans have nominated the least popular presidential nominee in recent history — and it showed. Throughout the week, the biggest names on the convention schedule consciously avoided lavishing too much praise on the nominee himself, for fear of their own political futures.

      House Speaker Paul Ryan mentioned Trump just twice in his address. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, locked in a tough re-election race, mentioned the nominee just once. Ted Cruz, the second-place finisher in the primary, refused to endorse Trump at all, telling attendees instead to “vote your conscience.”

      And these were the Republicans who showed up to speak. Many major party figures didn’t attend at all. Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake told the press he wasn’t attending because he had to mow his lawn. None of the Bushes showed up.


    • Ivanka Said Her Dad Cares About Child Care. Here’s What Happened When A Woman Asked Him About It.
      Ivanka Trump tried to portray her father as a champion of women while introducing him on the last night of the RNC. But not only is there no evidence that the man who has a reputation for demeaning women is actually a champion for them — an examination of his platform and history indicates quite the opposite.

      [...]

      Trump Organization’s salaries are not public, but that claim doesn’t hold up on his campaign. Trump pays his male campaign staffers 35 percent more money than female staffers. That’s partly because he has only two women among his senior-level staff, and just 28 percent of his staff is made up of women. One former staffer filed a complaint earlier this year saying she was paid $2,000 a month — about half what several men with the same title make.

      She also talked about how Trump would help families. “As president, my father will change the labor laws,” she said, suggested he’d make “child care affordable and accessible for all” and provide support for working mothers.

      While affordable child care is a cornerstone of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Trump has not released any plan for child care. The candidate has also shown zero interest in thinking about the issue. When an organizer asked him for his thoughts on child care back in December, he replied, “I love children” but refused to engage further, saying, “It’s a big subject, darling.”


    • Robert Scheer: Americans Shouldn’t Settle for Candidates ‘Who Have Created This Tremendous Mess’
      In a recent interview on The Real News Network, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer sat down with Paul Jay, senior editor of The Real News Network, to discuss the current election and the future of the American democratic system. The interview begins with Scheer talking about the Republican National Convention and neofascist rhetoric. “You don’t get fascist movements taking over, rising to power, without people being in pain,” Scheer says. “And we have a situation now in the United States that is increasingly resembling a kind of post-Weimar Germany.”

      Jay then brings the conversation around to new movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, which Scheer says save “a reasonable established order” by forcing those in power to respond to the needs of the people. “It’s only when the established order is failing to respond to the real needs of people that you get madness and chaos, and that’s what I think you’re hearing at the Republican convention.”


    • Never Mind the RNC — This Is What Voters Care About This Election


      Despite their absence from the Republican National Convention, voters prioritize campaign finance reform and action on climate change.


    • Donald Trump’s Convention Speech Rings Terrifying Historical Alarm Bells
      Donald Trump’s speech tonight accepting the Republican nomination for president will probably go down as one of the most frightening pieces of political rhetoric in U.S. history.

      Even for people who believe the danger of genuine authoritarianism on the U.S. right is often exaggerated, it’s impossible not to hear in Trump’s speech echoes of the words and strategies of the world’s worst leaders.

      Trump had just one message for Americans: Be afraid. You are under terrible threats from forces inside and outside your country, and he’s the only person who can save us.


    • Volatile America
      Then the headlines shifted and, for the moment, “normalcy” returned. It’s a Trump-sated normalcy that’s anything but, of course, and the most recent heavily reported violence (at least as I write these words) — the murder of three police officers in Baton Rouge — blends into the endlessly simmering turmoil known as the United States of America.

      And the civil war, in fact, started long ago. But until recently, only one side has been armed and organized. That’s why the two latest police killings, by disciplined, heavily armed former military men, loose a terrifying despair. The victims are fighting back — in the worst way possible, but in a way sure to inspire replication.

      When people are armed and outraged, the world so easily collapses into us vs. them. All complexity vanishes. People’s life purpose clarifies into a simplistic certainty: Kill the enemy. Indeed, sacrifice your life to do so, if necessary. I fear this is still the nation’s dominant attitude toward its troubles. We’re eating ourselves alive.

      One way this is happening was described in a recent New York Times story, headlined: “Philando Castile Was Pulled Over 49 Times in 13 Years, Often for Minor Infractions.” Castile, who as the world knows was shot and killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop on July 6, was a young man caught in a carnivorous system pretty much all his adult life. Every time he started his car, he risked arrest for “driving while black.” The Times quotes a Minneapolis public defender, who described Castile as “typical of low-income drivers who lose their licenses, then become overwhelmed by snowballing fines and fees.” They “just start to feel hopeless.”

      The story goes on: “The episode, to many, is a heartbreaking illustration of the disproportionate risks black motorists face with the police. . . . The killings have helped fuel a growing national debate over racial bias in law enforcement.”

      A growing national “debate”? Oh, the politeness! How much racism should we allow the police to show before we censure them? It’s like talking about the “debate” we used to have over the moral legitimacy of lynching.


    • Ted Cruz Booed and Heckled for Refusing to Endorse Donald Trump
      In a remarkable show of disunity at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Sen. Ted Cruz was booed and heckled by many delegates on Wednesday night as it became clear that he had no intention of endorsing Donald Trump for the presidency.

      Cruz, who called Trump “a pathological liar” and “utterly amoral” when he dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in May, refused to follow the lead of two of the other defeated candidates, Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio, who did endorse the billionaire in their speeches.

      Watching Cruz give what seemed like a campaign speech for himself, Trump’s children sat in silence. Then there were cheers and a ripple of applause from the delegates as Cruz looked into the camera and said, “to those listening, please don’t stay home in November.”


    • Donald Trump is the Loneliest Man in America
      Donald Trump may well be the loneliest man in America. And I’m only 45%-60% kidding. This belief springs from his use of one single word—a word that every native speaker of the English language other than Trump knows does not, in fact, exist: the word “bigly.”

      Consider this: Donald Trump is so rich, so insulated–and so truly bereft of friends—that he’s managed to walk around on this planet for more than 70 years without ever realizing that “bigly” is not an actual word.


    • Chamber of Commerce May Prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump
      The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday signaled that the big-business community is still undecided between newly minted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Chamber President Tom Donohue’s statements to Fox Business News on Wednesday morning represented an astonishing break from the organization’s nearly invariable support for Republican candidates.

      “Trump talks about some important things in energy and taxes and financial areas,” Donohue said. “Hillary perhaps has more experience and businessmen like that — businessmen and women like that — but I don’t think that’ll be decided until you hear the speeches here and next week and you see the first debate, and I think people will start to move more clearly to where they’re going to vote.”


    • On violence, neoliberalism and the hallucinatory anti-politics of the Trump era.
      "If we can't change consciousness, if we can't get people to identify with the issues in a way that make them appear very real to their lives, then all of a sudden anger gets distorted and rerouted into something worse - it becomes racism, it becomes a movement mobilized by the need for saviors, it becomes a movement that embodies the worst possible political alternative."


    • Roger Ailes leaves Fox News in wake of sexual harassment claims
      Roger Ailes, the longtime Fox News chairman who helped found the network and build it into a cable ratings behemoth, has been forced out of the company following allegations that he sexually harassed numerous subordinates, including former host Gretchen Carlson and star anchor Megyn Kelly.


    • Black Cleveland Residents Tell Tale of Two Cities in the Shadow of Republican Convention
      A day after Republican National Convention speakers discussed how to “make America safe again,” a group of young Clevelanders held their own “make America safe again” event at a downtown park.

      As police officers on horseback and bikes fended off a small rally down the block and helicopters buzzed overhead, the group of mostly black and Latino college students huddled around a picnic table Tuesday and talked about how irrelevant and offensive the Republican event is to many residents of its host city.


    • 9 Lies In Donald Trump’s Big Speech To The Republican Convention
      At the beginning of his big RNC-closing speech, Trump called for “a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation,” and said he would “present the facts plainly and honestly.” He didn’t follow through on that promise.

      Trump’s speech was much more scripted than his typically ad-libbed rally performances, which are riddled with falsehoods. But his formal acceptance of the nomination was also full of deception. Here’s a rundown of some of the misleading claims made by the man whose campaign statements were named the “lie of the year” by Politifact.


    • Trump Spent A Lot Of His Speech Fear-Mongering About Crime. These 3 Charts Prove Him Wrong.
      Donald Trump wants you to think that America is a scary, scary place. In his speech accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Trump claims that “decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this Administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.” He unleashes a blizzard of cherry-picked statistics all directed at one purpose — convincing you that crime has run amok and that he is the only thing that can save you.

      Don’t believe him. The reality is that crime isn’t just on a downward trend, but it has been for a very long time.


    • Trump Campaign Manager Makes Astonishingly Sexist Argument For Why Women Should Vote For Trump
      “Many women feel they can’t afford their lives, their husbands can’t afford to be paying for the family bills,” Manafort said. “Hillary Clinton is guilty of being part of the establishment that created that problem. They will hear the message. As they hear the message, that’s how we will appeal to them.”




  • Censorship/Free Speech



  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • The CIA, NSA and Pokémon Go
      Before heading out to capture Pokémon, you might want to consider the data the game has access to and the history of the company that created the game


    • Snowden: 'I never thought I'd be saved' after NSA leaks
      When Edward Snowden leaked highly classified secrets about government spying in 2013, the undertaking took meticulous coordination.

      Snowden, a former NSA contractor, chatted with Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and documentary maker Laura Poitras over encrypted email exchanges. Their first meeting hinged on code words and a secret signal involving a Rubik's cube.

      But when the first article revealing hush-hush surveillance programs went live that June while he was in a Hong Kong hotel room, that's as far as Snowden had thought things through, he said over a live internet feed from Russia, where he's been living in exile since the leaks.


    • China To Ban Ad Blockers As Part Of New Regulations For Online Advertising
      Since it's hard to see the Chinese government really caring too much about the problems that ad-blocking software causes for online publishers, there is presumably another motivation behind this particular move. One possibility is that the Chinese authorities use the tracking capabilities of online ads for surveillance purposes, and the increasing use of ad blockers in China is making that harder. That clearly runs against the current policy of keeping an eye on everything that online users do in China, which is perhaps why the authorities want ad blockers banned in the country, despite the inconvenience and risks for users of doing so.

      It remains to be seen how successful the Chinese government will be in stamping out such popular software, or whether this will be another regulation that is largely ignored.


    • Former Homeland Security Advisor: Tech Companies Have The Burden Of Proving Harm Of Backdoored Encryption
      Last week's one-sided "hearing" on encryption -- hosted by an irritated John McCain, who kept interrupting things to complain that Apple hadn't showed up to field false accusations and his general disdain -- presented three sides of the same coin. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance again argued that the only way through this supposed impasse was legislation forcing companies to decrypt communications for the government. The other two offering testimony were former Homeland Security Advisor Ken Wainstein and former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis.

      Not much was said in defense of protections for cellphone users. Much was made of the supposed wrongness of law enforcement not being able to access content and communications presumed to be full of culpatory evidence.

      But one of the more surprising assertions was delivered by a former government official. Wainstein's testimony [PDF] -- like Vance's -- suggested the government and phone makers start "working together." "Working together" is nothing more than a euphemism for "make heavy concessions to the government and prepare to deliver the impossible," as Patrick Tucker of Defense One points out. Wainstein says phone manufacturers must do more than theorize that weakened encryption would harm them or their companies. They must hand over "hard data" on things that haven't happened yet.
    • Wall Street Journal Reporter Hassled At LA Airport; Successfully Prevents DHS From Searching Her Phones
      Welcome to Bordertown, USA. Population: 200 million. Expect occasional temporary population increases from travelers arriving from other countries. Your rights as a US citizen are indeterminate within 100 miles of US borders. They may be respected. They may be ignored. But courts have decided that the "right" to do national security stuff -- as useless as most its efforts are -- trumps the rights of US citizens.

      Wall Street Journal reporter Maria Abi-Habib - a US-born citizen traveling into the States with her valid passport -- discovered this at the Los Angeles International Airport. Her Facebook post describes her interaction with DHS agents who suddenly decided they needed to detain her and seize her electronics.


    • France calls end to Microsoft's 'excessive' user data collection
      France is not happy about the amount of data collection and lack of security in Windows 10 and has given the firm three months to sort it out.


    • Microsoft responds to allegations that Windows 10 collects 'excessive personal data'
      Yesterday France's National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) slapped a formal order on Microsoft to comply with data protection laws after it found Windows 10 was collecting "excessive data" about users. The company has been given three months to meet the demands or it will face fines.

      Microsoft has now responded, saying it is happy to work with the CNIL to work towards an acceptable solution. Interestingly, while not denying the allegations set against it, the company does nothing to defend the amount of data collected by Windows 10, and also fails to address the privacy concerns it raises.

      Microsoft does address concerns about the transfer of data between Europe and the US, saying that while the Safe Harbor agreement is no longer valid, the company still complied with it up until the adoption of Privacy Shield.


    • Cloud Encryption Threat Map
      The Cloud has gained quite a bit of popularity within the past decade such that many companies can roll out their own or one hosted by a cloud provider with relative ease. However with this new world come new threats and it is important that organizations adequately model their networks, data and possible threats to ensure sensitive data is kept secure. Kenn White was kind enough to create this threat scenarios mind map and I thought it was worth sharing as it does a great job of showing scenarios that different security technologies help protect against.
    • Tor Could Protect Your Smart Fridge From Spies and Hackers
      There’s a growing fear that the exploding internet of things — from baby cams to pacemakers — could be a goldmine for spies and criminal hackers, allowing them access to all kinds of personal photos, videos, audio recordings, and other data. It’s a concern bolstered by remarks from top national security officials.


    • Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600 million


      After a $1.2 billion deal fell through, Opera has sold most of itself to a Chinese consortium for $600 million. The buyers, led by search and security firm Qihoo 360, are purchasing Opera's browser business, its privacy and performance apps, its tech licensing and, most importantly, its name. The Norwegian company will keep its consumer division, including Opera Apps & Games and Opera TV. The consumer arm has 560 workers, but the company hasn't said what will happen to its other 1,109 employees.
    • Maxthon browser is a wolf in sheep's clothing


      You may have installed the Maxthon browser on your mobile devices. If so, here's why you should remove it. Immediately.

      [...]

      What exactly has been discovered that could be so damaging to this underdog browser? Fidelis Cybersecurity reported that Poland-based Exatel uncovered the Maxthon browser regularly sends a file, via HTTP, named ueipdata.zip, to a server in Beijing, China. The ueipdata.zip contains a file called dat.txt which stores information about the following:

      Operating system CPU Ad blocker status Homepage URL Browser history Installed applications (and their version number)


    • French State of Emergency: Overbidding Mass Surveillance
      Once again. The State of Emergency in France has been extended until January. In reaction to violence shaking the country and with the presidential election of 2017 only a few months away, political leaders are indulging an ignominious orgy of security-driven policy. Not satisfied with merely prolonging the state of emergency, lawmakers have also amended the 2015 Intelligence Act passed last year to legalize domestic mass surveillance.

      It is hard to believe that only 48 hours have passed since the bill was sent to the French National Assembly. With incredible speed, in the middle of summer, the Committee on Legal Affairs of the French Senate has given carte blanche to rapporteur Michel Mercier (UDI - centre-right wing and former Minister of Justice) to erase so-called "rigidities" in the Surveillance Law adopted last year.

      The provision, much criticised during the parliamentary debates at that time, provides for real-time scanning the connection data of individuals suspected of terrorist activities.
    • Snowden director Oliver Stone calls Pokemon Go new level of 'surveillance capitalism'
      Filmmaker Oliver Stone tore into the Pokemon Go smartphone phenomenon on Thursday, describing it as "a new level of invasion" that could lead to totalitarianism.

      During a panel for his new movie Snowden on the first day of San Diego Comic-Con 2016, the director said the app was part of a larger culture of "surveillance capitalism."


    • NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden collaborates on ultra-secure iPhone case
    • Marines, NSA to Bring Combat-Adapted Smartphone Tech to the Battlefield
      The program will mirror a similar approach adopted by the US Army that will provide soldiers with the ability to transmit strike coordinates, access visual maps, and potentially engage weapon systems using a heavily-modified consumer-level smartphone.


    • WSJ Reporter: Homeland Security Tried to Take My Phones at the Border
      On Thursday, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter claimed that the Department of Homeland Security demanded access to her mobile phones when she was crossing the border at the Los Angeles airport.
    • Edward Snowden’s New Research Aims to Keep Smartphones From Betraying Their Owners
      In early 2012, Marie Colvin, an acclaimed international journalist from New York, entered the besieged city of Homs, Syria, while reporting for London’s Sunday Times. She wrote of a difficult journey involving “a smugglers’ route, which I promised not to reveal, climbing over walls in the dark and slipping into muddy trenches.” Despite the covert approach, Syrian forces still managed to get to Colvin; under orders to “kill any journalist that set foot on Syrian soil,” they bombed the makeshift media center she was working in, killing her and one other journalist and injuring two others.


    • Against the Law: Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance
      Front-line journalists risk their lives to report from conflict regions. Casting a spotlight on atrocities, their updates can alter the tides of war and outcomes of elections. As a result, front-line journalists are high-value targets, and their enemies will spare no expense to silence them. In the past decade, hundreds of journalists have been captured, tortured and killed. These journalists have been reporting in conflict zones, such as Iraq and Syria, or in regions of political instability, such as the Philippines, Mexico, and Somalia.
    • Snowden Designs a Device to Warn if Your iPhone’s Radios Are Snitching
      When Edward Snowden met with reporters in a Hong Kong hotel room to spill the NSA’s secrets, he famously asked them put their phones in the fridge to block any radio signals that might be used to silently activate the devices’ microphones or cameras. So it’s fitting that three years later, he’s returned to that smartphone radio surveillance problem. Now Snowden’s attempting to build a solution that’s far more compact than a hotel mini-bar.


    • New Snowden-Developed Smartphone Device Aims to Shield Journalists


    • Edward Snowden Makes An Open Source Anti-NSA Battery Case For iPhone 6


    • Snowden designs device to warn when an iPhone is ratting out users [iophk: "aside from the iphone problem, the real need is for an OSS baseband OS"]


    • Ed Snowden And Bunnie Huang Design Phone Case To Warn You If Your Phone Is Compromised
      Bunnie Huang is having quite a day -- and it's a day the US government perhaps isn't too happy about. Huang has worked on a number of interesting projects over the years from hacking the Xbox over a dozen years ago to highlighting innovation happening without patents in China. This morning we wrote about him suing the US government over Section 1201 of the DMCA. And now he's teamed up with Ed Snowden (you've heard of him) to design a device to warn you if your phone's radios are broadcasting without your consent. Basically, they're noting that your standard software based controls (i.e., turning on "airplane mode") can be circumvented by, say, spies or hackers.
    • Edward Snowden designed an iPhone attachment that detects unwanted radio transmissions
      Edward Snowden thinks about phone security a lot more than the average person. And with good reason, as the world-famous whistleblower revealed methods of government data collection on phone calls, and even from his exile in Russia, still remains a major advocate for digital privacy.


    • Elon Musk's Master Plan Includes Turning Tesla Into An Autonomous Uber
      Tesla's Elon Musk is not afraid to think big and then go for it. He famously published the Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan ten years ago, and has pretty much stuck to that plan.
    • Data ruling should kill off the investigatory powers bill
      The European court of justice ruling that bulk data collection is only lawful if it is used to tackle serious crime (Report, 20 July) makes it clearer than ever that the monstrous (in size and aims) investigatory powers bill currently passing through the House of Lords is simply not fit for purpose.

      The proposed legislation sanctions the mass collection of citizens’ telephone and email data – something that is both ineffective and, as we now know, unlawful – and fails to put in place sufficient safeguards against the misuse of the powers granted to the intelligence services.

      The US last year ended the bulk collection of data from telephone calls when a report found that its counter-terrorism benefits were few or none. Firsthand evidence suggests that mass surveillance makes the security services’ jobs harder, not easier; you don’t look for a needle in a haystack more efficiently by making the haystack bigger.


    • Ed Snowden and Andrew "bunnie" Huang announce a malware-detecting smartphone case
      Exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and legendary hardware hacker Andrew bunnie" Huang have published a paper detailing their new "introspection engine" for the Iphone, an external hardware case that clips over the phone and probes its internal components with a miniature oscilloscope that reads all the radio traffic in and out of the device to see whether malicious software is secretly keeping the radio on after you put it in airplane mode.


    • Film director Oliver Stone thinks Pokemon Go could lead to 'totalitarianism'
    • 'Snowden' director Stone talks NSA, Pokemon GO at Comic Con
    • Oliver Stone Calls Pokemon Go a ‘New Level of Invasion’ at Comic-Con ‘Snowden’ Panel
    • Why Oliver Stone Thinks ‘Pokemon Go’ Could Create Totalitarianism


    • Edward Snowden On Oliver Stone, A Society Of Surveillance & Seeing His Story Onscreen – Comic-Con


    • 35 Years after Saint Reagan’s Order, Treasury Still Dawdles
      The other day, I Con the Record released an updated index of the procedures intelligence components use to comply with Executive Order 12333’s rules on sharing information about US persons. As is typical of I Con the Record, it didn’t admit that this new “transparency” really just incorporates information demanded under FOIA. In this case, the index released three newly available documents liberated by ACLU in their 12333 FOIA. I Con the Record also misrepresented how long the renewed effort to make sure agencies have such procedures in place has gone on; as I’ve noted, PCLOB has been pursuing this issue since 2013.




  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Foreign embassy staff accused of human trafficking and child sex offences
      Diplomatic staff with immunity, working in embassies in the UK, have been accused of child sex offences and human trafficking, the Foreign Office says.

      A total of 11 "serious and significant" offences were allegedly committed by such people in the past year.

      Diplomatic missions and international organisations ran up nearly €£500,000 in unpaid parking fines in London last year, it was also revealed.

      Diplomats and some embassy staff are entitled to diplomatic immunity.

      This means they can be exempt from being tried for crimes.

      The allegations, contained a written ministerial statement by new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, include someone at the Mexican embassy allegedly causing a child aged 13 to 15 to watch or look at an image of sexual activity.


    • Public servant says Australian Bureau of Statistics forced him out because he was blind
      Ex-Bureau of Statistics worker Matthew Artis says he was unfairly moved around different sections of the ABS, treated as a liability and once told he was a "fish out of water" by one of his bosses.

      Mr Artis is suing his former employer in the Federal Circuit Court where he is alleging he was the victim of serious and blatant disability discrimination by the Commonwealth.


    • Can the British monarchy last forever?


      Increasing awareness of the shady dealings of the monarchy - and the institutions that protect it - are leading to a growing republican movement in the UK.


    • If the Risk Is Low, Let Them Go
      How a man who served 33 years on a 15-to-life sentence is pushing New York’s intransigent parole board to release violent offenders who have aged out of crime, the fastest growing segment of the prison population.


    • Court Says Cop Calling 911 With Suspect's Phone To Obtain Owner Info Is Not A Search


      The background is this: James Brandon Hill exited a taxi cab without paying, leaving his phone behind. The cab driver reported this to the police and an officer dialed 911 to obtain the owner's info. The court doesn't touch the issue of abandonment -- which would likely have made the search legal. But its decision that the method used to obtain this info isn't a search seems to be a bit off.

      While the information received may have had no expectation of privacy, an officer accessing a cell phone without a warrant is questionable under the Supreme Court's Riley decision. As noted above, the warrantless search still likely would have survived a motion to suppress as the phone was abandoned in the cab. In fact, Hill does not challenge the seizure of the phone -- only the search.


    • Police brutality: Is America teetering on edge of sectarian violence?


      The tragic shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile occured because soldiers and police officers alike view themselves on the frontline and dangerous edge of preventing terrorist and criminal attacks.


    • May gets Hollande ultimatum: free trade depends on free movement
      Theresa May was warned by the French president, François Hollande, at their first meeting in Paris that the UK cannot expect access to the single market if it wants to put immigration controls on EU citizens.

      At a joint press conference in the Élysée Palace, Hollande made it clear that the new British prime minister was facing a choice about whether to accept free movement of people in return for free trade.


    • Chinese anti-graft protest leader arrested for taking bribes: Xinhua
      A former leader of a Chinese village who was democratically elected five years ago after taking a stand against corruption has been arrested for taking bribes, said Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

      Lin Zuluan, one of the Wukan village protest leaders in 2011 whose calls for an uprising attracted global attention, had called for fresh protests in June against new land grabs and graft in the fishing village in Guangdong province.

      His arrest is the latest move on the core group of Wukan village protest leaders from 2011.


    • From yurt-dwellers to bankers, Mongolians worn out by 'corrupt' politics
      Mongolia is known for the nomadic lifestyle of many of its citizens, its mines of global importance and for being an unlikely – if troubled – democracy landlocked by Russia and China. On 29 June, amid deep economic problems Mongolians showed their discontent by voting opposition Mongolian People's Party into the State Grand Khural (parliament) in a landslide victory.

      The party took 85% of the seats in the parliament, defeating main rival the Democratic Party, which led a coalition from 2012-2016; about half of the elected candidates are first timers in the Khural. Voter turnout was above 72%, indicative of the electorate’s overwhelming discontent, and its apetite for change. The election period raised questions that stretch beyond the immediate economic crisis, making many reflect on the state of democracy, trust and public ethics.


    • ACLU of Florida Statement on the Police Shooting of an Unarmed Man in North Miami


      “We are extremely disturbed by the police shooting of Charles Kinsey, an unarmed caretaker helping a patient with autism outside a group home facility in North Miami. Thankfully, Mr. Kinsey is alive and not more gravely injured – but had the officer’s weapon been pointed just a few degrees differently, this senseless incident could have been a much greater tragedy.

      “This is the latest in what seems like an endless litany of police shootings of individuals who should not have been shot. Philando Castile in Minnesota, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Vernell Bing in Jacksonville: there are too many to name them all here. Of the 598 people killed by U.S. police this year, 88 were unarmed. Mr. Kinsey or his patient could very easily have become number 89.

      “We have to stem the tide of violence, both nationwide and here in Florida. It starts with holding people accountable for their actions. There must be a thorough and independent investigation into this shooting that covers both whether officers violated internal use of deadly force policies and whether criminal charges should be brought.


    • With Arms in Air, Unarmed Black Caregiver Shot by Police
      Charles Kinsey, a black man and caregiver at a group home, was shot by police on Monday in North Miami, Florida.


    • Hong Kong 'Umbrella Movement' student leaders found guilty
      It's a dark day for the student leaders of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests in 2014 that came to be known as the "Umbrella Movement."

      On Thursday, a court convicted Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow for unlawful assembly, for their role in starting the protests.


    • Want police reform? Charge rich people more for speeding tickets
      Soon after the horrific video of Minneapolis-St Paul resident Philando Castile being killed by a cop during a routine traffic stop was broadcast live over Facebook, evidence of just how “routine” the stop actually was also became public.

      Castile, it turned out, had been pulled over at least 52 times in 13 years for a variety of minor infractions – a broken seat belt, an unlit license plate, tinted windows, a missing muffler – or what his mother called “driving while black”.
    • Immigrants Told To ‘Get In Line’ Are Waiting For Years Because Of Court Case Backlog
      Critics often tell immigrants to “get in line” to legally stay in the United States — but the only line in place spans years, as there are now more than half a million cases backlogged in the federal immigration court system.

      Based on new Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) findings by the Associated Press, the total number of immigration cases still pending has reached 500,051 — a number driven by Central American mothers and children who began arriving at the southern U.S. border beginning in late 2013.

      Immigration courts have been inundated with cases after the Obama administration prioritized and expedited court hearings for Central Americans in a process critically called a “rocket docket,” which gives lawyers and immigrants little time to gather evidence to support their claims for humanitarian relief.


    • Texas Governor Latest To Ask For A 'Hate Crime' Law That Covers Attacks On Cops
      Yet another politician can be added to the list of people who think police officers just don't have enough protections as is. Following in the footsteps of legislators in New Jersey and Minnesota -- along with Rep. Ken Buck (CO) -- Texas governor Greg Abbott has decided it's time to treat attacking officers as a "hate crime."




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • I wanna go fast: HTTPS' massive speed advantage


      In fact, a bunch of the internet was pretty upset. "It's not fair!", they cried. "You're comparing apples and oranges!", they raged.


    • CenturyLink Claims Broadband Caps Improve The 'Internet Experience' And Empower Consumers
      Broadband ISP CenturyLink this week confirmed it's following on Comcast's heels and starting to impose usage caps and overage fees on the company's already pricey DSL services. As we've long noted, there's no reasonable defense for what's effectively a glorified rate hike on uncompetitive markets, but watching ISP PR departments try to justify these hikes has traditionally been a great source of entertainment (at least until you get the bill).




  • DRM

    • Statement on DMCA lawsuit
      My name is Matthew Green. I am a professor of computer science and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I focus on computer security and applied cryptography.

      Today I filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, to strike down Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law violates my First Amendment right to gather information and speak about an urgent matter of public concern: computer security. I am asking a federal judge to strike down key parts of this law so they cannot be enforced against me or anyone else.


    • Why I’m Suing the US Government
      Today I filed a lawsuit against the US government, challenging Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 1201 means that you can be sued or prosecuted for accessing, speaking about, and tinkering with digital media and technologies that you have paid for. This violates our First Amendment rights, and I am asking the court to order the federal government to stop enforcing Section 1201.


    • America's broken digital copyright law is about to be challenged in court
      The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the US government over ‘unconstitutional’ use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act


    • EFF Lawsuit Challenges DMCA's Digital Locks Provision As First Amendment Violation
      Computer security professor Matthew Green and famed hardware hacker Bunnie Huang have teamed up with the EFF to sue the US government, challenging the constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, also known as the "anti-circumvention" clause. As we've discussed for many years, 1201 makes it against the law to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that is designed to "circumvent" DRM or other "technological protection measures." There are all sorts of problems with this part of the law, including the fact that it doesn't matter why you have that tool or why you're circumventing the DRM. For example, it would still be considered infringement if you cracked DRM on a public domain work. That's... insane.

      The only "safety valve" on this is the ridiculous triennial review process, whereby people can beg and plead with the Librarian of Congress to "exempt" certain scenarios from being covered by 1201. The process is something of a joke, and even if you get an exemption one time, it automatically expires after three years, and the Library of Congress might not renew it.


    • Ever Buy Music From Apple? Use Linux? You Need This Tool
      Sure, you’re a hardcore superuser, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy the finer things in life — like shiny squircles and getting every new app first. But, what’s an OS-indiscriminate person like yourself going to do when it comes time to purchase music? That’s where the recover_itunes tool shines, and if you’re a Linux user with an iPhone, it might just be your new best friend.

      iPhones and other Apple products work great when you’ve purchased music from iTunes, but can be a headache when your music comes from other sources. On the other hand, music purchased from iTunes is notoriously difficult to listen to on anything other than an Apple product. One major reason for the difficulty with the latter is in the way that iTunes handles metadata.


    • EFF sues US government, saying copyright rules on DRM are unconstitutional
      Since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) became law in 1998, it has been a federal crime to copy a DVD or do anything else that subverts digital copy-protection schemes.

      Soon, government lawyers will have to show up in court to defend those rules. Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit (PDF) claiming the parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that deal with copy protection and digital locks are unconstitutional.

      Under the DMCA, any hacking or breaking of digital locks, often referred to as digital rights management or DRM, is a criminal act. That means modding a game console, hacking a car's software, and copying a DVD are all acts that violate the law, no matter what the purpose. Those rules are encapsulated in Section 1201 of the DMCA, which was lobbied for by the entertainment industry and some large tech companies.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Report: Lifesaving New AIDS Drugs Remain Costly; Older Versions Get Cheaper
      The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has found that prices of older HIV drugs continue to decline, but newer drugs largely remain expensive.

      The results were released on 21 July in Untangling the Web, the 18th edition of MSF’s report on HIV drug pricing and access, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban.


    • Commitment On Investment In Access To Essential Medicines Signed At UNCTAD14
      A commitment signed this week to facilitate investment in Africa’s pharmaceutical industry is expected to boost the sector’s production and make available essential medicines for millions of needy people.

      UNAIDS and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the African Union (AU), and the Kenyan and South African governments signed the pledge on 21 July, on the sidelines of the fourteen session of UNCTAD (UNCTAD-14), which is convening in Nairobi from July 17-22.


    • Trademarks



      • Running Out Of Puns: Get Ready For The Damn To Burst On Craft Beer Trademark Disputes
        With all the trademark actions we've seen taken these past few years that have revolved around the craft beer and distilling industries, it seems like some of the other folks in the mass media are finally picking up on what I've been saying for at least three years: the trademark apocalypse is coming for the liquor industries. It's sort of a strange study in how an industry can evolve, starting as something artisan built on friendly competition and morphing into exactly the kind of legal-heavy, protectionist profit-beast that seems like the very antithesis of the craft brewing concept. And it should also be instructive as to how trademark law, something of the darling of intellectual properties in its intent if not application, can quickly become a major speed bump for what is an otherwise quickly growing market.


      • Dear US Olympic Committee: Tweeting About The Olympics Is Never Trademark Infringement
        It seems the USOC is just getting started with its bullying bullshit this Olympic season. Fresh off the heels of threatening Oiselle, a corporate sponsor of an Olympic athlete (but not a sponsor of the Olympics themselves), over trademark concerns because the company posted a congratulatory tweet for its sponsored athlete that included the Olympic bib she was wearing, the USOC is now sending out a helpful little reminder to other companies that have sponsored athletes but not the games. And by helpful, I mean that it's helpful in seeing just how blatantly the USOC will outright lie in order to continue its bullying ways.




    • Copyrights



      • Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement
        So just as the US government itself is accused of being engaged in massive copyright infringement itself, the Justice Department proudly announces that it has charged the owner of Kickass Torrents with criminal copyright infringement claims. The site has also been seized and the owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland. As with the original Kim Dotcom/Megaupload indictment, the full criminal complaint against Vaulin is worth reading.

        As with the case against Dotcom/Megaupload, the DOJ seems to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as secondary liability in criminal infringement. That's a big concern. Even though Kickass Torrents does not host the actual infringing files at all, the complaint argues that Vaulin is still legally responsible for others doing so. But that's not actually how criminal copyright infringement works. The complaint barely even shows how Vaulin could be liable for the infringement conducted via Kickass Torrents.

        But, of course, that doesn't matter because the guy at Homeland Security Investigations (formerly: ICE: Immigrations & Customs Enforcement) just spoke to the MPAA and the MPAA said that Kickass Torrents had no permission to link to their content. Yes, link.


      • Amazon, Cable Industry Molest The Definition Of Copyright In Ongoing Scuff Up Over Cable Box Reform
        Last week we noted how copyright has once again become a straw man, this time as part of an attempt to kill the FCC's plan to bring competition to the cable box. Under the FCC's plan, cable providers would have to provide their programming to third-party hardware vendors -- using any copy protection of their choice -- without forcing consumers to pay for a CableCARD. The plan has little to actually do with copyright, but cable providers have tried to scuttle the effort by trying to claim more cable box competition will magically result in a piracy apocalypse (stop me if you've heard this sort of thing before somewhere).

        The cable industry's attack on the FCC's plan has been threefold: hire sock puppets to make violently misleading claims in newspapers and websites nationwide; push industry-loyal politicians (who have no real clue what the plan does) to derail the plan publicly as the worst sort of villainy, and present a counter proposal packed with caveats that makes it all but useless. This counter proposal involves the cable industry delivering its programming via apps (much like it already does), but forces consumers to continue renting a cable box if they want to record programs via DVR.

        Given the cable industry's plan is little more than a press release, that's only the caveat we know of. But anybody thinking the cable industry's going to just give up $21 billion in set top rental fees and their walled garden control over the user experience is utterly adorable.


      • Following KickassTorrents Death, Streaming Website Solarmovie Disappears


      • IsoHunt Launches A Working KickassTorrent Mirror — kickasstorrents.website
        Shortly after the U.S. Government seized the domains of KickassTorrents, IsoHunt is here with a working mirror of the world’s largest torrent website. The mirror can be accessed by visiting a URL similar to KAT’s domains i.e. kickasstorrents.website. The new website also displays a manifesto, demanding KAT founder’s freedom.


      • How Apple And Facebook Got KickassTorrents Founder Arrested
        The founder of the world’s largest torrent hosting website KickassTorrents is now behind the bars. The cause of his arrest are the legal purchases he made on Apple’s iTunes Store which helped the homeland security department to track him down.
      • Trump campaign admits Melania's speech plagiarized Michelle Obama
        Donald Trump's campaign has acknowledged that Melania Trump's speech on Monday at the Republican National Convention used identical phrasing as a speech from Michelle Obama in 2008.

        The admission came in a written statement (viewable below in its entirety) on Wednesday from Meredith McIver, the writer who worked with Melania on the speech. McIver identified herself as an "in-house staff writer for the Trump Organization" and a friend of the Trump family.








← Haar Mentioned as Likely Site of Appeal Boards as Their Eradication or Marginalisation Envisioned by UPC Proponent Benoît Battistelli | Links 23/7/2016: Leo Laporte on GNU/Linux, Dolphin Emulator’s Vulkan Completion →

Recent Techrights' Posts

Red Hat Offers DRM, TPM, and Backed Doored 'Confidential' Containers (CoCo) for Microsoft (Proprietary Spyware)
No kidding!
[Meme] Plagiarism Does Not Eliminate Jobs by Replacing Humans, It Replaces Human Knowledge With False Cruft
We need to boycott sites that fake their output
[Meme] Doing Dog's Job (Not God's Job)
The FSF did not advertise the talk by RMS (its founder), who spoke in France almost exactly 23 hours ago
[Meme] Free Software and Socially-Engineered Groupthink (to Serve Big Sponsors Like Google and Microsoft)
They do this to RMS all the time
 
Focusing on the Issues
we'll do our best to find the news and not talk about "Mr. T"
Only About 3.6% of Web Users in Pakistan Use Vista 11, According to statCounter
It's not hard to see why so far in 2025 Microsoft has already had several waves of mass layoffs - more than any other company
Rumour: In IBM, Impending "25% Reduction in Finance Roles"
25% to be laid off?
[Meme] Fake Articles From linuxsecurity.com (Just Googlebombing "Linux" With LLM Slop)
Google should really just entirely delist that site
RedHat.com Written by Microsoft Staff, Promoting Microsoft' Proprietary Software That Does Not Even Run on Linux!
This is RedHat.com this week...
Links 22/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Stripe, Microsoft's Illegal Accounting Practices Under Scrutiny
Links for the day
Fake 'Article' by Brittany Day (Guardian Digital, Inc) About Linux Mint 22.1 'Xia'
Apparently they've convinced themselves that this is OK
Red Hat Dumps "Inclusive Language", Puts "Master" In Official Communications and Headlines
Red Hat: you CANNOT say "master" (because it is racist). Also Red Hat: we put in it our headlines.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Gemini Links 21/01/2025: Media Provocations and Nazis Not Tolerated
Links for the day
Slopwatch: BetaNews Plagiarism and LLM Slop by UNIXMen
"state-of-the-art" plagiarism
What Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Debian Elections Teach Us About the State of Weak (or Fake) Communities
They show a total lack of trust in these communities
Links 21/01/2025: Mass Layoffs in "Security" at Microsoft (Despite Microsoft Promising It Would Improve After Many Megabreaches), Skype is Dead (Quietly)
Links for the day
Alternate Version of Daniel Pocock's 2024 Talk, "Technology in European Parliament Election Campaign"
There's loud ovation at the end of the talk
Gemini Links 21/01/2025: London Library, Kobo Sage, and Beyerdynamic DT 48 E
Links for the day
The January 20 Public Talk by Richard Stallman (Around Midday ET), Livestream 'Assassinated' by Google's YouTube
our guess is that the 'cancel mob' sabotaged it, possibly by making a lot of false reports to YouTube
[Video] Daniel Pocock's Public Talk About Free Software Politics, Social Engineering, Debian Deaths and Suicides, Coercion and Exploitation of Women
took many months to get
BetaNews Cannot Survive If Its Fake Articles Are Just SPAM for Companies Like AOHi and Aren't Even Composed by Humans
This is what domains or former "news" sites do when they die and look very desperately for "another way"
Pocock shot in the face, shot in the back, shot on Hitler's birthday saving France, Belgium and FOSDEM
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Dr Richard Stallman in Montpellier, Robert Edward Ernest Pocock in France
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, January 20, 2025
Links 20/01/2025: Conflict, Climate, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/01/2025: Conflicted Feelings and Politics
Links for the day
Daniel Pocock's ClueCon 2024 Presentation Was Also Streamed Live in YouTube and Later Removed by Google, Citing "Copyrights". Now It's Back.
The talk covers social control media, Debian, politics, and more
Google 'Cancels' RMS
Is the talk happening?
Microsoft Revisionism Debunked by Microsoft's Own Words About “the Failure of OS/2”
The Register on “the failure of OS/2”
Improving Daily Links by Culling Spam, Chaff, and LLM Slop
the Web is getting worse
Links 20/01/2025: Indonesia to Prevents Kids' Access to Social Control Media (Addiction and Worse), Climate News Catchuo
Links for the day
[Meme] EPO Targets
Targets mean nothing if or when you measure the wrong thing
EPO Union Says Monopoly-Granting Targets at EPO "Difficult to Achieve Without Compromising [Staff] Health, Personal Time or the Quality of the Final Products" (Products as in Monopolies, Not Real Products)
To those of us (over 99.999% of people impacted by this) who do not work at the EPO the misuse of words like "products" (monopolies are not products) should be disturbing
The EPO is Nowadays Trying to Trick Staff Into Settling Instead of Solving the Underlying Problems of Corruption and Injustice
This seems like a classic case of "divide-and-rule" or using misled/weak people to harm the whole group (or "the village")
Links 20/01/2025: More PR Stunts by ByteDance and MLK’s Legacy Disrespected
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/01/2025: Magnetic Fields, NixOS, and Pleroma
Links for the day
BetaNews Spreads Donald Trump Propaganda, Promotes Scams, and Publishes Fake 'Articles' About "Linux"
This is typical BetaNews
Richard Stallman 'Unveils' His January 20 Talk in Montpellier, France
It's free (gratis)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, January 19, 2025