03.03.14
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 7:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Ford should avoid Blackberry’s QNX OS and instead go for a Linux-based OS
LAST WEEK we wrote about rumours that Ford was leaving Microsoft (the company’s key automobile partner for years). There are now some reports about it [1], which makes it look like more than a rumour. Ford was Microsoft’s biggest and perhaps only supporter when it comes to automobiles, so it must be a huge loss for Microsoft and perhaps the end of Microsoft’s escapades inside people’s cars (Microsoft has many problems others than that, even at the core business). What’s baffling, however, is the choice of Blackberry’s QNX OS; it’s proprietary, unlike Android, Linux, and all those massively-popular options for car operating systems (which can be tailored to the needs of pertinent companies large or small).
There are reports at the moment about Ford trying to appeal to the “Open-Source Community” (not necessarily software). One article said that “OpenXC, essentially an API to a car, is a combination of open-source hardware and software that lets enthusiasts extend their vehicles with custom applications and pluggable modules. It uses standard, well known tools to open up a wealth of data from the vehicle to developers.”
The problem is, unless Ford uses an Open/Free system that developers can tinker with (not just at API level), it will never attract much interest. Ford would be wise to move towards a Linux-oriented system (and not BSD-based but closed). Since we are only in the rumours stage, there is still room for change in judgment. Ford executives should explore a relationship with the Linux Foundation. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Ford is reportedly set to replace the Windows-based Sync platform in its cars with an open-source based system used by several other automakers.
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Posted in GNU/Linux at 6:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about Linux devices and embedded Linux, categorised for easier digestion
Raspberry Pi
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That “blob” is the closed source driver code that the Pi requires today. “In common with every other mobile graphics core, using the VideoCore IV 3D graphics core on the Pi requires a block of closed-source binary driver code (a ‘blob’) which talks to the hardware,” Upton wrote. “Our existing open-source graphics drivers are a thin shim running on the ARM11, which talks to that blob via a communication driver in the Linux kernel. The lack of true open-source graphics drivers and documentation is widely acknowledged to be a significant problem for Linux on ARM, as it prevents users from fixing driver bugs, adding features and generally understanding what their hardware is doing.”
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Broadcom has released open-source drivers and documentation for the graphics processor that’s used in the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, among other devices.
“To date, there’s been a dearth of documentation and vendor-developed open source drivers for the graphics subsystems of mobile systems-on-a-chip (SoC),” Eben Upton, a Broadcom technical director and Raspberry Pi Foundation cofounder, wrote in a blog post. “Binary drivers prevent users from fixing bugs or otherwise improving the graphics stack, and complicate the task of porting new operating systems to a device without vendor assistance.”
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In celebrating two years that Raspberry Pi has been around, Eben Upton has announced today that they are open-sourcing their OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 graphics stack for the Broadcom VideoCore IV 3D graphics subsystem and it will help the Raspberry Pi with having a truly free graphics stack.
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The community of open source mobile developers around the world are a vocal bunch – and here at Broadcom we’ve heard their call.
To date, there’s been a dearth of documentation and vendor-developed open source drivers for the graphics subsystems of mobile systems-on-a-chip (SoC). Binary drivers prevent users from fixing bugs or otherwise improving the graphics stack, and complicate the task of porting new operating systems to a device without vendor assistance.
But that’s changing, and Broadcom is taking up the cause.
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Raspberry Pi super-computing clusters have been attempted before, but usually they don’t turn out as nice as this new one that’s comprised of 40 Raspberry Pi boards inside of an acrylic chassis.
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Raspberry Pi director of Educational Development Clive Beale questioned whether the DfE is doing enough. He said, “I’m really worried it hasn’t been taken seriously enough.”
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Usually there are two ways to look forward to buy a Raspberry Pi: first, think about a strange thing to make, and then go to the website; or second, buy the Raspberry Pi board having no idea of what you are going to do with it. Usually, I buy things and only after that I go through the Internet in search of inspiration and creative use cases for my new toys. That was the case with my first Raspberry Pi board: everyone seems to be able to put together his tiny PC with some parts (monitor, mouse and so on), a CPU and a lightweight Linux distribution, but what can we do that is totally crazy, mind-blowing and problem-solving?
Legato
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Called Legato, the embedded platform runs Wind River Linux and comes with pre-integrated and validated components that provide connectivity to any cloud, any network and any peripheral.
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Sierra Wireless recently introduced the Legato platform, an open source embedded platform built on Linux and designed to simplify the development of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications from the device to the cloud.
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THE INTERNET OF THINGS got a shot in the arm today as Sierra Wireless announced Legato, a Linux distribution designed for Machine to Machine (M2M) communications.
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Brooklyn based 3D printer manufacturer MakerBot has launched pre-sales for the second of three Replicator models that appear to be the world’s first commercial 3D printer based on embedded Linux. Almost all 3D printers are compatible with Linux desktops, just as they are with Windows and the Mac, and many, if not most, offer open source hardware and software designs. However, aside from some Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone hacks, the MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact appears to be the first to run embedded Linux.
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Rikomagic
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The folks at UK-based Cloudsto have added a new device to their range of small, ARM-based Linux computers.
The Rikomagic MK902 LE is a small box with a Rockchip quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and up to 16GB of storage. It ships with Ubuntu Linux, and it’s available from the Cloudsto shop for £94.99 and up, or about $159.
PicoScope
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Pico Technology has released a beta version of the PicoScope 6 oscilloscope software for Linux.
This is intended to support the use of Linux in the scientific and educational fields.
The PicoScope 6 application runs on a PC to create oscilloscope, FFT spectrum analyser and measuring device functions.
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Users can save captures for offline analysis, share them with other PicoScope for Windows and PicoScope for Linux users, or export them in text, CSV and Mathworks MATLAB 4 formats. The only additional hardware needed is a USB oscilloscope.
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USB oscilloscopes are popular – only that the marketable supply is focused almost exclusively to Windows platforms. Pico Technology now redeems the growing flock of Linux users by offering such a software that runs under their preferred operating system.
Cortex
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Newark Element14′s $79, Linux-ready “SAMA5D3 Xplained” SBC showcases Atmel’s SAMA5D3 processor, with features like dual LAN ports and Arduino compatibility.
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The first is the Hachiko development board for the Renesas RZ/A microcontroller, which is an ARM Cortex-A9-based MCU. This is positioned as a low end design board for applications such as door entry phones, barcode scanners and data communication modules.
Linaro/Yocto/Enea
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Linaro is a not-for-profit company, owned by ARM and some of its top Cortex-A licensees, yet it acts much like an open source project. In addition to its core role of developing standardized Linux and Android toolchain for ARM-based devices, the 200-engineer organization sponsors a variety of Engineering Groups (see farther below).
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Enea launched a free, community-backed Open Enea Linux platform, with Yocto and Linaro contributions, and plans to target various community-backed SBCs.
Misc.
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The trouble is, other big technology companies have been scrambling to capitalize on the so-called Internet of things. In December, Qualcomm, LG, Sharp, and other companies came together with the Linux Foundation for the new AllSeen Alliance. Now AT&T’s Digital Life business division, which focuses on home security and automation, is part of the AllSeen Alliance, too.
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Planet unveiled a Linux-based, 16-channel network video recorder called the NVR-1620, with dual HDD bays, dual displays, and up to 2560 x 1920 resolution.
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly at 6:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Corruption in the process which synthesises draconian laws whose only purpose is to protect monopolies, including the copyright monopoly
“Nice animation,” calls it Glyn Moody, “makes bias clear” (referring to this visualisation). So it seems like the BSA is now officially well inside the insidious panels that try to take everything from the public and pass everything to few plutocrats, under the guise of “free” “trade”. The Hill described the latest addition, namely Robert Holleyman, as “a former software trade group lobbyist for a top trade office.” President Obama has just nominated him, which shows what side Obama and Biden are really on. There is already interpretation of the news [1], which in many people’s views helps show (yet again) that policy around copyright, patents, etc. has nothing to do with public interests. Suffice to say, the corporate media does not cover this [2] (or hardly ever does) and only few voices of reasons do give it coverage in the corporate media [3]; they even slam the TPP, albeit too gently. Here in the UK, some shamelessly-named “Intellectual Property” Office [4] continues to distract from a policy which favours public interests, leaving it to sites that British ISPs are blocking by default (TorrentFreak, or the people’s voice, is not allowed) to speak some sanity [5-10] and also cover [11] the latest case of abuse of copyrights [12-15] (Professor Lessig has just won).
When it comes to copyrights, patents and all those other plutocrats-leaning laws, just remember that there is a war being fought against the people, ensuring that everything that’s ours if no longer ours, using some pixie dust which is draconian laws. We are never really part of making those laws; lobbyists of companies make up these laws, sometimes in secret. This massive injustice rarely receives press coverage because owners of the media have vested (multiple but aligning) interests. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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We recently highlighted the massive problem of the revolving door between the USTR’s office and various patent and copyright maximalist organizations. One example of this was Victoria Espinel, a former USTR official (and then IP Enforcement Coordinator — better known as the IP Czar), who went on to become the head of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the maximalist lobbying/trade group that is basically a voice for Microsoft, IBM and Adobe’s copyright maximalist positions. Espinel’s predecessor in the job was Robert Hollyeman, who lead the BSA for two decades, during which time it became well known for its preposterous studies equating every infringing copy to a lost sale.
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Opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—dubbed ‘NAFTA on steroids’—is receiving unprecedented popular opposition and nearly no news coverage by major outlets
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And you know what? That’s O.K. It’s far from clear that the T.P.P. is a good idea. It’s even less clear that it’s something on which President Obama should be spending political capital. I am in general a free trader, but I’ll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the T.P.P. just fades away.
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Popular file-hosting service RapidShare has stopped its lobbying efforts in Washington. The company invested over a million dollars in recent years to upgrade its image, an effort that initially paid off. However, just a few months after RapidShare’s lobbyists left Washington and despite huge changes to the company’s operations, the U.S. Government has now rebranded the service as a notorious market.
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In the long-running case of the RIAA versus music-streaming service Grooveshark, the major labels have this week asked the court for summary judgment in their favor. They claim that Grooveshark’s founders instructed employees to upload as much infringing content as possible, even making that a job requirement. Evidence proving greater levels of infringement was subsequently destroyed, the labels say.
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The copyright industry is amazing at pretending the copyright monopoly has always been there in its current form. But international copyright monopolies didn’t exist in practice across the Western world before 1989.
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Google is downranking The Pirate Bay’s website in its search results for a wide variety of queries, some of which are not linked to copyright-infringing content. Interestingly, the change mostly seems to affect TPB results via the Google.com domain, not other variants such as Google.ca and Google.co.uk.
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The two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet have been down for a few days, and will remain offline for another week. The tracker owners are performing maintenance and replacing hardware to cope with the billions of connection requests they get each day. Interestingly enough, most casual BitTorrent users are completely unaware of the prolonged downtime.
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Law professor, Creative Commons co-founder and advocate for copyright reform Lawrence Lessig has agreed to receive damages from an Australian music label. Without considering fair use Liberation wrongly had some of Lessig’s work removed from YouTube and threatened to sue – it didn’t go well.
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Last summer, we wrote about what appeared to be a suicidal Australian record label, Liberation Music, which issued a DMCA claim (after first having a disputed ContentID claim) on a classic presentation by famed professor (and copyright/fair use expert) Larry Lessig, in which he discusses fair use and creativity, using as an example, some clips that made use of the song “Lisztomania” by the band Phoenix. Liberation holds the Australian (not US) rights to that song, but still went DMCA crazy. Lessig filed a counter-notice and Liberation (again, apparently having no idea what it was doing) sent Lessig a letter saying that it would be filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against him if he didn’t retract his counter-notice. The whole thing was bizarre. It was as if whoever was doing all of this at Liberation Music was unaware of basic copyright law, the concept of fair use, how the DMCA works and (most importantly) who Larry Lessig is. In response, Lessig did the appropriate thing and filed for declaratory judgment and (more importantly) sought damages under section 512(f) of the DMCA, the nearly toothless clause of the DMCA that lets victims of bogus takedowns seek damages. As we’ve been pointing out for years 512(f) is almost entirely useless because courts almost never enforce it — and we hoped that with such a clear cut case, we might finally get a good 512(f) ruling on the books.
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An Australian music label has agreed to pay damages to a Harvard law professor after it threatened to sue him for using a popular song in a YouTube video lecture.
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An Australian record label that threatened to sue one of the world’s most famous copyright attorneys for infringement has reached a settlement with him.
The settlement includes an admission that Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor, had the right to use a song by the band Phoenix.
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LL’s video was, of course, in defense of free-use and used my video as an example (my original video that once had millions of views and is now stuck in a reuploaded YT purgatory, but I’ll get to that). My little bad-quality joke of a video spawned a life of its own in numerous live-action remakes, which is incredible. And Lessig – a Harvard copywright lawyer – was using it in speeches as an example.
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Posted in America, FSF, Law, OIN, OSI, Patents, Red Hat at 5:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The debate about software patents in the United States is back because many Free software advocacy groups and companies (not Open Invention Network though) are getting involved in a Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case
OVER THE past 6 months or so there have not been many debates about software patents. There were debates about trolls and other such distracting debates; many of them were ‘pre-approved’ by corporations and covered by the corporate press. We had highlighted this appealing trend several dozens of times before pretty much abandoning this debate and giving up on involvement; generally speaking, providing coverage for these debates is basically helping those who create obstacles for small players (monopolies/oligopolies) just shift the public’s attention away from patent scope.
Debates about software patents returned about a week ago. The Open Invention Network (OIN) was mentioned in the article “Software patents should include source code”, but it’s such an offensive idea because it helps legitimise software patents, which is what the Open Invention Network often does anyway. To quote the article: “Computer-implemented inventions that are patented in Europe should be required to fully disclose the patented invention, for example by including working, compilable source code, that can be verified by others. This would be one way to avoid frivolous software patents, says Mirko Boehm, a Berlin-based economist and software developer working for the OpenInvention Network (OIN).”
Why on Earth does the Open Invention Network get involved in pushing the idea of software patents in Europe? Source code or not, software patents are not legal in Europe and the same goes in most of the world, including India where lawyers’ sites still try to legitimise them.
In another blog post, one from a proprietary software company, the ludicrous notion of “Intellectual Property” is mentioned in the context of Free software and patents. The author is actually pro-Free software, but the angle he takes helps warp the terminology and warp the discussion somewhat. To quote him: “My usual response to the question, “Do I have to worry about patent trolls and copyright infringement in open source software?” is another question, “Does your proprietary vendor offer you unlimited liability for patent trolls and copyright infringement and what visibility do you have into their source code?” In the proprietary world I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a vendor who provides unlimited liability for their products against IP infringement, or even much over the cost of the products or services rendered. How often do you review their source code and if given the opportunity are you able to share your findings with other users. In open source that’s simply table stakes.”
Contrary to all the above, the Software Freedom Law Center, together with the FSF and the OSI (Simon Phipps and Luis Villa) actually fight the good fight. To quote Phipps: “How important are software patents? We know they’re a threat to the freedom of developers to collaborate openly in communities, chilling the commercial use of shared ideas that fuels engagement with open source. We know that the software industry was established without the “incentive” of software patents. But the importance of the issue was spotlighted yesterday in a joint action by two leading open source organizations.”
Here is how Phipps concludes his article at IDG: “I endorse and welcome this joint position calling for firm clarity on software patents. (I was obviously party to the decision to take it, although I’m not writing on OSI’s behalf here.) With 15 years of history behind us, there’s far more that unites the FSF and the OSI than divides us. We’ve each played our part in the software freedom movement that has transformed computing. Now all of us in both communities need to unite to end the chilling threat of software patents to the freedom to innovate collaboratively in community.”
Red Hat too is joining this battle and announcing this to shareholders, making some press coverage in the process amid many articles about SCOTUS in the post-Bilski case era (see some coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 910]).
Software patents are finally in the headlines again (not much sympathy for them), but there is also some focus on trolls, courtesy of companies like Samsung and Apple. Other recent reporting about patents covered patent lawyers’ business, the role of universities in patents (they help feed trolls these days), and also USPTO reform (that was a fortnight ago). None of this dominated the news, however, as much as the debate was on software patents. So, perhaps it’s time to get back to covering patents on an almost daily basis.
Software patents are the most important issue as they are the biggest barrier to Free software. We just need to have the subject of software patents and their elimination publicly discussed. █
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Posted in TechBytes Video at 5:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Direct download as Ogg
Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, talks about how Facebook is using people and why no person should support Facebook
Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense
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03.02.14
Posted in News Roundup at 4:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: This weekend’s headlines about foreign policy, surveillance, and aggression
China
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A year ago, Mandiant, since acquired by FireEye, issued a long report called “APT1″ that accused China’s People’s Liberation Army of launching cyber-espionage attacks against 141 companies in 20 industries through a group known as “PLA Unit 61398″ operating mainly from Shanghai.
Mass surveillance in US/UK
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Angwin goes to great lengths to do just that. One of the unthinkable things she did to keep her safe?
Tin foil. Seriously.
Angwin spent a day with her phone wrapped in it. The good news is the tinfoil disabled it.
“The bad news is the phone is disabled and people can’t get a hold of you,” she says. “And people look at you like you’re crazy.”
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Serafini and fellow Washington County Republican Del. Neil Parrott were reminded of that earlier this month when they signed on as co-sponsors of a measure called the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which, if enacted, could stop the National Security Agency from operating in the state by, among other things, cutting off utility services to the superspy agency.
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The NSA has refused to detail exactly how much access to secret Yahoo webcam surveillance that snapped photos of millions of unwitting video chatters, including those involved in adult activities, as demands from privacy regulators for more transparency in monitoring increase in volume. Allegations earlier this week that a clandestine UK scheme run by GCHQ tapped into millions of Yahoo webcam streams and recorded numerous still images to create a vast virtual “mugshot” book of potential terrorists, with technical assistance from the US’ NSA in setting up the system, has reawakened criticism of the federal agency after moves by President Obama to try to dampen down what have been seen as overly intrusive methods.
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The Guardian reports that GCHQ, a British analog to the National Security Agency, collected and stored images from Yahoo webcam streams through a program called “Optic Nerve.” According to the report, the agency targeted “millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing,” including citizens of both the United States and the United Kingdom, with the program.
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The latest top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) may have peered into the lives of millions of internet users who were not suspected of wrongdoing. The surveillance program codenamed “Optic Nerve” compiled still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and stored them in the GCHQ’s databases with help from the NSA. In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency reportedly amassed webcam images from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts worldwide. According to the documents, between 3 and 11 percent of the Yahoo webcam images contained what the GCHQ called “undesirable nudity.” The program was reportedly also used for experiments in “automated facial recognition” as well as to monitor terrorism suspects. We speak with James Ball, one of the reporters who broke the story. He is the special projects editor for Guardian U.S.
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Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) slammed the National Security Agency after reports that its surveillance program capture images from users’ webcams.
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Tony Gosling: This has got nothing to do with counterterrorism, has it? Because this is just yet another great data troll and there are all sorts of reasons why it is illegal. Apparently this sort of thing has to be sanctioned by the Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary at the highest levels, and in the US it has to be sanctioned through the secret FISA court, but there are very good reasons why the people that have committed this actually should be or are criminals. I’m talking about those who authorized it at government level, in GCHQ and the individual operators that have been collecting this data. I mean all of these things we’ve heard about spyware being put on viruses, put on our computers, our computers being stopped on the way to our homes to have this spyware, this kind of thing put on it, we also have denial of service attacks that is taking out websites of campaign groups and that sort of thing by GCHQ and by the NSA. But this is actually the most creepy so far. Using webcams, it’s like an intruder into your living room and it’s not just happening to people who counter terrorism, there is everybody they are after here.
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To date, most opposition to Fourth Amendment Protection Act provisions that would ultimately shut off electricity and water to NSA facilities supplied by state entities has come from those claiming it will never work, and others who defend the “national security” mission of the spy agency. Few have actually challenged the legality of state action.
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I’m not one to fall into an Orwellian funk about Big Brother government, but spectacular advances in technology ought to concern anyone who values privacy. Whether it’s the NSA global spying scandal or the likelihood of unmanned drones patrolling the skies over your idyllic middle-class neighborhood, it’s all getting a little scary. Whether it’s an array of police cameras in downtown Fargo, or private sector monitoring/collecting of your buying habits, or recording sound and picture of folks walking through a mall, or the fact that anyone with a cellphone can be tracked and identified – the technologies deployed already are far beyond the frightening screens in George Orwell’s “1984.”
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Recently it was announced that the prestigious George Polk Award for National Security Reporting would be given to the four journalists — Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman — most active in reporting about the content of the NSA documents leaked by Snowden. The award, named after a CBS News correspondent killed in 1948 while covering the civil war in Greece, is intended to honor journalists who “heightened public awareness with perceptive detection and dogged pursuit of stories that otherwise would not have seen the light of day.”
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Everyone from Germany’s Angela Merkel to Utah’s Tea Party wants to know what is going on in the 200,000-square-foot complex of Walmart-esque boxes squatting on the hillside due west of Point of the Mountain. Of course, this being the $1.5 million beating heart of a spy agency, we aren’t meant to know what’s out there—to paraphrase the Roach Motel slogan: Vast amounts of information go in, but none comes out. If it weren’t for Edward Snowden, we wouldn’t know much at all. But the tantalizing bits—including that NSA monitors terrorists’ porn browsing, Internet gamers, and a few employees’ ex-lovers—boggles the imagination.
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Yet America basically has a secret police in the form of the NSA. It is hypocritical to claim that we are the land of the free when we are being constantly watched by the government. America needs to either accept that we are not really free or the NSA need to massively change their practices. We have the Constitution for a reason, to guide our government and to protect America’s citizens.
RSA
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Stephen Colbert is not terribly worried about the NSA reading his emails.
“I don’t necessarily want people reading my emails but I’m not a spy, I don’t run a crime syndicate,” he said at the RSA computer security conference on Friday. “I’ve got things I don’t want people to know but I didn’t really go running for cover for a new way to encrypt.”
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It’s clear that Coviello has either not kept up with what’s been going on, is in denial or deliberately attempting to mislead.
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The NSA paid RSA $10 million to influence the default method of encryption used in a popular RSA product, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed.
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The Trustycon folks have uploaded over seven hours’ worth of talks from their event, an alternative to the RSA security conference founded by speakers who quit over RSA’s collusion with the NSA. I’ve just watched Ed Felten’s talk on “Redesigning NSA Programs to Protect Privacy” (starts at 6:32:33), an absolutely brilliant talk that blends a lucid discussion of statistics with practical computer science with crimefighting, all within a framework of respect for privacy, liberty and the US Bill of Rights.
Tor/IM
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Worried about Facebook’s takeover of Whatsapp? The Tor Project is prepping an anonymous instant messaging client that’s tied to its free, Deep Web-friendly browser.
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First of all Telegram is free and open-source, and you can grab the source from here. Well known security protocols are open-source and this gives the possibility for communities of cryptographers, hackers and public audience to test their actual security. Using two layers of secure encryption with 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 2048 encryption and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange. It’s impossible to brute force a RSA 2048 encryption key with all the computers available on the universe.
Ukraine
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Russia’s parliament has approved President Putin’s request for the use of force inside neighboring Ukraine, as the latest neocon-approved “regime change” spins out of control and threatens to inflict grave damage on international relations, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
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Russian senate endorse Putin’s request to use armed forces as Russian forces tighten their grip on Crimea and pro-Russian demonstrations take place in eastern and southern Ukraine.
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The EU and US have carried out a classic coup d’état in Ukraine using ultra-right forces as human material, anti-war activist Brian Becker told RT. And cementing that victory with an IMF aid package would place Ukraine on a Greek path into Europe.
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This morning, I see that some people are quite abuzz about a new Pando article ”revealing” that the foundation of Pierre Omidyar, the publisher of First Look Media which publishes The Intercept, gave several hundred thousand dollars to a Ukraininan “pro-democracy” organization opposed to the ruling regime. This, apparently, is some sort of scandal that must be immediately addressed not only by Omidyar, but also by every journalist who works at First Look. That several whole hours elapsed since the article was published on late Friday afternoon without my commenting is, for some, indicative of disturbing stonewalling.
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Putin, of course, is a total hypocrite. There is no doubt that the populations of Dagestan and Chehcnya had a genuine and settled desire to secede from Russia, and they have suffered Putin’s genocidal policies in consequence. Putin is not acting from a belief in self-determination, but from naked Russian nationalism. That is what is so amusing about the deluded left wingers supporting him against the nationalists of Kiev.
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The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda often at cross-purposes with the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
NED is one reason why there is so much confusion about the administration’s policies toward attempted ousters of democratically elected leaders in Ukraine and Venezuela. Some of the non-government organizations (or NGOs) supporting these rebellions trace back to NED and its U.S. government money, even as Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials insist the U.S. is not behind these insurrections.
Drones (extrajudicial killings)
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Khan almost did not make it the UK. Shortly before he was to travel to Europe he was taken from his home in Rawalpindi. He said 15 people including some dressed as police took him and held him for nine days, torturing him during the detention.
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This extrajudicial killing program should make every American queasy. Based on largely secret legal standards and entirely secret evidence, our government has killed thousands of people. At least several hundred were killed far from any battlefield. Four of the dead are Americans. The current case involves an al-Qaeda member known as Abdullah al-Shami, who was born in the United States and is now in Pakistan. Astonishingly, President Obama’s Justice Department has said the courts have no role in deciding whether the killing of U.S. citizens far from any battlefield is lawful.
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Were you surprised the 2014 New Mexico legislative session dragged to a finish without one word about killing drones?
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A UN counter-terrorism expert has published the second report of his year-long investigation into drone strikes, highlighting 30 strikes where civilians are reported to have been killed.
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EU legislation banning the use of drones won’t diminish the number of drone attacks, it will just be much more selective in terms of where they can be used, former Pentagon official Michael Maloof told RT.
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Jamaat e Islami (JI) chief Munawar Hasan said European Parliament’s condemnation of civilian killings in drone attacks hit Pakistani rulers hard since they badly failed in stopping civilian massacre.
Militarism
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While talking about the regime change program of U.S. foreign Policy he says, The US should encourage such change through the force of its own democratic example, not through force of arms or covert actions to encourage coups d’etat as it is doing today in Venezuela. And, by the way, that US example has been tarnished enormously by such actions as torture and abuse.”
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How President Obama can end the war on terror, once and for all.
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Former CIA acting Director Mike Morell might be recalled for testimony to determine if he misled Congress and doctored the White House response to a terrorist attack to ensure President Obama’s re-election.
The administration’s tangled web of Benghazi lies might be unraveling some more. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., has told Fox News that Morell, a former deputy director and twice acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will likely be recalled to testify.
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This is the Washington merry-go-round, of course, no matter who controls the White House or Congress. According to the reform group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “70 percent of the 108 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired between 2009 and 2011 took jobs with defense contractors or consultants. In at least a few cases, these retirees have continued to advise the Department of Defense – all while on the payroll of the defense industry.”
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If there were an Oscar for Best Hidden Agenda, it would go to Jack Ryan: The Shadow Recruit (dir. Kenneth Branagh). At a time when regulators and citizens try to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 recession and the CIA accountable for torture, Jack Ryan turns Wall Street into a victim and the CIA into a model husband. It does so with all the slick im/plausibility of a thriller—and it uses the Bible to boost its case.
Civil Rights
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My six-year-old son was suspended as a danger to others. His crime? A disability you could find in any classroom
Greenwald et al.
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Clearly, there’s an officially sanctioned, if not supported, backlash underway to cast doubt on the those who are disseminating the information that Eward Snowden and other whistleblowers are exposing to the global public.
What better way to respond to the evidence of government overreach and criminality in the spying by the NSA and other agencies than to try to change the subject by smearing the people who are funding the reporting on it to us.
This latest round of the media battle should not be surprising. In fact, it’s all too predictable.
In the latest round, Lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, the point person/interpreter for the majority of the Snowden disclosures, came under attack by indirection with a high profile smear on Pierre Omidyar, the E-Bay billionaire funding his new venture, First Look Media.
Leading the charge publicly is one Patrick Ames, who writes for Pando News, a rival news agency funded by another Silicon Valley tech moneyman. He has gone after Greenwald before charging that he is profiting by selling state secrets.
Snowden et al.
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The main thing The Snowden Operation wants us to know is that “this affair has Kremlin fingerprints on it. They may be faint and smudged, but they are there.” Yes, Lucas acknowledges, it’s possible the Russians aren’t involved, “but not likely.” The naive might be fooled into thinking all was exactly what it appeared to be on the surface and Snowden was simply an NSA employee who reached out to journalists on his own. But sophisticated observers like Lucas, with “30 years of looking at Soviet and then Russian intelligence and propaganda operations,” see the truth. Maybe Snowden was recruited by the Russians to leak NSA documents and knew it was them doing the recruiting; maybe he was recruited by them but they fooled him into thinking they were someone more sympathetic; or maybe the Russians somehow “brokered an introduction” between Snowden and others who would encourage and publicize his leaks (i.e., journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras and hacker Jacob Appelbaum) without any of them being aware of the hidden Kremlin hand.
Assange
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Julian Assange’s prolonged stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy has cost the Metropolitan Police £5.3million, in the 18 months since he entered the building in Knightsbridge.
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Assange, who rarely agrees to interviews, will talk about the spread of surveillance, advantages and abuses of the digital age and the future of democracy. This is one of more than 800 daytime programming sessions at the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival.
NSA Policy
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As part of my ongoing focus on Executive Order 12333, I’ve been reviewing how the Bush Administration changed the EO when, shortly after the passage of the FISA Amendments Act, on July 30, 2008, they rolled out a new version of the order, with little consultation with Congress. Here’s the original version Ronald Reagan issued in 1981, here’s the EO making the changes, here’s how the new and improved version from 2008 reads with the changes.
While the most significant changes in the EO were — and were billed to be — the elaboration of the increased role for the Director of National Intelligence (who was then revolving door Booz executive Mike McConnell), there are actually several changes that affected NSA.
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Bruce Schneier is a legendary figure in the security community, well-known for his expertise in cryptography and more recently for his insight into the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA). Schneier currently serves as the CTO of incident response management vendor Co3 Systems.
FBI
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Earlier this week, Bryan Seely, a network engineer and one-time Marine, played me recordings of two phone calls (embedded below.) The calls were placed by unwitting citizens to the FBI office in San Francisco and to the Secret Service in Washington, D.C. Neither the callers nor the FBI or Secret Service personnel who answered the phone realized that Seely was secretly recording them. He used Google Maps to do it.
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03.01.14
Posted in Deception at 8:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Media Bias
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The BBC has been accused of yielding to political pressure since the last election and allowing a right-wing bias to emerge in its journalism.
The serious criticism by a distinguished media professor suggests that the BBC has compromised its impartiality by depending too heavily on sources from business, the media, law and order and politics.
Covert Marketing
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Two-time “Worst Company In America” winner Electronic Arts isn’t doing its publicity department any favors. The company’s new freemium game Dungeon Keeper tricks frustrated players into leaving bad reviews on its own site, instead of on the Google Play Store, Gamasutra reports.
Politics
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Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., is defending his actions after he physically threatened a reporter at the Capitol after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
The confrontation began Tuesday when Michael Scotto, a reporter for New York cable news station NY1, asked Grimm about a Justice Department investigation into his campaign finances.
After cutting the interview short, Grimm told Scotto, “You ever do that to me again I’ll throw you off this (expletive) balcony.” He also threatened to “break (Scotto) in half.”
NY1 posted video of the incident on its website.
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The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity (through its Wisconsin Reporter and Watchdog.org websites) has aggressively attacked the “John Doe” probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin’s 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Its outlets have also published new information about the apparent targets of the investigation, but they have omitted an important detail: Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe.
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Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.
Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference) and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.
South Korea
Revisionism
Consumerism and Distraction
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This ad strongly promotes the values of consumerism, and implies that consumerism leads directly to happiness. In the ad, the girls bought these shoes, are wearing them, and are now fashionable, popular, and happy. This message encourages the belief that spending money and obtaining material goods is the only path to happiness for girls. This big lie will lower girls’ self-esteem and perhaps cause them to purchase unnecessary goods in their quest to appear cool and likeable.
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Posted in Finance at 8:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bitcoin
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Bitcoin, the emerging if still somewhat mysterious digital currency, may be coming soon to a high-tech ATM near you.
Kiosks that allow people to buy the virtual coins, or exchange them for cash, will be installed within the next month or so in Seattle and Austin, Texas, according to Robocoin, the Las Vegas-based company that makes the machines.
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Bitcoin is big news again. The digital cryptocurrency is on the frontpage of every major newspaper. This week its price collapsed because the largest exchange on the network did not handle a known design flaw in bitcoin properly, which caused widespread disruption and possibly some loss of bitcoin. As a precaution, several exchanges had to close their virtual doors till further notice.
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Feb 28 11:27 – A class action lawsuit has been filed that sues Mark Karpeles, MtGox Inc (US), MtGox KK (JP), and Tibanne KK (JP) for pretty much all of the above.
US
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What’s worth keeping an eye on is whether the Sam’s Club layoffs are a symptom of much larger problems at Wal-Mart. The company has been a giant of retail for decades, but there are signs that its reign is coming to an end.
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Wal-Mart (WMT) reported today and by now, most people who follow the stock are aware of the highlights: EPS before special items, at $1.60, beat estimates by a penny; revenues fell short of estimates; same-store sales and traffic fell.
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A plan to clear homeless people from New York City subway trains in a pre-dawn Monday operation by police and transportation officials was abandoned amid pressure from campaigners.
Dozens of homeless men and women sleeping on the seats of E line trains as they rolled into the World Trade Center terminal in the early hours were left alone, despite warnings that they would be asked to leave so cars could be cleaned.
“It was postponed,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told the Guardian. “We decided not to go ahead. I can’t give you a specific reason why it was postponed. But it may well take place in the future”.
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A group of fired-up activists in Portland, Ore., who were tired of seeing homeless people being mistreated staged the kind of protest that will be difficult for the mayor to ignore.
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The instant messaging service connects millions, but its record-breaking sale won’t generate new jobs
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America’s wealthy increasingly inhabit a different country from the one “they” inhabit, and America’s less fortunate seem as foreign as do the needy inhabitants of another country.
The first step in widening the sphere of “we” is to break down the barriers — not just of race, but also, increasingly, of class, and of geographical segregation by income — that are pushing “we Americans” further and further apart.
UK
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The formerly homeless are increasingly trapped in homes riddled with damp and infested with rodents after ministers gave councils powers to force those without a roof over their heads into rented accommodation rather than wait for a council house, a report by Britain’s biggest housing charities has found.
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Quietly and without notice, Britain has surrendered control over its trade with Iran
Central Europe
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One of the favourite parts of my job is meeting young ICT and web entrepreneurs – who are creating new apps and services that benefit us all. Our Startup Europe programme was designed to support this group – as you can see in my earlier blog post – but it’s also a way of encouraging more young people to get involved and see digital entrepreneurship as a viable career path.
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AstroTurf
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Records obtained in 2011 from the office of Ohio Rep. John Adams, the ALEC public sector chair for the state, show how he worked closely with ALEC’s Ohio private sector chair, Time Warner Cable lobbyist Ed Kozelek, to raise funds for the national ALEC meeting held in Cincinnati in April 2011.
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The gig is up for the everyone’s favorite deficit fetishists, Simpson and Bowles. It starts great with the headline: Anti-debt group finds itself in red.
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A year and a half after launching with much fanfare, a group affiliated with fiscal watchdogs Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson is nearly broke.
Misc.
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The first part of this clip is about why a lot of the good jobs are gone (hint: it rhymes with whoa-balization), and the second part gets to the point about where things are made and what countries benefit. Economist Robert Reich shows us, and it’s a little … scary.
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