Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

12.13.14

Links 13/12/2014: Android Wear “Lollipop”, European Commission and FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 6:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Marking HTTP As Non-Secure

        We, the Chrome Security Team, propose that user agents (UAs) gradually change their UX to display non-secure origins as affirmatively non-secure. We intend to devise and begin deploying a transition plan for Chrome in 2015.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 4.2.8 and Other Must-have Apps

      The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 4.2.8, the final update to the 4.2 branch. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols brags on his favorite Linux applications and Chema Martin says “Fedora 21 absolutely rocks.” And finally today, Chris Hoffman said “2014 shattered the myth of Linux impenetrability.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Introductory tasks for new GNUnet hackers

      We sometimes get requests for easy tasks to get started and join the GNUnet hacker community. However, it is often difficult for potential new contributors which areas they might be able to contribute to, especially as not all tasks are suitable for people that are just starting to work with GNUnet.

    • GCC Has Been Ported To The Visium Architecture

      Never heard of Visium before? Neither have we, but it’s yet another platform where GCC can serve as the code compiler. Eric Botcazou of AdaCore explained Visium as “a 32-bit RISC architecture with an Extended Arithmetic Module implementing some 64-bit operations and an FPU designed for embedded systems…The Visium is a classic 32-bit RISC architecture whose branches have a delay slot and whose arithmetic and logical instructions all set the flags, and they comprise the moves between GP registers (which are inclusive ORs under the hood in the traditional RISC fashion).”

  • Public Services/Government

    • The European Commission Is Looking to Update Its Open Source Policy

      The European Commission is working to upgrade open source policy so that developers have a much easier time to contribute to upstream projects, by removing some of the current constraints.

    • European Commission Finally Engaging with Open Source?

      Earlier this year, I wrote about the European Commission’s stunning incompetence in procuring desktop software: it actually admitted that it was in a state of “effective captivity with Microsoft”, and that it wasn’t really going to try to do anything about it. Fortunately, a recent article on the Commission’s “Joinup” site, by Gijs Hillenius, paints a rather brighter picture as far as the server side is concerned:

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • QEMU, FFMPEG guru unleashes JPEG-slaying graphics compressor

      Bellard – who is known for creating the QEMU virtualization hypervisor and the FFMPEG multimedia libraries, among other achievements – says the new format, called Better Portable Graphics (BPG), is designed to replace JPEG “when quality or file size is an issue.”

Leftovers

  • Security

    • DDoS of unprecedented scale ‘stops Sweden working’. The target? A gaming site

      Much of Sweden’s fixed-line broadband became collateral damage as a result of a DDoS attack on a mystery gaming site this week.

      While DDoS attacks are par for the course for most online businesses these days, the vast majority of these attacks don’t go on to affect the broadband connections of an entire country. But that’s what happened to customers of Telia, Sweden’s largest ISP, for 45 minutes on Tuesday night and then again intermittently throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening.

    • Friday’s security updates
    • Now at the Sands Casino: An Iranian Hacker in Every Server

      Most gamblers were still asleep, and the gondoliers had yet to pole their way down the ersatz canal in front of the Venetian casino on the Las Vegas Strip. But early on the chilly morning of Feb. 10, just above the casino floor, the offices of the world’s largest gaming company were gripped by chaos. Computers were flatlining, e-mail was down, most phones didn’t work, and several of the technology systems that help run the $14 billion operation had sputtered to a halt.

    • Iranian hackers used Visual Basic malware to wipe Vegas casino’s network

      Stop us if this sounds familiar: a company executive does something that makes a foreign government’s leadership upset. A few months later, hackers break into the company’s network through a persistent cyber attack and plant malware that erases the contents of hard drives, shuts down e-mail servers and phone systems, and brings operations to a screeching halt.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • BBC writer Thom Phipps advocates the murder of Julian Assange

      Public executions exist in Saudia Arabia, as do police death squads in Kenya. Public executions and death squads are part of this country’s past too. Most of us are happy to keep such barbaric behaviours squarely in the past and through history many have given their lives for the recognition of human rights and the improvement of the human condition. Presumption of Innocence, Rule of Law, Protection of Life and Freedom we all value and take for granted.

      You would not therefore expect the British Broadcasting Corporation to employ Mr Phipps in writing a comedy about Julian Assange when the former has publicly advocated for the public extrajudicial assassination of the latter.

    • Ben Miller to star in BBC4 Assange-inspired comedy Asylum

      Written by Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden, the comedy is part of a BBC season next year called Taking Liberties, celebrating 800 years of Magna Carta and exploring democracy in the run-up to the general election.

    • Hayden: No One Ever Warned Us Against Overreacting to 9/11

      A damning admission from a former head of the CIA and NSA

    • Anti-NSA protesters barge into Peter Thiel speech

      Protesters angry about the NSA spying programs and recent controversial police shootings interrupted a speech given by PayPal founder Peter Thiel at UC Berkeley on Wednesday.

    • Dear Peter Thiel: This is what disruption looks like

      A speech by the PayPal co-founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel at University of California Berkeley ended abruptly Wednesday night when a crowd protesting the recent deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police entered the lecture hall and overran the stage.

    • BERKELEY PROTESTS SHUT DOWN PETER THIEL SPEECH

  • Transparency Reporting

    • John Cusack visits Assange

      Hollywood actor John Cusack is the latest supporter to visit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his continued stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

      The American star joined US activist Daniel Ellsberg and Indian-born author and activist Arundhati Roy for a meeting inside the embassy in London.

      WikiLeaks said the three were marking the fourth anniversary of Assange being in “detention” without charge, as well as commenting on the round-the-clock police presence outside the embassy.

    • John Cusack visits Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his Ecuadorian Embassy bolthole
    • ‘Assange case – a witch-hunt by Swedish govt pressed by US’

      The US, the UK, and Sweden feel threatened by the WikiLeaks data release in 2010, so they work in tandem to keep Julian Assange locked up in London in fear of being sent to the US to face a grand jury, social campaigner Clark Stoeckley told RT.

      It is four years since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was accused of rape and sexual assault and two years since he fled into Ecuador’s embassy in London.

    • British Journalist Launches Kickstarter Campaign To Raise Funds For Assange, Snowden, & Manning Statues
    • ‘They’ll try to shut you down’: Meeting Assange & the non-stop ‘War on RT”They’ll try to shut you down’: Meeting Assange & the non-stop ‘War on RT’

      Assange shared an enlightening story about a Kurdish TV station that had been shut down in Denmark. The story, like so many others – from diplomatic cables with undiplomatic comments to hundreds of uninvestigated war crimes in Iraq – came to his attention through a leaked cryptogram.

    • Credit Cards Sued in VA for Wikileaks Blockade
    • Visa, MasterCard sued for blocking donations to WikiLeaks

      On Monday this week, American attorneys for Icelandic hosting provider DataCell ehf filed suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in hopes of having a federal judge award the company upwards of $5 million for what it claims was a coordinated attempt between Visa and MasterCard to restrict funding to WikiLeaks after the secret-spilling organization started publishing classified US State Department cables over four years ago.

    • Former Swiss Banker Collapses During WikiLeaks Trial

      Rudolf Elmer has been under investigation since 2011 for allegedly giving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two compact discs during a news conference in London; although he denies the charges, the trial was disrupted when the former banker fainted.Rudolf Elmer has been under investigation since 2011 for allegedly giving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two compact discs during a news conference in London; although he denies the charges, the trial was disrupted when the former banker fainted.

    • Former Swiss banker collapses at start of WikiLeaks trial
    • Snowden Living ‘Ordinary’ Life in Moscow

      Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said on Wednesday that he was leading an ordinary life in Moscow, where he has lived for over a year.

      Snowden caused an international uproar in 2013 when he disclosed details of the extent of surveillance and electronic monitoring by the NSA and its British equivalent, the General Communications Headquarters.

    • WikiLeaks exposes gov’t lies, shifts on India uranium deal

      Prime Minister Tony Abbott signed an agreement in September to allow sales of Australian uranium to India for the first time. Uranium sales were initially approved by then-Coalition PM John Howard in August 2007 but Howard’s successor, Kevin Rudd, reinstated the ban.

      Rudd’s action was in accordance with long-standing Labor Party policy that uranium should only be sold to countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A 2008 Lowy Institute poll found that 88% of Australians supported this policy.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance and Politics

    • The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States

      Early Friday evening Sen. Elizabeth Warren took to the Senate floor and gave a plain-spoken, barn-burning speech that could make history and put her into serious contention to be the next President of the United States.

      There are only a handful of political speeches that have such historic impact. Barack Obama’s keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention comes readily to mind. It’s what catapulted an obscure Illinois state Senator into the national limelight and put him on the path to becoming President.

      Warren’s Senate speech was different, but just as electrifying.

    • Levin highlights bipartisanship in farewell address

      “I watched and observed — I didn’t say a whole lot at first because junior members aren’t supposed to. I watched, and I learned,” Manchin said. “And I saw the system the way I imagined it probably was twenty, thirty, forty years ago, when it did work. I saw the Senate. And I’m thinking, why can’t the rest of the Senate work the way the Armed Services Committee works? And there’s one reason — we don’t have enough Carl Levin’s.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Refusing to Take Sides, NPR Takes Sides With Torture Deniers

      NPR correspondent Tamara Keith went on to refer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein discussing “a CIA program that used techniques she says amounted to torture.” In her own words, Keith reports that “the CIA program of secret overseas detentions and so-called enhanced interrogation methods began shortly after the September 11 attacks.”

    • FAIR TV: US Victimology, Equal Time for Torturers and Hypocritical Factchecking Lectures

      This week: ABC World News prepared viewers for the Senate report on CIA torture…by warning that its publication could harm Americans. Plus TV news covers the torture report by giving a platform to torture advocates. And a pundit who was dead wrong about the Iraq War shares his thoughts about the need for Rolling Stone to do better factchecking.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • No proof so far that NSA bugged Merkel’s phone: prosecutor
    • German investigation says the NSA probably didn’t tap Merkel’s phone after all

      Over a year after an unidentified source released a document he said proved the NSA had tapped the personal cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, an investigation by Germany’s top prosecutor has found no evidence that the tapping ever occurred. He says he also believes that the document may not even be authentic.

    • No proof of Snowden allegation that NSA tapped phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel says prosecutor
    • Former NSA Guys Just Launched This Startup To Stop Hackers’ Favorite Trick

      Area 1 Security, a two-year old Valley startup not yet out of stealth, just raised $8 million for a product that is meant to stop the most impossible hacker attacks, something called “social engineering.”

    • Can three ex-NSA snoops stop the worst hacks before they start
    • Ex-NSA Agents’ Security Startup Lands $8 Million In Funding
    • Ex-NSA Agents’ Start-Up Locks in $8m in Funding
    • Verizon’s New, Encrypted Calling App Plays Nice With the NSA

      Verizon is the latest big company to enter the post-Snowden market for secure communication, and it’s doing so with an encryption standard that comes with a way for law enforcement to access ostensibly secure phone conversations.

      Verizon Voice Cypher, the product introduced on Thursday with the encryption company Cellcrypt, offers business and government customers end-to-end encryption for voice calls on iOS, Android, or BlackBerry devices equipped with a special app. The encryption software provides secure communications for people speaking on devices with the app, regardless of their wireless carrier, and it can also connect to an organization’s secure phone system.

    • Google: We don’t spy on you
    • Schmidt: NSA revelations forced Google to lock down data
    • Your telltale video camera shake can identify you

      HERE’s a way to shake off anonymity – literally. Footage from wearable cameras contains a “motion signature” unique to you. The discovery could identify police wearing body cameras, but also let authorities single out protesters uploading footage, say.

    • How Congress Secretly Just Legitimized Questionable NSA Mass Surveillance Tool

      We recently noted that, despite it passing overwhelmingly, Congress quietly deleted a key bit of NSA reform that would have blocked the agency from using backdoors for surveillance. But this week something even more nefarious happened, and it likely would have gone almost entirely unnoticed if Rep. Justin Amash’s staffers hadn’t caught the details of a new provision quietly slipped into the Intelligence Authorization Act, which effectively “legitimized” the way the NSA conducts most of its mass surveillance.

    • Congress quietly expands NSA powers for spying on Americans

      The campaign to rein in the surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) has become even more difficult. Instead, Congress has used a set of provisions to expand the agency’s data-gathering power.

    • Rep. Justin Amash Rips Expanded NSA Spying OK’d by Congress

      In the middle of this week’s all-consuming deadline budget negotiations, Congress quietly passed a separate bill granting the National Security Agency broad new powers to collect Americans’ phone and email communications without warrants, share the data with the FBI and foreign governments, and, in some instances, retain the records indefinitely, according to reports.

    • Spy panel chairman confident NSA programs won’t die

      Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who is retiring from Congress after more than a decade, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor on Friday that “adults” would ensure that the bill goes through, despite opposition from the spy agency’s critics.

    • Forget North Korea – the real rogue cyber operator lies much closer to home

      A cyber-attack on Sony Pictures distracted attention from a more worrying story about a piece of malware used by GCHQ

    • RON PAUL: ABOLISH CIA & NSA, REMOVE ALL TROOPS STATIONED OVERSEAS

      In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA torture memo release, former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) has suggested that America should get rid of its premier intelligence agencies and bring all of our troops back home.

    • “NSA-Proof” Blackphone to Get its Own Secured App Store

      Blackphone, the privacy-and-security-obsessed smartphone, will be getting its very own privacy-and-security-obsessed app store full of vetted software in an attempt to increase the phone’s protection, the firm has confirmed.

    • How The Supreme Court Could Decide The Fate Of NSA Surveillance

      An Idaho nurse is leading the latest charge against the Obama administration for the U.S. National Security Agency’s dragnet phone data surveillance program.

      With legal help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, neonatal intensive care nurse Anna Smith contested the government’s spy programs Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    • Judges hear arguments over NSA surveillance

      A federal appeals court heard arguments Monday in an Idaho woman’s challenge to the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records — the third time in recent months that appeals courts around the country have considered the controversial counterterrorism program.

    • Appeals Judges to Hear Idaho Woman’s NSA Phone Data Case
    • NSA, CIA reform efforts doomed by GOP leadership of Senate Intel Committee

      The Republican takeover of the Senate after the midterm elections threatens to stall attempts to reform the nation’s surveillance laws and avoid transparency about the CIA’s controversial interrogation program, experts and civil liberties campaigners believe.

    • Europe: The NSA’s snooping habit is good and bad for business
    • NSA’s surveillance a ‘trade barrier’ for EU companies

      The US National Security Agency’s mass surveillance is a trade barrier for European Internet companies trying to provide services in the United States, a top EU official said yesterday (8 December).

    • EU Worried NSA Snooping Will Hurt International Trade
    • DOJ Misleads Court About Medical And Financial Records In Appeals Over NSA Surveillance

      Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in a challenge to the NSA’s phone metadata program. While watching, I noticed some quite misleading legal claims by the government’s counsel. I then reviewed last month’s oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit, and I spotted a similar assertion.

      In both cases, the government attorney waved away constitutional concerns about medical and financial records. Congress, he suggested, has already stepped in to protect those files.

      With respect to ordinary law enforcement investigations, that’s only slightly true. And with respect to national security investigations, that’s really not right.

    • OffNow Gets Recognition from Major NSA Whistleblower

      On Monday, William Binney was a guest on the Alex Jones Show. Since he’s a major whistleblower and the former chief technical director of the NSA, I thought it would be good to call in to talk about the OffNow plan to deny the spying giant the water it needs to perpetually violate the 4th Amendment.

    • Caricature Friday- former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden

      Former CIA director Michael Hayden claims during a CNN interview that rectal hydration is a legitimate medical procedure. Erik Wemple has the story here.

    • This Week, Judges in Seattle Heard the NSA Surveillance Case That Could Go to the Supreme Court

      Earlier this week, a real estate attorney from Coeur d’Alene stood up in front of a three-judge panel in Seattle’s Ninth Circuit courthouse to argue Smith vs. Obama—a case challenging NSA surveillance that began back in Idaho, and could be the one that ends up before the US Supreme Court.

    • U.S. Relations with South America Slow to Heal after NSA Spying

      Last week, in the aftermath of both Brazil and Uruguay’s presidential elections, the two countries switched to handling bilateral trade in their local currencies, rather than the previous policy of utilizing the U.S. dollar in their economic relationship. The change is being hailed as a “step forward” in Latin American economic independence and Mercosur is exploring the expansion of this policy to Paraguay, Bolivia, and Venezuela as a way for the region to move beyond economic regulations that have traditionally been dictated by the United States.

    • Laura Poitras on the NSA’s Most Disturbing Practice

      Poitras explains that the most disturbing NSA practice is the bulk collection of data from people who are not suspected of any crime. By collecting so much data, the organization is saturated with information and unable to accurately track real threats.

    • Judge Posner says the NSA should have unfettered access to your data
    • Federal Judge Gives Glimpse Into Authoritarian Mindset Behind NSA
    • Judge Posner: it should be illegal to make phones the government can’t search

      Speaking at a Georgetown law cybercrime conference, 7th circuit judge Richard Posner made a series of conscience-shocking, technologically illiterate statements about privacy that baffle and infuriate, starting with: “if the NSA wants to vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks, I think that’s fine.”

    • Congress just enshrined into law a Reagan-era rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans

      Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much these days, but members of Congress recently joined hands to codify a very worrisome national-security executive order into law.

      The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill authorizing funding for the intelligence community with large bipartisan support. The vote was 325-100. All tallied, 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans voted against it. The same bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent, meaning that the only thing standing in its way is a signature from President Barack Obama.

    • “Information Sharing” Should Include the Public

      It’s hard to think of a legitimate reason to keep this information secret. Everybody knows that this malware was used to attack Sony Pictures. And it must be obvious to the attackers that the postmortem at Sony will reveal the workings of the malware to Sony, its consultants, and the U.S. government. These facts are not secrets, let alone secrets that are worth protecting at the cost of putting the public at risk.

      The secrecy is probably designed to protect somebody from embarrassment. If that somebody is Sony, it’s not working—the Sony attack is well known at this point. Perhaps the goal is to keep from embarrassing somebody in the government. One effect of the secrecy is to make it harder for citizens to hold the government accountable for the consequences of its cybersecurity policy.

    • Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to parents: Don’t ban Facebook
    • Ninth Circuit hears NSA program challenge

      On Monday, the Ninth Circuit held oral argument in Smith v. Obama, a Fourth Amendment challenge to the Section 215 telephony metadata program. You can watch a video of the argument here. The panel consisted of Judges Hawkins, McKeown, and Tallman. This was the third argument by a federal circuit involving a challenge to the telephony metadata program. The others are the Second Circuit and the DC Circuit, neither of which has handed down a ruling yet.

    • Judges hear arguments over NSA surveillance
    • NSA’s phone spying program extended 90 days
    • EX-KGB AGENT CLAIMS RUSSIA TOLD ANNA CHAPMAN TO SEDUCE EDWARD SNOWDEN IN MOSCOW
    • Report: Russian Spy Anna Chapman Tried to Seduce Edward Snowden

      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was targeted by flame-haired former spy Anna Chapman, The Sunday People reports.

      According to the British newspaper, former KGB agent Boris Karpichkov, who has defected to the West, says the Kremlin laid out a plan for Chapman, 32, to lure Snowden, 31, into staying in the country so Russian intelligence officials could try to talk to him about American security secrets.

    • Russian Spy ‘Tried To Seduce’ NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Into Spilling U.S. Security Secrets, Former Agent Reveals

      The flame-haired 32-year-old was reportedly hired by the Kremlin to lure 31-year-old Snowden into staying in the country so that Russian intelligence officials could continue to question him about U.S. security secrets, The Sunday People reported.

    • Edward Snowden: Russian sex bomb spy Anna Chapman ordered to seduce US whistleblower, defector reveals

      Anna, 32, even proposed marriage to Snowden, 31, on the orders of Russian ­intelligence high command.

    • Udall will be missed on critical issues such as CIA torture, NSA spying

      Coincidence? Maybe. My sites haven’t crashed for months; then all of a sudden, I post a story on CIA torture and … poof. Offline for 12-plus hours. Then a black helicopter started circling my house and … JK on that last part.

      [...]

      If you voted for Gardner, you can expect that lack of public discourse and transparency for the next six years. Congratulations. Gardner doesn’t even bother to have his people email or call reporters back, especially if they have tough questions.

      And if you’re a Democrat who didn’t bother to get out and vote for Udall, you get the government you deserve, and clearly you’re OK with the CIA and the NSA watching your every move, torturing terrorism suspects without filing charges and executing U.S. citizens anywhere they want with illegal drone strikes.

    • NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to address French public

      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is to address the French public for the first time on Wednesday.

    • Bill to Halt NSA Warrantless Surveillance, Passed by House, Quietly Dropped before Going to Senate

      The do-nothing House of Representatives almost slipped up and did something to protect Americans’ privacy.

      The House passed a government funding bill that included an amendment that would have ended the ability of the National Security Agency to conduct “backdoor” warrantless surveillance of the content of Americans’ electronic communications under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. The provisions also would have stopped a mandate for technology providers to give law enforcement and other agencies an easy way to tap citizens’ communications.

    • Backroom Move Strips ‘Backdoor’ NSA Spying Ban From Spending Bill

      Congressional leaders have quietly deleted a measure meant to stop the National Security Agency’s “backdoor” surveillance of American communications from a major spending bill.

      The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in June to ban the NSA from searching for Americans’ communications in surveillance collected while targeting foreigners. But the omnibus spending package unveiled Tuesday night — a piece of legislation that must pass to avoid a government showdown — chucks that NSA safeguard.

    • Wickr – A Top Secret Messenger App For Linux, Windows, Android, And iOS

      Wickr is free, peer-to-peer encrypted messaging application for Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android. It was founded by a group of security experts in San Francisco for private communication. They define Wicker as a top secret messenger which means that nobody can track down the wickr users activities. You can send text messages, documents, audio/video, and pictures to a single or group of users. Also, you can retain the ownership of your own messages or media you share with your group. It allows you to set the expiration time to your messages, so the messages will be completely wiped out after a particular period of time. Wickr team assures that no conversions can be tracked or monitored by anyone, even by the Wickr team themselves.

    • Drone footage of former NSA spy station in Germany

      Ruptly’s drone soared over a derelict site, once home to one of the NSA’s largest listening stations, located in the north of Berlin’s Grunewald Forest.

      The US National Security Agency (NSA) built one of its biggest listening stations on top of a hill, and began surveillance operations from there in 1961, while construction of a permanent facility, known as USM 620 Kilo, began in 1963. Giant 12-meter (39 ft) satellite dishes on the site’s two towers enabled the NSA to intercept satellite signals, radio waves, and other transmissions, before interpreting and analyzing their findings. As the hill was located in the British sector of Berlin, the British and Americans co-operated on spying progams as part of the worldwide ECHELON spy network.

    • Hidden Electronic Eavesdropping Equipment Discovered in Downtown Oslo, Norway

      Spy equipment that can be used to eavesdrop on the mobile phones of politicians and ordinary Norwegians has been discovered in several places in the Oslo area, including close to the country’s parliament, newspaper Aftenposten has revealed.

      The equipment, hidden in fake mobile base stations, can be used to monitor all mobile activity in the vicinity. The paper conducted tests close important buildings in central Oslo and discovered a number of the devices, including close to the prime minister’s residence on Parkveien and close to the government offices.

      The purpose of the equipment appears to have been to find out who was entering and passing parliament, the government offices and other buildings in the area. It could also be used to listen to phone calls and monitor data traffic of selected people in the area, the paper says.

  • Civil Rights

    • Amid Details on Torture, Data on 26 Who Were Held in Error
    • CIA torture: How do we stop the torture next time?

      After America was forced to face the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11 by the US Senate torture report, Peter Foster in Washington asks if enough has been done to prevent it ever happening again.

    • British Intelligence Agencies Come Under Scrutiny After CIA Report Released
    • UK denies ‘unlawful’ activity claims were hidden in CIA report
    • Britain convulsed by its dirty secret in wake of CIA torture report
    • CIA revelations put UK spies under scrutiny
    • CIA report: UK defends actions over interrogation claims

      None of the redactions from a CIA report on interrogation related to British involvement in the mistreatment of prisoners, Number 10 has said.

    • Jim Murphy, Torture Apologist
    • CIA Torture Report: Obama administration continues to torture Guantanamo Bay detainees, says Reprieve
    • CIA on the Couch

      Why there would have been no torture without the psychologists.

    • What happened to the CIA torture report’s cast of characters

      The report examines how agents brutally interrogated prisoners at black sites around the world in the aftermath of 9/11, and is a revealing look at the government officials who created the secret program and those who carried it out.

    • CIA torture report: Prosecute US officials, says UN chief

      Senior US officials found to have sanctioned the use of torture by the CIA should face the “gravest penalties”, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism said.

    • CIA torture report sparks renewed calls to prosecute senior US officials

      A UN expert on human rights has repeated his call for the US to live up to its international legal obligations and prosecute senior officials who authorised the use of torture.

      Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said Eric Holder, the US attorney general, is under an international obligation to reopen inquiries into senior officials alleged to have breached human rights.

    • I interrogated the top terrorist in US custody. Then the CIA came to town

      The Senate report exposed an orchestrated campaign of deception and lies while I was an FBI agent. But here’s the worst part: the lies haven’t stopped

      [...]

      One of the hardest things we struggled to make sense of, back then, was why US officials were authorizing harsh techniques when our interrogations were working and their harsh techniques weren’t. The answer, as the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report now makes clear, is that the architects of the program were taking credit for our success, from the unmasking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11 to the uncovering of the “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla. The claims made by government officials for years about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation”, in secret memos and in public, are false. “Enhanced interrogation” doesn’t work.

    • President George W Bush ‘knew everything’ about CIA interrogation

      Former US President George W Bush was “fully informed” about CIA interrogation techniques condemned in a Senate report, his vice-president says.

    • Cheney: George W. Bush Was Fully Aware Of The CIA Torture Program

      President George W Bush was fully aware and an “integral part” of the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, his vice-president Dick Cheney said Wednesday.

    • CIA Torture Made Latin America Safe for China

      If you want to see how the use of torture has undermined U.S. influence and power, look at Latin America. From San Salvador to Santiago, the continent’s citizens are all too familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation techniques. Some still have the mental and physical scars to prove it.

    • Rectal rehydration and waterboarding: the CIA torture report’s grisliest findings
    • CIA ‘violated human rights’ – Afghan president

      Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has said the CIA’s brutal interrogation programme “violated all accepted norms of human rights in the world”.

      He is among many world leaders condemning how the agency imprisoned and questioned al-Qaeda suspects.

      A US Senate report on the programme has said the harsh methods did not lead to unique intelligence that foiled plots.

    • Why Dick Cheney and the CIA don’t need to worry about international criminal charges

      The release of portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation techniques added fine touches to a picture we already knew in broad strokes. The agency’s “enhanced interrogation” included physical abuse, sleep deprivation, waterboarding and something called “rectal feeding.”

      Though much of this was known, at least in the abstract, the added level of detail evoked a predictable international response. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, released a statement that presented the end game: criminal charges, not only for the CIA agents involved, but also for “former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme.”

      [...]

      The International Criminal Court is the only international venue that could try an American for his or her actions in the CIA’s interrogation program. There are territorial and temporary courts — the tribunals dealing with Yugoslavia or Rwanda, for example — but only the ICC is poised to take action if an individual country won’t. That’s key: The ICC has “complementary” jurisdiction, meaning that it will step in only if a local or national court is unable or unwilling to do so.

    • Why won’t Barack Obama prosecute CIA torturers?

      The graphic and unsparing report released this week on the CIA’s use of torture has prompted widespread calls for criminal charges to be brought against American spies involved in the agency’s detention programme.

      But while the White House has said it condemns the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” it is steadfastly refusing to prosecute those who ordered the torture or carried it out.

    • Police union: Miami chief’s statements on Eric Garner’s death ‘do not reflect the views’ of local officers

      Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa appeared on South Florida’s ABC affiliate over the weekend for a discussion about law enforcement in America. During the WPLG show, Orosa noted that he had watched video of Eric Garner’s deadly encounter with a New York police officer.

    • Miami Police Union Slams Chief For Defending Eric Garner

      In the wake of this weekend’s boisterous protests that twice shut down 195 and clogged streets from Wynwood to Midtown, Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa sat down with Michael Putney on Channel 10 last night. Orosa was surprisingly blunt about the Eric Garner case in New York, telling Putney that he believes the NYC cops who put Garner in a chokehold before his death will be indicted for federal civil rights violations.

    • Cops use taser on woman while she recorded arrest of another man

      Video of the March 30 melee surfaced online this week. Police erased the 135-second recording from the woman’s phone, but it was recovered from her cloud account, according to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City lawsuit (PDF), which seeks $7 million.

      [...]

      Mwamba was arrested on charges of assault for allegedly trying to run over two officers. Charges were dropped, and she suffered cuts and bruises.

    • Silk Road Judge: I Won’t Reveal Witnesses Because Ulbricht Could Have Them Killed

      When alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht’s trial begins in less than a month, he’ll face charges of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and computer fraud—not murder. But the specter of violence is creeping into Ulbricht’s trial nonetheless. The prosecution and judge in his case have now refused to let him know which witnesses will be testifying against him for fear that he might orchestrate their killing from his jail cell.

    • I Was There When an Undercover Cop Pulled a Gun on Unarmed Protesters in Oakland. Here’s How It Happened.

      Over the past 24 hours, photos showing a plainclothes police officer pulling a gun on unarmed protesters in Oakland have gone viral. Tens of thousands of people, and news outlets like Gawker, Buzzfeed, The Guardian, and NBC have shared them, often including outraged comments. But there have been few accounts of what exactly happened, and how the incident came to pass.

    • Attorney General Won’t Force New York Times Reporter to Reveal Source

      Attorney General Eric Holder has decided against forcing a reporter for the New York Times to reveal the identity of a confidential source, according to a senior Justice Department official.

      The reporter, James Risen, has been battling for years to stop prosecutors from forcing him to name his source for a book that revealed a CIA effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

      The government wanted Risen’s testimony in the trial of a former CIA official, Jeffrey Sterling, accused of leaking classified information.

    • CIA’s Brennan: I Think We’ve Had Enough Transparency For The Time Being

      The CIA’s Director John Brennan spoke out about this week’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA Torture Report — and to say he wasn’t pleased about the report would be an understatement. Rather amazingly, in real-time as Brennan spoke, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s staffers did a real time rebuttal/fact-check to his speech via Twitter, with each statement punctuated with the hashtag #ReadTheReport. Brennan’s tap dancing concerning the report included a number of jaw dropping statements, but I wanted to focus on two specific ones.

    • CIA’s Brennan has had enough torture talk, wants to move on

  • DRM

    • Telling people how to remove DRM isn’t illegal

      We all know that it’s against the law to sell copyrighted material, but is it also illegal to tell people about software that can strip DRM off e-books without the intention to distribute? New York Judge Denise Cote has recently ruled that it’s not. The lawsuit in question, which was never cut and dry to begin with, was filed by Penguin and Simon & Schuster against Abbey House Media, a company that used to sell e-books for them. Abbey House was bound by law to protect those files with DRM, but when it was a month away from shutting down its digital bookstore in 2013, someone in the company felt compelled to help customers gain control of the e-books they already bought.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Launching CollabMark Project to Hack Trademarks for Free Culture.

        oday, we launched CollabMark — a project to provide information about how open source and free culture communities can use trademarks.

        A project’s identity is important. Trademarks empower communities to protect their identity and build a strong reputation to recruit new members and distribute their work. But trademarks also impose some restrictions that are challenging for groups that thrive on freedom and decentralization. With CollabMark seeks to offer some strategies to collaborative communities, including a Collaborative Mark Policy that they can adopt to protect their name and logo in an open way.

    • Copyrights

      • Leak Exposes Hollywood’s Global Anti-Piracy Strategy

        Leaked documents reveal in detail how Hollywood plans to take on piracy in the years to come. One of the top priorities for the MPAA are cyberlockers and illegal streaming sites, with lawsuits planned in the UK, Germany and Canada. Torrent sites are a medium priority, which the MPAA hopes to fight with criminal prosecutions, domain seizures and site blocking.

      • Important “Innocence of Muslims” Copyright Case To Be Re-Argued Monday

        A panel of eleven Ninth Circuit federal judges will hear oral arguments Monday in a rehearing of Garcia v. Google, a copyright case arising from the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” video that was associated with violent protests around the world. The appellant, Cindy Lee Garcia, argues that she holds a copyright in her five-second performance in the video, and because she was tricked into participating, that the video uses that performance without permission. EFF and many other public interest groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, noting (among other concerns) that it is a matter of firmly established law that actors generally do not have a copyright in their performances.

      • Project Goliath: Inside Hollywood’s secret war against Google

        What is “Goliath” and why are Hollywood’s most powerful lawyers working to kill it?

        In dozens of recently leaked emails from the Sony hack, lawyers from the MPAA and six major studios talk about “Goliath” as their most powerful and politically relevant adversary in the fight against online piracy. They speak of “the problems created by Goliath,” and worry “what Goliath could do if it went on the attack.” Together they mount a multi-year effort to “respond to / rebut Goliath’s public advocacy” and “amplify negative Goliath news.” And while it’s hard to say for sure, significant evidence suggests that the studio efforts may be directed against Google.

      • Furious Google Ended MPAA Anti-Piracy Cooperation

        After delivering a major blow to torrent sites during October, Google must’ve thought the MPAA would be pleased. Instead, however, the MPAA issued a ‘snarky’ press release. According to a leaked email, the press release so infuriated Google’s top brass that the company ended cooperation with the MPAA.

        Each week Google removes millions of ‘infringing’ links from search engine results at rightsholders’ request, 9.1m during the last documented week alone. In the main Google removes these links within hours of receiving a complaint, a record few other large sites can match.

        But no matter what Google does, no matter how it tweaks its search algorithms, it’s never been enough for the MPAA. For years the movie group has been piling on the pressure and whenever Google announces a new change, the MPAA (and often RIAA) tell the press that more can be done.

      • Surprise: Spanish Newspapers Beg Government And EU To Stop Google News Shutting Down

        What makes this situation even more ridiculous is that, according to the ABC.es newspaper, German publishers are now asking Angela Merkel to change the manifestly broken German approach to using news snippets online, by copying the even more backward-looking Spanish law (original in Spanish.) Once again, it seems that an obsession with “protecting” copyright from imaginary harm causes otherwise rational people to lose the ability to think properly.

Time to Take Microsoft Out of British Aviation Before Planes Crash Into Buildings

Posted in Microsoft, Windows at 7:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Fault-intolerant systems with back doors a recipe for disaster

Takeoff

Summary: London’s mighty Heathrow Airport among those affected by a Microsoft-reliant air traffic control system which is not being able to properly recover from an outage, and not for the first time either

BRITS were aviation pioneers and arguably the fathers of aviation (depending on which version of history and definitions one picks). But British aviation, which is well beyond just British Airways in this globalised world, lost the confidence of much of the world yesterday. That’s for two reasons. First, an incident was reported where a drone came just 6 meters away from physical collision with a civilians-filled commercial plane (high capacity with many passengers) and simultaneously there were reports like [1, 2, 3, 4] about the computer system in of of the busiest airports in the whole world malfunctioning or altogether failing to operate while planes come (or are supposed to leave) at a pace of about one per minute. Everyone keeps asking, who is responsible for this? Curiously enough almost nobody calls out Windows. The press should know that a Windows error is not “computer error” (even The Independent, which is relatively decent British press, failed to note this). London must have been nuts to have chosen NATS, which heavily relies on Microsoft and Windows. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is, according to a Microsoft booster, a huge Microsoft client:

Gavin Clarke writes: National Air Traffic Services (NATS) at Swanwick in Hampshire, is a major customer of Microsoft with Windows on PCs and servers, and Office 2010 under a volume Enterprise Agreement.

NATS has upgraded to Windows 7 from XP on the desktop. It also has a load of RISC boxes and IBM gear, we’re told. There’s no indication what component of the network was at fault at this time.

Air traffic services are run by a relatively small IT team with knowhow and support from Lockheed Martin. Common-or-garden tech is outsourced to Serco, Capgemini, Amore Group Attenda, BT and Vodafone.

So blame everyone except Microsoft, right? This has become an International embarrassment for London, a tourists magnet that truly helps the British economy, and it’s due to dependence on Microsoft Windows. This is the second time it happens in about a year, so how safe are tourists going to feel? There is no need for terrorists to crash planes into buildings when Microsoft Windows crashes, leaving pilots and ground control unable to properly navigate in very busy skies (many planes fly over London all day long). NATS “is a major customer of Microsoft Windows on PCs and servers,” based on a person close to Microsoft, so what can one deduce from this? NATS has no technical skills for having chosen a platform with back doors and no resilience/error recovery comparable to that of Linux (and GNU). London’s airport authorities should take a lesson from LSE (London Stock Exchange) and move to GNU/Linux. “In December 2013, a computer problem at Swanwick took 12 hours to fix,” says one of the articles above, so it’s a recurring issue, much like LSE’s issues, which used to fall offline repeatedly for long periods of time because of Microsoft (there is no news about LSE crashes since it moved to GNU/Linux). Windows is clearly not fault-resilient, just like in LSE’s case, as the Windows-based systems failed to recover from a short outage. Microsoft’s file systems are ancient and there are other factors that make Windows too immature for real-world applications. Pilots reportedly lost persistent contact with staff on the ground, for the second time in about a year. Planes may not run Windows (there is Linux in parts of them), but they depend on what is used on the ground. Each country each its own system/s, but overlap exists,.

“Do we need to see passenger planes falling down on a city with about 10 million people (daytime population is even greater) before action is demanded and change is implemented?”Do we need to see passenger planes falling down on a city with about 10 million people (daytime population is even greater) before action is demanded and change is implemented? Judging by some of the latest news about the latest build of Windows, quality control is still worse than anything. Useds [sics] of Vista 10 are now forced to go back to last month’s back doors, demonstrating that Microsoft Windows is still one of the worst operating systems one can put on a PC (never mind a server):

USERS OF THE WINDOWS 10 Technical Preview have been advised to uninstall Microsoft Office before applying this month’s Patch Tuesday security updates, then to reinstall it.

Testers have been warned since the announcement and release of the Preview to expect complications and irregularities with the operating system as it is in no way considered finished.

It is rather an opportunity for people to feed back on its development before consumer release in the second half of 2015.

Also worthy of note in the December 2014 Patch Tuesday is that none of the seven updates affects users of the Microsoft Surface tablet range.

The seven updates provide fixes for 24 vulnerabilities, four rated critical and three rated important.

Do not let aviation system become on an operation system with NSA back doors (meaning that mission-critical systems can be hijacked and manipulated for sabotage, as in the case of Stuxnet). It is worse than irresponsible and in some circumstances it can put people with suits in jail, just like that boat incident in South Korea. Ignorance is not an excuse and we needn’t wait for a disaster (actual death, not just blue screen of death) before the Trojan horse is dumped. Remember the cause of the Spanair crash and also what sank BP's platform and contaminated the Gulf of Mexico. Then too the blue screen of death meant deaths; Many deaths, not just of people, and not only short-term. █

News From France and Germany: Battistelli Under Fire, But Not Fired Yet, Just Firing His Opposition

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Benoît Battistelli

Benoît Battistelli with one of his bosses from the multinational corporations

Summary: The régime headed by Benoît Battistelli and his criminal deputy continues to overthrow or pressure out everyone who is not ‘loyal’ to the régime

Benoît Battistelli’s reign of terror is coming to an end. He has become a laughing stock inside the organisation he proclaims to be managing. He is being vastly outnumbered by his opposition, so claiming that his opposition is a small dissenting voice or “muck raking” won’t work. People no longer need to fear him, especially if they remain united against him (he cannot lay off or euphemistically “suspend” half of his staff).

According to various reports, like this one from Switzerland (not part of the European Union but definitely EPO-focused), says that both patent scope (or quality) and independence are under fire. The EPO is not a corporation and managing/aligning it against the interests of European people should not be tolerated. Not even EPO staff – i.e. potential short-term benefactors in case of patent maximalism (in the long term it discredits the system and repels clients) – is willing to tolerate that. IP Watch says: “While some European Patent Office (EPO) employees strike on 10 December, many are waiting to see what the Administrative Council (AC), the office’s supervisory body, will do about the growing tension between EPO President Benoît Battistelli and his staff.

“The AC, composed of representatives from EPO member states, has been confronted with claims that patent examiners will no longer be able to ensure patent quality standards if Battistelli’s proposed “New Career System” (NCS) is approved.”

Another European site covered recent events involving the Administrative Council and according to Merpel from IP Kat, Battistelli has come under fire from yet more judges, namely:

  1. Sweden: Per Carlson, President of the Market Court
  2. Switzerland: Katherine Klett, Swiss Federal Supreme Court
  3. Cyprus: Stelios Nathaniel, Judge Supreme Court of Cyprus
  4. Denmark: Henrik Rothe, Chief Justice the Maritime & Commercial High Court
  5. Romania: Octvia Spineanu-Matei, High Court of Cassation and Justice
  6. Finland: Ari Wiren, Judge

Some “muck raking”, eh? That’s what Battistelli might wish to label it, albeit this would backfire on him. Some also serve as external members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, so basically these are in some sense colleagues not ‘loyal’ to the authoritarian and arrogant Battistelli.

There is already political action and pressure from the press against Battistelli.

“There is already political action and pressure from the press against Battistelli.”Jean-Yves Leconte, of France, was recently mentioned here for his actions on this matter. Here is more from him. A new press article from Les Echos writes about what goes on at the patent office and covers the action taken by judges after an unprecedented suspension by of Battistelli. This shows that the biggest stakeholders at EPO no longer want Battistelli. He is probably on his way out (sooner or later).

Not only the French press writes about this (because of Battistelli’s French nationality). The German press too covers it. The Frankfurter Rundschau reports about the revolt against Battistelli (at many levels) and other German media provides coverage of the protests (in German). Watch a patent maximalists’ site framing the problem as a transparency issue. Complete nonsense from patent lawyers. It’s a straw man, just like Battistelli’s (he pretends that “transparency” or lack of understanding is the problem).

German lobbyist Florian Müller published a decent analysis and roundup of the recent developments following the suspension of a judge by Battistelli’s régime:

On its website, the European Patent Office has published a “communiqué” concerning this week’s meeting of the Administrative Council (AC) of the European Patent Organisation (the international body running the EPO) that contains a sybilline sentence on the suspension of an EPO-internal judge (member of a board of appeal) for disciplinary reasons. The suspension was widely criticized, including but not limited to a letter by (internal) members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) to the AC, a letter by two external EBA members, Lord Justice Floyd and high-ranking Dutch court official Robert van Peursem, which was subsequently endorsed by leading patent judges from six other countries, and an email sent by a German patent litigator to his country’s AC member.

[...]

If this sentence explicitly mentioned a reprimand of President Battistelli for compromising judicial independence, its meaning and its significance would be clear. However, “an incident unique in the history of the EPO” is vague enough that this could also mean unanimous backing of the executive’s action and concern over whatever the suspended judge may have done. That interpretation is less likely to be correct than disagreement with the way the executive leadership handled the matter, but it can’t be ruled out completely in light of the unanimous endorsement of the suspension.

[...]

Coverage of this scandal in the general press will also play a key role. I heard that a Munich area center-right newspaper, Münchner Merkur, published an article in yesterday’s print edition, entitled “Die letzte Diktatur auf deutschem Boden” (“the sole remaining dictatorship on German soil”). Things can’t stay that way forever. The AC’s “communiqué” should be interpreted by the IP sector and by innovative companies depending on high-quality patents (I heard from an unofficial source that a compensation scheme with potentially disastrous implications for European patent quality was approved yesterday) as an invitation to push even harder for serious reform. It shows that all these recent efforts, by EPO staff and by others, didn’t go unnoticed, but they will one day have been in vain unless there’s even more pressure now.

The EPO is now in ‘damage control’ mode. It has published two updates in one day (yesterday) after almost 2 months of silence. Here is the first update:

Communique on decisions taken by the Administrative Council at its 142nd meeting concerning senior employees and appointments and reappointments to the Boards of Appeal

The Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation held its 142nd meeting in Munich on 10 and 11 December 2014 under the chairmanship of Jesper KONGSTAD (DK).

The Council addressed a number of points concerning senior employees and the Boards of Appeal. Specifically, the Council addressed disciplinary arrangements applicable to senior employees appointed by the Council under Article 11 (1)(2)(3) EPC and, noting its obligations under Article 11(4) EPC, agreed to set up a Council Disciplinary Committee.

The Council took this opportunity to reiterate its full endorsement of and support for the principle of independence of the members of the Boards of Appeal, as specifically set out in Article 23 EPC and generally embodied in internationally recognised principles of judicial independence.

The Council also made four re-appointments of members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal and Chairmen and legally qualified members of the of Boards of Appeal pursuant to Art 11(3) EPC, as well as a total of twelve appointments and re-appointments of legally qualified members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal pursuant to Art 11(5) EPC.

On a proposal from the President of the Office, the Council addressed and carefully considered a particular issue concerning alleged misconduct by a Council appointee under Article 11 (3) EPC. As a precautionary and conservative measure without anticipating any further steps which may ensue, the Council unanimously decided to suspend the person concerned from active duty on full salary until 31 March 2015. The Council requested the investigation to be completed as soon as possible, in order to allow it to decide on the next steps. The Council expressed its concern at an incident unique in the history of EPO.

Details of the appointments and reappointments as well as of other decisions taken by the Council at this meeting will be published separately.

Council Secretariat

Kongstad exists to protect Battistelli and his cronies, so he too is part of the problem, not the solution. Here is a later update about Kongstad’s flawed ‘regulation’/administration:

142nd meeting of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation (Munich, 10 and 11 December 2014)

The Administrative Council held its 142nd meeting in Munich on 10 and 11 December 2014
with Jesper Kongstad, Director General of the Danish Patent Office, in the chair.

After the Chairman’s report on the last meetings of the Board of the Administrative Council, the President of the European Patent Office, Benoît Battistelli, presented his activities report. The Council expressed its clear satisfaction.

The Council then exchanged information on strategic matters within the Organisation and on the social climate and addressed a particular issue concerning alleged misconduct by a Council appointee under Article 11 (3) EPC, reported separately on this website.

Further, the Council proceeded with a series of appointments and re-appointments to positions in the boards of appeal.

Later, the Council heard status reports on the Unitary patent and related developments as well as on substantive patent law harmonisation.

Lastly, the Council adopted a reform of the career system as well as the draft budget for 2015.

Council Secretariat

So basically Kongstad (one of the president’s cronies) keeps attacking the EPO’s staff. This is the sort of behaviour that even Stalin would be envious of. An activist site of EPO staff says that “EPO President Battistelli threatens the staff representatives – again!!!”

To quote the site’s framing of the latest developments: “Each Central Staff Committee (CSC) member has personally received a series of three highly threatening letters from the President, dated 4 December 2014. The members of the LSCs have also received the letter dealing with nominations to the Internal Appeals Committee (IAC). Within one week after receipt of the letters, 2 local members in Munich and 1 central member in The Hague have resigned. The staff representation has now lost 4 members 6 months only after the new elections under the “Social Democracy” framework. In this publication, the CSC responds to the threats of the President.”

Battistelli and his cronies need to be toppled before they managed to sack or drive out all of their opposition scaring the rest into silence and passivity. The crimes of Battistelli or his cronies will be the subject of future posts in Techrights. Battistelli’s tactics against his opposition are similar to how proponents of “War on Terror” handle dissent; if someone disagree, then just label that someone a threat and eliminate him/her to eradicate an uprise. █

12.12.14

Links 12/12/2014: Linux++, KDE Frameworks 5.5.0, Calligra 2.8.7

Posted in News Roundup at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Best Terminal Emulators for Linux

    If you’re a fan of Linux, you know the exact reason why it’s awesome – the command line. Though many outsiders view it as only a “hacker tool,” it’s actually one of the best tools available for any operating system. The Linux shell has the ability to install software, manage your operating system and basically everything else.

    To interact with the command line, you’ll need a terminal emulator. There are many terminal emulators available – perhaps too many. There are a lot of good ones and a lot of bad ones out there. It is because of this reason we’ve decided to create a list of five great terminal emulators available on Linux.

  • Why I rarely file bug reports

    “Any chance of a bug report?” a developer asked when I mentioned a problem with an application on social media. As a free software supporter, I felt an obligation to oblige, but in practice, the chance was slim. For those of us who don’t regularly file bugs, the process is usually too demanding, and too dependent on bureaucratic whim to seem worth the effort.

  • HP’s Big Slap-In-The-Face To Microsoft Will Show Up Next Year

    The operating system is called Linux++, and is part of HP’s ambitious project to reinvent the computer, reports MIT Technology Review’s Tom Simonite.

    Ultimately, HP hopes to replace Linux++ with something even more radical and homegrown, an operating system called Carbon, though it hasn’t talked about a timeline for that yet.

  • Has The Russian Government Moved To GNU/Linux As Planned?

    There is another plan which almost certainly will involve replacing Wintel PCs with GNU/Linux PCs gradually, by a million units per annum, the move to Baikal processors, a derivative of ARM. Recently, in response to sanctions over Ukraine, Russia will officially prefer home-grown “solutions” for IT. There are signs of a digital “cold” war emerging and the world’s IT is dependent on several components originating in Russia. Such pressures will surely accelerate migration to GNU/Linux in Russia. It’s a short cut to independence.

  • Linux Continues to Grow in the Cloud Computing and Implementation of Enterprise Applications

    The operating system of most famous open source is gaining ground in business particularly in cloud computing, according to a report from the Linux Foundation and Yeoman Technology Group.

    The Linux Foundation has published a study called “2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report” that shows the steady growth of Linux in the market for large companies, especially in recent years driven by factors such as the growth of cloud computing, in addition to its known qualities in terms of safety, capacity deployment, costs or virtualization.

  • Desktop

    • Must-have Linux desktop apps (Six Clicks)

      There’s nothing I can’t do on my Linux PCs that requires Windows. It’s really that simple.

      On my Linux Mint 17.1 desktop, I can run Windows games, thanks to Crossover, and run thousands of native games including many Steam-powered games. In addition, I don’t need to worry about anti-virus software since, despite all the FUD, there still hasn’t been a successful desktop Linux virus.

      Let’s get down to business: Here are the six applications I use every day to get my work done and keep in touch with my friends. Unless you have some particular program that’s Windows only, I think you’ll find these six programs may answer for all your daily needs as well.

  • Server

    • Containers, microservices, and orchestrating the whole symphony

      The microservices architecture is far from a new trend; it’s generally accepted as a better way to build apps these days. The common way to build apps was, until a few years ago, the monolithic approach—which was, if you look at it from a functional perspective, basically one deployment unit that does everything. Monolithic apps are good for small scale teams and projects, but when you need something that has a larger scale and involves many teams, it starts to become problematic. It’s much harder to make changes, as the code base becomes bigger and more people make changes to it.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux leader: Dependency on a platform is good for the platform

      Zemlin’s statement preceded the announcement Tuesday that the Cloud Foundry Foundation, representing the financial backing for open source projects, has been successfully spun off into an agency unto itself. It will remain intertwined with the Linux Foundation, however, in that Linux will become a contracting service provider to Cloud Foundry.

    • diff -u: What’s New in Kernel Development

      Containers are very tricky to implement. Trying to isolate sets of resources from each other completely, so that they resemble a discrete system, and doing it in a secure way, has to be addressed on a feature-by-feature basis, with many caveats and uncertainties. Over time, this makes the core kernel code more secure and robust, but each individual feature may have surprising issues.

      The whole namespace idea—corralling subsets of system resources like user IDs and group IDs, and performing on-the-fly translations between the resource names within the container and the corresponding names in the outer system—is tough to manage.

      Recently, Marian Marinov noticed that process counters in the outer system counted processes as being owned by the same user if his or her UIDs (user IDs) were the same inside two separate containers. The same was true for GIDs (group IDs). He didn’t like this, because the two containers represented two logically isolated systems, and in that context, the same UIDs could refer to different users entirely. They shouldn’t be counted together.

    • Linux 3.19 To Have Full Multi-Touch For More Logitech Devices

      Jiri Kosina has lined up his HID subsystem changes for the Linux 3.19 kernel that include more multi-touch device work and other input improvements.

    • XFS Has Improvements To Look Forward To With Linux 3.19

      One of the latest pull requests for the Linux 3.19 kernel is the XFS file-system changes.

    • Benchmarks

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Frameworks 5.5.0 Released
      • Release of KDE Frameworks 5.5.0

        This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

      • Calligra 2.8.7 is Out

        Packages for the release of KDE’s document suite Calligra 2.8.7 are available for Kubuntu 14.10. You can get it from the Kubuntu Updates PPA. They are also in our development version Vivid.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • 4MLinux Is So Lightweight It’s Anemic

        I worked with the all-in-one version of 4MLinux for several days, and I had a very frustrating experience trying to deal with the little distro that could not. The separate mini distros had a few usability issues too. I was disappointed by the minimalistic software inventory. Unless you install them to the hard drive, very few of the included apps actually run.

    • Screenshots

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Monthly Newsletter: November 2014

        The Gentoo Council addressed a few miscellaneous matters this month.

        The first concerned tinderbox reports to bugs. There was a bit of a back-and-forth in bugzilla with a dispute over whether bugs generated from tinderbox runs that contained logs attached as URLs instead of as files could be closed as INVALID. Normally the use of URLs is discouraged to improve the long-term usability of the bugs. Since efforts were already underway to try to automatically convert linked logs into attached logs it was felt that closing bugs as INVALID was counterproductive.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 Beta is here

        Time, and operating system developments wait on no one. Only a few months ago Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 and now the RHEL 7.1 beta has landed on our doorsteps.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 21 Raves & DRM Happiness

          But the real reason behind Fedora 21’s success? It’s an odd-numbered release. Historically, the odd-numbered releases have always been better than the even-numbered ones. Don’t ask me why. There’s no documentation or detailed research to prove why it happens this way. It’s just a physical law of the universe.

        • Red Hat 7.1 Beta, Malware History, and Bug Reports

          In the Linux feeds this evening was the announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 Beta. In other news, Jon Gold takes us down Linux malware memory lane and Derrik Diener looks at some terminal emulators – one that was new to me. Elsewhere Bruce Byfield discusses why he don’t file bug reports and Jack Germain says 4MLinux is so lightweight it’s anemic.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Google releases Cardboard VR viewer specs and SDKs

          The Android SDK enables applications with features including lens distortion correction, head tracking, 3D calibration, and side-by-side rendering. Other features include stereo geometry configuration and user input event handling.

        • Sharing with Qt on Android

          We just release a new version of GiraffPanic – a logic mobile game written with Qt and QML. In the new version we give the users the possibility to share unlock codes with each other to unlock new levels. So we wanted to have a nice way to share the code between devices without any need to copy paste them (codes) into another application. After trying a lot of different approaches (that did not work), we found it is possible to invoke the native Android share menu from within our application. Using this method keeps our own code quite tidy and supports all the ways of sharing provided by the host device.

        • Game of Thrones adventure released for Android

          I’m a huge fan of the and . I’ve read through the books a number of times, and watched the show even more. There’s always some little angle or juicy tidbit to find in the books, you just can’t read them once to take it all in. No matter how attentive a reader you are, you’ll definitely miss things as George R.R. Martin puts little hints and foreshadowings all over the place.

        • BlueZ 5.26 Taks Aim At Bluetooth 4.2 & Android 5.0

          BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth stack, boasts more features with today’s release of version 5.26.

          BlueZ 5.26 most notably adds support for Android 5.0 Bluetooth features and support for Bluetooth 4.2 commands and events. BlueZ 5.26 also supports the Low-Energy Secure Connections feature of Bluetooth, HID over GATT get and set report handling, and version 1.2 of the Phonebook Access Profile. BlueZ 5.26 also packs various fixes.

Free Software/Open Source

  • HubSpot Is Now Aiming to Solve DevOps with New Tool

    The company, traditionally focused on marketing software, is to eventually aiming to make the new product open source.

  • Cisco Announces Plan to Reinvent Snort 3 IPS

    The user friendliness is being enabled in part by way of a new command line shell that leverages the open-source Lua language.

    There is also a plan to have a simpler language for Snort rules. Roesch explained that the new rules language will be more streamlined than the existing language. The goal for the new rules language is for both humans and machines to be able to more easily read and write Snort policies.

    The most current stable open-source Snort release is version 2.9.7.0, but that doesn’t imply that the new Snort 3.0 release will be coming within the next three regular Snort release update cycles. Roesch said he doesn’t mind having a Snort 2.10.0 or an even higher number, emphasizing that the development of Snort 3 will take its due and proper course.

  • Events

    • How many LibrePlanet scholarships will we give?

      We’re excited to announce our first keynote speaker for LibrePlanet 2015: Karen Sandler, executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and co-host of the “Free as in Freedom” podcast. Ms. Sandler’s closing keynotes have been a highlight at LibrePlanet, and we’re so excited to have her back. In other words, LibrePlanet 2015 is shaping up to be a really great event.

    • AnDevCon Highlights Embedded, Open-Source

      Application performance management tools, speakers, and giant green Android mascots abounded at the Android Developer Conference San Francisco Bay Area, held November 18 through 21 in Burlingame, Calif. The event, in its eighth year, was sponsored by Intel, Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Twitter, Sony, Epson, and Amazon, among others.

    • Call for Papers is open for the Embedded Linux Conference 2015

      Are you involved in Embedded Linux? Well there is a Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) taking place in San Jose, CA, March 23 – 25, 2015. This is the “premier vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using Linux in embedded products”.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Dell Adds Midokura Open Network Virtualization Option for OpenStack

      Dell Computer is deepening its focus on the open cloud and OpenStack in particular. The company announced an expansion of its Open Networking initiative to include Midokura, a company focused on network virtualization, to complement Dell’s networking and server infrastructure. Their agreement includes a joint go-to-market program, validated reference architecture and global reseller agreement.

    • How to Easily Get Very In-Demand OpenStack Cloud Skills

      How in demand are cloud computing skills in the job market? Consider these notes from Forbes, based on a report from WANTED Analytics: “There are 3.9 million jobs in the U.S. affiliated with cloud computing today with 384,478 in IT alone. The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950 and the median salary for positions that pay over $100,000 a year is $116,950.”

    • OpenStack Is Huge In The Open-Source Cloud—But Maybe Not Huge Enough

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • IT should listen to users not just managers, says SugarCRM CEO

        Deliver the software users want and need (not just what management thinks is required), look for deployment flexibility, and beware of API charges. They are the messages from SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin.

        The proliferation of BYOA – bring your own applications – is putting pressure on IT departments to provide better tools, and to regard users as “constituents” rather than simply listening to management.

  • Public Services/Government

    • European Commission updates its open source policy

      The European Commission (EC) wants to make it easier for its software developers to submit patches and add new functionalities to open source projects. Contributing to open source communities will be made central to the EC’s new open source policy, expects Pierre Damas, Head of Sector at the Directorate General for IT (DIGIT). “We use a lot of open source components that we adapt and integrate, and it is time that we contribute back.”

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Security

    • A brief history of Linux malware
    • The Password? You Changed It, Right?

      As my Twitter followers may be aware, I spent the first part of this week at the Passwords14 conference in Trondheim, Norway. More about that later, suffice for now to say that the conference was an excellent one, and my own refreshed Hail Mary Cloud plus more recent history talk was fairly well received.

      [...]

      By this afternoon (2014-12-11), it seems that all told a little more than 700 machines have come looking for mostly what looks like various manufacturers’ names and a few other usual suspects. The data can be found here, with roughly the same file names as in earlier episodes. Full list of attempts on both hosts here, with the rather tedious root only sequences removed here, hosts sorted by number of attempts here, users sorted by number of attempts here, a CSV file with hosts by number of attempts with first seen and last seen dates and times, and finally hosts by number of attempts with listing of each host’s attempts. Expect updates to all of these at quasi-random intervals.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘Excited Delirium’ and the Suspicious Death of Kenwin Garcia

      Kenwin Garcia was a 25-year-old African American man from Newark who died in 2008 on the side of a highway, after an altercation with state police. Christopher Baxter from NJ Advanced Media states that his death was claimed to be a result of “excited delirium.” The term is used to describe a lethal overdose of adrenaline that leads to heart or respiratory failure. But there is little medical evidence to support this official judgment in Garcia’s case, and there is wider controversy surrounding the interpretation of the symptoms that constitute the syndrome. In Garcia’s case specifically, an autopsy found he suffered severe internal injuries, including a broken breastbone and ribs, a torn kidney and extensive bleeding.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The New York Times Downplays The Influence Of Money In Politics

      The New York Times downplayed the impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and dismissed the influence of money in politics by ignoring record-breaking spending of outside groups, the role of large donor political contributions, and dark money in the 2014 midterm election.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Solidarity against online harassment

      One of our colleagues has been the target of a sustained campaign of harassment for the past several months. We have decided to publish this statement to publicly declare our support for her, for every member of our organization, and for every member of our community who experiences this harassment. She is not alone and her experience has catalyzed us to action. This statement is a start.

    • GOP rep attempted late bid to kill spy bill

      One of the biggest thorns in the side of the country’s intelligence agencies attempted to mount an eleventh hour bid to kill the spy agencies’ funding bill on Wednesday.

      Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) wrote on Facebook that the intelligence authorization bill that easily passed through the House contained “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative.”

      “It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American,” explained Amash, who has a record of skepticism toward the National Security Agency and other agencies. Last year, he nearly succeeded in an attempt to end the NSA’s controversial phone records program.

    • Police can search cellphones in arrests without warrant, Supreme Court rules

      In a crime ruling that earned it rare praise from the federal government, the Supreme Court of Canada said police may search cellphones without a warrant when they make an arrest.

      Cellphones are the bread and butter of the drug trade, the majority said in a 4-3 ruling. It said police have been given the “extraordinary power” to do warrantless searches during an arrest, under common-law rules developed by judges over centuries, because of the importance of prompt police investigations. Until now, those searches typically included purses and briefcases. Civil liberties groups had urged the court to exempt cellphones.

    • European Commissioner For Human Rights And Key EU Privacy Committee Strongly Condemn Mass Surveillance And Bulk Data Retention

      As we wrote recently, the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that GCHQ surveillance doesn’t violate human rights. That’s hardly surprising, given IPT’s track record in approving pretty much everything that GCHQ does. But the global reach of the spying carried out by GCHQ and the NSA means that there are plenty of other bodies that are prepared to condemn what they have been doing. Here, for example, is an important report from the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, entitled “The Rule of Law on the Internet in the Wider Digital World”. It’s an extremely thorough exploration of this complex area, touching on key issues that have often been discussed here on Techdirt: privatized law enforcement, suspicionless mass data retention, cross-border exchange of data by law enforcement agencies, and global surveillance by national security agencies.

    • the long tail of MD5

      Everybody knows that MD5 is as terribly useless as ROT13 and you should have switched to SHA3-512 like twenty years ago. But lots of usage sticks around, and will continue to stick around for a long time to come, leading to the long tail of MD5. Why not simply convert to a better hash function? Maybe it’s not so simple.

    • Edward Snowden’s lawyer calls on Europeans to prosecute US torture architects

      A leading German human rights lawyer has called on prosecutors across Europe to “get active” and prepare to seize any CIA agents and US officials involved in torture who enter their territories.

  • Civil Rights

    • Stephen Colbert Mocks Fox News’ Raucous Support Of Torture
    • Mark Udall Wants To Release CIA Internal Review Of Torture Program

      Outgoing Senator Mark Udall has been a key player in trying to hold the intelligence community’s feet to the fire concerning their unconstitutional and illegal activities — and that includes both the NSA and CIA. He was a key player in making sure that the CIA torture report was actually released — and there was pressure on him, if the report wasn’t released, to read it into the record to force it out. Even with the release on Tuesday, some were asking for Udall to at least release an unredacted version or even more sections from the full ~7,000 page report, rather than just the 500 page exec summary. In fact, in Udall’s final floor speech on Wednesday (link to a video that is about 50 minutes), the Senator instead chose to reveal more information related to the so-called “Panetta Review” on the CIA’s torture program.

      [...]

      The CIA has done everything it can to try to bury the Panetta Report. But Udall actually discussed it in depth. A big chunk of his speech is actually discussing some of the details in the Panetta Review, going beyond the CIA torture report. Following his speech, Senator Richard Burr — who is a known buddy of the intelligence community, and soon to take over the Senate Intelligence Committee — ridiculously claimed that Udall disclosed a bunch of “very classified” material. What it actually shows, however is that the CIA’s response to the torture report is simply more lies from the CIA. As Udall noted in his speech, since the Panetta Review was supposed to be internal, it was a lot more open and honest, and it agreed with the Senate staffers. He first points out that the official CIA response to the terror report, from current Director John Brennan, shows the CIA’s “flippant” attitude towards oversight and the fact that it knows the Obama administration will let the CIA get away with anything. However, the Panetta Review shows the true story.

    • Stun Guns Used by Police 13 Times Causes Death

      The policy states that officers should not stun any handcuffed suspect.

    • How The CIA Got Conservative Author Ronald Kessler To Spin For Them On Torture

      The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture reveals that conservative author Ronald Kessler was “blessed” by the CIA, receiving background information from the agency which he used to push false claims about the effectiveness of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and publishing classified information without triggering a leak investigation.

    • Scalia: Constitution silent on torture

      Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is joining the debate over the Senate’s torture report by saying it’s hard to rule out the use of extreme measures to extract information if millions of lives were threatened.

      Scalia told a Swiss broadcast network that American and European liberals who say such tactics may never be used are being self-righteous.

    • Metaphysics

      Listening to the BBC and Sky, and reading The Guardian, all on the subject of whether the UK establishment knew about CIA torture or not, the realisation dawned on me that I had imagined my entire life story and in fact I had never actually existed. For a little while it was like being in a particularly scary Japanese film.

    • Rectal feeding is rape – but don’t expect the CIA to admit it

      Of all the revelations made about the “enhanced interrogation methods” used by the CIA on detainees in the aftermath of 9/11, the use of waterboarding and rectal feeding have garnered the most attention. In the case of the latter in particular, this was the first time many people had even heard of such a thing.

      Initially used in response to prisoner hunger strikes, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found this allegedly “necessary” and “legitimate” medical practice – also referred to as a “nutrient enema” – was also used by the CIA as a form of torture and control.

    • Guess Who Else Tortured People Like the CIA Did — Soviets and Nazis

      The Soviet Union was good at torture.

      But the Soviets excelled at torture because they understood its usefulness. “Our task is not only to destroy you physically,” a Stalinist interrogator explained to a prisoner in 1948. “But also to smash you morally before the eyes of the society.”

      History’s great agents of pain knew what the CIA pretends not to.

    • These American World War II Re-Enacters Dress Up Like Nazis for Fun

      That’s part of what drew her, as well as her friend and fellow photographer Marisha Camp, to photograph American re-enactors of Germans in World War II for her series “Targets Unknown.” Half out of necessity—those who attend the re-enactments are required to dress for the occasion—and half out of a desire to test the boundaries between subject and artist, Kranitz became an active member in the events she photographed.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • IsoHunt unofficially resurrects The Pirate Bay

        Torrent site isoHunt appears to have unofficially resurrected The Pirate Bay at oldpiratebay.org. At first glance, The Old Pirate Bay seems to be just a commemorative site for The Pirate Bay, which went down this week after police raided its data center in Sweden. Upon further inspection, however, it turns out the site is serving new content.

        Various mirror sites of The Pirate Bay have sprung up since the site’s disappearance, but this one is different. Some alternatives simply provide a copy of The Pirate Bay with no new content (many proxy sites have been doing this for years). Others, like thepiratebay.cr, go further and even provide fake content as if it was new and even attempt to charge users.

      • What chance a piracy consensus?

        The Government says rights holders and ISPs must develop an anti-piracy regimen themselves, or have one imposed on them. Early signs show this approach is working.

        The Government’s ultimatum to ISPs and content owners and distributors that they have three months to come up with a system for identifying and taking action against copyright infringers already appears to be bearing fruit.

      • MPAA Prepares to Bring Pirate Site Blocking to the U.S.

        The MPAA is in discussions with the major movie studios over ways to introduce site blocking to the United States. TorrentFreak has learned that the studios will try to achieve website blockades using principles available under existing law. Avoiding another SOPA-style backlash is high on the agenda.

      • Thanks To All Heroes Of Freedom Who Have Kept The Pirate Bay Running

        The file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is down following a raid by Swedish Police. The organization Rights Alliance, previously named the Anti-Pirate Bureau and representing the giant movie and record corporations, is behind the raid. It’s a dark day for freedoms online.

The USPTO is Broken: New Evidence Presented

Posted in America, Patents at 7:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Profit conflated with innovation

Summary: The scope of patents, as evidenced by some statistical figures and individual patents, shows that the USPTO is broken and must be reformed or dismantled

Kevin Drum from Mother Jones is a very good writer who covers a broad range of topics. Several weeks ago he wrote about patents, noting that “More Patents Does Not Equal More Innovation”. Well, more patents mean more business for the USPTO and patent lawyers, but they would rather just paint their profit as “innovation”. Here is what Mr. Drum writes, citing the corporate media:

Via James Pethokoukis, here’s a chart from a new CBO report on federal policies and innovation. Needless to say, you can’t read too much into it. It shows the growth since 1963 of total factor productivity (roughly speaking, the share of productivity growth due to technology improvements), and there are lots of possible reasons that TFP hasn’t changed much over the past five decades. At a minimum, though, the fact that patent activity has skyrocketed since 1983 with no associated growth in TFP suggests, as the CBO report says dryly, “that the large increase in patenting activity since 1983 may have made little contribution to innovation.”

We recently showed that almost every application for a patent is now successful, i.e. patent granted (proving that there no quality control at all and demonstrating laziness or greed, motivated by wrong yardsticks by which to assess patent examiners). This whole system has become a sham and people should do something about it, as the problem won’t go away on its own.

“This whole system has become a sham and people should do something about it, as the problem won’t go away on its own.”Might we ever see USPTO staff demonstrating in the streets of Washington, following the example set by EPO staff? The problem and the grievances (about scope and corruption) are similar.

The other week we saw the EFF highlighting yet another “Stupid Patent of the Month”. It is a software patent which is basically something that a child can come up with, or even an observer of what has been going on for centuries. To put it in the words of Ars Technica:

November’s “Stupid Patent of the Month,” brought to you by Penn State

Three months ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation inaugurated a monthly tradition in which they wrote about a “Stupid Patent of the Month.” The first patent they publicized was basically a description of a doctor’s “computer-secretary.” Since then, they’ve highlighted a vague software patent owned by a serial litigant, a patent on filming a yoga class, and a patent with a formula for curing cancer (a combination of “sesame seeds, green beans, coffee, meat, evening primrose seeds,” among other things.)

Here is the latest:

One of the items for sale is US Patent No. 8,442,839, entitled “Agent-based collaborative recognition-primed decision-making.” The lead inventors are PSU professors John Yen and Michael McNeese. The patent essentially describes different ways that people work together to solve a problem.

Steps include “receiving information regarding a current situation to be analyzed,” interacting to receive “assistance in the form of assumptions or expectancies about the situation,” and using “collected information to determine whether a decision about the situation is evolving in an anticipated direction.” A PSU news site describes the invention as using a framework called “Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork.”

“The patent reads a little like what might result if you ate a dictionary filled with buzzwords and drank a bottle of tequila,” writes EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer. He notes the patent was originally rejected by the patent office. “Penn State responded by amending its claim to ‘include a team-oriented computer architecture that transforms subject matter.’ In other words, it took an abstract patent and said, ‘Do it on a computer.’”

A lot of software patents are like that. They merely add “over the Internet” or “on a computer” to some process that has existed for a very long time. There’s no innovation in it, except perhaps the innovation which is the Internet or the computer itself.

Anyone who still thinks that the patent system promotes innovation should take a look at a patent or two, setting aside the jargon and buzzwords. We covered other examples in the past and examined their lack of novelty. Some examples came from Nintendo and there is this new example where Nintendo patents something using the “in mobile devices” pseudo ‘novelty’. To quote AOL:

A new patent published by the USPTO yesterday details an invention by Nintendo that would allow it to emulate its mobile game consoles, including the Game Boy line of devices specifically, in other settings, including on seat-back displays in airplanes and trains, and on mobile devices including cell phones. The patent is an updated take on an older piece of IP, so it’s not an entirely new idea, but it’s still very interesting to consider that Nintendo could have renewed interest in the idea of running its own back catalogue on many different kinds of screens.

It is not an entirely new idea at all. In-flight entertainment, emulation and mobile devices are very old ideas and just combining them should not be enough to earn a patent. Then again, as USPTO eventually accepts (grants patents for) 92% of all applications, it seems to have become an illegitimate system of protectionism that puts the burden on innocence on victims, passes a lot of incentive to patent lawyers, and has small companies foot the legal bills. █

US Patent Reform (on Trolls Only) More or Less Buried or Ineffective

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 6:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Not much in terms of changes except the public face

Michelle Lee
Photo from Asian Pacific Fund

Summary: An update on efforts to reform the patent system in the United States, including the possibly imminent appointment of Michelle Lee to USPTO leadership role

OUR friends over at IP Troll Tracker argue with proponents of patent trolls, including those who try to classify the world’s biggest trolls (firms like Intellectual Ventures) as something else. Apparently, trying to say who qualifies as a patent troll is a controversial issue among those who are in this business and this is why there was hardly any substantial progress on eradication of patent trolls. The de facto definition of “troll” these days is “small actor that uses patents”. It’s about scale, not scope. If you are a massive corporation like IBM and Microsoft, then you somehow can’t qualify as “troll” even when you engage in the very same tactics on a much larger scale.

“If you are a massive corporation like IBM and Microsoft, then you somehow can’t qualify as “troll” even when you engage in the very same tactics on a much larger scale.”This new article from TechDirt speaks of the fight for patent reform by the likes of Newegg, correctly noting that “the company became a leader in fighting back against ridiculous patent lawsuits, going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest trolls around. The company’s Chief Legal Officer, Lee Cheng, has vowed to never settle with a patent troll, and so far has never lost an appeal on a patent claim.”

Another older article from TechDirt cites Professor Bessen and reminds us that Free software projects are directly being harmed and even eliminated by patent trolls (we gave some examples before). To quote the article, via James Bessen, “we [now] learn of how a patent trolling operation by StreamScale has resulted in an open source project completely shutting down, despite the fact that the patent in question (US Patent 8,683,296 for an “Accelerated erasure coding system and method”) is almost certainly ineligible for patent protection as an abstract idea, following the Supreme Court’s Alice ruling and plenty of prior art. Erasure codes are used regularly today in cloud computing data storage and are considered to be rather important. Not surprisingly, companies and lawyers are starting to pop out of the woodwork to claim patents on key pieces. I won’t pretend to understand the fundamental details of erasure codes, but the link above provides all the details. It goes through the specific claims in the patents, breaking down what they actually say (basically an erasure code on a computer using SIMD instructions), and how that’s clearly an abstract idea and thus not patent-eligible.”

See this page about the patent: “The Accelerated erasure coding system and method software patent was filed by StreamScale, a patent holding company, and granted by the US patent office in march 2014 (filed july 2013). It claims to own the idea to use SIMD instructions to speed up the computation of Erasure Code. It is a patent-ineligible abstract idea and can be ignored.”

Well, it may be a patent-ineligible abstract idea, but proving in in Court can be costly, especially for a Free software project.

It is being reported right now that Michelle Lee, formerly of Google, is en route to becoming the next head of the USPTO (the pro-software patents sites exploit this to try to promote stronger policy in favour of software patents). “There were no big surprises,” writes Patent Progress, “on Michelle Lee’s nomination as head of the USPTO. The Committee went fairly easy on her with their questions, with the possible exception of Senator Durbin, who admits that he knows nothing about patents or patent law, but seems convinced by his Illinois constituents that there is no patent troll problem.”

Durbin and the likes of him seem to be talking based on (mis)information from lobbyists and funders, not facts. It’s the big corporations talking. Either way, while it’s clear that there is a patent troll problem, there is also a patent scope problem and that’s what trolls tend to exploit. It’s not a surprise that a site like Patent Progress only focuses on patent trolls; see who funds the site by proxy (certain type of big corporations). Another new post from this site states that “Commissioner Brill’s main point was that we shouldn’t wait for the study to be concluded before pursuing legislation against PAEs. There’s no question that the PAE problem exists and is getting worse; she made clear that the new Congress should act immediately after taking office.”

PAE is just a euphemism for troll or shark.

As readers may recall, the Republicans (GOP) spoke about 'reform' on patents roughly one month ago, but nothing was really going to change. Mike Masnick from TechDirt recently published this update that says: “Back in May, we wrote about how, despite pretty much everyone agreeing on a (decent, if not amazing) patent reform bill in the Senate, the whole thing got shot down at the last minute. That was when the trial lawyers called Senator Harry Reid, asking him to kill the whole thing, which he did by telling Senator Patrick Leahy that he wouldn’t allow the bill to go to the floor for a vote. This came after months of detailed negotiations, getting nearly everyone into agreement on the bill, which would have made life at least somewhat more difficult for patent trolls. About a week after that, we pointed out that it seemed likely that the patent trolls had miscalculated badly, because it was widely expected that the Republicans would take control of the Senate in the fall (as they did), and they were more gungho on real patent reform and (obviously) not concerned with what trial lawyers think (mocking trial lawyers being a hobby of Republican politicians).”

To make a long story short, there is still no sign of reform on patents and even if there’s reform some time in the near future, it won’t actually address the problem of patent scope; it only targets “small trolls”, not “big trolls” like Microsoft and Apple, which still can use software patents to imitimate or extort Free software projects, including Android and Linux. █

Software Patents in Canada Not Dead Yet

Posted in Site News at 6:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Canadian flag

Summary: Canada’s patent status quo increasingly like that of the United States and Canadian giants like BlackBerry now pose a threat to software developers

THE case of i4i was a reminder of the fact that Canada is not a software patents-free zone. There is actually evidence to the contrary and also a new article in patent lawyers-leaning press about the subject (see “Computer And Software Related Innovation – Is There A Rationale For Filing Software Patent Applications In Canada?”). It serves to show that Canada more or less follows the neighbours to the south (not the UK or France, which also have profound impact on Canadian politics), especially when it comes to patent practices. This includes patents on software, genetics, etc. These breeds of patents, which originate from rulings in the US, are spreading to other nations including Canada [via], despite the severe implications for practitioners, let alone public interests. To quote The Star:

Canadian courts have not yet ruled on whether genes can be patented. A lawsuit filed Monday over cardiac disorder Long QT aims to clear that up.

In recent years we became increasingly worried about a Canada-based company that had joined Rockstar (Apple- and Microsoft-backed, against Linux/Android) and it is now turning into a patent troll. We are talking about BlackBerry here as “the company also owns a stake in Rockstar – which may itself come up for sale in the near future, based on recent events.”

“Software patents are not only a threat to Free/libre software but to all software developers, except conglomerates that are essentially business entities.”BlackBerry’s transformation into patent troll has been covered here before and there is a chance that negative publicity will discourage it from attacking FOSS (as it already seems to be heading in that direction).

The bottom line is, Canada — like many Five Eyes nations — is silently a supporter of software patents. Our Canadian readers need to contact their politicians in an effort to change that. Software patents are not only a threat to Free/libre software but to all software developers, except conglomerates that are essentially business entities. █

Dreaming of a Just Christmas: When a Third of EPO Walks Out to Revolt and European Judges Attack the EPO Over Abuses

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO scandals making it into the press now…

Window

Summary: Information about the abuses of Battistelli et al. at the EPO are finally receiving wider coverage and increasing the strain on Battistelli’s authoritarian reign

TECHRIGHTS forecasts that heads will roll at the EPO within weeks or months. Our community also expects the corporate media to increase its level of coverage of these issues. It’s already happening, so citizens are being informed in many languages.

“The responses from the management of the EPO are telling because they in no way refute what we have covered here for months.”Yesterday we found a good summary of recent events, aptly titled “Is the EPO in Crisis” (detailed article from Managing IP).

The article gives the accused an opportunity to respond, but Konstad refuses to respond to Managing IP, which is pro-patents (it’s not hostile). Staying silent was his implicit policy all along, perhaps realising that he needs to harbour and shelter a bunch of bullies. The report has some new points and it’s rather revealing. The responses from the management of the EPO are telling because they in no way refute what we have covered here for months. Managing IP says that on November 20th more than a third of the staff walked out and protested. SUEPO (the staff union representing and defending EPO staff) is mentioned as well.

There is another interest new report from IP Kat and it shows increased involvement from prominent figures:

Leading European IP Judges join the chorus of condemnation

[...]

A week ago today, a member of one of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal was escorted out of the building, and banned from the premises pending an investigation of alleged misconduct.

It is believed that the reason for the “house ban” or suspension was the alleged dissemination of defamatory material.

Widespread criticism ensued immediately both inside and outside the office, both on the grounds that this directly breached guarantees of judicial independence (Art. 23 EPC), and that this was a further instance (among many) of heavy-handed suppression of criticism, dissension and debate within the EPO.

The ultimate governing body of the EPO, the Adminstrative Council (AC), meets this week. It is this body alone that would be empowered to impose sanctions such as suspension or dismissal on a Board member.

On Monday, members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA), which is the highest judicial authority in the European Patent system took the unprecedented step of complaining about the conduct of the President, and of his interference in their judicial independence, directly to the AC delegates arriving for their meeting.

Simultaneously, another letter emerged from a Partner in Bardehle Pagenberg, exhorting the head of the German delegation to the AC to take the lead in rectifying the President’s actions.

Anonymous comments, many of which from EPO staff, can be seen at the bottom. It sure is becoming quite a huge thing and in France the politicians have taken an interest (our French-speaking audience may be interested in [1, 2, 3]). To sum up some recent developments in the words of a source, “the socialist Deputy Leborgn (for the French citizens living abroad) already was in touch with various Ministers (including foreign affairs : Fabius, Industry : Pellerin, economy : Moscovici) in April this year. However, he was told in substance “before Mr. Battistelli there was no legal system framing the right to strike so that it should be regarded as a progress. Presented with the fact that the new strike law was below French standard, the deputy was answered that the EPO is made of 38 countries so that compromises should be made. For the record, Fabius, Moscovici, Pellerin and now Marcon all come from the same school as Mr Battistelli: that is the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration). ENA’s alumni is one of the most powerful French networks [and] may be even more powerful than freemasonry” (words of the source, not ours).

Now that this scandal’s coverage makes it into newspapers in German, French, English etc. we can rest assured that something big will happen. In the coming weeks we are going to cover corruption charges to add fuel to the fire. █

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts