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

07.12.16

Links 12/7/2016: Libinput 1.4, LLVM 3.8.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Kernel 4.6.4 Released with Networking Improvements and Updated Drivers

      Today, July 11, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the fourth maintenance update for the Linux 4.6 kernel series.

    • Linux 4.6.4
    • Linux 4.4.15
    • Linux Kernel 4.4.15 LTS Adds Many Updated USB Drivers, It’s Already in Solus

      After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.6.4, which is now the most advanced stable kernel branch available, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the release of Linux kernel 4.4.15 LTS.

      The Linux 4.4 kernel series is an LTS (Long Term Support) one, which means that it will be supported with security patches and bug fixes for a few more years than the normal Linux kernel branches. Because of this, many popular GNU/Linux operating systems prefer to use it, no matter if they are following a static or rolling release model. Among these, we can mention Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Arch Linux, and Solus.

    • Linux Kernel 4.7 got a delay in release

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA Provides A Surprise For Pascal GPU Owners Wanting Open-Source

        After it took NVIDIA until earlier this year to release the signed firmware for the GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell” GPUs, I expected — and based upon what I heard — that it could be months before seeing the firmware for GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” GPUs in order to enable hardware acceleration with these latest-generation GPUs. Thus it’s a huge surprise today to see NVIDIA already making public their Pascal GP100 firmware images!

        Hitting this afternoon in linux-firmware Git are the GP100 firmware files! There are 15 binary-only firmware blobs now part of the linux-firmware tree needed for initializing GP100 hardware. The GP100 blobs are named (for providing some reference) bl, ucode_load, ucode_unload, fecs_bl, fecs_data, fecs_inst, fecs_sig, gpccs_bl, gpccs_data, gpccs_inst, gpccs_sig, sw_bundle_init, sw_ctx, sw_method_init, and sw_nonctx. The largest of these blobs are 20955 bytes.

      • Just About 20 Lines Of Code Got Open-Source 3D Running On NVIDIA Pascal For Mesa

        Just a few hours ago I was writing about NVIDIA making public the GP100 “Pascal” GPU firmware binaries needed for as a requirement for bringing up GeForce GTX 1000 series hardware acceleration on the open-source driver stack. Now the initial support has landed in Nouveau’s NVC0 Gallium3D driver within Mesa for allowing 3D support.

        Ben Skeggs of Red Hat landed an initial support patch that has 16 lines of new code and five lines of deletions that bring this initial GP100 series GPU support. The support mostly comes down to just adding the “0×130″ case and various other relatively simple changes to allow this code to work. The bring-up for Pascal in the Nouveau stack is much more complicated within the Nouveau DRM kernel driver than what was needed for the Gallium3D user-space code. The GP100 Pascal Nouveau kernel changes so far were outlined in Initial Open-Source GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” Nouveau Driver Support — that work is starting to land in Linux 4.8.

      • libinput 1.3.901

        The first RC for libinput 1.4 is now available.

      • Libinput 1.4 Release Candidate

        Peter Hutterer has announced the first release candidate of the upcoming libinput 1.4 release for this input handling library used by X.Org, Wayland, and Mir systems.

    • Benchmarks

      • Blender Cycles Render Engine Benchmarks With NVIDIA CUDA On Linux

        Here is a look at the performance of the Blender 3D modeling/creation software with its Cycles Engine when making use of NVIDIA’s CUDA API for GPU acceleration. Tests for this initial comparison include NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” and GTX 900 “Maxwell” graphics cards.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.7 Desktop Users Complain About Multi-Screen Support, Fixes Incoming

        The KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment arrived last week, on July 5, and it already landed in the main software repositories of various GNU/Linux operating systems, including Arch Linux, Gentoo, and KDE Neon.

        KDE Plasma 5.7 brought numerous new features and improvements, along with the usual bug fixes, and it also promised improved multi-screen support. However, it appears that for many users who have already tried the new KDE Plasma desktop on their distributions, multi-screen support fails to work as expected.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Bodhi 4.0.0 Time Lines and June 2016 Donation Totals

      Last month I hinted at the first Bodhi 4.0.0 pre-release happening soon, but then June came and went with no more news. One of my goals for the 4.0.0 release is to realign our core Enlightenment Foundation Libraries with the latest upstream release. Their 1.18 release has been pushed back for several weeks due to the number of things it is integrating (namely the Elementary widgets are part of the core toolkit now) and ideally I would like to include this release by default in Bodhi 4.0.0.

    • New Releases

      • Budgie Desktop 10.2.6 Comes with Redesigned Budgie Menu, Spotify Compatibility

        Today, July 12, 2016, Softpedia was informed by Solus project leader Ikey Doherty about the general availability of the Budgie 10.2.6 desktop environment, a major release that introduces lots of new features and improvements.

        Coming three and a half months after the release of Budgie 10.2.5, which most of the Solus users are using on their computers, the Budgie 10.2.6 update promises many goodies. But first, the biggest change is the implementation of a stable, performant API/ABI, which will force those who maintain Budgie extensions to rebuild them based on the new API/ABI.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Steps the Python community and Dropbox are taking to increase diversity

        At the Red Hat Summit in San Francisco last month, DeLisa Alexander, executive vice president and chief people officer at Red Hat, announced the winners of the company’s second annual Women in Open Source Award. Jessica McKellar, director of engineering and chief of staff to the vice president of engineering at Dropbox, and Preeti Murthy, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, won the 2016 Women in Open Source Award.

      • 7 characteristics of open leaders

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Event report: Fedora 24 release party Pune

          Last Saturday we had the Fedora 24 release party in Pune. This was actually done along with our regular Fedora meetup, and in the same location. We had a few new faces this time. But most of the regular attendees attended the meetup.

        • Hosting your own Fedora Test Day

          Many important packages and software are developed for Fedora every day. One of the most important parts of software development is quality assurance, or testing. For important software collections in Fedora, there are sometimes concentrated testing efforts for pulling large groups of people in who might not always help test. Organizing a Fedora Test Day is a great way to help expose your project and bring more testers to trialing a new update before it goes live.

        • Farewell Pharlap

          Korora “was born out of a desire to make Linux easier for new users” and one way of achieving that aim was the development of Pharlap, a tool for the simple installation of third party drivers. However times change and sadly it is time to say goodbye to Pharlap which will not be included in Korora 24.

          This decision was not taken lightly and there are many reasons behind the move.

        • Creating a reproducible build system for Docker images

          As the population of DevOps practitioners grows greater in size, so does the Linux container userbase, as these often go hand in hand. In the world of Linux container implementations, Docker is certainly the most popular for server-side application deployments as of this writing. Docker is a powerful tool that provides a standard build workflow, an imaging format, a distribution mechanism, and a runtime. These attributes have made it a very attractive for developer and operations teams alike as it helps lower the barrier between these groups and establishes common ground.

    • Debian Family

      • Bodhi 4.0.0 Time Line, First Woman Debian TC

        The top story today in Linux news is the controversy following the removal of Nano from the GNU umbrella. Original maintainer Christian Allegretta had to address the resulting rumors that threaten the community. Elsewhere, Jeff Hoogland posted an updated time line for Bodhi 4.0 and the Debian project welcomes its first woman Technical Committee member. Linus is on the hot seat again after losing his patience over commenting style and the Korora project is dropping their driver manager Pharlap.

      • twenty years of free software — part 13 past and future
      • mips64el added to Debian testing
      • DebConf16 closes in Cape Town and DebConf17 dates announced

        Today, Saturday 9 July 2016, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 280 people attending from all over the world, and 113 hours of talks in 114 events, DebConf16 has been hailed as a success.

        Highlights included the Open Festival, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered (ranging from topics specific to Debian to a wider appreciation of the open and maker movements), the traditional Bits from the DPL, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year’s DebConf (DebConf17 in Montreal).

      • Technical committee appointment

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Mini-PC runs Ubuntu on quad-core Bay Trail Atom

            Mele has launched a “Star Cloud PCG03” mini-PC that runs Ubuntu on a quad-core Atom Z3735F with 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, three USB ports, Ethernet, and WiFi.

            Shenzhen Mele Digital Technology Ltd. has released an Ubuntu 14.04 equipped Star Cloud PCG03 mini-PC based on its earlier Windows-based Mini PC PCG09 and Mini PC PCG03. Like these models, as well as Mele’s first Ubuntu-based device, the Star Cloud PCG02 stick PC, the new Star Cloud PCG03 mini-PC runs on a quad-core, 1.33GHz (1.83GHz turbo) Atom Z3735F, a tablet-focused SoC from Intel’s 22nm Bay Trail generation.

          • Star Cloud PCG03U Ubuntu Mini PC Unveiled For $90
          • 32-Bit Ubuntu Alternatives

            Some folks may find the idea of using a 32-bit distribution of Linux to be downright silly. After all, we live in a 64-bit world these days, right? Well, that depends on who you ask. The fact of the matter is there are still a lot of fully functional PCs out there that run 32-bit Linux. Up until recently, this was all well and good. Then the news came down that Ubuntu would no longer be supporting 32-bit systems come the next Ubuntu release. Clearly not everyone is thrilled about his news.

            Rather than throw in the towel and recycle these PCs, I think it’s important to realize there is a world beyond Ubuntu. Yes, many other distros have also stopped support 32-bit distros. However for the time being, there are still options to choose from. In this article, I’m going to share some great non-Ubuntu based 32-bit friendly Linux distros you should check out.

            The first set of distributions I want to share with you are best for those who are already comfortable with Linux.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 to Land Next Wednesday, OTA-13 Brings Libertine Improvements

            The Ubuntu Touch saga continues, and today we would like to inform our readers about some of the latest changes coming in the next major update, the OTA-13, as well as about some good news for the soon-to-be-released OTA-12.

            According to Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak, the testing of the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 software update is almost over and things are looks great. No blockers, and everything works as expected for almost all devices, with a small exception for Meizu PRO 5 and BQ Aquaris M10, which need custom tarball re-spins.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 18: The best desktop — period

              You could keep worrying about being forced to upgrade to Windows 10, or you could try the best of all Linux desktops: Mint 18.

            • Linux Mint 18

              During my trial, Mint 18 provided me with a stable, friendly and problem-free experience. The distribution has a installer which is simple to use, a good collection of documentation and an excellent selection of default software. The configuration tools are straight forward to use, the software manager is easy to use and everything generally just worked the way I wanted it to. The one problem I ran into during my whole trial was the video display issue when running from the live disc, and that was quickly solved by switching to the fail-safe graphics mode from the live disc’s boot menu.

              I was curious to try X-Apps and I generally found these to be an improvement. I dislike the mobile-style interfaces GNOME applications tend to use and how they break consistency with other applications. X-Apps provide the same functionality as their GNOME counterparts, but improve the interface to work the same as all the other desktop applications. Most of the changes are small, but make working with the text editor or video player a much less frustrating experience.

            • Linux Mint 18 ” Sarah “
            • Linux Mint 18 reviews roundup

              Hectic Geek’s review is quite thorough and includes some interesting performance comparisons between Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18. The site was impressed with Linux Mint 18’s performance.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • SiFive brings open-source SoCs
    • Startup SiFive Aims for Open-Source Chips
    • First SoCs based on open source RISC-V run Linux

      SiFive unveiled the first embedded SoCs based on the open source RISC-V platform: A Linux-ready octa-core Freedom U500 and a FreeRTOS-based Freedom E300.

      A VC-backed startup closely associated with the RISC-V project announced the first system-on-chip implementations of the open source RISC-V processor platform. At the RISC-V 4thWorkshop at MIT this week, SiFive announced two embedded SoC families. The Freedom Unleashed family debuts with a 28nm fabricated, Freedom U500 SoC with up to eight 1.6GHz cores that runs Linux, aimed at machine learning, storage, and networking applications. The MCU-like Freedom Everywhere family for Internet of Things starts with a 180nm Freedom E300 model that runs FreeRTOS.

    • Server class COM supports 16-core Xeons, packs dual 10GbE

      Advantech’s server-class SOM-5991 COM Express module runs Linux on up to 16-core Xeon D-1500 processors, and offers dual 10GBase-KR ports and PCIe with NTB.

      We’ve seen a number of embedded boards supporting server-class Xeon E3-1200 SoCs from Intel’s Skylake architecture, such as Seco’s COMe-B09-BT6 COM Express Basic Type 6 module. Yet, Advantech’s SOM-5991, which uses the same 125 x 95mm Basic Type 6 form factor, is the first we’ve seen to run the similarly 14nm “Broadwell” based Xeon D-1500 SoCs, which are available with up to 16-core Xeons. Advantech claims it’s the first COM Express to use the Xeon D-1500, which debuted over a year ago, with more models arriving last fall and earlier this year.

    • Open-source Linux a step closer to automotive use

      Although it may seem like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are all the rage for dashboard infotainment systems, open-source Linux proponents haven’t conceded the battle yet. The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project announced the release of its Unified Code Base 2.0, implementing new in-vehicle entertainment support desired by automakers and drivers.

      The new code base adds support for audio routing, rear-seat entertainment systems and apps. It follows the version 1.0 release at CES earlier this year.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung Z2 Documentation Image Leak, The Next Tizen Smartphone

          Samsung Z2 Documentation Leak

          We have been talking about the upcoming Samsung Z2 smartphone for a while now and today we have seen some leaked documentation surface that looks like it is part of the official user manual of Samsung’s next Tizen based Smartphone. As we exclusively reported earlier this year the device will carry the model number SM-Z200F.

      • Android

        • Net users duke it out over whether Jia Jia, China’s beautiful android, is the fairest of them all

          Remember Asuna and Junco Chihara, two entries in Japan’s race to create the most hyperreal android ever? Despite their lifelike appearances compared to many other robots out there, some people still aren’t able to get past the “uncanny valley” phenomenon as a result of their unnatural facial movements.

        • The Superbook is a $99 laptop shell for your Android phone

          The dream of turning your smartphone into a laptop will never die. From Motorola’s Atrix to this crazy HP Windows Phone, there have been a number of companies that have tried (and largely failed) to build a smartphone that can be attached to a dock and turned into a laptop.

          In a somewhat new twist, a company wants to sell you just the laptop shell, while letting you use your current Android phone and an app to power it. The Superbook is a 11.6-inch laptop shell built by the team behind Andromium OS, the app that allows your Android smartphone to run a desktop-like operating system.

        • LeapDroid claims to be the fastest Android emulator for your PC

          When it comes to running Android on your PC, short of installing the Android x86 project, you can get by with an emulator. With that, this program called Bluestacks is probably the most popular. Enter LeapDroid, a new emulator which claims to be the “world’s fastest” Android emulator on PC. I guess we have to try it to believe it.

        • Exclusive: These could be Google’s upcoming Android Wear smartwatches

          As we reported last week, Google is in the process of building two Android Wear smartwatches. At the time, we were unable to show you the watches themselves. Today, that changes – what you see in the image above could be codename “Angelfish” and “Swordfish,” Google’s two Assistant-enabled wearables that we believe will be released after the new Nexus phones.

        • Google’s Android Wear ‘Angelfish’, ‘Swordfish’ Smartwatches Leaked in Images
        • Alphabet (GOOGL) Announces Free Android Training In India As It Retakes Smartphone Lead

          Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announced that it would begin training 2 million developers in India on Android as the company tries to take market share from the iOS ecosystem. The free Android Skilling program will be introduced across public and private universities, training schools and the government’s National Skills Development Corporation of India. India is expected to have the largest developer population with 4 million people by 2018, overtaking the U.S.

        • Google aims to train two million Indian Android devs by 2018

          Google will train two million Android developers across India over the next three years.

          Mountain View will provide complete training in its Android operating system under a new program that is paired with the Modi Government’s “Skill India” program.

          The course kicks off with Android Developer Fundamentals available in universities and the National Skills Development Corporation of India.

        • Google to train 2 million Indian Android developers

          Google has announced its new “Android Fundamentals” training program, which aims to train and certify up to two million Android developers in India. An Android Fundamentals training course, soon to be available online and at schools country-wide, is focused on training, testing and certifying Android developers to prepare students for careers using Android technology.

        • Samsung Galaxy Note 7 leaks in three new pics

          Earlier today, it was reported that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 might be the most expensive product in the productivity-purposed phablet line so far, starting at roughly $910 in Europe. It seems that was not to be the only leak of the day however, as three images have surfaced via Steve Hemmerstoffer of nowhereelse.fr who has Tweeted no less than three different images of Samsung’s up and coming creation. Here is the first:

        • Android Nougat may contain traces of NOT for users of custom CAs

          Google will sweeten the forthcoming Nougat release of Android by changing the way apps work with certificate authorities (CAs) and simplifying APIs.

          The changes will affect only some apps and users, Android security team software engineer Chad Brubaker says .

          The changes mean Google will not automatically trust user-selected CAs. Instead, all Android devices running Nougat and later versions of Android will run a standard set of Google-trusted AOSP certificate authorities, forcing some developers to change their apps if non-trusted certificate authorities are needed.

        • First Nokia Android Device, P1 Rumoured To Have 3GB RAM, HD Display

          If you have used Nokia, you will remember the rugged Nokia 3310 and other smartphones that could break a wall and still survive. Nokia is back to making smartphones but Android operating system.

        • How to live stream Android games to YouTube and Twitch

          Watching people play live video games from anywhere in the world has become a surprisingly huge phenomenon in recent years. Twitch is now a game-streaming juggernaut while YouTube has embraced gaming and live streaming in a big way, and seemingly everyday people have become well-paid Internet personalities because they play video games and chat.

        • Six Points on The Samsung Galaxy Note 7: AKA The Best Android Phone of 2016

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Two in Three Apple Watch Owners Won’t Buy Next Version (Told You So)

    Here we are, those who bought Apple Watches have been playing with their iToys. Some utterly love their iGadgets. But most who were duped into buying the expensive tech jewelry were disappointed or don’t find any reason to upgrade. A fresh survey of Apple Watch owners by Quartz finds that two thirds won’t be buying the new edition. And this turns out pretty much exactly as I predicted. The gadget does not have the appeal of the mobile phone/smartwatch (an Apple Watch is not even technically ‘mobile’ because you have to tether it to an iPhone for its functionality meaning it is ‘only’ an accessory, differing from those smart watches that do their own connectivity like say Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watches). And I said the life of the Apple Watch will be two genations, the second generation will not sell as well as the first, and then Apple will quietly shut down this silly cul-de-sac of tech innovation. We are nearing the half-point of that prediction and the signs say.. those who buy Apple Watches do not on the whole fall in love with the idea of the metal on the wrist. It is a poor technology solution and will not replace the smartphone. Hence, it will fail as a business idea. Apple is on that path now, to ending the Apple Watch after the second edition.

  • Hardware

    • Seagate Fires 6,500, Or 14% Of Workforce, Stock Soars

      Moments ago computer-memory specialist Seagate, in a preliminary financial report, announced that its Q4 revenue would be $2.65 billion, beating expectations of $2.34 billion, and up from the $2.3 billion guidance given previously. The company also reported gross margin of 25% and non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 25.8% for the fiscal fourth quarter 2016, up from the previous 23% forecast.

      Good news, and the stock is up 12% after hours as a result.

      The only problem is that when companies preannounce good news up front, there is usually some not so good news hidden toward the back. And sure enough, for a company which is guiding higher, the narrative promptly fell apart when we read that for STX management the future is so bright that it just had to lay off 14% of it workforce, or some 6,500 people. This too was a “beat” to expectations: in late June, the company announced it planned to cut “only” 1,600 jobs as a cost-saving measure.

    • Testing the 8-bit computer Puldin

      Puldin is 100% pure Bulgarian development, while the “Pravetz” brand was copy of Apple ][ (Pravetz 8A, 8C, 8M), Oric (Pravets 8D) and IBM-PC (Pravetz 16). The Puldin computers were build from scratch both hardware and software and were produced in Plovdiv in the late 80s and early 90s. 50000 pieces were made, at least 35000 of them have been exported to Russia and paid for. A typical configuration in a Russian class room consisted of several Puldin computers and a single Pravetz 16. According to Russian sources the last usage of these computers was in 2003 serving as Linux terminals and being maintained without any support from the vendor (b/c it ceased to exist).

  • Health/Nutrition

    • What happens when Pokémon Go turns your home into a gym

      In the virtual world of Pokémon Go, a gym is where players (in game parlance, “trainers”) gather to battle against each other. Trainers join one of three teams at an early stage of the game, and those teams fight for control of the gyms. If your team controls a gym, you get perks and bragging rights at that location. In the physical world, battling trainers look a lot like those three strangers standing outside of Sheridan’s home. Soon, a car pulled up and parked in front of the house, too. Another trainer.

  • Security

    • Report: Enterprises more reliant on open source and third-party software components
    • 1 in 16 Java Components Have Security Defects

      A new report from Sonatype analyzes the volume and variety of Java components in the ecosystems of over 25,000 developers and 3,000 organizations.

    • Enterprise software developers continue to use flawed code in apps

      Companies that develop enterprise applications download over 200,000 open-source components on average every year — and one in 16 of those components has security vulnerabilities.

    • Sonatype Releases 2016 State of the Software Supply Chain Report
    • Pokemon Go Is A “Malware” And “Hackers’ Dream”, Security Experts Say
    • New EU directive requires critical infrastructure to improve cyber-security

      Companies which supply essential services – such as energy, transport, banking, health or digital services such as cloud services and search engines – will be required to achieve minimum standards of cyber-security under new EU-wide rules adopted by the EU Parliament today.

    • CISSP certification: Are multiple choice tests the best way to hire infosec pros?

      Want a job in infosec? Your first task: hacking your way through what many call the “HR firewall” by adding a CISSP certification to your resume.

      Job listings for security roles often list the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) or other cybersecurity certifications, such as those offered by SANS, CompTIA, and Cisco, as a requirement. This is especially true in the enterprise space, including banks, insurance companies, and FTSE 100 corporations. But at a time when the demand for good infosec people sees companies outbidding each other to hire top talent, and ominous studies warn of a looming cybersecurity skills shortage, experts are questioning whether certifications based on multiple choice tests are really the best way to recruit the right people.

    • Pokémon Go on iOS gives full access to Google accounts

      Signing into Pokémon Go on iOS with a Google account gives the game full access to that account, according to a systems architect, Adam Reeve.

      The Android version of the game apparently does not have these issues.

      Reeve said that the security situation was not the same for all iOS users.

      Pokémon Go was released last week and has been a huge hit. It is the latest in a series of games from Nintendo but is made by a developer named Niantic, which is part owned by Google.

    • Pokémon Go shouldn’t have full access to your Gmail, Docs and Google account — but it does

      When you use Google to sign into Pokémon Go, as so many of you have already, the popular game for some reason grants itself (for some iOS users, anyway) the highest possible level of access to your Google account, meaning it can read your email, location history… pretty much everything. Why does it need this, and why aren’t users told?

    • Have you given Pokémon Go full access to everything in your Google account?

      Gamers who have downloaded the Pokémon Go augmented reality game were given a scare on Monday, after noticing that the app had apparently been granted “full access” to their Google accounts.

      Taken at face value, the permissions would have represented a major security vulnerability, albeit one that only appeared to affect players who signed up to play the game using their Google account on Apple devices.

    • Pokémon Go Was Never Able To Read Your Email [Updated]

      Here’s even more confirmation that Pokémon Go never had the ability to access your Gmail or Calendar. A product security developer at Slack tested the token provided by Pokémon Go and found that it was never able to get data from services like Gmail or Calendar.

    • HTTPS is not a magic bullet for Web security

      We’re in the midst of a major change sweeping the Web: the familiar HTTP prefix is rapidly being replaced by HTTPS. That extra “S” in an HTTPS URL means your connection is secure and that it’s much harder for anyone else to see what you’re doing. And on today’s Web, everyone wants to see what you’re doing.

      HTTPS has been around nearly as long as the Web, but it has been primarily used by sites that handle money—your bank’s website, shopping carts, social networks, and webmail services like Gmail. But these days Google, Mozilla, the EFF, and others want every website to adopt HTTPS. The push for HTTPS everywhere is about to get a big boost from Mozilla and Google when both companies’ Web browsers begin to actively call out sites that still use HTTP.

    • Now it’s easy to see if leaked passwords work on other sites

      Over the past few months, a cluster of megabreaches has dumped account credentials for a mind-boggling 642 million accounts into the public domain, where they can then be used to compromise other accounts that are protected by the same password. Now, there’s software that can streamline this vicious cycle by testing for reused passcodes on Facebook and other popular sites.

    • What serverless computing really means [iophk: "securityless"]

      Arimura even goes as far as to use the controversial “no-ops,” coined by former Netflix cloud architect Adrain Cockcroft. Again, just as there will always be servers, there will always be ops to run them. Again, no-ops and serverless computing take the developer’s point of view: Someone else has to worry about that stuff, but not me while I create software.

    • An open letter to security researchers and practitioners

      Earlier this month, the World Wide Web Consortium’s Encrypted Media
      Extensions (EME) spec progressed to Draft Recommendation phase. This is
      a controversial standard for transmitting DRM-encumbered videos, and it
      marks the very first time that the W3C has attempted to standardize a
      DRM system.

      This means that for the first time, W3C standards for browsers will fall
      under laws like the DMCA (and its international equivalents, which the
      US Trade Representative has spread all over the world). These laws allow
      companies to threaten security researchers who disclose vulnerabilities
      in DRM systems, on the grounds that these disclosures make it easier to
      figure out how to bypass the DRM.

      Last summer, the Copyright Office heard from security researchers about
      the effect that DRM has on their work; those filings detail showstopper
      bugs in consumer devices, cars, agricultural equipment, medical
      implants, and voting machines that researchers felt they couldn’t
      readily publish about, lest they face punitive lawsuits from the
      companies they embarrassed.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • In Africa, the U.S. Military Sees Enemies Everywhere

      From east to west across Africa, 1,700 Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other military personnel are carrying out 78 distinct “mission sets” in more than 20 nations, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act.

      “The SOCAFRICA operational environment is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous,” says Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, using the acronym of the secretive organization he presides over, Special Operations Command Africa. “It’s a wickedly complex environment tailor-made for the type of nuanced and professional cooperation SOF [special operations forces] is able to provide.”

      Equally complex is figuring out just what America’s most elite troops on the continent are actually doing, and who they are targeting.

      In documents from a closed-door presentation delivered by Bolduc late last year and a recent, little-noticed question and answer with a military publication, the SOCAFRICA commander offered new clues about the shadow war currently being waged by American troops all across the continent.

    • Navy Corrects “American Sniper” Chris Kyle’s Military Record, Lowers Medal Count

      The Navy has officially corrected Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle’s service record, lowering the medal count that he had claimed in his bestselling autobiography, American Sniper, according to a military spokesperson.

      The Navy issued the corrected DD214 form, his official discharge record, on June 14, two weeks after a report by The Intercept found Kyle embellished his military record, despite at least one warning from SEAL commanders that his claims were inaccurate.

      In his autobiography, Kyle claimed he received two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with a “V” device for valor. After investigating the discrepancy, the Navy now says Kyle earned one Silver Star and four Bronze Stars with a “V” device for valor during his 10-year career as a Navy SEAL.

    • Security, Territory and Population Part 1: Introduction

      Security, Territory and Population is a collection of lectures given by the French thinker Michel Foucault at the College of France in 1977-8. Foucault describes the lectures as a work of philosophy, defined as “the politics of truth” (p. 3), a term which itself seems to require a definition. This creates two difficult problems for the reader. First, philosophy is hard. It involves carefully picking things apart, examining each element, putting the pieces back together, and then picking them apart from some other perspective, examining the new set of pieces and reassembling. It’s hard work, and it makes for difficult reading.

      Second, these are lectures, not a polished work prepared for publication with the aid of editors and the time it takes to smooth out analysis. Foucault says that these lectures are part of a long program of study, of which other books and sets of lectures are parts. The earlier books include Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality for certain, and others as well. These are polished works, and they give an idea of the general program.

    • ‘War on Terror’ Blowback Hits Dallas

      The blowback from America’s “war on terror” swept into Dallas last Friday when an Afghan War veteran allegedly killed five police officers and was killed in turn by a remote-controlled robot deploying a bomb, writes retired Col. Ann Wright.

    • NATO Has a Very Peculiar Way of Showing It Doesn’t Want New Cold War

      On first day of NATO summit, critics condemn “new and dangerous plan” to provoke Russia with heightened military presence on its borders

    • NATO Reaffirms Its Bogus Russia Narrative

      President Obama and NATO leaders signed on to the false narrative of a minding-its-own-business West getting sucker-punched by a bunch of Russian meanies, a storyline that suggests insanity or lies, reports Robert Parry.

    • Vladimir Putin Is The Only Leader The West Has

      Emmott and Siebold report that “Russian aggression” is the reason NATO is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland. In other words, something that does not exist–Russian aggression toward the Baltics and Poland–is assumed to be a fact that must be countered with military deployments.

    • NATO as an ‘Entangling Alliance’
    • Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Who Said What When
    • The Real Lesson of Iraq: Nothing Was Learned, No Good Was Done

      Denunciations of Tony Blair as the evil architect of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War often dominate discussions of what happened there and many will look to the Chilcot inquiry to provide further evidence of his guilt. But the demonisation of Mr Blair is excessive and simple-minded and diverts attention from what really happened in Iraq and how such mistakes can be avoided in future.

      He may have unwisely followed the US into the quagmire of Iraq, but British government policy since 1941 has been to position itself as America’s most loyal and effective ally in peace and war.

      There have been significant exceptions to this rule, such as the Suez Crisis and the Vietnam War, but during the last 70 years the UK has generally sought to influence US policy in its formulation and then support it unequivocally once adopted.

      This may on occasions be humiliating and out of keeping with the British self-image of robust independence, but it is not as stupid from the point of view of the British state.

      In going to war in alliance with the US in Iraq, Mr Blair was not doing anything very different from his predecessors or successors, except that he was more successful than them in establishing close relations with the White House.

      Many British politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists have subsequently claimed they were convinced at the time that the invasion would end badly, but they were notably quiet about their forebodings at the time and for most part their wisdom is retrospective. Nor that British opposition to the US venture in Iraq could have done much to stop it happening.

    • Yup, More Mission Creep: US Defense Announces 500 More for Endless War

      Further escalating the United States’ involvement in the campaign against the Islamic State (or ISIS), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced Monday the deployment of 560 additional American forces to Iraq.

      The announcement was made two days after the Iraqi military reportedly seized the Qayyarrah Air Base, which lies 40 miles south of Mosul, and the troop deployment was billed as a way to support local forces in retaking that ISIS-held city.

      The airfield is “one of the hubs from which … Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southern-most envelopment of Mosul,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters before arriving in Baghdad on Monday. The U.S. troops will reportedly bolster Iraqi forces, particularly with “infrastructure and logistical capabilities,” according to the Washington Post.

    • Pentagon will send hundreds more troops to Iraq following seizure of key airfield
    • Islamic State Defectors Hold Key to Countering Group’s Recruitment

      While the Islamic State continues to lose territory on the ground in Iraq and Syria, the appeal of its apocalyptic ideas has proven more enduring. Since 2014, the group, also known as ISIS, has managed to attract as many as 30,000 recruits from around the world, including several thousand men and women from Europe and North America.

      A significant number of these individuals are believed to have been recruited online using social media.

      A new project focused on interviews with individuals who joined and later defected from ISIS might offer a way of stifling the appeal of the group. The ISIS Defectors Interview Project, conducted by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, compiles video and written testimony from former members of the group. Between September 2015 and May 2016, Anne Speckhard, a research psychologist at Georgetown University, and Ahmet Yayla, a former counterterrorism head of the Turkish National Police, met with 32 former ISIS members who escaped the group and have since fled to Turkey.

      The reality described by these defectors bears little resemblance to the utopian conditions described by the Islamic State in its propaganda. While their paths to joining the group may have been different, they ultimately rejected the militant organization after seeing firsthand what its practices were like. Instead of finding defenders of besieged Sunni Muslim communities, defectors often found the Islamic State to be merciless with anyone who opposed its rule. Appalled by the cruelty, injustice, and oppression they witnessed, they fled ISIS in disillusionment.

    • Clintonites in Democratic Party Back Settler Colonialism (Not a 1905 Headline)

      The Clinton loyalists debating the Democratic Party platform have defeated an amendment that would have called for an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and condemned Israeli squatter settlements illegal.

      The Democratic Party, in other words, backs the principle of colonialism no less than if it declared that the British should take back over India, that French commandos should storm the presidential palace in Algiers, or that the US army should march through the streets of Manila and reoccupy the Philippines. Maybe, in fact, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party would like to rescind the Declaration of Independence and accede to the United Kingdom? With Scotland talking about leaving, there might be a place opening up, and we could get the redcoats back to harass us.

    • As US Controlled NATO Meets: U.S. War on Russia and China Will Mean Ruin for the Whole of Europe and Asia

      Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s cry of distress is that of a man watching a tidal wave of destruction gathering force, similar to ones that have engulfed his country twice in the 20th Century. His dread is not to be dismissed since it comes from a man who is in a position to know what the U.S. is up to. His words reflect the fears of ever more people across all of Eurasia from France in the West to Japan in the East.

      Under the euphemism of “containment,” the U.S. is relentlessly advancing its new Cold War on Russia and China. Its instrument in the West is NATO and in the East, Japan and whatever other worthies can be sharked up.

      It is a Cold War that grows increasingly hotter, with proxy wars now raging in Eastern Ukraine and Syria and with confrontations in the South China Sea. There is an ever growing likelihood that these points of tension will flare up into an all out military conflict.

      In the West this conflict will begin in Eastern Europe and Russia, but it will not stop there. All the European NATO countries would be on the front lines. In the East the conflict will take place in the Western Pacific in the region of China’s coast and in the peninsulas and island countries in the region, including Japan, the Philippines and Indochina.

    • Hague Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea

      An international tribunal in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke on Tuesday of China’s behavior in the South China Sea, from the construction of artificial islands to interference with fishing, and ruled that its expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis.

      The tribunal also said that Beijing had violated international law by causing “severe harm to the coral reef environment” and by failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from harvesting endangered sea turtles and other species “on a substantial scale.”

      The landmark case, brought by the Philippines, was seen as an important crossroads in China’s rise as a global power. It is the first time the Chinese government has been summoned before the international justice system, and neighboring countries have hoped that the outcome will provide a model for negotiating with Beijing or for challenging its assertive tactics in the region.

    • The No-State Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

      Needless to say, this is not balanced journalism, but extremely prejudicial to the rights of the Palestinians living under foreign military occupation. When the illegality of the settlements is alluded to by the mainstream media (all too infrequently), they typically obscure it by saying something like: “Most countries do not recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s settlements.” This leaves readers with the impression that the matter is controversial, that there is debate about it within the international community, that there are two legitimate points of view. It affords validity to Israel’s position when it has none. Translated from newspeak, what that means is that every single government on planet Earth other than Israel itself recognizes the settlements as a violation of international law.

    • The Jordanian Arms Theft Story

      I’m still trying to figure out what to make of this story, so for the moment, I just want to unpack it.

      First, consider the players. The story is sourced to US and Jordanian “officials,” (a term which can sometimes mean contractors or Members of Congress). The CIA and FBI both refused to comment for the story; the State Department and Jordan’s press people both gave fluff statements.

      The story is a joint project — between Qatar’s media outlet, Al-Jazeera (here’s their link to the story), and the “official press” of the US, the NYT. So Americans, Jordanians, and Qataris were involved in this story.

      But no Saudis, in spite of the fact that the story reports that Saudis apparently complained some months ago.

    • Fool’s Errand: NATO Pledges Four More Years of War in Afghanistan

      The longest war in US history just got even longer. As NATO wrapped up its 2016 Warsaw Summit, the organization agreed to continue funding Afghan security forces through the year 2020. Of course with all that funding comes US and NATO troops, and thousands of contractors, trainers, and more.

      President Obama said last week that the US must keep 3,000 more troops than planned in Afghanistan. The real reason is obvious: the mission has failed and Washington cannot bear to admit it. But Obama didn’t put it that way. He said:

      “It is in our national security interest, especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested over the years, that we give our partners in Afghanistan the best chance to succeed.”

      This is how irrational Washington’s logic is. Where else but in government would you see it argued that you cannot stop spending on a project because you have already spent so much to no avail? In the real world, people who invest their own hard-earned money in a failed scheme do something called “cut your losses.” Government never does that.

    • Hatred Just Grows and Grows

      A Palestinian youngster breaks into a settlement, enters the nearest house, stabs a 13-year old girl in her sleep and is killed.

      Three Israeli men kidnap a 12-year old Palestinian boy at random, take him to an open field and burn him alive.

      Two Palestinians from a small town near Hebron enter Israel illegally, have coffee in a Tel Aviv amusement quarter and then shoot up everybody around before they are captured. They become national heroes.

      An Israeli soldier sees a severely wounded Palestinian attacker lying on the ground, approaches him and shoots him in the head at point blank range. He is applauded by most Israelis.

      These are not “normal” actions even in a guerrilla war. They are the manifestations of bottomless hatred, a hatred so terrible that it overcomes all norms of humanity.

    • Courthouse Shooting Leaves 3 People Dead, Injures Law Enforcement Officer

      At least two courthouse bailiffs and a jail inmate are dead after a shooting took place at a courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan, according to eyewitness accounts and a local CBS news affiliate WWMT reporter. A law enforcement sheriff’s deputy was also likely injured. The shooting, which took place at the Berrien County Courthouse was brought under control in roughly 30 minutes.

    • The reasons for invading Iraq were more ideological than scientific, more evangelical than rational.

      Britain is in political turmoil, but even prior to that, there was that old problem of why Her Majesty’s government went to war in a disastrous conflict that had no immediate, security related grounds. The reasons for invading Iraq were more ideological than scientific, more evangelical than rational.

  • E-mailgate

    • The Eel of History: Hillary Clinton, Emailgate and the FBI

      Tactics of minimisation have been central to Hillary Clinton’s political career. When stumbling takes place, go for the established book of deflective rules. When violations of the law take place, explain that it was normal at the time. Suggest that others had engaged in a form of conduct only subsequently frowned upon.

      Such tactics should be kept in the dustbin of history. For the Clintons, they have consistently worked, giving that particular not so holy family a particularly nasty sense of political entitlement. They remain the ghouls of the US political establishment, paying (or rather withholding) tribute to the dead ideas of liberalism.

      Evidently, the inappropriate use of a private server to conduct what were classified communications and potentially accessible to third-parties, did not seem grave enough a breach to warrant criminal charges.

      That was the preliminary finding by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is concluding its investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State. The Bureau had received the referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General seeking answers on whether classified information had been transmitted on that personal system during her time in office.

    • Poll finds majority of Americans disagree with FBI in Clinton e-mail flap

      A poll out Monday concludes that a majority of Americans disapprove of the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presumptive nominee for president who has been embroiled in a scandal involving her treatment of classified e-mail when she was Secretary of State.

      The ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted by Langer Research Associates found that 56 percent of those surveyed said they “disapprove” of FBI Director James Comey’s decision last week. Attorney General Loretta Lynch backed the recommendation. Thirty five percent answered that they “approve” of the decision. About 9 percent of respondents said they had “no opinion” on the issue.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • #WebOfDenial: Senators to Call Out Big Oil’s Blockade of Climate Action

      Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkeley (D-Ore.), Al Franken (D-N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Monday introduced a resolution (pdf) condemning “efforts of corporations and groups to mislead the public about the harmful effects of tobacco, lead, and climate” and urging “fossil fuel corporations and their allies to cooperate with investigations into their climate-related activities.”

      The senators will take to the Senate floor on Monday and Tuesday to call out the influential groups and individuals like the right-wing Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and Donors Trust, among other entities, for creating what they describe as “a massive campaign to deceive the public about climate change to halt climate action and protect their bottom lines.”

    • Latest Leak Shows How TTIP Puts US-EU Clean Energy Goals in ‘Mortal Danger’

      A new leak provides further confirmation that the pro-corporate TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the U.S. and European Union would result in “a giant leap backward in our fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

    • If Chávez Were Alive Today, Would the Situation in Venezuela be Different?

      US policy since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 has been regime change to return the oil-rich South American nation to the neo-liberal fold. After 17 years of Chávista polices, the US wants nothing more than for poor Venezuelans to suffer as much as possible – to make their economy scream – so that the popular movement will grow dissatisfied with the socialist inclined leadership.

    • Three Ideas for a Fairer and Cleaner Asia

      Community Forest Management Indonesia’s deforestation is chronic.15.8million hectares of forest were lost between 2000 and 2012. The devastation ruins local livelihoods and increases global warming. Big businesses are often responsible, implementing large-scale projects characterized by land grabs, disrespect for farmers, and a lack of understanding of traditional forest management methods.

    • Exxon Is Still Helping Fund The Spread Of Climate Denial

      ExxonMobil — the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company — has had an interesting year. In September, two investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that the company’s own scientists had recognized the dangers posed by climate change as far back as 1977, and yet did nothing about it. Those revelations sparked a cascade of calls from politicians demanding an investigation into whether or not Exxon knowingly mislead shareholders, and the public, about climate change. Currently, 17 attorneys general have subpoenaed Exxon for internal documents.

      The increased public scrutiny, however, does not seem to be stopping Exxon from giving money to groups that actively fund climate misinformation and oppose climate legislation.

    • Disturbing forests damages natural diversity

      Then, having made their counts of specified plants, birds and dung beetles, they made their extrapolations. And their calculation of equivalent biodiversity loss – that is, the area of forest that would have protected the lost creatures – was at least 92,000 sq km, and possibly an area bigger than Greece.

      “Even this lowest estimate is greater than the area deforested across the entire Brazilian Amazon between 2006 and 2015,” they write. “These results demonstrate an urgent need for policy interventions that go beyond the maintenance of forest cover to safeguard the hyper-diversity of tropical forest ecosystems.”

    • Duke Energy ups bond demand from nonprofits challenging fracked gas plant to $240M

      But now Duke Energy is asking for a $240 million bond, arguing that the groups’ appeal of the fast-tracked project would delay construction. The company and NCUC are citing a never-before-used provision of a 1963 state law to justify the bond demand.

      The nonprofits would have to pay the bond only if they lose their case against the plant in court. NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren told The News & Observer that he would “find it hard to believe we’d gamble money in that saloon.”

    • How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change

      The “solution” offered by many experts is to double down on industrial agriculture and genetic modification. But doing so ignores how natural systems function and interact and assumes we can do better. History shows such hubris often leads to unexpected negative results. Others are attempting to understand how to work within nature’s systems, using agroecological methods.

    • TTIP leak rebuts EU pledge to tackle climate change, say green activists

      The European Union’s proposal for a chapter on energy and raw materials in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement was leaked on Monday, just as the fourteenth round of talks between the EU and US got underway in Brussels.

      However, the EU’s plans have been criticised by the European wing of Friends of the Earth. Its economic justice programme coordinator Paul de Clerck said: “The EU’s leaked proposal on TTIP and energy is in complete contradiction with Europe’s commitments to tackle climate change, and the Paris agreement. It will flood the EU market with inefficient appliances, and consumers and the climate will foot the bill. The proposal will also hinder measures to promote renewable electricity production from wind and solar.”

      Green MEP Claude Turmes told the Guardian: “These proposals are completely unacceptable. They would sabotage EU legislators’ ability to privilege renewables and energy efficiency over unsustainable fossil fuels. This is an attempt to undermine democracy in Europe.”

    • Britain must urgently prepare for flooding, heatwaves and food shortages, says Government report

      Urgent action must be taken to protect Britain from flooding, deadly heatwaves, water shortages and an international food crisis that will all become increasing risks as the Earth warms, according to a Government report.

      Writing in the Climate Change Risk Assessment report, leading scientist Lord Krebs stressed there was “no question” that the primary response to climate change should be to reduce greenhouse gases.

      But he added that it was still “crucial to prepare for the inevitable changes” that will occur because of the emissions that have already been pumped into the atmosphere.

  • Finance

    • Seven ways to future-proof your IT contracts post-Brexit

      The UK’s Brexit vote has created a profound level of uncertainty – and IT firms in particular will be worried about how the legal and regulatory environment will change when the government formally gives notice to leave the EU.

      EU laws come in different varieties. There are directives that have been implemented into UK law by the UK Parliament, and the implementing legislation will continue to apply unless and until the laws are amended or replaced. There are also regulations that have direct application on the UK as a member state. These laws will not apply to the UK when it is no longer part of the EU, and so the UK will have to decide how to replace such laws, if it decides to at all.

    • A Tough Time for Conventional Wisdom

      The recent vote in favor of Brexit is only the latest case of failed conventional wisdom.

    • Cavaliers and Roundheads: four thoughts about the Article 50 litigation

      There are three potential cases against the government on Article 50, demanding that the ultimate decision on Brexit be made by parliament and not the prime minister under the royal prerogative.

    • Rethinking recovery: poverty chains and global capitalism

      Global inequality has never been greater. For example, the wealth of the world’s richest 62 people, who between them have more wealth than half of the world’s population, rose by 44% between 2010 and 2015. Over the same period the wealth of the bottom 50% of humanity fell by approximately 38%.

    • How New Jersey Has Embraced ‘State-Sanctioned Loan-Sharking’ to Students

      New Jersey has the country’s largest state-based student loan program. It’s also incredibly unforgiving. For this ProPublica Podcast, I talked with our own Annie Waldman about her story on what one bankruptcy attorney described at New Jersey’s “state-sanctioned loan sharking.” Waldman found one mother who has been required to keep paying off her son’s loans even after he was murdered.

    • EFF Joins Stars to Rock Against the TPP and Finally Defeat It

      One of the hardest pills to swallow about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is that our opinion about it (and yours) really isn’t worth much. When we look at the only three industries that have reportedly been holding up passage of the deal through Congress—big pharma, big tobacco and big finance—we can reach no other conclusion. That’s not the way it should be, but after five years of us constantly battling this undemocratic agreement with very little to show for it, that seems to be the way it is.

      This makes us angry. And when we get angry, we like to rock.

      That’s why we’re supporting Rock Against the TPP, an ambitious free music festival and rally around the country, principally organized by our friends at Fight for the Future, in collaboration with guitarist Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine, Prophets of Rage, and Audioslave) and his new label Firebrand Records. Joining Morello to headline the tour will be hip hop star Talib Kweli, actress Evangeline Lilly (star of Lost and the Hobbit), and a diverse line-up of other big-name acts (check out the full line-up in each city below).

      But Rock Against the TPP is more than just an opportunity for us to rock out and vent our frustrations about this toxic deal—it could also be the key to finally sinking it once and for all. How? Because although big money unfortunately holds great power over our representatives in Congress, there’s one thing that means even more to them—the voice of the people. But only when it’s loud enough—and that’s where the idea of a music festival comes in. If we can get thousands of ordinary music lovers to rise up against the TPP, this may be just the kind of groundswell of public sentiment that politicians can no longer ignore.

    • How the Super-Rich Will Destroy Themselves

      Perhaps they believe that their underground survival bunkers with bullet-resistant doors and geothermal power and anti-chemical air filters and infrared surveillance devices and pepper spray detonators will sustain them for two or three generations.

      Perhaps they feel immune from the killings in the streets, for they rarely venture into the streets anymore. They don’t care about the great masses of ordinary people, nor do they think they need us.

      Or do they? There are a number of ways that the super-rich, because of their greed and lack of empathy for others, may be hastening their own demise, while taking the rest of us with them.

    • Why the Opt Out Movement is Crucial for the Future of Public Education

      Save your child. Save your schools. Stop the corporate takeover of public education. You have the power. Say no. Opt out.

    • Vanishing the People’s Wealth to Make the Bosses Richer

      magine you are a shareholder in a big company and the top executives are sitting on huge amounts of cash and are not interested in putting it to work through productive capital investments, research and development, reducing company debt or paying employees a higher wage. What would you want done about it? Since you and other shareholders are the owners of the company, you’d likely say “give us back our money in cash dividends.”

      “No way,” say your hired hands, the company managers, who have spent a staggering $2.1 trillion of your money in the last five years on stock buybacks allegedly to increase the company’s earnings per share ratio, instead of increasing shareholder dividends. Overall this tactic has not been working over time except to make the corporate bosses richer, which is the real reason for many buybacks.

      What is the incentive for this cash burning frenzy? According to University of Massachusetts scholar, William Lazonick, in 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives received 52% of their remuneration from stock options and another 26% from stock awards.

    • Justice Department Overruled Recommendation to Pursue Charges Against HSBC, Report Says

      U.S. Justice Department officials overruled their prosecutors’ recommendation to pursue criminal charges against HSBC Holdings PLC over money-laundering failings, according to a House committee report prepared by Republicans that sheds new light on the bank’s 2012 settlement.

    • As Part of Confirmation Process, Loretta Lynch Suggested DOJ Didn’t Have Enough Evidence to Prosecute HSBC

      The report blames Eric Holder for the decision, not Loretta Lynch, who oversaw the case as US Attorney. Indeed, her name doesn’t appear in the WSJ story at all.

    • Why TTIP will live on – but not for the EU

      The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – also known as TTIP – could be the next casualty in the Brexit fallout. But not in the way you might expect. The controversial trade agreement between the EU and United States could well fall apart, only for the UK to pick up the pieces for its own trade deal.

    • How MBA Programs Drive Inequality

      Over the last several decades, American business executives have made decisions that have exacerbated the inequality that chokes prosperity for the country. They have misallocated resources and they have awarded themselves mind-boggling compensation packages while workers have suffered stagnant wages and increasing job insecurity. The stats are shocking: In 1965, a typical CEO took in about 20 times what an average employee earned, while the latest figures from the AFL-CIO put current CEO pay at 373 times what the average worker makes. (Amazingly, according to a forthcoming paper for the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) by Matt Hopkins and William Lazonick, even that ratio is grossly underestimated because it is based on grant-date fair value estimates of what stock options and stock awards might be worth, rather than how much CEOs actually take home when they exercise stock options and when stock awards vest).

    • Right-Sizing the Financial Sector in Post-Brexit Europe

      The vote in the UK to leave the European Union (EU) has set off a race among major European financial centers like Paris, Frankfurt and Milan to capture much of the financial industry that is now located in London. As a result of EU rules, it will be difficult to conduct many of the transactions which now take place in London if the UK is no longer part of the EU. This means that a large part of London’s financial industry will soon be looking for a new home.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Why Democrats Should Be Cheering For Bernie Sanders

      There’s been truly horrible news the past couple of days: Google Alton Sterling or Philando Castille if you somehow missed it. And there’s been nasty political news: Donald Trump and his ‘sheriff’s star.’ Those events are, sadly, predictable, and all the more troubling because of that predictability.

      Buried in the newsfeed, however, is one event that seems weird — and troubling too, though in a different way. That’s the story that members of the House Democratic caucus booed Bernie Sanders in a meeting on Wednesday.

      Really? Booed the guy that 45 percent of Democrats supported in the primary? Booed the guy that all year long has been the most favorably viewed politician in America? Booed the guy that got more votes from young people in the primaries than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined?

    • Why Black Lives Don’t Matter To The NRA

      Two men were brutally killed by police this week for carrying guns. One told the officer he had a legal license to carry, and the other allegedly had a concealed gun in a state where carrying without a license is legal. But don’t expect outrage from the National Rifle Association.

      The country’s largest gun lobby has fought tirelessly in recent years to expand gun ownership to all Americans, successfully securing the right for people to legally carry both open and concealed firearms virtually anywhere they want. In Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was shot Tuesday night at a convenience store, a license is not required to openly carry a firearm. And in Minnesota, where Philando Castile was shot on Wednesday during a traffic stop, people with permits can carry weapons, openly or concealed.

    • Despicable Bedfellows: NRA Endorses Trump with $2 Million National Ad Campaign

      Here’s a match made in the fire-pits of hell: Donald Trump just received an endorsement in the form of a $2 million national ad campaign sponsored by the NRA Political Victory Fund.

    • Don’t Stop the Revolution: The Sanders Movement After Orlando

      Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution” scored some impressive wins this weekend at the Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting in Orlando, adding to its victories last month in St. Louis. ABC News called the resulting document “exceptionally progressive.”

      Apparently Sanders had more leverage after the California primary than his critics were willing to admit.

      To be sure, there were also some losses – most notably on getting the party on record opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. But this new movement has already had a major impact on American politics. It’s likely to have even more in the months and years to come.

    • Don’t Endorse Hillary Before the Convention: An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders

      As such, I am alarmed by what I have been reading about your possible endorsement of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire tomorrow. I am asking that you hold off on an endorsement until after the vote, that you not place her name into nomination using a vote by acclamation and that you exercise your option afforded you by the minority report signed at the platform committee meeting to force a vote on the Hightower amendment opposing the TPP in Philadelphia.

    • Sanders May Endorse Clinton as Dems Adopt ‘Most Progressive Platform’

      Bernie Sanders is reportedly poised to endorse Hillary Clinton for president at their first joint campaign appearance on Tuesday.

      Both teams confirmed Monday that the Vermont senator would join the former secretary of state during a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where they would “discuss their commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.”

      Many saw that as an indication he would endorse Clinton. As NPR explains, “The phrasing is significant, in that it references both Clinton’s general-election campaign slogan, ‘Stronger Together,’ and the animating issue and the heart of Sanders primary bid—income inequality.”

    • Theresa May to become new PM after Tory rival Leadsom withdraws

      Theresa May will enter Downing street as Britain’s second female prime minister, a rapid ascent to the premiership that came after her sole remaining challenger withdrew from the leadership race.

      The home secretary’s coronation cuts short what was expected to be a bruising nine-week contest with Andrea Leadsom, and will bring an end to David Cameron’s six-year tenure in No 10, when he will offer his resignation to the Queen after this week’s prime minister’s questions.

      May has just two days to prepare herself for the premiership and address the pressing questions about who will be in her cabinet, how she will unite the party after the battle over Brexit and her preparations for the negotiations to leave the European Union.

      On Monday, May, who had campaigned for remain in the EU referendum, said she was “honoured and humbled” to have been chosen by her party, before offering an olive branch to colleagues who backing leaving the EU by declaring that she would “make a success” of Brexit.

    • ‘Divisive, Illiberal and Calculating’ Theresa May to be Crowned UK Prime Minister

      Conservative Party candidate Theresa May is set to be the new UK prime minister as her intra-party opponent, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out of the race on Monday in another post-Brexit political upheaval.

      May received 199 votes from other Members of Parliament versus Leadsom’s 84 votes. The home office secretary is now expected to be formally confirmed by the Conservative Party board and the chairman of the Tory 1922 committee, clearing the way for her to be appointed prime minister by Tory MPs, who also have a majority in the House of Commons.

    • Theresa May: What the MP set to become Prime Minister believes on human rights

      Theresa May is about to become Prime Minister after a career of opposing legislation that guarantees equality and human rights.

      The MP and home secretary has repeatedly indicated that she would look to repeal laws that guarantee human rights in Britain. She also has a record of voting against equality legislation and measures that prevent climate change.

      Most recently, at the end of May, Theresa May voted in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act. She has repeatedly criticised human rights legislation for limiting the powers of government – a position that has led to criticism even from fellow cabinet members.

    • Britain: Shakespeare in Action

      It’s a bit like a Shakespeare play – specifically the final scene of Hamlet, when almost all the play’s major characters die violently. And now we’re down to one. Her name is Theresa May.

      It has been barely three weeks since the United Kingdom (or at least, 52 percent of those who voted) chose to leave the European Union, but all the main Brexit leaders have already left the stage. The Conservative Party has always been notable for its ruthlessness, and leaders who threaten to split the party get short shrift.

      The first to go was Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum expecting that a pro-EU outcome would finally make the anti-EU obsessives on the right of his own Conservative Party shut up. It was a needless, fatal blunder.

      Cameron allowed some of his own cabinet members to campaign for “Brexit”, in the belief that they would return to the fold, chastened by defeat, when the country voted for “Remain”. Instead, the “Leave” campaign won, and Cameron announced his resignation the morning after the referendum.

    • Fear Factor: Trump the Boogeyman

      Little did he anticipate that his appeal to white nationalism would mean more to the Republican rank and file than proposals to cut taxes for rich people or defund Planned Parenthood.

    • Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and the search for the party’s Henry VII
    • The Alternative to Fervent Nationalism Isn’t Corporate Liberalism—It’s Social Democracy

      In his 1946 essay reviewing former Trotskyist-turned-reactionary James Burnham’s book The Managerial Revolution, George Orwell made several observations that resonate just as powerfully today as they did when they were first published.

      “The real question,” he wrote, “is not whether the people who wipe their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers, bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.”

      Orwell recognized what many today fail to perceive: That free market capitalism is, in the words of Karl Polanyi, a “stark Utopia,” a system that does not exist, and one that would not survive for long if it ever came into existence.

      But for Orwell, the question was not how (or whether) the crises of capitalism that rocked both Europe and the United States in the 20th century would be solved — the question was: what would take the place of an economic order that was clearly on its way out?

    • Donald Trump’s Anti-Establishment Scam

      Early on in his presidential bid, Donald Trump began touting his anti-establishment credentials. When it worked, he ran with it. It was a posture that proved pure gold in the Republican primaries, and was even, in one sense, true. After all, he’d never been part of the political establishment nor held public office, nor had any of his family members or wives.

      His actual relationship to the establishment is, however, complex in an opportunistic way. He’s regularly tweeted his disdain for it. (“I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?”) And yet, he clearly considered himself part of it and has, at times, yearned for it. As he said early on in his run for the presidency, “I want the establishment—look, I was part of the establishment. Let me explain. I was the establishment two months ago. I was like the fair-haired boy. I was a giver, a big giver. Once I decided to run, all of a sudden I’m sort of semi-anti-establishment.”

      An outsider looking to shake up the government status quo? An insider looking to leverage that establishment for his own benefit? What was he? He may not himself have known.

      He once rejected the idea of taking establishment (or Super PAC) money, only—more recently—to seek it; he rebuffed certain prominent establishment players, only to hire others to help him (and fire yet more of them). He’s railed against the establishment, then tried to rally it to his side (even as he denounced it yet again). Now, with the general election only four months away, it turns out that he’s going to need that establishment if he is to have a hope in hell of raising the money and organizing the troops effectively enough to be elected. There, however, is the rub: power brokers don’t suffer the slings and arrows of “outsider” scorn lightly.

    • The Huckster Populist

      The tectonic plates of American politics are no longer moving along the old fault lines of “left” versus “right” or even Democrat versus Republican.

      As we’ve seen this bizarre political year, the biggest force welling up is rage against insider elites in both parties, and against the American establishment as a whole – including the denizens of Wall Street, large corporations, and the mainstream media.

      Now, with Bernie Sanders essentially out of the race, Donald Trump wants Americans to believe he’s the remaining anti-establishment candidate.

      It’s smart politics but it’s a hoax.

    • TPP and Democratic Self-Delusion

      There were three issues, however, where Sanders’ delegates lost: opposition to Israeli settlements, a ban on fracking, and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

      The first two make sense: after all, those policy positions match Hillary’s stated position (though the US is supposed to be opposed to illegal settlements), so rejecting Sanders’ amendments equated to backing the nominee instead. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

      But Hillary, of course, claimed to oppose the TPP during the primary, even if that claim was always sketchy coming as it did as she worked so hard to negotiate the crappy deal as Secretary of State. So the mealy-mouthed language in the platform about protecting workers — akin to the same language in the Colombia Trade Deal that did squat to protect workers — is more notable.

      As is the idiotic opinion expressed by this person, described by Robert Reich as an acquaintance from the Clinton White House.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Pablo Escobar’s Brother Demands One Billion Dollars From Netflix Over Narcos

      What is it with South American historical figures suddenly thinking they can control everything to do with their family names? You’ll hopefully recall the brief existence of a case of publicity rights violation brought against Activision by Manuel Noriega over the depiction of him in the gamemaker’s Call of Duty series. That case was quickly tossed out by the court because the First Amendment has just an tiny bit more weight when it comes to artistic expression than does any publicity rights for public historical figures from other countries that might, maybe, kinda-sorta exist, possibly. We might have struggled at the time to find a complainant less likely than Noriega to win this sort of long-shot in the American court system, but we need struggle no longer.

      Roberto Escobar, brother and former accountant to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, has sent a letter to Netflix demanding a billion dollars (not a joke) and the right to review all future episodes of the streaming company’s hit show Narcos, to make sure that he and his family are portrayed accurately. The letter, first published by TMZ (which explains the massive TMZ watermark on it) is quite a read.

    • Sony Pictures Legal Affairs VP Files Bogus DMCA Notice Because His Salary Is Listed On Wikileaks

      Yeah, so the Sony Pictures hack is basically old news at this point. People have gone through it for all the juicy details and it’s been out of the news for quite some time. So, apparently, one Sony “legal affairs” exec decided that perhaps he could engage in a little copyfraud to try to hide some info without anyone noticing. As TorrentFreak first noticed, however, Sony Pictures Legal Affairs VP Daniel Yankelevits wasn’t particularly subtle in sending a DMCA notice to Google, asking it to delist the Wikileaks page with a search engine for all of the Sony Hack emails.

    • Standing in solidarity with Turkey’s journalists

      We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Turkey who fiercely continue their job despite facing relentless attacks and attempts to silence them. We also express our support to the 44 journalists and distributors in jail and to those facing arrest as retaliation for their exercise of their right to freedom of expression and freedom to inform.

      I am a journalist!

      Journalism is not a crime.

    • Facebook Sued for $1 Billion for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror

      Lawyers filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Facebook Inc., alleging it allowed the Palestinian militant Hamas group to use the platform to plot attacks that killed four Americans and wounded one in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

      “Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook’s online social network platform and communication services,” making it liable for the violence against the five Americans, according to the lawsuit sent to Bloomberg by the office of the Israeli lawyer on the case, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.

    • Twitter Now Flipflopping On The Issue Of Archiving Deleted Tweets By Public Verified Figures

      Politwoops, meanwhile, remains up and active. So, it seems that notoriety and status as a public figure are not the standard by which Twitter applies its tweet archiving rules. Instead, the space carved out for politicians and public servants appears to be a special one where the likes of celebrities and professional athletes do not operate. But if that is the line Twitter wishes to draw in its cyber-sand, it’s a strange one.

      In areas of law, the status of public figure-hood, as opposed to public servant, is typically the standard by which all kinds of laws are applied (such as the availability to parody, applicability of defamation laws, etc.). And there’s good reason for this: the goal is to foster conversation and knowledge that is in the public interest. The public’s interest need not be confined to politics, thankfully, yet Twitter’s choices appear to reserve separate rules for the political class. I can understand why Twitter might think this makes sense. After all, I find the drunken midnight thoughts of senators far more compelling than those of a UFC fighter. But my interest isn’t the same as the public interest.

      Twitter can engage in this flipflopping, of course. It’s their platform, after all, and they can keep it as arbitrarily closed as they like. The question becomes whether that makes the service more or less useful for the everyday Twitter user. And that’s a question that I think has an obvious answer.

    • Questionable DMCA Takedown Notice Filed Over Post Calling Lawyer Out For Copyright Infringement

      Today’s the day for bogus DMCA takedowns by clueless lawyers trying to hide embarrassing information, I guess. Earlier today we had a story about a legal exec at Sony Pictures issuing a completely bogus DMCA takedown over his salary info being included in the Sony Hacks email dump. And now we turn to Carl David Ceder, a young criminal defense lawyer in Texas. If you recognize that name, it might be because a much more well-known and established criminal defense lawyer, Scott Greenfield, wrote a few blog posts about young Carl a few years ago, when he discovered that Carl had been beefing up the content on his professional website by simply plagiarizing the content of other, more established legal bloggers, and posting it as if it were his own thoughts. To put it mildly, Carl did not respond well to this and sent a few barely comprehensible rants blaming everyone but himself, and never actually apologizing for copying someone else’s content wholesale.

      Now, there are lots of ways to deal with this kind of thing. One could admit it was a mistake, but that doesn’t seem to be in Carl David Ceder’s nature. And, of course, around here, we’re certainly willing to consider fair use arguments for copying material, though Carl presents none, and, indeed, it appears there’s little fair use claim he could make for what he did. There’s a pretty strong argument that he engaged in both plagiarism (claiming someone else’s work as your own) and copyright infringement, and from his response, didn’t appear to understand either issue, or why some people were concerned about it.

    • CUNY Responds To BDS Activism On Campuses With Move To Control Free Expression

      The City University of New York (CUNY), one of the nation’s largest public college systems, has proposed a policy to regulate freedom of expression. A graduate of CUNY’s School of Law and co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild, Suzanne Adely, says Palestinian solidarity activism was partly responsible for the proposal.

      “It’s our belief that the reason why this policy was drafted in 2013 and again reintroduced in 2016 has a lot to do with pressure that has been coming from institutions and politicians that seek to silence any criticism of Israel on campus,” Adely contended.

      This example is one of many—including disinviting commencement speakers and demonstrating against screenings—seen nationwide as college administrators have struggled to find a suitable response to student demonstrations. Even some faculty are worried. For them, it is attack on free speech and expression.

    • NYT’s James Risen & Abby Martin on Fighting Censorship, Endless War
    • Online surveillance: we all have something to hide

      We’ve all got secrets. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. We’ve all done things we’re worried about. We’ve all done things we’re embarrassed of.

      Yes, we’ve all got something to hide.

      Despite Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of a secret US/UK mass electronic surveillance program worldwide, it’s almost every other day that I still come across otherwise intelligent minds who insist that they do not fear online privacy invasions because they’ve either ‘done nothing wrong’ or have ‘nothing to hide’.

      In order to try and bring closure to these long-iterated arguments, a string of organisations from the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to journalists such as Glenn Greenwald have long made the case as to why, in an era when we’re increasingly connected by machines to a worldwide network, bulk online surveillance is a danger to us all.

    • Reporters Without Borders says Marie Colvin murdered by Assad regime
    • Family of U.S. Journalist Killed in Syria Sues Assad Regime
    • War reporter Marie Colvin’s family sues Syria
    • Family Of Slain US Journalist Wants The Syrian Regime Brought To Justice
    • Slain journalist Marie Colvin’s family files lawsuit alleging she was targeted and killed by the Syrian government
    • ANC reiterates opposition to SABC censorship
    • Mantashe: The ANC stands firmly against censorship at the SABC
    • ‘Censorship has no place in a democracy’ – Sanef on Icasa’s SABC ruling
    • Hlaudi accuses other media organisations of also censoring news

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • House uprising thwarts change to Patriot Act

      The House failed to pass legislation on Monday to enhance a provision of the Patriot Act that encourages banks to tip off federal authorities to suspected cases of terrorist financing.

      Many libertarians warned of potential privacy violations if the measure went into effect, which helped prevent it from reaching the necessary two-thirds majority to pass through the fast-track process under which it was considered.

      While the bill won a simple majority of 229-177, it didn’t clear the supermajority bar needed for passage. The procedure is typically used for noncontroversial bills that pass easily.

      Section 314 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, encourages financial institutions and the federal government to share information with each other about transactions connected to terrorism.

      Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.), who authored the bill with Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said it would help clarify the intent of the law so that financial institutions can file reports of suspicious activity without fear of civil litigation.

    • How to stay anonymous online

      Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most popular of these networks — Tor — has prompted computer scientists to try to come up with more secure anonymity schemes.

      At the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne will present a new anonymity scheme that provides strong security guarantees but uses bandwidth much more efficiently than its predecessors. In experiments, the researchers’ system required only one-tenth as much time as existing systems to transfer a large file between anonymous users.

    • Riffle: MIT Creates New Anonymity Network Which Is More Secure Than TOR

      Researchers at MIT and EPFL have come up with a new anonymity network that is said to be more secure than Tor. It’s a mix network which implements methods like verifiable shuffle and Authentication Encryption. The researchers will showcase it at a tech symposium later this month.

    • ISIS via WhatsApp: ‘Blow Yourself Up, O Lion’ [Ed: not end-to-end encryption]

      Executives at WhatsApp and Telegram defend encryption as a vital shield to privacy. Reached for comment last week, a spokesperson at WhatsApp said the company complies with U.S. laws requiring cooperation with law enforcement agencies. The spokesperson cited a statement by executives in April when WhatsApp implemented “end-to-end” encryption that will conceal the content of users’ communications even from the company itself.

    • Sweden Considers Making DNA Donated Purely For Medical Research Available To Police And Insurance Companies

      When it comes to biometrics, you really can’t beat DNA. You can always erase your fingerprints, or wear contact lenses to fool iris scanners, but there’s no way of changing all your DNA enough to make it unrecognizable (even with the new CRISPR technique). Couple that with the fact that we are shedding DNA everywhere we go — leaving tell-tale markers on everything we touch — and you have the perfect surveillance mechanism. That’s why earlier UK plans to give police access to medical databases are problematic, to say nothing of Kuwait’s mandatory DNA database for all citizens, residents and visitors.

    • Privacy Shield May Not Be “Schrems-Proof”, But Passage Expected

      The European Commission is expected to pass a controversial declaration on the “adequacy of US data protection standards” on 12 July, making transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States legal once more.

    • Polish Authorities Demand British Law Enforcement Interrogate Tor Exit Node Operator About Information He Doesn’t Have

      Of course, the great thing about Tor is that White couldn’t help the Polish authorities even he wanted to, since he was just operating the exit node, and knows nothing about the origin of the Tor traffic he facilitates. The sooner governments learn this basic fact, the sooner they can stop wasting time and resources trying to extract information from people that don’t have it.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Clintonites in Democratic Party Back Settler Colonialism (Not a 1905 Headline)

      The Clinton loyalists debating the Democratic Party platform have defeated an amendment that would have called for an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and condemned Israeli squatter settlements illegal.

      The Democratic Party, in other words, backs the principle of colonialism no less than if it declared that the British should take back over India, that French commandos should storm the presidential palace in Algiers, or that the US army should march through the streets of Manila and reoccupy the Philippines. Maybe, in fact, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party would like to rescind the Declaration of Independence and accede to the United Kingdom? With Scotland talking about leaving, there might be a place opening up, and we could get the redcoats back to harass us.

    • New York Times Public Editor Scolded For Suggesting Websites Should Treat News Commenters Like Actual Human Beings

      For some time now, the opinion du jour in “enlightened” media circles has been to treat the news comment section (aka the customers who visit your website daily and directly) as some kind of irredeemable leper colony. One that should be nuked from orbit before the infection spreads. As such, we’ve seen website after website proudly crow about how they’ve given up on allowing site comments because a handful of posters are obnoxious, hateful little shits and the social media age means more direct community interaction is passe.

      These announcements usually come hand in hand with all manner of disingenuous platitudes from the editorial staff, like we killed comments because we wanted to “build relationships,” or we muzzled our entire user base because we just “really value conversation.” Usually, this is just code for websites that are too lazy and cheap to moderate, weed and cultivate their community garden, and find it convenient to argue that outsourcing discourse to the homogenized blather realm of Facebook is an improvement.

    • Theresa May, UK’s Next Prime Minister, Has A Human Rights Record That May Raise Some Eyebrows

      Theresa May, 59, will take over the United Kingdom’s role of Prime Minister from David Cameron by Wednesday, British media reported Monday.

      May, who will be the first woman to lead the U.K. since Margaret Thatcher, is a Conservative MP and has been Home Secretary since 2010. Her main challenger, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out after realizing support for her competitor was much stronger. May received 60 percent of the vote from Conservative MPs. Despite her anti-Brexit position, she’s said that the U.K. will continue its split from the E.U. under her leadership.

      “First, the need for strong, proven leadership to steer us through what will be difficult and uncertain economic and political times, the need, of course, to negotiate the best deal for Britain in leaving the EU, and to forge a new role for ourselves in the world,” she said in a statement on Monday. “Brexit means Brexit, and we are going to make a success of it.”

    • Copspeak: 7 Ways Journalists Use Police Jargon to Obscure the Truth

      The close relationship between reporters and police is often marked by diffusion of language from the police PR team to the front page. In the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, here are some examples of how “copspeak” — or jargon used by police departments — is internalized by journalists covering police violence, and how it affects the public’s perception of crime and police brutality.

    • Controversies at Berkeley, and Long Le Describes New Types of High-Technology “less-lethal” Weapons

      In the second half-hour: U-S police forces will soon be adding new types of high-technology “less-lethal” weapons, but these devices are likely to pose greater complications for officer accountability and civilian oversight; researcher Long Le explains some of the issues.

    • Images of Militarized Police in Baton Rouge Draw Global Attention

      Photographs and video of heavily armed police officers wearing body armor and helmets arresting protesters in Baton Rouge over the weekend reverberated on social networks and in the world’s media, focusing new attention on the militarization of police forces across the United States.

      The image that drew the most comment, taken by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, showed a young woman in a dress standing serenely on a road outside the Baton Rouge Police headquarters as two Louisiana State Police officers dressed for battle rushed to arrest her.

    • Police Murder Because They Are Trained To Murder

      First, we know that the police have been, or are being, militarized. They are armed with weapons of war that hitherto have been used only on battlefields. We don’t know why police are armed in this way, as such weapons are not necessary for policing the American public and are not used in police work anywhere except in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

      There is an undeclared agenda behind these weapons, and neither Congress nor the presstitute media have any apparent interest in discovering the hidden agenda.

    • What to Do If You Get Pulled Over by a Cop and You’re Legally Armed

      Last summer, in the wake of the arrest and tragic death of Sandra Bland, following what should have been a routine traffic stop in Prairie View, Texas, I encouraged readers to understand their legal rights, but cautioned them not to “give the police an excuse to mistreat [them] or pile on additional charges.”

      Among my suggestions were the reminders that you have the right to remain silent, you don’t have to consent to have your car searched, you have the right to ask the police whether you’re free to go if you haven’t been arrested, and if you are arrested, you have the right to ask for an attorney—which you should do immediately. I also stressed the importance of staying calm.

    • Ever Use Someone Else’s Password? Go to Jail, says the Ninth Circuit

      This week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case called United States v. Nosal, held 2-1 that using someone else’s password, even with their knowledge and permission, is a federal criminal offense. This dangerous ruling threatens to upend a good decision that the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc—i.e., with 11 judges, not just 3—made in 2012 in the same case. EFF filed an amicus brief in the case and our arguments were echoed by the strong dissent, authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt. We’re pleased that a further appeal is planned and will be supporting it as well.

      This decision turns on the notorious Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and supports one of the most troubling applications of the law—prosecutions based on password sharing. As EFF has long warned, read broadly, the CFAA can be used to turn millions of ordinary computer users into criminals. This leaves innocent people to only hope that a prosecutor will not decide to throw a book at them, as they’ve been know to do in CFAA cases. Carmen Ortiz, a federal prosecutor, did exactly that to our friend Aaron Swartz. This threat underscores both the need for courts to course correct—to narrowly interpret the statute’s overbroad language—or, alternatively, for Congress to step in and clarify the vague terms. For instance, what does “authority” mean in the context of our increasingly interconnected world, where we use someone else’s computer every single day for our email, our entertainment, our social networks, our banking, our health care, and more?

      This appeal involves whether David Nosal, a former employee of executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry, violated the CFAA when other Korn/Ferry ex-employees, on Nosal’s behalf, used the password of a current employee, with her permission, to access an internal company database. This occurred after the company had expressly revoked Nosal’s own login credentials to prevent him from accessing the database.

    • The Next Step for Organized Labor? People in Prison.

      400,000 Americans are employed as prison labor across the United States.

      [...]

      In the early 2000s, the small but militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched union drives at Starbucks and Jimmy John’s. At the time, many in the mainstream labor movement scratched their heads. Traditionally, labor groups believed that the high turnover of fast food workers would make them impossible to organize.

      Nearly a decade later, fast food workers and the Fight for $15 are a central focus of the mainstream labor movement. And, given IWW’s ability to unionize workers who once seemed out of reach, many labor organizers now look to them as an incubator of new organizing strategies.

      Now IWW faces one of the biggest challenges in its history: convincing the broader labor movement to embrace the approximately 400,000 Americans employed as prison labor across the U.S.

    • Ending the Violence with Meaningful Solutions

      The justice, legal and prison systems rose to the top because the U.S. currently incarcerates 25% of the world’s prison population, even though we have only 5% of the world’s population, and our lower levels of social services and mental healthcare for those living in poverty mean that prisons become the places we often institutionalize the mentally ill.

    • Policing isn’t working for cops either

      Those were the words of four-year-old Dae’Anna, consoling her mother Lavish Reynolds after she witnessed the police shoot and kill her boyfriend Philando Castile.

      Those words are now scarred into the psyche of America, much like words that came before it: “Hands up, don’t shoot.” “I can’t breath.” “It’s not real.”

      If you haven’t realized that the system of policing isn’t working for the black community, you haven’t been paying attention. Just hours after the killing of Alton Sterling, a four-year-old child witnessed someone getting shot and bleeding out while she sat in the backseat. The system didn’t work for her, her mother or for Philando Castile. The system didn’t work for Alton Sterling, or for Mike Brown, or for Freddie Gray or for countless others.

      But here’s something we miss in this climate of police violence: the system of policing isn’t working for those working in law enforcement either. It doesn’t serve anyone.

    • Why Liberal New York City’s Schools Are Among the Nation’s Most Segregated

      New York City’s public schools are among the most segregated in the country – a fact that flies in the face of the city’s history as a bastion of progressivism. For this podcast, I spoke with former ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, now a New York Times Magazine staff writer, about her decision to delve deeply and personally into that paradox.

      Hannah-Jones wrote about the public school her daughter attends in New York City, PS 307. The school is populated by poor children of color from nearby housing projects. It also became the site of community tension when predominantly white and well-off parents living nearby were pushed into its school zone to ease crowding at another school.

    • Traffic Stop That Led To Philando Castile’s Death Illustrates Danger Of Driving While Black

      An Associated Press analysis found that Castile, 32, was pulled over an astonishing 52 times between 2002 and his death. About half of the 86 violations assessed against him were ultimately dismissed, and he was never convicted of anything more serious than a misdemeanor.

      Research indicates that Castile’s experience in that regard probably isn’t unique. Published in 2003, the most recent statewide study of the role race plays in traffic stops in Minnesota found that blacks were significantly more likely to be pulled over and searched than whites. The problem was particularly acute in suburbs like the one Castile was stopped in on July 6, where in some jurisdictions blacks were more than three times more likely to be stopped.

    • Dallas Police Shooting: Blowback from Impunity and Structural Racism

      Like the blowback against American superpower, which brought about the September 11th attacks, there will continue to be blowback against police so long as officers in departments throughout the country keep engaging in horrific acts of violence and oppression against minority communities.

    • Tensions High as Combat-Ready Police Confront National Black Lives Matter Protests

      After a weekend of protests and arrests across the U.S., demonstrations against police violence continued on Sunday in cities nationwide.

      As Common Dreams reported, marches and rallies responding to the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile took place Saturday in Phoenix, New York City, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, San Francisco, Nashville, Baton Rouge, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Rochester, New York. In St. Paul, an overnight face-off on Interstate-94 resulted in more than 100 arrests, while in Baton Rouge, nearly 200 people have been arrested since Friday.

    • As Protests Sweep Country, New Video Shows Off-Duty NY Cop Fatally Shooting Black Man Delrawn Small

      Protests against police brutality erupted across the United States over the weekend, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets and blocking roads, bridges and highways in more than a dozen U.S. cities. Hundreds of people were arrested nationwide. The protests were sparked by the police killing of two African American men last week — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. But another recent police shooting has gone largely unnoticed by national media. On July 4, off-duty New York police officer Wayne Isaacs shot and killed Delrawn Small, an unarmed African American man. Police officers initially claimed Small punched officer Isaacs in the face following a driving confrontation. But surveillance video that has just been released counters that claim, and instead shows the off-duty officer shooting Small within one second of Small approaching the vehicle. For more we speak with Roger Wareham, the attorney representing Delrawn Small’s family.

    • Following Horrific Violence, Something More Is Required of Us

      Alton Sterling was arrested because he was hustling, selling CDs to get by.

    • Before Alton Sterling, Louisiana Police Had Killed 38 Mentally Ill People Since 2015

      Videos of the brutal police killing of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have flooded the Internet.

      Sterling was selling CDs outside of a convenience store when he was detained by two white police officers. The officers were allegedly responding to a 911 call about a man with a gun.

    • What the NRA Doesn’t Want You to Know

      As expected, this study found that police officers are more likely to use force when dealing with Black people than they are when dealing with white people.

    • Man Who Posted Video of Police Killing Alton Sterling Says He Was Arrested a Day Later on Bogus Charges

      Chris LeDay, the Georgia man who first posted a video of Alton Sterling being shot to death by police, says he was detained by police the next day.

      “I just made it to my job on base and I’m being detained,” he wrote on Facebook on July 6. “They said I fit the description of someone and won’t tell me anything else. If anything happens I did not resist! Please be aware!”

      According to Carlos Miller, writing for Photography Is Not a Crime, LeDay works as an aerospace ground equipment technician at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia. While attempting to walk through a checkpoint to get to work, he was stopped and detained by “at least ten military police officers with guns, including a few with M-16s, all of them surrounding him in case he tried to make a run for it,” Miller reports.

      [...]

      LeDay’s suspicion that his detention constituted retaliation is understandable. The only person who has been criminally charged for the NYPD police killing of Eric Garner is Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the fatal chokehold. Orta, who was recently sentenced to four years in jail for drug and weapons charges, says he has been repeatedly harassed by police since the filming.

    • Racism and xenophobia are resurgent in the UK, and the centre-left is partly to blame

      “I’m not a racist, but…..”; “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body”; “it’s not racist to have concerns about immigration”. We’re all familiar with Britain’s broad repertoire of phrases for denying or downplaying prejudice. But with a fivefold increase in reported hate crimes since the Brexit vote, it is no longer tenable to sweep this issue under the carpet. We have to be honest. This country has a problem.

    • The Cake That This Country Baked

      A year after Sandra Bland’s arrest and death, America’s streets are filled with righteous rage. Surfacing on social media are surreal videos of mass arrests – including the live-streamed one of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, now out on bond – and hordes of jumpy, chanting, goose-stepping, assault-rifle-wielding robocop stormtroopers in seemingly unlikely places like Rochester N.Y. facing off against stately, placid protesters demanding only what this country blithely continues to insist it believes in: equality before the law, and not being shot down for breathing while black.

    • Female Muslim workers in Kelantan must cover ‘aurat’

      IT is now compulsory for Muslim women working at fast-food outlets and hypermarkets in Kelantan to cover their aurat (parts of the body that must be covered in Islam), including wearing long-sleeved uniforms, by next year.

      Most female workers on such premises currently don short-sleeved T-shirts, although Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) had recently introduced a long-sleeved uniform for its staff.

    • Leaked document says 2,000 men allegedly assaulted 1,200 German women on New Year’s Eve

      At first, there was complete silence from officials. As rumors spread on social media, police had nothing to say about allegations of mass sexual assaults and other crimes carried out on New Year’s Eve in the German city of Cologne.

      It was only days later that officials reported that hundreds of women were victims of assault in Cologne, Hamburg and other German cities.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality advocates make final push as EU consultation enters last week

      The activists at SaveTheInternet.eu, an international coalition of NGOs campaigning for net neutrality, have one more week to make their voice heard: the EU must protect net neutrality. Their message is targeted at BEREC, the Body of Regulators for Electronic Communications, which is drafting new guidelines on net neutrality. With the 18/07 deadline approaching rapidly, the Telecom industry has also joined the fray by unveiling their own plans for a restricted internet.

      SaveTheInternet.eu’s fight for net neutrality has been fought on many fronts, and with many different allies. Their actions have included a public street demonstration with hundreds of participants, and the ‘EU slowdown’ protest with over 7000 websites joining the ‘EU Slowdown’, over 40.000 faxes sent to the European Parliament and hundreds of phone calls by citizens to their representatives. Academics and tech companies have also supported the cause with open letters and public statements.

      This broad coalition is facing off against one main adversary: big Telecom providers. Last week, an association of the 17 biggest EU ISPs unveiled their “5G manifesto”, in which they called net neutrality rules to be watered down. On the basis of dubious arguments and analysis, they claim that a free and open internet threatens investment in new 5G networks. In reality, all available evidence points to the fact that net neutrality, by preventing anti-competitive behaviour, actually encourages infrastructure investment.

    • European 5G manifesto warns of danger with ‘net neutrality’ rules

      The EU has released its thoughts on 5G networks and how European players can become 5G leaders, in the “5G Manifesto presented by key players in the telco industry”.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

        For some reason, gamemaker Blizzard has been totally smitten with the idea of twisting copyright law into an ugly pretzel to sue anyone who makes a hack or cheat for one of its games for some time now. They did this concerning Starcraft, then World of Warcraft, and then Starcraft 2. This lawsuit tactic is starting to become something of a right of passage for Blizzard’s games, but the tactic in question makes little sense. Blizzard’s argument can be roughly translated as: cheats and hacks break the EULA for the game, the game is licensed by the EULA instead of being owned by anyone paying for it, the game does regular copying of code and files while in use, therefore a hack or cheat that breaks the EULA renders all of that routine copying as copyright infringement. While this wrenching of copyright into these kinds of lawsuits has nothing to do with the actual purpose or general application of copyright law, many cheer these moves on, because cheaters within the communal games we play are annoying.

        But the ends don’t justify the means, and this kind of twisting of copyright law is dangerous, as we’ve pointed out in the past. Not that that’s stopped Blizzard from utilizing this tactic, of course. In fact, recent Blizzard success Overwatch has become the latest to achieve this right of passage.

      • LBRY’s Blockchain-Based Netflix-Killer Is Now in Beta

        LBRY, a new protocol and service for sharing media online, is looking to give the power of sharing and consuming digital media back to the public. It allows media creators and consumers to interact directly – without any middlemen governing who’s allowed to share what with whom and for how much.

        The self-funded organization, which launched its closed beta last week, is using blockchain to protect and support LBC, LBRY’s online currency, in addition its decentralized metadata storage system. And although these technical intricacies may cause some people’s eyes to glaze over, they do empower LBRY to offer a number of benefits to the public, as with other open-source networks. So here’s what you really need to know about LBRY and the services it intends on providing.

      • Pirate swarms at risk from new patent

        Users of torrenting who are downloading pirated material may be caught out by NBC Universal’s new invention.

07.11.16

“We Need to Inform [Politicians, Journalists ... Ministers or Representatives] that the Whole European Patent System is at Risk.”

Posted in Courtroom, Europe, Patents at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Team Battistelli dragged back to The Hague this week

International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Photo credit: Reuters

Summary: Ahead of this week’s proceedings against the EPO, reports of the EPO’s latest (top-level management) violations, aggression, and dangerous push towards EPO extinction

THE last time IP Watch wrote about the EPO it was a puff piece with Battistelli in it (a so-called ‘interview’ that had softball questions). Earlier today IP Watch published this long piece from which we quote some key parts with added highlights:

Special Report: Union Lawsuit Claims EPO Has Prevented It From Functioning; Office Claims Immunity

Deteriorating relations between European Patent Office (EPO) management and staff union SUEPO have sparked another lawsuit in the district court in The Hague, Netherlands. The matter, which will be heard in a 15 July summary proceeding, alleges a pattern of threats, dismissals, suspensions from service and gagging of union members, said Prakken d’Oliveira attorney Liesbeth Zegveld, who represents SUEPO and its Dutch branch. Around one-third of union officials have been suspended, investigated or gagged, effectively preventing the union from functioning, she said in an interview.

The lawsuits are just part of the ongoing turmoil affecting the EPO. Reform of the Boards of Appeal (BoA) has also proved controversial, and there are concerns about the reluctance of the Administrative Council to get a grip on the staff-management battle.

The EPO said that, as an international organisation, it has immunity from such suits, as recently held by a German court. It defended its changes to the BoA, and announced an autumn conference for stakeholders to discuss an independent study on office social issues.

[...]

As for staff efforts to spur the AC to take control of the downward-spiralling situation: In a 22 June letter, the EPO-FLIER team, which identifies itself as “a group of concerned staff of the EPO who wish to remain anonymous due to the prevailing harsh social climate and absence of rule of law” at the office, begged Council members to assert their “fiduciary duty” over the organisation.

The AC took responsibility when it issued a resolution with “clear and achievable objectives for the President,” the open letter said. “Very briefly there was a marked improvement of the atmosphere in the Office.” But instead of complying with the unambiguous instructions, Battistelli has challenged his supervisory body, it said. “Mr. Battistelli is causing immeasurable damage to the Office; he is now untenable.”

Among other problems, the letter said, applicants have started noticing a decline in the quality of EPO patents, and, because of the ongoing disputes, the office no longer attracts the same calibre of staff. The letter also noted Battistelli’s continuing disregard for staff rights. “And all the time, the members of the Office’s only supervisory body watch it happen.”

“I believe the situation is now so bad and dangerous at the EPO that it is time that public, patent attorneys, economists and company bosses assemble and act together,” one staff member wrote in anonymous comments published on 3 July. “Make a petition, use your professional or private network if you know politicians, journalists, economist, write to ministers or representatives. We need to inform them that the whole European Patent System is at risk.”

There are also lots of lies and whitewashing from EPO spokespeople in this article (we rebutted these talking points in the past).

In relation to the boards’ planned ‘exile’, which we wrote about this morning, one person recalls old problems and says: “Another badly prepared project at the EPO, very common nowadays” (more so than ever before, by far). With context:

Thanks to Leidschendam for the link to the EPO building that was intended at the time. I find the design far more original that than of the future new Main :

http://www.epo.org/about-us/office/building.html

The rumor concerning the non-constructed building in Leidschendam was that after buying the land, it turned out that the land was not suitable for supporting a big building and the EPO had to sell it for other purposes (such as for houses, which are supposedly lighter than an office building), making a huge loss. Another badly prepared project at the EPO, very common nowadays – just check out what is coming with Early certainty (for examination and opposition)

“Never mind that in other posts the investigation units was found bugging public computers and fabricating facts,” said another person, alluding to Battistelli’s sheer arrogance and his attack on the course of justice:

I find the discussion about the independence of the boards somewhat strange. Haven’t you read the title of the post and the linked documents? Battistelli opinion on the boards is quite clear: they are here to directly follow the conclusions of the investigation unit. Never mind that in other posts the investigation units was found bugging public computers and fabricating facts. The boards work is to do as Battistelli says.
I heard Battistelli privately say a year ago that since he is paying the salary of the boards, he should get what he paid for. I think this is the idea behind the new fee structure: if the boards want to be independent, they should self finance.
In private Battistelli is a relatively simple man: he pays, he wants obedience. The real problem here is that the Council agreed. They did not distanciate from the letter, they did not even raise the point in the last session.

At the EPO, says another person sarcastically:

I fail to see the problem with the Council.
The Council has learned the virtue of OBEDIENCE.
The Council delegations comply with Simon Cameron’s definition of an “honest politician” (“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”)

The real problem seems to be the pig-headed stubborness of the Boards of Appeal which have yet to learn this lesson.

More on the same topic:

Question: other than a resolution at an AC meeting, is there a mechanism by which the President of the EPO can be censored (or even dismissed / have his immunity lifted)?

If the answer to this is no, then can BB rest assured that, so long as he is able to control the agenda for each and every AC meeting, there will always be sufficient (and lengthy) distractions that will prevent the AC from ever reaching a decision that is adverse to him?

If this is the case, then the members of the AC who are at all concerned about the serious damage that is being done by BB to the reputation of the EPO ought to figure out a way of changing the way that the game is played at AC meetings.

What is gratifying to see is that more and more people now recognise and speak about the risk of the EPO alienating talented staff, reducing patent quality, and letting a nutcase like Battistelli run the show. The sooner he is removed from Office (along with his cronies), the better chance of a quicker recovery the Office will have. Right now it’s just a total mess and it harms Europe as a whole. Patent examiners know this. █

Will Battistelli’s Friend/Ally Lucy Neville-Rolfe Shamelessly Attack British Democracy and Push for UPC in Spite of Brexit?

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When loyalty (to one’s powerful buddies) trumps logic and faithfulness to one’s country

EPLIT
EPLIT: All about money. Everyone’s money in their pockets.

Summary: EPLIT, the European Patent Litigators Association, wants a litigation-leaning (trigger-happy) UPC policy in spite of a referendum which puts that on hold if not kills it altogether

LAST month we wrote about Lucy Neville-Rolfe's remarks about the UPC. She doesn’t seem to care what the British public wants. She actively works for the interests of the microcosm she associates with. Some call her “Baroness” and given the “Robber Baron” concept, this might be an apt title.

Patent lawyers are, in very general teams, making money from patent wars that target not other patent lawyers but producing companies, i.e. scientists and producers, who then require patent lawyers to “defend” them. Patent lawyers have no personal products/services/agenda at stake; to them it’s like selling weapons to be funneled into a war in which they don’t participate (as soldiers).

Shelston IP, an Australian law firm whose staff acts like software patents lobbyists these days [1, 2], wrote about the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) which we mentioned here before in relation to Australia, Colombia (with the EPO) and in past years in relation to the US/USPTO [1, 2, 3]. What’s not to like when there’s “prosecution” at stake? This is, in essence, what the UPC is about. The C stands for “Court” because it’s presumed that litigation is both desirable and inevitable. That’s an expensive ‘product’ which patent lawyers ‘sell’, so they want more of it.

Now that UPC is on the rocks, as even some UPC proponents openly admit, there are efforts to work around the situation (we covered some before and showed Battistelli's personal role in them). Here is the latest:

A couple of weeks ago the IPKat published a paper from Prof. Dr. Winfried Tilmann of Hogan Lovells outlining a mechanism by which a post-Brexit UK might still participate in the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court. Other minds have also been addressing this issue, and so the IPKat is again delighted to publish this piece, describing a quite different approach, received from Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Jaeger, LL.M. of Universität Wien (that is University of Vienna to our anglophone readers).

The Brexit vote of June 23rd sent shockwaves throughout both the EU and the UK. Some take the vote as proof of Charles de Gaulle’s age-old observation, that Britain simply does not fit into the EU: “[L’Angleterre] a dans tout son travail des habitudes et des traditions très marquées, très originales. Bref, la nature, la structure qui sont propres à l’Angleterre diffèrent profondément de celle des continentaux.” Others see it as the death knell to the EU and / or the UK as we know them.

Whatever the point of view, one thing is for sure: should Britain overcome its abrupt total loss of political leadership and should someone emerge eventually who is willing to formally notify the European Council of the intention to leave subsequent to Art. 50 (2) TEU, that would be the end of the Unitary Patent Package as originally intended.

Some of the interesting bits emanate from the comments. One person wrote that: “Additionally, a new UP and UPC package guaranteeing that English is the only “true text” for Spain, could also bring the language-obsessed Spaniards onboard. It would still not be fully satisfactory for them, but at least for Spain, English would be established as the only legal language for these patents.”

No, this is totally nonsense. Without English, UPC would be obsolete as many of the stakeholders would be from English-speaking countries or countries that don’t understand French and German (barely anyone there speaks those languages). Even the patent trolls which UPC threatens to invite require English. So who would English be for? The Irish? With Brexit, the conflict over languages would only deepen and threaten to drive Italy back to the opposition. Spain would then have rivalry with Italy and the whole appeal of the UPC decline considerably.

“Today,” wrote another person, “the European Patent Litigators Association (EPLIT) has urged UK government to ratify UPC Agreement as soon as possible” (direct link).

So the conspiracy of patent lawyers, or “Team UPC” as we habitually call it, is lobbying our government on UPC and guess who leads the charge? “EPLIT sent a letter to The Rt. Hon Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe,” it says, “Minister for Intellectual Property. With this letter EPLIT urges the UK government to ratify the UPC Agreement as soon as possible.”

Will Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the lapdog of Battistelli and his thugs, lead the charge for UPC in the UK or will she choose to respect the rule of law, common sense, and will of the people (not patent lawyers)?

The remainder of the comments seem to have come from UPC proponents. One of them says:

Sorry for the UK.

No need to be sorry. The UK doesn’t need UPC. It was never a gift at all.

Anyway, somthing will have to be done for the UPC agreement as the UK is mentionned in the annex. Removing the London section will be a renegociation (without UK) that will be difficult because of the NL and IT who may want a section.

This would take years.

Watch this optimism which wrongly assumes that Theresa May, who hasn’t a clue about patents (I spoke to her in length in the past and she doesn’t even get technology), will rush to deal with the UPC as though it’s the most urgent matter:

The U.K. will have a new PM by Wednesday apparently and she has stated that Brexit is Brexit. Hard to imagine that the UPC can sneak through parliament unnoticed (with summer recess almost upon us) and party conference time in September breaking it up further. Soon would only be possible in October I’d guess and by then Brexit may be up and running. Hard ball from some EU states may even risk the UK not being accepted for signing? Hasn’t Cameron already been excluded from some EU summit sessions? I wouldn’t be surprised if some states (looking at a court) might challenge it.
The author’s suggestion that minor reform may be the best (only?) option seems pragmatic and realistic.

There is no minor reform which is “pragmatic and realistic” if the UK (and thus London) leaves the EU. This is a patent lawyer’s fantasy. Watch others who keep trying to bypass the law and push for UPC even before Brexit, as if the UPC is somehow beneficial to the UK (it’s not, it’s just for some lawyers in London and their huge clients from other countries). To quote the latest comment:

A minor reform of the UPCA seems indeed the best option to deal with a Brexit. However, it would serve all parties if the reform (and the negotiations that go with it) would take place after the system has been set in motion. This means, that it would also be beneficial for the UK to ratify now and to negotiate a UPC-exit alongside the Brexit negotiations.
The advantages for all parties are:
– the system can already start as planned (spring 2017)
– the system can gain momentum in the coming years, while the UK is still in the EU (the new UK prime minister has indicated that Brexit should be done carefully, and thus slowly).
– the UK will have the advantage of the London seat of the UPC
– the UK will have the advantage that once the system is started they will be considered indispensible for the continuation of the system (they are already deemed to be indispensible before the system has started), which will improve their negotiation position.

This thus could be considered a win-win situation. Accordingly, I second the request of EPLIT to the UK government to ratify the UPCA.

Wanna bet this supporter of EPLIT is not actually a patent applicant/assignee but someone who profits from patent mess? UPC has been all about enabling a hijack of the whole system to the detriment of European SMEs (while hijacking their voices)? █

Coup D’état in Relation to the European Patent Office

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

French/Corsican Abuse or Just Political Wars?

Sarkozy and Battistelli

Summary: Battistelli’s shameful behaviour is met with medals rather than scorn from Jean-Yves Le Déaut, demonstrating that in some people’s view he is doing a fine job, not embarrassing France with a culture of nepotism, abuse of justice, extravagant self-serving ceremonies, and union-busting zeal

THIS morning we wrote about political aspects of the Battistelli regime inside the EPO (broader than just Battistelli himself) and earlier today somebody posted — in an anonymous comment — Friday’s message from Raimund Lutz, part of Team Battistelli (big internal news items tend to come out late on Friday when the European media goes to sleep).

Here it is with some contextual remarks:

We’re doomed.

I’m pessimistic about the EPO, the member states, and “Europe”.

EPO welcomes OPECST Delegation

High-level French parliamentary commission visits the EPO

A delegation of France’s Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technological Assessment (OPECST), which is composed of members of both the French Senate and National Assembly, visited the EPO yesterday [7 July] for an exchange of views on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology inventions. The French delegation was headed by OPECST President, Jean-Yves Le Déaut, member of the French National Assembly, and also included representatives of the French Embassy. The task of the OPECST is to support the French parliament in gaining greater insight into technological and scientific matters on which it decides.

In his opening address, President Benoît Battistelli underlined that the EPO was closely following national debates on biotechnology in the member states. He welcomed the opportunity for an open dialogue with the OPECST on this topic.

The meeting was held in a cordial and constructive atmosphere, and focused on various points of common interest, including recent developments in the European patent system. It also offered the opportunity for an exchange between the OPECST delegation and a team of EPO patent practitioners and legal and economic experts. With biotechnology specialists from DG 1 and DG 5 and the EPO’s Chief Economist present, the EPO gave a number of presentations on biotechnology patents, including on the economic aspects, and the legal framework governing the patentability of biotechnology inventions, with a special focus on the law and practice concerning inventions related to plants and human gene sequences.

On the occasion of the visit, the EPO President was given a “Médaille de l’Assemblée Nationale” by Jean-Yves Le Déaut in his capacity as member of the National Assembly.

08.07 16 | Author Raimund Lutz – Vice-President DG 5 | Target group: DG4, DG5, President-DG0, DG1, DG2, DG3

Last month when we wrote about Battistelli's very expensive lobbying event we took note of the Commission’s role in it (the Commission’s so-called science chief) — a subject which Marc Tarabella has begun talking about for S&D. Another commenter explained:

The medal is not an award or decoration:

La Médaille de l’Assemblée nationale est une médaille remise à chaque député français en début de législature

It’s something that also Le Pen father would have received every year.

The following comment cites Corsican relations:

According to your own link, this medal (in fact, a replica of it) can also be a “vulgaire breloque” handed out at the discretion of individual MPs:

« Certains députés offrent à des individus qu’ils souhaitent mettre à l’honneur, une médaille similaire éditée par la boutique de l’Assemblée nationale ; il s’agit d’un cadeau et non d’une décoration officielle. »

The other Corsican famously declared: « C’est avec des hochets que l’on mène les hommes. » But who is led by whom here?

Benoît B. doesn’t seem to have the decoration Bonap was referring to, however a Charles-Robert Battistelli was awarded one in 1930.

The article cited in this case, regarding the Corsican connection, was translated for us some months ago and maybe now is a good time to post what we have of it (this is not complete).

Some time back in December, an article was published which chronicled the EPO situation from a rather unique angle. The article was written in French. One of our readers, who is able to comprehend French, gradually translated this rather long text. In an effort to maximise the amount of information that is available to the public, we decided to publish this text in English but didn’t quite have the necessary context. “The Agoravox piece is written in a rather elaborate language,” this reader told us, “and a good English translation is difficult, especially in view of the many historical and literary references. For example, “sections spéciales” is a reference to 1975 film about official repression forces under the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. From its polemical tone I would be a bit surprised to see it featured on the SUEPO web site, or let alone see a translation.”

Here it is in English:

What does the social conflict at the European Patent Office stand for?

by Appollo
Friday 18 December 2015

The social conflict at the European Patent Office (EPO) which has been ongoing for more than two years is now taking extreme proportions. The following address written by an acquaintance who is well in the know aims to present the reasons of the “forceps delivery” of a new “unitedstateseuropeanised” institution in charge of intellectual property, within the framework of the transatlantic partnership (TTIP/TAFTA). The author claims and shows that one should see in the brutal abolition of the rights of the staff, which is very autocratically conducted by its president (Mr. B. Battistelli), a preview of what awaits us all with the transatlantic partnership. The crisis of the European Patent Office is thus neither a categorical or corporatist conflict: it is in fact a laboratory of the subordination to US social standards — this is the tragic reality hidden by the sacharine expression “social standards harmonisation” — of the peoples of Europe who are destined to be dissolved into the United States. There are no monetary claims at stake in this conflict, but an opposition to the perpetually increasing targets given to each EPO staff member, ad absurdo. This situation is well known in various business (France-Telecom, etc.), but with respect to the EPO, through its extra-territorial status, there are no rights: no right to work, no criminal law, no civil law, just the extremist will of its president and his confederates, who created their own police forces operating in “special sections” and hired a anglo-US security company for its less palatable tasks. Decisions — whether individual or collective in scope — can only be contested before management, which is de facto both judge and party. Appeals are filed at the International Labour Organisation, which hasn’t been conceived for that and is overwhelmed: no case is anymore likely to be completed in reasonable time. It is thus a lawless structure, a “no-law-land”. The founding fathers evidently did not foresee the case where a president together with a few confederates would overtake it… without oversight. We will note that it went without saying that the attack began with the suppression of the right to strike.

Just one more word of presentation on the European Patent Office (EPO): founded in 1979, this executive organ of the European Patent Organisation is in fact an organ of European cooperation implementing the European Patent Convention (EPO). It is independent of the European Union (EU) and essentially granted up to now national patents in place of national authorities in charge of intellectual property in the 38 member states (e.g. the French INPI) –- to which must be added two states for which an extension is possible -– and not of an “European” patent, which should shortly be implemented. An invention patent is an intellectual property title which confers its holder (usually a corporation) the right to prohibit others to use the invention for a limited time (up to 20 years) and on a given territory (e.g. a country) in exchange of the divulgation to the public of the said invention.

Here is now the address.

* * *

Dear EPO colleagues: I am only now able to address you, as I have only gathered in the last few days the strength to write and describe the situation of the Office. Let it be clear that even though I write here as a Frenchman, I am addressing all of you.

Mr. Battistelli is French, of course, but… well, no: he is Corsican. This magnificent little island with a volcanic temperament, where the red cliffs plunge from their tree garnished crests into the deep blue of the Mediterranean, gave to France a man who was in his day execrated by which almost all Europe. Corsica landed under French rule in 1768, just in time for one to believe that Napoleon was a Frenchman — since it is him we are referring to. His uncommon military genius wasn’t French: if one just reflects about this, it will be obvious that France has demonstrated her total incompetence in that area for at least six hundred and fifty years. His project of fusing Europe into a new Carlovingian Empire wasn’t French either. Before him, the destiny of France had been to fight against empires: since at least the battle of Bouvines, she fought for her survival, for her independence, fatally smothered as she was by the Plantagenet Empire allied with the Holy Roman Empire, and then against the Spanish Empire allied with the Habsburg Empire. Let’s remember that she bears the name of the land of free men, the name of the free — at this is undoubtedly the reason why she is as frequently as unconsciously named the “country of liberty”. The Napoleonic way of governing wasn’t any more French: if he inaugurated in France the ascent to power of a soldier through a coup d’état, his authoritarianism was incomparably more severe than that of our kings of divine right; including Louis XIV who did non subdue his people, but its nobility. The French, in their great collective and political wisdom, only gave him victory for the wars which Europe waged on revolutionary France; they withheld them from him for the wars demanded by his ambition, thus sealing his fate, first in the Spanish sierras, and then in the Russian steppe. He ruled as an autocrat, which not even our kings dared to do. He mistreated his ministers and made corrupt puppets out of the members of the assemblies by buying them with money. He governed conquered Europe through the members of his family whom he named king and queen of Naples, Westphalia, Holland and Spain. He made himself king of Italy. His family came to be called the “tribe”: thanks to him, nepotism became a system of government.

He was initiated as a freemason, but refrained from associating his brothers to his dreadful end.

There is a lot more to it, but we await the reminder of the original’s translation. This proceeds to discussion ENA and other aspects of Battistelli’s background.

Perhaps it will be easier to comprehend Battistelli’s immunity (like Clinton’s) if political aspects are better understood. Battistelli serves some powerful people’s agenda and has apparently been doing so for quite some time (prior to EPO). █

China Mimics Patent Protectionism and Patent Aggression Strategies of Other Countries

Posted in Asia, Patents at 4:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

…And IAM ‘magazine’ uses that to promote the notion/stigma of China bias (possibly to help the agenda of IAM’s funding sources)

China

Summary: The race to the bottom, or the flirt with gradual transition to filing/registration rather than examination (rubberstamping instead of scientific assessment), leads to systems which are rife with feuds, abuse, and unfair treatment (discriminatory towards foreign companies)

THE USPTO has famously lowered its patent quality bar (in a Battistellite EPO fashion) in order to create the illusion of improved production. SIPO, a friend of Battistelli, has done the same in order to ‘outpace’ the US (artificial elevation of the number of grants by various misleading and nefarious means).

According to Patently-O‘s new article “Patenting From China”:

The new China-Patenting article from Jay Kesan, Alan Marco, and Richard Miller offers some interesting insight on developments in how Chinese innovators are using the patent system. The “More than Bric-a-Brac” article particularly focuses on how the Chinese approach has changed over time. The article concludes that China’s approach is not exceptional but rather is following the same pattern exhibited by other nations such as South Korea and Japan in decades past.

Not only once (see our previous post about CAFC*) but twice today IAM spread or disseminated propaganda (like its infamous EPO propaganda). With propaganda masked as ‘studies’ it’s hard to tell what’s going on unless one already knows what IAM is and who its clients (or funding sources) are. Take for example this new ‘study’ which accuses China’s patent system of being too China-leaning. This totally neglects to mention identical bias in the West, notably ITC and definitely not limited to it, but then again, it serves the overall agenda of the site. What is this, a news site or a think tank? Funded by patent trolls, PR/lobbying firms and so on… █
_____
* Patently-O‘s Dennis Crouch writes about the latest from CAFC today, noting: “In The Medicines Company v. Hospira, Inc., App. No. 14-1469 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (en banc), the Federal Circuit has ruled that an invention claimed as a “product-by-process” is only “on sale” if “the subject of a commercial sale or offer for sale…”

Yet More Reality Distortion Fields From Microsoft’s Ex-Chief Patent Counsel in Collaboration With IAM

Posted in Courtroom, Deception, Microsoft, Patents at 3:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981…” –Wikipedia

Shook, Hardy and Bacon L.L.P.
Shook, Hardy and Bacon L.L.P. with a slant

Summary: Another new example of software patents advocacy from IAM, with help from Microsoft’s people (or ‘former’ people)

NOT only patent trolls, the PR firm of the EPO and various patent law firms send money IAM’s way. Joff Wild has quite a few hands feeding him and these tend to be ardent advocates of patent wars (they profit from wars). It’s not really a news site, even if Google News recognises it as such. It is agenda. Sometimes it’s marketing.

Earlier today IAM gave readers the impression of software patents resurgence. As we have been showing here for a number of months, this could not be further from the truth and this claim comes (or sourced) from Microsoft’s former Patent Counsel, Bart Eppenauer. Joff Wild previously gave Bart Eppenauer a voice/platform in his Microsoft-powered site for similar reasons. It is not too shocking to find the site once again being composed, by proxy, by Microsoft folks in order to promote software patents, like those which Microsoft uses to continue its war on GNU/Linux, Android, ChromeOS, and Free software in general.

“It is not too shocking to find the site once again being composed, by proxy, by Microsoft folks in order to promote software patents, like those which Microsoft uses to continue its war on GNU/Linux, Android, ChromeOS, and Free software in general.”Wild wants us to believe that just two decisions (among many thousands) at CAFC (a corruptible court by the way), one of which involved Microsoft directly, somehow mean “eligibility nightmare the US software and biotech industries have been going through may – just may – be coming to an end.”

Well, the very opposite is true as SCOTUS refuses to revisit anything that pertains to Alice and litigation fell sharply. Lies by omission, selection, cherry-picking or just wishful thinking? Microsoft, a lobbyist for software patents, is hardly a reliable or objective source regarding software patents (especially in cases that involve Microsoft) and Joff Wild is experienced enough to know this. Does IAM even make an attempt to hide its agenda (and Microsoft’s) any longer? It has been getting pretty shallow.

This is what we often allude to as the problem of patent lawyers dominating if not abducting the media and thus controlling (or distorting) the message. █

Links 11/7/2016: Linux 4.7 RC7, PCLinuxOS Trinity

Posted in News Roundup at 2:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.7 delayed
    • Linux 4.7-rc7
    • Linux 4.7-rc7
    • Linux 4.7-rc7 Released: Linux 4.7 Kernel In Two Weeks
    • Linus Torvalds Announces The Last RC, Linux Kernel 4.7 To Be Released On July 24

      Linus Torvalds has just announced the availability of the seventh Release Candidate (RC) of the forthcoming Linux 4.7 kernel branch.

      Except for a couple of regressions, things look to have calmed down for Linux 4.7. According to Linus Torvalds, this could just be the last RC for Linux kernel 4.7, which means that the final release will be announced on July 24, 2016.

    • Linus Torvalds goes on epic rant over Linux devs’ comment syntax

      Linus Torvalds has launched an epic, yet entertaining, rant against Linux kernel maintainers over their use of syntax in code comments.

      Torvalds, who is the chief maintainer of the Linux kernel, has a record for no-nonsense posts to the army of coders who keep the operating system going.

      The comments are a key means by which developers can follow and understand code across the community.

    • Linus Torvalds goes off on one over comment syntax

      LINUS TORVALDS, the creator and chief maintainer of Linux, as well as the author of some entertaining online rants, has complained to the community about comment syntax styles.

      Torvalds was commenting in response to a proposal to standardise on a syntax style used to add comments which he described as “brain-damaged stupid”.

    • Linux Kernel Development – Greg Kroah-Hartman

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mode Switching Coming For Graphics Tablets In Libinput 1.4

        Linux input expert Peter Hutterer at Red Hat has shared an upcoming feature of libinput 1.4: mode switching support for graphics tablet (e.g. Wacom tablets) for switching through different behavior depending upon button presses.

      • libinput and graphics tablet mode support

        In an earlier post, I explained how we added graphics tablet pad support to libinput. Read that article first, otherwise this article here will be quite confusing.

        A lot of tablet pads have mode-switching capabilities. Specifically, they have a set of LEDs and pressing one of the buttons cycles the LEDs. And software is expected to map the ring, strip or buttons to different functionality depending on the mode. A common configuration for a ring or strip would be to send scroll events in mode 1 but zoom in/out when in mode 2. On the Intuos Pro series tablets that mode switch button is the one in the center of the ring. On the Cintiq 21UX2 there are two sets of buttons, one left and one right and one mode toggle button each. The Cintiq 24HD is even more special, it has three separate buttons on each side to switch to a mode directly (rather than just cycling through the modes).

      • Google’s SwiftShader Released

        Year by year, plain-old HTML 5 websites are becoming fancier, and right now, the home entertainment world is buzzing about VR and 3D. But most sites are missing the boat; they have no 3D content. Well, that’s about to change.

        Google recently opened the source code for its SwiftShader project. If you have used Google Chrome or Android, you probably have seen SwiftShader in action before. It’s a high-performance software renderer that improves the performance of games or 3D content on low-end machines.

        Until recently, SwiftShader was a closed-source project. Although Android and Chromium are open source, SwiftShader always was distributed as a separate component, covered by a proprietary license. Now that Google has released SwiftShader to the world, other web browser developers will be able to use it too. This, in turn, should stimulate the development of richer 3D web content.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Multi-screen woes in Plasma 5.7

        With Plasma 5.7 we promised improved multi-screen support. While we achieved that, some users are still experiencing issues. This is unfortunate and our users have all the reasons to be disappointed with us. We are working very hard to fix the issues which have been reported to us since the release.

        But there are many situations where users blame us for issues not under our control. With this blog post I want to describe some of the problems we got reported and explain them.

      • KDE Plasma Users Are Still Running Into Multi-Screen Issues

        KDE Plasma 5.7 was advertised as having better multi-screen support, but it turns out there’s still more work to do as various problems in the open-source Linux desktop stack are leading to a less than ideal experience.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • SHAPING THE SCENARIO TASKS

        This week we are moving on to Creating the scenario tasks for GNOME programs. After a discussion with Jim Hall(my mentor), Allan and Jakub(GNOME design team),we decided to look back at the usability test results from the last round of Outreachy, and focus on the tasks that the participants struggled to accomplish. For example: Finding the zoom button in Image Viewer (header bar button), changing the month/year in Calendar (header bar buttons), searching (header bar button) and copying in Characters (primary window button), annotating and bookmarking in Evince (header bar menus), and other tasks in Nautilus (several were header bar menus). Re-using these scenario tasks will allow us to compare how the design patterns have improved over time.

      • Getting ready for usability tests

        In this test, Diana will ask testers to simulate an “unboxing” of a new system. The tester will turn on the laptop or computer, watch the computer start up, and login to a fresh “test” account so they get first-user experience.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • New install medium 2016.07.09

        Dual architecture (i686 and x86_64):

        Main ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery.
        MATE desktop ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (with MATE Desktop Environment).
        TalkingParabola ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (adapted for blind and visually impaired users).

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity 2016.07 Community Edition Switches to Linux Kernel 4.6.3

        After we announced the release of the PCLinuxOS 64 Xfce 2016.07 Community Edition and PCLinuxOS 64 LXDE 2016.07 Community Edition distributions, the time has come for you to download PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity 2016.07 Community Edition.

        Created by PCLinuxOS senior member reelcat, the PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity Community Edition operating system is using the same acclaimed GNU/Linux technologies that are behind the official PCLinuxOS editions, but built around the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) project that tries to keep the spirit of the KDE 3.5 desktop alive.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Side-by-side: openSuSE Tumbleweed and Leap

        Leap, on the other hand, should never have such stability problems. It is so extensively tested, and so conservatively updated, that such problems are extremely unlikely to make it through. While the Leap distribution doesn’t have that long of a history to look at (it’s initial release was in April 2015), I think it is safe to say that Leap is related to SuSE Linux Enterprise in much the same way that Tumbleweed is tied to factory, and one thing that SuSE Linux Enterprise is very well known for is rock solid stability.

        That’s pretty much it, so I hope this brief review of the two distributions is helpful in deciding which would be right for your purposes.

      • Google Summer of Code student focuses on next steps

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Week 5&6 Report

        During week 5 and 6, I have been to the debian conference 2016. It was really interesting meeting with a lot of people all so involved in Debian.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Snapd 2.0.10 Snappy Tool Now Available in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Here’s What’s New

            Canonical’s Michael Vogt has been happy to announce that the snapd 2.0.10 Snappy tool from Ubuntu Core has successfully landed in the main software repositories of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

            We reported last week on the availability of the snapd 2.0.10 update, which is a pretty significant release, for Arch Linux and Fedora operating systems. Yes, that’s right, Canonical first pushed the snapd 2.0.10 build to Fedora’s COPR repository, as well as the main software repo of the Arch Linux distribution, allowing users to install the tool using the “pacman -S snapd” command, not an AUR helper.

            “The Snappy team is very happy to announce that the 2.0.10 release is now available in 16.04 via ‘xenial-updates.’ The 2.0.10 release contains a number of improvements and fixes over the previous 2.0.9 release that was available before,” says Michael Vogt, Software Developer at Canonical. “We hope you like it as much as we do. If you find any issues, please let us know via: http://bugs.launchpad.net/snappy.”

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • All the Apache Streaming Projects: An Exploratory Guide

    The speed at which data is generated, consumed, processed, and analyzed is increasing at an unbelievably rapid pace. Social media, the Internet of Things, ad tech, and gaming verticals are struggling to deal with the disproportionate size of data sets. These industries demand data processing and analysis in near real-time. Traditional big data-styled frameworks such as Apache Hadoop is not well-suited for these use cases.

    As a result, multiple open source projects have been started in the last few years to deal with the streaming data. All were designed to process a never-ending sequence of records originating from more than one source. From Kafka to Beam, there are over a dozen Apache projects in various stages of completion.

  • prpl Foundation Unveils the First Open Source Hypervisor for the Internet of Things
  • In the Wake of ownCloud, Here Comes Nextcloud

    The extremely popular ownCloud open source file-sharing and storage platform for building private clouds has been much in the news lately. CTO and founder of ownCloud Frank Karlitschek resigned from the company a few months ago. His open letter announcing the move pointed to possible friction created as ownCloud moved forward as a commercial entity as opposed to a solely community focused, open source project.

    Karlitschek had a plan, though. He is now out with a fork of ownCloud called Nextcloud, and there are strong signs that we can expect good things from this open platform.

  • Getting started with Git

    In the introduction to this series we learned who should use Git, and what it is for. Today we will learn how to clone public Git repositories, and how to extract individual files without cloning the whole works.

    Since Git is so popular, it makes life a lot easier if you’re at least familiar with it at a basic level. If you can grasp the basics (and you can, I promise!), then you’ll be able to download whatever you need, and maybe even contribute stuff back. And that, after all, is what open source is all about: having access to the code that makes up the software you run, the freedom to share it with others, and the right to change it as you please. Git makes this whole process easy, as long as you’re comfortable with Git.

  • Never Discount the Soft Skills for Career Building

    As an open source professional, even if you have the technical chops required for a position, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a “shoe-in” for the role. Surprisingly, what many don’t know is that what sets you apart from other candidates in the interview process is your soft skills. Finding a professional who has the technical skills to handle a job can be difficult, but finding a professional who has both the technical skills required and the personal attributes that enable collaboration with team members can even more challenging.

    For open source professionals looking to move, improving some of your soft skills is a great way to make yourself indispensable to employers. Focusing on these skills allows you to still grow professionally and attract potential employers without having to go through the formal training methods required to learn some of the more technical skills. In particular, pay specific attention to some of the skills listed below, as they were found to be amongst the top soft skills employers on Dice requested from open source professionals:

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • In mourning for Nano, chap crafts 1k-loc text editor

      Ticked off by the news that Nano opted out of GNU, a programmer called Salvatore Sanfilippo has written his own text editor.

      What’s impressive about it is that it provides a basic code editor with syntax highlighting and search, without ncurses as a dependency, and in a mere 1,000 lines of code (at Github).

  • Public Services/Government

    • Could open source help kill piracy in Romania?

      Open source enthusiast Petru Ratiu stressed that although Linux might be cost-effective, it’s not completely free, as it implies payments like the ones associated with support and training. As for the administration, he emphasised the need for open data and open formats.

    • New European contest to promote IT reuse

      The EC will award EUR 15,000 and EUR 10,000 to the two most-proven IT solutions reused by each of the four levels of public administration: cross-border, national, regional and local.

      Contenders for the ‘Sharing & Reuse Award’ can register their project here. The contest is open until 28 October 2016 and the prizes will be announced in March 2017.

      “We want to award existing IT solutions that have been developed and shared by public administrations, and that can be further reused across Europe”, says Margarida Abecasis, in charge of the ISA² programme, under whose auspices the awards are run.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Rcpp now used by over 700 CRAN packages
    • IoT puts assembly language back on the charts

      Let’s do the time warp again: according to an outfit that tracks programming languages, the Internet of Things is re-igniting demand for assembly language skills.

      Software consultancy TIOBE’s Programming Community Index has turned up the re-emergence of assembly programming in its monthly index (the definition of the index is here).

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

      In 2014, NASA gave $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution “rooted in Christian theology.” The grant supports an initiative to study “the societal implications of astrobiology.”

      Surprisingly, it took more than a year for anyone to complain.

      The potential issue here is obvious: NASA is a government agency. The Center of Theological Inquiry is, well, a center of theological inquiry—an institution that seemingly has a religious, and specifically Christian, orientation. At least in theory, the government is barred from sponsoring religious activities. And doing theology about extraterrestrials does sound kind of religion-y.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Radioactive waste and the nuclear war on Australia’s Aboriginal people

      Australia’s nuclear industry has a shameful history of ‘radioactive racism’ that dates from the British bomb tests in the 1950s, writes Jim Green. The same attitudes persist today with plans to dump over half a million tonnes of high and intermediate level nuclear waste on Aboriginal land, and open new uranium mines. But now Aboriginal peoples and traditional land owners are fighting back!

    • Biodiversity, GMOs, Gene Drives and the Militarized Mind

      The aforementioned study on ghost-tech was sponsored by DARPA (The Pentagon’s Research Ghost) and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (The ghost of the Microsoft Monopoly). DARPA has been busy. Interestingly, Microsoft BASIC was developed on a DARPA Supercomputer across the street from MIT, at Harvard. Where does DARPA end and MIT start? Where does Microsoft end and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation start. The orientation of our technologies has been dictated by the DARPA-Mind, a Mechanical Mind trained in War, and Gates continues to colonize meaning, just as gates had done to our lands, and the Green Revolution has done to our food.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Is Your Antivirus Making Your PC More Hackable? Probably YES!f

      Is your antivirus software protecting you from all kinds of malware and security threats? The answer to this questions is a big NO. While one shouldn’t completely get rid of his/her antivirus solution, one shouldn’t be too carefree having them installed. We also advise our readers to follow the basic security practices to stay safe on the internet.

    • Social Media Accounts Of Twitter And Yahoo CEOs Hacked By OurMine

      Hacking group OurMine has now targetted Jack Dorsey and Marissa Mayer. OurMine recently hacked their Twitter accounts and posted messages on their profile. OurMine has triggered the frequency of its operations in the recent times and targeting multiple high-profile tech CEOs and celebrities.

    • Let’s Encrypt torpedoes cost and maintenance issues for Free RTC

      Many people have now heard of the EFF-backed free certificate authority Let’s Encrypt. Not only is it free of charge, it has also introduced a fully automated mechanism for certificate renewals, eliminating a tedious chore that has imposed upon busy sysadmins everywhere for many years.

      These two benefits – elimination of cost and elimination of annual maintenance effort – imply that server operators can now deploy certificates for far more services than they would have previously.

    • Voice Commands Hidden In YouTube Videos Can Hack Your Smartphone
    • This is quite a nice tool – magic-wormhole

      This beats doing a scp from system to system, especially if the receiving system is behind a NAT and/or firewall.

    • Entry level AI

      I was listening to the podcast Security Weekly and the topic of using AI For security work came up. This got me thinking about how most people make their way into security and what something like AI might mean for the industry.

      In virtually every industry you start out doing some sort of horrible job nobody else wants to do, but you have to start there because it’s the place you start to learn the skills you need for more exciting and interesting work. Nobody wants to go over yesterday’s security event log, but somebody does it.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Europe’s NATO Ambivalence

      The just-completed NATO summit repeated tiresome U.S. propaganda about “Russia’s aggressive actions” but some European leaders flinched at the heated rhetoric and warmongering, notes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Veterans Must Be Honored for Teaching Us the Need for Peace

      Mark Karlin: Many in the US political, entertainment and media world jingoistically hype support for veterans’ charities, but rarely do they ever bring to our attention the devastating condition of veterans who have survived injuries. Why is a book such as Tomas Young’s War vital in countering a sanitized charitable appeal for veterans that doesn’t focus on the actual ordeals of veterans such as Tomas Young?

    • The Chilcot Report Fails to Speak Plain Truth: Bush Lied, So Did Blair

      The newly released Chilcot Report on Iraq is British understatement, to a fault. In fact, it is understated so far as to miss the plain truth of the matter. Saying only that extremely questionable intelligence “was not challenged [by the Bush and Blair regimes] and it should have been” is failing to say plainly what the evidence so clearly shows: George W. Bush lied; so did Tony Blair.

      To demonstrate that, let’s try a simple exercise: let’s compare what White House officials said about Iraq in the run-up to war with what they knew at the time — or at the very least, should have known, because the intelligence was available to them.

      What they said: “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the testimony of defectors — including Saddam’s own son-in law” (in the words of Dick Cheney).

      What they knew: Testimony obtained by reporters in 2003 showed that Saddam’s son-in law told UN weapons inspectors that “all weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear — were destroyed.” In other words, he said the opposite of what Cheney claimed he said.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Bankrupt Coal Miner Peabody Energy Paid Climate Denialist Craig Idso To Write Greenhouse Gas Reports

      A research center that has produced scores of reports dismissing the dangers of human-caused climate change was being paid by coal company Peabody Energy to produce reports about its greenhouse gas emissions.

      The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) is revealed as having historical financial ties to Peabody in the coal company’s bankruptcy papers.

      A DeSmog investigation has also uncovered undisclosed financial links between the center, run by veteran climate science denialist Craig Idso, and another contrarian group, the Science and Public Policy Institute.

      Peabody Energy was revealed as a funder of a web of groups and organisations that have worked to spread doubt over human-caused climate change while fighting rules to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

      Dr Idso, the chairman and founder of CSCDGC, has written many reports claiming that extra carbon dioxide is a benefit to the planet, while ignoring or downplaying the many negatives.

      His work was used in a flawed report from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a grouping of coal miners, transporters and burners — which argued greenhouse gas emissions were a large net financial benefit to society.

    • I Was Sick for a Year After an Oil Spill. Five Years Later, Pipeline Accidents Are Worsening

      Early in the morning on July 2, 2011, I walked down the gravel road on our Montana farm to let the goats out to graze for the day. I found an oily rainbow sheen on the Yellowstone River flowing through our hay fields and pasture, plus large clumps of crude oil sticking to trees, cattails and brush. The oily water was in our sloughs, our pond and the creek that runs along the eastern edge of the farm. I checked the local news on my phone and found that an Exxon oil pipeline had ruptured underneath the Yellowstone River upstream. More than 300 people upstream from us were evacuated, but no one had thought to notify those of us further from the spill. The smell of hydrocarbons was overwhelming.

      In the end, more than 63,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Yellowstone River from what we later learned was a “guillotine cut” in Exxon’s Silvertip pipeline, which lay in a trench only four to five feet under the Yellowstone River. Snowmelt combined with spring rains had caused heavy flooding, and the river bottom was scoured away, leaving the oil pipeline exposed. All it took was a heavy object being tossed down the river to break the pipeline in half. After spending $135 million on the cleanup, Exxon recovered less than 1 percent of the oil spilled.

  • Finance

    • Three Recent Wins Prove Old-Fashioned Union Power Isn’t Dead Yet

      Three big wins for workers in the last nine months arrived where you might least expect them: in the old, blue-collar economy. That’s the economy where unions are down to 6.7 percent, where wins are rare and workers are supposed to be on their way out.

      Yet at Chrysler, Verizon, and a huge Teamster pension fund, thousands of union members mobilized to put a stick in management’s eye. Hundreds of thousands will see the benefit.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Pro-Fracking, Pro-Colonialism, Anti-Single Payer: Dem Platform Disappoints

      At the committee’s final meeting in Orlando, Florida, supporters of Hillary Clinton successfully voted down amendments supporting a single payer healthcare system, a nationwide ban on fracking, as well as an amendment objecting to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and characterizing the settlements as illegal.

      The losses stung progressives already dismayed by the committee’s refusal to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in the platform earlier that day, among other defeats.

    • Obama: Out of Many Sides of His Mouth

      Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent of any crime on such grounds. On other occasions, Obama, without apparent embarrassment, has stated that “nobody is above the law.” (A public figure can be labeled stupid not just for saying or doing stupid things, but for not even realizing that the public will SEE his words or actions as stupid.)

      –Asked whether he would apologize for Washington’s role in Chile’s 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with a dictatorship, Obama replied: “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world.” (June 23, 2009)

      –Question from CNN, 2008: “Do you think the US should apologize for any mistakes that it has made in the past?” Obama’s reply: “I don’t think the US should ever apologize for anything.”

      –Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014 where he classified Russia to be one of the three great threats to the world along with the Islamic State and the ebola virus.

    • Oklahoma Governor Says Trump Is Trying To Be A ‘Racial Healer’

      Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said on Sunday that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has been “trying to campaign as a racial healer.”

      The governor appeared on CNN, where anchor Jake Tapper asked her twice if she thought Trump was a racial healer.

      “I’ve heard from a number of Latino Americans, Muslim Americans, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, African Americans, all expressing concern about some of the things Donald Trump has said,” CNN’s Jake Tapper told the governor.

    • Does anyone know what’s real anymore?

      Increasingly we are lost in a world of binary codes: zero or one, Republican or Democrat, black or white, female or male, good or bad.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Censorship: SABC postpones hearings indefinitely, Solidarity approaches ConCourt

      While opposition against censorship at the public broadcaster grows, according to trade union, Solidarity, the SABC has postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige and Suna Venter, that was scheduled for Monday indefinitely. The three employees remain suspended.

      Solidarity, which represents the three journalists, on Sunday said the mere postponement of the hearings is not acceptable. It reiterated that the disciplinary process must be abolished in its entirety.

      The trade union also announced that it would approach the Constitutional Court in the coming week for direct access to test the constitutionality of the censorship instruction. Also during this week Solidarity would approach the Labour Court to obtain an interdict against the SABC’s disciplinary process, pending the Constitutional Court case.

    • SABC’s Vuyo Mvoko awaits fate

      The Star understands that Mvoko, the most senior member of the eight-person group of journalists to speak out against the reign of repression and censorship being waged by SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, was served with a letter on Friday by the public broadcaster’s human resources department to provide reasons why his contract should not be terminated.

    • Bheki’s Ordinary People: SABC Turmoil

      The discord that plagues the SABC is a massive threat to the corporation. Controversy around the COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, his leadership and even his qualifications are some of the things that exposed the extent to which the institution’s structural integrity has been vastly compromised. Here’s what some South Africans think.

    • SABC postpones hearings of suspended employees indefinitely – Solidarity

      The SABC postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige and Suna Venter indefinitely. The hearing was due to start on Monday, 11 July. However, the three employees remain suspended. Trade union Solidarity, which represents the three journalists, said the mere postponement of the hearings is not acceptable. According to Solidarity, the disciplinary process must be abolished in its entirety.

    • SABC journalists want suspensions lifted

      Certain suspended SABC journalists want their suspensions lifted following the indefinite postponement of their disciplinary hearings.

    • SABC hearings postponed indefinitely

      The SABC laid disciplinary charges against journalists because they distanced themselves from a censorship instruction.

      Trade union Solidarity will go to court to revoke the suspensions of three senior SABC journalists and to test the constitutionality of SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s censorship instruction.

      The SABC has postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige, and Suna Venter, indefinitely, Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann said on Sunday.

      The hearing was due to start on Monday. However, the three employees, among those represented by Solidarity, remained suspended. The mere postponement of the hearings was not acceptable and the disciplinary process should be abolished in its entirety, he said.

    • Buthelezi says censorship at SABC reminds him of apartheid

      Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said that the censorship at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reminded him of the apartheid days when then president, PW Botha, banned coverage of his party.

    • SABC responds to Icasa’s ruling on censorship

      The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) board chairperson Mbulaheni Maguvhe says the corporation’s lawyers will now study the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) ruling against its editorial changes, and may take the matter to court.

    • SABC ordered to reverse its censorship policy

      The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has been ordered by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to reverse its editorial decision to censor ‘violent protests’ in the country.

      In May, the SABC said it will no longer show violent protests on any of its channels in a bid to “educate the population”, and send a message that violent action will not get them the attention they seek.

    • Icasa overturns Hlaudi’s ‘censorship’

      This makes the disciplinary action against eight SABC journalists who fought against the order and were subsequently suspended illegal.

      The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has overturned SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s decision not to broadcast the burning of public institutions because, in his opinion, it might encourage protestors to run amok.

      Icasa acting chairperson Rubben Mohlaloga said the Complaints and Compliance Committee had found the SABC had overstepped its authority and gave it seven days to reverse its decision.

    • Icasa orders SABC to withdraw their censorship on protests
    • South African state TV ordered to stop censoring protest footage
    • Russia censorship targets sports betting portals, affiliates
    • Russia Roskomnadzor gets tough on affiliates and sports media portals
    • Russian Media Watchdog Targets Sports Portals and High Traffic Affiliates

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Despite Security Concerns, Study Finds That Cloud Platforms Deserve Trust

      How much trust should organizations be putting in their cloud platforms and applications? Plenty, according to a Google-sponsored study called Trust in cloud technology and business performance: Reaping benefits from the cloud. The study found that enterprises that trust cloud computing apps and platforms to transform their businesses beyond cost cutting gain from significant revenue growth.

    • NSA Labels Privacy-Centric Internet Users As Extremists

      The NSA is not making any friends these days, and their latest statement on privacy-centric journalists is not helping matters much either. To be more precise, an investigation by the agency revealed how they are continuing to target the Tor network. Moreover, The Linux Journal is referred to as an “extremist forum”. Quite a strong sentiment, and possibly completely misguided as well.

    • Reports Shows UK Police Improperly Accessed Data On Citizens Thousands Of Times

      A lot of the problem with access is the access itself. Give enough people a way to look up compromising information on nearly anyone and abuse is guaranteed. Human nature ensures this outcome.

      Sure, abuse could be curbed with actual, substantial punishments for abusing this access, but as we’ve seen time and time again, the threat of firings and jail time doesn’t mean much if law enforcement officers are rarely, if ever, fired/jailed for abusing their access privileges.

      The larger problem with access is the lack of strong deterrents. Access is essential to law enforcement work, but far too often, this access is used for anything but law enforcement reasons.

      Big Brother Watch has released a report [PDF] detailing numerous abuses of law enforcement databases by UK police staff over the past several years.

    • DEA Finally Decides To Do Something About Its Wiretap Warrant Abuses

      The DEA never let Rule 41 jurisdiction limitations bother them. Agents used wiretap warrants to track suspects all over the nation. The DEA also didn’t let the DOJ’s hesitancy to condone its actions/warrants get in the way of its drug warring. DOJ lawyers heavily hinted that if the DEA wanted to use questionable wiretap warrants, it had better not be dragging its raggedy affidavits into federal court.

      But drag those affidavits into federal court it did, forcing the DOJ to defend the very warrants it told the DEA to stop dropping off at its place. The DOJ’s lawyers said the toxic, possibly illegal warrants were actually 100% legal, perfectly compliant with federal and state law — even though they were missing the signature of the local District Attorney, as required by federal law.

      The DEA — having had its bogus warrant assembly line exposed by USA Today’s Brad Heath and Brett Kelman — is finally moving towards curbing its wiretap abuse.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Police Said They Shot A Man Because He Pointed A Gun At Them. Video Shows He Had His Hands Up.

      Another black man was shot and killed by police in Texas early Saturday morning.

      Houston Police said Alva Braziel was waving a gun around and pointed it at them when they opened fire. But surveillance footage from a nearby gas station suggests otherwise.

      The video, which began circulating Saturday night on Twitter, shows Braziel walk out toward an intersection. When the squad car arrives, he appears to put his hands in the air and turn around, standing still for a few seconds before police shoot him.

    • Legalized Murder and the Politics of Terror

      Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states.

      Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle of the night on the basis of warrants for nonviolent offenses, carry out wholesale surveillance, confiscate property and money and hold people—some of them innocent—in county jails for years before forcing them to accept plea agreements that send them to prison for decades. They can also, largely with impunity, murder them.

      Those who live in these police states, or internal colonies, especially young men of color, endure constant fear and often terror. Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” calls those trapped in these enclaves members of a criminal “caste system.” This caste system dominates the lives of not only the 2.3 million who are incarcerated in the United States but also the 4.8 million on probation or parole. Millions more are forced into “permanent second-class citizenship” by their criminal records, which make employment, higher education and public assistance, including housing, difficult and usually impossible to obtain. This is by design.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom Announces The Launch Of File Sharing Website Megaupload 2.0

        The Megaupload creator is busy tweeting about the rebirth of his defaced website Megaupload which went offline in 2012. A series of tweets indicate that Megaupload 2.0 will be a presented to the world in January 2017 along with restored account data of all the old users.

      • As UK Piracy Falls To Record Lows, Government Still Wants To Put Pirates In Jail For 10 Years

        Last fall, our think tank, the Copia Institute, released a paper, The Carrot or the Stick? which detailed how innovation in the form of convenient, appealing and reasonably priced legal content streaming services appeared to be the most powerful tool in reducing piracy. The report looked at a number of different data sources and situations in multiple different countries. And what we found, over and over again, was pretty straightforward: ratcheting up enforcement or punishment did not work — or, if it did work, it only worked exceptionally briefly. However, by introducing good, convenient authorized services, piracy rates fell, like off a cliff. We saw this pattern repeated over and over again.

        And yet… instead of seeing policymakers and legacy content companies pursue strategies to encourage more innovation and more competition in authorized services, they continually focus on enforcement and punishment. This makes no sense at all. Take the situation in the UK, for example. Last week, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) came out with a report noting that piracy in the UK had dropped significantly in the wake of authorized streaming services like Spotify and Netflix entering the market. The full report is worth reading and pretty clearly suggests — as our own report last year did — that having good authorized services in place is the best way to reduce piracy.

Benoît Battistelli’s Attacks on EPO Unions, Judges, Boards, and Even Justice Itself the Subject of Media Fascination

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

But those capable of firing Battistelli continue to sit on his lap, enabling top-down imposition of neo-liberal policies

Sarkozy, Battistelli, and Kongstad

Summary: The EPO’s social affairs have become so bad that they are now comparable to the widely-disgraced Nicolas Sarkozy regime (‘union’) with the Bygmalion affair

THE EPO has a serious credibility problem. It’s the fault of Battistelli. Some people tell us that interest in the EPO’s services has been lost somewhat under Battistelli, even though it may take a year or two for people to actually see this (as there is a certain lag in the inflow/pipeline). The EPO’s forums have eerily quiet (enough for the EPO to publicly encourage people to participate in this dead zone) and the EPO repeated its lies a few days ago (lies about the boards of appeal losing their sovereignty by having a new manager appointed by Battistelli). Also noteworthy is this statement about Lithuania. Remember how Lithuania and Battistelli signed a deal with particularly curious timing and circumstances. Whatever is going on at the EPO right now (at the top-level management), it’s usually rather awkward. Not only do they lie to staff and to journalists; they also mislead some people in management, maybe even themselves. It’s embarrassing. It makes Europe look bad and it makes France look even worse. At the end of last month Renaud Lecadre wrote an article in the French media, accusing Battistelli of attacking EPO union/s. Here is SUEPO’s relatively new translation of the article with highlights on important bits:

Report

French Boss sows the seeds of anti-unionism at the European Patent Office

By Renaud Lecadre — 28 June 2016, 17:01

Benoît Battistelli, in March. Photo Emmanuel Dunand. AFP

Benoît Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office, appointed to the job under Nicolas Sarkozy, is coming under fire for staff union discrimination. His fate will be in the spotlight on Wednesday and Thursday when the Administrative Council meets.

At the European Patent Office, a French boss is sowing the seeds of anti-unionism

The only continental administrative body presided over by France, the European Patent Office (EPO) is in utter upheaval. The President, Benoît Battistelli, propelled into power in 2010 by Nicolas Sarkozy, is accused of drifting into dictatorship, discrimination against staff unions, and of denying the least legal challenge to his own little empire. A case of the leadership going off course, which will be coming under scrutiny on Wednesday by the Administrative Council of the EPO, which has its headquarters in Munich but also with a branch office in The Hague. And the risk is that the French presence among the international institutions will be eroded just that little bit more.

So what is Battistelli’s management accused of? In particular, at least three suicides of staff members during his tenure, one actually at the workplace. “Every case is a tragedy, and no-one understood the reason for their action,” was Battistelli’s view of the deaths, when Libération met him last month in Paris. Not surprisingly, the in-house unions have a different take on events: “All he sees are people who he thinks are incompetent and incapable, but no-one can be right all of the time against what everyone else thinks. France’s entire reputation among the international institutions is at stake,” says one French member of SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office).

Bringing the unions to heel

The EPO employs 6,700 international personnel, on a world market for patents which is fiercely competitive. Inventors (or would-be inventors) are at liberty to opt for any national,
European or Asian office, with a view to getting their inventions patented. “Competition is hard, and the difference in costs between the different offices is considerable,” says Battistelli in justification for his stance. “At the EPO we need to work more and work better. And that’s the programme for which I was appointed”. Liberal be damned; whatever executive role he may playing, the main aim seems to be to bring the unions to heel.

SUEPO won 70% of the votes in the staff elections. Battistelli suppressed his in-house union, banning them from using the internal messaging service, and initiated disciplinary procedures against seven of its executives, before attempting to set up a puppet union of his own – which polled 1% of the votes. “I have been an enthusiast of dialogue with the unions for a long time,” says Battistelli in his defence. Then he ushers in another initiative: Submitting the right to strike to an internal referendum under his tutelage, and with identification of the voters. Unfortunately, despite this close monitoring, in April 90% of the staff (of a 55% turnout) voted in favour of the latest strike.

When you’re up against the boss, where do you turn? SUEPO went to the Court of Appeal in The Hague, which in February 2015, ordered the EPO “to allow free access, and not to block
emails deriving from suepo.org”, ruling that the protection of union rights was “manifestly deficient”. Battistelli viewed this as a crime of lèse-majesté, an infringement on his executive authority, and took refuge behind the judicial immunity of his international institution. For very good reasons, namely: “The principle of immunity is not to protect people in a privileged position, but to protect against interference by outside nations.” SUEPO immediately interpreted this as: “A black pit for internal democracy, and for union and legal rights.” The EPO boss does not refute this, but refers in turn to “serial litigants”, “inadmissible” in his eyes, then stands his ground on his own rights as an executive: “There are no class actions when it comes to social affairs”…

Sabotaging the bicycle

Up to now, France has backed the French president of a continental institution. Last April, Emmanuel Macron received Benoît Battistelli at Bercy. “You have my support in all you are doing to adapt and modernise the EPO,” the first president is supposed to have said, at least according to the second one. And what about everyone else? Another demonstration by the staff of the EPO, at Munich or The Hague, without stopping in front of the French consulate… “Bercy is trying to understand his psychopathology,” is how one French union member tried to come to terms with events. “France must take on its responsibilities,” says William Bourdon, advocate for SUEPO. “It is regrettable and dangerous that a European institution which is supposed to be setting an example is so little under its control.”

On Wednesday, at the meeting of the Administrative Council, the EPO is going to be taking another look at its resolution adopted last March, when a previous Council expressed its “deep concerns about the social turmoil inside the Office”, then noted that “the internal sanctions and disciplinary procedures have been widely challenged by public opinion”. It may well be time to turn words into deeds. The President, reinstated last year for a three-year mandate, maintains that he is a victim of a “press campaign”, and will defend his stance to the death. His latest initiative: A press release complaining about the sabotage of his bicycle in the EPO car park, with the brake cables cut, a “deliberate act of vandalism personally aimed at the President”. Since then he has assigned himself six bodyguards.

Renaud Lecadre

The above correctly notes, as we pointed out before, that this whole affair and all these scandals are not at all beneficial to France (just to a few French individuals whom Battistelli gave high salary jobs). This fosters/creates a negative impression and French politicians are rightly concerned about this. It could become another Bygmalion affair. As for the bicycle angle, it has become somewhat of an internal joke. The above article focuses on Battistelli’s attacks on unions but not on his attacks on judges (those who assess and reassess patents, as this new example serves to remind us. There is an attack not only on EPO (Office) staff but also the Administration/Organisation (no wonder there are suicides, as noted above). Even stakeholders/applicants are negatively affected.

“Inventors deserve recognition for their incredible contributions to making our lives better,” the EPO wrote some days ago. “Help us do this,” they added, basically appealing for help with Battistelli's next PR and lobbying event. What they ought to say is that “Battistelli deserves recognition for his incredible attacks on staff, making our lives miserable.” That would at least be honest. On Friday also they did this kind of thing with a “startups” slant, pretending that the EPO under Battistelli cares about SMEs while effectively pushing them to the back of the line. Classic neo-liberalism!

As a reminder of Battistelli’s attacks on the boards, consider Sonja Behrens’s report with highlights on important bits. SUEPO provided the following English translation in its public site:

EPO Dispute: Judges feel threatened by Office Boss Battistelli

The decision taken last week by the Enlarged Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) to stop disciplinary proceedings against a suspended judge is, in a sense, a
settling of scores with Office President Benoît Battistelli. Specifically, present members of the EPO Boards of Appeal also feel themselves threatened, according to the document. Under these circumstances, their independence as judges is no longer guaranteed.

For many months a bitter dispute has been ongoing within the Office, with its 7,000 strong workforce, between the management and a large number of the employees and the staff unions. This has been prompted by the efforts at reform initiated by Battistelli – and the methods with which he intends to put his plans into practice. Employees complain of interference with their basic rights, including by way of internal investigation procedures.

The dispute over the suspension from office of a judge is the high point of the conflict – so far. The proceedings started to become noticeably unusual when the Enlarged Boards of Appeal arranged for a public hearing in the suspension proceedings, so as to ensure transparency in what was already a contentious issue, whereupon Office President Battistelli
intervened in writing. He demanded a hearing behind closed doors – and that, as the judges saw it, was impermissible meddling in the proceedings.

Judges see a “general, abstract threat”

According to the decision which JUVE has in its possession, Battistelli had argued that a public hearing was unlawful. The personal presence of witnesses from the Office was something he considered unnecessary for the proceedings, and nor would he authorise it. Moreover, the Enlarged Boards of Appeal were apparently not even allowed to investigate the matter again. And on top of all this, he made it clear that he would do everything in his power to ensure that business at the Munich patent authority could in future be run in an orderly fashion.

The court viewed this as a “general, abstract threat”, which affected every member of the Enlarged Boards. The intervention by the President, and thereby the Executive, was impermissible in terms of legal procedure, according to the judges, because Battistelli is not a party to these proceedings. The judges see their independence, which is firmly anchored in Article 23 of the European Patent Convention (EPC), as being fundamentally undermined.

Off-centre from the outset

Last autumn the Administrative Council of the EPO, on which representatives of the 38 Member States sit, called upon the Enlarged Boards of Appeal responsible to recommend dismissal in the disciplinary proceedings against the suspended judge. In so doing, the Administrative Council were already bowing to pressure from the President, who at the end of 2014 had imposed a ban on the former member of the Board of Appeal from entering the premises, and had him escorted out of the Office building in Munich. Over the following months, despite the uproar, the Administrative Council did not distance itself from the proceedings which had been initiated, nor from Battistelli’s most recent letter.

The suspended judge maintains, among other things, that the investigations against him incurred formal procedural errors – and for this reason alone the presumption of innocence could no longer be entertained in this respect, becausethe Office itself had broken the confidentiality of the proceedings.

In view of the circumstances, last week the Board of Appeal refused to dismiss the accused judge. The proceedings were terminated without a substantive decision, and, specifically on the significant grounds that, in view of the threats from the Office management, an independent ruling was impossible. As well as that, the Board recommended that the suspended judge be reimbursed for all the costs of the proceedings. They did not, however, regard themselves as empowered to order the compensation. The judges also accorded with the defendant’s wishes that the decision be made public.

Whether Battistelli, in the top position at the Office, continues to enjoy the support of the Administrative Council will become clear soon enough: At the end of June the Council is actually scheduled to rule on the reform of court procedures within the EPO. (Sonja Behrens)

The above seems reasonably accurate (we cannot see anything which is clearly wrong) and it alludes to Battistelli's media attacks on the accused judge (violating the EPO’s already-low standards for internal investigations). How can anyone take Battistelli seriously when he keeps breaking his own rules? Now he attacks even justice itself. “I fail to see how it increases or enhances the autonomy of the Boards of Appeal,” one person wrote about Battistelli’s coup last week. Here is the comment in full:

The point as I see it is the following:

Under the “old” arrangements, the judicial bodies (Boards of Appeal and EBA) adopted their own Rules of Procedure which were then subject to approval by the appointing authority (the AC which is the EPO “legislative”).

Under the new arrangements the Rules of Procedure for the judicial bodies will now be adopted by a sub-committee of the AC (the BOAC) and presumably then approved by the AC itself pursuant to Article 23 (4) EPC (which has not been changed).

In other words: the Rules of Procedure will now be adopted by a sub-committee of the “legislative” and approved by the “legislative” itself.

I cannot see this as being anything other than a transfer of competence from the judicial organs (who previously disposed of the competence to adopt the RoP) to the legislative (which now disposes of both the competences to “adopt” and to “approve” the RoP).

Undoubtedly this is all just one small detail in the grand scheme of things.
But I fail to see how it increases or enhances the autonomy of the Boards of Appeal or even the “preception of independence” so close to the heart of the EPO President.

To me it seems to be a very clear erosion of autonomy.
But maybe I am missing something?

“BB’s [Battistelli's] original proposal (that he should have sole responsibility) was absolutely wrong,” wrote another person, in a comment which some interpreted as pro-Battistelli views:

Back to Basics

I think what you are missing is that in most jurisdictions, court rules of procedure are produced on a collaborative basis. Yes, the judges themselves should be at the heart of it, but the fairest and most efficient outcome is achieved when other points of view are also taken into account. This is how it works in the UK and UPC, for example.

The requirement for separation of the judiciary from the executive arm of the EPO means that BB’s original proposal (that he should have sole responsibility) was absolutely wrong.

But the current situation where the Boards have sole responsibility and don’t have to listen to other views is not necessarily the best either.

Sure, you can argue about whether the proposed solution achieves the best balance. But it is more balanced than either of the above alternatives. And it does mean that the Boards themselves will still be drafting the rules, even though others will also have a say which they don’t at the moment.

At least one person thought that the above may have been “the President’s sock-puppet”:

Looks like the President’s sock-puppets are busy today.

Under the current arrangement, the Boards don’t have the sole responsibility.
There is a classical “separation of powers” arrangement whereby the Boards “propose” (i.e. adopt the rules) and the AC “disposes” (i.e. approves).

Under that arrangement the AC can exercise a certain amount of control over any proposed changes to the RoP by withholding its approval.

Now we go to an arrangement where the AC will both “propose” (via the BOAC) and “dispose”.

As Back to Basics said that seems like a transfer of competence from the Board to the AC. All of the power is now concentrated in the hands of the legislature (AC).
In a situation where the legislature is subservient to the executive (President) that is worrying.

And as for “others” having a say, pray tell how is that supposed to come about?

Not everyone agreed with this interpretation. One later response to it said:

Looks like the President’s sock-puppets are busy today.

The President employs sock puppets who describe his proposal as “absolutely wrong”?

Get real.

Now we go to an arrangement where the AC will both “propose” (via the BOAC) and “dispose”.

Or instead of making things up, we could actually read CA/43/16 Rev.1. The RoP will not be proposed by the AC. Nor by the BOAC.

They will be proposed by the President of the Boards of Appeal, advised by the Presidium. See new Rules 12c(2) and 12b(3)(c) EPC.

And as for “others” having a say, pray tell how is that supposed to come about?

See the Regulations of the Boards of Appeal Committee, Article 4(2)(i):

Quote:
[the BOAC shall] “carry out, where necessary, user consultations on matters of direct concern to users,such as proposals to amend the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal.”

Comments thereafter focused on the lack of consultation and oversight:

Regarding the others, did the document not deal with this by saying that the IP world would not be represented as only some areas of the BoAC’ s remit would concern them? Will need to check the wording but I thought it was rather curt and direct.

In fact in the explanatory notes to CA 43/16, it is stated:
” 20. In the user consultation carried out by the Office, users said they would like to be
granted observer status on the BOAC. Given that the BOAC will deal with a variety
of issues which are of no direct interest to users, this is not deemed appropriate.
However, where necessary, the BOAC should carry out broad user consultations,
in particular on proposals to amend the RPBA/RPEBA.”

What you are missing, Back to basics, is a picture of the President and the National delegations on holidays on a beach – possibly separatedly – sipping cocktails and yawning at your legal analysis that will change absolutely nothing.

Can you see it now? Yes? I thought so.

Sorry to be blunt – nonetheless, you may have a point in your analysis.

“To render them independent,” noted another person, “the Boards will be moved outside Munich in the middle of nowhere. The rest are just details that do not affect independence.”

This led to a long discussion about the ‘exile’ of the boards (to a yet-unspecified location):

To render them independent the Boards will be moved outside Munich in the middle of nowhere.

The same sick idea crossed my mind too…

Excerpt from the EPO Codex, Circular 115 of 10 March 1983, “Guidelines regarding travel in the interest of the service at the place of employment”:

(1) The place of employment shall be regarded as:
[...]
b) the districts listed in the annex for employees in post in [...] Munich.

[...]
The Munich area covers:

Aschheim
Baierbrunn
Brunnthal
Buchendorf
Dachau
Dingharting
Dornach
Eching
Eichenau
Feldgeding
Feldkirchen
Garching
Gauting
Germering
Gilching
Grasbrunn
Gräfelfing
Gröbenzell
Grünwald
Günding
Haar
Harthausen
Heimstetten
Hofolding
Hohenbrunn
Höhenkirchen
Ismaning
Karlsfeld
Kirchheim
Krailling
Lenstetten
München
Neubiberg
Neukeferloh
Neuried
Oberbiberg
Oberhaching
Oberschleißheim
Olching
Ottobrunn
Parsdorf
Percha
Planegg
Pleining
Puchheim
Pullach
Putzbrunn
Pöring/Poing
Sauerlach
Schäftlarn
Siegertsbrunn
Starnberg
Straßlach
Taufkirchen
Unterföhring
Unterhaching
Unterpfaffenhofen
Unterschleißheim
Vaterstetten
Wangen
Zorneding

Is this list applicable to the definition of “Munich” for, say, the purpose of Art. 6(1) EPC?

And that list can be modified by the President, as attests footnote 2:

Modified by decision of the President on recommendation of the GAC.

Technically he could define Kreuzberg, Wedding or Marzahn or even Bremerhaven, Frankfurt/Oder or Gelsenkirchen as being part of the definition of “Munich”, and no one would be able to do anything about it.

Another bit of input regarding the location, as per the EPC:

Excerpt from the EPO Codex …

I don’t think it is necessary to look that far.

The EPO branch at The Hague (Art. 6(2) EPC) is located in Rijswijk. Rijswijk is a fully independent municipality whose only connection to The Hague is that it borders The Hague.

According to Visser, The Annotated EPC:
- When the EPC 1973 was concluded, the offices of the IIB (predecessor of the EPO branch at The Hague) were located in The Hague. When the EPO actually started, the IIB had moved to Rijswijk. There has never been an EPO office in The Hague.
- During the revision of the EPC in 2000 it was “decided (I’m not sure in what sense… probably simply agreed among the delegations) that “any geographical location in the EPC should be interpreted broadly, e.g. The Hague should mean the province of South Holland and Munich the country of Bavaria. Any geographical allocation would at some point restrict the reallocation of offices.”

I guess one should be able to find this passage somewhere in the minutes of the 2000 diplomatic conference.

So… Munich = Munich area? Why think so small?

So DG3 could be relegated to the fortress in Landsberg or some old pigsty around Augsburg without further ado. Hof might be remote enough for the President’s taste. That’s a not nice thought to start the week-end with…

I was well aware of the very long-standing resistance of the borough of Rijswijk against its annexation by The Hague, but never really made the connection with the EPO. The ugly dovecote in Rijswijk was however inherited from the IIB.

Weren’t there plans to create a new site in ZH about 20 years ago? The name “Voorburg” resonates in my brain cells, but I’m not sure that was the place. This suburb is currently amalgamated with Leidschendam. I heard it “sous le manteau” that a plot of land had even been acquired, to be later cast off, yielding a beautiful profit set in bright red numbers. Anyway, it ain’t the kind of story you would normally read in the Gazette.

I checked Art. 6 in my own copy of Visser, the French patent office is characterised as “disorganised”. I don’t think this is the proper assessment, but then my edition dates back from when BB was still the head honcho there. ;-)

The upheaval around the so-called “Areas of Competence” clearly was just starters.

“IIRC,” one person wrote, “the enlarged Board of Appeals already decided, that The Hague means anywhere in the Netherlands, and Munich is therefore interpreted as anywhere in Bavaria…. Will try to refind that sometime….”

Citing this page, it’s later noted that “[i]t was Leidschendam and if I’m not mistaken the EPO made a loss on the plot of land. An architectural design competition had been held and the project was awarded in 1990 (building to be finished near the end of 1994), but patent filings collapsed so it was all cancelled.

“I believe that the Dutch authorities that bought back the land for a lower price then again made a nice profit by changing the zoning regulations to make it suitable for housing. But I might not have all the details right.”

We recently heard some rumours about missing floors in the new building of the EPO in the Netherlands, but insiders told us that these rumours were false.

Looking at another thread at IP Kat, one person asked: “Why is this blog still silent about the Administrative Council approving the proposed reform last Thursday, with only some relatively minor amendments? This approval is apparently perceived as unbelievable by anybody (except the EPO administration) who dares to express an opinion on the matter.”

Yes, well, there has been little or nothing on the subject, except in anonymous comments from people who are likely insiders. Going back to the original thread, people can see that the President of the EPO is left controlling the other “President” (BOAC) by appointment, which demonstrates how the Administrative Council effectively helped Battistelli destroy the boards’ independence. To quote:

“Now we go to an arrangement where the AC will both “propose” (via the BOAC) and “dispose”.”

It seems a bit more subtle to me.

Previously, it was the presidium of the boards that drafted the RoP.
Now, it is the president of the boards. The presidium only advises the president of the boards.
So this power has moved from the presidium to the president of the boards.

Here comes the rub: the president of the boards will be hand-picked by the EPO president (sure, a “joint proposal” by the EPO president and the BOAC).

No big deal, because once appointed he’ll be independent? Let’s see…
Will his reappointment after expiry of his 5-year term be essentially automatic? Or will the EPO president have a big say in this?

We’ll know soon enough how reappointment of the president of the boards will be handled.

Whatever happens next at the EPO (the past few days have been disappointingly quiet, even at SUEPO’s Web site), the perception of a Battistelli-led EPO is negative enough to merit immediate change. How will it come about? Perhaps stakeholders will vote with their feet or fees. █

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

Further Recent Posts

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