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02.12.15

Links 12/2/2015: ChaletOS, Linux 3.20 Features

Posted in News Roundup at 9:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Five ways open source middleware can impact unmanned systems

    Traditionally thought of as intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), or kinetic action platforms, unmanned systems are now filling roles such as command and control communications, meteorological survey, and resupply, and explosive ordnance disposal platforms. Historically, these platforms have been developed and fielded as standalone systems built by different vendors with unique and often proprietary payloads, control mechanisms and data formats. But this process has created limitations on interoperability and increased costs, leading the DoD to look at other, more viable options, including commercially supported open source middleware.

  • The privacy differential – why don’t more non-US and open source firms use the NSA as marketing collateral?

    The shockwaves generated by Edward Snowden’s revelations of the close collaboration between US tech giants such as Microsoft and Apple and the NSA are still reverberating through the industry. Those disclosures, together with related ones such as the involvement of the NSA in industrial espionage, as well as the asymmetric nature of US law when it comes to gathering data from foreign individuals, present something of an open goal for non-US technology companies – or so one might have thought.

    On the face of it, then, it is surprising that non-US technology firms and others that can distance themselves from the US law are not proclaiming this fact more loudly. After all, there must be a considerable number of organisations that would dearly love to locate their data as far away from the attentions of the NSA as possible.

  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of why I don’t always work in the open

    When you choose not to work in the open, what are your reasons? Are they Good, Bad or Ugly? What are your suggestions for how those of us who want to work more in the open can all do better?

  • Joyent: Never mind those other forkers, Node.js has a foundation now, too

    The popular, open source Node.js JavaScript runtime engine is getting a new foundation to manage its development, in a move that could help mend the recent schism in the project’s community.

  • Google’s new open-source PerfKit framework watches cloud application performance

    Google’s latest foray into the open-source realm is a framework it’s calling “PerfKit,” which is designed to measure application performance in the cloud, the company announced Wednesday.

  • Open source data-driven discovery at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

    The Apache Software Foundation has, since those early days, been at the forefront of challenging problems. Within the context of this article, the ASF has both fostered, and continues to host keynote scientific projects such as Apache OODT (a Top Level Project at the ASF which originally came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), to recently incubating projects such as Singa (an efficient, scalable and easy-to-use distributed platform for training deep learning models used currently within Deep Convolutional Neural Network and Deep Belief Network as examples).

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • A Watershed Moment to Protect the Free and Open Web

        Corporations that seek to control the Web, massive government and corporate surveillance, chilling effects on free expression — all of these issues will be harder to address if the next billions coming online think that the Internet exists solely within the walled gardens of platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. The greatest danger is people relinquishing their control to gatekeepers that get to decide the rules about what we see and what we create.

      • Cities need to be able to earn digital badges

        When I first heard of Mozilla Open Badges, my heart skipped a beat. Wisely implemented, digital badges can help individuals and communities focus their energies on worthy goals.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • Nice kitty: MongoDB 3.0 (with Tiger Inside)

      The open source cross-platform document-oriented database company MongoDB has reached version 3.0 this month.

      The new iteration sees significant changes in its storage layer performance and scalability.

  • Healthcare

  • Funding

    • The Open-Source Question

      You’d be forgiven for thinking that the tech world is a loathsome hotbed of rapacious venture capitalists, airheaded trend-riders, and publicity hounds. That’s the image presented by much of the tech press, which prizes stories about the Montgomery Burnses of the tech world over ones about its more idealistic denizens.

    • Payments

      With the new website, we’ve decided to revise how we promote and handle payments. We understand that this has rubbed some people the wrong way, and in the spirit of addressing concerns, we’ve decided to write this post. Keep in mind that this was a really difficult post to right. It covers sensitive territory, and it becomes difficult to choose the right words without offending anyone. That said, here’s our best explanation:

    • Should you pay for Elementary OS?

      Elementary OS has attracted a lot of attention lately. But a controversy is brewing over how the distro developers are setting up their new site for payments by users. The Elementary OS site is being redesigned to encourage users to pay for the distro. But should the Elementary OS developers expect a payment in the first place?

    • Jahia Completed a $22.5 Million Round of Financing From Invus
    • Jahia Completed a $22.5 Million Round of Financing From Invus
    • Growth & Expansion: Jahia Receives $22.5 million Round of Funding
    • Open Source Jahia Raises $22.5M to Grow Enterprise Clients

      Jahia is getting a $22.5 million cash infusion from Invus, a New York City-based investment firm, the Geneva, Switzerland-based open source content management system (CMS) vendor announced today.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Will you be my cryptovalentine?

      Valentine’s day is this Saturday and, if you’re like us, you’re either trying to pick the right gift or wishing you had someone to exchange gifts with. We wish you luck with that. But there’s something important that you can do regardless of your relationship status:

  • Project Releases

    • CMlyst got it’s first release

      Now that Cutelyst is allowing me to write web applications with the tools I like, I can use it to build the kind of web applications I need but am not fine with using the existing ones…

    • Cutelyst 0.6.0 is released

      Cutelyst, the Qt/C++ web framework just got another step into API stabilization.

      Since 0.3.0 I’ve been trying to take the most request per second out of it, and because of that I decided to replace most QStrings with QByteArrays, the allocation call is indeed simpler in QByteArray but since most of Qt use QString for strings it started to create a problem rather than solving one. Grantlee didn’t play nice with QByteArray breaking ifequal and in the end some implicit conversions from UTF-8 were triggered.

  • Public Services/Government

    • DISA Unveils Online, Open Source Collaboration Tool for DoD

      The Defense Information Systems Agency is launching a web-based, open source collaboration tool for the Defense Department that provides webconferencing, chat and instant messaging functions for employees based in the U.S. and abroad.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Eric S. Raymond Calls LLVM The “Superior Compiler” To GCC

      Joining in on the heated discussion that originated over Richard Stallman voicing concerns over adding LLVM’s LLDB debugger support to Emacs, Eric S Raymond has come out to once again voice his support in favor of LLVM/Clang and express his feelings that GCC’s leading days are over.

    • Perl creator Larry Wall: Rethought version 6 due this year

      Despite criticisms such as it having a “cryptic syntax,” the Perl language has remained prominent in language popularity assessments, even if popularity has declined and a planned upgrade has been slow to appear. Designed by Larry Wall, the scripting language is suited for tasks ranging from quick prototyping to Web programming and system management tasks, and it’s part of the prominent LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl/PHP/Python) open source stack. At the recent FOSDEM conference in Brussels, Wall revealed intentions to have the long-awaited Perl 6 release out in a beta version in September and generally available by December. Wall answered some questions from InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill via email about what’s planned for the language and responded to criticisms.

    • Learn to crunch big data with R

      Get started using the open source R programming language to do statistical computing and graphics on large data sets

Leftovers

  • Apple’s chorus of critics: How wrong can they be?

    Your daughter comes home from school with a report card studded with A’s. You (1) give her a hug and raise her allowance or (2) ground her and tell her you know she’ll never do this well again.

    Perversely enough, too many pundits and academics have chosen option No. 2 since Apple CEO Tim Cook presented investors the company’s most recent financial report card — a fourth-quarter earnings story that featured record sales at Apple, rapid growth, and (most important) a quarterly profit that is the largest ever recorded by a publicly traded company.

  • Russian woman dies after dropping charging iPhone into bathtub

    A young Russian woman has died after her charging iPhone fell into the bathtub in her Moscow flat.

    Yevgenia Sviridenko, 24, who was originally from Omsk, more than 2,000 miles from the Russian capital, was discovered by her flatmate in the bath on Monday evening, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported according to The Moscow Times.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Barbarians are made, not born – here’s how ISIS was created by the United States

      The US destruction of Fallujah in 2004 was a prime motivation for the growth of ISIS.

    • Senate confirms new Pentagon chief

      The Senate on Thursday confirmed Ashton Carter as President Obama’s new secretary of Defense in a 93-5 vote.

      Carter, 60, will be the 25th secretary of Defense and Obama’s fourth. He is expected to be sworn into office next week

    • Obama Asks Congress to Authorize War That’s Already Started

      As the U.S. continues to bomb the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, President Obama asked Congress today to approve a new legal framework for the ongoing military campaign.

      The administration’s draft law “would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations” like Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama wrote in a letter accompanying the proposal. The draft’s actual language is vague, allowing for ground troops in what Obama described as “limited circumstances,” like special operations and rescue missions.

      The authorization would have no geographic limitations and allow action against “associated persons or forces” of the Islamic State. It would expire in three years.

    • Ukraine arrests journalist after call to dodge draft

      Ukraine’s security service arrested a journalist on treason charges Sunday after he posted a video online urging people to dodge the country’s new military draft, his wife and officials said.

      Ruslan Kotsaba — a television journalist from the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk — was ordered held in custody for 60 days pending investigations, his wife, Uliana, wrote on Facebook.

    • Life in the Emerald City: Houthis Control Yemen, But They Don’t Yet Govern It

      Just weeks after a coup that ousted Yemen’s Western-backed government, the capital of Yemen is a city painted in green, mostly with spray paint.

      Green tree trunks, green sidewalks, green walls and even a green Ford F-350 bearing the Houthi slogan, which includes the words “Death to America,” on each side of the iconic American truck, about 340 of which the Pentagon shipped to Yemen over the past few years.

    • Endless War? Obama Sends Congress Expansive Anti-ISIS Measure 6 Months After Bombing Began

      President Obama has sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. The resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but does not put any geographic constraints. It also opens the door for ground combat operations in limited circumstances. The resolution’s broad language covers military action against the Islamic State as well as “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside [ISIS] or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” The resolution also leaves in place the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force Congress enacted one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, which has been used to justify U.S. action in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen and beyond, and which Obama had previously called for repealing. We speak with Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of many books, including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

    • Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

      PRESIDENT OBAMA is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

      Whatever else they decide, the House and Senate should revise the White House initiative to guarantee that it won’t have this tragic result. First do no harm; before proceeding with a debate over the limits of our continuing military engagement, Congress should make it impossible for future presidents to evade its final decision.

    • The Seduction of Brian Williams: Embedded with the Military

      He is a liar of course, someone who did not tell the truth no matter the reason or excuse, a bad trait for a journalist. Williams lied about being RPG’ed in a helicopter over Iraq; he did not see any variant of what you can see in the photo above. And that’s not a hard thing to “misremember.”

      But if there is any reason to forgive Williams, it was that he was seduced by both his own conflation of his sad little life as a talking head and the “brave troops,” and, more clearly, by the process of embedding with the military. I know. I saw it.

    • The Minsk Peace Deal: Farce Or Sellout? — Paul Craig Roberts

      As Washington is not a partner to the Minsk peace deal, how can there be peace when Washington has made policy decisions to escalate the conflict and to use the conflict as a proxy war between the US and Russia?

    • New York City Police Officer Is Said to Be Indicted in Shooting Death of Akai Gurley

      A New York City police officer was indicted Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in a Brooklyn public housing complex stairwell in November, several people familiar with the grand jury’s decision said.

    • Obama to Seek War Power Bill From Congress, to Fight ISIS

      The Obama administration has informed lawmakers that the president will seek a formal authorization to fight the Islamic State that would prohibit the use of “enduring offensive ground forces” and limit engagement to three years. The approach offers what the White House hopes is a middle way on Capitol Hill for those on the right and left who remain deeply skeptical of its plans to thwart extremist groups.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Privacy

    • Samsung Ad Injections Perfectly Illustrate Why I Want My ‘Smart’ TV To Be As Dumb As Possible

      Samsung has been doing a great job this week illustrating why consumers should want their televisions to be as dumb as technologically possible. The company took heat for much of the week after its privacy policy revealed Samsung smart TVs have been collecting and analyzing user living room conversations in order to improve voice recognition technology. While that’s fairly common for voice recognition tech, the idea of living room gear that spies on you has been something cable operators have been patenting for years. And while Samsung has changed its privacy policy language to more clearly illustrate what it’s doing, the fact that smart TV security is relatively awful has many people quite justly concerned about smart TVs becoming another poorly-guarded repository for consumer data.

    • Movie review: Citizenfour

      About 20 minutes into this electrifying, often terrifying documentary, the film-maker shows for the first time the man we have come to know as Edward Snowden. The ex-NSA employee who blew the whistle on the US Government’s spying on its citizens is a familiar face only because of 24 hours of interviews this film’s maker compiled over eight days in a Hong Kong hotel room. But when he first appears, he’s talking to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald about how they will deal with what Greenwald calls “the ‘you’ story”.

    • Jewel v. NSA: Making Sense of a Disappointing Decision Over Mass Surveillance

      A federal court in San Francisco sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, ruling that the plaintiffs could not win a significant portion of the case—a Fourth Amendment challenge to the NSA’s tapping of the Internet backbone—without disclosure of classified information that would harm national security. In other words, Judge Jeffrey White found that “state secrets” can trump the judicial process and held that EFF’s clients could not prove they have standing.

    • Judge Rules You Can’t Sue the NSA for Secretly Spying on You Unless You Prove You’re Being Secretly Spied On

      Advocates for less government snooping suffered a blow Tuesday when a federal judge in California ruled that a group of citizens can not sue the National Security Agency to stop the “upstream” collection of their data.

  • Civil Rights

    • More Power For Bad Cops: NYPD Head Supports Raising ‘Resisting Arrest’ To A Felony

      The most half-baked “weapon” in any policeman’s arsenal should never be raised to the level of a felony. “Resisting arrest” is the charge brought when bad cops run out of better ideas. This truism runs through nearly every law enforcement agency in the country. When you take a look at videographers and photographers who have been arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights (and backed by a DOJ statement), you’ll see plenty of “resisting arrest” charges.

    • Northern Va. woman dies after being stunned by deputies

      A 37-year-old woman has died after deputies in northern Virginia used a Taser stun gun on her while she was in custody.

      Natasha McKenna of Alexandria was taken off life support Sunday, five days after she was stunned at the Fairfax County jail, the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

      McKenna was in the process of being transported from the Fairfax County jail to the Alexandria city jail Tuesday when deputies say she failed to comply with their commands and resisted them. A deputy then used a Taser to restrain her, sheriff’s Lt. Steve Elbert said Monday.

    • Hundreds of South Carolina Inmates Sent to Solitary Confinement Over Facebook

      In the South Carolina prison system, accessing Facebook is an offense on par with murder, rape, rioting, escape and hostage-taking.

      Back in 2012, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) made “Creating and/or Assisting With A Social Networking Site” a Level 1 offense [PDF], a category reserved for the most violent violations of prison conduct policies. It’s one of the most common Level 1 offense charges brought against inmates, many of whom, like most social network users, want to remain in contact with friends and family in the outside world and keep up on current events. Some inmates ask their families to access their online accounts for them, while many access the Internet themselves through a contraband cell phone (possession of which is yet another Level 1 offense).

    • Pasco, Washington, police have killed more people than police in Germany and the UK combined

      With just 59,000 residents, the Pasco police department in Washington state have shot and killed four people in the past six months—more than police in the entire United Kingdom, which has over 80,000,000 citizens, in the past three years combined. In fact, Pasco police are on pace to have more police shootings than Germany, also with 80,000,000 citizens, over the current 12 month period.

    • U.S. Drops to 49th in World Press Freedom Rankings, Worst Since Obama Became President

      Each year, Reporters Without Borders issues a worldwide ranking of nations based on the extent to which they protect or abridge press freedom. The group’s 2015 ranking was released this morning, and the United States is ranked 49th.

      That is the lowest ranking ever during the Obama presidency, and the second-lowest ranking for the U.S. since the rankings began in 2002 (in 2006, under Bush, the U.S. was ranked 53rd). The countries immediately ahead of the U.S. are Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso, El Salvador, Tonga, Chile and Botswana.

    • ‘Drastic decline’ in world media freedom

      Media freedom has suffered a ‘drastic decline’ worldwide last year in part because of extremist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram, the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders says. – See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/europe/2015/02/12/-drastic-decline–in-world-media-freedom.html#sthash.dLBZAYMJ.dpuf

    • How the Chapel Hill Victims Deserve to Be Mourned

      I didn’t know Yusor Mohammad, Deah Shaddy Barakat or Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha — the victims of Craig Stephen Hicks’ shooting spree in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – but I recognize them. Anyone who has spent time in American Muslim communities would, and that’s partly why this horrible crime is so painful. I realize I’m making assumptions and maybe getting sentimental in the process, but I can’t help it. The personalities that come through from the testimonies of friends and family, the record of the efforts and achievements of these young people, and the photographs that radiate such joy and life are all too familiar to miss.

    • Conservatives Dance On Grave Of ISIL Hostage: ‘Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel B**ch’

      Not all conservatives used the death of American hostage Kayla Mueller to highlight the brutality of the Islamic State — some decided to focus their disgust on the 26-year-old’s humanitarian work for Palestinians.

      “No tears for the newly-departed Kayla Mueller, the ISIS hostage whose parents confirmed today that she is dead,” conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Tuesday, under the headline, “Kayla Mueller: Dead ISIS Hostage Was Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch.”

      “Mueller was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel,” she wrote.

      Schlussel condemned Mueller’s humanitarian work in the “so-called ‘West Bank’” to prevent the demolition of “terrorists’ ‘houses.’”

    • Trapped in Baku

      A press freedom advocate — and husband of an American servicewoman — went to the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan, fearing for his life. But he was turned away.

    • Azerbaijani journalist sheltering in Swiss embassy
    • Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry: Emin Huseynov went into hiding at Swiss embassy to avoid investigation

      Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hikmet Hajiyev said in this regard that the investigation carried out under the court verdict discovered that chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety Emin Huseynov has engaged in illegal business over unregistered grant contracts, making a great deal of money – AZN 1,575,956 – but evading from taxes AZN 247,551 tax to be paid to the state budget.

    • German Embassy Releases “Alarming” Declaration to Residents in Venezuela

      Caracas, February 11th, 2015. (Venezuelanalysis)- The German Embassy in Caracas has alarmed political observers in Venezuela by publishing what the press has described as an “alarming” official declaration to its citizens in the South American country.

      Published on February 5th, the declaration is written and signed by the Chargé d’Affaires at the German Embassy, Dr. Jörg Polster. It began to make the rounds on social media networks over the last two days.

      In the statement, German diplomat Polster informs readers that the embassy is extremely “worried” about the current situation in the country and advises German residents to take a number of “precautions in the face of the crisis”.

    • Google’s new robo-dog stalks premises, withstands hard kicks (VIDEO)
    • US bill seeks to tie massive trade pact to EU rejection of BDS

      Bipartisan lawmakers aim to make renunciation of Israel boycott efforts in Europe a key negotiating point in largest free trade deal in history

    • A Worthless Piece of Paper

      President George W. Bush was fond of saying that “9/11 changed everything.” He used that one-liner often as a purported moral basis to justify the radical restructuring of federal law and the federal assault on personal liberties over which he presided. He cast aside his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution; he rejected his oath to enforce all federal laws faithfully; and he moved the government decidedly in the direction of secret laws, secret procedures and secret courts.

      During his presidency, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This legislation permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when those warrants are served on custodians of records — like doctors, lawyers, telecoms, computer servers, banks and even the Post Office.

      Such purported statutory authority directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy in our “persons, houses, papers and effects.” That includes just about everything held by the custodians of our records. Privacy is not only a constitutional right protected by the document; it is also a natural right. We possess the right to privacy by virtue of our humanity. Our rights come from within us — whether you believe we are the highest progression of biological forces or the intended creations of an Almighty God — they do not come from the government.

    • Protesters call for Aquino resignation

      Nationalists and anti-imperialists marched to commemorate the 116th year of the Philippine-American War on Feb. 4, with a call to make President Aquino, suspended Police chief Alan Purisima, and the US government accountable for the recent Mamasapano deaths.

    • Egyptian Court Orders Release of 2 Al Jazeera Journalists

      An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the release of two journalists jailed for more than a year on charges of broadcasting false news in a conspiracy with the Muslim Brotherhood.

      The release followed the publication this week of a previously undisclosed opinion by Egypt’s highest appeals court condemning the journalists’ conviction as baseless when it ordered a retrial at the beginning of this year. The release also comes at a time when the Egyptian government appears to be trying to allay some of the international criticism it has received after a series of harsh and hasty criminal convictions issued during a crackdown on dissent after the military takeover in July 2013.

    • Denial of Refugee Protection For Matt DeHart

      On Monday, February 9th, Matt DeHart’s parents, Paul and Leann, received notice by mail from the Refugee Protection Division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board that the family’s claim for Refugee Protection had been denied. The family fled the United States after Matt was interrogated and tortured during an FBI espionage investigation in which child pornography charges were hastily filed after Matt was detained at the Canadian border, an action which was triggered by an espionage alert.

    • Matt DeHart Denied Asylum in Canada

      Matt DeHart claims that all his troubles stem from a file uploaded, twice, to a Tor server he ran out of a closet in his parent’s home. An FBI investigation into something the CIA might have done.

    • Matt DeHart, former American soldier claiming he was tortured by U.S., loses bid for asylum in Canada

      Mr. DeHart testified the pornography charges are a ruse to investigate an espionage and national security probe tied to his involvement in Anonymous and his operation of a “hidden” Internet server used to leak a classified U.S. government document, likely destined to WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization.

    • Jails Have Become Warehouses for the Poor, Ill and Addicted, a Report Says

      Jails across the country have become vast warehouses made up primarily of people too poor to post bail or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves, according to a report issued Wednesday.

      The study, “Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America,” found that the majority of those incarcerated in local and county jails are there for minor violations, including driving with suspended licenses, shoplifting or evading subway fares, and have been jailed for longer periods of time over the past 30 years because they are unable to pay court-imposed costs.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • “Canada Remains A Safe Haven For Online Piracy”

        The MPAA, RIAA and other entertainment industry groups keep hammering on Canada for its lacking anti-piracy enforcement. The groups label Canada a “safe haven” for both file-sharers and online pirate sites, and ask the U.S. Government to intervene.

      • Copyright Monopolist Claims Legal, Non-Infringing “Fair Use” Is Like AGGRAVATED RAPE

        In a fuming blog article, David Newhoff claims that non-infringing, legal uses of copyrighted works – that is, of people’s own property – are like “aggravated rape” when made without unneeded consent of the monopoly holder. Newhoff tries to scold the crucial concept of “fair use” in copyright monopoly doctrine, the concept which explicitly says that some usages are not covered by the monopoly and therefore not up to the monopoly holder, and ends saying that if you don’t grant permission and can’t set limits, it’s “aggravated rape”. Just when you think copyright monopoly zealots can’t sink any lower, they surprise you with one of the few creativities they’ve ever shown.

      • YouTube Flags Cat Purring as Copyright Infringing Music

        YouTube’s automated takedown tool is known for its flaws, but this week it crossed a line by attacking a purring cat. According to YouTube’s Content-ID system both EMI Publishing and PRS own the rights to a 12 second purring loop. The cat in question, Phantom, has filed a dispute and hopes to reclaim his rights.

      • US’s ‘Naughty List’ Of Countries Whose Intellectual Property Rules We Don’t Like Is A Joke That’s No Longer Funny

        Mocking the ridiculous “Special 301 report” from the US Trade Representative has become something of an annual sport around these parts. As we’ve explained, the whole concept of the report is something of a joke: copyright, patent and trademark maximalists send in reports to the USTR, claiming which countries don’t do enough to respect US intellectual property, and the USTR — via no systematic or objective process — rewrites those complaints into a report that declares certain countries “naughty” for their practices. The whole thing is such a joke that even those in the government will openly mock it. As I’ve said in the past, I once saw the head of the US Copyright Office openly joke about the purely arbitrary nature of the 301 report at a conference. Countries like Canada — which are regularly named to the report, despite having copyright laws that are, in many areas, more stringent than the US’s — have openly declared that they do not find the Special 301 process to be legitimate, and thus do not pay any attention to it. A couple of years ago, Chile also made it clear that it felt the 301 process was illegitimate.

      • Torrent Site: Copyright Troll Had Staff Access to Member Data

        Empornium, one of the leading private torrent trackers for adult content, says it believes a copyright troll gained access to a staff moderation account and is now using obtained data to threaten its users. The revelations may shine light on why some Empornium users have received settlement threats with no lawsuit filed and no notice from their ISPs.

      • BitTorrent’s Original Content Deal Makes Bid for Reputability

        The move might be an effort to appear more legitimate to advertisers and others within entertainment content distribution circles. The BitTorrent file-sharing protocol is often linked with users of the downloading software exchanging content in violation of intellectual property laws. The first project under this original video distribution agreement is the movie Children of the Machine.

Links 12/2/2015: Black Lab Linux KDE Edition, Android SmartWatches

Posted in News Roundup at 6:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Is GNU/Linux becoming too complex for its own good?

    A Debian developer, who faced issues with some minor tasks on his own machines, has now raised the question whether the distribution being built is too complex to understand and debug.

  • Server

    • Docker Popularity A Game-Changer For Cloud, Linux?

      What’s the next step for Docker, one of Silicon’s Valley’s hottest startups?

      It’s not an initial public offering — at least not this year, apparently. The well-funded, lean company says that it’s in no rush to go public.

  • Kernel Space

    • Top 10 Features of Linux Kernel 3.19

      Linux kernel 3.19 has been officially announced by none other than its father, Linus Torvalds, on February 8, 2015. It is a great release that brings some very interesting features. Because we didn’t have access to a complete list of its features at the moment of writing the news article about its availability, we have decided to drop another one that highlights Linux 3.19 kernel’s prominent features.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • A eulogy to CrunchBang, the Linux distro that time passed by

      DistroWatch.com is currently tracking 287 active Linux distributions. That’s a lot, but not every Linux distribution is a massive project. For every Ubuntu or Fedora, there are many more hobbyist distributions created and run by one or two people. Sometimes they grow into their own large projects, like Linux Mint did. And sometimes a developer decides to pull the plug, as CrunchBang’s developer recently did.

      [...]

      In the end, hobbyist Linux distributions are created to scratch an itch. Developers may eventually find that itch has been solved elsewhere, or may not want to put the long hours into scratching it anymore. CrunchBang no doubt has users who use and love it, even today—but the end of CrunchBang doesn’t have to be sad. CrunchBang’s developer now believes the larger Linux ecosystem has improved so much that CrunchBang is no longer necessary.

      That’s good news for everyone, including Newborough, who now gets to spend his valuable time on something else. Thanks for a killer run, Philip.

    • Security Onion: A Linux Distro For IDS, NSM, And Log Management

      Security Onion is a Linux distribution for intrusion detection, network security monitoring, and log management. It’s based on Ubuntu and contains Snort, Suricata, Bro, Sguil, Squert, Snorby, ELSA, Xplico, Network Miner, and many other security tools. Security Onion is a platform that allows you to monitor your network for security alerts. It’s simple enough to run in small environments without many issues and allows advanced users to deploy distributed systems that can be used in network enterprise type environments.

    • Getting Started with Linux: Another Look at UberStudent

      Time flies. It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been four years since I first took a look at a Linux distribution called UberStudent. Back then it was in its 1.0 release, called “Cicero.” The latest release, “Epicurus,” came out in mid-January, with a version number of 4.1.

      There are a lot of Linux distributions out there. What makes this one worth checking out?

      As with previous releases, what makes UberStudent unique is its target audience, and the software and little added touches it has as a result.

    • New Releases

      • Black Lab Linux Releases 32-bit Edition of Their KDE-Based Distro

        In a world where everyone tries to drop 32-bit support for their OSes, Black Lab Linux developers have announced on Twitter that they’ve released a 32-bit version of their KDE-based distribution in order to support installations of the Black Lab Linux KDE Edition 6.0 SR1 operating system on low-end computers or machines with old/semi-old hardware components.

    • Arch Family

      • Satire: Linus Torvalds awarded Arch Linux as the most consumer friendly distribution

        Richard M Stallman congratulated Arch for their achievement but also pointed out the areas where he thinks Arch needs improvement, “Arch’s lack of support of DRM and binary blobs are the only areas where I see hurdles in the wide-spread adoption of Linux. We have elevated the DRM implementation project at FSF to boost work on it. Today Arch is the second most popular operating system and this gap is only due to Arch’s bad philosophy of pure Open Source software. I think they should start offering proprietary and patented applications in their repositories.”

    • Red Hat Family

      • UAE Exchange consolidates data centres with Red Hat Linux

        Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that UAE Exchange, a leading foreign exchange and money transfer brand, has successfully created a scalable, secure, robust and high-performance datacenter environment by consolidating its IT infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

      • Red Hat Upgrades Virtualization Platform

        The prolific developers at Red Hat have been relatively quiet in the New Year. Now, the open source leader is picking up the pace with the introduction of the latest version of its enterprise virtualization tool.

        The company announced general availability this week of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.5 aiming to offer tighter integration with OpenStack while promising to ease deployment of IT infrastructures for traditional virtualization workloads along with enterprise-level cloud infrastructure.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • CrunchBang, Elementary, and other Linux Complications

          The top stories today are more thoughts on CrunchBang and Elementary OS’ move to raise capital. My Linux Rig spoke to Matthew Miller from Fedora about his desktop and Adam Williamson announced Fedora 22 Anacoda/DNF testing day. Canonical pats itself on the back for a job well done in media production and John Goerzen hits the complexity nail on the head.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi robot’s explained

      Is the Pi robot a specific product or just a concept? An easy answer for some, but not everyone knows the score

    • Hackable Pi-like SBC opts for 1.6GHz quad-core STB SoC

      Shenzhen Xunlong has launched a $59 open-spec “Orange Pi Plus” SBC with a 1.6GHz quad-core Allwinner H3 SoC, 40-pin Pi-compatible expansion, WiFi, and SATA.

      In December when Shenzhen Xunlong Software announced its open-spec, Linux- and Android-ready Orange Pi and Orange Pi Mini SBCs, both of which use the dual-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A20 system-on-chip, the company also briefly noted an upcoming, quad-core Orange Pi Plus. The Plus was said to offer a quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A31 SoC with a PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU. Instead, the shipping version, now available at AliExpress for $59, arrives with Allwinner’s new quad-core Cortex–A7 based H3 SoC and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU.

    • Linux-based mobile manipulation robots due soon

      Former Unbounded Robotics execs have launched “Fetch Robotics” with $3 million in funding, and will ship a ROS-on-Linux mobile manipulator bot in Q2 2015.

      A startup called Fetch Robotics has announced $3 million in Series A financing from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) and Shasta Ventures, along with a development team that jumped from the apparently now defunct Unbounded Robotics. Fetch Robotics plans to announce and ship two mobile manipulation robots in the second quarter that are aimed principally at the logistics and light industrial markets, “as well as for other human-robot collaboration opportunities,” says the company.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Russian Federation to help Tizen and Sailfish battle Android and iOS

          The Tizen Operating System has got unexpected interest from the Russian Federation, as the Minister of Communications and Mass Communications Nikolai Nikiforov showed his enthusiasm for the Tizen based Samsung Z1 and the “de-monopolization of the global IT-ecosystems”. When prompted about the lack of software, Nikiforov said that conditions will be created to promote the independent mobile OS.

        • Tizen Operating System in Samsung 2015 Smart TVs

          Samsung’s 2015 TV Line up will be Tizen, and they have confirmed that they will be dropping Android as a suitable TV platform for them. Using Tizen and EFL for its User Interface, Tizen TVs will have great multitasking between applications and movie streaming services, and great gaming potential with Sony’s PlayStation Now service, and much more!

        • Sony SmartWatch 3 Review: The Best-Performing Android Smartwatch Yet

          Sony’s been trying the smartwatch thing for years, but the original SmartWatch and the SmartWatch 2 both… what’s the word I’m looking for here? Sucked? Yeah. But the SmartWatch 3 has solid performance and two nifty features you won’t find on any other Android Wear. It’s the first with built-in GPS and a screen you can read without backlighting.

          Android Wear watches are off to a pretty decent start. The Moto 360, the LG G Watch R, and the Asus ZenWatch are all lovely and useful in their own ways. So why might you buy a Sony smartwatch instead?

      • Android

        • How Secure is Your Android? Mobile Antivirus Apps Tested

          Most of us will never see our Android antivirus apps spit out a warning because most of us will never encounter malware on our phones. So how can you tell if your Android antivirus is actually protecting your phone against the malware that sometimes sneaks onto Google Play or is installed by an overbearing spouse? Independent testing lab AV-Test is here with the answers.

        • Nokia’s HERE maps updated on Android and Windows Phone

          Nokia has announced that an update for its Windows Phone and Android Here mapping apps will be rolling out from today.

        • How to automatically unlock your Chromebook when your Android phone’s nearby

          Google is working hard to kill the password. If you want to live in that future now, you can turn on a feature that automatically unlocks your Chromebook whenever you wander near it with your Android phone in your pocket.

        • How to Download Android 5.0.2 Lollipop for Nexus 5?

          The Android Lollipop 5.0.2 update has been made available to some Nexus devices, including the Nexus 7 2012 and 2013 models and the Nexus 10. However, there is still no sign of the update for the Nexus 5 or the Nexus 4. While both the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 come with Android 5.0, apparently, the Nexus 5 Android 5.0 Lollipop update has been suspended because it was reported that the update causes the device’s battery to drain at a faster than normal rate.

        • Unofficial app opens up PS4 remote play on Android devices

          To this point, the PlayStation 4′s novel Remote Play function was only accessible on the PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TV, and certain Xperia mobile phones. That’s no longer the case, thanks to an unofficial port that lets the official PS4 Remote Play app work on practically any modern Android device.

        • HTC One M8 and LG G3 pick up Android 5.0 Lollipop

          AT&T began deploying Android 5.0.1 for its LG G3 variant on Tuesday. The carrier will automatically push the roughly 700MB update over the air, but eager users can also manually search for the file by navigating to Settings>General>About phone>Software Update.

        • Here are all of the phones that can get Google’s massive new Android update today

          Google started pushing out its latest version of Android in November, but most Android phone owners are still waiting for the update.

        • What’s Up With Android Wear?

          Research firm Canalys says just 720,000 smartwatches powered by Android Wear, Google’s operating system for wearable devices, shipped in the last six months of 2014.

        • HTC Could Be The Next Android Partner To Ditch Google In Smartwatches
        • JW Player Brings Its Video Player To Android Apps

          JW Player, the streaming video company that (in the words of its president Chris Mahl) helps online publishers find “life after YouTube, or life beyond YouTube,” has made a big move onto mobile with the general release of its Android SDK.

          The player already worked in mobile web browsers, so it wasn’t entirely absent from Android. But this will allow publishers to include the players directly in their apps, to customize its appearance, and to include video advertising.

        • Android Lollipop Review: Google’s Material Design Delivers The Goods

          Regardless of the tinkering Google’s engineers have done under the bonnet, the most noticeable improvement has to be the overall look. Google is calling Android’s fetching new aesthetic “Material Design” and it’s all about giving the OS a more welcoming look. It’s mostly flat colours, clever use of shadow and UI elements which look like layers of paper stacked on top of one another. Google has left behind the world of skeuomorphic design ­–– just like Apple did with iOS 7 –– and the end result is something that looks less cluttered and more eye-catching.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Finally: The best phablet in the world is getting Android Lollipop

        After releasing Android 5.0 Lollipop updates for a variety of top flagship handsets in the past weeks, including the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 3, Samsung has started rolling out the one official Lollipop ROM certain smartphone buyers were waiting for, the one made for the Galaxy Note 4.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Puppet Labs community manager on setting expectations

    The other side of community involvement in an open source project is the end users. It’s hard to be a successful open source project if no one is using it! But aside from providing documentation and forums, how else can projects and users connect?

    Kara Sowles, community manager for Puppet LabsOne way is a users group, a type of club where the members all share an interest in a particular arena. SHARE is one of the oldest computer users group around. The basic idea behind a users group is to provide more resources and share information among a local cell, provide support, encouragement, new ideas, mailing lists, and more. There are some challenges with belonging to a users group, managing a users group, and representing your open source project in a users group.

  • Cisco Takes Open Source Route to Policy Revamp

    Cisco is developing open source tools designed to allow network operators to describe policy in more meaningful terms.

    The Noiro Networks team inside Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) is trying to solve the problem of network policy that doesn’t make sense in an application-centric world. Typical networking policy uses networking language — describing traffic flows or or whether specific ports are allowed to connect with each other. Instead, the Noiro Networks team is looking to describe policies in terms of how applications are allowed to interoperate, says Thomas Graf, a principal software engineer at Cisco working on Noiro Networks.

  • Without open source, there would be no DevOps

    If we’re going to do DevOps, we have to give up open source. Right? Wait, we’re an Agile shop, so we have to give that up, too. Right?

    Over the last five years or so, I’ve talked with a lot of people confused about what it means to “do DevOps,” and clearly concerned about having to give up other things that have already proven their value in order to adopt DevOps. The bad news is, we’ve not done a good job in the DevOps community of nailing down what DevOps is and what it isn’t at an earlier stage in our development.

  • Google Launches Open-Source, Cross-Cloud Benchmarking Tool

    Google today launched PerfKit, an open-source cloud-benchmarking tool that, in Google’s words, is an “effort to define a canonical set of benchmarks to measure and compare cloud offerings.” The PerfKit tools currently support Google’s own Compute Engine, Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure clouds. Google says it has worked on this project with over 30 researchers, companies and customers, including ARM, Canonical, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Rackspace and Red Hat.

  • Events

    • Oregon State University Open Source Lab hosts 160 projects

      The South California Linux Expo (SCALE) is an annual event aiming to provide educational opportunities on the topic of open source software. This is SCALE13X, and prior to the event I caught up with one of the speakers, Emily Durham, who will give a talk called Human Hacking.

      Emily Dunham of Open Source Lab at OSUEmily is currently finishing her final year in computer science at Oregon State University (OSU), where she is the student systems engineer at the OSU Open Source Lab. Previous to that gig at OSU, she helped run the Robotics Club, Linux Users Group, and Security Club. Emily has 7 years of experience in open source communities, and I talked with her regarding her career and life, open hardware, community psychology, and of course, her upcoming talk at SCALE13X.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Myriad Project Marries YARN and Apache Mesos Resource Management

      There are a lot of interesting announcements arriving as the O’Reilly Strata event rolls out. In one notable example, MapR and Mesosphere have announced a new open source Big Data framework (called Myriad) that allows Apache YARN jobs to run alongside other applications and services in enterprise and cloud datacenters. The initiative was kicked off by a developer at Ebay and turned into a collaborative effort between multiple companies. The project is now approaching Apache incubation.

  • Funding

    • Hitachi’s Acquisition of Pentaho Makes it a Big Data Analytics Player

      We’ve been watching the Big Data space pick up momentum as 2015 begins, and now Hitachi Data Systems Corporation has announced its intent to acquire Pentaho in what is being billed as “the largest private Big Data acquisition transaction to date.” Hitachi claims that the acquisition will accelerate enterprise adoption of Big Data technologies and solutions through “easier, faster deployment, leading to faster ROI.”

  • BSD

  • Licensing

    • Open Source Debate: Copyleft vs. Permissive Licenses

      Most discussions of free software licenses bore listeners. In fact, licenses are usually of such little interest that 85%of the projects on Github fail to have one.

      However, one aspect of licensing never fails to stir partisan responses: the debate over the relative advantages of copyleft licenses such as the GNU General Public License (GPL), and permissive licenses such as the MIT or the Apache 2 licenses.

      You only have to follow the links to Occupy GPL! that are making the rounds to see the emotions that this unending debate can still stir. Calling for an end to “GPL purism,” and dismissing the GPL as “not a free license,” the site calls on readers to use permissive licenses instead, describing them as “truly OSS [Open Source Software] licenses and urging readers to “Join the Fight!”

      Occupy GPL! itself is unlikely to have a future. Anonymous calls to actions rarely succeed; people prefer to know who is giving the call to arms before they muster at the barricades. Nor is the site’s outdated name and inconsistent diction, nor the high number of exclamation and question marks likely to inspire many readers. Still, the fact that the site exists at all, and the counter-responses in comments on Google+ show that the old debate is still very much alive.

    • Confessions of a Recovering Proprietary Programmer, Part XIII

      As a recovering proprietary programmer, I can assure you that things work a bit differently in the open-source world, so some adjustment is required. But participation in an open-source project can be very rewarding and worthwhile!

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Wikileaks shows US funded Mamasapano operation – solon

      Secret embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 reveal the United States’ heavy involvement in the Philippines’ counter-terrorism efforts including the botched police operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, a party-list congressman claimed on Wednesday.

      Kabataan Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon said the cables, which were from 2005 to early 2010, show how the US government planned to operate covertly within the ranks of Philippine forces.

    • Killing of 3 Muslims in US elicits criticism over media blackout

      A shooting in the US, which has reportedly left three Muslims dead in a North Carolina university town, has set social media buzzing over accusations of double standards, with major media outlets failing to report the story.

    • U.S. Dumps Massive Load, of Weapons and Ammunition, in Lebanon

      The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon announced a new shipment of weapons and ammunition have arrived in Beirut, the latest American assistance to Lebanon’s army as it fights ISIS along its border with Syria. The Ambassador said the equipment includes more than 70 M198 howitzers and over 26 million rounds of ammunition and artillery “of all shapes and sizes, including heavy artillery.”

      “We are very proud of this top-of-the-line equipment. This is the best that there is in the marketplace. It’s what our soldiers use,” the Ambassador continued. “I know that in a matter of days it’s going to be what your brave soldiers are using in the battle to defeat terrorism and extremism.”

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Ecuador to Take Assange Case to UN Human Rights Council

      The Republic of Ecuador will take the case of its most famous asylum seeker, Julian Assange, to the U.N. Human Rights Council, according to reports this week.

    • Britain: Julian Assange Duty Is Draining Police Coffers, London Chief Says

      London’s police chief said Tuesday that the cost of keeping watch on Julian Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy there, was draining resources and must be reviewed. Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, sought refuge in the embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning on sexual assault allegations, which he denies. London’s Metropolitan Police have been standing guard around the clock to prevent him from fleeing, at a cost of about $15 million since the operation began. Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told LBC Radio that officials were considering “how we can do that differently in the future, because it’s sucking our resources in.” Mr. Assange says the allegations were trumped up to facilitate his extradition ultimately to the United States, where he could be put on trial over huge leaks of information to WikiLeaks.

    • Cameras could cut £10m bill for watching Assange

      A review of the round-the-clock operation to guard Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, was announced by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe yesterday.

    • Met Chief considering pulling the plug on £10m Assange operation

      The UK’s most senior police chief says he is reviewing the operation to guard WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because it is “sucking” their resources. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg last week revealed the cost of the surveillance operation outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London had reached around £10m. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told LBC radio: “We are reviewing the way forward there.” Mr Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, has been living at the embassy since June 2012.

    • Julian Assange security ‘sucking Met Police resources’

      Security costs for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange are to be reviewed, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has said.

      Maintaining a guard for Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in central London has cost £10m, according to figures disclosed to LBC radio.

  • Finance

    • Hidden cards in HSBC game of leaks

      The newspaper argued that similar policies would be followed by journalists in other parts of the globe, saying that it wouldn’t be responsible to just dump information on all account holders, as this could unnecesarily expose them to criminals after the extent of their wealth became public. Although no relevant accounts were tied to government officials by La Nación yet, investigations were said to be ongoing.

    • HSBC files show Tories raised over £5m from HSBC Swiss account holders

      Conservative donors, peers and a high profile MP are listed among the wealthy who legally held accounts in Switzerland with HSBC’s private bank, for a wide variety of reasons.

      Their ranks include Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park, plus his brother the financier Ben Goldsmith, and a Swiss resident, German-born automotive heir Georg von Opel, who has donated six-figure sums in the past two years.

      Peers named in the HSBC files include Lord Sterling of Plaistow, the P&O shipping and ports entrepreneur who was ennobled by Margaret Thatcher, and Lord Fink, who was a party treasurer under David Cameron and has given £3m to the Conservatives.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • How Reality TV Is Teaching Us to Accept the American Police State

      February 04, 2015 “ICH” – Americans love their reality TV shows—the drama, the insults, the bullying, the callousness, the damaged relationships delivered through the lens of a surveillance camera—and there’s no shortage of such dehumanizing spectacles to be found on or off screen, whether it’s Cops, Real Housewives or the heavy-handed tactics of police officers who break down doors first and ask questions later.

  • Privacy

    • Google is ‘privatized NSA’, unexamined deaths, & C of E censorship (E173)

      Afshin Rattansi goes underground on Google’s shady privacy record. Kristinn Hrafnsson, lawyer for WikiLeaks, warns that it appears Google is “not a benign company, it has sinister aims,” and reveals that it wants to be a dominant part of the military intelligence complex, handing information to the US government. Dr. Suzy Lishman, president of the Royal College of Pathologists, warns up to 10,000 deaths every year should be referred for further investigation, but are not due to massive numbers of death certificates being filled out minimally or wrong. We look into why the Church of England is removing the right to free speech for one of its vicars. Boris Johnson meets Hillary Clinton to discuss ISIS in New York. And if you’re a war-wounded veteran, you’d better hope you were injured after April 2005 – or you may lose most of your compensation to pay for basic care.

    • Philip K. Dick Warned Us About the Internet of Things in 1969

      Be careful about what you say in your living room if your new TV is on. News broke earlier this week that Samsung’s Web-connected SmartTV can listen to, record, and send what the television hears to a third-party company. The television doesn’t watch you watch it back, but it is listening.

    • Mayor Muriel Bowser Orders D.C. Fire to Lift Radio Encryption

      D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has ordered the D.C. Fire Department to lift the encryption of the department’s radios.

      News4′s Mark Segraves broke the news on Twitter Tuesday night.

      She has instructed the fire chief to stop encrypting the department’s radio transmissions beginning Friday morning. Encryption of the radios prohibits anyone except fire personnel from listening to the radio transmissions.

    • Obama asks Germany “to give us the benefit of the doubt” on NSA spying

      President Barack Obama asked Germans to give the United States the “benefit of the doubt” when it comes to snooping by the National Security Agency.

      In a Monday joint press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel held at the White House on Monday, Obama said he recognizes “the sensitivities around this issue.”

      In October 2013, German media reported that Merkel had “strong suspicions” that her personal cellphone was being monitored by American authorities.

      White House spokesman Jay Carney unequivocally told reporters at the time that such surveillance was not continuing, but he did not directly deny the allegations of past conduct. The next year, Germany decided not to renew its government contract with Verizon, citing concerns over spying by the National Security Agency.

    • Laura Poitras on Citizenfour, Edward Snowden and whistleblowers

      The first glimpse the world had of Edward Snowden was in a short video in a dark Hong Kong hotel room. But film-maker Laura Poitras’ journey with the NSA whistleblower began much earlier.

    • Oscar-Nominated Edward Snowden Documentary CITIZENFOUR to Debut on HBO 2/23
    • Court Says NSA Spying too Secret to Stop

      In a ruling handed down Tuesday, a federal district judge in California refused to rule that NSA collection of Internet and phone content without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment, and dismissed part of a lawsuit challenging the spy agency program.

    • Judge White Makes Crucial Error While Capitulating to State Secrets, Again

      Ah well, all that discussion probably counts as a state secret. A concept which is getting more and more farcical every year.

    • Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know

      Despite the continuing torrent of disclosures concerning previously secret and wide-ranging government surveillance efforts, many criminal defendants are not getting notice of the secret surveillance authorities used in their cases. This is a serious problem—one felt acutely by defendants, but one that also has immense consequences for the public at large in an age of mass surveillance. To those whose liberty is not on the line, the right of criminal defendants to notice might seem like a narrow, procedural issue. It is not. In a world of multiplying surveillance techniques used in secret, the criminal defendant’s right to notice of surveillance used against him is vanishing—and this shift presents a fundamental obstacle for defendants, and a basic, structural problem for courts and the public.

    • EFF Vows to Continue the Fight Against Mass Surveillance After Disappointing Ruling

      EFF will keep fighting the unlawful, unconstitutional surveillance of ordinary Americans by the U.S. government. Today’s ruling in Jewel v. NSA was not a declaration that NSA spying is legal. The judge decided instead that “state secrets” prevented him from ruling whether the program is constitutional.

    • Judge rules for NSA in warrantless search case

      A U.S. judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of the National Security Agency in a lawsuit challenging the interception of Internet communications without a warrant, according to a court filing.

      U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California wrote the plaintiffs failed to establish legal standing to pursue a claim that the government violated the Fourth Amendment.

    • Surveillance and Freedom of the Media

      These findings are the result of the exposure of mass surveillance that seriously undermines the safety of journalistic sources, the safety of whistleblowers and freedom of the media, in stark contrast with a meaningful democracy where access to information, privacy and freedom of expression is protected.

    • Twitter Reports a Surge in Government Data Requests

      Twitter on Monday released its twice-yearly transparency report, showing a surge in government requests for users’ Twitter information.

      The report, which discloses the frequency with which government agencies from around the world ask Twitter to hand over data on specific users, said total requests rose by 40 percent, to about 2,871, compared with the company’s last report, in July. The latest requests came from more than 50 countries.

    • If the NSA has been hacking everything, how has nobody seen them coming?

      The Snowden docs show us that high value targets have been getting compromised forever, and while the game does heavily favour offence, how is it possible that defence hasn’t racked up a single catch? The immediate conclusions for defensive vendors is that they are either ineffective or, worse, wilfully ignorant. However, for buyers of defensive software and gear, questions still remain.

    • The state most excited for “Fifty Shades of Grey” will surprise you

      TheWrap in conjunction with Facebook took a look at some of the chatter about the film — and its stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan — online. The data came from likes, comments and shares about the movie on Facebook. “For the past seven days, 3.7 million people had over 6 million interactions related to the Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson romp on Facebook,” TheWrap reported.

    • Breaking smart TV surveillance capabilities may be a felony

      Customers who are concerned about the surveillance capabilities of Samsung’s smart TVs have another headache to worry about: Tampering with the machine to disable such components may be a felony.

      Samsung’s privacy policy raised concerns with privacy activists who spotlighted the warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.” Now there are concerns that tinkering with the software by tech-savvy customers may run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

      “Most smart TVs on the market have taken technological measures to prevent users from accessing or modifying firmware in order to prevent illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted material. But users could technically face felony charges for circumventing lockdown restrictions — even if the modifications they’re trying to make are legal under copyright law,” Slate reported Tuesday.

    • Who Else Listens To Your TV?

      That’s not exactly what the Terms say; they note that “if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted”. So we’re not just talking about the sort of data Google Now or Siri sends to their service provider (the phrase after you have started the voice recognition). Samsung also sends the commands themselves, plus any conversation around them. From that description, it seems the whole stream of conversation is likely to be sent.

  • Civil Rights

    • Jeffrey Sterling’s trial by metadata: Free speech stories

      When a Washington, DC, area jury convicted Jeffrey Sterling of multiple counts of espionage, the smoking gun wasn’t a key bit of classified information found in the former CIA officer’s possession; it was a trail of phone calls and emails of unknown content.

      The information about where those calls and emails went, however – to a New York Times reporter – was enough to convince a jury to send Sterling to prison for up to 80 years.

      According to the US Justice Department, Sterling was providing Risen with details of a failed CIA attempt to undermine Iran’s nuclear programme by having a Russian scientist code-named Merlin pass along intentionally flawed blueprints. Risen then exposed the operation in his 2005 book, State of War.

    • Map of 73 Years of Lynchings

      The most recent data on lynching, compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, shows premeditated murders carried out by at least three people from 1877 to 1950 in 12 Southern states. The killers claimed to be enforcing some form of social justice. The alleged offenses that prompted the lynchings included political activism and testifying in court. FEB. 9, 2015 Related Article

    • Lynching as Racial Terrorism

      It is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments of black American men, women and children that were relatively common in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public events. They were sometimes advertised in newspapers and drew hundreds and even thousands of white spectators, including elected officials and leading citizens who were so swept up in the carnivals of death that they posed with their children for keepsake photographs within arm’s length of mutilated black corpses.

      These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. But that will change if Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney, succeeds in his mission to build markers and memorials at lynching sites throughout the South as a way of forcing communities and the country to confront an era of racial terror directly and recognize the role that it played in shaping the current racial landscape.

      Mr. Stevenson’s organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, took a step in that direction on Tuesday when it released a report that chronicles nearly 4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950. The report focuses on what it describes as “racial terror lynchings,” which were used to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. Victims in these cases were often murdered without being accused of actual crimes but for minor social transgressions that included talking back to whites or insisting on fairness and basic rights.

      The report is the result of five years of hard work. Researchers reviewed local newspapers, historical archives and court records; interviewed local historians, survivors and victims’ descendants; and scrutinized contemporaneously published articles in African-American newspapers, which took a closer interest in these matters than the white press. In the end, researchers found at least 700 more lynchings in the 12 states than were previously reported, suggesting that “racial terror lynching” was far more common than was generally believed.

    • Watch one of Jon Stewart’s most famous moments: his epic Crossfire appearance

      Crossfire’s whole premise was a debate between left and right, one that at times degenerated into a shouting match. Stewart often criticized the show as dumbing down American public discourse. And, when Crossfire’s hosts invited him on to debate, he embarrassed them.

      “You’re partisan — what do you call it — hacks,” Stewart said, to a stunned Carlson and Begala. “Stop hurting America.” Here’s the clip…

    • Privacy experts question Obama’s plan for new agency to counter cyber threats

      White House to unveil on Tuesday the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center but critics fear an expansion of government monitoring of online data

    • Judge Nap on New Cybersecurity Agency: ‘Lost Liberties Don’t Come Back’

      “I believe that the people who build these things have the ability to make them absolutely attack-proof, but in order to do that, they have to make them impervious to government intrusion,” Judge Nap said, adding that any government agency big enough to protect us is big enough to surveil us.

      “The Internet cannot be protected by the government, because the government will never permit a system that it can’t zero into,” Judge Nap said, concluding that he would “absolutely not” establish this agency.

      Watch Judge Nap and Stuart

    • Torture and the CIA’s Unaccountability Boards

      Last Saturday, January 31, CIA Inspector General David Buckley resigned after a little more than four years in office. His departure came at the end of the same month his office published a scathing report that found the agency committed serious wrongdoings in connection to its rendition, detention, and torture program. It was also the same month that his report was swept aside by a parallel investigation conducted by a CIA “Accountability Board” that was hand-picked by agency leadership. Unsurprisingly, the Accountability Board recommended holding no one accountable for any failings.

    • Guantánamo Bay: wheels of justice turn slowly – at $7,600 a minute

      The Guantánamo Bay war court is now costing US taxpayers over $7,600 per minute, according to new Pentagon figures.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Google is seriously taking on US telecom

      First it conquered search. Then it was online video and advertising. Now Google is turning its attention toward telecom — and it’s no experiment.

      In recent months, Google has said it’s bringing ultra-fast Internet to at least 18 US cities, including Atlanta and Nashville. It announced pilot tests of a low-cost, modular smartphone. The company’s joined an influential lobbying group for upstart telecom firms. And now Google is considering an entry into wireless service, as first reported by The Information, a technology news site founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin.

    • Hello HTTP/2, Goodbye SPDY

      HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the web. The majority of sites use version 1.1 of HTTP, which was defined in 1999 with RFC2616. A lot has changed on the web since then, and a new version of the protocol named HTTP/2 is well on the road to standardization. We plan to gradually roll out support for HTTP/2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks.

    • Wall Street Knows Darn Well That FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules Won’t Harm Broadband: Stocks Went Up

      And, indeed, it appears the stock market acted accordingly. Following Tom Wheeler’s official announcement that the FCC would move to reclassify under Title II, all the key broadband players saw their stocks jump up, not down. If it was really that bad, you would have seen the opposite.

02.11.15

EPO Staff to March to British Consulate to Protest Against the Administrative Council (AC)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sean Dennehey
Sean Dennehey
Image credit: UK Patent Office “Technical Contribution” Workshop – London 2005

Summary: Sean Dennehey and John Alty from the Board of the Administrative Council will see their consulate in Germany occupied by EPO staff

FOLLOWING some very large protests against EPO management, including a recent staff protest around the Danish Consulate (about 1,000 people in attendance, yielding mainstream press coverage), there is another protest being organised.

“Actions continue at the European Patent Office,” said a statement today. “On Wednesday 25 February 2015 a demonstration will take place in Munich (Germany) starting from the EPO Isar building (Bob-van-Benthem-Platz 1) at 12.10h and ending at the British consulate (Möhlstrasse 5).

“The United Kingdom is represented in the Administrative Council by Mr John ALTY (Chief Executive and Controller General of the UK IPO) and Mr Sean DENNEHEY (Deputy Chief Executive UK IPO). Mr Dennehey is also member of the Board of the Administrative Council (“Board 28″) which is currently discussing the future of the EPO Boards of Appeal. Mr Dennehey was recently re-elected Chairman of the Patent Law Committee. Mr Dennehey apparently supported the Office in trying to suppress public discussion about the suspension of a Member of the Boards of Appeal while at the same time leaving space for Mr Battistelli to express his view of the events.”

This ought to yield press coverage in English — not Danish — hence it would be readable by a broad audience and raise awareness of the EPO scandals.

We previously published Dennehey's contact details (after the EPO’s management had removed these), so those who wish to be diplomatic about it can eloquently express their concerns about the Administrative Council to him (or to John Alty, who is also in the list). As we have shown over the past half a year, the Administrative Council has become more of an extension of Battistelli’s regime; it’s not independent. The Administrative Council lost credibility not only in the eyes of EPO workers but also outsider who depend on EPO services and pay taxes that EPO receives. █

The EPO’s Digital War (Censorship) Against Staff Web Site

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Benoit Battistelli

Summary: The EPO’s management has been blacklisting dissent and increasingly relying on censorship as means of eliminating opposing voices

A LOT has been happening in the EPO regime in recent weeks, culminating in resignations or firings from one side and protests from the other (up to a third of all staff), resulting in an assault on the press (paid 'articles') from one side and DDOS attacks on the other. There is a war between staff and the crooked managers who attack the staff’s rights, break the rules, and operate a tyranny that betrays principles of scope and even, based on numerous criteria, violates EU law.

Based on an E-mail from the webhost of SUEPO, the attacks on their site is quite serious. Here are some enumerable details:

Subject: Server blocked due to DoS attack

thank you for your request.

The attack appears to be over. We were able to unblock your IP-Addresses.

Your server should be reachable again.
Detailed information about the attack:
Type UDP Packetflood
Traffic: 3,5G with 8MPacket/s
Random external IP Sources
Destination 87.106.183.86 Port 80,5190
Start-Date 2015-02-05 05:18:41+0100

In simple terms, there is no denying that this was a DDOS attack. We would love to know the outcome of the investigation as we too came under heavy DDOS attacks, lasting months (keeping my wife and I awake at night and causing serious financial damage), ever since we started criticising EPO management. We can’t tell if there is a correlation between these attacks (SUEPO and us), but if there is a correlation between those two, then we can deduce something about the motivation (or source).

A source told us that an investigation is underway, citing SUEPO as stating: “By flooding our server with external requests in this manner the attackers rendered it unavailable. As soon as our server was reachable again, the attackers attempted an SSH brute-force attack to take control of the server.

“Such attacks constitute a violation of law and SUEPO has filed criminal charges against unknown and will cooperate with the German and Dutch authorities, who are now investigating the matter.”

Our source further indicated that there had been other oppressive measures against SUEPO, so the above would not be exactly unprecedented. To quote further:

What happened to SUEPO until now?

Communication with our members has become extremely difficult. In particular, we cannot reach our members on their EPO email address because of the measures applied by the Office since 2013, such as:

- The domain name suepo.org is blacklisted in the email server of the EPO since 2013. A sender from @suepo.org cannot reach a recipient @epo.org

- Many colleagues have reported that external emails containing the word “SUEPO” in the subject line or body do not reach a recipient @epo.org. Despite several requests for clarification, the administration has remained silent on the matter.

What next?

Your committee will strive to maintain its communication means with staff and to continue to inform them promptly of what is really happening in the Office. We would like to encourage you to provide your local SUEPO Committee with your private email address if you haven’t done it yet. Given the current context, we think it makes sense.

This in its own right serves to show that the EPO already engages in digital war against SUEPO. It’s a war of censorship. Would the EPO go as far we paying crackers? That’s an important question. Some people deem DDOS attacks “just a sit-in/protest”. Such people rarely (if ever) had to respond to an actual DDOS attack; these can persist for weeks or months.

“Some people deem DDOS attacks “just a sit-in/protest”.”“In the meantime,” said our source, “SUEPO has issued the statement” (above).

“Some people,” our source added, “are currently trying to investigate whether there is any similarity between the recent cyberattacks on the server of the Croatian web portal dnevno.hr.

“An open question here is whether or not EPO funds are being used to finance these attacks.”

As we noted earlier today, Željko Topić is alleged to have covered up for his predecessor/s. Is the EPO now covering up its own misconduct, by covert, subversive or aggressive means also? If so, Topić may have plenty of “work experience” to offer the EPO after all. █

Corruption at the Croatian State Intellectual Property Office Which Željko Topić Came From: Part XV

Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Untold baggage of the EPO’s Vice-President

Ivo Sanader
Ivo Sanader, “convicted felon who served as Prime Minister of Croatia,” based on Wikipedia
Photo licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Summary: European Patent Office (EPO) Vice-President Željko Topić was appointed by a corrupt (and convicted) politician for leadership of a corruption-laden institution before joining EPO

WE are deeply disturbed to see possible attempts to silence/scare/unmask critics of the EPO's management. The mostly anonymous comments about Battistelli are getting quite serious and following our article about Ivan Kabalin we are hearing about more suppression of dissent at the EPO. As such, today we unveil another new set of documents, namely:

  1. NAGRADIO-EN [PDF]
  2. KOPCIC-DISMISSAL [PDF]
  3. OPINION-MZOS [PDF]
  4. AIPPI-EXPULSION [PDF]
  5. AIPPI-LETTER-MZOS [PDF]

We have spent quite some time studying these documents, which relate to some documents we already published in here. More sources have since then sent us more documents and somewhat better documents (than the ones we received before) have been handed to us, e.g. KOPCIC-OPINION-EN [PDF], KOPCIC-DISMISSAL-EN [PDF], AIPPI-EXPULSION [PDF]. Today we are going to explain what readers can find therein (in English). It’s really quite revealing and since we provide authentic documents we are pretty much immune from bullying. The translations are quite accurate as native speakers (Croatians) worked on them. They want justice. That’s what they want. It pains them to see thugs prospering in a system that harbours bad behaviour — the type of behaviour that now expands and percolates into the very core of Brussels.

Corruption and conflicts of interest at the Croatian State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) should not be too shocking given the nation’s record; no offence intended to Croatians, many of whom would possibly agree. Here is what we can deduce from the material added above: There are problems which actually predate the appointment of Željko Topić as Director-General of the SIPO. It begins with Mr. Nikola Kopčić who was the first Director-General of the Croatian SIPO from 1992 until January 2002. Kopčić was dismissed from office as a result of an undeclared conflict of interest which was in breach of the applicable statutory regulations as explained in more detail in the above documentation. To give a chronological overview:

AIPPI-LETTER-MZOS is dated 13 June 2001. It is a letter from the Croatian branch of the AIPPI to the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology (MZOS) drawing the attention of the Ministry to a conflict of interest at the SIPO and requesting the dismissal of Mr. Kopčić as Director-General.

AIPPI-EXPULSION is dated 27 December 2001. That’s the decision of the Croatian branch of the AIPPI to expel Mr. Kopčić from the AIPPI.

OPINION-MZOS is dated 27 December 2001. It shows the opinion of the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology (MZOS) recommending the dismissal of Kopčić as SIPO Director-General.

KOPCIC-DISMISSAL is dated 10 January 2002 and it is the decision of the Croatian Government to dismiss of Kopčić as SIPO Director-General.

The official decision of the Croatian Government announcing Kopčić’s dismissal was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia (“Narodne Novine”) and the published version can be accessed here (in Croatian). Following Kopčić’s dismissal in January 2002 the position of Director-General of the SIPO was held by Hrvoje Junašević until 2004. In May 2004, Željko Topić was appointed Director-General of the SIPO by the Croatian Government headed by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. As is generally known, Sanader was convicted on corruption charges by a Croatian court in November 2012 and he received a custodial sentence which was confirmed in June 2014. The official decision of the Croatian Government announcing Topić’s appointment as Director-General of the SIPO was signed by Ivo Sanader and is dated 5th May 2004. It was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia (“Narodne Novine”) and can be accessed here (in Croatian):

A Croatian press report, which was published by index.hr in April 2012 following Topić’s appointment as EPO Vice-President, claimed that in his capacity as Director-General of the SIPO Topić colluded in the cover-up of a number of irregularities and offences alleged to have been committed by his predecessor Nikola Kopčić.

Original text is available only Croatian from index.hr, but we now have a translation (NAGRADIO-EN above). Here it is in full:

The Pantovčak* rewarded him: Instead of facing prosecution, the Director of the Office responsible for monitoring ZAMP was promoted!

[* Note: Pantovčak = the Office of the Croatian President]

Author: Ilko Ćimić
Date: 10/04/2012

The State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) is the administrative body which is responsible for monitoring the operations of the Croatian Composers’ Society (HDS) and, likewise, its professional royalty collecting service ZAMP. However, the recent handover of responsibility for the supervision of the SIPO from the Ministry of the Economy to the Ministry of Science has revealed that for years the operations of that Office have not been subject to any proper supervision.

The fact is that until December last year, the government department responsible for intellectual property rights – and thus in charge of the supervision of the SIPO – was the Ministry of the Economy, Labor and Entrepreneurship. However, following the formation of the new Government [under Prime Minister Zoran Milanović], this competence was transferred to the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports led by Željko Jovanović.

The Office which should monitor ZAMP was itself without oversight

As “Index” learned, a meeting was held last month at the Ministry of Economy. In addition to representatives of the two aforementioned Ministries, this meeting was also attended by a former employee of the SIPO, Vesna Stilin, who once again, on the occasion of the transfer of competence, endeavoured to draw attention to the many irregularities in the operations of the SIPO, in particular concerning the actions of its Director, and to remind the other participants of the circumstances of her case in which she was dismissed from the position of Assistant Director for Copyright and Related Rights at the SIPO.

The meeting only served to confirm that for years now, the Office has effectively been under the autocratic rule of Mr. Topić and a small clique of his “minions”. The former government appears to have turned a blind eye to everything going on at the Office.

We would like to remind our readers that the highly controversial SIPO Director, Mr. Željko Topić, previously replied to a query from the Ministry of Finance as to whether certain business operations of ZAMP had in fact been carried out by a private company Emporion. At that time, Topić claimed that everything had been done by the book.

However, according to the latest document which “Index” is in possession of, it is clear that the Government, whether intentionally or not, has for years avoided any involvement with what was going on at the SIPO and never bothered to conduct an administrative audit of SIPO’s work and operations.

Instead of looking into the “ZAMP case” and investigating a series of charges against Mr. Topić, the official SIPO website published a news item reporting that Mr. Topić had been appointed to the position of Vice-President of the European Patent Office, and that he was leaving the SIPO! It would appear that Mr. Topić can thank “Croatian diplomacy” for his promotion which has been mostly orchestrated – as you might have guessed – by the President’s office.

A new car for the minister

But let’s get back to the handover. The official minutes of the meeting confirm that no member of the HDZ Government responded adequately to the various allegations of bribery, embezzlement of budgetary funds, irregularities concerning the internal organization of SIPO or the wrongful dismissal of Vesna Stilin. The meeting was attended by Sandro Mustafagić and Darinka Vedrina from the Ministry of Economy and Lean Salamunić Džaja from the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports.

Ms. Stilin once again drew the attention of the representatives of the two Ministries to irregularities in the internal organization of the SIPO, implemented in a covert manner by the SIPO Director [i.e. Topić], and the inadequate response of the Ministry of Science on the occasion of her dismissal. Ms. Stilin was dismissed from her duties in 2008. At that time, the Ministry of Science, led by Mr. Dragan Primorac, was responsible for the SIPO. According to Ms. Stilin, her dismissal was carried out with the approval of the Ministry of Science because the SIPO director Mr. Topić was using funds from the SIPO budget to pay for a new Audi 6 for the Ministry of Science which was used by the Minister Primorac.

Topić was paying some 20 thousand HRK to the Ministry of Science every month. At the same time, it was the responsibility of that particular Ministry to propose to the Government the appointment and the dismissal of the SIPO Director. Under such circumstances, transactions of this kind effectively constitute the giving and receiving of bribes.

Embezzlement of budgetary funds, stealing computers and favoritism

The competent Ministries have never specifically addressed the fact that an inspection carried out by the Ministry of Finance in 2008 identified financial wrongdoings on the part of the SIPO Director, Mr. Topić. A budgetary inspection at that time found that he first tried to embezzle 7.5 million HRK and then 9.7 million HRK. Under threat of foreclosure, the SIPO was required to make an immediate reimbursement of these funds to the State budget account. Sanctions were never imposed for these breaches of the regulations, although the Budget Law specifically prescribes what is to be done in such cases.

Neither was anything ever done about the fact that, whether intentionally or not, Mr. Topić effectively colluded in the cover-up of a criminal act by his predecessor, the first SIPO Director Mr. Nikola Kopčić, namely the theft of a computer from the SIPO. Furthermore, Mr. Topić never adopted the Regulation on Protection of Classified Information, which should have been implemented at a state institution such as the SIPO from the very beginning. The former SIPO Director [i.e. Kopčić] had at the same time been registered as a professional representative with the SIPO contrary to the applicable official regulations and the computer was a key piece of evidence that he had access to the official SIPO databases and, thus, unauthorised access to classified information. However, following the disappearance of the computer, no action was taken.

In this way, over a period of years FORINPRO Ltd., a private company, owned by the former SIPO Director, Mr. Nikola Kopčić, managed to avoid paying the costs of searches in the aforementioned SIPO databases thereby causing financial damage to the SIPO and, likewise, to the State budget. Mr. Topić did nothing until a year and a half after the event and by then it was too late for the police to trace the perpetrators of the theft, despite the 38 cameras and two security guards at the entrance to the SIPO.

Topić was also under obligation as a matter of official duty to initiate administrative proceedings to revoke the registration of FORINPRO in the SIPO Register because the owner of the company and former SIPO Director, Mr. Kopčić had been indicted and sentenced in consequence of the disputed registration which amounted to a criminal offence. Topić never took any action to revoke the registration despite a written reminder and a request from two members of the executive committee of the Croatian branch of the International Society for the Protection of Industrial Property (AIPPI).

Although these matters, supported by relevant documentation, have managed to find their way into public awareness, they have for the most part been ignored by the competent official authorities.

The circumstances of Stilin’s dismissal

A particular issue here is the manner in which Vesna Stilin was dismissed from SIPO.

Stilin’s dismissal which was issued with retroactive effect from 10 April 2008, was delivered to her on 24 April. During the period from 14 to 18 April, she was on annual leave which had been previously approved by Topić. Stilin had never received any prior notification of his intention to dismiss her. As confirmed by official records, during the period when she was on leave Topić ordered all of her effects, including those in locked cabinets, to be removed from her office and he allocated a room at the Ministry of Economy for her use, so that upon returning from ‘holiday’ she no longer had any office to go back to [at the SIPO].

According to the minutes of the meeting held at the Ministry of Economy:
“After receiving the decision concerning her dismissal, in May 2008 Ms. Stilin filed an appeal with the Administrative Court which, in September 2008, decided that the Government was entitled to make a discretionary decision. However, it omitted to examine the question as to whether when taking its decision the Government had relied upon the relevant legal provisions which would have given it the right to make such a discretionary decision and which it had not invoked despite the obligation to do so; and why there was no mention of other relevant reasons and circumstances, such as, why other Assistant Directors, who, in accordance with the decision of Mr. Topić in January 2008 received their mandates from the Government, and like Ms. Stilin, were dismissed by the Government but much later than her, i.e. following the enactment of the Ordinance on the Internal Order of the SIPO which included the relevant classification of jobs, whereas Ms. Stilin was dismissed after the adoption of the Regulation on the Internal Organisation of the SIPO and thus contrary to the prescribed procedure. The Croatian Constitutional Court does not, as a rule, examine whether the previous administrative instances and courts have established the facts of the case correctly and completely. Such a practice was adopted in this case, which is why Ms. Stilin filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights”.

Neither Sanader nor Kosor

As we have also learned, Stilin only discovered later on that the SIPO Director, Mr. Topić, had sent an additional submission concerning her dismissal to the Government. This submission contained a series of unfounded allegations about her, in particular in relation to the Public Lending Right, a significant new right for writers, which was her area of special expertise at the SIPO. Topić kept this submission secret, and Ms. Stilin only received a copy of it from the Croatian Government by chance whereupon she initiated criminal proceedings for defamation against Topić which are still ongoing.

In April 2009, Ms. Stilin sent a request to the Government asking for the annulment of the decision to dismiss her, following which Mr. Sanader and his successor as Prime Minister, Jadranka Kosor, requested the Ministry of the Economy to solve the problem with the SIPO Director, Mr. Topić, on three separate occasions. However, Ministry of Economy has so far failed to respond, and each time they indicated they were awaiting the decision of the Constitutional Court, which, according to Stilin, related to an entirely different matter.

The lawsuit originally filed with the Administrative Court in May 2008 which then went to the Constitutional Court whose decision the Ministry of the Economy claimed to be waiting for, is now before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and is a completely separate case from Stilin’s request for the annulment of her dismissal.

According to the minutes of the meeting:
“Stilin recalled that she also filed a request for mediation with the Municipal State Attorney’s Office. This is a step preceding a civil lawsuit, and was pursued because in the three years following the dismissal, the Ministry of the Economy failed to conduct an administrative audit of the SIPO as confirmed in writing by the Ministry in November 2010 and in August 2011.”

With an astronomical salary received from European taxpayers, no wonder Topić fights his critics so hard. He is fearful that people who speak English, German, French etc. may find out about his past. Topić tried to sue for defamation but lost the case. One may therefore assume that bribery allegations (as above) are truthful. Just because something like some statements may be damaging to Topić’s career doesn’t necessarily make them defamatory.

Watch the part in the text above which speaks of bribery. Of particular interest is also the claim that Topić failed to properly investigate the theft of an official computer from the SIPO premises which is alleged to have contained evidence of the improper access to official SIPO databases free of charge by Kopčić’s private company ForInPro Ltd. It is also alleged that Topić failed to take appropriate action to revoke Kopčić’s registration as an authorised representative in the official SIPO register despite requests from the Croatian branch of the AIPPI to do so. According to the press report, Kopčić’s registration should have been revoked following his conviction due to his breach of official regulations as SIPO Director-General.

Despite Kopčić’s expulsion from the Croatian branch of the AIPPI in December 2001, he was subsequently elected as a member of the EPI Council which is the governing body of the Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office. So apparently being corrupt in Croatia does not rule out/disqualify one from pursuing a career elsewhere.

Kopčić’s most recent election to the EPI Council took place in 2011 and he held a position as an alternate member on the Council until March 2014 [PDF]. He is currently a Deputy Team Leader on an EU-funded project relating to Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in Bosnia & Hercegovina.

The documents above mostly relate to the expulsion of Mr. Nikola Kopčić from the Croatian branch of the AIPPI in 2001 and his subsequent dismissal as Director-General of the SIPO in January 2002. Part of these documents were shared here before and it ought to set the tone for future discussions about SIPO (we have a lot more to come). The significant part here is the translation of a Croatian press article published by index.hr which claims that Topić colluded in the cover-up of various irregularities and offences alleged to have been committed by his predecessor Nikola Kopčić. Back-rubbing appears to be ‘business as usual’ for these people, so no wonder Battistelli can relate. He seems to be bringing in old buddies to serve as colleagues, expanding his ‘protection’ circle. Battistelli also covers up Topić’s past.

Assuming we are seeing corruption brought into the EPO, which is supposed to have higher standard than Croatia’s, we need to speak out. Judging by the media, the EPO is spreading monopolies of broader scope (e.g. software patents) to the UK and Ireland. Consider last week’s report about the patent court:

Local division of Unified Patent Court will hear intellectual property disputes

[...]

The European Commission has proposed the establishment of a “seamless, integrated single market for intellectual property rights”, which will also include the establishment of a unitary patent for Europe.

This serves multinational corporations, not local companies which will mostly be sued by foreign giants and perhaps even patent trolls. █

Cyberattacks on SUEPO Server Raise More Questions

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

World Cyber Games 2004

Summary: Several sites that are critical of the EPO’s management seem to have become prominent targets of ‘script kiddies’

Cyberattacks are a tricky thing to tackle. Systems analysis is hard because of the topology of the Internet (hopping possible, no fixed addresses, etc.) and administrations know the absolute limitations because other than pattern spotting not much can be done, especially when it comes to spotting the source of such attacks in a world full of zombies, botnets, and other consequences of back doors in Internet-connected proprietary software.

Last year our multi-layer servers infrastructure came under attacks which targeted both Tux Machines and Techrights. It started around the same time we published the EPO revelations, so when the webhost asked me if I could think of anyone who had the motivation to attack I said that I could think of nothing except the EPO series (although I was very hesitant to assume the EPO would resort to such attacks). These attacks lasted several months, often coinciding or intensifying with our release of EPO-related documents. Tux Machines does not have enemies because it mostly syndicates news.

“Maybe all these attacks are just a mere coincidence without correlation, but the fact remain that many critics of The EPO’s Vice-President Željko Topić suffer one way or another.”Several months went by and another Web site critical of the EPO (especially the Vice-President, Željko Topić) said it had been cracked. Weeks later we learned that another such site, also critical of the EPO’s Vice-President, feared retribution and decided to delete documents relating to the EPO Vice-President (knowing that he not only berates but also bullies his critics using lawsuits and apparent requests for removal/apology). Last week we learned that SUEPO, which is the staff union of the EPO (known for criticism of the EPO’s notorious Vice-President), had been “cracked” based on some sources. That claim may not have been accurate because based on the following text, which appeared yesterday on the SUEPO Web site, it was a DDOS attack combined with/related to brute-force cracking attempts. “We don’t have any more details beyond this,” told us the source who passed us the following text (statement from SUEPO):

“The SUEPO websites were unreachable on Thursday 5 February 2015 because of a cyber attack (of the Denial of Service type). The attackers also attempted an SSH brute-force attack to take control of the server. Such attacks constitute a violation of law and SUEPO has filed criminal charges against unknown and will cooperate with the German and Dutch authorities, who are now investigating the matter.”

Some comments (scroll down) in IPKat say that many of the offending addresses are in Belgium, but many are also in east Asia.

On Sunday we published an important batch of documents about the EPO's notorious Vice-President, whereupon over 50,000 cracking/login attempts were made in just 15 hours, bringing the site down for periods of time. This is not normal. Remember that when the EPO’s management does not waste money 'planting' articles in the media and bullying staff it is paying a Stasi-like unit to conduct surveillance on staff. Such units have no ethics whatsoever, so consider what they’re after (e.g. harvesting of IP addresses).

Maybe all these attacks are just a mere coincidence without correlation, but the fact remain that many critics of The EPO’s Vice-President Željko Topić suffer one way or another. We are not going to be intimidated by legal threats or technical sabotage and as a result of these recent events we are encouraged to actually speed up release of incriminating/damaging documents, irrespective of who’s behind these attacks. █

Microsoft’s Mole Strategy Against Free Software Spreads OOXML, Surveillance, Other Malice to the Real, Potent Alternatives

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Microsoft Trojan horse spreads ‘diseases’ like OOXML

Trojan

Summary: Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) is being disrupted by Microsoft from the inside, using the same people who used to openly attack FOSS and now keep a lower profile

TECHRIGTHS is distrubed (albeit not entirely surprised) to see that some people still fall for the “Microsoft loves Linux” (or FOSS) nonsense, which has become a hallmark of Microsoft's latest strategy against FOSS. There are many names for such a strategy. “Killing With Kindness” is one such names and it is often used in foreign policy by the occupier (or an occupying army).

“This is an assault disguised as love.”Last night a reader called iophk showed us more of Microsoft’s (strong NSA ally) ambitions to grab hold of people’s RAM, CPU etc., not just software and data. Microsoft is “pushing lock-in on the files themselves, not just their encoding format,” wrote iophk, sharing this report about Bing bribes (Microsoft has offered many bribes to promote Bing over the years). They are trying to get more data stuck in OOXML, which Microsoft bribed and corrupted officials for. There is no altruism here, only crime.

Doug Mahugh, who was part of these crimes for OOXML (we wrote a lot about him around 7 years ago), is now “Lead Technical Evangelist @ Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.” (a Microsoft proxy and mole inside FOSS) based on his Twitter profile. So the same crooks who spent years attacking FOSS are now in “Microsoft Open Technologies”, eh? Watch this timeline of tweets of his. See how Mahugh is promoting the infamous “embrace and extend” of FOSS in various projects, including in Moodle. This is an assault disguised as love. The goal of infiltrating Moodle, for example, is to make teachers and children dependent on OOXML since a relatively young ago. If these teachers and children turn to Google they will at least use OpenDocument Format (ODF), which Google and Android have begun embracing.

Speaking of infiltrations, Cyanogen is a rogue company that is now used by disruptors of Android other than itself, not just Facebook and Nokia but also Amazon, which has disrupted Android since many managers from Microsoft joined its Kindle division (we covered this years ago). Cyanogen is now acting like a Microsoft proxy and one new report says:

Cyanogen, the startup behind the popular aftermarket firmware CyanogenMod, is reportedly seeking investors that are willing to bet on it wresting control of Android from Google.

Rumours have been circulating for months that Yahoo, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft may be keen on taking a stake in Cyanogen. More recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft was interesting in participating in a $70m funding round that would value Cyanogen at hundreds of millions of dollars, following two rounds last year in which it raised a total of $30m.

Now, a report in Recode has added fuel to the fire, with the publication’s sources saying Cyanogen has talked to “a broad range of companies,” including both Amazon and Microsoft, as it seeks to establish an Android ecosystem that’s not controlled by Google.

Also distrurbing is what happens to Raspberry Pi. In response to what someone wrote about Microsoft influence in Raspberry Pi the official Twitter account pf Raspberry Pi offered nothing but insults and sarcasm, not true reassurance that Microsoft has no influence in Raspberry Pi (foundation) after months of collaboration (and most likely payments). █

“We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger….If you’re going to kill someone, there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.”

–Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s Platform Group Vice President

Microsoft Back Door in Windows (All Versions) Intentionally Left Open For Over a Year, Existed for 15 Years

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Servers at 9:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: It has become more obvious that Windows back doors are there by design (or knowingly left there by intention) even after Snowden’s NSA leaks

THERE ARE SOME corporate media reports about Microsoft patches, but few realise the significance of it. Microsoft tells the NSA about unpatched holes in Windows and other Microsoft software, which is the equivalent of giving the NSA back door access.

As we noted some weeks ago, evidence shows that Microsoft doesn't care about security and it is evidently the same with Apple. They both sat on known flaws that were critical for longer than 3 months, refusing to patch them. Both proprietary software companies, which together command the lion’s share of laptop and desktop operating systems, simply refused to close back doors and only decided to do something at the very belated end because the public finally knew about them (Google let is be known).

“Both proprietary software companies, which together command the lion’s share of laptop and desktop operating systems, simply refused to close back doors and only decided to do something at the very belated end because the public finally knew about them (Google let is be known).”Dan Goodin, who typically spends his ‘journalism’ career bashing Free software over security, has finally decided to shift some focus and write about a massive Windows flaw. It’s a major one, no doubt; But no name, no “branding”…

In Goodin’s own words:

Microsoft just patched a 15-year-old bug that in some cases allows attackers to take complete control of PCs running all supported versions of Windows. The critical vulnerability will remain unpatched in Windows Server 2003, leaving that version wide open for the remaining five months Microsoft pledged to continue supporting it.

The flaw, which took Microsoft more than 12 months to fix, affects all users who connect to business, corporate, or government networks using the Active Directory service. The database is built into Windows and acts as a combination traffic cop and security guard, granting specific privileges to authorized users and mapping where on a local network various resources are available. The bug—which Microsoft classifies as MS15-011 and the researcher who first reported it calls Jasbug—allows attackers who are in a position to monitor traffic passing between the user and the Active Directory network to launch a man-in-the-middle exploit that executes malicious code on vulnerable machines.

The significant part is in the second paragraph above (“took Microsoft more than 12 months to fix”). We can interpret that as saying that the hole, which NSA used for over a year for back door access (because Mirosoft told the NSA about it), is finally being acknowledged to the public. Therein lies the ‘magic’ of proprietary software. Is the NSA now ‘done’ cracking all the world’s networks that have Windows in them? Is it now ‘safe’ to finally close this back door?

Microsoft Windows is an utter joke when it comes to security, as Microsoft’s own actions serve to show. Back doors surely look like the goal, not an error. Windows was recently used to crack Sony years after the NSA had cracked North Korea’s network. Those who knowingly used an operating system with back doors can’t blame anyone other than themselves and perhaps Microsoft/NSA. Misplaced blame these days typically names China, Russia, or North Korea.

Remember that Microsoft leaves security holes open/in fact anyway, no matter if versions of Windows are supported or not (upgrades are neither simple nor free). As Goodin’s former employer puts it:

What happens six months from now, on 14 July? That’s the date Microsoft issues its last security fix ever for Window Server 2003 – the end of extended support from the server operating system’s maker.

The article states that many servers will basically be left with permanent back doors. Many of them contain customers’ (or patients’) data.

As Robert Pogson put it, “Server 2003, which is due to go without support this summer won’t be fixed for a recent Patch Tuesday revelation of a vulnerability built-in by design a decade ago and impossible to fix without breaking everything…”

He concludes correctly: “Maybe it’s time people switched to GNU/Linux, an operating system not designed by salesmen. It’s not perfect but at least the bugs are fixable.”

Yes, even bugs with special names, logos, and “branding” — those that the corporate media loves to hype up. █

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