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06.06.15

How Microsoft Squashed Free/Open Source Software in Voting Systems in the United States

Posted in America, Free/Libre Software, Windows at 6:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Insecure-by-design systems a misfit in any democracy

Voter

Summary: Microsoft is interfering with efforts to put Free/Open Source software in voting machines, ensuring that these machines continue to have back doors (Windows)

THE presence of Microsoft lobbyists is global/universal. We recently wrote about how Microsoft had successfully squashed Free/Open Source software-leaning rules in India, just like in Chile last year. Microsoft lobbying was done also by proxy and in the UK we found out that Microsoft was blackmailing British politicians, as recently as weeks ago. Microsoft is just a bully like that. Given its influence in the United States government, we expect much of the same in the US, if not more and worse.

“Microsoft lobbying in this area is a scarcely explored topic.”Microsoft wages war on politics in all sorts of ways, sometimes through lobbyists, sometimes through ‘former’ staff, pseudo ‘charities’ like the Gates Foundation, and pressure groups like the Business Software Alliance.

Today we present information given to us courtesy of the California Association of Voting Officials. They complain about Microsoft lobbyists and they have expressed an interest in aligning for global issues, for they too realise that Microsoft cannot be ignored if society wants fair elections and ultimately pursues voting machinery that can be trusted.

Microsoft lobbying in this area is a scarcely explored topic. There is very little information about it out there, hence we hardly ever covered the topic. It is widely known, however, that voting machines in the US use Windows, which has back doors and therefore can never be trusted, with or without tampering by a human operator. Putting Windows in voting machines gives plenty of leeway for mischief, especially by those with simpler access to the back doors. Consider, for instance, how Korean spies (the KCIA) famously meddled in South Korea’s elections.

At the early stages of research for the article we were trying to see or at least understand the relation Microsoft lobbyists have to voting machines. We have hardly heard of that before. There is a lot to it other than today’s proposed solutions being “open source”, which is probably where Microsoft lobbyists come in. Somehow, despite public will to induce transparency, accountability, audits etc. on the process, decades later we are still so heavily dependent on a proprietary, secretive system (or set thereof). Politics being determined by such a system (secret formula) won’t inspire public confidence. It breeds abuse and corruption and leads to reminiscing of the events in Florida 15 years ago (when George Bush got ‘elected’).

“We put open source language into voting system legislation,” told us someone from the California Association of Voting Officials, “and the Microsoft lobbyists have it removed.

“This must be stopped as OS voting systems are a preferred security environment for vote tabulation… the alternative being Diebold/ Dominion / Microsoft etc.”

We asked for additional information so that we can present it in an article, specifying what they have done and who has done it. Here is what we got:

The head attorneys for President Obama’s election report ( which omitted open source voting system solutions even though the information was gifted to them ) work for firms that lobby and / or represent Microsoft / Bob Bauer of Perkins Coie and Ben Ginsburg of Pattons Boggs /Jones Day

http://electionlawblog.org/?p=50792

Nate Persily was tasked with presenting the President with all information.. but inexplicably failed to include any reference to open source in the report. When asked about this omission – and possible steps to remedy ( addendum etc ) Persily went silent.

No members of the Presidential Committee were responsive..

In California — which is the frontline of the battle for open source voting systems in the USA — the lobbyist for the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials
Barry Brokaw- http://sacramentoadvocates.com/brokaw.html is also the lobbyist for Microsoft . –This may explain why the CACEO has been blocking efforts toward publicly owned General Public License voting system in California

US congressman Rush Holt’s bill 811 https://votingmatters.wordpress.com/from-rep-rush-holts-website-about-hr-811/ had open source included .. but it was mysteriously taken out – apparently at the direction of MS lobbyists and Verified Voting . Verified Voting is headed by David Dill – a Stanford Professor with Silicon Valley / Microsoft ties .. Verified Voting also employs Sarah Grootius Vilms from Patton Boggs as a lobbyist

A few days ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced she was filing a lawsuit in Ohio to challenge their voting laws .. but her legal team is again led by attorneys from Perkins Coie — and there was no mention of tabulation or software. We have again contacted them to request their attention to that part of proper election reform

Also a bit more of the story– There is a group called OSET ( Open Source Election Technology ) that is attempting to sell bogus software that is NOT open source as it purports to be.. per the Open Source Initiative standards,, They call it ‘ open Public license “– It is ” open -washing ” and very dangerous — They are trying to sell it to US jurisdictions

Mitch Kapor is the owner of OSET — He previously owned Lotus – KC Brandscomb was Mitch Kapor’s CEO at Lotus — and is married to IDEO’s Kelly IDEO recently received a 15 million dollar sole source contract from Los Angeles County , CA for a design that Alan Dechert and Open Voting Consortium gifted L.A. for free years back ( a ballot printing system.)

KC’s brother Harvie is now heading up efforts toward election reform in Colorado– Colorado is going toward a uniform system . and Harvie would appreciate OSET ” kinda sorta ” OS being used.. especially since Colorado is being heralded as the model by CA

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/06/10/213266/index.htm

This is “all public info,” explained our source, but “attribution should be given to the California Association of Voting Officials — not for the information provided — but rather for our efforts toward open source voting solutions.”

We have meanwhile noticed new efforts to exclude Free/Open Source “In Many Situations” [1], based on Wikileaks’ disclosure of the TISA Agreement (in current form). Forbes has just explained that it is “clearly something that the many lobbyists from the likes of Microsoft will have wanted to see included.” [2]

“Legislative capture via government mandates would be great,” explained our source, “but that is the holy grail and not presently considered achievable in the USA, so this is no shock. Secret agreements are certainly bad though.”

If any of our readers are aware of Microsoft intervention in Free/Open Source voting legislation in any other country, please let us know. It is almost definitely done elsewhere, but finding evidence of it is the hard part. Mirosoft itself has been rigging votes, not just voting systems. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. TISA Agreement Might Outlaw Governments From Mandating Open Source Software In Many Situations

    Now, this is nowhere near complete — it is “bracketed text” which is still being negotiated, and Colombia already opposes the text. Also, some may argue that the second bullet point, which says it only applies to “mass market” software and not “critical infrastructure” software solves some of these issues. Finally, some might argue that this is reasonable if looked at from the standpoint of a commercial provider of proprietary software, who doesn’t want to have to cough up its source code to a government just to win a grant.

    But, if that language stays, it seems likely that any government that ratifies the agreement could not then do something like mandate governments use open source office products. And that should be a choice those governments can make, if they feel that open source software is worth promoting and provides better security, reliability and/or cost effectiveness when compared to proprietary software. That seems tremendously problematic, unless you’re Microsoft.

  2. Leaked Draft Trade Agreement Could Threaten Open Source Deployment

    But another section also caught my eye, and indeed it seems that it could make things very difficult for governments that are prioritizing open source.

    The offending paragraph, proposed by Japan, reads: “No Party may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition of providing services related to such software in its territory.”

    This is clarified with: “For purposes of this Article, software subject to paragraph 1 is limited to mass-market software, and does not include software used for critical infrastructure.”

    This certainly makes some sort of sense. It means countries can’t require companies based abroad to hand over their source code, and is clearly something that the many lobbyists from the likes of Microsoft will have wanted to see included.

EPO and Administrative Council Stall Criticism by Pretending to Negotiate With Staff Whilst Actually Attacking It

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The goal of censoring critics

Benoit Battistelli

Summary: Benoît Battistelli and his ilk are not actually interested in making changes, only in silencing their critics

AT THE increasingly disgraced EPO, not much publicly happened in the month of May (and much of the prior month) because staff representatives tried a more diplomatic approach, assuming (quite wrongly) that EPO management would accept and formally recognise staff participation in decision making, workers’ rights, etc. Things may be just about to explode again because the staff aren’t having/tolerating any of the management’s pretenses of concessions, especially not when the management preys on staff and European media. The EPO seems to have opted for delaying tactics (giving the impression of negotiation) while nasty, shady, and privatised (state-connected) spies stab staff in the back.

Many IP addresses are being blocked this week due to DDOS attacks on Techrights; we have reasons for assuming it’s related to EPO coverage (we have a lot more coming about EPO management), for reasons we explained before [1, 2, 3, 4].

According to SUEPO’s site: “The last tri-partite meeting (Administrative Council/Office/Unions) on Union recognition took place on 28 May. Neither the Office nor the Administrative Council (AC) have given any indication that they intend to involve SUEPO in any form of serious collective bargaining.

“The EPO also refuses to stop investigations against staff and union representatives launched during the talks on unions recognition.”

Here is the statement issued in PDF form:

Unions Recognition Talks

going nowhere as slowly as possible

The last tri-partite meeting (Administrative Council + Office + Unions) on Union recognition took place on 28 May.

As was foreseeable from the talks during the two preparatory meetings between the Unions and the Administration (Office), the EPO refuses:

- to stop investigations against staff and union representatives launched during the talks on unions recognition;
- to accept basic principles for (mandatory) dispute resolution in case of disagreement between management and unions, or non-compliance with agreements signed;
- to provide unions with the minimal resources needed;
- to revisit urgently recently introduced reforms (Careers & Performance management, Sick leave & invalidity);
- to apply best practices (in spite of statements to the contrary by Mr Kongstad in the kick-off meeting);

Meanwhile, neither the Office nor the Administrative Council (AC) have given any indication that they intend to involve SUEPO in any form of serious collective bargaining.

Neither Mr Battistelli nor Mr Kongstad (Council Chairman) is serious about recognizing Unions as social partners. Sweet talk and communication spins cannot hide the truth, which is: their alleged overture towards unions is nothing but a disingenuous fig leaf to buy time and favour with the AC delegations.

In these circumstances, time has come to reassert unambiguously the claims granted by the Dutch Court of Appeal in its ruling of 17 February 2015, and fight for proper means of enforcement which, if proven unavailable, will place all the member states under liability for violation of fundamental rights.

SUEPO Central

Why is the EPO’s management being given the benefit of the doubt, especially given its appalling track record? This management is not only disliked by staff (many of whom go on strike), but also patent practitioners, such as patent lawyers. As IP Kat put it yesterday: “European Inventor Award survey… Award is not viewed as a particularly useful or attractive event by a large proportion of people who spend their time and practise their skills in the social media’s IP space.” (context here)

IP Kat also wrote about patent reform in Europe, noting: “Following an update by Margot Fröhlinger (Principal Director, EPO) on the unitary patent and unified patent court, the EPLIT meeting turned to issues concerning the draft Rules on the European Patent Litigation Certificate, the unclear and potentially unfair rules on “grandfathering” of practitioners without litigation certificates in the representation of clients before the new courts, the assessment of court fees based on the estimated value of the litigation [to this Kat, such an assessment sounds like a perfect recipe for a headache], the recoverability of costs and the training of technically qualified judges.”

Nowadays, the media, politicians, many of the patent practitioners, patent examiners and obviously scientists are all upset at the EPO. Why would anyone still give Benoît Battistelli and his ilk another chance? It is a waste of time and it gives these thugs an opportunity to silently attack the opposition while everything looks calm. There is a very rogue element at the top and it needs to be eliminated; compromises don’t lead anywhere because Battistelli isn’t man of compromise (he threatened to resign over this very idea). █

EPO Officially Confirms That It Specifically Hired Control Risks Group (CRG) to Spy on Journalists and Their Sources

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) article
Previous article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, regarding Benoît Battistelli and EPO suicides

Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) acknowledges when asked by the German media that it has hired a military-connected privatised spying giant

WE NOW know that it was John Martin’s department which made the decision to relay taxpayers’ money to notorious London-based spies (attacking journalism). British embezzlement? This funneling of funds should prove controversial at the very least. The EPO is now bullying critics, including the media.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote about the EPO before. It again mentioned the latest scandal the other day. Now we have the collection of translations [PDF]. Here it is in English:

Crisis management experts are snooping around the EPO

The European Patent Office has hired the private “global risk consultants” Control Risks to deal with allegations of mobbing. At the same time, it is the process of conducting talks with staff unions aimed at restoring “social peace”.

Munich, 1st June 2015. For a number of weeks now, opposing parties at the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich have attempted to engage in a “social dialogue”.

On the one hand, there is the EPO President Benoît Battistelli, a Frenchman who is said to be characterised by an autocratic leadership style; on the other hand, there are the staff union officials who hope to finally achieve recognition within the European organization which has 38 member states and enjoys immunity due to its supranational character.

In April, Battistelli and the Administrative Council of the EPO met with staff members represented by the Staff Union (IGEPA/SUEPO). After initially breaking the ice, they agreed to continue talks in order to arrive at a consensus (as reported in the FAZ on 25 April).

But storm clouds appear to be gathering on the horizon again. Shortly after this historical meeting which ended on such a hopeful note, some strangers called at the Patent Office beside the Isar and started to take a closer look. These were representatives of a British company called Control Risks Group (CRG). Control Risks is a privately held company which describes itself as “a global risk consultancy”. It offers advice on economic risks and assists companies, organisations and governments with the analysis of political risks and security solutions and supports managements in the elimination of operational risks. CRG is supposed to help the Internal Audit department of the EPO with the investigation of allegations of mobbing.

The services of these British experts are also very much in demand in situations such as those encountered in Third World countries which involve dealing with problems that cannot be easily resolved using conventional means. Control Risks has even made a name for itself in Germany. It is said to be the company that allegedly spied on journalists on behalf of Deutsche Telekom in order to identify contact persons inside the company who were involved in leaking information to external parties.

“The selection of CRG by the competent department was made in the course of a procurement procedure,” said a spokesman for the EPO. The competent department was the Internal Audit and Oversight department of the EPO whose Director is Mr. John Martin.

It was confirmed that only this department and not the President was involved in the decision. As part of the reforms introduced by Battistelli who assumed office in 2010, an internal investigation unit which operates in a substantially independent manner to protect its staff was established [as part of the Internal Audit and Oversight department].

In 2014, the Internal Audit department dealt with 68 complaints, for example cases involving mobbing, bullying, employment law violations or other misconduct by staff out of a workforce of 4,300 employees.

Although the number of complaints declined by 23 percent compared to 2013, Mr. Martin justified the move [to hire external investigators] as follows: “Because the EPO Investigative Unit is rather small in terms of staffing, we need to be able to contract external companies to support our fact-finding enquiries.”

However, the fact that it was Control Risks which was selected has – to put it mildlycaused “indigestion” in some quarters inside the EPO. It is referred to as an “unfortunate choice”. And the targeting of staff representatives as the subject of investigations into mobbing allegations is hardly considered to be conducive to a good atmosphere for talks between the President and staff unions.

According to what can be heard from staff, the overall effect of these developments is undermine the efforts to establish a social dialogue. On the other hand, the EPO tries to emphasise that, strictly speaking, the investigations into staff complaints are not connected with the current process of dialogue. And it was keen to point out that the second round of talks with Battistelli, the Chairman of the Administrative Council, Jesper Kongstad and staff unions SUEPO (Munich) and FFPE-EPO (representing the branch at The Hague) had not suffered any unsustainable damage last Thursday. The topic of surveillance did indeed come up on the agenda according to reports but the sense of outrage remained within bounds unlike the demonstrations in recent years against the President’s reform plans which by EPO standards were perceived as radical.

The goal remains to lay the foundations by September for an agreement according to which the trade unions will not only be formally recognized as representatives of staff at the EPO. They also want to be involved in the reform processes such as those relating to a performance-based reporting system for employees and the oversight of sick leave and other absences which are conspicuously high at the EPO. As these reform measures have already been introduced, the staff representatives doubt whether Battistelli is really serious about achieving a social consensus. Against this background, the timetable which has been set seems ambitious – and the decision to hire experienced “crisis management assistance” counterproductive.

We have a lot more coming about Control Risks, including their role in spying on Techrights. █

06.05.15

Links 5/6/2015: Linux on ATMs, TISA Agreement Leak

Posted in News Roundup at 11:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source? HP Enterprise will be all-in, post split, says CTO

    Speaking at the HP Discover conference in Las Vegas this week, CTO Martin Fink said open source will be central to how HP’s enterprise incarnation conducts its business.

    “We have taken this very, very seriously and we are all-in on the notion of open source,” Fink said, adding that even game-changing big bets like the Machine will be backed by open source software.

    [...]

    To prove it, on Wednesday HP announced Grommet, a new user interface framework that’s specifically tailored for enterprise applications and that HP has released under the Apache License.

  • How telecoms can escape vendor lock-in with open source NFV

    The problem: As mobile devices continue to proliferate, the Internet of Things keeps growing immensely, and more users and new data are pushed across telecom networks every day, network operators must invest in expanded facilities. The revenue from mobile applications is tied to number of devices/consumers not amount of data consumed. As time goes on, average revenue per user will remain flat or even decrease as data demand will increase significantly over time.

  • TISA Agreement Might Outlaw Governments From Mandating Open Source Software In Many Situations

    Now, this is nowhere near complete — it is “bracketed text” which is still being negotiated, and Colombia already opposes the text. Also, some may argue that the second bullet point, which says it only applies to “mass market” software and not “critical infrastructure” software solves some of these issues. Finally, some might argue that this is reasonable if looked at from the standpoint of a commercial provider of proprietary software, who doesn’t want to have to cough up its source code to a government just to win a grant.

    But, if that language stays, it seems likely that any government that ratifies the agreement could not then do something like mandate governments use open source office products. And that should be a choice those governments can make, if they feel that open source software is worth promoting and provides better security, reliability and/or cost effectiveness when compared to proprietary software. That seems tremendously problematic, unless you’re Microsoft.

  • Airbnb announces Aerosolve, an open-source machine learning software package

    The new tool, announced at Airbnb’s 2015 OpenAir developer conference in San Francisco, powers new pricing tips for hosts, which was also announced today. Written mostly in the Java and Scala programming languages, Aerosolve can also more intelligently rank and order things like images.

  • HP reveals Grommet open source app development framework

    Martin Fink, HP’s chief technology officer, revealed Grommet in a keynote speech at HP’s Discover conference in Las Vegas, explaining the framework will be available to everyone looking to create consistent user experiences in enterprise apps.

  • Stream processing, for dummies

    DataTorrent will be making it RTS core engine available under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

    The firm is a player in the real-time big data analytics market.

    It is also the creator of a unified ‘stream and batch processing’ platform.

  • Angry redditors rally to stop SourceForge’s mirror service

    SourceForge has been in the news a lot lately, and not for positive reasons. Angry redditors are rallying to encourage the mirror providers of SourceForge to stop supporting the site.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Apache OpenOffice versus LibreOffice

      Following yesterday’s LibreOffice report for 2014, comes another interesting report from Document Foundation members Barend Jonkers and Cor Nouws comparing the features of LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The 60-page report “focuses on areas as feasibility, smart use, quality and improvements, localization and more.” It makes clear that LibreOffice has undergone massive improvements as compared to OpenOffice.

  • BSD

    • DragonFlyBSD Moves Ahead With Updating Their Radeon DRM Graphics Driver

      DragonFlyBSD and other BSD distributions porting the Linux DRM drivers are still several major releases behind the upstream kernel state, but at least they’re making progress for those wishing to use the open-source drivers as an alternative to the prominent BSD display driver: the NVIDIA BSD proprietary driver that’s of high quality and on par with the Windows and Linux NVIDIA drivers.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Octave 4.0.0 Released

      The Octave developers are pleased to announce a major new release of GNU Octave, version 4.0.0.

    • MediaGoblin 0.8.0: A Gallery of Fine Creatures

      We’re excited to announce that MediaGoblin 0.8.0, “A Gallery of Fine Creatures”, has been released! The biggest news is that the client to server API (making use of the future federation API) is much improved! That means that users no longer have to depend on a browser to access MediaGoblin.

    • Open Source History: What if GNU and Linux Had Cloned MS-DOS, Not Unix?

      First, let’s run through what actually happened. When Richard Stallman started the GNU project in 1984, he intended from the beginning to write a clone of the Unix operating system. He explicitly rejected the notion that GNU might instead aim to copy an operating system like MS-DOS. As he wrote in the February 1986 GNU newsletter, platforms like DOS, although “more widely used” than Unix, were “very weak systems, designed for tiny machines.”

    • MediaGoblin 0.8.0 Open Source Media Server Released with Initial Python 3 Support

      Deb Nicholson has had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of a major new release of the open-source media server software MediaGoblin.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Ministry of Defence to build open source analytics platform

      The Ministry of Defence has launched a competition to build an ‘evolutionary’ new open source analytics platform to help it better understand its data.

    • France to boost uptake of free software in government

      France’s public administrations are encouraged to increase their use of free software, announces DISIC, the inter-ministerial Directorate for IT. Public administrations should become active participants in free software development communities, for example by allowing their software engineers to work on free software.

    • Defence body looks for messy data platform

      The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is dipping its toe into the waters of unstructured data with a competition for the development of prototypes for an open source analytics platform.

    • Embrace open source, says Ministry of Defence CIO

      The Ministry of Defence has launched a competition to build an ‘evolutionary’ new open source analytics platform to help it better understand its data, as CIO Mike Stone announced the MoD needs to drop its cautious approach and embrace open source.

  • Licensing

    • 5 Essential Duties of Legal Counsel in an Open Source Compliance Program

      Establishing an Open Source Review Board is one key way that companies can help ensure compliance with open source licenses, community norms and requirements (see the previous article, Why Companies That Use Open Source Need a Compliance Program, for more details.) In larger companies, a typical board is made of representatives from engineering, product teams and legal resources in addition to a Compliance Officer (sometimes called Director of Open Source).

      While FOSS compliance is more of an operational challenge related to execution and scaling than a legal challenge, legal counsel is an essential component of any review board and compliance program. Companies may choose to use internal legal counsel, or utilize external counsel on a fee basis. Regardless of how it’s achieved, there are five essential duties of an open source lawyer to ensure that a company observes all of the copyright notices and satisfies all the license obligations for the FOSS they use in their commercial products.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Beginning software delivery acceleration with DevOps

      Time and time again, we hear of companies achieving rapid acceleration with DevOps. Companies are touting success with the metric of deploys per day, sharing new baselines of 10, 50, or even 100 deploys a day. In more mature organizations, like LinkedIn, Netflix, Etsy, Facebook, and others, this number is a startling 1,000+ number. But, what does this even mean?

Leftovers

  • Security

    • MS Supports SSH, Keeping Up With the Kubuntus & More…

      Hmmm. Yeah, it’s smirk-inducing to see them finally want to join the rest of the world in the SSH department after all these years. But after reading Christine Hall’s article yesterday about our friends in Redmond and their “fox guarding the henhouse” security teams and their affinity for backdoors, you have to wonder, on a privacy level, if this is a good idea. I guess we’ll just have to see.

    • Thursday’s security alerts
    • Assume your GitHub account is hacked, users with weak crypto keys told

      The keys, which allow authorized users to log into public repository accounts belonging to the likes of Spotify, Yandex, and UK government developers, were generated using a buggy pseudo random number generator originally contained in the Debian distribution of Linux. During a 20-month span from 2006 to 2008, the pool of numbers available was so small that it made cracking the secret keys trivial. Almost seven years after Debian maintainers patched the bug and implored users to revoke old keys and regenerate new ones, London-based developer Ben Cartwright-Cox said he discovered the weakness still resided in a statistically significant number of keys used to gain secure shell (SSH) access to GitHub accounts.

    • Why Longer Passphrases are More Secure than Passwords [VIDEO]
    • This Hacked Kids’ Toy Opens Garage Doors in Seconds

      Nortek didn’t immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Another major brand of garage door opener, Genie, didn’t respond to to a request for comment either, but says on its website that its devices use rolling codes. A spokesperson for Chamberlain, the owner of the Liftmaster brand and one of the biggest sellers of garage door openers, initially told WIRED the company hasn’t sold fixed code doors since 1992. But when Kamkar dug up a 2007 manual for a Liftmaster device that seemed to use fixed codes, Chamberlain marketing executive Corey Sorice added that the company has supported and serviced older garage door openers until much more recently. “To the extent there are still operators in the market begin serviced by replacement parts, part of the objective is to get to safer and more secure products,” he said in a phone interview. “We’d love to see people check the safety and security of their [devices] and move forward.”

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Jeremy Corbyn

      The media dismiss any argument outwith the bounds of their narrow, manufactured corporate consensus as marginal and irrelevant. For example, never mind the fact that a clear majority in the UK has for years supported renationalisation of the railways. The very fact of its popular support makes it imperative to the BBC and other corporate media that it must not be voiced. Jeremy is very likely to voice it. Watch as he is carefully marginalised, patronised and excluded.

  • Privacy

    • A Misleading Moment of Celebration for a New Surveillance Program

      The morning after final passage of the USA Freedom Act, while some foes of mass surveillance were celebrating, Thomas Drake sounded decidedly glum. The new law, he told me, is “a new spy program.” It restarts some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and further codifies systematic violations of Fourth Amendment rights.

      Later on Wednesday, here in Oslo as part of a “Stand Up For Truth” tour, Drake warned at a public forum that “national security” has become “the new state religion.” Meanwhile, his Twitter messages were calling the USA Freedom Act an “itty-bitty step” — and a “stop/restart kabuki shell game” that “starts w/ restarting bulk collection of phone records.”

      That downbeat appraisal of the USA Freedom Act should give pause to its celebrants. Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency — and a whistleblower who endured prosecution and faced decades in prison for daring to speak truthfully about NSA activities. He ran afoul of vindictive authorities because he refused to go along with the NSA’s massive surveillance program after 9/11.

    • U.S. spy agency secretly expands warrantless Internet surveillance: report

      The U.S. government has secretly expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless Internet surveillance to search for evidence of what it called “malicious cyberactivity,” The New York Times reported Thursday, citing classified documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

      U.S. Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos in mid-2012 granting its secret approval for the NSA to begin hunting on Internet cables for data allegedly linked to computer intrusions originating abroad, including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the report said.

    • FBI anti-terror official calls on tech firms to ‘prevent encryption above all else’

      The FBI has again waded into the debate around encryption, with the bureau’s assistant director of counterterrorism telling the US congress that tech companies should “prevent encryption above all else”.

    • FBI official: Companies should help us ‘prevent encryption above all else’

      The debate over encryption erupted on Capitol Hill again Wednesday, with an FBI official testifying that law enforcement’s challenge is working with tech companies “to build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else.”

      At first glance the comment from Michael B. Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, might appear to go further than FBI Director James B. Comey. Encryption, a technology widely used to secure digital information by scrambling data so only authorized users can decode it, is “a good thing,” Comey has said, even if he wants the government to have the ability get around it.

    • Breaking news: “Pyrawebs” rejected for good [Espanol/English]

      This afternoon, the Paraguayan Senate voted against a bill that would have mandated internet service providers (ISPs) to store internet communications metadata for one year, thus rejecting the “Pyrawebs” initiative for good. The House of Representatives in Paraguay previously voted against the bill in March before sending it to the Senate for a final decision.

    • A Machine for Keeping Secrets?

      Like any modern zero-day sold on the black market, the Enigma compromise had value only if it remained secret. The stakes were higher, but the basic template of the game—secret compromise, secret exploitation, doom on discovery—continues to be one basic form of the computer security game to this day. The allies went to extraordinary lengths to conceal their compromise of the Enigma, including traps like Operation Mincemeat (planting false papers on a corpse masquerading as a drowned British military officer). The Snowden revelations and other work has revealed the degree to which this game continues, with many millions of taxpayer dollars being spent keeping illicit access to software compromises available to the NSA, GCHQ and all the rest. The first rule is not to reveal success in breaking your enemy’s security by careless action; the compromise efforts that Snowden revealed had, after all, been running for many years before the public became aware of them.

    • Chris Soghoian Q+A: The Next Chapter of Surveillance Reform

      I recently conducted a wide-ranging Q+A with the ACLU’s chief technologist, Chris Soghoian, on a range of topics, from the “fraudulent” nature of the recent debate over Section 215 of the Patriot Act to the dire need for more technological expertise among those tasked with overseeing the Intelligence Community in the 21st Century. Another part of our conversation was particularly relevant to those who worry that the end of bulk telephony metadata collection is the high-water mark for intelligence reform. Our topic: The lack of attention to the fact that much of the US’s massive surveillance infrastructure is used for top secret purposes only loosely related to national security. While US intelligence agencies portray themselves as using their dark talents against ne’er-do-wells, the reality is far different, argues Soghoian. He took particular issue with the NSA and its foreign partners like Britain’s GCHQ, doing things like snooping on the employees of technology businesses in order to exploit their products for espionage purposes.

    • Leaked trade deal stops countries from saying where your data goes

      There’s been a fair share of leaked trade deals raising hackles in recent memory, but the latest could have some big repercussions for your data privacy. WikiLeaks has slipped out details of the in-progress Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), and one of its clauses would prevent the US, European Union and 23 other nations from controlling both where your data is stored as well as whether or not it’s accessible from outside of the country. Germany, for example, couldn’t demand that Facebook and Google store residents’ account information on local servers.

    • Facebook Messenger now lets you send friends a map with your location
    • First Victory for Citizens against Surveillance: French Military Planning Act before Constitutional Court!

      The French Council of State published today its decision to refer of the Question Prioritaire de Constitutionalité (Prioritary Question of Constitutionality1) brought by the FDN Federation, French Data Network and La Quadrature du Net against the article 20 of the 2014-2019 Military Planning Act voted in 2013. This decision is fundamental in the fight against generalised surveillance and the access to connection data by French intelligence services. It takes an important place in the current debates on the French Intelligence Bill.

  • Civil Rights

    • OPM hack: as China blames US for huge cyberattack, new era of cyberwarfare and internet terrorism arrives

      One of the most damaging and intense attacks on the US government ever took place this year. And nobody, even those that had been hit, knew.

      The US government said last night that it had lost control of data held by the Office of Personal Management, which holds information about all of the staff employed by the US government. Nobody knows why, or who, stole it — but that is the reality of modern warfare.

    • Scott Walker: Men Can Sue if a Woman Gets an Abortion, but Women Can’t Sue for Pay Discrimination

      In 2012, Walker repealed Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which put teeth in the state’s anti- wage discrimination laws by allowing women to seek damages in state court. The law was opposed by business lobbies like the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, and by the state senator who drove the law’s repeal, now-Congressman Glenn Grothman, who said the gender wage gap can be explained because “money is more important for men.”

    • Ludicrous Feminism Against Salmond

      That the Tories and Unionist establishment would attempt to land a sexist smear on Alex Salmond for calling a woman a, err, woman, is unsurprising. That they are joined by a number of ludicrous feminists is unsurprising too.

  • DRM

    • Egregious Nonsense Regarding eBook Standards

      That’s the same strategy Microsoft employed when it knocked WordPerfect and Lotus out of their preferred positions thirty years ago, making it possible to seamlessly import documents created under those programs, but making sure that exporting them back again met with less than perfect results. For the last ten years, Microsoft has fought an ongoing battle against the OpenDocument Format (ODF) to try and keep it that way, something I’ve written hundreds of blog posts about here.

      Also like Microsoft, which dramatically reduced updating Office after it wiped out the competition (as it also did with Internet Explorer, after it wiped out Netscape, until it was once again challenged by Firefox), Amazon continues to provide an extremely mediocre presentation of actual books on devices. Only recently has it announced something as basic as new fonts, many years after the initial release of the Kindle. It has, however innovated vigorously and successfully on its family of Kindle devices, in order to win over as many customers as possible to its proprietary platform.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • My Daughter is a Netflix VPN Thief, Media Boss Confesses

        The new boss of Canadian telecoms giant Bell Media has confessed that her own daughter is a “thief”. Speaking at the Canadian Telecom Summit, Mary Ann Turcke says her 15-year-old was using a VPN to access Netflix’s superior U.S. service but she quickly put a stop to it. Netflix could’ve done so earlier, she added, but chose not to.

      • Pirate Bay Block Doesn’t Boost Sales, Research Shows

        New research from Carnegie Mellon University shows that the UK Pirate Bay blockade had no affect on legal consumption. Instead, visitors switched to alternative sites, Pirate Bay mirrors, or started using VPNs. However, the same research also reveals that blocking several major pirate sites at once does boost the use of paid legal services such as Netflix.

06.04.15

The EPO Sinks Deeper in a Scandal After Paying Public Money for Military-Connected Control Risks to Stalk Journalists and Staff

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Benoît Battistelli

Summary: Benoît Battistelli is now attacking the media itself, arrogantly doing so at the expense of the European public

THE EPO‘s management is truly out of touch. It is acting like a bunch of mercenaries or an army-tied contractor right now, hiring thugs with army connections, all working for Control Risks (see the open letter to Control Risks for background). The EPO is, in some regards, even worse than FIFA. At least FIFA didn’t hire goons/thugs to attack messengers.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently wrote about the EPO in Germany and, according to SUEPO, “The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (printable version) reports on the information that the EPO has commissioned the company Control Risks to investigate elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union” (what about the journalists people may be reporting to?).

The Süddeutsche Zeitung, which has also been covering EPO matters for quite a while, wrote about Control Risks. To quote SUEPO, “The Süddeutsche Zeitung comments on the information that the EPO has commissioned the company Control Risks to investigate elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union”

Any translations of these articles would be very much appreciated, if readers could kindly provide them for us to publish in English (for future record).

SUEPO said that “IPKat comments on the information that the EPO has commissioned the company Control Risks to investigate elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union” and the following day it said: “The EPO has issued a communiqué confirming the use of external investigation firms.”

The thugs who run the EPO are mistakenly assuming that the only people capable of speaking to the media are associated with SUEPO. They just use this as an excuse to crack down on SUEPO when in fact people from all parts of the EPO, as well as outside the EPO, have grown tired of the abuse. In an aggressive effort to suppress information the EPO’s management will only motivate more people to speak out. Therein lies the Streisand Effect.

One day later it said: “SUEPO sent an open letter to the company Control Risks which we understand has been commissioned by the EPO to investigate staff members who are elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union.

“We have now received a reply from Nick Allan, Regional Director (Europe & Africa).”

Their policy is just denying their work completely, or not naming their clients altogether (even though it is so obvious, and the EPO’s internal statement already served to confirm the allegations). Here are the contents of the reply:

To:
SUEPO Central Executive Committee
central@suepo.org

To whom it may concern (as your letter was unsigned),

Thank you for your letter. In all cases, our clients’ confidentiality is one of our highest priorities. Therefore, we do not comment on any specific cases and on our potential involvement. If you have any questions pertaining to the EPO, please direct them specifically to the EPO.

In general, I note your concern and would like to reassure you that Control Risks always conducts a due diligence with regard to the work we take on. Our Code of Ethics ensures that our employees always act in an ethical, independent and objective manner.

Sincerely yours,

Nick Allan
Regional Director, Europe & Africa
Control Risks

“Our Code of Ethics” is just marketing, much like their Web site, which hardly even mentions anything about the clients they have (or have had) and what they have done. Based on some articles, this company grossly overcharges for its unethical services, so one can only imagine how much tax money (of Europeans) got sunk into this abuse. The European purse is being misused by Battistelli and his cronies.

Control Risks is a rather evil company. Since they often work for military, mercenaries, etc. it’s not too shocking that they use the cloak of secrecy. SUEPO shows that this ugly firm is actually spying on journalists, not just their sources. To quote a report/summary/overview from SUEPO:

More on Control Risks

SUEPO understands that the company Control Risks has been commissioned by the EPO to investigate staff members who are elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union. The following articles report on the activities of this company:

Spiegel Online, The Dark Side of Power: German Corporate Spying Scandal Widens

“the government agents were [...] interested in the role Control Risks may have played in the Deutsche Telekom wiretapping affair. The scandal has dominated the public debate in the worlds of business, politics and the media for more than two weeks.”

“It is already clear that Telekom also hired Control Risks, which in turn subcontracted some of its assignments to a company called Desa. Desa, which is run by two former informants for the East German secret police, the Stasi, has also completed assignments for other prominent clients.”

“Moreover, it is clear that Control Risks worked for other German corporations, like Lufthansa and Deutsche Post. And, more recently, it was revealed that the two security firms were not the only ones that investigated a journalist from the newspaper Financial Times Deutschland (FTD)”

Spiegel Online, Attack on Customer Data: Lufthansa Admits Spying on Journalist

“[...] news broke that the security firm Control Risks, working for Deutsche Telekom, spied on a journalist from the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.”

The Guardian, Watching the detectives

“But probably the creepiest tale to come out of the investigation is that in 2000 Deutsche Telekom hired a British private security company called Control Risks to get to the bottom of who was behind leaks to Tasso Enzweiler, at the time the chief reporter for Financial Times Deutschland. Control Risks in turn hired Desa Investigation & Risk Protection – a Berlin detective agency set up by two former Stasi agents who worked for a department responsible, among other things, for spying on western journalists – which sent employees to follow Enzweiler around the clock for two weeks.”

Financial Times, From guard dogs and fences to business intelligence

“After making its name in hostage and crisis negotiation through the 1970s, London-based Control Risks has branched out to offer something close to a full risk management service for its clients. It has roughly 700 staff and annual revenues of about $250m and is one of the sector’s bigger players.

Security services in Iraq account for about a third of the company’s turnover, but revenues have been falling of late. Anticipating the decline, Control Risks has been seeking to expand its consultancy and investigation businesses.”

This is, at the very least, inducing the chilling effect, e.g. a bunch of spies (almost a thousand all around the world) stalking journalists in their daily lives. It scares both journalists and sources. It’s an ugly strategy of deterrence and retribution.

“SUEPO understands that the company Control Risks has been commissioned by the EPO to investigate staff members who are elected representatives of the Staff Committee and/or Staff Union,” says the SUEPO Web site.

“The following articles report on the activities of this company:

The more we read about this shady company (Control Risks), the more disgusted we become. They clearly have no “Code of Ethics”, just Code of Surveillance (or Harassment).

European taxpayers (that’s everyone in the European Union) should reach out to local politicians and explain to them how the EPO is wasting public money. The EPO is now rogue, corrupt, and borderline insane (like irrational/paranoid dictatorships). It is behaving as though it has become another branch of organised crime — a fitting analogy as some top staff have a résumé to show for it (not only Željko Topić). There’s no room for truce when the EPO’s management continues to attack. It should be clear who is offensive and who is defensive/reactionary here. Grievances among the staff are very much justified.

Techrights has a lot more coming about this subject. Battistelli is blackening his career each time he makes panicky moves in a desperate effort to gag critics. █

Pretending That Windows is Secure and ‘Open’ Using the ‘Transparency Centre’ Farce

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Security at 10:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system…”

–Dennis Fisher, August 7th, 2008

Summary: Microsoft is trying to redefine what Free/Open Source software means and what it takes for security of software to be assured/audited

THE strategy of Microsoft as of late has been combating Free software by changing what it actually means and then pretending to be it. FOSS Force has a good new article about Microsoft’s completely bogus posturing, intended to battle Free software by pretending that Microsoft’s source code is accessible. We are soon going to show (maybe later today) how Microsoft battled Free/Open Source software in voting, essentially using truly misleading lobbying, entryism, and obfuscation ploys.

As FOSS Force put it, “The Transparency Center concept was meant to allay fears that might cause foreign governments to consider options other than Microsoft (read: Linux and FOSS), by granting them unprecedented access to source code.”

In our latest articles about SSH and Microsoft we countered the claim that Microsoft is ever pursing security. It’s not. Security is not the goal. Read the article from FOSS Force for further details. █

With SSH Keys on Windows the World Will be a Vastly Less Secure Place

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

Summary: Another warning about the grave consequences of putting SSH endpoints on an operating system which is compromised by design

QUITE a few readers (and also pro-Microsoft bullies) have written to us regarding yesterday's article about OpenSSH and Microsoft, the first PRISM company which also uses broken (by design) ciphers to act as passive back doors. Microsoft is losing and is getting left behind, hence it tries to ‘embrace’ the competition. It’s not a good gesture but an effort to entice people into Windows prison, i.e. inherent insecurity. OpenSSH is supposed to be all about security, which Windows is inherently (by design) not compatible with. Does anyone really want to put public and private keys on a machine that is remotely accessible by spies? That’s suicidal for a government, corporation, legal firm, journalist, etc.

“We already know, thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden, that spies in the West are systematically harvesting passwords of systems administrators and then use these to hijack/infiltrate entire networks.”Microsoft promotion sites continue to praise Microsoft, whereas other sites cautiously welcome the move [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. This has been mentioned in various news sites since we first covered it, some Linux-centric ones ones too [1, 2]. In Linux Questions, for example, comments included “welcome microsoft to the year 2000.” Or even: “It was nice having known about you, PuTTY.”

To set the record straight, if we correctly understand Microsoft’s plans (all they are at this stage is just speculative, as there is not even a timetable, let alone any code), there will be increased access by espionage-seeking, power-motivated spies to people’s SSH keys. This will decrease overall security. Windows will be the weakest link. We already know, thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden, that spies in the West are systematically harvesting passwords of systems administrators and then use these to hijack/infiltrate entire networks all around the world. All that Microsoft’s involvement can achieve in this case is an increase in compromised computer networks. Putting SSH keys on Windows is the technical equivalent of putting tanks on rhapsodies (rendering the tanks sinkable). █

‘Stupid’ Scott Horstemeyer is Not Just an Internet Joke But Also a Bully (Updated)

Posted in Patents at 11:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Scott Horstemeyer
Photo source

Summary: Stupid is as stupid does, as Scott Horstemeyer from Atlanta serves to show, trying to silence critics using threats and a frivolous lawsuit

FREE speech requires tolerance towards those whom you don’t agree with. When the EFF calls some patents “stupid” it’s an expression of an opinion or a clear example of free speech. Anyone with some tact can see that it is nothing personal. It is also more objective than subjective because there are yardsticks by which to measure the triviality of a patent. Many patents these days seem like satire (but aren’t).

Scott Horstemeyer, who ‘possess’ (i.e. has his name on) an exceptionally stupid patent has just done something very stupid. Failing to grasp how the Streisand Effect works, he decided to bully EFF staff not only with threats but also with an expensive lawsuit. As Joe Mullin, who researchers trolls, has just put it: “The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been involved in plenty of litigation, but until now, it’s always been the one filing suit—seeking to create change in areas like free speech, copyright, or government surveillance.

“Horstemeyer has done something very stupid here, but given his stupid patent, at least he is consistent.”“Now the EFF finds itself on the other side of the “v.” Scott Horstemeyer, an Atlanta attorney and inventor whose patents were the subject of a monthly EFF feature called “Stupid Patent of the Month,” has sued the advocacy group over an April 30 blog post entitled “Eclipse IP Casts A Shadow Over Innovation.” Horstemeyer also named Daniel Nazer, the EFF lawyer who wrote the post, as a defendant.

“The EFF revealed the lawsuit in a blog post published yesterday afternoon. “We stand by the opinions expressed, and we will defend the lawsuit vigorously,” EFF general counsel Kurt Opsahl told Ars in a brief interview.”

Horstemeyer has done something very stupid here, but given his stupid patent, at least he is consistent. As Mike Masnick put it: “Back at the end of April, the EFF featured a patent held by Horstemeyer in its monthly “Stupid Patent of the Month.” We actually reposted it ourselves. You can go back and read those original posts detailing how and why the patent is stupid. But Horstemeyer isn’t happy. It apparently hurt his feelings for his little patent to be called out among all the stupid patents for extra special treatment. So he had a lawyer send a threat letter claiming that the post included “false, defamatory and malicious statements.””

Judges don’t tend to be totally stupid, so Scott Horstemeyer is unlikely to win this case. He can only avenge by inducing legal fees on the EFF (and himself!). How stupid is that? █

Update (6/6/2015): Horstemeyer has dropped the case.

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