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10.19.16

Addendum: EPO’s Alberto Casado Cerviño, WIPO’s Francis Gurry, and EUIPO’s Archambeau

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Photos taken as part of an IP event which took place in Riga (Latvia) in March 2015

IN the just-published part one of this series we mentioned the connections between Alberto Casado Cerviño of the EPO and various other bodies, including the now-notorious Francis Gurry, who once competed with Battistelli for the same position (both ended up absolutely loathed by their staff).

Some interesting photos are included below which include many of the “usual suspects” such as Casado, Archambeau (formerly EPO, now EUIPO) and Francis Gurry of the WIPO.

A link to a report on the conference (in Latvian) can be found on the homepage of the Latvian IPO. █

Casado:

CASADO with Sandris Laganovskis of Latvian IPO

Archambeau:

ARCHAMBEAU with head of Latvian IPO Laganovskis

ARCHAMBEAU RIGA 2015

CASDAO with ARCHAMBEAU

Gurry:

CASDAO with GURRY of WIPO

GURRY with head of Latvian IPO Laganovskis

Worrisome Connections Between EPO VP2 Alberto Casado Cerviño and Patricia García-Escudero Márquez

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Exploring the potential conflicts of interests implicating the EPO’s Boards of Appeal Committee

TODAY we start a new series about the management of the EPO, or the extended ‘family’ of Battistelli, sometimes known as Team Battistelli or Battistelli’s circle.

Alberto Casado Cerviño is the Vice President of Directorate-General 2 (Operational Support) which is in charge of delivering support for patent administration activities to internal and external users of EPO services, and includes Quality Management, Patent Administration and Information Management.

“The only negative publicity which he has attracted so far within the EPO seems to have been the fact that a number of suicide cases were related to staff in his Directorate-General 2 where Ciaran McGinley (reported to be due to retire shortly) is a Principal Director.”On a day-to-day basis Casado’s role within the EPO is a mostly unobtrusive one and he doesn’t really attract much attention. In fact some people have said that he is almost invisible although he does occasionally appear for management-staff meetings. The only negative publicity which he has attracted so far within the EPO seems to have been the fact that a number of suicide cases were related to staff in his Directorate-General 2 where Ciaran McGinley (reported to be due to retire shortly) is a Principal Director.

But despite his apparently unobtrusive role Casado seems to be a key member of Battistelli’s inner “circle of trust” and is probably relied on to provide important connections to influential circles in Spain.

“Casado’s previous position at the EUIPO in Alicante is worth noting because it underlines the close cross-connections between the upper management of the EPO and the EUIPO (formerly OHIM).”Before joining the EPO, Casado was the Director General of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM). Previously he held the posts of “Expert Consultant” of the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO) and was a Vice-President of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), the EU Trademark Office based in Alicante, which has recently been renamed the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

Casado’s previous position at the EUIPO in Alicante is worth noting because it underlines the close cross-connections between the upper management of the EPO and the EUIPO (formerly OHIM). The current Executive Director of the EUIPO is Antonio Campinos who is rumoured to be interested in the position of EPO President and has been touted as a potential successor to Battistelli. Campinos’ deputy is Christian Archambeau who previously worked at the EPO as Director of Personnel (2002-2010) which is the position currently occupied by Madame Bergot. We wrote about this before.

“Campinos’ deputy is Christian Archambeau who previously worked at the EPO as Director of Personnel (2002-2010) which is the position currently occupied by Madame Bergot.”As previously reported on Techrights [1, 2, 3], the appointment of Casado’s successor as Director General of the OEPM was shrouded in controversy and rumours of procedural irregularities.

The current Director General of the OEPM, Patricia García-Escudero Márquez, is the sister of Pío García-Escudero Márquez (English Wikipedia | Spanish Wikipedia), Count of Badarán, a scion of the Spanish aristocracy and a leading figure in the main conservative party Partido Popular who has been the Chairman of the Spanish Senate since 2011.

With Fair Use arguments (under “criticism”), here are publicly-available photos of Patricia García-Escudero Márquez.

OEPM - Patricia Escudero I

OEPM Patricia Escudero III

OEPM Patricia Garcia Escudero II

In a follow-up article we shall take a closer look at some of the recent Spanish political affairs surrounding the Partido Popular and the role played by Pío García-Escudero Márquez in these matters.

But for the moment let’s get back to Casado whose close connections to the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) deserve a mention.

The UIMP is a public university with administrative headquarters in Madrid and campuses in Santander, Valencia, Barcelona, Cartagena, Cuenca, Granada, Seville and Tenerife. Interestingly not only Casado but also Patricia García-Escudero Márquez, Campinos and Battistelli seem to have close connections to the UIMP and all of them are regular participants in events organised by the University, in particular the Summer IP Seminars which have been jointly organised by the OEPM and the UIMP since around 2006.

Casado is not too private a person. Here he is at a UIMP event.

CASADO at UIMP event

And some more casual photos in the public record.

CASADO I

CASADO II

CASASO III

In July 2011 an IP Seminar under the title “Innovations, Patents and Internationalising Businesses” was chaired by Casado in his role as Director General of the OEPM supported by Patricia García-Escudero in her then role as the Head of the OEPM’s Dissemination, Communication and Support Unit.

Two of the key speakers were Benoît Battistelli (EPO President) and Antonio Campinos (OHIM President). There was also a roundtable discussion moderated by Casado and featuring Campinos and Battistelli.

In July 2014 at the conclusion of one such event Battistelli was awarded with an honorary doctorate by the UIMP. Here is a photograph:

Battistelli UIMP

The latest event entitled “Protecting innovations in Spain: the new Patent Law” was held in July 2016. A video of Battistelli’s contribution can be seen here. Somebody should make a copy of the video before it disappears. For the sake of curation and long-term preservation we are making local copies of the event’s details [PDF] and also a programme from 2011 [PDF] (as referred to above).

“In July 2014 at the conclusion of one such event Battistelli was awarded with an honorary doctorate by the UIMP.”Battistelli is introduced by the current OEPM Director-General Patricia García-Escudero and the third person at the speaker’s table is none other than EPO Vice-President Casado.

Some readers may ask why these connections are of interest.

The answer lies in the recent appointments to the new supervisory body of the EPO Boards of Appeal, the Boards of Appeal Committee or “BOAC” as it is known internally. One of the members of this body is the OEPM Director-General Patricia García-Escudero.

“Based on the connections outlined above we are inclined to think that his favorite “pet chinchilla” on the BOAC is most likely to be Ms. García-Escudero.”Techrights recently reported that Roland Grossenbacher has also been appointed to this body and referred to him in this context as a longtime ally of Battistelli. We are not sure that Battistelli can still rely on Grossenbacher as a loyal ally, based on information received just days ago. Based on the connections outlined above we are inclined to think that his favorite "pet chinchilla" on the BOAC is most likely to be Ms. García-Escudero.

This first part will be followed by an article about recent Spanish political affairs surrounding the Partido Popular and the role played by Pío García-Escudero Márquez (brother of the current OEPM Director General and Casado’s successor). After that we will have a short update about VP4 (Željko Topić), who is effectively Battistelli’s ‘bulldog’ at the EPO (with a notorious and long track record). █

Site’s Infrastructure Under Attack and Upgrades Ahead of Major New Publications

Posted in Site News at 9:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Availability problems have not been self-induced but due to nefarious/suspicious activity

Server lights

Summary: Protections for the Web site have been improved and capacity increased in order to avoid or at least prepare for another week of abusive/spam traffic

WHILE it’s hard to pin-point the culprit, amid several new leaks from the EPO and an important series we have come under a lot of stress and pressure. The server, at times, was unable to cope. Bursts of dodgy traffic even crashed our cache server several times, resulting in disruption not just to Techrights but several other very large sites. It makes our site a liability to the host, which lost some large customers as a result of that. The back end is usually able to cope with many hits (millions per day), so in order to cause all this damage one must be pretty clever (or malicious). We have grown accustomed to server issues, especially at times when major releases of information were in the front page. Several companies out there offer DDOS attacks as a service.

“If I have to stay up until 7AM (same as last week), so be it.”We’ve just completed a series of significant upgrades of our infrastructure (several large servers) in order to better cope with abusive traffic, like the traffic experienced since approximately one week ago. We shall now proceed to publication of another major new series, which took a lot of researching to prepare and will certainly ruffle some feathers at the EPO.

I am paying out of my own pocket for these expensive upgrades. Ideology makes it worth the money and we are not asking for donations as these would only damage the image of the site. The past week’s ordeals (sleepless nights due to server issues, a lot of tinkering and dozens of hours lost to maintenance, not to mention many hours of downtime) only made us ever more eager to expose the abuses at the EPO. We won’t be silenced, no matter the cost. If I have to stay up until 7AM (same as last week), so be it. █

Team Battistelli’s Conspiracy Theory: SUEPO is Behind Everything, EPO Management is Trying to Tell the Media

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The management’s convenient illusion that there are no disgruntled employees, just “SUEPO”

Alex Jones
Becoming as k00ky as Alex Jones now… (photo source)

Summary: Attempts to blame SUEPO, the staff union of the EPO, even though SUEPO has nothing to do with articles that are critical of the EPO while many thousands of EPO employees are disgruntled

THE MANAGEMENT of the EPO has made many enemies. It even encouraged me to write a lot more about the EPO (as I have) when it sent me threatening letters.

Team Battistelli deals with critics in the same way the US government deals with Wikileaks; it just finds a boogeyman (like Russia) and then attacks the messenger relentlessly.

This short post is a brief clarification which is probably necessary as the EPO seems to be misleading the media. The EPO’s Boards of Appeal, according to this, were “celebrating all last night. Don’t know why.”

We can imagine that they too view EPO management as an enemy and who can blame them? Watch the dismissive attitude towards AMBA and the endless attempts to dismiss a judge despite it being against the rules. Regarding SUEPO, another famous victim of Team Battistelli, we have noticed something odd. Last night its Web site had a link to Techrights, but it was totally gone on Wednesday morning with an edit. Someone at SUEPO has basically removed the link to Techrights. We don’t know who did this and why.

Techrights NEVER, as far as it is aware, spoke to anyone from SUEPO, but some people who are members of SUEPO (there are thousands of them) probably speak to us sometimes. Why was the link removed? Fear? Almost for sure. Moreover, it is not unthinkable, given what happened last year (Heise and FOSS Patents censorship), that EPO management had demanded SUEPO that should take down link, whereupon it did without much resistance. That’s just a guess.

Censorship by intimidation at the EPO is a very common routine. They did this to me too, demonstrating that not even outsiders are immune from Eponia’s army.

Earlier today we asked someone (openly in Twitter) who has contacts at SUEPO to ask them if the links to Techrights were in fact removed after pressure from EPO management. We wish to know in order to highlight the modus operandi of Team Battistelli.

“I will ask my contact why Techrights articles have been removed from the SUEPO website,” one anonymous person told us, and “will inform you as soon as I get an answer.”

It didn’t take much time to get an answer, so it’s probably not much of a mystery either. “I’ve heard that the removal of publication is linked to the papers on Kongstad,” the person told is, “since during the Administrative Council’s Jesper whined telling that he was targeted by a smear campaign to which Battistelli immediately answered and took position in favor of him of course to protect him no doubt here. However, since SUEPO has nothing to do with those publications it decided to state it loud and clear. It is a tricky situation but keep in mind that SUEPO always tries to protect their staff and itself as best as possible. There is a serious risk for SUEPO that they immediately try to drag it in the mud. Hope this makes sense for you.”

So the EPO’s management now tries to blame all its ills and abuses on “SUEPO”, even when SUEPO has nothing to do with them and has nothing to do with material that we publish. The EPO’s management has gotten so desperate in its attempt to gag or suppress Techrights. I spoke about it with an insider who agrees. “Exactly,” we were told, “that’s the card they play!”

Well, the EPO must drop its fantasy that SUEPO is behind EVERYTHING! This is totally fictitious. Many thousands of EPO workers are disgruntled and it’s not because of SUEPO but because of their management.

Previously, SUEPO did publicly state that links had been removed due to fear of reprisal, but it did not do this today. When a gag order is part of the censorship (the EPO did this to me, as part of the threatening letters it sent) we know that we’re living in a world like the one envisioned in the book ’1984′.

One reader of ours, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the EPO and is not fluent in reading Danish, attempted to provide us somewhat of a translation of the Danish article. Based on that, Kongstad attempted to shamelessly blame SUEPO. The article started with something along the following lines: “A contact from the central EPO labor union, SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office) rebuffs in a mail to Berlinske that SUEPO is collaborating with the critical Internet blog Techrights.com on harassment against the EPO chairman of the board Jesper Kongstad, who is director for the [Danish] Patent- and Trademark Board. The one in question has according to his own statements been exposed to reprisals from management and therefor wishes not to put their name forth.”

What a nerve those people have, erroneously blaming SUEPO without even a shred of evidence. That’s just how bad things have become at the EPO. No wonder so many people are being wrongly accused. It’s a farce of a system. █

Side note: for those who wonder why our site has been inaccessible or barely accessible this past week, it’s definitely not self-induced error and we are investigating who is behind it and responsible for that. We’ve fought hard for a week just to keep the site online.

Links 19/10/2016: Canonical Livepatch Service, Plasma Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 7:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux-Based Photographic Workflow on Android with Termux

    The title is a bit of a mouthful, but the basic idea is pretty simple; Instead of schlepping around a Linux machine, you can transform an Android device into a lightweight Linux-based platform for organizing, processing, and backing up photos and RAW files when you are on the move. The key ingredient of this solution is the Termux, a small open source app that combines a terminal emulator and a lightweight Linux environment. The app comes with its own software repository that has all the tools you need to set up a simplified photographic workflow. The Linux Photography book explains exactly how to can go about it, but here are a few pointers to get started.

  • Server

    • Demand compels container management vendor Rancher to create partner program
    • Rancher Labs Expands Container-Management Reach With New Partner Program
    • Rancher Labs Introduces Global Partner Network
    • Rancher Labs Launches Partner Program Around Open Source Container Management
    • WTF is a container?

      You can’t go to a developer conference today and not hear about software containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and a bunch of other names with a nautical ring to them. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and everybody else seems to have jumped on this bandwagon in the last year or so, but why is everybody so excited about this stuff?

      To understand why containers are such a big deal, let’s think about physical containers for a moment. The modern shipping industry only works as well as it does because we have standardized on a small set of shipping container sizes. Before the advent of this standard, shipping anything in bulk was a complicated, laborious process. Imagine what a hassle it would be to move some open pallet with smartphones off a ship and onto a truck, for example. Instead of ships that specialize in bringing smartphones from Asia, we can just put them all into containers and know that those will fit on every container ship.

    • Solving Enterprise Monitoring Issues with Prometheus

      Chicago-based ShuttleCloud helps developers import user contacts and email data into their applications through standard API requests. As the venture-backed startup began to acquire more customers, they needed a way to scale system monitoring to meet the terms of their service-level agreements (SLAs). They turned to Prometheus, the open source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud, which is now a project at the Cloud-Native Computing Foundation.

      In advance of Prometheus Day, to be held Nov. 8-9 in Seattle, we talked to Ignacio Carretero, a ShuttleCloud software engineer, about why they chose Prometheus as their monitoring tool and what advice they would give to other small businesses seeking a similar solution.

    • VMware Embraces Kubernetes in Container Push

      VMware is the latest IT vendor to support Kubernetes, the open-source container management system that Google developed.
      VMware announced on Oct. 18 at its VMworld 2016 Europe event that it is now supporting the Kubernetes container management system on the VMware Photon platform.

      Kubernetes is an open-source project that was developed by Google and today benefits from the contributions of a diverse community, including Red Hat and CoreOS. The Kubernetes project became part of the Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in July 2015. The Kubernetes 1.4 release debuted on Sept. 26 with added security features.

      “We have now built a Kubernetes-as-a-service capability into Photon Platform,” Jared Rosoff, chief technologist for cloud native apps at VMware, told eWEEK.

    • CoreOS Expands Kubernetes Control With Redspread Acquisition

      The purchase of container management vendor Redspread is the container startup’s second acquisition.
      CoreOS on Oct. 17 announced the acquisition of privately held container management vendor Redspread. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed.

      Redspread got its start in the Y Combinator cyber accelerator for technology startups and was officially launched in March. Coincidentally, CoreOS was also originally part of Y Combinator, graduating in 2013. To date, CoreOS has raised $48 million in funding to help fuel its container efforts. The acquisition of Redspread is the second acquisition by CoreOS and comes more than two years after CoreOS’ acquisition of quay.io in 2014.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.9 Desktop Launches January 31, 2017, Next LTS Arrives August 2018

        After announcing earlier today, October 18, 2016, the release of the second maintenance update to the KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment, KDE published the release schedule for the upcoming major versions of the project.

      • KDevelop 5.0.2 Open-Source IDE Adds Many UI Improvements, 32-bit Windows Build

        The open-source, cross-platform and free integrated development environment (IDE) software KDevelop has been updated the other day, October 17, 2016, to version 5.0.2.

      • Plasma’s road ahead

        On Monday, KDE’s Plasma team held its traditional kickoff meeting for the new development cycle. We took this opportunity to also look and plan ahead a bit further into the future. In what areas are we lacking, where do we want or need to improve? Where do we want to take Plasma in the next two years?

        Our general direction points towards professional use-cases. We want Plasma to be a solid tool, a reliable work-horse that gets out of the way, allowing to get the job done quickly and elegantly. We want it to be faster and of better quality than the competition.

      • Global Menu Support Is Coming Back to KDE Plasma 5
      • KDE Plasma Looking At Global Menu, Wayland & Mobile For 2017

        KDE Plasma developers talked this week about their plans for the new development cycle and what they want the desktop to look like moving into 2017 and further ahead into 2018.

      • KDE Plasma 5 Desktop to Become a Solid and Reliable Workhorse That Stands Out

        On October 18, 2016, long time KDE software developer Sebastian Kügler published an in-depth story about what’s coming to the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment in the next couple of years.

        It appears that KDE’s Plasma team had their traditional kickoff meeting on Monday, October 17, to discuss the upcoming features of the next KDE Plasma 5 release, which will be versioned 5.9 and whose release schedule has been already published, as reported earlier right here on this space.

        However, the Plasma team also discussed new ways to improve the quality of the popular desktop environment, as well as make it faster, more stable and reliable than existing versions. Their aim is to bring KDE Plasma to an unprecedented level of quality that will blow the competition away.

        “Our general direction points towards professional use-cases. We want Plasma to be a solid tool, a reliable work-horse that gets out of the way, allowing to get the job done quickly and elegantly. We want it to be faster and of better quality than the competition,” said Sebastian Kügler in the blog announcement.

      • Twenty and counting: KDE marks another milestone

        Twenty years ago, a German software developer named Matthias Ettrich kicked off a project to provide Linux users with all the desktop functionality that Windows users had at the time.

        The detailed email inviting participation was sent by Ettrich on 14 October 1996. He outlined his ideas and goals and attracted plenty of interest. The K Desktop Environment project was on its way.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GStreamer Conference 2016 Videos, Vulkan Support Was Among The Talks

        The annual GStreamer Conference took place last week in Berlin alongside the Linux Foundation’s Embedded Linux Conference Europe. The videos from this multimedia open-source conference are now available.

        The folks from Ubicast have once again done a nice job recording all of the presentations from this GStreamer event. Conference talks ranged from the “stage of the union” to the state of VA-API with GStreamer, GStreamer Video Editing, dynamic pipelines, Vulkan, and more.

        When it comes to Vulkan support in GStreamer, there is work underway on vulkansink and vulkanupload elements, basic Vulkan support modeled on GStreamer’s libgstgl API, and more, but much more work is needed before it will be at the level of OpenGL support.

  • Distributions

    • Solus Enables OpenGL 4.5 for Intel Broadwell, MATE Edition Coming Along Nicely

      It’s been a great week for users of the unique and independent Solus operating system, and while you’re waiting impatiently for the Solus 1.2.1 release, we’d like to tell you a little bit about what landed in Solus during the past week.

    • Solus 1.2.1 Officially Released, First MATE Edition Now Available for Download

      Today, October 19, 2016, Softpedia was informed by the Solus Project about the official release and general availability of the long-anticipated Solus 1.2.1 release, along with the first Solus MATE Edition.

    • Solus 1.2.1 Released With Budgie Desktop Updates, Ships RADV Driver

      Version 1.2.1 of the promising Solus Linux distribution is now available and also premieres a MATE edition ISO to complement its original Budgie desktop.

    • Reviews

      • Meet Maui 1, the Slick New Hawaiian Netrunner

        Maui, the Netrunner Kubuntu replacement, is an inviting alternative. It is both new and already accomplished. The developers took a Kubuntu distro that was well-oiled but at the end of its development line to the next level.

        That should make adopting the Maui Linux distro a less risky option. Most other Linux distros are moving in the new direction of Wayland, Systemd and such. Maui’s developers are already there.

        Maui 1 is very stable and easy to use. It is a well-stocked distribution with an established library of KDE software.

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

      • 5 Best Arch Linux Based Linux Distributions

        Arch Linux is a very popular name amongst Linux enthusiasts. It is very popular because it allows the user to tailor-make their linux distro to their taste. Arch Linux provides a solid base for you to work with, while still allowing for expansion and complete customization. ​

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Leap 42.2 Approaching with RC, Meet Maui 1

        The openSUSE project today announced the release of Leap 42.2 Release Candidate 1 with less than one month remaining before final. On the other side of town, Dustin Kirkland announced Ubuntu kernel hotfixes and the Hectic Geek reviewed recently released 16.10. Jack Germain said Maui 1 “is stable and easy to use” and Sebastian Kügler blogged on “Plasma’s road ahead.”

    • Red Hat Family

      • Senior Gains Web Development Experience at Red Hat Internship

        High Point University senior Ryan Long got a taste of his dream career during a web development and design internship at Red Hat in Raleigh.

        Long, an interactive media and game design major and computer science minor from Fort Mill, South Carolina, gained valuable experience with the IT marketing team. He worked with the company’s website, fixing broken links, inserting translations and doing quality assurance. He also provided graphic design assistance and collaborated with the video team for projects that would be incorporated into the website.

      • Video: RHS 2016 – Container Security

        Dan Walsh (of SELinux fame) gave a talk on container security at the recent Red Hat Summit 2016.

      • CLIMB Project Selects Red Hat Ceph Storage to Achieve Their Storage Needs to Support Medical Breakthroughs
      • Red Hat eye from the Ubuntu guy: Fedora – how you doin’?

        Comment Red Hat is the biggest – and one of the oldest – companies in the Linux world, but despite the difficulty of accurately measuring Linux usage figures, Ubuntu and its relatives seem to be the most popular Linux distributions. Red Hat isn’t sitting idle, though. Despite its focus on enterprise software, including virtualisation, storage and Java tools, it’s still aggressively developing its family of distros: RHEL, CentOS and Fedora.

        Fedora is the freebie community-supported version, with a short six-month release cycle, but it’s still important. Although RHEL is the flagship, it’s built from components developed and tested in Fedora. According to Fedora Project Lead Matthew Miller told this year’s Flock to Fedora conference this summer its future looks bright.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Raspberry Pi (2 and 3) support in Fedora 25 Beta!

          So support for the Raspberry Pi in Fedora has been a long time coming and yes, it’s FINALLY here with support landing just in time for Beta!

          The most asked question I’ve had for a number of years is around support of the Raspberry Pi. It’s also something I’ve been working towards for a very long time on my own time. The eagle-eye watchers would have noticed we almost got there with Fedora 24, but I got pipped at the post because I felt it wasn’t quite good enough yet. There were too many minor issues around ease of use.

        • Raspberry Pi Finally Well Supported By Fedora With 25 Beta

          While Fedora has always supported ARM/AArch64 hardware well, they’ve missed out on the whole Raspberry Pi craze even as the ARMv7 hardware has been shipping for a while and there are plenty of Pi-focused Linux distributions out there. With Fedora 25, there’s finally going to be good support for the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 devices.

        • Fedora 25 Linux OS to Officially Offer Support for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 Devices

          Just a few moments ago, Fedora Project proudly announced that support for Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computers is finally coming to the Fedora Linux operating system.

          As you might know, the Beta of the upcoming Fedora 25 operating system has been released, and it brought numerous new GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software projects, including but not limited to Linux kernel 4.8, GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS, and LibreOffice 5.2.2. One thing was missing, though, and that’s support for ARM devices like the popular Raspberry Pi.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Refracta 8.0 – Devuan on a stick

          There are probably some people living in the world today who still haven’t heard of systemd, though I doubt that any of them read DistroWatch. More digital ink has been spilled debating the topic of init systems than any other in techie history. There is probably nothing I can say about systemd that hasn’t already been said, and no argument either for or against it that hasn’t been repeated ad nauseum. So I won’t waste this review seeking converts for The Cause™. I don’t expect the issue to be finally settled until the Sun swells up to become a red giant and evaporates the Earth.

          Geeks determined to resist the systemd juggernaut have several options. For me, the most interesting project is Devuan, a fork of Debian. I will say by way of disclosure that I have downloaded Devuan, installed it, used it for months, and like it. However, it does have a few flaws – the installer in particular needs some more work. The first beta forces you to do a network install that – depending on your Internet connection speed – can take an hour or more. This has defeated curious newbies who decide to give up long before the first boot-up prompt appeared.

          It was my search for a quick and easy way to get Devuan up and running that led me to Refracta, a unique distro that fills a niche that has long been neglected. Refracta’s existence predates the systemd wars – it was originally based on Debian 5.0, otherwise known as “Lenny.” But when Debian 8.0 “Jessie” went full systemd, Refracta moved to the Devuan camp.

          Refracta’s chief selling point is this: it’s a live image that can be quickly installed, customized, and re-installed back to live media again. So basically you can roll your own live CD, configured for your hardware and tweaked to suit your personal tastes. It is currently my favorite distro, and I’d recommend it to any Linux geek who has had a little bit of experience. A total Linux newbie might feel more comfortable with a distro that mimics Windows’ point-and-click friendliness, but once you’ve got the basics down, Refracta is easy to get used to.

          It’s also worth mentioning that even without being installed, a Refracta live CD or USB stick makes an excellent diagnostic and rescue tool. It contains quite a few command line utilities that aren’t in a default Devuan or Debian installation, including gddrescue, testdisk, smartmontools, hdparm, lm-sensors, iftop, and iptraf. I have personally used testdisk to recover data from a crashed hard drive.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 16.10 Review: Not Bad, But if You’re Happy with 16.04 LTS, Stick with it!

            After the previous 16.04 Long Term Release, Ubuntu has rolled out its latest ‘short term’ (my own naming convention for the non-LTS releases) version 16.10. Mainly, the ‘short term’ releases are only supported for 9 months and usually include software applications with their recent updates.

            When you release a new version of your operating system within every 6 months, usually there isn’t a lot of room for adding major changes. And that is the case with many GNU/Linux distributions these days, and Ubuntu 16.10 release is no exception. Since Unity is based on the user application set provided by GNOME desktop environment, according to the release notes, the underlying GNOME user applications have been upgraded to the version 3.20 at least (which is the case with the file manager — ‘files’, for instance) and some others have been upgraded to the version 3.22 which is the latest release of GNOME currently.

          • Canonical Now Offering Live Kernel Patching Services, Free for Up to Three PCs

            Today, October 18, 2016, Canonical informs us, through Dustin Kirkland, about a new interesting feature for Ubuntu Linux, which users can enable on their current installations.

          • Canonical Rolls Out Its Own Kernel Livepatching Service For Ubuntu
          • Canonical enterprise kernel livepatch service, free to Ubuntu community!
          • Hotfix Your Ubuntu Kernels with the Canonical Livepatch Service!

            Ubuntu 16.04 LTS’s 4.4 Linux kernel includes an important new security capability in Ubuntu — the ability to modify the running Linux kernel code, without rebooting, through a mechanism called kernel livepatch.

          • Ubuntu 16.10: Yakkety Yak… Unity 8′s not wack

            Canonical’s Ubuntu 16.10, codenamed “Yakkety Yak”, is nowhere near as chunky an update as 16.04 LTS was earlier this year. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new. In fact, the firm’s second release of the year has quite a few fresh features to hold users over until the bright and shiny future of Unity 8 and Mir arrive some time next year.

            Nevertheless, it’s very odd to have what feels like a smaller update arrive with Ubuntu’s October release, which typically is the more experimental release with tons of new features being tested. This time around that’s not really the case. In what’s become a familiar refrain for Ubuntu, most of the work is happening with the still-not-quite-there Unity 8.

            Ubuntu 16.10 marks the seventh time Unity 8 has not been ready for prime time. While Unity 8 appears to be progressing – judging by developer updates and playing with pre-release versions – it is, at this point, in danger of joining Duke Nukem Forever on the great vaporware list in the sky. Still, take heart Ubuntu fans, just as Duke Nukem Forever did eventually see the light of day, it seems very likely that Unity 8 and Mir will in fact be released eventually. Perhaps even as early as 17.04. Also, I have a bridge for sale, if anyone is interested.

          • LinuxAndUbuntu Review Of Unity 8 Preview In Ubuntu 16.10

            Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak has just been released with quite a few number of new stuff and a first preview of Unity 8 desktop environment. Unity could be installed in Ubuntu 16.04 but it comes with 16.10 pre-installed. Unity 8 has been in development since 2013 and anyone who has seen or used Ubuntu phone will quickly notice the similarities and some major differences.

          • Ubuntu 16.10 targets hybrid cloud deployments, supports Unity 8 development

            Canonical, developer of Ubuntu, a distribution of Linux, released a new version of its software that targets hybrid cloud deployments. Ubuntu is often mentioned as one of the top 3 distributions of Linux when shipments are considered, depending upon which research firm one cites.

          • Ubuntu 16.10 Now Offers More than 500 Snaps, Including VLC 3.0.0 and Krita 3.0.1

            With the release of the Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system, Canonical also had the pleasure of informing the community about the latest status of their Snaps universal binary packages.

          • Canonical Brings Its Ubuntu OpenStack and Ceph Offerings to 64-bit ARM Servers

            Canonical informs Softpedia about their latest collaboration with ARM, the industry’s leading supplier of microprocessor technology, to bring the company’s OpenStack and Ceph offerings to 64-bit ARM-based servers.

          • ARM, Canonical deliver Ubuntu OpenStack, Ceph to 64-bit ARMv8-A platforms
          • Canonical and ARM collaborate on OpenStack

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • NFL Teams Enjoy Giving NFL’s Social Media Policy A Giant, Hilarious Middle Finger, Using Toys

    You’ll recall that we recently commented on the NFL’s new dumb social media policy for its member teams, which outlines how much video content a team can push out as kickoff approaches (less than before), what type of video content from games teams can produce and distribute on their own (basically none), and the size of the fines if teams violate this policy (huuuuuge). The NFL has insisted elsewhere that this one-size-fits-all marketing approach has zilch to do with its precipitous ratings decline, although few believe it on this point. And, even as news of the policy has been released, the NFL itself has been inclined to push out as much of this very same content itself, centralizing its social media media control.

    So, if you’re an NFL team that doesn’t like the new policy and wants to make its fans aware of how silly it is in the most hilarious way possible, what do you do? Well, if you’re the Cleveland Browns and the Philadelphia Eagles, you push out Twitter updates to your followers that depict game highlights using plastic figurines. Here is how the Browns alerted their fans that their team had scored a touchdown.

  • Bill Belichick rants against NFL tablets: ‘I’m done’

    After the image of the New England Patriots coach slamming a Microsoft Surface tablet on the sideline in a Week 4 game against the Buffalo Bills went viral, Belichick explained Tuesday why he is fed up with the product.

  • Science

    • What is deep learning, and why should you care about it?

      Whether it’s Google’s headline-grabbing DeepMind AlphaGo victory, or Apple’s weaving of “using deep neural network technology” into iOS 10, deep learning and artificial intelligence are all the rage these days, promising to take applications to new heights in how they interact with us mere mortals.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • WHO Pandemic Influenza Advisory Group Meeting In Secret This Week

      The World Health Organization pandemic influenza framework advisory group is meeting this week, behind closed doors. A consultation is expected to take place on 20 October with stakeholders, and an information session has been organised on 21 October on the work of the advisory group, but no press is allowed in either meeting nor able to obtain any information about any aspect of the week’s events.

    • How Pharmaceutical Companies Are Keeping Americans From Doing Something The Government Says They Can Do

      The EFF’s series on “shadow regulation” continues, this time exploring how American pharmaceutical companies are keeping affordable medication out of the hands of Americans. The examination goes beyond what’s already common knowledge: that patents and regulatory capture have created a skewed marketplace that ensures healthy profit margins, rather than healthy Americans.

      But what’s not generally known is that the pharmaceutical companies have “partnered” with internet intermediaries to lock Americans out of purchasing options specifically approved by the FDA. To hear big pharmaceutical companies tell it, purchasing drugs from other countries (where the price is generally lower) is extremely dangerous, if not completely illegal. But that’s simply not true.

    • Eli Lilly Commits To Healthcare For 30 Million People In Middle-Income Countries And US By 2030 [Ed: Publicity stunt by company that got a bad name in those countries]

      Pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly today announced a stepped-up commitment to provide improved access to quality healthcare for 30 million people in resource-limited settings by 2030.

      The initiative, called Lilly 30×30, is based on a five-year, US$90 million investment in the Lilly Global Health Partnership, and aims at improving access to treatments for diabetes, cancer, and tuberculosis.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Mumbai: Two Muslim men arrested in RTI activist Bhupendra Vira murder case.

      Two Muslim men arrested in the Hindu RTI activist Bhupendra Vira murder case were remanded in police custody till October 24 by a magistrate in Mumbai today.

      The Mumbai police had arrested former Mumbai corporator Razzak Khan (78) and his son Amjad Khan (53) for their alleged involvement in the murder of the RTI activist. A 61-year-old Right to Information activist was killed in Mumbai on Saturday evening by a man who barged into his home, held a gun to his head and fired.

      Demanding their police custody, public prosecutor Ashok Medhe told the court, “The complainant (Vira’s son-in-law) in this case has alleged that they were getting repeated threats from the family of the accused. They also have a property dispute. In the past, family members of the accused had attacked Vira’s son. Police custody is required for a detailed investigation.”

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Background and Documents on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russias spy

      Earlier today the website DailyKos reported on a smear campaign plot to falsely accuse Julian Assange of pedophilia.

      Here is the description of the plot from Mr Assange’s legal team, the investigative report into the front company and associated correspondence. An unknown entity posing as an internet dating agency prepared an elaborate plot to falsely claim that Julian Assange received US$1M from the Russian government and a second plot to frame him sexually molesting an eight year old girl.

      The second plot includes the filing of a fabricated criminal complaint in the Bahamas, a court complaint in the UK and laundering part of the attack through the United Nations. The plot happened durring WikiLeaks’ Hillary Clinton related publications, but the plot may have its first genesis in Mr. Assange’s 16 months litigation against the UK in the UN system, which concluded February 5 (Assange won. UK and Sweden lost & US State Dept tried to pressure the WGAD according to its former Chair, Prof. Mads Andenas).

    • Ecuador curbs Assange’s internet to halt US election ‘interference’

      Ecuador has acknowledged it partly restricted internet access for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is taking refuge at its London embassy.

      It said Mr Assange had in recent weeks released material that could have an impact on the US presidential election.

      Ecuador also said its move was not the result of pressure from Washington.

      The US denied WikiLeaks accusations that it had asked Ecuador to stop the site publishing documents about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

    • WikiLeaks accuses Kerry of getting Assange off net

      WikiLeaks has said US Secretary of State John Kerry asked Ecuador to cut its leader Julian Assange’s Internet connectivity after the organisation had released the content of paid speeches that Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had given to Goldman Sachs.

      The US State Department has denied that Kerry was involved.

      The whistleblower organisation had accused Ecuador of cutting Assange’s Internet access a day earlier, saying “We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speechs.”

      On Tuesday, it released another lot of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. None of the material released has contained any sensational disclosures.

    • Ecuador says it cut off Assange’s Internet over Clinton data dumps

      Ecuador, the nation that has granted political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the country’s London embassy, said late Tuesday it had cut off his Internet access. Ecuador says it did this because of WikiLeaks’ recent dumps of hacked e-mails surrounding Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

      “The Government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. It does not interfere in external electoral processes, nor does it favor any particular candidate,” the government said in a statement. “Accordingly, Ecuador has exercised its sovereign right to temporarily restrict access to some of its private communications network within its Embassy in the United Kingdom. This temporary restriction does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities.”

    • Ecuador says it disconnected Julian Assange’s internet because of Clinton email leaks

      The government of Ecuador disconnected the internet access of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at its Embassy in London because of his site’s publishing of documents that could affect the US presidential election, the government said in a statement today.

      WikiLeaks announced early on Monday that Assange’s internet link had been severed, saying that it had “activated the appropriate contingency plans.”

      In that statement, shared by Politico reporter Eric Geller, the Ecuadorian government says it “respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states” and that it “exercised its sovereign right to temporarily restrict access to some of its private communications network within its Embassy in the United Kingdom.”

    • Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet at U.S. request, WikiLeaks says

      Wikileaks said Tuesday that Secretary of State John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, from publishing leaked emails that could disrupt peace negotiations with a guerrilla group in Colombia.

      [WikiLeaks emails show influence of Univision chairman in Clinton campaign // Internet cutoff is just the latest trouble for WikiLeaks’ Assange]

      Assange, who has been in refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London for more than four years, saw his access to the internet cut over the weekend.

  • Finance

    • Tobacco Carve-Out From ISDS Starts To Spread: Another Nail In The Coffin Of Corporate Sovereignty

      One of the last pieces of horse-trading that went on in order to conclude the TPP deal involved corporate sovereignty, aka investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and tobacco. As we reported a year ago, a “carve-out” for tobacco was agreed, which was designed to assuage fears that tobacco companies would use TPP’s ISDS mechanism to challenge health measures like plain packs — something that Philip Morris attempted against both Australia and Uruguay.

    • EU to push through Canadian trade deal despite Belgium split

      The free trade pact between the European Union and Canada is likely to be sealed next week despite opposition from the Belgian region of Wallonia, according to European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom as quoted by AFP.

    • CETA Still Not At Finish Line As Belgian State Halts Process

      CETA, the Canada-Europe trade agreement, is still not at the finish line yet. The European Commission has all but one member state on board for the signature of the Comprehensive Economy and Trade Agreement (CETA), Slovak Economy Minister Peter Ziga said today after a meeting of the trade ministers of the EU member states.

    • Rethinking investment treaties to advance human rights

      There are over 3,000 international investment treaties worldwide, with more under negotiation. The number of investor-state arbitrations based on these treaties continues to grow. Human rights issues have emerged in several arbitrations, for example in disputes that affected water access, public health, land rights, the environment and actions favouring disadvantaged groups. Yet few investment treaties contain meaningful references to human rights, and some arbitral tribunals have proved reluctant to consider human rights arguments made by states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Investment treaty policy needs reconfiguring in the light of human rights obligations. The UK has long been a key player in the development of the international investment regime. As the country gears up for international trade and investment negotiations in the aftermath of the ‘Brexit’ vote, there is an opportunity to show leadership by ensuring that investment policy supports human rights.

    • Surprise: Now Even Australia’s Biggest Business Organization Says It Has Doubts About TPP

      When a country’s top business association offers criticism in more or less the same terms as anti-TPP activists, maybe it’s time to think twice about ratifying a deal that still lacks any credible justification.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Green Party VP Nominee Ajama Baraka: We Must Disrupt Our Relationship to Democratic Party

      When Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein tapped Ajamu Baraka to be her running mate back in August, there were a flurry of news stories. Most tried to paint him as the anti-Obama—too radical, too intense, too left to occupy the space just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

      All of these characterizations of Baraka amounted to attempting to insult him with compliments.

      Long a voice for oppressed people around the globe, Baraka’s presence on the Green ticket is both self-aware and forward-moving; Southern organizer, human rights activist, veteran and socialist, Baraka is strategically positioned to prove that the core of what centrist Democrats would like you to believe about the Green Party is a lie.

    • Ken Loach: BBC news manipulative and deeply political

      Director Ken Loach has taken aim at the BBC, describing its news coverage as “manipulative and deeply political” and saying it is a “rotten place for a director”.

      Prominent leftwinger Loach, who is promoting his Palme d’Or-winning film about a man’s struggle with the UK benefits system, I, Daniel Blake, said there was a need to “democratise” the corporation.

      “Diversify it so that different regions can make their own dramas. And its notion of news has got to be challenged,” he told the Radio Times.

      “The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people’s consciousness; this is the story you should hear about, these are the people worth listening to. It’s manipulative and deeply political.”

      In response to the comments, a BBC spokeswoman said: “BBC News is independent and adheres to clear published editorial guidelines including on impartiality. The BBC is consistently rated the most trusted and accurate news provider by the majority of people in the UK.”

    • Hacked Emails Prove Coordination Between Clinton Campaign and Super PACs

      The fact that political candidates are closely coordinating with friendly Super PACs — making a mockery of a central tenet of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision — is one of the biggest open secrets in Washington.

      Super PACs are only allowed to accept unlimited contributions on the condition that the money is spent independently of specific campaigns. The Federal Election Commission hasn’t reacted for a variety of reasons, including a lack of hard evidence, vague rules, and a partisan divide among the commissioners so bitter they can’t even agree to investigate obvious crimes.

      But newly disclosed hacked campaign documents published by WikiLeaks and a hacker who calls himself Guccifer 2.0 reveal in stark terms how Hillary Clinton’s staffers made Super PACs an integral part of her presidential campaign.

    • Donald Trump Is Running Some Really Insecure Email Servers

      In what might be one of the more delicious cases of irony to ever grace a presidential election, a researcher has found that a number of email servers linked to Donald Trump’s hotel and others businesses are running horribly out of date software which receive no security patches, and are lacking other precautions for keeping hackers out.

      The findings come at a time when cybersecurity is a crucial topic in the presidential election, with hackers dumping documents from Hillary Clinton’s campaign online, and Trump and his supporters continuing to criticise Clinton’s use of a private email server.

    • Clinton campaign considered Bill Gates, Tim Cook for VP

      An email from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta released in the recent WikiLeaks dump reveals a group of potential running mates considered by Clinton’s campaign. Clinton’s vice presidential candidates, while not altogether surprising, include some vaguely interesting choices like Bill and Melinda Gates, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

    • Obama: Trump should ‘stop whining’ about rigged election

      President Obama on Tuesday offered a blunt rebuke to Donald Trump’s claim the presidential election will be rigged against him: Stop whining.

      “I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes,” Obama said during a Rose Garden press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

      Trump has riled his supporters in recent days by ramping up his effort to undermine the November elections as “rigged” by the political establishment and mainstream media.

    • Donald Trump support during presidential debate was inflated by bots, professor says

      Many of the Twitter users supporting Donald Trump after the presidential debates were bots, according to a new analysis.

      More than four times as many tweets came from automated accounts that supported Mr Trump than they did backing Hillary Clinton, according to Philip Howard from the University of Oxford.

      The robot tweets helped give the appearance that Mr Trump had more support than he did, according to Professor Howard. That apparent surge in support was referenced repeatedly by Mr Trump, who claimed that despite what the official polling showed he had actually won both of the debates.

    • GOP senators avoid Trump questions on rigged election

      Republican senators don’t want to talk about Donald Trump’s allegations of a rigged election.

      The Hill contacted the offices of all 54 Republican senators and asked them if they think the election is rigged. Thirty-four of the senators’ offices did not respond, while another three declined to comment.

      Those that did respond offered little support for the GOP nominee’s claim.

      Fifteen senators said they do not think the election is being or will be rigged.

      One, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), wants to “wait and see.”

    • Why Did Vote-Rigging Robert Creamer Visit The White House Over 200 Times During The Obama Admin

      Earlier today we wrote about a new Project Veritas undercover video that uncovered several democratic operatives openly discussing, in explicit detail, how to commit massive voter fraud. One of the operatives was a person by the name of Robert Creamer who is a co-founder of a democratic consulting firm called Democracy Partners. Within the video, an undercover journalist details a plan to register Hispanic voters illegally by having them work as contractors, to which Creamer can be heard offering support saying that “there are a couple of organizations that that’s their big trick” (see: “Rigging Elections For 50 Years” – Massive Voter Fraud Exposed By Project Veritas Part 2″).

      Unfortunately, the embarrassing video caused Creamer to subsequently resign from consulting the Hillary campaign as he issued a statement saying that he was “stepping back from my responsibilities working the [Hillary] campaign” over fears that his continued assistance would be a distraction for the campaign.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • GCHQ reacts in the best way to Oliver Stone’s description of it as “barbaric” and “ruthless” [Ed: The mouthpiece of GCHQ speaks]

      GCHQ has refused to be drawn into a war of words with Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, who described the agency as “barbaric”.

      Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Sunday, Stone – the director of JFK, Platoon, Wall Street and Snowden said: “GCHQ is one of the most barbaric agencies around, very cold, very smart.

      “And likely to arrest anybody at any time, on any thing on any cause. So hello!”

    • The Shadow Brokers is now crowdfunding release of NSA hacking tools
    • Hackers selling NSA hacking tools for 10000 bitcoins
    • Stolen NSA Cyberweapons Auctioned: Shadow Brokers Wants $6.3 million To Publish Hacking Tools’ Password
    • Shadow Brokers Cancel Auction of Supposed NSA Hacking Tools
    • No one wants to buy NSA’s hacking tools
    • Shadow Brokers cancel auction of alleged stolen NSA cyberweapons after no one bid anything
    • Shadow Brokers Scraps Auction, Opts for 10000 BTC Crowdfund to Release NSA Files
    • NSA hackers abandon auction, seek $6M in crowd funding
    • Granted Warrant Allowed Feds To Force Everyone At Searched Residence To Unlock Devices With Their Fingerprints
    • MI6, MI5 and GCHQ ‘unlawfully collected private data for 10 years’
    • FBI Lifts Gag Order On NSL Issued To Google… Which Doesn’t Have Much To Say About It

      In other news, Google saw an increase in FISA-ordered requests for user info, bumping it up by about 5,000 total accounts as compared to the previous reporting period.

      Hopefully, Google’s ungagged-but-still-secret NSL won’t stay secret for much longer. It would be troubling if this were to become Google’s standard policy — the announcement of gag order removals but with no further details forthcoming. Not much “transparency” in the Transparency Report, unfortunately… not if that’s how it’s going to be handled.

      True, much of the opacity is still the government’s fault: the not-at-all-useful “banding” that makes NSL numbers impossible to parse (1-499 could mean one NSL… or almost 500 in one reporting period), the gag orders that remain in place forever, etc. But private companies shouldn’t take their cues from naturally-secretive government agencies. They’re pretty much all we have to provide us with an outside, somewhat unrestricted measure of the government’s surveillance efforts.

    • Government Seeks Do-Over On Win For Microsoft And Its Overseas Data

      The DOJ wants the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit the decision it handed down in July — the one that’s preventing it from forcing Microsoft to hand over data stored on its servers in Ireland. The DOJ hoped the court would read the Stored Communications Act as applying to the location of the company served with the data request, rather than the actual location of the data. The Appeals Court disagreed with the lower court’s finding — one that dragged in the Patriot Act for some reason — pointing out that the purpose of the SCA was to protect the privacy of communications, not to facilitate the government in obtaining them.

    • Security agencies collected data unlawfully, UK court rules

      British spy agencies collected data illegally for more than a decade, a court has ruled.

      The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which investigates complaints against intelligence services, ruled on Monday that the agencies’ secretive collection and use of bulk communications data (BCD) failed to comply with human rights laws until 2015.

      The ruling is the result of a case brought by privacy campaigners Privacy International that challenged the collection and use of bulk data by security agencies GCHQ, MI5 and MI6.

    • Police should rein in facial recognition programs, says new report

      A coalition that includes the ACLU, EFF, and 50 other organizations has asked the Department of Justice to investigate how the FBI and police are using large-scale facial recognition databases in criminal investigations. The letter comes alongside a new report that claims around half of American adults are effectively part of these databases.

      The report, released by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, draws on both existing data and material obtained through public records requests. It notes that at least 26 states — which have been previously identified — let law enforcement scan photos from the Department of Motor Vehicles as part of investigations. Based on the number of drivers who have received licenses in each state, the study’s authors calculate that this covers 117 million adults — or 48 percent of the total adult population. The licenses aren’t part of one central index, but several databases across states.

    • The perpetual lineup: Half of US adults in a face-recognition database

      Half of American adults are in a face-recognition database, according to a Georgetown University study released Tuesday. That means there’s about 117 million adults in a law enforcement facial-recognition database, the study by Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology says.

      “We are not aware of any agency that requires warrants for searches or limits them to serious crimes,” the study says.

      The report (PDF), titled “The Perpetual Line-up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America,” shows that one-fourth of the nation’s law enforcement agencies have access to face-recognition databases, and their use by those agencies is virtually unregulated.

    • Before Nixon: When JFK tapped the phone of a New York Times reporter

      President Kennedy’s order to the CIA to begin collecting intelligence on American reporters—shattering its own charter—was formalized as Project Mockingbird. In the spring of 1963, this resulted in the wiretapping of two columnists, Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, after they allegedly revealed classified secrets. Other reporters were also monitored in this program until its end in 1965.

    • A database of the UK’s porn habits. What could possibly go wrong?

      To this end the Digital Economy Bill creates a regulator that will seek to ensure that adult content websites will verify the age of users, or face monetary penalties, or in the case of overseas sites, ask payment providers such as VISA to refuse to process UK payments for non-compliant providers.

      There are obvious problems with this, which we detail elsewhere.

      However, the worst risks are worth going into in some detail, not least from the perspective of the Bill Committee who want the Age Verification system to succeed.

    • NBC Happily Parrots The CIA’s Case For Escalating Cyber War With Russia

      As we’ve been noting there have been growing calls for the Obama Administration to publicly scold Russia for hacking the DNC, and to dole out some kind of righteous punishment for this unseemly behavior. Calls on this front have ranged from launching larger cyber offensives or even a brick and mortar military response. We’ve noted repetaedly how this is stupid for a multitude of reasons, since hacking “proof” is (if the hacker’s any good) impossible to come by, with false-flag operations consistently common.

      So while there are some very obvious problems with escalation here, the U.S. press seems pretty intent on helping the intelligence community justify doing exactly that. Enter countless outlets breathlessly passing along the idea that we simply must “retaliate” for Russia’s behavior, willfully ignoring that the United States wrote the book on nation state hacking and lacks the moral high ground. As Snowden and other whistleblowers should have made abundantly clear by now, we’ve been hacking allies, fiddling in Democratic elections, creating indiscriminately dangerous malware and worse for decades.

      Led by our bad example, we’ve cultivated a global environment in which nation state operators hack one another every second of every day to keep pace with the United States. As such, the idea that the United States is an innocent daisy that needs to “retaliate” is absurdly, indisputably false, yet this concept sits at 90% of the reporting on this subject. Case in point: eager to get the escalation ball rolling, the CIA last week used NBC to make the case for a renewed cyber-warfare campaign against Russia in the coming months…

    • StartPage decides to ditch Yahoo after data breach

      Europe-based StartPage, a search engine that focuses on user privacy has canceled its partnership with Yahoo. In an announcement made on Monday, StartPage said it will be dropping Yahoo’s aggregate search results from its metasearch platform Ixquick.eu by the end of the month.

    • Top U.S. security official returns to AU to talk cyberspace [Ed: Michael S. Rogers in latest NSA charm offensive]
    • Director of the National Security Agency and Commander of US Cyber Command to Speak at Columbus State University
    • Adm. Rogers: US ‘Working Our Way Through’ NSA-Cyber Command Split
    • Feds need clarity on cyber structures
    • Rogers: ‘We’re working our way through’ process to split NSA-CYBERCOM roles
    • Cybersecurity chief supports splitting role with NSA, but in the right way
    • Official: you can still trust the NSA [Ed: FCW with its puff pieces now...]

      t might not be as momentous as knocking down the Berlin Wall, but tearing down the barriers between Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance inside the National Security Agency is revolutionary, an NSA official in the thick of those efforts contends.

      The NSA is six weeks into “NSA21,” which the agency calls the most substantial organizational reform in its 60-year history. Announced earlier this year, NSA21′s primary change is flattening the organization and moving it from a mission-based construct to a functional model.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 4-star general snagged for lying in Stuxnet leak probe

      The Obama administration’s anti-leak drive has netted its most serious conviction of a high-ranking government official: a guilty plea by a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a felony charge of lying to investigators probing leaks about top secret U.S. efforts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.

      Retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright appeared in federal court in Washington on Monday afternoon, speaking in a low voice as U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon accepted the former four-star general’s admission that he lied to FBI agents about his contacts with New York Times reporter David Sanger and former Newsweek reporter Daniel Klaidman.

    • Judge Rejects ‘Rioting’ Charge Against Journalist For Reporting On Protestors, But Prosecutor Still Looking For New Charges

      Last week it was announced that journalist Amy Goodman would go to North Dakota to face charges over her coverage of North Dakota oil pipeline protests that went viral. The idea that Goodman was charged with doing journalism was really ridiculous. The original charges focused on “trespassing” but once the local state’s attorney, Ladd Erickson, realized that those clearly would not stick, he changed them to rioting. When asked to defend the arrest warrant and charges by a local newspaper, Erickson displayed a complete lack of understanding of the First Amendment in saying that because Goodman’s coverage was sympathetic to the protesters, it was fine to consider her a protester too.

      Thankfully, a judge disagreed and rejected the rioting charge.

    • Judge Rejects Riot Charge Against Amy Goodman of ‘Democracy Now’ Over Pipeline Protest

      The radio journalist Amy Goodman spent the weekend with the threat of a riot charge hanging over her, arising from protests over a planned oil pipeline in North Dakota. But on Monday a judge rejected the case for lack of evidence.

      Ms. Goodman, the host and executive producer of the syndicated radio, television and web show “Democracy Now!” on Pacifica Radio, had planned to enter a not guilty plea on Monday, but District Judge John Grinsteiner declined to sign the charging document, bringing the case to a stop — at least for now.

      She and her lawyers declared victory on Monday, but Ladd Erickson, a state prosecutor who is assisting the Morton County state’s attorney’s office in the case, said other charges were possible.

    • Stepdad Goes To Police With Stepdaughter’s Sexts, Asks Them To Intervene, Is Prosecuted For Child Porn

      Sexting continues to be a thing. And, as we have covered various stories revolving around people sending pictures of their naughty bits to one another, much of the consternation in the public tends to be around children partaking in sexting. And I can see their point. While I tend to laugh at prudishness in general, it would probably be best for all involved if underage youngsters weren’t texting each other provocative pictures of themselves with reckless abandon.

      So what is a parent to do if their children are found to be doing just that? One might think that going to both the child’s school and authorities to ask for help in stopping this behavior would be in order, right? Well, for one parent in Australia, doing just that landed him a conviction for child pornography and sex offender registration, even as essentially the entire legal system acknowledged that he was just trying to be a good father.

    • Dad Asks Cops to Intervene in Daughter’s Sexting. They Arrest Him for Child Porn.

      A man who found out that his 15-year-old stepdaughter was sexting her boyfriend proceeded to download the evidence to bring it to the school and the police to ask them to intervene.

      Oh dear, readers. You know where this is heading. Intervene they did. Now the dad has been convicted on child pornography charges and placed on the sex offender registry. This, despite the judge understanding exactly why the man, Ashan Ortell, 57, held onto the images.

      “There is no suggestion of any exploitation of them by anybody,” ruled Judge Jane Patrick, over in Australia, which is becoming as daffy as the United States. “You made no attempt to conceal the images. In fact, you were so concerned that you contacted the authorities about the images.”

    • Child bride in Turkey dies after giving birth

      A child bride in Turkey has died of a brain hemorrhage after giving birth at the age of 15, local media have reported.

      The bleed thought to have killed her is believed to have been associated with going into labour at such a young age.

      Known only as Derya B, the girl was married in a religious ceremony at the age of 14.

    • Turkish child marriage film shines light on hidden abuses

      Child brides in Turkey are often raped, beaten and forced to undergo virginity tests, according to the director of a new documentary which aims to break the silence on the taboo issue.

      “Growing Up Married”, which will premiere in London on Oct. 30, examines the impact of child marriage on four women who were wed as teenagers in western Turkey.

      “When hearing some of their stories I thought to myself ‘how are you still alive?’,” filmmaker Eylem Atakav said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

      Globally, one third of girls in developing countries, excluding China, are married before the age of 18 and one in nine before the age of 15, according to U.N. data.

    • Vintage Photos of Bold and Modern Iranian Ladies Before the Islamic Law Took Over!

      The Islamic Republic however didn’t incline towards the Sharia Law until the late 70’s. The Iranian Revolution that took place in the year 1978 witnessed massive changes in the otherwise modern country.

      Right from their eating habits to their attire, to literature and art & culture, Iran witnessed a sudden shift in their functioning. Overtaking the Pahlavi dynasty changed the fate of the innocent Iranians forever under the rule of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

    • Two-thirds of child refugees screened by officials found to be adults, Home Office figures show

      Nearly two-thirds of “child” refugees who officials questioned about their real age were found to be adults, Home Office documents show.

      Figures show that in the year to September 2015, 65 per cent of the child refugees who had their age disputed were found to be over 18.

      It comes after Conservative MPs raised questions about the ages of 14 refugees who were brought to the UK this week from the “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais.

      The Home Office has no way of independently verifying the age of child refugees being brought to the UK.

      Home Office documents show that if a refugee does not have a birth certificate, a Home Office screening officer can certify them as a child based on their “physical appearance” or “demeanour”.

    • Stripped, stomped and sprayed: Former police officer Yvonne Berry breaks silence on Ballarat arrest ordeal

      A woman who was captured on CCTV being stripped, stomped on and kicked in the Ballarat police cells has spoken out for the first time.

    • Finally Free: ‘Guantánamo Diary’ Author Released After 14 Years Without Charge

      After unlawfully imprisoning our client Mohamedou Ould Slahi at Guantánamo for 14 years without charge or trial, the U.S. government has finally released him. He is now home in his native Mauritania.

      We are overjoyed for Mohamedou and his loving family, who have been anxiously awaiting his return for so many years. His release brings the U.S. one man closer to ending the travesty that is Guantánamo.

    • FBI Facial Recognition Expert Helps Denver PD Arrest Wrong Man Twice For The Same Crime

      Never let it be said law enforcement won’t get their man. Even if it’s the wrong man. And even if they do it twice.

      This was Denver native Steven Talley’s first experience with the local PD.

    • ‘Fear, censorship and retaliation’: United Nations rapporteur slams Australia’s human rights record

      Australia lacks adequate protections for human rights defenders and has created “an atmosphere of fear, censorship and retaliation” among activists, according to a United Nations special rapporteur.

      Michel Forst, who released an end-of-mission statement on Tuesday after a fortnight in Australia, said he was “astonished” by numerous measures heaping “enormous pressure” on public servants, whistleblowers and ordinary citizens.

    • UN warns of ‘fear, censorship and retaliation’ in Australia

      Strict secrecy laws and harassment by government officials are creating an “atmosphere of fear” in Australia, a UN investigator warns.
      In a damning report Tuesday, United Nations special rapporteur Michel Forst said several human rights defenders had refused to meet him because of the fear of persecution.

    • Australian secrecy laws must be reviewed, says UN investigator
    • UN Calls on Australia to Re-examine Secrecy Laws
    • Australia should urgently improve whistleblower protection, UN expert says
    • UN investigator urges review of Australian secrecy laws
    • UN warns of ‘fear, censorship and retaliation’ in Australia
    • Chilling effect on rights defenders: UN
    • Chilling effect on rights defenders: UN

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Software-Defined Networking Puts Network Managers in the Driver’s Seat

      SDNs can help organizations keep up with evolving network demands in an app-centric IT environment and give network managers much more flexibility.

    • The Open-Source Group Trying To “De-Google” The Internet

      How can we surf the web without using Google, Amazon or Facebook? French group Framasoft, which promotes the use of open-source software, offers a way.

      Under the “De-google-ify internet” initiative, the group uses decentralized software solutions to design tools that allow consumers to retake control of their data.

      Members of Framasoft are strong advocates for the digital privacy of consumers. They consider it their mission to educate people about internet freedom.

  • DRM

    • MacBook Pro to ditch traditional USB ports in favour of USB-C

      TRADITIONAL USB ports could be about to go the way of the 3.5mm headphone jack after the news that Apple’s new MacBook Pro will come with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 only.

      A report from Macotakara claimed that Apple’s upcoming MacBook Pro models will ditch traditional USB ports, Thunderbolt 2 and the company’s MagSafe charging connector.

      Instead, according to a “reliable Chinese supplier”, the 13in and 15in laptops will have USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 ports, so buyers will be forced to cough up £65 to hook up standard USB devices.

    • Report: Apple will introduce new Macs at October 27th event [Updated

      The most interesting new information is about the MacBook Air. The 13-inch model is said to get USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3, and those ports will replace all of the ports on the current Air—USB Type-A, Thunderbolt 2, and Magsafe 2. We don’t know how many of these ports the Air will get, but if the design stays more or less the same, it should at least get more than the one-ported MacBook. The 11-inch Air, which currently serves as Apple’s entry-level laptop, would be removed from the lineup.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

10.18.16

The ‘Sarah Sharps’ of Microsoft: Not the Kind of Scandal the Media Cares Enough to Write About

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Related to this:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: women, don’t ask for a raise

Woman

Summary: Another example of the large (industrial) scale of sexual discrimination at Microsoft — a company that tries to advertise itself as diverse or tolerant and stigmatise Free/Open Source software (FOSS) as intolerant and/or not diverse

SEXUAL orientation-related and sexual discrimination at at workplace are a common theme. Microsoft’s propaganda mills, however, tried to stigmatise FOSS as hostile to minorities, women, and whatever else isn’t white, straight, middle-aged men.

Microsoft has got quite some audacity though. Microsoft’s hostility towards women [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and hostility towards gay people (or homophobia) [1, 2] were covered here before. Even Microsoft’s new CEO came under fire for it. The latest example of Microsoft sexism is reaching the press now. To quote The Register (one among very few that covered it):

Microsoft will have to defend itself against a lawsuit alleging that its employee rating system was biased against women.

A US district court in Washington has tossed out [PDF] the Redmond giant’s motion to dismiss a complaint lobbed at it by three women engineers, who allege the system for evaluating engineering and technical positions unfairly penalized them.

At issue is the Windows giant’s “Connect” system, the evaluation method Microsoft used to replace the much maligned “stack ranking” process for evaluating employee performance.

The engineers allege that the review system relies on manager and peer input from a group that is overwhelmingly male and, as a result, the female employees they evaluated may have missed out on raises and promotions.

“Plaintiffs allege these performance evaluation methods are ‘invalid’ because they ‘set arbitrary cutoffs among performers with similar performance’ and are ‘not based on valid and reliable performance measures’,” the court’s ruling, dated October 14, reads.

As we noted several months ago, sexism at Microsoft is systemic and a year ago we noted that it's not really a FOSS issue, in spite of a stereotype created and spread by the likes of Microsoft. Hence the relevance to FOSS… █

EPO Caricature: EQE Questions

Posted in Europe, Humour, Patents at 7:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

European qualifying examination (EQE)

Summary: The latest EPO cartoon, this time about European qualifying examination (EQE)

The Long History or Seeds of Control by Fear and Punishment at the EPO

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

WIPO and FIFA are small potatoes compared to the EPO…

Battistelli liar
Source (original): Rospatent

Summary: The latest hogwash from Team Battistelli (Pinocchio), the latest instance of software patents promotion by EPO Principal Director, and an old (decade-old) nugget of information from the Forum for Principal Directors

THE EPO has turned into an empire of lies, where the President has become virtually synonymous with Pinocchio, as we noted earlier today. The EPO not only lies a lot but also routinely breaks rules and laws (see this older tweet from October 7th, neglecting to say that the EPO does not obey the EPC, e.g. [1, 2]). Eponia has effectively detached itself from the Rule of Law.

Pinocchio wants the world to believe that nothing is amiss at the EPO. For the third time in less than a week the EPO is promoting this lie (for the self-deluding) that EPO staff is happy. “Our Social Conference enabled internal stakeholders to play an active role in the EPO’s future,” it said, but it wasn’t about stakeholders at all. In fact, the key stakeholders, like representatives of staff, were locked out. We’ll publish more details about that (best left for another day), having published some details earlier this month and last month. Here we have the latest puff piece in the “news” section of the EPO (warning: epo.org link). “A joint statement was signed by EPO Vice President Raimund Lutz and Brazilian Industry Minister Marcos Pereira,” it says, alluding to a deal with INPI (not the French one that ‘took over’ the EPO and perhaps stained it for good). “Under the PPH pilot,” says the news [sic], “patent applicants from Europe and from Brazil will be able to request accelerated patent prosecution at the EPO or at Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), which is expected to speed up the process and reduce costs for companies on both sides of the Atlantic.”

“Pinocchio wants the world to believe that nothing is amiss at the EPO.”As is often the case with these deals, the countries in question hardly have all that much at stake in the EPO. Take Cambodia for example (with zero patents at the EPO). Brazil has a massive population and not so few patents, but how many at the EPO? Not that many (relative to EU member states)…

Hogwash and marketing is what Raimund Lutz travels for.

The EPO has an affinity for Italy right now (not much of a prolific patenter either, or so we’re told) and it lobbies its politicians for the UPC amid Brexit, as noted here twice last week. Now it organises events in Italy (yet another one) and a separate new announcement says that “Maria Rosa Carreras from @OEPM_es will speak about the Quality at Source project at EPOPIC,” citing this new page with abstracts of talks (warning: epo.org link).

Curiously enough, based on this page at least, Grant Philpott’s talk will cover software patents. He just cannot help himself, can he? We wrote about it more than a year ago. Philpott, who absolutely does not want people to know what he did for Microsoft (enough to send me threatening letters about it), is propping up software patents again. Is it him who wrote the abstract which reads “software pervades through all technologies [thus] a greater debate on the patentability of software” or maybe an assistant of his? Whatever it is, such statements are tasteless, especially taking the EPC into account.

“The EPO has an affinity for Italy right now (not much of a prolific patenter either, or so we’re told) and it lobbies its politicians for the UPC amid Brexit, as noted here twice last week.”Here is the full abstract, complete with the “Industry 4.0″ buzzword: “The 4th Industrial Revolution – or “Industry 4.0″ – is the revolution of connectivity and distributed intelligence. It is characterised by driving technologies such as The Cloud, Big Data and the Internet of Things, and by the presence of computer technologies in every aspect of our lives. The consequences for IP are potentially tremendous, and they challenge some of the fundamental concepts of the system, such as the definition of “industry” and “inventor”. There will be a greater overlap and interplay between the types of rights, and as software pervades through all technologies a greater debate on the patentability of software. Patent offices will have to react to these changes, adapting their approaches. There will also be an impact on patent information and new challenges for patent searchers as a result of Industry 4.0.”

As a reminder, software patents are not allowed in Europe. Why do these people keep stomping on the EPC and the rules? Do they believe they’re somehow above the law and nobody will notice when they sidestep it?

Speaking of Principal Directors, someone sent us information related to them. “Today’s add-on,” we were told, is a “disgusting slide from something coined “Forum for Principal Directors”, back in 2006. Old, but very appalling, I hate the words “fear, isolation and punishment” even when being part of question, or discussion.”

Here is the inappropriate slide:

Philpott certainly used “fear, isolation and punishment” against me when he had EPO lawyers send me threatening legal letters late on a Friday night. Perhaps that’s just in the EPO’s culture, deeply embedded in the minds of the recruited and promoted (elevated to “Principal Director”, a fancy job title, along the lines of ranks at the British Army that Philpott came from*). These long ‘hooks’ of Eponia’s aggressive behaviour mean that while it enjoys immunity or impunity it feels absolutely eager to intimidate even bloggers who are far away from Eponia and have nothing to do with Eponia (except they write about it pro bono). █
____
* Certainly not thick-skinned for one who served any military as people have, in the past, asked for their names to be removed but did not send me threatening letters in an effort to take down entire articles.

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