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06.03.15

Links 3/6/2015: More Ubuntu Phones, Qt Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 6:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • SourceForge commits reputational suicide

    Despite seeming reformed last year, SourceForge has been caught red-handed abusing the reputations of open source projects

  • Test It Right: 3 Open Source Load Testing Tools for Your Application!
  • Did Slashdot bury negative stories about SourceForge?
  • Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned SourceForge

    If you’ve followed any tech news aggregator in the past week, you’ve probably seen the story about how SourceForge is taking over admin accounts for existing projects and injecting adware in installers for packages like GIMP. For anyone not following the story, SourceForge has a long history of adware laden installers, but they used to be opt-in. It appears that the process is now mandatory for many projects.

    People have been wary of SourceForge ever since they added a feature to allow projects to opt-in to adware bundling, but you could at least claim that projects are doing it by choice. But now that SourceForge is clearly being malicious, they’ve wiped out all of the user trust that was built up over sixteen years of operating. No clueful person is going to ever download something from SourceForge again. If search engines start penalizing SourceForge for distributing adware, they won’t even get traffic from people who haven’t seen this story, wiping out basically all of their value.

  • Sourceforge Hijacking Projects to Deliver Malware

    It’s been a crazy few days in Linuxville to be sure. Sourceforge is accused of locking out GIMP developers and inserting malware into the application for users to download. Scott Dowdle spotted a “GNOME versus KDE” in MR. ROBOT and Ubuntu was seen in a Google promotional video. David Both shows users how to use Konqueror and Attila Orosz takes a look at Deepin 2014.3. And finally, is the Bling factor in Linux doomed?

  • Buffalo First to Ship Wireless Routers with DD-WRT NXT Open Source Firmware
  • Buffalo Wireless Routers Have DD-WRT NXT Open Source Firmware

    Buffalo First to Ship Wireless Routers with DD-WRT NXT Open Source Firmware

  • Why Intel Invests in Open Source [VIDEO]

    Few if any companies in the world today are as deeply involved in open source work as tech giant Intel. Helping to lead Intel’s open source efforts is Imad Sousou, VP in Intel’s Software and Services Group and GM of the Intel Open Source Technology Center

  • Debunking the Myths of the Open Source Community

    The Linux operating system is the most popular open-source software in the world and has been ported to more computer hardware platforms than any other operating system. Readers will know the story of the underdog who rose to become the world’s leading server operating system. Android especially, a Linux derivative, has caused a stir in recent years with two out of three tablets and 75 percent of all smartphones using the Linux derivative operating system.

  • ‘Cardinal’ Takes Flight: ONOS Ships New Open Source SDN OS Version

    ONOS’ community today announced the availability of the third release of its open source SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS), named Cardinal. Providing the best value proposition for scale, performance and high availability, Cardinal adds comprehensive feature sets and performance improvements to enable a new variety of deployments and solution proof of concepts (POCs). Cardinal delivers several significant enhancements, mainly in the areas of Application Intent Framework, southbound interfaces and new distributed core features and capabilities.

  • Open source and Apple: The nagging nausea

    Open source software fans hate walled gardens. After all, they believe in communities supporting each other for the greater good. Sure, they fight over the details and who gets the most support, but that’s part of what it means to be a creator, an owner, a participant in both the journey and the final result.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Business

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing

    • Why Companies That Use Open Source Need a Compliance Program

      Corporate use of open source software is now the norm with more than 60 percent of companies saying that they build their products with open source software, according to the 2015 Future of Open Source survey. But that same survey also revealed that most companies that use FOSS in their products don’t have formal procedures in place for ensuring that their software complies with open source licenses and regulations.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • New open digital humanities projects

      The Digital Public Library of America and Europeana are collaborating on a project to standardize usage rights statements. Despite operating under different copyright laws (United States and European Union), the DPLA and Europeana are keen to have a clear and compatible way to share copyright information with collaborators and users. To that end, work has begun on developing a technical framework for interoperable rights statements. Currently, they are seeking comments on their Rights Statement White Paper and their Technical Infrastructure White Paper. The deadline for comments on both papers is June 26, 2015.

  • Programming

    • PyPy 2.6 Released, ~7x Faster Than CPython

      Version 2.6 of the PyPy JIT-compiler-based interpreter for Python has been released. With PyPy 2.6 there’s some Python compatibility improvements along with Numpy improvements and preliminary support for a new lightweight stats profiler.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Charlie Kennedy

      Charlie told me the story of how, as party leader, he was invited by Blair to Downing Street to be shown the original key evidence on Iraqi WMD. Charlie was really worried as he walked there, that there really would be compelling evidence as Blair said, and he would then be unable to maintain the party line against the war. When he saw the actual intelligence on which the dodgy dossier was based, he was astounded. It was incredibly weak and “totally unconvincing”. Blair was not present while Charlie saw the reports, but he saw him afterwards and told Blair he was quite astonished by the paucity of the evidence. Blair went white and looked really rattled, and resorted to a plea for patriotic solidarity. He then reminded Charlie he was not allowed to reveal what he had seen. Charlie felt bound by good faith – he had been shown the intelligence in confidence – not to publish this. Not I think his best moral judgement.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • PM Gifts MPs 10% Pay Rise

      DAVID CAMERON effectively handed penny-pinching MPs a backdated 10 per cent pay rise yesterday after the PM dropped his opposition to the extra cash.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Government should be able to block websites, says report

      Government agencies should have the right to block access to any websites they wish, says Parliamentary Committee, provided there is an adequate oversight mechanism in place.

      House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications has handed down its report into whether Government agencies should ‘disrupt the operation of illegal online services.’

    • The Streisand Effect With Chinese Characteristics

      Even in China, people find ways to circumvent the country’s famous Great Firewall that tries to block access to some external sites with material deemed politically dangerous. Interestingly, an editorial in the Chinese-government tabloid, the Global Times, written in response to the students’ publication, recognizes that fact…

  • Privacy

    • Senate delays vote on NSA phone records dragnet

      A controversial program allowing the U.S. National Security Agency to collect millions of domestic telephone records expired Sunday night after the Senate failed to vote on a bill to extend the authority for the surveillance.

  • Civil Rights

    • TSA Not Detecting Weapons at Security Checkpoints

      This is bad. I have often made the point that airport security doesn’t have to be 100% effective in detecting guns and bombs.

    • EXCLUSIVE: Undercover DHS Tests Find Security Failures at US Airports

      An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

    • Medical Marijuana Patient Protests After House Raided, Vibrator Allegedly Confiscated

      With her four teenagers inside, Ginnifer Hency’s house was raided by officers who suspected she was using and selling marijuana.

      In fact, she was. Hency, a multiple sclerosis patient with a medical marijuana card, was charged with intent to deliver, “even though I’m allowed to possess and deliver,” Hency said, in testimony before the Michigan House Committee.

      Medical marijuana use had been suggested by her neurologist, Hency said, adding that she can’t take run-of-the-mill pain medication because of a heart condition.

    • Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide

      In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car. In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

    • EU arts policies could lead to ISDS lawsuits, admits German government

      The German federal government has admitted that an EU country’s arts policies could lead to it being sued by foreign corporations before investor tribunals under trade agreements being negotiated with Canada and the US. Both the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently include the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which allows foreign investors to claim millions of pounds from governments for “indirect expropriation” such as an alleged loss of future profits.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Hollywood: Piracy Poses A Great Cybersecurity Threat

        The MPAA is advising the U.S. Government’s Internet Policy Task Force to help combat piracy, which they say poses a great cybersecurity threat. According to Hollywood, cyber criminals use pirated content as bait, to exploit citizens through malware and other scams.
        TSA Not Detecting Weapons at Security Checkpoints

06.02.15

Links 2/6/2015: Black Lab Linux Releases, Krita Fundraiser

Posted in News Roundup at 8:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • How to Make Money from Open Source Platforms, Part 3: Creating a Product

    What is the value of an open source platform? Would someone ever pay for it outright? Indeed, how does someone use an open source platform? Let’s start with the oldest and most significant of open source platforms, Linux. For the longest time, Linux was dismissed as a non-viable data center technology for “enterprise-grade” or “business critical” operations because it had no support model, no applications that ran on it and no obvious way to make money from it. How, then, did Linux become the engine that fueled the growth of the world’s open source ecosystem, an ecosystem that could be valued in the trillions of dollars, when calculating the percentage of the world’s economy that relies on open source systems? Was it just a bunch of hippies sharing the software and singing about it, or were there clear business reasons paving the way to its eventual victory?

  • Why enterprises embrace open source

    The state of affairs of enterprise IT is changing quickly. Open source will become a much higher percentage of every IT organization’s environment, given its advantages in terms of cost, control, and innovation. Likewise, open source skills will soon become a critical requirement, both for using open source wisely, but also in attracting the kind of talent necessary to compete in a Third Platform world.

  • SourceForge locked in projects of fleeing users, cashed in on malvertising [Updated]

    The takeover of the SourceForge account for the Windows version of the open-source GIMP image editing tool reported by Ars last week is hardly the first case of the once-pioneering software repository attempting to cash in on open-source projects that have gone inactive or have actually attempted to shut down their SourceForge accounts. Over the past few years, SourceForge (launched by VA Linux Systems in 1999 and now owned by the tech job site company previously known as Dice) has made it a business practice to turn abandoned or inactive projects into platforms for distribution of “bundle-ware” installers.

    Despite promises to avoid deceptive advertisements that trick site visitors into downloading unwanted software and malware onto their computers, these malicious ads are legion on projects that have been taken over by SourceForge’s anonymous editorial staff. SourceForge’s search engine ranking for these projects often makes the site the first link provided to people seeking downloads for code on Google and Bing search results.

    And because of SourceForge’s policies, it’s nearly impossible for open-source projects to get their code removed from the site. SourceForge is, in essence, the Hotel California of code repositories: you can check your project out any time you want, but you can never leave.

  • Make your very own emojis with Open-Source emojidex
  • Emojis go open-source with emojidex
  • Measuring the performance of a community manager

    In an open organization, measuring performance for particular roles like community managers may not be straightforward, especially when comparing those roles to others with more defined success metrics, goals, and outcomes. In my experience over the past six years, I’ve worked closely with my manager to make sure that we are in sync with my objectives and what I need to do in order to maximize my impact in my role as a community manager.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Security, creating a federated cloud, and more OpenStack news

      Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for news in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

    • DNSSEC, DANE and the failure of X.509

      As a few people have noticed, I’m a bit of an internet control freak: In an age of central “cloud based” services, I run pretty much my own everything (blog, mail server, DNS, OpenID, web page etc.). That doesn’t make me anti-cloud; I just believe in federation instead of centralisation. In particular, I believe in owning my own content and obeying my own rules rather than those of $BIGCLOUDPROVIDER.

  • Databases

  • Funding/GSoC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Mr Paulwell, we cannot afford to be left behind

      As a technology user and enthusiast, I believe in the critical role of open-source software to create the applications and infrastructure necessary to support government-funded technology projects. There is an accelerating interest in and use of open-source software worldwide. Local governments are changing. Forward-thinking municipalities are embracing technology to make countries and cities better for everyone. Innovative government staff are sharing resources, best practices, and collaborating on common problems. Jamaica needs to provide a broad range of resources, programmes and services to support and advance civic innovation.

      As open-source software becomes the leading information technology day by day, and there are open-source alternatives to most of the commercial software, Jamaica must join this technological revolution, as the national pledge does state, “…so that Jamaica may play her part in the advancement of the whole human race”.

      Open-source software is computer software with its source code made available with a licence in which the copyright holder supplies the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any reason or function. Open-source software is oftentimes developed in a public, collaborative manner. It is the most striking example of open-source development and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open-content movements.

  • Licensing

    • Conservancy Seeks Your Questions on GPL Enforcement

      Historically, Conservancy has published extensive materials about enforcement of the GPL, including blog posts, announcements regarding compliance actions, many sections appearing in the definitive Copyleft Guide (a joint initiative with the Free Software Foundation). After Conservancy’s recent announcement of its funding of Christoph Hellwig’s lawsuit against VMware, Conservancy has sought to answer as many questions as possible about GPL enforcement.

    • The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews François Marier, creator of Libravatar

      In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with François Marier, a free software developer from New Zealand. He is the creator and lead developer of Libravatar. In addition to his passion for decentralization, he contributes to the Debian project and volunteers on the FSF licensing team.

      Libravatar is a free network service providing profile photos for a number of Web sites, including bugs.debian.org and git.kernel.org. Its flexible architecture allows end users to host their own images and allows Web sites to use Gravatar as a fallback when necessary. It is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or end user can opt for any later version (GNU AGPLv3+).

  • Openness/Sharing

    • 5 reasons wikis rock for documentation

      You may not have noticed, but people often become attached to their favorite technology. This could be a mobile phone, a programming language, or a text editor. When you work on someone else’s project, you generally have to go with whatever the prevailing tools and languages are, but when it’s your own project, you get to choose the toys. Documentation requires technology, too, but most people have less of a pre-set opinion about documentation tooling than they do about web frameworks and version control systems. So how is a project to choose?

    • Open Data

      • UW students use open source mapping to aid relief efforts in Nepal

        Half a world away, University of Washington civil and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing stu­dents trace the out­lines of roads, paths and build­ings in Nepal from their lap­tops.

        Using open data soft­ware Open­StreetMap, the students in assistant professor Jes­sica Kamin­sky’s Civil Engi­neer­ing in Devel­op­ing Com­mu­ni­ties class joined an online com­mu­nity effort to turn satel­lite imagery of Nepal into maps and aid the earth­quake relief effort. These dig­i­tized maps provide emer­gency respon­ders and relief coordinators responding to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and powerful aftershocks in Nepal with crit­i­cal data to guide teams deployed on the ground.

      • Bulgarian government publishes first open datasets

        Bulgaria has just published the first datasets on its open data portal. Currently, about 36 datasets from 26 public agencies have been made available online. The organisations involved were summoned to do so by the Council of Ministers. The Council even has a dedicated team to overcome resistance at the agencies and help them to extract and cleanse the data from the databases. The ambition is to publish another 100 datasets before the end of this year.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • UK overhauls its Digital Service Standard

      The United Kingdom has revised its Digital Service Standard, which describes the components for building eGovernment services. The update came into effect on 1 June, and is to be used for new and redesigned external-facing services.

Leftovers

IRC Proceedings: May 17th – May 30th, 2015

Posted in IRC Logs at 3:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

IRC Proceedings: May 17th – May 23rd, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

IRC Proceedings: May 24th – May 30th, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

Enter the IRC channels now

06.01.15

Sharp Drop in Microsoft Patents, But Not in Patent Assaults, Coordinated Attacks on Android/Linux, and Googlebombing

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 7:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A failed or losing strategy after all? Investors sure think so.

SCOTUS Old Senate

The Old Senate Chamber during the US Supreme Court’s residency

Summary: Using patent blackmail (antithetical to the original goal of patents) and other forms of blackmail, Microsoft is desperately trying to crush GNU/Linux and Android, all while Windows ‘sales’ fall and investors lose confidence

“Issued US Patents Down 11% for Microsoft in 2015 Compared to 2014,” wrote Patent Buddy. “705 Patents Down 49% for Microsoft in 2015 Compared to 2014″ (depending on how it’s measured). It is often said that empires collapse and ultimately end sorely defeated when they over-militarise (like with patents) and then implode. Microsoft is apparently imploding right now.

This is not surprising to us. Microsoft still attacks Android with patents, but right now it uses them for leverage, by means of extortion or SLAPP (an effort not to actually take the blackmailed party to court, as it makes Microsoft look bad and can invalidate the patents). Will it work out at the end? Well, we doubt it, but Cyanogen, the latest embrace extend and extinguish manoeuvre by Microsoft, does pose a threat. Using Cyanogen as a proxy is not competing, it is disrupting nefariously.

“Using Cyanogen as a proxy is not competing, it is disrupting nefariously.”Investors’ press is not very impressed. One site asked a couple of days ago: “Can Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Truly Take Away “Open Source” Android From The Market?”

Here is a portion of this analysis:

The other question which arises is, will Microsoft be able to drive the open source operating system away from Google’s perceived dominance? The answer is quite simply no, since without Google services, Android will not prove to be an efficient operating system. There will be a whole suite of Microsoft applications which will considerably fill the gap, but will users be content with Microsoft’s app store? The Google Play Store forms the crux of the argument, as it is the main reason why Android is currently thriving. Microsoft will not be able to uphold Android, thereby removing any prevailing beliefs that it will take away the openness of Android.

Currently, Android is by far the most popular operating system. However, there are some who do not like Google and its services. However, this does not take away the fact that the majority trust and support Google’s presence on the Android front.

Moreover, making Android an even more dominant platform is basically digging Windows’ grave (Microsoft does the digging).

Investors’ press insists “Office for Android Won’t Save MSFT” (Microsoft’s biggest cash cow), neglecting to mention that patent pressure is how Microsoft hopes to convince companies to bundle it (possibly free of charge, i.e. no short-term profit, just lock-in). Here is how the press puts it: “In an effort to remain relevant in the mobile space, MSFT announced earlier this week that it has reached an agreement with 31 Android original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners to preinstall Microsoft Office on a host of current and future tablets. The idea is to expose a larger number of mobile users to the apps than what would be possible with sales of MSFT devices alone.”

This number, 31, is actually nonsense for reasons we named here before. Only 4 of these actually count for something and the reason they cooperated with Microsoft is bribes or extortion (if not both). There is evidence to show this in the leading technology press from Taiwan. Microsoft is now using patents or threat of lawsuits, patent tax etc. as an instrument of coercion, just like the Mafia does. As Mark Shuttleworth once put it: “That’s extortion and we should call it what it is. To say, as Ballmer did, that there is undisclosed balance sheet liability, that’s just extortion and we should refuse to get drawn into that game.” On another occasion Shuttleworth made a Mafia comparison: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay” (i.e. not sue by Microsoft).

“that’s illegal,” Shuttleworth insisted. “It’s racketeering.” Ironically, Shuttleworth is now helping Microsoft in several areas.

The investors’ press curiously took note of Microsoft’s blackmail tactics (curiously because the investment community is typically apathetic towards such behaviour, except when the public finds out). This is a matter which we covered here a week or more ago. This does not impress investors (or potential investors), who write that “Open source software is a different type of software. The developers of these platforms, for example Linux etc do not charge users when they use the software. The community of developers will update the software with advanced features bi-annually or quarterly. The issue is that these platforms also do the same kind of work that, say, Windows software is able to do. Hence, more and more users are switching to open source platforms. Therefore, the demand for paid software such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is increasingly on the decline.”

Microsoft cannot compete with Free software. It constantly attacks it, as we saw recently in India (Microsoft lobbying even by proxy). Microsoft cannot and will not become/embrace Free/Open Source software either, unless it is connected to proprietary software from Microsoft. Watch this new example where a Microsoft-connected site is openwashing proprietary software from Microsoft (the bloated and expensive Microsoft Dynamics), essentially googlebombing to achieve the intended effect (googlebombing by Microsoft is now a regular strategy).

A reader alerted us about this Microsoft advertisement in IT Wire (looks like an article), associating Microsoft’s proprietary software with volunteering efforts. Marine Rescue staff are wasting money (giving it to Microsoft) while people who volunteer give their time away and become ‘addicted’ to (or dependent on) Microsoft lock-in. They are broadcasting their own technical incompetence (the ‘cloud’ hype and proprietary software), but hey, it helps make the Australian government more locked in (to Microsoft). Less dependence on blackmailing of politicians, rights? █

EPO Reluctantly (and Privately) Confirms Giving Public Money for Military-connected ‘Control Risks’ to Spy on Journalists and Their Sources While Techrights is Under Fresh DDOS Attacks

Posted in Europe, Patents, Site News at 6:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Confirmed: European public money wasted attacking the public’s right to know the truth

Control Risks

Summary: The EPO President — or anyone who is referred to as ‘appointing authority’ — finds himself even deeper in a scandal as he silently attacks the very same people whom he pretends to negotiate with by contracting spies from London (to maliciously target British journalists)

THERE is a very large number of cracking attempts against Techrights at the moment (far more than usual). There is definitely also a DDOS attack against Techrights and the pattern can be demonstrated (it comes in waves), starting days ago. Readers have been writing about the site being down, the database being down, etc. because these attacks took the site down many times over the weekend. As a fairly experienced professional in this area (I do this for a living, focusing on sites and servers), even I am struggling. Babysitting the server and aggressive filtering became imperative, making the composition of new articles a secondary priority at best. As we have pointed out before, many of these issues started when we began criticising the EPO and showing corruption in it. Other sites that criticise the EPO report similar issues and the EPO has undoubtedly blocked Web sites critical of the EPO.

We finally have the EPO’s admission that it hired a military-connected company to spy on critics (including Techrights, based on our sources). This ought to do the EPO’s already-poor reputation no favours. This may also be illegal. If the EPO has the guts to hire a military-connected company to spy on critics, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to also attempt cracking (forcibly gaining access to data).

The EPO is now paying (European taxpayers’ money) to military-connected company called ‘Control Risks’. We’ve been told they spy on us specifically, but we imagine they might also spy on IP Kat (Google-hosted).

“According to a comment received on her earlier post,” wrote IP Kat, “Merpel understands that the European Patent Office has responded by means of the following internal Communiqué to the concern about reports that Control Risks (who describe themselves as “an independent, global risk consultancy specialising in helping organisations manage political, integrity and security risks in complex and hostile environments”) has been commissioned by the EPO to investigate staff members…”

Here is the full text:

Investigative Unit and external firms

26.05.2015

Regarding questions raised in recent publications and blogs

Dear colleagues,

Some recent publication and blogs have questioned the participation of an external firm in EPO activities related to the Investigative Unit. I want to clarify that 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. This is one reason why an external firm can be chosen in regard to an investigation, operating within the regulatory framework of the EPO, under the full supervision of the Investigative Unit.

The European Patent Office cannot comment on specific internal investigation cases. This lack of comment is to protect the integrity of any such case and protect the interest of all parties concerned. However I would like to remind the Office has a duty of care to its employees including to investigate allegations of harassment against them by other employees. Investigations can only take place following specific allegations, made by EPO staff or external parties, and these investigations are independently and objectively carried out by the Investigative Unit, under its sole responsibility.

The investigation process of the EPO follows the best international standards and allows persons to be heard, to respond and to defend themselves against any allegations, before any conclusion of misconduct would be reported to the employee’s appointing authority. Only in any case where a serious misconduct is confirmed by the Investigative Unit, a disciplinary case could be instigated where the subject has a further right to be heard before a disciplinary committee and before any subsequent decision on a sanction would be taken.

In 2014, the Investigative Unit received 68 allegations of misconduct (-23% compared to 2013), 50% being already rejected as insufficiently specified.

So the EPO has in fact just confirmed, internally, that it hired spies (the London-based ‘Control Risks’) and it’s known who the targets are. Merpel’s response to it (remember they’re based near London) is this: “Merpel welcomes this response, but regrets that it was made only internally, when the concern raised was much more widespread, and wonders what the EPO Communications department is up to. She notes that, although it is only stated that an “external firm” has been engaged, the Communiqué appears in essence to confirm the original reports concerning Control Risks.”

Well, another important point from Merpel is that “the Investigative Unit (and by extension, Control Risks) has the power to invade the privacy of the subject to an extent that would cause uproar if it happened in a national patent office or in any private enterprise operating within the EU.”

This is not over. We will revisit this subject again and we will do our best to get to the bottom of this. Given the EPO’s appointment of thugs, bullies and alleged criminals to top positions, readers shouldn’t be reluctant to assume the worst. █

Links 1/6/2015: wattOS R9, Tanglu 3

Posted in News Roundup at 5:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LightSail solar spacecraft gets back in touch with its ground crew

    The Planetary Society reports that the Carl Sagan-inspired spacecraft rebooted as predicted, and the ground team is once again in touch. There’s already a software fix waiting in the wings, and there will be a decision on when to deploy it “very soon” — if all goes according to plan, the Society will deploy the vehicle’s namesake sails soon afterward.

  • Why Doesn’t Everyone Love Linux and Open Source?

    If Linux is so great, why has it not replaced Windows, OS X and other closed-source operating systems completely? More generally, why do people still write and develop proprietary software, if open source is a more efficient, user-oriented and secure way to code? Those are important questions about the big-picture significance and future of free and open source software, and they’re worth thinking more about.

    I do not mean those questions to sound pejorative, or dismissive of the idea that Linux and other open source software is actually good. Open source has distinct benefits for both users programmers and users, which make it superior in many ways to closed-source software.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • OpenDaylight is One of the Best Controllers for OpenStack — Here’s How to Implement It

      The integration of OpenStack and OpenDaylight (ODL) is a hot topic, with abundant, detailed information available; however, the majority of these articles focus on explaining usage aspects, rather than how the integration is implemented.

    • Docker Delivers Security Configuration Checking Tool

      The Docker Bench for Security script is packaged as a Docker container to make it easier to run and test. One of the CIS Benchmark’s recommendations is to limit container privileges to only what is needed to run. Somewhat ironically, the Docker Bench for Security script is a very high-privilege container that has broad access to host resources—usually something a container should not be able to do. That said, as a security testing tool, the container does need the broad access to validate host configuration for container deployment properly.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.2 To Support The EFI System Resource Table

      The Linux 4.2 kernel cycle that will soon officially commence will be adding support for the EFI System Resource Table (ESRT) in order to allow the updating of UEFI/BIOS on modern systems from the Linux desktop.

    • Linux 4.0, Linux 4.1 Brings Performance Boosts For Some Intel Low-Power Hardware
    • Linux 4.1-rc6

      It’s been a fairly normal week, although I can’t say that the rc’s
      have exactly started shrinking yet. No, the rc’s haven’t been all that
      big to begin with this release cycle, and things have been fairly
      calm, but I’d be happier if we didn’t have noise in raid5 and
      device-mapper at this stage.

      That said, it’s not like rc6 is a big rc, and things look normal. This
      is about half drivers (mainly scsi target, networking, and graphics,
      plus the aforementioned raid and dm changes, with other random fixes).
      The rest is fairly evenly split between architecture updates (alpha
      stands out), filesystem updates (xfs, cifs and overlayfs) and “misc”
      (networking, turbostat tool update, documentation).

      Most of the fixes are really quite small. Shortlog appended, skimming
      it gives a flavor of the kinds of things we have here.

      Linus

    • Linux 4.1-rc6 Kernel Released
    • Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.1 Release Candidate 6

      It’s Sunday, so guess what?! Linus Torvalds has just announced yet another Release Candidate (RC) version for the forthcoming Linux kernel 4.1, available for download and testing right now.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel Broadwell HD Graphics Tests With Mesa 10.7 Git

        While Mesa 10.7 just recently entered development, the Git code is often benchmarked on Phoronix, and with not having delivered any Intel Broadwell Linux graphics tests in some time, here’s the latest numbers as of this weekend.

      • Libav Adds H.264 & HEVC Encoders For NVIDIA’s NVENC

        Following FFmpeg in supporting NVENC for NVIDIA’s GPU-based video encoding on Linux systems, the forked Libav project has now written up their own NVENC support for H.264 and H.265/HEVC.

    • Benchmarks

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva : An obituary

        Mandriva is certainly a rather unique company; it has also been the company for which I was privileged enough to work two times, one in 2003 as an intern for several months. Back then I used to handle the national resellers’network. The second time was ten years afterwards in 2012 and 2013, this time as a consultant helping them with their Open Source strategy and their marketing activities. One can see how this company is rather special for me. During my last “tenure” there I got to know what we now know to be the “last” team of Mandriva, its last incarnation as a company. Last week, we learned that the company has been liquidated, which essentially means not just that the company filed for bankruptcy, but that the company as such exists no more. Mandriva went several times (three times?) into bankruptcy, but was never obviously liquidated. At this stage I have no idea what became of the assets, nor its subsidiaries.mandriva-logo-opt

    • Arch Family

      • Latest Manjaro Linux Update Patches the Nasty EXT4 RAID Data Corruption Bug

        On May 30, the Manjaro Development Team, through Philip Müller, informed all Manjaro Linux users about the immediate availability for download of the tenth update for the stable Manjaro Linux 0.8.12 distribution.

      • Manjaro Linux 0.8.13 RC2 Comes with KDE Plasma 5.3.1 and KDE Apps 15.04.1
      • Manjaro OpenRC 0.8.13 – reinventing init without systemd

        It would be an understatement to say that systemd’s introduction as the dominant init system for modern Linux distros has stirred controversy. Both opponents and supporters of this new way of doing things have tended to get rather excited – to put it mildly – whenever the topic of systemd comes up on various tech blogs and forums. Defending one’s choice of init systems from critics has become a sort of moral obligation, if not a way of life. Take the “wrong” side of the argument on your favourite tech forum, and you can expect a deluge of heated comments, frequently containing accusations of “troll” and even nastier descriptive words not suitable for publication.

        I suppose it’s natural for geeks to get emotional about their operating system. In fact, if you’ve seen the 2013 movie Her, it’s predicted that in the near future not only will we be able to love our own personal operating system, but also have sex with it. Indeed, I think we’re already there, to judge by the way people have become attached to their mobile handsets.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8.1 to Arrive on June 6

        Debian 8 (Jessie) was announced only a month ago, and now its developers are preparing the first point update for it and they even have a precise date in mind.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Goodbye, SourceForge.

    ourceForge, once a trustworthy source code hosting site, started to place misleading ads (like fake download buttons) a few years ago. They are also bundling third-party adware/malware directly with their Windows installer.

  • Google’s I/O 2015 Web App Released As Open Source

    Now that the weekend is here, the after effects of this year’s android extravaganza that is Google I/O is still being fully digested. The announcements that came through will have repercussions going forward for the rest of this year, not to mention well into next year and beyond as well. Although, this year did not as many mega announcements as there was last year, there was still quite a few notable ones on offer. A few of the big headline points included the unveiling and releasing of the developer preview of Android M, as well as the announcing and brief explanation of Google’s next mobile payment platform, Android Pay. Of course, one of the surprise hits of this year’s event was the announcement (and subsequent release) of Google’s new photo service, which is now known as Google Photos.

  • SourceForge Accused of Bundling GIMP with Adware

    If you’ve downloaded a copy of GIMP for Windows from SourceForge in recent days, you may want to double check to make sure you didn’t get other programs installed as well. Some copies of the “open source Photoshop” were apparently being offered with for-profit adware bundled with the installer.

  • Project Releases

    • GNU Octave 4.0 Released, Includes A GUI & OpenGL

      GNU Octave, a high-level programming language for numerical computations and an open-source alternative to MATLAB, is out this weekend with a huge release. Meet GNU Octave 4.0.

      The GNU Octave 4.0 release now uses a GUI by default when running interactively, defaults to using OpenGL graphics with Qt while having fallback support for Gnuplot and Fltk, adds new audio functions/classes, makes other language additions, and has a whole lot of other changes.

    • Brasero Review – Burning CDs Like It’s the ’90s

      Brasero is an application from the GNOME stack that is used to burn CDs and DVDs or to creates copies from other disks. It’s been around for many years, and it’s trusted implicitly, but it doesn’t hurt if we analyze it a little bit more thoroughly.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Now, open-source platform emojidex offers emojis as service

      Washington: Now, a new project, named emojidex, is offering emojis as a service that allows developers to share new emojis with each other and add them to their apps and websites.

    • Indian Wikipedia page grows to 800K page views a month

      The Odia language is spoken by more than 40 million people in the Indian state of Odisha (the 9th largest Indian state by area) and its neighboring states, as well as, the Odia diaspora living outside India. With over 5000 years of literary heritage, the Odia language has been recognized as one of the oldest South Asian languages and has been given the status of a “classical language” by the Indian government.

    • Open Data

      • NU grad aids Nepal relief effort through open-source mapping

        When a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal, the world wanted to help the people, but few were as well-placed as 1998 NU graduate Neil Horning, who lives in Kathmandu.

        Already well-known to the open source mapping community for a human rights mapping website called NepalMonitor.org, Horning had only to grab his laptop and make his way through the rubble to be tapped for a new assignment.

        He would be the new coordinator of Quakemap.org, born the day after the quake in a high-tech workshop called Kathmandu Living Labs.

      • Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) Develops a Code Of Conduct

        Over the last decade there has been a gradual adoption of Code-Of-Conduct statements at events and within organisations, including at FOSS4G events and within OSGeo projects. Adopting a good Code-Of-Conduct consolidates expectations about respectful behaviour at events and forums, ensuring they are safe, welcoming and productive and helps communities discretely address indiscretions should they occur.

    • Open Hardware

Leftovers

  • After ‘One Year In Orbit,’ Russian Search Engine Sputnik Finds Few Users

    Russia’s new search engine hasn’t found many users.

    Created a year ago as part of a Kremlin effort to exert more control over the Internet, the search engine was given the high-flying name of the Soviet satellite that beat the United States into space in 1957: Sputnik.

  • Hardware

    • Tablet shipments lose momentum; Total PC unit forecast downgraded

      IC Insights will release its Update to the 2015 IC Market Drivers report in June. The Update includes revisions to IC market conditions and forecasts for the 2015 2018 automotive, smartphone, personal computer and tablet markets, as well as an update to the market for the Internet of Things. This bulletin reviews IC Insights’ 2015 unit shipment forecast for total personal computing unit shipments.

    • Fraunhofer study: software thin clients are both climate and wallet-friendly

      As part of a study commissioned by IGEL Technology, the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (UMSICHT) carried out research into various different approaches for IT work stations in terms of their impact on the climate and cost effectiveness. The researchers compared new PCs and notebooks with older devices, which continue to be operated as software-based thin clients. The researchers found that over the entire life cycle of a three-year operating phase, software thin clients reduced global warming potential by up to 60%, and cut overall costs by up to 47%.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Tobacco industry accused of fueling cigarette smuggling to boost profits

      The tobacco industry has been accused of “appalling hypocrisy”, amid claims that it is fuelling the illicit trade in cigarette smuggling to bolster its arguments against tax increases and other anti-smoking measures.

      In a report published to coincide with World No Tobacco Day, the pressure group ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) claimed that some tobacco companies are flooding foreign markets with more products than there is demand.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Top Bush Era CIA Official Just Confirmed the Iraq War Was Based On Lies

      Michael Morell’s stint with the CIA included deputy and acting director, but during the time preceding the US invasion of Iraq, he helped prepare daily intelligence briefings for Bush. One of those briefings, from October 2002, is an infamous example in intelligence history as how not to compile a report. This National Intelligence Estimate, titled “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction”, was the ostensibly flawed intelligence cited continuously by Bush supporters as justification to pursue a war of aggression against Iraq. However, this claim is dubious at best, and serves more as a smokescreen to lend credence to a president who was otherwise hellbent on revenge against Saddam Hussein, as evidenced in his statement a month before the report, “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

    • The New York Times calls for blood in Iraq-Syria war

      The New York Times published a major front-page critique Tuesday of the Obama administration’s military tactics in the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The article quotes several US and Iraqi military and intelligence officials, most of them unnamed, denouncing the supposed restraint on bombing due to excessive fears of killing civilians.

    • ‘Obama at War’ Shows How Syria Was Lost

      Meanwhile, Smith reports, “The administration’s training program has been severely delayed. Only 90 rebels have taken part so far. And the Pentagon now says the first 5,000 rebels won’t be vetted and ready until the end of this year at the earliest.”

    • Getting the CIA — and Secrecy — Out of the Drone Program

      President Barack Obama’s disclosure last month of the death of two hostages in a January drone strike offered the public a brief glimpse of the tragic consequences of the government’s clandestine drone killing program. We cannot know how commonplace these kinds of civilian casualties are because of the government’s selective secrecy on the program. But now, Congress has an opportunity to weigh in.

    • Pentagon report says West, Gulf states and Turkey foresaw emergence of ‘IS’

      A newly declassified Pentagon report provides startling high-level confirmation that the US-led strategy in Syria contributed directly to the rise of the Islamic State (IS).

    • Iran’s military mastermind: Only Iran is confronting ISIS

      The general in charge of Iran’s paramilitary activities in the Middle East said the United States and other powers were failing to confront Islamic State, and only Iran was committed to the task, a news agency on Monday reported.

    • Pentagon Report Predicted West’s Support for Islamist Rebels Would Create ISIS

      A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

    • Obama ordered CIA to train ISIS jihadists: Declassified documents

      U.S. intelligence documents released to a government watchdog confirms the suspicions that the United States and some of its so-called coalition partners had actually facilitated the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as an effective adversary against the government of the Syrian dictator President Bashar al-Assad. In addition, ISIS members were initially trained by members and contractors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at facilities in Jordan in 2012. The original goal was to weaken the Syrian government which had engaged in war crimes against their own people, according to a number of reports on Sunday.

    • The Benghazi outrage we actually should be talking about

      Newly revealed documents show how the CIA stood by as arms shipments from Libya enabled the rise of ISIS

    • Ex-CIA operative, author to speak to New Mexico graduates

      In 2003, Valerie Plame was exposed as a CIA operative by officials of the George W. Bush administration in an effort to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who had criticized the decision to invade Iraq.

    • Senior Al Shabaab Commander wanted by CIA dies in Somalia

      A Senior Al Shabaab commander wanted by CIA has died in Southern Somalia. Somalia based group, Al Shabaab said.

    • Sanders has been a longtime critic of CIA covert actions

      An interview televised by CSPAN in 1989, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders gave a stinging criticism of American covert actions to undermining socialist governments in Latin American countries.

      “If you trace the history of the United States vis a vis Latin America and Central America, there has never been a time where a country made a revolution for the poor people where it was not overthrown by the CIA or the United States government, or the marines,” Sanders said.

    • ‘Sudden Justice’ – an interview with Chris Woods on drone warfare.

      Much of Wood’s research has uncovered how the ‘war on terror’ has been a ‘tit-for-tat’ affair. Extraordinary rendition, began under Clinton, and resulted in alleged militants from Bosnia and Albania being taken to Egypt where they were tortured. One of these militants was the brother of the Al Qaeda Number Two El-Zawahiri, who subsequently ordered an attack on the US in Tanzania in revenge. In response, Clinton’s government put Osama bin Laden on the kill list. 9/11 soon followed, with the first US targetted drone strike happening a month later.

    • Drone Warfare

      With Chris Woods, investigative journalist and author of the book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars.

    • Far from facing the truth, the US is telling new lies about Iraq

      A couple of weeks ago, the Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush was asked in an interview with Fox News whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have invaded Iraq. It’s the kind of predictable question for which most people assumed he would have a coherent answer. They were wrong. Jeb blew it. “I would have [authorised the invasion],” he said. “And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

    • American leadership should be like Putin – Iraq War veteran

      Iraq seems to be losing the war with Islamic State (IS). Its army is retreating as the jihadists speed up their advance, with reinforcements coming from all across the globe, volunteers bolstering the extremists’ ranks. Airstrikes don’t seem to halt the offensive – either in Iraq and Syria. Isn’t this the time for the world to act? Shouldn’t the US do something decisive on the matter – given some claims that it’s America’s fault IS even came into existence in the first place. What should be done, what could’ve been done, and what should never have been done in the War on Terror?

    • Do the Right Thing

      How can we foresee unexpected situations before the fact? Mr. Mudd suggests what he calls “right-to-left thinking,” or asking completely different questions related to what we don’t know about a problem, instead of what we do know— Donald Rumsfeld’s famous “known unknowns.” For example, current analysts at the CIA might ask: Where is ISIS going to strike next? We know that the Islamist group will attack somewhere, but the where and when are unknown.

      But what about the “unknown unknowns,” things that we don’t even know that we don’t know? For this problem, Mr. Mudd believes a good leader needs to call in a “fresh team” of renegade thinkers who will purposefully challenge prevailing ideas, popular leaders and establishment traditionalists locked into the known unknowns. The renegades aren’t just playing devil’s advocate, or joining the contemporary equivalent of President Lincoln’s “team of rivals,” because that means staying within the boundaries of what is known about the unknown. To get to the unknown unknowns (assuming that they’re knowable in principle, if not in practice), you need to think outside parameters of convention, and this usually means bringing in outsiders and giving them a chance to be heard.

    • Finding support for invasion of Iraq is stretch

      In her Wednesday letter “ Army should avoid politics, do right thing,” Sylvia Bower began and ended her comments that the government “should acknowledge that Bush was right and there were WMD.” The writer’s premise and conclusion don’t agree with history and miss the point of the article.

    • Bob Woodward: George W. Bush did not lie about WMDs to get into Iraq War

      Former President George W. Bush did not lie about weapons of mass destruction to justify a war with Iraq, journalist Bob Woodward said in a segment on “Fox News Sunday.”

    • The Long, Long Fall of Bob Woodward

      This week many liberals gasped when Bob Woodward showed up on Fox News to defend George Bush and Dick Cheney’s prosecution of the Iraq War. Woodward told Chris Wallace that neither Bush nor Cheney lied about Iraq’s WMDs, that the intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons wasn’t seriously flawed and that the disastrous war against Saddam Hussein was probably justified.

    • The Fox Political Cult

      Probably the most infamous cases of mass mind control involves religious cults, with the People’s Temple Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, South America being the most tragic. In 1978, Jim Jones, most likely suffering from megalomania, forced 912 followers into committing mass suicide. Attempts to rescue the followers, ultimately by a member of the US House of Representatives, ended in the representative’s murder and the deaths of all sect members.

      The totality of Jim Jones’ control was blamed on a religious extremism administered through a charismatic leader with a regimen of 24/7 control of mind and body. In today’s world, religious cultism is not dead, but is still a problem.

      There is a more extensive form of mind control involving millions of Americans, not in the religious sense but in the political sense. There is no immediate threat of death for humans but, in effect, a deadly threat to a democracy founded well over 200 years ago, the American experiment in democracy.

      We are speaking of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which has potential access to a global audience of 4.7 billion people, three-fourths of the world’s population. Its Fox News Channel acts as the ultimate political cult in the United States.

    • Judith Miller’s Comeback

      Miller was renowned as a Times national-security reporter prior to 9/11, achieved stardom as the face of the pro-war propaganda effort prior to the Iraq invasion, and then became a household name all over the world once it was discovered she’d made the most impactful mistake the media business had ever seen.

    • Time for a frank discussion on the Iraq war

      There was a segment on America’s crumbling infrastructure on 60 Minutes last night. Congress, even Congress, recognizes the problem, if not its full gravity. They say, not without reason, that funding infrastructure overhaul is expensive and we can’t pay for it. With the Bush tax laws this is a problem. With the staggering cost of the American invasion of Iraq addressing America’s urgent domestic issues is a huge problem. Our inner cities fester and our bridges and highways are crumbling, to mention but two infrastructure problems.

    • Resurgence of the ‘Surge’ Myth

      Official Washington loves the story – the Iraq War was failing until President George W. Bush bravely ordered a “surge” in 2007 that won the war, but President Obama squandered the victory, requiring a new “surge” now. Except the narrative is dangerous make-believe, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

    • ISIS: An Inside Job?

      Poor Jeb! Being even less informed than his ambusher, he could only “respectfully disagree” and reiterate the neocon party line: if only we’d kept more troops in longer ISIS wouldn’t have coalesced. “You can rewrite history all you want,” he said, with a sigh, “but the simple fact is we’re in a much more unstable place because America pulled back.”

    • Why the Saudis just blacklisted two Lebanese militants

      This week, Saudi Arabia just sanctioned two senior Hezbollah members, Khalil Harb and Muhammad Qabalan, for “terrorist actions.” Both operatives have long Hezbollah resumes, but they stand out for playing leadership roles overseeing Hezbollah’s operations in one particular region: the Middle East. Tellingly, the decision to blacklist these two Hezbollah operatives comes in the wake of Hezbollah threats that Saudi Arabia would “incur very serious losses” and “pay a heavy price” as a result of its Yemen campaign. Given Hezbollah’s recent investment in expanding its regional presence and operations, the Saudis are taking these threats seriously.

    • Heirs of the ‘Secret War’ in Laos

      On the morning of May 14, 1975, in a valley of limestone, sinkholes and caves, the end was drawing near. The discarded possessions of those who had fled were everywhere: suitcases, shoes, wrinkled blouses. This was Long Tieng, a secret military air base established by the Central Intelligence Agency from where it led clandestine operations in Laos during the Vietnam War.

    • Henry Kissinger Just Turned 92. Here’s Why He’s Careful About Where He Travels.

      As Henry Kissinger turns 92, the former uber-diplomat still enjoys international prestige for his many career accomplishments. Still, there are wide areas of the globe he steers clear of — the better to avoid questioning in connection with war crimes.

      As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon and then Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford, Kissinger was known for his realpolitik approach to foreign policy. In the context of the Cold War, that often meant employing ruthless means to undermine perceived U.S. enemies and bolster allies. It is perhaps no coincidence that Kissinger has gone to great lengths to argue that countries cannot prosecute a world leader for crimes against humanity committed in a third country.

      Below are some of the most glaring examples of foreign policy decisions Kissinger made — from Vietnam to Chile — that violated human rights.

    • U.S. defense chief to China: End South China Sea expansion

      As China rapidly builds new artificial islands in the South China Sea to expand its territory claim there, Washington is adamantly refusing to recognize those claims.

      On Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter called for “an immediate and lasting halt” to the practice.

    • Bin Laden killing in 2011: a ‘Volcano of Lies’!

      In the May 21st 2015 issue of the London Review of Books, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who, in 1969, first exposed the ghastly My Lai massacre by US forces during the Vietnam War, published an new account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden which exposed the story told by the Obama Administration to be, as he put it, “a blatant lie.”

      Using sources inside the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, Hersh dismantled, plank-by-plank, the official narrative first paraded by President Obama in his public address a few hours after the raid in Abbottabad and later embellished by John Brennan.

      Hersh’s revelations establish that at the time of the raid Bin Laden was essentially an invalid. He was living under a sort of ‘house-arrest’ by the Pakistanis, who were monitoring him 24/7. US intelligence was alerted to Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad by a ‘walk-in’ informant who wanted to collect (and, in fact, did) a portion of the $25 million ‘reward’ that was on offer.

    • Judge Who Blocked Release of Osama bin Laden Death Photos Now Blocks Release of Senate Torture Report

      A federal judge has thwarted an attempt to force the release of the Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture program.

      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s full report on the CIA interrogation program. The executive summary of the report was previously made public, albeit with numerous redactions.

      But U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg rejected the ACLU’s request, ruling the report remains a congressional record and thus isn’t subject to the FOIA. When Congress created FOIA in 1966, it made sure to exempt the legislative branch from its provisions.

    • Osama’s ghost comes back to haunt US

      Much as the U.S. did that night by projecting Osama’s killing as an act of victory. By killing a terrorist who had long lost his relevance even in the eyes of his most serious backers, the only point U.S. President Barack Obama was trying to make was that killing an individual could compensate for not being able to address the circumstances that made his terror network flourish.

      [...]

      The same narrative later played out in Libya, where the intervening nations were more intent on finishing off Qaddafi than stabilising the country. The same story is gaining traction in the case of Syria, where the West’s recalcitrance on dealing with Assad has led to Islamic State gaining greater foothold, to a point now where it controls almost half its territory. The farce that played out in Libya is being repeated now in Syria and Yemen. We wonder if Osama’s ghost has been wilfully kept alive.

    • White lies

      The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh takes apart several important pieces of the U.S. narrative on the death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan in 2011.

      [...]

      Hersh alleges that Saudi Arabia paid for bin Laden’s accommodation. This is unverified but not improbable. More than anything, the Saudis wanted bin Laden silent, either under house arrest in Pakistan with no connection to the outside world, or dead. Their money got the former; the U.S. did the latter. The world did not get to hear of bin Laden’s account of who funded him and groomed him during the 1990s and early 2000s.

    • Celerier: Pandering to our enemies

      Meanwhile, we pander to our greatest enemies in the Middle East: Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which support terrorism and allow no human rights within their borders. This policy is both absurd and repugnant. Our policy should be to take sides with Assad before it is too late and help him destroy the terrorists. Then we must take Saudi Arabia to task for its contemptible acts against civilization.

    • “Death in the Congo” highlights obscure subject: African liberation

      The struggle for African liberation, often spearheaded by socialist, left-leaning national liberation movements, is an important part of African history. Many figures loom large as part of this history, including Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo.

      Young and charismatic, Lumumba endeared himself to the emerging national liberation movement, while trying to balance conflicting needs and agendas in a country largely controlled by Belgium financial interests – even after independence.

    • Bangladesh Says Coca-Cola Unit Manager Tied to Islamic State

      Bangladeshi authorities arrested two men suspected of being recruiters for the Islamic State, police said, one of whom works for a local unit of the Coca-Cola Co.

    • Turkey says US agrees to provide air cover for anti-Assad “rebels” in Syria

      Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday that the US had agreed to provide air support for so-called “moderate rebels” being trained in Turkey, once they cross the border into Syria.

      Cavusoglu told the Daily Sabah that there was “a principle agreement” between the two governments for Washington to provide air cover for the proxy forces being trained in a US-funded program aimed at toppling the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    • Turkey, US to provide air protection for moderate Syrian opposition forces

      Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu, speaking to Daily Sabah in an exclusive interview while attending the fifth MIKTA Foreign Ministers Meeting in Seoul, said the moderate Syrian opposition forces that will be part of the train and equip program in Kırşehir won’t be abandoned once they are back in Syria. He said ignoring their plight once in Syria was against what the program wanted to achieve, adding that the U.S. and Turkey had agreed in principle to provide the trained and equipped moderate forces with air protection in Syria. He said that the air cover for trained Syrian forces was not part of the comprehensive plan put forward by Turkey that included setting up no-fly zones and safe zones in Syria. On the issue of Rohingya refugees, he said Turkey was in close contact with Indonesia and Malaysia, which are also MIKTA members, adding that the government had donated $1 million to help the refugees. The foreign minister also remarked on the start of the latest round of Cyprus unification talks, noting that Turkey was more determined than ever to resolve the issue. The current positive climate created by the resumption of talks needed to last, he said.

    • The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale of Propaganda

      The US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO’s 1999 Kosovo campaign was no accident.

    • The Bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, Reconsidered

      When I was in Beijing during the protests in 1989, a middle-aged man came up to me and asked, “Couldn’t America send some B-52s here and…” and he made a swooping motion with his hand.

      Ten years later, on May 7, 1999, the American bombers did show up.

      Instead of showering freedom ordnance on China’s dictators, however, they dropped five bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

      As to why this happened, the United States has always declared it was an accident.

    • Ted Yoho Leads a Coalition to Ensure Only DOD Handles Drones

      Teaming up with conservatives, libertarians and liberals, at the end of last week U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., continued his fight to ensure authority over armed drones remains solely with the Department of Defense (DOD), as he brought back the “Drone Reform Act (DRA)” on Friday.

    • Germany and US Drones

      Germany should make sure that Ramstein is not used for illegal attacks

    • German Court Turns Down Drone Lawsuit but Leaves Door Open to Others
    • Court rejects Yemenis’ case against Germany over US drones

      A German court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit against the government brought by three Yemeni men who lost two relatives in a U.S. drone strike.

      The men, who were unable to leave Yemen to attend the hearing, alleged in their suit that the German government let the United States use an air base in southern Germany to relay flight control data for lethal drone strikes, including the 2012 attack in which their relatives were killed.

    • Court hears Yemenis’ case against Germany over US drone strike that killed 2 relatives
    • Yemeni Claim that Germany Helped US Drone Strikes Dismissed
    • Court rejects case against US drone strikes
    • German court to begin hearing in Yemen drone case
    • German court hears case into US drone killings in Yemen
    • Family Of American Drone Victims Vow To Fight German Court Ruling
    • German court set to hear testimony from family of Yemeni drone victim
    • Yemenis Are Taking Germany to Court Over US Drone Strikes
    • Court rejects Yemenis’ case against Germany over US drone strike that killed 2 relatives
    • Court dismisses claim of German complicity in Yemeni drone killings
    • German court rejects Yemen drone case
    • Drone War: German Court Throws Out Case by Family of Slain Yeminis
    • German court rejects Yemenis’ case over US drone killings
    • German court rejects complaint from Yemeni drone victims
    • German court case centers on Ramstein’s possible role in drone attack
    • Yemeni Claim that Germany Helped US Drone Strikes Dismissed
    • ‘US Can Do Whatever It Wants on German Soil’: German MP on Ramstein Base
    • Court dismisses Yemenis’ case over German role in US drone strikes
    • German Court Rejects Case Brought by U.S. Drone Strike Victims’ Family

      A German court in Cologne has rejected the lawsuit of a Yemeni family whose two relatives died in a U.S. drone strike.

    • Andrew Cockburn chronicles how U.S. drones complete Obama’s Kill Chain

      The United States military’s desire to kill without putting its soldiers at risk began earlier than many realize. In Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, veteran Washington reporter Andrew Cockburn begins the story of America’s modern assassination program in the 1960s, on the Ho Chi Minh trail in North Vietnam.

    • The debate on lethal robots is starting too late
    • Beyond drone warfare: Prof warns of ‘automated killing machines’
    • Drones deciding on their own when to kill? No thanks
    • Who will police the killer robots?
    • DARPA’s Autonomous Robots might Do More Damage than Good
    • DARPA’s ‘killer robots’ technology can leave humans ‘utterly defenseless’
    • US Military Developing Killer Robots For War
    • US air force embraces sci-fi technology in a dynamic shift in advanced weaponry

      From Artificial Intelligence, drones and the Internet of Things – the US army also has something clever up their sleeves and it’s no messing around with this new weapon of defense.

    • DARPA tests laser weapon for fighters, drones

      The U.S military will come one step closer to its dream of arming fighter jets with ray guns this summer, as DARPA shifts one of its hottest laser projects onto White Sands Missile range for field tests.

    • Drone warfare gone awry…

      Victims of drones are living witnesses of the US’ barbaric policies, brutalities and indiscriminate killing of civilians.

    • Casualties and Polls: Some Observations

      Ryan, who I don’t believe opposes drone technology per se, nevertheless criticizes the many surveys that consistently show solid U.S. support for drones because they “fail to seek information about public attitudes in the face of drone operations that, in reality, often cause civilian deaths.” He is right to conclude that, logically, public support declines when civilian casualties are involved, and he is also right to critique the polls. I do disagree, however, with the popular assumption (and not just Ryan’s) that “in reality” drone strikes “often” cause civilian casualties.

    • The Kill List: ICWatch Uses LinkedIn Account Info to Out Officials Who Aided Assassination Program

      WikiLeaks has begun hosting a new database called ICWatch, built by Transparency Toolkit. The site includes a searchable database of 27,000 LinkedIn profiles of people in the intelligence community. Organizers say the aim of the site is to “watch the watchers.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange talks about how the database could be used to help identify individuals connected to the U.S. kill list, formally known as the Joint Prioritized Effects List, or JPEL.

    • ICWatch Uses LinkedIn Information to Out Officials Who Aided Assassination Program
    • Death From Above

      This formula is repeated throughout the rest of the book. That is 1) There is a military problem 2) Someone always tries to find a technological solution, and then 3) Spends a lot of money only to find out the U.S. has made the problem worse.

    • Why a Muslim Peace Hero May Not Be Welcome

      Speaking in my hometown, Oxford, on Tuesday, Qatar’s Shaikha Moza told an audience at the university that Muslims are being “dehumanised” by Western media coverage of violent Islamic extremism and identified as “something fearful and unknowable”.

      I have to agree and do not consider this phenomenon to be particularly new. The British tabloids have worked hard to present Muslims at home and abroad as backward and hostile. I imagine this makes it easier to kill them when we send bombs and armed drones into Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

    • American prisoner’s fate unknown after deadly air strikes on Yemen jail

      Fears are growing over the fate of an American citizen trapped in a Yemeni military prison after a Saudi air strike bombed the compound where his lawyers believe he is held.

    • Podcast: The Case of Sharif Mobley, Detained American Possibly Killed in Saudi Attack in Yemen

      Sharif Mobley is a US citizen, who was kidnapped in Yemen and has been in detention for five years. The FBI is known to have interrogated him. His life has been increasingly endangered as war rages in Yemen, and this past week the military compound, where he has been held, was bombed.

    • Public Opinion, International Law, and Drone Strikes: Some Reflections

      We commend Professor Charles Dunlap for his excellent recent post on international law and public support for drone strikes. As he notes, there are many points of agreement between him, Professor Goodman, and ourselves, primarily that when it comes to drone strikes, the American public is interested not just in being safe, but in being compliant with international law. Of course, he points to a number of differences and we appreciate the opportunity to respond to what we take to be the main criticisms he raises.

    • Justice Department issues policy on domestic drone use

      The Justice Department is acknowledging that the FBI, DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies are likely to make increasing use of unmanned aerial drones in the United States.

    • NYT Trumpets U.S. Restraint against ISIS, Ignores Hundreds of Civilian Deaths

      The article claims that “the campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters” and “has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons.” But an anonymous American pilot nonetheless complains that “we have not taken the fight to these guys,” and says he “cannot get authority” to drone-bomb targets without excessive proof that no civilians will be endangered. Despite the criticisms, Schmitt writes, “administration officials stand by their overriding objective to prevent civilian casualties.”

    • Humanizing War and the Dangers of Drone Warfare

      Though war is one of the greatest scourges of humanity, the Church has always sought to humanize war, as much as this is possible. This effort faces a new challenge with the rise of drone warfare, now in nascent stage. The USCCB’s Committee on International Justice and Peace has just released its second letter in two years on the topic. What does it mean to humanize war? How has this challenge become more difficult? I will briefly examine these questions before introducing the important contribution of these two letters from the bishops.

    • The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers

      The Pentagon behaves as if aircraft carriers will rule forever … they won’t

    • Hawks of a Feather

      The glaring exception to all this hawkishness, of course, is Rand Paul, the libertarian senator who made his mark in 2013 with a filibuster protesting the American policy of using drones to kill Americans engaging in terrorism overseas. Paul was absent from Oklahoma City last month, busy with another filibuster to stop the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program. Days later, in an interview on MSNBC, the Kentucky senator lambasted the “hawks in our party” for policies that he said have allowed the terrorist group ISIS to “exist and grow.”

    • Dying in Vain at Home is No Different Than Abroad

      Just to round out this discussion of dying in vain and to give the concept a domestic feel, here is something to think about: Black men aged 20-34 died at a higher rate in Philadelphia in 2002 than in the military in Iraq from 2003-06 at the height of the US war there. Now that is real dying in vain, and a dying in vain that seems to grind on every day in America’s urban areas.

    • 30 Years Later: The Bombing Of MOVE Part 2

      Jared Ball and Bashi Rose continue their coverage of the May 13th Commemoration of the 1985 Bombing of MOVE

    • The weapons of war

      A century ago, the world witnessed the first use of weapons of mass destruction. On April 22, 1915, the German High Command launched their first chlorine attack with a bombardment of the trenches on the Western Front, sending a thick yellow cloud floating towards the French and Canadian lines. Its effects were horrific even by the standards of the trenches. Chlorine burnt the throat and destroyed the lining of the lungs. Many drowned in their own bodily fluids.

    • Activists condemn Swiss drone deal with Israel

      Swiss activists started a campaign on Tuesday against an official deal between their country and Israel through which Switzerland is to buy drones, Quds Press has reported. The first protest took place outside Switzerland’s largest military base.

    • The Vocabulary of War Criminals

      In the land of American exceptionalism, bipartisan political leaders make “mistakes” in foreign policy; they do not commit war crimes. The invasion of Iraq offers a much needed case study; and the brother of the president who launched the invasion sets the stage.

    • Taking Responsibility For Drone Killings- President Obama And The Fog Of War

      When President Barack Obama apologized on April 23 to the families of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an American and an Italian, both hostages killed in a drone attack in Pakistan in January, he blamed their tragic deaths on the “fog of war.”

    • TV ads urge Syracuse drone pilots to refuse flying over Afghanistan

      A coalition of peace groups began airing TV ads in Syracuse this week urging pilots from the 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Field in Mattydale to stop flying their remotely-piloted drones over Afghanistan.

      The 15-second TV ads are critical of the attacks carried out by the New York Air National Guard’s MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the attack wing.

      “Drone pilots: Please refuse to fly,” the ads say. “No one has to obey an immoral law.”

    • Families Press for Changes in Policy on Hostages

      Mr. Obama, she said, also conceded that his administration had failed her. “That was the least he could do,” Mrs. Foley said in an interview this week. “That was hopeful. I recognize that the administration feels badly it was not handled well and it was not given the priority it should have had.”

    • The Foreign Policy Essay: Just How Effective is the U.S. Drone Program Anyway?

      While these announcements represent an uncommon acknowledgement of casualties from drones, notably absent from these remarks was the acknowledgement that Weinstein and Lo Porto were indeed killed by a drone strike, the specific location of the strike, and which government agency was responsible for conducting the strike. Even in a moment of apparent transparency, the U.S. government was opaque.

    • RAF Waddington drone protesters’ trial put back until later this year

      The trial of four protesters who allegedly cut the perimeter fence at RAF Waddington and walked onto the base has been postponed until October.

      The defendants, members of the End The Drone Wars group, were arrested on January 5 following their protest against the use of unmanned Reaper ‘drones’ in the Middle East, remotely piloted from Waddington.

      Christopher Cole, 51, from Oxford, Gary Eagling, 52, from Nottingham, Dr Katharina Karcher, 31, from Coventry, and Penelope Walker, 64, from Leicester, all deny criminal damage.

    • The Interpreter on terrorism and dual citizenship

      Given yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister that his Government would legislate within weeks to revoke Australian citizenship from dual-nationality terrorists, it is worth revisiting three Interpreter pieces on whether this is a useful weapon in the fight against terrorism.

    • Interactive map shows details of every bomb that hit Aberdeen in World War II

      Recalling historical dates in chronological order might not be everyone’s party trick, but a new online map has just made gathering World War II knowledge a little easier. Powered by Google, the digital tool highlights the areas of Aberdeen which fell victim to the air raids of the 1940s – and the dates of when they were hit.

    • Memorial Day Heroes: “Thank You For Your Service”…On Second Thought

      It is Memorial Day again. Some will celebrate. Some will drink too much. Some will march in parades. Some will rally around the flag. Some will go shopping. Some will mourn. I am among the mourners. I mourn mostly for those we have killed — and I mourn for those we haven’t killed yet, but will in the days ahead. I mourn for all of the mothers and fathers who put their children to bed at night and wonder if this will be the night that they are killed by a drone attack.

      I mourn for the 500,000 Iraqi children – dead because of U.S. foreign policy. The official policy as described by Madeleine Albright on 60 Minutes was ‘that we think the price was worth it.’ Worth it to whom? Not to the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers of those children.

    • Gaza Strip: Israel to open investigation into Palestinian Bedouin sisters’ death near Khan Younis

      The deaths of Hakema Abu Adwan, 66, and Nadjah Abu Adwan, 47, was first documented by soldiers in the report in early May, when it was claimed the sisters were shot dead on 22 July by Israeli forces who then listed them as terrorists despite knowing that they were civilians.

    • Catch 22 at the German Embassy

      In an aggressive move, one of the demonstrators repeatedly forced a list of children killed by U.S. drone strikes into the embassy “janitorial” staff’s view.

    • A Civilian Is A Combatant Is A Civilian Is A Combatant

      The researchers found that many people who have lived where wars are fought have taken part in those wars in one way or another, and that they have no clear understanding (not that anyone else does) of when they have been civilians and when combatants. Said one interviewee, highlighted as typical: “What I think is that there is no line at all. . . . Civilians can turn into fighters at any time. Anybody can change from a fighter to a civilian, all in one day, in one moment.”

      The interviewees made clear that many are forced into participation in war, others have very little choice, and others join in for reasons not too different from those expressed by the Pentagon: primarily self-defense, but also patriotism, prestige, survival, civic duty, social standing, outrage at the targeting of peaceful protesters, and financial gain. Bizarrely, not a single interviewee said they joined in a war in order to prevent Americans from going shopping after church or otherwise continuing with their lifestyle or freedoms.

    • Albania and Serbia vow to work for Balkans’ stability

      At the heart of the mutual friction was Kosovo, the former Serbian province with an ethnic Albanian majority which unilaterally declared independence in 2008.

    • Neocons: The Men of Dementia

      So it happened also that when our modern heroes rode through the deserts of the Middle East, they saw a robust fellow (Iraq) mistreating a little fellow (Kuwait). When our heroes accosted him, the big fellow said that the little fellow was stealing his oil and not helping him protect his flock (the Arab nations) from the advancing Iranians. So Iraq, who had no money “with him” as Cervantes says of the lout Don Quixote encountered, said he could not pay Kuwait what it owed it.

    • Colorado theater shooting victims relive terror in courtroom

      From the witness stand, Christina Blache could finally do what she had most wanted and most feared: She looked for the first time at the man who shot her, who killed her friend, who ravaged so many lives.

      Her muscles tensed. Her nerves tingled. She fought back tears.

    • Kurdish women’s militia takes a stand for Ras al Ayn

      Nujaan, who is 27 and has been a soldier for four years, says that Isis’s “target is women”. She says: “Look at Shingal [in Iraq] where they raped the women and massacred the men. It is a matter of honour to defend ourselves first, and then our families and lands.” Sitting beside her is Zenya, 22, who adds that she also “is fighting for myself and my family”.

    • US Military and Civilians Are Increasingly Divided

      While the U.S. waged a war in Vietnam 50 years ago with 2.7 million men conscripted from every segment of society, less than one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. population is in the armed services today — the lowest rate since World War II. America’s recent wars are authorized by a U.S. Congress whose members have the lowest rate of military service in history, led by three successive commanders in chief who never served on active duty.

    • Chinese embassy in Pakistan verifying hostage video

      The Chinese embassy in Pakistan is attempting to verify reports of a video purporting to show a Chinese kidnapped by Taliban-allied fighters in Pakistan a year ago asking Beijing to help secure his release.

      Chinese in Pakistan have been told to be on the alert, despite the security situation improving this year.

    • Video surfaces of a kidnapped Chinese tourist in Pakistan

      A militant video released Sunday purported to show a Chinese tourist kidnapped by Taliban-allied fighters in Pakistan a year ago asking for his government to help him be released.

      A militant known to belong to a Taliban splinter group called Jaish Al-Hadeed, or the “Contingent of Steel,” gave the video to The Associated Press. While it could not be independently verified by the AP, the man in the video resembled other known photographs of Hong Xudong, kidnapped in May 2014.

    • Video of Chinese hostage could prove embarrassing for Pakistan

      An armed militia group in Pakistan with links to the Taliban released a video of a Chinese tourist they announced that they kidnapped last year, according to Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily.

      In the video, the hostage asked the Chinese government to pay the ransom or his captors would execute him, but did not specify the sum of money. The hostage also criticized the Pakistani government, stating that they only care about money and had made no attempt to rescue him, the paper said.

    • The Global Elite’s Crimes Against Humanity

      Virtually every government in the world creates an illusion for its people. Take economic policy. Government policies might hurt us in the short term, but we are all on a one way route to the ‘promised land’ of happiness, or so we are told by the politicians, the corporate media and spokespersons for the ones who make us suffer to ensure they never have to – the privileged elite, the ruling class.

    • ISIS vs 3D printing

      Time and again, conflict has been bad news for historical artifacts and sculptures. There was the infamous burning of the Library of Alexandria, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan by the Taliban, and the Nazi’s battle to burn as much “degenerate art” as they could find. Swept up in a violent fervor, mobs and soldiers have been quick to destroy what took societies centuries to create; what museums and collectors spent decades collecting, preserving, and documenting for the public.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • CIA Hordes Climate Data from Scientists

      In other words, MEDEA was a program that scientists relied on to get accurate and classified climate data — and now it is gone. But why?

    • Awkward: CIA Shuts Down Climate Research Program After Obama Frames Climate Change as National Security Threat
    • CIA Stops Sharing Climate Change Info With Scientists

      In a recent speech, President Obama proclaimed that climate change “constitutes a serious threat to global security (and), an immediate risk to our national security,” and warned that it actually could exacerbate other menaces, such as terrorism and political instability.

      “Severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram,” Obama said. “It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East.”

      But even as the White House is affirming its focus, the CIA reportedly is ending a key program that shared the agency’s climate change data — some of it gathered by surveillance satellites and other clandestine sources.

    • The CIA shuts down program that gives scientists access to vital climate change data

      The CIA will no longer allow climate change scientists to access data from spy satellites and submarines in order to study global warming. Prior to the announcement, scientists could study global warming data in extreme detail thanks to a program, called MEDEA — Measurement of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis. Now the CIA is shutting down the program, saying that there is no longer a need to study the implications of climate change.

    • CIA Ends Information Sharing with Climate Scientists

      The CIA began the program in 1992 under President George H. W. Bush, whose son George W. Bush, as president, shut down MEDEA. In 2010, President Barack Obama revived the program along with establishing a new CIA office, Center for Climate Change and National Security. That office was shut down without explanation in 2012.

    • Gelderland uses ‘neck breaker’ to kill geese at €13.50 a bird

      Gelderland provincial council has given a €22,000 contract to a small pest control company to kill 1,600 geese using a controversial method of breaking the birds’ necks.

      Despite the cost of €13.75 per bird, no-one has seen if or how the method works and the province does not plan to check up on the work or animal welfare issues, the AD reports.

      The contract has been awarded to a company named V&T, based in Leerdam but details about how the neck breaker will work are sketchy.

      The method, known as cervical dislocation, involves snapping the birds’ necks one by one. According to the local broadcaster Omroep Gelderland, the bird’s neck is placed between two blocks and then broken, resulting in a ‘stress-free and painless death’.

    • What Will the Refugio Oil Spill Kill?

      Since last Tuesday’s oil spill, more than 20,000 gallons of death-dealing crude has sickened or killed pelicans, cormorants, grebes, dolphins, sea lions, elephant seals, bass, guitarfish, spiny lobsters, rock crabs, urchins, octopi, shrimp, mussels, sea hares, sponges, anemones, coral, and whole swaths of smaller sea life along the long-protected and once-pristine Gaviota Coast.

    • 4 more bodies found after Texas flooding

      Authorities said Friday they reclaimed four more bodies from Texas waters, adding to the growing death toll inflicted by record-setting storms that continue to submerge highways and flood homes.

    • Texas, Okla. Flooding Kills 19, More Rain Expected

      Floodwaters deepened across much of Texas on Tuesday as storms dumped almost another foot of rain on the Houston area, stranding hundreds of motorists and inundating the famously congested highways that serve the nation’s fourth-largest city.

  • Finance

    • Germany: many strikes and a big scandal

      Was the German working class suddenly turning super-militant? Some may have been fearful, some hopeful that on the rail lines and elsewhere the old IWW-Wobbly song from 1915-USA, “Solidarity Forever” was literally coming true: “… without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.”

      The strike of locomotive engineers stopped freight cars May 19 and passenger traffic the next day. Unlike eight previous strikes by the same union, the strike was not for 30 hours, 42 hours or six days – but with no end date. Although the state-owned but largely independently-run railroad company tried to maintain a skeleton schedule, two-thirds of the wheels stopped turning; also city rail service was cut by 40 to 85 percent. In Berlin the crucial “S-Bahn” elevated system tried hard to achieve at least 20-minute intervals on main routes. Subway, bus and tram lines were unaffected – but overfilled.

    • Disgraced general David Petraeus is now being rolled out by private equity firm in a bid to impress potential new clients

      Former CIA director’s name recognition has become way for company KKR to help attract big name clients from country’s richest families

    • KKR rolls out ex-CIA director David Petraeus in hunt for family wealth

      Matthew McCarthy was asked by KKR to fly to New York from Ohio, where he manages money for the founders of a consumer-products company. First he had dinner with KKR’s billionaire co-founder Henry Kravis. The next morning, he met David Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current chairman of the KKR Global Institute at the company’s headquarters.

    • Why would anyone want to buy shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland?

      Front and centre of these will be the settlement with US regulators for as much as $10bn (£6.5bn) for the mis-selling of sub-prime mortgages and mortgage securities, the scale of which could provide a serious headache for chief executive Ross McEwan.

    • Acting for Your Life on LA’s Skid Row

      The more he researched, the more he was drawn into the population that most middle-class people would prefer to ignore. After raising some modest funds, he opened an office to begin recruiting Skid Row’s residents for a theater that would tackle their problems and those of society as a whole. As you can imagine, given the psychological wreckage and drug problems of those who he would be directing, this was not an easy task. McEnteer writes about Jim Beame, a talented but mentally ill member of Malpede’s company who riffed about baseball and other things that struck his fancy in a performance piece and as such was described as the company’s “star” by People magazine:

      But there was no Hollywood happy ending for Jim Beame. True, his association with LAPD appeared to calm him down somewhat. He had become more subdued and less overtly angry. But still, in his anger he hallucinated whoever he was with into his parents or his ex-wife, who was trying to control him. He had been kicked out of virtually all the shelters on Skid Row for his loud, abusive behavior. He interrupted long recitations of baseball or basketball statistics only to make lewd comments to any women who happened to be present. Conversation with him was impossible. By the time he joined LAPD he had been on the streets for six years, living in a vacant lot near Chinatown, eating out of the trash.

    • 5 Facts About The Cuban Economy

      Cuba was doing business with the U.S. even before the embargo was lifted.

    • In Shocking Move, Goldman Slashes America’s Long-Run “Potential GDP” From 2.25% To 1.75%

      While Ben Bernanke will never agree that global economic growth has ground to a halt as a result of his monetary policies, a phenomenon which in the past year has been dubbed “secular stagnation” by the very serious weathermen (and will certainly never admit the reason for such stagnation), with every passing month one thing becomes clear: there can be no growth and certainly no prosperity for the broader population with a $200 trillion (and rising at over $10 trillion per year) overhang in global debt. And now, even Goldman gets it.

    • Proposals to extend marketplace subsidies would only delay damage

      Congressional proposals to temporarily extend federal health insurance subsidies if they’re lost in an upcoming Supreme Court decision would only delay, not avoid premium hikes, insurance market disruptions and potential coverage losses for millions of Americans.

    • Thousands of Ukrainians protest Kiev regime’s draconian utility price hikes

      Protests are mounting against decisions by the NATO-backed regime in Kiev to drastically increase prices for energy, water, and other basic necessities. Protesters reportedly set up a mock gallows near government buildings in downtown Kiev this weekend. The protests follow a march on May 16 of an estimated 5,000 people in Kiev to protest the price hikes.

      The right-wing government in Kiev is slashing spending on subsidies to basic goods to funnel the money to the Ukrainian regime’s Wall Street creditors and boosting military spending on the war against Russian-backed forces in east Ukraine. As a result, consumer prices for basic necessities are skyrocketing.

    • Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies

      Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.

      [...]

      Tesla and SolarCity continue to report net losses after a decade in business, but the stocks of both companies have soared on their potential; Musk’s stake in the firms alone is worth about $10 billion. (SpaceX, a private company, does not publicly report financial performance.)

      Musk and his companies’ investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.

  • Lobbying/Politics

    • Here’s what’s in Ben Bradlee’s FBI file

      Ben Bradlee was a legendary editor, a man whose Washington Post brought down a president and whose swashbuckling style made him a celebrity and a hero to many an aspiring journalist.

      But according to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s towering, autocratic leader for much of the postwar era, Bradlee was “a colossal liar” who was out to smear him.

    • Now open: The Clinton campaign store
    • Dredging Hanoi Lake for Life after McCain

      They have deranged smiles, hefty laughs, sometimes, like John McCain, seven homes, a cool twenty million in the bank, and that syphilitic grin.

      I was in Vietnam, 1994, talking with people in Hanoi. Saw the photos of children all lined up in the courtyard of an orphanage. Oh, maybe 20 in one shot, 10 in another, and the story was repeated through narratives, both visual and oral.

    • Dana Milbank: The clown car Republican field

      In the oversold Republican primary situation, a candidate is likeliest to get attention when there’s a screw-up, such as Jeb Bush’s five attempts last week to answer a simple question about Iraq, or the borderline racist questions posed to Cruz by Mark Halperin of Bloomberg News.

  • Censorship

    • Court Orders VPN, TOR & Proxy Advice Site to be Blocked

      The site, RUBlacklist, is an information resource aimed at users who wish to learn about tools that can be used to circumvent censorship. It doesn’t host any tools itself but offers advice on VPNs, proxies, TOR and The Pirate Bay’s Pirate Browser.

  • Privacy

    • WhatsApp and Google – Forced By MI5 to Hand Over Encrypted Messages

      New laws are about to take effect in the UK, where the Conservatives want to force Google, Apple and Facebook to hand over encrypted messages from suspects (criminals or terrorists) to unravel their plans and annihilate them. These encrypted messages might be analyzed by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

    • Inside the company that can predict the future by analyzing every piece of information on the web

      Even so, his company is likely to be clued in. That’s because Recorded Future doesn’t just mine open forums for information: it tries to scan every part of the open web. Hackers frequently talk to each other on chat platforms known as IRCs — and Recorded Future is able to pick up those conversations too.

    • PowerPoint should be banned. This PowerPoint presentation explains why.

      The indiscriminate and ingrained use of PowerPoint presentations threatens the military’s institutional integrity. Former defense secretary Robert Gates said he was terrified by the thought of promising young officers sitting in cubicles and reformatting slides in their prime working years. At the CIA, he was able to ban slides from briefings, but at the Pentagon, he couldn’t even cut down the number used. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter banned PowerPoint presentations during a summit in Kuwait to encourage analysis and discussions, instead of the usual fixed briefings.

    • Athenians, lobby your lawmakers to let PATRIOT Act expire
    • Patriot Act reform: Senate debates NSA surveillance – live updates

      Controversial provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire tonight if the Senate doesn’t reach a compromise on government surveillance in a rare Sunday session. We are inside Congress with all the latest updates on the fate of the first major reform package since the Edward Snowden revelations – and what another marathon legislative session could mean for the future of intelligence.

      The USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan compromise that would ban the bulk collection exposed by Snowden and is overwhelmingly backed in the House of Representatives, fell three votes short of advancing in another marathon nine days ago. A two-month extension of government surveillance proposed by supporters of the status quo also fell short of the 60-vote supermajority needed to start debate on a bill in the Senate.

    • Orange schools to monitor social media posts of students, staff

      What Orange County students — and staff — post on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is now being monitored by their school district to “ensure safe school operations,” the district announced this morning.

    • UK police requests to access phone calls or emails are granted 93% of the time

      Ministers are facing calls to curb the scale of police access to private phone and email records, after a report by privacy campaigners found officers were making a request every two minutes and getting access in 93% of cases.

      The figures, released to Big Brother Watch under freedom of information laws, found there were more than 730,000 requests for communications data between 2012 and 2014 from forces across the UK. There were annual increases in applications in each of those years, peaking at just under 250,000 last year, according to the report.

  • Civil Rights

    • Theater of the Absurd

      Elected in the brand name of peace, the Barack Obama has joked to his White House staff that he is “good at killing people.”

    • North Korea, Somalia top most corrupt countries’ list
    • Jeffrey Sterling vs. the CIA: the Untold Story
    • Persecution of CIA’s Jeffrey Sterling

      The U.S. government’s successful prosecution of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for leaking secrets about a failed covert operation to the press followed a long campaign against him for protesting racial discrimination inside the spy agency, writes Norman Solomon.

    • Jeffrey Sterling vs. the CIA: An Untold Story of Race and Retribution
    • Jeffrey Sterling vs. the CIA: An Untold Story of Race and Retribution
    • LATEST VICTIM IN U.S. WAR ON WHISTLEBLOWERS

      Jeffrey Sterling recently stood before a judge as his sentence was read. The former CIA officer, the judge declared, would spend 42 months — that’s three and half years — behind bars.

      The feds had convicted Sterling on nine felony charges, including seven counts of espionage.

      He didn’t sell secrets to the Russians. He didn’t trade intelligence for personal gain. He made no attempt to disrupt the American way of life.

      What did he do, then?

    • CIA Whistleblower Kiriakou Joins Anti-War Activists To Write Letters To Political Prisoners

      He spent 30 months in federal prison for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s government-sanctioned torture practices. Now John Kiriakou joins activists from the anti-war group Code Pink to write letters to other activists, dissenters and perceived political prisoners.

    • AUDIO: Whistleblower John Kiriakou to Robert Scheer: Whistleblowers ‘Are Not Alone’
    • Truthdigger of the Week: Whistleblower John Kiriakou

      As Kiriakou told Scheer, the DOJ stacks the cards in its favor by filing as many charges as it can against a defendant, burying the victim in legal fees and, even more important, in fear. And win it does. According to a ProPublica piece that Kiriakou references in the Truthdig interview, the Department of Justice is victorious in 98.2 percent of its cases.

    • Why the last of the JFK files could embarrass the CIA

      Shortly after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who oversaw the first official inquiry, was asked by a reporter if the full record would be made public.

    • Top-Secret JFK Files Coming Soon—Maybe

      The 1992 JFK Records Act established that 40,000 documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy would be made public in October 2017. Now that the date is little more than two years away, seven archivists and technicians with top-secret security clearances have begun poring over the pages for processing at the National Archives, Politico reports. “Within our power, the National Archives is going to do everything we can to make these records open and available to the public,” Martha Murphy, head of the archives’ Special Access branch, says. “That is my only goal.” However, the president-to-be will have the power to keep the records—including 3,600 documents that have never been made public—under lock and key, a move many fear will fuel lingering doubts about whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, whether US officials knew about the plot in advance, and if officials purposefully blocked a full investigation.

    • 3,600 unseen documents on JFK assassination to be released, website reports

      Was the assassination of John F. Kennedy engineered by a government agency? Did Lee Harvey Oswald work for the mob, or for communists? And just why was he in New Orleans in the summer before the assassination?

    • Remaining JFK Records Could Prove Controversial to Nation’s Spy Agencies

      The remaining records concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are to be made public by October 2017, by law, but the release of those records is not guaranteed and may not happen if agencies such as the CIA and FBI appeal to the then-sitting president.

      “We have sent letters to agencies letting them know we have records here that were withheld,” Martha Murphy, head of the National Archives’ Special Access Branch, told Politico. While no agencies have requested a waiver quite yet, some have “gotten back to ask for clarification” while seeking more information.

    • The Kennedy files

      The JFK Records Act of 1992 ordered that all of the files related to the federal inquiry into John F. Kenney’s assassination be made public in 25 years. As the October 2017 deadline nears, POLITICO takes a look at what the files might tell us – if we actually get to see them.

    • Sen. Richard Burr: The Cloak and Dagger Senator

      No sooner had he become committee chairman this year when he staged an unheard of stunt in trying to reclaim from the executive branch copies of a classified report — revealing new evidence of torture via “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency — in order to bury it. It had been issued by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and the committee only weeks earlier.

    • Church Committee’s Fading Legacy

      In September 1975, CIA Director William E. Colby told Sen. Frank Church’s committee that 37 lethal poisons were discovered in an agency lab. Church, left, with Co-Chairman John G. Tower, R-Texas, displayed a poison dart gun for all to see.

      [...]

      Schwarz, Fenn, Weiner and Wyden all agree that in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, many of the institutions spawned by the Church Committee’s investigations were seriously weakened.

      One blow to the power of the FISA court, Weiner said, came when President George W. Bush authorized warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens without going to the court. It was an effective end-run, he said.

      “The system broke down after 9/11 on the direct orders of the president of the United States, who tried to bypass and countermand the court,” Weiner said.

      Fenn recalled a CIA official’s telling remark during a hearing.

    • Journalist’s Spying Trial Starts In Iran

      Washington Post’s Tehran reporter Jason Rezaian is accused of espionage and gathering classified information, among other charges.

    • Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian goes on trial in Iran for spying

      Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter imprisoned in Iran for nearly 10 months, is standing trial behind closed doors in Tehran on charges of espionage and at least three other major crimes.

    • Can you tell the difference between Bush and Obama on the Patriot Act?

      Dick Cheney and George W Bush were widely condemned by Democrats for their baseless fear-mongering to pressure members of Congress into passing expansive surveillance laws that infringed on American’s civil liberties. Unfortunately, with parts of their Patriot Act set to expire on Monday, the Obama administration is playing the very same game that its own party once decried hyperbolic and dishonest – even after a Justice Department report released last week concluded that the expiring section used to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk has never been vital to national security.

      See if you can tell the difference between the Obama administration’s statements about the renewal of the Patriot Act and those from the Bush administration when they wanted Congress to renew some of the controversial mass surveillance authorities they passed after 9/11.

    • Jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez goes on hunger strike

      The jailed leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Leopoldo Lopez, has declared he is on a hunger strike and called for a protest march next weekend against the socialist government.

      Lopez, the best-known opposition activist in custody, was jailed more than a year ago for his role in instigating street protests against the president, Nicolás Maduro, that led to violence in which 43 people died and hundreds more were injured.

    • Facts About the Media Garbage Against Diosdado Cabello

      The CIA has been linked to each and every one of the conspiratorial and coup-making processes against the Bolivarian Revolution, call them coups, economic war, assassination attempts against the president, or barricades (guarimbas). (The CIA is) another sewer pipe that logically excretes pestilent water against the Revolution that it has been unable to overthrow. The CIA being used as a “journalistic sewer pipe” demonstrates what their intentions are.

    • Operation Condor: Cross-Border Disappearance and Death

      Operation Condor was a covert, multinational “black operations” program organized by six Latin American states (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru), with logistical, financial, and intelligence support from Washington.

    • An ex-spy whose cover is author

      Escaping surveillance is what Matthews used to do for a living. Officially he was a diplomat, in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, but his real job was recruiting and then managing foreign agents, often in places where such activity was forbidden.

    • The dirty truth about voting & How to be a billionaire by 40

      An extensive Princeton University study shows that the American people have no impact on which laws get passed.

    • Beauty queen fights racial bias in Japan

      Can a beauty pageant combat racial bias in one of the most homogeneous societies on Earth?

      Ariana Miyamoto, who is part African-American, thinks it can. And she has been enduring a lot of abuse to make that point.

    • Colossal Injustice Of Torture Victim Abu Zubaydah’s Ongoing Imprisonment

      It’s been some time since I wrote about Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo in September 2006, beyond discussions of his important case against the Polish government, where he was held in a secret CIA torture prison in 2002 and 2003. This led to a ruling in his favor in the European Court of Human Rights last July, and a decision in February this year to award him — and another Guantánamo prisoner and torture victim, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — $262,000 in damages, for which, just last week, a deadline for payment was set for May 16, even though, as the Guardian noted, “neither Polish officials nor the US embassy in Warsaw would say where the money is going or how it was being used.”

    • “Incommunicado” Forever: Gitmo Detainee’s Case Stalled for 2,477 Days and Counting

      Since being seized in a raid in Pakistan in 2002, Abu Zubaydah has had his life controlled by American officials, first at secret sites, where he was tortured, and since 2006 in a small cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And, thanks to one of the strangest, and perhaps most troubling, legal cases to grow out of the War on Terror, it appears he’s not going to be leaving anytime soon—which was exactly the plan the CIA always wanted. Not even his lawyers understand what’s transpired behind closed doors in a Washington, D.C., courtroom.

    • Enemies of the State: Beijing Targets NGOs

      Fear of foreign infiltration behind a draft law that turns civic groups into security risks

    • Report alleges border patrol engaged in abusive behavior

      An American Civil Liberties Union report alleges that border patrol agents have engaged in racial profiling and intimidation tactics along southern New Mexico’s border with Mexico.

    • Confirm EU blacklist demands MP

      The EU has imposed sanctions and some travel bans on Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

    • The Cost of Secrecy

      Early last year, Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan received an unannounced visit at his Rawalpindi home from over a dozen unidentified men, some in police uniforms. He was subsequently abducted without being offered any explanation and, over the course of the next nine days, interrogated about his anti-drone work and tortured. After a local court ordered Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to produce Khan he was released and told not to speak to the media.

      Khan was due to travel to Europe to testify before parliamentarians about a December 2009 U.S. drone strike on his North Waziristan home that killed his brother and son along with a local stonemason staying with his family. He had also filed a case against the Pakistani government for its failure to investigate the deaths of his family members.

    • Why is this war hero being investigated?

      Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a Special Forces war hero who played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Taliban in the months after 9/11, is under investigation over a purported unauthorized disclosure relating to a U.S. hostage held overseas that was made to U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter’s office.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Cloudflare: We’re Not Aiding and Abetting Piracy

        Popular CDN service CloudFlare has denied allegations from the RIAA that accuse the company of aiding and abetting piracy. Warning against a SOPA-like precedent, the company has asked the court not to include CloudFlare in the restraining order which aims to stop a reincarnation of music service Grooveshark.

      • Steve Albini: The music industry is a parasite… and copyright is dead

        Steve Albini is a renowned musician, record engineer, producer and songwriter. He’s also not shy of expressing a controversial opinion or two.

      • European Court To Explore If Linking To Infringing Material Is Infringing

        A couple of years ago in the Svensson case, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) made it clear (finally) that merely linking to content is not infringement. That was a case involving a news aggregator linking to official sources. However, in a new case that has been referred to the CJEU, the court will examine if links to unauthorized versions of content is infringing as well. The excellent IPKat has the details of the case which involves a blog that linked to some pre-publication Playboy photos in the Netherlands. A lower court had said that it wasn’t copyright infringement, but still broke the law, by facilitating access.

05.31.15

Supreme Failure: With SCOTUS Approval of Patent Trolls and a Push by Justice Department to Reinforce Copyright on APIs (at SCOTUS Level) the Future Looks Gloomy

Posted in Law, Patents at 4:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

US Supreme Court darkens the future

US Supreme Court

Summary: The patent system goes wild in terms of scope, the nature of the plaintiff (merely purchasing patents), and the extension of patents to monopolies on named APIs (by virtue of deranged interpretation of copyright law)

WE are deeply disturbed to see Federal-level interventions and rulings in favour of the patent industry, including the most parasitic elements of it. People must learn the reality of these injustices and rise up in opposition before it’s too late. The gap between the rich and the poor rapidly widens because of these outrageous moves, which involve passage of ownership, not just physical ownership but also monopoly on simple ideas.

Florian Müller, a booster of Oracle against Android, covered the White House's attack on Android and on software developers, urging the SCOTUS to allow/endorse patentability of APIs (by denying an appeal).

“The gap between the rich and the poor rapidly widens because of these outrageous moves, which involve passage of ownership, not just physical ownership but also monopoly on simple ideas.”The SCOTUS also helps trolls (against Cisco) right now, as demonstrated by a decision that even British patent lawyers are denouncing. “Commentators have picked up on the identity of the patentee,” wrote IP Kat, “a troll/patent assertion entity/non-practicing entity/etc – as being the headline grabber in this case, if only to paint a picture of General Counsel throughout Silicon Valley being on the edge of their seats awaiting this decision. However, the Court’s comments in this respect were limited. The Court said that they were well aware of the industry that had developed in which patents were being used primarily for obtaining licensing fees. Such conduct can create a “harmful tax on innovation”. However, because no issue of frivolity had been raised by the parties in this case the Supreme Court did not comment further, except to reinforce the power that the district courts have in dissuading frivolous cases.”

I personally find the US patent system very intimidating. The rulings are almost always made in favour of Big Business interests; if not soon, then some time later. Based on these two new reports, Samsung now goes further with Android by patenting software. This is a software patent pertaining to computer vision, which is my area of research. It’s all reducible to math and the US allows this math to be patented and monopolised. Yesterday I saw the article “Auction Co. Can’t Shake Suit Over $2M Software Patents”. How can software patents be sold for so much? How can they be sold at all? This beats the purpose (original purpose of the patent system) because patents just become passable weapons. To quote the article: “A California judge on Friday tentatively refused to toss an inventor’s suit alleging an auction company botched its handling of video technology patents she held with her software programmer ex-husband by selling them for vastly less than their $2 million minimum value, ruling the auctioneer had a fiduciary duty to the inventor.”

“The rulings are almost always made in favour of Big Business interests; if not soon, then some time later.”These “handling of video technology patents” are software patents, which again cover math. This is clearly a problem, but groups like the EFF continue losing focus. They should tackle scope of patents, not ‘quality’ of pertinent patents or patent trolls.

Consider this latest post from Adi Kamdar (EFF). “What a waste of resources,” iophk wrote to us. “It is the ability to patent the wrong things that is the core of the problem not ‘bad’ patents or ‘trolls’, though they are also a problem.”

Kamdar wrote:

Amidst the clamor of surveillance reform and TPP Fast Track negotiations, Congress is still finding time to work out the kinks of patent reform. One of the big topics of the day: inter partes review (IPR). This procedure lets third parties (like EFF) challenge bad patents (like the one used to go after podcasters).

We joined Engine, Public Knowledge, and R Street in sending a letter [PDF] to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging them to strengthen the IPR procedure, making it more accessible to and a more powerful tool for those of us acting in the public interest.

The EFF is once again wasting its time fighting “bad patents” rather than software patents.

In other news, there’s this new article which talks about copyrights, trademarks and patents collectively, referring to them all as “Intellectual Property”. The part about patents says: “A common question that is often asked by founders is whether they can get their software patented.”

Software as a whole cannot be patented, but parts of it, in few parts of the world, can probably be patented.

The article says: “The short answer to this is “no- software cannot be patented per se,” i.e. a computer program is not independently patentable.” If the Justice Department gets its way, not only part of a program will be a monopoly but also APIs (covered by copyrights). It often seems like everything just gets worse, not better. Maybe this whole patent system (or by extension the so-called ‘IP’ system) needs a revolution and a reset. █

McAfee Associates Free Software and Anonymity With Crime

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, Security at 3:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Insecurity firm McAfee, whose record on Free software is appalling (it is Windows-centric for its business), continues years of tradition by slinging mud at Tor

TECHRIGHTS regards and has for many years considered McAfee to be a leading source of FUD against Free software. To give a very recent example, McAfee is connected to the "VENOM" hype (former management), just like Microsoft.

The latest McAfee FUD targets Tor [1-4]. It’s FUD which associates Tor with crime. Framing Tor as a crime tool is like framing kitchen knives as weapons for murder, but this kind of characterisation sure fits the current war against Tor (anonymity). The attack on encryption is also on the rise and much of the British media is now spreading propaganda that associates encryption with terrorism. A recent movie that I watched, The Imitation Game, shrewdly associates encryption with the Nazis. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. ‘Tox’ Offers Ransomware As A Service

    The ransomware is free to use but site retains 20 percent of any ransom that is collected, McAfee researcher says.

  2. Almost anyone can make ransomware with this horrifying new program

    We might be entering a whole new era of malware, one where even those who lack any semblance of deep technical expertise will be able to acquire and disseminate viruses and the like on the fly.

  3. Yay for Tor! It’s given us RANSOMWARE-as-a-service
  4. Open Source Malware Lets Anyone Hold Computer Users to Ransom

    A free collection of files has been discovered that aids in the creation of ransomware; the process of encrypting the contents of someone’s computer until they pay to have it unlocked. Set your price and away you go.

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