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11.13.14

Microsoft Windows is Still Designed as a Paradise of Back Doors, Intrusion, Wiretaps, and Interception

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 1:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Combination lock

Summary: At many levels — from communication to storage and encryption — Windows is designed for the very opposite of security

TO ONE who is aware of what Microsoft has been doing with the NSA since the 1990s it can be rather shocking to see entire nations relying on Microsoft Windows. As a quick recap, aided by one of our readers, back in the 90s there was this article stating: “Rubenstein, Microsoft attorney and a top lieutenant to Bill Gates. By his own account, Rubenstein acts as a “filter” between the NSA and Microsoft’s design teams in Redmond, Wash. “Any time that you’re developing a new product, you will be working closely with the NSA,”he noted.”

There is hardly room any for excuses or misinterpretation here. “How NSA access was built into Windows” is another important article from the German press and it was published back in the 90s. These older articles are merely few among many more (some no longer accessible due to ‘Web rot’) which already made it clear that Bill Gates and Microsoft were fine with back-dooring billions of people. Gates continues to be a vocal proponent of the NSA, even to this date (after Snowden had leaked details that made the NSA exceptionally unpopular like no time before, internationally).

Anyone who still thinks that proprietary software is secure says quite a lot about his/her own intelligence (and disregard for facts). It is also widely known why it is risky to connect Free software to proprietary software, which basically compromises the trust that Free software carries with it. Germany, based on this new article from Dr. Glyn Moody, is beginning to see the light as well. Here is a portion:

You Can’t Trust Closed-Source Code – Germany Agrees

Similarly, moves by both Microsoft and Amazon, among others, to set up local data centres in the EU will not on their own protect European data unless that is encrypted by the companies themselves, and the cloud computing providers do *not* have access to the keys. Indeed, if the data is encrypted in this way, local storage is not so important, since the NSA will have an equally hard time decrypting it wherever it is held – as far as we know, that is.

Because of that recent US court judgment ordering Microsoft to hand over emails held in Ireland, many people are now aware of the dangers of cloud computing in the absence of encryption under the control of the customer. But very few seem to have woken up to the problems of backdoors in proprietary software that I mentioned at the start of this post. One important exception is the German government, which according to Sky News is working on an extremely significant law in this area…

The NSA could get back door access into every data stored in Windows and now it can get access to data stored remotely, too. It’s total surveillance. Not even encryption can help.

I was contacted by a manager from Microsoft last week and after we exchanged some messages about the farce which is encryption in Windows he no longer had a counter argument. He found out, after some research, that I was in fact right. I was previously (almost a decade ago) ridiculed by top-level Microsoft staff for suggesting that encryption in Windows could easily be subverted, by design. Around that time Microsoft’s Allchin was seemingly worried about back doors and he was quoted on it (the Allchin article is hidden to many as the link has changed). Some of it is very old, but we have written about Bill Gates’ support of back doors since the early days of this Web site. Microsoft back doors in Windows go beyond just remote access and descend down to encryption, caused by a deficient-by-design (or generally bad) encryption. When we cited Cryptome's findings we received an overwhelming (and supporting) attention. The management from Microsoft tried to change our article (asking for changes) despite the article being correct. As stated in comments in Soylent News: “when my Windows 8.1 tablet recommended that I turn on encryption, as soon as I clicked “no” to handing my administrator user over to Microsoft, it disabled encryption.”

I showed it to Microsoft management, whereupon they checked and confirmed that this was true. No response since, hence we can assume there’s no counter argument.

In summary, Microsoft betrays the privacy of Windows users at many levels. No nation should deem Windows suitable for use (at any level) and ridicule is probably well deserved where one defends Windows as ‘secure’. █

Forget the FUD About Bash and OpenSSL, Microsoft Windows Blamed for Massive Credit Cards Heist

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 12:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Knob sets

Summary: Home Depot learns its lesson from a Microsoft Windows disaster, but it stays with proprietary software rather than move to software that is actively audited by many people and is inherently better maintained (Free/libre software)

MEDIA that is owned by large corporations likes to talk about FOSS bugs that have logos and brands not because there are many known incidents where harm was done but because FOSS is an easy scapegoat. Microsoft Windows, which has had bug doors for nearly two decades (very serious and remotely exploitable), should not be used on any production environment, but some businesses are evidently foolish enough to put it on critical systems, knowing damn well (they definitely should know it by now) that the NSA collaborates with Microsoft on back doors access and uses back doors for espionage (both industrial and political).

Earlier this year we asked journalists to call out Windows and urged Home Depot to speak about the role of Microsoft Windows in its massive (existence-threatening) incident that left millions of people (with credit card details) in the hands of crackers.

Microsoft Windows — not some FOSS bug with a logo and/or a name — punished not only Home Depot but also millions of innocent customers who did not know that Home Depot relied on Microsoft Windows for storing/processing sensitive details.

“Microsoft Windows — not some FOSS bug with a logo and/or a name — punished not only Home Depot but also millions of innocent customers who did not know that Home Depot relied on Microsoft Windows for storing/processing sensitive details.”Now there is acknowledgement of this, based on the report “Home Depot blames Windows for record hack, rushes out to buy Macs and iPhones afterward”. So basically they are moving to another proprietary platform with back doors. Apple has already admitted the existence of back doors in iOS, for example, and tried to pass them off as “diagnostics”. If Home Depot is serious about security, then GNU/Linux and other Free software (even BSD) should be universally used at Home Depot.

Home Depot should generally cleanse itself of proprietary software, which is totally unsuitable for credit cards handling because it has back doors and other security issues, mostly inherent issues. Other companies should learn from Home Depot’s mistake and never again process important data using proprietary software. The bad reputation that Home Depot gets from this incident is now putting the whole business in jeopardy and based on news reports about surveillance software Skype (after the Microsoft takeover), Microsoft wants to put it at the very heart of businesses, enabling wiretapping of unprecedented proportions, even inside private businesses (not some mundane chats). Only days ago the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that Skype is inherently insecure and so is WhatsApp, which is owned by a partly Microsoft-owned company (Facebook). Here is what Beta News wrote:

Secure communication is something we all crave online, particularly after Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations increased public interest in privacy and security. With dozens of messaging tools to choose from, many claiming to be ultra-secure, it can be difficult to know which one to choose and which one to trust. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its Secure Messaging Scorecard which rates a number of apps and services according to the level of security they offer.

Businesses should shun not only Microsoft but proprietary software in general (Microsoft tends to be one of the worst among them) if they wish to secure their communications, respect their customers’ safety, and ultimately assure their survival. Use of proprietary software is no joking matter; it can be lethal. The corporate press has hardly done enough — if anything at all — to highlight the real culprit in the Home Depot disaster. █

Windows ‘Update’ and NSA Back Doors, Including a 19-Year Bug Door in Microsoft Windows

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 12:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The back doors-enabled Microsoft Windows is being revealed and portrayed as the Swiss cheese that it really is after massive holes are discovered (mostly to be buried by a .NET propaganda blitz)

Windows ‘Update’, which essentially translates into Microsoft manipulating binaries on people’s machines without any changelog (at least not in source code form), is making the news again this month. Windows ‘Update’ is happening quite often (a monthly recurrence), but this time there is a lot to say about it.

The British NHS, which holds full medical records of very many individuals, recently received a lot of flack for sticking with an unsupported operating system that was released when I was a teenager instead of upgrading to recently-built Free software like GNU/Linux. Guess what happened to the NHS? “NHS XP patch scratch leaves patient records wide open to HACKERS” says the British press, meaning that not only the NSA gets access to NHS data:

Thousands of patient records could be left exposed to hackers, as up to 20 NHS trusts have failed to put an agreement in place with Microsoft to extend security support for Windows XP via a patch, The Register can reveal.

Another story of a botched update of Windows says that “Crypto attack that hijacked Windows Update goes mainstream in Amazon Cloud”:

Underscoring just how broken the widely used MD5 hashing algorithm is, a software engineer racked up just 65 cents in computing fees to replicate the type of attack a powerful nation-state used in 2012 to hijack Microsoft’s Windows Update mechanism.

That’s what one gets when using weak ciphers that the NSA promotes and Microsoft willingly spreads. Windows Update is a dangerous tool for many reasons not just because it is bricking Linux devices these days but because it’s a tool that gives the NSA a lot of power. Before an update kicks in the NSA is given information that allows it to take full control of PCs with Windows, remotely even (this is done every month). This may sound benign until one learns about Stuxnet (weaponised malware of the NSA) and considers this latest Patch Tuesday:

Microsoft is issuing the largest number of monthly security advisories since June 2011, five of them critical and affecting all supported versions of Windows. And applying the patches will be time consuming, experts say.

“Next week will tell us how many CVEs are involved but suffice to say, this patch load will be a big impact to the enterprise,” says Russ Ernst, the director of product management for Lumension.

CBS, being not just a proponent of espionage, mass surveillance, assassination and violent wars but also a proponent of back doors, had its site ZDNet downplay the above. “So far in calendar year 2014,” it said, “Microsoft has fixed 215 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer” (lots of potential NSA back doors). Then come some lame excuses and damage control from Microsoft in the update, trying to make its bad record look like a positive, neglecting that fact that Microsoft has been secretly patching holes to yield fake numbers and give a false sense of security. Here is the full summary:

So far in calendar year 2014, Microsoft has fixed 215 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, with more coming out today. There have been security updates to Internet Explorer every month this year except for January.

This other report, titled “Potentially catastrophic bug bites all versions of Windows. Patch now”, does not entertain the possibility of back/bug doors in Microsoft Windows being exploited, despite that fact that Microsoft already told the NSA (prodifing exploit knowledge), which undoubtedly engages in illegal intrusions/cracking. A report from IDG notes that this bug is nearly two decades old and add that only “[w]ith help from IBM, Microsoft has patched a critical Windows vulnerability that flew under the radar for nearly two decades. ”

“How many times might this flaw have been exploited by now?”So IBM, despite having no access to source code (as far as we can tell), was perhaps the only reason why Microsoft addressed this issue two decades late, eh? How many times might this flaw have been exploited by now? A reader of us, alluding to that nonsense .NET PR, explains: “Perhaps a big reason for the PR teams trumpeting the open-core or freemium model?”

It sure serves as a good distraction. When Windows XP support (patches) came to an end a Microsoft-connected firm immediately (on the very same day) started throwing brands and logos in relation to an OpenSSL bug, stealing the show and spreading FUD for many months, generalising it so as to appear like a serious, inherent issue in FOSS.

Watch this critical remote code execution flaw in Windows. It is extremely serious, but there is no logo or brand for it (unlike FOSS FUD like “Heartbleed” or “Shellshock” — with a brand that was even perpetuated by the Russia-based Mandriva the other day). █

Revealed: Microsoft is Trying to Corrupt the UK in Order to Eliminate Its OpenDocument Format-Oriented Standards Policy

Posted in Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 11:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

British flag

Summary: Microsoft interference with Britain’s preference for ODF is now confirmed, thanks to a valuable news report from Computer Weekly; OOXML lock-in is being unleashed by Microsoft on Android users

NUMEROUS articles in the British press have been pointing out too slow an adoption of ODF in the UK, despite policies that demand it. Now we have a better understanding of potential causes.

As a quick recap, here is a partial chronology of this year’s developments:

  1. UK Government Seems to Be Serious About Moving to Free Software and OpenDocument Format This Time Around
  2. In Another Attempt to Derail British ODF Policy Microsoft Calls Its Systematic Bribery “Internationally Recognised”
  3. Response to ODF as Government Standard Proposal
  4. Amended Comment Regarding ODF as Document Standard in the UK
  5. UK Government Adopts OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Already Attacks the Government Over It, Showing Absolutely No Commitment to Open Standards
  6. Groklaw Back in the Wake of ODF in the UK?

So ODF adoption in the UK is only a matter of time. But we have already known based on limited evidence (or a conspiracy of silence) that Microsoft worked silently to crush this policy. Yes, Microsoft claims that it “loves” FOSS and Linux or “supports” ODF while secretly attacking them all by corrupting the political system in the UK, striving to suppress them and ultimately kill them.

Now comes new evidence that shows how people at the highest levels at Microsoft are getting involved to block ODF, i.e. anything which merely permits Free software to compete on fair grounds. Computer Weekly has a couple of good articles, the first of which states that “Departments lack common targets for implementing open-document standards” and the second one telling us “the curious case of Microsoft and the minister”. As it turns out, the software monopolist clearly strikes back behind people’s backs. To quote the article: “Microsoft consistently opposed the policy, which the software giant saw as its last chance to overturn the UK government’s broader plans for open standards. As emails seen by Computer Weekly reveal, the decision became an issue in the supplier’s Seattle boardroom, and brought the lobbying powers of the software giant into full force in Whitehall.

“There has been speculation about the role played by senior government minister David Willetts, then minister of state for universities and science in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), but who later left the post in David Cameron’s 2014 summer reshuffle.

“An investigation by Computer Weekly has revealed that – according to well-placed sources – Microsoft turned to Willetts to help win its case, with the supplier’s global chief operating officer (COO) Kevin Turner getting involved. But neither BIS nor David Willetts himself is willing to discuss the role the minister played in Microsoft’s attempts to influence this obscure but vitally important part of government IT policy.

“Willetts was the government’s liaison point for Microsoft, as a major employer and investor in the UK economy. He also served as co-chair of the Information Economy Council, a body set up to enable dialogue between Whitehall and the IT industry over future policy.”

One should bear in mind that Britain is perhaps at the forefront of ODF adoption. There is an imminent London-based ODF event, just like those Plugfests from back in the days, and departments of government are expected to move to ODF. However, based on recent reports they are slow to conform or obey these requirements.

Last week we wrote to Linda from the Cabinet Office, hoping to get her and her colleagues’ attention amid dirty tricks from Microsoft. In a personal E-mail I stated:

Several months ago we had an amicable exchange in which I alerted Cabinet Office, through the comments, that Microsoft would likely oppose its policies in subversive and underhanded/secretive ways.

Two new articles from Computer Weekly serve to prove my point now and I hope that you and your colleagues will spare some times to read them, especially the following article:

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240234078/Government-open-standards-the-curious-case-of-Microsoft-and-the-minister

The more transparent the Cabinet Office makes this process, the more the British public will be able to protect the Cabinet Office from such self-serving foreign influence that strives to expand the reach of back doors, surveillance, predatory pricing, and format lock-in.

To quote the aforementioned (first) article from Computer Weekly:”Whitehall departments have begun to publish their plans on how to implement the government’s open-document standards policy – but so far, each appears to be working to very different timescales. One department – the Treasury – has stated it won’t see full implementation until as late as 2018.

“The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and the Treasury have published their plans so far. The Treasury said it will not be fully implementing the mandated open-document standard until February 2018, three years after other departments.”

The ODF-friendly UK policy might not survive if the British public does not get involved and helps the politicians or public servants resist brutal lobbying from Microsoft, which knows no boundaries. Here is another new article of interest:

From this week, it has promised to publish PDFs and Word documents in PDF/A and ODS formats respectively.

However, on Excel, which are most commonly published as “live” data tables, it said: “Content producers should convert to ODS format before submitting to digital content teams.

“However the statisticians have identified problems with certain spreadsheets – where drop-down filters fail to work when converted – more work needs to be done on finding a solution to this problem and DCLG will to commit to the spreadsheets where possible will be published from 1 November 2014 being in an ODS format.”

DCLG said that it is committed to opening up government and providing a level playing field for open source systems, providing the citizen with free access to government information.

I was in Whitehall some days ago, so I passed next to many of these government offices. The place is plagued by greedy businessmen and tourists, so the voice of the British people can hardly be heard. We need to become more loud about it and contact such people without shame or shyness. Microsoft is so desperate to spread OOXML everywhere that it now goes after users of the most widely used operating system (Android/Linux), aided by spin from Microsoft partner and booster Tony Bradley among other spinners who are spreading OOXML lock-in by promoting OOXML for mobile devices (Android does not even handle ODF out of the box, which is a great shame for Google). Microsoft first sought a monopoly on the application (office suite), then it pursued a monopoly on the format (OOXML), and now it is pursuing even a monopoly on the files with its so-called ‘cloud’ (storing all files on Microsoft’s servers). █

Links 13/11/2014: Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 LTS, New KDE Plasma

Posted in News Roundup at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source assumes growing role in data center transformation

    The acceleration of cloud computing as a model for modern IT infrastructure is causing massive transformation in data centers today. The largest data centers in the world run by Google, Amazon and others are super-efficient, automated, dynamically scalable and operate on seamless virtualized platforms often running on open source systems.

  • Australian news agency joins open source project

    Open source software developer Sourcefabric has signed Australian Associated Press to help develop an end-to-end news creation, production, curation, distribution and publishing platform.

    The two parties are inviting other news publishers to participate in the project, called Superdesk.

    AAP editor-in-chief Tony Gillies said, “Over the past 10 years, our existing editorial platform has proven increasingly inflexible.”

    “The time is right for some true innovation in this area and we believe that Sourcefabric will set us on the right path.”

    Sava Tatić, Sourcefabric managing director, said he was thrilled to be partnering with Australia’s national news agency.

  • Extra extra! How to use the press to promote open source

    This is a report from the All Things Open conference, held this year at the Raleigh Convention Center. I attended Steven Vaughan-Nichols session on marketing and using the press in open source—this is a recap.

    Before Steven was a journalist, he was a techie. This makes him unusual: a journalist who actually gets technology. Steven is here to tell us that marketing is a big part of your job if you want a successful open source company. He has heard a lot of people saying that marketing isn’t necessary anymore. The reason it’s necessary is because writing great code is not enough—if no one else knows about it, it doesn’t matter. You need to talk with people about the project to make it a success.

  • GraphHopper: a fast and flexible open source trip planner

    Route planning is an essential part of the connected and mobile world. Many people use commercial solutions on a daily basis to avoid traffic jams when heading home or when they plan their next business or outdoor trip. It is also a crucial part in many business areas like for garbage collection, pizza delivery, or ride sharing where speed is important to calculate thousands or even millions of high quality routes within a short time.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Lightweight Web Browser Midori Arrives with Lots of New Features

      Midori, a lightweight web browser that features full integration with GTK+ and fast rendering with WebKit, is now at version 0.5.9 and it should arrive in all the major repositories pretty soon.

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox Develops a Case of Selective Amnesia

        Roughly 10 years to the day after the release of Firefox 1.0, Mozilla on Monday announced an updated version of its open source browser complete with a new Forget button aimed at protecting users’ privacy.

        “Forget gives you an easy way to tell Firefox to clear out some of your recent activity,” explained Firefox Vice President Johnathan Nightingale. “Instead of asking a lot of complex technical questions, Forget asks you only one: How much do you want to forget? Once you tell Firefox you want to forget the last five minutes, or two hours, or 24 hours, it takes care of the rest.”

      • Firefox 10th Anniversary and new Firefox

        The celebratory Firefox release that puts the users more in control of how they browse

      • Firefox 33.1 Debuts With Security, Privacy and Developer Focus

        Ten years after the first Firefox 1.0 release, Mozilla emphasizes its core strengths of privacy and developer focus.

      • Mozilla Launches MozVR, Moves Toward Virtual Reality

        For some time now, Mozilla has been focused on making virtual reality come alive in browsing experiences. In June, the company delivered builds of Firefox that supported the Oculus Rift device and platform, and now the company has delivered a new site that demonstrates the virtual reality promise of the Web.

      • Firefox 33.0.3 Has Fixes for Conflicts with Graphics Drivers

        Mozilla has announced that Firefox 33.0.3 has been officially released and is now available for download. It’s just a maintenance version, but users should still upgrade.

      • Firefox Leans Towards the Vertical

        A couple of months ago, I wrote about the tremendous potential for Mozilla to change the world by putting smartphone capabilities in the hands of hundreds of millions of people with its Firefox OS. That’s an example of the project moving its focus away from the traditional desktop to a sector that is likely to become the dominant one in the next few years.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • Postgres and MySQL: EnterpriseDB unveils new way to link these open source databases

      EnterpriseDB says a tool unveiled today that connects Postgres and MySQL databases strengthens the position of Postgres as an alternative standard database.

      The MySQL foreign data wrapper allows remote data from Oracle’s open-source database to be defined as a table in Postgres, so firms can run SQL queries across it along with local Postgres tables as if they were all local.

    • Why MongoDB Embraces Open Source

      “If I were starting something new today that was software as a business, I would make it either open source or SaaS or freemium,” he said. “I would definitely not make it closed source if I’m starting from day one, ’cause I don’t think it works anymore. I think you’re going to have competition. There’s going to be stuff out there. It’s going to be tough. If you’re starting today, it’s sort of what are people doing five years from now would be the question.”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF & Conservancy Launch Copyleft.org To Promote Licenses Like The GPL

      Copyleft.org is intended as a project to promote copyleft licensing, especially the GPL. There’s guides, information on the licenses, and analysis of such licenses. There’s also a mailing list, IRC channel, and other resources for those wishing to learn more about these friendly licenses.

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK Ministry of Defence opens up to FOSS, a bit

      Earlier this year Computer Weekly reported news of the MoD’s £2m in sponsorship for a competition to find innovative ways of automating cyber defences.

    • The US Government’s Tenuous Relationship With Open Source

      The government has been involved with open source software since before the Internet — but it is only recently that government use of open source really has come into vogue, observed GitHub’s Ben Balter. “A big reason for this is that open source used to be inaccessible to outsiders and didn’t have the quality and support large organizations like government have come to expect.”

    • Indonesia tax agency saves 90 per cent with open source

      The open source community in Indonesia is still small and this has discouraged the Indonesian tax agency from moving some big systems to open source, its Transformation and ICT Director told FutureGov.

      Open source is usually used by universities in Indonesia, he said, and the source code is not published so “it’s in a small group”, said Harry Gumelar.

      “Our difficulty right now is that we don’t know who to contact if we have a problem,” he added. The tax agency has asked for help in the past, but not received any response from the community.

    • Government logs into open source policy to use as Digital India drive, cut software costs

      Indian government software applications are set to make the shift to open source, potentially boosting the pace at which such programmes are developed, and leading to millions of dollars in savings by moving away from proprietary systems.

  • Licensing

    • How to choose an open source license

      Open source license management provider Protecode has put together a simple overview (and accompanying infographic) on choosing the best open source license for a project.

      [...]

      The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a copyleft software license, which guarantees end users the freedoms to use, study, share (copy), and modify the software as long as they track changes/dates of in source files and release their code and any modifications under GPL. They can distribute their application using a GPL commercially, but they must open-source it under the same GPL license.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • You don’t know Javascript, but you should

      Thank you all for having me. I’m Kyle Simpson, known as “getify” online on Twitter, GitHub, and all the other places that matter. I was here in Rochester teaching a workshop for the Thought @ Work conference this past weekend, and figured I’d stick around to check out some JavaScript (JS) and Node classes here in the New Media Interactive Development program, so thank you for having me.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Russia — once again Public Enemy No 1

      The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said at the cel­eb­ra­tion of the fall of the Ber­lin Wall last week­end that we are facing a new Cold War. What are the geo­pol­it­ical real­it­ies behind this statement?

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Zealot of US climate change sceptics Jim Inhofe to determine environmental policy

      Ever since he became a US Senator in 1994, Jim Inhofe has been among the most prominent climate-change sceptics in Washington. The Oklahoma Republican, who turns 80 next week, once compared the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Gestapo.

      Now, the man who also compared the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to “a Soviet-style trial, in which ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigour”, is in line for one of the most important environmental jobs in Congress.

    • G-20 nations spend $88 billion a year propping up the fossil fuel industry

      Or it would be, at least, were it not for the enormous amounts of subsidies bestowed on the industry by G-20 nations, which seem to be reneging on their 2009 pledge to phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies. According to a new report from the Overseas Development Institute, G-20 nations spend $88 billion per year supporting oil exploration. That’s twice the amount the industry itself spends, and, according to the report, almost twice what the International Energy Agency estimates we’ll need to meet heat and electricity demand by 2030. And it definitely contradicts the IEA’s contention that, if we’re to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, two-thirds of our remaining fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground.

    • Rich countries subsidising oil, gas and coal companies by $88bn a year

      US, UK, Australia giving tax breaks to explore new reserves despite climate advice that fossil fuels should be left buried

    • Dead whale on French beach could explode

      Officials in France are racking their brains about how to deal with a dead whale washed up on a beach on the south coast of France. The decaying carcass is a ticking time bomb, with the possibility it could explode.

  • Finance

    • New EU migrants add £5bn to UK, report says

      Immigrants from the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 contributed more to the UK than they took out in benefits, according to a new study.

    • Activists Stopped From Feeding the Homeless in Fort Lauderdale
    • Global Displacement: A Result of Climate Change and War

      June 20, 2014 marked World Refugee Day, the first World Refugee Day during which global forced displacement was the highest since World War II. The Global Trends report, compiled by the UNHCR(United Nations High Commission for Refugees), established the figure of 51.2 million globally displaced people at the end of 2013, an increase of six million from the 45.2 million at the end of 2012.

    • Global Killing of Environmentalists Rises Drastically

      “Deadly Environment,” a report by the non-governmental organization Global Witness. revealed that from 2002 to 2013 at least 908 people were killed globally due to their environmental advocacy, with the rate of murder doubling in the last four years. Latin America and the Asia-Pacific show the highest rates of violence as tensions over limited natural resources in these regions escalate. Will Potter writes for Foreign Policy that, today, “Brazil remains overwhelmingly more dangerous for environmentalists than other countries.” Twice as many environmentalists were killed in Brazil as in any other country. However, this problem is just part of the global trend that reveals an increasing number of such deaths.

    • The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Failures of Actually Existing Economic Systems

      Hype went wild coming into last week’s 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Freedom” had been achieved. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), or what Western media preferred to call communist East Germany, had been rejected. Its hated official spying on its people – the massive “Stasi” apparatus – could not continue. Liberty and prosperity would and did arrive as the country rejoined the “free world.” The people had peacefully overthrown actually existing socialism and returned to capitalism. No one could miss that (officially hyped) interpretation of the fall of the Wall. Yet it is hardly the only one, although that was rarely admitted.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Facebook Messenger hits 500 million users after becoming mandatory

      FACEBOOK MESSENGER has hit the 500 million monthly user milestone after the social network forced users to download the app.

      The figure is more than double the 200 million the firm claimed in April, but doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

      The social network made it mandatory in July for iOS and Android users to download Facebook Messenger in order to use it, removing the chat functionality from the main Facebook app.

    • FBI’s “Suicide Letter” to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance

      The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target.

      The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents. The agency also attempted to break up his marriage by sending selectively edited “personal moments he shared with friends and women” to his wife.

    • Senator Reid Moves Forward With NSA Reform Bill

      We’re pleased to see Sen. Harry Reid move toward a final vote on the Senate version of the USA FREEDOM Act, S. 2685. EFF has consistently urged the Senate to move forward on the bipartisan bill since it was first introduced in July.

  • Civil Rights

    • Boyfriend of woman shot by Ann Arbor police: ‘Why would you kill her?’

      The boyfriend of the 40-year-old Ann Arbor woman who was shot and killed by police Sunday night said he doesn’t understand why police had to use lethal force to take down the woman who had a knife in her hand as she confronted officers.

    • Brazilian police kill 11,000 people in five years

      Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and 2013 for an average of six killings a day, a public safety NGO said Tuesday.

      The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the United States killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Obama thrills left with Web fight

      For his first battle against a Republican-controlled Congress, President Obama has chosen the Internet.

      Obama on Monday released an unusual video statement urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enact the toughest possible rules on Internet service providers, thrilling liberal activists who have long pushed him to take a firmer stand on net neutrality.

    • Anti Net Neutrality Crowd Reaches Deep For The Craziest Possible Response To President Obama’s Call For Real Net Neutrality Rules

      Well, we already wrote about President Obama’s somewhat surprising decision to come out strongly in favor of Title II reclassification for broadband (with strong forbearance) to setup some real net neutrality rules. We also covered the unhappy response from the big broadband players who are just repeating the same talking points from the past year, claiming that they’ll suddenly stop investing in broadband and how this will kill the internet (ignoring that they already rely on Title II for a number of things, including internet infrastructure).

    • Obama tells the FCC uphold net neutrality and reclassify the internet as a utility

      US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has come out in favour of reclassifying the internet as a public utility.

      The president has stayed fairly quiet on the matter since the Open Internet Order that made up part of his election pledges was shot down in a courtroom battle with Verizon at the start of the year.

      But in a statement on Monday he said: “I’m asking the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] to reclassify internet services under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act.

    • Obama shows the way on Net neutrality

      If you’ve been reading these parts for even a little while, you’re sure to have come across one of my many Net neutrality discussions. As tiresome as it has been to pound on the same podium over and over, it has been necessary — and President Obama’s very public statement asking that Internet service providers be classified under Title II is a major step in the fight for an open Internet.

      [...]

      Of course, that didn’t stop Sen. Ted Cruz from coming out with a pants-on-head stupid comment about Net neutrality being “Obamacare for the Internet.” Making a statement that amazingly dumb in public would probably have found him signed up for forced sterilization in the 1950s. It’s this kind of blatant, arrogant, willful ignorance that undermines our democracy. But enough about the dim, let’s look at the future.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • TTIP Update XLII

      The problems of TTIP are so many – total lack of meaningful transparency, the unnecessary inclusion of an ISDS chapter, the threat to Europe’s high standards governing health, safety, the environment, labour etc. – that the agreement’s supporters have been forced to fight back with the only thing they claim to offer: money. TTIP, they argue in multiple ways, will take us to the land of milk and honey, boost the GDP massively, and lead to lots of extra dosh for every family in the EU.

    • Copyrights

      • Dotcom Loses Lawyers – Then They Erase All History of Him

        Kim Dotcom is looking for a new legal team in New Zealand after a high-profile lawfirm withdrew its services. However, what’s especially unusual is that Simpson Grierson has not only pulled out, but is also removing all references to Dotcom and Mega from its corporate site.

      • Internet Pirates Always a Step Ahead , Aussies Say

        Almost three-quarters of Australians believe that using technical measures to end Internet piracy are doomed to fail and will only lead to higher ISP bills for consumers. Those are just two of the findings of a new survey carried out by the Communications Alliance, the industry body for the Australian telecoms industry.

      • ISP Protects Subscribers From Piracy “Fishing Expedition”

        Atlanta-based Internet provider CBeyond is protesting a DMCA subpoena from the anti-piracy monitoring outfit Rightscorp. The ISP is refusing to hand over the identities behind more than a thousand IP-addresses connected to copyright infringement while declaring Rightscorp’s efforts as a frivolous fishing expedition.

      • Copyright Holders Want Pirate Bay Blocked in Sweden

        Several major movie studios and record labels have filed a lawsuit against the Swedish ISP B2, demanding that the company blocks access to The Pirate Bay. The lawsuit, which also calls for a blockade of the streaming site Swefilmer, is the first of its kind in The Pirate Bay’s home country.

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