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04.14.15

Links 14/4/2015: 3DR Dronecode, Z1/Z2 Tizen

Posted in News Roundup at 7:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Dramatic Takeoff of GNU/Linux On The Desktop In Malta

      Malta is one of those places where the small size allows one to see significant migrations to GNU/Linux desktop in their full glory. Notice the ascendance of GNU/Linux in the same week that school started that year.

    • Desktop Linux Made Easy

      Ask any casual Linux enthusiast whether Linux is easy to use and they’ll tell you once installed, it’s very simple to navigate. The problem with the Linux desktop in 2015 isn’t how easy the desktop environment(s) are to work with, but whether the applications provided are easy enough for the average user at a workstation.

  • Server

    • IBM Deepens its Cloud Services Entrenchment with the U.S. Government

      IBM is making further inroads into getting its cloud computing tools and infrastructure solidified with the U.S. government. Big Blue recently announced that the U.S. Army is using IBM Hybrid Cloud to power one of the biggest logistics systems in the federal government. The new hybrid cloud system will be part of an ambitious Army data center designed to connect the IBM Cloud to the Army’s on-premise environment to enable use of data analytics. The Army foresees cost savings of 50 percent over its current cost structure, based on migrations to IBM’s cloud tools.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • EFL 1.14 Beta Brings Ecore-DRM Improvements

      Just one week after the EFL 1.14 Alpha 1 release marks the availability of Enlightenment Foundation Libraries’ 1.14 Beta 1 debut.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • You can come to the Randa Meetings 2015 – Please register now

        The dates for the sixth edition of the Randa Meetings are set: Sunday, 6th to Sunday 13th of September 2015. The first Sunday will be the day of arrival and the last Sunday accordingly the day of departure.

      • Some Skrooge news

        I’ve been alerted a few weeks ago that the Skrooge web site had been hacked, using some URL Injection. After attempting some enquiry and cleanup, I gave up : I couldn’t find the compromised code, and was not able to fix it. This is how I realized that sysadmin is a real job, and I am not one ! After asking some help on kde-www, Albert quickly prompted me to kde-sysadmins, and Ben Cooksley offered to clean the website and host it on kde servers.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • The 5 best distros for the Gnome desktop

        Gnome 3.16 was released recently and I considered it to be one of the best Gnome releases ever. A few weeks ago we did an extremely popular story on some of the best distros which offer great Plasma experience. So I decided to check out which distros offer a similar kind of Gnome experience.

        I have been using Gnome 3.16 on several machines and I am extremely impressed with the improvements, though I think there is still a lot to be improved. From among all the distros that I used, I picked those that offered the best Gnome experience out of the box.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Exploring SuperX 3.0

        Version 3.0 of SuperX can be downloaded as a 1.6GB ISO file. There are two builds available, one for 32-bit and another for 64-bit machines. Booting from the live media brings up the KDE desktop environment. The desktop’s wallpaper is soft blue. On the desktop we find a single icon for launching the distribution’s system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find the application menu, task switcher and system tray. Clicking the application menu button brings up a full screen application menu with large, colourful icons. I want to talk about the application menu more, but first let’s briefly talk about SuperX’s system installer.

      • Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 Cinnamon review

        Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a desktop distribution that’s based on Debian. It’s from the same folks responsible for Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu Desktop.

        The latest edition, Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 (LMDE 2), code-named Betsy, was released on April 10 (2015). Upgrading from LMDE 1 to 2 is not yet supported, but that should change soon. If you’re using Linux Mint 17, do not attempt to upgrade because the distributions are not compatible.

        Installation images for the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments were made available for download. This article offers a very cursory review of LMDE 2 Cinnamon.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Review: Sabayon 15.02 KDE

        This weekend has been a little slower than usual for work, so I have a little more time to do a review. Several weeks ago, I downloaded the latest version of Sabayon and kept it for a time (as now) when I’d be free to do a review. Moreover, looking through the archives of this blog, I realized that it’s been almost 3 years since I’ve looked at Sabayon, so a fresh review is long overdue.

    • Arch Family

      • Latest Antergos Live CD Includes GNOME 3.16, Based on Arch Linux

        On April 12, the Antergos development team, through Dustin Falgout, announced the immediate availability for download of an updated installation media for their Antergos Linux distribution based on the upstream Arch Linux operating system and featuring the latest GNOME 3.16 desktop environment.

    • Red Hat Family

      • RDO OpenStack Promises Easy, Free Open Source Cloud Computing

        RDO is a version of OpenStack designed for use on CentOS, a Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Actually, “based on” is a bit of a stretch, because CentOS is basically the RHEL source code recompiled by third parties—which is totally legal and kosher with Red Hat, of course, since the source is open. The only difference between CentOS and RHEL is that the former comes with no enterprise-class support or ecosystem integration.

      • Update: Short Interest of Red Hat, Inc. Drops by -6.6%

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 22 Virt Test Day is Thu Apr 16!

          It’s a great time to make sure your virt workflow is still working correctly with the latest packages in Fedora 22. No requirement to run through test cases on the wiki, just show up and let us know what works (or breaks).

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • 9 ways Android Wear is better than the Apple Watch

      Right off the bat, you have many more Android Wear options because a bunch of different companies have taken their own shot at an Android-powered smartwatch, including Motorola, LG, Huawei, Samsung, and Sony. There are 8 different designs so far.

    • 3DR’s Solo Drone Boasts Dual Linux Computers Running Dronecode

      3DRobotics today announced its first Linux-based drone, a Solo quadcopter touted as the first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to support full control of GoPro cameras and deliver live-streaming HD video to mobile devices. The ground controller, as well as the drone’s Pixhawk 2 autopilot, integrates a 1GHz Cortex-A9 computer running Linux. The Solo is available for pre-sale at $1,000, or $1,400 with a GoPro gimbal, with units shipping via 2,000 locations starting May 29.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

      • Android

        • Why is Android so different from Linux distros?

          Android is based on Linux, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the same as your average Linux distribution. A redditor wanted to know why Android is so different from the desktop distributions that we all know and love.

        • Verizon’s LG G3 Is Finally Getting Its Android 5.0 Update

          The wait for Android 5.0 to arrive on the LG G3 has varied widely based on carrier—AT&T managed to get it released rather quickly and T-Mobile just rolled it out a week or two ago. Now it’s Verizon’s turn to get the Lollipop update done.

        • ICYMI: You Can Soon Unlock Your Android Phone With Just Your Voice
        • Trusted Voice unlock is rolling out to some Android users

          When the latest version of Google’s Android app arrived last week, there was a hint that a new method for unlocking a device was on the way. Well, it seems the wait is over… for some.

        • LG G4 leaks: ‘Gorgeous’ Android flagship in real leather (and fake carbon fiber)

          If you’re waiting to see what the next LG flagship phone looks like, wait no longer. Here’s the LG G4, in all its leather-clad glory. It’s no clone.

          The secret site the images were snarfed from didn’t give much of a clue about the hardware specs — what was there were clearly placeholders — but if you like stitched leather, you’ll love the G4.

        • 4 ways your Android device is tracking you (and how to stop it)

          So there I was, poking around some of the more arcane settings on my Moto G, when I stumbled across something that took me aback: an archive of every voice command I’d ever spoken to my phone.

          Turns out that each time you say something to the Google Now search box, Android saves a copy of what you said in your “Voice & Audio” history. Your voice history can go back months or even years, and it includes a transcript of what you said plus a playback button, so you can relive the moment.

        • Motorola’s 5-incher finds the G-spot: Moto G 4G budget Android smartie

          Back in December 2013, I hailed the first generation Motorola Moto G as the best affordable smartphone on the market. If you want a reasonably compact 4.5-inch device, then, arguably, it still is the best, thanks to a midlife facelift that added a microSD slot and 4G reception.

        • Sony delivers Android 5.0 to Xperia Z3 Dual, Z1 and more

          Android 5.0 Lollipop is ready to roll on half a dozen Sony smartphones.

        • Deal alert: Get $100 off one of the world’s best Android Wear watches
        • Buy an Android smartphone and Moto 360 from Best Buy, get $100 off the total purchase

          Even though the successor to Motorola’s Android Wear smartwatch, the Moto 360, seems to be right around the corner, the original is still considered one of the better smartwatches currently available. Through Best Buy’s newest promotion, that purchase just became much more easygoing on your wallet.

        • Nexus 5 Android 5.1 Update: Is It Worth Installing Right Now?

          We’ve been using the Nexus 5 Android 5.1 Lollipop update for a number of weeks. And now that the update is rolling out in full force, Nexus 5 users are faced with a decision about whether to install Google’s latest firmware. With some experience under our belts, we want to help with your decision. This is our Nexus 5 Android 5.1 review at the three week mark.

        • Best new apps for Android and iOS (April 7th – April 13th 2015)

          Hey there, app hunters! As we do each week, we’ve combed through the Android and iOS stores once again to look for something interesting for you to download and play around with. Keeping track of the new apps that come out for the lighthearted, so should you desire to have a look at some fresh offerings each week, yet feel daunted by the heap of information you’d have to dig through, feel free to check back regularly.

        • Watch HBO Now on Android and Roku right now

          Think an iDevice is the only way to get HBO’s new streaming service? Think again. For $9.99 you can sling it just about anywhere — for three months.

        • 5 Things to Know About the Nexus 4 Android 5.1 Update

          Google’s Android 5.1 Lollipop update is missing for a number of Nexus devices though it looks like we can finally take the Nexus 4 Android 5.1 update off of the list. With an OTA in sight, we take a look at what users need to know, right now, about the Nexus 4 Android 5.1 Lollipop update.

        • These E3 Android Wear Watch Bands are Really, Really Nice

          Last week, Google announced a set of official partnerships with a handful of companies willing to make watch bands for Android Wear devices. One of those companies is E3 Motocycles, a shop out of Brooklyn, NY, who specializes in hand-made products that use quality materials like Horween leather. Out of the group that was announced by Google, the E3 watch bands were the closest to our personal tastes in watch bands, so we picked a few up. Man, these are incredible.

        • Android 5.0.2 pushed out for Sony Xperia Z1, Xperia Z1 Compact and Xperia Z Ultra

          Android 5.0.2 is now reaching the Sony Xperia Z1, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact and the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. The update is being disseminated to certain regions only, and offers build number 14.5.A.0.242. The update includes the new Material Design, Lock Screen notifications, the new 64-bit ART runtime compiler that will open apps faster, new “Recent Apps” screen, Project Volta for extended battery life, and more.

        • Some Nexus 5 Owners Afflicted By Camera Crashes Following Android 5.1 Update

          Updates get us excited, especially when they involve making the leap to the latest version of Android. But for some Nexus 5 users, the transition has come at the expense of their camera. Following the release of Android 5.1, they’ve been unable to reliably activate the camera without getting hit by crashes.

        • No, not that Cloud: Final Fantasy XIII now streaming to iOS, Android devices

          Square Enix games are hardly missing from mobile devices, but most of what you’ll see from the company are ports of its older games. Dragon Quest VIII, which originally launched on the PlayStation 2, was about as recent as it gets. At least it was until now.

        • Android 5.1 Lollipop OTA now available for the Nexus 4

          When Google announced Android 5.1 Lollipop last month, the new version of Android quickly began rolling out to multiple Nexus family devices. There are still a few Nexus handsets that have yet to see the update, but today we can check one more off the list – the Nexus 4. The OTA, which is available now, weighs in at only 174MB and will bring your device from build number LRX22C to LMY47O.

        • HTC One M8 Will Skip Android 5.0.2 And Go Straight To Android 5.1, HTC One M7 May Get 5.1 Too

          A new report indicates that HTC will skip Android 5.0.2 for the HTC One M8, which will go straight to 5.1 Lollipop at some time in the future. The older HTC One M7 may get 5.1 as well, despite a recent announcement that it will not.

        • Opera Launches Redesigned Opera Mini For Android

          Opera Mini, the little brother to Opera’s regular mobile browser, is getting a major makeover on Android today. The company says the new design, which is pretty much in line with the regular Opera mobile browser, is meant to give the browser a more native look and feel.

        • Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: The Best Android Phone Of All Time

          There has been something very surprising about the levels of interest I’ve seen with the S6 and S6 Edge, namely that the interest seems to be focused now, as the phone goes on sale, on the S6 instead of the Edge.

          This is the reverse of what I noticed when I published my initial hands-on reviews of the device from a pre-brief held in London ahead of their launch at Mobile World Congress. And indeed, I was at MWC – I was a guest of Samsung, covering the show for one of my British publishers – and the buzz there was all about the Edge.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Pivotal Open-Sources In-Memory Database Geode

    Geode and GemFire compete directly and indirectly in the market with SAP HANA, Teradata and Oracle products.

    Pivotal, EMC’s big data development platform-as-a-service (PaaS) division, on April 13 released Geode, a distributed in-memory database, to the open-source community as a key part of the eventual release of its entire big data platform to the community.

  • Pivotal Gets Open Sourcier

    You can’t help but wonder if EMC Federation boss Joe Tucci is reaching for his stress ball today. His company’s spawn, Pivotal Software, is open sourcing the core of GemFire, its distributed in-memory database.

    We asked Tucci to comment, but he hasn’t gotten back to us yet. And though his press spokesperson told us “we’re for it,” when it comes to open source, we suspect that it might feel a bit like watching your teenager turn your mansion into a commune.

  • PARCC Selects Open Source Platform for Non-Summative Assessments

    “Open source was a key requirement of the PARCC non-summative assessment tools delivery system because it allows us to more easily integrate the platform with other partners and opportunities in the future, as well as leverage the collective open source community contributions to the platform development,” said Jeff Cuff, director of technology at Parcc Inc., the nonprofit organization that manages the assessment system on behalf of the PARCC states, in a prepared statement. “Even more importantly, it is a highly economical approach for the states participating in the consortium, providing significant savings for maintenance compared to other options.”

  • Curoverse Begins Trial Run for Open Source Genomics Tool

    The move is the latest step for Curoverse, a startup that emerged from George Church’s Personal Genome Project at Harvard. The PGP was a plan led by Church to sequence more than 100,000 genomes in the U.S. and link them to individuals’ health information. (The same kind of aggregation, but of 1 million people’s genomic and other health information, is a goal of the Obama administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative.) Church needed a massive database to house all that information, and that’s what led to the creation of Arvados. It’s a database capable of storing giant amounts of genomic information, it’s shareable, it can run on both public and private cloud services, and it’s an open source platform, so anyone can use or modify the source code.

  • Hello Geode: Pivotal GemFire is now open source

    Making good on its promise from earlier in the year, Pivotal has released as open source the distributed in-memory database that powers GemFire, a featured part of Pivotal’s Big Data Suite Hadoop product.

    It’s another step on Pivotal’s road toward building an open source base for its Big Data Suite rather than keeping them on a proprietary leash. However, Pivotal still sees ways it could monetize its Hadoop products — even as advances in open source squeeze companies with proprietary offerings.

  • The Culture of Freedom: Free Software, Free Speech

    For the concluding part of may talk, I explored how this open source methodology manifested itself in the world of open publishing. The fact that it is net-based is hugely important, because it means that the barrier to publishing has been lowered almost to the point of disappearing. That matters, because as A. J. Liebling famously said: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”. Today, thanks to the Internet, we have all the advantages of owning a press without any of the massive costs or organisational issues.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Start Drafting Plans To Deprecate Insecure HTTP

        Barnes is hoping for more people to move to HTTPS by limiting new browser features from becoming available over insecure HTTP, in the name of security. He wrote in a mailing list post, “In order to encourage web developers to move from HTTP to HTTPS, I would like to propose establishing a deprecation plan for HTTP without security. Broadly speaking, this plan would entail limiting new features to secure contexts, followed by gradually removing legacy features from insecure contexts. Having an overall program for HTTP deprecation makes a clear statement to the web community that the time for plaintext is over — it tells the world that the new web uses HTTPS, so if you want to use new things, you need to provide security.”

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • HP: We’re not leaving the public cloud

      Several days after HP seemed to announce that it was going to stop offering public cloud services, the company is now stating that it will continue to offer its OpenStack-powered Helion public cloud.

    • Comcast has contributed 36K lines of code to a massive open source project called OpenStack

      Philly became the center of the action for those who use a massive open source project called OpenStack last month.

      Comcast hosted one of the OpenStack community’s regular meetups, drawing more than 150 developers from companies like Rackspace, Time Warner and Red Hat to The Hub in Rittenhouse Square for the two-day event.

  • CMS

  • BSD

  • Openness/Sharing

    • An Open Source Pinewood Derby Track

      There are a lot of reasons to consider reproducing. Tax breaks are near the top of the list, and a bizarre obligation to ensure the survival of the species following closely behind. The pinewood derby, though… Where else are you going to get a chance to spend hours polishing axles and weighing down bits of wood so they can roll faster?

    • The makerspace is the next open source frontier

      In this brave new world of heterogeneous projects that combine hardware, software, printed, cloud, and other pieces, we are going to see an cacophony of different tools for building these different parts of an idea and project. We have GitHub for collaborating around code, Thingiverse for 3D models, Trello for project management and coordination, Moqups and Balsamiq for user interface design, specific toolkits for building drivers and integrating with sensors, and more.

    • Open-source streetlamps from old soda bottles are making streets safer for women

      In the tiny barrio of San Luis, perched precipitously on the hills above Bogotá, a hundred university students are hard at work. Split into 10 groups, they glue, drill and screw things together to make 50 low-cost street lights.

      The lights’ beauty lies in their simplicity: A 3-watt LED lamp is connected to a controller and a battery pack, which is powered by a small solar panel. The light fixture’s protective casing is an old plastic soda bottle. Each lamp costs around 176,000 Colombian pesos ($70) to build, and nothing to run. Parts are sourced locally and the battery can power the lamp for three consecutive nights without charging. Once completed, the students install the lights throughout the neighbourhood, brightening dimly lit alleyways and dark clearings.

    • Open Data

  • Programming

    • Git Success Stories and Tips from Ceph Creator Sage Weil

      Git has changed the way that software is built — including the Ceph open source distributed storage platform, says Ceph Creator Sage Weil. Ceph has used the Git revision control system for seven years, since it switched from SVN. It has changed the project’s work flow and how they think about code.

      “Instead of thinking in files and lines, you think in flow of changes. Instead of having a single repository that everyone feeds from and into, everyone now has their own repository, their own branches. The meaning of branch changed,” said Weil, Ceph principal architect at Red Hat. “Everything just fell in place, as if the people who designed it really knew software development at scale.”

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • 32-Bit Integers and Why Old Computers Matter

      The number 256 is what broke the original arcade version of Pac-Man. As a game with no proper exit condition, Pac-Man relied on faith that players would eventually get tired of it before the 256th level. This was reasonable given that every single level after the 20th was just a repeat of level 20. But video games lend themselves to obsession like few things, even in 1980, so of course some players took it as a challenge—a test of endurance and concentration. Those that made it to 256 were in for a strange sight, what computer scientists would call “undefined behavior.” This was the result: ​

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Dear Apple: Your upgrade policy sucks

      While changes in technology are generally a mark of progress, they are not always immediately for the better. Certain hardware and software vendors would do well to understand that reality — Apple, for instance.

      Apple has long enjoyed a unique position in the marketplace in that it controls both the hardware and software running on its various platforms. This tight integration has allowed the company to produce some of the most stable and functional computer hardware ever made. This has also allowed Apple to make dramatic changes in both hardware and software without appearing to care a whit for its users, often condemning them to vast frustrations for no logical reason.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • In the Middle East, Bet on a Winner (Iran!)

      Think of it as the American half-century in the Middle East: from August 17, 1953, when a CIA oil coup brought down democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the Shah as Washington’s man in Tehran, to May 1, 2003, when George W. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of southern California. (The planes from that aircraft carrier had only recently dropped 1.6 million pounds of ordnance on Iraq.) There, standing under a White House-produced banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” the president dramatically announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and hailed “the arrival of a new era.”

    • Emails Reveal Discord Over Blackwater Charges

      WASHINGTON — As prosecutors put the finishing touches on the 2008 indictment of Blackwater security contractors for a deadly shooting in Iraq, the F.B.I. agents leading the investigation became convinced that political appointees in the Justice Department were intentionally undermining the case, internal emails show.

    • Former Blackwater guards sentenced in ‘staggering’ massacre of unarmed Iraqis

      Three former employees of the US private military contractor once known as Blackwater were sentenced to 30 years in prison on Monday and a fourth received a life sentence, closing a sordid chapter of the Iraq conflict relating to the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad.

    • Ex-Blackwater Guards Sentenced to Long Prison Terms in 2007 Killings of Iraqi Civilians

      One by one, four former Blackwater security contractors wearing blue jumpsuits and leg irons stood before a federal judge on Monday and spoke publicly for the first time since a deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq.

    • Florida Ex-Senator Pursues Claims of Saudi Ties to Sept. 11 Attacks

      The episode could have been a chapter from the thriller written by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida about a shadowy Saudi role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

      A top F.B.I. official unexpectedly arranges a meeting at Dulles International Airport outside Washington with Mr. Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after he has pressed for information on a bureau terrorism inquiry. Mr. Graham, a Democrat, is then hustled off to a clandestine location, where he hopes for a breakthrough in his long pursuit of ties between leading Saudis and the Sept. 11 hijackers.

    • Frustrated with US meddling, Latin America seeks its own path

      President Obama is in Panama this weekend for the Summit of the Americas, where he’ll meet with regional leaders who have grown increasingly determined to assert autonomy from the US.

    • Why the details of the Iran deal don’t matter

      At heart, this is a fight over what to do about Iran’s challenge to U.S. leadership in the Middle East and the threat that Iranian geopolitical ambitions pose to U.S. allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    • Terrorism Case Renews Debate Over Drone Hits

      A Texas-born man suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda stood before a federal judge in Brooklyn this month. Two years earlier, his government debated whether he should be killed by a drone strike in Pakistan.

      The denouement in the hunt for the man, Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, who was arrested last year in Pakistan based on intelligence provided by the United States, came after a yearslong debate inside the government about whether to kill an American citizen overseas without trial — an extraordinary step taken only once before, when the Central Intelligence Agency killed the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

    • The world of threats to the US is an illusion

      When Americans look out at the world, we see a swarm of threats. China seems resurgent and ambitious. Russia is aggressive. Iran menaces our allies. Middle East nations we once relied on are collapsing in flames. Latin American leaders sound steadily more anti-Yankee. Terror groups capture territory and commit horrific atrocities. We fight Ebola with one hand while fending off Central American children with the other.

      In fact, this world of threats is an illusion. The United States has no potent enemies. We are not only safe, but safer than any big power has been in all of modern history.

      Geography is our greatest protector. Wide oceans separate us from potential aggressors. Our vast homeland is rich and productive. No other power on earth is blessed with this security.

    • Drone Victims Take Germany to Court for Abetting U.S. Murders

      Andreas Schüller is an attorney on the staff of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. He is the lead attorney on a suit being brought by ECCHR and Reprieve against the German government on behalf of three Yemeni survivors of a U.S. drone strike. The case will be heard May 27th in Cologne.

      Their suit argues that it is illegal under German law for the German government to allow the U.S. air base at Ramstein to be used for drone murders abroad. The suit comes after the passage of a resolution in the European Parliament in February 2014 urging European nations to “oppose and ban the practice of extrajudicial targeted killings” and to “ensure that the Member States, in conformity with their legal obligations, do not perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings by other states.”

      I’ve always thought of drone murders as illegal under the laws of the countries where the murders happen, as well as under the UN Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact. I asked Schüller: Is your suit seeking prosecution for murder where (or in one of the places where) the act is committed from a distance?

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • A Lot Of Bottled Water Comes From Drought-Stricken California

      California’s in the middle of an epic drought — but that hasn’t stopped bottled water production in the state. Even as residents face mandatory cutbacks and fields lie fallow, companies continue pumping hundreds of millions of gallons of water every year into plastic bottles — sometimes straight from a municipal water supply.

    • Watch: Amid Drought, California Water Virtually Draining Away

      In California, alfalfa production has been scrutinized at a time when both exports of the crop and public awareness of the drought are growing. The expanding global dairy industry, particularly in China, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, is driving demand for alfalfa as animal feed. Much of the alfalfa that the U.S. exports is grown in water-scarce western states.

  • Finance

    • Occupation at University of Amsterdam Challenges the Logic of Market-Driven Education

      When students kicked in the door of the main administrative building, the Maagdenuis, at the University of Amsterdam on February 25, the “New University” – or “De Nieuwe Universiteit” – movement introduced a new aesthetic dimension of protest.

      The Maagdenhuis occupation, a protest against the financialization of higher education and against the concentration of decision-making power at the university, disrupted the everyday flow of doing, changing the normal organization of human sense experience on campus. By taking a building and reorganizing human activity inside, with emphasis on dialogue, deliberation and shared decision-making, occupiers created new aesthetic conditions necessary for a new politics, as philosopher Jacques Rancière, who recently visited the Maagdenhuis to show solidarity with UvA students, suggests.

  • Privacy

    • Even if the Patriot Act expires, the worst surveillance will carry on
    • Amnesty International takes UK government to European Court of Human Rights over mass surveillance

      Amnesty International, Liberty and Privacy International have announced today they are taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over its indiscriminate mass surveillance practices.

    • A New Era at the Tor Project

      Andrew Lewman, our current Executive Director, is leaving The Tor Project to take a position at an Internet services company. While at Tor, Andrew was passionate about using our tools to help people from diverse backgrounds and points of view benefit from online privacy. We thank Andrew for his contributions and wish him well.

    • Police want to keep surveillance tech secret

      Time for law enforcement to come clean on how stingrays spy on Americans’ cellphones

    • Forget spying, now the NSA wants your password list

      The NSA isn’t interested in a sneaky back door into your smartphone or computer any more, it just wants you to leave the front door wide open. While arguments continue around just what the National Security Agency can and can’t get access to – dragging more than one big tech name into the controversy – the spy organization’s chief is suggesting a far more blunt approach: in effect, handing over the keys to encryption upfront.

    • CISPA Is Back With A Vengeance

      First introduced in the House of Representatives in 2011, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is once again back in play and is being considered for legislative action this month. Much of the same concerns that accompanied its introduction in 2011 remain specifically that it is a blank check for cybersurveillance dressed up as a bill to promote cybersecurity.

      The earlier version of both SOPA and CISPA were defeated due in part to staunch opposition from numerous corners of the internet. CISPA initially contained language that included intellectual property issues as falling under the act making it essentially SOPA-light.

  • Civil Rights

    • The Power of Lies

      Lincoln did not think blacks were the equals of whites.

    • The Boston Marathon Show Trial

      Tsarnaev’s attorney knew that evidence would play no role in the case and focused on trying to save Dzhokhar from a death sentence by blaming the older brother who was killed by police. Perhaps Dzhokhar’s attorney remembered what happened to attorney Lynne Stewart who was sentenced to prison for representing a client for whom the government only wanted a pro forma representation.

    • The Nasty Blowback from America’s Wars

      Rowley warned Mueller that launching unjustified war would prove counterproductive in various ways. One blowback she highlighted was that the rationale being applied to allow preemptive strikes abroad could migrate back home, “fostering a more permissive attitude toward shootings by law enforcement officers in this country.” Tragically, the recent spate of murders by police has proved Rowley right.

    • My Labia Will Send Logan Airport TSA Thug Melendy A Postcard

      TSA thug Melendy got all up the side between my thigh and my labia — four times.

    • Autistic 11-year-old arrested for leaving class early: “He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me”s

      An autistic sixth grader in Lynchburg, Virginia was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, PRI’s Susan Ferriss reports.

    • The Real Arab Spring Is Happening in Israel

      The success of the Joint List is an example for the wider Arab world, says Ayman Odeh, its leader. Odeh, a 40-year-old lawyer from Haifa, is now one of the country’s best-known politicians. He won widespread accolades for his calm, reasoned response to being verbally abused on television by Avigdor Lieberman, a former foreign minister. “We live in the Middle East, in an era when people are being killed because they have a different ethnicity, religion or ideology. We have a different message: to accept differences, and work side by side to achieve our goals. We hope our example will affect all the Arab world,” he said.

      [...]

      The model is Martin Luther King, says Odeh. King and his supporters marched to Washington in 1963, demanding jobs and freedom. Odeh has prepared a 10-year plan to close the civic and economic gap between Israel’s Jewish and Arab population. “We intend to march to Jerusalem, to raise awareness for our 10-year plan and to demand democracy and justice for all.”

    • Why Does WaPo Protect Identities of Cops Who Tased a Shackled, Mentally Ill Woman Until She Died?

      The Washington Post knows who gave Natasha McKenna repeated high-voltage shocks just before she suffered a fatal heart attack–but it isn’t telling its readers.

      The Washington Post (4/11/15) ran a troubling story about an African-American woman who died after Fairfax County, Virginia, sheriff’s deputies repeatedly used a taser on her while she was already in shackles. The deputies administered four 50,000-volt shocks to Natasha McKenna, a prisoner at the Fairfax County jail who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, in an effort to force her into a chair for transport; minutes later, her heart stopped.

    • UAE Gave $1 Million to NYC Police Foundation; Money Aided ‘Investigations’

      The New York City Police Foundation received a $1 million donation from the government of the United Arab Emirates, according to 2012 tax records, the same amount the foundation transferred to the NYPD Intelligence Division’s International Liaison Program that year, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

      A 2012 Schedule A document filed by the New York City Police Foundation showed a list of its largest donors, which included several major financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Barclays Capital — but also a line item for the “Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.” The Intercept obtained a copy of the Schedule A document, which is not intended for public disclosure and only shows donors above the threshold of donating $1 million over four years.

    • John Legend launches campaign to end mass incarceration

      John Legend has launched a campaign to end mass incarceration.

      The Grammy-winning singer announced the multiyear initiative, FREE AMERICA, on Monday. He will visit and perform at a correctional facility on Thursday in Austin, Texas, where he also will be part of a press conference with state legislators to discuss Texas’ criminal justice system.

    • The Abuse of Satire

      My career—I guess I can officially call it that now—was not my idea. When my editor, Jim Andrews, recruited me out during my junior year in college and gave me the job I still hold, it wasn’t clear to me what he was up to. Inexplicably, he didn’t seem concerned that I was short on the technical skills normally associated with creating a comic strip—it was my perspective he was interested in, my generational identity. He saw the sloppy draftsmanship as a kind of cartoon vérité, dispatches from the front, raw and subversive.

      Why were they so subversive? Well, mostly because I didn’t know any better. My years in college had given me the completely false impression that there were no constraints, that it was safe for an artist to comment on volatile cultural and political issues in public. In college, there’s no down side. In the real world, there is, but in the euphoria of being recognized for anything, you don’t notice it at first. Indeed, one of the nicer things about youthful cluelessness is that it’s so frequently confused with courage.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Legal Responses May Be Imminent in Net Neutrality Face-off

      Back in March, the FCC’s 400-page net neutrality order arrived, and made waves because of the agency’s vote to reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service. The FCC argued that it created “clear and enforceable rules” to protect consumers, but broadband providers and others bristled at the regulation proposals.

      Over this past weekend, the net neutrality rule was published in the Federal Register, the daily journal of U.S. government initiatives, and legal action from those opposing it could be imminent.

    • FCC fires the starting gun on net neutrality legal tussles

      The move follows the historic decision by the FCC to impose more stringent net neutrality rules than anyone had expected in a vote at the end of February which saw the motion pass by three votes to two.

    • Hollywood Seeks Net Neutrality Exceptions to Block Pirates

      The Motion Picture Association has written to Brazil’s Justice Minister seeking exceptions to the country’s fledgling “Internet Constitution”. In a submission to the government the MPA says that the Marco Civil’s current wording on net neutrality deprives courts of the opportunity to order the blocking of ‘pirate’ sites.

    • 6 Stupid Reasons Actual People Are Scared Of Net Neutrality

      According to the most popular British talk show host on American premium cable, net neutrality is one of the most important regulations for the future of telecommunications (and, by extension, all of humanity under the age of 50). Net neutrality is about making sure your ISP can’t control what you view on the Internet and how fast you view it — or, as the aforementioned talk show host put it, “Preventing Cable Company Fuckery.” How could anyone possibly be against something as basic as that? The answer, as the following reactions to net neutrality prove, is “by being hilariously stupid.”

04.13.15

Links 13/4/2015: Linux 4.0 Released; A Look at Antergos 2015.04.12

Posted in News Roundup at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Real Reason Open Source Startups Fail

    The recent news around Nebula shutting its doors has stirred speculation that OpenStack startups are struggling because of the state of the OpenStack market. There is even a piece claiming that the OpenStack dream is on “life support.”

    This couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that winning in open source requires a playbook that is drastically different from one that most VCs investing in technology today are used to.

  • 3 best practices for bootstrapping an open source business

    I’ve felt this tension firsthand. My company, PencilBlue, an open source content management system, was instantly dismissed by a well-known venture capitalist because, as he put it, “No website creation tool makes money unless it completely gets rid of the need for developers.” This is someone who made seed investments in multiple household-name tech startups, and he had no clue that more than 70% of all websites are created by developers and that the $21 billion web development industry is ruled by open source platforms.

    That open source startups are hard to find in the investment-first ecosystem is not surprising, because they’re usually started by people who actually build the product. Most of the time, seeking early stage investment for an open source product doesn’t make financial sense. On the other hand, there’s much to be gained from the business and marketing knowledge in local startup communities, so being sequestered from them can put open source developers at a disadvantage.

  • Events

  • CMS

    • Presidential candidate website tech, compared

      Over the next year, political pundits will spend far too much time dissecting the horse race, scandals (real or imagined), the electoral college and more polls than you can shake a stick at. I’m doing none of that. I’m just looking at websites.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Pivotal sets the stage for open-source in-memory computing

        Opening up the code could give enterprise customers more input into what new features are added into future versions. For Pivotal, the move provides an entry to those corporate clients that have adopted policies of using open-source software whenever possible, said Roman Shaposhnik, Pivotal’s director of open source.

        The company also hopes the software, released under the name Project Geode, will find a wider user base, one looking for big data analysis technologies speedier than Hadoop or Spark, Shaposhnik said.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Git and GitHub for open source documentation

      We use git extensively for documentation in OpenStack so that we can “treat the docs like the code”—and I’m seeing this trend many places especially in the Write the Docs community.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Hacked French TV network admits “blunder” that exposed YouTube password

      The head of the French TV network that suspended broadcasting following last week’s hack attack has confirmed the service exposed its own passwords during a TV interview, but said the gaffe came only after the breach.

      “We don’t hide the fact that this is a blunder,” the channel’s director general Yves Bigot, told the AFP news service.

      The exposure came during an interview a rival TV service broadcast on the TV5Monde attack. During the questioning, a TV5Monde journalist sat in front of several scraps of paper hanging on a window. One of them showed the password of for the network’s YouTube account. As Ars reported last week, the pass code was “lemotdepassedeyoutube,” which translates in English to “the password of YouTube.”

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Transparency Reporting

    • From A to Z (Asteroids to Zombies), the British Just Want the Facts

      Government secrecy has long been a hallmark of Britain, where neither laws nor traditions made it easy to obtain the documents and records that are the underpinnings of any bureaucracy. But a decade ago, the doors were swung wide open to allow the sunshine of public scrutiny into agencies, bureaus and councils, and the result has been both gratifying and slightly alarming.

      While Britain’s Freedom of Information law has established itself as a potent tool to scrutinize the work of public authorities and hold those in power accountable, it has also had some expensive consequences — and, in some cases, revealed the absurdity of public whim.

      The hundreds of thousands of requests that have been received at various levels of government in the last decade have not only been time-consuming for agencies and councils, they have also proved extremely costly.

      Such, though, is the side effect of transparency, say the proponents of open government, who also argue that the benefits outweigh the burdens.

      “What people often forget is just how much F.O.I. saves money, because it exposes wasteful and extravagant spending,” said Paul Gibbons, a freedom of information campaigner and blogger. “Just one example: a local council in Scotland was spending thousands every year sending a delegation to Japan for a flower festival. Once F.O.I. came into force, they quickly realized they couldn’t justify doing that.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Snow-Capped Mountains and Rushing Rivers, but No Water to Drink in Nepal’s Capital

      Despite having among the highest water availability per capita in the world and holding about 2.7 percent of the world’s total fresh water reserves, Nepal suffers from a chronic water shortage.

      Set against a decade of political turbulence, acute mismanagement of water supplies and large in-migration from villages to the capital Kathmandu, the less socio-economically advantaged half of Nepal is increasingly left to fend for itself to gain access to clean water.

      In Kathmandu, the Nepalese government’s Central Bureau of Statistics shows that one out of five households do not have a domestic water source, while two-thirds live with a water supply which most probably would fail the standard for being ‘clean and safe.’

  • Finance

    • Dear Apple, Microsoft and Google, you owe Australia billions!

      As one watched representatives of the three most important IT companies in the world being grilled by an Australian Senate committee on tax avoidance last week, it soon became obvious that the whole show was a farce. The corporations have been fleecing Australia of billions of dollars in tax revenues for years and successive governments have been either powerless or unwilling to do anything.

      In the revenue leeching stakes, Apple is by far the worst offender followed by Microsoft, with Google bringing up the rear only by the virtue of its Australian R&D activities.

      The contempt with which all three companies view the Australian Government and the Australian people was obvious by the personnel they chose to front the Senate committee.

    • Dollar’s buying power plummets in first day of “official” WoW gold trading

      For most of World of Warcraft’s history, the only way to buy in-game gold with real currency was to go through one of many gray market third-party services (which technically goes against Blizzard’s terms of service for the game). That was true until yesterday, when Blizzard introduced a $20 game time token that can be sold for gold at the in-game auction house on North American servers (European servers will get the feature at a later date). While the real-world price of those tokens is fixed at $20, the gold price is “determined dynamically based on supply and demand,” as Blizzard puts it.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Noam Chomsky on the New York Times’ Media Bias

      A front-page article is devoted to a flawed story about a campus rape in the journal Rolling Stone, exposed in the leading academic journal of media critique. So severe is this departure from journalistic integrity that it is also the subject of the lead story in the business section, with a full inside page devoted to the continuation of the two reports. The shocked reports refer to several past crimes of the press: a few cases of fabrication, quickly exposed, and cases of plagiarism (“too numerous to list”). The specific crime of Rolling Stone is “lack of skepticism,” which is “in many ways the most insidious” of the three categories.

  • Privacy

    • ​Securing the web once and for all: The Let’s Encrypt Project
    • European court challenge to UK surveillance

      Rights groups have asked the European Court of Human Rights to rule on the legality of the UK’s large-scale surveillance regime.

      Amnesty International, Liberty and Privacy International filed a legal complaint with the court today.

      The scale of the surveillance carried out by GCHQ has been revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    • Brazil builds undersea internet cable to protect online privacy

      Angered by Edward Snowden’s revelations on the wiretapping habits of tri-lettered American agencies, Brazil is taking the internet into its own hands — and giving Uncle Sam the middle finger. Right now most internet traffic between South America and Europe travels through the overly inquisitive US, but that’s about to change. Next year, Brazil’s Telebrás and Spain’s IslaLink will begin laying £120 million worth of undersea internet cable to span the 5,600km of Atlantic Ocean between Fortaleza, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal. The Americans can just follow their allies’ activities on Facebook like everyone else.

    • Facebook admits it tracks non-users, but denies claims it breaches EU privacy law

      Social network claims privacy report commissioned by the Belgian privacy watchdog ‘gets it wrong multiple times’ over what Facebook does with user data

    • NSA dreams of smartphones with “split” crypto keys protecting user data

      The approach is only one of several options being studied by the White House. One alternative under consideration would have a judge direct a company to set up a mirror account so that law enforcement officials conducting a criminal investigation could read text messages shortly after they are sent. To obtain encrypted photos, the judge could order the company to back up the suspect’s data to a server while the phone is turned on and its contents are unencrypted.

  • Civil Rights

    • U.S. Air Force Fires General Who Threatened Airmen With ‘Treason’

      Three months ago, Maj. Gen. James Post — the deputy chief of Air Combat Command — warned airmen that talking to Congress about the A-10 Warthog is an act of “treason.”

      On April 10, the U.S. Air Force announced it had canned Post from his job.

      To be sure, the flying branch doesn’t like the A-10 and is locked in a battle with legislators over the attack plane’s future. But it certainly didn’t like Post making veiled threats. He made the comments during a January gathering of airmen at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

    • Dog Owners Threatened With $750,000 Fine Over Missing Dog Posters

      A D.C. dog owner did what anyone with a missing pet would do. He posted fliers — but then, he says, police threatened him with a $750,000 fine.

    • Access to justice a greater concern than free healthcare – poll

      The public is more concerned about access to justice than free healthcare, according to a poll commissioned by lawyers campaigning to reverse cuts to legal aid.

      The findings from a YouGov poll have been released as the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats vie to pledge more and more funding for the NHS.

    • Deputy who killed man after mistaking gun for Taser is an insurance exec who pays to play cop

      The reserve Tulsa County Sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot and killed a man last week when he thought he had pulled his Taser, is part of a group of wealthy donors who make large contributions to the department for the privilege of playing police officer.

      According to Tulsa World, Robert Bates, 73, who made the fatal mistake that cost a man his life, is a local insurance company executive who has donated multiple vehicles, weapons, and stun guns to the Sheriff’s Office since becoming a reserve deputy in 2008.

    • [Old] Shane Todd’s family says noose and towel used in U.S. engineer’s hanging death DESTROYED by police

      Police in Singapore destroyed two pieces of evidence tied to the death of Shane Todd, whose body was found in his apartment there in June 2012, according to the American engineer’s family.

      The 31-year-old’s parents, Rick and Mary Todd, have for months been demanding the Singapore government return the hand-made noose and towel around their son’s neck when his body was discovered by his girlfriend hanging from his bathroom door.

    • [Old] Experts: Engineer found dead didn’t write suicide notes

      Ever since the body of American engineer was found hanging in his Singapore apartment in June 2012, his mother Mary Todd has maintained that the five typewritten suicide notes found at the scene were not written by her son.

      “My son did not write those suicide notes,” Mary Todd has repeated to anyone who would listen.

    • [Old] Singapore gov’t destroyed evidence in US engineer’s death

      Two pieces of evidence central to the death of 31-year-old American engineer Shane Todd — whose body was found in his Singapore apartment in June, 2012 — have been destroyed by police on the island nation, according to an official letter sent to the Todd family lawyer earlier this month.

    • [Old] Shame In Singapore: If Edward Snowden Betrayed America, America Has Betrayed Shane Todd

      I can’t stop thinking about the strange circumstances surrounding the tragic death of a promising young American electric engineer in Singapore two years ago.

      His name was Shane Todd and his story is a cautionary tale for sanctimonious ideologues like Edward Snowden.

      Unlike Snowden, Todd defended America’s secrets and doing so may have cost him his life.

      While local authorities in Singapore claim that Shane committed suicide, his family is convinced he was murdered. For better or worse, so am I.

      Rather than recapitulating the circumstances surrounding Todd’s death, I would refer readers to an enormously compelling piece that appeared last year in the Financial Times about Todd’s death.

      Ironically, the only evidence I can add is taken from a classified diplomatic cable sent to the Central Intelligence Agency about seven years ago from a federal export controls official in China. The cable, which was made public by Wikileaks, reviews an application from a Chinese company for a license to export the technology that Shane had worked on in Singapore – a metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) epitaxial system for producing epitaxial materials like gallium nitride (GaN), a semiconductor circuit technology that offers disruptive capabilities in efficient microwave power generation.

    • [Old] Murder, international coverup alleged in new book

      “Mom, I might be paranoid, but I have the feeling that they are threatening my life if I don’t stay,” Shane said. “I am so naive. Coming to Singapore was the worst mistake of my life.”

      Just before his planned return to the United States, he was found hanged in his apartment. He already had a job lined up in the United States and had his family postpone celebrating Father’s Day and his brother’s birthday. He was going to be in a wedding in the summer.

      Rick and Mary Todd flew to Singapore, where they met with police. The official account of Shane’s apparent suicide soon unraveled.

    • [Old] 48 Hours: Did a son die protecting American secrets?

      The Singapore police told the Todds that Shane had hanged himself but, almost from the start, they did not believe it. Aside from having a new job, Shane had made summer plans with his brothers and had even asked his grandmother if he could use her car and apartment in the interim before he started his new job. He’d queried his future employer about the company policy regarding vacation time and publishing opportunities, Mary said.

      Even as Rick Todd staggered off the plane in Denver, devastated by the news of his son’s death, Mary and her sons already had hatched a plan to fly to Singapore immediately. There’s no doubt that the Todds had an advantage given that Rick flew for a major airline and the entire family had passports at the ready. Seemingly overnight, they were in Singapore asking pointed questions of police officials.

    • [Old] China, Hacking, And Murder
    • [Old] A Family Battles to Prove Their Son Died an American Hero in 48 HOURS: SPIES, LIES & SECRETS

      Peter Van Sant and 48 Hours return to a family’s quest to prove their son was murdered and did not commit suicide as officials in Singapore say, and they’re determined to clear his name in an updated edition of “Spies, Lies & Secrets,” to be rebroadcast Saturday, August 30 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

    • [Old] Did a son die protecting American secrets?
    • [Old] Hard Drive: An American engineer’s death in Singapore raised disturbing questions

      With the sheer determination of a mother on a mission, I made a beeline for Shane’s bathroom. As I looked into the bathroom, I was perplexed and shocked. Nothing I saw matched IO Khal’s description. “Oh my gosh, John, come quickly, you’ve got to see this,” I yelled.

      John ran to me and we both began to exclaim, “Where are the bolts, the ropes, and the pulleys? Why is the toilet not across from the door as Khal described it?” Perplexed, we ran our hands over the marble walls searching for holes that might have been patched, looking for anything that would back up what Khal had told us. Nothing!…

    • [Old] Hard Drive III: Shocking reason we were told Congressional investigation was unlikely

      A week and a half after we returned to Montana, we discovered through various media sources that Minister Shanmugam was still in Washington D.C. and was scheduled to meet with Senator Baucus, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Eric Holder, and various other government officials, including Arizona Senator John McCain.

      Prior to these meetings, USA Today cited Sen. Baucus, emphasizing that the SPF and Singaporean government “have been less than forthcoming” in the Shane Todd case and that evidence he had seen so far raised “very, very strong questions” and “deep concerns about national security.” …

    • [Old] Family investigates ‘whistleblower’ engineer’s mysterious death

      Mary Todd is coming to New York in her quest for justice.

      The mother of Dr. Shane Truman Todd, the American engineer found hanging in his Singapore apartment two years ago, has co-written a book, “Hard Drive: A Family’s Fight Against Three Countries,” with Shane’s cousin, Dr. Christina Villegas.

      The California women claim Shane was murdered and that authorities ruled his death a suicide for political reasons.

      “He had expressed fear for his life,” Villegas told me. “We don’t know who is responsible for his murder, but all three countries are guilty of destruction of evidence and the coverup.”

      Villegas, who is coming with Todd to New York on Sept. 5, said, “The US State Department is fully aiding the perversion of justice. As soon as John Kerry met with Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam, the FBI lost all interest in the case.”

04.12.15

Links 12/4/2015: Linux 4.0 Imminent, Semplice 7 Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 3:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The rebirth of Free Software Magazine

    When I started Free Software Magazine, over 10 years ago, it was a very different world. Magazines still mattered, Facebook was a primitive site for university students, Digg was about to become a huge new site (before disappearing a few years later), and… did I mention that Magazines still mattered?

    Fast-forward to 2015: it has been 11 years. While I can say that for the first time I have contributed to an exciting free software project with a few thousands lines of code, Hotplate — and believe me, I’ve been keeping busy — I was forced to put Free Software Magazine in hiatus in order to complete Hotplate.

  • Events

    • ownCloud Meetup to test devices in Berin

      Coming Wednesday, it’s time for the monthly Berlin ownCloud meetup again. Last month, we wanted to play with some little development boards, install ownCloud on them and see what they could do. But we had over a dozen new participants join, turning the meetup mostly in a ‘how to get an ownCloud development environment up and running’ session.

  • Programming

    • Apply agile methodologies to upstream development environments…. if you can.

      In consequence, it would not surprise me if we hear more and more about “corporate development methodologies” (a.k.a. agile) vs. “upstream development methodologies” (a.k.a. FLOSS).

      Scrum, XP, Kanban -ish fans will need to face those challenges and find solutions in order to succeed in open collaboration environments. In the same way, based on the increasing influence that companies are gaining in these ecosystems, FLOSS methodologies in a few years will differ from what we knew 10 years ago.

Leftovers

  • Politics

    • Obama: Clinton would make an ‘excellent president’

      A day before Hillary Clinton is expected to announce her second run for the White House, President Barack Obama said she would make an “excellent president.”

      “She was a formidable candidate in 2008,” Obama said in response to a question at a news conference in Panama. “She was a great supporter of mine in the general election. She was an outstanding secretary of state. She is my friend. I think she would be an excellent president.”

      Obama and Clinton have remained in touch since she left the State Department in 2013 where she served as Obama’s secretary of state in the first term.

      [...]

      “Not only have I run my last election, but I am not in the business of prognosticating future elections,” he said.
      Join The Conversation

      McClatchy Washington Bureau is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what’s in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

    • Rand Paul Is Not a Libertarian. He’s Just Running for President

      Rand Paul has in fact inherited much of his father’s popularity among the grassroots and youth activists of his party. I would tend to agree with most political insiders that he is one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination. However, I can’t help but wonder just how long and to what effect his disingenuous charade can possibly continue. At what point do his key voting blocs stop and realize what his actions are really designed to accomplish? Which is to trick them into electing an unremarkable first term Republican senator as America’s first “Libertarian” president.

    • How the KCIA was born – in deep shadows

      But my promise wasn’t kept. I stepped down as KCIA director in January 1963. The military government relinquished power to a civilian elected-government. But the KCIA kept its authority to investigate and has been blamed for abusing and politicizing its power many times since. It is still trying to hold onto the authority it promised to hand over. The motto that I drafted has also been damaged. I do feel responsible for its abuse of power and misdeeds as its founder.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Total control: is Monsanto unstoppable?

      Political lobbying, on an international scale, has intensified. There is much to play for. Other biotech giants are involved – Dow, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF – but Monsanto is at the head of the pack, pushing hard into Europe and Asia and, with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, into Africa too.

  • Security

    • Calls to make software designers liable for security weakness

      In December 2014, Google released information about a vulnerability that researchers working on its Project Zero bug-hunting initiative had discovered in Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system. Google had raised the issue privately with Microsoft three months previously, but Microsoft had failed to address the issue within Project Zero’s 90-day deadline.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Russian naval ship evacuates over 300 people stranded in Yemen

      The Russian Navy vessel Priazovye has helped to evacuate 308 people from war-torn Yemen. The Russian Defense Ministry stated citizens from 19 countries had been rescued, including Russian, Ukrainian, US and Yemini nationals.

    • CIA: Opponents of Iran’s initial nuclear agreement are being ‘disingenuous’

      Opponents of Iran’s initial agreement to curb its nuclear program are being “disingenuous” when they say the deal could still allow the Middle Eastern state to build nuclear weapons, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency said on Tuesday.

    • CIA director attacks critics of Iran deal as ‘wholly disingenuous’

      CIA Director John Brennan reportedly says the preliminary framework around the nuclear deal with Iran does what had once seemed impossible, calling some critics of the agreement “wholly disingenuous” and expressing surprise at the Iranians’ concessions.

    • CIA Director: We’re Winning the War on Terror, But It Will Never End

      Last night, Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan participated in a question-and-answer session at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. The first thirty-seven minutes consisted of an unusually probing exchange between Brennan and Harvard professor Graham Allison (full disclosure: Graham is a former boss of mine). Most notably, between 19:07 and 29:25 in the video, Allison pressed Brennan repeatedly about whether the United States is winning the war on terrorism and why the number of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups has only increased since 9/11: “There seem to be more of them than when we started…How are we doing?”

    • CIA Director Says the War on Terror May Never End
    • With a book to promote, Judy Miller succeeds in trolling enemies about Iraq War
    • With a book to promote, Judy Miller succeeds in trolling enemies about Iraq War

      America’s most famous former spy and a fallen-star New York Times writer have started a new round of smacktalk over a topic that has 2003 written all over it: Who’s to blame for the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

      Judy Miller and Valerie Plame Wilson have re-litigated the question of war over the past week in op-ed pages and on Facebook and Twitter. It became personal.

    • With a book to promote, Judy Miller succeeds in trolling enemies about Iraq War

      These revelations come from veteran New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey. It tells how special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rigged the 2007 perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the Valerie Plame case, and inadvertently condemned thousands of Americans to be killed and maimed needlessly in Iraq.

    • When Journalists Join the Cover-ups

      As embarrassing as the Judith Miller case was for the New York Times, the fiasco underscores a more troubling development that strikes near the heart of American democracy – the press corps’ gradual retreat from the principle of skepticism on national security issues to career-boosting “patriotism.”

    • Judith Miller tries, and ultimately fails, to defend her flawed Iraq reporting

      Then she misused that same influence and prestige. So she doesn’t get to ridicule all those who initially took her Times stories seriously, as the United States launched a war that killed 4,500 U.S. service members and left an Iraqi toll many times higher.

    • Judith Miller’s Blame-Shifting Memoir

      On April 3, former New York Times journalist Judith Miller published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths: Officials Didn’t Lie, and I Wasn’t Fed a Line.” If this sounds a bit defensive, Miller has tons to be defensive about.

      In the article, Miller claims, “false narratives [about what she did as a New York Times reporter] deserve, at last, to be retired.” The article appears to be the initial salvo in a major attempt at self-rehabilitation and, coincidentally, comes just as her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, is to be published today.

      In reviewing Miller’s book, her “mainstream media” friends are not likely to mention the stunning conclusion reached recently by the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other respected groups that the Iraq War, for which she was lead drum majorette, killed one million people. One might think that, in such circumstances – and with bedlam reigning in Iraq and the wider neighborhood – a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, so to speak, might prompt Miller to keep her head down for a while more.

    • Valerie Plame Blasts Ex-NY Times Reporter Judith Miller’s ‘Pathetic’ Iraq War Column

      “You were just cheering from the sidelines,” ex-CIA operative says about Miller’s role in helping build support for the Iraq War

      Former CIA operative Valerie Plame took to social media to criticize former New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s recent column that deflected her role in ginning up support for the Iraq War.

    • Judith Miller Clings to Her Own Stubborn Myths

      Judith Miller recently popped out of the Fox News bubble for a quick jaunt to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the home base for John Bolton, Max Boot, and other neo-con hawks, to give her forthcoming book a little free advertising. In the process she attempts to whitewash her role as an influential pro-war voice in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

      Her April 3, 2015 statement predictably follows the same party line as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush. She strongly defends herself against those who claim her reportage in the run-up to the war consciously fanned the flames of pro-war sentiment prior to the start of “shock and awe” on March 19, 2003. She claims she was a victim of faulty intelligence and “everybody” got it wrong about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. So why single her out?

    • Valerie Plame slams Judith Miller’s ‘pathetic and self-serving’ mea culpa: Don’t flatter yourself

      Valerie Plame, who was outed as a CIA agent by members of the Bush administration, fired back at a journalist whose work helped push the U.S. into war with Iraq.

      Former New York Times reporter and current Fox News contributor Judith Miller published an essay last week in the Wall Street Journal claiming responsibility for her eventually discredited reporting on Iraqi’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

      Plame suggested in a Facebook post that Miller was flattering herself.

      “Dear Judy,” she posted Monday night. “No one is crediting you with starting the Iraq war. We know you were not actually on the team that took us into the biggest, most tragic U.S. foreign policy debacle ever. You were just cheering from the sidelines. Your attempt to re-write history is both pathetic and self-serving.”

    • US plans for anti-Islamic State training drawing skepticism

      The fight against the Islamic State group received a jolt of energy when the United States and Turkey sealed a pact to train and arm Syrian rebels. Two months later, the program faces delays and skepticism — as Turkish officials, Syrian rebels and even former American advisers openly question whether it can ever have any battlefield impact.

    • Armed attack Inside the Jordanian Department of Intelligence, baffles Jordanians

      In an unprecedented violent attack inside Jordan’s most secretive and feared government security agency, The General Intelligence Directorate (GID), also known as the “Mukhabarat” in Arabic, an intelligence officer attacked and stabbed a high ranking senior officer during an alleged armed robbery attempt last week using a stun baton Taser and a knife. The attacker was identified in a statement by the victim’s tribe and reported by the London-based newspaper Al Rai al Youm as Mohamad Abdullah al Odwan. Odwan had allegedly entered the office of intelligence officer, Lt. Colonel Khaled Tawfiq al Utoom and demanded a hundred thousand dinar ( $ 150.000) from a safe the victim had in his office and supposedly contained millions more. Rai al Youm reported that Odwan stabbed and clubbed Utoom with his stun baton after the latter refused to hand over the money to him. Odwan then fled the building after taking large sums of money from the safe, but later was arrested and currently is under investigation.

    • US Wages ”War on Terror” in the Philippines

      The War on Terror provided the US an opportunity to expand its military footprint in the Philippines.

    • Untangling the Mysteries Behind Bowe Bergdahl’s Rescue Mission

      The Haqqanis were a terrorist threat that was well known in Washington and Kabul, and they were a constant source of diplomatic headaches. During the Cold War, Jalaluddin Haqqani was a handsomely paid CIA proxy in the fight against the Soviets, but after 9/11, his family took up arms against the latest infidel invaders. “In Pakistan’s tribal areas of North and South Waziristan, Maulavi [Jalaluddin] Haqqani and his sons run a network of madrasas and training bases and provide protection for foreign fighters and terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda,” The New York Times reported in June 2008.

    • U.S. Soldier Uses Heart Breaking Wikileaks Video To Make His Point

      Below is a very disturbing and well-known Wikileaks video exposing what happened (and is still happening) in the Middle East on a daily basis. It’s called “Collateral Murder,” and the solider you see in the video is Ethan McCord; he is one of many soldiers heard in the Wikileaks video who were deployed in Iraq.

      There is some disturbing footage in it, but it’s a powerful tool to let people know about something that is commonly covered up, leaving the Western world oblivious to the reality of the situation.

      We are made to believe that soldiers are sent over to these countries to fight terror, completely ignoring the fact that innocent people, for no reason, are being killed every day.

    • PATRIOT Act Reauthorization: The Fear Mongering and Disinformation Campaign Begins

      Absent from the Leader’s memo was the fact that PATRIOT Act Sec. 215 data has never stopped a single terrorist threat to the United States, as Obama administration officials were forced to admit in the fall of 2013. Also missing from McCarthy’s memo was that fact that the “shoe bomber”, the “underwear bomber”, the Ft. Hood shooter, and the Boston Marathon bombers were not stopped by NSA’s global surveillance dragnet, as typified by Sec. 215. McCarthy’s troops were also spared the reminder that Obama’s review group on intelligence and communications technologies found the program useless. Given those omissions, it’s also not shocking that Mr. McCarthy didn’t want his members focused on DEA’s own decades-long metadata program, which only raises very uncomfortable questions about how many mass surveillance programs are running that we don’t know about.

    • Iranians Are Much Talked About on Sunday Morning TV, But Never Heard From

      Sunday morning news television is where Washington sets its media agenda for the week and, more importantly, defines its narrow range of conventional, acceptable viewpoints. It’s where the Serious People go to spout their orthodoxies and, through the illusion of “tough questioning,” disseminate DC-approved bipartisan narratives. Other than the New York Times front page, Sunday morning TV was the favorite tool of choice for Bush officials and neocon media stars to propagandize the public about Iraq; Dick Cheney’s media aide, Catherine Martin, noted in a memo that the Tim-Russert-hosted Meet the Press lets Cheney “control message,” and she testified at the Lewis Libby trial that, as a result, “I suggested we put the vice president on Meet the Press, which was a tactic we often used. It’s our best format.”

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Stingray spying: FBI’s secret deal with police hides phone dragnet from courts

      The FBI is taking extraordinary and potentially unconstitutional measures to keep local and state police forces from exposing the use of so-called “Stingray” surveillance technology across the United States, according to documents obtained separately by the Guardian and the American Civil Liberties Union.

      Multiple non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) revealed in Florida, New York and Maryland this week show federal authorities effectively binding local law enforcement from disclosing any information – even to judges – about the cellphone dragnet technology, its collection capabilities or its existence.

      In an arrangement that shocked privacy advocates and local defense attorneys, the secret pact also mandates that police notify the FBI to push for the dismissal of cases if technical specifications of the devices are in danger of being revealed in court.

    • Vilifying WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning by Hearsay

      Even a cursory glance at what Dan Ellsberg has been up to recently will show that he obviously considers them all to have made huge, historic and overwhelmingly beneficial contributions to the world. So maybe Penn should listen to what his ‘very informed’ whistleblower (who was, himself, vilified in his own day, of course) has to say on the subject.

    • Probable Cause with Sibel Edmonds: Truth vs. Silent Witnesses & Official Lies

      We are going to discuss official lies, whistleblowers, silent witnesses, and how the majority falls for official fictions and dismisses truth. We will also be discussing another common tactic used by the deep state and its tentacles to promote official-lies and cover up truth: Muddying the facts by bombarding people with conflicting, contradicting, and confusing supplementary lies before moving on to their next officially-narrated official lie.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Triassic Mass Extinction May Give Clues on How Oceans Will Be Affected by Climate Change

      Just over 200 million years ago, the end-Triassic mass extinction killed off more than half of the species of organisms living on Earth’s land and in the oceans. We are only just beginning to understand how this – and the period of runaway global warming that followed – changed the chemistry of open oceans.

      The end-Triassic mass extinction marked the transition between the Triassic to the Jurassic Period and the rise of the large herbivorous dinosaurs, such as the Diplodocus. The extinction meant that previously abundant species were cleared from ecological niches which allowed dinosaurs to move in with little competition from other animals. The Jurassic lasted another 55 million years until the beginning of the Cretaceous Period.

  • Finance

    • 10 U.S. senators seek investigation into H-1B-driven layoffs

      Ten U.S. senators, representing the political spectrum, are seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors.

      They are asking the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department to investigate the use of the H-1B program “to replace large numbers of American workers” at Southern California Edison (SCE) and other employers.

      This letter is a significant development in this contentious issue. It arrives at the same time that lawmakers are pushing a substantial increase in H-1B visas under the I-Squared bill, legislation that would raise the H-1B cap. Two of the co-sponsors of the I-Squared bill also signed the letter asking for an investigation into H-1B program practices.

    • The 1 percent are parasites: Debunking the lies about free enterprise, trickle-down, capitalism and celebrity entrepreneurs

      ‘When did you last get a job from a poor person?’ So goes my favorite Tea Party slogan. The Americans are good at slogans but the Tea Party specializes in discombobulatingly daft ones. Of course you won’t get a job from a poor person, we wearily concede, but it doesn’t follow that the rich create jobs, as if they have special powers that turn their gains into a gift of jobs to the rest of us. U.S. billionaire Nick Hanauer is refreshingly honest about this: ‘If it was true that lower taxes for the rich and more wealth for the wealthy led to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs.’ So why hasn’t the spectacular shift in income and financial wealth to the rich over the last four decades led to unprecedented jobs growth?

    • Scapegoat Economics 2015

      As economic crises, declines and dislocations increasingly hurt or threaten people around the globe, they provoke questions. How are we to understand the forces that produced the 2008 crisis, the crisis itself, with its quick bailouts and stimulus programs, and now the debts, austerity policies and deepening economic inequalities that do not go away? Economies this troubled force people to think and react. Some resign themselves to “hard times” as if they were natural events. Some pursue individual strategies trying to escape the troubles. Some mobilize to fight whoever they blame for it all. Many are drawn to scapegoating, usually encouraged by politicians and parties seeking electoral advantages.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Facebook: We track non-users, but it’s not intentional

      SOCIAL NETWORK Facebook has admitted that it tracked non-users, but said that this happened only because of a bug.

      Facebook’s remarks come in response to a recent report from Belgium’s data protection authority accusing the firm of multiple violations of EU privacy law.

      These violations include “stalking” people geographically via Facebook mobile apps, and failing to inform users of data collection practices.

    • Facebook claims ‘a bug’ made it track nonusers

      Facebook researchers have found “a bug” that caused it to track people, even if they had never visited its website, the social media giant acknowledged this week.

      The bug caused the company to place cookies — a common way to track people’s browsing habits on the Web — on “some” people’s browsers, even if they had never visited Facebook.com to sign up for an account, the social media website’s European Public Policy Vice President Richard Allan wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

    • Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network

      Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.

    • PCLOB’s New Work: Examining “Activities” Taking Place in the Loopholes of EO 12333

      On Wednesday, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board met to approve its next project. They are just about completing a general overview of the Intelligence Community’s use of EO 12333 (as part of which they’ve been nagging agencies, notably DEA and Treasury, to comply with requirements imposed by Ronald Reagan). Next, they will move onto a deep dive of two programs conducted under EO 12333, one each for NSA and CIA. PCLOB has now posted materials from Wednesday’s meeting, though this overview is also useful.

      [...]

      Finally, remember that CIA has conducted investigations targeting Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, which suggests it interprets its ability to conduct counterintelligence investigations unbelievably broadly.

    • The DEA’s Bulk Collection Program

      Defenders of the NSA’s notorious bulk telephony program have stressed since it was first disclosed that the massive database of calling information can only be used for national security investigations of foreign terror groups, and is tightly regulated by the FISA Court. This week, however, USA Today confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own bulk telephony program, first reported in January, began nearly a decade before the attacks of September 11, 2001—vacuuming up records of Americans’ calls to a whopping 116 foreign countries “linked to drug trafficking” using administrative subpoenas. This is presumably the “massive database of phone records” referenced in a 2013 Reuters story on the shady practice of “parallel construction,” wherein state or local law enforcement agency are fed tips from DEA, then encouraged to “phony up investigations” (in the words of one Harvard law professor) in order to conceal the true origins of the information from courts and criminal investigations.

    • The government hides surveillance programs just because people would freak out

      The justification they were using for the NSA’s program – that it was only being used against dangerous terrorists, not ordinary criminals – just wasn’t true with the DEA. The public would clearly be outraged by the twisted legal justification that radically re-interpreted US law in complete secrecy. “They couldn’t defend both programs”, a former Justice Department official told Heath. The piece also reveals that Attorney General Eric Holder “didn’t think we should have that information” in the first place, which is interesting because Holder was one of the first Justice Department officials to approve the program during the Clinton administration. It’s nice he came to his senses, but if the program never risked going public, would he have felt the same?

      There are many other surveillance programs the government is desperate to keep hidden. Consider Stingray devices, the mini fake cell phone towers that can vacuum up cell phone data of entire neighborhoods at the same time and which are increasingly being used by local cops all around the country. The Associated Press reported this week that the Baltimore police have used these controversial devices thousands of times in the course of ordinary investigations and have tried to hide how the devices are used from judges.

      The lengths to which the FBI will go to keep these devices secret from the public is alarming. As a Guardian investigation detailed on Friday, the FBI makes local police that use them sign non-disclosure agreements, and goes as far as to direct them to dismiss charges against potential criminals if the phone surveillance will be exposed at trial (as is required by due process rights in the Fifth Amendment).

    • A reminder of journalism’s power to do the right thing

      Like others before him — such as Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers — Snowden released his findings to the press, and trusted journalists to do their job in exposing government malfeasance and lack of accountability. Also like Ellsberg, Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917.

    • Sun Investigates: Cellphone surveillance seen years earlier in ‘The Wire’

      The Baltimore Police Department surprised many when it revealed recently that it has used a cellphone surveillance device known as a “stingray” 4,300 times since 2007.

    • NSA thinks it can keep spying without compromising your security

      American police and spies love the idea of back door access to encrypted data that lets them snoop on suspicious types, but many will tell you that they’re wildly optimistic. Even if you don’t mind the implication that the government has a right to spy on anyone, this could easily introduce a flaw that any attacker can use. National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers thinks there’s a happy medium, however. At a recent speech, he called for a “front door” encryption key that would provide access, but would be broken into pieces that prevents any one agency or person from getting in. This theoretically prevents thieves (and less than scrupulous authorities) from grabbing your data, but still lets officials look around when they have permission.

    • The NSA wants tech companies to give it ‘front door’ access to encrypted data

      The National Security Agency is embroiled in a battle with tech companies over access to encrypted data that would allow it to spy (more easily) on millions of Americans and international citizens. Last month, companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple urged the Obama administration to put an end to the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata. The NSA, on the other hand, continues to parade the idea that the government needs access to encrypted data on smartphones and other devices to track and prevent criminal activity. Now, NSA director Michael S. Rogers says he might have a solution.

    • NSA and the Stasi – a cautionary tale on mass surveillance

      Four decades of domination over almost all aspects of life in East Germany came to an abrupt halt 25 years ago on 31 March 1990. One of the most intrusive surveillance organisations in human history, the Ministry for State Security, more infamously known as the Stasi, was dissolved. This is a poignant milestone as a global debate about privacy rages in the wake of revelations of massive US surveillance of internet communications.

  • Civil Rights

    • Virginia Beach Police investigating forceful viral video arrest

      Virginia Beach Police say they are investigating a “Use of Force” incident that occurred during an arrest that was recorded on a cell phone back in January.

      [...]

      Cervera would not say what part of the video he’s uncomfortable with, but did say he is questioning whether an officer stopped the recording and later deleted it.

    • We Do This for Rekia

      Upset about the amount of noise he claimed a group of young people were making in a nearby park, Servin recklessly fired over his shoulder at a crowd while sitting in his car. Rekia Boyd died less than 24 hours after being struck in the head by one of the five rounds Servin fired.

    • A Game of Substitution

      The same people, of course, told you I was lying when I blew the whistle on torture and extraordinary rendition in 2004. The security services and the British Government would never do such a thing, they said. I was insane, they said.

    • The Price of a Life

      What’s the right way to compensate someone for decades of lost freedom?

    • CIA torture flights in Scotland: Detectives claim there is ‘no proof’ terror prisoners were on board when they landed here

      A TWO-YEAR police probe into the so-called rendition flights has failed to unearth evidence that terror suspects were travelling on planes which used Scots airports.

    • Remote Polish Airport With Dark CIA History Gets €30 Mln in EU Funds

      A small remote airport in north-eastern Poland, once used by the CIA as a rendition hub, has already received over €30 million in EU funds for its re-fit, but experts say it is a perfect example of “how-not-to and where-not-to” invest, as its economic feasibility, projected tourist forecasts, and impact on local employment are desperately low.

    • Diego Garcia: UK stalls release of CIA black site ‘torture flight’ records

      The UK government continues to delay the publication of flight records which could prove the British overseas territory of Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for “torture flights,” a human rights NGO has said.

      Reprieve, which advocates for prisoners’ human rights in Guantanamo and elsewhere, said the UK government admitted in 2008 that Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, was used by two CIA rendition jets carrying prisoners in 2002.

      With the release of the Senate torture report in December, it was revealed that the CIA flew captives to secret prisons, known as black sites, across the globe as part of its rendition program.

    • Diego Garcia: UK Delays Publication of Flight Records Which May Hold Truth About CIA Activities

      The UK Foreign Office (FCO) has further delayed publication of flight records for Diego Garcia, following disclosures by a senior Bush administration official that interrogations took place at a CIA black site on the British island.

      FCO officials are “still assessing the suitability of the full flight records for publication”, nine months after they were first requested from the government by human rights NGO Reprieve.

    • UK stalls publication of CIA rendition flights records

      The UK Government is continuing to delay the publication of flight records which could hold evidence of the use of British territory by CIA ‘torture flights’ – over eight months after it said it was “assessing their suitability for publication.”

      The Government has previously admitted that Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, was used by two CIA ‘rendition’ jets carrying prisoners in 2002. The rendition programme saw prisoners flown around the world in order to be subjected to torture at secret prisons known as ‘black sites’, says the legal charity Reprieve.

      However, since making the admission in 2008, successive British administrations have failed to publish flight records which could shed further light on the role played in the rendition programme by the island.

    • Obama May Add More Layers of Bureaucracy in CIA Reorganization

      In announcing the reorganization in early March, Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan boasted that after the sweeping reorganization is implemented, the agency will be in the position to cover “the entire universe, regionally and functionally, and so something that’s going on in the world falls into one of those buckets.”

    • John Brennan’s deserving CIA reorganization plan

      We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.

    • John Brennan’s makeover of the CIA
    • Re-Opening The Investigation: CIA Black Sites

      They certainly sought to please in those initial dark days when a position at the NATO table was at stake. This was something of a new world order – the attacks after September 11, 2001 did certainly allow Washington to make that spurious case. The stakes were high, and the “need” for pressing intelligence saw a crude clipping of various liberties and protections.

    • ‘We Got the Wrong Guy’: Ex Spy Reveals CIA Syria Torture Error

      According to new accounts from former agent John Kiriakou, several spies warned against the rendition to Syria of Mahrer Arar, where he was tortured.

      A former spy was convinced that the U.S. intelligence agency CIA’s rendition and torture of the Canadian Mahrer Arar amounted to punishment of the wrong man.

      According to new accounts from former agent John Kiriakou, several colleagues warned against the treatment of Arar, which led to a public inquiry in Canada and a US$10 million federal government pay-out.

    • CIA staff tried to stop arrest, torture of Maher Arar, says former spy
    • Former spy: CIA employees tried to stop arrest, torture of Canadian Arar
    • Maher Arar’s arrest, torture almost stopped by CIA, ex-spy says

      A former spy has described the debate within the CIA over the arrest, rendition and torture of Canadian Maher Arar, saying multiple colleagues warned against it because they were convinced they were punishing an innocent man.

      The account from former CIA officer John Kiriakou sheds new light on decade-old events that caused a public inquiry in Canada, a $10 million payout from the federal government, and unsuccessful lawsuits in the U.S.

      It’s a rare peek into discussions within the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency — whose role in the 2002-03 events has never been publicly examined, having remained off-limits in Canada’s inquiry.

    • John Kiriakou, CIA Ex-Spy, On Canada’s Intelligence Safeguards: ‘You’re Kidding Me’

      A former CIA spy’s eyes widen when he hears that, in Canada, the political opposition doesn’t get to see or scrutinize national-security intelligence files.

      “You’re kidding me,” says John Kiriakou, who’s now under house arrest in Virginia after a two-year prison stay for revealing information about his former employer.

    • CIA Officials Knew Rendition Victim Was ‘The Wrong Guy,’ Kiriakou Reveals

      CIA insiders objected to the arrest, rendition, and torture of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar, but high-ranking officials ignored concerns that they were punishing an innocent man, according to former spy and whistleblower John Kiriakou in an interview with the Canadian Press.

    • Editorial: U.S. owes Arar an apology

      The United States will never apologize for sending former Ottawa resident Maher Arar off to be tortured in a Syrian prison, nor will the country tell us what led to that awful decision. For all we know, Arar remains on our neighbour’s anti-terror watch list, despite having his name cleared by a public inquiry here and earning a $10 million settlement (and an apology) from the Canadian government for its own shameful role in his extraordinary rendition.

    • Kiriakou: CIA Officials Knew Torture Victim Maher Arar Was Innocent

      CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou has revealed new details about the CIA’s internal debate over the arrest, rendition and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar. Kirakou told The Canadian Press news agency numerous colleagues warned against arresting Arar, saying he was innocent. But Kiriakou said an unnamed female officer insisted on pressing ahead, saying Arar had links to al-Qaeda.

    • CIA employees tried to stop arrest, torture of Arar, former spy says

      A former spy has described the debate within the CIA over the arrest, rendition and torture of Maher Arar, saying multiple colleagues warned against it because they were convinced they were punishing an innocent man.

    • Ex CIA member says some agency workers questioned Maher Arar arrest
    • CIA Knew They Tortured the Wrong Man, Whistleblower Kiriakou Says

      John Kiriakou has alleged that CIA insiders protested the arrest and torture of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar knowing that he was innocent, but a woman in CIA middle-management, whose identity he will not reveal, insisted upon the man’s arrest.

    • A former CIA agent who led counterterrorism arrests in Pakistan shares tales after two years in jail
    • A torture-denouncing CIA agent speaks after two years in jail
    • A CIA agent’s tales from the federal slammer

      He was jailed for telling journalists a bit too much about his former employer: the CIA. He insists he was punished for blowing the whistle on the use of torture in 2007, not because he tipped off journalists to the identity of a couple of former spy colleagues, which is why he was charged.

      “I’m 100 per cent positive,” Kiriakou says in an interview at home, where he’s completing his sentence under house arrest after two years in jail.

      He’s adamant that he’s being singled out. Lots of names leak out of the agency without consequences, he says. Also, he accuses the FBI of trying to entrap him several times and failing.

      To avoid a return trip to prison, there are limits to what he’ll say in interviews.

      He will describe how former CIA colleagues protested the arrest, transfer, and torture in Syria of Canadian Maher Arar — but he absolutely won’t reveal the name of a woman in CIA middle-management who he says insisted on Arar’s arrest.

    • UK ‘Assessing’ Diego Garcia Flight Records Amid CIA Torture Claims

      The British government has been accused of stalling over the publication of flight records in and out of the British-owned island of Diego Garcia, amid claims the remote Indian Ocean location was used as part of the CIA’s post 9/11 torture and rendition program.

    • Sri Lanka – Another pawn in the CIA/MI6 Gameplan

      During the election campaign the scene was set to overthrow Rajapaksa by ballot or by force.

    • Senior ex-general hints at CIA involvement in Balyoz coup plot case

      Retired Gen. Bilgin Balanlı, who was among the 236 suspects acquitted in the “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) coup-plot case, has said the United States or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could have had a finger in the coup case.

      The CIA or the U.S.’ “deep state” could have been involved in the case, recalling the testimony of a suspect, who said in 2010 he and a former deputy had picked up a sack full of documents in 2007 to be used in the Balyoz coup plot case from an American senator and a retired Turkish major in Istanbul and taken it to Ankara, according to Balanlı.

    • Television box sets: fact vs fiction

      As female CIA operatives complain about how women spies are portrayed in Homeland, and Ed Miliband says The Thick Of It was “too close to reality”, we take a look at some of the best-loved TV shows – how good were they at capturing real life?

    • Female CIA Agents Speak Out About Their Job, Slam Hollywood Portrayals Of Agency

      Women in the CIA say that depictions of female agents are not accurate and that some of the portrayals are downright offensive. The women in the CIA sisterhood say that Hollywood shows female agents as seductresses who rely on their good looks and charm. However, many CIA agents say that simply isn’t true and that female CIA agents are far from centerfolds.

      The New York Times, at the request of the notoriously tight-lipped CIA organization, spoke with current and former female agents to get a better understanding of exactly what the women agents in the field do. In the movies and on television, female agents are highly sexualized and can be seen sleeping with terrorists, seducing assets, and becoming overly emotional while in the field.

    • Female CIA Agents Fed Up with ‘Hollywood Sensationalism’ of Their Characters
    • ‘We don’t look that way and we don’t act that way’: The real women of the CIA slam ‘crazed and emotional’ portrayals of female agents in TV and movies
    • CIA Reaches Out to LGBT Community
    • Human Rights Watch urging Obama to prosecute Bush-era torture

      An international human rights group has launched a campaign calling on President Barack Obama to ensure that future presidents will not “view torture as a viable policy option.”

      Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has drawn up a petition urging the Obama administration to begin a “full criminal investigation” into torture techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) post 9/11 attacks.

    • Obama Faces Latin American Opposition to Venezuela Sanctions as Cuba Joins Summit of the Americas

      President Obama has arrived in Panama to attend the Summit of the Americas along with other leaders from Canada, Central America, South America, the Caribbean — and for the first time, Cuba. On Thursday, Obama announced the State Department has finished its review of whether Cuba should be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The move would allow the two countries to reopen their embassies and move forward on historic efforts to normalize relations that were announced in December. Meanwhile, the United States faces other tensions at the summit over its recent sanctions against Cuba’s close ally, Venezuela. An executive order signed by President Obama last month used the designation to sanction top Venezuelan officials over alleged human rights abuses and corruption. This week, the United States announced it no longer considers the country a national security threat. Other topics expected to be on the summit’s agenda include trade, security and migration. We speak with two guests: Miguel Tinker Salas, professor of Latin American history at Pomona College and author of the new book, “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know,” and Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy. His article in The Hill is headlined “Obama Could Face Disastrous Summit Due to Venezuela Sanctions.”

    • Venezuela Withdraws from OAS Civil Society Forum in Solidarity with Cuba

      Caracas has joined Havana in withdrawing its delegation to the Civil Society Forum at the 7th Summit of the Americas this week, after Cuban delegates broke the news that at least 20 counter-revolutionary Cuban “mercenaries” had also been invited to participate in the event.

      Among the highly controversial figures set to participate in the forum are the radical anti-Cuban government dissidents, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, Elizardo Sánchez and Rosa María Payá, as well as members of the Cuban exile community. All are known to have financial ties to U.S. funding agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and have a history of trying to subvert the Cuban government. Ex-CIA agent, Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, better known for his role in the assassination of Argentinian revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, is also participating in the summit.

    • Che Guevara Murderer Attending Summit of the Americas

      According to some reports, Felix Rodriguez has arrived in Panama to attend the OAS forums.

      According to Yoanislandia, quoting “friends in solidarity with Cuba,” the man who murdered Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Felix Rodriguez, arrived in Panama on Tuesday to attend the Summit of the Americas forums.

    • Che´s Daughter Rejects Presence in Panama of Man that Murdered her Father

      Aleida Guevara, daughter of Cuban-Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, described as shameful the presence in the activities of the Summit of the Americas of Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia, who was directly involved in the assassination of her father, in Bolivia.

      “In was a nonsense decision by whoever admitted him, said Guevara and reiterated that the presence of the former CIA agent is shameful. Felix was a CIA instrument and he offered himself in a mean manner to murder him.”

    • Obama optimistic for Cuba relations, Castro recalls past confrontations with U.S.

      Leaders of the United States and Cuba did something Saturday they hadn’t done since the spring of 1959, all the way back to the Eisenhower administration: Meet diplomatically face-to-face.

      President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro — the brother of longtime ruler Fidel Castro — met at the Summit of the Americas in Panama Saturday, and the visit is the talk of the conference.

    • Boston Marathon Bombings’ Guilty Verdict Exposed as a Gross Travesty of Justice

      The FBI and CIA’s common misuse of paying informants to entrap others globally into joining plots of terrorism was well documented in researcher-author Trevor Aaronson’s book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Between 9/11 and 2011 he confirmed that 508 defendants were recruited by informants paid up to $100,000 in multiple sting operations. In fact, in all but only three high profile cases were the FBI and their informants not involved. Again, this demonstrates that the US government’s calling card around the world reads “Terrorism-R-US,” just another M.O. for squandering hard earned taxpayer dollars to keep its invented “war on terror” very much ongoing and alive forever.

    • Finnish investor banned from Russia after FSB warning

      Russian authorities have denied entry to prominent businessman Seppo Remes and accused him of espionage, the Finnish investor claims. Remes is a board member in several Russian energy companies.

    • Finnish businessman says denied entry into Russia after FSB warning

      Finnish businessman Seppo Remes, co-owner of a Swedish company which invests in Russian electricity assets, said he had been denied entry into Russia for five years after receiving a warning from the Federal Security Service.

    • FSB Detains Opposition Journalist in Latest Crackdown on Crimean Press

      Russia’s Federal Security Service has detained an opposition-minded journalist in Crimea, a colleague said, in the latest in a series of Moscow’s investigations against Crimean reporters and writers who have criticized Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula.

    • Crimean journalist reported abducted by Russia’s FSB

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Threats Trigger Massive Surge in VPN Usage

        Piracy is a hot topic around the world and in Australia the issue has made mainstream headlines over the past week. After the announcement of a new anti-piracy scheme and the news of copyright trolls coming Down Under this week, VPN usage has surged to unprecedented levels.

04.11.15

Links 11/4/2015: elementary OS Freya, Mageia 5 on the Way

Posted in News Roundup at 5:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Coreboot Ported To A ~$30 AMD AM1 Motherboard

    For those searching for a low-cost system/motherboard for experimenting with Coreboot, there’s another new AMD motherboard that now works with Coreboot’s upstream Git code. The board costs only about $30 USD and works with all modern AMD AM1 processors.

  • New Google Boards Added To Coreboot

    The newest additions to Coreboot are the Veyron_Mighty and Veyron_Jerry. The Veyron series has been part of the Chromium OS repository since last year. These codenames are for devices powered by a Rockchip ARM SoC.

  • 5 Things To Know About The Rise Of Open Source

    The definition of open source can get complicated (especially when you start talking about licensing). Essentially open source software makes the source code freely available for use and/or modification, free of charge.

    This could give the impression that open source is for hobbyists and amateurs, but you will probably recognize the names of some major open source users: The Emmys, The Grammy Foundation, NBC, CBS and Sony, all use ​Metal Toad Media to develop their websites with open source tools.

  • New Open-source Encryption Software is Practically Uncrackable

    With the rise of mass surveillance efforts being carried out by intelligence agencies, researchers and industry professionals are currently working together to look for solutions that will enable them to protect sensitive information from being breached.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla disables new Firefox features to address critical security flaw

        On March 31, Mozilla released the latest version of Firefox, 37.0 — but the foundation has already issued a significant patch for that update, after discovering a critical security bug that broke HTTPS encryption in a way that was invisible to the end user. Ironically, one of the original points of the Firefox 37 update was to add security through the use of a feature known as opportunistic encryption.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The Document Liberation, one year after

      The Document Liberation is a project of The Document Foundation, announced in early April 2014 to host the different libraries handling proprietary and legacy document formats within LibreOffice. The idea was to provide a single repository for other software projects willing to deploy the same libraries, in order to simplify the integration. The project is led by Fridrich Strba and David Tardon, two long time LibreOffice contributors.

    • Happy birthday, Document Liberation Project!

      The Document Liberation Project was officially announced at LGM in Leipzig on April 2 2014, a year ago. We (the founding members) gave a talk about the project later on the same day.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Obama and Castro shake hands, begin new chapter in US-Cuba relations

    With a cordial evening handshake, President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved Friday toward a groundbreaking meeting on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in what would be a remarkable display of reconciliation between two nations.

    The powerful symbolism of a substantial exchange Saturday between the leaders with the leadership of the Western Hemisphere gathered around them could signal progress. Both sides are still working through nettlesome issues that would lead to the opening of embassies in Washington and Havana, the first stage in a new diplomatic relationship.

  • The growing childishness of American adults: Mallick

    A new daycare for adults in Brooklyn, N.Y. is just the latest symbol of the infantilism of American grown-ups.

  • Science

    • Smartphone data to give early warning of earthquakes

      One day last August, in the early hours of the morning, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Napa Valley, waking people all around California’s famed wine region. Many were wearing fitness trackers. Once the quake was over, tracker company Jawbone gathered the data in a public graphic, using it to detail the differences in disturbance for lifeloggers in Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose.

  • Security

    • Friday’s security updates
    • Deterring Cyberattacks With Sanctions?

      But deterrence is useless if you can’t figure out who attacked you. Malware isn’t like an ICBM that leaves a clear trail going from point-A to point-B. Thanks to Ed Snowden it’s public knowledge Five-Eyes Intelligence agencies have invested heavily in developing anonymity technology and conducting deception operations that aim to conceal the origins of their clandestine attacks. It would be naïve to believe that other countries aren’t doing the same.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Fight Imperialism with Unity, Says Morales

      U.S. imperialism is being challenged by regional organizations like CELAC, according to Bolivia’s president.

    • Hecklers Try To Veto University Screening Of ‘American Sniper;’ May Find Themselves Watching ‘Paddington Bear’ Instead

      “Harmed” how? By offering a movie no one on campus was obligated to watch? It wasn’t a mandatory event and those offended by the movie had several options available, most of which didn’t involve ensuring no one on campus could see the movie.

      In what would appear to be a dig at the “victims” infantilization-by-proxy of the entire student body, but is more likely due to a limited selection of last-minute offerings (guaranteed not to result in a swift petitioning), the CCI decided to screen “Paddington Bear” instead. For a student body composed of 18-23 year olds.

    • Graphic New Veteran-Sponsored Ads Are Asking Drone Pilots Not to Fly

      A group of anti-drone US military veterans want to put an end to American’s campaign of drone strikes in foreign countries, and they’re now taking the fight to prime time by directly calling on Air Force pilots to stop the destruction through a series of graphic television spots.

    • Commercials urge drone pilots to refuse to fly missions

      Anti-drone groups are airing cable television commercials near Beale Air Force Base, California, urging remotely piloted aircraft pilots to refuse to carry out missions.

      “The reason that we felt we had to start running these ads is the president and the Congress have been irresponsible and – we believe – operating illegally and immorally to let these drone attacks continue,” said Nick Mottern, of the group KnowDrones, the lead group behind the effort. “We felt that we had to speak directly to the people who were being ordered to do the killing because, at this point, it seems they’re the only ones who can put a stop to this.”

    • Campaign against killer drones launched in USA

      The goal of the campaign is to appeal to those who receive orders to kill. Those people should listen to the call of their conscience before they launch another drone, campaign organizers believe.

    • These Human Rights Activists Want To Ban ‘Killer Robots’

      If a human soldier commits a war crime, he has to face the consequences (at least in theory). The same goes for human operators of drones (again, in theory). But if a fully autonomous war machine with no human operator goes rogue and kills a whole bunch of innocent people, who would be responsible? Its programmers? The manufacturers? Finding someone to blame would be hard enough, and proving it in a court of law would be nearly impossible.

    • US-backed airstrikes on Yemen kill civilians – and hopes for peace

      You can’t bomb a country into existence, however much America seems determined to try.

      In the last week, 164 Yemeni civilians have lost their lives in the Saudi bombardment of my country. In media reports – full of geopolitical talk of “proxy wars” and “regional interests” – the names of the dead are absent. As always, it is ordinary Yemeni families who are left grieving, and forgotten.

    • The Yemen choice

      The Middle East imbroglio demonstrates the complexity of the post-9/11 world in which Obama’s foreign policy has managed to upset America’s traditional Arab allies while strengthening the position of its adversary, Iran.

      President Obama’s preferred approach to US foreign policy largely flows from the strategies of retrenchment, ie reducing but not completely avoiding American military and financial commitments abroad, and offshore balancing, that is: using regional allies to check the rise of potential hostile powers.

      Retrenchment has so far backfired in Iraq and a positive outcome in Afghanistan is yet to emerge. Offshore balancing is useful in regions where great powers have minimal engagements. In places like the Middle East the strategy is bound to spawn contradictions and Obama’s foreign policy therefore rests on inherent– and deliberate– ambiguity.

    • Manhunters Inc.: How the Predator Became Washington’s Calling Card
    • Hunting Humans by Remote Control

      Drones seemed to come out of nowhere, sexy as the latest iPhones and armed to kill. They were all-seeing eyes in the sky (“a constant stare,” as drone promoters liked to say) and surgically precise in their ability to deliver death to evildoers. Above all, without pilots in their cockpits, they were, in terms of the human price of war (at least when it came to the lives that mattered to us), cost free. They transformed battle into a video-game experience, leaving the “warriors” – from pilots to generals – staring at screens. What could possibly go wrong?

    • How Drones Turned American Wars Into Manhunts and Humans Into Prey

      In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, George W. Bush had predicted that the United States would embark upon a new kind of warfare, “a war that requires us to be on an international manhunt.” Something that initially sounded like nothing more than a catchy Texas cowboy slogan has since been converted into state doctrine, complete with experts, plans, and weapons. A single decade has seen the establishment of an unconventional form of state violence that combines the disparate characteristics of warfare and policing without really corresponding to either, finding conceptual and practical unity in the notion of a militarized manhunt.

    • Yemen: We did it again.

      The US has unleashed a great deal of blood upon the world, with its willingness to use “bombs” as our first reaction to any situation. We killed over one million in Iraq, and we have lost the ability to solve problems diplomatically; rather, we resort to the only tool in our tool bag, bombs. Such a policy has caused incredible death and destruction in Iraq, but also in Libya, Syria, and now Yemen, and much of current Yemeni blood is on our hands.

    • Somalia issues bounties for top Shebab leaders

      Somalia’s government has issued bounties for 11 top leaders of the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants, with $250,000 offered for the extremist’s chief, Ahmad Umar.

    • Obama’s excessive drone strikes in Somalia intensifies hate against Christians and the U.S.

      President Obama and White House officials are defending the United States’ “low-investment, light-footprint approach to counterterrorism.” As war and death plague places like Somalia and Yemen every day, President Obama continues to issue airstrikes with drones.

    • Why Al-Shabaab Kills

      The whole world knows of the horrors inflicted on Kenyan civilians by Somalia’s Al-Shabaab. But, the “corporate media tells Americans little if anything about Somalia’s road to ruin,” paved by the United States and its Ethiopian and Kenyan allies. “If there were true justice in this world the United States and its puppets would not only have to leave that country but make restitution as well.”

    • Controversy Swirls Around NYU Law Professor Involved in Obama’s Drone Program

      Harold Koh, the former legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State, is getting a chilly reception from some law students and alumni of New York University Law School, where he is currently a visiting scholar.

    • ‘Schizophrenia’ Of US Drone Programme Gets Cinema Treatment

      ”We’ve never asked a soldier to go and fight the Taliban for 12 hours and then go and pick up the kids from school,” he says.

    • Pakistani judge wants CIA official tried for murder
    • Pakistan judge orders charges against ex–CIA officials over drone deaths
    • Pakistan judge orders charges against ex–CIA officials over drone deaths
    • Ex-CIA Officials Face Police Inquiry Over Pakistan Drone Deaths

      A court in Pakistan has ordered police to investigate two former CIA officials over the deaths of two people in a drone strike.

    • Pakistani Court Orders Charges Against CIA Officials for 2009 Drone Strike

      A high court in Pakistan has ordered criminal charges against two CIA officials for a deadly drone strike in 2009. John Rizzo, the CIA’s former acting counsel, and Jonathan Bank, the agency’s ex-station chief, would face charges including murder, terrorism and conspiracy.

    • IHC orders registration of FIR against former CIA station chief
    • Pakistan Issues Murder Warrant for CIA Station Chief and Lawyer who Oversaw Drone Program
    • Do You Have to be a Muslim to be a Terrorist?

      Would a Muslim receive tougher terrorism sentencing than anybody else?

      The question might seem outlandish but the differing court verdicts of terrorism cases, between a Muslim and those of other beliefs, emphasize the inconsistencies in legal judgements.

      This kind of double standard has angered the British Muslim community. It’s now holding credible weight. The Lufthansa’s Germanwings airliner tragedy being a case in point. The investigation’s prosecutor, Brice Robin, dismissed the notion of terrorism, quoting: ‘There is no indication of any kind of terrorist background’. In other words, when a person’s background ticks all the boxes is it terrorism.

      This logic is deeply flawed. The co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s suicide mission that killed him and the rest of the 150 passengers shared the same intent as the 9/11 killings, yet the media stopped short of reporting terrorism. No doubt, a Muslim name would have swung it.

    • NY Times Covers Up Washington’s Monstrous Evil

      The NY Times on Monday ran a lengthy piece (“One Woman’s Mission to Free Laos from Millions of Unexploded Bombs”) on Channapha Khamvongas, a 42-year-old Laotian-American woman on a mission to get the US to help Laos clean up the countless unexploded anti-personnel “bombis” that it dropped, which are still killing peasants — especially children — half a century after the so-called “Secret War” by the US against Laos ended.

      The article explained that Khamvongas, as a young adult in Virginia, had read a book by anti-war activist Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War (originally published in 1972 and reissued in 2013), which featured accounts and hand drawings by refugees from that war of the deadly US aerial attacks and bombings of their farms and villages. It was a book that sparked revulsion in the US over the saturation bombing of Southeast Asia’s smallest and least developed country — a nation of under six million people.

    • Congress of War

      It is very bewildering, albeit horrifyingly fascinating, to watch American politicians jockey and posture for war with Iran. With the announcement last week that years of negotiations have yielded a framework agreement that will arrest any Iranian nuclear weapons program, not that one actually exists, while starting the much needed process of bringing Iran back into the world community, many members of Congress seem not just reluctant, but hostile, to the prospects of averting a war with Iran.

    • US-Created Violence and Chaos in Yemen

      Yemen is one of many examples of what happens following lawless US intervention.

    • Russia and Red Cross appeal for “humanitarian pause” in Yemen
    • Failure of Obama doctrine

      To suggest that the US policies in Yemen were a “failure” is an understatement. It implies that the US had at least attempted to succeed. But “succeed” at what? The US drone war had no other objective aside from celebration the elimination of whomever the US hit list designates as terrorist.

    • The Life and Death of Vietnam War Veteran Jack Wheeler: A Good Man in an Evil World

      As an Army officer, Jack wrote the US Department of Defense manual urging abstinence toward all use of chemical and biological warfare banned under the 1925 post-World War I Geneva Protocol and again reinforced in 1972 and 1993. Yet that’s rarely stopped hypocritical rogue states in their arrogance of exceptionalism like the US and Israel as the world’s most notorious violators from breaking international law at will, most recently using flesh burning white phosphorus in Fallujah, Iraq and tear gas on our own citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceful assembly and free speech during the Occupy Wall Street movement and frequent public demonstrations right up to the present. Of course Israel has used poison nerve gas on Palestinians on numerous occasions with impunity. Recall that it was during the 1980’s Reagan administration that sent US made chemical weapons to then ally Saddam Hussein while he waged war against neighboring Iran, knowing Hussein would use it on his own people the Kurds as well as on Iran’s military that US intelligence provided Hussein with enemy troop movement.

    • Yemen crisis reignites fear of al-Qaeda global threat

      But the drone strikes have also killed many Yemeni civilians and they have been hugely resented by local tribes.

    • Saudi actions backfire

      Saudi Arabia bears the greatest responsibility for the triumphant advance of the Houthi militia in Yemen, says Birgit Svensson: the leading Sunni power in the Gulf simply stood by while a Shia counterbalance emerged virtually on its doorstep, thereby creating an opportunity for Tehran

    • Hiding under the cloak of ‘collateral’ damage is unacceptable

      War is ravaging Yemen and civilians, including infants, are getting killed. The situation is catastrophic.

      As we have seen before with the US-led invasion of Iraq, no matter how much the missile-shooter, bomb-droppers and drone-attackers would have you believe about perfection of their war machines, gadgets and equipment, they simply have not perfected their deadly science. They are never precise, which leads to unintended consequences, what are conveniently dumped as the ‘collateral damages’. Thus, we witnessed the cold-blooded murder of nearly a million Iraqis, old and young, and another quarter million or so in Afghanistan who had nothing to do with the WMD and 9/11.

    • Lucknow Police To Use Pepper-Spraying Drones For Crowd Control; A First for India

      Capital of Uttar Pradesh and India’s 8th most populous city: Lucknow has become the first city in India to use to drones for crowd control. Police chief of Lucknow, Yashasvi Yadav has announced that they have purchased 5 high powered drones, costing Rs 6,00,000 each, which will be used for monitoring and controlling unruly mob.

    • Police Drones against Protesters: the “Machine Imperative”

      Innovation, Edmund Burke reminds us in “A Letter to a Noble Lord,” does not necessarily imply reform. While the peaceful uses of drones are often treated as the benign effects of the security industrial complex, the spill over into more violent deployments has proven unavoidable. What is done in Waziristan against Taliban militants will eventually be done to US citizens on a smaller yet significant scale – the civilian cloaking there becomes as irrelevant in tribal foothills as it does on the streets of Chicago.

      The drone monitors have gotten excited by an announcement that Indian police forces will be making use of drones to deploy pepper spray against protesters. Trials were conducted on Tuesday in Lucknow, with the city’s police force anticipating using five such vehicles later this month. “The results,” claimed the jubilant police chief Yashasvi Yadav, “were brilliant. We have managed to work out how to use it to precisely target the mob in winds and congested areas.”[1]

      The language used by Yadav serves an important purpose. Drones are weapons of use against that dark, primordial “mob,” difficult to control, unruly of purpose. From the perspective of many state authorities, any protesting group constitutes an unruly “mob”. The idea of a peaceful protest is nowhere to be seen, the greatest of unnatural phenomena. But Yadav insists that, “Pepper is non-lethal but very effective in mob control. We can spray from different heights to have maximum results.”

    • Sunday Extra: Obama has brought little hope, almost no change to war policy

      Many Americans are unaware that President Obama is:

      — Making war in eight countries around the world — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and the Philippines — in violation of the U.N. Charter, which forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” without the authorization of the U.N. Security Council.

    • No justice for drone attack victims

      A single bench comprising Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui will hear the case. The IHC had ordered for the registration of murder case in respect of two persons killed in drone attack at South Waziristan in 2010.

      The petitioner sought contempt of court proceedings against the SHO Secretariat police for not registering a murder case of two persons killed in drone attack.

    • DOJ chief: Nothing illegal with US role in Exodus

      There was nothing illegal about the participation of the US in Operation Plan Exodus in Mamasapano last Jan. 25 that resulted in the killing of international wanted terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, as well as the death of 44 police commandos, at least 17 Moro fighters and five civilians, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said yesterday.

      De Lima said the involvement of US forces in the planning and execution of the operation did not violate the Constitution or any law.

    • Americans have yet to grasp the horrific magnitude of the ‘war on terror’

      The report estimates that at least 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan from direct and indirect consequences of the U.S. “war on terrorism.” One million people perished in Iraq alone, a shocking 5 percent of the country’s population. The staggering civilian toll and the hostility it has engendered erodes the myth that the sprawling “war on terrorism” made the U.S. safer and upheld human rights, all at an acceptable cost.

    • Face Off: The Coming War between Armenia and Azerbaijan

      Diplomacy is barely keeping the lid on a conventional war in Ukraine; from Nigeria to the Fertile Crescent war is about as common as peace.

    • The National Interest: strategic advantage on Karabakh’s side
    • The National Interest: Strategic advantage and favorable defensible terrain in Nagorno Karabakh are under Armenian control

      The author highlights that the Azerbaijani side has significantly increased its military spending over the recent years, and this trend has not abated, despite the global decline of oil prices. Israel has been one of Azerbaijan’s strongest defense partners for several years now, and as a result of this relationship, the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan have acquired Israeli drones.

    • Iran claims to have killed ‘terrorist team’ run by foreign intel agencies

      Iran has accused Israel and its allies in the West of assassinating its nuclear scientists and attacking its nuclear sites with computer viruses.

      Israel has always declined comment on such accusations, saying that it does not comment on foreign reports.

    • U.S. Army May Investigate Colombia Child Rape Claims

      The U.S. Army may investigate accusations of sexual assault against its soldiers and contractors in Colombia, a spokesman said Friday, the military’s first response to claims published by a joint project of Colombia’s government and the guerrillas of the FARC.

      Army investigators are working with Colombia’s government to decide whether to launch a formal investigation into any of the claims that at least 54 Colombian girls and women were assaulted by U.S. troops and contractors between 2004 and 2007. A probe into a previous assault claim was inconclusive, although the alleged victim declined to cooperate with investigators, the spokesman told USA Today.

      The claims originated from a joint project of the ongoing peace talks between Colombia’s government and the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Historical researchers said in a report that they found evidence that 53 girls were raped by U.S. contractors operating out of Colombia’s Tolemaida military base near the village of Melgar in the central state of Tolima. Their independent report was aimed at addressing the rights of more than 7 million victims of Colombia’s 50-year internal conflict.

    • Red Tory, Blue Tory

      I should however like to see clarification from the SNP. Labour and Tory can of course combine to vote Trident replacement through. If that happens with Labour in office, the SNP should make plain that would mean the withdrawal of support for that government. For the SNP to allow Labour to push Trident through with Tory support, and then the SNP revert to supporting the Labour government in office, would be a betrayal of the Scottish people. To me, there has not been absolute clarity in our response on this issue. It must be given.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • 47% Of Spain’s Electricity Made By Renewables In March

      Almost half of Spain’s electricity in March was generated by renewable sources — mostly wind and hydroelectric. About 22.5% was from wind and 17.5% from hydro, with the rest produced by solar PV, solar thermal, and thermal renewables.

  • Finance

    • Chaos and Hegemony

      The irony of history: Albeit the U.S. has lost the ability to steer the oil price – one of its central political leverages –, it has in another way been able to drastically strengthen its hegemony via the new prices set by the global market. For the high oil prices have multiplied the percentage share of oil trade within global trade, which caused massively higher demand for dollars and U.S. government bonds. As a result, for the foreseeable future the U.S. dollar will thereby remain the indisputable reserve currency.

      It is precisely here that we can identify the actual basis for U.S. dominance: By way of an unlimited creation of the dollar as the globe’s reserve currency, the U.S. constitutes the only economy in the world that can finance several mega-projects at once – such as the bailing-out of banks and gigantic defense spending – through public debt and the issuing of government bonds.

    • How Wall Street captured Washington’s effort to rein in banks

      Intense lobbying of regulators, many of them veterans of the industry themselves, helped ensure that practices the Dodd-Frank law was meant to stop would remain in place.

    • With Looming Financial War, Bitcoin Ushers in Peaceful Insurrection

      Britain, France, Germany and Italy recently announced that they would be joining the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), just as the BRICS nations are shifting away from US dollar world reserve hegemony. This is another blow to the US led financial order, deepening a loss of confidence in its leadership among its European allies. In a recent interview on the Keiser report, former Goldman Sachs director and author of All the President’s Bankers, Nomi Prins pointed out how the recent US conflict with Russia is a manufactured aggression all about trying to maintain its financial supremacy in the face of inevitable decline. Prins described this as a crisis of the world order established after World War II and pointed to how a new cold war is brewing.

    • The ‘Netflix tax’ – Honest Joe and the big tax lie

      With corporate tax minimisation in the news, the Government is considering ways to claw back at least some money from easy targets. And it is taking us for fools in the process.

      The Government is considering a range of measures in next month’s budget which it says will restore integrity to the tax system and ensure billions of dollars in extra revenue. A key measure will be to ensure that the 10% GST is charged on video downloads and streaming – a so-called ‘Netflix tax’.

      Treasurer Joe Hockey has been meeting with state treasurers in Canberra in an unsuccessful attempt to come to new arrangements on how the GST – which goes to the states – should be shared. Everyone, unsurprisingly, wants a bigger share of the pie, so it seems like the only answer is to increase the size of that pie.

      [...]

      Don’t hold your breath on that one. It’s all bullshit. Google and Apple and Microsoft – and local companies like News Limited and BHP – have been ripping us all off for years with clever international tax minimisation schemes that take advantage of different taxation rates in different companies.

  • Censorship

    • Toronto church says it won’t allow Ukrainian-born pianist to perform

      A Ukrainian-born pianist who has been barred from performing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra says she’ll be giving a free concert in Toronto Friday night – but now that show appears to be in doubt.

    • Russia’s Missing Article: Censorship, Prudence, Or A Win For Moscow’s Troll Army?

      MOSCOW — For three straight days last weekend, the employees of the Novaya Buryatia newspaper in southern Siberia used scissors to remove an article from 50,000 copies of the weekly before it could be distributed.

    • EDITORIAL: School-sponsored censorship isn’t free speech

      If you believe certain kinds of expression must be regulated or prohibited, you don’t support free speech.

      Unfortunately, we live in an era of hypersensitivity, where intolerance reigns under the guise of tolerance, and where the exercise of truly free speech has become an increasingly risky proposition. And you’d be hard pressed to find worse free-speech hypocrisy than what passes for discourse on college campuses.

    • Pakistani University Students Protest Against State Censorship Over Balochistan

      The hashtags were used to share images of students holding up placards and posters, protesting the state’s decision to have the “Unsilencing Balochistan” session cancelled. The posters were emblazoned with slogans such as “talking about a province is not anti-state” and “you don’t believe in freedom of speech if you don’t believe in it for those who disagree with you.”

    • Deafening silence
    • The fastest way to spread extremism is with the censor’s boot

      The Charlie Hebdo killings have prompted a clampdown. But history teaches that openness and debate are the most effective weapons in the battle of ideas

    • Ronnie Screwvala: Censorship Should Not be One Person’s View

      Ronnie Screwvala, former filmmaker and the founder of UTV group, believes an interactive dialogue between the industry and the censor board can solve a lot of problems.

    • Are the World’s Biggest Internet Companies Under the Turkish President’s Thumb?

      Twitter and YouTube were blocked in Turkey once again April 6, sparking plenty of fanfare across social networks.

      This time around, the block was imposed after the mass circulation of photos from a hostage crisis that ended with the death of government prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz and two leftist militants on March 31.

    • Turkey’s Online Censorship

      The Turkish government’s unrelenting crackdown on free speech continues unabated. On Tuesday, Google narrowly avoided being banned in the country after it complied with a court order to remove links to a photograph showing militants holding a gun to the head of a prosecutor.

    • Poland marks 25 years since lifting of censorship

      With the closure of the office came the end of censorship in Poland. Up until then, all forms of public communication were controlled, including press announcements such as obituaries, as well as posters.

    • China Threatens Sina Corp. Over Insufficient Censorship

      China’s top Internet regulator threatened to shut down the news services of one of China’s most popular social media and online news companies if it doesn’t fix problems with inadequate censorship and the spreading of false information.

    • Sina faces suspension over lack of censorship

      Chinese web giant Sina will face suspension of its Internet news services if it fails to improve censorship of illegal content, authorities have warned.

      The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) summoned Sina leaders to a meeting late on Friday over “massive numbers of public complaints about its law violations”.

    • Turkey Twitter ban to be lifted after site complies with court ruling

      Twitter has complied with Turkey’s request to remove photographs of an Istanbul prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants and a ban on the micro-blogging site will be lifted very shortly, a senior Turkish official has said.

      “Twitter has agreed to shut down accounts and remove images relating to last week’s hostage-taking. The web site will reopen to access very shortly,” the official told Reuters.

    • ‘Great Cannon’ Is China’s New Weapon That Shoots Down Internet Sites

      That’s according to a report from Citizen Lab — an ICT, security and human rights lab based within the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab looked into these recent attacks and identified ‘Great Cannon’, a tool built to intercept data and redirect it to specific sites, as the attack system responsible for them.

    • The NSA Uses A Tool Similar To The One That China Used To Take Down GitHub

      The Chinese government’s massive attack on GitHub at the end of March, which directed massive amounts of traffic at its servers in an attempt to overwhelm them, was thought to have been accomplished by simply diverting traffic from what is known as China’s Great Firewall. Now researchers from the academic think tank Citizen Lab have found that China actually intercepted foreign traffic flowing into Chinese tech titan Baidu to attack targeted sites—a weaponized process that the researchers have dramatically termed “the Great Cannon.” And it turns out the tech used in this interception technique is startlingly similar to tech already developed by the NSA and its British equivalent, GCHQ.

    • China weaponizes its Great Firewall into the GREAT FIRE CANNON, menaces entire globe

      China has upgraded the website-blocking systems on its borders, dubbed The Great Firewall, so it can blast foreign businesses and orgs off the internet.

      Researchers hailing from the University of Toronto, the International Computer Science Institute, the University of California Berkeley, and Princeton University, have confirmed what we’ve all suspected: China is hijacking web traffic entering the Middle Kingdom to overpower sites critical of the authoritarian state.

    • Parliament cancels Mohammed cartoonist visit

      The Finnish parliament has cancelled a discussion event where the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, known for his depictions of the prophet Mohammed. The Secretary General of the Finnish parliament said that the cancellation was made on Security Intelligence Police advice.

  • Privacy

    • Congress must end mass NSA surveillance with next Patriot Act vote

      In less than 60 days, Congress – whether they like it or not – will be forced to decide if the NSA’s most notorious mass surveillance program lives or dies. And today, over 30 civil liberties organizations launched a nationwide call-in campaign urging them to kill it.

    • Patriot Act: Civil liberties groups seize chance to end notorious NSA surveillance program

      A campaign has been set up by more than 30 civil liberties organisations in an attempt to bring an end to a controversial section of the Patriot Act that allows the NSA and FBI to conduct suspicionless mass surveillance.

      Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was first passed through Congress following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, is set to expire on 1 June unless the US Congress votes for it to be reauthorised.

    • New Coalition Site Fight215.org Launches to Amplify Opposition to the NSA’s Mass Surveillance

      A coalition of 34 organizations from across the political spectrum is launching Fight215.org today to help concerned individuals contact lawmakers and demand an end to NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance under the Patriot Act.

    • John Oliver presses Edward Snowden on whether he read all leaked NSA material

      Edward Snowden avoided saying whether he had read every NSA document he handed over to journalists in an interview with comedian John Oliver on Sunday, as the HBO host posed uncomfortable questions to the NSA whistleblower in Moscow.

    • NSA holds info over US citizens like loaded gun, but says ‘trust me’ – Snowden

      The National Security Agency has a gun aimed at the head of each and every American, Edward Snowden says in a new interview, and they’re being asked to accept the NSA’s vast surveillance operations in the name of counterterrorism.

    • Phone Surveillance Revelation Should Prompt Reassessment Of NSA Spying

      Does evidence of a decades-old surveillance program throw out the case many public officials have made for the modern surveillance state?

      Since Edward Snowden first leaked documents about secret National Security Agency (NSA) programs, government officials have defended them in the name of September 11 and national security. Again and again, we heard that these programs were built in the wake of that tragic day to “connect the dots” so no event like that would ever occur again. They addressed issues of national security, not day-to-day policing.

    • The DEA collected call metadata way before the NSA did

      Apparently, the NSA’s massive surveillance program wasn’t a first: it was modeled after a precursor that ran from 1992 until 2013. According to USA Today, that program was called USTO, because it monitored almost every American’s calls from the US to other countries. It was a joint initiative by the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which began as a way to keep tabs on Colombian drug cartels and their supply routes. Since then, it grew in scope (thanks in part to a powerful computer provided by the Pentagon) to cover all international calls made to around 116 countries worldwide, including Canada, Mexico, parts of Asia and Europe, and most of Central and Southern America. The group was only dissolved after Edward Snowden went public with the NSA’s secrets in 2013.

    • New anti-NSA coalition pledges to ‘Fight 215’
    • Website Launched to Fight NSA Data Surveillance
    • The Rand Paul campaign is selling an “NSA Spy Cam Blocker” for your laptop

      Most laptops today have a built-in camera above the display. And most of those have a small light next to them that is supposed to turn on to alert the user when the camera is active. But a couple of years ago, researchers discovered that this doesn’t always work; hackers can activate the camera on certain MacBook models (and probably some other laptops) without enabling the light and tipping off the user.

    • Rand Paul sells “NSA spy cam blocker” as presidential bid fundraiser

      Bid announcement video taken off YouTube due to copyright claim over a song.

    • Rand Paul sells ‘NSA spy cam blocker’
    • Would You Care If Your Private Parts Were Seen by the Government?

      Turns out, many Americans don’t really know who former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is, and they seem to know even less about the shadowy government surveillance programs he went to lengths to reveal.

    • CanTheySeeMyDick.com offers impressive insight into NSA spying tactics

      CanTheySeeMyDick.com uses Oliver’s interview and revelation that private photos of American genitalia are now available to the government as the nexus around which to inform people about the varying laws, practices, and extralegal maneuvers that would grant access to citizens’ information. It’s a great tongue-in-cheek approach that runs with Oliver’s elaborate dick joke and makes it much easier to understand the prevalence and reach that has been afforded to the intelligence community and its surveillance capabilities.

    • NSA Has Set Aside A Special Room For Watching Porn

      Even though the National Security Agency has taken a lot of flak for its electronic spying programs the agency does play a vital role in the maintenance of national security. It sifts through vast swathes of data of all kinds to find clues about potential terrorist plots. Sometimes those plots could be hidden inside porn and that’s why the National Security Agency has set aside a whole room just for watching porn.

    • NSA analysts are being paid to watch a LOT of porn

      There’s been a lot of concern about how intelligence agencies around the world have been covertly snooping on private emails, instant message communications and phone calls, but here’s something you may not have realised.

    • As Hillary Announces For President, Four Questions She Should Answer

      But she has also said she would support reforms to ensure that surveillance doesn’t go too far and that the National Security Agency should be “more transparent” about its practices. She has also called for a “full, comprehensive discussion” about the NSA’s spying program. “That’s the discussion that has to happen in a calm atmosphere without people defending everything we’ve done and people absolutely opposing everything we’ve done,” she said in a 2013 appearance. “And we’re not having that conversation yet.”

    • Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander Is Speaking in Seattle Tonight

      1. Keith, why is the NSA collecting our dick pics? Are you collecting our tit pics too?

      2. I would like to collect it all, Keith: all of your personal and family photos! Okay, Keith?

      3. Cool if the government listens in next time you call your wife, Keith?

      4. Still convinced Snowden is a secret Russian spy, not a whistleblower, Keith?

      5. Why should we trust you, Keith, or your successor?

      6. Who was the person, Keith, who you called the most times last year? Who did you call on your birthday, Keith, and at what time of day? How long did each of you speak, Keith? In fact, would you mind sharing with me, Keith, your personal cell phone number, all the numbers you dialed, and the duration of all incoming and outgoing calls?*

    • 72% of Brits concerned about online privacy since Snowden leaks

      New research suggests nearly three quarters of British adults are worried about the distribution of their personal information online, with concerns including hackers and unauthorized access to data.

      The figures, compiled by pollster YouGov, found that 32 percent of respondents would be happy to pay for extra online security to ensure their date was protected. A further 29 percent felt it came down to the individual to take responsibility for protecting their data.

      There has been a huge rise in the level of consumer mistrust in tech firms since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 the UK and US governments were accessing consumer data without permission.

    • A wrong turn at the NSA can bring trouble

      It could have been worse. Authorities believe the two people who were shot by NSA police last week outside the agency’s headquarters on Fort Meade got there by mistake.

      The driver, identified by the FBI as 27-year-old Ricky Shawatza Hall of Baltimore, was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger was shot in the chest and taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center; the passenger’s identity and condition have not been available.

      Authorities have released few details of the incident, but the FBI was quick to rule out terrorism. Police say Hall and the passenger were traveling in an SUV that was reported stolen from a man at a motel in nearby Elkridge shortly before they arrived at the NSA gate off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway Monday morning.

    • Strengthen privacy rights

      A major piece of business that Congress failed to complete last year was to strengthen the privacy rights of Americans by curtailing government spying on them. It should be at the top of the agenda this year.

      A key argument for the wide latitude allowed the government under current law to seize private records without a court order is that such power is necessary to protect against terrorist activities.

    • Snowden journalist visits U., says goal of the NSA is to ‘eliminate all private communications’

      Why else would someone lock the bedroom or bathroom door? Use passwords to protect their social media accounts? Or why would they tell their spouses or psychiatrists things they wouldn’t tell others?

    • Greenwald talks Secrecy and Snowden
    • Glenn Greenwald speaks on government surveillance in a digital age
    • Soapbox: Don’t let government monitoring cripple freedom

      When the topic of the disclosures of programs of mass surveillance comes up in conversation, people often proclaim since they are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide. Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the NSA document leak story involving Edward Snowden, declares that people who take this position are “Engaged in an act of self-depreciation.” He notes that what they are effectively saying is, “I have agreed to make myself such a harmless, unthreatening and uninteresting person, that I don’t fear to have the government know what I’m doing.”

      [...]

      Michel Foucault, a 20th Century French philosopher, realized that the Panopticon could be used in any institution as a means of control: schools, hospitals, factories, work places, etc. Foucault posited that the means of control previously used by societies — punishment, imprisonment, killing dissidents, forced obedience to a particular party — were no longer needed, that mass-surveillance is a much more subtle and effective means of control than brute force. Eventually, Foucault surmised that surveillance is longer even needed, because people begin to police their own behavior.

    • Secrecy, surveillance threaten democracy, says Greenwald

      The university invited the lawyer-turned-journalist, known for his work on an award-winning series in British newspaper The Guardian that detailed global surveillance programs, to speak during a week devoted to exploring surveillance by the U.S. government.

    • Utah data centre critical to help the NSA ‘eliminate all private communications’, says Snowden journalist

      The journalist and ex-lawyer who came to prominence by helping Edward Snowden to disclose the secrets of the National Security Agency has spoken of ‘government inside the government’ and the critical role of the NSA’s ‘Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center’ at a gathering in Utah, describing the plant as having an “ominous role in the surveillance state”.

    • Glenn Greenwald Talks about Government Surveillance in Utah
    • Glenn Greenwald to speak at University of Utah
    • Privacy Board Will Do ‘Deep Dive’ on NSA, CIA Practices

      In a brisk 30-minute meeting on Wednesday in Washington, members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board read prepared statements about a “work plan” to perform two “deep dives” on agency practices that lean on the order.

    • PCLOB Takes on Executive Order 12333 Surveillance
    • The Investigation into 12333 Begins

      The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) voted 4–1 yesterday to conduct reviews of how Executive Order 12333 is used in counterterrorism investigations by the CIA and NSA. The PCLOB’s plan to investigate two surveillance programs conducted under the wide-ranging executive order will result in three reports — two classified, one public — that it hopes to complete by the end of this year.

    • Usual Suspects Oppose Maine Bill to Take on NSA: Attorney General, Law Enforcement Lobbyists

      The usual suspects came out in opposition of a Maine bill that would turn off support and resources to the NSA in the Pine Tree State during a committee hearing last week.

      Maine Attorney General Janet Mills and law enforcement lobbyists expressed reservations about LD531 during a Senate Committee on Judiciary hearing, saying it could hinder police from catching child pornographers and other dangerous criminals. Their arguments echoed those of law enforcement interests in Montana and Alaska.

    • Our intelligence apparatus, operating in the dark

      At the time, President Obama resisted calls to investigate lawless intelligence practices, insisting that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Unfortunately, we know where the road forward led. The NSA spied on citizens. The CIA spied on Congress. And the American people, as Hayes warned, became further desensitized to the idea of an intelligence apparatus that operates in secret and plays by its own set of rules — or perhaps none at all.

    • Asked How He Would Handle Being Blamed for Terrorist Attacks After Limiting NSA Power, Here’s What Rand Paul Said

      Paul said eliminating the mass collection of data on American citizens doesn’t mean putting an end to our intelligence agencies.

    • Spying on the U.S. Submarine That Spies For the NSA and CIA

      From March to September 2014, the U.S. submarine’s 152-man crew cruised the deeps of the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, earning a earning a coveted Battle “E” for their efficiency in doing all the fleet had asked of them. Which involved … what, exactly? They covered 34,000 nautical miles, participated in one multinational exercise, and made port calls in Portugal, Spain, Bahrain, and Gibraltar, according to official Navy reports.

    • Glenn Greenwald in North Texas: NSA Surveillance Program is ‘Antithesis’ of Fourth Amendment

      Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer and journalist who became a left-wing celebrity for his articles helping whistle-blower Edward Snowden expose the NSA’s mass-surveillance program, admits enjoying the reaction when critics discovered he would be in North Texas to appear on Glenn Beck’s right-wing radio show—and then to address the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis.

      Talking Friday to about 250 people at a luncheon meeting of the NCPA, a Dallas think tank that’s headed now by tea party hero Allen West, Greenwald said of the kerfuffle that was particularly created by his Beck appearance: “I love it.” He recalled trading barbs with “people on Twitter who thought it was a terrible thing to do.” But, he added, “I’ve made it a point to find common ground. I find that’s a healthy thing to do.”

    • Talking About Section 215: A Readers’ Guide

      Media coverage of John Oliver’s critique about the lack of discussion surrounding government surveillance programs seems to prove his point. Much, if not most, of the attention given to Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight has focused on Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden instead of focusing on the fact that the law governing one of the most heavily-criticized surveillance programs is up for potential reauthorization in less than two months. We’re talking about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision allowing the NSA to collect vast quantities of Americans’ phone records.

    • Snapchat releases report showing how many times the government asked for user data

      The report covers requests from Nov. 1, 2014 to Feb. 28, 2015. Over that time, it is said authorities asked for information on Snapchat users 403 times. Of that total, 375 requests were from the U.S. government and 28 were from foreign governments. The United Kingdom requested data the second most.

    • Surveillance Envy Drives France to Intrusive Law of Its Own

      Never a people to let Americans one-up them on anything, French lawmakers are considering a Patriot Act-ish bill that one civil liberties group describes as “a naked expansion of surveillance powers.” The measure, which already has preliminary approval, would justify snooping on a variety of grounds far beyond the anti-terrorism concerns driving much of the country’s political activity in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Besides security, the proposed Projet de Loi Relatif au Renseignement allows for deep government intrusions into online life to achieve economic, scientific, and international relations goals.

    • Allison: Red herrings and Clinton’s emails

      Sunday on Face the Nation, someone made the absurd comparison of Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon, as if her deleted emails had any similarity to Nixon in cahoots with Kissinger in that secret war of carpet bombing Cambodia.

    • Powerful Prose Examines Powerful Surveillance

      Oklahoma City University’s Powerful Prose series will continue with a presentation on the book “No Place to Hide,” a book written by Glenn Greenwald about accused classified intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. OCU law professor Art LeFrancois will discuss the book at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 30.

      The presentation is free to the public and will be held at Full Circle Bookstore, the series co-sponsor, in the 50 Penn Place shopping center at 1900 Northwest Expressway.

    • Original U.S. Phone Record Dragnet Finally Faces Lawsuit

      The Drug Enforcement Administration’s pioneering and purportedly discontinued dragnet pulled records from pliable phone companies for two decades without court review using administrative subpoenas.

    • Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records

      Human Rights Watch, a nonpartisan organization that fights human rights abuses across the globe, filed suit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration late Tuesday for illegally collecting records of its telephone calls to certain foreign countries as part of yet another government bulk surveillance program. The group is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has launched a series of legal challenges against unconstitutional government surveillance.

    • CISA: New “Cybersecurity” Bill Is About Surveillance, Not Security

      Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is trumpeting a major Senate cyber bill that he claims is better at protecting privacy. Burr, who is chairman the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, hails this bipartisan measure which was recently approved by his panel, as taking the first step in cracking down on the theft of personal data and intellectual property. Elaborating, he goes on to insist that the bill would create “a cybersecurity information-sharing environment that works much like a neighborhood watch program–allowing all participants to get a better understanding of the current cybersecurity threats that may be used against them.”

    • UK spied on CFK gov’t over Malvinas

      President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government has vowed to respond to documents that allegedly show how the British government was engaged in surveillance and cyber operations against the Argentine authorities and military officials and attempted to shape public opinion against the country’s sovereignty claims over the Malvinas Islands.

    • Scioli: UK spying is ‘violation of our rights’

      Following Defence Minister Agustín Rossi’s brief comments on Friday, Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli yesterday was the highest-ranking Victory Front (FpV) official to respond to recently released documents that suggest British espionage against Argentine and military officials over the Malvinas Islands, considering them serious and “a violation against the privacy and the rights of our country within the framework of freedom and democracy.”

    • WATCH: John Oliver Employs Brilliant Tactic to Get Edward Snowden to Explain Why NSA Surveillance Matters

      Yeupp, the government can and does collect dick pics.

      This is not a trivial matter. Sunday night, Oliver devoted the entire half hour of his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” to the matter of domestic surveillance, and the upcoming vote in Congress about whether to reauthorize the Patriot Act, including its provision allowing the government to collect our private information.

      The trouble is that Americans seem really ill-informed about the whole matter of domestic surveillance, as Oliver illustrates with on-the-street interviews. They also seem not to know exactly who whistleblower Edward Snowden is.

    • Paul G. Buchanan: Hager and co’s bombshells fizzle – not fire

      The slow drip feed of classified NSA material taken by Edward Snowden and published by journalists Glen Greenwald, Nicky Hager, David Fisher and others in outlets such as The Intercept and the New Zealand Herald caused a stir when first published.

      Revelations of mass surveillance and bulk collection of telephone and email data of ordinary citizens in the Five Eyes democracies and detailed accounts of how the NSA and its companion agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK spy on friend and foe alike, including trade partners and the personal telephones of the German prime minister and Indonesian president, caused both popular and diplomatic uproars.

    • US Sheriff’s Office Abuses Stingray Cellphone Spy Technology – Rights Group

      The American Civil Liberties Union said that the Erie County Sheriff’s Office in the US state of New York used invasive cellphone tracking devices called Stingrays to spy on local residents without a search warrant.

    • Baltimore police secretly tracked (at least) 4,300 cellphones
    • New York police caught lying over Stingray use, spying without court oversight

      In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks of nearly two years ago, the NSA, FBI, and even local police have hammered a consistent drumbeat of trust. Time and time again, at every level of government, local to national, elected officials and appointed commissioners have promised that the cutting-edge tools of mass surveillance used to hoover your personal information are actually tightly controlled and used only under appropriate conditions. Unfortunately, available evidence continues to blow holes in this narrative, most recently in New York State.

    • The Government Has Been Tracking Our Calls Since the Early 1990s

      The bulk collection of phone data goes back to 1992, with a DEA program that inspired the NSA

    • DEA sniffed MASSIVE AMOUNTS of phone records before Snowden’s intervention
    • Opinion: The unnoticed expansion of domestic surveillance

      Programs such as PRISM for foreign surveillance and domestic wiretapping drew huge outcry. At the time, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff accused the U.S. on the floor of the United Nations of “a breach of international law and an affront” to national sovereignty. Similar claims were made about domestic programs, especially since the their capabilities, let alone their use, were unknown to the vast majority of Americans.

    • When it Comes Ending Spying, Congress is a Waste of Time

      More and more it appears that focusing on Congress to stop federal spying is a complete waste of time.

      Even if Congress were to pass substantive reforms or allow provisions of the Patriot Act authorizing bulk phone surveillance to expire – and this seems highly unlikely – a recently declassified court order indicates spying would likely continue.

    • Edward Snowden Explains Why You Should Use Passphrases, Not Passwords

      It can’t be overstated how important it is to use strong passwords, given that we still haven’t figured this mess out. And until we do, PSAs like this one stay important. And it could hardly come from a more relevant source. Edward Snowden famously leaked key details about the NSA’s mass surveillance, so he knows a thing or two about what makes a system secure or not.

    • First Step Against the Federal Surveillance State – Texas Bill Would Require Warrant for Location Tracking

      A Texas bill that would prohibit law enforcement from obtaining location data from electronic devices without a warrant in most cases, representing an important first step in addressing the growing federal surveillance state will receive an important House committee hearing this week.

    • Fact: Facebook tracks non-users – says ‘fix already underway’

      Facebook says it’s begun fixing a bug that tracks web users even when they’re not registered on the social network. However, it rejected other accusations presented in a report by Belgian scholars questioning the legality of the revised privacy policy.

    • The Feds Want a Back Door Into Your Computer. Again.

      One fine day in 1991, an ambitious senator named Joe Biden introduced legislation declaring that telecommunications companies “shall ensure” that their hardware includes backdoors for government eavesdropping. Biden’s proposal was followed by the introduction of the Clipper Chip by the National Security Agency (NSA) and a remarkable bill, approved by a House of Representatives committee in 1997, that would have outlawed encryption without back doors for the feds.

    • New Zealand: Sham inquiry established into spying revelations

      The government’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn announced on March 26 that she would investigate complaints made by the Green Party and others “over alleged interception of communications of New Zealanders working or travelling in the South Pacific by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).”

      The aim of the inquiry is to contain the damage to the government and the political establishment more broadly from revelations of the GCSB’s illegal and anti-democratic activities.

    • U.S. Began Bulk Collection of Phone Call Data in 1992

      An explosive new report reveals the federal government secretly tracked billions of U.S. phone calls years before the 9/11 attacks. According to USA Today, the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration collected bulk data for phone calls in as many as 116 countries deemed to have a connection with drug trafficking. The program began in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush, nine years before his son, George W. Bush, authorized the National Security Agency to gather logs of Americans’ phone calls in 2001. This program served as a blueprint for NSA mass surveillance. We speak with Brad Heath, the USA Today investigative reporter who broke the story.

    • Apple and the Self-Surveillance State

      So, here’s my pathetic version of a grand insight: wearables like the Apple watch actually serve a very different function — indeed, almost the opposite function — from that served by previous mobile devices. A smartphone is useful mainly because it lets you keep track of things; wearables will be useful mainly because they let things keep track of you.

    • Apple preparing for ‘major, major’ datacenter expansion in Oregon – report

      Apple is set to follow through on expansion plans for its $250 million datacenter in Prineville, Oregon, a Wednesday report suggests, after the Oregon legislature resolved a tax issue that could have tacked millions of dollars onto Apple’s bills in the future.

    • Encryption Becomes a Part of Journalists’ Toolkit

      When whistleblower Edward Snowden used an email encryption program called PGP to contact documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, only a tiny fraction of journalists used it. The precaution, designed to scramble messages so only the sender and receiver can read them, was essential for Snowden to leak the information.

    • U.S. government monitored phone calls to Canadians in sweeping 1990s surveillance program

      The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed, USA Today newspaper reported today.

    • Baltimore’s transgender community mourns one of their own, slain by police
    • Our say: Hush-hush installation needs better signs

      There’s a lot we may never know about the odd incident last week in which two men were shot, one fatally, while allegedly trying to ram the gate at the employees-only entrance to the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade. But there does seem to be one contributing factor you’d think authorities could fix quickly – a poorly marked entrance ramp from Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

    • Lobbyists for Spies Appointed To Oversee Spying

      Who’s keeping watch of the National Security Agency? In Congress, the answer in more and more cases is that the job is going to former lobbyists for NSA contractors and other intelligence community insiders.

      A wave of recent appointments has placed intelligence industry insiders into key Congressional roles overseeing intelligence gathering. The influx of insiders is particularly alarming because lawmakers in Washington are set to take up a series of sensitive surveillance and intelligence issues this year, from reform of the Patriot Act to far-reaching “information sharing” legislation.

      After the first revelations of domestic surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, President Obama defended the spying programs by claiming they were “subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate.” But as Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., and other members of Congress have pointed out, there is essentially a “two-tiered” system for oversight, with lawmakers and staff on specialized committees, such as the House and Senate committees on Intelligence and Homeland Security, controlling the flow of information and routinely excluding other Congress members, even those who have asked for specific information relating to pending legislation.

    • Data privacy: the tide is turning in Europe – but is it too little, too late?

      Amazon Dash – the company’s single purpose internet-connected ordering button – may soon be blackening our skies with drones delivering loo rolls and detergent. And so, the relentless march of technology – not to mention cheap labour, unthinking consumerism and scandalous environmental devastation – goes on.

    • ‘Citizenfour’ keeps government spying right where it should be: In the public spotlight

      Though “Citizenfour” (2014) is not a horror film – rather, it’s a documentary – it ranks among the most frightening films I have ever seen because of its unyielding revelations of the U.S. government’s spying programs and the implications of those reports.

    • Class action privacy lawsuit filed against Facebook in Austria

      Case lead by privacy campaigner Max Schrems sees 25,000 users sue social network for alleged illegal tracking of their data and its involvement in the NSA’s surveillance programme

    • Facebook Sued By 25,000 Users Over Privacy

      Facebook is being sued in Austria over alleged privacy violations and claimed participation in the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM programme.

      An Austrian law graduate called Max Schrems is leading the class action lawsuit on behalf of around 25,000 Facebook users based in Europe and beyond.

    • Facebook preps for class action lawsuit as angry EU mob lawyer up

      A class action against Facebook over alleged breaches of European privacy laws is being heard in a Vienna district court today.

      Austrian law graduate Max Schrems and 25,000 other Facebook users are suing the social network. They allege that Facebook violated European citizens’ “fundamental rights” (defined in the European Convention on Human Rights) by transferring their personal data to the US National Security Agency (NSA).

    • Fees After Victory in Cybersecurity FOIA Case

      A nonprofit group is entitled to attorney fees from the government for its efforts to obtain a presidential order on cybersecurity, a federal judge ruled.

    • Congress Returns Next Week With A Tech-Heavy Agenda

      These are all issues Congress has tried and failed to address before. Patent reform died in the Senate last spring, controversial cybersecurity legislation never saw a floor vote last year and a NSA reform bill could not pass a Senate procedural vote last December.

    • US govt bans Intel from selling chips to China’s supercomputer boffins

      The US government has blocked Intel from shipping high-end Xeon processors to China’s supercomputer builders – and other American chip giants are banned, too.

      Intel confirmed to The Register last night it was refused permission to sell the chips to the Middle Kingdom’s defense labs and other parts of its supercomputing industry.

    • Want to See Domestic Spying’s Future? Follow the Drug War

      The DEA’s newly revealed bulk collection of billions of American phone records on calls to 116 countries preceded the NSA’s similar program by years and may have even helped to inspire it, as reported in USA Today’s story Wednesday. And the program serves as a reminder that most of the legal battles between government surveillance efforts and the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections over the last decades have played out first on the front lines of America’s War on Drugs. Every surveillance test case in recent history, from beepers to cell phones to GPS tracking to drones—and now the feds’ attempts to puncture the bubble of cryptographic anonymity around Dark Web sites like the Silk Road—began with a narcotics investigation.

    • Report reveals US has carried out domestic electronic espionage on Mexico

      For more than two decades, the U.S. government has carried out domestic electronic espionage that has impacted hundreds of countries including Mexico, the USA Today reported Wednesday.

    • Why it’s so hard to create norms in cyberspace

      There are two plausible reasons. First, as Admiral Michael Rogers, the head of the NSA and Cyber Command has argued, norms create a basic structure for international political relations. If, for example, the U.S. is to deter cyberattack from other countries, and vice versa, all the countries involved need to reach a common agreement on basic questions such as what cyberattacks are, when they are acceptable and when not acceptable, and so on. Creating this kind of common understanding takes a lot of hard work building common norms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, as Emanuel Adler’s research on arms control during the Cold War demonstrates.

    • To Promote an Open Internet, NSA Should Limit Data Collection

      The benefits of data collection “must be more clearly weighed against the potential damage to the normative commitments to an open and secure Internet,” writes Farrell, who urges intelligence-gathering agencies to “adopt a fundamental change of mind-set.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Australian government spends $4 million on ‘stop-the-boats’ telemovie

      The federal government has commissioned a $4.1m telemovie designed to dissuade asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat.

      The telemovie, set to be broadcast in refugee hotspots including Syria, Afghanistan and Iran, would include storylines about asylum seekers drowning at sea and feature the Australian navy, the ABC has reported.

    • Arrest Warrant Issued for Justin Bieber in Argentina

      An Argentine judge issued an arrest warrant for Justin Bieber on Friday (April 10), saying the singer failed to respond to summons related to allegations he ordered bodyguards to attack a photographer in 2013

      Judge Alberto Julio Banos ordered the “immediate detention” of Bieber and bodyguards Hugo Alcides Hesny and Terrence Reche Smalls.

    • Danish report: No need for whistleblower law

      Denmark does not need a special whistleblower law for public authorities, an expert committee has concluded.

    • This start-up promised 10,000 people eternal digital life—then it died

      Intellitar was selling its “immortality” service for $25 a month to people who wanted to create a digital doppelgänger that would live on even after their death. Customers uploaded a photo of themselves to Intellitar’s “Virtual Eternity” website, took a personality test, provided a voice sample and then trained their avatars’ “brains”—an artificial-intelligence engine—by feeding it stories, memories and photos. The result, the company said, was an animated avatar that your family, friends, and great-great-grandchildren could talk to, even after you went to the big database in the sky.

    • Spying on Muslims fosters distrust amongst community

      This past January, the U.S. Court of Appeals heard the oral argument for the Hassan v. City of New York case. What makes this case so special is that it has been the first case to ever challenge the New York City Police Department Muslim Surveillance Program. The United States National Security Agency controversy left America reeling — in June 2013, allegations arose that the NSA had been spying on millions of Americans every day through tapping of telecommunications networks (computer networks, telephones, the Internet, etc.) with the help of major companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft. Though this came to light through journalist Glenn Greenwald’s exposé revealing a partnership between Verizon and the NSA, it has been going on for years. It is a common suspicion that the revelation barely scratches the surface of all the surveillance that is likely going on, but Muslims have been sounding off on their loss of constitutional rights — and thereby the loss of every American’s constitutional rights — for years.

    • Philly PD Declares All Drivers To Be ‘Under Investigation’ While Denying Request For License Plate Reader Data

      More bad news has just arrived on the “We’re all not that terrible” PR front: according to Philly’s police department, each and every car owner whose vehicle’s license plate has had the misfortune of being scanned by the PD’s license plate readers is some sort of criminal. Charges TBD.

    • Wanted: Ten million Chinese students to “civilize” the Internet

      China wants to recruit 10 million young people, mostly university students belonging to the Communist Party’s youth wing, to “spread positive energy” on the Internet — in other words, to use social media to praise and defend the government.

    • Man who filmed cop killing fleeing suspect says an officer “told me to stop”

      The 23-year-old South Carolina man who used his phone to videotape a police officer fatally shooting a suspect in the back multiple times said Thursday that another officer who arrived on the scene ordered him to stop recording.

    • 8th Grader Faces Felony Charges For Changing Teacher’s Computer Background

      Eight-grader Domanik Green was arrested on felony charges in Holiday, Fla. Wednesday after breaking into his teacher’s computer to change the background picture to two men kissing.

    • 2009 DHS Document Says Border Patrol Can Search/Copy The Contents Of Your Device Just Because It Wants To

      FOIA clearinghouse MuckRock has scored another revealing document, this time from Customs and Border Protection. As we’re well aware, the US border isn’t technically considered to be part of the United States, at least not as far as the Constitution is concerned. All bets are off, 4th (and others) Amendment-wise. If you’re traveling with anything — whether its a vehicle, suitcase or laptop — expect it to be searched.

    • Southern California Deputies Caught on Video Beating Surrendering Man for More Than Two Minutes

      Knowing they were being video recorded by a news helicopter hovering above, Southern California deputies did not let that stop them from repeatedly punching and kicking a man who had already surrendered by lying flat on his stomach after he was tased earlier this afternoon.

      Up to nine San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies can be seen running up to the suspect to kick and punch him, angry at having been forced to chase him through the desert.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Protect Net Neutrality in India

      Internet is a global network, with total freedom. Well, that is soon going to change, unless you act now. While you are reading this, someone is trying to control what you see, read, download, listen or write on the internet by taking control over the sites you can access! Don’t wait for that moment to happen. Act now, and protect Net Neutrality by signing in for the petition.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Judge: IP-Address Doesn’t Identify a Movie Pirate

        The filmmakers behind the action movie “Manny” have filed hundreds of lawsuits against BitTorrent pirates this year, but not all have been successful. In a prominent ruling Florida District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro refused to issue a subpoena, arguing that IP-address evidence is not enough to show who has downloaded a pirated movie.

      • 70% Of Fans Still Can’t Watch LA Dodgers Games On TV Thanks To Time Warner Cable

        Last year Time Warner Cable and the Los Angeles Dodgers struck a twenty-five year, $8.35 billion deal giving Time Warner Cable the exclusive broadcast rights to all Dodgers games in Los Angeles via its creatively-named regional sports network, Time Warner Cable SportsNet LA. Time Warner Cable then immediately turned around and demanded massive price hikes (rumored to be around $5 per subscriber) for any other pay TV provider that wanted to offer the channel. All of the regional cable operators (including AT&T, Cox, Dish and DirecTV) balked at the hike, resulting about 70% of fans in Dodgers territory being unable to watch the final six games of last season.

      • EFF Seeks DMCA Exemption to Preserve Abandoned Games

        The EFF and the Entertainment Software Alliance are going head-to-head over the need to preserve functionality in abandoned games. The EFF wants an exemption to the DMCA to keep games alive after its servers are closed down, but the ESA and its allies the MPAA and RIAA are vigorously opposing the digital rights group.

Links 10/4/2015: Linux 4.0 Imminent, ZFS On Linux Improved

Posted in News Roundup at 12:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Opportunities and challenges of Open Source in Enterprise

    Today, open source is pervasive in enterprise IT, forming the foundation of many cloud services and applications.

    The open source community represents a vast pool of collaborative intellectual property, and it has become a fundamental part of businesses around the world and in Australia and New Zealand.

    “Open source is a great fit for any organisation that is looking to innovate more rapidly and effectively, and to save costs and increase the bottom line,” says Colin McCabe, senior manager, Services and Training, Red Hat.

  • Coders: 5G networks and open source code

    This week on Coders, RCR CEO and Editorial Director Jeff Mucci digs into evolving 5G cellular standards, software and proof of concept deployments with co-host Victor Agreda.

  • Couchbase CEO: the real rationale for enterprise open source

    Open source allows for a more natural adoption approach within the enterprise. It is free and generally easy to download, install, and get started with. This allows easy exploration of and experimentation with new technologies and allows enterprises to get comfortable with the software on smaller, non-mission-critical projects before any financial commitment is required.

  • Sirius: an Open Source Competitor to Siri, Cortana, Google Now

    Sirius is an open source, customizable system that can be commanded through vocal input. It has been built by University of Michigan researchers and is similar to Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Now. According to University of Michigan, Sirius “is designed to spark a new generation of intelligent personal assistants” for wearables and other devices.”

  • How the Syria Airlift Project is Using Open Source Dronecode for Humanitarian Aid

    In March of 2014 I found myself on the Turkish-Syrian border, doing research among Syrian refugees. The stories I heard were horrific. Mass sieges were in effect; the Syrian government and brutal militias were starving out entire neighborhoods, and the government appeared to be deliberately targeting hospitals and doctors. Smuggling medical supplies into opposition-held areas was punishable by torture and death. Syrians were besides themselves, trying to find some way to get food and medicine into these besieged areas. They asked me why the US did nothing.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome Web Store Gives Bad Extensions the Boot

        Google has given its Chrome Store a spring cleaning, ridding it of more than 200 browser add-ons and extensions that may have been delivering spyware and malware to users. “Obviously, they need to put more work into screening of uploads to the Chrome Store if it should be considered a trusted source,” noted Martin Zetterlund, founder of ScrapeSentry.

      • Google Chrome Will Soon Work Better For Linux HiDPI Systems

        A few months back I wrote about the poor state of Chrome/Chromium HiDPI support on Linux but fortunately with the latest unstable web browser code these issues appear to have been resolved.

    • Mozilla

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • A community distribution of OpenStack

      In this interview with Red Hat’s Alvaro Lopez Ortega, we learn a little bit about RDO, a community distribution of OpenStack which is designed to make it easy to install on operating systems like Fedora and CentOS. Alvaro is presenting at OpenStack Live next week, where he’ll share both some technical details on RDO as well as a little bit about the community that makes it happen.

    • Connectors to Hadoop Promise to Simplify Big Data Tasks

      Over time, it only had to become easier to leverage the open source Hadoop project, which has been the driving technology behind much of the Big Data trend. At one point, the Big Data trend–sorting and sifting large data sets with new tools in pursuit of surfacing meaningful angles on stored information–remained an enterprise-only story, but now businesses of all sizes are evaluating tools that can help them glean meaningful insights from the data they store.

    • First OpenStack Kilo RCs Debut

      The first Release Candidate (RCs) for the upcoming OpenStack Kilo release are now out. I’ve seen the RC for Nova (https://github.com/openstack/nova/tree/proposed/kilo), and the RC for Trove at: https://github.com/openstack/trove/tree/proposed/kilo with more set to follow.

    • PLUMgrid Launches Cloud Networking for OpenStack Kilo

      The OpenStack Kilo milestone release is several weeks away, but networking vendor PLUMgrid is already prepared for it. This week, PLUMgrid announced the release of its ONS (OpenStack Networking Suite) 3.0, compatible with OpenStack Kilo. The new ONS 3.0 platform also provides new tools for enabling networking in OpenStack clouds.

    • Piston Pivots Beyond OpenStack with CloudOS

      One size rarely fits all. That’s a lesson OpenStack vendor Piston Cloud Computing is showing it understands quite well with its CloudOS 4.0 release. Prior to CloudOS 4.0, Piston’s primary cloud server platform was called Piston OpenStack, with the most recent update being the 3.5 release, which debuted in September 2014.

    • 55.555 downloads of ownCloud in a box

      Recently I passed a magic number with my ownCloud in a box appliance. It hit the five fives, 55.555 total downloads, on SUSE Studio. It is the most popular download there. I would never have imagined that so many people would be interested in it and use it when I started with this. Amazing.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • ODF in the age of Big Data

      One may notice that the points listed above loosely match the main points usually mentioned when discussing the benefits of ODF in the more standard settings of the desktop. This is not surprising, but it was not necessarily intended; if anything this is a testimony to the value of a standard like ODF and its importance. The key point here is that when it comes to the cloud and big data, ODF is both a factor of transparency and innovation. This is something worth promoting and is a potential path to renewed success of ODF in the future.

    • One year old: Document Liberation Project

      The Document Liberation Project only was founded last year officially and now can see at least it’s first birthday. Not yet picked up much steam from new contributors so far, but then already serving e.g. users of Calligra, with libraries like LibRevenge, LibOdfGen, LibWpd, LibWpg, LibWps, LibVisio, LibEtonyek etc., to read in data from files in WordPerfect, MS Works, MS Visio, and Keynote formats.

  • CMS

  • BSD

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • JavaScript All the Way Down

      JavaScript originally was developed at Netscape in 1995, first under the name Mocha, and then as LiveScript. Soon (after Netscape and Sun got together; nowadays, it’s the Mozilla Foundation that manages the language) it was renamed JavaScript to ride the popularity wave, despite having nothing to do with Java. In 1997, it became an industry standard under a fourth name, ECMAScript. The most common current version of JavaScript is 5.1, dated June 2011, and version 6 is on its way. (However, if you want to use the more modern features, but your browser won’t support them, take a look at the Traceur compiler, which will back-compile version 6 code to version 5 level.)

Leftovers

  • The Trouble With SEO

    Here’s an example. Let’s say I’m writing an 800 word article about Microsoft — which I’ve been known to do on occasion. Well, to make sure that search engines understand that the article is about Microsoft, I have to name the company, and frequently, within the article. According to SEO experts, I would need to use the word “Microsoft” at least eight times within the article to obtain a keyword density of one percent — just to make sure the search engines understand that this article is indeed about our buddies in Redmond. I’d also need to make sure that the title also contains the word “Microsoft,” as search engines give extra weight to keywords included in the title.

  • No, Rand Paul didn’t ‘storm out’ of an interview

    You’ll notice that both Paul and Lewis agreed to one more question, and Paul left when Lewis asked a second “last question.” But that Paul walked off quickly and that the lights were turned off made it look that he left in the middle of it. Optics!

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Treating Jack Straw Differently

      A UKIP candidate has been obliged to report to the police for breaking the law on “treating” for providing sausage rolls at an event. Yet Jack Straw at elections in 2005 and 2010 held rallies for the Muslim community in Blackburn at which the Labour Party provided hundreds of voters with full sit down meals, free of charge, and Police refused to take any action – indeed they were protecting the event. This is yet another example of the political elite being above the law.

    • In FBI Terrorism Sting Against Mentally Ill Kansas Man, Informants Built Bomb & Provided List of Materials

      In a terrorism sting operation, the FBI arrested a twenty year-old man from Topeka, Kansas, who United States government officials claim attempted to “detonate a vehicle bomb at Fort Riley military base near Manhattan, Kansas.” He also apparently suffers from mental illness.

      John T. Booker Jr., who also goes by the name Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempting to damage property by means of an explosive and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.

      “Thanks to the efforts of the law enforcement community, we were able to safely disrupt this threat to the brave men and women who serve our country,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin declared. “Protecting American lives by identifying and bringing to justice those who wish to harm U.S. citizens remains the National Security Division’s number one priority.”

      But, according to an affidavit [PDF] by an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in Topeka, Booker had no direct interaction or communication with any terrorists or terrorist organizations prior to the FBI targeting him. He had obtained no explosives to carry out any sort of attack. He lacked the resources or capabilities act and told one of the informants in the case that he wanted to join the Islamic State but “didn’t know anyone who could help him do so.”

      An informant (CHS 1) introduced Booker to a second informant (CHS 2), who claimed to be a “high ranking sheik planning terrorist acts in the United States.” CHS 1 provided the list of materials that Booker needed to have in order to build a vehicle bomb. The two informants built the vehicle bomb, not Booker.

    • Army Recruit Charged With Helping ISIS Watched by FBI, Given Clearance by Army

      A Kansas man arrested and charged Friday morning for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State was under surveillance by the FBI last year when he checked himself into a mental institution and was not regarded as an immediate threat, according to a document obtained by The Intercept.

      In fact, the U.S. Army had approved the new recruit for a Secret clearance.

      John T. Booker Jr., who also goes by the name Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, was arrested Friday and charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction, and planning to destroy property with an explosive.

    • Exclusive: U.S. expands intelligence sharing with Saudis in Yemen operation

      The United States is expanding its intelligence-sharing with Saudi Arabia to provide more information about potential targets in the kingdom’s air campaign against Houthi militias in Yemen, U.S. officials told Reuters.

    • Secrecy Shrouds Unknown Role Of Top UK Government Official

      The British government is refusing to disclose the job title and taxpayer-funded salary of one of the most senior law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom, claiming the details have to be kept a secret for security reasons.

      Cressida Dick (pictured above) was formerly one of the highest ranking officers at London’s Metropolitan Police, the largest police force in the U.K., where she headed the Specialist Operations unit and oversaw a controversial criminal investigation into journalists who reported on Edward Snowden’s leaked documents.

    • Trapped in Yemen, Americans File Lawsuit Against US Government

      Despite the ongoing danger to their lives, Awnallah says that his family has received no assistance from the U.S. government. “[My family] has tried to get in touch, but no one is helping them,” he said. “They are asking me all the time if they are going to die here.”

      On April 9, Awnallah’s family and dozens of other Yemeni-Americans filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on behalf of American citizens trapped in the country. Citing Executive Order 12656, which obligates “protection or evacuation of U.S. Citizens and nationals abroad” in times of danger, the lawsuit further alleges that the U.S. government’s refusal so far to conduct evacuation operations in Yemen represents the continuation of longstanding policies that effectively deny full citizenship rights to Yemeni-Americans.

    • If Chuck Schumer kills the Iran nuclear deal, he should not be Senate minority leader

      The framework for the Iranian nuclear deal is about as good as anyone could reasonably expect. If it were solely up to the negotiators, it would likely be finalized in June. But they are not the only players, and it’s become clear that the biggest danger to the deal are hawks in Iran and the U.S.

  • Finance

    • Greens throw support behind Tax Dodging Bill

      In the wake of the HSBC, Swiss Leaks and LuxLeaks tax avoidance scandals the Green Party has pledged to introduce a Tax Dodging Bill in the first 100 days after the election. The campaign for such a Bill is being widely supported by a network of NGOs, cooperatives, faith groups, MPs and Unions [1].

    • Big tech companies lack one thing – shame

      Like, do these adults — at least physically, the three are in that stage of life — have no shame? Tony King of Apple, Maile Carnegie of Google, and Bill Sample of Microsoft were not in any way fazed by the fact that the companies they head locally cheat on their taxes.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Media

    • CNN Wants to Believe: White House ‘Russian Hackers’ Go From Suspects to Perps

      Unnamed “investigators”–who may come from the “FBI, Secret Service [or] US intelligence agencies,” we learn earlier in the piece–“believe” there are “tell-tale codes and other markers” that “point to” Russian government employees–how much fuzzier does evidence get? Yet immediately CNN is talking about the “Russian hack” as though it’s proven fact,,,

    • WSJ Ignores Conservative Spending Behind WI’s New Judicial Amendment, Remembers To Blame Soros

      In its analysis of an unprecedented change to how the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is selected, The Wall Street Journal ignored the significant financial contributions a right-wing group made in support of the move, which would strengthen conservative control of the court before it examines possible illegal campaign coordination between that same group and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R). Instead, the editorial board focused on the fact that the current chief justice has a lawyer who is on the board of directors of a judicial election reform group founded by George Soros.

    • Hillary Clinton Team Holds Off-The-Record Journalist Dinner Ahead Of 2016 Announcement

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign team held an off-the-record dinner Thursday night in Washington, D.C., for roughly two dozen journalists and staff members at John Podesta’s house, according to sources familiar with the matter.

      The dinner signals that the Clinton team is trying to engage with top reporters in the days before the Democrat’s expected announcement of a 2016 presidential run. It also suggests the new campaign team is looking to change course from the toxic relationship with the press that plagued the 2008 race. The Clinton team is also holding a private event in New York on Friday night for journalists, according to sources.

    • Attorney Responds To Times Of Israel Genocide Post: ‘I Didn’t Write That S**t’

      Lawyer and writer Josh Bornstein demanded an explanation from The Times of Israel on Thursday after the site published an op-ed under his name that advocated genocide of Palestinians.

      The post, which sparked outrage across social media and was quickly taken down by the site, called Palestinians “cockroaches” and said that Israel should “exterminate them.”

      The Times of Israel tweeted that it was “looking into” the post and noted that it did not endorse its content. The article ran under Bornstein’s byline, although several people noted that it looked nothing like anything else he had ever published.

      At about 6 p.m.. EDT, Bornstein took to Twitter from his home in Australia to clarify that not only had he not written the “racist” pro-genocide post, but that he had never started an account at the Times in the first place.

      “I didn’t write that shit,” he said. He noted he was a “secular atheist,” contrary to the religious tone of the piece. He later added that he suspected the site was hacked.

      Bornstein said he wanted an explanation from the Times of Israel.

  • Censorship

    • China’s Great Cannon

      On March 16, GreatFire.org observed that servers they had rented to make blocked websites accessible in China were being targeted by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. On March 26, two GitHub pages run by GreatFire.org also came under the same type of attack. Both attacks appear targeted at services designed to circumvent Chinese censorship. A report released by GreatFire.org fingered malicious Javascript returned by Baidu servers as the source of the attack. Baidu denied that their servers were compromised.

  • Privacy

    • Git Success Stories and Tips from Tor Chief Architect Nick Mathewson

      Tor, the free and open source software for anonymous web communications, has been using the Git revision control system for more than six years. The tool is so ingrained in the project’s development that Director and Chief Architect Nick Mathewson’s daily work flow is built around Git, he says.

      “Git’s the eighth version control system I’ve had to use, and the first one I’ve seriously trusted,” Mathewson said. “Many thanks to the Git developers for all their hard work.”

    • Privacy International calls on Europe’s top human rights court to rule on British mass surveillance

      Privacy International and several other human rights organisations are taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over its mass surveillance practices, after a judgement last year found that collecting all internet traffic flowing in and out of the UK and bulk intelligence sharing with the United States was legal.

      The appeal, filed last week by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Amnesty International, Liberty, and other partners, comes in response to a ruling in December by the UK’s surveillance court, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, dealing with the industrial-scale spying programmes TEMPORA and PRISM revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    • Our SecureDrop System for Leaks Now Uses HTTPS

      We’re happy to announce that sources can now access our SecureDrop document-submission website using HTTPS. Although SecureDrop connections were already encrypted previously, our new setup provides leakers with additional assurance that they are connecting with the authentic Intercept SecureDrop and not an impostor.

    • A Guide to the 5+ Known Intelligence Community Telecommunications Metadata Dragnets

      I’ve been laying this explanation out since USA Today provided new details on DEA’s International Dragnet, but it’s clear it needs to be done in more systematic fashion, because really smart people continue to mistakenly treat the Section 215 database as the analogue to the DEA dragnet described by USAT, which it’s not. There are at least five known telecommunications dragnets (some of which appear to integrate other kinds of metadata, especially Internet metadata).

  • Civil Rights

    • Montreal professors stare down riot cops

      It’s been a tough week for the student movement in Quebec. A fractious congress that resulted in the resignation and firing of the entire executive of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, the largest student federation in the province, led into a week where schools already on strike have struggled to win votes to maintain that strike, and few if any new schools have joined them. Facing a growing consensus that the strike should be postponed until the fall in order to join public sector unions in a common front, striking students are vulnerable.

    • Greenpeace bank accounts frozen by Indian government

      The Indian government has frozen bank accounts of Greenpeace after accusing the international environment campaign group of encouraging “anti-development” protests in the emerging economic power.

      The Union Home Ministry on Thursday suspended the official registration for foreign funding of Greenpeace India for six months and froze seven bank accounts connected with the organisation, The Hindu, a local newspaper, reported.

      Samit Aich, the executive director of Greenpeace, said the move was “an attack on democracy”.

    • Middle school student charged with cybercrime in Holiday

      The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has charged Domanik Green, an eighth-grader at Paul R. Smith Middle School, with an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access, a felony. Sheriff Chris Nocco said Thursday that Green logged onto the school’s network on March 31 using an administrative-level password without permission. He then changed the background image on a teacher’s computer to one showing two men kissing.

    • New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez Signs Civil Forfeiture Abolition Bill

      A quick and happy update from New Mexico: Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has signed HB 560, which I detailed here, into law. New Mexico has thus effectively abolished civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction before the government can seize property.

04.09.15

Links 9/4/2015: SalentOS, Semplice Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 7:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • NCR Launches Android-Based Thin Client ATMs

    A few years ago NCR took a fresh look at ATM operations. Cloud computing was becoming more powerful and NCR decided that banks could achieve significant efficiency by moving to a thin client ATM. It chose Android as its first operating operating system but may consider others in the future.

  • Dell will sell a bigger version of its flagship Android tablet

    You might not think of Dell as a big name in tablets — not on the level of, say, Apple or Samsung. In fact, though, the once-stodgy PC maker sells one of our favorite Android tabs, the Venue 8 7000, which won a Best of CES award and earned a strong score of 84 in our review. Now, the company is back with a 10-inch edition (the Venue 10), and it’s basically a blown-up version of the original, just with some improved ergonomics.

  • Dell & Red Hat revamp open stack private cloud solution
  • Linux Users’ Group will hear about new software

    On Monday, April 20, the Linux Users’ Group of Davis will offer a presentation on KDE Connect, software that lets a phone and computer easily share files, control each other and more.

    For example, users can receive their phone notifications on their computer, use their phone as a remote control for their desktop, and easily share photos and other files between devices without using cables.

  • Snoop Dogg Using Linux While Being Chased by a Stormtrooper Is Real

    The Instagram account of Snoop Dogg is a mishmash of ideas and various aspects of the artist’s life, but it’s also a personal account. This is where he decided to post a screenshot from a game (GTA IV most probably) of him using a Linux-powered laptop.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Patched in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

      Canonical, through John Johansen, announced today, April 8, that new kernel updates for the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) are available to users via the default software repositories of the respective distributions.

    • Linux Foundation to Host Open Encryption Project

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced it will host the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) and its Let’s Encrypt project, a free, automated and open security certificate authority for the public’s benefit. Let’s Encrypt allows website owners to obtain security certificates within minutes, enabling a safer web experience for all.

    • Linux Foundation Adopts Website Security and Encryption Platform

      The Linux Foundation will now host the Internet Security Research Group and its Let’s Encrypt platform, which provides secure, open SSL encryption for websites.

    • The Linux Foundation Starts Open Source Encryption Project

      As part of an effort to make encryption a standard component of every application, the Linux Foundation launched its open source Let’s Encrypt project along with its intention to provide access to a free certificate management service.

    • Linux Foundation to host open encryption project

      The Linux Foundation is to host an open encryption project aimed at providing a free and easy way to protect the huge amount of data passed over the internet every day.

      This data includes usernames and passwords, credit card data, cookies, and other types of sensitive or personal information.

    • Linux Foundation’s new mission: Cheap, easy Web encryption

      The Linux Foundation is lending support to the Let’s Encrypt project, to make it both free and simple for any Web server to encrypt connections

    • ‘Let’s Encrypt’ Will Try To Secure The Internet

      The Linux Foundation has lined up financial support for a group producing an easier way to encrypt Web site and mobile device traffic.

    • Linux Foundation Takes Web Security and Encryption Platform Under its Wing
    • Open Source Encryption For Everyone [Ed: but to make encryption work one must use it on top of a Free software stack]

      This version of the software is designed for Windows desktop computers, but further versions for other operating systems and mobile devices are in the pipeline. The research team is also working on various add-ons, including one that supports ad hoc encryption.

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org Foundation + SPI Merger Fails

        After almost two years of the X.Org Foundation’s Board of Directors pursuing a merger with SPI, the 2015 X.Org Elections have ended and the results were sent out to X.Org members last night.

      • Catalyst 15.3 Beta Backported To Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

        While AMD has yet to make the Catalyst 15.3 Beta Linux graphics driver available for download from their web-site, they released the driver to Canonical and as such this new AMD Linux driver has been available in Ubuntu 15.04 for a few weeks. Canonical is now back-porting this proprietary driver back into Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Calligra 3.0 Is Being Ported to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5, Here’s What It Looks Like

        A Calligra developer wrote an interesting post on his blog informing users about the progress made on porting the KDE’s number one office suite to the next-generation KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5 technologies that are being used in the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment.

      • First success in Calligra’s 2nd port to Qt5 & KF5

        Last month, in March, with the 2.9.0 release done, we Calligra developers followed our plans and started a branch named “frameworks”, to work on version 3.0, to be the first version based on Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. Calligra 3.0 should not see any new features, the focus is purely on getting the port to the new platform done without any regressions.

      • KDE Plasma 5.3 Beta to Be Released Next Week, Adds Powerful New Features

        The great team of developers behind the KDE Project met in February 2015 in the Blue Systems office in Barcelona, Spain, to discuss and plan the upcoming features that will be implemented in the highly anticipated KDE Plasma 5.3 release.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Partner Conference 2015: Day 1 Roundup

        Open Source software developer Red Hat (RHT) is hosting its annual North American Partner Conference this week in Orlando, where more than 350 partners are gathered to hear company executives discuss the past fiscal year and to learn more about what is in store for resellers in 2015.

      • Red Hat reveals opens source challenges and opportunities

        Red Hat senior manager, Colin McCabe, has laid out the opportunities and possibilities businesses should consider when deciding on implementing and open source solutions.

        “Open source is a great fit for any organisation that is looking to innovate more rapidly and effectively, and to save costs and increase the bottom line,” he said.

        “At Red Hat, we’ve been working for over two decades to maintain the open source model. It’s in Red Hat’s DNA to unravel complex technology challenges ranging from Cloud applications to content management using open source solutions. Red Hat is part of different open source communities and works on a variety of projects.

      • Red Hat Announces Winners of Red Hat North American Partner Awards

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of its annual Red Hat North American Partner Awards. The winners were announced last night at an event held during the Red Hat North American Partner Conference in Orlando, Fla.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 22 Beta To Be Delayed By One Week

          While Fedora developers did a good job getting out the Fedora 22 Alpha on time, the beta release of Fedora 22 will come at least one week late.

          At today’s Go/No-Go meeting it was decided F22 Beta isn’t ready to ship next week but will have to be delayed by one week at least to take care of unresolved blocker bugs. This beta delay pushes back all future F22 milestones — including the release of F22 final expected to take place in May.

    • Debian Family

      • DPL elections for 2015 are going on

        The Debian Project Leader electsions are going on. This is the yearly election for the leader, where members of the project vote for a new leader for a year. The debate this year seemed to me to be quite quiet, and voting activity seems to not be very high, either. Pity. Many years ago, the election period used to be quite energetic, bringing up some quite good viewpoints.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • DigiKam 4.9.0 Released With Bug Fixes, Install In Ubuntu/Linux Mint

            digiKam is an Open-Source project Photos management software, specially for KDE but you can use it on Ubuntu or others distros too. In digiKam photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections. Developers recently released digiKam 4.9.0 with 33 bug fixes. Developers main focus is on digiKam 5.0 release, as it is supposed to be a major release of digiKam.

          • Linux AIO Ubuntu Updated to Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, Adds Ubuntu MATE

            We were recently informed by Željko Popivoda, the developer of the Linux AIO project that builds all sorts of Live DVDs with multiple editions of an operating system, that there’s an update for the Linux AIO Ubuntu Live DVD.

          • Canonical and Bq Set Up Automated Power Testing to Improve Battery Life for Ubuntu

            Canonical has a series of automated testing methods for Ubuntu Touch which helps them weed out most of the bugs and problems before publishing updates for the operating system, and now they have set up a new lab that should find apps that are draining the battery.

          • Interview with Elizabeth K. Joseph of the Ubuntu Community Council

            I work as a systems administrator and frequently write and speak about my work in that role. My current position is with HP on the OpenStack Project Infrastructure where we maintain dozens of static systems that developers interface with for their work on OpenStack and a fleet of hundreds of worker servers that run all of the tests that are done against the code before it’s merged. This infrastructure is fully open source, with all of our system configurations, Puppet tooling and projects we used available via git here. Since I have a passion for both systems administration and open source, it’s been quite the dream job for me as I work with colleagues from around the world, across several companies.

          • Ubuntu OSes Patched Against Libtasn1 Exploit

            Details about a Libtasn1 vulnerability that was affecting Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS have been published in a security notice by Canonical.

          • Ubuntu Web Browser Shows Just How Well Convergence Is Working – Video

            Canonical has been talking about convergence for a while now, but it’s still difficult to explain it to new users without some visual aid. A new video has been posted showing the Ubuntu web browser, an application developed initially for the phone OS, running in the desktop edition Ubuntu 15.04.

          • Dueling NUC mini-PCs run Ubuntu on Broadwell

            ZaReason and System76 have each launched Intel NUC style mini-PCs running Ubuntu on 5th Gen. Intel Core “Broadwell” processors, starting at about $500.

          • Meizu MX4 Ubuntu hands-on review

            The Ubuntu MX4 is yet to receive an official price or release date, but our opening impressions of it are very positive.

            Featuring a premium design, innovative operating system, and decent internal specifications the MX4 looks like a great smartphone.

            We also have to praise Canonical for the great work it’s done over the past year to improve Ubuntu mobile’s stability and performance, and can’t wait to test the OS more thoroughly.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • SalentOS 14.04.2 Is Based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS and Offers a Modern Openbox Desktop

              Gabriele Martina announced on April 8 the immediate availability for download of the SalentOS 14.04.2 Linux distribution based on the upstream Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system from Canonical.

            • Linux Mint 17.2 Codenamed A Religious Name ‘Rafaela’

              After a successful release of Linux Mint 17 ‘Qiana’ and Linux Mint 17.1 ‘Rebecca’ here is a preparation for another successful release Linux Mint 17.2. On April, 8 Clem posted news on blog.linuxmint.com saying the next release Linux Mint 17.2 has been codenamed ‘Rafaela’. Here is what Rafaela means. Tell us Is it religious?

            • Linux Mint 17.2 Will Be Named “Rafaela”

              Recently, the developers have announced that Linux Mint 17.2 (based on Ubuntu Trusty) will be named “Rafaela”, the tradition being to use feminine names. The codenames of major releases use the next letter, from the alphabet, while the point releases’ names start all with the same letter.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New Atom SoC will target IoT devices, says Intel

      At IDF Shenzhen, Intel announced plans for a rugged IoT version of the Intel Atom x3 SoC, with built in cellular radios, and both Linux and Android support.

      At the Intel Development Forum (IDF) in Shenzhen, China, Intel announced a future Internet of Things version of its new Atom x3 (Sofia) system-on-chips, some of which are built by China-based Rockchip. Intel announced the Atom x3 at Mobile World Congress in early March along with the more powerful, 14nm fabricated “Cherry Trail-T” Atoms, the Atom x5 and x7.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • NEW Native WhatsApp clients hits the Tizen Store, Goodbye ACL WhatsApp Messenger

          We were overjoyed to see a high profile messaging app like WhatsApp available on the Tizen Store at launch for the Samsung Z1. Now it seems the WhatsApp Android App, which used Open Mobile’s ACL technology to run on Tizen, has served its purpose and a Native App has launched today with WhatsApp Messenger being replaced.

        • Samsung 2015 Tizen TV range now available at Curry’s in the UK

          Currys electronics, a UK online and In-store retailer has now got the Tizen based Samsung 2015 TV range In stock and available to buy right now!!! It seems it is only the larger branches that currently have some stock of the UE65JS9000 65″ at £3,999 and UE55JS9000 55″ at £3,099.

        • [Application] Application SecretVault Samsung Z1 Tizen Smart Phone

          Have you ever passed your phone to someone for them to use, only to see them going through your private pictures? This is something that seems more common in the Indian sub-continent and it is VERY annoying. To the rescue we have the SecretVault App that allows you to easily hide your pictures, Videos, Audios, and any other files that you do not want others to see.

      • Android

        • Google, Intel vow to speed up delivery of Android updates

          It usually takes months for mobile devices to get Android updates, but Intel and Google want to slash the wait time.

          Tablets and smartphones made as part of a new Intel mobile-device development program will be able to receive new Android versions and features in two weeks via over-the-air upgrades.

        • AT&T’s Samsung Galaxy S5 gets Android 5.0 Lollipop
        • Exclusive: Google is close to making Android Wear work on the iPhone
        • Which smartwatch sucks least? Apple Watch, Android Wear, Pebble, Samsung Gear?

          Reviews of Tim’s Apple Watch are pouring in, mixing like oil and water. Most reviewers agree that Apple’s new shiny timepiece isn’t fully perfected. That being said, the chief contention among reviews relate to degree and magnitude of imperfection. In other words, many reviewers can’t agree on (if or by) how much the Apple Watch sucks.

        • Google Boasts Android Wear Watch Bands Available From Clockwork Synergy, E3 Supply Co., And Worn & Wound

          Apple has spared no opportunity to advertise how customizable its debut smartwatch is, thanks to the promised number of bands wearers will be able to swap in and out. Unsurprisingly Google wants to take some of the wind out of those sails. The company has taken this moment to highlight a set of straps available for various Android Wear devices from the likes of Clockwork Synergy, E3 Supply Co., and Worn & Wound.

        • Watch Wars: Apple Watch vs. Android Wear

          The Apple Watch hits stores in just two weeks, and based on the reviews, it’s both an impressive bit of modern technology and a beautiful piece of jewelry. But the Apple Watch isn’t the only smartwatch on the market.

          Apple’s nemesis, Google, already has its own watch operating system, Android Wear, and companies like Samsung, LG, and Motorola make smartwatches that run it. What’s more, these Google watches are less expensive than the Apple Watch and come in a host of different styles.

        • Android 5.1 Lollipop Update For Nexus 5 Rolls Out To More Users; Nexus 4, 7, 9 Confirmed Next By Google

          The Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Nexus 5 is finally starting to roll out to additional owners of the smartphone almost a month after being initially announced by Google.

        • Sony Begins Xperia Z2 And Z2 Tablet Android Lollipop Global Rollout

          As previously announced, Sony has started pushing Android Lollipop out to Xperia Z2 and Z2 tablet devices all over the world. These updates are going out in phases and vary according to your region and carrier, so you still may have to exercise patience a bit longer.

        • Google is bringing back month view to its Calendar app for Android

          As it turns out, Google has been listening to your feedback and has decided to reintroduce month view to its Calendar app. Since Google updated the Calendar app alongside the jump to Android 5.0 Lollipop, many users have been begging the company to bring back the month overview so they can see more events at one time.

        • New Nexus 7 Android 5.1 Release Imminent

          A new Nexus 7 Android 5.1 update has been confirmed thanks to Google’s Android Open Source Project and it’s probably not the one that many Nexus 7 users were expecting.

        • Logitech Keys-To-Go now available for Android, Windows
        • Sony Xperia Z Ultra GPe now receiving OTA update for Android 5.1

          While Sony is gearing up to release its fourth Xperia Z phone, some phablet fans are still sitting pretty with the original’s larger-than-life cousin, the Xperia Z Ultra. For those who opted to keep things pure, the GPe variant was the way to go. Fortunately, Google hasn’t forgotten about the largest phone to have been offered with stock Android, as the just a few days after Android 5.1 hit LG’s G Pad 8.3 GPe, it’s now time for the Z Ultra GPe to receive the latest Lollipop build.

        • This brilliant free Android app will change the way you use your phone

          Multitasking is great, but smartphones will never offer a multitasking experience on par with desktop devices because they just don’t have enough screen real estate. That doesn’t mean switching back and forth from app to app is the only way to go on mobile phones, however, and a great Android app called Flynx has come up with a simple and elegant solution that you really have to check out.

        • Firefox for Android passes 100 million downloads four years after launch

          Mozilla announced Firefox for Android hit a big milestone today: 100 million downloads. The figure is confirmed on Google Play, where the app now shows the installs category is in the “100,000,000 – 500,000,000″ range.

        • Amazon Prime Instant Video finally comes to Android tablets

          For the longest time, Amazon enticed users to choose the Fire tablet with exclusive access to Prime Instant Video; despite the fact that Fire devices run a version of Android, purely Android tablets were denied the benefits of their modified brethren. Yesterday, though, that finally changed — Amazon unceremoniously made the Prime Instant Video app available to all Android tablets.

Free Software/Open Source

  • ScrollBack, a refreshing new community management tool

    ScrollBack is a new, open source community management tool that offers the extensive reach of social media, the engagement and archival abilities of forums, and the interactive and real time experience of chat.

  • Google open-sources Santa Claus

    For those of you who are more “bah humbug” than “pass the eggnog”, Santa Tracker offers an online method of tracking Santa’s fictional progress through the logistical chore of stuffing soon-to-be-ignored amusing plastic tat down the chimneys of the world’s best-fed and most-privileged children.

  • Open source won, so what’s next?

    Twenty years ago, open source was a cause. Ten years ago, it was the underdog. Today, it sits upon the Iron Throne ruling all it surveys. Software engineers now use open source frameworks, languages, and tools in almost all projects.

  • Does open source contribute to a more open society?

    Many companies say they love open source, but what does that actually mean? Does it mean they use a lot of software other people have written? Does it mean they like that they don’t have to pay for things? Or do they understand that loving open source also means contributing back to the community the code came from?

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • CMS

    • Git Success Stories and Tips from Drupal Core Committer Angie Byron

      The Git revision control system is “at the center” of Drupal’s hyper-collaborative community says Drupal core committer Angie Byron. The open source content management platform has 37,802 developers with Git commit access, and about 1,300 actively committing each month, she says.

    • Open source is key to the future of CMS development

      Open source will remain the best way to achieve a better developer experience, and as it grows in popularity, engaging with neighbor technology will become easier. Reusing existing components and becoming more distributed will be less complex. Thanks to open source, developers are able to work faster and more efficiently, which is good for business. But this is just the beginning. Open source has taken the CMS development experience to a whole new level, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

    • FBI Warns That WordPress Faces Terrorist Attack Risk

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an alert on April 7 about the potential danger of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists abusing vulnerabilities in the open-source WordPress blog and content management system software.

  • Funding

    • What’s so special about Google Summer of Code?

      Google has a program for their employees called 20% time that allows them to work on a side project one day a week. It’s how Carol Smith came to manage their Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program over 5 years ago. That, and learning about the job from the program manager at the time, Leslie Hawthorn, who later left Google in 2010, opening up the job for Smith.

  • BSD

    • DragonFlyBSD Updates Its ACPICA Implementation

      DragonFlyBSD developers have updated their ACPI power management implementation against Intel’s ACPICA code as of yesterday.

      With this commit pushed out today, it syncs the ACPICA code in the DragonFlyBSD kernel against Intel’s newest reference code. This contains the first part of upstream DragonFlyBSD support, the Windows 10 _OSI string was added, printf issue fixes, and other changes.

      Details on the ACPI Component Architecture can be found at ACPICA.org.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Greece holds public consultation on re-opening of national TV network

      The Greek government has held a three-day public consultation on the re-opening of the public TV channel ERT. The consultation was opened on the national open government portal, opengov.gr, on March 9 and closed on March 12 at 10.00. In total, 583 comments were added by Greek citizens.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • New South Wales Attacks Researchers Who Found Internet Voting Vulnerabilities

      A security flaw in New South Wales’ Internet voting system may have left as many as 66,000 votes vulnerable to interception and manipulation in a recent election, according to security researchers. Despite repeated assurances from the Electoral Commission that all Internet votes are “fully encrypted and safeguarded,” six days into online voting, Michigan Computer Science Professor J. Alex Halderman and University of Melbourne Research Fellow Vanessa Teague discovered a FREAK flaw that could allow an attacker to intercept votes and inject their own code to change those votes, all without leaving any trace of the manipulation. (FREAK stands for Factoring RSA Export Keys and refers to the exploitation of a weakness in the SSL/TLS protocol that allows attackers to force browsers to use weak encryption keys.) But instead of taking the researchers’ message to heart, officials instead attacked the messengers.

    • as always bundling fixes is bad

      I figure 24 hours is about the amount of time it takes from a security patch to be released until weaponized exploits show up. After that, if you’re not patched, you’re living dangerously, depending on the nature of the bug. Bundling new features with a high risk of regression with security fixes means users wait to upgrade.

      The iOS 8.3 update is 280MB. It can’t even be downloaded over the air, only via wifi. Security patches are important enough that they should always be made available separately. Then I could download them, even OTA, without fear of regression.

      What aggravates me most is that this is business as usual. As always. We’re training people not to patch. Users should be embarrassed to admit they’re running unpatched software; instead it’s regarded as the prudent choice.

    • Google Lets SMTP Certificate Expire

      The certificate was issued by Google Internet Certificate Authority G2, which issues digital certificates for Google web sites and properties.

    • Data security warning after conference breach

      Experts have repeated conference data security warnings after it was revealed the personal details of thousands of conference delegates may have been leaked in Australia after a data breach.

    • Linux Australia gets pwned, rooted, RATted and botted

      Linux Australia had a bit of a nightmare Easter Weekend.

      While the rest of us were loafing at the beach, the Penguinistas from Down Under were owning up to a pretty extensive cyberintrusion.

      The team has published a decent document setting out what happened, and it went something like this:

      Crooks broke into the organisation’s Conference Management server.
      Crooks got root on the server.
      Crooks installed a remote access Trojan (RAT) for later.
      Crooks rebooted the server and activated the RAT.
      Crooks “logged in” again and installed zombie malware, also known as a bot.
      While the crooks had access, a conference database backup took place to the server.

      Ironically, the backup that was intended to deliver one leg of the “security trinity” (availability) ended up hurting one of the other legs (confidentiality).

    • 2FA with (Free) IPA. The good, the bad and the ugly

      All your systems are Fedora 21, RHEL 7.1 or Ubuntu 14.02 all is working fine as the included SSSD is new enough to handle 2FA. All kerberized services can be used with 2FA w/o logging in again during the validity of your Kerberos ticket. Very convenient, very secure.

      [...]

      2FA works well, convenient and secure in a datacenter and office environment. Notebooks are fine as well as long as there is a network connection available. The mobile world (Smartphones and Tablets) is not yet ready for 2FA. Some issues can be worked around (with some drawbacks) while others render 2FA not usable at all (offline usage).

      Hopefully there will be some smart solutions available for mobile usage soon, as mobile usage causes the most of the security headaches.

    • Thursday’s security updates

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Real Nuclear Threat in the Middle East

      This is something out of Alice in Wonderland. The Islamic Republic of Iran, born in 1979, has not attacked another country. (With U.S. help, Iraq attacked Iran in 1980.) In contrast, Israel has attacked its Arab neighbors several times its founding, including two devastating invasions and a long occupation of Lebanon, not to mention repeated onslaughts in the Gaza Strip and the military occupation of the West Bank. Israel has also repeatedly threatened war against Iran and engaged in covert and proxy warfare, including the assassination of scientists. Even with Iran progressing toward a nuclear agreement, Israel (like the United States) continues to threaten Iran.

    • NRA Annual Meeting To Enmesh Gun Extremism With GOP Presidential Hopefuls
    • Pakistan court says former CIA station chief will face charges over drone strike

      The former head of the CIA in Pakistan should be tried for murder and waging war against the country, a high court judge ruled on Tuesday.

      Criminal charges against Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, were ordered in relation to a December 2009 attack by a US drone which reportedly killed at least three people.

    • Pakistani Court Orders Ex-C.I.A. Officials Charged Over 2009 Drone Strike

      A Pakistani court on Tuesday ordered criminal charges to be filed against a former C.I.A. station chief and a former C.I.A. lawyer over a 2009 drone strike that killed two people.

    • 560 dead amid fears of humanitarian collapse in Yemen

      As tons of desperately needed medical supplies await clearance to be flown into Yemen, aid workers warned Tuesday of an unfolding humanitarian crisis, saying at least 560 people, including dozens of children, have been killed, mostly in a Saudi-led air campaign and battles between Shiite rebels and forces loyal to the embattled president.

      More than 1,700 people have been wounded and another 100,000 have fled their homes as fighting intensified over the past three weeks, the World Health Organization said.

    • Al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen exploits chaos to rebuild, officials say

      The CIA’s drone base in the rippled surface of the Saudi Arabian desert has undergone major renovations over the past few years. Satellite imagery shows dozens of additions that appear to include living quarters, a new clamshell hangar for hiding aircraft and neat rows of freshly planted palm trees.

    • The Unreal Secrecy About Drone Killings

      Last year, after concluding that many passages in the document “no longer merited secrecy,” the Second Circuit published a redacted version of the Justice Department’s July 2010 Office of Legal Council memo that approved the “targeted killing” of Anwar al-Aulaqi. The court’s view was that government officials had already disclosed much of the information they were trying to withhold. In speeches, media interviews, and congressional testimony, officials had acknowledged the government’s role in the strike that killed al-Aulaqi, explained the purported legal basis for the strike, and invoked still-secret OLC memos to reassure the public that the strike was lawful. Having done all of this, the court said, the government couldn’t plausibly claim that the entirety of the July 2010 memo was still secret, and it couldn’t lawfully withhold the entirety of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act.

      From one perspective, the Second Circuit’s ruling was a victory for transparency. Human rights groups and media organizations had been calling for the release of the legal memos underlying the targeted-killing program; thanks to the Second Circuit’s ruling, one of those memos — arguably the most important one — was made public. From another perspective, the court’s ruling wasn’t very significant at all. The ruling didn’t expose secrets. By its own terms, it exposed facts and legal analysis that had already been disclosed.

    • Government’s Assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki Used “Significantly Different” EO 12333 Analysis

      Jameel Jaffer has a post on the government’s latest crazy-talk in the ongoing ACLU and NYT effort to liberate more drone memos. He describes how — in the government’s response to their appeal of the latest decisions on the Anwar al-Awlaki FOIA — the government claims the Court’s release of an OLC memo does not constitute official release of that memo. (Note, I wouldn’t be surprised if the government is making this claim in anticipation of orders to release torture pictures in ACLU’s torture FOIA suit that’s about to head to the 2nd Circuit.)

      But there’s another interesting aspect of that brief. It provides heavily redacted discussion of the things Judge Colleen McMahon permitted the government to withhold. But it makes it clear that one of those things is a March 2002 OLC memo that offers different analysis about the assassination ban than the analysis used to kill Anwar al-Awlaki.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Julian Assange on the NSA, Edward Snowden and the Fight Against Government Surveillance

      The AMA saw Assange fielding questions alongside Sarah Harrison, Renata Avila and Andy Müller-Maguhn, who were all representing the Courage Foundation, an organization which runs the official defense funds of whistleblowers. Assange spoke of how he believes the NSA leaks impacted society and its relationship with the government, along with outlining his thoughts on how the public can help protect whistleblowers, and offering his opinion on whether or not the average Joe’s and Jane’s can have any influence on how the government operates in regards to the privacy of its citizens.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Gatwick oil find ‘could produce billions of barrels’

      An oilfield near Gatwick airport could hold up to 100bn barrels of oil, according to a British exploration firm, in possibly the biggest onshore oil discovery in England since the 1980s.

      UK Oil and Gas Investments revealed it had found a “world-class potential resource” after drilling 3,000ft below ground in West Sussex. However, UKOG said only 3-15% of the total would be recovered, based on similar finds in the US.

    • As Colombian Oil Money Flowed To Clintons, State Department Took No Action To Prevent Labor Violations

      For union organizers in Colombia, the dangers of their trade were intensifying. When workers at the country’s largest independent oil company staged a strike in 2011, the Colombian military rounded them up at gunpoint and threatened violence if they failed to disband, according to human rights organizations. Similar intimidation tactics against the workers, say labor leaders, amounted to an everyday feature of life.

  • Finance

    • Hollywood Swinging Hard for Trans-Pacific Partnership

      Hollywood moguls and the vast majority of leftist entertainers have joined forces in a last-ditch effort to bully wavering Democratic lawmakers into backing President Obama’s fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the centerpiece of what he calls his “pro-trade agenda.”

    • WikiLeaks Disclosure Shows U.S. Airlines Received Billions in Subsidies

      WikiLeaks did more than expose governmental eavesdropping and foreign policy blunders: A 2009 data dump is shedding new light on the spat between Delta, United, and American and the three largest Gulf carriers over government subsidies and Open Skies agreements.

      The Business Travel Coalition, which backs retaining Open Skies agreements and is seeking to counter the U.S. carriers’ charges that Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad received $42 billion in unfair government subsidies, uncovered a U.S. congressional report, disclosed by WikiLeaks in 2009, that documents how U.S. aviation, including commercial airlines, the FAA, and airports, received $155 billion in federal direct spending from 1918 to 1998.

    • Op-Ed: What you don’t know about the Transpacific Partnership
    • What happens to democracy in a cashless society?

      Last month I was asked to speak at a conference in the City of London on the ethical issues surrounding new payment systems. The audience was packed with people working on innovative things like payment apps for smart phones and ‘contactless payments,’ where you can just wave a card or a phone over a terminal.

      Their new financial technologies are rapidly changing the way we pay for everything. This may be convenient, but as wand-waving and other high-tech alternatives to cash become the only ways to pay for anything, what happens if the wand loses its magic? What are the costs of becoming entirely dependent on technology in a cashless society?

      [...]

      This uncertainty is related to a second issue—that of anti-competitive practices. Visa and Mastercard already account for over 80 percent of the credit card market worldwide, and well over 90 per cent in many countries. The Financial Times refers to this situation as “a well-protected oligopoly” and so, for them, a good investment. Yet it also represents a hitherto unimaginable degree of control over the means of payment. Even if policies are adopted to diversify this market or—if that doesn’t work—to break up these oligopolies directly, such unprecedented levels of control raise a third area of concern in the form of peoples’ rights to privacy.

    • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

      • Three Fake Myths–and Two Actual Ones–About TPP Trade Pact

        The proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are doing everything they can to try to push their case as they prepare for the fast-track vote before Congress this month. Roger Altman, a Wall Street investment banker and former Clinton administration Treasury official, weighed with a New York Times column, co-authored by Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

        They begin by giving us three “myths”–all of which happen to be accurate depictions of reality. The first “myth” is that trade agreements have hurt US manufacturing workers and thereby the labor market more generally. Altman and Haas cite work by MIT economist David Autor showing that trade with China has reduced manufacturing employment by 21 percent, but then assert that the problem is trade not trade agreements.

      • Hillary Clinton hires a Google exec as the first woman to manage technology for a presidential campaign

        Hillary Clinton is betting that if Stephanie Hannon can handle natural disasters, she can certainly handle a controversial presidential campaign.

        Hannon, Google’s director or product management, has left the Internet giant to take over as the chief technology officer for Clinton’s still unannounced presidential campaign.

      • Clinton Hires Google Exec As Chief Tech Officer – WikiLeaks Shows Us Why

        Hillary Clinton has hired Stephanie Hannon, Google’s director of product management for civic innovation and social impact, as chief technology officer for her potential presidential campaign, fueling accusations from Julian Assange that Google is in bed with the US government.

  • Privacy

    • The FBI used to recommend encryption. Now they want to ban it

      The FBI wants to make us all less safe. At least that’s the implication from FBI director Jim Comey’s push to ban unbreakable encryption and deliberately weaken everyone’s security. And it’s past time that the White House makes its position clear once and for all.

      Comey was back before Congress this week – this time in front of the House Appropriations Committee – imploring Congressmen to pass a law that would force tech companies to create a backdoor in any phone or communications tool that uses encryption.

    • U.S. directs federal agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

      A DEA official said, “Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It’s decades old, a bedrock concept.”

    • Facebook’s Deepface Software Has Gotten Them in Deep Trouble

      In a Chicago court, several Facebook users filed a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant for allegedly violating its users’ privacy rights to acquire the largest privately held stash of biometric face-recognition data in the world.

      The court documents reveal claims that “Facebook began violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (IBIPA) of 2008 in 2010, in a purported attempt to make the process of tagging friends easier.”

    • A chat client which protects you from NSA’s snooping

      Have you been trying to convince friends and family to use encryption in light on the NSA revelations and had little success? Otr.to is a newly released web based chat client that requires no installation and offers OTR encryption via JavaScript libraries. With no installs necessary, sending encrypted messages to your least technical friends should be a lot less challenging.

    • Ajusto app that watches your driving habits leads to privacy concerns

      Desjardins Insurance has launched a smartphone app that tracks driver behaviour in return for the promise of substantial savings on car insurance, the first of its type in Canada, the company says.

    • The Woman Who Hacked Hollywood

      It’s been almost ten years since Laura Poitras’ name has been on the NSA Watch List. Every time she returns to her home country, security agents wait for her, somewhere between the gate of the plane and the US Immigration booth. They take her away to a room, confiscate her gear, her notebooks, and her videos. They question her and copy her hard drives. This has happened to her at least forty times since 2006.

    • Aboard Flights, Conflicts Over Seat Assignments and Religion

      Francesca Hogi, 40, had settled into her aisle seat for the flight from New York to London when the man assigned to the adjoining window seat arrived and refused to sit down. He said his religion prevented him from sitting beside a woman who was not his wife. Irritated but eager to get underway, she eventually agreed to move.

    • John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden: Pseudo-satire in defense of NSA surveillance

      Comedy host John Oliver conducted an interview with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow recently that was broadcast Sunday on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In the process, Oliver exposed his solidarity with the American state and its vast, illegal spying operations. He took the opportunity of the conversation to come out harshly against Snowden’s decision to leak large quantities of NSA documents.

      Pushing for a confession that his actions were potentially “harmful,” the British-born Oliver demanded to know whether Snowden had personally read every single document contained in the files that the former NSA employee transferred to journalists beginning in the summer of 2013.

      “I have evaluated all of the documents that are in the archive. I do understand what I turned over,” Snowden replied.

      “There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading what’s in the documents. Because when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you’d want to do is read them,” Oliver retorted sarcastically. He went on, “You have to own that. You’re giving documents with information that could be harmful.”

      Oliver repeated the favored arguments of the Obama administration and intelligence establishment to the effect that the preservation of “national security” required the elimination of civil liberties, such as Fourth Amendment protections against arbitrary searches and seizures.

    • CISA Hack of the Day: White House Can Already Share Intelligence with the State Department

      In about 10 days, Congress will take up cyber information sharing bills. And unlike past attempts, these bills are likely to pass.

      That, in spite of the fact that no one has yet explained how they’ll make a significant difference in preventing hacks.

      So I’m going to try to examine roughly one hack a day that immunized swift information sharing between the government and the private sector wouldn’t prevent.

    • The US Gov Can Download the Entire Contents of Your Computer at Border Crossings

      Hundreds of thousands of travelers cross US borders every day. And none of them—save the precious few with diplomatic immunity—have any right to privacy, according to Department of Homeland Security documents recently obtained by MuckRock.

      The US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Privacy Impact Assessment for the Border Searches of Electronic Devices outlines the finer points of border officials’ authority to search the electronic devices of citizens and non-citizens alike crossing the US border. What becomes clear is that this authority has been broadly interpreted to mean that any device brought into or out of the country is subject to the highest level of scrutiny, even when there is no explicit probable cause.

      Based upon little more than the opinion of a single US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer, any device can be searched and its contents read. With approval from a supervisor, the device can be seized, its contents copied in full, or both.

    • Fixing the FISA Court by Fixing FISA: A Response to Carrie Cordero

      Finally, we must briefly push back on Carrie’s statement that “changing FISA’s standard to a ‘significant purpose’ . . . has been overwhelmingly understood as an important substantive correction.” We may be traveling in somewhat different circles, but that hasn’t been our experience. Rather, among colleagues in our field, this change is widely viewed as the moment in which FISA became an existential threat to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in ordinary criminal cases. The “correction” that’s needed is to restore the primary purpose test.

    • Stop making the NSA the bogeyman of privacy

      I mention this because a lot of people seem concerned that the “cyber threat sharing” bills in congress (CISA/CISPA) will divulge private information to the NSA. This is nonsense. The issue is private information exposed to the FBI and other domestic agencies. It’s the FBI, ATF, or DEA that will come break down your door and arrest you, not the NSA.

    • U.S.: Azano Is a Supervillain … Who We Let Deal Surveillance Equipment

      Federal prosecutors have portrayed wealthy Mexican businessman José Susumo Azano Matsura as a supervillain who was always one step ahead of the law. For two decades, prosecutors said, federal agents investigated Azano for drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion and tax fraud to no avail before he was popped last year on charges he illegally donated to San Diego politicians.

      But the relationship between Azano and the U.S. government is more complicated than the Justice Department has let on.

    • Senate creating secret encyclopedia of US spy programs following Merkel eavesdrop disclosure

      Trying to get a handle on hundreds of sensitive, closely held surveillance programs, a Senate committee is compiling a secret encyclopedia of American intelligence collection. It’s part of an effort to improve congressional oversight of the government’s sprawling global spying effort.

      Sen. Dianne Feinstein launched the review in October 2013, after a leak by former National Security Agency systems administrator Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone. Four months earlier, Snowden had revealed the existence of other programs that vacuumed up Americans’ and foreigners’ phone call records and electronic communications.

      “We’re trying right now to look at every intelligence program,” Feinstein told The Associated Press. “There are hundreds of programs we have found … sprinkled all over. Many people in the departments don’t even know (they) are going on.”

      Feinstein and other lawmakers say they were fully briefed about the most controversial programs leaked by Snowden, the NSA’s collection of American phone records and the agency’s access to U.S. tech company accounts in targeting foreigners through its PRISM program. Those programs are conducted under acts of Congress, supervised by a secret federal court.

    • Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

      A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

      Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

    • Baltimore police often surveil cellphones amid US secrecy

      The Baltimore Police Department has used secretive cellphone surveillance equipment 4,300 times and believes it is under orders by the U.S. government to withhold evidence from criminal trials and ignore subpoenas in cases where the device is used, a police detective testified Wednesday.

      The unusual testimony in a criminal case marked a rare instance when details have been revealed about the surveillance devices, which the Obama administration has aggressively tried to keep secret. Citing security reasons, the government has intervened in routine state public-records cases and criminal trials, and has advised police not to disclose details.

    • Why Don’t Surveillance State Defenders Seem To Care That The Programs They Love Don’t Work?

      He also details some of the over-inflated claims of other surveillance programs in the past — all of which were later shown to be false. But, the article doesn’t really attempt to answer the question — just raise it. In the past, we’ve noticed that the entire concept of a cost-benefit analysis seems antithetical to the way the surveillance state does business. But why is that?

    • Baltimore PD Has Deployed Stingray Devices Over 4,300 Times, Instructed By FBI To Withhold Info From Courts

      Say what you will about the Baltimore PD and its cell tower spoofers (like… “It would rather let accused criminals go than violate its [bogus] non-disclosure agreement with the FBI…” or “It hides usage of these devices behind pen register/trap and trace warrants and then argues the two collection methods are really the same thing…”), but at least it’s making sure the hundreds of thousands of dollars it’s spent on the technology isn’t going to waste.

  • Civil Rights

    • To Catch a Torturer: My 28-Year Pursuit of Racist Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge

      On February 13, 2015, former Chicago Police Commander Jon G. Burge was released from federal custody, having served a little less than four years of his four-and-a-half year sentence for lying under oath about whether he tortured scores of African-American men during his time as commander. Less than a week before, I sat across from him in a small room in Tampa, Florida, questioning him, pursuant to a court order, yet again about his role in a torture case—this time, the case of Alonzo Smith, who was repeatedly suffocated with a plastic bag and beaten with a rubber nightstick in the basement of the Area 2 police station by two of Burge’s most violent henchmen after Burge informed him that they “would get him to talk, one way or another.”

    • Media Were Already Running With Police Fantasy When Video Exploded It

      The New York Times (4/7/15) released a video of a black South Carolina man Walter Scott being shot, casually and without apparent mercy, eight times in the back by white police officer Michael T. Slager. The media’s outrage after the video’s publication was righteous and swift. The state of South Carolina followed suit, filing murder charges against Slager. Indeed, the video offers no ambiguity whatsoever:

    • South Carolina Officer Is Charged With Murder of Walter Scott

      A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.

      The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.

    • O’Reilly Cherry-Picks Debunked Statistics To Downplay Racial Disparities In Police Shootings

      Bill O’Reilly cited debunked statistics to claim that more white than black Americans are killed by police officers in the wake of the fatal South Carolina police shooting of an unarmed black man.

      A police officer was charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 7, as reported by The New York Times. The Times noted that “the shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.”

    • Time Peddles Old Stereotypes With Op-Ed on Iranian ‘Carpet Merchants’

      This series of ethnic stereotypes becomes Oren’s whole prism for interpreting the negotiations, which are “an ideal example of how not to buy a Middle Eastern carpet.” He argues: “The Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany could have offered the lowest possible price as their final bid—take it or leave it. Iran would have had little choice but to sell the carpet.”

      When the US and its negotiating partners “recogniz[ed] the Islamic Republic’s right to enrich and to maintain its nuclear facilities,” Oren scolds: “The haggling had scarcely begun and already the merchant profited.” Actually, the right to a peaceful nuclear program was guaranteed to Iran when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (FAIR Blog, 4/8/13), but there isn’t really a stereotype that involves the customers of a “merchant” agreeing to respect international law.

    • Violated At The Airport By TSA Thug Sharonda Juana Walker (not sure on the spelling of “Sharonda”)

      There’s not an ounce of probable cause to search me at the airport — as I was today at LAX. To violate my body. To touch my breasts. To grope my hair. To have the blue latex-gloved hand of Sharonda Juana Walker, feel inside my turtleneck.

      And no, I don’t go through the scanners, and the metal detector line wasn’t an option at just before 7 a.m., when I got to the airport to leave for…no, not an ISIS meet-and-greet but an evolutionary psychology conference in Boston. Apparently, the sparse traffic at the airport at this hour leaves them plenty of time to feel up travelers.

    • Walter Scott shooting witness Feidin Santana reveals how he captured the video that saw police officer Michael Slager arrested

      The witness hailed as a hero for capturing the shooting of Walter Scott on camera has come forward to speak publicly about the incident for the first time.

      Identified by NBC News as Feidin Santana, the man whose video made headlines around the world described the “emotional” moment he handed his vital evidence over to the Scott family.

      Mr Santana’s video showed 33-year-old Officer Michael Slager shooting Mr Scott in the back as he runs away, and the witness said he only came forward when the police’s version of events – that Mr Scott had seized control of the officer’s Taser – appeared in the media.

    • Don’t ask why Walter Scott ran, ask why he was killed in cold blood: opinion

      Anyone with a sliver of vision and a shred of morality can see this.

      South Carolina Patrolman Michael Slager cowardly hid behind his badge when he claimed he felt threatened by Scott after pulling him over for a faulty brake light. Slager alleged that Scott reached for the officer’s stun gun and his life was in danger – Slager said he had no other option but to kill Scott.

      Slager lied. Video evidence does not.

      That video showed the world that the real victim was Scott, who was shot in the back as he attempted to run from Slager. And the real criminal is Slager, a man who resorted to lethal force after a mere traffic stop.

      The facts are clear-cut and the video evidence is undeniable. So why do I keep hearing this statement?

    • Video of Shooting Caught Police Propaganda Machine in Action

      A video supplied to The New York Times, showing the shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott at the hands of a South Carolina police officer, appears on first viewing to be the latest example of an unarmed black person killed unnecessarily by a white cop.

      But it’s so much more than that. Because three days elapsed between the shooting and the publication of the video of the shooting, the Scott incident became an illuminating case study in the routinized process through which police officers, departments and attorneys frame the use of deadly force by American cops in the most sympathetic possible terms, often claiming fear of the very people they killed. In the days after the shooting, the police version of events — an utterly typical example of the form — was trotted out, only to be sharply contradicted when the video surfaced. In most cases like this, there is no video, no definitive, undisputed record of much of what happened, and thus no way to rebut inaccurate statements by the police.

    • DEA Global Surveillance Dragnet Exposed; Access to Data Likely Continues

      Secret mass surveillance conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is falling under renewed scrutiny after fresh revelations about the broad scope of the agency’s electronic spying.

    • Former F.B.I. Agent Sues, Claiming Retaliation Over Misgivings in Anthrax Case

      When Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist, took a fatal overdose of Tylenol in 2008, the government declared that he had been responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which killed five people and set off a nationwide panic, and closed the case.

      Now, a former senior F.B.I. agent who ran the anthrax investigation for four years says that the bureau gathered “a staggering amount of exculpatory evidence” regarding Dr. Ivins that remains secret. The former agent, Richard L. Lambert, who spent 24 years at the F.B.I., says he believes it is possible that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax mailer, but he does not think prosecutors could have convicted him had he lived to face criminal charges.

      In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Tennessee last Thursday, Mr. Lambert accused the bureau of trying “to railroad the prosecution of Ivins” and, after his suicide, creating “an elaborate perception management campaign” to bolster its claim that he was guilty. Mr. Lambert’s lawsuit accuses the bureau and the Justice Department of forcing his dismissal from a job as senior counterintelligence officer at the Energy Department’s lab in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in retaliation for his dissent on the anthrax case.

    • Times Of Israel Scrubs Another Pro-Genocide Post Against Palestinians

      It was a nasty kind of deja vu at the Times of Israel on Thursday after the website caused an uproar by publishing and then removing an op-ed calling for the mass murder of Palestinians.

    • How St. Louis Police Robbed My Family of $1000 (and How I’m Trying To Get It Back)

      On a late spring evening eight years ago, police pulled over my mother’s 1997 Oldsmobile Aurora, in the suburb of St. Ann, Missouri, as she raced to pick up a relative from St. Louis’s Lambert International Airport. “Do you know why I stopped you?” the officer asked. “No I don’t,” my mother answered. The police charged her with speeding, but she did not receive a mere ticket. Instead, an officer ran my mother’s name and told her that since she had failed to appear in court for driving without a license, there was a six-year-old warrant out for her arrest. “I just started crying. I couldn’t believe it,” my mother said. The police arrested her and hauled her off to St. Louis County Jail, where authorities eventually allowed her one phone call, which she placed to my stepfather. He said, shaking his head, “I was surprised because I knew she didn’t have no warrants.”

    • Sweden keeps ban on spontaneous dancing

      Spontaneous dancing remains outlawed in Sweden except in venues with special “dance licences” after a majority in parliament voted down a move to free the feet.

    • Dick Cheney Gets Judy Miller to Serve as His Cut-Out, Again

      Particularly given that the only question of those I posed for my book that Miller did not answer was whether she saw Cheney on the trip to Aspen that she used to explain Scooter Libby’s Aspen letter, I find her admission that she did and does speak to Cheney — though had not, about the war — telling. (Remember, too, that Cheney did not release journalists he had spoken to to reveal him as a source in the way everyone else in the Executive Branch did.)

      Miller goes on to present a nonsense story about how Fitzgerald misled her and caused her to testify incorrectly, falsely testifying to the grand jury that Libby had told her Plame was at the CIA back in June. It doesn’t make sense — and doesn’t do anything to undermine the other evidence that would have been sufficient to convict Libby, notably Libby’s own notes and David Addington’s testimony as well as a second, far more important, meeting between Libby and Miller just days before Novak outed Plame.

      Maybe Miller just has no fucking clue what got presented at the trial?

      But having presented a flimsy excuse to question the verdict against Libby, Miller has presented others with an opportunity to point to another detail she includes in her book: that Fitzgerald offered to drop the charges against Libby if he would testify against Cheney. Again, that’s not surprising. Libby’s lies served to cover up Cheney’s orders to leak stuff to Judy Miller (not in the meeting she newly focuses on, but in the meeting during the week of Novak’s article).

    • America’s glaring double standard on terror: Why the Tsarnaev conviction is another black eye for Gitmo

      “Did the use of pressure cooker bombs,” the jury in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial was asked in several different ways on Wednesday afternoon, “cause the death of Martin Richard?”

      “Yes,” the jury declared Tsarnaev’s guilt in the murder of Richard, the 8-year old boy watching the race from the finish line killed in Tsarnaev’s attack on the Boston Marathon two years ago. “Yes,” the jury said, over and over. The jury gave the same response when asked about Tsarnaev’s responsibility for killing Lingzi Lu, a Boston University statistics student; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year old restaurant manager; and Sean Collier, an MIT cop, all of whom he and his brother killed. The jury found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts against him.

    • Desmond Tutu Calls for Justice for Jeffrey Sterling, Citing Petraeus Deal

      Last month, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote a letter to Leonie Brinkema, the judge in the Jeffrey Sterling trial, calling on her to prove cynicism wrong in her sentencing of Sterling. The letter was docketed this week.

    • Whistleblower Watchdogs Ask President to Remove Zinsler

      We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to urge you to remove the Department of Commerce’s Inspector General, Todd Zinser. Through his actions both before his appointment as IG and since, Mr. Zinser has proven that he is not fit for the position.

      IGs are supposed to root out fraud, waste, and abuse—a job they would not be able to do without whistleblowers. If there is anyone in government who should understand the importance of utilizing and protecting whistleblowers, it is an IG.

      This is why it is particularly worrisome that there have been multiple allegations and investigations of Mr. Zinser’s own retaliation against whistleblowers. A 2013 report by the Office of Special Counsel found that Mr. Zinser had shielded two top deputies charged with threatening two employees with retaliation if they blew the whistle on mismanagement at the Commerce IG’s office.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Big Media Companies Insist That VPN Services Violate Copyright Law

        Back during the SOPA fight, in a discussion with someone who was working with the politicians pushing SOPA, I pointed out that such a law would encourage much more encryption — and the response was “that’s no problem, because we’ll just ban encryption next.” As stupid and impossible as such a statement is, it shows the mindset of some copyright extremists. Thus, it should be no surprise that they’re actually starting down just such a path in New Zealand. As we noted last year, Kiwi ISPs, frustrated that their users kept running up against geoblocks, have started offering VPN services that get around geoblocks as a standard feature there. Basically, this is nothing more than a recognition that the internet really is global and attempts to pretend otherwise are pretty fruitless.

04.08.15

Links 8/4/2015: SalentOS 14.04.2, XFS in Fedora Server 22

Posted in News Roundup at 4:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Linux Setup – Carla Schroder, OwnCloud/Writer

    I adore Linux because I can do what I want on it. My first PC way back in 1994ish was an Apple something. It was fun, and then I got an IBM PC running Windows 3,1 and DOS 5. Windows was useless, so I spent a lot of time in DOS. Then I learned about Linux and never looked back. And Windows is still useless, and Apple is too confining. They both have their little walled gardens, and their primary purpose is lock-in and to keep selling you junk whether you want it or not, and whether or not it’s any good. They think they retain ownership of your stuff that you have purchased, which is a concept that needs to die.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • A conversation with Gene Kim on DevOps, waterfall development, and containers

      Gene Kim: It’s called “The DevOps Cookbook,” and it was actually supposed to come out before “The Phoenix Project.” The goal of the book is to put into context the cultural norms, principles, and observed patterns in high-performing organizations that enable fast flow of features from dev to ops while preserving world-class reliability and stability. For me, I think the big surprise three years into this project is that it’s as much about organizational learning as it is about key performance measures.

    • CoreOS moves tectonic plates, Docker may feel earthquakes

      Cloud is the next big front for some serious tech warfare and CoreOS just got the much needed ammunition.

      First things first. CoreOS is a company that offers a solution with the same name. And this solution is an extremely light and minimalistic operating system based on Google’s Chrome OS (or you can also call it a fork).

  • Kernel Space

    • Linus Tovalds Talks About Git and Why the Linux Kernel Needed It

      Linus Torvalds is mostly known for developing the Linux kernel, but he’s also the one who made Git, the distributed revision control system that’s used today for numerous projects, including the kernel. The project just turned ten years old, and Linus made some comments about this fact.

    • Git Success Stories and Tips from Qt Maintainer Thiago Macieira

      Git has come a long way in the 10 years since Linux creator Linus Torvalds released the first version of the now-popular distributed revision control system. For example, the addition of pull requests came three years after the original release, according to Atlassian. And over time it has added more collaboration tools, code review tools, integration to continuous integration systems, and more, recalls Qt Project core maintainer and software architect at Intel, Thiago Macieira.

    • OpenDaylight Developer Spotlight: Radhika Hirannaiah

      Radhika Hirannaiah, is currently working as an intern at OpenDaylight. She received a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State University in 2014. Her interests include Software Defined Networking (OpenFlow, OpenDaylight etc), Voice over IP, wireless and working on open source software projects.

    • Systemd Adds Reboot To EFI Firmware Option

      Systemd’s logind and systemctl components have added support for rebooting to the EFI firmware setup. Running systemctl –firmware-setup (or accessing via systemd’s logind interfaces) will cause the system’s firmware UEFI setup utility to show at next boot as another alternative to just hitting DEL/F2 at boot time or newer distributions that add a boot menu entry to GRUB2 for EFI firmware configuration. Of course, this will only work for newer systems that were originally booted in the EFI mode.

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Linux 4.0 Hard Drive Comparison With EXT4 / Btrfs / XFS / NTFS / NILFS2 / ReiserFS

        It’s been a while since last running any Linux file-system tests on a hard drive considering all of the test systems around here are using solid-state storage and only a few systems commissioned in the Linux benchmarking test farm are using hard drives, but with Linux 4.0 around the corner, here’s a six-way file-system comparison on Linux 4.0 with a HDD using EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and even NTFS, NILFS2, and ReiserFS.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Enlightenment EFL 1.14.0 Alpha 1

      The Enlightenment crew at Samsung have released their first alpha version of the upcoming EFL 1.14.0 library set.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • NetworkManagerQt 0.9.8.4 is out

        NetworkManagerQt is officially a Frameworks now. As a consequence the repository has been renamed from libnm-qt to networkmanager-qt and NMQt version number now follows Frameworks version number (currently 5.8.0).

      • Plasma Sprint 2015

        In February 2015 the Plasma developers met in the Blue Systems office in Barcelona to discuss and plan out where we would take Plasma over the duration of the next year. The sprint consisted of active Plasma developers and visual designers from around the world, from Canada to India.

      • digiKam 5.0 Is Being Ported to KDE Frameworks 5, to Be Released in July 2015

        The digiKam development team has announced a few hours ago, on April 7, the immediate availability for download of the digiKam Software Collection 4.9.0 image viewer and organizer application for the KDE desktop environment.

      • digiKam 4.9.0 Released
      • Plasma Theme Explorer
      • Plasma-nm 0.9.3.6 release

        We have released another plasma-nm version for KDE 4. It’s possible that this release will be the last one, because every distribution is now switching to Plasma 5 and given our irregular releases it’s possible that current distributions wouldn’t pickup the updated version anyway. I’ll keep backporting fixes from Plasma 5 to our KDE 4 branch if possible, so if you want to keep running on KDE 4 from some reason, you will still have a way how to get at least some fixes. There is also a new release of networkmanager-qt for KDE 4, which is required for below mentioned OpenConnect fixes.

      • Looking At Building The Linux Kernel With -O3 Optimizations

        A Linux user has started an LKML discussion over compiling the kernel with -O3 for driving performance improvements out of a more-optimized kernel binary.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GTK+ 3.16.1 Improves Client-Side Decorations Without a Compositor, Fixes Over 25 Bugs

        The GTK+ development team has announced the immediate availability for download of the first maintenance release of the GTK+ 3.16 GUI toolkit used in the GNOME 3.16 desktop environment.

      • GNOME 3.16

        GNOME 3.16 was released last week and is the result of more than 30000 commits by over 1000 persons, I am always impressed by those numbers, thank you all!

      • GNOME’s GTK+ Finally Getting Close To Dropping Windows XP Support

        GNOME/GTK+ developers are finally preparing themselves to drop support for Microsoft Windows XP.

        While Microsoft no longer offers public support for Windows XP and most modern software has done away with XP support, GNOME’s tool-kit continues to support Windows going back to XP. It’s been discussed before about dropping XP and this discussion has resurrected once again.

  • Distributions

    • Material Design Inspired Papyros Still Alive, Looks Gorgeous

      Papyros is a new Linux distribution designed around a Material Design framework, and it promises to be one of the most interesting releases in the Linux ecosystem. After a month that brought no news about its progress, the devs explained that the project is not dead, but alive and kicking.

    • Update, OS to Soon Switch to Ubuntu 15.04 Base

      Ubuntu developers are preparing to launch the last OTA update for the current branch of Ubuntu Touch RTM, and they are also working to change the base of the system to 15.04 (Vivid Vervet).

    • Reviews

      • An Everyday Linux Review Of openSUSE 13.2

        There are people out there that will want all of the verbose options, giving access to every available installation option but maybe there could be a general installer and a custom installer to make it easier for the masses.

      • Looking into the Void distribution

        Void is an independent distribution and offers a rolling release approach to package management. There are many Void editions we can download. There are Void images for the BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi computers along with builds for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines. In addition, there are spins of Void for specific desktop environments and we can download images for Cinnamon, Enlightenment, MATE and Xfce flavours. I decided to begin my trial with the 64-bit Cinnamon build of Void. The download for the Cinnamon image is 454MB in size.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Slackware Family

      • KDE 4.14.3 now also for Slackware 14.1

        The set has been spiced up with the latest Long Term Support (LTS) sources that I took from KDE Applications 14.12.3, specifically the newest versions of kde-workspace, kdelibs and kdepim. Essentially, I have used the exact same sources from which I built my KDE 4.14.3 packages for Slackware-current before.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Scientific Linux 7.1 to Be Unveiled on April 13, Release Candidate 2 Out Now

        Pat Riehecky from the Scientific Linux development team has announced today, April 7, the immediate availability for download and testing of the second and last Release Candidate (RC) version of the forthcoming Scientific Linux 7.1 operating system.

      • 2015 Red Hat Summit Announced

        Besides the speeches, 170 1-hour breakout sessions are planned. Breakout sessions are presentations by industry experts on topical issues. Some speakers include Thomas Cameron, John Shakshober, and Matt Hicks. A Partner Pavillion will be open showcasing many of Red Hat’s partners and their wares. Labs will let attendees test out Red Hat’s latest tech. For those wanting still more add-ons include in-depth training courses with expert instructors and certification exams in Red Hat OpenStack. Developers can attend DevNation for “a week of keynotes, technical sessions, BoFs, evening programming events, and more” with folks from some of the top tech companies around.

      • Red Hat channel chief: Time to build an open source practice

        Speaking to ChannelBuzz.ca ahead of the company’s North American Partner Conference here, Mark Enzweiler, senior vice president of global channel sales and alliances at Red Hat, described a shift in the conversation his company and its partners are having with their customers. Gone are the days of convincing customers that open source is “for real” in the enterprise. Now everybody’s got an opinion on open source – not just Linux, but other major projects as well, most notably OpenStack. Now, they want to know more, and that means partners have to know more.

      • Fedora

        • Details Of DNF Succeeding Yum In Fedora 22 Still Being Discussed

          DNF is the next-generation Yum and after being available for the past few Fedora releases, with Fedora 22 it’s ready for prime-time. Kevin Fenzi last week started a mailing list thread about dnf replacing yum and dnf-yum. DNF is installed by default as part of the “core” group, DNF-Yum is also installed by default, Yum is still installed so if something still depends directly on it or a user manually wants it, and the Yum RPM package now requires dnf-yum.

        • Fedora Server 22 Is Using The XFS File-System By Default

          Using the XFS file-system as the default within an LVM has been part of the Fedora Server technical spec while with Fedora 22 it’s finally happened. The default layout for Fedora Server 22 installations is using XFS atop LVM while /boot is outside the LVM setup.

    • Debian Family

      • More arm64 hardware for Debian – Applied Micro X-Gene

        As a follow-up to my post about bootstrapping arm64 in Debian, we’ve had more hardware given to Debian for us to use in porting and building packages for arm64. Applied Micro sent me an X-Gene development machine to set up and use. Unfortunately, the timing was unlucky and the machine sat on my desk unopened for a few weeks while I was on long holiday in Australia. Once I was back, I connected it up and got it working. Out of the box, a standard Jessie arm64 installation worked using network boot (dhcp and tftp). I ran through d-i as normal and installed a working system, then handed it over to the DSA and buildd folks to get the machine integrated into our systems. Easy! The machine is now up and running as arm-arm-03.debian.org and has been building packages for a few weeks now. You can see the stats here on the buildd.debian.org site.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Oxide Vulnerabilities Closed in Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

            Canonical revealed details about Oxide vulnerabilities that have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. This update brings a few fixes, but it’s nothing all that important.

          • Ubuntu 15.04 Launches in Two Weeks, Will Be Based on Linux Kernel 3.19.3 After All

            Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is about to be released in a little over two weeks, and the developers have announced that they settled on Linux kernel 3.19.3, a couple of days before the kernel freeze.

          • Unity 7 Improvements Backported from Ubuntu 15.04 to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

            Every once in a while Ubuntu developers made improvements to the Unity desktop environment, but that usually happens for new Ubuntu releases, like 15.04 for example. That doesn’t stop them from porting those improvements to older releases, such as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

          • Firefox 37.0.1 Has Been Added To The Default Repositories Of All The Supported Ubuntu Systems

            Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Firefox 37.0.1 has been recently released, coming with important bug-fixes. Not long after that, Canonical has patched it and added it to the default repositories of all the supported Ubuntu systems.

          • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Gets `Always Show Menus` Unity Feature (Proposed Repository)

            The much requested Unity feature to always show the menus, which is already available in Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet for almost three months, has been backported to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

          • There’s Yet Another Awkward Ubuntu Linux Tablet Announced

            In recent months we’ve covered an Ubuntu tablet with a 1TB hard drive, another sketchy Ubuntu tablet, and other awkward devices looking to ship Ubuntu in tablet/mobile form without any support from Canonical. There’s yet another tablet to talk about today.

          • Mailman Exploit Closed in Ubuntu 14.10

            Details about a Mailman vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS that has been found and fixed were published in a security notice by Canonical.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Ubuntu-Based Nitrux OS Is Now Powered by Linux Kernel 3.19

              Uri Herrera from Nitrux S.A. recently announced the immediate availability of Nitrux OS 4.15 Linux operating system that is currently used in their NXQ mini PC unveiled a couple of months ago.

            • MintBox Mini News

              CompuLab is working hard on the MintBox Mini. SMT (Supervised Manufacturer’s Testing) was done, and they’re now soldering, testing, starting mechanical assembly and packing of the units.

            • Linux Mint 17.2 to Be Named “Rafaela”

              The name of the next Linux Mint 17.2 release has been chosen and it’s going to be “Rafaela.” The project continues with the feminine names, so the new code name should be no surprise.

            • Edubuntu – the Free and Open Source Software Liberian Educators and Policy Makers Should Consider for Liberian Schools

              Ostensibly, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have significantly permeated our society, yet their integration in our educational system has not been achieved. The glaring disparity among students who are ICT literate and those who are not, is evidence of this. Understandably though, there are several priorities and challenges that may be responsible for the slow progress in this area. Fortunately for us, we have a few Liberians in our educational system who possess the dynamism needed to bring significant changes. However, these changes must parallel those of the global community’s. In doing so, we will effectively be eliminating one of the barriers that young Liberians graduating from high school face when they submit applications for employment; the ubiquitous, “must be computer literate” listed as a job requirement. In today’s article, I will discuss how EDUBUNTU, a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), can help us integrate ICTs in schools to achieve some level of equilibrium with regard to basic ICT literacy among Liberian students.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • SMARC module runs Linux on i.MX6, runs hot and cold

      Embedian has launched a SMARC COM that runs Linux on a Freescale i.MX6, and offers up to 2GB RAM, 4GB eMMC, -40 to 85°C operation, and a Mini-ITX baseboard.

    • Phones

      • Jolla Communicator for Ubuntu Helps Users Control Their Jolla Smartphones

        The Jolla community has put together an application called Jolla Communicator that allows users to send and receive messages on Ubuntu, which connected to a Sailfish OS-powered smartphone.

      • Android

        • HTC One M8 Android 5.0 Lollipop Update Continues

          Back in January HTC announced they’d miss the deadline they set themselves for the HTC One M8 Android 5.0 Lollipop update, but since then we’ve received plenty of good news as it’s rolling out to multiple carriers in the United States. It first kicked off for owners back in January, and over the past few weeks has continued to arrive for more and more proud owners.

        • One Android fan’s righteous rant: He owns 6 Android devices and none of them have Lollipop yet

          We all know there are good reasons why Android will never be rolled out as efficiently as the way Apple rolls out new versions of iOS. That said, surely the process can be better than it is right now… can’t it?

        • Moto G Android 5.1 Lollipop Update Is Out And What To Expect For 2013 Moto X, Moto E And Moto G LTE

          Motorola has begun rolling out the Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Moto G Google Play Edition (GPE), and it is possible that other versions of the phone could receive the update anytime soon.

        • Amazon Prime Instant Video comes to Android tablets with a catch

          Check the Amazon Instant Video splash page and you’ll see the news: You can officially stream videos from Amazon to your Google Android tablet. I say “officially” because tech savvy folks may have already sideloaded, or manually installed, the phone version some time ago. But for the mainstream masses who typically get their apps from the Google Play Store — a smart move for security reasons — this is new.

        • ‘Mortal Kombat X’ Available On iOS And Android, Launch Trailer Contains System Of A Down — Plus Full Roster Revealed

          The mobile companion game for Mortal Kombat X is available for download on both iOS and Android. Mortal Kombat X Mobile can be downloaded for free (with in-app purchases) on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, according to Hardcore Gamer. The Mortal Kombat X Mobile is the full Mortal Kombat X experience built for mobile devices.

        • Mortal Kombat X Mobile Android Release Date: iOS Version Is Live But When Will Fighting Game Appear In Google Play Store? [VIDEO]
        • A case to keep Android and Chrome OS separate

          There are many Android fans who aren’t enamored with Chrome OS. They cite lack of apps for the latter, and the wealth of features that make up the great utility of the former. There has long been speculation that Google will eventually merge the two platforms into one OS. I hope that never happens.

        • Apple Watch vs. Android Wear, Pebble and Samsung Gear

          What is a smartwatch, and what can it do? The Apple Watch arrives in a landscape filled with things for your wrist. How does it stack up? Great in some ways, and not so wonderfully in others. Let’s look at the closest competition and see.

        • Android 5.1 to hit Google Play Edition of HTC One M7 and M8

          Owners of the Google Play Edition of the HTC One M7 and M8 should stay tuned for Android 5.1.

          In a tweet late Tuesday, HTC vice president of product management Mo Versi said that “approval for both M8 & M7 GPE versions have been granted by Google for 5.1 OS. OTA out shortly!” That means an over-the-air update should reach both models soon if it hasn’t already. The Google Play Editions of such phones come with pure Android, which excludes any customizations typically made by the manufacturers.

        • Google highlights even more Android Wear watch faces, straps

          Itching to make your shiny new Android Wear watch really yours? You’re in luck — Google’s curating not only the best watchfaces to throw on your teensy wrist-display, but some of the handsome watchbands you should lash onto it too. Android Wear product manager Jeff Chang pointed out new (and mostly leather, sadly) straps available from E3 Supply Co., Worn & Wound and Clockwork Synergy in a post on the Official Android Blog earlier today. Thing is, you can’t actually buy these accessories straight from the Play Store proper — you’ll still have to mosey on over to each retailer’s site to lay claim to your next bit of wrist candy so the approach isn’t exactly as seamless as we would’ve hoped.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Animals Set FOSS Apart

    We’re going to take the scenic route in getting to the point today. If you don’t want to wait, you can go down to the bottom where it says, “The moral of the story…” But the point of today’s exercise is that we in the decentralized FOSS realm are a creative bunch, and in that creativity is our strength.

  • Etsy Owes Data Center Efficiency to Facebook’s Open Source VM

    Etsy attributes recent accomplishments in data center efficiency in large part to using the Facebook-developed, open source HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), according to software engineer Dan Miller on Etsy’s blog. Etsy is an extremely popular marketplace for handmade, vintage and unique items. The company is expected to IPO soon.

  • Open source risks being devoured by the very cloud to which it gave birth

    Open source, popular as it has been, has hardly killed off proprietary software. While margins and new license revenues have suffered across the enterprise software spectrum, it is the cloud, more than open-source software, that is to blame (or thank, depending on whose stock you own). Yes, open source built the cloud, but it is the cloud that gets all the credit (and cash).

  • Events

    • Empower developers with a mix of community, communication, and custom tools

      Open source developers can create an immense amount of value for any company that relies on open source software by giving it the ability to direct and influence aspects of the open source community. This allows the company to shape the tools they rely on and make them better fit company needs, a phenomenon otherwise known as “scratching their own itch.”

      Although an open source developer’s primary skill is writing good code, their value extends far beyond technical skills. Adopting open source practices requires participation in diverse communities that have a number of stakeholders who each have their own itches to scratch. Open source developers find themselves in a complex position that requires them to be experts not only in their technical field, but also in communication and collaboration.

    • DFN Workshop 2015

      To defend against targeted attacks based on spoofed emails he proposed to detect whether the writing style of an email corresponds to that of previously seen emails of the presumed contact. In fact, their research shows that they are able to tell whether the writing style matches that of previous emails with very high probability.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Dials Back on Firefox Opportunistic Encryption

        Mozilla issued the Firefox 37.0.1 update, which disables the opportunistic encryption feature that was just introduced in Firefox 37.
        Mozilla has had a change of heart regarding opportunistic encryption—for now. The company rolled out its open-source Firefox 37 Web browser on March 31, with one of the key new features being a capability known as opportunistic encryption. However, due to a security issue related to opportunistic encryption, Mozilla disabled the feature in the Firefox 37.0.1 update released April 3.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • NASA’s Chris Mattmann on Apache technology

      I’ve been involved in the ASF since 2005 when I got involved in the Apache Nutch project. I was a PhD student at USC taking Search Engines class and also working at NASA JPL. My final project in the class was an RSS parsing plugin (NUTCH-30) that got integrated. It was a budding, awesome community, and I got more and more excited after my patch and started helping out on the lists. I also saw a big use for Nutch and what eventually became Hadoop at NASA.

    • NASA, IBM Ask the World to Hack Space

      This weekend, NASA is hooking up with IBM’s BlueMix cloud platform in an unprecedented development effort. More than 10,000 developers, scientists, entrepreneurs and students in 62 countries will work in tandem on a code-a-thon aimed at building technology for space exploration. Here are more details.

    • PLUMgrid Delivers ONS 3.0 Suite for Driving OpenStack Clouds

      PLUMgrid, which focuses on virtual network infrastructure for OpenStack cloud deployments, has announced the latest SDN software PLUMgrid Open Networking Suite 3.0 for OpenStack with new operational tools, features for dynamic routing, and expanded service insertion for third party virtual, physical and container based appliances. Based on OpenStack Juno, PLUMgrid ONS 3.0 is Red Hat certified with RHEL OSP 6.

    • A case for predictable databases

      Barzan Mozafari, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), will be giving a talk on the predictability of performance in database systems at the OpenStack Live conference in Santa Clara, California on Tuesday, April 14.

  • Education

    • Open Source Picks Up the Pace

      This February, EBSCO Information Services announced plans to provide funding and technical assistance for contributors to the Koha open source ILS platform. Led by the Koha Gruppo Italiano (KGI)—founded by the American Academy in Rome, American University of Rome, and the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce—with development support from ByWater Solutions, Catalyst IT, and Cineca, the partnership will enable an upgrade of Koha’s core search engine to Elasticsearch, the popular open source, multitenant-capable full-text search engine.

  • Funding

    • Mourning Chris Yeoh

      It is my sad duty to inform the community that Chris Yeoh passed away this morning. Chris leaves behind a daughter Alyssa, aged 6, who I hope will remember Chris as the clever and caring person that I will remember him as. I haven’t had a chance to confirm with the family if they want flowers or a donation to a charity. As soon as I know those details I will reply to this email.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Cauldron 2015

      This year the GNU Cauldron Conference is going to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from August 7 to 9, 2015.

      The GNU Cauldron Conference is a gathering of users and hackers of the GNU toolchain ecosystem.

      Meaning that if you are interested in projects remotely related to the GNU C library, GNU Compiler Collection, the GNU Debugger or any toolchain runtime related project that has ties with the GNU system you are welcome!

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open access: a national licence is not the answer

        “Open Access: Is a national licence the answer?” is a proposal by David Price and Sarah Chaytor of University College London for a mechanism to provide full access to everyone within the UK to all published research. It was published on 31 March 2015 by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) whose director, Nick Hillman, wrote the foreword.

  • Programming

    • Google makes Santa Tracker open source on GitHub — will you fork Santa Claus?

      April Fool’s Day is well behind us, so all the pranks should be over, right? I ask because today, Google announces that it is making its Santa Tracker project open source on GitHub. The fact that it is open source is great, but the timing is odd. The last thing I expected to read about in April is friggin’ Santa Claus, but here we are.

    • Google Opens Santa Tracker For Developers By Making It Open Source

      Christmas may be a distant memory by now and the thought of Christmas 2015 might seem just as distant, as April has only just begun. However, it seems Christmas is not too far away from Google’s mind today, as the Search giant have just opened sourced their popular Santa Tracker software. If you are unfamiliar with Santa Tracker, then it is rather self-explanatory. Each year, around about Christmas time, Google releases its Santa Tracker offering the ability to track Santa while he is out and about and delivering his presents to all the boys and girls. That said, the tracker software is not just for tracking Santa and this is why last year Google released the Tracker as early as December 1st.

Leftovers

  • Here’s Google’s Secret to Hiring the Best People

    Performance on these kinds of questions is at best a discrete skill that can be improved through practice, eliminating their utility for assessing candidates. At worst, they rely on some trivial bit of information or insight that is withheld from the candidate, and serve primarily to make the interviewer feel clever and self-satisfied. They have little if any ability to predict how candidates will perform in a job.

  • Labour Appeals to Tories

    The Guardian has published an open appeal to Tory and Lib Dem voters to vote Labour in Dundee West. I think that tells you all you need to know about the Red Tories and their priorities. It is also a new low in journalism even for the fanatic and increasingly desperate Severin Carrell, who is a total disgrace to his profession. The costs of publishing the Guardian ought to be counted against Marra’s election expenses: this is not journalism in any sense, merely a puff piece for a candidate.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Six Things You Didn’t Know the U.S. and Its Allies Did to Iran

      Nasir al-Din Shah, Shah of Iran from 1848-1896, sold Baron Julius de Reuter the right to operate all of Iran’s railroads and canals, most of the mines, all of the government’s forests, and all future industries. The famous British statesman Lord Curzon called it “the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever been dreamed of.” Iranians were so infuriated that the Shah had to rescind the sale the next year.

      [...]

      Our rhetoric on Iran seems nonsensical: Do U.S. leaders actually believe Iran would engage in a first nuclear strike on Israel or the U.S., given that would lead to a quick and devastating retaliation from those well-armed nuclear powers?

      Even conservative U.S. foreign policy experts know that’s incredibly unlikely. They’re not worried that we can’t deter a nuclear-armed Iran — they’re worried that a nuclear-armed Iran could deter us. As Thomas Donnelly, a top Iran analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, put it in 2004, “the prospect of a nuclear Iran is a nightmare … because of the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East. … The surest deterrent to American action is a functioning nuclear arsenal.”

  • Finance

    • Fox News’ Smear Campaign Against The Poor Is Reflected In The GOP’s Latest Food Stamp Bills

      Fox News’ campaign of misinformation surrounding food assistance programs may be continuing to influence GOP legislation, as lawmakers in both Missouri and Kansas consider measures addressing “fake problems” within their state’s benefit programs.

      Republican lawmakers in Kansas recently introduced legislation restricting where recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, formerly known as “welfare”) can spend their money and what they can buy. The bill would limit the daily spending allowance to $25 and ban recipients from using benefits at psychics and tattoo parlors. Another measure, introduced by the House GOP in Missouri, will similarly limit how recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly knowns as “food stamps”) can use their benefits, prohibiting them from buying “steak, seafood, soda, cookies, chip[s], and energy drinks.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Rolling Stone and the Media’s Glass House

      There is nothing like a journalistic plane crash to inspire newsroom loudmouths to jump on their desks and lecture colleagues about the collapse of standards and crow that they’re such exemplars of the craft that never in a trillion years could they or their publication be snookered by a fabulist, a hoaxer, a dissembler or a liar.

    • U.S. Propaganda 101: Illegally Invade Countries, Fund the Media, Call it “Independent”

      The author accuses news outlets of doing exactly what he himself and the U.S. mainstream media in general does when reporting about foreign policy issues such as Ukraine: they “systematically [regurgitate U.S. propaganda, spread] lies, half-truths, and conspiracy theories.” The advantage they have is that they don’t need to translate anything. Apparently for Rohac an article written in Russian has to be Russian propaganda. It’s that simple: Russians are just not producing any honest journalistic content. This argument about texts being “directly translated from Russian sources” is not only weak, it is xenophobic.

  • Censorship

    • YouTuber Angry Joe Swears Off Nintendo Videos After The Company Claimed His Mario Party 10 Take

      Nintendo’s never-ending desire to control how YouTubers review its games or do “let’s plays” has been laughable from the start. From the trust-destroying agreement YouTubers had to enter into in order to get access to visual content to the beauracratic nightmare individuals had to wade through just to get a video approved for monetization, the whole thing started off on messy footing. And the biggest issue in all of this: Nintendo still can’t seem to grasp that these YouTubers are giving the company free advertising. Gamers love the kinds of videos these YouTubers produce. They use them to make purchasing decisions, to become interested in new games, and to fuel word-of-mouth advertising that no trumped up ad campaign could ever possibly hope to achieve. Why make any of that more complicated by creating an approval system for the videos? And, more importantly, why take away the incentive for fans to promote your games by demanding a share of their YouTube revenue?

    • Once Again, Political Speech Is Silenced By Copyright/ContentID

      This seems to happen every political season. When he was a Presidential candidate, John McCain got annoyed at YouTube taking down political videos based on copyright claims. During the last Presidential election, a Mitt Romney TV ad featuring President Obama singing an Al Green song was taken down via a copyright claim. And now, 2016 Presidential candidate Rand Paul has discovered that his announcement speech from Tuesday morning has been taken down.

  • Privacy

    • U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades

      The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

      For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

    • Rand Paul Vows to Stop NSA Spying ‘on Day 1′ of Presidency

      Rand Paul’s campaign kickoff just concluded with a rousing speech by the libertarian-leaning U.S. senator from Kentucky in which he promised that his first act as president would be to stop the NSA’s illegal spying on American citizens. He vowed to win the White House while clutching the Bill of Rights in one hand and the Constitution in the other.

    • NSA whistleblower: We’ve been lied to

      Bill Binney, a former U.S. National Security Agency employee turned whistleblower, is on a mission to expose the agency’s domestic spying programs and violations of constitutional rights.

      In an interview with AJ+’s Dena Takruri, Binney discusses why he thinks President Barack Obama is “violating the public trust” and what Americans can do to protect themselves from unwarranted surveillance.

    • U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades

      The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

    • If you called anyone overseas from 1992-2013, the DEA probably knew about it

      The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), under approval from the top echelons of the Department of Justice, ran a secret, extensive phone metadata bulk collection program for over two decades, amassing billions of records, according to a new report published Tuesday in USA Today.

      This database had previously been revealed to a lesser extent earlier this year, but neither its operational details nor its scope had been revealed until now.

    • Cell Phone Opsec

      Note that it actually makes sense to use a one-time pad in this instance. The message is a ten-digit number, and a one-time pad is easier, faster, and cleaner than using any computer encryption program.

    • Could your online porn habits be publicly released?

      Data brokers, which track browsing habits to sell to third parties, are not governed by any laws stating what can and can’t be done with the data. But they are not the same as hackers, who could theoretically access information about membership to porn sites. Vice said hackers would be more likely to sell the credit card information than release it online for no gain.

      Neither brokers nor hackers have a vested interest in creating Thomas’s nightmare vision of a searchable porn-user database. But that doesn’t mean the data isn’t out there. Even a browser in incognito mode will send tracking information to data brokers that according to one privacy researcher is “all sitting in a database somewhere”.

      Vice said that shouldn’t surprise internet users: “It’s a truth about the modern internet that just about anywhere you go, you’re being tracked.”

    • Post-Cryptanalysis, TrueCrypt Alternatives Step Forward

      TrueCrypt’s relative clean bill of health last week has now spawned a new focus on existing alternatives to the open source encryption software, namely VeraCrypt and CipherShed.

    • General Election Training: How can you campaign against mass surveillance?

      ORG supporters are invited to our General Election Training run by ORG staff on how we can make an impact this election! We’ll give you all the knowledge you need to be confident and effective digital rights activist this election.

    • Illegal downloading: Australia internet firms must supply data

      An Australian court has ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over details of customers accused of illegally downloading a US movie.

  • Civil Rights

    • Hologram replaces Edward Snowden statue in Brooklyn park

      Hours after police removed an illicit bust of Edward Snowden from its perch in a Brooklyn park on Monday, artists replaced it with a hologram.

    • Political Smears in U.S. Never Change: the NYT’s 1967 Attack on MLK’s Anti-War Speech

      John Oliver’s Monday night interview of Edward Snowden — which in 24 hours has been viewed by 3 million people on YouTube alone — renewed all the standard attacks in Democratic circles accusing Snowden of being a traitor in cahoots with the Kremlin. What’s most striking about this — aside from the utter lack of evidence for any of it — is how identical it is to what Nixon officials said to smear the last generation’s greatest whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg (who is widely regarded by Democrats as a hero because his leak occurred with a Republican in the White House).

    • TSA’s Airport “Behavior Detection Program” Found to Target Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists

      The Intercept revealed last month that it is quite easy to be deemed a “suspected terrorist” at airports in the United States. A leaked checklist used by the Transportation Security Administration shows an expansive list of “suspicious signs” for screening passengers, including yawning, fidgeting, whistling, throat clearing and staring at one’s feet. All of these, according to the TSA, are considered behaviors that indicate stress or deception. Well now The Intercept has revealed who the program actually targets: not terrorists, but undocumented immigrants. Taking a five-week period at a major U.S. airport, The Intercept found that 90 percent of all those arrested were detained for being in the country illegally. Not a single passenger was arrested or suspected for ties to terrorism. The overwhelming detention of undocumented immigrants bolsters criticism that government screening programs have targeted passengers with racial profiling. We speak to the reporter who broke this story, Jana Winter.

    • Strikes Grow in China as Grassroots Labor Movement Takes Shape

      As the economic landscape in China continues to shift, an awakening working class is demanding fair treatment and higher wages—and the movement is picking up steam.

      The Associated Press on Monday highlighted the emerging resistance to workplace exploitation and authoritarian government policies that has steadily grown over the past four years, with numbers of strikers doubling annually since 2011 until they reached more than 1,300 last year.

    • NY Cops Used ‘Stingray’ Spy Tool 46 Times Without Warrant

      The police department in Erie County, New York fought hard to prevent the New York Civil Liberties Union from obtaining records about its use of a controversial surveillance tool known as a stingray.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • ISP Pulls VPN Service After Geo-Unblocking Legal Threats

      Following copyright threats from large media companies a Kiwi ISP has taken down its VPN service. Lightbox, MediaWorks, SKY, and TVNZ had threatened legal action against services that bypass geo-restrictions on sites such as Netflix and Hulu. Other ISPs offering similar products are currently standing firm.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Australian public health advocates seek access to regional trade pact negotiations

      The peak lobby group for American pharmaceutical manufacturers has been given privileged access to negotiations for a major regional trade pact that could see the cost of medicines skyrocket in Australia.

      Public health advocates and business groups are concerned that pharmaceutical giants will be able to advance their commercial interests in the once-in-a-lifetime pact through their seat at the negotiating table, while the details are kept secret from the Australian public.

    • Health experts worried as Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations conclude

      The draft of the investment chapter published by Wikileaks last week outlines the controversial investor‐state dispute settlement mechanism which would allow foreign corporations to sue governments in offshore tribunals.

04.07.15

Links 7/4/2015: Dell XPS 13 With Ubuntu, digiKam Software Collection 4.9.0

Posted in News Roundup at 6:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Calling all Kiwi developers: Ready to push the limits of Open Source?

    “To have GitHub cohost their first conference outside of the US in Wellington is a strong endorsement of our tech capability.”

  • Open for Thinking, Participation & Collaboration: Peter Kerr

    As a digital immigrant who has, without sometimes knowing why, gone down he android path for my devices, I’m inherently drawn to the open source philosophy.

    In a sense, at a time when public participation in democracy is lessening, it is events such as this that continue to hold the flame for non-secrecy and more sharing in society.

  • A better Internet of Things through open source culture

    Open source’s influence extends far beyond sharing code, but this aspect sometimes goes unappreciated. For example, I previously wrote about how the special way of developing and collaborating associated with open source has come to also reflect many DevOps best practices, from transparency to iterative fast releases. I’d argue that it is many of these same default behaviors that are helping to make the Internet of Things a hot topic today.

  • Events

    • North West Linux Fest

      Fedora Jam is coming to Linux Fest North West in Bellingham, Washington, April 24th to 26th. If you are a friend of Fedora, sign up on the wiki and participate in our booth. Or if you are a musician, come by to try out Fedora Jam, we will have a guitar, keyboard and other instruments to try out. We will have Fedora shirts at the Friday game night, show your Fedora pride during the fest.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Networking in the cloud is changing

      As part of the OpenStack Live conference next week in Santa Clara, California, she’ll be delivering a three hour tutorial on OpenStack networking architecture and concepts, along with her colleague Faan DeSwardt.

    • AtScale Launches, Bridging Hadoop and Popular Analytics Tools

      At one point, the Big Data trend–sorting and sifting large data sets with new tools in pursuit of surfacing meaningful angles on stored information–remained an enterprise-only story, but now businesses of all sizes are evaluating tools that can help them glean meaningful insights from the data they store. As we’ve noted, the open source Hadoop project has been one of the big drivers of this trend, and has given rise to commercial companies that offer custom Hadoop distributions, support, training and more. Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR are leading the pack among these Hadoop-focused companies.

  • Funding

    • The Open Source Funding Conundrum

      Every time I hear of another great open source project shutting its doors, I hold my breath in hopes it will be forked. Sadly though, this isn’t a great plan for all projects. Sometimes these projects are rich in users but poor in developers. In this article, I’ll explore this issue and what can be done to keep open source projects funded.

    • CoreOS Team Gets $12 Million to Offer DIY Google-style Infrastructure with Tectonic

      Google has a vested interest in CoreOS bringing Kubernetes to the enterprise, with Google Ventures investing $12 million in Tectonic.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Basque parliament adapts workflow to eID tool

      The Basque Parliament is planning to overhaul its workflow, wishing to increase its use of digital identity and electronic signature solutions. The Basque Parliament is using Sinadura, an open source eID tool developed by Zylk, a Bilbao-based open source IT service provider. The parliament now wants to combine this with more applications, the company says.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • All You Need to Know

    I see that in “journalists” questioning Blair, nobody asked the obvious question, which is who was paying for this particular speech.

  • STV Debate Unionist Fit-Up

    I wondered how on earth they got an audience so completely unrepresentative of Scottish opinion, and the answer was not hard to find. The audience has been selected “based both on current opinion polls and the last general election result.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • ​Monsanto lobbyist claims ‘safe to drink a quart of pesticide’ – but bolts when offered a glass (VIDEO)

      A lobbyist for Monsanto claimed that it was safe to drink “a quart” of the company’s Roundup pesticide, but pointedly refused to try even a sip when offered a glass during an interview with French TV before storming off the set.

      Patrick Moore told a Canal+ journalist that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used weed killer, was not responsible for an increase in cancer rates in Argentina.

      “You can drink a whole quart of it and it won’t hurt you,” he insisted.

      When the journalist informed him that a cup of the herbicide was prepared for him, Moore bristled, saying: “I’m not stupid.”

      But when pressed by the interviewer if the substance was dangerous, Moore replied: “It’s not dangerous to humans.” He added that many try to commit suicide by drinking Roundup, but “fail regularly.”

    • Paul blazes new path on pot

      Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is poised to become the first top-tier presidential candidate from either party to make marijuana reform a major campaign issue.

      Paul, who will announce his White House bid on Tuesday, has argued forcefully that states should be allowed to adopt their own policies on the use of medical marijuana without fear of federal interference.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Factual Errors in John Bolton’s “Bomb Iran!” Op-Ed in the New York Times – and Why You Should Care

      Last week, at a crucial moment in nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, the New York Times published an op-ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” As I pointed out at the time, the Times accidentally undermined him by linking one of his key claims to an explanation of why that claim was wrong. After I asked about it, the Times changed the link.

      Bolton’s many other factual mistakes, detailed below, have also not been corrected — on top of which, Bolton failed to make a relevant disclosure about his paid work for a group that advocates the overthrow of the Iranian regime. It’s worth dwelling on these problems a bit given that Bolton’s perspective has a significant constituency in Congress — which could still derail the accord the White House is closing in on with the Iranians.

    • The Obama Arms Bazaar: Record Sales, Troubling Results

      With the end of the Obama presidency just around the corner, discussions of his administration’s foreign policy legacy are already well under way. But one central element of that policy has received little attention: the Obama administration’s dramatic acceleration of U.S. weapons exports.

      The numbers are astonishing. In President Obama’s first five years in office, new agreements under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—the largest channel for U.S. arms exports—totaled over $169 billion. After adjusting for inflation, the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion. That also means that the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Wikileaks

      I had not realised that Julian had so much Scottish ancestry or quite so recently. After independence, he will definitely be entitled to a Scottish passport!

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Conservative Media Blame Environmentalists, Not Climate, For California’s “Man-Made Drought”

      The Wall Street Journal editorial board recently recycled many of the same claims it made in a 2009 editorial titled, “California’s Man-Made Drought.” Right-wing website Hot Air dubbed the drought “California’s ‘man-made’ environmental disaster.” And when potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina described the drought as “a man-made disaster” during an appearance on Glenn Beck’s radio show, Beck demanded to know why “we don’t hear that story on the news at all,” while Rush Limbaugh declared that “there is a man-made lack of water in California,” and “[Fiorina is] right.”

      No, these media figures haven’t suddenly seen the light on climate change. Instead, they’re using the historic drought as an opportunity to baselessly attack environmental policies.

    • Nuclear submarine on fire at Russian shipyard

      A fire has broken out at a Russian nuclear submarine during repair work at a shipyard in Severodvinsk. The cause of the fire is believed to be related to welding work on the sub.

      The United Shipbuilding Company confirmed the incident, adding that nobody was hurt in it. According to the the shipyard’s spokesperson, the submarine’s nuclear reactor was shut down and its weapons unloaded before the repair started.

    • Russian nuclear submarine catches fire at shipyard

      A Moscow radio station published a picture showing smoke billowing from the submarine.

    • Russian Nuclear Sub ‘On Fire In Dry Dock’

      A Russian nuclear submarine has caught fire in a shipyard, according to news agency RIA Novosti.

      The 500m-long (1,640ft6) 949 Antei was being repaired on in Zvyozdochka shipyard in Russia’s northern province of Arkhangelsk, according to Russian news agency reports.

    • Russian nuclear submarine catches fire in shipyard

      Russian news agency Interfax cited a separate source as saying there were no weapons on board the submarine and other news agencies said the fire had started during welding, causing insulation materials to catch fire.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Fighting Toddler ‘Porn Addiction,’ UK Lawmakers Demand Porn Sites Include Age Checks Or Face Closure

      The UK’s attempts to filter the Internet of all of its naughty bits are nothing if not amusing, whether it’s the nation’s porn filter architect getting arrested for child porn, or the complete and total obliviousness when it comes to the slippery slope of expanding those filters to include a growing roster of ambiguously objectionable material. The idea of forcing some kind of overarching structure upon porn consumption in the UK is another idea that never seems to go away, whether it’s requiring a “porn license” (requiring users to clearly opt in if they want to view porn) or the latest push — mandatory age checks.

  • Privacy

    • Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer

      Microsoft has reversed its position on the contentious Do Not Track (DNT) browser feature, saying Internet Explorer will no longer send DNT signals to websites by default.

      “Put simply, we are updating our approach to DNT to eliminate any misunderstanding about whether our chosen implementation will comply with the W3C standard,” Microsoft chief privacy officer Brendon Lynch said in a Friday blog post.

    • Security Audit Of TrueCrypt Doesn’t Find Any Backdoors — But What Will Happen To TrueCrypt?

      Over the past few years we’ve followed the saga of TrueCrypt. The popular and widely used full disk encryption system got some attention soon after the initial Snowden leaks when people started realizing that no one really knew who was behind TrueCrypt, and that the software had not been fully audited. Cryptographer Matthew Green decided to lead an effort to audit TrueCrypt. A year ago, the team released the first phase, finding a few small vulnerabilities, but no backdoors and nothing too serious. This week the full audit was completed and again finds no evidence of any backdoors planted in the code.

    • Meet the privacy activists who spy on the surveillance industry

      On the second floor of a narrow brick building in the London Borough of Islington, Edin Omanovic is busy creating a fake company. He is playing with the invented company’s business cards in a graphic design program, darkening the reds, bolding the blacks, and testing fonts to strike the right tone: informational, ambiguous, no bells and whistles. In a separate window, a barren website is starting to take shape. Omanovic, a tall, slender Bosnian-born, Scottish-raised Londonite gives the company a fake address that forwards to his real office, and plops in a red and black company logo he just created. The privacy activist doesn’t plan to scam anyone out of money, though he does want to learn their secrets. Ultimately, he hopes that the business cards combined with a suit and a close-cropped haircut will grant him access to a surveillance industry trade show, a privilege usually restricted to government officials and law enforcement agencies.

    • DHS Seeks Increase in Domestic HUMINT Collection

      The Department of Homeland Security aims to increase its domestic human intelligence collection activity this year, the Department recently told Congress.

      In a question for the record from a September 2014 congressional hearing, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-GA) asked: “Do we currently have enough human intelligence capacity–both here in the homeland and overseas–to counter the threats posed by state and non-state actors alike?”

    • Stop Taking Dick Pics, But Not Because of the NSA. (SFW)

      Let me make something clear: I am pro dick pic. I mean, who doesn’t love the occasional consensual staring contest with a one eyed bandit? When Edward Snowden told everyone to keep taking dick pictures on Last Week Tonight, he was making an important point. Governments are meant to be accountable to people and controlled by them in democracies. Leaving aside any specific analysis of how much or whether America is really a democracy, Snowden’s message is profound and valid. We should have that freedom, and we have it by practicing that freedom at our governments. But we should be on a dick pic strike nevertheless.

  • Civil Rights

    • Czech president says his ‘doors are closed’ to US envoy over Moscow WWII visit comments

      Previously, Zeman said that his visit to Russia would be a “sign of gratitude for not having to speak German in this country.” He also intended to pay tribute to the memory of 150,000 Soviet soldiers who died liberating Czechoslovakia.

    • Barrett Brown suddenly stripped of prison e-mail after talking to press

      Barrett Brown, the brash journalist and former member of Anonymous who was sentenced in January 2015 to over five years in federal prison, had his e-mail privileges suddenly revoked, seemingly for corresponding with journalists.

      On Sunday, Brown’s supporters published his account of the punishment, describing how he suddenly lost access to his prison-supplied e-mail account on March 31. In the ensuing days, Brown attempted to contact various prison officials to get further information, including someone named “Trust Fund Manager Coleman.”

    • Malaysia passes controversial anti-terror bill

      Malaysia has passed a controversial anti-terrorism bill, which the government says is needed to tackle the threat from Islamic extremists.

      The bill reintroduces indefinite detention without trial – something the prime minister had repealed in 2012.

    • Chelsea Manning and the Call of America’s Conscience

      April 5th marked the five year anniversary of WikiLeaks publication of the Collateral Murder Video. The footage of a secret US military video depicted an Apache helicopter killing Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists. It provided an uncensored view of modern war for the world to see. The light that shone in the darkness was the conscience of a young woman. Chelsea Manning (formally Bradley Manning) is now serving 35 years behind bars for her great public service.

    • Assange, Manning Still Only Ones Imprisoned for Collateral Murder

      April 5 marked the five-year anniversary of the release of the Collateral Murder video by WikiLeaks. The shocking footage showed the entire world the 2007 US Apache attack helicopter airstrike on Baghdad that killed 12 people – including two Reuters staff members – and injured two small children.

    • Obama Executive Order prompts surge in bitcoin donations to the Snowden defence fund

      On 1 April 2015, Barack Obama signed into law an Executive Order “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities”

      Media reports speculated that the new powers granted by this Executive Order would enable executive authorities to confiscate cryptocurrency holdings and even prohibit donations to Edward Snowden’s defence fund.

      Since news of the Executive Order came to light, the bitcoin account for Edward Snowden’s official defence fund experienced a significant surge in donations , due at least in part to this post on reddit. We have received over 200 separate donations this month, including a single donation of 8.49 bitcoin, or over 2000 US dollars.

    • Obama reportedly criminalises “support” for “cyber-enabled activities”

      US President Barack Obama has issued an executive order authorising the Treasury Secretary to enact sanctions against those whom it deems to have “have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for” cyber-related crimes.

      Reuters reports that even US lawmakers consider the order “surprisingly broad”, and investigative journalists are concerned about its wide-ranging scope.

    • Historic child sex abuse: Young boys trafficked from Belfast to London, victim claims

      Vulnerable young boys were taken from a children’s care home in Belfast in the 1970s, trafficked to London and abused by powerful figures who were part of a Westminster pedophile ring, a victim has claimed.

      Richard Kerr, a victim of child sex abuse at the Kincora care home for boys, told Channel 4 News he also suffered abuse at London’s Elm Guest House and Dolphin Square.

    • Second Yemen war critic is arrested

      ANOTHER official at the National Democratic Assembly (Al Wahdawi) has been arrested for allegedly criticising military action in Yemen.

      Deputy secretary general Mohammed Al Motawa was yesterday accused of spreading false and malicious information about Operation Decisive Storm, led by Saudi Arabia and nine allied countries, including Bahrain.

      The coalition countries launched air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen on Thursday after Shi’ite militias sought to topple the Yemeni government led by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

    • Pakistan Judge: Charge CIA Lawyer, Officer for Drone Strike

      A Pakistani judge on Tuesday ordered that criminal charges be filed against a former CIA lawyer who oversaw its drone program and the one-time chief agency operative in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people.

      Former acting general counsel John A. Rizzo and ex-station chief Jonathan Bank must face charges including murder, conspiracy, terrorism and waging war against Pakistan, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court ruled. A court clerk and a lawyer involved the case, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, confirmed details of the judge’s ruling.

    • Ohio Democrat Teresa Fedor speaks out during abortion debate to reveal she has been raped – and is interrupted by laughter from Republicans

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