02.13.14

Elusive Freedom: How Society is Growing More Oppressive Rather Than Progressive

Posted in Law at 12:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Items of news from the past week, demonstrating quite clearly that dehumanisation of people starts not only abroad but also at the borders

• I’m No @ioerror But the Border Still Broke My Phone To Silence Me

  Yesterday upon returning to the United States from Canada, the United States Customs and Border Protections ruined my HTC One by breaking off the charger inside the phone. This was after I refused to delete recordings I had of them from the device.

• U.S. NSA: diplomat issue shouldn’t derail India ties

  The diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was arrested on December 12 on charges of visa fraud and lying to U.S. authorities about what she paid her housekeeper. She was stripped-searched while detained in a Manhattan federal courthouse, an incident that triggered a major rift between India and the United States.

• DEA-CIA Drug Trafficking Exposed by Whistleblower DEA Pilot Beau Abbott

  This interview with Beau Abbott was done by John Gentry, a wannabe cameraman, at Stew Webb’s request in the 1990s and recently loaded on YouTube by John Gentry of Dallas, Texas.

  I, Stew Webb was held as a Political Prisoner from 1992-1993 and met and talked for weeks with Beau Abbott, who was also a Political Prisoner at the Federal Prison in Springfield, Missouri, also known as Siberia- USA.

• Real-life Iron Man armor to be ready by June – US admiral

  In an attempt by fact to imitate fiction, the US military’s “Iron Man” armor will take an important step towards reality in June, when multiple prototypes will be revealed and tested.

  According to a report by Defense Tech, Navy Admiral William McRaven said three prototypes of the TALOS – Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit – are currently being put together in the hopes that they’ll be ready for testing this summer.

Ed: Cops in Manchester, in particular the Tactical Aid Unit (TAU), have had something similar for a number of years (Iron Man-like armor) and they act like private thugs of the state, beating up people people in the street with no oversight (a bit like death squads)

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Censorship Watch: Turkey Follows the UK, France, Not the Other Way Around

Posted in Law at 12:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The shame of Western society is intolerance towards particular ideas and their elimination by censorship without due process

• Ron Miller: Restricting the Internet is a business killer

  Turkey is the latest country to mess with the Internet, passing a law that, according to GigaOM, enables authorities to block content at the URL level. When will countries learn that limiting the Internet is a horrible idea?

• Frenchman Fined For ‘Theft’ And ‘Fraudulent Retention’ For Finding Health Docs Via A Google Search

• French journalist “hacks” govt by inputting correct URL, later fined $4,000+

  In 2012, French blogger, activist, and businessman Olivier Laurelli sat down at his computer. It automatically connected to his VPN on boot (he owns a small security services company, called Toonux, which was providing a connection via a Panamanian IP address) and began surfing the Web.

  Laurelli, who goes by the alias “Bluetouff” in most circles (including on Ars Technica), is something of a presence among the French tech-savvy community. Besides managing Toonux, he also co-founded the French-language activist news site Reflets.info, which describes itself as a “community project to connect journalists and computer networking specialists.” As such, Laurelli initiated a Google search on other subjects, but what he stumbled on was perhaps more interesting: a link that led to 7.7 Gb of internal documents from the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor (the acronym is ANSES in French).

• Adult content takedowns need judicial ruling, says former public prosecutor

  Plans to expand the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) – a UK-based Hotline to report the most serious cases of child abuse on the Internet – have been severely criticised in a report by the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken (now Lord) MacDonald. His recently-released report states that there are serious risks to free speech rights when a privately-funded body is given Internet take-down powers.

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Mozilla Sells Out

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Marketing at 12:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Mozilla is imitating the business model of Formula One drivers, wearing corporate stickers as covert marketing

YEARS before abandoning Google I also abandoned Firefox, which I had used since before the 1.0 release (I was a very early and happy adopter). The reason for abandonment was mostly technical and I returned to Firefox partly for idealogical reasons. Mozilla started talking about privacy (also hiring privacy advocates), it publicly shunned advertisers (thanks to these new hires), it adopted (and hired) standards, and it even embraced Linux, which was no longer an afterthought for the company. Mozilla also said goodbye to people whom it had hired from Microsoft — people who would later use their Mozilla hat to promote NSA Windows for ‘security’.

I was truly shocked to learn, despite the deceiving language from Mozilla [1], that it decided to sell out [2] (even longtime supporters of Mozilla think so) after I switched to Firefox even on mobile devices. Mozilla claims to offer better privacy these days [3], it has a new focus on mobile [4], and it even has its own homegrown mobile OS that is based on Linux and coming soon to many phones [5] (not to mention the huge popularity of the desktops/laptops browser [6]). What is going on at Mozilla and how could this be? Mozilla spends $300,000 trying to buy the community’s support [7] and now it’s throwing it all away by saying it will soon be embedding “sponsored content from hand-picked partners” inside the browser? Is Mozilla so desperate for cash or has its management lost its mind? This whole strategy needs to be abandoned fast (if it’s not too late to revoke deals). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Publisher Transformation with Users at the Center

   Directory Tiles will instead suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users. Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission. The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy.

2. Ads in Firefox, Debian init, and Rolling Releases

   Lots of folks are lamenting the latest news from Mozilla stating they’ll soon be showing users “sponsored content from hand-picked partners.” In other news, a recent Debian decision leaves Ubuntu on its own with upstart. Matt Hartley recently compared the ease of Ubuntu to the flexibility of rolling release distributions.

3. HTTPS Everywhere for Firefox for Android Secures Your Mobile Browsing

   Like its desktop counterpart, HTTPS Everywhere makes sure that you’re using HTTPS whenever possible, and kicks your browsing session over to HTTPS on its list of sites that support it, even if you click a link or are routed to a page that’s not SSL encrypted. To install, visit the link below using Firefox for Android, and the add-on will be automatically installed for you. Firefox will prompt you to accept the installation, restart to complete the changes, and when it’s back up, you’ll see the HTTPS Everywhere logo in the address bar.

4. Mozilla Previews New Firefox Launcher for Android

   At this week’s InContext Conference, Mozilla and EverythingMe showed a preview of the upcoming release of Firefox Launcher for Android. Firefox OS, Mozilla’s mobile platform has already used EverythingMe’s tools for presenting easy to get at collections of links to web apps. Firefox Launcher for Android is intended to make it easy to discover content you want and get it optimized for the way you use your phone.

5. A Look At The New Firefox UI On Ubuntu Linux

   After yesterday’s article about the new Firefox UI landing in the Aurora channel, here’s some screenshots showing what the new Firefox marked at 29.0a2 looks like on Ubuntu Linux.

6. Mageia 4, Firefox 27 & 29, and a Linux Language Barrier

   Mageia 4 was released on schedule last weekend and got the full treatment by friend Jamie Watson at ZDNet while Sean Kerner posted a screenshot tour and brief introduction. Firefox 27 and 29 are getting some attention. Red Hat’s Chris Mendler is planning to open a run distillery in his spare time. And Jack Wallen thinks geek speak is keeping Linux out of the mainsteam.

7. $300,000 Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund launched

   “Gigabit networks have the potential to change how we live, work, learn and interact on the web, much like the switch from dial-up to broadband did,” says Mark Surman, executive director of Mozilla. “The educators, developers, students and other inventive thinkers in these leading gigabit economies have a unique opportunity to help shape the web of the future, in ways that can help us all know more, do more and do better.”

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The Unethical Business of Semi ‘Open Source’ (Proprietary Disguised as Open)

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 11:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Examples of some bits of software that are not really FOSS but sure are (mis)using the “Open Source” brand

I RECENTLY had the horrible experience of spending weeks of my life wrestling with proprietary software that masquerades as “open” (for marketing). I needed to reverse-engineer some bits. A simple upgrade script, for example, is sold for just over $10,000. Without naming the company at hand, I only wish to say that fake ‘open source’ companies can be worse than proprietary because they use false marketing to seduce people and then act like predators. Over the past few weeks we have accumulated the articles below, highlighting what we believe to be fake ‘open source’ software and traps to watch out for. If we misclassified some of the examples below, then it simply means that the companies have done a terrible marketing job or are simply refusing to talk about freedom. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Best Free Shopping Carts

   The shopping cart software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, described metaphorically as “placing items in the shopping cart” or “add to cart”. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable.

2. A New Philosophy for opentaps

   Make opentaps Benefit the Maximum Number of People

3. The Role of Open Source in Orchestration

   The most challenging part of managing a complex IT infrastructure is not in the silos but the boundaries between those silos. Tools, processes, and even people have to be particularly flexible at the points where workflows intersect. And once these intersection points are codified (through tooling infrastructure, specific procedures, or training), they are exceedingly difficult to change.

4. How enterprises drive innovation through open source technologies

   Conference to illustrate how businesses in the region can transform their IT infrastructures and drive strategic impact for their business through deployment of open source technologies.

5. Goldman Sachs, with 10,000 tech workers, embraces open systems

   A surprising thing about Goldman Sachs, one of the globe’s most influential investment banks, may be the sheer size of its technology organization. It makes up a major part of its workforce.

6. OpenCRX: An open source Salesforce alternative

   Which CRM tool is best for your business? While Salesforce has a smooth, attractive interface and is easier to use in almost every aspect, openCRX offers features Salesforce lacks, such as invoicing capabilities, CalDAV support, integration with any email client, and support for LibreOffice, and arranges its key functionality into a more logical tab hierarchy. Because it’s Java-based, openCRX can run on any Linux, Windows, or Mac OS server in your data center. And because it’s open source software, you can modify the application to customize it for your needs. Though Salesforce has a lot going in its favor, openCRX is worth evaluating for its unique strengths.

7. What to consider when transitioning your open source business to a revenue-based model

8. 5 lessons for any open source business transitioning to a revenue-based model

   In a recent article on Opensource.com, I introduced Data Geekery, the company behind jOOQ, and talked about the challenges we faced when transitioning our products from open source to a revenue-based business model last year. Our team learned a lot about running a business in general as well as making a big transition in our structure. Here, I’ll share the top 5 lessons we learned that every open source business making this kind of change should know.

9. Nuxeo Platform 5.9.1 Is Out

10. Pentaho launches open source community edition 5.0

    Newest version of Pentaho’s open source data integration and business analytics platform

11. Sequenom Chose Open Source EDC System ClinCapture for Cost Efficiency and Team Commitment

12. Department for Business Innovation and Skills deploys open source electronic document management

    Open source consultancy Zaizi has been brought in by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to deploy the Alfresco Collaboration and Records Management service.

13. What’s the problem with DevOps?

    There’s a small problem with DevOps; for some at least… DevOps is just a bit too much Ops and not quite enough Dev.

14. Thales and MagTek Offer Open Source Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) Solution for Independent Payment Gateways

15. Nginx Plus 2.0 Includes Improved Java Apps Support, Other Enhancements

    With more than 120 million Websites now powered by the Nginx Web server, commercial efforts to bring more features continue to grow.

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Dice is Dicing Slashdot to Bits

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Slashdot is being liquidated and the community of Slashdot threatens a boycott of the site

SELLING OUT IS VERY EASY. Earning status and maintaining one’s integrity in the face of temptation is hard. There are always some Sugar Daddies out there, looking to buy themselves positive coverage from seemingly credible sources that would otherwise criticise them. Examples from the UK include The ‘Guardian’ and BBC, both of which accepted a bribe from Bill Gates’ shell entity in an implicit exchange of favours (agenda-pushing for money).

A new report today reveals that The ‘Guardian’ opens its doors even further for the agenda of rich and powerful companies [1]. This trend not limited to such general news sites though; even technology sites go down the same route in pursuit of Sugar Daddies. A lot of them justify it by saying that reporting requires money, hence sellout as a business model is ‘just’.

Not too long ago we covered the mess which was going on at Slashdot and SourceForge, which turned into Microsoft and Bill Gates promotion tools. They even hired longtime Microsoft boosters and former Microsoft staff, just like the BBC had done.

Following the latest scandals at SourceForge [2,3] we had a lot of discussion about it in Techrights IRC (Slashdot managers even came to the channel in attempts to appease) and last week we got a lot of discussion about Dice driving Slashdot into its death with video ads, Microsoft agenda, etc. Slashdot without a community is a dead site because it derives its value from readers and their comments. Our readers who used to like Slashdot said that Dice was essentially liquidating the sites (squeezing the goose for golden eggs) by making the best moves to alienate the readers, i.e. annoy them in exchange for some money/a “quick buck”. Bruce Pernes, who has been very prolific in Slashdot, is saying now in Slashdot that he’s seriously thinking about bringing Technocrat back (Slashdot for grown-ups as he calls it). Last night we made significant changes in Tux Machines, adopting a more Slashdot-like style (in the format/layout sense). It is still the site to follow for very quick and high-quality selection of GNU/Linux and FOSS news — something which Techrights has not been doing as of late (news is not covered quickly enough anymore). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Guardian’s seven-figure deal to build on ‘shared values’ & provide branded content 4 Unilever

2. Has SourceForge been judged unfairly?

   While it’s generally better not to judge too quickly, I think it’s reasonable that people are holding SourceForge to account for some of their decisions. People who download open source software do not expect to get other applications bundled with them.

3. The Reddit – SourceForge Lynch Mob

   It was like Cooks Source all over again, just without the catchphrase “But honestly Monica.”

   It’s been all over the web for the last week or two that the photo imaging program GIMP, a FOSS crown jewel, has dropped SourceForge as a download site. Although the GIMP folks had been a little concerned over some advertisements on SourceForge, the real reason appears to be DevShare, which bundles third party offers with open source downloads for install on Windows machines.

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DRM is Protectionism and Misuse of Laws, Nothing Technical

Posted in DRM at 10:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Interpretation of recent, truly troubling news about DRM and back doors, which are being promoted at a political level

ONE OF the world’s best known critics of DRM recently explained why the W3C lost credibility with its DRM moves. A week ago he explained [1] (getting applause/hat tip from the original Pirate Party’s founder [2] and TechDirt [3]) why DRM without corruption in politics is a pointless exercise of futility. DRM can, by definition, easily be circumvented, but it’s new laws that ban circumvention that make DRM what it is. It’s criminalisation of copying — even copying of what’s legally copyable. It’s a war on sharing. Apple is a big proponent of this and Microsoft became the biggest facilitator when it dumped Vista (and its predecessors) on this world. We need to fight back against those who are waging a war against our rights.

Sony, another infamous DRM booster (going as far as illegally sabotaging people’s computers with rogue DRM), is still fighting to spread DRM to books/literature [4] and Valve proved itself to be equally guilty (like Sony and Microsoft in consoles) by using the courts to prevent passage of digital data [5] (not even copying, just passage of ‘purchased’ — in reality rented — media). Meanwhile, as we learn from the press, “OEM “Kill-switch” anti theft bill proposed by California State” (criminalising devices with no back doors) [6].

If this is where technology is going, namely the enforcement of back doors and suspension of ability to copy and pass data (disguised as ‘technological solution’ when it’s actually political), then we are seriously destroyed. We are losing power over technology to a bunch of tyrannical technophobic plutocrats. DRM is their weapon of choice and it is one among several. DRM helps censor and divide the population, making everyone exceedingly dependent on copyright ‘masters’. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. What happens with digital rights management in the real world?

   In the real world, “bare” DRM doesn’t really do much. Before governments enacted laws making compromising DRM illegal (even if no copyright infringement took place), DRM didn’t survive contact with the market for long. That’s because technologically, DRM doesn’t make any sense. For DRM to work, you have to send a scrambled message (say, a movie) to your customer, then give your customer a program to unscramble it. Anyone who wants to can become your customer simply by downloading your player or buying your device – “anyone” in this case includes the most skilled technical people in the world. From there, your adversary’s job is to figure out where in the player you’ve hidden the key that is used to unscramble the message (the movie, the ebook, song, etc). Once she does that, she can make her own player that unscrambles your files. And unless it’s illegal to do this, she can sell her app or device, which will be better than yours, because it will do a bunch of things you don’t want it to do: allow your customers to use the media they buy on whatever devices they own, allow them to share the media with friends, to play it in other countries, to sell it on as a used good, and so on.

   The only reason to use DRM is because your customers want to do something and you don’t want them to do it. If someone else can offer your customers a player that does the stuff you hate and they love, they’ll buy it. So your DRM vanishes.

   A good analogue to this is inkjet cartridges. Printer companies make a lot more money when you buy your ink from them, because they can mark it up like crazy (millilitre for millilitre, HP ink costs more than vintage Champagne). So they do a bunch of stuff to stop you from refilling your cartridges and putting them in your printer. Nevertheless, you can easily and legally buy cheap, refilled and third-party cartridges for your printer. Same for phone unlocking: obviously phone companies keep you as a customer longer and make more money if you have to throw away your phone when you change carriers, so they try to lock the phone you buy with your plan to their networks. But phone unlocking is legal in the UK, so practically every newsagent and dry cleaner in my neighbourhood will unlock your phone for a fiver (you can also download free programs from the net to do this if you are willing to trade hassle for money).

2. Because Of DRM, The Entire Copyright Monopoly Legislation Is A Lie

   Would you consider it reasonable if the copyright monopoly legislation ended with the words “but if publishers think this law is too permissive, they can rewrite it as they like, and we’ll enforce that instead”? Because that’s exactly what the law looks like.

3. DRM Is The Right To Make Up Your Own Copyright Laws

   We’ve written about the problems of DRM and anti-circumvention laws since basically when we started way back in 1997. Cory Doctorow has been writing about the same stuff for just about as long (or perhaps longer). And yet, just when you think everything that can be said about this stuff has been said, Doctorow comes along and writes what may be the best column describing why DRM, combined with anti-circumvention laws, is so incredibly nefarious. Read the whole thing. It’s so well done, and so important, I’m actually going to write two posts about it, because there are two separate issues that deserve highlighting.

4. Sony and Barnes & Noble look like their ebook days are numbered

5. You can’t resell Valve games in Germany – court

   A German court has dismissed a ‘reselling’ case in favour of Valve Software, the maker of Steam OS. German consumer group Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (vzbv) had filed a complaint against Valve as Valve’s EULA (End User Licence Agreement) prohibits users from re-selling their games.

6. OEM “Kill-switch” anti theft bill proposed by California State

   As more and more persons become owners of smart phones, thieves have found an ever increasing number of targets to prey on. Theft of cellphones is at an all time high in major urban centers across the US and many other countries, and the Californian government has decided to take a stance against it. With cellphones taking a more prominent roll in our lives, we all store sensitive information on our devices, and this is what the bill proposes to address.

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‘Windroid’ is NSA-Powered, Not Linux-powered, and Real Nokia Phones (Not Microsoft ‘Nokia’) Are Only Jolla

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 10:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft marketing from The Verge and some history lessons about Nokia’s Linux endeavours

THERE has been some silly press coverage about a pointless Nokia-branded Microsoft phone, which basically serves the NSA and acts as an enhanced surveillance device. It’s even named after a war (or location of a famous war). We don’t want to feed those who hype it up (some FOSS sites do this foolishly as though it’s good for Android), but we’ll only cite FOSS Force, which explains: “Tom Warren reported on The Verge yesterday that he’s been hearing some skinny that Microsoft is considering making some changes to Windows Phone to allow it to run Android apps.”

No, this is not news. Microsoft has been trying to do that for quite some time (years!), but the entity that got close to it was MeeGo, which only days apart from the official abduction of Nokia by Elop finally got a fantastic tool for running key apps from Android’s broad market, using Alien Dalvik from the Myriad Group (we covered that at the time, back in February of 2011). Right now Jolla enjoys it.

To quote another decent new article from FOSS Force: “Since at least 2007, Microsoft has claimed that 235 of its patents are infringed by Linux. The trouble is, nobody knows what patents are being infringed because Redmond has been keeping that a secret, leaving us to assume that these are imaginary patents. Linux developers only want to see the patents, if they exist, so they can create workarounds to bring Linux into compliance. So far, Microsoft has refused.

“With Ross Gardler, current president of the Apache Foundation and paid spokesperson for Microsoft, running around telling everyone who will listen that “Microsoft is a changed company” and “Microsoft is much more open,” now would be the time to prove it. Show us the patents or promise not to use them against Linux,” wrote Christine Hall.

Why do some bloggers insist that Microsoft ‘embracing’ Android is good while Microsoft reportedly extorts Android backers? This is more of a strategy for concealing one’s predatory and probably illegal behaviour. Microsoft is not there to befriend Android. Microsoft wants to destroy Android. It hardly even makes any pretences about it.

A lot of the hype really comes from The Verge, a site managed by one who gave a platform to Microsoft’s anti-Android lobbyists (Patel). Be sceptical of promotional pieces like this new one which says: “Of Microsoft’s many challenges in mobile, none loom larger than the app deficit: it only takes a popular new title like Flappy Bird to highlight what the company is missing out on. Windows 8 apps are also few and far between, and Microsoft is stuck in a position where it’s struggling to generate developer interest in its latest style of apps across phones and tablets. Some argue Microsoft should dump Windows Phone and create its own “forked” version of Android — not unlike what Amazon has done with its Kindle Fire tablets — while others claim that’s an unreasonably difficult task. With a new, mobile- and cloud-focused CEO in place, Nokia’s decision to build an Android phone, and rumors of Android apps coming to Windows, could we finally see Microsoft experimenting with Google’s forbidden fruit?”

No, it’s racketeering and extortion. The stream of rubbish from The Verge has become inane Microsoft marketing and it’s not hard to see it. Floating all sorts of rumours and “exclusives” serves Microsoft’s agenda here. Other Microsoft boosters have been floating or debunking the idea of Microsoft ‘forking’ Android. Everything for attention, eh?

Half a decade ago Nokia had said that it would put Linux on all of its smartphones (Symbian for the rest). That was before a mole made it into the company. If people want what would have been Nokia’s product (if it hadn’t been destroyed by Microsoft entryism), then they should turn to Jolla and Sailfish OS (former Nokia staff and a Linux-powered operating system). They are already best sellers in Finland, they now land on Android devices [1], and they even open up their designs [2].

Nokia did not die. The brand died. Nokia staff moved on and continued working on MeeGo under another brand. They deserve our support. My wife says her next phone will be a Sailfish OS phone because the features are impressive and she used to love Nokia before Microsoft destroyed it. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Sailfish OS is coming to Android Devices

   If you are impressed with Jolla’s Sailfish OS but do not want to exchange your current Android phone for the Jolla smartphone, the finnish company has some good news for you. In a recent blog post, Jolla has announced that they are bringing Sailfish OS to Android devices.

2. Jolla’s 3D files let you print your own smart covers

   Willing to change the look and feel of your Sailfish OS device? Here’s some good news. Finnish smartphone manufacturer Jolla has released a pair of smart covers dubbed ‘The Other Half’ that not only change the way your phone looks like, but also facilitates a number of UI changes. Jolla has also released the Other Half developers kit, which includes 3D files and technical specs for developers and fans to print their own smart covers.

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News Roundup: Privacy, Surveillance, and Assassination

Posted in News Roundup at 9:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Another set of new links (from yesterday’s and today’s news) covering a very disturbing trend that exploits technology for imposition of power

• American Petroleum Institute kept tabs on enviros

  In 2010 the American Petroleum Institute (API) paid the global intelligence firm Stratfor more than $13,000 a month for weekly intelligence bulletins profiling activist organizations and their campaigns on everything from energy and climate change to tax policy and human rights, according to documents published by WikiLeaks in 2012.

  The weekly reports provided details on a wide range of environmental organizations including Greenpeace, NRDC, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. API was interested in anticipating which groups might be out to “attack” them.

• Utah Legislator Vows to Fight NSA by Cutting Off Its Water Supply

  Step aside, Rand Paul: the NSA has a new enemy. While the Kentucky senator announced his own class-action lawsuit against the NSA on Wednesday, Marc Roberts, a first-term Republican lawmaker in Utah, is planning to introduce legislation that will choke the water supply at the NSA data center under construction in the state.

• Protest outside Federal Building in Providence urges limits on NSA surveillance

  Local protesters joined the National Day of Action against government surveillance by rallying outside the Federal Building on Exchange Street in Kennedy Plaza.

  About 20 people held up signs and a large banner that said: “Dear U.S. Government: Stop Spying On Us!!” Organized jointly by Rhode Island MoveOn.org and the R.I. Coalition to Defend Human and Civil Rights, the protest was part of a national effort called The Day We Fight Back.

• Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Courts

  It is instructive to note that all of this will be done by the same government that operates under an explicit constitutional directive purportedly protecting people from “unreasonable searches and seizures” and specifying that “… no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause … and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”[3] Indeed, one of the most instructive aspects of the NSA scandal is the way the agency has succeeded, for an extensive period of time, in warding off legal challenges to the constitutionality of its surveillance programs. This is instructive from the point of view of libertarian theory, since it illustrates the degree to which the much-vaunted “checks and balances” within the State apparatus, highlighted in the recent Obama speech, are really illusory. In practice, the judicial and executive branches of government tend to act as a legitimizing mechanism for the actions of government agencies, with rare “checks and balances” and“reforms” coming only when the legitimacy of the system is under potent attack from some outside source.

• Edward Snowden asylum demand dropped by European parliament

  The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.

• Protest to Stop NSA Surveillance Generates 85,000 Calls to Congress

  Never underestimate the newfound digital power of advocacy groups to lobby lawmakers. Tuesday’s protest against government surveillance, dubbed The Day We Fight Back, generated more than 85,000 phone calls and 175,000 emails to members of Congress, thanks to more than 6,000 websites that agreed to host a banner to direct voters to act.

• Privacy board testifies to Congress on report rebuking NSA surveillance– live

  Panel says program is illegal and ineffective

• White House’s NSA snooping violates separation of powers, congressmen say

  Deputy Attorney General James Cole may have misled Congress earlier this month when he said the National Security Agency doesn’t look at phone data it collects from members of Congress, three lawmakers wrote in a letter on Wednesday.

  Because the NSA could track even phone numbers only distantly related to a suspected source believed to be involved in terrorism, it’s entirely possible that a member of Congress‘ records were tracked, said Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Republican author of the Patriot Act, and two other congressmen, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York.

• Reps.: Obama’s NSA Is Lying About Spying on Congress

  And it looks like they’re going to remain convinced of that no matter what.

• Congressional trio criticise James Cole’s NSA testimony as misleading

  Sensenbrenner, Issa and Nadler wrote to Cole on Wednesday for a public clarification of the statement, which they described as “not entirely accurate” – and in doing so drew attention to a little-noticed procedure used by the NSA.

• EU calls for US to have less control of the internet following NSA revelations

  The EC called for reform today in the way which the internet is run, saying it needs to be more transparent and accountable. Specifically, the EC wants to ensure that one country, specifically the US, doesn’t maintain a dominating influence.

• Steelie Neelie: ICANN think of more ‘credible’ rules for internet. (Cough *NSA* cough)

  EU vice president Neelie Kroes wants the US to slacken its grip on how the internet is managed in the aftermath of revelations about mass surveillance of innocent citizens.

  She said today that reform was needed to make internet governance more inclusive, transparent and accountable around the globe, with particular emphasis unsurprisingly placed on the role the European Union could play in reshaping that control.

• NSA actions pose ‘direct threat to journalism’ leading watchdog warns

  Agency’s dragnet of communications data threatens to destroy the confidence between reporter and source on which most investigations depend, Committee to Protect Journalists said

• Who’s watching?

  DUTCH houses are famous for having large front parlour windows that look directly onto the pavement, affording passersby a clear view of everything happening inside. It is commonplace to associate these windows with the Calvinist Dutch enthusiasm for transparency, a moral imperative to display that one has nothing to hide. One might think that such a compulsively transparent nation would be less upset than others to learn that its electronic communications were being monitored, but in fact Dutch citizens reacted with fury last August to documents released by Edward Snowden, showing that America’s National Security Agency had apparently collected huge amounts of information on Dutch phone calls and other communications—1.8m of them in December 2012 alone. The interior minister, Ronald Plasterk, issued a report in October denying any Dutch government complicity, and in television appearances accused the Americans of carrying out unauthorised surveillance in the Netherlands and promised to call them to account.

• US Congressman aims to cut water supply to NSA datacentre

• NSA Surveillance Proponent Unsure if Program Will Continue

  A vocal proponent among US Senate liberals for controversial National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance efforts says the program could be shut down, and experts are unsure how many Americans’ phone numbers have been gathered.

  Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, one of the few proponents of the NSA data-collection programs among Democratic progressives, said Wednesday he is “not assuming” that lawmakers will opt to “keep the bulk collection.”

• Reforms won’t hamper NSA’s efforts, official says

  Many of the new privacy protections and surveillance reforms ordered by President Obama will probably not harm the National Security Agency’s ability to do its job, the agency’s deputy said.

  “They’re not putting us out of business,” Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said in a recent interview at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. “They’re not putting an unbearable burden on us. There is a cost to implementing those procedures. But the cost is reasonable, and the effects are not hurting our mission in a significant way.”

• US plunges in World Press Freedom index after NSA leaks, attacks on whistleblowers

  Press freedom in the United States has suffered “one of the most significant declines” in the last year after sacrificing information to national security, with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoing.

  That’s according to The World Press Freedom Index for 2014 from Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which put the US in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop from last year.

• Obama’s Kill List

  Obama heads an administration Murder, Inc. agenda. He appointed himself judge, jury and executioner.

• How Obama Officials Cried ‘Terrorism’ to Cover Up a Paperwork Error

  After seven years of litigation, two trips to a federal appeals court and $3.8 million worth of lawyer time, the public has finally learned why a wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar was cuffed, detained and denied a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii: FBI human error.

  FBI agent Kevin Kelley was investigating Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when he checked the wrong box on a terrorism form, erroneously placing Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list.

  What happened next was the real shame.

• Karim Khan, Anti-Drone Activist Who Lost Family Members to U.S. Strike, Goes Missing in Pakistan

  An anti-drone activist and journalist has gone missing in Pakistan just days before he was due to travel to Europe to speak with Parliament members about the impact of the U.S. drone wars. The legal charity Reprieve says Karim Khan was seized in the early hours of February 5 by up to 20 men, some wearing police uniforms. He has not been seen since. Khan’s brother and son were both killed in a drone strike. In addition to public activism, Khan was also engaged in legal proceedings against the Pakistani government for their failure to investigate the killings of his loved ones. We are joined by filmmaker Madiha Tahir, who interviewed Khan for her documentary, “Wounds of Waziristan.”

• Jail time, fines in drone protest

  A judge in Onondaga County found 13 anti-drone-aircraft activists guilty of disorderly conduct for protesting at a Syracuse-area military base where airmen with the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Attack Wing remotely fire missiles from unmanned aircraft flying in Afghanistan.

  DeWitt Town Judge David Gideon on Friday sentenced 12 of the 13 peace activists for blocking entrances to the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base on Oct. 25, 2012, according to a De Witt court clerk. The dozen protesters each received 15 days in jail, $375 fines and two-year restraining orders prohibiting them from being near Col. Earl A. Evans, a commander at the base, the clerk said. Gideon is expected to sentence the remaining activist, Vietnam veteran Elliott Adams, on Feb. 25. The 67-year-old from Sharon Springs, Schoharie County, received permission from the judge to miss Friday’s court appearance because he was out of the state.

• Will Obama kill unknown American with secret memo?

  Every time you think the war on terror can’t get any weirder, it does.

  [...]

  All this helps explain why the Obama administration apparently feels it cannot kill an American citizen without first taking the political temperature in the U.S. When a government program has the odor of illegality, no one wants to use it unless the use will not be heavily criticized. That’s no way to run national security and it’s no way to run a constitutional democracy, either.

• Obama is first ‘war god’ in history – journalist

  - Looking at the way the White House has handled requests from (ACLU) America’s Civil Liberties Union and other rights activist groups demanding more clarification and more transparency on the drone program, what do you think the White House is afraid of if the information comes out in the open?

• The very public growth of The Intercept

  The Intercept, the new startup title funded handsomely by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, debuted Monday and created buzz both for simply showing up and for its content: An article examining the use of drones to kill government-selected targets abroad, plus a collection of aerial images of the United States’ national security campuses.

• Blog digest February 13: ‘DNI admits CIA’s not-really-secret drone program’

• JPMorgan Vice President’s Death Shines Light on Bank’s Close Ties to the CIA

  Just last month, JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that it facilitated the largest Ponzi scheme in history, looking the other way as Bernie Madoff brazenly turned his business bank account at JPMorgan Chase into an unprecedented money laundering operation that would have set off bells, whistles and sirens at any other bank.

  The U.S. Justice Department allowed JPMorgan to pay $1.7 billion and sign a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning no one goes to jail at JPMorgan — again. The largest question that no one can or will answer is how the compliance, legal and anti-money laundering personnel at JPMorgan ignored for years hundreds of transfers and billions of dollars in round trip maneuvers between Madoff and the account of Norman Levy. Even one such maneuver should set off an investigation. (Levy is now deceased and the Trustee for Madoff’s victims has settled with his estate.)

• If Obama Orders the CIA to Kill a U.S. Citizen, Amazon Will Be a Partner in Assassination

  President Obama is now considering whether to order the Central Intelligence Agency to kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan. That’s big news this week. But hidden in plain sight is the fact that Amazon would be an accessory to the assassination.

  Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide the agency with “cloud” computing services. After final confirmation of the deal several months ago, Amazon declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”

• Did the CIA Use Methods Developed by the Nazis?

  The program, writes Jacobsen, evolved into Project MKUltra, a secret US program studying mind and behavior control techniques, complete with experiments on human subjects. MKUltra also enjoyed the help of ex-Nazi scientists.

• Sen. Levin’s bid to boost drone oversight falters in Congress

  An effort by a powerful U.S. senator to broaden congressional oversight of lethal drone strikes overseas fell apart last week after the White House refused to expand the number of lawmakers briefed on covert CIA operations, according to senior U.S. officials.

  Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, held a joint classified hearing Thursday with the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA and military drone strikes against suspected terrorists.

  But the White House did not allow CIA officials to attend, so military counter-terrorism commanders testified on their own.

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