11.27.15

EPO Did Not Want to Take Down One Techrights Article, It Wanted to Take Down Many Articles Using Intimidation, SLAPPing, and Psychological Manipulation Late on a Friday Night

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

SLAPP is strategic lawsuit against public participation

North Korea flag and EPO

Summary: Recalling the dirty tactics by which the European Patent Office sought to remove criticism of its dirty secret deals with large corporations, for whom it made available and was increasingly offering preferential treatment

SAVING the best for last (there’s a lot more to come), tonight I wish to only share some early experiences I had with the EPO's bullies. At a later point we will show the full legal dissection that includes point-by-point rebuttal and demonstrates that the EPO not only ignores the law when it comes to internal operations but also when it comes to outside engagements (external). These people are thugs and they are contracting goons from the outside (i.e. more privatisation).

“They wanted to ensure that I have no time to seek legal advice.”The EPO, in sending me threatening letters, did not follow the appropriate procedures. These letters were seemingly not sent from a professional in the field, either. They should give 14 days to respond, as a matter of law. It seems as though they are not even aware of how it’s done, but they did it at around 23:30 on a Friday night, showing utter disregard for their target and misuse of new defamation laws, which do not even permit this. Any emotional harm caused to a person who is criticised is not enough to merit litigation, especially since malicious intent or fabrications are required to make up defamation cases. More importantly they need to say who it’s published to and who they actually represent (otherwise there may be no capacity to take any action at all, in which case this all just amounts to harassment or trolling). When I received the first letter (there was more than one) I knew the EPO was trying to engage in a campaign of silencing, but it was too late at night (and beginning of a weekend), so reaching out for legal advice was extremely hard. This is probably what the EPO intended; how many lawyers actually work until midnight on a Friday? They wanted to ensure that I have no time to seek legal advice or that the longer it takes, the greater the liability. Not even silence was presented as an option (akin to Miranda rights).

What I wrote back to them was very short and I then passed the letter to my lawyer. The sender of the latter was possibly not a law specialist. My lawyer called it a “prank letter”. On the face of it, I could ask for at least 14 days to respond, but how would one know this without access to a suitable lawyer late on Friday night? They asked me to write back immediately (a trap) and they clearly don’t know what they are doing, or maybe they deliberately break the rules. Well, this is “SLAPP” — an action intended only to chill a person. It’s abusive. Such abuses of the law are a common theme inside the EPO, based on other stories (like that of Elizabeth Hardon).

“The EPO already has a history of trademark-trolling its critics.”The EPO, in the mean time, carried on sending ever more threatening letters, but this time I already had legal advice, hence I could not be easily fooled. Further to a phonecall or two (during the weekend), my lawyer sent a holding response, sent at my instruction. I had reread my own post and found it totally defensible, even by citing mainstream media interpretations of the leaks (original and authentic, definitely in the public interest). Only if something was incorrect in it would it be worth taking down the post. But I will not do so. Because it’s totally defensible. The EPO was clearly just trying to take down all my recent posts (at the time) because it suffered a major backlash in the corporate media, which cited my articles on the subject. The bullies were utterly desperate to salvage the EPO’s reputation; they even wanted a public “apology” as means of attempting to change history and portray the messenger as wrong, i.e. putting words in their critic’s mouth.

I decided that if the criteria for takedown (and apology) was as terrible as noted in that last threatening letter (worse an example than the first), then they can just libel-troll a lot of other articles, as they probably already do against other people (the totally wrong surname in the first letter potentially serves to confirm this). The EPO already has a history of trademark-trolling its critics. It uses fear (or terrorism, to use a mightier synonym) to silence dissenting voices.

This whole campaign of libel-trolling, which I presume is the frantic/panicky result of managers and others potentially risking the sack (for their actions and the resultant public outcry from European lawyers, i.e. the ‘clients’ of EPO), is ideologically indefensible. It shames the EPO even further as they juggle a whole lot of scandals. █

“There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral”

–Walter Lippmann (American Journalist, 1889-1974)

The European Private Office: What Was Once a Public Service is Now Crony Capitalism With Private Contractors

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 7:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

European taxpayers now subsidise Washington-based PR agencies

FTI Consulting logo

Summary: The increasing privatisation of the European Patent Office (EPO), resembling what happens in the UK to the NHS, shows that the real goal is to crush the quality of the service and instead serve a bunch of rich and powerful interests, in defiance of the original goals of this well-funded (by taxpayers) organisation

Battistelli is in China at the moment as tyrants unite. The Chinese state councilor meets the EPO‘s President, based on Chinese media, but what goes on in Europe? We think that the next big scandal is brewing and this will be the subject of tonight’s (late night) articles.

“The organisation which proclaims to be public is now contracting foreign private entities to help manipulate public perception of the organisation.”Two nights ago we started looking for an important document and then made a request for it. It very quickly yielded this document, which proves that the EPO was meddling with the media.

The European Patent Office ought to be called the European Private Office because essentially this op-called ‘public’ body is privatising parts of its ‘business’ while ensuring that people with occasional connections to the management can potentially make a lot of money (risk-free profit) at the expense of European taxpayers. The organisation which proclaims to be public is now contracting foreign private entities to help manipulate public perception of the organisation.

“FTI Consulting deals with “litigation consulting, strategic communications” and various other areas, which seem to match the EPO’s current media strategy](silencing opposing voices with legal threats while manipulating the media).”A firm which was commenting on the recent Volkswagen scandal and according to the Wall Street Journal “provides legal, financial and public-relations services”, has just been paid close to a million dollars by the EPO.

FTI Consulting is basically, according to its Web site, something rather mysterious and only superficially (on the surface) benign. Wikipedia says “FTI Consulting is a business advisory firm headquartered in Washington, DC.” With 4,400 employees and $1.76 billion in revenue last year (and rising), this is quite a giant and it is publicly traded as FCN (NYSE). It’s a decade younger than the EPO (1982) and about my age. FTI Consulting deals with “litigation consulting, strategic communications” and various other areas, which seem to match the EPO’s current media strategy (silencing opposing voices with legal threats while manipulating the media). “In January 2014, FTI Consulting acquired London-based TLG Partners,” which gives them presence in Europe. The EPO has already signed a contract with the London-based Control Risks Group (CRG) — a subject which we covered in the following posts:

While we are not sure if it’s factually true (Maggie Thatcher isn’t our area of expertise, unlike some UK-IPO-related issues), one new comment in IP Kat says that “Maggie [Thatcher] attempted to privatise the UK Patent Office in the late 1980’s”

Notice just how much of the EPO is now being privatised for profit (external agencies), just like Blackwater in relation to the US Army. First CRG, now PR firms… what next? Tax money from Europe is being shipped to large private companies overseas. And for what? Gaming the European media? █

“[A]fter analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.”

–“Over half your news is spin”

Microsoft Once Again Disregards People’s Settings and Abuses Them, Again Pretends It’s Just an Accident

Posted in Dell, Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 6:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“What we’re really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.”

–Bill Gates

Summary: A conceited corporation, Microsoft, shows not only that it exploits its botnet to forcibly download massive binaries without consent but also that it vainly overrides people’s privacy settings to spy on these people, sometimes with help from malicious hardware vendors such as Dell or Lenovo

THE topic we have neglected as of late is Vista 10, which is still doing pretty poorly in the market. Its whole purpose seem to be data collection and Microsoft will not tolerate barriers to: 1) adoption of Vista 10 and 2) data collection from each Vista 10 user.

Microsoft is aggressively trying to impose downloads of Vista 10, even without consent from users. One ought to wonder, when will there be class action lawsuits? Microsoft pretended this was done in error, but later it became clear that this was not an accident. Microsoft is really desperate to make everyone adopt this malicious spyware, which acts as a keylogger with a lot of other nasty features.

According to reports from earlier this week, Microsoft’s special ally Dell helps snooping on users in more than one way. Not many reports mention this, but it’s a problem that affects Windows only [1], just like in the case of Lenovo, which took all the blame for Microsoft's bad behaviour.

According to reports from the British media, Microsoft is now overriding users’ preferences not only when it comes to downloading Vista 10. It not only ignores privacy settings, either. Microsoft is now using Windows updates to actually alter privacy settings [2], showing once again that anything privacy-related is a farce under Windows [3]. Remember that Microsoft works closely with the NSA.

One article rightly recalled Microsoft’s hypocritical AstroTurfing against Google and wrote: “Microsoft spent millions portraying Google as a greedy and amoral data marauder. Redmond doesn’t need to read your email, it told everyone. The Scroogled campaign positioned Microsoft itself as the ethical alternative; the occupier of the moral high ground.”

As one person put it in Twitter, “now that they’ve apparently “given away” Windows 10, the die is cast. Vast majority of people have no idea of privacy loss/laws” (it is only a ‘free’ ‘upgrade’, it is not “given away”).

The press will likely find yet more of Dell’s serious privacy violations [4], including this second one [5,6], but rarely will it bother to mention that only Windows is affected. This whole bunch of stories comes to show that Dell and Microsoft Windows are more like NSA incorporated. They are designed to erode privacy. Surveillance is a built-in goal. Just like in the case of Lenovo, however, Microsoft received none of the blame. Lenovo and Dell get all the negative publicity, but it is a Windows issue, not just a Lenovo or a Dell issue.

We wish to remind readers that now is a good time to leave Windows. The decks in the proprietary software world are stacked against privacy. They guard the watchers, not the users. Windows sometimes puts people in prison [1, 2]. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Dell, Comcast, Intel & Who Knows Who Else Are Out to Get You

    News came out on Tuesday that since August Dell computers have been coming out-of-the-box with a root certificate preinstalled that is an “unintended security vulnerability.” The source of the quote, by the way, is Dell itself.

    And you thought all you had to worry about was Superfish, the adware Lenovo installed on its computers that left users vulnerable to man-in the-middle attacks — even when running Linux. At least the latest dumb move by Dell seems to be Windows specific, meaning most readers of FOSS Force can breath easy and repeat the official Linux mantra rewritten from an old Dial soap campaign.

  2. Why Microsoft yanked its latest Windows 10 update download: It hijacked privacy settings

    According to Redmond on Tuesday, “when the November update was installed, a few settings preferences may have inadvertently not been retained for advertising ID, Background apps, SmartScreen Filter, and Sync with devices.”

    Fair play to Microsoft for shedding light on the blunder. Basically, its operating system allowed apps to access people’s unique advertising ID numbers; the SmartScreen Filter that sends executables to Microsoft servers to analyze was enabled; software was allowed to run in the background; and settings and passwords would be backed up the cloud. If you previously disabled any of those, they would be reenabled by the MCT-derived upgrade over a previous Windows 10 install.

  3. Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

    Microsoft pulled a major update for Windows after it blew away the user’s privacy settings, allowing app developers and advertisers to glean the user’s identity.

    But that’s only part of the story, which gets murkier by the day.

    We already knew Windows 10 Threshold deleted third-party data monitoring tools and cleanup tools, including stalwarts like Spybot and CCleaner. It even disabled Cisco’s VPN software. Just a bug, said Microsoft.

    Two bugs would be a puzzling coincidence – but something else makes it altogether more troubling.

    This year Microsoft introduced background tracking services called DiagTrack, or the Diagnostics Tracking Service. It was added to Windows 8.1 installations as well as betas of Windows 10. It arrived without much fanfare in May 14, in the shape of a patch, KB3022345.

    It was just one of several slurping enhancements added via the back door.

    [...]

    Microsoft spent millions portraying Google as a greedy and amoral data marauder. Redmond doesn’t need to read your email, it told everyone. The Scroogled campaign positioned Microsoft itself as the ethical alternative; the occupier of the moral high ground.

  4. New Dell computer comes with a eDellRoot trusted root certificate
  5. ​Dell in hot water again as second ‘Superfish’ root certificate surfaces

    Dell customers have turned up a second root certificate installed on some Dell machines, which could make them easy prey for malicious attacks on public Wi-Fi networks.

  6. Second Dell backdoor root cert found

When the EPO Liaised With Capone (Literally) to Silence Bloggers, Delete Articles

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Like history’s most genocidal regimes, the EPO’s management started an aggressive information warfare campaign this autumn

Lord Bryce

Summary: A dissection of the EPO’s current media strategy, which involves not only funneling money into the media but also actively silencing opposing views

THE EPO is doing more malicious things than we have time to cover. As noted in the previous post, DDOS challenges aren’t helping (lost 2 hours this morning) and the EPO’s expensive distortion of the corporate media is well under way, with Battistelli sending to influential people articles from his greased up ‘media partners’, Les Échos for instance [1, 2, 3] (now Battistelli's mouthpiece, his master’s voice).

“The EPO is now using public money to sue or threaten to sue journalists, activists etc. via dubious tactics and dubious people with a name like “Capone” (yes, it’s a real name!).”One important observation that we wish to point out very quickly (I must rush and dash outdoors really urgently if not soon) is that the EPO bullies bloggers at the same time that it is greasing up the corporate media (look at the dates on the leaked letters and see they’re just weeks apart). The EPO is now using public money to sue or threaten to sue journalists, activists etc. via dubious tactics and dubious people with a name like “Capone” (yes, it’s a real name!).

The EPO is clearly fighting an information war (read the Wikipedia article on “information warfare”) right now, combined with psychological warfare that mostly takes its toll on staff representatives. It wants to deprive its opposition of a voice while literally buying its own voices. This is the hallmark of imperialistic behaviour that must not be tolerated but at the same time can be difficult to crush (those who can end it are subjected to constant brainwash which only a lot of money can buy).

“This is the hallmark of imperialistic behaviour that must not be tolerated but at the same time can be difficult to crush (those who can end it are subjected to constant brainwash which only a lot of money can buy).”Contrary to media reports, the EPO did not bully me over one single article. It did this repeatedly. I later received another threatening from the EPO, regarding yet another article. That’s an outrageous sign that the EPO’s goal was to systematically remove a lot of articles — if not all articles — which I ever wrote about the EPO. As per advice that I received, maybe at the end I’ll just take legal action and charge for illegal takedown attempts — takedown of stuff that is factually correct. Such action is in itself illegal. It’s akin to bogus DMCA takedown requests (censorship). But wait, does the EPO even care what’s legal? Remember that the EPO is effectively above the law. It exploits that. Even when losing cases in court the EPO refuses to obey the rulings.

Believe it or not, Mr. Capone (yes, real name!) was the person doing legal bullying for the EPO. They seem to have gotten a cheap and unprofessional ‘lawyer’ (grossly abusing the law, which he does not even seem to understand) because a serious lawyer would laugh them out the door, fearing that the legal firm itself can be sued for SLAPP and bullying.

“Remember that the EPO is effectively above the law. It exploits that.”No public word on this situation yet, but please understand that the EPO seemingly dumped their lawyers and moved to a more aggressive firm. It’s all about intimidation and as we revealed in our first post on the subject, this seems to be a widespread campaign. Do not assume that Techrights is the only site under attack. We know that it’s not because we spoke to another blogger, the person who built a site opposing the Unitary Patent. The EPO bullied him (trademark-trolling). Sometimes, especially nowadays, I fail to see how Europe is safer than China for journalists…

These people have no shame; they describe a false scenario or a misrepresentation of the law in an effort to compel for action based on misinformation. Similar tactics were reportedly used against staff representatives while their lawyers were absent. The EPO’s bullies sent me threatening letters just before midnight on a Friday night, probably for similar reasons (more on that in future articles). We are going to expand on that some other day and provide more proof of our allegations, for I’ve run out of time and I must leave. █

Blogger Who Wrote About the EPO’s Abuses Retires

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Jeremy Phillips
Photo credit: IP Kat blog

Summary: Bloggers’ independent rebuttal capability against a media apparatus that is deep in the EPO’s pocket is greatly diminished as Jeremy Phillips suddenly retires

TODAY we had clear plans. We had a plan to share a lot more details about the EPO‘s campaign to chill bloggers, putting aside expensive distortion of the corporate media by the EPO. An unforeseen de facto DDOS attack, however, wasted 2 hours of my time this morning. Also discovered this morning was this bit of sad news about Jeremy from IP Kat. He is probably IP Kat‘s most prominent person and only days after the EPO’s bullying of bloggers becomes publicly known it also becomes publicly known that a blogger who occasionally covered EPO scandals (e.g. when the UK government issued ‘damage control’ statements regarding EPO) suddenly retires. We don’t think that IP Kat ever received threatening letters from the EPO (it did, like Gene Quinn, receive threatening letters from WIPO), but anyway, that may be the subject of another post, set aside for another day.

“He is probably IP Kat‘s most prominent person and only days after the EPO’s bullying of bloggers becomes publicly known it also becomes publicly known that a blogger who occasionally covered EPO scandals (e.g. when the UK government issued ‘damage control’ statements regarding EPO) suddenly retires.”This comment from IP Kat (by “Concerned Examiner”) last night mentioned a “Spanish press report on the events“. We hope that one of our Spanish-speaking readers can kindly provide an English translation for us to publish.

We are saddened to learn that one among relatively few bloggers who cover EPO scandals is retiring. As he put it in his departure message, “most of all I shall miss Merpel” (the other person who covers EPO scandals at IP Kat).

There are many comments being posted there, also from familiar accounts which typically write about the EPO. “Running this blog,” said one of them, “must be very energy-intensive and I’m sure it is wise to step away while you still have other projects to pursue.”

Well, much work remains to be done regarding EPO transparency (self-imposed or imposed by the European public). We are eager to continue a high pace of publication regarding the EPO. As an anonymous commenter said yesterday, “Europe is ripping itself and democracy apart. Hungary, now Poland too.

“…I too am afraid that the AC representatives do see no need, as their expertise regarding law is limited to patent matter, while their views are influenced by lobbyists in their home countries as well as within the EPO.”
      –Anonymous“The EPO is just another sign that people are now willing to inform themselves anymore, and democracy does not work when people simply follow masses…. And seeing what is happening all around, I too am afraid that the AC representatives do see no need, as their expertise regarding law is limited to patent matter, while their views are influenced by lobbyists in their home countries as well as within the EPO.”

“We will have to wait for the ILO administrative tribunal, but they cannot repair things, they can just say “what you did was illegal”, and offer nothing else. IF the governing body of ILO does not throw the EPO out, as the EPO is severely damaging the functionality of the ILO-AT….”

The latter part is a reference to a subject we covered here a month ago and Merpel did too. Please help us shed light on the truth inside the EPO by translating articles and sending us input. The EPO now spend nearly a million dollars (in a year!) just distorting the media. Don’t let them get away with "happy" propaganda that’s utterly false/fictional [1, 2]. █

Leaked: EPO Award of €880,000 “in Order to Address the Media Presence of the EPO” (Reputation Laundering)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Propaganda and media distortion, but at whose expense?

Summary: The European Patent Office, a public body, wastes extravagant amounts of money on public relations (for ‘damage control’, like FIFA’s) in an effort to undermine critics, not only among staff (internally) but also among the media (externally)

TODAY is Black Friday and there might be something black at the EPO (like black budget), whose documents, which show how public money is (mis)used, keep being leaked for us to publish. It took less than a day after our request.

Having already absorbed anti-corruption people (who were supposed to investigate the EPO) into its own ranks, the EPO now wants to devour the media too.

The following is self-explanatory really.

EPO media spendings page 1

EPO media spendings page 2

EPO media spendings page 3

The above 3 images can (and probably should) be shared widely.

The source of this material referred to our recent article and wished to highlight the following bits from the document. They may be of interest to those who are too lazy to read it. It confirms the allocation of €880,000 “in order to address the media presence of the EPO” and to quote the detailed breakdown:

13. Main Project with a duration of 1 year
with a campaign in Germany and the Netherlands : EUR 600K

14. Additional Project
with support for Dir. External communication: EUR 280K

According to the Summary on the title page, the beneficiary of the contract in this case was FTI Consulting:

In accordance with Art. 57 (b) FinRegs a report is provided on the award of 2 direct placements to FTI Consulting for EPO’s positioning campaign and support for Directorate External Communication.

We are going to write a lot more about it in the future. Please note that this was submitted by “President of the European Patent Office” (that’s Battistelli). It is an “award of urgently required direct placements,” which doesn’t sound so benign at all.

“In order to address the media presence of the EPO, a targeted positioning campaign has been launched,” says the document. When people in this field say “targeted positioning campaign” it implies something against the spirit of journalism.

“Proposals from 3 PR agencies were submitted,” says the document, “evaluated and decision taken.”

It is “new positioning campaign”. There’s that word again: positioning.

“Foreseen time-frame is 1 year.”

Almost a million dollars in just one year? Wow. “Main Project with a duration of 1 year,” the bottom part states.

Why do all this? The document says “reputational risk issue and crisis communication.” In simple terms? Reputation laundering.

Here is the full document as text:

CA/F 19/15
Orig.: en
Munich, 24.09.2015

SUBJECT: Report on award decisions owing to urgency pursuant to Article 57 b) of the FinRegs and Article 2.4.1 (2) of the Tender Guidelines

SUBMITTED BY: President of the European Patent Office

ADDRESSEES: Budget and Finance Committee (for information)

SUMMARY

In accordance with Art. 57 (b) FinRegs a report is provided on the award of 2 direct placements to FTI Consulting for EPO’s positioning campaign and support for Directorate External Communication

CA/F 19/15 e
LT 1659/15 – 152440001

I. STRATEGIC/OPERATIONAL

1. Operational.

II. RECOMMENDATION

2. To take note.

III. MAJORITY NEEDED

3. n/a

IV. CONTEXT

4. Under Article 57(b) of the FinRegs, a report is to be provided on the award of urgently required direct placements where it is not possible to await the outcome of the forms of invitation to tender and the award decision exceeds EUR 250K.

V. ARGUMENTS

5. In order to address the media presence of the EPO, a targeted positioning campaign has been launched.

6. Proposals from 3 PR agencies were submitted, evaluated and decision taken.

7. To maximise the effectiveness of communications, the new positioning campaign had to be prepared and implemented without delay.

8. Foreseen time-frame is 1 year.

9. To have one single strategy towards the media, the support of Directorate for External Communication must be provided by the same PR agency.

10. Support is required in the analysis for the current communication work, achievements and aspirations after 5 years of reforms and to pilot a project on reputational risk issue and crisis communication.

11. This need also to be implemented with the same time line as for the main project.

CA/F 19/15 e
LT 1659/15 – 152440001
1/2

VI. ALTERNATIVES

12. n/a

VII. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

13. Main Project with a duration of 1 year
with a campaign in Germany and the Netherlands : EUR 600K

14. Additional Project
with support for Dir. External communication: EUR 280K

VIII. LEGAL BASIS

15. n/a

IX. DOCUMENTS CITED

16. n/a

X. RECOMMENDATION FOR PUBLICATION

17. n/a

CA/F 19/15 e
LT 1659/15 – 152440001
2/2

Journalists should probably be made aware of the EPO’s plot to distort the media. That’s some very high-budget campaign. █

Links 27/11/2015: KDE Plasma 5.5 Plans, Oracle Linux 7.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • What I Learned from Blowing An Interview

    Likewise, blogging or writing books about software development is necessarily removed from software development. Patterns, architectures, idioms, and algorithms are potential value. It’s only by applying the ideas that we realize the value. The same goes for creating infrastructure like operating systems, text editors, programming languages, frameworks, and libraries.

  • How Deduplication Has Evolved to Handle the Deluge of Data

  • Hardware

    • More than a billion PCs are over three years old, and there’s little reason to replace them

      And right there is the problem facing the PC industry. You’re replacing a tool with another tool that does the same thing. Much like a light bulb or a hammer. It’s why we’re seeing a proliferation of “smart” devices – smart light bulbs, smart thermostats, smart smoke detectors, smart refrigerators – because without that new “smart” twist people just aren’t replacing their light bulbs, thermostats, smoke detectors, or refrigerators until the day they release the magic smoke and stop working.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • A Winter’s Tale: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

      A Turkish jet shoots down a Russian jet. Parliament votes to send RAF jets into the mix. What could possibly go wrong?

      Unfortunately, things do go wrong. Cameron’s 70,000 “moderate rebels” prove either non-existent or crazed pro-Saudi Wahabbists. Mostly they are the very jihadists Russia is attacking, but we are supporting. In the fog of war, another Russian plane is downed. A Russian pilot downs a British jet. With politicians on all sides afloat on the sea of militarist rhetoric, within 24 hours it has spiralled hopelessly out of control.

    • Cameron Overreaches With “70,000” Claim Nobody Believes

      Cameron is in serious trouble at Westminster after overreaching himself by the claim that there are 70,000 “moderate rebels” willing to take up the ground war with Isis. Quite literally not one single MP believes him. There are those who believe the lie is justified. But even they know it is a lie.

      There is a very interesting parallel here with the claims over Iraqi WMD. The 70,000 figure has again been approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee, with a strong push from MI6. But exactly as with Iraqi WMD, there were strong objections from the less “political” Defence Intelligence, and caveats inserted.

  • Finance

    • China may invest $1 trillion overseas in next 5 years

      Continuing the carrot and stick approach to international trade, Premier Li Keqiang told poorer European nations that China would likely invest in their countries and import their products if they promised to buy Chinese products

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Guardian’s Anti Corbyn Campaign Plumbs New Depths

      Yet astonishingly the Guardian ran three whole articles entirely about the McDonnell gaffe. You could read every single word of these three articles and not learn the basic information provided in each of the three Blue Tory papers above. The utterly disgraceful Jonathan Jones, John Crace and Tom Phillips all managed to produce articles which utterly omit what McDonnell actually said and why he said it, to contrive to give the impression that McDonnell was quoting Mao straight and with approval.

      [...]

      UPDATE: This is absolutely beyond parody. The Guardian have just published a FOURTH article on this subject, by Roy Greenslade, which still fails to say that McDonnell was referring to Osborne’s disposal of British assets to the Chinese state. Instead Greenslade cuts and pastes the most damning comments he can find in the Tory media. Not of course including any of the Tory media quotes given above which, unlike the Guardian, tell you what McDonnell was saying.

      When do you think the fifth Guardian article is coming?

  • Privacy

    • Teardown shows Nest Cam is “always-on” even when you think it’s off

      It turns out your home security camera may see more of your home than you thought it did. In a teardown of the Nest Cam, a team at ABI Research found that even when “off,” the camera draws nearly the same amount of power as when it’s fully powered on, meaning it’s functional and running even when the indicator light claims otherwise.

    • Tor Project appeals for help to carry on, expand anti-spying network

      The Tor anonymous browsing project has asked for donations to improve the network and invest in educational projects.

      The Tor Project is a non-profit scheme which runs Tor. Otherwise known as The Onion Router, the system allows users to enter areas of the Internet which remain unindexed by common search engines.

      The node-and-relay layout also skewers the original IP of the user, improving anonymity and thwarting surveillance efforts.

    • Glenn Greenwald: Why the CIA is smearing Edward Snowden after the Paris attacks

      Decent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a terrorism attack. American politicians and intelligence officials see something else: opportunity.

      Bodies were still lying in the streets of Paris when CIA operatives began exploiting the resulting fear and anger to advance long-standing political agendas. They and their congressional allies instantly attempted to heap blame for the atrocity not on Islamic State but on several preexisting adversaries: Internet encryption, Silicon Valley’s privacy policies and Edward Snowden.

      [...]

      The CIA’s blame-shifting game, aside from being self-serving, was deceitful in the extreme. To begin with, there still is no evidence that the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.

      CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central premise of the CIA’s campaign — encryption enabled the attackers to evade our detection — is baseless.

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