• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Works Great As A Linux Ultrabook

  Lenovo’s new X1 Carbon is made of carbon-fiber construction as implied by its name and is very thin and light at 0.70″ and just under three pounds. Lenovo claims that the X1 Carbon can last up to 10.9 hours with its lone battery, and continues with all of the features collected over the years with the various ThinkPad laptops/ultrabooks. This third-generation X1 Carbon also has much anticipated improvements to the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint.

Kernel Space

• Changes Already For Linux 3.20 (Linux 4.0?) Are Very Exciting

  While we don’t yet know whether the next kernel version is Linux 3.20 or Linux 4.0, what we do know is that this next Linux kernel revision will contain a lot of exciting updates.

• The Staging Pull For Linux 3.20 Has A Lot Of Changes All Over The Place

  The latest pull requests sent in for the Linux 3.20 kernel are the various subsystems maintained by Greg Kroah-Hartman. The changes for the USB drivers, char/misc, driver core, staging, and TTY/serial aren’t too jaw-dropping, but for staging at least is the usual heavy churn between kernel cycles.

• Reiser4 Updated For The Linux 3.18 Kernel

  For those still relying upon the Reiser4 file-system and haven’t migrated off to ZFS On Linux or Btrfs, the out-of-tree Reiser4 kernel code has been updated for compatibility with the Linux 3.18 kernel.

Applications

• hinversi: Casual and yet complete

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Install kernel 3.19 in Fedora

  • Different file types in Linux / UNIX

• Games

  • Edge Of Eternity J-RPG Tribute Now On Kickstarter, Has A Linux Demo

    An indie tribute to J-RPG classics. Explore a universe blending fantasy with science-fiction, intense ATB battles and branching story. The Kickstarter has reached 21% of the goal already, and it’s trending to hit waaaay over the goal if you trust Kicktraq.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • MakuluLinux KDE 7.0 is Live !

    Finaly the wait is over, the new MakuluLinux KDE 7 has been released, grab your copy from the KDE section in menu or simply click here.

  • KDE Frameworks 5.7 Brings Many Fixes, Supports NetworkManager 1.0, Etc

    The KDE community has done a Valentine’s weekend release of KDE Frameworks 5.7.0, the newest version of the add-on libraries used by KDE applications, KDE Plasma 5, and a growing number of other projects like LXQt.

  • Release of KDE Frameworks 5.7.0

    February 14, 2015. KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.7.0.

    KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms.

  • Local KDE meetings rock, and you should be in one

    A bunch of KDE enthusiasts from the sunny Barcelona (Spain), decided to organize a dinner in a restaurant to celebrate the launch of KDE 4.6. At that time, I was not even using KDE 4 (I was a happy KDE3 user instead!) but I though it would be nice to meet other people and discuss about the problems I had with KDE 4.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Three Things That Annoy Me With Using GNOME 3

    At the beginning of this month I wrote how I switched back to Fedora Linux on my main system to replace Ubuntu and also wrote about changes I made when installing Fedora 21 on my main system, a new ThinkPad ultrabook with Broadwell processor. There’s three small things that annoy me the most though about using GNOME 3.x.

Distributions

• CrunchBang Linux is back from the dead

  It was just a little while ago that the Linux world was shocked to find that CrunchBang Linux had died. The CrunchBang developer felt like it was time to move on, and so CrunchBang users were going to have to let it go and find a new minimalist distro for their computers…until now.

• CrunchBang rises from the ashes

• Arch Family

  • Some Linux distributions never change

    In comparison, the set-up of Arch Linux was a breeze and extremely fast once the hard drive partionning was figured out. I got a laptop that does not isn’t UEFI enabled so I had more choices and did not have to go through the rather complex tools such as parted or gdisk. I got to use cfdisk which I have relied on for several years.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat wants you to contain yourself and your workloads

    Red Hat’s newest push in the virtualization realm is containers. You know, the good old BSD jail-type containers that leverages your hardware better than any other virtualization technology? Yes, that one.

  • Fedora

    • Fedora is sponsoring HackRU Spring 2015!

      After much anticipation, we have decided to sponsor HackRU, a hackathon occurring on April 18-19th 2015 at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). As a hackathon attendee, I have noticed relatively little FOSS activity within the recent collegiate hackathon scene — as an organisation that strives to lead, not follow, Fedora will be sponsoring HackRU in April.

    • s3cmd 1.5.2 – major update coming to Fedora and EPEL

      As new upstream maintainer for the popular s3cmd program, I have been collecting and making fixes all across the codebase for several months. In the last couple weeks it has finally gotten stable enough to warrant publishing a formal release. Aside from bugfixes, its primary enhancement is adding support for the AWS Signature v4 method, which is required to create S3 buckets in the eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) region, and is a more secure request-signing method usable in all AWS S3 regions. Since releasing s3cmd v1.5.0, python 2.7.9 (as exemplified in Arch Linux) added support for SSL certificate validation. Unfortunately, that validation broke for SSL wildcard certificates (e.g. *.s3.amazonaws.com). Ubuntu 14.04 has an intermediate flavor of this validation, which also broke s3cmd. A couple quick fixes later, and v1.5.2 is published now.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Flavours and Variants

        • elementary OS: is financial support the only way to help a project grow?

          elementary OS is in news again, and for wrong reasons. In the latest blog post, the team accused those users of ‘cheating’ who chose not to ‘pay’ for the software.

        • 5 Reasons To Use Linux Mint And Not Ubuntu

          On the surface there isn’t much difference between Linux Mint and Ubuntu as Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu (except for Linux Mint Debian Edition) and apart from the desktop environment and default applications there isn’t really a difference.

          In this article I am going to list 5 reasons why you would choose Linux Mint over Ubuntu. Now I am well aware that Ubuntu users are going to come back and say that there are loads of reasons to use Ubuntu over Linux Mint and so the counterargument to this list will be made available later in the week.

Devices/Embedded

• OpenPi review – a Pi of Things

  The OpenPi on first look is a curious device – a nondescript black box with merely an HDMI and a microUSB slot. There’s no real indication of what it might be, however cracking it open reveals a custom board connected to a Raspberry Pi compute module. Inside as standard is a wireless dongle and a bluetooth receiver for a mini-wireless keyboard/mouse combo. It seems quite simple, and to be fair in this state it is – it’s basically just a (fully-functioning) Raspberry Pi.

  That’s actually the point of it though. With the compute module and the OpenPi board, you have full access to the usual Raspberry Pi power and settings and such. The selling point of the OpenPi though is that you can then take this board – which is completely open hardware – and modify the plans yourself to make a custom board that fits your needs. Wireless Things thinks of it as an easier way to create an internet of things, and they’ve succeeded in creating the platform to do this really.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Study says Android 4.0 and iOS 8 are most likely to crash your apps

      Ever had the feeling that certain phone operating systems are more likely to crash your apps than others? It’s not just you. Crittercism has posted its latest breakdown of crash reports from about 20,000 apps, and it’s clear that certain operating systems aren’t as friendly as others. On Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is most likely to wreck your day; KitKat (4.4) is close behind, while Lollipop’s early reputation for glitches apparently doesn’t affect apps. With Apple devices, however, the tables turn. While iOS’ app crash rate is lower overall, iOS 8 is a bit more problematic than its predecessor. That’s not surprising given that Apple hasn’t had as much time to tackle issues in 8, but you may feel better if you’re still holding on to 7.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Update for Samsung Galaxy S4 Features New User Interface: Device Receives New Google OS

      The update is now available for users in different parts of the world such as Russia, India, Slovakia, Germany and Czech Republic. Most European countries can also enjoy the update already. However, Galaxy S4 users from the US should wait for their mobile carriers to roll out the update.

    • iOS versus Android: The text bubble witch hunt

      There’s another petty iOS versus Android controversy brewing. Apparently some folks have gotten it into their heads that Apple is teaching people to hate anyone who doesn’t use an iPhone by displaying SMS messages in green and iMessage messages in blue.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Update For Moto X 2013 Edition Delayed, Motorola Reveals The Reason Behind It

      In October 2014, Google announced the arrival of a new firmware update, Android 5.0 Lollipop. Motorola has been among the brands that promised the new firmware would be available to its devices. Motorola said that Android 5.0 Lollipop would be introduced in its flagships devices including 2013 editions of Moto G and Moto X.

    • Moto E and Moto Maxx get Android 5.0 Lollipop update

      The mobile phone manufacturer made the Android update announcement on their official Twitter account on Feb. 12, saying that Android 5.0 Lollipop can now be downloaded for Moto Maxx and Moto E in selected markets.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 36 Won’t Bring Native YouTube HTML5 Playback, But Will Sync Pinned Tiles

    Only ten days from today, on February 24, Mozilla will upgrade its ever-popular Firefox web browser to version 36.0, a release that won’t bring the highly anticipated native HTML5 playback on YouTube, according to a recent discussion on the Mozilla bug tracker, but will finally allow users to sync their new tab page’s pinned tiles across all of their devices where Mozilla Firefox is installed.

  • uBlock ad blocker added to Mozilla’s extensions site

    If you’re in the market for an efficient ad blocker, you can now get uBlock from Mozilla’s extensions site to add it to your Firefox browser. uBlock can be a great alternative to AdBlock Plus and other ad blocking extensions since it seems to use less system resources.

BSD

• FreeBSD-Based m0n0wall Firewall/Network OS Announces The End

  For anyone that in the past decade has looked for an embedded firewall/network operating system to build your own router or network device has likely encountered m0n0wall. While m0n0wall has been popular over the years and is powered by FreeBSD, the lead developer of m0n0wall has tossed in the towel after twelve years in development.

• End of the m0n0wall project

  on this day 12 years ago, I have released the first version of m0n0wall to the public. In theory, one could still run that version – pb1 it was called – on a suitably old PC and use it to control the Internet access of a small LAN (not that it would be recommended security-wise). However, the world keeps turning, and while m0n0wall has made an effort to keep up, there are now better solutions available and under active development.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• I ♥ Free Software 2015

  It is that time of the year again – the day we display our affection to our significant other …and the Free Software we like best.

Standards/Consortia

• Deaf group sues Harvard, MIT over online courses

  The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Harvard and MIT yesterday, saying the two universities are violating the Americans with Disabilities Act because they don’t properly caption their online course offerings.

Should we be flattered or worried that the British accent turns foreigners on?

I do hope Time Out magazine didn’t rush its Global Dating Survey in order to publish it in time for Valentine’s Day. It would be very much against the spirit of the age. Sir John Chilcot has shown us the way: if an investigation is important, it mustn’t be rushed. We must take time to draw the right conclusions even if hell freezes over first – surely the perfect opportunity for Tony Blair to take up skiing.

As Dynasty’s Son, Jeb Bush Used His Connections Freely

The stream of requests to the White House from Jeb Bush, a young but well-connected Republican leader in South Florida, ranged from the weighty and urgent to the parochial and mundane.

In 1985, he sent an emotional letter pressing his father, Vice President George Bush, to investigate the detention of Cuban children in Texas, asking, “Shouldn’t there be some compassion?” (The vice president’s reply: “Heartbreaking.”)

In 1989, after his father became president, Mr. Bush offered his recommendation for the next Supreme Court opening. (“Your suggestion will be given thoughtful consideration,” a senior aide responded.)

Woman stung by scorpion on flight from LA to Portland

A scorpion stung a woman on the hand just before her flight from Los Angeles to Portland took off.

Flight 567 was taxiing on the runway Saturday night when the passenger was stung, Alaska Airlines spokesman Cole Cosgrove said. The plane returned to the gate, and the woman was checked by medics. She refused additional medical treatment, but she didn’t get back on the plane.

Health/Nutrition

• Mind control experiments on the mentally ill — Vermont State Hospital and the CIA

  I asked Karen what she thought they were trying to do her. She said that she had no doubt she was a research subject. The purpose of all this was just an extension of MKULTRA – mind control experiments. The CIA and their “Frankenstein” doctors were investigating how and when a person will break, when they will talk, at what point you can make a person do anything you want and when is too much, where they will just die.

  [...]

  Apparently, 3,000 mysterious deaths from 1952-1973 at the Vermont State Hospital, hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled to the Hospital from the CIA, giving deadly and experimental drugs to mental health patients, putting them in strait jackets, giving them no bed, and making them urinate on the floor is not worthy of investigation. Is this not news in part because the CIA was acting criminally, or because these were expendable mental health patients? You tell me.

• Could supermarkets for poor people tackle the UK’s chronic food poverty?

  It is rare to meet someone in the poverty world who does not profess to be motivated by politics, faith or social injustice. But Mark Game, who runs Community Shop, seems almost embarrassed by the idea that he might be trying to do anything other than run a successful business. Practical problem-solving, he says, is his thing. He is not religious, and he is not really a politics person.

• Pakistan Polio Update: Vaccination Team Attacked In Khyber Agency; Second Team Disappears In Baluchistan Province

  Resistance to polio campaigns in Pakistan have been growing since the 2011 U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. The CIA had used a vaccination campaign as a cover for gathering information on the whereabouts of the al Qaeda leader.

Security

• Facebook bug could have ERASED the ENTIRE WORLD

  The flaw potentially allowed mass deletion of photos using the identification number of a target album and an attacker’s Facebook Android app token. Any scripts to pull off this trick could be stopped by security controls like rate limiters.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• What Libya’s Unraveling Means

  Largely overshadowed by the crises in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, Libya’s unraveling has received comparatively little attention over the past few months. As this oil-rich nation veers toward complete chaos, world leaders would be wise to redouble efforts led by the United Nations to broker a power-sharing deal among warring factions.

• Dome of fire: Libya’s largest oil field sabotaged, company releases footage

  Libya’s Waha Oil Company has posted a video on its Facebook page showing the fire that raged through El Sarir oil field and halted oil flows to the Hariga port, in what is believed to be an act of sabotage.

• Prison Dispatches from the War on Terror: Confessed Plotter Gives Insight into Radicalization

  In 2006, 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad was arrested and charged with leading a group of young men who planned to bomb power stations, take hostages and “behead politicians” in order to compel the Canadian government to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Ahmad was also accused of planning to travel abroad to join Islamist insurgents fighting in foreign conflicts.

• al-Qaeda’s Feud with Denmark

  Denmark is a relatively small country, with a population of 5.7 million. But it is relatively wealthy, being the 35th largest economy in the world, producing more goods and services than Malaysia, Israel or the Philippines. Its military is more important than the country’s small size would suggest, since it is well supplied with fighter jets.

  The country is clearly in al-Qaeda’s sights, and not only because of the Jyllands Posten publication in 2007 of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. A Danish secret agent Morten Storm, went public with claims that he was key to tracking down Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born propagandist for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. On the basis of Storm’s information, he says, the US were able to launch drone strikes against al-Awlaki and to kill him in September, 2011. AQAP therefore has a vendetta against Denmark. The country also supported the Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq, so that Daesh / ISIL sympathizers have an animus against it. The Danish air force is bombing the radicals in Iraq nowadays.

• New shooting in Copenhagen: 3 wounded, including 2 police

  Police say three people have been wounded, including two police officers, in a shooting in downtown Copenhagen.

• Denmark On High Alert After Copenhagen Terror Attack Kills One

  Multiple reports indicated that shots were fired early Sunday morning at a Copenhagen synagogue. It was not immediately clear if the shooting was related to the earlier killing at the free speech event.

• Gunman Believed to Be Behind 2 Copenhagen Attacks Is Fatally Shot, Police Say

• Police Kill Suspect In Copenhagen Shootings

  Danish police shot and killed a man early Sunday suspected of carrying out shooting attacks at a free speech event and then at a Copenhagen synagogue, killing two men, including a member of Denmark’s Jewish community. Five police officers were also wounded in the attacks.

  Officials have not identified the perpetrator but say it is possible he was imitating the terror attacks last month in Paris in which Islamic radicals carried out a massacre at the Charlie Hebdo newsroom followed by an attack on Jews at a kosher grocery store.

• Danish police believe they killed gunman behind two Copenhagen shootings that killed 2, wounded 5

  By early Sunday, Danish police hunting for the shooter in each attack — one of which has been labeled a terrorist act — had shot and killed a man who opened fire on them near a train station, officials said.

• Police say Copenhagen gunman had criminal record, gang past

  A Danish filmmaker was killed in the first attack. Nine hours later, a security guard protecting a bat mitzvah near a synagogue was slain. Five police officers were wounded in the shootings.

• Copenhagen shootings suspect was ‘known to police’

  The suspect was from Copenhagen but has not been named. He had been “on the radar” of the intelligence services, police said. They have recovered a weapon believed to have been used in the first attack.

• Israeli leader calls for mass Jewish influx after attack

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that at a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, Israel is the only place where Jews can truly feel safe. His comments triggered an angry response from Copenhagen’s chief rabbi, Jair Melchior, who said he was “disappointed” by the remarks.

• Danish chief rabbi responds to Netanyahu: Terror is not a reason to move to Israel

  Netanyahu responds to Copenhagen attack: Wave of terror attack in which Jews are killed for being Jews will continue – Jews of Europe, Israel is your home.

• Declassified Report: US Helped Israel Obtain Hydrogen Bomb

  The US assisted Israel in developing the hydrogen bomb, according to a declassified report by the US Department of Defense. The move violated international laws the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act enacted in 1978 which codified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the US signed.

• US Confirmed Existence of Israeli H-Bomb Program in 1987

  Back in 1987, according to a tightly-held report produced for the Pentagon, (PDF) the Israelis were “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.”

• Rethinking the unthinkable

  A new report from the US National Academies looks at the ‘wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad’ idea of geoengineering the climate.

  [...]

  The NAS report refers to ‘climate intervention’, a phrase that joins ‘climate engineering’ and ‘climate remediation’ as recent attempts to rebrand geoengineering. But at least with this new phrase there is recognition of the almost complete absence of engineering in geoengineering. The rapid growth of geoengineering as a form of magical thinking makes it easy to forget that the technologies are largely imaginary. Scientists talk as though we could cool the planet tomorrow. The truth is that our technologies are no closer to being able to do this than they were at the end of world war two. We may pretend towards certainty but when it comes to geoengineering, it is tempting to conclude that, as William Goldman said about Hollywood, “nobody knows anything”.

• Chill factor at ‘CIA’ weather query

  A leading American climate scientist has said he felt “scared” when a shadowy organisation claiming to represent the CIA asked him about the possibility of weaponised weather.

  Professor Alan Robock received a call three years ago from two men wanting to know if experts would be able to spot a hostile force’s attempts to upset the US climate.

  But he suspected the real intention was to find out how feasible it might be to secretly interfere with the climate of another country.

• Weaponized weather inquiry alarms Rutgers University climate scientist

  A climate expert was alarmed when a mysterious organization claiming to be part of the CIA asked him whether he would be able to identify cases of weaponized weather attempts against the United States.

• What About CIA Query Over The Possibility Of Weaponised Weather

  How feasible it might be to secretly interfere with the climate of another country? A leading American climate scientist has said he felt “scared” when a shadowy organisation claiming to represent the CIA asked him about the possibility of weaponised weather.

• Why CIA Movie The Interview Obstructs Peace in Korea

  The ending of the movie introduces a particularly unrealistic and irresponsible message: that killing North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un will result in a successful revolution by liberal dissidents. Living conditions in North Korea are so harsh that a revolution would have happened long ago if the hardship was really blamed on the government, rather than on US-led sanctions and diplomatic offensives. Although hawks and anti-communists often point at emigration out of North Korea as evidence of widespread political dissidence within the country, the argument does not resist serious scrutiny. A 2005 survey of 1346 North Korean émigrés living in China found that 95% had left their country for economic reasons, with only 2% leaving out of political dissatisfaction. According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, political refugees are a small minority even among the émigrés that chose to resettle in the South: out of the 20,108 that had resettled by April 2011, only 7% indicated leaving because of dissatisfaction with the system. A 2011 South Korean survey of 102 North Koreans émigrés in China further showed that, even though 80% acknowledged that the South Korean economy gave the possibility of a better life than in the North, only 2% would want Korea to be reunified under a capitalist system. Obviously, even even if Kim Jong-Un was not just replaced with a new socialist leader, the country would be much more likely to descend into a protracted civil war than transform into a liberal democracy. While Americans may think they can solve the problem of nuclear-armed warlords battling for supremacy by marching into Pyongyang, so will the Chinese. This would leave us at best with a new, bloody division of Korean lands, and at worst with a new World War.

• U.S. Closing Embassy In Yemen

  The State Department confirmed late Tuesday that it has closed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and evacuated its staff because of the political crisis and security concerns following the takeover of much of the country by Shiite rebels.

• CIA scales back presence in Yemen

  The closure of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen has forced the CIA to significantly scale back its counterterrorism presence in the country, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the evacuation represents a major setback in operations against al-Qaida’s most dangerous affiliate.

• After Chaotic Withdrawal CIA Slashes Operations in Yemen

  With the takeover of Yemen by Shiite rebels, Western nations are stumbling over themselves to evacuate diplomats. The US announced its embassy’s closure, and Britain and France are soon to follow. But also racing for the exit is the CIA, potentially leaving Yemen – and the world – vulnerable to al-Qaeda attacks.

• The chaos in Yemen is a much trickier problem for the US than people realize

  The US evacuation of its embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, leaves a Middle Eastern country with 25 million citizens, a leading Al Qaeda branch, and real estate along one of the world’s busiest oil transit choke points without much of an American diplomatic presence.

• Fmr. U.S. Amb. to Russia:McFaul: Putin Believes CIA led Ukrainian ‘Coup’

• The Government Is Losing Territory In Eastern Ukrainians’ Hearts And Minds

  Ukraine’s 10-month attempt to reclaim its easternmost provinces has only made locals there hate the central government even more.

• Putin Wins, Obama Loses, in Draft Plan for Ukraine

  U.S. President Barack Obama is not mentioned there; but, for him to reject their deal, and to send lethal weapons to Ukraine now and so escalate the war and its massive bloodshed — which has already cost “up to 50,000” dead and millions of refugees — would be extremely embarrassing for the United States: no American “boots on the ground,” just tens of thousands of Ukrainian corpses under it, in a war that Obama himself had initiated (and even the founder of Stratfor, the “private CIA” firm, says that the February 2014 overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which started the war, was “the most blatant coup in history,” which it certainly was, and is increasingly recognized as having been).

• Female suicide bomber kills 16 in northeast Nigeria

  A teenage female suicide bomber blew herself up at crowded bus station in northeast Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 16 and wounding 30 others.

  Most of the victims were children who had either been selling peanuts or begging for money at the time of the explosion, said witnesses.

• PNP gave FBI the finger!

  They didn’t have a choice. Giving the FBI Marwan’s dirty finger is apparently part of the deal. In any case, we didn’t have the means to determine if the chopped finger belongs to Marwan. The US, on the other hand, has DNA sample from the imprisoned brother of Marwan as well as the facilities to perform the tests.

• Free Syrian Army Sold Kayla Mueller to ISIS

  Jurgen Todenhofer, the German journalist who lived with ISIS recently in Iraq and Syria, said they had all the best weapons, and ISIS told him they buy all their weapons from the FSA. American taxpayers have sent their hard earned dollars to the FSA through numerous acts passed in the US Congress; most were championed by Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona. When Kayla was kidnapped, her parents contacted officials in Arizona, her home area, and they contacted Sen. John McCain.

• Group plans to protest public presentation

  On Tuesday, a Laramie-based group called Wyoming Citizens Against Torture plans to protest a public presentation by Lynne Cheney, who will be accompanied by her husband and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

• Telling the Truth About Religious Violence

  President Barack Obama committed the ultimate political blunder the other day. He blurted out the truth.

  Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, he warned his Christian brethren against “getting up on our high horse” when condemning the violence of Muslim terrorists.

  “During the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” he said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

  Naturally, all hell broke loose.

  The Rupert Murdoch army launched into full attack, supported by Rush Limbaugh air strikes. Rabid Fox News commentators, foaming at the mouth, fought each other for control of the mics to condemn the president’s remarks as “un-American” and, even worse, liberal. He was derided as irreligious, weak, and not a real American.

• CIA torture undermined U.S. interests: Column

  U.S. ‘intelligence’ repelled moderates, boosted extremist recruitment in Middle East.

• Why the CIA Killed Imad Mughniyeh

  The CIA doesn’t assassinate often anymore, so when it does the agency picks its targets carefully. The story uncovered last weekend by the Washington Post and Newsweek the CIA’s reported role in the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh is the stuff of a Hollywood spy thriller. A team of CIA spotters in Damascus tracking a Hezbollah terrorist wanted for decades; a custom-made explosive shaped to kill only the target and placed in the spare tire of an SUV parked along the target’s route home; intelligence gathered by Israelis, paired with a bomb built and tested in North Carolina, taking out a man responsible for the deaths of more Americans than anyone else until 9/11.

• Americans bearing drones

  When President Aquino first faced the nation to speak about the raid that killed Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, better known as Marwan, but also left 44 Special

  Action Force troopers dead, he said the Philippine National Police had gathered “actionable intelligence” on the whereabouts of Marwan and his Filipino protégé,

  Basit Usman. The phrase has been repeated many times since, during the testimony of various police officers in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

• HOW AMERICA SCREWS UP THE WORLD WITHOUT EVER LETTING ITS PEOPLE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING

  Brian Williams, American television network anchor caught telling his audience a fantasy version of his experience on a foreign assignment, has unintentionally provided us with a near perfect allegory and tale of caution about American journalism and the role it plays in politics and foreign affairs.

• How Does the Pentagon Keep Fooling Reporters About Its Tech Research Agency?

  Last Sunday, Leslie Stahl used the coveted first segment on CBS’s 60 Minutes to do a puff-piece on the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Project Research Agency. Her story, which included a minor scoop about the agency’s work on cyber security, was covered all week in the tech press and gave DARPA another opportunity to strut its stuff on the national stage.

• The long shadows of Augusto Pinochet: Peace Boat passengers meet survivors of the other 9/11 in Valparaíso, Chile

  For most North Americans, the mention of 9/11 evokes grey airplanes against white cirrus; slow television seconds; and the obscene inward folding of metal and glass.

  This collective memory is video-looped on CNN specials, honored by fire-fighter parades and nurtured at candlelit vigils, so that peripheral details – whether we were at biology class that day, or had told an ex we still loved them – can stick to its sides like post-it notes.

  But 9/11 has entirely different associations in Chile, more difficult to pin to a central image. For Erika Arbulu, who met with a Peace Boat group when the ship docked in Valparaíso last week, the day began with radio interference, and then military songs over the transmitter.

  At 7 am on September 11, 1973, Admiral José Toribio Merino’s navy captured the Chilean port city of Valparaíso. At 8 am General Augusto Pinochet’s army – secretly backed by the CIA – moved on Santiago. And by 2:30 pm, Chilean jets had bombed their own presidential palace and Salvador Allende, Latin America’s first popularly elected socialist president, was dead.

• Former Army Sniper Pleads Guilty in Murder-for-Hire Conspiracy

  A former Army sergeant with the nickname Rambo pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to murder a federal drug agent and another man, in what the government has said was his post-military role as a contract killer.

Transparency Reporting

• What does the Swiss Leaks tell news editors

  If you are in charge for a news organization, quit following the official statements all the time and start devoting more space and energy to look for those persons who are willing to talk, those potential journalists who are more than just “sources.”

  Instead of fearing the consequences and punishment, you can assure them to protect their identity.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Study Finds Rising Levels of Plastics in Oceans

  While Americans generate 2.6 kilograms of waste per person per day, or 5.7 pounds, to China’s 1.10 kilograms, the United States ranked lower on the list because of its more efficient waste management, Professor Jambeck said.

• 140 whales die in beach stranding

  About 140 pilot whales which stranded themselves on a remote stretch of beach in New Zealand have died, an official said today.

• Why Are So Many Environmental Activists Being Murdered?

  Jeannette Kawas was an accountant whose concept of value was broader than any balance sheet. No number could capture for her the natural wealth she saw in the forests, rivers, beaches and mangrove swamps of Punta Sal, near her hometown of Tela in northern Honduras.

  In the 1980s, cattle ranchers, resort developers and loggers all wanted a slice of this landscape. As their hunger grew, Kawas formed an environmental organization, PROLANSATE, to protect the land, and in 1994, it convinced the government to allow it to create and manage a new national park there.

  Within three months PROLANSATE renamed Punta Sal National Park to honor its founder, who was shot dead in her home on February 6, 1995. Years later a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights said Kawas’s work in defense of the environment had motivated the murder.

• The fight to save one of the world’s oldest fish species

  Water from the iced-over Connecticut River numbed my hands as I cradled a hard, scaleless fish at the US Geological Survey’s anadromous fish laboratory at Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Its back was dark brown, its belly cream. Five rows of bony plates ran the length of its thin body to the shark-like tail. Four barbels covered with taste buds dangled from its flat snout in front of the sucker mouth. At 20 inches it was a baby. Adults can measure 14 ft and weigh 800 pounds.

• Climate science denialists in tailspin over hottest years

  All the recent declarations that 2014 was the hottest year on record seems to have prompted a spate of panic denial among climate change contrarians, denialists and ideologues.

  We’ve had a declaration of one of the “most extraordinary scandals of our time” from UK climate science manglers Christopher Booker and James Delingpole.

  The accusation is that climate scientists have been “fiddling” the world’s temperature data with the express motivation of showing the world is warmer than it really is.

• Great Barrier Reef: warmer waters helping coral-eating starfish thrive

  The survival chances of crown-of-thorns starfish increase by as much as 240% if sea-surface temperatures rise 2C, say Australian researchers

• Coalition Tells U.S. Export-Import Bank: Don’t Use U.S. Dollars to Finance Coal Project that Threatens the Great Barrier Reef

Finance

• HSBC files reveal how UK’s non-dom tax concession is being exploited

  Leaked files show how controversial tax status, aimed at encouraging foreign investors to spend time in UK, is used to legally hide fortunes in HSBC’s Swiss private bank

• Why Public Banks Outperform Private Banks: Unfair Competition or a Better Mousetrap?

  Public banks in North Dakota, Germany and Switzerland have been shown to outperform their private counterparts. International private competitors have responded by pushing for regulations limiting the advantages of the public banking model, but public banking advocates are pushing back.

• Unemployment causes 45,000 suicides a year worldwide, finds study

• Greek finance minister says Europe treats Greece like ‘the CIA when waterboarding was used’

• Greek FM: Troika austerity ‘like being waterboarded by CIA’

• Greek FinMin: ‘Troika’s Methods Resemble CIA’s Waterboarding’

• Greek FM:Troika austerity ‘like being waterboarded by CIA’

• After the Housing Crisis, a Cash Flood and Silence

• Greece needs solidarity as elites attack

• The CIA once got Swiss banking secrets by tricking a banker into driving drunk and then arresting him

  Before this week’s big Swiss banking leak, authorities had been trying to get information on that opaque and shady side of global finance for decades.

• EU sets up committee to probe tax deals

  The EU legislature approved the creation of the committee on Thursday by a 612-19 margin with 23 abstentions.

• Housing the homeless costs less than leaving them on the streets—a lot less

  This isn’t a revelation. Many proponents of truly trying to handle the homeless problems in our country have been pointing to studies and generating numbers to prove that helping the homeless, just a tiny bit, would save tons of money.

• Papa John’s in NYC owes nearly $800,000 in unpaid wages

  That could be tough for Mr. Schnatter, who has already threatened to jack his prices up for fear of having to offer healthcare to workers, thus taking important financial resources away from black hair dye.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The Real Ruler of Israel: Sheldon Adelson

  To assure this, they did an extraordinary thing: they founded an Israeli newspaper, solely devoted to the furthering of the interests of Binyamin Netanyahu. Not of the Likud, not of a specific policy, but of Netanyahu personally.

• Storytelling ability connected Brian Williams with viewers but also led to his downfall

  …NBC has also declined to publicly discuss any details relating to Williams and his suspension.

• Former Navy SEAL Says Brian Williams’ Embed Story Can’t Be True

  Embattled NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ claim that he once flew on a mission with Navy SEAL Team Six is far-fetched and likely untrue, one former SEAL said on Sunday.

  “What Brian Williams is saying, none of it can be true. For a reporter to be embedded with SEAL Team Six or any Tier One unit, that just doesn’t happen,” Don Mann, the former SEAL, told CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter.

• 7 Controversial World Leaders the CIA Secretly Thinks Have Psychological Issues

  Pentagon…Vladimir Putin has a form of autism… same kind of people… urged Martin Luther King to commit suicide

• Former CIA chief controls most of the media in Serbia – report

  American Fund “KKR investment”, headed by former CIA chief General David Petraeus, from October 2013 until this day, in less than a year and a half, has put under its control a significant part of Serbian media, internet portal “Vaseljenska” reported.

• Inside the Drawings of a Cartoonist for the CIA

  Chip Beck hasn’t taken a typical path for editorial cartoonists. A self-taught artist, he’s mostly worked for the United States government, including for the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Closer to the end of his career than many local cartoonists, Beck remains as active as any of them.

• WPost Is Lost in Neocon Fantasyland

  The neocons now control the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, a dangerous development for the American people and the world. Yet, the Post remains the more extreme of the two, pushing for endless confrontations and wars, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.

Censorship

• UK redactions to CIA torture report were made for national security, MPs rule

  Allegations that UK intelligence agencies ordered redactions to a US report on CIA torture in order to cover up its role in the mistreatment of detainees are unfounded, MPs have ruled.

  An investigation by the British parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) has concluded that redactions to documents in December’s report into CIA torture were all made on the grounds of national security and not to avoid embarrassment to the UK authorities.

• US official admits to UK role in rendition to Diego Garcia

• Amal Clooney vs Britain: George’s wife takes on most-challenging legal battle yet, and it ain’t pretty!

• Ireland to clash with UK at human rights court over hooded men judgment

  The Irish and UK governments are about to clash in the European court of human rights over an infamous torture case involving the British army from the early years of the Troubles.

• MPs’ torture statement based on ‘limited’ evidence

• UK Regulator Denies CIA Torture Report Redacted to Hide Britain’s Role

  UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee claims that the redactions made to the report on CIA torture practices did not concern London’s awareness of the mistreatment of detainees.

• U.S Official Casts Doubt On United Kingdom Claims Of Innocence In Torture Program

  Though the government of the United Kingdom has long maintained that it played no active part in the torture of prisoners subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA — beyond allowing planes to refuel at Diego Garcia — recent revelations from a senior U.S official entirely contradict those claims of innocence.

• British spies did not censor U.S. torture report

  British spies asked for material to be redacted in a U.S. Senate report about the CIA’s mistreatment of terrorism suspects but were not trying to hide any complicity in wrongdoing, a senior parliamentary committee concluded on Wednesday.

• MI6 did not ask US to cover up torture, MPs conclude

• UK torture redactions were for national security – MPs

• DOJ Says that Torture Report Secrets are Okay!

• We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals

• Jordan hands senior Islamist 18 months for criticizing UAE

• UK Requests for Torture Report Redactions Were Justified, MPs Find

  UK intelligence agencies requested redactions to the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report, a senior parliamentary committee has confirmed. But the redactions requested were “directly related to national security interests” and did not concern alleged UK complicity in the mistreatment of detainees, according to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

• China’s Internet Censorship Anthem Is Revealed, Then Deleted

  Nothing says innovation like a regimented choral performance.

  At least that seems to have been the thought process at the Cyberspace Administration of China, the government agency in charge of Internet policies, and increasingly, censorship.

  During the talent show portion of a Lunar New Year celebration held on Tuesday by the Beijing Internet Association and attended by many of the country’s leading media figures and Internet executives, the Cyberspace Administration debuted what can only be described as a semiofficial anthem.

• Watch: China has made an internet censorship THEME SONG

  Creating patriotic songs is an age-old solution to difficult problems, albeit one that is out of fashion in the Western world.

• Europe seeks to export stealth form of censorship

  Europe calls it protecting privacy. But a controversial judicial approach to ridding the Internet of links that might be embarrassing or upsetting to individual Europeans amounts to a stealth form of censorship.

• Index on Censorship statement on blasphemy debate attack in Copenhagen

  “The use of violence on a gathering exploring the intersection of religious and artistic freedom should send shivers down our spines.

  “The Charlie Hebdo murders inspired intensified public debate about free speech and its value. Many people who had previously given little thought to free speech were drawn for the first time into online discussions or attended events to help them get a better understanding of the issues. It would be terrible if violent acts such as that in Copenhagen shut down free speech even further.”

  “The ability to express ourselves freely, to attend meetings and debates without fear of violence, is fundamental to a free society. Free speech must be protected.

  “This is not just about cartoons or offence. If violence is allowed to win, free speech – and all of our ability to be who we are, practice what religion we like, have relationships with whomever we want – dies.”

Privacy

• VIDEO: Protesting George Friedman, CEO Of Stratfor, in Austin & San Francisco

  On January 22, journalist and political prisoner Barrett Brown was convicted in a Texas court of controversial charges. In addition to a 63-month sentence, Brown is expected to pay $890,250 in restitution to the private spy agency, Strategic Forecasting (a.k.a. “Stratfor”).

  This monumental fine, which turns a theoretically free citizen into an indentured servant of a corporation, is meant to hold Brown responsible for a hack by the Anonymous group LulzSec — even though the government admitted it didn’t have any concrete evidence to show he’d taken any material part in the hack.

  Jeremy Hammond, a member of LulzSec, pled guilty in May of 2013 and was sentenced to ten years in prison. The hack, carried out under the instruction of the FBI’s agent saboteur and snitch Sabu, revealed millions of emails that showed the complex interrelationship between the private intelligence firm, multinational corporations, and the surveillance state. The emails also revealed how Stratfor had infiltrated activist groups from Texas to India.

  On February 2, 2015, George Friedman, Stratfor’s CEO, was scheduled to sign his book “Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe,” at Book People, an independent bookstore in Austin, Texas. It would be Hammond’s 1,065th day in prison; Brown had been incarcerated for 874.

• The CIA Is Bringing Amazon’s Marketplace to the Intelligence Community

  Last year, the Central Intelligence Agency took the 17 agencies within the intelligence community to the cloud through a ground-breaking $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services.

• Spy agencies around the world

• Facebook Thinks Some Native American Names Are Inauthentic

  The social network has a history of telling its users that the names they’re attempting to use aren’t real. Drag queens and overseas human rights activists, for example, have experienced error messages and problems logging in in the past.

• Facebook’s Name Policy Strikes Again, This Time at Native Americans

  What do drag queens, burlesque performers, human rights activists in Vietnam and Syria, and Native Americans have in common? They have all been the targets of “real names” enforcement on Facebook. And despite reports from the media last year that seemed to indicate that Facebook has “fixed” the issue, they’re still being targeted.

• NSA sends Valentine’s Day tweets to insist it’s not listening in on ‘pillow talk’

  The NSA has had a lot of fun with the lovey-dovey holiday by apparently debunking myths that their analysts spy on couples whispering sweet nothings in bed.

• Our World Eerily Resembles ’1984′ and Might Be Even Scarier

  In 1949, George Orwell published a book that conveyed a dystopian society in a perpetual state of war under the watch of its totalitarian dictator, “Big Brother.” At the time, it was a fascinating concept partly because it echoed the deepening fears around the danger of absolute political authority in Spain, Germany and the Soviet Union. Now, in the Digital Age, “1984” is becoming eerily relevant once again—not because of the political environment, but because of how surveillance technology has started to potentially compromise our privacy.

• Macedonia: Massive surveillance revelation: 20 000 people wiretapped

  On 10 February, EDRi-member Metamorphosis, expressed grave concern about the publicly announced allegations of mass and unauthorised surveillance of citizens. Invasions of privacy directly affect freedom of expression in Macedonia, and fuel the overall climate of fear and silence.

• Bugging revelations stun journalists as inquiry unfolds

  One of those bugged all those years ago was Nick Kaldas, now Deputy Commissioner. Another was journalist Steve Barrett.

• ‘Vexatious’, ‘annoying’ and ‘disruptive’ Press Gazette barred by Met from asking more RIPA questions

  The Metropolitan Police has barred Press Gazette from requesting information about its use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to spy on journalists.

  Last night, the force rejected a Freedom of Information Act request on the grounds that it was the sixth question submitted since September.

  Explaining its decision to reject further FoI requests from Press Gazette, the Met said in an email that it has the right to refuse “vexatious requests… which are intended to be annoying or disruptive or which have a disproportionate impact on a public authority”.

• The Untold Story: How Radius Brought the Edward Snowden Doc ‘Citizenfour’ to America

  Tom Quinn and Jason Janego, who head the distribution label, discuss the secrecy involved with releasing the controversial film (code names, encrypted messages) and their fears about how it would be received (“Would Harvey fire me?”).

• 10 things the GCHQ-NSA privacy ruling means for you

  On 6th February 2015, in an unprecedented ruling, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that for a period of seven years the UK’s intelligence services had been acting unlawfully in accessing communications collected by the NSA.

  [...]

  GCHQ now has seven years of data gathered through a process now ruled unlawful. Seven years of data gathered about millions of innocent people. Privacy International has challenged GCHQ to delete it all, and are working on putting together an online form to help people do so for themselves.

• Libertarian Students Honor Their Chosen Hero, Edward Snowden

  There are no heroes, only heroic actions. That’s what NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told a cheering crowd of more than 1,000 libertarian students at the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C. this weekend. Thanks to the magic of modern technology, Snowden was able to accept his award via video feed, and answered questions from ISFL President Alexander McCobin.

Civil Rights

• Basis for Case in Brooklyn Police Shooting: No Threat Led Officer to Fire

  On the surface, the police shooting of an unarmed man in a housing project stairwell in Brooklyn seemed like a freakish accident.

  The officer, Peter Liang, told his superiors that his gun had gone off unintentionally, the bullet rattling off a wall and into an unsuspecting man’s chest, killing him. Even the New York City police commissioner, William J. Bratton, said there was no suggestion that the officer intended to shoot the man, Akai Gurley.

• Detained reporter’s family finds new lawyer to represent him in Iran

  The family of a Washington Post reporter imprisoned in Iran for more than half a year has engaged a prominent defense attorney known for taking sensitive cases involving Americans ensnared in legal issues in the country.

• Pennsylvania’s governor suspends the death penalty

  “A moratorium is just a ploy,” the association said in a statement. “Make no mistake, this action is not about waiting for a study– it’s about the governor ignoring duly enacted law and imposing his personal views against the death penalty.”

• Is US democracy in peril?

  In the US, there has been a culture of impunity for the CIA operatives responsible for torture of suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks

• European Parliament to investigate CIA’s torture and rendition operations in EU

  The European Parliament today voted to investigate the extent of the CIA’s detention, torture and rendition programme in EU countries.

  The decision comes two months after the US Senate intelligence committee published a redacted summary of its six year investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme.

  The European Parliament’s committees on civil liberties, foreign affairs and human rights previously investigated the CIA’s programme in 2006, and they will now resume their inquiry with new details from the Senate’s report.

• CIA torture: “Torture calls into question the very basis of our values”

  The torture methods used by the CIA to extract information from detainees have sparked another debate in Parliament in the wake of the US Senate publishing its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme. MEPs were asked to vote on two different resolutions on this on 11 February, but only one of them was adopted. We talked to S&D member Birgit Sippel and EPP member Elmar Brok to find out why their political groups had different views on the issue.

• MEPs disagree over what to do about CIA torture report

  The torture methods used by the CIA to extract information from detainees have sparked another debate in Parliament in the wake of the US Senate publishing its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

• Parliament to resume investigations into CIA-led operations in EU countries

  Parliament’s civil liberties, foreign affairs and human rights committees will resume investigations into the CIA’s alleged transportation and illegal detention of prisoners in EU countries, in the light of the US Senate’s new revelations of the use of torture by the CIA, says a resolution passed on Wednesday. MEPs also again call on EU member states to investigate these allegations and prosecute those involved.

• My Gitmo client’s interpreter worked for the CIA

  Latest embarrassing incident demonstrates that military tribunals cannot mete out justice to detainees

• Guantánamo Hearing Suspended when Defendants Claim Court Translator Previously Worked at CIA Torture Site

• Gitmo Translator’s Past At CIA Throws Wrench In Sept. 11 Trial

  Government prosecutors confirmed in a Guantanamo Bay war court today that an interpreter for one of five alleged co-conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks had earlier worked for the CIA. But they insisted no federal agency had tried to place the interpreter on the defense team to gather intelligence. Defense lawyers cried foul and asked that all further proceedings be suspended until the issue is resolved.

• 9/11 lawyers trade barbs over CIA ‘black site’ translator turned Guantanamo defense linguist

• Gitmo translator ID’d as CIA ‘black site’ agent

• USA: Guantánamo 9/11 military hearing halted after defendant claims court interpreter worked at CIA black site

• Coincidence or infiltration? Trial of alleged 9/11 plotters halted after accused ‘recognises interpreter’ from CIA ‘black site’

• CIA chief under pressure to resign after leak of lawyer’s memo

  John Brennan, the CIA head, has strongly denied that his organisation spied on Senate staff working on last year’s report on the agency’s involvement in torture and secret rendition – but memos from a CIA lawyer suggest the contrary.

• The CIA Lawyer Who Led a Secret Effort to Spy on the Senate

  When the CIA got caught spying on Senate staffers working on the 6,000 page torture report, John Brennan, who heads the agency, denied the transgression. “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into computers, nothing could be further from the truth,” he said on March 11, 2014. “That’s beyond the scope of reason.” Four months later, the CIA Inspector General found that the CIA did, in fact, improperly spy on the Senate intelligence committee. After that, Brennan apologized.

• ACLU Won’t Give Up on Full CIA Torture Report

  The ACLU had gone to the court in Washington, D.C., last month seeking to protect its right to receive a full copy of the 6,963-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s use of torture.

• ACLU Wins Round on ‘Torture Report’

  The American Civil Liberties Union early Monday withdrew an emergency motion filed late last month in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that blocked the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from collecting all copies of the committee’s full, unredacted report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program.”

• CIA needs just 6 years to release data, not 28

  The CIA has some good news for a group demanding a copy of the agency’s database of nearly 12 million declassified documents: it won’t take 28 years to release the set, only six.

  A Central Intelligence Agency official told a federal judge Friday that the spy agency has found a way to streamline the review process so that the 11.6 million pages of records requested by the open government outlet Muckrock can be released with only a “spot check” of the documents for snippets of stray classified information that might get tangled up in the files during the release process.

• Shielding US officials involved with torture has decadeslong precedent

• White House won’t return spy doc without court approval

  The Obama administration isn’t planning on handing 6,900 classified pages of a Senate Intelligence Committee report back to Capitol Hill, until a court has time to weigh in.

  In a court filing on Friday, the Department of Justice said it would let a lawsuit over the secret report play out before giving it back to Congress, as the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee has asked.

• 9/11 defendant sodomized at CIA ‘black site’ still suffers injuries, lawyer says

  A lawyer for a man accused of helping to plot the 9/11 attacks said today his captive Saudi client was rectally abused while in CIA custody, “and continues to bleed now, at least eight years later.” He and other men were forced to submit to rectal exams with excessive force, conducted by CIA operatives. The other words for this are rape, or sodomy.

• 9/11 Defendant Claims Ongoing Injuries From CIA Torture

  The one refreshing thing about the hearings in the 9/11 military commission case at Guantanamo this week is that defense lawyers are now allowed to say the word “torture” without the censor blacking out the audio feed. And the word “torture” came up a lot.

• 9/11 defendant still suffering from CIA ‘black site’ injuries, lawyer says at Guantánamo

• 9/11 defendant still suffering from ‘black site’ injuries, lawyer says at Guantánamo

• Medical records sought for Saudi facing Guantanamo trial

• The only US government employee jailed over torture has been released

• John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower Freed, Would Do It Again

• ‘No one went to jail but me’: CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou speaks out

• Espionage: Leaking Against the Impossible

• Oh, No: The ACLU Helped Jail CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou

  The ACLU, one of the United States’ most respected civil liberties organizations, collaborated with President Reagan’s CIA in writing secrecy laws that enabled the prosecution of Bush-era CIA whistle-blower John Kiriakou, according to Mark Ames at Pando Daily.

• EXCLUSIVE: US President Ordered Torture, Jailed CIA Agent Tells Sputnik

  John Kiriakou is out of prison two years after his conviction under The Espionage Act. In his first exclusive interview after his release, Kiriakou talked to Sputnik about torture, prison life and whistleblower protections and how torture committed by the CIA “was official U.S. policy.”

• Leaking Against the Impossible: Whistleblower John Kiriakou, CIA Torture and Leaking

  This case reveals, as do whistleblowing cases in general, that the discloser is presumed to be guilty, the tribal member who went against the creed. The result of that disclosure – exposing an illegal program, implemented by individuals who, one would think, would be the subject of prosecution – is evaded. Twisted logic ensues: the perpetrator of abuse escapes the exposure; and the one doing the exposing received due punishment. Rules, not substance, matter.

• Finding Creative Ways to Torture

  After World War II, Americans led the way in establishing landmark human rights principles, including a repudiation of torture. But more recent U.S. leaders have chosen to disgrace those ideals by devising euphemisms and end-runs to continue the barbaric practices, as Peter Costantini describes.

• VIDEO: Freed CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says “I Would Do It All Again” to Expose Torture

• Freed CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says “I Would Do It All Again” to Expose Torture

• The real heroes of the War on Terror: 6 brave Americans who defied Bush’s torture doctrine

  If it hadn’t been for sergeant named Joseph Darby, we might never have known about the abuses at Abu Ghraib

• American heroes who said no to torture

• This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you

  “Enhanced interrogation”: the George W. Bush administration bureaucrats who coined the term had perfect pitch. The apparatchiks of Kafka’s Castle would have admired the grayness of the euphemism. But while it sounds like some new kind of focus group, it turns out it was just anodyne branding for good old-fashioned torture.

  Unfortunately, the debate around it unleashed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report has largely missed the point.

  Certainly, the report did provide overwhelming evidence that torture did not produce useful intelligence. The CIA had concluded previously that torture is “ineffective”, “counterproductive,” and “will probably result in false answers.”

  An FBI agent wrote that one prisoner had cooperated and provided “important actionable intelligence” months before being tortured. Some CIA agents and soldiers reportedly questioned the legality of the policies and resisted carrying them out.

  A Bush Justice Department lawyer acknowledged: “It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program.” In any case, it is inherently impossible to know that any intelligence purportedly extracted by torture could not have been elicited by legal interrogation.

• ​CIA torture based on ‘voodoo science’ of advocates – US intelligence expert

• Fordham faculty petitions to revoke CIA director’s honorary degree

  A new, faculty-initiated petition is requesting that Fordham University revoke its honorary degree to John Brennan, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Calling Brennan’s honorary degree “indefensible,” the petition calls upon Fordham University to revoke the degree, citing what the petitioners call his defense and support of torture.

• Fordham University Faculty Members Want CIA Director John Brennan’s Honorary Degree Taken Back

• Was Jeffrey Sterling Trial a Gov’t Effort to Divide Investigative Journalists & Whistleblowers?

  In January, a federal jury in Virginia convicted former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on nine felony counts, including espionage. Prosecutors accused Sterling of leaking classified information about a secret operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program to journalist James Risen of The New York Times. Risen later revealed how the risky operation could have inadvertently aided the Iranian nuclear program. Supporters of Sterling described him as a whistleblower, but prosecutors claimed he leaked the information to settle a score with the agency. Sterling is scheduled to be sentenced in April. He faces a maximum possible sentence of decades in prison. We speak with Norman Solomon, who reported from the Sterling trial. “We’ve got to support investigative journalists and whistleblowers. We can’t allow the government to drive a wedge between the two,” Solomon says, co-founder of RootsAction.org, which has launched public campaigns to support both Sterling and Risen.

• Barney Frank: Making a case against torture

  It was this mindset that informed the decision to unleash the CIA to use the methods that the Senate Intelligence Committee report correctly criticizes. If our very survival as a nation was imperiled by Islamic fanaticism, then some justification might have existed for Cheney’s sneering dismissal of any concern that we were brutalizing prisoners and his lack of any regard for the fact that dozens of undeniably innocent people were among the victims.

• Guantánamo diary… The men behind the wire

  I’m not sure how one is supposed to review a book like Guantánamo Diary. It’s not literature; its historical account of a complex episode is subjective; and perhaps a fifth of its contents are redacted. Some of the pages are comically over-censored: a slab of black with only one word left uncut. Page 301 begins “But anyway. . .” and then, there are seven pages of redactions (see picture below). But even if Guantánamo Diary is not a perfect book, it is a necessary one.

• Woman Says Cop Beating Caused Miscarriage

  Kenya Harris sued the City of Albany, Ga., police chief John Proctor and officers Ryan Jenkins and Richard Brown, Jr. for excessive force, assault and battery and infliction of emotional distress.

• Turkish courts being turned into ‘revenge’ instruments says outgoing top judge

  The outgoing head of Turkey’s top court launched a final broadside against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, warning that the judiciary was being turned into an “instrument of revenge” by politicians.

• Malaysian cartoonist Zunar arrested for criticising Anwar Ibrahim ruling

  Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque – better known as Zunar – taken into custody after using Twitter to criticise judiciary involved in sodomy case

• New Report on Lynching Reveals Sinister Legacy of ‘Racial Terrorism’ in America

  Capital punishment and ongoing racial injustice in the United States are “direct descendents” of lynching, charges a new study, which found that the pre-World War II practice of “racial terrorism” has had a much more profound impact on race relations in America than previously acknowledged.

  The most comprehensive work done on lynching to date, the investigation unearthed a total of 3,959 racially-motivated lynchings during the period between Reconstruction and World War II, which is at least 700 more killings than previously reported.

• The police need to be reminded of their place in a free society

  From monitoring sales of Charlie Hebdo to using facial recognition technology on innocent people, Britain’s police are showing a lack of respect for our freedoms

• Kevin Davis wrongly killed by police after calling 911 for help

  Kevin Davis did the right thing. On December 29, Kevin called 911 for help. His girlfriend, April, had just been stabbed and the man who did it, Terrance Hilyard, fled the scene. Within minutes, the family dog, Tooter, and Kevin were each fatally shot by Dekalb County Police Officer Joseph Pitts.

• Shot three times by police, then isolated in hospital. Why was Kevin Davis’s family barred from seeing him?

  Police in Georgia who cuffed a man to his hospital bed for two days after he was fatally shot by an officer have been accused by his family of barring them from visiting him to stop full details of the shooting from being disclosed.

  Kevin Davis was detained at Grady hospital in Atlanta after being shot three times by a DeKalb County police officer, who was responding to a 911 call made by Davis and his girlfriend when she was stabbed by another man at their apartment in the suburb of Decatur.

• Walking While Brown, Chapter 6,782

  In further evidence U.S. police forces include way too many racist thugs who slam ‘em to the ground and beat ‘em up first and (possibly) think second, Madison, Ala. police partially paralyzed a 57-year-old Indian gentleman after assaulting him for taking a morning stroll through his engineer son’s affluent white neighborhood. The cops were called after a caller declared Sureshbhai Patel “suspicious,” apparently believing he was scouting garages for the right place to plant a bomb because he hates our freedom, when in fact he was admiring the clean streets before going in to help take care of his newborn grandson. When police accosted him, he repeatedly said “No English” and pointed to his son’s nearby house, but police just pounded him anyway. Surely an understandable mistake, yes? No, said Hank Sherrod, the family’s attorney, who did not mince his words. “There is nothing suspicious about Mr. Patel other than he has brown skin.” The family is suing. On their part, Madison police admitted no crime was committed. They did suspend the officer, launch an investigation, and wish Mr. Patel “a speedy recovery.” Only in America, where this sort of thing inexplicably keeps happening, day in and day out, far too often, and will likely continue to until a big enough fuss is made about it.

• Miami cops flood Waze with fake police sightings

  Hundreds of Miami police officers aren’t happy with Waze’s police-finding feature, and they’re not content with asking Google to remove it. According to NBC Miami, a number of cops in the city are taking matters into their own hands, downloading the app and inundating it with fake police sightings. We’re sure a lot of people love the app for that particular feature, as they can use it to make sure they’re driving well below the speed limit in the presence of law enforcement. Some American officers told AP last month, though, that the app could pose a threat, as wanne-be cop killers can easily use it to find a target.

• Hundreds protest police shooting in Washington state

  Hundreds gathered in southeastern Washington on Saturday to protest police brutality in the wake of a deadly shooting of a man who had been throwing rocks at the police.

  Before the midday rally, children and adults hand-lettered signs, calling for justice for Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who witnesses say was running away when police fired on him Tuesday in a busy intersection.

• Protesters Hold Rally outside CIA Headquarters in Virginia

  American anti-war activists gathered in front of a CIA base in Virginia, asking for the shutdown of Guantanamo prison.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Lawyer doubts admissions will affect Dotcom

    The first of seven people indicted over Kim Dotcom’s now defunct Megaupload website has pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges.

  • YODA Back, It Is: Law To Let You Actually Own Your Devices Even When Copyright Gets In The Way

    Last year, we wrote about Rep. Blake Farenthold introducing a small, but important piece of copyright legislation, the You Own Devices Act (YODA), which just says that if you buy some piece of computerized equipment, you can sell it with any included software, without having to get permission from the software provider. As we noted, the reality is that this is just making it clear that the first sale doctrine applies to computer equipment too — which shouldn’t need a new law, but some tech companies (especially in the networking space) feel otherwise.

  • ISP’s “Three Strikes” Scheme is Weird and Broken

    Eircom was one of the first ISPs in Europe to implement a voluntary “three strikes” anti-piracy program but strangely it’s now hiding the prospect of disconnections from customers. Together with music group IFPI, they also fail heavily on the piracy education front.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Valentine’s Comes to Linux

Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day and a lot of Open Source is feeling mushy. The Free Software Foundation began a campaign to show all the hard-working developers, managers, and support staff appreciate and has dubbed February 14 I love Free Software Day. openSUSE and the Document Foundation are in the act as well. Elsewhere, the Mageia project has announced their Valentine’s gift – Mageia 5 Beta 3.

Desktop

• Digitimes Research: Google to finish 2-in-1 Chromebook development in 1Q15

  Google is planning to push 2-in-1 devices in 2015, according Digitimes Research’s inquiries within the upstream supply chain. Google’s 2-in-1 Chromebook designed by Quanta Computer is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter.

• Uh oh! Steam Machines are doomed or something

  So I think it a good idea for Linux gamers and gamers in general to try to be patient while Valve does its work. The worst thing that could happen is for Valve to prematurely release SteamOS or the Steam Machines before they are ready for prime time. A buggy, slow version of SteamOS would cause many gamers to think twice about using it. And a badly designed controller or other hardware screw up would also damage the entire SteamOS platform.

• Cutegram 2, the Best Telegram Client for Linux Ever

  Cutegram is one of those new apps that you fall in love with them instantly, especially if they provide overwhelming features. It is a Telegram client for GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X systems, written in Qt5/QML and designed to blend perfectly into the KDE Plasma graphical desktop environment and dubbed by its developers “Best Telegram Client Ever.”

Server

• Docker

  … is the new hype these days. Everyone seems to want to be part of it; even Microsoft wants to allow Docker to run on its platform. How they visualise that is slightly beyond me, seen as how Docker is mostly a case of “run a bunch of LXC instances”, which by their definition can’t happen on Windows. Presumably they’ll just run a lot more VMs, then, which is a possible workaround.

Kernel Space

• PulseAudio 6.0 Gains Systemd Socket Activation Support, BlueZ 5 Features

  Nearly one year after the release of PulseAudio 5.0, the release of PulseAudio 6.0 is finally here with many changes.

• F2FS Gets A Few Fixes For Linux 3.20

  F2FS remains a very promising open-source file-system for targeting flash-based storage on Linux, though for Linux 3.20 the changes aren’t too exciting.

• Linus Torvalds Still Deciding Linux 3.20 vs. Linux 4.0

  Back in 2013 Torvalds talked of renaming Linux 3.20 to Linux 4.0 when the time came, but as talked about in several articles since then, there hasn’t been much communication whether the in-development Linux 3.20 will be re-branded as Linux 4.0. Like with the move from Linux 2.6.x to Linux 3.0, Torvalds wanted to move to v4.0 simply since the minor point release numbers were getting high.

• KVM Brings Some Improvements To Linux 3.20

  Paolo Bonzini has sent in the KVM pull request for the Linux 3.20 kernel and it includes some interesting changes and features for this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

• AMD R9 290 Hawaii Users Will Have An Important Fix With Linux 3.20

  Beyond the big set of AMD Radeon changes for Linux 3.20, Alex Deucher of AMD mailed in some important Radeon DRM driver fixes today that are a big deal for some R9 290 “Hawaii” users of the open-source driver.

• AMD Has A New Linux/OpenGL Driver Relationship Representative

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Already Has Graphics Code For Testing For Linux 3.21/Linux 4.1

    While we’re only in the middle of the Linux 3.20 kernel, for what might still be called Linux 4.0, Intel already has updated DRM driver code for testing that will not be merged until Linux 3.21 (or what might also be known as Linux 4.1).

  • Intel ILO Gallium3D Driver Updated For Broadwell

    While Intel’s official Mesa DRI driver has supported “Gen8″ Broadwell graphics for many months, today the support for these latest-generation HD/Iris Graphics processors landed within the unofficial ILO Gallium3D driver.

  • VDPAU Support Fixed Up In Latest Mesa Git

  • Mesa 10.4 vs. 10.6-dev With An Intel Core i3 Broadwell NUC

  • Controversy Arises Over SPI Project, Fighting With Elementary OS

    While the X.Org Foundation is voting on joining SPI and the SPI already represents a range of open-source projects from PostgreSQL to Debian, this organization is being criticized this week over how they negatively interacted with the Elementary OS project.

  • Wayland & Weston 1.7.0 Release Brings Valentine’s Love To The Linux Display Stack

    Wayland 1.7.0 along with the reference Weston 1.7 compositor were released in the early hours of the morning as a great Valentine’s Day gift to open-source users wishing to run the next-generation Linux display stack. The Wayland/Weston 1.7 release continues polishing up the stack as an alternative to the security-ridden X.Org Server.

Applications

• OpenShot 2.0 Remains To Be Seen

  It’s been almost two and a half years since the last official release to the open-source OpenShot video editing software. OpenShot 2.0 has been talked about for much of this time but this major update to the once very promising non-linear video editor has yet to materialize.

• An Update On OpenShot! OpenShot 2.0 Hopefully Out In Next Year

  Jonathan Thomas posted an update on OpenShot and the new features its gained recently in the lead-up to OpenShot 2.0. Among the progress shared in the “OpenShot Valentines Weekend Update” is read/write animated GIF support, major video playback improvements, cross-platform improvements, a new icon and branding, and libOpenShot 0.0.4 has been released. Jonathan has also made good progress on the Qt user-interface to OpenShot.

• QtSpeech progress

  Frederik Gladhorn created the QtTextToSpeech module a while ago as a test to see how feasible it would be to wrap all the platforms Qt is supported on’s TTS APIs in one easy to use Qt API. This turned out to be a great idea in my opinion. The predecessor to QtSpeech in KDE applications was Jovie, formerly known as kttsd. While it worked for the most part it required a daemon to be running which spoke with different synthesizers (originally) then was modified to use speech-dispatcher directly instead (when it was renamed to Jovie). QtSpeech on the other hand is a library. If you want to use it, you link to it in your application, create a QTextToSpeech object, and pass any text to speak to it’s “say” method. No D-Bus connection required, no daemon required, just a small, light library that wraps the native platform TTS API directly.

• Tonido: A Free, Private Cloud And Streaming Media Server

  Tonido is a cross platform, free application that allows you to access all files on your computer from a web browser, smartphone, tablet or even DLNA enabled devices. You can access your files from anywhere, and ofcourse you can share them to your friends, family, and colleagues as well. Additionally, you can create a secure private share that only authorized people are allowed to access them. As you’re the only person to access or share your files to others, you have a private and secure Cloud on your hand.

• xcv: Taking the long way around

• ascii: Quick and dirty info

• Instructionals/Technical

  • HPL (High Performance Linpack): Benchmarking Raspberry PIs

  • How To Install Ubuntu Make 0.5 On Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install Git 2.3.0 On Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install LyX 2.1.3 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install Wireshark 1.12.3 On Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems, Via PPA

  • Adding an LDAP backed domain to a Packstack install

  • Running Cisco management software in KVM

• Games

  • Cities: Skylines PC requirements, includes Mac and Linux demands

    Alright, so Colossal Order thinks they can mend our broken city builder hearts with Cities: Skylines next month, March 10th. What demands are they going to make of our Mayoral PCs to achieve this?

  • Interview With Artifex Mundi, Publisher Of Casual Adventure Games, We Have Keys For You

    Artifex Mundi has had a strong presence on Steam for Linux since they got through Steam Greenlight last year. Last month they published their 14th game on the digital store, and as usual it was a same-day release for Linux on Steam.

  • Age Of Wonders III Officially Nearing Beta For Linux

    I know some of you are wanting this badly, so the good news is that Age Of Wonders III will be officially released on Linux in beta form soon.

  • Metro Last Light & 2033 Redux Get Updated For Linux

    The developers working on the Linux versions of Metro Last Light Redux and Metro 2033 Redux have released a long-awaited new patch release.

  • Dying Light Major Patch Released, Still Abysmal On Linux

    Linux gamers still seem to be unable to play co-up, the motion blur when running is still there when turned off (not as bad as it was), and performance is still utterly abysmal. I have relayed my feedback to Techland as usual in the hopes they fix it up.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0r1 (Nestor) Officially Released – Screenshot Tour

    The Parsix GNU/Linux Project proudly announced a few minutes ago, February 14, that the first maintenance release of the Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (codename Nestor) computer operating system based on the Debian 7 Wheezy distribution has been officially released and is now available for download from its website or as an upgrade to existing Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 users.

  • 7.0r1 Release Notes

    Parsix GNU/Linux 7.0 (code name Nestor) brings the latest stable GNOME desktop environment, a brand new kernel built using or modernized kernel build system, updated installer and support for UEFI based systems. This version has been synchronized with Debian Wheezy repositories as of February 6, 2015. Parsix Nestor ships with GNOME 3.12 and LibreOffice productivity suit by default. Highlights: GNOME Shell 3.12.2, X.Org 1.14.7, GRUB 2, GNU Iceweasel (Firefox) 35.0.1, GParted 0.12.1, Empathy 3.12.7, LibreOffice 3.5.4, VirtualBox 4.3.18 and a brand new kernel based on Linux 3.14.32 with TuxOnIce 3.3, BFS and other extra patches. Live DVD has been compressed using SquashFS and XZ.

  • Rebellin Linux v2.5 Released!

    We’re proud to announce the release of Rebellin Linux v2.5! Plenty of great news from the Rebellin Project!

  • MeX Linux Uses Linux Kernel 3.19, It’s Based on Ubuntu 14.10 and Debian Jessie

    Arne Exton, the creator of numerous distributions of GNU/Linux, including the untroublesome and fast Exton|OS, had the pleasure of informing us today, February 14, about a new build for its MeX Linux computer operating system based on Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), Debian 8 Jessie, and Linux Mint 17.1 (Rebecca).

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

  • Mageia 5 Beta 3 Released with Proper EFI Support and Linux Kernel 3.19

    The third Beta of the forthcoming Mageia 5 Linux kernel-based operating system has been officially announced via Mageia’s blog on February 13, as a gift for Valentine’s Day “The release date was a close call between Friday, the 13th and Valentine’s day… but finally, Mageia 5 beta 3 is available for tests.”

  • Bad luck or Valentine gift: Mageia 5 beta 3 is out!

    The release date was a close call between Friday, the 13th and Valentine’s day… but finally, Mageia 5 beta 3 is available for tests. You will find more information about it on the Release Notes page.

  • Mageia 5 Beta 3 Now Properly Supports EFI On x86_64 Builds

    The third beta to the much delayed Mageia 5 is now available for some Valentine’s weekend testing.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat CEO: Today’s IT department is in a fight for its life

    There’s a new trend called “devops” that is sweeping the enterprise IT world and its become a life-or-death career situation for many IT departments.

  • Fedora

    • Remy DeCausemaker hired, DevConf videos, FUDCon APAC planning, F22 branches, and discussion about Fedora Rings

      At the DevConf.cz conference last weekend, I was given the okay to let it slip that Remy DeCausemaker will be joining Red Hat to work full-time on Fedora Community Action and Impact. Remy has been around Fedora a long time, and from his previous position at the Rochester Institute of Technology, was instrumental in launching the first minor in Free and Open Source Software. Remy will join the Fedora Council and lead initiatives for even greater Fedora community success and growth.

    • Red Hat / Fedora’s DevConf.cz 2015 Videos Now Online

      DevConf.cz 2015 took place last week in Brno, Czech Republic as the annual Red Hat / Fedora focused open-source Linux event. For those interested, the videos of the sessions are up online.

• Debian Family

  • Release Critical Bug report for Week 07

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Samsung’s Spying TVs, Ubuntu Phone Sells Out & More…

        The sale of the first ever Ubuntu phone through a European flash sale was evidently a success. Of course, we wouldn’t know as the phone isn’t available yet to those of us who live on this side of the pond, so it hasn’t been getting much press over here. However, EU sites are all atwitter with headlines like “Ubuntu Sells Out!”

      • Mir 0.11 Released With Many Enhancements

        Version 0.11 of the Mir Display Server was released this week for Ubuntu.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • elementary misses the point

          A recent post on the elementary blog about how they ask for payment on download created a bit of a stir this week. One particular sentence struck a nerve (it has since been removed from the post): “We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.”

          No, they aren’t. I understand that people want to get paid for their work. It’s only natural. Especially when you’d really like that work to be what puts food on the table and not something you do after you work a full week for someone else. I certainly don’t begrudge developers asking for money. I don’t even begrudge requiring payment before being able to download the software. The developers are absolutely right when they say “elementary is under no obligation to release our compiled operating system for free download.”

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android Circuit: Galaxy S6 On Sale March 22, I/O 2015 Dates, S6 Edge Is The Fastest Smartphone

      Taking a look back at the week’s news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including all of Samsung’s leaks around the Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge, the Sony Xperia Z4, phablets fight it out, Android’s crash rate beating iOS, Microsoft and Samsung team up, who’s using Android Wear, the dates for I/O 2015, and OnePlus loves Tuesdays.

      Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android over the last seven days (and you can read the weekly Apple news digest here).

    • The top 100 free Android apps from Amazon

      Yesterday, I linked to a page on Amazon that offered $140 of free Android apps for a limited time. But I goofed because there’s also another page that includes an ongoing list of the one hundred top free Android apps in Amazon’s store, and I forgot to include it. The list includes free games as well as free apps, and it’s updated hourly.

    • Green Bubbles: How Apple Quietly Gets iPhone Users To Hate Android Users

      Paul Ford, once again, has written up something fascinating. He discusses something I had no idea happened: when an iPhone user texts with another iPhone user using iMessage, the outgoing texts appear in calm blue bubbles. When an iPhone user texts with a non-iPhone user (or an iPhone user using something other than iMessage — meaning mainly Android users, obviously), those outgoing texts are in a harsh green. Here are the two examples Paul shows, starting with the iPhone to iPhone:

    • Here’s how Google plans to sell more Android phones in emerging markets

      Google is testing a way to make its super-cheap Android One smartphones more useful and accessible to people in emerging markets.

    • The USA TODAY Sports App: Download it now for iOS and Android

    • Android’s latest ‘be together, not the same’ ad spot is all about epic handshakes

      Google’s latest ad spot centered around their new motto — “Be Together, Not the Same” — hit the net late last night. The video doesn’t feature a slew of Canadian Androids or thousands of Android devices singing in unison. None of that. It’s rather simple, showing a variety of videos from around the net in which people are engaged in their own, unique, sometimes complex handshakes. That’s about it.

    • Xposed Framework for Android 5.0 Lollipop now available

      The popular Xposed Framework, which adds tons of customization options to Android, is now available as an alpha build for Android 5.0 Lollipop. Just the other day, developer rovo89 posted a teaser on XDA hinting that Xposed for Android 5.0 would be available ‘soon’. That day has finally come, so if you’re rooted and running Lollipop, get to it!

    • NSA approves Samsung and Boeing mobile devices for employee use

      Samsung’s products include the Galaxy S4/S5, Galaxy S5 with KNOX, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition, Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition with KNOX 2, Galaxy Note Edge with KNOX 2, Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and 10.5 LTE with KNOX 2, and the Galaxy Alpha with KNOX 2. For Samsung, Knox provides the added security features key to making the grade in the CSfC program.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Update Release Date: HTC One M8 for Sprint, T-Mobile Reported, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 OTA Gaining Momentum

    • Lenovo A6000, A5000, P70, S90 and Others to Get Android 5.0 Lollipop Update Soon

    • A sneak peek at Xiaomi’s Android-based Mi TV

      However, never say never: Xiaomi revealed last year that it plans to invest $1 billion in online video content, which could eventually pave the way to target Chinese expats, or even wider audiences, outside of China as well. With that in mind, it’s worth taking a closer look at Xiaomi’s Mi TV, the company’s 47-inch smart TV, which was on display at the press event as well.

The Basics of Open Source Software

With many organizations incorporating open source code into their software, business managers should have a basic understanding of what open source is all about. After all, Gartner and Accenture report open source adoption rates nearing 100% so it’s likely that your development team is already incorporating open source code into their projects.

So, what is open source? When a developer chooses to make his or her project open source, it gives third party developers the right to tinker and innovate with it. Check out this comprehensive video for an in depth explanation.

Developers incorporate open source into their projects to accelerate development time, thus reducing costs for the organization overall. Most of the time, the code is open to the public; but it is imperative that collaborators refer to a set of chief regulations and terms involved in open source software license management and dispersal.

Google launches PerfKit, open source benchmarking tool for cloud performance

Google has announced the launch of PerfKit, an open source cloud benchmarking tool aimed at aiding developers evaluating performance features.

Events

• SCALE is almost here!

  In less than a week, SCALE13x kicks off in Los Angeles! The hotel it takes place in is full so it promises to be busy – of course, there are more hotels around.

• OpenBSD booth at SCALE 13x

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle says it still fully supports the Sparc processor

  My blog post on the Oracle/Sun merger got quite a bit of attention, and a few folks from Oracle took exception to my portrayal of Sparc dying on the vine and a thin roadmap. After a few conversations, I have a better picture of things, and I was wrong.

CMS

• How sleeping 6 times a day helped the founder of WordPress build a billion-dollar company

  But before Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, was on the path to being a billion-dollar company, Mullenweg was simply an eager coder with a healthy attitude for self-experimentation.

  In conversation with author Tim Ferriss this week, Mullenweg elaborated on some of his productivity hacks, including his now-famous stint with the “Uberman” polyphasic sleep schedule. Polyphasic sleep simply means more than one sleep period per day; many of our friends in Spain are on a polyphasic sleep cycle with their luxurious afternoon siestas.

Healthcare

• OpenEMR 4.2.0 is released

  The OpenEMR community has released version 4.2.0. This new version will be 2014 ONC Certified as a Modular EHR.

Funding

• Hitachi Plans Pentaho Acquisition for IoT, Big Data Analytics Smarts

  What’s big data analytics worth in monetary terms? Hitachi gave a clue this week with news that it intends to acquire business intelligence company Pentaho for a sum rumored to range between $500 million and $600 million.

BSD

• PC-BSD 11.0-CURRENT Images Now Available!

  We hope to continue rolling these –CURRENT images as a way for testers and developers to tryout both FreeBSD and PC-BSD bleeding edge features, often months before a planned release. These images include a full PKG repository compiled for that months image. Users of this system will also be able to “upgrade” when the next monthly image is published.

• First Release Of PC-BSD 11.0-CURRENT Images

  The PC-BSD camp has started spinning development images of FreeBSD/PC-BSD 11.0 in the present 11.0-CURRENT state that is still far out from being officially released.

• LLVM 3.6 Release Candidate 3

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• I love Free Software Day 2015

  Valentine’s Day traditionally is a day to show and celebrate love. So why do not take this as a chance to show your love for Free Software this year?

• Show your love for Free Software

  Every year on 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free Software users to think about the hard-working people in the Free Software community and to show them their appreciation individually on this “I love Free Software”-Day.

• We love the projects around us!

  Today the Free Software Foundation Europe reminds us to thank and celebrate all those in Free Software we love and whose work we enjoy and built upon. In KDE, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything we do in some way depends on Free Software written by many other people – the huge ecosystem around us.

• Gallery of Free Software lovers

  A picture is worth thousand words and describing love with letters is much more harder than with images. On this page we collect some examples of people from all over the world expressing their enthusiasm for freedom in both software and society with photos.

• I ♥ Free Software

Openness/Sharing

• New games for Linux, Open Source Virtual Reality, and more

Your next favorite collaboration tool

Last night I had a crazy realization: I could probably replace the majority of what my team hopes to accomplish with standup meetings, design documents, project management apps, and social code sharing features with a single tool.

Health/Nutrition

• Pickering mom’s Facebook post galvanizing hundreds to vaccinate, she says

  Jennifer White’s painful family story is convincing hundreds of vaccine-hesitant parents around the world to rethink their actions.

  On Tuesday, White wrote a Facebook post about her newborn baby’s possible exposure to measles in a Markham doctor’s office waiting room in late January. In it, she slammed anti-vaxxers and their refusal to protect their children, and hers.

• Virginia Senate says suppliers, ingredients of execution drugs should be secret

  Virginia could keep the suppliers of the drugs used in executions secret, as well as all the components they mix to make the drug cocktail used in lethal injections under a bill the state Senate approved Tuesday.

Security

• Govt employing hackers to attack own facilities – hacking expert

  The internet has connected millions across the globe, rooting itself into the day-to-day activities. If something happens to it, it’s not just the end of kitty pictures – the whole world’s economy would collapse. What would the fallout be? How much harm can be done online? What does it mean to be a hacker these days? We ask professor at the University of Sussex and author of a book about hacking communities, Tim Jordan, on Sophie&Co.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Obama Undecided on Sending Arms to Ukraine

  President Obama says he has not yet decided whether to send arms to the Ukrainian military to fight Russian-backed rebels. Obama criticized Russia’s role in the conflict during a joint news conference at the White House with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

• Healing in post-war Gaza

  The emotional weight a photojournalist endures in covering conflict can be suppressed, but it can never be understated. And the commitment to highlighting the spirit of survival in the victims of the conflict can never be overstated. For American photojournalist Heidi Levine, that emotional toll has been severely challenged over her nearly 30 years documenting the Palestinian-Israel conflict. In the past year, she has done her work while also facing the almost simultaneous passing of two family members–her grandmother and father–while on assignment nearly 8,000 miles away from home.

• Did Obama just declare war on Syria?

  The news that President Obama has formally asked US Congress to authorize military force against ISIS is not surprising. What may come as a shock to Americans oblivious to these developments is that the administration has de facto declared war on Syria.

• UN envoy says Yemen national talks will resume amid crisis

  The U.N. envoy to Yemen has returned to Sanaa and resumed contacts with major political players to find a way out of a deepening crisis caused by a Shiite rebel takeover, participants in the talks said Sunday.

• Calls Grow to Reject AUMF That Permits ‘Waging War All Over World’

  ‘The devastating and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us that when we give military authority to the executive, it should not be a blank check,’ says Congressional Progressive Caucus

• Peter Van Buren Writes An Embassy Evacuation Explainer

  What is not silly is that we still have local employees at Embassy Sana’a. They, typically, are not evacuated when post suspends operations. In 2003, Ghulam Sakhi Ahmadzai, the building maintenance supervisor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was the Foreign Service National Employee of the Year. He was recognized for his exceptional efforts in Afghanistan during the 13-year absence of American employees and following the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December 2001. His loyalty to the U.S. government and to maintaining the integrity of the embassy during that absence, despite personal risk, could not be repaid by that one award. No doubt there are other Ghulams in Tripoli and Sana’a and in other posts where we have suspended operations in the past. Please keep them in your thoughts.

• Houston Muslim School Burned Down In What Investigators Say Is Likely An Arson Attack

  The arson attack was the third incident of Islamaphobic violence this week.

• Arson suspected in fire at Islamic center

  An early morning fire Friday at an Islamic center in southeast Houston left the facility’s faithful wondering if what appears to be an intentionally set fire was tied to their religion.

• Turkey’s Erdogan chides Obama for silence on N.C. Muslim murders

  Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday criticized President Obama for his silence following the killings of three young Muslims in North Carolina this week, the latest sign relations between the two leaders have become strained.

• Syrian townspeople insist U.S. airstrike killed civilians

  Mohammad Na’us was one of the most respected men in al Bab. He was the undertaker who washed the bodies of the dead prior to burial, a pious Quranic scholar who issued the sundown call to prayer in the Syrian town near the Turkish border, and for the past year, a seller of bread in his neighborhood.

  But on Dec. 28, the bakery’s delivery was late and he missed the prayers at sundown. Religious police arrested Na’us, a father of five in his 50s, and ordered him to spend one night in prison.

• ‘American Terrorist’: Middle East reacts to Murder of 3 Muslim-American Students in N Carolina

  If American mass media seemed reluctant to cover the murder of three Muslims students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as a hate crime, the same was not true in the Middle East, where strong opinions were aroused.

  Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan criticized President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for not speaking out on the issue (which is under investigation by local police and the FBI).

  Erdogan said, “If you stay silent when faced with an incident like this, and don’t make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you . . . As politicians, we are responsible for everything that happens in our countries and we have to show our positions.”

• Morning Plum: American public appears ready for some more war

  The good folks at NBC send over a partisan breakdown. Fifty two percent of Republicans support Obama’s authorization request, as do 51 percent of independents and 60 percent of Democrats.

  A few points about this. First, Republican voters appear at odds with GOP lawmakers on this topic. The latter have been arguing that, if anything, Obama’s request is too limiting. As Marco Rubio put it so felicitously, Congress should give Obama an authorization that says nothing more than we “authorize the president to take whatever steps are necessary to defeat ISIS. Period.” But a bare majority of Republicans supports the limits in the authorization Obama proposed, such as they are.

• Egypt to Purchase Fighter Jets and a Warship From France

  President François Hollande of France on Thursday announced the sale of nearly $6 billion worth of military hardware to Egypt, including two dozen Rafale fighter jets and a naval frigate.

  The contract represents the first foreign sale of the Rafale for its manufacturer, Dassault Aviation, which has been under intense pressure to find export customers for the warplane as France scales back its orders as part of government spending cuts.

• Top U.S. General in Afghanistan Provides ‘Options’ for Slowing Troop Withdrawal

  The four-star general in charge of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan told senators today that he has given the Pentagon different options for slowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

  There are now roughly 13,000 international troops in Afghanistan, 9,800 of them Americans, Campbell said. President Obama’s current plan would have reduced that to 5,500 soldiers, mostly centered in Kabul, by the end of this year. Army Gen. Cambell said that the Afghan government under its new president, Ashraf Ghani, did not want the U.S. to pull back so quickly.

• FBI Director Defends Police, Says Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist

  FBI Director James Comey repeatedly defended the police in a speech intended to address race relations after a series of high-profile killings by law enforcement officers.

  Speaking at Georgetown University this morning, Comey said citizens need to have more empathy for police, that police response time is not influenced by race, and that “law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest-hit neighborhoods.”

  Comey also cited and quoted from the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from the Broadway play “Avenue Q,” adding that while everyone has a duty to try and overcome bias, “racial bias isn’t epidemic in those who join law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts.” And yet “after years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel” and begin viewing black citizens differently.

• Chapel Hill Victim’s Sister: ‘Insulting and Outrageous’ to Call Shooting ‘Parking Dispute’

  Dr. Suzanne Barakat, sister of one of the Chapel Hill shooting victims, appeared on Morning Joe Friday morning to strongly dispute the early police theory that her brother, his wife, and sister-in-law were shot by Craig Stephens Hicks over a “parking dispute.” That all three victims were Muslim, and that Hicks had loudly proclaimed anti-religious sentiment, has led many to label the triple murder a hate crime.

• Obama’s new secretary of defense predicted 9/11 and the NSA mass spying that followed

  Three years before 9/11, Ash Carter was already talking catastrophe.

  Carter, confirmed Thursday as Obama’s new Secretary of Defense, vividly predicted in 1998 a near-future terrorist attack that would have long-lasting consequences beyond the immediate loss of thousands of lives.

• Life under drones — in victims’ own words

  Mohammed Saleh Tauiman was just 13 years old in 2014 when the Guardian newspaper gave him a camera so he could record life under the drones that flew over Marib province, Yemen.

• Halt drone strikes, say faith leaders

  One of more than 150 religious leaders who drafted a statement opposing the use of lethal drones by the United States military said Feb. 11 it’s an issue that more Baptists should care about.

• Drones make war too easy, too remote, faith leaders say

• Military drones heard in West Midlands

  After readings from the Bible and the Qur’an the worshippers dedicated themselves to peace and shouted out “Stop the drones!” and “Drones kill”. Most of the protestors were men and women training for ordained ministry in the Church of England and the Methodist Church. Bishop Edward Musonda from the Anglican Church in Zambia said: “It is a pleasure to take part in this act of Christian witness against this savage military weaponry.”

• “Frankly, I don’t think we know who we killed”

  A US drone strike which killed a senior al-Shabaab leader in Somalia a week ago appears to have been part of a change of tactics by the Americans since they started targeting the militant group in 2007. It was the fifth consecutive such strike against al-Shabaab’s leadership, with drones now appearing to have superseded other, manned aircraft and cruise missiles in the seven years since attacks began in Somalia.

• Maine Voices: Let’s stand together against dehumanizing, immoral drone warfare

  Morality is missing in action as innocent people die in the strikes, fueling anger around the globe.

• Yemen chaos shows drones can take out key targets, but they’ll never defeat terrorism

  For years, the US has relied on drones to prevent Yemen from collapsing. The strategy hasn’t worked.

• Senators From Both Parties Back ACLU, New York Times in FOIA Lawsuit for Drone Memos

• Four Senators File Brief Challenging DOJ’s Drone Law Secrecy

• Paul, Dems demand release of drone docs

  Sen. Rand Paul is joining three Democrats in urging a federal court to release secret documents about the government’s use of drones to kill three Americans.

  Along with Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (N.M.), the Kentucky Republican filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Wednesday supporting a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and The New York Times.

• Heinrich among senators urging court to make drone killing memos public

• US senators urge NY court to make drone killing memos public

  Saying the government cites “national security” too often to shield information from scrutiny, four U.S. senators urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to divulge more about rules it follows when it makes U.S. citizens the target of anti-terror drone strikes.

• Senators call to release drone memos

• In drone warfare we ought not trust

  While deployed, I concluded our drone strikes disproportionately kill innocent people. As a military chaplain, I preached a sermon questioning the morality of such warfare. After my commander read it, he said “the message does not support the mission” and had me investigated, officially reprimanded and released from active duty for “retraining.”

• Think Tank Publishes Report On Tanks That Think

  No military technology is perhaps more viscerally upsetting than the idea of a machine, armed with a gun, making the decision on its own to kill people. It’s a theme throughout dystopian fiction and films, and it animates protests against drones, despite the fact that military drones still have humans at the controls. Autonomy for weapons–where a gun turret or future machine will be programmed to press the trigger on its own–is a definite possibility in future wars. A new report from the Center for New American Security, a Washington D.C. think tank, wants to guide us calmly into understanding this future of armed thinking machines.

• Playing With Fire in an Age of Absurdity

  The peace movement is dead, the media are mute, and, in all likelihood, we will soon be engulfed in an electoral season in which the plain fact that Democrats and Republicans know not what they do will hardly even come up.

• James Bond is Dead

  Well, not exactly. New James Bond novels and movies pop up all the time, but Gérard de Villiers (who died in 2013) wrote either 100 or 200 novels about an Austrian (and freelance CIA operative), named Malko Linge, that have sold millions of copies in France and made him “the most popular writer of spy thrillers in French history.” The discrepancy with the numbers (100 or 200) hardly matters, though those figures are cited in the biographical information about the writer at the beginning of the two novels discussed here: Chaos in Kabul and The Madmen of Benghazi, both originally published in France in 2013. Clearly, the guy was prolific—much more than Ian Fleming. His expertise was the Middle East, which made his stories not only current but, often, prescient.

  [...]

  At the beginning of Chaos in Kabul, Linge is hired to eliminate Hamid Karzai. Yes, you read that correctly. So Linge is flown into Afghanistan after responding to his CIA agent, “This mission is impossible. The Agency has everything it needs in Afghanistan. You operate a fleet of drones that can hit anything. What can you expect from one man against the Karzai machine? Besides, you know I’m not a killer.” And the answer to his response? It can’t be obvious that Americans caused Karzai’s death. So, Linge agrees, but first he’s got to find an accomplice who will do the actual killing. That guy is a South African thug, and the plan is that Karzai will be shot when he’s riding in his motorcade.

• Unauthorized Government Attacks Are Murder

  Even Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, the author of numerous books and a legal expert for Fox News, in an otherwise excellent history of the usurpation of unique American civil liberties at the expense of ever expanding executive power (see Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty) focuses too much on President Barack Obama’s killing of American citizens without due process – for example, Anwar al Alawki in Yemen in 2011. Napolitano correctly argues that an American president is essentially claiming the right to murder his own citizens without prior legal niceties, but he focuses too much on the use of exotic drone technology to do so and not enough on a larger and more important problem. If anyone – U.S. citizen or not – is attempting to attack the United States, the president should have a right to take them out, provided the Congress has authorized military action or declared war. Even then, according to the founders’ original constitutional vision, if the country is under imminent threat of attack, the president can take appropriate action and get congressional authorization at the earliest possible time. If the president doesn’t have such legislative approval or a legitimate “imminent attack” rationale, he is essentially murdering people – U.S. citizens or not.

• President Obama puts his legacy at risk with new war in Middle East

  In light of the threat posed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, President Obama wants Congress to authorize military force against the Islamist group in the Middle East. Although the president believes a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) gives him the legal grounds to go to war on his own, he has sent Congress a draft authorization for their approval.

• Confront ‘American Sniper’

  If you already understand U.S. imperialism’s crimes in Iraq, that’s what you might take away from the movie, “American Sniper.” But many viewers, unaware of the truth behind the war, receive a distorted message. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film looks at the events only through U.S. eyes. It twists the truth, falsifying historical context while adding poisonous anti-Arab bigotry.

• Jamil Maidan Flores: Truth Also a Casualty in Mindanao ‘Mis-encounter’

  I didn’t think much of this until hours ago when I read a banner story of the Manila Times written by its chairman emeritus Dr. Dante Ang. The burden of the piece is that in the Mamasapano raid, codenamed Operation Wolverine, the main protagonists were American agents out to get the Malaysian terrorist Marwan and the BIFF leader Abdulbasit Usman. The PNP-SAF commandos were only security escorts to the agents.

• Purisima asked AFP for support during Mamasapano clash – general

• Chiz asks if US involved in Marwan operation

• Sacked SAF commander: What drones?

  This was revealed by its commander then, now relieved Police Director Getulio Napeñas, during a hearing Monday, February 9, on the operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, that claimed the lives of at least 68 individuals, including 44 elite SAF troopers.

• COMMENT: Marwan Dead at Pyrrhic Cost

  Lives: A total of 66 lives, not including Marwan’s, were lost – 44 SAF, 18 MILF and four civilians. The SAF casualties were nine of the 42 members of the 84th SAF Company dispatched to Pidsandawan to get Marwan and 35 of the 36 members of the 55th deployed in Tukanalipao – the lone survivor PO3 Robert Lalang.

• “How many dead women, children and innocent men for every dead terrorist?”

• Obama’s ‘Crusaders’ analogy veils the West’s modern crimes

  Like many children, 13-year-old Mohammed Tuaiman suffered from nightmares. In his dreams, he would see flying “death machines” that turned family and friends into burning charcoal. No one could stop them, and they struck any place, at any time.

  Unlike most children, Mohammed’s nightmares killed him.

  Three weeks ago, a CIA drone operating over Yemen fired a missile at a car carrying the teenager, and two others. They were all incinerated. Nor was Mohammed the first in his family to be targeted: drones had already killed his father and brother.

  Since president Barack Obama took office in 2009, the US has killed at least 2,464 people through drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones. The figure is courtesy of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which says that at least 314 of the dead, one in seven, were civilians.

  Recall that for Obama, as The New York Times reported in May 2012, “all military-age males in a strike zone” are counted “as combatants” – unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.

  It sounds like the stuff of nightmares.

• Obama’s Drones are far Deadlier than the Spanish Inquisition

Transparency Reporting

• Politician Facing Investigation Tries To Destroy His Emails; Assistant ‘Helps Out’ By Emailing Order To Other Staffers

  Far too many politicians and legislators aren’t happy with the fact that their emails are subject to public records requests. Some attempt to dodge this layer of accountability by using personal email accounts to handle official business. Oregon governor John Kitzhaber is one such politician.

  Unfortunately for Kitzhaber and many others just like him, public records laws anticipate this endaround. In many states, personal email accounts are also FOIA-able if the emails discuss official (read: public) business. Kitzhaber, however, believed he could outbludgeon the system.

• David Carr obituary: must-read newsman with a burning belief in the importance of truth

  At the end of an hour-long panel discussion on the film Citizenfour on Thursday night that he was moderating, David Carr sat back in his chair and in his distinctive, weather-worn voice asked Edward Snowden, the NSA exile, a final question via video link. “I’ve got to channel all the moms in the audience for just a sec,” he said. “You’re in Russia. So are you getting enough to eat? Is the food good?” It was classic David Carr. Unexpected, empathetic, funny. It raised a robust laugh from the packed crowd.

• David Carr, rumpled mensch and writers’ writer, dies on the job

  On Twitter Thursday night, I tried to fight the rumor that beloved New York Times media columnist David Carr died the same evening. I’d seen him less than three hours earlier, interviewing Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden (via satellite) at a sold out “Times Talk.” He was sharp and funny; he seemed happy; he had a bad cough. But he could not possibly be dead.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The World Has Reached Peak Chicken, Peak Rice, And Peak Milk

  We still haven’t reached peak oil. But peak milk happened in 2004, peak soybeans in 2009, and peak chicken in 2006. Rice peaked in 1988.

  A new study published in Ecology and Society explains that 21 key resources that humans rely on—mostly food—have already passed their peak rate of production.

  “Peak,” in this case, doesn’t mean that we’re actually producing fewer chickens or less milk yet. Instead, the researchers looked at the fact that the rate of production has plateaued, at the same time that population is increasing.

• Regionalism too tough to swallow? Try Flint’s water

  So it turns out that building your own regional water system is costly, time-consuming and difficult. Who knew?

  Apparently not officials in Genesee, Lapeer and Sanilac counties, which unhooked from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to build their own system, the unpronounceable Karegnondi Water Authority, helmed by Genesee County Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright.

• In the eye of a mega-drought: Researchers warn US should prepare for ‘unprecedented drought conditions’ unlike anything in past 1,000 years

  Since the turn of this century, the US south-west has spent more than a decade in drought. Last year was the warmest on record in California, which is in the middle of its driest spell for more than 400 years. But according to a new scientific study, that’s nothing compared to what comes next.

Finance

• Setting SYRIZA Straight, NYT Gets It Wrong on Debt

  But Alderman got the primary surplus back to front. The definition should actually be before interest payments–the primary surplus being a measure of whether a government would be spending more than it takes in if it weren’t paying back past borrowing. Could it be the Times reporter does not understand the magnitude of Greece’s financial challenges?

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Prosecutor in Scott Walker Probe Asks Justices to Recuse

  The prosecutor leading the probe into possible coordination between Governor Scott Walker’s campaign and outside groups has asked some Wisconsin Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from hearing a challenge to the investigation.

  A notation in court records titled “Motion for Recusal and Notice of Ethical Concerns” indicates that on February 12, Special Prosecutor Francis Schmitz filed a sealed motion for one or more of the Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from the case. Schmitz was previously on George W. Bush’s shortlist for U.S. Attorney and said that he voted for Walker.

• James Henry on HSBC, Mary Bottari on Scott Walker

  Scott WalkerAlso on the show: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said it was just a “drafting error” that led to his proposed budget calling for the evisceration of the central philosophy guiding the state’s university system, along with $300 million in cuts. Reporters and activists showed that to be a falsehood, and Walker’s proposed changes look like a revealing peak at the agenda of the man who wants to be the next president. We’ll hear from a key player in that story, Mary Bottari from the Center for Media and Democracy.

• Fox Hosts Promote Scott Walker As The “Sexy” Republican 2016 Hopeful

• Sun News Network, Canada’s “Fox News North,” Has Been Canceled

  Sun News Network, the right-wing Canadian news network described as “Fox News North,” is shutting down.

• ‘He Just Made It Up’: New York Post Accused of Fabrication in Machete Lawsuit Story

  It was the NYPD’s very own “Hot Coffee” case–a sign of a supposedly hyper-litigious system spiraling out of control. A “machete-wielding mad man” attacks the cops, gets shot in the leg, and then sues the NYPD for damages.

• Rand Paul’s claim — twice in one day — that he has a biology degree

  We first spotted a version of this quote in a Bloomberg column by David Weigel, and then checked the quotes with our colleague Jose DelReal, who had attended the conference.

• Presidential politics: all personality, no platform

  Hillary Clinton has everything she needs to run for president: money, name recognition, staff, organization. Everything except ideas.

  The 2016 presidential campaign will begin in earnest in late summer. This hasn’t snuck up on her; she has known this was coming since at least 2008. Yet here she is, six months before the unofficial start of her run, starting to figure out what she’ll do if she wins.

Censorship

• Police hunting for lone suspect in deadly Copenhagen cafe shooting

  François Zimeray, the French ambassador to Denmark who was also at the event, tweeted that he was “still alive.”

  Vilks, a 68-year-old Swedish artist, has faced several attempted attacks and death threats after he depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog in 2007.

Privacy

• BBC could get power to access private data

  The BBC could be given new powers to access to people’s private and public data as part of a raft of new measures to tackle licence-fee evasion.

  An independent consultation suggested that the corporation could be given access to “new data sources” to help make collection of the charge more efficient.

• UK Surveillance Consultation Suggests It Is End-Point Security, Not Encryption, That Cameron Wants To Subvert

  It is also striking that the codes of conduct were released on the same day that the UK’s secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that British intelligence services had broken the law, but that they were now in compliance because previously unknown policies had been made public. As Nyst speculates, it could be that the UK government is releasing more details of its spying in the form of these consultation documents in an attempt to head off future losses in the courts.

  Whether or not that is the case, it certainly seems that the attempts by civil liberties groups to end or at least limit mass surveillance are already having an effect on the UK government, and forcing it to provide basic details of its hitherto completely-secret activities. That success is a strong incentive to continue fighting for more proportionality and meaningful oversight here.

• How Canadian Spies Infiltrated the Internet’s Core to Watch What You Do Online

  You might not think Canada’s digital spies are on par with those in the US and UK—but rest assured, America’s northern neighbour is just as capable of perpetuating mass surveillance on a global scale. Case in point: at over 200 locations around the world, spies from Canada’s cyberintelligence agency have been monitoring huge volumes of global internet traffic travelling across the internet’s core.

  ​From these locations, Communications Security Establishment (CSE) can track who is accessing websites and files of interest. Its analysts can also log email addresses, phone numbers and even the content of unencrypted communications—and retain encrypted communication for later study, too—as well as intercept passwords and login details for later access to remote servers and websites.

  ​But perhaps more importantly, tapping into global internet traffic is a means for CSE to monitor, and also exploit, an ever growing list of digital threats, such as vulnerabilities in networks and computers and the spread of malware as well as botnets and the computers under their control. In the process, analysts can keep tabs on both friendly and foreign governments conducting covert cyber attacks and infiltration of their own.

• NSA Braced for New Leaks

  The National Security Agency, still reeling from massive leaks caused by Edward Snowden, is preparing to be hit with another major loss of secrets, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

  The leaks are expected to be published in the near future by a news outlet that was not further identified by the officials familiar with details of the compromise. The NSA is aware of the news outlet’s forthcoming disclosures and is taking steps to try and minimize any damage they will cause.

  According to the officials, the latest NSA disclosure of secrets is not the result of an insider stealing documents, as occurred in the case of fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

  Instead, the leaks will reveal certain NSA technical cyber intelligence gathering capabilities. The officials did not provide details about the leaks.

• Snowden filmmaker says US surveillance ‘out of control’

  For most Oscar nominees, the weeks before the February 22 ceremony are a whirlpool of stress.

  But Laura Poitras, up for best documentary for “Citizenfour,” insists it is like going for a healthy walk — compared to what she went through to get here.

  When former National Security Agency (NSA) consultant Edward Snowden, who revealed the massive scope of US intelligence surveillance, contacted the filmmaker, she found her life turned into a spy novel.

• Three of Tech’s Top CEOs to Skip Obama Cybersecurity Summit

  The top executives of Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Facebook Inc. won’t attend President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity summit on Friday, at a time when relations between the White House and Silicon Valley have frayed over privacy issues.

  Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt all were invited but won’t attend the public conference at Stanford University, according to the companies. Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook is planning to be at the event, where Obama is scheduled to give the keynote speech and have a private lunch with a select group of attendees.

• An NSA spy, a Fed and a sysadmin walk into a bar – that’s Obama’s new cyber-security order

  President Obama has signed an executive order that will attempt to protect America’s crucial computer networks by sharing knowhow between g-men and techies.

  The new order instructs federal agencies to set up a clearing house of real-time, up-to-the-minute information on what’s menacing US infrastructure. Companies running those networks and systems will be able to look into the intelligence stream, get an idea of what’s about to hit them, and beef up their defenses accordingly. This is assuming the system works as described.

  This sharing of information is supposed to go two ways: businesses can use the clearing house to tip off the Feds about threats that everyone ought to know about, we’re told.

• Obama Focuses on Cyber Security, but NSA Remains an Issue

  President Obama called for companies to voluntarily share more cyber attack information with federal agencies during a first-ever White House summit on cyber security issues, signing an executive action to help pave the way for such sharing.

• In the NSA’s aftermath, expect less cybersecurity cooperation

  The Obama administration is expected to take executive action Friday, sweeping aside two years of congressional negotiations and bickering in an effort to bolster the country’s cyber-defenses.

• ANOTHER US court smacks down EFF’s NSA wiretap sueball – but won’t say why

  A California court has once again upheld the legality of the US National Security Agency’s Bush-era mass telephone surveillance program, but has withheld its reasoning on grounds of national security.

• US judge backs NSA in people vs privacy case

  A US JUDGE HAS ruled in favour of the National Security Agency (NSA) in a personal privacy case, despite the protests of rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

  Jewel vs the NSA was ruled on by judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, who told plaintiffs that they had failed to prove that the government violated a long established hope that ‘a man’s home is his castle’, or rather the Fourth Amendment.

• Snowden: NSA Surveillance About Control, Fight Against It About Democracy

  An entire ballroom of more than 1,000 stood to applaud Edward Snowden as he was introduced at the Students for Liberty convention in Washington, and again after Snowden challenged them to “win” against the government’s attempt to expand its own power.

• Did the NSA and the UK’s Spy Agency Launch a Joint Cyberattack on Iran?

  An NSA document newly published today suggests two interesting facts that haven’t previously been reported.

  The Intercept, which published the document, highlighted that in it the NSA expresses fear that it may be teaching Iran how to hack, but there are two other points in the document that merit attention.

  One concerns the spy tool known as Flame; the other refers to concerns the NSA had about partnering with the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters and Israeli intelligence in surveillance operations.

• US likely responsible for Iran’s cyber warfare know-how

• The NSA Acknowledges What We All Feared: Iran Learns From US Cyberattacks

  The document suggests that such attacks don’t just invite counterattacks but also school adversaries on new techniques and tools to use in their counterattacks, allowing them to increase the sophistication of these assaults. Iran, the document states, ‘has demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others.’”

• NSA Spy Program So Secret Judge Can’t Explain Why It Can’t Be Challenged

  A federal judge ruled in favor of the National Security Agency in a key surveillance case on Tuesday, dismissing a challenge which claimed the government’s spying operations were groundless and unconstitutional.

• Court clamps down on warrantless surveillance case against NSA

  This week, a US District Court judge ruled in favor of the NSA in a case challenging its tactics of intercepting messages on the internet without a warrant. California District Judge Jeffrey White said that the plaintiffs in Jewel vs. NSA didn’t establish the legal standing needed to pursue claims that the US government violated their Fourth Amendment rights. White ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence presented by the plaintiffs, and that the risk of revealing of state secrets would prevent the case from going forward even if they had. The group, who are all AT&T customers being represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), still has a case against the wider telephone record collection and other forms of mass surveillance employed by the National Security Agency. Jewel vs. NSA was filed in 2008 and is one of the earliest lawsuits brought against the federal government over its monitoring practices, preceding the whistleblowing work of Edward Snowden.

• Tennessee Bills Take on NSA Code-Breaking Facility, Ban Material Support or Resources

  On Wednesday, Tennessee legislators filed bills to directly take on NSA spying by withholding vital state resources and material support from any federal agency engaged in warrantless surveillance.

• Data privacy becoming an Orwellian maze

  The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruling that GCHQ’s access to information intercepted by the NSA breached human rights laws is feeding a growing and increasingly heated global debate regarding the whole issue of digital privacy.

• Barack Obama acknowledges damage from NSA eavesdropping on Angela Merkel

• Obama acknowledges damage from NSA eavesdropping on Merkel

  U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that revelations of U.S. surveillance on German Chancellor Angela Merkel “damaged impressions” Germans hold of the U.S. government.

• ‘Privacy Critical to Human Freedom’: Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald Talk NSA

  Though Snowden beamed in remotely, conversation hosted by New York Times brings together trio that revealed vast secretive surveillance network to global public.

• Obama tells Germany to relax about NSA mass surveillance

  President Barack Obama has called for the German people, and by extension Europe, to trust that the US is not infringing on their privacy, despite the Snowden leaks.

  Obama issued the call for “trust” about the PRISM leaks during a joint press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel when asked how the leaks have affected the two nations’ relationship.

  “There’s no doubt that the Snowden revelations damaged the impressions of Germans with respect to the US government and our intelligence cooperation,” he said.

  “What I would ask would be that the German people recognise that the US has always been at the forefront of trying to promote civil liberties, and that we have traditions of due process that we respect.

• Obama: Snowden revelations ‘damaged impressions’ of NSA in Germany

  Talks in Washington on Monday focused on the conflict in Ukraine, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama also touched on issues including NSA espionage and nuclear negotiations with Iran.

• Obama Asks Germany to Stop ‘Assuming the Worst’ About NSA Spying

• Obama asks Germany “to give us the benefit of the doubt” on NSA spying

• Obama asks Germans for ‘benefit of the doubt’ on NSA

  President Barack Obama is asking Germans to give the United States “the benefit of the doubt” on National Security Agency surveillance, given U.S. history.

  Obama says “there’s no doubt” that NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s revelations about the U.S. spying programs damaged the impression of U.S. intelligence operations among Germans. He says that’s understandable, given Germany’s history.

• Court backs NSA on internet spying as Obama ducks call for reform

  It’s been a lousy week so far for opponents of U.S. spy tactics: a federal judge shut down a long-running challenge to the NSA’s mass collection of customer internet data, while President Obama brushed off a call to do something about the sprawl of government surveillance.

• NSA’s Section 215 Telephony Metadata Program Should and Can Be Shut Down

  One year ago, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) reviewed the National Security Agency’s bulk telephony metadata program and concluded the program was both illegal and imprudent as a policy matter. Under this program conducted pursuant to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA on a daily basis indiscriminately collects Americans’ calling records from telephone companies, including each call’s date and time, duration, and participating telephone numbers. This “metadata” does not include the contents of telephone conversations. The program is intended to enable the government to identify communications among known and unknown terrorism suspects. PCLOB recommended that the program be discontinued and that the government instead seek telephone call records directly from phone companies on a case-by-case basis where there is evidence of potential terrorist activity.

• Montana State Rep. Files Bill to go Head-to-Head with NSA Spying

  A bill filed in Montana yesterday would not only support efforts to turn off NSA’s water in Utah, but would have practical effects on federal surveillance programs if passed.

  Montana Rep. Daniel Zolnikov (R-45) introduced HB443, a bill that would ban “material support or resources” from the state to warrantless federal spy programs, making it the 10th state to introduce legislation similar to a bill up for consideration in Utah this year.

  “The best thing about privacy is that it is not a partisan issue,” said Zolnikov. “Groups like the ACLU and the Tea Party can work together to protect the rights of Montanans.”

• Mass Surveillance, Liberty & Activism talk

  ORG’s Executive Director Jim Killock will talk about mass surveillance, liberty and activism. He’ll say why mass surveillance is a danger to democracy and how we can work together to curb it.

• MPs want assurances over wider powers for security services

  MPs wants guarantees from the government that the decision to give the security services wider powers to tap phones and internet traffic will not be abused, website nu.nl reports on Tuesday. Home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk and defence minister Jeanine Hennis are due to present their draft legislation for expanding the security services’ intelligence-gathering powers shortly. Nu.nl questioned various party representatives about their position.

• Dutch intelligence won’t become America’s NSA: MP

  VVD Parliamentarian Klaas Dijkhoff denounced the phantom images raised by opponents that large scale data trawls will soon be conducted in the Netherlands, just like the NSA does in the United states, NU. reports. “The fear exists and people like to call up that feeling, but there is not country in the world where information is dealt with more carefully.” he said. But the Tweede Kamer (lower house of parliament) still wants guarantees that the expansion of the intelligence services’ surveillance capabilities will not lead to NSA practices.

• Obama defers to Congress to end NSA phone tracking

  President Obama won’t end the government’s controversial collection of data about millions of Americans on his own, because he’d rather the matter be dealt with by Congress.

• Oklahoma Action Alert: Help Stop NSA Spying, Support HB1738 and SB444

  Oklahoma HB1738 would deny much-needed material support or resources to warrantless federal spying programs. And SB444 would ban the state from participating in an unconstitutional federal-state information program. HB1738 must pass out of the House State and Federal Relations Committee while SB444 must pass out of the Senate Judiciary Committee before the bills can receive full votes in their respective chambers.

• NSA, CIA, and FBI Implementation of PPD-28

  As we continue to read through documents released on February 3 that collectively detail the intelligence community’s efforts to implement Presidential Policy Directive-28, (PPD-28), we thought it would be helpful to overview briefly, and to compare. implementing documents issued by three agencies in particular: NSA, CIA, and FBI.

  Overall, there is a great deal of overlap between the three agencies’ implementation policies. But they differ from each other in interesting ways, both with regard to retention and dissemination of information, and with regard to permitted departures from general rules contemplated by the policies themselves.

• Watch President Obama Talk Cybersecurity In Silicon Valley

• Obama’s cybersecurity summit was a dog-and-pony show

  To drive the point home, he signed an executive order to this effect, in the hopes of inspiring collaboration between companies and government security agencies.

• Twitter: U.S. government shares (some) info on data NSA requests from us

  Twitter said today that the U.S. government has filed a highly redacted version of the company’s draft national security transparency report, a step that shows for the first time information about data requests Twitter has gotten from the NSA and other intelligence agencies.

• Twitter receives NSA requests for user information for less than one percent of users

• IT industry experts speak out against the ‘unlawful’ nature of the GCHQ’s mass surveillance

  Mass surveillance of the internet by GCHQ prior to December was unlawful, according to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

  It said that the “intelligence sharing” process did not comply with human rights law, and there was a lack of transparency.

• You can’t control the internet. GCHQ needs to grow up and accept it

  In the end – and maybe this is the biggest change of all – we all have to accept that perfect safety is illusory. Doing so would make society will be a little more open, a little more liberal, a little more scary, and perhaps a little more dangerous. But I think any democracy worthy of the name can live with that, because it’s the price of freedom.

• US plots to KILL hackers – with bureaucracy!

  A new US government “cyber threat” agency will take information on computer security breaches at private companies, pair it with classified intelligence – and put it back out to businesses so they can learn how to beef up their defences.

  That’s the dream, anyway, according to President Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco, who launched the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) on Tuesday in Washington DC.

• Did the US Accidentally Give the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon to Terrorists?

  Next time Brian Williams or his carefully-coiffed successor assigns blame to some foreign actor for a cyberoutrage, I expect the “Cyber Threats Intelligence Integration Center” to figure prominently in the coverage.

• Mind what you say – because your TV might be listening

  We live in privacy obsessed times, which is rather ironic. After all, many of those who complained most vociferously about the alleged snooping of the NSA on our personal emails failed to realise that by posting every conceivable piece of personal information on social media, the average spook merely needs to follow you on Twitter to find out everything they need to know.

• Pop-up ads on TVs? Say it ain’t so!

  It’s a bad week for Samsung. After the firm addressed privacy concerns, some of its Smart TVs began displaying annoying pop-up ads. Meanwhile, the White House plans to form a cybersecurity agency, and smartphone thefts decline thanks to kill switches.

• Samsung warns people not to discuss ‘sensitive information’ in front of their SmartTV

• Be Warned, Samsung Smart TVs Can “Listen” to Your Living Room Chatter

• Bruce Schneier: Your TV may be watching you

  Our smartphones and computers, of course, listen to us when we’re making audio and video calls. But the microphones are always there, and there are ways a hacker, government, or clever company can turn those microphones on without our knowledge. Sometimes we turn them on ourselves. If we have an iPhone, the voice-processing system Siri listens to us, but only when we push the iPhone’s button. Like Samsung, iPhones with the “Hey Siri” feature enabled listen all the time. So do Android devices with the “OK Google” feature enabled, and so does an Amazon voice-activated system called Echo. Facebook has the ability to turn your smartphone’s microphone on when you’re using the app.

• Data retention: It seems BORING … until your TV SPIES ON YOU

  If there’s one thing we can thank this whole Samsung privacy brouhaha for, it’s casting data retention debates in a whole new light.

• Privacy board head: End data collection program

  The head of a federal privacy board is reiterating his call to end the government’s bulk collection and storage of Americans’ phone records.

  David Medine, the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, called for either President Obama or Congress to shut down the National Security Agency program. Obama has deferred to Congress to make the change.

• America’s surveillance state. Part 6 – The future of expanded spying & surveillance

  While some citizens fight back against more encroachments on privacy, the NSA and its backers in the White House, Congress and the Courts are expanding their own reach, now monitoring literally trillions of messages. While legislators have been unable to restrain the NSA, corporations and enterprising journalists are using encryption. Even as intelligence agencies in the US and abroad are escalating their cyber war capacities, private companies are commercializing their technology. All of these issues concern whistleblowers, who say they fear the emergence of a police state if the mass surveillance is not curtailed or stopped.

• To combat fraud, Visa wants to track your smartphone

  Those days of calling your bank to let them know that, yes, you really are in Thailand, and yes, you really did use your credit card to buy $200 in sarongs, may be coming to an end.

  The payment processing company Visa will roll out a new feature this spring that will allow its cardholders to inform their banks where they are automatically, using the location function found in nearly every smartphone.

  Having your bank and Visa know where you are at all times may sound a little like “Big Brother.” But privacy experts are actually applauding the feature, saying that, if used correctly, it could protect cardholders and cut down on credit card fraud.

• Obama’s Big Cybersecurity Order Is Meh

  Look, his net neutrality proposal was great. It’s clear that Obama has a deeper understanding of how the internet works than at least a shitload of other politicians. But this cybersecurity order looks potentially milquetoast on the threat-prevention front and straight-up worrisome on the government-slurping-all-our-data horizon.

• Sour grapes! Zuckerberg, Mayer, and Page expected to miss Obama’s cybersecurity order

  Not only were Yahoo, Facebook, and Google among the original “PRISM” companies revealed by Edward Snowden to have been forced into turning over information about their customers to the NSA, but France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Germany were among nations the NSA is accused of spying on as part of related programs. Perhaps today is a bit late to ask for a more open policy of sharing information.

• Obama’s Surveillance Reform Theater

  What we’re witnessing is Reform Theater. A sort of kabuki act which is intended to provide the impression that, in the wake of Ed blundenSnowden’s revelations, something is being done. Officials create the perception of action by occupying themselves with narrow aspects of mass interception and this is intentional. They wouldn’t dare do anything substantial that would threaten the gears of the surveillance state. Instead they’ll leave Big Brother’s infrastructure in place and dither around the edges.

• Samsung’s listening TV is proof that tech has outpaced our rights

  The Sun was an unlikely advocate for privacy in its special investigation piece early this week on the snooping Samsung telly. Forget phone hacking, it’s the technology companies you need to watch out for. The Sun’s outrage was not confined to Samsung: a neighbouring article reminded us of recent privacy complaints against Facebook and Google.

• Barack Obama’s cyber security push spurs privacy fears

  After the bruising recriminations between the White House and the technology industry over the National Security Agency, Barack Obama will travel to the Bay Area on Friday to enlist Silicon Valley’s support for his post-Snowden push for cyber security legislation.

• Facebook: Hey guys, come share all your securo-blunders with us!

  Facebook is teaming up with other big names on the interwebs to create a security information sharing portal, dubbed ThreatExchange*, which went live on Wednesday.

  ThreatExchange is billed as a platform that enables security professionals to “share threat information more easily, learn from each other’s discoveries, and make their own systems safer”.

• Is Big Brother Here for Good?

  If we are to end our post-9/11 national security state, the congressional leadership must come to believe that blocking efforts to restore the Bill of Rights will result in real political consequences. If, however, they continue to see no political consequences, Americans’ rights to privacy and due process will continue to diminish into artifacts of a bygone era.

• Obama responds to hacks and Silicon Valley with ‘emerging cyber threat’ plan

  President announces executive order ahead of summit to spur development of go-between for technology sector and government to share information

• Three of tech’s top CEOs to skip Obama cybersecurity summit

  The top executives of Google Inc, Yahoo! Inc and Facebook Inc won’t attend President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity summit on Friday, at a time when relations between the White House and Silicon Valley have frayed over privacy issues.

  Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt were all invited but won’t attend the public conference at Stanford University, according to the companies. Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook is planning to show to the event, where Obama is scheduled to give the keynote speech and have a private lunch with a select group of attendees.

• Obama Heads to Tech Security Talks Amid Tensions

  President Obama will meet here on Friday with the nation’s top technologists on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers. But nowhere on the agenda is the real issue for the chief executives and tech company officials who will gather on the Stanford campus: the deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government.

• Homeland Security to be put in charge of info sharing

  President Obama will announce a new executive order on the sharing of cybersecurity threats and information at Friday’s cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, the White House said.

  Most importantly to Silicon Valley, the president’s proposal is expected to cement the role of the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the National Security Agency, as the government lead for information-sharing with the private sector.

• Homeland Security to be put in charge of info sharing

  President Obama will announce a new executive order on the sharing of cybersecurity threats and information at Friday’s cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, the White House said.

  Most importantly to Silicon Valley, the president’s proposal is expected to cement the role of the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the National Security Agency, as the government lead for information-sharing with the private sector.

• Apple CEO signals he’s not backing down on iPhone encryption

  On Friday, the White House convened a “cyber summit” at Stanford’s campus in Palo Alto so that business and government leaders could get together and talk, essentially, about how scary hackers are.

• Kara Swisher Interviews President Barack Obama on Cyber Security, Privacy and His Relationship With Silicon Valley (Video)

  President Barack Obama took the hot seat with Re/code’s Kara Swisher Friday as the two talked about a range of tech-focused topics, including cyber warfare, the White House’s relationship with Silicon Valley tech giants and the Apple Watch.

• Obama Calls for Public Debate Over Encryption

  President Barack Obama said Friday that he probably leans more toward strong computer data encryption than many in law enforcement, but added that he understands investigators’ concerns over the matter because of their need to protect people from attacks.

  He suggested having a “public conversation” about the issue because “the first time that attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn’t follow up on it, the public’s going to demand answers.”

• Thank Snowden: Internet Industry Now Considers The Intelligence Community An Adversary, Not A Partner

  In fact, it seems noteworthy that this whole issue of increasing encryption by the tech companies to keep everyone out has been left off the official summit schedule. As the NY Times notes (in the link above), Silicon Valley seems to be pretty much completely fed up with the intelligence community after multiple Snowden revelations revealed just how far the NSA had gone in trying to “collect it all” — including hacking into the foreign data centers of Google and Yahoo.

• Guest Post: US Intelligence Reforms Still Allow Plenty of Suspicionless Spying on Americans

  Last week, the Obama Administration released a report and documents cataloging progress toward signals intelligence (SIGINT) reform goals set a year ago by the President in a document known as PPD-28. PPD-28 promises foreigners some of the same privacy protections given to US citizens and residents. But it turns out that those protections, even for citizens, are fairly meager, in ways that have not yet fully entered the public conversation about surveillance. US citizens and residents have been — and remain — exposed to suspicionless electronic surveillance. Implementation of PPD-28 will do little to change that.

• Administration’s New Cyber Threat Center Replaces Old Cyber Threat Center

  This week the Obama administration is releasing its second Executive Order in as many years on computer (“cyber”) security, which reports are saying will create a new department in the intelligence community to handle computer security threat information sharing. Officials are hailing the center as “new” and unprecedented.

Civil Rights

• ‘I’m Facing Years In Prison For Medical Marijuana — For Me, That’s A Death Sentence’

  Larry Harvey, 71, thought he was doing everything right growing medical marijuana for his personal use. His home state of Washington legalized medical cannabis in 1998, and Harvey says his cultivation of plants with his wife, other family members and a close friend complied with the law.

• These Six American Heroes Said No to Torture

  Why was it again that, as President Obama said, “we tortured some folks” after the 9/11 attacks? Oh, right, because we were terrified. Because everyone knows that being afraid gives you moral license to do whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe. That’s why we don’t shame or punish those who were too scared to imagine doing anything else. We honor and revere them.

• Exclusive: US Senate Intelligence committee corrects CIA torture report after Bureau probe

  The US Senate Committee on Intelligence has issued a significant correction to an appendix to its report on CIA torture after mistakes were highlighted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

  A “notice of errata” was published earlier this month showing amendments for almost half of the 119 prisoners held in the CIA’s rendition and enhanced interrogation programme.

  The mistakes, which have been put down to a “technical error”, relate to the number of days the detainees were held by the CIA during the programme.

• Man Held 20 Hours for Asking to File TSA Complaint

  Random American Citizen Roger Vanderklok (aka “Josef K.“) had the misfortune of going through TSA Supervisor Charles Kieser’s security-screening area. Vanderklok, 57, pictured with his wife, is a Philadelphia architect who runs half-marathons. He flies around the country for weekend races.

  The TSA said it was concerned about the gear in his carry-on bag, and pulled him out of line. The items of concern turned out to be only a running watch and some Power Bars, wrapped in a small PVC pipe for protection against crushing. Nonetheless, for the next 30 minutes, screeners checked and rechecked the bag. They found nothing dangerous. Vanderklok protested that he was no threat, and that the items were of no danger to anyone, and insisted on making a complaint.

  Electronics and “organic mass” can be used to make bombs, TSA Supervisor Charles Kieser said in response to Vanderlok’s complaint. “The passenger made a bomb threat to me,” Kieser testified later according to a court transcript. “He said ‘I’ll bring a bomb through here any day that I want… and you’ll never find it.’”
  - See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/02/13/man-held-20-hours-for-asking-to-file-tsa-complaint/#sthash.3S4vcvuH.dpuf

• The Guardian view on whistleblowers: heroes working in the public interest

  The world needs its whistleblowers. They are indispensable to a healthy society. The employee who, in the public interest, has the independence of judgment and the personal courage to challenge malpractice or illegality is a kind of public hero. Yet, as Sir Robert Francis reported on Wednesday , in the NHS as in any large and bureaucratic organisation, whistleblowers are far more likely to be resented than respected, as Helene Donnelly, the nurse who protested about the failings in care at Mid Staffs, found out. Far from having their names embossed on a roll of honour, Francis found that the doctors and nurses and other NHS staff who reported their anxieties about failings in patient care had been shunned, suspended or even sacked by hospital bosses. Many were left struggling to find a new job. Some have been driven to contemplate suicide.

• What’s behind the lower U.S. press freedom ranking?

  Reporters Without Borders released its annual World Press Freedom Index Thursday and revealed the U.S. has received its lowest score since 2006.

  The U.S. is ranked 49th in the world — dropping from 46th — right behind Malta, Niger, Burkina Faso and El Salvador.

  In comparison, our northern neighbor Canada was ranked eighth this year. Mexico, on the other hand, is 148th.

• Today in the News: Former cop charged with hiring hitman

  Imprisoned former Chicago-area police sergeant Drew Peterson was charged today with hiring a hitman to kill the prosecutor who sent him to prison for 38 years.

  Dressed in his prison uniform, Peterson asked for a public defender after hearing the charges against him. Peterson has been in jail since 2012, when he was found guilty of the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

• The Terror We Give Is the Terror We Get

  We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage. We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them. We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites. We produce high-budget films such as “American Sniper” to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad.

• Let Us No Longer Keep Silent About Torture

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Tim Berners-Lee: we need to re-decentralise the web

  Twenty-five years on from the web’s inception, its creator has urged the public to re-engage with its original design: a decentralised internet that at its very core, remains open to all.

  Speaking with Wired editor David Rowan at an event launching the magazine’s March issue, Tim Berners-Lee said that although part of this is about keeping an eye on for-profit internet monopolies such as search engines and social networks, the greatest danger is the emergence of a balkanised web.

• Google’s Vint Cerf warns of ‘digital Dark Age’

  Vint Cerf is promoting an idea to preserve every piece of software and hardware so that it never becomes obsolete – just like what happens in a museum – but in digital form, in servers in the cloud.

• Republicans Are Shooting Themselves in the Foot Over Net Neutrality

  I’ve written before about the GOP’s peculiarly uncompromising stance on net neutrality. At its core, net neutrality has always been a battle between two huge industry groups and therefore never really presented an obvious reason for Republicans to feel strongly about one side or the other. But they’ve taken sides anyway, energetically supporting the anti-neutrality broadband industry against the pro-neutrality tech industry. Today an LA Times article dives more deeply into the problems this is causing:

• Stop Demonizing the Internet

  In May 2013 I engaged in an hour long web chat with Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, a think tank that describes itself as “dedicated to understanding global challenges by applying technological solutions.”

DRM

• New Encryption Method Fights Reverse Engineering

  New submitter Dharkfiber sends an article about the Hardened Anti-Reverse Engineering System (HARES), which is an encryption tool for software that doesn’t allow the code to be decrypted until the last possible moment before it’s executed. The purpose is to make applications as opaque as possible to malicious hackers trying to find vulnerabilities to exploit. It’s likely to find work as an anti-piracy tool as well.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Bonobos Issues ‘Cease & Insist’ To Katy Perry After It Promised To Sell Left Shark Suits

    So the saga of the Left Shark and Katy Perry’s lawyers keeps getting more and more strange. We’ve already covered the legal threat from Perry’s lawyers to the guy who was offering a 3D printed figurine of the Left Shark, followed by the response explaining to Perry’s lawyers that there is no copyright in left shark, leading to Perry’s lawyers to issue a uh huh there is… while also using the figurine maker’s own photo of his 3D printed shark in their (now abandoned) trademark application.

  • Megaupload Programmer Sentenced to a Year in Prison

    Andrus Nomm, one of the Megaupload employees indicted by the United States, has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to a year in prison. Nomm signed a plea deal and admitted that he personally downloaded copyright-infringing files from Mega’s sites.

  • Megaupload Programmer Takes Plea Deal, Though It’s Still Unclear What Criminal Law He Violated

    A few days ago, it came out that programmer Andrus Nomm had flown to Virginia to be arrested. Nomm had worked for Megaupload in Europe and had been listed in the criminal case against Megaupload and its various employees. His name had mostly fallen off the radar, since he wasn’t down in New Zealand with most of the rest of them. It was obvious in his move to come to the US and be arrested that he must have worked out a plea deal with the feds, and that’s confirmed today with him pleading “guilty” to criminal copyright infringement with prosecutors asking for a year and a day in prison, which the court granted. Kim Dotcom noted that he has “nothing but compassion and understanding for Andrus Nomm.”

  • Go to Prison for File Sharing? That’s What Hollywood Wants in the Secret TPP Deal

    The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) poses massive threats to users in a dizzying number of ways. It will force other TPP signatories to accept the United States’ excessive copyright terms of a minimum of life of the author plus 70 years, while locking the US to the same lengths so it will be harder to shorten them in the future. It contains DRM anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own. The TPP will encourage ISPs to monitor and police their users, likely leading to more censorship measures such as the blockage and filtering of content online in the name of copyright enforcement. And in the most recent leak of the TPP’s Intellectual Property chapter, we found an even more alarming provision on trade secrets that could be used to crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers who report on corporate wrongdoing.

  • TPP will bring the world under US copyright control

    The text from the TPP reads “penalties that include sentences of imprisonment as well as monetary fines sufficiently high to provide a deterrent to future acts of infringement, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of corresponding gravity.” The EFF suggest that countries who do not have “sufficiently high” fines could be subject to pressure from the US Trade Representative to impose fines the US deems suitable.

    It doesn’t stop there though, TPP’s current copyright provisions enable judges to order the seizure, destruction or forfeiture of anything that can be “traceable to infringing activity”, used in the “creation of pirated copyright goods” or is “documentary evidence relevant to the alleged offence”. I find the last quote the most troubling, ‘documentary evidence’ could include the machine on which the content was created, servers it’s hosted on and could, at a stretch, include seizure of another persons machine based on chat logs if the activity was being discussed with a friend.