06.08.14

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • ZBOSS Linux 6.5 Brings ZFS For Storage

    ZBOSS Linux 6.5 was released on Friday as a RHEL-based “enterprise” Linux distribution that ships with the ZFS file-system by default.

  • A Conversation With Linus Torvalds, Who Built The World’s Most Robust Operating System And Gave It Away For Free

    In 1991, 22-year old Finnish computer programmer Linus Torvalds released his own operating system. Opening with the message “Hello everybody out there,” (a now-iconic phrase among Linux fans), he posted the source code online. People alternately contributed their abilities to improve it where they could or went off to build their own things with it.

  • LLVM Clang Moves A Bit Closer To Compiling The Linux 3.16 Kernel

    The latest Linux 3.16 kernel pull request worth covering on Phoronix are the latest LLVMLinux patches for being able to compile the kernel with Clang rather than GCC.

    With Linux 3.15 came the patch-set to come close to being able to compile under Clang and now with Linux 3.16 it’s a bit closer. A set of five LLVMLinux patches are called for merging that affect ARM and Shash Crypto code.

  • [GIT PULL] LLVMLinux patches for v3.16

  • The Linux 3.16 Kernel Already Has A Ton Of New Features

    The Linux 3.15 kernel isn’t even expected for release until later today, but thanks to the Linux 3.16 merge window opening a week early to adjust to Linus Torvalds’ upcoming schedule, we already have a good idea for a portion of the changes for the next kernel cycle.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Valve Are Funding A Big Change To Mesa, Should Improve Linux Graphical Performance

    • Mesa 10.1.5 Is Out While Waiting For Mesa 10.2

      Mesa 10.1.5 was just released this Friday evening while we’re still waiting for the imminent release of the major Mesa 10.2 release unless it was delayed again.

    • RadeonSI Moves A Bit Closer To GLSL 4.00 (OpenGL 4.0)

      AMD’s RadeonSI Gallium3D driver is a bit closer to supporting OpenGL 4.0 via the GLSL 4.00 specification requirements thanks to a new patch set published on Friday by Marek Olšák.

    • Intel Begins Lining Up Graphics Changes Already For Linux 3.17

      The Linux graphics developers within Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center have already prepared a fresh batch of changes that will land with the Linux 3.17 kernel — even though the Linux 3.15 kernel hasn’t been released yet and the Linux 3.16 kernel merge window opened early.

    • NVIDIA GeForce GT 740 On Linux: I’d Rather Have Maxwell

    • ARM Mali GPUs Go For OpenGL ES 3.1 Compliance

      ARM has already submitted their results of their graphics driver for several Mali graphics processors for OpenGL ES 3.1 certification by the Khronos Group.

  • Benchmarks

    • 30-way Intel/AMD/NVIDIA Linux 2D Performance Comparison

      The tested graphics processors for this article included the:

      1: Intel HD 4600
      2: NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT
      3: NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT
      4: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT
      5: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX
      6: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220
      7: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
      8: NVIDIA GeForce GT 520
      9: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
      10: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
      11: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
      12: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
      13: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
      14: NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN
      15: AMD Radeon X1800XT
      16: AMD Radeon HD 4550
      17: AMD Radeon HD 4670
      18: AMD Radeon HD 4770
      19: AMD Radeon HD 4830
      20: AMD Radeon HD 4850
      21: AMD Radeon HD 4870
      22: AMD Radeon HD 4890
      23: AMD Radeon HD 5770
      24: AMD Radeon HD 5830
      25: AMD Radeon HD 6450
      26: AMD Radeon HD 6570
      27: AMD Radeon HD 6770
      28: AMD Radeon HD 6870
      29: AMD Radeon HD 6950
      30: AMD Radeon HD 7850

• Applications

  • traceroute: Where you’re going and where you’ve been

    The original traceroute application must be about a thousand years old by now. I can remember messing with something like it ~20 years ago on a Windows machine, and promptly tossing it aside for a graphical version that showed where the IP addresses were located on the globe. Far more interesting.

  • transmission-cli: Add this to the list

  • termrec, ttyrec, tty2gif and others: Pretty as a picture

  • tpp: Pulling it all together

  • XBMC Media Center 13.1 “Gotham” Officially Released

    XBMC 13.0 “Gotham” was probably the best release made by its developers and incorporated numerous features and some very cool options. The devs started working on an update for XBMC almost right away after the launch and, a Release Candidate later, the 13.1 version arrived.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Split, merge, and delete pages of a PDF document with PDFmod

    • Run Kali Linux , BackBox and Gentoo Distrubutions Directly from Hard Disk in Ubuntu 14.04 using Grub Menu

    • Setup Static IP In Ubuntu 14.04

    • Setting up a TFTP server, PXE boot server with libvirt and virt-manager for ovirt-node

  • Games

    • Running With Rifles Top Down Action Game Releases Beta 0.96 For Linux

    • The 7 Days To Die Saga Continues, Still No Linux Version

      The developers behind 7 Days To Die do like to tease us and then repeatedly go silent now don’t they? Here’s the latest on what’s going on and it’s not good as usual.

    • Valve Funds Glassy Mesa Development For Better Driver Performance

      Valve has funded work by LunarG on a project codenamed “Glassy Mesa” to deliver potential performance improvements on the open-source Mesa graphics driver stack.

      Glassy Mesa is an experimental project using LunarGLASS for plugging LLVM into Mesa for shader compilation and run-time improvements. LunarGLASS originated back in 2010 as using LLVM IR as the base intermediate representation for the shader and kernel compiler stack. LunarGLASS has performance potential via taking advantage of LLVM’s many optimization passes.

    • Mesa 10.2 Officially Released With Tons Of Features

      Besides Mesa 10.1.5 being released last night, Mesa 10.2 made it out late last night followed immediately by Mesa 10.2.1 to take care of a build failure that sneaked into the final release.

    • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Coming to SteamOS – Will Run on OpenGL

      The Witcher: Wild Hunt is the third installment in CD Projekt Red’s open-world action role-playing video game series, which is very popular among fans of western RPG titles. The game was announced as a next-gen title for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The developer also mentioned that it would bring the game to Linux if SteamOS, in future, provides constant Linux environment, which it did, and now it looks like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming to SteamOS.

    • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Is Coming To SteamOS, Linux

      For anyone firing up Steam today for some weekend gaming, you may notice there’s a large advertisement on Steam’s main page with a notice that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming to SteamOS (Linux).

    • The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Confirmed For Linux & SteamOS

    • FLASHOUT 2 Futuristic Racer Released For Linux

      FLASHOUT 2 is a fantastic looking fast paced futuristic racer that is now available on Linux. It looks a lot like the old Wipeout games that’s for sure.

      They confirmed to us in the past that they were developing all versions next to each other, so to regular readers it should be no surprise that it has day 1 Linux support!

    • Unreal Engine 4.2 Brings 500+ Updates

      The latest major update to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 was released this week and the Linux support has taken another step forward.

    • The Humble Bundle: PC and Android 10

      This is the 10th PC and Android bundle, which contains 10 games, 9 of them also playable on our beloved Linux OS!

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Diving into FOSS

      Before sometime I got in touch with KDE community and was overwhelmed by it. Then I became a member of this community and started exploring about open source environment. The most fascinating thing about KDE community members is how committed they are to open source technology. Through IRC I would be able to contact with genius coders all over the globe. It’s been quite a time that I am using open source software. It is very much important to aware people about open source. We can have access to all robust and efficient soft wares for free. After being a part of KDE it interested me to use open source systems and I am really enjoying this.

    • Plasma Active on Qt5/KF5: Wallpapers and Activities Configuration

    • The future of activity switching

      The new pretty thing that is taking away my time is the activity switcher which got a rather big revamp for the next release of Plasma.

    • Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta on Arch User Repository

      As you already know, Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta is released on 3rd June.

      Many distros like Fedora, openSUSE, KUbuntu have already packaged this beta in their repositories

      So to make life of Archers easier, I have uploaded PKGBUILD for Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta on AUR.

    • GSoC 2014: KDE Games

      I am Anuj Pahuja(alasin), a Computer Science undergraduate from BITS Pilani, India. It is my first GSoC and I can’t thank KDE Community enough for accepting me as a student.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Get Your Ubuntu to Look like Mac OS X with a Simple Theme

      Most of the themes that can pull this Mac OS X transformation work on desktop environments like GNOME, MATE, Xfce, and so on, but not all of them work in Unity. The designer of this particular version made it compatible with GTK 3.10 and it works in Ubuntu as well.

      “The goal is to keep it as close as possible to ambiance on the code base with the same look as the original cupertino. If that isn’t possible for an element I will prefer the look of cupertino,” said the designer on gnome-look.org.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Release Announcement: LinuxBBQ “Cream”

    • GParted Live 0.19.0 Beta 1 Gets New Debian Base Update

      GParted Live 0.19.0 Beta 1, a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86-based computers that can be used for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions with the help of tools that allow managing filesystems, has been released and is now available for download.

    • Robolinux 7.5.3 OS Wants to Keep You Safe from NSA

      Robolinux 7.5.3 is a fast and easy to use Linux distribution based on Debian, and its developer thinks that it can be the solution for people who look to protect their privacy.

      If you remember from previous releases of Robolinux, the developer of this particular distribution came up with a working idea on how to move people from the Windows platform to Linux without them having to give up their favorite applications.

    • SparkyLinux 3.4 LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt Distros Are Based on Debian Jessie

      SparkyLinux 3.4, a lightweight, fast, and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customized LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt desktops is now available for download.

      The SparkyLinux 3.34 “Annagerman” system is built on Debian GNU/Linux “Jessie” and is not all that different from the previous versions in the series, at least not in this particular aspect.

  • Screenshots

    • Black Lab 5.0.1

    • Quick Look: Ubuntu GNOME 14.04

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • OpenMandriva Lx 2014 review

      OpenMandriva Lx 2014 is the latest edition of OpenMandriva, a desktop Linux distribution derived from Mandriva Linux. It is one of the distributions that rose out of the ashes of Mandriva Linux; the other being Mageia, and, to some extent, ROSA Desktop.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Apple Copies Ubuntu, Pimping Scientific, and 500 Steam Games

    • The ultimate Scientific Linux pimping guide

      Several weeks back, we reviewed Scientific Linux 6.5, a rather spartan incarnation of the legendary RHEL 6, which might be considered too boring and outdated for modern home use. Well, not so. Once long ago, I showed you how to transform CentOS into a home use beast.

      Today, we will do it again, with the most comprehensive guide on Scientific Linux pimping ever made on Planet Earth. Here, you get a bit of everything, and then so. Best of all? This guide is also relevant for CentOS and even Fedora, so make sure you keep it close to your heart. Let’s go.

    • Fedora

      • Public Fedora Board Meeting — Monday June 9th 2014

        Matthew Miller just announced that fortnightly public Fedora Board meetings are starting up again. The first meeting will be on Monday the 9th of June at 17:00 UTC time. (Matthew notes in the email to fedora-announce that the command date -d ’2014-06-09 17:00 UTC’ is an easy way to convert this into the timezone on your Fedora machine.)

      • More fedora.next branding ideas

        We previously posted about some of the logo design ideas that Máirín Duffy was working on for the 3 products of fedora.next (Cloud, Server, and Workstation). Since that post, Máirín has also posted a bunch of other iterations, and I also entered the fray with a few ideas of my own. Now, Máirín has done another round of design ideas. Check them out, and join the discussion over on her blog.

  • Debian Family

    • Elive 2.2.6 beta released

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Apple introduces Unity Scopes-like search and no one cries foul

          This week, Apple announced the new OS X Yosemite, and Linux users across the Linux-verse stood up and proclaimed “Oooo, I’d like to lay my hands on the lily-livered swab is writ that forgery!” Why so up in arms? Because Apple has done what Apple does — riff on features from other platforms and claim they’ve recreated a wheel that will make your life far easier. What did they do this time? Let’s chat.

          One of the big features of OS X Yosemite is included in the Spotlight tool. For those who don’t know, Spotlight is the OS X search tool that, up until Yosemite, searched the local drive. As of Yosemite, anyone who has touched the Ubuntu Unity Dash will notice something very similar to Scopes.

          [...]

          When Ubuntu released Unity Scopes, a very large and very vocal group from the Linux community cried foul, that Scopes was an invasion of privacy, was insecure, and would probably steal their identity…

          …maybe not that last bit. But there was plenty of backlash from the community (many of whom didn’t even use Ubuntu).

          How will the Apple community react when they start using the Scopes-like feature in Yosemite? They’ll love it. They’ll realize how convenient it is to be able to, from one location, search their local drive, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, and countless other sources.

        • Ubuntu 14.04 – There has never been a better time to switch to Linux

          You would think that writing about the latest version of Ubuntu 14.04 would be easy but it is hard to write about one of the biggest Linux distributions without repeating everyone else’s sentiments or covering the same ground that was covered with Ubuntu 13.10.

          With that in mind please don’t be disappointed that much of what I will be writing here has been written before.

          There is nothing revolutionary about Ubuntu 14.04, especially if you have already tried Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and Ubuntu 12.04. The improvements to Ubuntu have been slow and steady.

        • Meizu Will Present A Meizu MX3 Phone Running Ubuntu Touch, At The Mobile Asia Expo 2014

          Earlier this year, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2014) in Barcelona, Canonical has announced the first two phone manufacturers that will create Ubuntu Touch-based smartphones: Meizu and Bq.

        • More OpenSSL Vulnerabilities Found, Ubuntu OSes Get Patched

        • Flavours and Variants

          • An Ubuntu MATE Desktop Spin Might Still Materialize

            There’s been much talk in the past about creating a spin/derivative of Ubuntu Linux using the MATE Desktop Environment fork of GNOME2. While no spin materialized for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, talk of developing a new spin is again happening.

          • Ubuntu Might Get An Official Ubuntu MATE Flavor Soon

          • Linux Mint 17 Qiana MATE : Video Review and Screenshot Tour

            Linux Mint 17 Qiana is the latest version of linux mint that based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it was released and announced by Linux Mint Developer a few days ago. Linux Mint 17 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2019. In addition, The Linux Mint developers plan to use this package base until 2016.

            Linux Mint usually comes with four desktop editions: Cinnamon Desktop Environment, MATE Desktop Environment, KDE and XFCE, although currently, only Cinnamon and MATE editions are available, XFCE and KDE edition should arrive shortly.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Your Android phone, now with NSA-grade security

      NSA-grade security is now coming to an Android device near you.

    • Tizen-powered Samsung Z smartphone with open source mobile OS

      The Samsung Z looks and feels very much like Samsung’s Android smartphones. There’s the tiles section at the top of the home screen, with some app icons at the botton, and there’s the pull-down notifications and settings tray at the very top. You also get the hardware Back and Menu buttons, in addition to the main Home button. The Settings app looks almost identical to Samsung’s Android version.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open Source Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Solutions

  LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an application protocol for accessing directory services. It runs on a layer above the TCP/IP stack incorporating simplified encoding methods, and offers a convenient way to connect to, search, and modify Internet directories, specifically X.500-based directory services. It is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol. LDAP utilizes a client-server model.

• Nine Advantages of Open Source Software

  While it initially seemed revolutionary, open source software is actually rooted in traditional IT processes. Technology, after all, has always been about collaboration and continuous improvement. (In the early days of the ARPANET, for example, researchers established a “request for comments” procedure to improve the project.) Of course, there have been trepidations raised about open source. But the always-active open source communities are more than happy to address any concerns. As a result, more than one-half of the software acquired over the next several years will be open source, according to industry research.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Cloudera Boosts Its Hadoop Security with Gazzang Purchase

  • SQL, Open Source, Security Stand Out In Hadoop Ecosystem

    SQL is the gateway drug to enterprise adoption says analysts at recent developer conference. Hadoop Summit, leading big data developer conference, saw the maturation of the Hadoop ecosystem. Hadoop is one of the necessary requirements in realizing the promise of Big Data’s application growth in the enterprise, and key players have emerged among those most influential in this development.

• Databases

  • SQLite 3.8.5 Arrives with New Features

    SQLite 3.8.5, an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine, has been released with an impressive list of changes and improvements.

    Most of the SQLite releases are maintenance ones, but from time to time the developers make some important changes. The current update features a few new options, so an update is recommended.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 9.3 Beta 2 Is Now Available

    One week after FreeBSD 9.3 went into beta, the second beta update is now available.

    FreeBSD 9.3 is the next major FreeBSD 9 update due out that brings down some features from FreeBSD 10.0 like the Radeon KMS/DRM driver support, Xen HVM support, Apple MacBook trackpad support, disables hardware random number generators by default, and has a ton of other changes.

    FreeBSD enthusiasts can find out more about the forthcoming 9.3 update via the tentative release notes. FreeBSD 9.3 is expected to be officially released in mid-July.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNUstep’s position on Swift

    I wanted to make this post to make it clear to the community regarding GNUstep’s position on the new Swift language. If the language is released as open source then GNUstep will fully support it. If it is, however, not released as open source then we will either take steps to create an implementation ourselves or provide any assistance needed to a group of people other than ourselves who are willing to take that on.

  • We’re glad you liked Email Self-Defense. Let’s take it even farther.

    Yesterday was a big day for defending our freedom and privacy on the Internet. The FSF and its supporters joined the ranks of thousands for Reset the Net, the biggest-ever day of action against bulk surveillance.

  • Theming and Style in GNUstep

    Not only the pixmaps and colours can be changed, also the style of the interface. This include the menu style (vertical, in-window or Mac OS style), the scrollbar position (right or left), the behaviour of contextual menus, popup list and pulldown list (so these can have similar behaviour of the gtk components). The Silver theme include an style that let users run GNUstep’s apps on, for example, Gnome without problems.

  • GNU remotecontrol: Newsletter – June 2014

    GNU remotecontrol relies on OS file access restrictions, Apache authentication, MySQL authentication, and SSL encryption to secure your data. Talk to us you want to find out how you can further strengthen the security of your system, or you have suggestions for improving the security of our current system architecture.

  • GNU Nettle 3.0 Cryptographics Library Released

    The developers behind the Nettle project are out with a new major update to their dual-licensed GPLv2 and LGPLv3+ cryptographics library.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Hackers who threaten national security face life in prison

    Queen’s Speech: Hackers who risk lives by attacking food, energy and police computer networks face life in prison

  • Debian Urging Users Patch Linux Kernel Flaw

    Several vulnerabilities have been patched in the Linux kernel that could have led to a denial of service or privilege escalation.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Bergdahl’s Dad: Drone Killed Captor’s Kid

    In a 2010 speech, Robert Bergdahl claimed that the man who held Bowe “recently lost a son to a CIA missile drone strike.” The reports at the time appear to back him up.

  • Bergdahl’s father: Son’s captor lost child in US drone strike

  • Echoes of Homeland: Bergdahl’s captor lost son in CIA drone strike just like terrorist who ‘turned’ Sgt Nicholas Brody in hit show

  • U.S. government seeks more redactions in drone-strike memo release

    NEW YORK — The U.S. government, citing possible “exceptionally grave harm to national security,” told a federal appeals court it wants to give the public less information about its legal justification for using drones to kill Americans suspected of terrorism overseas.

    The Justice Department, Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency made the request in papers submitted late Thursday to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal.

  • US wants to censor drone strike memo ruling

  • ‘Korengal’ shows the lasting effects of war on U.S. soldiers

  • US Tries to Hide Data on Selective Murders with Drones

    Washington, Jun 6 (Prensa Latina) The White House asked Friday a federal judge for authorization to publish the minor possible quantity of information about the ” legal arguments ” of the Government to kill American citizens by means of the use of drones.

    Several government agencies, including the CIA, made an application to the appellate court in the city of New York, to avoid delivering texts to The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who had requested under the mandate of the Freedom of Information Act.

  • ‘Drones’ Examines Complexities of Remote-control Warfare

    In his drama Drones, filmmaker Rick Rosenthal poses complex security, political and ethical questions about drone attacks in the ongoing war against global terrorism.

  • Townsville parents want answers after son killed in drone strike

    A young Queenslander killed in a US drone strike in Yemen told his family he was teaching English there and, while there may have been more to the story than that, his family say they have been denied a burial, a death certificate and closure.

  • John Kass: ‘Obama: Like a Boss’ – bumber sticker for a true Chicagoan

    Now he’s got one thumb on the drones and the other on the Oval Office TV remote control watching “Plays of the Week” on ESPN.

    Sounds like a boss to me.

  • CIA Joins Twitter With Amazing First Tweet

  • US spy agency CIA joins Facebook, Twitter

  • CIA joins Twitter, posts best first tweet

  • The Killing of Pakistan’s Journalists

    A silenced press has broader implications. For instance, journalists are kept out of North Waziristan, where the U.S. has been concentrating its drone strikes. Washington says these strikes are killing mostly militants, and are nearly always effective operations. Islamabad claims that large numbers of civilians – including children – are being killed. The two governments present very different numbers. Without journalists to investigate, who is to say where the truth lies?

  • The curious case of drone strikes in FATA

  • Senate proceedings: Halt in drone strikes didn’t end terrorism, admits govt

  • Families Of Drone Victims: No Hope For Justice In US Courts

    ‘I have no faith left in a judiciary that refuses even to hear whether Abdulrahman, an American child, was wrongfully killed by his own government.’.

  • Family Of American Citizens Killed By Drone Drop Lawsuit Against U.S., Say They Lost Faith In System

• Transparency Reporting

  • Wikileaks Welcomes CIA to Twitter by Taking a Dig at Spy Agency

    For which, the whistleblower organisation Wikileaks replied: “@CIA we look forward to sharing great classified info about you,” along with links to CIA-related revelations in the Wikileaks website.

  • How an FBI Informant Orchestrated LulzSec’s Hacking Spree

    Newly revealed chat logs may corroborate an imprisoned hacker’s story: An informant facilitated Anonymous’ attacks on Stratfor and hundreds of foreign websites.

  • Australian drone strike victim moved to Christchurch to escape past

    An Australian man killed in a US drone strike in Yemen moved to Christchurch to escape a troubled past, friends say.

    Christopher Havard, 27, was killed in Yemen last November alongside dual Australian-New Zealand national Daryl Jones, who went by the name Muslim bin John.

  • Are Whistleblowers Terrorists Or Heroes?

    I have concluded that, regardless of any personal egos involved, Julian Assange (in his bold creation of Wikileaks), Edward Snowden (NSA whistleblower), and other individuals who have put their lives and careers on the line for all of us … are, to America and the world, HEROES. For that, I thank them.

  • £6m policing bill for Assange? That’s your problem

    The Ecuadorean ambassador to London says that a £6 million policing bill after two years of stalemate over Julian Assange is “not our problem”.

  • Assange, NY forum talk Orwellian future, internet as ‘suppression’ tool

    In the near future governments will control every aspect of human life, with even human DNA taken at birth and encoded right into your ID, says Julian Assange. A conference in New York discusses whether the internet might become a tool of suppression.

• Finance

  • The Specter of Authoritarianism and the Future of the Left: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux

    C. J. Polychroniou, for Truthout: It is widely believed that the advanced liberal societies are suffering a crisis of democracy, a view you share wholeheartedly, although the empirical research, with its positivist bias, tends to be more cautious. In what ways is there less democracy today in places like the United States than there was, say, 20 or 30 years ago?

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • BBC Lawbreaking

    I despair sometimes that society as a whole has lost all sense of how a democracy ought to operate. State abuse has become the norm.

• Censorship

  • Thai police: We’ll ‘get you’ for junta criticism

    Anti-coup protest organizer Sombat Boonngam-anong, captured Thursday, tracked using his IP address

  • Thai journalist: Censorship ‘self-destructive, kills my spirit’

  • Serbia: the Internet under censorship attack

    The Serbian government is facing increasingly frequent accusations of web censorship. The interventions by the OSCE and the European Commission, the reactions of prime minister Vučić

  • Art of censorship in Singapore

    The most recent – and perhaps unintended – turn of the screw came on May 12 when the Media Development Authority (MDA) released its proposed amendments to the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act for public consultation.

  • Censorship by other means, Dinanath Batra shows the way

    The publishing industry’s inexplicable surrender to RSS worker Dinanath Batra’s recent barrage of demands to cleanse their books on Indian history of “anti-Hindu” content seems to have created a quick and easy censorship model that is likely to be a quite a hit with the religious fringe.

  • Spanish Cartoonists Resign And Journalists Are Suspended After Abdication Week Censorship

    14 cartoonists have left satirical magazine El Jueves over the past 24 hours and leading Spanish daily El Mundo has suspended two correspondents over censorship accusations on Twitter.

  • Paternity suits and censorship row mar Spain’s royal handover

    Spain’s royal accession faced its first dispute last night over plans to grant the outgoing king legal privileges against prosecution for paternity scandals.

• Privacy

  • Big Data and Predictive Reasonable Suspicion

  • Big Brother: Meet the Parents

    Moms and dads from across the political spectrum have mobilized into an unexpected political force in recent months to fight the data mining of their children. In a frenzy of activity, they’ve catapulted student privacy — an issue that was barely on anyone’s radar last spring — to prominence in statehouses from New York to Florida to Wyoming.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Unaccompanied Children in Sleeping in Cages as Texas, Arizona Border Patrol Resources Continue to Be Overwhelmed

  • A Bunch Of Mathematicians Hate The NSA So They’re Discouraging Colleagues From Working There

  • Mathematicians Urge Colleagues To Refuse To Work For The NSA

    In January, the math community had its big event of the year — the Joint Mathematics Meeting — where 3,000 mathematicians and math students gathered to talk about new advances in the field and jostle for jobs. The National Security Agency is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country and so it always has a sizeable presence at the event to recruit new candidates. This year, it was even easier for the agency as the four-day conference took place at the Baltimore Convention Center, just 22 minutes away from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. Thomas Hales, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who describes himself as a “mathematician who’s upset about what’s going on,” is dismayed at the idea of the brightest minds in his field going to work for the agency. In reaction to the Snowden revelations — which started exactly a year ago – about NSA’s mass surveillance and compromising of encryption standards, Hales gave a grant to the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation to fly a representative to Baltimore to try to convince mathematicians young and old not to go help the agency with data-mining and encryption-breaking.

  • Ewen MacAskill: Intelligence agencies under tighter scrutiny after NSA leaks

    On June the 5th last year, British newspaper the Guardian published the first leaks from US intelligence worker Edward Snowden. Exactly one year on – Mr. Snowden, who is wanted in America on espionage charges, remains in Russia on temporary asylum. CCTV UK correspondent Dan Whitehead takes a look at what effect the intelligence leaks have had on governments and security agencies worldwide.

  • NSA: Inside the FIVE-EYED VAMPIRE SQUID of the INTERNET

  • NSA-Proof Server Protonet Smashes Crowdfunding Record by Raising $1m in 89 Minutes

    A private server startup has raised over $1 million in less than an hour and a half, breaking the crowdfunding record.

  • You can fight the NSA by ‘resetting the Net’

  • Judge: NSA can keep deleting data it was ordered to retain

    A federal judge in California withdrew a temporary order requiring the National Security Agency to retain the data it collects under a controversial and little understood section of the FISA Amendments Act after the NSA argued that being forced to hold onto the data would both be illegal and overwhelm its computer systems, rendering the United States and its allies vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

  • Four ways Edward Snowden changed the world – and why the fight’s not over

    Encrypted Gmail. Transparency from mobile providers. Maybe even a legal ‘revolt’ against ‘Orwellian’ surveillance. But until we get real reform, NSA and Co may survive in the shadows

  • NSA Monitoring Base in Germany Exposed

  • NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to appear at HOPE NYC

  • Senators Would Boost Independence of NSA Watchdog

  • A Simple Plan to Impede the NSA Is Taking Hold

    More e-mail providers are using encryption, meaning messages can’t be intercepted and read by the NSA or hackers.

  • How the NSA can ‘turn on’ your phone remotely

  • How the NSA can access your phone when you think it’s off

  • The Snowden Effect: 8 Things That Happened Only Because Of The NSA Leaks

    One year ago Thursday, one of the most consequential leaks of classified U.S. government documents in history exploded onto the world scene: The first story based on documents from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was published. Americans finally knew the spy agency was sucking up virtually all of the data about who they called and when.

  • How Glenn Greenwald helped whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal NSA secrets

    The good news from Glenn Greenwald’s latest book is that we’ve arrived at the future that science fiction always promised. The bad news is that, rather than jetpacks, we’re getting a cyberpunk dystopia – less Isaac Asimov and more William Gibson, as it were.

  • Whistleblower Kirk Wiebe On The NSA: “We Have to Box this Monster”

    Reflecting on the one year anniversary of Edward Snowden’s first revelations of rampant NSA surveillance program overreach, a whistleblower who preceded him sees both light and darkness on the horizon for the public’s rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of association.

  • ​Exclusive: 2 top NSA veterans expose shocking history of illegal spying

    Abby Martin features an exclusive interview with Top NSA whistleblowers Bill Binney, NSA Technical Director (1965 – 2001) & Kirk Wiebe, Senior NSA Analyst (1975 – 2001). The panel discusses the history behind the NSA’s illegal spying, both domestically and abroad, as well as their experience as witnesses to the agency’s transformation into an unconstitutional surveillance apparatus following the events of 9/11 and the FBI’s determination to crack down on their dissent.

  • 65 Things We Know About NSA Surveillance We Didn’t Know a Year Ago

  • Bahamas Hires Law Firm for ‘Surveillance and Privacy Matters’ after NSA Revelations

  • Binney, Wiebe and Ratner on the NSA – TRNN Webathon Panel

  • ​‘Yes we scan’: Graffiti, memes and T-shirts celebrate Snowden’s NSA leaks

  • From ‘Truth is coming’ to ‘Merkel Effect’: Top 13 Snowden quotes on NSA

  • Andreessen: Obama leaving tech industry ‘out to dry’ on NSA

    Influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is taking the Obama administration to task for its response to the international scandal over U.S. surveillance and the resulting harm to U.S. tech companies.

  • Vodafone: ‘governments use us to spy on citizens’

  • Vodafone reveals global scale of telephone surveillance

  • Senator Upset That ‘Eric Schnowden’ Leaks Inspired Anti-NSA Outrage

    “Now, Eric Schnowden has his time, he gets an hour on TV, he gets a hoorah from Brian Williams, but I think we ought to say to the national security staff that while we look at the constitutionality and other issues here that we do not demonize them,” she added.

  • NSA employees say they knew of agency’s reach before Snowden’s revelations

    Thursday marks exactly one year since whistleblower Edward Snowden’s first revelations were published in the Guardian newspaper. But before the world knew about Snowden, two other National Security Agency (NSA) employees had already described the massive reach of the agency’s activities.

  • No transparency for the UK in Vodafone’s transparency report

    Yesterday’s transparency report from Vodafone raised a very intriguing question: why did Vodafone feel obliged to redact aggregate surveillance statistics from their UK report?

  • Stephen Fry calls spying on citizens ‘squalid and rancid’ at Don’t Spy on Us Day of Action in London

    The performer Stephen Fry condemned the government’s failure to act over the Snowden revelations at the start of the Don’t Spy on Us Day of Action in London today.

    In a pre-recorded video, Fry said that using the fear of terrorism, “is a duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as spying on the citizens of your own country”.

  • Berlin Magical Secrecy Tour

  • Technology and the End of Privacy

    The self-created end of privacy in the United States was brought about as much by technology as desire. Those who claim there is little new here — the government read the mail of and wiretapped the calls and conversations of Americans under COINTELPROfrom 1956 to at least 1971 – do not understand the impact of technology.

  • Daniel Ellsberg: Both Manning & Snowden Exposed Government Secrecy to Proper Debate

    Everyone is writing and thinking about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, whose first revelations were published one year ago today. But it was also one year ago that Chelsea Manning’s trial began at Fort Meade in Maryland.

    Manning provided the “Collateral Murder” video, hundreds of thousands of military incident reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. She was convicted of multiple offenses including five Espionage Act offenses in 2013 and was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

• Civil Rights

  • A Plea To Melinda Gates: Stop Stigmatizing Abortion

    The Gates Foundation is all about solutions that make the greatest impact on vulnerable populations. So why ignore the 68,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions?

  • The Common Roots of Misogynist Culture in Pakistan and the U.S.

    A new study concluding that Americans tend to take hurricanes with female names less seriously than those with male names proves just how implicitly sexism is embedded in the culture of this nation. And a look at these photos of a Tennessee survivor of domestic violence should also perhaps elicit the question: “What is it about the culture of the U.S. that generates such misogyny?” – See more at: http://uprisingradio.org/home/2014/06/06/the-common-roots-of-misogynist-culture-in-pakistan-and-the-u-s/#sthash.GpiU1MKA.dpuf

  • Freed US soldier celebrated Xmas, played badminton with captors

    Freed US soldier Bowe Bergdahl developed a love for Afghan green tea, taught his captors badminton, and even celebrated Christmas and Easter with the hardline militants, a Pakistani militant commander told AFP Sunday.

  • IHC orders FIR against ex-CIA officials

  • Order against CIA station chief ‘can’t be carried out’

    The Islamabad High Court’s recent ruling ordering the registration of an FIR against the CIA’s former boss in Islamabad is the latest in a series of embarrassing verdicts that have been handed down due to poor coordination between the federation’s counsels and government departments.

  • Court orders arrest of ex-Pakistan CIA chief

  • IHC orders registration of FIR against former CIA station chief

  • Criminal wrongdoing and the CIA

    Too often “the law” is nothing more than prejudice embedded in jargon.

  • High Court Declines Case on Freedom of the Press Involving National SecurityHigh Court Declines Case on Freedom of the Press Involving National Security

    With a plot that sounds like a Jason Bourne move, on June 2 the Supreme Court declined to review Risen v. United States, a case raising an important question on First Amendment protections for the media but in a context that understandably left conservatives concerned over national security.

  • Feinstein: CIA to finish declassifying Senate report by July 4

    The CIA is close to finishing its review of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques and hopes to have it ready by July 4, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said.

  • Cosic: Publish when I die – CIA offered me Nobel Prize if I replace Tito

    One of the greatest Serbian writers, and surely the greatest witness of Serbian 20th century and a man who was directly involved in all the most crucial events of Serbia’s history from World War II until a few days ago when he passed away at age of 93, left his legacy to his friend and publisher Slobodan Gavrilovic.

  • “Guantánamo North” – NDAA Indefinite Detention Coming Soon to a Town Near You?

    Top senators thought you wouldn’t notice. Behind closed doors, they wrote up new indefinite detention and Guantánamo provisions in the annual defense policy bill, and then waited 11 days to quietly file the bill.

  • NDAA: Fight to End Indefinite Detention Goes to Senate

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • How Kim Dotcom’s $5m Whistleblower Bounty Will Work

      Kim Dotcom is pulling out all the stops in his fight against the U.S. government and his adversaries in Hollywood. On the table now sits a $5 million bounty for anyone prepared to reveal behind-the-scenes wrongdoing and corruption. Dotcom told TorrentFreak how it will work.

    • WatchSeries-Online.eu Domain “Hijacked” – Or Was It?

      The domain of a large streaming TV show site was hijacked yesterday and began diverting to an imposter site. That’s the claim from WatchSeries-Online.ch, a site that in its previous form had been riding up towards the Alexa 1000. But is the real story as straightforward as that? Typically of these sites, absolutely not.