03.25.14
Posted in Apple, DRM, Microsoft at 3:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Transmitting DRM-emcumbered and proprietary software-bound packets first
Summary: Those who advocate DRM and proprietary software dislike net neutrality, as demonstrated by Apple’s and Netflix’s opposition to the principle of packet delivery without discrimination
Microsoft has, for a long time in fact, been an opponent of net neutrality, based on its actions (we covered those). No company wants to be seen as anti-net neutrality, so they all pretend to be for it while their actions speak for themselves.
Netflix is clearly against net neutrality based on its actions and a reader sent us this article about Netflix’s CEO, noting that “ISPs are already getting paid for both ends of the connection. What ISPs are trying to get now is paying twice at both ends, that is to say collecting four ways for the same connection.”
The corporate press recently ran the story “Netflix Just Opened the Door to Paying ISPs More Access Fees” [1]. Disregard the spin and PR from the CEO of Netflix [2,3], who is basically claiming that he is against what he is doing. Also ignore the nonsense from AT&T [4] and other cable companies [5]; they just fear client alienation, so they tell to the public (existing or prospective customers) what the public wants to hear while doing exactly the opposite.
Apple, being Apple, is a lot more arrogant and selfish, hardly ever trying to hide its real agenda. Apple not only helps Microsoft [6] but it also helps cable companies kill net neutrality [7,8]. Apple is following the lead of Netflix in this case, ending what we once knew as a network which treats packets equally. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Netflix (NFLX) Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings is seeking your help to keep Internet service providers from charging higher fees to stream all the video its customers watch. In the process, he may have just opened his wallet to any Cox, Time Warner Cable (TWC), Verizon Communications (VZ), or AT&T (T) across the nation.
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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says it reluctantly pays US ISPs for interconnection fees, but argues providers shouldn’t be allowed to abuse their position
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If the Federal Communications Commission lets Internet service providers charge Web companies like Netflix for faster delivery of content to consumers, AT&T will lower its customers’ Internet bills. That’s what AT&T said Friday in a filing in the FCC’s “Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet” proceeding.
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Network operators Level 3 and Cogent Communications today urged the Federal Communications Commission to prevent Internet service providers from charging what they deem to be excessive fees for interconnection.
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Windows 8 picks up an unlikely ally in Apple
Apple is dropping Windows 7 support in Boot Camp — and Mac-based Windows users won’t like the reasons why
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GADGET MAKER Apple and ISP Comcast are planning a joint venture for streaming TV service, in a move that might ramp up the net neutrality debate.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the companies are in talks to create a service that will provide the Apple TV with a direct connection to a new video on demand (VOD) channel, bypassing internet congestion that could otherwise cause buffering or pixelation to customers.
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We recently reported Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings talk about the essence of net neutrality saying that ISPs such as AT&T and Comcast should not restrict, influence, or otherwise meddle with the choices consumers make. If reports are to be believed, Apple is talking to Comcast to get priority services for its set-top box that will bypass any congestion created by internet traffic.
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Posted in News Roundup at 2:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Human Rights
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Mariam Kirollos, a women’s rights activist, said on Twitter that the dean should be “interrogated and expelled” and that “investigations into the incident should start immediately”.
Intervention
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Raúl Capote is a Cuban. But not just any Cuban. In his youth, he was caught up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They offered him an infinite amount of money to conspire in Cuba. But then something unexpected for the US happened. Capote, in reality, was working for Cuban national security. From then on, he served as a double agent.
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Something else must be added instantly. It is no good thinking that the vote was somehow forced by the barrels of Russian rifles. The imagery is familiar, time-tested Cold War stuff with obvious truth in a lot of cases. And scarcely would Putin be above intimidation. But it does not hold up this time, if only because there was no need of intimidation.
The plain reality is that Putin knew well how the referendum would turn out and played the card with confidence. Washington and the European capitals knew, too, and this is why they were so unseemly and shamelessly hypocritical in their desperation to cover the world’s ears as Crimeans spoke.
This raises the legality question. There is blur, certainly, but the legal grounding is clear: International law carefully avoids prohibiting unilateral declarations of independence. In any case, to stand on the law, especially Ukraine’s since the coup against President Viktor Yanukovych last month, is a weak case in the face of Crimeans’ expression of their will.
There was a splendid image published in Wednesday’s New York Times. Take a look. You have a lady in Simferopol, the Crimean capital, on her way to something, probably work. Well-dressed, properly groomed, she navigates the sidewalk indifferently between a soldier and a tank.
CIA
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The hotel bar TVs were all flashing clips of Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein denouncing the CIA for spying on her staff, when I met an agency operative for drinks last week. He flashed a wan smile, gestured at the TV and volunteered that he’d narrowly escaped being assigned to interrogate Al-Qaida suspects at a secret site years ago.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee is poised to send a long-awaited report on the CIA’s interrogation practices to President Barack Obama’s desk for his approval — or redaction.
Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she has the votes on the narrowly divided panel to publicly reveal the executive summary and key conclusions of a 6,300-page report on Bush-era interrogation tactics, a move sure to fuel the Senate’s intense dispute with the CIA over how the panel pieced together the study. That vote is likely to happen sometime this week.
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The President of the United States has one overriding obligation: to uphold the Constitution and to enforce the laws of the land. That is the oath he swears on Inauguration Day. Failure to meet fully that obligation breaks the contract between him and the citizenry from whom he derives his authority and on whose behalf he acts. The consequence is to jeopardize the well-being of the Republic.
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The City of Sunrise, Florida, tried to take a page from the CIA’s anti-transparency playbook last week when it responded to an ACLU public records request about its use of powerful cell phone location tracking gear by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. And the state police are trying to get in on the act as well. We have written about the federal government’s abuse of this tactic—called a “Glomar” response—before, but local law enforcement’s adoption of the ploy reaches a new level of absurdity. In this case, the response is not only a violation of Florida law, but is also fatally undermined by records the Sunrise Police Department has already posted online.
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This topic is the center of a serious debate between the president of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein and the CIA, especially about spionage on the employers of the panel and about if they acceded to non-authorized information.
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Last week, Senator Ron Wyden spoke to an audience of about 700 in downtown Portland on the current state of our national surveilliance and national security system.
Over the weekend, I finally found the time to listen to it — and man, you should listen to his speech. It is both a high-level overview of everything that’s going on, as well as a specific rundown of Wyden’s concerns about the challenges posed to our civil liberties.
- See more at: http://www.blueoregon.com/2014/03/wyden-cia-fisa-electronic-surveillance/#sthash.vtncHcUG.dpuf
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In a remarkable about-face, the Central Intelligence Agency recently came under attack from one of the Senate’s staunchest defenders of national surveillance in the name of national security. On the Senate floor, Dianne Feinstein dramatically made public her accusation that the CIA spied on her committee’s staff in Congress’ lengthy investigation of U.S. interrogation methods.
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Among the reporter-columnists whose bylines I never miss, Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage of The New York Times is at the top of the list. He is penetratingly factual and stays on stories that are often surprising.
At the bottom of page 12 of the March 14 Times — in what should have been on the front page, garnering Savage another Pulitzer — was this: “U.S., Rebuffing U.N., Maintains Stance That Rights Treaty Does Not Apply Abroad.”
This treaty, signed by our Senate in 1992, is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which, Savage notes, “bans arbitrary killings, torture, unfair trials and imprisonments without judicial review” (The New York Times, March 14).
This treaty jumped into the news, thanks to Savage, because, as he states in his opening paragraph: “The Obama administration declared … that a global Bill of Rights-style treaty imposes no human rights obligations on American military and intelligence forces when they operate abroad.”
Wikileaks
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Cables posted on the whistleblowing website show a US ambassador telling Hillary Clinton Wales is ‘not necessarily interested in producing energy/electricity for the rest of the UK’
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The Army private who was tried and convicted as Bradley Edward Manning for leaking U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks is petitioning a Kansas court for a name change, to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.
Privacy
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When former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. government’s near-limitless ability to hoard and monitor private communications, it created shockwaves of indignation and forever changed the way we all conduct our digital business.
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Since May 2013, consecutive revelations have increasingly exposed the extent and severity of the extralegal surveillance activities conducted by French authorities. It is time for the French government to break its deafening silence on this issue and allow for an open and democratic debate on the extent of its surveillance practices. This is all the more important following the “Loi de programmation militaire” and these recent revelations regarding the cooperation of network operator Orange with French intelligence services. France must make it a priority to revise its current legislation in order to respect international law on privacy.
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An Oxford debate in late February posed the question: Is Edward Snowden a hero? In an impassioned defense of a patriotism that courageously stands against the abuse of state power, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges said yes, and by a vote of the those present, won the contest.
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Glenn Greenwald wrote on Tuesday that President Obama’s new proposals to overhaul the NSA’s bulk collection of phone data are a vindication of Edward Snowden and the journalists who have been reporting on the revelations contained in the documents he provided.
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Posted in Free/Libre Software at 2:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
He can also bring back Thunderbird and bake encryption into it
Photo by Darcy Padilla
Summary: Mozilla has new leadership — one that can change course and keep the most popular Mozilla projects focused on what really matters
MOZILLA has a new CEO [1,2], who is a very technical guy that cares about the values of Free software. One FOSS proponent/journalist explained “Why Mozilla’s Brendan Eich Is the Right Choice for CEO” [3], but other journalists, who are not so familiar with the area (this one does not know that Android has Linux in it) try to start distracting conversations because Mr. Eich, like many Free software people, is opinionated and is exercising free speech [4] (a common vector for demonising people like Stallman, by littering their profile with irrelevant non-technical stances). The real issues we have right now are not the semi-political/idealogical views of staff like Eich but things like privacy issues in future versions of Firefox, Mono creeping into Firefox (more on that in last week’s news [5,6]. Mind the fact that Unity is infected by Mono, as noted before, and it does not work properly under GNU/Linux [7]), and security issues which all browsers [8,9], especially under Windows, habitually have (Chrome is no exception but it’s patched very quickly [10]). As Firefox 28 is released and Firefox 29 starts being worked on [11-16] we get to discover that Firefox can become a gaming platform with Unreal Engine, not requiring Mono at all [17]. This is the direction Mozilla should aim for. In addition, Mozilla ought to resume Thunderbird development and make encryption part of the core, especially now that NSA and GCHQ are exposed as serious, international privacy offenders. Back in the days when Mozilla tried to reason about abandoning Thunderbird development its chief said that people were heading toward what we now know to be PRISM, including corporate surveillance like Microsoft's. People should self-host and encrypt, but they could use Mozilla to make it user-friendly and quick. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Mozilla, the company behind the popular Firefox Web browser, has been searching for a new CEO since Gary Kovacs, who came on-board in 2010, decided to leave almost a year ago. Mozilla has finally picked a new leader, former CTO Brendan Eich. With him comes change. Mozilla’s job number one will not be its Web browser, but its mobile operating system: Firefox OS.
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Today, Mozilla officially announced that Brendan Eich will be the new CEO of the open-source organization that produces the Firefox Web browser and the FirefoxOS mobile operating system. Eich is no stranger to the world of Mozilla; he’s been with Mozilla since its inception at Netscape. Eich is also famous for being the inventor of the JavaScript programming language.
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Linux is very secure. Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS, with its auto-updating and security sandboxing, is even more secure. But, neither is perfect. At Google’s own Pwnium hacking contest and HP Zero Day Initiative’s (ZDI) annual Pwn2Own hacking contest, three new sets of security problems were found in Chrome OS… and then immediately patched.
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Firefox 28 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android has been released.
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Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 28 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include VP9 video decoding, Web notifications on OS X, and volume controls for HTML5 video and audio.
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You’ll soon be able to stream and play highly realistic three-dimensional video games from within the Mozilla Firefox browser. Mozilla recently announced that the most recent version of its Firefox browser can run games developed with the Unreal Engine by Epic Games, which forms the backbone of many major 3D video games.
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Posted in News Roundup at 11:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Censorship
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A supporter of a bill to protect reporters and the news media from having to reveal confidential sources said Friday the measure has the backing of the Obama administration and the support of enough senators to move ahead this year.
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It’s not much of a secret that Apple sees itself as some kind of supreme overlord of apps for its iProducts. And that supreme overlord has some very puritanical views, it seems: no nudity, no literature, and no immoral comics (censorship claims based solely on Apple’s pure-as-the-driven-snow morality indexer). Far be it from a silly little human like myself to question whether our overlords’ iron-grip is good for the app ecosystem, but with all the questionable decisions that seemed to be made in the name of the app approval process, perhaps it’s time for a more democratized solution, like letting customers decide whether they want something or not.
Jimmy Carter
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Former President Jimmy Carter believes U.S. intelligence agencies are spying on him — so much so, he eschews email to avoid government spies.
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IBM
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Ten days ago IBM issued ”A Letter to Our Clients About Government Access to Data” that, as we reported, swore on all that is good and holy that it did not hand over data to the NSA and would never do such a thing.
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Phone Surveillance
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President Obama is set to announce a new proposal to scale back one of the most sweeping and controversial national-security surveillance programs in U.S. history, according to multiple reports.
Smears
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Mike Rogers is still willing to spread his stupidity to any new outlet that will have him. Despite the NSA and FBI being unable to find any evidence that Snowden colluded with Russian intelligence, Rogers continues to insist the former analyst is a Russian spy.
China
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American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create “back doors” in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets.
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The Chinese government called on the United States on Monday to explain its actions and halt the practice of cyberespionage after news reports said that the National Security Agency had hacked its way into the computer systems of China’s largest telecommunications company.
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Chinese technology giant Huawei has said it will condemn the infiltration of its servers on the part of the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) should allegations be true, according to Reuters.
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Some people forget this, but the day before the very first of the Ed Snowden revelations, there were plenty of headlines about how President Obama was about to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping, with a major focus of the talk being about how Obama wanted to the Chinese to stop their “cyberattacks” on US companies.
Privacy
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Snowden’s latest revelations show that the National Security Agency has the capacity to store 100 percent of a given nation’s phone calls and store them for a month. Is there no other way of preventing terrorist attacks?
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A Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing three government agencies to get answers about America’s role in Nelson Mandela’s infamous 1962 arrest.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday morning, Ryan Shapiro targets the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Defense Intelligence Agency for their failure to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests he has filed (read the full complaint below).
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The show is over. The fat lady has finally sung. The fat lady, in this case, is a former White House lawyer, Rajesh De, now the senior legal counsel for the US National Security Agency (NSA).
Last week, De told a statutory body of the US government, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), that the so-called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) corporations – a collection of US companies that were made subject to secret court orders to spy on their customers outside the US – had indeed done just that.
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More and more local law enforcement agencies in the United States are manipulating or abusing public records request laws in order to conceal whether they are using “Stingray” surveillance technology to collect data for law enforcement activities, even going so far as to pretend that records do not even exist.
A “Stingray” surveillance device is, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a device “that can triangulate the source of a cellular signal by acting like a fake cellphone tower and measuring the signal strength of an identified device from several locations.” Such technology has been in use in some form by the FBI since 1995.
The American Civil Liberties Union considers the technology to be the “electronic equivalent of dragnet ‘general searches’ prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” It maintains that “no statutes or regulations” currently exist to address “under what circumstances ‘Stingrays’ can be used.” There is very little case law to properly limit law enforcement use.
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What will life be like after the internet? Thanks to the mass surveillance undertaken by the National Security Agency and the general creepiness of companies like Google and Facebook, I’ve found myself considering this question. I mean, nothing lasts forever, right?
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Yahoo discovered, as many tech companies did last year, that they had been opted-in to broad surveillance programs operated by the NSA and GCHQ. While these companies had always responded to official requests coming through official channels (the sort of thing detailed in their transparency reports), they were unaware that these agencies were also pulling data and communications right off the internet backbone and tech company servers.
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Reaching back into the relatively recent past, the US Dept. of Defense also confirmed that Shell was or had been under investigation for allegedly conspiring to violate US espionage laws by targeting classified technologies.
Drones
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According to The Washington Times, as of November of last year, the United States, Britain, and Israel were the only countries to have fired missiles from drones.
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A global shift toward drone warfare is already under way, meaning Americans currently mostly disinterested in the debate may one day be up for a rude awakening. Governments the United States finds unsavory will end up pointing to America’s clandestine drone program as a precedent. “That’s where you have the problem,” the Brookings Institute’s Peter Singer told The Washington Times.
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The United States has boycotted the U.N.’s drone investigation, arguing that the U.N.H.R.C. lacks the expertise and narrowness of focus to be effective at policing drone warfare. With little domestic outrage over the killings of civilians like the victims of the Yemen wedding massacre, it’s hard to see why our government would give human-rights activists the time of day. After all, did you hear about the fancy realtors using drones to create marketing videos for high-value properties?
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Former President Jimmy Carter sat down with HuffPost Live on Tuesday, throwing some cold water on the Obama administration’s use of drones.
When asked about his stance on the policy, Carter said he “would not” rely on drone warfare, arguing that they kill innocent people and aggravate hatred toward the United States.
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The U.S. has committed egregious misdeeds in the name of reducing the risk of terror by a tiny—or even non-existent—margin.
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The new program could put more of a Yemeni face on killings that have been carried out by U.S. drones.
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Obama has deported more individuals than any other president, he supports coal and nuclear power, and his big victory in repealing the Bush era tax cuts came with a reinstating of the payroll tax, imposing on Americans a more regressive and costly tax system than before. Obama also defends the use of drones to kill Americans abroad, and he refuses to make any serious changes in an NSA surveillance program that runs roughshod on the civil liberties of Americans. And in 2008 he took more money in from Wall Street than any presidential candidate in history.
CIA
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The National Transportation and Safety Board, NTSB, is still conducting continuing research into a jet crash in Mexico in the autumn of 2007. The jet was carrying 3.7 tons of powdered coke and is just one of several cases that point to deep corruption within the American bureaucracy.
The jet, a Gulfstream II, that crashed was one aircraft that was affiliated with an ongoing US covert operation called Mayan Jaguar. Recently released court records reveal that the jet was just one of tens of aircraft sold to Latin American cartel organizations. Narco News reported recently that several of the jets sold through Mayan Jaguar have been used to move cocaine into Europe, via Africa. The aircraft were being observed and traced by US law enforcement and intelligent agencies that were responsible for Mayan Jaguar.
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Washington’s role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore the historical record. Since 1945, dozens of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually with bloodshed.
Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries on earth with fewer people than Wales, yet under the reformist Sandinistas in the 1980s it was regarded in Washington as a “strategic threat”. The logic was simple; if the weakest slipped the leash, setting an example, who else would try their luck?
The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US “ally”. This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington’s coups — in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a “Ukraine” or a “Chile” could never happen to them.
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This meant developing policy outside of FISA and keeping most of Congress in the dark.
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In twin letters sent Wednesday to the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid renewed charges of unconstitutional CIA spying on the Senate, first made in a speech March 11 by the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein.
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Watching Dianne Feinstein tear into the Central Intelligence Agency on the Senate floor the other day brought to mind a 1970s-era television commercial about a margarine supposedly indistinguishable from butter.
“Chiffon’s so delicious, it fooled even you, Mother Nature,” says the narrator.
“Oh, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” she replies, her voice becoming steely as she raises her arms to summon thunder and lightning.
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Nearly a decade after the CIA ended its clandestine programme of kidnaps and torture in the wake of September 11, there has still not been a full reckoning of what happened.
PR Strategy
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As we’ve pointed out before, nearly every document released has been the result of court orders in FOIA lawsuits pursued by the ACLU, EFF and EPIC. Others have been compelled by executive orders (Obama’s surveillance reforms) or are nothing more than official statements and press releases. There’s no transparency here, no intrinsic effort to “foster greater public visibility.” The agency has been forced out of the shadows and its awkward embrace of openness is nowhere more apparent than at its Tumblr blog.
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Posted in FSF, Kernel at 8:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The FSF gives an award for work on embracing ‘secure boot’, whereas the better option — in my own personal opinion — is to altogether boycott UEFI, for a variety of separate reasons
IT IS NOT often that I get to say this, but I disagree with the FSF’s decision to grant Matthew Garrett an award for work on UEFI. Not only has he acted as a Microsoft apologist (like Miguel de Icaza, who had also received an FSF award) but he also smeared Linux developers whom he did not agree with. Not only has he made Microsoft’s case (and Intel’s patents) stronger but he also made regulatory actions against UEFI 'secure boot' more complicated.
A world with UEFI ‘secure boot’ is a world less secure. We need to shun, boycott and altogether avoid UEFI, not find ways to embrace it. People who help popularise or lead us to acceptance of ‘secure boot’ are doing a disservice — not a service — to the principle of people controlling their own computing. That last point is what distinguishes my personal position from the FSF’s (collectively). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Posted in Asia, Microsoft, Patents at 8:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
US judges under observation by the patents Mafia, Microsoft
Summary: Extortion and racketeering giant Microsoft prefers cognitive dissonance as software patents are at risk in the US; Microsoft’s patent arsenal Nokia is in trouble in India for the same reasons as Microsoft, namely tax evasion
WHILE we no longer focus on patents, we do continue our focus on FUD. Sites that call themselves “Patent Progress” continue to focus only on trolls (small trolls, not big trolls) and citing controversial boosters of software patents as arguing that “the numbers [of troll cases] are in for 2013, and it seems that patent trolling shows no signs of slowing down. According to RPX, trolls sued over 4,800 companies last year, up from the 4,282 they sued in 2012.” This is another distraction from the real issue, which is patent scope (e.g. software patents).
Last night Geza from the FFII’s mailing list said that “Forbes has an article highlighting the upcoming SCOTUS case Alice Corp. vs. CLS Bank” (we have covered this a couple of times before).
“Here we have a dying company which is busy trying to assault the winners (Linux-based) with troll proxies like MOSAID (armed with Nokia patents which Microsoft arranged for MOSAID to receive).”This case, according to Geza, “(at least the EFF thinks) concerns software patents” and he cites this new article which says: “Microsoft and its allies in the tech industry urge the court to avoid any pronouncements on software patents, because that could endanger one of the most vigorous segments of the economy.”
“Big SW-patent shops (like MSFT) instead argue thet the present case is only on business-methods patents,” notes Geza.
Well, isn’t it unsurprising that Microsoft would say that? Here we have a dying company which is busy trying to assault the winners (Linux-based) with troll proxies like MOSAID (armed with Nokia patents which Microsoft arranged for MOSAID to receive). Nokia’s software patents promotion is no secret and it predates Microsoft’s hijacking of Nokia (“Microsoft Nokia Takeover Is Delayed Until April,” according to this new report), which also commits some of the same offences Microsoft is committing (namely tax evasion, with conviction in India). According to ZDNet, “Indian taxes are proving to be a sticky problem for Nokia as it attempts to transfer its devices business to Microsoft.” ZDNet should mention that Microsoft does the same thing and was found guilty in India, too. Microsoft’s influence in the Indian government did not exempt the company and also has not yet assured software patents in India. █
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Windows at 8:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft propaganda agents occupy the press and pressure people to stay with Windows
Summary: Analysis of some of the recent claims that GNU/Linux and Android are not secure, the source of such claims (sometimes Microsoft), and what the timing of these claims may or may not tell us about agenda
WE WOULD like to put forth the possibility that the latest ‘security’-themed negative coverage about GNU/Linux is not a natural outcome of standard/routine research or even amplified naturally because GNU/Linux having flaws is the “man bites dog” equivalent [1]. Microsoft has familiar tactics, partly revealed by leaked documents, of manufacturing negative coverage about competitors like GNU and Linux. We gave many examples in the past (see this page for example). It can take years for relevant documents to be leaked.
It is not at all unthinkable that Microsoft still pays think tanks and partners to flood news site with negative publicity relating to GNU/Linux security. One reader wrote to us the following: “I saw on Diaspora that you were planning to write a story about how Microsoft coordinates PR across what should be an independent press. You might be interested in some old work that I did to highlight a minor revolt against “embargos” by Techchrunch and Wired” (we covered those years ago).
The ‘security’-themed negative coverage goes beyond GnuTLS [1, 2] and the latest from Symantec and others (claiming UNIX/Linux botnets while ignoring the cause and the elephant in the room, which journalists don’t like to name). There were dozens of articles about it, simply relaying the claims without digging any deeper. Earlier this week we saw some headline about Microsoft finding and reporting Android security holes (“paper published by researchers from Indiana University and Microsoft” [1, 2]). Yes, Microsoft sure is “embracing” Android… trying to paint GNU/Linux “equally bad” (another familiar old strategy). Ars Technica, at times the Fox 'news' of tech (depending on the writers), is trying to peddle some other smears against GNU/Linux security. A lot of the latest can be attributed to shoddy ‘reporting’ by Dan Goodin, who started a lot of the other recent panic and continues his long smear attack on GNU/Linux security (this time he blames out-of-date servers that can and should be freely upgraded). This FUD was so bad that entire articles were written to rebut it (after it had spread to other places [2]). See the comments/updates in Cisco’s Web site; it is very revealing. There is also a long discussion about this in Disapora. It seems like some journalists made it their mission to make GNU/Linux look insecure by whatever means necessary (even misrepresentation). As Susan Linton put it: “A lot of Websites are still covering the last couple of Linux security breaches and today Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols said, “It’s not Linux’s fault!”” (and he’s right).
Will Hill wrote that the mistakes are starting to get unraveled: “Looks like his source, Cisco, was shredded for saying what they did. Check out all the strike outs and retractions.
“…The observation of affected hosts running Linux kernel 2.6 is anecdotal and in no way reflects a universal condition among all of the compromised websites. Accordingly, we have adjusted the title for clarity. We have not identified the initial exploit vector for the stage zero URIs. It was not our intention to conflate our anecdotal observations with the technical facts provided in the listed URIs or other demonstrable data, and the below strike through annotations reflect that. We also want to thank the community for the timely feedback.”
Will Hill connects this to the following bit, saying “it was also used as XP EoL hype.”
To quote the FUD: “In April 2014, Windows XP will become unsupported. Organisations urgently need to review their use of unsupported systems in operation. Such systems need to be upgraded where possible, or regularly monitored to detect compromise. Organisations should consider their exposure to risks from the use of unsupported systems…”
So they hardly even hide some of their motive, perhaps thinking it would be too subtle. ZDNet and other Microsoft-friendly sites also found the above an opportunity convenient enough to FUD both Bitcoin and GNU/Linux at the same time [3,4].
What we basically have here is an explosion of semi-truths, spin, and fabrications — all trying to make a perception of GNU/Linux not being more secure than Windows. Timing matters here. We previously saw 'former' Microsoft people smearing Android security from academic standing (no disclosures given) and here too we see Microsoft appearing in a paper against Android security, seemingly coming from a university. This isn’t uncommon and it’s one of these cases where showing the Microsoft connection is simple, as in the case of other academics whom Microsoft is paying to be spreading law-themed FUD against Android (also without disclosures).
Windows XP support is ending and many look forward to/towards a GNU/Linux migration, at the very least for security. That is true for the Indian government [5] and some British companies I happen to know about but cannot name (being discreet is important when dealing with a bully like Microsoft). GNU/Linux distributions are typically replacing Windows XP [6,7,8]; Apple is rarely even an option. Indian Banks may switch to Linux [9] and many other banks may soon move to Linux because of security of course [10-14]. There are several separate reports about potential mass migration of ATMs from Windows (XP) to GNU/Linux and Microsoft is of course paying attention to this (maybe it's reading people's E-mails, too). What is the alternative, the truly horrible Vista 8? Microsoft partners like Tony Bradley (shown above; he is strongly tied to Microsoft professionally and has a long history of attacking and smearing GNU/Linux in IDG) desperately try to whitewash Vista 8. “Microsoft apologist gets column space,” wrote iophk, perhaps not knowing that this “apologist” is actually tied to Microsoft (Forbes lets him run Microsoft’s propaganda campaign right now, without disclosures). One can truly see how miserable Microsoft has become.
Now is a good time for many to move from Windows XP to GNU/Linux, even in businesses. This new article says that “the largest percentage (41 percent) found “simply that Windows applications are not compatible.””
Wine might do better at compatibility than newer versions of Windows, including Vista 8. As iophk put it: “Maybe this will lead the removal of Microsoft from SMB environments and the movement to open standards.” Swapnil Bhartiya explained a few days ago that a migration to GNU/Linux is no longer what it used to be. “Don’t get scared,” he argues, “Linux is not what you might have heard about it way back in 2005. Today Linux is dominating the world – Android is powered by Linux, Chromebooks are powered by Linux, your Chromecast runs on Linux. And these are consumer-grade devices extremely easy to use.”
According to another new report, “Windows XP users are mistaking Microsoft’s nag screens for adware” (Windows XP users are faced with Microsoft ads now).
“Just upgrade to a GNU/Linux distro and be done with it,” concludes iophk.
GNU/Linux is the secure option, no matter how much Microsoft spin is trying to convince people otherwise. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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There have been a lot of media reports about Linux security problems recently. ZDNet has taken a stand and pointed out that the problem isn’t with Linux, the problem is with certain Linux users and administrators. I’d also argue that the problem is also with certain media outlets who jump on the “linux security stinks!” bandwagon at the earliest opportunity.
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Microsoft India has decided to discontinue support for its legacy Windows XP platform. This doesn’t affect too many people — since most users of Microsoft’s products have already moved onto the newer Windows systems —Vista, 7 and now 8. It does, however, hit one of the largest employers of the nation — the Indian government.
When the support for XP goes out of order next month, the Indian government might start taking on Linux in a big way — if a recommendation issued by the Tamil Nadu government is any indicator.
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Support for Windows XP officially ends on April 8, 2014. After this date Microsoft will no longer issues security updates, patch exploits or provide any other means of official, direct support to its users
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Xubuntu is a distribution of Ubuntu, which uses the same architecture and software repositories as the mainstream Ubuntu. The only difference is that in the regular Ubuntu distribution, it uses a GUI called Unity, which is much more Mac OSX like, whereas Ubuntu uses XFCE which resembles a prettier version of XP. Alternatively, you could also check out Linux Mint, which pretty much feels exactly like Vista, but I stick to Xubuntu due to better Cannonical support – the People behind Ubuntu). Xubuntu is incredibly stingy on resources, and can run smoothly on a Pentium 4 or higher with a measly 512MB of RAM. Recommended specs being any Dual Core Intel/AMD CPU with 1GB of RAM.
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In today’s open source roundup: Lubuntu could be the best replacement for Windows XP. Plus: A review of Portal 2 for Linux, and an interview with the creator of educational distro Ubermix
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As we have reported you earlier that Microsoft is pulling out their Windows XP support after April 8 2014. Since a vast majority of bank ATMs around the world currently runs on Windows XP, but if they’ll continue sticking to it after the deadline, then they’ll be exposed to all kinds of security threats, as Microsoft will no longer provide the security patches thereafter.
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Some financial services companies are looking to migrate their ATM fleets from Windows to Linux in a bid to have better control over hardware and software upgrade cycles.
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It might sound odd that ATMs are running on aging software better suited to a home PC. In fact, security experts have chastised the financial industry for putting ATMs on a PC operating system in the first place. They argue ATMs should be using software that is scaled down and less buggy, such as Linux.
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Posted in Microsoft at 7:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Another reason to stop using Windows and other Microsoft products/services
Summary: Microsoft’s above-the-law attitude well demonstrated by the snooping scandal and FBI collusion, which was not only violating human rights but also proved profitable to Microsoft (at the expense of taxpayers)
WE NOW know that Microsoft profited from its own privacy violations, pocketing taxpayers’ money through the FBI. Robber baron Bill Gates recently defended mass surveillance, characterising it as essential (for him) and generally confirming what many people already suspected (that he defends the NSA). He does something similar for a profit. Microsoft’s exceptionally strong relationship with the NSA should therefore be seen as ideological, too. Microsoft is not the victim here. The victim is the public, which governments and Microsoft are in essence colluding against.
“Violating the rights of citizens is now the equivalent of a Microsoft product and Microsoft cannot lose any money in this area.”US taxpayers pay Microsoft for US taxpayers to be spied on and Microsoft profits from the FBI (i.e. US taxpayers) as long as nobody puts up a resistance strong enough, e.g. by boycotting Microsoft. One bit of original coverage said: “In December 2012, for instance, Microsoft emailed DITU a PDF invoice for $145,100, broken down to $100 per request for information, the documents appear to show. In August 2013, Microsoft allegedly emailed a similar invoice, this time for $352,200, at a rate of $200 per request. The latest invoice provided, from November 2013, is for $281,000.”
Notice how Microsoft is charging. It’s becoming like a profitable business area. Violating the rights of citizens is now the equivalent of a Microsoft product and Microsoft cannot lose any money in this area. There was other such coverage, even in political sites [1]. As one of the sites that broke the news put it: “These documents show how frequently the government calls on tech companies for information, and how nonchalantly they do business. The DITU allegedly requested information from Microsoft hundreds of times a month, and it appears that the government can buy customer information by simply shooting the right person an email.”
Yes, it’s that simple. There is not even a court order. The illusion of justice defending the innocent is no more. Reading Skype messages is another thing that Microsoft habitually does, as we discovered about a year ago. This is done indiscriminately. Everyone is under surveillance.
Now, consider the fact that nobody at Microsoft has been sent to jail for it. Contrast that with what happened in Germany: “To illustrate the direction in which they are leading debate, I would like to juxtapose the Microsoft claim that it is entitled to examine hotmail traffic to find a leak with what happened when a former Deutsche Telekom security manager undertook similar activities over their networks to also identify a leak. He went to jail.”
This was said in reference to another revelation: Microsoft used surveillance on customers for business reasons [2]. These two latest revelations say something very simple; Regarding arrest of ‘ex’ Microsoft staff that abused access to data, he got fired because he’s ‘ex’, not because of abuse — the abuse is standard practice at Microsoft. According to this, “the software giant, on its own initiative, leafed through the blogger’s Hotmail account and instant-messenger chatter logs…”
This means that “chat logs as well,” as iophk put it, are now targeted. He added that “nothing passing through Redmond is safe. This is the very thing they loudly accuse Google of. No wonder any more where they get the ideas for those accusations.” Microsoft has already admitted doing this (it did not even try to deny or spin it). So who will be sent to jail? Nobody of course. Microsoft is above the law. But also, as some put it, “Microsoft Doesn’t Need a Court Order to Search Your Hotmail” (so nobody should ever use Hotmail or any of these other silly services that host E-mail for ‘free’).
For Microsoft, ‘free’ hosting is an opportunity for espionage, copying, framing, blackmail of competitors etc.
Ballmer shamelessly lied when he said “Google reads your mail, we don’t.” The very opposite seems to be true. Google was found innocent very recently [3].
Michael Arrington, writing in his personal blog, said: “I’m reading about how Microsoft read a blogger’s Hotmail (or other Microsoft hosted email) to determine who leaked Microsoft information to that blogger. Microsoft’s response is pathetic, stating that “the privacy of our customers is incredibly important to us” in the same post that explains that they’ll keep doing it.
“While I think that doing this is both evil and shortsighted (they lose trust and users), the only thing that surprised me was that they admitted it.”
Indeed. But they did.
As Dr. Matt Blaze put it in Twitter: “So I wonder what other activities MS looks through your Hotmail account for? Do they look for people thinking of installing Linux?”
Or worse: how about companies or government departments? Some of them try to keep it secret to avoid retribution or intervention by Microsoft. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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It was a major victory for Google this week after US District Judge Lucy Koh turned down a class-action lawsuit against the search giant over allegedly scanning the contents of peoples’ emails. Had the class-action suit been allowed to proceed, the world’s largest search engine would have faced shelling out an astronomical amount in damages.
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