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07.17.16

Links 17/7/2016: Lithuanian Police Switches to GNU/Linux, Blockchain on LinuxONE

Posted in News Roundup at 5:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The DIY diabetes kit that’s keeping us alive

    They are using Nightscout, an open source platform developed and run by a global community of type 1 diabetics.

    Open source means it is freely available for anyone to use and modify – in this case at their own risk.

    It’s a combination of a commercial product called a Continuing Glucose Monitor (CGM), which provides constant updates, a DIY transmitter and the freely available Nightscout programming code which enables the CGM data to be shared with a cloud data storage area – where it can then be distributed to other devices.

    So both father and son now receive constant updates on their phones (and George’s smartwatch) and are able to assess George’s needs minute by minute.

    It has given George the gift of freedom – he can now join his friends on sleepovers and enjoy his favourite sports.

    Mr Samuelson acknowledges that it is not without risk.

    “I am using open source software to do calibrations. Open source software is giving me final numbers and it is not an approved algorithm – it’s not going to be exactly the same as the proprietary algorithms,” he says.

  • Preserving the global software heritage

    The Software Heritage initiative is an ambitious new effort to amass an organized, searchable index of all of the software source code available in the world (ultimately, including code released under free-software licenses as well as code that was not). Software Heritage was launched on June 30 with a team of just four employees but with the support of several corporate sponsors. So far, the Software Heritage software archive has imported 2.7 billion files from GitHub, the Debian package archive, and the GNU FTP archives, but that is only the beginning.

    In addition to the information on the Software Heritage site, Nicolas Dandrimont gave a presentation about the project on July 4 at DebConf; video [WebM] is available. In the talk, Dandrimont noted that software is not merely pervasive in the modern world, but it has cultural value as well: it captures human knowledge. Consequently, it is as important to catalog and preserve as are books and other media—arguably more so, because electronic files and repositories are prone to corruption and sudden disappearance.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox will get overhaul in bid to get you interested again

        The next update to Firefox, however, represents the first step in Mozilla’s long-term plan to get you using its web browser once again. It hopes to rekindle the interest and influence it claimed a decade ago by revamping its core, which could make complex websites like Facebook snappier but make it more difficult for attackers to launch attacks over the web.

      • Mozilla Servo arrives in nightly demo form

        The Firefox codebase dates back to 2002, when the browser was unbundled from the Mozilla Application Suite—although much of its architecture predates even that split. Major changes have been rare over the years, but recently several long-running Mozilla efforts have started to see the light of day. The most recent of these is the Servo web-rendering engine, for which the first standalone test builds were released on June 30. Although the Servo builds are not full-blown browsers, they enable users to download and test the engine on live web sites for the first time. Servo is designed with speed and concurrency in mind, and if all goes according to plan, the code may work its way into Firefox in due course.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU ease.js 0.2.8 released

      This is a minor release introducing transparent Error subtyping.

      This release succeeds v0.2.7, which was released 26 October, 2015. There are no backwards-incompatible changes; support continues for ECMAScript 3+.

    • A leadership change for nano

      The nano text editor has a long history as a part of the GNU project, but its lead developer recently decided to sever that relationship and continue the project under its own auspices. As often happens in such cases, the change raised concerns from many in the free-software community, and prompted questions about maintainership and membership in large projects.

  • Public Services/Government

    • FOSSA – Now we need feedback by the real experts

      The goal of the “Free and Open Source Security Audit” (FOSSA) pilot project is to increase security of Free Software used by the European institutions. The FSFE has been following the project since the early beginning in 2014. I am concerned that if the project stays on its current course the European Institutions will spent a large part of the 1 Million Euro budget without positive impact on the security of Free Software; and the result will be a set of consultancy reports nobody will ever read. But if we work together and communicate our concerns to the responsible people in the Parliament and the Commission, there might still be a valuable outcome.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • The Open Source License API

      Around a year ago, I started hacking together a machine readable version of the OSI approved licenses list, and casually picking parts up until it was ready to launch. A few weeks ago, we officially announced the osi license api, which is now live at api.opensource.org.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Notes from the fourth RISC-V workshop

        Many of the lowRISC team (Robert Mullins, Wei Song, and Alex Bradbury) have been in Boston this week for the fourth RISC-V workshop. By any measure, this has been a massive success with over 250 attendees representing 63 companies and 42 Universities. Wei presented our most recent work on integrating trace debug, which you’ll soon be able to read much more about here (it’s worth signing up to our announcement list if you want to be informed of each of our releases).

      • Arduino-powered Lock Automatically Locks The Door When You Open Incognito Mode

        Mike, the CEO of the Useless Duck Company, has created an Arduino-powered door lock which locks the door automatically when you open an incognito window in your web browser. In a YouTube video, Mike shows how this awesome tech works.

  • Programming/Development

    • Wait… usenet is still… alive?!?!

      So, in conclusion, Fortran is a pretty cool language. The syntax is a little different that a curly-brace guy like me is used to, but once you figure it out, it’s pretty easy to use and has a very nice feature set. Again, if you’d like to look at a functional complete example, check out my source repository on GitHub.

      I’m going to do a third post in this series where I actually build a modern web application using Fortran for the middle tier (I’m thinking I need a cool name like LAMP or BCHS so maybe FARM – Fortran, Apache, REST and mySQL?) but that’s for another day. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed learning it.

    • Coding A Text Editor In Less Than 1000 Lines Of C Programming Language

      A coder has created a text editor in C programming language in less than 1000 lines. He has shared the code on GitHub and allowed the interested programmers to take a look at it and learn.

Leftovers

  • S&P 500′s record highs held back by Apple’s falling stock price

    The S&P 500′s multiple record highs set this week after more than a year-long wait on Wall Street would not have taken so long had Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the index’s largest constituent, not fallen deeply from its own all-time high.

  • Science

    • Welcome to the ‘Ecological Recession’: Global Biodiversity on Unsafe Decline

      A global assessment of ecosystems across the planet shows that “exploitation of terrestrial systems”—in other words, human land use from road-building to industrial agriculture—has pushed biodiversity below “safe” levels.

      The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that for 58 percent of the world’s land surface, which is home to roughly 71 percent of the global population, the level of biodiversity loss is “substantial enough to question the ability of ecosystems to support human societies.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Celebrating common sense?

      Last week, there was a bit of good news on the trade front: on July 8, tobacco giant Philip Morris lost its ridiculous case against Uruguay’s cigarette labeling laws. In 2010, the multinational company’s Swiss subsidiary—which owns its operations in Uruguay—sued the country over rules designed to discourage cigarette consumption, especially by young people. As in a similar case against Australia, the company alleged that requiring labels that emphasize the dangers of smoking lowered the value of its intellectual property rights (i.e., its trademarked labels) and therefore, its investments. The case was brought under the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism in a bilateral investment treaty between Switzerland and Uruguay. ISDS empowers companies to sue governments in private tribunals over measures that undermine their expected profits. It has become a lightning rod for controversy in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

    • Avoid ‘miracle’ rice, just eat a carrot!

      Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died on September 9, 2009. Alfred G. Gilman died on December 23, 2015. Both were Nobel laureates and now both dead. Gilman was a signatory to a recent letter condemning Greenpeace and its opposition to genetic engineering.

      How many Nobel laureates does it take to write a letter? Easily ascertained — the dead Gilman and 106 others were enlisted in “supporting GMOs and golden rice”. Correct answer — 107, dead or alive.

      The laureates were rounded up by Val Giddings (senior fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), Jon Entine (author of Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People) and Jay Byrne (former head of corporate communications, Monsanto). Real people don’t have the luxury of getting Nobel laureates to write 1/107th of a letter, “chosen” folk do. Evidently.

      Cornell University is a “chosen” institution — central to genetically modified public relations. The Cornell Alliance of Science is funded by Bill Gates, just like the failed golden rice experiment.

      The Nobel laureates accuse Greenpeace of killing millions by delaying ghost rice — something the biotech industry accuses me of doing, for the same reason. Unlike golden rice — whose failure to launch is the industry’s own failure, the opposition to genetic engineering (and hence golden rice) is very real and successful. As Glenn Stone, a rice scientist at Washington University, states: “The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, golden rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

    • Don’t Eat the Yellow Rice: the Danger of Deploying Vitamin A Golden Rice

      But such tactics are not new. Long ago, the GMO industry spent well over $50 million to promote “Golden Rice” as the solution to vitamin A deficiency in low income countries. They did so well before the technology was completely worked out, let alone tested. Let alone consumer acceptability tested. Let alone subjecting it to standard phase 2 and 3 trials to see if it could ever solve problems in the real world.

      So why has this apparently straightforward scientific project not reached completion after so many decades?

      Because the purpose of Golden Rice was never to solve vitamin A problems. It never could and never will. Its purpose from the beginning was to be a tool for use in shaming GMO critics and now to convince Nobel Laureates to sign on to something they didn’t understand.

  • Security

    • Notice of security breach on Ubuntu Forums [Ed: this is proprietary software on top of proprietary software. Shame!]

      Deeper investigation revealed that there was a known SQL injection vulnerability in the Forumrunner add-on in the Forums which had not yet been patched.

    • Ubuntu Forums Hacked! Here Is What Hacker Stole?
    • ChaosKey

      The Linux Kernel, starting with version 4.1, includes source for this driver. It should be built by default in your distribution. If your using Linux + KVM to host other Linux instances, read the VirtualMachine page to see how you can configure the guests to share the host entropy source.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The United Kingdom is sleepwalking into renewing humanity’s deadliest weapons

      On July 18, parliament will vote on renewing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. The British public are tired of simplified, polarising campaign messages, and are fast losing faith in their elected representatives, setting the stage for a renewal of Trident by default.

      The country’s state of internal crisis cannot be an excuse for us to sleepwalk into this decision. This vote is too important and too existential to ignore due to ‘campaign fatigue’. There needs to be a deeply searching debate.

      The lifetime cost of replacing Trident, running into several tens of billions, is of course hugely relevant, as is the nation’s defence, but no less relevant is the thinking behind what it means for a nation to continue to invest in weapons of mass destruction with the capacity to kill millions.

    • France’s Smartphone App Is Criticized for Its Slow Response to Tragedy in Nice

      According to Amar Toor of The Verge, the app is supposed to send out an alert within 15 minutes of the crisis. “It is not yet clear what caused the delay,” Toor wrote, “though experts had warned that the app may struggle if cellular networks are congested following an attack.”

      Additionally, the French journalist Anaëlle Grondin tweeted that one government source cited a “technical problem” as the source of the delay.

      People in the area of the truck attack reportedly relied on Facebook for a safety check-in. Murdock notes that this is “the third time the [Facebook] feature has been used in two months, being activated following recent incidents in Orlando, Florida and Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.”

    • Trump’s VP Pick, Mike Pence, Doesn’t Know Anything About Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

      Mike Pence, who on Thursday was announced as Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, has a long record of supporting Israel. Like many of his conservative peers, however, he doesn’t always have the best answer when asked directly about Israel’s foreign policy.

      The video below is a compilation of responses from politicians who were asked direct questions about Israel by reporter Sam Husseini. “Though they’ve varied somewhat in their answers, none has actually been straightforward,” Husseini noted.

    • Syrian Troops foil al-Qaeda riposte in Aleppo as France warns al-Qaeda could replace ISIL

      Even as the Syrian army defeated a counter-offensive by al-Qaeda in Syria and its battlefield allies at Aleppo, French President Francois Hollande warned that al-Qaeda should not be allowed to replace the declining Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) in Syria.

      On Saturday and Sunday, al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front) led the fundamentalist Faylaq al-Sham and other rebel groups in an attack on the Syrian troops who have closed the last road into East Aleppo. They apparently did not believe that the Syrian Arab Army had actually come to control Castellano Road into East Aleppo, and so tried to put a military convoy down it. Syrian artillery made mincemeat of the rebel vehicles and inflicted heavy casualties on the militiamen.

    • Turkish Government Cracks Down In The Wake Of Failed Coup Attempt

      At least 265 people died in the clashes and at least another 1,440 were injured, according to published reports. Nearly 3,000 military personnel have been detained while the Interior Ministry suspended some five generals and 29 colonels.

    • Are We in for Another Increase in Military Spending?

      At the present time, an increase in U.S. military spending seems as superfluous as a third leg. The United States, armed with the latest in advanced weaponry, has more military might than any other nation in world history. Moreover, it has begun a $1 trillion program to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons complex. America’s major military rivals, China and Russia, spend only a small fraction of what the United States does on its armed forces―in China’s case about a third and in Russia’s case about a ninth. Furthermore, the economic outlay necessary to maintain this vast U.S. military force constitutes a very significant burden. In fiscal 2015, U.S. military spending ($598.5 billion) accounted for 54 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending.

    • The Long-Hidden Saudi-9/11 Trail

      The U.S. government and mainstream media are playing down the long-hidden 9/11 chapter on official Saudi connections to Al Qaeda’s hijackers, hoping most Americans won’t read it themselves, as 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser observes.

    • Declassified 9/11 pages show ties to former Saudi ambassador

      The 28 pages of newly declassified material from the 9/11 Commission released Friday by Congress show multiple links to associates of Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, the former longtime ambassador to the United States.

      The details in the newly released documents are a mix of tantalizing, but often unconfirmed, tidbits about the Saudi Arabian ties of some of the 9/11 hijackers. They show possible conduits of money from the Saudi royal family to Saudis living in the United States and two of the hijackers in San Diego. The documents also indicate substantial support to California mosques with a high degree of radical Islamist sentiment.

    • US Declassifies Secret 9/11 Documents Known as the ’28 Pages’

      The U.S. intelligence community has officially lifted the veil on 28 classified pages from the first congressional investigation into the 9/11 terror attacks that some believe, once exposed, could demonstrate a support network inside the United States for two of those al-Qaeda hijackers.

      Today, the Obama administration declassified those documents — closely held secrets for over 13 years — and Congress released them to the public this afternoon. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies had kept the information secret until now, citing reasons of national security.

      The information in the pages lays out a number of circumstances that suggest it’s possible two of the 9/11 hijackers living in California had been receiving operational support from individuals loyal to Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to the attacks.

      But intelligence officials say the information was preliminary, fragmented and unfinished data that was subsequently investigated along with more complete information in subsequent 9/11 investigations.

    • Congress releases secret ’28 pages’ on alleged Saudi 9/11 ties

      The pages also say that the inquiry obtained information “indicating that Saudi Government officials in the United States may have other ties to al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups,” but the commission that authored the document acknowledged that much of the info “remains speculative and yet to be independently verified.”

    • 28 Pages Raise ‘Scores of Troubling Questions’ on US-Saudi Ties

      The just-released 28 pages of a 2002 congressional report into Saudi Arabia’s possible ties to the 9/11 hijackers have stirred speculation about the U.S. government’s continued relationship with the Gulf kingdom.

      Amnesty International criticized the White House’s statement that the pages, hidden from public view for 13 years, have not changed the government’s assessment that “there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaeda.”

      “We stand with survivors of this crime against humanity: They deserve justice and the whole truth,” the human rights group tweeted.

      As Murtaza Hussein wrote for The Intercept, the 28 pages “redacted in parts, detail circumstantial evidence of ties among Saudi government officials, intelligence agents, and several of the hijackers,” including by providing financial and housing assistance to those living in the U.S.

    • Turkey coup attempt: Erdoğan demands US arrest exiled cleric Gülen – live
    • Stuffing Turkey

      Electricity has been cut to the U.S. Incirlik air force base, where a number of nuclear gravity bombs are kept. The bombs are not an immediate threat (read the thread at that link), but who knows this?

    • Turkey’s Lose-Lose Coup Attempt

      Turkish President Erdogan has abetted jihadist terror and cracked down on political dissent – making him a contributor to Mideast troubles – but a military coup is the wrong way to remove him, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Thousands Arrested as Attempted Coup in Turkey Reportedly Fails

      Thousands of people were arrested and at least 161 killed overnight in Turkey as an attempted military coup came to a chaotic end.

      The death toll has been estimated to be as high as 194. A reported 2,389 military officials, including high-ranking officers, were taken into custody after clashing with citizens who had heeded Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan’s call to “stand up” against those he called coup plotters, the BBC reports.

      The Judges and Prosecutors High Council also reportedly dismissed 2,745 judges across the country.

    • The New Cold War’s Frontline in Crimea

      Most Americans don’t have a clue what has happened in a place called Crimea or why it is on the frontlines of what is becoming a new Cold War. In fact, few even know where it is. But Crimea’s location has made it one of the most frequent battlegrounds of empires — and today is no exception.

    • Blair to Bush on 9/12/01: ‘Co-Opt’ Sympathy for War

      “It is now [September 12, 2001] that the world is in a state of shock; now that it feels maximum sympathy for the US; now that it can be co-opted most easily,” Blair wrote.

      “The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit.” So said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a July 6 statement in response to the release of the long-awaited Chilcot Report – a 2.6 million-word examination, based on dozens of interviews and hundreds of classified documents, of the UK’s decision to join the Iraq War.

      “I did not mislead this country. I made the decision in good faith on the information I had at the time,” Blair insisted.

    • After Nice, Don’t Trade Liberty for Security

      Typically, the debate following attacks like these proceeds along two dimensions. There is a proposed domestic response designed to reduce the probability of similar attacks taking place in the future. And there is a proposed foreign response to punish the ones responsible – or more realistically, to punish a lot of random people that have the misfortune of living in the general vicinity of wherever the attacker and his friends are from. But I digress.

    • Conservatives Call For ‘Truck Control’ In Wake Of Terrorist Attack In Nice

      This is not the first time Duncan has tried to shift the conversation away from guns after an attack. On the three-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, the Congressman made a “knife control” joke. In response to a report about a teacher in Paris who was stabbed by an ISIS sympathizer, Duncan tweeted, “I doubt France will respond by demanding more knife control.”

    • Toppling Lumumba: Canada’s Dark Role in the Congo

      56 years ago today the United Nations launched a peacekeeping force that contributed to one of the worst post-independence imperial crimes in Africa. The Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) delivered a major blow to Congolese aspirations by undermining elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Canada played a significant role in ONUC and Lumumba’s assassination, which should be studied by progressives demanding Ottawa increase its participation in UN “peacekeeping”.

      After seven decades of brutal rule, Belgium organized a hasty independence in the hopes of maintaining control over the Congo’s vast natural resources. When Lumumba was elected to pursue a genuine de-colonization, Brussels instigated a secessionist movement in the eastern part of country. In response, the Congolese Prime Minister asked the UN for a peacekeeping force to protect the territorial integrity of the newly independent country. Washington, however, saw the UN mission as a way to undermine Lumumba.

      Siding with Washington, Ottawa promoted ONUC and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s controversial anti-Lumumba position. 1,900 Canadian troops participated in the UN mission between 1960 and 1964, making this country’s military one of its more active members. There were almost always more Canadian officers at ONUC headquarters then those of any other nationality and the Canadians were concentrated in militarily important logistical positions including chief operations officer and chief signals officer.

      Canada’s strategic role wasn’t simply by chance. Ottawa pushed to have Canada’s intelligence gathering signals detachments oversee UN intelligence and for Quebec Colonel Jean Berthiaume to remain at UN headquarters to “maintain both Canadian and Western influence.” (A report from the Canadian Directorate of Military Intelligence noted, “Lumumba’s immediate advisers… have referred to Lt. Col. Berthiaume as an ‘imperialist tool’.”)

    • A Mass Murderer Becomes a ‘Terrorist’–Based on Ethnicity, Not Evidence

      Despite the absence of any evidence of a political motivation, or indeed any motive at all—generally considered to be a key part of any definition of terrorism—the Times story still referred to the Nice killings as “the third large-scale act of terrorism in France in a year and a half.” The killings, Higgins wrote, “raised new questions throughout the world about the ability of extremists to sow terror.”

      Why is the Times willing to label the Nice deaths “terrorism”—a label that US media do not apply to all acts of mass violence, even ones that have much clearer political motives (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/15/14)? In part, they seem to be following the lead of French authorities: “French officials labeled the attack terrorism and cast the episode as the latest in a series that have made France a battlefield in the violent clash between Islamic extremists and the West.”

      But quotes from French officials made it clear that such claims were little more than guesswork: The story reported that Prime Minister Manuel Valls “said the attacker in all likelihood had ties to radical Islamist circles,” citing Valls’ statement to French TV: “He is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another.”

      [...]

      French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, “was more cautious,” the Times reported: “We have an individual who was not at all known by the intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islamism,” Cazeneuve was quoted.

      Why was the Times not similarly cautious about applying the label of “terrorism” to an act whose motives it admitted knowing nothing about? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Times believes that when the suspect is an Arab—Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant—then allegations of terrorism require no evidence whatsoever.

    • Coup d’état attempt: Turkey’s Reichstag fire?

      On the evening of July 15, 2016, a friend called around 10:30pm and said that both bridges connecting the Asian and European sides of Istanbul were closed by military barricades. Moreover, military jets were flying over Ankara skies. As someone living on the European side of Istanbul and commuting to the Asian side to my university on a daily basis and spending many hours in traffic in order to do that, I immediately knew that the closure of both bridges was a sign of something very extraordinary taking place.

      To confirm the news about the military jets over Ankara, I called my parents in Ankara. They answered the phone in a panic. I could hear military jets from the other end of the phone. Not surprisingly, my 86-year-old parents had experienced military coups in Turkey before. As I was talking breathlessly with my Dad, my Mum murmured from the other line calmly but firmly: “this seems like a coup d’état.”

      From that point onwards, all hell broke loose especially in Ankara and Istanbul. The death toll in less than 24 hours after the coup attempt in Turkey is over 200. There are thousand of people who are wounded. Twitter and facebook became inaccessible during the early hours. The tv channels started broadcasting live from Ankara and Istanbul: yet, they were not sure what was going on at the outset. Shortly after, the military released a statement saying that the “military has seized all power in Turkey” through the state tv channel TRT. That is when I could not stop my tears, for memories flocked back of the September 12, 1980 coup d’état when a similar announcement was made. I had experienced that coup as a student in one of the most politically active universities in the country, the Middle East Technical University. The memories, as for many people of my generation, were painful.

    • Turkish People-Power Foils Attempted Coup

      The poorly planned junior officers’ coup in Turkey on Friday appears to have failed as I write late Friday night, though rebel military elements still hold positions in some parts of the country, including Ankara, the capital. Their allegiances and motives are still unclear.

      Remarkably, among the reasons for the failure was the determined stance of the Turkish people who stood up for their democracy, even if about half of them deeply dislike President Erdogan.

      Crowds came out into the streets in Istanbul and Ankara. Individuals stood or lay down in front of tanks.

      Some civilians even arrested mutinying troops!

      After the military faction took over state tv, crowds invaded the station and allowed its anchors to come back on line.

    • US-based Turkish cleric facing extradition over botched rebellion claims president orchestrated plot to justify a clampdown on civil rights

      A US-based Turkish cleric accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the Ankara government has claimed President Recep Erdogan staged the rebellion himself to justify a major clampdown on opposition forces.

      Fethullah Gulen, who was a former key ally of Erdogan has been blamed by the politician of using his contacts to develop a ‘parallel structure’ to overthrow the state.

      Erdogan has called on US President Barack Obama to extradite Gulen, who is based in Pennsylvania.

    • Vietnam removes protesters gathered for anti-China rally in Hanoi

      Dozens of Vietnamese who gathered for an anti-China protest in central Hanoi were taken away by authorities on Sunday as they tried to rally support for an international tribunal’s ruling rejecting Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea.

      About two dozen people were bused away from around the landmark Hoan Kiem Lake in the capital even before they began their protest. There was heavy police presence around the lake with cars briefly banned from around it.

      The rally was organised by No-U group in Hanoi, which opposes China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. It came after the Hague-based permanent court of arbitration last week issued the ruling in a case initiated by the Philippines, which together with Vietnam is one of the claimants in the disputed waters.

    • Nice attack: France calls up 12,000 reservists

      France has called up 12,000 police reservists to help boost security after Thursday’s attack in Nice in which more than 80 people were killed.

      Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also appealed to “all willing French patriots” to sign up as reservists, to help protect the country’s borders.

      Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a lorry along the seafront through crowds before police shot him dead.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • US Navy banned from using sonar that harms dolphins and walruses

      A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the US Navy was wrongly allowed to use sonar in the nation’s oceans that could harm whales and other marine life.

      The ninth circuit court of appeals reversed a lower court decision upholding approval granted in 2012 for the Navy to use low-frequency sonar for training, testing and routine operations.

      The five-year approval covered peacetime operations in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.

    • Think Animals Don’t Have Emotions? Researchers Have News for You

      How might we discern an elephant’s or a mouse’s sense of the world? Elephants and mice might not tell us what they’re thinking. But their brains can. Brain scans show that core emotions of sadness, happiness, rage, or fear, and motivational feelings of hunger and thirst, are generated in “deep and very ancient circuits of the brain,” says the noted neurologist Jaak Panksepp.

      Researchers in labs can now trigger many emotional responses by direct electrical stimulation of the brain systems of animals. Rage, for example, gets produced in the same parts of the brains of a cat and a human.

    • As Congress Calls Out Fossil Fuel Deception, ExxonMobil Continues to Fund Climate Science Denial

      Last week, ExxonMobil released their much anticipated 2015 Corporate Citizenship and Worldwide Giving reports, which include voluntarily disclosed information about their corporate giving each year. Despite ongoing claims by the company to NOT be funding climate denial, the reports once again reveal that the oil and gas giant has continued to financially support many groups that work to undermine climate science, while labeling such funding as corporate social responsibility.

    • ‘The Dam Builders Could Not Stop My Mother’ So They Killed Her

      In March, my mother Berta Cáceres was murdered in her own home. Her death pains me in a way I cannot describe with words.

      She was killed for defending life, for safeguarding our common goods and those of nature, which are sacred. She was killed for defending the rivers that are sources of our people’s life, ancestral strength and spirituality.

      My mother became a woman of resistance, of struggle, so that our deep connection with nature is not destroyed; so that the life of our peoples—the Lenca Indigenous People of Honduras—is respected. Her killers tried to silence her with bullets, but she is a seed, a seed that is reborn in all men and women. She is a seed that will be reborn in the people that follow her path of resistance.

      To achieve justice for her death, I need your help.

    • Massive Fracking Explosion in New Mexico, 36 Oil Tanks Catch Fire

      This week—as thousands of Americans urge awareness to the destruction caused by oil bomb trains—an oil field in San Juan County, New Mexico erupted in flames Monday night, highlighting the continued and increasing dangers of the fossil fuel industry.

      The fire broke out around 10:15 p.m. Monday at a fracking site owned and operated by WPX Energy, setting off several explosions and temporarily closing the nearby Highway 550. Fifty-five local residents were forced out of their homes.

    • The Unyielding Grip of Fossil Fuels on Global Life

      Here’s the good news: wind power, solar power, and other renewable forms of energy are expanding far more quickly than anyone expected, ensuring that these systems will provide an ever-increasing share of our future energy supply. According to the most recent projections from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, global consumption of wind, solar, hydropower, and other renewables will double between now and 2040, jumping from 64 to 131 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs).

      And here’s the bad news: the consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas is also growing, making it likely that, whatever the advances of renewable energy, fossil fuels will continue to dominate the global landscape for decades to come, accelerating the pace of global warming and ensuring the intensification of climate-change catastrophes.

      The rapid growth of renewable energy has given us much to cheer about. Not so long ago, energy analysts were reporting that wind and solar systems were too costly to compete with oil, coal, and natural gas in the global marketplace. Renewables would, it was then assumed, require pricey subsidies that might not always be available. That was then and this is now. Today, remarkably enough, wind and solar are already competitive with fossil fuels for many uses and in many markets.

    • UK could warm by 4°C this century

      Scientific advisers warn that, by 2100, temperatures in Britain could rise by twice as much as the internationally-agreed limit set at the Paris climate conference.

    • Climate Law Champions Are Battling The Fossil Fuel Industry In Court

      In a growing number of climate-related legal actions, concerned citizens are targeting the Carbon Majors, the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations responsible for two thirds of the human-made carbon emissions in the atmosphere today.

      These corporations have made massive profits while outsourcing the true cost of their product upon the poor who are paying with their lives, their homes, and their ability to grow food, as they begin to deal with the impacts that 1˚C of warming is already inflicting on them.

      In a new report, the Climate Justice Programme examines cases across the world and finds that climate litigation will dwarf all other litigation, including tobacco and asbestos, in terms of both the number of plaintiffs and the timeframe over which it can stretch.

    • ‘Shocking,’ ‘Plain Stupid’: Theresa May Shuts Climate Change Office

      Less than a day after becoming the U.K.’s unelected leader, Prime Minister Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office, a move instantly condemned as “shocking” and “plain stupid.”

      May shuttered the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on Thursday and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes the same week as the U.K. government’s own advisers warned in a report that the nation was not ready for the inevitable consequences of climate change, including deadly heat waves and food and water shortages.

      “This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “This week the government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.”

    • The Little-Known Fund at the Heart of the Paris Climate Agreement

      The Green Climate Fund is supposed to finance the world’s shift away from fossil fuels. But fossil fuel-funding banks are eager to get on board.

    • Get Ready, a Potentially Record-Breaking ‘Heat Dome’ is Coming

      Temperatures in the central U.S. and Upper Midwest could reach 10 to 20 degrees above average

    • Pacific Islands Nations Consider ‘Pioneering’ Treaty to Ban Fossil Fuels

      Pacific Island nations are reportedly considering the world’s first treaty to ban fossil fuels, which would require signatories to work toward renewable energy targets and prohibit any expansion of fossil fuel mines.

      The leaders of 14 nations on the front lines of climate change are considering the treaty after an annual summit in the Solomon Islands known as the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). The treaty would establish a “Pacific framework for renewable energy” and require “universal access” to clean energy by 2030. It would also bind leaders not to approve any new coal or other fossil fuel mines nor provide subsidies for extraction or consumption.

    • Pacific ​​islands nations consider world’s first treaty to ban fossil fuels

      The world’s first international treaty that bans or phases out fossil fuels is being considered by leaders of developing Pacific islands nations after a summit in the Solomon Islands this week.

      The leaders of 14 countries agreed to consider a proposed Pacific climate treaty, which would bind signatories to targets for renewable energy and ban new or the expansion of coalmines, at the annual leaders’ summit of the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).

    • Cyclones set to get fiercer as world warms

      New analysis of cyclone data and computer climate modelling indicates that global warming is likely to intensify the destructive power of tropical storms.

  • Finance

    • Seafile now accepts bitcoin via BitPay

      We are very happy to announce that it’s now possible to pay for cloud accounts and licenses with bitcoin in our web shops. Bitcoin payments are possible via the very nice people over at BitPay.

    • The Qubes Project announces a decentralized bitcoin fund

      As part of our quest to decentralize and harden the project, we have switched today to a multi-signature wallet for our Qubes bitcoin fund. This means that no longer can a single person, not even myself, sign an outgoing transaction from our new wallet. For this to happen M out of N signatures is required (we selected N = 13, and M = 6, for the time being). The holders of the keys have been invited from among Qubes developers and supporters from all over the world. Some people might have more than one key, but still fewer than M.

    • Nicholas Wilson and the HSBC Blues

      Again, my opinion, I think HSBC USA should have been shut down for the money laundering, sanctions avoiding, and garden variety fraud disclosed in the 2010 Levin report and by the contributions of at least two US whistleblowers.

    • My thoughts on BREXIT: History is written by the victors

      Brexit has revealed a culture war, which the left has been quietly losing.

    • “Free” Trade? Fraud Alert

      It is rare these days to hear the words “market” and “trade” without the word “free” attached—especially on corporate media. I even hear colleagues who are pursuing a more localized economy use these terms without realizing that by so doing they are subtly and unintentionally promoting a political agenda they oppose.

    • Big Headlines for a Tiny Wage Hike

      Lloyd Blankfein, one of America’s most powerful bankers, a few years ago told a reporter that his Goldman Sachs financial colossus was doing “God’s work.”

      That off-hand comment would provoke an instant uproar. An embarrassed Blankfein had to quickly calm the waters. He meant his quip, the Goldman CEO assured us all, only as a joke.

      Earlier this week, one of Blankfein’s high-finance peers, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, made some headlines of his own. In a widely heralded New York Times op-ed, Dimon proudly announced that his bank is making a major move to “create more widely shared prosperity.”

    • The Blood-Dimmed Tide of Neo-Nationalism and Other Scary Simulacra

      The Greater Middle East has been successfully destabilized. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, any country not playing ball with transnational Capitalism has been brought to its knees by a series of invasions, bombings, sanctions, support for insurgencies, corruption, et cetera. Iran is currently negotiating in the hope of avoiding a similar fate. Russia, following its transformation into an autocratic capitalist free-for-all for ex-KGB men and their oligarch cronies — a transformation designed by folks like Jeffrey Sachs, Lawrence Summers, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the IMF, and other shock therapists — has been more or less surrounded by the EU and NATO, and is being pressured to get with the program. China, in spite of its playing grab-ass with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea, is deep into the global Capitalism thing. Vietnam and Laos have joined the club. Cuba is even opening for business again. South America is a work-in-progress, as ever, what with the recent neoliberal “soft” coup in Brazil, the re-neoliberalization of Argentina, the destabilization of Venezuela, and so on.

      This is just a quick summary of the highlights. The point is, apart from some isolated pockets of resistance — which the corporatists will get to eventually — and the various nightmarish terrorist theme parks operating out in the imperial hinterlands, it’s one big global capitalist world … one Market under Mammon, indivisible, with privatization and austerity for most, and distractionary paranoia for all.

    • Theresa May suggests Brexit delay as she says no Article 50 until Scotland gives go-ahead

      Theresa May has indicated that Brexit could be delayed as she said she will not trigger the formal process for leaving the EU until there is an agreed “UK approach” backed by Scotland.

      The Prime Minister on Friday travelled to Scotland to meet Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, and discuss plans for Britain’s Brexit negotiation.

      In a sign that the new Prime Minister is committed to keeping the Union intact, she said she will not trigger Article 50 – the formal process for withdrawing from the EU – until all the devolved nations in the country agree.

    • How Globalization Divides Us: Perspectives on Brexit from a Dual Citizen

      When I woke up on June 24th and checked the news, I cried. Along with millions of people around the world. I’m a diehard believer in independence, freedom, democracy, and strong local economies. For some, the Brexit result represented those things. If that had been the reality, I would’ve supported it too. But like every other choice offered in the global economy these days, Brexit was a false one. Getting out of Europe does nothing to address the real problems in UK society—or the world. We’re still headed down the same destructive path together, but now more fractious and divided than ever.

    • Truthdigger of the Week: Jaime Prater, Starbucks Barista Who Got Workers a Raise

      Want a raise?

      Jaime Prater did. A Starbucks barista for nine years, the 40-year-old resident of Montclair, Calif., was paid $10 an hour and given between 22 and 25 hours of work a week—at least 11 hours short of what he needs just to make ends meet. And compared to the standards of living among the professional class, what modest ends they surely are.

      This week, Prater managed to squeeze modest raises for himself and his colleagues out of his employer, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

      “[E]ffective October 3,” Schultz wrote last Monday in a letter to employees that begins with a reference to the week of racial shootings across the country, “all partners and store managers in U.S. company-operated stores will receive an increase in base pay of 5% or greater.” This raise and an increase in the stock holdings of employees who have been with the company for more than two years “will result in compensation increases between 5% and 15%,” Schultz added.

    • Brexit Takes Root in the Caribbean

      “Brexit” has been defined by many as “a real political earthquake with national and international implications”.

      It seemed a difficult fight for the separatists, because top English leaders –headed by their Prime Minister David Cameron– led the opposition to this demand promoted by the most conservative politicians.

      The British political leadership was defeated and, with them, all of Europe, its allies and even the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who saw his position of remaining within the European Union (EU) his most loyal and powerful ally in all main issues for the US power defeated.

      The result of the referendum on Brexit, which has affected all the world in various ways, has the countries of the Caribbean region in anxious expectation, torn between forecasts and preparations, because of the ties –both historical and current– that link them to the United Kingdom.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Turkish government asked public to resist coup in text message

      As a coup against Turkey’s government took place yesterday, Turkish citizens were sent a text message that urged them to take to the streets to support democracy and resist the coup. The text message appears to have been sent out during the coup from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

    • Jill Stein Just Promised To Pardon Snowden, Appoint Him To Cabinet If Elected

      Presumptive Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein promises to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – whom many describe as a true American hero – not just a full pardon, but a promotion to the upper echelons of government should she win the White House.

    • Jill Stein Pledges to Grant Edward Snowden a Full Pardon and Appoint Him to Her Cabinet

      Edward Snowden, America’s #1 fugitive, would not only get a full pardon under a Jill Stein administration, but would get a promotion to one of the highest levels of government.

      “[Snowden] has done an incredible service to our country at great cost to himself for having to live away from his family, his friends, his job, his network, to basically live as an expatriate,” Stein said during a livestreamed town hall with supporters on her Facebook page.

      “I would say not only bring Snowden back, but bring him into my administration as a member of the Cabinet, because we need people who are part of our national security administration who are really, very patriotic,” Stein continued. “If we’re really going to protect American security, we also have to protect our Constitutional rights, and that includes our right to privacy.”

    • Sanders ally Cornel West backs Green candidate

      Activist Cornel West is endorsing Green Party candidate Jill Stein after previously backing Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid.

      “This November, we need change,” he wrote Thursday in an op-ed for The Guardian. “Yet we are tied in a choice between [Donald] Trump, who would be a neo-fascist catastrophe, and [Hillary] Clinton, a neo-liberal disaster.”

    • Sixty mega-donors gave 30 percent of the money raised by Donald Trump and the Republican Party

      Sixty mega-donors gave at least $100,000 each to a joint committee raising funds for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, together pouring in $15.4 million from late May until the end of June, new campaign finance records show.

    • A question of leadership

      The explanation emerges in conversation with anyone under 30 who has an ounce of idealism. Gemma Jamieson Malik, for example, a London PhD student driven by housing costs to live out of London, explains: ‘It’s not that I’m a Jeremy Corby fan. It’s that he’s opened a space for a new politics I and my friends can feel part of. He’s generated a new energy around Labour.’

    • New Poll Shows Hillary Clinton Tied With Donald Trump

      The survey also showed that both are viewed as untrustworthy by over 60 percent of voters.

    • A Citizen’s Guide to the Upcoming Conventions

      It’s also unsettling many other Americans, some of whom will be demonstrating in downtown Cleveland to protest the nomination of a man who has gone out of his way to denigrate Latinos, blacks, Muslims and immigrants.

    • Donald Trump Appeases Extreme Right With Pence Pick

      In appeasing the extreme right by choosing Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump reveals how he hopes to secure enough votes to win the presidency — and how he may have to govern in order to satisfy the GOP base.

      With his announcement of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump almost single-handedly revived a political career that was circling the bowl not long ago. Pence, once considered a contender for the GOP presidential nomination, all but ended his hopes of national office when he signed Indiana’s “religious freedom” law, and bungled his response to a backlash that cost his state millions of dollars.

    • Mike Pence Is a Smooth-Talking Todd Akin

      The guy who led the crusade against Planned Parenthood and signed anti-abortion laws will drive more women to Hillary Clinton.

    • Mike Pence Said Martin Luther King Jr. Was His Hero Growing Up. Here’s Why That Sounds Absurd.

      King stood with President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Yet, when it comes to voting rights, an issue that King fought hard for, you see that Indiana doesn’t make it easy for voters to get to the polls. The state only kept polling places open until 6 p.m. during the May primary, although most states keep their polls open to 8 p.m. or even later. Indiana doesn’t have any laws that require employers to allow workers to leave work to go vote.

      In contrast, King said in his 1957 speech called “Give Us The Ballot,” “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind. It is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact. I can only submit to the edict of others.”

    • Ralph Nader on Election 2016: ‘Our Country Deserves Better’

      And, of course, Ramos asks him how he will be voting. “I always believe in voting your conscience,” Nader responds. “Not tactical votes, not ‘least worst’ votes.” This leads him to talk about Bernie Sanders’ recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton, calling it a “very astute” move. “He set her up for political betrayal,” Nader notes, adding that the strategy was “brilliant.”

    • After Sanders Endorses Clinton, ‘Political Revolution’ Faces Hard Choices

      On the other hand, despite what progressive commentators, like Joan Walsh, may claim, the Democratic primary was rigged to enable a Clinton win. Hundreds of superdelegates pledged their allegiance to Clinton before votes were cast in Iowa. A limited number of debates were scheduled to ensure voters had the least amount of exposure to Clinton opponents. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign falsely accused the Sanders campaign of “stealing” voter file data. The Hillary Victory Fund funneled millions of dollars through state parties to the DNC in what looked very much like a money laundering scheme. Democratic women supporting Sanders faced forms of retaliation.

    • Elizabeth Warren Absolutely Shreds ‘Terrifying’ Trump/Pence Ticket: ‘Two Small, Insecure, Weak Men’

      Even if Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not selected to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, she has definitely secured herself a spot in the campaign as the go-to person for unrestrained and brutally frank criticism of the GOP ticket.

      As Donald Trump prepared to formally announce Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Warren launched an all-out assault on the ticket, calling the Republican duo “two small, insecure, weak men.”

      Warren who has been a thorn in Trump’s side for weeks now — and appears to be the one who most effectively gets under his skin based on his weak rejoinders — hammered the two on Twitter for their anti-woman and anti-LGBT rhetoric.

    • How the Right Tears Down America

      So far, so good. A large number of GOP politicians, from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on down, have treated Obama since the beginning of his presidency as illegitimate and as an enemy to be maligned and legislatively blackmailed rather than treated as America’s chief executive. This attitude gave us government shutdowns, a near-default on our sovereign credit, and some of the worst congresses in history.

    • ‘He is a Faker’: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Publicly Spars with Donald Trump

      In recent media interviews, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly decried the candidacy of Donald Trump for president, characterizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as a “faker” with “no consistency” and “an ego.”

      Her unusually partisan comments earned some condemnation from centrist media commentators as well as Trump himself.

      In an interview with CNN published Tuesday, Ginsburg said: “He is a faker[...] He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • This art project uses the Khajuraho art style to comment on censorship

      Modern-day issues of censorship are juxtaposed with erotic drawings from the Khajuraho temples in a pop-up art project by Akshita Chandra, 21, a design student in Bengaluru.

    • BDS Is a War Israel Can’t Win

      Israel’s apologists would call the BDS campaign “immoral”, but the slander is laughably false

    • Turkey’s President Survives Coup Attempt, Thanks in Part to Social Media He So Despises

      The plotters failed, despite following a script that had might have succeeded in the 20th century, in part because Erdogan was able to rally support for democratic rule using 21st century tools: video chat and social media.

      After the officers claimed control of the country in a statement they forced a presenter to read on TRT, the state broadcaster, the country’s internet and phone networks remained out of their control. That allowed Erdogan to improvise an address to the nation in a FaceTime call to CNN Turk, a private broadcaster the military only managed to force off the air later in the night, as the coup unraveled. In his remarks, the president called on people to take to the streets.

    • Kashmir Held to Ransom

      Holding people to ransom; criminalizing political space; causing psychosomatic ills…

    • Starbucks and McDonald’s move to block porn from their Wi-Fi networks

      Anti-pornography groups have succeeded in their efforts to get Starbucks and McDonald’s to block porn on the chains’ Wi-Fi networks.

      Earlier this year McDonald’s (MCD) responded by putting filters in place at most of its U.S. restaurants, a change that was disclosed this week. The company had already had the filtering in place at its U.K. restaurants.

      “McDonald’s is committed to providing a safe environment for our customers,” he said. “We had not heard from our customers that this was an issue, but we saw an opportunity that is consistent with our goal of providing an enjoyable experience for families.”

    • A History of Media Control and Media Blackouts in Coups d’Etat

      With the information disarray coming out of Turkey during the (seemingly failed) military coup, we see the same pattern of attempting to control media as we’ve seen for the past 500 years, in peacetime and wartime. Revolutions come quickly or slowly, violently or peacefully, but they still follow the same pattern of attempting to control and distort the truth – only the technology differs over 500 years.

      The pattern is that the people in power rally to centralized information chokepoints to cut off and control the information flow and deny broadcasting ability to others, whereas the challengers use the power of lots and lots of volunteers to build a decentralized information flow around these chokepoints. When this succeeds, the challengers generally win. This has been repeated in coup d’état situations with the printing press, with pamphlets, with newspapers, and now, with the Internet and with social media. It’s also been used in more-or-less democratic settings where an establishment collectively tried to stonewall a challenger, as early as a century ago.

      Some would argue it’s ironic that Turkish ruler Erdoğan used social media last night to call for people to rally against the coup. On the contrary, this is completely in line with the idea that all media should be strictly controlled by a few people in power. Erdoğan used social media to broadcast his own messages, which doesn’t contradict the previous actions of limiting the same ability for everybody else. It’s perfectly in line with actions of historical autocratic rulers to disable Facebook and Twitter, except for use by the ruler.

    • Kashmir: Media persons protest against govt’s attempt of censorship

      The media fraternity took out a protest march in the Valley against the gag by the state government.

      Newspapers were not allowed to publish in Kashmir and were asked by the state government to suspend their operations for the next 3 days.

    • Florida prisons’ censorship of ‘Militant’ violates free speech rights

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Uber’s investigators admit to lying while digging up dirt on legal foes

      Ergo, the secretive, CIA-linked firm that was paid by Uber to investigate the plaintiff in one of the ride-hail startup’s many lawsuits, has now admitted to lying and illegally recording phone calls during its probe, according to Law360. Lawyers for Ergo owned up to the infractions in oral arguments in court Thursday, drawing a rebuke from the judge overseeing the case.

      Last December, Spencer Meyer filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, alleging a scheme to fix prices in violation of antitrust laws. The same day, Uber hired Ergo to investigate Meyer out of concern he posed a security risk to Kalanick. But Ergo also gathered information on Meyer’s lawyer, a move that some critics say went too far. Ergo’s lawyer argued that the firm was unaware the investigation was tied to a lawsuit, even while admitting Ergo’s investigator “dissembled and used false pretenses in his duties,” Law360 said.

    • Minutes from EU Court of Justice on #DataRetention

      On 19th July 2016, Advocate General Øe Saugmandsgaard will present the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) his opinion in the joined cases C-203/15 and C-698/15,Tele2 Sverige and Davis and Others. They concern the validity of national laws in Sweden and the UK for the retention of telecommunications data under EU law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This is a very relevant question, since the Court invalidated the EU Data retention directive in 2014.

    • Brexit and Privacy

      It’s as clear as mud, what it means when a country decides to willingly pull out of a trading bloc, a policy coordination mechanism, a relatively democratic network, and a framework for the free flow of people, data, and rights. Meanwhile today the minister in charge of surveillance for the past six years will assume the leadership of the country.

      There is much speculation as to what is next. Here’s our take. Importantly, there’s a lot to be worried about, some to like, much we cannot foresee. The future has rarely been so murky.

      What I am practically certain of is that there will be renewed pushes for surveillance as a result of Brexit. And there is no meaningful political resistance. The Minister in charge of the police has today become the Prime Minister and is claiming to have a mandate of controlling borders. Such uncertain times are often fertile ground for attempts to enhance surveillance powers.

    • Hey Students, Stop Asking Noam Chomsky for Help with Your Homework

      Noam Chomsky is pretty baffled by more than half of Americans; the amount of U.S. residents who will use Facebook this year. Chomsky is in the minority. He doesn’t use social media and detests when users refer to acquaintances they have the most minute exchanges with as “friends.”

      “Adolescents,” Chomsky clarified, “Who think they have 500 friends, ‘cause they have 500 people on their Facebook account, but these are the kind of friends whose relation to you is if you say, ‘I bought a sandwich,’ they say, ‘did it taste good?’ That’s a kind of interaction, but very different from having a real friend.’”

    • Spy or Whistleblower? Should Obama Settle With Snowden?

      Edward Snowden has been living in asylum in Russia for three years. As our country prepares to elect its next president, none of the candidates are likely to have a merciful attitude toward the controversial whistleblower, nor want to begin their administration with a political act on a provocative subject that passionately divides the country.

      But President Obama has an opportunity in his final months in office, when presidents traditionally exercise their pardon and clemency powers, to direct his Attorney General to offer a reasonable settlement to Snowden through his attorneys.

    • U.S. Government Presents Draft Legislation for Cross-Border Data Requests [Ed: in the US (and allies) Microsoft gives the government back door access to all data]

      Another example involves Brazil, where Microsoft has been fined millions of dollars, and its employees threatened with criminal prosecution, for following a U.S. law that makes it a crime to obey a Brazilian court order demanding information about a suspected criminal in Brazil.

    • Feds Monitoring Activists on Facebook Ahead of Republican Convention

      Federal authorities are watching political activists organizing protests ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention, warning that “anarchist extremists” pose a threat to Cleveland.

      A “threat assessment” issued jointly by the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Homeland Security warns law enforcement to be on the lookout for “potential indicators” of “violent anarchist extremist activity.” The indicators include “pilfering construction sites” for rocks, pipes, or bricks and “movement of newspaper containers and trashcans to create barricades” — but also carrying spray paint, eye drops, or wearing “clothing bearing anarchist symbols.”

    • Anti-Muslim Rep Seizes On Nice Attack To Call For Mass Surveillance Of Muslim Americans

      Mere hours after the horrifying attack in Nice, France on Thursday night, politicians and pundits began speculating about the religion of the attacker and calling for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Responding to the attack on Fox News, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seized the opportunity to push mass surveillance of Muslim Americans, saying that holding back would be a “sign of weakness.”

    • French government rejects crypto backdoors as “the wrong solution”

      Speaking on behalf of the French government, the deputy minister for digital affairs Axelle Lemaire has rejected an amendment to the new “Law for the Digital Republic,” which called for computer companies to provide backdoors to encrypted systems. As reported by the French site Numerama, Lemaire said of the idea: “What you propose is vulnerability by design. It’s inappropriate.” She also referred to the Netherlands’ recent statement in support of encryption, and the discovery of backdoors in Juniper’s products, as reasons not to take that route.

      She pointed out that with backdoors “personal data is no longer completely protected. Even if the intention [of giving the authorities access] is praiseworthy, it opens the door to actors with less praiseworthy intentions, to say nothing of the possible economic harm that loss of credibility will cause companies that implement these flaws.” She concluded: “You are right to add to the debate, but in the government’s view, it’s the wrong solution.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 188 arrest warrants issued for members of Turkey’s supreme courts

      Turkish prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State in the wake of Friday night’s attempted coup. Ten arrests have already been made, local media reported.

      The ten jurists detained were all members of the Council of State, which is Turkey’s top administrative court, NTV broadcaster reported.

    • Flights To Turkey Cancelled After Coup

      Flights to and from Turkey have been cancelled and Britons in the country have been advised to “stay indoors”.

    • New York nun is reported missing on vacation in Austria

      Images found on her phone suggest she was enjoying herself, taking photos and videos of the scenic Alpine countryside before she disappeared, the website reported

      Christie sent emails letting her nephew on Long Island know where she was but then the emails suddenly stopped July 6.

    • Obama has failed victims of racism and police brutality

      A long and deep legacy of white supremacy has always arrested the development of US democracy. We either hit it head on, or it comes back to haunt us. That’s why a few of us have pressed the president for seven years not to ignore issues of poverty, police abuse and mass unemployment. Barack Obama said it very well, following the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, that some communities “have been forgotten by all of us”.

      And now – in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights and beyond – this legacy has comes back to haunt the whole country.

      Obama and his cheerleaders should take responsibility for being so reluctant to engage with these issues. It’s not a question of interest group or constituencies. Unfortunately for so much of the Obama administration its been a question of “I’m not the president of black people, I’m the president of everyone.” But this is a question of justice. It’s about being concerned about racism and police brutality.

    • Seattle’s ‘Liberals’ Get Chance to Finally Start Addressing Police Brutality

      This year, Washington has a second chance to address police brutality and in compliance with international human rights laws.

    • ‘Combustible’ GOP Convention: Riot Police Swarm Cleveland as FBI Tells Protesters Not to Show

      Authorities in Cleveland, Ohio, are adding fuel to an already “combustible” atmosphere, some activists say, as the city readies extra jail space and courtrooms and shuts down a local university to house 1,700 riot police and their weapons in preparation for demonstrations at next week’s Republican Party convention.

      Democracy Now! reported Thursday that city officials “say some courts will be kept open almost 24 hours per day in case protesters are arrested en masse. Authorities have also opened up extra jail space to hold protesters.”

    • Cleveland Police Union President: Allowing Guns Near Convention Is ‘Absolute Insanity’

      Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, said he had concerns about the safety of officers at the upcoming Republican National Convention on CNN’s Smerconish on Saturday. In response to a question about guns being allowed near the convention, Loomis said, “That’s absolute insanity to me… My concern is for the uniformed member that is out there. They are going to be out there in the trenches.”

      Guns will not be permitted inside the Quicken Loans Arena and areas monitored by the Secret Service, but protesters coming to Cleveland will be allowed to carry guns due to the state’s open-carry laws. Items such as water guns, knives, canned food, and even tennis balls will not be allowed near the arena, however. As many as 50,000 people are expected to come to the convention area. There will be about 3,000 law enforcement officers at the convention — the same number of officers expected to be at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month.

    • Three Years After Justice Failed Trayvon Martin

      In the three years since George Zimmerman was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon Martin and the Black Live Matter movement was born, so many more have been lost even as so much progress was made.

      Three years ago today, full of despair, I posted my feelings on my Facebook feed.

    • A Man Burned The Flag And Got Arrested for ‘His Own Safety’

      A guy who wasn’t feeling the patriotism decided to burn an American flag and tell the world about it on Facebook — only to get arrested the next day after neighbors complained.

      Bryton Mellott, 22-years-old, of Urbana, Illinois, was taken into custody after police received calls about his Facebook posts, which included a picture of him setting the Stars and Stripes on fire (above) and a message explaining that he was “not proud to be an American. In this moment, being proud of my country is to ignore the atrocities committed against people of color, people living in poverty, people who identify as women, and against my own queer community on a daily basis.”

    • Before They Were Hashtags

      Alton Sterling and Philando Castile lost their lives to police brutality last week. While their deaths fit an all too familiar narrative for black men and women living in America, what we haven’t emphasized enough—especially in the accounts told by media—is the value their lives held.

      Before they were hashtags, these men mattered.

    • Violence, Police Authority and Black Lives Matter

      Trigger happy policing has become something of a modus operandi in the frontier mentality of law enforcement. Bullets come before negotiation; arrests are inconveniences of afterthought. In 2015, 1000 people were slain in police operations, a third of them black.

    • Sorry Conservatives, New Research from Harvard Shows a Profound Amount of Racism by Police…Not Less of It

      Philando Castile was killed by a Minneapolis-area police officer while giving him his identification. Like so many other black men, Levar Jones was also shot by a white police officer while fully complying with his commands. Eric Garner was choked to death while screaming “I can’t breathe.” John Crawford III was killed in a Walmart by police because he was carrying a toy gun that he wanted to purchase. Jonathan Ferrel was killed by a white police officer while seeking help after a car accident. 12-year-old Tamir Rice was street executed by the Cleveland police in less than 3 seconds.

      Stories and personal experiences of police thuggery and violence are so common in the black community that they constitute a type of collective memory and group trauma.

    • Israel: a turning point in anti-corruption efforts?

      War and security have long dominated public discourse in Israel, often overshadowing the country’s other pressing issues. Notable among these is the legal system’s attitude to high-level state corruption, which has played a crucial role in shaping the Israeli political landscape.

    • Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism

      f you were looking to have fun with some friends 50 years ago, you might have gone to a bowling alley. Maybe you would have hung out at a diner or gone to the movies.

      These were all activities that involved spending a certain amount of money in the local economy. That created opportunities for adults in your town to start and run small businesses. It also meant that a teenager who wanted to find a summer job could find one waiting tables or taking tickets at the movie theater.

      You can spend money on Pokémon Go too. But the economics of the game are very different. When you spend money on items in the Pokémon Go world, it doesn’t go into the pocket of a local Pokémon entrepreneur — it goes into the pockets of the huge California- and Japan-based global companies that created Pokémon Go.

    • Israeli Military’s New Chief Rabbi Implied Soldiers Can Rape in War, as Government Lurches to Far-Right

      The man chosen as the Israeli military’s new chief rabbi has previously implied that soldiers would be permitted to rape women in war.

      This comes at a time when the Israeli government lurches further and further to the right, with what has been called “its most hard-right government ever.”

      Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim was nominated for the top religious position in the Israel Defense Forces, of IDF, by the chief of staff on Monday.

      Karim was at the center of a media controversy in Israel in 2012, when it was revealed that, in 2003, he suggested on a religious website that soldiers were permitted to commit acts of rape during wartime.

    • Nice, France, Attack: A Gandhian Response to Serial Killers

      French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has extended the French state of emergency, which suspends key civil and human rights, in the aftermath of the gruesome truck attack on Bastille Day in Nice, which at this writing has left 80 dead and over a dozen in intensive care.

    • Those who don’t like the referendum result should demand more democracy, not less

      Like many people who passionately want the UK to remain in the European Union, I have struggled with feelings of denial about the referendum vote. I wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did. I wish I could magic it away. But it is important to recognise that what happened, happened. British people were told that they would get a chance to vote on a perfectly clear question: whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union. They were told that the decision would be decided on the basis of a simple majority of the British electorate as a whole, including expatriates, but not including those under the age of eighteen or European Union citizens resident in the UK (who voted in the Scottish referendum). The result was that 52% voted to leave.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • How to set up your own VoIP system at home

      The landline phone may seem an anachronism to many, but if like me you work from home it can still be an essential business tool. Even if you’re not a regular home worker, many people still like to have a phone that’s separate to their mobile. In a family house or shared house, it can sometimes also be useful for different people to have their own number too.

      In the past, your choices were fairly stark—either multiple analogue phone lines, which is what I had when I first moved into my flat, or ISDN. While the latter was very popular in parts of Europe, it never really took off in the UK or US. BT’s pricing was part of the problem, together with a lack of equipment. Nevertheless, for many years, I used a small German ISDN PBX at home. It made it simple to separate business and work calls, and thanks to the 10 number blocks BT issued as standard with ISDN2 lines, my lodger could have a number too.

      Pricing was the killer for ISDN in the home, unless you could claim it as a business expense. Now, however, VoIP services make it much easier to provide the same sort of functionality at a fraction of the cost, and it’s much easier than you might have thought, too. Here’s how I did it.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • BitTorrent Users Present a Goldmine of Marketing Opportunities

        Most file-sharers are aware they’re being watched but that doesn’t always have to be as bad as it sounds. Speaking with TorrentFreak, analytics company Peerlogix says it monitors millions of “well educated and tech-savvy” torrent users and leverages their content consumption habits for marketing purposes.

07.16.16

This is Why Benoît Battistelli Has 0% Approval Rating Among ‘His’ Staff at the EPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Battistelli is the EPO’s own Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, exploiting emergencies for further crackdowns against ‘his’ people

French BattistelliSummary: The EPO expresses solidarity regarding (mostly) French people but does so only in English as the real purpose is to manipulate the media and justify the EPO’s sheer abuses and unprecedented oppression against staff

It sometimes feels as though amid EPO crises Benoît Battistelli awaits external crises like terror attacks. This has become a hallmark of Battistelli. He breaks his own rules, he breaks laws, and the only justification he brings up is that there’s a major crisis which makes it necessary. He is like Erdoğan, who now tries to bring back the death penalty (following a failed coup attempt). At the EPO Mr. Battistelli needs a perception of terror (other than his own) to help justify millions of Euros (per term) spent on personal bodyguards. How much more inane can it get?

We keep seeing scorn regarding this claim that the “EPO believes in an open and inclusive society based on fundamental principles of freedom, equality and justice,” based on its own crazy statement, signed by Benoît Battistelli the day after the attack in Nice. “If EPO believes so much in “equality” principle, maybe it should not discriminate people who do not speak FR/NL/DE,” Benjamin Henrion wrote about it and another person remarked about inclusivity by stating: “Statement not available in French. Shame. And somehow strange.”

“Battistelli is delusional, paranoid, abusive, arrogant, monomaniacal, high-tempered, clueless, thuggish, and a chronic liar.”Well, that statement wasn’t for the victims or for the French people. It was for the media (published under “news”). Battistelli likes to pretend to be a victim, so he exploits every terror attack and makes it seem like he’s the savior. It’s a cheap political stunt (attempt at unification at times of crisis and fear) and since Battistelli is inherently a politician (he doesn’t grok technical things) this kind of tasteless exploitation must come naturally to him. Battistelli is delusional, paranoid, abusive, arrogant, monomaniacal, high-tempered, clueless, thuggish, and a chronic liar. A little more of these things can’t do much more harm than his reputation (of which he has none, he has 0% approval rating among staff). This latest statement of his already got the attention of some at IP Kat, who also mock it. █

Law Professors Try to Put an End to Patent Trolls So Patent Trolls-Funded IAM ‘Magazine’ Complains

Posted in America, Patents at 4:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Corporate lobbyists, think tanks (like the Coalition for 21st Century Patent ‘Reform’), bogus news sites and patents lawyers antagonise change which is well overdue

IAM logo and friends

Summary: Many professors suggest a method of stopping patent trolls (restrictions on venue shifting), so patent trolls-funded propaganda sites and think tanks strike back and distract even further, putting forth a wish list or a ‘reform’ that’s designed to give them more money and incredibly protectionist power

EARLIER this year we wrote a bunch of posts about the VENUE Act [1, 2]. The EFF had done a lot of work in the area, but after it made some headlines we haven’t been hearing much about it. At its core, the VENUE Act suggests moving patent trolls away from Texas (where they enjoy plaintiff-friendly courts).

“At its core, the VENUE Act suggests moving patent trolls away from Texas (where they enjoy plaintiff-friendly courts).”Professor Crouch’s site mentioned this strategy again a few days ago, noting: “A group of 45 professors sent the following letter to Congress arguing for statutory reforms to limit venue in patent infringement cases. One focus of this move is to direct intention toward a focused and limited action rather than another round of comprehensive patent reforms. This type of limited reform could come as part of a late-session omnibus package.”

This was later mentioned again in part 2 that said: “While law professors call for venue patent reform, the TC Heartland venue and personal jurisdiction challenge appears to still have legs. In April 2016, the Federal Circuit rejected the mandamus action, but the Supreme Court recently granted TC Heartland’s delay petition – allowing its petition for writ of certiorari to be filed by September 12, 2016. In the case, TC Heartland argues that the statute itself (28 U.S.C. § 1400(b)) limits where patent claims can be brought and that the Federal Circuit has unduly broadened venue in ways that harm the system.”

“So basically, IAM and its chums want to protect trolls and also go further by protecting software patents and other forms of nuisance.”Academics understandably wish to discourage patent trolls. Some made a career (or many high-profile papers) out of it, e.g. Professor James Bessen. Don’t expect patent lawyers-funded publications to join these professors. IAM (funded by the likes of MOSAID, a patent troll now known as Conservant) wrote a sort of rebuttal rather than coverage: “In a statement to this blog the advocacy group underlined its position: ‘21C does not favor a venue-only bill as it does not address the other abuses in the system, in particular with IPR/PGR. A policy fix is especially needed given the Supreme Court’s ruling that the PTO was legally entitled to adopt BRI.” That ruling from the Court came in Cuozzo v Lee which left the IPR regime intact.”

Cuozzo was good news [1, 2, 3, 4], but not for patent lawyers. IPR/PTAB is also a good thing, but not for patent lawyers. So basically, IAM and its chums want to protect trolls and also go further by protecting software patents and other forms of nuisance.

“The situation in the United States is flaky when it comes to software patents right now.”To quote the concluding words: “The professors’ letter may well place venue reform even further in the spotlight but without 21C on board it’s still hard to see how standalone legislation makes it to the President’s desk.”

“21C” is the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, which is more like a think tank, supported by large corporations such as AstraZeneca, BP, Eli Lilly, patent lawyers (American Intellectual Property Law Association), Ericsson (with patent trolls), and Siemens (software patents proponent).

Speaking of software patents, they seem to be going away or fading away. More of those dead software patents, having just died from Alice (as per the Supreme Court‘s decision), are reported on or mentioned at the court which is the originator of software patents. To quote a patent attorney: “Shortridge v. Foundation Construction–CAFC Held Claims Invalid under 101/Alice: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/15-1898.Opinion.7-11-2016.1.PDF …”

Also from this court (CAFC) we have the following news: “The Federal Circuit sitting en banc ruled in its The Medicines Company v Hospira opinion that MedCo’s purchase of manufacturer Ben Venue’s services to produce its anticoagulant drug Angiomax, which contains blood thinner bivalirudin, did not trigger the on-sale bar, as Hospira claimed.”

The situation in the United States is flaky when it comes to software patents right now. They’re dropping like flies, which is good for quality at the USPTO but not so good for patent lawyers and attorneys who are accustomed to making business out of software patenting (at the expense of software developers). █

The Importance of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and High-Quality Patents (Not Software Patents)

Posted in America, Deception, Patents at 3:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The following paper conflates patent strength/quality with patent maximalism (i.e. ease of patenting and suing)

CPIP paper

Summary: Strong patents rather than strong patent enforcement (i.e. ease of legal abuse) help discern the difference between successful economies and self-destructive economies

THE Open Invention Network (OIN), which we covered in the last post, is closely connected to (even overlapping at places) IBM. An entity called RPX, which we wrote about many times before (see Wikipedia article), was set up or propped up with help from IBM to counter Microsoft’s patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. “In an interview,” said a Microsoft-friendly site 8 years ago, “RPX founders John Amster and Geoffrey Barker said they left Intellectual Ventures on good terms but had philosophical differences with the firm’s approach. Neither of the co-CEOs would elaborate on those differences, instead highlighting how RPX plans to make inroads in the murky area of patent acquisition.” So one might say that they’re poison from the same pool.

According to Managing IP (MIP), “PTAB grants attorneys fees for first time, to RPX”. To quote:

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has awarded attorneys fees for the first time, ruling that Applications in Internet Time violated a protective order in its handling of RPX’s confidential information

Sanctions in Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings have been rare. But on July 1 the Board awarded attorneys fees for the first time.

This is a reason for concern because there are many people and companies out there that wish to demolish PTAB by any means possible. PTAB invalidates a lot of software patents these days. “The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has granted a rare motion to amend, in a covered business method review that focused on the construction of the term “meta-rights”,” MIP wrote in a later article.

“Battistelli lowered patent quality at the Office (to make bogus claims about so-called ‘production’), so the last thing he needs is independent oversight/scrutiny over patent quality.”One might choose to think of PTAB as the US equivalent of the appeal boards of the EPO, which Battistelli fights so viciously against. Battistelli lowered patent quality at the Office (to make bogus claims about so-called ‘production’), so the last thing he needs is independent oversight/scrutiny over patent quality.

Patent quality control, or “strong patents” as some might call it, helps determine economic strength in some cases. Regarding this very recent article titled “How Strong Patents Make Wealthy Nations” (actually more like patent maximalism, not quality control) Benjamin Henrion just joked. The article is actually academic (unlike the paper, which is self-serving as one might expect from CPIP) and it comes from George Mason University, more specifically the Antonin Scalia Law School. Scalia, as we noted here before, was not too crazy when it comes to patents (unlike in many other areas) and the article quotes Professor Stephen Haber of Stanford University as saying “there is a causal relationship between strong patents and innovation.” The article itself says in the conclusion: “Given the copious evidence showing that strong patents make wealthy nations, the IP critics have their work cut out for them” (see corresponding PDF).

“That is more or less what happens in China and it has created a patent bubble (false evaluation of patents based on their number, not quality).”It would be easy to just grant a patent for every application and never properly assess or reassess triviality, prior art etc. That is more or less what happens in China and it has created a patent bubble (false evaluation of patents based on their number, not quality). In order for the USPTO to redeem its reputation it will need more of PTAB (hiring of more staff to cope with the growing load/demand) and the same goes for the EPO, which must hire more technical judges rather than drive them to exile and leave a lot of vacant positions while raising costs so as to lower demand). █

With ‘Friends’ Like IBM and Its ‘Open’ Invention Network We Legitimise Software Patents Rather Than End Them

Posted in IBM, OIN, Patents at 3:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Choice of a ‘lesser evil’ still leaves us with evil

A devil

Summary: Another reminder of where IBM stands on patent policy and what this means to those who rely on IBM for sheltering of Free/Open Source software (FOSS) or small businesses (SMEs) in a post-Alice era

Large corporations take it all when it comes to patents. Patent trolls are somewhat of a distraction and an obsession, as they help obscure the underlying problem with patent scope, including the existence of software patents. Consider IBM. IBM is itself a patent bully (with history). It uses software patents to attack far smaller companies and lobbies for such patents as well. IBM is opposing patent reform and it is also relying on its lobbyist (and former employee and former USPTO Director) David Kappos to maintain the status quo and abolish Alice as a factor, i.e. to prop up software patents at a time they’re increasingly dying.

“IBM is opposing patent reform and it is also relying on its lobbyist (and former employee and former USPTO Director) David Kappos to maintain the status quo and abolish Alice as a factor, i.e. to prop up software patents at a time they’re increasingly dying.”According to another new article from Fortune, which seems to have found an interest in patents lately, “innovation and entrepreneurship has been on a steady decline for the last 40 years, and the U.S. has ultimately become less competitive as large companies take a greater share of profits in their respective industries, and roughly as many small companies go out of business as start up annually. One particularly telling statistic: Nearly 60% of U.S. employees now work for firms founded before 1980, Kauffman says.” The article is titled “How Licenses and Patent Trolls Are Choking Entrepreneurship in America”. The current policy is basically an SME killer (they’re increasingly being eliminated by patents), whereas large companies don’t seem to mind this. They form conglomerates like OIN which provide them with a collective shield in many cases. Where does antitrust law come into this?

“Don’t be misled,” IBM’s Manny Schecter wrote regarding the above article, “this is about occupational licenses, not patent licenses even tho it is also about patent trolls”

Benjamin Henrion responded to Schecter by saying “patent trolls such as IBM. I had a look at your Prodigy patents complain[t], really insane.”

And right now, based on yet another corporate media puff piece (Bloomberg in this case), it sure looks like the OIN people are greasing up major journalists for puff pieces this week. iophk told us regarding this article: “When will Microsoft put their money where their mouth is and join?”

“Some may be friends of FOSS on the technical side, but when it comes to policy — especially patent policy — they are certainly part of the problem.”Well, when will IBM actually do something to stop the menace of software patents rather than promote these? Red Hat, which itself pursues software patents of its own (we wrote about this before), gets all excited about OIN even if it doesn’t achieve much. Today it wrote about it that “Fortune reports that Toyota has joined the Open Invention Network as a full member, joining IBM, Red Hat, Google and others.”

Unless or until OIN makes its goal also the abolition of software patents, why would the FOSS community have a good reason to embrace it? Look at the main parties behind OIN. Some may be friends of FOSS on the technical side, but when it comes to policy — especially patent policy — they are certainly part of the problem. Toyota itself is very close to Microsoft. █

Links 15/7/2016: Microsoft Playing Dirty, GNOME Maps Problems

Posted in News Roundup at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Apcera Announces Support of New Open Source NATS Streaming Solution

    Apcera has announced that it is providing support for the new NATS Streaming solution, a performant, secure and simple open source messaging platform. NATS Streaming offers features that enable support for new classes of applications such as IoT and big data analytics. The platform is tightly coupled but loosely integrated with NATS, providing enterprise grade features without sacrificing NATS’ core simplicity.

  • Chef and Puppet lead the charge in open source cloud automation

    IT pros increasingly turn to Chef and Puppet for open source cloud automation and orchestration. But other options, such as TOSCA, are also worth exploring.

  • How Open Source Is Becoming the Core of All Software

    This panel discussion, recorded at this year’s OSCON in Austin, Texas, with two Cisco open source folks and a Capital One person is fascinating. Learn about how enterprises are acknowledging their use of OSS and taking greater responsibility for contributing back to it. Learn how people are more often using GitHub contributions as their resume. Learn how the open model allows companies to iterate faster in a rapidly changing world. If open source is becoming the default methodology, how is this changing mindsets within the enterprise?

  • Events

    • Submit presentations for Seattle GNU/Linux Conference

      Proposals for talks at the Seattle GNU Linux Conference are due by August 1st. SeaGL is a grassroots technical conference dedicated to spreading awareness and knowledge about the GNU/Linux community and free/libre/open-source software/hardware. Our goal for SeaGL is to produce an event which is as enjoyable and informative for those who spend their days maintaining hundreds of servers as it is for a student who has only just started exploring technology options. SeaGL welcomes speakers of all backgrounds and levels of experience—even if you’ve never spoken at a technical conference. If you’re excited about GNU/Linux technologies or free and open source software, we want to hear your ideas.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle v. Google Not Over Yet: Oracle Seeks Another New Trial While Google Seeks Sanctions On Oracle’s Lawyers

      Basically, Oracle is continuing to falsely pretend that fair use only applies to non-commercial use (it doesn’t), and that creating something new with an API isn’t transformative unless it’s like artwork or something (this is wrong). Oracle’s interpretation of fair use is not supported by the history or case law of fair use, and it would be shocking to see the court accept it here.

      Meanwhile, on the flip side, Google is looking to punish Oracle’s lawyers and asking for sanctions against them for revealing in open court sensitive information that had been sealed by the court.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • Errata and patches released!

      Now would be a good time to check http://www.openbsd.org/errata59.html as a number of patches related to reliability and security have been released as follows.

      This appears to be in response to fuzz testing as documented further in this mailing list archive: http://marc.info/?l=oss-security&m=146853062403622&w=2

      Tim Newsham and Jesse Hertz of NCC Group appear to have done most of the research related to these discoveries so far, and I know at least one of them has had patches committed to the OpenBSD project in the past, so it is nice to see continual collaboration from professional researchers contributing back to project!

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Notes from the fourth RISC-V workshop

        The lowRISC project, which is an effort to develop a fully open-source, Linux-powered system-on-chip based on the RISC-V architecture, has published notes from the fourth RISC-V workshop.

      • New Journal Will Focus on Open Source Hardware for Science

        Mention the term open source to most people, and they’ll immediately think of community-driven software, but open source hardware concepts have been around for some time, and there is even an official Open Source Hardware (OSHW) definition that can be referred to here. Open Source Hardware refers to machines, devices, or other physical things whose design has been released to the public for modification and distribution.

        Now, to usher in more scientific hardware to the open source fold, and to reward scientists that create it, Elsevier, has launched a new open access journal: HardwareX.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The L.E.D. Quandary: Why There’s No Such Thing as “Built to Last”

      The light bulb that has brightened the fire-department garage in Livermore, California, for the past hundred and fifteen years will not burn out. Instead, it will “expire.” When it does, it certainly won’t be thrown out. It will be “laid to rest.”

      “You have to use the correct terminology,” Tom Bramell, a retired deputy fire chief who has become the Livermore light’s leading historian, told me. The bulb has been on almost continuously since 1901, he said; in 2015, it surpassed a million hours in service, making it, according to Guinness World Records, the longest-burning in the world.

    • For 90 years, lightbulbs were designed to burn out. Now that’s coming to LED bulbs.

      In 1924, representatives of the world’s leading lightbulb manufacturers formed Phoebus, a cartel that fixed the average life of an incandescent bulb at 1,000 hours, ensuring that people would have to regularly buy bulbs and keep the manufacturers in business.

      But hardware store LED bulbs have a typical duty-cycle of 25,000 hours — meaning that the average American household will only have to buy new bulbs ever 42 years or so.

      The lighting industry is panicked about “socket saturation,” when all household bulbs have been replaced with long-lasting LED bulbs. There’s signs that they’re moving to limit the longevity of LED bulbs, albeit without the grossly illegal cartels of the Phoebus era. Philipps is seling $5 LED bulbs that have a 10,000 hour duty-cycle. Many no-name Chinese LED bulbs are so shoddy that they’re sold by the kilo, and buyers are left to sort the totally defective (ranging from bulbs that don’t work at all to bulbs that give people electrical shocks) from the marginally usable ones.

    • Creationist Ken Ham Offers Public Schools a Massive Discount to Bring Kids to His Ark Museum
    • What a decline of biodiversity below ‘safe’ threshold means for Earth

      About 58 percent of land on earth has dropped below the biodiversity safe limit, due largely to human land use practices, says a new study published Thursday in Science.

      The study, conducted by Tim Newbold, a post-doctoral scientist and the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London, aimed to analyze the level of biodiversity on the planet, but its impacts reach further than ecology, affecting food production, personal well-being, and the money that ties it all together.

    • Is There Really Such Thing as a ‘Safe’ Limit for Biodiversity Loss?

      Across an estimated 58 percent of the planet’s land surface, biodiversity—the rich variety of species that inhabit a given environment—has dropped below what scientists consider “safe” levels.

      That doesn’t just spell trouble for the multitude of plant and animal species that are vanishing. It will be disastrous for us humans, too.

      But there are a lot of big questions around whether there’s even such thing as a “safe” level for species loss to begin with, and where it should be set. Isn’t any species loss too much?

      “Biodiversity is essential for human well-being,” landscape ecologist Tom Oliver of the University of Reading, who wrote a commentary that accompanies the new study (both are published in Science), told me. Take, for example, the species we rely on to pollinate our food crops, he pointed out: Colony collapse disorder has been a major concern for years now, as bees die off.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Orphan Drugs Finding Home In Markets: Could Be 20% Of All Sales By 2020

      Worldwide sales for orphan drugs are forecast to reach $178 billion by 2020, according to a recent industry report. Moreover, the orphan drug market is expected to grow almost 12 percent per year, a level the broader pharmaceutical market “could only dream about” with its expected annual growth of 5.9 percent, according to Lisa Urquhart, editor of EvaluatePharma Vantage.

    • Arizona: If at First You Don’t Succeed (at Interfering With Women’s Health Care) Try, Try, and Try Again.

      It seems that Arizona is running out of ideas of how to interfere with women’s health, because lawmakers have taken to passing old laws that have already been struck down by the courts. This time, they’re trying to prevent Medicaid patients from obtaining reproductive health care, including pregnancy care, contraceptives, and cancer screenings from their chosen physician.

      Arizona already tried to do this in 2012. We sued in federal court, and won. Now that Arizona is trying again to deprive low-income women access to critical health care, we’re back in court.

    • First female-to-male Zika transmission via sex reported in New York City

      New York City’s health department on Friday reported the first female-to-male transmission of the Zika virus, which is most typically spread by the bite of an infected mosquito.

      The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the report is the first documented case of sexual transmission of Zika from a woman to her male sex partner.

    • GMOs, Greenpeace and Nobel Laureates

      The signatories allege that GMO ‘golden rice’, which supposedly would save millions of people in Asia from vitamin A deficiency, has not been used because of the opposition of groups like Greenpeace. Therefore, according to the open letter’s logic, these activists are responsible for perpetuating world hunger. “How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a crime against humanity?”, ask the signers rhetorically.

      [...]

      Professor Stone is no rookie latecomer who has just arrived on the scene. Since 2013 he directs a Templeton Foundation-funded study on rice in the Philippines. In his research he compares ‘golden rice’ with other rice varieties developed and planted in the Philippines, including industrial ‘green revolution’ varieties as well as traditional heirloom varieties from the mountains of Luzon island.

      Neither is he opposed to GMO’s. “Golden Rice was a promising idea backed by good intentions… In contrast to anti-GMO activists, I argued that it deserved a chance to succeed. But if we are actually interested in the welfare of poor children — instead of just fighting over GMOs — then we have to make unbiased assessments of possible solutions. The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

      We still want to know where the wise Nobel laureates got the idea that Greenpeace is holding back the ‘golden rice’.

    • One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana

      There’s a body of research showing that painkiller abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. But that’s always been just an assumption.

      Now a new study, released in the journal Health Affairs, validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to falling overdoses. Ashley and W. David Bradford, a daughter-father pair of researchers at the University of Georgia, scoured the database of all prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013.

      They found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication.

  • Security

    • Ubuntu Forums Get Breached, 2 Million Users/Emails/IPs [Ed: Idiots at Canonical used proprietary software for forums]

      Through an SQL injection vulnerability, the Ubuntu Forums were penetrated, as disclosed this morning by Canonical.

    • Canonical Patches Security Issue on Ubuntu Forums, Passwords Weren’t Compromised

      It would appear that, on the day of July 14, 2016, the Ubuntu Forums were compromised by someone who managed to get past the security measures implemented by Canonical and access the forum’s database.

    • Here’s another really great reason to never touch Linux
    • Ubuntu Forums security breach
    • Ubuntu Linux forums hacked!
    • Ubuntu Forums Hacked, But Passwords Were Not Compromised
    • Ubuntu Forums hack exposes two million users {Ed: At Canonical vBulletin forum software (proprietary) was already cracked before. But they learned no lessons and continued to use it.]
    • Ubuntu Forums Hacked, 2 Million Users’ Details Stolen
    • Ubuntu Forums Suffer Data breach; Credit Goes to SQL Flaw
    • Friday’s security updates
    • Room for Application Security Improvement

      Using open source components is a common software development process; just how common, however, may come as a surprise — even a shock — to some. The average organization uses 229,000 open source components a year, found research by Sonatype, a provider of software development lifecycle solutions that manages a Central Repository of these components for the Java development community.

      There were 31 billion requests for downloads from the repository in 2015, up from 17 billion in 2014, according to Sonatype.

      The number “blows people’s minds,” said Derek Weeks, a VP and DevOps advocate at Sonatype. “The perspective of the application security professional or DevOps security professional or open source governance professional is, ‘This really changes the game. If it were 100, I could control that, but if it is 200,000 the world has changed.”

    • Why We Should Be a Little Paranoid About Hackers Messing With Robot Surgeons

      A few weeks ago, my colleague Victoria Turk sat down in a surgical chair, slid her fingers into something that looked like pliers, wore a pair of 3D glasses, and tried to control a robotic surgeon remotely.

      The test went smoothly—until a researcher performed a basic hacking attack on the link connecting the haptic interface device that simulated the sense of touch, and the actual robotic arms performing the fake surgery.

      This was just a harmless, controlled demonstration, but it gave us a glimpse of the future. Using robots to carry out surgeries or high-risk operations in places where it’s not safe for human doctors or technicians will give medical professionals the ability to save lives and not risk their own. But it will also add a new type of risk: what if a hacker takes control of the robot instead of the operator?

      The biggest vulnerability, as Turk discovered, is the link between the human and the robot. Researchers who are studying the cybersecurity risks of using robot surgeons believe that in a real-world scenarios, the machines will likely use the same networks we use to check Facebook or play Pokémon Go.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Russia Welcomes Boris Johnson as Britain’s New Foreign Secretary

      Russia has welcomed the British government reshuffle, expressing hope for a rekindling of relations with the new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

      Russia’s Foreign Ministry sent a letter to Johnson welcoming him to his new office, while spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced that Moscow was not upset to see Johnson’s predecessor leave, state news agency Itar-Tass reported on Thursday.

    • After Nice, Don’t Give ISIS What It’s Asking For

      Not much is yet known about Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old man French police say is responsible for a horrific act of mass murder last night in the southern city of Nice. In the wake of the killings, French President Francois Hollande has denounced the attack as “Islamist terrorism” linked to the militant group the Islamic State. Supporters of ISIS online have echoed these statements, claiming responsibility for the attack as another blow against its enemies in Western Europe.

      While the motive for the attack is still under investigation, it is worth examining why the Islamic State is so eager to claim such incidents as its own. On the surface, ramming a truck into a crowd of people gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks seems like an act of pure nihilism. No military target was hit. Initial reports suggest that the killings may lead to French attacks on ISIS’s already-diminishing territories in Iraq and Syria. And French Muslims, many of whom were reportedly killed in the attack, will likely face security crackdowns and popular backlash from a public angry and fearful in the wake of another incomprehensible act of mass murder.

      But the Islamic State’s statements and history show that such an outcome is exactly what it seeks. In the February 2015 issue of its online magazine Dabiq, the group called for acts of violence in the West that would “[eliminate] the grayzone” by sowing division and creating an insoluble conflict in Western societies between Muslims and non-Muslims. Such a conflict would force Muslims living in the West to “either apostatize … or [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens.”

      This strategy of using violence to force divisions in society mimics the group’s tactics in Iraq, where it used provocative attacks against the Shiite population to deliberately trigger a sectarian conflict, one that continues to rage to this day.

    • Violence Haunts South Sudan as Civil War Flares

      The parched field in the town of Leer, South Sudan, was covered in a carpet of dried grass. Nearby was a sheet of corrugated metal — a roof to a home that, like most in this town, was now in ruins. Lying in the field were scattered clothes: a desert camouflage shirt in the pattern the U.S. military calls “chocolate chip,” a blue T-shirt that read “Bird Game” with characters resembling those of the video game Angry Birds.

    • Turkey coup: Erdogan government could restore death penalty, deputy leader warns

      “We will put forward a motion, which will demand the execution of those who have been involved in the coup attempt,” Mr Müezzinoğlu wrote on Twitter.

      Following his comments, #Idamistiyorum (“I want death penalty”) has become the top trend on Twitter in Turkey. The hashtag has been used more than 23,000 times.

    • Turkey Troops Say They Seize Power; Crowds Answer President Erdogan Call To Defy Them

      Gunfire and explosions rocked both the main city Istanbul and capital Ankara in a chaotic night, but by the early hours of Saturday there were indications that the coup was crumbling.

      If successful, the overthrow of Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003, would mark one of the biggest shifts in the Middle East in years, transforming one of the most important US allies while war rages on its border. If it fails, the coup attempt could still destabilise a pivotal country in the region.

    • Ankara parliament building ‘bombed from air’ – state agency

      Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency has reported that bombs or shells hit the Turkish parliament building in the capital, Ankara. At least 12 people have been reportedly injured.

    • Turkish President Returns to Istanbul in Sign Military Coup Is Faltering

      A military coup attempt plunged Turkey into a long night of violence and intrigue on Friday, threatening its embattled president, leaving dozens dead and injecting new instability into a crucial NATO member and American ally in the chaotic Middle East.

      The coup attempt was followed hours later by an equally dramatic public appearance by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose whereabouts had been unknown for hours after the plotters claimed to have taken control. Flying into Istanbul Ataturk Airport from an undisclosed location early Saturday, Mr. Erdogan signaled that the coup was failing.

    • The Latest: Iran says attempted Turkey coup ‘doomed to fail’

      Iran says the attempted military coup in Turkey was “doomed to fail.”

      Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as praising the “brave defense by the people of Turkey of their democracy and elected government.”

    • Turkey coup: President Erdogan denounces ‘treason’ of attempt by military to take control of country

      An extraordinary day of violence and tension has unfolded in Europe with an attempted military coup taking place in Turkey while France was still in a state of shock after a terrorist atrocity which claimed the lives of 84 people.

      Just hours after the Turkish government had expressed sympathy over the killings in Nice it was facing a struggle for survival after a faction of the armed forces declared a takeover and looked to impose martial law.

    • EXCLUSIVE: France ‘Suppressed Reports of Gruesome Torture’ at Bataclan Massacre

      According to this testimony, Wahhabist killers reportedly gouged out eyes, castrated victims, and shoved their testicles in their mouths. They may also have disemboweled some poor souls. Women were reportedly stabbed in the genitals – and the torture was, victims told police, filmed for Daesh or Islamic State propaganda. For that reason, medics did not release the bodies of torture victims to the families, investigators said.

      But prosecutors at the hearing claimed these reports of torture were “a rumor” on the grounds that sharp knives were not found at the scene. They also claimed that maybe shrapnel had caused the injuries.

    • Whither Turkey?

      A friend of the blog passes on these comments: I have just been watching the “Breaking News” about the military coup in Turkey and have been appalled at the historical ignorance of what all of these talking heads, Wolf Blitzer, et al are telling the American people.

    • Attempted Coup in Turkey Must Be Denounced

      There should be no equivocation. The answer to Turkey’s problems is not a military coup against an elected government and a return to decades of military dictatorship. The Turkish people pouring out on the streets to resist the military are not only Erdogan supporters, and they are inspiring in their courage.

    • Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002

      After years of political wrangling, the suppressed section of a 2002 congressional report that detailed possible ties between the Saudi government and the 9/11 terrorist attacks was released today. The classified documents have been the source of heated speculation for years, as they highlighted alleged links between high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family and the 9/11 hijackers.

      Many political figures who had previously seen the report led the charge calling for its release, including former Sen. Bob Graham, who said the 28 pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia,” and Minnesota Congressman Rick Nolan, who said the pages “confirm that much of the rhetoric preceding the U.S. attack on Iraq was terribly wrong.”

      The suppressed pages, redacted in parts, detail circumstantial evidence of ties among Saudi government officials, intelligence agents, and several of the hijackers.

      “While in the United States, some of the September 11th hijackers were in contact with or received assistance from, individuals who may be connected with the Saudi government,” reads the report, which added that FBI sources believed at least two of those individuals were Saudi intelligence agents.

      The report also mentions that numbers found in the phonebook of Abu Zubaydah, a detainee currently held in Guantánamo, could be traced to a company in Denver, Colorado, connected to former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

      One of the most notable figures mentioned is Omar al-Bayoumi, alleged by the report to have likely been a Saudi intelligence agent. Al-Bayoumi was in close contact with hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, providing them financial assistance during their time in the United States and even helping them find an apartment. Bayoumi in turn is believed to have been on the payroll of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and was regularly in receipt of large lump sums of money from the Saudi Ministry of Finance and other undisclosed arms of the government.

    • FBI Established Saudi Task Force Just before Joint Inquiry Release

      The pages are actually more damning than I expected. It lays out many damning details we already knew of: including that Bandar bin Sultan’s wife was providing money to one of the suspect Saudi intelligence people, several Saudi apparent agents provided support for the hijackers, and an apparent dry run for the attack was conducted by someone paid by the Saudis.

      One really damning detail that I didn’t know, however (or had forgotten if covered in Bob Graham’s book), is that it wasn’t until the Joint Inquiry focused on the Saudis that FBI established task force to look into Saudi Arabia’s role in the attack.

    • In 9/11 Document, View of a Saudi Effort to Thwart U.S. Action on Al Qaeda

      The long-classified document detailing possible connections between the government of Saudi Arabia and the Sept. 11 terrorist plot released on Friday is a wide-ranging catalog of meetings and suspicious coincidences.

      It details contacts between Saudi officials and some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, checks from Saudi royals to operatives in contact with the hijackers and the discovery of a telephone number in a Qaeda militant’s phone book that was traced to a corporation managing an Aspen, Colo., home of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

      The document, 28 pages of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is also an unflattering portrayal of the kingdom’s efforts to thwart American attempts to combat Al Qaeda in the years before the attacks.

      But it is also a frustrating time capsule, completed in late 2002 and kept secret for nearly 14 years out of concern that it might fray diplomatic relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Subsequent investigations into the terror attacks pursued the leads described in the document and found that many had no basis in fact. But the mythology surrounding the document grew with each year it remained classified.

    • US Congress Finally Releases ’28 Pages’ of 9/11 Report

      The U.S. Congress on Friday released the previously classified 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report on potential Saudi government ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.

      [...]

      The U.S. Congress on Friday released the previously classified 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report on potential Saudi government ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.

      The pages were posted (pdf) on the House Intelligence Committee’s website.

      The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti describes the document—secret for 13 years—as “a wide-ranging catalog of alleged links between Saudi officials and Qaeda operatives, from contacts that Saudi operatives in Southern California had with the hijackers to a telephone number found on the first Qaeda prisoner in C.I.A. custody that the F.B.I. traced to a corporation managing a Colorado home of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.”

      Former Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry and had called for the release of the pages, told CNN, “I think of this almost as the 28 pages are sort of the cork in the wine bottle. And once it’s out, hopefully the rest of the wine itself will start to pour out.”

      “Would the U.S. government have kept information that was just speculation away from American people for 14 years if somebody didn’t think it was going to make a difference?” he added.

      White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, however, said, “This information does not change the assessment of the U.S. government that there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaeda.”

      House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said, “it’s important to note that this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the intelligence community.”

    • What Really Happened in Syria

      But it is especially urgent with regard to Syria, a great bleeding wound on the edge of Europe that, over the last five years, has seen as many as 470,000 deaths, generated some 4.8 million refugees, and sent out waves of terrorism that are destabilizing politics from Eastern Europe to the U.S. Not since Yugoslavia has a country collapsed more completely or calamitously.

    • Britain’s Scramble for Africa: The New Colonialism

      Africa is facing a new and devastating colonial invasion driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of the continent, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. That’s the message from a damning new report from War On Want ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’ that highlights the role of the British government in aiding and abetting the process.

      Written and researched by Mark Curtis, the report reveals the degree to which British companies now control Africa’s key mineral resources, notably gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, oil, gas and coal. It documents how 101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) – most of them British – have mining operations in 37 sub-Saharan African countries and collectively control over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources.

    • As Bastille Day Attack in France Kills 84, Is the War on Terror a “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”?

      More than 84 people are dead in Nice, France, after an attack on a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the city in the French Riviera. Witnesses said a man in a large truck deliberately drove into a massive crowd watching a fireworks celebration. The truck continued driving a mile, mowing down people in the crowd. No group has taken responsibility for the attack. French media have identified the driver of the truck as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a French man of Tunisian descent who lived in Nice. Earlier today, French President François Hollande announced he would extend the state of emergency put in place after the Paris attacks which killed 130 people eight months ago. We go to France to speak with Palestinian-American playwright Ismail Khalidi in Nice and French human rights and civil liberties activist Yasser Louati in Paris.

    • Paramilitaries Continue Rampage in Colombia: the Case of El Bagre, Antioquia

      Uribe’s known paramilitary ties did not prevent the U.S. from arming his military to the teeth, nor did they prevent President George W. Bush from considering Uribe his closest friend in the region and even awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    • Stop Blaming Refugees For The Attacks In Nice

      Thursday evening as scores of people celebrated the 14th of July in Nice, France, a truck driver swerved into the crowd. At least 84 people were killed as a result and many more were injured. While certain political figures were quick to jump on blaming refugees, the attacker was identified by local media as a French resident.

      After attacks in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, and Orlando, many political figures have used the opportunity to turn on refugees. But in each of these instances the attacker or attackers were often locals.

      In the attacks in Paris in November 2015, police identified Salah Abdeslam, Brahim Abdeslam, Omar Ismail Mostefai, Chakib Akrouh, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Samy Amimour, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, and Bilal Hadfi. All these men were French or Belgian citizens and were born in one of the two countries. While some of them are thought to have radicalized and then subsequently traveled to Syria, all had spent the majority of their lives in Europe.

    • [A bit older:] Saudi-funded mosque opens in Nice after long struggle

      A Saudi-funded mosque in Nice opened its doors for the first time Saturday, after a 15-year tussle with the local town hall.

      The Nicois En-nour Institute mosque received authorisation to open early Saturday from the local prefect, substituting for town mayor Philippe Pradal, who recently took over from Christian Estrosi.

      Estrosi was implacably opposed to the construction of the mosque and in April had secured the green light to sue the French state in a bid to block its opening in the southern city.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Oil Spills Are Actually Good For Birds, Fish, And The Economy According To The Oil Industry

      “When a spill occurs, new economic activity occurs to clean-up contaminated areas, remediate affected properties, and supply equipment for cleanup activities,” a witness testified before a committee in Vancouver, WA.

    • New Rules Could Help Big Oil Escape Scrutiny at Fossil Fuel Auctions

      Lawmakers are attempting to make it even easier for fossil fuel companies to bid on public land auctions without facing disapproval from climate advocates, a move that green groups say buckles to corporate interests.

      Earlier this week, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources approved a bill that would require lease sales for offshore drilling to be held online rather than in person, as the Obama administration gears up to do the same with an onshore public land auction originally slated for a sell-off in Washington, D.C.

      All this despite the fact that climate advocates have been imploring the White House to end such leases altogether to help curtail rising greenhouse gases and fulfill its pledges as mandated by the Paris agreement.

    • Seems Like Fox News Didn’t Like the Joke About Its Crappy Climate Coverage

      “We want to call out the nefarious role Fox News plays by keeping its audience confused about the climate threat to the country and world.”

    • FEC fines Koch groups for illegal dark money

      The Federal Election Commission (FEC) announced today that it will fine three dark money groups a total of $233,000 for concealing the sources of funds spent on political ads in 2010.

      Three groups — the American Future Fund, 60 Plus Association and Americans for Job Security — received money from the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), now American Encore. CPPR is linked to the Koch brothers — it was founded by Sean Noble, who was, at the time, central to the Kochs’ dark money efforts. As head of CPPR, he “handed out almost $137 million in 2012 alone — all of it so-called dark money from unnamed donors.” The American Future Fund spent millions during the Republican presidential primary this year to oppose Donald Trump and John Kasich. In 2013, CPPR admitted to failing to properly disclose money spent on a California ballot proposition that year.

  • Finance

    • EU-US negotiators falter on TTIP progress, destabilised by Brexit

      EU and US negotiators said on Friday (15 July) that they still needed to overcome large differences for a transatlantic free trade deal to be sealed this year, and factor in the setback of Brexit, as the UK is one of the United States’ biggest export markets.

      The two sides are trying to agree on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which supporters say could boost each economy by some €90 billion at a time when growth in China and emerging markets is slowing.

    • Greenpeace: time to hit the stop button on TTIP

      An EU opinion poll released in June shows that 67 per cent of Europeans want to see more EU action on environmental protection – yet trade deals such as TTIP, and CETA (an EU-Canada trade deal) are set to undermine European environmental, health and labour protections.

      The EU TTIP energy and climate change chapters released Thursday are disconnected from the urgency of climate change and commitments made at the Paris climate summit. The energy chapter’s main aim is to free up the trade in fossil fuels, in particular the import of high carbon US shale gas into the EU, while the climate change chapter weakens the EU’s position on the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies by carving out significant loopholes.

    • TTIP Negotiators Need Many More Nights To Negotiate – And Are Planning Just That
    • EU-US negotiators falter to make decisive progress on TTIP, destabilised by Brexit

      EU and U.S. negotiators said on Friday (15 July) that they still needed to overcome large differences for a transatlantic free trade deal to be sealed this year, and factor in the setback of Brexit, as the UK is one of the United States’ biggest export markets.

      The two sides are trying to agree on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which supporters say could boost each economy by some €90 billion at a time when growth in China and emerging markets is slowing.

    • Turkey Exchange-Traded Fund Drops Amid Military Uprising

      This chart puts Friday’s plunge of the Turkish lira, amid a possible military coup, into historical perspective. It’s the biggest one-day move since the financial crisis in 2008.

    • Austerity Neoliberalism: a new discursive formation

      Austerity does not necessarily have to be neoliberal and neoliberalism does not have any necessary connection to austerity. But taken together they represent a toxic combination, one that attacks us body and soul.

    • In Finance, Even Business as Usual Comes at Too High a Price

      A healthy financial system is crucial to a stable and productive market economy. But after decades of deregulation, the US financial system has turned into a highly speculative system that has failed spectacularly at doing its job. My new report, “Overcharged: The High Cost of High Finance,” written with Juan Montecino and published by the Roosevelt Institute, describes in detail the massive costs of this failed financial system.

      The evidence of overcharging is all around us. The most obvious, of course, is the catastrophic financial crisis of 2007-2008 that wiped away $16 trillion — 24 percent of household net wealth, led to more than 5.5 million home foreclosures, and caused skyrocketing, hope-crushing unemployment rates. When the government picked up the pieces and committed more than $20 trillion of taxpayers’ money to bail out the largest financial institutions, millions of Americans were left high and dry, angry and frustrated.

    • Uber Hired a CIA-linked Intelligence Firm to Secretly Investigate Legal Opponents

      In December 2015, Andrew Schmidt filed a lawsuit against Uber, alleging that the the ride-sharing company was in violation of anti-trust laws as a result of its surge pricing policies. The lawsuit specifically named Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

      Shortly after the suit was filed, many of Schmidt’s associates began receiving phone calls inquiring about Schmidt’s personal life. It turns out that these calls were made by a third-party investigator hired by Uber to obtain information about Schmidt and his client, Spencer Meyer.

      That company is an intelligence firm called Ergo, which was founded in 2006 by R.P. Eddy, the former director of counterterrorism at the White House National Security Council.

    • Are tourists being caught out by Sweden’s old bank notes?

      June 30th was the last day on which Sweden’s old 20, 50 and 1,000 kronor notes could be used after the country’s central bank (Riksbanken) decided to phase them out. One reason for the withdrawal is the need to add modern protection against counterfeiting.

      But The Local has been told that exchange services in foreign countries may still be handing out the old notes to their customers.

      “I have had friends visiting this month from Ukraine, Mexico and Croatia. All had exchanged their notes in their home country, but when they got here those notes weren’t valid anymore,” J Graigory, an American living in Stockholm explained.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Ignorance and indifference: Delving deep into the Clinton e-mail saga

      Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, is facing a massive backlash after an FBI investigation found her to have been “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information. The scandal surrounding her use of a private e-mail server has only grown since the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue criminal charges. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe she should have been indicted, and more recent polls place Clinton in a dead heat with the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Clinton led by a significant margin just weeks ago.

    • Time for Nicola to Pick a Fight

      It is time for straight talking. Philip Hammond stated the plain truth when he said that Scotland could not have a different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK. It is true as a simple technical truth, as I explained. If the UK leaves the EU, the only way for Scotland to remain a member is Independence. Frankly anybody who understands the first thing about the subject knows that and it is actually helpful for Hammond to explain it. I have no doubt that May gave Sturgeon the same message today. By proclaiming commitment to Unionism in the first sentence of her first speech in Number 10, and then immediately coming to Edinburgh, May could not have made her position clearer. Further there is no doubt that Hammond would have cleared his unequivocal statement with May before he made it.

    • Could Donald Trump Block Hillary Clinton’s Campaign From Visiting His Website Via The CFAA?

      In the past few weeks, we’ve written about two troubling rulings in the 9th Circuit appeals court concerning the CFAA, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That law, that was literally written in response to Ronald Reagan being freaked out by the (fictional) movie War Games, was designed to go after hackers and make computer hacking into other people’s computers a crime. The law is woefully outdated and unfortunately vague, with terms like “unauthroized access” and “exceeds authorized access.” For years, many of us have been pushing for Congress to reform the law to make it not quite so broad, because in its current setup it’s the law the DOJ relies on when all else fails. That’s why the DOJ loves it. If you did something it doesn’t like on a computer, it’ll try to use the CFAA against you.

    • Anti-Women, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-LGBTQ Crusader: Trump Finds ‘Perfect Match’ in Pence for VP

      “Look, I don’t know that [climate change] is a resolved issue in science today.”—Gov. Mike Pence, 2014

    • 11 Scary Things You Need To Know About Trump’s VP, Mike Pence

      A lot of people anticipated that Donald Trump would choose a running mate that could help him balance out the ticket, but that does not appear to be the case. Though he won’t officially announce his VP pick until Friday, multiple sources have confirmed that the presumptive Republican nominee will select Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

      Choosing Pence is pretty much Trump’s way of doubling down on the intolerance and far-right ideology that has characterized his campaign thus far.

    • What Readers Need to Know about Noam Chomsky’s Position on Lesser-Evil Voting

      For starters, Chomsky has long held that the US political system has intentionally offered weak candidates close in ideology, while presenting the illusion of choice, and both wings are dedicated to the business class and business run society. This is why, Chomsky states, we have an extraordinarily violent labor history.

      I also think the premise that Chomsky advocates less than evil voting is incorrect. Chomsky, in select circumstances does not advocate less than evil voting, he simply suggests, but never insists, on strategic voting. Simply put, Chomsky holds that if you live in a state that is safe for Democrats, you have the options of: voting for the Green Party, not voting, but most importantly perhaps, carrying on with democratic action and organizing, which Chomsky holds to be the more significant part of the political process. The process is entirely independent of voting and since voting should occupy about five minutes of our time, we need to keep up the important work.

    • Centrists must embrace anti-elitism or face extinction.

      Instead of aping chauvinism, centrists must respond imaginatively to the anti-political sentiment behind Brexit and the rise of far right parties.

    • The RNC Desperately Needs $6 Million Because Dozens Of Companies Have Withdrawn Donations

      The host committee is asking Sheldon Adelson to make up the deficit.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Dutchman jailed for 30 days for ‘insulting’ the king

      A court in the Netherlands has sentenced a man to 30 days in jail for insulting the king on Facebook.

      The 44-year-old Dutchman “intentionally insulted” King Willem-Alexander, accusing him of being a murderer, thief and rapist, the Dutch judiciary said.

      He was convicted of breaking seldom-used royal defamation laws.

      A Dutch political party has proposed scrapping the laws and the king has pledged to accept the outcome of any debate on the issue.

    • Turkey: Journalists’ association presents award to press freedom groups

      Index on Censorship is delighted to be one of the nine groups honoured by the Turkish Journalists Association (TGC) with this year’s Press Freedom Prize.

      TGC announced on Wednesday that it was awarding a coalition of international press freedom organisations with the award “for the unique solidarity unparalleled in the past, it showed against the assaults on press freedom in Turkey, for its efforts to bring to international platforms the violation of rights and for instilling in their Turkish colleagues the feeling that they are not alone.”

    • Turkey: Charges against five journalists must be dropped

      Charges of acquiring and divulging state secrets, membership of, and administration of a terrorist organisation brought against five journalists, including four former members of Taraf newspaper’s editorial and investigative staff, must be dropped and one of the accused, Mehmet Baransu, must be released immediately and unconditionally, PEN International, English PEN, German PEN, Swedish PEN, PEN America, ARTICLE 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists, the Ethical Journalism Network, IFEX, Index on Censorship, the International Federation of Journalists, Global Editors Network and Reporters Without Borders said in a joint statement today.

      ‘These charges are a clear infringement of the right to free expression and a free press in Turkey and must be dropped, and Baransu released. It’s yet another example of abuses by the Turkish authorities of the problematic Anti-Terror law to silence investigative journalists. The law must be reformed without delay,‘ said Carles Torner, Executive Director of PEN International.

    • Gordon Campbell on the censorship in South Africa

      Clearly, New Zealand is in no position to criticise the performance of any other country’s state broadcaster. (On Tuesday night, state broadcaster TV ONE lead its 6 o’clock news bulletin with a long report on the Pokemon Go game. Go figure. ) Even so, South Africa’s state broadcaster is in a real mess.

    • South African bishops call for an end to media censorship crisis

      South Africa’s bishops have called on the country’s parliament to intervene in a censorship crisis regarding the reporting of violent protests ahead of elections next month.

    • #SABC: R2K Campaign takes anti-censorship protest to Luthuli House

      The Right2Know Campaign has taken its protest against censorship at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to Luthuli House where members are handing over a memorandum calling for the removal of COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

    • ANC needs to stop the rot at SABC: R2K

      Civil right groups the Right2Know campaign and SOS Coalition on Friday afternoon held a protest outside the African National Congress’s (ANC) headquarters Luthuli House demanding that the party take direct action about the alleged censorship at the SABC.

      This comes after the SABC’s (South African Broadcasting Corporation) editorial decision to not air images of destructive protests as the broadcaster believes they perpetuate violence in communities.

    • Right2Know, ANC meet at Luthuli House

      The Right2Know (R2K) campaign on Friday vowed to continue protesting until SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng left the broadcaster.

      The organisation met African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe at Luthuli House in Johannesburg during a picket against what it said was the political capture of the SABC.

    • ‘You’ve got two choices: the door or the window’ – Jimi Matthews to SABC staff

      Former SABC acting chief executive officer Jimi Matthews told eight reporters they could choose “the door or the window” if they disagreed with the broadcaster’s new policies, according to court papers.

      The journalists, dubbed the “SABC 8″, filed an urgent application on Friday seeking direct access to the Constitutional Court. They want the SABC’s recent policies declared “unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid”, and the disciplinary charges against them dropped.

    • ‘SABC ruled by a culture of fear and silence’

      The SABC ban on footage of violent protests and crackdown on journalists who questioned it has resulted in a “culture of fear and silence” in the newsroom that effectively prevents the public broadcaster from reporting accurately …

    • Suspended SABC journalists turn to Concourt
    • SABC 8 approach Constitutional Court
    • ‘Our positions are simply intolerable’ – SABC journalists to ConCourt
    • SABC journalists approach Constitutional Court
    • Suspended SABC journalists take their fight to the Constitutional Court
    • Suspended SABC journalists stick to their guns about censorship claims
    • SABC journalists launch ConCourt challenge
    • R2K Campaign vows to continue anti-censorship protests
    • R2K Campaign vows to continue anti-censorship protests
    • ‘SABC shenanigans putting SA to shame’

      The National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) says the shenanigans at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) are putting the whole nation to shame, and especially the black majority.

    • Newt Gingrich: Merely Visiting An ISIS Or Al Qaeda Website Should Be A Felony [Ed: Big Brother wants not only thought control by self-censorship but also criminalisation of reading through mass surveillance]

      Either way, this is idiotic. Merely visiting a website should put you in jail? What if you’re a journalist? Or a politician? Or a researcher trying to understand ISIS? That should be a felony? That’s not how it works. This also assumes, idiotically, that merely reading a website about ISIS will make people side with ISIS. It’s also not, at all, how the law works. Same with the second part about it being a felony to host such content. We’re already seeing lawsuits against social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for hosting accounts from ISIS, and many are voluntarily taking down lots of those accounts. But making it a felony to keep them up? That’s also not how the law works.

    • Turkey Throttled Social Media During Coup In ‘Evolution’ of Internet Censorship

      A coup by “factions” of the Turkish military is underway, and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter are being slowed to a crawl inside the country, according to Dyn Research, a company that tracks the state of the global internet. YouTube is also reportedly down in Turkey, although Dyn could not confirm this.

      An hour after Dyn Research confirmed the throttling, the company confirmed that the throttle was apparently turned off.

      The latest block represents an “evolution” in how Turkey censors its internet, according to Doug Madory, of Dyn Research. While the government previously blocked access to sites at the Domain Name System (DNS) level, users could easily circumvent the blocks by using another DNS service. By throttling traffic to social media sites instead of blocking them wholesale, the effect is the same but much more difficult to get around or even detect, Madory said.

    • As Erdogan Faces Turkish Coup, The Guy Who Once Banned Social Media Sites, Forced To Address Nation Via Facetime & Twitter

      We’ve written a fair amount about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Lately, it’s mostly been about his ridiculously thin skin over insults, and his willingness to take his hurt feelings international. But, even prior to that, he had a history of irrational hating on social media. Back when he was Prime Minister, he tried to blame Twitter for social unrest, even going so far as to order it banned in the country. And, when that failed, he actually sued his own government over the failure to block content on Twitter that he disliked.

      Now, as you hopefully know from news sources other than Techdirt, as I write this, it appears that there’s a military coup going on in Turkey, trying to usurp Erdogan. As part of that effort, all those social media sites that Erdogan himself does not like, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are being blocked. For Erdogan himself, that’s meant that he’s been cut off from his own means of communication to the public, leaving him to use Apple’s Facetime to call a local TV station to put him on the air…

    • New Doc Reveals the Tyranny of Political Correctness and Censorship Culture at Brown
    • College Students Don’t Want to Learn: They Want to Teach You About Identity Politics
    • Artist Frank Cho Leaves DC Comics, Attacks Censorship Of Wonder Woman Covers
    • Cover artist Frank Cho leaves Wonder Woman, accuses writer Greg Rucka of censorship
    • Frank Cho Leaves “Wonder Woman”; Blames Greg Rucka’s ‘Political Agenda’
    • Sorry, there’s no more porn with your Starbucks latte

      Starbucks said Friday it would soon add porn-blocking filters to its public, in-store Wi-Fi. The move follows McDonald’s, which disclosed this week that it had blocked the hamburger-eating public from accessing Wi-Fi-enabled porn at its restaurants.

      “Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn’t involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores,” Starbucks said in a statement. “In the meantime, we reserve the right to stop any behavior that interferes with our customer experience, including what is accessed on our free Wi-Fi.”

      The group Enough is Enough and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation have been putting pressure on companies that provide free Wi-Fi to the public to block porn sites.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Mandatory registration of prepaid cards in Poland

      Mandatory registration of prepaid cards is approaching inexorably in Poland. The need to register a SIM is an implication of the anti-terror law which has just been signed by the Polish President. This means, of course, the end of anonymous SIM cards – all of them will now have to be assigned to a specific customer. When buying such a card revealing personal details, including PESEL number, will be required. Importantly, cards for minors will have to be bought by their parents. Users who have already purchased a prepaid card must report and assign them with the personal information. Cards that are not registered till 1st February 2017 will be deactivated. Such a law is in use in other European markets, e.g. in France, Germany, Spain or Turkey and in the CEE region in Bulgaria, Hungary or Slovakia, which means Poland is not any exception. More detailed information on the registration of SIM cards in Poland is expected to be released on the 25th of July this year.

    • Digital Self-Defense for Journalists: An Introduction

      Digital self-defense is becoming an important part of the journalistic toolkit. Beyond risks to everyone’s digital lives—webcam hacking, email breaches, identity theft—people who work in newsrooms have even more at stake. Newsrooms are some of the biggest targets in the world for state-sponsored digital attacks, as well as more routine threats.

      But security is not about locking everything down. It can feel overwhelming if everything is under threat. Instead it’s about making it harder to access information that is especially important to secure. There is no such thing as “perfect security.” Instead, it’s more about building stronger roadblocks, and making it harder for others to access our data without consent.

    • The Chinese surveillance company safeguarding Australian democracy

      The ballots from the 2016 Australian election are being secured by a company owned by one of China’s most important security firms, with links deep inside the communist state’s vast surveillance system.

      In 2014, the Australian Electoral Commission hired the company SecureMonitoring to provide “Security Alarm System Monitoring for AEC Warehouses and National Office”, for $360,000 over three years.

      The security of AEC warehouses — where millions of ballot papers are stored — as well as the transport of ballot papers to them was the subject of strongly critical review both by former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty in his review of lost Western Australian Senate ballot papers in the 2013 election and the Australian National Audit Office. The AEC had decided to outsource all of its logistics and storage operations on the basis that the private sector wouldn’t do it as badly as they themselves had done it.

    • UK gov says new Home Sec will have powers to ban end-to-end encryption

      During a committee stage debate in the UK’s House of Lords yesterday, the government revealed that the Investigatory Powers Bill will provide any Secretary of State with the ability to force communication service providers (CSPs) to remove or disable end-to-end encryption.

      Earl Howe, a minister of state for defence and deputy leader in the House of Lords, gave the first explicit admission that the new legislation would provide the British government with the ability to force CSPs to “develop and maintain a technical capability to remove encryption that has been applied to communications or data.”

      This power, if applied, would be imposed upon domestic CSPs by the new Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, who was formerly the secretary of state for energy and climate change. Rudd is now only the fifth woman to hold one of the great offices of state in the UK. As she was only appointed on Wednesday evening, she has yet to offer her thoughts on the matter.

    • US Cyber Command readies for first troop deployment [Ed: NSA chief speaks as though he wants war and prepares troops for digital invasion. Having engaged in mass harvesting of passwords (sysadmins are the “target”), this empire now wages digital war. Given the history of the NSA's cracking at lots of friendly nations, these claims of cyberattack as “threat” are similar to police with “stop resisting”.]

      The demand for a cybersecurity component that can be deployed to protect U.S. military infrastructure and combat forces is so strong that Cyber Command will begin deploying its cyber troops even before the complete force is trained and staffed.

      Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the NSA and Cyber Command, said that even though the full complement of 6,200 troops broken in 133 teams has not yet been met, the need for these forces in the field requires that he send in what cyber soldiers he has that are fully trained to meet the threat, according to an NPR report.

    • Software Could Turn Cyberattacks Around, NSA’s Rogers Says

      The National Security Agency is working on possibly developing software to respond to digital acts of war, NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers said this week at MeriTalk’s Federal Forum in Washington, D.C.

    • NSA Boss Says U.S. Cyber Troops Are Nearly Ready
    • US Cyber Mission Force Nearly Ready for Action [Ed: offensively targeting nations]
    • Rogers: National Security Agency Becoming ‘FEMA of the Cyber World’

      Following major cybersecurity breaches nationwide, the National Security Agency is increasingly being called upon to advise both government offices and the private sector, said the head of the United States’ spy agency.

    • NSA wants to hire people that plan to leave for Silicon Valley [Ed: NSA and Silicon Valley: revolving doors?]

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Police Step Up Arrests For ‘Threatening’ Social Media Posts In The Wake Of The Dallas Shooting

      Arresting people for speech is problematic, especially when the content of the communications doesn’t rise to the level of a “true threat.” The Supreme Court’s Elonis decision says this distinction is important. It’s not enough for a person or persons to subjectively view the communication as threatening. It needs to be viewed through the “reasonable person” lens.

      In these cases, perception appears to be everything. In the wake of the Dallas shooting, it’s entirely normal for police officers to view the world a little differently. But this altered view — one that’s likely to be less skewed as time goes on — can’t be allowed to override the First Amendment and deprive individuals of their freedom to speak, not to mention their actual freedom.

      And just as certainly as law enforcement officers and officials are likely to view certain acts of blowhardiness as threatening in the immediate aftermath of a shooting targeting police officers, certain citizens are likely to vent their frustration and anger in particularly stupid ways, but without the intention or ability to carry out the perceived threat. Caution should be exercised on both sides of the interaction. However, those with the power to arrest, detain, and charge citizens for stupidity should be the more cautious of the two parties — simply because they still hold the power, despite recent events.

      Those in power should also take care to carry this out with some sort of consistency, if that’s the route they’re choosing to take. It can’t just be deployed against a bunch of nobodies who mouthed off about their contempt for law enforcement. If this is how it’s going to be handled, those who speak with the same rhetoric in defense of law enforcement need to be held accountable. Former congressional rep Joe Walsh tweeted out that this was now “war on Obama” after the Dallas shootings and yet no one showed up at his door to arrest him for threatening the President. It’s bad enough that power is being misused to silence criticism of law enforcement violence. It’s even worse when this power is deployed in a hypocritical fashion.

    • Federal Revenge Porn Bill Not As Bad As It Could Have Been, Still Probably Unconstitutional

      For the last two and half years or so, my Congressional Representative, Jackie Speier, has insisted that she was just about to introduce a federal law outlawing revenge porn. And then it wouldn’t come. There would be an article saying it was almost ready… and then nothing. Months would go by, another article would appear… and then nothing. Finally, on Thursday, Speier introduced the bill, insisting that the delay was in convincing Silicon Valley companies to sign on to it. Of course, that leaves out the fact that the reason many refused to sign on was because previous iterations of the bill were incredibly problematic and almost certainly unconstitutional. With two and half years to work on it, however, the finally introduced bill, called the Intimate Privacy Protection Act of 2016, or IPPA, is not nearly as bad as it could have been, nor as bad as some of the suggestions passed around by those who “consulted” on drafting the bill.

      But that doesn’t mean the bill isn’t unconstitutional.

      Let’s be clear: revenge porn is horrific. The creeps who put up revenge porn sites deserve to be shamed and mocked. The people who actually upload images to such sites or visit them are complete losers who need to get a life. But there are really important legal issues that come up when you try to outlaw such things, starting with the First Amendment. Yes, yes, as everyone will say, there are some exceptions to the First Amendment (though if you claim that shouting fire in a crowded theater is one of them, you’re going to be mocked as well). But the exceptions to the first First Amendment are very narrowly prescribed by the Supreme Court, and they’re much more narrow than most armchair lawyers believe. Looking over the list, it’s pretty difficult to see how revenge porn fits.

    • Ninth Circuit Panel Backs Away From Dangerous Password Sharing Decision—But Creates Even More Confusion About the CFAA

      Three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have taken a step back from criminalizing password sharing, limiting the dangerous rationale of a decision issued by a panel of three different judges of the same court last week. That’s good, but the new decision leaves so many unanswered questions that it’s clear we need en banc review of both cases—i.e., by 11 judges, not just three—so the court can issue a clear and limited interpretation of the notoriously vague federal hacking statute at the heart of both cases, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

    • Egypt standardizes sermons, tightening grip on mosques

      In a move to tighten state control over religious discourse, Egypt has launched a campaign to force Muslim clerics to read standardized government-written sermons at Friday prayers.

      Minister for Religious Endowments, Mokhtar Gomaa, gave the first-such scripted sermon Friday at Cairo’s Amr ibn al-As Mosque. Reading from a batch of notecards, Gomaa recited a sermon against corruption titled, “Bad money is a lethal poison.”

      “Our prophet has condemned the person who gives a bribe, who receives a bribe, and mediates between the two,” he said. The same sermon had been posted several days earlier on the ministry’s official website.

    • The Turkish Coup Is Live on Facebook [iophk: "for only as many seconds as FB allows it. These are not like the Usenet days"]
    • Turkey military coup: Erdoğan says ‘we will overcome this’ – live updates
    • Alex Vitale on Overpolicing, Cristina Jiménez on Immigration Ruling

      This week on CounterSpin: As the country reels from police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and a sniper’s killing of Dallas police officers, media insist there is “nationwide soul-searching” going on on the problem of racist police brutality.

    • The Great Republican Crack-up

      The disruption that the nomination of Trump represents for the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has been cast as a freakish anomaly, the equivalent of the earthquakes that hit the other side of Ohio in recent years. But just as those earthquakes had a likely explanation — gas and oil fracking in the Utica Shale — so can the crackup of the Republican Party and rise of Trump be traced back to what the geologists call the local site conditions.

      It’s no secret the country has sorted itself into ever-more polarized camps. What is underappreciated is how much that dynamic has played out even within regions, even within a single relatively small metropolitan area like Dayton. The city along the Great Miami River, an hour north of Cincinnati, was once a bastion of moderation and heterodoxy, the sort of place where the spectrum was jumbled with conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans and everything in between. But a combination of trends — among them suburban flight, deindustrialization, the flip of the Solid South to Republicans — changed everything.

    • GOP Lawmaker Pushes For Deporting Everyone On The Terror Watch List

      One day after the horrific terror attack on civilians in Nice, France, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) took to Twitter to call on President Obama to “immediately deport” immigrants on terror watch lists.

      In a series of tweets, Duncan proposed that the president “halt the Syrian refugee resettlement program” and “immediately deport any non-citizens listed on a terror-watch list.” He later added that immigrants would be given a deportation hearing, “thus protecting due process.”

      Duncan also suggested that the United States should be “careful” with “who we’re granting citizenship to and which countries we allow immigration from,” calling for a closer scrutiny of the visa waiver program with the European Union, which allows visa-free travel between United States and European Union residents.

    • Obama blasts Gingrich’s Muslim test as ‘repugnant’

      President Obama on Friday slammed a proposal by Newt Gingrich to “test” American Muslims and deport those who follow Shariah.

      “The very suggestion is repugnant and an affront to everything we stand for as Americans,” Obama said at a reception with diplomats at the White House.

    • Race War Fraud

      Right after police officers were shot in Dallas on July 7th, so many people were trying to explain to me why racism is not the problem. I’ve heard someone proclaim “but Obama is black”. I was surprised to hear someone insisting that “all lives matter” instead of just black lives. I heard people screaming “all violence must stop”. I certainly didn’t hear such an urgent call until the Dallas sniper shooting. And a seemingly constructive argument on racism was met with “don’t be divisive”. And so on and on.

    • Barack Obama Helped Us Peer Into the Racial Divide

      President Obama gave a majestic speech in Dallas, one of the best of his presidency, at once a soaring tribute to slain police officers and an affirmation of peaceful protest. But he was wrong about one thing: On race, sadly, we are as divided as we seem.

      This condition is not due to anything Obama has said or done. He bends so far backward to avoid giving offense, even to those who richly deserve offending, that he must need regular sessions with a chiropractor. The racial divide, which has its roots in lingering claims of white supremacy, has been there all along. It was mostly silent and unacknowledged until the very fact of the Obama presidency cast it in stark and unforgiving light.

      So I am not surprised at recent polls showing that Americans believe race relations are worsening. It is as if a dark corner has been illuminated to reveal the mess that was swept there long ago and willfully ignored.

      I have long believed that the most revolutionary act the first African-American president could ever perform is to go about his official duties for all the world to see. A black man stands to deliver the State of the Union address. A black man toasts foreign leaders at glittering White House dinners. A black family crosses the South Lawn to board the Marine One helicopter and be lifted into the sky.

    • “Follow the Directions of Law Enforcement”

      As of this writing, several hundred people have been arrested in protests against the latest police murders of innocent black men. Increased resistance to state crimes will bring increased repression; this is yet another model used by Israel that the U.S. follows.

      Where will it end? At what point in the future will young black men be able to wear hoodies without the police seeing them as instant targets? When will black men of any age be able to drive their cars through any city street, or stroll along any city boulevard, without fearing for their lives? This writer is not optimistic that it will be any time soon.

    • Filmers of Alton Sterling, Eric Garner killings say police have harassed and detained them

      Hundreds of protesters have been arrested throughout the U.S. in the past week, in demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism.

      The videos of the brutal police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota have reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement.

      But the bystanders who filmed and distributed the videos of the shooting of Alton Sterling say they have been detained and harassed by police for exposing the incident to the world.

      Moreover, the man who filmed the killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black father who died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer two years ago this week, is heading to prison for four years on unrelated charges, after he says he has endured constant police harassment.

      This bystander who recorded the viral video of Garner’s death is the only one connected to the incident who is being locked up; none of the officers involved have faced jail time. While the city’s medical examiner determined Garner’s death to be a homicide, the Staten Island district attorney declined to press charges.

    • There are two prongs in the ongoing attack on liberty and freedoms of opinion, assembly, and expression

      There are two parallel prongs being executed right now to crack down on liberty in an unprecedented fashion: freedoms of assembly, of expression, of speech, and liberty overall. To realize the importance of what’s happening, we need to see both of these prongs.

      The first prong is to introduce wide-ranging exceptions to liberty to “extremist” or “terrorist” anything. If you’re an extremist, you have no rights at all. We’re basically at that point already.

      The second prong is to gradually expand the definition of these public-appeasing rights-eliminating keywords until they include anything and anybody the government doesn’t like. We’re basically at that point already, too.

      Let’s look closer at these one by one:

      The first prong is making exceptions to universal liberty when certain keywords are present. There’s no shortage of “terrorist laws” in the world. Basically none of them make terrorism a worse crime (preparing to cause widespread devastation is already a serious crime in most or all countries); instead, they remove rights to due process for people suspected of such crimes, and frankly, for people in general.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Let’s keep the Internet equal and open for all

      Telecoms providers have not shied away from even the most shady tactics to further their agenda. They even published a “5G Manifesto” that can only be described as blackmail: They threaten not to invest in 5G networks unless net neutrality rules are weakened.

      Instead of rejecting these attempts at blackmail, Commissioner Günther Oettinger is praising the manifesto as “vital support from industry for the EU 5G action plan”.

      The relation between net neutrality and investment in infrastructure is in fact the polar opposite. Premium services with priority lanes and slower speeds for others will not lead to infrastructure improvement – equal access will. Net neutrality creates an incentive for investment in faster broadband connections by denying telecoms the ability to make money from a scarcity of bandwidth.

    • How the internet was invented

      “It had to be future-proof,” Cerf tells me. You couldn’t write the protocol for one point in time, because it would soon become obsolete. The military would keep innovating. They would keep building new networks and new technologies. The protocol had to keep pace: it had to work across “an arbitrarily large number of distinct and potentially non-interoperable packet switched networks,” Cerf says – including ones that hadn’t been invented yet. This feature would make the system not only future-proof, but potentially infinite. If the rules were robust enough, the “ensemble of networks” could grow indefinitely, assimilating any and all digital forms into its sprawling multithreaded mesh.

      Eventually, these rules became the lingua franca of the internet. But first, they needed to be implemented and tweaked and tested – over and over and over again. There was nothing inevitable about the internet getting built. It seemed like a ludicrous idea to many, even among those who were building it. The scale, the ambition – the internet was a skyscraper and nobody had ever seen anything more than a few stories tall. Even with a firehose of cold war military cash behind it, the internet looked like a long shot.

    • Comcast expands $10 low-income Internet plan

      Comcast’s Internet Essentials program that provides $10-per-month Internet service to low-income families has been expanded to make about 1.3 million additional households eligible.

      Comcast created Internet Essentials in order to secure approval of its acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011 and has decided to continue it indefinitely even though the requirement expired in 2014. Comcast says the 10Mbps plan has connected more than 600,000 low-income families since 2011, for a total of 2.4 million adults and children, and provided 47,000 subsidized computers for less than $150 each.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Nintendo Cracks Down on Pokémon Go ‘Piracy’

        Millions of people around the world are totally caught up in the Pokémon Go craze. Interestingly, many of these are playing “pirated” copies of the game. Nintendo is now trying to address this issue by sending takedown requests, hoping to make at least make some pirate sources harder to find. It will be hard to catch ‘em all.

      • Nintendo Cracking Down On Pokemon Go ‘Pirates’ Despite The Game Being Free

        In these past few weeks, the world has become divided into two camps: those who are sick of hearing anything about Nintendo’s new smash mobile hit, Pokemon Go, and those who can’t get enough of it. While the media tags along for the ride and with the app shooting up the charts as the craze takes hold, it’s worth keeping in mind that this is Pokemon and Nintendo we’re talking about, two connected groups with a crazy history of savagely protecting anything to do with their intellectual property.

      • NBC’s ‘Most Live Olympics Ever’ Will Have A One Hour Broadcast Delay For The Opening Ceremony

        It’s Olympics season again. What is normally an expose of how the IOC and the USOC become the biggest IP bullies on the block has had a little spice added to it this year in the form of a host country that by all reports is woefully unprepared for its duties while simultaneously being rocked by a pest-spread disease with the delightful symptom of shrinking the brains of fetuses. And if that doesn’t make you believe that some combination of a god and/or the universe wants the Olympics to cease to be, perhaps the fact that the whole fiasco will be broadcast by NBC will.

        Yes, running in parallel with our posts about IOC bullying, you will find a history of posts about NBC’s strange attempts to turn back the clock on its broadcast of the games. Historically, this has meant limiting the live streaming of most of the events, making it as difficult to find and watch any event as possible, and delaying all kinds of event broadcasts until NBC deems that the public wants to watch them. But have heart, dear friends, for the NBC overlords have listened and have declared that these Rio Olympics will be the “most live Olympics ever.”

      • Torrent pirates beware: NBC has a patent and it’s coming after you
      • Broadcaster NBC patents torrent-tracking technology
      • Bill Introduced To Create Copyright Small Claims Court… Which Copyright Trolls Are Going To Love

        For a while now, some in the copyright community have been pushing for a copyright “small claims court” as an alternative to filing a federal lawsuit over copyright law. It’s true that, especially for small copyright holders, the cost of filing a lawsuit may appear to be rather prohibitive. But it’s not clear that a small claims court is the answer. A few years ago, we wrote about some potential concerns with such an approach, but have also admitted that if set up right, it could have some advantages. But that requires it be set up right.

        Unfortunately, a new bill has been introduced, by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, along with Rep. Tom Marino, to officially set up such a system — and it’s done in a way that looks like it will not be well-designed, and instead will lead to a massive rush of small claims, especially by copyright trolls. The bill is called the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2016, or CASE Act, and… it’s got problems.

        The “good” news, if you can call it that, is that claims that would go before this appointed tribunal, made up of copyright lawyers recommended by the Register of Copyrights and appointed by the Librarian of Congress, would have much lower statutory damages availability than the federal courts. A copyright claim in a federal court has statutory damages up to $150k, for willful infringement. In the small claims system, the maximum statutory damages would be $15k. But, really, that’s just half of today’s official statutory damages — because if there’s no willful infringement, the Copyright Act puts a cap at $30k. In the small claims world, there’s no option to claim willful infringement.

      • Why Is The UK’s Intellectual Property Office Praising National Portrait Gallery’s Copyfraud Claims Over Public Domain Images?

        That’s a tweet from the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) asking how does the UK’s National Portrait Gallery in London “manage the copyright of national treasures like Shakespeare?” My initial response, of course, was “Wait, Shakespeare is in the bloody public domain, you don’t have any copyright to manage!” It seems rather easy to manage “the copyright” of Shakespeare when there is none. But it turns out the link is… even worse. It’s to a blog post on the IPO website eagerly praising the National Portrait Gallery for engaging in out-and-out copyright fraud. You’d think that the Intellectual Property Office would recognize this, but it does not.

      • Treaty For The Blind Comes Into Force… But US Refuses To Ratify Because Publishers Association Hates Any User Rights

        For many, many, many, many years, we’ve followed the rather crazy trials and tribulations of trying to get an international treaty signed to make it easier for the blind to access copyright-covered works (basically requiring countries to allow visually-impaired accessible versions to be reproduced and distributed). This is a treaty that people have tried to get in place for years and years and years, and it was blocked again and again — often by legacy copyright industries who flat out refuse to support any kind of agreement that could be seen as strengthening user rights, which they see (ridiculously, and incorrectly) as chipping away at copyright. Amazingly, despite a last minute push by the MPAA and the Association of American Publishers, an agreement was reached and signed in 2013, called the Marrakesh Agreement. As we noted at the time, we fully expected the legacy copyright industries to refocus their efforts on blocking ratification in the US, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

07.15.16

What If EPO Under Battistelli Gets Broken Beyond Repair Just Like the UPC?

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Not only the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is going down under but also its chief proponent, who might take the Office and the whole Organisation with him to the grave unless his nepotists’ regime gets stopped peacefully (unlike in Turkey right now)

Battistelli digs his own UPC grave

Summary: The latest evidence surrounding the demise of the EPO’s reputation and quality of work, as well as the demise of the system Battistelli forcibly tries to introduce (a race to the bottom)

THE EPO is preparing for the next lobbying event of Battistelli. It will (if he survives this long in the job) cost him millions of Euros. Oh wait, no… he'll have the EPO foot the bill, as usual. What has happened to the EPO? Even the marketing stinks (almost no tweets today and in yesterday’s truly awkward tweet no links were included, just the usual and rather corny stock photography). People keep telling me (privately) that quality of patents nosedived and some people even write about it publicly. This clearly isn’t the EPO I respected and wrote about (sometimes positively) a decade ago. It is rapidly going defunct and if we strive to save the EPO, then we aren’t doing a terribly effective job so far. The deeper Battistelli sinks, the more damage is caused and still he refuses to resign while the Administrative Council fails to do its job and fire him. That’s just how messed up the Office and the whole Organisation became after Battistelli’s (and his circle) coup. “I don’t know,” wrote one person today about whether Battistelli just wants to ruin the Office. “However, I have my suspicions that money may be at the root of all of this.” Remember that Battistelli’s contracts remain secret and information we have about his current salary contradicts what he publicly stated. The Administrative Council’s Chairman is complicit in hiding information about this, so what kind of oversight is this? Even FIFA looks like an institution of integrity compared to this.

“The Administrative Council’s Chairman is complicit in hiding information about this, so what kind of oversight is this?”It might take a while longer to save the EPO (meaning, saving it from the coup d’état), but one thing that won’t be saved is the UPC, at least right here in Britain. This ‘baby’ of Battistelli is being “knifed” (to use the proverb) before it’s even born.

“Following Brexit,” said IP Magazine, “the EPLIT has urged the government to take the necessary steps in ratifying the UPC Agreement” (EPLIT is just a bunch of self-serving parasites and this article, which is behind a paywall, fails to say that EPLIT overlaps Team UPC, i.e. those who stand to benefit from their own antidemocratic creation).

“Even FIFA looks like an institution of integrity compared to this.”To quote the article: “Following the UK’s June ‘Brexit’ vote, the European Patent Litigation Association (EPLIT) has urged the country’s government to take the necessary steps in ratifying the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement ‘as soon as possible’.”

Once again they are showing their true colours and utter disdain for democracy or law for and by the people. This is a theft of democracy; they’re trying to steal democracy in order to increase their profits. They’re not even hiding it anymore.

“A longtime pro-UPC blog finally admits that UPC is in very serious trouble.”Truth be told, the UPC is dying, hence its constructors are rather nervous. They’ve tried to write the law behind closed doors for a number of years and it all goes down in flames this past month. Cronyism is self-defeating in this case.

A longtime pro-UPC blog finally admits that UPC is in very serious trouble. Earlier today it published “Brexit vote: ‘Prepared path to Unitary Patent system might not exist anymore’” [via]

To quote a portion: “Can the Unitary Patent system still enter into force? Is it attractive without the UK or will companies rather stick with the established patent system as in force right now? According to Dr. Axel Walz, co-founder of the IP Dispute Resolution Forum (IPDR) in Munich, these topics have been discussed a lot among German colleagues after the UK vote of 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union. In an interview with Kluwer IP Law Walz said he thinks it is ‘at least doubtful’ whether EU law allows for the establishment of a Unitary Patent system with the inclusion of a non-EU-member.”

Henrion wrote about the above that “European companies are still protected from the harmful effects of UPC specialized patent court and patent trolls…”

Well, we need to ensure it stays that way.

Regarding the UPC and EPO, one person wrote at IP Kat:

May i suggest that someone might like to check what the EPO management’s line on all this is? Rumour had it that top management may be preparing for a delay in the EU patent with consequences for other projects/roadmaps. That may be an indicator of what is going to happen. The EPO won’t dictate matters but will be reliant and perhaps well informed.

Well, the UPC is increasingly being recognised as a dead end by the legal community/profession, as we showed here before. A day or two ago two more articles were published on this matter. One was titled “Is Brexit an IP Exit?” It said: “The Unitary Patent, which has been moving towards approval, provides for a single patent which can be granted for all EU-member countries, with a single Unified Patent Court for enforcement throughout the EU. Prior to the Brexit vote, it was widely expected that the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court would be implemented by mid-2017. However, it is likely that the uncertainty created by the Brexit vote will delay this implementation date. Moreover, many commentators believe that the U.K. is unlikely to be allowed to participate in the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court after it leaves the EU, as it would require the EU to provide the U.K. with a benefit without its corresponding EU obligations.”

“Rumour had it that top management may be preparing for a delay in the EU patent with consequences for other projects/roadmaps.”
      –AnonymousAnother new article about this was titled “Brexit Prompts IP Uncertainty for US Portfolios” and it said that “[s]hort-term, the exit will have little to no effect on patents. The UK is a signatory to the European Patent Convention of 1973. As such, its patent system is governed by the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPC is a treaty separate from the EU. Indeed, countries such as Albania, Norway and Switzerland are not members of the EU, but are member states of the EPO. Similarly, it is anticipated that the UK will remain a member state of the EPO, and UK patents and process will still be governed by the EPC.

“That said, the EU was expected to launch the so-called Unitary European patent system and a Unified Patent Court (UPC) to resolve issues related to the Unitary Patent. Under this new unitary patent system, a single EU patent would issue from the EPO, offering patent protection throughout the entire EU. This contrasts with the current EPO system, under which the EPO performs a centralized examination and then returns the application to the individual national patent offices, which then issue their own national patent, conferring their respective bundles of patent rights. It was anticipated that the EPC would receive sufficient ratification signatures to come into effect sometime in 2017.

“You want only justification for the existence of the UPC.”
      –Anonymous“However, the terms of the EPC agreement require UK ratification of the agreement in order to come into effect. If the UK is outside of the EU, it is reasonably anticipated that that launch of the Unitary Patent and the UPC may be delayed. We are waiting to hear from the respective EPC negotiators what specific effect the formal withdrawal will have. For example, the agreement may be altered to remove the requirement of the UK accession, and proceed with another country as one of the three required signatories. Alternatively, and depending on how other bi and multilateral negotiations progress, it is also possible that the UK might be permitted to join the unitary patent system without being a member of the EU. Accordingly, due to the uncertain future of the unitary patent system, clients planning to take advantage of that system should reevaluate their future filing strategies.”

Going back to IP Kat, one person wrote in a tongue-in-cheek fashion: “You want only justification for the existence of the UPC. You are a true European. President Juncker will add you to his Christmas card list.”

Another person was sort of faking (wishful thinking) a statement of UPC agenda and someone wrote that “UPC will create a single point of failure for software patents in Europe,” demonstrating that not only patent lawyers ‘in the know’ are involved in this discussion at this stage. Responding to “they DO represent all of British industry” (about a bunch of patent maximalists) the person said: “Sorry, my company was not part of it. The UPC will create a single point of failure for software patents in Europe, and those patent crooks can hardly deny that. In fact, we should go in web demonstration mode against the UPC like my company did for the past failed software patent directive.”

“…we should go in web demonstration mode against the UPC like my company did for the past failed software patent directive.”
      –AnonymousNotice the part which says “we should go in web demonstration mode against the UPC like my company did for the past failed software patent directive.” Is it 2005 all over again? Will it ever be?

An anonymous commenter said: “What are you on about? It isn’t clear to me whether you want or don’t want software patents. I wouldn’t want you representing me…”

Well, clearly not a software developer this last comment… no software developer that I know ever wanted or defended software patents. The more software professionals get involved in this debate (over UPC) at this stage, the better. Battering of what remains of the UPC will help ensure it’s nailed inside a coffin for good; no more renames and embellishing (for marketing to new European politicians who are clueless on these matters). █

EPO’s Battistelli, Who Breaks the Law, Subverts the Course of Justice and Refuses to Obey Court Orders, Says the Unthinkable Amid Terror Attacks

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Given the seriousness of these matters, will anyone bother publicly challenging the lies below?

Justice at EPO

Summary: Terrible attacks a day ago in France are being exploited by Benoît Battistelli for black comedy or a truly absurd statement under the EPO’s “news” section

WHENEVER there’s a terror incident in Europe the EPO issues a corny statement either from Battistelli, about Battistelli, or quoting Battistelli. They are trying hard to frame Battistelli as some kind of heroic sympathetic leader who protects staff from terror and all his atrocities (and wasteful bodyguards) are somehow justified “because terrorism!” It has become such a common tradition that this morning I predicted it would happen within hours and it soon turned out that I was absolutely right. It only took very little time for Battistelli to piggyback terror incidents again (warning: epo.org link, which can facilitate tracking of cookies/IP addresses) and the wording therein was hypocritical to the extreme.

“They are trying hard to frame Battistelli as some kind of heroic sympathetic leader who protects staff from terror and all his atrocities (and wasteful bodyguards) are somehow justified “because terrorism!””“Just patent terror attacks,” Petra Kramer wrote, “that will surely stop ISIS. Unleash the patent trolls. Sue terrorists!”

“Outrageous and pathetic that Battistelli misuses such an awful event to disseminate lies,” wrote another person, adding: “EPIC fail!”

Benjamin Henrion laughed at the part which says EPO believes in an open and inclusive society based on fundamental principles of freedom, equality and justice after I had pointed this out. One whom the EPO had bullied with bogus trademark claims replied with “yep and I believe in an open and inclusive society where beer would flow from each and every fountain ;)”

For those who have not been following this saga long enough, remember that Battistelli likes to pretend to be a victim. This is his longstanding media strategy.

“Unleash the patent trolls. Sue terrorists!”
      –Petra Kramer
To understand why Battistelli ‘milks’ terror attacks several times per year, see our previous articles about previous such opportunistic efforts. The EPO justifies oppression by claiming that it is under attack and now it says that Battistelli “believes in an open and inclusive society based on fundamental principles of freedom, equality and justice.”

Yes, Battistelli says he believes in “freedom, equality and justice” — on the very same day that there are hearings at The Hague regarding Battistelli's abuses! Isn’t that priceless? The timing could not be better because Battistelli actively fights against justice and refuses to obey the law (or even rulings from the highest courts). One might say that this is just the latest of many lies from Battistelli. To put it politely…

“Outrageous and pathetic that Battistelli misuses such an awful event to disseminate lies…”
      –AnonymousThere is this new comment about Battistelli and his own abuse of justice. It says that Battistelli “crossed a line that no President of the EPO should ever cross. After two years it came up with a reform of the BOA that is “not perfect” (a nice understatement to say that it is plainly bad). In respect of the other points of the Council resolution it seems that he also failed do deliver.

“Then what happened at the last Council? Did he blackmailed the AC by telling them “You want a reform of the BOA but I am not going to give you a better one”

“Instead of saying him “Thank you for your service we are now going to look for somebody who is fit for the job and can also draft a reasonable reform” the members of the AC probably said “How nice of you to give us some face-saving minor amendments! We approve your reform because it could have been even worse”.

“The last Council was an all-time low for its members but I am afraid that worse may come in the future now that BB [Battistelli] is aware that he can force them to do whatever he wants.”

We wrote about this before. “To me it looks as if he [Battistelli] was on a course set to destroy the office,” said another new comment. To quote the full comment: “If I understand what you are saying, something else is more important to Battistelli than the board of appeal. What is it? What is he trying to achieve? I am asking the question because I really wonder. To me it looks as if he was on a course set to destroy the office, but this cannot be. What interest would there be in that? So where are we heading to? How will the office look in five years?”

Any justice for patents would be hard to fathom or trust when the EPO itself makes a total mockery of judges (even at The Hague). Speaking of patent justice, a decision has just been overturned and an article published about it to say: “The patents for bivalirudin (Angiomax) were upheld by a federal court following a prior ruling that they were invalid. Drugmaker the Medicines Company says it is “now considering all … options with respect to Hospira, Mylan, and other generics.”

If that was Battistelli facing this federal court, he would not panic. He does not, after all, believe that he needs to respect the rule of law and obey court orders. But hey, earlier today he said he believed in “freedom, equality and justice” just because it suited him and his media strategy (or misleading narrative). █

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