• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• CES: Acer introduces first 15.6″ display Chromebook

  “The Acer Chromebook 15 is a true powerhouse, it provides fast mobile performance and a large display to help customers accomplish more every day,” said Jerry Kao, president of Acer Notebook Business Group in a statement. “Acer has been a leader in the Chromebook market, from providing the latest in technology and trailblazing battery life to designing new form factors. We’re driving the category forward again with the world’s first 15.6-inch display Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook 15.”

• Atom PC – Future PC

  It’s got enough computing power, graphics power and memory to be useful for all the kinds of tasks folks use a smartphone or tablet but it’s definitely a desktop-PC form factor. It has the instant supply of Android apps and the usability of a GNU/Linux desktop all in one package.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • The VIA OpenChrome DRM Still Might Be Kicking In 2015

    There hasn’t been much to report on in months for the OpenChrome DRM driver as there simply hasn’t been any new public patches to comment on. While it sort of looked like this VIA DRM Linux driver was dead, it seems work is possibly getting resurrected on this open-source driver.

Applications

• *fte: An epic tale of text editor discovery

• Plex Media Server Now Features Better Subtitle Support

  Plex Media Server, a software that makes it easy for everyone to play movies and TV shows on the computer, has received quite a few fixes and it should be available for download.

• eBook Reader and Editor Calibre Starts 2015 with New Updatex

  Calibre is an application that can be used as an eBook reader, converter, and editor. Its maker is not wasting any time and has release a new update for it, making some important improvements for the book-editing function.

• Proprietary

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Use Fingerprint To Command & Control Your Ubuntu/Linux Mint

  • How to check memory usage on Linux

• Games

  • More Steam Users Flock to the Linux Platform, Says Steam Hardware Survey

    The latest Steam Hardware Survey for December has been published and it confirms the rising trend of the Linux platform. It’s not something out of the ordinary, but it’s slowly moving in the right direction.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Kate5 on Mac

    Given that the KF5 based Kate works OK on Windows, I would like to get the Mac version up and running, too.

    As virtualization of MacOS X is kind of “forbidden” and not that nicely usable anyway, as no nice accelerating drivers are available for the standard vm solutions, I just went out into the world and bought some Retina MacBook.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME’s GTK+ Had A Booming 2014: OpenGL, Mir, Wayland, GtkInspector, Etc

    GNOME’s GTK+ tool-kit saw numerous improvements over the course of 2014 that led it to having a higher development activity rate than the preceding few years.

Distributions

• North Korea Linux 3.0 Blatantly Rips Off Mac OS X, but It’s Really Not Bad – Gallery

  North Korea Linux 3.0 is the best and latest from the state of North Korea. The ISO images of this elusive operating system have been made available and everyone can get to test it. Knowing Korean is a plus, but you can get the idea even without it.

• Screenshots

  • ZevenOS 6.0 Screenshot Tour

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Meizu M1 Note with 5.5 Inch Display to Launch with Ubuntu – Rumor

        We have yet to see any actual Ubuntu phones in the wild, but more rumors are popping up all over the place. This time it’s about the impending launch of the upcoming Meizu M1 Note with an Ubuntu system.

      • Robot, Is Being Programmed with Ubuntu

        Japan is the leader in the industry of humanoid robotics, although other countries have made significant progress. One of the best and easily recognizable humanoid robots that comes from Japan is Honda’s Asimo and it looks like the engineers are using Ubuntu for some of their tasks.

      • Ubuntu GNU/Linux Becoming Like That Other OS

        It’s the same old thing. An operating system gains reasonable popularity and it becomes godlike. It must not be criticized or the critic is declared mentally incompetent. That’s just wrong. If users become dependent on an OS and the developers of the OS go off on some tangent the users don’t like, that’s the developers’ problem, not the users. I long ago dropped Ubuntu because it didn’t work for me, breaking configurations with updates. I once had all my terminal servers drop out because the display manager would not run. My configurations were ignored. I went to Debian where users get much more respect. The policy that one package should not mess with the configuration of another protects users’ investments in their systems. Ubuntu thought it was fine that ~100 seats should be disabled when I installed a new set of icons, for Pity’s sake. For that, they overruled /etc/gdm.conf…

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Make Your elementary OS Look like Mac OS X Yosemite with Just a Theme

          elementary OS is a very beautiful system that doesn’t really need any enhancements, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any important themes out there for it. The Yellowstone GTK theme is built specifically for it and you can guess where this is going.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Run Google’s Kit Kat Android on Your PC as a Linux Distro – Gallery

      Android-x86 is a port of the Android operating system for the x86 platform. The developers have just released a new update for it and version 4.4-r2 is now out and ready for download.

    • Top 10 Best Android Wear Apps and Faces Monthly – January 2015 Edition

      To get the New Year started, we’ve put together our regular pick of the Top 10 Android Wear apps from the past month. These could be good choices for your new smartwatch, or just something to get your brain moving before you have to go back to work. A lot of these new apps this month are watch faces, after all that’s what the latest Android Wear update to Android 5.0 was all about, and there are some great new additions available. As well as watch faces, apps many of us use on a daily basis have been upgraded with great Android Wear support and it’s a good time to be an Android Wear user.

    • Flappy Bird’s Android Wear App Challenges Apple Watch

      Just as Flappy Bird signalled the lopsided nature of the software market during the early months of 2014, its arrival on your Android Wear powered smartwatch points to the strengths of Google’s approach to wearables, and how it will contrast with Apple’s strategy.

      [...]

      Google’s vision of Android Wear is relatively clear. It is a second screen to your main Android device (be it a smartphone, phablet, or ultraportable), it will give you rich notifications you can act on from your wrist, and it will present you with relevant and timely information.

    • Samsung pulls ahead of Apple in consumer satisfaction

      Customers in 2014 who bought a Samsung smartphone are more satisfied than those who purchased an Apple device, according to a new report from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

    • Xiaomi is the world’s most valuable technology startup, worth $46 billion

      As we briefly mentioned a little earlier, Xiaomi has just officially rounded-off its latest round of fundraising, where the company generated $1.1 billion with of additional investment. This gives Xiaomi a valuation worth $46 billion, matching original estimates and making the Chinese manufacturer the most valuable technology startup around.

    • Man returns stolen Android tablet when he can’t work it

      Yes, I am sober. Please let me explain. A man from Sunderland in northern England stole an Android tablet from a charity store, according to court documents. Christopher Hooson apparently saw it in the window of the Jonny Kennedy store in Whitley Bay and thought: “I’ll have that.”

      There was one small problem. When he brought it home he didn’t know how to get it to work. It’s unclear why this was so. What is clearer is that, eight days later, Hooson took it back to the charity store and showed his deep good-heartedness. He tried to donate the tablet back to the store.

      This move was unwise. Even charity stores have CCTV. And so Hooson, age 33, ended up in court to defend himself.

    • The Interview download includes Android hacker attack

      Several weeks ago Sony Pictures was hacked by a group that claimed to have done so that The Interview would not be released. Once it was clear that the film WAS still going to be released as normal, they issued further threat that anyone who saw the film would be in danger of physical attack. Most recently there’s been a hack embedded within a torrent – that’s an illegal download, in this case, and it’s hitting Android users in South Korea specifically.

    • New Android-Powered Nokia C1 Renders Leak Along With Phone’s Alleged Spec Sheet

      Nokia, what’s left of it that is, surprised everyone by announcing an Android-powered Nokia N1 tablet back in November. Why was this surprising? Well, I believe you all know by now that Nokia’s Devices and Services department was acquired by Microsoft, which left this Finnish company in ruins basically. The vast majority of the company is now Microsoft-owned, but what’s left of it is trying to make their mark out in the market. Nokia is technically not allowed to manufacture devices until 2016, as per their contract with Microsoft, but they found a way to avoid that rule. Nokia N1 wasn’t manufactured by Nokia, Foxconn did that for them.

    • Last year’s most surprising hit Android phone may get Lollipop soon

      Android handset makers launched a wide variety of smartphones last year and a surprising number of flagship devices managed to stand out of the crowd. But one handset in particular really stood out from the pack because it literally came out of nowhere to generate buzz that was unprecedented for a small, unestablished company.

    • Android Circuit: Galaxy Note 4 Versus Galaxy S5, Android’s Lack Of Profit, Gingerbread Lives Again

      Taking a look back at the week’s news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including the Galaxy S5 vs the Galaxy Note 4, the Note 4 LTE, Xiamoi’s 2015 strategy and financials, where is the profit in Android and can Samsung find it, is the Moto G the smartphone of the year, and is Android 2.3 Gingerbread a good OS in 2015?

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Why does Google Say Mozilla Thunderbird is Less Secure?

    Sometimes when you are looking for an answer to one thing, you end up finding something else rather surprising. Case in point, Google’s statement that Mozilla Thunderbird is less secure, but why do they say that? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a confused reader’s question.

Programming

• Next-Generation PHP 7.0 Is Running Well But Will It Catch Up To HHVM?

  It’s been a while since I’ve last tried out the Git code for the next-generation PHP (phpng) that’s going to be known as PHP 7.0 when released likely later this year.

  The next major release of PHP is to be called PHP7 in order to avoid confusion with the now-defunct PHP6 unicode initiative. PHP 7.0 is likely to be released by the end of 2015 per the PHP7 timeline. If the release candidates begin on time starting in June, we could be looking at the official PHP 7.0 release around October of this year. However, it’s largely dependent upon the state of affairs at that point with the quality of the code.

Science

• An asteroid striking Earth is a possibility, but we’re more likely to destroy ourselves

  Our solar system is littered with billions of pieces of debris, from the size of large boulders to objects hundreds of miles across. We know that from time to time these hit Earth. A Russian scientist has calculated that a mountain-sized asteroid — which crosses paths with the Earth every three years — could one day hit us with an explosion 1,000 times greater than the surprise 2013 impact of a bus-sized meteor in Russia.

  This is not the only doomsday scenario faced by our planet. Humanity may have already created its nemesis, according to Prof. Stephen Hawking. The Cambridge University physicist claimed that new developments in the field of artificial intelligence mean that, within a few decades, computers thousands of times more powerful than in existence today may decide to usurp their creators and end humanity’s 100,000-year dominance of Earth.

Health/Nutrition

• Chinese demand for tiger wine and skins puts wild cats in peril

  To the thump of dance music, four tigers roll over in succession, and then raise themselves up on to their haunches. A man in a shiny blue shirt waves a metal stick at them, and they lift their front paws to beg.

Security

• The Biggest Security Threats We’ll Face in 2015

  As the clock strikes midnight on the new year, so begins the countdown to a new round of security threats and breaches that doubtless will unfold in 2015. But this year will be a little different. In the past, when we’ve talked about threat predictions, we’ve focused either on the criminal hackers out to steal credit card data and banking passwords or on the activist hackers out for the lulz (and maybe to teach corporate victims a lesson).

  But these days, no threat predictions are complete if they don’t address the looming threats posed by nation-state attacks, like the ones exposed by Edward Snowden. It’s been said repeatedly that when a spy agency like the NSA undermines a system to gain access for its own use, it makes that system more vulnerable to attack by others. So we begin this list with that in mind.

• The Most Dangerous People on the Internet Right Now

  If only the internet had its own version of Lost in Space’s robot to herald every lurking hazard or menace with an unequivocal warning. Unfortunately Robot B-9 isn’t available. So in his absence we’ve compiled a list of candidates we consider to be this year’s most dangerous. We’ve taken a broad view of danger, though—it’s not just about who is potentially a danger to public safety, but also about entities who might be considered a danger simply because they rock the status quo.

• Countdown to Zero Day: launching Stuxnet on Iran

  As you turn the last page of Kim Zetter’s new book about the worm and virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program, don’t be surprised if you find yourself starting to mull over a career change.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings

  Heading into the last quarter of his presidency, Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings or finally break loose and pursue a realistic foreign policy seeking practical solutions to world problems, including the crisis with Russia over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

• Ukrainian Nazis Pay Private Military Company Academi (formerly Blackwater) for Training, Russian Report

  The Russian Government’s Tass ‘news’ agency is alleging that “The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) … has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” according to an unnamed source, which source is probably one of the few remaining anti-nazi bureaucrats still remaining in the Ukrainian Government. The reported price of this Blackwater (a.k.a. “Xe,” a.k.a. “Academi”) training contract is $3.5 million.

• Leaked Documents Show the US Used Drone Strikes to Target Afghan Drug Lords

  The latest documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that US drone strikes in Afghanistan weren’t limited to just al Qaeda and Taliban leaders — they also targeted drug dealers accused of supporting the insurgency.

  The papers, obtained by German news magazine Der Spiegel, include a “kill list” that once contained as many as 750 names, including many mid- and lower-level members of the Taliban involved in drug trafficking.

• The real politics behind the US war on IS

  In fact, it is all about domestic political and bureaucratic interests.

• Der Spiegel Reveals Loose Standards Needed for Drone Assassination

  The German magazine Der Spiegel has published a revealing exposé about the loose standards by which the the Obama administration assassinated people, including many non-combatants, in Afghanistan. The December 28 story documented a quick-to-assassinate tendency which took the form of readiness to loosely classify anyone in the drug trade as a legitimate assassination target, as well as a readiness to accept large numbers of civilian casualties.

  The Obama administration accelerated the 2008 decision by the Bush administration to extend the war on terror to the drug war. “In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock,” Der Spiegel reported, “there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.” The result was that many people who made the assassination list — hundreds of people at any time — were often several layers removed from actual Taliban terrorists, and may even have been unaware they were financing the Taliban.

• Bush’s Enduring Theories of Martial Law

  The failure to hold anyone accountable for torture derives from extraordinary post-9/11 legal theories that made the President all-powerful during “wartime” and established what amounted to martial law in the United States, a condition that continues to this day, writes retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.

• US Adding Names to Foreign Fighter Watchlist ‘Like a Ticking Odometer’

  Quoted in an article by the Washington Post‘s Greg Miller on Tuesday, an unnamed former U.S. intelligence official described how the NCTC—citing the threat of Europeans who may have travelled to foreign battlefields, particularly in Syria and Iraq—is actively placing thousands of people into the database nearly constantly, sometimes with (and often without) the full knowledge of European governments or their intelligence agencies. According to the report, the database already contains more than 15,000 names.

• Afghan ‘kill list’ leak: NATO risked civilian lives by targeting low-level Taliban fighters

  Besides targeting top Taliban leaders, NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking fighters and drug dealers on their list of “legitimate” targets, risking civilian lives in a wider airstrike campaign, Der Spiegel reported, citing Snowden archives.

• Leaked ‘kill list’ shows NATO killed Afghan children, civilians in pursuit of low-level Taliban fighters

  Drawing information from top secret documents spirited away by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel reports that the “kill list” used by NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking members of the Taliban along with drug dealers suspected of supporting them.

• New Snowden Docs Reveal Wider Net of NATO ‘Kill List’ Targets

  The reporting also explains how the wide net of those targeted for assassination covered those deemed to be narcotics traffickers.

• Pakistan Taliban: US drone ‘kills militants’ in tribal region

• Suspected U.S. Drone Strike Kills Nine in Pakistan’s North Waziristan

  A suspected U.S. drone strike killed at least nine suspected militants in Pakistan on Sunday, government and security officials told NBC News. Pakistani government and security officials said the drone fired two missiles and struck a militant compound in the Shawal valley of the restive region of North Waziristan.

• U.S. Drone Strike Said to Kill Militants in Pakistan

  At least six foreign militants are believed to have been killed in an American drone strike in the North Waziristan tribal region on Sunday morning, a Pakistani security official said.

  The Pakistani official said a drone fired two missiles into a compound in the Dattakhel subdistrict at 6.40 a.m. The area is close to the border with Afghanistan and to Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan and the site of the region’s administrative headquarters.

• President Obama’s Hawaii vacation: Day 15

  Obama headed out to the beach to join his daughter Malia and friends at Bellows Air Force Station on a mostly sunny day. A dozen onlookers watched as the motorcade left the Kailua neighborhood, some holding signs that read “Drones Kill” and “Stop NSA Snooping.” A rainbow stretched over the mountains as the president made his way to the beach and its sparkling turquoise waters.

• Obama: How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

  In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson was heckled this way. Anti-war activists targeted his Southeast Asian war they wanted ended.

  Obama way outdid his predecessors. With two years left to go. Bombing 7 countries in 6 years. More on this below.

  Plus subversion in unknown numbers of others. From its empire of bases. Its global embassies infested with CIA agents.

• Chickenhawk Response No. 8: The Economic Realities (and Unrealities) of a Trillion-Dollar Budget

  I’ve spent most of the past two days reading through the ~ 1,200 emailed or paper-mailed responses I’ve gotten, most from past or current military people and most supportive overall if differing in degree. Obviously I can’t quote from (or unfortunately even acknowledge) all of them, but I’ll excerpt some as feasible in coming days. Again, I’ll assume that I am free to quote from incoming messages unless specified otherwise, but I won’t use real names unless you say so in advance.

  Today’s theme: business aspects of what I call the chickenhawk economy.

• You Can’t Run From This Course-correcting Bullet

  The U.S. Army has manufactured a bullet that can change direction mid-flight, according to a story reported in the Independent (U.K.).

• Stay away from the Sentinelese. Either you’ll kill them or they’ll kill you

  The Sentinelese, a tiny island tribe in the Indian Ocean, have a tried-and-true foreign policy.

  [...]

  The Sentinelese have been derided as “savages” and “primitives” for failing to join the outside world. But their habit of killing intruders is nonetheless wise.

  Modern history is filled with sad sagas of indigenous peoples eradicated or decimated by diseases borne by European visitors. As in 17th-century America, epidemics can rapidly depopulate the land and leave it vulnerable to takeover.

• Drones and questions of command for Obama

  There was a disturbing revelation contained in recent a New York Times’ front-page report. President Obama has empowered the CIA by “allowing its director, not the White House, to make the final decisions about targeted drone strikes” on foreign soil. These strikes number in the hundreds from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia.

• Looking Backward, Looking Forward: 2014-2015

  Major events and policies in 2014 which have had a profoundly negative effect on the prospects for peace and social justice are equally numerous.

  (1) The US and EU installation of a puppet regime in the Western Ukraine (Kiev) and its conversion into an economic vassal state of the European Union and NATO outpost on Russia’s border is a major blow against democracy and boost to Ukrainian neo-fascist political leaders. The militarization of the Ukraine, as an adversary of Russia, threatens a global nuclear war.

• Pakistan Fumes At Being Portrayed As Hellhole By US TV Show Homeland

  Pakistan has problems with the way it has been depicted as a military-dominated, terrorist-infested hellhole in the American television drama Homeland and has reportedly conveyed its unhappiness to the show’s producers.

• Readers React: Why political gridlock isn’t always a bad thing

  To illustrate his point, Diamond blames the coup against Chile’s democratically elected Salvador Allende partly on Allende’s refusal to compromise, making no mention of the CIA’s role in bringing dictator Augusto Pinochet to power.

• Strikes to Continue in Afghanistan Despite Mission End: Former Official

  Former CIA official claims that US drone strikes targeting the Taliban and other insurgent groups will continue despite the official end of NATO combat operations in Afghanistan.

• The incredible US “peace plan” for Syria

  The Syrian people have won two successive wars in four years. Yet the country does not yet know peace. Not only are Washington “liberal hawks” doing everything in their power to prolong the crisis, but they have devised a plan to prepare a third war. Thierry Meyssan reveals here how they intend to use to their advantage the peace conference planned to be held in Moscow in late January 2015.

Transparency Reporting

• Complicity and Cover-Ups in Mexican Massacres (Audio)

  Christy Thornton speaks with Jesse Franzblau on the investigations by the National Security Archive (NSA) into the newly released documentation by Mexican authorities on the 2010 and 2011 migrant massacres.

Finance

• Why a consumer society can’t fix the climate

  Policy makers throughout the industrialized world generally assume that humankind can solve serious global problems by adopting better technologies and regulations—without questioning the viability of consumer-capitalist societies. This faith is mistaken. The big problems, particularly climate change, are so serious that they cannot be solved without unprecedented and extremely radical change, including abandoning the obsession with economic growth, market systems, and high living standards.

• Russia’s Putin praises Crimea’s ‘return home’ in New Year address

  Next year, the Russian economy is projected to fall by around 4.5 percent if the average price of oil remains near $60 per barrel, according to the central bank.

• What are U.S. Objectives in Weakening Russia’s Economy?

  Larry Wilkerson and Paul Jay discuss the “tactical strength and strategic weakness” of Putin in Ukraine and whether the West is trying to turn Russia into another “Greece”

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Marketing Madness

  If they really wanted to be freedom’s heroes, US filmgoers would be lining up at theaters that are showing the movie “Kill the Messenger,” an excellent drama based on a real story. It exposes how the CIA used its contacts and perhaps even paid agents who work inside the largest and supposedly “free and independent” corporate media organizations, to spread lies and destroy the reputation of Gary Webb, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had exposed an incredibly cynical and criminal program by the CIA in the 1980s to facilitate the massive import into the US of cocaine from Latin America in order to raise money from the drug cartels which it used to fund arms for the Contra army fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

• The Interview to be air-dropped into North Korea using balloons

  Balloons have been used before to take propaganda and other items into North Korea.

• Liam Neeson: Taken Has Put Americans Off Travelling To Europe

  The 62-year-old actor stars as retired CIA agent Bryan Mills in the action franchise and admits fans have written to him saying they’re frightened of travelling abroad due to the storylines in which his wife and daughter are kidnapped.

• Mike Huckabee’s Worst Media Moments

  Fox News and Mike Huckabee are finally parting ways as the now former host explores a second presidential run. After serving as the governor of Arkansas and losing a 2008 presidential primary bid, Huckabee was hired by the network. His media career was rife with controversial comments and outright falsehoods.

• Mike Huckabee Sold Out His Fans To A Quack Doctor, Conspiracy Theorists, And Financial Fraudsters

  Mike Huckabee, who is parting ways with Fox News, has profited from renting his Fox-promoted MikeHuckabee.com email list to a wide range of shady characters, including a medical quack claiming Alzheimer’s disease cures; a for-sale stock pundit that was fired from Fox; a financial firm that was fined by the government for engaging in “deliberate fraud”; and a survival food company that profits off of readers’ fears of being “herded into FEMA camps.”

  Huckabee has previously denied responsibility for his shady sponsored emails, telling Media Matters: “You are supposed to read the disclosure and the disclaimer that is a part of the messages. You know, we are simply the conduit to send messages, these are sponsored and I can’t always vouch for the veracity.”

• The Interview reinforces a negative view of US journalists

  The Interview is a dangerous movie. The first victim was Sony, which had electronic files hacked in an intrusion that revealed shocking details: like the fact that one of its executives wanted to cast a black actor as James Bond, and that many people at Sony can’t spell. But another more serious group of victims haven’t yet been mentioned: journalists who work in dangerous parts of the world.

  The film, which was released over the Christmas holiday, depicts two goofy journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and who are recruited by the CIA to kill him. Rogen’s character, the producer of a television interview program, was supposedly educated at my alma mater, Columbia School of Journalism, but seemed to have no qualms about crossing what I recall was one of the most indelibly-inked lines of journalism ethics: don’t do the bidding of the CIA.

• 5 Absurd Right-Wing Moments

• 2014 in review: The year according to Fox News

  The way the news is covered by Fox in the US can seem incomprehensible to the rest of the world – not to mention many Americans.

• Benign Intent: Tools of Corporate Media Propaganda

  In a healthy society governed by democratic principles and the rule of law, news media would be analogous to a powerful telescope, a roving, scrutinizing eye from which little or nothing can hide. Corrupt societies — ones that require the vast majority of the population to be passive, obedient, misinformed, ignorant, distracted and consumptive — require instead a media that acts as a kind of prism, a distorting lens that presents a perversion of reality.

  The scale of this distortion varies greatly around the world, with some — mostly independent — media (sometimes lone journalists) laudably aiming to shine a torch as best they can on state and corporate power. At the other extreme, dictatorships like North Korea use state media to portray a false reality to help control their people, who nonetheless are surely aware that their freedoms are strictly limited.

  Western corporate-owned media, however, is unique and quite remarkable in that while it depicts a reality as laughably false as that shown to the North Koreans, its readers/viewers — more accurately its consumers — are overwhelmingly unaware that they are being fed a pack of lies, that the picture given to them is — in key areas that concern corporate power and Western control of world resources — diametrically opposite to reality.

Censorship

• Government red-faced after memos warning staff not to breach Official Secrets Act are leaked to the media

• Government wants crackdown on violation of Official Secrets Act

  The government wants a crackdown on violation of Official Secrets Act through leakage of sensitive information in the media but its own communication seeking to curb the practice has come out in public domain.

  Aaj Tak has accessed a series of government notes highlighting concerns over the leakage of information to the media expressed by top security bosses. In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth on October 13, 2013, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval pointed out that a news channel had broadcast a report on India’s nuclear submarine INS Arihant.

• Ajit Doval, The NSA, Asks Ministries To Plug Classified Documents Leakage

  National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has asked ministries to take necessary steps to prevent leakage of classified information to the media and fix responsibility in case the leakage takes place.

• NSA red-faced after memos warning staff not to breach of secrecy laws are leaked to media

  In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth on October 13, 2013, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval pointed out that Aaj Tak channel had broadcast a report on India’s nuclear submarine INS Arihant.

• Cuban dissidents arrested before free-speech demonstration in Havana

  Cuban police have detained at least three leading dissidents ahead of a planned free-speech demonstration in the Plaza de la Revolución.

  The arrests of Antonio Rodiles, Eliezer Avila and Reinaldo Escobar look set to be the biggest test yet of diplomatic relations with the US since they were restored earlier this month after 53 years of tension.

• Putin just imprisoned an innocent man to silence his opposition-leader brother

  This morning, under the glare of worldwide media attention, a Russian court sentenced Oleg Navalny, an apolitical former postal worker, to three and half years in prison on embezzlement charges that are widely and correctly considered to be fictitious.

  Russia’s slide into authoritarianism has been so gradual, and accompanied by so many distractions such as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his ban on American adoptions (not to mention his cartoonish image abroad), that many Americans have missed it. Yes, Russia does some bad things, particularly to gays, the common perception goes, but it’s still not quite a dictatorship.

• The Bitter Education of Alexey Navalny

  It was the radicals—Russians call them the demshiza, formed from the roots of the words for “democratic” and “schizophrenic”—who insisted on talking about the fact that Putin had established a virtual state monopoly on media, jailed his opponents, most likely sent his cronies to London to poison a former secret agent, and enabled the murders of many more critics, cancelled elections, waged war on his own people in Chechnya and Dagestan, and annexed parts of Georgia and Ukraine. All along, Putin and his friends stole from state coffers and from their enemies on a scale that overwhelms the imagination. They were never just “crooks and thieves.” Navalny knows that now.

Privacy

• Nico Sell: ‘To me, the NSA and Edward Snowden are just the tip of the iceberg’

  The founder of secure messaging app Wickr on privacy, why she always wears dark glasses in public and why girls make great hackers

• Offshoring Data Won’t Protect It From The NSA

  The United States is the physical hub of the global Internet. Data from around the globe crosses gateways and servers in the United States. This basic fact, obscured by hazy visions of a borderless Internet cloud, is part of what accounts for global dismay at the revelations of extensive spying by the National Security Agency.

• Storing data offshore won’t protect it from NSA, expert says

• The NSA’s Ongoing Efforts to Hide Its Lawbreaking

  Every quarter, the National Security Agency generates a report on its own lawbreaking and policy violations. The reports are classified and sent to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. It’s unclear what happens once they get there.

  Those reports are now online dating back to late 2001.

  The NSA has posted redacted versions of the documents to its website. “These materials show, over a sustained period of time, the depth and rigor of NSA’s commitment to compliance,” the agency’s self-congratulatory introduction declares. “By emphasizing accountability across all levels of the enterprise, and transparently reporting errors and violations to outside oversight authorities, NSA protects privacy and civil liberties while safeguarding the nation and our allies.”

  These NSA characterizations are not credible.

• Missouri Bill Bans Use of Local Resources for NSA Surveillance

  A bill filed late last month in Missouri would step into the breach left by a federal government unwilling to restrain the unconstitutional surveillance of Americans.

• US Made Spyware Found on Merkel Aide’s USB Drive

  Reports out of Berlin today say that a top aide of German Chancellor Angela Merkel was targeted by advanced malware commonly used by the NSA and Britain’s counterpart, the GCHQ.

• Cyber attack on Angela Merkel aide: Report

  The German chancellor’s office has fallen victim to a hacking attack, according to a German newspaper. The Regin malware in question has been linked to British and US spy agencies.

• NSA spooks count on holiday distractions to hide misbehavior

• Apple Says Has Never Worked With NSA On IPhone Backdoors

  Apple responded on Tuesday to Germany’s Der Spiegel reports that the National Security Agency had developed a system to hack into and monitor iPhones called “Dropout Jeep,” saying it never worked with the U.S. spy agency and was unaware of efforts to target its smartphones. Der Spiegel referred to it as a “trojan,” or malware that helps hackers get into protected systems. The report, which surfaced on Sunday, did not suggest that Apple had cooperated with the U.S. spying agency on so-called backdoors.

• NSA Abused Power by Spying on Wives, Girlfriends

  The National Security Agency (NSA) was forced to admit on Christmas Eve how it wrongly spied on Americans in a list it released as a result of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

• The Patriot Act Is Cannibalizing America’s Economic Edge

  The majority opinion prioritized protectionism—the idea that phone-record collection could stop threats like ISIS from endangering U.S. citizens—over economic growth. Such myopic attachment to the tools of defense, without consideration of their big-picture relevance, puts the $5.7 trillion U.S. IT industry in danger of losing its competitive advantage.

  Risking the second-largest industry in the country will pose serious long-term consequences—not only to the economy, but, by association—to national security itself.

  It’s time for legislators to ask themselves which laws matter most.

• NSA Abuses Never End

  The NSA has posted redacted versions of the documents to its website. “These materials show, over a sustained period of time, the depth and rigor of NSA’s commitment to compliance,” the agency’s self-congratulatory introduction declares. “By emphasizing accountability across all levels of the enterprise, and transparently reporting errors and violations to outside oversight authorities, NSA protects privacy and civil liberties while safeguarding the nation and our allies.”

  These NSA characterizations are not credible.

  Even the uninformed observer will be suspicious of the spy agency’s account upon learning that far from voluntarily releasing redacted versions of these documents, it was forced to do so by Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the ACLU. The NSA fought to continue suppressing these documents from the public, even though the redacted versions in no way harm U.S. national security. A court ordered the documents released.”

• Kim Dotcom is back!

• MegaChat Poised to Compete With Skype

  Kim Dotcom, an individual who has become known as an outspoken encryption enthusiast, and the man who attempted to stop the recent hacks against both Sony and Microsoft’s online services via the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad, has announced he intended to bring about a rival against Skype. Dotcom intends to release MegaChat, a fully-encrypted video call and chat platform for users tired of Skype on all of their devices. The service is said to support key features of most well known messaging platforms already, but with the promise of no back doors where the United States government can access chat logs from those using the service, reports Slash Gear.

• Kim Dotcom serves up a Encrypted Chat service, Mega Chat ‘coming soon’

• MegaChat encrypted Skype rival imminent says Kim Dotcom

  Outspoken encryption enthusiast Kim Dotcom has promised the imminent arrival of his Skype rival, Mega’s fully-encrypted video call and chat platform, which will be positioned as a pipeline for free-speech. The service, currently referred to as MegaChat, will support all the key features of existing popular messaging clients, only with the added promise of no backdoors being provided to the US government, Dotcom claims, pointing out that it’s already in fact been used in public by high-profile leakers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. News of the app comes as fresh revelations from Snowden’s NSA documents finger several services as being targeted by the spy agency.

• Kim Dotcom vows to KILL SKYPE with encrypted MegaChat

  Megaupload maestro Kim Dotcom says he will soon unveil an encrypted video calling and chat service that he claims will mark “the end of NSA mass surveillance.”

  In a series of tweets, Dotcom said the service, to be called MegaChat, will also doom Skype, the current king of online calling, which is thought to have been cooperating with US government snoops since at least 2011.

  “No US based online service provider can be trusted with your data,” the rotund refugee proclaimed. “Skype has no choice. They must provide the US Government with backdoors.”

• Edward Snowden’s legal defence fund accepts bitcoin donations

  Whistleblower Edward Snowden is accepting donations in bitcoin to pay for his legal defence.

  Courage Foundation, which manages the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor’s legal defence fund, launched a website, edwardsnowden.com, where people can donate to support Snowden via a number of means.

  The website accepts payments via paypal, credit cards, bank transfer and cheques in addition to bitcoins.

• Big Brother Spying Program Is Stripping Away Privacy [Video]

• When it comes to surveillance, there is everything to play for

  The UK passed “emergency” legislation, referred to as the Drip Act, expanding mass surveillance powers in the wake of European court judgments. In the US, modest reforms to domestic mass surveillance failed to pass Congress. Ireland retrospectively made legal UK mass surveillance efforts related to the country, while even Germany – one of the most outspoken nations on surveillance – has challenged Der Spiegel’s reporting of the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone.

  [...]

  The technological backdrop is similarly mixed: in the immediate wake of Snowden, a flurry of new companies promising privacy arose, but there’s not yet a definitive app, while incumbents such as Tor have revealed several attacks and security breaches (since fixed). Conversely, though, major players are starting to regard privacy as a selling point: Google and others are encrypting ever more of their traffic, and even enhancing privacy controls over which information the search and social giants store.

• Senate letter exposes FBI domestic warrantless cellphone data mining

  In a letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson this week, leading US Senators requested information about the use of “StingRay” and “dirt box” devices and other cell phone surveillance and data mining systems by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other US government agencies.

• The year of surveillance is finally over

  Whether it was the NSA, your cell phone company or some place where you bought pants a few months ago, it seemed everyone was after your data in some way in 2014. Here are some of the stories that shed light on the new ways you’re being tracked — and also some methods to keep your information safe from prying eyes of all sorts.

• Why we should be worried about relinquishing our privacy to a secret state

  Ben Wizner is a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy & Technology Project — which is dedicated to protecting and expanding individuals’ right to privacy, as well as increasing the control that one has over their personal information, ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced, rather than compromised, by new advances in science and technology.

  Winzer has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberty abuses. These include challenges to airport security policies, government watchlists, extraordinary rendition, and torture. He has testified before US Congress, and also traveled several times to Guantánamo Bay, where he has met people who have been held against their will in secret prisons and tortured by the CIA.

  In July 2013, one month after the revelations about the NSA’s practices came to light, Winzer became Edward Snowden’s attorney. He was put in contact with him directly through the journalist Glenn Greenwald. I spoke to Wizner, focusing specifically on the issue of maintaining democratic accountability as technology advances.

• The Real Constitutional Crisis Is Hidden

  It’s the Bush-Obama record of surveillance and lack of accountability—and not executive action on immigration—that ought to concern citizens.

• Debate Over U.S. Government Surveillance Faces a Deadline

  Civil-liberties advocates and many lawmakers want stricter protocols for gathering information—in particular, limits on the mass collection of phone records by the National Security Agency—while opponents of such measures cite security threats that they maintain warrant the continuation of the bulk accumulation of personal data.

• Anti-terror plan to spy on toddlers ‘is heavy-handed’

  Nursery staff and childminders are given ‘duty’ to report toddlers they suspect of being at risk of becoming terrorists under new Home Office measures

Civil Rights

• Melville House Publishes Senate CIA Torture Report as Book

  Dennis Johnson, one of the founders of Melville House Publishing, called the CIA Torture Report “probably the most important government document of our generation, even one of the most significant in the history of our democracy” and announced the publishing of the report as an e-book and a paperbook.

• CIA Torture Report Sells Out in a Day

  Melville House revealed plans to sell the CIA’s recently release torture report earlier this month, and it turned out to be a good idea.

• Ferguson and CIA torture painful for Canadians

  Canadians know, by following their own and the US media, that race relations remain ugly in the United States despite gratifying progress and that the CIA tries to topple foreign governments, kill foreign leaders and tortures people to achieve its policy goals, for example in Guantanamo Bay.

• Making torture legal

  The CIA, the executive hand of the president, has been involved, deeply, in every crime known to man — for decades!

• Briton ‘lived’ Guantanamo torture

  The 47-year-old, who has been cleared for release from the detention camp since 2009, said he had not read the 6,000-page report but had been the victim of one of the measures outlined in it – “rectal rehydration”.

• If Obama won’t bring U.S. torturers to justice, why not compensate torture victims for life?

  President Barack Obama has made it clear since taking office that no one will be punished for torture.

  As I have repeatedly written before, that’s reprehensible. But what about compensating torture victims?

  According to the recent report issued by the U.S. Senate Intelligence committee, torture under the Bush administration was more brutal and widespread than previously understood.

• My Turn: Always and everywhere, torture is wrong

  As the child of an emigrant family that escaped from a Hungary ruled by a communist government, I heard many stories of relatives and friends enduring extreme cruelties and torture by that government. Perhaps this was the reason I joined Amnesty International 40 years ago.

  The organization is dedicated to helping the victims of human rights abuses and supporting the abolition of torture worldwide. After my family became American citizens, I never imagined that my new adopted country would engage in torture and abuse of prisoners. But in the 1970s, the investigations by Sen. Frank Church revealed that the CIA was not only attempting to assassinate some leaders of South American and Central American countries but that they were also assisting in torturing prisoners in those countries and training the torturers.

• ​80% whistleblower retaliation claims ignored in biased, ‘Trojan horse’ system

  The number of whistleblowers being retaliated against is increasing every year as former federal workers warn it’s almost impossible to raise grievances through official avenues within the government, a new report reveals.

  Among the employees and contractors working for the United States military and the American intelligence community, more than 8,700 have filed claims since 2001 in which they allege having faced reprisal for raising objections about supposed instances of waste, fraud or abuse, McClatchy reported on Tuesday.

  According to the report, an analysis of whistleblower retaliation claims made with the Pentagon suggests the number of workers who say they suffered for speaking out has been “increasing virtually every year” since September 11, 2001.

• Judge Okays Condé Nast Payout of $5.85 Million to Former Interns

  Onetime interns will each get payouts of up to about $1,900 for their time with the publisher

  Condé Nast appears likely to pay $5.85 million to thousands of former interns who have accused the magazine publisher of underpaying them for their work.

• Terrorism “Insurance” Expires

  The April 2013 issue of The Atlantic recounts the U.S. Senate testimony of a young man named Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemini. He attended English classes in Yemen before going to high school in Rosamond, California, then college in Beirut— all funded through U.S. State Department scholarships. One day a drone strike hit his remote home village of Wessab. Seven of his siblings died from injuries they sustained. During his testimony to the Senate, he said he has met dozens of civilians who were injured during drone strikes and other air attacks in Yemen. “The killing of innocent civilians by U.S. missiles in Yemen is helping to destabilize my country and create an environment from which AQAP benefits. [Drone strikes] are the face of America to many Yemenis.” (He was quoted using the acronym for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.)

• Is it not time to dismantle the CIA?

  It’s not as if we weren’t warned about the CIA. Some 50 years before the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its 500-page report on torture, former President Harry Truman published an opinion piece in the Washington Post asserting that the CIA was out of control and calling for it to be broken up.

• CIA should pledge to a ban on recruiting journalists

  According to a recent series of investigative reports, oil-rich Azerbaijan — wedged between Russia and Iran — is ruled by a virtual kleptocracy. It is illegal for Azerbaijan government officials to own businesses, but the law does not apply to their families. So while President Ilham Aliyev’s control of the nation’s oil industry remains cloaked in layers of deceptive legality, the facts about his two daughters’ hefty stake in the mining, financial services, construction, and other industries have become public knowledge.

  These facts were unearthed by a brave journalist named Khadija Ismayilova. On Dec. 5, Ismayilova was jailed; on Dec. 26, the Baku office of her employer, the US-funded Azeri language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was raided and ransacked.

  For months, the ruling party has been accusing Ismayilova of spying for the CIA. But she has not been formally charged with espionage, and weeks of interrogations and searches by the legal authorities have not produced a shred of evidence to justify such a charge. Yet sadly, America has a history of providing a pretext to authoritarians and other adversaries to discredit independent journalists in this manner. This needs to end.

  When RFE/RL was originally established in 1949, its purpose was to break the information monopoly of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — and its funding came covertly from the CIA. In 1967 this covert funding was exposed (by investigative journalists), and in 1971 it was terminated. In 1972, Congress voted to fund RFE/RL openly as an independent media company under the supervision of the Board for International Broadcasting, a new entity created to serve as a firewall between RFE/RL and the government.

• How To Read the Senate Report on CIA Torture

  Despite its rich fund of hard-won detail, the Senate report has, at best, produced a neutral outcome, a draw in this political contest over impunity. Over the past forty years, there have been a half-dozen similar scandals over torture that have followed a familiar cycle – revelation, momentary sensation, vigorous rebuttal, and then oblivion. Unless we inscribe the lessons from this Senate report deeply into the country’s collective memory, then some future crisis might prompt another recourse to torture that will do even more damage to this country’s moral leadership.

• The ‘Espionage Den’: American ghosts in Tehran

  After the hostage crisis, the Revolutionary Guard used it as a training centre, eventually opening a museum, variously called the Espionage Den or Den of Spies. Provocative murals and posters on peeling walls are updated regularly to reflect US invasions since then (Afghanistan and Iraq). One startling frieze is a parody of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” showing Uncle Sam handing dollars to a greedy banker. The perimeter walls feature a number of anti-American murals commissioned by the government of Iran, notably a Statue of Liberty with the slogan “Death to America!”

• The UN Anti-Nazi Resolution, the Prague Declaration and the History of “US Accommodation with Nazism”

  On October 27, 2014, the front page of The New York Times reported: “In Cold War, U.S. spy Agencies used 1,000 nazis.” What the headline fails to say is that the U.S. employed and protected men whom they knew were among the most barbaric nazi war criminals. “When the Justice Department was preparing in 1994 to prosecute a senior Nazi collaborator in Boston, named Aleksandre Lileikis, the CIA tried to intervene. The agency’s own files linked Mr. Lileikis to the machine-gun massacres of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania.

• LETTER: Pro-torture column really way off base

  Mr. Justin Smith’s over-long pro-torture piece in Sunday’s Daily News Journal (Dec. 21) was way off base.

  Characterizing water-boarding as “minor dunkings” is an error of the first order. CIA water-boarding is way worse than anything done in training for U.S. service personnel in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape classes, where the exercise is carefully regulated and controlled.

  CIA water-boarding has no such controls, is real and not practice, and in its excesses approaches and crosses over into the water torture for which we condemned war criminals after World War II.

• Over 100 deaths by abuse in Egyptian prisons in 2014: Report

  An end of year report by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence has documented an apparent spike in torture and abuse across Egyptian prisons in 2014, recording at least 100 deaths in custody.

• All those who OK’d torture should be held accountable

  As chief of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, Rodriguez ordered the destruction of 90 videotapes showing interrogations of Abu Zubaydah. Those tapes might have settled two questions: Were prisoners “tortured” and did “enhanced” interrogation techniques really provide “actionable” intelligence”? Why were the tapes destroyed, if the CIA is telling the truth?

  More disturbing is Joseph Reisert’s column (“Blatantly partisan tenor ensures CIA report serves no good purpose,” Dec. 12). You might expect a “professor of American constitutional law” to focus on the legal issues raised by the CIA report. Surely Reisert knows that torture is illegal under both American and international law.

  Japanese soldiers were charged with war crimes for waterboarding American POWs during World War II. “Just following orders” was not a defense.

• Turned Backs, The Mayor and the Police

  The funeral of Officer Ramos on Saturday, Dec. 27, turned into a Fascist spectacle as many in the ranks of the police turned their backs on NYC Mayor de Blasio—a Fascist spectacle because, already heavily militarized, already implicated in wanton killings of blacks nationwide, the police, many coming from far and wide, used the funeral to demonstrate their demand for acting with impunity and their contempt for authority to reign them in. The funeral symbolized the police as enemies of the rule of law, unable and unwilling to bear scrutiny for lawless acts of an ongoing nature but brought to national attention through a sudden condensation of events over the last several weeks. We stand in fear of our own public servants, just as we do toward the CIA on the international plane, a militarization of American life which internalizes, collectively, the repression America as a nation presents to and imposes on the world and internally demands of itself lest its global/domestic Power be questioned.

• Failures of torture well documented

  Michael Nutkiewicz’s recent letter to the Journal (Dec. 20) about the futility and danger of torture was spot-on correct. I spent 25 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and retired in 2009 as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI for New Mexico. Prior to that I was SAC for the FBI in Alaska for four years. My heart does not ache, and I face no moral dilemma, for those chosen to undergo enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT). My issue with EIT and torture in general is that it just doesn’t work and is, in fact, counterproductive. Mr. Nutkiewicz correctly notes studies have shown valuable intelligence overwhelmingly being collected through simple and direct interrogation techniques.

• Hector Avalos: A torturing faith?

  According to Hayden, the CIA’s program is “built on the particular psychological profile of the people we have and expect to get — al-Qaeda operatives. Perceiving themselves true believers in a religious war, detainees believe they are morally bound to resist until Allah has sent them a burden too great for them to withstand. At that point — and that point varies by detainee — their cooperation in their own heart and soul becomes blameless and they enter into this cooperative relationship with our debriefers.”

  So what sorts of sufferings might you inflict on these Muslim detainees to persuade them to cooperate, and yet remain sinless in their religion?

  Aside from waterboarding, which brings victims to near drowning, “interrogators used ‘rough takedowns,’ described as taking a naked detainee outside of his cell, placing a hood over his head, and dragging him up and down a long corridor while slapping and punching him.”

  Another was “the technique known as ‘hanging,’ involving handcuffing one or both wrists to an overhead horizontal bar… one detainee was apparently left hanging for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days to ‘break’ his resistance.”

  Then there was “forced rectal feeding,” which the CIA said was “medically necessary” for those refusing to eat. For example, a detainee named Majid Khan, was “subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan’s ‘lunch tray,’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused.”

• Commentary: A long overdue nod to Latin self-determination

  Fidel Castro would survive 11 U.S. presidents, at least eight CIA plots to assassinate him and a few premature obituaries, and live to see world’s most powerful country finally give in and recognize—in principle at least—Cuba’s right to national self-determination.

• Can The Cuban Revolution Withstand The Normalization Of Relations With US?

  On Dec. 17, the United States and Cuba carried out an unprecedented — but not unforeseen — prisoner swap: USAID subcontractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. intelligence asset were released by Cuban authorities in exchange for the three remaining members of the “Cuban 5” being held in the U.S.

  [...]

  The Cuban 5, on the other hand, were imprisoned for attempting to safeguard the small island nation from terrorist activities that intensified following the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane by former CIA agents Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. In 1998, they were charged with a number of crimes in the U.S., including conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and acting as agents of a foreign government.

• Torture Reports: Brazil and the United States Release Reports Documenting Systematic Human Rights Abuses

  One day after the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its Executive Summary of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program exposing a policy of torture applied in the War on Terror, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff unveiled her country’s investigatory National Truth Commission Report, identifying human rights atrocities committed in Brazil between 1946 and 1988.

• Al-Qaeda terrorist suspect dies days before his trial in New York

  Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer after U.S. commandos and FBI agents captured him in 2013, outside of his home in a suburb of Tripoli, Libya.

• Perspectives: Torture, stop defending the indefensible

  For instance, of the 119 detainees tortured by CIA agents and contractors, 26 individuals were mistakenly held. This means that completely innocent people were detained and tortured for months. Not all of them survived their captivity.

• Torture Doesn’t Save Lives, It Costs Them

  In 1995, I swore an oath to support and defend our Constitution — a document proclaiming basic human rights and prohibiting the U.S. government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment.” After taking this oath, I became a military intelligence officer and, four years after that, a counterintelligence officer with interrogation training.

• Was revenge the hidden rationale for torture?

  The widespread rhetoric of evil and fear surrounding terrorism suspects has created a large risk that individuals who are detained for interrogation will automatically be seen as inherently bad. For example, in a “Meet the Press” interview the Sunday after the torture report was made public, former Vice President Dick Cheney described the CIA’s targets as way: Unlawful combatants who committed unlawful acts of war against Americans.

  My research has serious implications: Public support for the use of severe interrogation may well have less to do with a quest for information than with a subconscious human instinct for vengeance, even though that is not the expressed purpose of interrogation.

• Brain-Washing the American Way

  2013’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the capture and murder of Osama bin Laden, made the false point that torture works.

  Both Sony films depict and promote State Department and C.I.A. narratives, and were vetted and approved by those government agencies—yet, the truth of each narrative is questionable, at best, and their effect on audience understanding of history is frightening.

• Police increasingly use
  torture, says Kontras

  Based on the CIA torture report recently disclosed, the bombshell report revealed that the American government had approved the torture of prisoners, some of whom were wrongfully imprisoned and held without due process or even public acknowledgment. An earlier report found that some detainees were held indefinitely at least in part because the CIA about the circumstances of their detention.

  When we allow fear and uncertainty to drive our policy, the consequences can haunt us forever. In the saddest news of all, of the world’s nations helped run the program.

  The Senate report makes it clear that “enhanced interrogation techniques” is simply a euphemism.

  Interrogators also staged executions and made threats to hurt detainee’s children or rape and murder their mothers, a common form of psychological torture that has been a mainstay of totalitarian regimes for centuries.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Who’s the true enemy of internet freedom – China, Russia, or the US?

  Recent reports that China has imposed further restrictions on Gmail, Google’s flagship email service, should not really come as much of a surprise. While Chinese users have been unable to access Gmail’s site for several years now, they were still able to use much of its functionality, thanks to third-party services such as Outlook or Apple Mail.

  This loophole has now been closed (albeit temporarily – some of the new restrictions seem to have been mysteriously lifted already), which means determined Chinese users have had to turn to more advanced circumvention tools. Those unable or unwilling to perform any such acrobatics can simply switch to a service run by a domestic Chinese company – which is precisely what the Chinese government wants them to do.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

North Korea Linux 3.0 (Red Star OS) screenshot tour

The desktop version North Korea Linux 3.0 is finally available for download and install, thanks to the same guy who initially brought us the server version of North Korea Linux. The ISO download has been popping up all over the place on torrent sites, and I’ve got a full screenshot tour of this odd but interesting Linux distribution. I suggest downloading it via Kick Ass Torrents.

Download the desktop version of North Korea Linux 3.0

Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech reports on the public release of Red Star 3.0:

The latest version of North Korea’s home-grown desktop operating system, Red Star Linux 3.0, was uploaded to BitTorrent on Monday. We first got a look at the operating system almost a year ago when screenshots were posted online.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • X.Org Server Saw More Code In 2014 Than 2013, But Its Heydays Are Over

    The X.Org Server had more code churn in 2014 than it did in 2013, but its pace has certainly slowed down compared to years prior. But at the same time for those thinking X.Org Server development is going the way of the dinosaur due to Mir and Wayland, you’re sadly mistaken too.

Applications

• Isoplex 1.0.4

  Yet another free application that allows anyone to view high quality movies for free

• Instructionals/Technical

  • HowTo: Use ps, kill, nice, and killall To Manage processes in FreeBSD and OS X Unix Operating System

  • How To Install Websvn In CentOS 7

  • How to use fglrx (AMD Catalyst) on Fedora 21 (!!)

  • Installation and getting started guide with Amazon Glacier storage on the Linux system

  • How To Install Install Cool Retro Term 0.9 On Ubuntu 14.10, Fedora 20, Arch Linux And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install Dropbox 3.0.4 On Linux Systems

  • How To Install LibreOffice 4.3.5 On Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivative Systems, Via PPA

  • How To Install LibreOffice 4.3.5 On Ubuntu, Debian And Derivative Systems

  • How To Install LibreOffice 4.3.5 On Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva And Derivative Systems

• Games

  • Upcoming Horror Adventure Game ‘Downfall’ Confirmed For Linux

    ‘Downfall’ is the remake of the 2009 adventure game by the same name. It’s the game preceding ‘The Cat Lady’ in developer Harvester Games’ planned trilogy, is slated for release in Q2 and has now been confirmed for Linux.

  • Lockdown Protocol, A High-score Shooter & Platformer Released Into Beta For Linux

    Lockdown Protocol is a good looking high-score orientated action platformer that has now entered beta for Linux, and it’s looking great.

  • Open source alternative to Minecraft, new games for Linux, and more

    Hello, open gaming fans! In this week’s roundup, I take a look at an open source alternative to Minecraft, a new Desura client, and new games for Linux.

  • Steam Client Beta Improves Video Performance, Adds FPS Counter

    First up, this latest Steam beta is expected to fix a video playback performance regression for Linux and OS X users. Unfortunately details on this regression and the affected hardware/drivers are scarce. This update has also reduced the CPU load when drawing animated images or videos.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • SoK comes to an end

    The KHangMan was initially a KXmlGuiWindow, but the new UI did not need a few things like the menubars and such, for which it was changed to a QMainWindow.The Messages.sh script was initially placed in src/desktop/ , but since those 3 folders (desktop, harmattan, plasma-active) were about to go, it was moved from there to simply src/ , and it was modified to translate the qml files also. After all these changes the code needed some heavy cleanup, because a lot of functionalities already implemented in the QML code were also defined in the cpp code. Some of the other cleanup tasks were removing commented out statements, removing unnecessary variables, optimizing the code by removing some unncecessary statements, and so on.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • OpenPGP Smartcards and GNOME

    The combination of GnuPG and a OpenPGP smartcard (such as the YubiKey NEO) has been implemented and working well for around a decade. I recall starting to use it when I received a FSFE Fellowship card long time ago. Sadly there has been some regressions when using them under GNOME recently. I reinstalled my laptop with Debian Jessie (beta2) recently, and now took the time to work through the issue and write down a workaround.

Distributions

• Arch Family

  • ArchBang New Release 2015

    Updated packages, Network Manager (nm-applet) for network connections, Firefox web browser and of course Gparted for all you power users

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Now Covered by Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald (NYSE:RHT)

    Several other analysts have also recently commented on the stock. Analysts at BMO Capital Markets raised their price target on shares of Red Hat to $77.00 in a research note on Tuesday. Separately, analysts at Piper Jaffray initiated coverage on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Tuesday. They set an overweight rating on the stock. Finally, analysts at William Blair reiterated an outperform rating on shares of Red Hat in a research note on Monday, December 22nd. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have issued a buy rating to the stock. Red Hat presently has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $72.78.

  • Fedora

    • F21 Release Party in Brno

      I finally found time to write a blogpost about our F21 release party in Brno office of Red Hat. It took place on the release date – December 9th. It was, as always, well attended. It’s hard to estimate the total number of attendees, but it was definitely over 100. Unfortunately, F21 DVDs had not arrived yet, but we still had other swag for people to take: Fedora product stickers, Fedora logo stickers, case badges, badges, pins, flyers,…

    • Installing The AMD Catalyst Driver On Fedora 21

      Installing the AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver on the latest Fedora release can sometimes be a challenge due to Fedora catering towards the open-source graphics drivers.

      With Fedora being on the bleeding-edge and not caring much about proprietary software support while the open-source graphics drivers continue to evolve, sometimes it can be a bit of a headache installing the AMD Catalyst/fglrx driver on the newest Fedora release, but generally it’s possible.

    • Korora 21 (Darla) Beta – Now Available

      The Korora Project is very pleased to announce that the first beta release of version 21 (codename “Darla”) is now available for download.

      Although this is a beta release of Korora, it is derived from Fedora 211 stable and should be ready for every day use. We are keen however, to hear any issues people encounter so that we can improve it for the final release. Feel free to bombard us on social media or log a report in our support system, Engage.

    • Korora 21 Now In Beta With Cinnamon 2.4 & More

      The first beta release of the Fedora-based Korora Linux distribution is now available that’s powered by last month’s Fedora 21.

• Debian Family

  • Release Critical Bug report for Week 01

  • Weirdness with hplip package in Debian wheezy

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Nokia Lumia 1020 Ubuntu OS Features Leaked

        There is a fresh leak being spread throughout the mobile device world from Team Ubuntu (via GizmoChina) that appears to reveal the Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone running a full version of Ubuntu OS Linux. This type of leak is hard to confirm one-hundred percent, but a series of images within the source website show the mobile device running the operating system effectively. The images appear to reveal the smartphone running the full version of the Ubuntu OS desktop operating system. Anyone who has used the Ubuntu Linux operating system previously should recognize the setup on the phone, as it featured a basic wallpaper with tiles commonly used for features and shortcuts set to the left hand side.

      • Meizu M1 Note to go open-source in 2015: Smartphone expected to feature Ubuntu Touch, to be launched at CES 2015

        Chinese smartphone brand Meizu, which not too long ago grabbed eyeballs of technology enthusiasts across the world by announcing its decision to convert its high-end smartphone, the MX4 to open-source, is now in the news again.

        This time it is because the China-based company’s first Canonical Ubuntu-powered smartphone, the M1 Note running the Ubuntu Flyme operating platform is pegged for official launch during the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015) in Las Vegas.

Devices/Embedded

• LG tips new 4K TVs running WebOS 2.0

  Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG has announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS.

  Following up on its well-received first batch of WebOS based smart TVs, LG just announced a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS. WebOS 2.0 offers up to 60 percent faster boot time, as well as an easier interface and easier connectivity to external devices. In addition, users can now customize their menus on the Launcher Bar.

• Phones

  • So the Smartphone ‘Bloodbath’ Annual Preview for Year 2015 – This is so boring

    So yes, readers, it was an exhilirating ride. But it is now over. The bloodbath is gone. Samsung won the hardware war clearly. Android won the OS war, decisively. There are no dark horses left. We just learned a week ago that even the so-called ‘third ecosystem’ haha, Windows Phone, has actually failed to activate one third of all the Lumia Nokia smartphones shipped using that OS. So Windows is in reality a far worse disaster than has even been reported, and the Nokia collapse was the worst corporate management catastrophy ever witnessed. Well, we know all that, Elop the worst CEO of all time and all that. what we now will see in the coming years is more price wars that will cause unforseen profit warnings, more mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business and Lenovo buying the Motorola business from Google. We may well see former greats like HTC and Blackberry being sold and buyers from Asia most likely China but could be India or elsewhere in Asia. Japan’s seven handset makers have gone through their own consolidation through mergers and acquisitions already shrinking from 7 manufacturers to 4. The South Korean market is in similar state now with Pantech being on the block.

  • Tizen

    • Samsung turns to Tizen for new Smart TVs

      Samsung says it will use Tizen Linux in all of its 2015 Smart TVs, which will feature WiDi and BLE for content sharing and mirroring from mobile devices.

  • Android

    • Android customization – how to regain storage space by cleaning the cache on your Android device

      Last week on our Android customization post, you got to play with image files and change up your wallpaper on your Android device. After messing with all those image files, you may be finding that your internal storage space is strangely low, so we should try to fix that.

    • OnePlus One receives first official Android 5.0 Lollipop alpha ROM: How to install

      OnePlus has released its first official Android 5.0 Lollipop alpha custom build for the OnePlus One smartphone.

    • AT&T Android 4.4.4 KitKat Update Arrives Ahead of Android Lollipop For Samsung Galaxy Note 3

      The update arrived ahead of Android lollipop that is scheduled to roll out this year. Although most users are hoping for Android Lollipop, the Kitkat version still includes bug fixes and security patches.

    • This Indecisive Smartphone Can Run Android, Windows, or Firefox OS

      The Pixi doesn’t run all these operating systems at once or anything; which one you want is a choice you’ll have to make when you buy one. But adding to the variety, the new Pixi comes 3.5-inch, 4-inch, 4.5-inch, and 5-inches alongside the choices of operating system. The only catch is that the tiny 3.5-inch version won’t have LTE. Still, that’s an ass-ton of variety.

    • LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga Is Now On Android, But The $6.99 Title Seems To Be Amazon Appstore-Only For Now

    • Could Android Survive Without Google?

      Android is still seen as an open operating system with communal benefits for all, but it is also still closely associated with Google. How important is Google to the Android ecosystem? The instinctive answer is ‘very’ but let’s question that for a moment and consider how much Android needs Google.

    • Android 5.0 Lollipop Update Leaked For Samsung Galaxy Note 3; How To Install It

    • Pro tip: Easily update your Android apps

      Jack Wallen shows you how to quickly and easily update your Android apps from within the Google Play Store.

    • Work Out While You Work, Free Premium Android Apps, and More Deals

    • Three ways to learn Android programming in 2015

    • Android App Stops Smartphone Spies

      You’re not paranoid if they really are listening. A new Android app can detect surveillance attempts on your smartphone, including IMSI catchers (also called “stingrays”), hidden text messages and attacks exploiting the telephone-signal protocol known as Signaling System 7 (SS7).

    • OnePlus unveils its own Android build without Cyanogen

      Following a temporary ban in India, OnePlus has released its own alpha Lollipop ROM for the One based on stock Android 5.0 — with no Cyanogen influence. For now, the alpha software is only available as a download, and you’ll need to wipe your phone in order to get it. It’s also very basic and OnePlus said it includes “no extras beyond the stock features of AOSP Lollipop,” though it promised to build on it over time. OnePlus started talking about its own Android fork shortly before Cyanogen inked an exclusive deal with Indian smartphone maker Micromax.

    • Things I appreciate about Android

      Android is probably the most versatile mobile platform out there, both when it comes to hardware and software. The Android platform is one that comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors. To somebody who has never really looked at Android in depth before, it can be a somewhat confusing experience. How is the HTC One, which looks completely different from the Galaxy S5 over here, possibly be a part of the same platform?

    • Start 2015 off right: with Flappy Bird on your Android Wear smartwatch [DOWNLOAD]

      After watching as Android dev Corbin Davenport ported everything from Minecraft Pocket Edition, to Doom, to Windows 95 onto his Android Wear smartwatch (he even got Grand Theft Auto 3 up and running), that mad developer is at it again.

    • Some Cool Retro Watchfaces

      These holidays, I was refraining from spending huge sums on stocking gadgets I don’t need. But (un)fortunately, I ended up buying a Nexus 5, a Moga Hero controller and a cheap smartwatch. So what do you do when you get an Android device? Exactly! Start hacking on it – root, custom ROMs, custom kernel, cool apps! So, my experimentation started with the SmartQ Z Smartwatch I had bought. For the price (CAD $91, including shipping from China) this was an irresistible piece of tiny Android to start tinkering around with. It packs a 1GHz Ingenic processor (MIPS) – JZ4775, 512MB DDR RAM and 4GB flash.

    • Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000 Updates with Android 5.0 lollipop via Custom ROM

      XDA Developer developed a custom ROM CyanogenMod CM12 series NightOwl version. Android developers with usernames TouchLeclouds and DroidTwe4kz also contributed to the custom ROM.

Open source carries software-defined storage forward

In my small home-office, I have hard drives, flash drives, and solid-state drives, which use FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, Btrfs, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems, and are connected to the computers with CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, ssh, and ftp over the Internet and Gigabit Ethernet with a variety of authentication systems based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory (AD). And, this, mind you, is a simple, small-business network.

Is it any wonder then that companies, far, far larger then my little operation, want to abstract their storage concerns away with software-defined storage (SDS)? I think not!

Coreboot Ported To Another Lenovo ThinkPad

While Coreboot is most commonly used by Google Chromebooks, an increasing number of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are becoming compatible with Coreboot for initializing and booting the system with open-source software.

Open Source App Allows Easier Image Sharing in Google Hangouts

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux using a Chrome extension

    Google’s Chromebooks can now run Linux, François Beaufort, former frequent Chrome hacker who was hired by Google in 2013, revealed on a Google+ post. To run Linux, users will essentially have to enable developer mode, and use a Chrome extension named Crouton Chrome.

    Chromebook computers run on Google’s ChromeOS, which isn’t as full-fledged as Windows, OS X, or most Linux distributions for that matter. Google, however, has added several handy features to the operating system in the last couple of months. Chromebooks now support offline video playback and also lets users run a handful of Android applications.

• Mozilla

  • Hats Off to Mozilla

    Firefox turned ten years old last November and celebrated the occasion with a new version (33.1) that featured a much-welcomed developer edition. It also featured a “forget” button that lets you backspace through time, blowing away history, cookies and open tabs: one more privacy tool for the shed.

    Those were two among many new moves by Mozilla, Firefox’s parent, all siding with individuals leaning against two prevailing winds that have blown across the on-line world for at least a decade.

BSD

• BSD Community is Too Insular

  First of all let me say I really like BSD. I enjoy studying it’s history which extends back to 1978 when it was a mere add-on to Bell Labs Unix version 6. The longest uptime I’ve ever had on a computer was with OpenBSD. It’s a fine piece of work.

  On the other hand when I look at the BSD community I see a less than friendly environment. It is rather like a gated community where you need to be invited in. Often when one goes to BSD forums one gets some mysterious error message and no access. IRC channels related to BSD are also invite only.

• The Good & Bad Of ZFS + HAMMER File-Systems On BSD

  Among the pros of ZFS are it’s self-healing, writable clones, fully journaling system using ZFS snapshots, compression, and portable storage. Among the viewed HAMMER positives are the focus on data integrity, great SQL database performance, lower RAM requirements, supports pseudo file-systems, fully open-source with a BSD license, etc. Of course, with each also comes various cons.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• A small update to our “User Liberation” video

  So we’ve now chucked this particular easter egg, and written this post to document the decision. Doing this reminded me of the relative impermanence of all digital media. DRM-pushing companies like Amazon and Apple who distribute videos and ebooks have the same capability, to go back and edit works after they are published. In many cases, they can even do it remotely, replacing works that you think of as living on a device in your home. Will they tell you about it when they do?

  Thank you to Urchin Studios for making the edits and for their amazing work on the project! It really demonstrates the power of free software and free formats, and debunks the myth that professional designers and animators must use proprietary software to be top notch.

• Happy GNU year 2015!

Project Releases

• Release 0.11 of ctioga2

  The possibilities of the new styling system are particularly interesting, and I’m working on ways to make it more powerful, and providing series of default style files that anyone could use as they want. Among other future changes, I want to improve the position of ticks, especially when using non-linear axes, and add functions to draw vector fields (though this still needs some thinking). Enjoy, and a happy new year to everyone !

Openness/Sharing

• Open-source 3D scans of museum items generate amazing new creative works

  Artist Oliver Laric worked with the Usher Gallery and The Collection in Lincoln to create 3D scans of their collections, then made the files available online. The art that emerged is varied and sometimes astonishing, like the work above by Leah Ferrini.

Programming

• Pulp in the New Year

  Pulp has used web.py as its web framework for a long time, but unfortunately that project has gone dormant. Since Pulp only uses a small set of web.py’s features (essentially using it as a thin WSGI adapter), replacing it is a reasonably straight-forward task. This gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we want out of a web framework and consider several compelling options.

• My $2375 Amazon EC2 Mistake

  When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes!

  Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently, hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins.

  Boom! A $2375 bill in the morning. Just for trying to learn rails.

  Lucky for me, I explained my situation to Amazon customer support – and they knew I wasn’t bitcoin mining all night. Amazon was kind enough to drop the charges this time!

• New tool to track use of open source Web code

  Prior to Libscore, developers contributed to front-end open source projects, hoping their work would be used at-large, but without having any concrete visibility.

Prince Andrew and ‘naked pool parties’ at his paedophile friend’s house

Juan Alessi, who spent 11 years working for Epstein, also told the Daily Mail how the Prince enjoyed daily massages by young women during his visits.

He said Andrew emerged ‘smiling’ after the rub-downs which, he believes, were paid for by Epstein.

Science

• Are two thirds of cancers really due to bad luck?

  A paper published in Science has been widely reported in the media today. According to media reports, such as this one, the paper showed that two thirds of cancers are simply due to bad luck, and only one third are due to environmental, lifestyle, or genetic risk factors.

  The paper shows no such thing, of course.

  It’s actually quite an interesting paper, and I’d encourage you to read it in full (though sadly it’s paywalled, so you may or may not be able to). But it did not show that two thirds of cancers are due to bad luck.

Health/Nutrition

• Drug firms sway vets on antibiotics in food animals

  In 2016, a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy will give veterinarians a key role in combating a surge in antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that infect humans. For the first time, the agency will require veterinarians, not farmers, to decide whenever antibiotics used by people are given to animals.

Security

• DNSSEC

  Many registrars don’t support DNSSEC, if you use such a registrar (as I do) then you need to transfer your zone before you can productively use DNSSEC. Without the DS entries being signed by a registrar and included in the TLD no-one will recognise your signatures on zone data.

• Friday’s security updates

• OpenBSD Moves to 5.7-beta

  As always, your testing is needed to ensure that any bugs are found and squashed early!

Transparency Reporting

• Taxpayers’ bill for policing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s two-year stay in Ecuadorian embassy soars to £9MILLION

  Guarding the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Julian Assange has claimed asylum has now cost taxpayers £9million, it has been revealed.

  Metropolitan Police officers have been standing outside the Knightsbridge building since the WikiLeaks founder took refuge there in June 2012 – a vigil costing £11,000 per day.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• How Fox News Covered Pope Francis’ Action On Climate Change

  Fox News reported on Pope Francis’ upcoming action on climate change by promoting climate change denial and suggesting that the pope is aligning with “extremists who favor widespread population control and wealth redistribution.”

• UK’s leading fund manager picks his stocks for 2015

  Britain’s leading fund manager, Neil Woodford, has warned that falling oil prices could prompt a rout in the global bond market as shale companies default on vast debts built up during the US fracking boom.

• Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There’s No Easy Fix

  When the latest international Climate Conference wrapped up in Lima, Peru, last month, delegates boarded their flights home without much official discussion of how the planes that shuttled them to the meeting had altered the climate.

  Aircraft currently contribute about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. That might not seem like much, but if the aviation industry were a country, it would be one of the world’s top 10 emitters of CO2. And its emissions are projected to grow between two and four times by 2050 without policy interventions.

Finance

• TTIP Update XLVI

  There are *already* more than €30 billion worth of ISDS claims against EU nations

  [...]

  This is the key problem with ISDS: it places the rights of corporations above the rights of nations – indeed, in this case, above the rights of the EU to determine laws within its borders. ISDS cannot be “fixed”, as the European Commission would have us believe, because it was designed with exactly this purpose in mind: it was introduced as a way of protecting investments in countries where the local rule of law could not be depended upon. Since that is manifestly not the case in the EU or US, it serves no purpose other than to undermine the strong legal systems there. The only solution is therefore to drop ISDS from TTIP, CETA and all future agreements.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Koch-Funded News Outlet Defends Dark-Money Organizations

  Conservative news outlet Watchdog.org released a six-part series defending dark-money organizations — politically focused groups that conceal the identities of their donors — but failed to disclose its own funding from the Koch brothers and other conservative dark-money players.

Privacy

• What your Android apps know about you: Researchers reveal the software that can listen to your microphone, access your contacts and always knows exactly where you are

  Android apps are spying on users far more than expected, a new study has found.

  The research by Vocativ shows the apps that can access user’s microphones, call logs and contacts.

• Holistic security for journalists and sources — Logan Symposium

• F.B.I. Employees With Ties Abroad See Security Bias

  The F.B.I. is subjecting hundreds of its employees who were born overseas or have relatives or friends there to an aggressive internal surveillance program that started after Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent foreign spies from coercing newly hired linguists but that has been greatly expanded since then.

  The program has drawn criticism from F.B.I. linguists, agents and other personnel with foreign language and cultural skills, and with ties abroad. They complain they are being discriminated against by a secretive “risk-management” plan that the agency uses to guard against espionage. This limits their assignments and stalls their careers, according to several employees and their lawyers.

• Telephone taps and secret surveillance helped Margaret Thatcher defeat Arthur Scargill in the year-long pit dispute

  So many telephones were being tapped during the 1984-5 miners’ strike that the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong became so alarmed that he took immediate steps to ensure that no mention was ever made of the extent of the eavesdropping.

  Margaret Thatcher’s success in hushing up the bugging of phones by the Security Service MI5 is finally revealed in her 1985 cabinet papers released by the National Archives.

  Action to prevent public disclosure of the role of intelligence officers was personally approved by the Prime Minister.

Civil Rights

• Fox News’ Attack On Driver’s Licenses For Undocumented Californians Is Full Of Falsehoods

  Fox News falsely claimed that California’s new program to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants amounted to “back door to citizenship” that would increase identity theft. But the program requires a stringent background check and shares the support of law enforcement and public officials who point to studies that show the program will lead to increased safety and transparency for citizens.

• Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap”

  In part two of our holiday special, we feature our April 2014 interview with Matt Taibbi about his book, “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.” The book asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. “It is much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else,” Taibbi says.

• The lost detainees and the CIA’s dungeons

  The executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on CIA torture was finally published on 9 December 2014, and it proved shocking, despite being highly-redacted and missing 9,400 documents “withheld by the White House”.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Get ready: The FCC says it will vote on net neutrality in February

  Federal regulators looking to place restrictions on Internet providers will introduce and vote on new proposed net neutrality rules in February, Federal Communications Commission officials said Friday.

• Google Strikes an Upbeat Note With FCC on Title II

DRM

• Netflix Cracks Down on VPN and Proxy “Pirates”

  Netflix is starting to block subscribers who access its service using VPN services and other tools that bypass geolocation restrictions. The changes, which may also affect legitimate users, have been requested by the movie studios who want full control over what people can see in their respective countries.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Canadian ISPs and VPNs Now Have to Alert Pirating Customers

    Starting today Canadian Internet providers are required to forward copyright infringement notices to their subscribers. This notification scheme provides a safe harbor for ISPs but is also expected to result in a surge in piracy settlement schemes. The new law further causes trouble for VPN providers, who are now required to log customers for at least six months.