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● 04.18.15

● Links 18/4/2015: ExTiX 15.2, RaspArch

Posted in News Roundup at 7:01 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Argos Uses GNU/Linux, Windows Leads Only to Malware

• Last year we reported that another British giant, Ryman (smaller than Argos, but still a highstreet chain), had moved to GNU/Linux. They told me that had dumped it due to Windows malware.

Desktop

=> ↺ Uruguay By Quarters – The GNU/Linux Desktop Share

• Uruguay is one of the countries that has pushed GNU/Linux in education and that effort is paying off. GNU/Linux is growing every year and more rapidly every year in Uruguay. It’s all good, something to emulate if we want the best IT for the lowest cost.

=> ↺ How to make Linux’s desktop look good on high-resolution displays

• Ultra-high-resolution displays with high pixel densities are all the rage now, and for good reason: They look amazing compared to conventional displays. The big problem for PC users is that a lot of software isn’t designed with that level of pixel density in mind.

• If you’re running GNOME 3 in Linux, your first boot will have you looking for your reading glasses. (Windows suffers from similar issues with high-DPI displays.)

• Luckily, you can save your eyes and enjoy that glorious screen you paid for with a few steps. This article will show you how to change the scaling settings for GNOME 3, Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird, and Chromium.

Server

=> ↺ Linux Containers to Boost Six Networking Picks

• In this release of Network Bits & Bytes, we discuss the networking requirements of Linux containers, which present an alternative to virtual machines for carving up x86 server resources that is seeing very strong interest in the web 2.0 vertical and may become a core building block in cloud data centers over the next few years.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 4.1 Has Improvements For The Multi-Queue Block Layer

• The latest good stuff for the Linux 4.1 kernel are the block core improvements, which mostly are focused on improving the multi-queue block layer (blk-mq).

=> ↺ Sub-$20 802.11n USB WiFi Adapter That’s Linux Friendly

• As a quick Friday note, if you’re looking for a 802.11n/g USB WiFi adapter that’s very affordable and will work great with Linux, here’s one of my recent purchases. After being pleased with one of them, I’ve since ordered a few more of these Wireless-N adapters for Linux usage.

• [...]

• …it also very clearly advertises Linux support.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ X.Org Looks To Have Six Summer Projects

• This summer there should be six students working on new projects for X.Org/Mesa/Wayland via the foundation’s annual participation in the Google Summer of Code.

Applications

=> ↺ NetworkManager Drops WiMAX Support

• With WiMAX not being too popular and other competing wireless standards taking over, NetworkManager is discontinuing its support for this technology.

=> ↺ Docker Engine 1.6 Debuts Alongside Docker Registry 2.0 and Compose 1.2.0

=> ↺ shpaint: For the Toulouse-Lautrec of the terminal

Proprietary

=> ↺ Pixar’s giving away RenderMan for free!!

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ 40 Useful Linux Commands

=> ↺ How To Install Sweet Home 3D 4.6 On Linux Systems

=> ↺ Addendum to 12th installment: watermarks with copyright notice using LaTeX

=> ↺ How to install Known on a CentOS 7 VPS

=> ↺ How to install Kde Plasma 5 on Arch Linux

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KActivities on KDE’s Phabricator

• If you haven’t heard, there are a few KDE projects testing Phabricator for patch review and project management.

=> ↺ What happened in Toulouse?

• … a KDE PIM sprint happened in Toulouse! And what happened during that sprint? Well, read this wholly incomplete report!

=> ↺ Evolving KDE

• KDE began its life as a desktop project and Qt showcase back in 1996. Since then KDE has evolved to become something more significant; the modern KDE is a global community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates producing some of the world’s finest user-centric Free Software. As we have evolved, so too has the world around us. The user’s experience is no longer restricted to the desktop. It has expanded to the user’s hands, wrists, glasses and more and will continue to evolve into areas we have yet to imagine.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat Joins Khronos, The Group Behind OpenGL & Vulkan

Fedora

=> ↺ F22 Beta, Flock, Linux 4.0, Fedora 23 (!), and Diversity — it’s 5tFTW for April 17th, 2015

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ ExTiX 15.2 Is Based on Ubuntu 15.04 and Debian 8 Jessie, Features LXQt and KDE Editions

• After having announced his new RaspArch distribution that helps users run the powerful Arch Linux distribution on a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B computer board, Arne Exton informed Softpedia about the immediate availability for download of the ExTiX 15.2 Linux operating system.

=> ↺ Elementary OS 0.3 (Freya) Released – A Quick Review and Installation Guide with Screenshots

• Elementary OS is a Ubuntu based GNU/Linux distribution, which started as a theme and application set for Ubuntu. From eye-candy theme and wallpaper it turns out to be an independent Linux distribution. It inherits legacy of Ubuntu OS and shares Ubuntu’s software Center for package management. It is known for its lightweight nature which is low on resource that makes it easy to run on old PCS, simple yet effective user interface, beautiful themes and wallpaper serves as an eye-candy to users and one of the best Linux OS for Linux newbies.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ RaspArch Offers an Easy Way to Run Arch Linux on Raspberry Pi 2

• Arne Exton had the pleasure of informing Softpedia about a new distribution of GNU/Linux created from the ground up for the Raspberry Pi 2 tiny computer board and called RaspArch.

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ Slides – Developing HTML5 applications for Tizen

Android

=> ↺ NAB: Kaltura Offers Open Source Android Video Library

• During NAB, video technology provider Kaltura launched what the company is calling the industry’s first open source video library for HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) playback on Android devices.

=> ↺ Kaltura ‘cracks the code’ for reliable HLS video streaming on Android devices

=> ↺ Stream PC games to your Android device with Remotr

• The concept of streaming games to a mobile device is nothing new. Nvidia’s Grid service, for example, allows players to access PC games via the company’s Shield console and tablet, while Limelight Game Streaming opens the door to Android devices — provided you have an Nvidia GameStream-compatible PC.

• Remotr opens the door even further, letting you play just about any PC game on just about any Android device. It’s free, and it works — but with some caveats.

=> ↺ Google Play Services 7.3 Adds A New UI For Trusted Places And Finally Makes The Persistent Android Wear Notification Dismissible [APK Download]

• Google Play services made a rather lofty jump from 7.0 to 7.3 a couple days ago. While there don’t appear to be any big API changes for developers, a couple of pretty obnoxious issues were cleared up for regular users. It looks like the Home address in Trusted Places is not only working again, but there may be an improved UI that makes it even easier to set up safe zones (if you didn’t already have it). Android Wear owners will also be pleased to say goodbye to the persistent notification. As always, we’ve got a download link below.

=> ↺ Android 5.1.1 references surface on Google’s own site

• Google just recently began rolling out Android 5.1 Lollipop within the last few weeks, but there may be another software version already on its way sometime soon. The next version is Android 5.1.1, and it was recently found running on the Nexus 9 and Wi-fi Nexus 7 (2013) model on Google’s Android Audio Latency information page. The Nexus 9 is running build number LMY47S and the Wi-fi Nexus 7 (2013) is shown running build number LMY47W. We’ve attached a screenshot below so you can see for yourself.

=> ↺ U.S. Cellular Samsung Galaxy Note Edge & Galaxy Note Android 5.0.1 Lollipop Software Update

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Watch Out Google, DARPA Just Open Sourced All This Swish ‘Dark Web’ Search Tech

• Google appears to be an indomitable force. But, with today’s release from the US military’s research arm of its Memex search technologies and Europe’s competition investigation into the Mountain View giant, it might be a propitious time for tech-minded entrepreneurs to start building a Google killer.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Rust 1.0+ To Focus On Better Windows Support, ARM, & Faster Compile Times

• With Rust 1.0 now in beta and v1.0 being in good shape, developers are beginning to form plans for what to add to this Mozilla-sponsored language in the post-1.0 era.

BSD

=> ↺ DragonFlyBSD Pulls In GCC 5 Compiler

• While GCC 5 hasn’t been officially released yet, DragonFlyBSD has pulled in a near-final revision of the open-source compiler for use by their BSD operating system.

Project Releases

=> ↺ Wine 1.7.41 Works More On Kernel Job Objects, MSI Patches

• Two weeks ago Wine 1.7.40 added kernel job object support (after previously being a feature of Wine-Staging) and now with today’s v1.7.41 release this Windows feature has been further improved.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Forge.mil changed how the US military develops software

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Building a game engine, a twist on classic arcade games, and more gaming news

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ The World’s First Self-Powered Video Camera Can Record Forever

• It makes perfect sense. The sensors that capture images for a digital camera and the sensors that convert light into electricity for a solar cell rely on the same technology. So why not build a device with a sensor that does both, and create a self-powered video camera? Some Columbia University researchers did just that.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Japan’s “Over 65″ Rise To Record 33 Million, More Than Double Number Of Children

• With Abenomics seemingly a total failure (aside from managing to collapse the currency and living standards of the population – worst Misery Index in 33 years) the demographic crisis that Japan faces just got more crisis-er. As NHKWorld reports, Japan’s population continues to fall (4th year in a row) but what is worse, there are now 33 million people over the age of 65 (a record 26%), more than double the number under the age of 14 (16.2 million). The ministry says the population will likely continue declining for some time as fewer babies are born and society ages.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

=> ↺ Why We Must Return to the US-Russian Parity Principle

• When I spoke at this forum nine months ago, in June 2014, I warned that the Ukrainian crisis was the worst US-Russian confrontation in many decades. It had already plunged us into a new (or renewed) Cold War potentially even more perilous than its forty-year US-Soviet predecessor because the epicenter of this one was on Russia’s borders; because it lacked the stabilizing rules developed during the preceding Cold War; and because, unlike before, there was no significant opposition to it in the American political-media establishment. I also warned that we might soon be closer to actual war with Russia than we had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

=> ↺ Germany is the Tell-Tale Heart of America’s Drone War

• A TOP-SECRET U.S. intelligence document obtained by The Intercept confirms that the sprawling U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany serves as the high-tech heart of America’s drone program. Ramstein is the site of a satellite relay station that enables drone operators in the American Southwest to communicate with their remote aircraft in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and other targeted countries. The top-secret slide deck, dated July 2012, provides the most detailed blueprint seen to date of the technical architecture used to conduct strikes with Predator and Reaper drones.

• Amid fierce European criticism of America’s targeted killing program, U.S. and German government officials have long downplayed Ramstein’s role in lethal U.S. drone operations and have issued carefully phrased evasions when confronted with direct questions about the base. But the slides show that the facilities at Ramstein perform an essential function in lethal drone strikes conducted by the CIA and the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa.

• [...]

• Former drone sensor operator Brandon Bryant, who conducted operations in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, said that without Ramstein, the U.S. would either need to find another base in the area, with the ability to hit satellites in the Middle East and Africa, or place U.S. personnel much closer to the areas they are targeting. “Instead of being able to be [inside the U.S.] with their operations, they would have to do more line-of-sight stuff, more direct deployments, more people going over there rather than [operating] in the states,” Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the drone program, told The Intercept. The U.S. is “doing shady stuff behind the scenes like using satellite and information technologies that, if able to continue being used, are going to just continue to perpetuate the drone war,” he charged.

=> ↺ Secret Details of Drone Strike Revealed As Unprecedented Case Goes to German Court

• On Aug. 31, 2012, a top-secret U.S. intelligence report noted that “possible bystanders” had been killed alongside militants from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in a drone strike in eastern Yemen two days earlier. The source of the intelligence, a Yemeni official described in the cable as “reliable,” identified two of the dead as Waleed bin Ali Jaber and Salim bin Ali Jaber, “an imam of a mosque who had reportedly preached a sermon that had insulted AQAP.”

• The source believed that Salim and Waleed “had been lured to the car by the two AQAP militants when the airstrike hit.”

=> ↺ Saban hints: Clinton opposes the Iran deal

• Just minutes before Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 presidential election, Israeli Channel One News interviewed Haim Saban, an American-Israeli media magnate and long-time Clinton supporter. Noticeably excited, he explained that she had waited to make the announcement until she had carefully prepared the ground for her campaign.

=> ↺ Saudi-led Yemen air war’s high civilian toll unsettles U.S. officials

• Concerned about reports of hundreds of civilian casualties, Obama administration officials are increasingly uneasy about the U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led air war against rebel militias in Yemen, opening a potential rift between Washington and its ally in Riyadh.

• Backed by U.S. intelligence, air refueling and other support, Saudi warplanes have conducted widespread bombing of Yemeni villages and towns since March 26 but have failed to dislodge the Houthi rebels who have overrun much of the Arab world’s poorest nation since last fall.

• Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, widely regarded as the terrorist network’s most lethal franchise, has capitalized on the chaos by sharply expanding its reach. Fighters loyal to the group claimed control Thursday of a military base and other key facilities near Mukalla, an Arabian Sea port in southern Yemen.

=> ↺ Malvinas Secretary Filmus to talk about Falklands and oil in London

• According to Filmus Facebook, the conference “Militarization and the Illegal exploration for oil in the South Atlantic: the Argentine response” follows on a similar and successful event held in Paris on the sidelines of the Unesco congress on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Obama-Castro meeting overshadows anti-US line at summit

• As usual when Latin America’s leftist leaders get together with United States officials, there were plenty of swipes at the US during the seventh Summit of the Americas.

=> ↺ How Obama’s Cuba policy can help with other Latin American countries

• The historic handshake with Raul Castro has taken place for the cameras. President Obama has declared that the United States is done meddling in Latin America. There will be rough patches, but this is happening: the relationship with Cuba is on the mend.

• That should remove one very sore spot in Washington’s ties to the region, a policy that often embarrassed even friends of the U.S.

=> ↺ Cuba Being Removed From State Sponsors of Terrorism List

• The White House has submitted documentationin support of removing Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, on which it’s been for more than 33 years, longer than any country but Syria, which was placed on the list in 1979. The other two countries on the State Department’s list, Iran and Sudan, were placed there in 1984 and 1993. Cuba’s placement on the list, like the Cold War era sanctions, have done nothing to improve the situation in Cuba or advance any of the U.S.’s stated goals.

=> ↺ Can Latin America and the United States Overcome the Past?

=> ↺ U.S. Intervention Most Threatens Mideast Stability

• The Obama administration’s decision to negotiate with Tehran triggered near hysteria among U.S. politicians and pundits who advocate perpetual war in the Middle East. One complaint is that the talks failed to address Iran’s regional role.

=> ↺ Senate Heavy Lifting Begins With Education and Iran

=> ↺ The long arm of Blackwater

• It’s probably a good time to remember that in its various guises, the company had close ties to influential people in the U.S. government and Republican politics.

• Directors included former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, former CIA Counterterrorism Director Cofer Black, former Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat and former NSA Director Bobby Inman.

=> ↺ Are Soldiers Happy? Unhappy? Compared to What?

• But what makes the 52 percent number, featured in the story’s subhead (“Army Data Show 52% Pessimistic About the Future”), any more meaningful than 9 percent? Each is an arbitrary cutoff, dividing those who “score poorly” from a “positive result.” Depending on how many pessimism-related questions were asked, you could get virtually any result you wanted by moving that cutoff up or down. And since that number could be anything, it means nothing.

Transparency Reporting

=> ↺ Judges slammed for Assange stance

• Julian Assange’s lawyer has attacked judges for withdrawing from a legal conference because the WikiLeaks founder was taking part.

Finance

=> ↺ Finally some privacy – for multinational tax dodgers

• So now we have a situation in which the budget is in deficit, tax receipts from transnational corporations are falling and abuse of tax loopholes is widespread.

• Isn’t it great that someone is looking out for the privacy of oppressed billionaires?

=> ↺ The Trans-Pacific Partnership is great for elites. Is it good for anyone else?

• In 2011, Australia enacted a tough new anti-smoking law that requires cigarette companies to distribute their wares in plain green packages. Anti-smoking activists see Australia’s law as a model for the world. They hope that replacing logos with graphic health warnings will make them less appealing to consumers, especially minors.

• Naturally, tobacco companies hated the law. And they found a surprising way to fight back: they persuaded governments in Ukraine and Honduras to file complaints with the World Trade Organization, alleging that the new regulations violated global trade rules.

=> ↺ ‘It hurts when Germans call Greece a failed state’

• With the war of words – and cashflows – between Greece and Germany showing no sign of dying down, The Local meets one young Greek who’s come to see what the Germans have to teach about running a country successfully.

• [...]

• …Bonn University, when the professor asked students to name the ‘worst’ country to have joined the EU.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ For the media, traditional values still matter

• But far too often, journalism falls short. Reporters often seem to take what politicians and their handlers say at face value, writing what they hear without ensuring that the facts bear it out. They look for winners and losers at the expense of nuance. They strive to give the appearance of even-handedness by creating a false balance between two sides that do not deserve equal weight. They elevate politics, polls and personality over substance and measured analysis.

=> ↺ Newsletter: Shake Off Hypnosis, See Root Causes Of Crises

• An ambitious young journalist who wanted to speak truth to power, Matt Kennard, wrote for the Financial Times. He quickly learned the corporate media was not the place to tell truths that the power structure did not want to hear. Now he has written a new book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter Takes on the Masters of the Universe,” which does speak truth to power.

Censorship

=> ↺ China’s Great Cannon could backfire

=> ↺ How startup GitHub survived a massive five-day network attack (Q&A)

=> ↺ China develops downtime tool called the Great Cannon

=> ↺ Reading This Magazine Could Land You in Jail

=> ↺ The New Thought Police

=> ↺ To Protect the Most Fundamental Rights of Internet Users, We Must Always Be Skeptical of Any Call for Regulation

• The Internet is the largest knowledge base that has ever existed. Its rapid development became possible greatly due to its unregulated nature at its starting point. The “anarchical” character of the Internet allowed all users to contribute their share of knowledge and make it accessible to other users around the world. The vision of Wikipedia is based on this simple, yet revolutionary, concept of allowing free and unlimited access to the sum of all human knowledge.

• As knowledge is the most fundamental tool to free people from having their rights and freedoms infringed, this vision has become a great source of hope to oppressed people all over the world. At the same time, it has become one of the greatest sources of fear to oppressive regimes. When knowledge is accessible to everyone, it is much harder to control the people by imposing false consciousness of limited choices. When information is quickly communicated on social media platforms with no governmental command, revolutions have better chances to succeed. When the Internet connects the world to a small global village, human rights violations are less likely to hide unnoticed in the dark.

• When considering the issue of regulating the Internet, we must not overlook the possible harmful implications of even seemingly minor regulation. Every governmental intervention carries with it limitation of personal rights, whether its primarily aim is to serve the governments’ interests and control or even where it is limited solely to the legitimate purpose of protecting and serving the citizens themselves.

=> ↺ The most concerning element of Facebook’s potential new power

• “Facebook has more power in determining who can speak and who can be heard around the globe than any Supreme Court justice, any king or any president.” Those prescient words came from law professor Jeffrey Rosen way back in 2010. Five years later, the Times is willingly handing its censorship keys over to that king of kings.

=> ↺ Sony Pursued Site-Blocking in Norway Because Nobody Could Afford to Challenge Them

• In 2013 when site-blocking was hitting the courts in Norway (again,) Sony’s legal team briefly considered the threat of a challenge from the Norwegian Pirate Party or other groups opposed to filtering the internet. But any fears of a challenge were quickly brushed aside. Why? Because, in all likelihood, no one could take the financial risk of challenging the site-blocks in court.

Privacy

=> ↺ How Wiretapping Is Used In Iceland

• Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, an MP for the Pirate Party, posed a formal question to the Ministry of the Interior on police wiretapping in 2008. Yesterday, Stundin reports, he shared what he learned with parliament.

• A police warrant to tap someone’s phone is granted in 99.3% of all cases where one was requested. Of the 720 wiretap warrants police have asked for, in only five cases was the request denied.

=> ↺ Editorial: Denial of spy role needed

• The latest revelation about New Zealand’s intelligence doings has stirred little interest.

• A report that says Kiwi spies are passing intelligence material on terrorists in Bangladesh to local security forces with a reputation for murder and torture would in previous years have been a major scandal.

• But the story yesterday, which you may well have missed, seems to have left eyebrows unraised across the nation.

=> ↺ Kiwi agency ‘shared intel with Dhaka’

=> ↺ Kiwis share intelligence with Bangladesh

=> ↺ Eavesdropping on Dhaka’s communications

=> ↺ New Zealand involved in spying on Bangladesh

=> ↺ GCSB dragging NZ into human rights abuses in Bangladesh

=> ↺ New Zealand shared intelligence with Bangladesh’s repressive agencies

• Leaked documents show that New Zealand’s intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), has spent more than a decade collaborating with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on targets in Bangladesh. The agencies passed on information to Bangladeshi security agencies, which are notorious for torture, murder and “disappearances.”

=> ↺ How NZ and US agents plotted to spy on China

• On Auckland’s busy Great South Rd in the suburb of Greenlane, the Chinese consulate, a white modern building, is tucked behind a row of bushes and small trees.

=> ↺ New Zealand Plotted Hack on China With NSA

• New Zealand spies teamed with National Security Agency hackers to break into a data link in the country’s largest city, Auckland, as part of a secret plan to eavesdrop on Chinese diplomats, documents reveal.

• The covert operation, reported Saturday by New Zealand’s Herald on Sunday in collaboration with The Intercept, highlights the contrast between New Zealand’s public and secret approaches to its relationship with China, its largest and most important trading partner.

=> ↺ Leaked papers reveal NZ plan to spy on China for US

• Our spies and America’s top government hackers cooked up a plan to crack into a data link between Chinese Government buildings in Auckland, new Edward Snowden documents reveal.

=> ↺ Twitter moves non-US accounts to Ireland away from the NSA

• Twitter has updated its privacy policy, creating a two-lane service that treats US and non-US users differently. If you live in the US, your account is controlled by San Francisco-based Twitter Inc, but if you’re elsewhere in the world (anywhere else) it’s handled by Twitter International Company in Dublin, Ireland. The changes also affect Periscope.

=> ↺ The NSA’s Fight To Keep Its Best Hackers

• The National Security Agency is probably among the best-equipped parts of the federal government at recruiting, training and staffing an elite team of cybersecurity professionals.

=> ↺ Too little too late? NSA starting to implement ‘Snowden-proof’ cloud storage

• The NSA is implementing a huge migration to custom-designed cloud architecture it says will revolutionize internal security and protect against further leaks by data analysts with unfettered access to classified information.

=> ↺ Tech Groups Pressure Congress To End NSA Bulk Data Collection

• A host of technology trade groups are lobbying Congress to end the government’s controversial metadata collection program that was brought to public prominence by Edward Snowden almost two years ago. In a letter sent to intelligence and judiciary leadership yesterday, groups representing a vast array of tech firms, including Google, IBM, Facebook, and Apple, expressed support for fundamental surveillance reform.

=> ↺ The Pentagon’s new cyber attack plan: ‘Blunt force trauma’

• The Pentagon wants cyber weapons that can inflict “blunt force trauma.”

=> ↺ Why Amazon’s new EU data centres are just as vulnerable to NSA surveillance as their US ones

• On 5 June 2013, Edward Snowden initiated a cascading exposé that would open the eyes of the world to the surreptitious and wholesale surveillance of digital communications by the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK.

• The revelations laid bare the activities and programmes that have been intercepting and analysing the vast majority of internet and phone communications at a global level for many years, including programmes that obligated the world’s largest technology corporations to provide access to their networks and data centres through the use of secret court orders that not only forced these corporations to hand over data about their users en masse but also prevented them from disclosing anything about these orders.

=> ↺ NSA Spying Is At Stake in This ‘Last-Ditch’ Reform Bill

• Backed up against a rapidly approaching do-or-die deadline, bipartisan lawmakers are poised to introduce legislation next week that would roll back the National Security Agency’s expansive surveillance powers.

=> ↺ Weakened surveillance reform bill is ‘yesterday’s news’, civil libertarians say

• The impending USA Freedom Act seeks to stop NSA phone record collection, leaving Section 215 intact, which activists say will only prolong mass surveillance

=> ↺ Groups push to end NSA spying

• The National Security Agency’s authority to collect the phone records of millions of people is scheduled to end on June 1, and a bipartisan privacy coalition of 39 organizations wants to make sure it stays that way.

=> ↺ FBI, NSA Hoping For More Surveillance Room To Increase Spying Capabilities

=> ↺ Lawmakers, Tech Firms Press for NSA Reform

• With key provisions of the Patriot Act set to expire on June 1, a bipartisan group of lawmakers could introduce as soon as next week legislation that would place some limits on the surveillance powers of the National Security Agency (NSA), reports National Journal.

=> ↺ Congress to Introduce Last-Ditch Bill to Reform NSA Spying

• With the clock winding down, lawmakers in both chambers are staging one last attempt to rein in the government’s surveillance powers.

=> ↺ Senator Wyden: Congress may block government access to encrypted consumer devices

=> ↺ ‘Significant’ number of senators backing privacy push, Wyden says

=> ↺ On The War On General Purpose Computing

• The powers that be want to control your phones and your drones. And who can blame them? It was inevitable. Of course they’re upset that smartphones are making it hard to catch speeders. Of course manufacturers are hurrying to ensure that drones refuse to fly to certain locations, before they’re forced to do so by law. Those are the instruments of power in today’s and tomorrow’s world.

=> ↺ NSA declares war on general purpose computers

• NSA director Michael S Rogers says his agency wants “front doors” to all cryptography used in the USA, so that no one can have secrets it can’t spy on — but what he really means is that he wants to be in charge of which software can run on any general purpose computer.

=> ↺ A Tidbit From an Old NSA Document (2000)

• This paragraph was unclassified in the original document, suggesting that the NSA plan to adapt to the new world through tailored access wasn’t at all a secret even back in 2000. Of course, the document in which this paragraph was contained was originally classified Secret (and is now declassified), so having access to this document would not have been easy. Still, it’s interesting to me as an example of refusing to believe that they had lost the crypto wars. And we have since learned that they had the technical capability to be justified in that belief.

=> ↺ Iceland for Snowden, Where NSA Whistleblower Could Get Citizenship

• Edward Snowden, famous for leaking classified information about the US government and former NSA contractor, could be looking to Iceland for citizenship status.

=> ↺ Snowden could be granted Icelandic citizenship

=> ↺ Edward Snowden might get Iceland citizenship

• One of the most controversial figures of the world in the past couple of years, whistle-blower Edward Snowden, might get Islandic citizenship, Forbes reports.

=> ↺ Snowden Coming Closer To Icelandic Citizenship

• When I met with Jonsdottir at the Pirate Party’s small office within Iceland’s small parliament building in Reykjavik this week, she kicked off the interview without any prompting by sharing the news that the Academy Award-winning documentary about Snowden, “Citizenfour,” had recently been well received at its Icelandic premiere. I took the opportunity to ask if she was still pursuing Icelandic citizenship for the controversial American after nearly two years of being blocked in the Althingi (Iceland’s parliament).

=> ↺ Google Maps hack shows Edward Snowden at the White House

• It seems unlikely that the world’s most infamous whistleblower and scourge of the NSA, Edward Snowden, will be visiting the White House anytime soon. But according to Google Maps, he’s quite literally set up shop on the front lawn.

=> ↺ ‘Edwards Snow Den’: Google ‘relocates’ NSA whistleblower to White House

=> ↺ Edward Snowden Is in the White House, According to Google Maps

=> ↺ ‘Edwards Snow Den’ infiltrates the White House on Google Maps

=> ↺ Assange Says Russian Intelligence Played No Part in Snowden Choosing Russia

=> ↺ Bolivia Accuses Assange of Inadvertently Putting Evo Morales’ Life at Risk

=> ↺ Assange Says China, Russia Not in the Loop about Snowden Flight

=> ↺ Assange grassed Snowden to the NSA

• Wikileaks boss Julian Assange complicated Edward Snowden’s escape from Russia by tipping off the NSA with a false rumour about the Bolivian President.

=> ↺ Julian Assange WikiLeaks Update: Edward Snowden Rumor Put Bolivian President’s Life In Danger, Bolivia Claims

=> ↺ Assange Says Russia ‘Did the Right Thing’ in Granting Refuge to Snowden

=> ↺ Attorney to NSA and CIA: Turn over Hillary Clinton documents now

• On the Friday, two days before her expected announcement that she is officially running for President, a public-interest attorney for a government watchdog group threw down his gauntlet and notified the news media that he will not allow presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton and her minions to get away with wiping clean her computer server in a suspected obstruction of justice case.

=> ↺ Key Congressional Committee Has “No Confidence” In DEA Head Leonhart

• Fed up with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart over a long litany of scandals in the drug-fighting agency she heads, 22 members of the House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee issued a statement saying they had “no confidence” in her leadership.

=> ↺ DEA Prostitution Scandal: Retired Cops Call For Drug Policy Changes

• The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) came under intense criticism this week in the wake of Congressional hearings highlighting reports that agents in Colombia attended sex parties with prostitutes paid for by criminal gangs, among other allegations. A House Oversight Committee hearing this week led to a no-confidence vote for DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, symbolically refuting her arguments that agent improprieties named in a recent report were due to a few “bad apples.” Hearings on the scandal extended past oversight into a Judiciary Committee subcommittee, where the DEA’s Office of Responsibility Chief defended the botched allegations and echoed Leonhart’s testimony.

=> ↺ House Oversight Committee Expresses “No Confidence” in DEA Administrator Leonhart

=> ↺ The DEA’s using powerful spyware for surveillance too

• The war on drugs has a surprising soldier amongst its ranks: Italian spying software. As Motherboard’s sources tell it, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s dropped $2.4 million on surveillance tools that are capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, social media messages, and can even take hold of someone’s webcam and microphone. Oh, Remote Control System (as its officially called) can grab passwords, too.

=> ↺ Before The NSA, The DEA Used Phone Records To Track Drug Cartels

=> ↺ DEA gets sued for spying on Americans’ int’l phone calls

=> ↺ Phone data collection crossed line in 1992: Our view

• The Obama administration has repeatedly used the threat of post-9/11 terrorism to justify secretly vacuuming up the telephone records of virtually every American.

• Now it turns out the government was grossly violating innocent citizens’ privacy much earlier and for a more questionable reason.

=> ↺ Guest speaker at Drake sheds light on NSA surveillance

• As sympathetic as Stone is to the idea of keeping citizens safe, he believes the collection of phone records was an overreaction.

=> ↺ Jesse Kline: Slamming the door on the snoopers

• The first thing revealed by U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden was a government program that collects records of every single phone call made in the United States. That program could soon come to an end, unless both houses of Congress vote to reauthorize Section 215 of the Patriot Act before the June 1 deadline. But given that we now know the U.S. government, and its “Five Eyes” allies (including Canada), have also been vacuuming up just about every piece of information that’s sent over the Internet, allowing Sec. 215 to expire will barely make a dent in the massive surveillance state that Snowden revealed.

=> ↺ Support HR 1466

• The bill would legally dismantle the National Security Agency’s most aggressive surveillance programs, including the bulk collection and retention of virtually all Americans’ landline phone records justified under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The repeal of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act would also prevent the agency from tapping the physical infrastructure of the Internet, such as undersea fiber cables, to intercept ‘upstream’ data in bulk, which critics including the ACLU claim the NSA uses to collect data on Americans.

=> ↺ Viewpoint: A critical debate on Snowden and the NSA

• While Snowden’s leaks may be old news, the central debate they raise about how much domestic surveillance should be tolerated in a modern age of terrorism has not yet been resolved on a national level.

=> ↺ Snowden scandal not so black and white

• Americans are not the only victims of the U.S. intelligence agency; the entire world is being spied on.

=> ↺ RT premieres ‘Terminal F’ Snowden documentary in Russia

=> ↺ Pre-premiere of new Edward Snowden documentary screened in Moscow

• A documentary screening of Terminal F or Chasing Edward Snowden was launched on 13 April during the inauguration ceremony of Russia Today’s (RT) documentary channel, RTDOC, in Moscow.

=> ↺ France’s new intelligence bill, an NSA ‘deja-vu’

• Human rights groups have warned that France’s proposed “anti-terror” bill, which would grant more powers to the intelligence services, puts the country in danger of NSA-style mass surveillance powers, creating an undemocratic state.

• Campaigners have said the proposals will produce a “deja-vu” effect, effectively creating a French version of the NSA, the United States’ intelligence body.

=> ↺ France’s new spy bill raises fears of mass surveillance

=> ↺ Liberty takes fight against mass surveillance to European Court

• Liberty, the movement for civil liberties and human rights in the UK, has filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights against the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling that UK intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance activities are legal.

• Liberty is challenging the Tribunal’s December 2014 judgment that GCHQ’s Tempora programme – which sees the agency intercept and process billions of private communications every day – complies with human rights law.

=> ↺ Senate Intelligence Committee Kicks Off Budget Season

• The Senate Intelligence Committee kicked off budget season this week with a slew of appearances from Washington’s top spies. CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart all made trips up to the Hill this week to talk budget lines.

• Lawmakers leaving the briefings said the Senate panel’s meetings were fairly broad. The intelligence leaders touched on a variety of issues, they said, but dollar signs were the hearings’ main focus.

=> ↺ Who is Responsible for Protecting Your Personal Data Online?

• An overwhelming majority of British adults are now concerned about the online security of their private information, the threats posed by hackers and the possibility of unauthorised access to their data. This was the key finding of recent YouGov research in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks.

=> ↺ Congress cannot be taken seriously on cybersecurity

• Members of Congress – most of whom can’t secure their own websites, and some of whom don’t even use email – are trying to force a dangerous “cybersecurity” bill down the public’s throat. Everyone’s privacy is in the hands of people who, by all indications, have no idea what they’re talking about.

• Leaders are expected to bring its much-maligned series of “cybersecurity” bills to the floor sometime in the next couple weeks – bills that we know will do little to help cybersecurity but a lot to help intelligence agencies like the NSA vacuum up even more of Americans’ personal information. The bills’ authors deny that privacy is even an issue, but why we’re trusting Congress at all on this legislation, given their lack of basic knowledge on the subject, is the question everyone should be asking.

=> ↺ OSCE Representative Urges Governments to Ensure Privacy Amid Surveillance

• Governments should not neglect the importance of judicial oversight in the implementation of surveillance programs, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic said Friday at the Global Conference on CyberSpace 2015.

=> ↺ Troubleshooting feature on Cisco routers is open to data-slurp abuse

• Infiltrate A default feature of Cisco routers can readily be abused to collect data, security researchers warn.

• Embedded Packet Capture (EPC) was designed by Cisco as a troubleshooting and tracing tool. The feature allows network administrators to capture data packets flowing through a Cisco router.

=> ↺ As police body cameras catch on, a debate surfaces: Who gets to watch?

• The debate in the nation’s capital and across the country over whether police should wear body cameras has quickly evolved into a new and perhaps more difficult question: Who gets to see the video?

=> ↺ The “Language of Privacy” Is Doing Well in Police Body Camera Discussions

• Police body cameras do raise a host of legitimate privacy concerns. But police body cameras are often used to record encounters that occur in public where, given the state of modern technology, none of use can reasonably expect the degree of privacy that, perhaps, we might otherwise like. The police encounters that take place inside private residences and inside hospitals and schools are being considered in ongoing conservations on body cameras, where the language of privacy is often heard.

=> ↺ Labour manifesto: ‘High speed’ broadband for all plus strengthened surveillance

• Labour has promised that every property in the UK will be able to get high speed broadband if it wins the general election.

=> ↺ GitHub issues first transparency report; 40 accounts affected

• US authorities filed just ten subpoenas with code-sharing site GitHub in the past year.

• The company said in its debut transparency report published Thursday that it complied with just seven of those subpoenas. That means in three cases there was nothing disclosed. In just shy of half of those demands, the company notified the affected account holder.

=> ↺ Missouri Action Alert: Help Protect the 4th Amendment, Pass HB264!

=> ↺ How Your Future Leader Is Tracking You – Ranking Presidential Candidate Website Privacy

• Over the next 18 months, amidst all the posturing, grandstanding and bitching that will swallow up all the actually important factors in the race to become president, many Americans will head to the websites of Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul (Jeb Bush is having some, erm, trouble with his site). As they follow the candidates, so too they will be followed. It’s just many won’t know it, or will be oblivious to just how their information is used.

=> ↺ New Pentagon Chief Carter to Court Silicon Valley

• The Pentagon desperately wants to be more agile and flexible, but decades of cultural bureaucracy often prevent the nation’s largest organization from being that. Now, a tech-savvy physicist is in charge of the military and he is about to ask companies like Google and Facebook for solutions.

=> ↺ Secrecy Around ‘Stingray’ Cell Surveillance Persists Despite Growing Transparency Efforts

• The federal government, local police departments and the Harris Corporation are participating in a coordinated effort to keep the public in the dark about the full capabilities of cell site simulator surveillance devices, also known as Stingrays.

=> ↺ U.S. shining light on self

• How do you keep tabs on federal agencies amassing mountains of secret data?

• Secretly, of course.

• And, no, that’s not a punch line. Government’s surveillance of the public is no joke.

• Congress is at least trying to get a handle on the endlessly proliferating masses of data that alphabet-soup agencies are collecting on friends and foe alike, at home and abroad.

=> ↺ Without ECPA update, Feds will spy on you like it’s 1986

• The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) is the main federal law that governs data stored electronically, including email, business data, your photographs, social media, etc. But ECPA literally predates the Internet, so it predates the widespread use of home computers, email, and social media. It predates cloud storage. Almost any 30 year-old law probably requires updating, but ECPA is so out-of-date that it demands it.

=> ↺ Excessive federal surveillance an abuse of power

• Leland Stanford once said that government is founded upon the doctrine of the consent of the governed and the principle that people are endowed with certain inalienable rights.

=> ↺ Access to Encryption Software Easier for Hackers to Steal Info – EFF

• Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula claims that allowing the US government access to bypass encryption software in Americans’ personal technology devices would likely make it easier for hackers to exploit their information.

=> ↺ The 7 safest apps to send private and secure messages

• With that in mind, technologists are now building better ways for people to shield their communications from prying eyes.

• The technology driving most of these programs is called “end-to-end encryption,” which means that a message is ciphered before it’s sent and then deciphered after its received. This way, anyone looking to snoop on intermediary servers won’t be tablet to understand what the message says.

• While end-to-end encryption is a known standard, it’s a hard practice for the layperson to adopt into their everyday work. Now developers are figuring out new ways to make message-sending as easy as possible using this kind of encryption.

=> ↺ Appointing Democratic Judges to the FISA Court Won’t Solve Its Structural Flaws

• Chief Justice Roberts recently named two new judges to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — Judge James P. Jones from the Western District of Virginia and Judge Thomas B. Russell from the Western District of Kentucky. Roberts has now appointed three judges to the FISC since the Snowden revelations, and all three were originally nominated to the bench by a Democratic president (Clinton). This marks a stark departure from Roberts’ thirteen pre-Snowden appointments, eleven of whom were appointed by Republican presidents. The question naturally arises: does this change in composition herald a change in the FISC’s approach?

=> ↺ Delaware’s Fusion Center poses threat to liberty

• It is bad news for freedom here in Delaware now that the New Castle County police have their own Fusion Center. Virtually every state now has one in operation or formation after more than $1.4 billion dollars of Homeland Security money was spent to create 77 of them nationwide to assist in the overstated war on terror.

=> ↺ Change the world, you say? Anti-spying push just can’t hack it despite ‘Citizenfour’

=> ↺ Snowden’s ‘Sexy Margaret Thatcher’ Password Isn’t So Secure

• In a YouTube extra from his interview with John Oliver posted late last week, Snowden offered some password security advice: He pans Oliver’s comically awful suggestions like “passwerd,” “onetwothreefour,” and “limpbiscuit4eva,” and instead wisely recommends that computer users switch from passwords to much longer passphrases. He goes on to offer an example: “MargaretThatcheris110%SEXY.”

=> ↺ Ever wondered what your password says about you?

• You probably have some variation of sequential numbers (‘123456′ or ‘000000’), a very obvious word (‘password’ or ‘access’) or something right in front of your nose (‘qwerty’).

• These are some of the most common passwords, tech firm SplashData found in last year’s annual report.

• Blue has also been identified as the most popular colour used in passwords, possibly because it is used widely by social media sites like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

• So you may be fixating on whatever is close at hand.

=> ↺ Princeton University to feature live video talk with Edward Snowden

• Princeton University will feature a live discussion with Edward Snowden and Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Bart Gellman on May 2.

=> ↺ Americans Should Defend Their Digital Privacy

• In addition, the NSA is colluding with the corporations to spy on Americans. According to CNET, this agency asks tech companies to hand over their customers’ data. The NSA also wiretaps on fiber-optic Internet cables to gather data about Americans’ Internet usage. It also tries to justify its mass surveillance as an anti-terrorism effort that has stopped dozens of attacks. However, two U.S. Senators have debunked this claim by stating that the same terrorist plots were instead foiled by standard law enforcement. The NSA’s surveillance eerily resembles that of 1984’s Big Brother, who also claimed to protect people for the price of privacy. As Benjamin Franklin once stated, “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

=> ↺ Amnesty International takes Gov to court over spying

• Nick Williams, Amnesty International’s legal counsel said: “The UK government’s surveillance practices have been allowed to continue unabated and on an unprecedented scale, with major consequences for people’s privacy and freedom of expression. No-one is above the law and the European Court of Human Rights now has a chance to make that clear.”

=> ↺ Former Homeland Security Secretary: Government ‘Backdoors’ Into iPhones Are Unnecessary

• Michael Chertoff, co-author of the Patriot Act, a set of laws that provided the U.S. government with broad surveillance powers in the wake of 9/11, is unashamedly proud of what he built.

=> ↺ Trade Bill Takes Aim at Foreign Governments’ Data Protections

• U.S. technology companies and their trade groups immediately sounded their support for the proposed bill.

=> ↺ Tell Obama: Say no to cyber surveillance

• Over the past few weeks, the U.S. Congress has been churning out privacy-threatening cyber surveillance proposals like popcorn at a movie theater. They’re up to five different bills, and none of them are good. Each bill protects companies that share our private data with the government — which often must give it to the NSA and the FBI — instead of protecting users’ privacy.

=> ↺ Us ‘Agrees To Stick To Law’ In Use Of Surveillance

• NEARLY one year after it was reported that the United States was intercepting and monitoring Bahamian telephone calls, America has agreed to use the “lawful” authority to obtain surveillance information from this country, according to Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell yesterday.

• Following a wave of backlash over the US spying allegations, it was agreed that information gathering would only be used for interdiction purposes. This includes information that aids in the clamp down of illegal activity, The Tribune understands.

=> ↺ US Promises Bahamas to Use ‘Lawful Authority’ to Obtain Surveillance Data on Citizens

=> ↺ The Metadata ‘Blackmail Machine’ At The Heart Of Britain’s Digital Policy Deficit

• Politicians, to put it bluntly, don’t understand the internet. And he is palpably correct. This has been a Parliament where the prime minister suggested he might ban Snapchat, where disastrous and ineffective ‘opt-in’ porn legislation was introduced, and where it emerged a Baroness who sits on the Lords technology committee thought Google Maps kept a camera trained on her home address.

• “You have the Home Secretary actually saying things like telephone metadata is just the same as your phone bill,” Davis railed in his Portcullis House office. “I can’t imagine she’s telling fibs, so she plainly doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

• Davis, 66, blames the glaring lack of any discussion of digital issues at the election by politicians or the media on a “grotesque misunderstanding about it, mostly by people over 40… [they] don’t understand how intrusive the powers are. Most of my colleagues are ignorant of where this is, and where it’s going.”

• One of the most famous examples Davis can give is the knee-jerk pledge by Cameron to ban all kinds of communication that the government cannot access, immediately drawing references to the photo sharing service Snapchat.

=> ↺ Social media without the snooping – nice idea but can it really work?

• Mining users’ data to sell to advertisers and brokers is, of course, the primary business model of internet giants that provide a free service, one that has created billionaires from grad students almost overnight. Because it has been such a phenomenally successful money-spinner it should really be no surprise that companies such as Facebook sometimes resort to means which, if not actually illegal, certainly sail pretty close to the wind. Anything to maintain the flow of personal data that feeds the machine.

=> ↺ China jails 71-year-old veteran journalist for ‘leaking state secrets’

• Human rights activists accuse Beijing of ‘blatant political persecution’ after the writer Gao Yu is jailed for allegedly leaking a Communist Party memo

=> ↺ How do we build encryption backdoors?

• This is not the first time we’ve been here. Back in the 1990s the Federal government went as far as to propose a national standard for ‘escrowed’ telephone encryption called the ‘Clipper’ chip. That effort failed in large part because the technology was terrible, but also because — at least at the time — the idea of ordinary citizens adopting end-to-end encryption was basically science fiction.

=> ↺ Cybersecurity pros slam threat information-sharing bills

• More than 65 cybersecurity professionals and academics have come out against a trio of bills moving through Congress that are meant to enable information sharing about digital threats between businesses and the government.

• In a letter sent today to ranking members from both parties of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, they are urging Congress reject the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act and two similar bills.

=> ↺ Big data makes NSA dysfunctional

• A former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Bill Binney says mass surveillance is a big problem, and covers the entire planet, including Africa and SA, with no exceptions.

• Stories about NSA surveillance programmes have littered the headlines since 2013, following the leaks of secret documents by famous whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

• However, it seems the more we hear, the less clear things are, and questions have been raised as to whether mass surveillance is even relevant to businesses and other organisations in SA. Binney believes it is, and will be presenting at ITWeb Security Summit 2015, to be held at Vodacom World from 26 to 28 May.

=> ↺ Thoughts – Is the U.S. Still An Authoritarian National Surveillance State?

• All authoritarian regimes utilize information to try and stifle those people and organizations that seek to speak truth to power. In the U.S. we have the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. With the U.S. already being an authoritarian national surveillance state that has two sets of laws, a law enforcement and administrative state that supports the parallel track of laws, and utilizes private/public cooperation to engage in these activities; how would the U.S. government look to use administrative law to place limitations on speech through the utilization of information technology? That is the topic of my next research post.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Cop Sexually Assaults 19 Year-Old and Only Sentenced on Misdemeanor Charges

• A cop took a deal in relation to charges of sexually assaulting a teenage girl and will not receive a felony conviction, will not have to register as a sex offender, will only serve a year in jail, and still currently has his law enforcement certification.

• The rapist cop used a small amount of marijuana found during a traffic stop to extort a young woman into performing sexual acts. The officer made her boyfriend walk down to a nearby lake and wait for him to finish assaulting the young woman. The former deputy, Cory Cooper, is 31 years old. The victim is 19.

=> ↺ Slow violence, cold violence – Teju Cole on East Jerusalem

• Why the viciousness of modern Israeli law directed against Palestinians must be taken as seriously as the cruelties of war

=> ↺ Security expert pulled off flight by FBI after exposing airline tech vulnerabilities

• One of the world’s foremost experts on counter-threat intelligence within the cybersecurity industry, who blew the whistle on vulnerabilities in airplane technology systems in a series of recent Fox News reports, has become the target of an FBI investigation himself.

• Chris Roberts of the Colorado-based One World Labs, a security intelligence firm that identifies risks before they’re exploited, said two FBI agents and two uniformed police officers pulled him off a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 commercial flight Wednesday night just after it landed in Syracuse, and spent the next four hours questioning him about cyberhacking of planes.

=> ↺ Abolish the TSA

• Apparently, the two screeners, one male and the other female, worked out a system. The female screener operating the body scanner would misidentify attractive men as women on the scanner, so that the machine would flag the extra, uh, bulk in their groin area, which then initiated a pat-down from her partner in lechery.

=> ↺ TSA Trained Disney, SeaWorld to SPOT Terrorists

• Going to Disney World this summer? Don’t laugh excessively with widely open staring eyes — because those behavior indicators could identify you as a potential terrorist. Packing a Mickey Mouse costume? Wearing a disguise is another indicator.

• Yes, the Transportation Security Administration’s embattled $900 million behavior detection program, called Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, is not just used at airports. It’s also used at theme parks.

=> ↺ AcTVism film trailer

• The AcTVism Munich media collective is releasing a film on 19th April featuring Noam Chomsky, The Real News Network’s Paul Jay and myself.

=> ↺ Denied Medication by NYPD, Epileptic Man Has Two Seizures in Custody: Lawsuit

• New York Police Department officers repeatedly denied an epileptic man his medication while detaining him in a holding cell, resulting in two seizures and hospitalizations before he could be taken to Brooklyn central booking more than a day later, a new federal lawsuit alleges. The man was never charged with a crime.

=> ↺ If Virginia Elections Weren’t Hacked, It’s Only Because No One Tried

• It’s that bad. The headline grabbing line that many news sites have run with is the unchangeable WEP encryption key used on the machines was “abcde.” Meaning it was crazy easy for people to hack into (even if you didn’t know the password originally, it would not be difficult to figure that out just by monitoring the system).

=> ↺ Whistleblowers: Little UN Protection for Exposing Wrongdoing

• High-profile whistleblowers have joined forces for the first time in demanding that the United Nations change a global system they say deters its thousands of staffers from exposing crime, corruption and other wrongdoing.

• In a letter sent to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday, nine current and former U.N. workers say current policies offer “little to no measure of real or meaningful protection” from retaliation that can include firing, harassment and intimidation.

=> ↺ For one VA whistleblower, getting fired was too much

• He left a note for the mailman: “Please call 911 — tell them to go to red barn building.”

• There, officers found the body of Christopher Kirkpatrick, a 38-year-old clinical psychologist who had shot himself in the head after being fired from the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

• Kirkpatrick had complained some of his patients were too drugged to treat properly, but like other whistleblowers at the facility, he was ousted and his concerns of wrongdoing were disregarded.

=> ↺ Op-ed: Why the entire premise of Tor-enabled routers is ridiculous

• Ars recently reviewed two “Tor routers”, devices that are supposed to improve your privacy by routing all traffic through the Tor anonymity network. Although the initial release of Anonabox proved woefully insecure, the basic premise itself is flawed. Using these instead of the Tor Browser Bundle is bad: less secure and less private than simply not using these “Tor Routers” in the first place. They are, in a word, EPICFAIL.

• There are four possible spies on your traffic when you use these Tor “routers”, those who can both see what you do and potentially attack your communication: your ISP, the websites themselves, the Tor exit routers, and the NSA with its 5EYES buddies.

=> ↺ When the Student Movement Was a CIA Front

• With the passage of half a century, it may be difficult to understand why so many political and cultural organizations, led by individuals with a generally liberal or leftist outlook, covertly collaborated with the CIA in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s, before exposés in Ramparts and other publications put an end to most such arrangements. After all, many of the activities of the Agency in that era are among those that we now regard as particularly discreditable. These include the CIA’s cooperation with the British intelligence services in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953; its cooperation with the United Fruit Company in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954; and its cooperation with the Republic of the Congo’s former colonial rulers, the Belgians, in overthrowing the country’s newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, in 1960.

=> ↺ France’s National Assembly shows support for legalization of Edward Snowden-style whistleblowing

• If American whistleblower Edward Snowden were French, he would have had a good chance of remaining a free man — despite having leaked thousands of classified intelligence documents.

=> ↺ ‘French Snowdens’ to get protection under law

• French MPs have voted through a new amendment to the controversial surveillance bill, which would allow whistleblower spies to be protected by law.

=> ↺ Many Government Tiplines Not Encrypted

• If you had plans to anonymously turn over sensitive data to the feds, you might want to think twice.

• That hot tip you’re sending in could be snaking its way through an unencrypted network, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

=> ↺ Guerrilla Artists Demand Return of Edward Snowden Bust from NYPD

• A trio of anonymous artists are demanding that the NYPD return a sculpture depicting Edward Snowden, seized after the artists secretly installed it in a public park last week. The artists call the work, depicting the NSA whistle-blower, “a gift to the city.” It was briefly on view in a war memorial in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park (see Guerrilla Artists Celebrate Whistle-Blowers with Edward Snowden Statue).

=> ↺ Artists demand NY police return Snowden bust

• Three artists on Tuesday demanded that New York police return a bust of fugitive U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden to public display or threatened legal action.

• Civil rights lawyer Ronald Kuby said the artists would remain anonymous because they feared arrest and prosecution after authorities removed the sculpture from a Brooklyn park last week.

=> ↺ Legal experts pan US for disappointing human rights record

• Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, went further, suggesting the U.S. government undermines human rights standards. The U.S. is an active participant in the United Nation’s human rights review process, she explained, but the last set of recommendations resulted in zero domestic reforms. That lack of responsiveness could undermine the review’s credibility going forward, she warned.

• The U.S. is set to undergo its second United Nations review in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 11.

=> ↺ Two Denver TSA Agents Fired For Conspiring To Feel Up Good Looking Passengers

• Two TSA agents posted at Denver International Airport have been fired after it was discovered that they had worked out a scheme allowing one of the agents to grope unsuspecting male passengers as they passed through security checkpoints. TSA authorities were first alerted to the situation earlier this year thanks to an anonymous tip. An investigation of the two agents revealed that a clever–though troubling–system where the male agent would identify male passengers he found attractive at which point his female accomplice would flag them to be pulled aside for pat-down inspections.

=> ↺ The ‘too difficult’ box: Britain’s pre-election charades sidestep all the key questions

• Is it laziness? Ignorance? Or have Britain’s political parties and the London media conspired to turn Britain’s 2015 general election into a dreary series of rehearsed arguments?

• One thing’s for sure, the straight-talking of traditional hustings, where prospective MPs ran the gamut surrounded by querulous voters in town centers, is history. Nothing original or spontaneous can permeate the squeaky clean studio as party leaders sleepwalk into Britain’s latest US import, the TV election debate.

=> ↺ Beware the Banana Republic Postal Ballot

• Yet another election is about to be held under the UK’s dreadfully insecure postal ballot system, which an English judge who presides over electoral fraud cases has said “would disgrace a banana republic”.

=> ↺ The Most Important Issue in the 2016 Election That No One Is Talking About

• Given the court’s growing stature as the final arbiter in political battles between Republicans and Democrats, along with its own increasingly partisan nature, their replacements will be imbued with a level of power and authority almost unparalleled in American judicial history. And it is progressively more likely that the person who gets to decide what that future court looks like will be the next president of the United States.

=> ↺ Death of the whistleblower

• With the stated aim of protecting the country against terror attacks, the U.S. has since gigantically expanded its surveillance programme allowing it to intercept day to day phone conversations and internet browsing of civilians. The policy of monitoring lives of the public dates back to the days of Cold War when the FBI spied on civilians to track their political leanings as well as to clamp down on Anti-Vietnam War protestors.

• The personal information which is gleaned could thus be misused not only to tarnish reputations of government critics by tracking their browsing history on pornography but also to target peaceful civilians fighting for civil liberties or against unjust policies of the State.

• For example, the FBI conducted raids in the homes of Palestine and Colombia solidarity activists in September 2010 based on a warrant that the activists had provided material support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Hizballah, which were considered terrorist organizations by the U.S.

• [...]

• The fallout of hounding of Snowden is that well-intentioned, discerning civilians would refrain from exposing wrongdoings of people in positions of power, especially in the government. If Snowden was to be the last whistleblower, democracy in the U.S., for those who care, would be the casualty.

=> ↺ Demand Washington stop laying ground work for police state

• In South Carolina, white police officer Michael Thomas Slager gunned down unarmed black man Walter Scott with eight gunshots to the back as Scott fled. Slager has been fired and charged with murder, and he should be convicted.

• [...]

• Meanwhile in San Bernardino, Calif., police were caught on camera giving suspect Francis Pusok a brutal beating after he had been shocked with a stun gun and surrendered to police. Lying in the prone position with his hands behind his back, Pusok was violently kicked in the genitals and repeatedly struck on the head by multiple police officers. Because Pusok is white, the story will receive almost no coverage.

• If the media can’t help incite racial hatred, like the kind that led to the execution of two police officers in New York City or the shooting of two white police officers in Ferguson, Mo., they are uninterested in reporting police brutality.

• [...]

• American hero Edward Snowden revealed just how criminally out of control our government is in spying on both Americans and victims abroad.

• Meanwhile NSA whistleblower William Binney alerted Americans that the federal government has been bugging nearly every citizen’s phone for years, just like in every other dictatorship.

• With the protests in Ferguson, American people were able to see that after being militarized, today’s police departments look more like a storm-trooper occupying army than our friends and neighbors.

=> ↺ Technology for Foreign Enemies is Eventually Brought Home

• In it he states it is essential that the use of drones be restricted to protect the privacy of citizens, as it is likely drones will become a standard law enforcement tool. He also said that Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA surveillance program shows how that power can be abused if not checked.

=> ↺ Letters to the Editor: Abolish death penalty in Delaware

• A public execution is a spectacle of official homicide that endorses killing to solve problems, the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, especially children. The death penalty only satisfies a desire for revenge and can never promote social justice or a sense of humanity. An outdated response to violent crime, retribution does not break the cycle of violence. Imagine hanging someone or a botched lethal injection. Now imagine that the person executed was innocent.

=> ↺ Despite Changes, US Government Still Unwilling to Provide Meaningful Information to Americans Put on No Fly List

• The United States government will now inform US citizens placed on the No Fly List whether they have, in fact, been put on the No Fly List and possibly some details related to the basis for the listing. But an attorney for an American challenging the government’s No Fly List authority has suggested that the changes are “meaningless.”

• The new procedure comes after a federal court in Oregon ruled in June of last year that US citizens placed on the No Fly List had their rights to “procedural due process” violated and instructed the government to provide a “new process” that satisfied the “constitutional requirements for due process.”

• In a case involving Gulet Mohamed, a US citizen who claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was placed on the No Fly List, the government informed the judge that this new procedure was now available to Mohamed and that the government would no longer refuse to confirm or deny whether Mohamed was listed [PDF].

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Can the internet be saved without harming democracy?

• Citizens of the internet: here is some welcome news. Your downtrodden digital rights might be getting a well-overdue booster shot. But it comes with some warnings.

• This week in the Hague, a high-level group of 29 internet policymakers and influencers – including prominent ex-US and UK security and intelligence officials Michael Chertoff, Joseph Nye, Melissa Hathaway and David Omand – issued a clarion call for the protection and promotion of human rights online. Self-styled the Global Commission on Internet Governance, the group made this call as part of the broader objective of restoring trust and confidence in the internet.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ WikiLeaks releases entire trove of Sony Hack including confidential emails

• Wikileaks has just now released the entire trove from the Sony hack. According to a press release on WikiLeaks, the entire archive which contains 30,287 documents from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and 173,132 emails, to and from more than 2,200 SPE email addresses has been leaked because “This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”

=> ↺ It seems Amy Pascal hated Angelina Jolie — there was more to that email than we knew

• Just when you were starting to forget about the Sony email hack scandal, WikiLeaks comes back with a vengeance. Recently, the controversial online whistle-blower website made the more than 170,000 emails as well as 30,000 private documents searchable on their site.

=> ↺ Chris Dodd’s Email Reveals What MPAA Really Thinks Of Fair Use: ‘Extremely Controversial’

• Two years ago, we were among those who noted how odd it was to see the MPAA in court arguing in favor of fair use, since the MPAA tends to argue against fair use quite frequently. The legal geniuses at the MPAA felt hurt by our post and some of the other news coverage on the issue, and put out a blog post claiming that the MPAA and its members actually love fair use. According to that post, the MPAA’s members “rely on the fair use doctrine every day” and the idea that it “opposes” fair use is “simply false, a notion that doesn’t survive even a casual encounter with the facts.”

• Now, as you may have heard, Wikileaks has put the leaked Sony emails online for everyone to search through for themselves. I imagine that there will be a variety of new stories coming out of this trove of information, now that it’s widely available, rather than limited to the small group who got the initial email dumps. In digging through the emails, one interesting one popped up. It’s Chris Dodd revealing the MPAA’s true view on “fair use” in an email to Michael Froman, the US Trade Rep in charge of negotiating agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP).

=> ↺ WikiLeaks: Hollywood working with local anti-piracy groups

• A powerful Hollywood lobby group has been working hand in glove with one of Australia’s most outspoken voices against online piracy.

• Hacked Sony Pictures emails published by WikiLeaks reveal that CreativeFuture, the US film industry’s main anti-piracy lobby, regards Village Roadshow co-chairman Graham Burke as one of its champions, engaged in a critical fight for the future of the internet.

• In an email sent in September 2014, CreativeFuture chief executive and Hollywood veteran Ruth Vitale wrote to alert US movie studios including Sony Pictures, 21st Century Fox, Disney, Viacom and Warner Brothers to “what is going on in Australia” where Burke “is at the centre” of campaigning against online piracy.

=> ↺ Sony execs lobbied Netflix to stop VPN users

• In emails leaked from Sony Pictures following a cyber attack, it has been revealed that Sony Pictures has lobbied Netflix into cancelling customer accounts associated with users accessing the service from places where the streaming video company has not yet launched.

• WikiLeaks published on Thursday a trove of searchable emails and documents believed to have been obtained as a result of a massive cyber attack on the studio in 2014. More than 30,000 documents and 170,000 emails belonging to Sony Pictures were leaked as a result of the attack.

• Sony has slammed the whistleblower website for publishing and indexing the “stolen employee and other private and privileged information”.

• The documents and emails range from financial information to negotiations between the company and its distributors — including Village Roadshow and Foxtel in Australia — and also revealed the company’s delicate relationship with streaming video service Netflix.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks Posts Sony Pictures Documents, Angering the Studio

• Sony Pictures Entertainment reacted harshly on Thursday to word that WikiLeaks, a web portal devoted to disclosing confidential information from governments, corporations and other large and powerful entities, had posted a searchable archive of emails and other documents stolen from the studio last year by hackers.

=> ↺ Sony Studio Renews Warning After WikiLeaks Posts Stolen Data

• David Boies, a lawyer for Sony Pictures Entertainment, began warning news media outlets on Friday that WikiLeaks’s posting of emails and documents stolen from Sony does not, in the media giant’s view, make them fair game.

• “WikiLeaks is incorrect that this Stolen Information belongs in the public domain, and it is, in many jurisdictions, unlawful to place it there or otherwise access or distribute it,” Mr. Boies wrote in a letter that was prepared for distribution to outlets that post or publish the material.

=> ↺ MPAA Wants Private Theaters in U.S. Embassies to Lobby Officials

• Emails from the Sony hack reveal that the MPAA asked its member studios to pay $165,000 each to upgrade the screening rooms of several U.S. embassies. American ambassadors could then utilize these private theaters as indirect lobbying tools by showing off Hollywood content to high level officials.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks Release of Stolen Sony Data Is ‘Just Wrong’ – Former NSA Director

• WikiLeaks made the wrong decision in releasing the cache of data hackers obtained from Sony Pictures Entertainment in November 2014, former National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander said on Friday.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks publishes huge archive of hacked Sony documents

• The Sony attack, widely suspected to be the work of North Korea, sent shockwaves through the U.S. entertainment industry when hackers leaked sensitive corporate data. The WikiLeaks archive, which contains 30,287 documents and 173,132 emails, sheds light on Sony Pictures’ relationships with government and industry.

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