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● 10.26.16

● Links 26/10/2016: “softWaves” in Debian 9, Rust in GNOME

Posted in News Roundup at 6:15 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop/Microsoft

=> ↺ Update: Convictions Upheld, Sentences Extended In Romanian Microsoft Bribery Trial

• According to the blog post, the trial ended on October 3rd, and investigators found that more than 100 people, including former ministers, the mayor of Bucharest, and various businessmen were involved in this latest corruption scandal involving Microsoft. More than 20 million euros were paid by Microsoft there as bribes.

• [...]

• These bribery convictions are just the tip of the iceberg. Multiple news outlets are reporting on investigations of bribery in other countries as well as separate investigations by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities And Exchange Commission.

=> ↺ A History Of Everyday Linux User’s 350 Blog Posts

• This article is something of a landmark as it is the 350th post on Everyday Linux User.

• I took last week off to celebrate. Well actually I went away with the family down to England for a few days and didn’t take a computer with me. I did take in Alnwick Castle however which is the location for Hogwarts from the Harry Potter films.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 3.9 To Linux 4.9 Kernel Benchmarks: Testing The 21 Last Kernels

• With the in-development Linux 4.9 kernel showing signs of some performance improvements, I’ve gone ahead and tested the last 21 major kernel releases on the same system. From Linux 3.9 to Linux 4.9, each of the major kernel releases was tested from the same Intel Core i7 desktop with a variety of benchmarks.

=> ↺ Generic Governors Support Coming For Intel P-State

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Linux 4.9 I/O Scheduler Benchmarks On A SSD: Noop vs. CFQ vs. Deadline

• Some Phoronix Premium readers had recently requested some fresh I/O scheduler benchmarks using the Linux 4.9 kernel, so here are those test results.

• Included in this short article are some I/O scheduler comparison benchmarks using the Linux 4.9 Git code from last week when comparing Noop, Deadline, and CFQ mainline choices. The disk used was running EXT4 and was a 120GB Samsung 850 EVO solid-state drive.

Applications

=> ↺ Rblpapi 0.3.5

• A new release of Rblpapi is now on CRAN. Rblpapi provides a direct interface between R and the Bloomberg Terminal via the C++ API provided by Bloomberg Labs (but note that a valid Bloomberg license and installation is required).

=> ↺ Flatpak 0.6.13

• These used to take an application id and an optional branch name as two arguments. This meant you could not specify multiple apps to install in a single command. So, instead of having the branch as a separate argument we now support partial references. If you only specify an id we try to match the rest as best we can depending on what is installed/available, but if this matches multiple things you have to specify more details.

=> ↺ New features on Hosted Weblate

• Today, new version has been deployed on Hosted Weblate. It brings many long requested features and enhancements.

=> ↺ A Wild Desktop Reddit App for Linux Appears

• Reddit is …Well it’s Reddit: there’s little else like it on the internet.

• Thos of us who use Reddit probably do so a tab, in a browser, because that’s how the site works best.

• Many desktop Reddit apps exist, but few translate the unique experience of using the service to the desktop in a way that really works.

=> ↺ darktable 2.0.7 Open-Source Image Editor Supports New Canon EOS 80D RAW Formats

• The powerful, open-source, and cross-platform darktable RAW image editor has just been updated today, October 25, 2016, to version 2.0.7, a major release that adds numerous new features and improvements.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Opera 41 Browser Brings Performance Improvements

• For those still using the Opera web-browser, Opera 41 is now available as the latest stable release and seems primarily focused on performance improvements.

=> ↺ Faster and better browsing – Welcome Opera 41

• We all know the feeling. You want to check out your favorite website, but when you open your laptop or turn on your computer, you realize the browser is closed. You click on the browser icon and then have to wait while the browser opens all your previously opened sites…

• We have a solution for you that makes your browsing faster: Opera 41 includes a new, smarter startup sequence that cuts away almost all the wait time, no matter how many tabs you open on startup.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Containerization and Deployment of Application on Atomic Host using Ansible Playbook

=> ↺ Aaargh gcc 5.x You Suck

=> ↺ Microsoft Catalog Files and Digital Signatures decoded

=> ↺ New flatpak command line

Games

=> ↺ ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’ Coming To Linux In November, Mac Port On Hold

• Feral Interactive has confirmed that Eidos Montreal’s cyberpunk action role playing game “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” will be making its way to Linux next week.

=> ↺ PlayStation 4 hacked again? Linux shown running on 4.01 firmware

• Hackers attending the GeekPwn conference in Shanghai have revealed a new exploit for PlayStation 4 running on the 4.01 firmware. In a live demo you can see below, once again the Webkit browser is utilised in order to inject the exploit, which – after a conspicuous cut in the edit – jumps to a command line prompt, after which Linux is booted. NES emulation hilarity courtesy of Super Mario Bros duly follows.

• Assuming the hack is authentic – and showcasing it at GeekPwn makes the odds here likely – it’s the first time we’ve seen the PlayStation 4′s system software security compromised since previous holes in the older 1.76 firmware came to light, utilised by noted hacker group fail0verflow in the first PS4 Linux demo, shown in January this year.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ New features in GNOME To Do

• Some of you might have noticed that GNOME To Do wasn’t released with GNOME 3.22. There is a reason for that: I didn’t have enough time to add new features, or fix any bugs. But that changed, and in fact big things happened.

=> ↺ CUDA 8, cuDNN, Nvidia drivers and GNOME Software metadata

• The Nvidia driver repository has been updated with AppStream metadata. From Fedora 25 onward, you will be able to search for Nvidia, CUDA, GeForce or Quadro to make the driver, control panel and other programs appear in the Gnome Software window.

• As far as I know, this should be enabled by default on Fedora 25.

=> ↺ Builder Rust

• With Federico’s wonderful post on Rust’ifying librsvg I guess it makes sense to share what I’ve been doing the last couple of days.

• I’ve been keeping my eye on Rust for quite a while. However, I’ve been so heads down with Builder the last two years that I haven’t really gotten to write any or help on integration into our platform. Rust appears to take a very pragmatic stance on integration with systems code (which is primarily C). The C calling convention is not going anywhere, so at some point, you will be integrating with some part of a system that is “C-like”. Allowing us to piecemeal upgrade the “Safety” of our systems is much smarter than rewrite-the-universe. This pragmatism is likely due to the realities of Rust’s birth at Mozilla. It’s a huge code-base, and incrementally modernizing it is the only reality that is approachable.

=> ↺ Librsvg gets Rusty

• I’ve been wanting to learn Rust for some time. It has frustrated me for a number of years that it is quite possible to write GNOME applications in high-level languages, but for the libraries that everything else uses (“the GNOME platform”), we are pretty much stuck with C. Vala is a very nice effort, but to me it never seemed to catch much momentum outside of GNOME.

• After reading this presentation called “Rust out your C”, I got excited. It is possible to port C code to Rust, small bits at a time! You rewrite some functions in Rust, make them linkable to the C code, and keep calling them from C as usual. The contortions you need to do to make C types accessible from Rust are no worse than for any other language.

=> ↺ GNOME’s Epiphany 3.24 Web Browser to Use Firefox Sync Service, HTTPS Everywhere

• The GNOME developers are preparing to release the first development version of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, versioned 3.23.1, and we can’t help but notice that some of the core apps were updated recently.

Distributions

Reviews

=> ↺ Zorin OS 12 Beta – Flat white, no sugar

• I did not do any other testing, no extensive tweaking, no customization. I felt no need or desire to do so. Now, do remember Zorin OS 12 is still in beta, so we can excuse some of the problems we see here. But others are purely Ubuntu, and have been ported over from the parent distro without any discrimination or any improvements and fixes introduced in the last six months. The big offenders include: multimedia and smartphone support, poor software management, and then the somewhat heavy utilization and slow performance.

• Zorin is quite pretty but weary on the eyes, it tries perhaps too hard to be more than it is, and overall, the value it brings is negatively offset by the myriad papercuts of its design and the implementation of its unique style, plus the failings of the Ubuntu family. It’s an okay choice, if you will, but there’s nothing too special about it anymore. It’s not as fun as it used to be. Gone is the character, gone is the glamor. This aligns well with the overall despair in the Linux desktop world. Maybe the official release will be better, but I doubt it. Why would suddenly one distro excel where 50 others of the same crop had failed with the exact same problems? Final grade, 5/10. Test if you like the looks, other than that, there’s no incentive in really using Zorin. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

New Releases

=> ↺ Clonezilla Live 2.4.9-17 Disk Cloning Live CD Now Powered by Linux Kernel 4.7.8

• On October 25, 2016, Clonezilla Live developer Steven Shiau proudly announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.4.9-17, a new stable version of the popular, open-source disk imaging and cloning live system.

OpenSUSE/SUSE

=> ↺ Suse: Question. What do you call second-place in ARM enterprise server linux? Answer: Red Hat

• ARM TechCon Suse is claiming victory over Red Hat by announcing – and these caveats are all crucial – “the first commercial enterprise Linux distribution optimized for ARM AArch64 architecture servers.”

• In plainer English, Suse has developed an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that runs on 64-bit ARM servers (should you happen to ever find one). Suse claims this software is a world first because it is a finished commercial product, thus beating Red Hat to the punch: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for ARM is still only available as a beta-like development preview.

=> ↺ SUSE Preps Linux for ARM Servers

• The move toward ARM-based servers took another step forward this week as SUSE announced plans for server and storage versions of Linux supporting 64-bit ARM SoCs. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Enterprise Storage will be available before the end of the year.

• Intel currently dominates the server sector, one of its most profitable markets, with its x86 Xeon processors.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat CEO: Culture matters for encouraging innovative behaviors

• I regularly meet with customers and partners to discuss challenges they’re facing, and I’ve noticed something recently: When they ask for advice, they typically spend five minutes talking to me about technology—and the remaining time asking me questions about organizational culture.

=> ↺ Open Systems Specialists runs riot at Red Hat partner awards

• Open Systems Specialists (OSS) has taken out a string of top Red Hat partner awards, with the Kiwi IT infrastructure provider walking away with regional, cloud and virtualisation honours.

• Awarded at the Red Hat Asia Pacific Partner Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, the Auckland-based company took home the Region Partner of the Year Award for Australia and New Zealand, alongside regional recognition for its expertise across cloud and virtualisation technologies.

• Fending off strong competition from Australia, Japan, China, India, Korea and the ASEAN countries, OSS was recognised for its ability to deliver innovative solutions to customers during the past 12 months.

=> ↺ A New Major Contribution From Eurotech, With the Support of Red Hat, Leads the Way for an Open Source Industrial IoT Platform

=> ↺ Red Hat Named a Visionary in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage

=> ↺ Violin Memory Expands Support for Private and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructures with RedHat OpenStack Liberty

=> ↺ Red Hat Open Tech to Run UKCloud’s Enterprise Platform; Radhesh Balakrishnan Comments

• Red Hat and public cloud provider UKCloud have forged a partnership to develop an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud platform for the U.K. government’s work to deliver digital services to the public.

• UKCloud has standardized on Red Hat OpenStack Platform with Red Hat Ceph Storage to handle citizen web applications and government systems in behalf of public sector organizations across industries such as healthcare, defense and police and justice, Red Hat said Monday.

Finance

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (RHT) EVP Sold $86,317.00 in Stock

=> ↺ What do Analysts Say about: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ AGF Investments Inc. Reduces Position in Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

=> ↺ Newsmaking Penny Stock: Investors Checking Out Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora 25 supplemental wallpapers

• Each release, the Fedora Design team works with the community on a set of 16 additional wallpapers. Users can install and use these to supplement the standard wallpaper. The Fedora Design team encourages submissions from the whole community. Contributors then use the Nuancier app to vote on the top 16 to include.

=> ↺ F24-20161023 updated Lives released

=> ↺ Flatpak Unboxes Major Changes In Its Latest Release

• A big update to Flatpak, the fledgling Linux application distribution framework, has been released.

=> ↺ Fedora Join meeting 24 October 2016 – Summary

Debian Family

=> ↺ “softWaves” will be the default theme for Debian 9

• After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of twelve choices have been submitted, and any Debian contributor has received the opportunity to vote on them in a survey. We received 3,479 responses ranking the different choices, and softWaves has been the winner among them.

=> ↺ This Is the Final Artwork of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” Operating System

• Today, October 25, 2016, Debian Project’s Laura Arjona Reina and Niels Thykier proudly announced Juliette Taka Belin as the official artwork winner for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system.

=> ↺ Rankings, Condorcet and free software: Calculating the results for the Stretch Artwork Survey

• We had 12 candidates for the Debian Stretch Artwork and a survey was set up for allowing people to vote which one they prefer.

• The survey was run in my LimeSurvey instance, surveys.larjona.net. LimeSurvey its a nice free software with a lot of features. It provides a “Ranking” question type, and it was very easy for allowing people to “vote” in the Debian style (Debian uses the Condorcet method in its elections).

• However, although LimeSurvey offers statistics and even graphics to show the results of many type of questions, its output for the Ranking type is not useful, so I had to export the data and use another tool to find the winner.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Reviews: Quirky Zorin and Boring Ubuntu

• Perhaps not so coincidentally, Joshua Allen Holm reached nearly the same conclusion today with Ubuntu 16.10. He began, “At first glance, little has changed in Ubuntu 16.10. It looks almost exactly like every other recent release of Ubuntu.” He spent most of his article looking at Unity 8, which is still just a preview, and said it does show promise with its early “polish.” Holm concluded there was little reason to recommend an upgrade unless you need a fix provided or wish the newer software. In addition, Chin Wong recently upgraded and came to nearly the same exact conclusions.

=> ↺ Canonical explains Ubuntu Advantage benefits — could your business switch to Linux?

• Linux-based desktop operating systems are better than Windows because they are free, right? Whoa there, folks. Neither are necessarily better or worse — it really depends on your needs. Cost-free operating systems, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, are definitely great for home consumers looking to breathe new life into old machines. With that said, the benefits of Linux extend beyond money and cost-savings.

• Linux being free is sort of misleading when it comes to business use too. While a small business with a few employees can get by with free support, larger companies would be crazy to go it entirely alone — paid support is a necessity for success. Today, Canonical releases a well-designed infographic that explains the benefits of its paid support, called ‘Ubuntu Advantage’.

• “Ubuntu Advantage is the commercial support package from Canonical. It includes Landscape, the Ubuntu systems management tool, and the Canonical Livepatch Service, which enables you to apply kernel fixes without restarting your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems”, says Canonical.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ This Linux computer may be smaller than a coin, but it packs some big computing power

• Whether you think they’re a novelty, sneaky powerful, or just seriously cute, microcomputers are here to stay. Find out what all the fuss is about with the versatile, ultra-adaptable VoCore 2 Linux mini computer, paired with an Ultimate Dock for just $42.99.

• If you’ve never experimented with a microcomputer like the VoCore 2, you may be surprised by how much you can do with this tiny open source computer and wireless router. The VoCore 2’s 580 MHz processor is ready to handle almost any coding plan, including Java, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby projects.

=> ↺ Daily Deal: VoCore2 Mini Linux Computer And Ultimate Dock

=> ↺ Save 14% off the VoCore2 Mini Linux Computer + Ultimate Dock – get it for just $42.99

=> ↺ pcDuino goes quad-core, swaps Arduino for RPi compatibility

• LinkSprite’s $25, 64 x 50mm “pcDuino4 Nano” SBC is a re-spin of FriendlyARM’s NanoPi M1, offering a quad-core H3, Raspberry Pi expansion, and 3x USB ports.

• Can you be a pcDuino without the Duino? For its latest open source pcDuino board, LinkSprite has switched from Arduino compatibility to a 40-pin Raspberry Pi expansion interface, breaking the mold of the three pcDuino SBCs, and five models total, that made it into our June HackerBoard SBC survey. The new pcDuino4 Nano, which is on pre-sale for $25, follows the $40 pcDuino3 Nano, which fell directly in the middle of the pack of our reader rankings of community-backed SBCs, but was the most popular of the pcDuino models overall.

Phones

Tizen

=> ↺ About to buy a smartwatch? Odds are you aren’t, unless it’s by Samsung

• According to the latest report by IDC, volumes are nosediving. This is not peanuts: we are talking about a YoY decline in the third quarter of 2016 of 51.6%. The number of units shipped is crumbling, from 5.6 to 2.7 million. What’s the reason for this? IDC objects that Apple, being the major player of the market – it accounts for 1.1 million units shipped in 3Q16, 41.3% of market share – hasn’t had the chance to shine yet, because its latest wearable device, Apple Watch Series 2, has been made available only in mid-September. And two weeks in three months are not the tie-breaker.

Android

=> ↺ Xiaomi makes the Mi Note 2 and Mi VR headset official

• You probably heard all the buzz earlier around that new Xiaomi phone with basically no bezels. That device rather overshadowed the slightly more conventional (and probably more usable) Mi Note 2. This device has high-end specs, a curved display, and support for global LTE.

=> ↺ DirtyCOW Linux hole works on Android too – “root at will”

=> ↺ Android 7.1 hits the Galaxy Nexus and 2013 Moto X via CyanogenMod and Unlegacy ROMs

=> ↺ Introducing DNS66, a host blocker for Android

• I’m proud (yes, really) to announce DNS66, my host/ad blocker for Android 5.0 and newer. It’s been around since last Thursday on F-Droid, but it never really got a formal announcement.

• DNS66 creates a local VPN service on your Android device, and diverts all DNS traffic to it, possibly adding new DNS servers you can configure in its UI. It can use hosts files for blocking whole sets of hosts or you can just give it a domain name to block (or multiple hosts files/hosts). You can also whitelist individual hosts or entire files by adding them to the end of the list. When a host name is looked up, the query goes to the VPN which looks at the packet and responds with NXDOMAIN (non-existing domain) for hosts that are blocked.

=> ↺ Kodi 17 “Krypton” Beta 4 Released with ARMv8A 64-bit Builds for Android, Fixes

• Today, October 25, 2016, Martijn Kaijser had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability of the fourth, and probably the last Beta milestone of the upcoming Kodi 17 open-source and cross-platform media center software.

=> ↺ How to Switch to Android Without Missing iMessage

=> ↺ WhatsApp is rolling out video calls on Android

=> ↺ Android Pay is coming to hundreds of thousands more websites

=> ↺ How to disable new tab article suggestions in Chrome 54 for Android

=> ↺ Rumor: Galaxy S8 specs to include 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED and 6 GB of RAM

=> ↺ Android 7.0 Nougat Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge get latest OS by end 2016; Galaxy Note 7 update scrapped

=> ↺ LG Android 7.0 Nougat Download To Include LG G5, LG V10 And LG G3

=> ↺ Rowhammer memory attack can root Android phones in seconds

=> ↺ Rowhammer Vulnerability Comes to Android

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Nantes: Open source cuts off recurring charges

• Switching to open source means the end of the periodic recurring charges from proprietary software vendors, says Eric Ficheux, change management specialist at Nantes Métropole, France’s 6th largest city. “The total cost of ownership of LibreOffice is far lower than of its proprietary predecessor”, he says.

=> ↺ Keeping up the fight for free software

• Here’s John Sullivan’s vision for a more just world: You pop into your favorite electronics retailer and encounter a panoply of new gadgets, each one more alluring and astounding than the last—and each one guaranteed to respect your freedom. Your freedom to inspect its software. Your freedom to modify that software. Your freedom to have that software collect only the data you wish.

=> ↺ How Walmart Is Embracing the Open-Source OpenStack Model

• Walmart wasn’t always an open-source advocate, but now it’s one of the biggest consumers of open-source technology and is actively building a culture that fosters open-source development. BARCELONA, Spain—Walmart, the world largest retailer and one the largest employers, aims to give back to the OpenStack community. In a session at the OpenStack Summit here, Andrew Mitry, lead architect for Walmart’s OpenStack effort, and Megan Rossetti, part of the OpenStack Operations team at Walmart, detailed how the open-source model is working for the retail giant.

=> ↺ PUFIN Open Source Blockchain Tech May Be Marketplace Lending Answer

=> ↺ Chain Releases Open-Source Version of Chain Core Technology Powering Visa’s New B2B Connect

• On October 21, 2016, Visa announced a new partnership with blockchain enterprise company Chain that will develop “a simple, fast and secure way to process B2B payments globally.” Dubbed Visa B2B Connect, the system will offer participating pilot financial institutions a consistent process for managing settlement through Visa’s standard practices.

• “The time has never been better for the global business community to take advantage of new payment technologies and improve some of the most fundamental processes needed to run their businesses,” said McCarthy. “We are developing our new solution to give our financial institution partners an efficient, transparent way for payments to be made across the world.”

=> ↺ Chain Launches Open Source Developer Platform

• Chain, a provider of blockchain technology solutions, today released Chain Core Developer Edition, a free and open source version of its distributed ledger platform that enables organizations to issue and transfer assets on permissioned blockchain networks.

• For the first time, developers can download and install Chain Core to start or join a blockchain network, build financial applications, and access in-depth technical documentation and tutorials. Users have the option to run their prototypes on a test network, or “testnet,” operated by Chain, Microsoft, and the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), a collaboration of Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Technion.

=> ↺ Open Source ERP Options For Small and Medium Businesses

• Open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) holds a small portion of the overall ERP market, which is mainly ruled by few commercial products provided by well-known enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sage.

=> ↺ Steering Kubernetes Through Uncharted Territory

• Taylor Thomas is a Cloud Software Engineer for the Software Defined Infrastructure team at Intel working on Kubernetes, CI/CD, and the Snap open telemetry framework. The team also uses Kubernetes to run a large part of their services, and Thomas will describe this work in his upcoming talk “Off the Beaten Path: An Explorer’s Guide to Kubernetes ” at KubeCon. In this article, however, he provides a preview of some challenges that the team has encountered.

Events

=> ↺ Software Freedom Kosova 2016

• Software Freedom Kosova (SFK) 2016 took place in Prishtina from October 21-23, 2016. We were able to push a special Fedora badge for SFK to be awarded to SFK attendees who vist the Fedora booth. The badge was awarded 14 times out of which 12 were existing contributors while 2 new contributors were onboarded at the event ! Yaay – we look forward to seeing you in the community nafieshehu and marianab.

=> ↺ OpenStack Summit Barcelona

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ US ‘could legalise cannabis across country’ in wake of California decriminalisation vote

• The decriminalisation of recreational cannabis use in California could be a milestone towards ending the drug’s prohibition nationally, it has been suggested.

• Alongside the presidential election, California will vote over whether to make recreational marijuana use legal on 8 November.

• If approved, as polls suggest it will be, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) will allow adults aged over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and cultivate up to six plants for personal use, the National Organisation of the Reform of Marijuana Laws explains.

• Legalisation of recreational cannabis has already taken place in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, but experts believe decriminalisation in California could present a strong challenge to the federal government’s cannabis ban.

Security

=> ↺ Tuesday’s security updates

=> ↺ We Got Phished

• She logged into her account but couldn’t find the document and, with other more urgent emails to deal with, she quickly moved on and put this brief event out of mind.

• This staff member will henceforth be known as PZ, or “patient zero.”

• The login page wasn’t really a login page. It was a decoy webpage, designed to look legitimate in order to trick unsuspecting recipients into typing in their private login credentials. Having fallen for the ruse, PZ had effectively handed over her email username and password to an unknown party outside the Exploratorium.

• This type of attack is known as “phishing.” Much like putting a lure into a lake and waiting to see what bites, a phishing attack puts out phony prompts, such as a fake login page, hoping that unwitting recipients can be manipulated into giving up personal information.

=> ↺ DDoS attacks against Dyn the work of ‘script kiddies’

• Last week’s distributed denial of service attack in the US against domain name services provider Dynamic Network Services are more likely to have been the work of “script kiddies”, and not state actors.

• Security researchers at threat intelligence firm Flashpoint dismissed reports that linked the attack to WikiLeaks, the Russian government or the New World Hackers group.

• Instead, Flashpoint said, it was “moderately confident” that the Hackforums community was behind the attack which led to well-known sites like Twitter, Spotify, Netflix and Paypal being inaccessible on 21 October (US time).

=> ↺ How one rent-a-botnet army of cameras, DVRs caused Internet chaos

• Welcome to the Internet of Evil Things. The attack that disrupted much of the Internet on October 21 is still being teased apart by investigators, but evidence thus far points to multiple “botnets” of Internet-connected gadgets being responsible for blocking access to the Domain Name Service (DNS) infrastructure at DNS provider Dyn. Most of these botnets—coordinated armies of compromised devices that sent malicious network traffic to their targets—were controlled by Mirai, a self-spreading malware for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

• in a blog post on the attack, Dyn reported “tens of millions” of devices were involved in the attack

• But other systems not matching the signature of Mirai were also involved in the coordinated attack on Dyn. “We believe that there might be one or more additional botnets involved in these attacks,” Dale Drew, CSO of Level 3 Communications, told Ars. “This could mean that they are ‘renting’ several different botnets to launch an attack against a specific victim, in which multiple other sites have been impacted.”

• The motive may have been blackmail, since the attacker sought a payout by Dyn to stop. But Drew warned that the huge disruption caused by the attack “could result in large copycat attacks, and [a] higher [number of] victim payouts [so] as to not be impacted in the same way. It could also be a signal that the bad guy is using multiple botnets in order to better avoid detection since they are not orchestrating the attack from a single botnet source.”

=> ↺ ARM builds up security in the tiniest Internet of Things chips

• IoT is making devices smaller, smarter, and – we hope – safer. It’s not easy to make all those things happen at once, but chips that can help are starting to emerge.

• On Tuesday at ARM TechCon in Silicon Valley, ARM will introduce processors that are just a fraction of a millimeter across and incorporate the company’s TrustZone technology. TrustZone is hardware-based security built into SoC (system on chip) processors to establish a root of trust.

• It’s designed to prevent devices from being hacked and taken over by intruders, a danger that’s been in the news since the discovery of the Mirai botnet, which recently took over thousands of IP cameras to mount denial-of-service attacks.

=> ↺ Antique Kernel Flaw Opens Door to New Dirty Cow Exploit

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Russia Reveals ‘Satan 2′ Nuclear Missile Capable of Destroying Texas in One Blow

• Russia is flexing its military muscle as tensions with the US simmer in the wake of a heated third presidential debate, where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called Republican candidate Donald Trump a “puppet” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, Russia has declassified the first image of its new thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile.

• The RS-28 Sarmat missile—better known as the Satan 2 nuclear missile—has finally been revealed after years of being hyped by the Russian government. According to a Russian publication aligned with the Kremlin called Sputnik, the super-nuke has a payload capable of destroying an area “the size of Texas.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Murder of Brazil official marks new low in war on Amazon environmentalists

• Before he could get out of his car, two men on a motorcycle pulled up and the passenger shot seven bullets into the 54-year-old, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

• The killer got off the bike, opened the car door and shot him twice more. Araújo slumped on to his wife, who was seated beside him. Neither she, nor his two stepchildren, were injured. No attempt was made to steal anything.

• The killing, on Thursday 13 October, had all the hallmarks of the sort of assassination that is common in the lawless Pará state, in the eastern Amazon, where illegal logging, clandestine mining and modern slavery are rife.

• More than 150 environmental activists have been killed in Brazil since 2012, with studies showing the country accounts for half the global toll of such murders.

=> ↺ Scientists Warn the Collapse of This Glacier Could Be Globally Catastrophic

• The hulking West Antarctic ice sheet has been worrying scientists for decades. Global warming, as we already know, is causing very massive glaciers to melt a very rapid pace. But if this ice sheet goes, as some climate models have formidably simulated, sea levels could rise by as much as 12 feet. That’s enough to flood 28,800 square miles of coastal land in the United States alone.

• For many experts, the question isn’t if this is going to happen, but when.

• Since the 1950s, West Antarctica’s glaciers have been called “unstable,” “unstoppable,” and the region’s “weak underbelly” by researchers who recognized their unique vulnerabilities and immense potential for catastrophe.

• In particular, the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers near the Amundsen Sea are of utmost concern because they possess the ability to destabilize the entire ice sheet, setting off a careening chain of events. According to Washington Post, while both glaciers are capable of causing up to two feet of sea level rise, each depositing nearly “45 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually,” their structural integrity makes them especially dangerous.

Finance

=> ↺ Not just bigots and boors oppose trade deals: McQuaig

• The decision of British voters to leave Europe has been treated as evidence that they’re intolerant xenophobes keen to seal themselves off from the world. That Donald Trump is on their side only helps make the case that they represent a boorish throwback, a desire to make the English-speaking world great again by turning it into a giant gated community surrounded by sky-high walls.

• Having such a collection of bigots and boors opposing “globalization” may turn out to be a boon for those promoting globalization — that is, the laws that govern the global economy.

• This is unfortunate, since these laws — and the international trade deals that enforce them — have delivered benefits almost exclusively to those at the top in recent years, and should be thoroughly overhauled.

• But with Neanderthal wall-builders lurking in the background, it may be easier for the Trudeau government to convince Canadians to accept these badly flawed and increasingly unpopular trade deals as part of living in an open, modern world.

• U.S. President Barack Obama helped make this case in his address to Parliament last week, urging us to resist “sealing ourselves off from the world,” as he derided opposition to foreigners and opposition to international trade deals with the same broad brush.

• But whoa, Nelly! Let’s not lump Trump’s scurrilous Muslim ban in with legitimate resistance to trade deals such as NAFTA, as well as the highly contentious new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the sweeping 12-nation trade deal Obama is keenly promoting.

=> ↺ Twitter Planning Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

• Twitter Inc., having failed to sell itself, is planning to fire about 8 percent of its workforce as the struggling social-media company prepares to go it alone for the time being.

• Twitter may eliminate about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, according to people familiar with the matter. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. The people asked not to be identified talking about private company plans.

• An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. A Twitter representative declined to comment.

=> ↺ Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down economics experiment is so bad the state stopped reporting on it

• Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, the Republican responsible for the state’s business-friendly tax policies, is now trying to erase any evidence of just how wildly unsuccessful his Reaganomics experiment has proved.

• Last month the state’s Council of Economic Advisors, which Brownback created in 2011 and still chairs, quietly discontinued quarterly reports originally intended to showcase the state’s rapid economic growth. (During Brownback’s re-election campaign in 2014, the reports were scrubbed from the internet and subsequently available only upon request.)

• The council issued what ended up being its last report in May.

• Brownback “specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”

• Holliday’s Kansas Center for Economic Growth noted the reports’ discontinuation and in April, the nonprofit issued its own economic proposal outlining the proven economic benefits of investing in public kindergarten-through-grade 12 education.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ A Good Year to Go Green (Party)

• The video of Donald Trump crowing that his celebrity status entitles him to assault women slightly eclipsed Hillary Clinton’s leaked speeches. But we still learned that Clinton holds “public and private positions,” that her populist promises regarding free trade, preserving Social Security, and checking the power of Wall Street probably won’t survive Inauguration Day.

• Millions of voters have figured out that the two major parties don’t represent them. They’re right. It’s not a two-party system, it’s a two-party racket.

• They’re frustrated with a choice that, we’re told, is limited to two nominees with deep disapproval ratings. Voter dissatisfaction is reflected in polls that show broad support for a choice of more than two on the ballot.

• Despite such sentiments, Democrats are scolding Green Party candidates: “This isn’t your year. We must defeat Trump.”

• Meanwhile, we’re seeing indications that Clinton is heading towards a solid win, as the Trump campaign sinks deeper into disgrace.

• 2016 might turn out to be the safest year ever to vote Green, right? No, say Democrats.

• Dems will never admit it’s a good time to go Green. They want a field permanently limited to two parties of war and Wall Street.

• To understand what we’ve lost under the two-party racket, compare the cringeworthy Clinton-Trump debates with Green nominee Jill Stein’s rebuttals.

=> ↺ After DNC chair suggests WikiLeaks emails were ‘doctored,’ technology blog calls her bluff

• Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile said last week that a number of her WikiLeaks emails were “doctored,” implying that she either didn’t send them or the messages she did send were altered. But a technology blog is now calling her bluff.

• “I have seen so many doctored emails. I have seen things that come from me at two in the morning that I don’t even send,” Brazile told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly following Wednesday’s third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas. Brazile had been asked specifically about one email that indicated Hillary Clinton may have received a Democratic primary debate question ahead of the event, which aired on CNN in March.

=> ↺ I’m voting for Jill Stein. It’s a moral choice. It reflects who I am as a person.

• I was 19 when Eric Garner was choked to death by the police. Seeing that video of his death over and over again as it spread across Facebook felt like waking up to reality. Within days, I joined my first political protest: a “die-in” in my college’s student center, symbolizing our stand against police brutality.

• I’m now 21 years old, in the midst of my senior year at Simpson College in Iowa, and this will be my first time voting in a presidential election. Systemic racism is the most important issue to me, and my views on that topic and many others are far to the left of both Trump and Clinton. That’s why I’m choosing to vote for Jill Stein in my home battleground state of Iowa.

• I face a lot of stigma for my choice to vote third party. People tell me I’m wasting my vote, or that I’m just trying to be different. But they are completely missing the point of why I’m choosing to do this. To me, my vote represents a moral choice. It reflects who I am as a person.

• [...]

• I am a Marxist, a radical feminist, and the child of a Laotian immigrant, so it’s obvious why Trump doesn’t speak to me. His hateful and bigoted language, such as the recent recordings where he discussed sexually assaulting women, is appalling. I’m particularly disturbed by his law-and-order rhetoric. I read that he claimed police are the most discriminated-against group in America right now. I’m truly flabbergasted at that statement.

=> ↺ Clinton ally speculates why Clinton used private server

=> ↺ Iceland’s Pirate Party prepares for power as polls suggest election triumph

• The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

• Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and web geeks. It sets policy through online polls – and thinks the government should do the same. It wants to make Iceland “a Switzerland of bits,” free of digital snooping. It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

• And then there’s the name: in this land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

• The rise of the Pirates – from radical fringe to focal point of Icelandic politics – has astonished even the party’s founder, a poet, web programmer and former WikiLeaks activist.

=> ↺ Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

• The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

• Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and Web geeks. It sets policy through online polls — and thinks the government should do the same. It wants to make Iceland “a Switzerland of bits,” free of digital snooping. It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

• And then there’s the name: In this land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

=> ↺ Nearly All Of Silicon Valley’s Political Dollars Are Going To Hillary Clinton

• Aditya Agarwal, the newly promoted chief technology officer of Dropbox, the cloud storage company, will vote in his first U.S. election on Nov. 8. Though he’s worked for U.S. tech companies for years, it hasn’t been easy to stay abreast of the paperwork he needed to get visas and become a citizen.

• “Over the course of being in the United States for the last 16 years, I have had an F-1 [student] visa, an OPT, a CPT,” he said. “I’ve had, like, four H-1Bs [a visa used for high-skilled workers, often in the technology industry]. I’ve had, like, a green-card process that took like five or six years. I’ve gone through the citizenship process.”

• The process is “deeply personal for me,” he said, speaking as a newly minted American citizen about to cast a ballot, “so I’m really excited about it.”

=> ↺ WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world

• “Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer, David Kendall, as well as former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.

• “Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again: “I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.”

• The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.

=> ↺ Facebook Heavily Biased Toward Hillary Clinton? WikiLeaks Latest Reveal Shows Possible Direct Correlation

• As we quickly approach the November 8th elections, email leaks from the Clinton camp continue to loom over the presidential candidate. The latest data dump from WikiLeaks shines a light on emails between Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

• In one email exchange, dated June 6th, 2015, Sandberg expresses her desire for Clinton to become president, writing to Podesta, “And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can.” While that was a private exchange, Sandberg also made her zest for seeing Clinton as the 45th President of the United States publicly known in a Facebook post on July 28th of this year.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Smith College Opens A Tattletale Phone Line So Students Can Snitch On Campus Speech Criminals

• “Stop it! Don’t! I’m telling!” is, understandably, a part of some kids’ lives — when they’re 8. At 18, you’d think that proto-adult debating thingie would kick in.

• Well, it used to.

• But now, Smith College has eliminated the need to, you know, talk things out — tell somebody when they’re being kind of a dickbag — with a 24/7 speech crime hotline.

=> ↺ Chickenshit American Bar Association Scared Out Of Publishing Report Calling Trump A Libel Bully

• We’ve talked a lot about Donald Trump and his ridiculous views on defamation and the First Amendment — including his penchant for threatening defamation lawsuits against basically everyone who says something he dislikes. He rarely follows through, though he certainly does sue sometimes.

• In fact, someone has set up Trump-clock.com which lists out every known legal threat against the press or critics since his Presidential campaign began (ignoring the long list that predates the campaign). It also has a clock showing how long it’s been since Trump’s last threat.

• So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a group of media lawyers at the American Bar Association commissioned a report on Trump’s litigation history, and the report (correctly) concluded that Donald Trump is a “libel bully” making a bunch of bogus threats and with a history of filing bogus defamation lawsuits in court (something he’s outright bragged about). This shouldn’t be controversial. Trump is, clearly, a libel bully, and even he has more or less admitted that with his comments on why he sued author Tim O’Brien.

• But, apparently, the American Bar Association was too chickenshit and refused to publish the report, out of a fear that (wait for it…) Trump would sue them.

=> ↺ Is banning gambling ads censorship? You bet

• For those of a certain age, like me, you only need to mention the words ‘shake’ and ‘vac’ in the same breath before one of advertising’s greatest earworms plays on loop in your brain: ‘Do the Shake n’ Vac and put the freshness back, do the Shake n’ Vac and put the freshness back…’, all accompanied by the mental image of a woman in a long skirt dancing about with a vacuum cleaner. The advert played for years, and even people too young to remember it have doubtless picked up the tune through some form of cultural osmosis. And yet, I have never bought Shake n’ Vac. Why would I want to scatter powder imbued with some artificial fragrance on to my carpet and then hoover it up? It sounds like a terrible idea.

• [...]

• Only a small minority of people in the UK have a problem with gambling to the extent that it threatens their finances or becomes a mental-health problem. And the problem isn’t even growing. As Christopher Snowdon pointed out recently: ‘There are fewer people gambling and no change in the rate of problem gambling. The rise of online gambling, the introduction of fixed-odds betting terminals and a dramatic increase in gambling advertising has had no effect on rates of problem gambling.’

• So what could possibly justify yet more draconian measures against gambling? Companies should be free to advertise their products unless there is a seriously good reason not to – and no such problem has been demonstrated. Most of those who gamble do so at a level that amounts to harmless entertainment. Given the pitifully low levels of excitement in England football matches recently, anything that can add a bit of spice to proceedings is to be welcomed. But most of us recognise that, in the long run, gambling is a mug’s game: the house (almost) always wins.

=> ↺ Why shouldn’t Louis Smith take the piss out of Islam?

• Topknotted pommel-horse enthusiast Louis Smith has irked the Twitterati and the governing body of British gymnastics. No, not with his atrocious haircut; the Rio 2016 silver medallist filmed himself and fellow gymnast Luke Carson ‘mocking Islam’ at a friend’s wedding. The video was subsequently obtained by the Sun and now the internet has gone wild, calling for Louis to be stripped of his MBE.

• In the footage, a clearly inebriated Smith can be seen filming himself and his even more whammed mate yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ while performing a mock Islamic prayer. He then makes some reference to 60 virgins – it’s actually 72 maids that jihadi maniacs are promised when they get to Jannah, but that’s beside the point. Moments later in the video, a female wedding guest admonishes the pair, telling them they’re taking the piss.

• Well, obviously they are! And when did taking the piss become a crime? In a free society people should be allowed to ridicule ideas; in fact, that is arguably the most important aspect of a free society. Dictators fear the sound of laughter because it means someone somewhere is going off script.

=> ↺ Kid needs permission slip to read ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ his dad’s response is brilliant

• But those objections miss the point of the novel—they could only be more ironic if parents were calling for copies of Bradbury’s book to be destroyed. And Radosh is practically an irony-spotter by profession, so this wasn’t lost on him. He signed the slip and attached his own note, praising Milo’s teacher for immersing the kids so thoroughly in the world of Fahrenheit 451.

=> ↺ Dad Has Perfect Burn for Book Club Permission Slip

• Rain on your wedding day? Not really ironic. Not being allowed to read a dystopian novel about book censorship without getting the green light from your parents? Maybe a little ironic. That’s the situation Milo Radosh found himself in when he had to get a permission slip signed so he’d be allowed to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for a school book club, the Daily Dot reports. And his dad, Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh, met this rubber-stamp request with a most appropriate online burn. “tfw your kid’s school makes you sign a permission slip so he can read Fahrenheit 451,” the elder Radosh lamented Monday on Twitter, including emoji depicting a stack of tomes and fire.

=> ↺ Dad’s reply to authoritarian permission slip request goes viral

=> ↺ A permission slip to read ‘Fahrenheit 451′? This dad can’t resist the irony

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ New Docs Detail How AT&T Planned To Profit Massively By Helping Law Enforcement Spy On The Public

• Back in 2013 the New York Times profiled just the latest in AT&T-related surveillance scandals, revealing the existence of “Project Hemisphere.” The original report detailed how Project Hemisphere is a joint program between AT&T and the DEA that provides a variety of federal and state law enforcement agencies with nearly real-time access to logs and location data on nearly every single call that touches the AT&T network. Unlike AT&T’s NSA-related scandals, in many ways this system is much larger than anything covered previously. It’s also much older, with the project having roots as far back as 1987.

• Making the revelations even more notable was the fact that the report indicated that AT&T had employees embedded with the DEA to help expedite access to this data. This difficulty in trying to determine where the government begins and AT&T ends isn’t new; AT&T has long helped the FBI tap dance around privacy and surveillance law, often having its own employees actively working as government intelligence analysts.

=> ↺ Edward Snowden is a saint, not a sinner

• Wikipedia is founded on a bedrock principle of neutrality, seeking to describe all relevant sides without taking a political stance. As an individual, I, too, try to stay out of most political debates — except where they directly impact my personal passion for the free flow of information. This is one of those times.

• When I founded Wikipedia in 2001, the Internet was a place where ordinary people could freely create and share with one another. Wikipedia emerged from that egalitarian spirit, as a community committed to the free exchange of knowledge. Our mission was and continues to be to collect the sum total of all human knowledge and make it available to everybody in their own language.

• [...]

• Some of the world’s biggest tech companies have stood up against government attempts to enlist them in surveillance operations. Nowhere was that more clearly on display than earlier this year, when Apple refused FBI demands that it insert malware into an iPhone, which would have weakened its technology for everyone. But what may be even more important than legal reforms and technical changes is the public debate Snowden instigated. His disclosures brought about a change in consciousness, reinstating privacy as a central value, and newly incentivizing the protection of information activists and dissidents abroad. Young people in the United States are more judicious in what they publicly share online. Activist groups like Black Lives Matter are taking pains to protect their communications. And the United Nations has recognized that encryption is vital to the protection of global human rights.

=> ↺ Spies for Hire

• pIn July, Simone Margaritelli, an Italian security researcher, boarded a Boeing 777 in Rome headed for Dubai, a city now billing itself as a tech startup hub.

• He had a big job interview with a new, well-funded cybersecurity company called DarkMatter, whose self-described mission is to “safeguard the most complex organizations,” from government to the private sector, by preventing and fighting malicious cyberattacks and providing secure methods of communication — defensive cybersecurity, rather than offensive, which involves breaking into online systems and devices for espionage or destruction.

• A friend of a friend had recommended Margaritelli, who was invited to spend five days in the United Arab Emirates at the company’s expense to learn more about the job. When he arrived in Dubai, the City of Gold, he found a full schedule of outings and a deluxe suite at the Jannah Marina Bay Suites hotel.

• [...]

• Margaritelli declined to pursue the job offer. After his post, titled “How the United Arab Emirates Intelligence Tried to Hire Me to Spy on Its People,” began circulating, DarkMatter issued a single terse Twitter reply. The company said it preferred “talking reality & not fantasy.”

• “No one from DarkMatter or its subsidiaries have ever interviewed Mr. Margaritelli,” Kevin Healy, director of communications for DarkMatter, wrote in an email to The Intercept. The man Margaritelli says interviewed him, Healy continued, was only an advisory consultant to DarkMatter — and that relationship has since ended (though several sources say he was employed by the company and had a DarkMatter email address).

• “While we respect an author’s right to express a personal opinion, we do not view the content in question as credible, and therefore have no further comment,” Healy wrote.

• DarkMatter denied outright Margaritelli’s assertions that it was recruiting hackers to research offensive security techniques. “Neither DarkMatter – nor any subsidiary, subset, research wing, or advisory department—engage in the activities described,” Healy wrote. “We conduct rigorous testing on all our products to ensure they do not include any vulnerabilities.”

=> ↺ Yahoo scanning order unlikely to be made public: sources

• Obama administration officials briefed key congressional staffers last week about a secret court order to Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) that prompted it to search all users’ incoming emails for a still undisclosed digital signature, but they remain reluctant to discuss the unusual case with a broader audience.

• Executive branch officials spoke to staff for members of the Senate and House of Representatives committees overseeing intelligence operations and the judiciary, according to people briefed on the events, which followed Reuters’ disclosure of the massive search.[nL2N1C601L]

• But attempts by other members of Congress and civil society groups to learn more about the Yahoo order are unlikely to meet with success anytime soon, because its details remain a sensitive national security matter, U.S. officials told Reuters. Release of any declassified version of the order is unlikely in the foreseeable future, the officials said.

• The decision to keep details of the order secret comes amid mounting pressure on the U.S. government to be more transparent about its data-collection activities ahead of a congressional deadline next year to reauthorize some foreign intelligence authorities.

=> ↺ AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal

• On Nov. 11, 2013, Victorville, California, sheriff’s deputies and a coroner responded to a motorcyclist’s report of human remains outside of town.

• They identified the partially bleached skull of a child, and later discovered the remains of the McStay family who had been missing for the past three years. Joseph, 40, his wife Summer, 43, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, had been bludgeoned to death and buried in shallow graves in the desert.

• Investigators long suspected Charles Merritt in the family’s disappearance, interviewing him days after they went missing. Merritt was McStay’s business partner and the last person known to see him alive. Merritt had also borrowed $30,000 from McStay to cover a gambling debt, a mutual business partner told police. None of it was enough to make an arrest.

• Even after the gravesite was discovered and McStay’s DNA was found inside Merritt’s vehicle, police were far from pinning the quadruple homicide on him.

• Until they turned to Project Hemisphere.

• Hemisphere is a secretive program run by AT&T that searches trillions of call records and analyzes cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why.

• “Merritt was in a position to access the cellular telephone tower northeast of the McStay family gravesite on February 6th, 2010, two days after the family disappeared,” an affidavit for his girlfriend’s call records reports Hemisphere finding (PDF). Merritt was arrested almost a year to the date after the McStay family’s remains were discovered, and is awaiting trial for the murders.

=> ↺ Military Warns Chinese Computer Gear Poses Cyber Spy Threat

• The Pentagon’s Joint Staff recently warned against using equipment made by China’s Lenovo computer manufacturer amid concerns about cyber spying against Pentagon networks, according to defense officials.

• A recent internal report produced by the J-2 intelligence directorate stated that cyber security officials are concerned that Lenovo computers and handheld devices could introduce compromised hardware into the Defense Department supply chain, posing cyber espionage risks, said officials familiar with the report. The “supply chain” is how the Pentagon refers to its global network of suppliers that provide key components for weapons and other military systems.

=> ↺ Documents show AT&T secretly sells customer data to law enforcement

• It accesses the trove of telephone metadata available to AT&T, who control a large proportion of America’s landline and cellphone infrastructure. Unlike other providers, who delete their stored metadata after a certain time, AT&T keeps information like call time, duration, and even location data on file for years, with records dating back to 2008.

• But according to internal company documents revealed Monday by the Daily Beast, Hemisphere is being sold to local police departments and used to investigate everything from murder to Medicaid fraud, costing US taxpayers millions of dollars every year even while riding roughshod over privacy concerns.

• Access to Hemisphere costs local police between $100,000 and more than $1m a year, the documents reveal, and its use requires just an administrative subpoena – a much lower judicial bar than a search warrant because it does not need to be issued by a judge.

• Until Monday, Hemisphere’s use was kept secret from the public – and even from judges, defense attorneys and lawmakers – by an agreement between law enforcement and AT&T which means police must not risk disclosing its use in public or even in court.

=> ↺ Washington Post Reports Huge Surge in Secret Electronic Surveillance Requests

• The Washington Post’s data looked at two federal courts—one in Northern Virginia and one for the District of Columbia. According to the Post’s report, these two courts are some of the most active in the country and are the only ones to disclose any surveillance information.

• [...]

• The data release comes at a time of increased anxiety over secret government internet surveillance. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Yahoo Inc. had built a software to scan users’ incoming emails for information provided by U.S. intelligence officials. Facing backlash, the general counsel of Yahoo sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Oct. 19 requesting more transparency into the details of the FBI’s investigation.

=> ↺ Ex-Deputy Director of NSA discredits ‘story’ spun by Snowden

• There is a scene in the Snowden movie where the Deputy Director of the NSA, played by Patrick Joseph Byrnes, sends Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Snowden on a mission to Hawaii. The man portrayed by Patrick Joseph Byrnes is Chris Inglis, the now ex-Deputy Director of the NSA who disputes ever meeting Edward Snowden and questions whether the Oliver Stone biopic is more fabrication than dramatisation.

=> ↺ UK’s Mass Surveillance Connection to New-Zealand

• Almost everybody knows about the massive surveillance program carried out by UK’s GCHQ. It’s an open secret now. It continued with zero accountability in the years before Edward Snowden’s leaks. Until today it was not known that who or which companies were helping UK’s GCHQ to upgrade and expand its spying campaign. Newly obtained documents by The Intercept and Television New Zealand shows that GCHQ purchased large amounts of “data acquisition” systems and “probes” from Endace which is a New-Zealand company that specializes in network data recording. UK’s GCHQ wanted to improve its monitoring of high-speed internet cables from 87 10Gbps lines in 2009 to 800 by 2013 and this New-Zealand company helped attain this goal.

=> ↺ Mass Government Surveillance Worldwide Made Possible By NZ Company Endace

• We already knew from the Snowden leaks in 2013 that governments around the world had been spying on their citizens through the use of various technologies. We now know that at least one spy agency, GCHQ in the UK, enlisted the help of New Zealand network monitoring vendor Endace. Here’s what we know.

• The company helped the GCHQ develop interception technology that allowed the agency to capture vast amounts of data at speeds of up to 100Gbps from trans-continental undersea cables that carried internet traffic. Endace had reportedly used New Zealand taxpayer money to help fund the development of this technology.

• Endace is known for its network monitoring offerings and it recently began getting into the Internet-of-things (IoT) business by partnering with Cisco. On the surface, it’s just a vendor dealing with technology to help businesses secure their networks by offering them visibility. Behind the scenes, Endace has been dabbling in the lucrative global spy trade for the past decade, according to leaked documents obtained by The Intercept.

=> ↺ New Zealand surveillance company helps enable worldwide mass surveillance

• New Zealand-based surveillance company Endace has created the Medusa system, a program that enables the collection of vast amounts of data possible at record speed. The company is an integral partner in assisting any government from around the world to harvest information about their citizens.

• With its motto ”Power to see all,” the company is alleged to have sold its surveillance technology to countries like India, Spain, Canada, Australia, Israel and the United States. The company enables partners to intercept and monitor 100 percent of the traffic on networks, and it’s alleged that one of their biggest customers in recent years is the British agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

• Endace is known for its network monitoring offerings and it recently began getting into the Internet-of-things (IoT) business by partnering with Cisco. On paper, it’s just a vendor dealing with technology to help businesses secure their networks by offering them visibility. Behind the scenes, Endace has been dabbling in the lucrative global spy trade for the past decade, according to leaked documents obtained by The Intercept .

=> ↺ Report: New Zealand company selling surveillance tech to global spies

• A company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand has played an integral role in global mass surveillance, according to a new report.

• Based on documents and emails leaked to The Intercept, Endace has quietly been selling its technology to government agencies, allowing them to gather vast quantities of “private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.”

• Founded in 2001, the company claims to deliver “the world’s best network monitoring and recording systems,” producing technology that can help clients intercept and monitor online traffic. It boasts “100 percent accurate capture and storage of network traffic.”

=> ↺ Endace: This Unknown Company Powers Massive Surveillance Around The World

• The government security agencies try to intercept information about people on the internet. The agency takes the help of companies which provide network recording products to suck information from the internet. According to leaked documents, GCHQ took the help of Endace to create mass surveillance systems.

=> ↺ GCHQ hired New Zealand firm for mass hack capabilities – Snowden leak

• Documents obtained by the Intercept show UK spies got the NZ-based firm Endace to create data capture technology that scooped up information.

=> ↺ Tax-funded NZ company sold mass surveillance tech to torturers and GCHQ

• A whistleblower has provided The Intercept with leaked documents about Endace, an obscure New Zealand company based in Auckland, revealing that the company — which received millions in government funding — developed the mass surveillance equipment used by the UK spy agency to engage in illegal mass surveillance on fiber-optic lines that traverse the UK, and that Endace’s customer list also includes a who’s-who of telcoms companies, spy agencies, and the Moroccan secret police, who make a practice of spying on people, then kidnapping and torturing them.

=> ↺ UK Intelligence agency GCHQ paid New Zealand firm Endace to tap key internet lines

• According to the 2013 Snowden documents, UK intelligence agency GCHQ took the help of commercial partners to tap into undersea cables that carry Internet traffic, enabling them to secretly gather vast amounts of digital communications data under a surveillance program code-named Tempora.

=> ↺ UK spies paid a New Zealand firm to help tap key internet lines

=> ↺ UK Intelligence Agency GCHQ Harvested Data From Undersea Internet Cables

=> ↺ Leaked Documents Show New Zealand Company’s Connection To GCHQ’s Internet Dragnet

• Other info in the documents shows Endace and GCHQ were (are?) aiming for deployment of 300-500 of these systems, allowing the agency to pull in a large percentage of the traffic traveling through tapped underseas cables. There are also hints that suggest some data is more useful to the GCHQ than others, with WhatsApp, Facebook, Gmail, and Hotmail being specifically named. Also of importance to GCHQ: the ability to track targets by MAC address.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Beta Wayback Machine – Now with Site Search!

• For the last 15 years, users of the Wayback Machine have browsed past versions of websites by entering in URLs into the main search box and clicking on Browse History. With the generous support of The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, we’re adding an exciting new feature to this search box: keyword search!

=> ↺ The Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers to Follow

• Want to know who’s leading the fight to protect your internet rights? Then don’t miss our round up of the Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers!

• Our right to Internet freedom is constantly being challenged by governmental suppression of accessibility and organized infringement on our ability to openly express and share ideas. Luckily forward-thinking human rights and internet freedom activists are boldly fighting to maintain our freedoms online.

• Here’s our selection of the Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers taking the lead. Follow these organizations and individuals to stay up-to-date on what they’re doing to secure your rights!

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload 2/BitCache Reaches Funding Target. Now What?

• While fighting the U.S. in a New Zealand courtroom, Kim has seen fit to launch a funding campaign for his newest project, MegaUpload 2 (MU2) and BitCache, on BnkToTheFuture.

• Over the weekend, Kim’s project was funded successfully. Kim spoke with CoinTelegraph about what comes next.

=> ↺ Megaupload 2.0 Will Outsource File-Hosting and Prevent Takedown Abuse

• The third incarnation of the popular Megaupload service just completed its first investment round, crowdfunding over a million dollars. With Kim Dotcom as the chief evangelist, the service hopes to revolutionize the file-sharing space next year. Interestingly, Megaupload 2.0 plans to outsource most of the storage to third-party providers and will manually review all takedown requests

=> ↺ Shake Up At The Copyright Office A Possible Preview To Fight Over Copyright Reform

• There are all sorts of rumors flying about this. Pallante has, apparently, been advocating strongly for moving the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress, and either making it an independent agency or linking it up with the Patent & Trademark Office under the Commerce Department. That would be a big mistake, frankly, because copyright is not supposed to be about “commerce” and “industry” but about benefiting the public. That’s why it makes sense to leave it as part of the Library of Congress.

=> ↺ US acting register of copyrights announced as Pallante given new role

• Maria Pallante has been appointed senior adviser for digital strategy by the Librarian of Congress after serving as register of copyright since 2011, with Karyn Temple Claggett appointed acting register of copyrights

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