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● 03.04.22

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● Links 4/3/2022: $39 MangoPi, Linux Mint Changes

Posted in News Roundup at 3:34 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ Jrnl – Express Your Feelings on the Digital Diary in Linux Terminal

• Just say ‘Dear Diary’ and express your untold feelings in the note. When you have literally no one to share your thoughts with, a diary can be your best friend. It is much more than saying things to yourself. However, carrying a diary seems burdensome when we have our PC. So, a digital diary seems a good idea for sure. Let’s get introduced to Jrnl, a modern digital diary on the Linux terminal. Jrnl is an open source journaling app available on the Linux terminal. And recently, I got to learn about it. While giving it a try on this application, I found it surprisingly fun and exciting. So, here is a simple content of my experience with Jrnl.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Install OBS Studio on Debian 11 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OBS Studio on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, OBS Studio is software designed for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and streaming video content, efficiently. You can use OBS studio screen-cast including screen recording, camera image, and sound record. It can be used to stream content on various servers such as Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and many other providers. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

=> ↺ How to change the sudo password time

• Although many don’t like sudo, it must be admitted that many users still use it. And many newbies who are still learning to use Linux should use it. One of the most asked questions is how to change the sudo password time. Let’s go for it.

=> ↺ Display disk partition sizes

=> ↺ How to disable/blacklist Nouveau nvidia driver on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

• The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to disable the default Nouveau kernel driver on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux Desktop.

=> ↺ How to switch back networking to /etc/network/interfaces on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

• This tutorial will explain how to switch back networking from NetPlan/CloudInit on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux to the – now already obsolete – networking managed via /etc/network/interfaces.

=> ↺ Graphics driver check on Ubuntu 22.04

• This tutorial will show you how to check what graphics driver your Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish system is currently using and what graphics card model is part of your system’s hardware. Knowing your video card model and graphics driver version can help you determine if you need to install a newer driver, and which model to download the driver for.

=> ↺ How to configure DHCP Server on RockyLinux 8 / AlmaLinux OS 8?

• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol stands for DHCP. In short, we are talking about a network protocol that allows us to assign IP addresses automatically under the parameters and time that we define. This is significant because in large networks, DHCP sends the parameters necessary for the connection to the network to be established. In addition to this, it assigns an IP address so that we do not have to do this manually. In this post, we are going to configure a DHCP server that can do this by itself. For this, we will use a Rocky Linux 8 system, but it will also be compatible with Alma Linux 8 and other derivatives of the RHEL family.

=> ↺ How to Install Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – LinuxCapable

• NGINX is an open-source, free HTTP server software. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for e-mail (IMAP, POP3, and SMTP) and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers. The goal behind NGINX was to create the fastest web server around, and maintaining that excellence is still a central goal of the Nginx project. NGINX consistently beats Apache and other servers in benchmarks measuring web server performance and is now the most popular used web server according to W3Tech. In the following tutorial, you will learn to install Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish desktop or server with a free TLS/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt and some basic configuration setup with server block and Nginx file permissions.

=> ↺ How to Install Slack on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – LinuxCapable

• Slack is an app that lets you communicate with your team in real-time. It’s the perfect solution for development teams and corporations who want to integrate many services, run groups meetings, etc., using Slack’s channels system, which allows users (teams) to create their topics or discuss customer issues cohesively within one channel while also featuring voice & video calls as well file-sharing capabilities or just about anything else! In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Slack on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using two different methods of installations Flatpak and Snap along with how to update, maintain or remove using both package managers.

=> ↺ How to resize a qcow2 disk image on Linux

• Qcow2 is the default virtual disk storage format used by Qemu (qcow stands for qemu copy-on-write). This image format makes use of thin provisioning, so, after we initially set the maximum virtual size of a disk, space is actually allocated only when used, but not made available back to the host when freed.In this article we see how to “sparsify” a qcow2 disk image to reclaim available space, how to expand it or shrink it, and how to manage the partitions layout on it from the host system, connecting it by using the NBD protocol.

=> ↺ Bash Scripting: Conditionals

• A conditional in Bash scripting is made up of two things: a conditional statement and one or more conditional operators. Bash scripts give us two options for writing conditional statements. We can either use an if statement or a case statement. In some situations, a nested if statement can also be helpful. These conditional statements only work by using operators. An operator could tell the statement to check if two numbers are equal, or if one is greater than other, etc. The combination of conditional statements and operators is how we write Bash scripts that can proceed with a specific set of instructions depending on whether or not a condition matches our specifications. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use conditionals in Bash scripting on a Linux system.

=> ↺ How to exit from Bash script

• If you are writing a Bash script or even just executing one, an essential thing you will need to know is how to exit from a Bash script. There are keyboard combinations that can exit from a Bash script while it is executing in your terminal, and there are ways to exit from within a Bash script using various exit codes. We will show you examples of both. In this tutorial, you will learn how to exit from a Bash script either from within the script or from the command line while the script is executing on a Linux system.

=> ↺ Bash script: String comparison examples

• The need to compare strings in a Bash script is relatively common and can be used to check for certain conditions before proceeding on to the next part of a script. A string can be any sequence of characters. To test if two strings are the same, both strings must contain the exact same characters and in the same order. It could be a word or a whole sentence. For example, string one is equal to string one but is not equal to string two. Get the idea? In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to compare strings in a Bash script on a Linux system. We’ll show this in the context of a simple if/else Bash script so you can see how testing for this condition would work when developing scripts.

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Who-T: libei – adding support for passive contexts

• A quick reminder: libei is the library for emulated input. It comes as a pair of C libraries, libei for the client side and libeis for the server side. libei has been sitting mostly untouched since the last status update. There are two use-cases we need to solve for input emulation in Wayland – the ability to emulate input (think xdotool, or Synergy/Barrier/InputLeap client) and the ability to capture input (think Synergy/Barrier/InputLeap server). The latter effectively blocked development in libei [1], until that use-case was sorted there wasn’t much point investing too much into libei – after all it may get thrown out as a bad idea. And epiphanies were as elusive like toilet paper and RATs, so nothing much get done. This changed about a week or two ago when the required lightbulb finally arrived, pre-lit from the factory. So, the solution to the input capturing use-case is going to be a so-called “passive context” for libei. In the traditional [2] “active context” approach for libei we have the EIS implementation in the compositor and a client using libei to connect to that. The compositor sets up a seat or more, then some devices within that seat that typically represent the available screens. libei then sends events through these devices, causing input to be appear in the compositor which moves the cursor around. In a typical and simple use-case you’d get a 1920×1080 absolute pointer device and a keyboard with a $layout keymap, libei then sends events to position the cursor and or happily type away on-screen.

=> ↺ Remi Collet: PHP version 8.0.17RC1 and 8.1.4RC1

• Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

=> ↺ Enterprise open-source is on the up and proprietary software on the way down

=> ↺ Made on a Mac with proprietary software

• The use of proprietary software in enterprise organizations is expected to decline eight percentage points over the next two years, while the use of enterprise open-source software is expected to increase five percentage points. So say 1,296 IT leaders around the world, according to Red Hat’s fourth annual “The State of Enterprise Open Source” report. Currently, report respondents say 45 per cent of their software is proprietary and they expect that figure to drop to 37 per cent in two years. Meanwhile, enterprise open source software, presently 29 per cent of the organizational software mix, is expected to reach 34 per in that same time span. And community-based open source software, now at 21 per cent, is predicted to see a slightly smaller gain, reaching 24 per cent two years hence. Red Hat’s report, released on Wednesday, attempts to measure how enterprises see business-oriented open source software within their organizations. As a vendor of open source software and related services, Red Hat has something of a vested interest in the report’s findings.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Mint is Making a Major Bluetooth Change

• An improved Bluetooth experience is expected to feature in the next major release of Linux Mint. Current versions of the Linux distro ship with Blueberry as the default Bluetooth manager tool, which uses the gnome-bluetooth backend. This handle connections to Bluetooth devices like headphones, headsets, games controllers, smartphones, etc, and the integration of devices within the Cinnamon desktop UI. But Linux Mint 21 —due for release later this year— is likely to use Blueman and the bluez backend. Why the change? Well, the short answer is that Blueman works better. Testing by Mint shows it successfully connects to a wider range of devices (audio equipment in particular). And when you’re shipping a desktop OS used by millions you ought to be using what works best, right?

Devices/Embedded

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ $39 MangoPi-Nezha MQ RISC-V developer board runs OpenWrt, Debian, or RT-Smart RTOS (Crowdfunding) – CNX Software

• MangoPi-Nezha MQ tiny developer board with Allwinner F133-A (aka Allwinner D1s) RISC-V processor with 64MB on-chip RAM has just launched on Crowd Supply for $39, and delivery is expected in July 2022. The 4x4cm development board comes with a MicroSD card slot, display and camera interfaces, an on-board microphone, as well as WiFi connectivity, two USB Type-C ports, and two 22-pin headers for expansion.

=> ↺ How did we build the new Astro Pi computers for the International Space Station?

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Sony Xperia 1 II and Xperia Pro start receiving Android 12 updates in the US – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Huawei P50 Pocket review: The fashion-forward flip phone | Android Central

=> ↺ Ultra-affordable Moto G22 goes official with 90Hz screen, Android 12, and stellar battery life – PhoneArena

=> ↺ 5 Android Apps You Should Avoid

=> ↺ This Android Malware Has Been Downloaded 10,000 Times

=> ↺ How to enable or disable Live Captions in Android 12 – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Lenovo’s Yoga Tab 11 runs Android 11 at an all-time low of $250 – 9to5Toys

=> ↺ Google tests an even darker ‘dark mode’ for its Android app – The Verge

=> ↺ The Best Metroidvania Games on Android – Droid Gamers

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Tor: Supporting our community

• The goal to help internet users privately access an uncensored web has united lots of different people from different places. Fostering this community is very important to us. That is why we decided to write this post about some of our community partners, how we are supporting them, and how you can support them too.

• For example, the birth of Tor itself relied on community support. Our project was first sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). To return this support, we have helped our community in any way we can—we’re proud to have been the fiscal sponsor for Library Freedom Project and to have supported Open Observatory of Network Interference, once a team that was part of the Tor Project. Now both of these projects have moved on to become their own organizations, doing amazing work to build a cohort of librarian privacy advocates and to measure and report on internet censorship!

Leftovers

Education

=> ↺ COVID-19 Has Left Millions Of Students Behind. Now What?

• Kids learned plenty during the pandemic, Kuhfeld told me. The problem, she said, is that they aren’t learning as much or as quickly as they were each year before the pandemic. Nationally, third-graders in fall 2021 were, on average, testing significantly below where third-graders were testing in fall 2019 in reading and math. The NWEA assessments showed these declines extended across third-graders through eighth-graders, too.

Hardware

=> ↺ Hardware Hacking 101 Needs Matching Toolkit

• One doesn’t always have the luxury of sipping tea comfortably while hacking a piece of hardware at a fully-equipped workbench, where every tool is within reach. To address this, [Zokol] shares an early look at a hardware hacking toolkit-in-progress, whose purpose is to make hacking sessions as productive as possible while keeping size and weight within reasonable limits. There isn’t a part list yet, but there are some good tips on creating your own.

=> ↺ CAD Up Some Shoes, But Don’t Start From Scratch

• Nothing helps a project get off the ground better than a good set of resources, and that’s what led [DaveMakesStuff] to release his Digital Shoe Design Kit, which is a set of 3D models ready to customize into a basic running shoe.

=> ↺ 7 mechanical keyboards that offer custom-built features for half the price

• Mechanical keyboards are more than a product category. Over the last decade they’ve become an online phenomenon, with an enormous community of fans and tinkerers (including yours truly) joining in the fun. Not only has that made the market for keyboards explode with a wide array of options, it’s caused some interesting transference between the hobbyists and the manufacturers.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ TikTok Hysteria Returns: AGs Launch Mental Health Impact Inquiry

• While the repeated freak outs over TikTok tend to be bipartisan, they’re often motivated by different things. The Trumpist right generally doesn’t like TikTok because Chinese people made a product that’s better and more successful than U.S. tech platforms (the latter point being obvious if you spend thirty seconds comparing the Facebook/Instagram and TikTok video platforms). This is dressed up under all manner of other pretenses (see: Trump trying to offload the whole company to his friends at Oracle and Walmart under the pretense he was just suddenly and uncharacteristically, super concerned about consumer privacy). Then of course there’s another segment of TikTok hysteria common on the right and left, which, as we’ve seen throughout history when new tech is involved, requires tearing your hair out about a parade of perceived horribles being caused by something you don’t actually understand. The latest example of that segment of TikTok hyperventilation can be seen in a new multi-state AG investigation into weather TikTok is causing mental and physical health issues in teens:

=> ↺ What’s Holding Up the COVID Vaccines for Children Under 5?

• As the United States relaxes pandemic restrictions, advising some 70% of Americans they no longer need to wear a mask, many parents of young children are desperate to know when they can expect a vaccine to be authorized for kids under 5.

• But opaque communication from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and drugmakers, on top of whiplash over the shifting timeline and unexpected delays, has led to confusion and angst. Some parents are obsessively tracking every press release, investor report and social media announcement to glean information, and a few have even lied about their kids’ ages to get their children vaccinated. Many feel they are on their own.

=> ↺ What’s Holding Up COVID Vaccines for Kids Under 5?

=> ↺ Collective of US states investigate TikTok’s impact on children

• A consortium of US states announced on Wednesday an investigation into TikTok’s possible harms to young users of the platform, which has boomed in popularity especially among children.

• Officials across the United States have launched their own probes and lawsuits against Big Tech giants as the national government has failed to pass new regulations due in part to partisan gridlock.

• The consortium of eight states will look into the harms TikTok can cause to its young users and what TikTok knew about those possible harms, said a statement from California attorney general Rob Bonta.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Chinese firm’s disclosure of NSA malware ignored by most tech sites

• What makes this event even more of an outlier, is the fact that the details, released by Pangu Lab last week, come nine years after it claims to have discovered the malware.

• Chinese security firms rarely, if ever, do what American infosec outfits do as a matter of course: provide the details of some exploit or the other and attribute it to one country or another. Most of the time, the countries that are blamed are Russia, China, North Korea and Iran – which, rather coincidentally, happen to be the top four enemies of the US Government.

=> ↺ Justin Reilly: Rising Ransomware Threats on Schools Require Better Approach to Cybersecurity

• Cyberattacks against school districts went up by 18 percent in 2020, the height of the pandemic. The trend has continued since and isn’t expected to slow down in 2022. Among attacks against school districts, ransomware – an attack that locks users out of files on their own systems and then demands ransom money to return their rightful access – is by far the most common variety.

=> ↺ Splunk appoints Gary Steele as new CEO

• We now know that leader is Gary Steele, who was the founding CEO of SaaS (software-as-a-service) security vendor Proofpoint, a company he led for nearly 20 years. During that time, Steele navigated both an IPO in 2012 and a private equity buyout from Thoma Bravo last year. He will start on April 11, when he will also take a seat on Splunk’s board.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Cybersecurity Experts Urge EU Lawmakers to Fix Website Authentication Proposal That Puts Internet Users’ Security and Privacy at Risk

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Reflections from the Netherworld: Advice from JFK to Joe Biden

• I send greetings from the other side — and no, I don’t mean the other side of the aisle. I refer to the place where old politicians go to make amends for their sins.

• Apart from our shared Catholicism and affinity for sunglasses, I suspect you and I don’t have a lot in common. Actually, that may not quite be true. After all, your family and mine have both experienced more than our share of tragedy and you and I both did make it to the top rung of American politics.

=> ↺ Putin, Lenin, Imperialism and the (Real) History of Ukraine

• Ukraine is a place few people in this country can find on a map. Far fewer have any idea of when and how the Ukrainian state originated, or how it has related to its neighbors over time. So I might make up any random narrative about it, weaving in bits and pieces of truth here and there, and perhaps the majority of my listeners would nod agreeably at my presentation finding no flaws. There are a whole lot of ingredients to work with and to play with when it comes to Ukraine’s history.

• In 2014 having, having given little thought to Ukraine to that point, people in this county (self-defined Americans and others) were informed by the most authoritative sources they knew, the cable TV news anchors and commentators. They were treated to a history lesson that went something like this: The country of Ukraine has always been oppressed by Russia. It was colonized by Russia for centuries. Russia still, after the end of the Soviet Union, wants to control Ukraine! So it responded to a popular revolution in Kyiv, an expression of the Ukrainians’ longing to fulfill its “European aspirations,” by invading Ukraine!

=> ↺ We Only Want the Earth

• Over a hundred years after Connolly’s execution, capitalism still dominates. If anything, it’s more deep-rooted and more injurious particularly because of neoliberal policies which have resulted in unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequalities and environmental devastation. And even worse, neoliberalism brought with it the “end of history” and a pervasive new message that “there is no alternative” (TINA). So, despite its imperfections, capitalism is the best system there is for achieving prosperity and personal freedom. That message is so engrained that many on the Left find it hard to defeat. Not believing we can win, not believing there is an alternative is the biggest obstacle we face.

• What are the ramifications of this propaganda?

=> ↺ Protect Wilderness From Fighter Jet Trainings

• The proposal would authorize low-level fighter jet maneuvers and supersonic flights that cause sonic booms above rural and Tribal communities, some of the Southwest’s most fragile sky-island ecosystems, and beloved wilderness areas and national monuments.

• The Air Force also wants to permit dropping of flares at lower altitudes, increasing the risk of human-caused wildfires across landscapes already experiencing severe drought. Additionally, the proposal would allow release of aluminum-coated silica “chaff” over public lands, polluting the environment.

=> ↺ Now Is the Time for a Global Movement Demanding Nuclear De-escalation

=> ↺ War is ‘Til We Stop It

• A high school sophomore invited me to dinner with her family in a tree-lined neighborhood a short distance from my hotel by bus. Their house overlooked the city. She described the sparkling of the commercial center at night. In the days before the war, she’d held her sweet sixteen party in a hotel ballroom downtown. She still had the cream-colored dress.

• The young woman’s English was perfect. She adored Shakespeare. She had hoped to apply to study in Oxford. But that was before the war.

=> ↺ War and Peace in Ukraine

• War is a tragedy, a crime, and a defeat. the nation condemns the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin to abandon the path of diplomacy by brutally attacking and invading Ukraine, a blatant violation of international law.

=> ↺ Take It From JFK—Appeasement Over Confrontation

=> ↺ Russia has blocked Meduza’s website

• Many Internet users in Russia are currently unable to access Meduza’s website. Our newsroom was first informed of this by our readers on the evening of Thursday, March 3.

=> ↺ The war: day seven: Photos of intensifying Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities

• On the morning of February 24, Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation,” saying its purpose was the liberation of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics and the “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine. Russia then sent its troops into Ukraine. Fighting in the vicinity of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, and other cities has continued for several days. People are hiding in shelters, subway stations, and underground parking garages. Others are fleeing to neighboring countries — the United Nations says more than 1 million refugees have now left Ukraine. These photos were taken during the seventh day of the war.

=> ↺ You can’t silence us: Russia’s president will lose, too, when the nation’s free press is gone

• We’re publishing this text while there’s still time for us to mark the beginning of yet another historic development: Russia has officially introduced state censorship. What do we mean by “still time”? Within a few days, maybe even today, it is possible that there will be no independent media left in Russia. Very soon, it’s possible that anyone in Russia seeking information from the “enemy voices” of independent sources will need to make the same efforts as those who lived behind the Iron Curtain.

=> ↺ Russia’s War in Ukraine Could Spark Nuclear Catastrophe; Calls for Global Disarmament Grow

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that if a Third World War were to take place, it would be a nuclear war. His comments come just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert and after Russian nuclear submarines set sail for tests in waters near Norway. Meanwhile, voters in Belarus have approved a referendum opening the door for Russia to station nuclear weapons in Belarusian territory, and Russia has called on the U.S. to remove its nuclear weapons from European soil. “We need to acknowledge that nuclear weapons are clearly not a cause of stability in the world, as we’re often told,” says Daniel Högsta, campaign coordinator for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “They don’t deter conflicts; they in fact have the potential to exacerbate them.” Högsta also explains the dangers of imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine despite Russia’s continued threats of using nuclear weapons, which he says amount to a kind of “nuclear blackmail.”

=> ↺ Report from Kyiv: Solidarity, Perseverance & “Full Mobilization” Against Russian Invasion

• As the United Nations reports more than a million refugees have now fled the violence in Ukraine, the U.N. General Assembly voted 141 to 5 to denounce the Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russian troops have reportedly seized their first city: the strategically located southern port of Kherson. Heavy shelling continues to be reported in the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, and a 40-mile-long Russian convoy approaching Kyiv has been stalled due in part to Ukrainian resistance. We go to Kyiv to speak with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and former Ukrainian trade minister, who details the global financial costs of the war and describes how the Ukrainian government is mobilizing to fight the resistance. We also speak with Kyiv-based human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk, who calls on the international community to impose more sanctions on Russia.

=> ↺ ACTION ALERT: NBC Off by 18 Years on US’s Last Use of Cluster Bombs

• NBC Nightly News (2/28/22) falsely reported that the United States has not used cluster bombs since 1991—when it fact the US has employed the weapons as recently at 2009, and has even more recently sold them to allied countries that have dropped them.

=> ↺ The West’s SWIFT Kick is Aimed at Russia, But it Will Also Hit the US Dollar

• SWIFT is a messaging service that connects banks worldwide. It’s not a bank itself. It’s not even, strictly speaking, a payment network. It carries instructions for transfers, but the transfers take place via other networks. It’s just one moving part in the world’s complex finance and trade system.

• As with most such measures, giving Russian banks the boot from SWIFT  is certain to hurt the sanctioners along with the sanctioned. In this case, the potential victims with the most to lose are  the issuers and holders of US dollars.

=> ↺ Demands from EU member states: Greece to upgrade borders with helicopters, drones, police dogs

• Following a review by other Schengen states, the Greek government is improving surveillance and control of its external borders, funded by EU funds. This could encourage pushbacks in violation of international law.

=> ↺ US Must Not Use Ukrainians as a Foreign Policy “Tool,” Sanders Adviser Says

=> ↺ Sanders Adviser Matt Duss on Ending Ukraine Crisis & How U.S. Shock Therapy in Russia Enabled Putin

• While President Biden has ruled out sending troops into Ukraine, the U.S. is directly aiding Ukraine militarily and has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia amounting to what some have called “economic warfare.” We look at Biden’s response with Senator Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, who is also Ukrainian American. He says the U.S. should continue to exhaust all diplomatic avenues in order to stop violence in Ukraine. Duss also details the U.S. role in setting the stage for Putin’s oligarchical government and says the U.S. must not use “Ukranians as a tool for our foreign policy and our conflict with Russia.”

=> ↺ 1 Million People Have Fled Ukraine in the Past Week, UN Says

=> ↺ Russia’s Nuclear Warning is an Act of Desperation From Putin, Which Makes it Even More Dangerous

• The invasion may only have happened last Thursday, but Russia is already weaker in the eyes of the world because it has not achieved its objectives. Its army has failed to take the larger Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian resisting has blocked the Russian advance on almost all fronts. Pictures of the smouldering wreckage of Russian armoured vehicles fill television screens nightly.

• The Russian campaign plan apparently assumed a Blitzkrieg advance against negligible opposition, swiftly eliminating the Ukrainian political and military leadership. Mindless wishful thinking is the only reason why Putin could have imagined that an army of only 190,000 soldiers, many of them non-combatant cooks, drivers and the like, would be able to seize and occupy a country three times the size of Britain.

=> ↺ Can Iran and the U.S. Breathe Life Back Into Nuclear Deal?

• Meanwhile, faced with the current reality relating to the situation on the ground, which shows that Iran is unlikely to give up its missile capabilities or pull back from regional allies, Biden seems to have come around to the original deal.

• Iran is unlikely to remove the more advanced centrifuges it now possesses and uses after the Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the deal. Neither is Iran likely to get an assurance that Trump or a future U.S. president who follows his lead on foreign policy will not abandon the deal again after the 2024 presidential election in the United States. The rest of the world is thus forced to live in an era in which the United States, the strongest military and economic power, is no longer capable of committing to treaties, whether on global warming or the nuclear deal with Iran.

=> ↺ The Thermonuclear Melian Debate Over Ukraine

• Each of those time gaps allowed the countries enjoying them, before being swallowed up into military hostilities, to safely arm or rearm as they could in anticipation of the worst, which soon came to all of them. So it is easy to see some short-term tactical advantage to an appeasement policy prior to experiencing a military invasion.

• This was certainly Hitler’s and Stalin’s view when each chose to enter into their Molotov-Ribbentrop alliance to carve up Poland (seen by both Hitler and Stalin then as Putin sees Ukraine today), and to keep from warring against each other (in the inevitable Fascist-Communist 1940s superpower war), and in Stalin’s case to appease Hitler’s eastward expansion without the USSR having been able to gain any Western European allies against Hitler/fascism and Japanese militarism.

=> ↺ Hypocrisy Over Ukraine

• The West blessed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus

• My mind rushes to 1974 when NATO, primarily America and England, authorized Turkey, a NATO “ally,” to invade Cyprus, a Greek island that had the misfortune of having a Moslem Turkish minority and British military bases.

=> ↺ The Ukraine War Follows Decades of Warnings That NATO Expansion Would Provoke Russia

• The more widespread and familiar view in the West, particularly in the United States, is that Russia is and has always been an expansionist state, and its current president, Vladimir Putin, is the embodiment of that essential Russian ambition: to build a new Russian empire.

• “This was … always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary,” President Joe Biden said on Feb. 24, 2022.

=> ↺ The Attack on Ukraine and the United Nations Charter

• Even if one accepts Russia’s takeover of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia (neither region spoke Georgian and they were relatively autonomous), or the annexation of Crimea (it was historically part of Russia until 1954), or even if one accepts Russia’s defending Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine where mostly Russian speakers live, the current invasion is on another level.

• The Russian assault is a frontal attack on the international state system and world order. Since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, state sovereignty has meant that countries should not forcefully interfere in the internal affairs of another country. While numerous violations can be shown historically, the post-World War II system, articulated in the United Nations Charter, clearly outlines the do’s and don’ts of state behavior.

=> ↺ Jan. 6 Committee Says Trump Engaged in “Criminal Conspiracy” to Undo Election

=> ↺ House Committee Issues Subpoena to Top Trump Fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle

• The U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the fiancee of his son, Donald Trump Jr.

=> ↺ “The Trojan Horse Affair” reignites a row over radicalisation in schools

• In truth, worries about Islam in Birmingham schools would have come to a head with or without the Trojan Horse document, and whatever its provenance. For the government, the rise to prominence of conservative Muslim school leaders was an embarrassing consequence of its flagship “academies” programme, which granted state schools greater independence. Local politicians and police, for their part, were coming under pressure for looking the other way. Now, by raking over the coals, the “Serial” podcast has reignited a row over the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme, Prevent, which requires schools, universities, prisons and so on to be on the lookout for violent extremism. Referrals lead to a conversation with police officers or specialist counsellors and the offer of a deradicalisation course.

=> ↺ Telecoms blackout hits northeast Ukraine; large power outages also reported

• A telecoms blackout has reportedly hit Sumy Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, marking one of the most serious communications disruptions of the conflict so far.

• The blackout was reported by the internet shutdown tracker NetBlocks on March 3rd at 8:23PM local time (1:23PM ET).

Environment

=> ↺ Michigan may restrict withdrawals for bottled water like Nestle

• “Right now, the Great Lakes Compact protects the Great Lakes from water withdrawal so that a state like Arizona couldn’t come and hook a pipe up to Lake Michigan and start pumping. But as long as the water is bottled and in small containers, there is no prohibition on the amount of water that can be taken out of the Great Lakes,” Rabhi said.

• Once they’re drafted, the package of bills would do a couple of things: It would target companies that bottle water and it would expand the Public Trust Doctrine. That doctrine says the state holds resources in trust for the people. It must protect those resources.

• The doctrine already covers surface water such as streams and lakes. It does not protect groundwater.

=> ↺ On land and sea, climate change causing ‘irreversible’ losses: UN

• Climate change has already caused “irreversible losses” for Nature, UN experts have said, warning that if emissions are not cut quickly, warming could trigger chain reactions with potentially catastrophic effects for all species, including humans.

• All forms of life on Earth are linked together by a vast web of causes and consequences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a new report on the impacts of global warming published this week.

• Those effects are severe and wide ranging across the world’s natural habitats.

=> ↺ Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts for Poorer Countries – Validated Independent News

• “As a country’s emissions get higher, they are less tied to essentials for human well-being. Measures of human well-being increase very rapidly with relatively small increases in emissions, but then level off,” writes Klinksy. “That means high-emitting countries could reduce their emissions significantly without reducing the well-being of their populations.”

Energy

=> ↺ FOSS Energy Efficiency Project (FEEP)

• FEEP is developing tools to improve energy efficiency in free and open source software development. Design and implementation of software has a significant impact on the energy consumption of the systems it is part of. With the right tools, it is possible to quantify and drive down energy consumption. This increased efficiency contributes to a more sustainable use of energy as one of the shared resources of our planet.

=> ↺ Republicans at CPAC Say ‘Drill Dummy Drill’ in Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

• As the Russian invasion of Ukraine began last week, American conservatives descending on Florida for 2022’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) delivered a mixed message about the conflict. Many speakers seemed undecided on whether to quietly support Russian President Vladimir Putin or fall back on Cold War conservative ideologies. Others, like Charlie Kirk, CPAC favorite and founder of youth conservative organization Turning Point USA, simply urged attendees to forget about “a dispute 5,000 miles away in cities we can’t pronounce,” and focus instead on “how the cartels are deliberately trying to infiltrate our country.”

• But one thing many speakers could agree on was that the war showed the need for America to push for expanded coal mining and oil and gas drilling. It was a line that the American Petroleum Institute had been pushing since the first day of the invasion, when it said in a blog post that “right now, the most important move President Biden can make is to signal that America is positioned to provide stability and supply amid any disruption of international energy markets — and can do so without increasing costs at home.”

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ A Chance to Stop the Ambler Road in Alaska’s Brooks Range

• The Trump administration pushed through a rapid and flawed Environmental review of the proposed road, and the Record of Decision issued in 2020 approved the road’s construction. Fortunately, the Biden Administration has remanded the decision to permit the Ambler Road back to the Bureau of Land Management for additional environmental review giving the public another chance to halt this destructive project. I have previously written about the Ambler Road and its threats to the region.

• The problem for anyone opposing the Ambler Road is that the Ambler Mining District is a “world-class” deposit of copper, containing ten times higher grade ore than any other known deposits in the world.

=> ↺ Australia’s Doomed Koalas

• Divergent attitudes to such animal species, notably indigenous ones, has been a point of some despair for conservationists.  In 1995, Ron Green, the zoological director of Canberra’s Australian National Wildlife Sanctuary, put his finger on the matter by suggesting that Australians were “unique” in their “blasé” disposition.  “They’ll look at the white rhinoceros going into extinction on the TV, and become outraged but [have] an illusion that everything is fine in Australia; the ‘She’ll be right, mate’ syndrome, but we’ve wiped out the most mammals of any country in the world.”

• Despite an emerging ecological awareness in Australia, the syndrome still stalks the halls of power. Last month, the Morrison government found itself in the unenviable position of having to declare the koala an endangered species in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.  In 2012, the species had been listed as “vulnerable” in the same jurisdictions.  As conservation scientist Stuart Blanch from WWF-Australia glumly observed, “Koalas have gone from no-listing to vulnerable to endangered within a decade.  This is a shockingly fast decline.”

Finance

=> ↺ Cultural Concessions in a Class War

• That saying came back to mind a decade later over dinner with my partner, one of her colleagues, and the colleague’s husband, who worked in the world of finance. As usual, we found ourselves talking about the politics of higher education in North Carolina. The three academics at the table framed those politics as a struggle between right-wing reactionaries in the state legislature and left-liberal faculty in the universities. After listening patiently to our troglodyte-bashing, the colleague’s husband said, as I recall, “I don’t think the struggles are about ideology; they’re about who controls the flow of money through individual campuses and through the university system, and who’s going to benefit from that control.” Here was the non-academic, the person on intimate terms with capitalism, offering the hardnosed materialist analysis! At the time, I balked at discounting the importance of ideology; but I now think he was right. The ideological froth on the surface of the politics of higher education is largely a distraction.

• It’s not that there aren’t genuine ideological differences between left-liberal faculty and right-wing legislators. No doubt many of those legislators would firmly reject the radically egalitarian, anti-imperialist, small-d democratic politics of faculty members on the left. But much of the recent denouncing of critical race theory, gender studies, sexuality studies, and other humanities fields by right-wing state legislators is more about riling the base than about fighting substantive intellectual battles. This is evident when the denouncers are asked to describe exactly what they disagree with, and it turns out they have no clear understanding what critical race theory, or any other academic target du jour, consists of. Which is what one would expect if all the rhetorical turbulence served mainly to keep other issues off the table.

=> ↺ Digital Redlining or Digital Divides

• Meinrath added, “Right now we have all these different programs – and it’s not to say that each of these individual programs might not being good things unto itself – but there is no comprehensive strategy.  Which means that in an individual community or locality, there might be five different projects, each supporting a different component or facet or constituency or neighborhood.”  He warned, “Because there’s no overarching coordination, in that same community you might have areas that are completely unserved after those programs are finished.”

• “Between 2009 and 2017, the federal government spent $47 billion on broadband,” Christopher Ali, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, pointed out.  “The major reason, I think, why this spending has not solved the digital divide is that we’ve had a policy system that has favored the larger incumbent providers,” he added. “We’ve trusted the largest telecommunications companies to connect the country and they’ve failed miserably. We’ve given them billions of dollars in federal subsidies.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Biden’s SOTU Speech Channeled Reagan While Nearly Ignoring Climate

=> ↺ New York REI Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form a Union

=> ↺ Democratic Insiders Keep Bashing Progressives, but Progressives Keep Winning Key Elections

• There’s been a concerted effort over the past several months by D.C. insiders to suggest that progressives are the problem for a Democratic Party that is struggling to gain traction going into the 2022 midterm elections. They would have you believe that “Democrats’ Drive to the Left Threatens Their Grip on Power,” that Democrats are stuck in a “prison of their own ideological extremes,” and that “Democrats need a reckoning after misjudging the nation’s mood.” Or, as veteran Democrat consultant James Carville, who has been crusading against the left, recently put it, “only 11 percent of the Democratic Party is progressive. It’s the smallest part of the party. But the problem is they make 70 percent of the noise.”

=> ↺ Investigation Shows Police Are Still Secretly Surveilling Minnesota Activists

=> ↺ Texas College Protesters Shut Down Event for Anti-Trans Candidate Jeff Younger

=> ↺ Orbán on Putin, the reason for the war, Paks II, and the differences between East and West

=> ↺ Government condemns Russia, opposition turns to OSCE over false media coverage, Hungarians welcome refugees, Hungary supports Ukraine’s EU accession

• Prime Minister Viktor Orbán condemned Russia’s war waged against Ukraine, in a video posted on his Facebook page last Thursday.

• “We condemn Russia’s military action with our European Union and NATO allies,” Orbán said in a video posted on his Instagram and Facebook pages following a meeting of the National Security cabinet.

=> ↺ AMD, Intel halt chip sales to Russia

• Both AMD and Intel on Thursday said that the two companies had halted sales of their products to Russia and Belarus, an explicit commitment from the chip industry in taking action against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• On Thursday morning, AMD said it was halting all chip shipments. By Thursday afternoon, Intel had joined AMD with a similar statement.

=> ↺ Reddit sides with Ukraine, bans all links to Russia’s state-sponsored RT and Sputnik

• Reddit is now categorically banning its users, globally, from posting links to Russian state-sponsored media outlets, including RT and Sputnik — and it may not have even stopped there. A Reddit admin has seemingly confirmed that Reddit is blocking links to all websites that end in .ru.

=> ↺ Catalyst Cloud awarded All-of Government contract – a big win for data sovereignty

• Catalyst Cloud are pleased to announce today that they have been awarded an All-of-Government Cloud Framework Agreement with Te Tari Taiwhenua Department of Internal Affairs. The Agreement allows New Zealand government agencies to use cloud services from Catalyst Cloud much more easily.

• As New Zealand’s only locally owned and operated cloud provider, Catalyst Cloud have been providing cloud infrastructure and platform services onshore since 2014, with three local data centre regions in Aotearoa.

=> ↺ The current (digital) Dark Age

• Over the past few years, it’s gradually occurred to me that we’re in the midst of a new Dark Age. The previous one was in the Middle Ages, when commoners lived in ignorance and fear, and the Roman Catholic Church terrorised and exploited the credulity and superstition of masses for its to consolidate its power, and became the richest entity in history (up to that time). The power of the Church was based in large part on the fact that they had common motivations – the literacy of the clergy gave them the means to pass on knowledge, to communicate effectively, and organise themselves. RCC leaders ruled as autocrats, and their power was supported by the priesthood, who stood above the commoners with their elite code of Latin. Literate monks – the kindly, studious, high-aptitude socially awkward nerds of their day – beavered away on tasks assigned them by their anointed masters in rarefied monasteries, writing histories, translating holy texts, awaiting suitable inspiration to interpret the word of God, and tinkering with things (alchemy, beer, foosball tables).

• Today, we have much the same situation, where digital literacy is concerned. Today, however, the role of the RCC is played by the combined force of the “Frightful Five”, which wield far more power collectively than any individual nation, and their wealth is unprecedented. Their C-Suites and marketing teams form the autocratic clergy, and developers are the literate but subordinate monks. Most computer users are almost completely illiterate serfs with regard to the devices on which they depend both for social interaction and their livelihoods. They tend to veer towards superstition and learned helplessness rather than taking the initiative to gain their literacy.

=> ↺ Digital Services Act (DSA)

• The DSA, also known as the Digital Services Act, is considered to be the next major project for shaping the digital revolution by the EU after the General Data Protection Regulation. The EU Commission’s goal is to establish new rules for online platforms, especially for very large ones, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb, or Booking.com with the DSA.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Anti-Vax Doctor Hires Anti-Vax Lawyer To Threaten A Dallas Publication With A ‘Deafamation’ Lawsuit

• Spotify — the world’s most popular music streaming service — has hitched its wagon to Joe Rogan, a former comedian and reality TV host whose particular take on world events involves him inviting highly controversial guests onto his podcast and then just muttering “that’s wild” when they invoke insane conspiracy theories.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Meta Messes Up Again: Admits That It Suspended RT & Sputnik Due To Gov’t Pressure

• There may be many good reasons to ban Russian state-sponsored media propaganda from a site or a pay TV service. But there is definitely one very bad reason to: because random governments ask you to. And, yet, that’s exactly what Meta/Facebook has done. Former UK politician Nick Clegg, who was recently promoted into the top circle of Meta execs and given full control over policy decisions, posted on Twitter (yes, the Facebook exec was posting on Twitter) that the company had decided to restrict access to Russian state-sponsored propaganda outfits RT and Sputnik because the company had “received requests from a number of Governments and the EU.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Shirley Chisholm

=> ↺ Francesco Pacifico Confronts Fiction’s Oldest Questions

• A third of the way through Francesco Pacifico’s novel The Women I Love, the narrator, a semi-employed editor and writer named Marcello, does something to his girlfriend that men have been doing to women for centuries: He constrains her freedom. Then, understanding the weight of what he’s just done, he attempts to write the scene from her perspective: “I’ll just avoid…the neurotic, obsessive, childish point of view of the typical male narrator—and I’ll tell the story instead through Barbara’s eyes.”

=> ↺ These Native Hawaiians Waited Years for Homes on Their Ancestral Land. Then the Problems Began.

• When Steven Moniz Jr. and his wife, Sheri, got the keys to their new home in 2013, their kids were so happy that they made “snow angels” on the carpet. It was the first time the couple had ever owned property, and they too were overjoyed.

• For years, they had rented an apartment in a low-income housing project on Oahu, unable to afford a house amid the island’s booming real estate market. But then, because Steven is Native Hawaiian, they were able to purchase a new residence at roughly half the going rate through a unique homesteading program created a century ago to return Hawaii’s Indigenous people to their ancestral lands.

=> ↺ Unfortunate, But Not Surprising: Court Blocks Maryland’s Library eBook Law

• Back in December, we wrote about how the major book publishers had teamed up to sue the state of Maryland over a fairly tame law concerning ebooks and libraries. As we’ve been detailing, over the last few years, the big book publishers have been working overtime to abuse copyright law to destroy libraries. Whereas, historically, a library could just buy a book like anyone else, and then lend it out, with ebooks, the publishers demand ridiculous prices for libraries and then put nonsensical restrictions on how libraries can lend out those ebooks. This is because publishers hate libraries — and, while they want to insist to you that copying a digital file is “theft,” they will also deny that those same digital files get the kind of first sale rights of physical books.

=> ↺ Minneapolis Cops Who Watched Officer Derek Chauvin Kill George Floyd Convicted On Federal Charges

• It’s not often you see a cop face criminal charges for injuring or killing someone they’re attempting to arrest. It’s even rarer still to see a cop convicted. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is a unicorn. He knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, choking the life out of the unarmed black man, who was suspected of nothing else than passing a bogus $20 bill at a local store. He did this for three minutes after another police officer told Chauvin he couldn’t detect a pulse.

=> ↺ Solutions to Biased Artificial Intelligence May Include Establishing a New Social Network – Validated Independent News

• “The sheer scale of moderation on Facebook for example means that they have to adopt the most reductive, non-nuanced rules they can in order to communicate them to a distributed global workforce,” said Keller.

=> ↺ Even Pro-Lifers Help Loved Ones Who Need an Abortion

• Is abortion murder? its opponents claim it is—that’s why they call themselves “pro-life” and abortion providers “babykillers.” That’s why people have bombed and burned down abortion clinics and murdered doctors and staffers—it’s all to “save babies.” But do abortion opponents really believe that an embryo is the equivalent of a baby, a child, a grown-up?

=> ↺ Biden’s State of the Union Comments on Defunding Police Were Wrong

• Those lines drew cheers in the House chamber, and they’re not surprising from a politician who wrote the disastrous 1994 crime bill and always positioned himself as an ally of law enforcement. But how did they read to the people who helped get him into office, no small number of whom believe in reducing and reallocating the tremendous amount of resources allocated to law enforcement. This point was raised by Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, who, according to Politico, is someone House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said was outside of Democrats’ party line on police.

=> ↺ New York Times tech workers vote to unionize

• Tech workers at The New York Times voted to unionize, becoming the largest active tech union in the country.

• A National Labor Relations Board vote Thursday resulted in a majority of the more than 500 software engineers and product designers who cast ballots deciding to unionize.

• The tech workers will be represented by the NewsGuild-CWA, the union that already includes The Times’s newsroom.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Namecheap Says It’s No Longer Doing Business With Users Registered In Russia

• Domain registrar Namecheap announced this week that the company would no longer be doing business with customers registered in Russia. In an email notification sent to customers, that I’ve confirmed as genuine with the company, it recommends that any Russia-based customers of its domain hosting, email, and other services find a new registrar by March 6:

=> ↺ Negotiations Over UN Cybercrime Treaty Under Way in New York, With EFF and Partners Urging Focus on Human Rights

• The Ukraine crisis looms large over the talks, with many Member States voicing solidarity with Ukraine and questioning whether Russia (who was the initial driving force behind the adoption of this treaty) could debate in good faith and defend claims of sovereignty in formulating cybercrime provisions while invading Ukraine and unleashing cyberattacks. “These cyberattacks are not conducive to a constructive engagement with Russia on this treaty,” the EU representative pointed out, capturing a sentiment shared by many negotiating states. Despite high levels of distrust, Member States are proceeding with the negotiations as planned. EFF addressed the Ad-Hoc Committee March 1, via videoconferencing, saying cybercrime poses a threat to human rights, and expressing concerns that investigative powers adopted in the treaty will seek to accommodate the worst police surveillance practices across participating states.  “Any proposed obligations to enable investigation and prosecution should adhere to human rights law…There is a real risk that, in an attempt to entice all States to sign a proposed UN cybercrime convention, bad human rights practices will be accommodated, resulting in a race to the bottom,” EFF Policy Director for Global Privacy, Katitza Rodriguez told the committee.EFF also reminded the committee that cybercrime provisions have been used against whistleblowers, security researchers, human rights defenders, political dissidents and members of LGBTQ+ communities in ways that are inconsistent with human rights. Great care must be taken when enshrining these provisions in an international instrument.The upcoming negotiations are sure to be contentious, with wide areas of disagreement about the very broad scope of the Treaty already apparent  (as we discussed earlier). There is some agreement that the treaty should criminalize certain acts defined as  “core cybercrime.” EFF understands this to include crimes that inherently target information and communications technologies (ICTs)—a list of potential crimes can be found in Articles 2-6 of the Budapest Convention and include: illegal access to computing systems, illegal interception of communications, data interference, system interference, and misuse of devices. While even this core group of offenses has led to human rights problems in the past, some states would go further. New Zealand, Australia, UK and the US want to recognize new crimes, those where ICTs increase the scope, speed, and scale of the offense, at least to the extent information technologies are a factor. The US and Australia also point out that an online crime committed anonymously may play a role in framing what derivative crimes legitimately fall within the scope of the treaty.

• EFF addressed the Ad-Hoc Committee again on March 2, recommending that the objectives of this treaty should be dual: addressing specific challenges posed by cybercrime, on the one hand, and ensuring robust protections for human rights in cybercrime investigations, on the other. The scope of the treaty should be narrow, and content-based crimes such as hate speech, copyright infringement, and publishing misinformation must be categorically excluded. It is also essential that the scope of any convention be restricted to criminal matters, excluding national security, cybersecurity, cyberwarfare, or rules for internet governance.In our statement, we caution against casting too wide a net when deciding what crimes to include within this instrument. “Just because technology is used in the commission of a crime does not make that act a cybercrime, nor should the simple use of technology in the commission of an offense be an aggravating factor.  Content offenses such as misinformation, incitement to terror, and copyright infringement should be categorically excluded from the negotiations.”Covered offenses should be carefully articulated to avoid their misuse in ways that infringe fundamental human rights. Technologically-facilitated conduct is complex, and broadly scoped cyber crimes have been used to stifle legitimate and important activity. If the treaty negotiations are able to make progress despite these disagreements (which will be a challenge), surveillance and privacy questions will be important to watch, too. The treaty might include provisions that expand law enforcement powers and increase data sharing between governments. Broadly scoped investigative powers should not transform this instrument into a general-purpose vehicle for digital evidence gathering. Any cross-border investigative powers, in particular, should be carefully and narrowly crafted and remain closely linked to investigations of a specific, precisely worded criminal conduct. In other global treaty processes, attempts to recognize the obligation of countries to ensure surveillance powers are necessary and proportionate (a baseline requirement for any limitation on a human right) have met resistance. But basing cross-border digital evidence gathering on robust protection is imperative. As the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) recently noted in an analysis:”Agreeing on a common standard across States will almost certainly ultimately lead to a lower standard than one that would be achieved by identifying a high universal standard and asking States to “level up”. The concern is that, in order to address law enforcement’s jurisdictional problems, the substantive law will become weakened, giving law enforcement too-quick access with too-little due process. The trend towards universalization, in other words, could lead to a lowest common denominator in terms of due process.”Indeed, there is a real risk of a race to the bottom of privacy protections. Bearing in mind the global nature of the treaty, it will be crucial that human rights stay front and center during negotiations and that a race to the bottom in terms of human rights protections is avoided.  

• We welcome the fact that every non-governmental organization that requested to participate in this treaty process is able to register with the Ad-Hoc Committee, including  EFF, Derecho Digitales, Human Rights Watch, Access Now, Privacy International, and other civil society colleagues. This contrasts with many other negotiation processes, including those for the updated Protocol to the Budapest Convention, where civil society was excluded from listening or providing input during negotiations. For the UN treaty, multi-stakeholder participation should include attending committee sessions, making written submissions, and even speaking at the meetings. However, it remains to be seen if there will be opportunities for actual and meaningful participation of civil society organizations.  EFF supported Human Rights Watch’s oral intervention, which states, “building trust requires transparency and the involvement of civil society, including groups with digital security expertise and who work with vulnerable communities and individuals.”  We and our civil society colleagues have an important role in maintaining a focus on the human rights implications of the treaty and keeping rights at the center of the discussion. The Ad-Hoc committee meetings are live-streamed through March 11 on the UN Web TV website.

=> ↺ Ukraine’s Plea to Unplug Russia From the Internet Is Denied

• Following Ukraine’s request to essentially disconnect Russian websites from the internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has responded explaining why they’re both unable and unwilling to take such unprecedented action.

• In a letter obtained by Rolling Stone from ICANN CEO Göran Marby to Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, Marby acknowledged “the terrible toll being exacted against your country” by Russia, but explained why ICANN has denied the request.

=> ↺ Wartime Is a Bad Time To Mess With the Internet

• There is already heavy pressure on social media platforms. Russia is demanding that various companies from Facebook to Google and Netflix carry its state-sponsored content. The European Union, in an unprecedented move, has decided to prohibit the broadcasting and distribution of content by these outlets throughout the European Union, and Ukraine is asking the European Commission to do far more.

• But now the government of Ukraine has called on ICANN to disconnect Russia from the internet by revoking its Top Level domain names, “.ru”, “.рф” and “.su” from the root zone, in an attempt to make access to Russian websites and email difficult for people outside as well as inside of Russia. Ukraine also reached out to RIPE, one of the five Regional Registries for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, asking the organization to revoke IP address delegation to Russia. 

• As a practical matter, some of these calls are essentially impossible; ICANN can’t just press a button and boot a country offline; RIPE can’t just revoke IP addresses. But those are not the only problems: remaking fundamental internet infrastructure protocols is likely to lead to a host of dangerous and long-lasting consequences.

=> ↺ How T-Mobile took over Sprint, destroyed 30,000 American jobs, and raised phone bills with the help of Donald Trump.

• Google Fi can lease time on T-Mobile’s network for Google Fi and still charge less for it because of a few reasons, including no “free” phone subsidies. [...] T-Mobile is running leaner than ever, but they raise prices anyway. They absorbed Sprint, teetering on bankruptcy, for barely more than the outstanding cost of Sprint’s debt, ruined a competitor, got all of their customers, and then shut down Sprint’s towers and fired the “redundant” people causing 30,000 job losses in America. They’ve been doing it piecemeal to avoid any big headlines, so I’d have to link to a bunch of stories if I cited it. They do layoffs like Microsoft and IBM. And according to this site, 17% of T-Mobile’s employees say they took a pay cut in exchange for escaping that particular round of layoffs. Meanwhile, the Trump administration looked the other way on antitrust in the Sprint deal even though American consumers are obviously harmed when we go from four phone companies to three, in exchange for Deutche Telekom (T-Mobile) booking at least $195,000 of empty rooms at his hotel. (Although I’ve read other claims of as much as $250,000.) Turning Sprint around under Chapter 11 would have been better for American consumers, but Trump is an oligarch who was profiting off his office, like Vladimir Putin. It’s also coming to light that Trump helped Russians launder money and hide real estate assets in shell companies. Ruh roh.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ FBI Gains Access to Sci-Hub Founder’s Google Account Data

• Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan says that following a legal process, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has gained access to data in her Google account. Google itself informed her of the data release this week noting that due to a court order, the company wasn’t allowed to inform her sooner.

=> ↺ Premier League Wants Cloudflare to Expose “HesGoal” Operators

• The Premier League has gone to court in the US, requesting CDN provider Cloudflare to help identify the owners of HesGoal.com. The site, which is by far the most popular pirate live streaming portal in the UK, broadcasts a wide range of sports including the top football matches.

=> ↺ Episode 10: Open Culture VOICES – Jill Cousins

• Welcome to episode ten of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, we’re joined by Jill Cousins, CEO & Director of The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland. The Hunt Museum exhibits one of Ireland’s greatest private collections of Art and Antiquities, dating from the Neolithic Period to the 20th century. Jill has been pivotal in their work on digitization and opening up the collection to new audiences. Prior to joining The Hunt Museum, she was the Executive Director of Europeana Foundation.

=> ↺ Episode 9: Open Culture VOICES – Stéphane Chantalat

• Welcome to episode nine of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. On this episode, Stéphane Chantalat, Head of the Computerization and Digitization of Collections Department at Paris Musées, shares his insights and experience with Open GLAM.

=> ↺ The Campaign to Shut Down Crucial Documentary Tool youtube-dl Continues – And So Does the Fight to Save It

• The saga started two years ago, when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to demand that GitHub take down the repository for youtube-dl, claiming that the software breaks digital locks on videos and could allow people to save copies of songs from the major music labels that RIAA represents. Concerned about losing its crucial safe harbor from copyright liability, GitHub initially complied, sparking a widespread outcry. The tool has been around since 2006, and is used by journalists and activists to save eyewitness videos, by YouTubers to save backup copies of their own uploaded videos, and by people with slow or unreliable network connections to download videos in high resolution and watch them without buffering interruptions. As we explained then, youtube-dl doesn’t infringe or encourage the infringement of any copyrighted works, nor does it “circumvent” any technical protection measures on YouTube videos. But the developers made some small adjustments to remove any possible doubt, and GitHub promptly restored the repository.

• Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music seem to be hoping German law will give them leverage that they can’t get in the United States. They are suing a small hosting provider, called Uberspace, on essentially the same theories that failed to impress GitHub (and EFF) two years ago. In fact, their case seems to be even weaker: Uberspace doesn’t even host youtube-dl – it simply hosts the youtube-dl homepage, which links to GitHub. But lawsuits like this can be expensive to fight, which means small companies may simply fold under pressure.

• But with help from GFF, Uberspace is standing up to the music labels. In a brief filed today, Uberspace explains that youtube-dl is simply a tool that doesn’t circumvent any digital locks, and therefore Uberspace can’t be compelled to take down the homepage.

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