● 08.03.13

● Links 3/8/2013: Calligra Suite 2.7, New Benghazi Leaks

Posted in News Roundup at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

• The place where Linus gets his paycheck says the Penguin was driving

Audiocasts/Shows

Applications

• Not so very long ago, shipping goods over long distances was a very different matter than it is today. Numerous types of products were often jumbled together in a single vessel, sometimes with untoward consequences. Stack the bricks next to the bananas, for example, and you may have a mess on your hands when the shipment arrives.

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• With Wine 1.6 having been released two weeks ago with 10,000+ changes, we’re now out of the code freeze and Wine 1.8 development has begun. Wine 1.7.0 was released today as the first version in this new development series.

Games

• While Fez 2 has recently been cancelled by developer Phil Fish, Polytron’s producer Marie-Christine Bourdua has confirmed to Joystiq that the studio is still working with Sony on an upcoming project. Bourdua also confirmed that indie-hit Fez will be getting ported to Mac and Linux.

• Portal, an innovative single-player game developed and published by Valve, has been launched officially on Linux and a new Beta version is now available.

• Don’t Starve, a new action adventure developed by Klei Entertainment, has just received a major patch on all platforms.

• To be released soon is the Alien Arena 7.66 game update, but more interesting than this small update that just provides minor optimizations and an overhauled menu system, is the introduction of a new Alien Arena game. Alien Arena: Tactical is the new CRX-powered open-source game.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• There are many free and open source alternatives of Microsoft Office including LibreOffice and Calligra Suite. The Calligra team has announced the release of version 2.7 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra active and the Calligra Office Engine.

• A new media center for KDE 5 / Plasma 2 has been in the works for a while and today Sinny Kumari posted some tangible details. With the release of a new beta, users can try it out too. Of course, it has that “smartphone” look, but it still works as a desktop application. Plasma Media Center 1.1 Beta introduces several cool new features besides a ton of bug fixes.

• We’ve been asked many times how to contribute to Kubuntu financially so we are now open for donations. Your donations will help finance project expenses such as hardware, travel and cloud computing.

• I’m living in Sweden.I’m currently working as a IT-Technician in a company called IT-Hantverkarna. Painting in my free time.

• Maria Far today announced the release of Krita 2.7 with “a lot of cool new features, bug fixes and improvements. Soon to come to a Linux distribution near you.” The transform tool was rewritten and said to be “hugely improved.” A new line smoothing ink function was highlighted, as well as “greyscale masks and selections.”

• Hey everyone! As we, the Artikulate team, are targeting to release Artikulate this fall, we would like to invite more and more contributors to come help us with the project (which is aimed at helping users with their language learning/pronunciation skills).

• The program of the Qt Contributor Summit was mostly determined by who was attending and what the important topics at the time were. KDAB attended the summit with strength, and participated in many relevant discussions.

• Project Neon is a fantastic resource for KDE developers giving daily builds for KDE software. It’s maintained by the lovely Kubuntu community on the lovely Launchpad infrastructure. KDE developers can install the various bits they need to develop their part of KDE without having to worry about compiling everything themselves. It installs everything into /opt so it doesn’t touch your normal software installation.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GUADEC 2013, GNOME’s annual European Conference, kicked off today in a warm and sunny Brno (Czech Republic). This is the main GNOME event of the year, and there are hundreds of contributors here for 8 days of talks and working events.

• Ali Linx (almost Linux ;)) from Lubuntu is the new Head of QA in Ubuntu GNOME (UG) and he is asking for your help to test 13.10 release. Furthermore the cool guys from UG community have some new wikis!

Distributions

• Foss Force has the results of a poll of their readers that asked about their first Linux distro. Wow. Talk about taking me back a long, long time! I haven’t thought about how I got started with Linux for ages.

• Parted Magic, an operating system that employs core programs of GParted and Parted to handle partitioning tasks with ease, while featuring other useful software, is now at version 2013.08.01.

• Parted Magic 2013.08.01 integrates a large number of updates, but the developers also chose to fix some old problems and add some new features.

• Back on June 23, when we asked you to name the first Linux distro you ever used, we pretty much knew that the choice “Other” would take the day.

• That’s because we wanted to be completely neutral, so the ten choices we offered besides “Other” were just the top ten distros from the Distrowatch “Page Hit Ranking,” which meant that those who started their Linux life with something other than Debian or SUSE in the pre-Ubuntu era were not represented.

• Zorin has a history of creating pretty refined Ubuntu spins specifically targeted to newcomers. Their recent release Zorin OS 7 is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and it has 6 months of support. I earlier reviewed the Zorin OS 7 Core (with GNOME desktop) and found it to be very good in terms of functionality, stability and aesthetics. Zorin, as a tradition, first releases the core or GNOME distro and follows it up with “Lite” and “Educational Lite”, two lightweight Zorin OS variants with LXDE desktop. Both are actually Lubuntu 13.04 spins. I, myself, am a big fan of LXDE desktop as it is possibly the most efficient of all fully featured DEs. However, LXDE requires the users to have a little bit of expertise in Linux; simple things such as autologin, adding programs to start up, setting up compositing manager, etc. are easier in other desktop environments (DEs) like XFCE, KDE & GNOME. However, of late, I saw LXDE control center in PCLinuxOS and ROSA which actually makes these things easier for the users.

New Releases

Gentoo Family

• I’ve been seriously slacking on the Sabayon stuff, but been hanging with the community on the Official Sabayon Facebook page and watched a thread on a background image erupt into a mountain. It really is amazing at how a small change to a GUI send people running for their pitchforks and torches. I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself and probably will be in the future too. The GUI is very important to us and it’s drastic unchangeable changes really ticks a guy off. Gnome and KDE both felt the feedback when they revamped their GUIs. I abandoned Gnome cause of the gnome shell. Some love the gnome-shell and brag it up and down. Gnome maybe pays them to do it….

Red Hat Family

• After a couple of really hot days I’m back with a short overview of what kept us[1] busy while working on KDE in Red Hat this month.

Fedora

• The Fedora 17 operating system, otherwise known under the name of Beefy Miracle, is now officially dead.

• It’s not uncommon for the developers to stop supporting various operating systems and now the time has come for Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle), an OS launched a little over a year ago, on May 29, 2012.

Debian Family

• Congratulations to OSI Director Martin Michlmayr, who was one of the recipients of an O’Reilly Open Source Award at OSCON in Portland, OR last week.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu Forums are back to normal following a serious hack attack that exposed the usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords of 1.8 million open source users.

• Parent firm Canonical restored the forums on Tuesday as well as publishing a detailed summary of what went wrong and the broad steps it has taken to beef up security.

• Verizon and T-Mobile have announced that they’ll be supporting the Ubuntu phone in the United States.

• Canonical has been busy lately getting more and more carriers to join its Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group. They had succeeded in getting some of the key players from major markets around the globe leaving one of the biggest markets the US. The company has now cracked the US market as well. Both Verizon and T-Mobile have joined the CAG.

• Ambitious scheme to build dual-boot smartphone which can double up as a desktop computer running Ubuntu has fallen deep into the ‘dead zone’ – and won’t get bailout

• A very early version of the Unity 8 user-interface for phones and mobile devices is now available for testing on Ubuntu 13.10 without needing to use any special package repositories or other complicated steps.

Devices/Embedded

• The Italian Institute of Technology gave its first public demonstration of a Linux-based quadruped robot for navigating rough terrain. Meanwhile, a new version of the Hydraulic Quadruped (Hyq) robot is under development that can “feel” and step over obstacles using a step reflex algorithm, letting the robot navigate more easily in low-visibility environments.

• Linux-based robots come in all shapes and sizes, from Biorob’s ankle-high Cheetah-cub Robot to the knee-high models that can be built from the Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot kit to NASA’s full-scale humanoid Robonaut 2. In the heavyweight class, we’ve seen Micromagic Systems’ 2.8-meter, 1800-Kilogram Mantis Hexapod Walking Machine. Now, the Department of Advanced Robotics at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology, or IIT), has developed another heavyweight contender in the Hydrolic Quadruped (Hyq) robot.

• Since BeagleBoard was born five years ago, the four open-source BeagleBoard.org platforms (BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, BeagleBone, and, most recently, BeagleBone Black) have made a deep impact on the open-source world. They have enabled fun and functional projects, including superhero costumes, robots, and home automation gadgets.

• The PC, called the MinnowBoard, is basically a motherboard with no casing around it. It was codeveloped by Intel and CircuitCo Electronics, a company that specializes in open-source motherboards, and went on sale this month for US$199 from a handful of retailers.

• Aaeon announced the availability of a rugged, Linux-compatible embedded controller computer that measures only 4.9 x 3.0 x 0.73 inches. The AEC-6401 Compact Embedded Controller runs on a dual-core, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N2600 processor, offers an SSD bay, provides gigabit Ethernet, USB, HDMI and serial connectivity, and supports -20 to 40°C fanless operation.

Phones

Android

• Zeebox pitches itself as a “TV sidekick” that helps you discover new shows and learn more about shows you’re already familiar with. I found the experience similar to that obtained in a Twitter session with a Twitter hashtag, where you follow based on hashtag as the show plays out. One difference with Zeebox is that it has a built-in schedule — you can see upcoming shows without leaving the app.

• The Folder is a flip phone that comes with a dual-sided touch screen, according to a manual discovered on Samsung’s site.

• Is the Ubuntu Edge, the Linux-powered “superphone” that Canonical hopes to develop through a crowdsourced funding campaign, a dying prospect? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean the project hasn’t already succeeded in significantly advancing Canonical’s goals in the smartphone and mobile-device market. Here’s why.

• According to the current industry trend, smartphone makers are releasing a cheaper, ‘Mini’ version of their flagship devices. We had HTC One Mini and Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, now Motorola is said to be making a cheaper version of the Moto X that was released yesterday, will it be the Moto X Mini?

• There is a lot to love about the Chromecast. It lets you stream your browser, your desktop, and a number of apps directly to your TV with little more than a $35 dongle that plugs into HDMI on your TV. However, lately, a few problems have arisen. For one, it’s really difficult to find one unless you’re willing to wait weeks for the next stock to come in. Additionally, the root method that was discovered over at XDA has since been patched. So Google isn’t letting everyone play fast and loose with their new dongle. It’s still a great device, but it’s not perfect and now there is an alternative called PiCast.

• If you were planning to get a wooden phone, whole boot loader you can unlock without using an axe, you are going to get very very disappointed.

• Nvidia began shipping its Nvidia Shield handheld gaming console, which runs Android 4.2.1 on a 1.9GHz Tegra 4 SoC, for $300. Early reviews praised the device on just about every level except for its weight and price, and the lack of decent Tegra-optimized Android games, while an iFixit teardown found an internal design unlike anything it had ever seen.

• Android 4.3 added significant new security features, and Google has also added two other new security features to older versions of Android. Now, if only the carriers and OEMs would patch the Bluebox security hole every Android user would be happier.

• Four months after the launch of Facebook Home, which aimed to turn every Android phone into the long-rumored Facebook Phone, the company is starting to bring certain Home features into their primary app with an update today. In other words, bits and pieces of Home are coming to the main app… without requiring anyone to actually download Home.

• Today at the Black Hat Security conference, Forristal delivered a talk that detailed precisely what the Android master key vulnerability is all about. As Forristal explained, Google’s Android had multiple vulnerabilities in how the operating system verifies JAR/ZIP/APK files, which run on Android devices.

• New phone, new spy-software

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• According to Canalys, 31% of personal computer shipments in Q2 of 2013 were tablets and Android/Linux was on 53% of those tablets.

Free Software/Open Source

• Rackspace VP of Intellectual Property Van Lindberg was one of six tech-industry executives testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about intellectual property on Thursday. He highlighted the value of open source and the sometimes ridiculous nature of DMCA takedown requests.

• This week, Intel announced the Minnowboard, a small embedded development board akin to the RaspberryPi, BeagleBoard and similar devices. The point that grabbed my attention is that it’s being touted as an “open source computer”. The device is shipped running Ångström and is compatible with the Yocto project for building custom embedded Linux systems, but while there are many devices available that run Linux, the term “open source computer” is seldom bandied about. So just how “open source” is the Minnowboard?

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Marking yet another milestone for Mozilla’s Firefox OS mobile phone platform, devices based on it have arrived in Venezuela and Colombia, and Mozilla has just announced hat Firefox OS phones will arrive in Brazil in the fourth quarter of this year. When we covered Mozilla’s mobile plans back in April, the company was targeting five countries to deliver the phones in: Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. It’s quickly becoming clear, though, that these phones will show up in many more markets.

SaaS/Big Data

• SaaS applications and mobile applications are big business drivers for a faster, more agile approach to the integration layer, says Chris Purpura, vice president and general manager for MuleSoft’s CloudHub integration-as-a-service platform.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Advertising regulators cite Oracle a fourth time for running “overboard and unsupported” ads, will refer matter to Federal Trade Commission.

CMS

• I’m going to assume you already have Joomla set up. Your next step is to customize Joomla to meet the needs of your business. First, be clear on the purpose of your Joomla site. Is it primarily for e-commerce, a web portal, or perhaps a static website? Choose a template for your Joomla site that fits your site’s goals and is convenient for your site’s visitors to browse. Pre-made templates, some free and some for pay, are popular among casual Joomla users since they’re ready to use. You can also create your own template, or hire a web designer to create one for you.

Business

• In its latest “next generation” leap to service the global business community, industry innovator xTuple takes on both proprietary and open source software with its Cloud 2.0 service and a new evaluation methodology, hosted in the Cloud.

• Open is beautiful

BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GnuTLS is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols and technologies around them. It provides a simple C language application programming interface (API) to access the secure communications protocols as well as APIs to parse and write X.509, PKCS #12, OpenPGP and other required structures. It is aimed to be portable and efficient with focus on security and interoperability.

Project Releases

Public Services/Government

• SoftLayer Technologies, a cloud infrastructure services provider and a recent IBM purchase, recently hosted infrastructure for a contest among developers of open-source robot-control software.

Licensing

• Binaries, those pieces of an application that go with all that sexy code, are increasingly becoming important as documentation for how software and services are built.

Openness/Sharing

• Open-source code is a huge boon startups and the internet at large — it allows for apps and services that would take months or even years of coding to spring up without much extra work. But there’s also a distinct problem with open source: It doesn’t pay.

• Khan Academy, the online learning platform that has been active in the open-source community and released its code through GitHub, is now trying to bring financial as well as technological support to developers that contribute their services for free.

Open Data

• I began paragliding a few years ago. It’s maybe the most weather-dependent sport in the world. We often fly in mountainous areas, very close to the ground. We need to know about local effects like thermal updrafts, clouds growth, mountain-breeze, foehn wind, and all sorts of other micro weather effects.

Open Access/Content

• Textbooks are incredibly expensive (not to mention cumbersome and heavy in dead tree format). Smart students can pick up free digital textbooks from several sources, including one we haven’t mentioned before: Rice University’s OpenStax College.

Open Hardware

• A study by Michigan Technological University claims that the average US household could save itself up to $2,000 by printing their own products and parts instead of buying them from the store.

• “With the exponential growth of free designs and expansion of 3D printing, we are creating enormous potential wealth for everyone,” said professor Joshua Pearce, coauthor of the paper “Life-cycle economic analysis of distributed manufacturing with open-source 3-D printers”, published in Mechatronics.

• Performance Mattered During Competition to Advance Robotics Capabilities in Disaster Scenarios

• A group of Canadian pilots and engineers are designing a small, two-seat airplane that is affordable, safe and easy to fly. The MakerPlane project aims to qualify as a light sport aircraft and the group wants to give the designs away for free, making it the first-ever open source airplane.

Programming

• Perforce, which provides version management and document collaboration solutions for the enterprise, says working together within the channel can level the playing field between large organizations and small startups. That’s the message in the company’s report this week on the first year of its 20/20 Program, which promotes use of Perforce products by small companies.

Leftovers

Science

• Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

• [...]

• Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of “the prisoner’s dilemma”, a scenario of game theory – the study of strategic decision-making.

Hardware

• When AMD64 (AMD) and EM64T (Intel) CPU technology was new and ready for the prime market, there was much talk about whether the real-world was ready for 64bit computing in the consumer sector. At the time, 64bit computing had been around in the server sector for quite some time.

• Well, it’s now 2013 and we are still talking about whether 64bit computing is ready, as opposed to good old reliable 32bit.

Security

• The chief engineer of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab gives the crowed at Black Hat advice on how to innovate successfully.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• The CIA-operated unmanned aerial combat vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, killed more people in Pakistan per missile strike in July, 2013 than at any other point in the past 12 months, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported.

• According to the Bureau’s tally, the CIA carried out at least three strikes in July, 2013. This was the busiest month since January for CIA’s drones with the strikes claiming at least 23 lives, eight of them identified by name.

• Yemeni security officials say a suspected U.S. drone has killed three alleged al-Qaida members in the country’s volatile south.

• The officials say a drone-fired missile hit a car early on Thursday in the southern city of Hadramawt, setting it on fire and killing three men who were inside it.

• Since 2002, the United States has killed thousands of people in missile strikes and covert military operations, including innocent civilians and even its own citizens.

• About 30 militants and more than 200 other inmates escaped from the Dera Ismail Khan jail after a squad of highly trained Taliban fighters armed with grenade launchers and dressed as police overran the facility in the early hours of Tuesday.

• On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry hinted that U.S. drones strikes in Pakistan could end soon. This news largely echoes a line in Obama’s May counterterrorism speech when the president said that “by the end of 2014, we will no longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we’ve made against core Al-Qaeda will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.” After Obama gave that speech, it was only a matter of days before a new drone strike in Pakistan made front-page news. Despite the best intentions of President Obama and Secretary Kerry, drone strikes in Pakistan will only end when they are no longer an effective means to take out enemy targets.

• Obama has even usurped the unilateral power of killing American citizens with drones without due process. No other American president has ever claimed to have such a power outside of the U.S. Constitution.

• The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.

• In May CNN’s Jake Tapper argued that the CIA’s presence in Benghazi, where four Americans were killed in an attack on September 11, 2012, should be scrutinized.

• A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.

• Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit in the 1990s, said Saturday on Fox News that the new allegations are about “intimidation” and “persecution.”

• “The people who risked their lives on the ground in Libya…are now being intimidated that their careers will be ruined or they will be fired if they happen to say what was going on on the ground at the time,” Scheuer said. “I’ve known John Brennan and he’s the director there and he’s a bully of the first order. He will never say anything negative or question anyone above him, but for the people below him he is a bully of epic dimensions.”

Transparency Reporting

• Among the charges that Army Private Bradley Manning was found guilty of this week was computer fraud—for using a free, open-source program.

• When Manning downloaded thousands of classified files, he used wget, a simple Web program that’s been around since 1996. Anyone can use wget to store downloaded files, and yet the government managed to convince the military court that Manning’s use of it amounted to computer fraud.

• One of the charges for which a military court found Army Pfc. Bradley Manning guilty on Tuesday is computer fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. But the nature of that conviction might surprise people who haven’t been following the case closely: it all comes down to a simple little Web program that dates back to 1996.

Finance

• As the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) gears up for its 40th birthday party in Chicago, Illinois, next week, some state legislatures are digging into taxpayers’ pockets to pay for ALEC politicians to travel to the birthday bash.

• Endless debates over austerity vs. stimulus policies agitate governments. Which is “the correct” one to escape global capitalism’s ongoing crisis? The debates proceed as if official pol1icies were key to ending crises. But the politicians’ fights over policies are mostly distractions from the main events: how crises usually end themselves and their immense social costs.

• The March on Washington aimed to secure a decent, livable wage for all Americans as a way to reduce income inequality. Fifty years later, that noble goal remains unachieved. In fact, the 1970s proved to be a turning point. The decades since show a steady decline in the share of national income going to the lower 50 percent and, indeed, to the lower 90 percent of American households.

• Christin King, like many college students, is worried about keeping up her grades and squeezing in extracurricular activities while holding a job.

• “I’m really stressing out,” she says. “I don’t know how I’m going to fit it all in.”

• Her job, working in the campus library at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, pays minimum wage, she says. And though a portion of her college tuition is covered by financial aid, King will still graduate with a large amount of student-loan debt, she says.

• Washington DC City Council bill will require Walmart and other giant non-union retailers moving into the city to pay a living wage: $12.50, instead of the capitol’s standard $8.25. Walmart, which feels targeted by the legislation, says it may scrap plans to open six stores in DC as a result, sparking media sympathy not for the workers but instead for the corporation.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• In response to a viewer question asking if negative actions in video games were seen as sinful by God, Pat Robertson referred to games like “Grand Theft Auto” and said, “if you’re murdering somebody in cyberspace in a sense you’re performing the act, you like it or not.”

Censorship

• Tor’s famous for anonymizing your Internet activities and infamous for being a pain to use. Debuting at Black Hat, the Tortilla tool smooths out some of the global network’s rough edges.

• PM’s high-profile adviser lambasts plans to block online porn, and says police need more resources to fight internet crime

Privacy

• From the middle of a Dutch field at the OHM 2013 fest­ival, I man­aged to do this inter­view for RT about GCHQ tak­ing large sums of money from its US equi­val­ent, the NSA….

• But journalism that wanted to take a more independent look at issues like who is granted asylum by a given country, or how countries refused to extradite those wanted on serious charges, might consider cases where the United States has protected suspected criminals–people who have caused actual harm in the world.

• New Snowden leaks show Verizon, Vodafone, and BT share direct data.

• There is currently a huge public discussion going on about privacy, what it means in the Internet age, is it important or an outdated concept? Are there exceptions allowed? Does the government have special rights to see private documents and communication of the people? Does the government have the right to keep information about what it is doing private or should the government be 100% transparent? Is security more important than privacy?

• US has funded the UK’s largest intelligence agency in return for access to intelligence…

• Last August, NSA head General Keith Alexander was the T-shirted hero of Def Con, a somewhat lawless hacker gathering in Las Vegas. He promised that the NSA doesn’t keep a file on every American, perhaps telling the literal truth but not exactly disclosing what, in a year’s time, would become widespread knowledge.

• A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases, according to documents provided to The Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden. “I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”

• It makes sense for the US and UK to co-operate and share, but payments between the two agencies must mean influence

• The bill, proposed on July 24 and coined The Surveillance State Repeal Act, momentarily provided the American constituency with a glimmer of hope for humanity, until it was inevitably sent to a committee which will, much like a CIA blacksite, make sure it never sees the light of day again.

• Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA) Keith Alexander was heckled during his talk at the BlackHat conference in Las Vegas yesterday, as the body defended itself against fresh claims it is able to snoop on anything anyone does in the Internet.

• Alexander was always going to attract a lot of attention, some of it negative, given the revelations from the Edward Snowden leaks on massive NSA surveillance operations. One heckler shouted he didn’t trust Alexander, even accusing him of lying to Congress, which the NSA chief quickly denied.

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed a new batch of slides claiming to document a computer system allowing the National Security Agency to search through a vast database of emails, browsing histories and the private Facebook messages of millions of individuals.

• In both the House and Senate, the Judiciary committees want to impose new limits on surveillance — while the Intelligence committees are lining up to defend the agency.

• When looking at a website URL, the S in HTTPS stands for Secure. Thus, with HTTPS agencies, like the NSA, or internet service providers cannot read the content of data that a website and its users exchange unless they break it with encryption. From August 21, Wikimedia will eventually makes this standard on its site for all browsing users who are logged-in.

• You’ve never heard of XKeyscore, but it definitely knows you. The National Security Agency’s top-secret program essentially makes available everything you’ve ever done on the Internet — browsing history, searches, content of your emails, online chats, even your metadata — all at the tap of the keyboard.

• The Guardian exposed the program on Wednesday in a follow-up piece to its groundbreaking report on the NSA’s surveillance practices. Shortly after publication, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former Booz Allen Hamilton employee who worked for the NSA for four years, came forward as the source.

• Edward Snowden’s father Lon: “I am thankful to the Russian people”

• Proposals signify major shift in political opinion as laws would represent the first rollback of the NSA’s powers since 9/11

• In return for the payment GCHQ was required to ‘pull its weight’, according to the documents which were leaked last night

• Lon Snowden told the FBI he would not be used as an ‘emotional tool’

• Edward’s father supports his son’s decision to seek asylum in Russia

• He says his son would never get a fair trial in the U.S. if he returned

• Described his son as ‘patriotic’ and ‘wholesome’ and never cruel

• It’s not about Obama or party loyalty. It’s about the reality that public opinion on privacy versus security can change quickly

• Party establishments oppose change but ferment grows as president meets lawmakers and libertarians sense their moment

• Congress slithered out of town Friday for its August recess with the budget in shambles, a government shutdown looming and another bloodbath over raising the debt ceiling on the horizon. Small wonder that Congress boasts an approval rating so low that its popularity is rivaled by terminal diseases and middle seats on trans-Atlantic flights.

Civil Rights

• Instead, commissioners voted 2-1 to adopt a resolution they had asked the county lawyer to draft. They also added a clause allowing the sheriff to challenge the authority of federal authorities who might impose the NDAA on individuals.

• The bill’s primary sponsor is current gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-33rd District).Donnelly’s bill specifically guarantees the right of citizens of California to be free from any federal law, including the NDAA, that would authorize their indefinite detention in violation of habeas corpus.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Yesterday, a group of technology executives visited the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to discuss technology innovation and copyrights. The lengthy meeting produced some minutes that include interesting arguments. In particular, it’s worth reading a PDF record of comments from Rackspace Vice President of Intellectual Property Van Lindberg. Van Lindberg argued that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is widely misused and lamented the actions of patent trolls

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.