● 07.01.14

● Links 1/7/2014: CoreOS and Blackphone in Headlines

Posted in News Roundup at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• CoreOS is considered by some observers to be a fork of Google’s Chrome OS system, customized for Linux server management. The system is so small because container workloads contain part of the Linux operating system themselves, the user-space parts needed by the application. But all kernel functions, such as scheduling processes and memory management, are the function of the host system and shared by whatever number of containers is running on the host. Containers also leave each workload isolated from the others in a manner that’s sometimes described as “lightweight virtualization.”

• The move toward a services-based approach for all IT is taking another step today with the launch of the CoreOS Managed Linux operating system as a service offering. CoreOS is an open-source Linux startup that has been developing a Docker container-based virtualization platform since August 2013. CoreOS first released a beta of its platform in May and is now announcing the first commercially supported release.

• Our top story in tonight’s Linux news recap is the announcement of CoreOS, a new commercial Linux distribution. Over at Datamation, Matt Hartley explains why Xfce is the best Linux desktop. Also today, WorldOfGnome.org has a short review of GNOME 3.13.3, eWeek has a slideshow of newly released Peppermint 5, and the Mint 17 reviews just keep on coming.

Server

• The official announcement reads, “We dedicate this release of SME Server 9.0 to Chris. Without him it would be nowhere near ready. If you download and use it, please remember him and his work, and that of all the other contributors who work tirelessly to make Koozali SME as good as it is.”

• The container management company’s rise to prominence has generated a lot of buzz within the tech world, and in an interview with Gigaom, CEO Ben Golub explains why its open source platform has the potential to grow further.

Kernel Space

• Pretty much all of the projects in software developer Yitao Li’s GitHub repository were developed on his Linux machine. None of them are necessarily Linux-specific, he says, but he uses Linux for “everything.”

• For example: “coding / scripting, web browsing, web hosting, anything cloud-related, sending / receiving PGP signed emails, tweaking IP table rules, flashing OpenWrt image into routers, running one version of Linux kernel while compiling another version, doing research, doing homework (e.g., typing math equations in Tex), and many others…” Li said via email.

Graphics Stack

• Christian König has proposed user pointer support for the Radeon DRM driver to match the Intel driver’s recent feature.

Applications

• My Weather Indicator, an Ubuntu AppIndicator for displaying the current weather on the panel, was updated to version 0.6.8 today, receiving numerous bug fixes as well as a few other changes.

• Today, after a long period of hard work and preparation, having deemed the existing WebODF codebase stable enough for everyday use and for integration into other projects, we have tagged the v0.5.0 release and published an announcement on the project website.

• Recently, Shuerhaaken, the Xnoise developer, has announced that he no longer maintains Xnoise, due to that the project has lost its development contributors. But since Xnoise is open-source, everybody can fork it and keep the media player alive.

• CrashPlan is an open source backup software developed by Code42, an American software company. Code42 was founded as an IT consultancy company, but finally ended up focusing on online storage solutions, and released the very first version of CrashPlan on 2007. CrashPlan is an ideal backup solution for small medium to large enterprise organizations. It can backup data between remote systems, local systems, and external devices and CrashPlan Cloud.

Instructionals/Technical

• An advocate for software freedom for more than a decade, O’Brien has written and recorded dozens of tutorial podcasts for people wanting to learn how they can make use of open source software. His long-running series on LibreOffice is quickly approaching a 40-episode milestone. Another series on privacy and security, which helps everyday computers users take advantage of encryption technologies, runs concurrently (one recent episode features O’Brien at a conference giving—what else?—a talk). Learning new software can make casual users feel lost in a sea of new procedures, techniques, icons, and settings. O’Brien’s voice is the lighthouse that keeps them firmly and confidently on course.

• As you may know, Maynard is a desktop environment for Rapbian (the Debian system for Raspberry Pi) developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Callabora, but it can also run on a regular Linux desktop system. It uses GTK+, runs on Wayland and provides a backend for the Weston reference compositor, using GNOME Web as the default internet browser, mimicking the Gnome Shell experience.

Games

• As you may know, Valve, now a member of The Linux Foundation, has initiated some ambitions projects: the SteamOS, a Linux operating system optimized for gaming, the Steam Machine, a gaming colsole that will run with SteamOS and the Steam Controller, a game controller specially designed for SteamOS and the Steam Machine.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• The “LXQt” desktop that’s a Qt version of the lightweight LXDE desktop can now be compiled using Qt5 where as previously there were still Qt4 dependencies.

• Whisker Menu is an application menu / launcher for Xfce that features a search function so you can easily find the application you want to launch. The menu supports browsing apps by category, you can add applications to favorites and more.

• I have used various Linux desktop environments over the years: GNOME, KDE, LXDE and XFCE. As for the best Linux desktop? Each experience has its advantages. Some Linux desktops offer lots of glamour and neat effects, while others provide a solid (be it simpler) user experience without making the end user feel like they’re using a desktop from the late 20th century.

• In this article, I’ll explain why I still feel that XFCE remains the best Linux desktop available, even after trying other desktop environments.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I haven’t been directly involved in Plasma development in the past a lot, only since very recently, because of my job at BlueSystems. Ever since I started working on the Plasma Desktop Shell, I’ve had 2 important concepts in mind that I’ve tried to follow:

• The desktop is the place people go when they want to be performant. Let the user focus by offering simple concepts that just work.

• There are two technology goals that Plasma hasn’t yet achieved that I hope it will one day. Neither of these were primary goals at the outset of Plasma’s design or development, but as the code base matured and I watched the strengths and weaknesses of various design decisions, they made it onto my radar.

• Erasing the boundary between remote and local in user interfaces

• Component-centric design providing stability and performance improvements

• The ninth edition of Akademy-es was held last month in Málaga at the Telecommunications School of University of Málaga. Akademy-es had never been held in the city before but it is where the idea of Akademy-es began, during Akademy 2005, resulting in the first Akademy-es in 2006 in Barcelona. KDE old timer Antonio Larrosa is the link between both editions, being the local organizer of Akademy-es 2014 and Akademy 2005.

• digiKam is the closest thing you can get in GNU/Linux based systems (also on proprietary operating systems) which costs nothing. It’s one of the many extremely polished and feature rich open source applications developed by the KDE community. The digiKam community has announced the release of version 4.1.0 which include many bug fixes for the 4.0.0 release.

• This last two weeks have been very exiting with the kickstarter campaign getting closer and closer to the pledge objective. At the time of writing we just crossed 13k! And with the wave of new users, drawn by the great word spreading labor of collaborators and enthusiasts, we have been very busy bringing new functions and building beta versions for you.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• I’m pleased to announce that the GNOME PERU FEST 2014 has been held in the IBM Perú campus according to the plan I presented to the GNOME Foundation at the beginning of this year. “Let’s use Linux” was the mark for this year. I want to thank to all the people who helped me to accomplished this project, my family and friends in Lima were so kind to support the job. The GNOME Foundation, IBM and INFOPUCP were the organisations that sponsored this year the event. Thanks also La Republica, a well-know newspaper in Lima, because they published a post of our event in their Webpage

Distributions

Screenshots

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat is working with several management solution providers, including BMC and HP. As members of the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network, these vendors have provided key insight, feedback and support for the management certification, and are all in various stages of the certification process.

• When Red Hat announced very solid quarterly earnings a few days ago, CEO Jim Whitehurst was quick to attribute part of the strong performance to his company’s new focus on cloud computing. In discussing the enterprises that pay Red Hat for subcription support and services, he said: “These are some of the most sophisticated IT organizations in the world, and many continue to increase their purchases from Red Hat to modernize their IT infrastructure with cloud enabling technologies.”

Fedora

• There’s been quite a bit of water under the bridge since my post on the 3.14 kernel status. With 3.15.x due to land in Fedora 20 shortly I thought I’d give an overview of changes for 3.15 and what’s happened since the last post.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• In 2013, Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu – attempted to raise $32m via crowdfunding for its Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It didn’t make it, but the Ubuntu phone isn’t dead. In fact, development is well under way and the Ubuntu phone operating system is very much alive.

• Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical could not provide a storage service that could compete with Google Drive or Dropbox, so they have decided to drop the project.

• For those who don’t know, both Cinnamon and Mate are GNOME2 forks used a lot on Linux Mint systems that provide the users alternatives to the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

Flavours and Variants

• Quick update for Lubuntu 14.04 users: the bug that caused the Network Manager icon not to show up on the panel by default was finally fixed today.

• As the world increasingly moves to cloud-based infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the needs of traditional desktop users are changing. The Peppermint OS Linux platform is an effort to integrate the cloud SaaS world with the desktop in a seamless hybrid approach. Peppermint had its 1.0 release back in 2010, and the technology has been steadily updated ever since. The Peppermint Five Linux distribution was officially released on June 23, providing an updated software base and new features for Peppermint OS users. Peppermint Five is based on the recent Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Linux release that debuted on April 17.

• Linux Mint 17 is very impressive, but it is often said that the devil is in the details. With Linux Mint 17, the accumulated details are very devilish indeed. The development team did a hell of a job making this Linux distro smoother and better. The GUI for System Settings has a more consistent look. The categories are better organized and separated into subsections.

Devices/Embedded

• The Linux Foundation released an Tizen-based Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) stack for in-vehicle infotainment, with the UI written in HTML5 and JavaScript.

• We’ve seen Tizen-based smartwatches and phones, among other form-factors. Now Tizen is heading for the car. The Linux Foundation’s Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project released its first open source IVI stack based on the Tizen IVI version of the Linux-based operating system.

Phones

Android

• Most of the HTC handsets listed in the roadmap have already received the Android 4.4.2 KitKat with Sense 6.0. The only device which is yet to get the software taste is HTC One Mini M4. As LlabTooFeR claims, the update has been in the testing phase for One Mini and is expected to roll out next week, sometime between 30 June and 6 July.

• Rumors about Android 5.0 Lollipop have been floating around since the beginning of the year, but at the I/O conference, Google presented the next version of their operating system only as Android L. While they didn’t want to reveal the full name just yet, they did make a very interesting announcement regarding the operating system. The company released a developer preview (or beta) version of Android L and you can already test it out if you happen to own a Nexus 5 or Nexus 7 (2013). Before you get too excited though, we do need to mention that this version is aimed at developers and the average consumer might have some trouble installing it. If you want to check it out follow the instructions below (via Times of India), but please be cautious as the original article warns that Android L might cause some problems to your device. And again, this reportedly only works for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013).

• It’s not just email either, though it tends to take the brunt of everybody’s anger. There are dozens of apps sending us hundreds of notifications; managing all that incoming information is a genuine hassle. Looking at the notification center on our phones, it’s hard not to imagine some harried, 1930s office worker. His tie is loosened, sleeves rolled up, sweat beading on his forehead underneath a green visor as he looks at the metal tray marked “INBOX” on his desk. It’s piled high with a stack of paper, sent to him from people he doesn’t know and doesn’t love.

• The showstopper for this year’s Google I/O was Android wear, with the unveiling of first Android Wear devices : Samsung Galaxy Live and LG G watch. All the lucky Google I/O attendees will be able to take one of them home too. We are expecting to see some detailed review of the smart watches soon from people who have already got their hands on them.

• What’s also interesting about the Blackphone is that it’s the first device (or one of the first, at least) to be based on Nvidia’s Tegra 4i. The Tegra 4i was announced 18 months ago, but was held up almost indefinitely due to manufacturing delays and then modem validation issues. Details have been extremely scarce regarding the fate of the product, so it’s interesting to finally see some shipping silicon.

• SGP Technologies has begun shipping its privacy-focused Blackphone, claiming the handset will protect users from intelligence agencies’ and criminal groups’ espionage campaigns.

• The Blackphone is the first smartphone released by SGP Technologies and is a joint project between security firm Silent Circle and hardware company Geeksphone.

• Blackphone, an Android-based smartphone developed by Silent Circle, SGP Technologies and Geeksphone, is now shipping. The phone became a sensation during Mobile World Congress as it offered extreme privacy of communication. After the NSA revelations made by Edward Snowden, there is a huge demand for services or devices which offer privacy from NSA and other surveillance agencies. However even the Blackphone doesn’t offer any protection from NSA. Phil Zimmermann, one of the creators of the phone, said that Blackphone doesn’t make you NSA proof.

• The Blackphone is something that had debuted back in February as an anti-surveillance device in the wake of the severe NSA threats which had emerged around that time. This device has been priced at $629 and it comes equipped with an Android-based operating system which kicks in an array of security traits.

Free Software/Open Source

• It would be difficult to find someone who could provide more insight into what is happening in the world of the Eclipse IDE than Wayne Beaton, the director of open source projects at The Eclipse Foundation. So what is new with Eclipse, beyond the obvious excitement surrounding the latest Eclipse Kepler release and the recently announced support for Java 8?

SaaS/Big Data

• The recommendation is to update your installation to this version. The previous version 1.6.0 had great new features, first and foremost the parallel up- and download of files and a way more performant handling of the local sync journal. That required a lot of code changes. Unfortunately that also brought in some bugs which are now fixed with the 1.6.1 release.

• Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

Databases

• Big trends in the No Design Database era and other takeaways from MongoDB’s first user conference.

• The combination of the Internet, Moores Law and hyper fast commoditization changed that, but not as quickly as you might imagine. At least not until the most recent times (perhaps the last five years) when vendors emerged who upended the old models and presented us with a fresh way to look at everything compute related. Infrastructure, Database, Software, Platform…Pretty Much Everything is rapidly being converted to a Service. Witness Citi recently talking MongoDB as a Service.

CMS

• Whether you need to set up a blog, a portal for some specific usage, or any other website, which content management system is right for you? is a question you are going to ask yourself early on. The most well-known and widely used open source content management system (CMS) platforms are: Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. They are all based on PHP and MySQL and offer a wide range of options to users and developers alike.

Healthcare

• These Tools helps you track medical data, create electronic medical records, deploy medical billing apps and lots more

Business

• Read the blog post about Security Monkey to learn more about the project, and if you use Amazon’s cloud, you might want to check out Security Monkey on GitHub.

Funding

• About the only thing GNU Project founder Richard Stallman and I can agree on when it comes to software freedom is that it’s “Free as in free speech, not free beer.”

• I really hope the Heartbleed vulnerability helps bring home the message to other communities that FOSS does not materialize out of empty space; it is written by people. We love what we do, which is why I’m sitting here, way past midnight on a Saturday evening, writing about it; but we are also real people with kids, cars, mortgages, leaky roofs, sick pets, infirm parents, and all kinds of other perfectly normal worries.

• The only way to improve the quality of FOSS is to make it possible for these perfectly normal people to spend time on it. They need time to review patch submissions carefully, to write and run test cases, to respond to and fix bug reports, to code, and most of all, time just to think about the code and what should happen to it.

• It takes a lot of money to build a database company in an industry dominated by a giant like Oracle. It’s a lesson that open-source NoSQL database startup Couchbase know well as it continues to raise funding to build its business.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• My name is Alex Patel, and I’ll be working as an intern with the campaigns team at the Free Software Foundation this summer. This fall, I will be a sophomore at Harvard College in Cambridge, MA, at which I’m pursuing a joint degree in computer science and philosophy.

• Email Self-Defense, a beginner’s guide and infographic to email encryption by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), was released in six new languages [fr, de, jp, ru, pt, tr] on June 30, 2014. More languages are underway.

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

Programming

• In software, this is epitomized by the GitHub generation, but I believe it’s a characteristic of any aspect of culture touched by the Internet. For those still trapped in the worldview of the Industrial Age, a hierarchy of mediators collects dues in return for providing permission to pass. But the Internet connects everyone to everyone else, peer to peer without discrimination…

• LDC that’s the LLVM-based D language code compiler has been updated. LDC 0.13.0 was released last week with new features.

Leftovers

Science

Health/Nutrition

• CHS hospitals charges some of the highest costs in the country and aggressively targets many patients for money.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Whereas previous aid to anti-Assad forces was handled by the CIA, the newest round will fall under the purview of the Department of Defense, which is frequently more hands-on

• President Obama’s plan to spend another half-billion dollars on Syria’s “moderate” rebels will add more fuel to the destructive violence just as the killing was finally dying down. It’s also hard to see how this investment will promote serious negotiations, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

• As radical Islam spreads through the United Kingdom, US President Barack Obama has sent a special CIA unit to interrogate senior British security experts. The move is seen as a snub of Britain’s MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies.

• Since February, continuing protests, many of them violent, against the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro have claimed more than 40 lives in Venezuela and injured more than 800 people. Most were victims of opposition supporters who have also set fire to universities, public buildings and bus stations – even the buses themselves have been burned. The scale of the protests has decreased since the start of April when the government and opposition leaders held talks to end the conflict. Much of the unrest had until then taken place in richer neighbourhoods, led by students attending private schools. But recently demonstrations have been restricted to opposition strongholds, such as Táchira state on the Colombian border. The protestors cite high inflation, and shortages of food and other goods as the source of their frustration. The latter is almost certainly the result of hording by opposition-owned and controlled distribution chains.

• [...]

• President Maduro calls the protests “the revolt of the rich.” Asked by a Guardian U.K. reporter in April whether his government should accept responsibility for some of the killings, he proposed that 95 per cent of protest-related deaths were the fault of “right wing extremist groups” at the barricades. Maduro mentioned three motorcyclists who were beheaded by a wire strung across the road by protesters. In the same exclusive Guardian interview, Maduro, a former bus driver and unionist, emphasized the considerable increases in social services and reduction in inequality over the last 15 years.

• Instead of sending military to Iraq, the Obama administration should espouse critical factors for objectively serving the Iraqi people, reports Abbas J. Ali.

• Did the Islamic State of Iraq, the main predecessor of ISIS, not emerge after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Did not many ISIS militants escape the U.S.-controlled Abu Ghraib Prison in 2013? And just how many weapons that the U.S. issued to the Syrian opposition end up in ISIS hands? Seriously, though, you cannot just get away with all this simply because you do not share a 550-mile land border with Syria

• The Iraqi resistance brought an end to the formal military occupation of their country; the resistance is now seeking to rid itself of the occupation-installed government and its bloody sectarianism. It is this resistance that is taking control of northern Iraqi cities. Witnesses on the ground in Iraq say that multiple groups with significant political differences have set those divisions aside to unite against the sectarian government of Nuri Al-Maliki. The Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) is one of those groups, but they are playing a smaller role. Mosul and Tal Afar are in the hands of the General Military Council of the Iraqi Revolutionaries, liberated from Maliki’s brutal sectarian rule. Only a strong, coordinated military organization—not 1000 or even several thousand undisciplined extremists—could take and hold a city the size of Mosul (1.4 million) and continue to advance.

• I know a “secret.” I know the identity of the man who was CIA chief of station in Kabul until one month ago. The name of the top spook in Afghanistan was disseminated via email to 6,000-plus reporters as part of an attendance list of senior U.S. officials participating in a meeting with President Barack Obama during his surprise visit with U.S. troops. The government spotted the error and asked journalists not to post it. They agreed. Still, it’s all over the Internet. What I found via Google during a few hours of searching made me 98 percent sure it was him; sources in Kabul covered the 2 percent of doubt. Until the week before last I was working on this story for Pando Daily, where I was a staff writer and cartoonist. We intended to publish the name — not to endanger him (which in any case would not have been possible since CIA headquarters at Langley had yanked him off his post), but to take a stand for adversarial media.

• Each protected sources while under threat of imprisonment

• The US is sending another 300 troops to Iraq to beef up security at the US Embassy and elsewhere in the Baghdad area to protect US citizens and property, officials said Monday.

• Our war on terror is nearly 13 years old. And while we are thankful there have been no large-scale attacks on our homeland since 9/11, we are troubled by how little we know about what is being done to protect us. Consider two developments last week:

• • Monday, the U.S. Justice Department declassified the legal memo used by President Barack Obama to justify a 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed an American citizen who had become an al-Qaida leader. Targeted killings using unmanned drones have been a major weapon abroad, with literally thousands of attacks; hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed.

• In the last 25 years Australia has become enmeshed in the US military machine. We need to re-assert our independence for the sake of the nation and the Asia-Pacific region

• “We Believe that Every American Has the Right to Know When Their Government Believes it is Allowed to Kill Them.”

• While Battle Creek was celebrating its annual cereal festival, peace walkers who began their journey from the Boeing Company Headquarters in Chicago (Boeing is the company manufacturing drones) arrived in our city along with supporters who joined them along the way to stage a vigil to end drone warfare outside the Air National Guard complex where a drone command center is planned.

• Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

• The “private security” contractor formerly known as Blackwater has often been accused of being engaged in what might normally be seen as a level of evil and depravity normally reserved for over-the-top movie villains. And yet, every time new news comes out about the company, it only seems to either live up to that reputation or take it even further. Blackwater is today known as Constellis Holdings as of a few weeks ago. Before that it was Academi. And before that it was also known as Xe Services for a while, as the company keeps trying to get further and further from its Blackwater reputation. NY Times reporter James Risen — who the DOJ is currently trying to put in jail — has an astounding report about how a Blackwater exec threatened to kill a State Department investigator, telling that investigator that nothing would be done if he were killed, because it happened in Iraq. Believe it or not, this was over the State Department investigator merely investigating claims of unsanitary conditions in a dining facility, rather than anything more serious…

• New York Times journalist Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days for refusing to testify about a CIA leak in 2005, the last time a reporter was imprisoned for not divulging information.

• ISIS spokesman also congratulated the US Supreme Court for giving mega companies of the US complete control over the government. “Elites ruled the world in middle ages which changed with the arrival sins like democracy, by giving back the power to elites, the US supreme court has given us the assurance that our dream will one day come true.”

• The United States is on a course to eventually join a 1997 international treaty, championed by Princess Diana, which bans anti-personnel land mines or APLs. During a conference in Maputo, Mozambique, U.S. officials announced that the country’s military would stop producing and buying anti-personnel landmines.

Transparency Reporting

• In the latest revelations from documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Washington Post has revealed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court secretly gave the National Security Agency sweeping power to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries around the world. A classified 2010 document lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. Only four were protected from NSA spying — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The NSA was also given permission to gather intelligence about the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. As we broadcast from Bonn, Germany we are joined by Sarah Harrison, investigative editor of WikiLeaks, who accompanied Snowden on his flight from Hong Kong to Moscow last June. She now lives in exile in Germany because she fears being prosecuted if she returns to her home country, the United Kingdom. Harrison describes why she chose to support Snowden, ultimately spending 39 days with him in the transit zone of an airport in Moscow then assisting him in his legal application to 21 countries for asylum, and remaining with him for about three more months after Russia granted him temporary asylum. She has since founded the Courage Foundation. “For future Snowdens, we want to show there is an organization that will do what we did for Snowden — as much as possible — in raising money for legal defense and public advocacy for whistleblowers so they know if they come forward there is a support group for them,” Harrison says.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• In a Friday court filing, BP asked US District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to require businesses to make restitution plus interest of excess payments, which it called “windfalls.” It also requested an injunction to stop the businesses from spending these excess sums.

Finance

• The ultra-rich are not like you or me. They are treated by totally different standards. They also behave differently. They have no problem with being cuckolded. Charlie Brooks sent his best wishes to Coulson in jail. If I were Brooks, I would be sending money in to pay very large men to help him find the soap in the shower. Although presumably like Aitken and Archer, Coulson is going to one of those jails for posh people where you can play golf and go home at the weekend. I never understood Brigadier Parker Bowles either, though apparently his wife’s shagging was good for his military career. Funny people, toffs.

• This morning, we received an email and telephone call from PayPal notifying us that our account has been restricted pending further review. At this time, it is not possible for ProtonMail to receive or send funds through PayPal. No attempt was made by PayPal to contact us before freezing our account, and no notice was given.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• I recently took part in a debate about the old versus the new “altern­at­ive” media and their rel­at­ive mer­its on RT’s Crosstalk with Peter Lav­elle:

Censorship

• Anyone retweeting or sharing posts judged “extremist” by the Russian Government now face years in prison.

• A draft bill for the modernization of Swiss copyright law will be presented for public consultation in the coming months. While downloading for personal use will remain legal, uploading infringing content via BitTorrent will not. In addition to infringement warnings for Internet subscribers, the blocking of “obviously illegal” sites is also on the table.

• We are fanatic supporters of privacy. Not so much because we have super secrets to hide, but because we consider privacy as a basic human right. So we believe that anytime anyone chooses to exercise that right on the net, then they should have unencumbered access to all the necessary tools and services. OpenVPN is such a service and there are also many tools (clients) which allow us to utilize and enjoy that service.

Privacy

• “Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth, we’ve decided to bid Orkut farewell,” Google said in a post on the Orkut blog on Monday.

• Edward Snowden is still waiting to hear if he’ll get a presidential pardon.

• He probably won’t get one after embarrassing President Barack Obama with revelations of massive U.S. government surveillance programs, but 100,000 of the exiled whistle-blower’s fans nonetheless earned the proposal an official White House response on June 24, 2013.

• They did so by signing a whitehouse.gov petition that quickly cleared the six-figure threshold for feedback.

• Ever since WhatsApp, a massively popular messaging app was acquired by Facebook, many of its users have started looking for alternatives to the service. Facebook, which itself, doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to privacy, is the only reason users are on the lookout for good replacements to the service.

• The Office of the Director National Intelligence has released data on the scope of its foreign intelligence-gathering efforts, but a senior senator says the so-called transparency report only raises additional questions.

• It has come to light that the United States National Security Agency had been authorised to spy on India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which is now in power.

• The BJP was among six non-US political parties for which authorisation was given to NSA to spy upon, a leading Indian English daily reported on Tuesday.

• Though the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court often splits 5-4 on partisan and ideological issues, a consensus is emerging against the government’s electronic intrusion on personal privacy, which could portend trouble for NSA spying, says Marjorie Cohn.

• The National Security Agency has been authorized to intercept information concerning all but four countries worldwide, top-secret documents say, according to The Washington Post.

• “The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,” the paper reported. Yet “a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through US companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.”

• Secret loopholes exist that could allow the National Security Agency to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to conduct massive domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens, according to leading academics.

• The research paper released Monday by researchers at Harvard and Boston University details how the U.S. government could “conduct largely unrestrained surveillance on Americans by collecting their network traffic abroad,” despite constitutional protections against warrantless searches.

• Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age

• As was noted in the writeup of the ODNI’s First Ever Transparency Report, this tentative and forced step into transparency was a step forward for No Such Agency, even if each document release has been accompanied by the unmistakable sound of gritting teeth and a nearly universal refusal to acknowledge that most of the “openness” had been compelled by court orders following FOIA lawsuits.

• The Internet Media Research Center has compiled The United States’ Surveillance Record of China and Other Countries across the World under the authorization of the Office of the Central Network Security and Informatization Leading Group and the State Internet Information Office. According to a report by China National Radio (CNR), in the newly-published book eighteen experts expose the surveillance conducted by the U.S.

• In her speech Glass attacked Washington politics, the NSA, and Texas Republicans saying their decades of control has resulted in nothing. Glass added that anyone thinking there’s no room for a third party in the Texas political landscape better get ready for a fight.

• The Government of Germany just announced that it will be cancelling an information technology project with Verizon. The announcement makes clear Germany is doing this because they do not trust that Verizon will or even can safeguard Germany’s data and telecommunications from spying by the National Security Administration (NSA).

• Two weeks ago the House of Representatives voted to bar the Obama administration from engaging in a controversial surveillance practice that insiders call a “backdoor search.” A Friday letter from the Obama administration gives some hints about how common the practice is.

• Perhaps you already assume that there’s some kind of twisted marriage between Wall Street megabanks and the US global surveillance regime. Why wouldn’t there be? But not even a total cynic could have anticipated spymaster Keith Alexander cashing in this hard, this fast.

• When former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden met with journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong, he arguably changed the face of US intelligence forever. After the release of Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide in May, even more was learned about the NSA’s alleged controversial actions.

• THE government still has not received a formal report from the United States regarding the National Security Agency’s reported surveillance of mobile phone calls in the country, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said yesterday.

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting too much intelligence data to analyse, one of its former technical directors has warned.

• As a result, the agency could be missing indications of the very terrorist threats it is attempting to counter.

• He started his career as a patriot and ended it as a patriot – and he thinks Ed Snowden is a patriot as well. Computer Weekly talks to Bill Binney, the senior NSA official who blew the whistle before Snowden.

• The media landscape has been transformed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a vast cache of documents to select journalists, notably at the Guardian and the Washington Post, which made global headlines a year ago this month. And “the new challenge this year is how to maintain the Internet as somewhere for free expression and innovation,” as Michael Maness, VP of journalism and innovation at the Knight Foundation, said.

Civil Rights

• The CIA recommended prisoners captured in the Afghanistan War be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay because officials were convinced prisoners would be outside the jurisdiction of US courts. The secret jail would potentially be able to hold prisoners forever. However, just over ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had a right to challenge their detention in US courts and opened up the pervasive lawlessness at the facility to lawsuits by prisoners.

• Reporters sued the CIA for records on its fight with Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairwoman Diane Feinstein over the CIA’s alleged coverup of an internal review of its rendition program.

• A federal judge in Portland issued an opinion last week that people on the government’s no-fly list have a constitutional right to know why.

• Whatever you think of the accomplishments of the American Indian Movement, Indian-on-Indian violence is a lasting stain on the organization. It was not good for health or longevity to be “bad-jacketed,” talked about as a “snitch.”

• In the end, AIM’s penchant for brandishing and sometimes using firearms made it a target of FBI infiltration for the twin purposes of gathering intelligence and sowing paranoia. Instead of taking over tribal governments or building lasting institutions outside of tribal governments, AIM devolved into a criminal defense committee.

• In November 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy asked contract employees at the Hanford plutonium processing plant in Washington state to take an unusual oath.

• The DOE wanted them to sign nondisclosure agreements that prevented them from reporting wrongdoing at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear facility without getting approval from an agency supervisor. The agreements also barred them from using any information for financial gain, a possible violation of federal whistleblower laws, which allow employees to collect reward money for reporting wrongdoing.

• Ersula Ore was stopped in May while walking in the middle of a Tempe, Ariz., street to avoid construction — and when she refused to show her ID, she was wrestled to the ground, dashcam footage shows.

• Perhaps feeling a bit besieged after dog owner Sean Kendall posted a video of his impassioned confrontation with Salt Lake City police after one of their fellow officers entered his yard and shot his dog, Geist, Police Chief Chris Burbank stepped in front of a camera—and acted pissy that anybody would dare criticize his officers.

• Law exempts soldiers and police from criminal responsibility if they cause injuries or deaths

• The Pentagon’s transfer of war equipment to local police forces lacks a rational explanation.

• A new documentary about a young man who took his own life while facing charges on computer crimes skips a much-needed conversation about suicide

• “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz” depicts the life and death of Reddit’s co-founder and an Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

• The documentary is written, directed and produced by Brian Knappenberger. On January 20 this year, the documentary premiered in the competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

• Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger recently spoke to chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown about his new film, “The Internet’s Own Boy.”

• Where to begin with the saga of Aaron Swartz? His life, cut short by suicide at age 26, continues to resonate strongly online and off because it was devoted in equal measure to technological innovation, social justice and free thought. While so many Silicon Valley billionaires blithely state their desire to change the world, Swartz truly meant it and truly did. His accomplishments include co-founding Reddit, crafting key elements of the RSS feed and Creative Commons, and helping lead the successful protest against federal copyright law PIPA/SOPA in 2012. He killed himself in January 2013, just before he was to have faced trial for several counts of computer hacking stemming from his theft of a trove of license-protected academic research documents controlled by the digital library JSTOR. No one disputes that Swartz broke the law in nabbing the documents, an act likely related to his passionate, stated belief in de-commercializing research and reforming copyright law, but several forces elevated it from a pedestrian hacking case to a national story. The Dept. of Justice, stung by Wikileaks and empowered by the Patriot Act and an outdated 1986 statute criminalizing computer misdeeds, threw the book at Swartz. As reported in the film, they spoke freely of making an example out of him for would-be anarchists, hack-tivists or cyber-terrorists. Relentless prosecutors spent two years making sure Swartz would do years of hard time for a crime whose victims appeared more than willing to look past.

• Aaron Swartz is remembered as many things — an early partner and creator of Reddit, a self-made millionaire by the age of 19, and a hacktivist who ushered in a huge wave of opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act.

• Green Party member and 2008 Congressional candidate Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan is once again battling political persecution. On July 21, he will stand trial for circulating recall petitions against Benton Harbor’s pro-corporate Mayor James Hightower.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Earlier this year, we wrote about the Senate’s latest attempt at a cybersecurity bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which tries to distinguish itself from the toxic attempts to pass CISPA over the past few years. We and many others have already detailed how CISA, like the CISPAs before it, has a tremendous problem in creating perverse incentives for companies to help the government spy on people, but as a bunch of public interest groups are noting, the definitions are so broad, that the bill could actually be a backdoor way to undermine net neutrality. That’s because it has an incredibly broad definition of a “cyberthreat” such that an ISP could declare, say, Netflix to be a cyberthreat, allowing it to throttle Netflix’s bandwidth. Here are two key paragraphs from a letter sent by CDT, EFF and a bunch of other group…

DRM

• Maybe you’ve seen Into the Wild, or (gasp) have actually read it. It’s the true story of an ordinary person who, one day, decided to abandon society, pack some rice and a rifle into a bag and head off into the wilderness never to return. It’s the sort of drastic move you rarely hear about in our modern life. But in next week’s final installment of How to Disappear, we’ll meet some people who’ve literally done just that: gone “off the grid.” For now, though, let’s take a (tongue-in-cheek) look at how you can take some first steps toward undoing the digital ties that bind, and get a little closer to the exit door.

Intellectual Monopolies

• In my last update, I focussed once more on the Investor-State Dispute Settlement element of TTIP, this time in the light of the European Commission’s consultation on the subject, which closes this week, on 6 July, and which is open to everyone – not just EU citizens. Alongside that column, I also wrote a similar post over on Techdirt, which contains yet more information about ISDS and the consultation.

Copyrights

• A few weeks ago, we wrote about how Malibu Media was up to its old tricks again, demanding six strikes data from Comcast as part of its evidence gathering for its copyright trolling. Apparently, no one fought the request, so a magistrate judge has granted Malibu Media’s request and told Comcast to comply with the forthcoming subpoena. When the six strikes plan was first put into place, many people worried that the information from it would be used in lawsuits, but people hadn’t realized that it might also get abused by copyright trolls.

• And whoever comes out on top, you can bet the poor old writer won’t be any better off

• Google has removed all links to Bayfiles, the file-hosting service created by the Pirate Bay’s founders. For reasons unknown, people searching for the site can no longer reach it through the search engine. The site’s operators are puzzled, but say that the change has very little impact on visitor numbers.

• The past year, the copyright industry appears to have calmed down a bit, thinking it won the file-sharing wars. At the same time, people sharing culture and knowledge have done the same thing. This conflict is far from over.

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