● 07.25.14

● Links 25/7/2014: GOG With GNU/Linux, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• The Linux faithful have mixed opinions on the success of Google’s Linux- and Chrome browser based Chrome OS. The lightweight OS came along years after Fedora, Ubuntu and other Linux distros, and shares relatively little of their mainstream Linux codebase. Some dismiss it as a limited, browser-only platform — a complaint often applied to Firefox OS — while others warn that Google is co-opting and subjugating Linux, a process already begun with Android.

• Google is all geared up to push Chromebooks to students in the US. They have uploaded a new ad on YouTube targeting students. The video titled Chromebook: For Students shows student lockers and a very clear text ‘everything a student needs in a laptop’.

Server

• With the rise of containers as an alternative to virtual machines in Linux environments, IT organizations that make that shift will need a way to potentially manage thousands of containers. Looking to become one of the vendors that not only supplies those Linux containers but also manages them, Docker today announced it has acquired Orchard Laboratories Ltd.

Kernel Space

• Fresh off the release of ACPI 5.1 by the UEFI Forum, Linux developers are updating their support against this latest revision to the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. In particular, ACPI 5.1 is supposed to help out ARM.

• While accessing the ACPI/UEFI specifications still require jumping through some hoops, the ACPI 5.1 update is reported to fix major gaps in supporting ACPI on ARM. Hanjun Guo has already laid out patches for providing Linux ARM64 support compliant with the ACPI 5.1 specification. ACPI 5.1 has “major changes” to the MADT, FADT, GTDT, and _DSD for bettering up this non-x86 platform support.

• Eric Searcy is the IT Infrastructure Manager at the Linux Foundation. Here he tells us how he got started as a sysadmin and at the Linux Foundation, describes his typical day at work, and shares his favorite sysadmin tools, among other things.

• Aric Gardner is a Linux Foundation SysAdmin who works on the OpenDaylight collaborative project. Here he tells the story of how became a sysadmin, shares his specialty in scripting and automation, and describes a typical day at work, among other things.

Graphics Stack

• While the Radeon R9 290 series is now mature in the marketplace, the open-source Linux driver support has lagged. The Hawaii support had been broken for months (no working 3D on the open-source driver, but will work under the Catalyst Linux driver) and the few open-source AMD developers weren’t tasked with fixing it over not being sure why it wasn’t working and having no immediate business cases for fixing the support. Fortunately, with a bug comment made tonight, it seems things might be in order.

Applications

• I’ve gotten a little tired of typing out ls vimwiki/ | shuf -n1 all the time, and that’s usually proof positive that it’s time to give it an alias. So it’s in my .bashrc now as “tokolosi,” and here’s what the little demon dragged home today:

• The Calibre software provides some important functions for its users, like the ability to read, edit, and manage eBooks. The developer has issued a new update and the new version brings a few major features.

• Even if people mostly use Calibre for converting eBooks from one format to another or as a reader, the application is also capable of editing books as well. This new function was implemented recently and the developer is still adding features and fixes for it.

• Photocrumbs has served well as a working name for my spare-time coding project. But the time has come to give my forgetful photo publishing PHP script a proper name. It took me a while to come up with a good name. I wanted a short and catchy name that reflects my deep interest in Japan. While trawling the web, I stumbled across the Japanese white-eye bird called mejiro in Japanese. It’s small, it’s cute, and it has a short name that sounds unmistakably Japanese — in other words, exactly the name I was looking for. So here it is, Photocrumbs is now Mejiro.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• A while ago, we’ve announced our plans to add Linux support as one of the features of our digital platform, with 100 games on the launch day sometime this fall. We’ve put much time and effort into this project and now we’ve found ourselves with over 50 titles, classic and new, prepared for distribution, site infrastructure ready, support team trained and standing by, and absolutely no reason to wait until October or November. We’re still aiming to have at least 100 Linux games in the coming months, but we’ve decided not to delay the launch just for the sake of having a nice-looking number to show off to the press. It’s not about them, after all, it’s about you. So, one of the most popular site feature requests on our community wishlist is granted today: Linux support has officially arrived on GOG.com!

• “The year of the Linux desktop” is a phrase people have tossed around with increasing irony since the nineties, but it was never going to arrive explosively. Linux has slowly grown and spread into homes through friendly distributions like Ubuntu and Mint, installed as easy and safer alternatives to Windows or to freshen up old duffers (my netbook is Minty fresh now). Games have followed.

• If you have been following our coverage of the gaming scene, then you might remember us speculating on the possibility of Good Old Games (GOG.com) going to introduce Linux games. A few days following that article, GOG actually confirmed that they did indeed plan on getting Linux as another platform where they would introduce games regularly and promised about a 100 games by fall of this year. Now it seems that GOG managed to push their worker elves and the penguin folks hard enough that they are ready to release about 50 of the promised games for Linux.

• The game is set to release on Linux, Mac, Windows, Xbox One, PS4 & Wii U simultaneously. More information can be found over at the Project Tools website, along with the different game packages.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I’m sorry to bring bad news, but after trying to fight some last minute bugs in the new Gmail resource today, I realized that pushing the resource into KDE Applications 4.14 was too hurried, and so I decided not to ship it in KDE Applications 4.14. I know many of you are really excited about the Gmail integration, but there are far too many issues that cannot be solved this late in 4.14 cycle. And since this will probably be the last 4.x release, shipping something that does not perform as expected and cannot be fixed properly would only be disappointing and discouraging to users. In my original post I explained that I was working on the Gmail integration to provide user experience as close as possible to native Gmail web interface so that people are not tempted to switch away from KMail to Gmail. But with the current state of the resource, the effect would be exactly the opposite. And if the resource cannot fulfil it’s purpose, then there’s no point in offering it to users.

• With the Plasma 5.0 release out the door, we can lift our heads a bit and look forward, instead of just looking at what’s directly ahead of us, and make that work by fixing bug after bug. One of the important topics which we have (kind of) excluded from Plasma’s recent 5.0 release is support for Wayland. The reason is that much of the work that has gone into renovating our graphics stack was also needed in preparation for Wayland support in Plasma. In order to support Wayland systems properly, we needed to lift the software stack to Qt5, make X11 dependencies in our underlying libraries, Frameworks 5 optional. This part is pretty much done. We now need to ready support for non-X11 systems in our workspace components, the window manager and compositor, and the workspace shell.

• KDE’s Sebastian Kügler has provided an update regarding KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 support for Wayland as an alternative to running on an X11/X.Org Server.

• The work on revisiting and expanding the Human Interface Guideline on tooltips has begun. If there’s something that has always bothered you about how tooltips in KDE Applications and Plasma look and feel consider to join in. The work is still in its early stages, so now would be the best time to voice your concerns. [https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=121892]

• Cutelyst uWSGI plugin now has support for –thread, which will create a QThread to process a request, however I strongly discourage its usage in Cutelyst, the performance is ~7% inferior and a crash in your code will break other requests, and as of now ASYNC mode is not supported in threaded mode due to a limitation in uWSGI request queue.

• from today on, the master branch of kate.git is KF5 based.

• That means, for the next KDE applications release after 4.14, Kate will use the awesome KF5 stuff!

• The KTextEditor framework is already in a good shape and most active KatePart development is since months pure KF5 based.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GUADEC 2014 is almost upon us, and we are talking to the three keynote speakers who are lined up for this year’s conference. Nathan Wills – LWN editor, typeface designer and author – is one of these keynote speakers. His talk, titled Should We Teach The Robot To Kill, addresses issues relating to Free Software and the automative industry. We caught up with him to find out a bit more about this fascinating subject, as well as his views on Free Software conferences.

Distributions

• We’re halfway through 2014, and a handful of Linux distributions have already made a big splash in the community. Which distributions are the best ones for this year? Let’s take a look.

• Kali Linux 1.0.8, a more mature, secure, and enterprise-ready version of BackTrack Linux, has been announced by Offensive Security and brings support for EFI systems, among other updates and changes.

• The developers of Kali Linux 1.0.8 took advantage of this version change and decided to make other improvements to the operating system, although you will need a user account to see exactly what has been modified.

• In today’s news feeds is MakeUseOf.com’s top five Linux distributions for 2014. One of their picks is said to vulnerable to attack and the proof has been posted. In other news, GOG.com has rolled out support for 50 DRM-free Linux games. And finally tonight, Fedora 21 has been delayed.

Red Hat Family

• Oracle sees continued potential for growth as it rolls out its latest Linux distribution release.

Fedora

• Fedora is a big project, and it’s hard to follow it all. This series highlights interesting happenings in five different areas every week. It isn’t comprehensive news coverage — just quick summaries with links to each. Here are the five things for July 22nd, 2014:

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical is working on the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 (Utopic Unicorn), but its developers are also trying to improve some technologies that haven’t made it just yet to the desktop version, such as Unity 8 and the Mir display server.

• Canonical has revealed details in a security notice about an acpi-support vulnerability in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system that has been found and corrected.

• The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS…

• The first stable point release update to the Long Term Support Ubuntu 14.04 is now available.

• Canonical is working in parallel at both the desktop and the mobile versions of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Touch already using Unity 8 and Mir as default, since the development branch was based on Ubuntu 13.10.

• Recently, the developers have implemented the Kernel 3.16 RC3 as default on the unstable branch of Ubuntu 14.10, scheduled for release on the 23rd of October, 2014.

Devices/Embedded

• Over the past two years we’ve come to really grow fond of the design of the Raspberry Pi. It’s almost iconic in a way, and we don’t think we’re the only ones to believe this: as you can have see with the Banana Pi review on the previous page the layout is almost identical to the standard model B.

• TinyGreenPC launched a Raspberry Pi and Linux based digital signage player that runs on just 7 Watts, and offers optional WiFi and an OPS interface.

• The Pi Media Player is one of the most power-efficient signage players on the market, according to TinyGreenPC, a subsidiary of UK-based embedded manufacturer and distributor AndersDX. It helps that the 7 Watt, Raspian Linux-enabled signage player runs on a Raspberry Pi.

• Three Bulgarian engineers who co-founded a firm called StorPool – which builds a virtual SAN using the aggregated storage of Linux KVM servers – are aiming to expand the reach of their three-year-old project.

• Boyan Ivanov, CEO, Boyan Krosnov, chief product officer, and Yank Yankulov, the chief tech officer, started the firm in November 2011 with $261,600 seed funding. In February this year they raised an undisclosed amount of cash in an A-round. We’d guess it’s in the $1m – $2.5m area.

Phones

Android

• Disney movies have the uncanny ability to make us laugh, cry, and dance with joy at the same time. Whether you are a young kid or an adult, these films have a special place in many people’s hearts. Apart from winning many Oscars, these movies have garnered fans across all generations. From overbearing grandmas to unapologetically brash kids, Disney movies are so irresistible that they can make anyone laugh or cry. That’s why today we have for you a list of some of the best Android apps out there that are made for Disney fans.

• About 10 years ago, when I got my first mobile phone, I hardly knew anything about its operating system or its processor. Even its screen size didn’t matter. I was just happy to have a ‘mobile’ phone.

• Today, the mobile phone paradigm has shifted from feature phones to smart phones. When people consider purchasing a new mobile phone, they examine its operating system, its configuration, and its screen size. Increased attention to these details can be attributed to technological advancements—and, more importantly, to the slew of new mobile operating systems available today. In this highly competitive market, Android has obtained about 80 percent of the global market share, making it the clear leader among mobile operating systems.

• What makes Android so popular? Why has the mobile market swung toward Android lately? Let’s take a quick look at how Android has achieved this, as well as the role of open source in the Android story.

• OnePlus have developed quite a buzz over the last few months with the release of their first device the OnePlus One. Part of the allure is the incredibly low asking price of $300 – which is typically half the cost of its on-spec rivals. However another feature which has greatly attracted attention is the OnePlus One comes with CyanogenMod (CM) custom ROM as stock out of the box.

Free Software/Open Source

Events

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Today Google announced Chrome Beta has received a relatively major update. Chrome Beta is the testing version of Chrome. To all purposes it is the same as Chrome although the Beta version incorporates all the small tweaks and experimental aspects Google are testing. By using the Beta version the user gets a first glimpse at features which quite likely will be available on the standard Chrome and also provides Google with the necessary test data.

Mozilla

• Mozilla recently released Firefox version 31, and now this updated version of the Fedora default web browser is available for download in Fedora 20.

SaaS/Big Data

• SAP may not be on every individual user’s radar, but the company is a giant global force in running enterrprise back-end systems, new forays into the cloud and other new platforms, and managing enterprise class applications. Now, SAP has announced that it is committing to Cloud Foundry and OpenStack, providing a clear path forward for an open cloud ecosystem.

• Yesterday, we released ownCloud 7. You might have read that somewhere on the internet – it was widely announced and broadly picked up. If you do not have ownCloud yet, you really should try it now, and if you are one of the people happily using ownCloud for a while, update soon!

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation has announced that the second Release Candidate version of LibreOffice 4.2.6 is now available for download and that users can test it.

Education

• In the world of the Internet, where everything is so easily available, it seems like all technology is a benefit to online learners. For those who aren’t able to use the available traditional resources for various reasons, open source technology specifically is a huge boon. Let me share my seven-year journey of using open source and how it helped me add more value to both my personal and professional lives.

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Nginx, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Nginx Web server, is out today with a new release of its Nginx Plus server. The Nginx Plus r4 release provides users with new security and load balancing features.

BSD

• After more than a half-year in development and working on tens of thousands of lines of code, Pkg 1.3.0 has been released by FreeBSD developers.

• Pkg 1.3.0 introduces a new solver to automatically handle conflicts and dynamically discover them, pkg install can now install local files and resolve their dependencies via remote repositories, sandboxing of the code has happened, improved portability of the code took place, the pkg API has been simplified, improvements to the multi-repository mode, and a ton of other changes and fixes took place.

• More on the pkg 1.3.0 release for improved package management on FreeBSD can be found via this mailing list post.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• In some ways we have actually made improvements to the Unix Philosophy with Richard Stallman’s GPL. We also have a mostly standardized graphical system with the X Window System. I can’t find any overt references to sharing of source code from the early days of Bell Labs but it clearly did happen even if it was de facto rather than de jure.

• We are pleased to announce the next alpha release of GNU Guix, version 0.7.

• This release is an important milestone for the project since it is the first to provide an image to install the GNU system from a USB stick.

Public Services/Government

• The United Kingdom recently made an announcement about its decision to adopt the Open Document Format (ODF) as its in-house standard for all new documents. And now, Microsoft has lost another important fight in yet another European city.

• Toulouse, France’s fourth largest city, has ditched Microsoft Office in favor of LibreOffice.

Licensing

• Karen Sandler is a veteran of the free and open source software world. Having completed an engineering degree, she has worked as a lawyer for the Software Freedom Law Center, was Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and recently accepted a position as Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. I interviewed Karen via email to ask her about her background and insight into various issues in the free and open source world.

Openness/Sharing

• Recently I had the opportunity to watch a soccer game (football to the majority of the world). This game was one of the most amazing displays of team effort I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. (Here’s an obligatory link if you don’t know to which game I refer). Almost every score was predicated with a series of passes and touches by various players. There was a level of unselfish play and team spirit I don’t often see when observing professional sports.

• Benetech started out in the 90s without even understanding the meaning of the term open source. They just “needed an easy way to interface with different voice synthesizers” to develop readers for people who are blind and “shared the code to be helpful.”

Programming

• PHP 5.5.15, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, has been released and it’s now available for download.

Leftovers

• The battle started when a government-hired crew tore down the metal cross atop the one-room church in this village surrounded by rice paddies last month.

Science

• As the world celebrates the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, a revelation has come to fore that during the Cold War race to the moon between the US and the former USSR, the former had “kidnapped” a Soviet mooncraft in the 60s called Lunik, studied it in detail and returned it intact.

Security

• Personally, while I still think the DHS is an unlikely sponsor for this project — the National Security Agency (NSA) or NIST seem like its more natural home — I think the SWAMP sounds like a very useful one-stop for anyone wanting to double-check their pre-production code for errors before release.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Judicial Watch announced today that on June 17, 2014, it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the United States Department of Defense (DOD) to obtain records of communications relating to its May 2, 2011, FOIA request for bin Laden death photographs and videos (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:14-cv-01027)).

• The birth of the armed-drone program underscores two central ironies. First, the weapon that the U.S. deployed so eagerly after 9/11 was a hot potato that it juggled around internally beforehand. (Indeed, the George W. Bush administration devoted most of its lone pre-9/11 cabinet-level meeting on al Qaeda—convened on Sept. 4, 2001—to wrangling about the drone program.) Second, for a program now so widely criticized in the Muslim world for killing civilians, pre-9/11 policy makers were actually driven toward armed drones because the more traditional alternatives involved unacceptable risks of collateral damage.

• The UK, which has carried out over 300 drone strikes in the country, has consistently stated it is aware of only one incident in which non-combatants died: a March 2011 strike that killed four farmers. In December 2013, three months after the Watapur strike, then defence secretary Philip Hammond reiterated this claim in a Guardian op-ed.

• On the afternoon of September 7 last year, in the Watapur region of Afghanistan’s Kunar province, a farmer named Miya Jan heard a buzzing overhead. He looked up to see a drone, he told the Los Angeles Times, and minutes later, he heard an explosion.

• Afghanistan has been targeted by more drone strikes than any other country in the world, yet almost nothing is known about where those attacks took place, or who they killed.

• A new study by the Bureau’s drones team, published today, examines the official opaqueness that surrounds drone operations and explores how outside organisations – such as the Bureau – might be able to lift this veil of secrecy.

• An 80-year-old local Navy veteran is facing a potential year in prison if convicted of charges stemming from his involvement in an anti-drone protest at a New York Air Force base in April.

• Andrew Schoerke, of Shaftsbury, is a retired U.S. Navy captain and a member of Veterans for Peace Will Miller Green Mountain Chapter. On April 28 he was part of a group of 300 protesters at the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base which shares space with the Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York.

• On July 10, 2014, in New York State, Judge David Gideon sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores to a year in prison and fined her $1,000 for photographing a peaceful demonstration at the U.S. Air National Guard’s 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Field (near Syracuse) where weaponized Reaper drones are remotely piloted in lethal flights over Afghanistan. – See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/07/187788/grandmother-gets-year-prison-taking-picture%E2%80%A8#sthash.34Km49MC.dpuf

• On July 10, 2014, in New York State, Judge David Gideon sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores to a year in prison and fined her $1,000 for photographing a peaceful demonstration at the U.S. Air National Guard’s 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Field (near Syracuse) where weaponized Reaper drones are remotely piloted in lethal flights over Afghanistan. Dozens have been sentenced, previously, for peaceful protest there. But uniquely, the court convicted her under laws meant to punish stalkers, deciding that by taking pictures outside the heavily guarded base she violated a previous order of protection not to stalk or harass the commanding officer.

• “Do you honestly believe that this land is yours because God said so?”

• The supporters of CUFI moved up the convention center escalators and took their seats for a plenary session. Onstage were the first guests, all recognizable from Fox News—Weekly Standard editor-in-chief Bill Kristol, onetime CIA director James Woolsey, and the Council on Foreign Relations fellow Elliott Abrams, a presidentially pardoned veteran of foreign policy disasters on two continents. Sitting right next to them was John Hagee, the burly Christian Zionist pastor who founded CUFI in 2006 He leaned into a microphone, passionately explaining why supporters of Israel should not be tricked by casualty reports.

• Iraq’s security forces have killed at least 75 civilians and wounded hundreds of others in indiscriminate air strikes on four cities since June 6, according to Human Rights Watch. The New York-based human rights watchdog says it documented 17 airstrikes, the majority in the first half of July, in which barrel bombs were used.

• More than 50 former Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the nation’s reserve force, citing regret over their part in a military they said plays a central role in oppressing Palestinians, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

• “We found that troops who operate in the occupied territories aren’t the only ones enforcing the mechanisms of control over Palestinian lives. In truth, the entire military is implicated. For that reason, we now refuse to participate in our reserve duties, and we support all those who resist being called to service,” the soldiers wrote in a petition posted online and first reported by the newspaper.

• While some Israelis have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, the military’s structure is such that serving in any capacity forces one to play a role in the conflict, said the soldiers, most of whom are women who would have been exempted from combat.

• In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences.

• The students making the posts will not reveal online that they are funded by the Israeli government, according to correspondence about the plan revealed in the Haaretz newspaper.

• Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he’s worried there’s a perception of the United States “disengaging” from global affairs.

• Gates, who also once headed the CIA, says he recognizes the ocean-to-ocean diplomacy the Obama administration has been carrying out in the Mideast and Eastern Europe and other world hot spots like Africa.

• “Rise of the Politics of Fear”: “The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson’s “Great Society”.

• “I think Russia saved us in Syria. If we had rushed in surface-to-air missiles to the Syrian opposition and they were then stolen by ISIS and they were now shooting down civilian airliners it would have been a different story,” Baer said.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Since the political crisis erupted in Yemen in 2011, the country has begun to move towards democracy. Many challenges remain in the country, wracked by civil unrest and widespread water and food insecurity, says Bishow Parajuli, the UN World Food Programme’s representative in Yemen.

• Plans for a cable car attraction and a shopping and entertainment complex mean the Grand Canyon is facing the biggest threat in its history, the US National Parks Service claims

Finance

• Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme relied on reams of fake trading documents to fool regulators for decades.

• Now he may be the victim of a forgery himself, after a U.S. judge on Wednesday denied a bizarre motion supposedly filed by Madoff that claimed the U.S. int

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Democratic congressman Jim Himes was on C-SPAN early this morning, and was on the receiving end of an angry complaint by a Republican caller over basically everything that anyone has ever said negatively about the Obama administration in the past four-plus years. Himes’ response? Suggesting this person maybe not watch so much Fox News.

• The caller, Bob, went on a rant about issues from Benghazi, the NSA, Fast & Furious, Syria, Obamacare, the EPA, the government shutdown, Eric Holder, Van Jones, et cetera, et cetera. He concluded, “Any other president would have been laughed out of office right now.”

• Most members and staffers of the US House of Representatives won’t be able to edit pages on Wikipedia for more than a week. Administrators of the popular Web encyclopedia have imposed a 10-day ban on the IP address connected to Congress’ lower house.

Privacy

• Apple has “inadvertently admitted” to creating a “backdoor” in iOS, according to a new post by a forensics scientist, iOS author and former hacker, who this week created a stir when he posted a presentation laying out his case.

• Privacy has always been one big issue when it came to using smartphones, but no one knew precisely why. Many of us feared social networks and apps that required private information and payed less attention to the actual device and its OS system. It would seem Apple’s iOS features a so called “backdoor” that allows agencies like the NSA to have almost complete access to every iOS running device. Forensic scientist and writer Jonathan Zdziarski, presented some slides at the HOPE conference in New York, in which he proved that, in general, the iPhones are well secured, specially the iPhone 5S that runs iOS 7, but they will never be protected from the government or Apple itself.

• APPLE has shed some light on the diagnostic capabilities in its iOS operating system, in a response allegations that it purposefully installed a “backdoor” on its mobile devices.

• A US researcher has mounted a very strong case that Apple has deliberately left security holes in iOS. Apple’s response is underwhelming.

• A key government document obtained by The Intercept confirms that the Obama administration does not require “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to brand Americans or foreigners as suspected terrorists.

• The 166-page “sensitive security information” document that details how the government decides whether someone should be on a terrorist watchlist has been leaked to the press.

• The Intercept on Wednesday published the U.S. government’s 166-page rulebook that guides the creation of its famous internal “terrorist watchlist.”

• Both the Bush and Obama administrations have resisted spelling out how individuals, including its own citizens, wind up on the list, or how they can be removed. The registry supplies the names for the no-fly list that has grounded many a confused traveler, and includes thousands of names of those who are merely suspected of possibly having ties to others who may themselves be suspected of ties to terrorism.

• “Immediate family of suspected terrorists,” according to Scahill and Devereaux, such as “their spouses, children, parents or siblings,” may be placed on a list “without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity.”

• As Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux point out in their analysis, the document is positively Kafkaesque, allowing agencies to add you to the watchlist if you are suspected of associating with a person who is suspected of being under suspicion of being a terrorist — and “terrorist” has been redefined to include “people who damage government property,” and people who seek to “influence government policy through intimidation.”

• As writers and artists, we join PEN American Center in urging Congress to act to end mass surveillance. We recognize the need for strong protections for U.S. national security, and acknowledge that such measures will sometimes entail difficult tradeoffs. However, the NSA’s shockingly broad and indiscriminate surveillance programs threaten our most cherished democratic ideals and violate our constitutional and international human rights to free expression and privacy. The Washington Post’s recent report that nine out of 10 individuals whose communications are being intercepted are not the intended targets of investigation underscores the total lack of proportionality of NSA mass surveillance, and the need for reform.

• Canadian government officials requested subscriber information from telecoms at least 1.13 million times per year between 2006 and 2008, according to documents obtained by e-commerce law expert Michael Geist.

• In early April, Sen. Charles E. Grassley summoned FBI officials to his Capitol Hill office. He said he wanted them to explain how a program designed to uncover internal security threats would at the same time protect whistleblowers who wanted to report wrongdoing within the bureau.

• Civil rights group Liberty is representing MPs Tom Watson and David Davis in a fresh case challenging the UK government’s recently passed Data Retention and Investigatory Powers (DRIP) bill.

• After recent comments in Moscow by Edward Snowden about the extent to which private telecoms data is used by the UK and US governments, you might have expected British lawmakers to think twice about the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers bill.

• A yarn attributed to Sean McBride recounts an interview from the 1950s when, while serving as Irish Foreign Minister, a journalist asked him: “What about the role of British Intelligence in Dublin?”

• “If the British had some intelligence, that’d be great,” replied the man who once led Amnesty International.

• A vulnerability broker published a video demonstrating one of several flaws it has found in the privacy-focused Tails operating system, which is used by those seeking to make their Web browser harder to trace.

• Exodus Intelligence of Austin, Texas, said its short clip shows how the real IP address of a Tails user can be revealed using the flaw. The company said it hoped publicizing its findings would serve as a warning to users about putting “unconditional trust” in a software platform.

• Putting aside certain rhetorical devices that have cropped up in this debate, like name-calling or guilt-by-association, let’s examine some of Shava’s points to see if we can take the conversation in a constructive direction.

• The co-creator of a system designed to make internet users unidentifiable says he is tackling a “bug” that threatened to undermine the facility.

• Max Schrems’s case against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is likely to have profound implications

• Whether you think NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, you have to admit: The guy knows how to keep his information secure.

• The fact that Snowden isn’t sitting in Guantanamo right now with ankle cuffs and a bag over his head demonstrates his ability to avoid detection.

• Dutch intelligence services can receive bulk data that might have been obtained by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) through mass data interception programs, even though collecting data that way is illegal for the Dutch services, the Hague District Court ruled Wednesday.

• The Dutch intelligence services AIVD/MIVD may exchange information with the US NSA…

• John Napier Tye, a former State Department official, says Americans’ data remains vulnerable until executive order that provides NSA with a path to collect data is reformed

• An independent privacy watchdog agency announced Wednesday that it will turn its focus to the largest and most complex of U.S. electronic surveillance regimes: signals intelligence collection under Executive Order 12333.

• A deal between the Senate and the Obama administration on NSA reform legislation may be in sight. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board will get an earful from privacy advocates today. The House passed a bill to reauthorize the satellite TV law STELA, but the Senate has more ambitious plans for the must-pass legislation. Yahoo pays a visit to the FCC to talk about net neutrality.

• Angela Merkel’s old mobile phone is an icon of our time. A Nokia 6210 Slide – it was accessed and monitored by the US spy agency the National Security Agency.

• The US monopoly over much of the world’s information and communication technologies gave the NSA – piggybacking on a complicit private sector – one-click instant access to her policy musings and personal whims.

• But Dark Mail takes the extra step of cloaking your email’s metadata, which includes the subject line and the ‘To’ and ‘From’ fields. That way, spies can’t easily identify who’s sending emails.

• Since the Snowden revelations, it has become clear that email as a basic internet protocol is essentially insecure, and other options — texting, messaging apps, and the like — are not much better.

• Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note.

• I arrived in Berlin last week, hoping to see something rare: A country that is prosperous, well-governed and even happy, if only because it had just been crowned champion of the football World Cup.

• The decision comes in response to Snowden’s NSA revelations, and follows two recent cases of German officials accused of spying for the U.S.

• Germany will monitor US and UK agents as part of its long discussed counter-espionage ’360 degree view’ plan, shifting its focus from China, Russia, and Iran, according to local media.

• Germany’s intelligence services have been instructed to add the US embassy in Berlin to its list of surveillance targets in retaliation for US spying on the German government and communication.

• Tensions between the U.S. and Germany over American intelligence gathering could have a decisive impact on whether the European Union adopts harsher sanctions on Russia.

• Willie contends, “Here’s the big, big consequence. The U.S. is basically telling Europe you have two choices here. Join us with the war against Russia.

• Join us with the sanctions against Russia. Join us in constant war and conflicts, isolation and destruction to your economy and denial of your energy supply and removal of contracts. Join us with this war and sanctions because we’d really like you to keep the dollar regime going.

• We’re all too familiar with the bulk collection of cellphone metadata—information on whom you contact and when—that Edward Snowden revealed. However, Executive Order 12333 from 1981 (thanks, President Reagan) allows the NSA to collect the actual content from phone calls and Internet communications if they are amassed from outside U.S. borders. John Napier Tye, former section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, recently wrote about this issue in The Washington Post.

• Bitcoin is safe, except when it is not. It can become not safe when the devices that hold them are compromised. Just as bitcoins stored on an exchange are only as secure as that exchange, bitcoins stored on your computer or cell phone are only as secure as those devices.

• Advertisers really want to track you. Your browsing history is one of the best clues as to what ads you are most likely to see. Perhaps more nefariously, advanced tracking methods can help other entities (like the NSA) know what privacy-oriented web surfers are doing on the web.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized a new law that forces Internet companies conducting business in the country’s borders to store Russian citizens’ data there, further tightening the government’s grip on Russians’ online activity.

• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi opposed ending bulk collection of telephone records by the NSA in 2013, and in 2014 tells President Obama that no Congressional approval is needed in order to take action in Iraq.

• The NSA sits at the nexus of violations of both the Fourth and Fifth Amendments with a legal dodge called Parallel Construction.

• Parallel Construction is a technique used by law enforcement to hide the fact that evidence in a criminal case originated with the NSA. In its simplest form, the NSA collects information showing say a Mr. Anderson committed a crime. This happens most commonly in drug cases. The conclusive information is passed to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), who then works backwards from the conclusion to create an independent, “legal” body of evidence to use against Mr. Anderson.

• Given the importance of the privacy rights established in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which include an explicit right to the protection of personal data, the EU institutions’ actions were appropriate. The treaties that underpin the EU’s authority further emphasise that the Union’s international relations must be “guided by” basic democratic principles and respect for human-rights laws.

• No-nonsense German police on July 10 searched the home and office of a military employee who is accused of passing sensitive secrets to the U.S. government. Just before this event, there was an announcement that a member of German BND intelligence has been arrested, accused of selling an estimated two hundred documents to the CIA. They reportedly contained details of investigations by a German parliamentary panel into the vast electronic surveillance of European populations by the NSA, which included hacking Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone.

• The new system, called OpenPDS, protects your privacy while still letting apps access information they need to work.

• Move over Edward Snowden, there’s a new surveillance whistleblower on the scene. His name is John Napier Tye and he’s warning Americans about illegal spying. John Tye claims he filed a complaint with the State Department before leaving. In other words, he’s no leaker like Edward Snowden.

• Bill Binney worked at the National Security Agency nearly three decades as one of its leading crypto-mathematicians. He then became one of its leading whistleblowers.

• Now 70 and on crutches, both legs lost to diabetes, Binney recalls the July morning seven years ago when a dozen gun-wielding FBI agents burst through the front door of his home, at the end of a cul-de-sac a 10-minute drive from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

• So Google reminds us that it has invested heavily in security, including encrypting data as it moves between datacentres, and is now looking towards securing stuff by other people on the Internet.

• People don’t tend to vote on foreign policy. But reflecting on the crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria and Iraq that followed him as he headed to the West Coast for a fundraising swing, President Barack Obama acknowledged that they’re adding to an anxiety that’s feeding cynicism that could hurt his party in the midterms.

• Given recent German indignation about the National Security Agency, it has been easy to overlook the fact that for decades the German government has cooperated extensively with the NSA on surveillance activities. But after a high-level meeting in Berlin this week, this long-standing but veiled cooperation may have a firmer legal and political base.

• You’ve probably heard about Tor. Technically speaking, it is a global mesh of nodes, also known as relays, which encrypt and bounce traffic between client computers and servers on the Internet. That encryption and bouncing of traffic is done in such a way, that it is practically impossible to know who visited a web site or used a network service in general. To put it simply, anytime I choose to surf the web using Tor it’s impossible for the administrators of the sites I visit to know my real IP address. Even if they get subpoenaed, they are just unable to provide the real addresses of the clients who reached them through Tor.

Civil Rights

• Europe’s top human rights court ruled Poland violated the rights of two terror suspects by allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from 2002-2003 and facilitating the conditions under which they were subject to torture.

• Europe’s top human-rights court ruled Thursday that Poland allowed the CIA to detain two terrorism suspects at a secret prison on its territory where they were exposed to “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.”

• [...]

• The court ordered Poland to pay $175,000 to Zubaydah and $135,000 to Nashiri.

• Europe’s top human rights court condemned Poland on Thursday for hosting secret CIA prisons, saying Warsaw knowingly abetted unlawful imprisonment and torture of two Guantanamo-bound detainees.

• The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a Palestinian and a Saudi national locked up in a US “black site” for several months in Poland in 2002-2003 before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where they are still being held.

• In the first rulings of their kind, the European Court of Human Rights found Poland liable for enabling the CIA torture of two suspected terrorists in a forest north of Warsaw, and letting them be sent to Guantanamo Bay to potentially face a “flagrantly unfair trial” by military commission.

• Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing the CIA to imprison and torture two alleged terrorists on Polish soil.

• The court in Strasbourg, France, said that Poland failed to stop the “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who were taken to Poland in 2002.

• A US man was left gasping for air for almost two hours after his lethal injection execution went wrong, leading to calls for the return of the firing squad.

• A heartbroken woman is suing the city of St. Clair Shores and police after officers shot her dog dead in November. The encounter was filmed by the cops’ dashboard camera.

• Governments are a key offender, he stresses, advising use of HTTPS and OpenPGP to block software-based security threats

• Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, while eschewing extrajudicial killings, says the United States lacks the moral authority to cite human-rights abuses as reasons to withdraw support from the Jamaican security forces. Golding complained that the US has a long history of carrying out heinous actions against other countries, and the drone strikes which are aerial vehicles remotely controlled by CIA operatives are tantamount to extrajudicial killings.

• The truth about renditions and detentions at the island of Diego Garcia has to be revealed.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• There are many ways to tackle the issue of online piracy and Louisiana State University has decided on its approach. At the bottom end, offenders will experience a temporary Internet disconnection, with repeat offenders receiving fines and potentially career-damaging notes on their education records.

• A leading YouTube entrepreneur is facing legal action for alleged copyright infringement in her videos.

• The British government has now decriminialised the piracy of films, music and games – meaning that users caught downloading and sharing pirated material will no longer be fined or prosecuted.

• In a blatant act of democracy that would make Mussolini spin in his grave, the UK government reluctantly conceded that if everybody does it, it probably shouldn’t be a crime.

• Instead, as a nod to the intellectual monopoly gangsters, those dastardly “pirates” (i.e. everyone) will receive four spam letters a year from the Content® manufacturing industry, in a futile attempt to convince the rigidly bored audience to pay for Hollywood’s increasingly derivative and uninspiring garbage.

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.