● 10.12.14

● Links 12/10/2014: Blackphone Tablet, Sony’s Firefox OS Port

Posted in News Roundup at 2:54 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Lenovo should certainly supply no-OS PCs for people like me and let the world know what M$ is costing them. No business should get a free ride being able to charge an arbitrary amount without even disclosing the cost to the consumer. It’s not like an OS is not a user-serviceable part. Users can and do change OS. They should not be forced to pay for an OS they don’t use. I told Lenovo that. I hope they’re listening.

• A. Several media players are available for the Linux operating system, so you should not have any trouble finding a program to play the music files salvaged from your old Windows XP machine, which is now unsupported by Microsoft. Many programs cannot play tracks with copy restrictions built in, but if you converted the songs to unprotected MP3 files or another unrestricted format, they should play fine on a Linux system.

• Rather than Web archive files, developers will deploy new applications to the Google Cloud Platform using Docker containers with the application, a Jetty server and a streamlined version of the Linux OS. This approach will also make it possible for Google to offer pre-tested Docker container instances containing specific versions of Jetty, the OS and the Java Development Kit best suited for specific use cases.

Desktop

• Kano is a device that allows its user to essentially make his or her own computer. The kit comes with a clear plastic case, speaker, keyboard, Wi-Fi dongle, and a Raspberry Pi. For those who are not familiar with Raspberry Pi, it is a $25 computer about the size of a credit card targeted for those that want to build their own computer and save money.

Kernel Space

• John Linville is a principal engineer at Red Hat and the maintainer for wireless LANs in the Linux kernel. In this video he gives us a guided tour of his home office, including his Fedora and RHEL workstations, his collection of vintage hardware, and a few retro computing projects underway. (For more, see the full series of Linux kernel developer videos.)

• Chris Mason at Facebook sent in his Btrfs pull request on Friday for the Linux 3.18 kernel.

• Notable Btrfs file-system changes for Linux 3.18 include cleaning up and improing the RAID recovery/repair support, fsync fixes, and a variety of other fixes and clean-ups. The rest of the changes are really just across the board while there’s around 2,000 lines of new code.

• While we’re just one week in for what’s expected to be a longer than usual merge window, here’s a look at the top work so far for the Linux 3.18 kernel.

• One of the main features for the Xen pull request submitted for the Linux 3.18 kernel are pvscsi front-end and back-end drivers. Xen’s pvSCSI yields support to use physical SCSI devices from within a Xen domain. The back-end pvSCSI driver running in the Domain-0 does the majority of the I/O work while the front-end driver running from domU passes the requests to the pvSCSI driver back-end.

• The media pull request was submitted yesterday for the Linux 3.18 kernel.

Graphics Stack

• As anticipated, Andy Ritger of NVIDIA presented at XDC2014 in Bordeaux, France the company’s plans to support alternative window managers beyond X11 when it comes to their Linux graphics driver. NVIDIA is working on some significant improvements to their closed-source Linux driver to support Mir and Wayland.

• Matt Turner, an Intel OTC developer and long-time open-source graphics contributor, presented at XDC2014 Bordeaux about progress made with their GLSL compiler. Connor Abbott, fresh out of high school who was an Intel intern this summer, presented his work on the new “NIR” intermediate representation.

• Samuel Pitoiset has been working hard to reverse-engineer NVIDIA’s hardware performance counters of their GPU and to allow them to be taken to their full potential under the open-source Nouveau Linux graphics driver.

• Keith Packard of Intel and the X.Org Server maintainer presented at this week’s XDC2014 Bordeaux conference about the state of GLAMOR, accelerating X.Org’s 2D over OpenGL / OpenGL ES in a device-independent manner rather than each hardware driver requiring custom 2D acceleration code-paths.

• When X.Org Foundation board member Martin Peres isn’t busy hacking on the Nouveau open-source NVIDIA driver, he’s often focusing on software security related work through his studies. One of his recent endeavors in trying to improve Linux security is working on a library for Wayland Security Modules (libWSM) to support security decision making on Wayland-based graphic stacks.

• The new OpenGL ABI does have the interest of other graphics driver developers and also the community as its main benefit is that it can allow for multiple GPU drivers to co-exist on the same system without running into any collisions over the OpenGL libraries, etc. The new ABI is also to promote EGL over GLX and allow multiple drivers to even exist for the same process. This is the first major OpenGL ABI update in more than ten years.

• Peter Hutterer on the behalf of the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors issued an update regarding their state at this year’s XDC2014 Bordeaux conference.

• Libinput is the library that’s been under development for one year now to try to work out a single input library implementation that can be shared by all Wayland compositors and other potential use-cases. Peter Hutterer gave an update on this input stack during this week’s XDC2014 conference in Bordeaux.

Benchmarks

• The latest Linux graphics benchmarks I ran from the high-end Maxwell GeForce GTX 980 graphics card were some anti-aliasing tests.

• Curious if running Linux games via Steam’s Big Picture Mode causes a performance impact over a conventional desktop session?

Applications

• In the past, I’ve covered various astronomy packages that help you explore the universe of deep space. But, space starts a lot closer to home. It actually begins a few hundred miles above your head. There are lots of things in orbit right above you. In this article, I look at one of the tools available to help you track the satellites that are whizzing around the Earth: Gpredict.

• Thunderbird is the powerful email client from Mozilla, with support for POP3 for keeping email locally and IMAP for remote storage. In addition, it features chat support, feeds reader and newsgroups. The interface is similar to the one of the newer versions of Firefox.

• Brackets is an open-source editor for web designers, developed by Adobe, with a wealth of features and a huge number of extensions, which can be installed in a few clicks, turning Brackets into a very powerful tool for web developers.

• Since just a few days ago I had a look at the latest SMPlayer release, it’s a good time now to overview yet another movie player written in Qt: QMPlay2.

Proprietary

• Ubuntu Linux users no longer need to employ arcane workarounds to watch Netflix on their computers.

• Now that Netflix is finally letting people watch their steaming services on Linux, there is a sort of confusion among the Linux users regarding the supported platforms that has to be addressed.

• If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you’ve probably tried to stream video on Linux systems like Fedora. And as with many for-pay services, your experience varied. As of the latest Google Chrome browser release, though, your troubles are over.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• Wine developers are contemplating a staging-like tree where new changes could be introduced faster before being mainlined inside Wine, but this idea doesn’t catch the fancy of all Wine developers.

• As a continuation of the article earlier about a kernel-like staging tree for Wine, there’s one mailing list post in particular that deserves its own post… It appears for at least the time being that the Direct3D command stream patches have been stalled from being mainlined.

Games

• Borderlands 2 recently arrived for Linux, even after Gearbox president Randy Pitchford warned Linux users not to get their hopes up. Steam also just hit a milestone of over 700 Linux games available—712 at the moment. A full 18 percent of all the games available on Steam now support Linux and SteamOS! That’s not a bad start when SteamOS—the root cause of Linux’s gaming resurgence—hasn’t even been officially released yet.

• The 90′s Arcade Racer was funded on Kickstarter in February 2013 and a Linux version was promised by its creators. I am really waiting for this game, but somehow it is taking them a lot longer to develop than anticipated. The original release date was set for November 2013, and then they said it would come out this last summer.

• Linux gamers have a very interesting weekend ahead of them, with all kinds of titles getting massive discounts. One of the most interesting collections is called the Classic Explorer Pack and features three great games.

• Another World is one of the iconic games of the ‘90s and it’s been a reference point in gaming for the past 20 years. Now, Linux users can also buy the remastered version and enjoy it with the rest of the world.

• Regular readers may recall PCGamingWiki contributor soeb’s previous high level analyses of Civilization V and XCOM: Enemy Unknown (read here for our previous coverage), which looked at the visuals, performance and end user experiences provided by their Linux ports.

• Valve is currently working on their Steam Machines, which is their console that is powered by their version of Linux called SteamOS.

• A couple of old Sid Meier classics were released on Steam, more precisely Sid Meier’s Colonization, Pirates! Gold Plus and Sid Meier’s Cover Action.

• The pack includes three classic games, all ported to Linux, and the fans of these gems can buy all of them for 11,24€, with a 25% discount. The individual games cost 5.24€ each. The offer will be available until October 16.

• It’s still in early access as well, so it’s not yet feature complete, and it has mixed reviews, so it’s up to you how you feel about that.

• It’s done by a different team than the other Shadowrun games, so it will play differently.

• The Hive is a story-driven real-time strategy game with nice and detailed graphics which was launched on Thursday on Steam Early Access for Windows. And it seems like developers Skydome are now working on a Linux version! At least according to what they said in a tweet and on their Steam forum.

• Wargame is a highly acclaimed real-time strategy with modern graphics, single-player and multi-player modes, different nations and a huge amount of units (over 750).

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The Linux operating systems are present everywhere, not only in the homes of regular people. They are used in all sorts of projects, either for scientific or entertainment purposes. By the looks of it, KDE has been spotted in a short presentation video for the famous Weta Digital studio.

• As you may recall, I recently switched to GitBook.io as my primary publishing platform. Alas, my GitBook.io experiment didn’t last long. Everything worked smoothly until I encountered a rather serious issue: for some reason, EPUB, MOBI, and PDF files generated by the service didn’t include any images. I duly submitted a bug report and tried to contact the developers via Twitter, but I got no response.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Using the Raspberry Pi for around the past two years has generally been pretty fantastic. It took us a year or so to stop being surprised by just how much it was able to do in the various projects we saw or made ourselves. One thing that we always struggled with was web browsing though; Midori was slow and laggy and it would take up all the Raspberry Pi’s system resources as well.

Distributions

Reviews

• Edition with its abundance of games, choices of emulators and the fact it comes with Steam, PlayOnLinux and Dosbox pre-installed.

• The system was stable in the most part but you can’t always guarantee what an emulator is going to do and on the odd occasion my screen resolution changed.

• With so many games available the LXDE menu system felt a bit overloaded. Ways around this problem include adding your favourites to the panel at the top or installing either Slingscold for a nicer dash style display or Cairo as a dock.

• All in all, SparkyLinux Gameover Edition provided me with the most fun that I have had in ages and it has been a welcome guest during my internet free week.

• ROSA Desktop Fresh R4 is the latest edition of the bleeding-edge edition of ROSA Desktop, a Linux desktop distribution from ROSA Laboratory, a Linux software solutions provider based in Moscow, Russia.

• One the greatest strengths of Mint 17 lies in its revised Update Manager which provides a lot more information than Ubuntu’s package management choices (Synaptic, Aptitude, dpkg, and Apt-Get) do about each update type (regular updates, security updates, backports, and romeo updates) which makes it much easier to maintain systems.

• So, if you’re looking for an elegant, high-performance, easy-to-use, highly functional, stable, and maintainable desktop Linux that is a real alternative to Windows and perhaps the most user-friendly distribution available, Linux Mint 17 is probably what you want.

New Releases

• 4MLinux 10.0 Allinone Edition FINAL released.

• The BackBox Team is pleased to announce the updated release of BackBox Linux, the version 4.0!

• This release includes features such as Linux Kernel 3.13, EFI mode, Anonymous mode, LVM + Disk encryption installer, privacy additions and armhf Debian packages.

• Like the phoenix rising from the ashes Lunar Linux is back with a vengeance; a lot of overhauling have been done all over the core tools, packages, installer and the ISO-builder. Even though our journey to reach this milestone have been a long one we hope that the changes and quality improvements we’ve made was worth the wait. So what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy of Lunar Linux while it is hot!

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• In today’s Linux news are reviews of Cylon Linux and OpenMandriva’s latest. Folks are all abuzz about a Netflix announcement from Canonical and more drones are discovered running Linux. In addition, we have several software stories to share with names like Marble, Epiphany, and Scribus.

Slackware Family

Debian Family

• FFmpeg 2.4.2 has kept the “Fresnel” codename and is now the most advanced version out there. The big release of the 2.4.x branch happened a month ago and this is just a maintenance iteration.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The Ubuntu 14.10 development cycle has been rather uneventful and no major features have been implemented. The same cannot be said about the thousands of other packages that are used in the operating system, as most of them have been updated. This is also true for the Linux kernel.

Devices/Embedded

• At this year’s VISION exhibition, Vision Components (hall 1, stand F42) will showcase a new generation of intelligent cameras with innovative hardware and software. Operating with Linux firmware, the systems follow a new processor approach: until now, VC has been using freely programmable DSPs combined with the proprietary VCRT operating system which ensures optimal hardware utilization. Now, the VC Z series employs a new Xilinx hardware module that integrates FPGA logic and a dual core ARM processor. Both elements can be programmed. This design not only minimizes the required space on the board, but also enables a considerable speed boost, if required: since the FPGA can now be used for image processing, this process can be executed up to ten times faster than without FPGA support.

Phones

Tizen

• Yesterday we reported that UK online retailer unlocked mobiles had confirmed pre-orders for the Gear S, well today It looks like the momentum isn’t stopping there.

Android

• After announcing that Android L would support 64-bit hardware way back in June, Google has finally released a 64-bit Android L developer preview emulator image. Curiously, though, it’s a 64-bit image for 64-bit Intel chips (Atom/Bay Trail) and not ARM. With Nvidia’s 64-bit Tegra K1 supposedly just around the corner, but no tools for developers to actually create or prepare 64-bit ARMv8 apps, what exactly is going on?

• “If privacy is important to you, the Blackphone is almost certainly what you’re after in a mobile device. Besides, you don’t have much choice currently. One thing I’m still coming to terms with, however, is the concept of selling peace of mind.

• As Edward Snowden continues to leak information about how the NSA and other national government agencies were/are hoovering up every bit of personal data available to them, digital privacy has never been a hotter topic. With people wanting more control over how their data is handled, it was inevitable that products like the Blackphone would appear.”

• Before now, all those robots were controlled with an arcane, outmoded interface. Specifically, by remote operators using a joystick and a separate monitor based on a Linux platform, according to iRobot Technical Director of Defence and Security Orin Hoffman. Operating a mission-critical robot using an interface akin to a disembodied prize claw added stress to an already stressful task.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• In this age of technology there has been an ever increasing need for better mobile security, quite simply because we as a society use our mobile smartphones, and devices like tablets more than we use our computers these days. Attempted NSA email tapping and personal information hunting through Google and other sources as well as cyber attacks from hackers and cyber criminals is a big red flag that we need to do absolutely everything we can to protect ourselves from any such attack. Other examples of obvious reasons why better mobile security is needed can be summed up with the recent numerous accounts of leaked images from various cloud accounts and applications like the third party snapchat app from earlier. While nothing can replace the habit of making sure you have a decent password, one way to get better mobile security has been through the use of the Blackphone, a recently released Android based smartphone from Secret Circle which has highly advanced encryption standards to give the user back the control.

Free Software/Open Source

• Facebook has open sourced some of its community cookbooks to allow a wider world of software application developers to consider using Facebook’s Chef framework.

• Facebook decided to release these findings after designing what it calls (in somewhat grandiose terms) “a new paradigm” that lets a software engineer make any change he/she needs, to any systems he/she owns, via simple data-driven APIs (while also scaling to Facebook’s huge infrastructure and minimizing the size of the team that would have to own the system).

• Pica8 kicked off a busy week in the increasingly competitive software-defined networking space, making moves that officials say will help fuel the adoption of Linux-based OSes on bare-metal switches.

• [...]

• ONIE has been accepted by the Open Compute Project, and enables businesses to run a range of operating systems—such as Pica8′s PicOS or Cumulus Networks’ operating system—on the same switch hardware. Vendors like Pica8 and Cumulus Networks are championing the use of standards-based operating systems running on low-cost bare-metal switches as an alternative in the software-defined network (SDN) space to more expensive and complex hardware from the likes of Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks.

• Open Source 2.0 news has a lot in store for users that will surely light up their day!

• Tech News World reported that users play major roles in the upgrade of features, functionalities, rewrites and new releases. Open Source 2.0 news alleged that its developers are trying to edge out their competitors’ dominance in the market.

• GitHub‘s Ben Balter urges government contractors to adopt open source products and software development practices to build on operational and cost efficiencies and ensure that information technology systems use mature code and receive continuous maintenance support.

• Balter, who works to drive government awareness for GitHub, writes in a guest post published Thursday on FedScoop that contractors can gain operational benefits as well as attract potential customers by open-sourcing software.

Events

• As I looked around the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing career fair (PDF) floor, I stopped by the Pinterest booth and learned that open source software plays a big role at the company. And even better, Pinterest now plays a big role in the world of open source software, too.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• It’s interesting to hear Mozilla taking this stance, because, after a series of kerfuffles with the Internet Advertising Bureau, the company is moving ahead with multiple initiatives that will put ads in front of Firefox browser users, including “directory tiles.”

• It was back in August of 2013 that The Internet Advertising Bureau started firing off screed after screed against Mozilla for its plans to block advertising cookies in the Firefox browser by default. The bureau even took out newspaper ads claiming that Mozilla’s claims that it had a right to help users protect their privacy was basically hogwash.

• The specs and hardware of Sony Xperia SP reveal it is smaller but faster in performance than its fellow Android mid-range smartphone from the same label, Sony Xperia C. Both handsets have many similar features that they give their buyers a difficult time in choosing which smartphone to pick for their own.

• Xperia SP debuted to conquer the mid-range sphere with loads of technology from its bigger brother Xperia Z, but with a price tag friendly to the budget-conscious buyers. Shortly following Xperia SP with its own set of specs and features to bet, was Xperia C.

SaaS/Big Data

• Mark Voelker is no stranger to the OpenStack community. As a technical leader at Cisco and a co-founder of the Triangle OpenStack Meetup, Mark gets to see OpenStack from a lot of different lenses.

• In this interview about his work at Cisco and his upcoming All Things Open talk, Mark shares his thoughts on where OpenStack is and where it’s heading as topics like Big Data and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) continue to emerge in the OpenStack roadmaps for many companies.

• Amazon boasts a broad range of tools for managing an EC2 instance, but partners say third-party and open source tools expand on Amazon’s offerings.

Funding

• In the rarified world of ‘private data clouds’ a handful of companies dominate. On the open source side, Red Hat acquired Ceph for $175m and Gluster for $136m. Then there was EMC, which acquired ScaleIO for $200m.

BSD

• In this process they’ve found more success making DragonFlyBSD’s kernel more like Linux than trying to adapt the complex, quick-moving drivers to their code-base. “It makes more sense to change the DragonFly kernel to behave like Linux than trying to constantly keep up and change the drivers to use *BSD-specific APIs. In a way I’m porting DragonFly to the drm drivers and not the drivers to DragonFly.”

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Guix talk of this summer’s GNU Hackers Meeting is now available on-line.

Project Releases

• Basically it is a roughly 4 years old project. This is about two thirds the whole history of the Redis project. Yet, it is only today, that I’m releasing a Release Candidate, the first one, of Redis 3.0.0, which is the first version with Cluster support.

• A new release 0.1.0 of the RPushbullet package (interfacing the neat Pushbullet service) landed on CRAN today.

Openness/Sharing

• In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the the future of Linux, Google’s Internet of Things (IoT) standard, a new Code.org crowdfunding campaign, and more!

Open Hardware

• Crowdsupply is generally a good place to spot cool open source projects looking for funding: Tah is an Open source, Arduino-compatible Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) platform for use as a beacon, microcontroller, and HID device.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• In August 2014, CNN was accused of directly participating in the media blackout of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) vaccine fraud.

• Six months into West Africa’s Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heeding calls for substantial intervention in the region.

• On Sept. 16, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has killed over 2,600 people, an alarming figure that experts say will rise quickly if the disease is not contained.

• Mr. Obama’s announcement came on the heels of growing international impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government’s “infuriatingly” slow response to the outbreak.

• Assistance efforts have already stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to foreign healthcare workers over Africans.

• Duncan had come to the United States to marry his fiancée. He had contracted the disease in Liberia while helping a pregnant Ebola victim to the hospital. His family has voiced fears he was given inferior treatment because he is an African, not a U.S. national. Duncan, who had no health insurance, was initially sent home from a Dallas hospital, despite telling a nurse he had been to Liberia. New questions are also being raised about his treatment after he was diagnosed. Three other Ebola patients treated in the United States have received blood transfusions from survivors of the disease, but Duncan did not. There have been conflicting reports over whether one of the survivors, Dr. Kent Brantly, has a blood type that matched Duncan’s. Duncan’s fiancée, Louise Troh, was unable to see him before he died, as she was kept in isolation. In a statement, Troh said: “I trust a thorough examination will take place regarding all aspects of his care.”

Security

• Some Snapchat users are waking up to an unpleasant surprise this morning. A cache nearly 13GB of private Snapchats is now circulating through 4Chan, in a leak the users have dubbed The Snappening. Snapchat has faced security problems before, but this time the fault appears to be with a third-party app used to catalog snaps that would otherwise be deleted. While users assumed the snaps would only be visible to Snapchat HQ and the third-party app, a data breach left them circulating through the open web.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has logged nearly 2,000 hours of drone flights over the continental U.S. on operations unrelated to immigration enforcement since 2011. This means the DHS is spying on Americans with drones, although they are not reporting precisely what they are doing or why.

• In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”. As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.S

• 38 years ago, on October 6, 1976, Cubana Airlines Flight 455 was downed by terrorists, only now known to be CIA operatives; experts further claim it was not the only case when CIA was sponsoring terrorists.

• “The US Government, being consistent with its stated commitment to fight terrorism, should act without double standards against those who, from US soil, have carried out terrorist acts against Cuba,” said Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Barbados Lisette Perez, as cited by the Barbados Advocate, during the ceremony of commemorating the victims at the Cubana Monument at Paynes Bay, Barbados.

• Three women who protested the United States’ use of drones are now facing federal charges – and $1,300 each in fines – after being accused of trying to enter the National Security Agency’s protected property in Maryland.

• Barack Obama could have been worse in terms of foreign policy. Now, worse is a silly word to use when you’re talking about life and death. It’s not going to comfort survivors to know that more people died in the last war or Hellfire missile strike than in this one that killed their loved ones.

• The play’s subject matter is not likely to become dated any time soon.

• In May 2013, some 11 years into the War on Terror, President Obama took a break from reviewing target sets and kill lists to deliver a much-anticipated “drone speech” at the National Defense University in Washington DC. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us,” Obama admonished; “we have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’”

• Five years after a brand-new President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, a substantial majority of his fellow countrymen believe he still doesn’t deserve it and never did.

• The former state senator received the prestigious global prize in 2009 after having done little if anything to earn it.

• Since then, however, Democrat Obama has ordered two troop surges into Afghanistan, initiated an air war to successfully oust Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, who was then executed by a mob. That country has since fallen into a lawless chaos of feuding militias and terrorist training grounds.

• Yemen has been the target of the US drone programme like Pakistan and Somalia. And in revulsion at the drones, one of the slogans of the Houthis has been: “Death to America”. This strain could be seen across the Arab world and with ISIS breaking new ground and advancing in spite of US aerial bombing, the omens for the US and its allies do not seem promising.

• In continued resistance to escalating U.S. wars, 75 people marched and rallied at the gates of Hancock Air Force Base here on Oct. 5. The marchers came from across the region, including Buffalo, Rochester, Utica, Albany, Ithaca, Binghamton and Syracuse itself.

• On October 7, 2014, Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker appeared before Judge Matt Whitworth in Jefferson City, MO, federal court on a charge of criminal trespass to a military facility. The charge was based on their participation, at Whiteman Air Force Base, in a June 1st 2014 rally protesting drone warfare. Kelly and Walker attempted to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the Base Commander, encouraging the commander to stop cooperating with any further usage of unmanned aerial vehicles, (drones) for surveillance and attacks.

• The government has publicly disapproved of the drone programme while tacitly agreeing to it in private with the US.

• Washington has developed a silent empire, a fourth branch of government alongside the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court: the national security state.

• Henry Kissinger projects the public image of a judicious elder statesman whose sweeping knowledge of history lets him rise above the petty concerns of today, in order to see what is truly in the national interest. Yet as Kissinger once said of Ronald Reagan, his knowledge of history is “tailored to support his firmly held preconceptions.” Instead of expanding his field of vision, Kissinger’s interpretation of the past becomes a set of blinders that prevent him from understanding either his country’s values or its interests. Most importantly, he cannot comprehend how fidelity to those values may advance the national interest.

• US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drew up plans to “smash Cuba” with air strikes nearly 40 years ago, government papers obtained by researchers show.

• In 1976, the Times reports, he was so “apoplectic” about Fidel Castro’s sending troops to support Communist insurgents in Angola that he wanted to, “as he said, ‘cobber the pipsqueak,” according to longtime Cuba expert Peter LeoGrande, who has co-authored a book with the relevant documents, newly declassified by the Ford Presidential Library.

Transparency Reporting

• Having reviewed both sides of the argument comprehensively, it has become very clear to me who is on the right side of history in the clash of ideas and ethics between Google and WikiLeaks that is the main subject addressed in Assange’s 2014 book When Google Met WikiLeaks (read my review of Assange’s book here). Without a doubt, the ethics and deeds of WikiLeaks offer a far superior value system: one that reflects the public interest best.

• Julian Assange has entered Australia’s surveillance debate dismissing as “absurd” and “meaningless” government assurances that telecommunications interception is limited and subject to strict oversight.

Finance

• The Washington Post is having some trouble figuring out why more Americans aren’t enthusiastic about the state of the economy, and why they’re not giving Barack Obama and Democratic politicians more credit for turning things around. But it’s not so hard to figure out.

• The EU believes that Luxembourg may have broken the law by giving Amazon special treatment. It may have been that the country offered the company lower tax rates. This isn’t illegal, but making corporate deals that aren’t available for all companies is, reports The New York Times.

Censorship

• The Conservatives invoke charge of media censorship to justify a copyright law change to benefit political war rooms.

• President Erdogan’s new style of media censorship is less brutal—and much more effective.

• Like clockwork, another news organization is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s hair-trigger take down process to stifle political commentary just when that commentary is most timely. This time it’s Gannett Co. Inc., a massive media conglomerate that owns, among many other publications, the Courier-Journal in Kentucky. The Courier-Journal’s editorial board interviewed a Democratic candidate for Senate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and streamed the interview live. That stream included 40 uncomfortable seconds of the candidate trying desperately to avoid admitting she voted for President Obama (the president is none too popular in Kentucky). A critic posted the video clip online—and Gannett promptly took it down.

Privacy

• Former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander has held investments in a corporation that identifies itself as a “world leader in cloud solutions.” And in a “data gathering and research” firm. And in a company that develops software that improves the quality of images captured by surveillance cameras. And in a radio frequency business that, among other things, manufactures amplifiers for air traffic control, radar, and surveillance.

• The NSA once said that if revealed, this information [pdf below] would threaten national security.

• The agency refused VICE News’ July request for copies of Alexander’s financial disclosure reports, which he is required to fill out annually under a federal law known as the Ethics and Government Act. The law also states that government agencies are required to release the files upon request.

• The check also revealed that a special tool called MUSCULAR had been deployed by NSA to keep a tab on Google and Yahoo data links. The same is being assisted by a British Agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

• To do this, NSA and GCHQ first try to hack their way into the links and try to capture information sent to and fro through the fibre optic cables around the world.

• A drastic curtailment of government surveillance powers is scheduled to occur if the House of Representatives allows a crucial section of the U.S. Patriot Act to expire.

• And we have no recourse. If you resist, you go to jail, maybe not for long, not yet anyway, but jail is jail. Object to TSA and you miss your flight. They know it and use it. The courts do nothing about this. They too are feds.

• New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Monday unveiled change to the government’s oversight of its intelligence agencies, following a long-running controversy over allegations of illegal spying.

• Key announced he would take on the new role of Minister for National Security and Intelligence while delegating ministerial responsibility for the country’s two intelligence agencies — the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) — to Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson.

• The European Commission should disclose documents relating to the U.K.’s mass online surveillance activities, European ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has said.

• The draft recommendation follows a complaint made last year by a German journalist, who asked the Commission for access to documents relating to British activities exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents included correspondence between the justice commissioner at the time, Viviane Reding, and the British foreign secretary at the time, William Hague, as well as a letter from Reding’s office to the U.K.’s permanent representative to the E.U., and letters from citizens to the Commission asking for the espionage to be investigated.

• With an uncommon view of history in action, a new documentary captures Edward Snowden’s leak of NSA documents as it unfolded in a Hong Kong hotel room.

• Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who blew the whistle on the US government’s mass surveillance programs, has been reunited in Russia with his long-time girlfriend, a new documentary shown on Friday revealed.

• Fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden has reunited in Russia with his girlfriend, according to a documentary premiered in New York.

• “Citizenfour,” the closest look we’ll ever have at how the largest leak in U.S. government history went down, is about to premier at the New York Film Festival.

• In response, politicians from all over the United States rushed to speak out in favor of cybersecurity laws, using the attack to spread fear in support of their legislation of choice.

• The hackers who stole information from 76 million households and 7 million businesses aren’t the only ones exploiting people in the JP Morgan Chase security breach. Politicians are, too.

• After failing to identify the potentially disastrous Heartbleed bug, the United States Department of Homeland Security has successfully lobbied to have the ability to conduct “regular and proactive scans” of civilian agency systems.

• At the end of the Laura Poitras doc, the famed informant registers shock over another who outranks him

• Citizenfour, new film on spying whistleblower Edward Snowden, shows journalist Greenwald discussing other source

• As Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour premieres in New York tonight, realscreen has learned of another major documentary on Edward Snowden in the works, set to launch in 2015.

• Early this morning, a mysterious statue of Edward Snowden appeared in Union Square Park in New York City, opposite the Abraham Lincoln Statue.

• “I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power,” Comey told CBS News’ Scott Pelley in an interview for “60 Minutes” that will air on Sunday. “You cannot trust people in power.

• One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight — until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that yes, the agency still exists and yes, it still has some insane policies and restrictions.

• Steven Aftergood of FAS Secrecy News went searching for an answer to an almost-unanswerable conundrum. And he got the most nonanswer-like answer imaginable.

• Earlier this year the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Security Agency seeking a copy of a report it sent to Congress detailing authorized disclosures of classified information to the media. The request was rejected. Why? Because the report is classified.

• A lot of information has been leaked about the government and its various agencies, not the least of which being the NSA. Of course, not all leaks are unauthorized — the government itself will leak its own information at times, the reasons for which are varied and, despite requests otherwise, still secret. A recent Freedom of Information Act request for information about what leaks the government has made was denied due to claims of posing a potential threat to national security.

• To infiltrate foreign networks and gain access to sensitive systems, the NSA has been using the tactics of “physical subversion” – deploying undercover agents in Chinese, German, South Korean and possibly even American companies, The Intercept reports.

• The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

• As a much-anticipated documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden premiers in New York this evening, new revelations are being published simultaneously that expose more information about the NSA’s work to compromise computer networks and devices.

• Europe is taking a long hard look at its data protection laws in the post-Snowden climate. As US public cloud providers face scrutiny over Safe Harbour rules, the EU end users that rely on them are left with some pretty fundamental questions on their future of their cloud services.

• Translated into 16 languages, IFightSurveillance.org highlights images and quotes from activists, business leaders, lawyers and technologists. For instance, initial profiles include Vladan Sobjer, whose organization, SHARE Defense, helps Serbians learn about encryption; Ron Deibert, whose group, the Citizen Lab, analyzes malware and digital threats to vulnerable groups from Bahrain to Iran; and Anne Roth, whose own surveillance by German law enforcement led her to work for better protections for her fellow citizens.

• The EFF has launched a new site dedicated to educating users about how to resist pervasive surveillance online, through the promotion of encryption and other tools and the publication of first-person stories from people around the world who have fought surveillance in various ways.

• Why did Bradley Cooper and Jessica Alba fail to record a tip when they paid their cabbies during New York City taxi rides back in 2013? Why was Cooper near a Mediterranean restaurant in Greenwich Village? Why was Alba at a ritzy hotel in Soho?

• Mentioning the idea of separate, closed networks, even for ostensibly noble aims such as protecting privacy or guarding critical infrastructure, is sure to raise the spectre of balkanization ? the hypothetical scenario where the Internet mimics the political upheaval and splintering of the Balkans starting in the 19th Century.

• Part political thriller and part spy novel, Privacy Lost exposes domestic surveillance in a post-9/11 world.

• Before Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency and Prism made headlines, a group of technologists was dedicated to making the Internet more anonymous.

• Long before Edward Snowden blew the lid off the government’s widespread Internet snooping, an unknown Bay Area telecommunications company was striking back at an equally secretive but far more common tool in the FBI’s shadowy world of surveillance.

• Congress has quietly begun reviewing every U.S. government intelligence collection program. It’s got the potential to trigger the next big fight between The Hill and Obama’s spies.

• In an interview with CNBC, National Security Agency recruiter Steven LaFountain announced a half-dozen camps around the U.S. where kids as young as 13 have a chance to train with high-level programming experts to learn the fundamentals of preventing cyber attacks and other security breaches.

• Thankfully, legislation to limit the NSA’s power is being considered by Congress. The USA Freedom Act aims to end the collection of American citizens’ metadata and limit such programs as PRISM, the NSA program that collects and stores vast amounts of electronic data on national and international levels. This act would also limit the recording of phone calls to very specific circumstances and allow companies such as Google and Facebook to legally disclose government demands for users’ private data.

• When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit convenes Nov. 4 to hear a challenge to government surveillance, lawyers will make their case to one judge — Senior Judge David Sentelle — who has grappled in recent years with the intersection of individual privacy rights and technology.

• All sorts of law enforcement officials have angrily decried Apple and Google’s decisions, using all sorts of arguments against the idea of default encryption (including that old chestnut, the “think of the children” argument). One former DHS and NSA official even suggested that because China might forbid Apple from selling a device with encryption by default, the US should sink to the same level and forbid Apple from doing so here, in some sort of strange privacy race to the bottom.1 The common thread amongst all of this hysteria is that encryption will put vital evidence outside of the reach of law enforcement.

• A COMEDY CLUB in Barcelona is experimenting with charging punters per laugh using face-recognition technology.

• The BBC reported that face-recognition software is being used at the Teatreneu club to track the enjoyment of a show and charge fans the equivalent of 23p per laugh. It would seem the club is literally looking to get the last laugh.

• The firm’s principal cyber-security strategist Jeff Jones was presenting at the IP Expo Europe exhibition in London on Thursday, where he suggested that the leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had impacted the Redmond technology giant and the cloud computing market as a whole.

• The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard on September 24 oral arguments on whether the secret surveillance program known as the System of Operative-Investigative Measures, or SORM, used by Russian law enforcement agencies violates the human right to privacy. The judgment is expected soon, however Russian experts doubt the ECHR will put an end to the controversial program.

• Once again, our annoyance and fear threshold for location-tracking technology is being tested anew.

• It’s right for people to be vigilant about privacy but often well-intentioned writers paint with too broad a brush or don’t bother to get the full story. This particular story focuses on the “conspiratorial” dimension of the beacon installation and fails to understand several important technical limitations of beacons.

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) has turned the internet into a “giant surveillance platform,” a leading security specialist has said.

• The president’s spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of millions of us and lie about it.

• The president continues to dispatch his National Security Agency spies as if he were a law unto himself, and Congress — which is also being spied upon — has done nothing to protect the right to privacy that the Fourth Amendment was written to ensure. Congress has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, yet it has failed miserably to do so. But the spying is now so entrenched in government that a sinister and largely unnoticed problem lurks beneath the surface.

• The German Federal Intelligence Agency works closely with the USA, and because of that it may have violated laws. A parliamentary committee has launched an investigation into potential violations of privacy.

• The Big Brother threat frightens Germans more than the terror threat.

• According to a recent survey, 67 percent of Germans view surveillance of their Internet activity by foreign secret services as the biggest threat to their freedom.

• Control of Internet companies ranked second on the list of threats to freedom, with 61 percent of Germans concerned about these firms sharing their personal data with governments, according to the annual “Freedom Index Germany” survey conducted by the John Stuart Mill Institute and the Allensbach Institute.

• A provision of the “foreign fighters” national security bill currently being considered by Parliament would allow the same department that accidentally published details of thousands of asylum seekers’ identities to collect fingerprint and retina scans of every person entering and leaving Australia without legislative approval…

• Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden will speak via video chat from Moscow during the Observer Ideas festival this weekend in London

Civil Rights

• By law, they’re Israeli colonies, but NPR’s guest calls them ‘neighborhoods’

• More doubts raised over forensics and statements of Burmese pair held for Hannah Witheridge and David Miller killings

• As a vocal critic of religion, it comes as no surprise that Bill finds fault with Islam. Yet to many, Bill’s vociferous support of Sam Harris statement that “Islam is the mother lode of all bad ideas” is deeply troubling.

• It was problematical even before I went. You had the feeling [President Lyndon] Johnson wasn’t telling the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin, but you couldn’t prove it. That the government was corrupt, but you couldn’t prove it. The North Vietnamese weren’t these kind people, like Jane Fonda said. You served the Constitution and if the president said go, that’s what you do. I could have gone to Sweden or Algeria. I just couldn’t have my friends over there doing the fighting.

• The Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban has rightly captured the world’s attention. But what about the invisible child victims of US drones?

• As Malala Yousafzai has told the media, that second when she was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan changed her life, (it is also changing the lives of others too), Malala has become a very marketable western commodity. My issue is not with Malala, I support and respect her wish of education for all, however (and it shames me to say this being British) I doubt she fully realizes the extent to which she is being exploited by her new “mentors” in the UK.

• There is an element of risk to all now living in Pakistan since the US led War on Terror brought internal conflict to the region but there is only special treatment for some of those affected. Why not fly out every child harmed by US drones to the west for the most up to date medical care, there are plenty for wellwishers to assist.

• The Nobel Peace Prize is required by Alfred Nobel’s will, which created it, to go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

• The Nobel Committee insists on awarding the prize to either a leading maker of war or a person who has done some good work in an area other than peace.

• The 2014 prize has been awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay, which is not a person but two people, and they have not worked for fraternity between nations or the abolition or reduction of standing armies but for the rights of children. If the peace prize is to be a prize for random good works, then there is no reason not to give it to leading advocates for the rights of children. This is a big step up from giving it to leading makers of war. But then what of the prize for peace and the mission of ending war that Nobel included in his will in fulfillment of a promise to Bertha von Suttner?

• Malala Yousafzay became a celebrity in Western media because she was a victim of designated enemies of Western empire. Had she been a victim of the governments of Saudi Arabia or Israel or any other kingdom or dictatorship being used by Western governments, we would not have heard so much about her suffering and her noble work. Were she primarily an advocate for the children being traumatized by drone strikes in Yemen or Pakistan, she’d be virtually unknown to U.S. television audiences.

• Without meaning to, Western supporters of Somali security forces were even arming various militias in the country, Sheikh said. The government was paying its soldiers very little, and irregularly, too. So many of the soldiers trained by the European training mission, EUTM, defected straight to their respective clan’s militia – and some to al-Shabab – taking all their freshly acquired skills with them.

• According to reports, the drone attacked hideouts of militants on the Cancharo Kandoa area of Afghanistan near Pakistan border.

• For Western critics of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is the quintessential resource for documenting his regime’s mass atrocities. But as the United States undertakes direct military involvement in Syria, the monitoring group’s methodical casualty counts and network of local sources have become a double-edged sword for Barack Obama’s administration.

• No longer just a PR problem for the Assad regime and radical Syrian rebel groups, the monitoring organization has begun publishing allegations of civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military. And the observatory’s founder, Rami Abdul Rahman, says he’s not going to stop.

• Trash is mostly what Ryan Devereaux serves up in his recent piece on investigative journalist Gary Webb.

• The CIA hires officers who might succeed in the midst of ambiguity — the murk of uncertainty, pressure, and the obligation to act now — but can also affirm the principles we are sworn to serve. For me — a former CIA officer who spent decades trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, who lived with the impossible task of getting it right every time when all choices were fraught with ill consequence — one truth stood out in its simple clarity: Torture is wrong. No hypothetical can gainsay that, and no circumstance can justify making an exception.

• Today would have been John Lennon’s 74th(!) birthday had he not been gunned down on the sidewalk outside of The Dakota in December 1980. Before his death, his political activism and pacifism endeared him to millions, but certainly not to the United States government. Check out this May 1972 FBI memo re: “Security matter dash revolutionary activities” with notes from the deportation hearings the Nixon administration was throwing at him…

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