● 05.16.15

● Links 16/5/2015: MAME Free Software. Rust 1.0, New Wine

Posted in News Roundup at 11:33 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Server

• Big Switch Networks got its start with the open-source Floodlight Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller. Big Switch’s current product portfolio has long since forked from Floodlight, but the company still has many ties in the open-source community.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Most often when talking of new OpenGL 4 extensions in Mesa it tends to be regarding the Intel Mesa driver given they’re the company investing the most into the Linux graphics stack, followed by the Radeon and Noveau drivers. However, this week in Mesa is some love to the fallback/debugging software rasterizers.

• Within Intel’s Beignet project for open-source OpenCL support on Linux systems with HD/Iris Graphics, there’s a OpenCL20 branch as part of Beignet Git. The OpenCL 2.0 support code hasn’t been touched in a few weeks, but it’s clearly in the works by the Intel China crew that’s been maintaining this project.

• With Mesa 10.6 due to be released in early June, our usual performance comparisons of this new Mesa 3D version will come. To get our latest round of Mesa open-source graphics driver benchmarking kicked off, here are benchmarks of Intel’s Iris Graphics when comparing Mesa 10.5 and 10.6 Git atop Ubuntu 15.04.

• While Wayland 1.8 is coming along, along with the Weston 1.8 update, it looks like the libweston functionality will be staved off for another release.

Applications

• Calibre, an eBook reader, converter, and editor that works on multiple platforms, has been upgraded to version 2.28 and it brings a very important new feature, the ability to convert any ebook to a DOCX file.

• The Git development team is proud to announce the immediate availability for download of the first maintenance release for Git 2.4, the stable branch of the acclaimed open-source distributed version control system.

• Lately, I have been dedicating a lot of my time (well, at least compared to what I used to) to Free Software projects. In particular, I have spent a moderate amount of time with two projects written in Python.

• In this post, I want to talk about the first, more popular project is called coursera-dl. To be honest, I think that I may have devoted much more time to it than to any other project in particular.

• RPM of PHP version 5.6.9 are available in remi repository for Fedora ≥ 21 and remi-php56 repository for Fedora ≤ 20 and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS).

• Yesterday morning in Barcelona, the day after the Gluster Summit, GlusterFS 3.7.0 got released. Close to 600 bug reports, a mix of feature requests, enhancements and problems have been addressed in a little over 1220 patches since July last year.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• The retail version of the Oculus Rift finally has a confirmed release window of early 2016, meaning virtual reality fans have just less than a year to create their ideal gaming environments. A crucial part of any VR setup is the rig powering the headset, and Oculus today released its recommended, minimum PC specs, including an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 video card, an Intel i5-4590 processor, 8GB RAM and Windows 7. Check out the full PC recommendations below. Meanwhile, Oculus has “paused” development for OS X and Linux systems “in order to focus on delivering a high-quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software and content on Windows,” Chief Architect Atman Binstock writes. Oculus doesn’t have a timeline for jumping back into Mac and Linux development.

• We knew that Larian was working on something big that stopped their work on the Linux version, and now we know what.

• There’s a unique sensation, familiar to people who switch from commercial operating systems to Linux, that I like to call the Linux Gap. At first, everything seems normal and logical; the pieces are in different places and have different names but they all do the same things. Then, you find a piece that’s just missing, or a design choice that puts one person’s pet peeve ahead of how the majority of people want to use the system. It’s a moment when you realize this software was built by committee, not crafted as a user experience, and that might be an enormous pain in the ass.

• Spec Ops: The Line is the latest Steam on Linux title, however, not everyone will be happy with the Linux port of this third-person shooter.

• Larian Studios have just revealed that they intend to release Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, a reworked version of the original game that was made available just last year, and it’s going to be available for the Linux platform as well.

• Metro: Last Light Redux is a remake of the original Metro: Last Light that was revamped and enhanced by the 4A Games studio. It’s already out for the Steam for Linux platform, but it looks like it’s not getting on GOG.com anything soon.

• Euro Truck Simulator 2, a game developed by SCS Software, has just received a new, huge Scandinavia map expansion DLC, which brings a lot of interesting new content.

• Axiom Verge, a 2D side-scrolling adventure game developed by Thomas Happ Games LLC has been released on Steam, and it also comes with a Linux version.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• It’s my pleasure to announce the release of the Qt 5.5 Beta today.

• Since we released Qt 5.4, a lot of effort has been put into fixing bugs reported both by our customers and the community. With this in focus, we went through a couple weeks of dedicated bug fixing here at The Qt Company. During this time, we worked 100% on fixing as many open issues as possible. Although the focus of Qt 5.5 has been on stability and performance, it also has some interesting new features and functionality to offer.

• Lars Knoll announced the Qt 5.5 beta today to the blog.qt.io. Lars noted, “Since we released Qt 5.4, a lot of effort has been put into fixing bugs reported both by our customers and the community. With this in focus, we went through a couple weeks of dedicated bug fixing here at The Qt Company. During this time, we worked 100% on fixing as many open issues as possible. Although the focus of Qt 5.5 has been on stability and performance, it also has some interesting new features and functionality to offer.”

• Qt Gamepad is inspired by the HTML5 Gamepad API while styled with a Qt-like API. Qt Gamepad offers C++ and Qt Quick APIs and there’s a plug-in architecture for providing different backends to interface with the actual gamepads.

• For those tracking the development of KDE Applications 15.08, the release schedule has now been firmed up. The feature freeze is to take place on 22 July along with the beta release, the KDE 15.08 RC release on 5 August, and the official KDE Applications 15.08 release is set for 19 August.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Last week GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 concluded in Depok, Indonesia. We now have a gallery with pictures from the Summit to share. Again, many thanks to everyone (including sponsors) who made the 2015 Summit possible!

• In complementing this morning’s early Fedora 22 Workstation benchmarks, here’s some numbers in looking at Fedora 22′s GNOME Shell 3.16 desktop under an X.Org Server as well as Wayland.

• On May 13, the GNOME Project, through Matthias Clasen, had the pleasure of informing us about the immediate availability of the second maintenance release of the GNOME 3.16 desktop environment.

Distributions

New Releases

• Arnault Perret had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia about the immediate availability for download of his HandyLinux 2.0 distribution based on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (Jessie) operating system.

• On May 12, Henry Jensen announced the immediate availability for download of the ConnochaetOS GNU/Linux 14.1 operating system based on the well-known Slackware and Salix OS projects.

Red Hat Family

• A survey from Red Hat showed that 21 percent of organisations have incorporated IoT projects into their business, while 28 percent plan to in the next year. Additionally, 70 percent plan to do so over the next five years.

• Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprise customers worldwide. It develops and offers operating system, virtualization, middleware, storage, and cloud technologies. RHT has a PE ratio of 8. Currently there are 19 analysts that rate Red Hat a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 4 rate it a hold.

• That book – The Open Organization – is about creating a successful business in today’s enormously fast-moving technology climate. The only way to do that is by eschewing the old ways of doing business – including a top-down hierarchical approach – in favor of a new approach that emphasizes soliciting and embracing everyone’s opinions, letting go of “command and control” and moving away from traditional management comfort zones.

Fedora

• I regularly go through most frequent problems reported to ABRT retrace server because it helps me prioritize bugs in Fedora that are assigned to my team. I think ABRT service is great for developers to prioritize their bugs + it helps collect much more data about the crash than an average user normally provides.

• With the open-source OpenCL news this week about Beignet working on OpenCL 2.0 support and Intel Cherryview now supporting OpenCL, I decided to see how the open-source OpenCL support is shaping up for the soon-to-be-released Fedora 22.

• Now, this is one great piece of news for all Fedora Linux and Cinnamon lovers, as it appears that the next major release of Fedora will come with an official Cinnamon Spin.

• Fedora 22 is scheduled for May 26 and the countdown has begun. There are only 11 days left and Matthew Miller today said that they’re “in pretty good shape” for an on-time release. Last minute bugs are being squashed but Miller didn’t rule out the possibility of a slip.

Debian Family

• I was inspired to write this by the recent announcements of public desire for a Debian fork, an idea that I find to be dumb and which likely will not lead to a lot of technical work.

• Nonetheless, I saw the same systemd debate unfold again. I’ve seen it countless times already, and there was virtually no variation from the archetypal formula. You have two ardent and vocal sides, roughly classified into an opponent/proponent dichotomy, neither of which have anything enlightening to say and both with their own unique set of misunderstandings that have memetically mutated into independent ideas that poison virtually every debate of this nature.

• I largely avoid systemd “debates” these days. They depress me due to all of the flawed reasoning and shitflinging emerging everywhere, but I felt that perhaps this little write-up could try to explain the background and causes for just why systemd inspires so much vitriol and turf warring.

Derivatives

• This Debian-based system is designed to preserve your privacy and anonymity online, providing better protection than just using the Tor browser alone on a typical operating system. How effective is this concealment-centric operating system’s tools? Well, in 2012, vulnerabilities for Tails topped the NSA’s most-wanted list alongside Tor and TrueCrypt.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The Tor Project announced the release of the Tor Browser 4.5.1 for all those who want to stay anonymous online. The new maintenance release is based on Mozilla Firefox 31.7.0 ESR, and it is available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows platforms.

• Meizu might launch MX4 Ubuntu Edition on May 18, if the teaser posted by the Chinese company on Twitter is to be believed and if all the chatter on Chinese news websites will prove to be accurate.

• A fridge called ChillHub that runs Ubuntu was just announced last week, but it looks like Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, was making a similar announcement back in 2006. And he was using the famous voice and accent of the Borat movie character.

Flavours and Variants

• It has been a busy week for Linux powered hardware. We have had drones, refrigerators and more conventional hardware that are all powered by various incarnations of Ubuntu, launched this week. Another new hardware release we have seen this week is the MintBox Mini, it is the result of a collaboration between Linux Mint and CompuLab.

• I’ve tried just about every flavor of Linux available. Not a desktop interface has gone by that hasn’t, in some way, touched down before me. So when I set out to start kicking the tires of Elementary OS Freya, I assumed it was going to be just another take on the same old desktop metaphors. A variation of GNOME, a tweak of Xfce, a dash of OSX or some form of Windows, and the slightest hint of Chrome OS. What I wound up seeing didn’t disappoint on that level—it was a mixed bag of those very things. However, that mixed bag turned out to be something kind of special … something every Linux user should take notice of.

Devices/Embedded

• With the release of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B priced at $35 and its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi Model B+, having recently had its price dropped to $25 you might have thought a cheaper computer of equal capabilities would be hard to find. But now along comes CHIP, a $9 Linux computer!

• Qualcomm has launched two WiFi-enabled SoCs that support the AllJoyn IoT standard, including a 650MHz, MIPS-based “QCA4531″ SoC that runs OpenWRT Linux.

• Arduino announced a smaller, cheaper “Mini” version of the Arduino Yún SBC that offers fewer real-world ports, but gives more control to Linux.

• Arduino, the Italian-based project that designs the official line of Arduino hacker boards, announced a $60 Arduino “Yún Mini” SBC today at the Maker Faire Bay Area. This was the same event where Arduino two years ago announced its first Linux-ready board. the Arduino Yún. The Yún Mini sacrifices a number of interfaces in order to reduce size, and gives the OpenWRT Linux based Linino distribution, which is also used by the original Yún, more control over the board’s functions.

• The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that the price of the original Raspberry Pi Model B+ has been cut, and it should now be found at $25 (€22).

• This week Samsung debuted three new system-on-chips on several Yocto-based Linux “Artik” computer-on-modules aimed at the Internet of Things market. Last week, a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign by Next Thing Co. launched a tiny, IoT focused “Chip” single board computer starting at $9 that will debut a new, small footprint Allwinner R8 SoC. And in February, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched a wildly successful Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that features a quad-core Broadcom BCM2836 SoC that was custom made for the SBC.

• We are happy to announce that every Backer who has pledged $81 and above will be getting an “ARDUINO UNO” (clone) with their reward.

• The Firefox OS from Mozilla has been out for some time now, but today Firefox OS is landing in a new market for the first time. It’s coming to Smart TVs, starting with six models in Panasonic’s VIERA line.

Phones

Tizen

• So we’ve got news of the new Samsung Gear A (codenamed Orbis) Smartwatch, the new Samsung Gear SDK and a render of what the Smartwatch could look like based on prototype drawings. Now we have more renders of what the upcoming Samsung round Smartwatch could possibly look like, with its round bezel that takes advantage of the new round user Interface.

Android

• There are more than half a dozen smartwatches that run Google’s wearable software, but it’ll take more to make people want to buy them. These should be the next steps.

• Google’s Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update comes with a number of big time bug fixes for Lollipop problems. It’s an exciting update but it’s also one that you may not want to install on day one. Today, we take a look at a few reasons why you might want to skip your initial Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop release date.

• Roughly a month ago, we reported that the Android version of WhatsApp, one of the more (if not the most) popular messaging services out there, got its first taste of Google’s Material Design. Unfortunately, the update in question (2.12.34) was not initially available for all users straight out of the Play Store. What’s more, there were still certain aspects of the interface that refused to get rid of the boring, yet well-known Holo design.

• Sony has already updated many of its smartphones to Android 5.0 Lollipop, but now we’re looking forward to the jump to 5.1 and a new video shows us what to expect.

• The small-but-mighty Moto E is leaping ahead of several more expensive flagships in the race to Android 5.1. It joins a number of other devices this week that are finally getting their turn at some long-overdue updates.

• Google still isn’t talking about its rumored Android M release, an release that could wind up being the Android 6.0 update, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t seen details emerge ahead of an announcement. In fact, we’ve seen a number of exciting Android M release details arrive in the days before Google I/O 2015.

• As it turns out, a new video has surfaced online showcasing the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update for Sony Xperia Z3. In addition, the Android 5.0 Lollipop update for Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo has also been confirmed by the South Korean conglomerate.

• With Android Lollipop, Google announced that full disk encryption (FDE), an optional feature available since Android Honeycomb, would be enabled by default. This requirement was later revoked due to performance issues on certain classes of hardware, the Nexus 6, having shipped with FDE enabled, being a prime example.

• This week after nearly 5 months without a single update Google finally delivered the much needed Nexus 9 Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update with a collection of bug fixes and performance improvements aimed at fixing the tablet. After spending a few days with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop on the Nexus 9, here’s our initial thoughts.

• With the latest Mesa patch series by Chih-Wei Huang of Android-x86, the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver is to be enabled.

Free Software/Open Source

• The folks who maintain MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) are aiming to make the project completely open source in order to expand both its pool of supporters and its utility to developers and historians.

• This is notable because MAME is seen to be the premier emulator for arcade games, and the volunteers who maintain it have done laudable work to preserve artifacts of the game industry in a playable state.

• Given the scale of MAME, built over nearly two decades by so many contributors, accomplishing a change in licensing is a project in itself. One contributor reports that the licensing proposed is “BSD3 for core files and BSD3,GPL2 or LGPL2 for drivers/emulators”

• Unlike most vintage console or computer games, arcade games can be both difficult to find and expensive to buy, so many arcade fans use emulators to create their own homebrewed arcade systems. The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) has become the most popular emulator for gamers who want to play classic arcade games in their home, and now the team behind MAME has decided to make the emulator completely open source.

• CommunityCube is a plug-and-play open source, small server designed to build a cooperative, fair internet where users’ privacy and rights are protected. It was originally conceived of in 2013, inspired by the Edward Snowden disclosures, when the founders recognized the need for a consumer-level product to protect privacy and anonymity.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Today we are very proud to announce the 1.0 release of Rust, a new programming language aiming to make it easier to build reliable, efficient systems. Rust combines low-level control over performance with high-level convenience and safety guarantees. Better yet, it achieves these goals without requiring a garbage collector or runtime, making it possible to use Rust libraries as a “drop-in replacement” for C. If you’d like to experiment with Rust, the “Getting Started” section of the Rust book is your best bet (if you prefer to use an e-reader, Pascal Hertleif maintains unofficial e-book versions as well).

• New programming languages come and go. Most of them remain nothing more than academic toys or niche novelties. Rust, development of which is sponsored by Mozilla, might be one of the exceptions. The new language reached the 1.0 milestone today, marking the point at which its feature set is stabilized and developers can start to use it without having to worry too much about their code getting broken by a major change.

• Firefox 38.0.5 Beta was just released by Mozilla, and it bring a few new features that should really surprise users of this Internet browser.

SaaS/Big Data

• In this Q&A, Rackspace’s Private Cloud VP and GM discusses the state of the OpenStack community and the company’s plan to strengthen its role in it.

• ownCloud has been getting a lot of attention for its flexibility, and because interest in private clouds is on the rise. You can move beyond what services such as Dropbox and Box offer by leveraging ownCloud, and you don’t have to have your files sitting on servers that you don’t choose, governed by people you don’t know. Here are our latest updated resources for getting going with ownCloud, literally in minutes.

Business

• Earlier this year, we from Zarafa, have informed our ecosystem about the direction of Zarafa’s future product development. It was one, very long newsletter where we showed how we see the world of communication & sharing. Most people only remembered one thing, though: Zarafa stops Outlook. In some cases, people felt like the world has come to an end. Of course, we understand such emotions. But of course, such a big decision is not made overnight. I would like to take a moment to explain how our discontinuation of the Zarafa MAPI client is only one part of our mission to create an open source communication & sharing platform.

Openwashing

• EMC has dipped its toe into the open source community, announcing Project CoprHD, its upcoming open source project based on EMC ViPR Controller.

• “We have an open source bias,” said Comcast senior fellow Jon Moore. Surprised? You’re not alone.

Project Releases

• The Wine development release 1.7.43 is now available.

• What’s new in this release (see below for details): - Improved support for Shell Browser windows. - Some more API Sets libraries. - Read/write operations support with built-in devices. - Major Catalan translation update. - Support for WoW64 mode on ARM64. - Various bug fixes.

• Wine developers have announced that a new version of the application has been made available and is now available for download. It’s full of interesting features and numerous fixes.

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

• It’s one thing to claim a commitment to an open source philosophy, and another altogether to build an open source business. MakerBot ran afoul of the maker community as they accused the company of shifting away from an open source business model. There was much gnashing of teeth directed at Bre Pettis.

Programming

• ARM v8.1a is a revision to ARM’s AArch64 64-bit architecture. ARMv8.1-A is a backwards-compatible revision to the ARMv8.0 architecture while native ARMv8.1-A hardware is expected by late 2015.

Leftovers

Security

• Well, here it is 2015 and a major US university has pulled the plug because of an intrusion. It’s a sad story, with a tale that for months they allowed the intrusion to continue so they could find the attackers/study the attack… Yeah, right. Well, that other OS let the bad guys walk all over them and eventually they had to start over. It sounds like their response is limited to changing passwords and making a plan for enhanced security. I hope they decide to go with FLOSS and GNU/Linux in the future to reduce the threats allowed by an ill-conceived OS from M$.

• Does every vulnerability need a logo and its own Website like Heartbleed and now VENOM have? Here’s why not every flaw is “the next big thing.”

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Pope Francis, Pope of Popes, is once again making the news. This time for some incredibly powerful quotes about those who may have an agenda against peace: Pope Francis said Monday that “many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war”. The Argentine pontiff made the hard-hitting comment in response to a question from one of the 7,000 children taking part in an audience held with the Peace Factory organisation. “This is serious,” Francis told the children. “Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms. “It’s the industry of death”.

• As Ukraine continues its battle against separatists, corruption and a collapsing economy, it has taken a dangerous step that could further tear the country apart: Ukraine’s parliament, the Supreme Rada, passed a draft law last month honoring organizations involved in mass ethnic cleansing during World War Two.

• The draft law – which is now on President Petro Poroshenko’s desk awaiting his signature – recognizes a series of Ukrainian political and military organizations as “fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century” and bans the criticism of these groups and their members. (The bill doesn’t state the penalty for doing so.) Two of the groups honored – the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust while also killing close to 100,000 Polish civilians during World War Two.

• Navy Adm. and head of the National Security Agency (NSA) Michael Rogers elaborated on the U.S. government’s economic sanctions against North Korea following the Sony cyber attack, saying that it was essential to prove that cyber criminals, including governments, will be reprimanded for their actions, according to Defense News.

• China’s aggressive reclamation of reefs in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) has turned territorial defense into the country’s biggest security threat, National Security Adviser Cesar Garcia Jr told a Senate hearing on Thursday, May 7.

• “Judging from the recent developments, particularly the reports of massive reclamation projects in our exclusive economic zone, it is now very clear that our territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea has in fact overtaken all security issues in our hierarchy of national security issues,” Garcia said.

• Also, way-too-dumb-to-be-President Jeb Bush takes his fifth embarrassing stab at answering a very simple question about Iraq; We finally find a Republican who isn’t running for President in 2016; Great news for progressive Democrats in Wisconsin!; And Desi Doyen joins us for our 600th(!) Green News Report!…

• Our public characterisation of the university’s action as a political ban is entirely accurate. The university’s justification—that there was a risk of disruption to other activities on campus that day—is untenable. Firstly, despite our requests, no evidence of such risk has ever been provided. Secondly, as we indicated in our open letter, the university applied a diametrically opposed standard in regards to the likelihood of protests at the lecture delivered on campus, just a few weeks earlier, by retired British Colonel Richard Kemp. You upheld his right to speak, yet you denied that same right to the SEP.

Finance

• As well as oft-voiced concerns that Japan’s key agricultural sector would be harmed, the plaintiffs are also worried that TPP will push up drug prices — something that is a big issue for other nations participating in the negotiations. The new group rightly points out that corporate sovereignty jeopardizes the independence of Japan’s judicial system, and said that the secrecy surrounding the talks…

Censorship

• The Internet and the proliferation of satellite technology mean Iran can no longer control foreign news and television broadcasts, the country’s culture minister said Sunday, urging a new approach.

• In remarks that signal the government’s intention to open Iran up to the world, Ali Jannati told police commanders that new delivery systems ignore borders, making censorship measures redundant.

• “In the past, through pressuring the media or guiding the information, we could direct public news and take control of it,” state media quoted him as saying.

• Now the human rights commissioner, Tim Wilson, has weighed in, condemning the university for engaging in what he called “a culture of soft censorship”. The human right of free speech requires, he argues, “more than just stopping censorious laws. It also requires a culture that tolerates dissent and allows for challenging ideas to be voice, heard and debated”.

• In mainland China, when viewers watch the popular TV period drama The Empress of China, they do not see the female actresses’ cleavage, pictured in the first frame above. To keep things “decent”, censors have cropped the picture so that viewers see the little past the womens’ necks.

• Index on Censorship has condemned the latest extension to the detention of the prominent Bahraini human rights activist on spurious charges

• [...]

• Earlier this year, Bahrain revoked the citizenship of 72 individuals, including journalists, bloggers, and political and human rights activists, rendering many of them stateless — as part of its latest attempt to crack down on those critical of the government.

• For many years, major U.S. entertainment companies have been trying to gain the power to make websites disappear from the Internet at their say-so. The Internet blacklist bills SOPA and PIPA were part of that strategy, along with the Department of Homeland Security’s project of seizing websites that someone accused of copyright infringement. Hollywood’s quest for more censorship power was on display again today at a House of Representatives committee hearing that was supposed to be discussing reforms at ICANN, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Internet’s domain name system. Amidst a discussion of new top-level domain names (such as “.sucks”), a lawyer representing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and other groups told the House Judiciary Committee’s Internet subcommittee that ICANN should force the companies that register domain names to suspend domains based on accusations of copyright infringement.

• If this sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s exactly the sort of system that the disastrous SOPA bill would have created—one where entire websites can be forced to go dark, without a day in court, because some material on the site is accused of infringing a copyright. We wrote about this strategy in March, when it appeared in the US Trade Representative’s “Notorious Markets List,” also at Hollywood’s request.

• Sixteen-year-old Amos Yee is the latest individual to run afoul of Singapore’s censorship rules

• Libyan journalists and residents took the opportunity of World Press Freedom Day to protest on Sunday the ongoing censorship by public company Libya Telecom & Technology (LTT), based in Tripoli, and currently under control of Libya Dawn.

Privacy

• It appears Edward Snowden’s decision to blow open the National Security Agency’s mass snooping has been vindicated again, with the House of Representatives passing the USA Freedom Act, which promises to end bulk collection across all domestic surveillance authorities. It was overwhelmingly supported by members of the House, with a vote of 338 to 88 and, if passed by the Senate, would see Section 215 of the Patriot Act amended to stop intelligence agencies collecting Americans’ phone call and internet communications data, placing limits on how that data can be obtained from communications providers. The overall aim is of the Act is to make surveillance far more targeted with more oversight on bodies like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court who approve or deny requests from the NSA and other snoop agencies.

• UK government admits it broke the law; what to do next

• With only days left to act and Rand Paul threatening a filibuster, Senate Republicans remain deeply divided over the future of the PATRIOT Act and have no clear path to keep key government spying authorities from expiring at the end of the month.

• Crucial parts of the PATRIOT Act, including a provision authorizing the government’s controversial bulk collection of American phone records, first revealed by Edward Snowden, are due to lapse May 31. That means Congress has barely a week to figure out a fix before before lawmakers leave town for Memorial Day recess at the end of the next week.

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) wanted to spy on Siemens with the help of German intelligence, a German newspaper reported, in what could be a shaming episode for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

• Transcripts of a German parliamentary inquiry into the NSA have been leaked by WikiLeaks.

• The searchable files cover 10 months of hearings, which have not been as open as authorities would have us believe, according to WikiLeaks.

• “Despite many sessions being technically public, in practice public understanding has been compromised as transcripts have been withheld, recording devices banned and reporters intrusively watched by police,” according to WikiLeaks.

• The surveillance activities of the US National Security Agency (NSA) have come under fresh scrutiny following reports in the German Bild am Sonntag that the organisation sough the the help of the German intelligence agency BND to spy on the industrial group Siemens.

• Wikileaks has published transcripts of “unclassified sessions” of the Bundestag inquiry into the BND-NSA colloboration. The leaked documents show discrepancies between public and private sessions of the inquiry.

• The White House today urged the Senate to pass a bill that would end the National Security Agency’s mass data collection program before it goes on holiday at the end of next week.

• The House passed the USA Freedom Act on Wednesday in a landslide vote, but the Senate is yet to take up it or any measure to address expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.

• House of Representatives votes overwhelmingly to ban mass collection of Americans’ phone records as it votes in favour of the USA Freedom Act

• Two years after leaks by ex-contractor Edward Snowden exposed secret surveillance, the House votes to end the practice.

• The Bush administration’s decision to keep bulk collection of domestic phone records a secret was a strategic mistake, former NSA Inspector General Joel Brenner told his former colleagues on Friday.

• But in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was so determined to assert untrammeled executive power that any internal debate about going public or telling Congress was “academic” at the time, said Brenner, who served as the agency’s in-house watchdog from 2002 to 2006.

• “In the wake of Snowden, our country has lost control of the geopolitical narrative; our companies have lost more than $100 billion in business and counting. Collection has surely suffered,” Joel Brenner told the audience at National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland on Friday.

• The decision to keep secret the National Security Agency’s collection of American calling records was a strategic blunder that set the stage for Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosures and ultimately harmed US national security, the agency’s former inspector general told NSA employees in a blunt talk Friday.

• The decision to keep secret the National Security Agency’s collection of American calling records was a strategic blunder that set the stage for Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosures and ultimately harmed U.S. national security, the agency’s former inspector general told NSA employees in blunt remarks Friday.

• Alison Macrina had bad news for the 30 or so librarians in the darkened auditorium on a recent Friday. “Your password is bad,” she informed them. “I’m really sorry. Everything you’ve learned about passwords is wrong. It’s not your fault.”

• Waxman would join the NSA at a pivotal moment. Congress is currently considering changes to the Patriot Act that would modify the agency’s program of collecting Americans’ phone records. That program, which was revealed by Snowden’s leaks, has stoked a now two-year-old debate over the lengths to which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies should be allowed to go when collecting information on American citizens. On Thursday, a three-judge panel for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Patriot Act does not authorize the phone records program.

• Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told a Princeton University audience Saturday that mass surveillance by the government is wrong and defended his decision to leak classified information about those programs to the media.

• In his remarks, he was unapologetic for divulging troves of government secrets that led the Justice Department to charge him with espionage, have the government revoke his passport and see him live under asylum in Russia since 2013. He argued against mass surveillance and criticized government officials for authorizing it.

• Whistleblower Edward Snowden will appear by video link at a major conference in Melbourne on Friday.

• Last week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) explained why he continues to oppose legislation that would revise Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to ban the mass collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency (NSA). “Section 215 helps us find a needle in the haystack,” he said. “But under the USA Freedom Act, there might not be a haystack at all.” It was by no means the first time a defender of the NSA’s phone-record dragnet seized on this metaphor, the popularity of which is rather puzzling when you consider that it refers to a hopeless undertaking.

• As we’ve noted, our support for the current version of USA Freedom that is moving through the Senate and the House is conditional on amendments that improve the bill. While we hope to see such amendments, we also know that they may not be possible, since Judiciary Committee leaders noted during the USA Freedom markup that it is the product of “painstaking and careful negotiations,” that would be killed by any changes. And yesterday, the hearing on HR. 2048 in the House Rules Committee made it clear that USA Freedom Act will not be amended.

• The court ruled that the program was illegal, but didn’t not order it halted, saying it could continue illegally until Congress weighs in on the matter. Sen. Burr seems to plan on leading the charge to keep the surveillance going.

• Last week a federal appeals court said police do not need a warrant to look at cellphone records that reveal everywhere you’ve been. Two days later, another appeals court said the National Security Agency (NSA) is breaking the law by indiscriminately collecting telephone records that show whom you call, when you call them, and how long you talk.

• The National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone data violated the Patriot Act, the United States Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday. But in fighting terrorism, zeroing in on the phone conversations of suspects also may be a waste of law enforcement’s time. Terrorists have long moved away from phones, and use various other methods of communication, many of which are much more difficult to monitor.

• That might be the thinking behind the White House’s appointment today of Ed Felten, a Princeton computer science professor, as its deputy U.S. chief technology officer.

• Edward Snowden’s most famous leak has just been vindicated. Since June 2013, when he revealed that the telephone calls of Americans are being logged en masse, his critics have charged that he took it upon himself to expose a lawful secret. They insisted that Congress authorized the phone dragnet when it passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act, citing Section 215, a part of the law that pertains to business records.

• When the courts ruled NSA domestic spying illegal last week, it was the plain fact of that surveillance that was most important. But it also means that whistleblower Ed Snowden, cast as a traitor and spy by his critics, is vindicated.

• Bernie Sanders is running for president for many reasons, and you’re going to hear about a lot of them on the campaign trail.

• Although the entire scope of PRISM is unclear, particularly which carriers other than Verizon Wireless the NSA worked with, the court forecasted that customers of other carriers may also have standing.

• Today, a federal appeals court ruled that the bulk phone metadata collection program run by the National Security Agency that was brought to light thanks to the leaks of former contractor Edward Snowden was illegal, and not covered by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. But the ruling went further than that; it said, essentially, that anyone whose data was collected as part of the program, called PRISM, may be allowed to sue the NSA for harvesting their data.

• Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND not only collected information on European politicians and companies for US intelligence but also used data obtained via spying and mass surveillance for its own purposes, according to the Bild newspaper.

• [...]

• According to Bild, the BND carried out surveillance on European corporations, agencies and ministries. It filtered out information on German nationals. Then the agency analyzed the data and used it in internal reports.

• Sen. Mike Lee is raising money off his opposition to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

• And he’s hoping the NSA will spy on him and find out all about it.

• The White House on Thursday urged passage of legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee that would prohibit collection of Americans’ phone records without cause, a move that comes hours after a federal appellate court ruled such action unconstitutional.

• This is not Congressman Ted Lieu’s first foray into pushing back against unconstitutional mass surveillance. As a state senator in California, Lieu, a Democrat, joined forces with State Senator Joel Anderson, a Republican, to write and pass the California Fourth Amendment Protection Act. Governor Jerry Brown signed the legislation into law, which says the state will not cooperate with or use its resources to support federal requests to strengthen its mass surveillance.

• One by one, several powerful Republican senators took to the floor Thursday morning to offer one of the most full-throated defenses of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of billions of U.S. phone records since Edward Snowden exposed the program nearly two years ago.

• One of the most famous NSA whistleblowers (or the ‘original NSA whistleblower’), William Binney, said the agency is collecting stupendous amounts of data – so much that it’s actually hampering intelligence operations.

• MacAskill was one of the first reporters to interview Snowden on the disclosures and though admitting that there were times when he thought the former NSA contractor was a “fanatic, a crackpot” – especially when placing blanket over his head when on a telephone call – he said he was a ‘hero’ and ‘principled’ in what he did.

• The German parliament recently revealed that the country’s electronic surveillance agency BND had been helping the NSA spy on European politicians and defense contractors for over a decade. Now Germany’s top public prosecutor will investigate to see if the country’s NSA partnership was violating any laws, Reuters reports.

• Germany was in a tizz this weekend, in the wake of spying allegations that could harm the country’s thorny relationship with surveillance of its citizens.

• Germany’s secret service has severely restricted cooperation with its US partner the NSA in response to a scandal over their alleged joint spying on European officials and companies, media reported Thursday.

• Chancellor Angela Merkel’s popularity has dropped abruptly in the wake of an unfolding spying scandal and she has slipped from the top spot among Germany’s leading politicians, ARD television network said on Friday.

• Germany has reportedly pulled the plug on cooperation with the NSA following controversy over the role of its BND secret service assisting with US spying ops targeted at European politicians and firms, including Airbus.‬

• [...]

• The affair prompted a lawsuit from Airbus and a criminal complaint from Germany’s neighbours Austria as well as placing a strain on Angela Merkel’s governing coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). Merkel has offered to testify to German MPs as part of wider attempts to defuse the growing row.

• This week, Austrian Interior Minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner announced that Austria has filed a criminal complaint on suspicion of “secret intelligence activities to the detriment of Austria”.

• On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel for the first time officially commented on the allegations that Germany’s intelligence agency BND illegally helped the US spy on European firms and officials.

• The NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone call records may be illegal, a US federal appeals court has ruled.

• On 6 June 2013, the Guardian published a secret US court order against the phone company Verizon, ordering it on an “ongoing, daily basis” to hand over the call records of its millions of US customers to the NSA – just one of numerous orders enabling the government’s highly secret domestic mass surveillance program. Just days later the world learned the identity of the whistleblower who made the order public: Edward Snowden.

• Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record.

• But even as they increasingly use apps that understand what they say, most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either.

• Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

• The Intercept has released a new document from Edward Snowden’s cache of government files describing how the NSA has been converting voice calls to searchable text documents for nearly a decade

• Legislation that would end the U.S. National Security Agency’s massive collection of telephone records of ordinary Americans has been overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives.

• Unfortunately for the NSA, various leaks, which include mass surveillance of nude Webcam chats, tapping international leaders’ phones, mass metadata collection, the stealing of SIM card encryption keys, and various other programs have painted the agency in a very dark light. If anything, we’ll likely learn the true answer to the aforementioned FOIA request the same way we’ve learned about all of these other programs: through a leak.

• The NSA has created a tool for transcribing phone calls on mass and converting them into searchable text, according to documents released by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• Called “Google for Voice”, the nine-year-old programme enabled spies to extensively search conversations using keywords, and included an algorithm for flagging particular records.

• Dan Froomkin, a journalist at the Intercept, released the latest files which claimed the tool was used in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but may have employed more widely.

• Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept on Tuesday show that Uncle Sam’s spies, and their British counterparts at GCHQ, have been investing in the technology to convert phone calls and news reports in foreign languages into English for over a decade.

• Seizing on last week’s failed attack on a Texas contest to draw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, the chairmen of three congressional security committees, two former CIA directors and the secretary for homeland security all urged greater scrutiny of domestic extremists they claim have been inspired by the Islamic State.

• The NSA has been revealed to have developed a secret program called Skynet, which attempted to identify terrorist connections.

• Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan doesn’t deny that he’s had contact with terrorist groups. In fact, it would have been rather difficult to do his job otherwise.

• But the fact that Zaidan is a respected investigative journalist and the Islamabad bureau chief for Al Jazeera didn’t seem to faze the U.S. National Security Agency, which not only spied on him, but went as far as to brand him a likely member of Al Qaeda and put him on a watch list.

• The U.S. government labeled a prominent journalist as a member of Al Qaeda and placed him on a watch list of suspected terrorists, according to a top-secret document that details U.S. intelligence efforts to track Al Qaeda couriers by analyzing metadata.

• According to Snowden’s revelations, Britain has assisted the NSA in spying on thousands of private communications at home on a daily basis; however, the opaqueness of the state’s surveillance practices has preempted the necessity of a public debate on privacy, claims a UKIP spokeswoman.

• The US government placed an Al-Jazeera journalist on a watch list of suspected terrorists in the belief that he was a member of Al-Qaida, according to a top-secret document revealed by The Intercept.

• Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, a Syrian national who is Al-Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau chief, reported throughout his career on the Taliban and Al Qaida. He secured several interviews with senior Al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

• His name emerged in one of the documents leaked by the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. It labelled him as a “member of Al-Qaida” as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.

• Online operation reportedly stopped after NSA fails to provide clear reasons for each request for surveillance of individuals or organisations

• Germany has “drastically reduced” internet surveillance for the US National Security Agency (NSA), reports from Germany say.

• Claims that the German intelligence agency, the BND, had helped the NSA spy on European politicians, institutions and firms triggered outrage in Germany.

• The BND adopted new rules requiring “clear justification” for each search.

• As the NSA is not providing this, the BND has effectively stopped handing over internet surveillance data.

• Congress has a chance to vote no on the NSA’s mass phone record surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. But NSA apologists are trying to broker a deal to extend Section 215 for another two months. That’s two more months of the NSA sweeping up millions of people’s phone records unconstitutionally. With your help, we can stop Congress from simply rubber-stamping this reauthorization. Tell Congress: no reauthorization of Section 215, no matter how short.

Civil Rights

• “Extremists” are often mentioned in the same breath as “domestic terrorists,” so with a little bit of rebranding, the FBI is now able to surveill people solely for their First Amendment-protected activities. That’s handy and not totally unexpected, given the agency’s long history of eyeballing activists who run contrary to its view on How Things Should Be. At one point, it was uppity blacks and encroaching homosexuals. Now, it’s people who don’t want an oil pipeline running through their neighborhoods.

• In the years since the World Trade Center came down, many Americans, including the judges who ruled Thursday, have come to realize the sober fact that some steps to prevent terrorism are excessive, useless or both. It took a long time, but sanity is making a comeback.

• The page does not list former employment at the FBI but does say that she graduated from George Mason University and that she is currently a “change agent” at MahoganyChange.org. The website address leads to a Facebook page that also includes videos by Davis in which she decries police brutality and hails inclusion.

• Court records show Davis was charged with disorderly conduct in Fairfax County in 2013, but the charges were eventually dropped. An apparent competency evaluation conducted in that case remains under seal.

• The House just passed a White House-backed National Security Agency reform bill Wednesday, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where lawmakers say the legislation would make America less safe, and an key electronic privacy group is pulling its long-time support for the proposal.

• Resumes and details of 27,000 NSA contractors have been put together in a searchable database by Transparency Toolkit. Researchers used LinkedIn and similar websites where the spy agency employees were openly sharing about their jobs.

• Everyday people are transforming the way police officers behave thanks to the power of camera-enabled smartphones. Now, the advocacy group Transparency Toolkit wants to transform the way the national security state behaves using other common tech tools: Google and LinkedIn.

• Jobs’ Mob’s security is easy like Sunday morning

• A former US spook found himself at the centre of another religious war when he dared to say that Apple Mac security was trivial.

• Congress is about to decide the future of surveillance, and the US government’s bulk data collection program is on the line.

• US attorney general Loretta Lynch said on Thursday the Department of Justice was reviewing a court decision that revived a challenge to a controversial National Security Agency program that collected the records of millions of Americans’ phone calls. She said the collection was a ‘vital tool in our national security’ and that she was not aware of any privacy violations under the revised program

• Debate over NSA collection of phone metadata has often focused on whether the law is constitutional—but a federal appeals court says it’s not even legal.

• The French government has voted in favor of greater powers of surveillance, giving it intelligence-gathering capabilities on a par with the NSA. The move came in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack which led to the deaths of 12 people and prompted the Je Suis Charlie support campaign.

• Flashback to the autumn of 2013. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, stands before dozens of journalists at the beginning of a European summit in Brussels. They all want to hear what she has to say about the claims that the National Security Agency (NSA) tapped her mobile phone.

• THE United States was forced to defend its human rights record yesterday at the United Nations in Geneva.

• Justice Department official James Cadogan faced a grilling by delegates at a meeting of the UN human rights council (UNHRC) over a variety of abuses.

• French researchers have built a new Android app designed to monitor the network activity of other applications on their device, in order to minimize resource usage and the risk of infection.

• The BBC article also mentions the accelerating drive to force the federal government back inside its constitutional cage: “This year 15 other states have introduced some kind of anti-NSA legislation, including politically diverse locations like liberal Washington and Maryland and conservative Oklahoma and Mississippi.”

• Edward Snowden, the indicted government whistleblower, says the National Security Agency (NSA) should no longer be authorized to continue its mass collection of phone metadata kept by telecommunication companies under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

• House lawmakers, on the heels of a federal appeals court ruling that the National Security Agency phone data collection was “unlawful,” are expected to take up the USA Freedom Act in the coming days.

• Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney discuss the difference between intelligence gathering and ordinary police work, why the NSA failed after 9/11 and how the agency collects data on ordinary Americans.

• “When they started that collection, as far as I was concerned, that’s a direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country,” Binney explains. “So, they’re scrapping our Constitution and that’s when I said I have to get out.”

• William Binney, a 31-year NSA veteran, blew the whistle on the agency when he realized technology that he had developed to protect Americans was being used to spy on them. In a wide-ranging, 45-minute discussion (produced by Josh Scheer with support from KPFK Radio), he and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer discussed who’s responsible for the surveillance, how authorities’ desire for blackmail power was a factor in their failure to stop the 9/11 attacks, and more.

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