● 02.23.16

● Links 23/2/2016: Meizu Pro 5 at MWC, Bill Gates Openly Promotes Back Doors

Posted in News Roundup at 7:09 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Over the years, I’ve heard some people claim that Linux is finally ready for the masses. I would suggest that outside of a completely locked down OS such as ChromeOS (which is Linux powered), no OS is genuinely ready for the masses. Instead, it has been my experience that the masses should stick to tablets and Chromebooks.

• Reglue has presented disadvantaged kids with Linux-based computers since 2005, and we see the same thing over and over. This next generation will accomplish things that our last three generations could not. In 2016 alone, we have delivered machines to four kids with their eyes on the stars, wanting a career in aerospace or astro-physics, seven kids who want to be educators, two who will strive for degrees in computer science and eight who want to pursue the field of bio and robo-technology.

• But in other areas, Microsoft has been left behind. Apple took over the smartphone market in 2007, and Google followed up with an open source mobile operating system that would be even more widely proliferated. Microsoft still makes a mobile version of Windows, but relatively few people care.

Server

• IBM has released over 40 thousand lines of Blockchain code to help developers build ledgers for the distributed technology that underpins Bitcoin

• IBM has provided 44,000 open source lines of blockchain code to help developers incorporate the technology into their work.

Kernel Space

• Although some companies have embraced the world of free software with open arms, there are many who haven’t. NVIDIA is one name that comes to mind. Its reputation in the Linux world is far from stellar, but maybe its recent actions will help mend some bridges.

• A chunk of code added to the Linux kernel to help inter-container communication turned out to mess up checksum handling on Ethernet networks.

• Described here, the bug was in veth (Virtual Ethernet).

• As the description notes, the coding error allowed corrupt packets to get passed to a veth device for delivery to the application. Vijay Pandurangan, engineering site lead at Twitter’s New York City offices, writes that applications at Twitter were receiving corrupt data “when network hardware was corrupting packets” (that is, for example, if there was a failing hardware device).

• Twenty-five years after its inception, Linux remains the poster child for open source. And yet, ironically, Linux was never really intended to be open source, according to a recent TED interview with its creator, Linus Torvalds.

Graphics Stack

• The first release candidate of Mesa 11.2 is now available and this also signifies the branching of 11.2 from Mesa Git master.

• Emil Velikov of Collabora continues as the Mesa release manager. Emil issued the 11.2 RC1 announcement a few minutes ago.

• Collabora’s Emil Velikov announced on February 22, 2016, the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the forthcoming Mesa 3D Graphics Library 11.2.

Applications

• MKVToolNix developer Moritz Bunkus has recently released a new version of his popular MKVToolNix open-source and cross-platform MKV (Matroska) manipulation tool for all supported operating systems.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Ethan Lee, porter behind quite a few decent Linux titles recently did a talk at MAGFest and his slides can now be downloaded.

• The slides are pretty nice, but I hope there is a video of it to show off too as you can miss a lot going by just the slides. He has some major gripes with middleware, which isn’t surprising to me. The amount of times a Linux port has been held up due to middleware not being on Linux is annoying.

• For those who like a bit of emulation in their lives, PPSSPP has release a major update to their open source emulator recently.

• Epic Games has just revealed that Unreal Engine 4 is the first one to provide official support for the new Vulkan API, and a demo has been presented at the Mobile World Congress 2016, but only for the mobile platform.

• Stainless Games have announced Carmageddon: Max Damage for consoles (PC comes later), but they still haven’t put out promises left over from the Carmageddon: Reincarnation Kickstarter. Promises like a Linux version, a Mac version and others.

• Originally due for release a few days ago, but the developer delayed it due to the big Steam sale. NeonXSZ has been worked on by the developer for four years!

Desktop Environments/WMs

• It’s that time of the year when I return with some of the most exciting desktop environments to look forward to. The Linux world is extremely dynamic; a lot can happen within a year so it’s interesting to see where these desktop environments stand today. For the sake of this story I tried out all these desktop environments in a virtual machine so that you don’t have to.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The last semester was quite crazy for me as I had to work restlessly for my studies, which let me very little time to work on GNOME Games. That being said that doesn’t mean nothing happened in Games land! Here is what to expect in the next versions of Games.

• I quit my job. I’m freelancing. And I’m founding an IT startup. I’m enjoying my freetime writing even more free software, especially coala. Want to get some free software related IT work done?

• It’s been a little long, since I updated you all with the project progress. I feel immensely happy to tell that the Print Route feature has finally landed with the release of version 3.19.90(first beta release). Kudos to all the contributors (Gnomies) who have put in a lot of efforts to make this release successful. Gnome has got quite awesome stuff added to it.

• Plans are afoot to have Java 9 accommodate the GTK 3 GUI toolkit on Linux systems. The move would bring Java current with the latest version of the toolkit and prevent application failure due to mixing of versions.

• The intention, according to a Java enhancement proposal on openjdk.net, would be to support GTK (GIMP Toolkit) 2 by default, with GTK 3 used when indicated by a system property. Java graphical applications based on JavaFX, Swing, or AWT (Advanced Window Toolkit) would be accommodated under the plan, and existing applications could run on Linux without modification with either GTK 2 or 3.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

• After 10 years spent studying open source, for ZDNet and now Seeking Alpha, I have finally come up with a comprehensible analogy for it.

• Open source is an iceberg.

• The benefits of open source do not primarily go to “open source companies.” Even Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) CEO Jim Whitehurst freely admits that, comparing open source to the standardized nuts, bolts and screws of 200 years ago. Those standards enabled the real glories of the Industrial Revolution – trains, planes, automobiles – to be created. The whole age of mass-market invention flowed from it.

• The stock of Red Hat Incorporated (NYSE:RHT) registered an increase of 3.38% in short interest. RHT’s total short interest was 6.12M shares in February as published by FINRA. Its up 3.38% from 5.92 million shares, reported previously. With 2.19M shares average volume, it will take short sellers 3 days to cover their RHT’s short positions. The short interest to Red Hat Incorporated’s float is 3.37%. The stock increased 0.84% or $0.55 on February 19, hitting $65.9. About 1.76M shares traded hands. Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) has declined 18.23% since July 16, 2015 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 8.51% the S&P500.

• Frontier Capital Management Co. LLC increased its position in Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) by 7.6% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 964,085 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after buying an additional 67,688 shares during the period. Frontier Capital Management Co. LLC owned about 0.53% of Red Hat worth $79,836,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Fedora

• It’s an untouched Fedora minimal ARM image rootfs tarball, with some stuff removed (like kernel, boot partition etc.). You can follow the old tutorial with this file and it will install a new Fedora 23 chroot on your Android phone. The CLI stuff works pretty much the same as Fedora 22 did. However in the meantime, the X server application by pelya (which you can find on the Play Store) got massively improved (huge props to their team!).

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical has just revealed that Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition is now available for pre-order at the measly price of $369.99 (€335).

• The Snappy Ubuntu Core is now also working on the Dragonboards, which are single-board computers powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.

• The Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are now considered to be the best on the market, so any single board powered by them is not going to be a bad one. There are a few models already available and a new one coming down the line.

• Canonical and its Linux-based Ubuntu OS have recently received some attention via the announcement of the rather intriguing bq Aquaris M10 tablet. And it seems that the open source company isn’t immune to the call of MWC 2016. Just in time for the start of the mobile madness, Ubuntu reveals that two community efforts have brought the “converged” mobile experience to rather older smartphones, the Sony Xperia Z1 and OnePlus One. Unofficially, however, there might be even more in the works that could be revealed at MWC this week.

• Canonical has just revealed that a couple of GNU cpio vulnerabilities were found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems.

• As you may know, today, February 22, was the first day of the MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2016 event, which takes place these days in Barcelona, Spain, on Thursday, February 25.

• PLUMgrid is a company that equips OpenStack clouds with dependable Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solutions. Through its solutions, the firm allows data centers to manage workloads systematically across virtual machines. At the Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona from March 22nd – 25th, the organization plans to exhibit its Open Networking Suite (ONS) on Ubuntu OpenStack Cloud.

• Canonical and Meizu have announced that the Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu edition is now available for pre-order, priced at $369.99. The phone has the highest specs amongst all the phones currently available which run the open source operating system (OS) and is competitive when compared against top of the range Android offerings.

• The specifications given for the device include: a 5.7″ 1080p AMOLED screen, 21.16 MP rear-facing camera, 5 MP front-facing camera, 32 GB storage, 3 GB RAM, 8 core Exynos 7420 processor with MALI T760 GPU, dual micro-SIM, and Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

• Just a few days ago, we reported on the fact that the official Ubuntu flavors were having their first Beta release as part of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) cycle this Thursday, February 25, 2016.

• We’ve reported earlier that Canonical published several Ubuntu Security Notices on its website about the availability of new kernel updates for the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating systems.

• At the request of our readers, we’re publishing some more details about what’s going on with the development of the OTA-9.1 hotfix update, which promises to patch the infamous incoming call issue reported by numerous Ubuntu Phone users.

• Ubuntu Linux firm Canonical is starting an interoperability lab to allow telecoms service providers to validate the capabilities of virtual network function appliances ahead of any deployment in a production environment. The move is intended to smooth the adoption of such technologies in the telecoms industry.

• Canonical’s VNF Performance Interoperability Lab (V-PIL) was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and aims to provide independent performance testing, interoperability and validation of software appliances developed for network function virtualisation (NFV) deployments.

• If there’s one thing tech enthusiasts love more than an underdog, it’s an underdog with high specs. The Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition is just such a device. It’s powered by the same 14nm Samsung Exynos processor as the flagship Galaxy S6. It has a 21-megapixel camera with laser-assisted phase-detect autofocus and a Hi-Fi DAC from ESS. Clad in an aluminum unibody shell and sporting an AMOLED display, it’s as modern and good looking as any smartphone out here at Mobile World Congress. But it runs Ubuntu, and that makes it too much of an underdog.

• “We’ve seen a lot of activity on the Ubuntu front in anticipation of the Mobile World Congress 2016, and now it’s finally starting. There is a lot of exciting news going to be shared with the community in the coming days, and the company wanted to make an impression”, said a Softpedia statement. Many of the Ubuntu developers and members of Canonical have said that the new Expo is really impressive, and it’s easy to see why that’s the case from the pictures that have been shared until now. The company also shared its schedule and demos for the entire duration of the congress. “Ubuntu at Mobile World Congress 2016″ The Mobile World Congress 2016 is one of the biggest events of the year, so Canonical couldn’t miss the opportunity of promoting its products, especially the mobile devices and the Ubuntu operating system. The demos will cover pretty much everything that’s done by Canonical, including OpenStack, LXD, Ubuntu Core on switches, cloud benchmarking, robots and drones, home gateways, industrial IOT, and much more.

• With Canonical heavily promoting ZFS for Ubuntu 16.04 with the file-system support being added to their default kernel, their latest work is on creating an Ubuntu ZFS guide for those wanting to play with this advanced file-system.

Flavours and Variants

• On Sunday 21st February a message was posted to the Linux Mint blog stating that the website has been hacked and the intruder managed to post a link to an unofficial ISO version of Linux Mint.

• For more information about what has happened visit http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994.

• The Linux Mint blog tells you how to check whether you have downloaded a dodgy version of Linux Mint.

• Now this post is a little bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted because not once in any of my guides have I told you to check the MD5/SHA256 checksums for the downloaded ISO files of any distribution to make sure you have a legitimate copy.

Devices/Embedded

• Silk Labs has won KickStarter funding for its “Sense” home surveillance camera and automation hub, which features voice, face, and gesture recognition, and AI.

• Silk Labs has found Kickstarter success for its first home automation product. The Linux-based Sense smart camera is available through Mar. 17 starting at $249, and will ship in December. The startup was formed last year by former Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal, along with Chris Jones, who co-developed Firefox OS with Gal, and Michael Vines, a former senior director of technology at Qualcomm.

• Variscite unveiled a 43 x 23mm “DART-SD410” COM that runs Linux or Android on a 64-bit Snapdragon 410 with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and -25 to 85°C support.

Phones

Tizen

• For 2016 we were hoping for Samsung to continue the Tizen Smartphone momentum and it looks like they will not disappoint with evidence that a newer Tizen Smartphone is being imported to India for testing. Rear metal assembly parts for a mobile phone have been imported for a model number SM-Z510FD, and looking at previous naming conventions means it should be called the Samsung Z5 on release.

• There has been lots of Interest in the Tizen 2.4 Z130HDDU0CPB1 software updates for the Samsung Z1 in both India and Bangladesh. Now we see the updates have also gone live in both Nepal and Sri Lanka. The update will be delivered Over the Air (OTA), so will either use your WiFi or network providers cellular data. It is advised to use WiFi as the update is pretty big measuring in at ~262MB.

Android

• Hardware manufacturer Nvidia has updated its Shield Android TV system software, putting the platform one step ahead of competing microconsoles with support for Android 6.0 Marshmallow, among other significant features and additions.

• Cheetah Mobile and Cubot have partnered up to introduce a co-branded smartphone called the CheetahPhone. It’s an Android-powered device that is priced at €199 (approximately $220) and is available to everyone in the European Union through Amazon starting in April with pre-orders beginning on March 20.

• The two most hotly anticipated Android smartphones of 2016 are now both official. LG took the wraps off of its new LG G5 bright and early on Sunday morning, and Samsung followed closely behind when it unveiled the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge soon after.

• It goes without saying that these new Android phones outclass anything and everything that has come before them — when’s the last time you saw a flagship Android phone that wasn’t better than its predecessors? With Samsung and LG now set to do battle in the coming months though, the real question is which new flagship phone came out on top.

• Last we heard of Android One, Google was reportedly loosening hardware restrictions placed on manufacturers and planning a re-launch in the coming months. At MWC, General Mobile is releasing a GM 5 Plus Android One device that costs nearly $300 and has high-end specs like USB Type-C and fast charging.

• The device has a 5.5-inch full HD Gorilla Glass 4-covered display and is powered by a Snapdragon 617 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage with micro SD card expansion. It has a large 3100mAh battery that can be charged via a USB Type-C connector that supports Qualcommn’s Quick Charge 3.0.

• Earlier this year at CES we were introduced to Remix OS — an Android variant from Jide that turns Google’s mobile operating system into a desktop OS. Remix takes basic Android and adds all the elements you’d expect on a PC or Mac: there’s support for mice and keyboards, a windowed interface, a file manager, system bar, and a dock at the bottom of the screen for your apps. And because its based on Android, it already has a load of apps ready to use — from Facebook and Microsoft Word to Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga.

• Last year, Google marked its return to public exhibition at Mobile World Congress, but with a whole new twist: it wasn’t really exhibiting any of its own or any of its partner’s products, it was all just in the name of fun. You see, at trade shows like MWC, business is the predominant subject of conversation, and while quite a few consumer product announcements may occur, they’re often secondary to the whole issue of “things which cause money to change hands.” MWC isn’t open to the public, either, and so attendees are largely in the mobile business in one form or another, or members of the media. As such, things can get a bit… stuffy.

• The Android-x86 open-source project is partnering up with Jide Technology, the company behind Remix OS.

• If you are unfamiliar with Jide’s Remix OS, it’s based on Android and is an operating system designed for PCs and laptops. It’s been getting a lot of attention as of recently and the Remix OS 2.0 release is shaping up to be quite interesting.

• The leader of the Android-x86 project has just announced that he has entered a partnership with Jide Technology, the creators of the already famous Remix OS.

• Jide Technology, the makers of Remix OS, have just announced that the first Beta version of their operating system will be released on March 1, and it’s packing a ton of new features.

Free Software/Open Source

• Using the Wercker Command Line Interface (CLI), developers can spin up Docker containers on their desktop, automate their build and deploy processes and then deploy them to various cloud providers, like AWS, and scheduler and orchestration platforms, such as Mesosphere and Kubernetes.

• The Wercker Command Line Interface is available as an open source project on GitHub and runs on both OSX and Linux machines.

• Docker 1.10.2 was released a few hours ago, February 23, 2016, bringing all sorts of improvements and bugfixes to the latest and most advanced stable branch of the open-source and cross-platform application container engine.

• Trying to track a complex project without drowning in too much information is still a challenge for many of us. To solve this, we developed OpenProject, a web-based open source project management tool that supports teams throughout the entire project life cycle. It is licensed under GNU GPLv3 and written in Ruby on Rails and AngularJS.

• One would think that with the popularity and success of free and open source software (FOSS) in recent years, there would also be an emerging model for contributor engagement and retention. One might even imagine a participation standard exists—improved through an ongoing collaboration of projects invested in sharing best practices over years. Yeah no.

• Talk about customer relationship management (CRM) software and you’ll probably be thinking about on-premise software packages or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from big companies like Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle or Microsoft.

• But there are plenty of viable open source CRM solutions in addition to these commercial CRM offerings.

• Like other variants of open source software, many open source CRM apps come in free “community” editions as well as commercial open source editions that include additional features and support.

Events

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Today, the Internet we love and treasure is facing serious threats. Issues like mass surveillance and walled gardens, along with calls to weaken online security, increasingly endanger the Internet’s openness. Most recently, we saw the FBI ask Apple to circumvent their own devices’ security protections, setting a dangerous precedent that threatens consumers’ security. And in many parts of the world, especially emerging markets, inclusion and equality online aren’t guaranteed.

• To address these threats, the Internet needs a new breed of advocate: individuals with both a technologist’s savvy and an activist’s zeal. We need advocates who can stand up for critical issues like privacy, inclusion, and literacy online, and ensure the Internet remains a public resource.

SaaS/Big Data

• OpenStack vendor Mirantis today is announcing a new deal that will bring OpenStack Public cloud technology to the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Mirantis is partnering with the Saudi Telecom Company (STC), which is the largest telecom provider in MEA, to provide services to over 100 million customers across nine countries.

• As we’ve been reporting, The Apache Software Foundation, which incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, has squarely turned its focus to Big Data tools in 2015. The foundation has also made clear that you can expect more on this front in 2016, as a number of incubated projects graduate to Top-Level Status at Apache, which helps them get both advanced stewardship and certainly far more contributions.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Google last week introduced EarlGrey, a functional user interface testing framework for Apple iOS apps.

• YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Photos, Google Translate and Google Play Music have successfully adopted the framework, the company said.

• EarlGrey has been open sourced under the Apache license, according to Google’s Siddartha Janga. The company has provided app developers with a start guide and the ability to add EarlGrey to their projects using CocoaPods or to add it manually to Xcode project files.

• At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook announced the launch of a new open source hardware effort to extend cellular wireless service and hopefully accelerate the scaling up of telecommunications infrastructure and the development of new wireless broadband technologies, including 5G wireless. The program, called the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), is also working on providing currently unserved rural communities with wireless network efforts. A pilot 4G network is already underway in the Philippines, and Facebook has a project in planning for the Scottish Highlands.

• While IBM once had a public image of a virtually monolithic corporate entity, that image has softened in recent times, in part due to its support of and interest in open-source technologies. At the IBM InterConnect event taking place in Las Vegas, the open-source projects being fostered and developed by IBM are a significant part of the conversations between the company and its clientele.

• IBM today announced new services available from its public cloud, thanks to deeper partnerships with Apple, GitHub, and VMware. IBM is also launching a new cloud service called Bluemix OpenWhisk that represents an answer to Lambda event-driven computing service from public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS).

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The GNU C Library version 2.23 is now available.

• The GNU C Library is used as *the* C library in the GNU system and in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux as the kernel.

• No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a stable release.

Public Services/Government

• EUSurvey, the multilingual online survey management tool, has released its OSS v1.3 that comes up with newly implemented features, performance improvements as well as several bug fixes.

Openness/Sharing

Open Access/Content

• Recent studies from the Campus Computing Project have asked chief information officers and faculty what they think about digital and open educational resources when it comes to course materials. While CIOs believe they create more effective and efficient learning opportunities for students, faculty are still skeptical about the benefits of them, besides cost. Most faculty do consider cost as one of the main factors in choosing textbooks, along with quality, so high-quality OER should continue to gain in popularity among instructors.

Open Hardware

• Rice University bioengineering researchers have modified a commercial-grade CO2 laser cutter to create OpenSLS, an open-source, selective laser sintering platform that can print intricate 3-D objects from powdered plastics and biomaterials. The system costs at least 40 times less than its commercial counterparts and allows researchers to work with their own specialized powdered materials.

• 1970 was a year that marked a significant event for rock and roll music lovers around world – Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest guitarists the world has ever seen, died. While many technically accomplished guitarists have since come and gone, Jimi redefined what the guitar could be. A couple of years before his death, Jimi recorded the classic song “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” The intro has a classic Hendrix riff that used a wah-wah (or waa-waa) pedal.

Programming

• LDC 0.17.0 was released this past week as the newest version of this LLVM-based compiler for the D programming language.

Standards/Consortia

• The event is intended to explore open source and its impact on the standards community and beyond. It will be hosted by ANSI, coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standardization system, in partnership with American University and the George Washington University School of Law.

Leftovers

• Office 365 is experiencing a European outage, marking the second time in three months that Microsoft’s critical enterprise systems are unavailable for a sustained period.

• The company has been quoted as attributing the problems to “high resource utilisation”.

• Many users are unable to log into Office 365 through its front-end portal, resulting in perpetual lag, while the website promising that technicians are “working on it”. If users are able to log in to services – for example Outlook – they are experiencing further lag inside the service environment when trying to open emails.

Hardware

• Additionally, the LS1012A is the first processor designed specifically for an emerging new storage solution, dubbed object-based storage. Object-based storage relies on a smart hard disk drive that is directly connected to the data center’s Ethernet network. The processor must be small enough to be integrated directly on the circuit board for a hard disk drive.

Security

• TL;DR: The glibc DNS bug (CVE-2015-7547) is unusually bad. Even Shellshock and Heartbleed tended to affect things we knew were on the network and knew we had to defend. This affects a universally used library (glibc) at a universally used protocol (DNS). Generic tools that we didn’t even know had network surface (sudo) are thus exposed, as is software written in programming languages designed explicitly to be safe. Who can exploit this vulnerability? We know unambiguously that an attacker directly on our networks can take over many systems running Linux. What we are unsure of is whether an attacker anywhere on the Internet is similarly empowered, given only the trivial capacity to cause our systems to look up addresses inside their malicious domains.

• Michael Tremer, a developer working on the open source IPFire Linux firewall project, announced on February 22, 2016, the availability of a new Core Update for the distribution.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• I don’t really know where to start with Michael Hayden’s piece in the New York Times defending drone strikes. Perhaps with the report last fall from the Intercept that shows that the very data we use to characterize the results of drone strikes is cooked “by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets.” Drone strikes are automatically effective if you assume they are effective, and you can do that by the casual us versus them analysis that says “If you live in one of these areas, or are walking near particular people, you’re probably a terrorist.” The only (ironic) way in which this might be true is that, if you didn’t hate the United States before indiscriminate drone killings, you’re much more likely to afterwards, when someone you know was killed. Not that the targets are necessarily well-chosen, either. One analyst has described these methods as “completely bullshit.”

• It should be acknowledged that it is difficult to evaluate Hayden’s op-ed, because he refers to intelligence reports that the American public will never see. Moreover, it is impossible to know whether everything Hayden wanted to reveal is included in the published Times piece, since the content of the op-ed must have been approved by the CIA Publications Review Board, whether as a stand-alone piece or an excerpt from his forthcoming book. Nevertheless, there are a few troubling aspects to the op-ed, which are consistent with all U.S. government officials’ arguments in support of drone strikes: how the program is framed and what complicating bits of information that are left out.

• The U.S. National Security Agency could be relying on a seriously flawed machine-learning model to target drone strikes in Pakistan, according to a new analysis of slides uncovered last year by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• Published last May by The Intercept, the slides detail the NSA’s so-called Skynet program, in which machine learning is apparently used to identify likely terrorists in Pakistan. While it’s unclear if the machine-learning model has been used in the NSA’s real-world efforts, it has serious problems that could put lives at risk if it were, according to Patrick Ball, director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.

Transparency Reporting

• Browser maker Mozilla, digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Creative Commons have called for more openness in global trade agreements.

• The trio—alongside a variety of expert “stakeholders representing Internet users, consumers, innovative businesses, cultural institutions, and scholars”—released a “Brussels Declaration on Trade and the Internet,” which was launched on Monday to coincide with the start of the 12th round of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in Brussels.

Finance

• EFF has spent years battling the undemocratic Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); not because we are against free trade, but because we fear that the undue influence that vested interests have over the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In turn, the USTR exercises its own influence over foreign policymakers, ultimately resulting in punishingly strict copyright rules and ham-fisted digital policies sweeping the globe. These concerns have been fully validated with the belated release of the final text of the agreement.

• In fact, even we have been surprised at some of the new Internet-related policies that have now been subsumed into these closed trade negotiations—such as rules dictating how countries have to manage their country-code domain names, and limiting their flexibility to mandate the review of source code in consumer technology, or to require private data of their citizens to be hosted locally. It would be fair to say that until recently nobody ever expected such rules to be the subject of closed door negotiations between trade negotiators, rather than being openly debated in national parliaments, or in more transparent international bodies such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), or even the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Censorship

• The DA said it will fight clauses in the new FPB amendment bill which can result in a fine of up to R150,000 for Facebook or Twitter posts.

• The DA says it will object to a number of ‘problematic clauses’ in a new bill intended to give the Films and Publications Board (FPB) wide-sweeping powers to censor the Internet.

• The Films and Publications Amendment Bill is scheduled to be engaged in Tuesday’s sitting on the Communications Portfolio Committee.

• He said: “We’re trying to get a message out on a fraction of the resources available. When the State broadcaster is essentially engaged in censorship of four of the eight political parties three days before the debate, it makes it very difficult.

• Social networking giant vKontakte is facing the prospect of being blocked by ISPs in Russia after copyright holders took a complaint to court. According to a local anti-piracy outfit, vKontakte – which has dozens of millions of daily users – is not doing enough to take down unauthorized content.

• People Before Profit says the debate does not represent the many people who will not be voting for the main parties

• The Social Democrats have accused RTÉ of State censorship ahead of tomorrow’s debate.

• RTÉ are excluding four of the eight political parties from the leader’s debate.

• The Social Democrats have lodged a formal complaint with RTE over the party’s exclusion from the final TV leaders’ debate tonight, accusing the broadcaster of “state censorship”.

Privacy

• A picture of Mark Zuckerberg brandishing a slightly evil smile on his face, walking past thousands of people wearing VR headsets, has caused a havoc online. It happened at this year’s Mobile World Congress, during Samsung’s Galaxy S7 launch event in Barcelona.

• Utah is being hit with up to 300 million security incidents a day, the state’s public safety commissioner says.

• He complains that the undefined “incidents”, the bulk of which are likely automated scans, have skyrocketed since 2010 when the number of incidents peaked at 80,000 a day.

• Commissioner Keith Squires told local broadcaster KUTV he suspected the increase is thanks to construction of the National Security Agency’s major data centre in the state.

• Wikileaks released tonight a new cache of documents, showing that the United States’ National Security Administration bugged private meetings between major world leaders, including the United Nations Secretary General.

• The N.S.A. bugged meetings between U.N.S.G. Ban Ki-Moon, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several representatives from other major world governments, listening in on their conversations on climate change, global economics, and even “how to deal with Obama,” according to the new documents.

• Jewel v. NSA is the EFF’s big case against the NSA over its surveillance efforts. It predates the Snowden revelations (from a lot), and stems from that time an AT&T technician, Mark Klein, just walked through the doors of the EFF to provide the organization with evidence that AT&T basically routes a bunch of data through NSA filters for “upstream” collection (part of the NSA’s “702″ collection program). The case has gone through a bunch of permutations and procedural issues, many of which have not gone the EFF’s way, unfortunately.

• For the first time, mass surveillance opponents can dig into evidence on the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet spying programs, a federal judge ruled Friday.

• Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and newly minted startup founder, filed a motion asking a federal court to quash a lawsuit that named him personally violating Americans’ constitutional rights through the NSA’s bulk metadata telephone surveillance program.

• The lawsuit – which resulted in the groundbreaking ruling by Judge Richard Leon that the bulk metadata collection program “likely violates the Constitution” – also named President Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and others.

• WarGames is an ’80s classic and, for many people, their first introduction to the concept of hacking. Matthew Broderick plays a hacker who thinks he’s found a fun war simulation, but is in fact talking to a NORAD supercomputer that controls the nukes, and nearly starts World War III. And believe it or not, it not only had a basis in reality, it set up how the government perceives, and deals with, cybersecurity.

• A small town library in New Hampshire that went to war with the DHS over a Tor relay has become the unlikely impetus for new legislation aimed at protecting public libraries from government overreach.

• There are companies – such as CloudFlare – which are effectively now Global Active Adversaries. Using CF as an example – they do not appear open to working together in open dialog, they actively make it nearly impossible to browse to certain websites, they collude with larger surveillance companies (like Google), their CAPTCHAs are awful, they block members of our community on social media rather than engaging with them and frankly, they run untrusted code in millions of browsers on the web for questionable security gains.

• It would be great if they allowed GET requests – for example – such requests should not and generally do not modify server side content. They do not do this – this breaks the web in so many ways, it is incredible. Using wget with Tor on a website hosted by CF is… a disaster. Using Tor Browser with it – much the same. These requests should be idempotent according to spec, I believe.

• Finnish authorities are moving ahead with plans to give security and intelligence officials web surveillance powers, says Yle’s investigative journalism programme. According to MOT the move follows revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed extensive global intelligence programmes involving governments and telecoms companies, but in which Finland was not involved.

• In an interview with the Financial Times published late Monday night, Gates dismissed the idea that granting the FBI access would set a meaningful legal precedent, arguing that the FBI is “not asking for some general thing, [it is] asking for a particular case.”

• The tech industry has been generally supportive of Apple in its fight against the FBI’s demand to unlock an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino shootings, but one big name is on the FBI’s side: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who seems unswayed by fears of compromised security and a potential legal precedent.

• The war between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, hinges mostly on one major question: Is the court order telling Apple to help the FBI unlock Farook’s iPhone an isolated case, or is it just the start of a new method for the government to guarantee access to anyone’s device?

• Over and over again as people keep talking about the Apple / FBI encryption stuff, I keep seeing the same line pop up. It’s something along the lines of “but the FBI needs to know what’s on that phone, so if Apple can help, why shouldn’t it.” Let’s debunk that myth. The FBI absolutely does not need to know what’s on that phone. It might not even care very much about what’s on that phone. As the Grugq ably explained last week, there’s almost certainly nothing of interest on the phone. As he notes, Farook destroyed his and his wife’s personal phones, indicating that if there were anything truly important, he would have destroyed the last phone too.

• Look, let’s face facts here. For all the talk coming from the law enforcement community that they need backdoors into encryption to stop crime, they absolutely know that the reverse is true: strong encryption prevents crime. Lots of it. Strong encryption on phones makes stealing those phones a lot less worthwhile, because all the information on them is locked up.

• As the standoff between the Department of Justice and Apple Inc. continues over an iPhone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, 51% say Apple should unlock the iPhone to assist the ongoing FBI investigation. Fewer Americans (38%) say Apple should not unlock the phone to ensure the security of its other users’ information; 11% do not offer an opinion on the question.

• Two can play at the “pull on the heart strings about losses due to terror” game apparently. While the FBI has rolled out the “but the poor victims of San Bernardino” argument for why it wants to force Apple into hacking the security of its own customers, Apple has countered with a big gun of its own: it has hired former Solicitor General Ted Olson to defend the company against the FBI in this case. Olson is a mega-star in legal circles. He’s argued tons of cases before the Supreme Court, and of course, was Solicitor General under George W. Bush (whose election he helped ensure in representing him in Bush v. Gore).

• In order to prevent unauthorised firmware being installed on a device, Apple (and most other vendors) verify that any firmware updates are signed with a trusted key. The FBI don’t have access to Apple’s firmware signing keys, and as a result they’re unable to simply replace the software themselves. That’s why they’re asking Apple to build a new firmware image, sign it with their private key and provide it to the FBI.

• A powerful intelligence insider is weighing in on Apple’s standoff with the FBI over unlocking the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone. Retired Gen. Michael Hayden says Apple is right in principle, but the government has a point. The former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA created and oversaw controversial programs designed to keep Americans safe. Hayden joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss his new book, “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror.”

• On Friday, we noted that one of the reasons that the FBI was unable to get access to the data on the remaining iPhone from Syed Farook was because after the shooting and after the phone was in the hands of the government, Farook’s employer, the San Bernardino Health Department, initiated a password change on his iCloud account. That apparently messed stuff up, because without that, it would have been possible to force the phone to backup data to the associated iCloud account, where it would have been available to the FBI. But, after we published that article, a rather salient point came out: the Health Department only did this because the FBI asked it to do so.

• Over the weekend the narrative the FBI has been trying to spread around the legal effort to get Apple to build a system that lets the FBI hack Apple customers began to crumble, as it was revealed that the FBI’s own actions were largely responsible for the fact that the information on Syed Farook’s phone was no longer accessible. That gave more and more weight to the argument that the whole reason that the FBI did this was to set a precedent that judges can force companies to hack their own customers, should the FBI want them to do so. Again, it seems fairly obvious that the FBI chose this case in particular, because basically everyone agrees that Farook and his wife were bad people who murdered a bunch of Farook’s co-workers. That obviously makes the FBI’s case more sympathetic for setting a precedent. But with the shady actions that resulted in the data being locked up, that nice story was starting to slip away.

• The NSA (National Security Agency) is in the midst of a two-year-old lawsuit with the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) for the right to keep its zero-day handling process secret from the prying eyes of the outside world.

Civil Rights

• EFF was dismayed to learn last week that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth has refused to provide inmate Chelsea Manning with printouts of EFF blog posts and other materials related to prisoner censorship. Worse yet, it appears that the reason is ostensibly to protect EFF’s copyrights.

• Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for her role in the release of military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. A volunteer from her support network attempted to send her a series of articles EFF wrote last year about our work defending the rights of inmates to maintain an online presence. This included articles about severe punishments leveled at inmates with Facebook profiles and our views on how prison telecommunications systems should be regulated. Also attached were relevant public records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, EFF’s comments to the Federal Communications Commission, and articles from Buzzfeed and the Harvard Business Review.

• Officials at Ft. Leavenworth prison, where Chelsea Manning is confined has apparently become super interested in protecting EFF’s copyright. Or so they claim. Manning has been blocked from reading printouts of EFF blog posts, and the US Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) insists it’s just about the copyright and not because they might disapprove of the EFF’s message.

• The private Muslim school Iqra Privatskole, located in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district, received 18.5 million kroner in state-funded support in 2015. But the school’s outlook on dating may put future funding in jeopardy.

• In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis discusses the launch of his new ‘Democracy in Europe’ movement (DiEM25), the UK’s upcoming referendum on EU membership, and why a surge of democracy is needed to prevent the EU from sliding toward disintegration.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Brown was brought in as a high-level adviser to Gurry, a fellow Australian, at the start of his first term in 2008, but she soon balked at what she saw as unacceptable practices by Gurry and later left the organisation as a whistleblower.

Copyrights

• It was evident when the “three strikes” or “graduated response” was first proposed in France back in 2009 that it was a really bad idea. After all, in its crudest form, it cuts people off from what has become a necessity for modern life — the Internet — simply because they are accused of copyright infringement, an area of law that is notoriously full of uncertainties. Given that inauspicious start, it’s no surprise that over the years, the three strikes system has failed everywhere, with some of the early adopters either dropping it, or putting it on hold.

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