From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 06:42:25 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 07:42:25 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Georgetown students shed light on China's tunnel system for nuclear weapons References: <201112011204.pB1C4Hfh017117@synergy.ecn.purdue.edu> Message-ID: <3243EF60-AC33-437B-946F-88009DD71E04@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > From: Joe C > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/georgetown-students-shed-light-on-chinas-tunnel-system-for-nuclear-weapons/2011/11/16/gIQA6AmKAO_print.html > > Georgetown students shed light on China's tunnel system for nuclear weapons > By William Wan, Tuesday, November 29, 8:30 PM > > The Chinese have called it their ?Underground Great Wall? ? a vast network > of tunnels designed to hide their country?s increasingly sophisticated > missile and nuclear arsenal. > > For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at > Georgetown University has called it something else: homework. > > Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they > have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, > obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds > of gigabytes of online data. > > The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about > thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a > secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and > deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. > --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 06:51:16 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 07:51:16 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Fahrenheit 451 becomes e-book despite author's feelings Message-ID: Amazing that this popular sci-fi writer is so out-of-touch with the real world. --- rick Fahrenheit 451 becomes e-book despite author's feelings The book's author had previously told e-book publishers to "go to hell" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15968500 The science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 has been published as an e-book despite its author's dislike of the format. Ray Bradbury previously claimed electronic books "smell like burned fuel". Mr Bradbury's agent said the rights for the author's book had been close to expiring and the publisher had insisted the new contract include e-book rights. Experts said the news reflected the growing importance of e-formats. Fahrenheit 451, first published in 1953, describes a dystopian future in which the US has outlawed reading and firemen burn books. It has sold more than 10 million copies since publication. 'Too many machines' As late as last year, Mr Bradbury remained firmly opposed to the idea of his book appearing as a digital title. "I was approached three times during the last year by internet companies wanting to put my books on an electronic reading device," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. "I said to Yahoo: 'Prick up your ears and go to hell.'" He also complained about the spread of modern technology. "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now," he said. However, Mr Bradbury's agent said the deal had become unavoidable. "We explained the situation to him that a new contract wouldn't be possible without e-book rights," Michael Congdon said. "He understood and gave us the right to go ahead." 'A good thing' The US publisher Simon & Schuster has released Fahrenheit 451 and is selling it at a list price of $9.99 (?6.35). The company described the e-book as "a rare and wonderful opportunity to continue our relationship with this beloved and canonical author and to bring his works to a new generation of readers". A spokeswoman for HarperCollins, which publishes Mr Bradbury's books in the UK, said the firm was still in talks with his agent. Book industry insiders said it was ironic that a science fiction writer should have been so opposed to the idea of electronic reading devices, suggesting strong sales might have changed Mr Bradbury's mind. "The facts have changed, and so has his opinion," said Neill Denny, editor of the Bookseller magazine. "My view is good publishing is format-neutral, and so long as publishers control copyright and suppress piracy, then e-books are a good thing for publishers and authors in general. "However, the e-book is a format that excludes the traditional bookshop and the book trade needs to find a way urgently to support their presence, otherwise there is a danger books drop out of sight permanently for many consumers." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 06:53:00 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 07:53:00 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA's most aggressive defender: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Message-ID: <62C6852C-A1C0-4554-9447-DA5FC0231B89@infowarrior.org> SOPA's most aggressive defender: U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Declan McCullagh November 30, 2011 11:57 PM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57334409-281/sopas-most-aggressive-defender-u.s-chamber-of-commerce/ There is no more influential business lobby group in the world than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that its "core purpose is to fight for free enterprise" and "individual freedom." Which is why the Chamber's unflagging--even unyielding--support of a controversial copyright bill loathed by Silicon Valley might come as something of a surprise. Not only do critics view the Stop Online Piracy Act as antithetical to the individual freedom the Chamber applauds, but the technology industry has contributed more to economic growth and free enterprise in the last decade than Hollywood has. Yet the Chamber has been even more aggressive than the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America in defending SOPA and attacking the legislation's critics. SOPA would allow the Justice Department to seek a court order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies that would force them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish from the Internet. This public embrace of SOPA by a pillar of the GOP establishment, which has a muscular lobbying operation, donates generously to political campaigns, and was a close ally of the Bush White House, is crucial to winning over House Republicans. They might otherwise be leery of a bill with strong support from Hollywood and their Democratic allies that would lead to more government oversight over the Internet. Steve Tepp, an intellectual property attorney at the Chamber, has become one of SOPA's most ardent defenders. He's written that SOPA's critics intentionally "mislead and scare people to make their point" and peddle "hyperbole." In a snarky blog post before Halloween, he said that anti-SOPA types are "unpacking all their favorite ghouls and hobgoblins" and making "extreme and absurd claims." In another post, Tepp said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "will always stand" on the "side of American businesses"--an odd statement given that the list of businesses opposed to SOPA includes eBay, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, AOL, Zynga, and many other technology companies. (See CNET's FAQ and our previous coverage of security concerns.) Yahoo recently quit the Chamber to protest its copyright position, while Google and the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents 2,200 companies, are considering following suit, the Washington Post reported. Both the Chamber and Google have confirmed to CNET that the search company remains a member; a new campaign funded in part by MoveOn.org seeks to convince Google to change its mind and leave. When a Washington, D.C. trade association's members are vocally divided on a policy issue, typically the group remains silent. Unless, of course, one group of companies is writing much larger checks. "I would assume that the Chamber's members who support SOPA contribute more than those who are opposing it," says Ryan Radia, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington. CEI has criticized SOPA but tends to count the Chamber as a ally on regulatory affairs and has jointly hosted events with the Chamber. Normally trade associations experiencing deep divisions might seek a compromise, Radia said. "I'm perplexed as to why the Chamber hasn't taken an approach similar to that of the Business Software Alliance, which recently raised concerns about some of the provisions of SOPA." Tepp, the Chamber's chief intellectual property counsel at its Global Intellectual Property Center, did not respond to a request for comment today. Neither did a Chamber spokeswoman. To be sure, support for SOPA and an earlier version in the Senate called Protect IP is broader than Hollywood. A list of supporters includes the Association of Magazine Media, the National District Attorneys Association, the Romance Writers of America, Eli Lilly and Company, Kate Spade, Pfizer, Ralph Lauren, and a number of labor unions. That list appears on FightOnlineTheft.com, another Chamber project that urges visitors to "tell Congress to act on the rogue sites legislation immediately." The Web site doesn't highlight the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by name -- instead, it's described as a project of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, which is in turn organized by the Chamber's intellectual property center. Another reason why the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center appears so enthusiastic about SOPA may be that its employees tend to come from backgrounds that encourage enthusiasm for expanding copyright law. Tepp previously worked for Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who wanted to ban peer-to-peer networks and co-sponsored Protect IP. He also worked at the U.S. Copyright Office, which explicitly endorsed SOPA last month. Mark Elliot, the center's executive vice president, was previously a senior director at Pfizer, which backs SOPA. Gina Vetere, the center's executive director for international intellectual property, came from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which has highlighted alleged pirate Web sites. That concentrated support for expanding copyright law could tip the balance in the House of Representatives, where a committee vote is scheduled for December 15, a source with knowledge of the schedule told CNET. (An aide to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, declined to confirm the date.) "Unlike your run-of-the mill trade group, the Chamber speaks with a very loud voice and very big budget," says Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, an opponent of SOPA. Update: Yahoo's full statement is: "Yahoo! has memberships with numerous trade associations and belongs to a number of organizations that promote a free and fair marketplace which enable Yahoo! to innovate on behalf of our more than 700 million users. As our membership renewal time neared and we reviewed our membership, we decided not to renew." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 07:09:41 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 08:09:41 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Secret key-logging software found on millions of phones Message-ID: Secret key-logging software found on millions of phones Posted on December 1, 2011 - 04:58 by Emma Woollacott http://www.tgdaily.com/security-features/59944-secret-key-logging-software-found-on-millions-of-phones Millions of Android, Nokia and BlackBerry phones are secretly tracking their users, according to an Android developer. Trevor Eckhart says he's uncovered a piece of spyware that monitors the phone's location even when location services are disabled, and which logs every keystroke. It ignores the 'Force stop' button and ins nearly impossible to remove, he says. The software - which Eckhart describes as a rootkit, because of the way it's so hidden - comes from Carrier IQ, which initially threatened legal action against Eckhart, although it backed down when the Electronic Frontier Foundation intervened. Eckhart's posted a video on YouTube showing the software on his own phone, recording keystrokes, search queries, texts and locations. "The Carrier IQ application is receiving not only HTTP strings directly from browser, but also HTTPs strings," he says. "HTTPs data is the only thing protecting much of the 'secure' internet. Queries of what you search, HTTPs plain text login strings (yuck, but yes), even exact details of objects on page are shown in the JS/CSS/GIF files above - and can be seen going into the Carrier IQ application." Carrier IQ says its software is designed only to help carriers improve their network performance. "While we look at many aspects of a device?s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools. The metrics and tools we derive are not designed to deliver such information, nor do we have any intention of developing such tools," it says in a statement. "The information gathered by Carrier IQ is done so for the exclusive use of that customer, and Carrier IQ does not sell personal subscriber information to third parties. The information derived from devices is encrypted and secured within our customer?s network or in our audited and customer-approved facilities." Verizon's issued a statement explaining how its users can opt out, here. "The company claims the software is designed to help mobile phone carriers to improve their service quality by measuring where calls drop, what applications are causing performance issues and which handsets may have problems on their networks," says Chester Wisniewski of Sophos. "This may be true, but the inability to opt-out or remove the software without informing the user is extremely concerning. Combine that with all of the sensitive information the software is designed to intercept and it raises far more questions about how this software is being used." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 07:05:15 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 08:05:15 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pepper Spray Inventor speaks out, condems its modern use Message-ID: <5BFF81AF-A4F6-4845-AA74-38A465586F63@infowarrior.org> Pepper Spray Developer: It Has Become Fashionable to Use Chemicals on People with Opinions By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday November 29, 2011 3:02 pm http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/11/29/pepper-spray-developer-it-has-become-fashionable-to-use-chemicals-on-people-with-opinions/ In what appears to be his first television interview on the subject, Kamran Loghman, the developer of weapons-grade pepper spray and the policy for its use by US police departments, appeared on Democracy Now! to condemn how police forces have been using pepper spray on peaceful protesters in the country. He said he was ?shocked? and bewildered to see UC Davis police pepper spraying students and the first thing that came to his mind was how the students could be his children ?sitting down having an opinion? and being shut down forcibly by chemical agents. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman opened the segment by noting how it was not ?unprecedented for an inventor to voice regrets when an invention turns out to have harmful uses.? She highlighted Alfred Nobel, who is believed to have regretted inventing dynamite, and Alfred Einstein, who felt guilty that his work had helped spur the invention of the atomic bomb. She said Loghman is now someone who could be added to the list of inventors that have had problems with how their inventions were used. Loghman worked with the FBI on the research & development of pepper spray, which was tested over the course of three years in the 1980s. He described the development during the segment along with the ingredients in pepper spray. Why pepper-spray was weaponized, he explains: < - > Prior to that, in the use of force by law enforcement, when you encounter somebody who is aggressive, let?s say somebody who is under the influence of narcotic or alcohol and you arrest them and the highway patrol wants to take him out of the car and they become combatant. At that time, police officers had really little choice. It was either baton or go to deadly force. By introduction of pepper spray, it was very quick. Police officers were trained to do that. They could arrest the individual, take him back to the jail, wash their face and give them proper decontamination and that was the end of the story. And in that regard it was a great weapon. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the last twenty years. < - > Loghman helped produce one of the original training manuals specifying how to use the pepper spray. The manual was required reading for officers looking to get certified so they could use the spray. According to Loghman, what he saw with the UC Davis police was a ?complete improper and inappropriate use? of pepper spray. It is to be used when there is threat to officers or the possibility of property damage. And, what transpired was ?not in accordance with any training or any policy of any department? that he knows of, which is why he feels it is his ?civic duty? to speak up and ?explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.? Loghman addressed the use of tear gas in Egypt on peaceful protesters?tear gas that has been made in the United States. He talked about the difference between weapons-grade pepper spray and tear gas and commented on the use of the tear gas on Egyptians: < - > It is becoming more and more fashionable right now, this day and age, to use chemical on people who have an opinion. And that to me is a complete lack of leadership both in the police department and other people who cannot really deal with the root of the problem and they want to spray people to quiet them down. And it?s really not supposed to be that. It?s not a thing that solves any problem nor is it something that quiets people down.? < - > Pepper spray was never meant to be used on a mass of people, like Egyptians, to force them to go home. The pepper spraying of UC Davis students happened on November 18, when students were being forced to take down tents they had set up in the main quad area of campus. Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! producers deserve credit here. No cable or network news outlet has had Loghman on to talk about pepper spray yet, even though it has become routine to see police using pepper spray on Occupy protesters. It was used on Occupy Seattle protesters, including an 84-year-old woman, who required the help of an Iraq war veteran so she would not be trampled, and a pregnant 19-year-old, who miscarried. And on Occupy Portland protesters, including a 20-year-old woman who vomited after being hit and was then arrested for trespassing. And on antiwar demonstrators trying to protest drones at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. And, in addition to rubber bullets, on Occupy Denver protesters by Denver police who violently cracked down on the camp late in October. And by police on Occupy San Diego to break up a human chain that was not dissimilar from the one UC Davis students formed. And, at the end of the first week of Occupy Wall Street, Officer Anthony Bologna touched off a media storm after video captured him pepper spraying female protesters penned in behind orange netting, who let out blood-curdling screams as they began to feel the effects of the spray. As Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show last night, ?Pepper spray has become America?s car horn.? Or a prime example of how militarized police forces in America have become and how police will be used to intimidate and suppress people who engage in peaceful protesting. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 06:56:53 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 07:56:53 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Zittrain in Technology Review: The personal computer is dead Message-ID: Zittrain in Technology Review: The personal computer is dead Jonathan Zittrain '95 November 30, 2011 http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2011/11/30_zittrain-the-personal-computer-is-dead.html The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared in the Nov. 30 edition of the Technology Review. [Click here for audio.] In addition to his HLS professorship, Zittrain is faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is also a professor of law at the Harvard Kennedy School, and professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Zittrain is the author of the 2008 book ?The Future of the Internet?And How To Stop It.? The personal computer is dead by Jonathan Zitttrain The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don't merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand, to operating system vendors on the other?and even those who keep their PCs are being swept along. This is a little for the better, and much for the worse. The transformation is one from product to service. The platforms we used to purchase every few years?like operating systems?have become ongoing relationships with vendors, both for end users and software developers. I wrote about this impending shift, driven by a desire for better security and more convenience, in my 2008 book The Future of the Internet?and How to Stop It. For decades we've enjoyed a simple way for people to create software and share or sell it to others. People bought general-purpose computers?PCs, including those that say Mac. Those computers came with operating systems that took care of the basics. Anyone could write and run software for an operating system, and up popped an endless assortment of spreadsheets, word processors, instant messengers, Web browsers, e-mail, and games. That software ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous to the dangerous?and there was no referee except the user's good taste and sense, with a little help from nearby nerds or antivirus software. (This worked so long as the antivirus software was not itself malware, a phenomenon that turned out to be distressingly common.) Choosing an OS used to mean taking a bit of a plunge: since software was anchored to it, a choice of, say, Windows over Mac meant a long-term choice between different available software collections. Even if a software developer offered versions of its wares for each OS, switching from one OS to another typically meant having to buy that software all over again. That was one reason we ended up with a single dominant OS for over two decades. People had Windows, which made software developers want to write for Windows, which made more people want to buy Windows, which made it even more appealing to software developers, and so on. In the 1990s, both the U.S. and European governments went after Microsoft in a legendary and yet, today, easily forgettable antitrust battle. Their main complaint? That Microsoft had put a thumb on the scale in competition between its own Internet Explorer browser and its primary competitor, Netscape Navigator. Microsoft did this by telling PC makers that they had to ensure that Internet Explorer was ready and waiting on the user's Windows desktop when the user unpacked the computer and set it up, whether the PC makers wanted to or not. Netscape could still be prebundled with Windows, as far as Microsoft was concerned. Years of litigation and oceans of legal documents can thus be boiled down into an essential original sin: an OS maker had unduly favored its own applications. When the iPhone came out in 2007, its design was far more restrictive. No outside code at all was allowed on the phone; all the software on it was Apple's. What made this unremarkable?and unobjectionable?was that it was a phone, not a computer, and most competing phones were equally locked down. We counted on computers to be open platforms?hard to think of them any other way?and understood phones as appliances, more akin to radios, TVs, and coffee machines. Then, in 2008, Apple announced a software development kit for the iPhone. Third-party developers would be welcome to write software for the phone, in just the way they'd done for years with Windows and Mac OS. With one epic exception: users could install software on a phone only if it was offered through Apple's iPhone App Store. Developers were to be accredited by Apple, and then each individual app was to be vetted, at first under standards that could be inferred only through what made it through and what didn't. For example, apps that emulated or even improved on Apple's own apps weren't allowed. The original sin behind the Microsoft case was made much worse. The issue wasn't whether it would be possible to buy an iPhone without Apple's Safari browser. It was that no other browser would be permitted?or, if permitted, it would be only through Apple's ongoing sufferance. And every app sold for the iPhone would have 30 percent of its price (and later, that of its "in-app purchases") go to Apple. Famously proprietary Microsoft never dared to extract a tax on every piece of software written by others for Windows?perhaps because, in the absence of consistent Internet access in the 1990s through which to manage purchases and licenses, there'd be no realistic way to make it happen. Fast forward 15 years, and that's just what Apple did with its iOS App Store. In 2008, there were reasons to think that this situation wasn't as worrisome as Microsoft's behavior in the browser wars. First, Apple's market share for mobile phones was nowhere near Microsoft's dominance in PC operating systems. Second, if the completely locked-down iPhone of 2007 (and its many counterparts) was okay, how could it be wrong to have one that was partially open to outside developers? Third, while Apple rejected plenty of apps for any reason?some developers were fearful enough of the ax that they confessed to being afraid to speak ill of Apple on the record?in practice, there were tons of apps let through; hundreds of thousands, in fact. Finally, Apple's restrictiveness had at least some good reason behind it independent of Apple's desire for control: rising amounts of malware meant that the PC landscape was shifting from anarchy to chaos. The wrong keystroke or mouse click on a PC could compromise all its contents to a faraway virus writer. Apple was determined not to have that happen with the iPhone. By late 2008, there was even more reason to relax: the ribbon was cut on Google's Android Marketplace, creating competition for the iPhone with a model of third-party app development that was a little less paranoid. Developers still registered in order to offer software through the Marketplace, but once they registered, they could put software up immediately, without review by Google. There was still a 30 percent tax on sales, and line-crossing apps could be retroactively pulled from the Marketplace. But there was and is a big safety valve: developers can simply give or sell their wares directly to Android handset owners without using the Marketplace at all. If they didn't like the Marketplace's policies, it didn't mean they had to forgo ever reaching Android users. Today, Android's market share is substantially higher than the iPhone's. (To be sure, that market share is inverted in the tablet space; currently 97 percent of tablet Web traffic is accounted for by iPads. But as new tablets are introduced all the time?the flavor of the month just switched to Kindle Fire, an Android-based device?one might look at the space and see what antitrust experts call a "contestable" market, which is the kind you want to have if you're going to suffer market dominance by one product in the first place. The king can be pushed down the hill.) With all of these beneficial developments and responses between 2007 and 2011, then, why should we be worried at all? The most important reasons have to do with the snowballing replicability of the iPhone framework. The App Store model has boomeranged back to the PC. There's now an App Store for the Mac to match that of the iPhone and iPad, and it carries the same battery of restrictions. Some restrictions, accepted as normal in the context of a mobile phone, seem more unfamiliar in the PC landscape. For example, software for the Mac App Store is not permitted to make the Mac environment look different than it does out of the box. (Ironic for a company with a former motto importuning people to think different.) Developers can't add an icon for their app to the desktop or the dock without user permission, an amazing echo of what landed Microsoft in such hot water. (Though with Microsoft, the problem was prohibiting the removal of the IE icon?Microsoft didn't try to prevent the addition of other software icons, whether installed by the PC maker or the user.) Developers can't duplicate functionality already on offer in the Store. They can't license their work as Free Software, because those license terms conflict with Apple's. The content restrictions are unexplored territory. At the height of Windows's market dominance, Microsoft had no role in determining what software would and wouldn't run on its machines, much less whether the content inside that software was to be allowed to see the light of screen. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore found his iPhone app rejected because it contained "content that ridicules public figures." Fiore was well-known enough that the rejection raised eyebrows, and Apple later reversed its decision. But the fact that apps must routinely face approval masks how extraordinary the situation is: tech companies are in the business of approving, one by one, the text, images, and sounds that we are permitted to find and experience on our most common portals to the networked world. Why would we possibly want this to be how the world of ideas works, and why would we think that merely having competing tech companies?each of which is empowered to censor?solves the problem? This is especially troubling as governments have come to realize that this framework makes their own censorship vastly easier: what used to be a Sisyphean struggle to stanch the distribution of books, tracts, and then websites is becoming a few takedown notices to a handful of digital gatekeepers. Suddenly, objectionable content can be made to disappear by pressuring a technology company in the middle. When Exodus International?"[m]obilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality"?released an app that, among other things, inveighed against homosexuality, opponents not only rated it poorly (one-star reviews were running two-to-one against five-star reviews) but also petitioned Apple to remove the app. Apple did. To be sure, the Mac App Store, unlike its iPhone and iPad counterpart, is not the only way to get software (and content) onto a Mac. You can, for now, still install software on a Mac without using the App Store. And even on the more locked-down iPhone and iPad, there's always the browser: Apple may monitor apps' content?and therefore be seen as taking responsibility for it?but no one seems to think that Apple should be in the business of restricting what websites Safari users can visit. Question to those who stand behind the anti-Exodus petition: would you also favor a petition demanding that Apple prevent iPhone and iPad users from getting to Exodus's website on Safari? If not, what's different, since Apple could trivially program Safari to implement such restrictions? Does it make sense that South Park episodes are downloadable through iTunes, but the South Park app containing the same content was banned from the App Store? Given that outside apps can still run on a Mac and on Android, it's worth asking what makes the Stores and Marketplaces so dominant?compelling enough that developers are willing to run the gauntlet of approval and take a 30 percent hit on revenue instead of simply selling their apps directly. The iPhone restricts outside code, but developers could still, in many cases, manage to offer functionality through a website accessible through the Safari browser. Few developers do, and there's work to be done to ferret out what separates the rule from the exception. The Financial Times is one content provider that pulled its app from the [iOS] App Store to avoid sharing customer data and profits with Apple, but it doesn't have much company. The answer may lie in seemingly trivial places. Even one or two extra clicks can dissuade a user from consummating what he or she meant to do?a lesson emphasized in the Microsoft case, where the ready availability of IE on the desktop was seen as a signal advantage over users' having to download and install Netscape. The default is all-powerful, a notion confirmed by the value of deals to designate what search engine a browser will use when first installed. Such deals provided 97 percent of Firefox-maker Mozilla's revenue in 2010?$121 million. The safety valve of "off-road" apps seems less helpful when people are steered so effortlessly to Stores and Marketplaces for their apps. Security is also a factor?consumers are willing to consign control over their code to OS vendors when they see so much malware out in the wild. There are a variety of approaches to dealing with the security problem, some of which include a phenomenon called sandboxing?running software in a protected environment. Sandboxing is soon to be required of Mac App Store apps. More information on sandboxing, and a discussion of its pros and cons, can be found here. The fact is that today's developers are writing code with the notion not just of consumer acceptance, but also vendor acceptance. If a coder has something cool to show off, she'll want it in the Android Marketplace and the iOS App Store; neither is a substitute for the other. Both put the coder into a long-term relationship with the OS vendor. The user gets put in the same situation: if I switch from iPhone to Android, I can't take my apps with me, and vice versa. And as content gets funneled through apps, it may mean I can't take my content, either?or, if I can, it's only because there's yet another gatekeeper like Amazon running an app on more than one platform, aggregating content. The potentially suffocating relationship with Apple or Google or Microsoft is freed only by a new suitor like Amazon, which is structurally positioned to do the same thing. A flowering of innovation and communication was ignited by the rise of the PC and the Web and their generative characteristics. Software was installed one machine at a time, a relationship among myriad software makers and users. Sites could appear anywhere on the Web, a relationship among myriad webmasters and surfers. Now activity is clumping around a handful of portals: two or three OS makers that are in a position to manage all apps (and content within them) in an ongoing way, and a diminishing set of cloud hosting providers like Amazon that can provide the denial-of-service resistant places to put up a website or blog. Both software developers and users should demand more. Developers should look for ways to reach their users unimpeded, through still-open platforms, or through pressure on the terms imposed by the closed ones. And users should be ready to try "off-roading" with the platforms that still allow it?hewing to the original spirit of the PC, perhaps amplified by systems that let apps have a trial run on a device without being given the keys to the kingdom. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens, we'll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we'll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible. We need some angry nerds. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 06:42:03 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 07:42:03 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - New double issue of Surveillance & Society References: <5C3DD8911B41B2448CC432574C12555E142D503C@EVS-DES.campus.unn.ac.uk> Message-ID: <49696D98-C9EB-40F1-BA40-172F841D5F2B@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > Surveillance & Society > > http://www.surveillance-and-society.org > > > > Vol 9, No 1/2 (2011) > > A Global Surveillance Society? > > This is a double issue in which most of the articles were initially presented at the 2010 Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society conference, A Global Surveillance Society?. The conference was held jointly with the European Science Foundation's COST initiative, Living in Surveillance Socities (LiSS), at City University in London. Different aspects of the conference were organised by Gavin Smith, Kirstie Ball, Clive Norris and William Webster, and thanks and acknowledgements go out to them all. > > Articles > > Surveillance Impediments: Recognizing Obduracy with the Deployment of Hospital Information Systems > PDF > Torin Monahan > 1-16 > Mutual Transparency or Mundane Transgressions? Institutional Creeping on Facebook > PDF > Daniel Trottier > 17-30 > Deviance and Control in Communities with Perfect Surveillance ? The Case of Second Life > PDF > Victoria Wang, Kevin Haines, John V. Tucker > 31-46 > Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients under the watchful eye of Ontario Works > PDF > Krystle Maki > 47-63 > Citizenship rights in a surveillance society: The case of the electronic ID card in Turkey > PDF > Alanur Cavlin Bozbeyoglu > 64-79 > Surveillance under Mussolini's regime > PDF > Chiara Fonio > 80-92 > Low-tech surveillance and the despotic state in Eritrea > PDF > David M Bozzini > 93-113 > Mobility, surveillance and control of children and young people in the everyday: perspectives from sub-Saharan Africa > PDF > Gina Porter, Kate Hampshire, Alister Munthali, Elsbeth Robson > 114-131 > How far can child surveillance go?: Assessing the parental perceptions of an RFID child monitoring system in Japan > PDF > Arisa Ema, Yuko Fujigaki > 132-148 > Playing with surveillance: The design of a mock RFID-based identification infrastructure for public engagement > PDF > Karen Louise Smith, Brenda McPhail, Joseph Ferenbok, Alex Tichine, Andrew Clement > 149-166 > Being Watched Watching Watchers Watch: Determining the Digitized Future While Profitably Modulating Preemption (at the Airport) > PDF > Matthew P. Tiessen > 167-184 > Borderlines. Surveillance, Identification and Artistic Explorations along European Borders. > PDF > Raul Gschrey > 185-202 > The Wall, the Window and the Alcove: Visualizing Privacy > PDF > Catherine Liu > 203-214 > Living Behind Glass Facades: Surveillance Culture and New Architecture > PDF > Kristin Veel, Henriette Steiner > 215-232 > Review Articles > > ?Cough a Little upon Entering?: Some Reflections on the History of Surreptitious Spectatorship - An extended review of: Locke's Eavesdropping: An Intimate History. > PDF > Gary T Marx > 233-241 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 09:48:23 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 10:48:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Bill to ban insider trading in Congress is suddenly popular Message-ID: Bill to ban insider trading in Congress is suddenly popular By Kimberly Kindy, Published: November 30 http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bill-to-ban-insider-trading-in-congress-is-suddenly-popular/2011/11/30/gIQAn193DO_print.html For six years, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter pressed her colleagues to co-sponsor legislation that would ban them from using information they gleaned on Capitol Hill to guide their trades in the stock market. Most lawmakers bristled, offended by the mere suggestion that they would ever engage in such behavior. Others politely listened but walked away ? some as recently as last month. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) never expected to hear from them again. But now, as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee prepares to hold the first of two congressional hearings on the topic, Slaughter?s Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act has become an overnight sensation. Slaughter has 127 co-sponsors, up from the nine she had on Nov. 12, the day before ?60 Minutes? aired a piece highlighting investments that congressional leaders made in companies while legislative efforts were underway that may have affected stock values. The piece was based on ?Throw Them All Out,? a book released last month by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer. ?I?ve never seen such an explosion of interest,? said Slaughter, who has served in Congress since 1987. ?The day after it ran, when I went through the airport, the TSA agents were asking me about the bill. Suddenly, everyone was interested.? The piece also sparked interest for the first time in the Senate, where Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) soon introduced separate bills. Classic insider trading usually involves senior company officials who use their inside knowledge about their firms to benefit themselves financially. It is prohibited by law. No law explicitly prevents members of Congress from profiting on information they pick up in briefings about companies, industries or the economy. All three bills propose to ban lawmakers and their staffs from using non-public information in making trades on Wall Street. Lawmakers and their top staffers would also be required to report securities transactions in excess of $1,000 within 90 days. Currently, members of Congress report annually, and many do not disclose the dates of trades. The potential conflicts posed by lawmakers? investments have received growing media coverage in recent years, in articles in The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic magazine. Schweizer said he decided to focus on congressional stock trades after reading a Post article in December 2010 about how Armed Services Committee members are allowed to own stock in major defense companies, even though they require presidential appointees to divest in any company that does at least $25,000 in business with the Pentagon. ?That cast everything into relief,? Schweizer said. ?They can own stock in companies that are major defense contractors, and this guy over here has to sell his Coca-Cola stock? That got me angry.? Frank?s mea culpa Of all the lawmakers who have joined with Slaughter in recent days, only Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has publicly acknowledged that he ignored her previous appeals and now regrets it. In a Nov. 16 letter to Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Frank requested a hearing on the issue before the House Financial Services Committee ? now scheduled for Dec. 6 ? saying he believed that he ?neglected to act on a matter that I think is important in establishing confidence in our constituents that we are serving them faithfully.? Indiana University law professor Donna M. Nagy, an expert in securities law, is scheduled to testify at Thursday afternoon?s hearing and will tell members of the Senate homeland security panel that she thinks Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-5 already prohibits lawmakers from making insider trades. Under the anti-fraud provision, Nagy said, congressional ?insider information? would be treated as property of the United States. Prosecutors could make a fraud case against lawmakers who ?secretly misappropriated government property for their own personal benefit,? she said. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who will lead Thursday?s hearing, said he thinks that the SEC rule ?clearly covers members of Congress and our staff,? but he added that he is open to something like the STOCK Act that ?both deters such unethical behavior and punishes it when it happens.? Challenging the charges Lawmakers who were singled out by ?60 Minutes? or Schweizer have challenged the assertions made against them. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denied that she did anything improper in participating in a Visa initial public offering in 2008 at a time when credit card legislation was working its way through Congress. Through a spokesman, Pelosi said she did not act on inside information or receive any special consideration from Visa. She also said she did not block any legislation on Visa?s behalf and was in the forefront of fighting for credit card reform. ?It?s nothing more than preposterous fantasy devoid of any fact,? Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said of Schweizer?s assertions. Bachus denounced the implication that he had used insider information gleaned from a briefing with then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. He also said the book erred when it said he made a bet that General Electric stock would fall. ?The book is absolutely false and factually inaccurate when it states that I ?shorted General Electric options? and did so ?four times in a single day,??? Bachus wrote in a statement to the publisher. ?The truth is I bought call options on General Electric stock, which is an investment made when one thinks a stock will rise.? Schweizer has admitted that he made a mistake on the GE trades. But he said his larger point about congressional conflicts of interest still stands. ?Why is he allowed to set policy for the nation at the same time he does this kind of trading?? he asked. Database editor Dan T. Keating contributed to this report. ? The Washington Post Company --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 12:03:55 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 13:03:55 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH lawyers: US citizens targeted if at war with US Message-ID: Obama lawyers: Citizens targeted if at war with US By MATT APUZZO | AP ? 2 hrs 17 mins ago http://news.yahoo.com/obama-lawyers-citizens-targeted-war-us-154313473.html WASHINGTON (AP) ? Top national security lawyers in the Obama administration say U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida. The lawyers were asked at a national security conference Thursday about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Alwaki, a U.S. citizen and leading al-Qaida figure. He died in a Sept. 30 U.S. drone strike in the mountains of Yemen. The government lawyers ? CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson ? did not directly address the al-Alwaki case. But they said U.S. citizens don't have immunity when they're at war with the United States. Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, are equipped to make decisions about who qualifies as an enemy. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 12:04:47 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 13:04:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WikiLeaks details surveillance industry Message-ID: <5D9F8A76-7F86-4151-AF76-49B737A1EDFA@infowarrior.org> WikiLeaks details surveillance industry December 2, 2011 - 2:24AM AFP http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-world/wikileaks-details-surveillance-industry-20111202-1o9kr.html WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has launched the website's new project - the publication of hundreds of files detailing a global industry that gives governments tools to spy on their citizens. They reveal the activities of about 160 companies in 25 countries that develop technologies to allow the tracking and monitoring of individuals by their mobile phones, email accounts and internet browsing histories. "Today we release over 287 files documenting the reality of the international mass surveillance industry - an industry which now sells equipment to dictators and democracies alike in order to intercept entire populations," Assange told reporters in London on Thursday. Advertisement: Story continues below He said that in the past 10 years it had grown from a covert industry that primarily supplied government intelligence agencies such as the NSA in the United States and Britain's GCHQ, to a huge transnational business. Assange has been in Britain for the past year fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning on allegations of rape and sexual assault, living under tight bail conditions. His case is due to come up again on December 5. The documents on the website, http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html, include manuals for surveillance products sold to repressive Arab regimes. They have come to light in part from offices ransacked during rebellions in countries such as Egypt and Libya earlier this year, as well as investigative work by WikiLeaks and its media and campaigning partners. "These systems that are revealed in these documents show exactly the kind of systems that the Stasi wished they could have built," said Jacob Appelbaum, a former WikiLeaks spokesman and computer expert at the University of Washington. "These systems have been sold by Western companies to places for example like Syria and Libya and Tunisia and Egypt. These systems are used to hunt people down and to murder." Experts who worked on the release warned that at present the industry was completely unregulated, and urged governments worldwide to introduce new laws governing the export of such technology. ? 2011 AFP --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 17:53:23 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 18:53:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?=91The_Pirate_Bay_Dancing=92_Add?= =?windows-1252?q?-On_Killls_DNS_and_IP_Blockades?= Message-ID: ?The Pirate Bay Dancing? Add-On Killls DNS and IP Blockades ? Ernesto ? November 30, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-dancing-add-on-kills-dns-and-ip-blockades-111130/ Efforts to censor the Internet are increasing in the Western world. In the US lawmakers are currently discussing legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that could take out The Pirate Bay, or disable access to it. In several other countries such as Italy, Finland and Belgium, courts have already ordered Internet Providers to block their users? access to the site. Demonstrating the futility of these efforts, a small group of developers today releases a browser add-on called ?The Pirate Bay Dancing.? When Homeland Security?s ICE unit started seizing domain names last year, a group called ?MAFIAAFire? decided to code a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains. The release went viral and by now more than 200,000 people have installed the add-on. ICE wasn?t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet. Today MAFIAAFire delivers a new release that aims to thwart the increasing censorship efforts in countries worldwide. Named ?The Pirate Bay Dancing,? the Firefox add-on undoes local DNS and IP blocks by routing users through a series of randomly picked proxies. The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that the development of the plugin was partly motivated by SOPA and PIPA, the pending anti-piracy bills in the US. ?DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of ?breaking the Internet,? so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in ?our usual plugin form? ? the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on,? we were told. Although the add-on carries The Pirate Bay in its name it also works with other sites such as Newsbin2 and BTJunkie which are blocked in the UK and Italy respectively. In a broader sense it can also be used to bypass national ?firewalls? such as in China, and soon perhaps the US. Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free. After the add-on is installed users can specify the websites for which they want it to work, and these sites then trigger a response from the plugin. If someone from Italy for example chooses to unblock The Pirate Bay, the add-on will save this preference and load the site through a proxy on the next visit. MAFIAAFire is using thousands of proxies which will be rotated constantly, hence the (dirty) dancing. The current version is fully working but TorrentFreak was told that the functionality will be expanded in future releases. The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that they were eager to help The Pirate Bay out, as the site?s operators have been an inspiration to them. The Pirate Bay team on their turn will soon feature the add-on on their homepage. ?Saving TPB was a big deal to us, we love the site and how it has stood the test of time while dozens of others fell, bent over or were run over. The MAFIAA have been trying to take down TPB?s sails for years, country by country, this extends its life a little more to give it smooth sailing,? TorrentFreak was told. ?In the bigger picture, other than the US? SOPA we also have each country experimenting with its own mini-firewall. This makes all those blocks in all those countries, and all the millions the MAFIAA have spent to get to there, useless,? the MAFIAAFire team added. While the latest MAFIAAFire add-on shows how easy it is to bypass these censorship attempts, supporters of the measures would argue that it will nonetheless stop the vast majority of casual pirates. The creators of ?The Pirate Bay Dancing? are not ignorant of this, but aside from delivering a working product, one of their main goals is to send a signal that censorship is never the right path to take. Judging from the recognition they?ve received so far, they sure have succeeded on that front. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 21:21:46 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 22:21:46 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Government Representatives Using 'Cybersecurity, ' 'Terrorism' As Excuses To Further Trample The Bill Of Rights Message-ID: <8B3B2334-55E3-4BA8-84BA-76589B6D8F0B@infowarrior.org> Government Representatives Using 'Cybersecurity,' 'Terrorism' As Excuses To Further Trample The Bill Of Rights from the they're-not-'rights'-so-much-as-they-are-'privileges,'-appar dept Well, Facebook no longer needs to be the scapegoat when it comes to harvesting your personal information and doing nefarious things with it. Now, thanks to the House of Representatives, you can look forward to "a broad swath of ISPs and other private entities" collecting your personal data and sharing it with "the government, other businesses, or "any other entity" so long as it's for a vaguely-defined "cybersecurity purpose." This is yet another governmental attempt to harvest personal internet usage data in hopes of somehow preventing something bad from happening in the future, all under the pretense of being hip deep in a "cyberwar." If you're looking to see who's spearheading this new attempt to rifle through your internet drawers, look no further than the bipartisan team of Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger. And they're working with un-Representative-like speed. EFF posted this information on November 30th and they are already trying to move it out of committee today (December 1st). If someone is trying to push something through posthaste, generally speaking, it's a terrible bit of legislation that would raise all sorts of objections if left out in the sunlight for any length of time. As it's written, this bill would "trump existing privacy statutes that strictly limit the interception and disclosure of your private communications data, as well as any other state or federal law that might get in the way," even opening the door for spyware installation. (For your own protection, of course.) The bad news gets worse .... < -- > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111201/07501916943/government-representatives-using-cybersecurity-terrorism-as-excuses-to-further-trample-bill-rights.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 21:23:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 22:23:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA on the ropes? Bipartisan alternative to 'Net censorship emerges Message-ID: <9362AE83-569F-480C-A4F7-E389667EF301@infowarrior.org> SOPA on the ropes? Bipartisan alternative to 'Net censorship emerges http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/sopa-on-the-ropes-bipartisan-alternative-to-net-censorship-emerges.ars By Nate Anderson | Published about 3 hours ago The Senate's PROTECT IP Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are so noxious that even the Business Software Alliance has serious reservations, and SOPA's main backer had to take to the virtual pages of National Review today to quell a growing revolt among his conservative colleagues about "regulating the Internet." Whatever you think of the legislation, it unquestionably represents a sea change in the US approach to the Internet, one which explicitly contemplates widespread website blocking and search engine de-listing. The level of debate on an issue this important has been... suboptimal. (And hearings have been rather lopsided affairs). Just listen to the rhetoric of SOPA author Lamar Smith: "Enforcing the law against criminals is not censorship." Pithy, sure, but it doesn't relate to any actual objections put forth by thoughtful critics. But rightsholders do need some means of enforcing copyrights and trademarks, something tough to do when a site sets up overseas and willfully targets American consumers with fake goods and unauthorized content. Some sites can be leaned on when hosted in friendly countries, but many simply thumb their nose at US law with impunity. If you can't go after the sites at the source, and you can't lure their operators to the US (both tactics used with success in other cases), what's left but blocking site access from within the US? Fortunately, plenty can be done, and it can be done in a way that doesn't raise the same immediate concerns about due process and censorship. One promising alternative was unveiled today by a bipartisan group of 10 senators and representatives. It ditches the ?law and order? approach to piracy and replaces it with a more limited, trade-based system. And the legislators behind it have put out a draft of the idea for public comment before they even begin drawing up actual legislation. (Does the Smoky Back Room industry know about this threatening behavior?) Less cops and robbers, more trade policy Here's the plan, according to a draft seen by Ars Technica: online piracy from overseas sites will be taken away from the Attorney General and moved out of the courts. Instead, power will be vested in the International Trade Commission, which already handles IP disputes relating to imports (the ITC is heavily involved in the recent patent wars around smartphones, for instance). The government won't bring cases, either; rightsholders can petition the ITC for a "cease and desist" order, but only when the site in question is foreign and is "primarily" and "willfully" violating US law. Sites would be notified and would have a right to be heard before decisions are made in most cases, and rulings could be appealed to a US court if desired by either party. ("Urgent" requests could get preliminary and temporary letters based on a one-sided hearing, but the process also envisions "sanctions" for any company that tries to abuse the ITC process.) Sites which are truly bent on counterfeiting and piracy are unlikely to pay much attention to a US-based cease and desist order, of course, so the new plan envisions two remedies. If such an order is issued, Internet advertising firms and financial providers would have to stop offering credit card payments and ads to the site in question. Website blocking by ISPs and DNS providers is not part of the plan, nor would search engines or others be required to remove links to such content. The two-page draft of the plan is being issued so that "the public can provide us with feedback and counsel before the proposal is formally introduced in the House and the Senate." And clearly, feedback would be useful. Can such a "follow the money" plan do anything about noncommercial piracy, for instance? Should it try to do so? But the whole shift in tone marked by the new approach looks far more promising than anything likely to come out of the mess that is SOPA. Who's behind all of this sweet sanity? Senators Wyden (D-OR), Cantwell (D-WA), Moran (R-KS), and Warner (D-VA); Reps. Chaffetz (R-UT), Campbell (R-CA), Doggett (D-TX), Eshoo (D-CA), Issa (R-CA), and Lofgren (D-CA). --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 1 21:11:28 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 22:11:28 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Senate approves (controversial) $662 billion defense bill Message-ID: <4E026EF6-FC75-40F5-8965-4D66F7546DD6@infowarrior.org> December 1, 2011 9:02 PM Senate approves $662 billion defense bill (CBS News) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57335281/senate-approves-$662-billion-defense-bill/ WASHINGTON - Ignoring a presidential veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a massive, $662 billion defense bill that would require the military to hold suspected terrorists linked to al Qaeda or its affiliates, even those captured on U.S. soil. The vote was 93-7 for the bill authorizing money for military personnel, weapons systems, national security programs in the Energy Department, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Reflecting a period of austerity and a winding down of decade-old conflicts, the bill is $27 billion less than what President Barack Obama requested and $43 billion less than what Congress gave the Pentagon this year. Shortly before final passage, the Senate unanimously backed crippling sanctions on Iran as fears about Tehran developing a nuclear weapon outweighed concerns about driving up oil prices that would hit economically strapped Americans at the gas pump. The vote was 100-0. The Senate's version of the defense bill still must be reconciled with the House-passed measure in the final weeks of the congressional session. Senate keeps controversial detainee policy in defense bill In an escalating fight with the White House, the bill would ramp up the role of the military in handling terror suspects. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller both oppose the provisions as does the White House, which said it cannot accept any legislation that "challenges or constrains the president's authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the nation." Late Thursday, a White House official said the veto threat still stands. The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of al Qaeda or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. American citizens would be exempt. The bill does allow the executive branch to waive the authority based on national security and hold a suspect in civilian custody. The legislation also would give the government the authority to have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had sought an exception to the provision for U.S. citizens. Lengthy negotiations produced a face-saving move that the Senate backed 99-1, a measure that said nothing in the bill changes current law relating to the detention of U.S. citizens and legal aliens. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., repeatedly pointed out that the June 2004 Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld said U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely. The series of detention provisions challenges citizens' rights under the Constitution, tests the boundaries of executive and legislative branch authority and sets up a showdown with the Democratic commander in chief. Civil rights groups fiercely oppose the bill. "Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The bill reflects the politically charged dispute over whether to treat suspected terrorists as prisoners of war or criminals. The administration insists that the military, law enforcement and intelligence agents need flexibility in prosecuting the war on terror after they've succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. Republicans counter that their efforts are necessary to respond to an evolving, post-Sept. 11 threat, and that Obama has failed to produce a consistent policy on handling terror suspects. The Senate rejected an effort by Feinstein to limit a military custody requirement for suspects to those captured outside the United States. The vote was 55-45. Feinstein said her goal was to ensure "the military won't be roaming our streets looking for suspected terrorists." The issue divided Democrats, with nine senators, many facing re-election next year, breaking with their leadership and administration to vote against the amendment. Republicans held firm, with only Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Mike Lee of Utah backing Feinstein's effort. "We need the authority to hold those individuals in military custody so we aren't reading them Miranda rights," Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said in defense of the legislation. Last week, the administration announced a new set of penalties against Iran, including identifying for the first time Iran's entire banking sector as a "primary money laundering concern." This requires increased monitoring by U.S. banks to ensure that they and their foreign affiliates avoid dealing with Iranian financial institutions. But lawmakers pressed ahead with even tougher penalties despite reservations by the administration. Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Kirk had widespread bipartisan support for their amendment that would target foreign financial institutions that do business with the Central Bank of Iran, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products. The sanctions on petroleum would only apply if the president determines there is a sufficient alternative supply and if the country with jurisdiction over the financial institution has not significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, David Cohen, a senior Treasury Department official, and Wendy Sherman, an undersecretary of state, warned that the amendment could force up oil prices ? a financial boon for Iran. "There is absolutely a risk that in fact the price of oil would go up, which would mean that Iran would in fact have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less," Sherman said. "And our real objective here is to cut off the economic means that Iran has for its nuclear program." Cohen said the amendment would tell foreign banks and companies "that if they continue to process oil transactions with the Central Bank of Iran their access to the United States can be terminated." "It is a very, very powerful threat," Cohen warned. "It is a threat for the commercial banks to end their ability to transact in the dollar and their ability really to function as major international financial institutions," and one that could push allies away from contributing to a coordinated effort against Iran. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 2 07:37:34 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 08:37:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Ten days of secret planning to rescue markets Message-ID: (my own assessment is that this is simply another round of kick-the-can regarding the global financial mess that might buy the world a few weeks or months until the next round of this game is announced. -- rick) Ten days of secret planning to rescue markets David Milliken and Marc Jones Reuters 8:22 a.m. EST, December 2, 2011 http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/sns-rt-us-eurozone-interventiontre7b02p6-20111201,0,3684953,full.story LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Britain orchestrated this week's bold move by central banks to stave off a cash crunch in global markets, helping drive a plan that began to take shape around 10 days ago. For months, central bankers have tracked with growing concern how the deleveraging among European banks, hurt by the tumbling value of euro-zone debt, was hurting global funding as banks sold off assets and brought cash back home. Indeed, some central banks had urged the Federal Reserve for some months to put in place cheaper dollar funding, but the Fed had resisted, said a source with direct knowledge of this week's deal. Last week, conditions grew particularly acute after a German bond auction failed to attract enough buyers. The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank started serious discussions around the middle of last week, banking officials in Europe and the United States told Reuters. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said he called the meetings that led to the decision by six of the world's major central banks to cut dollar funding rates to keep money flowing through the world's financial arteries. "It was the result of conversations which I initiated as chairman of what used to be known as the G10 governors, now the economic consultative committee, among a limited number of central banks," he told a news conference in London on Thursday. The decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Japan, Canada, Britain and Switzerland to provide cheaper dollar funding for banks eased credit strains and provided a fillip to market sentiment. Short-term funding costs eased on Thursday for the first time since July 22, when the latest phase of the euro-zone crisis took hold after European Union leaders failed to lay out detailed plans for a strong bailout fund. Several banking officials said there was no specific trigger for the action, and specifically denied rumors that a European bank was on the brink of collapse. Instead, they characterized the action as the culmination of many weeks of worry as financial strains had built. "Non-Europeans are not just complaining about the lack of action by Europeans but starting to feel more strongly that Europe can't contain this problem by itself," said a source briefed on the central bank discussions. "That sense might have led to this swap deal." Even emerging markets, notably Eastern Europe and Asia, were feeling the pinch as European banks pulled back lending operations and put assets on the block, two banking officials said. Local banks that took up the slack had less access to dollar funding for their clients, bank officials said. In the announcement, the six central banks said they also were ready to make money available in currencies other than their own, if necessary. "They wanted to ensure that a dollar crunch did not brake economies in Asia, in the United States," said Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter. FRATERNITY Central bank officials from leading economies are in constant contact. They have cemented close relationships at the face-to-face meetings they hold every couple of months in Basel to exchange intelligence on financial markets and the economy. After the ECB and the Fed discussed conditions last week, the Fed's policy panel held a video-conference on Monday and agreed to cut the interest rate on its dollar swap lines. Another source said provisional agreement was reached in a teleconference at the start of last week, and that by the end of the week, details had been agreed and the date of November 30 set for the announcement. It wasn't the first time central banks, including the Bank of Japan and the ECB, had approached the Fed about a cheaper dollar swap, a source said. "Other central banks have been urging the Fed to put this arrangement in place for some time but Fed didn't say 'yes' up till now," said the source, who has direct knowledge of the arrangement. "The Fed said 'yes' this time probably because the euro zone crisis developed into a global problem." The ECB has been watching the creeping credit freeze with growing alarm for more than half a year but its interventions -- lending banks in the euro zone half a trillion euros -- have failed to defeat fears they could be sucked under by the region's sovereign debt crisis. Two years into Europe's crisis, investors are fleeing the euro zone bond market, European banks are dumping government debt, deposits are draining from southern European banks and a looming recession is fueling doubts about the euro's survival. Fed officials have been quick to point out that the cheaper dollar swap lines, intended to ensure banks outside the United States have ready access to dollars, are not intended to bail out Europe -- but to help shore up economic growth. "There is not so much leverage out there in the market right now, so if we do see the banking system freezing up, you might not see much forced selling, but it would impact the global economy in a very big way," said Kathleen Gaffney of Loomis Sayles, a part of Natixis Asset Management. EUROPEAN RETREAT With dollar funding strains compounded by regulatory pressure, European banks have preferred to shore up balance sheets rather than fork out for dollar funding. But most large banks also have dollar assets and liabilities. With interbank rates rising as concerns grow about the funding ability of counterparties, European banks have been effectively cut out of dollar markets. This has already prompted some European banks to dispose of U.S.-denominated assets -- and sparked concerns that trade with the United States could be at risk. Andrew Cole, investment director at Baring Asset Management, said the so-called TED spread -- the difference between interest rates on interbank loans and short-term government bills -- had been flashing warning signals. "This is still a long way from the very high levels seen when Lehman Brothers failed, but has been moving steadily higher in recent months and is indicative of the concern about bank credit ratings, which has been impeding both interbank lending and lending in the wider economy," Cole added. The crisis has already prompted European banks to halt lending and start selling assets. But they are particularly keen to dispose of assets in U.S. dollars, where funding is most tight, seeing them pull back in areas like project finance, shipping finance, aviation and infrastructure. For banks with big U.S. operations, or which tend to lend for projects denominated in dollars, like the French banks, this has been a particular problem. Dollar funds have been made available via the ECB, but they are expensive and tapping the central bank carries stigma. The funding crunch in Europe is far greater than simply a dollar issue, however, as banks in Europe's crisis hotspots such as Greece have found themselves shut out of the interbank market needed to fund their day-to-day operations. Even getting access to backstop funding options, such as ECB funding facilities, is becoming a problem as banks fret about running out of eligible securities they can use to tap these, or collateral. Banks are busy hoarding what securities they can to cash in at the ECB. "This is Lehmans, take two. Cubed," said Gaffney. (Additional reporting by Sarah White and Sinead Cruise in London; Writing by Kirstin Ridley and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Alexander Smith, Andrew Callus, Dan Grebler and Jan Paschal) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 2 10:52:56 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 11:52:56 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Skype flaw reveals users' location, file-downloading habits Message-ID: (c/o MS) Skype flaw reveals users' location, file-downloading habits A team of researchers has uncovered an issue that imperils Skype users' privacy by putting their location and identity up for grabs By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor December 1, 2011 Researchers have found a flaw in Skype, the popular Voice-over-Internet-Protocol service which allows users to make video phone calls and internet chat with their computers. The vulnerability can expose your location, identity and the content you're downloading. Microsoft, which owns Skype, says they are working on the problem. The issue was uncovered earlier this year by a team of researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), MPI-SWS in Germany and INRIA in France and included Keith Ross, Stevens Le Blond, Chao Zhang, Arnaud Legout, and Walid Dabbous. The team presented the research in Berlin recently at the Internet Measurement Conference 2011 in a paper titled "I know where you are and what you are sharing." The researchers found several properties of Skype that can track not only users' locations over time, but also their peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing activity, according to a summary of the findings on the NYU-Poly web site. Earlier this year, a German researcher found a cross-site scripting flaw in Skype that could allow someone to change an account password without the user' consent. ... http://www.csoonline.com/article/695631/skype-flaw-reveals-users-location-file-downloading-habits --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 3 08:49:45 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 09:49:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?RIAA=3A_Piracy_is_=93Under_Contr?= =?windows-1252?q?ol=94_But_Wait_=96_=93Rampant_Theft=94_Continues?= Message-ID: RIAA: Piracy is ?Under Control? But Wait ? ?Rampant Theft? Continues ? enigmax ? December 2, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-piracy-is-under-control-but-wait-rampant-theft-continues-111202/ Make no mistake, anti-piracy organizations have a thin line to tread. On the one hand they have to show their efforts yield results, and on the other that the piracy situation is so bad that they are needed more than ever. From two different mouths the RIAA has been doing that just this week but it?s hard to accept that either approach yields results without being counter-productive. Some people believe that anti-piracy groups do a hateful and cynical job, and achieve little other than negative publicity. Others maintain that they are absolutely necessary to protect the livelihoods of the world?s creative industries, and without them the world would be a worse place. Whatever the belief held, proponents and opponents alike are nevertheless intrigued by what happens behind the closed doors of anti-piracy groups, particularly when viewed through the prism of their press announcements. Just this week Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Chairman & CEO Cary Sherman commented on the White House launch of a new awareness campaign along with PSAs designed to alert the US public to the apparent perils of piracy. ?As a community still plagued by the rampant theft of our work, we have seen firsthand the devastating effects this theft can have on the lives of hard-working, passionate musicians, songwriters, producers and countless others,? said Sherman. While the RIAA?s support of this type of campaign is nothing new, the last decade witnessed a much more controversial way of spreading the anti-piracy message ? massive legal action which saw the music group settle with thousands of individuals for millions of dollars and sue a few unfortunate souls to within an inch of their lives for millions of dollars each. As the RIAA previously told TorrentFreak, that legal campaign was designed to attract attention after PSAs previously run by the group were shown to make ?little difference?. But there are also other techniques available to the RIAA to tip the market in their favor. During November, Tennessean.com ran an article titled Music Row spent $4 million on lobbying in 3 months in which they state that the industry?s focus on lobbying ?comes after the music industry?s use of a tactic, now almost universally acknowledged as a failure, in which it filed lawsuits against individuals accused of illegally downloading songs to stop piracy.? So a failure then? Absolutely not, says the RIAA in a just-published response. ?Our legal efforts served as an essential educational tool: Fans know far more now about copyright laws and the legal consequences of stealing music than ever before. Before initiating lawsuits in 2003, only 35 percent of people knew file-sharing on P2P was illegal; afterward, awareness grew to 70 percent,? writes RIAA Director of Communications Liz Kennedy. ?Where there was virtually no legal digital market before the lawsuits, today the market exceeds $3 billion annually, and revenue from online platforms will comprise more than 50 percent of total industry revenues this year,? she continues adding that doing nothing would have meant illegal downloading would have ?skyrocketed further?. The RIAA?s conclusion is shown in the title of the piece ? RIAA largely succeeds in goal of bringing piracy under control ? but that seems scarcely compatible with Sherman?s comments that the industry is being subjected to rampant theft, unless ?controlled rampant theft? is something the RIAA associates with a successful outcome to an anti-piracy campaign. While Sherman may be offering support to the new PSA?s issued by the government, it?s clear that from previous comments the RIAA have little faith in them. The sue-em-all campaign certainly raised awareness, but it hasn?t negated the need for millions to be spent on lobbying, most recently in support of PROTECT IP and SOPA. And here?s the thing. There are few people outside the music industry (maybe even inside) who think that suing customers turned out to be a particularly clever thing to do. Similar numbers are supportive of the industry?s championing of SOPA. All of this only adds credibility to the arguments of those who say that anti-piracy groups do a hateful and cynical job, and achieve little else other than generate negativity. Worryingly, this is a view widely held by the ?Internet Generation? who are the ones expected to forget the past and utilize RIAA-sanctioned music services in the future. The cry of F*** THE RIAA didn?t exist before the lawsuits and it will take a long time to forget ? support of draconian SOPA-style legislation only succeeds in prolonging the memories. Of course, the RIAA will always justify their worth, characterizing questionable former campaigns as a success but noting that there is a new crisis in the piracy war that means they?re needed more than ever before. However, all is not lost, because the RIAA already have the solution. I?ll leave you with Liz Kennedy?s words from The Tennessean which show that rather than throwing millions at lawyers and lobbying, maybe the RIAA should spend some time getting advice from Valve and Steam, and learning how influencing the public is really done. ?To be clear, no legal efforts are a panacea,? says Kennedy, ?compelling legal consumption options are the most important.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 3 18:38:18 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 19:38:18 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - 85 y/o woman may sue TSA after being strip searched at JFK Message-ID: 85-year-old woman may sue TSA after being strip searched at JFK Airport 'I really look like a terrorist,' 110-pound Long Island grandmother says BY Nicholas Hirshon NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, December 2 2011, 9:36 PM http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/lenore-zimmerman-85-hurt-strip-search-tsa-agents-jfk-airport-article-1.986198 An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport. Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. ?I walk with a walker ? I really look like a terrorist,? she said sarcastically. ?I?m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.? TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows ?proper procedures were followed.? But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter. She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son ? her only immediate relative. When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator. She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes. ?I was outraged,? said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist. As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash. ?My sock was soaked with blood,? she said. ?I was bleeding like a pig.? She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms. ?Why are you doing this?? she said she asked the agents, who did not respond. The TSA claims the footage does not show any sign of the injury. ?Our screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy,? Farbstein said. Zimmerman says a medic arrived to treat her injury. The process took so long that she missed her 1 p.m. flight and had to catch a later one. Her son said he was shocked when his mom called around 9 p.m. that night and described what happened. ?She was put through a hell of a day,? he said. Zimmerman, who takes blood thinners, later had a tetanus shot for fear of infection from the walker wound. Bruce Zimmerman, 53, said he can?t understand why the agents targeted his mom. ?She looks like a sweet, little old lady,? he said. ?She?s not a disruptive person or uncooperative.? nhirshon at nydailynews.com --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 4 07:43:52 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 08:43:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Swiss Gov understands the Internet & ICTs Message-ID: <2275CB83-92F1-4BD7-BD77-5561D10FFB0F@infowarrior.org> Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal ? Enigmax & Ernesto ? December 2, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/ One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products. In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to online piracy. In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented. The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn?t have to change. Their report begins with noting that when it comes to copying files, the Internet has proven a game-changer. While the photocopier, audio cassette tape and VCR allowed users to make good quality copies of various media, these devices lacked a in-built distribution method. The world-wide web changed all that. Distribution method or not, the entertainment industries have opposed all these technological inventions out of fear that their businesses would be crushed. This is not the right response according to the Swiss government, which favors the option of putting technology to good use instead of taking the repressive approach. ?Every time a new media technology has been made available, it has always been ?abused?. This is the price we pay for progress. Winners will be those who are able to use the new technology to their advantages and losers those who missed this development and continue to follow old business models,? the report notes. The government report further concludes that even in the current situation where piracy is rampant, the entertainment industries are not necessarily losing money. To reach this conclusion, the researchers extrapolated the findings of a study conducted by the Dutch government last year, since the countries are considered to be similar in many aspects. The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don?t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary. The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn?t. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing. The Swiss report then goes on to review several of the repressive anti-piracy laws and regulations that have been implemented in other countries recently, such as the three-strikes Hadopi law in France. According to the report 12 million was spent on Hadopi in France this year, a figure the Swiss deem too high. The report further states that it is questionable whether a three-strikes law would be legal in the first place, as the UN?s Human Rights Council labeled Internet access a human right. The Council specifically argued that Hadopi is a disproportionate law that should be repealed. Other measures such as filtering or blocking content and websites are also rejected, because these would hurt freedom of speech and violate privacy protection laws. The report notes that even if these measures were implemented, there would be several ways to circumvent them. The overall suggestion the Swiss government communicates to the entertainment industries is that they should adapt to the change in consumer behavior, or die. They see absolutely no need to change the law because downloading has no proven negative impact on the production of national culture. Aside from downloading, it is also practically impossible for companies in Switzerland to go after casual uploaders. In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that tracking companies are not allowed to log IP-addresses of file-sharers, making it impossible for rightsholders to gather evidence. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 5 18:38:53 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 19:38:53 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - C|Net's DownloadCom is bundling Nmap with malware! Message-ID: (c/o RSK and others) > ----- Forwarded message from Fyodor ----- > > Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 14:35:30 -0800 > > Hi Folks. I've just discovered that C|Net's Download.Com site has > started wrapping their Nmap downloads (as well as other free software > like VLC) in a trojan installer which does things like installing a > sketchy "StartNow" toolbar, changing the user's default search engine > to Microsoft Bing, and changing their home page to Microsoft's MSN. > > The way it works is that C|Net's download page (screenshot attached) > offers what they claim to be Nmap's Windows installer. They even > provide the correct file size for our official installer. But users > actually get a Cnet-created trojan installer. That program does the > dirty work before downloading and executing Nmap's real installer. > > Of course the problem is that users often just click through installer > screens, trusting that download.com gave them the real installer and > knowing that the Nmap project wouldn't put malicious code in our > installer. Then the next time the user opens their browser, they > find that their computer is hosed with crappy toolbars, Bing searches, > Microsoft as their home page, and whatever other shenanigans the > software performs! The worst thing is that users will think we (Nmap > Project) did this to them! > > I took and attached a screen shot of the C|Net trojan Nmap installer > in action. Note how they use our registered "Nmap" trademark in big > letters right above the malware "special offer" as if we somehow > endorsed or allowed this. Of course they also violated our trademark > by claiming this download is an Nmap installer when we have nothing to > do with the proprietary trojan installer. > > In addition to the deception and trademark violation, and potential > violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this clearly violates > Nmap's copyright. This is exactly why Nmap isn't under the plain GPL. > Our license (http://nmap.org/book/man-legal.html) specifically adds a > clause forbidding software which "integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap > into a proprietary executable installer" unless that software itself > conforms to various GPL requirements (this proprietary C|Net > download.com software and the toolbar don't). We've long known that > malicious parties might try to distribute a trojan Nmap installer, but > we never thought it would be C|Net's Download.com, which is owned by > CBS! And we never thought Microsoft would be sponsoring this > activity! > > It is worth noting that C|Net's exact schemes vary. Here is a story > about their shenanigans: > > http://www.extremetech.com/computing/93504-download-com-wraps-downloads-in-bloatware-lies-about-motivations > > It is interesting to compare the trojaned VLC screenshot in that > article with the Nmap one I've attached. In that case, the user just > clicks "Next step" to have their machine infected. And they wrote > "SAFE, TRUSTED, AND SPYWARE FREE" in the trojan-VLC title bar. It is > telling that they decided to remove that statement in their newer > trojan installer. In fact, if we UPX-unpack the Trojan CNet > executable and send it to VirusTotal.com, it is detected as malware by > Panda, McAfee, F-Secure, etc: > > http://bit.ly/cnet-nmap-vt > > According to Download.com's own stats, hundreds of people download the > trojan Nmap installer every week! So the first order of business is > to notify the community so that nobody else falls for this scheme. > Please help spread the word. > > Of course the next step is to go after C|Net until they stop doing > this for ALL of the software they distribute. So far, the most they > have offered is: > > "If you would like to opt out of the Download.com Installer you can > submit a request to cnet-installer at cbsinteractive.com. All opt-out > requests are carefully reviewed on a case-by-case basis." > > In other words, "we'll violate your trademarks and copyright and > squandering your goodwill until you tell us to stop, and then we'll > consider your request 'on a case-by-case basis' depending on how much > money we make from infecting your users and how scary your legal > threat is. > > F*ck them! If anyone knows a great copyright attorney in the U.S., > please send me the details or ask them to get in touch with me. > > Also, shame on Microsoft for paying C|Net to trojan open source > software! > > Cheers, > Fyodor --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 6 07:06:18 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 08:06:18 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US Message-ID: (c/o CG) The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US Robert Johnson | Dec. 5, 2011, 11:09 AM | 31,298 | 75 http://www.businessinsider.com/program-1033-military-equipment-police-2011-12 The U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will. We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens. Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the "1033 Program" that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone. 1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40-year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this year's staggering take topped the charts, next year's orders are up 400 percent over the same period. This upswing coincides with an increasingly military-like style of law enforcement most recently seen in the Occupy Wall Street crackdowns. Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice told The Daily, ?The trend toward militarization was well under way before 9/11, but it?s the federal policy of making surplus military equipment available almost for free that has poured fuel on this fire.? From The Daily: < - > Thanks to it, cops in Cobb County, Ga. ? one of the wealthiest and most educated counties in the U.S. ? now have an amphibious tank. The sheriff of Richland County, S.C., proudly acquired a machine-gun-equipped armored personnel carrier that he nicknamed ?The Peacemaker.? This comes on top of grants from the Department of Homeland Security that enable police departments to buy vehicles such as ?BearCats? ? 16,000-pound bulletproof trucks equipped with battering rams, gun ports, tear-gas dispensers and radiation detectors. To date, more than 500 of these tank-like vehicles have been sold by Lenco, its Massachusetts-based manufacturer, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel. ?It?s kind of had a corrupting influence on the culture of policing in America,? Lynch says. ?The dynamic is that you have some officer go to the chief and say, people in the next county have [military hardware], if we don?t take it some other city will. Then they acquire the equipment, they create a paramilitary unit, and everything seems fine. ?But then one or two years pass. They say, look we?ve got this equipment, this training and we haven?t been using it. That?s where it starts to creep into routine policing.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 6 07:30:23 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 08:30:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FDA approves 'hangover pill' Message-ID: <97928539-5DF7-4762-A86F-AB1DC517B3EE@infowarrior.org> Cheers! FDA-approved hangover pill promises to take edge off holiday partying Over-the-counter cocktail beats hair of the dog BY Nicole Lyn Pesce NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, December 3 2011, 2:56 PM http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cheers-fda-approved-hangover-pill-promises-edge-holiday-partying-article-1.986338 This pill is the ultimate buzzkill. A new FDA-approved hangover cure has hit the market just in time for holiday party season. ?So many people see hangovers as a shameful or embarrassing thing. I think of them as just a fact of life,? said Brenna Haysom, the creator of Blowfish through the West Village-based Rally Labs LLC. The over-the-counter drug cocktail combines 1,000 milligrams of aspirin, 120 milligrams of caffeine and a stomach-soothing agent into two effervescent tablets taken the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Once dissolved in water, the remedy claims to knock out multiple hangover symptoms in just 15 to 30 minutes. ?The magic of the effervescent tablet is that it hits your system much faster than getting a cup of coffee, taking an antacid and taking some aspirin separately,? she said. The remedy doesn?t give free reign to binge, however. ?I definitely don?t encourage people to get obliterated,? warned Haysom, who has been hung up on hangovers since college. ?This is a really effective product for people who have a couple too many: A happy hour that goes a little long, or holiday parties are a perfect example ... and they wake up feeling terrible. This gets you functioning again quickly.? Haysom drafted the business model while earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard, but shelved it to spend seven years at a private equity firm in Manhattan. It wasn?t long before her hard working (and hard partying) lifestyle drew her back to making the magic bullet. ?This product comes from personal experience,? she laughed, recalling a particularly boozy business dinner the night before she had to make a major presentation. ?The headache, being so tired, and then the upset stomach ... it definitely was a moment where I was like, there has got to be a better way.? Blowfish runs $2.99 for a single dose, or $11.99 for a six-pack. It is currently available in Ricky?s NYC stores or online at ForHangovers.com, which offers free shipping and 24-hour courier service in Manhattan. The tablets will hit Duane Reade shelves in January. ?Unfortunately, I don?t think we?ll get there before New Year?s Eve,? Haysom said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 6 14:12:54 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 15:12:54 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive Message-ID: <935BA44E-0324-460E-9C46-31604378C1C8@infowarrior.org> Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive Tuesday - 12/6/2011, 12:39pm ET By Michael O'Connell http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=247&sid=2658996 Tweets, emails and other electronic communications can be considered "government documents" and must be preserved. The National Archives handles official government materials, while the Library of Congress' mandate is to deal with anything that may have long-term historical interest. "We're basically in the same situation as the National Archives, only on a much larger scale," said Bill Lefurgy, digital initiatives program manager at the Library of Congress national digital information infrastructure and preservation program. "We tend to have a much larger perspective in terms of what we collect." He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris Tuesday morning to talk about the library's digital mission. But how much digital information are we talking about? How about all of the tweets from Twitter's archives? "We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public," Lefurgy said. The archives don't contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else ? billions and billions of tweets ? are there." Using new technical processes it has developed, Twitter is moving a large quantity of electronic data from one electronic source to another. "They've had to do some pretty nifty experimentation and invention to develop the tools and a process to be able to move all of that data over to us," Lefurgy said. The Library of Congress has long been the repository of important, historical documents and the Twitter library, as a whole, is something historic in itself. "We were excited to be involved with acquiring the Twitter archives because it's a unique record of our time," Lefurgy said. "It's also a unique way of communication. It's not so much that people are going to be interested in what you or I had for lunch, which some people like to say on Twitter." Researchers would be able to look at the Twitter archive as a complete set of data, which they could then data-mine for interesting information. "There have been studies involved with what are the moods of the public at various times of the day in reaction to certain kinds of news events," Lefurgy said. "There's all these interesting kinds of mixing and matching that can be done using the tweets as a big set of data." One benefit for the Library of Congress in receiving this large data set is that it's been forced to stretch itself technologically. "It's been difficult at times," Lefurgy said. "But we firmly believe that we have to do this kind of thing because we anticipate that we'll be bringing in large data sets again into the future. We don't know specifically what, but certainly there's no sign of data getting smaller or less complicated or less interesting." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 6 14:14:34 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 15:14:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Snow-Cone Machines paid for by Homeland Security Message-ID: <74FA12A9-2749-4F8A-9013-3B5B6F80BB21@infowarrior.org> Montcalm County gets homeland security snow cone machine http://thedailynews.cc/2011/12/03/montcalm-county-gets-homeland-security-snow-cone-machine/ Montcalm County is now in possession of a $900 Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine, thanks to a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. ? Daily News/Elisabeth Waldon STANTON ? The United States is fighting terrorism ? one snow cone at a time. Montcalm County recently received a $900 Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine. The West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission (WMSRDC) is a federal- and state-designated agency responsible for managing and administrating the homeland security program in Montcalm County and 12 other counties. The WMSRDC recently purchased and transferred homeland security equipment to these counties ? including 13 snow cone machines at a total cost of $11,700. The machines were funded by a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. The request for a snow cone machine came from another county, but all 13 counties received them. The purchase raised some questions at a recent Montcalm County Board of Commissioners meeting. Commissioners wondered about the machine and questioned its purpose. The Michigan Homeland Security Grant Program?s Allowable Cost Justification document, dated May 9, 2011, says the snow cone machines can make ice to prevent heat-related illnesses during emergencies, treat injuries and provide snow cones as an outreach at promotional events. WMSRDC Executive Director Sandeep Dey said one county requested a popcorn machine, but that request was denied. He said the snow cone machine request would not have been granted by itself, but was approved because it came with other homeland security equipment. ?It is used to attract people so they can be educated and prepared for homeland security,? Dey said from his office in Muskegon. ?More importantly, they (homeland security officials) felt in a medical emergency the machine was capable of making ice packs which could be used for medical purposes.? The snow cone machine is currently being stored in the Montcalm County Emergency Services (MCES) building in Stanton. MCES Director David Feldpausch said the machine could be useful at the scene of a large fire or during very hot weather. ?I don?t like the term snow cone machine, because it sounds horrible,? Feldpausch said. ?When you look at it as an ice shaving machine and its purpose, it makes a little more sense. I assume it will get used in Montcalm County a lot more in the summertime by the Fire Corps.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 7 06:39:50 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 07:39:50 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?The_=91hacktivists=92_of_Telecom?= =?windows-1252?q?ix_lend_a_hand_to_the_Arab_Spring?= Message-ID: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-hacktivists-of-telecomix-lend-a-hand-to-the-arab-spring/2011/12/05/gIQAAosraO_print.html The ?hacktivists? of Telecomix lend a hand to the Arab Spring By Shyamantha Asokan, Published: December 6 On a rainy November morning in Northern Virginia, at a cafe where elderly women are meeting for pastries, Andrew Lewis is hacking into one of the most tightly controlled police states in the Middle East. ?The more you know, the more you can help,? he murmurs, as his scan of Syria?s cyberspace throws up lists of servers. His 6-foot-6-inch frame hunched over his laptop, Lewis skims the codes at lightning speed and clicks on one of the servers that process and direct Syrian Internet traffic ? but then he is asked for a password. He guesses it correctly on his second attempt. Lewis, 22, is a member of Telecomix, an unconventional Western computer club that helps activists across the Middle East. During this year?s Arab Spring, pro-democracy protesters have used Facebook to promote rallies and Skype to avoid tapped cellphones, but their governments have in turn boosted online censorship and spying. Telecomix has tried to step in and provide the activists with tech support. When Hosni Mubarak, Egypt?s now ousted president, cut off the entire country?s Internet in January, Telecomix set up dial-up connections using two servers in Europe. The members then faxed the dial-up numbers to every Egyptian office, university and coffee shop they could find. In August, after extracting records from unsecured servers, the group discovered that Syria was using equipment made by a Silicon Valley company, Blue Coat Systems, to block certain sites. (The U.S. government is now investigating Blue Coat, which denies selling its products to a country under economic sanctions.) Telecomix has also helped activists in Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. Lewis has never been to the Middle East. He does not know anybody there, mix much with Arab Americans or speak a word of Arabic. When asked why he devotes days and nights to this lonely task, he simply says, ?I have a strong conviction that the Internet should be open to everyone.? This morning, Lewis is working on Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad?s crackdown against a nine-month-long uprising has left at least 4,000 dead, according to the United Nations. On his left, Lewis has an iPad logged in to Telecomix?s chat room. The forum uses encrypted Internet connections and servers owned by Telecomix members. Lewis collects anonymous protest reports from his Syrian contacts, whose code names include ?the Major,? and broadcasts them on Twitter. His updates add to a grim thread of on-the-ground observations of security forces using machine guns and tear gas. On his right, Lewis has a laptop for testing more encrypted connections, which activists can use to make their online activity harder to monitor. He also uses it for ?mapping? ? scanning Syria?s networks and servers for surveillance equipment. It is a fairly straightforward task for a techie, given the lax security around the networks in question. Lewis can see all the computers and surveillance devices on a certain network, but cannot access or tamper with them. Lewis says he feels that cyber-activism is his best chance of making a difference in Washington. He isn?t robust enough for Occupy D.C.?s increasingly wintry anti-capitalist protest camp. His lack of a college degree excludes him from the city?s think-tank circuit. His teachers hoped his height would make him a star athlete, but he turned out to be a ?mal-?coordinated? gentle giant. ?This is somewhere where I can help. I can do tech really well,? says Lewis, who, despite spending so much time at his laptop for Telecomix, still relaxes by playing video games. ?Sometimes it?s easier to hide behind a computer screen.? * * * Telecomix began five years ago, when a group of Swedish hackers came together to fight a proposed European Union law that would help Internet providers cut off users who were sharing copyrighted files. ?The idea was that no company or country had the right to deny someone Internet access or watch them online,? says Christopher Kullenberg, a founding member who is a PhD student at the University of Gothenburg in southern Sweden. As the Arab Spring took hold this year, toppling three autocrats and rattling several others, the group?s focus shifted to the Middle East. This mission drew ever more hackers. Today, Telecomix is a loose, leaderless movement, with members in Sweden, the United States, France and Germany. Kullenberg estimates that there are 20 full-time volunteers ? the group does not make money and so does not pay wages ? although many others dip in and out alongside day jobs. The number of chat room members has fluctuated this year between 130 and more than 500. The size of the group?s following in the Middle East is purposely kept unclear to protect activists? identities. Telecomix members estimate that they work with as many as 20 Syrian dissidents on a regular basis, but they do not even know the activists? names. Several people could be sharing one code name, or one could be using several. The group wipes records of hits on its Web site, which could be used to trace activists. Lewis, one of four core U.S. members, became a full-time volunteer in September. He stumbled on the group after quitting his job on an IT support desk at the Pentagon, which he took up via a contracting firm soon after finishing high school. A natural computer whiz, he progressed quickly. ?I was making a lot of money but wondering if I deserved it,? says Lewis, who has now moved back home and is living off savings. ?I started wondering, ?What am I doing with my life???? Telecomix is one of a clutch of Western groups trying to boost Internet freedom in the Middle East. Members of the Tor Project, based in Massachusetts, have this year held workshops for bloggers in Egypt and Tunisia. Originally developed by U.S. Navy scientists, Tor is now a free and popular tool for ?anonymizing? Internet connections. An e-mail or Web site search sent using this software bounces among several servers, often in different countries, before reaching its destination, thus disguising the user?s IP address. * * * Lewis has almost finished his coffee and is thinking of moving on. During the day, he relocates to a new WiFi cafe every four hours to prevent his computer being tracked. Coffees are paid for in cash. He is trying to cut down on working at night, which he has to do in his parents? basement. Like many Telecomix members, he is nervous about the Syrian authorities tracing him or his contacts. The Assad family has ruled Syria for four decades and uses entrenched networks of human informants, a pervasive fear of phone-tapping and, increasingly, online snooping to stifle free speech. The country?s penal code prohibits ?weakening national sentiment.? ?Syria is one of the worst in the region for surveillance,? says Nadim Houry, the deputy director for Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. He says activists often keep several Facebook accounts in fake names and avoid using phrases such as ?human rights? in e-mails, although old-school informants are still Assad?s main monitoring tool. Many Arab governments are boosting their online surveillance efforts with Western technology, just as activists try to evade them using Western social media and hackers. The Blue Coat devices in Syria were one example of a wider trend ? when regimes fell this year in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, online censorship and monitoring tools made by Western companies were found in their state security agencies. Syria had an estimated 4 million Internet users in 2010, or a fifth of its population, according to data from Freedom House, a U.S.-based think tank. Egypt had a 24 percent Internet penetration rate, while just over a third of Tunisians were online. All countries had seen their rates at least double since 2005, even though they remained behind the U.S. rate of 78 percent. Despite taking on some big forces, Lewis is in good spirits ? for once, he has had a proper night?s sleep. So he can chat with contacts in other time zones, he usually does his ?first shift? from midnight until 5 a.m. He then takes a nap and works again from 11 a.m. onwards. At times, he has done 24-hour stretches subsisting on coffee and frozen pizzas. ?It?s much to the annoyance of my parents,? Lewis says. ?They don?t want a freeloading son ? they want me to do stuff around the house.? ? The Washington Post Company --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 07:31:59 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 08:31:59 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?OT=3A_Harry_Morgan=2C_Colonel_Po?= =?windows-1252?q?tter_on_=91M*A*S*H=2C=92_Dies_at_96?= Message-ID: <93B8A044-5DFE-4671-A199-E34C7B3CD5D5@infowarrior.org> "Sufferin' Saddlesoap!" Thanks for the laughs, Harry. -- rick Harry Morgan, Colonel Potter on ?M*A*S*H,? Dies at 96 By MICHAEL POLLAK http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/arts/television/harry-morgan-mash-and-dragnet-actor-dies-at-96.html Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series ?M*A*S*H,? died on Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. His son Charles confirmed his death, saying Mr. Morgan had been treated for pneumonia recently. In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers, thugs and police chiefs. On television, he played Officer Bill Gannon with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb?s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated ?Dragnet,? from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy ?Pete and Gladys? (1960-62), reprising a role he had played on ?December Bride? (1954-59). He was also a regular on ?The Richard Boone Show? (1963-64), ?Kentucky Jones? (1964-65), ?The D.A.? (1971-72), ?Hec Ramsey? (1972-74) and ?Blacke?s Magic? (1986). But to many fans he was first and foremost Col. Sherman T. Potter, commander of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in Korea. With a wry smile, flat voice and sharp humor, Mr. Morgan played Colonel Potter from 1975 to 1983, when ?M*A*S*H? went off the air. He replaced McLean Stevenson , who had quit the series, moving into the role on the strength of his performance as a crazed major general in an early episode. In an interview for the Archive of American Television, Mr. Morgan said of his ?M*A*S*H? character: ?He was firm. He was a good officer and he had a good sense of humor. I think it?s the best part I ever had.? Colonel Potter?s office had several personal touches. The picture on his desk was of Mr. Morgan?s wife, Eileen Detchon. To relax, the colonel liked to paint and look after his horse, Sophie ? a sort of inside joke, since the real Harry Morgan raised quarter horses on a ranch in Santa Rosa. Sophie, to whom Colonel Potter says goodbye in the final episode, was Mr. Morgan?s own horse. In 1980 his Colonel Potter earned him an Emmy Award as best supporting actor in a comedy series. During the shooting of the final episode, he was asked about his feelings. ?Sadness and an aching heart,? he replied. Harry Morgan was born Harry Bratsburg on April 10, 1915, in Detroit. His parents were Norwegian immigrants. After graduating from Muskegon High School, where he played varsity football and was senior class president, he intended to become a lawyer, but debating classes in his pre-law major at the University of Chicago stimulated his interest in the theater. He made his professional acting debut in a summer stock production of ?At Mrs. Beam?s? in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and his Broadway debut in 1937 in the original production of ?Golden Boy,? starring Luther Adler, in a cast that also included Karl Malden. After moving to California in 1942, he was spotted by a talent scout in a Santa Barbara stock company?s production of William Saroyan?s one-act play ?Hello Out There.? Signing a contract with 20th Century Fox, he originally used the screen name Henry Morgan, but changed Henry to Harry in the 1950s to avoid confusion with the radio and television humorist Henry Morgan. Mr. Morgan attracted attention almost immediately. In ?The Ox-Bow Incident? (1943), which starred Henry Fonda, he was praised for his portrayal of a drifter caught up in a lynching in a Western town. Reviewing ?A Bell for Adano? (1945), based on John Hersey?s novel about the Army in a liberated Italian town, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Morgan was ?crude and amusing as the captain of M.P.?s.? He went on to appear in ?All My Sons? (1948), based on the Arthur Miller play, with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster; ?The Big Clock? (1948), in which he played a silent, menacing bodyguard to Charles Laughton; ?Yellow Sky? (1949), with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter; and the critically praised western ?High Noon? (1952), with Gary Cooper. Among his other notable films were ?The Teahouse of the August Moon? (1956), with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, and ?Inherit the Wind? (1960), with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, in which he played a small-town Tennessee judge hearing arguments about evolution in the fictionalized version of the Scopes ?monkey trial.? In ?How the West Was Won? (1962) he played Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. After a personable performance as Glenn Miller?s pianist, Chummy MacGregor, in ?The Glenn Miller Story? (1954), starring James Stewart, he often played softer characters as well as his trademark hard-bitten tough guys. There were eventually a number of comedies on his r?sum?, among them ?John Goldfarb, Please Come Home? (1965), with Shirley MacLaine and Peter Ustinov; ?The Flim-Flam Man? (1967), with George C. Scott; ?Support Your Local Sheriff!? (1969), with James Garner and Walter Brennan; and ?The Apple Dumpling Gang? (1975), a Disney movie with Tim Conway and Don Knotts. He returned as Bill Gannon, by now promoted to captain, in the 1987 movie ?Dragnet,? a comedy remake of the series starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks. Mr. Morgan?s television credits were prodigious. He once estimated that in one show or another, he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years. Regarded as one of the busiest actors in the medium, he had continuing roles in at least 10 series, which, combined with his guest appearances, amounted to hundreds of episodes. He reprised the role of Sherman Potter in ?AfterMASH? (1983-85), a short-lived spinoff. Among the later shows on which he appeared as a guest star were ?The Love Boat,? ?3rd Rock From the Sun,? ?You Can?t Take It With You,? ?Murder, She Wrote? and ?The Jeff Foxworthy Show.? Mr. Morgan?s first wife, Eileen Detchon, died in 1985 after 45 years of marriage. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Bushman, whom he married in 1986; three sons from his first marriage, Christopher, Charles and Paul; and eight grandchildren. A fourth son, Daniel, died in 1989. Mr. Morgan lived in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. His son Charles, a lawyer in Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview that he would marvel at his father?s photographic memory. ?My dad would read a script the way somebody else would read Time magazine and put it down and be on the set the next day,? he said. But Harry Morgan never sat as a guest on a talk show, Charles Morgan said; it did not seem appropriate or necessary. ?Appearing on a talk show to focus on himself because he was Harry Morgan,? he said, ?was not nearly as natural as appearing in a role as Pete Porter or Bill Gannon or Colonel Potter, or as the cowboy drifter who wandered into town with Henry Fonda and got wrapped up in a vigilante brigade in ?Ox-Bow Incident.? ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 11:02:52 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:02:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Microsoft's Kafkaesque XBox360 ToS Change Message-ID: You can't opt out of the "no class-action" Xbox 360 TOS update after all By Ben Kuchera | Published about 2 hours ago We reported that Microsoft was taking away your right to sue the company in the latest Xbox 360 update by forcing gamers into neutral arbitration, while also blocking consumers from joining class-action lawsuits... unless they opted out of the clause by mailing a letter to Microsoft. It seems this isn't actually the case, as Microsoft has told Kotaku that you can't opt out: you need to give up these rights if you'd like to continue using your Xbox 360. < - > "The terminology in the ToS used to 'opt out' applies only to future changes made after this agreement," Kotaku reported. So you have to accept this agreement, and give up your right to class-action status and most legal action against Microsoft, but you can opt out of any future changes. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/12/you-cant-opt-out-of-the-no-lawsuits-xbox-360-tos-update-after-all.ars --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 11:35:11 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:35:11 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?FBI_to_change_definition_of_=91r?= =?windows-1252?q?ape=92_for_the_first_time_since_1929?= Message-ID: <61BCCE27-1EA7-498D-93E4-39B0ADD8F7AD@infowarrior.org> (Link to full article to get the definitions - I kept them out of this note to avoid tripping your Lovejoy filters. -- rick) FBI to change definition of ?rape? for the first time since 1929 Activists say the old definition undercounted sexual assaults and discouraged reporting BY Rheana Murray NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, December 8 2011, 1:10 AM The FBI?s definition of ?rape? is about to get a long-awaited update, for the first time since 1929. The revamped description will be broader, pleasing activists who say the current definition leads to the low-balling of sexual assault cases, and also discourages victims to come forward. < - > http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/fbi-change-definition-rape-time-1929-article-1.988510 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 11:59:39 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:59:39 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - USMA: Terrorist Threats to Commercial Aviation: A Contemporary Assessment Message-ID: <166D47C9-9F51-439B-8AC9-EA9F338B7CEC@infowarrior.org> Terrorist Threats to Commercial Aviation: A Contemporary Assessment Nov 30, 2011 Author: Ben Brandt http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/terrorist-threats-to-commercial-aviation-a-contemporary-assessment Ten years ago, al-Qa`ida utilized four U.S. commercial airliners to destroy the World Trade Center?s towers, damage the Pentagon, and kill close to 3,000 people. This attack spurred the United States to convert its counterterrorism efforts into a sustained war on terrorism, resulting in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the capture or killing of hundreds of al-Qa`ida members, and the eventual death of al-Qa`ida chief Usama bin Ladin. There has been extensive reflection in recent months regarding the implications of Bin Ladin?s death and the Arab Spring to al-Qa`ida and its affiliated groups. Two critical issues, however, have been partially sidelined as a result. How has the terrorist threat to commercial aviation evolved since the events of 9/11? How have actions by the U.S. and other governments worked to mitigate this threat? This article offers a thorough review of recent aviation-related terrorist plots, subsequent mitigation strategies, and current terrorist intentions and capabilities dealing with commercial aviation. It concludes by offering three steps security experts can take to reduce the terrorist threat to commercial aviation. Aviation-Related Plots Since 9/11 and the Regulatory Response A number of al-Qa`ida-affiliated plots sought to target commercial aviation since 9/11. A sampling of these include the ?shoe bomber? plot in December 2001, an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002, the liquid explosives plot against transatlantic flights in 2006, the Christmas Day plot in 2009, and the cargo bomb plots in 2010. Other prominent operations attempted or executed by Islamist extremists during this period include a 2002 plot to hijack an airliner and crash it into Changi International Airport in Singapore, the 2002 El Al ticket counter shootings at Los Angeles International Airport, the 2004 bombings of two Russian airliners, the 2007 Glasgow airport attack, a 2007 plot against Frankfurt Airport by the Sauerland cell, a 2007 attempt by extremists to target fuel lines at JFK International Airport in New York, the 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow?s Domodedovo International Airport, and the 2011 shootings of U.S. military personnel at Frankfurt International Airport. In response to these incidents, the U.S. government and many other countries have dramatically increased aviation security measures to prevent or deter future attacks. Many of these measures are well known to the public, including: the hardening of cockpit doors; federalization of airport security screening staff and the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); deployment of federal air marshals (FAMs) and federal flight deck officers (FFDOs) aboard aircraft; implementation of new detection equipment and methods, such as advanced imaging technology (AIT), often referred to as ?body scanners?; increased amounts of screening for cargo; explosive trace detection (ETD), full body ?patdowns,? and behavioral detection officers (BDOs); enhanced scrutiny for visa applicants wanting to travel to the United States; and the use of watch lists to screen for terrorists to prevent them from boarding flights or from gaining employment in airports or airlines. Certain measures?such as invasive patdowns, AIT scanning, inducing passengers to remove jackets, belts, and shoes for inspection, and requiring them to travel with minimal amounts of liquid in their possession?have drawn widespread complaints regarding their inconvenience, as well as questions about their supposed efficacy. The reactive nature of many such measures has been widely noted as well, with some security practices designed to counter highly specific attack techniques utilized in past terrorist plots. Al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) sarcastically commented on this tendency in its online magazine Inspire, rhetorically asking the U.S. government whether it thought the group had no other way to conceal explosives after the TSA prohibited passengers from carrying printer cartridges. Current Threats to Aviation Despite the strenuous efforts by governments to harden commercial aviation in the post-9/11 era, the number of plots illustrates that al-Qa`ida core, its affiliates, and numerous other Islamist extremist groups and self-radicalized individuals maintain a high level of interest in attacking aviation. Despite the organizational disruptions caused by the deaths of numerous senior al-Qa`ida leaders in 2011, and the current preoccupation of several al-Qa`ida affiliates with local conflicts, this ongoing interest in attacking aviation is unlikely to dissipate in the long-term. Furthermore, the evolving tactics utilized in these various plots lend weight to AQAP?s contention that government regulators suffer from a lack of imagination in anticipating and mitigating emergent and existing threats. As indicated by numerous accounts, including the description of the cargo plot contained in Inspire, terrorists constantly seek to analyze existing aviation security measures to probe for weaknesses and develop countermeasures. Terrorists? ongoing efforts to study and defeat security are further exemplified by the arrest of Rajib Karim, a former information technology employee at British Airways; prior to his arrest, Karim maintained an ongoing dialogue with AQAP operative Anwar al-`Awlaqi and attempted to provide al-`Awlaqi with information on aviation security procedures.[1] Therefore, despite government efforts to improve aviation security, a number of critical tactical threats remain. Insider Threats Rajib Karim sought to stage a terrorist attack on behalf of AQAP, seeking to become a flight attendant for British Airways to stage a suicide attack. He also attempted to recruit fellow Muslims (including a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport and an employee of airport security) to stage an attack.[2] Coupled with the aforementioned 2007 JFK airport plot, which involved at least one airport employee, and a reported 2009 plot by Indonesian terrorist Noordin Top to target commercial aviation at Jakarta?s main airport, which included assistance from a former mechanic for Garuda Indonesia,[3] this illustrates the primacy of the so-called ?insider threat? to aviation. Although TSA and U.S. airports currently conduct criminal and terrorist database checks on potential airport, airline, and vendor employees who are to be granted access to secure areas, there are significant vulnerabilities in this approach,[4] which has proven notably unsuccessful at stopping members of street gangs from gaining employment and carrying out criminal activities such as narcotrafficking, baggage theft, and prostitution at airports nationwide. In 2010, an individual named Takuma Owuo-Hagood obtained employment as a baggage handler for Delta Airlines, then promptly traveled to Afghanistan where he made contact with the Taliban, reportedly providing advice on how to effectively engage U.S. troops.[5] The magnitude of this vulnerability is compounded because most airport employees working in secure areas do not undergo security screening prior to entering their workspace due to practical constraints. Additional measures, such as random screening and security probes, are unable to effectively mitigate this threat. The insider threat becomes markedly worse at non-Western airports in regions such as West Africa or South Asia, where local authorities? ability to effectively screen prospective airport employees is frequently negligible due to incomplete or poorly structured terrorist and criminal intelligence databases. Threats from Ranged Weapons MANPADS, or man-portable air defense systems, have been described as a growing threat to commercial aviation following the outbreak of Libya?s civil war in early 2011 and subsequent news reports claiming that al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has obtained surface-to-air missiles.[6] Some reports suggest that missiles stolen from Libyan arsenals have spread as far as Niger, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. In addition to AQIM, al-Shabab has been known to possess advanced MANPADS, allegedly provided by Eritrea.[7] Given that AQAP maintains ties to al-Shabab and has reportedly taken over multiple military depots in Yemen following the outbreak of civil unrest there,[8] it is not implausible to assume that AQAP could acquire additional MANPADS. There are also reports that the Taliban acquired MANPADS from Iran,[9] making it conceivable that elements of the group sympathetic to al-Qa`ida?s aims could provide al-Qa`ida with MANPADS for a future attack. Although MANPADS are unable to target aircraft at cruising altitudes, commercial aircraft would become vulnerable for several miles while ascending and descending, particularly due to their lack of countermeasure systems. In addition to the MANPAD threat, a significant variety of ranged weapons could be used to target commercial aircraft, particularly when taxiing prior to takeoff or after landing. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), for example, are inaccurate at extended ranges; however, they have been used to shoot down rotary wing aircraft in combat zones, and have been used in at least one plot against El Al aircraft.[10] The Irish Republican Army (IRA) used homemade mortars to attack Heathrow Airport in the 1990s, while heavy anti-material sniper rifles such as the Barrett M82 fire .50 caliber rounds to a range of more than one mile and have been previously used by non-state actors, such as the IRA and the Los Zetas drug cartel.[11] Evolving Threats from Explosive Devices Terrorist groups, particularly AQAP, have continuously refined their ability to conceal improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from security screening equipment, as shown by the 2009 Christmas Day plot, where a would-be suicide bomber concealed explosives in his underwear, and the 2010 cargo bomb plot, where bombmakers hid explosives in printer cartridges. Following the 2009 plot in particular, TSA, foreign regulatory agencies, and some airlines sought to increase safeguards against passenger- or cargo-borne IEDs by the deployment of AIT and ETD equipment. IEDs, however, are likely to remain a significant threat to commercial aviation due to limitations in current screening technology. AIT can be defeated by concealing IEDs internally, either by the frequently discussed stratagem of surgically implanting devices in a would-be suicide bomber or by the simpler route of secreting the device within a body cavity. Alternately, IEDs concealed within complex electronic devices are likely to defeat all but the most thorough visual inspection, as illustrated by explosives experts? initial failure to detect the devices used in the 2010 cargo plot.[12] AQAP has shown itself to be particularly adept at concealing IEDs within electronic devices such as printers and radios, which it will likely continue to use in the future. ETDs and explosives detection dogs, meanwhile, can be defeated by numerous countermeasures. For example, many (though not all) ETD devices detect only two popular explosive compounds. ETD equipment is also not designed to detect the components of improvised incendiary devices (IIDs), making the use of these correspondingly attractive to terrorists. Lastly, IEDs can be sealed and cleaned to degrade the ability of ETD equipment to detect explosive vapors or particles.[13] Nor is behavioral profiling likely to provide the solution to passenger-borne IEDs and IIDs. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab underwent two interviews by security staff prior to staging his attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in 2009. Similarly, a GAO report examining the TSA?s use of BDOs noted that the scientific community is divided as to whether behavioral detection of terrorists is viable.[14] Threats Against Airline Facilities and Airports One aspect of aviation security that is not frequently addressed is the potential for terrorists to strike other aspects of aviation infrastructure beyond aircraft. Commercial airlines are highly reliant upon information technology systems to handle critical functions such as reservations and crew check-in, a fact not lost upon Rajib Karim when he suggested in correspondence with Anwar al-`Awlaqi that he could erase data from British Airways? servers, thus disabling the airline?s website.[15] Such an approach would mesh closely with al-Qa`ida core?s and AQAP?s stated aims of waging economic jihad against the West. The operational control centers operated by air carriers are another significant point of vulnerability, which conduct the airlines? flight control, meteorology, and emergency management functions. Despite their criticality to flight operations, these control centers are rarely heavily guarded, meaning that a team of attackers equipped with inside knowledge could temporarily shut down the global operations of a major air carrier, particularly if backup facilities were to be targeted as well. Another threat to commercial aviation is the increasing number of plots and attacks targeting airports themselves rather than aircraft. There have been two significant attacks staged at international airports thus far in 2011 in Frankfurt and Moscow. Attacks against airports have been planned or executed using a variety of tactics, such as firearms, car bombs, suicide bombers, and hijacked aircraft. The targets have included airport facilities such as fuel lines, arrival halls, and curbside drop-off points. Terrorists could also breach perimeter fencing and assault aircraft on runways, taxiing areas, and at gates. This tactic was used during the 2001 Bandaranaike airport attack in Sri Lanka, when a team of Black Tigers[16] used rocket-propelled grenades and antitank weapons to destroy half of Sri Lankan Airlines? fleet of aircraft.[17] More recently, Afghan authorities announced the discovery of arms caches belonging to the Haqqani network near Kabul Airport and claimed that the group had planned to use the caches to stage an assault on the airport.[18] The actions of activist groups?such as Plane Stupid, which has breached perimeter fencing at UK airports so that activists could handcuff themselves to aircraft in a protest against the airline industry?s carbon emissions[19]?demonstrate the viability of such an attack in the West as well.[20] The trend toward attacking airports rather than aircraft has likely been driven by a number of factors, particularly increased checkpoint screening measures and terrorists? growing emphasis on decentralized, small-scale attacks on targets of opportunity. Firearms will likely prove to be a key component of future attacks, given their relative ease of use compared to explosives, as well as their wide availability in the United States and many other countries. This trend was exemplified by the 2011 Frankfurt attack, which was conducted by Arid Uka, an employee at the airport?s postal facility, who shot and killed two U.S. soldiers at a bus at the terminal. Although deployment of plainclothes security personnel and quick reaction teams can help ameliorate the impact of attacks on airports, their ease of execution and the impossibility of eliminating all airport queues (be they for drop-off, check-in, security screening, baggage claim, or car rentals) make this tactic a persistent threat. Required Steps to Improve Aviation Security Given the breadth and complexity of threats to commercial aviation, those who criticize the TSA and other aviation security regulatory agencies for reactive policies and overly narrow focus appear to have substantial grounding. Three particularly serious charges can be levied against the TSA: it overemphasizes defending against specific attack vectors (such as hijackings or passenger-borne IEDs) at the expense of others (such as insider threats or attacks on airports); it overemphasizes securing U.S. airports while failing to acknowledge the significantly greater threat posed to flights arriving or departing from foreign airports; and it has failed to be transparent with the American people that certain threats are either extremely difficult or beyond the TSA?s ability to control. Furthermore, the adoption of cumbersome aviation security measures in the wake of failed attacks entails a financial burden on both governments and the airline industry, which has not gone unnoticed by jihadist propagandists and strategists. While the U.S. government has spent some $56 billion on aviation security measures since 9/11, AQAP prominently noted that its 2010 cargo plot cost a total of $4,900.[21] With this in mind, there are several measures that could be undertaken to improve U.S. aviation security. First, policymakers must recognize the timely collection and exploitation of intelligence will always be the most effective means of interdicting terrorist threats to aviation, whether by disrupting terrorist leadership in safe havens, breaking up nascent plots, or preventing would-be terrorists from boarding aircraft. The successful exploitation of intelligence gathered from the Bin Ladin raid in May 2011 has likely done far more to defend commercial aviation from al-Qa`ida than the use of advanced imaging equipment and patdowns. Second, the TSA and other aviation security regulators must increase their liaison with the airline industry regarding the development of risk mitigation strategies, as airlines are far more aware of the vulnerabilities inherent to commercial aviation, as well as the practical constraints on proposed security measures. Third, rather than increasing spending on screening equipment and employees deployed in the United States, the TSA and other regulators should instead provide financial support for airlines attempting to improve security for their overseas operations. This could include subsidizing background checks on airlines? international employees and vendors, paying for armed guards at ticket counters, helping upgrade security for airlines? computer networks and control centers, and paying for the deployment of ETD screening equipment. Aviation security regulators should also work to improve the quality of threat information shared with airlines, which is frequently dated, irrelevant, or inaccurate. Most importantly, the TSA and policymakers must publicly acknowledge that it is impossible to successfully protect every aspect of commercial aviation at all times. Intelligence gaps will occur, watch lists will not always be updated, scanners will fail to detect concealed items, and employees will become corrupt or radicalized. As politically painful as such an admission may be, it is essential to scale back bloated security measures that add significant expense and inconvenience to commercial aviation without materially reducing risk. The TSA?s leadership has begun to take small steps in this direction, such as a current pilot program designed to prescreen travelers to facilitate expedited screening, but more must be done to ensure that commercial aviation remains both secure and commercially viable. Ben Brandt is a director at Lime, a political risk consultancy based in the United Arab Emirates. Prior to joining Lime, he worked as a threat analyst for a major U.S. airline, as well as at the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. Mr. Brandt holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. [1] ?BA Worker to Stand Trial on Terror Charges,? CNN, March 26, 2010. [2] Vikram Dodd, ?British Airways Worker Rajib Karim Convicted of Terrorist Plot,? Guardian, February 28, 2011. [3] ?Terror Suspect Top Said Planning Attack on Airline ? Indonesian Police Chief,? BBC, September 1, 2009. [4] For example, it is difficult to conduct effective background screening on immigrants who have migrated to the United States from countries with poor records systems. [5] Alissa Rubin, ?Tangled Tale of American Found in Afghanistan,? New York Times, October 11, 2010. [6] See, for example, ?Qaeda Offshoot Acquires Libyan Missiles: EU,? Agence France-Presse, September 6, 2011. [7] ?Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia,? UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, July 18, 2007. [8] Fawaz al-Haidari, ?Blast at Qaeda-Looted Yemen Ammo Plant Kills 75,? Agence France-Presse, March 28, 2011. [9] Declan Walsh, ?Afghanistan War Logs: US Covered Up Fatal Taliban Missile Strike on Chinook,? Guardian, July 25, 2010; ?Afghanistan War Logs: Anti-Aircraft Missiles Clandestinely Transported from Iran into Afghanistan ? US Report,? Guardian, July 25, 2010. [10] Richard Cummings, ?Special Feature: The 1981 Bombing of RFE/RL,? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 9, 1996. Some news reports claim that Islamic militants planned to target an El Al flight with rocket propelled grenades in Switzerland in 2005 as well. [11] Scott Kraft, ?New IRA ?Spectaculars? Seen Stalling Peace,? Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1994; Samuel Logan, ?Los Zetas: Evolution of a Criminal Organization,? ISN Security Watch, March 11, 2009. [12] ?Failure to Find Airport Bomb ?a Weakness,? Expert Says,? BBC, November 1, 2010. [13] For details, see Brian Jackson, Peter Chalk et al., Breaching the Fortress Wall (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007). [14] ?Aviation Security: Efforts to Validate TSA?s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway,? U.S. Government Accountability Office, May 2010. [15] Alistair MacDonald, ?U.K. Prosecutors Tie BA Employee to Awlaki,? Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2011. [16] The Black Tigers were a specially selected and trained group of suicide operatives deployed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during their insurgent campaign in Sri Lanka. [17] Celia W. Dugger, ?Rebel Attack on Airport Shocks Leaders of Sri Lanka,? New York Times, July 25, 2001. [18] Matt Dupee, ?NDS Smashes Haqqani Network Plots in Kabul,? The Long War Journal, July 31, 2011. [19] See, for example, Helen Carter, ?Plane Stupid Demo at Manchester Airport Increased Emissions, Court Hears,? Guardian, February 21, 2011. [20] Ibid. [21] See, for example, Bruce Riedel, ?AQAP?s ?Great Expectations? for the Future,? CTC Sentinel 4:8 (2011). For details on the $56 billion, see Ashley Halsey III, ?GOP Report: TSA Hasn?t Improved Aviation Security,? Washington Post, November 16, 2011. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 12:01:58 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 13:01:58 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?OT=3A_Harry_Morgan=2C_Colonel_Po?= =?windows-1252?q?tter_on_=91M*A*S*H=2C=92_Dies_at_96=2E?= Message-ID: <8B844BFE-335C-4F9E-B1F0-5EFD6CE1E646@infowarrior.org> "Sufferin' Saddlesoap!" Thanks for the laughs, Harry. -- rick Harry Morgan, Colonel Potter on ?M*A*S*H,? Dies at 96 By MICHAEL POLLAK http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/arts/television/harry-morgan-mash-and-dragnet-actor-dies-at-96.html Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series ?M*A*S*H,? died on Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. His son Charles confirmed his death, saying Mr. Morgan had been treated for pneumonia recently. In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers, thugs and police chiefs. On television, he played Officer Bill Gannon with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb?s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated ?Dragnet,? from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy ?Pete and Gladys? (1960-62), reprising a role he had played on ?December Bride? (1954-59). He was also a regular on ?The Richard Boone Show? (1963-64), ?Kentucky Jones? (1964-65), ?The D.A.? (1971-72), ?Hec Ramsey? (1972-74) and ?Blacke?s Magic? (1986). But to many fans he was first and foremost Col. Sherman T. Potter, commander of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in Korea. With a wry smile, flat voice and sharp humor, Mr. Morgan played Colonel Potter from 1975 to 1983, when ?M*A*S*H? went off the air. He replaced McLean Stevenson , who had quit the series, moving into the role on the strength of his performance as a crazed major general in an early episode. In an interview for the Archive of American Television, Mr. Morgan said of his ?M*A*S*H? character: ?He was firm. He was a good officer and he had a good sense of humor. I think it?s the best part I ever had.? Colonel Potter?s office had several personal touches. The picture on his desk was of Mr. Morgan?s wife, Eileen Detchon. To relax, the colonel liked to paint and look after his horse, Sophie ? a sort of inside joke, since the real Harry Morgan raised quarter horses on a ranch in Santa Rosa. Sophie, to whom Colonel Potter says goodbye in the final episode, was Mr. Morgan?s own horse. In 1980 his Colonel Potter earned him an Emmy Award as best supporting actor in a comedy series. During the shooting of the final episode, he was asked about his feelings. ?Sadness and an aching heart,? he replied. Harry Morgan was born Harry Bratsburg on April 10, 1915, in Detroit. His parents were Norwegian immigrants. After graduating from Muskegon High School, where he played varsity football and was senior class president, he intended to become a lawyer, but debating classes in his pre-law major at the University of Chicago stimulated his interest in the theater. He made his professional acting debut in a summer stock production of ?At Mrs. Beam?s? in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and his Broadway debut in 1937 in the original production of ?Golden Boy,? starring Luther Adler, in a cast that also included Karl Malden. After moving to California in 1942, he was spotted by a talent scout in a Santa Barbara stock company?s production of William Saroyan?s one-act play ?Hello Out There.? Signing a contract with 20th Century Fox, he originally used the screen name Henry Morgan, but changed Henry to Harry in the 1950s to avoid confusion with the radio and television humorist Henry Morgan. Mr. Morgan attracted attention almost immediately. In ?The Ox-Bow Incident? (1943), which starred Henry Fonda, he was praised for his portrayal of a drifter caught up in a lynching in a Western town. Reviewing ?A Bell for Adano? (1945), based on John Hersey?s novel about the Army in a liberated Italian town, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Morgan was ?crude and amusing as the captain of M.P.?s.? He went on to appear in ?All My Sons? (1948), based on the Arthur Miller play, with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster; ?The Big Clock? (1948), in which he played a silent, menacing bodyguard to Charles Laughton; ?Yellow Sky? (1949), with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter; and the critically praised western ?High Noon? (1952), with Gary Cooper. Among his other notable films were ?The Teahouse of the August Moon? (1956), with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, and ?Inherit the Wind? (1960), with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, in which he played a small-town Tennessee judge hearing arguments about evolution in the fictionalized version of the Scopes ?monkey trial.? In ?How the West Was Won? (1962) he played Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. After a personable performance as Glenn Miller?s pianist, Chummy MacGregor, in ?The Glenn Miller Story? (1954), starring James Stewart, he often played softer characters as well as his trademark hard-bitten tough guys. There were eventually a number of comedies on his r?sum?, among them ?John Goldfarb, Please Come Home? (1965), with Shirley MacLaine and Peter Ustinov; ?The Flim-Flam Man? (1967), with George C. Scott; ?Support Your Local Sheriff!? (1969), with James Garner and Walter Brennan; and ?The Apple Dumpling Gang? (1975), a Disney movie with Tim Conway and Don Knotts. He returned as Bill Gannon, by now promoted to captain, in the 1987 movie ?Dragnet,? a comedy remake of the series starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks. Mr. Morgan?s television credits were prodigious. He once estimated that in one show or another, he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years. Regarded as one of the busiest actors in the medium, he had continuing roles in at least 10 series, which, combined with his guest appearances, amounted to hundreds of episodes. He reprised the role of Sherman Potter in ?AfterMASH? (1983-85), a short-lived spinoff. Among the later shows on which he appeared as a guest star were ?The Love Boat,? ?3rd Rock From the Sun,? ?You Can?t Take It With You,? ?Murder, She Wrote? and ?The Jeff Foxworthy Show.? Mr. Morgan?s first wife, Eileen Detchon, died in 1985 after 45 years of marriage. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Bushman, whom he married in 1986; three sons from his first marriage, Christopher, Charles and Paul; and eight grandchildren. A fourth son, Daniel, died in 1989. Mr. Morgan lived in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. His son Charles, a lawyer in Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview that he would marvel at his father?s photographic memory. ?My dad would read a script the way somebody else would read Time magazine and put it down and be on the set the next day,? he said. But Harry Morgan never sat as a guest on a talk show, Charles Morgan said; it did not seem appropriate or necessary. ?Appearing on a talk show to focus on himself because he was Harry Morgan,? he said, ?was not nearly as natural as appearing in a role as Pete Porter or Bill Gannon or Colonel Potter, or as the cowboy drifter who wandered into town with Henry Fonda and got wrapped up in a vigilante brigade in ?Ox-Bow Incident.? ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 14:20:27 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 15:20:27 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Twitter Bots Drown Out Anti-Kremlin Tweets Message-ID: <01B34053-11D6-479A-ADDB-B2B2B53B605A@infowarrior.org> (c/o jh) Twitter Bots Drown Out Anti-Kremlin Tweets Thousands of Twitter accounts apparently created in advance to blast automated messages are being used to drown out Tweets sent by bloggers and activists this week who are protesting the disputed parliamentary elections in Russia, security experts said. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/12/twitter-bots-drown-out-anti-kremlin-tweets/ Amid widespread reports of ballot stuffing and voting irregularities in the election, thousands of Russians have turned out in the streets to protest. Russian police arrested hundreds of protesters who had gathered in Moscow?s Triumfalnaya Square, including notable anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny. In response, protesters began tweeting their disgust in a Twitter hashtag #???????????? (Triumfalnaya), which quickly became one of the most-tweeted hashtags on Twitter. But according to several experts, it wasn?t long before messages sent to that hashtag were drowned out by pro-Kremlin tweets that appear to have been sent by countless Twitter bots. Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, observed that ?if you currently check this hash tag on twitter you?ll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day. To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour.? ?Whether the attack was supported officially or not is not relevant, but we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech,? Goncharov wrote. I?ve been working with a few security researchers inside of Russia who asked not to be named for fear of retribution by patriotic Russian hackers or the government. Since Trend?s posting, they?ve identified thousands of additional accounts (e.g., @ALanskoy, @APoluyan, @AUstickiy, @AbbotRama, @AbrahamCaldwell?a much longer list is available here) that are rapidly posting anti-protester or pro-Kremlin sentiments to more than a dozen hashtags and keywords that protesters are using to share news, including #Navalny. A review of the 2,000 Twitter accounts linked above indicates that most of them were created at the beginning of July 2011, and have very few tweets other than those meant to counter the protesters, or to simply fill the hashtag feeds with meaningless garbage. Some of the bot messages include completely unrelated hashtags or keywords, seemingly to pollute the news stream for the protester hashtags. In addition, almost all of the bot accounts are mostly following each other, with a handful of exceptions: It appears that most of the auto-created accounts that are flooding the protester hashtags are following the Twitter account @master_boot, which looks like it belongs to an actual user. In fact, one of Master_boot?s 17,000+ followers recently tweeted to inquire about Twitter bots. The person behind the @master_boot account did not immediately respond to requests. Interestingly, the Kremlin leadership appears to be using their Twitter accounts to bash those calling the recent elections a fraud. Reuters is reporting that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev caused shock and jeers on Wednesday after an obscene insult directed at political opponents appeared on his official Twitter feed. According to cached copies of the feed and a notification of the post received by a Reuters reporter, Medvedev?s tweet read: ?It has become clear that if a person writes the expression ?party of swindlers and thieves? in their blog then they are a stupid sheep getting f****d in the mouth :) .? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 19:03:17 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 20:03:17 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Lawmakers unveil sensible alternative to SOPA Message-ID: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57339611-38/lawmakers-unveil-sensible-alternative-to-sopa/ Lawmakers unveil sensible alternative to SOPA by Larry Downes December 8, 2011 3:55 PM PST commentary A bipartisan group of leading members of Congress, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), today unveiled draft legislation that could ease tensions in a growing firefight over online piracy pitting technology industries and consumers against content providers. The bill, "The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade" or OPEN Act, provides a narrow and sensible alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act, bills pending in the House and Senate respectively. OPEN's sponsors expect to introduce the legislation in both houses within a week. Wyden and Issa are also calling for public collaboration on the draft on a Web site launched today. SOPA was introduced last month as a supposed corrective to Protect IP, which passed out of a Senate committee in May. Both bills were supposedly aimed at stopping "worst of the worst" foreign Web sites selling unlicensed goods protected by U.S. copyright and trademark. Critics, including much of the technology community, argued that the proposed laws strayed dangerously from that narrow goal, unnecessarily threatening the underlying engineering and openness of the Internet. OPEN offers a much more focused alternative. The draft bill would make it easier for rights holders to stop rogue sites by filing complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The ITC, created by Congress in 1916, is an independent federal agency charged with enforcing U.S. trade law. If the ITC finds that a foreign entity is importing goods into the U.S. illegally, it issues orders to stop the trade and sanction the violator. The ITC already has authority to deal with intellectual-property violations. Under a current procedure, known as Section 337, if the ITC finds that imported goods are violating U.S. intellectual property law, an administrative judge can issue cease-and-desist orders. The judge can also direct U.S. customs and border services to block entry of the goods into the U.S. Preliminary injunctions are also available. The OPEN Act would enhance ITC's Section 337 powers to deal with infringing goods, whether physical or virtual, being sold to U.S. consumers from foreign Web sites. For illegal goods being sold by non-U.S. sites, for example, the commission could order payment processors including credit card companies and ad networks to cut ties to the sites. Stopping the flow of money is widely seen as the most effective remedy for copyright and trademark abusers otherwise outside the reach of U.S. law. This approach is also part of both SOPA and Protect IP, for example, but would be effected either by the Department of Justice or privately, rather than through the ITC. To address concerns about sites that offer time-sensitive goods, including pre-release copies of books and movies, the ITC would also be authorized to expedite its normal complaint process. The OPEN Act includes significant safeguards to assure sites being charged with infringement receive notice and an opportunity to challenge any complaints filed with the ITC. The bill goes far to preserve existing standards of liability for third parties, including Web sites that host comments, links, or user content. Current procedures for enforcing copyright and trademark against U.S. infringers would not be undermined. Sites affected under the new law must be shown to have "limited purpose or use" other than willful infringement activities. The earlier bills, touted as curbing foreign Web sites that sell unlicensed or counterfeit U.S. goods including movies, music, and knock-off physical products, have been widely criticized for lacking these safeguards and for going far beyond the rogue Web site issue. SOPA, for example, is nearly 80 pages long, and included new power for private rights holders to attack domestic sites. It would also make streaming content without a license a felony. Legal scholars argued the bill would create new, lower standards of third-party liability and render obsolete the existing notice-and-takedown system in place since the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Internet engineers also worried about provisions in both bills that would allow the Department of Justice to order ISPs to misdirect users away from domain names that had been condemned, possibly without any notice to the registered owner. Internet security experts, including former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker, fear the new provisions would unintentionally open gaping holes in DNS security technology. OPEN has none of these defects. Instead, it treats the problem of rogue foreign Web sites as precisely what it is--a foreign trade problem. It enhances the ability of the ITC, the agency already charged with hearing trade complaints, to cut off the supply of funds to the most dangerous sites, and to do so quickly when necessary. The new bill comes from an impressive and unlikely coalition of Republicans and Democrats concerned by the overreach of SOPA and Protect IP. Besides Wyden and Issa, the basic framework for OPEN, announced last week, was co-sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) and U.S. Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), John Campbell (R-Calif.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Yet supporters of SOPA and Protect IP criticized the new bill even before it was released. According to an article in The Hill last week, an aide to the House Judiciary Committee criticized the OPEN framework for "transferring" enforcement to the ITC, resulting in "a dramatic and costly expansion of the federal bureaucracy." (The House Judiciary Committee introduced SOPA.) But there is no transfer of authority here. The ITC has long had the power to enforce intellectual-property complaints and has done so independently and in accordance with due process. Nothing in the OPEN draft expands the size of the ITC. With Republicans and Democrats on both sides of this debate, OPEN, SOPA, and Protect IP will continue to generate controversy. But one thing is now clear: Silicon Valley is paying close attention. And, it appears, at least some members of Congress are willing to fight to protect entrepreneurs and technology innovators. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 19:05:03 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 20:05:03 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DC Panel: Hacktivism, Vigilantism and Collective Action in a Digital Age Message-ID: <9FA2C584-5EED-405C-A689-3FB8896DF667@infowarrior.org> A CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION EVENT Hacktivism, Vigilantism and Collective Action in a Digital Age Cybersecurity, Civil Liberties, Technology Event Summary http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/1209_hacktivism.aspx?p=1 Radical online activism is a new public policy challenge, with groups such as Anonymous being described as everything from terrorist organizations to freedom fighters. With activities ranging from attacking government websites to revealing private information about targeted organizations, these groups have commanded the public?s attention with often-subversive cyberactivism. Policymakers and technology experts are working in particular to understand Anonymous?s origins and motives?and how it functions with no leaders, hierarchy or structure?in order to develop appropriate policy responses to this new type of online collective action. Event Information Friday, December 09, 2011 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Where Falk Auditorium The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC On December 9, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host a discussion exploring the impact of "hacktivism" and vigilantism in a digital age. Panelists will examine the environment in which it emerged, implications for developing an effective cybersecurity agenda and how public policies can help deter particularly malicious behavior without quashing internet freedom. After the program, speakers will take audience questions. Participants Introduction and Moderator Allan A. Friedman Fellow, Governance Studies Panelists Gabriella Coleman Professor New York University Richard Forno, Ph.D. Cybersecurity Graduate Program Director UMBC Paul Rosenzweig Principal, Red Branch Consulting Lecturer in Law, George Washington University --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 18:54:38 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 19:54:38 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DC Panel: Hacktivism, Vigilantism and Collective Action in a Digital Age Message-ID: <341DA2A2-B058-4230-806C-210C4645C5F5@infowarrior.org> A CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION EVENT Hacktivism, Vigilantism and Collective Action in a Digital Age Cybersecurity, Civil Liberties, Technology Event Summary http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/1209_hacktivism.aspx?p=1 Radical online activism is a new public policy challenge, with groups such as Anonymous being described as everything from terrorist organizations to freedom fighters. With activities ranging from attacking government websites to revealing private information about targeted organizations, these groups have commanded the public?s attention with often-subversive cyberactivism. Policymakers and technology experts are working in particular to understand Anonymous?s origins and motives?and how it functions with no leaders, hierarchy or structure?in order to develop appropriate policy responses to this new type of online collective action. Event Information Friday, December 09, 2011 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Where Falk Auditorium The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC On December 9, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host a discussion exploring the impact of "hacktivism" and vigilantism in a digital age. Panelists will examine the environment in which it emerged, implications for developing an effective cybersecurity agenda and how public policies can help deter particularly malicious behavior without quashing internet freedom. After the program, speakers will take audience questions. Participants Introduction and Moderator Allan A. Friedman Fellow, Governance Studies Panelists Gabriella Coleman Professor New York University Richard Forno, Ph.D. Cybersecurity Graduate Program Director UMBC Paul Rosenzweig Principal, Red Branch Consulting Lecturer in Law, George Washington University --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 8 18:48:34 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 19:48:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?_Cyber-intruder_sparks_massive_f?= =?windows-1252?q?ederal_response_=97_and_debate_over_dealing_with_threats?= Message-ID: <3C57100A-7ABB-4D36-B8D0-16B3816F70BA@infowarrior.org> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/cyber-intruder-sparks-response-debate/2011/12/06/gIQAxLuFgO_print.html Cyber-intruder sparks massive federal response ? and debate over dealing with threats By Ellen Nakashima, Updated: Thursday, December 8, 7:06 PM The first sign of trouble was a mysterious signal emanating from deep within the U.S. military?s classified computer network. Like a human spy, a piece of covert software in the supposedly secure system was ?beaconing? ? trying to send coded messages back to its creator. An elite team working in a windowless room at the National Security Agency soon determined that a rogue program had infected a classified network, kept separate from the public Internet, that harbored some of the military?s most important secrets, including battle plans used by commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. The government?s top cyberwarriors couldn?t immediately tell who created the program or why, although they would come to suspect the Russian intelligence service. Nor could they tell how long it had been there, but they soon deduced the ingeniously simple means of transmission, according to several current and former U.S. officials. The malicious software, or malware, caught a ride on an everyday thumb drive that allowed it to enter the secret system and begin looking for documents to steal. Then it spread by copying itself onto other thumb drives. Pentagon officials consider the incident, discovered in October 2008, to be the most serious breach of the U.S. military?s classified computer systems. The response, over the past three years, transformed the government?s approach to cybersecurity, galvanizing the creation of a new military command charged with bolstering the military?s cyberdefenses and preparing for eventual offensive operations. The efforts to neutralize the malware, through an operation code-named Buckshot Yankee, also demonstrated the importance of computer espionage in devising effective responses to cyberthreats. But the breach and its aftermath also have opened a rare window into the legal concerns and bureaucratic tensions that affect military operations in an arena where the United States faces increasingly sophisticated threats. Like the running debates over the use of drones and other evolving military technologies, rapid advances in computing capability are forcing complex deliberations over the appropriate use of new tools and weapons. This article, which contains previously undisclosed information on the extent of the infection, the nature of the response and the fractious policy debate it inspired, is based on interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the operation. Many of them assert that while the military has a growing technical capacity to operate in cyberspace, it lacks authority to defend civilian networks effectively. ?The danger is not so much that cyber-capabilities will be used without warning by some crazy general,? said Stewart A. Baker, a former NSA general counsel. ?The real worry is they won?t be used at all because the generals don?t know what the rules are.? Furious investigation The malware that provoked Buckshot Yankee had circulated on the Internet for months without causing alarm, as just one threat among many. Then it showed up on the military computers of a NATO government in June 2008, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of a Finnish firm that analyzed the intruder. He dubbed it ?Agent.btz,? the next name in a sequence used at his company, F-Secure. ?Agent.bty? was taken. Four months later, in October 2008, NSA analysts discovered the malware on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, which the Defense and State departments use to transmit classified material but not the nation?s most sensitive information. Agent.btz also infected the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, which carries top-secret information to U.S. officials throughout the world. Such networks are typically ?air-gapped? ? physically separated from the free-for-all of the Internet, with its countless varieties of malicious code, such as viruses and worms, created to steal information or damage systems. Officials had long been concerned with the unauthorized removal of classified material from secure networks; now malware had gotten in and was attempting to communicate to the broader Internet. One likely scenario is that an American soldier, official or contractor in Afghanistan ? where the largest number of infections occurred ? went to an Internet cafe, used a thumb drive in an infected computer and then inserted the drive in a classified machine. ?We knew fairly confidently that the mechanism had been somebody going to a kiosk and doing something they shouldn?t have as opposed to somebody who had been able to get inside the network,? one former official said. Once a computer became infected, any thumb drive used on the machine acquired a copy of Agent.btz, ready for propagation to other computers, like bees carrying pollen from flower to flower. But to steal content, the malware had to communicate with a master computer for instructions on what files to remove and how to transmit them. These signals, or beacons, were first spotted by a young analyst in the NSA?s Advanced Networks Operations (ANO) team, a group of mostly 20- and 30-something computing experts assembled in 2006 to hunt for suspicious activity on the government?s secure networks. Their office was a nondescript windowless room in Ops1, a boxy, low-rise building on the 660-acre campus of the NSA. ANO?s operators are among 30,000 civilian and military personnel at NSA, whose main mission is to collect foreign communications intelligence on enemies abroad. The agency is forbidden to gather intelligence on Americans or on U.S. soil without special authorization from a court whose proceedings are largely secret. NSA, whose employees hold 800 PhDs in mathematics, science and engineering, is based at Fort Meade, an Army base between Baltimore and Washington that has the world?s largest collection of supercomputers as well as its own police force and silicon-chip plant. The ANO operators determined that the breach was serious after a few days of furious investigation. On the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 24,Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., then the NSA?s top computer systems protection officer, was in an agency briefing with President George W. Bush, who was making his last visit to the NSA before leaving office. An aide handed Schaeffer a note alerting him to the breach. At 4:30 p.m., Schaeffer entered the office of Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director and a veteran military intelligence officer. Alexander recalled that Schaeffer minced no words. ?We?ve got a problem,? he said. Permanent slumber That evening, NSA officials briefed top levels of the U.S. government: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the deputy defense secretary and senior congressional leaders, telling them about the incident. Working through the night, the ANO operators pursued a potential fix. Since Agent.btz was beaconing out in search of instructions, perhaps they could devise a way to order the malware to shut itself down. The next morning, in a room strewn with empty pizza boxes and soda cans, they sketched out their plan on a white board. But before it could be put into action, the NSA team had to make sure it would not affect the performance of other software, including the programs that battlefield commanders use for intelligence and communications. They needed to run a test. ?Our objective,? recalled Schaeffer, ?was first, do no harm.? That afternoon, the team members loaded a computer server into a truck and drove it to a nearby office of the Defense Information Systems Agency, which operates the department?s long-haul telecommunications and satellite networks. At 2:30 p.m. they activated a program designed to recognize the beaconing of Agent.btz and respond. Soon after, the malware on the test server fell into permanent slumber. Devising the technical remedy was only the first step. Defeating the threat required neutralizing Agent.btz everywhere it had spread on government networks, a grueling process that involved isolating individual computers, taking them offline, cleaning them, and reformatting hard drives. A key player in Buckshot Yankee was NSA?s Tailored Access Operations (TAO), a secretive unit dating back to the early 1990s that specialized in intelligence operations overseas focused on gathering sensitive technical information. These specialists ventured outside the military?s networks to look for Agent.btz in a process called ?exploitation? or electronic spying. The TAO identified new variants of the malware and helped network defenders prepare to neutralize them before they infected military computers. ?It?s the ability to look outside our wire,? said one military official. Officials debated whether to use offensive tools to neutralize the malware on non-military networks, including those in other countries. The military?s offensive cyber unit, Joint Functional Component Command ? Network Warfare, proposed some options for doing so. Senior officials rejected them on the grounds that Agent.btz appeared to be an act of espionage, not an outright attack, and didn?t justify such an aggressive response, according to those familiar with the conversations. As the NSA worked to neutralize Agent.btz on its government computers, Strategic Command, which oversees deterrence strategy for nuclear weapons, space and cyberspace, raised the military?s information security threat level. A few weeks later, in November, an order went out banning the use of thumb drives across the Defense Department worldwide. It was the most controversial order of the operation. Agent.btz had spread widely among military computers around the world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating the potential for major losses of intelligence. Yet the ban generated backlash among officers in the field, many of whom relied on the drives to download combat imagery or share after-action reports. The NSA and the military investigated for months how the infection occurred. They retrieved thousands of thumb drives, many of which were infected. Much energy was spent trying to find ?Patient Zero,? officials said. ?It turned out to be too complicated,? said one. ?We could never bring it down to as clear as .?.?. ?that?s the thumb drive.??? The rate of new infections finally subsided in early 2009. Officials say no evidence emerged that Agent.btz succeeded in communicating with a master computer or in putting secret documents in enemy hands. The ban on thumb drives has been partially lifted because other security measures have been put in place. ?A great catalyst? Buckshot Yankee bolstered the argument for creating Cyber Command, a new unit designed to protect the military?s computer and communications systems. It gave NSA Director Alexander the platform to press the case, advocated by others, that the new command should be able to use the NSA?s capabilities to obtain foreign intelligence to defend the military?s systems. ?It was a great catalyst,? said Alexander, although the effort later faced questions about whether the head of the largest and most secretive intelligence agency should also lead the new organization. The new organization, which has a staff of 750 and a budget of $155 million, brings together the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, which carried out the bulk of the cleanup work under Buckshot Yankee, and the Network Warfare unit, the military?s offensive cyber arm. It began full operations on Oct. 31, 2010, with Alexander as its head, But the creation of Cyber Command did not resolve several key debates over the national response to cyberthreats. Agent.btz provoked renewed discussion among senior officials at the White House and key departments about how to best protect critical private-sector networks. Some officials argued that the military was better equipped than the Department of Homeland Security to respond to a major destructive attack on a power grid or other critical system, but others disagreed. ?Cyber Command and [Strategic Command] were asking for way too much authority? by seeking permission to take ?unilateral action .?.?. inside the United States,? said Gen. James E. Cartwright Jr., who retired as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August 2011. Officials also debated how aggressive military commanders can be in defending their computer systems. ?You have the right of self-defense, but you don?t know how far you can carry it and under what circumstances, and in what places,? Cartwright said. ?So for a commander who?s out there in a very ambiguous world looking for guidance, if somebody attacks them, are they supposed to run? Can they respond?? Questions over the role of offense in cyber-deterrence began the 1990s, if not earlier, said Martin Libicki, a Rand Corp. cyberwarfare expert. One reason it is so difficult to craft rules, he said, is the tendency to cast cyberwar as ?good, old-fashioned war in yet another domain.? Unlike conventional and nuclear warfare, cyberattacks generally are enabled only by flaws in the target system, he said. Another reason it is so difficult, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the overlap between cyber-operations and the classified world of intelligence. ?The link to espionage is where the nuclear precedent breaks down and makes cyber closer to covert operations,? Lewis said. By the summer of 2009, Pentagon officials had begun work on a set of rules of engagement, part of a broader cyberdefense effort called Operation Gladiator Phoenix. They drafted an ?execute order? under which the Strategic and Cyber commands could direct the operations and defense of military networks anywhere in the world. Initially, the directive applied to critical privately owned computer systems the United States. Several conditions had to be met, according to a military official familiar with the draft order. The provocation had to be hostile and directed at the United States, its critical infrastructure or citizens. It had to present the imminent likelihood of death, serious injury or damage that threatened national or economic security. The response had to be coordinated with affected government agencies and combatant commanders. And it had to be limited to actions necessary to stop the attack, while minimizing impacts on non-military computers. ?Say someone launched an attack on the U.S. from a known Chinese army computer ? a known hostile computer,? the official said. ?You could maybe disable the computer, but you?re not talking about making it explode and killing somebody.? Turf battles But the effort to create such comprehensive rules of engagement foundered, said current and former officials with direct knowledge of the policy debate. The Justice Department feared setting a legal precedent for military action in domestic networks. The CIA resisted letting the military infringe on its foreign turf. The State Department worried the military would accidentally disrupt a server in a friendly country without seeking consent, undermining future cooperation. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, worked to keep its lead role in securing the nation against cyberthreats. The debate bogged down over how far the military could go to parry attacks, which can be routed from server to server, sometimes in multiple countries. ?Could you go only to the first [server] you trace back to? Could you go all the way to the first point at which the attack emanated from? Those were the questions that were still being negotiated,? said a former U.S. official. The questions were even more vexing when it came to potentially combating an attack launched from servers within the United States. The military has no authority to act in cyberspace when the networks are domestic ? unless the operation is on its own systems. In October 2010, Pentagon officials signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security pledging to work to enhance the nation?s cybersecurity. But in speeches, Alexander, the head of Cyber Command, has suggested that more needs to be done. ?Right now, my mission as commander of U.S. Cyber Command is to defend the military networks,? he said in an April speech in Rhode Island. ?I do not have the authority to look at what?s going on in other government sectors, nor what would happen in critical infrastructure. That right now falls to DHS. It also means that I can?t stop it, or at network speed .?.?. see what?s happening to it. What we do believe, though, is that that needs to be accounted for. We have to have a way to protect our critical infrastructure.? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in a speech in California that same month, made her preference clear. ?At DHS, we believe cyberspace is fundamentally a civilian space.? The execute order was signed in February 2011. The standing rules of engagement limit the military to the defense of its own networks and do not allow it to go outside them without special permission from the president. The next vulnerability? Almost from the beginning, U.S. officials suspected that Russia?s spy service created Agent.btz to steal military secrets. In late 2008, Russia issued a denunciation of the allegation, calling it ?groundless? and ?irresponsible.? Former officials say there is evidence of a Russian role in developing the malware, but some doubt whether the spy service created Agent.btz to infiltrate U.S. military computers. Some say it could have been a product of Russia?s sophisticated mafia, with its extensive computer expertise, to collect all sorts of protected records worth stealing ? or selling to the highest bidder. Or there could have been Russian involvement in one phase of the malware?s development before it was adapted by others. Others say they have no doubt that it was intentionally aimed at the Defense Department. New versions of Agent.btz continue to appear, years after it was discovered. What is clear is that Agent.btz revealed weaknesses in crucial U.S. government computer networks ? vulnerabilities based on the weakest link in the security chain: human beings. The development of new defenses did not prevent the transfer of massive amounts of information from one classified network to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, an act that the government charges was carried out by an Army intelligence analyst. NSA analysts know how to neutralize Agent.btz and its variants, but no one knows when the next vulnerability will be discovered or what kind of intrusion might ensue. Richard ?Dickie? George, who was the NSA information assurance technical director until his retirement this year, said that in the early days of Operation Buckshot Yankee, a four-star general asked when the danger from Agent.btz would pass and heightened security measures could end. ?We had to break the news to him,? George recalled, ?that this is never going to be over.? Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. ? The Washington Post Company --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 07:45:28 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 08:45:28 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH unveils new strategy to combat homegrown terror Message-ID: Dec 08, 2011 White House unveils new strategy to combat homegrown terror http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/12/white-house-unveils-new-strategy-to-combat-homegrown-terror/1?loc=interstitialskip By Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY Updated 14h 2m ago Updated 6:38 p.m. The White House unveiled a strategy Thursday aimed at battling homegrown terrorism that emphasizes better coordination with local authorities. The United States has made significant progress in degrading al-Qaeda's capabilities in recent years?President Obama noted today that 22 of the top 30 al-Qaeda operatives have been killed or captured under his watch. Intelligence officials suspect the terror organization is increasingly focused on seeking U.S.-born collaborators to carry out attacks. There have been 33 plots involving homegrown terrorists uncovered since 2009, according to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. "Protecting our nation's communities from violent extremist recruitment and radicalization is a top national security priority," according to the strategic document. "It is an effort that requires creativity, diligence and commitment to our fundamental rights and principles." The strategy draws broad outlines for fighting extremism and follows up on the White House's National Strategy for Counterterrorism, which was released in June. In a speech timed with the release of the counterterrorism strategy, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said the United States needed to avoid playing into al-Qaeda's strategy that "seeks to bleed us financially by drawing us into long, costly wars that also inflame anti-American sentiment." Brennan stressed that the White House would emphasize combating al-Qaeda's efforts to inspire people within the USA to carry out attacks on American soil. One interesting facet of the new document is a call for teaching local officials to recognize violent extremism. The strategy suggests federal and local authorities tweak the way they approach the American Muslim community on the issue. "Just as we engage and raise awareness to prevent gang violence, sexual offenses, school shootings and other acts of violence, so, too, must we ensure that our communities are empowered to recognize threats of violent extremism and understand the range of government and non-government resources that can help keep their families, friends and neighbors safe," the report says. Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., said he was disappointed that the Obama administration isn't designating one agency to coordinate operations. He also expressed frutration by the White House's reluctance "to identify violent Islamist extremism as our enemy." " To understand this threat and counter it, we must not shy away from making the sharp distinction between the peaceful religion followed by millions of law-abiding Americans and a twisted corruption of that religion used to justify violence," said Liberman, who is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security committee. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 08:02:40 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 09:02:40 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Clinton Urges Countries Not to Stifle Online Voices Message-ID: <3A6D68BD-F643-4182-B29D-06A6A60B5F65@infowarrior.org> Many argue this is another case of high-tech do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do given the recent debacles in proposed net regulation policies bandied about in Washington and the strong, though indirect, approach it takes towards stifling online voices. -- rick Clinton Urges Countries Not to Stifle Online Voices http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/world/at-hague-hillary-rodham-clinton-urges-countries-not-to-restrict-internet.html By STEVEN LEE MYERS and HEATHER TIMMONS THE HAGUE ? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other international leaders urged countries and private businesses on Thursday to fight increasing efforts to restrict access to the Internet by repressive governments and even some democratic ones. Opening a two-day conference on digital freedom here sponsored by Google and the Dutch government, Mrs. Clinton warned that restrictions on the Internet threatened not only basic freedoms and human rights, but also international commerce and the free flow of information that increasingly makes it possible. ?When ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us,? Mrs. Clinton said. She added: ?There isn?t an economic Internet and a social Internet and a political Internet. There?s just the Internet.? Mrs. Clinton and others cited examples in which autocratic countries ? often with the assistance of international technology corporations ? cracked down on access to the Internet or the use of it, including Syria, Iran, China and Russia. But increasingly some democratic countries have tried to restrict information, a development that underscores the complexity of controlling an essential part of modern life. On Dec. 1, South Korea?s Communications Commission said it would start reviewing social networking services and mobile applications to remove offensive or immoral content. Officials described the changes, including adding an eight-member team to monitor social media sites, as a necessary measure against North Korean propaganda. Four days later, the minister of communications in India said that it, too, would develop a way to screen information on the Internet and remove content it found offensive or incendiary, after Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft jointly refused to do so. While efforts by countries like China to curb the Internet have been well documented, such steps by democratic countries have deepened alarm among free-speech advocates, even if the intent is to regulate harmful or illegal content. ?More and more countries are trying now to regulate and control the Internet,? Uri Rosenthal, the foreign minister of the Netherlands, said after meeting separately with Mrs. Clinton on Thursday. ?And it is unacceptable that Web sites are blocked, Internet queues are filtered, content manipulated and bloggers are attacked and imprisoned.? Mrs. Clinton cited the imprisonment of Aleksei Navalny, a widely followed blogger who has challenged the results of Russia?s Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, and the arrest of a Syrian blogger, Anas al-Marawi, who has opposed the government of President Bashar al-Assad and its crackdown. ?These and many other incidents worldwide remind of us of the stakes of this struggle,? she said. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that in Russia, the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., had asked Russia?s largest social networking site, VKontakte, to block the online activities of opposition groups challenging the election results. Mrs. Clinton, in her remarks, also cited efforts by countries to change the way the Internet ? now largely self-regulated and globally interconnected ? is governed. Although she did not name the countries, Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan introduced a draft resolution at the United Nations this year that would allow greater government control over the Internet in individual countries. The United States opposes the resolution. Mrs. Clinton said such a proposal would undermine the very nature of the Internet. ?They aim to impose a system, cemented in a global code, that expands control over Internet resources, institutions and content and centralizes that control in the hands of the government,? she said. Jurisdiction on the Internet has always been a murky business. Because the companies that run the major search engines and social media sites are based in the United States, and have most of their hardware and data storage there, they claim that American laws about free speech apply. In India, that has led to tensions with major Internet companies. Since August, the Indian government has held six meetings with executives from Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google in which government officials expressed their alarm at content on YouTube and other sites that they said maligned politicians and religious figures. Anger at India?s ruling United Progressive Alliance government, led by the Congress Party, has mounted this year as government corruption scandals have been uncovered. The number and circulation of parodies, satirical videos and jokes about political figures have also increased. Kapil Sibal, India?s minister of communications and information technology, who ran three of these meetings, told the executives that they needed to screen content that users created and to prevent derogatory material from being published. Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, one of the companies that refused, attended the conference in The Hague and said it was undercut by such efforts. ?It makes easy sense for a government to say: ?We don?t like that. We?re going to curtail that. We?re going to shut it down. We?re going to censor it.? ? India has an uneasy relationship with free speech. Books and movies are sometimes banned if they are critical of powerful businesspeople or politicians, or if the government feels they may offend religious sensibilities. ?India is able to claim the high and mighty democracy road when it compares itself to China, but little things and big things can undermine that,? said Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. ?What separates you from a dictatorship is your willingness to tolerate dissent, to have people express themselves and to have voices heard.? Mr. Sibal made his demands public on Tuesday and called these companies ?uncooperative.? The government will devise its own way of screening content, he said. Steven Lee Myers reported from The Hague, and Heather Timmons from New Delhi. Neha Thirani contributed reporting from Mumbai, India. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 13:11:24 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:11:24 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - RIAA Label Artists & A-List Stars Endorse Megaupload In New Song Message-ID: <20CA306B-966C-49BC-8908-DB8FB43F9F9E@infowarrior.org> RIAA Label Artists & A-List Stars Endorse Megaupload In New Song ? enigmax ? December 9, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-label-artists-a-list-stars-endorse-megaupload-in-new-song-111209 MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world?s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. TorrentFreak caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off ?this rogue nonsense? and told us he wants content owners to get paid. By now readers will be all too familiar with the rhetoric of the mainstream music and movie industries. So-called foreign ?rogue sites? steal American content, steal American money, cost American jobs and damage the economy, the lobbyists insist. While many BitTorrent sites of all shapes, sizes and directions are listed as ?rogue? by both the RIAA and MPAA, these groups also define many cyberlocker services using the same terms. Heading up that particular list are the world-famous Megaupload and Megavideo, two companies founded by the larger-than-life character Kim Dotcom. In a recent video (skip to 5m 10s) from Creative America, Kim is portrayed as an evil baddy, sucking the life blood from the creative industries. But today, Creative America, the RIAA and MPAA will have the shock of their lives. ?You should checkout the Mega Song and video. Hope you like it,? Kim told TorrentFreak. Somewhat intrigued we did, and we have never ? EVER ? seen anything as audacious as this before. In a 4 minute track produced by Printz Board, P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game, Mary J Blige , Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, Jamie Foxx and more sing about how wonderful Megaupload is. ?When I got to send files across the globe, I use Megaupload,? declares Will.i.am, an artist signed to labels owned by RIAA-members Warner and Universal. ?When i?m sending my hits out I use Megaupload, ?cos it?s fast. I can receive hits and I can send ?em out,? declares P Diddy, an artist signed to Interscope, a label owned by Universal. Kanye West, signed to Universal-owned Def Jam, likes to use Megaupload ??because it?s the fastest and safest way to send files ? period.? Alicia Keys, who is signed to Sony-owned RCA, says she uses Megaupload ??.because I know that I can get my music safely and quickly -and you know that i?m serious about my music.? Snoop Dogg, signed to EMI-owned Priority, uses it ??because it keeps the kids off the street,? and The Game (Universal) says that even his lawyers know he uses it, ??and I got plenty of them.? This stunning PR coup is a huge feather in the cap of Megaupload but Kim, who certainly has a colorful and sometimes chaotic past, seems to be taking it all in his stride. Far from the crazy character portrayed in the media, he was courteous and measured while speaking with TorrentFreak about this public support from the stars, and the behind-the-scenes support already being received. ?Amongst our 180 million users is a large number of celebrities, musicians, film makers, actors, etc. and they love Mega. We have hundreds of premium accounts from employees of the companies the RIAA and MPAA represent. In fact 87% of the fortune 500 companies have premium accounts with us,? Kim told us. So what of Mega?s apparent rogue site status, is that of concern to the company? ?Mega might become one of the biggest customers of the content industry and all this ?rogue? nonsense will be forgotten,? Kim explains. ?We want content creators to get paid!? Easier said than done perhaps, but Kim says he has it all worked out. He told TorrentFreak the solution comes with Megakey, a product which provides Mega users with free premium services now, and free premium licensed music and movies in the future. All this will be financed through advertising and as usual, Kim has big, innovative and probably controversial plans in mind. When Megakey is installed the software asks permission to modify where 10 to 15% of the user?s online advertising experience is sourced from. ?It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads coming from Megaclick, our ad network,? says Kim. ?This way we will generate enough ad revenue to provide free premium services and licensed content so that our users can have it for free.? And the company believes the idea has huge potential. ?Imagine 450 million Megakey installations by 2015 with over 5 billion ad impressions per day. That pays for a lot of content,? Kim assured us. Looking at the graphic embedded below, traffic-wise the site is certainly a force to be reckoned with. In future, free musical premium content will be provided through Megabox, described by Kim as the company?s iTunes competitor, while free premium movies will be supplied via Megamovie.com, a service we can reveal will be launched next year. During the course of our discussion with Kim we also discovered an interesting feature that has been built into Megakey. Once installed the whole range of Mega sites can be accessed without the need to use the Internet?s DNS system, meaning that should SOPA kick in and the US government seizes Mega?s domains, users can still access the site. ?We implemented this to give users the fastest and most direct channel to our sites,? Kim told TorrentFreak. ?Mega is not concerned about SOPA or Protect IP. We are a legitimate online service provider, online for 7 years.? A lot has been said and written about Megaupload and Kim, including his earlier PR stunts. But this song, featuring artists on labels that are members of the RIAA, is on the next level. Enjoy. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 13:21:31 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:21:31 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet Without A Problem, Why Can't The US? Message-ID: <754FC794-DD76-4696-8632-F05B9729AEA9@infowarrior.org> MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet Without A Problem, Why Can't The US? from the wow dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/14521817014/mpaa-boss-if-chinese-censor-internet-without-problem-why-cant-us.shtml The MPAA is getting pretty desperate, it seems. MPAA boss Chris Dodd was out trying to defend censoring the internet this week by using China as an example of why censorship isn't a problem. It's kind of shocking, really. < - > "When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn't do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites." < - > Is that really what Chris Dodd wants the US government to aspire to? To setting up its own Great Firewall? His other comments were almost as ridiculous: < - > "How do you justify a search engine providing for someone to go and steal something?" he asked rhetorically in a recent interview at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers conference. "A guy that drives the getaway car didn't rob the bank necessarily, but they got you to the bank and they got you out of it, so they are accessories in my view." < - > But that completely misunderstands and misrepresents the situation. Google isn't the driver. Google is the car manufacturer. Do we sue Ford as an accessory? It's this sort of ridiculousness that makes it so difficult to take Dodd and the MPAA seriously in these discussions. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 13:22:39 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:22:39 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GOP aides head to K St. for tech war Message-ID: GOP aides head to K St. for tech war By: Anna Palmer December 8, 2011 11:39 PM EST http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1940AB8E-748D-488C-A790-6B917B0704D3 A pair of senior Hill aides at the center of a brewing battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley are packing their bags for K Street, where they?ll work for two of the entertainment lobby shops trying to influence their former colleagues in Congress on the very same issue. Allison Halataei, former deputy chief of staff and parliamentarian to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and Lauren Pastarnack, a Republican who has served as a senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee, worked on online piracy bills that would push Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook to shut down websites that offer illegal copies of blockbuster films and chart-topping songs. Halataei recently joined the National Music Publishers? Association, and Pastarnack is jumping to the Motion Pictures Association of America, two lobbying groups pressing Congress to pass the proposals. The departures are a classic example of the revolving door between Capitol Hill and downtown, where the private sector lures well-connected staffers just as a high-stakes legislative battle heats up. The goal is straightforward: leverage the insight, connections and expertise of an insider to tip the scales in their favor. ?This is one of those mega-fights where there is a lot of money at stake and whenever it gets to that, it?s kind of ?Katy bar the door? as far as what they?ll pay for talent,? said McCormick Group headhunter Ivan Adler. ?This fits into the perfect scenario of why senior-level people from well-placed committees get hired, and it?s because they really know the three p?s: people, policy and process. And that makes them very valuable in the Washington marketplace.? NMPA President David Israelite dismissed the idea that Halataei was hired because of the ongoing legislative battle. ?It has nothing to do with pending legislation,? Israelite said. Allison ?knows our issues, has really good relationships across the aisle and is a very smart lawyer.? Further, Israelite said, hiring Halataei would be ?nothing but hurtful to our effort? and cited Smith?s support since he introduced the House version of the piracy bill. Smith?s committee is slated to mark up the bill as early as next week. MPAA spokesman Howard Gantman declined to comment, and Pastarnack did not respond to a request for comment. One former GOP aide who works on these issues, Carl Thorsen, said departures like this can actually help the process. ?Professionals who bring this kind of experience with them downtown generally improve the process all around, and their involvement is a positive regardless of who they represent,? said Thorsen, who is a contract lobbyist for NMPA through his firm Thorsen French Advocacy. ?Alli Halataei and Lauren Pastarnack are both savvy and well-regarded professionals, and I am thrilled they will be involved in the debate surrounding these important issues.? Indeed, the hires are just part of the associations? strategy to influence the online piracy legislation. The music publishers are set to beat their lobbying spending from last year. The publishers spent $620,000 during the first nine months of 2011, according to disclosure reports. That?s up from $420,000 over the same period in 2010. For its part, the MPAA brought on former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who has almost completely revamped the trade group, making significant personnel changes. MPAA spent about $1.3 million on lobbying during the first nine months of 2011. The new hires will be integral to the groups? lobbying operations. As vice president for government affairs, Halataei is NMPA?s chief liaison to Capitol Hill and federal agencies on behalf of the music publishing and songwriting industry. Pastarnack will be director of government relations at MPAA. The former aides will face one-year lobbying bans, which means they cannot lobby the respective committees where they previously worked. But those bans don?t render the former aides useless to their new employers. ?They can provide invaluable insight to people on the outside ? even in the consultation mode,? one tech industry lobbyist said, noting that Halataei had been Smith?s secondhand person and knows how the Texas Republican thinks and what would be an effective lobbying strategy. Additionally, the Senate and House panels work closely together, and both Halataei and Pastarnack have ties to staffers in the chambers they didn?t serve in and aren?t banned from lobbying. And while music publishers and the movie industry would like swift passage of the legislation, it probably will be a multiyear effort. Patent reform legislation, another effort shepherded by Smith and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), took six years to get across the finish line. Halatei and Pastarnack are just the most recent examples of senior staffers headed to an industry in the middle of a legislative brawl. In 2009, Michael Paese, former top aide to then-House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), created a stir when he joined Goldman Sachs as head of its lobbying office. Frank, who was trying to pass a massive banking regulatory overhaul, took the extra measure of extending Paese?s cooling-off period. Frank issued a memo that barred Democratic members of the panel from communicating with Paese until the end of the congressional term in 2010. And while the departures are completely legal, congressional watchdogs like Craig Holman of Public Citizen don?t like it. ?This is very much a troubling aspect of the influence-peddling industry and unfortunately, it is the way business is done,? Holman said. ?This is the revolving-door abuse in which those who have a great deal of money can afford to hire senior staffers or even former members of Congress to do their bidding for them in the private sector as lobbyists.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 16:37:46 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 17:37:46 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GOP bill would dress down TSA Message-ID: <38D4738E-F6BE-4632-B7AD-1EA149A7E390@infowarrior.org> GOP bill would dress down TSA By BURGESS EVERETT | 12/9/11 12:18 PM EST Updated: 12/9/11 2:48 PM EST http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70185.html House Republicans have a message for Transportation Security Administration employees: You may look like cops and dress like cops, but you?re not the cops. The Stop TSA?s Reach In Policy, or STRIP, Act introduced Thursday, would prohibit TSA employees ?who have not received federal law enforcement training? from using the title of ?officer,? as well as bar them from wearing uniforms and badges resembling those of law enforcement officers. Several recent high-profile incidents have drawn outrage from lawmakers, such as recent claims by an 85-year-old woman that she was strip-searched by TSA employees in New York and a 2010 pat-down of a screaming toddler in Chattanooga, Tenn. In 2005, the TSA changed the title of security screeners to that of ?officer?; in 2008 officers transitioned from a white uniform to a blue one with a metallic badge. ?It is outrageous that in a post 9/11 world that the American people should have to live in fear of those whose job it is to keep us safe,? Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the bill?s lead sponsor, said in a statement. ?The least we can do is end this impersonation which is an insult to real cops.? The TSA does not comment on pending legislation, but issued a statement defending its efforts to protect travelers and explaining the gradual changes in TSA uniforms. ?As part of the organization's continued efforts to transition the workforce to a cadre of well-trained, professional transportation security officers, TSA introduced uniforms more reflective of the critical nature of their work and of the high standards they uphold. Whether in airports, mass transit facilities or other transportation modes, TSA maintains a close working relationship with law enforcement and reaches out to law enforcement partners to address potential criminal activity,? a spokesman said in an e-mail. TSA administrator John Pistole last month acknowledged the various high-profile security encounters, describing them to a Senate panel as ?one-off situations.? Pistole said the TSA is doing as much as it can to reduce them, and added that all screening devices will eventually have a filter to mitigate privacy concerns stemming from undergoing scans, which on some machines leave little of the human anatomy to the imagination. The bill has 25 co-sponsors, including House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.), who along with other GOP leaders released a scathing report on the TSA in November, calling for reform and a renewed focus on risk-based screening. Mica said the TSA is overburdened with bureaucrats and called unnecessary pat-downs an ?insult to the freedom of the American people.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 16:38:38 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 17:38:38 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Coffee, Tea or Cancer? Almost Half of Americans Oppose X-ray Body Scanners Message-ID: <58D8113A-A42D-44AB-84FD-827814E20A24@infowarrior.org> Coffee, Tea or Cancer? Almost Half of Americans Oppose X-ray Body Scanners by Michael Grabell ProPublica, Dec. 7, 2011, 6:55 a.m. http://www.propublica.org/article/coffee-tea-or-cancer-americans-oppose-x-ray-body-scanners Even if X-ray body scanners would prevent terrorists from smuggling explosives onto planes, nearly half of Americans still oppose using them because they could cause a few people to eventually develop cancer, according to a new Harris Interactive poll conducted online for ProPublica. Slightly more than third of Americans supported using the scanners, while almost a fifth were unsure. The Transportation Security Administration plans to install body scanners, which can detect explosives and other objects hidden under clothing, at nearly every airport security lane in the country by the end of 2014. It's the biggest change to airport security since metal detectors were introduced more than 35 years ago. The scanners have long faced vocal opposition. Privacy advocates have decried them as a "virtual strip search" because the raw images show genitalia, breasts and buttocks ? a concern the TSA addressed by requiring software that makes the images less graphic. But in addition to privacy objections, scientists and some lawmakers oppose one type of scanner because it uses X-rays, which damage DNA and could potentially lead to a few additional cancer cases among the 100 million travelers who fly every year. They say an alternative technology, which uses radio frequency waves, is safer. Some travelers like Kathy Blomker, a breast cancer survivor from Madison, Wis., have decided to forgo the machines altogether and opt for a physical pat-down instead. "I've had so much radiation that I don't want to subject myself to radiation that I can avoid," she said. "I decided I'm just not ever going to go through one of those machines again. It's just too risky." After ProPublica published an investigation, reported in conjunction with PBS NewsHour, showing that the X-ray scanners had evaded rigorous safety evaluations, the head of the TSA told Senator Susan Collins that his agency would conduct a new independent safety study. He subsequently backed off that promise, prompting the senator to write the TSA pressing the agency to go ahead with the study and asking it to post larger signs alerting pregnant women that they have the option to have a physical pat-down instead of going through the X-ray scanners. The TSA has repeatedly touted a series of polls showing strong public support for the scanners. But those polls and surveys ? conducted by Gallup, The Wall Street Journal and various travel sites ? largely dealt with the privacy issue. Only one of those polls ? by CBS News ? asked specifically about X-ray body scanners, finding that 81 percent of Americans thought that such X-ray scanners should be used in airports. But that poll ? like all the others ? did not mention the risk of cancer. When confronted with the cancer-terrorism trade-off, however, Americans took a much more negative view of the scanners. Harris Interactive surveyed 2,198 Americans between Dec. 2 and Dec. 6. (Full survey methodology can be found here.) The international polling firm asked, "If a security scanner existed which would significantly help in preventing terrorists from boarding a plane with powder, plastic, or liquid explosives, do you think the TSA should still use it even if it could cause perhaps six of the 100 million passengers who fly each year to eventually develop cancer" Forty-six percent said the TSA shouldn't use it, 36 percent said it should, and 18 percent weren't sure. Asked to comment, TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy said in a statement that the X-Ray scanners are "well within national standards." "TSA?s top priority is the safety of the traveling public and the use of advanced imaging technology is critical to the detection of both metallic and non-metallic threats," he said. "All results from independent evaluations confirm that these machines are safe for all passengers." The number of potential cancer cases used in the poll comes from a peer-reviewed research paper written by a radiology and epidemiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and posted on the TSA's website. The professor, Rebecca Smith-Bindman, concluded that 'there is no significant threat of radiation from the scans.' But she estimated that among the 750 million security checks of 100 million airline passengers per year, six cancers could result from the X-ray scans. She cautioned that the increase was small considering that the same 100 million people would develop 40 million cancers over the course of their lifetimes. Another study by David Brenner, director of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, estimated that as airlines approach a billion boardings per year in the United States, 100 additional cancers per year could result from the scanners. The TSA uses two types of body scanners to screen travelers for nonmetallic explosives. In the X-ray machine, known as a backscatter, a passenger stands between two large blue boxes and is scanned with an extremely low level of ionizing radiation, a form of energy which strips electrons from atoms and can damage DNA, leading to cancer. In the millimeter-wave machine, a passenger stands inside a round glass booth and is scanned with low-energy electromagnetic waves which don't strip electrons from atoms and have not been linked to cancer. There is a great deal of uncertainty when performing cancer risk assessments from the very low levels of radiation that the backscatters emit. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration put the risk of a fatal cancer from the machines at one in 400 million. The U.K. Health Protection Agency has put it at one in 166 million. Some experts say such estimates of population risk create a distorted picture of the danger because humans are constantly exposed to background radiation and already accept risks that increase exposure, such as flying on a plane at cruising altitude. In the authoritative study on the health risks of low levels of radiation, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the risk of cancer increases with radiation exposure and that there is no level of radiation at which the risk is zero. Given that risk, Brenner and some in Congress have argued that the TSA should forgo in the X-ray scanners in favor of the millimeter-wave machine. European officials have gone so far as to prohibit the X-ray body scanners, leaving the millimeter-wave scanner as the only option. But some countries, including Germany, have reported a high rate of false alarms with the millimeter-wave machines. The TSA has said that keeping two technologies in play creates competition, encouraging the manufacturers of both technologies to improve the detection capabilities, efficiency and cost of the scanners. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 17:23:47 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 18:23:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - To State Dept., WikiLeaks or Not, Secrets Are Secrets Message-ID: <6B214A5E-4533-4176-A57B-DFFB9456E99E@infowarrior.org> December 7, 2011 To State Dept., WikiLeaks or Not, Secrets Are Secrets By SCOTT SHANE http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/us/state-dept-withholds-cables-that-wikileak-posted.html WASHINGTON ? The quarter-million confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year have been public on the Web for months. But don?t tell the government. It is pretending otherwise. Asked in April by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of 23 cables on Guant?namo, rendition and other matters, the State Department responded as if the confidential documents were still confidential. Twelve of the cables ?must be withheld in full? because they are classified as secret or contain important information, Alex Galovich, of the department?s Office of Information Programs and Services, wrote to the A.C.L.U. on Oct. 21. The other 11, he concluded, ?may be released with excisions.? The accompanying documents were indeed carefully redacted ? here a sentence is removed, there a whole page. But the ambassadors? confidences that the department was intent on protecting are, meanwhile, just a click away for anyone interested. Ben Wizner, litigation director for the A.C.L.U.?s national security project, said the group?s request for documents that were already public was ?mischievous? but also had a serious point: forcing the government officially to acknowledge counterterrorism actions that it has often hidden behind a cloak of classification. ?In part the request was to expose the absurdity of the U.S. secrecy regime,? Mr. Wizner said. But he said the government had repeatedly blocked lawsuits challenging counterterrorism programs by invoking what is called the state secrets privilege and telling judges that allowing the cases to proceed would endanger national security. ?The only place in the world where torture and rendition cannot be discussed is U.S. courtrooms,?he said. Both the State Department and the Justice Department declined to comment, saying the A.C.L.U.?s request is still in litigation. In the past, government officials have said that they do not recognize the leak of classified material as the legal equivalent of declassification, so they must continue to treat it as classified. In the case of WikiLeaks, the Obama administration has responded aggressively to the disclosures: Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of supplying documents to the anti-secrecy group, faces a possible life sentence if convicted. A grand jury in Virginia is investigating whether WikiLeaks activists violated the law in obtaining and publishing secrets, though no such prosecution has ever succeeded. The A.C.L.U. flap is only the latest conundrum posed by the growing category of public-but-classified information. The Central Intelligence Agency?s drone attacks on militants in Pakistan are ostensibly secret but widely discussed. Government censors have redacted commonplace information from American counterterrorism officers? memoirs, saying it is technically classified. Of course, by redacting passages the public is free to read, the State Department has called attention to what it considers the most diplomatically touchy parts of cables. At a glance, its reasoning is not obvious. Excised from a 2010 cable from Luxembourg about a visit from Moazzam Begg, a British former detainee at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, is an American diplomat?s view that Mr. Begg was ?doing our work for us? by trying to persuade European countries to take more Guant?namo inmates. Nearly all of a 2008 report from London on unsurprising ?pessimistic? British government views on Pakistan is redacted. A 2009 cable from Madrid, about human rights advocates seeking an indictment of six former American officials for approving torture, took out a remark critical of Baltasar Garz?n, a Spanish judge known for going after high-profile foreign targets. ?Garzon has a reputation for being more interested in publicity than detail in his cases,? said the sentence the State Department cut, perhaps in the hope that the gesture ? however symbolic ? might ease the offense to the judge. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 9 21:32:57 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 22:32:57 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Universal Music Issues Questionable Takedown On Megaupload Video That Featured Their Artists Message-ID: <3A0CB085-2353-476E-B825-61E10D60FAAF@infowarrior.org> Universal Music Issues Questionable Takedown On Megaupload Video That Featured Their Artists [Updated] from the this-is-going-to-get-interesting dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111209/14234917026/universal-music-issues-questionable-takedown-megaupload-video-that-featured-their-artists.shtml As a bunch of you have noticed, the video that we had a couple posts ago, involving a bunch of the RIAA's biggest artists singing or speaking along to a song endorsing MegaUpload (which the RIAA insists is a rogue site) has been... taken down due to a copyright claim from Universal Music. Here's a screenshot: We're hearing a few different stories as to what's going on, but some people are insistent that nothing in the video violates a UMG copyright. We will do an update or do a new post once there's more info, but (of course) trying to censor information online only seems to make it that much more popular. And it appears that the video is already showing up elsewhere. Either way, it's quite a story isn't it? RIAA and Universal Music insist that they're trying to shut down this site "for the artists." Then the artists speak up in support of the site... and Universal Music censors them using the same copyright law they're trying to expand... Update: TorrentFreak has the response from MegaUpload: ?Those UMG criminals. They are sending illegitimate takedown notices for content they don?t own,? he told us. ?Dirty tricks in an effort to stop our massively successful viral campaign.? So did Universal have any right at all to issue YouTube with a takedown notice? Uncleared samples, anything? ?Mega owns everything in this video. And we have signed agreements with every featured artist for this campaign,? Kim told TorrentFreak. ?UMG did something illegal and unfair by reporting Mega?s content to be infringing. They had no right to do that. We reserve our rights to take legal action. But we like to give them the opportunity to apologize.? ?UMG is such a rogue label,? Kim added, wholly appreciating the irony. The TorrentFreak has some quotes from some legal experts, pointing out that that is exactly why we don't need things like SOPA and PIPA which would go much further and allow significantly more collateral damage on such bogus takedowns. 55 Comments | Leave a Comment.. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 11 14:31:22 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:31:22 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front Message-ID: <582F0578-9127-43B3-A50C-B325AA8D8E23@infowarrior.org> latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story latimes.com Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates. By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau 6:12 PM PST, December 10, 2011 Reporting from Washington Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone. As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare. But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said. "We don't use [drones] on every call out," said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. "If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don't call them." The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate. Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission. In an interview, Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, said Predators are flown "in many areas around the country, not only for federal operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency responders in times of crisis." But former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), who sat on the House homeland security intelligence subcommittee at the time and served as its chairwoman from 2007 until early this year, said no one ever discussed using Predators to help local police serve warrants or do other basic work. Using Predators for routine law enforcement without public debate or clear legal authority is a mistake, Harman said. "There is no question that this could become something that people will regret," said Harman, who resigned from the House in February and now heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank. In 2008 and 2010, Harman helped beat back efforts by Homeland Security officials to use imagery from military satellites to help domestic terrorism investigations. Congress blocked the proposal on grounds it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from taking a police role on U.S. soil. Proponents say the high-resolution cameras, heat sensors and sophisticated radar on the border protection drones can help track criminal activity in the United States, just as the CIA uses Predators and other drones to spy on militants in Pakistan, nuclear sites in Iran and other targets around the globe. For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws. Advocates say Predators are simply more effective than other planes. Flying out of earshot and out of sight, a Predator B can watch a target for 20 hours nonstop, far longer than any police helicopter or manned aircraft. "I am for the use of drones," said Howard Safir, former head of operations for the U.S. Marshals Service and former New York City police commissioner. He said drones could help police in manhunts, hostage situations and other difficult cases. But privacy advocates say drones help police snoop on citizens in ways that push current law to the breaking point. "Any time you have a tool like that in the hands of law enforcement that makes it easier to do surveillance, they will do more of it," said Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. "This could be a time when people are uncomfortable, and they want to place limits on that technology," he said. "It could make us question the doctrine that you do not have privacy in public." In North Dakota, Janke learned about the Predators last spring after local law enforcement was invited to a briefing on how two Customs and Border Protection drones based at the Grand Forks air base could assist police. He immediately saw advantages. "We don't have to go in guns blazing," the sheriff said in a telephone interview. "We can take our time and methodically plan out what our approach should be." Macki, head of the regional SWAT team, decided drones were ideal for spotting suspects in the vast prairie, where grassy plains stretch to the horizon except for trees planted to stem erosion from the winds. "Anything where we need an advantage, we try to give them a call," said Macki, who declined to specify how often or where he has used the Predators. "We are very fortunate to have them in our area willing to assist us." The first known use was June 23 after Janke drove up to the Brossart farm with a search warrant for cattle that supposedly had strayed from a neighboring ranch. The sheriff says he was ordered off the property at gunpoint. The six adult Brossarts allegedly belonged to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an antigovernment group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. The family had repeated run-ins with local police, including the arrest of two family members earlier that day arising from their clash with a deputy over the cattle. Janke requested help from the drone unit, explaining that an armed standoff was underway. A Predator was flying back from a routine 10-hour patrol along the Canadian border from North Dakota to Montana. It carried extra fuel, so a pilot sitting in a trailer in Grand Forks turned the aircraft south to fly over the farm, about 60 miles from the border. For four hours, the Predator circled 10,000 feet above the farm. Parked on a nearby road, Janke and the other officers watched live drone video and thermal images of Alex, Thomas and Jacob Brossart ? and their mother, Susan ? on a hand-held device with a 4-inch screen. The glowing green images showed people carrying what appeared to be long rifles moving behind farm equipment and other barriers. The sheriff feared they were preparing an ambush, and he decided to withdraw until daybreak. The Predator flew back to its hangar. At 7 a.m. the next day, the Predator launched again and flew back to the farm. The drone crew was determined to help avoid a bloody confrontation. No one wanted another Ruby Ridge, the 1992 shootout between the FBI and a family in rural Idaho that killed a 14-year-old boy, a woman and a deputy U.S. marshal. This time, Janke watched the live Predator feed from his office computer, using a password-protected government website called Big Pipe. Around 10 a.m., the video showed the three Brossart brothers riding all-terrain vehicles toward a decommissioned Minuteman ballistic missile site at the edge of their property. The sensor operator in Grand Forks switched to thermal mode, and the image indicated the three men were unarmed. Janke signaled the SWAT team to move in and make the arrests. No shots were fired. A search of the property turned up four rifles, two shotguns, assorted bows and arrows and a samurai sword, according to court records. Police also found the six missing cows, valued at $6,000. Rodney Brossart, his daughter Abby and his three sons face a total of 11 felony charges, including bail jumping and terrorizing a sheriff, as well as a misdemeanor count against Rodney involving the stray cattle. All have been released on bail. Calls to Rodney Brossart were not returned Saturday. The family is believed to be living on the farm. brian.bennett at latimes.com --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 11 15:55:04 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:55:04 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels Message-ID: Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels By Michael Robertson, MP3tunes Dec. 11, 2011, 9:00am PT 7 Comments http://gigaom.com/2011/12/11/why-spotify-can-never-be-profitable-the-secret-demands-of-record-labels/ Imagine a new hot-dog selling venture. Let?s also say there?s only one supplier to purchase hot dogs from. Instead of simply charging a fixed price for hot dogs, that supplier demands the HIGHER of the following: $1 per hot dog sold OR $2 for every customer served OR 50 percent of all revenues for anything sold in the store.In addition, the supplier requires a two-year minimum order of 300 hot dogs per day, payable all in advance. If fewer hot dogs are sold, there is no refund. If more than 300 hot dogs are sold each day, payments to the supplier are generated by calculating $2 per customer or 50 percent of total revenues, so an additional payment is due to the supplier. After the first two years, the supplier can unilaterally adjust any of the pricing terms and the shop can never switch suppliers. Would this imaginary hot dog establishment be able to generate a profit? Never, because the economics are one-sided. The supplier will always elect the formula that captures the largest amount of money for themselves, completely disregarding the financial viability of the store. If the store miraculously managed to generate a profit, the landlord would simply raise the rates after two years. Such economic demands may be imaginary for the hot dog business, but they are the stark reality that every digital-music subscription service such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, and others must confront. These details aren?t well-known because digital music service deals are always wrapped tightly with strict non-disclosure agreements. For the first time, people are talking, and these previously secret demands are being made public. The specifics are even more onerous than the hot dog example cited above. Together they doom online audio companies to a life of subjugation to the labels, as you will learn below. Here are some specific demands that digital music companies are compelled to agree to: ? General deal structure: Pay the largest of A) Pro-rata share of minimum of $X per subscriber, B) Per-play costs at $Y per play, C) Z percent of total company revenue, regardless of other business areas. As stated previously, this means labels de facto set retail price (they also regularly negotiate floors on price, giving even less wiggle room), which limits the ability of the music service to develop ancillary revenue streams that aren?t siphoned off by the labels. ? Labels receive equity stake. Not only do labels get to set the price on the service, they also get partial ownership of the company. ? Up front (and/or minimum) payments. Means large amounts of cash are necessary to even get into the game. In my experience, this further stifles innovation in services and business models. ? Detailed reporting, including monthly play counts. This seems rational enough ? you would assume this information is necessary to pay artists and make other business decisions. The problem is, the labels each make additional demands, including providing additional reports unrelated to payment, including overall market share of sales in various categories. I doubt that, for example, phone manufacturers demand Best Buy provide the percentage of sales of competitors? phones. The labels effectively offload their business analysis (and the cost of such analysis) onto the music services. I can?t think of another industry where that is standard practice. ? Data normalization. Labels all provide their data and files in different formats. That data is constantly changing as labels make available new material and make unavailable old material. This might seem trivial. It?s not. Without standard naming conventions and canonical methods for referencing artist, tracks and albums (ISRC and UPC don?t cut it), the services are left to try and match artist, track, album names provided by one label with those of another. It?s incredibly inefficient, as each service must undergo this process separately (although there are now companies that provide a service for doing this for the retailers). ? Publishing deals. Once you?ve signed deals with the labels, you then need to cut deals with the publishers. Determining ownership is a complete nightmare and there are huge holes in the licensable catalog. The data issues here are worse than with the labels. The long and short of it: Although you may have the rights to stream from labels, you sometime can?t get the rights to stream from the publisher, or worse, even find the publisher. ? Most favored nation. This is a deal term demanded by every major label that ensures the best terms provided to another label are available to it as well. This greatly constricts the ability to work out unique contractual terms and further limits business models. It is a form of collusion since each label gets the best terms the other label negotiates. It?s also why it?s easy to get one label (typically EMI) because they?ll provide low-cost terms knowing that others will demand higher rates, which EMI will then garner the benefit from. ? Non-disclosure. Every contract has strict language prohibiting the digital music company from revealing what they pay to the labels. If they speak publicly about any of the licensing terms, they jeopardize invalidating their license which would torpedo their business. Since labels license on behalf of the artists any payment to the artist comes from the labels not the digital music company. This is the main reason music services, not the labels, have been getting heat from the artist community. Music services can?t defend against accusations about low artist payments because they pay the labels who don?t disclose what they?re paying to the artists. With most other businesses, if a supplier makes unreasonable demands, a retailer can turn to other providers. Since copyright law gives record labels and publishers a government-granted monopoly, no such option is possible with music. Digital vendors have only two options: Accept the terms or not include those songs in their offering. The sale of EMI to other music companies means there will shortly be only three major labels. If a music service rejects terms offered by a label, then that service?s offering will have an enormous hole in their catalog of 25 percent or more of popular songs. In the business world, a monopoly leads to lopsided economics, and the subscription digital music business is a poignant illustration of that. Final note: Online radio services such as Pandora take advantage of a government-supervised license available only to radio broadcasters thus sidestepping dealing with record labels. While the per-song fees are daunting, they bypass virtually all of the terms listed above. A 15-year veteran of the digital music business, Michael Robertson is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com and is currently CEO of personal cloud music service MP3tunes as well as the radio recording service DAR.fm. He can be reached at michael at michaelrobertson.com. He would like to thank Paul Petrick for his contribution to this piece. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 12 07:05:01 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:05:01 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Blackwater changes names again Message-ID: Wall Street Journal December 12, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577089021757803802.html Company Once Known As Blackwater Ditches Xe For Yet Another New Name By Nathan Hodge Despite new ownership, a new board and new management, security contractor Xe Services LLC could never shake a troublesome nickname: the company formerly known as Blackwater. Now, it's the company formerly known as Xe. On Monday, Virginia-based Xe plans to unveil a new name--Academi--and new logo. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ted Wright, president and chief executive, said the name change aims to signal a strategy shift by one of the U.S. government's biggest providers of training and security services. Mr. Wright said Academi will try to be more "boring." Founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, the original Blackwater cultivated a special-operations mystique. But it was tarnished by a string of high-profile incidents, including a deadly 2007 shootout in Iraq that ultimately led to its reorganization and rebranding as Xe Services. Mr. Prince left the business in 2010, selling his stake to investor group USTC Holdings LLC. Mr. Wright came on board this summer as part of a continuing corporate reorganization. In recent meetings with clients, he said he explained that the new corporate identity was supposed to stress the company's focus on regulatory compliance and contract management, in addition to its track record of protecting clients. "I tell them, from now on, I'm going to be in the background; I'm going to be boring," he said. "You're not going to see me in headlines." But Mr. Wright may be courting controversy in one area. He said he would like to take Academi's business back to Iraq, and has hired an outside company to help it apply for an operating license there. "I think eventually, we're going to get a license; we're going to do business in Iraq," he said. In its various incarnations, Academi has provided protective details for U.S. diplomats and officials in hot spots around the globe. But it is still excluded from one of the most lucrative markets for private security: The Iraqi government stripped the company of its operating license after the 2007 shootout. Demand for security contractors in Iraq has surged, however. The State Department is hiring a large contract security force to protect the U.S. mission there, and private security firms also are eyeing possible work for energy companies as the Iraqi oil-and-gas sector opens up to foreign investment. Deborah Avant, a professor at the University of Denver who is an expert on private security firms, said the State Department was hiring a "fairly large contingent of people that will be doing a variety of things" in Iraq. Iraq's regulatory and political climate, she said, is fast-changing, and the dynamic will shift after the withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of the year. The rebranded Academi, meanwhile, wants to focus on a new line of business: security assessment. It already provides guards and runs training facilities, but wants to expands its offerings by assessing security risks for both private-sector and government clients. The company said it has trained 50,000 people and conducted more than 60,000 protective security missions around the world in the past seven years. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 12 07:10:29 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:10:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA Message-ID: <36E87D9F-4A75-4531-BBE0-A1CDD3125B54@infowarrior.org> Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA ? enigmax ? December 12, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-to-sue-universal-joins-fight-against-sopa-111212/ File-hosting service Megaupload has told TorrentFreak that it will sue Universal for wrongfully taking down its content from YouTube. Universal took action Friday to remove a Megaupload-produced pop video which featured leading artists singing the cyberlocker service?s praises. The move has also prompted the company to enter the SOPA debate, with a call for like-minded people to join forces and fight for an Internet without censorship. Last Friday, file-hosting service Megaupload surprised the Internet by launching a campaign fronted by a Printz Board-produced song featuring some of the world?s most prominent recording artists. Needless to say, the spectacle of P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Macy Gray, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige all declaring their love for Megaupload was too much for the IFPI and RIAA. As the story began to spread and the Mega Song trended on Twitter, it was suddenly blocked by YouTube, a victim of Universal Music Group (UMG) and IFPI copyright takedowns. What followed late Friday were demands from Mega founder Kim Dotcom for YouTube to reinstate the video (full details in our earlier article), and counters from Universal to take it down again. With the weekend over, the controversy is alive again. ?Let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to Universal Music Group. We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing Megaupload,? Megaupload CEO David Robb told TorrentFreak this morning. ?Efforts to reach out to UMG and open a dialog about this abuse of the DMCA process were answered with unfounded and baseless legal threats and demands for an apology.? Threats against Megaupload from the mainstream entertainment industries are nothing new, yet thus far the movie and music groups have refrained from legal action. Nevertheless, the name-calling persists. ?Regrettably, we are being attacked and labeled as a ?rogue operator? by organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA, which represent some of the music and movie industry. They are wrong,? says Robb. ?Our record of closing accounts of repeat infringers and taking down illegal files proves we stand against piracy and care about the rights of content owners.? But while Mega insists it always complies with legitimate takedown requests as required by law, the RIAA and their member labels want much more, as their championing of the Stop Online Piracy Act illustrates. ?UMG is currently lobbying lawmakers in Washington for legislation that would allow them to not only delete specific content from a website, but to delete entire websites from the Internet. After this demonstration of the abuse of power by UMG, we are certain that such an instrument of Internet censorship should not be put into the hands of corporations,? says Robb. Those corporations, Robb suggests, may have already abused their existing powers to censor the Mega Song campaign on YouTube for commercial ends. Mega will shortly relaunch Megabox, a label-worrying iTunes competitor that will give artists 90% of all sales, a far bigger share than many currently enjoy. But whatever Universal?s motivations for the takedowns were, according to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom the label will now have to justify their actions in court. TorrentFreak can confirm that Mega?s legal team have already been instructed to sue Universal over the illegitimate copyright takedown of the Mega Song, an act which Kim says was an attempt to sabotage their viral campaign. Furthermore, having previously been restrained on the issue of SOPA, it now appears the Mega Song takedown has prompted a change of course by Megaupload. ?We thank everyone for the massive support. Let?s join forces and fight for an Internet without censorship. Stand up and oppose new laws like SOPA and PIPA, which are being written this month in Washington,? says Mega CEO David Robb. ?Let your local representatives in Congress know what you think. Join organizations that are promoting free speech and innovation. Let?s not allow corporations to create an Internet dictatorship with the massive censorship firewall they are lobbying for in Washington.? A TorrentFreak request for comment from an RIAA spokesperson remains unanswered. Related Posts ? Universal Censors Megaupload Song, Gets Branded a ?Rogue Label? ? RIAA Label Artists & A-List Stars Endorse Megaupload In New Song ? OPEN, The Alternative to SOPA ? Feds Return Mistakenly Seized Domain After a Year of Smoke and Mirrors ? Kaspersky Dumps Anti-Piracy Group in SOPA Protest Previous Post --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 12 12:49:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:49:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Bank fees that overdraw teen's account have mom seeing red Message-ID: <404CF58C-1280-403E-9C88-4AD2500B043F@infowarrior.org> Bank fees that overdraw teen's account have mom seeing red http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/problemsolver/ct-biz-1208-problem-ganziano-20111208,0,7226121.column December 8, 2011 The bank account was supposed to teach 18-year-old Daniel Ganziano about fiscal responsibility. In the end, the McCullom Lake teenager said he learned just one thing: Don't trust banks. Ganziano's tough economic lesson began last year, when his mom urged him to set up a savings account with the TCF Bank in the nearby Jewel grocery store. At first things went smoothly, but as the money in his account dwindled, he began to ignore it. By fall, Ganziano had just $4.85 left in the account ? too little to withdraw from an ATM ? so he let it sit. He had all but forgotten about the account until he received a letter from TCF on Oct. 12 saying six days earlier, it had charged him a $9.95 "monthly maintenance fee" because his account had too little money in it. The $9.95 charge made his account overdrawn by $5.10, which triggered another fee. At TCF, any account overdrawn by more than $5 is charged a $28-a-day overdraft fee. The net result: Ganziano was $33.10 in the hole. By then, his nascent savings account was in a downward spiral. At $28 a day, the charges were adding up quickly. When he and his mother went to the nearest branch that weekend to close the account, they were told they would first have to pay the accumulated fees, which totaled $229.10. His mom, Melinda Ganziano, was livid. In less than two weeks, without making any purchases or withdrawals, her son's $4.85 savings account had turned into a $229.10 debt. The elder Ganziano said she asked for the fees to be waived, and was told TCF would eliminate just one of the $28 charges. She argued her case to other bank employees, but was told there was nothing they could do. Defeated, Melinda Ganziano paid the $229.10 and shut down the account. She said she asked to speak to a regional supervisor and was told one would call her back. By mid-November, after receiving no calls from TCF, Ganziano fired off an angry email to What's Your Problem? She said she was most upset that her son's overdraft charges were triggered by the inactivity fee, which she thought was just plain wrong. "I try to raise my children the right way and if my son would have overdrawn this account because of spending money he didn't have we would have made him take care of it," she said. "But what TCF did is not right. Money is tight right now and if this is their way of making money, they need to be stopped." Ganziano said the entire goal of setting up the account was to teach her sons how to be smart with their money. "When they get zapped this way, why would they trust a bank?" she said. The Problem Solver called TCF Bank spokesman Jason Korstange on Friday. Later that day, a TCF representative called Melinda Ganziano and agreed to send her a check for the $229.10. Korstange said TCF recently switched from charging people $35 for every overdraft to $28 per day for up to 14 days when an account has insufficient funds. The fees kicked in because a computer saw Daniel Ganziano's account was $5.10 below zero ? 10 cents over the $5 threshold. "If we had done it by hand, someone probably would have said, 'Oh it's just 10 cents, let's not worry about it,'" Korstange said. "But we process millions of transactions a day, and there has to be a cutoff number." Korstange said TCF Bank has roughly 8,000 employees, and if the Ganzianos had gone to another branch, a different TCF worker might have refunded the overdraft fees on the spot. "We're learning from it too," Korstange said. "We hope not to make these mistakes again." Melinda Ganziano said she expects to see the check within days. So what lesson did the younger Ganziano learn? "He just said, 'Mom, I can't have a bank account,'" Ganziano said. "I said, 'You can Dan. We just need to find you a good bank.'" --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 12 18:14:02 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:14:02 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Charter of Open Source Org is Classified, CIA Says Message-ID: Charter of Open Source Org is Classified, CIA Says http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/?p=5971 Open Source Works, which is the CIA?s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open source information. Oddly, however, the directive that established Open Source Works is classified, as is the charter of the organization. In fact, CIA says the very existence of any such records is a classified fact. ?The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request,? wrote Susan Viscuso, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, in a November 29 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive for the Open Source Works directive and charter. ?The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure,? Dr. Viscuso wrote. This is a surprising development since Open Source Works ? by definition ? does not engage in clandestine collection of intelligence. Rather, it performs analysis based on unclassified, open source materials. Thus, according to a November 2010 CIA report, Open Source Works ?was charged by the [CIA] Director for Intelligence with drawing on language-trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues. Open Source Works? products, based only on open source information, do not represent the coordinated views of the Central Intelligence Agency.? As such, there is no basis for treating Open Source Works as a covert, unacknowledged intelligence organization. It isn?t one. (Even if Open Source Works were engaged in classified intelligence analysis, the idea that its charter must necessarily be classified is a non-sequitur. Illustrating the contrary proposition, the Department of Defense last week issued a new Instruction on ?Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT),? setting forth the policies governing that largely classified intelligence domain.) Beyond that, it is an interesting question ?why the CIA felt the need to establish such a unit given the existence of the DNI Open Source Center,? said Dr. Richelson. The Open Source Center, the successor to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, is the U.S. Government?s principal open source agency. It is, naturally, a publicly acknowledged organization. ?An even more interesting question,? he added, is ?why would the CIA, whose DI [Directorate of Intelligence] organization structure is published on its website, feel it necessary to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of this new open source component?? The CIA?s extreme approach to classification policy is timely in one sense: It provides a convenient benchmark for evaluating current progress in combating overclassification. If the charter of CIA?s Open Source Works remains classified six months from now, when the Obama Administration?s Fundamental Classification Guidance Review will have completed its first cycle, that will be a decisive indication that the Review failed to eliminate even the most blatant examples of overclassification. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 07:43:20 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:43:20 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FBI says Carrier IQ files used for "law enforcement purposes" Message-ID: <8923AB55-DCEB-4AAE-AE01-FF667AFD7DA8@infowarrior.org> (not surprising at all. -- rick) FBI says Carrier IQ files used for "law enforcement purposes" By Rob Beschizza at 12:42 pm Monday, Dec 12 The FBI disclosed this weekend that data gathered by Carrier IQ software is used by it for "law enforcement purposes", but refused to give details of how it has done so. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Muckrock, the FBI said that it held relevant records but that their release could interfere with pending or prospective law enforcement proceedings. The request asked for "manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ." Muckrock's Michael Morisy says he plans to appeal the FBI's decision: "What is still unclear is whether the FBI used Carrier IQ's software in its own investigations, whether it is currently investigating Carrier IQ, or whether it is some combination of both." Carrier IQ came to public attention after threatening a security researcher who reported on the functionality of its software, which is installed on cellphones by some carriers and handset manufacturers. The software, described by Google chairman Eric Schmidt as a "keylogger", is capable of logging and transmitting everything typed by users, though Carrier IQ insists that it does not do so. The researcher, Trevor Eckhart, spotted suspicious logging activity and demonstrated how the software reacts when users interacted with their cellphones. Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T all acknowledge using Carrier IQ for diagnostic purposes, but say that they do not use it to maintain records of individual users' activity. Carrier IQ has not yet returned a call for comment. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 08:38:23 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:38:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Army Activates First of its Kind Cyber Brigade Message-ID: <60B71AB6-BCFE-434F-8414-64BA8FB53EB0@infowarrior.org> (c/o jh) Army Activates First of its Kind Cyber Brigade http://www.military.com/news/article/army-news/army-activates-first-of-its-kind-cyber-bridage.html?comp=700001076338&rank=3 December 12, 2011 Army News Service by Tina Miles FORT MEADE, Md. -- Network warfare, cyber security and the illegal release and posting of classified information on the internet are all hot topics in recent news headlines -- topics which the government, and more importantly its military, take very serious. The nature of that seriousness is evident with the Army's recent activation of its first computer network operations brigade. With an urgent insistence and tremendous help from the National Security Agency, Department of Defense and U.S. Cyber Command, Army and Congressional staff, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command created the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade to support U.S. and Army Cyber Commands with their missions to provide a proactive cyber defense. In an event that marked the culmination of years of preparation, the colors of the 780th MI Brigade were unfurled for the first time during an activation ceremony at NSA's Friedman Auditorium, Fort Meade, Md., Dec. 1. "While normally it is enough to gather in time-honored tradition to pass unit colors to mark the transition of commanders and continuity of mission, on really rare occasions like today we have the opportunity to activate a new unit -- hand-picked, specifically recruited and purpose built, which has and will continue to contribute to a complex fight against those who present a clear and present danger to our nation's security, while providing new and breathtaking capabilities to our Army's already impressive portfolio of warfighting capabilities," said Maj. Gen. Mary A. Legere, INSCOM commanding general. Though fully preoccupied with two wars in the Middle East, engaged in other operations globally and confronted by resource constraints that might have been an excuse for inaction, the Army empowered INSCOM to once again build a unit in response to a specific threat -- providing it with the mandate, mission and resources to form this brigade. In December 2010, the Army approved the establishment of an Army Cyber Brigade and designated the 780th MI Brigade to fulfill this mission with an effective date of Oct. 1, 2011. "'Never rely too heavily on intuition. It will never be a good substitute for good intelligence.'" said Legere, quoting a phrase from Gen. Omar Bradley. "It is his spirit, and in response to a sense of foreboding, that our Army has had the wisdom to resource and create the 780th." The ceremony also marked the assumption of command for Col. Jonathan E. Sweet, as he accepted the colors from Legere. "Aug. 19th, 1942, Maj. Gen. Lee, commander of the newly formed 101st Airborne Division, told his Soldiers assembled at Camp Claiborne, La., that 'the 101st has no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny,'" said Sweet. "These men were the infantry's best-of-the-best. They were selected, trained and deployed to counter an adversary that threatened our country during the Second World War." Sweet compared his new brigade to a more seasoned one. "Like the 101st, the 780th MI Brigade has no history, and was formed to counter an adversary operating in a different domain -- a highly technical, manmade domain called cyberspace," Sweet added. While recognizing numerous individuals responsible for the creation of the brigade, and those who assisted his career accomplishments, Sweet said it is an honor to have the opportunity to return to Fort Meade and join Command Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Hoke, 780th MI Brigade command sergeant major, to activate, command, and operationalize this incredibly special brigade. "The first 26 miles of this marathon began in October 2002, with the activation of Detachment Meade. Since then it's evolved and expanded into the Army's Network Warfare Battalion, assembled a headquarters company and staff, and today the 780th MI Brigade," said Sweet. "As we cross this finish line and take a moment to enjoy the accomplishment, we're reminded that it's merely a transition point, providing us enough time to catch our breath and get ready to step out across the start line for the next phase of what is actually a triathlon." The brigade's 781st MI Battalion and Headquarters and Headquarters Company, at Fort Meade, and the 782nd MI Battalion, located at Fort Gordon, Ga., will collectively enable the unit's mission to conduct signals intelligence, computer network operations, and when directed, offensive operations, in support of DoD, Army and interagency operations worldwide, while denying the same to its adversaries. "This [activation] is a tribute to the belief in the notion that our nation requires assured freedom of maneuver in cyberspace in this era of persistent conflict and the advent of the increasingly more sophisticated threats to our security," Legere added. Legere added that the Army's newest brigade is fully prepared to assist Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, as they forge ahead in promoting cyber defense and full spectrum Cyber Ops as one of their top priorities, and in helping Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander of USCYBERCOM and director of the NSA, as he continues to educate, implore and challenge our nation's leadership to take decisive action to develop and expand this kind of capability that is now so critical to our nation's security. "The challenge to our nation in this domain is upon us. You see this every day. The future danger that you envisioned has arrived," said Legere. "And the time for the men and women of the 780th to take your place in the Army's long gray operational line as a fully resourced operational unit ready for action is now." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 11:05:41 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:05:41 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Broward Considers Airport Body Scanner Ban Message-ID: Broward Considers Airport Body Scanner Ban December 13, 2011 10:21 AM http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/12/13/broward-considers-airport-body-scanner-ban/ FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami.com) ? In the wake of most countries in Europe vowing to stop using full-body scanners at airports; the Broward County Commission is looking into banning the scanners from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The ban would be in place until the scanners have scientifically been proven safe for passengers. The Commission is expected to take up the issue Tuesday and the TSA will have a spokesperson there to argue for the government?s position. If the Broward Commission bans the body scanners, it would be the first major airport in the United States to approve a ban since Europe banned the system, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The scanners emit low-levels of radiation when performing the scans, which has raised concerns around the world. PBS published a report earlier this year that said it was possible that between six and 100 airline passengers each year could get cancer from going through the machines. The TSA has repeatedly said the scanners are less dangerous than common X-rays. The Department of Homeland Security also said that the technology used on the scanners is safe for all passengers. While Broward County can pass the ban, the ultimate decision will come from the TSA on whether or not to keep the technology in place. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 17:21:34 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:21:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Post-Revolt Tunisia Can Alter E-Mail With `Big Brother' Software Message-ID: Post-Revolt Tunisia Can Alter E-Mail With `Big Brother' Software By Vernon Silver - Dec 12, 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-12-12/tunisia-after-revolt-can-alter-e-mails-with-big-brother-software.html In Tunisia, Big Brother goes by an alias: Ammar 404. A play on the ?Error 404? message for blocked websites, Tunisian bloggers dreamed him up as a fictional front man for the sprawling surveillance state of former ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Aided directly and indirectly by American and European suppliers, Ammar 404 took control of virtually all electronic communication in Tunisia and turned lives upside down -- even changing the content of e-mails in transit. In this world, Tunisians of all stripes could never be sure if e-mails arrived as sent or at all, or who was reading them. Asma Hedi Nairi, a former Amnesty International youth coordinator, says e-mails she and her friends exchanged were replaced by messages ranging from random symbols to ads for rental cars. Opponents of the regime toppled in January?s revolution received threatening messages such as ?you can run but you can?t hide,? while people with no role in politics found their correspondence snagged if it inadvertently included words flagged as critical of the government. Ammar 404 even damaged reputations by inserting pornographic images in work e- mails and routing intimate photos onto Facebook, Nairi, 23, says. ?Ammar 404 was seeing everything,? says Nairi, who is studying in Tunis for a master?s degree in criminal sciences. ?War of Information? The interference forced her to shut down five e-mail accounts in the years before the revolution, robbing her of contact lists and documents. The sexual nature of some intrusions was especially embarrassing within the country?s mostly Muslim culture, Nairi says, further chilling the free flow of political discussion. ?Ammar 404 is more dangerous than any policeman in the street,? she says. ?It was a war of information.? Tunisia?s surveillance capabilities put it at the forefront of a technological arms race in which repressive regimes are gaining increasing power to monitor -- and manipulate -- citizens? electronic activities. The review of Tunisian surveillance draws a rare blueprint of a totalitarian nation?s monitoring apparatus, and is part of a Bloomberg News investigation across the region that reveals how governments use Western surveillance technology to track dissidents. In Syria, an Italian company pulled the plug on an Internet monitoring system after Bloomberg reported the project was in the works as the death toll of protesters mounted. Iran purchased European gear to track citizens? locations even after a crackdown surrounding the contested 2009 elections. And in Bahrain, police interrogated activists using text-messages intercepted with European surveillance equipment. Egypt, Yemen and Syria purchased the same interception gear, the investigation found. Largely Unregulated The export of surveillance gear is largely unregulated, and interception capabilities are standard in most communications systems around the world, intended for use by law enforcement. Neither the U.S. nor the European Union bars exports of monitoring technology to Tunisia. Tunisia is a model of what could await the rest of the world if sales of these technologies go unchecked, says Ben Wagner of the European University Institute near Florence, Italy, who has published research on Internet governance in Tunisia. Ben Ali?s regime deployed the surveillance gear to demonstrate its power, Wagner says. Changing e-mails into nonsense, rather than luring dissidents into ambushes, created a pervasive unease, in which even spam could be perceived as the work of Ammar 404, he says. Testing Ground ?It leaves citizens in a persistent state of uncertainty about the security and integrity of their communications,? he says. Western suppliers used the country as a testing ground. Moez Chakchouk, the post-revolution head of the Tunisian Internet Agency, says he?s discovered that the monitoring industry gave discounts to the government-controlled agency, known by its French acronym ATI, to gain access. In interviews following Ben Ali?s ouster after 23 years in power, technicians, activists, executives and government officials described how they grappled with, and in some cases helped build, the repressive Wonderland. Many Responsible A post-revolution hunt for Ammar 404 shows that while he is, of course, nobody in particular, many shoulder responsibility for his deeds. They include the ?cyber police,? the Internet agency that installed the systems, and the corporate enablers who sold the technology despite growing international outcries over the government?s human rights violations. ?I can tell you how it was done,? says Kamel Saadaoui, 46, who ran the Internet agency from 2008 through the revolution. ?Tunisian companies, whether the telecoms or the Tunisian Internet Agency, have worked with European companies,? he says during an interview in May, soon after he was promoted to president of the nation?s telecommunications regulator. Munich-based Trovicor GmbH provided voice and data interception on cell phones, and Sundby, Denmark-based ETI A/S, supplied mobile data interception used to reconstruct online activities, Saadaoui says. ETI systems are capable of tracking the websites a person visits and logs of e-mail correspondence. Trovicor, a former unit of Siemens AG (SIE) and Nokia Siemens Networks, didn?t respond to a request for comment. Nokia Siemens spokesman Ben Roome declined to comment. Siemens referred questions to NSN. Deep-Packet Inspection ETI is a subsidiary of London-based BAE Systems Plc, Europe?s biggest defense contractor, which bought ETI in March for more than $200 million. Sara Hirsch, a London-based spokeswoman for both companies, said they can?t comment on specific countries or contracts. Their operations comply with national laws and their own internal standards, she said. Saadaoui, who has a master?s degree in computer science from Michigan State University, says he helped procure and set up the system that captured and changed e-mails. It uses a technique called deep-packet inspection, which peers into the content of communications and sends suspect e-mails to the Interior Ministry. During an hour-long interview in his office at the National Telecommunications Agency, he describes a monitoring room with metal bars on the windows and 20 desks, where staffers review the e-mails in an array of languages. ?They were able to read why it was blocked and decided whether it should be re-routed to the network or deleted,? he says. ?Or changed.? ?Not Our Job? Interior Ministry spokesman Hichem Meddeb says his ministry has no role in surveillance. ?It?s not our job to intercept phone or e-mail or websites,? he says. Security agencies probably handle such things, he says. As the capabilities ramped up in 2007, concerns reverberated among the men and women who monitored the Internet, Saadaoui says. ?The cyber police just wanted to be the police,? he says. ?The political police was something that was imposed on them.? After the May interview, Saadaoui didn?t respond to requests for follow-up interviews, including attempts made during visits to his office on four consecutive days in September. While Saadaoui was open about many details, he said nondisclosure agreements bar him from naming the companies that sold two main deep-packet inspection systems: one for blocking websites, and the other for intercepting e-mails. Deep-packet inspection goes beyond traditional monitoring methods such as scanning for names of senders. Nonsense E-mails ?It?s like intercepting written mail,? says Milton Mueller, an information studies professor at Syracuse University in New York who has a two-year National Science Foundation grant to study the technology. In Sfax, a port halfway between Tunis and the Libyan border, human rights lawyer Abdelwaheb Matar noticed in 2008 that e-mails sent by his contacts started arriving as nonsense. One, in April that year, said, ?How would you like to have dinner? I just bought a new car,? according to copies cited by Tunisian blogger Malek Khadhraoui that year and confirmed by Matar. When clients didn?t get his e-mails, Matar, 55, resorted to faxing, he says. On a bookshelf in his office, he displays two Statue of Liberty replicas he bought in New York as a symbol of the values he defends in his work pursuing cases against government agencies. Unspeakable Threat Matar brings his laptop around to the front of his desk to show a visitor an e-mail he received on Sept. 26, 2008. He points to the words, which are too horrible for him to read aloud. In French, it calls him weak, compares his face to a pile of excrement, and then threatens, ?Every day, I will try to perforate your anus with a baseball bat.? It then signs off with a common, profane insult. The sender of the e-mail was ?fdgfjdhjfk fdhfjkhjksdh,? and Matar is still unsure whether it started as a friendly message changed in transit, or was simple low-tech harassment. With Ammar 404, you never knew. ?How does it feel? I don?t know how to describe it,? he says. ?It?s an intimidating aggression.? He now protects his communications with encryption software. The cyber-repression was made easier by the physical structure of Tunisia?s data flow, which runs through just a few choke points. In broad terms, the system has two distinct parts: one for intercepting phone-related traffic and one for the Internet, Saadaoui says. Palace Monitors Each phone company taps for voice, text messages and other mobile data, which feed into monitoring posts, mostly at the Interior Ministry, a person familiar with the system says. Under Ben Ali, some headphone-wearing operators also sat inside the presidential palace in Carthage, the person says. Trovicor and its predecessors, Siemens and Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied Tunisia?s phone companies with monitoring- center computers and maintained their ability to feed calls and data to the listening posts, four people familiar with the sales through their work for the companies say. Utimaco Safeware AG, a unit of Abingdon, England-based Sophos Ltd., supplied systems that helped link those German monitoring centers to the phone network, a person familiar with the installations says. London-based Apax Partners LLP, which controls Sophos, referred questions to Sophos and Utimaco. Utimaco General Manager Malte Pollmann says the company hasn?t sold directly to Tunisia. His products might be in the country because companies that build phone networks, including Nokia Siemens, use Oberursel, Germany-based Utimaco?s systems, Pollmann says. Sophos, the majority shareholder of Utimaco, directed questions to Pollmann. Channeling All Traffic To monitor the Web, the government channels virtually all computer traffic through the national Internet agency. Its gear is housed in rooms it controls at Tunisie Telecom buildings in three Tunis neighborhoods, including Belvedere, near the capital?s main park, and Kasbah, where the old city and souk are, Chakchouk says. ?All the international connections are coming to those sites,? Chakchouk, 36, the agency?s chief since February, says in an interview at the headquarters in a whitewashed, bougainvillea-draped villa in a hilly Tunis neighborhood. He says nondisclosure pacts with vendors bar him from disclosing their names. Siphoning Messages In each of the three telecom rooms, which are about half the size of a tennis court, a handful of computers known as ?boxes? straddle the data pipelines, Chakchouk says. Their function is to siphon off communications, mostly by searching for key words, according to Saadaoui. ?You get all the traffic going through these boxes,? Saadaoui says. Once the system flagged a suspect e-mail, a fiber optic network under the streets of Tunis carried it from the telecom offices to the Interior Ministry?s operator room, Saadaoui says. Moez Ben Mahmoud Hassen, a spokesman for Tunisie Telecom, said the company ?denies any possible relation with such practices.? He stressed that it follows the law and respects the confidentiality of communications. Asked about the company?s activities during Ben Ali?s government, he said it was a matter for the courts and declined to elaborate. Communications through mobile operator Orascom Telecom Tunisie, also known as Tunisiana, were not monitored, according to a statement released by company spokeswoman Fatma Ben Hadj Ali. The country?s other mobile operator, Orange Tunisia, didn?t respond to requests for comment. Politicized Internet Saadaoui revealed details of Tunisia?s surveillance, he says, in part because he?d become disillusioned with how Ben Ali?s regime had politicized the Internet over two decades. In 1991, a year after graduating from Michigan State, Saadaoui was part of the team that first set up the net in Tunisia, he says. At the start, it was a research tool, free of any censorship or surveillance, until the regime grabbed control in 1996 with the establishment of the ATI, he says. Dhamir Mannai, a former adviser to state-controlled Tunisie Telecom?s chief executive officer, recalls how in the freewheeling 1990s he ran his own e-mail servers. ?When the agency was created, I was told to stop,? he says. From that point on, ?Everything goes through that agency, all Internet access, and all e-mail, so it?s very easy to monitor.? View From Inside As Saadaoui rose through the ranks, he saw from the inside the regime?s increasing interest and spending on cyber policing. The effort started with censorship of websites critical of the government, he says. Blue Coat Systems Inc. (BCSI) and NetApp Inc. (NTAP), both based in Sunnyvale, California, provided filtering, Saadaoui says. NetApp, which sells data storage systems, previously had a unit that makes computers used for monitoring networks. It sold the business to Blue Coat in 2006. Blue Coat spokesman Steve Schick said the company could neither comment nor confirm the accuracy of its reported involvement. A spokeswoman for NetApp said the company declined to comment. Then, when dissidents started using e-mail to distribute the contents of banned sites, Tunisia?s Internet agency added e- mail surveillance. ?E-mails was a homemade solution,? Saadaoui says. Tunisian software developers used Postfix, a free, open-source mail management program, to scan traffic through the mid-2000s, he says. Going Shopping When the network grew with broadband, becoming less manageable by late 2006, Saadaoui went shopping for more sophisticated solutions at the ISS World trade shows, the marketplace for ?lawful interception? gear that meets several times a year in locations including Dubai, Prague and Washington. Some companies, such as ETI, refused to take the work upgrading Tunisia?s surveillance because the requirements were so intrusive, Saadaoui says. As part of the Web blocking, Tunisia paid to use Santa Clara, California-based McAfee Inc.?s SmartFilter product, says current Internet agency head Chakchouk. In a statement, McAfee said it is committed to complying with all export laws and regulations. ?Additionally, steps have been taken by McAfee to safeguard the product and to prohibit and disable illegal use,? the company said. Saadaoui says he ended up with two European contractors that each used deep-packet inspection -- one supplier for filtering websites and another for capturing e-mails. Snagging E-Mails The surveillance system for e-mails became destructive because communications didn?t show up intact, or arrive at all, Saadaoui says. Victims included businesses and professionals unlucky enough to have a keyword snagged in the system. ?They need the e-mail to arrive quickly and it doesn?t arrive. They lose money. They lose image. They lose credibility,? Saadaoui says. In 2008, activists noticed something was wrong, and conducted experiments to demonstrate Ammar 404 had employed new tools. Former political prisoner Abdallah Zouari teamed up with Tunisian blogger Sami Ben Gharbia. The men?s locations made their test possible: Ben Gharbia was based in the Netherlands, where he is the advocacy director of Global Voices, an online community promoting free speech. Zouari lived in internal exile in southern Tunisia. Testing the System They logged onto Zouari?s account and simultaneously viewed his incoming correspondence, including one from the Tunisnews online newsletter with headlines about an imprisoned journalist. In the Netherlands, the e-mail appeared untouched. In Tunisia, the same message said, ?If you want to increase your performance, try this and let us know. Regards,? a screenshot of the 2008 e-mail shows. Zouari, 56, a rotund man who sports a callus on his bald forehead from regular use of a prayer rug, is now a leader of the Ennahda Islamist party, which won the most seats in October?s first post-revolution election. He says during an interview in Tunis that he suffered from changed and blocked e- mails for years. ?They did it even with our own families, our friends, far from politics,? he says. ?Personal Secrets? ?The most important thing for me was the personal secrets,? he says, rubbing his hands together. ?You have a political life, but also a personal life -- money, family relations, solving each others? problems.? By 2010, it became a contest as Tunisians increasingly employed encryption the packet inspection couldn?t crack. Communications on Facebook boomed, and the regime demanded better tools, Saadaoui says. The same European contractor that provided e-mail surveillance signed a deal to add monitoring of social networks, he says. It was too late. The supplier hadn?t yet delivered the solution when the ?Facebook revolution? crested in January. The government?s last-ditch attempts to quell online organizing included hacking and password-stealing attacks by Ben Ali?s regime, outside the purview of the Internet agency, Saadaoui says. Slim Amamou, a blogger who was arrested during the uprising and briefly became a minister for youth and sport after the revolution, says the presidential palace and ruling party orchestrated the final cyber attacks. Hack Attacks ?When needed, they contracted foreign hackers for access to hack opponents and dissidents,? he says. In the end, the regime couldn?t overcome a revolution that stayed one step ahead of the cyber police. Today, Chakchouk, the new head of Tunisia?s Internet authority says he?s working to dismantle Ammar 404, and turned off the mass filtering, he says. Now he?s locked in legal battles over court orders to block specific Web pages. On Saturday, May 7, he and his team pulled an all-nighter to set the filtering equipment to block a single Web page to comply with a military court?s demand related to a defamation complaint. The following Tuesday, still looking tired, Chakchouk says it took so long because they were figuring out how to replace the page with a message explaining the blockage -- rather than the customary Error 404. Since the revolution, Chakchouk has spoken at conferences around the world, decrying censorship. Yet he won?t say much about surveillance. For now, the packet inspection boxes are still on the network. ?We tried to understand the equipment and we?re still doing that,? he says. ?We?re waiting for the new government to decide what to do with it.? -- With assistance from Ben Elgin in San Francisco and Jihen Laghmari in Tunis. Editors: Marcia Myers, Melissa Pozsgay To contact the reporters on this story: Vernon Silver in Rome at vtsilver at bloomberg.net; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 17:28:38 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:28:38 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - BBC World News to Be Available Through Comcast Message-ID: <50C2034F-522C-4388-B36A-49CEBDC4F07E@infowarrior.org> Wow -- real news on cable .... what a novel concept! Yes, I am pleased at this. -- rick December 13, 2011 BBC World News to Be Available Through Comcast http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/business/media/bbc-world-news-to-be-available-through-comcast.html By BRIAN STELTER The BBC will announce on Tuesday a first-of-its-kind deal for Comcast to carry the BBC World News channel, opening the door to wider distribution for the channel within the United States. The carriage agreements come nearly a year after the BBC charted a new course for expansion in the United States, where it believes that viewers? appetites for international news are not being satisfied by the likes of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. ?We?re a global news organization for a globalized world,? Peter Horrocks, the BBC?s director of global news, said in a phone interview Monday. The channel also believes that the United States can be a crucial component of its commercial revenue going forward. While the BBC is subsidized by British taxpayers, BBC World News is commercially supported through ads and distribution fees, just like its bigger sister channel in the United States, BBC America. Until now, BBC World News has been available in just about six million United States homes, mostly in New York City and Washington. In the deal with Comcast, the nation?s largest cable provider, it will be available by the end of the month in some ? but not all ? of the Comcast homes in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and other markets. It will come on in some of the company?s markets next year, for a total of nearly 15 million homes by the end of 2012, Mr. Horrocks said. While that represents just a fraction of the 100 million American homes with cable or satellite subscriptions, it is an important foothold for the BBC, which wants to meet a perceived need for impartial international news. The way some at the BBC see the television world, Fox News and MSNBC are occupying partisan poles; CNN is struggling to choose between substance and sensationalism; and another foreign import to the United States, Al Jazeera, is tainted by its host country, Qatar. ?We?re very deliberately saying, ?We?re not going to tell you what to think,? ? Mr. Horrocks said. Broadcast into more than 200 countries and territories, the 24-hour BBC World News is sober and hard-nosed by American standards. Some of its newscasts have been carried by public TV and radio stations in the United States for decades, but the broadcaster, like others in the television industry, wants a more direct connection to customers. Mr. Horrocks said he has been heartened by the popularity of the BBC?s news Web site and by the public TV and radio simulcasts of its programming. And Comcast, he said, ?has been very receptive to the argument that there is a market in the U.S. for a much more international perspective on the news.? Web traffic backs that argument up; by some rankings the BBC is already the No. 1 non-United States news Web site among Americans, though it has been unable to break into the top tier of sites. In preparation for a push into the American marketplace, the BBC added about a dozen staff members to its Washington bureau earlier this year. (Two weeks ago it hired Dick Meyer from NPR to run its news coverage in the Americas.) It also took its nightly newscast off BBC America, more clearly defining that channel as a source of entertainment, not news. Now the broadcaster is pitching BBC America and BBC World News to cable and satellite distributors. But getting distribution for new cable channels is exceedingly difficult ? even more so than it was in 1998, when BBC America was started. (BBC America was picked up by Cablevision in the New York metropolitan area just a couple of months ago.) And there is another international news channel knocking on the same distributors? doors: Al Jazeera English, which was widely credited this year for its coverage of protests in Middle Eastern countries. Although Al Jazeera indirectly secured channel space on Time Warner Cable?s system in New York City last summer, the Comcast deal will give BBC an advantage because it will reach more homes. Mr. Horrocks declined to comment on the terms of the agreement with Comcast, but said the BBC did not pay for carriage, as other channels have sometimes done to get started. The research firm SNL Kagan estimates that BBC World News earned about 4 cents a subscriber a month last year, and BBC America, 12 cents, far less than CNN?s 52 cents or Fox?s 70 cents. If the BBC can prove that there is an audience for its news in the United States, it may be able to increase that per-subscriber fee over time. Probably the least surprised people about the BBC?s effort are those who run the more opinionated news channels in the United States. They actively export CNN and Fox News to other countries. Last week, MSNBC, which is trying to catch up to CNN and Fox in this regard, held a ceremony in Israel to denote its carriage for the first time in that country. ?It?s important that our brand be seen around the world,? said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 13 17:47:45 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:47:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - News Literacy Project Message-ID: <74E3F8BD-C9BA-410B-83E1-443B5473928D@infowarrior.org> http://www.thenewsliteracyproject.org/ The News Literacy Project (NLP) is an innovative national educational program that mobilizes seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age. The project teaches students critical-thinking skills that will enable them to be smarter and more frequent consumers and creators of credible information across all media and platforms. It seeks to light a spark of interest in students to seek information that will make them more knowledgeable about their communities, the nation and the world. The project also aspires to elevate the mission of news literacy nationally through classroom programs, digital media, public events and the news media itself. NLP shows students how to distinguish verified information from spin, opinion and misinformation ? whether they are using search engines to find websites with information about specific topics, assessing a viral email, viewing a video on YouTube, watching television news or reading a newspaper or a blog post. Students are being taught to seek news and information that will make them well-informed and engaged students, consumers and citizens. They are also being encouraged to produce news and information accurately, fairly and responsibly to make their own voices as credible and powerful as possible. The project has created a new model by forging partnerships among active and retired journalists, the project?s local coordinators in New York City, Chicago and the Washington, D.C., area, and English, history, government, humanities and journalism teachers. Journalist fellows and teachers are devising units focusing on the importance of news to young people, the role of the First Amendment and a free media in a democracy, and the best ways to discern reliable information. Working with educators, students and journalists, NLP has developed original curriculum materials based on engaging activities and student projects that build and reflect understanding of the program?s essential questions. The curriculum includes material on a variety of topics, including viral email, Wikipedia, search engines, YouTube and the news, that is presented through hands-on exercises, games, videos and the journalists? own compelling stories. Videos and broadcast reports that capture the project in action and showcase exemplary student work can be found on the project?s YouTube channel. Twenty news organizations are partnering with NLP. This website features a national directory of volunteer journalists, including their biographies and photographs. The project has more than 185 journalists enrolled in its online directory, including broadcast correspondents, authors of best-selling books and winners of journalism?s highest honors. Since 2009, nearly 100 journalist fellows have made more than 250 presentations in classrooms, conferences, workshops and other NLP programs. The journalists are matched with classes based on the curriculum. For example, a White House or political reporter might do a presentation to a government class, former foreign correspondents might speak to a class focused on international issues, and a feature writer, a columnist or an investigative reporter might talk to an English class. Broadcast journalists work with students creating video or audio reports in after-school programs. NLP is increasingly using Skype to bring journalists from around the world to its classes across the country. Even as young people increasingly participate in the national conversation through such forms of communication as text messages, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, the concept of news literacy is not widely discussed in America?s public schools. With the 24-hour news cycle and the explosion of online information, today?s students have access to unprecedented amounts of information. Yet they are also confronted with the daunting task of determining the reliability of myriad sources of ?news? ? and surveys show that they are increasingly uninterested in information with a civic purpose. The News Literacy Project seeks to reverse these trends. In addition, at a time when negative reports about the news media abound, it presents students and their teachers with positive role models of journalists and insights into how news is reported, edited and produced. But its biggest impact promises to be on the nation?s civic life: When young people are exposed to information that is in the public interest, the country?s democratic grass-roots are strengthened. ?Our goal should be that every American possesses the skills to discern news from infotainment, fact from opinion, and trustworthy information sources from untrustworthy,? said Michael Copps, a member of the Federal Communications Commission. ?Happily, there is good work being done on the literacy front. One example is the News Literacy Project.? NLP is reaching young people as they are becoming increasingly aware of the news and are developing the habits of mind that can shape consumption patterns for a lifetime. They are doing so at a time when they are confronted with myriad sources of greatly varying credibility. The nation?s education system is not confronting this challenge; the concept of news literacy is not widely discussed in public schools. Moreover, as a Carnegie-Knight task force reported in 2007, mandatory testing has led to a decline in the use of the news in classrooms, squeezing out one of the best ways to prepare students for their role as citizens at a time when it may be more needed than ever. A 2008 study by the Pew Research Center found that 34 percent of young adults age 18 to 24 report receiving no news from any source on a typical day. A 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 8- to 18-year-olds spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day on entertainment media ? a 20 percent increase in the past five years. It also found that ?use of every type of media has increased over the past 10 years, with the exception of reading? ? and reading, of course, includes newspapers and magazines. The need for young people to develop their own standards for truthful, reliable information is all the more important because today?s students are producers as well as consumers. Whether emailing, texting, interacting on Facebook, posting on YouTube or blogging, they are increasingly part of the national conversation. The project was founded in early 2008 by Alan C. Miller, then an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times. The idea arose from his experience talking about his career as a reporter and why journalism matters to 175 sixth graders at his daughter?s middle school in Bethesda, Md. Student thank you notes indicated he had connected, and prompted him to think about a new way to make a difference. English teacher Sandra Gallagher wrote to him: ``All of the information you shared was interesting to them and pertinent to our curriculum. You brought to life the idea of `newspaper? and opened a new perspective of thinking.?? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 07:22:43 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:22:43 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Rep. Issa: SOPA won't be approved unless fixed Message-ID: Rep. Issa: SOPA won't be approved unless fixed by Declan McCullagh December 14, 2011 4:00 AM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57342716-281/rep-issa-sopa-wont-be-approved-unless-fixed/ Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior House Republican, is predicting a dim future for the Stop Online Piracy Act. "I would expect this bill is not going to become law in this Congress unless these problems are resolved," Issa, whose district includes portions of San Diego and Riverside counties, told CNET in a telephone interview. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who's planning to offer amendments to SOPA during a vote on Thursday. (Credit: U.S. House of Representatives) The problems he's referring to are a long list of criticisms from opponents of SOPA, including Internet engineers, Web companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Zynga, and civil liberties and human rights groups. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe says SOPA "should not be enacted by Congress" because of censorship concerns, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has proposed an article page blackout. Issa says he became a critic of SOPA because he came to Congress from the high tech industry and has been on multiple sides in intellectual property lawsuits. He was in federal district court "on patent cases as a defendant and a plaintiff," he says. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who drafted SOPA, has scheduled a committee vote on a slightly revised version--call it SOPA v2.0--on Thursday. Issa says he's planning to offer amendments to SOPA that would "reduce" the discretion of the U.S. attorney general, who under the legislation would be allowed to seek a court order to make allegedly piratical Web sites virtually vanish from the Internet, including through Internet Protocol address blocking and deep packet inspection. In a separate statement, Issa said SOPA v2.0 "retains the fundamental flaws of its predecessor." (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.) The Justice Department has already "abused its discretion" by seizing the domain name of a hip-hop music blog and then relinquishing it last week by abruptly abandoning the lawsuit, Issa says. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), a Web entrepreneur who serves on the House Judiciary committee, told CNET yesterday that he has similar concerns about the Justice Department's expansive authority and is also planning to offer amendments to SOPA. It's probably a fair statement to say that Smith would only have scheduled the committee vote if he thought he had enough votes to forward SOPA to the House floor. On the other hand, he waited until virtually the last minute to announce the hearing: committee rules require three days notice, and Smith made the announcement late Monday. Even if SOPA does clear the committee, "would it be appropriate to bring such a controversial bill to the floor?" Issa asks. "I think the Republican House leadership will look and say, 'Unless we have the support of the vast majority of Republicans, we're not going to take the bill to the floor.'" (Issa is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which is busy investigating the Obama administration on many fronts, including Fannie and Freddie bonuses, the Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious, and the Freedom of Information Act.) SOPA represents the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and their allies to counter what their members view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. The National Governors Association sent a letter to key House members today (PDF) urging legislative action against "foreign 'rogue' Web sites that traffic in stolen and counterfeit" intellectual property--but which stopped short of endorsing SOPA by name. Along with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, Issa has proposed an alternative called the OPEN Act. It targets ad networks and credit card companies, but stops short of trying to delete "rogue" Web sites from the Internet. Before being elected to Congress, Issa founded Directed Electronics in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1982 to sell Viper car alarms and similar products. During that time he learned firsthand how the International Trade Commission works, and the OPEN Act creates what amounts to a specialized ITC piracy court. (Issa sold his interest in Directed Electronics in 2000 and it subsequently went public.) The MPAA has criticized the OPEN Act as failing to "provide an effective way to target foreign rogue Web sites"; it's also been dismissed by content owners who say using the International Trade Commission instead of the federal courts makes the process too slow. "The MPAA is being disingenuous when they say that," Issa replies. If a foreign Web site doesn't reply and participate in the ITC process, he says, the process wouldn't be the normal 16 or 18 months but far speedier. "The ITC has a faster rocket docket than any federal court." Internet companies including Mozilla, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo have endorsed the OPEN Act, with some executives planning full-page ads criticizing SOPA, and the Senate version called Protect IP, that will appear in the New York Times and Washington Post. For his part, MPAA chairman Chris Dodd lashed out at "piracy apologists" in a speech yesterday and called comparisons between SOPA and the Great Firewall of China "outrageous." Hollywood has prepared its own a set of ads warning of offshore Web sites. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, has written an op-ed offering many of the same arguments. Issa has convened an online discussion of the OPEN Act at KeepTheWebOpen.com, which allows anyone to critique the draft bill or suggest improvements. "We think it's the right way," he says. "Legislation shouldn't just be a piece of paper on a desk or posted to a static site. The American people should be able to have a dialogue with others to have a better piece of legislation." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 07:30:01 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:30:01 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OpEd: The Insidious Fine Print Message-ID: <7DFDC6E0-F158-460B-864C-BF0182C135E8@infowarrior.org> December 13, 2011 The Insidious Fine Print http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/the-insidious-fine-print-in-the-spending-bill.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print It looks like a small throwaway line in a 2012 spending bill: no federal funds may be used to carry out chapters 95 or 96 of the Internal Revenue Code. A little digging shows that those chapters happen to authorize the presidential election public financing system. A few House Republicans, who have long hated the system, thought they could get rid of it by inserting the line in a bill to keep the government from shutting down this weekend. The provision will eventually be deleted, but it is only one of scores of policy riders that Republicans have tried to insert in the spending bill. Most have nothing to do with Congress?s basic job of financing the government, but nongermane provisions have become standard procedure for conservative lawmakers to pursue ideological goals with a few words in must-pass bills. Like pieces of shrapnel, they have to be extracted one at a time, but a few always seem to remain, doing a great deal of damage. The 2012 omnibus spending bill was actually proceeding rather smoothly. Lawmakers from both parties had largely reached agreement on how much money would be given to the various federal departments, in part because the overall spending limit was set by the debt-ceiling deal last summer. But that made it a more attractive target for the ideologues, and it quickly began to sag under the weight of its attachments. Some riders border on the ridiculous. One would end the ban on firearms and crossbows on water projects managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, (supported by a few Democrats, as well) said campers on corps lakes need to be able to defend themselves. Another would ban the Energy Department from enforcing incandescent lighting standards. The president would be banned from hiring an aide on climate change issues. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting could no longer buy NPR programs. Many of the riders are more serious, including several attempts to roll back environmental regulations on interstate air pollution, toxic power-plant emissions, and water pollution from mining. The District of Columbia could not offer a needle-exchange program or spend its own funds on abortions for poor women. (The abortion ban, also included in last year?s spending bill, does not apply to any state.) And, in time for Christmas, Republicans are trying to limit visits by Cuban-Americans to families on Cuba, a policy President Obama relaxed. Many of these riders will be dropped in negotiations with the Senate, but some, very possibly including the crackdown on Cuban travel and abortion in the capital, will remain. The outcome won?t be clear until the bill gets to a final vote, probably later this week. It is being held up because a separate bill to extend the payroll tax cut has also been delayed by extraneous Republican riders, including advancing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, cutting off the child tax credit to illegal immigrants and dropping pollution rules on industrial boilers. When Republicans took over the House last year, they pledged to ?end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ?must-pass? legislation.? If any of them wonder why the popularity of Congress is at an all-time low, they need only flip through their violation of that pledge on virtually every page of this legislation. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 07:31:01 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:31:01 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Facebook Resisters Message-ID: <1F121EC9-D129-4B80-8D97-B05A3D8EC634@infowarrior.org> (Note: I am one of these folks too. -- rick) December 13, 2011 The Facebook Resisters By JENNA WORTHAM http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/technology/shunning-facebook-and-living-to-tell-about-it.html?pagewanted=print Tyson Balcomb quit Facebook after a chance encounter on an elevator. He found himself standing next to a woman he had never met ? yet through Facebook he knew what her older brother looked like, that she was from a tiny island off the coast of Washington and that she had recently visited the Space Needle in Seattle. ?I knew all these things about her, but I?d never even talked to her,? said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in common with the woman. ?At that point I thought, maybe this is a little unhealthy.? As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population. But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try. One of Facebook?s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated. ?I wasn?t calling my friends anymore,? said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. ?I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.? To be sure, the Facebook-free life has its disadvantages in an era when people announce all kinds of major life milestones on the Web. Ms. Elser has missed engagements and pictures of newborn babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had created between her and her closest friends. So she shut it down. Many of the holdouts mention concerns about privacy. Those who study social networking say this issue boils down to trust. Amanda Lenhart, who directs research on teenagers, children and families at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that people who use Facebook tend to have ?a general sense of trust in others and trust in institutions.? She added: ?Some people make the decision not to use it because they are afraid of what might happen.? Ms. Lenhart noted that about 16 percent of Americans don?t have cellphones. ?There will always be holdouts,? she said. Facebook executives say they don?t expect everyone in the country to sign up. Instead they are working on ways to keep current users on the site longer, which gives the company more chances to show them ads. And the company?s biggest growth is now in places like Asia and Latin America, where there might actually be people who have not yet heard of Facebook. ?Our goal is to offer people a meaningful, fun and free way to connect with their friends, and we hope that?s appealing to a broad audience,? said Jonathan Thaw, a Facebook spokesman. But the figures on growth in this country are stark. The number of Americans who visited Facebook grew 10 percent in the year that ended in October ? down from 56 percent growth over the previous year, according to comScore, which tracks Internet traffic. Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner, said this slowdown was not a make-or-break issue ahead of the company?s public offering, which could come in the spring. What does matter, he said, is Facebook?s ability to keep its millions of current users entertained and coming back. ?They?re likely more worried about the novelty factor wearing off,? Mr. Valdes said. ?That?s a continual problem that they?re solving, and there are no permanent solutions.? Erika Gable, 29, who lives in Brooklyn and does public relations for restaurants, never understood the appeal of Facebook in the first place. She says the daily chatter that flows through the site ? updates about bad hair days and pictures from dinner ? is virtual clutter she doesn?t need in her life. ?If I want to see my fifth cousin?s second baby, I?ll call them,? she said with a laugh. Ms. Gable is not a Luddite. She has an iPhone and sometimes uses Twitter. But when it comes to creating a profile on the world?s biggest social network, her tolerance reaches its limits. ?I remember having MySpace for a bit and always feeling so weird about seeing other people?s stuff all the time,? she said. ?I?m not into it.? Will Brennan, a 26-year-old Brooklyn resident, said he had ?heard too many horror stories? about the privacy pitfalls of Facebook. But he said friends are not always sympathetic to his anti-social-media stance. ?I get asked to sign up at least twice a month,? Mr. Brennan said. ?I get harangued for ruining their plans by not being on Facebook.? And whether there is haranguing involved or not, the rebels say their no-Facebook status tends to be a hot topic of conversation ? much as a decision not to own a television might have been in an earlier media era. ?People always raise an eyebrow,? said Chris Munns, 29, who works as a systems administrator in New York. ?But my life has gone on just fine without it. I?m not a shut-in. I have friends and quite an enjoyable life in Manhattan, so I can?t say it makes me feel like I?m missing out on life at all.? But the peer pressure is only going to increase. Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, said society was adopting new behaviors and expectations in response to the near-ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks. ?People may start to ask the question that, if you aren?t on social channels, why not? Are you hiding something?? she said. ?The norms are shifting.? This kind of thinking cuts both ways for the Facebook holdouts. Mr. Munns said his dating life had benefited from his lack of an online dossier: ?They haven?t had a chance to dig up your entire life on Facebook before you meet.? But Ms. Gable said such background checks were the one thing she needed Facebook for. ?If I have a crush on a guy, I?ll make my friends look him up for me,? Ms. Gable said. ?But that?s as far as it goes.? This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: December 13, 2011 An earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of Americans who do not have cellphones, as estimated by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. It is 16 percent, not 5 percent. Also, a caption incorrectly spelled Erika Gable?s name as Ericka. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 08:05:48 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:05:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - F.A.A. Approves iPads in Cockpits, But Not for Passengers Message-ID: <90A510F5-5B8A-4A7F-97A0-17274A2CED90@infowarrior.org> (Umm, yeah - I call this regulatory hypocracy that apparently is not backed up by the 'science' or else it would be a blanket prohibition anywhere in the aircraft. -- rick) F.A.A. Approves iPads in Cockpits, But Not for Passengers By NICK BILTON December 14, 2011, 12:34 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/f-a-a-approves-ipads-in-cockpits-but-not-for-passengers/ The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that pilots on American Airlines flights would be allowed to use iPads instead of paper flight manuals in the cockpit starting Friday, even during takeoff and landing. But, passengers are still required to shut down anything with the slightest electronic pulse from the moment a plane leaves the gate until it reaches an altitude of 10,000 feet. The rule barring passengers from using a Kindle, an iPad, or even a calculator, were originally made to protect the electronics of an aircraft from interference. Yet pilots with iPads will be enclosed in the cockpit just a few inches from critical avionics on a plane. There is some thought that the rule disallowing devices during takeoff and landing was made to insure passengers paid attention. The F.A.A. has never claimed this. (If this was the case, passengers would not be allowed to have books, magazines or newspapers during takeoff and landing.) The F.A.A.?s stance regarding devices on planes has been revised several times. Last month, in my weekly Disruptions column, I noted that the rules requiring passengers to shut down devices, like Kindles and iPads, seem outdated. At the time I spoke with Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., who said the reason for the ban was that the agency would rather err on the side of caution when it came to allowing digital devices on planes. Yet in a statement issued to The New York Times, the F.A.A. said that it conducted ?rigorous testing of any electronic device proposed for use in the cockpit as an electronic flight bag, in lieu of paper navigation charts and manuals.? The F.A.A. did not say why the testing that has been used for pilots could not also be used to test the seating area where passengers sit, so they could use iPads and Kindles, too. The F.A.A. did say it had limited the number of approved devices in the cockpit to two, one for each pilot. ?This involves a significantly different scenario for potential interference than unlimited passenger use, which could involve dozens or even hundreds of devices at the same time,? the F.A.A. said in the statement. American Airlines did not respond to a request for comment. Last week the airline caused a kerfuffle when it ejected Alec Baldwin, a co-star on the NBC show 30 Rock?, from a flight for playing a game of Words with Friends on his iPhone while the plane was parked at the gate. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 08:07:22 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:07:22 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Fwd: Japan Unleashing Packs of Wild Monkeys to Test Fukushima Radiation References: <201112141342.pBEDgSau006144@synergy.ecn.purdue.edu> Message-ID: <01B92761-1D6F-4BE0-8EBE-18C247AE6B83@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > From: Joe C > > Hope for the best? Anyone who has EVER read a comic book knows what a bad idea this is. > > http://gizmodo.com/5867763/japan-unleashing-packs-of-wild-monkeys-to-test-fukushima-radiation > > Problem: nobody knows just how bad the radioactive contamination is at Fukushima, nine months later. Prediction: still pretty bad. Solution: send in a bunch of monkeys armed with radiation meters and GPS collars, hope for the best. Let's do it! From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 14 19:41:28 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:41:28 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Patriot Act Fears Squash UK Defense Company's Microsoft Cloud Plan Message-ID: <33F38B03-3E50-4D1F-AC7E-ABCE7563C8FD@infowarrior.org> Report: Patriot Act Fears Squash UK Defense Company's Microsoft Cloud Plan By Andrew R Hickey, CRN 11:03 AM EST Thu. Dec. 08, 2011http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/232300148/report-patriot-act-fears-squash-uk-defense-companys-microsoft-cloud-plan.htm A British defense contractor killed its plans to move to the public cloud via Microsoft Office 365 over concerns that the Patriot Act could make data accessible outside of Europe, according to reports. Speaking at the Business Cloud Summit 2011 in London this week, Charles Newhouse, head of strategy and design for BAE Systems said it had expected to deploy Microsoft Office 365 for its cloud solution, but since data sovereignty could not be guaranteed it had to pull the plug on the proposal, according to a report from Computer Weekly. Newhouse told the crowd during a panel discussion that it ditched its Microsoft Office 365 deployment because it could not guarantee that the company's data would not leave Europe and that the Patriot Act could make BAE's data accessible by the U.S. government. "We were going to adopt Office365 and the lawyers said we could not do it," Newhouse said during the discussion. Massive global companies like BAE have strict guidelines around data protection and where data can be stored and accessed. BAE, which sells defense equipment and weaponry to various global governments, said that its data must be protected at all times. Microsoft itself has noted that BAE's concerns aren't off-based. During its European launch of Office 365, Microsoft UK Managing Director Gordon Frazer said that data stored in European data centers could potentially be handed over to American officials under the Patriot Act, Engadget reported at the time. And when asked if Microsoft could guarantee that data stored in Europe wouldn't leave the continent, Frazer said: "Microsoft cannot provide those guarantees. Neither can any other company." Newhouse also noted that recent cloud outages that have racked Microsoft and other cloud providers also raised red flags as BAE investigated its move to the public cloud via Office 365. "A number of high profile outages that users have suffered recently demonstrated just how little control you actually have. When it all goes horribly wrong, you just sit there and hope it is going to get better. There's nothing tangibly you can do to assist," Newhouse said in a recording of a portion of the discussion posted by Computer Weekly. Along with lack of control, concerns over where data is located and who can access it were top concerns, Newhouse said. "I was on a study tour recently, and 85 percent of European companies out on that now cite international regulations being their major issue. Everyone was on about the U.S. Patriot Act, saying that the geo-location of their data and who has access to that data is the number one killer for adopting to the public cloud at the moment," Newhouse said. "We had these wonderful conversations with Microsoft where we were going to adopt Office 365 for some of our unrestricted stuff, and it was all going to be brilliant. I went back and spoke to the lawyers and said, '[The data center is in] Ireland and then if it fails in Ireland go to Holland.' And the lawyers said 'What happened if they lose Holland as well?'" --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 08:28:02 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:28:02 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Credit Score + Social Media Mining = Scary Message-ID: As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit Pay up, or we'll spam your newsfeed! By Adrianne Jeffries 12/13 7:39pm http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/as-banks-start-nosing-around-facebook-and-twitter-the-wrong-friends-might-just-sink-your-credit/2/ Can't pay? Well, what about your friends? Let?s take a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Future. The year is 2016, and George Bailey, a former banker, now a part-time consultant, is looking for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a co-op in the super-hot neighborhood of Bedford Falls (BeFa). He has never missed a loan payment and has zero credit card debt. He submits his information to the online-only PotterBank.com, but halfway through the application process, the website asks for his Facebook login. Then his Twitter. Then LinkedIn. The cartoon loan officer avatar begins to frown as the algorithm discovers Mr. Bailey?s taxi-driving buddy Ernie was once turned down by PotterBank for a loan; then it starts browsing his daughter Zuzu?s photo album, ?Saturday Nite!? And what was this tweet from a few years back: ?FML, about to jump off a goddamn bridge?? A new wave of startups is working on algorithms gathering data for banks from the web of associations on the internet known as ?the social graph,? in which people are ?nodes? connected to each other by ?edges.? Banks are already using social media to befriend their customers, and increasingly, their customers? friends. The specifics are still shaking out, but the gist is that eventually, social media will account for at least the tippy-top of the mountain of data banks keep on their customers. ?There is this concept of ?birds of a feather flock together,?? said Ken Lin, CEO of the San Francisco-based credit scoring startup Credit Karma. ?If you are a profitable customer for a bank, it suggests that a lot of your friends are going to be the same credit profile. So they?ll look through the social network and see if they can identify your friends online and then maybe they send more marketing to them. That definitely exists today.? And in the last year or so, financial institutions have started exploring ways to use data from Facebook, Twitter and other networks to round out an individual borrower?s risk profile?although most entrepreneurs working on the problem say the technology is three to five years away from mainstream adoption. ?Credit score is a lagging indicator,? said Brett King, a tall, puffy Australian with white blond hair who is the founder of the online-only bank Movenbank and author of BANK 2.0: How Customer Behavior and Technology Will Change the Future of Financial Services. ?At best, your credit score is about 60 days behind. What we?re trying to do is look for things that reflect the likelihood of a future default, rather than what?s happened in the past.? Movenbank is an online bank in private alpha release that replaces plastic credit and debit cards with a mobile device such as an iPad or smartphone. Mr. King is a major proponent of the questionable young science of using social media to evaluate creditworthiness. When it comes to online privacy, Mr. King subscribes to the Mark Zuckerberg school of thought: standards are evolving, and the world will be better for it. (As long as you?re connecting and sharing, only good things can happen to you!) ?Our view of what ?private? is, is changing,? Mr. King said. ?We make friends with people we barely know!? He predicts that banks will soon start asking customers to verify their social media profiles. Not everyone has a social media presence, of course, so submitting your Twitter handle will first be pitched as a way to provide customer support or account alerts, which will later open the door for ?more complex products,? Mr. King said. Employers have already started using social media to evaluate potential candidates, and in 2009 a woman in Quebec stopped receiving disability payments for major depression after Manulife decided, based on beach vacation photos on Facebook, that she seemed happy enough to work after all. ?I?m sure that insurers now are looking at Facebook profiles and saying, ?You?ve said you?re not a smoker? Well how come in three of these ten photos where you?re out with friends, you?re smoking??? Mr. King said. That means that tweet, ?Just got fired, man. Spending my severance at the bar!? may have been ill-considered. Mr. King is especially interested in identifying customers who can evangelize the service to a sizable crowd of cloud-friends. Movenbank requires users to connect their Facebook accounts upon registering, data from which will be baked into a proprietary ?CRED? score, a number that determines which rates and products are available. The exact recipe is still being written, but eventually Movenbank will boost your CRED as you hook it up to your accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn and even eBay, which calculates a reputation score based on buyer feedback. It?s not the only metric, Mr. King said, but a strong Twitter presence could tip the scale in favor of a marginally risky borrower. Much of this is driven by enterprising techies looking for the next big sector of the economy to disrupt with a social twist. Back in July, the 34-year-old internet pundit, angel investor and startup entrepreneur Kevin Rose, best known as the founder of Digg, sat down in front of his webcam in a t-shirt and baseball cap to talk to the internet about credit cards. ?This might be potentially the dumbest, least-vetted idea I?ve ever put out there,? he said. ?What if we could make credit cards a little more social?? Mr. Rose was just spitballing, and his idea seemed innocuous enough. But there?s a nightmare scenario: if banks learn how to use social media, they could gather information they aren?t allowed to ask for on a credit application?including race, marital status and receipt of public assistance?or worse, to redline segments of the social graph. In other words: choose your online friends wisely, for they may one day determine your APR. Lenddo, a Hong Kong-based microlending startup incubated in New York?s FinTech Innovation Lab, calls itself ?the first credit scoring service that uses your online social network to assess credit.? The first thing Lenddo asks for is a Facebook account; then it wants access to Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo, and Windows Live. The Observer was given a respectable score of 470. But when we tried to apply for a loan, we were told ?you need at least 3 connections with scores above 400 in your Lenddo trusted network.? (We wouldn?t have been able to get a loan anyway: Lenddo is only available in the Philippines, although it recently hired an ex-Googler to head up the Americas.) The company?s algorithm is proprietary and secret, said CEO Jeff Stewart, but the primary metric is what Lenddo knows about the people you?re friends with. ?We think that in the age of the internet you should be able to establish your reputation and your identity through your social graph, through your on- and offline community, and use that to get access to financial products and information,? he said. If Lenddo sees one of your best Facebook buddies took out a loan and paid it back, there?s a good chance you will too. ?Our backgrounds are in machine learning and pattern recognition,? Mr. Stewart said. ?It?s some serious math. ?There?s no reason there shouldn?t be thousands of engineers working to assess creditworthiness.? In another nifty but nefarious innovation, Lenddo reserves the right to broadcast your loan status if you fall into default. As the site warns: ?Failure to repay will negatively impact your Lenddo score, as well as the score of your Lenddo friends. Lenddo MAINTAINS THE RIGHT TO NOTIFY YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY if the borrower fails to repay, however, this is only done after several notifications to the borrower and an attempt to work out a payment plan.? ?I think Mark Zuckerberg said it best,? Mr. Stewart said. ?Every industry will be in fact impacted by social.? Banks have been curious about using social media to gauge risk for at least a year, said Matt Thomson, VP of platform at Klout, which calculates ?influence? based on a user?s social media activity. Determining creditworthiness is not a core product of Klout?s, he said, but banks have approached the startup to ask about it. He wouldn?t name names. ?It?s really like the who?s who of banking,? he said. (Mr. Stewart of Lenddo also said his startup is approached ?regularly? by major banks curious about the algorithm.) Klout, arguably the leader in developing a metric for social media power users, has taken a beating from bloggers for being spammy and potentially insecure. The New York Times wrote about shocked parents who discovered Klout had autogenerated skeleton profiles for their children, based on what it had gathered from their connections to others; the science fiction writer Charles Stross called the service ?the internet equivalent of herpes.? R. Ethan Smith, who blogs as The Startupist, recently wrote a critique of Movenbank?s projected partnership with Klout. ?Klout claims that I am influential about New Jersey, coffee, and iPads,? he wrote, noting that he has no real expertise in any of the three and doesn?t even own an iPad. ?Now, let?s assume that King is completely serious about using online social profile data to determine a Movenbank user?s influences, which will essentially determine their ability access a line of credit? To stake tangible dollars on what seems to be a relatively easily manipulable algorithm is not something I would characterize as ?good business sense.?? Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff dismissed the idea that social media credit scoring is a serious erosion of privacy, mostly because there?s nothing left to hide. ?We?re already in the nightmare scenario,? he wrote in an email. ?They already know everything about you?more than most of us realize. If anything, the addition of social networking information to this data mining will help us come to some understanding of how much more these companies know about us than we know about ourselves.? The precise formula for FICO, the most widely used credit score, is secret and proprietary to the Fair Isaac Corporation, a publicly traded company. Experian and TransUnion, two of the three national credit bureaus, did not respond to requests for comment on this story; Equifax, the third, did respond. ?Our corporate development professionals are very aware of the opportunities to enhance our proprietary data and partner with companies who add value to the accuracy of our reporting, which helps our customers make better decisions prior to lending,? a company rep said in an email, adding that Equifax can?t comment on future strategies because it?s a public company. This new use for social media data could turn out to be empowering, Mr. Rushkoff pointed out, if it leads to people lending to one another. A reputation score based on the social graph could lower the barrier to entry for peer-to-peer lending startups. ?Instead of everyone outsourcing their savings, investments, and borrowing to truly evil institutions who use what information they about us simply as an excuse to drain more money from us,? Mr. Rushkoff said, ?we would invest in one another.? Snow is falling lightly outside as Mr. Bailey logs off of PotterBank.com. Suddenly, a bell rings. It?s his iPhone: a text message from Lending Club, a peer-to-peer lending startup based in San Francisco. His friends saw his Tumblr post with photos of the coveted apartment, and forwarded it to friends of friends. Collectively, they?ve pledged to invest over and above the needed deposit. He looks up, smiles; looks back at his phone, and taps out a tweet: ?No man is a failure who has friends!? CORRECTION: The original post incorrectly said Lenddo is based in New York. The company is officially headquartered in Hong Kong. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 09:15:02 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:15:02 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects Message-ID: WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects (CBS News) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57343287/wh-oks-military-detention-of-terrorism-suspects/ The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil. As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases. The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been "softened." The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions. "We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President's senior advisors will not recommend a veto," the White House statement said. The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year. While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare "enemy combatants," as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved. "By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side." The debate over captured terrorism suspects Senate keeps controversial detainee policy in defense bill Bagram: The Other Guantanamo? FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals. "My concern is that you don't want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty" as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: "A case that we're investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?" Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees. "If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American's reputation for upholding the rule of law," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill." Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower. By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain. ? 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 09:17:21 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:17:21 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Detaining US citizens: How did we get here? Message-ID: <54EAAF57-EEAC-4E9D-B909-9E3A02530E25@infowarrior.org> Detaining US citizens: How did we get here? The US Senate is pushing to give the military the option of indefinitely detaining US citizens without trial. D. Parvaz Last Modified: 15 Dec 2011 14:31 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/2011121475544131362.html The Obama administration defends its right to kill US citizens, such as 'terror' suspect Anwar Al Awlaki [EPA] Aziz Rana, professor of constitutional law at Cornell University, explains the significance of provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorisation Act that define the entire world as a battlefield, allowing for open-ended detainment of US citizens, without a trial. Rana tells Al Jazeera that these provisions are merely the latest round in a long battle between Congress, the executive branch, and rights activists. On the executive branch versus civil liberties: "One of the positions in the legal community, for example, around the assassination of [Anwar] Al Awlaki, is that this is a constitutional violation. A new US law will declare the world a battlefield, making virtually anyone vulnerable to indefinite military detention. But the executive branch has pretty systematically defended this - not that it can, under the Constitution - but it has systematically defended its ability to pursue a variety of different practices. For example, various officials in speeches and statements have implied that the battlefield extends beyond Afghanistan or Iraq and indeed may be global. If an individual is suspected of engaging in terrorism but is in a friendly or non-hostile country - such as Yemen - that still would count as the battlefield. So the executive branch is already defending the idea of the world as a battlefield. They're also already defending the idea that you can extinguish citizen rights in various places if someone is suspected of being a terrorist. So, for example, Al Awlaki was a US citizen, and the claim is that you can engage in a targeted assassination even of a US citizen that contests whether or not he or she is a suspected terrorist. There are these practices on the ground that have been backed up by a series of Executive Branch statements, legal opinions, speeches, et cetera. And the thing that's really telling about the current climate in the US, is that there has been very little judicial pushback and very little popular or political pushback. So, for example, in the context of Al Awlaki, his family attempted to raise the legality of the fact that he was on a targeted assassination list last December in a case before the Federal court, and that case was dismissed on 'justiciability' grounds, specifically that [Al Awlaki's] father didn't have standing to sue on his son's behalf. Although the decision never reached the merits of the case, the judge also seemed to indicate that on the merits he would have sided with the Obama administration under the 'state secret privilege'. The courts were unwilling to address the underlying claims that were being presented, to there are questionable practices that are being pursued, but there hasn't been much institutional or political pushback." Codification of rights violations "The concern, potentially, with codification [of indefinite detentions without trial] is a longstanding debate on whether or not it's better for emergency practices to be discretionary - in other words, they're being pursued unilaterally by the Executive Branch - or to actually be codified. The claim about the value of practices being codified is that if these practices get codified, they're under some form of statute, then there's some process that attaches to it, there's some clarity about what the various institutional actors can and cannot do. The critique on the other side is if what you're codifying, if the statues are giving legal imprimatur, the Congress' stamp that we already think of as deeply problematic because they contradict civil liberties and civil libertarian goals - then, in a sense, the process can be quite coercive. There's nothing about having a codified framework that makes it less likely to infringe on rights. Think comparatively. A place like Egypt?where you have emergency laws that create an infrastructure of authoritarian rule. Just because it exists in the law, it doesn't mean that it necessarily going to be rights-protective. These are two problematic options. One option is discretionary power as articulated by the executive branch, but with very little institutional pushback from the judiciary or the public at large, or new statutory frameworks that validate these processes as articulated by Congress but that are themselves quite coercive. Manipulation of case law "The Hamdi case [Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 2004] where you had a US citizen of Saudi decent, who was captured on the [Afghan] battlefield by the Northern Alliance and turned over to US custody - he was initially sent to Guantanamo before they realised he was a US citizen, and then he was imprisoned in a military brig in South Carolina. The legality of his detention ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court. ? the opinion by Justice O'Connor, which became the law of the case, is that you can detain even a US citizen as an enemy combatant, and that detention can be for the duration of hostilities. But there have to be certain procedural safeguards that are provided to the individual that's being detained. Now, O'Connor, when she wrote that opinion, when she was talking about the duration of hostilities, she was actually attempting to limit or constrain - though not ultimately successfully - the framework that had been applied by the Bush administration. Because the Bush administration's framework was that the war on terror is a global war, and that it's going to last indefinitely, perhaps forever. And she [O'Connor] was trying to focus on the fact that, no, the battlefield is Afghanistan, and the reason that this person can be detained is because there's an authorisation for the use of military force that allows an individual to be picked up in Afghanistan. And that detention lasts as long as there are extensive military operations in Afghanistan. Now, what we've seen since then is that her language was still not specified enough, like when do military operations in Afghanistan end? We've been involved in various phases in war there for now a decade and so there is still the implication that hostilities can be long-standing and permanent. And the way that both administrations [Bush and Obama] have interpreted that language is by using the language from the Hamdi case to essentially justify near-permanent detention, because hostilities are endless. What you see in the [NDAA] bill is the effort to use phrases from cases in order to justify the practice, but to strip out in various ways the meaning of the phrase that might have limited the reach of detention powers." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 09:29:49 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:29:49 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Tons Of Amendments Proposed For SOPA Message-ID: <6CFF8C8B-A2F6-4EFD-9E66-E13F4038167D@infowarrior.org> by Mike Masnick Thu, Dec 15th 2011 5:49am http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111215/01322617096/tons-amendments-proposed-sopa.shtml Tons Of Amendments Proposed For SOPA from the sit-back-and-relax,-this-is-going-to-take-a-while dept The "markup" process for SOPA is going to begin shortly (at 10am ET/7am PT), and it's going to be quite a circus. This is when various amendments can be proposed and debated. You can watch it stream live, if they can keep the stream up (they had trouble during the SOPA hearings). On top of that, I'm planning to live tweet as much as I can via my Twitter account -- assuming Twitter doesn't tell me I've "hit the limit of tweets for the day" (as it did during the hearings as well). I also have a few meetings here and there, so I'll have to disappear from time to time depending on how long the markup goes. But I still intend to cover as much as I can. Normally, this process doesn't take a huge amount of time... but this time around there are a huge number of amendments, and reports are that it may take two days to get through everything. I've heard anywhere from 55 to 60 amendments are being proposed, each one of which needs to be discussed and voted on. We got our hands on an "amendments roster" (embedded below) that shows 55 amendments. It's possible that more have been added. However, there are plenty of interesting amendments already here -- and it suggests, at the very least, that some unexpected members of the Judiciary Committee retain serious concerns about SOPA, even after Lamar Smith's watered down version was released. Here are just a few of the interesting amendments: ? Zoe Lofgren has an amendment that says a DNS operator should have no obligation to block a website if doing so would impair the security or integrity of the domain name system or the operator's system or network. I'm sure opponents will say this makes the blocking toothless, but what they're really saying is they don't care if censoring websites they don't like harms the security of the internet. ? Darrell Issa tries to completely dump the DNS blocking section, as well as the requirements for search engines to block links. This would be a huge step forward... which is why Smith will never let it happen. ? Lofgren wants to make sure the anti-circumvention rule isn't able to be used to block tools used to get around foreign censorship. Considering our own State Department is funding such tools... this seems important. But it does lead to a bizarre situation where it could be legal to create circumvention tools for foreigners, but not for your own country. The whole circumvention stuff is ridiculous. ? Lofgren also wants to make sure that those defined as "foreign infringing sites" actually violate copyright law, rather than "facilitate" infringement. Defenders of SOPA insist it's just about enforcement, not about broadening copyright law itself. But when you extend enforcement to things that don't directly break the law... ? Jared Polis wants an amendment saying that the US government won't spend any money "protecting the intellectual property rights of pornography." Interesting. ? Polis also wants to dump the anti-circumvention provisions entirely. Good for him. Anti-circumvention has been a disaster under the DMCA. Expanding it here would just be crazy. ? Jim Sensenbrenner wants to do away with the private right of action entirely. Also a good idea. At least someone recognizes that this is a lawyer's dream tool. The private right of action will be massively abused. It wasn't clear where Sensenbrenner stood on the overall bill, but nice to see that he's clearly concerned with the likely abuse of section 103. He has another amendment that "replaces" the private right of action with the ability serve an order on payment providers and ad networks -- but limits the authority to enforce this to the Attorney General. I'm not sure this is that much better, but it'll be interesting to hear the details. ? Lofgren tries to narrow the definition of what's "dedicated to theft of US property." This needs to be narrowed. While it's narrower than it was in the original, it's still way too broad. ? Jason Chaffetz has an amendment that says if a company files an action based on Section 103 (trying to get ads or payment processors cut off) and the court disagrees... the company who files has to pay all fees of all the parties. Similarly, Ben Quayle, has an amendment that says anyone who knowingly misrepresents that a site is "dedicated to theft of us property," they'll be required to pay attorneys fees and court costs, and another amendment that just says that the losing party pays. Good to see more members worried about how the private right of action can be abused. ? There are a bunch of amendments clarifying that ad networks, payment processors and search engines should only get immunity in very specific cases for voluntarily cutting off sites, rather than the broad immunity currently in the bill. ? Chaffetz and Polis both have amendments concerning the "study" on the impact. Chaffetz, quite rightly, says that key parts of section 102's DNS blocking should not go into effect until after a study is done assessing the impact on internet security. Polis also wants a report on the impact of DNS blocking, as well as the impact on "employment, economic growth and the availability of capital." ? Polis wants to add in DMCA-like safe harbors to the felony streaming provisions, and also make it so first time offenses remain a misdemeanor. ? Hank Johnson includes one of my favorite clauses, and one I think should be on almost every bill: the provisions of the bill expire after five years. Why more bills don't have such provisions, I don't understand. ? Polis takes on the issue of massively expanding the diplomatic corp. with diplomats whose sole job it is to push ever more draconian copyright law on foreign nations, by saying they should be required to "consider fair use, consumers and licensees as part of their duties." What? Consider consumers? When would Congress ever do that? ? And, of course, Issa seeks to substitute his own OPEN bill. That would definitely be a big step forward towards getting rid of the problems of SOPA, but there's no way that amendment passes. There are a bunch more, but those were just some of the interesting ones... We'll try to have a wrap up after it's all over. Chances are most of these amendments won't pass, but perhaps a few of them will at least get a reasonable hearing. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 11:05:56 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:05:56 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Judge gives Universal Music 24 hours to explain takedown spree Message-ID: <23A4FC3A-64DA-4502-A646-D5A60D07AA62@infowarrior.org> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/judge-gives-umg-24-hours-to-explain-takedown-spree.ars Judge gives Universal Music 24 hours to explain takedown spree By Timothy B. Lee | Published about an hour ago A federal judge has given Universal Music Group until the end of the day Thursday to respond to charges that it abused the DMCA takedown process to censor a promotional music video by the locker site Megaupload. There's been no love lost between the American recording industry and the Hong Kong-based Megaupload. The RIAA has called Megaupload a "notorious service" that "thumbs their noses at international laws, all while pocketing significant advertising revenues from trafficking in free, unlicensed copyrighted materials." So label executives must have been furious on Friday when the locker site unveiled a new promotional video featuring some of the music industry's biggest names singing the site's praises. One of the labels, Universal Music Group, went a step further and started filing takedown notices. The legal basis for the takedown requests isn't clear. Megaupload says that the music and artwork in the video are original, and that it has signed agreements with everyone who appeared in it. An early report suggested that Will.I.Am sent a takedown request, but this may have been the work of an over-zealous lawyer, as Megaupload CIO Kim Dotcom says that he "spoke directly with will.i.am," and confirmed that the artist "absolutely had not authorized the submission of any takedown notice on his behalf." On Monday, Megaupload?doubtless relishing the opportunity to play copyright victim?filed a lawsuit in federal court against UMG for misuse of the DMCA takedown process. UMG, it said, is "abusing the DMCA takedown mechanism to chill free speech they do not like." It asked the court to declare that Megaupload had the right to post its video and to restrain UMG from submitting any more takedown notices. But UMG apparently continued its takedown campaign, targeting an episode of Tech News Today that included a clip from the video in its coverage of the controversy. The host, Tom Merritt, says he filed a counter-notice under the DMCA, but as of Wednesday evening the show had not been restored. Under the DMCA, it will take 10 days for the video to go back up. "In 10 days a daily news show is worthless," he told the Verge, "so Universal was able to censor this episode of Tech News Today." On Wednesday, Megaupload asked the court to rule quickly on the matter, arguing that UMG's takedown campaign was harming Megaupload's free speech rights. "UMG has squashed not only the video itself, but even public comment about it by others, including a 45 minute news broadcast that criticized UMG," the firm wrote. "The Court should act immediately to ensure the public that such tactics will not be tolerated." In a brief order on Wednesday afternoon, Judge Claudia Wilken wrote that she would "defer ruling" on Megaupload's request for a restraining order until UMG has had an opportunity to respond. But she asked the label to file its response "on or before December 15"?that is, on Thursday. Ars sought a comment from UMG, but we have not received a response. Correction: An earlier version of the story stated that it takes up to 10 days for sites to restore content in response to a takedown request. In fact, a site must wait at least 10 days before restoring the material. Image courtesy of Megaupload From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 11:07:57 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:07:57 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - House Judiciary Livestream of SOPA markup Message-ID: FYI -- 10:00 a.m. in the 2141 Rayburn House Office Building Markup of: H.R. 3261, the ?Stop Online Piracy Act? http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html There's a lot of bipartisan WTFAREWEDOING protests to this proposed bill, much to my surprise. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 15:42:59 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:42:59 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress Message-ID: <77D2435C-7088-4315-B218-E0BA59DF937A@infowarrior.org> December 15, 2011 | By Parker Higgins and Peter Eckersley An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively. < - BIG SNIP OF WHOS WHO OF INTERNET DESIGN - > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 16:17:51 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:17:51 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The nightmarish SOPA hearings Message-ID: The nightmarish SOPA hearings By Alexandra Petri http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/the-nightmarish-sopa-hearings/2011/12/15/gIQA47RUwO_blog.html?hpid=z4 Last night I had a horrifying dream that a group of well-intentioned middle-aged people who could not distinguish between a domain name and an IP address were trying to regulate the Internet. Then I woke up and the Judiciary Committee?s SOPA hearings were on. It?s exactly as we feared. For every person who appears to have some grip on the issue, there were three or four yelling at him. ?I?m not a nerd,? said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D- Calif.). ?I aspire to be a nerd.? ?I?m a nerd,? said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). If I had a dime for every time someone in the hearing used the phrase ?I?m not a nerd? or ?I?m no tech expert, but they tell me .?.?.,? I?d have a large number of dimes and still feel intensely worried about the future of the uncensored Internet. If this were surgery, the patient would have run out screaming a long time ago. But this is like a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. ?We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what?s required,? they say cheerily. ?We?re not going to cut the good valves, just the bad ? neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.? This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing ? there?s nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like ?server? and ?service? when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke?s on us. It?s been a truism for some time that you can tell innovation in an industry has ceased when the industry starts to develop a robust lobbying and litigating presence instead. As long as there have been new technologies, the entertainment industry has been trying to get them shut down as filthy, thieving pirates. Video cassettes? Will anyone tune into TV again? MP3 players? Why even bother making a record? Digital video recorder that lets you skip ads? That?s a form of theft! But SOPA is threatening to touch something far more precious than that ? the glorious sprawl of the Internet. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that, in the name of preventing online piracy of copyrighted work, creates a horrifyingly large censorship authority for the Internet. Among other things, it requiresservice providers (which have come out opposing the bill) to block access to entire sites if a user on the site is accused of copyright infringement. There are dozens of reasons this is wrong. The biggest and most pressing is that not only does the bill not do what it sets out to do, it also creates a horrifyingly blunt instrument to censor the Internet. One of the underlying assumptions of our system of government has always been that even though people mean well now, that doesn?t mean you give them the authority to do terrible things later. The attorney general now may use SOPA in only the most narrowly tailored of cases. But as the Founders knew, it is unwise to give people more powers than you would like them to use. There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you have to have some understanding of it. And when people are saying things like, ?This is just the rogue foreign Web sites? and ?This only targets the bad actors? and ?So you want universities to host illegal pirated versions of copyrighted content?,? it?s enough to make you claw out large fistfuls of your hair. No! No! Nobody is hosting anything. This bill would require service providers to cut off access to entire Web sites where users are deemed to be engaging in copyright infringement, not take down stolen content they posted themselves. That?s already against the law. But no one seemed to be able to express this. When you have a signed letter from the engineers responsible for creating the Internet pointing out that this bill would jeopardize our cybersecurity, balkanize the Internet and create a climate of uncertainty that would stifle innovation, it seems odd to ignore it. As a general rule, when the people saying that this will have a horrible, chilling impact on something are the ones who created that thing in the first place, and the people who are saying, ?Oh, no, it?ll be fine, it only targets the bad actors? are members of the Motion Picture Association of America, it seems obvious whose opinion you should heed. And the rush to legislate struck many of the committee members as odd. ?Haste makes waste,? Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) noted. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) asked, ?Why is there this rush to judgment?,? noting, ?I have rarely been part of a committee operation where we have not had .?.?. technical experts to deal with major concerns that have arisen.? This is enough to paralyze a person with dread. When Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) proposed an amendment to exempt colleges and not-for-profit institutions from the unfunded mandate of having to shut off access to certain sites ? like freedom, Internet censorship isn?t free ? it was shot down 23 to 9. When he proposed another amendment to target the restrictions not at IP addresses (which, as he noted, can be dynamic and assigned to toasters) but at domain names, it fell just as easily. This afternoon, the hearings continue, with even more amendments. But at the rate it?s going, it looks likely that SOPA will make it to the floor. I just want the nightmare to be over. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 17:51:35 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:51:35 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA Signals End of a Free-Information Age We Won't Know We Had Until It's Gone Message-ID: Thursday, December 15, 2011 5:44 PM EST SOPA Signals End of a Free-Information Age We Won't Know We Had Until It's Gone By Connor Adams Sheets http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/268080/20111215/sopa-signals-end-free-information-age-won.htm As they unceasingly have for the past several years, I watched today as Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit, blew up with an endless stream of news about topics as divergent as NDAA, SOPA, Bahrain, Iran and the economy. The mainstream media seems to over paper much of the important news in order to promote stories of kidnapped girls and tawdry murders, but the people who have a hunger to know can still create access for themselves to the kinds of information they deem to be important. Want to know about Egypt's ongoing turmoil? Find some reporters on the ground there and follow their lists, find some human rights groups on one side and the government mouthpieces on the other side and follow all of them. And peruse the various media outlets for whatever reporting may be going on there (actual reporting continues in disparate pockets, despite all the hype to the contrary.) It may be difficult to find real information, but it does exist, and it is our prerogative to care enough to find and consume it. But what concerns me is not the existence of information, as the continuing existence of humanity guarantees we will continue to do and say things of interest. At issue is the limiting of our access to said facts and opinions, and it is a concern that is coming to a head in Washington right now. But first some background, as I see it: First the corporatization and over-monetization of mainstream media outlets turned them into efficient distributors of what the lowest common denominator wants to consume, or what news providers believe they want to or should be consuming. News was once dominated by the figureheads on the nightly news, household names who decided what we should know. Then we were left to our own devices to parse through the broadcasts and periodicals that defined the news-scape. As the companies that produced those dispatches were bought up by national, then international conglomerates, they became more and more homogeneous. As an intern covering the U.S. Congress five years ago, while still in college, I witnessed firsthand the pack mentality that defines the vast majority of modern journalism. Over-worked, underpaid and severely under-supported reporters scramble to report and aggregate all the same stories for their own publications, while real, hard-hitting investigative journalism takes a backseat. The number of journalists with ever-decreasing amounts of time to spend on enterprise has fallen precipitously in the past couple of decades, but the blow was softened as readership migrated to the Web. In the new media sphere there was less curated, well-funded and professionally vetted journalism, but it was very hard to keep a secret for long. WikiLeaks blew the lid on thousands of pages of "top secret" files, Reddit, Digg and other websites provided forums for like-minded, engaged individuals to promote the most important, least-appreciated content, and blogs provided sources for alternate viewpoints that would never have otherwise seen the light of publication. The hits went to whoever had something interesting to say the most often, and a quasi-democratization of opinion reigned. For most of the past decade, this new arena of freedom of speech and less-fettered access to information operated just below the radar of most high-powered politicians, law enforcement authorities, CEOs and other people with the power to effect change. But as Twitter and other new media outlets fueled the Arab Spring, the elites became concerned, and the crackdown loomed large on the horizon. There was too much freedom to assemble, too much free speech, too much ability to exercise the right to overthrow a tyrannical government. In America this all came to a head as we witnessed the crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that swept the nation. The government used brute force in a an attempt to scare the citizenry into abandoning its protestations. Didn't work. So that brings us to today. The U.S. Congress and its corporate friends and backers are unnerved by the rumblings of the gentry, so they clear the way for the National Defense Authorization Act despite the protestations of the Pentagon, FBI, ACLU, and everyone who would rather not be locked up forever for checking Al Jazeera one too many times. It basically suspends habeas corpus permanently, and President Barack Obama has signaled he won't be vetoing it. Unfortunately, that was just the smokescreen for the law that will hit closer to most of our computers, that they will use to end our little segment of open exchange. SOPA, as the Stop Online Piracy (aka Privacy) Act is known, was literally drafted behind closed doors, ostensibly in order to protect intellectual property. But its real impacts are much more ominous, as anyone who has ever posted on YouTube, done a search on Google, or updated his or her status on Twitter or Facebook (all companies who, along with many others, have declared their opposition to SOPA) should take the time to educate themselves about. The result will be the creation of a legal framework under which the government can stop information exchange essentially at will. Sure, the feds likely won't use it much at first--it's couched as a way for them to target and punish torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and other domains (like YouTube and Google, to name a couple of "offenders") which provide a means for Web users to attain or view copyrighted material without paying for it. But the justified fear of everyone who enjoys not becoming a felon--because they accidentally clicked on a Lady Gaga video not posted on her official Vimeo account--is that it will go much further. The widely-held and perfectly fair interpretation of this law, which is generating some of the most intense criticism of any piece of legislation in recent memory, is one under which the feds would be able to shut down Twitter or other websites at any times it deems such a move necessary. For instance: when people are attempting to organize a protest. If SOPA passes, it will signal the end of this era of open online dialogue that our younger generations managed to create for themselves. We should all rue the day. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 15 19:37:48 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:37:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Blacklisting Provisions Remain in Stop Online Piracy Act Message-ID: <9AAD224A-2979-4707-917D-8AAD076BBDD5@infowarrior.org> Blacklisting Provisions Remain in Stop Online Piracy Act ? By David Kravets ? December 15, 2011 | ? 2:58 pm | http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-stalls/ (This post was updated at 6:45 p.m. EST. No vote to move the bill to the House floor has been taken. The hearing is ongoing.) The House Judiciary Committee debated the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act for hours Thursday ? and about five hours into the hearing voted 22-12 to reject an amendment that would do away with its most controversial provision that would force changes to core internet infrastructure in order to stop copyright infringement. Despite that vote, members on both sides of the political aisle also expressed reservations that the internet-blacklisting legislation was moving too fast. ?I would just ask: Why is there this rush?? Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) said. He mentioned there were exigent circumstances when lawmakers approved the Patriot Act weeks after 9/11, but none existed here. ?For the life of me, I can?t understand it.? Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California) had similar thoughts, and added that the measure went too far. ?We never tried to filter the telephone networks to block illegal content on the telephone network, yet that is precisely what this legislation would do relative to the internet.? The legislation?s most vocal backers are the recording and movie studios, who say online piracy is killing their business. The measure?s detractors are civil liberties groups and internet architects who say the bill amounts to censorship and a fundamental alteration of the internet itself. At the outset Thursday, lawmakers demanded that the entire 70-plus-page bill be read into the record. It took a House clerk an hour to read Rep. Lamar Smith?s SOPA bill, which is an amended version of legislation he introduced last month. ?While the internet should be free, it should not be lawless,? Smith, the committee?s chairman from Texas, said. The measure effectively grants private companies the ability to de-fund websites they allege to be trafficking in unauthorized copyright and trademark goods. The latest version requires a judge?s signature to order ad networks and banks to stop doing business with a site ?dedicated? to infringing activities. What?s more, SOPA originally required ISPs to alter records in the net?s system for looking up website names, known as DNS, so that users couldn?t navigate to the site. Under Smith?s amendment, ISPs would not be required to introduce false information into DNS at the urging of the Justice Department, but they would be mandated to employ some method to prevent American citizens from visiting infringing sites. ISPs, could, for instance, adopt tactics used by the Great Chinese Firewall to sniff for traffic going to a blacklisted site and simply block it. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) urged panelists to remove the DNS and firewall aspects of the bill. Rep. Mel Watt (D-North Carolina) said he was not a technological ?nerd,? but said he did not ?believe? security experts who said that the internet would become less secure unless Issa?s amendment was adopted. ?I?m not a person to argue about the technology of this,? Watt said before he voted against the amendment. Issa?s amendment failed 22-12. Stewart Baker, the former policy director of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a paper that he believed SOPA was dangerous, as do some of the internet?s founders. ?The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry,? wrote 83 prominent internet engineers, including Vint Cert, John Gilmore and L. Jean Camp. At last month?s hearing on the bill and on Thursday?s, not one technical expert was called to testify. Many lawmakers urged Smith to continue the hearing to enable the committee to hold another hearing with technical experts. Smith declined. No vote was taken on whether to send the measure to the House floor as lawmakers were still debating and defeating similar amendments to the one Issa had introduced and others. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) proposed a measure that the pornography industry would not enjoy the protections of the measure. He said the Justice Department ?should protect pornographers last.? That amendment failed, with nine members favoring and 18 against. Earlier in the day, lawmakers also defeated an amendment that would have excluded universities and research institutions from having to blacklist sites. So that means those institutions would be included in Justice Department orders demanding Internet Service Providers like AT&T and Comcast to block their customers from visiting infringing sites. The legislation also gives legal immunity to financial institutions and ad networks that choose to boycott ?rogue? sites even without having been ordered to do so. Smith?s measure, as amended, also clarifies that sites ending in .com, .org and .net are not covered by the bill. Only foreign sites fall under the revised SOPA?s wrath. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 06:56:56 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:56:56 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer Message-ID: <9C689D5B-A3DD-4074-AE8B-E8E818B02679@infowarrior.org> The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran. By Scott Peterson, Staff writer, Payam Faramarzi*, Correspondent posted December 15, 2011 at 11:41 am EST Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran. Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone?s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety. Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan. < - > http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/437272 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 06:57:27 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:57:27 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GPS Spoofing Countermeasures Message-ID: <34240006-A441-4FF2-A1F2-5760C51659EC@infowarrior.org> GPS Spoofing Countermeasures Jon S. Warner Roger G. Johnston December 2003 http://www.homelandsecurity.org/bulletin/Dual%20Benefit/warner_gps_spoofing.html This article was originally published as Los Alamos research paper LAUR-03-6163. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not necessarily be ascribed to Los Alamos National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy. Anthony Garcia, Adam Pacheco, Ron Martinez, Leon Lopez, and Sonia Trujillo contributed to this work. Jon S. Warner, Ph.D., and Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP, are members of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Civilian Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are vulnerable to attacks such as blocking, jamming, and spoofing. The goal of such attacks is either to prevent a position lock (blocking and jamming) or to feed the receiver false information so that it computes an erroneous time or location (spoofing). GPS receivers are generally aware of when blocking or jamming is occurring because they have a loss of signal. Spoofing, however, is a surreptitious attack. Currently, no countermeasures are in use for detecting spoofing attacks. We believe, however, that it is possible to implement simple, low-cost countermeasures that can be retrofitted onto existing GPS receivers. This would, at the very least, greatly complicate spoofing attacks. Introduction The civilian Global Positioning System (GPS) is widely used by both government and private industry for important applications, including public safety services such as police, fire, rescue, and ambulance. The cargo industry, buses, taxis, railcars, delivery vehicles, agricultural harvesters, private automobiles, spacecraft, and marine and airborne traffic also use GPS for navigation. In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is drafting an instruction requiring that all radio navigation systems aboard aircraft use GPS.1 Additional uses include hiking and surveying, as well as robotics, cell phones, animal tracking, and even wristwatches. Utility companies and telecommunication companies use GPS timing signals to regulate the base frequency of their distribution grids. GPS timing signals are also used by domestic and international finance, broadcasting, mobile telecommunications, banking (for money transfers and time locks), and other distributed computer network applications.2, 3 In short, anyone who wants to know exact location, velocity, or time might find GPS useful. Unfortunately, the civilian GPS signals are not secure.4 Only the military GPS signals are encrypted (authenticated), but these are generally unavailable to civilians, foreign governments, and most of the U.S. government, including most of the Department of Defense. Plans are under way to upgrade the existing GPS system, but they apparently do not include adding encryption or authentication to the civilian GPS signal.5, 6 The GPS signal strength measured at the surface of the Earth is about ?160dBw (1 x 10?16 watts), which is roughly equivalent to viewing a 25-watt light bulb from a distance of 10,000 miles. This weak signal can easily be blocked by destroying or shielding the GPS receiver?s antenna. The GPS signal can also be effectively jammed by a signal of a similar frequency but greater strength. Blocking and jamming, however, are not the greatest security risk, because the GPS receiver will be fully aware that it is not receiving the GPS signals needed to determine position and time. A more pernicious attack involves feeding the GPS receiver fake GPS signals so that it believes it is located somewhere in space and time that it is not. This ?spoofing? attack is more elegant than jamming because it is surreptitious. The Vulnerability Assessment Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory has demonstrated the ease with which civilian GPS spoofing attacks can be implemented.7 This spoofing is most easily accomplished by using a GPS satellite simulator. Such simulators are uncontrolled and widely available. To conduct the spoofing attack, an adversary broadcasts a fake GPS signal with a higher signal strength than the true signal. The GPS receiver believes that the fake signal is actually the true GPS signal from space and ignores the true signal. The receiver then proceeds to calculate erroneous position or time information based on this false signal. How Does GPS Work? GPS is operated by the Department of Defense. It consists of a constellation of 27 satellites (24 active and 3 standby) in 6 separate orbits. It reached full official operational capability status on 17 July 1995.8 GPS users can obtain a 3-D position, velocity, and time fix in all types of weather, 24 hours a day. GPS users can locate their position to within ? 18 ft on average or ? 60 to 90 ft in a worst case.9 Each GPS satellite broadcasts two signals: a civilian unencrypted signal and a military encrypted signal. The civilian GPS signal was never intended for critical or security applications, though that is, unfortunately, how it is now often used. The Department of Defense reserves the military encrypted GPS signal for sensitive applications such as smart weapons. Here we are focusing on the civilian (unencrypted) GPS signal. Any discussion of civilian GPS vulnerabilities is fully unclassified.10 The carrier wave for the civilian signal is the same frequency (1575.2 MHz) for all the GPS satellites. The C/A code provides the GPS receiver on the Earth?s surface with a unique identification number (also known as PRN or pseudo random noise code). In this manner, each satellite transmits a unique identification number that allows the GPS receiver to know which satellites it is receiving signals from. The Nav/System data provides the GPS receiver with information about the position of all the satellites in the constellation as well as precise timing data from the atomic clocks aboard the satellites. Figure 1: GPS signal structure. The receiver continuously listens for the GPS signals from space and locks onto the signals from several GPS satellites simultaneously. The actual number of satellites the receiver locks onto is determined by the number of satellites in view of the receiver and the maximum number of satellites the receiver hardware is designed to accommodate. Because of the C/A code identification, the GPS receiver knows exactly which satellites it is receiving data from at any given time. Once the identification codes for each of the received satellite signals are recognized, the GPS receiver generates an internal copy of the satellites? identification codes. Each satellite transmits its identification codes in 1-millisecond intervals. The receiver compares its internally generated code against the repeating C/A code from space and looks for any lag from the expected 1-millisecond interval. Any deviation is assumed to be the travel time of the GPS signal from space. Once the travel time (?T) is determined, the receiver then calculates the distance from itself to each satellite using the following formula: Distance = ?T x Speed of Light. Figure 2: Example of GPS signal time delay. One problem with this method is that the clocks on the receiver are not as accurate as the atomic clocks on board the satellites. Because the receiver obtains signals from several GPS satellites simultaneously, the distances to several satellites are known at any given time. Figure 3 gives a conceptual overview given the distance of three GPS satellites (denoted by the stars). Note that in Figure 3 the ranges to the satellite, as measured by the GPS receiver, do not overlap at a single point. The measured and true ranges differ due to the clock errors in the receiver. The result is a distance error seen by the receiver; the error is represented by the dotted line in Figure 3. Figure 3: 2-D representation of finding a position. At this point, the receiver knows it is somewhere in the area of overlap shown by the dotted lines (Figure 3). The receiver then interpolates this overlap area to find the center. The result of this interpolation gives two important pieces of information: the position of the receiver and the clock error of the receiver. In addition to the time correction from the Nav/Sys data information from the satellites, the GPS receiver in essence uses the correct position information to determine its own clock error. The more satellites involved, the smaller the area of overlap and the better the position fix will be. In theory, three satellites are all that are needed for a position fix. However, in practice, four or more satellites are needed to acquire an accurate latitude, longitude, and altitude fix. Only one satellite is required for a time fix. The position is initially found in an X,Y,Z Earth-centered, Earth-fixed co-ordinate frame and then converted to latitude, longitude, and altitude. Countermeasures Several of the countermeasures we propose are based on signal strength, which must (at least initially) be higher for the fake signal than the true signal from space. Some of the other countermeasures involve recognizing the characteristics of the satellite simulator itself. Many (if not all) GPS receivers display the signal strength and satellite number for each of the satellites it is receiving data from. We are unaware of any receivers that store this data and compare the information from one moment to the next. One or more of the following countermeasures should allow suspicious GPS signal activity to be detected: ? Monitor the absolute GPS signal strength: This countermeasure involves monitoring and recording the average signal strength. We would compare the observed signal strength to the expected signal strength of about ?163 dBw (5 x 10?17 watts). If the absolute value of the observed signal exceeds some preset threshold, the GPS receiver would alert the user. This countermeasure is based on the idea that relatively unsophisticated GPS spoofing attacks will tend to use GPS satellite simulators. Such simulators will typically provide signal strengths many orders of magnitude larger than any possible satellite signal at the Earth?s surface. This is an unambiguous indication of a spoofing attack. ? Monitor the relative GPS signal strength: The receiver software could be modified so that the average signal strength could be recorded and compared from one moment to the next. An extremely large change in relative signal strength would be characteristic of an adversary starting to generate a counterfeit GPS signal to override the true satellite GPS signals.11 If the signal increases beyond some preset threshold, an alarm would sound and the end user could be alerted. ? Monitor the strength of each received satellite signal: This countermeasure is an extension of the above two techniques. Here, the relative and absolute signal strengths are tested individually for each of the incoming satellite signals. Signals from a GPS satellite simulator will tend to make the signal coming from each artificial satellite of equal strength. Real satellite signals, however, vary from satellite to satellite and change over time. The idea here is that if the signal characteristics are too perfect, there is probably something wrong and the user should be alerted. Like the previous two countermeasures, this countermeasure could be implemented by modifying the existing software code of the GPS receiver. ? Monitor satellite identification codes and the number of satellite signals received: GPS satellite simulators transmit signals from multiple satellites (typically 10)?more than the number of real satellites often detected by a GPS receiver in the field at a given time. Many commercial GPS receivers display satellite identification information but do not record this data or compare it to previously recorded data. Keeping track of both the number of satellite signals received and the satellite identification codes over time may prove helpful in determining whether foul play is occurring. This is especially true of an unsophisticated spoofing attack where the adversary does not attempt to mimic the true satellite constellation at a given time. ? Check the time intervals: With most GPS satellite simulators, the time between the artificial signal from each satellite and the next is a constant. This is not the case with real satellites. In other words, the receiver may pick up the true signal from one satellite and then a few moments later pick up a signal from another satellite, etc. With the satellite simulator, the receiver would pick up signals from all of the ?satellites? simultaneously. This is an exploitable feature of the satellite simulator that could be used to tell whether the signals were coming from the true source or a false simulator-based source. ? Do a time comparison: Many current GPS receivers do not have an accurate clock. By using timing data from an accurate, continuously running clock to compare with the time derived from the GPS signal, we can check on the veracity of the received GPS signals. If the time deviates beyond some threshold, the user can be alerted to the possibility of a spoofing attack. As the Vulnerability Assessment Team has demonstrated, very accurate clocks can be small and inexpensive and operate on very low power. ? Perform a sanity check: A small, solid-state accelerometer and compass can be used to independently monitor the physical trajectory (heading, velocity, etc.) of the receiver mounted, for example, on a moving truck. The information provided by this approach can be used to double-check the current position fix reported by the GPS receiver based on a previously reported position. In a sophisticated spoofing attack, the adversary would send a false signal reporting the moving target?s true position and then gradually walk the target to a false position. This is how an attack on a cargo truck might occur. The accelerometer would serve as a relative (not absolute) backup positioning system, which could be used to compare to the position reported by the GPS receiver. A discrepancy between the accelerometer and the receiver would raise a red flag and alert the user. All seven strategies can be implemented by retrofitting existing GPS receivers; it is not necessary to redesign them. Strategies 1 to 5 can be implemented primarily through software alone. Strategy 6 could be implemented through software, or else a more accurate clock could be fitted onto the existing GPS receiver. Strategy 7 would require both hardware and software implementation to work properly. We believe that a proof of principle for countermeasures 1 to 7 could be demonstrated fairly quickly. Conclusion Although the countermeasures proposed in this paper will not stop spoofing attacks, they will alert the user of the GPS receiver to suspicious activity. This will decrease the odds that a spoofing attack can succeed and will require adversaries to deploy more sophisticated methods than the simple attack we have previously demonstrated.12 We believe that the potential countermeasures we propose could be implemented easily and inexpensively by retrofitting existing GPS receivers. Author Contact Information Jon S. Warner, Ph.D. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (505) 665-9987 jwarner at LANL.gov References Click on an end note number to return to the article. 1. John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Vulnerability Assessment of the Transportation Infrastructure Relying on the Global Positioning System, Final Report, Department of Transportation, 29 August 2001. 2. S. J. Harding, Study Into the Impact on Capability of UK Commercial and Domestic Services Resulting From the Loss of GPS Signals, Qinetiq, 2001. 3. LeeAnne Brutt, ?NS/EP Implication of GPS Timing,? Office of the Manager, National Communications System, Technical Notes, Technology and Standards Division, Volume 6, Number 2, Aug. 1999. 4. Vulnerability Assessment of the Transportation Infrastructure. 5. Committee on the Future of the Global Positioning System, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, National Research Council Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1995). 6. ?Air Force NAVSTAR Global Positioning System Fact Sheet,? Florida Today Space Online (3 Oct. 1999). 7. J. Warner and R. Johnston, ?A Simple Demonstration That the Global Positioning System (GPS) Is Vulnerable to Spoofing,? Journal of Security Administration, in press (2003). 8. U.S. Coast Guard, ?GPS Frequently Asked Questions,? 8 Nov. 2002. 9. U.S. Air Force, GPS Support Center (2003). 10. Headquarters Air Force Space Command, NAVSTAR Global Positioning System Operations Protect Guide, Peterson Air Force Base. 11. J. Warner and R. Johnston. 12. Ibid. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 06:59:12 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:59:12 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - UMG claims "right to block or remove" YouTube videos it doesn't own Message-ID: UMG claims "right to block or remove" YouTube videos it doesn't own By Timothy B. Lee | Published about 6 hours ago http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/umg-we-have-the-right-to-block-or-remove-youtube-videos.ars Universal Music Group has responded to Megaupload's request for a temporary restraining order barring the music giant from further interference with the distribution of its "Mega Song." UMG insists that it had a right to take down the video?not under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as Megaupload had assumed, but under a private contractual arrangement between UMG and YouTube. UMG's filing raises more questions than it answers. Most obviously, the firm has not explained why it took down the video in the first place. But the filing also raises deeper questions about UMG's effort to essentially opt out of the DMCA takedown rules. UMG seems to believe it can take down videos even if it doesn't hold the copyright to them, and that when UMG takes a video down from YouTube, the owner of that video can't avail herself of even the weak protections against takedown abuse provided by the DMCA. A different kind of takedown As we discussed on Thursday, UMG casts Megaupload as a major villain in the war over illegal file-sharing. Last week, Megaupload sought to bolster its image by releasing a pop-star-studded promotional video. UMG's takedown request was an unexpected publicity coup. Megaupload took full advantage, suing UMG on Monday and asking the judge for an immediate restraining order to prevent UMG from further interfering with the video's distribution. UMG's response, filed late on Thursday, focuses on the narrow question of whether Judge Claudia Wilken should grant such a restraining order. The recording giant makes two principle arguments in opposition. First, UMG says such a restraining order is not authorized by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA's notice-and-takedown safe harbor includes a provision for monetary damages against copyright holders who abuse the takedown process, but it does not give the courts the power to block copyright holders from sending takedown requests. But more importantly, Universal argues that its takedown is not governed by the DMCA in the first place. In a statement supporting Megaupload's complaint, CIO Kim Dotcom had stated "it is my understanding" that Universal had invoked the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions. But UMG says Dotcom got it wrong: the takedown was sent "pursuant to the UMG-YouTube agreement," which gives UMG "the right to block or remove user-posted videos through YouTube's CMS based on a number of contractually specified criteria." In other words, when UMG removes a video using YouTube's CMS, that might be a takedown, but it's not a DMCA takedown. And that, UMG argues, means that the DMCA's rule against sending takedown requests for files you don't own doesn't apply. "Not limited to copyright infringement" UMG underscored the point by including a letter UMG lawyer Kelly Klaus sent to YouTube on Wednesday. In that letter, Klaus wrote: "Your letter could be read to suggest that UMG's rights to use the YouTube "Content Management System" with respect to certain user-posted videos are limited to instances in which UMG asserts a claim that a user-posted video contains material that infringes a UMG copyright. As you know, UMG's rights in this regard are not limited to copyright infringement, as set forth more completely in the March 31, 2009 Video License Agreement for UGC Video Service Providers, including without limitation Paragraphs 1(b) and 1(g) thereof. This appears to be a reference to the agreement underlying the VEVO partnership between Google and UMG announced in April 2009. As far as we know, the agreement isn't public, so we can only speculate on what's in Paragraphs 1(b) and 1(g). But we plan to ask Google for a copy." UMG's response also sheds some light on another mystery: why Monday's issue of Tech News Today was yanked from YouTube. When UMG removes a video via YouTube's CMS, a "reference file" is created that "in theory is supposed to identify other instances of postings of the same content." UMG speculates that this "reference file" system was responsible for the accidental removal from YouTube of a Tech News Today episode featuring the Megaupload video. The recording industry is currently lobbying for passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would create a DMCA-style takedown regime for advertising and credit card networks. Critics may question whether it's wise to give new takedown powers to copyright holders that demonstrate such a cavalier attitude toward the rights of others. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 07:01:14 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:01:14 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Book publisher takes RIAA approach in blasting out suits Message-ID: <26DFE959-9058-487E-BAB0-2D248195F311@infowarrior.org> ?For Dummies? Publisher Sues BitTorrent Users to ?Educate and Settle? ? Ernesto ? December 16, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/for-dummies-publisher-sues-bittorrent-users-to-educate-and-settle-111215/ John Wiley and Sons, one of the world?s largest book publishers, is continuing its efforts to crack down on BitTorrent piracy. The company filed a new mass-lawsuit this month, targeting dozens of John Does who allegedly shared Wiley titles online. Talking to TorrentFreak, the publisher states that it?s not their intention to litigate against individuals, but to settle and educate instead. During October, John Wiley and Sons became the first book publisher to go after BitTorrent users in the US. With this lawsuit the company followed mostly in the footsteps of movie studios, who together have sued more than 200,000 people in the US since early last year. Last week the major publisher picked up the pace by filing another mass-lawsuit, yet again targeting those sharing the ?For Dummies? series online. The complaint lists 36 IP-addresses through which the defendants downloaded and shared titles including ?Hacking for Dummies,? ?Vegetable Gardening for Dummies? and ?Cooking Basics for Dummies.? In nearly all BitTorrent lawsuits that have been filed in the US, the copyright holders do not intend to file individual cases. Instead, they want to obtain the identities of account holders behind IP addresses so they can send a settlement claim ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. TorrentFreak got in touch with the book publisher to find out if their end game is any different. It appears not. ?Our intention is to stop the infringement and let individuals know that they are violating the law and depriving the creators of the works of rightful compensation. Our preference is to educate, settle, and prevent further infringement,? Wiley?s attorney William Dunnegan told us. Aside from a settlement, Wiley also hopes the legal action will deter others from engaging in the same behavior. This is the same approach the RIAA took when it got involved in mass-lawsuits years ago. Although the strategy works in theory, the problem is that the evidence the company holds against file-sharers will never be tested in court. This is an issue, because due to faulty evidence many people have been wrongfully accused of sharing copyrighted works on BitTorrent. When tested, the evidence can turn out to be untrustworthy. In a past RIAA court case experts described the evidence gathering techniques ?as factually erroneous?, ?unprofessional? and ?borderline incompetent.? In addition, academics have shown that due to shoddy technique even a network printer can be accused of sharing copyrighted files on BitTorrent. Wiley?s attorney is aware of the critique, but says they do everything they can to prevent screw-ups. ?We understand that the ISP account holder may not be the actual downloader. That?s why we will do due diligence after we receive the information from the ISP,? Dunnegan told us. The lawyer didn?t want to elaborate on what steps are taken but said that they ?have a flexible approach depending on the situation.? Thus far things are going smoothly for the book publisher in court. In their first case District Court Judge William Pauley recently ordered that Wiley can send subpoenas to the ISPs of the defendants, which means that the first settlement letters should go out soon. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 07:12:34 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:12:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?=91Indefinite_Detention=92_Bill_?= =?windows-1252?q?Heads_To_Obama=92s_Desk_As_White_House_Drops_Veto_Threat?= Message-ID: <1E411D84-4515-46D7-9528-F5AEFEDCE408@infowarrior.org> ?Indefinite Detention? Bill Heads To Obama?s Desk As White House Drops Veto Threat Establishment media and neo-cons still pretend NDAA doesn?t apply to American citizens Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Wednesday, December 14, 2011 http://www.infowars.com/indefinite-detention-bill-heads-to-obamas-desk/ UPDATE: Obama has dropped his threat to veto the bill and is now expected to sign it into law. Remember ? it was Obama?s White House that demanded the law apply to U.S. citizens in the first place. The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama?s desk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously report that the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens. ?The House on Wednesday afternoon approved the rule for the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting up an hour of debate and a vote in the House later this afternoon,? reports the Hill. Mainstream news outlets like The Hill, as well as neo-con blogs like Red State, are still pretending the indefinite detention provision doesn?t apply to American citizens, even though three of the bill?s primary sponsors, Senator Carl Levin, Senator John McCain, and Senator Lindsey Graham, said it does during speeches on the Senate floor. ?It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,? remarked Graham. ?And when they say, ?I want my lawyer,? you tell them, ?Shut up. You don?t get a lawyer.?? As Levin said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens. ? A d v e r t i s e m e n t ? ?The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved?and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,? said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Senator McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the bill that American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely, ?no matter who they are.? Quite how those still in denial could even entertain the notion that the bill would not apply to American citizens when the Obama administration is already enforcing a policy of state assassination and killing American citizens it claims are ?terrorists,? without having to present any evidence or go through any legal process, is beyond naive. With the White House having largely resolved its concerns with the bill, which had nothing to do with the ?indefinite detention? provision, Obama could put pen to paper as early as tomorrow on a law that if recognized will nullify the bill of rights ? ironically tomorrow is ?Bill of Rights Day?. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 12:01:20 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:01:20 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA Markup Day 1 in A Nutshell Message-ID: SOPA Markup Day 1: We Don't Understand This Bill, It Might Do Terrible Things, But Dammit, We're Passing It Now http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111216/02382617103/sopa-markup-day-1-we-dont-understand-this-bill-it-might-do-terrible-things-dammit-were-passing-it-now.shtml So, if you weren't paying attention, yesterday was a marathon session of SOPA amendments... It ran for 11.5 hours, with just one tiny break, and it looks like they didn't even get through half of the amendments. I'll get into some more details in a bit, but honestly the single best description of the insanity of these hearings came from The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri, who called them "nightmarish." If this were surgery, the patient would have run out screaming a long time ago. But this is like a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. ?We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what?s required,? they say cheerily. ?We?re not going to cut the good valves, just the bad ? neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.? This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing ? there?s nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like ?server? and ?service? when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke?s on us. That really describes the situation perfectly. Over and over again the people in favor of this bill flat out admitted that they didn't understand the technology -- and when the various people opposed to it asked why don't they get some experts in to answer some questions, the supporters had no credible response. The DNS and security aspects were completely brushed aside. As Rep. Jason Chaffetz (who is fighting the good fight against this) pointed out repeatedly, there's simply no reason to rush this bill when there are such widespread concerns about it and no one has taken the time to get the answers to key questions. But the supporters of the bill -- mainly Reps. Lamar Smith, Bob Goodlatte and Mel Watt -- simply wanted to push forward at all costs. They rejected every amendment raised, except two minor ones (we'll get to that in a minute). Amazingly they rejected all sorts of quite reasonable suggestions -- while complaining that those opposed to the bill never had any suggestions to fix it! And yet when those actual proposals were brought up, they were rejected out of hand. It really was pretty disgusting. Goodlatte's responses struck me as particularly inane. He kept rejecting amendments because he feared that the amendment could be abused. The fact that most of those amendments were to prevent the much wider scale abuses guaranteed under SOPA never seemed to occur to him. In fact, supporters of the bill regularly used arguments that actually could have been turned around on them. They refused an amendment from Rep. Darrell Issa to limit the powers of the bill to those who actually were in the US, saying that it would set a bad precedent for countries like China... and this came just after they were totally outraged that anyone might think that the entire bill itself sets a bad precedent for countries like China. The disingenuous bullshit was really ridiculous. Rep. Watt was particularly keen to display his own ignorance. He regularly admitted that he wasn't very knowledgeable on technology -- which should have been a reason to recuse himself or to at least ask for more info from experts. Instead, he just insisted that all of the technical experts were simply wrong. Based on what? Nothing. How does someone like Watt get elected when he appears to want to regulate the internet based on pure faith and against what every single expert has said? It's downright scary. Later, Watt angrily rejected an amendment to clarify some language to make sure it was limited -- by saying that he believed the language already said what the amendment added. If that's true, why reject the amendment? All it would do is make the intent clear. Instead, he said no. That makes no sense at all. What was clear, from the beginning, was that the SOPA supporters were not there in good faith. They had no intention of listening to reasonable suggestions to fix the bill, and stuck together as a bloc to reject pretty much all of them -- even while admitting their own ignorance. The really sad part was when Goodlatte tried to equate the views of a couple of policy analysts who get money from the entertainment industry, with the views of nearly 100 independent internet engineers who have pointed out how problematic SOPA really would be. Watt and others tried to pretend that because each side could turn up someone who would say something that those views were equal. It's the insane Congressional equivalent of "he-said/she-said" journalism, where you "hear" both sides, but never seek out the truth. That's nuts. The simple fact is that nearly every single actual credible internet engineer has come out against these bills. There isn't an equivalence where each side can turn up a few people. The scales are completely weighted down against the bills... and many of those people have no associations whatsoever -- even as SOPA defenders insisted that only "Google" experts were against the bill. Stewart Baker isn't speaking for Google. Sandia National Labs isn't speaking for Google. The real insanity is that supporters of the bill are rushing forward just because they want to pass "something," and they don't seem to care about the consequences. As for the two amendments that did pass, one was to say that if you "knowingly misrepresented" a claim on a site, you had to pay attorneys' fees. Of course, "knowingly misrepresent" is a very, very high bar that will almost never be met. A similar amendment by Rep. Chaffetz that would also require fees if you failed to get an injunction in court was rejected, because SOPA supporters were worried this would scare people off. As Chaffetz pointed out: that's the whole point. It would scare off those who don't have strong, legitimate claims. The other amendment that passed right at the end, was from Rep. Jared Polis, requiring the State Department to do a study on the eventual impacts of SOPA. That doesn't change the law really. It just will at least let people check back in on the damage it does a couple years from now. A few other key points: ? Huge kudos to Reps. Issa, Lofgren, Chaffetz and Polis, who combined to repeatedly point out the problems of the bill and to argue forcefully and compellingly about why we needed to fix these problems. That much of the rest of the Committee ignored these concerns, played them down, or rejected them for silly or nonsense reasons, is really just a statement on the sad state of Congress today. ? I heard from sources that a big time content industry lobbyist was seen hanging out in the "members only" area during the session. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about what's going on, then you're not paying attention. ? There was a bizarre elementary school-like fight that went on at one point. Rep. Steve King tweeted early on: We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet. Rep. Jackson-Lee found out about this and announced that she was "offended," at which point it seemed like a bunch of these old clueless men started arguing about how inappropriate it was for her to say she was offended. The whole session had to pause while they talked to a "parliamentarian" about whether it was okay to use the term "offended," eventually leading Jackson-Lee to change her statement. Yeah. These are the people in charge of making our laws. Scary. ? With the session going on for 11.5 hours, there was a short break for lunch, but for dinner Rep. Lamar Smith offered "four kinds of pizza," but apparently only for other members. Staffers had to sit and starve. Nice of them, huh? All in all, the process should leave you frightened for our country. This was not an attempt to fix a broken law. It was an attempt to please some Hollywood funders at the expense of innovation and jobs. It's insanity. That said... if you want to watch more of it today, tune in either at the Judiciary website or the KeepTheWebOpen site and make sure you have a pillow nearby for when you want to bang your head on the desk or wall. Once again, I'll be live-tweeting some of the hearing (don't think I can make all of it) from my personal Twitter account. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 12:06:26 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:06:26 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA Nightmare, Day 2 Begins now... Message-ID: Link to House Judiciary's video feed - http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 16:32:36 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:32:36 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works Message-ID: (There's a great SOPA Bingo card at the article link. -- rick) Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works Posted by Joshua_Kopstein on Friday, Dec 16, 2011 http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/12/16/dear-congress-it-s-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-the-internet-works I remember fondly the days when we were all tickled pink by our elected officials? struggle to understand how the internet works. Whether it was George W. Bush referring to ?the internets? or Senator Ted Stevens describing said internets as ?a series of tubes,? we would sit back and chortle at our well-meaning but horribly uninformed representatives, confident that the right people would eventually steer them back on course. Well I have news for members of Congress: Those days are over. We get it. You think you can be cute and old-fashioned by openly admitting that you don?t know what a DNS server is. You relish the opportunity to put on a half-cocked smile and ask to skip over the techno-jargon, conveniently masking your ignorance by making yourselves seem better aligned with the average American joe or jane ? the ?non-nerds? among us. But to anyone of moderate intelligence that tuned in to yesterday?s Congressional mark-up of SOPA, the legislation that seeks to fundamentally change how the internet works, you kind of just looked like a bunch of jack-asses. Some background: Since its introduction, SOPA and its Senate twin PROTECT-IP have been staunchly condemned by countless engineers, technologists and lawyers intimately familiar with the inner functioning of the internet. Completely beside the fact that these bills as they currently stand would stifle free speech and potentially cripple legitimate businesses by giving corporations extrajudicial censorial powers, they have found an even more insidious threat: The method of DNS filtering proposed to block supposed infringing sites opens up enormous security holes that threaten the stability of the internet itself. The only problem: Key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don?t understand how the internet works, and worse yet, it?s not clear whether they even want to. It?s of course perfectly standard for members of Congress to not be exceptionally proficient in technological matters. But for some committee members, the issue did not stop at mere ignorance. Rather, it seemed there was in many cases an outright refusal to understand what is undoubtedly a complex issue dealing with highly-sensitive technologies. When the security issue was brought up, Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding. Grinningly admitting ?I?m not a nerd? before the committee, he nevertheless went on to dismiss without facts or justification the very evidence he didn?t understand and then downplay the need for a panel of experts. Rep. Maxine Waters of California followed up by saying that any discussion of security concerns is ?wasting time? and that the bill should move forward without question, busted internets be damned. The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It?d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill?s supporters weren?t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can?t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there?s no need to ?bring in the nerds? to suss out what?s actually on it. ?No legislation is perfect,? Rep. Watt said at one point, continuing the insane notion that the goal of the House should be to pass anything, despite what consequences it may bring. Later, Iowa Representative Steve King tweeted, somewhat ironically, about surfing the internet on his phone because he was bored listening to his colleague Shiela Jackson speak about the bill. Then, even more ironically, another representative?s comments calling him out for it were asked to be stricken from the record. So it was as proponents of the Hollywood-funded bill curmudgeonly shot down all but two amendments proposed by its opponents, who fought to dramatically alter the document to preserve security and free speech on the net. But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do. This used to be funny, but now it?s really just terrifying. We?re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing ? it?s just pathetic and sad. Fortunately, committee members like Zoe Lofgren, Jason Chaffetz and Jared Polis are attempting to keep some semblance of sanity and reason in these debates. You can follow them live as the mark-up continues today via live stream or Twitter. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 16 17:15:28 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:15:28 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA vote: Well, there's always next year Message-ID: <41784BD4-DC0A-42AF-96EC-9DB5D0D49A87@infowarrior.org> (Update: I beleive they're resuming markup on 12/21, which suggests Smith is trying to get this thing out of committee in the dead of night and/or while everyone is drinking eggnog and looking skywards for Santa. -- rick) SOPA vote: Well, there's always next year by Declan McCullagh December 16, 2011 2:15 PM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57344469-281/sopa-vote-well-theres-always-next-year/ A marathon congressional hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act, which detoured through discussions of Twitter-borne insults and the popular meme "The Internet is for Porn," will resume sometime in 2012. The delay was a victory for opponents of SOPA, who pulled off a quasi-filibuster by repeatedly presenting critiques of the controversial Hollywood-backed copyright legislation and offering over 70 amendments that sought to rewrite individual portions of the legislation. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), the head of the House Judiciary committee chairman and author of SOPA -- also known as Hollywood's favorite House Republican -- initially had promised to hold a final vote on his bill as soon as possible "Yes, I have every intention of going forward today, tomorrow, and however long it takes," Smith said yesterday. But Smith's plan was derailed by a dogged group of opponents, who managed to pull off this legislative upset even though they were badly outnumbered on the committee by allies of the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry Association of America, and other SOPA proponents. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.) Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who represents part of Silicon Valley, launched the first procedural fusillade as soon as the hearing began yesterday by insisting on her right to have the entire text of SOPA read aloud by the committee's clerk. An unhappy Smith said that the reading "will take 45 minutes to an hour." Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat whose district is adjacent to Hollywood, asked Smith if "a motion to dispense with the reading is in order." "Such a motion regrettably is not in order," Smith replied, and the markup session ground to a halt for an hour. After nearly 12 hours of debate in which both sides seemed to be repeating themselves more often than not, Smith reluctantly adjourned yesterday's session until 10 a.m. ET today. Meanwhile, his plans for an accelerated vote, without convening even one hearing exploring SOPA's technical aspects, slammed into an unexpected obstacle: a last-minute deal on a spending bill to fund the federal government through September 2012. The House approved it today. Nobody else in Washington, D.C., except perhaps the large copyright holders who helped to advance SOPA so far so quickly, wanted to stick around any longer on a Friday afternoon in December. Smith eventually recognized the obvious and said: "We stand adjourned." One bizarre detour came when Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), was, perhaps, a bit too honest in assessing one of his colleague's presenting style. King tweeted: "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson [sic] has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet." That would be Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat named the "meanest" member of Congress by Washingtonian magazine, who responded by calling the tweet "offensive." The debate the future of Internet copyright law paused to discuss the important question of whether who, if anyone, had impugned the integrity of a member of the committee and how it could be rectified. The second unusual detour came when Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who presumably knows his way around the Internet better than any other member of Congress (he founded BlueMountainArts.com), brought up pornography. A "high percentage" of the Internet's use is for porn, he said. It's "a pornographer's wet dream!" Polis then offered an amendment that would stop the Justice Department from using SOPA's vast powers to aid adult industry businesses who happen to hold valid copyrights. "Pornography should not be the focus of the attorney general's protection," he said. This was a brilliant tactical maneuver. First, it delayed discussions while members of the august Judiciary committee wrangled with how to handle this unusual conversational detour. Second, it put Smith, a conservative Republican whose district is largely Texas Hill Country, on the defensive. "We need to respect the discretion of federal law enforcement officials," Smith said. Third -- and this may have been the point of the entire exercise -- it gave Polis an excuse to insert the full lyrics of the popular Internet meme "The Internet is for Porn" into the official congressional hearing record. More to come... --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 19 17:34:48 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:34:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - AT&T Pulls $39 Billion T-Mobile Bid After Regulator Opposition Message-ID: <7A929521-C90D-418A-AF44-63A8DEA79259@infowarrior.org> AT&T Pulls $39 Billion T-Mobile Bid After Regulator Opposition By Scott Moritz - Dec 19, 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-12-19/at-t-pulls-39-billion-t-mobile-bid-after-regulator-opposition.html AT&T Inc. (T) abandoned a $39 billion takeover bid for T-Mobile USA after underestimating opposition from regulators, thwarting its ambitions to become the biggest U.S. wireless carrier. AT&T will take a pretax charge of $4 billion to reflect cash payments and other considerations due to T-Mobile-owner Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE), according to a statement today from the Dallas-based company. AT&T failed to convince the Justice Department, which sued to block the transaction in August, that it could remedy the market impact of absorbing T-Mobile. AT&T would have spent months in litigation to try to win court approval for buying the nation?s No. 4 mobile-phone operator in the largest acquisition announced this year. The company also faced possible opposition from the Federal Communications Commission. ?They rolled the dice and took their chances,? said Craig Moffett, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst in New York. ?In the end, it didn?t work out, but that doesn?t mean it was a mistake to try.? AT&T?s decision came after the judge in the Justice Department lawsuit agreed on Dec. 12 to put the case on hold as the telephone company decided whether or how to revise the transaction. The delay may have made it more difficult for AT&T to close the deal by the Sept. 20 deadline. Stephenson?s Confidence AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said in a statement today that efforts by regulators to block the deal may hurt customers and industry investment. ?To meet the needs of our customers, we will continue to invest,? Stephenson said, adding that regulators need to allow more spectrum sales and reform rules to ?meet our nation?s longer-term spectrum needs.? Stephenson said in March, when the deal was announced, that he was confident of receiving regulatory clearance. He said the combination would help improve service, speed up investment in faster networks and drive wireless expansion in rural areas. The deal would have added T-Mobile?s 33.7 million customers to AT&T?s 100.7 million subscribers, surpassing Verizon Wireless?s 107.7 million. ?They made an unprecedented move bidding on T-Mobile and appear to have miscalculated the risks and the regulatory opposition,? said Kevin Smithen, an analyst with Macquarie Capital USA Inc. Critics of the deal said it would eliminate an aggressive price competitor, driving up subscription costs. T-Mobile?s monthly wireless plans are $15 to $50 cheaper than comparable AT&T plans, according to an analysis by Consumer Reports. DT?s Plans AT&T fell 0.7 percent to $28.55 in extended trading. As of the close of regular trading today, the stock had lost 2.2 percent this year. Deutsche Telekom lost 1.2 percent to 8.89 euros in Frankfurt today. For Deutsche Telekom, the collapse of the deal leaves it with one more subscriber-losing business as the Bonn-based company confronts the fallout from Europe?s debt crisis. Deutsche Telekom had planned to use the proceeds to cut debt by 13 billion euros ($16.9 billion) and repurchase 5 billion euros of its shares. The company also needs funds to upgrade fiber and wireless networks in Germany and other European markets. Deutsche Telekom said in a statement that its 2011 financial targets and shareholder remuneration policy won?t be affected by the deal?s termination. The company said it expects to receive the cash breakup fee by the end of the year. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom pulled their applications to the FCC on Nov. 24, with AT&T announcing the same day that it would record $4 billion in costs this quarter to reflect the risk of the deal collapsing. $7 Billion Breakup The withdrawal came after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asked the commission on Nov. 22 to send the proposal to an agency judge for a hearing. The same move by the FCC in 2002 helped block EchoStar Communications Corp.?s acquisition of satellite-TV rival DirecTV. According to the terms of the offer, AT&T must pay Deutsche Telekom a $3 billion breakup fee in cash, transfer radio spectrum to T-Mobile and strike a more favorable network-sharing agreement. Deutsche Telekom has valued the breakup package at as much as $7 billion. In an effort to sell the deal to regulators and the public, AT&T vowed to honor the T-Mobile service plan prices after the merger. The company also vowed to bring 5,000 call-center jobs currently based overseas to the U.S. in the event of approval. To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Moritz in New York at smoritz6 at bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 19 17:37:54 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:37:54 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Senator Harry Reid Moves To Approve PROTECT IP in January Message-ID: <81C22414-96E2-4311-ABB6-A001F5A652EF@infowarrior.org> Senator Harry Reid Moves To Approve PROTECT IP And Begin Censoring The Internet from the people-vs.-hollywood dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111217/22470217117/senator-harry-reid-moves-to-approve-protect-ip-begin-censoring-internet.shtml Apparently ignoring the widespread protests about both SOPA and PROTECT IP (PIPA) from the last few months (and the momentum growing against both bills), it was announced over the weekend that Harry Reid is seeking to override the hold on PIPA put forth by Senator Ron Wyden (along with Senators Jerry Moran, Maria Cantwell and Rand Paul) by seeking cloture. This isn't a huge surprise. Last week Senator Reid had informed other Democratic Senators that he intended PROTECT IP to be the first bill he brought to the floor when the Senate returns for business in January. So, now the cloture vote will happen January 24th, 2012 just as the Senate comes back into session. That means there's a little over a month where Hollywood is going to make every effort it can to get Senators over to its side. They need 60 Senators to betray the Constitution and to undermine a decade and a half's work on online security for a plan that won't actually help Hollywood at all. But, with Hollywood flinging money around DC like they're making record revenues at the box office (which... um... they are), they've already got 40 Senators signed on. That means there's a month to make sure 20 other Senators don't betray their country, their economy and the internet. The really disappointing part in all of this is that these Senators appear to remain totally out of touch to the public opinion on these bills. They simply look at Hollywood, the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO and see dollar signs. These groups fund campaigns, and 2012 is an election season. So, might as well try to make them happy. Public will be damned. Of course, the one way to defeat dollars is with voters. The more constituents who reach out and call their Senators, or (better yet) go and visit them and explain how this bill is a disaster that undermines everything America stands for, the better. So, start calling... --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 20 19:00:23 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:00:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.S. Asks Journals to Censor Articles on Virus Message-ID: <867D8E16-3849-48B3-B4C6-151A69B203F0@infowarrior.org> December 20, 2011 Fearing Terrorism, U.S. Asks Journals to Censor Articles on Virus By DENISE GRADY and WILLIAM J. BROAD http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/health/fearing-terrorism-us-asks-journals-to-censor-articles-on-virus.html For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish the details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics. In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person. Easy transmission is all it takes to start a pandemic, in which the virus spreads all over the world. The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model for predicting what flu viruses will do in people. The virus, A(H5N1), was the one that causes bird flu, which rarely infects people but has an extraordinarily high death rate when it does get into humans. A government advisory panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, has asked two journals, Science and Nature, to keep certain details out of reports that they intend to publish on the research. The panel cannot force the journals to censor their articles, but the editor of Science, Bruce Alberts, said the journal was taking the recommendations seriously and would most likely withhold some information. He said the government would create a system to provide the missing details to legitimate scientists anywhere in the world who needed them. Dr. David R. Franz, a biologist who formerly headed the Army defensive biological lab at Fort Detrick, Md., is a member of the board and said its decision to intervene, made in the fall, was quite reasonable. ?My concern is that we don?t give amateurs ? or terrorists ? information that might let them do something that could really cause a lot of harm,? he said in an interview. ?It?s a wake-up call,? Dr. Franz added. ?We need to make sure that our best and most responsible scientists have the information they need to prepare us for whatever we might face.? Dr. Amy P. Patterson, director of the office of biotechnology activities at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., which oversees the board, said the recommendations were a first. ?The board in the past has reviewed manuscripts but never before concluded that communications should be restricted in any way,? she said in a telephone interview. ?These two bodies of work stress the importance of public health preparedness to monitor this virus. We need to enhance our preparedness.? Ronald M. Atlas, a microbiologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and past president of the American Society for Microbiology, who has advised the federal government on issues of germ terrorism, said the hard part of the recommendations would be creating a way to move forward in the research with a restricted set of responsible scientists. ?If you understand the mechanisms, you can build defenses,? he said of research on how deadly viruses can spread. ?That?s why the research is done and why it?s critical for public health.? Until Tuesday, he added, the standard method of virus researchers was ?to get that information out as soon as possible so the scientific community can build those defenses. Now, however, we?re afraid this has crossed the line to where it?s easy to use. There?s danger, and you don?t want it freely out there.? The government, Dr. Atlas added, ?is going to struggle with how to get the information out to the right people and still have a barrier? to wide sharing and inadvertently aiding a potential terrorist. ?That?s going to be hard.? Given that some of the information has already been presented openly at scientific meetings, and that articles about it have been sent out to other researchers for review, experts acknowledged that it may not be possible to keep a lid on the potentially dangerous details. ?But I think there will be a culture of responsibility here,? said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ?At least I hope there will.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 08:48:09 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:48:09 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Finnish police find Patriot missiles in cargo Message-ID: <2745C4F3-AD31-43C3-BAE2-3D8A711FC791@infowarrior.org> (c/o JH) Finnish police find Patriot missiles in cargo Finnish police say they are investigating a cargo of 69 Patriot surface-to-air missiles found in a ship destined for the Chinese port of Shanghai. The Associated Press http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017059032_apeufinlandmissiles.html Finnish police say they are investigating a cargo of 69 Patriot surface-to-air missiles found in a ship destined for the Chinese port of Shanghai. The National Bureau of Investigation says the British-flagged M/S Thor Liberty arrived from northern Germany on Dec. 15 and docked in a Finnish port to load up with anchor chains. The bureau said Wednesday that the vessel was held in port because it also contained materials for the manufacture of explosives. It said police and customs officials are investigating whether the shipment broke Finnish laws on weapons trading. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 09:05:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:05:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Last Living B-52 Designer Dies at 94 Message-ID: December 17, 2011 Holden Withington, Last Living B-52 Designer, Dies at 94 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/us/holden-withington-last-living-b-52-designer-dies-at-94.html By DOUGLAS MARTIN On a Friday in 1948, six aeronautical designers from the Boeing Company holed up in a hotel suite in Dayton, Ohio. They stayed put until Monday morning, except for the one who left to visit a hobby shop and returned with balsa wood, glue, carving tools and silver paint. The group emerged with a neatly bound 33-page proposal and an impressive 14-inch scale model of an airplane on a stand. Col. Pete Warden, the Air Force chief of bomber development, studied the result and pronounced, ?This is the B-52.? One of those six was Holden Withington, and on Dec. 9, at age 94, he became the last of the B-52 designers to die. His daughter, Victoria Withington, said he died at his home on Mercer Island, Wash. He had Alzheimer?s disease. It takes a vast team of experts to design a complex airplane, particularly one like the B-52 Stratofortress, with its eight engines and radically swept-back wings. Mr. Withington, called Bob, played down the achievement, saying it evolved from earlier plane designs and not a little luck. The B-52, laden with nuclear warheads, was a forbidding-looking mainstay of American air defense during the cold war and a strategic deterrent to a nuclear attack. It saw substantial duty in Vietnam and the Iraq wars and is still in use. And its fundamental design ? novel wings with engine ?pods? positioned underneath ? became the standard for almost all commercial jet carriers. ?Essentially, they discovered the perfect form of the subsonic jet,? Michael Lombardi, the Boeing Company?s corporate historian, said. ?Airbus, Boeing, any other company, it?s the basic form they follow.? A year after the B-52 breakthrough, Mr. Withington and other Boeing engineers turned their attention to designing a civilian jet transport plane. They used many features of the bomber, particularly the wing design and engine placement, to create the Boeing 707, the airliner that ushered in the Jet Age. In 1941 Boeing recruited Mr. Withington from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he had earned a master?s degree and done research using the university?s wind tunnel. His first assignment was to design and build a state-of-the-art wind tunnel for Boeing. Theodore von Karman, the eminent mathematician and aeronautical expert, passed on a piece of advice: ?Make it as fast as you can.? Mr. Withington didn?t know anything about jets at the time, but he suspected Dr. von Karman was speaking with knowledge of Britain?s top-secret research on jets. He built the wind tunnel to produce speeds of 625 miles an hour, close to the sound barrier. In 1945 George Schairer, a renowned Boeing aerodynamicist, was part of an expert group following American troops through Germany to snap up intelligence on German weapons. Mr. Schairer discovered that the Germans had performed extensive studies on swept-back wings. He sent a letter to Mr. Withington, who immediately began testing the concept in his wind tunnel. In less than a month, Mr. Withington proved that swept-back wings worked. When they were combined with jet engines, the way forward seemed clear. He tested the new wing formulation for use in Boeing?s B-47 bomber, the B-52?s predecessor. He did his tests at night when power was cheaper, sleeping on a cot next to the tunnel. The resulting six-engine jet bomber perplexed even Mr. Withington. ?That?s a mighty strange-looking airplane,? he recalled thinking in a 2002 interview. ?I wonder if it will really fly.? It did, and the B-47 bomber was used from 1951 to 1965. But the Air Force, wanting a heavier bomber with more range, chose Boeing to build the prototype for the B-52. A debate raged in the service and beyond over the merits of a jet engine versus those of a turbo prop, which would use less fuel but sacrifice speed. The RAND Corporation, the research group, favored the turbo prop. But the turbo prop approach ?just wasn?t coming together,? Mr. Withington told The Times of Shreveport, La., in 2002. ?The program was at risk of being canceled,? he said. A meeting was held at Wright Field in Dayton to address what Mr. Withington said was now viewed as a crisis. Colonel Warden decreed that the turbo prop idea should be dropped in favor of jet engines, then ordered the group back to their hotel room for their weekend of frenzied work. They used slide rules for calculations. Holden White Withington was born on Nov. 23, 1917, in Philadelphia. His family lived a peripatetic life; his father was a traveling salesman and, for a while, a bootlegger. In addition to his daughter, Mr. Withington is survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth Merrow; his sons, Vincent, Martin and Holden; and five grandchildren. After the success of the B-52, Mr. Withington climbed Boeing?s executive ladder. At one point he was vice president and general manager of the company?s effort to build a supersonic jetliner to challenge the Concorde of Britain and France and the Tu-144 of Russia. Congress killed the project in 1971 because of worries about sonic booms and environmental damage. He retired as vice president for engineering in 1983. Only then did he get his pilot?s license. At 80, he built a two-seater airplane in his backyard. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 09:17:29 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:17:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - RIAA: Someone Else Is Pirating Through Our IP-Addresses Message-ID: Talk about hypocritical statements here --- funny how it's okay for RIAA to use this but not for the folks they sue. If it wasn't sadly real it'd almost be amusing. -- rick RIAA: Someone Else Is Pirating Through Our IP-Addresses ? Ernesto ? December 21, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/ A few days ago we reported that no less than 6 IP-addresses registered to the RIAA had been busted for downloading copyrighted material. Quite a shocker to everyone ? including the music industry group apparently ? as they are now using a defense previously attempted by many alleged file-sharers. It wasn?t members of RIAA staff who downloaded these files, the RIAA insists, it was a mysterious third party vendor who unknowingly smeared the group?s good name. Over the past week we?ve had fun looking up what governments, Fortune 500 companies, and even the most dedicated anti-piracy groups download on BitTorrent. All we had to do is put their IP-addresses into the search form on YouHaveDownloaded and hit after hit appeared. To our surprise, we found out that even IP-addresses registered to the RIAA were showing unauthorized downloads of movies, TV-shows and software. This curiosity was quickly picked up by other news outlets to whom the RIAA gave a rather interesting explanation. Apparently these file-sharing transactions weren?t carried out by RIAA staffers, but by a third party who?s using the RIAA IP-addresses to share and distribute files online. ?Those partial IP addresses are similar to block addresses assigned to RIAA. However, those addresses are used by a third party vendor to serve up our public Web site,? a spokesperson told CNET, adding, ?As I said earlier, they are not used by RIAA staff to access the Internet.? This is all a bit confusing. First of all, the addresses are not similar, they are simply assigned to the RIAA. Everyone can look that up here, or here. Secondly, while we are prepared to believe that RIAA staff didn?t download these files, we are left wondering what mysterious third party did. Also, is it even allowed by the official registry to register a range of IP-addresses to your private organization, and then allow others to use these IPs? Also, just as a bit of friendly advice, it?s generally not a good idea to let others use your organization?s addresses to browse the internet. This time it?s ?just? copyrighted material up for debate, but who knows what else they may be sharing online. Considering the RIAA?s past of suing tens of thousands of file-sharers for copyright infringement, the excuse is perhaps even more embarrassing than taking full responsibility. When some of the 20,000 plus people who were sued by the RIAA over the years used the ?someone else did it? excuse this was shrugged off by the music group?s lawyers. Can these people have their money back now? We doubt it. Whois pirating? Elsewhere, Henrik Chulu from the Free Culture blog discovered that someone at the infamous Johan Schl?ter law firm downloaded the Danish movie ?Dirch?. But Maria Fredenslund from anti-piracy group RettighedsAliancen had their excuse ready. ?We?re working for right holders, who obviously have given us permission to collect their material online as part of an investigative work,? she told Comon.dk in response. Notably, Sarkozy is staying quiet and not attempting to justify any infringements carried out in his name. Perhaps a case of least said, soonest mended? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 14:24:15 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:24:15 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA Haters Are Already Finding Easy Ways To Circumvent Its Censorship Message-ID: (c/o JH) SOPA Haters Are Already Finding Easy Ways To Circumvent Its Censorship http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/12/21/sopa-haters-are-already-finding-easy-ways-to-circumvent-its-censorship/ ?The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,? goes the saying coined by Sun Microsystems coder and EFF founder John Gilmore. Now the Internet?s communities of coders and free speech advocates have interpreted the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as intolerable digital damage before it has even come to a vote, and are already working on tools anyone can use to route around its roadblocks to foreign, copyright-infringing sites. While Congress has postponed the second half of its hearing of SOPA until next year, a developer named Tamer Rizk has been busy building an add-on for Firefox called DeSopa, which aims to give any Firefox user access to sites that SOPA?s copyright protection measures has blocked. ?This program is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy,? reads a note including on DeSopa?s download page. ?If SOPA is implemented, thousands of similar and more innovative programs and services will sprout up to provide access to the websites that people frequent. SOPA is a mistake. It does not even technically help solve the underlying problem, as this software illustrates.? DeSopa takes advantage of an blatant weakness in how SOPA?s controversial filtering mandate would function under the current version of the bill. The new copyright infringement regime would allow editing of the Domain Name System, the registry that converts websites? domains (like Google.com or Yahoo.com) into an Internet Protocol address (like 74.125.157.99 or 98.137.149.56). When you type ?Google.com? into your browser, your computer communicates with DNS servers that convert that name into an IP address. But type the IP address directly into your browser, and it works just as well. Since SOPA would lead to editing American DNS servers? IP lists to insert errors for sites deemed illegal, DeSopa simply checks with foreign DNS servers to find the correct IP address and navigates directly to whatever blocked site the user enters. To avoid incorrect IP addresses in those foreign servers, the program even checks domains with three DNS servers and grabs whichever IP address has at least two agreeing answers. ?Similar offshore resolution services will eventually maintain their own cache of websites, without blacklisting, in order to meet the demand created by SOPA,? writes Rizk. For the last two weeks, users on Reddit have been assembling their own lists of IP addresses for key sites that might be blocked under SOPA, what some of them call the ?Emergency List.? Users could simply check the list for the IP address of a blocked site they want to visit and navigate directly to its IP. Or, as the redditors have discussed, they could edit the ?hosts? file on their own machines, a locally-stored list that overrides DNS and tells Web browsers which domains correspond with which IP addresses. Editing hosts files is far from a perfect solution: Because sites? IP addresses frequently change, users would often find certain sites inaccessible and need to go searching for a more current IP. But as DeSopa illustrates, SOPA?s thin layer of DNS censorship means users are sure to find a way to keep their locally-stored versions of DNS up to date and visit blacklisted sites. Just because SOPA?s DNS censorship can be defeated, however, doesn?t mean the bill won?t damage the Internet. Engineers have been warning Congress that monkeying with DNS will make it impossible to implement DNSSEC, a new DNS protocol designed to prevent DNS spoofing attacks that hijack users? browsing and take them to untrusted sites even when they enter the domain of a trusted one. Those security concerns are one reason SOPA?s discussion in Congress has been postponed until the new year to allow for more technical research. ?No one in Congress intended to break anything,? says Dan Kaminsky, a leading DNS security researcher who has vocally opposed SOPA?s proposed changes to the system. ?They intended to address a legitimate economic concern. But thanks to the law of unintended consequences, their efforts in DNS filtering run counter to our efforts in DNS authentication.? The end result of SOPA in its current form, in other words, would be to reinforce the Internet?s fundamental security problems without blocking access to copyright-infringing sites for any user savvy enough to use simple software tools. Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet, said as much in his letter to Congress earlier this month, even listing the exact ways DNS filtering would be circumvented. ?This collateral damage of SOPA would be particularly regrettable because site blocking or redirection mechanisms are unlikely to make a significant dent in the availability of infringing material and counterfeits online, given that DNS manipulation can be defeated by simply choosing an offshore DNS resolution provider, maintaining one?s own local DNS cache or using direct IP address references,? he wrote. Cerf, after all, helped to design the Internet to be robust above all else, finding its way around physical and digital hurdles to reliably deliver data. Thanks to a few angry geeks, it will likely find its way around any legal hurdles, too. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 15:23:28 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:23:28 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - USG Targets The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Others Message-ID: <48F02D3E-AF05-4957-AC9C-98C1D67DD2EE@infowarrior.org> US Government Targets The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Others ? Ernesto ? December 21, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/us-government-targets-the-pirate-bay-megaupload-and-others-111221 The US Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload and Russia?s leading social network VKontakte. In its second ?Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets?, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites and physical markets which are reportedly involved in piracy and counterfeiting. The list is based solely on input from lobby groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the websites mentioned in the report ?merit further investigation? for their alleged infringing behavior. ?These are marketplaces that have been the subject of enforcement action or that may merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights infringements. The scale and popularity of these markets can cause economic harm to U.S. and other IP right holders,? the report reads. As in previous reports, the largest category of allegedly infringing sites are BitTorrent related. The USTR points out that BitTorrent can also be used for lawful purposes, but it lists The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, BTJunkie, Kat.ph and Torrentz.eu as examples of possibly unlawful sites. ?Despite the criminal conviction of its founders, the Sweden-based ThePirateBay continues to facilitate the download of unauthorized content. ThePirateBay recently ranked among the top 100 websites in both global and U.S. traffic, according to Alexa.com,? the report explains TPB?s inclusion. Aside from the BitTorrent indexes and search engines above, USTR also lists several BitTorrent trackers that may be investigated further. The report highlights the Russian based Rutracker, Demonoid, and the Bulgarian tracker Zamunda. The USTR also zooms in on two of the world?s largest file-hosting services, Megaupload and Putlocker. This pushes Megaupload into the spotlight for the second time this month, after a public endorsement by a wide range of celebrity stars resulted in a YouTube takedown scandal and a subsequent lawsuit last week. According to the USTR, Megaupload is highlighted as an alleged piracy haven because it ?allows for the unauthorized distribution of protected content through subscriptions and reward schemes to popular uploaders.? Finally, USTR?s decision to include the Russian Facebook competitor Vkontakte is also noteworthy. Not only because it?s a social network, but also because VKontakte spokesman Vladislav Tsypluhin recently noted that the company?s copyright problems are in the past after a deal was made with the USTR. ?We have an arrangement with the U.S. Trade Representative?s office, they will check our copyright compliance, and then we will be excluded from the list of pirate sites,? Tsypluhin said. The RIAA and MPAA were quick to praise the USTR for their contribution. However, the list raises questions, as it brands businesses as rogue piracy havens solely based on input from entertainment industry lobby groups. Even sites that have cooperated with the USTR for months remain highlighted. This is worrying, not least because the U.S. Government will grant these lobbying groups more control over the internet if the SOPA and PIPA bills pass next year. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 15:41:46 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:41:46 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Local Cops Ready for War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons Message-ID: <9F5DF637-A737-4188-A03F-1C50AF394B7F@infowarrior.org> Local Cops Ready for War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local-cops-ready-for-war-with-homeland-security-funded-military-weapons.print.html A decade of billions in spending in the name of homeland security has armed local police departments with military-style equipment and a new commando mentality. But has it gone too far? Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting report. by Andrew Becker , G. W. Schulz | December 21, 2011 4:45 AM EST Nestled amid plains so flat the locals joke you can watch your dog run away for miles, Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota?s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there?s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade. But that hasn?t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars. Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation?if it ever occurs?officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it?s been parked near the children?s bounce house. ?Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,? says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. ?There?s no terrorism here.? Like Fargo, thousands of other local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-style equipment in the name of homeland security, aided by more than $34 billion in federal grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Daily Beast investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. The buying spree has transformed local police departments into small, army-like forces, and put intimidating equipment into the hands of civilian officers. And that is raising questions about whether the strategy has gone too far, creating a culture and capability that jeopardizes public safety and civil rights while creating an expensive false sense of security. ?The argument for up-armoring is always based on the least likely of terrorist scenarios,? says Mark Randol, a former terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress. ?Anyone can get a gun and shoot up stuff. No amount of SWAT equipment can stop that.? Local police bristle at the suggestion that they?ve become ?militarized,? arguing the upgrade in firepower and other equipment is necessary to combat criminals with more lethal capabilities. They point to the 1997 Los Angeles-area bank robbers who pinned police for hours with assault weapons, the gun-wielding student who perpetrated the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, and the terrorists who waged a bloody rampage in Mumbai, India, that left 164 people dead and 300 wounded in 2008. The new weaponry and battle gear, they insist, helps save lives in the face of such threats. ?I don?t see us as militarizing police; I see us as keeping abreast with society,? former Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton says. ?And we are a gun-crazy society.? ?I don?t see us as militarizing police; I see us as keeping abreast with society.? Adds Fargo Police Lt. Ross Renner, who commands the regional SWAT team: ?It?s foolish to not be cognizant of the threats out there, whether it?s New York, Los Angeles, or Fargo. Our residents have the right to be protected. We don?t have everyday threats here when it comes to terrorism, but we are asked to be prepared.? The skepticism about the Homeland spending spree is less severe for Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York, which are presumed to be likelier targets. But questions persist about whether money was handed out elsewhere with any regard for risk assessment or need. And the gap in accounting for the decade-long spending spree is undeniable. The U.S. Homeland Security Department says it doesn?t closely track what?s been bought with its tax dollars or how the equipment is used. State and local governments don?t maintain uniform records either. To assess the changes in law enforcement for The Daily Beast, the Center for Investigative Reporting conducted interviews and reviewed grant spending records obtained through open records requests in 41 states. The probe found stockpiles of weaponry and military-style protective equipment worthy of a defense contractor?s sales catalog. In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff?s department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone, like those used to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn?t died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests. Police in Des Moines, Iowa, bought two $180,000 bomb-disarming robots, while an Arizona sheriff is now the proud owner of a surplus Army tank. The flood of money opened to local police after 9/11, but slowed slightly in recent years. Still, the Department of Homeland Security awarded more than $2 billion in grants to local police in 2011, and President Obama?s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contributed an additional half-billion dollars. Law enforcement officials say the armored vehicles, assault weapons, and combat uniforms used by their officers provide a public safety benefit beyond their advertised capabilities, creating a sort of ?shock and awe? experience they hope will encourage suspects to surrender more quickly. ?The only time I hear the complaint of ?God, you guys look scary? is if the incident turns out to be nothing,? says West Hartford, Conn., Police Lt. Jeremy Clark, who organizes an annual SWAT competition. A grainy YouTube video from one of Clark?s recent competitions shows just how far the police transformation has come, displaying officers in battle fatigues, helmets, and multi-pocketed vests storming a hostile scene. One with a pistol strapped to his hip swings a battering ram into a door. A colleague lobs a flash-bang grenade into a field. Another officer, holding a pistol and wearing a rifle strapped to his back, peeks cautiously inside a bus. The images unfold to the pulsing, ominous soundtrack of a popular videogame, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Though resembling soldiers in a far-flung war zone, the stars of this video are Massachusetts State Police troopers. The number of SWAT teams participating in Clark?s event doubled to 40 between 2004 and 2009 as Homeland?s police funding swelled. The competition provides real-life scenarios for training, and Clark believes it is essential, because he fears many SWAT teams are falling below the 16 hours of minimum monthly training recommended by the National Tactical Officers Association. ?Luck is not for cops. Luck is for drunks and fools,? Clark said, explaining his devotion to training. One beneficiary of Homeland?s largesse are military contractors, who have found a new market for their wares and sponsor training events like the one Clark oversees in Connecticut or a similar Urban Shield event held in California. Special ops supplier Blackhawk Industries, founded by a former Navy SEAL, was among several Urban Shield sponsors this year. Other sponsors for such training peddle wares like ThunderSledge breaching tools for smashing open locked or chained doors, Lenco Armored Vehicles bulletproof box trucks, and KDH Defense Systems?s body armor. ?As criminal organizations are increasingly armed with military-style weapons, law enforcement operations require the same level of field-tested and combat-proven protection used by soldiers and Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other high-risk locations,? boasts an Oshkosh Corp. brochure at a recent police seminar, where the company pitched its ?tactical protector vehicle.? The trend shows no sign of abating. The homeland security market for state and local agencies is projected to reach $19.2 billion by 2014, up from an estimated $15.8 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the Homeland Security Research Corp. The rise of equipment purchases has paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams, but reliable numbers are hard to come by. The National Tactical Officers Association, which provides training and develops SWAT standards, says it currently has about 1,650 team memberships, up from 1,026 in 2000. Many of America?s newly armed officers are ex-military veterans from the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. Charles Ramsey, who was police chief in Washington, D.C., on 9/11, upgraded the weaponry when he moved to Philadelphia in 2008. Today, some 1,500 Philly beat cops are trained to use AR-15 assault rifles. ?We have a lot of people here, like most departments, who are ex-military,? Ramsey says. ?Some people are very much into guns and so forth. So it wasn?t hard to find volunteers.? Some real-life episodes, however, are sparking a debate about whether all that gear also creates a more militarized mind-set for local police that exceeds their mission or risks public safety. In one case, dozens of officers in combat-style gear raided a youth rave in Utah as a police helicopter buzzed overhead. An online video shows the battle-ready team wearing masks and brandishing rifles as they holler for the music to be shut off and pin partygoers to the ground. And Arizona tactical officers this year sprayed the home of ex-Marine Jose Guerena with gunfire as he stood in a hallway with a rifle that he did not fire. He was hit 22 times and died. Police had targeted the man?s older brother in a narcotics-trafficking probe, but nothing illegal was found in the younger Guerena?s home, and no related arrests had been made months after the raid. In Maryland, officials finally began collecting data on tactical raids after police in 2008 burst into the home of a local mayor and killed his two dogs in a case in which the mayor?s home was used as a dropoff for drug deal. The mayor?s family had nothing to do with criminal activity. Such episodes and the sheer magnitude of the expenditures over the last decade raise legitimate questions about whether taxpayers have gotten their money?s worth and whether police might have assumed more might and capability than is necessary for civilian forces. ?With local law enforcement, their mission is to solve crimes after they?ve happened, and to ensure that people?s constitutional rights are protected in the process,? says Jesselyn McCurdy, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ?The military obviously has a mission where they are fighting an enemy. When you use military tactics in the context of law enforcement, the missions don?t match, and that?s when you see trouble with the overmilitarization of police.? The upgrading of local police nonetheless continues. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio now claims to operate his own air armada of private pilots?dubbed Operation Desert Sky?to monitor illegal border crossings, and he recently added a full-size surplus Army tank. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly boasted this fall he had a secret capability to shoot down an airliner if one threatened the city again. And the city of Ogden, Utah, is launching a 54-foot, remote-controlled ?crime-fighting blimp? with a powerful surveillance camera. Back in Fargo, nearby corn and soybean farmer Tim Kozojed supports the local police but questions whether the Homeland grants have been spent wisely. ?I?m very reluctant to get anxious about a terrorist attack in North Dakota,? Kozojed, 31, said. ?Why would they bother?? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 21 17:33:03 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:33:03 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Security in Flu Study Was Paramount, Scientist Says Message-ID: December 21, 2011 Security in Flu Study Was Paramount, Scientist Says By DOREEN CARVAJAL http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/health/security-in-h5n1-bird-flu-study-was-paramount-scientist-says.html The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, concerned about bioterrorism and a worldwide pandemic, has for the first time ever urged scientific journals to keep details out of reports that they intend to publish on a highly transmissible form of the bird flu called A(H5N1), which has a high death rate in people. Working with ferrets, researchers on the virus at two medical centers ? Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison ? are investigating genetic changes that may make the virus more easily transmittable to people. Doreen Carvajal spoke with Ron A. M. Fouchier, the lead researcher at the Erasmus Center. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows. Q. What was your reaction to efforts to censor the research? A. The draft recommendations reached us at the end of November, and since that time we have been working with the journals and the international organizations to figure out a way to deal with it, because this is an unprecedented issue in science. In principle, we of course understand the statement by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the United States government. This is dual-use research, meaning research that can be used for good and bad purposes. The N.S.A.B.B. advice is that we can share this in a restricted form. We would be perfectly happy if this could be executed, but we have some doubts. We have made a list of experts that we could share this with, and that list adds up to well over 100 organizations around the globe, and probably 1,000 experts. As soon as you share information with more than 10 people, the information will be on the street. And so we have serious doubts whether this advice can be followed, strictly speaking. Q. So what is the solution? A. This is very important research. It raises a number of important issues that need to be shared with the scientific community. And because we cannot keep this confidential with such a large group. I think the only solution is to publish in detail. Q. How do you sum up the most vital information that should be shared? A. There are three aspects that need to be shared. The first part of the work can be shared without detail. The message is that H5N1 can go airborne between mammals. Of course, we have also showed how this virus can go airborne, and which mutations cause this virus to go airborne. And those mutations, the info of those mutations, need to come in the hands of people who are doing research ? for instance, the people who are doing surveillance in countries affected by H5N1. If those mutations would be detected in the field, then those countries affected should act very aggressively to stamp out the outbreaks, to protect the world. So if we can stamp this virus out before it actually emerges, then we prevent a pandemic. And I think that is what we all want. But even if we would not be able to prevent a pandemic ? and let?s assume that there is a very small chance that the virus will emerge in nature ? then our last resource would be drugs and vaccines. Now, drugs and vaccines are normally evaluated with bird flu viruses that are not adapted to mammals. Now the questions are whether those vaccines are effective against the mammal-adapted virus. And so by doing this research, we are able to get ahead of this virus emerging in the field to test whether our last resource would be functional. So the three things are: one is the simple fact that it can go airborne. That means that all the advice from the scientific community to outbreak countries now can be more unanimous that H5N1 is a very big risk to human health. The second thing is surveillance, and the third thing is preparation by evaluating vaccines and antivirals. Q. What were the precautions that you took, if any, in the course of your research to guard against terrorism? A. This experiment was not designed overnight. We started planning for these experiments 10 years ago, consulting with experts nationally and internationally about how to do this safely. We built special facilities to protect people against the virus and the virus against the people. Q. What was special about your facilities, in the Netherlands? A. The biosafety information can be found on our Web site. The biosecurity, I cannot release any information. Q. Over that period, were there any safety issues? A. Everything was smooth. There were layers upon layers upon layers of biosecurity measures. The design of this type of facility was such that it would be very unlikely for all barriers to break at the same time. Q. How did you conduct the research? A. I cannot disclose the methods, because the methods are supposed to be a recipe for bioterrorism. We mutated the virus and then performed a natural selection for additional mutations. We were testing on ferrets. We designed the experiment over the course of 10 years. We have been doing hands-on work on the experiments for the last two years, testing on dozens of ferrets. Q. Is the research finished? A. We are continuing the work. We need to evaluate vaccines, and we need to evaluate antiviral drugs and how well they work against this virus. We also need to have a more general understanding of whether this virus could acquire abilities of airborne transmission in other ways. Q. Have you seen any sign that government authorities or anyone else was monitoring you because of concerns about terrorism? A. I am sure I am being monitored by many governments. But also the usual states, not only the rogue countries. If they are monitoring me, they are doing a good job of staying out of my sight. Q. How easy is it to recreate this virus? A. It is not very easy. You need a very sophisticated specialist team and sophisticated facilities to do this. And in our opinion, nature is the biggest bioterrorist. There are many pathogens in nature that you could get your hands on very easily, and if you released those in the human population, we would be in trouble. And therefore we think that if bioterror or biowarfare would be a problem, there are so many easy ways of doing it that nobody would take this H5N1 virus and do this very difficult thing to achieve it. You could not do this work in your garage if you are a terrorist organization. But what you can do is get viruses out of the wild and grow them in your garage. There are terrorist opportunities that are much, much easier than to genetically modify H5N1 bird flu virus that are probably much more effective. Q. How difficult would it be to recreate it? A. If we get this in the hands of labs that can already do it ? such as the C.D.C. or N.I.H. laboratories ? they would be able to repeat our work in a matter of weeks. But for rogue countries or terrorist groups, this would take years of work. Q. So why such concern ? aren?t you offering information that will protect countries? A. That?s a question you should address to the advisory board. That?s our opinion, and we think this work should have been published in detail. Q. What is your next step? A. We will respect this advice, because this is the consensus for now. And we will work toward publishing a manuscript without the details, and we will wait on how the N.S.A.B.B. and the United States government envisages sharing the information in a classified way. As I said, we have doubts this is possible. Q. Did you consider publishing anyway? A. Yes, we could even launch it on our own Web site. We could do that. Of course, that?s not the smart way to move. There is an intense debate in our field, and it would be silly for us to act on our own on this. It?s better to have this discussion in the scientific and health community and see where it goes. If everybody agrees that this is the way to go, then we will respect that. Q. What was the reaction from colleagues? A. The only people who want to hold back are the biosecurity experts. They show zero tolerance to risk. The public health specialists do not have this zero tolerance. I have not spoken to a single public health specialist who was against publication. So we are going to see an interesting debate over the next few weeks between biosecurity experts and public health experts who think this information should be in the public domain. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 07:41:46 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:41:46 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Retired=2C_Computerless_Woman_Fi?= =?windows-1252?q?ned_For_Pirating_=91Hooligan=92_Movie?= Message-ID: <0A26306D-2C40-46DE-81DC-3A49F4DBBA45@infowarrior.org> Retired, Computerless Woman Fined For Pirating ?Hooligan? Movie ? enigmax ? December 22, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/retired-computerless-woman-fined-for-pirating-hooligan-movie-111222/ Despite not owning a computer or even a router, a retired woman has been ordered by a court to pay compensation to a movie company. The woman had been pursued by a rightsholder who claimed she had illegally shared a violent movie about hooligans on the Internet, but the fact that she didn?t even have an email address proved of little interest to the court. Guilty until proven innocent is the formula in Germany. The just-concluded case in Germany demonstrates perfectly that in some jurisdictions the standard way to deal with a file-sharing claim is guilty until proven innocent. At 09:10 during a cold January morning in 2010, the defendant in the case says she was tucked up in bed. A movie copyright holder, however, insists the retired single woman was illegally sharing files on the Internet. The settlement letter sent to the woman by the copyright holder stated clearly that on January 4th she?d been using the eDonkey network to share a violent film about hooligans. For this offense she must pay compensation of around 650 euros or face court, they said. Like so many claims of this nature, the accusation was problematic. Although she previously subscribed to a 2-year Internet and telephone package, six months earlier the woman had sold her computer and didn?t even maintain an email address. After refuting the allegations of the rightsholder, the case went to court. The Munich District Court handled the case, and heard evidence that not only is the woman computerless, she lives alone and doesn?t possess a wireless router either. How the alleged offense could have been carried out even by a third party remains a mystery. Nevertheless, none of the above protestations were of interest to the court. Despite the fact that the copyright holder and/or their tracking company could have made errors, or that the woman?s ISP could have identified her account incorrectly, none of these avenues were examined. ?Normally the copyright holder has to prove who did the copyright infringement. As this is hard for him ? because he has no chance to look into thousand houses ? the courts in Germany alleviate this burden of proof,? explains Christian Solmecke, a lawyer with Wilde Beuger Solmecke, the law firm that defended the woman. Solmecke told TorrentFreak that initially all a copyright holder has to do is show that a protected work has been traded via a specific IP-address, then the accused has to prove their innocence. ?In the next step the defendant has to prove, that neither he nor anyone else who had access to his internet account did the copyright infringement. In my opinion our client has proved that fact. If you have no computer and no W-LAN, there has to be a failure in the backtracking of the IP-address,? he added. The bottom line in Germany is that account holders are responsible for everything that happens on their account and if they can?t prove their innocence, they are found guilty. The woman must now pay just over 650 euros in damages to the copyright holder. There can be little doubt that German law is tipped heavily in the favor of rightsholders. Little surprise then that Germany is without doubt the worst place in the world for pay-up-or-else-schemes. So how often are people wrongly accused? ?Every second person tells me, that he or she appears to be wrongfully accused,? says Solmecke. ?Some of them lie even to their lawyer but most of them tell the truth. From my point of view, there has to be a big mistake in some of the different backtracking-systems.? So for now the formula for rightsholders seems incredibly simple. IP address. Accusation. Profit. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 07:54:29 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:54:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pro-copyright group takes SOPA to task Message-ID: <7B790258-6787-4A12-9575-0746195C71EE@infowarrior.org> Pro-copyright group takes SOPA to task by Declan McCullagh December 21, 2011 9:41 PM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57346829-281/pro-copyright-group-takes-sopa-to-task/ The Heritage Foundation, probably the nation's most influential conservative advocacy group, has long been a reliable ally of large copyright holders. But not when it comes to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. The venerable think tank, which enjoys close ties with the Republican Party and inspired President Reagan's missile defense program and the GOP's welfare reform effort, warned today that SOPA raises important security and free speech concerns. "The concern with SOPA is that it enforces private property rights at the expense of other values, such as innovation on the Internet, security of the Internet, and freedom of communication," James Gattuso, Heritage's senior research fellow in regulatory policy, told CNET this evening. While SOPA addresses a "very real problem," he says, it's not necessarily the right solution. Unlike some Washington advocacy groups that are predictably anti-copyright, Heritage has historically taken the opposite position. It called the Motion Picture Association of America's decision to sue peer-to-peer pirates a "wise choice," and suggested that disrupting P2P networks to curb piracy, an idea that some politicians actually proposed, is a step "in the right direction." Heritage's criticism is important because SOPA author Lamar Smith of Texas, who has become Hollywood's favorite Republican, is almost certain to win committee approval in early 2012. Then the bill's fate will rest in the hands of the Republican House leadership--which could chose to delay a floor vote indefinitely if the GOP appears divided. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.) "The areas that are the most concern are the obligation of service providers to block resolution of IP addresses and the obligation of search engines to block search results," says Gattuso, whose conservative credentials include working at the Federal Communications Commission during the first Bush administration and for then-Vice President Dan Quayle. "Those get to the core issue of why the federal government could be able to interfere with the way the Internet is operated, and the core issue of what people can say and what information they can get on the Web." A warning from a group like Heritage, usually a staunch ally of copyright holders, could help to sway undecided Republicans. It's no exaggeration: Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general who's now a Heritage fellow, seemed to be channelling an MPAA lobbyist when writing in 2005 that "there is no difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and illegally downloading a copyrighted movie from Kazaa." Heritage's warnings of international "threats to intellectual property rights" date back to at least 1987. And it scores protection of intellectual property rights in its annual Index of Economic Freedom. SOPA, of course, represents the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty. It's opposed (PDF) by Internet companies and many Internet users. While Heritage may be the largest, it wasn't the first free-market group to criticize SOPA. In a letter to Smith last week, TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Job Security, and Americans for Limited Government warned Smith that his committee "simply has not spent enough time on this legislation to properly address the complex and important issues at stake." These aren't left-leaning groups by any measure: TechFreedom has argued against Net neutrality, warned against expansive antitrust and privacy regulations, and defended the now-abandoned merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. "You don't have to be against copyright to be skeptical of SOPA," Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, told CNET today. "Even those who will defend copyright (believe that SOPA) would have sweeping unintended consequences. So it's perfectly consistent for conservatives to insist on both the need to enhance copyright enforcement and to be exceedingly careful about how we do so." The most prominent group on the other side is probably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has become the most aggressive defender of SOPA, likely because it receives more money in membership dues from Hollywood than Silicon Valley. (Yahoo and Kapersky Lab have dropped out in protest, and Google is under pressure to do the same.) Concerned Women for America and the National Association of Manufacturers have also endorsed SOPA. In an interview with CNET last week, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a senior House Republican, said SOPA should not be brought to the House floor. (Issa is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which is busy investigating the Obama administration on many fronts, including Fannie and Freddie bonuses, the Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious, and the Freedom of Information Act.) If SOPA clears the House Judiciary committee, "would it be appropriate to bring such a controversial bill to the floor?" Issa asks. "I think the Republican House leadership will look and say, 'Unless we have the support of the vast majority of Republicans, we're not going to take the bill to the floor.'" --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 07:56:27 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:56:27 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Questions Linger on Safety of Airport Body Scanners Message-ID: <3E64DB8A-A64C-4F33-8AF2-2F8D0FB2E1E2@infowarrior.org> Questions Linger on Safety of Airport Body Scanners ? By Jason Paur ? Email Author ? December 22, 2011 | http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/12/questions-linger-on-safety-of-airport-body-scanners/ Airline passengers will face the long lines, interminable delays and frustrating backups that come with holiday travel. Through it all, they?ll also have to decide whether to submit to one of the 500-plus x-ray or radio wave scanners found in airports nationwide and wonder about their safety. Much of the debate surrounding the increasingly common security scanners revolves around their effectiveness and privacy. But the health implications are coming to the fore as the European Union bans x-ray scanners because of health concerns. Many EU nations will instead use millimeter-wave, lower frequency scanners. Both types use a beam of electromagnetic energy to create an image of a passenger ? sans clothing ? in an effort to detect weapons and other contraband. Millimeter wave scanners use a portion of the spectrum close to microwaves, while x-ray scanners, of course, use the higher frequency x-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Both devices collect the scattered waves that reflect off the body to create an image. The dose of radiation from the x-ray scanners is very low. But whether it is low enough to be harmless remains a lingering question. A recent report by ProPublica and PBS uncovered concerns over the level of radiation passengers are exposed to. Although the dose is very low, the scanners still violate ?a longstanding fundamental principle of radiation safety ? that humans shouldn?t be x-rayed unless there is a medical benefit,? the report states. There also is the concern that repeated exposure to even low doses of radiation could be a problem. According to the story, research suggests ?anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the [x-ray backscatter] machines,? based on roughly 100 million passengers flying annually. The report also questions why the decision to deploy x-ray scanners was made by the Transportation Security Administration, not the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates drugs and medical devices that can affect public health. The TSA argues the radiation poses very little threat to human health compared to the security provided by the devices. ?It?s a really, really small amount relative to the security benefit you?re going to get,? Robin Kane, the agency?s assistant administrator for security technology, told ProPublica. In response to the ProPublica/PBS report, the FDA said the risk of getting cancer is just 1 in 400 million. The agency also clarified several points made in the story. And as our colleagues at Threat Level noted, Johns Hopkins University?s Applied Physics Laboratory analyzed the Rapiscan 1000 x-ray scanner and published the leading and most often-cited study (.pdf) in October 2010. The 49-page report, released in a redacted form, says the machines leak virtually no radiation to TSA staff and nearby passengers and expose the person being scanned to a fraction of the maximum exposure level deemed medically safe. ?You would have to go through the scanner 1,000 times to equate to one medical x-ray,? said Peter Kant, Rapiscan?s executive vice president, summarizing the study. ?You get twice as much radiation when eating a banana than when going through the scanner.? But critics note the mechanical beam?s intensity level has not been published, making it impossible to evaluate the safety claims. Moreover, medical x-ray machines disperse radiation throughout the body, whereas the airport scanners penetrate to about skin level. That means there is a high concentration of radiation on a single organ ? the skin. Questions remain regarding the safety of the scanners and whether such tests were bungled, the manner in which they were placed into widespread use and just how effective they are. There also have been questions about the connection between Rapiscan, which produces the scanners, and former TSA boss Michael Chertoff. Chertoff?s consulting firm had done work for Rapiscan. Both companies deny anything inappropriate occurred. Beyond the health concerns and the EU ban on x-ray scanners, France and Germany stopped using millimeter wave radio scanners because of numerous false positive results. According to a separate story about the effectiveness of the scanners, of all the passengers singled out for closer scrutiny after being scanned by millimeter wave machines, pat-down searches revealed more than half of them posed no threat at all. The most mundane things, like sweat and folds in clothing, were among the things contributing to false positives. Several tests of both types of scanners have shown they are effective at detecting items like guns and knives, but no more so than much cheaper metal detectors already in use. Other tests have shown explosives can be hidden on the body in a manner unlikely to be detected by those monitoring images generated by the scanners. Passengers do not have a choice whether they are being scanned in a millimeter wave scanner, which resembles a phone booth with glass walls, or an x-ray scanner in which they stand between two large boxes. Airports often have one or the other, but they typically are not used for every security line. There are roughly 250 x-ray machines and 260 millimeter wave machines in use nationwide. The TSA plans to deploy a total of 1,800 scanners by 2014. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 09:54:31 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:54:31 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The New International Economic Disorder Message-ID: <180043A5-9846-44D6-84D5-6841FD44955D@infowarrior.org> The New International Economic Disorder Mohamed A. El-Erian 2011-12-21 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/elerian12/English NEWPORT BEACH ? A new economic order is taking shape before our eyes, and it is one that includes accelerated convergence between the old Western powers and the emerging world?s major new players. But the forces driving this convergence have little to do with what generations of economists envisaged when they pointed out the inadequacy of the old order; and these forces? implications may be equally unsettling. For decades, many people lamented the extent to which the West dominated the global economic system. From the governance of multilateral organizations to the design of financial services, the global infrastructure was seen as favoring Western interests. While there was much talk of reform, Western countries repeatedly countered serious efforts that would result in meaningful erosion of their entitlements. On the few occasions that such resistance was seemingly overcome, the outcome was gradual and timid change. Consequently, many emerging-market economies lost confidence in the ?pooled insurance? that the global system supposedly put at their disposal, especially at times of great need. This change in sentiment was catalyzed by the financial crises in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America in the late 1990?s and early 2000?s, and by what many in these regions regarded as the West?s inadequate and poorly designed responses. With their trust in bilateral assistance and multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund shaken, emerging-market economies ? led by those in Asia ? embarked on a sustained drive toward greater financial self-reliance. Once they succeeded in overcoming a painful crisis-management phase, many of these countries accumulated previously unthinkable levels of international reserves as precautionary cushions. They extinguished billions in external indebtedness by generating and sustaining large current-account surpluses. And they increased the scale and scope of domestic financial intermediation in order to reduce their vulnerability to external storms. These developments stood in stark contrast to what was happening in the West. There, unprecedented leverage, massive debt creation, and a seemingly infinite sense of credit entitlement prevailed. Financial excesses become the rule rather than the exception, facilitated by financial innovation and the erosion of lending standards and prudential regulation. Suddenly, the world turned upside down: ?rich? countries were running large deficits and, in some cases, tipping from net creditor status to net indebtedness, while ?poor? countries were running surpluses and accumulating large stocks of external assets, including financial claims on Western economies. Little did these countries know that their divergent paths would end up fueling large global imbalances, and eventually trigger a financial crisis that has shaken the prevailing international economic order to its foundations. There is no restoring fully that order. Rather than recovering strongly, sluggish Western growth is periodically flirting with recession at a time of high unemployment and multiplying debt concerns, particularly in Europe. In an amazing turn of events, virtually every Western country must now worry about its credit ratings, while quite a few emerging economies continue to climb the ratings ladder. We can now consider the image of Western delegations heading to emerging countries to plead, cap in hand, for financial support, both direct and through the IMF. At first blush, this unusual convergence between Western and emerging countries seems to reflect what advocates of a new international economic order had in mind. But appearances can be misleading, and, in this case, they are misleading in a significant way. Advocates envisaged an orderly process in which economic convergence accompanied and facilitated global economic growth. They foresaw a collaborative process guided by enlightened policymaking. But what is occurring is far different and more unpredictable. Rather than exhibiting enlightened leadership, Western policymakers have consistently lagged realities on the ground, with a bewildering mixture of denial, misdiagnosis, and bickering undermining their responses. Rather than proceeding in an orderly manner, today's global changes are being driven by the disorderly forces of de-leveraging emanating from a Europe in deep financial crisis and an America seemingly unable to restore sustained high rates of GDP growth and job creation. Multilateral institutions, particularly the IMF, have responded by pumping an unfathomable amount of financing into Europe. But, instead of reversing the disorderly deleveraging and encouraging new private investments, this official financing has merely shifted liabilities from the private sector to the public sector. Moreover, many emerging-market countries have noted that the policy conditionality attached to the tens of billions of dollars that have been shipped to Europe pales in comparison with what was imposed on them in the 1990?s and early 2000?s. Fortunately, despite having lagged rather than led this process of consequential (and increasingly disorderly) global change, it is not too late for policymakers to catch up. But doing so requires more than just better national policymaking in Europe and America; it is also time for urgent and deep reform of the multilateral system and its main institutions. That process requires joint leadership by the emerging world as a true equal and partner of Western powers. Mohamed A. El-Erian is CEO and co-CIO of PIMCO, and author of When Markets Collide. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011. www.project-syndicate.org --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 12:09:52 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:09:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - News as a Process: How Journalism Works in the Age of Twitter Message-ID: <89D35378-FDE9-45C5-A0E0-9D33CAA38875@infowarrior.org> 21, 2011, 7:42 PM EST News as a Process: How Journalism Works in the Age of Twitter http://www.businessweek.com/printer/technology/news-as-a-process-how-journalism-works-in-the-age-of-twitter-12212011.html A study of the way information flowed during the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt paints a portrait of what the news looks like now By Mathew Ingram We?ve written many times about how journalism is changing in the age of social media, thanks to what Om Malik has called the ?democracy of distribution? provided by tools like Twitter?and how everyone now has the opportunity to function as a journalist, even for a short time, during news events like the attack on Osama bin Laden?s compound. A new study of the way information flowed during the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year paints a fascinating picture of how what some call ?news as a process? works, and the roles bloggers, mainstream media, and other actors play during a breaking news event. More than anything, it?s a portrait of what the news looks like now. The study, titled ?The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,? was published in the International Journal of Communications, and involved several researchers from the Web Ecology Project, Gilad Lotan from the social-media service Social Flow, and Microsoft (MSFT) researcher and sociologist Danah Boyd. (A PDF version of the study is available here.) The researchers looked at two datasets: one composed of 168,000 tweets from Jan. 12 to 19 that contained hashtags such as #sidibouzid and #tunisia, and one composed of 230,000 tweets from Jan. 24 to 29, containing hashtags such as #egypt or #jan25 (the date of a mass demonstration that played a key role in the subsequent Egyptian revolution). The research broke those who tweeted about both events down into a number of groups of ?key actors??including activists, mainstream media outlets, individual journalists, bloggers, digerati, and celebrities?and then tracked how information about various events during both periods flowed from one source to another. One interesting aspect of the study is that some key players in both events were almost impossible to classify as belonging to a single group. Jillian York, for example, is a researcher who works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation but is also a prominent blogger for Global Voices and is passionate about issues in the Arab world. Twitter becomes a crowdsourced newswire As the study describes, Twitter has come to play a crucial role in the way that news functions during events like the Egyptian revolution?like a crowdsourced newswire filled with everything from breaking news to rumor and everything in between, and one that both uses and is used by mainstream media: ?The shift from an era of broadcast mass media to one of networked digital media has altered both information flows and the nature of news work ? during unplanned or critical world events such as the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, MSM turn to Twitter, both to learn from on-the-ground sources, and to rapidly distribute updates.? The evolution of what media theorist Jeff Jarvis and others have called ?networked journalism? has made the business of news much more chaotic, since it now consists of thousands of voices instead of just a few prominent ones who happen to have the tools to make themselves heard. If there is a growth area in media, it is in the field of ?curated news,? where real-time filters like NPR?s Andy Carvin or the BBC?s user-generated-content desk verify and redistribute the news that comes in from tens of thousands of sources, and use tools like Storify to present a coherent picture of what is happening on the ground. The study makes the point that mainstream media outlets play a key role in the dissemination of news during such events (and also notes that journalists tend to retweet other journalists more often than they do nonmainstream sources), but it also makes it obvious that prominent bloggers and activists are crucial information conduits, as well. In graphic representations created by Global Voices using the study?s data, for example, blogger Nasser Wedaddy is a key hub who distributes information to bloggers, activists, and mainstream media. (Here?s another fascinating visualization of networked data flows in Egypt during the revolution in February.) It?s called social media for a reason As noted by Nancy Messieh at The Next Web, one of the additional points the study makes is that the personal Twitter accounts belonging to journalists were far more likely to be retweeted or engaged with by others than official accounts for the media outlets they worked for. The point here is one we have tried to make repeatedly: Social media are called social for a reason. They?re about human beings connecting with other human beings around an event, and the more that media outlets try to stifle the human aspect of these tools?through repressive social-media policies, for example?the less likely they will be to benefit from using them. Another benefit of a distributed or networked version of journalism is one sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has made in the course of her research into how Twitter and other social tools affected the events in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. As she wrote in a recent blog post, one of the realities of mainstream media is what is often called ?pack journalism?: the kind that sees hundreds of journalists show up for official briefings by government or military sources, but few pursue their own stories outside the official sphere. Social media and ?citizen journalism,? Tufekci says, can be a powerful antidote to this kind of process, and that?s fundamentally a positive force for journalism. As we look at the way news and information flows in this new world of social networks, and what Andy Carvin has called ?random acts of journalism? by those who may not even see themselves as journalists, it?s easy to get distracted by how chaotic the process seems, and how difficult it is to separate the signal from the noise. But more information is better?even if it requires new skills on the part of journalists when it comes to filtering that information?and journalism, as Jay Rosen has pointed out, tends to get better when more people do it. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 12:26:54 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:26:54 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TSA: Smoke Screening (with Schneier) Message-ID: <3376BDB5-2C70-4C85-BE86-1A5F7C92BA00@infowarrior.org> December 20, 2011 Smoke Screening http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/tsa-insanity-201112.print As you stand in endless lines this holiday season, here?s a comforting thought: all those security measures accomplish nothing, at enormous cost. That?s the conclusion of Charles C. Mann, who put the T.S.A. to the test with the help of one of America?s top security experts. By Charles C. Mann Not until I walked with Bruce Schneier toward the mass of people unloading their laptops did it occur to me that it might not be possible for us to hang around unnoticed near Reagan National Airport?s security line. Much as upscale restaurants hang mug shots of local food writers in their kitchens, I realized, the Transportation Security Administration might post photographs of Schneier, a 48-year-old cryptographer and security technologist who is probably its most relentless critic. In addition to writing books and articles, Schneier has a popular blog; a recent search for ?TSA? in its archives elicited about 2,000 results, the vast majority of which refer to some aspect of the agency that he finds to be ineffective, invasive, incompetent, inexcusably costly, or all four. As we came by the checkpoint line, Schneier described one of these aspects: the ease with which people can pass through airport security with fake boarding passes. First, scan an old boarding pass, he said?more loudly than necessary, it seemed to me. Alter it with Photoshop, then print the result with a laser printer. In his hand was an example, complete with the little squiggle the T.S.A. agent had drawn on it to indicate that it had been checked. ?Feeling safer?? he asked. Ten years ago, 19 men armed with utility knives hijacked four airplanes and within a few hours killed nearly 3,000 people. At a stroke, Americans were thrust into a menacing new world. ?They are coming after us,? C.I.A. director George Tenet said of al-Qaeda. ?They intend to strike this homeland again, and we better get about the business of putting the right structure in place as fast as we can.? The United States tried to do just that. Federal and state governments embarked on a nationwide safety upgrade. Checkpoints proliferated in airports, train stations, and office buildings. A digital panopticon of radiation scanners, chemical sensors, and closed-circuit television cameras audited the movements of shipping containers, airborne chemicals, and ordinary Americans. None of this was or will be cheap. Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security. To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as ?security theater?: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe. The first time I met Schneier, a few months after 9/11, he wanted to bet me a very expensive dinner that the United States would not be hit by a major terrorist attack in the next 10 years. We were in Washington, D.C., visiting one of the offices of Counterpane Internet Security, the company he had co-founded in 1999. (BT, the former British Telecom, bought Counterpane seven years later; officially, Schneier is now BT?s chief security technology officer.) The bet seemed foolhardy to me. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had just told The Washington Times that al-Qaeda was dispersing its killers all over the world. From an airplane-hijacking point of view, Schneier said, al-Qaeda had used up its luck. Passengers on the first three 9/11 flights didn?t resist their captors, because in the past the typical consequence of a plane seizure had been ?a week in Havana.? When the people on the fourth hijacked plane learned by cell phone that the previous flights had been turned into airborne bombs, they attacked their attackers. The hijackers were forced to crash Flight 93 into a field. ?No big plane will ever be taken that way again, because the passengers will fight back,? Schneier said. Events have borne him out. The instigators of the two most serious post-9/11 incidents involving airplanes? the ?shoe bomber? in 2001 and the ?underwear bomber? in 2009, both of whom managed to get onto an airplane with explosives?were subdued by angry passengers. Schneier?s sanguine views had little resonance at a time when the fall of the twin towers was being replayed nightly on the news. Two months after 9/11, the Bush administration created the Transportation Security Agency, ordering it to hire and train enough security officers to staff the nation?s 450 airports within a year. Six months after that, the government vastly expanded the federal sky-marshal program, sending thousands of armed lawmen to ride planes undercover. Meanwhile, the T.S.A. steadily ratcheted up the existing baggage-screening program, banning cigarette lighters from carry-on bags, then all liquids (even, briefly, breast milk from some nursing mothers). Signs were put up in airports warning passengers about specifically prohibited items: snow globes, printer cartridges. A color-coded alert system was devised; the nation was placed on ?orange alert? for five consecutive years. Washington assembled a list of potential terror targets that soon swelled to 80,000 places, including local libraries and miniature-golf courses. Accompanying the target list was a watch list of potential suspects that had grown to 1.1 million names by 2008, the most recent date for which figures are available. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security, which absorbed the T.S.A. in 2003, began deploying full-body scanners, which peer through clothing to produce nearly nude images of air passengers. Bruce Schneier?s exasperation is informed by his job-related need to spend a lot of time in Airportland. He has 10 million frequent-flier miles and takes about 170 flights a year; his average speed, he has calculated, is 32 miles and hour. ?The only useful airport security measures since 9/11,? he says, ?were locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can?t break in, positive baggage matching??ensuring that people can?t put luggage on planes, and then not board them ??and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.? Remember the fake boarding pass that was in Schneier?s hand? Actually, it was mine. I had flown to meet Schneier at Reagan National Airport because I wanted to view the security there through his eyes. He landed on a Delta flight in the next terminal over. To reach him, I would have to pass through security. The day before, I had downloaded an image of a boarding pass from the Delta Web site, copied and pasted the letters with Photoshop, and printed the results with a laser printer. I am not a photo-doctoring expert, so the work took me nearly an hour. The T.S.A. agent waved me through without a word. A few minutes later, Schneier deplaned, compact and lithe, in a purple shirt and with a floppy cap drooping over a graying ponytail. The boarding-pass problem is hardly the only problem with the checkpoints. Taking off your shoes is next to useless. ?It?s like saying, Last time the terrorists wore red shirts, so now we?re going to ban red shirts,? Schneier says. If the T.S.A. focuses on shoes, terrorists will put their explosives elsewhere. ?Focusing on specific threats like shoe bombs or snow-globe bombs simply induces the bad guys to do something else. You end up spending a lot on the screening and you haven?t reduced the total threat.? As I waited at security with my fake boarding pass, a T.S.A. agent had darted out and swabbed my hands with a damp, chemically impregnated cloth: a test for explosives. Schneier said, ?Apparently the idea is that al-Qaeda has never heard of latex gloves and wiping down with alcohol.? The uselessness of the swab, in his view, exemplifies why Americans should dismiss the T.S.A.?s frequent claim that it relies on ?multiple levels? of security. For the extra levels of protection to be useful, each would have to test some factor that is independent of the others. But anyone with the intelligence and savvy to use a laser printer to forge a boarding pass can also pick up a stash of latex gloves to wear while making a bomb. From the standpoint of security, Schneier said, examining boarding passes and swabbing hands are tantamount to performing the same test twice because the person you miss with one test is the same person you'll miss with the other. After a public outcry, T.S.A. officers began waving through medical supplies that happen to be liquid, including bottles of saline solution. ?You fill one of them up with liquid explosive,? Schneier said, ?then get a shrink-wrap gun and seal it. The T.S.A. doesn?t open shrink-wrapped packages.? I asked Schneier if he thought terrorists would in fact try this approach. Not really, he said. Quite likely, they wouldn?t go through the checkpoint at all. The security bottlenecks are regularly bypassed by large numbers of people?airport workers, concession-stand employees, airline personnel, and T.S.A. agents themselves (though in 2008 the T.S.A. launched an employee-screening pilot study at seven airports). ?Almost all of those jobs are crappy, low-paid jobs,? Schneier says. ?They have high turnover. If you?re a serious plotter, don?t you think you could get one of those jobs?? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 22 20:25:55 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:25:55 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Founder of Xerox PARC Jacob Goldman dies at 90 Message-ID: Founder of Xerox PARC Jacob Goldman dies at 90 Rue Liu, Dec 22nd 2011 Discuss [1] http://www.slashgear.com/founder-of-xerox-parc-jacob-goldman-dies-at-90-22204266/ Founder and chief scientist of Xerox?s renowned Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) Jacob ?Jack? Goldman has died at age 90. Goldman has been credited with spearheading many of the technological breakthroughs that are at the core of modern computing and that have been a huge influence on the success of Apple and Microsoft in personal computing. In the late 1960s, Goldman proposed that Xerox establish an advanced research facility. Despite much resistance he managed to launch Xerox PARC, which would develop most of the significant technologies we take for granted today, including the first personal computer called Alto, the graphical user interface (GUI), Ethernet, and laser printing. However, Xerox itself never capitalized on the research and instead allowed other companies such as Apple to take and develop the GUI technology to produce the first mainstream personal computer that supported a visual interface in lieu of command lines. In the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, Jobs was said to be mesmerized by the work done at PARC during his 1979 tour of the facility, saying ?I can?t believe Xerox is not taking advantage of this.? Goldman had a masters degree and doctorate in physics with a focus on magnetism. He joined Ford Motors in 1955 and became head of its R&D laboratory before moving to Xerox. Goldman became a private investor and served on the board of several companies after he retired from Xerox. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 07:45:56 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:45:56 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - EFF Reverse Engineers CarrierIQ Message-ID: Analyzing Carrier IQ Profiles As we explained in our post on Carrier IQ's architecture, one of the main factors in determining what the Carrier IQ stack does on a particular phone is the "Profile" that is running on that device. Profiles are files that are typically written by Carrier IQ Inc. to the specifications of a phone company or other client, and pushed to the phone by Carrier IQ Inc. using its own command and control infrastructure. Profiles contain instructions about what data to collect, how to aggregate it, and where to send it. To create transparency for the public that has been monitored by the more intrusive variants of this software, we will need a comprehensive library of these Profiles, and to know which ones were pushed to which phones at what times. Profiles are stored in different locations in different versions of the Carrier IQ software, and in many cases, a phone may need to be jailbroken or rooted before the profile can be extracted. If you have a rooted/jailbroken phone, and can find a Profile on it, please send us 1) a copy of the Profile, 2) which phone and network it was from, and 3) where on the phone's file system you found it. You can send us this information in an email at iqiq at eff.org or in a git remote we can pull from. [UPDATE: there is a thread at xda-developers.org discussing possible methods for finding profiles on phones] < -- > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/analyzing-carrier-iq-profiles --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 08:20:37 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:20:37 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Go Daddy boycott threat for backing hated anti-piracy law Message-ID: <01E80CA6-2379-457F-AC36-2192444D620B@infowarrior.org> (Yes, I host thru them myself, but may join the move if I find another registrar I like. --- rick) Go Daddy boycott threat for backing hated anti-piracy law Site owners transfer domains from pro-SOPA registrar By Kevin Murphy ? Get more from this author Posted in Hosting, 23rd December 2011 13:02 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/23/godaddy_boycott/ Internet users have called for a boycott of web hosting giant Go Daddy over its public support of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the US. While the company has publicly supported SOPA and similarly controversial proposed legislation for months, its position went largely unnoticed until a thread on Reddit gained legs yesterday. User "selfprodigy" said he planned to move 51 domain names he has registered with Go Daddy to another registrar, adding: "I'm suggesting Dec 29th as move your domain away from GoDaddy day because of their support of SOPA. Who's with me?" The posting attracted almost 4,000 comments, largely supportive of the boycott. Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network - the owner of sites such as FailBlog - said in a tweet that he would move his 1,000 domains away from Go Daddy unless it dropped its support for SOPA. The campaign now also has a website at GoDaddyBoycott.org (registered via Canadian registrar Tucows using a privacy service to protect the owner's identity). Go Daddy's position, however, has been firm. Not only has it supported SOPA from the outset, but it has also dismissed criticisms of the bill, which many say amounts to censorship. "The notion that the solutions that have been put forth will break the internet, or that certain legal businesses will go off-line because of new mandates, is utterly unconvincing," Go Daddy general counsel Christine Jones wrote in November. "SOPA goes a long way toward fixing the existing problems." A month later, responding to similar criticisms on her personal blog, Jones wrote: "Most of what we are seeing is either 1) rhetoric, 2) regurgitated lobbying spin, 3) criticism of language we have already fixed, or 4) retweets by people who like to steal music and buy fake, but cheap, goods." However, most companies in the domain name industry that have expressed an opinion oppose SOPA, saying it will break end-to-end authentication using DNSSEC, the emerging domain security protocol. They also say that by forcing American ISPs to block piracy sites at the domain level, SOPA will compel American internet users to use workaround DNS services operated by criminals overseas, increasing the likelihood of phishing and fraud. Go Daddy's Jones has refuted this, writing last month: "It?s hard to imagine that the limited times per year that the Attorney General seeks this remedy for a site dedicated to infringement will result in a mass exodus away from DNS as we know it. I have to believe that the average person doesn?t want to commit a crime." Go Daddy has faced calls the boycotts before, notably this March when then-CEO came under fire for posting a video online showing him shooting an elephant while on vacation in Zimbabwe. In that case, the calls for a boycott resulted in thousands of domain names being transferred to rival registrars, but the net effect of the publicity was positive for Go Daddy's sales. Nevertheless, opportunistic competitors quickly seized upon the latest scandal yesterday, taking to Twitter to promote special discounts for consumers wishing to transfer their domains away. Today, a Go Daddy spokesperson said in a statement: "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations." Go Daddy says it registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second. It is responsible for well over a third of all .com domains registered today, not including its resellers' sales. ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 08:21:48 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:21:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hurt Locker BitTorrent Lawsuit Dies, But Not Without Controversy Message-ID: <9146718F-18C5-4B3E-8B02-5C9BEAE6BD36@infowarrior.org> Hurt Locker BitTorrent Lawsuit Dies, But Not Without Controversy ? Ernesto ? December 22, 2011 http://torrentfreak.com/hurt-locker-bittorrent-lawsuit-dies-but-not-without-controversy-111222/ The record-breaking lawsuit, filed by the makers of The Hurt Locker against 24,583 alleged BitTorrent users, has come to an end. Although this appears to be good news for the defendants, the lawyers representing the movie studio are continuing with their cash demands. During recent months the lawyers engaged in dubious behavior, asking people to settle with them after they were dismissed from the lawsuit, and targeting people who were never included to begin with. After being honored with an Oscar for Best Motion Picture last year, the makers of The Hurt Locker went on to secure the award for the biggest file-sharing lawsuit a few months ago. By targeting at least 24,583 alleged BitTorrent users, Voltage Pictures hoped to recoup millions of dollars in settlements to compensate the studio for piracy-related losses. And so it happened. After former RIAA-lobbyist Judge Beryl Howell signed off on the subpoenas, the suspected infringers were asked to pay thousands of dollars to settle their case, or else. As the case dragged on, the major roadblock for Voltage Pictures turned out to be the Internet providers, who were often only releasing the personal details of a few dozen defendants each month. As a result, the Hurt Locker makers had to file extension after extension to keep the case alive. Judge Howell eventually ran out of patience and decided not to grant a new extension this month, thereby closing the case. Although this appears to be good news for the tens of thousands of defendants, a range of questionable actions from Voltage Picture?s law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver suggests that they might be in for a surprise. Over the past months TorrentFreak talked to several defendants who were notified by their Internet providers that Voltage Pictures had sent a subpoena to reveal their personal details. By itself this is nothing new, were it not for the fact that these people?s IP-addresses were among the thousands that were dismissed from the case weeks earlier. It turns out that after removing IP-addresses from the complaint, the lawyers were asking the ISPs for identifying information of the account holders anyway. Initially we thought that this must have been an isolated incident, but after contacting some lawyers we heard that it was most certainly not. Speaking to TorrentFreak, BitTorrent defense lawyer Robert Cashman described the actions as unethical and sanctionable, and told us that the Judge would probably not allow this to happen if she knew what was going on. ?I am having this same issue with a potential client,? Cashman said. ?As far as I know they cannot have the names from the ISP as the IP-addresses no longer belong to putative defendants,? he said. ?A number of in-house attorneys at one of the ISPs are looking into the issue now to determine whether or not to comply with the request.? From the people we talked to thus far we heard that at least some ISPs have complied, probably because the ISPs nor the defendants knew that the IP-addresses were no longer listed as defendants. Questionable behavior to say the least, but it gets worse, much worse. BitTorrent defense lawyer Blair Chintella informed us that aside from going after dismissed defendants, the lawyers are also targeting people who?ve never been listed as a defendant in the first place. In a separate article Chintella provides additional background on the issue, where he believes Voltage Picture?s lawyers are out-of-order. ?Recently I?ve been contacted by one or more people whose alleged IP addresses aren?t listed in the court records,? Chintella says. ?This appears to be not only an ethical violation but a legal issue giving rise to one or more claim under state or federal law.? So it appears that the lawyers were using the court subpoenas to get the personal details of people whose IP-addresses were never listed in any complaint. Although it?s not clear how many times this has occurred, it?s possible that the lawyers went after thousands more people than they told the court. To get their take on the situation, TorrentFreak contacted law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, but received no response. While it?s clear that the practices outlined here warrant further investigation, it is doubtful that they will be looked into as the case is now officially closed. People who have recently received a settlement letter should remain vigilant though, as the Hurt locker makers may start to file individual lawsuits. Meanwhile, the number of people sued in the US for alleged BitTorrent downloads has surpassed 250,000, and new mass-lawsuits are added every week. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 08:29:30 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:29:30 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Holiday Greetings from infowarrior-l Message-ID: <56CA0358-37D7-46CD-BEDE-EC2C5904F04C@infowarrior.org> (Ganked from one of my favourite BBC sitcoms from the 1980s --- "Yes Minister.") Video@ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7EL3_xL9s Sir Humphrey: "Minister, Just one thing. I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a, by-no-means disagreeable obligation, which is over the years become more-or-less, an established practice within government circles, as we approach the terminal period of the year, calendar of-course not financial. In fact not to put a too fine a point on it, week 51, and submit to you, with all appropriate deference for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation and indeed confidence. Indeed one might go so far to say, hope, that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible of being deemed to be such as, to merit the final verdict of having been, by-no-means unsatisfactory in it?s overall outcome and in the final analysis to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification, which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average." Jim Hacker: "Humphrey, are you saying Happy Christmas?" Sir Humphrey: "Yes Minister!" < - > Happy Holidays to the subscribers of infowarrior-l! --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 08:54:55 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:54:55 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TSA confiscates cupcake, calls frosting a "gel" Message-ID: (I feel oh-so-much-safer now. -- rick) TSA confiscates cupcake, calls frosting a "gel" By Cory Doctorow at 11:44 am Thursday, Dec 22 http://boingboing.net/2011/12/22/tsa-confiscates-cupcake-calls.html Rebecca writes, At Las Vegas International Airport, TSA supervisor [REDACTED] is keeping travelers safe from the terror of delicious cupcakes-in-a-jar. I learned this firsthand earlier today, when I put myself and my fellow travelers at risk by attempting to travel with one. The agent who first found my dangerously delectable snack consulted [REDACTED] about it just barely within my earshot. He responded hesitantly at first, saying that he was "not sure"--and "with the holidays coming, it's getting harder and harder." When he finally decided my treat was a no-go, I asked to speak with him directly, and he asserted that the frosting on this red velvet cupcake is "gel-like" enough to constitute a liquid, in part because it "conforms to its container." Also: it "should have been in a zip-lock." At this, I offered to scoop my dangerously conformist cupcake out of its jar and place it in a zip-lock bag, where it could mush about to its heart's content; but Agent [REDACTED] wisely refused. After all, the jar in all its tasty glory "clearly contains more than 3 ounces of total contents," he said. I then explained to [REDACTED] that I'd been allowed to bring cupcakes-in-jars through Boston's Logan airport on my outbound flight with no problem (the TSA agent there had exclaimed, "These look delicious!"). To this logic, [REDACTED] responded, "If Boston had done their job right in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now." (Take that, Boston!) CLEARLY [REDACTED] is in the right, because unbeknownst to him, when I had previously opened one of these marvelous cupcakes on the flight from Boston, everyone's safety was jeopardized. There was pandemonium among my hunger-crazed fellow travelers: Everybody wanted one. (Just like [REDACTED], who probably ate my cupcake on his next break.) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 09:00:53 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:00:53 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Fed=92s_Once-Secret_Data_Release?= =?windows-1252?q?d_to_Public?= Message-ID: <23ECFD4C-C884-40CD-A31C-5E9EDC79814E@infowarrior.org> Fed?s Once-Secret Data Released to Public By Phil Kuntz and Bob Ivry - Dec 23, 2011 12:01 AM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-data-compiled-by-bloomberg-released-to-public.html Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, talks about Bloomberg News' response to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's letter to four senior lawmakers yesterday that said recent news articles about the central bank's emergency lending programs contained "egregious errors." Winkler speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg) Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It?s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form. To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled ?1a Fed Data Roadmap.? The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history. ?Scholars can now examine the data and continue the analysis of the Fed?s crisis management,? said Allan H. Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the author of three books on the history of the U.S. central bank. The data reflect lending from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the discount window and single-tranche open market operations, or ST OMO. Bloomberg News obtained information about the discount window and ST OMO through the Freedom of Information Act. While the Fed initially rejected a request for discount-window information, Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, filed a federal lawsuit to force disclosure and won in the lower courts. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to intervene in the case, and the Fed released more than 29,000 pages of transaction data. Additional Data The Fed later supplied additional data to fill in gaps in its initial response. Bloomberg News is updating an interactive graphic it first published in August to add the new information. Congress required the Fed to post data to its website in December 2010 on six broad-based programs, its assistance to Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. (AIG) and more general information on its mortgage-backed securities purchases and so-called foreign-currency liquidity swaps. Those data were presented in spreadsheets that made it difficult to gauge how much individual banks were borrowing from the various programs on any given day. Some reported totals from media outlets and government studies varied widely. In connection with today?s release, here?s a by-the-numbers explanation of the variations: $1.2 trillion -- The Fed?s actual lending to banks and financial companies at its single-day peak, Dec. 5, 2008, through the seven programs Bloomberg News studied in depth. Emergency measures that targeted specific companies -- Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. -- were excluded from Bloomberg?s analysis because they were previously disclosed. Loans to these companies from the other seven programs were included. Bloomberg excluded foreign-currency liquidity swaps because names of commercial banks that borrowed under the program haven?t been disclosed to the public. $1.5 trillion -- The Fed?s own number to represent its peak lending. This amount included the foreign-currency liquidity swaps, according to the Fed website. Under the swap lines, the Fed lends dollars to foreign central banks, which in turn lend the money to local banks. Only the names of central banks involved in the transactions have been made public. The Fed?s tally of peak lending differed from Bloomberg?s in other ways, too. It included the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, which Bloomberg excluded. That program?s borrowers were investors rather than banks. Also, the Fed didn?t include ST OMO. Bloomberg did, based on a March 7, 2008, news release in which Fed officials said they would use the program ?to address heightened liquidity pressures in term funding markets.? $7.77 trillion -- The amount the Fed pledged to rescue the financial industry, according to Bloomberg research that examined announced, implied or actual upper limits on lending and guarantees. This number, which represents potential commitments, not money out the door, was first published in March 2009, when it peaked. ?One of the keys to understanding why we?ve avoided another Great Depression, so far, is to see how bold the Fed was in 2008 and 2009,? said Niall Ferguson, a Harvard University history professor. ?That boldness consisted of a range of contingency commitments that backstopped the banking system. Just because they weren?t used doesn?t mean they weren?t important.? After Bloomberg included the $7.77 trillion figure in a Nov. 28, 2011, story, some media outlets mischaracterized it as the Fed?s actual lending. The Fed, in a Dec. 6 memo accompanying a letter Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke wrote to lawmakers, called those mischaracterizations ?wildly inaccurate.? $6.8 trillion -- The potential amount the Fed might have lent if ?all eligible program applicants request assistance at once to the maximum permitted under the program guidelines,? according to a July 21, 2009, report by the Treasury Department?s Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In that report, the officials monitoring the Treasury Department?s $700 billion bailout fund attempted to determine the Fed?s ?total potential support? related to the financial crisis. Most of the difference between the TARP watchdog?s tally and Bloomberg?s involves one program, TALF. The inspector general attributed its $900 billion capacity to the Treasury, which was guaranteeing some of its lending. Bloomberg grouped TALF with the Fed, which created the program. $16 trillion -- The ?total transaction amounts? for Fed lending included in a July 21, 2011, study by the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan investigative agency that reports to Congress. The Fed?s Dec. 6 memo said it was inaccurate to describe that amount as the total of its lending and guarantees, as some websites did. The method the GAO used to produce that total differed from Bloomberg?s approach. Bloomberg built spreadsheets to show each borrower?s daily amounts outstanding, and then found the day on which those amounts peaked. The GAO tallied all cumulative loans to arrive at $16 trillion. Its report noted that the total didn?t reflect how loans? terms varied under different Fed programs. If a bank borrowed $1 billion overnight for 100 nights, Bloomberg?s analysis would show that the bank had a $1 billion balance at the Fed for 100 days; the GAO method that produced the $16 trillion total would sum up those transactions to $100 billion, even though the bank never owed more than 1 percent of that total. $1.14 trillion -- A different total for Fed lending that the GAO included in the same July 21, 2011, report. The calculation is similar to, not the same as, Bloomberg?s method of arriving at its peak lending figure. The GAO accounted for differences in loan terms by multiplying each loan amount by the number of days the loan was outstanding and then dividing by the number of days in a year. Bloomberg?s figure represents peak lending on a single day. $13 billion -- An estimate of the income that 190 banks could have made from investing the Fed loans they took. To arrive at the figure, Bloomberg found the banks? tax-adjusted net interest margin -- that is, the difference between what they earn on loans and investments and what they pay in borrowing expenses. Such data was available for 190 of the 407 borrowers. That information is included in today?s release. In those cases, Bloomberg multiplied each bank?s net interest margin by its average Fed debt during reporting periods in which they took emergency loans. In that calculation, Bloomberg excluded loans from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility because that cash was passed along to money-market funds. Penalty Rates In its memo, the Fed said it was incorrect to write, as Bloomberg did, that banks ?reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed?s below-market rates.? ?Most of the Federal Reserve?s lending facilities were priced at a penalty over normal market rates so that borrowers had economic incentives to exit the facilities as market conditions normalized, and the rates that the Federal Reserve charged on its lending programs did not provide a subsidy to borrowers,? the Fed said. An October 2008 report by Daniel Thornton, a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said the primary credit rate, which is paid by most borrowers from the Fed?s discount window, had been ?consistently lower? than the certificate of deposit and Eurodollar rates since March 2008. ?Generally Low? Rates that banks paid at the Term Auction Facility, a lending program created in December 2007 to augment the discount window, ?have generally been low relative to rates that depository institutions would have had to pay otherwise,? Thornton said in the report. David Skidmore, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on whether Fed programs provided a subsidy relative to actual market rates during the crisis. Bloomberg?s income-estimate method isn?t perfect. It assumes that the banks used their Fed loans in the same way they did their other capital, for example. Still, in the absence of precise data, the approach provides an indication of banks? income from their Fed loans. ?The net interest margin is an effective way of getting at the benefits that these large banks received from the Fed,? said Gerald A. Hanweck, a former Fed economist who?s now a finance professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. To contact the reporters on this story: Phil Kuntz in New York at pkuntz1 at bloomberg.net; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry at bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka at bloomberg.net. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 10:43:13 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:43:13 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GAO can't give opinion on USG financial status (again) Message-ID: <1FEE2F37-23B6-4F20-8276-FAB214A14B38@infowarrior.org> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:24:13 -0500 From: GAO Webmaster Subject: GAO Review of U.S. Government's 2011 Financial Report PRESS RELEASE SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND FISCAL CHALLENGES REFLECTED IN U.S. GOVERNMENT'S 2011 FINANCIAL REPORT WASHINGTON (December 23, 2011) - The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) cannot render an opinion on the 2011 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations. As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government's inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government's ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements. While the vast majority of the 24 CFO Act Agencies received unqualified opinions, DOD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have consistently been unable to receive such audit opinions. Efforts are underway at both agencies to address this situation. At DOD, following years of unsuccessful financial improvement efforts, the Comptroller established the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness Directorate to develop, manage, and implement a strategic approach for addressing weaknesses and for achieving auditability. DHS was able to attain a qualified audit opinion on its fiscal year 2011 Balance Sheet and Statement of Custodial Activity for the first time since 2003. "This is a significant achievement for DHS," said Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO. Dodaro added, "But even though progress has been made, our report illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management." Treasury is undertaking both short-term and long-term initiatives to improve intragovernmental imbalances. Resolving this problem will also require a strong and sustained commitment by federal entities. In addition, GAO was unable to render an opinion on the 2011 Statement of Social Insurance and the 2011 Statement of Changes in Social Insurance Amounts because of significant uncertainties, primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth. The consolidated financial statements discuss these uncertainties, which relate to reductions in physician payment rates and to productivity improvements, and provide an alternative projection to illustrate the uncertainties. Dodaro also cited material weaknesses involving an estimated $115.3 billion in improper payments, information security across government, and tax collection activities. "The comprehensive fiscal projections presented in the 2011 Financial Report show that - absent policy changes - the federal government continues to face an unsustainable long-term fiscal path," Dodaro said. "While the Budget Control Act of 2011 improved the outlook, it did not fundamentally change the longer-term path over the next few decades. Dealing with the federal government's longer-term fiscal challenges will require sustained attention and difficult decisions. These fiscal challenges further highlight the need for the Congress, the administration, and federal managers to have reliable and complete financial and performance information both for individual federal entities and for the federal government as a whole." Dodaro also commended the commitment and professionalism of the Inspectors General across government who are responsible for auditing the annual financial statements of individual federal entities each year. The fiscal year 2011 Financial Report of the United States Government, which includes financial information from the 24 major federal departments and agencies along with GAO's audit report, is being released today by the Treasury Department. The report is also available on GAO's web site at (http://www.gao.gov/financial.html). For more information, contact GAO's Office of Public Affairs, at (202) 512-4800. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 13:47:55 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:47:55 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GoDaddy No Longer Supports SOPA Message-ID: (Bravo, netroots protests! -- rick) GoDaddy No Longer Supports SOPA http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378&isc=smtwsup Press Release: GO DADDY NO LONGER SUPPORTS SOPA Looks to Internet Community & Fellow Tech Leaders to Develop Legislation We All Support SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) ? Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the ?Stop Online Piracy Act? currently working its way through U.S. Congress. ?Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation ? but we can clearly do better,? Warren Adelman, Go Daddy?s newly appointed CEO, said. ?It?s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.? Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech. ?As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy,? said Adelman. In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support. ?Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future,? Jones said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 13:54:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:54:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Law Firms Removing Their Name From SOPA Supporters' List; SOPA 'Support' Crumbling Message-ID: Law Firms Removing Their Name From SOPA Supporters' List; SOPA 'Support' Crumbling from the well-look-at-that dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml So we were just discussing how a bunch of companies who were listed by the US Chamber of Commerce as SOPA/PIPA supporters are demanding to be taken off the list, noting that, while they had agreed to a generic statement about fighting the sale of counterfeit goods, they don't support crazy broad legislation like SOPA/PIPA. It seems that others listed as "supporting" SOPA are scrambling to get off the list as well. The Judiciary Committee's official list had included a bunch of big name law firms as being in support of the law as well -- which is a little strange, since law firms usually don't take official positions on things like this. They may express opinions on such matters on behalf of clients, but outright supporting legislation is a different ballgame altogether. A group of lawyers (most of whom have a long history of working with the entertainment industry) did send a letter to the Judiciary Committee to say that they agreed with Floyd Abrams' analysis of SOPA. That's it. They didn't say their firms supported SOPA -- and, in fact, there's an asterisk with the signatures noting that the names of their firms are solely for identification purposes. Yet the Judiciary Committee took those names anyway and put them on the supporters list. Expressing a legal opinion on a bill is extraordinarily different from supporting the bill. But the Judiciary Committee ignored that and listed them as supporters anyway. From what we've heard, many of those law firms are not happy, and have been demanding removal from the Judiciary Committee's official list. Among those who have already complained/been taken off the official list are Morrison & Foerster, Davis Wright Tremaine, Irell & Manella, Covington & Burling. I would hope that the Judiciary Committee removes all the names and issues a rather public apology for blatantly including the names of firms who clearly made no statement in support of the proposed legislation. This is a pretty egregious move on the part of House Judiciary Committee staff. They're so eager to list supporters that they've been naming firms who do not support the bills. And then they've been using those claims to pretend there's widespread support... So, between the US Chamber of Commerce stretching what many companies thought they were supporting and pretending it meant support for SOPA/PIPA, and the Judiciary Committee's over-eagerness to assume that a legal analysis of one part of the bill by a few lawyers meant their huge law firms supported the bill... it's looking like the facade of widespread corporate support for SOPA is crumbling pretty quickly... --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 23 13:56:08 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:56:08 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Gibson Guitar & Others On SOPA Supporters List Say They Never Supported The Bill Message-ID: Gibson Guitar & Others On SOPA Supporters List Say They Never Supported The Bill from the well,-look-at-that dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111222/16384317175/gibson-guitar-others-sopa-supporters-list-say-they-never-supported-bill.shtml I mentioned that we'd been hearing reports that some of the companies named on "the list" companies that are in favor of SOPA were surprised about this and wanted off the list. Gibson Guitar -- which has been dealing with its own ridiculous situation concerning the feds seizing property without a clear legal basis -- is now saying that it does not support SOPA, and has been asked to be removed from the list of supporters. It sounds as if the company doesn't know how it got on the list: < - > Hey guys - Gibson does NOT support this legislation. Gibson's CEO has demanded that Gibson be removed from the list of company's supporting SOPA. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet! < - > For what it's worth, it looks like Gibson's "support" came from a letter sent by the US Chamber of Commerce in support of the general concept of PROTECT IP and SOPA, not directly about SOPA itself. It seems like this is a risk of just agreeing to sign on to something that the US Chamber of Commerce passes around without fully understanding the details or how it is to be used. Gibson is not alone. Jim D'Addario from D?Addario & Company responded to a tweet by also saying that the company has not supported SOPA (though, he claims it might support a similar bill if it didn't have free speech implications). So how did this happen? Well, Petzl provides some of the details. It's another company found on the US CoC's letter in support of SOPA/PIPA, but it has put out a detailed blog post of how the US Chamber of Commerce is being misleading here. The company says that it did agree to sign a US CoC letter in support of "government action against intellectual property theft via rogue websites," but that the letter they saw did not bring up any specific legislation. Thus, it says it's supportive of legislation to deal with counterfeiting, but not the approach taken in SOPA/PIPA: < - > To reiterate, Petzl America has not and does not support SOPA or the Protect IP Act. Nor do we support any legislation that would harm the freedom of the Internet. We are strongly against counterfeiting, especially, as in the case of counterfeited Petzl products, where the safety of the end user is concerned. By extension, we are for legislation that would help reduce the theft of intellectual property, production of counterfeit goods, and knowing sale of counterfeit goods. However, we believe that SOPA and Protect IP do not address these concerns in a constructive manner. < - > The issue here, yet again, appears to be one where the US Chamber of Commerce plays fast and loose with the truth, in order to exaggerate the real situation. These companies expressed interest in the general concept of dealing with counterfeit goods sold online. The US CoC then used that support to pretend that all of these companies supported a sweepingly broad set of bills that went way, way, way beyond just dealing with the narrow issue of counterfeit physical goods. We've talked repeatedly about how ridiculous it is that supporters of SOPA/PIPA conflate physical counterfeiting with digital copyright infringement. The two are quite different in many, many ways. And here's a case where it's coming back to bite the supporters, as plenty of companies who would support a narrow action against a specific problem, are being used by the US CoC, who pretends they support broad, overreaching laws that touch on issues totally unrelated to the specific issue these companies wanted to discuss. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 08:38:24 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:38:24 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Myth That SOPA & PIPA Will Stop Infringement By 'Educating' The Public Message-ID: <19E60935-A98A-40F0-8A1F-0649F4F5CFA6@infowarrior.org> The Myth That SOPA & PIPA Will Stop Infringement By 'Educating' The Public from the educating-them-how-to-avoid-domestic-DNS dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/04083317141/myth-that-sopa-pipa-will-stop-infringement-educating-public.shtml One of the key arguments we've heard about SOPA and PIPA in defending the fact that dedicated infringers will always find their way around the blocks to continue infringing, is that it's really intended as an "educational" mechanism, based on the assumption that people going to certain "rogue sites" don't know they're rogue -- but with a big DOJ banner, perhaps they'll be educated. This has never made much sense, frankly. The entertainment industry has been betting its legacy business model for quite some time on the myth that all it takes is a little "education" to fix things. Multiple studies have shown that nothing is further from the truth. People who infringe know they're infringing. And they still do it. Education won't make a lick of difference. DNS expert Paul Vixie is debunking this myth even further, by separating people into two groups: intended infringers (those who know what they're doing breaks the law, but are still going to do it) and "unintented infringers" who don't realize they're breaking the law. As he notes, SOPA/PIPA are completely useless against the intended infringers, since they'll always find easy ways around the blocks. So what about the unintended infringers? Well, he points to a recent study of college students, about their views on following internet policies. And the short summary is that they all break the policies anyway, for a variety of reasons -- with a big reason being that, even if it's against "policy" they just don't believe they're really doing anything wrong. As Vixie notes, "from a high level policy perspective... we really can put "unintended infringer" into the "myth" category." Kids aren't lacking in education or morals or anything like that. They just don't see what's so wrong about accessing what the technology allows access to. If the industry hadn't wasted so many years and so much money on legal tricks and lobbying for stricter copyright laws, and instead invested that money and effort into providing better legitimate and licensed services, those kids would have gladly jumped to those offerings. But the industry decided to go in the other direction... --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 08:41:09 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:41:09 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Crowdsourced List of SOPA Supporters Message-ID: Crowdsourced List of SOPA Supporters https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmGJz_37ojoqdFZhYlBhN2hQOGRoN2R0ZGh3VDZlblE&pli=1#gid=0 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 09:20:49 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:20:49 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Crowd dynamics Message-ID: <466EC34E-5F0B-4542-8DE2-F16EB2152DF1@infowarrior.org> Crowd dynamics The wisdom of crowds The strange but extremely valuable science of how pedestrians behave Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition http://www.economist.com/node/21541709/print IMAGINE that you are French. You are walking along a busy pavement in Paris and another pedestrian is approaching from the opposite direction. A collision will occur unless you each move out of the other?s way. Which way do you step? The answer is almost certainly to the right. Replay the same scene in many parts of Asia, however, and you would probably move to the left. It is not obvious why. There is no instruction to head in a specific direction (South Korea, where there is a campaign to get people to walk on the right, is an exception). There is no simple correlation with the side of the road on which people drive: Londoners funnel to the right on pavements, for example. Instead, says Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other?s intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it?s right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority. That is at odds with most people?s idea of being a pedestrian. More than any other way of getting around?such as being crushed into a train or stuck in a traffic jam?walking appears to offer freedom of choice. Reality is more complicated. Whether stepping aside to avoid a collision, following the person in front through a crowd or navigating busy streets, pedestrians are autonomous yet constrained by others. They are both highly mobile and very predictable. ?These are particles with a will,? says Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich, a technology-focused university. Messrs Helbing and Moussaid are at the cutting edge of a youngish field: understanding and modelling how pedestrians behave. Its purpose is not mere curiosity. Understanding pedestrian flows makes crowd events safer: knowing about the propensity of different nationalities to step in different directions could, for instance, matter to organisers of an event such as a football World Cup, where fans from various countries mingle. The odds of collisions go up if they do not share a reflex to move to one side. In a packed crowd, that could slow down lots of people. In 1995 Mr Helbing and Peter Molnar, both physicists, came up with a ?social force? computer model that used insights from the way that particles in fluids and gases behave to describe pedestrian movement. The model assumed that people are attracted by some things, such as the destination they are heading for, and repelled by others, such as another pedestrian in their path. It proved its worth by predicting several self-organising effects among crowds that are visible in real life. One is the propensity of dense crowds spontaneously to break into lanes that allow people to move more efficiently in opposing directions. Individuals do not have to negotiate their way through a series of encounters with oncoming people; they can just follow the person in front. That works better than trying to overtake. Research by Mr Moussaid suggests that the effect of one person trying to walk faster than the people around them in a dense crowd is to force an opposing lane of pedestrians to split in two, which has the effect of breaking up the lane next door, and so on. Everyone moves slower as a result. Up close and personal Another self-organising behaviour comes when opposing flows of people meet at a single intersection: think of parents trying to shepherd their children into school as other parents, their sprogs already dropped off, try to leave. As people stream through in one direction, the pressure on their side of the intersection drops. That gives those waiting on the other side more opportunity to go through, until pressure on their side is relieved. The result is a series of alternating bursts of traffic through the gates. This oscillation in flows is clever enough to have got Mr Helbing wondering about its application to cars. Traffic-light systems currently operate on fixed cycles, with lights staying green on the basis of past traffic patterns. If those patterns are not repeated, drivers are left to idle their engines for too long at red signals, raising emissions and tempers. Mr Helbing thinks it is better to have decentralised, local systems, which?like parents at the school gates?can respond to a build-up of traffic and keep the lights on green for longer if need be. City authorities agree: Mr Helbing?s ideas will soon be implemented in Dresden and Zurich. Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. An experiment in 2009 tested the walking speeds of Germans and Indians by getting volunteers in each country to walk in single file around an elliptical, makeshift corridor of ropes and chairs. At low densities the speeds of each nationality are similar; but once the numbers increase, Indians walk faster than Germans. This won?t be news to anyone familiar with Munich and Mumbai, but Indians are just less bothered about bumping into other people. Another problem with assuming people act like particles is that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually in groups. That matters, as anyone trying to get past shuffling tourists knows. It also leads to some lovely fine-scale choreography when small groups are squeezed. Observations of pavement crowds in Toulouse in France show that clusters of three and four people naturally organise themselves into concave ?V? and ?U? shapes, with middle members falling back slightly. If a group of three people cared about moving quickly, they would behave like geese and form a convex ?V?, with the middle member slightly in front to forge a path. Instead, they adopt a formation that enables them to keep communicating with each other; talking trumps walking. Mr Moussaid?s solution to such complexity has been to build a model based less on the analogy between humans and particles and more on cognitive science. Agents in this new model are allowed to ?see? what?s in front of them; they then try to carve a free path through the masses to get to their destination. This approach produces the same effects of lane-formation in crowds as the physics-based models, but with some added advantages. In particular, boffins think it could help make emergency evacuations safer. Simulating evacuations is a big part of what pedestrian modellers do?the King?s Cross underground fire in London in 1987 gave the field one of its starting shoves. One big danger in an emergency is that people will follow the crowd and all herd towards a single exit. That in turn means that the crowd may jam as too many people try to force their way through a single doorway. The physics-based models do have an answer to this problem of ?arching? (so called for the shape of the crowd that builds up around the exit). Their simulations suggest the flow of pedestrians through a narrow doorway can be smoothed by plonking an obstacle such as a pillar just in front of the exit. In theory, that should have the effect of splitting people into more efficient lanes. In practice, however, the idea of putting a barrier in front of an emergency exit is too counter-intuitive for planners to have tried. The cognitive-science model offers a more palatable option, that of experimenting with the effects of changes in people?s visual fields. Mr Moussaid speculates that adaptable lighting systems, which use darkness to repel people and light to attract them, could be used to direct them in emergencies, for example. Where the cognitive approach falls down is in the most packed environments. ?At low densities, behaviour is cognitive and strategic,? says Mr Moussaid. ?At high density, it?s about mass movement and physical pressures.? At a certain point crowds can shift from a controlled flow to a stop-and-go pattern, as people are forced to shorten their stride length and occasionally halt to avoid collisions. This kind of movement can develop into something much more frightening, known as crowd turbulence, when people can no longer keep a space between themselves and others. The physical forces that are imparted from one body to another when that happens are both chaotic and powerful: if someone falls over, others will be unable to avoid them. Science meets religion Working out precisely how and when these transitions happen is tough. Bringing a real-life situation under control once a stop-and-go pattern has started is equally hard. So the trick is to ensure that serious crowding is avoided in the first place. From big events such as the London Olympics to the design of new railway stations, engineering firms now routinely simulate the movement of people to try to spot areas where crowding is likely to occur. A typical project involves using off-the-shelf software programs to identify potential bottlenecks in a particular environment, such as a stadium or a Tube station. These models specify the entry and exit points at a location and then use ?routing algorithms? that send people to their destinations. Even a one-off event like the Olympics has plenty of data on pedestrian movement to draw on, from past games to other set-piece gatherings such as, say, city-centre carnivals, which enable some basic assumptions about how people will flow. Once potential points of congestion are identified, more sophisticated models can then be used to go down to a finer level of detail. This second stage allows planners to change architectural designs for new locations and identify when to intervene in existing ones. ?There should be many fewer crowd disasters given what we now know and can simulate,? says Mr Helbing. The biggest test possible of these tools and techniques is the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia that Muslims are expected to carry out at least once in their lives if they can. With as many as 3m pilgrims making the journey each year, the haj has a long history of crowd stampedes and deaths. Indeed, video footage of a haj stampede is used by lots of modellers to validate their simulations of crowd turbulence. The Saudi authorities have brought in consultants in recent years, focusing in particular on the layout of the Jamarat Bridge, where pilgrims perform a ritual in which they throw stones at three pillars. By making the crossing one-way, and changing the shape of the pillars so that people can stone them from a number of locations, they have improved the bridge?s safety. But according to Paul Townsend of Crowd Dynamics, a consultancy that has worked on the pilgrimage, the risks remain significant. He thinks that the use of gates that could be opened and shut would help to manage the flow. Yet the haj presents some very specific difficulties beyond its sheer scale. Part of the problem is not having a clear idea of how many pilgrims will turn up, which makes planning difficult. Another issue is the nature of the crowd. ?Pilgrims on the haj have the attitude that, if I die there it is God?s will,? says Mr Townsend. ?There is a willingness to get more and more dense in the space.? Scientists can model many aspects of pedestrian behaviour, but religious fervour is a step too far. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 09:23:43 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:23:43 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Social media in the 16th Century Message-ID: <43B0182C-672D-495B-BD5F-44FDA9200E70@infowarrior.org> Social media in the 16th Century How Luther went viral Five centuries before Facebook and the Arab spring, social media helped bring about the Reformation Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition http://www.economist.com/node/21541719/print IT IS a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters? message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed. That?s what happened in the Arab spring. It?s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day?pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts?and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform. Scholars have long debated the relative importance of printed media, oral transmission and images in rallying popular support for the Reformation. Some have championed the central role of printing, a relatively new technology at the time. Opponents of this view emphasise the importance of preaching and other forms of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the role of media as a means of social signalling and co-ordinating public opinion in the Reformation. Now the internet offers a new perspective on this long-running debate, namely that the important factor was not the printing press itself (which had been around since the 1450s), but the wider system of media sharing along social networks?what is called ?social media? today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries, grasped the dynamics of this new media environment very quickly, and saw how it could spread his message. New post from Martin Luther The start of the Reformation is usually dated to Luther?s nailing of his ?95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences? to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31st 1517. The ?95 Theses? were propositions written in Latin that he wished to discuss, in the academic custom of the day, in an open debate at the university. Luther, then an obscure theologian and minister, was outraged by the behaviour of Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who was selling indulgences to raise money to fund the pet project of his boss, Pope Leo X: the reconstruction of St Peter?s Basilica in Rome. Hand over your money, went Tetzel?s sales pitch, and you can ensure that your dead relatives are not stuck in purgatory. This crude commercialisation of the doctrine of indulgences, encapsulated in Tetzel?s slogan??As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, so the soul from purgatory springs??was, to Luther, ?the pious defrauding of the faithful? and a glaring symptom of the need for broad reform. Pinning a list of propositions to the church door, which doubled as the university notice board, was a standard way to announce a public debate. Although they were written in Latin, the ?95 Theses? caused an immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther?s friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and quickly spread throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther?s friend Friedrich Myconius later wrote that ?hardly 14 days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.? The unintentional but rapid spread of the ?95 Theses? alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. ?They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,? he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he ?should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.? For the publication later that month of his ?Sermon on Indulgences and Grace?, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation. Mubarak and Leo X, the anciens r?gimes The media environment that Luther had shown himself so adept at managing had much in common with today?s online ecosystem of blogs, social networks and discussion threads. It was a decentralised system whose participants took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to participants in such systems as a ?networked public?, rather than an ?audience?, since they do more than just consume information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to a friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to ripple through the network of printing centres across Germany. Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther?s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author?s involvement. As with ?Likes? and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a given item?s popularity. Luther?s pamphlets were the most sought after; a contemporary remarked that they ?were not so much sold as seized?. His first pamphlet written in German, the ?Sermon on Indulgences and Grace?, was reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were editions of a few dozen works by Luther. In all, some 6m-7m pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the Reformation, more than a quarter of them Luther?s. Although Luther was the most prolific and popular author, there were many others on both sides of the debate. Tetzel, the indulgence-seller, was one of the first to respond to him in print, firing back with his own collection of theses. Others embraced the new pamphlet format to weigh in on the merits of Luther?s arguments, both for and against, like argumentative bloggers. Sylvester Mazzolini defended the pope against Luther in his ?Dialogue Against the Presumptuous Theses of Martin Luther?. He called Luther ?a leper with a brain of brass and a nose of iron? and dismissed his arguments on the basis of papal infallibility. Luther, who refused to let any challenge go unanswered, took a mere two days to produce his own pamphlet in response, giving as good as he got. ?I am sorry now that I despised Tetzel,? he wrote. ?Ridiculous as he was, he was more acute than you. You cite no scripture. You give no reasons.? Being able to follow and discuss such back-and-forth exchanges of views, in which each author quoted his opponent?s words in order to dispute them, gave people a thrilling and unprecedented sense of participation in a vast, distributed debate. Arguments in their own social circles about the merits of Luther?s views could be seen as part of a far wider discourse, both spoken and printed. Many pamphlets called upon the reader to discuss their contents with others and read them aloud to the illiterate. People read and discussed pamphlets at home with their families, in groups with their friends, and in inns and taverns. Luther?s pamphlets were read out at spinning bees in Saxony and in bakeries in Tyrol. In some cases entire guilds of weavers or leather-workers in particular towns declared themselves supporters of the Reformation, indicating that Luther?s ideas were being propagated in the workplace. One observer remarked in 1523 that better sermons could be heard in the inns of Ulm than in its churches, and in Basel in 1524 there were complaints about people preaching from books and pamphlets in the town?s taverns. Contributors to the debate ranged from the English king Henry VIII, whose treatise attacking Luther (co-written with Thomas More) earned him the title ?Defender of the Faith? from the pope, to Hans Sachs, a shoemaker from Nuremberg who wrote a series of hugely popular songs in support of Luther. A multimedia campaign It was not just words that travelled along the social networks of the Reformation era, but music and images too. The news ballad, like the pamphlet, was a relatively new form of media. It set a poetic and often exaggerated description of contemporary events to a familiar tune so that it could be easily learned, sung and taught to others. News ballads were often ?contrafacta? that deliberately mashed up a pious melody with secular or even profane lyrics. They were distributed in the form of printed lyric sheets, with a note to indicate which tune they should be sung to. Once learned they could spread even among the illiterate through the practice of communal singing. Both reformers and Catholics used this new form to spread information and attack their enemies. ?We are Starting to Sing a New Song?, Luther?s first venture into the news-ballad genre, told the story of two monks who had been executed in Brussels in 1523 after refusing to recant their Lutheran beliefs. Luther?s enemies denounced him as the Antichrist in song, while his supporters did the same for the pope and insulted Catholic theologians (?Goat, desist with your bleating?, one of them was admonished). Luther himself is thought to have been the author of ?Now We Drive Out the Pope?, a parody of a folk song called ?Now We Drive Out Winter?, whose tune it borrowed: ? Now we drive out the pope ? from Christ?s church and God?s house. ? Therein he has reigned in a deadly fashion ? and has seduced uncountably many souls. ? Now move along, you damned son, ? you Whore of Babylon. You are the abomination and the Antichrist, ? full of lies, death and cunning. Woodcuts were another form of propaganda. The combination of bold graphics with a smattering of text, printed as a broadsheet, could convey messages to the illiterate or semi-literate and serve as a visual aid for preachers. Luther remarked that ?without images we can neither think nor understand anything.? Some religious woodcuts were elaborate, with complex allusions and layers of meaning that would only have been apparent to the well-educated. ?Passional Christi und Antichristi?, for example, was a series of images contrasting the piety of Christ with the decadence and corruption of the pope. Some were astonishingly crude and graphic, such as ?The Origin of the Monks? (see picture), showing three devils excreting a pile of monks. The best of them were produced by Luther?s friend Lucas Cranach. Luther?s opponents responded with woodcuts of their own: ?Luther?s Game of Heresy? (see beginning of this article) depicts him boiling up a stew with the help of three devils, producing fumes from the pot labelled falsehood, pride, envy, heresy and so forth. Amid the barrage of pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts, public opinion was clearly moving in Luther?s favour. ?Idle chatter and inappropriate books? were corrupting the people, fretted one bishop. ?Daily there is a veritable downpour of Lutheran tracts in German and Latin?nothing is sold here except the tracts of Luther,? lamented Aleander, Leo X?s envoy to Germany, in 1521. Most of the 60 or so clerics who rallied to the pope?s defence did so in academic and impenetrable Latin, the traditional language of theology, rather than in German. Where Luther?s works spread like wildfire, their pamphlets fizzled. Attempts at censorship failed, too. Printers in Leipzig were banned from publishing or selling anything by Luther or his allies, but material printed elsewhere still flowed into the city. The city council complained to the Duke of Saxony that printers faced losing ?house, home, and all their livelihood? because ?that which one would gladly sell, and for which there is demand, they are not allowed to have or sell.? What they had was lots of Catholic pamphlets, ?but what they have in over-abundance is desired by no one and cannot even be given away.? Luther?s enemies likened the spread of his ideas to a sickness. The papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication in 1520 said its aim was ?to cut off the advance of this plague and cancerous disease so it will not spread any further?. The Edict of Worms in 1521 warned that the spread of Luther?s message had to be prevented, otherwise ?the whole German nation, and later all other nations, will be infected by this same disorder.? But it was too late?the infection had taken hold in Germany and beyond. To use the modern idiom, Luther?s message had gone viral. From Wittenberg to Facebook In the early years of the Reformation expressing support for Luther?s views, through preaching, recommending a pamphlet or singing a news ballad directed at the pope, was dangerous. By stamping out isolated outbreaks of opposition swiftly, autocratic regimes discourage their opponents from speaking out and linking up. A collective-action problem thus arises when people are dissatisfied, but are unsure how widely their dissatisfaction is shared, as Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, has observed in connection with the Arab spring. The dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, she argues, survived for as long as they did because although many people deeply disliked those regimes, they could not be sure others felt the same way. Amid the outbreaks of unrest in early 2011, however, social-media websites enabled lots of people to signal their preferences en masse to their peers very quickly, in an ?informational cascade? that created momentum for further action. Where monks came from, in the Lutherans? view The same thing happened in the Reformation. The surge in the popularity of pamphlets in 1523-24, the vast majority of them in favour of reform, served as a collective signalling mechanism. As Andrew Pettegree, an expert on the Reformation at St Andrew?s University, puts it in ?Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion?, ?It was the superabundance, the cascade of titles, that created the impression of an overwhelming tide, an unstoppable movement of opinion?Pamphlets and their purchasers had together created the impression of irresistible force.? Although Luther had been declared a heretic in 1521, and owning or reading his works was banned by the church, the extent of local political and popular support for Luther meant he escaped execution and the Reformation became established in much of Germany. Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France, argues that ?the marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past?even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet.? Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution. Today?s social-media systems do not just connect us to each other: they also link us to the past. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 16:39:05 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:39:05 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NORAD Santa Message-ID: <5AAC6902-B3A4-40AF-A92B-8BC14B3E2814@infowarrior.org> (I think this is a neat tradition for the kids, and the volunteer effort going into this each year is always nice to see. -- rick) Santa tracker news flash: Santa's sleigh spotted at top of world December 24, 2011 | 11:43 am http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/santa-tracker-spots-santas-sleigh.html The Santa tracker makes it official, boys and girls: Santa Claus is coming to town. NORAD's Santa-tracking operation says that Santa One, Santa's reindeer-powered sleigh, has been spotted at the top of the world. The sleigh easily scaled Mount Everest and then zoomed over the Taj Mahal in India, according to NORAD. Santa's route can't be predicted, NORAD says, but he usually arrives between 9 p.m. and midnight, traveling from east to west. For the most accurate, up-to-date information, boys and girls (and adults) can follow Santa One's journey online with the Santa Tracker at NORADsanta.org, while Mom and Dad enjoy some eggnog, spiked or otherwise. Now, kids, you may be wondering, "Who is this NORAD guy and how do I get his job when I grow up"? NORAD is actually a bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo. It's responsible for scanning the skies above North America, providing aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada. That role expanded to include "official tracker of Santa" -- an enviable gig indeed -- nearly 60 years ago. It started by accident: A department store ran an ad that included a phone number for kids who wanted to call Santa and remind him of his or her gift requests. But the phone number was wrong. When the first call rolled in to NORAD's hot line looking for "Santa," the then-director of operations, Col. Harry Shoup, thought it was a prank. But then another call came in. And another, and another. "The staff realized what was happening and started taking the phone calls," NORAD spokesman Lt. Commander Bill Lewis told the Los Angeles Times. "Ever since then, we have taken on the important responsibility of tracking Santa." "We track Santa live as he travels north to south, moving across the time zones as he moves across the globe," Lewis said. "Santa cams will capture him at various points flying over the city and delivering the gifts." Kids who want to call in to check on Santa's progress or to make a last few adjustments to their holiday list can call (877) Hi-NORAD (446-6723). More than 1,250 people -- you might call them Santa's elves -- come in on Christmas Eve and stay through early Christmas morning to help field calls. Kids, and grownups, can also keep up with NORAD's Santa tracker on Google +, Facebook and Twitter. And finally, there's this: Lewis says there's always a Grinch-y type who deserves a lump of coal for grousing about the government spending its time on the Santa tracker. He would like that person to know that partners, such as Google Earth, and the call takers all volunteer their time -- and they do it for free. "Tracking Santa really fits in to what we do, monitoring U.S. and Canadian airspace," he added. "We?re looking to the skies of Canada and the United States, so if Santa is flying around, it gives us the situational awareness that it?s him and it?s not a threat to the United States." Merry Christmas, everyone! --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 21:10:50 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:10:50 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - STRATFOR Hacked Message-ID: Among other things --was Stratfor's client list also disclosed? #antisec #lulzxmas http://pastebin.com/8MtFze0s < -- > (via Cryptome) Subject: Important Announcement from STRATFOR Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:49:58 -0500 From: STRATFOR Dear Stratfor Member, We have learned that Stratfor's web site was hacked by an unauthorized party. As a result of this incident the operation of Stratfor's servers and email have been suspended. We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posed on other web sites. We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained. Stratfor and I take this incident very seriously. Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me. We are working closely with law enforcement in their investigation and will assist them with the identification of the individual(s) who are responsible. Although we are still learning more and the law enforcement investigation is active and ongoing, we wanted to provide you with notice of this incident as quickly as possible. We will keep you updated regarding these matters. Sincerely, George Friedman STRATFOR 221 W. 6th Street, Suite 400 Austin, TX 78701 US www.stratfor.com --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 24 21:34:11 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:34:11 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Go Daddy loses over 37, 000 domains due to SOPA stance Message-ID: Go Daddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance December 24, 2011 | Tom Cheredar http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/24/godaddy-domain-loss/ Hosting and domain registrar company Go Daddy has lost more than 37,000 domains in the past two days due to the company?s wishy-washy stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act. The fleeing domains comes as a result of the intense backlash from customers and Internet critics after Go Daddy appeared on an official list of companies supporting SOPA. The internet responded by staging a wide-spread boycott where people would switch their domains to another registrar, which Go Daddy initially dismissed as having little impact on their business. Now it seems that assessment wasn?t entirely accurate. Although Go Daddy reversed their stance on SOPA, it wasn?t before 37,000 domains were transfer off of its service, according to information reported by The Domains. The report indicates that over 15,000 domains were transferred off Thursday and another 21,054 domains on Friday. If you factor in the $6.99 to $10.99 fees associated with each of those domain registrations, Go Daddy is losing a significant amount of money. Many on community link sharing site Reddit, which is where the boycotts were first organized, are skeptical that Go Daddy is really against SOPA. Citing reports from TechCrunch and Gizmodo, Reddit users point out that Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman is neither for or against SOPA ? a convenient position to take considering his company?s customer base is fleeing. While Adelman admits the bill needs work, he said the company isn?t beyond throwing support to another SOPA-like piece of legislation in the future. For anyone who?s still in the dark about the proposed legislation, SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. The implication of having the act pass is that it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For more information about the bill, check out this nifty infographic about what SOPA means for business and innovation. [Via TheNextWeb] --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 09:34:44 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:34:44 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Spies Fail to Escape Spyware in Bazaar for Cyber Arms Message-ID: <8E70BE6B-15ED-4DD9-8EF6-0F77BFB1A01B@infowarrior.org> Spies Fail to Escape Spyware in Bazaar for Cyber Arms By Vernon Silver - Dec 21, 2011 7:01 PM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/spies-fail-to-escape-spyware-in-5-billion-bazaar-for-cyber-arms.html The intelligence operative sits in a leather club chair, laptop open, one floor below the Hilton Kuala Lumpur?s convention rooms, scanning the airwaves for spies. In the salons above him, merchants of electronic interception demonstrate their gear to government agents who have descended on the Malaysian capital in early December for the Wiretapper?s Ball, as this surveillance industry trade show is called. As he tries to detect hacker threats lurking in the wireless networks, the man who helps manage a Southeast Asian country?s Internet security says there?s reason for paranoia. The wares on offer include products that secretly access your Web cam, turn your cell phone into a location-tracking device, recognize your voice, mine your e-mail for anti-government sentiment and listen to supposedly secure Skype calls. He isn?t alone watching his back at this cyber-arms bazaar, whose real name is ISS World. For three days, attendees digging into dim sum fret about losing trade secrets to hackers, or falling prey to phone interception by rival spies. They also get a tiny taste of what they?ve unleashed on the outside world, where their products have become weapons in the hands of regimes that use the gear to track and torture dissidents. ?I?m concerned about my calls or Internet being monitored, because that?s what they sell,? says Meling Mudin, 35, a Kuala Lumpur-based information-technology security consultant who takes defensive measures as he roams the exhibits. ?When I make phone calls, I step out of the hotel, I don?t use my computer and I also don?t use the wireless services provided.? ?We Meet Again? ISS, which convenes every few months in cities from Dubai to Brasilia, is the hub of the surveillance trade. In recent years, countries such as Syria, Iran and Tunisia bulked up their monitoring by turning to some of ISS?s corporate sponsors, such as Italy?s Area SpA and Germany?s Utimaco Safeware AG (USA) and Trovicor GmbH, a Bloomberg News investigation showed. Business is booming, with annual revenue of $3 billion to $5 billion growing as much as 20 percent a year, ISS organizer Jerry Lucas estimates. Lucas, 68, an American with a PhD in physics, is perfectly cast for the part of spyware convention mastermind. With sweeping eyebrows and a bare pate that make him a look-alike of Democratic strategist James Carville, he greets an uninvited journalist at his Prague event in June with, ?We?ve been expecting you.? On the second encounter, in Kuala Lumpur this month, he descends an escalator from the convention floor and intones: ?We meet again.? Warning Attendees Lucas, whose conference company TeleStrategies, Inc., is based in McLean, Virginia, makes the point that his marketplace serves police who conduct criminal investigations and intelligence services that prevent terror attacks. Virtually every communications network in the world includes wiretapping for prosecutors, or location tracking to rescue people in emergencies. And customers at ISS also include phone company executives. Still, Lucas describes Spy vs. Spy intrigue that emerges when he convenes ISS (short for Intelligence Support Systems). The potential for hacking has led him to warn attendees to comply with the law of host countries. ?We tell them, ?Do not bring in radio equipment that is not allowed by the government,?? says Lucas, who started ISS nine years ago. Some gear can intercept mobile-phone or Internet transmissions, impersonating legitimate networks by sitting in the middle of the data flow. ?These guys can be your base station,? Lucas says. ?Hide Your Laptop? Attendees routinely guard against hacking, says Nikhil Gyamlani, a Munich-based developer of monitoring systems who has attended several ISS events. He says being in close contact with competitors versed in the dark arts gives them a chance to secretly copy documents saved on hard drives or sent via e-mail. He advises preventive measures. ?Absolutely no use of wireless networks, and hide your laptop in a safe,? says Gyamlani, 34, the founder of a new surveillance company, GlassCube. ?The fear is very justified.? Some who haven?t taken such precautions have learned to be more careful. At ISS in Prague this year, an employee of an African telecommunications regulator was cruising Facebook on his Archos (JXR) tablet computer when he found his every click being projected on a screen at the front of the room, he recalled afterwards in the lobby. He?d been using the hotel?s wireless Internet. Watching The Detectives While ISS is closed to journalists, a Bloomberg News reporter dropped in on two 2011 installments, walking hotel corridors, sitting in bars and haunting lounges. In Prague, at a hotel connected to a shopping mall food court, potential buyers included Thailand?s Department of Special Investigation and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In the lobby, contingents from Greece and Turkey sat on opposite sides of the room. Many conventioneers carried black canvas tote bags from Utimaco, whose systems were used in a Syrian surveillance project that was exposed this year by Bloomberg News and shut down before it could become operational. Approaches by a journalist at ISS only triggered more paranoia among some executives. At a fourth-floor conference room rented by Trovicor in Prague, an employee, Jesper Mathiesen, not only declined to talk, but declined to trust the reporter?s business card as reliable identification. Rock Star ?Anyone can print a business card,? he said, as another employee led a delegation from Serbia into the room. In the Prague hotel?s elevators, an employee of Andover, U.K.-based Gamma International rode up and down, escorting government delegations to back-to-back, appointment-only demonstrations of Gamma?s FinFisher intrusion system, conducted in darkened rooms. Once secretly planted on a target?s computer, FinFisher allows remote control of the device. The tool became widely known early this year when a copy of a FinFisher proposal turned up in Egypt after the February revolution and was posted online. The notoriety helped make the German hacker-turned- executive behind FinFisher a rock star of the ISS circuit. Listed in the conference agendas only by his initials, MJM, he is Martin J. Muench, 30, the managing director of Gamma?s German unit. One of his talks in Kuala Lumpur is titled, ?Offensive IT Intelligence Information-Gathering Portfolio --An Operational Overview.? Saudi Arabia, India At this gathering of real-life James Bonds, Muench most resembles 007 himself, as played by Sean Connery: just over six feet tall, in a trim black suit and skinny black tie. Spotted at ISS this month, Muench declines to comment, while lighting a cigarette. For the Malaysia event, which has 871 invited attendees from 56 countries, the Hilton lobby hosts a parade of ISS?s various tribes and their telltale markings. Buyers from Saudi Arabia?s interior ministry, India?s cabinet secretariat and the 5-month-old state of South Sudan brandish yellow nametags that peg them as government officials. Vendors are identified by red tags. Employees of Munich-based Trovicor are easy to pick out: each is dressed identically, in a dark suit and a red necktie, which is custom made, marketing director Birgitt Fischer-Harrow says. Barring Syria ?It is a Trovicor corporate identity. The company colors are black, white and Pantone 202c red,? she says, referring to the precise shade of burgundy. Trovicor is a former intelligence unit of Siemens AG and Nokia Siemens Networks. The chain of companies supplied and maintained eavesdropping systems for Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia and other countries that have battled rebellions this year, a Bloomberg News investigation showed. Fischer-Harrow says the company can?t comment on contracts or clients. Lucas says he?s barred Syrian or Iranian government representatives from ISS. Still, that hasn?t stopped surveillance gear from reaching those countries, and the controversy has attracted crashers to ISS seeking to expose how the technology can be abused by repressive regimes. In an empty hotel restaurant after lunch, Eric King, the human rights and technology adviser at London-based Privacy International, is poring over conference presentations he?s obtained and tallying a growing list of suspicious technological glitches. When he tries to send an e-mail from his Apple Inc. laptop, he gets a message that his encryption won?t work. Seeking Hackers His paranoia builds as he also realizes that more secure 3G networks, used for phones and wireless Internet, are unavailable in the hotel. King, 22, jetlagged and wearing a wrinkled, blue button-down shirt, has a hypothesis: Someone has blocked the 3G to force everyone to use methods that would be easier to intercept. He consults the ISS program and finds a possible culprit, ?Live Demonstration of Tactical GSM Interrogation and Geo- Location System.? ?We?ve got to get us some hackers,? he says, eager to untangle what may be a nest of surveillance. A few hours later, King heads to Kuala Lumpur?s art deco Central Market to meet a Privacy International volunteer. Over a noodle dinner, she puts him in touch with a hacker who agrees to meet up the next day. Recruiting Spies Back at the hotel, the night is young and the paranoia is deep. Unlike typical trade shows, this one has no social events. No corporate-sponsored cocktail parties. No hospitality suites. Clients and suppliers don?t want to be seen with each other in public, and some countries bar their agents from mingling at the event because it?s a recruiting ground for spies seeking sources, organizer Lucas says. In some delegations, ?They?ll send four or five people and have one here just to watch the rest,? he says. At the Hilton?s wine bar, Vintage Bank, three men from Milan-based HackingTeam are talking among themselves, drinking from brandy snifters. Because HackingTeam sells programs that can spy on a computer?s contents and activities, maybe they know something about the 3G blackout. All three say that they, too, have noticed, and also suggest an interception effort may be afoot. In the morning, King?s hacker arrives at the Hilton lobby, toting a backpack filled with wireless Internet gear and wearing a black T-shirt. Intelligence Operative They set up shop on a coffee table. After an hour of performing many of the same tests the intelligence operative had done at the start of the convention, the network activity comes up clean. The hacker suggests the 3G problem might just be a spotty phone system. Later, ISS organizer Lucas says any drop in service may have been caused by heavy usage by convention-goers. Upstairs, the operative is back in the leather club chair, this time using an iPad. Asked if this isn?t risky, he says it?s just for browsing websites, not e-mail or anything involving passwords. And he?s got no files saved to it. Does he have e-mail access? He holds up a BlackBerry, and says he?s running nothing sensitive through it. Then he does a double-take. The screen saver is a photo of him and his wife. The bad guys could do face recognition, he says, looking at the picture. Kicking himself for the lapse, he walks off, the paranoia having got the best of him. -- Editors: Marcia Myers, Melissa Pozsgay To contact the reporter on this story: Vernon Silver in Rome at vtsilver at bloomberg.net; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 11:11:33 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:11:33 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Lieberman calls on Twitter to block Taliban Message-ID: <4F072E7B-981F-4D24-9CCF-0E58AC8C7304@infowarrior.org> (Yeah, good luck with that. At least you know where they are operating --- drive 'em off of twitter and the good guys have a harder time monitoring / engaging / collecting intel on them. Crazy Joe doesn't see the whole picture, just the simple view. As usual. -- rick) Congress calls on Twitter to block Taliban American congressmen are calling on Twitter to block Taliban propagandists from the micro-blogging site. By Ben Farmer, Kabul 5:07PM GMT 25 Dec 2011 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8972884/Congress-calls-on-Twitter-to-block-Taliban.html Senators want to stop feeds which boast of insurgent attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan and the casualties they inflict. Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt to eliminate violent Islamist extremist propaganda from the internet and social media. The Taliban movement has embraced the social network as part of its propaganda effort and regularly tweets about attacks or posts links to its statements. The information has ranged from highly accurate, up-to-the-minute accounts of unfolding spectacular attacks, to often completely fabricated or wildly exaggerated reports of American and British casualties. Twitter feeds including @ABalkhi, which has more than 4,100 followers, and @alemarahweb, which has more than 6,200 followers, regularly feature tweeted boasts about the deaths of "cowardly invaders" and "puppet" Afghan government forces. Related Articles ? Imran Khan: I have the opposition on the mat 25 Dec 2011 ? Kabul attack: Isaf and Taliban press officers attack each other on Twitter 14 Sep 2011 ? Taliban spokesman 'arrested in Afghanistan' 14 Nov 2011 Taliban spokesmen also frequently spar with Nato press officers on Twitter, as they challenge and rebut each other's statements. Twitter declined to say if the company had been asked to block the feeds by Mr Lieberman. Rachel Bremer, a spokesman for Twitter, said: "This isn't something we'd comment on." In 2008 Google agreed to tighten its rules for hosting videos on YouTube after Mr Lieberman complained the site hosted films from al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist movements showing attacks on American forces in Iraq. Leslie Phillips, a spokesman for the senate homeland security committee, said: "Senator Lieberman's efforts to eliminate violent Islamist extremism propaganda from the internet and social media has been a campaign of persuasion. "He has written letters, for example to Google seeking the company to enforce more strongly its terms of service, which ban the sort of thing that we see from violent Islamist extremists. "Google responded positively to the Senator's letter." However Twitter is reported to be rejecting the move after pointing out that unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban movement is not registered by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organisation. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 12:53:58 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:53:58 +0000 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Wikipedia Ditching GoDaddy Over SOPA Message-ID: <1816771881-1324925638-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1078374109-@b11.c17.bise6.blackberry> (C/o jh) Wikipedia Ditching GoDaddy Over SOPA, Jimmy Wales Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/wikipedia-godaddy-sopa_n_1170034.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 Sent from my mobile. Please pardon typos and brevity. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 14:33:16 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:33:16 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GoDaddy and Transfer Issues Message-ID: (c/o jh) GoDaddy and Transfer Issues http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-update/ Posted by Tamar, Namecheap Community Manager on 26th December 2011 We wanted to give our customers a quick update on the status of domain transfers associated with one of our competitors, GoDaddy. First, we?re very sorry that some of you in the past 24 hours have experienced delays in transferring domains over to us. As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules. We at Namecheap believe that this action speaks volumes about the impact that informed customers are having on GoDaddy?s business. It?s a shame that GoDaddy feels they have to block their (former) customers from voting with their dollars. We can only guess that at GoDaddy, desperate times call for desperate measures. Don?t worry ? each and every transfer request will be processed manually by our team. Every request will go through. We won?t rest until everyone who wants to join the Namecheap family can do so! --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 16:18:35 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:18:35 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - more on ... GoDaddy and Transfer Issues Message-ID: <4E2EF71B-A9A0-4066-93A5-90EE8E147C9D@infowarrior.org> (c/o the doctor) > GoDaddy and Transfer Issues > http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-update/ An update was posted to this entry at 1245 PDT by Namecheap, which you may wish to forward to the mailing list. The first sentence of the update will be of particular interest. "GoDaddy has confirmed they have finally unblocked our queries. The transfer queue is being cleared and all transfers should go smoothly from here on. Many thanks to our customers and supporters for bringing this issue the attention it deserved!" Shame on you, GoDaddy. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 17:11:48 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:11:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TSA screenings aren't just for airports anymore Message-ID: TSA screenings aren't just for airports anymore Roving security teams increasingly visit train stations, subways and other mass transit sites to deter terrorism. Critics say it's largely political theater. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-checkpoints-20111220,0,3213641.story By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau December 20, 2011, 5:03 p.m. Reporting from Charlotte, N.C.? Rick Vetter was rushing to board the Amtrak train in Charlotte, N.C., on a recent Sunday afternoon when a canine officer suddenly blocked the way. Three federal air marshals in bulletproof vests and two officers trained to spot suspicious behavior watched closely as Seiko, a German shepherd, nosed Vetter's trousers for chemical traces of a bomb. Radiation detectors carried by the marshals scanned the 57-year-old lawyer for concealed nuclear materials. When Seiko indicated a scent, his handler, Julian Swaringen, asked Vetter whether he had pets at home in Garner, N.C. Two mutts, Vetter replied. "You can go ahead," Swaringen said. The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country. "We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. "We take that transportation part seriously." The TSA's 25 "viper" teams ? for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response ? have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking for an additional $24 million next year. That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security. TSA officials say they have no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety. But they argue that the random nature of the searches and the presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent and bolster public confidence. "We have to keep them [terrorists] on edge," said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington. "We're not going to have a permanent presence everywhere." U.S. officials note that digital files recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan after he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in May included evidence that the Al Qaeda leader had considered an attack on U.S. railways in February 2010. Over the last decade, deadly bombings have hit subways or trains in Moscow; Mumbai, India; Madrid; and London. But critics say that without a clear threat, the TSA checkpoints are merely political theater. Privacy advocates worry that the agency is stretching legal limits on the government's right to search U.S. citizens without probable cause ? and with no proof that the scattershot checkpoints help prevent attacks. "It's a great way to make the public think you are doing something," said Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who writes on privacy and security. "It's a little like saying, 'If we start throwing things up in the air, will they hit terrorists?' '' Such criticism is nothing new to the TSA. The agency came under fresh fire this month when three elderly women with medical devices complained that TSA agents had strip-searched them in separate incidents at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Lenore Zimmerman, 84, said she was ordered to pull down her pants after she refused to pass through a full body scanner because she was afraid the machine would interfere with her heart defibrillator. TSA officials denied the women were strip-searched, but they announced plans to create a toll-free telephone number for passengers with medical conditions who require assistance in airport screening lines. TSA officials said they also are considering a proposal by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to designate a passengers advocate at every airport. The TSA's viper program hasn't drawn that kind of attention, although it is increasingly active. In Tennessee in October, a viper team used radiation monitors and explosive-trace detectors to help state police inspect trucks at highway weigh stations throughout the state. Last month in Orlando, Fla., a team set up metal detectors at a Greyhound bus station and tested passengers' bags for explosive residue. In the Carolinas this year, TSA teams have checked people at the gangplanks of cruise ships, the entrance to NASCAR races, and at ferry terminals taking tourists to the Outer Banks. At the Charlotte train station on Dec. 11, Seiko, the bomb-sniffing dog, snuffled down a line of about 100 passengers waiting to board an eastbound train. Many were heading home after watching the Charlotte Panthers NFL team lose to the Atlanta Falcons after holding a 16-point lead. No one seemed especially perturbed by the TSA team. "It's probably overkill," said Karen Stone, 26, after a behavior-detection officer asked her about the Panthers game and her trip home to Raleigh. "It's cool," said Marcus Baldwin, 21, who was heading home to Mebane, near Burlington, where he waits tables to help pay for computer technology classes. "They're doing what our tax money is paying them to do." "I'm mostly curious," said Barbara Spencer, 75, who was heading home to Chapel Hill after watching her grandson perform in a Christmas play. She asked the officers whether a terrorist threat had required the extra security. No, they replied. Vetter, the lawyer, had attended the game with his son, Noah. They jogged for the train after Seiko had finished his sniff, but Vetter had bigger worries on his mind. "The Panthers blew it," he said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 26 22:56:07 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:56:07 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OpEd: Keeping Students From the Polls Message-ID: Editorial Keeping Students From the Polls Published: December 26, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/keeping-college-students-from-the-polls.html?_r=1 Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver?s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver?s license, you still can?t vote. Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal. Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver?s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don?t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver?s licenses from being used for voting. It?s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina. Republicans usually don?t want to acknowledge that their purpose is to turn away voters, especially when race is involved, so they invented an explanation, claiming that stricter ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In fact, there is almost no voter fraud in America to prevent. William O?Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are ?foolish? and tend to ?vote their feelings? because they lack life experience. ?Voting as a liberal,? he said, ?that?s what kids do.? And that?s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O?Brien favored. Many students have taken advantage of Election Day registration laws, which is one reason Maine Republicans passed a law eliminating the practice. Voters restored it last month, but Republican lawmakers there are already trying new ways to restrict voting. The secretary of state said he was investigating students who are registered to vote in the state but pay out-of-state tuition. Wisconsin once made it easy for students to vote, making it one of the leading states in turnout of younger voters in 2004 and 2008. When Republicans swept into power there last year, they undid all of that, imposing requirements that invalidated the use of virtually all college ID cards in voter registration. Colleges are scrambling to change their cards to add signatures and expiration dates, but it?s not clear whether the state will let them. Imposing these restrictions to win an election will embitter a generation of students in its first encounter with the machinery of democracy. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 27 16:11:29 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:11:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Movie executives see record profits, salaries despite piracy fear-mongering Message-ID: (c/o AJR) Movie executives see record profits, salaries despite piracy fear-mongering By Stephen C. Webster Tuesday, December 13, 2011 Movie industry lobbyists like to say that online piracy costs their clients billions of dollars every year, and it?s getting worse ? but that?s doesn?t quite seem to be the case, according to data released this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS report (embedded below) shows that the movie industry is doing very well, earning record profits and paying executives more than ever, even as it hires fewer workers than it did just a decade ago. Although a recent National Crime Prevention Council ad campaign tries to make the point that piracy kills jobs, the CRS found that total gross revenues and box office receipts have doubled in the last 15 years. Grosses went from $52.8 billion in 1995 to $104.4 billion in 2009, while box office receipts went from $5.3 billion in 1995 to $10.6 billion in 2010 ? yet hiring still went down. One thing that has gone up, higher than ever, is executive pay. The CRS report noted that News Corporation paid CEO Rupert Murdoch $33,292,753 in 2011; Viacom gave CEO Philippe Dauman made $84,515,308; Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes took home $26,303,071; while Disney CEO Robert A. Lger earned $29,617,964. Sony CEO Howard Stringer was at the bottom of the bunch at $4.3 million, having taken a 14 percent pay cut due to losses. Those salaries are quite hefty compared to the top earners just a decade and a half ago. At Disney, former CEO Michael Eisner?s total compensation was $10 million in 1994, while Time Warner was compensating former CEO Gerald M. Levin $5 million, the CRS reported. Historical data for the other executives was not included. The CRS report further shows that employment by film studios and related service companies has remained relatively stable since 1998. Though there have been spikes and slumps in hiring over the years, about 374,000 people worked full or part time making movies last year, down from 392,000 in 1998. That?s on the upswing from a low in 2009, when employment dipped just below 370,000. Despite what the industry?s lobbyists are telling lawmakers, it?s impossible to say whether a minor slump in hiring is really reflective of piracy?s effects. That seemingly proves the industry?s biggest concern is not the Jack Sparrows of the Internet, but rather Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. ?Revenues from the U.S. movie industry?s home entertainment sector have been declining in recent years,? the report noted. ?According to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry-funded nonprofit, total U.S. spending on home entertainment, including movies and television content, was $13.9 billion in 1999. Spending rose to a peak of $21.8 billion in 2004, before declining gradually to $18.8 billion in 2010. The decline partly reflects the shift to less expensive video-on-demand services, such as Netflix.? Netflix said that as of Sept. 30, it had 23.79 million customers, a slight decline over the previous quarter due to subscriber losses after a recent price hike. And in spite of the CRS report, Netflix insists it is good for studios. ?Netflix is a boon to the entertainment industry, paying more than $1 billion a year to the studios for licensing rights to stream movies and TV shows over the internet for more than 20 million Netflix members to instantly watch,? spokesman Steve Swasey told Raw Story. ?In addition, Netflix purchases DVDs for more than 10 million Netflix members who receive discs by mail.? With their convenience factor and low cost of entry, Netflix has become a tremendous success, even as it has depressed sales of home videos. Much like what Apple?s iTunes did for music, driving down piracy and opening up new revenue, albeit in smaller streams than what the industry once knew, Netflix is doing for movies. But instead of working with them to provide a compelling alternative to piracy, studios are playing hardball with Netflix, raising prices on their streaming contracts. Netflix is expected to pay over $1.98 billion next year to keep the bulk of its online library, up from $180 million in 2010. To make matters worse for Netflix, network owners like Time Warner and Comcast are rolling out their own video-on-demand services and setting caps on users? bandwidth consumption. That will ultimately make them pay more for streaming large chunks of data, which cuts into the amount of time people can spend watching Netflix or downloading pirated content. Netflix at present time accounts for up to 30 percent of Internet traffic in North America during peak hours, according to network measurement firm Sandvine (PDF). That means Netflix far outweighs movies being downloaded from the peer-to-peer network bittorrent, which Sandvine estimates accounts for roughly 21 percent of Internet traffic. Breaking that figure down further still, a study into online piracy conducted by intelligence firm Envisional Inc., commissioned by NBC Universal and often cited by movie industry lobbyists, claims that just 35 percent of bittorrent traffic was people trading movies illegally. By comparison, another 35 percent was dedicated to sharing pornography not under copyright to studios, and another 29 percent was television shows, books, music, software and games. But even with those numbers, it is impossible to extrapolate exactly what percentage of the total is purely infringing traffic, as some bittorrent downloads are legitimate. And even if that figure could be determined, studies have shown that those most involved in copyright infringement are typically the movie industry?s best customers, meaning a final total number for overall losses due to piracy is impossible to calculate. As entertainment industry lobbyists hammer members of Congress about the need to fundamentally change the structure of the Internet by passing the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, Parker Higgins, a spokesperson for technology advocacy group The Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he hopes they remember that even today?s declining home video market was once in the studios? cross-hairs. ?The home video market is one that the movie industry tried to crush in its infancy, by trying to outlaw the VCR,? he told Raw Story. ?This is an industry whose take on new technology you can?t really trust.? The MPAA did not respond to a request for comment. The full CRS report follows. #### http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/13/movie-executives-see-record-profits-salaries-despite-piracy-fear-mongering/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 27 16:17:00 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:17:00 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Go Daddy gets name off SOPA supporters list Message-ID: Go Daddy gets name off SOPA supporters list by Don Reisinger December 27, 2011 12:32 PM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57348831-17/go-daddy-gets-name-off-sopa-supporters-list/ Go Daddy is trying really, really hard to distance itself from the Stop Online Piracy Act. The domain registrar today announced that its name is no longer on a U.S. Congressional list of SOPA supporters. That's right: Go Daddy is announcing that its name has been removed from a list. But it's not just any list to Go Daddy. The company's off-and-on love affair with SOPA is having a profound impact on its operation. And at this point, even saying that it's not on a list is important for the company. SOPA, which was introduced in late October by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), could pave the way for the U.S. Justice Department to easily obtain an order that would help it virtually eliminate Web sites alleged to contain pirated content from the Internet. Major technology companies including Comcast, Dell, and Sony support SOPA. Online giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter are among the companies that stand in opposition to the bill. But as a domain registrar, Go Daddy sits at the crossroads of the debate over the legality of the act. Unfortunately for Go Daddy, however, many of its customers feel that it has been on the wrong side of the debate. Since SOPA's unveiling, the registrar spoke publicly and wrote blog posts outlining its support for the bill. In response, several notable companies, including Cheezburger Inc. of icanhascheezburger.com fame, and even Wikipedia have started to pull away from Go Daddy due to the registrar's stance. Seeing the writing on the wall, Go Daddy announced late last week that it no longer supports SOPA, saying that Congress could "clearly do better" at fighting online piracy. (Yesterday, Go Daddy also said that it does not support the related Protect IP Act.) But that wasn't the end of the story. For one thing, the company seemed decidedly unconvincing in its statement on SOPA, indicating that it could, potentially, be swayed to support it again if the wider Internet community--which has decried the bill--changes its mind. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this," Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman said in a statement late last week on Internet piracy. "Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it." The registrar has also been on radio silence in response to a question posed by CNET yesterday, asking whether it now actually, actively opposes SOPA. Saying it wants to do a better job of fighting online piracy and getting its name removed from a list, after all, are arguably rather passive. Regardless, the damage has been done. A massive protest thread has exploded on Reddit, the company lost over 21,000 domains in just one day last week, and its top competitors are circling. Whether a change in tune at this point will even matter is up for debate. GoDaddy has not immediately responded to CNET's request for comment on its stance on SOPA. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 27 16:18:44 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:18:44 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Universal Music Takes Down 50 Cent's Official YouTube Video Message-ID: <962BD24D-A0BB-4D0B-B3E0-30FB6C9C653C@infowarrior.org> Universal Music Takes Down 50 Cent's Official YouTube Video from the how's-that-work-now? dept Remember how the music labels like to say that everything they do is for the sake of the artists on their label? Yeah. Then remember how Universal Music had 50 Cent's own personal website declared a pirate site? It seems that UMG quite frequently works against the interests of its artists -- both big and small. It's no secret that 50 Cent and his label (UMG-owned Interscope) are in a state of constant disagreement. But what happens when 50 Cent decides, on Christmas Day, to release his latest "official" video? Universal Music takes it down. 50 Cent's own YouTube account put up the "official video" for the song "They Burn Me," but within hours, if you went to that page, you saw the following: We've been hearing lots of similar stories lately of UMG being pretty quick on the trigger to take down videos, even ones that its own artists have been releasing. The label got a lot of attention over the bogus takedown of the MegaUpload video, but it seems like UMG pretty much feels free to take down videos all the time, even those that the artists they're claiming to "protect" want up. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111226/23573217193/universal-music-takes-down-50-cents-official-youtube-video.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 27 18:01:35 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:01:35 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pentagon Finds No Fault in Ties to TV Analysts Message-ID: December 24, 2011 Pentagon Finds No Fault in Ties to TV Analysts By DAVID BARSTOW http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/us/pentagon-finds-no-fault-in-its-ties-to-tv-analysts.html A Pentagon public relations program that sought to transform high-profile military analysts into ?surrogates? and ?message force multipliers? for the Bush administration complied with Defense Department regulations and directives, the Pentagon?s inspector general has concluded after a two-year investigation. The inquiry was prompted by articles published in The New York Times in 2008 that described how the Pentagon, in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, cultivated close ties with retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. The articles also showed how military analysts affiliated with defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts. In response to the articles, the Pentagon suspended the program and members of Congress asked the Defense Department?s inspector general to investigate. In January 2009, the inspector general?s office issued a report that said it had found no wrongdoing in the program. But soon after, the inspector general?s office retracted the entire report, saying it was so riddled with inaccuracies and flaws that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In late 2009, the inspector general?s office began a new inquiry. The results of the new inquiry, first reported by The Washington Times, confirm that the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld made a concerted effort starting in 2002 to reach out to network military analysts to build and sustain public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld?s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guant?namo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry?s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both. One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: ?You guys influence a wide range of people. We?d like to be sure you have the facts.? The inspector general?s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation. The inquiry confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld?s staff frequently provided military analysts with talking points before their network appearances. In some cases, the report said, military analysts ?requested talking points on specific topics or issues.? One military analyst described the talking points as ?bullet points given for a political purpose.? Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program?s intent ?was to move everyone?s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.? The inquiry also confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld?s staff hired a company to track and analyze what the military analysts said during their media appearances. According to the report, four military analysts reported that they were ejected from Mr. Rumsfeld?s outreach program ?because they were critical? of the Pentagon. One former Pentagon official told the investigators that when Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general and NBC military analyst, ?started challenging? Mr. Rumsfeld on air, he was told that Mr. Rumsfeld wanted him ?immediately? removed from the invitation list because General McCaffrey was no longer considered a ?team player.? Mr. Rumsfeld told investigators that he did not recall ordering General McCaffrey?s exclusion. Wesley K. Clark, a retired four-star Army general who worked as a military analyst for CNN, told investigators he took it as a sign that the Pentagon ?was displeased? with his commentary when CNN officials told him he would no longer be invited to special briefings for military analysts. General Clark told investigators that CNN officials made him feel as if he was less valued as a commentator because ?he wasn?t trusted by the Pentagon.? At one point, he said, a CNN official told him that the White House had asked CNN to ?release you from your contract as a commentator.? But several former top aides to Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that the purpose of the program was merely to inform and educate, and many of the 63 military analysts interviewed during the inquiry agreed. Given the conflicting accounts, the inspector general?s office scrutinized some 25,000 pages of documents related to the program. But except for one ?unsigned, undated, draft memorandum,? investigators could not find any documents that described the strategy or objective of the program. Investigators said that to understand the program?s intent, they had to rely on interviews with Mr. Rumsfeld?s former public affairs aides, including his spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke. Based on these interviews, the report said, investigators concluded that the ?outreach activities were intended to serve as an open information exchange with credible third-party subject-matter experts? who could ?explain military issues, actions and strategies to the American public.? The inspector general?s office looked into the issue of whether military analysts with ties to defense contractors used their access to senior Defense Department officials to advance their business interests. The report found that at least 43 of the military analysts were affiliated with defense contractors. The inspector general?s office said it asked 35 of these analysts whether their participation in the program benefited their business interests. Almost all said no. Based on these answers, the report said, investigators were unable to identify any analysts who ?profited financially? from their participation in the program. The report, however, said that these analysts may have gained ?many other tangible and intangible benefits? from their special access. (Eight analysts said they believed their participation gave them better access to top Defense Department officials, for example.) The report said that a lack of clear ?internal operating procedures? may have contributed to ?the perception? that participation by military analysts with ties to defense contractors ?provided a financial benefit.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 28 08:09:18 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:09:18 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - An emerging global apparatus for drone killing Message-ID: <71F2C77E-1B3E-4395-A753-EEBE70E2D5B1@infowarrior.org> Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing By Greg Miller, Published: December 27 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/under-obama-an-emerging-global-apparatus-for-drone-killing/2011/12/13/gIQANPdILP_print.html The Obama administration?s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda?s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential. In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force? ?cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation?s security goals. The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force. In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military?s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don?t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives. The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view. With a year to go in President Obama?s first term, his administration can point to undeniable results: Osama bin Laden is dead, the core al-Qaeda network is near defeat, and members of its regional affiliates scan the sky for metallic glints. Those results, delivered with unprecedented precision from aircraft that put no American pilots at risk, may help explain why the drone campaign has never attracted as much scrutiny as the detention or interrogation programs of the George W. Bush era. Although human rights advocates and others are increasingly critical of the drone program, the level of public debate remains muted. Senior Democrats barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, described the program with a mixture of awe and concern. Its expansion under Obama was almost inevitable, she said, because of the technology?s growing sophistication. But the pace of its development, she said, makes it hard to predict how it might come to be used. ?What this does is it takes a lot of Americans out of harm?s way .?.?. without having to send in a special ops team or drop a 500-pound bomb,? Feinstein said in an interview in which she was careful to avoid explicit confirmation that the programs exist. ?But I worry about how this develops. I?m worried because of what increased technology will make it capable of doing.? Another reason for the lack of extensive debate is secrecy. The White House has refused to divulge details about the structure of the drone program or, with rare exceptions, who has been killed. White House and CIA officials declined to speak for attribution for this article. Drone war?s evolution Inside the White House, according to officials who would discuss the drone program only on the condition of anonymity, the drone is seen as a critical tool whose evolution was accelerating even before Obama was elected. Senior administration officials said the escalating number of strikes has created a perception that the drone is driving counterterrorism policy, when the reverse is true. ?People think we start with the drone and go from there, but that?s not it at all,? said a senior administration official involved with the program. ?We?re not constructing a campaign around the drone. We?re not seeking to create some worldwide basing network so we have drone capabilities in every corner of the globe.? Nevertheless, for a president who campaigned against the alleged counterterrorism excesses of his predecessor, Obama has emphatically embraced the post-Sept. 11 era?s signature counterterrorism tool. When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation?s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead, according to the New America Foundation. The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled. The number of strikes in Pakistan has declined this year, partly because the CIA has occasionally suspended them to ease tensions at moments of crisis. One lull followed the arrest of an American agency contractor who killed two Pakistani men; another came after the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden. The CIA?s most recent period of restraint followed U.S. military airstrikes last month that inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border. At the same time, U.S. officials have said that the number of ?high-value? al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan has dwindled to two. Administration officials said the expansion of the program under Obama has largely been driven by the timeline of the drone?s development. Remotely piloted aircraft were used during the Clinton and Bush administrations, but only in recent years have they become advanced and abundant enough to be deployed on such a large scale. The number of drone aircraft has exploded in the past three years. A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office counted 775 Predators, Reapers and other medium- and long-range drones in the U.S. inventory, with hundreds more in the pipeline. About 30 of those aircraft have been allocated to the CIA, officials said. But the agency has a separate category that doesn?t show up in any public accounting, a fleet of stealth drones that were developed and acquired under a highly compartmentalized CIA program created after the Sept. 11 attacks. The RQ-170 model that recently crashed in Iran exposed the agency?s use of stealth drones to spy on that country?s nuclear program, but the planes have also been used in other countries. The escalation of the lethal drone campaign under Obama was driven to an extent by early counterterrorism decisions. Shuttering the CIA?s detention program and halting transfers to Guantanamo Bay left few options beyond drone strikes or detention by often unreliable allies. Key members of Obama?s national security team came into office more inclined to endorse drone strikes than were their counterparts under Bush, current and former officials said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former CIA director and current Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, and counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan seemed always ready to step on the accelerator, said a former official who served in both administrations and was supportive of the program. Current administration officials did not dispute the former official?s characterization of the internal dynamics. The only member of Obama?s team known to have formally raised objections to the expanding drone campaign is Dennis Blair, who served as director of national intelligence. During a National Security Council meeting in November 2009, Blair sought to override the agenda and force a debate on the use of drones, according to two participants. Blair has since articulated his concerns publicly, calling for a suspension of unilateral drone strikes in Pakistan, which he argues damage relations with that country and kill mainly mid-level militants. But he now speaks as a private citizen. His opinion contributed to his isolation from Obama?s inner circle, and he was fired last year. Obama himself was ?oddly passive in this world,? the former official said, tending to defer on drone policy to senior aides whose instincts often dovetailed with the institutional agendas of the CIA and JSOC. The senior administration official disputed that characterization, saying that Obama doesn?t weigh in on every operation but has been deeply involved in setting the criteria for strikes and emphasizing the need to minimize collateral damage. ?Everything about our counterterrorism operations is about carrying out the guidance that he?s given,? the official said. ?I don?t think you could have the president any more involved.? Yemen convergence Yemen has emerged as a crucible of convergence, the only country where both the CIA and JSOC are known to fly armed drones and carry out strikes. The attacks are aimed at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate that has eclipsed the terrorist network?s core as the most worrisome security threat. From separate ?ops centers? at Langley and Fort Bragg, N.C., the agency and JSOC share intelligence and coordinate attacks, even as operations unfold. U.S. officials said the CIA recently intervened in a planned JSOC strike in Yemen, urging its military counterpart to hold its fire because the intended target was not where the missile was aimed. Subsequent intelligence confirmed the agency?s concerns, officials said. But seams in the collaboration still show. After locating Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen this fall, the CIA quickly assembled a fleet of armed drones to track the alleged al-Qaeda leader until it could take a shot. The agency moved armed Predators from Pakistan to Yemen temporarily, and assumed control of others from JSOC?s arsenal, to expand surveillance of Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric connected to terrorism plots, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. The choreography of the strike, which involved four drones, was intricate. Two Predators pointed lasers at Awlaki?s vehicle, and a third circled to make sure that no civilians wandered into the cross hairs. Reaper drones, which are larger than Predators and can carry more missiles, have become the main shooters in most strikes. On Sept. 30, Awlaki was killed in a missile strike carried out by the CIA under Title 50 authorities ? which govern covert intelligence operations ? even though officials said it was initially unclear whether an agency or JSOC drone had delivered the fatal blow. A second U.S. citizen, an al-Qaeda propagandist who had lived in North Carolina, was among those killed. The execution was nearly flawless, officials said. Nevertheless, when a similar strike was conducted just two weeks later, the entire protocol had changed. The second attack, which killed Awlaki?s 16-year-old son, was carried out by JSOC under Title 10 authorities that apply to the use of military force. When pressed on why the CIA had not pulled the trigger, U.S. officials said it was because the main target of the Oct. 14 attack, an Egyptian named Ibrahim al-Banna, was not on the agency?s kill list. The Awlaki teenager, a U.S. citizen with no history of involvement with al-Qaeda, was an unintended casualty. In interviews, senior U.S. officials acknowledged that the two kill lists don?t match, but offered conflicting explanations as to why. Three senior U.S. officials said the lists vary because of the divergent legal authorities. JSOC?s list is longer, the officials said, because the post-Sept. 11, 2001, Authorization for Use of Military Force, as well as a separate executive order, gave JSOC latitude to hunt broadly defined groups of al-Qaeda fighters, even outside conventional war zones. The CIA?s lethal-action authorities, based in a presidential ?finding? that has been modified since Sept. 11, were described as more narrow. But others directly involved in the drone campaign offered a simpler explanation: Because the CIA had only recently resumed armed drone flights over Yemen, the agency hadn?t had as much time as JSOC to compile its kill list. Over time, officials said, the agency would catch up. The administration official who discussed the drone program declined to address the discrepancies in the kill lists, except to say: ?We are aiming and striving for alignment. That is an ideal to be achieved.? Divided oversight Such disparities often elude Congress, where the structure of oversight committees has failed to keep pace with the way military and intelligence operations have converged. Within 24 hours of every CIA drone strike, a classified fax machine lights up in the secure spaces of the Senate intelligence committee, spitting out a report on the location, target and result. The outdated procedure reflects the agency?s effort to comply with Title 50 requirements that Congress be provided with timely, written notification of covert action overseas. There is no comparable requirement in Title 10, and the Senate Armed Services Committee can go days before learning the details of JSOC strikes. Neither panel is in a position to compare the CIA and JSOC kill lists or even arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the rules by which each is assembled. The senior administration official said the gap is inadvertent. ?It?s certainly not something where the goal is to evade oversight,? the official said. A senior Senate aide involved in reviewing military drone strikes said that the blind spot reflects a failure by Congress to adapt but that ?we will eventually catch up.? The disclosure of these operations is generally limited to relevant committees in the House and Senate and sometimes only to their leaders. Those briefed must abide by restrictions that prevent them from discussing what they have learned with those who lack the requisite security clearances. The vast majority of lawmakers receive scant information about the administration?s drone program. The Senate intelligence committee, which is wrapping up a years-long investigation of the Bush-era interrogation program, has not initiated such an examination of armed drones. But officials said their oversight of the program has been augmented significantly in the past couple of years, with senior staff members now making frequent and sometimes unannounced visits to the CIA ?ops center,? reviewing the intelligence involved in errant strikes, and visiting counterterrorism operations sites overseas. Feinstein acknowledged concern with emerging blind spots. ?Whenever this is used, particularly in a lethal manner, there ought to be careful oversight, and that ought to be by civilians,? Feinstein said. ?What we have is a very unique battlefield weapon. You can?t stop the technology from improving, so you better start thinking about how you monitor it.? Increasing reach The return of armed CIA Predators to Yemen ? after carrying out a single strike there in 2002 ? was part of a significant expansion of the drones? geographic reach. Over the past year, the agency has erected a secret drone base on the Arabian Peninsula. The U.S. military began flying Predators and Reapers from bases in Seychelles and Ethi?o?pia, in addition to JSOC?s long-standing drone base in Djibouti. Senior administration officials said the sprawling program comprises distinct campaigns, each calibrated according to where and against whom the aircraft and other counterterrorism weapons are used. In Pakistan, the CIA has carried out 239 strikes since Obama was sworn in, and the agency continues to have wide latitude to launch attacks. In Yemen, there have been about 15 strikes since Obama took office, although it is not clear how many were carried out by drones because the U.S. military has also used conventional aircraft and cruise missiles. Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabab is based, is surrounded by American drone installations. And officials said that JSOC has repeatedly lobbied for authority to strike al-Shabab training camps that have attracted some Somali Americans. But the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil. The plans are constantly being adjusted, officials said, with the White House holding strategy sessions on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia two or three times a month. Administration officials point to the varied approach as evidence of its restraint. ?Somalia would be the easiest place to go in in an undiscriminating way and do drone strikes because there?s no host government to get? angry, the senior administration official said. ?But that?s certainly not the way we?re approaching it.? Drone strikes could resume, however, if factions of al-Shabab?s leadership succeed in expanding the group?s agenda. ?That?s an ongoing calculation because there?s an ongoing debate inside the senior leadership of al-Shabab,? the senior administration official said. ?It certainly would not bother us if potential terrorists took note of the fact that we tend to go after those who go after us.? Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. ? The Washington Post Company --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 28 08:44:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:44:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DOD NLW Reference 2011 Message-ID: (U//FOUO) DoD Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book 2011 http://publicintelligence.net/dod-non-lethal-weapons-2011/ Raytheon Non-Lethal Acoustic Pressure Riot Shield Patent http://publicintelligence.net/raytheon-non-lethal-acoustic-pressure-riot-shield-patent/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 28 19:55:45 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:55:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hollywood Targets GoDaddy Founder As Legal Fight Heats Up (Exclusive) Message-ID: <7DC0200E-62E3-4F54-80ED-6EC98A64812B@infowarrior.org> (c/o DG -- this story gets weirder and weirder. -- rick) Film Academy Targets GoDaddy Founder As Legal Fight Heats Up (Exclusive) http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/oscar-academy-awards-godaddy-276479 GoDaddy's support -- and subsequent withdrawal of support -- of an anti-piracy bill has been controversial and befuddling. The company is now facing allegations of aiding and abetting trademark infringement, and the group behind the Oscars seeks to depose GoDaddy chairman Bob Parsons. 12:27 PM PST 12/28/2011 by Eriq Gardner In recent weeks, GoDaddy has had a huge target on its back. The Internet domain name registration giant broke ranks with many in the tech community by supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). That led to a boycott against GoDaddy organized by social community site Reddit, which contributed to more than 70,000 of GoDaddy?s customers taking their business elsewhere. Facing a massive backlash, GoDaddy withdrew its SOPA support, but few were impressed with the company?s half-hearted about-face ? especially upon reports that GoDaddy was unfairly attempting to impede those customers who wished to move away. Meanwhile, as all of this has been happening, GoDaddy has been engaged in a bare-knuckled litigation fight with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which puts on the Oscars each year. In May 2010, AMPAS sued GoDaddy, accusing it of facilitating trademark infringement from unscrupulous cybersquatters. The case has survived two motions to dismiss, and on Tuesday AMPAS told a court why GoDaddy?s controversial founder Bob Parsons should submit to a seven-hour deposition that explains the company?s various policies. In the lawsuit, AMPAS takes issue with GoDaddy?s ?CashParking? program that allows users to buy a domain, "park" the page and collect a portion of revenue from GoDaddy's advertising partners on a pay-per-click basis. AMPAS alleges that the program has been used to register hundreds of websites such as 2011oscars.com, academyawardz.com, and betacademyawards.com. Last December, U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins refused to dismiss the lawsuit, finding that AMPAS had pled facts sufficient to show standing. Specifically, the judge allowed the plaintiff to go ahead with its claims that GoDaddy?s ?illegal activities result in advertising related to the Academy?s marks being placed on numerous parked pages that have actual relationship to the Academy, thereby causing dilution of Plaintiff?s interest in legally protected trademarks.? GoDaddy now has to contend with allegations that it aids and abets massive trademark infringement. Not only on this case, but on others as well, such as a $100 million lawsuit over an unauthorized Michael Jackson online casino. In light of this, the fact that GoDaddy had previously spoken up in support of SOPA was curious. In a statement delivered last month to the House judiciary committee considering the legislation, GoDaddy explained why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was not enough to deter piracy. The first reason given? ?Although we believe that the DMCA works well in some contexts, its remedies are limited in that it does not include mechanisms for addressing trademark infringement?? What explains the company?s mixed messages? A number of theories abound, but one gaining steam chalks it up to the eccentricities of founder Bob Parsons, who recently stepped down as CEO but is staying on with the growing company as executive chairman of the board. In a blog post for SF Weekly on Tuesday, Dan Mitchell targets Parsons for the company?s confounding behavior, from sophomoric Super Bowl commercials and arbitrarily yanking sites from the Internet to phantom IPOs and making it difficult for people to transfer their domains. In its move on Tuesday to get Parsons to testify in the ongoing litigation, AMPAS makes the same point. ?Bob Parsons is not your typical CEO, who relies upon his executives to manage a publicly listed company,? says AMPAS? legal brief. The Academy reports that GoDaddy has been attempting to ?hamstring? its discovery by refusing to turn over various documents and says that depositions with many of the company?s top executives have been frustrating. Many of them reportedly can?t explain why the company makes the moves it does. So in advance of a February cut-off date for discovery, AMPAS wishes to depose Parsons, whose ?fingerprints are all over GoDaddy?s domain name monetization programs,? according to the brief. And in the process, perhaps get some answers about why Parsons has seemingly been two-faced on the piracy front. One example given is a post that Parsons wrote for his personal blog. In it, Parsons takes issue with the practice known as ?kiting,? where registrars take advantage of a 5-day grace period to put up mini-Web sites loaded with search engine bait. Later, on his blog, Parsons discussed a trademark lawsuit against Dotster ? ?a registrar who hasn?t exactly been a stranger to domain kiting,? he said ? for registering many misspellings of trademarked names, and associating them with search engine pages. ?This is exactly AMPAS?s complaint in this case,? says the plaintiff. ?That its marks are famous and well-known; that GoDaddy monetizes domain names incorporating AMPAS?s trademarks ? having received 60 cease/desist letters from AMPAS ? yet continues to park domain names incorporating AMPAS?s marks.? If there's one thing that both supporters and critics might be able to agree upon, it's that GoDaddy is truly befuddling. Can Parson provide some insight here? A decision whether he'll have to testify should come soon. E-mail: eriqgardner at yahoo.com Twitter: @eriqgardner --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 07:42:32 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:42:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - National ByeDaddy Day Message-ID: (Yes, I just initiated the transfer of several domains from GoDaddy myself. -- rick) December 28, 2011 | By Rainey Reitman #MoveYourDomain to Protest the Internet Blacklist Bills https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/moveyourdomain-protest-internet-blacklist-bills When the well-known domain name registrar Go Daddy threw its support behind the Stop Online Piracy Act, it led to a PR disaster: Internet users rebelled against the registrar, and called for Go Daddy customers to transfer their domains. In response to the boycott Go Daddy has switched their position, but some companies are deciding to take a stance against the Internet blacklist legislation. In a day of action scheduled for December 29th, these companies are publicly protesting the scary legislation that endangers our Internet infrastructure and threatens online free expression in the name of combating so-called rogue websites. We?re incredibly grateful that these companies have chosen to donate funds to EFF to support our work fighting for free expression online. Please check them out and, if possible, jump on board: Namecheap ? The originator of the #MoveYourDomain Day event has issued a challenge to the Internet community to transfer domain names to Namecheap on December 29, 2011. Namecheap is offering low-cost registration services and donating $1 to EFF for every transferred domain. You can learn about the campaign and transfer your domains and read Namecheap?s official stance on SOPA. For updates on the event, follow Namecheap on Twitter. Gandi ? EFF's own registrar, Gandi is offering discounted transfer rate for .biz, ,.com, .info, .net, and .org domains if you pay in U.S. dollars. Starting December 29, 2011 and going until January 15, 2012, Gandi will be donating $1 to EFF for every domain name transferred to them. What better way to ring in the New Year than taking a stand for an uncensored Internet? Check out Gandi?s statement opposing SOPA. If you like what you see, you can transfer your domain names and keep up with Gandi on Twitter. Zopim ? the company responsible for the embedded chat windows you see on so many websites, is running a special promotion to protest SOPA. They?re showing support by offering customers a 40% discount code and donating 10% of the proceeds from purchases using that code to EFF. Learn more here. You can also find Zopim on Twitter. Are you a company running a similar campaign? Email rainey at eff.org If you?ve been hungry for new ways to promote online freedoms and protest the blacklist bills, then help these companies with their campaigns. And if you don?t have a need for any of these services, you can still become a member of EFF, sign our petition against the blacklist bills, and check out our activism toolkit for other ways you can help fight SOPA and Protect IP. The Internet blacklist bills are a looming threat to our online rights in the new year. EFF couldn?t fight these nasty proposals all on our own. So we?re thankful to be in a diverse coalition with organizations such as American Censorship/Fight for the Future, Avaaz, the Cato Institute, Center for Democracy and Technology, Demand Progress, Free Press, Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Wikimedia Foundation. See a comprehensive list of all the organizations at the Center for Democracy and Technology?s Chorus of Opposition page. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 08:07:50 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:07:50 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DHS Creates Accounts Solely to Monitor Social Networks Message-ID: <2B44D668-6D15-4060-AA33-02177912DFE4@infowarrior.org> (not surprising at all -- rick) http://abcnews.go.com/US/dhs-creates-fake-accounts-monitor-social-networks/story?id=15247533#.Tvxz9SN1_x6 DHS Creates Accounts Solely to Monitor Social Networks By OLIVIA KATRANDJIAN Dec. 28, 2011 An online privacy group is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security accusing it of not releasing records from the agency's covert surveillance of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. The DHS creates accounts solely to monitor social media sites and establish a system of records of the information gathered. The agency does not post information, seek to connect with other users, accept invitations to connect or interact with others according to a statement on their website. The agency scans social media sites for a list of words that include "dirty bomb," "hostage," "exercise," "task force," "explosion," "lockdown," "riot," "nuclear threat," "brown out," "meth lab," "cain and abel" and "brute forcing." Several countries and cities, including North Korea and Mexico, are also flagged as key words. In a statement, the DHS said that the National Operations Center (NOC) "will gather, store, analyze, and disseminate relevant and appropriate de-identified information to federal, state, local, and foreign governments, and private sector partners authorized to receive situational awareness and a common operating picture," said the statement. First Lady Notes 'Excellence' of Secret Service Watch Video In April 2011, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) requested records from the DHS of the agency's social network monitoring program. The agency has an obligation to locate the records and notify the requestor if the records are available for release. Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director, told ABC News that the requests have gone unanswered. On Dec. 20, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the DHS. "We want to know how they're collecting information online, what they're collecting online and if there's legal basis to do this," Rotenberg told ABC News. "We are trying to understand what the circumstances are when the DHS is engaged in tracking to social media sites," Rotenberg added. The DHS declined to comment on the issue. Former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said this initiative is nothing new. "One of the biggest overlooked areas of the federal government when it comes to crime and terrorism is diligently searching public source information," said Garrett. Garrett said the DHS can see online information that's not available to the public as long as they have legal authority, in the form of a search warrant, to do so. But often people leave private information open to the public. "People today are very open about their thoughts and feelings on a number of different topics. It amazes me the amount of information people will write about themselves online. There's a false security about the anonymity of sitting in front of a computer screen and saying things you wouldn't say in public or in front of your parents or your spouse," said Garrett. Garrett said the DHS should be monitoring social media sites. "It's one of those things that the government should be doing as long as they're obeying the law. I can't tell you how many bad guys have been caught because they do something bad and then post about it online," Garrett said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 14:03:30 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:03:30 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US MSM ignores TSA op-ed, Pravda publishes Message-ID: US Mainstream Media Refuses Op-Ed About TSA Eroding Civil Liberties... But Pravda Publishes It from the sad-statement dept A few months ago, we wrote about how a TSA agent who was involved in an intrusive "pat down" of Amy Alkon threatened her with a defamation claim for daring to say and write that she felt she was raped by the TSA agent. Recently Alkon sought to publish an op-ed about her experience and the importance of standing up for one's civil rights in America. As she notes, pretty much all of the American mainstream media refused to publish the piece: Media outlets that refused to publish this piece include the LA Times, The New York Times, Reuters, CNN, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo.com, MSNBC.com, and The Washington Post. You know who did publish it? Pravda. Yes, the rather infamous Russian publication..... < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111228/11045117216/us-mainstream-media-refuses-op-ed-about-tsa-eroding-civil-liberties-pravda-publishes-it.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 14:19:30 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:19:30 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Verizon Wireless to charge $2 for one-time payment Message-ID: <3BBC063D-6C0E-4827-B533-540F66553BB8@infowarrior.org> Verizon Wireless to charge $2 for one-time payment http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111229/ap_on_hi_te/us_verizon_wireless_monthly_fees/print By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer 1 hr 56 mins ago NEW YORK ? Verizon Wireless, the country's largest cellphone company, is introducing a $2 fee for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards. The company says this "convenience fee" will be introduced Jan. 15. The fee won't apply to electronic check payments or to automatic credit card payments set up through Verizon's AutoPay system. Paying by credit card in a Verizon store will also be free, as will mailing a check. Other carriers have tried to get subscribers to move to automatic payments through other means. AT&T Inc. offers a $10 gift card for those who set up AutoPay. Sprint Nextel Corp. charges subscribers who have caps on the fees they can rack up each month. Those people are charged $5 monthly unless they set up autopay. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 16:25:42 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:25:42 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SOPA opponents may go nuclear Message-ID: SOPA opponents may go nuclear and other 2012 predictions by Declan McCullagh December 29, 2011 4:00 AM PST http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57349540-281/sopa-opponents-may-go-nuclear-and-other-2012-predictions/?tag=mncol;topStories The Internet's most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat. It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable "power to censor the Web." But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery. When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you'll know they're finally serious. True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option--possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP--but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012. "There have been some serious discussions about that," says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. "It has never happened before." (See CNET's SOPA FAQ.) Web firms may be outspent tenfold on lobbyists, but they enjoy one tremendous advantage over the SOPA-backing Hollywood studios and record labels: direct relationships with users. How many Americans feel a personal connection with an amalgamation named Viacom -- compared with voters who have found places to live on Craigslist and jobs (or spouses) on Facebook and Twitter? How would, say, Sony Music Entertainment, one of the Recording Industry Association of America's board members, cheaply and easily reach out to hundreds of millions of people? Protect IP and SOPA, of course, represent the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the RIAA, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty. There are early signs that the nuclear option is being contemplated. Wikimedia (as in Wikipedia) called SOPA an "Internet Blacklist Bill." Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has proposed an article page blackout as a way to put "maximum pressure on the U.S. government" in response to SOPA. The Tumblr microblogging site generated 87,834 calls to Congress over SOPA. Over at GoDaddyBoycott.org, a move-your-domain-name protest is scheduled to begin today over the registrar's previous--and still not repudiated--enthusiasm for SOPA. Popular image hosting site Imgur said yesterday it would join the exodus too. Technically speaking, it wouldn't be difficult to pull off. Web companies already target advertisements based on city or ZIP code. And it would be effective. A note popping up on the screens of people living in the mostly rural Texas district of SOPA author Lamar Smith, Hollywood's favorite Republican, asking them to call or write and voice their displeasure, would be noticed. If Tumblr could generate nearly 90,000 calls on its own, think of what companies with hundreds of millions of users could do. If these Web companies believe what their executives say (PDF) about SOPA and Protect IP, they'll let their users know what their elected representatives are contemplating. A Senate floor debate scheduled for January 24, 2012 would be an obvious starting point. "The reason it hasn't happened is because of the sensitivity," says Erickson, "even when it's a policy issue that benefits their users." He adds: It may happen." Or it may not. It would change politics if it did. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 18:11:30 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:11:30 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Appeals Court Revives Jewel v. NSA (gov spying case) Message-ID: <921CE849-4301-478A-9495-23D744BBC8EF@infowarrior.org> December 29, 2011 Appeals Court Revives EFF's Challenge to Government's Massive Spying Program https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-revives-effs-challenge-governments-massive-spying-program Justices Find that Spied-On Telephone Customers Have the Right to Sue San Francisco - The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today blocked the government's attempt to bury the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, returning Jewel v. NSA to the District Court for the next step. The court found that Jewel had alleged sufficient specifics about the warrantless wiretapping program to proceed. Justices rejected the government's argument that the allegations about the well-known spying program and the evidence of the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco were too speculative. "Since the dragnet spying program first came to light, we have been fighting for the chance to have a court determine whether it is legal," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Today, the Ninth Circuit has given us that chance, and we look forward to proving the program is an unconstitutional and illegal violation of the rights of millions of ordinary Americans." Also today, the court upheld the dismissal of EFF's other case aimed at ending the illegal spying, Hepting v. AT&T, which was the first lawsuit against a telecom over its participation in the dragnet domestic wiretapping. The court found that the so-called "retroactive immunity" passed by Congress to stop telecommunications customers from suing the companies is constitutional, in part because the claims remained against the government in Jewel v. NSA. "By passing the retroactive immunity for the telecoms' complicity in the warrantless wiretapping program, Congress abdicated its duty to the American people," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "It is disappointing that today's decision endorsed the rights of telecommunications companies over those over their customers." Today's decision comes nearly exactly six years after the first revelations of the warrantless wiretapping program were published in the New York Times on December 16, 2006. EFF will now move forward with the Jewel litigation in the Northern District of California federal court. The government is expected to raise the state secrets privilege as its next line of defense but this argument has already been rejected in other similar cases. For the full opinion in Jewel: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/20111229_9C_Jewel_Opinion.pdf For the full opinion in Hepting: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/20111229_9C_Hepting_Opinion.pdf Contact: Rebecca Jeschke Media Relations Director Electronic Frontier Foundation press at eff.org --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 18:33:31 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:33:31 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Ebert: I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping... Message-ID: <1847E2E6-57F3-435C-868E-05B1374A5F23@infowarrior.org> I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping... BY ROGER EBERT / December 28, 2011 http://www.rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111228/COMMENTARY/111229973/ Box office revenue at movie theaters "lagged far behind 2010," an article by the AP's David Germain reports. Partly that was because the year lacked an "Avatar." Partly because a solid summer slate fell off in the autumn. Germain talks to several Hollywood insiders who tried to account for the general decline of ticket sales; 2011 had "smallest movie audience since 1995." I have some theories of my own, fueled by what people tell me. 1. Obviously, the absence of a must-see mass-market movie. When moviegoers hear about "Avatar" or "The Dark Knight," they blast off from home base and land in a theater seat as quickly as they can. 2. Ticket prices are too high. People have always made that complaint, but historically the movies have been cheap compared to concerts, major league sports and restaurants. Not so much any longer. No matter what your opinion is about 3D, the charm of paying a hefty surcharge has worn off for the hypothetical family of four. 3. The theater experience. Moviegoers above 30 are weary of noisy fanboys and girls. The annoyance of talkers has been joined by the plague of cell-phone users, whose bright screens are a distraction. Worse, some texting addicts get mad when told they can't use their cell phones. A theater is reportedly opening which will allow and even bless cell phone usage, although that may be an apocryphal story. 4. Refreshment prices. It's an open secret that the actual cost of soft drinks and popcorn is very low. To justify their inflated prices, theaters serve portions that are grotesquely oversized, and no longer offer what used to be a "small popcorn." Today's bucket of popcorn would feed a thoroughbred. 5. Competition from other forms of delivery. Movies streaming over the internet are no longer a sci-fi fantasy. TV screens are growing larger and cheaper. Consumers are finding devices that easily play internet movies through TV sets. Netflix alone accounts for 30% of all internet traffic in the evening. That represents millions of moviegoers. They're simply not in a theater. This could be seen as an argument about why newspapers and their readers need movie critics more than ever; the number of choices can be baffling. 6. Lack of choice. Box-office tracking shows that the bright spot in 2011 was the performance of indie, foreign or documentary films. On many weekends, one or more of those titles captures first-place in per-screen average receipts. Yet most moviegoers outside large urban centers can't find those titles in their local gigantiplex. Instead, all the shopping center compounds seem to be showing the same few overhyped disappointments. Those films open with big ad campaigns, play a couple of weeks, and disappear. The myth that small-town moviegoers don't like "art movies" is undercut by Netflix's viewing results; the third most popular movie on Dec. 28 on Netflix was "Certified Copy," by the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. You've heard of him? In fourth place--French director Alain Corneau's "Love Crime." In fifth, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"--but the subtitled Swedish version. The message I get is that Americans love the movies as much as ever. It's the theaters that are losing their charm. Proof: theaters thrive that police their audiences, show a variety of titles and emphasize value-added features. The rest of the industry can't depend forever on blockbusters to bail it out. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 29 22:14:31 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:14:31 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Stratfor Data Dump (urls) Message-ID: (c/o MS and others) This evening, the "Anonymous" / Lulz folks released the credit card info of about 75k users, plus the email, username, and password hashes of over 860k registered users of their "intelligence advisory service." (via cryptome - http://cryptome.org/0005/stratfor-hack.htm) Summary of releases of STRATFOR documents, subscribers' firm names and personal information (including addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers and passwords), latest release at top: 29 December 2011. Lulzxmas Dumps 860,000 STRATFOR Accounts: http://pastebin.com/f7jYf5Wd http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O5P03RXK --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 30 11:26:24 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:26:24 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside Message-ID: Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside John C. Newman, M.D., Ph.D., and Robin Feldman, J.D. N Engl J Med 2011; 365:2447-2449December 29, 2011 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1110652 For three decades after its publication, in 1975, the Mini?Mental State Examination (MMSE) was widely distributed in textbooks, pocket guides, and Web sites and memorized by countless residents and medical students. The simplicity and ubiquity of this 30-item screening test ? covering such functions as arithmetic, memory, language comprehension, visuospatial skills, and orientation ? made it the de facto standard for cognitive screening. Yet all that time, it was under copyright protection. In 2000, its authors, Marshal Folstein, Susan Folstein, and Paul McHugh, began taking steps to enforce their rights, first transferring the copyright to MiniMental, a corporation the Folsteins founded, and then in 2001 granting a worldwide exclusive license to Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) to publish, distribute, and manage all intellectual property rights.1,2 A licensed version of the MMSE can now be purchased from PAR for $1.23 per test. The MMSE form is gradually disappearing from textbooks, Web sites, and clinical tool kits.1 Clinicians' response to this ?lockdown? has been muted. A few commentators have expressed concern about continuing to use a now-proprietary tool in training2 or about implications for the developing world,1 echoing debates about patented pharmaceuticals. In our experience, many clinicians are either unaware of the MMSE's copyright restrictions or simply ignore them, despite the risk of copyright infringement. But then in March 2011, a promising new cognitive screening tool that was to be available through ?open access,? the Sweet 16 ? a 16-item assessment of thinking, learning, and memory developed by Harvard's Tamara Fong3 ? was removed from the Internet at the request of PAR in an apparent copyright dispute.4 The Sweet 16 includes orientation and three-object recall items, similar to the MMSE's, along with a digit-span item. This action, unprecedented for a bedside clinical assessment tool, has sent a chill through the academic community; clearly, clinicians and researchers can no longer live in blissful ignorance of copyright. Copyright derives from one of the few powers explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Any new intellectual work is under copyright protection automatically from the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium of expression ? a category now including blog posts, iPhone apps, and cognitive screening tools. Copyright law grants the author (or owner, for copyright can be transferred) exclusive rights to copy the work, distribute it, make works derivative of it, and perform or display it publicly. These rights last for 70 years past the date of the author's death, or up to 120 years from the time of creation if the work was done ?for hire.? This duration has been retroactively extended several times, so that works published as early as 1923 may remain under copyright today (and will until at least 2019). For persons or entities other than the copyright holder to copy or distribute a work, they must have permission from the owner, usually in the form of a license. Copying or distribution without permission is copyright infringement and carries stiff civil or even criminal penalties. There is limited protection under ?fair use? law for certain nonprofit uses of limited parts of a work ? for example, for teaching or research ? but that exception is narrower than it sounds. One need not have intended to infringe someone's copyright to be subject to damages of up to $30,000 per work, and willful infringers pay up to $150,000 ? and may, under certain circumstances, be subject to a jail term. For clinicians, the risk of infringement is real. Photocopying or downloading the MMSE probably constitutes infringement; those who publish the MMSE on a Web site or pocket card could incur more severe penalties for distribution. Even more chilling is the ?takedown? of the Sweet 16, apparently under threat of legal action from PAR (although PAR has not commented publicly). Are the creators of any new cognitive test that includes orientation questions or requires a patient to recall three items subject to action by PAR? However disputable the legal niceties, few physicians or institutions would want to have to argue their case in court. The MMSE case may be a harbinger of more to come. Many clinical tools we take for granted, such as the Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living, fall into the same ?benign neglect? copyright category as the MMSE did before 2000. At any time, they might be pulled back behind a wall of active copyright enforcement by the authors or their heirs. What can researchers do to ensure that our colleagues can use the tools we develop to improve patient care? One option is to essentially place works in the public domain by declaring free and open rights for all users. The Geriatric Depression Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) depression scale, and the Saint Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) cognitive assessment tool are all in the public domain. That domain, however offers no mechanism for ensuring that authors are recognized or compensated and no means of guaranteeing that later improvements will be made freely available. The ability to improve a clinical tool is crucial. Even licenses granting wide permission to copy, such as those of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) scale, while laudable, might still inhibit innovation by permitting legal challenges to improved tools perceived as derivative (as may have been the case with Sweet 16 and the MMSE). A better solution is to apply the principle of ?copyleft? from the open-source technology movement to encourage innovation and access while protecting authors' rights. Copyleft is intellectual jujitsu that uses copyright protection to guarantee the right of anyone to use, modify, copy, and distribute a work, as long as it and any derivatives remain under the same license. The author retains the right to offer the work under a different license simultaneously ? for example, giving a company specific license to commercialize the work without copyleft protections. Popular copyleft licenses include the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license and the GNU Free Documentation License. Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter all use open-source software at the heart of their products, because there is a clear economic benefit to using well-tested, well-validated, continually improved software in the core of complex products. Similarly, there is a clear clinical benefit to using well-tested, well-validated, continually improved clinical tools in complex patient care ? as demonstrated by the MMSE's use before 2000. In a sense, copyleft is how academic medicine has always been assumed to work.2 Restrictive licensing of such basic tools wastes resources, prevents standardization, and detracts from efforts to improve patient care. We suggest that authors of widely used clinical tools provide explicit permissive licensing, ideally with a form of copyleft. Any new tool developed with public funds should be required to use a copyleft or similar license to guarantee the freedom to distribute and improve it, similar to the requirement for open-access publication of research funded by the National Institutes of Health.5 The solution can be as simple as placing a copy of the tool on the authors' Web site, with a statement naming or linking to the license. Clinicians and researchers would be free to use, copy, and improve the tool; improvements would have to offer a similar copyleft license, perpetuating the benefits. Yet authors would maintain ownership and copyright of their tool and could profit by licensing it for a fee to commercial users or publishers who wished to include it in a non-copyleft work. The restrictions on the MMSE's use present clinicians with difficult choices: increase practice costs and complexity, risk copyright infringement, or sacrifice 30 years of practical experience and validation to adopt new cognitive assessment tools. By embracing the principles of copyleft licensing, we can avoid such setbacks and build a more open future of continually improving patient care. Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org. Source Information From the Division of Geriatrics, San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the University of California San Francisco (J.C.N.); and the Law and Bioscience Project, University of California Hastings College of the Law (R.F.) ? all in San Francisco. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 30 11:29:17 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:29:17 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Boot Hezbollah from Twitter or we sue, group says Message-ID: Boot Hezbollah from Twitter or we sue, group says http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/29/9809452-boot-hezbollah-from-twitter-or-we-sue-group-says Al-Manar is Hezbollah's "media arm," says the group seeking to have it and other terrorist-related groups removed from Twitter. By Suzanne Choney An Israeli law center said Thursday it is threatening to sue Twitter unless the social network cuts off access to groups, including Hezbollah, that are considered terrorist organizations by the United States. The law center, Shurat HaDin, describes itself as being "dedicated to enforcing basic human rights through the legal system," and says it has represented "victims of terrorism in courtrooms around the world." In a letter to San Francisco-based Twitter, attorney and Shurat HaDin executive director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner wrote that "it has come to our attention that Twitter, Inc. provides social media and associated services" to such groups as Hezbollah and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab ? labeled as "foreign terrorist organizations" (or FTOs) by the United States. "Please be advised that providing social media and other associated services to terrorist groups is illegal and will expose Twitter, Inc. and its officers to both criminal prosecution and civil liability to American citizens and others victimized by terrorisms carried out by Hezbollah, Al-Shabaab or other FTOs." Shurat HaDin specifically contends that Twitter's service goes against a 2010 Supreme Court case declaring unlawful "any assistance or support" to terrorist organizations. The law center, which has a New York office, wants Twitter to "immediately provide us written confirmation" that it will "permanently" discontinue access to Hezbollah, "Al-Manar TV, Al-Shabaab and any other FTOs ... Absent such confirmation, we will seek all available relief and remedies against Twitter, Inc. in all relevant jurisdictions." A spokesman for Twitter said the company does not have any comment about the potential lawsuit or the issue of allowing access to the groups. But it has long made a point of saying it does not take political sides, and favors free speech. The short-messaging microblog network, which limits posts to 140 characters, has come under fire in recent months for being used as a tool for disruption. Some disruption is considered positive, such as the role Twitter played in helping to foment the Arab Spring. But not all disruption is lauded. Twitter, as well as Facebook and RIM's BlackBerry phones, were all cited by British officials as the means for coordinating flash mobs and rioting last summer in Britain. More recently, in the U.S., Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, is leading an effort to get Twitter to block some accounts that are pro-Taliban. The site, in operation for five years, has been the frequent target of legal action by activist groups and celebrities seeking to stop or pull down information they don't like. It generally refuses unless the account in question misrepresents itself as belonging to someone else. Otherwise, Twitter says, it will comply only with legal U.S. court orders, and it has often clashed with law enforcement agencies that seek to go further. In January, Twitter successfully appealed the Justice Department's decision to keep under seal a subpoena for account records of a member of the Icelandic Parliament with ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Earlier Thursday, Twitter was ordered to hand over information about the account of a user active in the Occupy Boston protests. The case came to public attention after the company refused prosecutors' request to keep the subpoena secret and alerted the account holder that his information was being sought Twitter has more than 100 million active users around the world who say they use the free service at least once a month. An analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis, Will McCants, told NPR this week there is no research so far that shows terrorists are getting many new recruits via social media like Twitter. "Social media is interesting as a new outlet for terrorist groups, but in terms of achieving al-Qaida's goal or the Taliban's goal of creating new recruits. ... I think it is a complete disaster," he said. But, said Darshan-Leitner in the Shurat HaDin press release, Hezbollah "and its terrorist networks have entered the global world of social media to further their murderous agenda. Twitter?s complicit service to known foreign terrorist organizations is not only morally irresponsible, it is also illegal. Twitter needs to take responsibility for the platform it is providing to known terrorists and cease and desist immediately. Their failure to do so exposes them to severe liability." Shurat HaDin practices what it calls "Pro-Israel Lawfare." It partners with lawyers in countries around the world to sue governments, financial institutions and companies that it says knowingly or unknowingly assist anti-Israeli terrorist organizations. The group's mission, it says, is to "bankrupt the terror groups and grind their criminal activities to a halt ? one lawsuit at a time." In February, Darshan-Leitner was co-counsel in an action brought by five readers who sued former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his publishers for $5 million, alleging that in his 2006 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Carter made "false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author's agenda of anti-Israel propaganda." The case, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, was dropped in May. In September, Darshan-Leitner threatened to sue about 150 U.S. colleges for allegedly refusing to fight anti-Semitism on their campuses. Msnbc.com's M. Alex Johnson contributed to this report. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 30 12:01:17 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:01:17 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Art Cashin's Look Back At 2011 Message-ID: <0A88FC90-2C7D-4411-BBAE-15930C374030@infowarrior.org> It may not be iambic pentameter or Shakespearean sonnet-worthy but the venerable Art Cashin delivers his now traditional year-end poetic summation of all things newsworthy - old and new. For those unaware, Art is the Director of Floor Operations for UBS Financial Services and a true "old timer" on the floor of the NYSE.....and quite pithy in his comments. :) (Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ubs-art-cashin-waxes-poetic-new-year) 'Tis two days yet to New Year but despite what you?re hopin? The folks in the Board Room say ?the full day we?re open? So we'll buy and we'll sell as the tape crawls along And though "Bubbly's" verboten we may still sing a song Two Thousand Eleven looked good at the start But deadlocks in D.C. took things all apart We finished up with a rally thanks to old Santa Claus But some late Euro troubles Almost caused us to pause We lost special people as we seem to each year It just makes us treasure each one that?s still here Peter Falk, dear Columbo put his raincoat away James Arness, Marshall Dillon wears a new star today Jack Kevorkian left us without an assist Harry Morgan, Colonel Potter will also be missed And Christopher Hitchens said of God he had doubt Now he?s taken that journey when we each will find out Andy Rooney?s curmudgeon up to heaven has gone Jack La Lanne and his juicer have also moved on Amy Winehouse so troubled has joined heaven?s choir And Betty Ford also in this year did expire Joe Frazier, once smokin? went down for the count And Jane Russell, the Outlaw found a heavenly mount Liz Taylor?s great beauty now in heaven?s halls glows Jackie Cooper, the child star donned some angelic clothes Steve Jobs left his iPad he won?t need it now His final words as he left us were just a simple ?Oh Wow!? Mark Haines left the floor too without saying good-bye Though he growled & he grumbled he was still a good guy Kim Jong Il has departed yet North Korea?s no fun We?re stuck with his third kid who he named Kim Jong Un Navy Seals got Bin Laden now Khaddafi?s gone too Two of the worst kind that we ever knew Japan had a huge earthquake followed by a great wave Which engulfed a reactor that they couldn?t quite save A tornado hit Joplin Alabama slammed too Lots of tears then rebuilding nothing else could they do And in once civil Norway one day folks ceased to smile When a gun totting loner shot some kids on an isle While in Middle East cities young folks took to the streets And they spoke to each other Using YouTube and tweets In Washington - Gridlock was the theme of the year It brought ratings cuts to us and left nothing to cheer Up sprang ?Occupy Wall Street? it was almost a flop ?Til a YouTube explosion of that pepper spray cop Corzine?s MF Global misplaced lots of dough When they asked where it went he said - damned if I know Herman Cain scored debate points his three ?nines? moved up fast But he made a quick exit shocked by things from his past We saw Merkel, Sarkozy a cliff-hanger in Greece Bonga boy Berlusconi claimed some girl was his niece The Prez had a few struggles in the polls he did slip Prompting new speculation that Hil & Biden he?ll flip Casey Anthony?s jury somehow had a doubt And some Italian justice let Amanda Knox out A chambermaid pointed to a guy named Strause-Kahn But the District Attorney said her tale was a con And then Anthony Weiner emailed some pointed tweets Charlie Sheen had a meltdown as he screamed of his feats Let not this year's memories of sadness or sleaze Disturb you this day just give your heart ease Have faith that this New Year will bring a new sign And believe in yourself it will all work out fine Just lift up your spirits and some fruit of the vine And kiss ye a loved one and sing Auld Lange Syne And late in the evening as you watch the ball fall Wish yourself all the best Happy New Year to All!! --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 30 14:17:09 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:17:09 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DHS buys software as part of Einstein 3 deployment Message-ID: DHS buys software as part of Einstein 3 deployment Friday - 12/30/2011, 5:44am ET By Jason Miller http://www.federalnewsradio.com/241/2684411/DHS-buys-software-as-part-of-Einstein-3-deployment- The Homeland Security Department has been experimenting with the Einstein 3 intrusion prevention cybersecurity software for almost three years. Now it looks as if the agency is ready to move beyond the test phase. DHS bought about $20 million worth of software from TIBCO Federal Services earlier this year as part of its plan for broader deployment of the Einstein 3 program. "With our messaging software, we have adapters that will allow all the users to connect all the different systems and components of the cyber stack back up to the enterprise bus, and then we bring the information together in real time," said Dick Martin, president of TIBCO federal. "By accessing the information for all the different systems in real time, we can react more quickly." Under the five-year deal, DHS can distribute the TIBCO messaging software to the civilian agencies at no extra cost as they deploy the advanced cybersecurity system. DHS would not comment on the software deal and didn't respond to multiple requests for comments about Einstein 3 more broadly. But in its Privacy Impact Assessment from March 2010, DHS wrote, Einstein 3 "will draw on commercial technology and specialized government technology to conduct real-time full packet inspection and threat-based decision-making on network traffic entering or leaving these executive branch networks. The goal of Einstein 3 is to identify and characterize malicious network traffic to enhance cybersecurity analysis, situational awareness and security response. It will have the ability to automatically detect and respond appropriately to cyber threats before harm is done, providing an intrusion prevention system supporting dynamic defense." DHS asked Congress for more than $200 million for the Einstein program in the fiscal 2012 budget request. Congress allocated $229 million for network security deployment in the 2012 omnibus bill passed earlier this month, but didn't specifically call out the Einstein program. Congress also authorized $79.1 million for U.S. CERT and $35 million for federal network security. Overall, DHS will receive $443 million for cyber activities in 2012. DHS implemented Einstein at all agencies and Einstein 2 at 15 agencies plus on the four Networx telecommunications Managed Trusted Internet Providers networks. The decision to buy TIBCO software signals a plan to move out more broadly with Einstein 3. Martin said the TIBCO software will help minimize the threats from intrusions and also will help eliminate intrusions to begin with. "Right now, if an agency has a variety of different point products to help protect their networks, the information from each one of these, by the time you get it, the intrusion has already happened and the damage is done," Martin said. "What we do is we connect in real time to each and every one of these point products, and we bring the information up to a control center. We can determine based on the nature of the threats if it's real and then we have a rules engine that will automatically take action against that intrusion." TIBCO's messaging software already is in place across several agencies, including the Army and the Air Force. Martin said the Air Force, for instance, has been able to minimize the effects of cyber attacks by getting data at "machine speed" instead of the six weeks it used to take. "The intention and focus with Einstein 3 is with the civilian agencies," he said. "There also are some plans in the near future to protect the networks in the Defense Industrial Base. And in the long-term, there are other industries outside the federal government, such as the finance industry and the energy grid, that need cybersecurity help. There are no contracts for the Defense industrial base or for any of the other outside industries yet, but the future forward is clearly going in that direction." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 30 16:07:07 2011 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:07:07 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Verizon_Cancels_=242_=91Convenie?= =?windows-1252?q?nce_Fee=92_After_Backlash?= Message-ID: <2A79DE76-888C-4561-B19C-71936539532C@infowarrior.org> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-12-30/verizon-defends-2-convenience-fee-.html Verizon Cancels $2 ?Convenience Fee? After Backlash By Alex Sherman - Dec 30, 2011 Verizon Wireless (VZ), the largest U.S. mobile carrier, canceled a planned $2 ?convenience fee? for online and phone bill payments after a backlash from consumers and scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission. The company reversed its decision after just one day in response to customer feedback, according to a statement on its website today. Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless had announced the fee yesterday for users who make single bill payments on a month-to-month basis online or by phone. Customers began criticizing Verizon Wireless on Twitter and Web forums after the company disclosed the fee, with some setting up online petitions and calling for consumers to boycott the carrier. The FCC today said it was ?concerned? about the plan and that it would investigate. ?Companies used to think they could get away with putting out unpopular policies,? said Brianna Cayo Cotter, a spokeswoman for Change.org, a website that lets people start online campaigns. ?Today, hundreds of thousands of people can mobilize and change policies in a matter of hours. That?s what we?re seeing with Verizon.? Verizon Wireless customers started more than 35 petitions on Change.org against the fee, including one that was joined by more than 95,000 people within hours. Last month, a consumer backlash led to Bank of America Corp. canceling a $5-per-month fee for debit card users. In that case, too, consumers used online campaigns to pressure the company. Boosting Earnings Verizon Wireless said yesterday it planned to add the fee to address costs it incurs for processing the single payments. The charge wouldn?t have applied to customers who enroll in automatic payment plans, use electronic checks, pay at a Verizon Wireless store, send in checks or pay through online banking websites. ?The best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,? Dan Mead, Verizon Wireless chief executive officer, said in the today?s statement. Verizon Communications Inc., which co-owns the wireless business with Vodafone Group Plc, rose (VZ) 0.2 percent to $40.12 at the close in New York. The stock advanced 12 percent this year. Verizon Wireless is driving up profit at parent Verizon Communications as it gains users for Apple Inc.?s iPhone and Google Inc. Android devices, which let users browse the Web, watch video and stream music. Third-quarter net income at New York-based Verizon Communications doubled to $1.38 billion from $659 million a year earlier. To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Sherman in New York at asherman6 at bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom at bloomberg.net