From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 1 07:00:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 08:00:48 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Exploding The Myth Of The 'Ethical Hacker' Message-ID: Exploding The Myth Of The 'Ethical Hacker' Guest post by Conrad Constantine and Dominique Karg http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/07/31/exploding-the-myth-of-the-ethical-hacker/print/ Fretful members of U.S. Senate are preparing to debate the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, potentially making it easier for corporations to share data about their users with the authorities. But who are they scared of? In the current lexicon of the cyber security industry, it?s the so-called blackhat hackers who seek to subvert information for their own gain. On the other side of that coin are so-called whitehats, or ?ethical? hackers. Two IT security specialists at cyber security firm AlienVault offer 5 reasons why the latter term is best left unsaid: The subject of whether or not to hire an ?ethical hacker? has been debated since the 90?s, albeit with perhaps a little less misdirection back then. We?d argue that the ?ethical? hacker simply does not exist, so perhaps the time has come for a new question, about whether we should even use the term ?ethical hacker.? If you find yourself on the wrong side of a locked door, you do not think to yourself ?I need an ethical locksmith? ? unless you?re a thief, in which case you probably have a whole host of other questions. Instead, you look for a locksmith, pure and simple. You trust that the person that turns up to break your lock will do no more, and no less, than the job you?ve hired him for. Calling him ethical does not legitimize his practice of breaking in. So why is there a need to justify hiring a hacker by claiming he?s ?ethical?? In my opinion, the job title itself is the problem. Argument 1 : A hacker is a hacker is a hacker The term ?hacker? has two connotations: ? someone that has been convicted of a computer related criminal activity, or ? someone who thinks a certain way about technology. If you consider it a term that refers to criminal intentions then you?re basically saying ?ethical criminal.? How is it possible to argue that that makes sense when it?s obviously a contradiction? On the other hand, if you are using it to describe a person who thinks about technology in a certain way, then why does it need the word ?ethical? in front of it? Argument 2: Good versus evil This takes us back to our ethical locksmith argument. Yes, hackers have had bad press for many years, but calling the practice ?ethical? will not change that. The job of the hacker is to clandestinely look for ways to infiltrate systems. What is then done with that access is the differentiator. It?s easy right now to pick on bankers who are having a hard time, especially as many are being tarred fraudsters and thieves. However, we don?t see any of these professionals clamouring to repackage themselves as ?ethical? to distance themselves from their unsavory peers. Argument 3: Legitimate versus dishonest Some hackers would argue that they?re not criminals, but activists. Others would say that they?re just rebellious in the way they think about technology and have a duty to highlight an organisations? poor security. Does that make them unethical? We need people who are willing to stand up and challenge authority ? in so doing, does that then make them ethical? We don?t see why it should. It just means that they can look at something ? an application or a business process, for example ? and can see why something won?t work and are willing to explain why ? or better still how it can be improved. A case in point is the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A report into the incident stated that the disaster was completely preventable. It wasn?t the earthquake, or resulting tsunami, that was to blame but human error, or human oversight, spawned from a culture of unquestioning obedience. All it would have taken was for one person to stand up and state that the various technical processes employed to implement safety regulations, rather than preventing an accident, could fail. And that?s precisely a hacker?s mindset ? not to take things for granted, to question authority and challenge the regimented way of doing something that pushes back on the status quo. Ethical or unethical doesn?t come into the equation. Argument 4: Hiring a ?non-criminal? We would concede that for many convicted of hacking it could be argued that there are extenuating circumstances. For example, a few years ago it was almost impossible to get access to code to learn on your own, resulting in many resourceful technical people being convicted of ?hacking.? Today, this argument of ?I had to hack so I could learn? would not be considered adequate defence as the availability of virtual infrastructure technologies ? among other interesting tools ? means there is so much more that can be set up in your own home to learn your craft. Additionally, Germany?s ?Hacking? law defines many security tools as illegal purely because of their design and ability. For that reason, you don?t even have to be doing anything with these tools that could harm someone to be found guilty of hacking. This ambiguity has resulted in the argument that not all hackers are criminals and therefore the term ?ethical? started to be used. While we would agree that not all hackers are criminals, we would therefore also argue that the term ?ethical? is unnecessary. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that most organizations would not hire a criminal ? therefore why do we need ?ethical? in front of hacker to prove this. Argument 5: Criminal turned protector Moving on from the last argument, it doesn?t seem logical to refer to someone as an ?ethical hacker? because he or she has moved over from the dark side ?into the light.? It just makes them a bad hacker. Kevin Mitnick isn?t famous because of his skills ? he?s famous because he got caught. And before we move on from talking about skills, we?d like to clarify that ?ethical hacking certificates? aren?t worth the paper they?re printed on. The reason you want to employ a hacker is not because they know the ?rules? to hacking, can run them and produce reports. What makes a hacker desirable as an employee is the very fact that they don?t play by the rules, with an ?anything that works? mentality, as it?s this combination that will give them the skills to test your systems to the very limit. A spade is a spade When people use the term ?ethical? hacker, they mean someone who is good at breaking into things by using creative techniques and methods but without the criminal intention. However, my case is that the inclusion of the term ?ethical? does not legitimize the practice. It is still hacking ? end of argument. I?m also not saying that you shouldn?t hire a hacker, just don?t make them out to be something that they?re not. If they?re a hacker ? they?re a hacker. By describing them as ethical does not necessarily make them ethical, or unethical for that matter. And for hackers, you have a talent and should not have to hide it under a rock because some people practice the art for malicious or fraudulent reasons. If we?re too embarrassed to openly admit that we need and want a hacker to test our systems then let?s give them a new name not legitimize the practice. Answers on a postcard please. ----- Dominique Karg is the co-founder and chief hacking officer of AlienVault. Karg wrote the first line of OSSIM code and later published it in 2003 on Sourceforge.net. Dominique has led the project since its beginning to today, first as security architect and coder, then as manager of the development team. Conrad Constantines a research engineer at AlienVault and has spent more than a decade researching security vulnerabilities in telecom, medical and media corporations, as well as dealing with the fallout of the 2011 RSA breach. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 1 19:49:12 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 20:49:12 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DHS Issuing Its Own DMCA Takedowns On YouTube To Stifle Speech Message-ID: <1D4CBC49-AE0D-4C7B-B0BC-C815EF6563A7@infowarrior.org> Homeland Security Issuing Its Own DMCA Takedowns On YouTube To Stifle Speech from the seems-questionable... dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120720/02530219774/homeland-security-issuing-its-own-dmca-takedowns-youtube-to-stifle-speech.shtml We recently wrote about the fight over copyright/fair use in political videos. In the comments, someone anonymous pointed us to a YouTube page including a typical takedown notice.. Here's a screenshot. This is actually the first time I can recall that I've seen a takedown that had "multiple" takedown notices. So it's interesting that YouTube even has such an error message. But what really caught my attention was the second claimant listed. United States Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security? Issuing copyright takedowns? For what it's worth, the commenter who submitted this pointed us to another video, which they claim is the same as what was taken down. I have no idea if it's the same video or not, but it is some idiotic conspiracy mongering, taking one comment from a reporter completely out of context, and pretending President Obama said it, when he did not. I never understand conspiracy theories like that, but that's really neither here nor there. The real question is why is Homeland Security issuing takedowns? Works produced by the federal government, of course, can't have copyright. However, it is possible for the government to hold copyrights -- mainly if someone else gets it and assigns it to the government. So it's possible that happened here, though it still seems like a strange move. If the video is the same as the other one pointed to, it's just conspiracy theory claptrap, and I don't see why DHS would even bother issuing a takedown. But, even if we assume that the copyright itself and the takedown were legit, does this seem reasonable at all? Having a government agency directly using a copyright claim to take down a video? Especially when that group is DHS -- in which national internet censor ICE exists. Giving it the power to censor videos too just seems like it's going way too far. It's not as if Homeland Security is going to bring the work "to market" to make money, so it's not like there's an "impact on the market" for the work. The only reason to issue the takedown -- no matter how accurate the claim is -- is to silence speech. A government organization using a government-granted monopoly to stifle speech may be all too common, but that doesn't mean it should pass by unremarked upon. I reached out to people at YouTube to see if they could explain why DHS appears to be issuing DMCA takedowns, and got back the equivalent of a "no comment." I also reached out to Homeland Security, who at first seemed interested in looking into the details and then completely stopped responding to emails. Having not received further communication from them in over a week at this point, I'm just going with the post as is, in the hopes that maybe someone out there can explain why the federal government is using copyright to censor speech? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 07:24:41 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 08:24:41 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Missile Defense Staff Warned to Stop Surfing Porn Sites Message-ID: <6F8BBAEF-C780-402C-8ACF-782269B342DC@infowarrior.org> Missile Defense Staff Warned to Stop Surfing Porn Sites By Tony Capaccio - Aug 1, 2012 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-08-01/missile-defense-staff-warned-to-stop-surfing-porn-sites.html The Pentagon?s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency?s executive director. In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected ?engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.? ?Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,? James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News. ?These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,? he wrote. Individuals identified as violating the rules face referral for ?appropriate? disciplinary action, he wrote. They put ?their security clearances in jeopardy, and are subject to suspension and removal from federal service or MDA sponsored contracts.? Agency spokesman Rick Lehner said in an e-mail that the memo was written in response to ?a few people downloading material from some websites that were known to have had virus and malware issues.? Infected Websites A government cybersecurity specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such work is classified, said that many pornographic websites are infected and criminals and foreign intelligence services such as Russia?s use them to gain access to and harvest data from government and corporate computer networks. ?There are great dangers in interacting with any site that has high-quality imagery, whether it?s pornographic or not, or a lot of links,? said Chase Cunningham, chief of cyber analytics at Sterling, Virginia-based Decisive Analytics Corporation, in a telephone interview yesterday. Using what is called steganography, Cunningham said, a programmer can embed malicious computer code that infects computers, opens ports, steals data or gains access to networks when photos, videos or other files are downloaded. Missile Defense The Missile Defense Agency is responsible for developing, fielding and upgrading the nation?s ground- and sea-based missile defense programs, working with Japan and Israel, among other nations. Its top contractors are Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA); Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), based in Bethesda, Maryland; Raytheon Co. (RTN) of Waltham, Massachusetts; Falls Church, Virgina-based Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC); and Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) of Dulles, Virginia. The Pentagon is seeking $7.7 billion for the agency in fiscal 2013. The Pentagon inspector general criticized the agency?s director, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Patrick O?Reilly, for abusive behavior toward subordinates in a May 2 report. ?Witnesses testified that O?Reilly?s leadership style resulted in a command climate of fear and low morale,? the inspector general found. The report was on the inspector general?s website. In his memo, James reminded employees that the agency?s ?network systems are subject to monitoring at all times. Inappropriate usage will be detected and reported to supervisors for appropriate disciplinary action.? ?The seriousness of the potential breach to operations cannot be overstated,? James wrote. ?Contracting officers will coordinate action through contractor management when contractor personnel engage in inappropriate usage.? Lehner denied the memo was intended to intimidate agency employees from reading the IG report. To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio at bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9 at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 07:42:46 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 08:42:46 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Inquiry Into Security Leaks Is Casting Chill Over Coverage Message-ID: <6410148B-BC16-4A6D-9622-A8E9B254147F@infowarrior.org> August 1, 2012 Inquiry Into Security Leaks Is Casting Chill Over Coverage By SCOTT SHANE http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/us/national-security-leaks-lead-to-fbi-hunt-and-news-chill.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print WASHINGTON ? F.B.I. agents on a hunt for leakers have interviewed current and former high-level government officials from multiple agencies in recent weeks, casting a distinct chill over press coverage of national security issues as agencies decline routine interview requests and refuse to provide background briefings. The criminal investigation, which has reached into the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., appears to be the most sweeping inquiry into intelligence disclosures in years. It coincides with Senate consideration of new legislation, designed to curb intelligence officials? exchanges with reporters, that intelligence veterans and civil libertarians fear could be counterproductive and may raise constitutional issues. The legislation approved last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee would reduce to a handful the number of people at each agency permitted to speak to reporters on ?background,? or condition of anonymity; require notice to the Senate and House intelligence committees of authorized disclosures of intelligence information; and permit the government to strip the pension of an intelligence officer who illegally discloses classified information. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, the presumed presidential nominee, and other Republicans have added an election-year spin to old Washington tussles over government secrecy, accusing the White House of leaking secrets to enhance President Obama?s image. Mr. Romney has sought to taint the centerpiece of Mr. Obama?s security record, the killing of Osama bin Laden, calling White House disclosures about the raid in Pakistan ?contemptible.? The Obama administration has set a record for prosecuting leaks of classified information to the news media, with six cases to date, more than under all previous presidents combined. But on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, suggested that the F.B.I. was foot-dragging and should zero in on high-level Obama administration officials. Mr. McCain said he was ?frankly puzzled? that investigators were taking so long, since the relevant articles and books cited ?a relatively small number of senior officials.? The F.B.I. appears to be focused on recent media disclosures on American cyberattacks on Iran, a terrorist plot in Yemen that was foiled by a double agent and the so-called ?kill list? of terrorist suspects approved for drone strikes, some of those interviewed have told colleagues. The reports, which set off a furor in Congress, were published by The New York Times, The Associated Press, Newsweek and other outlets, as well as in recent books by reporters for Newsweek and The Times. In June, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., rejecting Republican calls for a special prosecutor, directed the United States attorneys for Maryland and the District of Columbia to investigate the leaks. While some officials have indicated that their primary focus has been on the cyberattacks and the Yemen plot, some of those interviewed have been questioned about the targeted killing of terrorists. Employees of several agencies have been directed to preserve records related to the cases under review. Early interviews have appeared to be informational in tone, rather than accusatory, some employees have said, as agents try to master the facts on complex secret programs and trace press reports about them. Already the deterrent effect of the investigation on officials? willingness to discuss security and foreign policy issues, presumably one purpose of the leak crackdown, has been striking. Some government officials and press advocates say Americans are learning less about their government?s actions. ?People are being cautious,? said one intelligence official who, considering the circumstances, spoke on condition of anonymity. ?We?re not doing some of the routine things we usually do,? he added, referring to briefings on American security efforts and subjects in the news. Gregg Leslie, the interim executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy group, said the effect of the current investigation comes on top of a growing awareness by journalists in the last two years that the government often tracks employees? e-mail and telephone contacts. ?Reporters are beginning to resort to the old practice of meeting on a park bench to avoid leaving an electronic trail,? he said. The Senate antileak proposals got strong bipartisan support in the intelligence committee, with only Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, voting against them. But in recent days the proposed bill has been pilloried by former officials and civil liberties groups and has gotten no public support from current intelligence officials, the White House or the House Intelligence Committee. Critics have pointed out that the new rules would be highly selective, applying only to the intelligence agencies and not to the White House, the State Department ? or to Congress itself. In addition, they say, by prohibiting official background briefings by subject-matter experts who do not want to be named publicly, the bill could actually prompt reporters to seek out unofficial sources, leading to more uncontrolled disclosures. ?Everybody in the intelligence world agrees that we have never seen so many high-level leaks,? said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former assistant director of the C.I.A. ?But this is the wrong solution.? W. George Jameson, a lawyer who spent most of his 30-year C.I.A. career in the general counsel?s office, said the Senate bill also could be unconstitutional on separation-of-powers grounds. ?It?s the legislative branch telling the executive branch how to deal with executive-branch classified information,? he said. Rigid rules can backfire, Mr. Jameson said. Often, a reporter who obtains classified information calls an agency to check facts or alert officials to a pending story. Remaining mum, he said, often makes no sense. ?Sometimes you have to reveal classified information to protect classified information,? Mr. Jameson said. ?Things move fast, and there are no bright lines.? Brian Weiss, a spokesman for Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, said she was aware of the potential problems. ?The bill is a work in progress,? he said. ?Senator Feinstein is looking at the comments and is open to changes as it moves forward.? A closer look at the recent disclosures reveals some of the complexity. The Stuxnet computer worm that destroyed some Iranian nuclear centrifuges, for example, first came to light not from press leaks but from computer security companies that saw its consequences in several countries. The New York Times had reported in January 2009 that President George W. Bush had authorized attacks on Iranian computer networks; more recent articles provided more detail on the American role in the attacks, and Mr. Obama?s oversight of them. Some experts say the underlying cause of damaging disclosures is the overclassification of routine information. ?People who regularly deal with classified information lose all respect for the system because so much of what they see is improperly classified,? said Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school. She noted that more than 4.8 million government employees and contractors now held security clearances. ?That?s not a recipe for keeping secrets,? she said. Charlie Savage contributed reporting. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 08:49:03 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 09:49:03 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users Message-ID: 2 August 2012 Last updated at 11:54 Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19093078?print=true Facebook has revealed that it believes there are now more than 83 million fake users on the social network. In company filings published this week, it said 8.7% of its 955 million active users might not be real. Duplicate profiles made up 4.8% of the fakes, user-misclassified accounts amounted to 2.4%, and 1.5% of users were described as "undesirable". The estimate came at a time of growing concern about the value of marketing on the platform. In total, the company said it estimated there were 83.09 million fake users, which it classified in three groups. The largest group of "fakes" were duplicates, which the company defined as "an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account." Others were described as "user-misclassified" where, Facebook explained "users have created personal profiles for a business, organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet". Finally, "undesirable" accounts were profiles deemed to be in breach of Facebook's terms of service. Typically, this means profiles which have been used for sending out spam messages or other content. 'Harm our business' Facebook, whose business model relies on targeted advertising, is coming under increased scrutiny over the worth of its advertising model which promotes the gathering of "likes" from users. "We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising," the company said in its filing. "The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business." Last month, the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones set up a fake company called VirtualBagel to investigate allegations of fake "likes". His investigation found that the large majority of "likes" for the fake firm originated from the Middle East and Asia. Many users appeared to be false, such as "Ahmed Ronaldo" - apparently a Cairo-based user who is employed by Spanish football club Real Madrid. Last week, digital distribution firm Limited Press alleged that, based on its own analytics software, 80% of clicks on its advertisements within Facebook had come from fake users. In a post on its Facebook page, the company said: "Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. "Do we know who the bots belong too [sic]? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes." After a surge of attention to the company, it has since removed the Facebook posting, and said Facebook was now looking into its concerns. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 15:53:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 16:53:04 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Republican filibuster blocks Senate Cybersecurity bill Message-ID: <2105949C-A9F0-4497-A929-286F5FE39983@infowarrior.org> Republican filibuster blocks Senate Cybersecurity bill Online security includes abortion rights it seems By Iain Thomson in San Francisco Posted in Security, 2nd August 2012 20:03 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/senate_blocks_cybersecurity_bill/ The latest attempt by the US government to ensure some kind of security standards for its critical infrastructure has failed, with Senate Republicans having blocked legislation over concerns at over-regulation of business and the weighing-down of the bill with useless ammendments. "Despite the President?s repeated calls for Congress to act on this legislation, and despite pleas from numerous senior national security officials from this Administration and the Bush Administration, the politics of obstructionism, driven by special interest groups seeking to avoid accountability, prevented Congress from passing legislation to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks," said the White House in a statement. The US Cybersecurity Act 2012 originally called for mandatory security standards to be enforced for companies forming the US national critical infrastructure ? a rather nebulous term used to cover power, communications, water and the other stuff that makes life relatively safe and bearable. The government only has oversight of around 20 per cent of this, with private companies running the rest. After the Republicans enforced a filibuster, the bill failed to meet the 60 votes required at a 52-48 split, with five Republicans and five Democrats crossing the floor. The US Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying group which was in the vanguard of opposition to the bill, applauded the vote. "While we thank the co-sponsors for their efforts on the issue of cybersecurity, the legislation voted down today would have given the federal government too much control over what actions the business community could take to protect its computers and networks," Ann Beauchesne, its VP of National Security told El Reg in an emailed statement Owing to the peculiar nature of the US legislative system, various irrelevant amendments were tacked onto the plan, including two to limit abortion, a motion to limit the sale of high capacity gun magazines, and an amendment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The bill was watered down to down to make security standards voluntary but that wasn't enough to appease critics. The legislation also worried civil liberties groups with its lack of privacy protections, although these were in part addressed. "Regardless of today's vote, the issue of cybersecurity is far from dead,? said Michelle Richardson, ACLU legislative counsel, in a statement. "When Congress inevitably picks up this issue again, the privacy amendments in this bill should remain the vanguard for any future bills. We'll continue to work with Congress to make sure that the government?s cybersecurity efforts include privacy protections. Cybersecurity and our online privacy should not be a zero sum game." The failure of the bill will leave many in the security industry seriously concerned. At last month's Black Hat and DEFCON meetings, current and former government representatives warned that the situation for the US in cybersecurity terms was dire. General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and head of US Cyber Command, called for the hacking community to help keep America safe. Based on what attendees were telling El Reg, the security community is perfectly happy to share information with the government, so long as it's a two-way street. The most common complaint is that government wanted all their hacks, but offered nothing in return when it came to locking down anyone else's systems. The Cybersecurity Act would have formalized some kind of information sharing, and the House of Representatives' passing CISPA also seeks to set up a framework for collating data. But the security industry traditionally hasn't needed legislation in the past to share information on a common threat. Ever since the early days of the antivirus industry, the top researchers have shared information with commercial rivals on new threats. The first person to bag malware gets naming rights, but data is shared because security was more important that making a buck. This El Reg hack wonders if a similar system might work better than a government mandated one for cybersecurity. ? From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 15:53:13 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 16:53:13 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Stats Used To Support Cybercrime 'Threats' Just As Bogus As Hollywood's 'Loss' Claims Message-ID: <38B07BE1-8161-4006-9972-27D1AE6ED6B0@infowarrior.org> The Stats Used To Support Cybercrime 'Threats' Just As Bogus As Hollywood's 'Loss' Claims from the but-of-course... dept While the latest attempt to pass a cybersecurity bill may be on ice for now, it'll be back... and with it there will be a lot more hyperbole about how urgent this is because of various massive "losses" already happening due to cybersecurity problems. Of course, nearly all of the numbers and claims you hear will be 100% bogus. For years, we've highlighted stories about how the claims of "losses" from the entertainment industry due to infringement are completely fictitious. In the past, we've seen Julian Sanchez go on a hunt to find the origin of some of the numbers being thrown around, and come up with evidence that they're based on nothing. For example, claims of $200 billion in losses due to counterfeiting... came from a 1993 Forbes article that just makes that claim with no citation and no backing info. But it became gospel among those arguing there was as problem. With Congress and the President continuing to insist that we need a cybersecurity bill, politicians have been tossing around all sorts of questionable numbers. Just a few weeks ago, we noted that General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, had tossed out some numbers and claimed that cybersecurity was the "greatest transfer of wealth in history." Considering that we're living through the aftermath of a financial meltdown that involved a massive transfer of wealth, I find the original claim difficult to believe. Plus, as we noted, he seemed to only cite studies from McAfee and Symantec, two companies who have a massive vested interest in keeping the cybersecurity FUD going, because it helps them sell stuff. Thankfully, the folks over at Pro Publica decided to take a much closer look at the numbers politicians are relying on in support of the massive "harm" that is already being caused by online security issues... and discovered that the numbers are completely and totally bogus. In fact, the full story (which is fascinating) parallels (very closely) the story with "piracy" stats from the industry. One popular number is "$1 trillion" in losses due to cybersecurity breaches. That number gets thrown around a lot by politicians (and many in the press who merely parrot such numbers unquestioningly, even as that gives those politicians more cover to claim that there's a reputable source supporting the number). Yet, the Pro Publica report highlights that, not only is this number bogus, but the (quite well respected) researchers who put together the original report for McAfee did not use that number and, more importantly, many of them spoke out publicly with surprise that McAfee put out a press release with such a number -- which they thought was questionable and not supported by their data. In fact, there were a number of methodological problems, including that the data was based on a self-reported "average" amount of the "worth of sensitive information stored in offshore computer systems." Who knows if the respondents are being accurate, first of all, but even more to the point, the "worth" of such information is a highly subjective number. People can find something "worthwhile" without paying for it, but by focusing on the "worth," they obscure the fact that the market price may be quite different than what people think something is worth. And, what people think something is worth has zero impact on any actual losses. But, from a very small number, McAfee just sprinkled some magic pixie dust on the already questionable number, and proceeded to extrapolate, massively: < -- > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120802/02474519915/stats-used-to-support-cybercrime-threats-just-as-bogus-as-hollywoods-loss-claims.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 2 17:35:19 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 18:35:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Appeals Court orders TSA to justify year-long defiance of the law Message-ID: <083C54C0-F6D4-4C45-B97C-1C893975E776@infowarrior.org> Court orders TSA to justify year-long defiance of the law TSA has refused to explain and take public comments on body-scanning policies. by Timothy B. Lee - Aug 2 2012, 5:10pm EDT http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/court-orders-tsa-to-justify-year-long-defiance-of-the-law/ For over a year, the Transportation Security Administration has ignored a court order requiring it to engage in a formal rule-making process regarding body-scanning machines at airports. On Wednesday, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit granted a request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to compel the TSA to explain its actions. Critics of the full-body scanners have questioned whether the machines protect the health and privacy of travelers, and whether the machines will prove effective at stopping terrorists. Ordinarily, those concerns would be raised during the formal rule-making process that federal agencies are required to conduct before they establish new regulations. The TSA appears to believe these requirements do not apply to them. So in 2010, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit challenging the use of the scanners. In July 2011, the DC Circuit agreed with EPIC that the TSA needed to begin a formal rule-making process, as the law requires. When the one-year anniversary of that order rolled around, the TSA appeared to have completely ignored the court. So EPIC asked the court to compel the TSA to explain its inaction. On Wednesday, the court granted the request and ordered the agency to explain its actions by the end of August. Requiring the TSA to follow the formal rule-making procedure is important, because one of the essential steps in that process is the solicitation of public feedback. American travelers will have the opportunity to voice their concerns about the TSA's policy, and the agency will be required to respond to those concerns. Given that so many of the TSA's policies are shrouded in secrecy, forcing the TSA to explain its policies will be a much-needed source of transparency. And if the rationale for using the machines is as flimsy as some critics charge, perhaps the exercise will cause the agency to re-consider the decision to use them. In an op-ed for Ars last month, Jim Harper of the Cato Institute (Disclosure: I'm a Cato adjunct scholar) explained his "Require the Transportation Security Administration to Follow the Law" petition, which calls on President Obama to order the TSA to comply with the court's order. It now has almost 17,000 signatures. The White House has committed to formally respond to any petition that reaches 25,000 signatures. If you think the TSA should obey the law, you might want to add your signature. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 06:49:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 07:49:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SEC and the QOTD Message-ID: "Some S.E.C. officials are pushing new measures that would force firms to fully test coding changes before their public debut," --- in other words, HFT algo devs are violating the cardinal rule of software development, which is to TEST IN PRIVATE before "going live", especially on systems that have the capability to cause significant collateral damage around the world. These people (both the SEC and HFT devs) are idiots. pure and simple. ----rick August 2, 2012, 9:06 pm Errant Trades Reveal a Risk Few Expected http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/errant-trades-reveal-a-risk-few-expected/?hp&pagewanted=print By NATHANIEL POPPER and PETER EAVIS The trading firm Knight Capital recently rushed to develop a computer program so it could take advantage of a new Wall Street venue for trading stocks. But the firm ran up against its deadline and failed to fully work out the kinks in its system, according to people briefed on the matter. In its debut Wednesday, the software went awry, swamping the stock market with errant trades and putting Knight's future in jeopardy. The fiasco, the third stock trading debacle in the last five months, revived calls for bolder changes to a computer-driven market that has been hobbled by its own complexity and speed. Among the proposals that gained momentum were stringent testing of computer trading programs and a transaction tax that could reduce trading. In the industry, there was a widespread recognition that the markets had become more dangerous than even specialists realized."What is starting to become clear is that the costs in terms of these random shocks to the system are occurring in ways that people never anticipated," said Henry Hu, a former official at the Securities and Exchange Commission and a professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Knight, founded in 1995, is a leading matchmaker for buyers and sellers of stocks, handling 11 percent of all trading in the first half of this year, according to the data firm Tabb Group. Knight lost three-quarters of its market value in the last two days, in addition to losing $440 million from the errant trades, and was scrambling to find financing or a new owner. While the turbulence on Wednesday hit scores of individual stocks, the broader market took the spasm in stride, closing down less than 1 percent on Wednesday and Thursday. The S.E.C., which has opened an investigation into potential legal violations at Knight, said it was "considering what, if any, additional steps may be necessary." Some S.E.C. officials are pushing new measures that would force firms to fully test coding changes before their public debut, according to a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. While the idea has long been discussed at the agency, it gained traction after the Knight debacle. The S.E.C. applied limited safeguards on trading after the "flash crash" of 2010 sent the broader market plummeting in a matter of minutes. But big investors like T. Rowe Price, members of Congress and former regulators said Thursday that the S.E.C. and the industry had been too complacent and needed to do more to understand and control the supercharged market. "Things are happening far too regularly," said Ed Ditmire, an analyst at Macquarie Securities who focuses on stock exchanges. "It's not nearly as solid a market as it should be, so there's plenty of room for improvement." Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that recent events "have scared the hell out of investors" and called for the agency to hold hearings. "I believe this latest event was handled better than the flash crash, but the larger question is whether our markets are adequate to deal with the technology that is out there," Mr. Levitt said. "I don't think they are." Regulators have made changes to the markets over the last two decades that have taken it out of the hands of a few New York institutions and allowed dozens of high-frequency trading firms and new trading venues to dominate the stock market. The high-speed firms like Knight, which connect directly to the servers of the exchanges and are capable of executing thousands of trades a second, are responsible for more than half of all activity in American markets. Companies that have benefited from the fragmentation and computerization of the markets have largely managed to fend off tighter controls by pointing to the steady decline in the cost of trading stocks. Some large, institutional investors, like Vanguard, have said that the increased volume of trading has made it easier to get in and out of stocks, lowering the ultimate costs for individuals who invest in popular vehicles like mutual funds. But even people who had previously defended the advances in trading technology said on Thursday that too many problems had been overlooked. In Knight's breakdown on Wednesday, as well as in the botched initial public offerings of Facebook in May and BATS Global Markets in March, the problems were caused by new computer programs that had not been adequately tested. Currently regulators have no protocol for signing off on new software programs like the one Knight rolled out. "When they put these things out in the world they are really being tried for the first time in a real-life test," said David Leinweber, the head of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "For other complex systems we do offline simulation testing." Mr. Leinweber has suggested to the S.E.C. that it do this work with the help of the supercomputing facilities at his center. The S.E.C. has recently moved in this direction by contracting with a high-speed trading firm that will provide it with more up-to-date market information. Other changes to the markets would help slow trading during crises. Before computer trading became dominant, if a flood of unusual orders came in, they would usually be questioned by human order matchers, called specialists, working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. To mimic that role, regulators are introducing a circuit breaker called the "limit up, limit down." This forces a pause in trading of a stock if it starts occurring outside a normal price range. The mechanism will start in February. "Quite literally, it could have stopped the flash crash," said Gus Sauter, the chief investment officer at Vanguard. The S.E.C. did introduce some circuit breakers after the flash crash but they stopped trading in only five of the stocks that were hit by Knight's faulty program. Some critics of the current market structure have said that much bolder reform is needed. One change that has been contemplated is a financial transaction tax, which would force firms to pay a small levy on each trade. At the right level, this could pare back high-frequency trading without undermining other types, supporters say. "It would benefit investors because there would be less volatility in the market," said Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat of Oregon. He introduced a bill containing a financial transaction tax last year. Opponents of such a levy say that it could hurt the markets and even make it more expensive for companies to raise capital. "I would be very concerned about unintended consequences," said Mr. Sauter. But Representative DeFazio, who favors a levy of three-hundredths of a percentage point on each trade, says he thinks the benefits of high-frequency trading are overstated. "Some people say it's necessary for liquidity, but somehow we built the strongest industrial nation on earth without algorithmic trading," he said. Benjamin Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg contributed reporting. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 07:06:58 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 08:06:58 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US resists control of internet passing to UN agency Message-ID: <21773754-19C1-46F8-9860-EDB3FCBE0759@infowarrior.org> 3 August 2012 Last updated at 02:13 US resists control of internet passing to UN agency By Leo Kelion Technology reporter http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19106420?print=true The US has confirmed it would resist efforts to put the internet under the control of the United Nations. At present several non-profit US bodies oversee the net's technical specifications and domain name system. They operate at arms-length from the US government but officially under the remit of its Department of Commerce. There has been speculation that other nations will push for a change later this year, but they cannot force the US to comply. The US has set out its position in documents filed with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) - the UN agency responsible for encouraging the development of communications technologies. The ITU is hosting a conference in December in Dubai to which representatives from 178 nations have been invited to review the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR). The ITR is a 1988 treaty which set out rules for how traffic should flow between different telecom networks, and how to calculate charges for traffic exchanged between carriers in different countries. The rise of the internet and mobile devices has led to calls for it to be revised, but countries are expected to disagree over the changes needed. The US's ambassador to the conference, Terry Kramer, outlined his worries in a statement published by the country's Department of State. "The US is concerned that proposals by some other governments could lead to greater regulatory burdens being placed on the international telecom sector, or perhaps even extended to the internet sector," he wrote. "The United States also believes that existing multi-stakeholder institutions, incorporating industry and civil society, have functioned effectively and will continue to ensure the health and growth of the internet and all its benefits." Leaked documents The ITU does not publish submissions by each country - leaving it up to the individual states to decide which material to release. But a site called Wcitleaks.org has posted proposals leaked to it. They include a submission from Russia suggesting the ITU could become responsible for allocating at least some of the internet's addresses as well as the "determination of the necessary requirements". At present US-based Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) co-ordinates the codes and numbering systems, deciding which new internet address endings should be allowed as an alternative to .com. It then leaves it to ISPs (internet service providers) to assign individual addresses. President Vladimir Putin has signalled Russia's final submission could go further. In 2011 he said he was keen to discuss "establishing international control over the internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union". The Russia Today news service has since reported that China and India had backed this stance. No votes But the ITU has made it clear that any changes to the treaty must have unanimous support, and it would block members trying to put any matter to a vote. "We never vote because voting means winners and losers and you can't afford that," Dr Hamadoun Toure, the ITU's secretary-general told the BBC. "Whatever one single country does not accept will not pass." He acknowledged that some countries were unhappy with the way Icann had looked after the internet address system. "Some people are saying the governments are not consulted enough," he said. But he played down the idea that there would be a serious effort to seize control of its functions and pass them to the ITU. "Has anybody suggested to take responsibility from Icann? No, it's never been done. I truly believe there is a complementarity involved between our work - we can work together." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 07:09:37 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 08:09:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - RIMM agrees to hand over its encryption keys to India Message-ID: <5B6A3F36-F26B-40D0-9D04-9EAE2258AD90@infowarrior.org> BlackBerry maker Research in Motion agrees to hand over its encryption keys to India Joji Thomas Philip, ET Bureau Aug 2, 2012, 05.57AM IST http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-02/news/33001399_1_blackberry-enterprise-encryption-keys-corporate-emails NEW DELHI: BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's (RIM) four-year standoff with the Indian government over providing encryption keys for its secure corporate emails and popular messenger services is finally set to end. RIM recently demonstrated a solution developed by a firm called Verint that can intercept messages and emails exchanged between BlackBerry handsets, and make these encrypted communications available in a readable format to Indian security agencies, according to an exchange of communications between the Canadian company and the Indian government. This satisfies India's core demand that RIM provide intelligence and security agencies with automatic solutions to monitor all communication on BlackBerry smartphones on a real-time basis, an official aware of the development said. "I can confirm that RIM is providing an appropriate lawful access solution that enables India's telecom operators to be legally complaint with respect to their BlackBerry consumer traffic," said a company spokesman. But he said there was no access to secure encrypted BlackBerry enterprise communications or corporate emails as these were accessible only to the owners of these services. Correspondence reviewed by ET, however, shows that the solution demonstrated by RIM can intercept all BlackBerry services. A telecom department official also confirmed that corporate emails would form part of the services that the government will be able to monitor. The Canadian smartphone maker, which had set up servers and other interception facilities in Mumbai last year after India had threatened to shut down BlackBerry services, has now handed over this infrastructure to Indian agencies, internal government documents reviewed by ET reveal. India One of the Few Bright Spots The DoT will soon ask all telcos to connect their networks to the interception facilities built by RIM here. DoT is currently awaiting the home ministry's approval to issue this directive. Incidentally, RIM had denied setting up this facility last year. Super-secure corporate emails, called Blackberry Enterprise Services, have traditionally been RIM's main attraction for companies and corporate executives. In India, in the last few years, the BlackBerry messenger service has become very popular among students and teenagers, providing a new user segment for the smartphone maker. An amicable solution over the monitoring issue is important for the Canadian smartphone maker since India is one of the few bright spots for the company that has been battling falling sales in its primary markets of the US and Europe. Industry watchers say RIM has tripled its customer base here to close to 5 million over the last two years, even as its market share has crashed globally with customers moving to competitors like Apple and handsets that run on Google's Android operating system. India also offers massive growth opportunities as a tiny fraction of the country's 950 million cellphone customers use smartphones. The home ministry had been seeking interception solutions since the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai after security agencies learnt that Pakistani militants used mobile and satellite phones to coordinate the strikes. Currently, Indian agencies submit the name of the suspect to RIM, which in turn provides the decoded communication records of the customer, but this does not include its enterprise services. The handset maker had been providing the requisite information only after checking if the interception requests had legal authorisation, executives aware of the development told ET. Under the new setup, RIM has said it would not even remotely monitor its Mumbai facility anymore, and has agreed to 'disconnect the remote maintenance system monitoring which it normally provides to ensure high service level'. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 07:11:25 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 08:11:25 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Appeals Court: Embedding copyright-infringing video is not a crime Message-ID: <497D879E-8733-4409-B1AD-AA3416FF9968@infowarrior.org> Embedding copyright-infringing video is not a crime, court rules A court has ruled that embedding a copyright-infringing video is not infringement in itself, and therefore not a crime. by Zack Whittaker August 3, 2012 2:45 AM PDT http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57485976-38/embedding-copyright-infringing-video-is-not-a-crime-court-rules/ Embedding a copyright-infringing video on another website is not illegal, a court ruled a court on Thursday. Judge Richard Posner ruled at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that myVidster, a social video bookmarking site, did not infringe the copyright of Flava Works, a porn production company, when it embedded copyright-infringing versions of Flava Works content from third-party Web sites. The decision overturned a preliminary injunction from 2011, imposed by a lower court after Flava Works filed suit against myVidster in 2010. According to the Appeals Court ruling, myVidster "doesn't touch the data stream" and therefore doesn't host the infringing video, but links to versions hosted elsewhere on the Web. myVidster was "not encouraging swapping, which in turn encourages infringement," the ruling said: > myVidster is giving web surfers addresses where they can find entertainment. By listing plays and giving the name and address of the theaters where they are being performed, the New Yorker is not performing them. It is not "transmitting or communicating" them. > > Is myVidster doing anything different? To call the provision of contact information transmission or communication and thus make myVidster a direct infringer would blur the distinction between direct and contributory infringement and by doing so make the provider of such information an infringer even if he didn't know that the work to which he was directing a visitor to his website was copyrighted. Both Google and Facebook filed papers in support of myVidster. They argued that sites such as theirs should be seen as intermediaries only, and that they should not be held liable if someone uploads copyrighted material to their servers, claiming Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also filed an amicus brief in support of myVidster. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sided with Flava Works, filing a brief urging the appeals court to uphold the lower court's injunction. How this will affect other cases remains unseen. 23-year-old Richard O'Dwyer, who operated the TV-Shack website, is to be extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. to face copyright infringement charges. His site offered links to other websites that hosted uploaded copyrighted television shows and films, but did not host the material itself. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 07:13:12 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 08:13:12 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - France will cut funding to its piracy police Message-ID: Aug 3, 2012 - 7:00AM France will cut funding to its piracy police ? By Robert Andrews France?s Hadopi piracy agency has warned hundreds of thousands accused of piracy. But it?s become frowned upon by the country?s new government. First step in reform is to cut the agency?s budget. France?s new culture minister is not yet promising to disband the country?s internet piracy enforcement agency, Hadopi. But she already is already planning to cut its budget and to dissuade it from kicking people off the internet. Aur?lie Filippetti has commissioned former Canal+ pay-TV CEO Pierre Lescure to lead a wide-ranging and overdue review to update Act II of France?s so-called ?cultural exception? ? a set of rules for protecting Francophone culture ? for the digital age, including the role of Hadopi. Geeks are reading indications by the new Francois Hollande government as suggesting an axe for the agency, which was formed in October 2012 to send warning letters to ISP subscribers deemed to by rightsholders to be downloading content without authorisation. Filipetti, in an interview with La Nouvelle Observateur, only goes as far as promising to underfund Hadopi: < -- > http://paidcontent.org/2012/08/03/france-will-cut-funding-to-its-piracy-police/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 18:27:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 19:27:52 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_China=27s_Comment_Group_H?= =?windows-1252?q?acks_Europe=97and_the_World?= References: Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: Simon > China's Comment Group Hacks Europe?and the World > > http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-02/chinas-comment-group-hacks-europe-and-the-world#p1 > > When Greece was falling apart last summer, European Union leaders > rushed to prepare another round of capital injections for Athens. > Someone with advance knowledge of just where those hundred > billion-plus euros were going and when they?d be deployed could have > made a fortune. Someone like the hackers who had infiltrated the EU > Council?s computers. > > Over 10 days last July, the hackers returned to the Council?s > computers four times, accessing the e-mails of 11 top economic, > security, and foreign affairs officials. On July 18, they accessed the > e-mails of EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, Europe?s point man > for shepherding the delicate politics of the Greek bailout, in just 14 > minutes. > > The EU breach, first reported by Bloomberg News on July 27, was a > particularly audacious act of cyber-espionage by the team long known > to U.S. intelligence as Byzantine Candor. Arguably China?s preeminent > hacker collective, it also has government ties, according to a 2008 > U.S. State Department cable published by WikiLeaks. The collective?s > tactic, hacking computers using hidden HTML code known as comments, > earned it another name in private security circles: the Comment Group. > > > > In secret, some 30 U.S.-based private-security researchers managed to > monitor the group for nearly two months last summer. None of the > researchers contacted by Bloomberg News wished to be named because of > the sensitivity of the data. The researchers exploited a vulnerability > in the hackers? own security and created a digital diary that logged > their every move as they crept into the networks of at least 20 > victims, shut off antivirus systems, camouflaged themselves as system > administrators, and then tried to cover their tracks. > > The researchers? computer logs offer an unprecedented minute-by-minute > look at the Comment Group?s highly organized operations, believed to > be at the cutting edge of China?s hacking capabilities. ?They aren?t > doing this for fun. They are doing it in this case because this is > tradable information,? says Richard Falkenrath, formerly deputy > assistant to the President and deputy homeland security adviser under > George W. Bush. ?We may not be able to get information that anyone > either shorted or went long on EU sovereign debt on this, but that?s > the obvious market.? > > China?s foreign ministry in Beijing dismisses allegations of > state-sponsored hacking as baseless and says the government will crack > down given adequate proof. U.S. National Security Council spokesman > Tommy Vietor declined to discuss the Comment Group specifically, > referring reporters to a May 4 statement by Secretary of State Hillary > Clinton in which she said the U.S. and China would work to ?develop a > shared understanding of acceptable norms of behavior? around > commercial data and intellectual property online. > > Beyond the Comment Group, what started as attacks on the U.S. military > and defense contractors by Chinese hacker groups has widened into a > campaign from which no corporate entity is safe. Attacks on Google > (GOOG), Morgan Stanley (MS), and ExxonMobil (XOM) are among the few > that have become public. ?What the general public hears about?stolen > credit card numbers, somebody hacked LinkedIn (LNKD)?that?s the tip of > the iceberg, the unclassified stuff,? says Shawn Henry, former > executive assistant director at the FBI?s cyber division, who left the > agency in April. ?I?ve been circling the iceberg in a submarine. This > is the biggest vacuuming up of U.S. proprietary data that we?ve ever > seen. It?s a machine.? > > The Comment Group researchers say the sheer volume and breadth of the > hacker collective?s attacks shocked them. Victims ranged from > corporate giants to top lawyers, from defense contractor Halliburton > (HAL) to Washington law firm Wiley Rein to a Canadian magistrate. > Earlier targets included the 2008 presidential campaigns of Barack > Obama and John McCain and a U.S. nuclear power plant sited next to a > fault line. Alex Lanstein, a senior researcher for the security > company FireEye, estimates the group has hacked more than 1,000 > organizations since 2010. > > Comment Group?s attacks have been so successful that a cyber-security > unit within the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in San > Antonio is dedicated to tracking them, according to a person familiar > with the unit who could not speak on the record due to national > security concerns. Most of the attacks the researchers witnessed, > though, were commercial targets relevant to China?s economic > interests. The lawyers targeted, for example, were pursuing trade > claims against the country?s exporters; another victim was an energy > company preparing to drill in a disputed area of the South China Sea > that China officials say belongs to them. > > U.S. spycatchers and private security researchers say Comment Group > thefts include anything that could give China an edge as it strives to > become the world?s largest economy. From the networks of major oil > companies, they take seismic maps charting oil reserves; from patent > law firms, clients? trade secrets; from investment banks, market > analysis that might affect the global ventures of state-owned > companies. Drugmakers and tech companies are also targets. > > > One of the group?s tricks is to hijack unassuming websites and use > them to send commands to victim computers. (Host websites have > included those of a teacher at a south Texas high school and an Idaho > drag-racing track.) This turns mom-and-pop sites into tools of foreign > espionage; identifying such zombie sites provides a way to relatively > easily track Comment Group activity. > > In case after case, the hackers? trail appeared wherever and whenever > there were global headlines. Last summer, when the news focused on > Europe?s debt crisis, the Comment Group followed. The timing coincided > with a frantic period for EU Council President Van Rompuy, set off by > the failure on July 11 of the EU finance ministers to agree on a > second bailout package for Greece. Over the next 10 days, the slight, > balding former Belgian prime minister presided over tense > negotiations, drawing European leaders, including German Chancellor > Angela Merkel and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, > to a consensus. And the hackers had a ringside seat. > > It?s clear from the logs that this was less a smash-and-grab hack than > the cyber equivalent of a wiretap aimed at gathering vast amounts of > intelligence over weeks or months. The hackers had an established > routine, always checking in around 9 a.m. local time, the logs show. > They controlled a Council server that gave them a complete run of the > e-mail system. From there, they simply signed onto the accounts of Van > Rompuy and the others. The spies grabbed e-mails and attached > documents, encrypted them in compressed files, and catalogued the > reams of material by date. They took a week?s worth of e-mails each > time, appearing to follow a set protocol. Their other targets included > Odile Renaud-Basso, then-economic adviser and deputy head of the > cabinet, and the EU?s counter-terrorism coordinator. It?s unclear how > long the hackers? incursion lasted, the researchers say. > > There?s also no indication the hackers penetrated the Council?s > offline system for secret documents. ?Classified information and other > sensitive internal information is handled on separate, dedicated > networks,? the Council press office said in a statement when asked > about the hacks. The e-mail networks ?are not designed for handling > classified information.? > > The EU attacks were representative of the Comment Group?s playbook, > the researchers say. Starting with a malware-laden e-mail, they moved > rapidly through networks, nabbing encrypted passwords, cracking them > off-line, and then returning to mimic the organization?s own network > administrators. The hackers were able to dip in and out of networks, > sometimes over months, disabling antivirus software and manipulating > network administrator status as needed. > > The Comment Group has changed up a few tactics since last summer, the > researchers say, but not its pace. Falkenrath, the former Bush > security aide, says China has succeeded in integrating decision-making > about foreign economic and investment policy with intelligence > collection. ?That has big implications for the rest of the world when > it deals with the country on those terms,? he says. > > > The bottom line: China?s hacker collective may provide the state > unparalleled access to sensitive foreign economic information. > --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 21:10:34 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 22:10:34 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hey, We Finally Have A Privacy And Civil Liberties Oversight Board... After Being Left Dormant For Almost Five Years Message-ID: <50CEE20D-0B34-4A9D-9750-D174CF95680E@infowarrior.org> (Better late than never, though I don't expect much knowing how DC works. ----rick) Hey, We Finally Have A Privacy And Civil Liberties Oversight Board... After Being Left Dormant For Almost Five Years from the about-time dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120803/01382919920/hey-we-finally-have-privacy-civil-liberties-oversight-board-after-being-left-dormant-almost-five-years.shtml With all the efforts to pass cybersecurity legislation, along with all the fears of government violating our privacy (4th amendment? Whazzat?), you might think it would be somewhat useful to have an agency in charge of watching the government -- one which actually has some real power. Well, it exists. Sort of. In 2006, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) was created, in part as a counterweight to concerns over the Patriot Act. The PCLOB was staffed, but after the White House tried to interfere and stifle some of its work, one member very publicly quit in 2007. Congress responded by actually passing a useful law, which gave the PCLOB more independence and more power (including subpoena power). After it passed, there was a transition period of six months. At the end of that, the existing board (which was a part of the White House) would cease to exist, and a new independent agency was supposed to take its place. Instead, the existing board ceased to exist on January 30, 2008... and that was it. Since then, there has been no board. At times, both President Bush and President Obama have sent some nominations to the Senate, but nothing more had happened. Even back in 2010 people were complaining what a travesty it was that the board remained empty for two years. Fast forward another two years and change... and the thing still wasn't staffed. The whole thing was such a joke that in a recent discussion with a Congressional Rep (known for being a supporter of civil liberties), when the PCLOB (and its lack of members) was brought up, the Congressional Rep admitted that he'd never even heard of the thing. For all the urgency that was talked about in passing cybersecurity legislation, everyone just sat around twiddling their thumbs while this independent organization tasked with making sure the government didn't abuse our civil liberties sat completely empty. Until now. Yes, we finally have a staffed PCLOB. The Senate has approved all five nominees: David Medine, James Dempsey, Elisebeth Cook, Rachel Brand and Patricia Wald. It's amazing that it's taken nearly five years to put this board in place (and that there wasn't more outrage over its absence). The real question now is how will the PCLOB wield its power. Hopefully it does some good and actually holds the government to account when it violates the civil liberties of the public. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 3 23:01:37 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 00:01:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Trading_Program_Ran_Amok=2C_With?= =?windows-1252?q?_No_=91Off=92_Switch?= Message-ID: <439C41CF-BCD4-485A-9321-CABDC44DCD3C@infowarrior.org> August 3, 2012, 8:54 pm Trading Program Ran Amok, With No ?Off? Switch http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/trading-program-ran-amok-with-no-off-switch/?hp&pagewanted=print By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, NATHANIEL POPPER and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED When computerized stock trading runs amok, as it did this week on Wall Street, the firm responsible typically can jump in and hit a kill switch. But as a torrent of faulty trades spewed Wednesday morning from a Knight Capital Group trading program, no one at the firm managed to stop it for more than a half-hour. Some Knight employees and New York Stock Exchange officials noticed the blizzard of erratic orders in the minutes after trading started and sent alarmed messages to Knight managers, according to the exchange and Knight employees who declined to be identified discussing the matter. As Knight struggled to survive on Friday, employees at the company, market overseers and other electronic trading firms were asking the same basic question: Where was the off switch? Several market insiders said that they were bewildered, because in a market where trading losses can pile up in seconds, executives typically have a simple command that can immediately halt trading. "Even just a minute or two would have been surprising to me. On these time scales, that is an eternity," said David Lauer, a trader at a high-speed firm until a year ago. "To have something going on for 30 minutes is shocking." Regulators are planning to look into why there was such a lag between the discovery of the problem and when Knight's trading ceased, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. But so far the company has not provided any answers, even to its own staff, employees said. On Friday, Knight, which in the last decade grew into a leading broker for American stocks, climbed off the mat, securing emergency financing that allowed it to continue operating for the day. It also enticed some of its customers to resume sending client stock trades, two days after it disclosed a possibly fatal $440 million loss from the software problem. But it faced a desperate weekend of maneuvering to find a more permanent solution for its woes. Knight's short-term financing was meant to keep it alive until Monday, when its executives and advisers hope to have deals completed to remove any doubt about the firm's future. Advisers, including Sandler O'Neill & Partners, have been talking with Knight rivals and private equity shops about either buying divisions of the firm or investing in the business. Among the businesses that Knight is in discussions about selling is its futures brokerage unit, largely made up of operations the firm purchased only in May, according to people briefed on the matter. Potential buyers for the business include R. J. O'Brien, which is based in Chicago and is one of the oldest futures clearing firms in the country. Others that have expressed interest in potential investments or deals include rivals to Knight like the Citadel Investment Group, Virtu Financial and Peak6 Investments, as well as private equity firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG Capital, these people said. Knight is also working with Goldman Sachs to help unwind the trades behind its extensive loss, according to people briefed on the matter. Goldman has agreed to buy, at a discount, the shares that the trading firm had accumulated. Such a move would help Knight by taking the portfolio off its hands and freeing up capital. Two major brokerage firms, TD Ameritrade and Scottrade, said on Friday that they had begun sending client orders to Knight. Others, like E*Trade Financial, had yet to resume doing so. "Knight is one of many order routing destinations for us and has long been a good and trusted partner," Fred Tomczyk, TD Ameritrade's chief executive, said in a statement. Toward the end of the trading day Friday, employees in the Jersey City offices gathered around TV screens and cheered at every bit of good news. Shares in Knight leapt 57 percent on Friday, closing at $4.05. But they remained down more than 60 percent for the week. Coming after a number of previous market mishaps caused by faulty computerized trading, Knight's trading problems rekindled a broader discussion about the vulnerability of an increasingly complex and fragmented stock market. In a statement, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary L. Schapiro, called the Wednesday episode unacceptable and said that her staff would "convene a round table in the coming weeks to discuss further steps that can be taken to address these critical issues." Duncan Niederauer, the chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, said in a conference call with investors that the incident was a "call to action," and that the exchange was prepared to lead the way on reforms. "We are all understanding - meaning we, market participants, and most importantly the regulators - are understanding that speed is not always better," Mr. Niederauer said. Within the financial community, much of the attention was still focused on what happened Wednesday morning. While the New York Stock Exchange has said that there was "irregular trading" in only about 140 stocks listed on its exchange that day, Knight's trading in those stocks was so extreme that it was visible in the volume of trading in all stocks. A New York Times analysis of New York Stock Exchange volume on Wednesday morning showed that during the first minute of trading there was 12 percent more trading in all stocks than there had been on average during the previous seven days. By the third minute of trading there was 116 percent more trading than the previous week's average. The difference reached a peak at 9:58 a.m., when the volume was six times greater. After that, trading volume fell off sharply, nearing the recent average at 10:15 a.m. Mr. Niederauer said that the exchange had noticed the problem and contacted Knight "within minutes" of the 9:30 opening bell. Knight's failure to respond sooner was particularly mystifying to other traders because on Wednesday the firm had introduced new trading software. Industry experts said that this would normally be cause for programmers and other employees to be on high alert. Once the problems began, many traders said it would have made sense if the firm's employees had not caught the problems for the first minute or so, given the speed at which Knight's program was firing off orders. After that, though, the problems were visible for all to see. Howard Tai, an expert in high-speed trading at the Aite Group, said that at all the firms where he worked, there were several warning signals built into every computerized trading system. When all else failed, there was always the "automatic kill switch" that could immediately stop trading. Mr. Lauer said, "It's kind of mind-boggling that it got so out of control." Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess contributed reporting. ? Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company ? Privacy Policy ? NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 4 11:40:43 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 12:40:43 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - How HFT Changed The Way Markets Trade Message-ID: <9FFADDB0-3C85-444D-B6C3-390F3950909B@infowarrior.org> How HFT Changed The Way Markets Trade ? Posted by Jeff Carter ? on August 2nd, 2012 http://pointsandfigures.com/2012/08/02/how-hft-changed-the-way-markets-trade/ In all the hub bub about high frequency trading, we are missing several points. I don?t want to belittle electronic trading because managed correctly it?s great for the marketplace. However, ever since electronic trading began to take over futures markets, I have seen a noticeable difference in the way the market trades in volatile situations. In the prehistoric days when people stood in a pit side by side and fought for trades, we had crazy up and down days. But the volatility today is unlike anything long time traders have seen. It?s not just the stock market ($ES_F, $SPY), but it?s in the ag markets($ZC_F,$ZS_F), currency markets, and Treasury markets. Years ago, Peter Steidlmayer wrote a book with a new type of data analysis called Market Profile. Today, when he looks at data from the same exact markets, it?s lumpy. Markets no longer trade through a range, but go point to point. For traders this heightens risk. Financial numbers are generally a volatile time in the market. In pit traded markets, even one second before the number, you could get some small sized trades off. In the Eurodollars ($GE_F) for example, if you needed to move 500 lots and had one minute before the number to do it you could. Today, bids and offers in the book are non existent. The number comes out and the market jumps to the next price level. Because of speed advantages or co-location, or both, only certain entities get a chance to participate in the market. This also increases the amount of risk. On the flip side, usually when risk profiles increase, returns increase. Not so in today?s marketplace. Because it?s not as easy to enter into and exit the market, traders are forced to give up the edge. This trims their return on each side of the trade. The way speed is used has killed moment by moment liquidity. It also killed the depth in the book. No longer are entities willing to put orders at risk. Back in 1998, I was looking at the Bund options traded at the Eurex. A friend of mine who traded options there showed me the bid/ask for the at the money straddle. He said, ?It?s only showing 2000 up, but I guarantee you it?s at least 20,000 up if you want to move a number.?. Looking at any electronic book today, you don?t see near the amount of depth that you would have in the pit days. One reason is order fillers didn?t disclose their orders. The other is there is huge risk of some rogue algo picking you off, running stops and then selling/buying to the market on the other side. Part of the problem is the HFT industry won?t police themselves. They are too competitive. If one sees the code or order types of another, it?s giving away proprietary information that could leave the firm vulnerable. There is also too much money at stake. Exchanges can?t keep up. Neither can regulators. A lot of people point to speed as the only problem. I don?t see speed by itself as a problem. But speed combined with other factors is a problem. If we change market structure and keep the speed, better markets will result. Market structure is the only sure fire way to keep things in line. Our current structure stinks. Dark pools, payment for order flow, trading against customers through internalization, front running, decimalization, co-location are all standard operating procedure today. Each undermines competitive marketplaces in one way or another, undermining confidence. However, if market structure is changed to a flatter, more competitive, horizontal marketplace, the current economics of the marketplace will be severely altered. The big banks won?t be as profitable. Exchanges might do less volume. Online brokers will be affected. Most certainly, the private firms and hedge funds that have HFT operations will be affected. Oh, and this is how a mistake in HFT killed a perfectly good company($KCG): < snip > http://pointsandfigures.com/2012/08/02/how-hft-changed-the-way-markets-trade/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 4 12:04:41 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 13:04:41 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Dangers of the cloud... Message-ID: The Cloud(tm) has its uses and conveniences, obviously. The key thing is to remember that there are trade-offs that go along with that, and how much risk are you willing to accept? --rick http://www.emptyage.com/post/28679875595/yes-i-was-hacked-hard Yes, I was hacked. Hard. So maybe you saw my Twitter going nuts tonight. Or you saw Gizmodo?s Twitter account blow up. Or you saw this in AllThingsD. Or this in the DailyDot. Although embarrassing, Twitter was the least of it. In short, someone gained entry to my iCloud account, used it to remote wipe all of my devices, and get entry into other accounts too. Here?s what happened: At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn?t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it?s not. Especially given that I?ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices. The backup email address on my Gmail account is that same .mac email address. At 4:52 PM, they sent a Gmail password recovery email to the .mac account. Two minutes later, an email arrived notifying me that my Google Account password had changed. At 5:00 PM, they remote wiped my iPhone At 5:01 PM, they remote wiped my iPad At 5:05, they remote wiped my MacBook Air. A few minutes after that, they took over my Twitter. Because, a long time ago, I had linked my Twitter to Gizmodo?s they were then able to gain entry to that as well. < - big snip > http://www.emptyage.com/post/28679875595/yes-i-was-hacked-hard --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 4 20:41:38 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 21:41:38 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Don't like what the data says? Just ignore it. Message-ID: <2AFC2A57-5DE4-4E55-9815-43AD5E67B2EA@infowarrior.org> http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/ New Law in North Carolina Bans Latest Scientific Predictions of Sea-Level Rise By ALON HARISH Aug. 2, 2012? abcnews.go.com A new law in North Carolina will ban the state from basing coastal policies on the latest scientific predictions of how much the sea level will rise, prompting environmentalists to accuse the state of disrespecting climate science. The law has put the state in the spotlight for what critics have called nearsightedness and climate change denial, but its proponents said the state needed to put a moratorium on predictions of sea level rise until scientific techniques improve. The law was drafted in response to an estimate by the state's Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) that the sea level will rise by 39 inches in the next century, prompting fears of costlier home insurance and accusations of anti-development alarmism among residents and developers in the state's coastal Outer Banks region. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue had until Thursday to act on the bill known as House Bill 819, but she decided to let it become law by doing nothing. The bill's passage in June triggered nationwide scorn by those who argued that the state was deliberately blinding itself to the effects of climate change. In a segment on the "Colbert Report," comedian Stephen Colbert mocked North Carolina lawmakers' efforts as an attempt to outlaw science. "If your science gives you a result you don't like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved," he joked. The law, which began as a routine regulation on development permits but quickly grew controversial after the sea-level provision was added, restricts all sea-level predictions used to guide state policies for the next four years to those based on "historical data." Tom Thompson, president of NC-20, a coastal development group and a key supporter of the law, said the science used to make the 39-inch prediction was flawed, and added that the resources commission failed to consider the economic consequences of preparing the coast for a one-meter rise in sea level, under which up to 2,000 square miles would be threatened. A projection map showing land along the coast underwater would place the permits of many planned development projects in jeopardy. Numerous new flood zone areas would have to be drawn, new waste treatment plants would have to be built, and roads would have to be elevated. The endeavor would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, Thompson said. "I don't want to say they're being dishonest, but they're pulling data out of their hip pocket that ain't working," he said of the commission panel that issued the prediction, the middle in a range of three predictions. Thompson, who denies global warming, said the prediction was based on measurements at a point on the North Carolina coast that is unrepresentative of the rest of the coast. But the costs Thompson decries as wasteful are to the law's opponents a necessary pill the state must swallow if it is going to face up to the challenge of protecting the coast from the effects of climate change. State Rep. Deborah Ross, a forceful critic of the bill, compared it to burying one's "head in the sand." "I go to the doctor every year. If I'm not fine, I'd rather know now than in four years," said Ross, a Democrat who represents inland Greensboro, N.C., but owns property on the coast. "This is like going to the doctor and saying you're not going to get a test on a problem." Its supporters counter that the law does not force the state to close its eyes to reality, but rather to base policy on more than a single model that produced what they believe are extreme results. Republican State Rep. Pat McElraft, who drafted the law, called the law a "breather" that allows the state to "step back" and continue studying sea -level rise for the next several years with the goal of achieving a more accurate prediction model. "Most of the environmental side say we're ignoring science, but the bill actually asks for more science," she said. "We're not ignoring science, we're asking for the best science possible, the best extrapolation possible, looking at the historical data also. We just need to make sure that we're getting the proper answers." As it thrust North Carolina into a national debate about climate politics, the bill became a lightning rod at home. A spokeswoman for Gov. Perdue said her office received 3,400 emails opposing the bill in the first week after it passed the Republican-controlled state legislature. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), sea level rise along the portion of the East Coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts is accelerating at three to four times the global rate. A USGS report published in the journal Nature Climate Change in June predicted that sea level along the coast of that region, which it called a "hotspot," would rise up to 11.4 inches higher than the global average rise by the end of the 21st century. The historical political clout wielded by North Carolina's developers has led some critics of the law to accuse legislators backing it to promote those who line the pockets of their campaigns. The largest industry contributors to McElraft's campaigns have been real estate agents and developers, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Her top contributor since she was elected to the General Assembly in 2007 has been the North Carolina Association of Realtors, followed by the North Carolina Home Builders' Association. McElraft, who is a former real estate agent and lives on Barrier Island off the coast, denied that campaign contributions ever influence her decisions as a lawmaker, and said her votes have not always favored increased development. More than simply protecting developers, the new law protects homeowners from an overactive state government that would take away their right to build on their own property, McElraft said. Given an increased projected risk of flooding, insurance companies would likely charge coastal property owners, who already pay higher premiums, a concern Rep. Ross said she shared. Ross, though, said she would rather pay for a more expensive insurance policy on her coastal home than be uncertain about whether it will be wiped out by the Atlantic Ocean in a few decades. Gov. Perdue released a statement Thursday that gave a qualified endorsement of the law while urging lawmakers to develop a coherent approach to sea-level rise. "North Carolina should not ignore science when making public policy decisions. House Bill 819 will become law because it allows local governments to use their own scientific studies to define rates of sea level change," Perdue wrote. "I urge the General Assembly to revisit this issue and develop an approach that gives state agencies the flexibility to take appropriate action in response to sea level change within the next four years." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 4 21:42:12 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 22:42:12 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Corrected URL - Don't like what the data says? Just ignore it. References: Message-ID: <28542055-FFA4-4D5D-BD28-8CBB655DA884@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > From: Monty > The URI appears to be wrong. It looks like it should be > > http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782 > From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 4 21:50:55 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 22:50:55 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Lauding her for doing it her way Message-ID: <9E62FF5E-F81F-4588-95AA-A197A3AC666D@infowarrior.org> +1 to this athlete --- not only for her prowess in the pool but also for announcing she wants to stay amateur to compete in college instead of turning pro now and cashing in on her post-Olympic fame. Plus the article shows that you CAN become successful by sticking to the basics and not doing with what everyone expects you to do along the way. As Moulton concludes, sometimes 'old school' does indeed work. :) Bravo to her, and to the rest of the amazing combined US Olympic swim team this year! --rick David Moulton: Lauding Missy Franklin for doing things her way ? By DAVID MOULTON ? Posted August 4, 2012 at 4:09 p.m. http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/aug/04/david-moulton-lauding-missy-franklin-doing-things/ There are many great stories and achievements by U.S. athletes so far in the Summer Olympics. Missy Franklin is my favorite. Not to take anything away from inspirational Gabby Douglas or the historic brilliance of Michael Phelps. But Franklin?s story is so nostalgic. There is much about sports that is better today than in past generations, but how we produce champions is not always one of them. Today we force kids to pick a sport instead of playing multiple ones. Academies in gymnastics, swimming, tennis (and to some extent golf and hockey) have largely taken the place of high schools, clubs and families staying intact. In order to be the best you have to do it a certain way, they now say. That ?way? is when your child prodigy gets to a certain age, often no later than ninth grade, you send them away from home. They go train with the best coaches and with and against the other best child prodigies in the world. That is the new normal at the elite level. No high school, often no college and living hundreds if not thousands of miles away from your friends and family before you are old enough to have a driving permit. In a day and age of specialization in sports ? on the field and off ? Missy and her parents did it so differently. They stayed home. Instead of moving to California or Florida, where the elite swimmers go because that?s what you do, Missy had another idea. She looked back at the ?establishment? from Colorado and wondered, ?Why would I move away from my friends and family? I?ll be miserable and if I?m not happy, I won?t swim better.? The ?establishment? argued, ?Well, you?ll get better coaching if you come with us.? Missy said, ?Seems to be working pretty well with the guy who grew up in that swimming hotbed of North Dakota so far. Known him since I was 7. Why do I need a new one?? Funny, over time the sports ?establishment? has forgotten that Vince Lombardi and John Wooden were both high school coaches. For a combined 19 years. Boy, if only those high school kids had received some good coaching, maybe with an AAU or traveling team. Imagine what they would have become? So Missy stayed, living with her, get this, parents! She went to high school with her friends and swims weekdays with the local ?club? team. Amazingly, none of this prevented her from attending elite meets, qualifying for U.S. national teams and being one of the very best in the world. With all of her success comes a bunch of companies wanting to throw a lot of money her way. A few hundred thousand dollars to be exact. Only problem is, if Missy accepts it, she can still swim for Team USA in future Olympics but won?t be able to swim for her college team. For most of us and certainly all of the ?establishment,? that?s no problem. Cash the checks and be a professional swimmer, right? Wrong. The 17-year-old high school senior is adamant about going to and swimming in, get this, college. That?s so 20th century. When I think of Missy and her parents there?s a part of me that hears the whistling theme of the Andy Griffith Show in the background as this story plays out. Except Missy doesn?t go to high school in Mayberry, she does so in Aurora, Colo. Which lends greater meaning to her achievements in London (three golds entering the weekend), if only so those back home have had something to be happy about again. So here?s to Missy Franklin, her parents and their family story. I?m not naive enough to think this is going to change how we produce great individual athletes in the 21st century. It?s just nice to know that ?old school? still works. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 5 11:03:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 12:03:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Leaked MPAA Memo Reveals TV-Shack Press Strategy Message-ID: Leaked MPAA Memo Reveals TV-Shack Press Strategy ? Ernesto ? August 5, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-mpaa-memo-reveals-tv-shack-press-strategy-120805 A leaked ?memo? from the MPAA shows how movie industry insiders are being briefed to respond in media interviews on the extradition case of TV-Shack admin Richard O?Dwyer. In the talking points the MPAA describes the UK student as a deliberate criminal while mocking his wardrobe. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who launched a petition to stop the extradition, is called out as ?presumptuous? by the movie industry group. Last year Richard O?Dwyer was arrested by police for operating TVShack, a website that listed user-submitted link to TV-shows. The UK student has since fought a looming extradition to the US, but thus far without success. In March, Home Secretary Theresa May officially approved the extradition request from US authorities. In June the case was once again brought to the attention of the mainstream press when Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched a petition to stop the extradition. According to Wales, Richard O?Dwyer is a victim of the entertainment industry?s attempt to censor and control the Internet. The MPAA were not amused with the campaign and behind the scenes began to brief movie industry insiders on how to respond. In a leaked memo obtained by TorrentFreak we see how the group lists ?basic talking points? and background on the case for ?reporter briefing.? The memo starts by framing TV-Shack as a pirate website through which O?Dwyer made a healthy profit. ?Richard O?Dwyer created TVShack.net, offering thousands of stolen movies and other pirated content to viewers in violation of both U.S. and U.K. law. In fact, O?Dwyer actively advertised the amount of money users would save by illegally streaming content via TVShack rather than by acquiring it legitimately. At the same time, he profited handsomely from advertizing on the site.? The claim of O?Dwyer supporters that Internet freedom is at stake is nonsense according to the MPAA. ?This case isn?t about Internet freedom. It?s about a man profiting from theft. However, we do welcome a larger discussion about how best to protect intellectual property online while ensuring an Internet that works for everyone.? Taking it a step further, the MPAA claims that the movie industry is one of the main beneficiaries of ?freedom of speech and expression,? which copyright law helps to protect. ?Copyright law is a tool to protect the work of creators and makers, not censorship. The motion picture industry wouldn?t exist without freedom of speech and expression, which have been among our ?time-honored? core values for over a hundred years.? The memo then discusses some background on the case, with a fictitious Q&A with a reporter. The first question asks for a response to the Jimmy Wales petition, and the answer is clear. ?We think it?s presumptuous of Mr. Wales to claim to speak for the ?general public.? That?s because the ?general public? includes the hundreds of thousands of creators and makers who create and make the compelling entertainment and content that virtually all of us enjoy on a daily basis. Their hard work deserves to be protected.? ?We don?t believe in unlimited copyright, as Mr. Wales suggests. We do believe, deeply, that our values don?t change just because technology improves. And that people?s values don?t change whether we are online or off.? The memo then goes on to describe how the TV-Shack website worked and what O?Dwyer?s role was. The MPAA sees O?Dwyer as more than just a middleman, mentions how he continued after ICE seized the domain name, and points out that the operator of a similar website was recently convicted in the UK. ?O?Dwyer was not a mere ?middleman.? He knowingly set up a site with the purpose of acting as a clearinghouse for infringing content ? he advertised his site as a place to find movies that were still in theatres and in-season tv shows. He profited heavily from this activity. To call him a ?middleman? suggests a lack of involvement in the illegal activity, which is simply not the case.? Finally, the MPAA writes that the TV-Shack admin is not just ?a regular college student who likes playing with computers.? Despite wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, he is fully responsible for his actions. ?Being 24, posing for newspaper photo shoots in a cartoon sweatshirt, and having your mother and Jimmy Wales speak for you, does not mean you are incapable for breaking the law.? While the memo doesn?t include any shocking revelations it?s intriguing to see how carefully the MPAA briefs its friends. The full memo with some extra details is embedded below. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 5 18:31:14 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 19:31:14 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Internet Pirates Will Always Win Message-ID: <4B08E8AD-664D-4281-8CCA-3E7B94092BAB@infowarrior.org> August 4, 2012 Internet Pirates Will Always Win By NICK BILTON http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/sunday-review/internet-pirates-will-always-win.html STOPPING online piracy is like playing the world?s largest game of Whac-A-Mole. Hit one, countless others appear. Quickly. And the mallet is heavy and slow. Take as an example YouTube, where the Recording Industry Association of America almost rules with an iron fist, but doesn?t, because of deceptions like the one involving a cat. YouTube, which is owned by Google, offers a free tool to the movie studios and television networks called Content ID. When a studio legitimately uploads a clip from a copyrighted film to YouTube, the Google tool automatically finds and blocks copies of the product. To get around this roadblock, some YouTube users started placing copyrighted videos inside a still photo of a cat that appears to be watching an old JVC television set. The Content ID algorithm has a difficult time seeing that the video is violating any copyright rules; it just sees a cat watching TV. Sure, it?s annoying for those who want to watch the video, but it works. (Obviously, it?s more than annoying for the company whose product is being pirated.) Then there are those ? possibly tens of millions of users, actually ? who engage in peer-to-peer file-sharing on the sites using the BitTorrent protocol. Earlier this year, after months of legal wrangling, authorities in a number of countries won an injunction against the Pirate Bay, probably the largest and most famous BitTorrent piracy site on the Web. The order blocked people from entering the site. In retaliation, the Pirate Bay wrapped up the code that runs its entire Web site, and offered it as a free downloadable file for anyone to copy and install on their own servers. People began setting up hundreds of new versions of the site, and the piracy continues unabated. Thus, whacking one big mole created hundreds of smaller ones. Although the recording industries might believe they?re winning the fight, the Pirate Bay and others are continually one step ahead. In March, a Pirate Bay collaborator, who goes by the online name Mr. Spock, announced in a blog post that the team hoped to build drones that would float in the air and allow people to download movies and music through wireless radio transmitters. ?This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system,? Mr. Spock posted on the site. ?A real act of war.? Some BitTorrent sites have also discussed storing servers in secure bank vaults. Message boards on the Web devoted to piracy have in the past raised the idea that the Pirate Bay has Web servers stored underwater. ?Piracy won?t go away,? said Ernesto Van Der Sar, editor of Torrent Freak, a site that reports on copyright and piracy news. ?They?ve tried for years and they?ll keep on trying, but it won?t go away.? Mr. Van Der Sar said companies should stop trying to fight piracy and start experimenting with new ways to distribute content that is inevitably going to be pirated anyway. According to Torrent Freak, the top pirated TV shows are downloaded several million times a week. Unauthorized movies, music, e-books, software, pornography, comics, photos and video games are watched, read and listened to via these piracy sites millions of times a day. The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want. ?There?s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it?s an inverse relationship,? said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. ?The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online.? The hit HBO show ?Game of Thrones? is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don?t really want to solve the piracy problem. ?If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,? he said. ?But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.? The way people download unauthorized content is changing. In the early days of music piracy, people transferred songs to their home or work computers. Now, with cloud-based sites, like Wuala, uTorrent and Tribler, people stream movies and music from third-party storage facilities, often to mobile devices and TV?s. Some of these cloud-based Web sites allow people to set up automatic downloads of new shows the moment they are uploaded to piracy sites. It?s like piracy-on-demand. And it will be much harder to trace and to stop. It is only going to get worse. Piracy has started to move beyond the Internet and media and into the physical world. People on the fringes of tech, often early adopters of new devices and gadgets, are now working with 3-D printers that can churn out actual physical objects. Say you need a wall hook or want to replace a bit of hardware that fell off your luggage. You can download a file and ?print? these objects with printers that spray layers of plastic, metal or ceramics into shapes. And people are beginning to share files that contain the schematics for physical objects on these BitTorrent sites. Although 3-D printing is still in its infancy, it is soon expected to become as pervasive as illegal music downloading was in the late 1990s. Content owners will find themselves stuck behind ancient legal walls when trying to stop people from downloading objects online as copyright laws do not apply to standard physical objects deemed ?noncreative.? In the arcade version of Whac-A-Mole, the game eventually ends ? often when the player loses. In the piracy arms-race version, there doesn?t seem to be a conclusion. Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game. Nick Bilton is a technology columnist for The New York Times. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 5 18:34:11 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 19:34:11 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH weighs executive order on cybersecurity Message-ID: <9349FDA3-1F93-4ACB-8CC9-FC42ACE86341@infowarrior.org> After defeat of Senate cybersecurity bill, Obama weighs executive-order option By Brendan Sasso - 08/04/12 02:40 PM ET http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/242227-with-defeat-of-cybersecurity-bill-obama-weighs-executive-order-option Senate Republicans recently blocked cybersecurity legislation, but the issue might not be dead after all. The White House hasn't ruled out issuing an executive order to strengthen the nation's defenses against cyber attacks if Congress refuses to act. ?In the wake of Congressional inaction and Republican stall tactics, unfortunately, we will continue to be hamstrung by outdated and inadequate statutory authorities that the legislation would have fixed," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in an emailed response to whether the president is considering a cybersecurity order. "Moving forward, the President is determined to do absolutely everything we can to better protect our nation against today?s cyber threats and we will do that," Carney said. The White House has emphasized that better protecting vital computer systems is a top priority. The administration proposed its own legislation package in 2011, sent officials to testify at 17 congressional hearings and presented more than 100 briefings on the issue. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Obama warned that a successful cyber attack on a bank, water system, electrical grid or hospital could have devastating consequences. The president urged Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Act, which was offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill would have encouraged private companies and the government to share information about cyber threats and would have required critical infrastructure operators to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. But Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), worried the bill would burden businesses with unnecessary and ineffective regulations. The bill's sponsors watered down the regulatory provisions, replacing the security mandates with voluntary incentives, but that wasn't enough to win over Republicans. The bill mustered 52 votes in the Senate, well short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. If Obama issues an order on cybersecurity, it wouldn't be the first time that his administration has resorted to executive action to bypass Congress. Obama uses the slogan "we can't wait" to argue that some issues are too important to be allowed to stall in Congress. When lawmakers refused to pass the Dream Act to give legal status to students brought to the country illegally, the administration announced that it would stop deporting young immigrants who would have been eligible to stay under the bill. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained that Obama could enact many of the core provisions of the Cybersecurity Act through executive order. Many companies managing vital computer systems are already heavily regulated. Lewis said the president could order agencies to require the industries they regulate to meet cybersecurity standards. "You don't need new legislative authority to do that," Lewis said. He noted that some regulatory agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, are independent and not bound to follow executive orders. But Lewis predicted that even the independent agencies would likely enforce an executive order on cybersecurity. Lewis said the Office of Management and Budget is already working on security standards for federal computer systems, and said those guidelines could form the basis of standards for the private sector. Lewis acknowledged that the provisions of the Cybersecurity Act that would have torn down legal barriers to information-sharing would have to be enacted by Congress. Although those provisions were the ones most strongly supported by the business community, Lewis expressed skepticism that they would do much to improve cybersecurity anyway. "You can have them or don't have them. Who cares," he said. But Lewis said that an executive order could even partially address information-sharing. The FCC, for example, has set up a voluntary system for companies to share information about cyber threats with each other, he said. An executive order may accomplish many of the goals of the Cybersecurity Act, but it could also further raise the ire of Republicans and the business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who lobbied against the legislation. Republicans have already accused President Obama of making illegal power grabs with his previous executive actions, and a cybersecurity order would likely elicit similar howls of disapproval. Although Sen. Collins was frustrated by the defeat of her bill, she reacted coolly to the idea of the president bypassing Congress. "I'm not for doing by executive order what should be done by legislation," she said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the main co-sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act, said she prefers that Congress address the problem, but she is open to presidential action if Congress fails. "I suppose if we can't, the answer would be yes," she said when asked whether she would support an executive order. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 00:08:07 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 01:08:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Security Start-Ups Catch Fancy of Investors Message-ID: <6D870136-D3B6-4828-8602-D376085E5421@infowarrior.org> August 5, 2012 Security Start-Ups Catch Fancy of Investors http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/technology/computer-security-start-ups-catch-venture-capitalists-eyes.html By NICOLE PERLROTH and EVELYN M. RUSLI MENLO PARK, Calif. ? The question is no longer who have hackers hit. It is who has not been hit. The organizations attacked by pranksters, criminal syndicates or foreign governments include Google, LinkedIn and the Central Intelligence Agency. Big companies are expected to spend $32.8 billion on computer security this year, up 9 percent from last year. Small and medium-size businesses will spend more on security than on other information technology purchases in the next three years, according to the research firm International Data Corporation. Yet here in Silicon Valley, with all the feverish talk of innovation and billion-dollar start-ups, few entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have been eager to take on the security juggernauts Symantec and McAfee ? and in many cases cybercriminals ? for a piece of that action. That has started to change. In the last 12 months, the initial public offerings of once obscure security start-ups have outperformed offerings from household names like Facebook and Zynga. Imperva, a data security company that went public last year, finished 2011 among the year?s top offerings. Its shares jumped nearly 30 percent on their first day of trading, and remain 37 percent above the offering price. Zynga?s stock, by comparison, has plunged 73 percent since its offering last December. Shares of Splunk, a data security company, jumped nearly 65 percent from its offering in April. It raised $331 million in a secondary offering. Most recently, shares of Palo Alto Networks, a security start-up, climbed 26 percent when they started trading in July. The reason for the enthusiasm? ?People are starting to realize that the billions of dollars that have been invested into traditional network security is not working for them anymore,? said Ted Schlein, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm. Security start-ups have also become red-hot takeover targets. Apple, which has avoided big-ticket deals, agreed to acquire AuthenTec for $356 million last month in its second-largest acquisition to date. And last year, the EMC Corporation, which already owned RSA, acquired NetWitness. The price was never disclosed but people close to the acquisition talks say NetWitness sold for $400 million, more than 10 times its 12-month trailing revenue. Venture capitalists have taken notice. Last year, they collectively poured $935 million into tech security companies, nearly double the $498 million they invested during 2010, according to a MoneyTree report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. ?We?re seeing a flow of new entrepreneurs interested in the space,? said Asheem Chandna, a venture capitalist at Greylock who invested in Imperva and Palo Alto Networks. The rise of security start-ups is the product of a confluence of new technology, fear and people with a lot of money to invest. Major technological shifts, like the move to mobile devices and cloud storage, have redirected and increased the flow of information ? for both employees and hackers. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, too. Last year was the year of the ?Advanced Persistent Threat,? or A.P.T., a computer attack in which hackers spend time researching a target and its intellectual property, figuring out who has access to it, and deploying any means necessary to steal it. RSA was the victim of such an attack last year. So were the military contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Speaking at a security conference last year, Timothy McKnight, Northrop Grumman?s chief security officer, said the company was fending off several such attacks a day. ?The vast majority of companies have already been breached,? Shawn Henry, the F.B.I.?s former top computer security official, said in a recent interview. ?I?ve looked at all sectors and the depth, penetration and breadth of these attacks are substantial.? The bulk of the attacks go undisclosed, either because companies don?t know they have been hit or because they fear what disclosure will mean for their stock prices. But the attacks that have surfaced have become headline-grabbing events, exposing the vulnerability of technology firms, government agencies and the security companies that people assumed were well protected. Patrick Morley, chief executive of Bit9, a start-up that blocks malware, says the steady stream of ?bad news? has been a boon for business. Bit9 was founded a decade ago but was largely unknown until 2010, when Google?s password system was breached and top-level executives started to pay attention. ?In boardrooms, executives lifted their heads and asked, ?Are we O.K.?? ? Mr. Morley said. ?We?ve grown 100 percent every year for the past two years. Before that, we didn?t see that kind of growth,? he said. Bit9, which roughly tripled its client base in two years, announced last week that it had raised $34.5 million in an investment round led by Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm. Mr. Chandna of Greylock said the bulk of security start-ups that solicit his firm fall into one of four categories: mobile security, authentication, intrusion detection and ?big data? security companies. Several recently secured millions in financing. Lookout, a firm that blocks malware and spyware on consumers? mobile devices, raised $78 million from top-tier firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. A range of new start-ups market a similar service to businesses that now must deal with the headache of employees? bringing their iPhones and iPads to work and carting confidential intellectual property around with them. Zenprise, a start-up that brings business-level security to consumer phones, recently raised $65 million. Appthority, a one-year-old start-up that tracks suspicious behavior by mobile apps, raised $6.5 million from Venrock, U.S. Venture Partners and others last May. Solera Networks, a security start-up that tracks intrusions in real time, has raised over $50 million from Intel Capital and others, and many say it is ripe for a nine-figure acquisition. Investing in security can entail unusual challenges. In some cases, venture capitalists have received death threats from online criminals. In others, criminals have shut down their sites altogether. Ray Rothrock, an investment partner at Venrock, said he had received threatening e-mails from such people. On occasion, his firm has hired security guards to protect its offices. Blue Security, an Israeli start-up backed by Benchmark Capital and others, was forced to shut down its antispam service in 2006 after criminals responded to its filtering technology with an aggressive counterattack. Spammers flooded its database servers with so much traffic that it took down Blue Security ? and thousands of other Web sites with it ? to the point that Internet service providers refused to host the service and it was forced to close. ?The thing about security investments is that sometimes you don?t know where you?re going to land in terms of attracting attention from the bad guys,? Mr. Rothrock said. But, he said, the risks are still worth the rewards. ?Security is a growing market and it will grow forever.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 00:41:30 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 01:41:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NASA's Curiosity rover lands on Mars Message-ID: <26198FBD-DC7B-440C-AF38-C8D8CFB378BB@infowarrior.org> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19141172 Nasa's Curiosity rover lands on Mars 6 August 2012 Last updated at 01:28 ET Help Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - has spent the past eight months travelling from Earth to Mars, covering more than 560 million km. It is equipped with the most sophisticated science payload ever sent to another world. Its mission, when it gets on the ground, is to characterise the geology in Gale and examine its rocks for signs that ancient environments on Mars could have supported microbial life. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 07:47:23 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 08:47:23 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Could GPS Spoofing Cause Another Flash Crash? Message-ID: <8D723CB0-ADF0-4FD9-8215-2EB5DCA8FAD2@infowarrior.org> (Hey, if GPS spoofing or another type of incident would screw with the HFT algo-bots, I'm all for it. Those parasites need to disappear and stop turning the global markets from a semi-organised casino into absolute and utter chaos. ---rick) Could GPS Spoofing Cause Another Flash Crash? By Guest Author - August 5th, 2012, 12:30PM http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/08/could-gps-spoofing-cause-another-flash-crash/ GPS..Global Positioning System. The term has become part of our everyday lives. There are GPS devices everywhere ? in your car, in airplanes, at the stock exchanges and even in your iPhone. But did you ever wonder how secure these GPS devices are? Can they be jammed or even worse counterfeited or ?spoofed?? What could happen if a GPS device was spoofed? Well, in an absolutely riveting testimony before a House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas at Austin lets us know exactly what can go wrong with a civil GPS signal: ?The problem is that the same transparency and predictability that have made civil GPS signals so wildly popular all across the globe give rise to a dangerous vulnerability. Transparency and predictability make the civil GPS signals easy to imitate to counterfeit. The fact is that civil GPS signals are like Monopoly money: they have a detailed structure but no built-in protection against forgery.? To prove his point, Todd and a group of researchers successfully commandeered a civil unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the White Sands Missile Range with the use of a GPS spoofing device that they developed. They proved that civil GPS is ?inherently insecure and shouldn?t be trusted blindly?. Why are we at Themis Trading talking about the hacking of a GPS receiver on a UAV? Because GPS devices are also embedded in our financial system and a GPS spoofing scenario could cause a market disaster similar to the flash crash. Here is what Todd Humphreys said in his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security: ?But there is one input port that the network firewalls leave entirely unprotected. An unassuming set of antennas on the roof of these data centers carry unsecured civil GPS signals directly into the core of the matching engine network. Slaved to a once-per-second synchronization pulse from a GPS- disciplined clock, the individual servers in the network apply time stamps to the trades they execute. A decade ago, a tenth of a second was an acceptable time stamp resolution. High frequency traders now demand nanoseconds.? Now, thankfully, this is not news to the major stock exchanges. Todd talks about how he met with senior executives from some exchanges and feels that they have taken precautions against GPS spoofing. But there is a group of financial professionals that he feels have not taken any precautions against GPS spoofing and remain vulnerable to an attack: ?High frequency traders whose servers are co-located with the matching engines at major exchanges may be more vulnerable to GPS spoofing. In the NYSE and some other exchanges, these co-located customers are offered either a timing feed from the exchange?s system time or a direct feed from GPS antennas on the roof. Many co-located customers, distrustful of the exchange?s system time, opt for the direct GPS feed.? ?The high-frequency traders who own the servers do not like inexplicable market behavior, and unlike old-fashioned traders who are obligated to stay in the market no matter its behavior, high-frequency traders can pull the plug at any moment. In the aftermath of the May 6, 2010 flash crash, it was revealed that automatic data integrity checks in trading algorithms were configured to trigger on unusual latency in the exchanges data feeds. In other words, if transaction time stamps do not look right, algorithmic traders flee the marketplace.? ?A spoofing attack that aggressively manipulated the timing in a large number of co-located servers could therefore cause a partial market vacuum, what traders call a loss of liquidity, with the result being increased price volatility and damage to market confidence.? We wonder if our regulators are aware of this potential vulnerability in our market structure. While we hear so much about the supposed benefits of high frequency trading (they tell us that they shrink spreads and add liquidity), we don?t often hear about the systemic risks that HFT has placed on our market. While HFT continues to extract its ultra short term rents from the market, it also continues to layer more and more risk on the market. You can bet that if a GPS spoofing event were to corrupt data, HFT?s would run for the exit doors quickly. And guess who would be left holding the bag again? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 08:27:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 09:27:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?MPAA_Recruits_=93Surrogates=94_t?= =?windows-1252?q?o_Support_Extradition_of_UK_Student?= Message-ID: <35DBE17F-B965-4D1E-9C6B-3F519B60867F@infowarrior.org> MPAA Recruits ?Surrogates? to Support Extradition of UK Student ? Ernesto ? August 6, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-recruits-surrogates-to-support-extradition-of-uk-student-120806 Following on from an MPAA memo that leaked yesterday, TorrentFreak has obtained an even more revealing document which shows that the movie group is experiencing problems finding ?allies? to support the extradition of UK student Richard O?Dwyer. According to the ?communication plan? the MPAA is recruiting ?third party surrogates? to write op-eds and blog posts which back their position. Yesterday we covered a leaked MPAA memo with talking points on the TVShack case. The MPAA successfully lobbied the Department of Justice to demand the extradition of the site?s former operator, UK student Richard O?Dwyer. However, in recent months public opinion turned against the authorities, a point now being noted by the mainstream media. A new MPAA leak (embedded below) shows that this is worrying movie industry bosses. In a ?communication plan? the MPAA explains why these talking points are needed and how the group plans to counter the opposition. ?The overall media coverage has been and will continue to be challenging,? the MPAA writes. They mention the petition of Wikipedia founder jimmy Wales, the Demand Progress campaign, and note that a recent survey showed that 95% of the public does not support the extradition. According to the MPAA, public opinion is skewed because people are being led to believe that TVShack was operating perfectly legal in the UK. ?To counter these assertions, the MPAA and its allies need a coordinated effort to focus more on the criminal activity involved in the operation of TVShack and other similar linking sites,? the MPAA notes. Interestingly, the movie industry group appears to be having a hard time finding ?allies?. ?Ideally, this would be done through third parties ? but finding third parties ? especially in the United Kingdom ? has been very difficult so far, so the MPAA must be prepared to respond to media requests on the issue and set the record straight to counter the misinformation campaign by our opponents.? As the leaked ?talking points? memo revealed yesterday, the MPAA prepared a case background to be handed out to journalists. In addition, the group drafted responses to the ?misinformation? that?s being spread by Jimmy Wales and others. The MPAA further notes that staffers Mike Robinson and Mark Miller are ready to speak about the case in public. However, they also want to recruit ?allies and third parties, both in the US and abroad? to help them get the message across. ?We are also working on an oped as well as blogs by third-party surrogates,? they later add. While the MPAA never admitted to getting surrogates to report for them this is not totally unexpected. We previously spotted a pro-SOPA op-ed by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff that used phrases that were previously uttered by MPAA people. The main message these surrogates will be asked to deliver is that Richard O?Dwyer is a criminal. The MPAA continues to point out that an operator of a similar site was recently found guilty in the UK, and will feed this information to journalists. ?We will seek to make sure reporters know about the parallels ? and the proof that this kind of copyright theft is illegal in the U.K.,? MPAA notes. Of course, they don?t mention that the U.K. case they refer to wasn?t about copyright infringement. Neither do they explain why O?Dwyer wasn?t charged with any crimes in the U.K. To hear the other site of the story TorrentFreak contacted Richard O?Dwyer?s mother Julia, who was baffled by the MPAA?s strategy. According to her, it?s the MPAA who are spreading misinformation. ?It?s rather worrying that the MPAA is behaving in this unnecessarily vindictive way, trying to portray Richard as someone he is not in order to further their own interests,? Julia O?Dwyer says. ?Richard has fully cooperated with the Police at all times and has never told a lie. Lying is something he just won?t do. In contrast the MPAA peddles misinformation about the details of the alleged conduct.? Among other things she notes that TVShack fully complied with takedown requests, that the site never hosted any copyrighted content and that MPAA member Warner Bros. even asked if their content could be featured on TVShack. With both sides determined to be heard, the case will continue to make headlines in the coming weeks. The controversial extradition is currently awaiting an appeal to the High Court later this year. MPAA?s communication strategy is embedded below: http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-recruits-surrogates-to-support-extradition-of-uk-student-120806 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 08:59:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 09:59:20 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TPP Text On Fair Use Leaks; US Proposals Are Really About Limiting Fair Use, Not Expanding It Message-ID: <13E517E0-AC64-4ECE-8CC3-43BE6CFC389B@infowarrior.org> Which, presumably, is the reason why there's so much secrecy over its negotiations, right? ---rick TPP Text On Fair Use Leaks; US Proposals Are Really About Limiting Fair Use, Not Expanding It from the unfortunate dept About a month ago, we were slightly encouraged by the public statement from the USTR that it was adding language to the TPP agreement that embraced "limitations and exceptions" to copyright law -- even as we believe that it's wrong to call fair use rights "limitations and exceptions" when they're really just enforcing the public's own rights to information. We also found it bizarre and ridiculous that no text was being shared -- and noted that the USTR would garner a lot more trust if it was actually transparent and opened up the language in question for public discussion. Others expressed some specific worries about even the nature of the statement. That said, it was a big deal that the USTR would even acknowledge such things as fair use in a document like this, because historically it had never done so. It appeared to be a "step" in the right direction, but a relatively small one. Late on Friday, however, the text of the current negotiations on that particular section leaked to KEI who posted it to their site, and while (again) at least this is on the table for discussion, there are reasons to be greatly concerned. As many public interest groups had wondered, it appears that the text focuses on expanding the "three step" test for these expansions of user rights. The three step test for user rights, as is written into the Berne Convention agreement is much more limited than most of what we conceive of as fair use (it's also a relatively recent addition to the Berne agreement, being added in 1971)...... < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120804/00173819933/tpp-text-fair-use-leaks-us-proposals-are-really-about-limiting-fair-use-not-expanding-it.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 10:29:06 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 11:29:06 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government Message-ID: <0DBEF266-7352-4134-B276-503250EB02A4@infowarrior.org> Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government ? enigmax ? August 6, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/ The nightmare week for Demonoid has just reached a huge crescendo, with news coming out of Ukraine that following a massive DDoS attack the site has now been busted by local authorities. Those looking for a U.S. connection to the raid won?t be disappointed ? a source in the country?s Interior Ministry says that the action was scheduled to coincide with Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky?s trip to the United States. Last week thousands of Demonoid users feared the worst when their beloved site disappeared from the Internet. Many thought that the site had been busted, but were eventually relieved to hear that it was ?only? a massive DDoS attack. But today the roller-coaster ride plummeted to new depths, with confirmation coming out of Ukraine that the DDoS was just the beginning ? the site has been busted by the authorities. ColoCall is the largest datacenter in Ukraine and a place that has been Demonoid?s home in recent years. But in the middle of last week, in the wake of the DDoS attack, government investigators arrived at ColoCall to shut Demonoid down. ?Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them,? an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed. ?Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site.? As reported on TorrentFreak following our discussions with Demonoid?s admin last week, there were suspicions that the site may have been subjected to some kind of exploit or hack in addition to the DDoS. That version of events is now confirmed by the ColoCall source. ?Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,? the source added. But aside from the busting of the site, which is the biggest BitTorrent-related raid in recent memory and one that has taken out the world?s largest torrent site/tracker combo, there is a rather large international sting in the tail. Despite general opinion that Demonoid did not contravene Ukranian law, especially since it blocked all Ukranian IP addresses to avoid upsetting the locals, the site still attracted the attention of the authorities there. That, according to a source in the country?s government, is all down to the United States getting involved. A source inside the Interior Ministry has informed Kommersant that the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky?s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement. Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid?s head has been presented on a platter. But while Demonoid?s servers are in custody, the site?s admin does not appear to be. The ColoCall source would not say who is behind the site, only that its management is located in Mexico. The devil may yet be back?. TorrentFreak contacted the Demonoid admin for a comment but we have yet to hear back --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 6 13:31:15 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 14:31:15 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Leak Police Message-ID: <380F4CB1-C92A-4AA8-84FB-995D1407C9A5@infowarrior.org> Op-Ed Columnist The Leak Police By BILL KELLER Published: August 5, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/opinion/keller-the-leak-police.html In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, this newspaper famously published a number of stories regurgitating the Bush administration hype about Saddam Hussein?s supposed arsenal of mass destruction. A few journalists elsewhere ? notably Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, then of the Knight Ridder newspapers ? dug deeper, discovered contrary intelligence, and challenged the official line. Later, The Times also published some excellent work on how an administration eager to justify its decision to go to war cherry-picked the intelligence to make its case. The Times has owned up to ? and, we pray, learned from ? the things we got wrong. But this is a good time to look a little harder at the journalists who got it right. How did they come up with the evidence to refute the version embraced by the president, by most officials in both parties and by a lot of the mainstream media? They got it from government officials with access to classified information, who risked their jobs to confide the truth to journalists. Critics call these ?leaks,? although such stories hardly ever spill out unbidden; they are painstakingly assembled by teasing out bits of information, triangulating, correcting, testing, confirming. I?d call them a public service. Washington is currently going a little nuts on the subject of leaks. The Obama administration, which has, without really setting out to do so, already surpassed all previous administrations in its prosecution of leakers, has begun new investigations into disclosures by The Times, Newsweek, The Associated Press and others. Congress has mandated surveillance systems that make it easier to identify leakers and to prevent unauthorized downloads of classified material. But that has not quieted the hysteria. Republicans are accusing the F.B.I. of insufficient zeal and demanding a special prosecutor. Democrats, typically worried about being perceived as soft on national security, have tried to out-deplore the Republicans. Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill the other day that, among other things, would forbid background briefings on intelligence matters by anyone except an agency?s director, deputy director or public-affairs spin doctors ? thus cutting out the officers with firsthand knowledge and silencing those who question the party line. It should be dubbed the Keep Americans in the Dark Act. Feinstein already seems to be backpedaling a bit, after discovering that top intelligence officials think elements of her bill are ridiculous. (For one thing, it applies only to the spy agencies and does not touch the places that routinely consume classified intelligence material ? the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, allied foreign governments or, perhaps the leakiest vessel in Washington, Congress itself.) Is this latest outbreak of leak panic just another mood swing? Or is something else going on? There is a plausible case that more secrets are spilling these days. In part that is because so much material is automatically, needlessly classified that officials tend not to take classification as seriously. I suspect another factor is the enthusiasm with which senior officials contribute their notes and self-serving recollections for behind-the-scenes books, setting a permissive example for those farther down the official ladder. (The top officials thus assure their place in history; it?s the juniors who get prosecuted.) Some of the current wailing is just politics as usual, or what has become usual in the pit bull arena of the modern campaign. Mitt Romney, desperate for a way to turn President Obama?s takedown of Osama bin Laden into a liability, has professed to be shocked and outraged that a president or his circle might use classified information to burnish the image of the commander in chief. The Republican nominee-to-be points to stories about Obama?s handling of the Bin Laden raid, his oversight of a terrorist kill list and the administration?s cyberattacks on Iran as ?contemptible? breaches of national security. Romney certainly knows something about keeping secrets; there have been no leaks so far of his tax returns, the names of his big-money bundlers, the records of his work as governor and Olympics czar or, for that matter, his economic plan. But his indignation, if it is not feigned, is a little na?ve. One of the more insightful watchers of Washington culture had this to say on how things work in the world of information-as-power: ?Presidents make ?secret? decisions only to reveal them for the purposes of frightening an adversary nation, wooing a friendly electorate, protecting their reputations. The military services conduct ?secret? research in weaponry only to reveal it for the purpose of enhancing their budgets, appearing superior or inferior to a foreign army, gaining the vote of a congressman or the favor of a contractor. The Navy uses secret information to run down the weaponry of the Air Force. The Army passes on secret information to prove its superiority to the Marine Corps. High officials of the government reveal secrets in the search for support of their policies, or to help sabotage the plans and policies of rival departments. Middle-rank officials of government reveal secrets so as to attract the attention of their superiors or to lobby against the orders of those superiors.? That was Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, in a 1971 deposition defending the paper?s publication of the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers. Frankel acknowledged the self-serving nature of these transactions ? on both sides ? but concluded that this ?cooperative, competitive, antagonistic and arcane relationship,? as he called it, was essential to the working of democracy. Without this trafficking in secrets, he said, ?there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted, either abroad or in Washington, and there could be no mature system of communication between the government and the people.? I?m prepared to believe that unauthorized disclosure to the press of classified information has occasionally had dire consequences, though clear-cut examples of that are scarce. More often, what ?leaks? have done is inform Americans about what is being done in their name ? the good (successful targeting of militants, cyberdisruption of Iran?s nuclear program) and the not so good (warrantless eavesdropping, torture). Raise a hand if you?d really prefer not to know those things. Some of the instances that seem at first glance to be irresponsible breaches of security turn out, on closer study, to be something else. Recently, The Times, along with several other news organizations, disclosed that the United States had successfully planted a double agent in Al Qaeda in Yemen, and managed thereby to thwart the suicide bombing of an airliner. Outing a double agent is a death warrant. But in this case, reporters who worked the story sought and received assurances that the agent had finished his work and moved to safety. The Qaeda double-agent revelations may well have been good for American security: sowing some corrosive mistrust among the fanatics, and creating a potential hero for young Muslims disenchanted with jihad. Over the decades, rival interests ? the government?s legitimate responsibility to keep some things secret, the press?s constitutional freedom to ferret out information and report it ? have coexisted through informal understandings. The government worked to protect secrets at the source but generally accepted that it had little recourse once they had escaped. Violators were reprimanded, but hardly ever charged under the Espionage Act. Reporters and editors were sometimes persuaded to withhold information if they were convinced it could put lives at risk. Alexander Bickel, who was the chief counsel for The Times in the Pentagon Papers case, wrote that this accommodation ?works well only when there is forbearance and continence on both sides. It threatens to break down when the adversaries turn into enemies, when they break diplomatic relations with each other, gird for and wage war. Such conditions threaten graver breakdowns yet, eroding the popular trust and confidence in both government and the press on which effective exercise of the function of both depends.? Bickel?s argument, in a seminal book of legal philosophy called ?The Morality of Consent,? assumes a respectful ? if adversarial ? relationship between, on one side, an establishment press and, on the other, a government that accepts the value of compromise in the conduct of public affairs. It?s arguable whether we have either of those today. The notion of an establishment press is, to say the least, under siege. News comes from a dizzying number of directions. We know from the WikiLeaks case that among the legions of Internet aggregators and disseminators are at least a few who would feel no compunction about disclosing life-threatening information if they got their hands on it. So far, though, the secrets that set Washington on edge still tend to come from reporters who have spent years developing relationships with sources, mainstream reporters like Landay and Strobel, or like David Sanger of The Times and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, who are prominent among the current targets of the leak police. They operate without security clearances or subpoena powers. They work, rather, with sources who may be scared, who probably know only part of the story, who may have their own agendas that need to be discovered and taken into account. Reporting secret information with confidence usually entails a multitude of sources, ideally backed by documentary evidence. So, while the mainstream press might not enjoy the hegemony it held before the Internet, most of what the country knows about the secret activities of its government it knows thanks to news organizations that still take their responsibilities seriously: reporters who check to make sure that the double agent is safe before they publish the story. (WikiLeaks, which has built a reputation on one tremendous leak, is still the exception that proves the rule.) Unfortunately, these are not days of ? in Bickel?s phrase ? ?forbearance and continence.? We live in a time of zero-sum politics, where trust is scarce and compromise is perilous, and where the hamster-wheel news cycle puts no special value on reflection. In a saner Washington, a reasonable effort to control truly harmful leaks might be balanced by an equally serious effort to roll back excessive classification, so that we could have a more informed debate about drones and cyberwarfare and kill lists. In that Washington, we could worry a little less about where the stories came from, and a little more about what?s in them. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 7 06:37:36 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 07:37:36 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The surprising, stealth rebirth of the American arcade Message-ID: (I'm one of those who feels D&B is not the equivalent of the 'old school' arcades of years past. I remember watching 'Tron Legacy' and folks smiling/sighing - including me - when they saw Flynn's Arcade power up again, 8-bit sounds and all. --rick) The surprising, stealth rebirth of the American arcade Nostalgia and alcohol fuel a gaming comeback. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/the-surprising-stealth-rebirth-of-the-american-arcade/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 7 06:37:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 07:37:45 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Vizualize: Google pictures the global arms trade Message-ID: Google experiment lets you visualize the global arms trade in detail http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/projects/armsglobe/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/07/google-experiment-lets-you-visualize-the-global-arms-trade-in-de/ We're all well aware of Google's drive for experimenting with bizarre tidbits from time to time, and the search giant's latest venture is one that gives a rather colorful and very detailed look at the global arms trade. Not surprisingly, the results are quite astonishing thanks to the interactivity and great amount of data Mountain View's been able to add to its visualization -- showing info like the number of imports / exports by each country from as far back as 1992 all the way up until 2010. There's a lot more to it, however, with the ability to also see how much cash was being spent per nation, and whether it was on ammo or civilian / military weapons. For that, you might want to head over to the Arms Trade site, where you'll be able to take Google's experiment for a spin -- literally. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 7 14:02:39 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 15:02:39 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Who's That Woman in the Twitter Bot Profile? Message-ID: <35C5D210-A515-4AE2-A85D-37AB3D7B663E@infowarrior.org> Who's That Woman in the Twitter Bot Profile? By Jason Feifer August 7, 2012 They're sometimes called "bimbots"--the army of Twitter bots with pretty profile pictures. Who are the women pictured in those photos? This is the story of the quest to find out. < - > http://www.fastcompany.com/3000064/whos-woman-twitter-bot-profile --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 7 20:30:27 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 21:30:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - More TSA Fail Message-ID: <4E82F88D-FEA5-4B4F-BE39-B0824B5AAE0C@infowarrior.org> If TSA ever releases a ringtone, it would be "D'oh!" *facepalm* (c/o AJR) Newark TSA Screeners Lose Woman Who Tested Positive For Explosives And Shuts Airport Down Posted: August 6, 2012 http://www.inquisitr.com/294086/newark-tsa-screeners-lose-woman-who-tested-positive-for-explosives-and-shuts-airport-down/ Newark TSA screeners lost track of a woman who tested positive for explosives and allowed her to leave on a plane bound for Cleveland, Ohio. The woman with alleged explosives residue on her body was never identified and left the Cleveland airport before Ohio TSA agents realized what had happened, the Daily Mail reports. Transportation Security Administration security failures caused ?dozens? of flight delays and more than 100 flight cancellations as passengers waited for hours inside the airport as searches were conducted for the bag and the identity of the mystery woman. The mystery woman ?slipped through? a TSA checkpoint at Terminal C after being flagged during a preliminary test for explosives. The Newark Liberty International Airport was locked down by TSA screeners after losing track of both the mystery woman who tested positive for explosives and a bag with possible explosive residue that sat on the tarmac for approximately 45 minutes. Airport passengers were reportedly furious when they were forced to wait in line for hours after their flights were canceled yesterday. The bomb squad found the bag with possible explosive residue which was misplaced on the tarmac after two and a half hours of searching the Newark Liberty International Airport landing and baggage storage area. The over-sized bag was eventually cleared and removed from the airport tarmac. Fox 5 New York notes the TSA has refused to comment about the alleged involvement of explosives at the Newark Liberty International Airport. The Newark airport lockdown was ordered ?out of an abundance of caution? is all the TSA is publicly stating at this time. Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/294086/newark-tsa-screeners-lose-woman-who-tested-positive-for-explosives-and-shuts-airport-down/#JApziiOspcaO6RyI.99 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 8 06:54:18 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 07:54:18 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NYS Bank Regulator to Treasury: Drop Dead Message-ID: NYS Bank Regulator to Treasury: Drop Dead By Barry Ritholtz - August 8th, 2012, 7:28AM http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/08/nys-bank-regulator-to-treasury-drop-dead Benjamin Lawsky, head of the New York State Department of Financial Services, has declared that the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve is ?too corrupt to be involved in NY?s actions against money launderers and Iran sponsors at Standard Chartered bank. At least, that is what is implied by his actions (but not his expel;licit words. I wrote that). Lawsky refused to give Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke or anyone else at Treasury or the Fed any advance notice of pending legal or regulatory actions. Sorry, Treasury, but your track records preceded you. Good for him. I wish more state regulators, attorneys general, and banking supervisors would distance themselves from all Federal relations. We have a Republic, with separate rules for state and national regulation. It is apparently to all that the Federal regulators, other than the FDIC, have dropped fate ball. Start with the corruption of the Treasury department going back to Robert Rubin. His tenure, working in concert with Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm, was where the office of the Treasury Secretary turned into a Wall Street subsidiary. The revolving door policy was in full view. Once Treasury was corrupted, it was a short hop to the rest of the oversight infrastructure taking their level of regulatory capture to new levels. This Treasury Department, like the one that preceded it, along with Congress and the White House, have proven themselves to be utterly incapable of overseeing the banking industry. Rather than adhere to this betrayal of the public trust, Mr. Lawsky decided to do something amazing: He followed the law. The rest of the regulatory sector should take note. Have a read of the paragraph at the top of this page to see how prosecution of banking felons is supposed to be done. We live in a Banana Republic formerly known as the United States. Its time to turn this nation back into a Democracy . . . --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 8 14:14:13 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:14:13 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Even The Sex At The Olympics Is Sponsored Message-ID: Even The Sex At The Olympics Is Sponsored from the don't-f**k-without-the-official-olympic-rubber dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120808/05195419960/olympic-sex-sponsorship-athletes-get-trouble-using-non-sponsor-condoms.shtml We've had plenty of stories about the insane lengths the Olympics goes to in order to block out any appearance of a non-sponsor brand, including taping over the brands of non-sponsors on bathroom fixtures and urinals. And, apparently, the Olympics obsession with deleting all non-sponsorship brands extends almost to the point of contact when athletes decide to get down and dirty with each other. Every couple years, when the Olympics roll around, there are stories like this one, about the volume of sexual activity in the Olympic Village among the athletes. And, if we go by condom count, the volume keeps on growing: "At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the Australian organizing committee distributed 45,000 free condoms in the village. Eight years later in Beijing, 70,000 condoms?labeled with the phrase ?Faster, Higher, Stronger??were exhausted and 20,000 more were ordered. This year in London, the Olympic organizing committee is providing 150,000, using special dispensers which contain a message promoting sexual health. Averaged among 10,490 athletes, that?s enough condoms for every athlete to have sex 15 times over the Olympics? three weeks" And, of course, the Olympics found a sponsor to pay up for the privilege of being where the rubber meets the... well, you know. Durex is the official condom of the games. But... uh oh, call in the brand police! BMX cyclist Caroline Buchanan tweeted a photo of free condoms available in the Olympic Village which (*gasp*!) were not made by Durex! And, indeed, the response from the Olympics was swift, as they began an investigation into this illicit behavior, because just think of all the problems if these athletes had sex with a non-sponsored condom! That cannot be allowed at all. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 8 17:48:56 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 18:48:56 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Can Twitter save NASA? Message-ID: Can Twitter save NASA? August 8, 2012 By Scott Sterling http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/can-twitter-save-nasa/ As Curiosity collects data on Mars, the rover?s Twitter banter is stoking flames of publicity back on Earth, which may be the key to keeping the feeble ember of the space program alive. Judgment Day, as foretold by the Terminator series, must be near. We sent a robot to Mars earlier this week and it started tweeting back to us with facts about the mission. It also engaged in some banter with Sesame Street and dropped the popular ?I?m in you!? Internet meme. It?s like a titanium version of Kevin Smith. And it?s also the best thing NASA could have done. What was probably started as a joke in one of the JPL?s meetings (probably by the guy with the mohawk) has turned into one of the biggest PR coups NASA has had in years. People love the tweeting rover, even if it?s not precisely the rover that?s tweeting. You can tell them that the Curiosity rover cost $2.5 billion and they will say, to a man, that the money was well-spent because they are now emotionally involved. The American people haven?t been emotionally involved in a space mission since the Hubble Space Telescope, and that?s the fundamental reason why we barely have a space program today. < -- > Curiosity isn?t the solution itself. Its mission is designed to last for more than a year and a half. People will have forgotten about it long before then. But the lesson of involving the American citizen in the space program again is a lesson that can be reused over and over again. NASA needs to start selling itself once more. Show us benefits. Show us excitement. Show us leading the world and we?ll be willing to bankroll anything, but we have to be invested in the process. Involve us, and not just when it comes time to name a spaceship. Believe it or not, the politicians still listen to us occasionally. If we want something, like a person on Mars instead of a personable robot, they will find the trillion dollars it takes. But if you let us forget that NASA exists, we will. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 8 19:15:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 20:15:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning About Far-Right Terror Message-ID: DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning About Far-Right Terror http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/dhs/all --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 9 06:00:23 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 07:00:23 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The United Nations and the Internet Message-ID: <8AC233CB-E394-4A6E-8A42-77827E5DEE2C@infowarrior.org> The United Nations and the Internet: It's Complicated A battle is brewing, but the black helicopters are not about to invade. BY REBECCA MACKINNON | AUGUST 8, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/08/the_united_nations_and_the_internet_it_s_complicated On Aug. 2, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the White House to stop an obscure U.N. agency from asserting greater control over the Internet. It is the "consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States," the lawmakers affirmed, "to promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet today." President Barack Obama's administration sometimes finds itself at odds with members of Congress who oppose nearly everything the United Nations does on principle. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently complained of "black helicopter" conspiracy theorists harming the national interest after they blocked U.S. ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty for the second time. When it comes to the Internet, however, Congress, the White House, technology companies, and civil liberties groups are all on the same page: All agree that the United Nations -- a body representing the interests of governments -- should not be given control over a globally interconnected network that transcends the geography of nation-states. The Internet is too valuable to be managed by governments alone. Yet there is less agreement over how well the alternative "multistakeholder" model of Internet governance is working -- or whether it is really serving all of us as well as it might. The immediate threat to the Internet as we know it is the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) scheduled for December in Dubai by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a U.N. body whose remit has thus far been limited to global telephone systems. Members meet behind closed doors. Their policy proposals were until recently accessible only to members -- until activists forced transparency upon them through a website called "WCITLeaks." The leaked documents reveal how a number of governments -- in league with some old-school telecommunications companies seeking to regain revenues lost to the Internet -- are proposing to rewrite global international telecommunications regulations in ways that opponents believe will corrode, if not destroy, the open and free nature of the Internet. (For readers wanting to delve into details, a number of nonprofit organizations including the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Internet Society have published analyses of the leaked documents and other recent ITU statements.) A number of countries, including Russia and China, have put forward proposals to regulate aspects of the Internet like "crime" and "security" that are currently unregulated at the global level due to lack of international consensus over what those terms actually mean or over how to balance enforcement with the protection of citizens' rights. Other proposals focus on changes to who handles technical coordination and the setting of standards that enable all the devices, networks, and software across the Internet to communicate and connect with one another. Most of those technical coordination functions are currently handled by a constellation of institutions whose doors are open to all groups with a "stake" in the Internet's future: engineers, activists, unaffiliated individuals, and corporate and government representatives. These institutions are not exactly household names. Only a tiny fraction of the billion-plus people on the planet who increasingly depend on the Internet have ever heard of the U.S.-based nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which coordinates the global domain-name system, the collection of regional Internet registries that coordinate IP addresses, or the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which develops global technical standards so that devices and software all around the world can interoperate with one another -- let alone any of the other organizations that coordinate Internet-related resources and standards. This governance ecosystem has worked astonishingly well in managing the Internet's exponential growth, largely because the system is so open and decentralized that any person anywhere on Earth with engineering or software-programming skills can invent new software applications, devices, and other networked technologies that can all interconnect with one another without needing to obtain permission or buy a license from anybody. Some other ITU proposals would shift some of these organizations' roles to the ITU itself, which -- because it primarily serves the interests of U.N. member states and excludes other stakeholders in its decision-making processes -- will reflect a bias toward centralization, bureaucracy, predictability, and control. This would inevitably corrode if not destroy the Internet's openness and permission-free qualities that have made the Internet such a powerful platform for innovation and empowerment. This is by no means, however, the first attempt by powerful governments to assert power through the ITU. China, Russia, and many developing countries have complained for nearly two decades that the new, nongovernmental multistakeholder institutions are dominated by Americans and Western Europeans who manipulate outcomes to serve their own commercial and geopolitical advantage. These critiques converge with the interests of former and current state-owned phone companies wanting to restore revenues of yore before email and Skype wiped out the need for most international phone calls. "There is still a continual theme that the glories of the past in terms of the telco monopolies of decades ago can somehow be reconstructed within the landscape of the Internet," writes Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Center. Doing so might also raise government revenues in some places, and thus a number of developing-country governments have lined up behind Russia, China, and other authoritarian regimes in support of empowering the ITU. But will they succeed? "There is no doubt that some governments, notably Russia, would like to see the ITU replace ICANN and other private sector-based Internet institutions," Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller wrote in a recent blog post recapping much of the history and distilling highlights from his book on the struggle published two years ago. "What most people don't realize, however, is that certain governments have advocated that position for more than a decade -- and they have repeatedly failed to realize those goals." The last major Internet governance fight -- or at least the last one to make it into the English-language mainstream media -- took place in 2005 during the run-up to a U.N. meeting called the World Summit on the Information Society. At that time, governments wound up agreeing more or less to maintain the status quo, due to a lack of consensus combined with loud opposition to increased U.N. management of Internet resources by human rights and free speech groups. A global coalition of activists, Internet companies, and some (but not all) democracies have once again joined forces as they did seven years ago to save the Internet from the U.N. yet again. Chances are that if they fight as hard as they did before, they can stop most of the new ITU proposals. But if they do win this battle, it will not be the last. "It's going to go on for some while now," says the Internet Society's Sally Shipman Wentworth, who is working to bolster international awareness and support for multistakeholder governance of an open Internet. In the long run, she warns, "there's no guarantee that the Internet or the telecommunications infrastructure as we know it today will emerge unscathed." Defending a free and open global Internet requires a broad-based global movement with the stamina to engage in endless -- and often highly technical -- national and international policy battles. Fortunately, 2012 has seen major growth of that movement, starting with the January defeat in the United States of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which opponents argued would serve the entertainment industry's interests at the expense of Internet users' fundamental rights. Then in July came the defeat in the European Parliament of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), negotiated behind closed doors between the United States and 34 trading partners, which Internet freedom advocates widely opposed because it encourages governments to privilege the rights of certain copyright holders over the rights of everybody else who uses the Internet, without sufficient guarantees that the enforcement mechanisms won't be abused for political or other purposes. The political groundswell against ACTA in Europe and elsewhere is part of a worldwide movement against closed-door Internet policymaking conducted nationally and internationally by corporate and government elites. On the heels of these victories, the ITU's plan to hold a closed-door meeting with a nontransparent policymaking process raised the ire of activists still energized from victories against SOPA and ACTA. An open letter signed by a broad coalition of civil society groups from all over the world has demanded that the December meeting in Dubai be opened to civil society participation, development of a formal public consultation process, and the public release of all policy documents. ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour? declined to meet those demands, but agreed to publish one document listing all the proposals (with names of proposing countries and other details redacted). The format of the meeting and ITU policy formulation process will not be changed, but Tour? pointed out that people are welcome to engage with their national ITU delegations if they want to ensure that their governments are adequately representing their citizens' interests at the table. The Internet Society has responded by compiling information about how (or if) the different national delegations are engaging with other stakeholders in their countries. In late July, a gathering of African civil society groups published a joint declaration calling for -- among other things -- open and transparent Internet policymaking and multistakeholder Internet governance. Just this week, on Aug. 7, a European letter led by the Bulgarian delegation piled on, calling on governments "to overcome their desire for more control, and instead consider more sharing." The signatories also offered a list of things that concerned citizens can do to add their voices and actions to a growing global movement. The movement on its own may not be enough, however. If multistakeholder Internet governance is to survive an endless series of challenges, its champions must commit to serving the interests and protecting the rights of all Internet users around the world, particularly those in developing countries where Internet use is growing fastest. This means that the United States and other Western governments, along with the world's most powerful companies, will not always be able to obtain the outcomes they want from global multistakeholder processes. Indeed, some libertarians argue that the U.S. Congress -- with legislative efforts like SOPA -- is arguably as much a threat to the Internet as the United Nations. The Obama administration demonstrated with ACTA -- negotiated in secret for four years until WikiLeaks published a draft in May 2008 -- that, when left to its own devices without sufficient public pressure, it too can be secretive and unaccountable. Noncommercial participants in ICANN's policymaking structures have been complaining for years that Western companies hold too much power within that organization and that Western governments have worked to further national commercial interests at the expense of global Internet users. One example was a last-ditch effort in 2011 by U.S. and EU government representatives to stop the rollout of ICANN's expansion of new top-level domain names (the part of the domain name that comes after the "." like .com or .gov) because people might create new suffixes that could threaten the trademarks of Western companies. Yet the top-level domain program has received a great deal of support from governments, companies, and civil society groups in the developing world and in countries where languages use non-roman scripts like Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Russian, to name just four. In fact, ICANN's long delay in expanding top-level domains was for years a huge source of discontent with ICANN among non-Western participants. Another problem, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Katitza Rodriguez recently noted, is that "still a large part of the world's population feels excluded from international Internet policymaking venues" -- even multistakeholder ones. That is because even though participation is in theory open to anybody, in practice only a limited number of groups from outside the developed West can afford the time and have the technical expertise, English-language skills, and funds to send people around the world to attend regular meetings. The result is that non-English-speaking developing-world Internet users are underrepresented in organizations like ICANN. According to Alex Gakuru, who was elected in 2009 to represent the African constituency in ICANN's Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, when he first attended a meeting of ICANN's main policy-development organization, "I was the only black man." Then he joined a working group to represent noncommercial interests in resolving a particular issue in the domain-name system. Speaking at a recent conference in Nairobi, he described a frustrating experience: ""They did not want me there, so they said things like, you don't have so many years of experience in ICANN; you just joined not so many years; you weren't here when ICANN was formed. So I said, "OK, in other words, nobody from the developing world is good enough to participate in ICANN? If that's so, why don't you just tell me and we can announce it to the board?' Then they said, "Oh no, you can join.""" Groups like the Internet Society are working to address the diversity problem by sponsoring fellowships for engineers and members of civil society groups from the developing world to attend ICANN and the IETF meetings. They are also bringing developing-world officials to IETF meetings, where the Internet's technical standards are debated and agreed upon, to experience consensus-based policy processes driven not by bureaucrats but by a mix of engineers, business and government representatives, activists, and nonprofits. The hope is that many governments will become more supportive of multistakeholder processes once they have more experience with them. "The engineers say, we're not going to solve your political problems. But we have solutions to your technical problems," says the Internet Society's Wentworth. After attending a recent IETF meeting, she reports, officials from Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Cameroon started sending engineers to the IETF for the first time, when in the past their governments had only dealt with the U.N.'s ITU. Even if multistakeholder governance organizations do grow much more diverse, another problem remains. With so many stakeholders from around the world espousing so many different interests and concerns, one still cannot be sure that the rights of the world's most vulnerable and underrepresented Internet users will be protected without a common set of values and core principles. This is why, argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Rodriguez, "human rights must form the baseline for any multistakeholder Internet policymaking." The problem is that "current processes do not guarantee human rights will be respected and maximized." Here's where the United Nations is actually useful. While it is clearly the wrong organization to coordinate Internet standards and regulations, the world body has played an essential function in establishing a human rights framework for Internet policymaking on a global scale. Thanks in no small part to U.N. human rights-focused institutions, a global consensus is growing that the Internet's development must be grounded in the principles enshrined in a set of global human rights agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its two associated covenants. In July, the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution affirming that these human rights principles extend to the Internet. Last year, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, issued a seminal report on the challenges as well as the opportunities created by both governments and industry when it comes to online free expression. These documents are now being used by human rights advocates around the world as a basis for human rights-grounded policymaking that is increasingly difficult for governments or corporations to dismiss. History has shown that all governments and all corporations will use whatever vehicles available to advance their own interests and power. The Internet does not change that reality. Still, it should be possible to build governance structures and processes that not only mediate between the interests of a variety of stakeholders, but also constrain power and hold it accountable across globally interconnected networks. Right now, the world is only at the beginning of a long and messy process of working out what those structures and processes should look like. You might say we are present at the creation. Rebecca MacKinnon is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a former CNN bureau chief in Tokyo and Beijing, co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices, and author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 9 06:30:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 07:30:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - MDC3 and CyberMaryland 2012 Registration Open Message-ID: <867776E7-A9D5-4218-A8B9-E2EE356F745A@infowarrior.org> (Disclosure: As with last year, I am UMBC's lead on the challenge event. --rick) MARYLAND CYBER CHALLENGE & COMPETITION 2012 ANNOUNCEMENT The Maryland Cyber Challenge & Competition (MDC3), formerly the Maryland Cyber Challenge (MDC3), is back for its second year as the State?s premiere cybersecurity event. MDC3 2012 will run concurrently with the CyberMaryland Conference at the Baltimore Convention Center on 16-17 October 2012. Register your team now to compete?or join us at CyberMaryland 2012 to watch us crown the competition?s top cybersecurity talent in the two-day live finals! Incredible prizes?and industry bragging rights?are at stake! Who Can Compete? --------------------------- MDC3 offers three levels of competition: high school, college and professional. Each division is open to participants who meet the following qualifications: ? High School: Students in class years 2013-2016 ? College: Full-time and part-time university (graduate & undergraduate) and community college students ? Professionals: Industry & government cybersecurity/IT professionals (Teams of six are recommended) What is the Challenge? ------------------------------ Teams within each level will battle it out in a series of exciting, real-world cybersecurity games that put their skills -- from technical expertise and platform knowledge to critical thinking and teamwork -- to the ultimate test in operational cybersecurity situations. Online qualification rounds during the Fall will test each team?s cyber defense skills, including their ability to harden systems against vulnerabilities, maintain critical services, and communicate timely and effectively as a team. As teams advance, the qualification rounds will increase in complexity and intensity. The finals?to be hosted in person at CyberMaryland 2012?will include a Capture the Flag/King of the Hill variant event which introduces more challenging exercise problems as the game progresses. What is the Reward? --------------------------- In 2011, first and second place student teams received $5000 (per person) scholarships to support their higher education sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA), along with an internship with SAIC. Each member of the second place student teams received $2000 scholarships, also from NSA. Professional first- and second-place finalists received $2000 and $1000 cash prizes respectively (per person). In addition, the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), a not-for-profit, international organization of information security professionals and practitioners, awarded one-year memberships to the first-place winners in all divisions of competition, as well as to the second-place finishers in the high school and college divisions. Awards for MDC3 2012 will be announced in the near future! For More Information ----------------------------- Registration @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdcompetition/atreg1.aspx Info Sessions @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdconference/infosessions.aspx Competition Schedule @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdconference/schedule.aspx MDC3 2011 Results @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdconference/2011results.aspx CyberMaryland Conference Details @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdconference/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 9 07:07:34 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 08:07:34 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Legitimate eBook Lending Community Closed After Copyright Complaints Message-ID: Legitimate eBook Lending Community Closed After Copyright Complaints "LendInk, a community for people interesting in using the lending features of the Kindle and Nook, has been shut down after some authors mistakenly thought the site was hosting pirated ebooks. The site brought together people who wanted to loan or borrow specific titles that are eligible for lending, and then sent them to Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com to make the loans. Authors and publishers who were unaware of this feature of the Kindle and Nook, and/or mistakenly assumed the site was handing out pirated copies, were infuriated. LendInk's hosting company received hundreds of complaints and shut the site down. LendInk's owner says: 'The hosting company has offered to reinstate Lendink.com on the condition that I personally respond to all of the complaints individually. I have to say, I really do not know if it is worth the effort at this point. I have read the comments many of these people have posted and I don't think any form of communication will resolve the issues in their eyes. Most are only interested in getting money from me and others are only in in for the kill. They have no intentions of talking to me or working this out. So much for trying to start a business and live the American Dream.'" http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/09/007212/legitimate-ebook-lending-community-closed-after-copyright-complaints --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 10 07:28:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 08:28:04 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Disinformation: How It Works Message-ID: <668C4492-741E-4BAB-825E-43F9DA6A9836@infowarrior.org> Interesting Friday reading...... Disinformation: How It Works Thursday, 09 August 2012 03:15 Brandon Smith http://www.alt-market.com/articles/964-disinformation-how-it-works --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 10 07:46:13 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 08:46:13 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Upside of Wall St. Failures? Nothing Message-ID: <2F2E5D2F-0259-433B-B9C1-854277502EA3@infowarrior.org> Upside of Wall St. Failures? Nothing By Barry Ritholtz - August 10th, 2012, 8:09AM http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/08/upside-of-wall-st-failures/ ?The truth may instead be that the finance industry not only has fewer missteps than the rest of corporate America, but that sometimes failure is a good thing.? -Steven M. Davidoff Just what we needed, another silly article defending yet another Wall St. failure. Following Knight Capital?s $400 million dollar computer trading error, there was a bizarre article in the NYT?s Dealbook earlier this week. It tried to make the case that Wall Street?s occasional snafus are really no big deal. I want to clarify a point on Knight, and then explain why this Dealbook article is so ridiculous. First, about that Knight Capital snafu. They tried to bring a new computer trading technology online, they failed (miserably) to adequately test it and/or anticipate a variety of potential errors. It cost them nearly half a billion dollars. Their stock (KCG) plummeted 74%. The firm required a lifeline from outside investors, and numerous people were ? or will be ? sacked. I have precisely zero problems with this scenario. A company, as happens quite often, screwed up royally. They were not bailed out by taxpayers, their losses were not externalized to third parties. The people responsible for the errors were not given a free pass, the global economy was not driven to collapse. No laws were broken. No new regulations were required to respond to this. There will not be Congressional hearings on this issue. All told, exactly what wear supposed to happen happened. I wish more of our financial cock-ups looked like this one. And therein lies the absurdity of the NYT article. What should be a typical case of a major brokerage/banking error is notable because it is the exception, not the rule. This is how companies are supposed to fail. They do something wrong, they pay the price, and they either go out of business, or bought on the cheap or broken up for parts. But what the author failed to recognize is what makes the finance sector different from all other sectors: The impact it has on the rest of the economy. When Research in Motion or Sears messes up, well its bad for RIMM and SHLD. Even Microsoft?s lost decade has only hurt Mister Softee and their shareholder sand users ? not the entire global technology infrastructure. When AIG or Citigroup or Lehman Brothers or Bank of America or Bear Stearns or Long-Term Capital Management mess up, it is not an exaggeration to say it threatens the global economy. Look at the damage MF Global caused versus the collapse of WorldCom. Refco versus Tyco. The list goers on and on. There are numerous reasons for this distinction, but consider these three: 1. Credit Issuance: Credit has become the lifeblood of the global economy. When these firms slow or stop issuing credit due to their errors, it has a major impact on economic activity. Yes, companies are too dependent on short term credit, but that is the environment bankers helped create ? they must be cognizant of the impact they have. 2. Leverage: Beyond credit, no other industry uses so much leverage to achieve profitability. Other sectors throttle back during slow downs, but Bankers ramp up from 8X to 40X to maintain profitability because they can. When they slip up, they crash and burn, rather than merely stumble. 3. Fiduciary: Many financial institutions have (or appear to have) a fiduciary to clients. When they betray that trust, it appears to be far worse a violation than merely missing a quarter. This was the genius of Glass Steagall. When bankers had their all-too-regular implosions, they did not spill over onto Main Street. Just look at the impact of the 1987 market crash on the real economy ? de minimus. We shouldn?t have to jump up and down and cheer ?Yeah! A Wall Street company screwed up, and the rest of the world did not implode.? That should be our default setting. That its not tells you all you need to know about what is wrong with our financial system. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 10 13:53:31 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:53:31 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pentagon proposes more robust role for its cyber-specialists Message-ID: <9012232D-A959-4028-ACA8-9322D9D84B32@infowarrior.org> Pentagon proposes more robust role for its cyber-specialists By Ellen Nakashima, Published: August 9 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-proposes-more-robust-role-for-its-cyber-specialists/2012/08/09/1e3478ca-db15-11e1-9745-d9ae6098d493_print.html The Pentagon has proposed that military cyber-specialists be given permission to take action outside its computer networks to defend critical U.S. computer systems ? a move that officials say would set a significant precedent. The proposal is part of a pending revision of the military?s standing rules of engagement. The secretary of defense has not decided whether to approve the proposal, but officials said adopting the new rules would be within his authority. ?Without a doubt it would be a very big and significant step forward,? said a senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. ?It would account for changes in technology that will give more flexibility in defending the nation from cyberattack.? Currently, the military is permitted to take defensive actions or to block malicious software ? such as code that can sabotage another computer ? only inside or at the boundaries of its own networks. But advances in technology and mounting concern about the potential for a cyberattack to damage power stations, water-treatment plants and other critical systems have prompted senior officials to seek a more robust role for the department?s Cyber Command. The proposed rules would open the door for U.S. defense officials to act outside the confines of military-related computer networks to try to combat cyberattacks on private computers, including those in foreign countries. In establishing the new regulations, officials have sought to overcome concerns that action in another country?s networks could violate international law, upset allies or result in unintended consequences, such as the disruption of civilian networks. The Pentagon, in consultation with the White House and other agencies, has developed strict conditions governing when military cyber-specialists could take action outside U.S. networks. Some officials said these conditions are so stringent that the new capability to go outside military boundaries might never be used. Pentagon and other officials say such military action is meant to be taken only in extreme emergencies and with great care. The proposed revision to Cyber Command?s standing rules is significantly narrower than what the military originally sought, officials said. But, one senior Pentagon official said, ?we want to have something approved that starts the dialogue that allows us to start seeking more.? Generally, the new rules would allow the two-year-old Cyber Command to take defensive action in a foreign country or in the United States if reliable intelligence indicates that a threat is imminent and could have certain consequences, such as deaths, severe injury or damage to national security, said several current and former officials. ?We?re not talking about shooting back, not talking about tit-for-tat,? said the Pentagon official, who like many interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity and would not discuss operational details. ?We?re talking about stopping the bleeding, lest something really bad happens to the country.? The standing rules of engagement, or SROE, were last revised in 2005. They are intended to give military commanders guidance on what they can do when they find their troops or systems under attack and they need to act quickly without having to consult the president or defense secretary. While the rules for air, sea and land operations are fairly straightforward, the rules for cyberspace have posed great challenges for policymakers. For one thing, cyberattacks can take place in milliseconds. The assailant may be unknown. The attack route may be hard to trace, crossing multiple countries. ?The legal and policy entanglement in cyber is far, far more difficult than it is in some of the other domains? of warfare, William J. Lynn III, a former deputy defense secretary, said at a global security conference this year. The SROE discussion is part of a larger interagency policy debate over the role of government in fighting attacks on the nation?s privately owned critical computer systems. Ideally, current and former officials say, the Pentagon would like Cyber Command to be able to undertake a range of activities, from blocking or redirecting viruses to disabling a computer server in another country to prevent destructive malware from being launched. But something as aggressive as shutting down a server in another country is probably going to require presidential permission, Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of Cyber Command, has said. Indeed, ?going after something outside the network in defense of the nation, which may still be characterized as offensive, is definitely the hardest policy part,? a senior U.S. official said. Even actions on networks in the United States would involve an integrated cyber operations center with personnel from all relevant agencies: the National Security Agency, Cyber Command, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. When a cyber threat is detected, whichever agency has the lead by law ? FBI for criminal and counterintelligence cases, Cyber Command for foreign adversary and terrorist attacks ? would take over, officials said. DHS has the lead for working with critical industries. NSA and Cyber Command are able to lend their expertise to DHS and other agencies, officials said. ?We?re very careful about roles and responsibilities between Justice, DHS and DOD,? the U.S. official said. ?Those are being carefully reviewed. But in every domain, ultimately DOD has the responsibility to defend the nation.? A variety of blocking techniques can be used that are not destructive to networks, officials said. They include diverting malware into a ?sinkhole,? effectively a cyber black hole, which is something Internet service providers do now to protect their own networks. Alexander, who is also director of the NSA, has pushed publicly for new rules on rules of engagement. Officials ?need standing rules of engagement and execute orders that allow the government to do defense that is reasonable and proportionate,? he said at a recent conference in Aspen. Earlier efforts to establish the ability for the military to defend private critical networks failed in the face of opposition from the Justice Department, which did not want to set a legal precedent for military action in domestic networks, and the State Department, which feared the military might accidentally disrupt a server in a friendly country, undermining future cooperation. Alexander said an enhanced ability for the Pentagon to take action to defend the nation rests in part on expanded cyberthreat data-sharing. He said that in debating the rules, policymakers are ?trying to do the job right.? But what concerns him is the discussion over whether ?you can use this tool, but not that one, without understanding what that really means.? ? 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 Sat Aug 11 09:46:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2012 10:46:48 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - From SOPA To Cybersecurity: All About Trying To Control The Internet Message-ID: <6827F9B8-1AB7-46CD-869F-94A994D682F7@infowarrior.org> From SOPA To Cybersecurity: All About Trying To Control The Internet from the watch-this dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120810/02415019984/sopa-to-cybersecurity-all-about-trying-to-control-internet.shtml Al Jazeera English recently did a very well done episode on its Fault Lines program about attempts by Hollywood and the US government to control the internet. It's about 24 minutes long and includes interviews with a bunch of people who were involved in protecting the internet discussing what happened. The first half is about the SOPA/PIPA fight, and how it was basically about Hollywood trying to hold back the internet: Halfway through, it shifts to talk about the various cybersecurity bills and attempts to crackdown on Anonymous. Basically, it's about the government completely overreacting to what they believe are "threats" to the internet. Towards the end it also talks about how the government can and does abuse its powers, highlighting the case of Thomas Drake. It's a great video with some fantastic interviews, though it could do without the overly dramatic music. Still, it's good to see more people connecting the dots, and recognizing that much of what we're seeing these days is really just an attempt to "control" a platform that has been so successful because it was so wide open. Many of us believe that it needs to stay that way to remain a powerful tool for speech and for progress. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 11:03:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:03:48 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Gauss: Virus Like Stuxnet Found, Russian Security Firm Claims Message-ID: (c/o JC) Gauss: Virus Like Stuxnet Found, Russian Security Firm Claims The Huffington Post | By Gerry Smith Posted: 08/09/2012 2:20 pm Updated: 08/10/2012 11:17 am http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/gauss-virus-stuxnet_n_1761107.html?utm_hp_ref=tw Security researchers on Thursday said they discovered a new computer virus that infected about 2,500 computers across the Middle East and appeared to target banks in Lebanon. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, a Russian security firm, said the virus began infecting computers last September, but they did not discover it until two months ago. The servers that controlled it stopped working in July, they said. The malicious software -- nicknamed "Gauss" -- shared similarities with three other viruses that have been found in the region since 2009, the researchers said in a blog post. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 11:03:42 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:03:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system Message-ID: <480BA213-AD03-4B0C-831B-5CF8DCC241EF@infowarrior.org> Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system Published: 10 August, 2012, 11:23 Edited: 11 August, 2012, 01:35 http://rt.com/usa/news/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/ Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology ? and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous. Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It?s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America?s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who?s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program?s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year?s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing. Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails. On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, ?the head of a new breed of terrorist.? As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning. Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the servers of WikiLeaks supporter sites were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabits of traffic per second. On Friday, WikiLeaks tweeted that their own site was sustaining attacks of 10 Gb/second, adding, "Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them." According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is ?designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.? A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be "analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.? In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, ?TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.? Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas? staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces. What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf). ?Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,? Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). ?Any patterns detected ? links among individuals, vehicles or activities ? will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.? In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard ?Hollis? Helms said his signature product ?can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.? He calls it ?a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,? and that, ?The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.? An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor?s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to ?[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.? Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the "See Something, Say Something" program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well. In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor?s Fred Burton allegedly writes, ?God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.? Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months. News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government?s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 11:04:17 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:04:17 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Why High-Frequency Trading Doesn't Compute Message-ID: | SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 Why High-Frequency Trading Doesn't Compute By JIM MCTAGUE http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904239304577573162788310008.html Markets have been jarred by four major computer mishaps this year, including the recent one at Knight Capital. It's time to rein in the Street's speed demons: trading bots. Wall Street is no autobahn. Traders pushing pedal to the metal risk hurtling into the Buttonwood Trees. Knight Capital's $440 million computer-generated smash-up this month is the latest sign that the world's most important financial superhighway, where trades take place in less than the blink of an eye, sorely needs a speed limit. Michael Goldstein, a professor of applied investments at Babson College and a noted advisor on market regulators, suggests slowing traffic to 10 milliseconds?a millisecond is 1/1,000th of a second?the limit in 2007. Today, trades zip by in a fraction of a millisecond, depending on the distance between the robot and the data centers of the nation's 15 stock exchanges and 40 or so "dark pools"?electronic trading venues designed to handle large institutional orders. Traders hooked on the advantages of speed might grumble; but Goldstein doubts that they would abandon Wall Street for some market abroad. It takes about 17 milliseconds to send a trade from New York to London and even more time to Asian markets like Singapore. EVEN A SPEED LIMIT OF five milliseconds could reduce the pileups on Wall Street, Goldstein contends. To high-speed-trading robots, a few milliseconds is an eternity?providing plenty of time for machine and operator to spot and rectify errors they might not notice when data are flowing at lightning speed. Changes in regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission at the beginning of this century that tried to increase competition among exchanges and bring down customers' costs emphasized speed in the execution of orders. Prior to that, exchanges like Nasdaq would slow down trades from the East Coast so that those from the West Coast could catch up. Exchange officials felt it unfair to give New Yorkers an advantage based solely on geography. But when the SEC allowed other exchanges to trade stocks listed on Nasdaq or the NYSE, the faster traders got the best executions. Hasty preparation of software for a high-speed computer might have caused Knight Capital to spin out. A newly minted algorithm designed to participate in a fledgling NYSE program offering price improvement to retail customers mistakenly ordered the market-making firm's computers to purchase $4.5 billion worth of stock in the first 45 minutes of the trading day. What's more, the humans there didn't realize that a problem existed until they got a phone call from the New York Stock Exchange, where most of the errant trades were being executed. Suspicions on the Street and in regulatory circles are that the software had been inadequately road-tested. The SEC is trying to come up with a definitive answer. Knight Capital's off-road experience was the fourth major computer-related market accident this year. The three others: In February, the electronic oil-trading platform at the CME in Chicago crashed, forcing trades to temporarily migrate to the slower flesh-and-blood open-cry pits in New York. In March, the seven-year-old BATS electronic exchange had to cancel its initial public stock offering when a glitch in its own computer system prevented its shares from opening. And in May, a computer snafu at the Nasdaq-OMX market famously disrupted the initial public offering of Facebook, the Street's most highly anticipated event of the year. Regulatory steps following the notorious Flash Crash in May 2010 were supposed to prevent this sort of stuff. Additionally, there have been hundreds of highly disturbing fender benders. On May 18, quotes and trades from reporting exchange Nasdaq for all NYSE, AMEX, ARCA, and Nasdaq-listed stocks stopped, beginning at 11:29:52 a.m. and continuing for almost 17 seconds, says Eric Hunsader of Nanex, a market-data firm in Winnetka, Ill. Seventeen seconds is "an eternity by high-frequency trading standards," says Hunsader, who continually sends out Twitter updates on bizarre, computer-generated market movements. The Bottom Line A speed limit of 10 milliseconds for high-frequency-trading robots would cut down on the number and the severity of computer-generated market disruptions. In order to work, Goldstein's speed limit would have to be universal. Exchanges make good money serving high-frequency traders. The owners of these over-clocked, nitrogen-cooled robots pay handsome annual rents to put their machines in the data centers housing the exchange's own servers. They want to be first in line to buy or sell when a stock is moving up or down. Because data move through wires and airwaves, the closer the robot is to an exchange's servers, the faster it can trade. SO PROFITABLE IS THIS "ROBOTEL" model that NYSE-Euronext in 2010 opened a $600 million, 400,000-square-foot facility?the equivalent of seven football fields?in Mahwah, N.J. NYSE-Euronext hardly is alone. Most of the 15 stock exchanges in the U.S., as well as the CME, the world's largest commodities exchange, have built similarly expansive robotels. High-frequency trades account for more than 70% of daily volume on the exchanges and about 18% of profits, though this latter figure is expected to grow robustly. Some exchanges might welcome speed limits. Co-location space still would remain valuable. But more importantly, one executive says, speed limits would restore retail investors' confidence in the market's fairness. Lack of trust is keeping much of the small fry away. Robots are grand?but the exchanges make much more money off us dumb humans than they do on the super-smart machines. Putting the interests of high-frequency traders above everyone else's simply doesn't compute. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 13:44:43 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 14:44:43 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - White House Pulls Down TSA Petition Message-ID: <74EC8396-F972-44AF-AB1D-008022D32D3C@infowarrior.org> White House Pulls Down TSA Petition The Electronic Privacy Information Center posted a brief and detailed notice about the removal of a petition regarding security screenings by the TSA at US airports and other locations. 'At approximately 11:30 am EDT, the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House 'We the People' website. About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the Administration were obtained when the White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition. The site also went down for 'maintenance' following an article in Wired that sought support for the campaign." http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/1521240/white-house-pulls-down-tsa-petition --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 15:50:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:50:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Clarification - White House Pulls Down TSA Petition References: Message-ID: <84F76474-9EB5-496A-97BC-8CE51706EBD8@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > From: "Dissent" > > Jim Harper, the creator of the petition, says that it was removed at > the correct time and not cut short. Here's his tweet: > > It expired on time. MT @ARossP: Did WH illegitimately remove > @Jim_Harper?s TSA petition? Or did it just expire at its scheduled > time? > > He later tweeted: > > @ARossP EPIC put up a page saying WH "unexpectedly cut short" > petition. I would have loved longer, but I don't think that's > accurate. > > So..... > > Cheers, > > /D From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 20:11:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 21:11:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Does Olympics #NBCfail herald a media apocalypse? Message-ID: <64922B95-07C8-4B42-BAA0-3799459933D9@infowarrior.org> Does Olympics #NBCfail herald a media apocalypse? Thu, Aug 9, 2012 http://news.yahoo.com/does-olympics--nbcfail-herald-a-media-apocalypse-.html The idea that NBC is stiffing Olympics fans just won?t let go. A Gallup poll now suggests that most Americans hate NBC?s practice of airing popular events only at night, taped?and not as they happen. In fact, 59 percent want the Games live and on tape delay. For shorthand, let?s keep calling that pissed-offness #nbcfail, following Steven Marx, the stay-at-home-dad who coined that hashtag on Twitter two weeks ago. Marx watched his tag go gold as Twitterers use it to bash NBC for tape-delayed coverage they consider partial, condescending, incomplete and just generally jacked. Sure, the lumbering fatcat network (anyone out there old enough to call it ?the peacock??) is winning a jaw-dropping 33.6 million viewers a night with its exclusive stateside coverage of the London Olympics. So, at 30 Rock, they?re crying all the way to the bank. But evidently some portion of those zillions now tune in largely to hate on NBC. These NBC-haters are like opera-goers who turn up at the Met just to boo the tenor. Booing, it seems, has always been a sport in itself. What?s emerged in #nbcfail, then, is another Olympics: one that pits two superpowers against each other, 80s-style, and seems to express epic, all-or-nothing ideologies. Digital media versus traditional. The audience versus the TV. The People versus the Crown. And we know how that one ends. The #nbcfail complaints started with the opening ceremonies when NBC stuttered its broadcast, meaning that U.S. viewers didn?t get to see the pageantry live. The network has also been holding for primetime broadcasts of major events when, in the Nixon-era clich? that NBC still likes to trot out, ?friends and family are able to gather together to watch.? Rather than talk about how much more efficient primetime programming is for advertisers, the network disingenuously cites its audience?s need for ?context??meaning chintzy network fudge sauce and graphics and visual hoopla of highly produced backstory packages, which it?s harder to include with a live feed. This palaver doesn?t sit well with the #nbcfail crowd. As Mark Joyella, a Florida reporter who tweets as @standupkid, put it: ?NBC thinks we're too dumb to watch the Olympics without help.? Oof?fighting words. Raising specter of condescension. And obfuscation! And keeping the people in the dark and feeding them with stale tape-delayed bread and Misty May-Treanor circuses! Sounds like WAR. Some Twitterers have been especially galled that they have been denied a glimpse of intriguing or meaningful events of global import: A tribute to the victims of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks for instance; or the heart-breaking timing snafu that cost one Korean fencer a gold in favor of set-piece Americana (more dreadful Michael Phelps hagiography.) The charge on Twitter that NBC is treating its viewers as dumb hayseeds is dead serious. It?s a fascinating playing-out of the tension between social media, where users both consume and produce news and commentary, and the top-down broadcast model. Yeah, this time around it may sound silly that anyone?s whining about missing the Slovenia-China women?s judoko showdown. (FYI: Urska Zolnir of Slovenia took the gold in the 63 kilogram.) But next up are the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. These spectacles?tarted up and lighted and miked and staged almost entirely for primetime network broadcast?help put in place the American president, for Pete?s sake. With the networks dictating how they go down, voters might well demand the rawer story on Twitter or blogs. And then, carrying even greater real-world weight, are the presidential debates. These, too, are run as artifacts of the networks? heyday. The candidates end up sucking up to antiquated TV conventions that hamstring their messages and circumscribe beyond calculation how voters perceive them. If the networks are seen as shutting viewers out of democracy, as NBC is seen as having shut us out of the Olympics, can Occupy The Entire Media be far behind? NBC?s Olympics has only been the latest test case in the Crown/People divide. If you want to read the rumblings of revolution yourself, check out #nbcfail. Recently @SiMichele tweeted, ?Dear @nbc: the ratings are good because you have monopolized our access to the #olympics. NOT because your coverage is good.#nbcfail.? ?Monopolized our access?? That?s not idle whimpering. It?s a call to arms. Maybe even governments can learn from #NBCfail. As the networks continue to show down with disenfranchised viewers, stay tuned this fall for what might be the greatest Olympic event yet. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 12 21:13:30 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:13:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - G20 plans response to rising food prices Message-ID: <9D225664-B399-4636-A31D-EB9247CB013C@infowarrior.org> (Not the kind of story one sees every day.....what I find noteworthy is this sentence: "G20 officials emphasized the planned meeting was not a sign of panic" --- whenever officials say something like this, one can almost bet that the reality behind closed doors is the exact opposite. ----rick) Last updated: August 12, 2012 9:25 pm G20 plans response to rising food prices By Javier Blas, Commodities Editor http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/17cca4aa-e47d-11e1-affe-00144feab49a.html G20 countries are to step in to try and co-ordinate a response to surging food prices, after the worst US drought in half a century devastated crops in the world?s largest agricultural exporter. The conversations behind closed doors among senior G20 and UN agriculture officials about calling a session of a new emergency forum come after the cost of corn, or maize, surged to an all-time high, surpassing the level seen during the 2007-08 food crisis. The US government on Friday stoked the fears of a price surge, saying the drought had forced the country?s farmers to abandon cornfields covering a larger area than Belgium and Luxembourg combined. The Department of Agriculture slashed its forecast for the crop and predicted record prices over the next year. And when Barack Obama arrives in corn-growing Iowa for a three-day tour on Monday, he will be entering a fierce debate in the run-up to the presidential election on whether the grain is worth more as food or biofuel. G20 officials plan to hold a conference call in the week of August 27 to discuss a meeting, which could be held in late September or early October, according to four officials familiar with the conversations. The meeting would be the first of the Rapid Response Forum, a newly created body to ?promote early discussion among decision-level officials about abnormal international market conditions?. The forum is part of the G20-backed Agricultural Market Information System, created last year at the initiative of France and seen as a key policy response to the 2007-08 crisis. Leading G20 countries are ?in favour of holding a meeting? as crop conditions continue to deteriorate in the US, one of the officials said. G20 officials emphasized the planned meeting was not a sign of panic. On the contrary, they said, it would be an attempt to avoid the kind of policies, including export restrictions and hoarding, that in 2007-08 transformed a shortage of agricultural commodities into the first full-blown food crisis in 30 years with riots in two dozen countries. ?In many respects it is just making sure everyone is on the same page in terms of what the situation is, and certainly trying to discourage any policies that would exacerbate the volatility,? one G20 official said. The UN is likely to use the meeting to push for a global debate about biofuel policies, particularly asking the US, the EU and other countries to scrap government-mandated production targets. Agriculture policy makers are increasingly worried after the cost of corn, soyabean and wheat has surged between 30 and 50 per cent since June. Arif Husain, deputy head of vulnerability assessment at the World Food Programme in Rome, said: ?This is the third price shock in the last five years.? But policy makers are comforted by several factors. One is that the price of rice, a key commodity for food security in Asia, remains stable; another is that production of local African staples such as cassava has increased significantly over the past five years as countries boost their food security. Global demand is also less strong than in 2007-08 due to the impact of the financial crisis in economic growth, and countries have avoided beggar-thy-neighbour policies such as export bans and panic buying. Additional reporting by Gregory Meyer in New York and Jack Farchy in London --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 13 00:23:07 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 01:23:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?FBI_suspected_Kim_Dotcom_of_poss?= =?windows-1252?q?essing_a_=91Doomsday_Device=92_to_wipe_evidence?= Message-ID: <40ECFBCA-03E3-479B-90C9-C21B81BF531F@infowarrior.org> (Someone at 935 Pennsylvania Ave had a vivid imagination, or was desperate for '24'-like drama in planning the raid. --rick) FBI suspected Kim Dotcom of possessing a ?Doomsday Device? to wipe evidence August 12, 2012 By Francis Bea http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/fbi-justifies-kim-dotcom-raid-on-purported-doomsday-device/ Could Kim Dotcom delete incriminating evidence around the world with the click of a button? No, but the FBI suspected he could. If you watched the footage released days ago of elite tactical squads and bomb-sniffing dogs raiding Kim Dotcom?s New Zealand mansion, you may have wondered, as many did, whether the show of force was over the top. Why the firepower for a man accused of running a piracy website? According to the NZ Herald, the FBI suspected Kim Dotcom of possessing a ?doomsday device? capable of wiping out all evidence of Internet piracy throughout the world. No such device was uncovered. Grant Wormald, the supervisor responsible for overseeing the raid, told New Zealand?s High Court at Auckland that the FBI had tipped off New Zealand authorities to the alleged device. The Bureau reportedly said Dotcom ?carried a device with him to delete servers around the world,? which could have been ?triggered in seconds? from any mobile device by any one of the 20 individuals that were said to have access to it. But if the device would have existed, as Kim Dotcom?s lawyer pointed out, Kim Dotcom could have remotely deleted the servers anyway. After the raid, he was left unattended for an hour with his iPhone in his possession. While Dotcom could have used a script to wipe files, in reality, the only failsafe way of wiping evidence on the servers without destroying them would be to run the hard drives through a powerful magnetic degausser. Unless his servers were already situated within a giant degausser, instantly wiping his servers in that manner would be impossible. Destroying them with an alternative means, like igniting thermite above server stack, would have been an even more remote possibility. Either way, a universal doomsday button for wiping out all pirated data throughout the world remains a far-fetched claim, and in Dotcom?s case, one that simply wasn?t true. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 13 00:23:18 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 01:23:18 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Australia_clamps_down_on_=91algo?= =?windows-1252?q?=92_trading?= Message-ID: August 13, 2012 4:37 am Australia clamps down on ?algo? trading By Jeremy Grant in Singapore http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ad11c4bc-e4f2-11e1-8e29-00144feab49a.html Australia has moved to clamp down on ?aberrant? automated share trading, unveiling sweeping proposals that would require traders to have controls on their systems and test them annually to prevent market disruption. The move by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission comes only weeks after malfunctioning software at Knight, a US broker, highlighted the vulnerability of equity markets to algorithms that go wrong. It is also a sign that regulators in key Asian markets are determined to avoid the mistakes made in US and European markets where the unfettered development of rapid automated trading has led to a fundamental reassessment of equity market structure. Last month, Hong Kong?s Securities and Futures Commission issued a proposal requiring that algos be tested at least annually. Belinda Gibson, Asic deputy chairman, on Monday said: ?Recent events overseas are a reminder of the speed and automation of markets and the importance of robust controls over those systems.? ?This type of trading, and algorithms generally, continue to be of concern. The measures we are proposing will strengthen our protection against the type of disruption we have seen recently in other markets,? Ms Gibson said. The proposed rules would require market participants to have direct control over pre-trade ?filters?, and to suspend, limit or prohibit an order or series of orders from automated processing that would ?interfere with the efficiency and integrity of the market in relation to one or more authorised persons?. ?This will ensure that market participants have the ability, in real time, to control and prevent aberrant order flow before it disrupts the market,? Asic said. Asic also proposed fining traders A$1m (US$1.1m) if they did not have arrangements in place to trace the origin of all orders and trading messages ? electronic signals that carry orders to an exchange or trading platform. The watchdog said it believed the proposals would ?raise expectations? for the testing of automated trading systems, filters and controls and ?provide the investing public with greater confidence ? in Australia?s equity markets?. While most trading firms already have in place some controls over algorithms and brokers have been adopting ?pre-trade risk management? systems to help prevent problems, Australia?s new measures would require market participants to go further. ?We expect market participants that do not already have this technology to incur some cost in building the capability. All market participants may need to review existing policies and introduce new procedures,? the watchdog said. The proposals are the outcome of a wide-ranging study into Australian market structures that began in 2010 ahead of the start of competition in Australia?s equity markets. ASX, the Australian exchange, dominated share trading in the country until late last year, when Chi-X, operator of an alternative trading platform, entered the market. That has split share trading between the two venues, offering arbitrage opportunities that are suited to the use of algorithms. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 13 06:54:12 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:54:12 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Women Who've Transformed A Mars Rover Into A Sassy Social Superstar Message-ID: <62C15F60-056F-49DB-B3F3-EF508399BF09@infowarrior.org> The Women Who've Transformed A Mars Rover Into A Sassy Social Superstar Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff 8/10/2012 @ 6:22PM |10,577 views http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/08/10/the-women-whove-transformed-a-mars-rover-into-a-sassy-social-superstar/print/ NASA is no stranger to social media. The space agency has been actively working to reach out to the public over the Internet for quite some time now. But NASA seems to have reached its high point so far in social media when it comes to the Mars Curiosity rover. The rover?s Twitter feed currently has over 930,000 followers, and its Facebook page has over 250,000 fans. One of the things that makes these pages so engaging and popular is that they?re written in the first person. Curiosity, it turns out, has quite the brassy personality. She litters her twitter feed with pop culture references, tweetspeak, and a bold attitude. Behind that brassy personality are three women working at NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Veronica McGregor, Social Media Manager; Stephanie L. Smith and Courtney O?Connor, both Social Media Specialists. I had a chance to talk with the entire team on the phone today about their challenges and successes in being the voice of the largest spacecraft ever to touch the surface of another world. One key thing, of course, is to understand that Curiosity isn?t the first Mars mission to have a Twitter feed. Most of NASA?s missions do, and the rovers, in particular, have personality. McGregor took on the task of tweeting on behalf of the Mars Phoenix lander in 2008 until it was confirmed that it had stopped broadcasting in 2010, and she explained why the rovers have personality. ?Back when Twitter was new, we tried tweeting both ways ? in the first and third person. We always got more feedback when we were in first person. It?s also an advantage given the 140 character limit ? ?I am? is a lot shorter than ?The spacecraft is.?? ?It?s easier to anthropomorphize rovers,? added Smith. ?The cameras make it look like she has eyes. So it?s tempting to think of the rover as a bodacious chick on the surface of another planet with a rock vaporizing laser on her head.? ?People love the personality,? said O?Connor. ?She?s the biggest spacecraft ever sent to the surface of another planet. So of course she has confidence instead of a meek, timid personality. If you see the rover herself, you can tell she has a powerful voice.? Well, that explains the voice, I thought. But what about the movie quotes and pop culture references? ?The pop culture references and song lyrics come from the fact that we have fun together!? O?Connor told me. ?We like to bring that into the voice of the rover.? ?I basically only communicate in old movie quotes,? said Smith. One thing that I personally can?t help noticing about Curiosity?s feed is its willingness to use the ?tweetspeak? of hardcore Twitter users ? which is unusual for a Twitter feed with that many followers. For example, here?s what Curiosity tweeted upon landing on Mars: I asked the team what kind of feedback they?ve received from that. ?By and large, it?s been extremely positive,? Smith told me. ?Our audience has given us permission to be more human, casual and approachable. Although I admit that when NPR?s Science Friday called [Curiosity chief scientist] John Grotzinger Curiosity?s ?bff? I did ask myself, ?what have we wrought??? ?We?re not trying to make science sound like fun,? explains McGregor. ?Because science IS fun! The feed reflects how the team talks to each other, as well as the hopes and dreams of people here at JPL. We want people to realize that science is fun.? ?We?re keeping it real,? added Smith. Even though they?ve been maintaining a fun tone, the team did admit to me that the popularity of Curiosity and its social media presence has been somewhat of a surprise. ?We definitely exceeded expectations,? said McGregor. ?But then, we were surprised at the popularity of Phoenix. Maybe that excitement was always out there, and it?s only now that they?ve been able to share that love of space.? Despite the team?s confidence, reflected in the brassy personality of Curiosity?s twitter feed, they were definitely nervous and planning what to do about Monday if the rover?s complicated landing system hadn?t worked. ?With anything this complicated, were were all nervous and eating our lucky peanuts during the landing,? said McGregor. ?Because the feed is written in the first person, if she hadn?t been communicating, we would have been silent. So you would have seen tweets id?ing themselves as [mission control] giving the status. We always have a plan for how to handle this type of situation. But luckily, we didn?t have to. It worked perfectly.? And the team intends on sending the data and pictures from Curiosity as long as the rover is operational. Indeed, there?s one picture in particular that Stephanie Smith is excited about. ?This isn?t happening for a while,? she said. ?But when the arm is deployed, there is a suite of instruments, including the MAHLI camera, which can take pictures of its surroundings. That camera can also turn around and take a picture of Curiosity. And you know what that means? Profile pic!? This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/08/10/the-women-whove-transformed-a-mars-rover-into-a-sassy-social-superstar/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 13 15:23:17 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:23:17 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Argentina=92s_New_Literary_Tradi?= =?windows-1252?q?tion=3A_Pensions_for_Aging_Writers?= Message-ID: <27623707-020B-4110-B6BE-3C6AC4F37D13@infowarrior.org> Argentina?s New Literary Tradition: Pensions for Aging Writers By SIMON ROMERO http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/world/americas/argentina-offers-its-aging-writers-a-little-security.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print BUENOS AIRES ? It is not enough for this city to boast cavernous bookstores that stay open past midnight, broad avenues once roamed by literary giants like Jorge Luis Borges, cafes serving copious amounts of beef and red wine, or even a bizarre neo-Gothic skyscraper, the Palacio Barolo, inspired by Dante?s ?Divine Comedy.? Now, writers have yet another reason to live here: pensions. The city of Buenos Aires now gives pensions to published writers in a program that attempts to strengthen the ?vertebral column of society,? as drafters of the law described their goal. Since its enactment recently, more than 80 writers have been awarded pensions, which can reach almost $900 a month, supplementing often meager retirement income. ?The program is magnificent, delivering some dignity to those of us who have toiled our entire life for literature,? said Alberto Laiseca, 71, one of the recipients, who has written more than a dozen books of horror fiction, including ?The Garden of Talking Machines? and ?The Adventures of Professor Eusebio Filigranati.? The pensions reflect how Argentina has sought to bolster what is already one of the strongest literary traditions in the Spanish-speaking world; Borges, the acclaimed short-story writer and poet, easily comes to mind, but Argentina also boasts classics like ?Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism,? a 19th century cornerstone of Latin American literature by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who went on to become Argentina?s president. Argentina produced an array of other renowned writers in the 20th century, like the novelists Ernesto S?bato and Roberto Arlt, and in recent years Buenos Aires has enjoyed a resurgent literary scene (of the 22 authors recently chosen by the magazine Granta as the best young novelists writing in Spanish, 8 are Argentine). In addition to the pensions, the city offers subsidies to independent publishers and tax exemptions on book purchases. The literary pensions underscore how Argentina ? despite the European feel of its capital city, which evokes parts of London, Paris and Budapest in its leafier districts ? currently feels like an alternate reality on some pivotal matters. As some European nations debate austerity measures aimed at curbing large budget deficits and reining in expansive welfare states, Argentina is deepening its own. While European nations trim social benefits, Argentina has granted pensions in recent years to more than two million people who worked in the informal sector, in an effort to reduce inequality. Retirement benefits were also extended to Argentines living abroad, some of them outside the country for decades. Under President Cristina Fern?ndez de Kirchner, social spending has soared in other areas, including cash transfers to poor families and programs like ?Soccer for Everybody,? in which the government covers the broadcasting fees of soccer matches so people can watch for free. But as economic growth slows amid galloping inflation and a crackdown on access to hard currency, concern is growing that the buildup in social spending may not be sustainable. Many writers here, as well as some legislators, insist that it is. The law in Buenos Aires, approved at the end of 2009, received the backing of various political parties, with a notable exception. The party of Mauricio Macri, a right-of-center businessman who is mayor of Buenos Aires, abstained from the vote. There are now plans to extend the literary pensions beyond Buenos Aires. Juan Carlos Junio, a lawmaker who supports Mrs. Kirchner, revived a bill in July that would make pensions available to writers nationwide, potentially offering some financial stability to hundreds of older writers in the provinces. ?I?m very optimistic about the approval of our bill,? Mr. Junio said. ?There?s a general recognition of the transcendent role that writers have had in forging our society.? Here in Buenos Aires, the requirements for obtaining the pension are fairly strict. A writer must be at least 60 and the author of at least five books released by known publishing houses, ruling out self-published writers. Authors of tomes on law, medicine or other technical matters need not apply, as the pensions are limited to writers of fiction, poetry, literary essays and plays. In extraordinary cases in which an author has published fewer than five books, an evaluation committee, with its members drawn from organizations like the Argentine Writers Society and the literature department of the University of Buenos Aires, considers recognitions like literary prizes in determining the eligibility for a pension. The pensions (aspiring English-speaking expatriate writers, take note) are open only to Argentines with at least 15 years of residency in the city of Buenos Aires; the works must be in Spanish or an indigenous language of Argentina. Each recipient?s pension is calculated in accordance with assets and other income, with the aim of bringing the retirement income of writers over 60 in the range of the base salary of municipal civil servants. ?We prefer not to call it a pension, but rather a subsidy in recognition of literary activity,? said Graciela Ar?oz, a poet who is president of the Argentine Writers Society, which has more than 800 members. ?In the end, this is about fortifying the pleasurable act of reading, which prevents us from turning into the equivalent of zombies.? Still, zombie prevention is generally not a very profitable line of work. Precedents exist in Argentina for offering state support of writers, including subsidies at the provincial level, and a select few have been given sinecures, such as the directorship of the National Library offered to Borges in the 1950s. But the pensions are a welcome innovation, according to some recipients. ?The life of the older writer is subjected to the help of his children,? said Bernardo Kleiner, 84, a novelist and short-story writer. Before receiving the pension, he said, he had to rely on financial assistance from his two grown daughters and delay retirement by staying on the job as a psychiatrist. He saw patients well into his 70s. ?Before there were cuts in pensions,? Mr. Kleiner said, referring to market-oriented reforms in the 1990s. ?Now there are more rights for the worker.? Despite a brighter future for some writers, not everyone here is sanguine about the future of the written word. At his apartment in the neighborhood of Flores, between sips from a bottle of Heineken and drags on an Imparciales cigarette, Mr. Laiseca, the horror-fiction writer, said he was writing a new novel in longhand about the Vietnam War. But while such an endeavor might hold value in Argentina, he said, he was aware that other societies saw things in a different light, referring to a study he read about teenagers in another country who said they were proud of not having read a single book. ?What an assault on the imagination,? he said. Charles Newbery contributed reporting. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 13 15:50:57 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:50:57 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - If I Were The MPAA... How I Would Deal With My Car Break-In Message-ID: If I Were The MPAA... How I Would Deal With My Car Break-In Techdirt8/13/12 14:21 Harold Feld http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120813/10323120007/if-i-were-mpaa-how-i-would-deal-with-my-car-break-in.shtml My family and I got back from our annual vacation in the Current Middle Ages last Friday morning around 2 a.m. Exhausted from the trip, I forgot to take in my iPod and left it visibly displayed on the front seat. When I went out to the car the next morning, I found the passenger-side window broken and the iPod (along with some other items in the front seat) stolen. I called the police, and an officer came out to take my report. He was properly professional and sympathetic. He informed me that the chief tool available was a database that pawnshops must maintain of any electronic devices that are pawned. If the serial number on my iPod came up in the database, they would nab the felon. Otherwise, though, there wasn't much hope. The officer also advised me that there had been some similar incidents in the general neighborhood and that the best way to avoid having my car broken into in the future was to make sure that no electronics or charging cords were visible. I thanked him for his professionalism and advice and that was that. Then I got to thinking, what if I were the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)? How would I handle the theft of my iPod and the advice from the police on how to avoid future break ins? Rather differently, as I explain below . . . . So if I were the MPAA, how would I handle this? ? Berate the cop who answered my call for not stopping the crime before it happened. I would also go around to everyone in my neighborhood and accuse them of "supporting theft" from their failure to set up a neighborhood watch to protect my right to leave my iPod in the front seat of my car. ? When the cop told me that I could reduce the likelihood of future car break-ins by keeping electronics hidden, I would shout at the cop for "supporting theft." After all, I have a perfect right to keep my iPod in my car, prominently displayed if I want. How dare this cop tell me to change my behavior to avoid getting robbed! ? Later, I would try to get the cop who advised me on how to avoid future car break-ins fired for "abetting car thieves." I would conduct a public smear campaign in which I accused this cop of being in bed with thieves, fences, and other nefarious dealers in stolen goods because he "supports theft" by advising me how to avoid future car break-ins rather than setting a 24/7 guard on my driveway or preemptively arresting anyone who looks like he or she might steal my iPod. After all, if you really cared about stopping theft, you wouldn't tell me to change my behavior or take steps to protect myself! I have a perfect right to leave my iPod in my front seat, and theft is wrong. So telling me to hide my iPod to avoid a break in means you don't really want to enforce the law. ? While I'm at it, I will also accuse my neighbors of secretly wanting to steal my iPod. They have motive (who wouldn't want a free iPod?) and opportunity, so they are all prime suspects. I will demand the police conduct a house-to-house search. If they are too busy, I insist the police give ME the right to do a house-to-house search. I will also start harassing my neighbors and treating them like criminals. If they tell me to bugger off, and demand to see a warrant before I search their homes for my iPod, I will point to their bad attitude as proof that they are either thieves or support thieves. Why else would they object? ? I would lobby the Montgomery County Council to place a 24/7 guard on my driveway so I can leave my iPod in the front seat. I would also insist on a video surveillance system and fingerprinting for anyone who comes with 500 feet of my car. Any neighbors who complain about what a waste of tax payer money this is, or that it invades their privacy, or that they don't like giving fingerprints to police to protect my right to leave my iPod in the front seat "support theft" and deserve the smear treatment. ? I would give $1 million in campaign donations to any County Council rep who votes for my proposals. I would give the same amount to the opponents of any County Council member who even suggests that my proposals are a little extreme and maybe I ought to just put my iPod in the glove compartment. I would hold parties where County Council members can meet famous movie stars and recording artists, all of whom will urge the members of the County Council to vote for my eminently reasonable proposal to avert the veritable crime wave of iPod thefts in my driveway. ? I would produce statistics that show that Montgomery County loses thousands of dollars and numerous jobs annually from iPod theft from my driveway. Anyone who questions the accuracy of these statistics "supports iPod theft." ? Then I will wonder why I am so unpopular with my neighbors. I will conclude they have been deluded by the pawnshop lobby. Or they support iPod theft. But it can't be anything wrong with me, since I have a perfect right to leave my iPod in the front seat of my car and anyone who questions any measures to protect that right either supports theft or is being controlled by the pawnshop lobby. You may ask, wouldn't it actually be easier, cheaper and more effective for me to change my habits and be a bit more careful about leaving my iPod and other electronic devices on the front seat of my car? To which I can only say "if you can even ask that question, you clearly support iPod theft." Stay tuned . . . From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 14 13:27:00 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:27:00 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The NOAA Is Shopping For 46, 000 Rounds Of Ammunition Message-ID: The NOAA Is Shopping For 46,000 Rounds Of Ammunition Robert Johnson http://www.businessinsider.com/the-national-weather-service-is-shopping-for-46000-rounds-of-ammunition-2012-8 Following a request for 450 million rounds of ammunition for DHS and ICE earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking for 46,000 rounds of ammunition for the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service stations in Ellsworth, Maine, and New Bedford, Mass., are slated to receive 16,000 rounds of .40 S&W jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullets. Jacketed hollow points usually have a layer of copper around the lead to provide strength and prevent the barrel of the gun getting fouled up with soft lead. Hollow point bullets are designed to expand when they enter the body, causing as much damage as possible to internal organs and tissue. They've been illegal in international warfare since 1899. 6,000 rounds of S&W JHP will be sent to Wall, New Jersey and another 24,000 rounds of the same bullets will be handed over to the station in St. Petersburg, Florida. St. Pete. is the only city that's not receiving 100 or more paper targets to assist with training of agency issued sidearms. Two hundred targets are going to Maine and Massachusetts, but only 100 to New Jersey. So, 46,000 rounds and 500 targets. One commenter pointed out that the NOAA overseas the National Marine Fisheries Service that's responsible for all U.S. marine resources. The aquisition mentions this agency, NMFS and the OLE ? Office of law Enforcement. Again, this recent batch of ammunition is in addition to the 450 million rounds requested by DHS and ICE in March. And that, BI Military & Defense commenter tc84 points out, is before Friday's updated request by DHS, putting the ammunition requested by that group at 750,000 rounds. Paul Watson at InfoWars points out the new request lists rounds of all types including buckshot, slugs, and .357 magnum rounds, a bullet renowned for its immense "stopping power". --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 14 20:03:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:03:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Kim Dotcom: MPAA / RIAA Corrupted the U.S. Government Message-ID: Kim Dotcom: MPAA / RIAA Corrupted the U.S. Government ? Ernesto ? August 14, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-mpaa-riaa-corrupted-the-u-s-government-120814 In a submission to the U.S. Copyright Tzar the MPAA and RIAA characterized Kim Dotcom and his colleagues as manipulative, ?wealthy and arrogant.? According to the MegaUpload founder this language is a sign of weakness. ?There is no need to sway public opinion because everyone can see how the MPAA and RIAA are corrupting the system by infiltrating their own people into key government positions,? he says. Last Friday the MPAA and RIAA filed a joint submission with Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel. The two groups gave their recommendations for future IP enforcement policy and among other suggestions offered to help out with future international actions against ?rogue sites? such as Megaupload. ?In this case, the Justice Department and other federal agencies are now grappling with a set of wealthy and arrogant defendants who are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to sway public opinion against efforts to hold them accountable,? the groups wrote. An interesting choice of words. Ignoring whether or not the statements apply to Dotcom or not, being ?wealthy and arrogant? is by no means a crime. In fact, many people in Hollywood and the music business can easily be described using the same terms. In addition, ?swaying public opinion? is one of the main goals of both the MPAA and RIAA. In a response to the name-calling, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says the insults are a sign of weakness. According to him there is absolutely no need to ?sway anything.? ?They are calling me names because the case against Megaupload is a stillborn cripple,? Dotcom told TorrentFreak. ?There is no need to sway public opinion because everyone can see how the MPAA and RIAA are corrupting the system by infiltrating their own people into key government positions. They are openly paying politicians and hiring public officials who are favorable to them.? Dotcom is referring to the so-called ?revolving door? between the U.S. Government and the copyright industries. As a result, the MPAA and the U.S. authorities prosecuting Megaupload can be considered a close group of friends. ?A recent example is the senior vice president of the MPAA Marc Miller who recently called me a ?career criminal? at a press briefing regarding the potential dismissal of the Megaupload case,? Dotcom says. ?He is a former prosecutor and colleague of Jay Prabhu, one of the US Attorneys behind the prosecution of Megaupload. They worked together in the Computer Crime division at the Department of Justice and they jointly won the Anti-Piracy Leadership Award from the SIIA.? ?Good friends help each other,? Dotcom adds. One of the most crucial employees at the MPAA is its CEO Chris Dodd, who joined the movie industry group in 2011 after serving as a senator for thirty years. ?The MPAA made the ultimate hire with former Senator and Joe Biden?s best friend Chris Dodd. They now own the ear drums at the White House. And Chris Dodd is using his influence,? Dotcom says. ?The US Attorney [Neil MacBride] leading this case was a former copyright lobbyist and lawyer of Joe Biden. He is also a buddy of Chris Dodd. This gang of friends plotted the takedown of Megaupload in bad faith,? Dotcom adds. As mentioned before, Kim Dotcom and his legal team claim to have evidence that vice president Joe Biden was the one who ordered the shutdown of Megaupload. According to Dotcom the vice president admitted this in public. ?At a recent fundraiser luncheon Joe Biden openly admitted and bragged that he was behind the Megaupload termination. And that he had to convince Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to back him and Chris Dodd. We have a credible witness who has provided our legal team with evidence.? Dotcom is convinced that Biden is the mastermind, and that people such as assistant U.S. attorney Jay Prabhu are nothing more than foot soldiers waiting in line to walk through the revolving door. ?Who believes that Jay Prabhu, a semi-talented assistant US Attorney with little respect inside the DOJ has the balls to take down a global cloud storage business with millions of legitimate users and 4% of all Internet traffic? He is just a soldier following orders.? ?And when the Megaupload case finally arrives at the bullshit graveyard Jay Prabhu might get a job at the MPAA just like his former colleague Marc Miller. That is, if the MPAA still exists after Megaupload, it?s business partners and our users sue them and the studios for damages.? While the entertainment industry and the U.S. Government succeeded in taking Megaupload out, at least temporarily, Dotcom believes that the truth will come out in the end. ?The evidence of corruption is surfacing thanks to whistleblowers. This time they went too far and it?s going to bite them where it hurts,? Dotcom says. ?We are innocent. We can prove it. The legal experts are siding with us. We are winning important court battles. And we have the people of the Internet on our side. The public and the media are becoming more interested in this case, making it increasingly difficult for the US government to get away with lies and dirty tricks.? Megaupload?s founder already scored a victory in New Zealand, and he believes that more will follow. ?Independent New Zealand judges see right through the politically motivated maliciousness of this case and won?t become an accessory after the fact for big content billionaires in the US,? he says. According to Dotcom the public has an important role to play in turning this case in favor of Megaupload. Voting Obama out of office is a good start, as he is in the pockets of the MPAA and RIAA. ?Remember the Mr President song? ?Don?t let them get away with that?. You can start by voting for a new administration in November if Obama isn?t turning this around. Hollywood and the MPAA are only backing Obama?s re-election and can?t expect any favors from Mitt Romney. Romney is simply the better bet for a free Internet. ?You have the power to send a strong message to the next President of the United States. Get involved. Tell your friends. Blog and tweet. Take your Internet back while you still can,? Dotcom concludes. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 14 22:43:09 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 23:43:09 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Secrecy creep Message-ID: <43FF0C6B-0702-4733-BEE0-4D97B09C15D2@infowarrior.org> Tuesday, Aug 14, 2012 1:17 PM UTC Secrecy creep Executive branch agencies have learned well from the Obama administration's fixation on punishing whistleblowers By Glenn Greenwald That the Obama administration has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers is by now well-known and well-documented, as is its general fixation on not just maintaining but increasing even the most extreme and absurd levels of secrecy. Unsurprisingly, this ethos ? that the real criminals are those who expose government wrongdoing, not those who engage in that wrongdoing ? now pervades lower levels of the Executive Branch as well. Last night, McClatchy reported on a criminal investigation launched by the Inspector General (IG) of the National Reconnaissance Office, America?s secretive spy satellite agency, against the agency?s deputy director, Air Force Maj. Gen. Susan Mashiko. After Mashiko learned that four senior NRO officials whose identities she did not know reported to the IG ?a series of allegations of malfeasant actions? by another NRO official relating to large contracts, Mashiko allegedly vowed: ?I would like to find them and fire them.? Moreover, after McClatchy published stories in June about the agency?s abusive and problematic use of polygraph tests to root out leakers, top agency officials made statements ?taken as a threat that polygraphers who raise similar concerns about the agency?s practices ? even to the inspector general ? would be punished or criminally prosecuted as leakers.? As usual in today?s Washington, punishment is solely for those who expose high-level wrongdoing, and secrecy powers are primarily devoted to shielding the wrongdoers. Today, Mother Jones? Kate Sheppard reports on a complaint alleging very similar behavior at the Department of Interior. In 2009, President Obama issued an executive order requiring the primacy of objective science over ideology in policy-making. It was not until 2011 that the Interior Department got around to complying by creating the position of Scientific Integrity Officer ? ?to ensure and maintain the integrity of scientific and scholarly activities used in Departmental decision making? ? and it then hired for that position a hydrologist, Dr. Paul Houser, who was previously an associate professor in George Mason University?s Geography and Geoinformation Sciences Department. < -- > http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/secrecy_creep/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 13:01:41 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:01:41 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Google Launches 'Prior Art Finder' For Patents Message-ID: Google Launches 'Prior Art Finder' For Patents from the interesting-development dept Google has announced a new offering called the Prior Art Finder, in which it tries to help anyone find prior art on patents. When you view a patent via Google's patent database, there will now be a button you can click, which tries to take terms from the patent, and displays a variety of related info from the date that the patent was filed: What I find most interesting about this is the fact that they're dating the results of the search to anything existing prior to the date of the filing. One of the big complaints that people make when others discuss how obvious or non-novel a patent is, is that it's impossible to go back to how the world was at the time the patent was filed. This effort seems to take one step in the direction of fixing that, though the quality of the results will matter quite a bit. I do wonder how useful this tool will be in the early days (especially concerning much older patents when there wasn't nearly as much info online), but I could see how it would become much more useful in the future, as Google both improves it and when it's searching a much larger database of knowledge and information. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120814/10183120047/google-launches-prior-art-finder-patents.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 13:05:30 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:05:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NBC Wonders if It Should Have Actually Tape-Delayed the Olympics More Message-ID: (NBC's Olympics coverage can best be described as "3 hours of prime time commercial programming interrupted by 3-4 minute segments of athletics." That's the way it feels it will earn ratings? If so, I suppose they'll be investing in buggy whips next. --rick) NBC Wonders if It Should Have Actually Tape-Delayed the Olympics More Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:23:02 -0400 http://m.adage.com/article?articleSection=media&articleSectionName=Media&articleid=http%3A%2F%2Fadage.com%2Fmedia%2Farticle%3Farticle_id%3D236674 The London Olympics drew 219.4 million U.S. viewers as gold-medal performances by Americans bolstered ratings, according to NBC, overtaking the 2008 games in Beijing to become the nation's most-watched TV event. Total viewership topped the 215 million that tuned in to the Beijing broadcast, according to a statement yesterday from Comcast's NBC Universal division citing Nielsen ratings. NBC sold about $1.25 billion in advertising, beating the $850 million for the 2008 Olympics. Though NBC drew criticism for not airing more of the games live, showcasing taped events in prime time "undeniably" helped ratings, NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus said. He said he wondered if NBC should have tape-delayed more events, such as the U.S. men's gold-medal basketball game and the men's tennis finals between Andy Murray and Roger Federer, which were live. "It's undeniable we hurt our ratings by doing that," Mr. Lazarus said in a phone interview. "We have to balance what we're trying to do for viewers across the country and our business model." The performances of American athletes -- who won a world-best 104 medals, including 46 gold -- also helped drive ratings, said Andy Donchin, director of media investments for Carat North America, an advertising firm. Despite the outcry over tape-delaying marquee events, including Michael Phelps's four gold-medal swims and Gabby Douglas's first-place performance in the women's gymnastics all-around, NBC successfully persuaded audiences to tune in several hours after the competitions took place. "In a way, knowing Michael Phelps or Gabby Douglas won a medal may make you watch even more," said Mr. Donchin. "Even tape delayed, you still want to see it." The better-than-expected ratings mean that the broadcaster may turn a profit on the games, Mr. Lazarus said. Ad sales beat internal projections by 15% to 20%, he said. NBC had previously forecast a loss of about $200 million. The network won't know if it made money on the event for "several weeks" as it completes its accounting, Greg Hughes, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. Advertisers such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola and P&G are "very, very happy" with the ratings, Mr. Donchin said, a testament to the way event-based TV can still draw large audiences. The viewership was helped by a growing population and a wider array of channels showing the Olympics, including MSNBC and Bravo. NBC's prime-time broadcast averaged 31.1 million viewers. While that was 12% higher than the Beijing games and 26% above the Athens Olympics in 2004, it ranked below Atlanta's in 1996. NBC, which paid $1.18 billion for the rights to the London Olympics, had initially projected lower ratings versus the Beijing games. The network provided live online coverage of every Olympic event for the first time, although web viewers needed to show that they were a pay-TV subscriber to get access. NBC may allow more events to be seen by non-cable subscribers in future Olympics, but any new packages will have to be approved by NBC's cable operator partners, Mr. Lazarus said. The next summer games will be held in Rio de Janeiro. Comcast, the cable-TV provider based in Philadelphia, acquired control of NBC Universal for $13.8 billion in January 2011. The business, which includes TV, film and theme-park units, contributed about 36% of Comcast's sales in the second quarter. "The ratings from day one exceeded everyone's expectations," said Todd Gordon, managing director of Magna Global, the media-buying arm of advertising holding company Interpublic Group of Cos. "The ratings were up so much for Beijing I think people really assumed that beating those ratings weren't going to be realistic. To exceed those numbers consistently throughout the games was pretty extraordinary." -- Bloomberg News -- --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 13:46:50 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:46:50 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Road From D.C. To Cape Cod Reveals Reach Of Defense Industry Message-ID: <2DB689A7-CFE0-42FC-8C8F-DBABD8ABC36D@infowarrior.org> (c/o DS) Road From D.C. To Cape Cod Reveals Reach Of Defense Industry http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/08/15/road-from-d-c-to-cape-cod-reveals-reach-of-defense-industry/print/ Every summer I drive the wife and kids from our home in Virginia to a house in Plymouth, Massachusetts that has been owned by my family since the 1920s. I?ve made the trip many times, but it wasn?t until this year that it dawned on me the road from D.C. to Cape Cod passes through the heart of the U.S. defense industry. You can learn a lot about that industry?s role in the U.S. economy and political culture by just looking out your car window ? if you know what to look for. So here?s a travel guide. If you?re leaving from Capitol Hill, you?ll probably want to drive up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to get onto I-95 North in Baltimore. Before you reach the city, though, you?ll pass the first big defense-industrial site on our itinerary, the headquarters of Northrop Grumman?s electronics unit near the Baltimore airport. It?ll be on your right about a hundred yards off the parkway just after you pass the main airport exit, and it?s huge: with two million feet of enclosed space and over 6,000 workers it is probably the premier military-radar assembly site in the world. It used to be even bigger ? there were 17,000 workers at the end of the Cold War ? but Northrop automated many processes and demand has slackened since the old days, when 180 F-16 fighters needing onboard radars were being produced every year. The factory was built on the site of a former fruit orchard in 1951 by Westinghouse, which had been the biggest rival of General Electric ever since it bought Nikola Tesla?s patent for alternating current to compete with Edison?s direct current. Westinghouse moved its radio operations from Massachusetts to Maryland in 1938, and shortly thereafter developed the Army?s first air-defense radar. The radar detected the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, although the military failed to react. A series of other breakthroughs followed including the pulse-doppler technology that made airborne radars possible, but by the end of the Cold War Westinghouse was ready to join the migration out of manufacturing. Northrop Grumman bought its military-electronics unit in 1996 for $3.6 billion, which today looks like a smarter investment than the broadcasting properties Westinghouse chose to purchase with the proceeds. Once you get onto I-95 North, you?ll probably want to follow it to the New Jersey Turnpike. That?s kind of a shame, because if you?d stayed on I-95 you would have gone right by the Boeing plant south of Philadelphia where the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and CH-47 Chinook helicopter are built. That complex too employs 6,000 workers and like Northrop?s Maryland plant it has a long history. The Chinook is assembled in the old Baldwin Locomotive factory that the world?s biggest maker of steam locomotives built in 1929 before it faltered in its efforts to convert to diesel engines. Boeing bought the building in 1965 when Chinook production began, and currently is in the midst of a costly effort to make the plant more efficient. Nobody remembers now, but during World War One Baldwin suffered a horrible explosion at a nearby munitions plant it was operating, killing 133 workers (mostly women and girls). There?s a monument to their loss in the local cemetery. We?ll have to leave those details for another time, though, because you took the shorter route to Cape Cod through Jersey. When you get about 15 miles due east of Philly, you?ll see an odd sight on the north side of the turnpike ? the superstructure of a warship sitting in a field. That is the site in Moorestown, New Jersey where the Navy tests the radars for its Aegis combat system, the most capable air- and missile-defense system in the world. The radars and a host of other electronics gear are assembled at an adjacent complex owned by Lockheed Martin, which until recently was also the headquarters of its sprawling military-electronics business unit. The 400-acre main campus hosts 4,000 workers, making it the biggest employer in Burlington County. The Moorestown factory was built in 1953 on what had been an asparagus farm by the old Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA was a pillar of the New Jersey economy in the early postwar years when the state was still a hub of electronics innovation thanks to the early work of Thomas Edison at Menlo Park. The company started out manufacturing consumer electronics and pioneered the development of color television in the 1950s, but over time gravitated towards military work as Japan began making inroads into the U.S. consumer market. General Electric bought RCA in 1986 in a belated effort to benefit from the Reagan military buildup, but sold the military part of the business to Lockheed Martin during the defense-sector consolidation that followed the end of the Cold War. That proved to be a wise move for Lockheed, which became the leading supplier of radars, computers and other items to the Navy thanks largely to the Moorestown facility. You?ll see another vestige of New Jersey?s former dominance in the global electronics business if you decide to take the Garden State Parkway around Manhattan to avoid the inevitable backup at the George Washington Bridge. The parkway snakes past sites once made famous by Edison, but when you get to the Clifton area you?ll notice that military contractor Exelis (formerly ITT Defense) still maintains a major presence in the area. The company has 1,500 employees in and around Clifton working on electronic jammers, information systems and tactical communications for all of the military services. You?d never guess looking at the nondescript Exelis building only a few yards off the west side of the parkway that it belongs to one the world?s leading repositories of military-electronics expertise. Having driven north around New York City, you?ll have two options for continuing your Cape Cod trek into Connecticut. Rather than rejoining I-95 at the state line, let?s travel the more scenic Merritt Parkway, the nation?s first divided highway. That will take you right past the headquarters of Sikorsky helicopters in Stratford, a unit of locally-based United Technologies. United Technologies has a huge manufacturing presence in Connecticut, and its Stratford plant where the Army?s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and the Marine Corps? CH-53 Super Stallion heavy lifter are assembled is one of the biggest rotorcraft complexes in the world. Sikorsky employs 9,000 workers in the Nutmeg State, most of them at Stratford. Unlike some other local manufacturers, it is going gangbusters: sales of military, civil and commercial helicopters have increased about 40 percent over the past five years. Right after passing Sikorsky headquarters on the north side of the Merritt Parkway, you?ll be taking a connector south to the Connecticut Turnpike along the shore, which is also I-95. If you feel like taking a brief detour from your route, you can exit at the outlet malls in Clinton and drive 20 miles north to a similarly imposing United Technologies plant in Middletown where its Pratt & Whitney unit assembles all the engines for the F-22 and F-35 fighters. No other company in the world is currently capable of producing jet engines with such demanding performance specifications. Pratt & Whitney employs about 11,000 workers in Connecticut, and recently handed the state?s economy a pleasant surprise when it announced it would be building engines for a popular new Airbus commercial transport at the same plant where the fighter engines are assembled. Not long after returning to the turnpike, you?ll be passing through historic Groton. When you get to the crest of the bridge over the Thames River, you can see the center of global innovation in undersea warfare a mile down-river to your right, the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics. You can also see the Navy?s big submarine base off in the distance to your left, still the locus of U.S. undersea operations in the North Atlantic. Electric Boat delivered the Navy?s first submarine in 1900, the USS Holland, and later went on to construct the first nuclear-powered submarine (USS Nautilus) and the first ballistic-missile submarine (USS George Washington). General Dynamics currently has 5,000 engineers and draftsmen at work in and around Groton designing the next generation of ballistic-missile subs, and an additional 2,000 tradesmen assembling Virginia-class attack subs, so the town is on firm ground in calling itself the submarine capital of the world. The economic impact of Electric Boat spills over into neighboring Rhode Island, where General Dynamics has established a major industrial facility at Quonset Point to construct hull cylinders for its submarines. The digital machining and outfitting capabilities at Quonset Point make it one of the most advanced naval construction sites in the world, not to mention the biggest industrial employer in Rhode Island. But that is not the only impact the defense industry has on the Ocean State. Raytheon has a sprawling campus near Newport that develops electronic systems for U.S. warships, and as you travel I-95 through the state capital of Providence you will see the high-rise headquarters of military supplier Textron looming above Westminster Street near the highway. Textron assembles the parts of the V-22 tiltrotor not built at Boeing?s Philadelphia facility, and a variety of other helicopters used by the Army and Marine Corps (most of that work is done in Texas). Textron?s name tells you something about how manufacturing has changed in this part of the Northeast over the last century. The conglomerate originated in textile mills that once dotted the shoreline in places like Providence, Fall River and New Bedford, and managed to stay healthy by diversifying into aerospace operations such as Cessna business jets. Its Bell Helicopter unit is a major rival of Sikorsky in the civil and commercial rotorcraft market, and alternately teams with or competes with Boeing?s military rotorcraft unit. The continuing success of companies like Textron, United Technologies and General Electric in a region where thousands of factories have shut down over the years is a testament to the adaptability of well-run enterprises. I usually get off the interstate in Providence and take an old highway designated Route 44 to my house in Plymouth. If you?re going on to the Cape Cod proper, you?ll probably turn onto I-195 at Providence and cross the Cape Cod Canal at Bourne or Sagamore. The bridge at the latter crossing will allow you an unobstructed view of a big radar site on the Cape maintained by Massachusetts-based Raytheon, the nation?s fourth-largest military contractor. The radar is designed to detect ballistic-missile attacks on the U.S., and is only one of hundreds of military systems the company makes in Massachusetts, Arizona and elsewhere. The last military-industrial stop on my personal itinerary is off Route 44 in Taunton, Massachusetts where I pass near four buildings owned by General Dynamics in the Myles Standish Industrial Park. The thousand workers there are developing a new battlefield communications network for the Army called WIN-T, and they recently escaped major job losses when the Army reversed plans to cut funding for the program under pressure from Senator Scott Brown. Taunton is one of those tired milltowns that desperately needs good jobs, so the continued presence of the General Dynamics operation is crucial to its economic health. General Dynamics acquired the operation when it purchased the defense operations of General Telephone and Electronics after the Cold War ended; GTE?s former corporate headquarters is right next to the Connecticut Turnpike in Stamford. There?s a lesson embedded in this trip through the heartland of the U.S. defense industry. Military production has become the cornerstone of manufacturing in America?s Northeast. From the Northrop Grumman plant in Baltimore to the Lockheed Martin complex in New Jersey to the General Dynamic?s shipyard in Connecticut, Pentagon demand is an engine of prosperity. I haven?t even mentioned sites that were far afield of my Cape Cod route, like the GE aircraft-engine plant in Lynn, Massachusetts and the General Dynamics shipyard in Bath, Maine. There are hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs associated with such sites in the Northeast. If you think that losing those jobs wouldn?t be devastating for the region, then you don?t understand the U.S. economy. This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/08/15/road-from-d-c-to-cape-cod-reveals-reach-of-defense-industry/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 14:55:33 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:55:33 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Now SSA purchasing 174K rounds of ammo? Message-ID: <25AC47A1-FBA8-4F51-94F4-4D0D311D9E84@infowarrior.org> Social Security Administration To Purchase 174 Thousand Rounds Of Hollow Point Bullets Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Wednesday, August 15, 2012 First it was the Department of Homeland Security, then it was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and now the Social Security Administration is set to purchase 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets that will be delivered to 41 locations across the country. A solicitation posted by the SSA on the FedBizOpps website asks for contractors to supply 174,000 rounds of ?.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition.? An online ammunition retailer describes the bullets as suitable ?for peak performance rivaling and sometimes surpassing handloads in many guns,? noting that the ammo is ?a great personal defense bullet.? The synopsis to the solicitation adds that the ammunition is to be shipped to 41 locations within 60 days of purchase. A separate spreadsheet lists those locations, which include the Social Security headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland as well as major cities across the country including Los Angeles, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Seattle. < - > http://www.infowars.com/social-security-administration-to-purchase-174-thousand-rounds-of-hollow-point-bullets/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 18:05:50 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:05:50 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - UK issues 'threat' to arrest Wikileaks founder Message-ID: 15 August 2012 Last updated at 18:40 ET Julian Assange: UK issues 'threat' to arrest Wikileaks founder http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19259623?print=true The UK has issued a "threat" to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London to arrest Julian Assange, Ecuador's foreign minister has said. Mr Assange took refuge at the embassy in June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over assault and rape claims, which he denies. Ricardo Patino also said a decision on the Wikileaks founder's asylum request would be made public on Thursday. The Foreign Office said it could revoke the embassy's diplomatic status. In a statement issued as Mr Patino spoke, it said the UK had a "legal obligation" to extradite Mr Assange. Meanwhile, a number of police officers are outside the embassy, in Knightsbridge. At a news conference in Quito on Wednesday night, Mr Patino said: "Today we received from the United Kingdom an express threat, in writing, that they might storm our Embassy in London if we don't hand over Julian Assange. "Ecuador rejects in the most emphatic terms the explicit threat of the British official communication." 'Hostile act' He said such a threat was "improper of a democratic, civilized and rule abiding country". "If the measure announced in the British official communication is enacted, it will be interpreted by Ecuador as an unacceptable, unfriendly and hostile act and as an attempt against our sovereignty. It would force us to respond," he said. "We are not a British colony". A Foreign Office spokesman said the UK remained "determined" to fulfil its obligation to extradite Mr Assange. "Throughout this process have we have drawn the Ecuadorians' attention to relevant provisions of our law, whether, for example, the extensive human rights safeguards in our extradition procedures, or to the legal status of diplomatic premises in the UK," the spokesman said. "We are still committed to reaching a mutually acceptable solution." The law which Britain is threatening to invoke in the Assange case is the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987. UK 'frustrated' It allows the UK to revoke the diplomatic status of an embassy on UK soil, which would potentially allow police to enter the building to arrest Mr Assange. The BBC's deputy political editor James Landale says the British government has been in long negotiations with Ecuador over the issue and has reminded it of the act. But he added that while the UK has been frustrated at the lack of a decision it is not about to raid the embassy. Even if Mr Assange is granted asylum, he will have to cross British territory and could be arrested, our correspondent said. On Monday, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said a decision would be made this week after he held a meeting with his advisers. Mr Patino told reporters the decision had been made and an announcement would issued on Thursday morning, at 07:00 Ecuadorian time (13:00 BST). Final appeal Mr Assange's Wikileaks website published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed several governments, particularly the US, in 2010. In 2010, two female ex-Wikileaks volunteers alleged that Mr Assange, an Australian citizen, had attacked them while he was in Stockholm to give a lecture. Mr Assange claims the sex was consensual and the allegations are politically motivated. The 41-year-old says he fears that if he is extradited to Sweden, he may be sent later to the US and could face espionage charges. In June, judges at the UK's Supreme Court dismissed his final appeal against extradition to Sweden. An offer to the Swedish authorities by Ecuador for investigators to interview Mr Assange inside the embassy, was rejected. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 15 20:46:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:46:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DVD plus nano-rods equals security, density: researchers Message-ID: <024A7DCD-9DD6-4D5A-8C56-DE700D539C86@infowarrior.org> Interesting approach to encryption, I think! --rick DVD plus nano-rods equals security, density: researchers A little light encryption By Richard Chirgwin ? Get more from this author Posted in Science, 15th August 2012 23:45 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/15/optical_polarisation_encryption_swinburne/ Swinburne and Taiwanese researchers have demonstrated technology that can use a single laser beam to create 3D polarization in nanomaterials. What?s cool about this is that they demonstrate that the polarization can be used to encrypt information ? as well as expanding the storage capacity of optical media like DVDs. As is shown in the illustration at the bottom of this story, the polarization technique ? in its infancy at the moment ? allows different images to be encoded in one place, showing up depending on the polarization the ?read? beam uses. Using polarization to encode information like this isn?t new: however, achieving 3D polarization using a single beam is, according to the researchers. As the abstract in Nature states, ?arbitrary three-dimensional polarization orientation of a beam hasn?t been achieved yet?. Gold nano-rods tuned to specific wavelengths are added to the surface of the DVD, according to Swinburne?s Professor Min Gu. The rods are sensitive to the polarization of the ?write-laser? ? so while one polarization will align some particles in the rods, a different polarization will affect a different set of particles. Professor Gu says the laser can be polarized ?in any direction? ? yielding the ?arbitrary? polarization referred to in the Nature paper. This characteristic of the laser is what provides both the lift in storage density and the technique?s encryption possibilities. ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 16 06:20:56 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 07:20:56 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Kim Dotcom Must Be Allowed To See FBI Evidence Against Him, Court Rules Message-ID: <993A8903-7B53-4812-B377-CA925B8199A6@infowarrior.org> Kim Dotcom Must Be Allowed To See FBI Evidence Against Him, Court Rules ? enigmax ? August 16, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-must-be-allowed-to-see-fbi-evidence-against-him-court-rules-120816/ The bid to have Kim Dotcom extradited to the United States suffered a significant setback today. US authorities had insisted there was no need for them to reveal the evidence they hold against the Megaupload founder. But today a New Zealand judge upheld an earlier decision and ordered the US to reveal the evidence they are relying on to have Dotcom and his associates shipped to the United States, including details of covert operations and confidential discussions with rights holders. Responding to a request from Megaupload?s legal team, Judge Harvey at the North Shore District Court ruled in May on whether the United States government should be forced to reveal the evidence it holds on Kim Dotcom and other defendants in the case. Megaupload said they have a right to see the case being built against them but the United States insisted that no right to disclosure exists. Judge Harvey disagreed with the prosecution and ordered disclosure of all documents relating to the alleged crimes of the so-called Megaupload Conspiracy. ?In my view there must be fairness and the hearing and balance must be struck, otherwise the record of case becomes dominant virtually to the exclusion of everything else and places the extradition process in danger of becoming an administrative one rather than judicial,? the Judge wrote. He later stepped down after allegedly describing the United States as ?the enemy?. Refusing to concede defeat, US authorities pushed back and sought a judicial review of Judge Harvey?s ruling. In a judgment today, the High Court upheld the earlier decision handed down in the North Shore District Court. Justice Helen Winkelmann dismissed the application for a judicial review, noting that without disclosure of the evidence, Kim Dotcom and his co-accused ? Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk ? would not be able to mount a full and proper defense in their extradition hearing. ?Without disclosure [Kim Dotcom and associates] will be significantly constrained in [their] ability to participate in the hearing, and the requesting state will have a significant advantage in terms of access to information,? the ruling reads. The documents to be disclosed are significant in their scope, encompassing all elements of the case from the allegations of infringement, through to information being held on the nature of the Megaupload rewards program. Interestingly, as part of a section marked Criminal Breach of Copyright, the ruling says that US authorities must disclose: ? All records obtained or created in connection with the covert operations undertaken by agents involved in the investigations related to these proceedings in transacting and uploading/downloading data and files on the Megaupload site. ? All records or information and/or material provided to or obtained by the investigation and/or prosecuting agencies by the investigating and/or prosecuting agencies in this case from holders and/or owners of copyright interests evidencing alleged infringement of their copyright and/or complaining of such infringement. - All records and materials related to communications between relevant copyright holders and Megaupload and/or its employees regarding their copyright interest, the direct delete access provided by Megaupload to any such copyright holders, and any communications between the copyright holders and Megaupload and/or its staff regarding take-down notices. Today?s ruling marks a significant victory for Kim Dotcom, his associates, and their legal team. Access to the evidence against them has been ruled crucial to the defendants being able to mount a proper defense, something that the US authorities have tried to deny. Last week Dotcom promised more revelations ? they are now almost certainly on their way. The extradition hearing is currently expected sometime early 2013. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 16 06:31:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 07:31:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Ars: The rise of license plate readers Message-ID: Your car, tracked: the rapid rise of license plate readers by Cyrus Farivar - Aug 15 2012, 2:20pm EDT Largely unregulated, cameras now collect millions of travel records every day. < -BIG SNIP- > http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 16 20:33:10 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:33:10 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US court sides with gene patents Message-ID: <3A7506CF-7375-4D50-9170-63984FE8314E@infowarrior.org> US court sides with gene patents 16 Aug 2012 | 19:15 BST | Posted by Amy Maxmen Gene patents prevail in a landmark case over two genes associated with hereditary forms of breast and ovarian cancer. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/us-court-sides-with-gene-patents.html The lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, a diagnostic company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, that holds patents on the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, has bounced from court to court since 2010. In a 2-1 decision today, a federal appeals court reaffirmed their latest decision that genes represent patent-eligible matter. Biotechnology and drug companies own thousands of genetic sequences. Industry, therefore, largely welcomes the decision, which they say will foster innovation for diagnostic tests and other biomedical tools that advance personalized medicine. Meanwhile, the news has disappointed several scientists, patients and medical societies who filed legal briefs on behalf of the plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Public Patent Foundation. In a statement released today, ACLU attorney Chris Hansen called the decision extremely disappointing. ?This ruling prevents doctors and scientists from exchanging their ideas and research freely,? he added. ?Human DNA is a natural entity like air or water. It does not belong to any one company.? In March, the US Supreme Court asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reconsider the case in light of a ruling against patents on a different, non-genetic diagnostic test. In this case, patents were rendered invalid because they merely reiterated ?laws of nature?. But according to the latest judges, the patents Myriad holds do not reiterate these laws. In the court?s decision, Judge Alan Lourie writes: ?Each of the claimed molecules represents a nonnaturally occurring composition of matter.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 17 06:25:39 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 07:25:39 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Another National Strategy to Implement Message-ID: <0093C0FD-B996-48EA-AFAE-A6284838F2EB@infowarrior.org> (c/o MM) Another National Strategy to Implement Filed under: Biosecurity ? by Alan Wolfe on August 14, 2012 http://www.hlswatch.com/2012/08/14/another-national-strategy-to-implement/ Without much fanfare at all, the White House released a ?National Strategy for Biosurveillance? on July 31, 2012, promising to ?unify national effort around a common purpose and establish new ways of thinking about providing information to enable better decisionmaking [sic].? Unfortunately, this strategy lacks clear ways and means that would allow for a coordinated national biosurveillance effort. Rather than leveraging the ?whole of government? approach and implementing an oversight process that has broad authorities, this strategy avoids directing roles and responsibilities that are necessary to avoid duplication of effort and power struggles over who is supposed to be in charge of this overall program. This is not a new issue. After the 2005 avian influenza flu scare, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2007 to stand up a National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC). So DHS obediently complied, with a plan to stand up the NBIC in 2008 and have it fully operational in 2009. Its responsibilities included rapidly identifying and tracking biological events; integrating and analyzing data from various environmental and clinical sources; disseminating alerts and appropriate information; and overseeing the development of interagency coordination through a National Biosurveillance Integration System (NBIS). DHS?s Office of Health Affairs stood up NBIS in 2004, an IT system that relied on open source information and added some intelligence and threat analysis. In 2007, the White House released HSPD-21, ?Public Health and Medical Preparedness,? tasking the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to?establish an operational national epidemiologic surveillance system for human health, with international connectivity where appropriate? that included working with the Federal, State, and local surveillance systems (where they existed) for public health purposes. DHHS has oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which of course has a long history of monitoring and tracking disease outbreaks that might affect human or animal health. In 2008, DoD created an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center to be a global health surveillance proponent for its deployed forces. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) immediately criticized the DHS plan in this 2008 report. It stated ?Threats of bioterrorism, such as anthrax attacks and high-profile disease outbreaks, have drawn attention to the need for systems that provide early detection and warning about biological threats, known as biosurveillance systems.? DHS had not, from the GAO?s point of view, taken the necessary steps to plan and budget its NBIC and would not meet the statutory requirement to be operational by September 30, 2008. DHS had not formalized information sharing agreements with outside agencies (such as the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, and Transportation), and of course, Project BioWatch has to feed into the NBIC. Project BioWatch is hardly a ?national? system with only 30-odd sites in U.S. metropolitan areas, but it is part of the overall data collection effort. The GAO returned in 2010 to report that there did not appear to be a comprehensive national biosurveillance strategy that clearly identified the USG objectives or a focal point with responsibility, authority, and funding to lead the effort. In particular, the GAO noted that the NBIC had not been fully successful in collaborating with its Federal, state and local partners, because (surprise) those agencies had basically stonewalled NBIC, citing excuses such as lack of funds, lack of authorities, and so on. The Presidential Decision Directive-2, ?National Strategy to Counter Biological Threats,? which was released in December 2009, called for a national biosurveillance capability, as did the DHHS National Health Security Strategy. The lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities, joint strategies, policies, and procedures for operating across agency boundaries had limited NBIC?s ability to do what it had been chartered to do ? maintain situational awareness of biological threats across the nation and effectively communicate to decision-makers what the current state of biological threats were. So the National Security Staff has responded to the GAO recommendation after about two years of discussions and reviews. With the White House?s release of this (yet another) national strategy, surely the roles and responsibilities of the various USG agencies involved will be clarified. Except ? they aren?t. The strategy does detail four core functions of the national biosurveillance enterprise, to include scanning and discerning the environment; integrating and identifying essential information; alerting and informing decision-makers; and forecasting and advising on the impacts of biological disease outbreaks. But this is hardly startling stuff. Everybody gets the goodness of a concept proposing an ?all-nation? system that saves lives by providing actionable and timely information on biological threats. What may be less well understood and not fully recognized is the startling scope of this effort. Biosurveillance does not, as a layperson might expect, involve the collection and analysis of only biological threats (both natural and man-made), but rather all hazards ? chemical and radiological incidents and accidents included ? that might affect the health of the biosphere (humans, animals, and crops). This is a huge task, and one might wonder if any one agency could hope to integrate and make sense of this data, even if all the Federal agencies cooperated with DHS?s NBIC as they?ve been directed. But that?s all going to be addressed in 120 days, when a ?strategic implementation plan? will lay out the roles and responsibilities, specific actions and activity scope, and perhaps most importantly, a mechanism for evaluating progress toward specific goals within those four core functions. It?s doubtful there will be any additional funds for this effort (given budget realities), but the developers of this strategy are optimistically calling for ?new thinking and revised methodologies? that will enable this enterprise to work and to allow those timely decisions to save lives and reduce the impact of whatever threats this biosurveillance enterprise takes on. My personal concern is that the deliberate inclusion of tracking bioterrorism incidents and naturally-occurring biological disease outbreaks, in addition to chemical and radiological incidents and accidents, is simply too much to handle. It?s information overload. The focus of this enterprise ought to have been kept to natural disease outbreaks, which is certainly where the legitimate concerns originated. There is no appreciable threat of terrorist misuse of the life sciences today; rather, the insider threat caused by the creation of hundreds of biological laboratories, in response to numerous DHS and DHHS grants, may be the greater threat source. The USG has this bad habit of trying to develop optimal strategies that attempt to eliminate risk and prevent incidents by controlling the threat, rather than focusing on the more achievable mitigation and resilience measures that might be implemented at the State and local level. I am even less confident that a single office will get the authority to convince the three major players, DHS, DHHS, and DoD, to play nicely ? specifically, to standardize their biosurveillance information and release it in a timely fashion so that these decision-makers can be informed. A more likely outcome will be the jockeying of political appointees to create new authorities and to obtain additional funding for an effort that remains poorly scoped and poorly overseen. But hey, let?s come back in four months and see if that ?strategic implementation plan? is out. Maybe we?ll see some realistic direction and achievable goals and objectives in that document. And maybe we?ll see an effective interagency approach that employs a ?whole of government? concept, with a program that is both resourced and executable within the next year. But I?m not counting on it. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 17 07:45:11 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:45:11 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Why you can't take your unlocked iPhone 4S to another U.S. carrier Message-ID: Why you can't take your unlocked iPhone 4S to another U.S. carrier In this edition of Ask Maggie, CNET's Marguerite Reardon explains how wireless operators have manipulated the market to ensure you can't take your iPhone 4S to any other U.S. carrier you want. < - > http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57495076-94/why-you-cant-take-your-unlocked-iphone-4s-to-another-u.s-carrier/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 17 08:18:27 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:18:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Twitter changes provokes anger from developers Message-ID: <57859EDB-2399-46DD-91CA-0E3EA9C678C8@infowarrior.org> Any changes related to improving or standardising the "user experience" almost always are bad news for end users and third party developers. --- rick http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19293793?print=true 17 August 2012 Last updated at 11:03 Twitter changes provokes anger from developers Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications. Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission. Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to expand by 200% before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow further. Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products. Revoked key The changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API). An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another. In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Twitpic. Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience". Mr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens." In this context, "tokens" are individual users. The guidelines also covered how tweets are displayed within apps. "If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key," Mr Sippey explained. 'Wiggle room' The changes are not expected to have an immediate impact on users. However, the announcement was heavily criticised by developers. Marco Arment, creator of popular reading service Instapaper, advised developers who were building on Twitter to "start working on another product". "Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle room with the rules," he wrote in a blog post. "Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time. "Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with. "I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore." Twitter is not the only service to put such restrictions in place. Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging companies that made heavy use of its Maps product. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 17 08:45:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:45:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - You Are Not a Social Media Jedi, Ninja, Sherpa, or Guru Message-ID: You Are Not a Social Media Jedi, Ninja, Sherpa, or Guru August 16, 2012 - 7:17pm Eric Stoller http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/you-are-not-social-media-jedi-ninja-sherpa-or-guru They are everywhere. On Twitter profiles, blog bios, and Facebook pages across the social media sphere, inflated social media titles are rampant. People claiming to be experts with social media as they bask in the warm glow of 7 Twitter followers. Seriously, they are found in countless numbers on the web. Some people are even promoting themselves as Pinterest experts. That's almost as funny as the consultants who are sure that Google Plus is going to be "the next big thing." It's an epidemic of throwing stars, mountain climbing gear, and lightsabers. It's time to define some terms. What exactly do these titles mean and are they smart or silly? Here's a list of the titles that I see most often while browsing the social web: ? Social Media Guru - One time, a very nice administrator of Indian descent called me his social media guru. That is the only time that I've been okay with being called a guru of anything. Guru originates from Hinduism. A guru is a religious leader. While you may be knowledgeable about social media, the odds are pretty slim that you are doing anything that is remotely connected to the actual meaning of the word. ? Social Media Expert - Experts have highly specialized skills and knowledge on a particular topic. You joined Pinterest yesterday, you're not an expert. This one gets used more often than an Instagram filter. ? Social Media Ninja - Ninjas are silent assassins. Usually, a social media consultant isn't in the business of actually eliminating their competition. Perhaps if you've actually studied Ninjutsu, and can tweet whilst hurling shuriken?no, who am I kidding. The only person who calls themselves a ninja is Seth Priebatsch. ? Social Media Maven - Paging Malcolm Gladwell. Oh, reached a tipping point have we? Well, social media mavens go above and beyond by being trusted experts. However, I would hope that mavens are also experts at irony?trust me. ? Social Media Sherpa - According to Dictionary.com, a Sherpa is "a member of a people of Tibetan stock living in the Nepalese Himalayas, who often serve as porters on mountain-climbing expeditions." Do you match those criteria? No?then you are most-definitely not a social media sherpa. ? Social Media Jedi - It has to be said: Star Wars is science fiction?and no one has any midi-chlorians. Move along. ? Social Media Scientist - It's a jazzy title. However, why don't you just call yourself a communications researcher? Because really, that's what you're doing. ? Social Media Scholar - Please refer to my comments about social media scientists and add a healthy dose of pretentiousness. ? Social Media Champion - I wonder if people ever called themselves "fax machine champions?" While there are definitely people who champion social media at your campus, it's hard to take anyone serious who calls themselves a social media champion. ? Social Media Rock Star - I get it. You want to play guitar and sing in a band. Who hasn't wanted to do that at some point in time. However, the same rules apply for rock stars as they do for champions - other people may think of you in that way, but it's not cool to call yourself a social media rock star. What are your "favorite" social media titles? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 18 08:15:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 09:15:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Steve Wozniak on Internet Democracy Message-ID: <04DDB0C9-29A4-4D30-9AF7-90F061B7C362@infowarrior.org> Apple Founder Steve Wozniak on Internet Democracy August 14, 2012 MEDIA ROOTS ? When I think of the most prolific innovators of our generation, there are a couple names that immediately come to mind. The founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, are definitely at the top of the list. There's no denying that Apple computers have aesthetically designed the world in which we all know and live in today?by simplifying technology to the point where everyone can use and access the internet, Apple products have changed the course of social interaction in the world. I had the great pleasure of sitting down with the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, last week in downtown DC. Truthfully, I was a little worried that someone worth billions of dollars would be pretentious and aloof. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see how down to earth and open he was to share his perspective. It was a refreshing and enlightening experience to hear from such a visionary on issues like MegaUpload's Kim Dotcom, Net Neutrality, WikiLeaks, and government legislation that curbs our internet freedoms. < - > http://mediaroots.org/apple-founder-steve-wozniak-on-internet-democracy.php --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 18 08:16:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 09:16:04 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Fwd: Mystery malware wreaks havoc on energy sector computers References: Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: "Ken" > > This is getting out of control now!!! Something really bad is going to happen before changes are made, typical opus Morandi. I was at a hacker conference last year and they talked about how easy it is to attack Scada systems, it was unreal how little to no security. You can send article, if appropriate, with my rant' > > Mystery malware wreaks havoc on energy sector computers > http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/shamoon-malware-attack/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 18 08:21:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 09:21:52 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Russia's female punk band protesters jailed for two years Message-ID: (It's interesting how many MSM mentions - print and TV - tend to bury the group's name deep in their articles, if they even mention them on air. The horror! My virgin ears!!! --rick) Russia's female punk band protesters jailed for two years http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pussy-riot-band-members-guilty-russian-judge-finds/2012/08/17/2f81876c-e86c-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_story.html Fri, Aug 17 2012 By Timothy Heritage and Maria Tsvetkova MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail on Friday for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a church, a ruling supporters described as his "personal revenge". The group's backers burst into chants of "Shame" outside the Moscow courthouse and said the case showed Putin was cracking down on dissent in his new six-year term as president. Dozens were detained by police when scuffles broke out. The United States and the European Union condemned the sentence as disproportionate and asked for it to be reviewed, although state prosecutors had demanded a three-year jail term and the maximum sentence possible was seven years. But while the women have support abroad, where their case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting, opinion polls show few Russians sympathize with them. "The girls' actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church's rules," Judge Marina Syrova told the court as she spent three hours reading the verdict while the women stood watching in handcuffs inside a glass courtroom cage. She declared all three guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow's main cathedral in February to belt out a "punk prayer" deriding Putin. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, giggled as the judge read out the sentences one by one, but portrayed themselves as victims of Soviet-style persecution during the trial that began on July 30. They have already been in jail for about five months, meaning they will serve another 19, and could be released if Putin were to pardon them. The Orthodox Church hinted it would not oppose such a move by appealing, belatedly, for mercy. Pussy Riot took on two powerful state institutions at once when they burst into Moscow's golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts to protest against Putin's close ties with the Church. The judge said the three women had "committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society." She rejected their argument that they had no intention of offending Russian Orthodox believers. It became one of Russia's most high-profile trials since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Putin's critics said it put the 59-year-old Kremlin leader's policies in the dock. Opponents depicted it as part of a crackdown by the ex-KGB spy against a protest movement that took off over the winter, attracting what witnesses said were crowds of up to 100,000 people in Moscow to oppose his return to power. "They are in jail because it is Putin's personal revenge," Alexei Navalny, one of the organizers of the protests, said outside the court. "This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin." A police source told Itar-Tass news agency 50 people had been detained near the court when scuffles broke out. Among them were Sergei Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader, and Garry Kasparov, a Putin critic and former world chess champion. But there was no sign of the opposition taking to the streets in anger. Opposition leaders plan a small gathering in Moscow on Sunday, the anniversary of a failed coup shortly before the Soviet Union fell in 1991, but the next big anti-Putin rally is not planned until September 15. Putin's spokesman did not immediately comment on the verdict but the president's supporters said before the trial that he would have no influence on the court's decision. Although Pussy Riot have never made a record or had a hit song, foreign singers have led the campaign for the trio's release. Madonna performed in Moscow with "PUSSY RIOT" painted on her back and wearing a ski mask in solidarity. But a poll of Russians released by the independent Levada research group showed only 6 percent sympathized with the women and 51 percent found nothing good about them or felt irritation or hostility. The rest could not say or were indifferent. Valentina Ivanova, 60, a retired doctor, said outside the courtroom: "What they did showed disrespect towards everything, and towards believers first of all." CHURCH CALLS FOR MERCY Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term on May 7 after a four-year spell as prime minister, had said the women did "nothing good" but should not be judged too harshly. The trio's defense lawyers said they would appeal. The Church issued a statement condemning the women's actions but urged the state to show mercy "within the framework of the law". That appeared to signal that the Church would back a pardon or reduced sentence, although the women would be expected to admit guilt if they sought a pardon. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was concerned about the "disproportionate sentences ... and the negative impact on freedom of expression in Russia", and urged Russian authorities "to review this case". EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the sentence called into question Russia's respect for the "obligations of fair, transparent, and independent legal process". In protests outside Russia in support of Pussy Riot, a bare-chested feminist activist took a chainsaw to a wooden cross bearing a figure of Christ in Kiev. In Bulgaria, sympathizers put Pussy Riot-style masks on statues at a Soviet Army monument. Opposition leaders say Putin will not ease up on opponents in his new term. Parliament has already rushed through laws increasing fines for protesters, tightening controls on the Internet, and imposing stricter rules on defamation. Gay rights suffered a blow in Moscow when an appeals court upheld a ruling rejecting applications from activists to hold a gay rights march each year for the next 100 years. Anti-gay activists later sued Madonna for $10 million in St Petersburg, saying she insulted their feelings by speaking out for gay rights there last week. (Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Alissa de Carbonnel, Thomas Grove and Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Olzhas Auyezov in Kiev; Editing by Alastair Macdonald, Will Waterman and Giles Elgood) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 18 18:08:37 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:08:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Agencies tamp down speculation over hollow-point ammo purchases Message-ID: Agencies tamp down speculation over hollow-point ammo purchases Published August 17, 2012 FoxNews.com http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/17/agencies-tamp-down-speculation-over-hollow-point-ammo-purchases/ Obscure federal agencies triggered a firestorm of conspiracy theories this week after they put out orders for thousands of rounds of deadly hollow-point bullets. But the agencies, most recently the Social Security Administration, are trying to put a damper on the speculation -- noting the ammunition is "standard issue" and simply used for mandatory federal training sessions. "Our special agents need to be armed and trained appropriately," said a message on the official blog for Social Security's inspector general office explaining the purchases. The bullet purchases drew widespread attention as the website Infowars.com published several stories on them that were linked off the widely read Drudge Report and other sites. Infowars.com catalogued a string of recent purchases -- first by the Department of Homeland Security, then by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then the Social Security Administration. The Social Security Administration solicitation, posted Aug. 7, called for 174,000 rounds of ".357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition." Infowars.com speculated that the purchases were being made in preparation for "civil unrest," imagining a scenario of economic collapse where seniors could cause "disorder" if denied their Social Security benefits. But the Social Security Administration statement, posted Thursday, noted that their agents need firearms and ammo in the course of training, investigations and responding to threats against offices and employees. "As we said in a recent post, our office has criminal investigators, or special agents, who are responsible for investigating violations of the laws that govern SSA's programs," the office said. The agency said it has 295 special agents across 66 offices in the country. "These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests," the statement said. As for concern about the type of bullets -- hollow points, which expand upon impact -- the statement said the type is "standard issue" and is used during "mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, found itself scrambling to respond to a similar report this week about an order for 46,000 rounds of ammo. Though the agency initially indicated it was for the National Weather Service -- leading to questions about why the National Weather Service could possibly need so many bullets -- a spokesman clarified the bullets are actually meant for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. A "clerical error" resulted in the order saying the ammo was for the weather service. Spokesman Scott Smullen said the error's been fixed in the bidding system. He, too, said the ammo is "standard issue" and will be used by 63 enforcement personnel at NOAA during qualifications and training sessions. "NOAA officers and agents enforce the nation's ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles," he said. According to NOAA, the specialized agents are supposed to have 200 rounds in their "duty bag," and qualification and training requires another 500-600 rounds per agent. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 19 10:25:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:25:20 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Assange speaks from Ecudorian embassy in London Message-ID: <0F1E2D9F-2BD7-459A-901F-CA198072FADA@infowarrior.org> (Full statement @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19312679) The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com Assange: US may be holding one of 'world's foremost political prisoners' By David Stringer, Associated Press posted August 19, 2012 at 10:51 am EDT http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0819/Assange-US-may-be-holding-one-of-world-s-foremost-political-prisoners WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called on US President Barack Obama to end a so-called "witch hunt" against his secret-spilling website, appearing in public Sunday for the first time since he took refuge two months ago inside Ecuador's Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crimes allegations. The 41-year-old Australian, who has fought for two years against efforts to send him to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct against two women there, addressed a crowd of more than 200 supporters, reporters, and dozens of British police, as he spoke from the balcony of Ecuador's mission. Ecuador on Thursday granted Mr. Assange asylum and he remains out of reach of British authorities while he is inside the country's small embassy. Britain insists that if he steps outside, he will be detained and sent to Sweden. Assange and his supporters claim the Swedish case is merely the opening gambit in a Washington-orchestrated plot to make him stand trial in the US over his work with WikiLeaks ? something disputed by both Swedish authorities and the women involved. "I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks," Assange said as he read aloud a written statement. "The Unites States must dissolve its FBI investigation. The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters." On Saturday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama administration considers Assange a matter for the governments of Britain, Sweden, and Ecuador to resolve. A Virginia grand jury is studying evidence that might link Assange to Pfc. Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has been charged with aiding the enemy by passing the secret files to WikiLeaks and is awaiting trial. No action against Assange has yet been taken. Assange also urged the US to release Private Manning, but said: "If Bradley Manning really did as he is accused, he is a hero, an example to us all, and one of the world's foremost political prisoners." The WikiLeaks founder did not refer in his statement to the Swedish allegations against him, or indicate how he believes the standoff over his future may be resolved. Assange attempted to draw parallels between himself and the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, three of whose members were convicted and jailed this week for a performance denouncing President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral. "There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response," Assange said. He shot to international prominence in 2010 when his WikiLeaks website began publishing a huge trove of American diplomatic and military secrets ? including 250,000 US embassy cables that highlight the sensitive, candid, and often embarrassing backroom dealings of US diplomats. As he toured the globe to highlight the disclosures, two women accused him of sex offenses during a trip to Sweden. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 19 19:20:59 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:20:59 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?utf-8?q?You_can=E2=80=99t_block_Facebook_using_?= =?utf-8?q?Windows_8=E2=80=B2s_hosts_file?= Message-ID: You can?t block Facebook using Windows 8?s hosts file http://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/19/you-cant-block-facebook-using-windows-8s-hosts-file/ The Windows hosts file offers a great way of blocking or redirecting certain Internet hosts. I?m for instance using it whenever I move websites to a new hosting company to check the life site before the DNS has fully propagated. You can also download software like Hosts Man that allow you to add lists of known malicious sites or advertising servers to the file to block those automatically from being visited on the computer. In theory, you can add any domain, host or website to the hosts file so that it is blocked on the system. Ghacks reader SGR just informed me that this apparently has changed in the Windows 8 RTM version. While you can still add any host you want to the hosts file and map it to an IP, you will notice that some of the mappings will get reset once you open an Internet browser. If you only save, close and re-open the hosts file you will still see the new mappings in the the file, but once you open a web browser, some of them are removed automatically from the hosts file. Two of the sites that you can?t block using the hosts file are facebook.com and ad.doubleclick.net, the former the most popular social networking site, the second a popular ad serving domain. The strange thing is that even write protecting the file does not have an effect on it as entries are still removed once you open a web browser. Actually, any kind of Internet connection seems to be enough for that behavior. If you open the Windows Store for instance, the entries get removed as well automatically. This could be a bug that is affecting only some high profile sites and services, or something that has been added to Windows 8 deliberately. We have reached out to Microsoft and are currently waiting for a response from a company representative. Since it is Sunday, it is not likely that this is going to happen today. It is also in the realm of possibility that the hosts file may not accept other hosts. Update: Tom just pointed out that turning off Windows Defender, which basically is Microsoft Security Essentials, in Windows 8 will resolve the issue. It appears that the program has been designed to protect some hosts from being added to the Windows hosts file. To turn off Windows Defender press the Windows key, type Windows Defender and hit enter. This launches the program. Switch to Settings here and select Administrator on the left. Locate Turn on Windows Defender and uncheck the preference and click save changes afterwards. Please note that this turns off Windows Defender, and that it is recommended to have another antivirus software installed on the system to have it protected against Internet and local threats. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 07:04:59 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:04:59 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Airborne_BASIC=97=22buzzing=22_c?= =?windows-1252?q?omputer_code_over_FM_radio?= Message-ID: Ahhhh, good ol' BASIC. Those were the days! :) -- rick Experiments in airborne BASIC?"buzzing" computer code over FM radio Before the 'Net, Finland created a primetime program-sharing radio service. < - > http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/experiments-in-airborne-basic-buzzing-computer-code-over-fm-radio/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 07:17:06 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:17:06 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free Message-ID: Saturday, August 18, 2012 Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/08/dear-apple-please-set-imessage-free.html Normally I avoid complaining about Apple because (a) there are plenty of other people carrying that flag, and (b) I honestly like Apple and own numerous lovely iProducts. I'm even using one to write this post. Moroever, from a security point of view, there isn't that much to complain about. Sure, Apple has a few irritating habits -- shipping old, broken versions of libraries in its software, for example. But on the continuum of security crimes this stuff is at best a misdemeanor, maybe a half-step above 'improper baby naming'. Everyone's software sucks, news at 11. There is, however, one thing that drives me absolutely nuts about Apple's security posture. You see, starting about a year ago Apple began operating one of the most widely deployed encrypted text message services in the history of mankind. So far so good. The problem is that they still won't properly explain how it works. And nobody seems to care. < -- > To me, the disconcerting thing about iMessage is how rapidly it's gone from no deployment to securing billions of text messages for millions of users. And this despite the fact that the full protocol has never been published by Apple or (to my knowledge) vetted by security experts. (Note: if I'm wrong about this, let me know and I'll eat my words.) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 13:03:22 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:03:22 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Russian police pursuing other members of Pussy Riot Message-ID: UPDATE 1-Russian police pursuing other members of Pussy Riot 9:59pm IST http://in.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=INL6E8JKATO20120820 By Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel MOSCOW, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Russian police are hunting for more members of the Pussy Riot punk rock band, a spokeswoman said, signalling further pressure on the group despite an international outcry over jail terms for three women who protested in a church against Vladimir Putin. The Russian president's critics condemned the court proceeding that yielded the two-year prison sentences on Friday as part of a clampdown on a protest movement and reminiscent of show trials of dissidents in the Soviet era. Police said on Monday they were searching for other members of the group over the February protest at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral, but had not yet identified the suspects. They did not say how many people they were looking for, nor whether they faced arrest and charges. Five members of the anonymous feminist punk group stormed the church altar in brightly coloured balaclavas, mismatched dresses and wielding an electric guitar, but only three were arrested and tried. Although the search was launched before Friday's verdict, the determination of police to pursue other Pussy Riot members suggested the Kremlin would keep the heat on the band despite the furore over the punishment imposed on the three young women. A lawyer for Pussy Riot, Mark Feigin, said he believed police knew the identity of the other two women and had video surveillance footage of them walking into the church. He said the search handed police a tool to put pressure on any of Pussy Riot's 10 plus members continuing its protest. "If you put some unidentified persons on the wanted list, then you can arrest whoever you want in a balaclava," he said. In an interview last week, other members of Pussy Riot - their faces hidden behind colourful masks like those worn during the "punk prayer" - said the trial had only strengthened their resolve to stage new protests. On Friday, the band released a new song entitled "Putin is Lighting the Fires of Revolution." Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred over their performance of a "punk prayer" urging the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin. A police spokeswoman said other unidentified members of Pussy Riot were being sought under a criminal case that was now separate from that against the three performers who were tried. NO OFFENCE TO DEVOUT, PROTESTERS SAY Tolokonnikova's husband, Pyotr Verzilov, said Pussy Riot members remaining at large want "normal lives" and painted the police statement as part of a wider Kremlin crackdown on opponents who hope to stage mass street protests in the autumn. "Putin likes the taste of repression," he told Reuters. Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich said they had sought to protest against Putin's close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and had not set out to offend believers. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, whose works are being read by Samutsevich in jail, said the trial showed Russia's system of power was "immensely fragile" and likened Pussy Riot to dissident poets in the era of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. "The greatest appreciation for poetry in Stalinism was that you could have been shot for a poem," Zizek said in Moscow. The United States, European Union and several nations have called the sentences disproportionate, and Washington has urged Russian authorities to "review" the case. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, asked about the Western criticism, warned against interference in judicial affairs and said people should not "go into hysterics" about the case. He denied accusations that the trial was politically motivated and said the women could still appeal. "Let's not draw hasty conclusions or go into hysterics." Putin himself, an ex-KGB spy who returned to the presidency for a third term on May 7 after a four-year spell as prime minister, said before the sentences were pronounced that the women did "nothing good" but should not be judged too harshly. They have already been in jail for about five months, meaning they will serve another 19 but could be freed if Putin were to pardon them. The Orthodox Church signalled it would accept such a move by appealing, belatedly, for mercy. Madonna denounced on Saturday the jail terms imposed on the three women. She said they were being sent to a "penal colony for ... a 40-second performance extolling their political opinions". --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 14:24:21 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:24:21 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Voyager at 35 Message-ID: <261BB23F-C1CC-4BB4-99BF-92846CD1B0EF@infowarrior.org> (To invoke a baaaaad movie from that time in history: "V-GER! --rick) Voyager at 35: Break on Through to the Other Side http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-249 August 20, 2012 Thirty-five years ago today, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever. Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, that launched 16 days later on Sept. 5, 1977, are still going strong, hurtling away from our sun. Mission managers are eagerly anticipating the day when they break on through to the other side - the space between stars. "Even 35 years on, our rugged Voyager spacecraft are poised to make new discoveries as we eagerly await the signs that we've entered interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Voyager results turned Jupiter and Saturn into full, tumultuous worlds, their moons from faint dots into distinctive places, and gave us our first glimpses of Uranus and Neptune up-close. We can't wait for Voyager to turn our models of the space beyond our sun into the first observations from interstellar space." Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft on Aug. 13, 2012, surpassing Pioneer 6, which launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back to NASA's Deep Space Network on Dec. 8, 2000. (It operated for 12,758 days.) Scientists eagerly awaiting the entry of the two Voyagers into interstellar space have recently seen changes from Voyager 1 in two of the three observations that are expected to be different in interstellar space. The prevalence of high-energy particles streaming in from outside our solar system has jumped, and the prevalence of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system has briefly dipped, indicating an increasing pace of change in Voyager 1's environment. Voyager team scientists are now analyzing data on the direction of the magnetic field, which they believe will change upon entry into interstellar space. Notable discoveries by Voyager 2 include the puzzling hexagonal jet stream in Saturn's north polar region, the tipped magnetic poles of Uranus and Neptune, and the geysers on Neptune's frozen moon Triton. Although launched second, Voyager 1 reached Jupiter and Saturn before Voyager 2, first seeing the volcanoes of Jupiter's moon Io, the kinky nature of Saturn's outermost main ring, and the deep, hazy atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 1 also took the mission's last image: the famous solar system family portrait that showed our Earth as a pale blue dot. Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun, heading in a southerly direction. Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun, heading in a northerly direction. For the last five years, both spacecraft have been exploring the outer layer of the heliosphere, the giant bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. "We continue to listen to Voyager 1 and 2 nearly every day," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The two spacecraft are in great shape for having flown through Jupiter's dangerous radiation environment and having to endure the chill of being so far away from our sun." Dodd and her team have been carefully managing the use of power from the continually diminishing energy sources on the two spacecraft. They estimate that the two spacecraft will have enough electrical power to continue collecting data and communicating it back to Earth through 2020, and possibly through 2025. While no one really knows how long it will take to get to interstellar space, Voyager scientists think we don't have long to wait. And, besides, the first 35 years have already been a grand ride. A public lecture about the journey of the twin Voyager spacecraft will be held at JPL on Sept. 4. More information is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.cfm?year=2012&month=9 . The Voyager spacecraft were built by JPL, which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. jccook at jpl.nasa.gov --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 15:29:00 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:29:00 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Comedian Phyllis Diller Dead at 95 Message-ID: I wonder what Fang says about this? --rick Phyllis Diller Dead at 95 http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/20/phyllis-diller-dead/ Comedian Phyllis Diller -- who paved the way for today's female comics -- died this morning, TMZ has learned. Sources close to Diller tell us the comedian died in her sleep at her L.A. home, surrounded by family. She was 95. We're told Diller had recently fallen, hurting her wrist and hip -- but her rep says the injury had nothing to do with her death. Diller suffered a heart attack in 1999 and was later fitted with a pacemaker. Phyllis began her career all the way back in 1952 -- and rose to fame with her TV specials alongside Bob Hope in the 1960s. Later that decade, Phyllis starred in her own show called "The Phyllis Diller Show" ... as well as a variety show called "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show." She was also a regular on "Laugh In." She also posed for Playboy -- but the pics were never published. Diller remained spunky to the very end, famously appearing in the 2005 movie "The Aristocrats," telling an x-rated joke ... better than comics half her age. Joan Rivers recently appeared on "Watch What Happens Live" and said, Diller "broke the way for every woman comedian.? Last time we shot Diller was in 2011, and she was still sharp as a tack -- cracking jokes and reminiscing about her "protegee" Joan Rivers. She even named her favorite comedian of all time. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 20 16:56:54 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:56:54 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: The 87-year-old doctor still charging patients $5 a visit Message-ID: <8DC43E72-E598-4F75-A3CD-BF92E609CD26@infowarrior.org> The 87-year-old doctor still charging patients $5 a visit Produced for the BBC by Leigh Paterson and Matt Danzico 19 August 2012 Last updated at 20:56 ET http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19289230 To residents of Rushville, Illinois, Dr Russell Dohner is a real-life folk hero. The 87-year-old physician has been caring for locals for 57 years. And his office, directly across from the town square, contains the same phones, files cabinets and examining tables it did when he moved in. But it is the price of a visit that patients find remarkable. Dr Dohner charges just $5 for a check-up - the same rate he's charged for the past three decades. The BBC visited Dr Dohner to meet the real face of affordable healthcare. < -- > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19289230 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 21 07:24:30 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:24:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Beloit Mindset List for Class of 2016 Message-ID: Beloit College's Mindset List for Class of 2016 By The Associated Press AP / August 21, 2012 http://www.boston.com/news/education/2012/08/20/beloit-college-mindset-list-for-class/TCQW6FBQhNdvrptNYzp1IJ/story.html Every year, Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., releases its Mindset List to give a snapshot of how the incoming freshmen class views the world. The list for the Class of 2016: ___ Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1994. For these students, Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead. ___ 1. They should keep their eyes open for Justin Bieber or Dakota Fanning at freshman orientation. 2. They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of ??electronic narcotics.?? 3. The Biblical sources of terms such as ??forbidden fruit,?? ?'the writing on the wall,?? ?'good Samaritan,?? and ??the promised land?? are unknown to most of them. 4. Michael Jackson?s family, not the Kennedys, constitutes ??American royalty.?? 5. If they miss The Daily Show, they can always get their news on YouTube. 6. Their lives have been measured in the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds. 7. Robert De Niro is thought of as Greg Focker?s long-suffering father-in-law, not as Vito Corleone or Jimmy Conway. 8. Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge. 9. They have never seen an airplane ??ticket.?? 10. On TV and in films, the ditzy dumb blonde female generally has been replaced by a couple of dumb and dumber males. 11. The paradox ??too big to fail?? has been for their generation what ??we had to destroy the village in order to save it?? was for their grandparents?. 12. For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman?s job in the State Department. 13. They can?t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it. 14. There has always been football in Jacksonville but never in Los Angeles. 15. Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all. 16. Since they've been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16-cent rise in the price of a first-class postage stamp. 17. Benjamin Braddock, having given up both a career in plastics and a relationship with Mrs. Robinson, could be their grandfather. 18. Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf. 19. The Green Bay Packers have always celebrated with the Lambeau Leap. 20. Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected quietly by well-meaning friends. 21. A significant percentage of them will enter college already displaying some hearing loss. 22. The Real World has always ??stopped being polite and started getting real?? on MTV. 23. Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles. 24. White House security has never felt it necessary to wear rubber gloves when gay groups have visited. 25. They have lived in an era of instant stardom and self-proclaimed celebrities, famous for being famous. 26. Having made the acquaintance of Furby at an early age, they have expected their toy friends to do ever more unpredictable things. 27. Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for ??save,?? a telephone for ??phone,?? and a snail-mail envelope for ??mail?? have oddly decorated their tablets and smartphone screens. 28. Star Wars has always been just a film, not a defense strategy. 29. They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as ??tapes.?? 30. There have always been blue M&Ms, but no tan ones. 31. Along with online viewbooks, parents have always been able to check the crime stats for the colleges their kids have selected. 32. Newt Gingrich has always been a key figure in politics, trying to change the way America thinks about everything. 33. They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America?s future. 34. Billy Graham is as familiar to them as Otto Graham was to their parents. 35. Probably the most tribal generation in history, they despise being separated from contact with their similar-aged friends. 36. Stephen Breyer has always been an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. 37. Martin Lawrence has always been banned from hosting Saturday Night Live. 38. Slavery has always been unconstitutional in Mississippi, and Southern Baptists have always been apologizing for supporting it in the first place. 39. The Metropolitan Opera House in New York has always translated operas on seatback screens. 40. A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space. 41. Good music programmers are rock stars to the women of this generation, just as guitar players were for their mothers. 42. Gene therapy has always been an available treatment. 43. They were too young to enjoy the 1994 World Series, but then no one else got to enjoy it either. 44. The folks have always been able to grab an Aleve when the kids started giving them a migraine. 45. While the iconic TV series for their older siblings was the sci-fi show Lost, for them it?s Breaking Bad, a gritty crime story motivated by desperate economic circumstances. 46. Simba has always had trouble waiting to be king. 47. Before they buy an assigned textbook, they will check to see whether it?s available for rent or purchase as an e-book. 48. They grew up, somehow, without the benefits of Romper Room. 49. There has always been a World Trade Organization. 50. L.L. Bean hunting shoes have always been known as just plain Bean Boots. 51. They have always been able to see Starz on Direct TV. 52. Ice-skating competitions have always been jumping matches. 53. There has always been a Santa Clause. 54. NBC has never shown ??It?s a Wonderful Life?? more than twice during the holidays. 55. Mr. Burns has replaced J.R. Ewing as the most-shot-at man on American television. 56. They have always enjoyed school and summer camp memories with a digital yearbook. 57. Herr Schindler has always had a List; Mr. Spielberg has always had an Oscar. 58. Selena?s fans have always been in mourning. 59. They know many established film stars by their voices on computer-animated blockbusters. 60. History has always had its own channel. 61. Thousands have always been gathering for ??million-man?? demonstrations in Washington, D.C. 62. Television and film dramas have always risked being pulled because the story line was too close to the headlines from which they were ??ripped.?? 63. The Twilight Zone involves vampires, not Rod Serling. 64. Robert Osborne has always been introducing Hollywood history on TCM. 65. Little Caesar has always been proclaiming ??Pizza Pizza.?? 66. They have no recollection of when Arianna Huffington was a conservative. 67. Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been officially recognized with clinical guidelines. 68. They watch television everywhere but on a television. 69. Pulp Fiction?s meal of a ??royale with cheese?? and an ??Amos and Andy milkshake?? has little or no resonance with them. 70. Point-and-shoot cameras are soooooo last millennium. 71. Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes. 72. Astronauts have always spent well over a year in a single space flight. 73. Lou Gehrig?s record for most consecutive baseball games played has never stood in their lifetimes. 74. Genomes of living things have always been sequenced. 75. The Sistine Chapel ceiling has always been brighter and cleaner. ___ Source: Beloit College --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 21 13:52:07 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:52:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FBI-Created 'Terrorist Plot' Fails To Produce A Single Terrorist -- But Does Plenty Of Damage To Individual Liberties Message-ID: <1923DAFA-72F3-44B3-9307-FDC2AD00FBA3@infowarrior.org> FBI-Created 'Terrorist Plot' Fails To Produce A Single Terrorist -- But Does Plenty Of Damage To Individual Liberties from the sacrificing-your-1st-and-4th-amendment-rights-on-the-altar-of-security dept As the FBI continues its perfect streak of successfully thwarting every terrorist plan it has conceived and put in motion itself (a few of which have been covered here), details of an unintentionally hilarious (and particularly horrendous) "terrorist plot" conjured up back in 2006 have emerged, thanks to an NPR expose and a lawsuit filed against the FBI by some of the unwilling participants. Dubbed "Operation Flex" in deference to its main participant, this 2006 FBI project attempted to uncover a terrorist cell in a group of Orange County Muslims, even if it had to invent that cell itself. The FBI's man on the inside was Craig Montielh, who likely cut an incongruous figure at the mosque at 6'2", 260 lbs... and white. A bodybuilder with a sketchy past, Montielh was instructed to make contact with the supposed jihadists during his frequent visits to an Irvine gym where many of the Muslim men worked out. < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120818/18363620090/fbi-created-terrorist-plot-fails-to-produce-single-terrorist-does-plenty-damage-to-individual-liberties.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 21 19:40:49 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 20:40:49 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Arijit Vs. Delta Message-ID: <80593A57-568B-452D-A0D6-CA46D8A2029E@infowarrior.org> Arijit Vs. Delta http://arijitvsdelta.blogspot.co.uk/ On Saturday, August 18, 2012, Delta Airlines gave in to the fears of bigots and refused to let me board a flight out of Buffalo-Niagara Airport. What follows is my 3,000-ish word reflection on what happened. http://arijitvsdelta.blogspot.co.uk/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 07:12:55 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:12:55 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Oz authorities gain power to collect Australians' internet records Message-ID: <4933B0A1-C587-4852-A4E5-D33BE603B078@infowarrior.org> Authorities gain power to collect Australians' internet records August 22, 2012 - 2:46PM http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/authorities-gain-power-to-collect-australians--internet-records-20120822-24m03.html Laws passed today will allow authorities to collect and keep Australians' internet records, including their web-browsing history, social media activity and emails. Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the laws would help police track cyber-criminals around the globe, and would give authorities the power to find people engaged in forgery, fraud, child pornography, and infringement of copyright and intellectual property. The laws will also allow Australia to accede to the Council of Europe Convention on Cyber-crime, which has 34 members. ''Cyber-crime is a growing threat that touches all aspects of modern life,'' Ms Roxon said. ''It poses complex policy and law enforcement challenges, partly due to the transnational nature of the internet.'' But Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said the laws went further, and the government had failed to explain why the far-reaching powers were necessary. ''The European treaty doesn't require ongoing collection and retention of communications, but the Australian bill does,'' Senator Ludlam said. ''It also leaves the door open for Australia to assist in prosecutions which could lead to the death penalty overseas.'' The legislation will allow the Australian Federal Police to collaborate with international authorities in seeking Australian communications data under warrants. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 07:25:15 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:25:15 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Visualizing Threats in Big Data Message-ID: <4CD0366A-7FA7-4F81-88B3-6A5A34A2B3C6@infowarrior.org> Visualizing Threats in Big Data http://blog.opendns.com/2012/08/21/visualizing-threats-in-big-data/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 07:28:46 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:28:46 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - T-Mobile cuts the strings on new data plan, goes fully unlimited Message-ID: (I just moved from VZ to TMobile and have no complaints with the data plan. In fact, I think my networking is faster on TMob than it was on VZ. --rick) T-Mobile cuts the strings on new data plan, goes fully unlimited The carrier is following in the path of Sprint Nextel and targeting heavy data users with no caps or throttling. by Roger Cheng August 21, 2012 9:01 PM PDT http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57497706-94/t-mobile-cuts-the-strings-on-new-data-plan-goes-fully-unlimited/ With Verizon Wireless and AT&T piling on more restrictions to their data plans, T-Mobile USA is going the opposite route with a new truly unlimited plan. Starting September 5, T-Mobile will take a page out of Sprint Nextel's playbook and offer a truly unlimited data plan -- one without any caps, throttled connections, or overage charges. T-Mobile says that customer demand has driven the change, but the move comes after Verizon and AT&T have both moved away from unlimited plans and focused on capped shared data plans that have irked some consumers with their complicated options. T-Mobile argues that the offering is superior to Sprint Nextel, which also offers a fully unlimited data plan, but lacks the same coverage for high-speed wireless services. "We think it's counter-punch to every option that's out there," said Harry Thomas, director of segment marketing for T-Mobile. T-Mobile is a distant fourth-place among the national carriers and needs every edge it can get to catch up. The company has seen its contract customers defect, either moving up and signing a contract with one of the other nationwide carriers, or moving down to one of the more affordable prepaid options. Given the attention that data limits have gotten, T-Mobile could see some customers giving it a second look. Sprint has already said its unlimited plan has helped set it apart, particularly when paired with the iPhone. T-Mobile is one of the few carriers that doesn't sell the iPhone, but it offers a micro-SIM card that allows consumers to bring unlocked iPhones from rivals. The move to unlimited seems to fly in the face of the carrier's rhetoric about capacity constraints -- arguments it made when it was poised to be acquired by AT&T. But Thomas said T-Mobile is working to ensure there is enough capacity for its users. In addition to obtaining spectrum from AT&T as part of the break-up fee from the failed merger, the company is planning to swap spectrum with Verizon Wireless to improve coverage and is investing $4 billion in improving the network. There are some restrictions. Customers can only choose to pair a smartphone with the unlimited option, and the mobile hotspot feature, which can connect other WiFi-enabled devices, isn't available under the plan. T-Mobile will keep its current line-up of plans with their restrictions. When a certain level is reached, T-Mobile will slow down the connection to a crawl, a practice known as throttling. But under its premium 5GB and 10GB plans, the hotspot feature is included. The unlimited data plan costs $30 a month when bundled with a voice and text plan, which range between $49.99 and $59.99 a month, depending on whether the customer wants 500 voice minutes or an unlimited voice plan. Under its "value" no-contract option costs $25 on top of a bundle of voice and text messages, which ranges between $39.99 and $49.99. In comparison, Sprint's unlimited data plans for smartphones range between $79.99 and $109.99, depending on the number of minutes available. Regional prepaid carrier MetroPCS, meanwhile, introduced yesterday a similar no-strings unlimited plan for $55, although it was described as a promotional offer with no set expiration date. The T-Mobile plan will be available to existing and new customers, Thomas said, adding that this wasn't a promotion, but a permanent option. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 07:37:19 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:37:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Americans tune out Afghan war Message-ID: Americans tune out Afghan war as fighting rages on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120822/as-afghanistan-forgotten-war/ DEB RIECHMANN | August 22, 2012 01:42 AM EST | KABUL, Afghanistan ? It was once President Barack Obama's "war of necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten war. The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It's not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress ? even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day. Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They're more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted "Stop the war!" They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class. By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that's long enough. Public opinion remains largely negative toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to it and just 27 percent in favor in a May AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31 percent said the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting there now. Not since the Korean War of the early 1950s ? a much shorter but more intense fight ? has an armed conflict involving America's sons and daughters captured so little public attention. "We're bored with it," said Matthew Farwell, who served in the U.S. Army for five years including 16 months in eastern Afghanistan, where he sometimes received letters from grade school students addressed to the brave Marines in Iraq ? the wrong war. "We all laugh about how no one really cares," he said. "All the `support the troops' stuff is bumper sticker deep." Farwell, 29, who is now studying at the University of Virginia, said the war is rarely a topic of conversation on campus ? and he isn't surprised that it's not discussed much on the campaign trail. "No one understands how to extricate ourselves from the mess we have made there," he said. "So from a purely political point of view, I wouldn't be talking about it if I were Barack Obama or Mitt Romney either." Ignoring the Afghan war, though, doesn't make it go away. More than 1,950 Americans have died in Afghanistan and thousands more have been wounded since President George W. Bush launched attacks on Oct. 7, 2001 to rout al-Qaida after it used Afghanistan to train recruits and plot the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The war drags on even though al-Qaida has been largely driven out of Afghanistan and its charismatic leader Osama bin Laden is dead ? slain in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani hideout last year. Strangely, Afghanistan never seemed to grab the same degree of public and media attention as the war in Iraq, which Obama opposed as a "war of choice." Unlike Iraq, victory in Afghanistan seemed to come quickly. Kabul fell within weeks of the U.S. invasion in October 2001. The hardline Taliban regime was toppled with few U.S. casualties. But the Bush administration's shift toward war with Iraq left the Western powers without enough resources on the ground, so by 2006 the Taliban had regrouped into a serious military threat. Candidate Obama promised to refocus America's resources on Afghanistan. But by the time President Obama sent 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan had drained Western resources and sapped resolve to build a viable Afghan state. And over time, his administration has grown weary of trying to tackle Afghanistan's seemingly intractable problems of poverty and corruption. The American people have grown weary too. While most Americans are sympathetic to the plight of the Afghan people, they have become deeply skeptical of President Hamid Karzai's willingness to tackle corruption and political patronage and the coalition's chances of "budging a medieval society" into the modern world, says Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, a policy research organization in Washington. "With millions of veterans home and talking with their families and friends ... some knowledge of just how hard this is has percolated down," said Marlowe, who has traveled to Afghanistan many times. It has also been hard to show progress on the battlefield. World War II had its Normandy, Vietnam its Tet Offensive and Iraq its Battle of Fallujah. Afghanistan is a grinding slough in villages and remote valleys where success is measured in increments. The Afghan war transformed into a series of small, often vicious and intense fights scattered across a country almost as large as Texas. In July, 40 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan in the deadliest month for American troops so far this year. At least 31 have been killed this month ? seven when a helicopter crashed during a firefight with insurgents in what was one of the deadliest air disasters of the war. Ten others were gunned down in attacks from members of the Afghan security forces ? either disgruntled turncoats or Taliban infiltrators. Many argue that bin Laden's death justifies a quick U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Others say it's important to stay longer to shore up the Afghan security forces and help build the government so that it can stand on its own. An unstable Afghanistan could again offer sanctuary to militants like al-Qaida who want to harm American and its allies, they say. "Those of us who have been at this for a long time continue to think that it's important, and that we have a chance now of a path forward with a long-term perspective that will produce the results," said James Cunningham, the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The U.S.-led coalition's combat mission will wind down in the next few years, leading up to the end of 2014 when most international troops will have left or moved into support roles. Military analysts say the U.S. envisions a post-2014 force of perhaps 20,000 to hunt terrorists, train the Afghan forces and keep an eye on neighboring Iran and other regional powerhouse nations. Americans aren't likely to know the number until later this year. But will anyone other than families of service personnel take note? "I have heard others say that the danger that their spouses or children are serving in is just simply not being cared about," said Fred Wellman, a 22-year Army veteran who did three tours in Iraq. "I think a lot of veterans feel it is just forgotten." Political satirist Garry Trudeau captured the apathy about the war in a comic strip this year showing a U.S. servicewoman stationed in Afghanistan calling her brother back home. After he complains that his children have the flu and how he's struggling to keep up with their hectic hockey schedule, he asks her where she's calling from. She tells him she's in Afghanistan. "Oh, right, right ..." her brother replies. "Wait, we're still there?" ___ Associated Press Writers Kristin Hall in Nashville, Tennessee and Jennifer Agiesta in Washington 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 Wed Aug 22 08:09:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:09:04 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - PayPal strikes payments deal with Discover Message-ID: PayPal strikes payments deal with Discover By Alistair Barr Reuters Posted: 08/22/2012 05:51:12 AM PDT Updated: 08/22/2012 05:51:13 AM PDT http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21372269/paypal-strikes-payments-deal-discover SAN FRANCISCO - Online payments provider PayPal will gain access to millions of physical stores in the United States under an agreement with Discover Financial Services. Under the deal, unveiled Wednesday, PayPal will issue payment cards to its more than 50 million active users in the United States next year. The cards will let PayPal users buy from merchants that already use Discover Network, a payment network with more than 7 million U.S. retail locations. PayPal, a unit of San Jose-based eBay (EBAY), is expanding into the physical world, in search of new opportunities. In the past year, the company has signed up more than 15 retailers, including Home Depot and Office Depot, to accept PayPal payments in their stores. Adding PayPal to Discover's network is a big boost for the initiative, according to Ken Paterson, a director at Mercator Advisory Group, a research firm that focuses on the consumer payments industry. "It's a big step for both companies," Paterson said. "This would provide a ready-made route for PayPal to get into most card-accepting retail establishments in the U.S." For Discover, PayPal's large user base could become a significant source of extra transaction volume for its payment network, he added. PayPal users will be able to pay at merchants on the Discover Network by swiping their new cards through existing check-out machines and entering a four-digit PIN, the companies said. Merchants will not need to buy new hardware or software to accept PayPal, according to Don Kingsborough, the PayPal executive leading the company's offline push. The new cards will have a Discover Issuer Identification Number, or IIN, a code that identifies the card holder. Discover has already set up the IINs for the PayPal cards on its network, the company noted. PayPal will charge retailers a "small" fee when users pay with the new cards, and, in turn, will pay Discover for access to its network, on a per-transaction basis, the companies said. They declined to give details of these fees. "We are going to process a significant amount of volume over time with PayPal," said Diane Offereins, president of Discover Payment Services. Teaming up with PayPal also makes Discover Network more appealing to merchants, she said. Discover's payment service is not used by as many merchants as those run by payment processing giants such as Visa and MasterCard. Offereins estimated about 95 percent merchant coverage compared with other payment networks. "We've been working on closing the acceptance gap," she said. "This will help us close that last lingering gap." If the agreement goes well, PayPal and Discover said they may expand it outside the United States. Kingsborough said that PayPal probably will not be striking similar deals with Visa and MasterCard. "This agreement would be very difficult to duplicate," Kingsborough said. "Other players in the issuer network realm have a different view of the world and want to do these things on their own." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 08:14:33 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:14:33 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Peter Bergen's smackdown on the anti-Obama SEALS Message-ID: (I am neither a Romney nor Obama fan; merely passing along a pretty good smackdown of the latest national security bluster. IMHO Bergen makes some very valid points here. --rick) Are 'Swift Boat' attacks on Obama bogus? By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst updated 2:07 PM EDT, Sun August 19, 2012 http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/opinion/bergen-obama-swift-boat/index.html President Obama announces the killing of Osama bin Laden, in a broadcast from the White House May 1, 2011. Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the ideological spectrum, and the author of the new book "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A group of former U.S. military and intelligence officers, including retired Navy SEALs, appear in a 22-minute documentary that was released on Wednesday asserting that the Obama administration has leaked considerable classified intelligence about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden for political gain. They also claim that the administration has given itself too much credit for this feat of American arms and intelligence gathering. The film even makes the dramatic charge that the Obama administration is "purposefully putting lives in jeopardy" because of its purported leaks about national security. The charges bear some resemblance to the "Swift Boat" tactics used against Sen. John Kerry in the tight 2004 presidential election against President George W. Bush in which Kerry's service in Vietnam, seemingly a strength of the candidate, was turned into a weakness. The particulars of the indictment against Obama as laid out in the new film, which is titled "Dishonorable Disclosures," are: -- The president announced the bin Laden raid before intelligence picked up from bin Laden's compound could be fully exploited. -- The use of hitherto covert "stealth" helicopters on the raid was publicized. -- The name of the secret unit that executed the raid --SEAL Team Six -- was made public putting them and their families at risk. -- The name of the Pakistani doctor recruited by the CIA to help find bin Laden was leaked, jeopardizing him and the CIA's ability to recruit spies in the future. The doctor is now serving 33 years in a Pakistani prison. -- Obama has taken way too much credit for killing al Qaeda's leader. "Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did. The work that the American military has done killed Osama bin Laden. You did not," says a former Navy SEAL interviewed in the film. Criticism of the way that the bin Laden raid has been discussed publicly by the Obama administration makes up the bulk of "Dishonorable Disclosures," but the administration is also taken to task for supposedly leaking details of covert U.S. actions against the Iranian nuclear program to New York Times reporter David Sanger (who has said he was not the recipient of "deliberate leaks out of the White House") and outlining to other journalists the personal involvement of Obama in selecting targets for the CIA drone program in Pakistan. One former Navy SEAL featured in the film demands dramatically, "Tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy." Is there any merit to these serious accusations? In fact, Obama and his national security team made every effort -- successfully -- to keep the intelligence about bin Laden a closely held secret for almost a year, from the time they first identified what they believed might be the al Qaeda leader's hideout in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, in August 2010 until May 1, 2011, when the raid was launched to kill him. The raid itself was conducted as a covert operation under the overall direction of then-CIA Director Leon Panetta. I have written a book about the hunt for bin Laden during the course of which I was the only journalist granted access by the Pakistanis inside the compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was killed. I also spoke on the record about the hunt for bin Laden with a variety of current White House, Pentagon and intelligence officials, as well as former Defense Department and CIA officials familiar with aspects of the story. None of them divulged classified information about the bin Laden operation. Indeed, they went to great pains to avoid doing so. What precipitated the operation going public was not Obama's announcement of the raid but the crash of one of the Black Hawk choppers used in the raid, which turned what had hitherto been a covert operation into a very public event. Pakistani journalists started arriving at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound soon after the helicopter crashed and started filing stories about the mysterious helicopter and its oddly shaped tail rotor. An Abbottabad resident even tweeted about the unusual sound of helicopters flying over the city in the middle of the night. It wasn't much of a leap for reporters to ascertain that these helicopters had particular features that had prevented them from being detected by Pakistani radar. Soon after the SEALs had raided the Abbottabad command, Pakistani officials on the ground were interrogating bin Laden's wives and children at the compound who told them that bin Laden had just been killed. None of this was going to stay secret for long. Indeed, it was Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's top military officer, who sped up the Obama administration's announcement of the raid. A few hours after the raid, Kayani told his American counterpart, Adm. Mike Mullen, "Our people need to understand what happened here. We're not going to be able to manage the Pakistani media without you confirming this. You can explain it to them. They need to understand that this was bin Laden and not just some ordinary U.S. operation." Mullen then told Obama and his national security team, "Kayani has asked for us to go public," which swayed Obama to announce the raid sooner than was planned. (Obama wanted to wait for 100% DNA confirmation that it was bin Laden. At the time of the president's announcement about the raid the confirmation was at 95%.) During his speech to the nation and world, Obama did not divulge the name of SEAL Team Six, saying only that a "small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability." It quickly leaked that SEAL Team Six had executed the raid, but this was hardly surprising as the SEALs are the principal Special Operations Forces in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater, something that has been discussed in multiple news stories over the past several years and in bestselling books such as "Lone Survivor" by former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. And the SEALs have hardly kept a low profile of late, cooperating in a movie "Act of Valor" that was released in theaters this year, which actually featured real SEALs playing the parts of the heroes of the movie. Perhaps if you had absolutely no knowledge of the U.S. military, or indeed access to Wikipedia where SEAL Team Six has had an entry since 2004, it would be news to you that SEAL Team Six, along with the Army's Delta Force, are America's premier counterterrorism units. Obviously, a mission to take out bin Laden would not be entrusted to any other than these elite units. So the notion that the public naming of the unit that killed bin Laden endangers the lives of its members and their families is overwrought. Members of SEAL Team Six are well able to take care of themselves and their families. And who first leaked the involvement of SEAL Team Six in the bin Laden operation remains unclear. It is just plain wrong that anyone in the U.S. government leaked the name of the CIA asset in Pakistan, Dr Shakil Afridi, who was recruited by the agency in its quest to find bin Laden. This information first surfaced in a story in the Guardian newspaper in July 2011 after Afridi was arrested by the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI. It is obvious that this information was leaked not by the Americans but the Pakistanis who have done their own investigation of the bin Laden raid, which embarrassed them considerably. As to the notion that Obama has taken too much credit for the bin Laden raid, well he is commander-in-chief, and it was entirely his decision to launch the risky raid on Abbottabad based on the only fragmentary intelligence that bin Laden might be there. As Adm. William McRaven, who was the military commander of the bin Laden raid, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last month, "at the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions, that was instrumental in the planning process, because I pitched every plan to him." The raid decision was opposed by Vice President Joe Biden, who had run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency against Obama. If Biden had won the White House in 2008, Osama bin Laden might still be alive. And the decision to do the raid was also opposed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had served every president going back to Richard Nixon. Gates was concerned about some kind of replay of the 1980 Iran hostage rescue debacle, which helped to turn President Jimmy Carter into a one-term president. The notion that the decision to greenlight the risky raid was made by anyone other than Obama is just plain silly, and it was a decision he made against the advice of both his vice president and his secretary of defense. The film "Dishonorable Disclosures" gets even sillier. At one point one of the former officers interviewed for the film charges that the Obama administration "divulged to the world we are using drone technology." The fact that the United States uses drones in Pakistan is one of the world's worst kept secrets. In fact, the New America Foundation where I work has maintained a public database of these attacks since early 2010.' Similarly, the claim that the Obama administration has recently leaked information about the Stuxnet virus attacks on the Iranian nuclear program to the New York Times is overblown, as this information has been reported since 2010, and the Iranians themselves publicly acknowledged that their nuclear program was under cyberattack two years ago. It is true that the U.S. role in the cyberattacks was disclosed in the New York Times. And in June, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed two federal prosecutors to investigate leaks including the New York Times story about Obama ordering the cyberattacks against Iran with the Stuxnet virus. There remains much that is unknown about the still-classified intelligence surrounding the bin Laden raid, including: -- How did the CIA find the real name of bin Laden's courier who was the key to finding him? -- How was the courier's cell phone first tracked down? -- How was he tracked to bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad? -- How did the CIA establish a safe house in Abbottabad? And who staffed it? None of this information has been leaked, and it remains classified for good reason as it gets into the CIA's "sources and methods." Don't expect to hear any of those details any time soon. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 22 21:39:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:39:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TSA Rifles Through Bags, Conducts Pat Downs At Paul Ryan Event Message-ID: <0145E9CF-0D16-4FC6-80B6-4293B186210A@infowarrior.org> TSA Rifles Through Bags, Conducts Pat Downs At Paul Ryan Event Government agents moving out of airports and into the streets Steve Watson Infowars.com Aug 22, 2012 http://www.infowars.com/tsa-rifles-through-bags-conducts-pat-downs-at-paul-ryan-event/ For some time we have been warning that the TSA is systematically moving beyond the nation?s airports and conducting operations on the streets of America. The latest example of this kind of activity occurred at an event organized by Mitt Romney?s GOP running mate Paul Ryan this past weekend in The Villages, Florida. The Shark Tank blog reports that TSA officers showed up alongside Secret Service and the local Sumter County Sheriff?s Office, and proceeded to do what they do like no one else does. ?A big WTF is in order here.? the blog notes, adding ?We heard that the TSA was going to expand its ummm, ?reach,? but to assist in political campaigns is quite the jump in broadening their ?transportation security horizons.?? ?I counted no less than (6) TSA agents alongside the usual uniformed Secret Service detail-not to be confused with the ?Men In Black? looking agents.? blogger Javier Manjarres notes, with a picture of the agents in action (below). As we have previously documented, airport security style checkpoints and inspection procedures are already in place at bus terminals, train stations, and are rapidly being expanded to the streets of America. Agents have even been spotted roaming around at public events such as sports games and music concerts, and even at high school proms. The TSA even moved beyond its own borders this summer as agents were dispatched to airports in London for the Olympic Games. The TSA has also announced its intention to expand the VIPR program to include roadside inspections of commercial vehicles, setting up a network of internal checkpoints and rolling out security procedures already active in airports, bus terminals and subway stations to roads and highways across the United States. These internal checkpoints, run by Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the TSA, involve trucks being scanned with backscatter x-ray devices in the name of ?safety? and ?counter terrorism?. Homeland Security is also developing technology to be used at ?security events? which purports to monitor ?malintent? on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. Since its inception in the US after 9/11, the TSA has grown in size exponentially. The agency was slammed in a recent congressional report for wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on security theatre. If people think they can avoid the TSA by staying away from airports, they?re going to be in for a rude awakening. TSA is clearly engaged in a total takeover of society and plans to have its agents searching, patting down, scanning and harassing Americans at all levels of society, not just at transport hubs but at public events, in the street and on highways and roads across the country. The implementation of ?Checkpoint USA?, where citizens are routinely stopped, searched and radiated by federal VIPER teams is further evidence of how America is crumbling into a Soviet-style police state where the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is abolished and the 4th amendment eviscerated. ?????????????????????- Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones? Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 23 06:13:58 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:13:58 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Anti-Piracy Law Firm Will Publicly Humiliate The Clergy, Police & Arabs Message-ID: <216815C1-77E8-44E6-903C-3399BB6DB5ED@infowarrior.org> Anti-Piracy Law Firm Will Publicly Humiliate The Clergy, Police & Arabs ? enigmax ? August 23, 2012 http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-law-firm-will-publicly-humiliate-the-clergy-police-arabs-120823/ A German law firm will hit a new low next week, even for companies engaged in the file-sharing settlement letter business. The company says that from September 1st it will begin publishing the details of individuals it claims have infringed their clients? copyrights by sharing hardcore pornography online. To make matters worse, they?re threatening to target churches, police stations and Arabs first. Neither the Pirate Party nor Anonymous are happy and now the latter are threatening action of their own. When the RIAA embarked on its file-sharing settlement letter campaign last decade it unwittingly created a monster. Although the music industry group discontinued its actions in this field some time ago, dozens of other companies ? notably in the porn business ? followed in their footsteps. The exact figures aren?t clear, but several hundred thousands individuals have been pursued for cash settlements for file-sharing in the United States and around Europe the problem is even worse. Germany has been hit by the trolls particularly hard, and it is from there that a new horror story is developing. In a statement on its website the Urmann law firm explains that a large number of the file-sharing cases it is involved in end in settlements, a situation that is ?often more useful than going through the courts.? However, the company says that if necessary it will go to court to get justice for its clients, but there are things it can do to persuade stubborn individuals to pay up instead of having a hearing. Starting September 1st, Urmann says it will begin publishing the personal details of Internet account holders it claims have violated their clients? copyrights. The exact number is unknown, but Urmann previously claimed to have the identities of 150,000 individuals. According to comments made by the law firm to Der Spiegel, the bulk of the firm?s clients aren?t record label owners either ? they?re sellers of German hardcore pornography. But the worst is yet to come. According to comments an Urmann insider made to Wochenblatt, the law firm is planning to target the most vulnerable people first ? those with IP addresses registered to churches, police stations and ? quite unbelievably ? the embassies of Arab countries. Urmann insists that it is completely entitled to take this action because the law is on its side. The company is leaning on a 2007 Federal Constitutional Court ruling that deemed it legal for law firms to publish the names of their clients? opponents in order to advertise their services. However, there is some debate if the ruling applies since it was targeted at commercial opponents, not regular citizens. Bernd Schl?mer of the German Pirate Party describes the law firm?s threats to undermine the privacy rights of individuals as ?shocking? and says that Urmann?s actions could be construed as ?legal coercion.? Perhaps not surprisingly, the loose-knit activist collective Anonymous are also unhappy and are hinting at action of their own. ?A law firm has announced that shortly it will publish a so-called enemies list on the web,? the group said in an announcement. ?Once the list of Urmann and colleagues is online, we will take care of it!? Urmann courted controversy last year when it started an auction to sell the unpaid settlements of 70,000 alleged file-sharers to the highest bidder. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 23 10:44:56 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:44:56 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pogue: How Hollywood Is Encouraging Online Piracy Message-ID: <863CD961-9E31-49F3-A62D-9F47F9BD293D@infowarrior.org> Permanent Address: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-hollywood-encouraging-onine-piracy How Hollywood Is Encouraging Online Piracy The death of the DVD is pushing users to piracy By David Pogue | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 | 24 Image: Jude Buffum Face it, movie fans: the DVD is destined to be dead as a doornail. Only a few Blockbuster stores are still open. Netflix's CEO says, ?We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter, forever.? The latest laptops don't even come with DVD slots. So where are film enthusiasts suppose to rent their flicks? Online, of course. There are still some downsides to streaming movies?you need a fast Internet connection, for example, and beware the limited-data plan?but overall, this should be a delightful development. Streaming movies offers instant gratification: no waiting, no driving?plus great portability: you can watch on gadgets too small for a DVD drive, like phones, tablets and superthin laptops. Hollywood movie studios should benefit, too. The easier it is to rent a movie, the more people will do it. And the more folks rent, the more money the studios make. Well, apparently, none of that has occurred to the movie industry. It seems intent on leaving money on the table. For all of the apparent convenience of renting a movie via the Web, there are a surprising number of drawbacks. For example, when you rent the digital version, you often have only 24 hours to finish watching it, which makes no sense. Do these companies really expect us to rent the same movie again tomorrow night if we can't finish it tonight? In the DVD days, a Blockbuster rental was three days. Why should online rentals be any different? When you rent online, you don't get any of the DVD extras?deleted scenes, alternative endings, subtitles?even though you're paying as much as you would have paid to rent a DVD. Yet perhaps most important, there's the availability problem. New movies aren't available online until months after they are finished in the theaters, thanks to the ?windowing? system?a long-established obligation that makes each movie available, say, first to hotels, then to pay-per-view systems, then to HBO and, only after that, to you for online rental. Worse, some movies never become available. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind, Bridget Jones's Diary, Saving Private Ryan, Meet the Fockers, and so on, are not available to rent from the major online distributors. None of the movie studios would talk to me on the record about this subject, so I can't tell you why so many major movies are missing. Obviously somebody, somewhere, objects to releasing the rights?a lawyer, a director, a studio executive. (Disney's Web site answers the question this way: ?Unfortunately, it is not possible to release or have all our titles in the market at once.? Oh, okay. So they're not available because they're not available.) The people want movies. None of Hollywood's baffling legal constructs will stop the demand. The studios are trying to prevent a dam from bursting by putting up a picket fence. And if you don't make your product available legally, guess what? The people will get it illegally. Traffic to illegal download sites has more than sextupled since 2009, and file downloading is expected to grow about 23 percent annually until 2015. Why? Of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, guess how many of them are available to rent online, as I write this in midsummer 2012? Zero. That's right: Hollywood is actually encouraging the very practice they claim to be fighting (with new laws, for example). Yes, times are changing. Yes, uncertainty is scary. But Hollywood has case studies to learn from. The music industry and the television industry used to fight the Internet the same way?with brute force: copy protection, complexity, legal challenges. Eventually all of them found roads to recoup some of their lost profit not by fighting the Internet but by working with it. The music industry dropped copy protection and made almost every song available for about $1 each. The TV industry made its shows available for free at sites such as Hulu, paid for by ads. The moral? Make your wares available legally, cleanly and at a fair price?and only the outliers will resort to piracy. And you can keep making money. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 23 10:45:07 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:45:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pogue: 5 Ways Hollywood Can Stop Digging Its Own Grave Message-ID: <976C3134-BB0C-43F8-8B29-5BBD2E12C152@infowarrior.org> 5 Ways Hollywood Can Stop Digging Its Own Grave Big movie studios are losing money by fighting public demand for online movies By David Pogue http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pogue-5-ways-hollywood-can-stop-digging-its-own-grave-piracy&WT.mc_id=SA_printmag_2012-09 In my Scientific American column this month I noted that Hollywood seems perversely determined to promote illegal movie downloads, rather than fight them. If the movie studios truly wanted to turn legal movie rentals into a popular, profitable, commonplace activity, it should quit kicking and screaming and embrace the digital age. It can start by taking these steps: 1. Include the DVD extras. In the DVD age there was real value to the extras: deleted scenes, director's commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes and so on. Not to mention subtitles and captions?important options for millions of viewers. Online movies generally don't give us any of that. But you still have to pay the same for a rental as you did for a DVD rental. 2. Offer a reasonable viewing period. You pay, what, $4 to stream a movie?and then if you don't finish the whole thing the first night, they expect you to rent it again just to watch the last 30 minutes? That's insanity. It means that you can't start a movie after dinner if you have kids; you won't finish by bedtime. Or you start the movie after you put the kids to bed?but if you get sleepy, you can't finish it tomorrow. You should have three days to watch it, just as in the DVD rental days. Or at least 27 hours, so you could finish the movie the next night. 3. Eliminate the starting time. You have to start watching a movie within 30 days of renting it. Okay, this isn't a big deal?most of the time you rent a movie because you want to start watching right away?but what's the need for the 30-day restriction? If we paid for it, we should be able to watch it whenever. 4. Eliminate the "release window" concept. When a movie's run in theaters is over, the movie studio doesn't make it immediately available for online viewing. Instead, it makes the movie available for a few weeks at a time to highly engineered series of outlets: DVD; pay-per-view TV; HBO and movie channels; and so on. Each of these "release windows" offers exclusivity to that particular viewing source. To Hollywood's mind, that's the best way to make the most money from each movie. But during each window none of the other movie sources are making any money for Hollywood. While a certain movie plays only in hotel rooms, for example, nobody online can rent it or buy it. What if?gasp?a movie became available through all channels simultaneously, so that everyone could start paying money to the movie studios at once? Radical, I know, but it deserves an experiment at least. 5. When it's buyable, it should be rentable. Often Hollywood tries to gouge out a few extra bucks by making a movie available for sale online ($15) for a few weeks before you can rent it online ($4). Here again the logic seems clear enough?$15 is a lot more than $4!?but what they're missing is the potential revenue from lost rentals during those weeks. But there are some counterarguments, too. Plenty of people (I'm among them) would never dream of buying a movie that they'll watch only once but would happily rent it. And time is of the essence: more people will probably rent a recent movie?while the marketing, ads, and reviews are still fresh in their minds?rather than an older one. In other words, while Hollywood is locking up a movie in its "sale only" window, it could be losing a lot more revenue from lost rentals. Listen up, Hollywood: Nobody ever went out of business offering a good product for sale at a reasonable price with an eye toward pleasing the customer. You should try it some time. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 24 11:13:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:13:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Windows 8 Tells Microsoft About Everything You Install, Not Very Securely Message-ID: <703AAB46-3586-4DF8-92B7-674A98FD52F2@infowarrior.org> Can anyone confirm what, if anything, OSX 10.8's Gatekeeper sends back to Apple? Wouldn't surprise me to see Apple doing something like this, too. --rick Windows 8 Tells Microsoft About Everything You Install, Not Very Securely http://log.nadim.cc/?p=78 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 24 14:03:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:03:48 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT RIP: The Count von Count. Message-ID: <9773F240-DBE3-48BF-A8F1-1C3177587A83@infowarrior.org> RIP, Count von Count: Sesame Street Actor Jerry Nelson Dead at 78 by John Boone Today 11:28 AM PDT http://www.eonline.com/news/340745/rip-count-von-count-sesame-street-actor-jerry-nelson-dead-at-78 Shall we count the ways children around the world loved Jerry Nelson? Read this in the voice of Count von Count, please: One, he voiced the aforementioned number-loving vampire to life on Sesame Street. Those not in their more impressionable years might have preferred the censored spoof of the Count's innocent-turned-very-inappropriate counting that went viral. Two, he gave life to the purple-haired explorer Gobo Fraggle on Fraggle Rock. And if that's not enough, three, he popped up not only on The Muppet Show but movies and specials throughout the years. Which makes it all the sadder that Nelson passed away yesterday. The puppeteer passed away Thursday at the age of 78 from unspecified causes, according to CBC Radio-Canada. Nelson, who was born in Tulsa, Okla., but raised in Washington, D.C., began his career under the tutelage of puppeteer Bil Baird (famous for creating Charlemane the Lion and performing in film The Sound of Music) before joining up with Jim Henson, another Baird trainee, in the 1960s. Nelson bowed out of the Muppets in 2004 for health reasons but stuck with his most famous character, Count von Count. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 24 19:59:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:59:45 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Apple Wins $1 Billion as Jury Finds Samsung Violated Patents Message-ID: Apple Wins $1 Billion as Jury Finds Samsung Violated Patents Reuters 24 Aug 2012 | 08:45 PM ET http://www.cnbc.com/id/48783982/ Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung Electronics on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages. As for the countersuit, the jury found Apple did not violate any of Samsung's wireless standards or feature patents. Shares of Apple , which this week became the biggest company by market value in history, hit an all-time high of $675 in after-hours trading. Click here for the latest after-hours quote. The verdict, which came much sooner than expected, could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding mobile computing market. A number of companies that sell smartphones based on Google's Android operating system may now face further legal challenges from Apple, a company that is already among the largest and most profitable in business history. Brian Love, a Santa Clara law school professor, described it as a crushing victory for Apple: "This is the best-case scenario Apple could have hoped for." In a statement after the verdict, Apple said, "We are grateful to the jury for their service and for investing the time to listen to our story and we were thrilled to be able to finally tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew ... We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right." Samsung also issued a post-verdict statement, saying, "Today?s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies ... This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple?s claims." The jury deliberated for less than three days before delivering the verdict on seven Apple patent claims and five Samsung patent claims ? suggesting that the nine-person panel had little difficulty in concluding that Samsung had copied the iPhone and the iPad. Billions of dollars in future sales hang in the balance. Apple's charges that Samsung copied its designs and features are widely viewed as an attack on Google and its Android software, which drives Samsung's devices and has become the most-used mobile software. Apple and Samsung, two companies that sell more than half the world's smartphones and tablets, have locked legal horns in several countries this year. Earlier on Friday, a South Korean court found that both companies shared blame, ordering Samsung to stop selling 10 products including its Galaxy S II phone and banning Apple from selling four different products, including its iPhone 4. But the trial on Apple's home turf ? the world's largest and most influential technology market ? is considered the most important. The fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, accusing the South Korean company of slavishly copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung countersued. Apple had sought more than $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung, which has disputed that figure. The companies are rivals, but also have a $5 billion-plus supply relationship. Apple is Samsung's biggest customer for microprocessors and other parts central to Apple's devices. The U.S. jury spent most of August in a packed federal courtroom in San Jose ? just miles from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino ? listening to testimony, examining evidence and watching lawyers from both sides joust about seven Apple patents, five Samsung patents, and damage claims. Jurors received 100 pages of legal instructions from U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh on Aug. 21 prior to hearing the closing arguments from attorneys. Lawyers from both tech giants used their 25 hours each of trial time to present internal emails, draw testimony from designers and experts, and put on product demonstrations and mockups to convince the jury. At times, their questions drew testimony that offered glimpses behind the corporate facade, such as the margins on the iPhone and Samsung's sales figures in the United States. From the beginning, Apple's tactic was to present what it thought was chronological evidence of Samsung copying its phone. Juxtaposing pictures of phones from both companies and internal Samsung emails that specifically analyzed the features of the iPhone, Apple's attorneys accused Samsung of taking shortcuts after realizing it could not keep up. Samsung's attorneys, on the other hand, maintained Apple had no sole right to geometric designs such as rectangles with rounded corners. They called Apple's damage claim "ridiculous" and urged the jury to consider that a verdict in favor of Apple could stifle competition and reduce choices for consumers. The California trial has produced its share of drama and heated moments. Lawyers routinely bickered over legal matters in the jury's absence, filed rafts of paperwork to thwart each other's courtroom strategy, and sometimes even resorted to public relations tactics to make their views known. email: tech at cnbc.com Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions. URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/48783982/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 24 20:06:24 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:06:24 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Microsoft denies Windows 8 app spying via SmartScreen Message-ID: Microsoft denies Windows 8 app spying via SmartScreen By Iain Thomson in San Francisco ? Get more from this author Posted in Security, 25th August 2012 00:10 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/25/windows8_smartscreen_spying/ Microsoft has moved to quell fears that Windows 8 is building up a detailed record of all applications stored on client machines via its SmartScreen application. An analysis by security researcher Nadim Kobeissi noticed a potential privacy violation in Windows 8's SmartScreen system, which checks applications that the user wants to install against a database of known dodgy code and warns the user if Redmond's records suggest there may be a problem. "The big problem is that Windows 8 is configured to immediately tell Microsoft about every app you download and install," Kobeissi wrote. "This is a very serious privacy problem, specifically because Microsoft is the central point of authority and data collection/retention here and therefore becomes vulnerable to being served judicial subpoenas or National Security Letters intended to monitor targeted users." To make matters worse, the install logs are sent to Microsoft and can be snooped by third-parties, the researcher claims, since the mechanism supports the SSLv2 protocol which is known to be breakable. While it's possible to turn off SmartScreen, it's not easy, and the OS will remind you periodically to turn it back on. The thought of Microsoft getting a log of every application stored on a client system predictably got some in the IT community's hackles up. Stories like this elicit fears in some quarters that all the data is fed back to a secret room in Redmond, where it is examined by the FBI, RIAA, or the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires. "We can confirm that we are not building a historical database of program and user IP data," a spokesperson told El Reg. "Like all online services, IP addresses are necessary to connect to our service, but we periodically delete them from our logs. As our privacy statements indicate, we take steps to protect our users? privacy on the backend. We don?t use this data to identify, contact or target advertising to our users and we don?t share it with third parties." As for concerns over the leakage of material via SSLv2.0, Microsoft said that it will not use this protocol with Windows 8 and that SmartScreen does not support that version. Kobeissi notes that 14 hours after he posted about the issue a new scan of the servers showed no SSlv2 support, although he stands by his original findings. Lest you think that Kobeissi is some tinfoil-hat type, he is a respected security researcher in his field. Kobeissi, a Canadian of Lebanese extraction, invented the Cryptocat encrypted chat application and is a strong anti-censorship campaigner. But while in this case it appears that Microsoft is in the clear, there's still room for improvement. Currently the SmartScreen system does use application information stored at Redmond to validate local apps, hence the information is collected. But Kobeissi points out that the need for this could be eliminated if such data was stored locally on the client end and updated regularly. ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 24 20:18:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:18:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Appeals Court: Gov't can fund embryonic stem cell research Message-ID: http://www.wtop.com/884/2471404/Court-Govt-can-fund-embryonic-stem-cell-research Court: Gov't can fund embryonic stem cell research Friday - 8/24/2012, 6:04pm ET By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court on Friday refused to order the Obama administration to stop funding embryonic stem cell research, despite complaints the work relies on destroyed human embryos. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court decision throwing out a lawsuit that challenged federal funding for the research, which is used in pursuit of cures to deadly diseases. Opponents claimed the National Institutes of Health was violating the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo. But a three-judge appeals court panel unanimously agreed with a lower court judge's dismissal of the case. This is the second time the appeals court has said that the challenged federal funding of embryonic stem cell research was permissible. "Dickey-Wicker permits federal funding of research projects that utilize already-derived ESCs _ which are not themselves embryos _ because no `human embryo or embryos are destroyed' in such projects," Chief Judge David B. Sentelle said in the ruling, adding that the plaintiffs made the same argument the last the time the court reviewed the issue. "Therefore, unless they have established some `extraordinary circumstance,' the law of the case is established and we will not revisit the issue." Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement after the decision, "NIH will continue to move forward, conducting and funding research in this very promising area of science. The ruling affirms our commitment to the patients afflicted by diseases that may one day be treatable using the results of this research." Researchers hope one day to use stem cells in ways that cure spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other ailments. Opponents of the research object because the cells were obtained from destroyed human embryos. Though current research is using cells culled long ago, opponents say they also fear research success would spur new embryo destruction. Proponents say the research cells come mostly from extra embryos that fertility clinics would have discarded anyway. The lawsuit was filed in 2009 by two scientists who argued that Obama's expansion jeopardized their ability to win government funding for research using adult stem cells _ ones that have already matured to create specific types of tissues _ because it will mean extra competition. President George W. Bush also permitted stem cell research, but limited the availability of taxpayer funds to embryonic stem cell lines that were already in existence and "where the life and death decision has already been made." Obama's order removed that limitation, allowing projects that involve stem cells from already destroyed embryos or embryos to be destroyed in the future. To qualify, parents who donate the original embryo must be told of other options, such as donating to another infertile woman. Sentelle also rejected the opponent's two other arguments: that the same federal law prohibits funding for projects where embryos are "knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death," and that NIH issued guidelines on the funding without responding to complaints about the research. "Because the executive order's entire thrust was aimed at expanding support of stem-cell research, it was not arbitrary or capricious for NIH to disregard comments that instead called for termination of all ESC research," including research the White House has permitted since 2001," said Sentelle, who wrote the majority opinion for Judges Karen Henderson and Janice Rogers Brown. Sentelle was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Henderson by President George H.W. Bush and Brown by President George W. Bush. (Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 25 09:42:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 10:42:52 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - General Tells Crowd How US Hacked Enemy In Afghanistan Message-ID: <4BAB8DB6-EB62-4EB1-8AE7-AEA5A1AC1C93@infowarrior.org> One wonders exactly how much of Gen Mills' comments are effects-inflation as part of DOD's continual cyber-chest-thumping these days. Or perhaps a feeble attempt at psyop? And further still, given the targets / environment in question, one has to wonder exactly how sophisticated of a "cyber attack" this was against Tango Joe to begin with. --rick -----Original Message----- http://www.khou.com/news/world/167334595.html August 25, 2012 General Tells Crowd How US Hacked Enemy In Afghanistan By Raphael Satter, Associated Press The U.S. military has been launching cyberattacks against its opponents in Afghanistan, a senior officer says, making an unusually explicit acknowledgment of the oft-hidden world of electronic warfare. Marine Lt. Gen. Richard P. Mills' comments came last week at a conference in Baltimore during which he explained how U.S. commanders considered cyber weapons an important part of their arsenal. "I can tell you that as a commander in Afghanistan in the year 2010, I was able to use my cyber operations against my adversary with great impact," Mills said. "I was able to get inside his nets, infect his command-and-control, and in fact defend myself against his almost constant incursions to get inside my wire, to affect my operations." Mills, now a deputy commandant with the Marine Corps, was in charge of international forces in southwestern Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011, according to his official biography. He didn't go into any further detail as to the nature or scope of his forces' attacks, but experts said that such a public admission that they were being carried out was itself striking. "This is news," said James Lewis, a cyber-security analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said that while it was generally known in defense circles that cyberattacks had been carried out by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, he had never seen a senior officer take credit for them in such a way. "It's not secret," Lewis said in a telephone interview, but he added: "I haven't seen as explicit a statement on this as the one" Mills made. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Mills' speech. U.S. defense planners have spent the past few years wondering aloud about how and under what circumstances the Pentagon would launch a cyberattack against its enemies, but it's only recently become apparent that a sophisticated program of U.S.-backed cyberattacks is already under way. A book by The New York Times reporter David Sanger recently recounted how President Barack Obama ordered a wave of electronic incursions aimed at physically sabotaging Iran's disputed atomic energy program. Subsequent reports have linked the program to a virus dubbed Flame, which prompted a temporary Internet blackout across Iran's oil industry in April, and another virus called Gauss, which appeared to have been aimed at stealing information from customers of Lebanese banks. An earlier report alleged that U.S. forces in Iraq had hacked into a terrorist group's computer there to lure its members into an ambush. Herbert Lin, a cyber expert at the National Research Council, agreed that Mills' comments were unusual in terms of the fact that they were made publicly. But Lin said that the United States was, little by little, opening up about the fact that its military was launching attacks across the Internet. "The U.S. military is starting to talk more and more in terms of what it's doing and how it's doing it," he said. "A couple of years ago it was hard to get them to acknowledge that they were doing offense at all - even as a matter of policy, let alone in specific theaters or specific operations." Mills' brief comments about cyberattacks in Afghanistan were delivered to the TechNet Land Forces East conference in Baltimore on Aug. 15, but they did not appear to have attracted much attention at the time. Footage of the speech was only recently posted to the Internet by conference organizers. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 25 09:49:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 10:49:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Apple v. Samsung: The infringing device scorecard Message-ID: <1EE018F8-40EB-4E55-8270-D662DA272FDE@infowarrior.org> Apple v. Samsung: The infringing device scorecard In the end, a jury found that a broad selection of Samsung devices infringed on Apple's patents. Here's the full list. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500273-37/apple-v-samsung-the-infringing-device-scorecard/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 25 14:28:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:28:48 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - RIP Neil Armstrong Message-ID: <69FD87D8-910F-42CD-AF68-D5BCEBD717CA@infowarrior.org> 25 August 2012 Last updated at 15:19 ET US astronaut Neil Armstrong dies, first man on Moon http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19381098 US astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has died at the age of 82, US media report. Earlier this month he had surgery to relieve blocked coronary arteries. He set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, famously describing the event as "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind". Armstrong, along with three other astronauts, received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest US civilian award, last November. He was the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. He and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the moon. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 08:52:13 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:52:13 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - 5 Design Tricks Facebook Uses To Affect Your Privacy Decisions Message-ID: <0CE5B810-AB8C-47B4-85AC-F639D389D769@infowarrior.org> 5 Design Tricks Facebook Uses To Affect Your Privacy Decisions http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/25/5-design-tricks-facebook-uses-to-affect-your-privacy-decisions/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 08:57:53 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:57:53 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FCC eyes tax on Internet service Message-ID: <2F30F091-936A-4832-9280-17EC9F6BE2A0@infowarrior.org> FCC eyes tax on Internet service By Brendan Sasso - 08/26/12 06:00 AM ET http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/245479-fcc-eyes-tax-on-internet-service The Federal Communications Commission is eyeing a proposal to tax broadband Internet service. The move would funnel money to the Connect America Fund, a subsidy the agency created last year to expand Internet access. The FCC issued a request for comments on the proposal in April. Dozens of companies and trade associations have weighed in, but the issue has largely flown under the public's radar. "If members of Congress understood that the FCC is contemplating a broadband tax, they'd sit up and take notice," said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a consumer advocacy group that opposes the tax. Numerous companies, including AT&T, Sprint and even Google have expressed support for the idea. Consumers already pay a fee on their landline and cellular phone bills to support the FCC's Universal Service Fund. The fund was created to ensure that everyone in the country has access to telephone service, even if they live in remote areas. Last year, the FCC overhauled a $4.5 billion portion of the Universal Service Fund and converted it into a broadband Internet subsidy, called the Connect America Fund. The new fund aims to subsidize the construction of high-speed Internet networks to the estimated 19 million Americans who currently lack access. Julius Genachowski, the FCC's chairman, has made expanding broadband access his top priority. He argues that a high-speed Internet connection is critical for succeeding in the 21st century economy and that expanding Internet access is the country's next great infrastructure challenge. But the money for the new Internet subsidy is still coming from the fees on phone bills. And in recent years, with more people sending emails instead of making long-distance phone calls, the money flowing into the program has begun to dry up. The Universal Service fee has had to grow to a larger and larger portion of phone bills to compensate. The FCC floated a number of ideas for reforming the fund's contribution system. In addition to the broadband fee, the commission also sought comments on taxing text messages, as well as levying a flat fee on each phone line, instead of the current system, which is based on a portion of the revenue from interstate phone calls. The commission only sought input on the ideas and did not indicate whether it planned to move ahead with any of them, including the broadband fee. When the FCC released its proposal, Genachowski issued a statement saying the current contribution system is outdated and full of loopholes. "Today we propose three goals for contribution reform: efficiency, fairness, and sustainability," Genachowski said. "And we underscore that any reforms to the contribution system must safeguard core Commission objectives, including the promotion of broadband innovation, investment, and adoption." In its filing, Google argued that the evidence "strongly supports expanding the [Universal Service Fund] contribution base to include broadband Internet access services." According to Google, taxing broadband service is preferable to taxing the kinds of online services it offers, like email or Google Voice. "Saddling these offerings with new, direct USF contribution obligations is likely to restrict innovative options for all communications consumers and cause immediate and lasting harm to the users, pioneers, and innovators of Internet-based services," Google argued. But Turner argued that imposing a fee on broadband access, even if it is only a dollar or two, would discourage many people from buying the service?the exact opposite outcome of what the FCC is trying to achieve. "For folks who are thinking about adopting broadband, who have much lower incomes or don't value broadband as much?that extra dollar on the margins will cause millions of people... to not adopt," Turner said. The FCC could run into legal problems with the Internet Tax Freedom Act, a 1998 law that bans the government from taxing Internet access. But the FCC has long argued that Universal Service is a fee that the providers choose to pass on to consumers and not a tax. Turner said it is unlikely that the FCC will make any controversial moves before November's election. "I don't anticipate that the chairman would move to adopt a drastic overhaul ahead of the election," he said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 09:48:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 10:48:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Neil Armstrong saw moonwalk as 'just' a job Message-ID: Neil Armstrong dead, astronaut saw moonwalk as 'just' a job Originally published: August 25, 2012 3:17 PM Updated: August 26, 2012 9:37 AM By The Associated Press http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/neil-armstrong-dead-astronaut-saw-moonwalk-as-just-a-job-1.3927096 CINCINNATI - Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon. He commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions and becoming the first man to walk on the moon. His first words after the feat are etched in history books and the memories of the spellbound millions who heard them in a live broadcast. PHOTOS: Neil Armstrong through the years | Apollo 11 misson MORE: 1969 moon landing | Space exploration through the years "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said. He insisted later that he had said "a'' before man, but said he, too, couldn't hear it in the version that went to the world. Armstrong, who had bypass surgery earlier this month, died Saturday at age 82 from what his family said were complications of heart procedures. His family didn't say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati. He was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said in a statement. The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world. The accomplishment fulfilled a commitment President John F. Kennedy made for the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of 1960s. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. "The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said. In those first few moments on the moon, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action. Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, the modest Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program. "I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession." Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Armstrong for NASA's oral history project, said Armstrong fit every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it. "I think his genius was in his reclusiveness," said Brinkley. "He was the ultimate hero in an era of corruptible men." Fellow Ohioan and astronaut John Glenn, one of Armstrong's closest friends, recalled Saturday how Armstrong was on low fuel when he finally brought the lunar module Eagle down on the Sea of Tranquility. "That showed a dedication to what he was doing that was admirable," Glenn said. A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations." Along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future." Armstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Obama said in a statement. "When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable ? that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible," Obama said. Obama's Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Armstrong an American hero whose passion for space, science and discovery will inspire him for the rest of his life. "With courage unmeasured and unbounded love for his country, he walked where man had never walked before. The moon will miss its first son of earth," Romney said. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong's grace and humility. "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own," Bolden said in a statement. Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded. When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before a packed baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight. He later joined Glenn, by then a senator, to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted that day was the 34th anniversary of his moonwalk. "Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought. At another joint appearance, Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth I'm truly, truly envious of." Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown. In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwestern Ohio farm. In an Australian interview earlier this year, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things." Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much." The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.) "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed." "Roger, Tranquility," Apollo astronaut Charles Duke radioed back from Mission Control. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface. "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly," Collins said through NASA. In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon before the last moon mission in 1972. For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York. Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel. As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license. Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea. After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets. Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 ? the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959. He commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966, bringing back the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit. Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment. "But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said. An estimated 600 million people ? a fifth of the world's population ? watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history. Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk. Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent. Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts. In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents. "You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard." Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000. In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches. In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th Century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong mentioned one disappointment relating to his moonwalk. "I can honestly say ? and it's a big surprise to me ? that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said. From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft. He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y. Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage. Armstrong's is the second death in a month of one of NASA's most visible, history-making astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer on July 23 at age 61. Just prior to the 50th anniversary of Glenn's orbital flight this past February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut. Noted Armstrong in an email: "I am hoping I will be 'in his shoes' and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated." Glenn is 91. At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence for Armstrong. For anyone else who wanted to remember him, his family's statement made a simple request: "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 14:08:49 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:08:49 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TPP indeed is 'Son of ACTA and SOPA' Message-ID: LEAKED! TPP: the Son of ACTA will oblige America and other countries to throw out privacy, free speech and due process for easier copyright enforcement By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Saturday, Aug 25 The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the son of ACTA, a secretive copyright and trade treaty being negotiated by the Pacific Rim nations, including the USA and Canada. As with ACTA, the secretive negotiation process means that the treaty's provisions represent an extremist corporate agenda where due process, privacy and free expression are tossed out the window in favor of streamlined copyright enforcement. If this passes, America will have a trade obligation to implement all the worst stuff in SOPA, and then some. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Carolina Rossini and Kurt Opsahl explain: < -- > http://boingboing.net/2012/08/25/leaked-tpp-the-son-of-acta-w.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 14:10:56 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:10:56 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Social media and insurance problems Message-ID: Scammed Facebook users could lose insurance claims because they post too much information online By Paul Bentley http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192377/Scammed-Facebook-users-lose-insurance-claims-post-information-online.html PUBLISHED: 03:48 EST, 23 August 2012 | UPDATED: 07:00 EST, 24 August 2012 Facebook users face losing claims against banks and insurance companies because they are inviting fraudsters to scam them by posting so much personal information online. Anyone burgled after advertising holiday plans on social networks, or scammed after inadvertently leaving clues about their accounts or passwords online, could find they are left completely out of pocket. The crackdown is said to be ?inevitable? after experts warned that hackers are finding it easier than ever to commit identity fraud and predict it will start happening within a year. Simply posting a picture of your car, or details about which phone network you use, is now enough for many scammers to be able to hack your computer and steal your bank details within minutes, they said. One example given included a man who faced losing thousands after a picture of his new car posted online gave scammers enough detail to trick him into opening an email, which appeared to be from the DVLA. With online fraud costing banks and insurance companies billions every year, they are expected to start taking into account the streams of information willingly publicised by people on the websites when analysing claims within the next year. Alessandra Quartucci, head of saving at confused.com, said: ?At the moment banks do not check a claimant?s personal social network information. 'However, we wouldn?t be surprised in the future if this did change as people are making this information more and more accessible. ?The words and images you post on the internet can be viewed by hundreds, even thousands, of people and sharing too much information on social networking sites can be a financial disaster. ?It is the debit and credit card owner?s responsibility to make sure their cards are kept in a safe and secure place, and telling everyone you?re not home does not make your house a safe place.? The major high street banks currently deal with fraud claims on a ?case by case? basis. While they do not routinely check social networking sites, if something posted online could be considered ?grossly negligent? it would be considered and could leave the customer completely liable to cover the cost of what they have had stolen. Experts say the problem is one the banks will ?inevitably? come down on more seriously because it is now so straightforward for hackers to use details posted online to create full profiles of internet users. Oliver Crofton, director of online security company Vigilante Bespoke said this likely to start happening within the next year. ?Hackers now use a more targeted approach, digging deeper and using social media,? he said. ?People put an alarming amount of personal information on different sites and everything you update, you broadcast to the world. ?This is costing the banking industry so much at the moment that it is an inevitable development that they will get stricter. ?If you get burgled and you had 'checked in' at Heathrow a few days before on Facebook, insurance companies will make it hard for you to claim your money back. ?One friend of mine recently updated his status to say he was annoyed with his phone network. A hacker could easily use that information to then get hold of your email address and send an email which looks official saying, ?we?re sorry you have had a bad experience, please click on this link for some money back''.' In a shocking example given by Mr Crofton, who carried out an investigation into online security for Men?s Health, one man faced losing thousands because he posted a picture of his new car on Facebook. Using the number plate and tax disc information visible on the photograph, together with an email address the person had posted on a LinkedIn profile and a home address found on an official website, hackers were able to send the man an official-looking document, which appeared to be from the DVLA asking him to renew his tax disc. When he clicked on a link provided in the email, the victim?s computer was infected with a virus which allowed the hackers to monitor everything he typed on his computer, including bank details and passwords. A report last year by the Cabinet Office?s Office of Cybersecurity and Information Assurance found that cybercrime costs the UK economy ?27billion a year. As a result, insurance companies said in the future claims could be rejected if customers had been ?reckless? with information they posted online. One admits it would consider rejecting applications outright from celebrities who write about their personal lives on Twitter because they are making themselves so vulnerable to being targeted. ?We look at each individual who comes to us for insurance on their own merit and lifestyle naturally plays a part in this,? a spokeswoman for insurers Hiscox said. ?For example, if a high profile personality chooses to promote their lives, holidays and new purchases in the public arena, that?s their choice but we may choose not to offer them cover.? Research has found that thousands of people who use social networking sites regularly leave themselves open to their homes being raided. There are now 30million users of Facebook in the UK and more than 10million using Twitter. A survey of 3,000 from The Co-operative Insurance found 36 per cent of people who use the sites update friends on their whereabouts, while 35 per cent publicise events such as holidays, potentially alerting criminals to when their home will be empty. Lee Mooney, Head of Home Insurance at The Co-operative, added: ?We could envisage a future where claims could be rejected if it was discovered that someone had been reckless with information they?d posted on a social networking site. ?You have to ask yourself: ?Would I be happy to divulge this information normally?? If not, you shouldn?t make people aware of it online.? Gareth Kloet, head of home insurance at confused.com, added: ?It is possible that insurers could seek to access that information in the future. Something like ?places? and ?tagging? on Facebook broadcasts people?s locations on a platform which has millions of users and insurers could easily access such information. ?Some people may openly advertise if their house hasn?t been adequately secured and this openly acts as a record which insurers may use when looking at a customer?s claim. ?In the future we may see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent. Home security doesn?t mean just physical locks.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 26 16:39:50 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 17:39:50 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing Message-ID: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing By Cory Doctorow Even if we win the right to own and control our computers, a dilemma remains: what rights do owners owe users? This talk was delivered at Google in August, and for The Long Now Foundation in July 2012. < - big snip - > http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 27 15:21:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:21:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Are you a CISSP? References: Message-ID: (via jericho) If you are, you should be aware that ISC2 board elections are coming up. Last year, Wim Remes decided to run a petition to get his name added to the ballot, and ultimately joined the board. He did so seeking to help change ISC2 for the better, to begin to tackle the many criticisms leveled against the organization, and their CISSP certification. This year, four more people are looking to join the board. Each of them are going through the petition process, which requires 500 signatures from current CISSP holders. This will get their name on the ballot, where they hope to get elected to the board to bring more change. I have been an outspoken critic of ISC2 in the past. This includes one published article on the Code of Ethics [1], countless Tweets, dozens of mails to ISC2's general counsel, and more. Recently, I also did a guest bit for a presentation on "Why You Should Not Get a CISSP" at DEFCON 20 [2]. The presentation was done by Timmay, and the most revealing part was exposing how the CBK had barely been updated the last 15 years. Personally, I think the current ISC2 board is stale and needs a refresh. I think the same people are frequently re-elected and have little motivation to make real change within the organization. Since it is ridiculously profitable, there may not be much incentive to do so for some of them. On the other hand, look at what ISC2 has done in terms of community outreach and supporting non-ISC2 security projects or initiatives. It was only a few months ago that ISC2 finally made an appearance at BlackHat, after Remes helped push for more public interaction from the organization. So, if you are an active CISSP holder, consider the value of your certification. Consider what ISC2 does, especially with the money you have given them. Remember that with around 100,000 CISSPs, frequently obtained by non-security people, that the value of the certification is slowly dwindling. It is NOT a measure of security knowledge; it is a punch line to many jokes. I believe you should be concerned about this, and look to change it. That starts with having a more active, outspoken, and driven board. Please read these petitions and consider alternative board members this year: (1) Boris Sverdlik (@JadedSecurity) [http://jadedsecurity.net/2012/08/22/isc2-bod-vote-2012/] (2) Dave Lewis (@gattaca) [http://www.liquidmatrix.org/blog/vote-for-dave/] (3) Chris Nickerson (@indi303) [http://change.isc4thepeople.com/] (4) Scot Terban (@krypt3ia) [http://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/isc2-board-candidacy/] This summary of candidates and more perspective comes from Robert Graham (@ErrataRob) and a blog post he wrote about the subject [3]. Thanks for your consideration, - jericho [1] http://attrition.org/security/rants/cissp_convenient_ethics/ [2] http://attrition.org/security/conferences/ [3] http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/08/these-guys-want-to-reform-isc2cissp.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 27 18:51:27 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:51:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FAA to study use of electronics on planes Message-ID: <0104E740-0684-41FF-A0AA-E4AA1FF72ED5@infowarrior.org> FAA to study use of electronics on planes Monday - 8/27/2012, 5:55pm ET By JOSHUA FREED AP Airlines Writer http://www.wtop.com/256/3010436/FAA-to-study-use-of-electronics-on-planes- (AP) - It's going to be a while before airline passengers can use iPads and other electronic devices during the whole flight. The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that it is starting a process to study the issue, with a timeline that means it will take at least until March 2013 for a recommendation _ and maybe longer for action. In March the FAA raised hopes that it might loosen rules for electronic devices by saying it would "explore ways to bring together all of the key stakeholders involved." Smartphones and tablet computers are common in the passenger cabin, and pilots are using iPads in the cockpit. But passengers have to shut off electronic devices when the plane is below 10,000 feet because of worries that signals emitted by the devices might interfere with electronics in the cockpit. The FAA doesn't actually ban the devices. But it says airlines can only allow devices that have been tested and proven not to interfere with the plane's electronics. With thousands of devices on the market and new ones coming out each day, airlines simply ban them all during takeoff and landing. The FAA will form a committee this fall to study the issue for six months and then make recommendations. The FAA often uses such Aviation Rulemaking Committees when it is considering changes, and their deliberations often last months, sometimes years. This group will include people from mobile technology companies, airplane makers, pilots and flight attendants, airlines, and passenger associations. The FAA will also ask for public input. In a written statement, acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said the agency wants "information to help airlines "decide if they can allow more widespread use of electronic devices in today's aircraft." The FAA said allowing cellphone use during flights isn't under consideration. FAA spokeswoman Brie Sachse said the members of the new committee have not yet been chosen. She declined to say why the process is taking so long. (Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 27 19:07:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:07:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Facespook: Russian spies order $1mln software to influence social networks Message-ID: Facespook: Russian spies order $1mln software to influence social networks Published: 27 August, 2012, 13:13 Edited: 27 August, 2012, 13:23 http://rt.com/politics/intelligence-orders-influencing-social-619/print/ Russia?s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has ordered three systems worth about US$1 million that will automatically spread information on social networks. The systems were ordered in a three separate tenders and the official client?s name is Military Unit 54939, but Kommersant Daily newspaper, which broke the news, writes that according to its sources this military unit belongs to the Foreign Intelligence Service?s structure. The first system is called Dispute and is responsible for overall monitoring of the blogosphere and social networks in order to single out the centers where the information is created and the ways by which it is spread among the virtual society. It also looks at factors that affect the popularity of various reports among internet users. The second system, Monitor-3, will develop the methods of organization and management of a ?virtual community of attracted experts? ? setting of tasks, control over work and regular reports on chosen issues. The third, and probably most important, of the systems is Storm-12 ? its task is to automatically spread the necessary information through the blogosphere, as well as ?information support of operations with pre-prepared scenarios of influence on mass audience in social networks.? The first two systems are to be ready by the end of 2012 and the third by 2013. According to Kommersant, all three tenders were won by the company Iteranet, headed by a former deputy head of the Russian Cryptography Institute, Igor Matskevich, who previously worked on top secret state orders. The newspaper claims that the tenders were held in a top secret mode and does not specify how the information was obtained or the reasons for deciding to disclose it. However, this could be connected with the fact that in August last year President Dmitry Medvedev signed several decrees ordering all state agencies, including the Foreign Intelligence Service, to publish reports on their activities on the internet. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 28 13:46:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:46:52 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Anti-Porn Plank Added To Draft GOP Platform Message-ID: Paging Mrs. Lovejoy .... --rick GOP Anti-Porn Plank Added To Draft Platform By Republican Committee The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing Posted: 08/27/2012 2:15 pm Updated: 08/27/2012 2:40 pm http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/gop-anti-porn-plank-platform_n_1833840.html The GOP platform committee has included a plank in this year's draft document calling for "vigorous" enforcement of anti-pornography laws. In a press release Monday from Morality in Media, a faith-based non-profit, President Patrick Trueman, a former anti-porn prosecutor, calls the current distribution of pornography "a violation of current federal law" and lauds Republicans for approving stricter new wording: <-> The new language replaces previous platform wording, which only opposed child pornography. It will now read, "Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced." Trueman noted that current federal obscenity laws not only prohibit distribution of hardcore pornography on the Internet but also on hotel/motel TV, on cable/satellite TV, and in retail shops. <-> In an interview with The Huffington Post's Jen Bendery, Trueman said youth access to pornography amounted to "a major, major problem," and even caused males in their twenties to develop "porn-induced sexual dysfunction." "It's the Viagra problem for guys in their 20s," Trueman said. Young males are now spending "10 to 12 years looking at porn on the Internet and masturbating to it, so when they are getting married, they are dysfunctional sexually because their brain maps are changed. They enjoy what they've been doing for 10 to 12 years. Normal sex is not something that gets them excited." The broader regulation, submitted by Family Research Council president and Louisiana RNC delegate Tony Perkins, also echoes GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's position on the issue during his previous campaign for the White House. "I wanna make sure that every new computer sold in this country after I'm president has installed on it a filter to block all pornography and that parents can click that filter to make sure their kids don't see that kinda stuff coming in on their computer," Romney said at a campaign stop in Iowa in 2007. In February, Romney lent support to a similar effort in response to a Morality in Media questionnaire about cracking down on pornographers. The Daily Caller reported earlier this year that Trueman, who served in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, had received an assurance from Romney?s campaign that the former Massachusetts governor would ?vigorously? prosecute pornographers if elected president. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 28 17:21:27 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:21:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Air Force Openly Seeking Cyber-Weapons Message-ID: <4878097C-E803-41A1-9948-F07C73E7DC6E@infowarrior.org> August 28, 2012, 12:03PM Air Force Openly Seeking Cyber-Weapons by Brian Donohue http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/air-force-openly-seeking-cyber-weapons-082812 The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) posted a broad agency announcement [PDF] recently, calling on contractors to submit concept papers detailing technological demonstrations of ?cyberspace warfare operations? (CWO) capabilities. The Air Force is looking to obtain CWO capabilities falling into a number of categories including: ?cyberspace warfare attack? and ?cyberspace warfare support.? The broad agency announcement defines ?cyberspace warfare attack? capabilities as those which would give them the ability to ?destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries [sic] ability to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage.? Cyberspace warfare support capabilities, the document claims, would include actions deployed by operational commanders in order to, intercept, identify, and locate sources of access and vulnerability for threat recognition, targeting, and planning, both immediately and for future operations. This also includes the providing of information required for the immediate decisions involving CWOs and data used to produce intelligence or provide targeting for an electronic attack. In addition to those listed above, the Air Force is seeking ?situational awareness capabilities that give an operator near real-time effectiveness feedback in a form that is readily observed by the operator.? This would address the ?mapping of networks (both data and voice),? ?access to cyberspace domain, information, networks, systems, or devices,? ?denial of service on cyberspace resources, current/future operating systems, and network devices,? and ?Data manipulation.? Furthermore, the Air Force is requesting proposals for technologies and concepts for ?developing capabilities associated with cyberspace warfare attack,? ?developing and assessing cyberspace capabilities while disconnected from the operational cyberspace domain,? ?developing capabilities to assess and visualize non-kinetic cyberspace domain effects,? ?developing capabilities to support rapid implementation of effects-based cyberspace capabilities,? and ?employing unique characteristics resulting in the adversary entering conflicts in a degraded state.? The solicitation provides a rare glimpse at the kind of information warfare systems that the U.S. military uses and is trying to build in the future. The Department of Defense typically does not discuss these kinds of capabilities publicly. In order to be considered, concept papers must be submitted via registered mail (to ensure their protection) before the end of this year. In cases where submitters believe their concept contains particularly sensitive information, they are urged to contact the AFLCMC?s security officer, Michael Gamble. This public announcement comes at something of an odd time considering the outrage feigned by Congress and the ensuing investigation launched by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after the New York Times published an article in which anonymous Obama administration officials were quoted admitting that the Stuxnet worm had been a U.S. operation. Odd timing or not, the Air Force?s frank call for arms is emblematic of an increasingly stark reality: the construction and eventual deployment of military-grade malware and other electronically-transmitted weapons is only going to become more main stream as we move forward, urging some to call for a more open dialogue on the use of cyberweapons. Unfortunately for Americans, this is a two-way street. Back in April, Ilan Berman, the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council issued a grave warning [PDF] in a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security?s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies as well as the Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee. ?Over the past three years, the Iranian regime has invested heavily in both defensive and offensive capabilities in cyberspace. Equally significant,? Berman warned, ?its leaders now increasingly appear to view cyber warfare as a potential avenue of action against the United States.? Berman?s words, however serious, are fairly unsurprising considering the almost monthly reports describing new and nearly indefensible malware, like Flame and Gauss, purportedly designed by American operatives and unleashed upon middle-eastern networks. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 28 18:20:26 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:20:26 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - United reservation system crashes, FAA issues ground stop Message-ID: <068E3C82-1802-40A8-9516-7F22075BCD0F@infowarrior.org> United reservation system crashes, FAA issues ground stop By Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY Updated 46m ago CAPTIONBy Michael Stravato, AP -- Updated at 6:21 p.m. ET http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2012/08/united-reservation-system-crashes-faa-issues-ground-stop/833343/1 There were more technology woes this afternoon at United, which suffered a "systemwide outage" of its passenger reservation system for about two hours, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. The outage affected everything from United's website to the carrier's check-in and boarding processes. The problem was resolved around 5:20 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware. It wasn't immediately clear how many fliers were affected, but the disruption was serious enough for United to issue a "ground stop" for United flights at several of the airline's hubs. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a "ground stop" for all United flights destined for three of United's biggest hubs: Houston Bush Intercontinental, Newark Liberty and San Francisco. In layman's terms, a ground stop means all flights will be held at their point of origin until the situation improves at the destination airports. The FAA cited a "UAL COMPUTER ISSUE" as the cause for the ground stop, which was lifted around 5:30 p.m. ET. FlightAware notes the outage involved the "SHARES" computer reservation system, which also caused significant glitches when United switched over to that system on March 3 as part of its merger with Continental. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 07:31:42 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:31:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - CRS Takes On The Question Of Patent Trolls Message-ID: <1F9AF8BB-FCD0-45FD-BCB7-66433E7FCAC2@infowarrior.org> Congressional Research Service Takes On The Question Of Patent Trolls from the good-research dept As we've discussed in the past, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) produces tons of research for Congress -- much of which never sees the light of day. In general, CRS is considered extremely competent and not driven by political and partisan food fights. Reports that come out of CRS usually seem to be careful and thorough. It's just that we rarely get to see them because, even though they're technically in the public domain, they're not automatically released to the public. Some do get out, however, and the Secrecy News blog has a few recent reports, all of which are fairly interesting, including one on Presidential claims of executive privilege (pdf). However, for folks around here, the one that may be even more interesting is CRS's exploration of patent trolls (pdf and embedded below), the problems they create, and some possible ways to deal with the problem. In typical CRS fashion, the report is pretty straightforward, laying out the arguments in a fairly objective way, without taking any particular sides. Even so, it does do a pretty good job of objectively portraying some of the problems with patent trolls, which the report (mostly) refers to under the more diplomatic term "Patent Assertion Entities" (PAE) -- though, it does discuss the "patent troll" term a few times. The report makes repeated references to an awful lot of the excellent research that's been done in the past few years on the subject, including from Bessen & Meurer, Mark Lemley and Christine Chien. It also relies heavily on the excellent FTC report on the problem of patent trolls, which we discussed last year. In terms of what to do about the harm caused by patent trolls (and the report notes both potential beneficial aspects and negative ones), the report discussed the recently introduced SHIELD Act, which would aim to put an increased legal burden on trolls who sue indiscriminately against parties who clearly are not violating the patents in question. However, it also suggests a few other possible methods of reform, including carving out different rules for tech patents (though, it admits that might run afoul of some international trade agreements), better notice (i.e., better clarity on the "boundaries" of patents) and my favorite: figuring out ways to reduce the overall "leverage, hold-up and settlement pressure" that leads to patent trolls regularly getting their way, even when the patent is bogus. All in all, it's a worthwhile read, and at the very least a useful index of some important research in the field. < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120828/00082920174/congressional-research-service-takes-question-patent-trolls.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 07:37:42 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:37:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Here come the hedge fund ads Message-ID: Fund Managers Seek Their Inner Ad Men Opaque Industry Studies Marketing Ahead of Rule Change By SUZANNE VRANICA, JULIET CHUNG and JESSICA HOLZER http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444230504577615442169965050.html "Invest in hedge funds: because you are worth it." "Alternative investments are it." "It's not your father's hedge fund." Those are just a few hypothetical slogans that could appear on a billboard near you as a result of a planned relaxation of a ban on hedge-fund advertising. While many hedge funds say they aren't rushing out to buy up TV ads and rename sports stadiums like their more visible brethren in the banking world, they are testing the waters for what the new freedom could mean for this opaque industry. U.S. regulators are expected Wednesday to propose loosening restrictions banning private-investment firms from advertising?a provision contained in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, Act. The new law, passed in April, directs the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to reverse a long-standing ban on general solicitation for certain private offerings so long as firms take reasonable steps to verify investors in these deals are "accredited investors," institutions or people who meet certain lofty income or asset thresholds. Some hedge funds adhere to stricter criteria. Hedge funds "are starting to do their homework," said Stacey Haefele, chief executive of HNW, a New York marketing firm that works with financial clients. In recent weeks, Ms. Haefele said, she has fielded a handful of calls from small funds asking what kinds of advertising methods they should consider and how much certain types of ads cost. Some of the funds turning to Madison Avenue are looking for ways to broaden their appeal as they hunt for investors. Persuading potential investors to open their checkbooks has turned more difficult for many funds, especially for smaller firms, amid greater competition and pressure on the industry to dial down its traditionally high fees. A flurry of launches has left the field more crowded and pensions, endowments and other institutions are turning increasingly to large, established managers. "We are looking to raise money, and the ability to source new investors that are beyond our traditional networks is appealing," said Michael Mahaffy, chief executive of Point Capital Aligned Wealth LLC, a hedge fund that launched earlier this year. Mr. Mahaffy said he recently reached out for advertising advice from Consigliere Brand Capital LLC, a marketing agency that also has an investment arm. He said he also intends to explore the use of social media. Whitebox Advisors LLC, a $2.3 billion hedge-fund and mutual-fund firm in Minneapolis, is awaiting clarity from regulators, said Mark Strefling, the firm's chief legal officer. Already, though, the prospect of loosening restrictions has sparked discussions. "We're not necessarily going to be focused on soliciting for our funds, but on broader identification of Whitebox as a thought leader," Mr. Strefling said. Industry executives and lawyers predict that most big firms will tread cautiously, eschewing traditional tactics such as glossy ads in popular magazines or high-profile sports sponsorships that often are used by banks and other financial firms. The exact contours of the new rules aren't yet known, they say, and other restrictions by some states and regulatory agencies remain in place. And since most of those funds don't target retail investors, some question the benefits of marketing to the masses. Many of the bigger Madison Avenue advertising agencies say they haven't been approached, but smaller firms, including DiMassimo Goldstein, have received inquiries from hedge funds, the ad firms said. DiMassimo is a New York-based ad firm that has worked with CNBC, Barclays PLC and SunTrust Banks Inc., among others. The advertising ban, which dates back to the Securities Act of 1933, came into the spotlight last year when Facebook Inc. FB +0.98% raised $1 billion from investors while it was still a private company. Under SEC rules governing private offerings, Facebook had to adhere to the advertising ban in order to issue the shares without registering them with the SEC and opening its books to the public. Bankers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +0.35% advised Facebook to sell the stock only to non-U.S. investors because they believed the intense media spotlight surrounding the deal left the company in danger of violating the ban. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R., Calif.) argued the rules were outdated, and Sen. Jon Thune (R., S.D.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) spearheaded the push to include a provision lifting the ban in the JOBS Act. After the proposal expected Wednesday, the SEC must vote a second time to make the rules final. That could happen sometime this fall, though investor groups are urging the commission to take more time to consider adding restrictions before finalizing the rule. Meanwhile, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro is facing increasing pressure from Republican lawmakers who are angry the regulator has blown well past the law's June deadline to lift the ban. Few ad executives expect hedge funds to approach that level of spending given the small audience firms will be targeting. Still, in an industry with big personalities and thousands of firms, some are likely to dive in. "I am hellbent on creating a global brand and the only way to do that is through advertising," said Anthony Scaramucci of fund of hedge funds SkyBridge Capital, which manages $3 billion in assets and hosts a star-studded industry conference in Las Vegas. Earlier this year, Mr. Scaramucci had lunch with a midsize New York ad firm he says he could hire if the ban is lifted, adding he was waiting to learn what rules the SEC would issue and for his lawyers to approve any plans he might hatch. "The media likes to focus on the person that made a billion, the person who lost a billion and the person who stole a billion, so what happens is the general public has an image that we are gunslingers," Mr. Scaramucci said. "I don't want SkyBridge defined by that." Write to Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica at wsj.com, Juliet Chung at juliet.chung at wsj.com and Jessica Holzer at jessica.holzer at dowjones.com A version of this article appeared August 29, 2012, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Fund Managers Seek Their Inner Ad Men. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 07:40:18 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:40:18 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - HFTs Flat-Out Buying Data Ahead of You Message-ID: (Oh, no, this is perfectly acceptable for a fair and balanced market. Puh-lease. ---rick) August 28, 2012, 9:41 AM High-Frequency Traders Flat-Out Buying Data Ahead of You By Geoffrey Rogow http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/08/28/high-frequency-traders-flat-out-buying-data-ahead-of-you/ When the Institute for Supply Management releases its index of manufacturing activity next week, the headlines from the report will flash to traders at what their eyes tell them is 10:00 am. But unless they are subscribers to a new low-latency feed provided by Thomson Reuters, they?ll actually be getting it late?and depending on how they?re positioned, it could be too late. The ISM is just one of the private data providers that are increasingly splitting their dissemination policies. Some are sticking to the letter of the law, releasing their information to all comers at the same time, but also providing special opportunities for high-speed traders willing to pay for super-fast feeds. On the government side, providers of public information are actively trying to avoid playing favorites to this influential crowd of high-frequency traders. Both are wrestling with questions of integrity, while the lines defining what is or is not early release are becoming increasingly blurred. In July, the ISM signed a contract with Thomson Reuters to offer a streamlined version, called ?low-latency,? of its closely watched business-activity report. It will release the full report to Business Wire, a press release service, at exactly the same time. Investors with the superfast computers and algorithmic-trading software needed to read and act upon the low-latency line?s digitalized information will inevitably be the first to trade on the news. The advantage these high-tech traders enjoy is measured in just millionths of a second, but it will be more than enough time to beat competitors who instead must rely on news services that generate headlines from the Business Wire release. According to observers of ISM?s actions, the national nonprofit organization is motivated by a desire to smooth the impact of its data, which can move everything from stocks to currencies. With an ?algo? feed, the market can assume these traders will have it first and plan accordingly, as opposed to other policies where the first point of dissemination is in question. The bifurcated release also limits technical glitches, which seem to be on the rise. This month alone, both the Labor Department and the National Association of Realtors have accidentally released information on their websites well in advance of the official release time. Whereas the government is actively trying to curtail the ability of high-frequency firms to trade on its data first?the Labor Department, for example, is poised to change the protocol for market-sensitive economic indicators released during its ?lockup? with media organizations?ISM and other private data providers are embracing the algorithmic news feeds. The rationale: there is simply no way to cut out rapid traders altogether. Then there?s somewhat thorny issue of financial benefits. Though ISM, as a non-profit, can?t derive revenue from this specialized delivery, it is a big business for others. The potential beneficiaries include news delivery services such as Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg and News Corp. unit Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. Also winning side: data center operators such as AT&T Co. and the trading firms themselves. Paul Rowady, a senior analyst at independent research firm the Tabb Group, said firms delivering data feeds could charge $25,000 or more for access to the data, or could include it in a broader package of products. He noted that this type of data, where there is a known catalyst released at a specific time, is the most sought after by high-speed traders, calling it the ?low-hanging fruit? for highly automated strategies. ?When you know it?s coming, you can get your catcher?s mitt ready,? Rowady said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 07:58:06 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:58:06 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Big Brother on a budget: How Internet surveillance got so cheap Message-ID: Big Brother on a budget: How Internet surveillance got so cheap Deep packet inspection, petabyte-scale analytics create a "CCTV for networks." by Sean Gallagher - Aug 28 2012, 9:00pm EDT http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/big-brother-meets-big-data-the-next-wave-in-net-surveillance-tech/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 12:32:15 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:32:15 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - White House plans to regulate contractor computer security Message-ID: Aliya Sternstein | Nextgov | August 27, 2012 | 2 Comments White House plans to regulate contractor computer security http://m.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2012/08/white-house-plans-regulate-contractor-computer-security/57668/?oref=govexec_today_nl The Obama administration has drafted plans to require federal contractors to adopt specific cybersecurity safeguards for company equipment that transmits government information. The proposed regulations come as the White House considers issuing an executive order that would regulate computer security at all critical businesses. Industry backlash stopped Congress from mandating such reforms. NASA, the Defense Department and the General Services Administration, which purchases goods and services for agencies across government, released the draft rules Friday. Under the plan, doing business with the government would be contingent on agreeing to protect corporate-owned devices and federal data on websites. This regulation ?would add a contract clause to address requirements for the basic safeguarding of contractor information systems that contain or process information provided by or generated for the government (other than public information),? the proposal states. The provision calls for only a few computer protections and leaves vendors substantial flexibility, which troubles some computer security experts. Specifically, the administration wants ?current and regularly updated? malware blockers, such as antivirus or antispyware mechanisms, as well as ?prompt? installation of software patches and other security updates. Federal data posted to company Web pages must be secured through passwords or other technological restrictions. Information and equipment also would have to be sheltered by one physical element, such as a locked case, and one digital defense, such as a login. Alan Paller, research director for the SANS Institute who frequently advises the administration, called the plan ?worse than useless.? He said the requirements will provide agencies with a false sense of security. The proviso does not elaborate on the degree to which antimalware software must be ?current and regularly updated? or provide a timeline for the ?prompt? application of patches, Paller said. And the clause is silent on limiting administrative privileges, which grant networkwide access, he added. ?Who are these people who can be so cavalier in the face of a massive buildup of attacks so great that it caused the head of MI5 -- Jonathan Evans -- 60 days ago to break a two year silence to call ?astonishing?,? ? Paller said, referring to remarks by the chief of the United Kingdom?s intelligence agency on June 25. Evans? full statement was, ?The extent of what is going on is astonishing -- with industrial-scale processes involving many thousands of people lying behind both state-sponsored cyberespionage and organized cybercrime.? The new legal language would apply to all contractors and subcontractors ?regardless of size or business ownership,? agency officials said. While debating the rider, officials considered the financial burden on companies, but decided cleanup charges for neglecting to guard government data would outweigh additional security expenses. ?The resultant cost impact is considered not significant, since the first-level protective measures (i.e., updated virus protection, the latest security software patches, etc.) are typically employed as part of the routine course of doing business,? the notice states. On the other hand, ?the cost of not using basic information technology system protection measures would be a significant detriment to contractor and government business.? Contractors are still evaluating the framework to ensure it does not hamper technological advancements or strain budgets. Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president at TechAmerica, a trade group, said, ?Because it covers any government information, it covers the entire corporate network for both classified and unclassified data. While the proposal sets requirements for what appear to be prudent business practices, we have asked our members to assess the impact, administrative burden and costs from both a technical and security perspective.? He added, ?Whatever those burdens, they will be ultimately borne by the taxpayer. What we want to make sure we are not doing is establishing requirements that tie the hands of industry to be innovative in the face of evolving cyber threats.? Federal officials, for years, have admitted that adversaries are targeting NASA and Pentagon intelligence handled by contractors. NASA, where contractors outnumber federal employees, reported 5,408 computer security incidents in 2010 and 2011 in which outsiders either installed malicious software or accessed systems. Some of the hacks may have been organized by foreign spies seeking to further national agendas, according to the space agency?s inspector general. About 90 percent of NASA?s funding goes to contractors. During one cyber strike on a defense contractor in March 2011, attackers believed to be sponsored by a foreign intelligence service excised 24,000 files related to weapons systems, Pentagon officials said. A July 2011 leak of 90,000 military email addresses and passwords at defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton later resulted in online fraud, FBI officials said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 13:44:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:44:20 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?We_Don=92t_Need_No_Stinking_Warr?= =?windows-1252?q?ant=3A_The_Disturbing=2C_Unchecked_Rise_of_the_Administr?= =?windows-1252?q?ative_Subpoena?= Message-ID: <53651412-947E-49B5-852B-CB31BF3EA6E3@infowarrior.org> We Don?t Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of the Administrative Subpoena ? By David Kravets ? 08.28.12 6:00 AM http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas/all/ When Golden Valley Electric Association of rural Alaska got an administrative subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Administration in December 2010 seeking electricity bill information on three customers, the company did what it usually does with subpoenas ? it ignored them. That?s the association?s customer privacy policy, because administrative subpoenas aren?t approved by a judge. But by law, utilities must hand over customer records ? which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data ? to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is ?relevant? to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month. Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official?s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers ? virtually all businesses ? are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment ? the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge. In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf) ?I think this is out of control. What has happened is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,? said Joe Evans, the utility?s attorney. Anecdotal evidence suggests that federal officials from a broad spectrum of government agencies issue them hundreds of thousands of times annually. But none of the agencies are required to disclose fully how often they utilize them ? meaning there is little, if any, oversight of this tactic that?s increasingly used in the war on drugs, the war on terror and, seemingly, the war on Americans? constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable government trespass into their lives. That?s despite proof that FBI agents given such powers under the Patriot Act quickly began to abuse them and illegally collected Americans? communications records, including those of reporters. Two scathing reports from the Justice Department?s Inspector General uncovered routine and pervasive illegal use of administrative subpoenas by FBI anti-terrorism agents given nearly carte blanche authority to demand records about Americans? communications with no supervision. When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the nation?s most liberal appeals court based in San Francisco, ordered Golden Valley to fork over the data earlier this month, the court said the case was ?easily? decided because the records were ?relevant? to a government drug investigation. With the data the Alaska utility handed over, the DEA may then use further administrative subpoenas to acquire the suspected indoor-dope growers? phone records, stored e-mails, and perhaps credit-card purchasing histories ? all to build a case to acquire a probable-cause warrant to physically search their homes and businesses. But the administrative subpoena doesn?t just apply to utility records and drug cases. Congress has spread the authority across a huge swath of the U.S. government, for investigating everything from hazardous waste disposal, the environment, atomic energy, child exploitation, food stamp fraud, medical insurance fraud, terrorism, securities violations, satellites, seals, student loans, and for breaches of dozens of laws pertaining to fruits, vegetables, livestock and crops. Not one of the government agencies with some of the broadest administrative subpoena powers Wired contacted, including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, would voluntarily hand over data detailing how often they issued administrative subpoenas. The Drug Enforcement Administration obtained the power under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and is believed to be among the biggest issuers of administrative subpoenas. ?It?s a tool in the toolbox we have to build a drug investigation. Obviously, a much, much lower threshold than a search warrant,? said Lawrence Payne, a DEA spokesman, referring to the administrative subpoena generically. Payne declined to discuss individual cases. Payne said in a telephone interview that no database was kept on the number of administrative subpoenas the DEA issued. But in 2006, Ava Cooper Davis, the DEA?s deputy assistant administrator, told a congressional hearing, ?The administrative subpoena must have a DEA case file number, be signed by the investigator?s supervisor, and be given a sequential number for recording in a log book or computer database so that a particular field office can track and account for any administrative subpoenas issued by that office.? After being shown Davis? statement, Payne then told Wired to send in a Freedom of Information Act request, as did some of the local DEA offices we contacted, if they got back to us at all. ?Would suggest a FOIA request to see whether you can get a number of administrative subpoenas. Our databases have changed over the years as far as how things are tracked and we don?t have access to those in public affairs unfortunately,? Payne said in an e-mail. He said the agency has ?never? been asked how many times it issued administrative subpoenas. Amy Baggio, a Portland, Oregon federal public defender representing drug defendants for a decade, said DEA agents ?use these like a doctor?s prescription pad on their desk.? Sometimes, she said, they issue ?hundreds upon hundreds of them? for a single prosecution ? often targeting mobile phone records. ?They are using them exponentially more in all types of federal criminal investigations. I?m seeing them in every drug case now,? Baggio said. ?Nobody is watching what they are doing. I perceive a complete lack of oversight because there isn?t any required.? A typical DEA investigation might start with an informant or an arrested dealer suspected of drug trafficking, she said. The authorities will use an administrative subpoena to get that target?s phone records ? logs of the incoming and outgoing calls ? and text-message logs of the numbers of incoming and outgoing texts. Then the DEA will administratively subpoena that same information for the phone numbers disclosed from the original subpoena, and so on, she said. Often, Baggio said, the records not only show incoming and outgoing communications, they also highlight the mobile towers a phone pinged when performing that communication. ?Then they try to make a connection for drug activity and they do that again and again,? Baggio said. ?They used a subpoena to know that my client used a phone up in Canada, but he said he was playing soccer with his kids in Salem.? That client is doing 11 years on drug trafficking charges, thanks to an investigation, Baggio said, that commenced with the use of administrative subpoenas. The FBI was as tight-lipped as the DEA about the number of administrative subpoenas it issues. Susan McKee, an FBI spokeswoman, suggested that some of the bureau?s figures for how many administrative subpoenas it has issued, for as many years back as possible, ?may be classified.? In a follow-up e-mail, McKee offered the same advice as the DEA. ?I am sorry the statistics you are looking for are not readily available. I would suggest that you explore the FOIA process,? she said. If all of those statistics are classified, that would be very odd. The FBI is required to report annually how often they use the terrorism and espionage-specific administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters to target Americans. In all, the bureau has reported issuing 290,000 National Security Letters directed at Americans in the past decade. But those aimed at foreigners are not required to be accounted for publicly. Likewise, FBI anti-terrorism requests for subscriber information ? the name and phone numbers associated with phone, e-mail or Twitter accounts for example, aren?t included in that tally either, regardless if the account holder is an American or foreigner. All of which means that, even in the one instance where public reporting is required of administrative subpoenas, the numbers are massively under-reported, according to Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ?I think it?s ridiculous they won?t release the real numbers,? she said. Richardson speculated that the government has ?something to hide.? Some of the stranger statutes authorizing administrative subpoenas involve the Agriculture Department?s power to investigate breaches of the Floral Research and Consumer Information Act and the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act. The Commerce Department has administrative subpoena power for enforcing laws relating to the Atlantic tuna and the Northern Pacific halibut. It also has those powers when it comes to enforcing the National Weather Modification Act of 1976, requiring ?any person to submit a report before, during, or after that person may engage in any weather modification attempt or activity.? In a 2002 government report, the Commerce Department said it had not used its administrative subpoena powers to enforce the National Weather Modification Act ?in the recent past.? (.pdf) Susan Horowitz, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, urged Wired to send in a FOIA in a bid to obtain data surrounding how often it issues administrative subpoenas. Lacking in all of these administrative subpoenas is Fourth Amendment scrutiny ? in other words, judicial oversight. That?s because probable cause ? the warrant standard ? does not apply to the administrative subpoena. Often, the receiving party is gagged from disclosing them to the actual targets, who could, if notified, ask a judge to quash it. And even when they are challenged in court, judges defer to Congress ? the Fourth Amendment notwithstanding. In one seminal case on the power of the administrative subpoena, the Supreme Court in 1950 instructed the lower courts that the subpoenas should not be quashed if ?the inquiry is within the authority of the agency, the demand is not too indefinite and the information sought is reasonably relevant.? In the mobile age, one of the biggest targets of the administrative subpoena appears to be the cellphone. AT&T, the nation?s second-largest mobile carrier, replied to a congressional inquiry in May that it had received 63,100 subpoenas for customer information in 2007. That more than doubled to 131,400 last year. (AT&T did not say whether any of the subpoenas were issued by a grand jury. AT&T declined to elaborate on the figures.) By contrast, AT&T reported 36,900 court orders for subscriber data in 2007. That number grew to 49,700 court orders last year, a growth rate that?s anemic compared to the doubling of subpoenas in the same period. In all, the nation?s mobile carriers reported that they responded to 1.3 million requests last year for subscriber information. Other than AT&T, most of the figures that the nine mobile carriers reported did not directly break down the numbers between warrants and subpoenas. In a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), AT&T said it usually always positively responds to subpoenas except when ?law enforcement may attempt to obtain information using a subpoena when a court order is required.? While there is much confusion as to when a court order is needed, they are generally required for wiretapping and sometimes for ongoing locational data. Markey?s office did not respond for comment. Many, including Baggio, charge that the government?s use of administrative subpoenas is often nothing less than a ?fishing expedition.? And the courts don?t seem to mind. In the Golden Valley case, the San Francisco federal appeals court said the outcome was a no-brainer, that Congress had spoken. ?We easily conclude that power consumption records at the three customer residences satisfy the relevance standard for the issuance of an administrative subpoena in a drug investigation,? the court ruled. The decision seemingly trumps a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that the authorities must obtain search warrants to employ thermal-imaging devices to detect indoor marijuana growing operations. Ironically, the justices ruled that the imaging devices, used outside a house, carry the potential to ?shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.? Rewind to 1996, when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the drug-trafficking conviction of a man arrested aboard an Amtrak train in December 1993. A DEA agent issued an administrative subpoena demanding Amtrak hand over passenger lists and reservations for trains stopping in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the agent was based. The agent reviewed the reservation information looking for passengers who paid cash, booked sleeping cars, and purchased tickets on the day of departure, ?all of which in his experience suggested possible drug trafficking,? the appeals court said, in upholding the challenged subpoena. Hilman Moffett was found to be carrying 162 pounds of baled marijuana in his luggage. In one high-profile case, the Securities and Exchange Commission used the administrative subpoena power to help unwind the Enron financial scandal in 2003. And a decade ago, the Justice Department used administrative subpoenas to investigate a Cleveland, Ohio, podiatrist for an alleged kickback scheme with two medical testing labs. The subpoenas sought the doctor?s professional journals, copies of his and his children?s bank and financial records, files of patients who were referred to the labs in question, and his tax returns. In another example, a judge sided with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in 2007, ordering publisher McGraw-Hill to turn over documents concerning data used in one of its publications to calculate the price of natural gas as part of the government?s probe into a price-manipulation scandal. Records obtained by a federal agency don?t have to stay with that agency or be destroyed, either. Some of them may be transferred to other agencies if ?there is reason to believe that the records are relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry of the receiving agency,? according to a Justice Department Criminal Resource Manual. The records can be transferred to state agencies, too. But the states may not need the federal government?s assistance. They have an undetermined number of statutes authorizing the issuance of their own administrative subpoenas. For instance, most every state has that authority when it comes to investigating child-support cases. (.pdf) Consider the Boston case in which Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley issued an administrative subpoena in December demanding ?subscriber information? for several alleged members of Anonymous as part of an investigation into who sabotaged Boston police?s website and released officers? e-mails. A Suffolk County judge in February sided with Conley?s administrative subpoena that ordered Twitter to hand over IP addresses of accounts identified as ?Guido Fawkes,? ?@p0isAn0N,? and ?@OccupyBoston.? Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt Law School scholar who has written extensively on administrative subpoenas, said the power of the administrative subpoena was born at the turn of the 20th century, when the U.S. began developing the regulatory state. Administrative subpoenas initially passed court muster since they were used by agencies to get records from companies to prosecute unlawful business practices, he said. Corporations weren?t thought to have the same privacy rights as individuals, and administrative subpoenas weren?t supposed to be used to get at private papers. When the Supreme Court upheld that the Federal Trade Commission?s administrative subpoena of internal tobacco company records in 1924, Justice Wendell Holmes limited the power to companies, writing that anyone ?who respects the spirit as well as the letter of the Fourth Amendment would be loath to believe that Congress intended to authorize one of its subordinate agencies to sweep all our traditions into the fire and to direct fishing expeditions into private papers.? But times have changed. ?In some ways, they were a good thing if you were liberal,? Slobogin said of the administrative subpoena. ?But they have migrated from corrupt businesses to people suspected of crime. They are fishing expeditions when there is no probable cause for a warrant.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 14:39:39 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:39:39 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Java Update Leaves PCs Open To Hackers, Experts Warn Message-ID: <183B2534-74A2-4647-A187-A19F00F32003@infowarrior.org> (c/o JC) Java Update Leaves PCs Open To Hackers, Experts Warn Reuters | By Jim Finkle Posted: 08/27/2012 6:44 pm Updated: 08/28/2012 9:14 am By Jim Finkle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/java-update-hackers_n_1834815.html?utm_hp_ref=tw BOSTON (Reuters) - Computer security firms are urging PC users to disable Java software in their browsers, saying the widely installed, free software from Oracle Corp opens machines to hacker attacks and there is no way to defend against them. The warnings, which began emerging over the weekend from Rapid7, AlienVault and other cyber security firms, are likely to unnerve a PC community scrambling to fend off growing security threats from hackers, viruses and malware. Researchers have identified code that attacks machines by exploiting a newly discovered flaw in the latest version of Java. Once in, a second piece of software called "Poison Ivy" is released that lets hackers gain control of the infected computer, said Jaime Blasco, a research manager with AlienVault Labs. Several security firms advised users to immediately disable Java software -- installed in some form on the vast majority of personal computers around the world -- in their Internet browsers. Oracle says that Java sits on 97 percent of enterprise desktops. "If exploited, the attacker will be able to perform any action the victim can perform on the victim's machine," said Tod Beardsley, an engineering manager with Rapid7's Metasploit division. Computers can get infected without their users' knowledge simply by a visit to any website that has been compromised by hackers, said Joshua Drake, a senior research scientist with the security firm Accuvant. Java is a computer language that enables programmers to write one set of code to run on virtually any type of machine. It is widely used on the Internet so that Web developers can make their sites accessible from multiple browsers running on Microsoft Windows PCs or Macs from Apple Inc. An Oracle spokeswoman said she could not immediately comment on the matter. Security experts recommended that users not enable Java for universal use on their browsers. Instead, they said it was safest to allow use of Java browser plug-ins on a case-by-case basis when prompted for permission by trusted programs such as GoToMeeting, a Web-based collaboration tool from Citrix Systems Inc Rapid7 has set up a web page that tells users whether their browser has a Java plug-in installed that is vulnerable to attack: http://www.isjavaexploitable.com/ (Editing by Ciro Scotti) (Reporting By Jim Finkle) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 14:51:55 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:51:55 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - more on - Java Update Leaves PCs Open To Hackers, Experts Warn References: Message-ID: <2A651298-6677-486D-82C6-74B83D6D18A3@infowarrior.org> Begin forwarded message: > Subject: Re: [Infowarrior] - Java Update Leaves PCs Open To Hackers, Experts Warn > > Actually: > > Researchers: Java Zero-Day Leveraged Two Flaws > https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/08/java-exploit-leveraged-two-flaws/ > > And it is being actively exploited. > > - ferg > From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 19:27:42 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 20:27:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Oracle reportedly knew of critical Java bugs under attack for 4 months Message-ID: Oracle reportedly knew of critical Java bugs under attack for 4 months The critical vulnerabilities are now being exploited in serious malware attacks. by Dan Goodin - Aug 29 2012, 7:00pm EDT http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/critical-java-bugs-reported-4-months-ago le engineers were briefed on critical vulnerabilities in the Java software framework more than four months before the flaws were exploited in malware attacks that take complete control of end-user computers, according to a published report. Poland-based Security Explorations privately alerted Oracle to the bugs on April 2, IDG News reported on Wednesday. On Sunday, again?four months later, separate security researchers at FireEye reported targeted malware attacks that used the Oracle software to install the Poison Ivy backdoor trojan. The exploits were added to the popular BlackHole exploit kit on Monday evening, and have since snowballed. It can be found on more than a dozen separate websites, FireEye researcher Atif Mushtaq wrote in an update on Wednesday. According to IDG News, two of the 19 vulnerabilities Security Explorations reported in April are those now under attack. By combining them, hackers are able to completely bypass security protections built into Java that are supposed to isolate Java applications from sensitive operating system functions. Neither of those were fixed during the most recent critical patch update for Java in June, although it did address three other issues the Polish firm reported. Oracle's next regular update isn't scheduled until the mid-October. The flawed Java components violate many of Oracle's own Secure Coding Guidelines for the Java Programming Language, Security Explorations said. In an exploit analysis published on Tuesday, Immunity Inc. researcher Esteban Guillardoy wrote, "The first bug was used to get a reference to sun.awt.SunToolkit class that is restricted to applets while the second bug invokes the getField public static method on SunToolkit using reflection with a trusted immediate caller bypassing a security check. The beauty of this bug class is that it provides 100 percent reliability and is multiplatform. Hence this will shortly become the penetration test Swiss knife for the next couple of years (as did its older brother CVE-2008-5353)." It's not uncommon for a single malware attack to stitch together multiple vulnerabilities for maximum effect. The Stuxnet worm, for example, targeted five separate zero-day flaws in Microsoft's Windows operating system. A recent hack that took full control of Google's Chrome browser exploited six bugs. Security Explorations' April advisory said the firm provided proof-of-concept exploits for all the vulnerabilities reported to Oracle, although CEO Adam Gowdiak said the code submitted combined the bugs differently from those exploited in the wild to bypass Java's security sandbox. Oracle hasn't commented on the vulnerabilities since the attacks became public. Company representatives didn't respond to e-mail messages seeking comment for this post. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 29 19:37:24 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 20:37:24 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GIMP now (finally) available as a native Mac app Message-ID: <96EC93DC-BF0A-4741-954D-6C814283346C@infowarrior.org> GIMP now (finally) available as a native Mac app by Mike Schramm Aug 29th 2012 at 4:00PM http://www.tuaw.com/2012/08/29/gimp-now-finally-available-as-a-native-mac-app/ This is something that's been a long time coming, and it's finally here. GIMP is an excellent Photoshop-esque open source photo editor. While it's been available on Mac for a long time, it has required the X11 Window environment, which itself needs a separate (and somewhat messy) installation. For a long time, the programmers working on GIMP have been promising to eventually take it native, but it hasn't happened until just recently. As of version 2.8.2, you can now simply go grab the GIMP .dmg file from the main website, and then install and run on your Mac as needed. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 07:20:46 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:20:46 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Comcast Said Near U.S. Approval to Encrypt Basic-Cable Signals Message-ID: <9EFD02EC-EEF0-4D7A-B4DF-59DE6EB1BDC8@infowarrior.org> Comcast Said Near U.S. Approval to Encrypt Basic-Cable Signals By Todd Shields - Aug 30, 2012 12:01 AM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-29/comcast-said-near-u-s-approval-to-encrypt-basic-cable-signals.html Cable companies led by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) are close to winning U.S. permission to start encrypting basic- tier signals, two regulatory officials said, in a move to fight theft and reduce service calls. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has asked fellow commissioners to lift an encryption prohibition in place since 1994, the agency officials said yesterday. They asked not to be identified because the request hasn?t been made public. The agency last year proposed allowing encryption following requests from companies, including New York-area provider Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) and closely held RCN Telecom Services Inc. Almost one-fifth of 134 households whose cable connections were cut off by RCN during an audit in Chicago last year subsequently contacted the company to subscribe, ?clear evidence that they had previously been viewing cable without paying,? the company told the FCC in a filing last year. Cablevision found that, when it encrypted basic service under a waiver from the FCC, it almost eliminated the need to send crews in trucks to disconnect service, the Bethpage, New York-based company told the agency in a filing. ?Cablevision?s experience proves the environmental benefits of eliminating the encryption prohibition,? Cablevision told the agency. Digital Signals Encrypting the basic tier would let Comcast start and stop service remotely, which customers prefer to scheduling an appointment with a technician, Philadelphia-based Comcast said in a filing at the FCC. RCN, based in Herndon, Virginia, said in a filing it was seeing rising levels of theft as cable systems replace analog service with digital signals that are easier to steal. Television sets with modern tuners can receive the unencrypted basic-service package which is sent in digital format and includes local broadcast stations. Cable companies already encrypt offerings on the more expensive programming tiers that aren?t regulated by the FCC and include a wider array of channels. The FCC prohibited encryption at a time cable dominated the pay-TV market, so customers wouldn?t need a set-top box to view local stations. The requirement doesn?t hold for satellite providers DirecTV (DTV) and Dish Network Corp. (DISH) or for cable competitors such as TV services offered by AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Communications Inc. Free Service The National Cable & Telecommunications Association in 2004 estimated that about 5 percent of homes near cable lines accessed service without paying, resulting in almost $5 billion in lost revenue. That was more than 8 percent of industry revenues that year, according to a filing at the FCC by the Washington-based trade group. The organization?s members include the biggest U.S. cable operator, Comcast, No. 2 provider Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) and Cablevision. Genachowski?s proposal includes methods for third-party equipment makers such as Boxee Inc. to relay unscrambled basic programming to customers, the two officials said. Boxee had expressed concern its customers wouldn?t be able to access basic-cable TV channels. Genachowski?s proposal faces a vote and no deadline for action at the five-member agency where he is part of the 3-2 Democratic majority. Neil Grace, an FCC spokesman, in an e-mail declined to comment. To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Shields in Washington at tshields3 at bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2 at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 09:28:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:28:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes Message-ID: <92B405CF-30F1-4080-9AF0-36C6BB7A4D26@infowarrior.org> Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes ? By Christina Bonnington and Spencer Ackerman ? August 30, 2012 | ? 6:30 am | http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/drone-app/ It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America?s many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store ? and therefore, from iPhones everywhere. The Cupertino company says the content is ?objectionable and crude,? according to Apple?s latest rejection letter. It?s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away, says Josh Begley, the program?s New York-based developer. The company?s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Store keep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application that aggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia ?not useful.? Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo. And now, there?s this crude content problem. Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn?t present grisly images of corpses left in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when a strike has occurred, going off a publicly available database of strikes compiled by the U.K.?s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles media accounts of the strikes. iOS developers have a strict set of guidelines that must be adhered to in order to gain acceptance into the App Store. Apps are judged on technical, content and design criteria. As Apple does not comment on the app reviews process, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly why an app got rejected. But Apple?s team of reviewers is small, sifts through up to 10,000 apps a week, and necessarily errs on the side of caution when it comes to potentially questionable apps. Apple?s original objections to Drones+ regarded the functionality Begley?s app, not its content. Now he?s wondering if it?s worth redesigning and submitting it a fourth time. ?If the content is found to be objectionable, and it?s literally just an aggregation of news, I don?t know how to change that,? Begley says. Begley?s app is unlikely to be the next Angry Birds or Draw Something. It?s deliberately threadbare. When a drone strike occurs, Drones+ catalogs it, and presents a map of the area where the strike took place, marked by a pushpin. You can click through to media reports of a given strike that the Bureau of Investigative Reporting compiles, as well as some basic facts about whom the media thinks the strike targeted. As the demo video above shows, that?s about it. It works best, Begley thinks, when users enable push notifications for Drones+. ?I wanted to play with this idea of push notifications and push button technology ? essentially asking a question about what we choose to get notified about in real time,? he says. ?I thought reaching into the pockets of U.S. smartphone users and annoying them into drone-consciousness could be an interesting way to surface the conversation a bit more.? But that conversation may not end up occurring. Begley, a student at Clay Shirky?s NYU Media Lab, submitted a threadbare version of Drones+ to Apple in July. About two weeks later, on July 23, Apple told him was just too blah. ?The features and/or content of your app were not useful or entertaining enough,? read an e-mail from Apple Begley shared with Wired, ?or your app did not appeal to a broad enough audience.? Finally, on Aug. 27, Apple gave him yet another thumbs down. But this time the company?s reasons were different from the fairly clear-cut functionality concerns it previously cited. ?We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,? the company e-mailed him. It was the first time the App Store told him that his content was the real problem, even though the content hadn?t changed much from Begley?s initial July submission. It?s a curious choice: The App Store carries remote-control apps for a drone quadricopter, although not one actually being used in a war zone. And of course, the App Store houses innumerable applications for news publications and aggregators that deliver much of the same content provided by Begley?s app. Wired reached out to Apple on the perplexing rejection of the app, but Apple was unable to comment. Begley is about at his wits end over the iOS version of Drones+. ?I?m kind of back at the drawing board about what exactly I?m supposed to do,? Begley said. The basic idea was to see if he could get App Store denizens a bit more interested in the U.S.? secretive, robotic wars, with information on those wars popping up on their phones the same way an Instagram comment or retweet might. Instead, Begley?s thinking about whether he?d have a better shot making the same point in the Android Market. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 09:31:19 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:31:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Collusion between the New York Times and the CIA Message-ID: <32DE3EBA-D551-4465-9F76-A3E974EC7060@infowarrior.org> Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power < - > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 10:51:54 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:51:54 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The TSA's Infamous 'Behavior Detection' In Action Message-ID: The TSA's Infamous 'Behavior Detection' In Action: Mandatory 'Chats' About Every Detail Of Your Trip < - > It's nearly impossible for the average human being to chat normally with someone who has the power to indefinitely detain or otherwise screw up their travel plans for any number of nebulous "violations." There's no such thing as an innocuous or friendly question when it comes to an agency with a reputation for acting irresponsibly, vindictively and ignorantly, depending on the situation. No one is ever going to feel comfortable just handing out additional personal information, no matter how anecdotal, to someone who can use any misstep as an excuse to search, detain or otherwise inconvenience anyone and everyone. < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120826/17463920160/tsas-infamous-behavior-detection-action-mandatory-chats-about-every-detail-your-trip.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 15:25:30 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:25:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Texas voter ID law is blocked Message-ID: <44D80CC8-A758-431C-87A7-5264854AA2CE@infowarrior.org> Texas voter ID law is blocked By Sari Horwitz and Del Quentin Wilber, Updated: Thursday, August 30, 12:59 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/texas-voter-id-law-struck-down/2012/08/30/4a07e270-f2ad-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html?hpid=z1 A federal court on Thursday blocked a controversial new voter ID law in Texas, ruling that the state failed to show that the law would not harm the voting rights of minorities. The three-judge panel in the historic case said that evidence also showed that costs of obtaining a voter ID would fall most heavily on poor African Americans and Hispanics in Texas. Evidence submitted by Texas to prove that its law did not discriminate was ?unpersuasive, invalid, or both,? wrote David. S. Tatel, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in the panel?s 56-page opinion. The ruling will likely have political implications in the coming elections. Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over whether increasingly tough voter ID laws discriminate against African Americans and Hispanics. Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott said that the state will appeal Thursday?s ruling to the Supreme Court, which is the next stop in a voting rights case. ?Today?s decision is wrong on the law and improperly prevents Texas from implementing the same type of ballot integrity safeguards that are employed by Georgia and Indiana ? and were upheld by the Supreme Court,? Abbott said in a statement. Texas is the largest state covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires federal approval or ?preclearance? of any voting changes in states that have a history of discrimination. Because of Texas?s discrimination history, the voter ID law signed last year by its Republican governor, Rick Perry, had to be cleared by the Justice Department. The department blocked the law in March, saying it would endanger minority voting rights. Texas sued the department, leading to a week-long trial in July. Tatel was joined in the Texas decision by U.S. district judges Rosemary Collyer, appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush and Robert L. Wilkins, who was nominated in 2010 by President Obama. Earlier this week, a separate three-judge panel in Washington threw out Texas?s redistricting plans saying the maps drawn by the Republican-led legislature undermined the political clout of minorities who are responsible for the state?s population growth. The Obama administration opposed both laws because it says they threaten to disenfranchise millions of Latino and African American voters. The challenges are part of an escalating national legal battle over voter ID laws that has become more intense because it is an election year. Eight states passed voter ID laws last year, and critics say the new statutes could hurt turnout among minority voters and others, many of whom helped elect Obama in 2008. But supporters of the measures ? seven of which were signed by Republican governors and one by an independent ? say that requiring voters to show specific photo IDs would prevent voter fraud. Republican lawmakers have argued that the voter ID law is needed to clean up voter rolls, which they say are filled with the names of illegal immigrants, ineligible felons and the deceased. Texas, they argue, is asking for no more identification than people need to board an airplane, get a library card or enter many government buildings. In a courtroom just down the hallway from where judges heard arguments over the Texas voter ID statute, lawyers for the Justice Department and South Carolina are squaring off this week over a similar measure passed by the state?s legislature last year. The Justice Department rejected the South Carolina voter ID law in December, the first time that a voting law was refused clearance by Justice in nearly 20 years. South Carolina sued the government to overturn the decision. The law would require South Carolina voters to show one of five forms of photo identification to be permitted to cast a ballot: a state driver?s license, an ID card issued by the state?s department of motor vehicles, a U.S. military ID, a passport, or a new form of free photo ID issued by county election officials. Lawyers for South Carolina say the law was needed to prevent election fraud and to ?enhance public confidence in the integrity of the law.? ?No one disputes that a state must have a system for identifying eligible registered voters who present themselves to vote,? Chris Bartolomucci, a lawyer for South Carolina, told the three-judge panel on Monday. ?That is just common sense.? The Justice Department and attorneys representing civil rights groups, including the NAACP and ACLU, countered in court that the law did discriminate against minority voters and cannot pass muster under the Voting Rights Act. ?A disproportionate number of those individuals are members of racial minority groups,? said Bradley Heard, a Justice Department lawyer, in describing how the law would affect South Carolina voters. Last month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. gave a speech in Texas and referred to voter ID laws as ?poll taxes,? referring to fees in some states in the South that were used to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era. Under the Texas law, the minimum cost to obtain a voter ID for a Texas resident without a copy of his birth certificate would be $22, according to the Justice Department. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 15:50:36 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:50:36 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Revolving Door: US Copyright Office General Counsel Becomes IFPI Lobbyist Message-ID: Revolving Door: US Copyright Office General Counsel Becomes IFPI Lobbyist http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120830/02135620215/revolving-door-us-copyright-office-general-counsel-becomes-ifpi-lobbyist.shtml We've pointed out over and over again that the revolving door between the government and the big copyright maximalists represents a broken system -- and we're seeing it yet again. David Carson, the long time General Counsel of the US Copyright Office has announced that he's leaving that job... to become head of global legal policy for the IFPI (the international version of the RIAA). His role will be to "coordinate the recorded music industry's legal policy strategy worldwide." Think he'll have undue influence with the US Copyright Office? He's only been in General Counsel of the US Copyright Office for 15 years. Of course, the IP-Watch story linked above shows how the revolving door works both ways. In effect, Carson is replacing Shira Perlmutter, who left the IFPI role earlier this year... to become the chief policy advisor on IP issues for the US Patent and Trademark Office. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 16:08:40 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:08:40 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Oracle issues Java security patch Message-ID: (Okay, it's "not critical" according to Oracle, but yet they're doing an out-of-cycle early release??? ---rick) Oracle issues Java security patch updated 04:36 pm EDT, Thu August 30, 2012 http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/08/30/update.7.addresses.hole.ahead.of.planned.update/ Oracle has issued a patch to address a recently discovered security hole affecting Mac, Windows, and Linux users. The patch represents a rare early fix release, as Oracle was already slated to release a patch in October of this year. The patch is available for download at Java.com. Security experts believe the latest patch fully disarms the Java exploit, which made remote installation of malicious code possible. Still, users will be vulnerable to the exploit until they update their Java software. Oracle does not mark the update as security critical, but many security experts urge users to download it and patch the security hole as soon as possible. Users downloading the new runtime may need to reload or quit their browser in order to enable Java again. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 19:01:49 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:01:49 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Facebook opens up user phone numbers, emails to advertisers Message-ID: Facebook opens up user phone numbers, emails to advertisers http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/08/30/advertiser.tool.improvement.in.limited.trials.opening.up.soon/ updated 07:14 pm EDT, Thu August 30, 2012 Advertiser tool improvement in limited trials, opening up soon Facebook has announced plans to allow external marketers to mine new customers from the social network using personal information, such as phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook users' unique UID code, and other identifying characteristics. The targeting option will be available to advertisers next week. Facebook says advertisers will have to seek their customers' permission to use the data for marketing purposes before they proceed. Using Facebook's "Power Editor" tool for advertisers, some users had access to a "custom audiences" tab earlier today. The tab allowed selection of which specific type of information they are targeting, and then upload a comma separated value (CSV) spreadsheet with identifying information. Both sets of data are allegedly asked before matching, which if properly executed, allows some modicum of data security preventing unauthorized data mining. None of the data being searched is unjustly acquired by Facebook-- the user would have had to provide the searchable data to the network by choice. Facebook's prior advertising methods have come under fire. A settlementagainst the "sponsored stories" feature is awaiting more information to the judge. Sponsored stories were advertisements that appeared on a user's Facebook page when a friend "likes" an advertiser, including the friend's name and photograph. The suit claims that the paid post uses user's images and names to advertise products without compensation for advertising purposes in violation of California law. Additionally, startup company Limited Run has deleted its Facebook page and will cease paying for ads, claiming that the majority of the clicks the company was receiving were driven not by real people but by automated programs. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 30 19:36:50 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:36:50 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Court ruling that NSA spying violated 4th Amendment remains secret Message-ID: Court ruling that NSA spying violated 4th Amendment remains secret EFF sues US to uncover details of court decision on phone and e-mail spying. by Jon Brodkin - Aug 30 2012, 7:40pm EDT http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/court-ruling-that-nsa-spying-violated-4th-amendment-remains-secret/ Last month, a letter to Congress noted that ?on at least one occasion? a secretive US court ruled that National Security Agency surveillance carried out under a 2008 act of Congress violated the Fourth Amendment?s restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures. But the actual ruling remains secret. Decisions handed down by the US?s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) are classified ?because of the sensitive intelligence matters they concern,? the letter from the Office of the National Intelligence Director to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) states. The explanation wasn?t good enough for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for details on the FISC ruling or rulings. Today, the EFF followed that up with a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in US District Court in Washington, D.C., saying its July 26 FOIA request has not been processed within the 20-day deadline. Details on a government ruling that the NSA violated the Constitution could help the EFF in its broader fight against warrantless wiretapping authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008. While the FISA amendments in 2008 were designed to aid anti-terrorist operations, the EFF says it "gave the NSA expansive power to spy on Americans' international e-mail and telephone calls." The EFF lawsuit filed today says the FISC ruling or rulings should be made public because it concerns ?possible questions about the government?s integrity which affect public confidence.? The lawsuit asks for a decision ordering the DOJ to make the records available immediately. In an accompanying statement, the EFF said the requested records could also help Congress decide whether to allow the surveillance program to continue. "The surveillance provisions in the FAA [FISA Amendments Act] will sunset at the end of this year unless Congress reauthorizes the law,? the EFF said. ?The pending congressional debate on reauthorization makes it all the more critical that the government release this information on the NSA's actions.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 06:57:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:57:52 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents Message-ID: <379DDBA6-C99D-4D7B-933F-37D02BA4A032@infowarrior.org> Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents By NICOLE PERLROTH Published: August 30, 2012 SAN FRANCISCO ? Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Google engineer and Bill Marczak is earning a Ph.D. in computer science. But this summer, the two men have been moonlighting as detectives, chasing an elusive surveillance tool from Bahrain across five continents. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/technology/finspy-software-is-tracking-political-dissidents.html?_r=1&hpw Chanting antigovernment slogans, mourners escorted the body of a 16-year-old killed by security forces in Bahrain this month. What they found was the widespread use of sophisticated, off-the-shelf computer espionage software by governments with questionable records on human rights. While the software is supposedly sold for use only in criminal investigations, the two came across evidence that it was being used to target political dissidents. The software proved to be the stuff of a spy film: it can grab images of computer screens, record Skype chats, turn on cameras and microphones and log keystrokes. The two men said they discovered mobile versions of the spyware customized for all major mobile phones. But what made the software especially sophisticated was how well it avoided detection. Its creators specifically engineered it to elude antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, F-Secure and others. The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes. The market for such technologies has grown to $5 billion a year from ?nothing 10 years ago,? said Jerry Lucas, president of TeleStrategies, the company behind ISS World, an annual surveillance show where law enforcement agents view the latest computer spyware. FinSpy is made by the Gamma Group, a British company that says it sells monitoring software to governments solely for criminal investigations. ?This is dual-use equipment,? said Eva Galperin, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group. ?If you sell it to a country that obeys the rule of law, they may use it for law enforcement. If you sell it to a country where the rule of law is not so strong, it will be used to monitor journalists and dissidents.? Until Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak stumbled upon FinSpy last May, security researchers had tried, unsuccessfully, for a year to track it down. FinSpy gained notoriety in March 2011 after protesters raided Egypt?s state security headquarters and discovered a document that appeared to be a proposal by the Gamma Group to sell FinSpy to the government of President Hosni Mubarak for $353,000. It is unclear whether that transaction was ever completed. Martin J. Muench, a Gamma Group managing director, said his company did not disclose its customers. In an e-mail, he said the Gamma Group sold FinSpy to governments only to monitor criminals and that it was most frequently used ?against pedophiles, terrorists, organized crime, kidnapping and human trafficking.? In May, Mr. Marquis-Boire, 32, of San Francisco, and Mr. Marczak, 24, of Berkeley, Calif., volunteered to analyze some suspicious e-mails sent to three Bahraini activists. They discovered all the e-mails contained spyware that reported back to the same command-and-control server in Bahrain. The apparent use of the spyware to monitor Bahraini activists, none of whom had any criminal history, suggested that it had been used more broadly. Bahrain has been increasingly criticized for human rights abuses. This month, a 16-year-old Bahraini protester was killed in what activists said was a brutal attack by security forces, but which Bahrain?s government framed as self-defense. The findings of the two men came as no surprise to those in the field. ?There has been a clear increase in the availability of penetrating cyberattack tools,? said Sameer Bhalotra, President Obama?s former senior director for cybersecurity who now serves as the chief operating officer of Impermium, a computer security firm. ?These were once the realm of the black market and intelligence agencies. Now they are emerging more and more. The problem is that it only requires small changes to apply a surveillance tool for attack, and in this case it looks like dissidents were targeted.? Since publishing their findings, Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak have started receiving malware samples from other security researchers and from activist groups that suspected they may have been targets. In several cases, the two found that the samples reported back to Web sites run by the Gamma Group. But other samples appeared to be actively snooping for foreign governments. A second set of researchers from Rapid7, of Boston, scoured the Internet for links to the software and discovered it running in 10 more countries. Indeed, the spyware was running off EC2, an Amazon.com cloud storage service. Amazon did not return requests for clarification, but Mr. Marczak and Mr. Marquis-Boire said the server appeared to be a proxy, a way to conceal traffic. Mr. Marquis-Boire said a Turkmenistan server running the software belonged to a range of I.P. addresses specifically assigned to the ministry of communications. It is the first clear-cut case of a government running the spyware off its own computer system. Human Rights Watch recently called Turkmenistan one of the ?world?s most repressive countries? and warned that dissidents faced ?constant threat of government reprisal.? Ms. Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, ?Nobody in their right mind would claim it is O.K. to sell surveillance to Turkmenistan.? The Gamma Group would not confirm it sold software to Turkmenistan. A military attach? at the Turkmenistan Embassy in Washington refused to comment. Mr. Muench, who for the last month has repeatedly denied that the researchers had pinpointed the company?s spyware, sharply reversed course Wednesday. In a statement released less than an hour after the researchers published their latest findings, Mr. Muench said that a Gamma Group server had been broken into and that several demonstration copies of FinSpy had been stolen. By Thursday afternoon, several of the FinSpy servers began to disappear, Mr. Marczak said. Servers in Singapore, Indonesia, Mongolia and Brunei went dark, while one in Bahrain briefly shut down before reincarnating elsewhere. Mr. Marquis-Boire said that as he traced spyware from Bahrain to 14 other countries ? many of them ?places with tight centralized control? ? he grew increasingly worried about the people on the other end. Four months in, he sounds like a man who wants to take a break, but knows he cannot just yet: ?I can?t wait for the day when I can sleep in and watch movies and go to the pub instead of analyzing malware and pondering the state of the global cybersurveillance industry.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 07:13:11 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 08:13:11 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: What The Apollo Astronauts Did For Life Insurance Message-ID: <4BA62ECE-EBA8-4322-8E7C-C09292FC7D45@infowarrior.org> What The Apollo Astronauts Did For Life Insurance 03:21 am August 30, 2012 http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/30/160267398/what-the-apollo-astronauts-did-for-life-insurance This week, Americans have been remembering Neil Armstrong. But before he walked on the moon, he had to solve a much more prosaic problem. "You're about to embark on a mission that's more dangerous than anything any human has ever done before," Robert Pearlman, a space historian and collector with collectspace.com, told me. "And you have a family that you're leaving behind on Earth, and there's a real chance you will not be returning." Exactly the kind of situation a responsible person plans for by taking out a life insurance policy. Not surprisingly, a life insurance policy for somebody about to get on a rocket to the moon cost a fortune. But Neil Armstrong had something going for him. He was famous, as was the whole Apollo 11 crew. People really wanted their autographs. "These astronauts had been signing autographs since the day they were announced as astronauts, and they knew even though eBay didn't exist back then, that there was a market for such things," Pearlman said. "There was demand." Especially for what were called covers -? envelopes signed by astronauts and postmarked on important dates. About a month before Apollo 11 was set to launch, the three astronauts entered quarantine. And, during free moments in the following weeks, each of the astronauts signed hundreds of covers. They gave them to a friend. And on important days ? the day of the launch, the day the astronauts landed on the moon ? their friend got them to the post office and got them postmarked, and then distributed them to the astronauts' families. It was life insurance in the form of autographs. "If they did not return from the moon, their families could sell them ? to not just fund their day-to-day lives, but also fund their kids' college education and other life needs," Pearlman said. The life insurance autographs were not needed. Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon and came home safely. They signed probably tens of thousands more autographs for free. But then, in the 1990s, Robert Pearlman says, the insurance autographs started showing up in space memorabilia auctions. An Apollo 11 insurance autograph can cost as much as $30,000. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 10:48:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:48:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Obama Weighs Broad Program to Defend Networks From Cyber Attacks Message-ID: (c/o MM) Obama Weighs Broad Program to Defend Networks From Cyber Attacks By Chris Strohm - Aug 30, 2012 12:01 AM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-30/obama-weighs-broad-program-to-defend-networks-from-cyber-attacks.html President Barack Obama might create a broad new program to protect vital government and private computer networks from cyber attacks, according to a draft document being circulated in his administration. The government would continuously collect and disseminate information about cybersecurity threats in a new approach to combating attacks, according to the document. The administration is weighing taking action instead of waiting for Congress to pass cybersecurity legislation. The draft represents ?early? discussions about how to update a 2003 presidential directivefor protecting the most critical U.S. assets and ?is not close to being done,? White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The administration and Congress have spent much of the past year discussing ways to prevent cyber attacks that could cripple U.S. telecommunication networks, banks, pipelines and electric grids. The Senate failed to advance comprehensive cybersecurity legislation backed by the administration after Republicans objected it would be too costly and burdensome for companies. ?If the Congress is not going to act on something like this, then the president wants to make sure that we?re doing everything possible,? John Brennan, Obama?s counterterrorism adviser, said earlier this month. The draft document outlines a vision for sharing information among the Homeland Security Department, Defense Department, U.S. intelligence agencies and companies that own or operate critical computer networks. Threat Coordination The Department of Homeland Security would be in charge of defending federal, non-military networks and would coordinate efforts to protect private-sector networks, according to the draft. One issue that the draft doesn?t clearly explain is how much authority DHS would have to tell businesses what they must do to protect their computer systems from attack. The document says only that the department would plan ?requirements for vulnerability and risk assessments.? Two coordination centers would be created within DHS, one for physical assets and another for cybersecurity. ?Together, these centers shall be the federal government?s focal point for situational awareness and actionable information to protect the physical and cyber aspects of critical infrastructures,? according to the draft. Constant Picture The goal would be to have ?a near-real-time common operating picture? for threats to critical infrastructure and ?strong cooperation? between the government and companies, especially energy and communications companies, according to the document. The Obama administration also is considering issuing more stringent cybersecurity requirements through an executive order, Hayden said. Presidential directives typically address national security or foreign policy matters. They are issued by the National Security Council and may be classified. The directives carry the same weight as executive orders, which deal with management and operations of the executive branch. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, has said the administration should issue a cybersecurity order. ?While an executive order cannot convey protection from liability that private sector companies may face, your administration can issue cybersecurity standards and provide technical assistance to companies willing to take voluntary steps to improve their security,? Feinstein wrote in an Aug. 28 letter to Obama. ?You can also direct the intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security to provide as much information as possible to the private sector about cyber threats, including classified information,? she wrote The Senate bill number is S. 3414. To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington atcstrohm1 at bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katherine Rizzo at krizzo5 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 Aug 31 14:36:27 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:36:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - TSA Launches 18 New Twitter Accounts In PR Drive Message-ID: TSA Launches 18 New Twitter Accounts In PR Drive Federal agency denies accounts will be used to monitor public Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Friday, August 31, 2012 http://www.infowars.com/tsa-launches-18-new-twitter-accounts-in-pr-drive/ The Transportation Security Administration has launched a staggering eighteen new Twitter accounts as part of a PR drive presumably in response to the overwhelming amount of negative publicity the federal agency receives on a routine basis. ?As part of what looks to be a massive information campaign by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), TSA on Thursday announced the launch of 18 new Twitter accounts. If that seems like a lot for one organization, that?s because it is,? reports Security Management.com. Although the TSA claims that the new accounts are merely for enabling the public to access information relevant to their local area, only six of the eighteen will be used for that purpose. The rest will be staffed by TSA spokespersons and used to disseminate information about the conduct of the agency, which routinely comes under the national spotlight in a less than positive context. The TSA?s primary twitter account, which is linked to the agency?s official blog, has failed to refute accusations leveled at the TSA on numerous occasions before, most notably when it was unsuccessful in disproving engineer Jon Corbett?s evidence that the TSA?s $1 billion dollar program is virtually worthless because it can be fooled by sewing a metallic object in a side pocket. Asked if the public should be worried that the TSA would use the accounts to monitor Internet users who send negative comments to the federal agency?s Twitter accounts, the TSA responded, ?Our TSA Blog Team does not monitor individuals online.? However, as a leaked Department of Homeland Security manual revealed earlier this year, the TSA?s umbrella agency is indeed tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners. The words ?militia,? ?riot,? ?body scanner,? and ?nationalist? were included in the list of keywords the DHS is tasked with monitoring. In addition, a recent FOIA request revealed that the DHS was monitoring political opposition to its controversial See Something, Say Something campaign. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) also admits that it has documents which contain political profiling pertaining to Alex Jones, Infowars as well as the Drudge Report, but has thus far refused to release them despite facing a Freedom of Information Act request. ********************* Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 17:08:51 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:08:51 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Argentine tax agents to track all credit card buys Message-ID: <2CAB7B6E-46F0-417A-BC15-53FAE38F6245@infowarrior.org> Aug 31, 4:32 PM EDT Argentine tax agents to track all credit card buys By MICHAEL WARREN Associated Press http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_ARGENTINA_CREDIT_CARDS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-08-31-11-32-04 BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentina just made it more expensive for its people to use credit cards outside the country, and more dangerous for cardholders who aren't paying all the taxes they should. One measure published in Friday's official bulletin adds a 15 percent tax every time people make a purchase outside the country using a card issued by an Argentine bank. Another requires the banks to report every credit card purchase, home or abroad, to the tax agency. The moves target Argentines who have discovered that by using credit cards outside the country, they can get around increasingly tight currency controls and shelter their money from soaring inflation. Purchases outside Argentina using peso-denominated cards soared 48 percent in June compared to the year before, obligating the central bank to send $289 million out of the country in just one month. Overall capital flight soared to $23 billion in 2011. AFIP chief Ricardo Etchegaray, the government's top tax collector, presented the moves as populist measures that would only affect the wealthiest Argentines, and mainly when they travel outside the country - a reduced group of 168,000 taxpayers who charged $1.5 billion in the last 18 months. But a closer look shows the measures go much farther, giving the government powerful new tools to combat widespread tax evasion. Tax and customs agents now will be able to compare better what Argentines declare to the customs and tax agencies with what their credit card bills say. Before, the reporting requirements applied only to expensive charges of more than 3,000 pesos (about $645). Now, every single purchase by every co-signer must be reported. And if the totals show people are living large while claiming to be paupers, they could get into big trouble. "From October onward, (card-issuers) must report in detail all purchases made by cardholders and their co-signers, starting in September, both within and outside the country," said Etchegaray. "With this move, AFIP seeks to assure that taxes are paid by those contributors who are able to pay more." Argentines don't have to declare their income unless they are salaried and make more than $20,000 a year or are self-employed and make more than $30,000, so many register with the tax authorities as if they make less than the limit, dealing in cash and trying to keep their income and purchases off the books. But Argentina also taxes accumulated wealth, giving the government license to scrutinize people's private property to an extent that foreigners are ill-accustomed to. People whose incomes don't match their lifestyles can find themselves closed out of the financial system until they come clean. Since November 2011, Argentina's government has sought to stem capital flight by closing down nearly every avenue people have to legally trade their inflationary pesos for U.S. dollars. The black-market peso price has spiked as a result, trading now at 6.37 pesos to the dollar, compared to the official rate of 4.65. That 37 percent gap represents what people with undeclared pesos have to lose in order to convert their cash to dollars inside Argentina. Credit cards, meanwhile, are paid at the official rate, and many cardholders have figured out ways to use them to avoid this loss. The 15 percent tax raises the effective cost of purchases to 5.35, reducing the gap by nearly half. In neighboring Uruguay, long a refuge for Argentines seeking to shelter their money as well as a popular tourist destination, leftist President Jose Mujica called the measures "crudely protectionist" in an interview Friday with M24 Radio in Montevideo. He said his country should avoid anti-Argentine sentiment, but should take steps to mitigate the impact "because we all know the importance of tourism, we also know the importance of real estate investment." Cardholders will pay the new tax as part of each month's credit card bills, with the government promising to reimburse the totals each May to taxpayers whose sworn declarations show they paid more than they owed in taxes the previous year. But inflation will have robbed much of the reimbursement's real value by then, and for people who don't make enough income to need monthly withholdings through the year, it directly hits their pocketbooks. ? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 17:12:44 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:12:44 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Congress Demands Answers for Unjust Domain Name Seizures Message-ID: <8596155D-7EFF-4D7B-AE2E-96112BE70711@infowarrior.org> August 31, 2012 | By Trevor Timm Members of Congress Demand Answers for Homeland Security?s Unjust Domain Name Seizures This morning, a bipartisan group of Representatives, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), sent a pointed letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napalitano protesting the recent spat of domain name seizures?executed on dubious copyright grounds?that have been censoring websites with no due process. ?Our concern centers on your Department?s methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose actions and content are presumed to be lawful, protected speech,? the letter said, which was also signed by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut.). The Representatives? letter focused on the case of former hip hop website Dajaz1. Dajaz1?s domain name had been seized for over a year, despite evidence that the website had lawful material, and that ?many of the allegedly infringing links to copyrighted songs, and specifically the links that were the basis of the seizure order, were given to the site?s owner by artists and labels themselves? including Kanye West, Diddy, and a vice president of a major record label. Adding to the injustice, the government refused to cooperate with Dajaz1?s attorneys for months, and sought numerous extensions of the seizure authority in secret. When the court records were finally released, it showed that the government was waiting on the RIAA to evaluate a "sampling of allegedly infringing content" and respond to other ?outstanding questions.? While the RIAA fiddled, Dajaz1 lost the right to speak and the public lost its right to read what was published there. Finally, after a year, control over dajaz1.com was handed back to the owners with no apology, and no explanation. It is disturbing enough that DHS has been effectively acting as the tax-funded hired gun of the content industry, but, even more horrifying, it censored the wrong targets, for no good reason, for a year. Dajaz1?s case is far from unique, as we found out earlier this week when a similar situation happened to Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, the popular sports streaming sites that were seized?again with no due process?back in February 2011. The sites, which have been in the midst of a court fight to return its domains, had been arguing that linking was not infringing, noting that a Spanish court had already found the sites legal. Yet the government still held onto their domain for 18 months. On Wednesday, they again handed back their domains with no explanation. < - > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/members-congress-demand-answers-homeland-securitys-unjust-domain-name-seizures --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 31 17:13:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:13:20 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Battle for Privacy Intensifies in Australia Message-ID: <3051A05F-FD76-45A1-924C-3B8707C357A7@infowarrior.org> August 31, 2012 | By Rebecca Bowe The Battle for Privacy Intensifies in Australia Australians are fending off threats to their right to privacy from all directions. First, there was Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon?s push to expand government online surveillance powers, submitted to Parliament in a package of reforms sought in a National Security Inquiry. Then, on Aug. 22, the Australian Senate approved the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011, granting authorities the power to require phone and Internet providers to store up to 180 days worth of personal communications data. The purpose is to aid in investigations by both foreign and domestic law enforcement agencies, making it especially controversial since it can result in granting foreign governments access to Australian citizens? communications data. The legislation only allows for data retention in the cases of specifically targeted individuals. The bill is based on the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime ? which we've flagged in the past as one of the world?s worst Internet law treaties ? and the passage of the bill opens the door for Australia to join the Convention. But as the Australia Privacy Foundation has pointed out, Australia lacks the constitutional safeguards afforded to many other democratic countries that have ratified the treaty: < - > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/battle-privacy-intensifies-australia --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.