From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 3 06:41:59 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 07:41:59 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - UN internet regulation treaty talks begin in Dubai Message-ID: 2 December 2012 Last updated at 20:43 ET UN internet regulation treaty talks begin in Dubai By Leo Kelion Technology reporter http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20575844?print=true A UN agency is trying to calm fears that the internet could be damaged by a conference it is hosting. Government regulators from 193 countries are in Dubai to revise a wide-ranging communications treaty. Google has warned the event threatened the "open internet", while the EU said the current system worked, adding: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But the agency said action was needed to ensure investment in infrastructure to help more people access the net. "The brutal truth is that the internet remains largely [the] rich world's privilege, " said Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union, ahead of the meeting. "ITU wants to change that." Internet governance The ITU traces its roots back to 1865, pre-dating the United Nations. Back then the focus was on telegrams, but over ensuing decades governments have extended its remit to other communications technologies. It helped develop the standards that made sure different countries' telephone networks could talk to each other, and continues to allocate global radio spectrum and communication satellite orbits. The current event - the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit) - marks the first time it has overseen a major overhaul of telecommunication regulations since 1988. The ITU says there is a need to reflect the "dramatically different" technologies that have become commonplace over the past 24 years. But the US has said some of the proposals being put forward by other countries are "alarming". "There have been proposals that have suggested that the ITU should enter the internet governance business," said Terry Kramer, the US's ambassador to Wcit, last week. "There have been active recommendations that there be an invasive approach of governments in managing the internet, in managing the content that goes via the internet, what people are looking at, what they're saying. "These fundamentally violate everything that we believe in in terms of democracy and opportunities for individuals, and we're going to vigorously oppose any proposals of that nature." He added that he was specifically concerned by a proposal by Russia which said member states should have "equal rights to manage the internet" - a move he suggested would open the door to more censorship. However - as a recent editorial in the Moscow Times pointed out - Russia has already been able to introduce a "black list" of banned sites without needing an international treaty. The ITU's leader is also playing down suggestions that Russian demands will see him gain powers currently wielded by US-based bodies such as the internet name regulator Icann. "There is no need for the ITU to take over the internet governance," said Dr Toure following Mr Kramer's comments. Pay to stream One of the other concerns raised is that the conference could result in popular websites having to pay a fee to send data along telecom operators' networks. The European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (Etno) - which represents companies such as Orange, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom - has been lobbying governments to introduce what it calls a "quality based" model. This would see firms face charges if they wanted to ensure streamed video and other quality-critical content download without the risk of problems such as jerky images. Etno says a new business model is needed to provide service providers with the "incentive to invest in network infrastructure". A leaked proposal by Cameroon which talks of network operators deserving "full payment" has been interpreted by some as evidence that it is sympathetic to the idea. Mr Kramer has suggested that "a variety of nations in the Arab states" also supported the idea. However, the US and EU are against it which should theoretically stop the proposal in its tracks. The ITU has repeatedly said that there must be common ground, rather than just a majority view, before changes are introduced to the treaty. "Voting in our jargon means winners and losers, and we cannot afford that," Dr Toure told the BBC. Rejecting regulation Such assurances have failed to satisfy everyone. The EU's digital agenda commissioner, Neelie Kroes, has called into question why the treaty needs to refer to the net. "The internet works, it doesn't need to be regulated by ITR treaty," she tweeted. Vint Cerf - the computer scientist who co-designed some of the internet's core underlying protocols and who now acts as Google's chief internet evangelist - has been even more vocal, penning a series of op-ed columns. "A state-controlled system of regulation is not only unnecessary, it would almost invariably raise costs and prices and interfere with the rapid and organic growth of the internet we have seen since its commercial emergence in the 1990s," he wrote for CNN. Google itself has also run an "open internet" petition alongside the claim: "Only governments have a voice at the ITU... engineers, companies, and people that build and use the web have no vote." However, the ITU has pointed out that Google has a chance to put its views forward as part of the US's delegation to the conference. "They are here, and they're telling everyone that it's a closed society," said Dr Toure when asked about the firm's campaign. "We will challenge them here again to bring their points on the table. The point that they are bringing - which is internet governance - it's not really a place for discussion [of that] here. "Therefore we believe they will find themselves in an environment completely different from what they were expecting." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 3 08:38:59 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 09:38:59 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Three little ICANN atrocities that make the ITU look good by comparison Message-ID: December 1, 2012 Three little ICANN atrocities that make the ITU look good by comparison December 1st marks the beginning of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Fussing about the threat to the Internet posed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is reaching that state of critical mass where media outlets write about it mainly because other media outlets are writing about it. The tacit assumption behind much of this fussing is that the status quo, exemplified by ICANN and other ?multi-stakeholder institutions,? is doing a wonderful job and we should strive to preserve them. But the status quo is not so wonderful. In the past two weeks ICANN?s board and CEO have made decisions that are so bad they call into question its very legitimacy as an institution. And the governments participating in ICANN seem to be hell-bent on proving that the threat of arbitrary and uninformed governmental interference is more likely to come from inside ICANN than from the ITU. Here are the disturbing facts < -- > http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/12/01/three-little-icann-atrocities-that-make-the-itu-look-good-by-comparison/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 3 08:41:07 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 09:41:07 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pentagon plans elite espionage unit Message-ID: DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas By Greg Miller The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said. The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units. When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 ?collectors? in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years. The total includes military attach?s and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense. Among the Pentagon?s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China. ?This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,? the agency?s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. ?This is a major adjustment for national security.? < - > http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dia-to-send-hundreds-more-spies-overseas/2012/12/01/97463e4e-399b-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 4 07:53:03 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 08:53:03 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Pentagon Drops 'Strategic Communication' Message-ID: Pentagon Drops 'Strategic Communication' By Tom Vanden Brook http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/03/pentagon-trims-strategic-communication/1743485/ WASHINGTON ? The Pentagon is banishing the term "strategic communication," putting an end to an initiative that had promised to streamline the military's messaging but instead led to bureaucratic bloat and confusion, according to a memo obtained by USA TODAY. Strategic communication had aimed to synchronize the military's messages with its actions. Instead, it led to creation of offices and staffs that duplicated efforts of traditional public affairs offices, according to the memo. In the memo, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs George Little wrote that over the past six years, strategic communication "actually added a layer of staffing and planning that blurred roles and functions of traditional staff elements and resulted in confusion and inefficiencies." In the Army, for example, personnel assigned to strategic communication slots increased from seven in 2006 to 38 last year, Pentagon records show. The Army spent $5 million for contractors assigned to strategic communication. Little's memo to the chiefs of the military's combatant commands said, "We avoid using the term SC to avoid confusion." Strategic communication has had high-level detractors, including Adm. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the military communicated more with its actions than messages crafted by strategic communication staffs. Mullen told USA TODAY last year that he preferred traditional public affairs offices to provide information and context on military actions. The military has struggled for the past decade with its strategic communication. In 2001, an advisory board to the Pentagon was advised that it needed to do more to shape public opinion. Since then, several problems surfaced. In 2009, for example, the military severed a contract with the Rendon Group, a strategic communication firm, after it was learned that the company was profiling reporters who might write negative stories. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 4 07:53:14 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 08:53:14 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - All I Want For Christmas Is The Truth Message-ID: <31862857-3AEA-4662-B68F-A6B396B97F8E@infowarrior.org> Although talking mostly about "information" related to the ongoing global financial crisis, there are plenty of useful nuggets about public (dis)information, perception management, and so forth that makes for interesting reading. (And his edit of the classic Jack Nicholson tirade is brilliant, too) --rick ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS THE TRUTH Jim Quinn http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=43582 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 4 11:19:23 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 12:19:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - ITU Approves Deep Packet Inspection Standard Behind Closed Doors Message-ID: <0A28A987-D8CF-4CCA-8E58-736A557F9680@infowarrior.org> ITU Approves Deep Packet Inspection Standard Behind Closed Doors, Ignores Huge Privacy Implications http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121203/07493221209/itu-approves-deep-packet-inspection-standard-behind-closed-doors-ignores-huge-privacy-implications.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 4 11:21:59 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 12:21:59 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - It's all in the EULA fine print Message-ID: <89BB412A-8273-4626-8F74-7C87B8F83BB2@infowarrior.org> Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/04/feature_tech_licences_are_daft/ Adobe demands 7,000 years a day from humankind It's all in the EULA fine print By Bob Dormon Posted in Applications, 4th December 2012 08:00 GMT Feature I'm not a very good liar, I haven't got the memory for it, which is why it always pricks my conscience whenever I tick the yes box to the prompt "I have read and understood?" when installing software. I am, of course, fibbing. I never read a word. In fact, even though we all tick yes to these agreements every day, unless you're a legal bod, I doubt you could find anyone you know who could quote a single line from any of them. Since the beginning of the year, I've been collecting licence agreements for all the software I've installed. The idea was to see just how many words I was being asked to read. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as the pile for me to read grew, so, in inverse proportion, did my will to live. I could lie at this point and say I read them all, but instead, I opted for a few well-worn favourites. Blind faith Adobe Flash anyone? In recent years, the company has claimed it had eight million downloads a day and, before we get on to the maths, have you ever followed that link that took you a second to ignore as you ticked the "I have read and agree?" box? < -- > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/04/feature_tech_licences_are_daft/print.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 4 12:06:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 13:06:20 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The open-and-shut administration Message-ID: <6CB59EBB-9113-4164-9A83-B8FF204513E3@infowarrior.org> The open-and-shut administration By Dana Milbank http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-open-and-shut-administration/2012/12/03/0fe12754-3d9f-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_print.html ?My administration,? President Obama wrote on his first day in office, ?is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.? Those were strong and hopeful words. Four years later, it is becoming more and more clear that they were just words. On Monday afternoon, open-government advocates assembled in a congressional hearing room to ponder what had become of the Obama administration?s lofty vows of transparency. ?It?s been a really tough slog,? said Anne Weismann of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. ?The lack of effective leadership in the White House, in the executive branch, has really made it difficult to have more significant progress.? ?They?ve been reluctant to take positions,? said Hudson Hollister of the Data Transparency Coalition, ?and translate that to real action.? ?In the beginning of 2010, [Obama] said he made a significant mistake by abandoning some of his pledges related to transparency,? said Josh Gerstein of Politico, ?and that going forward they would do things differently. Seems to me we are forward and it seems to me we?re not doing things any differently.? It was a more-in-sadness-than-in-anger critique of Obama often heard from the political left, and the moderator, the Sunlight Foundation?s Daniel Schuman, was apologetic. ?We?re placing a lot of blame at the administration,? he observed. ?Or blame isn?t the right word ? maybe responsibility.? No, blame is just fine. The Obama administration?s high level of opacity, though typical of modern presidencies, is troubling precisely because the president was so clear about his determination to do things differently. As recently as early last year, some open-government advocates were still hopeful, presenting Obama with an anti-secrecy award at the White House. But even then, there were signs of trouble: The award presentation wasn?t on his schedule and was closed to reporters. By certain measures, ?overall secrecy has actually increased rather than declined,? said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists? Project on Government Secrecy. ?Criminalization of unauthorized disclosures of information to the press has risen sharply, becoming a preferred tactic. Efforts to promote public accountability in controversial aspects of counterterrorism policy such as targeted killing have been blocked by threadbare, hardly credible national security secrecy claims.? A Washington Post report from this past summer concluded that ?by some measures the government is keeping more secrets than before.? Those making Freedom of Information Act requests in 2011 were less likely than in 2010 to get material from 10 of 15 Cabinet agencies, which were more likely to exploit the law?s exemptions. Also, the National Declassification Center, which Obama established in 2009, had by the summer of 2012 reviewed only 14 percent of the pages it was assigned to review and declassify by the end of 2013. Now the administration is maintaining silence as lawmakers prepare to pass one of the gravest threats to government transparency in years. A bill passed by the Senate intelligence committee would ban anybody but the top officials and public-relations staff at intelligence agencies from speaking to the media. The proposal, intended to crack down on classified leaks, would significantly set back freedom of the press, thwart whistle-blowers and squelch the airing of dissenting views on intelligence issues. This is part of a broader effort to make it a crime for national security officials to talk to reporters. The Obama administration has, to its credit, made progress in a few areas: releasing more of the White House visitor logs, disseminating more information about nuclear weapons, disclosing more about intelligence spending, and declassifying more historical records. But these don?t amount to the ?unprecedented level of openness? Obama promised. The few advances that have been made are mostly administrative changes that will end with the Obama administration. ?We haven?t seen that many, if any, legislative initiatives from the White House,? Weismann lamented at Monday?s gathering of the open-government advocates. Consider the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, a bill with bipartisan support that would make it easier to track government spending by requiring agencies to report expenditures in a uniform way online. The legislation is so uncontroversial that it passed the House on a voice vote. But the Obama administration raised objections ? and the transparency law has yet to see the light of day. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 5 07:01:40 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 08:01:40 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Latest TPP Round Locks Out Public Interest Groups Who Flew To New Zealand; Gives Them 15 Minutes Of Access Message-ID: <5B7F8AEA-34F2-4F9F-91A0-479B655F0E1C@infowarrior.org> Latest TPP Round Locks Out Public Interest Groups Who Flew To New Zealand; Gives Them 15 Minutes Of Access from the shameful dept The various government bodies negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been criticized repeatedly for their lack of transparency. In the last few negotiating meetings, they've tried to respond to this by arguing that they allowed public interest / civil society groups various ways to meet with and interact with the delegates. For the most part, this interaction was way too limited, but it was something. However, for the latest negotiating round in New Zealand, it appears that these groups have been almost entirely excluded. Representatives from a bunch of groups fighting for the public interest -- including EFF, KEI, OpenMedia.ca, Public Citizen and others flew all the way to New Zealand... only to be barred from the premises where the negotiations are being held, save for a brief 15 minute session for each on one day of the 10 day negotiation. < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121204/17393321227/latest-tpp-round-locks-out-public-interest-groups-who-flew-to-new-zealand-gives-them-15-minutes-access.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 5 07:06:38 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 08:06:38 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?What_Hell_Hath_Disney-Lucasfilm_?= =?windows-1252?q?Wrought=3F_=91Star_Wars=92_Meets_=91Extreme_Makeover=92?= Message-ID: <6489E1DA-A113-4665-B8D4-02FD3209E1BB@infowarrior.org> What Hell Hath Disney-Lucasfilm Wrought? ?Star Wars? Meets ?Extreme Makeover? http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/what-hell-hath-disney-lucasfilm-wrought-star-wars-meets-extreme-home-makeover/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 5 07:44:58 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 08:44:58 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Cloud Computing in Higher Education and Research Institutions and the USA Patriot Act Message-ID: Cloud Computing in Higher Education and Research Institutions and the USA Patriot Act http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2181534 Joris Van Hoboken Institute for Information Law Axel Arnbak Institute for Information Law (IViR, University of Amsterdam) Nico Van Eijk Institute for Information Law (IViR, University of Amsterdam) November 27, 2012 Abstract: Institutions have started to move their data and ICT operations into the cloud. It is becoming clear that this is leading to a decrease of overview and control over government access to data for law enforcement and national security purposes. This report looks at the possibilities for the U.S. government to obtain access to information in the cloud from Dutch institutions on the basis of U.S. law and on the basis of Dutch law and international co-operation. It concludes that the U.S. legal state of affairs implies that the transition towards the cloud has important negative consequences for the possibility to manage information confidentiality, information security and the privacy of European end users in relation to foreign governments. The Patriot Act from 2001 has started to play a symbolic role in the public debate. It is one important element in a larger, complex and dynamic legal framework for access to data for law enforcement and national security purposes. In particular, the FISA Amendments Act provision for access to data of non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. enacted in 2008 deserves attention. The report describes this and other legal powers for the U.S. government to obtain data of non-U.S. persons located outside of the U.S. from cloud providers that fall under its jurisdiction. Such jurisdiction applies widely, namely to cloud services that conduct systematic business in the United States and is not dependent on the location where the data are stored, as is often assumed. For non-U.S. persons located outside of the U.S., constitutional protection is not applicable and the statutory safeguards are minimal. In the Netherlands and across the EU, government agencies have legal powers to obtain access to cloud data as well. These provisions can also be be used to assist the U.S. government, when it does not have jurisdiction for instance, but they must stay within the constitutional safeguards set by national constitutions, the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter. Number of Pages in PDF File: 41 Keywords: cloud computing, privacy, information security, lawful access, Patriot Act, FISAA, ECPA http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2181534 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 5 08:42:51 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 09:42:51 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Senator slams Homeland program for wasteful, frivolous spending Message-ID: <76AE3712-06BA-48CA-B15D-E8A67DF0620F@infowarrior.org> Senator slams Homeland program for wasteful, frivolous spending Coburn accuses DHS's Urban Area Security Initiative grant program of creating false sense of security, wasting money on projects unrelated to terrorism like sno-cone makers UPDATED 21:50 PM EST, December 4, 2012 | BY John Solomon http://www.washingtonguardian.com/homelands-urban-follies-0 A $7.1 billion Homeland Security Department program to make cities safer from terrorism has paid for 13 sno-cone machines in Michigan, a $98,000 underwater robot in Columbus, Ohio, an armored vehicle for a tiny Maine town that uses it to patrol the annual pumpkin festival, and humorous videos that offered little valuable information for fighting real threats, according to an investigation by Sen. Tom Coburn. The Oklahoma Republican, an influential voice in Congress on fiscal restraint and budget issues, is releasing a report Wednesday lambasting the department's Urban Area Security Initiative for allowing federal tax dollars to be spent by communities on equipment and programs unrelated to directly fighting terrorism. The program has created "waste, inefficiency and a false sense of security," Coburn's report declares. In an interview with the Washington Guardian, Coburn said the problem with the program is that it wrote checks to communities to buy equipment without applying a rigorous means test or ensuring that federal dollars were focused on stopping the next terrorist attack. ?Number one is, they don?t know where they are spending the money, and there?s no oversight to how the money is being spent,? Coburn said. The Homeland Security Department said Tuesday night it appreciates the issues the senator's report raises and that it has already improved its oversight of spending but it "fundamentally disagrees with the report's position on the value of homeland security grants and the importance of investments in our first responders on the frontlines and the development of critical capabilities at the local level." "As envisioned by Congress, these grants have directly supported the development and sustainment of core state and local capabilities ... from helping to save lives and minimize damage during the tornadoes in the South and Midwest, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy to building a national network of fusion centers to strengthen critical information sharing and terrorism prevention," spokesman Matt Chandler said. The spokesman added the Obama administration has proposed a new approach to the grants starting in 2013 that "reflects a more targeted approach to grant funding that will ensure federal dollars are being used to build and sustain core capabilities and address national priorities while incorporating measures of effectiveness to ensure accountability." While Homeland boasted about its fusion centers, the Washington Guardian recently reported that a bipartisan Senate investigation raised serious questions about the quality of the intelligence products those centers were producing. Coburn's report cites numerous public news reports to demonstrate the breadth of questionable spending and to raise questions about whether it really constituted counterterrorism. It said the urban initiatives program, which has handed out $7.144 billion over the last decade, was "designed to be start-up investments to help the most vulnerable urban areas enhance both their readiness and response capabilities" but evolved into an entitlement program that allowed local law enforcement to buy whatever equipment it wanted in the name of Homeland Security without an assessment of the risks, costs and benefits. "Columbus, Ohio, recently used a $98,000 UASI grant to purchase an underwater robot. Local officials explained that it would be used to assist in underwater rescues," Coburn's report noted, questioning the counterterrorism benefits. "Keene, New Hampshire, with a population just over 23,000 and a police force of 40, set aside UASI funds to buy a BearCat armored vehicle. Despite reporting only a single homicide in the prior two years, the City of Keene told DHS the vehicle was needed to patrol events like its annual pumpkin festival." The report also cites examples where funding went to legitimate counterterrorism needs but was wasted through poor performance and mismanagement, like in Cook County, Ill., where $45 million was spent on a camera surveillance system codenamed "Project Shield" that failed because it was not built to withstand Chicago's harsh weather. "The technology was initially tested at the U.S. Open Golf Tournament in June 2003," the senator's report explained. "However, the mild conditions were not the 'actual conditions' expected for Project Shield in terms of weather'. The temperatures in the test period did not take into consideration 'the extreme hot and cold temperatures experienced annually in Cook County.' In short, when the weather changed, the hardware for Project Shield stopped working." The report ridiculed DHA for allowing cities to use grant funds to pay for officials' attendance at the HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit in San Diego in late October. "The marquee event over the summit, however, was its highly promoted 'zombie apocalypse' demonstration," the report said, showing pictures of people made up as zombies at the event. Watch a video of the training exercise here: Coburn said part of the problem is that DHS and its subordinate agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) rubber-stamp requests without regard to investigating the true needs for fighting terrorism and have given local communities no incentive to return unused monies. He told the Washington Guardian that the government needs to get tougher with individual agencies. "First of all, cut their budgets. Number two, you have the Congress do oversight. Bring the agencies up here, set some new rules on grants. In other words, 'you will oversight the grants, you will make sure they're compliant. And if you don't have the capability to manage it, maybe we're spending too much money on the grant.'" His report cited the example of $6,200 in grant money used to buy 13 sno-cone makers in one Michigan community. "FEMA explained that it approved the sno-cone machines because the grantee characterized them as a dual purpose investment that could be used to fill ice packs in an emergency as well as to help attract volunteers at community outreach events," the report noted, adding federal officials couldn't say how many times the sno-cone machines were actually used for those purposes. "FEMA?s lax guidelines and oversight made the agency a virtual rubberstamp for most anything that grant recipients creatively justified as related to homeland security?regardless of how loosely related. Not surprisingly, state and local officials are given strong incentives by FEMA to spend every grant dollar given them rather than return any excess funds," Coburn's report noted. The senator's investigation also question several videos made by local communities using the Homeland funding, suggesting they were more about entertainment than valuable counterterrorism messaging. One video series in Kansas City, for instance, offered "little more than common sense suggestions like 'have an emergency plan' and 'know the potential threats.' The message of the video, however, is presented as a steady stream of jokes," the report lamented. The Washington Guardian and its partner, the Medill News Service, recently reported that all federal agencies combined have spent a total of $16.3 billion on outsider advertising, public relations, marketing and videographer contractors. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 5 15:54:56 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 16:54:56 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Border_Agents=92_Power_to_Search?= =?windows-1252?q?_Devices_Is_Facing_Increasing_Challenges_in_Court?= Message-ID: <9831FACC-B231-444D-9300-3A61EE8B9EEC@infowarrior.org> December 3, 2012 Border Agents? Power to Search Devices Is Facing Increasing Challenges in Court By SUSAN STELLIN http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/business/court-cases-challenge-border-searches-of-laptops-and-phones.html The government has historically had broad power to search travelers and their property at the border. But that prerogative is being challenged as more people travel with extensive personal and business information on devices that would typically require a warrant to examine. Several court cases seek to limit the ability of border agents to search, copy and even seize travelers? laptops, cameras and phones without suspicion of illegal activity. ?What we are asking is for a court to rule that the government must have a good reason to believe that someone has engaged in wrongdoing before it is allowed to go through their electronic devices,? said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing plaintiffs in two lawsuits challenging digital border searches. A decision in one of those suits, Abidor v. Napolitano, is expected soon, according to the case manager for Judge Edward R. Korman, who is writing the opinion for the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York. In that case, Pascal Abidor, who is studying for his doctorate in Islamic studies, sued the government after he was handcuffed and detained at the border during an Amtrak trip from Montreal to New York. He was questioned and placed in a cell for several hours. His laptop was searched and kept for 11 days. According to government data, these types of searches are rare: about 36,000 people are referred to secondary screening by United States Customs and Border Protection daily, and roughly a dozen of those travelers are subject to a search of their electronic devices. Courts have long held that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches do not apply at the border, based on the government?s interest in combating crime and terrorism. But Mr. Pascal?s lawsuit and similar cases question whether confiscating a laptop for days or weeks and analyzing its data at another site goes beyond the typical border searches. They also depart from the justification used in other digital searches, possession of child pornography. ?We?re getting more into whether this is targeting political speech,? Ms. Crump said. In another case the A.C.L.U. is arguing, House v. Napolitano, border officials at Chicago O?Hare Airport confiscated a laptop, camera and USB drive belonging to David House, a computer programmer, and kept his devices for seven weeks. The lawsuit charges that Mr. House was singled out because of his association with the Bradley Manning Support Network. Pfc. Bradley Manning is a former military intelligence analyst accused of leaking thousands of military and diplomatic documents to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks. In March, Judge Denise J. Casper of Federal District Court in Massachusetts denied the government?s motion to dismiss the suit, saying that although the government did not need reasonable suspicion to search someone?s laptop at the border, that power did not strip Mr. House of his First Amendment rights. Legal scholars say this ruling could set the stage for the courts to place some limits on how the government conducts digital searches. ?The District Court basically said you don?t need individualized suspicion to search an electronic device at the border,? said Patrick E. Corbett, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich. ?What they were troubled with was the fact that the government held these devices for 49 days.? Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, declined to discuss the policy in an interview, but a spokeswoman for the agency said in an e-mail: ?Keeping Americans safe and enforcing our nation?s laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen all materials ? electronic or otherwise ? entering the United States. We are committed to ensuring the rights and privacies of all people while making certain that D.H.S. can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.? The statement also referred to the agency?s policy on border searches of electronic devices, which says that officers can keep these devices for a ?reasonable period of time,? including at an off-site location, and seek help from other government agencies to decrypt, translate or interpret the information they contain. If travelers choose not to share a password for a device, the government may hold it to find a way to gain access to the data. The agency did provide recent statistics on how many travelers this policy affects. From Oct. 1, 2011, through Aug. 31, 2012, 11.9 million travelers were referred to secondary screening after entering the United States. Of those searches, 4,898 included an electronic device. In the previous year, 12.1 million people underwent additional screening, with 4,782 searches of electronic devices. While there is little public information about who is pulled aside for extra scrutiny, some people whose laptops have been searched say they feel they were selected based on their academic, journalistic or political pursuits. Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker and the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship, estimates that she has been detained more than 40 times upon returning to the United States. She has been questioned for hours about her meetings abroad, her credit cards and notes have been copied, and after one trip her laptop, camera and cellphone were seized for 41 days. Ms. Poitras said these interrogations largely subsided after a Salon article describing her experiences was published in April, but she is editing her latest film in Europe to avoid crossing the border with her research and interviews. (The film, the third in a series about the war on terror, focuses on domestic surveillance.) ?I?m taking more and more extreme measures, to the point where I?m actually editing outside the country,? she said. ?They use the border as a way to get around the law.? Mr. Abidor said he had also changed his travel patterns: because he is regularly detained at the border, he keeps little data on his laptop and rents a car when driving back to the United States from Canada, so he is not stranded waiting for the next train. Still, he said he experienced ?a near panic attack? every time he returned to the United States. ?I have not done anything illegal, nor have I tried to hide anything I?ve done,? he said. ?I?ve told them where I?ve traveled. I?m studying something that?s legal. I learned a language millions of people speak. I don?t understand how a variety of legal acts can lead to suspicion.? Even when suspicion of illegal activity exists, it can be based on old records that do not display the nuances of a case when an individual?s passport is scanned. One traveler suspects his laptop was searched at the border because of a juvenile conviction ? dating a 15-year-old when he was 17 landed him on the sex offender registry. ?I?m guessing they probably saw my record on their computer system,? he said, speaking on the condition that his name not be used. ?It?s very unpleasant to know that people can pull it up, take it out of context and turn it into something horrible.? In other cases, travelers say they have no idea why they were singled out. A laptop belonging to Lisa M. Wayne, a criminal defense lawyer, was searched after she returned from a trip to Mexico. Ms. Wayne said her main concern was the information about clients? cases stored on her laptop: she is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which is a co-plaintiff in the Abidor suit, along with the National Press Photographers Association. But at the time of the search, she was unaware of her rights and felt pressured to hand over her computer. ?It was very clear to me that the longer I objected or interrogated them, the longer I was going to be detained, and I had a connecting flight,? she said. ?It?s an intimidating experience. It was not consensual other than, you comply with the rules.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 07:21:15 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 08:21:15 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Leaked: ITU's secret Internet surveillance standard discussion draft Message-ID: <9DB72064-F9D5-4EE7-9DE9-A45C4553242F@infowarrior.org> Leaked: ITU's secret Internet surveillance standard discussion draft http://boingboing.net/2012/12/05/leaked-itus-secret-internet.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 11:09:57 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 12:09:57 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo Message-ID: (c/o KM) Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo Big Content doesn't like the GOP advocating for copyright changes. by Timothy B. Lee - Dec 6 2012, 11:15am EST http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/staffer-axed-by-republican-group-over-retracted-copyright-reform-memo/ The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Congress re-convenes in January. The incoming chairman of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by several Republican members of Congress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advocating reform of copyright law. They asked that Khanna not be retained, and Scalise agreed to their request. The release and subsequent retraction of Khanna's memo has made waves in tech policy circles. The document argues that the copyright regime has become too favorable to the interests of copyright holders and does not adequately serve the public interest. It advocates several key reforms, including reducing copyright terms and limiting the draconian "statutory damages" that can reach as high as $150,000 per infringing work. The memo was widely hailed by tech policy scholars and public interests advocates. However, it raised the ire of content industry lobbyists, who applied pressure on the RSC to retract the memo. The organization did so within 24 hours of its release. Khanna's firing will only further raise the memo's profile. His firing is a surprising move for a party that has been looking for ways to attract younger voters. Copyright reform enjoys broad popularity among Internet-savvy young people, and taking up the cause could have attracted the support of thousands of youthful redditors. But evidently, Hollywood's lobbying muscle was too powerful for the Republican leadership to resist. We reached Khanna by e-mail on Thursday, but he declined to comment on the story. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 11:36:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 12:36:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - MPAA's latest drivel Message-ID: MPAA To USTR: More Shutdowns Like Megaupload, Please from the protectionism-at-its-finest dept The USTR has released the various comments sent in for its annual "notorious markets" report. This is related to its annual Special 301 report, and it's where the USTR basically takes the list of sites and countries that the entertainment industry (and the pharmaceutical industry) don't like... and declares them "notorious" for not doing enough to please the execs in those industries in cracking down on infringement. TorrentFreak points us to the latest filing from the MPAA, which is chock full of... not a single surprise. Basically it just names all the websites that it doesn't like because they challenge its business model. Same old story. But where it gets a little interesting is where the MPAA gleefully talks up how totally awesome it was when the feds shut down Megaupload, and implies that life would be that much grander if the feds did that kind of thing more often:... < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121205/16451021247/mpaa-to-ustr-more-shutdowns-like-megaupload-please.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 13:03:55 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 14:03:55 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Security Obsession Drives 100 Scientists from NASA Message-ID: <7DA2CE8B-C1B6-41F7-B266-99DC6B9644C3@infowarrior.org> December 06, 2012 Top Security Clearance Needed to Help Steer the Curiosity Rover? Security Obsession Drives 100 Scientists from NASA by DAVE LINDORFF http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/06/security-obsession-drives-100-scientists-from-nasa/ Up on the planet Mars, there is a complex new rover names Curiosity that is driving around looking for evidence of possible life. Its every little finding is readily broadcast around the world, as was done today at a televised conference in California, to be analyzed by scientists in the US, in Europe, in China, and even in Iran. The scientists and engineers who are managing that remarkable vehicle, as well as the fantastically successful Cassini probe orbiting Saturn, the Kepler satellite that is discovering all those planets orbiting distant stars, and all the other various satellites and space probes launched by NASA, however, are not as free as the space probes they are running. Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena?an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs. Never mind that not one of them was or is engaged in secret activities (NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world). In order to continue working at JPL, even scientists who had been with NASA for decades were told they would need a high-level security badge just to enter the premises. To be issued that badge, they were told they would need to agree undergo an intensive FBI check that would look into their prior life history, right back to college. Not surprisingly, many scientists and engineers at JPL took umbrage at this extreme invasion of their private lives. Neighbors and old colleagues and acquaintances, ex-spouses, etc. were going to be interrogated about their drug-use history, their drinking habits, their juvenile arrest records, their sexual orientation-all those things that prying agents like to get into when doing a security clearance background check?as if they were applying for positions in the CIA or the Secret Service. Robert Nelson, an astronomer who spearheaded an effort to prevent this pointless security effort, together with 27 other angry JPL scientists, sued JPL and the federal government in federal court. They lost initially in federal court but won a permanent injunction at the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court level. Unfortunately, the Obama administration appealed, and in 2011 when their case got to the Roberts Supreme Court, which rarely meets an invasive government security demand it doesn?t like, they lost. Everyone who wanted to continue doing space science at JPL was told they had to submit to a security investigation. The cost of this idiocy, which was aggressively pursued to a final Pyrrhic victory in the High Court by the Obama Department of Justice, has been grievous, as some 100 veteran scientists at JPL have quit or taken early retirement, rather than open their lives to the FBI. Take Amanda Hendrix. She tells ThisCantBeHappening!, ?I left JPL after 12 years (and with a good position and lots of opportunities) because I was very unhappy about the new badging requirements, particularly since they didn?t make sense to me for scientists like myself who require no access to top-secret-type materials. It was extremely disappointing to me that an institution like JPL would subject their long-time employees to such measures in order to keep their jobs.? Hendrix is now working at the Planetary Science Institute. Dennis Byrnes, who began working at JPL in early 1977, and who beginning in 2005 was chief engineer for flight dynamics, making him the ?lead technical person at JPL for all things related to the flight dynamics of all JPL missions both in operations and planned,? also quit his job this year rather than submit to the security investigation. He says, ?My job included all aspects of mission design, navigation and some aspects of guidance and control.? Prior to 2005 he says he was deputy manager and briefly the manager of JPL?s navigation and mission design section, and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal (NASA?s highest technical engineering award) for his work on the Galileo Project to Jupiter. Byrnes notes that when the Supreme Court issued its ruling, it didn?t mean the security checks had to go forward. ?It merely meant that NASA could proceed, but did not require it,? Byrnes says. ?We urged NASA to consider other avenues similar to the Dept. of Energy, National Science Foundation and others who decided on a less restrictive implementation, but to no avail.? In late 2011, when the details of the full implementation of the security checks at JPL were announced , the 68-year-old Byrnes says, ?I decided to retire rather than submit to the investigations. This in no way reflected fear of discovery of anything personal (I had security clearances in the late ?60?s through mid-70?s and have nothing to hide). Rather, it was a decision on principle. I believe the whole process to be unconstitutional and a completely unnecessary abuse of government power.? He says had this new badge requirement not come along, he would have stayed on for several years longer at JPL, ?since I am a recognized world expert in my field and thoroughly enjoy what I do.? Not everyone who quit over this issue was a scientist. Susan Foster, a senior science writer at JPL, began her career there working as a secretary in 1968, even before the first Apollo moon landing. She says she quit solely because of the NASA requirement that she submit to a ?waiving of my Fourth Amendment rights or be denied access to the facility? where she had worked for 44 years. She is currently unemployed and looking for work. What upset her most, she says, was NASA?s plan to use the information it obtained on its scientists? and employees? lives to create a ?suitability matrix,? which would be used to see if they merited continued employment. In questioning JPL management, Foster says people learned that this ?suitability matrix? would be considering things like ?whether JPL scientists had participated in political demonstrations that could qualify in NASA?s scheme of things as disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly? ? all activities that she says many of JPL?s scientists had engaged in over the years. Says Foster, ?Criteria such as ?attitude? are pretty frightening in their subjectivity, and ?striking against the government? is chilling to anyone who has supported, say, a legitimate teachers? action.? Remember, this is all in order to be allowed to work at a very open science agency that by law publishes all its findings. Nelson, who was the point man for the JPL employee challenge to the new security requirement, also quit on principle rather than submit to the security investigation. An over 30-year veteran of JPL, and former head of the American Astronomical Association, Nelson says he decided he would not put up with that kind of intrusive invasion of his private life even in order to keep working at a job he loved, so he filed for retirement. After retiring earlier than he had planned from his position at JPL, Nelson is now also at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, AZ, where his title is senior scientist. One of the big concerns expressed by the JPL scientists was that NASA would not adequately protect the incredibly personal information it was going to be gathering on its employees at JPL. NASA after all, they noted, is not the CIA or the Secret Service. It operates in the open, and doesn?t have a culture of secrecy, and as a bureaucracy, is ill-equipped to manage such information securely. Sure enough, last week NASA was forced to admit that an employee at the agency?s offices in Washington DC had left a laptop computer containing all that newly acquired personal information on its employees in his car on Halloween night, and it had been stolen. Worse yet, further validating the concerns of JPL scientists, the data on the computer had not even been encrypted! Now NASA has had to hire a contractor specializing in protecting potential victims of identity theft to help all the JPL scientists at risk to avoid having their savings pilfered, their credit cards stolen, and perhaps to protect them from being subjected to harassment or extortion because of information gleaned from their security files. This disaster at JPL is an case of the US security state run amok, and provides yet another example of how the Obama administration, which came into office in 2009 promising to return the country to some kind of sanity and respect for the Constitution, has instead driven 100 invaluable scientists out of JPL, weakening the nation?s already struggling space program, and has put hundreds of scientists? lives, and the lives of their families, at risk. And all for nothing. There are no secrets at JPL, except perhaps for the temporary one about what it was that the Curiosity rover discovered in its early soil sampling on Mars. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 14:08:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 15:08:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Friday yukk on a Thursday Message-ID: <848AB3F6-5354-45B0-86B5-C3C6C1C4A691@infowarrior.org> A Modest Proposal To Boost US GDP By $852 Quadrillion: Build The Imperial Death Star http://www.zerohedge.com/news/modest-proposal-boost-us-gdp-852-quadrillion-build-imperial-death-star --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 6 17:32:25 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 18:32:25 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - USG board aims to revamp decrepit US security classification system Message-ID: Government board aims to revamp decrepit US security classification system By Layer 8 Created Dec 6 2012 - 3:18pm http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/government-board-aims-revamp-decrepit-us-security-classification-system The US government's overly complicated way of classifying and declassifying information needs to be dumped and reinvented with the help of a huge technology injection if it is to keep from being buried under its own weight. That was one of the main conclusions of a government board tasked with making recommendations on exactly how the government should transform the current security classification system. "Current page-by-page review processes are unsustainable in an era of gigabytes and yottabytes [2]. New and existing technologies must be integrated into new processes that allow greater information storage, retrieval, and sharing. We must incorporate technology into an automated declassification process," the congressional Public Interest Declassification Board stated [3]. "The current classification system is fraught with problems. In its mission to support national security, it keeps too many secrets, and keeps them too long; it is overly complex; it obstructs desirable information sharing inside of government and with the public. There are many explanations for over-classification: most classification occurs by rote; criteria and agency guidance have not kept pace with the information explosion; and despite the Presidential order to refrain from unwarranted classification, a culture persists that defaults to the avoidance of risk rather than its proper management." The board added that the security classification problem is growing. Agencies are creating petabytes of classified information annually, which quickly outpaces the amount of information the government has declassified in total in the previous seventeen years since Executive Order 12958 [4] established the policy of automatic declassification for 25 year old records. Without dramatic improvement in the declassification process, the rate at which classified records are being created will drive an exponential growth in the archival backlog of classified records awaiting declassification, and public access to the nation's history will deteriorate further, the report stated. At the heart of the classification revamp should be a number of high-tech implementations. Available technologies, such as context accumulation, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, should be piloted to study their effectiveness on helping implement these recommendations and to engage users and garner their trust in a new system, the board wrote Promising new technologies should be tested through a series of pilot projects, once proven, can be deployed at multiple agencies and then expanded to include pilot projects for classification. The ultimate goal of these pilots is to discover, develop and deploy technology that will: ? Automate and streamline classification and declassification processes, and ensure integration with electronic records management systems. ? Provide tools for preservation, search, storage, scalability, review for access, and security application. ? Address cyber security concerns, especially when integrating open source information into classified systems. ? Standardize metadata generation and tagging, creating a government-wide metadata registry. Lessons learned from the intelligence community will be helpful here. ? Accommodate complex volumes of data (such as email, non-structured data, and video teleconferencing information). High tech is only part of the major recommendations the board suggests. A complete overhaul in how information is classified is likely a more sticky point. IN THE NEWS: The year in madly cool robots [5] From the report: "Classification should be simplified and rationalized by placing national security information in only two categories. This would align with the actual two-tiered practices existing throughout government, regarding security clearance investigations, physical safeguarding, and information systems domains. Top Secret would remain the Higher-Level category, retaining its current, high level of protection. All other classified information would be categorized at a Lower-Level, which would follow standards for a lower level of protection. Both categories would include compartmented and special access information, as they do today. Newly established criteria for classifying information in the two tiers would identify the needed levels of protection against disclosure of the information. Using identifiable risk as the basis for classification criteria should help in deciding if classification is warranted and, if so, at what level and duration." In the end the board made 14 recommendations that would modernize the current system of security classification and declassification. The recommendations: 1: The President should appoint a White House-led Security Classification Reform Steering Committee to oversee implementation of the Board's recommendations to modernize the current system of classification and declassification. 2. Classification should be simplified and rationalized by placing national security information in only two classification categories. 3. The threshold for classifying in the two-tiered system should be adjusted to align the level of protection with the level of harm anticipated in the event of unauthorized release. 4. The specific protections afforded intelligence sources and methods need to be precisely defined and distinguished. 5. Pre-decisional, tactical and operational information with short-lived sensitivity should be identified and segmented for automatic declassification without further review. 6. Agencies should recognize in policy and practice a "safe harbor" protection for classifiers who adhere to rigorous risk management practices and determine in good faith to classify information at a lower level or not at all. 7. The classification status of Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) information should be reexamined. A process should be implemented for the systematic declassification review of historical information. 8. The President should bolster the authority and capacity of the National Declassification Center (NDC) with specific measures to advance a government-wide declassification strategy. Executive Order 13526 should be amended to eliminate the additional three years now permitted for review of multiple agency equities in all archival records (including those stored outside the NDC). 9. Historically significant records should be identified and set aside as early as possible after their creation to ensure their preservation, long-term access, and availability to agency policymakers and historians. Each agency should strive to have an in-house history staff to assist in the prioritization of records. 10. Agencies should improve records management overall by supporting and advancing the government-wide information management practices found in the President's Memorandum on Managing Government Records and its Directive. 11. The organization and integration of agency declassification programs must be improved across government. 12. Agencies should be encouraged to prepare case studies and national security histories, in classified and unclassified versions. 13. A series of pilot projects should be used to evaluate proposals for enhancing capabilities at the NDC, streamlining the declassification system and improving access to historically significant records, including historical nuclear information. 14. The President should direct the Security Classification Reform Steering Committee to encourage collaboration and to determine how to employ existing technologies and develop and pilot new methods to modernize classification and declassification. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office detailed the daunting federal security classification infrastructure stating that designating, safeguarding, and disseminating such important information involves over 100 unique markings and at least 130 different labeling or handling routines, reflecting a disjointed, inconsistent, and unpredictable system for protecting, sharing, and disclosing sensitive information. In 2006 the GAO reported on a survey of federal agencies that showed 26 were using 56 different designations to protect information they deemed critical to their missions-such as law-enforcement sensitive, sensitive security information, and unclassified controlled nuclear information. Because of the many different and sometimes confusing and contradictory ways that agencies identify and protect sensitive but unclassified information, the sharing of information about possible threats to homeland security has been difficult, the GAO stated. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 7 07:37:14 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 08:37:14 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Dear Joe, just retire and shut up already Message-ID: (He/they overlook the fact that their vaunted legislative proposals will do JACK-NOTHING to fix our underlying problems. --rick) Op-Ed Contributors At Dawn We Sleep By JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN and SUSAN COLLINS Published: December 6, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/opinion/will-congress-act-to-protect-against-a-catastrophic-cyberattack.html?hp IF you read the newspapers on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, you would have been led to believe that Japan was poised to attack ? but in Southeast Asia, not Pearl Harbor. Few experts believed that Japan was prepared to take on the United States; war, they believed, was not necessarily imminent. ?In view of the presence of new British naval strength at Singapore and powerful American squadrons in the rear of any southward Japanese expedition, it is believed there is no immediate likelihood of a large-scale invasion or bombing,? The Times quoted an Australian official as saying. On this anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, it?s worth remembering that enemies will attack at a time of their choosing. In fact, they rely on surprise. A storm is surely gathering again, and we must resist the false sense of calm. The attack is not a matter of if, but when. It will not be launched from aircraft carriers, missile silos or massed armies. It will come through cyberspace and will strike our most vital computer systems, those that manage our electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications networks and financial markets. We know that our digital networks are being tested, on a minute by minute basis, by would-be cyberterrorists, criminal gangs, rogue hackers and rival nations who look for unguarded digital back doors that would allow them to seize control of our most essential computers. In invoking Pearl Harbor, we?re not trying to be alarmist ? we?re borrowing an analogy the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, himself used in an Oct. 11 speech about what a catastrophic cyberattack might look like. ?An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches,? he said. ?They could, for example, derail passenger trains or even more dangerous, derail trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country. The most destructive scenarios involve cyber actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at one time, in combination with a physical attack on our country. Attackers could also seek to disable or degrade critical military systems and communication networks.? Mr. Panetta added: ?The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber-Pearl Harbor, an attack that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life. In fact, it would paralyze and shock the nation.? The harsh reality is that such an attack does not require extensive computer skills. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported on an overseas hacker who gained control of a small Texas water utility using Internet tools available to anyone. It took him just 10 minutes. The utility learned of the attack only when proof of it appeared online ? the hacker?s warning of how susceptible the plant was. Given these warnings and actual evidence of successful attacks, you would hope that Congress would be working urgently to strengthen the cyberdefenses of our critical infrastructure ? to make them well-defended forts, rather than undefended targets. But twice this year the Senate failed to pass bipartisan cybersecurity legislation, with the United States Chamber of Commerce leading the opposition. What made this so frustrating was that we ? along with our Democratic co-sponsors, Senators Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Dianne Feinstein of California and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia ? had already agreed to a major compromise to address the concerns of the chamber and its Senate allies by replacing mandatory cybersecurity requirements with voluntary, industry-developed standards that would also have protected from lawsuits companies that chose to implement the new standards. Indeed, the concept of a voluntary, incentive-based system was proposed by the chamber and other industry groups in a March 2011 white paper and endorsed by a Republican-led House task force in October 2011. Our willingness to compromise and adopt this reasonable, moderate approach was met with irrational resistance ? even after the chamber learned ? thanks to the F.B.I. ? that it had been the victim of Chinese cyberespionage. One of the biggest mistakes that enabled the attack on Pearl Harbor was a belief that Japan lacked the capacity to mount devastating aerial bombing attacks so far from its borders. For a modern-day equivalent, look at the recent attack against one of the world?s largest energy businesses, the Saudi oil business Aramco, which had 30,000 of its computers crippled in a cyberattack, wreaking havoc on the company?s operations. If that wasn?t a clear enough warning, the destroyed computers? files were replaced with pictures of burning American flags. Recently, the consumer banking sites of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC and others came under the largest sustained denial of service attack in history. The attacks went on for weeks, knocking many of these sites off line or slowing them to a crawl. These attacks did not have to be initiated from within the United States or even a few miles offshore. Cybersecurity experts believe Iran is the likely culprit in both attacks, and we fear this is just the beginning. The headlines before the attack on Pearl Harbor turned out to be delusional. No one can reasonably entertain such a delusion about our adversaries? capacity to attack us in cyberspace today. Time has almost run out in this session of Congress, and President Obama will soon issue an executive order that will establish cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure according to the statements of his top cabinet officials. But the president?s powers are limited, and the issuance of an executive order is controversial even among some supporters of cybersecurity legislation. The new Congress must take up this issue, and pass comprehensive legislation to defend our nation against this gathering cyberthreat. If it doesn?t, the day on which those cyberweapons strike will be another ?date which will live in infamy,? because we knew it was coming and didn?t come together to stop it. Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, are, respectively, the chairman and senior Republican on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 7 07:43:33 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 08:43:33 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US Navy's Email Weapon System (EWS) Message-ID: <83E39C74-56C6-40EB-9283-8C95AEFE9F73@infowarrior.org> Good advice for users, to be sure. That said, since it is Outlook they refer to, I agree that it should be classified as a weapon system -- unfortunately it's one that misfires and frequently causes more harm to friendly forces than the enemy. US Navy's Email Weapon System (EWS) (AKA: Microsoft Outlook) http://cryptome.org/dodi/navy-ews.pdf --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 7 07:46:50 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 08:46:50 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - USG Soon Able To Access Foreign Medical Dossiers Due To Patriot Act Message-ID: <9E009249-9674-4979-84FC-45C65F836595@infowarrior.org> US Government Agencies Will Soon Be Able To Access Foreign Medical Dossiers Due To Patriot Act from the radical-transparency dept The US Patriot Act has suddenly scared an entire nation, and it's not the US itself this time. The Netherlands is currently going nuts about the US government being able to request medical details of all its citizens when the Dutch Electronic Patient Database (EPD) is implemented next month. This will not be the only country that freaks out because of the Patriot Act, as this sort of thing is likely to happen a lot more often. A recent study explained that US government agencies can secretly request anyone's data if they are using a cloud-computing service which 'conducts systematic business in the US'. It is already sufficient when the service provider is somehow a subsidiary of a US company. That turns out to be a problem in the Netherlands, because the company that has developed the EPD and will be hosting the patients' data on its cloud computing systems is the US-based CSC. The Dutch government and the organization responsible for implementing the EPD are convinced there is no problem, because there are clear contracts which have assigned Dutch jurisdiction, and fortunately the Dutch have stringent data protection laws that will protect patients' sensitive data. Because that's what data protection laws do, right? False! At least with regard to information law, researchers from Amsterdam University warn that this analysis is way too simplistic. According to the scholars, it is quite possible the US government agencies can circumvent data protection laws and could easily request access to medical information of every single person in the Netherlands. The study doesn't just cover the Netherlands (though it is especially timely for that), but rather looks at how these risks may apply more globally. Here are just a few of the findings that should raise eyebrows across the globe ...... < -- > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121201/12234021198/us-government-agencies-will-soon-be-able-to-access-foreign-medical-dossiers-due-to-patriot-act.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 7 08:04:19 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 09:04:19 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - T-Mobile killing annual contracts Message-ID: <9ED7A7EB-BB53-4F40-A610-3723AB6AC7FF@infowarrior.org> (Disclosure: I am on a TMob prepaid plan with my GNex and had zero problems whatsoever. --rick) On T-Mobile killing the contract: It's about time http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57557754-94/on-t-mobile-killing-the-contract-its-about-time/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 8 15:35:37 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2012 16:35:37 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Press Parrots Cybersecurity FUD From Former NSA Boss Without Mentioning Massive Conflict Of Interest Message-ID: <027055CB-C7BC-4A3D-BB17-9ACB62DC91BA@infowarrior.org> Press Parrots Cybersecurity FUD From Former NSA Boss Without Mentioning Massive Conflict Of Interest from the do-some-freaking-research dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121203/02332821207/press-parrots-cybersecurity-fud-former-nsa-boss-without-mentioning-massive-conflict-interest.shtml Not this again. Nearly three years ago, we wrote about the growing hype around "cyberwar" in the US government -- much of it being pushed by one Michael McConnell. News reports love to cover McConnell's fear-mongering about how the internet is at risk. He used to always talk about "cyberwar" but that term went out of fashion, so lately it's all "cyberattacks" and "cyberterrorism." The reason the press loves McConnell is that he's a former head of the NSA (under Clinton) and director of national intelligence (under George W. Bush). What those reports don't like to mention is that since leaving the government, McConnell has a very cushy job as Vice Chairman of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. Booz Allen is a company that regularly seems to do $100 million+ deals with government agencies, many of them related to cybersecurity. You think that having a former NSA director running around scaring agencies about how they're at risk of "cyberwar" or "cybersecurity" isn't useful for business? And yet, it seems that time and time again when we see McConnell's name, reporters completely fail to mention this particular conflict of interest. Instead, they report his claims as if they're fact, despite the much simpler and more obvious fact: no one has died from an internet attack. Ever. None. Zero. Zilch. Take, for example, this News.com article by Steven Musil. And then let me know where either of these points is made. You can't, because they're not in there. McConnell's connection to Booz isn't mentioned. Nor is the fact that "cyberthreats" are still as dangerous as a ghost story. Instead, he throws in a couple scary scary quotes from McConnell about how we're getting close to a cyber-9/11 or a cyber-Pearl Harbor without pointing out that plenty of people think such claims are completely overblown. Also, we've been hearing about this for years now, and while it's been quite profitable for McConnell, there's been no evidence that such a threat is really any closer. But, boy does it make money for government contractors. This isn't to pick on Musil in particular -- plenty of reporters seem totally taken in by McConnell's old job and seem to throw any skepticism (or the ability to do a basic Google search about his current job) out the window. But if we keep seeing it, we're going to keep calling it out until people realize that maybe there are motives there beyond what McConnell says. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 09:34:42 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:34:42 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Five Reasons Americans Hate the Stock Market Message-ID: <019D6C20-7FDC-4E58-9664-FE26F0CA3872@infowarrior.org> Five Reasons Americans Hate the Stock Market ? Joshua M Brown ? December 9th, 2012 This post was originally published on August 17th and it promptly went viral. The abandonment of the US equity market is not one issue facing the nation, it is THE issue. There hasn't been a sustained economic recovery in US history that didn't correspond with a healthy climate of capital formation and widespread investment returns. So why isn't that happening now? < -- > http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/12/09/five-reasons-americans-hate-the-stock-market/ From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 09:39:51 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:39:51 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Why_we_don=92t_need_another_law_?= =?windows-1252?q?against_intelligence_leaks?= Message-ID: <86223D7C-A38A-475F-97E1-62D8892F1493@infowarrior.org> Why we don?t need another law against intelligence leaks By Leonard Downie Jr. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-dont-need-another-law-against-intelligence-leaks/2012/12/06/a00281cc-3f1e-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_print.html Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large of The Washington Post, served as the newspaper?s executive editor from 1991 to 2008. He also is a professor at Arizona State University?s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication....... The decade-long clandestine U.S. ?war on terror? has spawned a parallel, escalating campaign to stop leaks of information about intelligence activities to the news media. During the first four years of the Obama administration, investigations of spy agency employees have proliferated. Six current or former officials have been prosecuted for unauthorized disclosures of information, more than in all previous administrations combined. The pressure to keep quiet is intensifying. The director of national intelligence has expanded the use of lie-detector interrogations in leak investigations. His office is studying how all 16 U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies handle ?non-incidental contacts? with the news media, presumably interviews and background briefings. Pentagon officials have been ordered to monitor news media for disclosures of classified information. Now the Senate is considering legislation that would go even further. The 2013 Intelligence Authorization Act would make it a crime for career intelligence officers to provide almost any type of information to the news media, whether the information is classified or not. The bill specifically prohibits a career official from participating in ?background or off-the-record? sessions with reporters. This is a classic example of overkill. The legislation would end contacts that often benefit both the government and the public by allowing the exchange of accurate information about vital national security issues and intelligence activities, including abuses requiring attention. As executive editor of The Washington Post for 17 years, I know firsthand that such conversations also help the news media avoid publishing information that, inadvertently, might harm national security. The legislation is pending before the Senate, following its approval by the Senate Intelligence Committee over the summer. The only committee member to vote against the bill, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), has placed a hold on it to prevent passage in its current form. ?Without transparent and informed public debate on foreign policy and national security topics, American voters would be ill-equipped to elect the policymakers who make important decisions in these areas,? Wyden said in announcing his hold. The governmentmust keep some secrets, but excessive secrecy can erode credibility and breed excesses. How can the government build public support for aggressive counterterrorism measures if it operates primarily in the shadows? ?There is no perfect solution to this problem,? said Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, who served in the George W. Bush administration?s Office of Legal Counsel, part of the Justice Department. His recent book, ?Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11,? explores the tension between protecting necessary secrets and telling citizens what they should know, too much of which Goldsmith believes is classified as secret. ?Leaks can serve a really important role,? he told me, ?in helping to correct government malfeasance, to encourage government to be careful about what it does in secret and to preserve democratic processes.? The 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon fundamentally reshaped American attitudes about national security. With Congress?s approval, the Bush administration launched a series of extraordinary counterterrorism measures, many of which have continued under President Obama. To carry out their mandated mission, intelligence agencies created an expensive, sprawling network of government bureaucracies and private companies engaged in countless top-secret activities at hundreds of locations throughout the country. The CIA detained and coercively interrogated terrorism suspects in ?black site? prisons in foreign countries. The National Security Agency wiretapped and monitored phone calls and other communications without warrants. The CIA has used armed drone aircraft to kill terrorist leaders in several countries. And U.S. intelligence has mounted cyberattacks on Iran. Americans know much of this because of news media reports, pieced together through contacts with multiple government sources, some of whom were worried about the legality and accountability of these covert activities. Editors joined the discussions before deciding what to publish and what to withhold. Sometimes, other government officials were interviewed to establish whether publication could harm American lives or national security. These are just the sorts of contacts that the pending legislation would rule out. That would be a mistake. A specific case may help explain why. In 2005, Post reporter Dana Priest wrote a story that described how the CIA was ?hiding and interrogating? terrorism suspects in ?a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including .?.?. several democracies in Eastern Europe.? Priest reported an ongoing debate within the agency ?about the legality, morality and practicality? of the black-site program. Her story led to the closing of secret prisons and played a role in subsequent congressional and judicial actions that exposed and curbed the inhumane treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects. It was the culmination of many months of reporting by Priest, including earlier incremental stories, based on conversations with intelligence officials and other sources. She also discovered details of other counterterrorism efforts with Eastern European countries hosting CIA black sites. Through contact with her sources, she kept her editors informed about government concerns that publication of certain information might cause damage to national security. Our discussions centered on whether the damage seemed real and whether it outweighed the public?s interest in learning those specific details. Post editors agreed to meet with the directors of national intelligence and the CIA, and then later with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, to listen to their concerns. As executive editor, I decided to publish the secret-prisons story, but without the names of the Eastern European countries because, as the story stated, ?the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of terrorist retaliation.? Except for the meetings with top intelligence officials at CIA headquarters, and with the president and vice president in the White House, Priest?s conversations with government officials over many months may not have occurred under the restrictions in the pending Senate legislation. The most troubling provision in the bill would prohibit all contact with the news media or ?any person affiliated with the media? by any intelligence officials other than an agency?s director, deputy director or ?specifically designated? public affairs officers ? all of whom are political appointees. That could limit the flow of intelligence information to what political appointees decide to tell reporters, in ?authorized leaks,? for political purposes. Reporters could be cut off from more knowledgeable and impartial career analysts, such as those who disclosed, in the run-up to the Iraq war, their doubts about Bush administration claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This prohibition ?would make everyday reporting about everyday intelligence activities practically impossible,? Jack Goldsmith told me. ?It would promote opportunistic spinning by the executive branch, which is already a problem.? Another provision in the bill would pressure the Justice Department to be more aggressive in approving subpoenas of reporters to compel them to cooperate in leak investigations. Since the 1970s, the department has had a policy of approving subpoenas of reporters in federal investigations only if ?all reasonable attempts? have been made to obtain the information elsewhere and if the attorney general signs off after negotiations with the news organization. ?Because freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news,? the policy states, ?the prosecutorial power of the government should not be used in a way that it impairs a reporter?s responsibility to cover as broadly as possible controversial public issues.? The Senate Intelligence Committee cited no evidence that this policy is no longer workable, even in national security investigations. In fact, the executive branch already has abundant legal tools, which the Obama administration has used aggressively, to investigate sources of national security leaks. One of those tools, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), was recently used to prosecute a former CIA counterterrorism operative, John Kiriakou, who pleaded guilty to disclosing the name of a covert intelligence agent to a reporter investigating coercive interrogations of terrorism suspects. Earlier, Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News in which he said the interrogation technique called waterboarding is torture. In an Oct. 23 statement to CIA employees, then-Director David H. Petraeus made clear the message sent by Kiriakou?s conviction. ?This case yielded the first IIPA successful prosecution in 27 years, and it marks an important victory for our Agency, for our Intelligence Community, and for our country,? Petraeus told them. ?Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.? In this digital age, information about U.S. intelligence activities can come from myriad, often unreliable sources ? including Congress itself. Those sources aren?t covered by the Senate legislation. Without access to knowledgeable career officials, it would be much more difficult for the news media to determine the accuracy of information or whether its publication or broadcast could truly harm national security. Especially in times of war, declared or undeclared, it is important to maintain the right balance between accountability and national security. The Senate legislation could tip that balance dangerously. Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large of The Washington Post, served as the newspaper?s executive editor from 1991 to 2008. He also is a professor at Arizona State University?s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 09:41:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:41:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Sharp debate expected on electronic-intercept law Message-ID: Sharp debate expected on electronic-intercept law By Ellen Nakashima http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sharp-debate-expected-on-electronic-intercept-law/2012/12/08/c5599d4e-3fb8-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_print.html A measure granting the government expansive power to intercept electronic communications in the United States without a warrant is set to expire this month, setting up a sharp debate in the Senate over how to balance privacy against national security. The government uses the measure, contained in a law known as the FISA Amendments Act, to intercept e-mails and telephone calls of foreigners located overseas under a blanket approval issued once a year by a special court. But communications of U.S. citizens talking with the foreigners also are being scooped up. The intelligence community argues that the measure is essential to protect against foreign threats and has made renewing the law its top legislative priority. The House approved a five-year extension in September by a vote of 301 to 118. The Senate must vote by the end of the year or the authority expires. Opposition has surfaced among a small, bipartisan group of senators worried that Americans engaged in harmless communications with foreigners could be monitored without a warrant or other privacy protections. Under the law, a special court whose proceedings are secret issues a yearly certification that permits the government to monitor the e-mails and phone calls of foreigners if the government can satisfy the court that its procedures will target people located overseas and ensure the privacy of U.S. citizens caught in the monitoring. Targeting the communications of a U.S. citizen or anyone inside the United States requires a warrant. One of the complaints of the senators and civil liberties advocates is that the government refuses to disclose the number of U.S. citizens and residents whose communications have been collected or reviewed under the law. ?You have this potentially large pile of communications and nobody knows how many Americans are in that pile,? Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. Wyden has threatened to block a vote on reauthorization unless Senate leaders agree to a debate on changes that would add safeguards for U.S. persons. Twelve other senators, including conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), have joined Wyden in pushing to require the government to provide an estimate of how many communications involving U.S. citizens have been collected under Section 702 of the statute. The senators also want the government to get a court?-approved warrant before deliberately searching electronic data for individual Americans. ?The government ought not be able to search through that database for information about a U.S. citizen without a court order because that becomes akin to a warrantless wiretap,? Lee said in an interview. The law was passed in 2008 as an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It expanded the government?s power to conduct electronic surveillance on U.S. soil for foreign targets overseas without individual warrants. The Obama administration, like the George W. Bush administration, has defended the program as vital to gathering quickly information about the plans and identities of terrorists and other threats. ?There is no question that we?ve gotten valuable information that has led to intelligence and national security successes,? said Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in a press call this year. ?This would really create a risk for our security if we lost this capability.? He cited ?specific incidents both involving terrorist attacks and other kinds of threats where we have been able to thwart them or gain insight into them as a result of this collection activity,? but he declined to elaborate. Litt said estimating the number of communications by U.S. citizens collected ?incidentally? under FISA cannot be done with any degree of accuracy. But he said the law is not ?a tool for spying on Americans.? Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director, countered that the law provides the government with too much leeway. ?It?s a law that gives the government almost unchecked power to monitor Americans? communications,? he said in an interview. ?It?s indefensible that anyone?s even thinking about reauthorizing it without asking questions about the law?s use.? The ACLU sued the government over the law?s constitutionality. A federal judge threw out the suit, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reinstated it. The case was argued in October before the Supreme Court, which is considering only whether the plaintiffs have standing to proceed with their challenge. The procedures involved in monitoring foreign communications remain largely hidden. Officials in the communications industry said the government gives companies the e-mail addresses, phone numbers, user names and other identifiers of foreign targets to tap. The lists could run to dozens or hundreds of identities, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The companies divert electronic copies of the communications in real time to a special FBI facility in Northern Virginia. In the case of e-mail, the government may receive virtual replicas of people?s entire in-boxes, the officials said. The National Security Agency stores the data for translation and analysis. Automated tools help analysts find links in the communications among, say, the e-mails of five members of a suspected terrorist cell. ?Some sniffer is looking for similarities among their contacts,? said a former federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic?s sensitivity. ?If all five are talking to a sixth, that sixth is going to be a person of interest.? The law allows collection of communications across a broad spectrum of ?foreign intelligence? topics and threats, which include nuclear proliferation, foreign diplomats and extremist groups. Critics say the wide range increases the chances that Americans who are not targets of surveillance will have their communications picked up. Intelligence officials say a warrant requirement would be burdensome and unnecessary, given that the information has been lawfully collected. They note that they have regularly briefed Congress on the program?s operations. Their reports to Congress have identified no cases of intentional or systematic misuse, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee review. But Wyden said the special court has already found that the government?s efforts to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens failed on at least one occasion. ? 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 Sun Dec 9 13:34:49 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 14:34:49 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - How to Circumvent UEFI Secure Boot Message-ID: <6D6F65C4-B9DE-4582-99F6-3BF2D1E049A1@infowarrior.org> Linux Foundation UEFI Secure Boot System for Open Source By James Bottomley - October 10, 2012 - 1:53pm Guest post from James Bottomley, Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board I?m pleased to announce that the Linux Foundation and its Technical Advisory Board have produced a plan to enable the Linux (and indeed all Open Source based distributions) to continue operating as Secure Boot enabled systems roll out. In a nutshell, the Linux Foundation will obtain a Microsoft Key and sign a small pre-bootloader which will, in turn, chain load (without any form of signature check) a predesignated boot loader which will, in turn, boot Linux (or any other operating system). The pre-bootloader will employ a ?present user? test to ensure that it cannot be used as a vector for any type of UEFI malware to target secure systems. This pre-bootloader can be used either to boot a CD/DVD installer or LiveCD distribution or even boot an installed operating system in secure mode for any distribution that chooses to use it. The process of obtaining a Microsoft signature will take a while, but once it is complete, the pre-bootloader will be placed on the Linux Foundation website for anyone to download and make use of. < -- > http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 18:36:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 19:36:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?US_drops_=91net_regulation_bombs?= =?windows-1252?q?hell=2C_threatens_WCIT_exit?= Message-ID: US drops ?net regulation bombshell, threatens WCIT exit http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/09/us_threatens_wcit_veto/ By Richard Chirgwin Posted in Policy, 9th December 2012 21:33 GMT As the ITU?s WCIT conference rolls on in Doha, the head of the American delegation Terry Kramer has pointed to the big red button, threatening to veto any new treaty it believes puts the Internet at risk. America?s delegation has become increasingly agitated at the content of proposed changes to the ITRs ? International Telecommunications Regulations ? coming from countries such as Russia and China. According to Australian telecommunications newsletter Communications Day, the veto threat was made to a Dow Jones journalist, with Kramer saying the US delegation could ?walk away from the conference?. In this (video) interview between Kramer and the ITU?s Sarah Parkes, Kramer says he was ?surprised and disappointed? at the version of the ITRs put forward on 7 December, saying it ?creates an open door for review of content and potential censorship?. Kramer describes the central issue as being the difference between ?operating agency? and ?recognised operating agency?. That one word, he says, redefines the scope of the ITRs. If confined to recognised operating agencies ? that is, the government-licensed telecommunications carriers ? the ITRs would not have the scope to reach into entities such as ISPs, cloud operators or other service providers. Yet another point of contention has emerged regarding the handling of Internet names and numbers, with members such as Russia backing a wording of the ITRs that puts names and numbers under national control (kind of). The proposed regulation says ?member states shall have the right to manage all naming, numbering, addressing and identification resources used for international telecommunications?, something that would erode the top-level control wielded by ICANN and IANA. Although governments have generally ignored IP addressing resources (to such a degree that in the UK, the board of IPv6 advocacy organisation 6UK has resigned en masse), the same cannot be said for naming agencies, many of which are already indirectly government-operated via national telecommunications carriers, or by agencies working under explicit government mandate. The live-streamed "secret" talks continue this week. ? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 20:57:14 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 21:57:14 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Researchers find crippling flaws in global GPS Message-ID: (Paper @ http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~dbrumley/courses/18487-f12/readings/Nov28_GPS.pdf) Researchers find crippling flaws in global GPS By Darren Pauli | Dec 10, 2012 http://www.scmagazine.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=325731 Researchers have developed three attacks capable of crippling Global Positioning System infrastructure critical to the navigation of a host of military and civilian technologies including planes, ships and unnamed drones. The scenarios developed include novel remote attacks via malicious GPS broadcasts against consumer and professional- grade receivers which could be launched using $2500 worth of equipment. A 45-second crafted GPS message could bring down up to 30 percent of the global GPS Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), while other attacks could take down 20 percent of NTRIP networks, security boffins from Carnegie Mellon University and firm Coherent Navigation wrote in a paper. (pdf) The stations provide global navigation satellite system data to support "safety and life-critical applications", and NTRIP is the protocol used to stream that data online. Together, attack scenarios created "serious rami?cations to safety systems". "Until GPS is secured, life and safety-critical applications that depend upon it are likely vulnerable to attack," the team of four researchers said. Author Tyler Nighswander told SC that little was preventing attackers from replicating their custom spoofing hardware to launch the attacks. "The good news is that as far as we know, we are the only ones with a spoofing device currently capable of the types of attacks," Nighswander said. "The bad news is that our spoofer would not be prohibitively expensive and complicated for someone to build, if they had the proper skillset. "It's difficult to put an exact likelihood on these attacks happening, but there are no huge [roadblocks] preventing it at the moment." Attacks were conducted against seven receiver brands including Magellan, Garmin, GlobalSat, uBlox, LOCOSYS and iFly 700. Trimble was working with researchers to push out a patch for its affected products, Nighswander said. Attacks included location spoofing in applications used by planes, cars, trucks and ships to prisoner ankle bracelets, mobile phone towers, traf?c lights, and SCADA systems. It could also crash receivers used for applications from surveying to drone navigation, reset clock and open remote root shells on receivers. Previously suggested long-term ?xes involving adding authentication to civilian signals or new directional antennas were important, but were not useful in the short term due to their potential lengthy deployment cycles. The researchers said an Electronic GPS Attack Detection System (EGADS) should be deployed which could flag the noted data-level attacks, and an Electronic GPS Whitening System (EGWS) which could re-broadcast a "whitened signal" to otherwise vulnerable receivers. The researchers said their work differed from existing GPS jamming and spoofing attacks because it detailed a larger attack surface "by viewing GPS as a computer system". This included analysis of GPS protocol messages and operating systems, the GPS software stack and how errors affect dependent systems. "The overall landscape of GPS vulnerabilities is startling, and our experiments demonstrate a signi?cantly larger attack surface than previously thought," the researchers wrote. Attacks The GPS data level attacks caused more damage than previous spoofing attacks and were able to trigger a remote crash of high-end professional receivers. A second attack targeted the GPS receiver software stack, in some cases triggering another remote wipe. Vulnerabilities in the stack were present because like other critical hardware systems, receivers were treated as devices, not computers, and were rarely patched. The third attack exploited the fact that high-level software and systems trusted GPS navigation solutions. This demonstrated how remote GPS-level attacks can ?ow up the stack to dependent software. It demonstrated new remote attacks against latent bugs which depend on time and date. "For example, we show that we can permanently de-synchronise the date of Phasor Measurement Units used in [a] smart grid. We also show we can cause UNIX epoch rollover in a few minutes, and year 100,000 (the ?rst 6-digit year) rollover in about two days." Generating input over radio frequency was difficult: "In particular, in order to test data-level GPS attacks via RF, we need to be able to generate and broadcast our own GPS signal just like a real satellite. "Further, receivers have antennas that can distinguish if there are multiple signals, making it potentially possible for a receiver to detect spoo?ng. Finally, receivers are literally boxes with no programmable API." Researchers built a "hybrid receiver and satellite in a box", or specifically a novel GPS phase-coherent signal synthesiser (PCSS) to provide more capability than previously used kit, and slashed thousands of dollars off the price tag. It received live GPS signals and produced malicious signals in a way that would not be detected by GPS satellites. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 9 21:01:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 22:01:04 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Brain 'pacemaker' to treat Alzheimer's Message-ID: <1A4CC950-34DB-4625-A154-31A968FA73F4@infowarrior.org> Brain 'pacemaker' to treat Alzheimer's http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20121208-194909-5872 UPI 12/9/2012 1:44:52 AM BALTIMORE, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Researchers surgically implanted a pacemaker-like device into the brain of a patient with early Alzheimer's disease, they say is first such U.S. operation. Dr. William S. Anderson, a neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, performed the surgery and said it was part of a federally funded, multicenter clinical trial marking a new direction in clinical research designed to slow or halt the ravages of the disease. "Recent failures in Alzheimer's disease trials using drugs such as those designed to reduce the buildup of beta amyloid plaques in the brain have sharpened the need for alternative strategies," Dr. Paul B. Rosenberg, also of the medical school and the trial's Johns Hopkins site director, said in a statement. "This is a very different approach, whereby we are trying to enhance the function of the brain mechanically. It's a whole new avenue for potential treatment for a disease becoming all the more common with the aging of the population." About 40 patients are expected to receive the deep brain stimulation implant over the next year or so at Johns Hopkins and four other institutions in North America as part of an advance study led by Johns Hopkins' Dr. Constantine G. Lyketsos and Dr. Andres Lozano of the University of Toronto. Other sites include: the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Florida and Banner Health System in Phoenix. The medical device company, Functional Neuromodulation Ltd., is also supporting the trial. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 10 10:50:14 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:50:14 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?WCIT_=96_China_And_Russia_Withdr?= =?windows-1252?q?aw_Bid_For_Greater_Control_Of_Internet?= Message-ID: WCIT ? China And Russia Withdraw Bid For Greater Control Of Internet Controversial proposals handed to the ITU on Friday have now been withdrawn On December 10, 2012 by Tom Brewster http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/wcit-china-russia-government-itu-internet-101419 China, Russia and others have withdrawn controversial proposals at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 2012 that would have given them greater control over the Internet, following a public backlash from dismayed onlookers. A leaked document from WCIT had indicated a number of nations, also including the United Arab Emirates (UAE and Saudi Arabia, wanted to have more power over the Web?s laws and infrastructure. Much of the power over the working of the Internet currently lies with US bodies. A spokesperson from the ITU confirmed to TechWeekEurope the proposals were now ?off the table?. They were at a loss as to why the nation states, who handed their proposals to the ITU on Friday, had pulled out. According to a source at the conference, the ITU is saying the document was never officially put forward. The conference, organised by the UN?s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is seeking to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which make up a treaty establishing international rules for telecommunications systems, last updated in 1988. Negative press at WCIT The leaked document, entitled ?Proposals for the Work of the Conference?, indicated China, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt all wanted to be granted greater control over the Web. However, Egypt issued a statement over Twitter distancing itself from the proposals. ?Member States shall have the sovereign right to establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance, and to regulate the national Internet segment, as well as the activities within their territory of operating agencies providing Internet access or carrying Internet traffic,? read the document published by Wcitleaks. The group of nations said member states should have equal rights to manage all naming, numbering and addressing on the Internet, which would indicate they want to see some of the power wrested from the US in terms of technical management of the Web. The US currently decides on who runs the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN runs some of the key infrastructure of the Web, such as domain name assignment and is one of the most important bodies involved in the running of the Internet. Attendees at the conference have until this Friday (14 December) to decide on what proposals will be accepted and made into international law. However, even when they are drafted into law, nation states will not be compelled to follow the rules, they will only be expected to enforce them in their own regions. Over 900 proposals have been put forward so far. The conference has attracted plenty of negative press, as major organisations like the European Union and Google have launched campaigns raising concern over increased government control over the Web. Last week, reports claimed the ITU website had come under attack, with more hits planned in the coming days. Hacktivist collective Anonymous has been vocal about its qualms with the meeting. One of the biggest concerns surrounding the ITU conference is the lack of input from non-governmental sources. The Internet Society (Isoc) has been vocal about the need to represent citizens. ?Ultimately, one of the greatest benefits of the Internet is its potential to ensure that all citizens of the world have the same opportunities to participate in public life,? a blog post from Isoc read. ?As we celebrate Human Rights Day on December 10, let?s seize this moment to remember the opportunities and challenges raised by the Internet for the ability of all stakeholders to have their voices heard.? Campaigning group Avaaz launched a petition on Friday calling on the ITU to ?reject any changes to current Internet regulations that would weaken or alter the free and open nature of the Internet?. ?We also demand that any proposed changes to current international Internet regulations be publicly debated, and subject to citizen input and approval.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 10 10:51:26 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:51:26 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - 'Rampant Piracy' Is Deader Than Your Outdated Metrics Message-ID: <57F56EC8-7805-4444-A497-708A9D3BB1FB@infowarrior.org> Dear Recording Industry: 'Rampant Piracy' Is Deader Than Your Outdated Metrics from the the-newest-music-genre:-'post-Napster' dept Tom Townshend at MSN Music posits an interesting question: is illegal downloading dead? To be sure, asking any lobbyist fronting for the RIAA this question will result in a long-winded tongue lashing that compares today's "digital dimes" with yesteryear's "plastic money-printing machine." But the question is valid. Is piracy as much of a problem as the RIAA insists it is? Or has music consumption changed so dramatically that the old yardsticks no longer work? Townshend points out some interesting stats on last week's chart toppers.... < - > http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121127/15205021160/dear-recording-industry-rampant-piracy-is-deader-than-your-outdated-metrics.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 10 10:56:51 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:56:51 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - iOS 6 Maps stranding Australian drivers, police say Message-ID: iOS 6 Maps stranding Australian drivers, police say updated 09:28 am EST, Mon December 10, 2012 Map mistake forces government rescue operations Police in Victoria, Australia have issued a bulletin warning people about an error in iOS 6 Maps which is leaving people stranded. The bulletin notes that during the past few weeks, rescue operations have been needed for a number of people using iOS 6 to drive to the city of Mildura. The firmware is instead leading people into a part of Murray-Sunset National Park over 40 miles away. Making the issue more than an inconvenience is that the park has extreme temperatures and little water, as well as bad cellphone coverage, sometimes forcing people to walk long distances to call emergency services. Some rescues have reportedly taken as long as 24 hours. No deaths have been recorded so far, however. "Police have contacted Apple in relation to the issue and hope the matter is rectified promptly to ensure the safety of motorists travelling [sic] to Mildura," says a message on the Victoria police website. "Anyone travelling to Mildura or other locations within Victoria should rely on other forms of mapping until this matter is rectified." The mistake may be the most serious one yet in iOS 6 Maps, which has proven an embarrassment to Apple since its release in September. People have regularly complained about mislabeled items and bad directions, as well as missing features and instances of poorly-rendered 3D. At least two key executives have been fired over the app, including iOS head Scott Forstall and the person in charge of Maps, Richard Williamson. < - > http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/12/10/map.mistake.forces.government.rescue.operations/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 11 06:17:36 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:17:36 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Pax_Americana_=91winding_down=92?= =?windows-1252?q?=2C_says_US_report?= Message-ID: <9AF7E2BD-9DA6-4123-A97C-91766383807F@infowarrior.org> (Report @ http://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf) December 10, 2012 6:48 pm Pax Americana ?winding down?, says US report By Geoff Dyer in Washington China will be the world?s largest economy by 2030 but the US will still remain ?first among equals? in the international system, according to a new US government intelligence assessment of global trends. The report predicts that Europe, Japan and Russia will continue to experience relative decline, and that Asia will come to dwarf the rest of the world in terms of its economic and military power. < - > http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4031c202-42f3-11e2-aa8f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EkFYhVa2 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 11 10:43:09 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:43:09 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Alan Alda & Time: Actor Teaches At Stony Brook, Asks Scientists To Explain Time Message-ID: <4F9D66D0-ACAB-4A08-A013-BE9F6D985C67@infowarrior.org> Alan Alda & Time: Actor Teaches At Stony Brook, Asks Scientists To Explain Time By FRANK ELTMAN 12/11/12 03:01 AM ET EST http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/professor-alan-alda-actor-teaches-stony-brook-scientists-time_n_2276265.html MINEOLA, N.Y. ? Professor Alan Alda has a homework assignment for scientists. Yes, that Alan Alda. The actor known for portraying Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce on the TV show "MASH" and more recent guest shots on NBC's "30 Rock" is also a visiting professor at New York's Stony Brook University school of journalism and a founder of the school's Center for Communicating Science. The center is sponsoring an international contest for scientists asking them to explain in terms a sixth-grader could understand: "What is time?" Alda is well-known for his affinity for science and is the longtime host of PBS' "Scientific American Frontiers." He said it is vital for society to have a better understanding of science, and puts much of the onus on scientists to better explain their work. "There's hardly an issue we deal with today that isn't affected by science," Alda said. "I've even heard from a number of people in Congress that they often don't understand what scientists are talking about when they go to Washington to testify, and these are the people who make the decisions about funding and policy." He said many scientists have told him they have to get better at communicating. "We see misinformation about scientific facts on a daily basis," Alda said. "Sometimes you know so much about something you assume everybody else is as familiar as you are and you tend to speak in shorthand. Even other scientists may not understand what you are talking about if they are not an expert in your field." This is the second year Alda is supporting what he calls the Flame Challenge II. The name comes from his own experience as an 11-year-old, when he asked a teacher what a flame was. She replied, "oxidation," which left him just as puzzled. So, last year he asked scientists to answer his childhood question via a contest administered by the Stony Brook center. The center received more than 800 submissions from around the world, and the winner chosen by 6,000 student judges was Ben Ames, a 31-year-old Kansas City native studying for his Ph.D. at the University of Innsbruck. He created an animated video () explaining how clashing atoms create fire. http://bit.ly/YJXdwV This year, Stony Brook received 300 questions from 11-year-olds and settled on a query submitted by Sydney Allison, a sixth-grader at Gomm Elementary School in Reno, Nev. Entries can be submitted until March 1. The winner gets a trophy, a trip to the 2013 World Science Festival in New York and the satisfaction of educating not only sixth-graders, but the general public. "This contest probably gives people the impression that it's a teaching tool for kids," Alda said. "That's a happy by-product, but it really is a tool for scientists to take a complex question and explain it in a way the rest of us can understand." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 11 13:07:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:07:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hacking the Human Brain: The Next Domain of Warfare Message-ID: <2AAE428F-E0CC-4879-AC18-37CA3E9F436F@infowarrior.org> (c/o MAM) Hacking the Human Brain: The Next Domain of Warfare ? By Chloe Diggins and Clint Arizmendi ? 12.11.12 ? 9:30 AM http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/the-next-warfare-domain-is-your-brain It?s been fashionable in military circles to talk about cyberspace as a ?fifth domain? for warfare, along with land, space, air and sea. But there?s a sixth and arguably more important warfighting domain emerging: the human brain. This new battlespace is not just about influencing hearts and minds with people seeking information. It?s about involuntarily penetrating, shaping, and coercing the mind in the ultimate realization of Clausewitz?s definition of war: compelling an adversary to submit to one?s will. And the most powerful tool in this war is brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, which connect the human brain to devices. Chloe Diggins and Clint Arizmendi are research & analysis officers at the Australian army?s Land Warfare Studies Centre. The views expressed are their own and do not reflect those of the Australian Department of Defence or the Australian Government. Current BCI work ranges from researchers compiling and interfacing neural data such as in the Human Conectome Project to work by scientists hardening the human brain against rubber hose cryptanalysis to technologists connecting the brain to robotic systems. While these groups are streamlining the BCI for either security or humanitarian purposes, the reality is that misapplication of such research and technology has significant implications for the future of warfare. Where BCIs can provide opportunities for injured or disabled soldiers to remain on active duty post-injury, enable paralyzed individuals to use their brain to type, or allow amputees to feel using bionic limbs, they can also be exploited if hacked. BCIs can be used to manipulate ? or kill. Recently, security expert Barnaby Jack demonstrated the vulnerability of biotechnological systems by highlighting how easily pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) could be hacked, raising fears about the susceptibility of even life-saving biotechnological implants. This vulnerability could easily be extended to biotechnologies that connect directly to the brain, such as vagus nerve stimulation or deep-brain stimulation. Outside the body, recent experiments have proven that the brain can control and maneuver quadcopter drones and metal exoskeletons. How long before we harness the power of mind-controlled weaponized drones ? or use BCIs to enhance the power, efficiency, and sheer lethality of our soldiers? This new battlespace is not just about influencing hearts and minds. It?s about involuntarily penetrating and coercing the mind. Given that military research arms such as the United States? DARPA are investing inunderstanding complex neural processes and enhanced threat detection through BCI scan for P300 responses, it seems the marriage between neuroscience and military systems will fundamentally alter the future of conflict. And it is here that military researchers need to harden the systems that enable military application of BCIs. We need to prevent BCIs from being disrupted or manipulated, and safeguard against the ability of the enemy to hack an individual?s brain. The possibilities for damage, destruction, and chaos are very real. This could include manipulating a soldier?s BCI during conflict so that s/he were forced to pull the gun trigger on friendlies, install malicious code in his own secure computer system, call in inaccurate coordinates for an air strike, or divulge state secrets to the enemy seemingly voluntarily. Whether an insider has fallen victim to BCI hacking and exploits a system from within, or an external threat is compelled to initiate a physical attack on hard and soft targets, the results would present major complications: in attribution, effectiveness of kinetic operations, and stability of geopolitical relations. Like every other domain of warfare, the mind as the sixth domain is neither isolated nor removed from other domains; coordinated attacks across all domains will continue to be the norm. It?s just that military and defense thinkers now need to account for the subtleties of the human mind ? and our increasing reliance upon the brain-computer interface. Regardless of how it will look, though, the threat is real and not as far away as we would like ? especially now that researchers just discovered a zero-day vulnerabilityin the brain. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 11 14:44:40 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:44:40 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - National Security Bosses Still Claiming It Would Violate National Security To Tell You If They Violate Your Privacy Message-ID: <98DF6214-61B1-4397-8913-11F451ED6729@infowarrior.org> National Security Bosses Still Claiming It Would Violate National Security To Tell You If They Violate Your Privacy from the whose-security-are-we-talking-about? dept Via Julian Sanchez we learn that Senator Ron Wyden has released some updated responses from our national intelligence bosses concerning the questions that Wyden (and a few other Senators) have been asking for years. It's been pretty clear that a "secret" interpretation under the FISA Amendments Act (related to the Patriot Act) has meant that the NSA is scooping up tons of American communications, even as its mandate is that it only cover foreign intelligence?and Wyden has been pushing for more information. It appears that there are some pretty significant loopholes that have allowed the NSA to go a lot further. For example, it isn't allowed to collect information on Americans if "it's known at the time of acquisition" that the communications are domestic. So as long as it doesn't look when it's acquiring (but does look later) there's no problem. Similarly, it appears that the secret interpretation also means as long as the target of the investigation being conducted -- and not necessarily the person whose communication is being intercepted -- is a foreign terrorist, the communication is fair game. That is, so long as the NSA can claim that they're collecting the information to go after Al Qaeda, they can claim that it's valid to intercept almost anything, as it "targets" foreign communications, even if it's collecting purely domestic communications. The key to all of this is reports that the NSA is likely collecting a massive chunk of information, possibly including pretty much all mobile phone records. Senator Wyden keeps asking about how many Americans have had their data collected, and what interpretation the NSA is using. These seem like completely valid questions, but the NSA and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, keep refusing to answer. After the NSA responded to yet another request from Wyden for answers to these questions, Wyden once again demanded answers from James Clapper, the Director of National Security. Wyden, along with Senators Jeff Merkeley, Tom Udall and Mark Udall, sent a letter simply asking Clapper to respond to four simple questions -- many of which could be answered with a simple yes or no: < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121210/13172621339/national-security-bosses-still-claiming-it-would-violate-national-security-to-tell-you-if-they-violate-your-privacy.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 12 06:29:08 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 07:29:08 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DHS Pays San Francisco To Buy Surveillance Equipment That Records Video AND Audio On City Buses Message-ID: <0253EC89-87FB-4E92-923C-1A4C525BAC9F@infowarrior.org> Homeland Security Pays San Francisco To Buy Surveillance Equipment That Records Video AND Audio On City Buses from the surveillance-society dept http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121211/00105921343/homeland-security-pays-san-francisco-to-buy-surveillance-equipment-that-records-video-audio-city-buses.shtml We all know that law enforcement has been regularly expanding its ability to spy on people at every turn, especially with surveillance cameras installed all over the place. But it still seems a bit shocking to find out that many municipalities are installing systems on public buses that record both audio and video of everyone on the bus -- including in San Francisco. That doesn't just seem like overkill, it raises significant legal questions. California -- for better or for worse (and I'd argue, for worse) is a two party consent state when it comes to recording, meaning everyone has to know they're being recorded. So it seems like recording without getting consent should be seen as an illegal, warrantless form of wiretapping. Even more troubling: the reason San Francisco is doing this upgrade? The Department of Homeland Security paid them to do it. It gave them a grant covering the entire cost. Is Homeland Security really worried about drunks getting into a brawl on the bus? Or do they see this as an opportunity to do significantly more involved surveillance? The whole program seems pretty troubling, and yet more and more places are adding the devices, with little to no public recognition. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 07:47:57 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 08:47:57 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.N. summit rejects U.S., Europe hands-off-the-Internet plea Message-ID: While dismayed, I have to snicker at how the US is complaining about such "middle of the night votes" (my words) on a controversial issue. What's good for the goose *must* be good for the gander!! Live and learn, people. ---rick U.N. summit rejects U.S., Europe hands-off-the-Internet plea Nigeria, Cuba, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia persuade a majority of summit delegates to support giving a United Nations agency a more "active" role in Internet governance. < -- > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57558887-38/u.n-summit-rejects-u.s-europe-hands-off-the-internet-plea/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 08:03:17 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:03:17 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Google Zeitgeist 2012 Released Message-ID: <47EF675F-D636-4992-8190-791819AE3A04@infowarrior.org> Google Zeitgeist 2012 Released http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 15:36:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:36:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.S. says won't sign ITU telecom treaty in current form Message-ID: <89F89BA1-7146-4D72-AE7B-B18F0F870C07@infowarrior.org> U.S. says won't sign ITU telecom treaty in current form By Matt Smith | Reuters ? 2 hrs 0 mins ago http://news.yahoo.com/u-says-not-sign-itu-telecom-treaty-current-183058751--finance.html DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States, Britain and Canada on Thursday refused to sign a new global telecommunications treaty, warning it would provide a mandate for governmental regulation of the Internet, potentially ending 11 days of fractious talks in Dubai. In pre-written statements, the three countries informed a summit of the International Telecommunications Union of their decision, with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Kenya making similar announcements. The summit chairman broke up the meeting for an hour of private negotiations to try and revive the treaty, but with the United States announcing a press conference at 1900 GMT it seems Washington is in no mood for compromise. "It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the U.S. must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. body. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years. All without U.N. regulation." The United States and its allies have fought to ensure the new treaty, which is being revised for the first time since 1988, only applies to traditional telecommunications. A large bloc of countries led by Russia supports adding language to the treaty that could open the door to more regulation of cyberspace on issues from spam, security and the assignment of addresses to web pages. The U.S. bloc's coordinated snub followed a vote that approved an African proposal to add a sentence in a treaty relating to human rights. Western delegates believe this effectively reintroduced a contentious proposal that said no country should be allowed to unilaterally deny another country access to communications networks. "We prefer no resolution on the Internet at all and I'm extremely concerned that the language just adopted opens the possibility of Internet and content issues," Simon Towler, head of the British delegation, said after the Africa proposal was passed. The treaty was scheduled to be signed at 1330 GMT on Friday. (Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Leila Abboud and Nick Zieminski) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 15:37:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:37:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.N. summit implodes as U.S., others spurn Internet treaty Message-ID: <30BE4CFB-B847-4B3C-ADFC-61E70F24E365@infowarrior.org> U.N. summit implodes as U.S., others spurn Internet treaty United Nations summit breaks down after U.S., Canada, and other democracies refuse to sign treaty that would hand a U.N. agency more authority over how the Internet is managed. < - > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559034-38/u.n-summit-implodes-as-u.s-others-spurn-internet-treaty/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 15:40:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:40:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US officially a surveillance state (if you didn't know already) Message-ID: U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens By JULIA ANGWIN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html#printMode Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens?even people suspected of no crime. Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions. A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect. Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency?how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored?and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens. The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation. Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases?flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained. The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes. "It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate. Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens. Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected. But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or members of the public. "All you have to do is publish a notice in the Federal Register and you can do whatever you want," says Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant who advises agencies on how to comply with the Privacy Act. As a result, the National Counterterrorism Center program's opponents within the administration?led by Ms. Callahan of Homeland Security?couldn't argue that the program would violate the law. Instead, they were left to question whether the rules were good policy. Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information." The list could potentially include almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals. Previous government proposals to scrutinize massive amounts of data about innocent people have caused an uproar. In 2002, the Pentagon's research arm proposed a program called Total Information Awareness that sought to analyze both public and private databases for terror clues. It would have been far broader than the NCTC's current program, examining many nongovernmental pools of data as well. "If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks against the United States, their people must engage in transactions and they will leave signatures," the program's promoter, Admiral John Poindexter, said at the time. "We must be able to pick this signal out of the noise." Adm. Poindexter's plans drew fire from across the political spectrum over the privacy implications of sorting through every single document available about U.S. citizens. Conservative columnist William Safire called the plan a "supersnoop's dream." Liberal columnist Molly Ivins suggested it could be akin to fascism. Congress eventually defunded the program. The National Counterterrorism Center's ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors. In addition, unlike the Pentagon, the NCTC was created in 2004 specifically to use data to connect the dots in the fight against terrorism. Even after eight years in existence, the agency isn't well known. "We're still a bit of a startup and still having to prove ourselves," said director Matthew Olsen in a rare public appearance this summer at the Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank. The agency's offices are tucked away in an unmarked building set back from the road in the woodsy suburban neighborhood of McLean, Va. Many employees are on loan from other agencies, and they don't conduct surveillance or gather clues directly. Instead, they analyze data provided by others. The agency's best-known product is a database called TIDE, which stands for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links. Some names are known or suspected terrorists; others are terrorists' friends and families; still more are people with some loose affiliation to a terrorist. TIDE files are important because they are used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to compile terrorist "watchlists." These are lists that can block a person from boarding an airplane or obtaining a visa. The watchlist system failed spectacularly on Christmas Day 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, boarded a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam wearing explosives sewn into his undergarments. He wasn't on the watchlist. He eventually pleaded guilty to terror-related charges and is imprisoned. His bomb didn't properly detonate. However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions." "This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had." As result, Mr. Obama demanded a watchlist overhaul. Agencies were ordered to send all their leads to NCTC, and NCTC was ordered to "pursue thoroughly and exhaustively terrorism threat threads." Quickly, NCTC was flooded with terror tips?each of which it was obligated to "exhaustively" pursue. By May 2010 there was a huge backlog, according a report by the Government Accountability Office. Legal obstacles emerged. NCTC analysts were permitted to query federal-agency databases only for "terrorism datapoints," say, one specific person's name, or the passengers on one particular flight. They couldn't look through the databases trolling for general "patterns." And, if they wanted to copy entire data sets, they were required to remove information about innocent U.S. people "upon discovery." But they didn't always know who was innocent. A person might seem innocent today, until new details emerge tomorrow. "What we learned from Christmas Day"?from the failed underwear bomb?was that some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel, the national intelligence agency's civil liberties officer. "We realized we needed it to be retained longer." Late last year, for instance, NCTC obtained an entire database from Homeland Security for analysis, according to a person familiar with the transaction. Homeland Security provided the disks on the condition that NCTC would remove all innocent U.S. person data after 30 days. After 30 days, a Homeland Security team visited and found that the data hadn't yet been removed. In fact, NCTC hadn't even finished uploading the files to its own computers, that person said. It can take weeks simply to upload and organize the mammoth data sets. Homeland Security granted a 30-day extension. That deadline was missed, too. So Homeland Security revoked NCTC's access to the data. To fix problems like these that had cropped up since the Abdulmutallab incident, NCTC proposed the major expansion of its powers that would ultimately get debated at the March meeting in the White House. It moved to ditch the requirement that it discard the innocent-person data. And it asked for broader authority to troll for patterns in the data. As early as February 2011, NCTC's proposal was raising concerns at the privacy offices of both Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. Privacy offices are a relatively new phenomenon in the intelligence community. Most were created at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Privacy officers are often in the uncomfortable position of identifying obstacles to plans proposed by their superiors. At the Department of Justice, Chief Privacy Officer Nancy Libin raised concerns about whether the guidelines could unfairly target innocent people, these people said. Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns to emerge. The risk, then, is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood?say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms. An August government report indicates that, as of last year, NCTC wasn't doing predictive pattern-matching. The internal debate was more heated at Homeland Security. Ms. Callahan and colleague Margo Schlanger, who headed the 100-person Homeland Security office for civil rights and civil liberties, were concerned about the implications of turning over vast troves of data to the counterterrorism center, these people said. They and Ms. Libin at the Justice Department argued that the failure to catch Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't caused by the lack of a suspect?he had already been flagged?but by a failure to investigate him fully. So amassing more data about innocent people wasn't necessarily the right solution. The most sensitive Homeland Security data trove at stake was the Advanced Passenger Information System. It contains the name, gender, birth date and travel information for every airline passenger entering the U.S. Mary Ellen Callahan, then-chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security: 'This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.' Previously, Homeland Security had pledged to keep passenger data only for 12 months. But NCTC was proposing to copy and keep it for up to five years. Ms. Callahan argued this would break promises the agency had made to the public about its use of personal data, these people said. Discussions sometimes got testy, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. In one case, Ms. Callahan sent an email complaining that "examples" provided to her by an unnamed intelligence official were "complete non-sequiturs" and "non-responsive." In May 2011, Ms. Callahan and Ms. Schlanger raised their concerns with the chief of their agency, Janet Napolitano. They fired off a memo under the longwinded title, "How Best to Express the Department's Privacy and Civil Liberties Concerns over Draft Guidelines Proposed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center," according to an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The contents of the memo, which appears to run several pages, were redacted. The two also kept pushing the NCTC officials to justify why they couldn't search for terrorism clues less invasively, these people said. "I'm not sure I'm totally prepared with the firestorm we're about to create," Ms. Schlanger emailed Ms. Callahan in November, referring to the fact that the two wanted more privacy protections. Ms. Schlanger returned to her faculty position at the University of Michigan Law School soon after but remains an adviser to Homeland Security. To resolve the issue, Homeland Security's deputy secretary, Jane Holl Lute, requested the March meeting at the White House. The second in command from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, NCTC and the office of the director of national intelligence sat at the small conference table. Normal protocol for such meeting is for staffers such as Ms. Callahan to sit against the walls of the room and keep silent. By this point, Ms. Libin's concern that innocent people could be inadvertently targeted had been largely overruled at the Department of Justice, these people said. Colleagues there were more concerned about missing the next terrorist threat. That left Ms. Callahan as the most prominent opponent of the proposed changes. In an unusual move, Ms. Lute asked Ms. Callahan to speak about Homeland Security's privacy concerns. Ms. Callahan argued that the rules would constitute a "sea change" because, whenever citizens interact with the government, the first question asked will be, are they a terrorist? Mr. Brennan considered the arguments. And within a few days, the attorney general, Eric Holder, had signed the new guidelines. The Justice Department declined to comment about the debate over the guidelines. Under the new rules, every federal agency must negotiate terms under which it would hand over databases to NCTC. This year, Ms. Callahan left Homeland Security for private practice, and Ms. Libin left the Justice Department to join a private firm. Homeland Security is currently working out the details to give the NCTC three data sets?the airline-passenger database known as APIS; another airline-passenger database containing information about non-U.S. citizen visitors to the U.S.; and a database about people seeking refugee asylum. It previously agreed to share databases containing information about foreign-exchange students and visa applications. Once the terms are set, Homeland Security is likely to post a notice in the Federal Register. The public can submit comments to the Federal Register about proposed changes, although Homeland Security isn't required to make changes based on the comments. Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin at wsj.com A version of this article appeared December 13, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: U.S. Terror Agency To Tap Citizen Files. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 13 15:47:18 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:47:18 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Cheneyism Preserved But Attenuated in New Plum Book Message-ID: <1A74F6A9-446B-4997-8309-A16FA94735AC@infowarrior.org> Cheneyism Preserved But Attenuated in New Plum Book In the George W. Bush Administration, Vice President Dick Cheney advanced the idea that the Office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch, and that it was therefore exempt from the sort of oversight mechanisms ? including classification oversight ? which it might otherwise be (and previously was in fact) subject to. Somewhat unexpectedly, this conception of a Vice Presidency that transcends the three branches of government reappears in the 2012 edition of the Plum Book, an official publication which lists thousands of employment positions for appointees within the federal government and which is published every four years. ?The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter,? the new 2012 Plum Book states in Appendix No. 5, reproducing identical language from the 2008 Plum Book. This language was first introduced in 2004, when that year?s Plum Book also stopped listing most of the previously identified staff positions in the Office of Vice President, with the exception of the Chief of Staff (I. Lewis Libby) and one other assistant. By 2008, even those two staff listings had been deleted from the Plum Book as the Office of the Vice President retreated into further concealment. However, while replicating the language of Cheneyism, the latest Plum Book restores the deleted coverage of the Office of Vice President. Thirteen current OVP positions are now listed. And the Office of the Vice President appears ? as it did prior to the Bush Administration ? under the heading of the Executive Branch. Update: The statement that the Vice Presidency ?belongs neither to the Executive nor to the Legislative Branch but is attached by the Constitution to the latter? is derived from a 1961 Office of Legal Counsel opinion (at p. 11), which termed the question a ?semantic problem.? Under the George W. Bush Administration, however, this semantic problem was invoked to alter established oversight practices in the direction of greater secrecy. > - < http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/12/ovp_plumbook.html From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 18 07:33:53 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:33:53 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Facebook Destroys Instagram Message-ID: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/12/facebook-destroys-instagram/ Facebook Destroys Instagram Over the past few years, I have been fairly critical about Facebook ? starting first with its absurd valuation, and then moving to its abuse of privacy and data mining about its users, its frequent unannounced changes to its terms, and the general disdain with which it treats its users. Although I was an Instagram fan, once FB bought the company, I stopped using the app (there are lots of alternatives). This morning, I was reading the latest terms of service for the photo app ? and they are nothing short of insane. Facebook will be adding advertisements into Instagram?s application ? and you and your kids may be part of them. From the NYT Bits blog, here are the changes in Instagram?s privacy policy that you should be aware of: 1. Instagram can share information about its users with Facebook, its parent company, as well as outside affiliates and advertisers. 2. You could star in an advertisement ? without your knowledge. 3. Underage users are not exempt. 4. Ads may not be labeled as ads. 5. Want to opt out? Delete your account. Number five turns out to be a great idea ? this morning, I deleted my Instagram account. At this rate, its only a matter of time before Facebook gets deleted . . . --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 18 20:00:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:00:02 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Instagram: 'Wait, Wait! That's Not What We Meant!' Message-ID: Instagram: 'Wait, Wait! That's Not What We Meant!' from the responding-to-the-deluge dept So, as the deluge of hate towards Instagram got louder and louder concerning its terms of service change, the company has now come out and said that it will change the terms and, of course, that it never meant them to be read the way people were interpreting them, and that it plans to adjust the terms so that people aren't so damn angry at them. On the question of "advertising on Instagram" they note: < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121218/15010921430/instagram-wait-wait-thats-not-what-we-meant.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 19 06:33:58 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:33:58 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - BAC plays ostrich on the Net Message-ID: (c/o lyger) "Certain risks" in the BAC message? Reputational risk? Risk of facing reality? Risk of its employees thinking twice about their company? The horrors!! --rick "As Part Of Our Ongoing Effort To Protect Bank Of America, Zero Hedge Is Blocked" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-18/part-our-ongoing-effort-protect-bank-america-zero-hedge-blocked --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 19 13:39:04 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:39:04 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Finally, an Independent Study of the Health Effects of Airport Scanners Message-ID: <03FE3E77-F1C7-4CF3-8EA2-7D763CDAA2D8@infowarrior.org> (care/of JC) After a long debate, the safety question will be answered -- by Science. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/finally-an-independent-study-of-the-health-effects-of-airport-scanners/266406/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 19 13:39:12 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:39:12 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - GAO: TSA primarily interested in self-preservation Message-ID: The TSA's True Focus Isn't 'Safety' - It's Self-Preservation from the give-'em-a-inch-and-they'll-take-a-mile-(and-your-plastic-sword) dept Despite its own worst efforts, the TSA doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Year after year, horror story after horror story surfaces, detailing abuse of American citizens at the hands (very often literally) of TSA agents. If they're not poking, prodding, fondling or carelessly tossing supposed explosives into a trash can five feet away, they're confiscating harmless plastic swords while allowing loaded handguns on board. If they're not digging around in someone's laptop searching for who knows what, they're "diverting" iPads into their personal collections. A report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) suggests that the TSA's main focus isn't safety, it's self-preservation. As yearly budget reviews loom, the TSA suddenly needs to "look busy" and justify its continued existence. Anything that might cut back its funding is briefly humored and then discarded. (via Reason 24/7) < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121217/17563321412/tsas-true-focus-isnt-safety-its-self-preservation.shtml From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 20 07:44:32 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 08:44:32 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH Releases National Strategy For Information Sharing Message-ID: <13E72A8C-B389-439E-8A32-53059F3BF145@infowarrior.org> Just what we need -- another national strategy that sounds impressive as something to "address" something but most likely won't do anything really useful over the long term. At least that's what I get from a brief skim of the Summary....will read more when I can. --rick PDF @ http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2012sharingstrategy_1.pdf --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 20 18:34:16 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:34:16 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Iconic NYSE sold for $8.2 Billion Message-ID: <04E5E823-7CFE-4F1B-AB7A-360C771312D2@infowarrior.org> IntercontinentalExchange to Acquire NYSE for $8.2 Billion By Nina Mehta and Nandini Sukumar - Dec 20, 2012 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-12-20/intercontinentalexchange-said-in-merger-talks-with-nyse-euronext.html Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- IntercontinentalExchange Inc., the 12-year-old energy and commodity futures bourse, agreed to acquire NYSE Euronext (NYX) for cash and stock worth $8.2 billion, moving to take control of the world?s biggest equities market. IntercontinentalExchange, based in Atlanta, will pay $33.12 a share for the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, 38 percent above yesterday?s closing price, according to a statement today. Both boards approved the proposal and the companies expect to complete the transaction in the second half of 2013. Last year, the U.S. blocked a joint hostile bid by IntercontinentalExchange and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) for the New York-based company on concern the combination would dominate U.S. stock listings. Merging NYSE Euronext, which owns the biggest exchanges by value of listings in the U.S., France and the Netherlands, with the second-largest futures market underscores both the growing importance of derivatives and the diminishing influence of the 220-year-old NYSE. The Big Board, once the benchmark for global free markets, has seen its share of trading in stocks listed on the exchange decline to 21 percent from 82 percent. ?Not only are they losing volume, they?re also getting squeezed in their margins because of all these competitors who have different corporate structures,? Thomas Caldwell, who oversees about $1 billion as chairman and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Caldwell Securities Ltd., said in a telephone interview. His firm owns shares of NYSE and ICE. ?They?re languishing as everyone sits and waits for cash equity volumes to pick up, which may or may not occur for several years.? Shares Climb Shares of New York-based NYSE Euronext rallied 34 percent to $32.25 today, pushing its market value to $7.8 billion. IntercontinentalExchange added 1.4 percent to $130.10, bringing its capitalization to $9.5 billion. Jeffrey Sprecher, the chief executive officer of IntercontinentalExchange, will head the combined company, with NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer becoming president. Discussions that led to the takeover agreement began in October, Niederauer said in a telephone interview. The companies plan to explore an initial public offering for NYSE?s European equities unit. A takeover would mark an unusual success after more than $32 billion of exchange takeovers failed since October 2010. ?This is a much easier deal to get done,? said Brian Barish, who helps oversee about $7 billion including about 4 million NYSE Euronext shares as president and chief investment officer of Denver-based Cambiar Investors LLC. ?When Nasdaq was talking about doing something with NYSE, there were obvious antitrust market concentration problems. ICE is a totally different story because they don?t do equities.? Unsolicited Bid Under the terms of the agreement, NYSE shareholders can elect to take $33.12 in cash, 0.2581 share of IntercontinentalExchange, or a mix of $11.27 in cash and 0.1703 stock, according to the statement. The companies said the majority of the $450 million in estimated savings will be achieved in the second year after the deal closes. The transaction will increase earnings by more than 15 percent in the first year, according to the statement today. Sprecher joined Nasdaq OMX CEO Robert Greifeld in an unsolicited bid for NYSE Euronext in April 2011. The offer, scuttled by the Justice Department seven weeks later, sought to derail NYSE?s pending merger agreement with Deutsche Boerse AG. (DB1) Cost Cutting The merger with Deutsche Boerse was rejected by European competition authorities in February because it would have created a dominant European exchange operator for derivatives. NYSE Euronext subsequently began a cost-cutting plan known as Project 14 and said on Nov. 6 that it generated savings of $82 million so far this year, 33 percent of the total $250 million expected by the end of 2014. ?The business for the New York Stock Exchange can only get better,? Sprecher said in a phone interview about stock trading. Regulatory changes in U.S. equities are likely and ?the new model will favor the NYSE,? he said. In addition to the Big Board, the company operates bourses in Paris, Lisbon, Brussels and Amsterdam and London-based Liffe, Europe?s second-largest derivatives market. NYSE adjusted earnings were $653 million in 2011 on revenue of $4.6 billion. The company posted profit of $357 million in the nine months through Sept. 30, down 32 percent from the same period in 2011. ?The rationale for the deal is to cut costs in an industry that is encountering reduced volumes and an increased regulatory burden,? Peter Lenardos, an exchange analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London, said today. The transaction is also ?for ICE to gain access to European derivatives as NYSE is the owner of Liffe,? he said. Clearing Services Liffe will be merged into London-based ICE Clear Europe, the exchanges said. The two companies have agreed to a clearing services contract where ICE Clear Europe processes all of Liffe?s trades, according to a separate statement today. Niederauer said this ensures NYSE has a way to clear futures trades if the deal with IntercontinentalExchange falls through. When the union with Deutsche Boerse ended, NYSE, which had delayed building its own clearinghouse in Europe, was left with no partner and a stalled process to form its own clearinghouse. ?Putting ICE and Liffe together would create a major London-based derivatives exchange, specializing in interest rates, commodities and credit,? said Richard Perrott, exchange analyst at Berenberg Bank in London. He rates ICE a buy and NYSE Euronext a hold. ?Liffe would shift to using ICE?s existing clearing services, removing the need for NYSE Euronext to pursue its own? central clearinghouse, he said. The New York Stock Exchange, formed in 1792 under a sycamore tree on Wall Street, became the center of American capitalism through its grip on trading and listings for companies from Ford Motor Co. to AT&T Inc. (T) and DuPont Co. Faded Reputation The Big Board?s reputation faded in the last decade when scandals highlighted the potential for collusion on the NYSE floor and faster technology reduced the need for middlemen. In September 2003, Chairman Richard Grasso ended a 36-year career at the exchange as regulators and directors said a $140 million pay package called his leadership into question. Grasso?s successor, John Thain, orchestrated the 2006 reverse merger that gave the NYSE control of Chicago-based Archipelago Holdings Inc. and turned the member-owned exchange into a public company. By then, regulatory directives aimed at lowering transaction costs for investors were in the process of cutting the NYSE?s market share. Buying NYSE Euronext is a way for Sprecher to get access to the company?s Liffe derivatives platform, Diego Perfumo, an analyst at Equity Research Desk LLC, an investment advisory firm in Greenwich, Connecticut, said in a phone interview. Liffe Access ?When Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext tried to merge, ICE immediately partnered with Nasdaq and tried to poach NYSE away,? Perfumo said. ?ICE was going to keep Liffe and Nasdaq was going to keep the rest of NYSE. Short-term interest rate futures are 70 percent of Liffe?s business and the other 30 percent is equity derivatives, which is an undervalued asset within NYSE Euronext. What Sprecher is after is Liffe.? Sprecher founded IntercontinentalExchange as an online marketplace for energy trading. Its seed capital came from settlement money collected by Sprecher?s previous company, Western Power Group, in 1996 tied to a lawsuit over an agricultural-waste burning power plant in Southern California. IntercontinentalExchange offers contracts based on European energy commodities such as Brent crude, natural gas and heating oil at its London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. In the U.S., it has futures on agricultural commodities such as coffee, cocoa and sugar as well as Russell stock indexes and currencies at ICE Futures U.S. The company owns the world?s largest clearinghouse for credit-default swaps, ICE Clear Credit LLC. Enhanced Products ?The combined company could enhance the products offered across asset classes, cross-market to different client bases with different needs, expand ICE?s reach in Europe to NYSE?s exchanges and drastically reduce the cost of futures regulation,? Joseph Greco, a managing director at Meridian Equity Partners, a New York-based broker that has traders on the NYSE floor, said in an interview. ?For NYSE it would augment the futures and derivatives footprint domestically.? With more than 1,000 employees, IntercontinentalExchange earned $521.7 million in net income from revenue of $1.3 billion in 2011 when its profit margin was 39 percent. For the first nine months of the year, 87 percent of Intercontinental?s revenue came from clearing and transaction fees. As of Sept. 30, the company had $1.24 billion in cash and cash equivalents and had issued $400 million in bonds due in 2018 and 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Add Scale Equity-exchange executives have sought to add scale through mergers and acquisitions after the number of U.S. and European trading venues increased by about 50 in the past decade, driving down profitability. Stock trading has also declined, with daily volume of U.S. exchange-listed securities averaging 6.44 billion shares this year, the lowest level since at least 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Populist outcry, antitrust concern and some of the most volatile markets on record have prevented the completion of more than $32 billion in announced transactions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on deals since October 2010 that were valued at $1 billion or more. The transaction needs approval from U.S., U.K., French, Dutch and Belgian securities regulators and antitrust authorities in the U.K., Portugal and Spain. ?Given the highly regulated nature of transparent markets such as ICE and NYSE we will have to secure the necessary antitrust approvals in Europe and the USA,? Mark MacGann, head of European government affairs and public advocacy at NYSE Euronext said. ?We welcome the opportunity to engage with European decision makers in a constructive manner.? ICE?s lead advisor was Morgan Stanley while NYSE?s lead bankers were Perella Weinberg Partners LLPand BNP Paribas SA. To contact the reporters on this story: Nina Mehta in New York at nmehta24 at bloomberg.net; Nandini Sukumar in London at nsukumar at bloomberg.net or @NandiniSukumar on Twitter To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson at bloomberg.net --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 21 06:52:21 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 07:52:21 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Saw this a mile away -- Instagram reverts to prior policy on advertising Message-ID: <80A575C7-8289-45B3-ADA1-4CCA08FED5DA@infowarrior.org> Reacting to users? outcry, Instagram reverts to prior policy on advertising By Associated Press http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/reacting-to-users-outcry-instagram-reverts-to-prior-policy-on-advertising/2012/12/20/8d846234-4b19-11e2-8758-b64a2997a921_story.html SAN FRANCISCO ? Instagram has abandoned wording in its new terms-of-service agreement that sparked outcry from users concerned it meant their photos could appear in advertisements. In a blog post late Thursday, the popular mobile photo-sharing service says it has reverted to language in the advertising section of its terms of service that appeared when it was launched in October 2010. Instagram is now owned by Facebook Inc. and maintains that it would like to experiment with different forms of advertising to make money. Its blog post says that it will now ask users? permission to introduce possible ad products only after they are fully developed. The outcry to the changes announced earlier this week led the company to clarify that it has no plans to put users? photos in ads. 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 Fri Dec 21 06:59:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 07:59:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Apple reportedly pulls plug on project behind portable charger Message-ID: The Great Wall of Cupertino continues to rise .... --rick Apple reportedly pulls plug on project behind portable charger The iPhone maker refuses to license the rights to its Lightning connector for use in a portable charging station, its CEO says in announcing refunds to Kickstarter donors. < - > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57560376-37/apple-reportedly-pulls-plug-on-project-behind-portable-charger/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 21 07:34:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:34:05 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Thought for the Day Message-ID: <7EE9DEFC-71FD-40F4-AE43-58FC6781E460@infowarrior.org> @DeathStarPR: Alright, we're calling it. 21st of December: Worst. #Apocalypse. Ever. ..... though it could also be that the Mayans had the Pentium bug, too. :) --rick --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 21 13:33:39 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:33:39 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments Message-ID: <9A92B028-65DC-4D59-B0A2-7B81BD5EC718@infowarrior.org> NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121221/10123121471/nra-to-protect-2nd-amendment-we-must-trample-1st-4th-amendments.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 22 08:37:58 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:37:58 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Apple backtracks on Kickstarter charger ban Message-ID: <56DFCAC5-3284-42EA-99EF-78BDEDD72E9A@infowarrior.org> Apple lifts block on combo 30-pin+Lightning charging accessories The Kickstarter campaign that was "shut down" now has a green light. by Jacqui Cheng - Dec 21 2012, 5:10pm EST http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/12/apple-lifts-block-on-combo-30-pinlightning-charging-accessories/ The POP station from Kickstarter aimed to combine Lightning and 30-pin connectors into a single charging device. The Kickstarter campaign that was "shut down" by Apple for creating a charging station that had both Lightning and 30-pin iPod connectors wasn't following the specifications required to be part of Apple's "Made for iPod" (MFi) program, according to Apple. Still, Apple has reviewed the specifications and has apparently reversed course on those restrictions, telling Ars on Friday that it has decided to allow 30-pin and Lightning connectors side-by-side for charging purposes. "Our technical specifications provide clear guidelines for developing accessories and they are available to MFi licensees for free. We support accessories that integrate USB and Lightning connectors, but there were technical issues that prevented accessories from integrating 30-pin and Lightning connectors, so our guidelines did not allow this," Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr told Ars on Friday. "We have been working to resolve this and have updated our guidelines to allow accessories to integrate both 30-pin and Lightning connectors to support charging." The incident highlights some of the problems accessory creators can face when using Kickstarter to fund yet-to-be-created projects?especially as they relate to Apple accessories. Earlier on Friday when we spoke to James Siminoff, the creator of the POP Kickstarter campaign, he explained that the timing of the iPhone 5 announcement (and its related introduction of the new Lightning connector) is what threw the whole project for a loop. "We were already a member of the MFi program before the release of the iPhone 5. When we came out with the project, one of the biggest questions we got was whether we'd support the iPhone 5, and we said 'absolutely,'" Siminoff told Ars. "At the time, there was no reason to think that they would change the way in which they're selling [the MFi program]." That is, Siminoff and his company didn't expect Apple to make changes to the restrictions placed on the MFi spec?he says previously, Apple didn't have language that would have prohibited an Apple connector to be sold in a product alongside another connector. But eventually Apple did begin to issue new guidelines that said Lightning connectors couldn't be included alongside any other kind of connector?30-pin or otherwise. Siminoff says his company interpreted this as not applying to their product. "They started to come out with guidelines, and there was one that said Lightning would not be allowed in any product that has 30-pin," he said. "We didn't clarify if that was for chargers or a docking station?we assumed the latter?so while we saw it, it didn't seem to make sense for what we were doing that they would not allow these two things to be on the same device." Siminoff went on: "Maybe we should've seen that and decided that we can't make [the POP charger]. But it didn't make any rational sense. At the same time, they were changing things, updating the policies, so we said, 'OK we'll submit the project [to the MFi program] and see what happens.'" What happened was that Apple eventually turned the application down for not following the updated MFi spec. As such, Siminoff made the decision this week to cancel the project altogether rather than modify it to allow users to plug in their own Lightning cables because it simply wouldn't have been the product that he originally wanted to produce. "We got very strong feedback saying we should still make a product that just has USB," Siminoff told Ars before Apple decided to update its guidelines, "but I still feel good about the decision to just refund everyone's money, because we just wanted to make a product that we believed in." A product they "believe in" would include clean lines and easy-to-use cables coming from a single charging station, not adapters and ports that users need to plug things into, said Siminoff. That's exactly why Siminoff remains skeptical of Apple's apparent reversal of its decision to bar the combination of 30-pin and Lightning connectors; what about Lightning alongside other connectors? "If it has to be an Apple-only product, and Lightning can't be next to, say, an Android charger, then it's still not something we want to make, Siminoff said after hearing the news about Apple's updated guidelines. "I hope they become customer friendly. Maybe we will be able to do [the POP charger] after all." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 22 08:38:44 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:38:44 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Politicians Decry Fake Torture, Cover Up Real Torture Message-ID: <35E0C527-16AB-4D18-8B33-0F21F7FB35E7@infowarrior.org> Politicians Decry Fake Torture, Cover Up Real Torture from the the-nation-cannot-abide-inaccurate-torture-depictions dept Even if a lifetime of exposure to the continuous hypocrisy of politicians has turned many of us into jaded, cynical shells of human beings reduced to selecting "None of the Above" when voting, every so often something comes along that breaks through our hardened shells... and carves another slice off our dwindling faith in humanity. This is one of those moments. < - > http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121220/15133521458/politicians-decry-fake-torture-cover-up-real-torture.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 22 08:40:11 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:40:11 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The Web We Lost Message-ID: <455878FF-92CE-4549-A5F2-DD131514F3D1@infowarrior.org> The Web We Lost December 13, 2012 The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be. So here's a few glimpses of a web that's mostly faded away: < -- > http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Dec 22 08:46:02 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:46:02 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Senate committee scraps anti-leaks measures from intelligence spending bill Message-ID: Senate committee scraps anti-leaks measures from intelligence spending bill By Greg Miller http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senate-committee-scraps-anti-leaks-measures-from-intelligence-spending-bill/2012/12/21/cb7815b0-4bb2-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_print.html The Senate Intelligence Committee has scrapped anti-leaks legislation that would have imposed sweeping new restrictions on government officials? and spy agencies? ability to interact with reporters. The committee stripped a series of anti-leaks provisions from an intelligence spending bill that faced opposition from a senior member of the panel as well as media organizations and the U.S. spy chief. One of the discarded measures would have eliminated a long-standing practice in Washington in which senior intelligence analysts occasionally provide ?background briefings? for reporters on terrorism threats and other national security issues. Other provisions would have restricted the ability of former national security officials to take jobs as TV commentators, and enabled heads of intelligence agencies to block pension payments to employees ?determined? to have violated non-disclosure agreements. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, said the language was removed because it became clear that opposition to the anti-leaks measures would have blocked Senate passage of the broader spending bill. Feinstein also noted that James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, has independently ?initiated a number of steps to improve detection and investigation of leaks that dovetail with our provisions.? Still, the outcome was a setback for Feinstein, who for months had defended the legislation as critical to stanching the flow of secrets to the media. ?The culture of leaks has to change,? Feinstein said when the bill was approved by the committee in July. The measures were introduced at a time when U.S. officials were expressing outrage over a series of reports on sensitive U.S. operations, including the disruption of a terrorist plot in Yemen and the U.S. role in cyberattacks on the nuclear infrastructure in Iran. But the Senate bill encountered opposition from Clapper, among others, who argued that it would inhibit the government?s ability to share information it wanted to relay to the public about terrorist threats and other national security concerns. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the intelligence panel, threatened to place a hold on the bill ? a step that would block it from coming to a full vote ? unless the anti-leaks provisions were changed or withdrawn. Media organizations including The Washington Post supported lobbying efforts by the Newspaper Association of America in opposition to the bill?s leaks language. The ban on ?backgrounders? would have allowed only top officials at the CIA and other agencies, or their public affairs departments, to share information with the media. That would have prevented analysts who are the government?s main experts on topics ranging from terrorism to climate change from taking part in sanctioned and supervised discussions with reporters. Most of the briefings deal broadly with analysts? interpretations of events and avoid discussion of the operational activities of the CIA and other agencies. Feinstein acknowledged that she did not know of any evidence that backgrounders had led to leaks of classified information. Despite the decision to abandon the anti-leaks measures, the issue remains a heated one. The Obama administration has initiated six leaks-related prosecutions, more than all previous administrations combined. Meanwhile, the pending release of the film ?Zero Dark Thirty,? about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, has reignited a controversy over the level of cooperation filmmakers got from the Obama administration. Feinstein and two other senators sent a letter to Sony Pictures this week saying the film?s depiction of the CIA?s interrogation program ? and the implication that it helped extract valuable information ? was ?grossly inaccurate and misleading.? The Senate committee last week approved a report that concluded that water-boarding and other brutal CIA interrogation methods did not produce meaningful results. The contents of the report, based on a three-year review of internal CIA records, remain classified. ? 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 Dec 22 08:50:05 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:50:05 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole Message-ID: <9B6FB0B9-3FF2-4C74-BC3F-D8F89FE19790@infowarrior.org> Which DC lobbyist lives in a more fantastical world divorced from reality? Grover Norquist or Wayne LaPierre? ---rick http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/opinion/the-nra-crawls-from-its-hidey-hole.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print December 21, 2012 The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, would have been better advised to remain wherever he had been hiding after the Newtown, Conn., massacre, rather than appear at a news conference on Friday. No one seriously believed the N.R.A. when it said it would contribute something ?meaningful? to the discussion about gun violence. The organization?s very existence is predicated on the nation being torn in half over guns. Still, we were stunned by Mr. LaPierre?s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant. Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times as he said the killing was the fault of the media, songwriters and singers and the people who listen to them, movie and TV scriptwriters and the people who watch their work, advocates of gun control, video game makers and video game players. The N.R.A., which devotes itself to destroying compromise on guns, is blameless. So are unscrupulous and unlicensed dealers who sell guns to criminals, and gun makers who bankroll Mr. LaPierre so he can help them peddle ever-more-lethal, ever-more-efficient products, and politicians who kill even modest controls over guns. His solution to the proliferation of guns, including semiautomatic rifles designed to kill people as quickly as possible, is to put more guns in more places. Mr. LaPierre would put a police officer in every school and compel teachers and principals to become armed guards. He wants volunteer and professional firefighters, who already risk their lives every day, to be charged with thwarting an assault by a deranged murderer. The same applies to paramedics, security guards, veterans, retired police officers. ?The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,? Mr. LaPierre said. We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob. And let?s be clear, civilians bristling with guns to prevent the ?next Newtown? are an armed mob even with training offered up by Mr. LaPierre. Any town officials or school principals who take up the N.R.A. on that offer should be fired. Mr. LaPierre said the Newtown killing spree ?might? have been averted if the killer had been confronted by an armed security guard. It?s far more likely that there would have been a dead armed security guard ? just as there would have been even more carnage if civilians had started firing weapons in the Aurora movie theater. In the 62 mass-murder cases over 30 years examined recently by the magazine Mother Jones, not one was stopped by an armed civilian. We have known for many years that a sheriff?s deputy was at Columbine High School in 1999 and fired at one of the two killers while 11 of their 13 victims were still alive. He missed four times. People like Mr. LaPierre want us to believe that civilians can be trained to use lethal force with cold precision in moments of fear and crisis. That requires a willful ignorance about the facts. Police officers know that firing a weapon is a huge risk; that?s why they avoid doing it. In August, New York City police officers opened fire on a gunman outside the Empire State Building. They killed him and wounded nine bystanders. Mr. LaPierre said the news media call the semiautomatic weapon used in Newtown a machine gun, claim that it?s a military weapon and that it fires the most powerful ammunition available. That?s not true. What is true is that there is a growing call in America for stricter gun control. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 23 09:43:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:43:20 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - E-book restrictions leave 'buyers' with few rights Message-ID: E-book restrictions leave 'buyers' with few rights Unlike the owners of a physical tome, buyers of e-books are licensees with lots of limitations. It's time to change the rules. By Michael Hiltzik December 22, 2012, 9:27 a.m. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20121223,0,1032270.column There's a crass old joke about how you can never buy beer, just rent it. Who would think that the same joke applies to book buying in the digital age? But that's the case. Many people who'll be unwrapping iPads, Amazon Kindles or Barnes & Noble Nooks on Tuesday morning and loading them with bestsellers or classics won't have any idea how limited their rights are as their books' "owners." In fact, they won't be owners at all. They'll be licensees. Unlike the owners of a physical tome, they won't have the unlimited right to lend an e-book, give it away, resell it or leave it to their heirs. If it's bought for their iPad, they won't be able to read it on their Kindle. And if Amazon or the other sellers don't like what they've done with it, they can take it back, without warning. All these restrictions "raise obvious questions about what 'ownership' is," observes Dan Gillmor, an expert on digital media at Arizona State University. "The companies that license stuff digitally have made it clear that you own nothing." Typically, e-book buyers have no idea about these complexities. How could they? The rules and limitations are embodied in "terms of service" documents that Amazon, Apple, B&N and other sellers shroud in legalese and bury deep in their websites. That tells you how little they want you to know. The rules are based, in turn, on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with which Congress hoped to balance the rights of copyright holders and content users. "In the digital environment, that's always been the trickiest balance to strike," Annemarie Bridy, a specialist in intellectual property law at the University of Idaho, told me. In those terms, the DMCA looks like a failure. Both camps have important rights to protect. Let's start with copyright owners. In the non-digital world, copyright ends with the first sale of each copyrighted object. Under the "first sale" doctrine, once you buy a book, that physical book is yours to lend, give away, or resell. Copyright is safeguarded by the limitations of physical transfer ? once the book is given or loaned, the original buyer no longer has access to it. If a library owns five copies of a book, only five borrowers can read it at the same time. Theoretically a book can be photocopied, but only at great effort and with a perceptible loss of quality. In digital-dom, however, technology allows infinite copies to be made, with no loss of quality. Absent the usual restrictions, one could give away an e-book and still have it to read. Unrestricted transferability becomes a genuine threat to the livelihood of authors, artists, filmmakers, musicians. So some limitation is sensible. That's usually done through digital rights management, or DRM, which encodes copy or usage limitations into the digital file. The DMCA protected DRM by outlawing efforts to circumvent it (with a few exceptions). The question is whether the balance has tipped too far in favor of the booksellers, at the consumers' expense. The answer is yes. For one thing, DRM has put far too much power in the hands of digital booksellers. Amazon, in particular, has shown it can't be trusted with that power. In 2009, having learned that it inadvertently had sold unauthorized e-book versions of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" through its website, the company simply deleted those e-books from buyers' Kindles stealthily, without warning. An uproar followed, not least because Amazon's Orwellian behavior involved those Orwellian masterpieces. Amazon settled a subsequent lawsuit by promising never to steal a book back from a Kindle without the device owner's permission. But earlier this year, the company was revealed to have unilaterally shut down the access of Linn Jordet Nygaard, a Norwegian Kindle owner, to her library of 43 e-books, for reasons it refused to divulge. Another uproar, and Amazon backed down again, restoring Nygaard's account ? again without explanation. Amazon refused my request for comment. Another downside of e-book DRM is that most e-books are tied to the seller's reading device or apps. Buy a book from Amazon, and you can read it only on a Kindle or Amazon app. Buy it from Apple, and it can be read only on an Apple device. This lock-in gives the booksellers power over not only consumers but publishers. In fact, it led several publishers to make a price-fixing deal with Apple that aimed to undermine Amazon's market power, but ended with their getting whacked with a big federal antitrust fine instead. Moreover, notwithstanding the public impression that digital is forever, nothing is permanent in the digital world. In fact, digital content can be less permanent than physical books. In libraries you can find volumes that date back hundreds of years and can still be read (if carefully); but there are digital files that date back only a decade yet are completely unintelligible today. Nowhere does Amazon, Apple or any other distributor pledge to support its digital formats in perpetuity. Quite the contrary: They typically warn that they can cancel their service at any time, without warning, in a way that could end your access to a lifetime of e-book purchases in the flash of an electron. They could also go out of business, leaving millions of dependent customers in the lurch. Amazon keeps your purchased content for free on its own servers ? the term is "in the cloud" ? for downloading to your Kindles as needed. You pay once for an e-book and can use it on all the Kindles you own. I can't find any written promise by Amazon that this storage will always be free. If it announces a few years from now that henceforth there will be a monthly fee to store books purchased, say, more than 10 years ago, what rights will you have to resist? None. There are ways to protect your e-books from grasping e-booksellers or the future. Programs available on the Web can strip the DRM code from your purchased items ? for books, one possible method involves an e-library management program called Calibre. The program easily can be augmented with a DRM-stripping application so you can convert e-books sold in any proprietary format into a different format or even as plain text. But is it legal? No one is quite sure, and that's a problem. The DMCA makes it unlawful to circumvent certain DRM protection, but doing so on an item you've bought and want to keep in a different format for your own use ? not to make multiple copies for sale ? may not break the law. On the other hand, distributing software that enables that is illegal under the DMCA even if the goal is legitimate, which is absurd. Even if reformatting a file you own is legal, what if you don't own it? The hard-to-find terms of service of e-book sellers specify that you're only licensing a book, not buying it (although the Amazon order page does say you're "buying" it). "In the digital context, it's not clear that the 'first sale' has ever occurred," says Bridy. It should be a top priority for Congress to clear out the murk. Buyers of e-books must have the explicit right to reformat their purchases and save backup copies for their own use, permanently. The sale of an e-book must be irrevocable. On the other side, it must remain strictly illegal to make multiple unauthorized copies of any copyrighted work for distribution. Lending by libraries, one digital copy at a time, should be facilitated ? it tends to widen the audience for books. The guiding principle must be that an e-book owner's rights and responsibilities parallel those of a book owner, and the same must go for authors, publishers and booksellers. "Someone once observed to me that if libraries were being invented today, publishers would try to make them illegal," Gillmor says. Clarify these rules of e-book commerce, and the book market will reap the benefit. The power of electronic booksellers over publishers might be reduced, and consumers would know what they were buying ? and would own what they bought. Leave the rules as vague as they are, and the victims will be authors, consumers and publishers. Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik at latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter. Copyright ? 2012, Los Angeles Times --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 23 09:45:08 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:45:08 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Mumford_=26_Sons_Warn_Against_?= =?windows-1252?q?=91Unauthorized_Lending=92_of_Their_CD?= Message-ID: (Idiotic statement like that just make me want to see folks go torrent their stuff just on principle. ---rick) Mumford & Sons Warn Against ?Unauthorized Lending? of Their CD ? By Angela Watercutter ? 12.23.12 ? 6:30 AM http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/mumford-sons-lending-copyright/ Mumford & Sons? latest album Babel has a copyright notice that warns agains unauthorized lending. A lot of people heard Mumford & Sons this year. The London-based folkie foursome played 15 cities in the U.S. this summer, ruled Spotify (they were one of the top 20 most-streamed bands of 2012), and their album Babel was the biggest debut of the year, selling 600,000 copies in its first week. With numbers like that, it seems like Mumford & Sons really want people to hear their super-earnest brand of roots rock. They just don?t want anyone to loan their record to you. Hidden in the fine print on the back of Babel is an odd provision that clearly states: ?The copyright in this sound recording and artwork is owned by Mumford & Sons. Warning: all rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited.? Most of that all seems legit, but ?lending?? Since when can?t people let friends borrow their records? Typically albums have copyright notices ? most simply state the year the album was first released and who holds the copyright. Most also include language warning against unauthorized reproduction, and some even include the extra-scary FBI anti-piracy warning. But at this point, we all get the gist of what they mean: You can?t go and duplicate your newly purchased CDs and sell bootlegged copies out of the trunk of your car. Or whatever. But lending them to your mom? Totally legit. And as San Francisco-based copyright attorney Andrew Bridges pointed out on Twitter, the odd language on Mumford & Sons? CD is probably invalid. ?I?m a lawyer, I love fine print; I read fine print,? Bridges said in an interview with Wired. ?I bought the Mumford & Sons CD [recently], and I pull it out and I see an unusually big fine print and I say, ?Holy hell!?? Where the language comes from is a little unclear. When asked about the copyright notice on the album, a spokesperson for the band?s label Glassnote Records responded via email, ?We are checking with our lawyers who had instructed us to do this,? and then didn?t respond to any follow-up queries. But for a Grammy-nominated band that got massively popular based on fan support ? ?The attitude of Mumford & Sons is that fans really do come first and word of mouth is important? Glassnote founder and CEO Daniel Glass recently told MTV ? it seems odd that they wouldn?t want their supporters to spread the gospel. And curiously other previous releases on Glassnote, like those from Childish Gambino and Two Door Cinema Club, don?t carry similar warnings. So maybe it was an accident? Or a mistake? Or it was placed there with a different understanding of the definition of ?lending?? ?It is outrageous that a record label would want to treat music fans, and their rights, with such disregard ? that?s no way to build a fan base,? Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in an email to Wired. ?A [label] that simply prohibits ?unauthorized lending? raises more questions than it answers ? after all, lending a record doesn?t need to be authorized by a copyright owner when it?s authorized by law, specifically the first sale doctrine.? The highly-confusing but incredibly important ?first sale? doctrine in the Copyright Act states that the buyer of a copyrighted work ? whether it?s a CD, book, or otherwise ? can re-sell or loan that particular copy of the work in any way they want without the copyright holder?s permission. Ever sold your Collective Soul discography to Amoeba Music for candy money? You?ve exercised your first sale rights. Interestingly, the doctrine is currently before the Supreme Court in a matter that has nothing to do with music. In Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. entrepreneur Supap Kirtsaeng was sued for copyright infringement by Wiley for selling books on eBay that were bought at lower prices overseas. A New York federal jury found Kirtsaeng liable for copyright infringement and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision. The case may have nothing to do with Mumford & Sons but Bridges, who noted that in all his time reading fine print he?d ?never seen this language before,? said that there?s a chance the decision before the Supreme Court could apply since the crux of the court?s decision will hinge on whether the first sale doctrine applies to works manufactured overseas. If the album was made outside of the U.S. and imported for sale and the court upholds the decision against Kirtsaeng, Babel?s copyright notice could hold more water. ?If this disc was made in Mexico, then it may be that I don?t have the right to lend it to anybody under the plaintiff?s view in the Kirtsaeng case,? Bridges said. ?That actually highlights the importance of the Supreme Court?s pending case.? Of course purchasers of Babel aren?t the only ones who could be impacted by the Supreme Court?s decision ? it could affect business like eBay and your local used bookstore too. But that still doesn?t explain why a band or their label would put a copyright notice on an album on the off chance that a court case would change the nature of the first sale doctrine, especially if it could alienate fans by telling them how they can enjoy your band?s music. ?There are two issues. One is a legal issue: Is this prohibition binding, and if it is not binding, is it fraudulent? The second is the policy issue: Do we want an environment in the system that would enforce this kind of prohibition?? Bridges said. ?And third is a social issue: What were they thinking?? Yeah guys, what were you thinking? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 23 09:51:00 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:51:00 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct Message-ID: <2E92E7DF-105E-4079-AC56-2B01E4B48A7C@infowarrior.org> December 22, 2012 Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct By GINA KOLATA http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/health/new-drugs-aim-to-make-cells-destroy-cancer.html For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated ? breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research. Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers. No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. ?This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,? said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. ?I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,? he added. And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces ?our strength can be leveraged.? At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. ?I was shocked,? he said in an interview this summer. Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi?s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack ? a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat. ?For us, this is a go/no-go situation,? said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company?s research on the drug. The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell?s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own. The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of ?a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.? Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work. Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart. The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match? In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J. But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body. Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules. At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound. The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma. A week later, Cedric Barriere, the scientist conducting the experiment, went to his boss, Dr. Debussche, saying, ?Laurent, I have a problem.? He confessed that he had treated some of the mice only once. And their tumors had vanished. Dr. Debussche was stunned. ?We have to reproduce it,? he said. They did. Dr. Debussche popped open a bottle of Champagne, but his team tempered its hope. ?The joke is if we were trying to cure mouse cancer we would have done it 30 years ago,? said Dr. Donald Bergstrom, a vice president at Sanofi. As research progressed, all three companies worried about the unprecedented challenges of testing a drug in many types of cancers at once. Such a clinical trial would most likely involve just a few patients in each of many medical centers. But keeping a trial going involves mounds of paperwork and documentation. Medical centers are often loath to do it for just a handful of patients. Roche was the first to start testing a p53 drug in patients. The company began, as required, with an attempt to establish a dose strong enough to be effective but not too toxic. It took a surprisingly long time ? three years ? because Roche was cautious, starting with a tiny dose and gradually escalating it. Health authorities in the United States and Europe worried that the medicines might have unexpected effects. ?Drugs of this type had never been given to a human being,? Dr. Gwen Nichols of Roche said. The studies looked only at safety, but Dr. Nichols said there were encouraging hints that the drugs might be working. In biopsies and scans, cancer cells appeared to be dying. Rigorous efficacy studies are next. If they are successful, they will be followed by clinical trials across cancer types. More recently, Merck began its study to find a safe dose. It is enrolling only patients with acute myelogenous leukemia, a cancer in which p53 is almost always disabled by the blocking protein MDM2. Once the company finds the best dose, it plans to give its drug to just 15 to 30 patients and look for efficacy. And if the drug fails to break apart the two huge proteins and enable the angel of death to do its job? ?Then we will not bring the drug forward,? Dr. Gilliland said. Sanofi is in much the same position. It just started its safety tests in Europe. Medical centers in the United States will be added next year. Like Merck, it will focus solely on patients who are most likely to respond to its own drug ? in this case, patients with liposarcoma like Mr. Bellino. Their tumors can be as big as a watermelon, says Dr. Andrew J. Wagner, an expert at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and one of Mr. Bellino?s doctors. They often start at the back of a patient?s belly, where they go unnoticed unless the person is very thin. ?There is a lot of space back there,? Dr. Wagner explained. Surgeons try to remove the tumors, but they usually grow back and spread. Liposarcoma is so rare ? only about 2,000 or so cases each year ? that no drugs have ever been specifically tested on patients with this type of cancer. Mr. Bellino said over the summer that he hoped he could be among the first to try it. When the call goes out for study subjects, he said, ?I will be waving my hands.? But the test will come too late for him. He died from his cancer on Nov. 13. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 24 07:23:34 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2012 08:23:34 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Holiday Wishes from Infowarrior-L Message-ID: <9FE50203-9E43-4474-99CF-5A46B34A3973@infowarrior.org> (A festive one of Sir Nigel Hawthorne's classic run-on-sentence monologues from one of my favorite BBC sitcom series of the 1980s --- "Yes (Prime) Minister.") Video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vShJa6GobFQ (and well worth watching) Bernard: "Before you go home for the holidays, Minister, Sir Humphrey has something to say to you." Sir Humphrey: "Minister, Just one thing. I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a, by-no-means disagreeable obligation, which is over the years become more-or-less, an established practice within government circles, as we approach the terminal period of the year, calendar of-course not financial. In fact not to put a too fine a point on it, week 51, and submit to you, with all appropriate deference for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation and indeed confidence. Indeed one might go so far to say, hope, that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible of being deemed to be such as, to merit the final verdict of having been, by-no-means unsatisfactory in it?s overall outcome and in the final analysis to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification, which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average." Jim Hacker: "Humphrey, are you saying Happy Christmas?" Sir Humphrey (shocked): "Yes Minister!" Happy Holidays to the subscribers of infowarrior-l! -rick --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 25 15:14:49 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 16:14:49 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Is Paying to Message Strangers a New Texting Business? Message-ID: December 24, 2012, 2:42 pm Is Paying to Message Strangers a New Texting Business? By BRIAN X. CHEN http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/facebook-premium-messaging/?ref=technology Cellphone carriers are making less money from text messages thanks to free messaging services offered by Facebook, Apple and other tech companies. But now Facebook is running a test to see if it can make some money by charging people to send messages to strangers. Facebook said it started the experiment with a small percentage of users last week. For $1, a message sent to a stranger will show up in the recipient?s in-box. Typically, when you send a message to people who aren?t connected to you on Facebook, it shows up in a box labeled ?Other,? which is often ignored. LinkedIn, the social networking service for professionals, offers a similar paid service. When people sign up for premium accounts, they can send a limited number of messages to people they aren?t connected with each month. For instance, you can pay $20 a month for a premium account that allows you to send three messages to strangers each month. Who would want to pay to send a message to strangers? Perhaps a job seeker could ask an employer about getting some work. Journalists could benefit from having another alternative to phone calls and e-mails. Facebook says research has shown charging for messaging is the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and get people messages that are more relevant. Now that the cellphone text message is quickly becoming old-fashioned, is this the new premium text message? Sure looks that way. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 25 21:23:52 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:23:52 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Merger Made Comcast Strong, U.S. Web Users Weak Message-ID: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-12-25/merger-made-comcast-strong-u-s-web-users-weak.html Merger Made Comcast Strong, U.S. Web Users Weak By Susan Crawford - Dec 25, 2012 On a gray day in February 2010, Brian Roberts sat facing the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee?s antitrust subcommittee. The panel was holding its first hearing on a proposed merger between two of the country?s most powerful media companies, the cable distribution giant Comcast Corp. and the entertainment conglomerate NBC Universal. Roberts, the chief executive officer of Comcast, was a calm and friendly witness. If the Justice Department?s Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger, Comcast?s future as the largest distributor of information in the country would be assured. Comcast had been gaining strength as a monopoly provider of wired high-speed Internet access in its territories, while the U.S. was lagging behind other countries when it came to the prices charged for and the speed and capability of this basic communications tool. At the same time, the Internet was becoming the common global medium. With high-speed Internet access, a farmer in Missouri can access weather conditions and crop prices; American Indians on a remote reservation can have their eyes checked by a distant doctor; entrepreneurs and small businesses in California, New York and all the states between can find inexpensive entry points into global markets. World Leader A decade earlier, the U.S. had led the world in Internet access, but by the time of the hearing, in most of Comcast?s markets, the company was the only provider selling services at speeds sufficient to satisfy Americans? requirements. The access Comcast sold was less useful than it could have been, however, because the network was designed to be contested among users in the same neighborhood, making speeds unreliable. It also favored passive downloads far more than active uploads. Meanwhile, in most parts of the U.S., the Internet access that all Americans would need within five years -- fiber-optic lines capable of speeds from 100 megabits to gigabits per second -- could not be purchased at all. With the merger, Comcast would become even more powerful. Any new high-speed Internet provider in Comcast territory would have to enter the market for content at the same time it incurred the heavy upfront costs needed to wire a network. Indeed, by the time the Comcast-NBC Universal merger was announced at the end of 2009, Verizon Communications Inc., the only nationwide company installing fiber-optic lines, had already signaled that it was planning to stop doing so. It was just too hard to compete with Comcast. In turn, Comcast had no incentive to make its Internet access affordable or available to everyone within its territories. Nor did it have any incentive to upgrade its networks to fiber optics. In seeking to have business ties to much of the content it provided, too, Comcast was setting itself up to be the unchallenged provider of everything -- all data, all information, all entertainment -- flowing over the wires in its markets. The company would have every incentive to squeeze online services that were unwilling to pay the freight to Comcast. A few months before the hearing, Roberts had told investors in a conference call that the merger would make Comcast ??strategically complete.? After more than 40 years of steady acquisitions, including some of the largest deals in the industry, Comcast would be done. New Monopolies Americans might be surprised at how concentrated the market is for the modern-day equivalent of the standard phone line. Two enormous monopoly submarkets -- one for wireless and one for wired transmission -- are each dominated by two or three large companies. On the wired side, Comcast is the communications equivalent of Standard Oil. Even before its merger with NBC Universal, it was the country?s largest cable operator, its largest residential high-speed Internet access company, its third- largest phone company, the owner of many cable content properties -- including 11 regional sports networks -- and the manager of a robust video-on-demand platform. Comcast?s high- speed Internet access had almost 16 million subscribers. (The second-largest cable provider, Time Warner Inc., had about 9 million.) Comcast dominated the markets in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and 11 more of the 25 largest U.S. cities. NBC Universal, for its part, owned some of the most popular cable networks in the country and one of the largest broadcast networks, with 25 television stations, seven production studios and several crucial Internet properties, including iVillage and a one-third interest in Hulu.com. The merged company would control 1 in 5 hours of all television viewing in the U.S. The other cable companies were represented at the hearing by a token competitor, Colleen Abdoulah, president and CEO of WideOpenWest Networks. A midsize cable system struggling to compete for subscribers in Comcast?s territory in the Midwest, WOW was trying to provide better customer service, but it was forced to pay high prices for take-it-or-leave-it bundles of programming owned by NBC Universal and other media conglomerates. The big cable-distribution companies such as Comcast can get those bundles for far less than the smaller companies can. Abdoulah would testify that if Comcast controlled NBC Universal, WOW?s negotiations for programming would become even more one-sided. Behind the witness table was David Cohen, the lawyer who had shaped Comcast?s public narrative of the merger: A true-blue American family company was trying to save the NBC broadcast network and bring order and technical innovation to the cable-TV industry. To those who argued that the merger would stick U.S. consumers with high-priced, homogenized entertainment and second-class Internet access, Comcast had only to respond that the situation for consumers would not be any worse than it already was. If opponents could not decisively prove ?merger- specific harms,? the phrase Comcast employees repeated endlessly to staff members across Washington, the deal could not be blocked. Internet Future By February 2010, the accepted wisdom in Washington was that the deal would go through. And it showed Americans their Internet future. Even though there are several large cable companies nationwide, each dominates its own regions and can raise prices without fear of being undercut. Wireless access, dominated by AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon, is, for its part, too slow to compete with the cable industry?s offerings; mobile wireless services are, rather, complementary. Verizon Wireless?s joint marketing agreement with Comcast, announced in December 2011, made that clear: Competitors don?t offer to sell each other?s products. It doesn?t have to be this way. Other developed countries have a watchdog to ensure that all their citizens are connected at cheap rates to fiber-optic networks. In South Korea, more than half of households are already connected to fiber lines, and those in Japan and Hong Kong are close behind. In the U.S., only about 7 percent of households have access to fiber, and it costs six times as much as in Hong Kong. Rather than try to ensure that the U.S. will lead the world in the information age, American politicians have removed all regulation of high-speed Internet access and have allowed steep market consolidation. The cable industry has done its best to foil municipal efforts to provide publicly overseen fiber Internet access. Now, the U.S. has neither a competitive marketplace nor government oversight. In the subcommittee hearing, Roberts never faltered, and his performance was judged a success. In the end, the Antitrust Division allowed the merger, and the FCC followed suit. Compared with people in other countries, Americans are paying more for less and leaving many of their fellow citizens behind. Perhaps they will start to care when they see that the U.S. is unable to compete with nations whose industrial policy has been more forward-thinking. (Susan Crawford is a contributor to Bloomberg View and a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School. She is a former special assistant to President Barack Obama for science, technology and innovation policy. This is the first in a series of three excerpts from her new book, ?Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,? which will be published Jan. 8 by Yale University Press. The opinions expressed are her own.) To contact the writer of this article: Susan P. Crawford at scrawford at scrawford.net or @scrawford on Twitter To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald at bloomberg.net. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Dec 25 21:29:20 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:29:20 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent Message-ID: Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent ? Ernesto ? December 25, 2012 BitTorrent is used by millions of people every day, including people who work at major Hollywood studios. Those who are said to be suffering the most from online piracy are no stranger to sharing copyrighted files themselves. New data reveals that employees at Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox are openly pirating movies, games and other forms of entertainment while at work. While Christmas is a time for sharing there are certain files that some people believe should be excluded from that experience. For more than a decade the MPAA has waged war against ?thieves? who dare to share their movies online. Online piracy is costing the creative industries billions of dollars in lost revenue, they say. The Hollywood group is therefore one of the main facilitators of the ?six strikes? copyright alerts plan that will begin in the coming year. The main goal of this plan is to educate members of the public about piracy, and point them to legal sources. However, new data uncovered by TorrentFreak shows that the MPAA might want to start in-house, as plenty of copyrighted material is being shared by employees of major Hollywood studios. With help from BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye we found that BitTorrent piracy is rampant in Hollywood. Let?s take a look at some of the files these Hollywood studios are sharing, starting with Paramount Pictures. Keep in mind that what we show here is just a small fraction of the files that are actually being shared. It?s the tip of the iceberg. Static IP-addresses registered to Paramount were associated (e.g.) with the downloading of a wide variety of content as can be seen below. The indie production Battle Force was one of the movies shared, as well as the Lionsgate film The Hunger Games. And what about Happy Feet, a movie distributed by competitor Warner Bros?' < - > http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-studios-caught-pirating-movies-on-bittorrent-121225/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 26 08:17:39 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:17:39 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - D.C. to more than double traffic-camera network Message-ID: <5AE83B9D-C1FF-4FDD-BC87-607BCE5BFBB8@infowarrior.org> D.C. to more than double traffic-camera network http://www.wtop.com/109/3171710/DC-to-more-than-double-traffic-cameras Wednesday - 12/26/2012, 8:57am ET WASHINGTON - The nation's capital plans to add 134 traffic cameras next year to its already extensive network of devices that generate tickets for speeding and running red lights. The Washington Examiner ( http://tinyurl.com/crtchcm) reports that the new cameras will more than double the size of the traffic-camera program in the District of Columbia. Traffic cameras generated a record $85 million in revenue during the last fiscal year. The D.C. Council recently voted to reduce some fines for motorists caught on camera. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul Quander says the cameras are saving lives because they force people to slow down. District officials say traffic fatalities dropped from 72 in 2001 to 32 in 2011. But detractors say the cameras are driven more by revenue than public safety. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Dec 26 08:19:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:19:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - China may require real name registration for internet access Message-ID: <122FCC73-9399-4202-AA0C-B7AC149E7FBC@infowarrior.org> China may require real name registration for internet access Tue, Dec 25 2012 http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USBRE8BO01320121225 BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity. A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said. "The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people's interest," Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in a front page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week. "Only that way can our internet be healthier, more cultured and safer." Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous - and perhaps most significantly, anonymous - online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate. It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users. It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers. Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp's wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names. The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules. "It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989," wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army. Chinese internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked. Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Huang Yan; Editing by Michael Perry) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 27 19:00:16 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:00:16 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Congress_Defeats_E-Mail_Privacy_?= =?windows-1252?q?Legislation_=97_Again?= Message-ID: Congress Defeats E-Mail Privacy Legislation ? Again ? By David Kravets ? 12.21.12 ? 1:30 PM http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/12/congress-caves-privacy/ The Senate late Thursday forwarded legislation to President Barack Obama granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they?re watching on Netflix. While lawmakers were caving to special interests, however, they cut from the legislative package language requiring the authorities to get a warrant to read your e-mail or other data stored in the cloud. Instead of protecting privacy, the Senate tinkered with the Video Privacy Protection Act, (.pdf) which outlaws the disclosure of video rentals unless the consumer gives consent, on a rental-by-rental basis. That prohibits Netflix customers from allowing their Facebook streams to automatically update with information about the movies they are viewing, though Spotify and other online music-streaming customers can consent to the automatic publication on Facebook of the songs they?re listening to. Congress adopted the Video Privacy Protection Act in 1988 after failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork?s video rental history was published by the Washington City Paper during confirmation hearings. Obama is expected to promptly sign the Video Privacy Protection Act amendment, which the House passed last year, to allow Facebook users to have their timelines automatically updated with whatever they?re watching on Netflix. Facebook and Netflix strongly supported the measure. But another part of the same Senate package ? sweeping digital privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud ? was removed at the last minute. Just a month ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the cloud-storage privacy protections as part of the Netflix package. Clearly, lawmakers would rather roll over to special interests than protect Americans? privacy. Chris Calabrese, the legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was unhappy that one of the group?s top legislative priorities disappeared into the ether. ?If Netflix is going to get an update to the privacy law, we think the American people should get an update to the privacy law,? Calabrese said in a telephone interview. Calabrese was talking about reforming the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The reform package, introduced by Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), would have nullified a provision that allows the government to acquire a suspect?s e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed. Currently, the government can obtain e-mail or other cloud documents without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. The authorities only need to demonstrate, often via an administrative subpoena, that it has ?reasonable grounds to believe? the information would be useful in an investigation. Leahy has repeatedly sought to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, but he finds little support for it among fellow lawmakers or with the President Barack Obama administration. But at least Netflix and Facebook got what they wanted. Americans should be elated, too, because they will now become even bigger marketing pawns on Facebook. ?We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want,? Netflix spokesman Joris Evers told CNET. ?After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 27 19:03:01 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:03:01 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Senate Finally Holds Weak 'Debate' On FISA Amendments Act... But Terrorism! Message-ID: <919F0497-28E1-4F71-B20A-525E1B1C69E0@infowarrior.org> Senate Finally Holds Weak 'Debate' On FISA Amendments Act... But Terrorism! from the and-therefore-we-shouldn't-even-know-what's-going-on dept While some in the Senate tried to skip over debate of the likely unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act, the Senate finally held a rushed and scripted "debate" today, which did very little to actually explore the issues (and the Senate Chamber was mostly empty during the "debate"). Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley did their best to raise significant issues, but Senator Dianne Feinstein kept shutting them down with bogus or misleading arguments, almost always punctuated with scary claims about how we had "only four days!" to renew the FISA Amendment Acts or "important" tools for law enforcement would "expire." It turns out that's not actually true. While the law would expire, the provisions sweeping orders already issued would remain in place for a year -- allowing plenty of time for a real debate. Furthermore, Feinstein continued to mislead (bordering on outright lies) about the FISA Amendments Act. While some of the proposed amendments focused on finally forcing the secret interpretation of the FISA Amendments Act to be disclosed, Feinstein held up the text of the bill and insisted there "is no secret law" and that "the text is public." That assumes that "the law" and "the text of the legislation" are one and the same. They are not. As Julian Sanchez notes, imagine that Supreme Court rulings were all classified, how would you interpret the Constitution? You could make guesses, based on what the law said, but without the court's rulings, you would not know what that meant in practice. That's exactly the situation we have with the FISA Amendments Act... and it's made even worse by the fact that those who have seen the still-secret interpretation -- such as Senator Wyden -- have made it clear that its quite different than what most people think the law says. Even more ridiculous is that the text of the FISA Amendments Act has been set since September. There's been plenty of time to actually debate these issues. Hell, last year's renewal for just one year was conditioned on the promise from the Senate that there would be debate this year. Yet they wait until December 27th to hold this fake "debate" with Feinstein spreading FUD up and down about how not renewing this for another five years means the terrorists win? This is a really shameful display of Congress caving to law enforcement's almost certainly unconstitutional desire to be able to widely spy on almost any information it can get its hands on, so long as they claim collecting that info might possibly somehow help in discovering illegal behavior by non-US citizens. What's amazing is that those supporting the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act continue to take it on faith that the law is not being abused, even as there's already been an admission that some of the activities violated the 4th Amendment (but no further evidence of what happened or how that would be prevented), and even other tools that we were told were "proven" and "crucial" to the "war on terrorism" later turned out to be expensive boondoggles that were no help at all. Senator Saxby Chambliss was particularly ridiculous in this discussion, insisting that because there was that admission earlier this year that the 4th Amendment was abused, it shows that "oversight is working." This ignores that no further exploration followed to see how widespread the abuse was. Again, Julian Sanchez highlights just how ridiculous this is by noting that the fact that the argument is completely tautological in saying that oversight works because abuse has been discovered. Congress has both the mandate and the obligation to oversee how law enforcement is using its surveillance powers -- and yet many of its members, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, appear to be abdicating that job due to OMG TERRRORISM!@#!@#!! Update: And they just voted on Senator Leahy's amendment, which was a pretty simple one, just shortening the term of this extension from 5 years to 3 years. All it would do is require that the next debate on this happen sooner, rather than later, but it was voted down (52 to 38) by Senators who'd rather not even discuss the fact that they're allowing the NSA and other law enforcement officials to regularly violate the Constitution. Just punt that question as far down the field as possible, I guess. Update: And, down goes another amendment. Senator Merkley's amendment would have "encouraged" that secret interpretations of the FISA Amendments Act made by the FISA court be made public (in redacted form). This seems like common sense, but the Senate voted it down (54 to 37) -- because, apparently they like secret laws which the public isn't even allowed to know about, even if it means the NSA can snoop on nearly all of their communications without a warrant. Update: And there goes another one. Senator Rand Paul introduced an amendment clarifying that the 4th Amendment protects all of your communications. The Senate rejected it by an overwhelming margin, 79 to 12, because apparently protecting your privacy and upholding the 4th Amendment is not the kind of thing the Senate supports these days. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121227/11581121501/senate-finally-holds-weak-debate-fisa-amendments-act-terrorrism.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Dec 27 22:27:48 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 23:27:48 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Facebook Purges Pro-Gun Accounts Message-ID: <60A3050C-809C-46E5-B839-7F9D5118455A@infowarrior.org> Facebook Purges Pro-Gun Accounts Massive act of censorship sees alternative media pages disappeared Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com December 27, 2012 Facebook is purging accounts that carry pro-second amendment and pro-liberty information in a censorship purge that has accelerated over the past few hours, with innumerable pages being disappeared merely for posting legitimate political content. NaturalNews.com?s Mike Adams contacted us to alert us to the fact that ?Facebook banned our account for posting this,? with an attached image of a Gandhi quote about how the British disarmed the citizenry during their rule in India. The following is a list of Facebook accounts operated by individuals in the alternative media that have been shut down by Facebook staff over the past 24 hours. Infowars writer Aaron Dykes and political dissident Brandon J. Raub have also had their accounts deleted. Raub was snatched by police and forcibly imprisoned in a psychiatric ward earlier this year for posting political content on Facebook. Infowars editor Kurt Nimmo also had his account suspended this morning. < - > http://www.infowars.com/facebook-purges-pro-gun-accounts/print/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 07:35:22 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:35:22 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hollywood hypocracy Message-ID: Mark my words -- in 2013 they will still blather on about how piracy is killing their industry and profitability and need to be addressed in a broad-stroked manner. No shame whatsoever. --rick Hollywood Reprises ?Hobbit? to ?Star Trek? in Bid for ?13 Record http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-28/hollywood-reprises-hobbit-to-star-trek-in-bid-for-13-record.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 07:37:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:37:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History Message-ID: Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History By Washingtons Blog - December 28th, 2012, 1:30AM More Spying On Citizens than in Stasi East Germany TechDirt notes: In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who?s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans. < - big snip - > http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/12/americans-are-the-most-spied-on-people-in-world-history/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 07:48:45 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:48:45 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - LEAKED: WH Bogus Talking Points On Why Senate Should Trample The 4th Amendment Message-ID: <566A7417-143C-4FCB-B205-E58F3B893B7E@infowarrior.org> LEAKED: White House's Bogus Talking Points On Why Senate Should Trample The 4th Amendment http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121227/23120421503/leaked-white-houses-bogus-talking-points-why-senate-should-trample-4th-amendment.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 08:35:35 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:35:35 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Happy Birthday, Stan Lee! (and "Excelsior!") Message-ID: <914FBE03-513C-4309-9190-A94C72C71FDE@infowarrior.org> Stan Lee Birthday: The Comic Genius Turns 90 In 2012 (PHOTOS) Posted: 12/28/2012 5:17 am EST | Updated: 12/28/2012 5:17 am EST Today is the birthday of comic genius and wily television personality, Stanley Lieber, better known as Stan Lee. The Marvel writer and editor behind works such as "The Amazing Spiderman" and "The Incredible Hulk" is turning 90 years old this Friday, December 28. A young Stanley Lieber began his comic career at Timely Comics in 1939 in New York. His initial duties included proofreading, erasing pencil marks and filling inkwells, but two years after this drudgery he enjoyed his first text-filler job in a 1941 issue of "Captain American Comics," writing under the pseudonym Stan Lee. His first real career break arrived at 19 years old, when Timely editor Joe Simon and his creative partner Jack Kirby left the company. Lee was subsequently given the post of interim editor, but it was his talent for writing and imagining epic heroes that earned him the permanent position of editor-in-chief, a seat he would occupy until 1972 when he was made publisher of Timely's later evolution, Marvel Comics. Lee's truly creative era began in the late 1950s, however, when DC Comics spurred a trend in superhero stories, courtesy of characters like the Flash and the Justice League of America. Lee was given the task of creating a team of heroes similar to JLA for Marvel, the result of which was the Fantastic Four. Working mostly with Kirby as well as with Bill Everett and Steve Ditko, Lee went on to devise personalities like the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the X-Men, Daredevil, Doctor Strange and, of course, the Amazing Spider-Man. < -- > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/stan-lees-birthday-the-comic-genius-turns-90_n_2371345.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 12:21:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 13:21:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - YouTube Kills Billions of Video Views Faked By Music Industry Message-ID: (c/o DOD) YouTube Kills Billions of Video Views Faked By Music Industry 7:00 PM - December 27, 2012 - By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : DailyDot http://www.tomsguide.com/us/youtube-sony-bmg-universal,news-16514.html YouTube says it has found the music industry with their hands in the cookie jar. ZoomThe video service deleted more than 2 billion fake video views in the channels of Universal, Sony, and RCA, according to Daily Dot. The decision apparently was made when YouTube found out that the companies were using view building services hired from sites such as Fiverr to create video views that never existed. Sony/BMG's was hit the hardest with views dropping from a total of more than 850 million to just 2.3 million. RCA declined by 159 million views to a total of 120 million. Universal lost more than 1 billion views and now stands below 6 billion. Google confirmed that the companies violated its terms of services, which prohibits users from artificially inflating video views. Google noted that the view stripping was "an enforcement of [the company's] viewcount policy". Services that promise the perception of greater user exposure have become commonplace on the web. There are plenty of sites such as YouLikeHits, which allow users to increase the number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers. The tradition goes back to the news aggregation service Digg, which created services that would sell "diggs" to vote Internet content to the front page. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Dec 28 21:59:11 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:59:11 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended Message-ID: (all the more reason for bad guys OF ANY SORT to go low-tech, old-school, and thus make all these high-tech communication gadgets and instant snooping methods fairly useless. But Congress thinks it knows best, and appearances are everything to them. But the message remains the same: ZMGTERRORISTSBEAFRAID -rick) December 28, 2012 Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended By ROBERT PEAR http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us/politics/senate-votes-to-extend-electronic-surveillance-authority-under-fisa.html WASHINGTON ? Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government?s power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 23, clearing it for approval by President Obama, who strongly supports it. Intelligence agencies said the bill was their highest legislative priority. Critics of the bill, including Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, expressed concern that electronic surveillance, though directed at noncitizens, inevitably swept up communications of Americans as well. ?The Fourth Amendment was written in a different time and a different age, but its necessity and its truth are timeless,? Mr. Paul said, referring to the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. ?Over the past few decades, our right to privacy has been eroded. We have become lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. Digital records seem to get less protection than paper records.? The bill, which extends the government?s surveillance authority for five years, was approved in the House by a vote of 301 to 118 in September. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill in the next few days. Congressional critics of the bill said that they suspected that intelligence agencies were picking up the communications of many Americans, but that they could not be sure because the agencies would not provide even rough estimates of how many people inside the United States had had communications collected under authority of the surveillance law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The inspector general of the National Security Agency told Congress that preparing such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office. The chief Senate supporter of the bill, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the proposed amendments were unnecessary. Moreover, she said, any changes would be subject to approval by the House, and the resulting delay could hamper the government?s use of important intelligence-gathering tools, for which authority is set to expire next week. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was adopted in 1978 and amended in 2008, with the addition of new surveillance authority and procedures, which are continued by the bill approved on Friday. The 2008 law was passed after the disclosure that President George W. Bush had authorized eavesdropping inside the United States, to search for evidence of terrorist activity, without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying. Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that he and Mr. Wyden were concerned that ?a loophole? in the 2008 law ?could allow the government to effectively conduct warrantless searches for Americans? communications.? James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Congress, ?There is no loophole in the law.? By a vote of 52 to 43, the Senate on Friday rejected a proposal by Mr. Wyden to require the national intelligence director to tell Congress if the government had collected any domestic e-mail or telephone conversations under the surveillance law. The Senate also rejected, 54 to 37, an amendment that would have required disclosure of information about significant decisions by a special federal court that reviews applications for electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence cases. The amendment was proposed by one of the most liberal senators, Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and one of the most conservative, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said the surveillance law ?does not have adequate checks and balances to protect the constitutional rights of innocent American citizens.? ?It is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence,? Mr. Durbin said, ?but the reality is that this legislation permits targeting an innocent American in the United States as long as an additional purpose of the surveillance is targeting a person outside the United States.? However, 30 Democrats joined 42 Republicans and one independent in voting for the bill. Three Republicans ? Mr. Lee, Mr. Paul and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ? voted against the bill, as did 19 Democrats and one independent. Mr. Merkley said the administration should provide at least unclassified summaries of major decisions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. ?An open and democratic society such as ours should not be governed by secret laws,? Mr. Merkley said, ?and judicial interpretations are as much a part of the law as the words that make up our statute.? Mrs. Feinstein said the law allowed intelligence agencies to go to the court and get warrants for surveillance of ?a category of foreign persons,? without showing probable cause to believe that each person was working for a foreign power or a terrorist group. Mr. Wyden said these writs reminded him of the ?general warrants that so upset the colonists? more than 200 years ago. ?The founding fathers could never have envisioned tweeting and Twitter and the Internet,? Mr. Wyden said. ?Advances in technology gave government officials the power to invade individual privacy in a host of new ways.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 16:41:29 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:41:29 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Disruptions: The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes Message-ID: <06AE2520-3EE8-4D87-93EA-0D857B2022D9@infowarrior.org> December 30, 2012, 11:00 am Disruptions: The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/f-a-a-rules-make-electronic-devices-on-planes-dangerous/ By NICK BILTON Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous. In September, a passenger was arrested in El Paso after refusing to turn off his cellphone as the plane was landing. In October, a man in Chicago was arrested because he used his iPad during takeoff. In November, half a dozen police cars raced across the tarmac at La Guardia Airport in New York, surrounding a plane as if there were a terrorist on board. They arrested a 30-year-old man who had also refused to turn off his phone while on the runway. Who is to blame in these episodes? You can't solely pin it on the passengers. Some of the responsibility falls on the Federal Aviation Administration, for continuing to uphold a rule that is based on the unproven idea that a phone or tablet can interfere with the operation of a plane. These conflicts have been going on for several years. In 2010, a 68-year-old man punched a teenager because he didn't turn off his phone. Lt. Kent Lipple of the Boise Police Department in Idaho, who arrested the puncher, said the man "felt he was protecting the entire plane and its occupants." And let's not forget Alec Baldwin, who was kicked off an American Airlines plane in 2011 for playing Words With Friends online while parked at the gate. Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers. A year ago, when I first asked Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., why the rule existed, he said the agency was being cautious because there was no proof that device use was completely safe. He also said it was because passengers needed to pay attention during takeoff. When I asked why I can read a printed book but not a digital one, the agency changed its reasoning. I was told by another F.A.A. representative that it was because an iPad or Kindle could put out enough electromagnetic emissions to disrupt the flight. Yet a few weeks later, the F.A.A. proudly announced that pilots could now use iPads in the cockpit instead of paper flight manuals. The F.A.A. then told me that "two iPads are very different than 200." But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. "Electromagnetic energy doesn't add up like that," said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager. It's not a matter of a flying device hitting another passenger, either. Kindles weigh less than six ounces; Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs weighs 2.1 pounds in hardcover. I'd rather be hit in the head by an iPad Mini than a 650-page book. In October, after months of pressure from the public and the news media, the F.A.A. finally said it would begin a review of its policies on electronic devices in all phases of flight, including takeoff and landing. But the agency does not have a set time frame for announcing its findings. An F.A.A. spokeswoman told me last week that the agency was preparing to move to the next phase of its work in this area, and would appoint members to a rule-making committee that will begin meeting in January. The F.A.A. should check out an annual report issued by NASA that compiles cases involving electronic devices on planes. None of those episodes have produced scientific evidence that a device can harm a plane's operation. Reports of such interference have been purely speculation by pilots about the cause of a problem. Other government agencies and elected officials are finally getting involved. This December, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the F.A.A. telling the agency that it had a responsibility to "enable greater use of tablets, e-readers and other portable devices" during flights, as they empower people and allow "both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness." A week later, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, also sent a letter to the F.A.A. noting that the public was "growing increasingly skeptical of prohibitions" on devices on airplanes. She warned that she was "prepared to pursue legislative solutions should progress be made too slowly." If progress is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won't be because the device is interfering with the plane's systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator. E-mail: bilton at nytimes.com --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 16:53:47 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:53:47 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy Message-ID: <50C61E8A-0874-41ED-81D7-396C1784D7C7@infowarrior.org> Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent < - > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 21:02:40 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:02:40 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Silent sub: Russian noiseless Borei class nuclear submarine immersed Message-ID: <97A461CC-6C0F-4040-8F90-5B99AE751E8F@infowarrior.org> Silent sub: Russian noiseless Borei class nuclear submarine immersed Published: 30 December, 2012, 17:26 Edited: 30 December, 2012, 18:20 http://rt.com/news/russian-noiseless-borei-submarine-106/print/ Super-modern, powerful and almost noiseless Russian nuclear submarine Vladimir Monomakh has been put in water to become the third ship of the Borei project. The cruiser is about to begin sea trials and mooring to become fully operational in 2013. Vladimir Monomakh was laid down at Russia?s largest shipbuilding complex Sevmash, located on the shores of the White Sea in the town of Severodvinsk in northern Russia on March 19, 2006 ? the 100th anniversary of the Russian submarine fleet. Borei-class submarine Length: 170 m Beam: 13.5 m Draught: 10 m Test depth: 450 m Displacement: 14,720 tons surfaced 24,000 tons submerged Speed: 29 knots (54 km/h) Complement: 107 (55 officers) Armament: 16-20 ? Bulava SLBMs 6 ? 533 mm torpedo tubes It belongs to a class of missile strategic submarine cruisers with a new generation of nuclear reactor, which allows the submarine to dive to a depth of 480 meters. It can spend up to three months in autonomous navigation and, thanks to the latest achievements in the reduction of noise, it is almost silent compared to previous generations of submarines. The submarine is armed with the new missile system, which has from 16 to 20 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles Bulava (SS-NX-30 by NATO classification). The rocket is able to overcome any prospective missile defense system. On August 27, 2011, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on a successful test of Bulava to investigate its maximum range. The missile was launched from the White Sea, flew 9,300km in just 33 minutes, and then fell in the specified area in the Pacific Ocean. All Borei class submarines are equipped with a floating rescue chamber designed to fit in the whole crew. The Borei family The first and head submarine of Borei class, Yury Dolgoruky, has already completed the test program and is to be officially adopted by the Russian Navy on Sunday. Construction of the missile carrier is approximately estimated at around US$770 million, while other Borei class submarines are believed to cost less. ?The hoisting of the flag and the signing of the acceptance act is to be adopted at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk on Sunday, December 30,? the Rubin design bureau that designed the submarine said in a statement on Saturday. Another missile cruiser of this project, the Aleksandr Nevsky, is undergoing tests, according to Borisov. While a fourth, more advanced submarine, the Knyaz Vladimir, with enhanced technical characteristics and increased ammunition is currently being built. Over the next eight years Russia plans to have built 10 Borei class submarines altogether, according to the state armaments program of 2011-2020. All Borei class submarines are believed to provide a basis of naval strategic nuclear forces of Russia in the coming decades. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 21:03:41 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:03:41 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Judge rebuffs feds' secret arguments on no-fly list Message-ID: Judge rebuffs feds' secret arguments on no-fly list By JOSH GERSTEIN | 12/29/12 7:12 PM EST http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/12/judge-rebuffs-feds-secret-arguments-on-nofly-list-152969.html A federal judge in California has rejected the Obama administration's effort to use secret arguments and evidence to defeat a lawsuit relating to the so-called no-fly list designed to keep suspected terrorists off of airline flights. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup turned down a motion by the Justice Department to dismiss former Stanford student Rahinah Ibrahim's lawsuit against various federal government agencies over her reported inclusion on the no-fly list as well as an incident in September 2005 where she was barred from taking a flight from San Francisco and detained for a couple of hours. Alsup, who sits in San Francisco, also refused the Justice Department's offer to show him affidavits from law enforcement officials which the government would not share with Ibrahim or her attorneys. "Here the government seeks to affirmatively use allegedly privileged information to dispose of the case entirely without ever revealing to the other side what its secret evidence might be," Alsup wrote in an order filed last week (and posted here). "Only in the rarest of circumstances should a district judge, in his or her discretion, receive ex parte argument and evidence in secret from only one side aimed at winning or ending a case over the objection of the other side. Here, the government has not justified its sweeping proposal." "It has gone so far as even to redact from its table of authorities some of the reported caselaw on which it relies! This is too hard to swallow," Alsup wrote. Alsup seemed particularly exercised by what he said was the Justice Department's proposal that it would hang on to the confidential materials, which he added would not be officially filed with the court. If the judge is correctly stating the government's proposal, it would be unusual even for cases involving classified information. A quick glance at the filings in the case suggests the government is following its typical process for cases involving sensitive information. (No-fly list data, which is regularly shared with uncleared airline personnel, is not considered classified but rather "sensitive security information" which the Transportation Security Administration has legal control over.) The civil case will now proceed to discovery of relevant evidence. The judge did not rule out considering specific evidence later on that the government may wish to submit and keep secret, but he set a high bar for doing so. He also said the government would have to share any SSI relevant to the case with Ibrahim's counsel. The public accounts of what happened to Ibrahim make it sound like the Maylaysian national may have been on the no-fly list when first denied travel in 2005, but was later moved to a "selectee" list of travelers who get extra security attention but aren't banned outright from traveling. However, the U.S. subsequently revoked her visa and denied her another one in 2009, suggesting some ongoing security concern on the government's part. The revocation cited actual or possible terrorist activity, but was not specific. The lawsuit, filed in 2006, has already traveled twice to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The most recent ruling, in February of this year, held that Ibrahim had standing to sue even though she's not a U.S. citizen and left the country voluntarily. If the Obama administration really wanted to drop a bomb on the case, it could invoke the State Secrets Privilege in an effort to make the suit go away, but the courts might frown on an effort to do so at this point in the legal process. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 21:33:33 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:33:33 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - How China Is Sealing Holes in Its Internet Firewall Message-ID: How China Is Sealing Holes in Its Internet Firewall By Philip Shishkin Dec 30, 2012 6:30 PM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-30/how-china-is-sealing-holes-in-its-internet-firewall.html Two things struck me when I first flew into Beijing: lack of sunlight and lack of Internet. The sun, on many days, hangs behind a haze of pollution, its light filtered down to a soupy dusk. The Internet is stuck behind a government firewall, its main offerings obstructed to those living in China. That neither the sun nor the Web is fully gone, merely crippled, makes dealing with their abbreviated selves especially annoying. You know their full versions are out there somewhere because they tease you most days. The sun?s orange halo might appear briefly at dawn, only to be engulfed by the smog. Gmail?s homepage might begin to load tentatively, only to stumble and freeze. In many parts of the world (with some notable exceptions), we have come to count breathable air and unfettered Internet access among basic human conveniences, alongside indoor plumbing and access to education. That?s why it is so jarring and disorienting to suddenly lose them in Beijing to man-made forces of breakneck industrialization and censorship. No amount of reading or hearing about Beijing?s air pollution and the Great Firewall, as the system of Internet censorship is inevitably known, is enough to prepare you to deal with them. For the moment, I?ll leave the sun where I hope it still is, wrapped away in a blanket of smog so thick I can barely see the high-rises less than a mile away. It smells faintly as if someone is burning tires. Registration Required The Great Firewall is a more complex and nuanced phenomenon, and it appears to be getting more capable in tripping up undesirable Web connections. Like many foreigners in China, I signed up for a virtual private network, or VPN, geek-speak for a link to an overseas server, which allows you to leapfrog the Chinese Internet and plug straight into the real thing, as if you were sitting in New York or London. Twitter, the New York Times and Gmail loaded seamlessly on my iPad, ending a tense couple of days of withdrawal symptoms. And then it all crashed. My VPN provider, a major player in the market, explained in an e-mail that the disruption was due to a recent update of the Great Firewall, referred to as the GFW, which ?now has the ability to learn, discover and block VPN protocols automatically.? The next day, the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper, ran an article headlined, ?Foreign-run VPNs illegal in China: govt.? In it, the man known as the founding father of the Great Firewall was quoted as saying that foreign VPN providers needed to register with the government. ?I haven?t heard that any foreign companies have registered,? Fang Binxing, who is now president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the newspaper. Fang gained notoriety in 2011 when a student threw a shoe at him while he was delivering a lecture on cybersecurity. The shoe connected with the target. The student fled the scene and went into hiding, becoming an instant celebrity among the country?s many opponents of Internet curbs. Sometime later, hackers broke into the homepage of Binxing?s university and defaced it with an image from something called Angry Shoes, a spoof on the wildly popular ?Angry Birds? game. The birds at the slingshot are replaced with shoes, and the pigs in the wooden house are replaced with Binxing?s face. The most recent VPN disruption seemed intended to target mobile devices, which are fast becoming an important way to access the Internet. As my VPN provider promised to find a way to outwit the Great Firewall, several articles in state-run media reminded readers of the dangers lurking on the Web. China?s Rationale On Dec. 18, for instance, a commentary piece on Xinhua, China?s official news agency, called for new laws to govern the Internet: ?If there is no strict legal punishments on the violators in cyber space, the negative factors will run wild to destroy the Internet order and even incite online violence, which will bring great damage to people and society.? This is the Chinese government?s original rationale for erecting the Great Firewall, an elaborate network of blocks, network slowdowns and censorship rules that keep many of China?s half- billion Internet users in the dark about events in the world and in their own country. The unease about the broader issue of curbs on free speech was stoked anew recently when Mo Yan, the Chinese writer who won this year?s Nobel Prize for literature, seemed to liken censorship to airport-security checks: an indispensable nuisance. China?s Internet is a strange place. Twitter and Facebook are blocked, their ability to disseminate unwelcome news and serve as organizing platforms for all sorts of protests deemed too grave a threat. Some of Google Inc.?s services, including Gmail, are intentionally slowed down to a snail?s pace, which is arguably even worse than being blocked outright because it gives customers an impression of poor service. At the same time, Chinese clones of these American companies operate freely and load lightning-fast, their searches carefully scrubbed for sensitive terms by in-house censors. Western Internet companies that choose to enter the booming Chinese market have to play by the government?s rules. The most striking example is Skype Inc., owned by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) As detailed by Greatfire.org, a website tracking all things related to the Great Firewall (and, of course, blocked by it), when you download Skype software in China, you are actually getting a product tweaked in a crucial way. Chinese Skype, a joint venture majority-owned by a local company, allows the government to monitor your chats. Among the many curious things about the Chinese Internet, one apparent contradiction stands out. Xinhua, which insists on blocking Twitter, recently opened a Twitter account, sending out more than 3,000 tweets, and attracting 8,000 followers -- following no one itself. Xinhua?s appearance on Twitter, and the one-way nature of its boosterish account, invited an avalanche of ridicule in the Chinese blogosphere. Blocked Sites Western news outlets that touch taboo subjects are blocked, too. Bloomberg.com and nytimes.com are both blocked because of their recent investigative reports on the financial dealings of top Chinese leaders. How effective is the Great Firewall, given the many ways of leaping over it? China?s Internet sleuths aren?t overly concerned with how foreign companies and individuals access the Web, or what they read there. They are concerned about Chinese public opinion, and about ways to influence it by regulating what the Chinese people are and aren?t allowed to see on the Internet. By that second measure, the firewall achieves its objectives just fine, despite the availability of VPNs and other technical tricks, many of them free. Of China?s 500 million Web users, only about 1 percent ?use these tools to get around censorship, either because most do not know how or because they lack sufficient interest in -- or awareness of -- what exists on the other side of the ?great firewall,?? Rebecca MacKinnon writes in ?Consent of the Networked,? a book on Internet freedom around the world. Meanwhile, the wizards at my VPN provider finally found a way around the firewall?s latest crackdown on smartphones and tablets. My iPad is useful again, until the firewall catches on and a new round of cat-and-mouse begins. Sadly, there?s no good news to report on breaching the wall of smog blocking the sun. No one has yet invented a virtual private network to transport one through the Beijing pollution. (Philip Shishkin is a fellow at the Asia Society and the author of ?Restless Valley: Revolution, Murder and Intrigue in the Heart of Central Asia,? to be published in May by Yale University Press. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer of this article: Philip Shishkin at Philip.Shishkin at gmail.com. To contact the editor responsible for this article: Katy Roberts at kroberts29 at bloomberg.net. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Dec 30 21:38:23 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:38:23 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Regarding the 'fiscal cliff' ... Message-ID: <2341F415-2FA5-4F81-A42F-5189AF6E2C76@infowarrior.org> The Reformed Broker12/30/12 6:11 PM Joshua M Brown http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/12/30/adding-insult-to-injury/ The debt ceiling debacle last summer "injured" the US government and our citizenry in that it became apparent to the world that we've become an ungovernable nation. The effects of this revelation will be felt for a lifetime or more - history has shown us what happens when the people have decided en masse that a particular empire was in decline, the results have not been pretty. This week, Congress has decided to add insult to that injury - a public bitchfight over whether or not people making either $500,000 or $600,000 should be the cut-off point for the expiration of a set of decade-old phony tax cuts that were never officially approved anyway. Discussions about taking a nibble off this or that social program, military budget boondoggle or what have you are a distraction and do not warrant the breathless "breaking news" tweet-tornadoes and on-air exaltation they've been getting. This evening on every news channel and radio station in the country, you'll be treated to the opinions of the following guests: ? Rent-a-Pundits ? Day traders ? "News personalities" ? Make-believe hedge fund managers ? Chief Strategists of firms that only exist on LLC paperwork ? Lobbyists who are part of the problem to begin with ? People who had some free time and a clean suit ? People whose publicity agents and PR firms are on their game ? Former politicians who have no special insight into the current negotiations ? Partisan hacks who regurgitate party talking points for a living There will be some voices of reason and clarity - more than likely these will be the reporters and bloggers who actually cover this stuff objectively for a living - but these will be few and far between. My advice is to ignore most of what you hear unless this is entertainment for you. In that case, enjoy it like the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast that it is. Warren Buffett gave an interview to the BBC on Friday. When asked about the Fiscal Cliff deadline, he told the audience it was a non-event either way. Mr. Buffett has as much at stake - in both invested capital as well as the livelihoods of his employees and their dependents - as anyone else in the nation. If he tells you it won't matter, that ought to be good enough. There is no reason you should be actively seeking out the "insights" of others. Remember: * No one knows what will happen, including those in the center of it. * No one knows what the market or economic reaction will be either, although some guesses will prove to have been better than others * When all is said and done, off the cliff or on it, you will still get out of bed next year, make the kids breakfast and put them on the school bus. Having some kind of advanced edge on the Fiscal Cliff's outcome will not change that. Sleep tight, and may the insulting proceedings in Washington carry on without your rapt attention. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Dec 31 14:38:31 2012 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:38:31 -0500 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Spoiler alert: 2013 banished words list released Message-ID: <02E5C2FE-3C4F-4B27-B972-BD2D31E428E9@infowarrior.org> Spoiler alert: 2013 banished words list released Monday - 12/31/2012, 6:56am ET Neal Augenstein, wtop.com http://www.wtop.com/1226/3176574/Annual-list-of-banished-words-released WASHINGTON - It's time for "fiscal cliff" to take a leap, according to the annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness." Each year since 1971, Lake Superior State University in Michigan has compiled its list of words people don't want to hear again. Here are the banished words for 2013: ? "Fiscal Cliff" - The phrase referring to the country's financial crisis got the most votes. Listmakers note it becomes even more annoying when prefaced by "the so-called." ? Kick The Can Down The Road - The phrase formerly known as "choose not to deal with now." ? Double Down - The blackjack term is being (over)used instead of "repeat." ? Job Creators/Creation - Made popular during the 2012 presidential campaign, contributors to the list hypothesize the buzzword could be replaced with "lowering unemployment." ? Passion/Passionate - Apparently users think describing their "likes" as passion is sexier than saying they're enthusiastic. ? YOLO - On Twitter, it stands for You Only Live Once. Listmakers say YOLO is used as an excuse to do stupid things. ? Spoiler Alert - What used to be a polite warning is now a declaration that someone is about to share trivial information, whether the listener wants to hear it or not. ? Bucket List - A few years ago, it was hip enough to be included in a movie title. Now, listmakers believe it is time for the "to-do list" alternative to kick the bucket. ? Trending - Originally used on Twitter to describe a story getting traction in social media, list contributors think "trending" is trite. ? Superfood - Marketing over substance - is the food healthful or not? ? Boneless Wings - Not really meat from a chicken wing, it sounds tastier than "chicken pieces with sauce." ? Guru - In almost all cases, the person being described is not teaching transcendental meditation, Hinduism or Buddhism. And nobody wants to be described as "the person we could find who knows the most about the topic we're talking about right now." Other words people came to know - and tire of - in 2012 could also have made it onto the list: Gangnam Style. Mommy Porn. Anything-geddon. Meh. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.