Europoltsat.pdf (application/pdf Object) US Appeals Court Rules Computer Code Is Not ‘Property’ And Can’t Be Stolen. Sergey Aleynikov, an ex-Goldman-Sachs programmer, spent a year in prison for downloading source code of the firm’s high-speed trading software before his sentence was overturned in February. Today the court explained why — downloading computer code doesn’t constitute stealing under the US National Stolen Property Act. The 2nd Circuit Appeals Court ruled that since computer code cannot be physically obtained, it doesn’t fit the legal description of a stolen good.
“Because Aleynikov did not ‘assume physical control’ over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby ‘deprive [Goldman] of its use’, Aleynikov did not violate the [National Stolen Property Act],” the court wrote in its decision [PDF]. In addition, the Appeals Court struck down charges against Aleynikov of violating the Electronic Espionage Act since the software was never destined for foreign markets. Image: AP. Kim Dotcom: US Military Had 15,634 Megaupload Accounts.
In recent weeks the battle has continued to save the data stored at the now-defunct site Megaupload. Contrary to the image painted by the entertainment industries, untold numbers of people used the file-hosting service for completely legitimate sharing. Today we can reveal that not only did people at the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and NASA hold Megaupload accounts, so did more than 15,600 members of the US Military. Ever since Megaupload was dismantled in January there have been concerns about data being held on the site’s servers.
While the MPAA and RIAA insist that the site was simply a huge piracy hub, the facts point to a much bigger picture of people using the site for countless legitimate transfers of files simply too big to email. As mentioned earlier this month, Megaupload’s legal team is working hard to reunite site users with their data, an aim also shared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with their MegaRetrieval campaign. Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforcement plan. American Internet users, get ready for three strikes "six strikes. " Major US Internet providers—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth "strike," you won't necessarily be "out.
" Much of the scheme mirrors what ISPs do now. Copyright holders will scan the 'Net for infringement, grabbing suspect IP addresses from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. ISPs have committed to forward such notices to subscribers—though, crucially, they won't turn over actual subscriber names or addresses without a court order. The agreement puts heavy emphasis on "education," going so far as to recast this behavior as some "right to know" on the part of parents unaware of a child's P2P activity. Baby steps to mitigation. All US police to get access to international travel records? This just in from the “All international travelers are suspected terrorists” department: In response to questions (see the video at approx. 37:00-38:30) from members of a House Homeland Security subcommittee during a hearing yesterday, DHS Deputy Counter-Terrorism Coordinator John Cohen said that, as part of the Orwellianly-named “Secure Communities” program, local police will soon be receiving the result of a check of DHS international travel logs, automatically, for every person arrested anywhere in the US for even a minor offense.
Local police will be able to run checks of travel records for “nonoffenders” — innocent people — as well. According to one report: Under the forthcoming plan, authorities will be able to instantly pull up an offender’s or nonoffender’s immigration records and biometric markers, he said. The government already is able to vet visitor records from multiple databases for national security and public safety threats, Cohen added. USA now BLOCKING video material advocating treason or insurrection from entering country!?! via reddit.com. Panopticon: Government And Privacy In The New Millenium. Government And Privacy In The New Millenium January 2003 Panopticon: a word from the early 18th century. An idea from the mind of Jeremy Bentham, English civic philosopher and designer of prisons. An idea that has become central to American life in the 21st Century.
Panopticon: a prison system, whereby the jailer can keep in view all of the inmates, all of the time. The dream of fascists. Panopticon: the ambition of many of the present leaders of the United States Government, ostensibly to fight a war against terrorism. It is the stuff of dystopian novels like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, movies like Brazil and THX 1138, the fevered conspiracist fantasies of the black helicopter theorists who rant from cryptic websites and on late night talk radio shows. But this time is different. For example: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Awareness Office administers a program known as "Total Information Awareness"(TIA).
So--when will the "war on terrorism" be over? Mega Indictment. After Historic Protest, Members of Congress Abandon PIPA and SOPA in Droves. Yesterday, in the largest online protest in Internet history, more than 115,000 websites altered millions of web pages to stand in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, the Internet blacklist bills. Some sites — Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, Craigslist and others — completely shut down for the day, replacing their sites with material to educate the public about the bill’s dangers. Others, like Google and Mozilla, sent users to a petition or action center to express their concerns to Congress.
While the final results are still being tabulated, EFF alone helped users send over 1,000,000 emails to Congress, and countless more came from other organizations. Web traffic briefly brought down the Senate website. 162 million people visited Wikipedia and eight million looked up their representatives’ phone numbers. Google received over 7 million signatures on their petition. Talking Points Memo has a great round up of more of the staggering numbers. And members of Congress were quick to react. The Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator. US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith is the guy who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, as I'm sure you know, is the shady bill that will introduce way harsher penalties for companies and individuals caught violating copyright laws online (including making the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime which you could actually go to jail for). If the bill passes, it will destroy the internet and, ultimately, turn the world into Mad Max (for more info, go here).
I decided to check that everything on Lamar's official campaign website was copyright-cleared and on the level. Lamar is using several stock images on his site, two of which I tracked back to the same photographic agency. So I took a look back at an archived, pre-SOPA version of his site. This is a screenshot of his site as it appeared on the 24th of July, 2011. And this is the background image Lamar was using. And whaddya know? Oh dear. We need your help! For more on SOPA, read this. Protect IP Act Senate whip count - OpenCongress Wiki. Fuck FBI Friday III: ManTech. Guess Which Gov Agency Edits the Most Wiki Pages | Danger Room. MMI Research Ltd v Cellxion Ltd & Ors [2009] EWHC 418 (Pat) (11 March 2009)
Young Turks: Reddit is the Internet’s new activist hotbed. By Stephen C. WebsterSaturday, December 31, 2011 11:51 EDT In a segment broadcast Friday night, Current TV’s “The Young Turks” hosts took a look at social media forum Reddit, which has recently become a flashpoint for resistance to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which critics warn will break the structure of the Internet if it becomes law. For Reddit, that threat is very real: one of the site’s managers recent commented that independent analysts have told them that if SOPA passes, Reddit is essentially doomed. Such a small staff cannot possibly police such a massive volume of user-submitted content for links to websites potentially engaged in copyright infringement of any type, they explained, pleading with users to push back against the bill. “I love it,” host Cenk Uygur said Friday night. “It’s incredible, and a lot of people are getting involved,” co-host Ana Kasparian added. This video is from Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” broadcast Friday, Dec. 30, 2011.
Stephen C. Stephen C. The Repression Strengthened Us! One wrong move, forgetting to take your hat off, the interruption of a phone ringing notwithstanding — after a spell, a trip to the bank to pay the light bill — alongside men carrying machine guns — does get to feel normal. Such a transit of mind is a testimony to the human ability to adapt, yes? — and I am reminded of a marvelous tale that dear friend Francis Huxley tells. It was the 1950s, and he was called to transport a Native of the Brazilian Xingu tribe to Sao Paulo for emergency medical treatment. After success with that, they strolled through the streets of the city — for the Native man, the first time ever in such a scene.
Upon passing a bank heavily guarded by men in military uniform, bearing epaulets, badges, and heavy black boots and carting machine guns – the man turned and asked what this strange display was all about. And so it is here, just over the border and sixty years later. First the government blocked the road from passage, including the arrival of food and water. EPIC Sues DHS Over Covert Surveillance of Facebook and Twitter. Stuxnet weapon has at least 4 cousins: researchers. Are You Being Tracked? 8 Ways Your Privacy Is Being Eroded Online and Off | Media. December 28, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
In a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Few people have ever heard about CIQ. Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of venture capitalists. At the hearing, Sen. Following Muller’s Senate testimony, Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ’s VP of marketing, told the Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency to contact them for data. CIQ is emblematic of a growing number of ongoing battles that delineate the boundary of what, in the digital age, is personal, private life and information. 1.
Sen. According to the company, its software is designed to improve mobile communications. Making matters worse, Carrier IQ attempted to silence Eckhart with a cease-and-desist letter, demanding he replace his analysis with a statement disavowing his research. Why Twitter Was the Only Company to Challenge the Secret WikiLeaks Subpoena. Alexander Macgillivray" />Secret subpoenas* information requests of the kind the Department of Justice sent Twitter are apparently not unusual.
In fact, other tech companies may also have received similar WikiLeaks-related requests. But what is unusual in this story is that Twitter resisted. Which raises an interesting question: Assuming that Twitter was not the only company to have been served a secret subpoena order, why was it the only company that fought back? The answer might lie in the figure leading Twitter’s legal efforts, Alexander Macgillivray (right), an incredibly mild mannered (really) but sharp-as-a-tack cyber law expert.
Twitter’s general counsel comes out of Harvard’s prestigious Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the cyber law powerhouse that has churned out some of the leading Internet legal thinkers. Twitter wooed Macgillivray away from Google in the summer of 2009, and he now heads a 25-person legal team. Submission for Review and Comment: “The Menlo Report: Ethical Principles Guiding Information and Communication Technology Research” (“Menlo Report”) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science and Technology, Cyber Security D.
Persona management system for communications. Abstract: A system to apply persona styles to written communications. The system includes a communication analyzer and a modification engine coupled to the communication analyzer. The communication analyzer identifies an element of original content of a written communication and determines that the element of the original content of the written communication is incompatible with a selected persona style. The selected persona style defines a communication style. The modification engine modifies the original content of the written communication to replace the element of the original content with a substitute element that is compatible with the selected persona style. Claims: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
Description: [0001]There are many reasons why interpersonal communications may be misunderstood. . [0007]Embodiments of a system are described. Complete Inspire Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Magazine. The following document is reportedly the full and “uncorrupted” version of the Inspire Magazine said to be produced by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A previous version of the magazine was incomplete and contained 64 pages of ASCII cupcake recipe fragments. This complete version was removed from Scribd after it falsely claimed to have received a notice from the “copyright holder” of the magazine. The authenticity of the following document should be deeply scrutinized. We have also been unable to remove password protection and security settings from the file, something that we are normally able to do quite easily with government documents.
Al-Malahem Media Foundation. Libraries News » Blog Archive » Changing Access to JSTOR. New Zealands Three Strikes Law was Pushed, Bought and Paid for by the US - Wikileaks. The slow trickle of leaked diplomatic cables from Wikileaks may not be in the headlines as much as it was when it started, but revelations keep pouring out of the website. Recently, new diplomatic cables published on the site revealed just how, not only influential the US was, but just how much control the US had over the passage of the three strikes law in New Zealand. If there wasn’t any anti-American sentiment before in New Zealand, there certainly will be for some after new diplomatic cables were published revealing the role the US had in pushing for a three strikes law in New Zealand.
The New Zealand’s new three strikes law was the most controversial copyright laws in the country and one of the most controverisal in the world. While the law was being proposed, debate was fierce. A diplomatic cable that was sent clear back in 2005 shows that the US was offering up money to put in new copyright laws. Apparently, the three step plan was already hammers out. Have a tip? Who are the hunger strikers? How prisoners land in Pelican Bay’s SHU. By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway An aerial view of Pelican Bay State Prison – Photo: California Department of Corrections Sympathy for the prisoners on hunger strike in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison is limited due to the widely held impression that these men — and indeed most supermax prisoners — are the “worst of the worst.”
According to conventional wisdom, in order to land in the most secure units in the prison system, these men must have committed terrible crimes in the first place and then compounded them by committing further violent acts while in prison. How else could they end up in long-term solitary confinement, locked up 22 1/2 hours a day in 8 by 10 cells for years or even decades? In fact, as we’ve written many times before, solitary confinement is now a disciplinary measure of first rather than last resort in most state prison systems. Any prisoner, regardless of his original crime, can end up in solitary. Schlag gegen Anonymous: FBI nimmt 14 mutmaßliche Hacker fest - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Politik.
If an Agent Knocks: Federal Investigators and Your Rights. Love Lulz & Cyanide. Pentagon Set To Track Social Media. Behind the CIA's Secret Somalia Operations | Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Police to begin iPhone iris scans amid privacy concerns. Re: Endgames / HB Gary Federal - Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:41:45 -0600. Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race.