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Old 28-03-18, 07:07 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 31st, ’18

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"All you need to do is show your target his or her phone and the moment they glance it unlocks." – Marc Rogers, researcher and head of information security at Cloudflare






































March 31st, 2018




Megaupload Founder Wins Battle in Ongoing Fight Against U.S. Extradition

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom won one battle with New Zealand authorities on Monday when a Wellington court ruled the attorney general broke the law by refusing his request to be given all information about him held by public agencies.

The Human Rights Review Tribunal’s decision might be relevant for his high-profile U.S. extradition case, which is with the Court of Appeal. Dotcom says the information he requested in July 2015 and denied one month later could be presented as evidence in that case.

German-born Dotcom faces extradition to the United States relating to his Megaupload site, which was shut down in 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion.

U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three co-accused Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material.

Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, is fighting those charges and the extradition.

The Human Rights Review Tribunal awarded Dotcom damages of NZ$30,000 ($21,816) for the “loss of a benefit” and NZ$60,000 for “loss of dignity and injury to feelings”.

Reporting by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Paul Tait
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-n...-idUSKBN1H20D0





Google Loses Android Battle and Could Owe Oracle Billions of Dollars
Danielle Wiener-Bronner

Google just lost a major copyright case that could cost it billions of dollars and change how tech companies approach software development.

An appeals court said on Tuesday that Google violated copyright laws when it used Oracle's open-source Java software to build the Android platform in 2009.

Tuesday's ruling is the latest development in a topsy-turvy eight-year battle between Google (GOOG) and Oracle (ORCL).

Oracle first brought its case against Google in 2010, claiming that Android infringes two patents that Oracle holds on its Java software, a ubiquitous programming language powering everything from phones to websites.

In 2012, a jury determined that Java does not deserve protection under copyright law. Two years later, an appeals court overturned the ruling, raising the question of whether Google's use of Oracle's API violated copyright law.

A jury determined in 2016 that Google's use of Oracle's APIs was legal under the copyright law's fair use doctrine, which allows the free use of copyrighted material under specific circumstances. Oracle appealed the decision, and a judge took its side on Tuesday.

"There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform," a panel of three Federal Circuit judges wrote in Tuesday's opinion.

Oracle said in a statement on Tuesday that the recent "decision protects creators and consumers." Google said it is weighing its next steps. It could appeal to the full slate of judges on the court.

"We are disappointed the court reversed the jury finding that Java is open and free for everyone," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "This type of ruling will make apps and online services more expensive for users. We are considering our options."

Another court will decide how much Google owes Oracle in damages.

As of 2016, Oracle was seeking about $9 billion from Google. But because APIs have become much more widespread over the years, a court could decide that Oracle deserves more, said Christopher Carani, a partner with McAndrews, Held & Malloy and a professor at Northwestern's law school.

"The numbers in this case will be staggering," he added.

The verdict is likely to eclipse the current largest copyright verdict of $1.3 billion, awarded to Oracle when it sued rival SAP in 2010.

Google isn't the only company that stands to lose from this decision. Many others rely on open-source software to develop their own platforms. Tuesday's ruling means that some will either have pay to license certain software or develop their own from scratch.

"The decision is going to create a significant shift in how software is developed worldwide," Carani said. "It really means that copyright in this context has teeth."

"Sometimes free is not really free," he added.

— CNNMoney's David Goldman contributed reporting.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/27/news...ase/index.html





Dish Network, Others Near $46M Award In Pirating Row
Michael Macagnone

Dish Network LLC, China Central Television and a pair of other companies are one step closer to victory in their suit accusing a Chinese company of pirating their TV signals, after convincing a New York federal magistrate judge they should be awarded a more than $46 million default judgment.

The report from Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo noted that the defendant, HTV International Ltd., had stopped cooperating with the litigation and had removed its attorneys from the case. Judge Kuo recommended the judgment, along with an injunction...
https://www.law360.com/articles/1020...n-pirating-row





‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ Dethrones ‘Black Panther’ at the Box Office
Andrew R. Chow

It took giant robots fighting giant monsters to finally unseat “Black Panther” at the top of the box office.

“Pacific Rim Uprising,” the bombastic sequel to Guillermo Del Toro’s 2013 action film, grossed $28 million domestically in its first weekend according to comScore, which compiles box office data. The new film from Legendary and Universal, directed by Steven S. DeKnight (“Daredevil”), opened smaller than its predecessor domestically — that one made $37 million upon release — but thrived overseas, making $122.5 million internationally, with a huge reception in China. “Pacific Rim Uprising,” shot mostly in China and Australia, cost $155 million to make, not including marketing.

“Black Panther” pulled in another $16 million, good for second place. The film has now made $630 million domestically; it will have to reach about $676 million in order to beat “The Avengers,” from 2012, to become the biggest superhero film of all time, adjusting for inflation.

“Sherlock Gnomes,” Paramount’s chipper computer-animated comedy about a garden doll version of the Arthur Conan Doyle detective, made $10.6 million — a steep decline compared to its predecessor, “Gnomeo & Juliet,” which made $25.3 million upon its opening in 2011. The new film received terrible reviews and represents another box office flop for Paramount, which has limped through the past six months with financial disappointments like “Annihilation,” “Suburbicon,” and “Downsizing.”

“Isle of Dogs,” Wes Anderson’s latest buoyant stop-motion film for Fox Searchlight, earned $1.57 million in just 27 theaters. Reviews have been strong, but discussion around the movie, set in Japan, has been plagued by accusations of cultural appropriation. The film will open wide in the coming weeks.

The surprise faith-based hit “I Can Only Imagine,” starring Dennis Quaid, continued to draw audiences in its second week, making $13.8 million. The Roadside Attractions film has now made $38 million, far surpassing its $7 million production budget. And another low-budget faith-based movie, Sony’s “Paul, Apostle of Christ,” opened to a respectable $5 million, continuing a recent formula of success for Christian movies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/m...ox-office.html





RIAA Reports Music Industry Is Making All The Money Just As New Study Says Piracy Has Never Been More Widespread
Timothy Geigner

As much conversation as gets logged on the topic of copyright infringement, or piracy, you may not have noticed that there are not that many arguments against piracy. Certainly there's a volume of voices, particularly those coming from the entertainment industry, but those voices are typically making only one of two claims. The first claim is that piracy is morally wrong. This claim typically devolves into something along the lines of "but piracy is theft", and relies on the intuitive notion that downloading, say, a song hurts the creator of that song by depriving them of income. If there was no income deprivation, there would be no moral wrong. The second claim skips the first part of that equation and simply asserts that piracy harms the entertainment or content industries, depriving them of the income they need in order to create more content. You will notice that, ultimately, there is actually only one argument against piracy: its effect on the income of the content producers.

With as much as entertainment advocacy groups like to pantomime Chicken Little on this topic, you might be surprised to learn that the RIAA recently came out with its 2017 Year-End industry report, in which it gleefully notes both how much money the music industry is making and, importantly, how that revenue is growing rather than shrinking.

In 2017 revenues from recorded music in the United States increased 16.5% at estimated retail value to $8.7 billion, continuing the growth from the previous year. At wholesale, revenues grew 12.6% to $5.9 billion. These increases were driven by more than 35 million paid subscriptions, a 56% growth year-over-year. This is the first time since 1999 that U.S. music revenues grew materially for two years in a row, while gaps in core rights continue to distort the marketplace and deprive recording artists and songwriters of the royalties they deserve.

So, we have two years of growth in music industry revenue in America, even as the RIAA is also still complaining about market distortions and artists not getting enough royalties. The full report notes that streaming revenue is way up, digital downloads are down, and physical product purchase revenue has been mostly flat. Note that this is all for the American market. Nowhere in the full report does it flesh out exactly what the RIAA's complaints about artist compensation are based on, although piracy/infringement is almost certainly the answer.

The problem for that argument, which is again the only real argument for focusing on piracy as some great evil, is that another report just came out from MUSO, a group that tracks piracy, indicating that piracy is more popular in the public right now than it ever has been.

Piracy tracking outfit MUSO has documented the piracy landscape with data from tens of thousands of the largest global piracy sites. In its latest report, the company recorded more than 300 billion visits to pirate sites last year alone. This is an increase of 1.6 percent compared to 2016.

More than half of all these visits (53%) are going to streaming sites, making that the most popular piracy tool. Torrent sites and direct download portals still have a significant user base, but follow at a respectable distance. Most of the pirate visits came from the United States, followed by India and Brazil. Despite the various pirate site blockades, the UK also secured a spot in the top ten, ranked at the bottom with nine billion visits.


A couple of things to note in the report's details. Again, America had the highest instances of piracy by far, nearly twice as much as India, which came in third. Also note that, while streaming sites for television was the most popular method of piracy in the public, pirating music came in second. So, we have two data points. The RIAA says that the American music industry revenue has risen two years running. MUSO says that Americans pirate more than anyone else, that they often pirate music, and that piracy levels are at the zenith and rising.

The "piracy hurts the music industry" mantra just took a credibility hit, no?

The explanation for this isn't difficult to understand. Those that pirate music also buy music, go to concerts, and support the bands and music industry through all kinds of other purchases. They also likely subscribe to streaming services and pirate what they can't find there, or what they discover there. The point is that music pirates are often fans of music and may purchase along with pirating.

In other words, the simplistic attack mantras from the RIAA don't make a great deal of sense alongside the RIAA reporting that the music industry is making gobs of money, and increasingly so.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...despread.shtml





Los Angeles Wants to Build Its Own Citywide Broadband Network

Los Angeles is taking net neutrality seriously.
Paul Resnikoff

It would be one of the largest municipal broadband networks in the world. Now, Los Angeles is studying an aggressive plan to protect net neutrality.

Los Angeles wouldn’t be the first municipality to create their own broadband utility. But they’d probably be the biggest. Earlier today, the Los Angeles City Council introduced a motion to study the feasibility of a massive, citywide broadband grid.

The motion was started by Councilmember Paul Krekorian. And it calls for a citywide utility that would bring broadband to every residential and business address. Most importantly, it would eliminate the digital divide and dramatically lower the cost of connectivity.

Also part of the plan: a 100% guarantee of net neutrality. “In announcing the motion, Krekorian emphasized that providing at-cost access to high-speed Internet was increasingly important, citing developing factors such as a lack of competition among Internet service providers, as well as the Federal Communications Commission’s decision last year to repeal protections for net neutrality,” noted TechWire’s Zack Quaintance.

“If we can move forward with this, Los Angeles would be the biggest city to take on creating a broadband utility, but we would not be the first,” Krekorian told Government Technology. “In this process, I want to make sure we look at any existing models that are being used or tested elsewhere in the country and evaluate how effective they are at delivering cost-effective broadband service to residents.”

Krekorian pointed to Chattanooga, TN as already having “a robust system” with hi-speed access and reasonable costs. Other municipalities, including Fort Collins, CO, have also successfully constructed broadband networks.

Interestingly, we’re learning that a number of states actually prohibit individual cities from building their own internet grids. But many of those states are also in full rebellion against the FCC’s net neutrality rollback.

Krekorian noted that Los Angeles already has a substantial network of fiber-optic cable. So large parts of the network already exist. “Los Angeles owns a network of fiber-optic cable that runs through every part of the city,” Krekorian told the Los Angeles Times. “I want to see if we can maximize its use and ensure that everyone has access to fast, affordable internet services.”

Meanwhile, another giant California city is already getting started.

Up north, San Francisco is now pushing forward with a massive, $2 billion project to install a broadband network throughout its city. The project will be a public-private partnership, and looks to be rolling ahead after three years of planning.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is urging local municipalities to construct their own broadband utilities. On Thursday, the organization urged cities to counter the recent net neutrality repeal, which could limit freedom of speech. “If the commercial providers are determined to make money by violating the privacy and speech rights of their users, and if some policymakers in Washington are determined to clear the way for them to do that — then states, cities, towns, and counties should take matters into their own hands by creating publicly owned services that do honor those values and can help ensure an open internet,” the report declares.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...et-neutrality/





Republicans Block State Net Neutrality Bill
Bill Cummings and Emilie Munson

A bill that would allow the state to regulate the Internet in the absence of federal net neutrality rules died in committee on Thursday due to a procedural trick engineered by Republican senators.

Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme and co-chairman of the Energy and Technology Committee, used his authority to split the committee and allow only the four senators to vote. While Democrats have a majority in the committee when House members are included, the committee has two Senate Democrats and two Republicans.

The resulting vote was a tie, meaning the bill failed. Although Formica held the vote open until 4 p.m., it was unlikely the two Republican senators — Formica and Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield — would change their “no” votes.

The procedural trick is seldom used, but was possible because the state Senate is tied 18-18 between Republicans and Democrats. That means Republicans gained an extra chairman on each committee. Formica used that to his advantage and moved to split the vote, which was raised by a senator.

“It was something that we think is a federal issue and we think should be handled at the federal level,” said Formica. “We didn’t want to subject our state to any lawsuits which we knew would be coming.”

“At this point it seemed to be the proper procedure to just end the conversation,” he said.

Formica’s co-chair Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, called the move “highly unusual” and “stunning.”

“It was chaos,” he said. “If you want a bill to die, just like if you want a bill to succeed, you should have the votes for it to die or succeed. I’m not saying that they don’t have the right (to split the committee)because the rules allow for the procedure, but I think it’s cleaner if you vote it up or down.”

The issue of net neutrality has gained steam since the Federal Communications Commission, under President Donald Trump, decided to dismantle Obama-era Internet regulations. Net neutrality advocates fear the change could enable internet providers to throttle consumer internet speeds, block certain websites or force some businesses to pay more to put their content on the same internet platform.

Many Democrats voiced support for state-level net neutrality regulations at a news conference in February. Oregon and Washington have passed similar protections.

"There is nothing more important than an open Internet," said Sen. Derek Slap, D-West Hartford, on Thursday. "The business models are changing significantly, and the landscape is very different and has have never had no rules in place."

Many believe it’s up to Congress to decide who regulates the Internet, given that the service crosses state lines, Slap acknowledged.

"There is legal precedent where regulators wanted to regulate the cable industry," Slap said. "This is something worth fighting for and 30 other states are taking action because they understand there is a clear danger to our economy. I think it’s worth moving this bill forward."

Like Formica, Sen. Hwang maintained issue is a federal one.

"Considering the pace of the world wide web and data privacy and the Amazons of the world, we recognize the Internet has wide implications," he said. “For me, it is the ultimate interstate commerce issue. It is ultimately a federal issue."

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, proposed the bill and posted a video on Twitter denouncing the Republicans’ actions just after the vote.

“It’s concerning the fact that net neutrality has passed two legislatures on a bipartisan basis by wide margins, but here in Connecticut Republicans and their big lobbyist friends have decided they want to make sure they are protected and not consumers,” he said.
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article...l-12791381.php





AT&T/Verizon Lobbyists to “Aggressively” Sue States that Enact Net Neutrality

ISPs will sue to block net neutrality laws until they get one they like.
Jon Brodkin

A lobby group that represents AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos plans to sue states and cities that try to enforce net neutrality rules.

USTelecom, the lobby group, made its intentions clear yesterday in a blog post titled, "All Americans Deserve Equal Rights Online."

"Broadband providers have worked hard over the past 20 years to deploy ever more sophisticated, faster and higher-capacity networks, and uphold net neutrality protections for all," USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter wrote. "To continue this important work, there is no question we will aggressively challenge state or municipal attempts to fracture the federal regulatory structure that made all this progress possible."

The USTelecom board of directors includes AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, CenturyLink, Windstream, and other telcos. The group's membership "ranges from the nation's largest telecom companies to small rural cooperatives."

States’ rights don’t apply to net neutrality

Spalter's blog post reminisces about the founding of the United States of America, noting that the Articles of Confederation "ma[de] Congress the sole governing body of our new national government" and that the Constitution "grant[ed] the federal government jurisdiction over commerce that moves across state lines."

State regulations on net neutrality thus conflict with America's founding principles, Spalter wrote:

It is said that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' Nowhere can we find a more perfect modern example for this sentiment than in the cacophony of disparate calls by state and local regulators across the country each seeking to impose their own brand of 'net neutrality' regulations on consumers' Internet experience.

The US should have one net neutrality standard instead of different rules in each state and city, Spalter also wrote. Spalter reiterated the broadband industry's argument that websites should be as heavily regulated as Internet providers, even though net neutrality rules have generally been designed to prevent ISPs from discriminating against online services:

Protections should be no different for consumers in Minnesota or Iowa than they are in California or Florida. Equally true, consumers deserve consistent safeguards across the online world, whether engaging with Facebook, Goggle [sic], AT&T or Comcast.

Of course, the US did have a nationwide net neutrality standard that prohibited ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing Internet content in exchange for payment. But that standard was bitterly opposed by USTelecom and other broadband industry groups.

USTelecom previously sued the Federal Communications Commission to overturn those net neutrality rules and lost in court. However, USTelecom eventually got its way after Republican Ajit Pai was appointed FCC chairman by President Trump; Pai led a 3-2 vote to kill the rules.

Pai's FCC also claimed the authority to preempt state and municipal net neutrality rules at the urging of Verizon and other ISPs.

But Washington state and Oregon are imposing net neutrality laws, saying the FCC lacks authority to preempt them. There is pending net neutrality legislation in more than half of US states, and the governors of five states have issued executive orders designed to protect net neutrality.

Spalter complained that the net neutrality debate has gone on too long. "No one will get the years of time back that’s been spent on a 'net neutrality' debate long on circular, heated rhetoric and painfully short on honest, constructive dialogue," he wrote.

But the net neutrality debate might have ended years ago if USTelecom and other broadband industry groups hadn't opposed the federal standard. State lawmakers only decided to enforce net neutrality at the local level after ISPs convinced the FCC to abandon its nationwide oversight of net neutrality.

“Hell no” to (some) state laws

USTelecom hasn't announced specific lawsuits yet, but any state that passes a net neutrality law is likely to be sued by USTelecom or other broadband lobby groups and ISPs. Broadband industry lawsuits will argue that the FCC has authority to preempt the local laws. The FCC's preemption authority is limited, but legal experts disagree on whether states can impose strict net neutrality laws.

USTelecom hasn't been consistent on the question of whether federal policy should trump states' rights in telecom regulation. USTelecom opposed the FCC during the Obama administration when it preempted state laws that prevent the expansion of municipal broadband networks, which often compete against USTelecom member ISPs. When the FCC lost a court case over that preemption attempt, USTelecom called the ruling "a victory for the rule of law."

But while USTelecom believes states should have the right to prevent cities from building their own broadband networks, the group doesn't think states should have the right to impose their own net neutrality laws.

USTelecom is hoping that Congress will end the debate by passing a net neutrality law—as long as it's less strict than the rules recently repealed by the FCC.

"We also will continue to work with Congress to enact one consistent set of national and permanent consumer protections," Spalter wrote. "All Americans deserve equal rights online. Standing up for them means not merely saying no to state-level regulation, but hell no to the idea of dismantling what must be a united and connected future."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...et-neutrality/





FCC Approves SpaceX Plan for 4,425-Satellite Broadband Network
Devin Coldewey

SpaceX has a green light from the FCC to launch a network of thousands of satellites blanketing the globe with broadband. And you won’t have too long to wait — on a cosmic scale, anyway. Part of the agreement is that SpaceX launch half of its proposed satellites within six years.

The approval of SpaceX’s application was not seriously in doubt after last month’s memo from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was excited at the prospect of the first U.S.-based company being authorized to launch a constellation like this.

“I have asked my colleagues to join me in supporting this application and moving to unleash the power of satellite constellations to provide high-speed Internet to rural Americans,” he wrote at the time. He really is pushing that “digital divide” thing. Not that Elon Musk disagrees:

Today’s Falcon launch carries 2 SpaceX test satellites for global broadband. If successful, Starlink constellation will serve least served.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2018

SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell echoed the sentiment in a statement provided to TechCrunch:

“We appreciate the FCC’s thorough review and approval of SpaceX’s constellation license. Although we still have much to do with this complex undertaking, this is an important step toward SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected.”

The proposed service, which will be called Starlink, was opposed by several existing satellite operators like OneWeb and Spire. They’re rightly concerned that another operator in space — especially one that wants to launch thousands of satellites — will crowd both spectrum and orbit.

OneWeb, for example, said that SpaceX satellites shouldn’t be allowed to be deployed within 125 kilometers of altitude of its own. You do want to avoid interference, but really, it’s too much to ask for a 150-mile buffer zone around your gear.

One objection that did carry water, however, was the request for an extensive orbital debris mitigation plan.

“The unprecedented number of satellites proposed by SpaceX and the other [non-geostationary orbit fixed-satellite service] systems in this processing round will necessitate a further assessment of the appropriate reliability standards of these spacecraft, as well as the reliability of these systems’ methods for deorbiting the spacecraft.”

So SpaceX will have to provide more studies on this by the time it finalizes its designs and starts launching.

And that will have to be fairly soon. To move things along, the FCC requires SpaceX to get underway in a hurry or else, presumably, it will have to be reauthorized:

“SpaceX must launch 50 percent of the maximum number of proposed space stations, place them in the assigned orbits, and operate them in accordance with the station authorization no later than March 29, 2024.”

The company has already launched test versions of the satellites, but the full constellation will need to go out more than two at a time. SpaceX eventually plans to launch 12,000 of the things, but this authorization is for the high-altitude group of 4,425; a separate authorization is necessary for the remaining number, since they’ll be operating at a different altitude and radio frequency.

The Falcon 9 carrying SpaceX’s test Starlink satellites launches on February 22

Commissioner Rosenworcel, in a separate statement, also called for a general revisiting of regulations around commercial space.

“This rush to develop new space opportunities requires new rules,” she writes. “Despite the revolutionary activity in our atmosphere, the regulatory frameworks we rely on to shape these efforts are dated. Across the board, we need to prepare for the proliferation of satellites in our higher altitudes. In short, we have work to do.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/29/fc...dband-network/





As the CLOUD Act Sneaks into the Omnibus, Big Tech Butts Heads with Privacy Advocates
Taylor Hatmaker

As the House advances a 2,232-page spending bill meant to avert a government shutdown, privacy advocates and big tech companies aren’t seeing eye to eye about a small piece of legislation tucked away on page 2,212.

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, a.k.a. the CLOUD Act (H.R.4943, S.2383) aims to simplify the way that international law enforcement groups obtain personal data stored by U.S.-based tech platforms — but the changes to that process are controversial.

As it stands, if a foreign government wants to obtain that data in the course of an investigation, a series of steps are necessary. First, that government must have a Mutual Legal Assistant Treaty (MLAT) with the U.S. government in place, and those treaties are ratified by the Senate. Then it can send a request to the U.S. Department of Justice, but first the DOJ needs to seek approval from a judge. After those requirements are met, the request can move along to the tech company hosting the data that the foreign government is seeking.

The debate around the CLOUD Act also taps into tech company concerns that foreign nations may move to pass laws in favor of data localization, or the process of storing users’ personal data within the borders of the country of which they are a citizen. That trend would prove both costly for cloud data giants and difficult, upending the established model of cloud data storage that optimizes for efficiency rather than carefully sorting out what data is stored within the borders of which country.

In a February 6 letter, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Oath (TechCrunch’s parent company) co-authored a letter calling the CLOUD Act “notable progress to protect consumers’ rights.”

In a late February blog post, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith addressed the issue. “The CLOUD Act creates both the incentive and the framework for governments to sit down and negotiate modern bi-lateral agreements that will define how law enforcement agencies can access data across borders to investigate crimes,” Smith wrote. “It ensures these agreements have appropriate protections for privacy and human rights and gives the technology companies that host customer data new statutory rights to stand up for the privacy rights of their customers around the world.”

In a recent opinion piece, ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani argues that the CLOUD Act sidesteps oversight from both the legislative and judicial branches, granting the attorney general and the state department too much discretion in choosing which governments the U.S. will enter into a data exchange agreement with.

The Center for Democracy and Technology also opposes the CLOUD Act on the grounds that it fails to protect the digital privacy of American citizens and the Electronic Frontier Foundation dismissed the legislation as “a new backdoor around the Fourth Amendment.” The Open Technology Institute also denounced the CLOUD Act’s provision to “allow qualifying foreign governments to enter into an executive agreement to bypass the human rights protective Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process when seeking data in criminal investigations and to seek data directly from U.S. technology companies.”

Both organizations acknowledge that improvements to the bill do partially address some of the human rights concerns associated with not requiring an MLAT in a data sharing agreement.

“While this version of the CLOUD Act includes some new safeguards, it is still woefully inadequate to protect individual rights,” OTI Director of Surveillance & Cybersecurity Policy Sharon Bradford Franklin said of the changes.

“Critically, the bill still would permit foreign governments to obtain communications data held in the United States without any prior judicial review, and it would allow foreign governments to obtain U.S.-held communications in real time without applying the safeguards required for wiretapping by the U.S. government. ”

The Consumer Technology Association voiced its support of the altered bill in a press release issued Thursday. “CTA thanks the House of Representatives for taking steps to empower America’s digital infrastructure for the 21st century. The inclusion of the CLOUD Act and RAY BAUM’S Act in today’s legislation ensures Americans can safely create, share and collect electronic data while providing them the resources to do so.”

While some changes made aspects of the bill more palatable to digital privacy watchdogs, some are objecting to the choice to tack it onto the omnibus spending bill.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul spoke out Thursday against passing the CLOUD Act by attaching it to the spending bill.

“Tucked away in the omnibus spending bill is a provision that allows Trump, and any future president, to share Americans’ private emails and other information with countries he personally likes. That means he can strike deals with Russia or Turkey with nearly zero congressional involvement and no oversight by U.S. courts,” Wyden said. “This bill contains only toothless provisions on human rights that Trump’s cronies can meet by merely checking a box. It is legislative malpractice that Congress, without a minute of Senate debate, is rushing through the CLOUD Act on this must-pass spending bill.”

While the content of the CLOUD Act has evolved away from controversy with some modifications, the choice to pass it as part of the omnibus plan without further opportunity for public debate to examine its potential far-reaching implications is proving just as controversial as earlier forms of the legislation.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/22/cl...ill-house/amp/





The New Technology that Aspires to #DeleteFacebook for Good
Brian Fung

It's been a terrible week for Facebook, with policymakers and users alike demanding answers from the social network over its Cambridge Analytica fiasco, in which the data analysis firm improperly accessed the personal information of about 50 million Facebook users.

But the backlash has had at least one major beneficiary. That's Mastodon, a Twitter-like social network that has had a massive spike in sign-ups this week. As the #DeleteFacebook movement has gained steam, people are registering for Mastodon at four times the rate that they normally do, according to Eugen Rochko, the service's creator.

Between Monday and Tuesday alone, Mastodon gained about 5,800 new users, Rochko said in an interview. That's more new registrations than what Mastodon typically sees over an entire week.

For a social network — Mastodon has 1.1 million users to Facebook's 2.2 billion — that may not sound very impressive. But what makes Mastodon increasingly attractive, particularly in a post-#DeleteFacebook world, is its attitude toward data and control — two of the same issues that now bedevil Facebook as it seeks to justify its data-hungry business model to outraged users. Mastodon's code is open-source, meaning anybody can inspect its design. It's distributed, meaning that it doesn't run in some data center controlled by corporate executives but instead is run by its own users who set up independent servers. And its development costs are paid for by online donations, rather than through the marketing of users' personal information.

Designers such as Rochko are part of a wave of technological innovation aimed at clawing back some of the power that elites, such as Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, have spent the past decade amassing. Rooted in the idea that it doesn't benefit consumers to depend on centralized commercial platforms sucking up users' personal information, these entrepreneurs believe they can restore a bit of the magic from the Internet's earlier days — back when everything was open and interoperable, not siloed and commercialized.

Facebook's most important innovation, at least from a business perspective, was its aggressive collection and use of customer data for advertising purposes. Facebook not only gathers the information that we volunteer about ourselves, such as email addresses and birthdays, but also data that we generate simply by using the platform, such as likes, friend connections and more. This information, as we learned from Cambridge Analytica's whistleblower, can be extremely powerful in the wrong hands.

Facebook pledged this week to crack down on apps on its platform that may be leaking user data to third parties. But, in the end, that promise simply highlights how much of a say Facebook has over our digital fate — in some cases, it may be allowing our information to spread to who-knows-where, without our explicit knowledge.

How to keep an eye on our data as it moves from one owner to another is a tricky problem that Ryan Shea and Muneeb Ali have been working on since 2013. When the pair founded Blockstack, a new kind of app marketplace, they flipped the model on its head. What if instead of trusting companies to hold all your data, the information always stayed with you, on your computer or a cloud storage provider of your choice? And what if every time a new app wanted to access your data you simply gave it a key that could decrypt all that personal information that you controlled? If you later decided the app was no good, you could just take back the key.

While that may not sound very distinct from, say, deciding whether to let Airbnb access your friends list on Facebook, Shea and Ali say that it makes a world of difference.

“There’s no company in the middle that’s hosting all the data,” Ali explained. “We’re going back to the world where it’s like the old-school Microsoft Word — where your interactions are yours, they’re local and nobody’s tracking them.” Unlike Word, the apps on Blockstack come with all the powerful features of an Internet-native application. Two apps on the Blockstack marketplace already work this way — Graphite, a kind of decentralized version of Google Docs, and Stealthy, a decentralized messaging app.

What makes this model possible is the blockchain, the underlying technology that supports bitcoin. Many of us know bitcoin as a kind of digital cash, or a type of investment asset that's subject to wild price swings. But the supporting blockchain technology is a powerful record-keeping and transaction system that opens the door to much more than exchanges of money.

At its most basic level, a blockchain is essentially a list of authentic records that's publicly accessible to anybody. When it comes to matters of data and identity, you can think of it like an encrypted phone book: If you have the key that tells you the page where you can find a person and unlock his or her data, then you can see their phone number, email address, friends list and everything else that person wants to make available to you.

To be clear, under this model your data isn't stored directly on the blockchain; the key you provide simply points to the place on your hard drive or server where you've stored your data. At scale, this has massive implications for security and privacy. Rather than billions of people trusting big companies to store their information, that same information is spread out across billions of separate machines, making any single breach — like the massive one that hit credit-reporting company Equifax last year — far less damaging. And it helps prevent companies such as Facebook from making unilateral decisions about how to handle your information.

“If that system is built and the technology is developed, some of the issues we’ve seen related to data breaches, access to people’s personal info — that would potentially improve,” said Aaron Wright, founder of the Blockchain Project at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.

The blockchain enables other uses, too. Because the security of the blockchain is maintained by lots of computers working in concert to prevent fraud, some developers have built apps that take advantage of these computers' unused processing capacity to run entirely new, decentralized programs. That combined computing power can, well, power a Facebook without Facebook's corporate machinery or private infrastructure. By the same token, the blockchain could lead to an Uber without Uber, or an Airbnb without Airbnb.

Despite the promise of these ideas, the developers face enormous challenges. Given how dominant platforms such as Facebook are, encouraging users to switch away from those networks could be a massive hurdle, particularly if their friends don't follow.

Meanwhile, many of the newer services come with a steep learning curve or require some technical familiarity. Until developers can make the user experience as simple as handing over your data to Facebook with the click of a button, people are going to take the path of least resistance, experts say.

“The reality is that most people do not want to run their own Web servers or social network nodes,” Chelsea Barabas, Neha Narula and Ethan Zuckerman, three researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, wrote in a recent Wired essay.

Still, the rising interest in decentralized social networks such as Mastodon shows there's growing appetite among Internet users for something — anything — besides the model laid out by Silicon Valley's biggest companies.

Unless Facebook wins those users back, disrupters like Zuckerberg could someday become the disrupted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...book-for-good/





People are Using Bitcoin’s System to Share Child Pornography, Researchers Say
Hamza Shaban

German researchers have found about 1,600 files of non-financial data, some of which link to or contain child pornography and other objectionable material, on the system that stores bitcoin transactions.

The discovery could place certain users of the bitcoin network in legal jeopardy, the researchers said, and could pose an obstacle for greater adoption and mainstream acceptance of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin “miners” and people who have volunteered to use their computers to maintain the network may be liable for the possession of illegal content, the researchers said. But people who own and trade bitcoin but don't participate in the bitcoin network are not directly affected.

The researchers analyzed about 1,600 files on bitcoin's blockchain, the public ledger that serves as the infrastructure for cryptocurrency transactions. Most of the files were harmless, the researchers concluded, but some contained copyright violations and the disclosure of people's identifiable information, and at least eight files had sexual content. Some files depict or link to “mildly pornographic content,” and two files contain 274 links to child pornography websites, the researchers found. Another file is believed to depict a nude image of a minor, the researchers said.

“We thus believe that future blockchain designs must proactively cope with objectionable content,” the researchers from Aachen University and Goethe University Frankfurt wrote in their research paper, which was presented last month at an international conference on financial cryptography in Curacao.

Experts say that the files likely got there when people added the material as notes to transactions or inserted them as if they were transactions themselves. People using the blockchain can add non-financial data to describe a transaction's purpose, insert benign messages or record information for other financial services. Anyone with access to the bitcoin software has the ability to upload content to the blockchain, including miners, exchanges and other individual users.

It isn't known who uploaded the offending material. The seven researchers did not respond to a request for comment.

Although users on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube may see objectionable content posted by others, people who maintain aspects of blockchain-based systems may actually be in possession of such content even if they did not produce it themselves. That's because people who maintain the bitcoin network have to download the entire blockchain or parts of it.

“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others,” the researchers said. It's difficult to pinpoint who added the objectionable files because users on the bitcoin blockchain are pseudonymous and can generate a new address for every transaction.

The researchers said there is legislation in several countries, including the United States, that suggests that illegal content held on the blockchain would be unlawful to possess for all its users. The researchers suggested that technologists creating new blockchain designs could address these issues, perhaps by preventing people from inserting such files or halting their spread, to protect users from potential liability.

Christian Catalini, a professor and founder of MIT’s Cryptoeconomics Lab, said that the offensive material the researchers found in the blockchain does not present a major problem right now because the blockchain was not designed as a large-scale file storage system — meaning it’s still hard for people to use it to post offensive content. But as developers create new blockchains primarily for hosting files, the posting of offensive material could become an issue, he said.

As with certain communications platforms on the Web — such as social media, blog platforms and chat forums — engineers could set rules or create filters for illicit material. “The choice of accessing all sorts of content already exists, and that is a result of having the Internet,” Catalini said. “What's novel here is we have a new technology, but the solution is the same.”

While bitcoin's value soared last year, the cryptocurrency market has faced heightened scrutiny, even as more people are turning to virtual currencies as an investment option. Google said recently that it will ban cryptocurrency-related advertisements on its platform, following a similar decision by Facebook earlier this year, in an attempt to stem misleading ads. The Federal Trade Commission is also cracking down on alleged cryptocurrency schemes and filed a lawsuit last week.

As of Wednesday, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies was more than $350 billion, according to the cryptocurrency tracker coinmarketcap.com.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...d-pornography/





Elizabeth Smart Demands Porn Bill Backer Stop Using Her Name
Michelle R. Smith

A proposal targeting online pornography and human trafficking billed as the "Elizabeth Smart Law" has grabbed headlines for its unusual approach: require a filter that can be lifted with a $20 fee.

But Smart, who was kidnapped from her Utah home as a teenager in 2002, sent a cease-and-desist letter to demand her name be removed from it.

And the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography advocacy group, demanded last year that the man behind the legislation, Chris Sevier, stop claiming it supported his work.

Despite those issues, constitutional concerns raised by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, and a history of outlandish lawsuits from Sevier including trying to marry his computer as a statement against same-sex marriage, similar bills pushed by Sevier keep popping up in state legislatures.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the idea, has tracked around two dozen similar bills in 18 state legislatures this year, none of which have passed. A bill in Rhode Island is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday .

Sevier and those who support the idea say that it would protect children and others by making pornography and sites that allow human trafficking harder to access.

Elizabeth Smart may have been heavily involved in the making of the Lifetime movie about her 2002 abduction, but that didn’t make seeing the finished project any easier

Sevier said he chose Smart's name because she has spoken about the negative effects of pornography, including saying that pornography during her captivity "made my living hell worse."

After being told by AP earlier this month that Smart's lawyer was sending a cease-and-desist letter, Sevier said the name "Elizabeth Smart Law" was an "offhand name" that had been given to the legislation by lawmakers. The bill is also being promoted as the Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act.

"Obviously, we're not trying to hurt Elizabeth Smart, for god's sake," Sevier said. "We don't really care what it's called. We just want it to pass. And we're going to see to it that it passes, and the law is on our side."

A federal judge in Utah on March 16 threw out a lawsuit from Sevier that targeted gay marriage by arguing that he should be able to marry his laptop. Similar lawsuits in Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and Kentucky have been dismissed.

Sevier was sentenced to probation after being found guilty in 2014 of harassment threats against country singer John Rich. Sevier previously told the AP he didn't do anything wrong, and that the case came after a variety of lawsuits between the two men.

The bills introduced around the country differ in some details but generally include requiring internet service providers, or those who sell devices that connect to the internet, to install a filter that screens out obscene material or sites that facilitate prostitution. The blocking can be lifted with a $20 payment. Republicans and Democrats have pushed it in different states.

Both the EFF and American Civil Liberties Union say it's well-established that the idea is unconstitutional, including because it would install a censorship filter onto everyone's computer that would screen out lawful content.

"I am not quite sure whether legislators really fully understand the nanny state this bill would create," said Dave Maass, of EFF. "Now what I find fascinating is I just don't understand how (Sevier) is pulling this off, like how he's convincing so many people to introduce this bill."

Maass said he wonders whether the bill is a publicity stunt rather than a real attempt to pass legislation.

"Unfortunately he's exploiting the tragedy of human trafficking for what seems to be a crusade against pornography," Maass said.

In Rhode Island, Democratic Sen. Frank Ciccone, explained his sponsorship of the bill, saying the internet "can be a harmful and dangerous environment for our children."

"Our kids now have easy access to materials that no child should be viewing, such as pornography and other highly offensive or disturbing material," he said in a news release.

He maintained that his intent was to require that such filters be made available to parents who want them, and called the bill a "work-in-progress."

Ciccone did not return requests for comment about how he learned about the bill, but a Rhode Island Senate spokesman, Greg Pare, called it "a national bill" that he said was modeled after one in New Jersey. Similar legislation introduced in New Jersey has not been voted on.

Pare cited the HumanTraffickingPreventionAct.com website that Sevier is behind, which says at the top that the act is "referred to as the Elizabeth Smart Law." A spokesman for Smart said she has nothing to do with it.

"Elizabeth is not connected with this organization," spokesman Chris Thomas told The Associated Press. "There was absolutely no authorization to use her name."

She had a lawyer send a cease-and-desist letter this month that tells the group to stop using her name "in any way," Thomas said.

Sevier told the AP that he met with Smart's father, Ed, in Utah and "he knows about it."

Elizabeth Smart's spokesman said that Ed Smart had met in the past with a group of people pushing the idea, but that it was Ed Smart who suggested that his daughter send the letter.

Asked if he would take her name off the site, Sevier wouldn't say.

"It's not that we will take it down or won't take it down," he said. "It's irrelevant."

As of Monday, Smart's name was still at the top of the website.
https://www.newstimes.com/news/texas...n-12782042.php





Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones
Charlie Savage

Federal law enforcement officials are renewing a push for a legal mandate that tech companies build tools into smartphones and other devices that would allow access to encrypted data in criminal investigations.

F.B.I. and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on approaches to provide such “extraordinary access” to encrypted devices, according to people familiar with the talks.

Based on that research, Justice Department officials are convinced that mechanisms allowing access to the data can be engineered without intolerably weakening the devices’ security against hacking.

Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said.

The F.B.I. has been agitating for versions of such a mandate since 2010, complaining that the spreading use of encryption is eroding investigators’ ability to carry out wiretap orders and search warrants — a problem it calls “going dark.”

The issue repeatedly flared without resolution under the Obama administration, peaking in 2016, when the government tried to force Apple to help it break into the iPhone of one of the attackers in the terrorist assault in San Bernardino, Calif.

The debate receded when the Trump administration took office, but in recent months top officials like Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, have begun talking publicly about the “going dark” problem.

The National Security Council and the Justice Department declined to comment about the internal deliberations. The people familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioning that they were at a preliminary stage and that no request for legislation was imminent.

But the renewed push is certain to be met with resistance.

“Building an exceptional access system is a complicated engineering problem with many parts that all have to work perfectly in order for it to be secure, and no one has a solution to it,” said Susan Landau, a Tufts University computer security professor. “Any of the options people are talking about now would heighten the danger that your phone or your laptop could be hacked and data taken off of it.”

Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, stressed the importance of strengthening — not weakening — security protections for products like the iPhone, saying threats to data security were increasing every day and arguing that it was a question of “security versus security” rather than security versus privacy.

“Proposals that involve giving the keys to customers’ device data to anyone but the customer inject new and dangerous weaknesses into product security,” he said in a statement. “Weakening security makes no sense when you consider that customers rely on our products to keep their personal information safe, run their businesses or even manage vital infrastructure like power grids and transportation systems.”

But some computer security researchers believe the problem might be solvable with an acceptable level of new risks.

A National Academy of Sciences committee completed an 18-month study of the encryption debate, publishing a report last month. While it largely described challenges to solving the problem, one section cited presentations by several technologists who are developing potential approaches.

They included Ray Ozzie, a former chief software architect at Microsoft; Stefan Savage, a computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego; and Ernie Brickell, a former chief security officer at Intel.

According to several people familiar with the new round of deliberations, those three men have been participating in a series of workshops convened at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Daniel Weitzner, a computer science professor. They have discussed their research with government officials, including Valerie Cofield, a senior F.B.I. science and technology official working on “going dark” issues.

The researchers, Mr. Ozzie said, recognized that “this issue is not going away,” and were trying to foster “constructive dialogue” rather than declaring that no solution is possible.

Mr. Savage said the talks had focused on trying to create a safe enough way to unlock data on encrypted devices, as opposed to the separate matter of decoding intercepted messages sent via encrypted communications services, like Signal and WhatsApp.

“The stuff I’ve been thinking about is entirely the device problem,” he said. “I think that is where the action is. Data in motion and the cloud are much harder to deal with.”

The deliberations shed new light on public remarks by Trump administration officials in recent months. In October, Mr. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, argued in a speech that permitting technology companies to create “warrant-proof encryption” was endangering society.

“Technology companies almost certainly will not develop responsible encryption if left to their own devices,” he said. “Competition will fuel a mind-set that leads them to produce products that are more and more impregnable. That will give criminals and terrorists more opportunities to cause harm with impunity.”

And Mr. Wray, the F.B.I. director, has twice given speeches this year in which he pointed to Symphony, an encrypted messaging system for banks. Pushed by a state regulator, several banks agreed to give copies of their Symphony keys to law firms. Because Symphony keeps a copy of encrypted data on its servers, that arrangement created a backup means for investigators to gain access to the messages if necessary.

“At the end, the data in Symphony was still secure, still encrypted, but also accessible to the regulators so they could do their jobs,” Mr. Wray told a cybersecurity conference in Boston this month. “I’m confident that by working together and finding similar areas to agree and compromise, we can come up with solutions to the ‘going dark’ problem.”

The Symphony approach, however, would not work for millions of ordinary smartphone users. But one alternative being worked on by Mr. Ozzie and others is receiving particular attention inside the government.

The idea is that when devices encrypt themselves, they would generate a special access key that could unlock their data without the owner’s passcode. This electronic key would be stored on the device itself, inside part of its hard drive that would be separately encrypted — so that only the manufacturer, in response to a court order, could open it.

Law enforcement officials see that idea as attractive in part because companies like Apple are already trusted to securely hold special keys permitting them to push operating system updates to devices like iPhones.

Still, Ms. Landau argued that creating such a system would create significant additional security risks. She noted, among other things, that updates are relatively rare but police would want seized phones opened every day — so many more tech company employees would need access to the powerful new keys, increasing the risk of theft or abuse.

The Obama administration never agreed on asking for legislation mandating access mechanisms. Military and cybersecurity agencies worried that weakening security would create new problems, and commerce officials worried about quashing innovation and making American tech products less competitive.

Still, in 2016, the Obama administration’s deliberations also came to focus on the idea of access keys on devices, a participant said, but stalled because of difficult technical questions about the details. They included how to prevent criminals from deleting the access keys on their devices or from using phones that do not have the mechanism because they run on outdated software or were built for foreign markets.

But one Justice Department official familiar with the deliberations contended that it might not be necessary to come up with a foolproof system, arguing that a solution that would work for ordinary, less-savvy criminals was still worth pursuing.

Mr. Brickell, the former Intel official, echoed that view. Enforcing compliance with a rule that devices must have access mechanisms to function “is a difficult problem,” he said. “Let’s keep working on it. But let’s not let the desire for a perfect solution get in the way of one that would help.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/u...ncryption.html





FBI Sought iPhone Order Before Exhausting Options: U.S. Inspector General
Dustin Volz

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not exhaust possible solutions to unlock an iPhone connected to a gunman involved in a late-2015 shooting spree before seeking a court order to compel Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to help access the device, a U.S. Justice Department internal watchdog said on Tuesday.

The conclusion may pose challenges for the Trump administration in possible future litigation to force companies to help crack into encrypted devices. Senior U.S. officials have sought in recent months to revive a debate over whether encryption on devices should be weakened to allow law enforcement easier access to data belonging to criminal suspects.

Apple declined to comment.

According to a report by the Justice Department’s office of inspector general, an FBI unit that breaks into mobile devices only began seeking outside help to unlock the iPhone tied to the gunman in the shooting in San Bernardino, California, on the eve of the February 2016 court filing demanding Apple’s assistance.

The FBI unit chief knew that one of the vendors contacted had almost 90 percent completed a technical solution that would unlock the iPhone, the report said. The Justice Department said at the time it required Apple’s assistance because it lacked other means to access the device.

Apple refused to help, prompting a high-stakes legal and public relations confrontation that ended when the FBI said an unidentified nongovernment party had come forward with a way to crack the phone.

Communication failures at the FBI caused some officials to misunderstand the status of its own efforts to open the device, and contributed to delays in seeking help from the FBI unit and the vendor that was ultimately successful, the report said.

“The lack of coordination resulted in a “belatedly-obtained technical solution” that forced the government to withdraw its court filing stating it could not access the iPhone, it added.

The FBI told the inspector general there was no delay in developing the technique that opened the iPhone and that the vendor had proactively notified officials of the cracking method.

The review also found no evidence that then-FBI Director James Comey made inaccurate statements when he testified about the agency’s iPhone unlocking efforts before Congress in February and March 2016. Comey was fired last year by President Donald Trump, who has accused him of being dishonest about private meetings the two of them had before his firing.

Technology companies and many digital security experts have said that the FBI’s attempts to require that devices allow easier access a criminal suspect’s cellphone would harm internet security and empower malicious hackers.

U.S. lawmakers have expressed little interest in pursuing legislation to require companies to create easier access.

FBI Director Chris Wray said in January that the bureau was unable to access data from nearly 7,800 devices in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 with technical tools despite possessing proper legal authority to pry them open.

Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Richard Chang
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1H32PA





State Department Seemingly Buys $15,000 iPhone Cracking Tech GrayKey

As the FBI pushes once again for backdoors in consumer encryption products, the State Department is apparently taking advantage of a $50 per iPhone unlocking product from Grayshift, a company with an ex-Apple engineer on its staff.
Joseph Cox

Grayshift, a company that offers to unlock modern iPhones for as little as $50 each, has caused a buzz across law enforcement agencies, with local police already putting down cash for the much sought-after tech. Now, it appears a section of the US State Department has also purchased the iPhone cracking tool, judging by procurement records reviewed by Motherboard.

The news comes as The New York Times reports that the Justice Department and FBI have renewed their efforts to force tech companies to implement encryption backdoors into consumer products, meaning authorities could more reliably gain access to devices.

Grayshift’s iPhone product, dubbed GrayKey, can unlock devices running versions of Apple’s latest mobile operating system iOS 11, according to marketing material obtained by Forbes . An online version of GrayKey which allows 300 unlocks costs $15,000 (which boils down to $50 per device), and an offline capability with unlimited uses is $30,000. According to a recent post from cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, which obtained leaked details on GrayKey, the product itself is a small, four inch by four inch box, and two iPhones can be connected at once via lightning cables. Malwarebytes adds that the time it takes to unlock a device varies depending on the strength of the user’s passcode: it may be hours or days. Notably, Grayshift includes an ex-Apple engineer on its staff, Forbes reported.

On March 6, the State Department ordered an item from Grayshift for just over $15,000, according to a purchase order listing available on the US government’s public federal procurement data system. The listing is sparse on details, putting the order under the generic label of “computer and computer peripheral equipment.” But Motherboard confirmed that the Grayshift in the State Department listing is the same as the one selling iPhone cracking tech: the phone number of the vendor in both the purchase order and documents Motherboard previously obtained detailing a GrayKey purchase by Indiana State Police is the same.

The “funding office” for the Grayshift purchase was the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, according to the procurement records. The Bureau acts as the law enforcement and security arm of the State Department, bearing “the core responsibility for providing a safe environment for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy,” the State Department website reads.

The State Department acknowledged a request for comment, but was unable to provide a response in time for publication. Motherboard will update this piece if we receive a statement.

Grayshift is likely posing stiff competition to much more established firms in this space. According to emails previously published by Motherboard, a similar iPhone unlocking product offered by popular mobile forensics firm Cellebrite costs $200,000, or $5,000 per device according to Malwarebytes, clearly a sizeable, and perhaps unaffordable price hike compared to Grayshift’s offering.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...g-tech-graykey





Yes, Cops Are Now Opening iPhones With Dead People's Fingerprints
Thomas Fox-Brewster

In November 2016, around seven hours after Abdul Razak Ali Artan had mowed down a group of people in his car, gone on a stabbing spree with a butcher's knife and been shot dead by a police officer on the grounds of Ohio State University, an FBI agent applied the bloodied body's index finger to the iPhone found on the deceased. The cops hoped it would help them access the Apple device to learn more about the assailant's motives and Artan himself.

This is according to FBI forensics specialist Bob Moledor, who detailed for Forbes the first known case of police using a deceased person's fingerprints in an attempt to get past the protections of Apple's Touch ID technology. Unfortunately for the FBI, Artan's lifeless fingerprint didn't unlock the device (an iPhone 5 model, though Moledor couldn't recall which. Touch ID was introduced in the iPhone 5S). In the hours between his death and the attempt to unlock, when the feds had to go through legal processes regarding access to the smartphone, the iPhone had gone to sleep and when reopened required a passcode, Moledor said. He sent the device to a forensics lab which managed to retrieve information from the iPhone, the FBI phone expert and a Columbus officer who worked the case confirmed. That data helped the authorities determine that Artan's failed attempt to murder innocents may have been a result of ISIS-inspired radicalization.

Where Moledor's attempt failed, others have succeeded. Separate sources close to local and federal police investigations in New York and Ohio, who asked to remain anonymous as they weren't authorized to speak on record, said it was now relatively common for fingerprints of the deceased to be depressed on the scanner of Apple iPhones, devices which have been wrapped up in increasingly powerful encryption over recent years. For instance, the technique has been used in overdose cases, said one source. In such instances, the victim's phone could contain information leading directly to the dealer.

No privacy for the dead

And it's entirely legal for police to use the technique, even if there might be some ethical quandaries to consider. Marina Medvin, owner of Medvin Law, said that once a person is deceased, they no longer have a privacy interest in their dead body. That means they no longer have standing in court to assert privacy rights.

Relatives or other interested parties have little chance of stopping cops using fingerprints or other body parts to access smartphones too. "Once you share information with someone, you lose control over how that information is protected and used. You cannot assert your privacy rights when your friend's phone is searched and the police see the messages that you sent to your friend. Same goes for sharing information with the deceased - after you released information to the deceased, you have lost control of privacy," Medvin added.

Police know it too. "We do not need a search warrant to get into a victim's phone, unless it's shared owned," said Ohio police homicide detective Robert Cutshall, who worked on the Artan case. In previous cases detailed by Forbes police have required warrants to use the fingerprints of the living on their iPhones.

But there are some anxieties around the ability of the police to turn up at a crime scene and immediately start accessing deceased individuals' cellphones without any need for permission. Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Freedom, Security and Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said it's possible in many cases there would be a valid concern about law enforcement using fingerprints on smartphones without any probable cause. "That's why the idea of requiring a warrant isn't out of bounds," Nojeim added.

Alongside the lack of legal restrictions, the fingerprint method's much cheaper than having to pay a contractor like Cellebrite or U.S. startup GrayShift (whose iPhone hacking tech was revealed by Forbes earlier this month) to unlock a phone. Whilst Cellebrite is believed to charge between $1,500 and $3,000 for each iPhone, GrayShift's GrayKey hacking box costs up to $30,000 for unlimited unlock attempts. Once the phone's opened, the cops will keep it in that state and send the device to forensics experts. They'll then use tools like Cellebrite's UFED tech to draw all the information out for investigators to explore. More often than not, police will already have those forensics services on hand.

Face ID hacks

Police are now looking at how they might use Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology, introduced on the iPhone X. And it could provide an easier path into iPhones than Touch ID.

Marc Rogers, researcher and head of information security at Cloudflare, told Forbes he'd been poking at Face ID in recent months and had discovered it didn't appear to require the visage of a living person to work. Whilst Face ID is supposed to use your attention in combination with natural eye movement, so fake or non-moving eyes can't unlock devices, Rogers found that the tech can be fooled simply using photos of open eyes. That was something also verified by Vietnamese researchers when they claimed to have bypassed Face ID with specially-created masks in November 2017, said Rogers.

Secondly, Rogers discovered this was possible from many angles and the phone only seemed to need to see one open eye to unlock. "In that sense it's easier to unlock than Touch ID - all you need to do is show your target his or her phone and the moment they glance it unlocks," he added. Apple declined to comment for this article.

Obviously, for the average user who's in control of their phone, there isn't much to worry about here. And there's no evidence police have opened victims' iPhones via Face ID. So far. "I don't know that's been used yet," said Moledor. "It's probably going to be same as using the fingerprint. As long as the subject is recognisable, it should work."

Don't be surprised if cops do start holding iPhone X devices up to the faces of the dead in the near future then, if it hasn't happened already. As Cutshall said: "I've not be told there's a legal issue to use people's fingerprints or facial recognition to get into a phone... [if it's part of a legal process] that'd be something we would do."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb.../#5d8bac22393e





Wylie: It’s Possible that the Facebook App is Listening to You

But it’s probably not using speech recognition.
Jon Christian

During an appearance before a committee of U.K. lawmakers today, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie breathed new life into longstanding rumors that the Facebook app listens to its users in order to target advertisements.

Damian Collins, a member of parliament who chaired the committee, asked whether the Facebook app might listen to what users are discussing and use it to prioritize certain ads.

“That’s probably a question for Facebook,” Wylie said.

But, Wylie said in a meandering reply, it’s possible that Facebook and other smartphone apps are listening in for reasons other than speech recognition. Specifically, he said, they might be trying to ascertain what type of environment a user is in in order to “improve the contextual value of the advertising itself.”

“There’s audio that could be useful just in terms of, are you in an office environment, are you outside, are you watching TV, what are you doing right now?” Wylie said, without elaborating on how that information could help target ads.

Facebook has long denied that its app analyzes audio in order to customize ads. But users have often reported mentioning a product that they’ve never expressed an interest in online — and then being inundated with online ads for it. Reddit users, in particular, spend time collecting what they purport to be evidence that Facebook is listening to users in a particular way, such as “micro-samples” of a few seconds rather than full-on continuous natural language processing.

A Facebook representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Wylie’s statement. It’s not clear how Wylie would have any insight into what data the Facebook app collects.

Privacy activist Paul-Olivier Dehaye, who appeared alongside Wylie at the committee, offered a more philosophical answer to Collins’ question.

“I’m not convinced it would be so hard to implement,” Dehaye said of the possibility that the app is listening in. “But I just have a general comment, that Facebook is so opaque that people start [guessing and] clutching at straws at what explains all this targeting.”
https://theoutline.com/post/3947/wyl...stening-to-you





Facebook Delays Home-Speaker Unveil Amid Data Crisis
Sarah Frier

• Social network had hoped to show off devices at F8 in May
• Company still plans to launch products later this year

Facebook Inc. has decided not to unveil new home products at its major developer conference in May, in part because the public is currently so outraged about the social network’s data-privacy practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company’s new hardware products, connected speakers with digital-assistant and video-chat capabilities, are undergoing a deeper review to ensure that they make the right trade-offs regarding user data, the people said. While the hardware wasn’t expected to be available until the fall, the company had hoped to preview the devices at the largest annual gathering of Facebook developers, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal plans.

The devices are part of Facebook’s plan to become more intimately involved with users’ everyday social lives, using artificial intelligence -- following a path forged by Amazon.com Inc. and its Echo in-home smart speakers. As concerns escalate about Facebook’s collection and use of personal data, now may be the wrong time to ask consumers to trust it with even more information by placing a connected device in their homes. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment.

Facebook has faced a public reckoning this month about its treatment of user data, sparked by reports that political-advertising firm Cambridge Analytica obtained information on 50 million users without their permission. The reports spiraled into a crisis for Facebook, which is sending Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to testify in front of Congress on privacy in the coming weeks.

The social-media company had already found in focus-group testing that users were concerned about a Facebook-branded device in their living rooms, given how much intimate data the social network collects. Facebook still plans to launch the devices later this year.

At the developer conference, set for May 1, the company will also need to explain new, more restrictive rules around what kinds of information app makers can collect on their users via Facebook’s service. The Menlo Park, California-based company said in a blog post this week that for developers, the changes “are not easy,” but are important to “mitigate any breach of trust with the broader developer ecosystem.”

— With assistance by Mark Gurman
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...id-data-crisis





26 of the 115 Most Popular VPNs are Secretly Keeping Tabs On You
Bryan Clark

A recent investigation into 115 of the world’s most popular VPN services revealed that many are antithetical to their stated claims. To build trust, providers make promises not to track users through logs or other identifying information. But as a popular VPN comparison site found out, this isn’t always true.

The Best VPN recently peeked under the hood of over 100 of the biggest VPN services. All told, 26 of them collect three or more important log files that could contain personal and identifying information — things like your IP address, location, bandwidth data, and connection timestamps.

For VPN users, the goal is increased privacy, a sense of anonymity long-since lost to the likes of Google and Facebook. And it’s a booming market. By 2019, the worldwide demand for VPN services is expected to hit approximately $70 billion — up from $45 billion in 2014.

It’s ironic, really. The goal is to hide from trackers, not pay for one.

Some, we knew about. There’s PureVPN, a company whose privacy policy explicitly states that it keeps no logs on users. It reads:

We do not monitor user activity nor do we keep any logs. We therefore have no record of your activities such as which software you used, which websites you visited, what content you downloaded, which apps you used, etc. after you connected to any of our servers.

This is patently false, as 24-year-old Ryan Lin can attest to. Lin was arrested late last year after these non-existent logs were turned over to FBI agents. The logs — the same ones PureVPN promised not to keep — were instrumental in the man’s arrest. As I wrote back in November:

This is not a nice guy we’re talking about, allegedly.

Still, PureVPN has an obligation to keep these details private — as much as we want people like Lin held accountable for their actions. The bulk of privacy-conscious individuals aren’t Lin, nor do they seek additional anonymity for malicious reasons. Instead, the most common reasons, according to market-research firm GlobalWebIndex, are:


• To access entertainment content from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, etc.
• To access networks and sites restricted in certain countries
• To retain anonymity while browsing
• To communicate with friends and family abroad

According to the recent investigation, PureVPN is still at it. The privacy policy still states it keeps no logs, yet. The Best VPN’s study detailed it was actually collecting names, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, bandwidth data, and connection timestamps.

PureVPN isn’t alone. Other popular options, like HideMyAss!, Hotspot Shield, and VyprVPN all collected more data than they claimed to, as did more than 20 others. You can see the full list here.

The moral of the story is this: not all VPNs are created equal. Do your homework before trusting a third-party service with anything but your most casual web browsing. And even then, if you’re going to be paying for something, you might as well ensure you’re getting your money’s worth.
https://thenextweb.com/security/2018...ng-theyre-not/





Many VPN Providers Leak Customer's IP Address via WebRTC Bug
Catalin Cimpanu

Around 20% of today's top VPN solutions are leaking the customer's IP address via a WebRTC bug known since January 2015, and which apparently some VPN providers have never heard of.

The discovery belongs to Paolo Stagno, a security researcher who goes by the pseudonym of VoidSec, and who recently audited 83 VPN apps on this old WebRTC IP leak.

Stagno says he found that 17 VPN clients were leaking the user's IP address while surfing the web via a browser.

The researcher published his results in a Google Docs spreadsheet. The audit list is incomplete because Stagno didn't have the financial resources to test all commercial VPN clients.

The researcher is now asking the community to test their own VPN clients and send him the results. For this, he set up a demo web page that users must access in their browser with their VPN client enabled. The code running on this page is also available on GitHub, if users want to test the leak locally, without exposing their IP on somebody else's server.

WebRTC leak known since 2015

Stagno's code is based on the WebRTC bug discovered in January 2015 by security researcher Daniel Roesler. Back then, Roesler found that WebRTC STUN servers, which intermediate WebRTC connections, will keep records of the user's public IP address, along with his private IP address, if the client is behind-NAT network, proxy, or VPN client.

The problem was that STUN servers would disclose this information to websites that had already negotiated an WebRTC connection with a user's browser.

Since then, many advertisers and law enforcement agencies have used this WebRTC-related bug to acquire a site's visitor's IP address.

Most browsers come with WebRTC enabled by default

Browsers, who at that point spent years integrating WebRTC support in their code, rolled out features or official add-ons that would prevent the IP leak, albeit cripple some of WebRTC's real-time communications features.

Nonetheless, browsers didn't disable WebRTC, and the feature is still enabled by default in all major browsers —except the Tor Browser, Edge, and Internet Explorer.

Below is a list of VPN providers that Stagno found vulnerable to IP leaks. Around 80 commercial VPN providers remained untested at the time of writing. For updated results, please refer to Stagno's Google Docs sheet.

BolehVPN (USA Only)
ChillGlobal (Chrome and Firefox Plugin)
Glype (Depends on the configuration)
hide-me.org
Hola!VPN
Hola!VPN Chrome Extension
HTTP PROXY navigation in browsers that support Web RTC
IBVPN Browser Addon
PHP Proxy
phx.piratebayproxy.co
psiphon3 (not leaking if using L2TP/IP)
PureVPN
SmartHide Proxy (depends on config)
SOCKS Proxy on browsers with Web RTC enabled
SumRando Web Proxy
TOR as PROXY on browsers with Web RTC enabled
Windscribe Addons

Some VPNs keep logs

And in another similarly worrisome research, the team at TheBestVPN.com also discovered that 26 out of 115 VPN clients they tested kept some types of log files.

The study didn't analyze actual VPN client installations, but privacy policies published online by each service.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...ia-webrtc-bug/





Microsoft to Ban 'Offensive Language' from Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services

Microsoft will ban 'offensive language' and 'inappropriate content' from Skype, Xbox, Office and other services on May 1, claiming it has the right to go through your private data to 'investigate.'
Pichi Chuang

Better watch out if you are playing Xbox, get ticked, and cuss. Microsoft might ban you for the “offensive language.” If they do, then say bye-bye to your Xbox Gold Membership and any Microsoft account balances.

Or if you and a significant other are getting hot and heavy via Skype, you better watch your language and any nudity because that, too, can get you banned. The ban hammer could also fall if Cortana is listening at the wrong moment or if documents and files hosted on Microsoft services violate Microsoft’s amended terms.

The changes are part of the new Microsoft Terms of Services agreement that go into effect on May 1 and cover a plethora of Microsoft services.

Civil rights activist and law student Jonathan Corbett took the time to read the new terms and sounded the alarm.

Microsoft provided a summary of the changes; number 5 reads:

In the Code of Conduct section, we’ve clarified that use of offensive language and fraudulent activity is prohibited. We’ve also clarified that violation of the Code of Conduct through Xbox Services may result in suspensions or bans from participation in Xbox Services, including forfeiture of content licenses, Xbox Gold Membership time, and Microsoft account balances associated with the account.

What qualifies as offensive language?

Offensive language is fairly vague. Offensive to whom? What my granny might find offensive and what I might find offensive could be vastly different. But how would Microsoft even know if you had truly been “offensive”? Well, that part falls under Code of Conduct Enforcement, which states, “When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content in order to resolve the issue.”

Microsoft did add, “However, we cannot monitor the entire Services and make no attempt to do so.”

I’m not sure that will make you feel better, as another portion states that Microsoft “may also block delivery of a communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason.”

Corbett also pointed out a portion of text found in Microsoft’s new agreement:

Don’t publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, or criminal activity).

Corbett then wrote:

So wait a sec: I can’t use Skype to have an adult video call with my girlfriend? I can’t use OneDrive to back up a document that says “f*ck” in it? If I call someone a mean name in Xbox Live, not only will they cancel my account, but also confiscate any funds I’ve deposited in my account? (And are we no longer allowed to shoot people in Call of Duty? Animated violence doesn’t really get any more “graphic” than this Microsoft-approved video game offers.)

Are Microsoft’s ToS changes due to FOSTA/SESTA?

Some folks believe the changes in Microsoft’s terms may be related to Congress passing the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which was combined with the Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act (SESTA). FOSTA/SESTA would hold platforms responsible for users’ speech, illegally shared content, and anything that might be construed as trafficking. It has been called “the death of the open internet.”

The Department of Justice warned that the bill “raises a serious constitutional concern,” as it “shall apply regardless of whether the conduct alleged occurred [sic], or is alleged to have occurred, before, on, or after such date of enactment.” In short, since it applies retroactively, it applies to trafficking that took place before the law passed — which the DoJ believes violates the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause.

When the Senate passed the bill, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called it a “dark day for the Internet” because it is “a bill that silences online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users.” FOSTA/SESTA is “the worst of both worlds.” The EFF added, “When the Department of Justice is the group urging Congress not to expand criminal law and Congress does it anyway, something is very wrong.”

Already, Craigslist shuttered its “personals” section, and Reddit banned numerous subreddits. Craigslist explained, “Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking Craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.”

When FOSTA/SESTA passed the House, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — a critic of the bill — warned, “This bill will only prop up the entrenched players who are rapidly losing the public’s trust. The failure to understand the technological side effects of this bill — specifically that it will become harder to expose sex-traffickers, while hamstringing innovation — will be something that this congress will regret.”
https://www.csoonline.com/article/32...-services.html





Ecuador Cuts Off Julian Assange's Internet Access at London Embassy

Government accuses WikiLeaks founder of putting international ties at risk by failing to abide by deal not to interfere in other countries
Jon Henley

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world from its London embassy, where the founder of the whistleblowing WikiLeaks website has been living for nearly six years.

The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.

It said Assange’s recent behaviour on social media “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] maintains with the United Kingdom, with the other states of the European Union, and with other nations”.

The move came after Assange tweeted on Monday challenging Britain’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury earlier this month.

The WikiLeaks founder also questioned the decision by the UK and more than 20 other countries to retaliate against the poisoning by expelling Russian diplomats deemed spies.

Assange has lived in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of sex crimes he denies. Sweden has dropped the case but Assange remains subject to arrest in the UK for jumping bail and fears he will be extradited to the US for questioning about WikiLeaks’ activities if he leaves the embassy building.

Ecuador previously cut Assange’s internet access in the embassy in October 2016 over fears he was using it to interfere in the US presidential election following Wikileaks’ publication of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign adviser, John Podesta.

In May 2017 the Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, again asked Assange to refrain from commenting on Spain’s dispute with the separatist region of Catalonia. Assange had tweeted that Madrid was guilty of “repression”.

As part of a subsequent agreement between Assange and the Ecuadorian government, he is not permitted to send any messages that could interfere with Ecuador’s relations with other countries.

Why can't Assange leave the Ecuadorian embassy?

Assange sought asylum in the embassy in June 2012 following a series of legal challenges through British courts to a European arrest warrant issued by Sweden. He is technically free to leave but says he cannot because he is in breach of a warrant that was granted to extradite him to Sweden, and faces arrest. Assange has not at any point been charged with an offence under Swedish law but was sought for questioning over complaints of sexual assault by two women in 2010. Assange had raised concerns about Swedish demands that he be questioned in person, fearing extradition to the US.

Assange’s comments on the nerve agent attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia prompted the British foreign office minister Alan Duncan to call him a “miserable little worm” during a Commons debate on Tuesday. Duncan said he should leave the embassy and surrender to British justice.

Assange replied: “Britain should come clean on whether it intends to extradite me to the United States for publishing the truth and cease its ongoing violation of the UN rulings in this matter.

“If it does this disgraceful impasse can be resolved tomorrow. I have already fully served any theoretical (I haven’t been charged) ‘bail violation’ whilst in prison and under house arrest. So why is there a warrant for my arrest?”

The former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, and the music producer Brian Eno said in a statement they had heard “with great concern” about Assange’s lost internet access.

“Only extraordinary pressure from the US and the Spanish governments can explain why Ecuador’s authorities should have taken such appalling steps in isolating Julian,” they pair said, adding Assange had only recently been granted citizenship.

“Clearly, Ecuador’s government has been subjected to bullying over its decision to grant Julian asylum, support and ultimately, diplomatic status.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...-off-wikileaks

















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