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Old 23-03-16, 07:30 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 26th, '16

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"You’re either a squatter or a renter. You are nothing more than a slum dweller of the digital world." – Anthony Zboralski






































March 26th, 2016




ShareByLink is a Signup-Free File Sharing Service
Mike Williams

ShareByLink is an open-source file sharing service and application for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The package is all about simplicity. There’s no registration, no account to create, nothing to set up: just install the program, then right-click a file and select "Share file(s) online...".

Whatever you’ve selected is uploaded to a central server. A link is displayed and copied to the clipboard. Pass it to someone else and they’ll be able to download the file.

The developer says the link expires after 30 days, but there’s no way to control that, perhaps delete the file early if it’s something sensitive. The client doesn’t even maintain a log of the files you’ve uploaded, or the links received.

ShareByLink is extremely short on documentation, too. Even basics like the maximum file size you can share seem to be missing, so we had to test a few files to see what happened (a 1GB video upload seemed to work).

If you can lived with the unpolished, "not really finished" feel, ShareByLink could be interesting. It’s easy to use, no account hassles, with extras including a command line uploader, and an option to host files on your own server.

The lack of control over (and information about) the uploaded files is an issue, though, and we wouldn’t use the service to share anything even faintly sensitive or confidential.

ShareByLink is a free service and application for Windows, Linux and Mac.
http://betanews.com/2016/03/22/file-sharing-no-signup/





US Recorded-Music Revenues Rose Slightly in 2015 Says RIAA
Stuart Dredge

US music industry body the RIAA has published its figures for 2015, revealing that recorded-music revenues rose by 0.9% last year to $7bn.

That’s estimated retail value: the amount of money people spent on physical music, downloads and streams. The wholesale value – the money flowing back to rightsholders – rose 0.8% to $4.95bn.

Another key point from the RIAA’s announcement: streaming is now the biggest chunk of US recorded-music revenues, rising from 27% in 2014 to 34% in 2015 – overtaking download sales in the process.

Streaming revenues were up 29% to $2.4bn in 2015. Download sales fell from $2.58bn in 2014 to $2.33bn in 2015 – a 9.6% decline. Meanwhile, physical sales fell by 10.1% to $1.9bn last year.

A big positive story from the figures is the growth of paid subscriptions to streaming services in the US. Revenues from streaming subscriptions rose by 52% from $800m in 2014 to $1.22bn in 2015.

“In 2015, digital music subscription services reached new all-time highs, generating more than $1bn in revenues for the first time, and averaging nearly 11 million paid subscriptions for the year,” wrote RIAA boss Cary Sherman in a blog post.

“Heading into 2016, the number of subscriptions swelled even higher — more than 13 million by the end of December — holding great promise for this year.”

There’s rounding going on here: the number of paid subscriptions in the US have risen from 3.4m in 2012 to 6.2m in 2013, 7.7m in 2014 and 10.8m in 2015, and as Sherman made clear, these are averages for the year, not year-end totals.

(An interesting stat: in 2013, the annual revenue per average streaming subscriber was $103. In 2014 it was just under $104. But in 2015, it was nearly $113.)

Other components in the US streaming sector included SoundExchange distributions – which rose from $773m in 2014 to $803m in 2015 – and income from on-demand ad-supported streams, which rose from $295m to $385m.

The latter area is proving controversial in the US, just as it is elsewhere in the world. In fact, Sherman adopted the same language as IFPI boss Frances Moore in lamenting the “value gap” between ad-funded streaming consumption, and the revenues flowing back to rightsholders and musicians.

“The consumption of music is skyrocketing, but revenues for creators have not kept pace,” wrote Sherman.

“In 2015, fans listened to hundreds of billions of audio and video music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube, but revenues from such services have been meagre — far less than other kinds of music services. And the problem is getting worse.”

The RIAA has called this out with a graph showing how the number of ad-supported streams grew by 63% in the US in 2014, but revenues from those streams rose by just 34%. That gap widened in 2015: streams were up 101%, but the revenues they generated grew by just 31%.

“This is why we, and so many of our music community brethren, feel that some technology giants have been enriching themselves at the expense of the people who actually create the music,” wrote Sherman.

“Some companies take advantage of outdated, market-distorting government rules and regulations to either pay below fair-market rates, or avoid paying for that music altogether.”

YouTube, right? Well, not just YouTube. In fact, the RIAA is training its sights on radio broadcasters as well as Google’s online video service, as the RIAA gears up for the latest round of its lobbying efforts over royalties.

“These unjustifiable inequities (really, special-interest favours) include: the exemption AM/FM broadcasters enjoy from having to pay artists and labels for the music they play, satellite radio’s unfair and inexplicable below-market rate standard, and the hopelessly outdated ‘notice and takedown’ provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which many services have distorted to rake in billions of dollars of revenue on the backs of artists, songwriters and labels.”

Last year, BPI CEO Geoff Taylor criticised YouTube via a factnugget claiming vinyl sales were more lucrative for the British music industry than YouTube streams. The RIAA is making exactly the same point now about ad-funded on-demand music more generally, but with figures from 2015.

“Last year, 17 million vinyl albums, a legacy format enjoying a bit of a resurgence, generated more revenues than billions and billions of on-demand free streams: $416 million compared to $385 million for on-demand free streams,” wrote Sherman.

(Our caveat: these are revenues, not profit. A comparison of the costs of producing vinyl and the costs of distribution through ad-supported streaming services are a topic for a separate article in itself.)

With Spotify arguing that its free tier is an essential funnel to convert its listeners into paying subscribers, and YouTube still getting going with its YouTube Red subscription tier, addressing this value gap is a sensitive issue for the industry.

It’s interesting (well, it is to us) that neither the RIAA’s official announcement nor Sherman’s additional commentary mentioned piracy at all. In 2016, YouTube, ad-supported on-demand streams and the value gap are the new bête noire for a growing number of rightsholders.

Piracy, despite the RIAA’s success in squashing Aurous shortly after its launch last year, has receded as a villain.

Even so, the broader picture from the RIAA stats is still one of optimism. Here’s how the body’s SVP of strategic data analysis, Joshua Friedlander, put it in the announcement:

“While overall revenue levels were only up slightly, large shifts continued to occur under the surface as streaming continued to increase its market share,” he wrote.

“In 2015, the industry had the most balanced revenue mix in recent history, with just about one third of revenues coming from each of the major platform categories: streaming, permanent downloads, and physical sales.”
http://musically.com/2016/03/22/us-r...015-says-riaa/





David Bowie's Producer is Terrified by the Music Industry's 'Downward Spiral'

And he has the speculative fiction to prove it
Jamieson Cox

Legendary music producer Tony Visconti described a vision of the music industry's dystopian future at his SXSW keynote speech this morning, calling himself "The Ghost of Christmas Future" and reading an earnest, self-penned short story to make his point. After walking a roomful of attendees through his musical education and early work as a producer, Visconti made it clear that he believes the industry's in jeopardy.

"I think we're living in a time when formulas are being repeated more than they ever were in the past... I didn't want to come out here saying this stuff, swinging two fists in the air," said Visconti. "If this was really working, record sales would be going through the roof." It was an impassioned, frustrated plea for change from someone who's spent half a century navigating the business of music.

The bulk of Visconti's warning was delivered through a short piece of fiction, one he spent about 20 minutes reading before wrapping up his speech. Taking place 10 years in the future, the story revolves around a senior A&R expert at the planet's only remaining major record label. (It's called The Universe.) Businesspeople around the world sync their schedules by taking drugs that block their circadian rhythms, letting them control their sleep schedules; the label releases just one single a week, recorded by the winner of a lottery and crafted by the label's employees. The A&R employee spends entire days listening to Jimi Hendrix records and dreaming of the good ol' days. When he begs his boss to sign a talented street musician, he's told signing artists based on talent is too risky. Distraught, the employee commits suicide by leaping from the balcony of his Sydney condo. Visconti started getting choked up as he read the story's final lines.

It sounds overwrought, but it was a genuinely moving scene. Visconti's passion for music is inarguable: he spent the speech's first half breaking down his childhood and musical training in impressive detail. He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of two musicians who sang and played instruments, and he learned to read music at an early age. ("I've been in the music business for 50 years now because I can read music," Visconti said.) His proximity to the media capital of New York afforded him some unique opportunities: he corresponded with Chet Atkins, watched Leonard Bernstein's symphony rehearse at Carnegie Hall, and stumbled onto Little Richard in a lavender convertible. "I had... incredible experiences you can only have when you're a kid in New York," said Visconti. "I was blessed with this kind of upbringing."

He wasn't able to realize his own rock star ambitions, but his grasp of theory set his career into motion, and he quickly became the house record producer at a label off the strength of a few clean-sounding demos. That led to a working relationship with the British producer Denny Cordell, and then a trip to London. He met a teenage David Bowie a few weeks later, and their connection was immediate. "We were kin. We were brothers," said Visconti. "We kinda had a long date [the day we met]... It was supposed to be about making his new album and now here we were, watching Knife in the Water."

Visconti's genuine love for his life's work ended up softening some of his criticism of the industry, which tended toward the traditional and the strident. His devotion to rock 'n' roll ideals is resolute, and he has no interest in contemporary pop music; the idea of him listening to any of SXSW's many electronic acts is borderline laughable. (One artist he likes: Sun Kil Moon, to whom he was introduced by Bowie.) "The next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Bruce Springsteen," said Visconti, "but they're not getting the shot. They're not being financed."

Given the narrowness with which Visconti seems to define both artistry and "success" in the music industry, it's possible "the next David Bowie" is already working and thriving somewhere outside of his field of view. Major labels and their beleaguered A&R representatives aren't the primary vehicles for musical discovery anymore, and young artists are just as likely to turn to SoundCloud or YouTube as they are musical institutions. (Someone like Chance the Rapper is doing just fine without big-league financing.) And while it's indisputable that there's less money in the music industry now than there was during Visconti's heyday, it's just as likely that he happened to reach his prime during a historically anomalous time for musicians. It's harder to make money when you can't rely on the crutch of physical scarcity.

Visconti's downcast vision of the future might have a few holes, but they don't compromise the impressiveness of his résumé. He opened for the Mamas & the Papas at Carnegie Hall; he made albums with Marc Bolan and Morrissey; he wrote string arrangements at a grand piano for Band on the Run alongside Paul McCartney. And if he couldn't keep his emotions in check while reading his humble speculative fiction, it's because he really, truly cares about music. "I would get butterflies in my stomach when I brought home a new album by The Beatles, or by Jimi Hendrix, or Led Zeppelin, or Joni Mitchell's Blue," said Visconti. "We have to nurture our artists."
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/17/11...te-david-bowie





It’s Not Your Imagination: US Netflix has a Much Smaller Selection than it Used To
Adam Epstein

No, you haven’t gone crazy. Netflix’s catalog of movies and TV shows really is shrinking.

The streaming service’s library for American subscribers has shrunk by a third since 2014, according to a report by AllFlicks, a website that lists and categorizes Netflix content by country. In March of 2014, the US Netflix library contained approximately 6,500 movies and 1,600 television shows. As of yesterday (March 23), Netflix offered its US subscribers 4,330 movies and 1,200 TV shows—decreases of 33% and 26%, respectively.

In total, US Netflix has lost 32% of its titles in a little over two years.

While US Netflix might be shrinking, it still has a lot more content than the rest of the world. Britain, for instance, only has about 3,000 titles to America’s 5,500. Australia only has about 2,000. India, which Netflix entered in January (along with dozens of other countries), only has 875.

The reason is that securing international streaming rights to shows and movies is exceedingly difficult—laws and regulations differ by country, as does the type of content that people around the world consume. Netflix hopes that its library in other countries will eventually rival its comprehensive selection in the US.

That goal might be accomplished sooner rather than later, if the US library continues to shrink. And there are three key factors at play that suggest it might continue to do so:

Competition from other streaming services

For a while, Netflix dominated the streaming media space. But services like Hulu and Amazon Video have seriously ramped up streaming efforts in recent years. When the streaming rights for a popular movie or TV show are up for grabs, it’s not just Netflix going after them.

Last year, Hulu nabbed the exclusive rights to Seinfeld—a classic series Netflix would probably love to be able to offer to its subscribers. (Netflix did win the rights to stream Friends in a similar deal). Hulu similarly secured the rights to stream all episodes of upcoming AMC series, including from The Walking Dead spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead. In 2011, Hulu wasn’t much of a factor in those types of deals: Netflix was the exclusive streaming home for AMC’s Mad Men and The Walking Dead back then.

A few months after Hulu beat out Netflix on Seinfeld, Amazon outbid Netflix to stream the new show from Jeremy Clarkson, the former face of BBC’s popular auto series, Top Gear. The e-commerce company’s video wing also won the streaming rights to USA Network’s brilliant new hacker series, Mr. Robot.

Bigger focus on originals

Netflix will spend over $5 billion on content this year—much of that devoted to making its own shows. The streaming service has deliberately shifted its strategy toward developing original shows instead of licensing outside content. Not only are original shows (and, increasingly, movies) the most watched content on Netflix, but they’re also the easiest to market.

The company doesn’t have to worry about licensing original shows around the world because, of course, it owns the rights to them. Netflix is said to be developing 600 hours of original programming for 2016—that’s 25 days of content. And these shows are designed to appeal to broad global audiences, not necessarily just Americans.

As it has shown in its licensing strategy, Netflix loves exclusivity, and there’s nothing more exclusive to Netflix than a show Netflix made itself. The value of a Netflix subscription, the company might argue, is in how much content you can get that you can’t find on any other streaming service.

Trimming the fat

A report from October 2015 by CordCutting.com found a nearly identical decrease to what AllFlicks found in the total number of titles that Netflix offered its subscribers in the US. But it also found that the catalog is considerably newer than it used to be. In 2014, 37% of Netflix titles were produced in the 2010s. In October of 2015, that number was 65%.

Certainly, with another year of new movies and shows to choose from, that percentage was bound to go up—but not necessarily by the amount that it did.

Netflix may be getting rid of a lot of the older (most of it obscure) content that subscribers weren’t watching in the first place. That doesn’t explain why lots of great movies have left Netflix in the last few years, but it might explain, in sheer, raw numbers, why the US Netflix catalog has dropped a third of its weight since 2014.

Quartz reached out to Netflix for comment and we’ll update this story if the company responds.
http://qz.com/646874/its-not-your-im...an-it-used-to/





Netflix Throttles Its Videos on AT&T, Verizon Networks

Streaming service says it limits video quality to protect users from exceeding data caps
Ryan Knutson and Shalini Ramachandran

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. were on the defensive last week after accusations swirled they were throttling the quality of Netflix Inc. video on their wireless networks.

It turns out it was Netflix that was doing the throttling.

Netflix, a leading proponent of open-Internet rules, has been lowering the quality of its video for customers watching its service on AT&T or Verizon Communications wireless networks.

The popular video service said Thursday that for more than five years it has limited its video speeds to most wireless carriers across the globe, including AT&T and Verizon, to “protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps,” which may discourage future viewing.

Netflix said it caps its streams at 600 kilobits-per-second—much slower than what should be possible on modern wireless networks. It hasn’t previously disclosed the practice. The issue came to light after T-Mobile US Inc. ’s chief executive last week said Verizon and AT&T customers were receiving lower-quality Netflix streams. The carriers denied throttling Netflix videos.

The fact that Netflix, not the carriers, is responsible for the lower quality illustrates the dilemma mobile-app makers face with data caps. The majority of all traffic on wireless networks is video, so providers must balance video quality against data consumption. Watching two hours of HD video on Netflix would consume up to 6 gigabytes of data, Netflix says. That is an entire month’s allowance under an $80 a month Verizon plan.

Netflix said it doesn’t limit its video quality at two carriers: T-Mobile and Sprint Corp., because “historically those two companies have had more consumer-friendly policies.” When customers exceed their data plans on Sprint or T-Mobile, the carriers usually slow their network connections, rather than charge overage fees.

Netflix has been an outspoken supporter of “net neutrality,” the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. It has railed against the idea that it should compensate broadband providers or mobile carriers for the amount of data that its customers eat up, and it has been quick to point out any sign of discrimination by carriers regarding data caps. The net-neutrality rules apply to Internet providers but not content companies like Netflix.

On Thursday, Netflix said it is also exploring “new ways to give members more control in choosing video quality.” It is working on a mobile “data saver” to be rolled out in May that would allow consumers to “stream more video under a smaller data plan, or increase their video quality if they have a higher data plan.”

Verizon and AT&T said they don’t throttle or manipulate video content. “Verizon delivers video content at the resolution provided by the host service, whether that’s Netflix or any other provider,” a Verizon spokesman said.

“We’re outraged to learn that Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs.

At T-Mobile, Netflix quality is reduced when customers have activated Binge-On, a feature that lets them stream unlimited video from video providers at lower quality. Sprint used to throttle almost all video traffic on its network, but after disclosing the practice last year, it was forced to stop because of public outcry.

Netflix has a video on its website that includes real-time data on the quality of the video stream. Watching that video on all four carriers, even when connection speeds were strong, shows AT&T and Verizon streams are capped at lower quality.

Milan Milanović, who works in the IT industry and monitors carrier networks as a hobby, was among the first to notice, and posted a video on YouTube showing the lower quality streams. Mr. Milanović’s method was replicated by The Wall Street Journal.

AT&T and Verizon are the two largest carriers in the country—about three-quarters of the nation’s monthly wireless subscribers are their customers. Their networks face enormous strain from all that traffic. If several thousand people in one area start streaming high-definition Netflix videos, speeds for all users in the area could be reduced from congestion.

Jan Ozer, a consultant who helps companies optimize online video, said Netflix’s strategy is a smart one. “If they were upfront about it, they could say, ‘We’re trying to make sure our users don’t consume all their bandwidth.’ ”

Over Wi-Fi and other wired broadband connections, Netflix is the largest data consumer, accounting for 37% of all downstream Internet data traffic in North America during peak periods, according to Sandvine, a networking company that tracks Internet use.

There is much less use over mobile networks: During peak periods, Netflix makes up just 3.4% of all downstream mobile data traffic, ranking it ninth. YouTube is No. 1 at just over 20%.

Netflix got into high-profile fights with home Internet providers in 2014. The company had accused Internet providers of refusing to connect their networks directly to its specialized video servers for free, which it said resulted in buffering and lower video quality for consumers. Netflix eventually settled those disputes by paying Internet providers for direct connections into their networks, thus reducing bottlenecks.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/net...OTIyNDMyNDQxWj





British Man Face Jail Time For Circumventing Block on Piracy Websites

A UK piracy advocate is facing some seriously stiff penalties.

A BRITISH man who operated servers which allowed internet users to bypass blockades put in place on pirating websites is facing jail time in an unprecedented case against piracy enablers.

Like the Australian government, the UK has been involved in an ongoing fight to crack down on illegal piracy in recent years.

The country has implemented an internet filter that requires a number of ISPs to block illegal file sharing sites such as Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents.

In 2014, Callum Haywood was arrested for his involvement with several proxy sites and services that allowed users to circumvent the blockade by using mirror sites to access the torrents.

He was interviewed by police at the time and released as investigators continued working on the case. But this week they formally announced charges against the young developer, in a case that could send shock waves through the pirating community.

According to Torrent Freak, the 22-year-old is charged with one count of converting and/or transferring criminal property and six counts of possession of an article for use in fraud. The charges relate to his operation of a Pirate Bay proxy and two KickassTorrent proxies.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/techno...6e068227494c77





Apple Exec Says Using a 5-Year-Old PC is 'Sad'
Selena Larson

Apple announced a handful of new products and updated apps at an event on Monday, including the smaller iPhone SE and CareKit, a framework for creating apps that enable people to take an active and collaborative role in monitoring their health.

The company also announced a new iPad Pro, the PC replacement from Apple with a 9.7-inch display that's smaller than the iPad Pro released last year, and something that was said during that particular presentation has rubbed many people the wrong way.

Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, took the stage in Cupertino, California, to explain some of the new features and specs on the new iPad Pro. Between showing off a new display and camera, Schiller also took some digs at Windows and PC users, specifically calling out those users who are on computers more than five years old.

Schiller said that 600 million people are using PCs that are over five years old. "This is really sad," he said.

The audience in Cupertino laughed and applauded, but many of those watching the livestream did not.

"PEOPLE HAVE OLD COMPUTERS!" *audience of affluent white males laughs*
— Patrick Lucas Austin (@patbits) March 21, 2016

Dear Phil Schiller, I'm sorry I made you sad, but somedays I have to decide between school, food, sometimes med over an iPad. Sorry. #pc
— Ana Jasso (@friends60ana) March 21, 2016

TFW #AppleEvent jokes about using old vs. new tech & even the affluent privileged are aware of how fucked up it is b/c they're priced out.
— Rachael Berkey (@bookoisseur) March 21, 2016

who is it sad for if people have PC's that are old if they still serve their needs? the answer is: corporations who want to sell you stuff
— Lee Scheinbeim (@Arrqh) March 21, 2016

im glad i wasnt the only one that thought the "using a 5 year old pc is really sad" comment was really unfortunate
— あぁくん~ (@aakun4) March 21, 2016

If Phil Schiller from Apple thinks that 600 million people that use 5 yo PC's is "sad" then why don't you bother to make your Mac's cheaper
— Chris (@ChrisThurgood77) March 21, 2016

"600mil people with a 5 y.o. PC. That's just sad. They should get an iPad Pro."
Oh, because they have an older PC for the specs. #AppleEvent
— Cath (@cath465) March 21, 2016

Schiller may have been attempting a subtle dig at competitors while trying to show that the new iPad Pro is the ultimate PC replacement, but the remark only underscored the privilege and lack of self-awareness plaguing tech executives and individuals in the industry who can afford to buy the hot new gadgets whenever they come on the market.

The "sad" comment stood in stark contrast to Apple's announcement at the beginning of the program. Lisa Jackson, Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives at Apple, took the stage early to tout the company's recycling efforts; phones, computers, tablets and products Apple makes are meant to last for a long time, and when they reach the end of life, should be recycled.

Five years might be a long time for Apple, a company that releases new devices all the time, but for many people, a five-year-old device can still serve their needs. In fact, older, cheaper computers can be a lifeline to the Internet for individuals who can't afford to pay for new mobile devices and laptops.

Apple's MacBooks start at $1,299. The new iPad Pro starts at $599. You can buy older laptops with decent specs from resellers and on sites like eBay for less than $200. You can even buy a new Chromebook for $149.

Sixteen percent of American adults don't have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer, according to Pew Research, and 19 percent of people who don't use the Internet cite the cost of purchasing and maintaining a computer as the main barrier to using it.
It's not sad that people still use five-year-old PCs. It's sad that companies and people in the tech industry think those users should be the butt of a bad joke.
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/phil-schiller-sad/





The Internet is a Digital Shanty Town
Anthony Zboralski

The land belongs to Google, Facebook, Amazon… They own the data centres.

You can build all you want, but you never know who owns what and for how long… and your corner looks like this.

Imagine your Facebook profile or your twitter account as a hut, a dwelling or one of these blue tents.

The walls don’t belong to you and they can change appearance at any time. The lock on your door? Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you come home to find some %£$&er in your bed reading your private messages…. That’s the internet for you.
The only things that belongs to you is your data but to be on that land you have to give up your commercial rights to it. When there is an ad next to your profile page… you get nothing! If you find yourself on top of a search results page, surrounded by ads… you get zero! and worse, if you don’t pay Google a rent, your competitor jumps on top of you with an ad...

You’re either a squatter or a renter. You are nothing more than a slum dweller of the digital world.

Sure, you’d like to leave. And good luck to you. This is where your friends and family live too. Even if you don’t like Facebook, closing your account excommunicates you from their memories, out of sight, out of mind. So you stay, and suffer.

The solution? Land titling.

Land titling is a form of land reform in which private individuals and families are given formal property rights for land which they have previously occupied informally or used on the basis of customary land tenure. Proponents argue that providing formal titles increases security of land tenure, supports development of markets in land, and allows better access to credit (using land titles as collateral).

My friend, Syahfirie Manaf introduced me to the concept. The World Bank, his employer, brought land titling to Indonesia forty years ago.

The same idea worked in Ecuador, Vietnam, Bahia, Kabul, Mauritania, India... What were once economic slums grew to become billion euro economies.

As soon as you get land titles, you are not in a slum anymore! You are now free to sell your land, pass it to your children, or improve your home and local infrastructures.

That’s what Belua is trying to do with the Internet. Instead of land titles, you’ll own shares of the relevance, fame and other realities you helped create.
https://medium.com/belua-systems/the...n-3edc0c2ffd12





The Internet of Things Will Be the World's Biggest Robot
Bruce Schneier

The Internet of Things is the name given to the computerization of everything in our lives. Already you can buy Internet-enabled thermostats, light bulbs, refrigerators, and cars. Soon everything will be on the Internet: the things we own, the things we interact with in public, autonomous things that interact with each other.

These "things" will have two separate parts. One part will be sensors that collect data about us and our environment. Already our smartphones know our location and, with their onboard accelerometers, track our movements. Things like our thermostats and light bulbs will know who is in the room. Internet-enabled street and highway sensors will know how many people are out and about# -- and eventually who they are. Sensors will collect environmental data from all over the world.

The other part will be actuators. They'll affect our environment. Our smart thermostats aren't collecting information about ambient temperature and who's in the room for nothing; they set the temperature accordingly. Phones already know our location, and send that information back to Google Maps and Waze to determine where traffic congestion is; when they're linked to driverless cars, they'll automatically route us around that congestion. Amazon already wants autonomous drones to deliver packages. The Internet of Things will increasingly perform actions for us and in our name.

Increasingly, human intervention will be unnecessary. The sensors will collect data. The system's smarts will interpret the data and figure out what to do. And the actuators will do things in our world. You can think of the sensors as the eyes and ears of the Internet, the actuators as the hands and feet of the Internet, and the stuff in the middle as the brain. This makes the future clearer. The Internet now senses, thinks, and acts.

We're building a world-sized robot, and we don't even realize it.

I've started calling this robot the World-Sized Web.

The World-Sized Web -- can I call it WSW? -- is more than just the Internet of Things. Much of the WSW's brains will be in the cloud, on servers connected via cellular, Wi-Fi, or short-range data networks. It's mobile, of course, because many of these things will move around with us, like our smartphones. And it's persistent. You might be able to turn off small pieces of it here and there, but in the main the WSW will always be on, and always be there.

None of these technologies are new, but they're all becoming more prevalent. I believe that we're at the brink of a phase change around information and networks. The difference in degree will become a difference in kind. That's the robot that is the WSW.

This robot will increasingly be autonomous, at first simply and increasingly using the capabilities of artificial intelligence. Drones with sensors will fly to places that the WSW needs to collect data. Vehicles with actuators will drive to places that the WSW needs to affect. Other parts of the robots will "decide" where to go, what data to collect, and what to do.

We're already seeing this kind of thing in warfare; drones are surveilling the battlefield and firing weapons at targets. Humans are still in the loop, but how long will that last? And when both the data collection and resultant actions are more benign than a missile strike, autonomy will be an easier sell.

By and large, the WSW will be a benign robot. It will collect data and do things in our interests; that's why we're building it. But it will change our society in ways we can't predict, some of them good and some of them bad. It will maximize profits for the people who control the components. It will enable totalitarian governments. It will empower criminals and hackers in new and different ways. It will cause power balances to shift and societies to change.

These changes are inherently unpredictable, because they're based on the emergent properties of these new technologies interacting with each other, us, and the world. In general, it's easy to predict technological changes due to scientific advances, but much harder to predict social changes due to those technological changes. For example, it was easy to predict that better engines would mean that cars could go faster. It was much harder to predict that the result would be a demographic shift into suburbs. Driverless cars and smart roads will again transform our cities in new ways, as will autonomous drones, cheap and ubiquitous environmental sensors, and a network that can anticipate our needs.

Maybe the WSW is more like an organism. It won't have a single mind. Parts of it will be controlled by large corporations and governments. Small parts of it will be controlled by us. But writ large its behavior will be unpredictable, the result of millions of tiny goals and billions of interactions between parts of itself.

We need to start thinking seriously about our new world-spanning robot. The market will not sort this out all by itself. By nature, it is short-term and profit-motivated# -- and these issues require broader thinking. University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo has proposed a Federal Robotics Commission as a place where robotics expertise and advice can be centralized within the government. Japan and Korea are already moving in this direction.

Speaking as someone with a healthy skepticism for another government agency, I think we need to go further. We need to create agency, a Department of Technology Policy, that can deal with the WSW in all its complexities. It needs the power to aggregate expertise and advice other agencies, and probably the authority to regulate when appropriate. We can argue the details, but there is no existing government entity that has the either the expertise or authority to tackle something this broad and far reaching. And the question is not about whether government will start regulating these technologies, it's about how smart they'll be when they do it.

The WSW is being built right now, without anyone noticing, and it'll be here before we know it. Whatever changes it means for society, we don't want it to take us by surprise.

This essay originally appeared on Forbes.com, which annoyingly blocks browsers using ad blockers.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archiv...rnet_of_1.html





Banned by Amazon for Returning Faulty Goods

Greg Nelson has bought 343 items from the online giant since 2014. But after sending 37 back he is now blocked from using it and can’t reclaim his credit balance
Miles Brignall

Computer programmer Greg Nelson is a self-confessed Amazon addict, buying hundreds of items on its site. But after sending back 37 items of 343 purchased, the online giant has blocked his account with immediate effect – and told him he would lose a gift card balance that he had on the account.

He insists there was a genuine reason for all his returns over the past two years – the goods were either faulty, damaged or not as described. However, Amazon has refused to let him continue buying from the site without giving him, in his words, a “proper explanation”.

Amazon told Nelson that the money held on his account as a gift card balance is lost to him, as gift vouchers can only be used on the site and have no transferable value.

His case will alarm anyone blocked by Amazon who has spent a lot of money building up a large library of Kindle books or other digital purchases, as they will fear being unable to access much of it (see below).

Customers who may, for example, have been given a £200 gift voucher for Christmas, and then had their account closed before they spent the money, would lose the lot under the terms of the policy.

Nelson says: “As a previously fervently loyal fan of Amazon who has been a customer since 2002, I understand that it is trying to protect its business – however I find its actions in this situation totally egregious. I could understand if there were evidence that I had somehow tried to abuse the system, but I haven’t. Of course, Amazon can refuse to serve whom it likes, but surely it cannot legally keep gift card balances and other purchased goods which have already been paid for by the customer – despite what any potentially unfair small print might say?”

He emailed Amazon to point out the unfairness in closing accounts based on unpublished limits of legitimate returns, but says he received a standard response refusing to reopen his account. He has also questioned whether it is legal for the internet giant to refuse to refund a customer’s unspent gift balance.

Nelson is the latest person to fall foul of the company’s policy of banning customers who exercise their consumer rights to return goods.

A spokesman for Amazon told Guardian Money he could not discuss Nelson’s case, except to say the company would not reopen his account.

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for the millions of customers who shop with us. In a tiny fraction of cases we are forced to close accounts where we identify extreme account abuse. This decision is only taken after we have reviewed the account carefully and tried to work with the customer over an extended time period to resolve any issues,” he said.

The former distance selling rules, now part of the consumer contracts regulations, allow online shoppers to return an item within 14 days without giving a reason for a full refund, provided the item is in the original packaging. Amazon voluntarily extends this policy so items can be returned inside 30 days, but acts against customers who do it too often.

Items that are damaged or not as described, or simply don’t last as they should, are all often sent back by unhappy consumers, as they would return an item to a physical shop.

Although relatively rare, Amazon has been cancelling customers accounts since at least 2008, and in some cases has even reportedly cancelled the accounts of other family members living at the same address.

In November last year Money highlighted the case of Nigel Colledge from Kingskerswell, South Devon, who similarly had his account cancelled despite spending thousands of pounds with the firm.

He bought 246 items in 2015 alone, and had been a customer since 2006. The self-confessed electronics junkie, who prided himself on having all the latest gizmos, said the majority of items he returned were high-value electronic items that had failed. He had chosen to cancel problematic purchases rather than wait for Amazon to simply exchange the item. It is unclear whether that would have saved him from being banned as Amazon refuses to explain the policy, or to differentiate between returns made for genuine or other reasons.

In January Amazon closed down another customer, Katy Kilmarton, after she returned 30 out of 112 items bought. She also lost a £170 gift card balance and the remaining months of her Amazon Prime membership, which costs £79 a year.

Money spent several hours on the Amazon website this week, but could find no reference to the policy. We have repeatedly asked the company what constitutes too many returns, but it has refused to divulge the figure.

Nelson points out that both the customer and the company have no control over deliveries once they leave the warehouse, and asks if it would ban a customer who just happened to have several deliveries damaged by the courier.

While thousands of UK consumers boycotted Amazon over its controversial tax situation, many disabled and elderly customers – and those who live in rural areas away from big shops – have come to depend on the company’s slick online operation. Are they now going to have to accept damaged or wrongfully described items to avoid the risk of being banned, asks Nelson.

What happens to purchased items

Having an Amazon account blocked could make life difficult for Kindle users. Although you will still be able to view the books you’ve already bought, and can buy more, users had better hope they don’t have a problem in the future.

Amazon says it sends customers whose account it is closing a weblink that allows them to view previous digital orders. They can also check whether purchased items are still in warranty.

How customers who have bought electronic items that develop a subsequent fault within the warranty period will fare is less clear. When their account is closed they are told: “Please do not make contact through the standard customer service channels again, as they will no longer be able to assist you.”

When your account is closed you also lose access to the Amazon Prime on-demand film streaming service, and if you have paid £79 for an annual subscription the money is lost. The DVD-sending service LoveFilm is also owned by Amazon, as is the popular talking books service Audible; books are downloaded so anyone who has had their account closed will keep past purchases. LoveFilm users will have to join their local library. Comics fans who signed up to download site Comixology, taken over by Amazon in 2014, will also be looking elsewhere.

How easy it is to set up an alternative account remains to be seen. Most people will simply use a partner’s account. If you choose to close your account you lose access to everything.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/201...credit-balance





Opera’s $1.2B Sale: Shocking Underdog Victory or Cruel Twist of Fate 21 Years in the Making?
Chris O'Brien

The news that Norway’s Opera Software accepted a $1.2 billion buyout offer doesn’t have everyone popping champagne corks.

At first glance, it seems nothing short of miraculous that the company, founded in 1995 during Netscape’s heyday, hung on long enough to see a sizable exit. But the deal also comes just as Opera had finally hit its stride in recent years, and executives were starting to dream about achieving the status of global tech powerhouse that had eluded them for so long.

Sitting in a conference room recently at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Opera CEO Lars Boilesen hinted at his disappointment that his team might not get a chance to see whether it could, at last, fulfill its potential on its own.

“We were fine being independent,” Boilesen said. “The fact that the board wanted to start a strategic process was a decision by the board.”

Of course, executives aren’t actively opposing the deal either. But in a conversation with Boilesen and Opera chief technology officer Håkon Wium Lie, the executives noted (several times in our interview) that it must still win shareholder approval and likely won’t close for several months. After Opera’s board announced last fall it would begin a formal process for evaluating offers it was starting to receive, it fell to the executive team to vet these offers and determine which — if any — might be a strategic fit.

And in that regard, Boilesen and his team agree that there are potential benefits to the acquisition by China-based firms Kunlun Tech, which makes mobile games, and Qihoo 360, which makes antivirus and search software. The companies see Opera’s browser, which is very popular in several Asian markets, as a platform to expand the reach of their products into places like India and create an ecosystem for users, much like Apple has done with Safari and Google with Chrome.

The Chinese companies bring tremendous resources and access to even more Asian markets that could accelerate Opera’s growth in the short term. And by no longer being a publicly traded company, Opera won’t face the same pressures to deliver quarterly profits, letting it invest in expansion to pursue its goal of being a truly global company.

“We have to crack the western world,” Boilesen said. “And that can be a bit hard if you have to deliver profits every quarter. You have to invest in technology and new features.”

Whether or not the deal is officially consummated, the fact that Opera, a company founded in the Internet’s paleolithic era, has reached this point means they have beaten some fairly long odds. Even web browser pioneer Netscape, which so famously went public the same year Opera was founded, didn’t last more than a few years before being crushed by Microsoft.

Opera was spun out of Norway’s main telecom company, Telenor, and released its first web browser in 1997. But Microsoft’s move to integrate its own web browser, Explorer, into Windows 95, devastated Netscape and also made it hard for Opera to get global traction on the desktop.

But Opera managed to gain an advantage briefly when it started working early on a mobile version of the browser. Released in 2000, for several years it was a popular choice for the growing range of mobile devices with Internet connections in the pre-smartphone era.

The arrival of the iPhone and then Android seemed like it had sealed Opera’s fate, creating a new category of phones that were mainly dominated by Apple’s Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser.

Opera’s saving grace came in an unlikely deal the company made in 2010. Opera bought AdMarvel, a mobile advertising product, for $8 million. The company used that to launch its Opera Mediaworks in 2013, a mobile advertising platform that included a video component.

According to its financials for the fourth quarter of 2015, the company overall reported $193.5 million in revenue, up 25 percent from the previous year. Of that total revenue, mobile advertising products accounted for $145.4 million. And within ad revenue, mobile video ads were 60 percent.

“It was a small acquisition,” said Boilesen. “We were lucky to find it. And as result, we became the mobile advertising alternative to Google.”

Meanwhile, Opera’s browser market share had dropped to 5.5 percent, placing it sixth in the world, according to metrics firm StatCounter. (Chrome, Safari, Explorer, Firefox, and Alibaba’s UCWeb are all ahead.) But Opera remains strong in emerging markets, likely in part due to the fact that its compression technology helps it run faster on low-performance phones.

“We gave people the ability to get online in places where they are mobile first,” Boilesen said. “Through the Opera Mini browser, we could compress data and a browser on a feature phone. It became known as a cheap way to access the Internet.”

Indeed, according to StatCounter, Opera is the number one browser in Africa, fourth in Indonesia, third in Russia and India. However, in the U.S. and Europe, Opera has fallen off the radar.

“I cannot convince my neighbor in Norway to use Opera,” said Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s chief technology officer. “But it’s very easy to convince 1,000 students in Indonesia.”

But with a sounder financial footing, the company has been reinvesting in the browser. And it has begun studying ways to get back into those western markets.

“We should be serving more than our share in U.S,” Lie said. “We’re not going to stop. We’re adding things to the desktop browser. We have had the web product for 20 years. It’s a vital part of the infrastructure of using the Internet for people. We need to make it a vital tool that has some features that are not currently there.”

As part of that strategy, the company this month announced the release of the developer’s version of the desktop browser with new ad-blocking technology built in. The company claims that by having the ad-blocking technology built into the browser’s code, the load time for web pages increases on average by 40 percent compared to third-party ad-blocking extensions.

The ad-blocking technology is just one example of how over the past year the company had begun aggressively investing in enhancing the browser. But while work on these new features was underway, the success of its mobile advertising business started getting Opera noticed. And offers started coming in from interested buyers.

With Internet traffic and video continuing to shift to mobile devices, having a red-hot mobile video advertising product suddenly became very attractive.

“Personally, I’m not very surprised,” Boilesen said. “We have experienced growth in our user base. And people started circling.”

It seems very unlikely that shareholders will turn down the offer, which represents a 50 percent premium over the value of Opera’s stock on the day it was announced.

But executives take comfort in the fact that the potential new owners have said Opera would continue to operate with a degree of independence. And for now, they’re trying to focus on the deal’s upside.

“We have the products,” Boilesen said. “We’re just looking for owners who can take us to another level. If the deal comes through, we hope it will help us move faster.”
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/17/op...in-the-making/




French Newspapers Start Blocking Readers Who Use Adblockers

Media outlets launch week-long campaign to encourage readers to uninstall ad-blocking software
Amar Toor

Major French news outlets have launched a campaign against ad-blocking software, with some forcing users to uninstall the programs before accessing their sites. The week-long campaign was organized by GESTE, an association of online publishers, with participants including newspapers like Le Monde, Le Parisien, and L'Équipe, as well as the French music streaming service Deezer.

In announcing the initiative last year, GESTE said its members aim to remind readers "that their content and services are not free," and to remind them of the "indispensable character of advertising as a source of finance." According to a study released earlier this month, three out of 10 French internet users currently have ad-blocking software installed, including 53 percent of web users between the ages of 16 and 24. Other sites, including Forbes and the German tabloid Bild, have launched similar anti-AdBlock efforts in the past.

Organizations participating in the campaign have deployed various methods to dissuade readers from using ad-blocking software. Some, like Le Parisien and L'Équipe, a sports daily, have made their websites inaccessible to those running AdBlock or similar programs. Others, including Le Monde and L'Express, remain accessible to AdBlock users, though readers running the software will be greeted by messages encouraging them to disable the software or whitelist the sites. Some are offering discounted subscriptions for those who comply.

In an article published in L'Express today, adjoint editorial director Eric Mettout described advertising as a "necessity" for those who want to read the paper without a subscription. He added that "adblockers are not angels," pointing to reports that some larger web companies have paid to circumvent the blocks, though he also acknowledged that publishers and advertisers must respond to consumer demands. Mettout writes that publishers know they must "resolve the most disruptive aspects of ads on their sites," and that "advertisers and their agencies are also, they say, aware of the problem."
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/22/11...block-campaign





Edward Snowden: Privacy Can't Depend On Corporations Standing Up to the Government

Service providers aren't to be trusted, Snowden says at Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet event at MIT
Jon Gold

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden opened the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet 2016 conference on Saturday with a discussion of free software, privacy and security, speaking via video conference from Russia.

Snowden credited free software for his ability to help disclose the U.S. government's far-reaching surveillance projects – drawing one of several enthusiastic rounds of applause from the crowd in an MIT lecture hall.

"What happened in 2013 couldn't have happened without free software," he said, particularly citing projects like Tor, Tails (a highly secure Linux distribution) and Debian.

Snowden argued that free software's transparency and openness are cornerstones to preserving user privacy in the connected age. It isn't that all commercial products are bad, nor that all corporations are evil – he singled out Apple's ongoing spat with the FBI as an example of a corporation trying to stand up for its users – merely that citizens should not have to rely on them to uphold the right to privacy.

"I didn't use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn't trust them," Snowden stated. "Not because I knew that there was a particular back door or anything like that, but because I couldn't be sure."

Private data, these days, only stays private at the sufferance of the major tech companies that administer devices and services, he argued. Given the increasing centrality of smartphones and social networks and the myriad of other digital communication methods to modern life, simply trusting that those tech companies will protect their users' privacy is insufficient.

Relying on corporations to protect private data is bad enough in a vacuum – but Snowden pointed out that many tech giants have already proven more than willing to hand over user data to a government they rely on for licensing and a favorable regulatory climate.

He particularly singled out service providers as being complicit in overreaching government surveillance.

"We can't control telecom partners," Snowden stated. "We're very vulnerable to them."

However, protecting privacy is gaining mindshare, he added. Increasingly, a digital public concerned with keeping its private data to itself is getting behind the idea of pushing back on the tech industry and the government.

"We're no longer passive in our relationship with our devices," he said.

But awareness must be raised still further, and alternatives have to be offered by the free software world. Encrypting everything that can be encrypted is one way to preserve privacy, as is self-hosting.

"Even mass surveillance has limits," Snowden said.

Even if tech companies don't actively partner with the government on surveillance, there are huge vulnerabilities in important systems, he noted. A need for stability compromises the ability to patch security holes in anything like a timely manner, particularly in the enterprise.

"It's not just a question of stable – stable is important," Snowden said. "But increasingly, due to the pace of adversary offensive research [being] so fast, that if our update cycles are not at least relevant to the attack speed, then we're actually endangering people."
http://www.networkworld.com/article/...overnment.html





The Behind-the-Scenes Fight Between Apple and the FBI

Obama administration officials and Apple initially shared some common ground on data encryption. Then terrorists struck in San Bernardino, and everything changed.
Adam Satariano, Chris Strohm

On June 2, 2014, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook took the stage at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco to tout the iPhone's latest mobile-operating system, iOS 8. With more than 6,000 developers and technology enthusiasts cheering them on, Cook and other executives showed off new text messaging features, a health-tracking tool and an updated photo app.

Not once during the two-hour presentation did Cook & Co. mention what would prove to be the most consequential software development of all. Tucked inside the new OS was a dramatic change to how Apple encrypts data on iPhones. The new system made it impossible for government investigators—and even Apple itself—to pull information from a device without a passcode.

Following the event, Apple gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation early access to iOS 8 so it could study how the new system would change evidence-gathering techniques, according to people familiar with the software's development. The agency quickly realized Apple had closed an important access point used for years by agents to collect information about criminal suspects. Many in the FBI were stunned. Suddenly, photos, text messages, notes and dozens of other sources of information stored on phones were off-limits.

The new encryption protections set off a behind-the-scenes battle that ultimately spilled into the open last month, when a California judge granted the Justice Department an order requiring Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Federal prosecutors and Apple will argue their cases before a magistrate judge on March 22.

"The stakes couldn't be higher."

This story, based on interviews with more than a dozen government officials, technology executives and attorneys tracking the case, charts the 18-month period between the iOS 8 release and San Bernardino attacks—revealing the complicated, up-and-down nature of Washington's relationship with Silicon Valley. At times, Apple and the White House enjoyed good ties, even working together to persuade China not to force phone makers to give authorities a key to unlock a handset's encryption. The administration also didn't give in to FBI lobbying for new legislation that would make it easier to unlock data on mobile devices with warrants.

But the San Bernardino attack changed the dynamic, ratcheting up tensions that had simmered ever since Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations that the U.S. was collecting Americans' personal data. Law enforcement officials had long warned that stronger encryption would eventually shut out criminal investigators. Now they had a case with national security implications they could use to press their argument that Apple had gone too far with iOS 8.

"The reason the relationship went south is the government was expecting some degree of accommodation on the part of the technology companies," said Timothy Edgar, the former director of privacy and civil liberties for the White House National Security Staff from 2009 to 2010. "They were expecting the companies to essentially back down and not go forward with new security measures that would make it impossible for you to access devices or communications. They were caught off guard by basically being told to get lost."

The outcome of the debate, which may ultimately be decided by Congress or the Supreme Court, could set a legal precedent requiring Apple and other technology companies to provide federal investigators with tools to bypass security features. Other countries such as China could follow suit. The U.S. government, meanwhile, risks alienating technology companies who may make their products even more impenetrable. Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have leaped to Apple's defense.

"The stakes couldn't be higher," said Alex Abdo, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's speech privacy and technology project, which has filed a brief supporting Apple. "This is an unprecedented legal question with extremely significant policy and technological implications."

Apple, the White House, Department of Justice and the FBI declined to make any officials available for interviews and instead pointed to previous public comments on encryption.

Shortly after Apple previewed iOS 8 in 2014, the company's top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, traveled to Washington to discuss the changes with then-Attorney General Eric Holder and other administration officials. An unflappable intellectual property attorney hired by Steve Jobs in 2009, Sewell explained that the new protections were needed to protect customers' privacy. Hackers were becoming increasingly sophisticated at a time when people were sharing more financial, health and personal data on their mobile devices.

Yes, Apple would still provide investigators with vast amounts of information, such as e-mail and pictures stored on its iCloud servers. But with iOS 8 the company would no longer have access to information stored on the actual device.

Apple has been deluged with government requests for data. The FBI has agents assigned to work with Apple, and the company has a growing team of lawyers around the world whose only job is to respond to law enforcement orders. Apple received more than 5,000 requests from the government in the first six months of 2015, the most recent figures made public by the company.

Within the Obama administration, Apple found some receptive to its arguments for strong encryption. "As a general matter, they laid out a reasonable basis for what they were doing," said James Cole, who served as deputy attorney general from 2011 to 2015 and was involved in discussions between Apple and the government. "In many respects, they had a legitimate interest for what they were trying to protect."

Yet long before iOS 8 was launched, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had fretted about Apple's encryption, according to a person familiar with the matter. In 2010, the company introduced the video-calling app FaceTime. It encrypted conversations between users. The following year, the iMessage texting application arrived; it, too, featured encryption. While neither of these developments caused a public stir, the U.S. government was now aware how much of a premium Apple put on privacy. The encryption technology made it impossible for investigators or Apple to peek at the contents of FaceTime and iMessage communications, the person said. It's unclear what steps, if any, the government took directly with Apple to address the concerns.

For several years, the FBI pushed the White House to propose new laws that would ensure investigators could access data on phones and other devices with court orders. Officials were close to an agreement on legislation to update communications and privacy laws in 2013, but the Snowden revelations blew up the deal, according to a former U.S. official. After that, there was never again a serious effort to pass the legislation, the official said.

In fact, the bureau's efforts were never universally supported inside the administration, according to Edgar, now a senior fellow at Brown University, who attended some of those early meetings. Officials from the Commerce Department raised concerns about the proposed legislation's impact on U.S. companies, while the State Department worried about issues such as exposing foreign dissidents. The Defense Department didn't want to create new vulnerabilities for its operations, he said. "There was a real split, and there still is," Edgar said.

Added Cole, who is now a partner with the law firm Sidley Austin LLP, which filed an amicus brief in support of Apple: "The United States government is not uniform on this. It's a highly charged issue."

Soon after the iOS 8 launch, FBI Director James Comey blasted Apple's position. "Encryption isn’t just a technical feature; it’s a marketing pitch," he said in an Oct. 16, 2014 speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But it will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels."

"Sophisticated criminals will come to count on these means of evading detection," Comey said. "It’s the equivalent of a closet that can’t be opened, a safe that can’t be cracked. And my question is, at what cost?"

Even as the FBI publicly criticized Apple, the company believed it was approaching common ground with the White House. It didn't hurt that Cook had maintained a constructive relationship with the Obama team. He contributed money to both of Obama's presidential campaigns and has attended major events, including state dinners held for the leaders of China and Canada. In 2013, Obama invited Cook to sit near First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address. According to government records, Cook has met at least 14 times with White House officials since 2010, including a meeting with Obama on Dec. 2, 2014.

In late 2014, Apple began working closely with administration officials to lobby China against adopting new anti-encryption policies, according to two people familiar with the effort. Under the proposed rules, any company selling smartphones in the country would have to provide the Chinese government with a key to unlock the handset's encryption.

The lobbying worked and China backed off. But Apple took away the wrong impression. The White House hadn't reached any conclusion when it came to what encryption meant for the needs of U.S. law enforcement agencies, one former official said.

The encryption debate festered inside the White House in the following months, consuming meetings and leading the National Security Council staff to draft a memo in the summer of 2015 laying out possible options, including seeking more voluntary cooperation from companies. The administration ultimately decided not to pursue or advocate for any of the proposals, according to a senior U.S. official. A formal decision not to seek legislation was officially made on Oct. 1.

When it became clear that the administration wouldn't support a new law that would help investigators gain access to iPhones and other devices, many FBI agents became frustrated and disappointed. Some recalled that the bureau was pilloried for not connecting the dots to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to Leo Taddeo, the former special agent in charge of the New York FBI special operations and cyber division.

If the White House wasn't going to push for new legislation, Comey and other FBI officials decided to become more outspoken about their concerns with encryption, said Taddeo, who is now the chief security officer for cybersecurity company Cryptzone. He said FBI officials were determined to air a "deliberate and open understanding of the risks."

In October, Apple also signaled that it was digging in its heels. The company filed an objection to provide data from an iPhone used by a New York drug dealer. The little-noticed disagreement in a New York courtroom foreshadowed what would come a few months later in California.

Even as the behind-the-scenes debate simmered, Apple continued to work with FBI agents when issued a warrant for evidence that could be accessed on its servers. After the San Bernardino attacks in December, Apple pulled data backed up to its iCloud service from the iPhone used by the shooter, Syed Farook. The company also sent engineers to San Bernardino to help with the data-recovery effort. But when the FBI wanted to override the encryption on Farook's iPhone, the company said it didn't have a special key to unlock the device.

With the investigation underway, Cook attended a meeting in January between Silicon Valley executives and members of the White House national security team to discuss ways the industry and Washington could work more closely to combat terrorism. With Comey, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on hand, Cook urged the administration to come out in favor of strong encryption because it would set an example for other countries. The message echoed Cook's statements in earlier months linking privacy to civil rights.

Lynch focused on the detrimental effects of encryption on national security and emphasized the importance of a continuing dialogue to find solutions, according to a Justice Department official. She said that was a priority for law enforcement and intelligence agencies charged with protecting public safety and national security, the official said.

In early February, Sewell, Apple's top attorney, got a call from FBI general counsel James Baker to let Sewell know the agency might file a subpoena seeking Apple's help unlocking Farook's phone. Baker said a final decision hadn't been made, but a few days later Comey testified before a Senate subcommittee that the iPhone carried by Farook might contain evidence that couldn't be accessed because the device was encrypted. The FBI couldn't confirm what was said during the phone call.

On Feb. 16, a magistrate judge in Riverside, California, ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock the phone. Apple executives were shocked the agency had gone public. For years, they had worked closely with the agency in private. In at least two previous instances, including a case in Baltimore, the government had decided against seeking a court order forcing Apple to unlock a phone running iOS 8. Over the next several hours, Apple crafted a response that was posted on the Apple website late at night.

A battle that had been simmering beneath the surface for almost two years was now very public.

The fight shows no signs of ending soon. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, has come out in support of the FBI, calling Apple's view "absolutist." Meanwhile, technology companies including Apple are taking steps to make it even harder to penetrate digital communication. According to Edgar, the former White House official, there isn't much common ground between those points of view.

"Lawyers think privacy is you can't listen to my conversation without a warrant; technologists think privacy is you can't listen to my conversation, period," Edgar said. "It's hard to reconcile those two points of view."

-- With Jordan Robertson in Washington
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/featur...le-and-the-fbi





Apple May Be Willing to Risk Contempt Charge
Peter J. Henning

Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple. The company is challenging an order that it help unlock an iPhone. Credit Robert Galbraith/Reuters
Parents are known at times to deliver an ultimatum to a recalcitrant child by saying, “Do this, or else!” The question is what that the frequently undelivered punishment may actually be.

When a case is in court, the judge can hold a party in contempt as the “or else” for refusing to comply with an order. But how far can a court go in imposing sanctions for contempt?

That question may arise for Carl Ferrer, the chief executive of Backpage.com, an advertising website that has been identified for its connections to possible sex trafficking. Mr. Ferrer is in a fight with the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for not complying with a subpoena.

It may also become an issue for Apple if a judge orders it to help unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December. The company may be willing to defy the order, and even if it wants to comply, there is a chance that its engineers would refuse to provide that assistance, as The New York Times reported, perhaps making compliance impossible.

In Mr. Ferrer’s case, the Senate voted 96-0 to pass a resolution on Thursday authorizing its legal counsel to file an action in the Federal District Court in Washington to hold him in civil contempt for refusing to turn over corporate records about the company’s advertising review procedures and appear before the subcommittee to testify last November. The company’s lawyer issued a statement that it “looks forward to a proper consideration of the important First Amendment constitutional issues by the judiciary – the branch of government charged with protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

A judge’s power to punish someone for misconduct that takes place inside the courtroom is broad, as any fan of the movie “My Cousin Vinny” will recall when the protagonist is summarily ordered to jail for his antics. For conduct outside the judge’s presence, the power to impose a penalty is more limited, and depends on whether it is intended to punish the person, which would be a criminal case, or coerce compliance with an order, which is civil.

That distinction is crucial because if the contempt is deemed criminal, then the person receives the usual array of constitutional protections afforded in any prosecution, such as a right to a jury trial and the requirement that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, before any punishment can be imposed.

Civil contempt, on the other hand, entails fewer procedural requirements, so that a judge can sanction a person who refuses to comply without undertaking a full-scale trial. That can result in being incarcerated for an extended period, with no finding of guilt.

The reason for allowing an expedited process for civil contempt is that the contemnor, as the person in violation of the order is called, is said to “hold the key to the jail cell” by deciding whether to comply, so it is considered remedial rather than punitive. Witnesses who have spent months behind bars for refusing to testify before a grand jury include Greg Anderson, the personal trainer for the home run leader Barry Bonds, and Susan McDougal, a friend of President Clinton who participated in the Whitewater investment.

The Senate chose to use its authority to seek a civil contempt against Mr. Ferrer because that gives it greater control over the case, and an increased likelihood of actually securing the documents and testimony the subcommittee seeks.

If the Senate wanted to pursue a criminal contempt, it would have to refer the case to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute, something that has not happened in recent cases. Federal prosecutors did not act in response to referrals regarding Lois Lerner, a former I.R.S. official involved in claims of scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of conservative political organizations, and former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., for refusing to disclose internal documents related to the botched gun-smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Backpage.com asserts that the First Amendment protects it from having to submit all the documents subpoenaed by the subcommittee because it engages in advertising, which is a category of commercial speech. Mr. Ferrer may be willing to defy a court order to vindicate the principle of free speech, as other journalists have done.

That could mean a trip to jail for contempt, however, because federal courts generally do not recognize the First Amendment as a basis to resist a subpoena. The length of any incarceration could be considerable, as happened in one case when an investment manager spent more than seven years in jail for refusing to comply with a court order in a civil securities fraud case.

Apple is scheduled to be in court on Tuesday to challenge an order that it help unlock the iPhone. If it loses the fight, the question is whether the company will decide to be held in contempt to uphold its position that cooperating would create a dangerous precedent.

In its most recent brief filed last week in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, the company argued that “the government seeks to commandeer Apple to design, create, test and validate a new operating system that does not exist, and that Apple believes – with overwhelming support from the technology community and security experts – is too dangerous to create.” That does not indicate any willingness to do the government’s bidding, even if the judge tells Apple to do so.

Whether the company’s engineers, responsible for creating the high level of encryption in its devices, would be willing to design the workaround that would unlock the phone could present an additional hurdle to compliance. If they will not, then the company may have no choice but to defy an order. Then the court would have to decide whether Apple can be held responsible for the conduct of its employees.

Unlike an individual who can be sent to jail, if Apple were it to be held in civil contempt, it would face only a fine. Coming up with a monetary penalty large enough to have any real impact on a company as big and profitable as Apple could be difficult to achieve.

In 2015, Apple reported net income of more than $53 billion. So a penalty of $10 million a day for the next year would take away only about 7 percent of its annual profit, an amount the company may be willing to pay to advance its position regarding the privacy of customer data. And any penalty might be tax deductible as a business expense.

A large fine like that would be much more likely to fall in the criminal rather than civil contempt category, requiring a full-scale trial to establish that Apple should be punished, rather than taking the more expedited civil route. In United Mine Workers v. Bagwell, the Supreme Court found that a $52 million fine assessed against a union for violating an injunction related to a strike constituted a criminal sanction, so there are limits on how much the court can assess against Apple as part of a civil contempt.

Whatever the merits of the Justice Department’s argument to unlock the iPhone, there will be an issue about whether the court can effectively coerce Apple into providing the assistance demanded.

It may be that there is no effective “or else” when taking on the world’s most valuable company, especially one that is willing to take a defiant position that enhances its popularity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/bu...pt-charge.html





Johns Hopkins Researchers Poke a Hole in Apple’s Encryption
Ellen Nakashima

Apple’s growing arsenal of encryption techniques — shielding data on devices as well as real-time video calls and instant messages — has spurred the U.S. government to sound the alarm that such tools are putting the communications of terrorists and criminals out of the reach of law enforcement.

But a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers has found a bug in the company’s vaunted encryption, one that would enable a skilled attacker to decrypt photos and videos sent as secure instant messages.

This specific flaw in Apple’s iMessage platform likely would not have helped the FBI pull data from an iPhone recovered in December’s San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack, but it shatters the notion that strong commercial encryption has left no opening for law enforcement and hackers, said Matthew D. Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University who led the research team.

The discovery comes as the U.S. government and Apple are locked in a widely watched legal battle in which the Justice Department is seeking to force the company to write software to help FBI agents peer into the encrypted contents of the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farouk, one of two attackers who were killed by police after the shooting rampage that claimed 14 lives.

Cryptographers such as Green say that asking a court to compel a tech company such as Apple to create software to undo a security feature makes no sense — especially when there may already be bugs that can be exploited.

“Even Apple, with all their skills — and they have terrific cryptographers — wasn’t able to quite get this right,” said Green, whose team of graduate students will publish a paper describing the attack as soon as Apple issues a patch. “So it scares me that we’re having this conversation about adding back doors to encryption when we can’t even get basic encryption right.”

The Justice Department contends in the San Bernardino case that it is not asking Apple for a back door or a way to weaken encryption for all its iPhones. Instead, the government says it wants Apple to dismantle a password security feature on one device so that the FBI can try its hand at cracking the encryption without risking that all the data will be wiped after too many failed attempts.

The California case involves information that is stored on a phone, whereas Green’s students were focused on intercepting data in transit between devices. But they share a principle — that all software has vulnerabilities. And messing with the software hurts overall security, Green said.

“Apple works hard to make our software more secure with every release,” the company said in a statement. “We appreciate the team of researchers that identified this bug and brought it to our attention so we could patch the vulnerability. . . . Security requires constant dedication and we’re grateful to have a community of developers and researchers who help us stay ahead.”

Apple said it partially fixed the problem last fall when it released its iOS 9 operating system, and it will fully address the problem through security improvements in its latest operating system, iOS 9.3, which will be released Monday.

Green suspected there might be a flaw in iMessage last year after he read an Apple security guide describing the encryption process and it struck him as weak. He said he alerted the firm’s engineers to his concern. When a few months passed and the flaw remained, he and his graduate students decided to mount an attack to show that they could pierce the encryption on photos or videos sent through iMessage.

It took a few months, but they succeeded, targeting phones that were not using the latest operating system on iMessage, which launched in 2011.

To intercept a file, the researchers wrote software to mimic an Apple server. The encrypted transmission they targeted contained a link to the photo stored in Apple’s iCloud server as well as a 64-digit key to decrypt the photo.

Although the students could not see the key’s digits, they guessed at them by a repetitive process of changing a digit or a letter in the key and sending it back to the target phone. Each time they guessed a digit correctly, the phone accepted it. They probed the phone in this way thousands of times.

“And we kept doing that,” Green said, “until we had the key.”

A modified version of the attack would also work on later operating systems, Green said, adding that it would likely have taken the hacking skills of a nation-state.

With the key, the team was able to retrieve the photo from Apple’s server. If it had been a true attack, the user would not have known.

To prevent the attack from working, users should update their devices to iOS 9.3. Otherwise, their phones and laptops could still be vulnerable, Green said.

Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that Green’s attack highlights the danger of companies building their own encryption without independent review. “The cryptographic history books are filled with examples of crypto-algorithms designed behind closed doors that failed spectacularly,” he said.

The better approach, he said, is open design. He pointed to encryption protocols created by researchers at Open Whisper Systems, who developed Signal, an instant message platform. They publish their code and their designs, but the keys, which are generated by the sender and user, remain secret.

Some academics have advocated that law enforcement use software vulnerabilities to wiretap targets. That, they said, is preferable to building in a back door to enable access, which they said would broadly damage security.

Susan Landau of Worcester Polytechnic Institute recommends that the government also disclose the bugs to the software-maker. “That gives you a shorter amount of time to use the vulnerability, but you still have some time,” she said.

Green said that technologists such as those at the National Security Agency could easily have found the same flaw. “If you put resources into it, you will come across something like this,” he said.

He said that law enforcement could use his students’ attack or something similar on an unpatched iPhone to obtain photos sent via iMessage in an active criminal or terrorist investigation.

Federal investigators have been stymied when trying to intercept iMessage content. Last year, Apple and prosecutors in Baltimore wrangled for months in court over the issue, with the government trying to compel the firm to find a way to give it data in clear text, and the firm insisting it would be unduly expensive and burdensome and harmful to security. Apple reportedly does not have the technical capability to provide encrypted iMessage content in real time. The prosecutors eventually stood down in the case, which involved guns and drugs; the Obama administration had decided at that point not to push the issue in the courts.

The FBI has said that hacking phones and computers using software bugs is not something it can do easily or at scale. Officials argue it is more efficient to get a wiretap order from a judge and have the company turn on the tap. Also, certain tools might be classified for use by intelligence agencies and not available to criminal investigators.

FBI Director James B. Comey told lawmakers this month that the FBI had sought help from intelligence agencies to crack the code on Farouk’s phone — without success. “We don’t have the capabilities,” he said, “that people sometimes on TV imagine us to have.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...74e_story.html





U.S. Says it May Not Need Apple to Open San Bernardino iPhone
Joseph Menn

U.S. prosecutors said Monday that a "third party" had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, a development that could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple Inc.

A federal judge in Riverside, California, late Monday agreed to the government's request to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday so that prosecutors could try the newly discovered technique. The Justice Department said it would update the court on April 5.

The government had insisted until Monday that it had no way to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California, except to force Apple to write new software that would disable the password protection.

The Justice Department last month obtained a court order directing Apple to create that software, but Apple has fought back, arguing that the order is an overreach by the government and would undermine computer security for everyone.

The announcement on Monday that an unnamed third party had presented a way of breaking into the phone on Sunday - just two days before the hearing and after weeks of heated back-and-forth in court filings - drew skepticism from many in the tech community who have insisted that there were other ways to get into the phone.

“From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the government's case is the claim that Apple's help is required to unlock the phone," said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "Many in the technical community have been skeptical that this is true, especially given the government's considerable resources.”

Former prosecutors and lawyers supporting Apple said the move suggested that the Justice Department feared it would lose the legal battle, or at minimum would be forced to admit that it had not tried every other way to get into the phone.

In a statement, the Justice Department said its only interest has always been gaining access to the information on the phone and that it had continued to explore alternatives even as litigation began. It offered no details on the new technique but said it was "cautiously optimistic" it would work.

"That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option," a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Melanie R. Newman, said. "If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people."

It would also likely end the case without a legal showdown that many had expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group backing Apple, said the San Bernardino case was the "hand-chosen test case" for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary.

In that context, he said, the last-minute discovery of a possible solution and the cancellation of the hearing is "suspicious," and suggests the government might be worried about losing and setting a bad precedent.

But George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor, said the government was likely only postponing the fight.

"The problem is not going away, it's just been delayed for a year or two," he said.

Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, and his allies have argued that it would be unprecedented to force a company to develop a new product to assist a government investigation, and that other law enforcement agencies around the world would rapidly demand similar services.

Law enforcement officials, led by FBI Director James Comey, have countered that access to phones and other devices is crucial for intelligence work and criminal investigations.

The government and the tech industry have clashed for years over similar issues, and Congress has been unable to pass legislation to address the impasse.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn. Additional reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Bill Rigby, Jonathan Weber and Leslie Adler)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-app...-idUKKCN0WN2CZ





Israeli Firm Helping FBI to Open Encrypted iPhone: Report

Israel's Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, is helping the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's attempt to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Wednesday.

If Cellebrite succeeds, then the FBI will no longer need the help of Apple Inc, the Israeli daily said, citing unnamed industry sources.

Cellebrite officials declined to comment on the matter.

Apple is engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over a judge's order that it write new software to disable passcode protection on the iPhone used by the shooter.

The two sides were set to face off in court on Tuesday, but on Monday a federal judge agreed to the government's request to postpone the hearing after U.S. prosecutors said a "third party" had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone.

The development could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown which has become a lightning rod for a broader debate on data privacy in the United States.

Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japan's Sun Corp, has its revenue split between two businesses: a forensics system used by law enforcement, military and intelligence that retrieves data hidden inside mobile devices and technology for mobile retailers.

(Reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-app...-idUKKCN0WP17J





Paris Terrorists Used Burner Phones, Not Encryption, to Evade Detection

"Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones."
Glyn Moody

New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services.

As an article in The New York Times reports: "the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims."

The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. For example: "Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest." The information come from a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry.

Outside the Bataclan theatre venue, the investigators found a Samsung phone in a dustbin: "It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium."

As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found yet more burner phones: "Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes." At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones "still in their wrappers."

As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. That seems to be further evidence that they knew such communications were routinely monitored by intelligence agencies. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts—they seem to have stopped using the Internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.

That authorities are only now discovering this fact shows how well the strategy worked.

As Ars has reported, along with other countries the UK government is pushing for ways to circumvent or weaken encryption because it claims strong crypto creates a "safe space" for terrorists. This new information that the Paris attackers did not routinely use encryption, if at all, but turned instead to the tried-and-tested technique of burner phones, undermines the argument that everyone's communications must be weakened in order to tackle terrorism.

The New York Times article suggests that there was some evidence of encryption software being used elsewhere. A witness reported seeing a terrorist with a laptop, and told the investigators that as the computer powered up, "she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: "It was bizarre—he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet," she said." The New York Times writes: "Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks."

But as many were quick to point out online, the witness probably wasn't looking at some encryption software in action, because such systems show the decrypted message, not the encrypted form. The former Ars Technica editor Julian Sanchez wrote on Twitter: "It's suggestive of a verbose boot. Using encryption looks like 'reading a message' because you decrypt it first."

Until we have stronger evidence to the contrary, it seems likely that encryption played little or no part in the Paris terrorist attacks.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ot-encryption/





House Bill Wants to Crack Down on Prepaid 'Burner' Phones

The draft bill would force prepaid phone retailers to record and verify personal information on buyers in an effort to combat terrorism.
Zack Whittaker

A Californian lawmaker is pushing new legislation that would crack down on prepaid "burner phones," which she says are used by terrorists and other serious criminals.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA, 14th), who represents the San Francisco and the Bay Area district, introduced the legislation this week requiring prepaid phone retailers to collect information on the buyer at the time of purchase, such as their name, address, and date of birth.

The information would be verified by a credit card, or a Social Security number or driving license number -- mirroring similar obligations on those who sign up for a long-term phone contract.

In a statement, the Democratic lawmaker said the draft bill, dubbed the Closing the Prepaid Mobile Device Security Gap Act of 2016 (or HR 4886), would help track terrorists and serious criminals because prepaid phones "can be purchased without identification and record-keeping requirements."

"This bill would close one of the most significant gaps in our ability to track and prevent acts of terror, drug trafficking, and modern-day slavery," said the statement.

The bill was referred to the House Energy and Commerce, and Judiciary committees, but the text of the bill has yet to be publicly released.

Speier's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Speier's bill comes in the wake of growing terror threats in Europe, in which attackers are said to have used burner phones to carry out various attacks across the continent.

Burner phones, or prepaid cell phones that are often bought in bulk and disposed of each time a communication is made, were used in the second wave of terrorist attacks in Paris late last year. By using different devices and phone numbers each time, it's an attempt to evade the bulk metadata collection programs by Western intelligence agencies.

It's not the first reactive effort by lawmakers to limit the use of technology under the guise of aiding national security.

Lawmakers in California and New York state introduced legislation earlier this year to ban the sale of smartphones and devices that provide encryption, like most iPhones, and some newer Android phones.

Google recently introduced device encryption on newer Android devices, but in most cases it can still be forced to turn over user data. The search and phone giant followed in the footsteps of Apple, which has said it cannot feasibly bypass a user's iPhone or iPad passcode, making it unable to respond to warrants for data stored on its devices.

That didn't stop the Justice Dept., which for weeks waged a war of words and legal rhetoric at the technology giant for its refusal to help federal agents access the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

The government later dropped its case.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/califor...burner-phones/





French Police Report On Paris Attacks Shows No Evidence Of Encryption... So NY Times Invents Evidence Itself
Mike Masnick

Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a big article providing a bunch of details about the Paris attacks from last year, now that the lone surviving member of those attacks has been captured in Belgium. The article is mostly based on a 55-page report put together by French antiterrorism police and given to France's Interior Minister. Someone apparently gave the report to the NY Times as well. And it does includes some interesting background info, including some previously unknown attack details. It also includes a bit about how the attacks were planned and carried out, with the most salient detail being that it's pretty clear that the team used burner phones (i.e., phones purchased just for this purpose, for a very short time, and not easily traced back to individuals):

They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims.

That's not all that surprising, of course. People have known about burner phones for ages. But the thing that stood out for me was the desperate need of the NY Times reporters to insist that there must be encryption used by the attackers, despite the near total lack of evidence of any such use. Immediately after the attacks, law enforcement and intelligence officials started blaming encryption based on absolutely nothing. Senator John McCain used it as an excuse to plan legislation that would force backdoors into encryption. And Rep. Michael McCaul insisted that the Paris attackers used the encrypted Telegram app, despite no one else saying that. In fact, for months, the only thing we'd heard was that they used unencrypted SMS to alert each other that the attacks were on, and made almost no effort to hide themselves.

But, amazingly, the NY Times takes evidence of a lack of encryption... to mean there must be encryption:

According to the police report and interviews with officials, none of the attackers’ emails or other electronic communications have been found, prompting the authorities to conclude that the group used encryption. What kind of encryption remains unknown, and is among the details that Mr. Abdeslam’s capture could help reveal.

But... that's not how encryption works. If they're using encrypted emails, the emails don't disappear. You still can see that they exist, and the metadata of who sent messages to whom remains. It's just that you can't read the contents of the emails. This is bogeyman thinking about encryption, where people think it does something it doesn't actually do. Sure, it's possible that the attackers used some sort of secretive way to communicate, but then the issue isn't encryption, but rather that they figured out how to hide the method by which they communicated. Or, you know, they just talked about stuff in person.

And then there's this:

One of the terrorists pulled out a laptop, propping it open against the wall, said the 40-year-old woman. When the laptop powered on, she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: “It was bizarre — he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet,” she said. Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks.

OH MY! "A bunch of lines, like lines of code"?!?!?! Must be encryption! Or, you know, Linux. Or some other system that doesn't start with a graphical user interface. And even if it was encryption, then he wouldn't be looking at it in encrypted form. To read encrypted messages you decrypt them first. Nothing in this paragraph above makes any sense at all as "proof" of encryption. It just seems like proof of the reporters' technology ignorance.

It may very well turn out that the attackers used encryption. It very likely will be true in the future that attackers and terrorists will use encryption. But, this crazy moral panic going on these days where anything that people can't understand "must be encryption!" is reaching insane levels.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...e-itself.shtml





Before We Even Know the Details, Politicians Rush to Blame Encryption for Brussels Attacks
Mike Masnick

You may remember that, right after the Paris attacks late last year, politicians rushed in to demonize encryption as the culprit, and to demand backdooring encryption before the blood was even dry. Of course, it later turned out that there was no evidence that they used encryption at all, but rather it appears that they communicated by unencrypted means. Just yesterday, we noted that the press was still insisting encryption was used, and using the lack of any evidence as evidence for the fact they must have used encryption (hint: that's not how encryption works...).

So, it should hardly be a surprise that following this morning's tragic attacks in Brussels that have left dozens dead and many more injured, that encryption haters, based on absolutely nothing, have rushed in to attack encryption again. The first up was Rep. Adam Schiff, who quickly insisted that he had no actual facts on the matter, but we should be concerned about encryption:

“We do not know yet what role, if any, encrypted communications played in these attacks,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

“But we can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks,” he added.

Schiff, of course, is the same guy who just a few months ago was loudly promoting CISA, saying we needed it to protect our privacy from hackers. Of course CISA doesn't do that. You know what does? Encryption. The very encryption Schiff now wants to blame.
Not one to be left out, Senator Dianne Feinstein jumped in with a thinly veiled statement in support of her supposedly soon to be released bill, mandating backdoors in encryption:

“We must use all the tools at our disposal to fight back,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The way to prevent attacks like this is to develop good intelligence and always be vigilant.”

"All the tools" likely means including her plans to break encryption.

And, of course, the many in the press are no help at all. There have been reports that a talking head on NPR blamed encryption this morning, while a NY Times reporter, Rukmini Callimachi -- who was the lead reporter on that ridiculous article yesterday insisting that the lack of encryption was evidence of encryption -- is tweeting up a storm claiming that ISIS is now encouraging the use of encryption, even though the questionably-sourced document she links to (which is written in English?!?) isn't actually recommending encryption, but things like Tor and VPNs, which are designed to merely mask your IP address.

26. ISIS is now advising its "brothers" in Belgium to only go online with encryption. (Thanks @MichaelSSmithII) pic.twitter.com/eWb4SD3INi
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) March 22, 2016


It's like she sees encryption in absolutely anything. Meanwhile, as a number of other commenters have pointed out, if "ISIS brothers" actually follow the advice in that document, it will only likely help them get caught, as a sudden and abrupt change in behavior is a pretty good way for law enforcement to make you a suspect. And, really, encouraging people to jump onto tools like Tor that they don't understand, but which they think will keep them safe, almost certainly will lead to ridiculously bad implementations that make it easier to spot what they're doing.

Either way, in the wake of yet another attack we're left with people who don't understand and dislike encryption, rushing to demonize it for no good reason at all.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-attacks.shtml





NSA is So Overwhelmed with Data, it's No Longer Effective, Says Whistleblower

One of the agency's first whistleblowers says the NSA is taking in too much data for it to handle, which can have disastrous -- if not deadly -- consequences.
Zack Whittaker

A former National Security Agency official turned whistleblower has spent almost a decade and a half in civilian life. And he says he's still "pissed" by what he's seen leak in the past two years.

In a lunch meeting hosted by Contrast Security founder Jeff Williams on Wednesday, William Binney, a former NSA official who spent more than three decades at the agency, said the US government's mass surveillance programs have become so engorged with data that they are no longer effective, losing vital intelligence in the fray.

That, he said, can -- and has -- led to terrorist attacks succeeding.

Binney said that an analyst today can run one simple query across the NSA's various databases, only to become immediately overloaded with information. With about four billion people -- around two-thirds of the world's population -- under the NSA and partner agencies' watchful eyes, according to his estimates, there is too much data being collected.

"That's why they couldn't stop the Boston bombing, or the Paris shootings, because the data was all there," said Binney. Because the agency isn't carefully and methodically setting its tools up for smart data collection, that leaves analysts to search for a needle in a haystack.

"The data was all there... the NSA is great at going back over it forensically for years to see what they were doing before that," he said. "But that doesn't stop it."

Binney called this a "bulk data failure" -- in that the NSA programs, leaked by Edward Snowden, are collecting too much for the agency to process. He said the problem runs deeper across law enforcement and other federal agencies, like the FBI, the CIA, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which all have access to NSA intelligence.

Binney left the NSA a month after the September 11 attacks in New York City in 2001, days after controversial counter-terrorism legislation was enacted -- the Patriot Act -- in the wake of the attacks. Binney stands jaded by his experience leaving the shadowy eavesdropping agency, but impassioned for the job he once had. He left after a program he helped develop was scrapped three weeks prior to September 11, replaced by a system he said was more expensive and more intrusive. Snowden said he was inspired by Binney's case, which in part inspired him to leak thousands of classified documents to journalists.

Since then, the NSA has ramped up its intelligence gathering mission to indiscriminately "collect it all."

Binney said the NSA is today not as interested in phone records -- such as who calls whom, when, and for how long. Although the Obama administration calls the program a "critical national security tool," the agency is increasingly looking at the content of communications, as the Snowden disclosures have shown.

Binney said he estimated that a "maximum" of 72 companies were participating in the bulk records collection program -- including Verizon, but said it was a drop in the ocean. He also called PRISM, the clandestine surveillance program that grabs data from nine named Silicon Valley giants, including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, just a "minor part" of the data collection process.

"The Upstream program is where the vast bulk of the information was being collected," said Binney, talking about how the NSA tapped undersea fiber optic cables. With help from its British counterparts at GCHQ, the NSA is able to "buffer" more than 21 petabytes a day.

Binney said the "collect it all" mantra now may be the norm, but it's expensive and ineffective.

"If you have to collect everything, there's an ever increasing need for more and more budget," he said. "That means you can build your empire."

They say you never leave the intelligence community. Once you're a spy, you're always a spy -- it's a job for life, with few exceptions. One of those is blowing the whistle, which he did. Since then, he has spent his retirement lobbying for change and reform in industry and in Congress.

"They're taking away half of the constitution in secret," said Binney. "If they want to change the constitution, there's a way to do that -- and it's in the constitution."

An NSA spokesperson did not immediately comment.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whi...a-ineffective/





Lawmakers Say NSA Plan to Expand Sharing Data ‘Unconstitutional’
Dustin Volz

A Democratic and a Republican congressmen have asked the National Security Agency to halt a reported plan to share more raw intelligence data with other federal agencies, warning the policy shift would be “unconstitutional and dangerous,” according to a letter seen by Reuters.

U.S. Representatives Ted Lieu and Blake Farenthold, who sit on the House Oversight Committee, said in a letter dated March 21 to NSA Director Michael Rogers that the proposal would violate Fourth Amendment privacy protections because the collected data would not require a warrant before being searched for domestic law enforcement purposes.

“If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous,” Lieu, a California Democrat, and Farenthold, a Texas Republican, wrote.

The New York Times reported last month that the proposal would allow the NSA to share intercepted private communications with other U.S. intelligence agencies before applying any privacy protections to the data.

Bob Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Times the Obama administration was finalizing a 21-page draft of the new permissible procedures. The draft has not been made public.

Civil liberties advocates have interpreted the change as potentially allowing NSA foreign intelligence data, which sometimes can include collection of communications to, from or about Americans, to be used for domestic policing purposes.

The NSA has said its analysts scrub out certain personal information before handing any communications data over to other agencies.

“Our country has always drawn a line between our military and intelligence services, and domestic policing and spying,” the lawmakers wrote. “We do not — and should not — use U.S. Army Apache helicopters to quell domestic riots; Navy Seal teams to take down counterfeiting rings; or the NSA to conduct surveillance on domestic street gangs.”

The executive branch is able to change its rules for some surveillance programs without congressional approval. Without a law from Congress, the government relies on executive order 12333, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and later modified by President George W. Bush.

Critics have said the order is overly broad and vague.

The NSA did not respond to a request for comment about the letter.

Congress last year passed a law curtailing certain aspects of the NSA’s surveillance authority, most notably ending its bulk collection of domestic phone records exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKCN0WP28K





Apple Worries that Spy Technology has Been Secretly Added to the Computer Servers it Buys
Julie Bort

Apple's huge success with services like iTunes, the App Store, and iCloud has a dark side.

Apple hasn't been able to build the all the data centers it needs to run these enormous photo storage and internet services on its own.

And it worries that some of the equipment and cloud services it buys has been compromised by vendors who have agreed to put "back door" technology for government spying, according to a report from The Information's Amir Efrati and Steve Nellis.

Apple has also been using cloud services from its rivals, namely Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, to help it run these services. And it reportedly just signed a contract to use Google's cloud services as well. Meanwhile, it has embarked on yet another attempt to build more of its own data centers to handle all of that, called Project McQueen, reports Jordan Novet at VentureBeat, and the project is having a rough go of it, reports The Information.

Still, Apple is motivated to design build its own hardware, the same as Google and Amazon does, and run it on its own for one pretty scary reason: security. It suspects that the servers it has been ordering from others are being captured during shipping, and backdoors added to them that will make them susceptible to being hacked.

At one point, the company even had people taking photographs of the motherboards in the computer servers it was using, then mark down exactly what each chip was, to make sure everything was fully understood.

As one person quoted by The Information says, designing and building its own data center hardware is the easiest way to make sure there's no "extracurricular" activity going on.

Apple has made a big deal about the privacy of its products, and even agreed to battle the FBI in court to prevent a court order forcing Apple to write special software to help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple was concerned that that order would set a precedent that would later have forced it to weaken the built-in security on iPhones and other products. The FBI recently asked to cancel the first hearing in the court fight, as it apparently has found a way to unlock the phone without Apple's help.
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple...it-buys-2016-3





Tor Project Says it Can Quickly Catch Spying Code

The organization has worked for three years to improve its ability to catch fraudulent software
Jeremy Kirk

The Tor Project is fortifying its software so that it can quickly detect if its network is tampered with for surveillance purposes, a top developer for the volunteer project wrote on Monday.

There are worries that Tor could either be technically subverted or subject to court orders, which could force the project to turn over critical information that would undermine its security, similar to the standoff between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Tor developers are now designing the system in such a way that many people can verify if code has been changed and "eliminate single points of failure," wrote Mike Perry, lead developer of the Tor Browser, on Monday.

Over the last few years, Tor has concentrated on enabling users to take its source code and create their "deterministic builds" of Tor that can be verified using the organization's public cryptographic keys and other public copies of the application.

"Even if a government or a criminal obtains our cryptographic keys, our distributed network and its users would be able to detect this fact and report it to us as a security issue," Perry wrote. "From an engineering perspective, our code review and open source development processes make it likely that such a backdoor would be quickly discovered."

Two cryptographic keys would be required for a tampered version of the Tor Browser to be distributed without at least initially tripping security checks: the SSL/TLS key that secures the connection between a user and Tor Project servers plus the key used to sign a software update.

"Right now, two keys are required, and those keys are not accessible by the same people," Perry wrote in a Q&A near the end of the post. "They are also secured in different ways."

Even if an attacker obtained the keys, in theory people would be able to check the software's hash and figure out if it may have been tampered with.

Apple is fighting a federal court's order to create a special version of iOS 9 that would remove security protections on an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino mass shooters.

A ruling against Apple is widely feared by technology companies, as it could give the government wider leverage to order companies to undermine encryption systems in their products.

On Monday, the Justice Department indicated it is investigating an alternative method to crack Farook's iPhone, which if successful would not require Apple's assistance.

Perry wrote that the Tor Project stands "with Apple to defend strong encryption and to oppose government pressure to weaken it. We will never backdoor our software."

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is a network that provides more anonymous browsing across the Internet using a customized Firefox Web browser. The project was started by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory but is now maintained by the nonprofit Tor Project.

Web browsing traffic is encrypted and routed through random proxy servers, making it harder to figure out the true IP address of a computer. Tor is a critical tool for activists and dissidents, as it provides a stronger layer of privacy and anonymity.

But some functions of Tor have also been embraced by cybercriminals, which has prompted interest from law enforcement. Thousands of websites run as Tor "hidden" services, which have a special ".onion" URL and are only accessible using the customized browser.

The Silk Road, the underground market shut down by the FBI in October 2013, is one of the most famous sites to use the hidden services feature.
http://www.csoonline.com/article/304...ying-code.html





A Statement from The Tor Project on Software Integrity and Apple
Mike Perry

The Tor Project exists to provide privacy and anonymity for millions of people, including human rights defenders across the globe whose lives depend on it. The strong encryption built into our software is essential for their safety.

In an age when people have so little control over the information recorded about their lives, we believe that privacy is worth fighting for.

We therefore stand with Apple to defend strong encryption and to oppose government pressure to weaken it. We will never backdoor our software.

Our users face very serious threats. These users include bloggers reporting on drug violence in Latin America; dissidents in China, Russia, and the Middle East; police and military officers who use our software to keep themselves safe on the job; and LGBTI individuals who face persecution nearly everywhere. Even in Western societies, studies demonstrate that intelligence agencies such as the NSA are chilling dissent and silencing political discourse merely through the threat of pervasive surveillance.

For all of our users, their privacy is their security. And for all of them, that privacy depends upon the integrity of our software, and on strong cryptography. Any weakness introduced to help a particular government would inevitably be discovered and could be used against all of our users.

The Tor Project employs several mechanisms to ensure the security and integrity of our software. Our primary product, the Tor Browser, is fully open source. Moreover, anyone can obtain our source code and produce bit-for-bit identical copies of the programs we distribute using Reproducible Builds, eliminating the possibility of single points of compromise or coercion in our software build process. The Tor Browser downloads its software updates anonymously using the Tor network, and update requests contain no identifying information that could be used to deliver targeted malicious updates to specific users. These requests also use HTTPS encryption and pinned HTTPS certificates (a security mechanism that allows HTTPS websites to resist being impersonated by an attacker by specifying exact cryptographic keys for sites). Finally, the updates themselves are also protected by strong cryptography, in the form of package-level cryptographic signatures (the Tor Project signs the update files themselves). This use of multiple independent cryptographic mechanisms and independent keys reduces the risk of single points of failure.

The Tor Project has never received a legal demand to place a backdoor in its programs or source code, nor have we received any requests to hand over cryptographic signing material. This isn't surprising: we've been public about our "no backdoors, ever" stance, we've had clear public support from our friends at EFF and ACLU, and it's well-known that our open source engineering processes and distributed architecture make it hard to add a backdoor quietly.

From an engineering perspective, our code review and open source development processes make it likely that such a backdoor would be quickly discovered. We are also currently accelerating the development of a vulnerability-reporting reward program to encourage external software developers to look for and report any vulnerabilities that affect our primary software products.

The threats that Apple faces to hand over its cryptographic signing keys to the US government (or to sign alternate versions of its software for the US government) are no different than threats of force or compromise that any of our developers or our volunteer network operators may face from any actor, governmental or not. For this reason, regardless of the outcome of the Apple decision, we are exploring further ways to eliminate single points of failure, so that even if a government or a criminal obtains our cryptographic keys, our distributed network and its users would be able to detect this fact and report it to us as a security issue.

Like those at Apple, several of our developers have already stated that they would rather resign than honor any request to introduce a backdoor or vulnerability into our software that could be used to harm our users. We look forward to making an official public statement on this commitment as the situation unfolds. However, since requests for backdoors or cryptographic key material so closely resemble many other forms of security failure, we remain committed to researching and developing engineering solutions to further mitigate these risks, regardless of their origin.

We congratulate Apple on their commitment to the privacy and security of their users, and we admire their efforts to advance the debate over the right to privacy and security for all.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/sta...rity-and-apple





Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism
Jason Koebler

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive.

It’s an undeniably creative use of two services that were designed to give people in the developing world some access to the internet. But now that Angolans are causing headaches for Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, no one is sure what to do about it.

In 2014, Wikimedia partnered with Angolan telecom provider Unitel to offer Wikipedia Zero to its customers. Wikipedia Zero is a somewhat-controversial program that “zero rates” Wikipedia and other Wikimedia properties (such as image and video database Wikimedia Commons) on mobile phones in developing countries, meaning customers don’t have to pay for any data use on the Unitel network, as long as the data use is associated with a Wikimedia domain.

The argument in favor of zero rating is that it gives people access to information who would otherwise not be able to afford it (Unitel normally charges $2.50 for 50mb of mobile data; the median Angolan salary is $720 annually, according to Freedom House). The argument against zero rating is that by providing people with a closed ecosystem, you’re creating a tiered internet system—people who can afford it get the “real internet,” people who can’t are stuck with Facebook, Wikipedia, and a couple other services, and may never get the chance to upgrade to the full, open internet. Facebook’s program, called “Free Basics,” has come under fire—and was banned in India—because some see it as a user grab technique for Facebook, but Wikipedia Zero has gotten less flak because Wikimedia’s a nonprofit organization and its sites often skew to be purely informative.

The controversy usually ends with those two arguments—rarely does anyone ever consider what happens if creative people find loopholes in these zero rated services.

That brings us to what’s going on in Angola. Enterprising Angolans have used two free services—Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero—to share pirated movies, music, television shows, anime, and games on Wikipedia. And no one knows what to do about it.

Because the data is completely free, Angolans are hiding large files in Wikipedia articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia site (Angola is a former Portuguese colony)—sometimes concealing movies in JPEG or PDF files. They’re then using a Facebook group to direct people to those files, creating a robust, completely free file sharing network. A description for a Facebook group with 2,700 members reads: “created with the objective of sharing music, movies, pictures, and ANIMES via Wikimedia.” I was not admitted into the Facebook group and none of its administrators responded to my messages for an interview.

Wikipedia’s old guard, however, are concerned with this development. Wikipedia has very strict copyright guidelines and some editors of the site say they’re tired of playing whack-a-mole.

“I am reporting a possible misuse of Wikimedia projects and Wikipedia Zero to violate copyright,” one editor wrote on a Wiki discussion forum. “I am not sure if users are doing it in bad faith, but they have been warned and keep doing it. I don't think that Wikipedia Zero should stop existing there of course, but maybe something could be done, like preventing them from uploading large files or by previously instructing them in local language about what they can or [can] not do.”

In several cases, wide swaths of IP addresses suspected to belong to Angolans using Wikipedia Zero have been banned from editing stories on Wikipedia, which has had the side effect of blocking Angolans who are using Wikipedia Zero to contribute to Wikipedia in a more traditional way. (In one case, IPs were unblocked because a Portuguese Wikipedia editor decided that an Angolan amateur photographer’s photos were “of immense value.”)

In an email thread on the Wikimedia-L listserv and on Wikipedia talk pages, users in the developed world are trying to find a compromise.

Few seem to agree that actively blocking Angolans from editing Wikipedia articles is a good solution, but other editors say they are sick of manually deleting pirated content from Wikipedia articles and suggested that those using Wikipedia Zero should only be allowed to read Wikipedia, not edit it or upload files.

Adele Vrana, head of the Wikimedia Zero program, told me in a phone interview that the foundation has been aware of the situation since at least last summer, and said that blanket bans or alterations of the Wikipedia Zero are “not on the table.” She wrote in an email to the listserv that the Wikimedia Foundation is as stumped as its editors.

“We would prefer to catch it much earlier or simply prevent it outright (without significant limits being placed on good faith editors). Last fall, we had internal discussions on finding technical solutions for this problem,” she wrote. “We understand that it’s challenging for our existing editing community to handle a sudden influx of new editors. This seems to be a crucial and important conversation for the movement at large to have. I hope we can figure out a way to turn this moment in Angola into an opportunity to learn how to deal with new readers and editors.”

I spoke with experts at three different digital rights groups that have all weighed in on international zero rating in one way or another. None of them were willing to say on the record whether they thought what’s going on with Angola and Wikipedia Zero was a good or a bad thing. But one line of reasoning came up in one of the conversations that made a lot of sense: In many ways, this debate is about what Wikimedia—a community and organization that prides itself on the free transfer of information—fundamentally wants to be.

Vrana told me that Wikimedia is “looking into the legal aspects and understanding local legislation and how copyright might work in Angola,” but Juliet Barbara, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that for the time being Wikimedia will use the community-developed framework to remove copyrighted material.

“With the existing framework, what we have to go on are policies developed by volunteers about the information that appears on Wikipedia,” Barbara said. “Those are pretty specific about the information being knowledge oriented information rather than personal. I’m not saying that’s always going to be how it is, that’s just the restriction we’re working with.”

Many on the listserv are framing Angola’s Wikipedia pirates as bad actors who need to be dealt with in some way so that more responsible editors aren’t punished for their actions. This line of thinking inherently assumes that what Angola’s pirates are doing is bad for Wikipedia and that they must be assimilated to the already regulated norms of Wikipedia’s community. If the developing world wants to use our internet, they must play by our rules, the thinking goes.

But people in developing countries have always had to be more creative than those for whom access to information has always been a given. In Cuba, for instance, movies, music, news, and games are traded on USB drives that are smuggled into the country every week. A 20-year-old developer in Paraguay found a vulnerability in Facebook Messenger that allowed people to use Free Basics to tunnel through to the “real” internet. Legal questions aside (Angola has more lax copyright laws than much of the world), Angola’s pirates are furthering Wikipedia’s mission of spreading information in a real and substantial way.

“When users are faced with a choice of partial access to internet services but not to the entire internet, they might come up with ways to use that partial internet in creative ways that might negatively affect the entity giving it to them,” Josh Levy, advocacy director at Access Now, told me. Facebook Free Basics was criticized widely, but Access Now is one of the few groups that has said Wikipedia Zero is a bad idea because it creates a tiered internet.

While the “misuse” of zero rated systems is a new problem, it closely mirrors ones that have been going on in the wider internet for decades, and the smart money is on allowing Angola’s burgeoning internet community to develop without our interference, even if it means growing pains for Wikipedia. Proposed copyright protection laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have censored sites that hosted pirated content, was widely believed to be one that could have fundamentally ruined the internet; limiting how Angolans (or anyone else using Wikipedia Zero) access the site could have detrimental impacts.

The Wikimedia Foundation, for its part, seems to have good intentions with its wait-and-see approach. The foundation gives no money to Unitel as part of the program; a good solution here, probably, would be cheaper or free access to the entire internet. While Wikipedia editors in Portugual can simply go to another website to download or share pirated files, Angolans don’t really have that option.

“This is the type of thing that reflects larger battles that have gone on about the internet overall,” Charles Duan, a copyright expert at Public Knowledge, told me. “In general, it’s better to allow people more openness and freedom to use Internet tools because you never know what ends up being useful.”

Angolan’s pirates are learning how to organize online, they’re learning how to cover their tracks, they are learning how to direct people toward information and how to hide and share files. Many of these skills are the same ones that would come in handy for a dissident or a protestor or an activist. Considering that Angola has had an autocratic leader in power for more than 35 years, well, those are skills that might come in handy one day.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wik...s-zero-rating/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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