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Old 16-05-18, 06:31 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 19th, ’18

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"I have literally never seen an issue that polls so decisively on one side." – Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii)






































May 19th, 2018




Senate Approves Bipartisan Resolution to Restore FCC Net Neutrality Rules
Brian Fung

The Senate approved a resolution Wednesday that aims to undo a sweeping act of deregulation undertaken last year by the Federal Communications Commission, issuing a rebuke to the Trump administration, which supported the FCC's move.

The resolution targets the FCC's vote in December to repeal its net neutrality rules for Internet providers. If successful, the legislative gambit could restore the agency's regulations and hand a victory to tech companies, activists and consumer advocacy groups.

The congressional effort comes less than a month before the rules are officially expected to expire, on June 11. And the high-profile vote could shine a spotlight on lawmakers running for reelection during a tough midterm season.

“The Senate vote, on the eve of midterms, could have significant political effects,” said Marc Martin, a telecom lawyer at Perkins Coie in Washington. But, he cautioned, it remains unclear how many voters will actually be motivated by net neutrality to go to the polls.

Senate supporters of the FCC rules put forward the legislation under the Congressional Review Act, a law that permits Congress to revisit — and reject — decisions by administrative agencies within a certain window of their approval. The resolution, or CRA for short, passed with the backing of all 49 Democratic senators and three Republicans: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John N. Kennedy of Louisiana and Lisa A. Murkowski of Alaska.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who led the CRA effort, called the vote a victory for democracy and the economy on Wednesday afternoon.

“When we talk about a free and open Internet, we mean it is free from corporate control,” said Markey, who called on the House to take up the measure.

Kennedy, whose vote was closely watched, as he was one of the few Republicans siding with Democrats on the issue, said he was ultimately persuaded to vote yes because more than 1 in 5 Louisianans lack choice in their broadband provider.

“It was a fairly close call, but I'll tell you what it comes down to: the extent to which you trust your cable company,” Kennedy told The Washington Post moments after casting his vote. “If you trust your cable company, you're not going to like my vote today. If you don't trust your cable company, you will.”

Kennedy's vote was highly sought by Democrats in the run-up to the vote. Markey and Kennedy have met and discussed the issue numerous times in recent weeks, according to a Democratic aide, and the two lawmakers' staffs have been in “constant communication.”

Still, it is unclear what fate may await the measure in the House. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged the House to take up the issue quickly.

“House Republicans don't have to choose the same path that the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate chose,” Schumer said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “The American people have spoken. Speaker Ryan should listen.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said lawmakers in that chamber are focused on designing their own legislation to “permanently address this issue,” casting doubt on whether the Senate resolution can advance. And, given the White House's endorsement of the FCC's repeal, analysts say, it is unlikely that Trump will sign the resolution to make it effective. (In one of his first acts of office, Trump last year signed a Republican-backed CRA overturning other FCC rules that established new privacy protections for Internet users.)

The net neutrality regulations, imposed on broadband companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast in 2015, banned the industry from blocking or slowing down websites. The rules also prohibited those companies from offering websites and app developers faster, easier access to Internet users in exchange for extra fees — a tactic that critics described as digital “fast lanes” that could distort online competition in favor of large, wealthy businesses.

Despite surviving a court challenge from broadband industry groups seeking to overturn the rules in 2016, they came under fire again a year later — this time from the agency's new Republican leadership. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai led the charge against the net neutrality regulations, calling them an example of government overreach that discouraged Internet providers from investing in upgrades to their networks.

Pai said his agency's "light-touch" approach would lead to better, faster Internet service for Americans — and more competition.

Last November, a month before he and the FCC's two other Republicans, Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr, voted to repeal the rules, Pai said, “Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the Internet."

On Wednesday, Pai said: "It’s disappointing that Senate Democrats forced this resolution through by a narrow margin. But, ultimately, I'm confident that their effort to reinstate heavy-handed government regulation of the Internet will fail."

The agency's two Democrats at the time, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, voted to keep the rules on the books.

Pai's opponents have said the rules are a necessary consumer protection as the Internet has become more vital to supporting the economic livelihoods of everyday Americans. In surveys, solid majorities say they support the principle of net neutrality, generally, and the FCC's rules, in particular.

“Pai's so-called 'Restore Internet Freedom' order was built on a mountain of false premises — about the law, the state of investment ... and public sentiment,” Tim Karr, a consumer advocate at Free Press, tweeted Tuesday.

In response to Wednesday's vote, AT&T said it was committed to a lasting legislative compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the issue.

“We reiterate our call for actual bipartisan legislation that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protections for all internet users,” the telecom giant said in a statement.

Trade groups representing Internet providers sent a letter to Capitol Hill on Tuesday urging lawmakers to vote against the CRA. Calling on Congress to reject the resolution in favor of developing bipartisan legislation to replace the FCC rules, the groups argued that the CRA does “nothing” to address the data mining and other practices of tech companies who have come under growing scrutiny for their role in facilitating the spread of online misinformation and harassment.

The Internet Association, a trade group backed by Facebook, Uber and others, has said that regulations targeting Silicon Valley on hate speech risks running afoul of the First Amendment. It also said last week that consumers demand strong and enforceable net neutrality rules on Internet providers.

“It is essential that rules be reinstated through any means necessary, including the CRA, courts, or bipartisan legislation,” the group said in a statement.

Tony Romm contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...hat-to-expect/





Dems Increasingly See 'Electoral Dynamite' in Net Neutrality Fight
Ali Breland

Democrats are increasing looking to make their support for net neutrality regulations a campaign issue in the midterm elections.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate is expected to vote on a measure to restore the Obama-era rules repealed by the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission this week.

It’s not clear that Democrats will be able to win the 51st supporter they need to ensure passage, but even if they fail they think the public fight will crystalize their image as the party battling to support an open internet.

And they see it as creating a public record of Republicans voting against net neutrality, which they plan to use in future campaigns.

“This bill does one simple thing: It gets every member of the Senate on the record for or against net neutrality,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Wednesday. “Republicans are going to regret it from a public policy standpoint and a political standpoint."

"I have literally never seen an issue that polls so decisively on one side," Schatz told The Hill in a separate interview on Friday. He encouraged Democrats running to closely consider making it a big issue in their own campaigns.

"Everyone has to run their own race and make their own decisions," he said. "I will say this though: I have seen nothing so far to indicate that this is not electoral dynamite. I think every Democratic candidate ought to look very hard as to what this will do in terms of enthusiasm among millennials and the extent to which it can mobilize infrequent voters."

Public opinion polls about net neutrality vary but consistently show support for the policies which aim to create a level playing field on the internet by preventing broadband companies such as AT&T and Comcast from slowing down or blocking certain types of content. Many polls show overwhelming support for the rules.

Democratic campaign committees say they plan to use the issue to rally support for their candidates in 2018 midterms and potentially future elections as well.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told The Hill that the organization sees the “potential” in net neutrality “to motivate young and progressive voters to turn out.”

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) spokesman David Bergstein expressed a similar sentiment to The Hill.

“This is the kind of issue that directly impacts voters lives and is something that voters are dealing with in a very tangible way,” he said. “That will be unpopular with voters in every state, of every political persuasion.”

A Democratic campaign aide said that committees will likely make net neutrality more of a campaign issue than in past races, partially because of the “heightened focus on internet privacy this election cycle.”

In the wake of data scandals like Facebook’s with Cambridge Analytica, voters are more concerned with internet data security. The aide said this is driving attention to net neutrality, even though it’s a different issue.

The DSCC plans to run new advertising on net neutrality in the coming weeks.

Republicans dismiss the Democratic efforts as “political theater.”

Instead of playing games, they say Democrats should work with them on a bipartisan compromise.

“Unfortunately, manufactured controversy often gets more attention in Washington than real solutions,” Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) wrote in a CNBC op-ed on Wednesday.

Thune has long called for Democrats to come to the negotiating table on the issue. Democrats say they haven’t seen an option presented by Republicans that would enforce net neutrality rules in a strong enough manner to protect consumers.

Thune and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, whose plan to scrap net neutrality rules is set to go into effect on June 11, say they oppose the rules because they impose unnecessary regulation on broadband companies.

They fear that such rules will stifle investment in broadband.

Pro-net neutrality activists are also trying to use the threat of politics to pressure Republicans. Fight for the Future, for example, plans to track members’ votes with a legislative scorecard and target those who don’t try to save the rules.

The group has already launched a series of billboards in the districts of some lawmakers who are opposed to net neutrality provisions.

Fight for the Future says its aims are singularly focused on net neutrality, and not politics, but they believe that politicians who stand against the rules will take a political hit.

“Lawmakers who betray their constituents by voting to let net neutrality die, despite overwhelming public outcry, will inevitably pay for it at the polls,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future. “But that’s not the goal. The goal is restoring open internet protections for all, to ensure basic rights needed for a healthy democracy."
http://thehill.com/policy/technology...utrality-fight





Documents show Ajit Pai met with AT&T execs right after the company started paying Michael Cohen. Now Congress needs to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality repeal and investigate.

TL;DR: Ajit Pai has denied hearing from Michael Cohen, but FOIAed documents show he met with AT&T execs a month after Cohen began receiving payments from the company. Call your lawmakers before they vote on the net neutrality CRA tomorrow and demand they overturn the FCC’s corrupt net neutrality repeal.

This past week, AT&T apologized for for its “serious misjudgment” in hiring U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen to provide “insights” into how the new administration would handle issues like net neutrality and AT&T’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

Although Pai denied hearing from Cohen, new scheduling documents obtained through FOIA by corruption watchdog American Oversight show the Chairman met with with top AT&T executives at a private dinner in Barcelona a month after the company began paying Cohen. One of the top AT&T representatives present at this meeting was noted net neutrality enemy Bob Quinn, who hired Cohen and has since stepped down over the controversy.

These revelations come on the tail of one of the most problem-ridden and undemocratic consultations in the FCC’s history. Throughout the comment period, the agency refused to address problems with fake comments, alleged DDoS attacks that prevented Internet users from commenting, and failed to release of thousands of important consumer complaints over net neutrality violations until the last minute.

At this point, members of Congress must vote to support the CRA and reverse the agency’s disastrous net neutrality repeal when the resolution hits the Senate floor in just over 24 hours. Then they need to hold a public hearing to investigate what went on between AT&T, Cohen, and the FCC, and give the public the answers they deserve.
https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/d...n-6d5f0eac0557





Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi EasyMesh Certification Aims to Standardize Mesh Networks

The new certification program will ensure that wireless mesh network routers, gateways, and access points from different manufacturers will all work together.
Michael Brown

The Wi-Fi Certified EasyMesh program that the Wi-Fi Alliance announced today promises to do for mesh networks what the Alliance has long done for wireless networking gear in general: Assure consumers that they can build out wireless home networks without worrying if one brand of device will be compatible with another.

The emergence of mesh networking somewhat undermined that effort, because every manufacturer pursued its own path. Wi-Fi is still Wi-Fi, so you don’t need to worry that your smartphone, or media streamer, or home security camera will connect to your wireless router, regardless of brand. But if you buy a Linksys Velop router today, for example, you can buy only Linksys Velop access points if you want to expand your network to cover more areas of your home later.

EasyMesh promises to bring to mesh networks the same interoperability assurances that conventional routers have long offered. If Linksys decides to make its Velop product line EasyMesh compatible, and Netgear does the same, for example, you’ll be able to use Netgear’s Orbi Outdoor access point with a Linksys Velop router. That’s important, because to date, Netgear is the only manufacturer offering an outdoor mesh access point—but it only works with Netgear’s Orbi-series routers.

Wi-Fi EasyMesh has two basic components: Agents that monitor and report network and client performance to a Controller operating on one device in the network. The Controller manages network traffic, assigning clients to access points to maximum network performance and efficiency.

“Interoperability has been core to Wi-Fi’s success,” said Wi-Fi Alliance marketing VP Kevin Robinson in an embargoed interview last week. “A standardized approach enables great economies of scale.” Robinson explained that EasyMesh has two main components: The controller and the agent. “The controller resides in one device on the network—in either a gateway or an access point—where it controls and manages all the devices on the network and how they connect to each other. Agents are in the mesh access points, and they organize with each other and provide information to the controller about how the network is operating.”

If one access point gets overloaded, or a client device moves from one location to another where a different access point will be able to service it faster or more efficiently, the controller will seamlessly move that client to another AP. EasyMesh supports both wired and wireless data backhaul, and backhaul can be either shared or dedicated, in which one Wi-Fi link is used solely for that purpose (both the Linksys Velop and the Netgear Orbi mesh routers support the latter).

Robinson said home-networking vendors will be able to comply with EasyMesh and still differentiate their products with unique features or performance. “One company might develop a lead in how it optimizes and manages the network,” he said. “That feature might reside in the controller, but it will work with the agents in other companies’ access points.”

Robinson also said that EasyMesh is implemented in software, “…so there should be no need for new hardware.” But he added that it is up to each vendor to decide about adding EasyMesh to existing products.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3272...-networks.html





All Major U.S. Carriers Give Your Real-Time Location Info to Third Parties

The tech is provided by LocationSmart and seamlessly works in the background.
Joe Maring

It's hard to believe that much of anything is truly private these days. Between smartphones, the internet, and everything else, so much of our data and lives are on full display for various businesses to see. Recently, it was discovered that all four of the major United States carriers provide your real-time location info to third-parties thanks to a loophole in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

How'd this matter come to light? Between 2014 and 2017, former sheriff Cory Hutcheson used a service called "Securus" to track the location of a judge and members of Missouri's Highway Patrol around 11 different times. Securus is a service that allows police officers to facilitate calls made to inmates, but it can also be used to pinpoint the location of a cell phone in a matter of seconds.

Securus obtains this location info from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, but according to ZDNet, it does so through a middle-man called "LocationSmart."

LocationSmart is based out of California, and after it obtains this data from carriers, sells it to companies like Securus. The location data LocationSmart gets is based on tower information it gets from carriers, and while this process is slower than using GPS, it works in the background without your knowledge and has little-to-no impact on battery life. LocationSmart touts it can pinpoint someone's real-time location in just 15 seconds.

In other words, carriers are letting LocationSmart have your real-time location information so it can then share it with other third-parties. Is any of this even legal?

Unfortunately, it sure is.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents carriers from sharing user location to the United States government, but there aren't any restrictions in place on other companies. As noted by Kevin Bankston, the Director of New America's Open Technology Institute, this is "one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law."

If you're looking for a silver lining, LocationSmart says that companies that use its services must get "explicit consent" from users before obtaining their location – whether it be through an app or text. However, there are other instances where it's implied that a user wants their location shared and this step can be avoided (such as when someone calls a towing company to pick up their car).

The FCC's been asked to investigate the matter by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, but it remains to be seen what actions (if any) will be taken.
https://www.androidcentral.com/all-m...-third-parties





Hacker Breaches Securus, the Company That Helps Cops Track Phones Across the US

A hacker has provided Motherboard with the login details for a company that buys phone location data from major telecom companies and then sells it to law enforcement.
Joseph Cox

A hacker has broken into the servers of Securus, a company that allows law enforcement to easily track nearly any phone across the country, and which a US Senator has exhorted federal authorities to investigate. The hacker has provided some of the stolen data to Motherboard, including usernames and poorly secured passwords for thousands of Securus’ law enforcement customers.

Although it’s not clear how many of these customers are using Securus’s phone geolocation service, the news still signals the incredibly lax security of a company that is granting law enforcement exceptional power to surveill individuals.

“Location aggregators are—from the point of view of adversarial intelligence agencies—one of the juiciest hacking targets imaginable,” Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, told Motherboard in an online chat.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Securus obtains phone location data from major telcos, such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and then makes this available to its customers. The system by which Securus obtains the data is typically used by marketers, but Securus provides a product for law enforcement to track phones in the US nationwide with little legal oversight, the report adds. In one case, a former sheriff of Mississippi County, Mo., used the Securus service to track other law enforcement official’s phones, according to court records.

The hacker who breached Securus provided Motherboard with several internal company files. A spreadsheet allegedly from a database marked “police” includes over 2,800 usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, and hashed passwords and security questions of Securus users, stretching from 2011 up to this year. A hash is a cryptographic representation of a piece of data, meaning a company doesn’t need to store the password itself. But the hashes themselves were created using the notoriously weak MD5 algorithm, meaning attackers could learn a user’s real password in many cases. Indeed, some of the passwords have seemingly been cracked and included in the spreadsheet. It is not immediately clear if the hacker that provided the data to Motherboard cracked these alleged passwords or if Securus stored them this way itself.

Most of the users in the spreadsheet are from US government bodies, including sheriff departments, local counties, and city law enforcement. Impacted cities include Minneapolis, Phoenix, Indianapolis, and many others. The data also includes Securus staff members, as well as users with personal email addresses that aren’t explicitly linked to a particular government department.

Motherboard verified the data by using Securus’ website’s forgotten password feature. When typing in a gibberish email address, the site returned an error. But when presented with a username and email address from the hacked data, the site progressed to the next stage of the password reset process, confirming that those credentials are stored within Securus’ systems. Every set of credentials Motherboard tested was successful.

It is not totally clear how many of these users have access to Securus’ phone location service. But other parts of the data indicate that many of the users are likely to be working in prisons: some of the users’ roles are marked as “jail administrator,” “jail captain,” and “deputy warden.” On its website, Securus markets its “Location Based Services” product to prisons so staff can know where inmates are calling.

“Track mobile devices even when GPS is turned off,” the Securus website reads. “Call detail records providing call origination and call termination geo-location data,” it adds. This is the same product that is being abused by some law enforcement officials.

“Securus was enabling tracking without a warrant and allowing users of their system to claim authority to do so without checking it. That’s a problem,” Andrew Crocker, staff attorney at campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Motherboard in a phone call. “A concern with any system is if it’s not limited to authorized users who have the authority to engage in surveillance, then it’s doubly problematic.” In other words, a hacker gaining access to a list of Securus users and their login details could be particularly dangerous.

The hacker explained to Motherboard how they allegedly obtained the data, and from that account, it appears the hack was relatively simple. And a hack of Securus was also the basis for a previous 2015 investigation from The Intercept, which included 70 million prisoner phone calls.

But this latest data breach is not the only sign that Securus is careless with sensitive information. Rid pointed Motherboard to a Securus user manual available online. One part shows a map and user interface for a Securus product, but instead of populating the screen with fake data for demonstration purposes, the guide appears to include the real name, address, and phone number of a specific woman. (Motherboard confirmed the details with those in online databases, as well as a media report that mentions the woman).

“The PII [personally identifying information] exposure in the (still) public user guide raises on question: does Securus have the culture and the procedures in place to protect sensitive PII? The answer appears to be no,” Rid told Motherboard.

Senator Ron Wyden, who sent letters to major telcos and the FCC pushing for more answers around Securus before the New York Times’ piece, told Motherboard in a statement that “If this account is true, it demonstrates, yet again, that Securus is failing cybersecurity 101, in total disregard for the privacy of the Americans whose communications and private data it should be protecting. This incident is further evidence that the wireless carriers and FCC need to step up and do much more to ensure that Americans’ location information and other personal information isn’t sold to companies like Securus that have demonstrated that they simply don’t care about cybersecurity.”

Securus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jason Koebler contributed reporting.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...company-hacked





FCC Investigating LocationSmart Over Phone-Tracking Flaw

The company that boasts it can find any phone in the US lands on the FCC's radar after a report its website exposed millions of Americans.
Alfred Ng

LocationSmart boasted that it could find any phone in the US. Now the company is finding itself under investigation.

The Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into the California-based company, a day after a security researcher from Carnegie Mellon University exposed a vulnerability on LocationSmart's website.

The cell phone tracking firm offered a free demonstration on its website, where you could track any phone, as long as you had consent from the phone's owner. The flaw, which LocationSmart said it's fixed, would have allowed anyone to use the tracking feature, without needing prior consent.

Robert Xiao said he discovered the flaw within 15 minutes of looking at LocationSmart's website, calling it an "elementary" exploit.

The bug has prompted an investigation from the FCC, the agency said on Friday. An FCC spokesman said LocationSmart's case was being handled by its Enforcement Bureau.

LocationSmart is able to obtain accurate geolocation data on nearly any phone in the US because it buys that data from major US wireless carriers, including T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Though wireless carriers aren't allowed to provide location data to the government, they can sell that data to businesses.

Since The New York Times revealed that Securus, an inmate call tracking service, had offered the same tracking service last week, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, called for the FCC and major wireless carriers to investigate these companies.

On Friday, Wyden praised the investigation, but requested the FCC to expand its look beyond LocationSmart.

"The negligent attitude toward Americans' security and privacy by wireless carriers and intermediaries puts every American at risk," Wyden said. "I urge the FCC expand the scope of this investigation, and to more broadly probe the practice of third parties buying real-time location data on Americans."

He is also calling for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to recuse himself from the investigation, because Pai was a former attorney for Securus.

In a statement provided on Friday, LocationSmart said that it was investigating the vulnerability to ensure that no customer information was stolen.

"LocationSmart is continuing its efforts to verify that not a single subscriber's location was accessed without their consent and that no other vulnerabilities exist," said Brenda Schafer, LocationSmart's vice president of product and marketing.
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-invest...tracking-flaw/





UK Adults may Soon have to Buy “Porn Passes” from Corner Shops to Prove their Age Online
Matthew Hughes

Later this year, new UK legislation will require visitors to adult websites to prove that they’re over the legal age of 18. The logistics of how this will work, however, are proving trickier than thought.

It’s likely most porn sites will verify user ages through credit cards. After all, in the UK at least, you need to be over the age of 18 in order to access any kind of credit.

The problem is, around 40-percent of Brits don’t hold a credit card. And that says nothing about the 1.6 million working adults who are “unbanked” — meaning they lack access to mainstream banking services.

To get around this, the government department responsible for enforcing this law, the BBFC, has proposed another method of age verification that’ll see adults buy “porn passes” from high-street stores.

Here’s how it’ll work: you’ll go to your local newsagents and, along with the usual basket of bread and milk, you’ll ask for a “porn pass.”

If you’re particularly fresh-faced, the cashier may ask you to prove your identity, either with a driving license or a passport.

When they’re satisfied you’re over the age of 18, they’ll give you a sixteen-digit code, which you can use online to prove your age on X-rated websites. According to The Telegraph, these passes will cost around £10 (roughly $14).

Crucially, you can do this without revealing any details about yourself to the website — like your name, age, address, or passport details. While the “porn passes” will suit those with limited access to financial services, they’ll almost certainly be used by those wary of divulging too much information about themselves.

That’s something that’s understandable. It’s never pretty when adult websites leak user data. When hackers dumped Ashley Madison’s database to the public in 2015, the aftermath included break-ups and suicides. It was ugly.

It’s also believed they’ll have a use outside of porn. The Telegraph reports that the passes will also be used to buy alcohol and knives online — the sales of both being tightly restricted in the UK.

The new age-verification laws were due to be implemented in April, but have since been delayed. They’re expected to go into force at the end of the year.
https://thenextweb.com/uk/2018/05/13...ir-age-online/





Police Realizing That SESTA/FOSTA Made Their Jobs Harder; Sex Traffickers Realizing It's Made Their Job Easier
Mike Masnick

For many months in the discussion over FOSTA/SESTA, some of us tried to explain how problematic the bills were. Much of the focus of those discussions were about the negative impact it would have on free speech on the internet, as the way the bill was drafted would encourage greater censorship and more speech-chilling lawsuits. But as we heard from more and more people, we also realized just how incredibly damaging the bill was going to be to those it was ostensibly designed to protect. Beyond the fact that it was passed based on completely fictional claims about the size of the problem, those who actually were victims of sex trafficking began explaining -- in fairly stark terms -- how SESTA/FOSTA would put them in greater danger and almost certainly lead to deaths.

While supporters of the bill seem to insist that because the bill puts legal liability on platforms that are used for sex trafficking that it will magically make sex trafficking disappear, the reality is more complex. While we can argue about Backpage's complicity in what happened on its platform, for years it was used as a tool to protect sex workers, giving them more control over their lives and who they worked with. As we've pointed in the past, a recent study found that Craigslist, back when it had its "erotic services" section, appeared to decrease female homicide rates by an astounding 17.4%. Backpage picked up the slack when Craigslist was bullied into closing that section, but now it's gone too.

And stories are already coming in about the damage done. A recent episode of the Reply All podcast all about SESTA/FOSTA had some scary stats at the end, noting that there are already many stories of sex workers who have gone missing or been killed since the bill became law.

Motherboard has a story with much more details, noting that the passing of SESTA/FOSTA has emboldened pimps to take advantage of more victims of sex trafficking. As many sex workers had explained, Backpage actually allowed them to have more control themselves, and helped them get away from pimps. But without Backpage?

“Pimps seem to be coming out of the woodwork since this all happened,” Laura LeMoon, a sex trafficking survivor, writer, and co-founder and director of harm reduction nonprofit Safe Night Access Project Seattle, told me in an email. “They’re taking advantage of the situation sex workers are in. This is why I say FOSTA/SESTA have actually increased trafficking. I’ve had pimps contacting me. They’re leeches. They make money off of [sex workers’] misfortune.”

The Verge also has an excellent deep dive into how SESTA/FOSTA has put more women's lives at risk.

What about the claims that SESTA/FOSTA would help law enforcement (many of whom pushed for the law)? Yeah, about that: police are now realizing that it's more difficult for them to find sex traffickers without Backpage. I mean, it's not like people were explaining this a decade ago.

Meanwhile, given how many SETSA/FOSTA supporters insisted that the bill was necessary to prevent the sex trafficking scourge, you'd think that sex trafficking prosecutions and arrests would show an upswing, right? Instead, we see things like how a special court in Delaware set up specifically to focus on dealing with sex trafficking cases is shutting down due to the lack of actual sex trafficking victims. The reason the court was shut down according to the judge who shut it down?

... there was "little evidence to suggest the defendants of this court are the subjects" of sex-trafficking enterprises.

So, I'm still wondering why all of the supporters of SESTA/FOSTA seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth in the last couple months as all of this has happened. Can one of them step forward and actually defend what they've done as the evidence is showing they're literally getting people killed and making it more difficult to stop sex trafficking?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...b-easier.shtml





Police Seize Servers of Bulletproof Provider Known For Hosting Malware Ops
Catalin Cimpanu

Dutch police have seized ten servers belonging to a bulletproof hosting provider known for harboring child pornography sites and command and control servers for DDoS botnets, cyber-espionage, malvertising, spam, and malware operations.

The name of the hosting provider is MaxiDed, a service that has operated since late 2008, but which became increasingly more aggressive with its marketing in the last two years when its ads became a common occurrence on cybercrime forums.

According to an archived version of the site, the company offered dedicated servers, VPS, VPN, and server colocation services, claiming to host nearly 2,500 servers across 30 hosting providers in 82 countries.

MaxiDed was an infamous bulletproof hosting provider

MaxiDed advertised itself as a bulletproof hosting provider, a term used to describe hosting companies that ignore reports of criminal activity or copyright infringement happening on their servers.

Such services have been widely available in recent years, and authorities have rarely intervened, mainly because the hosting providers shield themselves from any responsibility behind bulky and wide-ranging terms of service.

Across the years, MaxiDed established itself as a go-to solution for many cybercrime groups like Carbanak, many nation-state cyber-espionage operations, according, but also hosted command and control servers for Mirai DDoS botnets, the AdGholas malvertising campaign, and many credit card fraud operations, according to Trend Micro and SpoofIt reports.

Furthermore, in a press release today, Dutch Police said MaxiDed was also providing hosting service to a file-sharing site named DepFile that was being used for sharing child pornography content.

Police said its investigation revealed that MaxiDed employees were aware that their servers were used to share child pornography and host malware, but did nothing about it.

Police seize ten servers and make two arrests

Dutch authorities seized ten MaxiDed servers located in the Netherlands, while Thai police arrested a 29-year-old at a holiday resort in the province of Chumphon, south of Bangkok.

Investigators said the 29-year-old man, a Moldavian national, was the owner of not only MaxiDed but also the file-sharing service through which child pornography content was being shared.

Bulgarian police arrested a second man, a 37-year-old Moldavian national, suspected of being one of the MaxiDed administrators.

Seized data was shared with Europol

Since earlier today, the MaxiDed website now redirects to a now-classic Dutch police takedown page that reads: "The police investigation focuses on the criminal activities of MaxiDed and the people behind MaxiDed. MaxiDed uses the Dutch (digital) infrastructure to provide services to criminals by renting out servers from which criminal activities can be deployed such as sending spam messages and causing DDOS attacks."

Dutch officials said they've shared the data seized from the ten MaxiDed servers with Europol, which will distribute to law enforcement agencies in other countries for further investigations.

Andrei Barysevich, Director of Advanced Collection at Recorded Future, claims MaxiDed's reputation suffered in recent years.

"They did not have a stellar reputation," he said,"[they were] known for leaking private information in case of disputes."

Many websites with hosting provider reviews gave the service low ratings and described it as a scam, one of the reasons why the service recently switched its main domain from maxided.com to maxided.net.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...g-malware-ops/





Fourth Circuit Rules That Suspicionless Forensic Searches of Electronic Devices at the Border Are Unconstitutional
Sophia Cope

In a victory for privacy rights at the border, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today ruled that forensic searches of electronic devices carried out by border agents without any suspicion that the traveler has committed a crime violate the U.S. Constitution.

The ruling in U.S. v. Kolsuz is the first federal appellate case after the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Riley v. California (2014) to hold that certain border device searches require individualized suspicion that the traveler is involved in criminal wrongdoing. Two other federal appellate opinions this year—from the Fifth Circuit and Eleventh Circuit—included strong analyses by judges who similarly questioned suspicionless border device searches.

EFF filed an amicus brief in Kolsuz arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley supports the conclusion that border agents need a probable cause warrant before searching electronic devices—whether manually or with forensic software—because of the unprecedented and significant privacy interests travelers have in their digital data. In Riley, a case that involved manual searches, the Supreme Court followed similar reasoning and held that police must obtain a warrant to search the cell phone of an arrestee.

As Hamza Kolsuz prepared to board a flight to Turkey at Washington Dulles International Airport, border agents searched his luggage and found that he was attempting to export firearms parts without a U.S. license. Border agents then confiscated his iPhone and manually searched it. They subsequently arrested Kolsuz and conducted a second search of his iPhone, this time using a forensic tool by the company Cellebrite. This forensic search produced “an 896-page report that included Kolsuz’s personal contact lists, emails, messenger conversations, photographs, videos, calendar, web browsing history, and call logs, along with a history of Kolsuz’s physical location down to precise GPS coordinates,” according to the court’s opinion.

The Fourth Circuit’s ruling applies only to forensic, not manual, searches of electronic devices at the border because Kolsuz only challenged the use of the evidence obtained from the forensic search of his cell phone in his prosecution. “We have no occasion here to consider whether Riley calls into question the permissibility of suspicionless manual searches of digital devices at the border,” the court said.

While we're heartened that the Fourth Circuit left open the possibility that manual searches may also require individualized suspicion, we disagree with the court’s unsupported statement that “the distinction between manual and forensic searches is a perfectly manageable one,” given that manual searches of electronic devices enable government agents to access virtually the same personal information as forensic searches.

EFF has long argued that border agents need a warrant from a judge, based on probable cause of criminality, to conduct electronic device searches of any kind. The Supreme Court’s pre-Riley case law, however, permits warrantless and suspicionless “routine” searches of items like luggage that travelers carry across the border, a rule known as the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Based on these pre-Riley cases, the government claims it has the power to search and confiscate travelers’ cell phones, tablets, and laptops at airports and border crossings for no reason or any reason, and without judicial oversight.

The Kolsuz court recognized the unique privacy interests that travelers have in their digital data and thus held, “particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley,” that forensic border device searches are “non-routine” searches that require “some form of individualized suspicion.” The Fourth Circuit quoted Supreme Court precedent and concluded that forensic border device searches are “highly intrusive” searches that infringe the “dignity and privacy interests” of individuals. The court noted, “The key to Riley’s reasoning is its express refusal to treat [cell] phones as just another form of container….”

Importantly, the Fourth Circuit also left open the possibility that forensic border device searches may require the highest standard of individualized suspicion under the Fourth Amendment: “What precisely that standard should be—whether reasonable suspicion is enough… or whether there must be a warrant based on probable cause… is a question we need not resolve.”

Unfortunately for Kolsuz, the Fourth Circuit did not suppress the 896-page report that resulted from the warrantless forensic search of his cell phone. The court held that the border agents reasonably relied upon existing case law “allowing warrantless border searches of digital devices that are based on at least reasonable suspicion,” and that the firearms parts that were found in his luggage supported reasonable suspicion that his cell phone contained evidence that Kolsuz was involved in “ongoing efforts to export contraband illegally.”

While we would have liked to see the Fourth Circuit go further by expressly requiring a warrant for all border device searches, we’re optimistic that we can win such a ruling in our civil case with ACLU against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Alasaad v. Nielsen, challenging warrantless border searches of electronic devices.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ces-border-are





Popular Encrypted Email Standards are Unsafe - European Researchers

European researchers have found that the popular PGP and S/MIME email encryption standards are vulnerable to being hacked, leading them to urge people using them to disable and uninstall them immediately.

University researchers from Muenster and Bochum in Germany, and Leuven in Belgium, discovered the flaws in the encryption methods that can be used with popular email applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail.

“There are currently no reliable fixes for the vulnerability,” lead researcher Sebastian Schinzel, professor of applied cryptography at the Muenster University of Applied Sciences, said in a tweet on Monday.

“If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in your email client for now.” The team will unveil their findings in full on Tuesday.

The vulnerabilities in PGP and S/MIME standards pose an “immediate risk” to email communication including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S. digital rights group.

It recommended that users switch for the time being to secure messaging app Signal for sensitive communications.

Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) put out a statement saying there were risks that attackers could secure access to emails in plain text once the recipient had decrypted them.

It added, however, that it considered the encryption standards themselves to be safe if correctly implemented and configured.

“Securely encrypted email remains an important and suitable means of increasing information security,” it said in a statement, adding that the flaws which have been discovered can be remedied through patches and proper use.

The use of PGP - short for Pretty Good Privacy - for secure communications has been advocated, among others, by Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on pervasive electronic surveillance at the U.S. National Security Agency before fleeing to Russia.

PGP, for example, works using an algorithm to generate a ‘hash’, or mathematical summary, of a user’s name and other information. This is then encrypted with the sender’s private ‘key’ and decrypted by the receiver using a separate public key.

To exploit the weakness, a hacker would need to have access to an email server or the mailbox of a recipient. In addition the mails would need to be in HTML format and have active links to external content to be vulnerable, the BSI said.

It advised users to disable the use of active content, such as HTML code and the loading of external content, and to secure their email servers against external access.

Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-cy...-idUKKCN1IF1LL





The FBI Supposedly Has 7,775 Un-hackable Phones. We’re Asking for Proof
Michael Rosenbloom

EFF sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI and other Department of Justice agencies to get some straight answers about approximately 7,800 supposedly un-hackable cellphones.

Law enforcement agencies say they have a problem–criminals all use encrypted devices, making those devices inaccessible to law enforcement. They call this the “Going Dark” problem, saying that modern encryption is so good that all the criminals in the world are “going dark” to government surveillance. To stop this, these agencies are clamoring for laws that would mandate backdoors be placed in encryption algorithms that allow for law enforcement access.

EFF is very concerned about these efforts to introduce backdoors into encryption, because as we’ve said, there’s no such thing as a safe backdoor. Any backdoor in encryption can be just as easily used by bad actors as by law enforcement if it gets leaked, and once a hard-coded backdoor is discovered, it often can’t be closed.

Nevertheless, law enforcement agencies leaders continue to argue that they will be helpless without these backdoors. In particular, FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly claimed that the FBI failed to break the encryption of 7,775 mobile devices during the 2017 fiscal year.

This number sure is interesting, since we know that the FBI was able to get into the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter without forcing Apple to help them do it, and we know that companies like Cellebrite and Grayshift sell access to iPhones for a few thousand dollars each. If these companies are actively providing their products to law enforcement, and have been doing so for years, where does Wray find 7,775 devices the FBI cannot hack?

To find out, we have submitted a FOIA request to the FBI, as well as the Offices of the Inspector General and Information Policy at DoJ. Among other things, we are asking the FBI to tell the public how they arrived at that 7,775 devices figure, when and how the FBI discovered that some outside entity was capable of hacking the San Bernardino iPhone, and what the FBI was telling Congress about its capabilities to hack into cellphones.

When law enforcement argues for legally mandating encryption backdoors into our devices, and justifies that argument by claiming they can’t get in any other way, it’s important for legislators and the public to know whether that justification is actually true.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...e-asking-proof





Congress' Latest Move to Extend Copyright Protection Is Misguided

Once again, Congress is poised to give away content in the public domain to special interests.
Lawrence Lessig

Almost exactly 20 years ago, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of existing copyrights by 20 years. The Act was the 11th extension in the prior 40 years, timed perfectly to assure that certain famous works, including Mickey Mouse, would not pass into the public domain.

Immediately after the law came into force, a digital publisher of public domain works, Eric Eldred, filed a lawsuit challenging the act. The Constitution gives Congress the power to secure copyrights “for limited times,” for the express purpose of “promot[ing] Progress.” Extending the copyright of an existing work, Eldred argued, could not promote anything — the work already exists. And repeated extensions of existing terms cannot be what the framers meant by “limited times.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the challenge. I was lead counsel for the plaintiff. And in addition to our brief, a scad of creators who build upon the public domain, along with librarians, archivists, and economists, filed briefs in support of Eldred; Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman agreed to sign the economists' brief only if the words "no brainer" were included.

Yet the court rejected our challenge to the law. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not convinced that Congress was addicted to term extensions. The most recent extension, the Court remarked, simply harmonized the term internationally. After the 1998 extension, there was no reason, the Court believed, to think that Congress would need to extend terms anymore. After all, with a term of 95 years for work created before 1976, and life of the author plus 70 years for work beginning in 1976, how much more time could possibly be needed?

Twenty years later, the fight for term extension has begun anew. Buried in an otherwise harmless act, passed by the House and now being considered in the Senate, this new bill purports to create a new digital performance right—basically the right to control copies of recordings on any digital platform (ever hear of the internet?)—for musical recordings made before 1972. These recordings would now have a new right, protected until 2067, which, for some, means a total term of protection of 144 years. The beneficiaries of this monopoly need do nothing to get the benefit of this gift. They don’t have to make the work available. Nor do they have to register their claims in advance.

That this statute has nothing to do with the constitutional purpose of “promot[ing] Progress” is clear from its very title. The “Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society Act” (or CLASSICS) is as blatant a gift without any public return as is conceivable. And it's not just a gift through cash; it's a gift through a monopoly regulation of speech. Archives with recordings of music from the 1930s or 1940s would now have to clear permission before streaming their musical content even if the underlying work was in the public domain.

Yet there is no registry of these owners anywhere. And while massive digital suppliers, such as Apple Music and Spotify, could probably afford to carry the burden, no public or non-profit website could even begin to bear the cost of assuring they were not committing a felony. The act doesn’t harmonize American law with international law. Indeed, it creates more disharmony. No other jurisdiction creates a similar right anywhere. The act is simply a gift, paid for by further weakening the ability of archivists to keep our culture accessible. That’s why more than 40 professors of intellectual property of all political stripes signed a letter this week asking Congress to reject the CLASSICS Act.

When a creative work is a century old, Congress should let it pass into the public domain. But at the very least, if Congress is so eager to give gifts to famous creators, it should require that the beneficiary at least record their claim in advance, in a public and searchable archive, so it is simple to know which rights must be cleared and how.

Either way, it is finally clear that the Supreme Court’s prediction that the copyright owners would be satisfied with the copyright protection provided by the Sonny Bono Act turns out not to be true. If this bill passes, we can expect other copyright owners to complain about the “unfairness” in the gift given to the creators of legacy recordings. And in the clamber to harmonize with this 144-year term, a swamp of extensions is certainly on the way.

No doubt, the beneficiaries of these gifts will be grateful to Congress, and show their gratitude in the campaign-finance-ways of Washington. Equally without doubt, this is not what a system meant to “promote the Progress of Science” was ever intended to be.
https://www.wired.com/story/congress...-is-misguided/





The Brazen Bootlegging of a Multibillion-Dollar Sports Network
Tariq Panja

What do you do when your multibillion dollar sports network has been stolen?

Executives at Qatar’s beIN Sports pondered that question last week as they stared at a bank of screens inside their sprawling headquarters here. On the night of May 2, the network’s main channel, which functions as the ESPN of the Middle East, televised the deciding game of the Champions League semifinal between A.S. Roma and Liverpool.

They watched the beIN Sports feed as Liverpool scored to take an early lead. Then they watched the same play 10 seconds later on live coverage from beoutQ, a bootlegging operation seemingly based in Saudi Arabia, whose roots lie in the bitter political dispute between Qatar and a coalition of countries led by its largest neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

That night, like every night for the past few months, 10 beoutQ channels were live, almost all of them screening the ostensibly exclusive and very expensive content of beIN, which owns some of the most valuable sports rights in France, Spain and Turkey.

The coalition countries have subjected Qatar to a punishing blockade over the past year. Those countries last year accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and criticized its relationship with Iran, an ally of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. They enacted an embargo, cut off diplomatic ties and set up the blockade of the energy-rich emirate, closing Qatar’s access to many of the region’s ports and much of its airspace. Qatar has denied the allegations and has claimed it has assisted the United States in its war on terrorism.

Now, one month before the start of the World Cup, the world’s most-watched sporting event and beIN’s signature property, the audacious piracy operation is positioned to illicitly deliver the tournament’s 64 games to much of the Middle East. Qatar, despite abundant resources, has been powerless to stop it.

Decoder boxes embossed with the beoutQ logo have for months been available across Saudi Arabia and are now for sale in other Arab-speaking countries. A one-year subscription costs $100. A Bangladeshi worker reached by phone at Sharif Electronics in Jeddah this week said his shop has been selling the boxes for three months. “Many people buy them,” he said.

As the Champions League semifinal unfolded last week, Tom Keaveny, beIN’s managing director for the Middle East who has worked in television for three decades, gathered with a half-dozen beIN engineers in a small room known as “the lab” with a mandate: Disrupt beoutQ.

So far they have not been successful.

Keaveny said beoutQ’s operation “takes industrial scale knowledge and ability and multimillion dollar funding.”

“This isn’t someone in their bedroom,” he said.

BeoutQ’s website claims its backers are a Colombian and Cuban consortium. Officials at beIN said they had spent more than $200,000 investigating the bootlegging and traced the beoutQ signal to the Riyadh-based satellite provider Arabsat. Saudi Arabia is the company’s largest investor.

Government officials in Saudi Arabia and its embassy did not respond to messages seeking comment.

For more than a decade, Qatar, a desert-state smaller than Connecticut that controls much of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply, has used sports to raise its profile. It will play host to the World Cup in 2022. The country’s ruling family controls the Paris Saint-Germain soccer team, one of the most prominent in Europe.

BeIN has committed several billion dollars to secure exclusive rights to the biggest sports events, often paying far more than market value to ensure supremacy in the Arab world and beyond. The network has become a national emblem for the emirate, making the piracy of its broadcasts especially humiliating.

“The name beoutQ is totally designed to intimidate,” said Mohammad Al-Subaie, executive director of commercial affairs for the beIN Media Group. “Being a Qatari, I really feel angry about it.”

The dispute between Qatar and its neighbors has touched every aspect of life. Qatar Airways flights must avoid neighboring airspace, lengthening flight times. Families with relatives in coalition countries have to see them in another location. Some 12,000 Qatari camels grazing on Saudi land were expelled. Giant images of Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, have been plastered on scores of buildings in response to the blockade to stoke nationalist sentiment.

“It hasn’t been an edifying conflict,” said David B. Roberts, a Gulf expert at King’s College in London. “Reports in the Saudi media that they will try to turn Qatar into an island by digging a canal along the Qatar-Saudi border and use the area to store nuclear waste sound childish.”

It didn’t take long for beIN to conclude that the rogue channel was likely linked to Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after the dispute began, Saudi Arabia banned the sale of beIN broadcast boxes and prohibited existing customers from paying their subscriptions to the channel. Soon, prominent Saudis, including an adviser to the royal court, began promoting the beoutQ website on social media. Then beoutQ launched in October with 10 high-definition channels. Its owners geo-locked it so only internet users in Saudi Arabia had access.

The website featured all major beIN content, including soccer from around the world, N.B.A. games and marquee tennis tournaments. BeoutQ’s backers, emboldened by their ability to steal content at will, have now started to add content owned by other broadcasters beyond beIN, including fights in the Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed-martial arts league.

Officials at beIN said they have been unable to find lawyers willing to pursue the case in Saudi courts, but subpoenas issued in the United States to website hosting companies helped reveal that a credit card belonging to a man named Raed Kusheim paid for hosting fees. Kusheim is the chief executive of Saudi-based Selevision, a distributor of set-top boxes and on-demand broadcast services.

Kusheim, in a WhatsApp message, denied any involvement in beoutQ. He said he was involved in an unrelated legal dispute with beIN. He did not respond to a direct question about his credit card.

Since October, set-top boxes have been appearing throughout Saudi Arabia, loaded with access to the channels over the internet and on satellite television. Those boxes deliver hundreds of premium channels from around the world. BeIN’s antipiracy team traced the signal to space on the Arabsat satellite.

BeIN has demanded Arabsat remove the rogue channels. Arabsat — through the United States-based law firm Squire Patton Boggs — refused. It said the customer who bought the satellite space denied being involved in beoutQ.

The beIN antipiracy team believes it knows how beoutQ is stealing the signal. Essentially, the website is re-airing content delivered to an individual subscriber. Since each subscriber has a unique identification number that is usually visible, known as a fingerprint, beIN engineers thought they would be able to easily identify the offending customer. However, the pirates have figured out how to hide their fingerprints.

“There’s nothing else like it in the world,” Esteban Israel, beIN’s executive director of technology, said of beoutQ’s level of sophistication. “We work with all the top technology vendors, technology developers. We have our experts, we deploy state of the art technologies and we have not seen this anywhere else.”

As beIN’s engineers search for a way to stop the piracy, beoutQ is flourishing. At the start of the Champions League game between A.S. Roma and Liverpool, beIN’s Keaveny noticed the logo for the forthcoming Russia World Cup had been added alongside beoutQ’s. A halftime promotion promised beoutQ’s subscribers that they would see all 64 World Cup games live. The commentary and studio analysis on beoutQ broadcasts are usually from beIN.

FIFA and other governing bodies that have sold exclusive broadcast rights to beIN have supported the company’s antipiracy efforts but have generally chosen not to criticize Saudi Arabia. A group that has offered to invest $25 billion to start two new tournaments with FIFA includes Saudi investors. La Liga, Spain’s top soccer league, recently signed a lucrative sponsorship deal to loan to top Spanish teams players from Saudi Arabia’s World Cup squad.

Sophie Jordan, the Paris-based general counsel for beIN’s parent company, said turning a blind eye toward piracy risked devaluing the rights.

“The rights holders need to be very careful,” she said. “By the time they realize this imperils the value of the rights in the region and not stimulate competition as some might believe, it will be too late.”

BeIN has filed complaints with the World Trade Organization and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which includes both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “But legal time is different to business time,” Jordan said. “We are losing money every day. We will prevail, but we will prevail in three or even five years.”

At beIN’s headquarters, the control room was still buzzing on the night of Liverpool’s Champions League victory as midnight neared. The broadcaster’s director of programming, Duncan Walkinshaw, imagined what resources beoutQ must have to be able to push out someone else’s channels and even give them their own commercial breaks. By the end of the week, more than 50 live games had been broadcast by beoutQ.

“They’ve created a brand without any acquisitions,” he said. “It’s quite extraordinary and very wrong. We’re investing our time and effort and someone is stealing it and making it their own.”

Ben Hubbard contributed reporting from Beirut.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/s...ar-beoutq.html





Roku is Showing an FBI Anti-Piracy Warning for YouTube and some Other Channels
Ryne Hager

YouTube TV isn't the only video service that seems to be running into problems today. According to widespread recent reports, many people are having trouble accessing specific Channels on their Roku set-top devices. The affected services, which includes YouTube and Netflix, are allegedly showing an FBI anti-piracy warning message.

The FBI and @RokuPlayer say that the YouTube channel on Roku is an ‘unauthorized service’ that has been pirating content. Weird. pic.twitter.com/wi31hv3Ydi

— Peter Tsai (@supertsai) May 16, 2018


Reports seem to have started a bit over three hours ago—according to the timeline for responses by the official @RokuSupport Twitter account. Roku's Support channels issued an official statement:

We are aware of a technical glitch that is affecting the Channel Store and channel playback on your Roku device. We hope to resolve the issue shortly. You can get a status update at https://t.co/mxCNxoG36N. We apologize for any inconvenience.

— Roku Support (@RokuSupport) May 16, 2018


We aren't sure if the issue has been resolved just yet, but there are a few individual reports of success accessing the affected channels. It's possible that not everyone is experiencing the problem, though. To date, Roku's status update hasn't indicated any resolution.

So if you find yourself unable to kick up your feet this evening to binge watch some Babylon Berlin on your Roku, you know why.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/0...tube-channels/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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