In 2009, Norway’s dominant ISP Telenor voluntarily signed a network neutrality pledge. This week, it railed against companies like YouTube who send their data for “free”—and it said “this must be changed.” Sites that don’t pay up go in the slow lane.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/a-nordic-change-of-heart-on-net-neutrality.ars
Australian researchers have created a system that allows VoIP calls to be routed between Android phones even when there’s no network or WiFi access.
Poor Internet providers. They have to carry all that horrible, horrible traffic from Netflix and YouTube, and they just can’t afford it anymore. Unless they start charging end users 21 percent more for Internet access, or unless they’re allowed to bill Internet companies at 3.7¢ per GB, the Internet could “become unusable at peak times” due to congestion.
“According to our information, Julian assange is, to put it mildly, not very pleased that Afterposten, too, has obtained … the U.S. diplomatic cables from a source,’ the paper’s chief editor wrote earlier this month, according to AFP.
This isn’t the first time Assange has been beaten at his own game.
After Cablegate, Wikileaks got very powerful. Julian’s declarations about future leaks influence markets and government policies. While it becomes a power, shouldn’t WL create a mechanism of accountability by the public opinion?
This is the basic social contract around the rule of law for protestors: individuals don’t get to pick and choose which laws they are bound by and which they aren’t, even if their goal is to change the law or expose injustice. Whether someone who participated in a DDOS attack knew they were exposing themselves to arrest or not (bearing in mind the most widely-used DDOS tool, Low Orbit Ion Cannon, does nothing to hide your IP address), they face the consequences of that social contract: DDOSing is illegal.
Dutch web magazine Tweakers.net is reporting that mobile operator T-Mobile is doing research to find out whether it can block heavy data traffic such as uploading pictures or video conferencing via Skype to guarantee functionality of text messaging and Twitter services during peak traffic and during concerts or other events where tens of thousands want to use a limited number of antennae. “Smartphones are treating data in a different way,” T-Mobile spokesperson Priscilla Tomasoa argues, “so we are looking for different ways to manage traffic”. The provider does not know whether the system they’re looking at will actually be implemented.
T-Mobile already uses technologies such as Cell_PCH aka Network Controlled Fast Dormancy (by Nokia-Siemens) to manage the data traffic burden by having data connections enter ‘sleep mode’ whenever they’re not being used. That already saves 30 percent of data traffic.
(My translation)
Dutch language article: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/72307/t-mobile-doet-proef-met-blokkeren-bepaald-dataverkeer-bij-drukte.html
Dutch web magazine Tweakers.net suggests that Belgian Internet Service Provider Belgacom could have blocked the website http://bgcmap.narod.ru/ without a court order, at least temporarily…until internet users reported it to the media.
The website provides information about technical facilities such as local exhanges, local distribution centres and local street cabinets all belonging to Belgacom.
The site turned out to be inaccessible last week on both the networks of Belgacom and its mobile branch Proximus unless the internet users would go and use a proxy server to circumvent the blockade. Customers of other providers could easily access the website.
Traceroute information would stall at Belgacom’s servers which led to the conclusion that it wasn’t a DNS blockade but a blockade of a specific website. One commenter argued that Belgacom would not go and block a site without a court order.
At first Belgacom was not able to quickly provide comments over the weekend but now the provider states:
The information about the street cabinets has been stolen. Belgacom did have a court order. The information is no longer accurate.Meanwhile internet users report that the site is accessible again. Probably due to the fact that another user had copied the stolen data and uploaded it to Google Maps. Secondly, the source code of the website itself has been copied and made available online. This renders any blocking activity useless.
(My translation)
Dutch language article: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/72309/belgacom-blokkeert-website-zonder-gerechtelijk-bevel-update.html
Share Freely Inspired by pirate radio and the free culture movements, PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile wireless file sharing networks where users can anonymously share images, video, audio, documents, and other digital content.
More: http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeIiFKnKPjE
See also:
Online file-sharers disheartened at the news that Google has begun censoring peer-to-peer search terms can now take their data into the real world with the PirateBox, a lunchbox-sized device created by David Darts, a professor of art and technology at NYU Steinhardt.
If you fancy making your own PirateBox, Darts provides instructions for building one at a cost of around $100. It’s not the first time file-sharing has entered the real world though – last year artist Aram Bartholl installed USB sticks in walls and buildings around New York to create a series of digital dead drops.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/01/piratebox.html
The program maps the extent of criminal activity and copyright infringement online.
It uses a tagging technique to track files through networks commonly used by movie and music pirates to transfer large files in fragments from multiple users simultaneously.
“We have found that while many people download copyright infringing material, only about 100 people in the world upload most of the content.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/online-peril-for-internet-pirates/story-fn6bfkm6-1225996731913
We move back to technological aspects of hacking and spend time discussion the creation and inherent decentralized architecture of the Internet with Rop Gonggrijp and Wau Holland. As an example of Internet freedom, Felipe Rodriquez, Haneke Vermeulen, and Marleen Stikker describe efforts of XS4ALL to bring access to the Internet to common people.
We learn about ‘subversive way of thinking’ from several CCC members, as well as about their exploits hacking into a bank in Hanover
More: http://www.thesprawl.org/hacktube/?entry=37
Direct link to video (right click + ‘save as’): http://www.thesprawl.org/hacktube/videos/1/Hacks%20by%20Christine%20Bader.m4v
See also:
Unauthorized access
Site: http://www.thesprawl.org/hacktube/?entry=9
Direct link to video (right click + ‘save as’): http://www.thesprawl.org/hacktube/videos/1/unauthorized_access.m4v
Hippies from Hell
Site: http://www.thesprawl.org/hacktube/?entry=17
Direct link to video (right click + ‘save as’): http://connectmedia.waag.org/hippies/HFHdivx.AVI
Part 1/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0E-AScyqq4
Part 2/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EFSyQLoBPI
Part 3/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kAtEuUWYgc
Part 4/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heq8hlqZEUg
Part 5/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT_HL5yKCZs
Part 6/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fflqJFvnPy8: ‘Child pornography is sort of used as a sweetener for censorship. It’s the entry for censorship’
Part 7/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnLXhkUnoLI
Part 8/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dX3ddKJ57s
Part 9/9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMbCafRRmqo
Daniel, Rop, Julian, ex-MI6 officer and others
Previously:
Picture Gallery: Adrian Lamo, Rop Gonggrijp, and Cryptome‘s John Young at H2K2, July 2002
http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/h2k2-july02.html
An independent barrister based in London,Francis Davey, has analysed the UK governments recently proposed secondary legislation on sharing the costs of the controversial Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA) and concluded that it has been “misdrafted” and “may also be unlawful“.
The legislation, which was announced earlier this week (full summary), is a crucial part of plans to tackle “illegal” (unlawful) internet copyright infringement by customers of broadband ISPs. It proposes that the cost of sending warning (notification) letters to end users should be split between ISPs (25%) and Rights Holders (75%).
TorrentFreak spoke to a staff member at DarksideRG who informed us that they are indeed one of the 39 Dutch-hosted sites that has been pulled offline. Although this may sound dramatic, in reality the site’s owners were kindly asked by their hosting company to relocate, following complaints from BREIN and the MPAA.
DarksideRG’s hosting company Leaseweb had to ask the site’s owner to leave because BREIN has previously won a case in The Netherlands against a torrent site hoster. DarksideRG was notified about the complaints in advance and was given enough time to secure their files. The forum has been temporarily replaced with an announcement that it is in the process of moving servers.
http://torrentfreak.com/axxos-home-darksiderg-disconnected-by-the-mpaa-110129/
It’s time to bring those types of searches back under the umbrella of the Fourth Amendment
A computer scientist has found a vulnerability in the latest version of Google’s Android operating system that can be exploited to disclose sensitive user information
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/29/android_data_disclosure_bug/
The Verizon and MetroPCS appeals are “fatally premature and must be dismissed”
Excerpt from a 1995 interview with Felipe Rodriquez and Rop Gonggrijp, By Shuchen Tan - translated by Patrice Riemens
For Gonggrijp, real hacking is now more or less something of the past. ”I’ve never been a truly great hacker myself” he admits. “What matters to me, are the ideas behind hacking: free access to information for everybody. In our society, information is no longer stocked in libraries and archives, but is burrowed in databases and spread over the network. It is a knowledge machine which ninety percent of the population can never access. To us, this is a great injustice, and we already stated so in the final resolution of the Galactic Hacker Party in 1989.”
To put these ideas in practice, Hacktic set up the XS4all foundation (speak: access for all) in 1994. XS4all runs a ‘server’ on which every computer-user can legally access the world wide Internet, for a fee of 25 guilders ($14) a month. Together with the ‘Balie’ cultural centre, the XS4all foundation was also instrumental in the creation of the ‘Digital City” project (DDS). This initiative is backed by a 60.000 guilders ($ 33.000) subsidy from the ministry of economic affairs.
“From a band of infamous computer-anarchists we have evolved into very respectable citizens indeed” says Gonggrijp, not without some irony. “We are even considered important to the Dutch economy.” Hacktic has worked purposely to bring about this swing in opinion, explains Felipe Rodriquez.
He is part of Hacktic’s core group since 1990 and he was closely connected with the establishment of XS4all and the Digital City project. Rodriquez: ”A few year ago, if you heard the name Hacktic, everyone would think of dangerous terrorists. In the yearbooks of the Dutch internal intelligence service (BVD), we would be portrayed as a band of nefarious anarchists, bent on disrupting society. But now they have come to see that we are nice and quiet people really, with the best of intentions.”
The finest hour came undoubtedly when CRI Inspector Harry Onderwater himself gave acte-de-presence at Hacktic’s magazine farewell-party (CRI, the criminal investigation unit of the national police, co-ordinates computer-’crime’-fighting in the Netherlands. -transl.). Gonggrijp is not overly surprised: “We have come to know each other better over the years and the hostile image we had of each other is simply becoming untenable. Better still, they even quite admire what we are doing.” The line between hacker and security expert is a thin and difficult one to draw, according to Gonggrijp. “Basically, we spring from the same nest. I know personaly of a number of security experts who were subscribers to Hacktic. That’s because in order to secure effectively, you first must be able to hack. It is a cat-and-mouse game, and we both know we are dependant upon each other.”
While the average computer-user is quite satisfied if sHe manages to get an access into the Internet, Hacktic is already immersed into the problems of
the 21st century. Main concerns here are cryptography and privacy protection. Gonggrijp: “Basically, the whole discussion about privacy in the network is something of the past. Due to the massive use of credit and bank cards, all kind of personal information is already floating in the network. Marketing specialists are able to get any kind of intelligence about you they want: what’s your car make, where did you eat out last week, what kind of stuff did you buy in the K-mart yesterday.”
Rodriquez: “Many people still tend to see the Internet as yet again a new mass-medium. I rather would see it as a natural evolution in human communication. Here you have, at long last, again a medium with which people can communicate with each other.” Gonggrijp: “The time of the mass-media, whereby one provider is going to decide what everyone else is going to see, that time is gone now. for a bleedin’ half century we have been looking at sitcoms like zombies! That’s not to-day’s world any longer, the people want to decide for themselves what they are going to look at, and they want to become providers. The Internet can play an important role here, because it is in itself an anarchistic system, without central authority. The mass-media are still working in terms of that big, middle-of-the-road cluster. The media are tame because they believe their public is tame.
It’s about time we put a bomb under those ‘keep-it-tame’ filters.”
Much more: http://pastebin.com/sTgz88X8
Previously:
WikiLeaks co-producer Rop Gonggrijp: First Hacker and Techno Anarchist of the Netherlands
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/11/wikileaks-co-producer-rop-gonggrijp-first-hacker-and-techno-anarchist-of-the-netherlands/
Sun 30 Jul 2006 : Transparency in the cold light of Finland
We all have emotional instincts which react against our perceptions of the world. The interaction of these reactions losely defines society. If we perceive differently we react differently. An important class of perceptions are those things we can measure. By measuring different things we can change perception. By changing perception we can change reactions. By changing reactions we can change society.
Much more: http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/
“I think it’s great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it’s them”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/29/idINIndia-54494520110129
An executive at London-based Vodafone Group PLC explained Friday morning that it did indeed have a role in the phone and Internet blackout affecting Egypt since Thursday night, confirming speculation that the firm had cooperated with the regime to close off protesters’ communications.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/vodafone-confirms-role-egypts-cellular-internet-blackout/
Held annually in London’s Earls Court, Infosecurity Europe is the continent’s leading exhibition for information security professionals
This explanation is both right and wrong.
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-233801-arab-world-social-networks-and-wikileaks.html
