Archive for 2011/09/01

Decision by internet businesses not to trust DigiNotar certificates has serious consequences for all major IT services of the Dutch government

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

Traffic Authorities, Tax Authorities, Welfare Services, Data Interception Authorities and lots of government agencies use the digital certificates of DigiNotar which enable secure communications.

An unexpected and unwelcome example of how eavesdropping by the Iranian government can ultimately affect the entire Dutch government administration and its communication with Dutch citizens.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2604862/zoek-gevaren-dreigende-uitval-it-uit.html 

Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=diginotar

The 5 Most Evil Things Tech Companies Helped Happen

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness

IBM & The Holocaust
Nokia Siemens & Torture in Bahrain
RIM & Saudi Arabian Censorship
Dow/Monsanto & Agent Orange
Yahoo! & Chinese Torture

http://gizmodo.com/5836282/the-5-most-evil-things-tech-companies-helped-happen 

Deezer, a France-based internet music streaming service that seeks to replicate Spotify’s success, has confirmed it will launch in the UK this month and is already working on one or more partnerships with major broadband ISPs

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/09/01/spotify-rival-deezer-confirms-uk-launch-and-seeks-broadband-isp-backing.html

The Communications Regulator, Ofcom UK, has today announced that it is officially moving forward with plans for the introduction of licence exempt White Space wireless broadband technology in the UK

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

This uses the radio spectrum that exists between digital terrestrial TV channels to deliver internet access over a Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN); IEEE 802.22 standard (details).

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/09/01/ofcom-officially-proposes-uk-launch-of-white-space-wireless-broadband-tech.html

Brazilian Ministry of Justice sends new Internet Law to the National Congress

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Public Policy

http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2011/09/01/brazilian-ministry-of-justice-sends-new-internet-law-to-the-national-congress.html

ISP Sued For Revealing Info On US-Based Critic Of Thai Laws

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110831/02164215747/isp-sued-revealing-info-us-based-critic-thai-laws.shtml

Site owner of MinisterPresidentRutte.nl has to hand over the domain name to the Dutch State within 14 days

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Jurisprudence

Judge argues that the domain name “belongs with the State” and the current owner is misusing the domain by having it redirect to something that hasn’t got anything to do with the Prime Minister.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2604326/staat-krijgt-domeinnaam-van-premier-rutte.html

Previously:

Domain http://www.ministerpresidentrutte.nl claimed well before Mark Rutte was sworn in as Prime Minister of The Netherlands
http://vrritti.com/2011/08/23/20335/

Dutch State heading to Court to claim the domain http://www.ministerpresidentrutte.nl. The domain is currently redirecting to whistleblower website klokkenluideronline.nl
http://vrritti.com/2011/08/17/dutch-state-heading-to-court-to-claim-the-domain-www-ministerpresidentrutte-nl-the-domain-is-currently-redirecting-to-whistleblower-website-klokkenluideronline-nl/ 

 

Media Saturn Holding launches Europe’s easiest to use Cloud based music streaming service called JUKE. Offers access to 13 million songs from 80,000 labels

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, The Cloud

German language news article:

http://www.presseportal.de/pm/50533/2105034/13-millionen-songs-bei-juke-24-7-entertainment-gmbh-startet-juke-europas-einfachsten

Hulu officially launches streaming service in Japan

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20100292-17/hulu-officially-launches-streaming-service-in-japan/

A prominent poster on the elite password-protected jihadi web site Shumukh has told fellow forum members his account on the site has been hacked to send spyware to fellow forum participants

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/jihadi-spyware/

The real reason Google bought Motorola – Patents are nice, but lovely tax losses are worth more

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Google

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/google_buys_tax_breaks_along_with_mobility/

Lobby groups representing a majority of US advertisers and online media companies have demanded that domain name overseer ICANN slam the brakes on its controversial new generic top-level domains programme

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Online advertising, Public Policy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/icann_generic_domain_plan_slammed_by_corporates/

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/tomtom_releases_ipad_app/

LG has joined an initiative established by Philips and Sharp to create a standard platform for television apps

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/09/01/lg_joins_philips_sharp_in_tv_app_standard_platform/

All WikiLeaks’ secret US cables are on BitTorrent in full – And the Guardian has published the crypto password in full – Decrypted versions appear on ThePirateBay.org

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection

The book by David Leigh, Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, contains an excerpt explaining how he persuaded Julian Assange™ to give him the PGP passphrase, named as ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistory_Since_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/cablegate_leak_row/

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6644172/Wikileaks_Cables__Full__Unredacted__and_Decrypted_(cables.csv)

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6644050/WikiLeaks_uncensored_US_diplomatic_cables_(cables.csv)

Call on EU Commissioner Viviane Reding to elaborate on reach of US Patriot Act and consequences for EU citizens

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Public Policy

Letter:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150281743907732&set=a.380595437731.161258.18717797731&type=1&theater

Apple reportedly setting up system for remote iPhone diagnostics

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/apple-reportedly-setting-up-system-for-remote-iphone-diagnostics.ars

Spotify offers API to iOS devs, opens streaming to any app

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/spotify-opens-up-api-to-ios-devs-allowing-streaming-to-any-app.ars

Report: Facebook music platform to debut at f8 in late September

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/08/report-facebook-music-platform-debuting-at-f8-in-late-september.ars

Offline Gmail, Google Calendar and Docs? Um, Yes Please!

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models

http://gizmodo.com/5836230/offline-gmail-google-calendar-and-docs–um-yes-please

The Wikileaks security gaffe earlier this week that resulted in the distribution of a quarter million unredacted cables, like any sufficiently-sized SNAFU, will progress in phases. Today, it entered the second phase—finger pointing

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness

http://gizmodo.com/5836427/wikileaks-blames-guardian-reporter-in-recent-security-breach

Google’s new Chrome extension allows you to +1 any page on the Internet, reporting it on your public profile. It also sends every URL you visit to Google “to retrieve +1 information.” Riiiiiight.

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports

http://gizmodo.com/5836458/why-does-the-google-%252B1-extension-need-my-browsing-history

Linux Kernel Servers Hacked: Earlier this month, a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure were compromised. We discovered this August 28th. While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/76512/hackers-kraken-servers-linux-kernel.html

Kaspersky calls on Dutch government to remove DigiNotar from PKI chain

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

WordPress and Iranian blog platform also affected by DigiNotar issues and lack of transparency

Dutch language article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/38314/1/%22Nederlandse_overheid_moet_DigiNotar_dumpen%22.html

TOR has sentenced DigiNotar to death (proactively)

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement

Removing DigiNotar from the TOR browser

Dutch language news article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/38319/1/Tor_geeft_DigiNotar_internet-doodstraf.html

The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T’s proposed acquisition of fellow wireless carrier T-Mobile USA

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/doj_files_suit_over_att_tmobile_merger/

IBM is to acquire the Cambridge, UK-based “big data” analytics outfit i2, echoing HP’s $11bn purchase of Autonomy Corp. earlier this month

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/ibm_acquires_i2/

Wikileaked cable: AFACT was MPAA’s cat’s-paw – Hoping that a precedent in Australia would serve as a lever to use on other Commonwealth countries

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation

The cable cites Mike Ellis, president of the MPA’s Asia Pacific operation, as saying that the case would be “closely followed”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/afact_subcontractor_to_mpaa/

“My general rule,” Google’s Eric Schmidt said, “is that people have a lot of free time and … there are people who do really evil and wrong things on the Internet, and it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed them out”

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection

This doesn’t mean “eliminating them”, he says: “if we knew their identity was accurate, we could rank them. Think of them like an identity rank.”

He admits this is a problem in countries with oppressive attitudes to their citizens or their citizens’ communications, but adds that “sensibilities are different”.

“There, there’s no assumption of privacy, everybody assumes the Internet is bugged and that the secret police are after them.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/google_plus_identity_service/

Foundem – the UK-based vertical search engine that sparked antitrust investigations into Google on both sides of the Atlantic – has accused the web giant of demoting vertical search competitors with the latest major update to its famous search algorithms, an update officially aimed at reducing “webspam”

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Google, Online advertising, Stats / reports

In a document (PDF) posted to the web on Wednesday, Foundem does not say whether its own search engine was demoted by Google’s “Panda” update – a change that went live in January – but it does say that Panda should play a major role in the ongoing investigations into Google’s search and ad practices.

“In essence, Panda marks a significant escalation in Google’s undeclared war on its vertical-search rivals,” Foundem says. “So far, few have made a connection between Panda and the various antitrust Investigations into Google. But Panda isn’t just relevant to these investigations; it is central to them.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/foundem_accuses_google_of_wmd_program_against_vertical_search_rivals/

A new study uses the movements of mobile phones during the Haiti earthquake, and cholera epidemic, to accurately show where people went during the disasters, and where help should be delivered

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/haiti_mobile_tracking_natural_disasters/

Microsoft collects phone location data without permission, says researcher

Posted: 2011/09/01 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20100228-281/microsoft-collects-phone-location-data-without-permission-says-researcher/