http://gizmodo.com/5869171/the-fed-humvee-is-going-to-save-the-army-millionsd-at-the-pump
Archive for 2011/12/29
2011: Riots and revolutions: How we all changed the world
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / AwarenessSTRATFOR Offers Members Free Identity Protection (video)
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data ProtectionHollywood Wants To Punish GoDaddy For Enabling Infringement
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, LitigationA website that allows users to ‘name and shame’ lawyers whose services they are unhappy with has been ordered to close
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, JurisprudenceThe High Court ruled that solicitorsfromhell.co.uk should be shut down and its publisher Rick Kordowski permanently barred from re-publishing some information contained on the site in the future. Kordowski was also banned from transferring control of the personal data contained about solicitors named on the site from himself to others.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/29/solicitors_in_court/
To define the local piracy culture researchers conducted 2,303 telephone interviews, and they found that roughly half of all adults can be branded a pirate
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsand 15 Percent of US File-Sharers Hide Their IP-Address
http://torrentfreak.com/15-percent-of-us-file-sharers-hide-their-ip-address-111229/
Raspberry Pi, a Credit-Card-Sized Computer, Set to Launch
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech EvolutionThe Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer that plugs directly into your TV via an HDMI input, is launching next month, following five years of research and development. Developed in the U.K. by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the $35 version of the device runs Linux, has a 700MHZ ARM 11 processor and 256MB of RAM, and features the first-person multiplayer video game Quake 3 Arena; the $25 version has similar specs, but with 128MB of RAM. Videogame veteran David Braben, the brains behind the Pi, has been quoted as saying he originally created the Pi for educational use.
http://allthingsd.com/20111228/raspberry-pi-the-credit-card-sized-computer-set-to-launch/
Subpoena requests IP address information about the accounts of @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, as well as ‘Guido Fawkes’ and two Twitter hashtags: #BostonPD and #d0xcak3
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Privacy / Data ProtectionAt the bottom of the document, a Suffolk county assistant district attorney asked Twitter not to share the request with any of its users, since such an action could “impede the ongoing criminal investigation.” Twitter has since said it did not follow that request due to its privacy policy.
“We can’t comment on any specific order or request,” Twitter spokesperson Matt Graves told ReadWriteWeb in a statement about the matter. “However, to help users protect their rights, it is our policy to notify our users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so.”
iPhone users downloading more than 5 million free apps a day
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsDutch State Secretary Fred Teeven: A Law Which Forces Google To Introduce Opt-In Regimes For Online Data Collection Would Be In Conflict With EU Law And Economically Unwise
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, Google, Legislation, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Public PolicyGoogle can continue to collect traffic data, geo-location information, IP addresses, SSIDs, router information and MAC addresses
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2703937/teeven-verbod-verzamelen-routerdata.html
See also:
http://vrritti.com/?s=teeven
2011: The Year Intellectual Property Trumped Civil Liberties – Any civil liberties agenda was a complete non-starter with Congress and the Obama administration
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Public PolicyWhile the Obama administration was lobbying against tinkering with the Patriot Act, and telling the courts that Americans have no privacy in their public movements, the White House was quietly working with the recording and motion picture industries to help broker a deal by which internet companies would block internet access to repeat online infringers.
The rush to alter the internet at the behest of the same industry that tried to ban the VCR and MP3 players
Much more:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/civil-liberties-ip/
How Cornell Beat Stanford (And Everybody Else) for NYC Tech Campus
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public Policy“Stanford was inherently conflicted from day one,” Kim told Wired. After all, Mayor Bloomberg didn’t propose that New York would match or follow Silicon Valley or Boston-Cambridge as high-tech hubs. He proposed to make New York City the best in the world.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/12/how-cornell-beat-everybody-nyc/
All the torrent files users are adding are available for the entire world to see. This public visibility has its benefits, but sometimes a simple ‘drop and share’ service is a better solution
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business ModelsIt gets really interesting when that’s combined with a URL shortener so the torrent can be shared easily on social networks and in blog comments.
Tors.in does all the above.
http://torrentfreak.com/tors-in-dump-your-torrents-and-get-a-fancy-url-to-share-111229/
In a new Megaupload court filing the file-hosting service makes it clear that it will go to considerable lengths to find out exactly what has been going on at Universal, YouTube, Vimeo and other entities involved in the Mega Song takedown
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, LitigationBemoaning the fact that none of UMG’s claims have been backed up by evidence or witnesses, Megaupload says it now needs facts to move forward.
“Megaupload therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant it leave to take limited but essential written discovery…regarding the UMG Entities’ private dealings with service providers regarding the takedowns of the Megaupload Video and the identity and authority of the persons or entities who requested the takedowns,” the company writes.
“Without such information, Megaupload will be unable to determine which UMG entity instructed YouTube to remove the Megaupload Video; which other, non-UMG persons may have so instructed YouTube; and on whose behalf, on what grounds, and under what authority the removal was sought.
“In addition, as UMG has denied sending notices itself to other service providers, subpoenas to any such providers who took down the video is the appropriate means to determine the party doing so,” the filing adds.
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-to-universal-youve-got-some-explaining-to-do-111228/
David Cameron gets custom prime-ministering iPad app
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public PolicyThe app will contain the latest figures on NHS waiting lists, crime, unemployment and other public sector data according to a report by The Times. It will also allow him to read Civil Service documents on the tablet and will pull in “real-time” information from Google and Twitter among other news sources. Advisers got the idea after a trip to the US.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/29/david_cameron_ipad_app/
The FCC has announced that the world’s first White Space database will go live on 26 January 2012, allowing unlicensed devices to find unused frequencies
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech EvolutionWhite Space devices are required to sense their location and then obtain from an online database a list of locally available frequencies within the TV broadcasts bands.
Manufacturers are expected to sign deals with databases to provide that information for the life of the device, so getting an operational database is a necessary precursor to any White Space deployments.
Those manufacturers have been clear that they want more than one database too, to ensure competitive pressure. So the FCC has almost a dozen companies signed up (including both Google and Microsoft) to become database suppliers, providing identical information and differentiating through additional services, but Spectrum Bridge has pushed ahead to become the world’s first.
This is the first step on a long road to dynamic frequency allocation across the radio spectrum.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/28/white_space_award/
Continuing the week long celebration of wreaking utter havoc on global financial systems, militaries, and governments, we are announcing our next target: the online piggie supply store SpecialForces.com. Their customer base is comprised primarily of military and law enforcement affiliated individuals, who have for too long enjoyed purchasing tactical combat equipment from their slick and “professional” looking website. What’s that, officer? You get a kick out of pepper-spraying peaceful protesters in public parks? You like to recreationally taser kids? You have a fetish for putting people in plastic zip ties?
To be fair, at least SpecialForces.com DID store their customers’ credit card information using blowfish encryption (unlike the global intelligence and security industry “professionals” at Stratfor, who apparently remain confused as to whether their customers’ information was even encrypted or not). Nevertheless, our voodoo prevailed and we were quickly able to break back into the military supplier’s server and steal their encryption keys. We then wrote a few simple functions to recover the cleartext passwords, credit card numbers, and expiration dates to all their customers’ cards. That’s how we roll.
In reality, for the past few months, we have been in possession of approximately 14,000 passwords and 8000 credit cards from SpecialForces.com. Unfortunately a former comrade leaked the password list early, and the full story on this owning will be told in our upcoming zine. Until then, feast upon one hell of a juicy text file.
More:
http://anoncentral.org/2011/12/antisec-specialforces-com-hacked/
In addition:
The usernames, e-mail addresses and passwords of at least 24 Dutch users were posted online, one of them being an employee of the Dutch Ministry of Defense
Dutch language news article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/39687/1/Anonymous_kraakt_Specialforces.com%2C_lekt_NL-adressen.html
Anonymous Actress Who Sued IMDB For Revealing Her Age Ordered To Reveal Her Name
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, LitigationThe sad thing is that most of the damage being done to her future career options is self-inflicted. If this actress thought her ability to land roles was diminished by IMDB’s posting of her real age, it’s going to be nothing compared to the fallout of this lawsuit, if she decides to proceed under her real name.
Senator Joe Lieberman Asking Twitter To Block Pro-Taliban Feeds
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Public PolicyAre libraries betraying the public by limiting access to digitized works that were previously (or should still be) in the public domain?
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business ModelsThe Great Digitization Or The Great Betrayal?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111227/02494617196/great-digitization-great-betrayal.shtml
Criminals try and prevent ATMs from returning either the money or the card (by physically modifying the machine). The user will think that the ATM is malfunctioning and will contact or visit the bank while the criminals are waiting to collect the goods
Dutch language news article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/39686/1/Politie_waarschuwt_voor_Cash_Trapping.html
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Will Be Speaking At Dutch Conference EIM2012 Next Year
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / AwarenessInvitation-only event for CIO’s of big companies will take place on 23rd May 2012. Unknown whether Assange will be there in person. The organizers feel that Assange is ‘a prominent speaker in relation to transparency‘ while ‘the increasing pressure for more transparency from governments, the public opinion and activist organizations provides CIO’s both with threats and opportunities‘
Dutch language news articles:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/39678/1/Julian_Assange_naar_Nederland.html
http://www.persberichten.com/persbericht.aspx?id=67732
At least half of the revenue, generate from apps, comes from freemium apps
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reportsWith a freemium app you can use the basic app for free. However, if you want to use additional features you’ll have to pay for them. Furthermore, the study shows that Apple App Stores generate more revenue than the Android worldwide.
http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2011/12/29/freemium-apps-are-the-trend-of-2011.html
Google, Facebook top Internet destinations in 2011
Posted: 2011/12/29 in Education / Awareness, Google, Stats / reportsGoogle edged out Facebook as the top Internet destination this year, according to data released today by market researcher Nielsen. The Web giant logged 153.4 million average unique visitors per month, compared with the social-networking giant’s 137.6 million.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57349510-93/google-facebook-top-internet-destinations-in-2011/
