The proposal would give the United Nations control over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the web address system. The present system is operated by a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives control to nonprofits instead of governments
http://www.infowars.com/house-to-consider-handing-over-internet-regulation-to-united-nations/
United States law enforcement authorities have confirmed they are investigating images of child abuse unearthed from Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload servers.
The material was discovered during FBI examination of the contents of the internet millionaire’s cloud storage system, seized in the global takedown of the “Mega Conspiracy” that included police raids at Dotcom’s Auckland mansion in January.
A spokesman from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Peter Carr, said there was an ongoing investigation into the images of child pornography found on the servers but would make no further comment.
More:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/child-porn-found-megaupload-servers-fbi-4901637
Takkenberg argues that the cooperation was particularly successful when conducting the Bredolab botnet investigation, because foreign judges have been making use of the evidence produced by all Dutch parties mentioned.
To some the cooperation was controversial however because:
1. The Dutch Police had sent every internet user who owned an infected PC (and had become a facilitator of the botnet itself) a warning message;
2. The High Tech Crime Unit worked closely with hosting provider Leaseweb and security company Fox-IT, both commercial enterprises;
3. The evidence produced by these Dutch entities resulted in an arrest in Armenia.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2820042/politie-blij-met-privaat-publieke-samenwerking-hackers.html
Previously:
4 Years In Prison For Armenian Bredolab Botnet Operator
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/22/4-years-in-prison-for-armenian-bredolab-botnet-operator/
Hacker collective becoming more and more ‘loosely-knit’
Oddly enough Cerf did not talk about Google’s silence on these new cybersecurity bills…
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/05/22/father-internet-calls-out-us-government-cispa
Dutch ISPs just lost one of many court cases against BREIN and will now have to block the additional IP addresses or domain names of The Pirate Bay too. Lawyers are nonetheless looking forward to the next ‘circumvention method’ The Pirate Bay will try and use, only to have that method formally declared useless too.
Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110629/brein-wint-ex-parte-verbod-op-nieuw-tpb-adres.html
Previously:
Does A Change Of IP Address Change The Illegallity Of A Website? KPN And Tele2 Seem To Think So
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/23/does-a-change-of-ip-address-change-the-illegallity-of-a-website-kpn-and-tele2-seem-to-think-so/
Dutch Vice-prime Minister Maxime Verhagen:
“Since 2008, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation and the EU have been supporting the Turkish Ministry of Justice with the harmonisation of Turkish law with the European E-commerce Directive and the European rules for privacy and data protection. This exchange of knowledge and experience contributed to a sound legal framework for e-commerce in Turkey (…) E-commerce in Turkey has great potential. To exploit the full potential of the Turkish online market, it is important to create a level playing field with the EU. Also, companies need to invest in creating trust in e-commerce by complying with the rules, respecting privacy of consumers and using adequate security measures. In our experience, sectors that invest in trust marks and dispute resolution mechanisms benefit most in the long run.”
Content vs infrastructure
According to the ALPA and Gaumont, illegal downloads of movies (presumably only international films) saw a 50 percent reduction in the last year.
The 45-year-old said the investiture in front of the Princess Royal was “really thrilling and particularly humbling”.
Now based in the US, Apple’s senior vice-president of industrial design flew in to the UK with his wife and eight-year-old twin sons for the event.
He was born in Chingford, east London, and studied at Newcastle Polytechnic.
Sir Jonathan had a brief chat with Princess Anne and later revealed they had talked about how often he comes back to the UK while she spoke of her iPad.
He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the New Year Honours list for services to design and enterprise.
KickAssTorrents, one of the most popular BitTorrent websites on the Internet today, is facing a total blackout in Italy
http://torrentfreak.com/italian-court-orders-all-isps-to-block-kickasstorrents-120524/
Previously:
Italian ISP blocking of Pirate Bay leads to significantly fewer visitors – thepiratebay.org is now only the 673rd most visited site in Italy
http://vrritti.com/2011/01/05/italian-isp-blocking-of-pirate-bay-leads-to-significantly-fewer-visitors-thepiratebay-org-is-now-only-the-673th-most-visited-site-in-italy/
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US was successful in hacking Yemeni tribal websites, replacing al-Qaeda propaganda with altered versions showing the damage the terrorist group has done to the Yemeni people.
Speaking at a conference of US and international special commanders, Clinton said cyber intelligence experts were able to take down pages extolling the murder of Americans and substitute them with pages describing the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on Yemenis. She noted that the extremists responded by telling supporters not to believe everything they see on the Internet.
Clinton said it was all part of a larger, multi-pronged effort to combat the spread of extremist propaganda.
“Together, they will work to pre-empt, discredit and outmaneuver extremist propaganda,” she stressed.
The cyber-attack was launched by the Center for Strategic Counter-Terrorism Communications, a group of specialists, diplomats and intelligence analysts from different agencies housed at the State Department. Their prime task is to prowl the Internet and social media to prevent al-Qaeda’s recruitment of new members.
More:
http://www.rt.com/news/us-al-qaeda-websites-clinton-063/
The Government’s lawyers have been ordered to explain how the FBI left the country with evidence in the Kim Dotcom case meant to be kept in “secure custody” by New Zealand police.
High Court chief judge Helen Winkelmann has told the Attorney-General’s lawyer, Mike Ruffin, he has until Monday to explain why FBI agents were allowed to take 135 cloned computer and data storage devices to the United States.
At a legal challenge at the High Court in Auckland yesterday, Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison, QC, called the revelation “high-handed” at best and “at the worst misleading”.
Mr Davison and lawyers for Dotcom’s three co-accused want a judicial review into search warrants used during FBI-inspired raids on January 20. Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortman and Bram van der Kolk were arrested over allegations of criminal copyright violation through their file-sharing website Megaupload.
Mr Davison said he asked for assurances in correspondence with Mr Ruffin’s predecessor, Anne Toohey, that no evidence would leave New Zealand shores unless on the back of a court decision.
More:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10808032
The department is also contemplating payment blocking. Webwereld.nl is reporting that Fox-IT’s Ronald Prins is of the opinion that DNS blocking will not be an effective solution both in relation to gambling sites and The Pirate Bay.
The Pirate Bay’s Alexa Rank did drop 15 places since the recent (partial) blockade in The Netherlands. The UK Alexa Rank of The Pirate Bay dropped 11 positions since the recent (partial) blockade in that country.
Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110581/justitie-wil-dns-blokkades-voor-goksites.html
See also:
Italian ISP blocking of Pirate Bay leads to significantly fewer visitors – thepiratebay.org is now only the 673rd most visited site in Italy
http://vrritti.com/2011/01/05/italian-isp-blocking-of-pirate-bay-leads-to-significantly-fewer-visitors-thepiratebay-org-is-now-only-the-673th-most-visited-site-in-italy/
Schmidt declined to respond on whether his firm would indeed put forward any “remedies” as requested by Almunia, who was clear that a Statement of Objections could be issued within weeks if Google didn’t play ball.
Schmidt claimed that he hadn’t seen any precise examples of which laws his company might have abused and remained steadfast that his firm would be continuing to talk to the competition commissioner and his team.
Earlier, Schmidt told the Big Tent crowd that he was “not aware of anything we’ve done wrong. We’re happy to be educated on the contrary”.
Beyond that, he said “we’re not going to speculate”, which is interesting not least because of the amount of evidence that has been placed in the public domain from complainants who have grumbled to the European Commission that Google does favour its own search results over others.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/23/eric_schmidt_google_big_tent/
Speaking at Google’s annual Big Tent event in Watford this morning, Hunter gently tussled with a panel that included TalkTalk’s executive director Andrew Heaney, the Daily Mail‘s Amanda Platell and Index on Censorship’s Kirsty Hughes over how to protect children from smut on the internet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/23/google_big_tent_smut_debate/
Previously:
When Porn Is Even More Of A Cash Cow Than Piracy: Survey Finds UK Internet Users Oppose Mandatory ISP Adult Site Blocks
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/21/when-porn-is-even-more-of-a-cash-cow-than-piracy-survey-finds-uk-internet-users-oppose-mandatory-isp-adult-site-blocks/
Preparing a good defense to deter cyber attacks ranks among his top concerns, Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, the commander of U.S. European Command, told the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service.
“In many ways, cyber is the threat I worry about most going forward over the long-term,” said Stavridis, who also serves as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. “And the reason is, the potential for damage to our fundamental, societal way of life … compared to our level of preparation.”
“In the world of cyber, we are on the beach at Kitty Hawk, [N.C.],” Stavridis said, referring to the Wright Brothers’ famous first flight that heralded the birth of aviation. “We are just at the beginning.”
But he insisted that the United States and its friends and partners dealing with cyber threats don’t have the luxury of time the aviation industry enjoyed as it was being advanced.
“We don’t have 100 years in cyber,” he said. “We are so vulnerable. We have to take steps today to bring order to the chaotic world of cyber. And I think that is going to be not only a security challenge, but also a societal challenge.”
More:
http://www.defpro.com/news/details/35583/?SID=e1895d3b7b1b55161ee73aa84fb8d69a
And:
Chicago NATO Summit: declaration on defence capabilities
We are putting in place a new, leaner and more effective command structure.
We have made steady progress in developing a number of capabilities we identified in Lisbon as critical to the successful conduct of our operations, including: improving our defences against cyber attacks; extending NATO’s air command and control system; and augmenting our capabilities in Afghanistan for exchanging intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data and countering improvised explosive devices.
In the light of this progress, we have confidently set ourselves the goal of NATO Forces 2020: modern, tightly connected forces equipped, trained, exercised and commanded so that they can operate together and with partners in any environment”
http://www.avionews.com/index.php?corpo=see_news_home.php&news_id=1140935&pagina_chiamante=index.php
An investigation by Europe’s antitrust head Joaquin Almunia looked at whether Google gave preferential treatment to its own services in its search results.
Mr Almunia said the company must now “offer remedies” swiftly.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18143812
and:
“I offer Google the possibility to come up in a matter of weeks with remedies,” said Almunia. “If Google comes up with an outline of remedies which are capable of addressing our concerns, I will instruct my staff to initiate the discussions in order to finalize a remedies package.”
Google wasn’t immediately available to comment.
The EU’s anti-trust chief said it was in the interest of all those involved in the case to reach a “quick resolution” to the four areas of concern he has identified.
The first concern relates to how Google displays links to its own vertical searches for services such as restaurants or news differently to the way it does for links to competitors.
“We are concerned that this may result in preferential treatment compared to those of competing services, which may be hurt as a consequence,” Almunia said.
The second part of the investigation, Almunia said, focused on how Google copies content from competing vertical search services and “uses it in its own offerings…using that material on its own sites without their prior authorization.”
Third, EU regulators want Google to change the deal it strikes with its partners, whereby Google dictates how websites deliver search advertisements. This obliges partners to “obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google, thus shutting out competing providers”, and could potentially impact advertising services purchased for example by online stores, online magazines or broadcasters, Almunia said.
Finally, EU anti-trust regulators found that competitors were shut out of Google’s auction-based advertising platform, AdWords, on which advertisers can bid for the placement of search ads on search result pages provided by Google.
The Internet giant will now need to submit an outline of possible remedies to address regulators’ concerns.
More:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120521-705717.html
The results from 728 respondents to our latest monthly survey has revealed that the majority (83.9%) are against proposals designed to force home broadband ISPs into imposing mandatory adult website blocks by default. The introduction of such a system, which could be applied to all internet accounts in the UK, was recommended by the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection (Claire Perry MP).
See also the current popularity of sites such as xhamster, livejasmin, pornhub, xvideos and youporn:
Eugene Kaspersky has reiterated his long-standing support for Internet IDs, and called for all SCADA systems to be redesigned around a secure operating system, to protect critical infrastructure from cyber-attack.
SCADA is so vulnerable, Kaspersky told the AusCERT audience: “It’s not possible to protect. Stuxnet told us that modern systems are not protected at all. SCADA could be very easy victims – the result of an attack could be like Stuxnet but everywhere.”
He said his company’s research suggests that malware costs the world economy $US100 billion each year, and noted other vendors estimates of the total trillion-dollar cybercrime industry mean that, “because of cybercrime, we have the equivalent of two or three Japanese tsunamis a year” of economic damage.
People “need to understand the danger of cyber-weapons and of cyber-war to ruin national infrastructure. Transportation, power-grids, power plants … it would take us back to the pre-electric era.”
Last week, longtime chief Howard Schmidt stepped down. He’s replaced by Michael Daniel, who’s been in the Office of Management and Budget’s national security division for 17 years. What does that mean for the future of the cybersecurity issue? Probably that we can expect his knowledge of the intelligence community to play a part in not just tracking down hackers, but determining the lines that need to be crossed with future SOPA-like bills. So while this sounds like a relatively nondescript appointment, Daniel will almost definitely be a major player the next time someone comes for your internet.
http://gizmodo.com/5911617/white-house-hires-a-new-cybersecurity-chief
Filmmakers, video mixers and others have petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for the ability to continue to use DVD decryption tools to copy short clips of DVDs from motion pictures to put into their own films. The issue isn’t whether they have a fair-use right to the material, but whether they can utilize decrypting tools to make the best reproduction for film-making purposes.
Much more:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/feds-considering-allowing-dvd-encryption-cracking/
