An urgent appeal from OpenMedia

December 20, 2011 — xanthippa

This is an urgent appeal from OpenMedia – I am forwarding it on to you for your consideration:

We only have 24 hours until key matching support ends. Please sign up now to avoid missing this opportunity.

Become a monthly donor in the next 24 hours and indie ISP Distributel and domain registrar Hover will double your contribution every single month in 2012. Even contributing $3 will make a huge difference. We can’t stress enough how crucial your participation is in sustaining our work fighting for an open and affordable Internet.

Please join us today before this generous matching funds offer ends.

In case you need another nudge, here’s what one of you said in our survey:

“The team at OpenMedia does fantastic work and together we can achieve our goals of keeping the internet affordable and surveillance free…I am proud to be a current and continuing supporter of OpenMedia’s efforts…Our country is entering a very dangerous time and I feel that OpenMedia’s efforts, along with the efforts of supporters and the public, are key to protecting our democracy and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Together, we stopped the government in their tracks on two key decisions this year: allowing Big Telecom more complete control over Internet pricing in Canada, and including a new online spying scheme in a package of crime reforms. But we’ve received word that lobbyists are working overtime through closed-door meetings to make the Internet more restricted and expensive.

Don’t let them undo the progress we’ve made this year. Take this last chance to have your contributions doubled.

With hope,

Steve, Reilly, Lindsey & Shea

P.S. Join our allies program today and you’ll get to see under the hood of one the most vibrant movements in the country. Join us: http://openmedia.ca/allies

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Dispelling the myths about organic farming

December 20, 2011 — xanthippa

If I had live off the food I grew myself, I would starve to death.

It’s that simple.

One of my husband’s favourite jokes is that if somebody wants to kill a plant without using any herbicides, all they have to do is ask me to look after it:  within days of my most ardent efforts to meet its every need, the plant will simply give up and die.

We have a most beautiful rock garden in our front yard:  my husband and kids made it, because (they said) they could not take yet another year of dead plants in front of the house as I tried over and over to grow some flowers…

Even the rabbit refuses to eat plants I try to grow for him in the back yard:  he’ll eat their farm-bought equivalents, but not the ones from the backyard…

(The only exception to this rule is a rosebush I have:  I have tried to kill it for years – even digging up all its roots and everything – but it just keeps coming back bigger and stronger…)

I explain this to underscore the wonder with which I regard all humans who are actually capable of growing food.

When I was little, my grandmother and her boyfriend grew most of their food:  this was unusual in the industrialized part of the world I came from, but organic farming was his passion and both were really, really good at it.  I always wanted to help – but I was only permitted to help with harvesting, banned even from watering plants (see reason above).

Ever since I had a choice, I have been buying my food from local farmers:  most of it organic.

Yes, I had heard all the things about ‘organic farming’ not producing better or tastier food than other farming methods.  Yet, for me, this was a conscious indulgence!

I really did not care if the peach tasted better because it was organic or because I thought it was organic…

And I did run experiments on my family by buying identical cuts of meat from the supermarket and local farmers and cooking them identically (say, the barbecue, and so on):  they very consistently preferred both the taste and the texture of the meat I purchased from local (‘organic’ or ‘near-organic’ or ‘least-harmful-practices) farmers.

This suited me very well:  I like the idea of supporting local farmers directly, eating food that was not shipped here across large distances, of knowing and developing a trust relationship with the people I got my food from… (I even went out to the farm where my beef came from, to see that yes, the cows actually walk around in the field and eat grass, and so on.)

While I would not think less of people for not following these practices, I relished in being able to do so myself.  I was not doing it because I was convinced my kids would get sick from eating supermarket food – I did it because I could and I enjoyed doing it.

Of course, whenever I could help it, I would never touch genetically modified foods:  the ‘safety tests’ performed on these are woefully inadequate and I do not believe they demonstrate these foods are safe for human consumption.  For example, most tests are run for less than 10 years – which means that cumulative damage which would show up after 15-20 years of consumption of these foods has never been examined, much less demonstrated to be safe.

In addition, the predatory practices by ‘some’ GM developers have truly very frightening implications.  For example, inserting the ‘terminator gene’ (which prevents 2nd generation seed from germinating, thus ‘protecting the IP’ of the seed’s developer – and ensuring the farmer must purchase new seed every planting season) into the highly mobile pollen rather than the location-controllable egg part of the seed is understood (by IP patent lawyers – I asked) to be an overtly aggressive move, signalling the conscious potential for the weaponization of GM seeds.

But, that is a different story altogether…

Perhaps it is with a bit of satisfaction that I read the following article:

“The results are in from a 30-year side-by-side trial of conventional and organic farming methods at Pennsylvania’s Rodale Institute. Contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure.”

…

“But even without a price premium, the Rodale study found organic systems are competitive with the conventional systems because of marginally lower input costs.”

I do not know how good this study is and if the article is representing its findings accurately. But, it is interesting and worth the read.

If it is even partially true, we may need to re-evaluate what we think we know about organic farming…

Posted in corruption, society, technology. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

SOPA: uniting the internet against collusion by big business and big government

December 15, 2011 — xanthippa

SOPA

Sounds so innocuous:  Stop Online Piracy Act.

After all, ‘Pirates’ are all ‘bad’, so anything to get them off ‘our internet’ must be ‘good’, right?

We, surely, the Orwellian language is only a part of the trick here.

The SOPA hearings are being held today and it is difficult to believe that anyone who does not directly benefit financially from this legislation would be willing to support it.  The effect of this legislation would be to chill free speech in ways to give Richard Warman and his Section 13 co-oppressors wet dreams in perpetuity!

Right now, even with the ‘moderate’, much less draconian legislation in place, the copyright infringement laws are being used to silence critics of big business – or even just independent voices (lest they become critical in the future).

In this example, a DMCA claim was used to censor a daily tech news episode which criticized a big-music corporation:  under the law, a mere DMCA claim was enough to force a takedown of the episode for a minimum of 10 days.  If you are running a daily news show, 10 days is an eternity…  At least, under the DMCA rules, the news show could appeal to a judge…

And, of course, we all know that the US government has been known to censor a blog for over a year, denying them due process of law to get their property restored and name cleared.

Just to add injury to injury:  not only are you guilty until proved innocent under SOPA, getting to court to prove your innocence will be much harder.  And even if you were victorious and the courts found you innocent of all charges, you would not have a recourse to sue for damages suffered as the result of the false SOPA accusation!

Is this type of legislation even needed?

The Swiss government certainly does not think so:  they have gone the opposite route.  After studying the data for a long time, these legislators have concluded that downloading music/videos for personal use is not just perfectly legal, they claim it actually channels money away from copyright holders and  helps the music/movie industry in the long run.

Even US judges are suggesting that if you buy a DVD, you just might be allowed to rip it under ‘fair use’ doctrine!

And what about the people who have been the most vociferous about the need for crippling the internet in the name of copyright protection?  Surely, they themselves do not indulge in the very behaviour they wish to stamp out with knee-jerk legislation like ‘three accusations and you are permanently banned from the internet’, right?

Well, not exactly.

“French President Nicholas Sarkozy is a man who has championed some of the most aggressive anti-piracy legislation in Europe. But today it’s revealed that the occupants of his very own office and home are responsible for a nice selection of pirate downloads using BitTorrent. Three strikes? Those with access to the Presidential Palace’s IP addresses have already doubled that quota. “

But, surely, those entertainment legacy industry movers and shakers who have lobbied the legislators for SOPA – the ones who claim that downloading movies and music for free would bankrupt them – surely they are not doing this themselves, are they?

Of course they are!

“With increasing lobbying efforts from the entertainment industry against BitTorrent sites and users, we wondered whether these companies hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others. After some initial skimming we’ve discovered BitTorrent pirates at nearly every major entertainment industry company in the US, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fox Entertainment and NBC Universal. Busted.”

And those ‘evil Pirates’ – they must be up to even more vile things…

…but only if you call building a school and bringing high-speed internet connection to a small farming village (which only had one dial-up connected computer for the whole village before) to be a bad thing…

Let’s hope the unanimous screams of protest from the citizens of the internet get heard!

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In defense of CarrierIQ

December 13, 2011 — xanthippa

Over the last month or two, I have been highly critical of CarrierIQ and the sneaky way they gather smart-phone user information without informing the user they are doing so, much less providing an opt-out choice.

CarrierIQ has taken a lot of heat from a lot of places over this.  Now, they are defending themselves:  in the name of fairness, I think it is important to bring this defense to your attention.

The full document can be read here.

In the first few lines. they thank Trevor Eckhart for “for sharing his findings with us”.  That is quite a change from their initial response, when they threatened to sue him if he continued to expose their practices…until the Electronic Frontier Foundation stood up for him, that is.  It’s nice to see that, deep down inside, they are really swell guys and gals who care…

Reading ‘between the lines’, here are a few excerpts from CarrierIQ’s statement:

“…Carrier IQ software automatically passes the hardware serial number and the subscriber serial number (e.g. IMEI/IMSI) to the Network Operator who can then match to their customer records…”

i.e.  CarrierIQ matches the phone and user information in their database, making it possible to identify individual user’s phone habits as opposed to just collecting  ‘anonymous operational data’ that could be used to analyze network performance without compromising user privacy.

*   *   *

“Q. “Why is my battery only lasting 3 hours and my phone keeps crashing?”

 A. Because you have loaded a new application abcxyz and this is draining the battery quickly and making your phone unstable.”

i.e. CarrierIQ monitors what applications are on your phone.

*   *   *

“Q. “Why does my phone drop calls when I drive on Interstate 80?”

 A. It looks like you were dropping calls between exit 34 and exit 35 and we are upgrading our towers to improve performance at that section of the highway.”

i.e.  CarrierIQ records your location with respect to phone usage.

*   *   *

“The Carrier IQ software installed on the mobile device is called the IQ Agent.

. . .

The IQ Agent has been implemented on feature phones, smart phones, data modems and tablets.”

Nice to know…  I guess I’ll pass on that tablet computer and put my IT guys to hacking the modem:  if it is doing what the smart phones are doing, it’s time for a jail-break!

*   *   *

“In typical deployments, the IQ Agent uploads diagnostic data once per day, at a time when the device is not being used.

. . .

Network Operators who are Carrier IQ customers do not charge consumers for this upload nor does it show up as usage of consumer data plans.”

In other words, you are not given any clue that one corporation is beaming data from your phone or tablet and selling it to another corporation.  Nice!

Well, at least they don’t make you pay for it…

*    *    *

” [Preload] version of the IQ Agent cannot typically be deleted by an end user but only gathers and forwards metrics from the device if it is enabled with a profile …”

My emphasis.

*   *   *

“Network Operators typically prefer the embedded version of the software as it provides the most comprehensive diagnostic set. This embedded information is used to understand which control signals are passed between the mobile device and the handset…”

Again, the emphasis is mine.

*   *   *

I think this ought to be sufficient for a Q.E.D. – but the document goes on:

“Network Operators and handset manufacturers determine whether and how they deploy Carrier IQ software and what metrics that software will gather and forward to the Network Operator.”

Translation:  “All of your data is belongs to us, you puny little humans!  Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!!”  

OK, let’s not go overboard here.

Let’s be fair!

Carrier IQ suggests that they themselves do not make the call about just how much data to collect about you – they will only collect and pass on the data which their customers, the Network Operators and handset manufacturers, will pay them to collect about you! 

Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!!

*   *   *

“An embedded version of the IQ Agent cannot be deleted by consumers through any method provided by Carrier IQ.”

Is there an echo in here?  Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!

*   *   *

“A new profile can be downloaded to a mobile device when it periodically checks-in with the network server. After receiving the new profile from the network server, the device will begin gathering the metrics and pre-processing according to these instructions.”

Translation:  you complain – we’ll ferret out your secrets!

*   *   *

And that is just the first half of the document…

In the rest of the document, to the best of my reading, they assure us they are working on a ‘fix’ that would make it less possible for us to find and remove the IQ Agent, they admit to (at times) collecting SMS messages (but that was a mistake and they don’t do it any more), collecting phone call data, URL information, collecting keystroke data (but only under ‘specific conditions’ and when the ‘collector’ wants it – not for themselves, not at all….plus it’s not ‘on purpose’, just a by-product of other functions), and so on.

And then there is IQ Insight…  This is the bit that collects all the location information:  letting ‘operators’ to really drill down through your data!

Oh – and they say they only sell your information once…

But, don’t take my word for it:  I am sure my reading of this document is highly flawed and imperfect, as what they say in their ‘conclusion’ does not, in my never-humble-opinion, match up fully with what they say in the body of the text.  Obviously, it must be my understanding which is flawed.

It would be much better if you were to read the document for yourself and form your own opinion about CarrierIQ’s most illuminating explanations.

And, if these do not send you screaming for a throw-away phone, I have this lovely medieval bridge in Prague I’d love to sell you!

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FOI request for FBI use of data secretly collected from smart phones: denied!

December 13, 2011 — xanthippa

A while back, I  posted about CarrierIQ and its ‘rootkit of all evil’.

In it are links which demonstrate how CarrierIQ has embedded code into smart phones which runs in the background and is not easily accessible to the phone’s user (with no notification to the user that it is running, much less choices to ‘opt out’).  This code records everything the phone is used for and reports this information back to CarrierIQ – even if the user is not in any contract with the company, or has indeed ever heard of its existence.  This information contains:

  • GPS information
  • incoming and outgoing phone calls
  • details of internet access and use, including encrypted data (like passwords)
  • all keystroke information

In another post, I have written about INDECT:  the EU’s proposed regime of continuous surveillance of member states’ citizenry for the purpose of identifying ‘unusual behaviour’, which would then be brought to the attention of police for ‘follow up’.  ‘Unusual behaviour’ would include (but not be limited to):

  • lingering too long in public areas
  • abnormal transit system use
  • internet habits that include visiting potentially ‘antisocial websites’
  • associating with ‘antisocial elements’
  • abnormal shopping habits

(In that post, I also provide a link to an article about CarrierIQ’s attempt to silence the researcher who first published information about its surveillance practices.)

The potential for abuse is so strong, it is difficult to overstate it…it seems that, increasingly, legislation is being drafted and passed all around the world not to safeguard against it, but to take advantage of it.

Here is an analysis (by a lawyer) of SOPA, just one such proposed pieces of legislation (in the USA) and the ways in which it breaches the constitution.

But if you are still not convinced that police agencies are warrantlessly accessing vast amounts of private data collected about citizens without their permission or knowledge, here is another piece of information you should consider:

‘A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents – but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed, might reasonably interfere with an ongoing investigation.’

Indeed.

Our constitutions were written with the specific purpose of protecting the civil rights of citizens from their governments.  Most of us have forgotten this:  and our governments are increasingly passing laws which circumvent (if not directly breech) our unalienable rights which all written constitutions (starting with the Magna Carta) are but imperfect expressions of.

We need to wake up and oppose this passive tolerance of the increasingly corrupt and oppressive surveillance society – before it is too late!

H/T:  Tyr

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Tired of PayPal’s games?

December 8, 2011 — xanthippa

About a year ago, we had a bit of trouble with PayPal:  not only had they frozen my son’s account with birthday money in it, they actually went back and reversed payments to some vendors which they had approved several days earlier! We had received the goods, the payment disappeared from the vendors’ account and the vendors were seriously unimpressed.

With us!

It took me a while to contact these vendors, explain the situation and beg them not to suspend our accounts because of an unforseen action by PayPal, which we had no control over.  (In the case of Steam, loosing the account would also have lost us all the games we had previously bought on that site over several years.)

Then, I started jumping through all kinds of ‘hoops’ that PayPal dictated, so that they would release the funds.  I did everything – and fulfilled their every demand, however unreasonable, to the best of my abilities.

They still would not release the funds.

After well over a month, they finally re-activated the account:  for a day.  We had 24 hours to spend the money – whatever was not spent would be frozen for ever…

At this point, I will rather not buy something than use PayPal to do it.

Which is why I am glad to hear that more and more retailers are looking at PayPal alternatives.  Here is a good article about one company’s search and why they ditched PayPal for Stripe:  if you receive money through PayPal, this is required reading!

Posted in technology. Tags: . 3 Comments »

US government abandons due process as it censors a polular blog for over a year

December 8, 2011 — xanthippa

This is truly astonishing – and why SOPA and similar such nonsense must be opposed by all pro-free-speech people!!!

‘Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine’s offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company’s printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine’s lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that’s a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that’s been in the making for over a year, and which we’re exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year — with the only difference being that, rather than “a printing press” and a “magazine,” the story involved “a domain” and a “blog.”‘

Read the full story at TechDirt – and weep, because this is not the only such case.

Then get ready to fight against oppression of free speech under ALL its guises!

Posted in freedoms, opression, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Cancer treatment breakthrough – from a 17-year-old!

December 8, 2011 — xanthippa

This is one of those feel-good stories that just makes you wonder…

‘Her creation is being heralded as a “Swiss army knife of cancer treatment.” Zhang managed to develop a nanoparticle that can be delivered to the site of a tumor through the drug salinomycin. Once there it kills the cancer stem cells. However, Zhang went further and included both gold and iron-oxide components, which allow for non-invasive imaging of the site through MRI and Photoacoustics.’

For her success, Angela Zhang was awarded the grand prize at the Siemens competition which highligts research excellence at high school level.

Wow!

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Have you heard about INDECT?

December 5, 2011 — xanthippa

If you haven’t heard about INDECT ( Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment), you are not alone – especially if you are on this side of the pond.

Or you might have heard of it and dismissed it as some sort of a paranoid conspiracy theory…which is exactly what some, including Wikipedia, imply it to be.

On the other hand, WikiLeaks takes it deadly seriously.  As does European Digital Rights (EDRI).

If you happen to be unaware that items like phones send constant streams of information about you – including installing a hidden keylogger – back to corporations you may have no commercial relationship with, here is an article with a video that shows, step-by-step, how this is being done. (Yes, when this information was first published, CarrierIQ tried to shut the source up with threats of lawsuits.)

And just to help you relax when you bring home a new video-game console…consider their enhanced sensory abilities (lip-reading, facial expression analysis to measure emotional states, enhanced speech recognition) in conjunction with the ‘back doors’ being built in to so many of our digital devices.

But, I digress…

The EU is planning to gather information about its citizens from ‘open sources’ (social media, chat-rooms, blogs) as well as public surveillance systems (like CCTV cameras to the GPS devices that they wish to legislate to be mandatory in every vehicle in order to ‘monitor traffic patterns’), their surfing habits, their shopping habits (remember all those ‘loyalty cards’?), to all other policing methods.  Then they plan to run this mass of data through some algorithms which will analyze the language used by specific citizens with their public behaviours (say, like sitting in a public place for longer than ‘normal’) and online preferences, cross-reference it all and come up with ‘automated dossiers’ which will alert police officers to go check out specific citizens deemed to have ‘abnormal behaviour’.

All this is to be done by an arms-lenght (translation:  completely unaccountable) agency which is as transparent as tar, overseen by a police-agency dominated board.  As this agency is an EU creature, all the member states would be compelled to give it full access to citizen information, from financial to DNA databases.

Of course, we know this is the direction our society is moving in – but I suspect most of us have not been aware of the degree to which this has already been happening and just how lacking we are in any privacy rights.

Perhaps we ought to pay more attention…

H/T:  HackerNews

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Cool Science: random numer generation just got a lot more random

December 2, 2011 — xanthippa

Random number generation is a lot harder than one might suppose: since they are generated by an algorithm, there will always bias, a ‘regularity’ which makes even the most random-seeming number generation non-random.

Why is this important?

For security, among other applications.

If a security system’s ‘random numbers’ can be predicted, its encryption can be cracked and the system will no longer be secure.  (Ok – this is a simplification, but the underlying principle holds.)

This is why generating truly random numbers is so important.  It looks like Ben Sussman, an Ottawa scientists at the National Research Council (NRC), has made some serious advances here:

‘Sussman’s Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second.

His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes.

“This out-coming light is very, very special,” Sussman says.

It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space.’

Cool science!
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