Topic: Appelbaum - on July 14, 2016 at 3:52:00 PM CEST
Orwell’s Swan Song: Free Speech Activists Whitewashing Wikipedia To Silence Dissent
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be writing a blogpost in July 2016 about how EFF and TorProject supporters are actively censoring free speech on the internet, I would have thought I’d be writing it for The Onion. Unfortunately, I’m not. I have supported and amplified for EFF, the Tor Project and related organisations, staff members and campaigns relentlessly, for years. As a ‘Person of Interest’, I have relied on their enterprises to keep me safe. I have defended them ideologically and in principle, when they have been unfairly under attack. However in an unbelievably Orwellian twist, recent and current events have completely transformed the situation from free speech organisations being similarly under attack by the State, to the State using free speech organisations to attack enemies of the State, and free speech as a whole.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 14, 2016 at 3:50:00 PM CEST
Tor-Projekt tauscht Aufsichtsgremium aus
Relativ überraschend hat das Anonymisierungs-Projekt seinen Verwaltungsrat komplett ausgetauscht. Unter den neuen Direktoren ist auch Kryptografie-Ikone Bruce Schneier. Der Anonymisierungsdienst Tor hat sein Aufsichtsgremium komplett ausgetauscht. Der alte, siebenköpfige Verwaltungsrat habe einstimmig sechs neue Mitglieder bestimmt und sei zugleich geschlossen zurückgetreten. Zur neuen, ehrenamtlich tätigen Führungsspitze zählen unter anderem Cindy Cohn, die Leiterin der Electronic Frontier Foundation, sowie die prominenten Kryptologen Bruce Schneier und Matt Blaze.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 14, 2016 at 3:47:00 PM CEST
The Tor Project Elects New Board of Directors
Today, the board of directors of the Tor Project is announcing a bold decision in keeping with its commitment to the best possible health of the organization. Says Tor's Executive Director Shari Steele, "I think this was an incredibly brave and selfless thing for the board to do. They’re making a clear statement that they want the organization to become its best self."
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 13, 2016 at 12:02:00 PM CEST
Riffle: MIT Creates New Anonymity Network Which Is More Secure Than TOR
MIT is a place where a stone thrown up in the air will definitely land on an extraordinary mind. I have no intention to hurt those guys, by the way. The point of giving such example is that the researchers at MIT have come up with a new anonymity network which is said to be more secure and safer than the existing ones, namely Tor. The news sounds good to the ears after hearing stories about vulnerabilities present in Tor. MIT News reports that the newly created anonymity network will be uncovered by the researchers of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium later this month.
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Topic: POLITIK - on July 13, 2016 at 11:55:00 AM CEST
Standing in solidarity with Turkey’s journalists
Index on Censorship supports the “I am a journalist” campaign launched by journalists and media freedom advocates from Turkey. We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Turkey who fiercely continue their jobs despite facing relentless attacks and attempts to silence them. We also express our support to the 44 journalists and news distributors in jail, and to those facing arrest as retaliation for exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom to inform. Here is the campaign statement: I am a journalist! Journalism is not a crime. In Turkey, harassment of the press is getting worse by the day.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 13, 2016 at 11:52:00 AM CEST
Sophisticated Malware Found on the Network of a European Energy Company
Security researchers from SentinelOne have stumbled upon a malware campaign targeting at least one European energy company, which features a large arsenal of tools rarely seen in ordinary malware samples. The detail that particularly stood out as regards the malware's code was the fact that its creators spent a great amount of time to make sure their threat wouldn't raise any flags on infected hosts. This level of detail and attention is usually found in the malware used by nation states. SentinelOne experts believe that a threat actor residing in Eastern Europe may have been behind this malware, which they dubbed Furtim's Parent.
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Topic: WEB - on July 13, 2016 at 11:49:00 AM CEST
Facebook is still a gun marketplace
On January 29 2016, Facebook announced they would no longer allow peer to peer sales of guns. They made a big deal about it. Got a big write-up in the New York Times. It was a big deal. The world’s biggest social network was taking a stand against guns. I wish they’d meant it. I really fucking do. On June 13 2016, an asshole walked into a gay Orlando nightclub and killed 49 people with an AR15. It was the latest in a long string of gun violence in the US. And it didn’t even piss me off. At least I couldn’t tell if that massacre was pissing me off or whether I was still pissed off from the one before. They run together like water now.
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Topic: WAR - on July 13, 2016 at 11:45:00 AM CEST
Mass Shootings
A note that the data on shootingtracker.com will now comply with the standard Gun Violence Archive methodology on how mass shootings are counted. Gun Violence Archive has always used the FBI derived definition: FOUR or more shot and/or killed in a single event [incident], at the same general time and location, not including the shooter. This difference is that we do not count the shooter among the victims when determining if a shooting reaches the threshold of Mass Shooting. It insures a clear separation between victims of a shooting and those who perpetrate the crime. GVA also does not parse the definition to exclude any type of gun violence such as gang shooting or domestic violence. The definition is purely numerical and reflects ALL shootings which reach that statistical threshold.
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Topic: POLICE REPORT - on July 13, 2016 at 11:43:00 AM CEST
FBI gives up on DB Cooper case after 45-year investigation
The FBI has closed the books on their 45-year hunt for skyjacker D.B. Cooper. Seattle FBI Special Agent in Charge Frank Montoya Jr. said it was his decision to halt the investigation. He said that he notified counterparts in Washington D.C., former agents and others directly impacted by the case before making the announcement. "The fact of the matter is it's sometimes difficult to come to a consensusit's time to move on," Montoya Jr. said on Tuesday. The Cooper case captivated the world for four decades.
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Topic: SECURITY - on July 13, 2016 at 11:42:00 AM CEST
The FBI Says Its Malware Isn’t Malware Because the FBI Is Good
The FBI is facing accusations that malware it deployed while running Operation Playpen, a sting that infiltrated and maintained a dark web child pornography website for two weeks and eventually led to more than 100 arrests, was illegal. But the agency swears that using malware was good because, well, the FBI had good intentions. Some judges have actually ruled to throw out evidence obtained by the malware the FBI used on the basis that it did not have the proper warrants. (The DOJ and FBI just had a major breakthrough with the supreme court in modifying Rule 41, giving them expansive new hacking powers, but we’ll get to that in a second.) According to a legal brief filed by they FBI, “A reasonable person person or society would not interpret the actions taken by a law enforcement officer pursuant to a court order to be malicious.” Hmm.
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Topic: Space - on July 13, 2016 at 11:40:00 AM CEST
The Space Station Is Becoming A Spy Satellite For Wildlife
Scientists have a new way to eavesdrop on the planet and its inhabitants. Reuters In 1250, the prior of a Cistercian Abbey reputedly tied a note to a leg of a barn swallow, which read: “Oh swallow, where do you live in winter?” The next spring, he got a response: “In Asia, in the home of Petrus.” This perhaps apocryphal story marks one of the first known instances of someone tagging an animal to track its movements. Thanks to many such endeavors, we now know that every year, barn swallows migrate between their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere to wintering grounds throughout the tropics and the south. In 1912, one intrepid individual that was ringed in England turned up 7,500 miles away in South Africa.
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Topic: DRUGS - on July 13, 2016 at 11:38:00 AM CEST
State-Space of Drug Effects: Results
It is hard to keep up with all of the new research chemicals (RCs). When a substance comes onto the scene, it is hard to predict whether first adopters will experience fascinating, terrifying or just plain weird effects from the drug. Largely, one thing is certain: Most psychonauts agree that describing subjective effects is brutally difficult. Without a principled framework for pinning down the nature of a drug experience, we will continue to misunderstand and misjudge the states of consciousness disclosed by brains on RCs. What should we know about the subjective effects of a drug? In what way are drugs different? And in what way do they produce similar effects? This post will present a general conceptual framework for discussing drug effects in a principled fashion. This will be done by analyzing the responses of a recent survey on drug effects. The major axes of variance are obtained using factor analysis, and the dimensions are interpreted and discussed.
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