The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the B.C. court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect.
Category Archives: Current Events
It’s Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork
GHash is in a position to exercise complete control over which transactions appear on the blockchain and which miners reap mining rewards. They could keep 100% of the mining profits to themselves if they so chose. Bitcoin is currently an expensive distributed database under the control of a single entity, albeit one that requires constantly burning energy to maintain — worst of all worlds.
via It’s Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork :: Hacking, Distributed.
First patent troll ordered to pay “extraordinary case” fees
“Lumen’s motivation in this litigation was to extract a nuisance settlement from FTB on the theory that FTB would rather pay an unjustified license fee than bear the costs of the threatened expensive litigation,” Cote stated in the order she issued on Friday. “Lumen’s threats of ‘full-scale litigation,’ ‘protracted discovery,’ and a settlement demand escalator should FTB file responsive papers, were aimed at convincing FTB that a pay-off was the lesser injustice.”
via Payback time: First patent troll ordered to pay “extraordinary case” fees | Ars Technica.
TrueCrypt Website Says To Switch To BitLocker
I do not know precisely what this means, as I have no contact with the developers anymore: but this is what was agreed upon.
They should no longer be trusted, their binaries should not be executed, their site should be considered compromised, and their key should be treated as revoked. It may be that they have been approached by an aggressive intelligence agency or NSLed, but I don’t know for sure.
While the source of 7.2 does not appear to my eyes to be backdoored, other than obviously not supporting encryption anymore, I have not analysed the binary and distrust it. It shouldn’t be distributed or executed.
via TrueCrypt Website Says To Switch To BitLocker – Slashdot.
From: TrueCrypt Final Release Repository
TrueCrypt’s formal code audit will continue as planned. Then the code will be forked, the product’s license restructured, and it will evolve. The name will be changed because the developers wish to preserve the integrity of the name they have built. They won’t allow their name to continue without them. But the world will get some future version, that runs on future operating systems, and future mass storage systems.
There will be continuity . . . as an interesting new chapter of Internet lore is born.
The threat facing online comments
Thus, according to the ECtHR, a news website should anticipate types of stories that might attract defamatory or insulting comments and be prepared to remove them promptly – or even before the comment has been reported, which might mean websites will be forced to pre-moderate any comment it publishes. One only has to look at the type and volume of comment posted below the line on websites from the FT’s to the Daily Mail’s to see the implications of this ruling. And, as any moderator will tell you, controversial comments can appear in the unlikeliest of places.
New Al Qaeda Encryption Software
Cryptography is hard, and the odds that a home-brew encryption product is better than a well-studied open-source tool is slight.
In Letter to Obama, Cisco CEO Complains About NSA Allegations
The letter follows new revelations, including photos, published in a book based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden alleging that the NSA intercepted equipment from Cisco and other manufacturers and loaded them with surveillance software. The photos, which have not been independently verified, appear to show NSA technicians working with Cisco equipment. Cisco is not said to have cooperated in the NSA’s efforts.
via In Letter to Obama, Cisco CEO Complains About NSA Allegations | Re/code.
We are rate limiting the FCC to dialup modem speeds until they pay us for bandwidth
If it bothers you that I’m doing this, I want to point out that everyone is going to be doing crap like this after the FCC rips apart Net Neutrality. It’s time for the web to organize and stand up against these thugs before they ruin everything that the web stands for.
U.S.: Stop using Internet Explorer
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a part of Homeland Security known as US-CERT, said in an advisory released on Monday morning that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to “the complete compromise” of an affected system.
“We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem,” Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute warned in a separate advisory, that US-CERT linked to in its warning.
via U.S.: Stop using Internet Explorer – chicagotribune.com.
How the FCC Plans to Save the Internet By Destroying It
Previous telecommunications systems — most notably the phone system — are regulated as “common carriers”. This means you can call whoever you like; you can use whatever phone you want; and anyone in a service area can sign up at a fair rate.
This designation recognizes that communication systems are too important to be left to the vagaries of profit-be-damned executives and that the operators are in very powerful positions to do harm and extract tolls.
via How the FCC Plans to Save the Internet By Destroying It: An Explainer — Medium.