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Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

The energy and greenhouse-gas implications of internet video streaming in the United St... - 0 views

iopscience.iop.org/...054007

energy environmental research streaming video internet vs DVD

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jun 14
     
    [# ! Via Francisco Manuel Hernandez Sosa's FB...] OPEN ACCESS Arman Shehabi1, Ben Walker2 and Eric Masanet2 "Letters The rapid growth of streaming video entertainment has recently received attention as a possibly less energy intensive alternative to the manufacturing and transportation of digital video discs (DVDs). This study utilizes a life-cycle assessment approach to estimate the primary energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions associated with video viewing through both traditional DVD methods and online video streaming. Base-case estimates for 2011 video viewing energy and CO2(e) emission intensities indicate video streaming can be more efficient than DVDs, depending on DVD viewing method. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Jun 14
     
    OPEN ACCESS Arman Shehabi1, Ben Walker2 and Eric Masanet2 "Letters The rapid growth of streaming video entertainment has recently received attention as a possibly less energy intensive alternative to the manufacturing and transportation of digital video discs (DVDs). This study utilizes a life-cycle assessment approach to estimate the primary energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions associated with video viewing through both traditional DVD methods and online video streaming. Base-case estimates for 2011 video viewing energy and CO2(e) emission intensities indicate video streaming can be more efficient than DVDs, depending on DVD viewing method. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 04 Jun 14
     
    [# ! Via Francisco Manuel Hernandez Sosa's FB...] OPEN ACCESS Arman Shehabi1, Ben Walker2 and Eric Masanet2 "Letters The rapid growth of streaming video entertainment has recently received attention as a possibly less energy intensive alternative to the manufacturing and transportation of digital video discs (DVDs). This study utilizes a life-cycle assessment approach to estimate the primary energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions associated with video viewing through both traditional DVD methods and online video streaming. Base-case estimates for 2011 video viewing energy and CO2(e) emission intensities indicate video streaming can be more efficient than DVDs, depending on DVD viewing method. "
Paul Merrell

UN Report Finds Mass Surveillance Violates International Treaties and Privacy Rights - ... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ort-condemns-mass-surveillance

surveillance state UN-report digital-privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The United Nations’ top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the “Special Rapporteur”) issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. “The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report concluded. Central to the Rapporteur’s findings is the distinction between “targeted surveillance” — which “depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization” — and “mass surveillance,” whereby “states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites.” In a system of “mass surveillance,” the report explained, “all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the States concerned.”
  • Mass surveillance thus “amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications,” it declared. As a result, “it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time indiscriminately.” In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the members of the “Five Eyes” alliance are signatories. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of the U.S.’s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually every major country has signed the treaty. Article 17 of the Covenant guarantees the right of privacy, the defining protection of which, the report explained, is “that individuals have the right to share information and ideas with one another without interference by the State, secure in the knowledge that their communication will reach and be read by the intended recipients alone.”
  • The report’s key conclusion is that this core right is impinged by mass surveillance programs: “Bulk access technology is indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy and impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17. In the absence of a formal derogation from States’ obligations under the Covenant, these programs pose a direct and ongoing challenge to an established norm of international law.” The report recognized that protecting citizens from terrorism attacks is a vital duty of every state, and that the right of privacy is not absolute, as it can be compromised when doing so is “necessary” to serve “compelling” purposes. It noted: “There may be a compelling counter-terrorism justification for the radical re-evaluation of Internet privacy rights that these practices necessitate. ” But the report was adamant that no such justifications have ever been demonstrated by any member state using mass surveillance: “The States engaging in mass surveillance have so far failed to provide a detailed and evidence-based public justification for its necessity, and almost no States have enacted explicit domestic legislation to authorize its use.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Instead, explained the Rapporteur, states have relied on vague claims whose validity cannot be assessed because of the secrecy behind which these programs are hidden: “The arguments in favor of a complete abrogation of the right to privacy on the Internet have not been made publicly by the States concerned or subjected to informed scrutiny and debate.” About the ongoing secrecy surrounding the programs, the report explained that “states deploying this technology retain a monopoly of information about its impact,” which is “a form of conceptual censorship … that precludes informed debate.” A June report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights similarly noted “the disturbing lack of governmental transparency associated with surveillance policies, laws and practices, which hinders any effort to assess their coherence with international human rights law and to ensure accountability.” The rejection of the “terrorism” justification for mass surveillance as devoid of evidence echoes virtually every other formal investigation into these programs. A federal judge last December found that the U.S. Government was unable to “cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.” Later that month, President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies concluded that mass surveillance “was not essential to preventing attacks” and information used to detect plots “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”
  • That principle — that the right of internet privacy belongs to all individuals, not just Americans — was invoked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he explained in a June, 2013 interview at The Guardian why he disclosed documents showing global surveillance rather than just the surveillance of Americans: “More fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.” The U.N. Rapporteur was clear that these systematic privacy violations are the result of a union between governments and tech corporations: “States increasingly rely on the private sector to facilitate digital surveillance. This is not confined to the enactment of mandatory data retention legislation. Corporates [sic] have also been directly complicit in operationalizing bulk access technology through the design of communications infrastructure that facilitates mass surveillance. ”
  • The report was most scathing in its rejection of a key argument often made by American defenders of the NSA: that mass surveillance is justified because Americans are given special protections (the requirement of a FISA court order for targeted surveillance) which non-Americans (95% of the world) do not enjoy. Not only does this scheme fail to render mass surveillance legal, but it itself constitutes a separate violation of international treaties (emphasis added): The Special Rapporteur concurs with the High Commissioner for Human Rights that where States penetrate infrastructure located outside their territorial jurisdiction, they remain bound by their obligations under the Covenant. Moreover, article 26 of the Covenant prohibits discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, nationality and citizenship. The Special Rapporteur thus considers that States are legally obliged to afford the same privacy protection for nationals and non-nationals and for those within and outside their jurisdiction. Asymmetrical privacy protection regimes are a clear violation of the requirements of the Covenant.
  • Three Democratic Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in The New York Times that “the usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated” and “we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security.” A study by the centrist New America Foundation found that mass metadata collection “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism” and, where plots were disrupted, “traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case.” It labeled the NSA’s claims to the contrary as “overblown and even misleading.” While worthless in counter-terrorism policies, the UN report warned that allowing mass surveillance to persist with no transparency creates “an ever present danger of ‘purpose creep,’ by which measures justified on counter-terrorism grounds are made available for use by public authorities for much less weighty public interest purposes.” Citing the UK as one example, the report warned that, already, “a wide range of public bodies have access to communications data, for a wide variety of purposes, often without judicial authorization or meaningful independent oversight.”
  • The latest finding adds to the growing number of international formal rulings that the mass surveillance programs of the U.S. and its partners are illegal. In January, the European parliament’s civil liberties committee condemned such programs in “the strongest possible terms.” In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that European legislation on data retention contravened EU privacy rights. A top secret memo from the GCHQ, published last year by The Guardian, explicitly stated that one key reason for concealing these programs was fear of a “damaging public debate” and specifically “legal challenges against the current regime.” The report ended with a call for far greater transparency along with new protections for privacy in the digital age. Continuation of the status quo, it warned, imposes “a risk that systematic interference with the security of digital communications will continue to proliferate without any serious consideration being given to the implications of the wholesale abandonment of the right to online privacy.” The urgency of these reforms is underscored, explained the Rapporteur, by a conclusion of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that “permitting the government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state and its citizens.”
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Why customers need to Run Simple in the Digital and Networked Economy | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...-digital-and-networked-economy

customers need run simple networked world W@rld economy zdnet

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 10 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 10 Jan 15
     
    "Summary:Customers today are looking for ways how to transform their business to cater to our digitized, networked, and complex world. The need to deliver services rather than products, and everything needs to happen fast, so innovation with speed is key."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

In 2015, More Than Ever, Fighting For Our Freedoms Is Our Mission | La Quadrature du Net - 0 views

www.laquadrature.net/...or-our-freedoms-is-our-mission

fighting for freedom digital privacyy expression Quadrature du Net mission net

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Jan 15
     
    "Submitted on 28 Jan 2015 - 13:30 free speech Net filtering Privacy - Personal Data Surveillance press release Printer-friendly version Send by email Français Paris, 28 January 2015 - On the occasion of the European Data Privacy Day, the Observatoire des Libertés et du Numérique (Freedoms and Digital Observatory) recalls on its first year's work and reminds us that privacy is more crucial now than ever"
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 Jan 15
     
    "Submitted on 28 Jan 2015 - 13:30 free speech Net filtering Privacy - Personal Data Surveillance press release Printer-friendly version Send by email Français Paris, 28 January 2015 - On the occasion of the European Data Privacy Day, the Observatoire des Libertés et du Numérique (Freedoms and Digital Observatory) recalls on its first year's work and reminds us that privacy is more crucial now than ever"
Paul Merrell

Most Agencies Falling Short on Mandate for Online Records - 1 views

www2.gwu.edu/...NSAEBB505

eFOIA FOIA audit National-Security-Archives agency-compliance

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Nearly 20 years after Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only 40 percent of agencies have followed the law's instruction for systematic posting of records released through FOIA in their electronic reading rooms, according to a new FOIA Audit released today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org to mark Sunshine Week. The Archive team audited all federal agencies with Chief FOIA Officers as well as agency components that handle more than 500 FOIA requests a year — 165 federal offices in all — and found only 67 with online libraries populated with significant numbers of released FOIA documents and regularly updated.
  • Congress called on agencies to embrace disclosure and the digital era nearly two decades ago, with the passage of the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments. The law mandated that agencies post key sets of records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making FOIA requests, and use new information technology to post online proactively records of significant public interest, including those already processed in response to FOIA requests and "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests." Congress believed then, and openness advocates know now, that this kind of proactive disclosure, publishing online the results of FOIA requests as well as agency records that might be requested in the future, is the only tenable solution to FOIA backlogs and delays. Thus the National Security Archive chose to focus on the e-reading rooms of agencies in its latest audit. Even though the majority of federal agencies have not yet embraced proactive disclosure of their FOIA releases, the Archive E-FOIA Audit did find that some real "E-Stars" exist within the federal government, serving as examples to lagging agencies that technology can be harnessed to create state-of-the art FOIA platforms. Unfortunately, our audit also found "E-Delinquents" whose abysmal web performance recalls the teletype era.
  • E-Delinquents include the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, which, despite being mandated to advise the President on technology policy, does not embrace 21st century practices by posting any frequently requested records online. Another E-Delinquent, the Drug Enforcement Administration, insults its website's viewers by claiming that it "does not maintain records appropriate for FOIA Library at this time."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • "The presumption of openness requires the presumption of posting," said Archive director Tom Blanton. "For the new generation, if it's not online, it does not exist." The National Security Archive has conducted fourteen FOIA Audits since 2002. Modeled after the California Sunshine Survey and subsequent state "FOI Audits," the Archive's FOIA Audits use open-government laws to test whether or not agencies are obeying those same laws. Recommendations from previous Archive FOIA Audits have led directly to laws and executive orders which have: set explicit customer service guidelines, mandated FOIA backlog reduction, assigned individualized FOIA tracking numbers, forced agencies to report the average number of days needed to process requests, and revealed the (often embarrassing) ages of the oldest pending FOIA requests. The surveys include:
  • The federal government has made some progress moving into the digital era. The National Security Archive's last E-FOIA Audit in 2007, " File Not Found," reported that only one in five federal agencies had put online all of the specific requirements mentioned in the E-FOIA amendments, such as guidance on making requests, contact information, and processing regulations. The new E-FOIA Audit finds the number of agencies that have checked those boxes is now much higher — 100 out of 165 — though many (66 in 165) have posted just the bare minimum, especially when posting FOIA responses. An additional 33 agencies even now do not post these types of records at all, clearly thwarting the law's intent.
  • The FOIAonline Members (Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Labor Relations Authority, Merit Systems Protection Board, National Archives and Records Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Department of the Navy, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Federal Communications Commission) won their "E-Star" by making past requests and releases searchable via FOIAonline. FOIAonline also allows users to submit their FOIA requests digitally.
  • THE E-DELINQUENTS: WORST OVERALL AGENCIES In alphabetical order
  • Key Findings
  • Excuses Agencies Give for Poor E-Performance
  • Justice Department guidance undermines the statute. Currently, the FOIA stipulates that documents "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests" must be posted by agencies somewhere in their electronic reading rooms. The Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy defines these records as "frequently requested records… or those which have been released three or more times to FOIA requesters." Of course, it is time-consuming for agencies to develop a system that keeps track of how often a record has been released, which is in part why agencies rarely do so and are often in breach of the law. Troublingly, both the current House and Senate FOIA bills include language that codifies the instructions from the Department of Justice. The National Security Archive believes the addition of this "three or more times" language actually harms the intent of the Freedom of Information Act as it will give agencies an easy excuse ("not requested three times yet!") not to proactively post documents that agency FOIA offices have already spent time, money, and energy processing. We have formally suggested alternate language requiring that agencies generally post "all records, regardless of form or format that have been released in response to a FOIA request."
  • Disabilities Compliance. Despite the E-FOIA Act, many government agencies do not embrace the idea of posting their FOIA responses online. The most common reason agencies give is that it is difficult to post documents in a format that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, also referred to as being "508 compliant," and the 1998 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act that require federal agencies "to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities." E-Star agencies, however, have proven that 508 compliance is no barrier when the agency has a will to post. All documents posted on FOIAonline are 508 compliant, as are the documents posted by the Department of Defense and the Department of State. In fact, every document created electronically by the US government after 1998 should already be 508 compliant. Even old paper records that are scanned to be processed through FOIA can be made 508 compliant with just a few clicks in Adobe Acrobat, according to this Department of Homeland Security guide (essentially OCRing the text, and including information about where non-textual fields appear). Even if agencies are insistent it is too difficult to OCR older documents that were scanned from paper, they cannot use that excuse with digital records.
  • Privacy. Another commonly articulated concern about posting FOIA releases online is that doing so could inadvertently disclose private information from "first person" FOIA requests. This is a valid concern, and this subset of FOIA requests should not be posted online. (The Justice Department identified "first party" requester rights in 1989. Essentially agencies cannot use the b(6) privacy exemption to redact information if a person requests it for him or herself. An example of a "first person" FOIA would be a person's request for his own immigration file.) Cost and Waste of Resources. There is also a belief that there is little public interest in the majority of FOIA requests processed, and hence it is a waste of resources to post them. This thinking runs counter to the governing principle of the Freedom of Information Act: that government information belongs to US citizens, not US agencies. As such, the reason that a person requests information is immaterial as the agency processes the request; the "interest factor" of a document should also be immaterial when an agency is required to post it online. Some think that posting FOIA releases online is not cost effective. In fact, the opposite is true. It's not cost effective to spend tens (or hundreds) of person hours to search for, review, and redact FOIA requests only to mail it to the requester and have them slip it into their desk drawer and forget about it. That is a waste of resources. The released document should be posted online for any interested party to utilize. This will only become easier as FOIA processing systems evolve to automatically post the documents they track. The State Department earned its "E-Star" status demonstrating this very principle, and spent no new funds and did not hire contractors to build its Electronic Reading Room, instead it built a self-sustaining platform that will save the agency time and money going forward.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Shouldn't Be in Jail, MEP Says | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/-shouldnt-jail-mep-says-140814

Julia Reda Peter Sunde legal system fails

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 Aug 14
     
    " Ernesto on August 14, 2014 C: 13 News [Julia Reda], Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, will be visiting Peter Sunde in prison later today. According to Reda the Pirate Bay founder's imprisonment is a failure of a justice system that lost touch with digital culture. "The tactic of draconian deterrence against file sharing has failed," she says. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 Aug 14
     
    " Ernesto on August 14, 2014 C: 13 News [Julia Reda], Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, will be visiting Peter Sunde in prison later today. According to Reda the Pirate Bay founder's imprisonment is a failure of a justice system that lost touch with digital culture. "The tactic of draconian deterrence against file sharing has failed," she says. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 Aug 14
     
    " Ernesto on August 14, 2014 C: 13 News [Julia Reda], Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, will be visiting Peter Sunde in prison later today. According to Reda the Pirate Bay founder's imprisonment is a failure of a justice system that lost touch with digital culture. "The tactic of draconian deterrence against file sharing has failed," she says. "
Gary Edwards

Introduction to OpenCalais | OpenCalais - 0 views

www.opencalais.com/...introduction-opencalais

OpenCalais Semantic-Web

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Mar 15 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Mar 15
     
    "The free OpenCalais service and open API is the fastest way to tag the people, places, facts and events in your content.  It can help you improve your SEO, increase your reader engagement, create search-engine-friendly 'topic hubs' and streamline content operations - saving you time and money. OpenCalais is free to use in both commercial and non-commercial settings, but can only be used on public content (don't run your confidential or competitive company information through it!). OpenCalais does not keep a copy of your content, but it does keep a copy of the metadata it extracts there from. To repeat, OpenCalais is not a private service, and there is no secure, enterprise version that you can buy to operate behind a firewall. It is your responsibility to police the content that you submit, so make sure you are comfortable with our Terms of Service (TOS) before you jump in. You can process up to 50,000 documents per day (blog posts, news stories, Web pages, etc.) free of charge.  If you need to process more than that - say you are an aggregator or a media monitoring service - then see this page to learn about Calais Professional. We offer a very affordable license. OpenCalais' early adopters include CBS Interactive / CNET, Huffington Post, Slate, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, The White House and more. Already more than 30,000 developers have signed up, and more than 50 publishers and 75 entrepreneurs are using the free service to help build their businesses. You can read about the pioneering work of these publishers, entrepreneurs and developers here. To get started, scroll to the bottom section of this page. To build OpenCalais into an existing site or publishing platform (CMS), you will need to work with your developers.  Why OpenCalais Matters The reason OpenCalais - and so-called "Web 3.0" in general (concepts like the Semantic Web, Linked Data, etc.) - are important is that these technologies make it easy to automatically conne
Paul Merrell

The Supreme Court's Groundbreaking Privacy Victory for the Digital Age | American Civil... - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...ng-privacy-victory-digital-age

privacy rights 4th-Amendment litigation Supreme-Court

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court on Friday handed down what is arguably the most consequential privacy decision of the digital age, ruling that police need a warrant before they can seize people’s sensitive location information stored by cellphone companies. The case specifically concerns the privacy of cellphone location data, but the ruling has broad implications for government access to all manner of information collected about people and stored by the purveyors of popular technologies. In its decision, the court rejects the government’s expansive argument that people lose their privacy rights merely by using those technologies. Carpenter v. U.S., which was argued by the ACLU, involves Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted in 2013 of a string of burglaries in Detroit. To tie Carpenter to the burglaries, FBI agents obtained — without seeking a warrant — months’ worth of his location information from Carpenter’s cellphone company. They got almost 13,000 data points tracking Carpenter’s whereabouts during that period, revealing where he slept, when he attended church, and much more. Indeed, as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in Friday’s decision, “when the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user.”.
  • The ACLU argued the agents had violated Carpenter’s Fourth Amendment rights when they obtained such detailed records without a warrant based on probable cause. In a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court agreed, recognizing that the Fourth Amendment must apply to records of such unprecedented breadth and sensitivity: Mapping a cell phone’s location over the course of 127 days provides an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts. As with GPS information, the timestamped data provides an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his ‘familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.’
  • The government’s argument that it needed no warrant for these records extends far beyond cellphone location information, to any data generated by modern technologies and held by private companies rather than in our own homes or pockets. To make their case, government lawyers relied on an outdated, 1970s-era legal doctrine that says that once someone shares information with a “third party” — in Carpenter’s case, a cellphone company — that data is no longer protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court made abundantly clear that this doctrine has its limits and cannot serve as a carte blanche for the government seizure of any data of its choosing without judicial oversight.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • While the decision extends in the immediate term only to historical cellphone location data, the Supreme Court’s reasoning opens the door to the protection of the many other kinds of data generated by popular technologies. Today’s decision provides a groundbreaking update to privacy rights that the digital age has rendered vulnerable to abuse by the government’s appetite for surveillance. It recognizes that “cell phones and the services they provide are ‘such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life’ that carrying one is indispensable to participation in modern society.” And it helps ensure that we don’t have to give up those rights if we want to participate in modern life. 
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Open Access and the Complexity of Digital Rights · Global Voices - 1 views

globalvoicesonline.org/...e-complexity-of-digital-rights

open access access complexity digital rights internet

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Feb 13
     
    [... How do ways of thinking change through time and space? British anthropologist Jack Goody posed this question in 'The Domestication of the Savage Mind', his 1997 publication covering new forms of communication within society. According to his study a culture which transmits its knowledge orally does not think in the same way as a writing-based culture. ...]
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Agenda Digital para Europa | EUR-Lex - 52010DC0245 - ES - 1 views

eur-lex.europa.eu/...LexUriServ.do

agenda digital europa

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 16 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 16 Feb 13
     
    Europe's Digital Agenda 2013
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Ardour 5.0 Open Source DAW Officially Released with Tabbed User Interface - 0 views

news.softpedia.com/...ed-user-interface-507261.shtml

ardour open source DAW digital audio workstation sound music production tech

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Aug 16
     
    "Now available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows OSes Aug 12, 2016 18:40 GMT · By Marius Nestor · Share: Currently one of the best cross-platform, open-source and freely distributed DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software pieces, Ardour has received today, August 12, 2016, a major milestone that introduces a multitude of new features and countless improvements."
Alexandra IcecreamApps

How to Convert JPG to Word - Icecream Tech Digest - 0 views

icecreamapps.com/...convert-jpg-word

convert pdf to word convert jpg to word convert jpg to pdf pdf to doc jpg to pdf jpg to word jpg to word converter pdf to word pdf to word converter

shared by Alexandra IcecreamApps on 16 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Alexandra IcecreamApps on 16 Sep 16
     
    Keeping documents printed out on paper is a common way of storing them. However, if you need to somehow edit them, obviously you will need to transfer them into digital form. The best option here is to scan them and … Continue reading →
  • Alexandra IcecreamApps on 16 Sep 16
     
    Keeping documents printed out on paper is a common way of storing them. However, if you need to somehow edit them, obviously you will need to transfer them into digital form. The best option here is to scan them and … Continue reading →
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How The Internet Is Destroying Our Lives Too | LinkedIn - 0 views

www.linkedin.com/...ur-lives-too-govindraj-ethiraj

internet destruction our lives cyberchondria

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Nov 16
     
    "Govindraj Ethiraj Founder, Ping Digital Broadcast, IndiaSpend Imagine visiting your doctor one day complaining of a headache. And your doctor says, just as you sit down, "Well, you could have anything from a hangover to a brain tumour.""
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Nov 16
     
    "Govindraj Ethiraj Founder, Ping Digital Broadcast, IndiaSpend Imagine visiting your doctor one day complaining of a headache. And your doctor says, just as you sit down, "Well, you could have anything from a hangover to a brain tumour.""
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Music Piracy Triggers Significant Losses, EU Study Shows - TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/t-losses-eu-study-shows-160525

music piracy losses study shows other not conflict contradiction bias

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16
     
    " By Ernesto on May 25, 2016 C: 113 News New research published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office shows that piracy hurts both digital and physical music sales. In EU countries the total losses are roughly 5% of yearly revenues, which equals €170 million. In addition, piracy also triggers secondary losses for governments and the public sector. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16
     
    " By Ernesto on May 25, 2016 C: 113 News New research published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office shows that piracy hurts both digital and physical music sales. In EU countries the total losses are roughly 5% of yearly revenues, which equals €170 million. In addition, piracy also triggers secondary losses for governments and the public sector. "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

(Online Music Piracy Doesn't Hurt Sales, European Commission Finds - TorrentFreak | # !... - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/ropean-commission-finds-130318

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16
     
    " Ernesto on March 18, 2013 C: 372 New research published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre shows that online piracy doesn't hurt digital music revenues. The researchers examined browsing habits from 16,000 Europeans and found that there's a positive link between online piracy and visits to legal music stores, irrespective of people's interest in music. The study concludes that the music industry should not see piracy as a growing concern."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 May 16
     
    " Ernesto on March 18, 2013 C: 372 New research published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre shows that online piracy doesn't hurt digital music revenues. The researchers examined browsing habits from 16,000 Europeans and found that there's a positive link between online piracy and visits to legal music stores, irrespective of people's interest in music. The study concludes that the music industry should not see piracy as a growing concern."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Facebook and Microsoft Are Laying a Giant Cable Across the Atlantic | WIRED - 0 views

www.wired.com/...ng-giant-cable-across-atlantic

facebook microsoft lay giant cable accross atlantic MAREA spying networks warniing danger technology misuse wired

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 May 16
     
    [Facebook and Microsoft are laying a massive cable across the middle of the Atlantic. Dubbed MAREA-Spanish for "tide"-this giant underwater cable will stretch from Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, shuttling digital data across 6,600 kilometers of ocean. Providing up to 160 terabits per second of bandwidth-about 16 million times the bandwidth of your home Internet connection-it will allow the two tech titans to more efficiently move enormous amounts of information between the many computer data centers and network hubs that underpin their popular online services. ...]
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 29 May 16
     
    [Facebook and Microsoft are laying a massive cable across the middle of the Atlantic. Dubbed MAREA-Spanish for "tide"-this giant underwater cable will stretch from Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, shuttling digital data across 6,600 kilometers of ocean. Providing up to 160 terabits per second of bandwidth-about 16 million times the bandwidth of your home Internet connection-it will allow the two tech titans to more efficiently move enormous amounts of information between the many computer data centers and network hubs that underpin their popular online services. ...]
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Millennials Listen to 75% More Music Than Baby Boomers, Study Finds - 0 views

www.digitalmusicnews.com/...listen-more-music-baby-boomers

millennials vs. baby boomers music listening habits rise despite piracy fantasy deception debunk press media industry bias manipulation market

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 07 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 07 Jun 16
     
    "Data keeps debunking myths about Millennials and their music. Baby Boomers are famously self-important when it comes to the importance of their generation and the music it created. But a new study shows that the 55+ demographic actually listens to substantially less music than their 16-34 cohorts. In fact, Millennials - loosely defined as those born in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s - listen to 75.1% more music on a daily basis, according to data shared this morning with Digital Music News."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 07 Jun 16
     
    "Data keeps debunking myths about Millennials and their music. Baby Boomers are famously self-important when it comes to the importance of their generation and the music it created. But a new study shows that the 55+ demographic actually listens to substantially less music than their 16-34 cohorts. In fact, Millennials - loosely defined as those born in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s - listen to 75.1% more music on a daily basis, according to data shared this morning with Digital Music News."
Paul Merrell

Glassholes: A Mini NSA on Your Face, Recorded by the Spy Agency | Global Research - 2 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5367764

surveillance state Google-Glass NSA facial-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • eOnline reports: A new app will allow total strangers to ID you and pull up all your information, just by looking at you and scanning your face with their Google Glass. The app is called NameTag and it sounds CREEPY. The “real-time facial recognition” software “can detect a face using the Google Glass camera, send it wirelessly to a server, compare it to millions of records, and in seconds return a match complete with a name, additional photos and social media profiles.” The information listed could include your name, occupation, any social media profiles you have set up and whether or not you have a criminal record (“CRIMINAL HISTORY FOUND” pops up in bright red letters according to the demo).
  • Since the NSA is tapping into all of our digital communications, it is not unreasonable to assume that all of the info from your digital glasses – yup, everything – may be recorded by the spy agency. Are we going to have millions of mini NSAs walking around recording everything … glassholes? It doesn’t help inspire confidence that America’s largest police force and Taser are beta-testing Google Glasses. Postscript: I love gadgets and tech, and previously discussed the exciting possibilities of Google Glasses. But the NSA is ruining the fun, just like it’s harming U.S. Internet business.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 14
     
    Thankfully, there's buddying technology to block computer facial-recognition algorithms. http://tinyurl.com/mzfyfra On the other hand, used Hallowe'en masks can usually be purchased inexpensively from some nearby school kids at this time of year. Now if I could just put together a few near-infrared LEDs to fry a license plate-scanner's view ...  
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere | The Cable - 0 views

thecable.foreignpolicy.com/...line_privacy_rights_everywhere

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback UN digital-privacy human rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable. The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.
  • The Brazilian and German initiative seeks to apply the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to online communications. Their proposal, first revealed by The Cable, affirms a "right to privacy that is not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence." It notes that while public safety may "justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information," nations "must ensure full compliance" with international human rights laws. A final version the text is scheduled to be presented to U.N. members on Wednesday evening and the resolution is expected to be adopted next week. A draft of the resolution, which was obtained by The Cable, calls on states to "to respect and protect the right to privacy," asserting that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy." It also requests the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, present the U.N. General Assembly next year with a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, a provision that will ensure the issue remains on the front burner.
  • Publicly, U.S. representatives say they're open to an affirmation of privacy rights. "The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. "We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations." But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • n recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas. The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does. Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts.
  • "Recall that the USG's [U.S. government's] collection activities that have been disclosed are lawful collections done in a manner protective of privacy rights," the paper states. "So a paragraph expressing concern about illegal surveillance is one with which we would agree." The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus -- referred to as "soft law" -- that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners' data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms. "They want to be able to say ‘we haven't broken the law, we're not breaking the law, and we won't break the law,'" said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations. The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that "we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations."
  • The United States negotiators have been pressing their case behind the scenes, raising concerns that the assertion of extraterritorial human rights could constrain America's effort to go after international terrorists. But Washington has remained relatively muted about their concerns in the U.N. negotiating sessions. According to one diplomat, "the United States has been very much in the backseat," leaving it to its allies, Australia, Britain, and Canada, to take the lead. There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."
  • The position, according to Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, has little international backing. The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees. Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights.
  • "It's clear that when the United States is conducting surveillance, these decisions and operations start in the United States, the servers are at NSA headquarters, and the capabilities are mainly in the United States," he said. "To argue that they have no human rights obligations overseas is dangerous because it sends a message that there is void in terms of human rights protection outside countries territory. It's going back to the idea that you can create a legal black hole where there is no applicable law." There were signs emerging on Wednesday that America may have been making ground in pressing the Brazilians and Germans to back on one of its toughest provisions. In an effort to address the concerns of the U.S. and its allies, Brazil and Germany agreed to soften the language suggesting that mass surveillance may constitute a violation of human rights. Instead, it simply deep "concern at the negative impact" that extraterritorial surveillance "may have on the exercise of and enjoyment of human rights." The U.S., however, has not yet indicated it would support the revised proposal.
  • The concession "is regrettable. But it’s not the end of the battle by any means," said Human Rights Watch’s PoKempner. She added that there will soon be another opportunity to corral America's spies: a U.N. discussion on possible human rights violations as a result of extraterritorial surveillance will soon be taken up by the U.N. High commissioner.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 13
     
    Woo-hoo! Go get'em, U.N.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Awful Spanish Copyright Law May Be Stalled Waiting For EU Court Ruling On Plans To Chan... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com

more critics international spanish copyright law

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14
     
    "from the stopping-good-ideas,-stopping-bad-ideas dept Techdirt has written about Spain's new copyright law a couple of times. There, we concentrated on the "Google tax" that threatens the digital commons and open access in that country. But alongside this extremely foolish idea, there was another good one: getting rid of the anachronistic levy on recording devices that was supposed to "compensate" for private copying (as if any such compensation were needed), and paying collecting societies directly out of Spain's state budget. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14
     
    "from the stopping-good-ideas,-stopping-bad-ideas dept Techdirt has written about Spain's new copyright law a couple of times. There, we concentrated on the "Google tax" that threatens the digital commons and open access in that country. But alongside this extremely foolish idea, there was another good one: getting rid of the anachronistic levy on recording devices that was supposed to "compensate" for private copying (as if any such compensation were needed), and paying collecting societies directly out of Spain's state budget. "
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