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Paul Merrell

Thinking XML: The XML flavor of HTML5 - 1 views

www.ibm.com/...index.html

html5 xml conversions

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jul 10 - Cached
  • 6 recommendations for developers using the next generation of the web's native language
  • In this article, I shall provide a practical guide that illustrates the state of play when it comes to XML in the HTML5 world. The article is written for what I call the desperate web hacker: someone who is not a W3C standards guru, but interested in either generating XHTML5 on the web, or consuming it in a simple way (that is, to consume information, rather than worrying about the enormous complexity of rendering). I'll admit that some of my recommendations will be painful for me to make, as a long-time advocate for processing XML the right way. Remember that HTML5 is still a W3C working draft, and it might be a while before it becomes a full recommendation. Many of its features are stable, though, and already well-implemented on the web.
Paul Merrell

The Cover Pages: Alfresco Enterprise Edition v3.3 for Composite Content Applications - 0 views

xml.coverpages.org/AlfrescoV33-CMIS.html

Alfresco CMIS cloud computing integration interoperability Lotus Outlook Google Docs Drupal

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • While CMIS, cloud computing and market commoditization have left some vendors struggling to determine the future of enterprise content management (ECM), Alfresco Software today unveiled Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.3 as the platform for composite content applications that will redefine the way organizations approach ECM. As the first commercially-supported CMIS implementation offering integrations around IBM/Lotus social software, Microsoft Outlook, Google Docs and Drupal, Alfresco Enterprise 3.3 becomes the first content services platform to deliver the features, flexibility and affordability required across the enterprise.
  • Quick and simple development environment to support new business applications Flexible deployment options enabling content applications to be deployed on-premise, in the cloud or on the Web Interoperability between business applications through open source and open standards The ability to link data, content, business process and context
  • Build future-proof content applications through CMIS — With the first and most complete supported implementation of the CMIS standard, Alfresco now enables companies to build new content-based applications while offering the security of the most open, flexible and future-proof content services platform. Repurpose content for multiple delivery channels — Advanced content formatting and transformation services allow organizations to easily repurpose content for delivery through multiple channels (web, smart phone, iPad, print, etc). Improve project management with content collaboration — New datalist function can be used to track project related issues, to-dos, actions and tasks, supplementing existing commenting, social tagging, discussions and project sites. Deploy content through replication services — Companies can replicate and deploy content, and associated information, between content platforms. Using powerful replication services, users can develop and then deploy content outside the firewall, to web servers and into the cloud. Develop new frameworks through Spring Surf — Building on SpringSource, the leader in Java application infrastructure used to create java applications, Spring Surf provides a scriptable framework for developing new content rich applications.
Paul Merrell

The Chrome Assault: IE's Walls Are Crumbling | ConceivablyTech - 0 views

www.conceivablytech.com/...ssault-ies-walls-are-crumbling

browsers market share statistics

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Net Application’s numbers for October show another loss for IE, down 0.39 points or 0.65% to 59.26%, the lowest number in, as far as we know, in at least 12 years. Firefox dropped as well, down to 22.82%, which is a 15 month low for Mozilla. The clear winner in October was Google, which saw its Chrome browser blow past the 8% barrier and landed at 8.47%, a gain of 0.49 points or 6.14% over September. Safari gained slightly and is now at 5.33% and Opera continued its zig-zag pattern and was down a bit to 2.28%.
  • StatCounter is also out with market share numbers. As usual, the numbers deviate from Net Applications’, but the trend is comparable. Chrome, by the way, is listed by StatCounter with 12.39% market share, Firefox with 31.24% and IE with 49.22%. The interesting part about StatCounter is the geographic breakdown. While North America still loves IE, Europe does not – and this is critical for Microsoft as there are more Internet users in Europe than in North America. On these shores, there is a good distance between IE and Firefox, but Firefox has caught up with IE in Europe, even if Firefox has turned into a slight decline over there as well. IE is now a 39.53% in Europe and Firefox at 38.65%. Firefox is losing market share not quite as fast as IE and could become Europe’s most popular browser by the end of the year. The big winner, however, is also Chrome – which is now listed at 12.28%.
Paul Merrell

Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Friday, 12 November 2010 - 0 views

xml.coverpages.org/...news2010-11-12.html

IETF memento HTTP time-based access to resource states

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • HTTP Framework for Time-Based Access to Resource States: Memento Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael Nelson, Robert Sanderson; IETF I-D Representatives of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Old Dominion University have published a first IETF Working Draft of HTTP Framework for Time-Based Access to Resource States: Memento. According to the editor's iMinds blog: "While the days of human time travel as described in many a science fiction novel are yet to come, time travel on the Web has recently become a reality thanks to the Memento project. In essence, Memento adds a time dimension to the Web: enter the Web address of a resource in your browser and set a time slider to a desired moment in the Web's past, and see what the resource looked like around that time... Technically, Memento achieves this by: (a) Leveraging systems that host archival Web content, including Web archives, content management systems, and software versioning systems; (b) Extending the Web's most commonly used protocol (HTTP) with the capability to specify a datetime in protocol requests, and by applying an existing HTTP capability (content negotiation) in a new dimension: 'time'. The result is a Web in which navigating the past is as seamless as navigating the present... The Memento concepts have attracted significant international attention since they were first published in November 2009, and compliant tools are already emerging. For example, at the client side there is the MementoFox add-on for FireFox, and a Memento app for Android; at the server side, there is a plug-in for MediaWiki servers, and the Wayback software that is widely used by Web archives, worldwide, was recently enhanced with Memento support..."
Paul Merrell

The Past Clouds the Future of Europe's New Antitrust Enforcer - Vox - 0 views

frenk.vox.com/...es-new-antitrust-enforcer.html

antitrust European Commission U.S. Christine Varney

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Joaquin Almunia left his job as the E.U.’s economics and monetary affairs commissioner this month to become antitrust chief.
  • Christine Varney, the head of the antitrust division at the United States Justice Department, warned European regulators in a speech on Monday to restrict imposing obligations to the European Union on American companies that are doing business globally.Regulators in Europe are under pressure from governments, media companies and technology developers to blunt the market power that Google has amassed by running the world’s most popular Internet search tools.
  • Mr. Almunia also will need to resolve whether to give greater freedom to online merchants like eBay and Amazon which, like Google, are based in the United States. Some specialty goods and luxury goods brands, in particular LVMH of France, have lobbied hard to require that merchants have traditional shops as a precondition for selling goods over the Internet.
Paul Merrell

InfoQ: ECMAScript 5 released - 0 views

www.infoq.com/...ecmascript5

javascript ecmascript 5

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 09 - Cached
  • ECMAScript 5 was released this week (pdf), generally known as JavaScript™, bringing advances to the basic libraries whilst introducing stricter runtime modes to aid with identifying and removing common coding errors.
  • The additions of a standard JSON parsing mechanism and strict mode will be of great benefit to developers, with the potential to translate into smaller libraries for Prototype and other extension libraries required. Parsing ISO dates from a JSON stream now becomes much more portable than before, and looks likely to be the de facto standard for representing dates in the future. Lastly, since this is backwardly compatible and takes cues from existing libraries like Prototype, it is likely that developers and web browsers alike will take to the new features of JavaScript in the near future.
Gary Edwards

The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash - Charlie's Diary - 1 views

www.antipope.org/...hy-steve-jobs-hates-flash.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe's goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps."
  • he really does not want cross-platform apps that might divert attention and energy away from his application ecosystem
  • This is why there's a stench of panic hanging over silicon valley. this is why Apple have turned into paranoid security Nazis, why HP have just ditched Microsoft from a forthcoming major platform and splurged a billion-plus on buying up a near-failure; it's why everyone is terrified of Google: The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone's trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Apr 10
     
    Excellent must read!  Best explanation of what is currently driving Silicon Valley.  Charlie puts all the pieces in context, provides expert perspective, and then pushes everything forward to describe a highly probable future.  MUST READ stuff! excerpts:  I've got a theory, and it's this: Steve Jobs believes he's gambling Apple's future - the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn - on an all-or-nothing push into a new market. HP have woken up and smelled the forest fire, two or three years late; Microsoft are mired in a tar pit, unable to grasp that the inferno heading towards them is going to burn down the entire ecosystem in which they exist. There is the smell of panic in the air, and here's why ... We have known since the mid-1990s that the internet was the future of computing.  With increasing bandwidth, data doesn't need to be trapped in the hard drives of our desktop computers: data and interaction can follow us out into the world we live in. .....Wifi and 4G protocols will shortly be delivering 50-150mbps to whatever gizmo is in your pocket, over the air. ......  It's easier to lay a single fat fibre to a radio transciever station than it is to lay lots of thin fibres to everybody's front door.... Anyway, here's Steve Jobs' strategic dilemma in a nutshell: the PC industry as we have known it for a third of a century is beginning to die. PCs are becoming commodity items. The price of PCs and laptops is falling by about 50% per decade in real terms, despite performance simultaneously rising in real terms. The profit margin on a typical netbook or desktop PC is under 10%.  At the same time, wireless broadband is coming. As it does so, organizations and users will increasingly move their data out into the cloud (read: onto hordes of servers racked up high in anonymous data warehouses, owned and maintained by some large corporation like Google). Software will be delivered as a service to users wherever they are, via whatev
Paul Merrell

MPEG-LA Considering Patent Pool for VP8/WebM | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThi... - 0 views

digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/...y-not-be-royalty-free-for-long

WebM VP8 patent Google H.264

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 May 10 - No Cached
  • A new era of Web video without the patent-encumbered formats that have defined the Internet to date. That seems ideal. But like many ideals, it may prove to be unattainable. As a number of observers have already noted VP8 isn’t free from patent liability. And now that Google has open-sourced it as part of WebM, that liability is likely to become an issue. And quickly, too. Indeed, Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, tells me that the group is already looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8.
  • It would seem, then, that VP8 may end up subject to the same licensing issues as H.264. If MPEG LA does create a patent pool license for the standard, the free lunch Google promised yesterday may not be free after all.
Gary Edwards

Five reasons why Microsoft can't compete (and Steve Ballmer isn't one of them) - 2 views

betanews.com/...teve-ballmer-isn-t-one-of-them

Microsoft Joe-Wilcox Google IBM Monopolist OpenWeb

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • discontinued
  • 1. U.S. and European antitrust cases put lawyers and non-technologists in charge of important final product decisions.
  • The company long resisted releasing pertinent interoperability information in the United States. On the European Continent, this resistance led to huge fines. Meanwhile, Microsoft steered away from exclusive contracts and from pushing into adjacent markets.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Additionally, Microsoft curtailed development of the so-called middleware at the core of the U.S. case: E-mail, instant messaging, media playback and Web browsing:
  • Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates learned several important lessons from IBM. Among them: The value of controlling key technology endpoints. For IBM, it was control interfaces. For Microsoft: Computing standards and file formats
  • 2. Microsoft lost control of file formats.
  • Charles Simonyi, the father of Microsoft, and his team achieved two important goals by the mid 1990s: Established format standards that resolved problems sharing documents created by disparate products.
  • nsured that Microsoft file formats would become the adopted desktop productivity standards. Format lock-in helped drive Office sales throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s -- and Windows along with it. However, the Web emerged as a potent threat, which Gates warned about in his May 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo. Gates specifically identified HTML, HTTP and TCP/IP as formats outside Microsoft's control. "Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats," Gates wrote. He observed not seeing a single Microsoft file format "after 10 hours of browsing," but plenty of Apple QuickTime videos and Adobe PDF documents. He warned that "the Internet is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981. It is even more important than the arrival of the graphical user interface (GUI)."
  • 3. Microsoft's senior leadership is middle-aging.
  • Google resembles Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s:
  • Microsoft's middle-management structure is too large.
  • 5. Microsoft's corporate culture is risk adverse.
  • Microsoft's
  • . Microsoft was nimbler during the transition from mainframe to PC dominance. IBM had built up massive corporate infrastructure, large customer base and revenue streams attached to both. With few customers, Microsoft had little to lose but much to gain; the upstart took risks IBM wouldn't for fear of losing customers or jeopardizing existing revenue streams. Microsoft's role is similar today. Two product lines, Office and Windows, account for the majority of Microsoft products, and the majority of sales are to enterprises -- the same kind of customers IBM had during the mainframe era.
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 11
     
    Excellent summary and historical discussion about Microsoft and why they can't seem to compete.  Lot's of anti trust and monopolist swtuff - including file formats and interop lock ins (end points).  Microsoft's problems started with the World Wide Web and continue with mobile devices connected to cloud services.
Gary Edwards

Windows 8: Microsoft's browser-based OS | ExtremeTech - 1 views

www.extremetech.com/...s-8-the-first-browser-based-os

Windows-8 Win8 HTML+ Native-HTML-Apps Open-Web-Productivity

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Microsoft’s browser-based operating systemGet this: The entire Metro interface — the complete Windows 8 front-end — is powered by Internet Explorer 10. Not the browser with a back button and an address bar, but the IE10 rendering engine Trident. To drive this point home, Metro-style apps in Windows 8 can be written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they will be just as “low-level” as their C++ and C# cousins. In other words, Windows 8 runs web apps natively.
  • To put this into contrast, think about the current state-of-the-art in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 9. Chrome has glorified extensions and bookmarks, Firefox is working on an Open Web App Store, and IE9 has pinned sites. Windows 8 will have web apps that are first-class citizens, capable of using all of the same hardware resources as any other compiled program — and it will all be powered by Internet Explorer 10.
  • It’s the great Web App Dream: write once, run anywhere.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • All three versions are fundamentally identical.
  • What if Windows 8 is actually a success on the tablet? If Windows 8 becomes ubiquitous, so does Internet Explorer 10 — and if IE10 can be found on hundreds of millions of devices, what platform do you think developers will choose?
  • This poses a tricky question, though. You see, not only does IE10 power Windows 8′s primary interface, but Internet Explorer 10 — the browser — is also available as a Metro-style app, and as a full-interface browser in the Explorer Desktop.
  • Do you write an app for tens of millions of iPhones and iPads, or do you write a single piece of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that can run perfectly on every Windows 8, IE10-powered tablet, laptop, and desktop?
  • Those same web apps, with a little tweaking, will probably even work with Chrome and Firefox and Safari — but here’s an uncomfortable truth: if Windows 8 reaches 90% penetration of the computing market, why bother targeting a web browser at all? Just write a native, Metro-style web app instead.
  • Finally, add in the fact that IE10 will almost certainly come to Windows Phone 8 next year, and you will have a single app container — AppX — that runs across every damn computer form factor.
  • Microsoft, threatened by the idea of OS-agnostic web apps and browser-based operating systems from Google and Mozilla, has just taken the game to a whole new level — and, rather shockingly, given that Windows 8 started its development in mid-2009, it would seem that the lumbering behemoth might have actually out-maneuvered Google
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 11
     
    Excellent review of Windows 8, including some prescient thinking about what it means to have HTML+ Web Apps running natively on the Win8 OS platform.  The author/reviewer Sebastion Anthony suggest why this breakthrough is a problem for Google, Apple and Mozilla.  I'm wondering though; is this a problem for the Open Web future?  Or is this a positive step towards an Open Web communications and collaborative computation platform that  is used by all and owned by none?   After nearly thirty years of a love-hate-hate more than ever relationship with Microsoft, for sure Win8 and native HTML+ is something to carefully watch.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft's Sidekick/Pink problems blamed on dogfooding and sabotage - RoughlyDrafted M... - 0 views

www.roughlydrafted.com/...med-on-dogfooding-and-sabotage

Microsoft cloud T-Mobile Verison Google

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Additional insiders have stepped forward to shed more light into Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Danger, its beleaguered Pink Project, and what has become one of the most high profile Information Technology disasters in recent memory.
  • The sources point to longstanding management issues, a culture of “dogfooding,” and evidence that could suggest the issue was a deliberate act of sabotage.
  • Beyond T-Mobile, observers say Microsoft’s problems with Danger are likely to reflect poorly on the company’s own Azure Services cloud computing initiative, as well as its MyPhone cloud service for Windows Mobile phones. The sidelining of the Pink Project is also a likely setback to Microsoft’s ongoing relationship with Verizon, which has been an early advocate of Microsoft’s other mobile related technologies, including the DRM used in Verizon’s VCast music and media service.
Paul Merrell

Opera: Web standards could eclipse Flash - ZDNet.co.uk - 0 views

news.zdnet.co.uk/...0,1000000121,39655473,00.htm

html5 Opera flash Adobe

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 09 - Cached
  • The next revision of the HTML web language will make Adobe's Flash technology largely redundant, according to the chief executive of browser company Opera. The open web standards included in HyperText Markup Language version 5 (HTML 5) provide a viable alternative to Adobe's proprietary Flash for the delivery of rich media web content, Jon von Tetzchner told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.
  • Von Tetzchner said that HTML 5's handling of rich media meant that Flash — Adobe's ubiquitous, proprietary multimedia platform for the web — is becoming largely unnecessary. "You can do most things with web standards today," von Tetzchner said. "In some ways, you may say you don't need Flash."
Paul Merrell

Antitrust Chief Hits Resistance in Crackdown - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...26antitrust.html

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jul 09 - Cached
  • WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top antitrust official and some senior Democratic lawmakers are preparing to rein in a host of major industries, including airline and railroad giants, moving so aggressively that they are finding some resistance from officials within the administration.
    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 26 Jul 09
       
      Predictable. Government regulatory agencies tend to become dominated by the regulated industries in no small part due to the "revolving door" that sees particular officials shuttling back and forth between working for industry and government. As former Senator Scoop Jackson said, the perennial problem with regulatory agencies is who will police the police? Now the Obama Administration's antitrust reformers hit the obstacle of regulatory agency bias toward the regulated industries. The monopolists fight back.
Paul Merrell

Sig.ma - Live views on the Web of Data - Sindice Blog - 0 views

blog.sindice.com/...-live-views-on-the-web-of-data

semantic web data aggregators RDF RDFa

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jul 09 - Cached
  • While Sig.ma is by no mean the first data aggregator for the Semantic Web, its contribution is to show that the sum is really bigger than the single parts and exciting possibilities lie in a holistic approach for automatic semistructured data discovery and consolidation. In Sig.ma, elements such as large scale semantic web indexing, logic reasoning, data aggregation heuristics, pragmatic ontology alignments and, last but not least, user interaction and refinement, all play together to provide entity descriptions which become live, embeddable data mash ups.
    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 27 Jul 09
       
      Interesting experimental data aggregator for the Semantic Web. 7-minute video is well worth the watch.
Paul Merrell

Exploring HTML 5's Audio/Video Multimedia Support - 0 views

www.devx.com/43324

HTML 5 audio video multimedia

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Because HTML 4.0 essentially was a "frozen" version, the specific mechanism for displaying content has been very much format dependent (e.g., Apple QuickTime Movies and Flash video) and usually relies upon tags with varying parameters for passing the relevant information to the server. As a result, video and audio embedding on web pages has become something of a black art . Its perhaps not surprising then that the <audio> and <video> tags were among the first features to be added to the HTML 5 specification, and these seem to be the first elements of the HTML 5 specification that browser vendors implemented. These particular elements are intended to enable the browser to work with both types of media in an easy-to-use manner. An included support API gives users finer-grained control.
  • Theoretically, the <video> and <audio> elements should be able to handle most of the codecs currently in use. In practice, however, the browsers that do currently support these elements do so only for the open source Ogg Vorbis and Theora standards.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 09
     
    Kurt Cagle digs into audio and video support in HTML 5. As always, his view is revealing.
Gary Edwards

HTML5 Will Transform Mobile Business Intelligence and CRM - 0 views

www.enterpriseappstoday.com/...business-intelligence-crm.html

HTML5 OpenWeb OpenWeb-Productivity-Platform Cloud-Productivity-Platform Cloud-Compound-Document

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • "HTML5 is a big push forward, especially considering how it handles different media as well as cross-device portability," said Tiemo Winterkamp, senior vice president of global marketing at business intelligence (BI) vendor arcplan
  • one big benefit of HTML5 is that browsers will be able to integrate additional content like multimedia, mail and RIA with enhanced rendering capabilities. And plans have been made to allow future HTML5 browsers to securely access sensor and touch information, which makes HTML5 a viable alternative to native application development for such functions.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 18 Oct 11
       
      The browser becomes the compound document container, but HTML5 is clearly the document format.  Any application or Office Suite capable of creating HTML5 documents, or connecting, linking and embedding information and application services in another apps HTML5 document would be cloud productivity platform ready.  Similar to a local Windows workgroup, the database and transaction processing servers can be in the cloud, connecting to browser based apps and interfaces where the essence of the new compound document is created or interactively expressed.  Kind of cool having GPS built into the information stream instead of having to type in a zip code, and refreshing a legacy compound document or compound chart.
  • With HTML5, nearly every piece of internet content we can envision today will be able to be coded in HTML, Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and therefore automatically portable to all environments and browsers supporting HTML5.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "This approach is very attractive for BI vendors who aim to provide business critical information anywhere, anytime and on any device," said Winterkamp. "The result is an attractive, multi-functional user interface with as little design and deployment effort as possible. And more importantly, you only need to develop these apps once for all devices."
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Oct 11
     
    Good article on the increasing use of HTML5 for business apps.  The focus is on mobile devices, even though HTML5 clearly targets anything capable of running a WebKit class browser.  The article also demonstrates, albeit unwittingly, the use of HTML5 as a cloud platform "Compound Document" model.  Something far more important than the comparatively limited focus of BI and CRM mobility apps.   A Cloud Producitvity Platform will replace the legacy Desktop Productivity Platform anchored on Microsoft's Windows-MSOffice workgroup networking.  Just as Compound Documents were the fuel of desktop productivity apps and services, a new breed of compound documents will fuel cloud productivity based workgroups.  The article even demonstrates the basics of embedding charts, interactive feeds, media  and database streams in HTML5 document interfaces.  Still missing real time messaging between apps, but clearly the HTML5 cloud compound document model has arrived. excerpt: HTML5 will lead to richer mobile BI and CRM apps that can be used across browsers and devices. HTML has evolved considerably since it was first mapped out by Tim Berners-Lee more than 20 years ago. Now we're up to HTML 5.0, which could have a significant effect on the business intelligence and CRM landscape.
Paul Merrell

ExposeFacts - For Whistleblowers, Journalism and Democracy - 0 views

exposefacts.org

transparency whistle-blowers resources Wikileaks Tail

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Launched by the Institute for Public Accuracy in June 2014, ExposeFacts.org represents a new approach for encouraging whistleblowers to disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy. From the outset, our message is clear: “Whistleblowers Welcome at ExposeFacts.org.” ExposeFacts aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war. At a time when key provisions of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are under assault, we are standing up for a free press, privacy, transparency and due process as we seek to reveal official information—whether governmental or corporate—that the public has a right to know. While no software can provide an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality, ExposeFacts—assisted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its “SecureDrop” whistleblower submission system—is utilizing the latest technology on behalf of anonymity for anyone submitting materials via the ExposeFacts.org website. As journalists we are committed to the goal of protecting the identity of every source who wishes to remain anonymous.
  • The seasoned editorial board of ExposeFacts will be assessing all the submitted material and, when deemed appropriate, will arrange for journalistic release of information. In exercising its judgment, the editorial board is able to call on the expertise of the ExposeFacts advisory board, which includes more than 40 journalists, whistleblowers, former U.S. government officials and others with wide-ranging expertise. We are proud that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was the first person to become a member of the ExposeFacts advisory board. The icon below links to a SecureDrop implementation for ExposeFacts overseen by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and is only accessible using the Tor browser. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation notes, no one can guarantee 100 percent security, but this provides a “significantly more secure environment for sources to get information than exists through normal digital channels, but there are always risks.” ExposeFacts follows all guidelines as recommended by Freedom of the Press Foundation, and whistleblowers should too; the SecureDrop onion URL should only be accessed with the Tor browser — and, for added security, be running the Tails operating system. Whistleblowers should not log-in to SecureDrop from a home or office Internet connection, but rather from public wifi, preferably one you do not frequent. Whistleblowers should keep to a minimum interacting with whistleblowing-related websites unless they are using such secure software.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14
     
    A new resource site for whistle-blowers. somewhat in the tradition of Wikileaks, but designed for encrypted communications between whistleblowers and journalists.  This one has an impressive board of advisors that includes several names I know and tend to trust, among them former whistle-blowers Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Ann Wright. Leaked records can only be dropped from a web browser running the Tor anonymizer software and uses the SecureDrop system originally developed by Aaron Schwartz. They strongly recommend using the Tails secure operating system that can be installed to a thumb drive and leaves no tracks on the host machine. https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html Curious, I downloaded Tails and installed it to a virtual machine. It's a heavily customized version of Debian. It has a very nice Gnome desktop and blocks any attempt to connect to an external network by means other than installed software that demands encrypted communications. For example, web sites can only be viewed via the Tor anonymizing proxy network. It does take longer for web pages to load because they are moving over a chain of proxies, but even so it's faster than pages loaded in the dial-up modem days, even for web pages that are loaded with graphics, javascript, and other cruft. E.g., about 2 seconds for New York Times pages. All cookies are treated by default as session cookies so disappear when you close the page or the browser. I love my Linux Mint desktop, but I am thinking hard about switching that box to Tails. I've been looking for methods to send a lot more encrypted stuff down the pipe for NSA to store. Tails looks to make that not only easy, but unavoidable. From what I've gathered so far, if you want to install more software on Tails, it takes about an hour to create a customized version and then update your Tails installation from a new ISO file. Tails has a wonderful odor of having been designed for secure computing. Current
Paul Merrell

BBC News - GCHQ's Robert Hannigan says tech firms 'in denial' on extremism - 0 views

www.bbc.com/uk-29891285

surveillance state GCHQ terrorists™

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Web giants such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp have become "command-and-control networks... for terrorists and criminals", GCHQ's new head has said. Islamic State extremists had "embraced" the web but some companies remained "in denial" over the problem, Robert Hannigan wrote in the Financial Times. He called for them to do more to co-operate with security services. However, civil liberties campaigners said the companies were already working with the intelligence agencies. None of the major tech firms has yet responded to Mr Hannigan's comments.
  • GCHQ, terrorists, and the internet: what are the issues? GCHQ v tech firms: Internet reacts Change at the top for Britain's
  • Mr Hannigan said IS had "embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits." The "security of its communications" added another challenge to agencies such as GCHQ, he said - adding that techniques for encrypting - or digitally scrambling - messages "which were once the preserve of the most sophisticated criminals or nation states now come as standard". GCHQ and its sister agencies, MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, could not tackle these challenges "at scale" without greater support from the private sector, including the largest US technology companies which dominate the web, he wrote.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Nov 14
     
    What I want to know is what we're going to do with that NSA data center at Bluffdale, Utah, after the NSA is abolished? Maybe give it to the Internet Archive?
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.”
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  • 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.”
  • 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 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.
  • 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 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.”
Paul Merrell

LEAKED: Secret Negotiations to Let Big Brother Go Global | Wolf Street - 0 views

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trade agreements TISA privatization data privacy globalization

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Much has been written, at least in the alternative media, about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two multilateral trade treaties being negotiated between the representatives of dozens of national governments and armies of corporate lawyers and lobbyists (on which you can read more here, here and here). However, much less is known about the decidedly more secretive Trade in Services Act (TiSA), which involves more countries than either of the other two. At least until now, that is. Thanks to a leaked document jointly published by the Associated Whistleblowing Press and Filtrala, the potential ramifications of the treaty being hashed out behind hermetically sealed doors in Geneva are finally seeping out into the public arena.
  • The leaked documents confirm our worst fears that TiSA is being used to further the interests of some of the largest corporations on earth (…) Negotiation of unrestricted data movement, internet neutrality and how electronic signatures can be used strike at the heart of individuals’ rights. Governments must come clean about what they are negotiating in these secret trade deals. Fat chance of that, especially in light of the fact that the text is designed to be almost impossible to repeal, and is to be “considered confidential” for five years after being signed. What that effectively means is that the U.S. approach to data protection (read: virtually non-existent) could very soon become the norm across 50 countries spanning the breadth and depth of the industrial world.
  • If signed, the treaty would affect all services ranging from electronic transactions and data flow, to veterinary and architecture services. It would almost certainly open the floodgates to the final wave of privatization of public services, including the provision of healthcare, education and water. Meanwhile, already privatized companies would be prevented from a re-transfer to the public sector by a so-called barring “ratchet clause” – even if the privatization failed. More worrisome still, the proposal stipulates that no participating state can stop the use, storage and exchange of personal data relating to their territorial base. Here’s more from Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary of Public Services International (PSI):
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  • The main players in the top-secret negotiations are the United States and all 28 members of the European Union. However, the broad scope of the treaty also includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. Combined they represent almost 70 percent of all trade in services worldwide. An explicit goal of the TiSA negotiations is to overcome the exceptions in GATS that protect certain non-tariff trade barriers, such as data protection. For example, the draft Financial Services Annex of TiSA, published by Wikileaks in June 2014, would allow financial institutions, such as banks, the free transfer of data, including personal data, from one country to another. As Ralf Bendrath, a senior policy advisor to the MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, writes in State Watch, this would constitute a radical carve-out from current European data protection rules:
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