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Paul Merrell

Beware the Dangers of Congress' Latest Cybersecurity Bill | American Civil Liberties Union - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...ress-latest-cybersecurity-bill

surveillance state legislation ACLU cybersecurity

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • A new cybersecurity bill poses serious threats to our privacy, gives the government extraordinary powers to silence potential whistleblowers, and exempts these dangerous new powers from transparency laws. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 ("CISA") was scheduled to be marked up by the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday but has been delayed until after next week's congressional recess. The response to the proposed legislation from the privacy, civil liberties, tech, and open government communities was quick and unequivocal – this bill must not go through. The bill would create a massive loophole in our existing privacy laws by allowing the government to ask companies for "voluntary" cooperation in sharing information, including the content of our communications, for cybersecurity purposes. But the definition they are using for the so-called "cybersecurity information" is so broad it could sweep up huge amounts of innocent Americans' personal data. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans' personal data and communications from undue government access and monitoring without suspicion of criminal activity. The point of a warrant is to guard that protection. CISA would circumvent the warrant requirement by allowing the government to approach companies directly to collect personal information, including telephonic or internet communications, based on the new broadly drawn definition of "cybersecurity information."
  • While we hope many companies would jealously guard their customers' information, there is a provision in the bill that would excuse sharers from any liability if they act in "good faith" that the sharing was lawful. Collected information could then be used in criminal proceedings, creating a dangerous end-run around laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which contain warrant requirements. In addition to the threats to every American's privacy, the bill clearly targets potential government whistleblowers. Instead of limiting the use of data collection to protect against actual cybersecurity threats, the bill allows the government to use the data in the investigation and prosecution of people for economic espionage and trade secret violations, and under various provisions of the Espionage Act. It's clear that the law is an attempt to give the government more power to crack down on whistleblowers, or "insider threats," in popular bureaucratic parlance. The Obama Administration has brought more "leaks" prosecutions against government whistleblowers and members of the press than all previous administrations combined. If misused by this or future administrations, CISA could eliminate due process protections for such investigations, which already favor the prosecution.
  • While actively stripping Americans' privacy protections, the bill also cloaks "cybersecurity"-sharing in secrecy by exempting it from critical government transparency protections. It unnecessarily and dangerously provides exemptions from state and local sunshine laws as well as the federal Freedom of Information Act. These are both powerful tools that allow citizens to check government activities and guard against abuse. Edward Snowden's revelations from the past year, of invasive spying programs like PRSIM and Stellar Wind, have left Americans shocked and demanding more transparency by government agencies. CISA, however, flies in the face of what the public clearly wants. (Two coalition letters, here and here, sent to key members of the Senate yesterday detail the concerns of a broad coalition of organizations, including the ACLU.)
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 14
     
    Text of the bill is on Sen. Diane Feinstein's site, http://goo.gl/2cdsSA It is truly a bummer.
Gary Edwards

A founder-friendly term sheet - Sam Altman - 1 views

blog.samaltman.com/a-founder-friendly-term-sheet

Sam-Altman Investing VC

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jun 13
     
    Must read for every entrepreneur!  When your product and service can command these kind of terms, for sure your company is worth investing in. "A founder-friendly term sheet When I invest (outside of YC) I make offers with the following term sheet.  I've tried to make the terms reflect what I wanted when I was a founder.  A few people have asked me if I'd share it, so here it is.  I think it's pretty founder-friendly. If you believe the upside risk theory, then it makes sense to offer compelling terms and forgo some downside protection to get the best companies to want to work with you. What's most important is what's not in it: *No option pool.  Taking the option pool out of the pre-money valuation (ie, diluting only founders and not investors for future hires) is just a way to artificially manipulate valuation.  New hires benefit everyone and should dilute everyone. *The company doesn't have to pay any of my legal fees.  Requiring the company to pay investors' legal fees always struck me as particularly egregious-the company can probably make better use of the money than investors can, so I'll pay my own legal fees for the round (in a simple deal with no back and forth they always end up super low anyway). *No expiration.  I got burned once by an exploding offer and haven't forgotten it; the founders can take as much time as they want to think about it.  In practice, people usually decide pretty quickly. *No confidentiality.  Founder/investor relationships are long and important.  The founders should talk to whomever they want, and if they want to tell people what I offered them, I don't really care.  Investors certainly tell each other what they offer companies. (Once we shake hands on a deal, of course, I expect the founders to honor it.) *No participating preferred, non-standard liquidation preference, etc.  There is a 1x liquidation preference, but I'm willing to forgo even that and buy common shares (and sometimes
Paul Merrell

Meet 6 Politicians Getting Rich from America's Endless Wars | Alternet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...ing-rich-americas-endless-wars

CISPA internet freedom privacy surveillance state

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Dutch has been in the news lately for co-sponsoring a bill, along with House intelligence committee chair Mike Rogers (R-MI), called the Cyberintelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. CISPA gives private companies the ability to share information with government intelligence agencies, which could potentially use the data however they see fit – in the name of national security, of course. An identical version of the bill passed the House in 2012, but went nowhere after Internet privacy activists mounted a campaign against it and Obama threatened a veto. CISPA has returned, however, much to the dismay of activists who say it could be the end of what little privacy remains online.
  • “In seeking to promote cybersecurity information sharing, CISPA creates a sweeping exception to all privacy laws,” Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the New York Times.   A tweet from Dutch's official Twitter handle reads, “#CISPA: Because U.S. companies need to protect your personal information from hackers.” One has to wonder if the next industry to do massive fundraising for Dutch might be the telecoms, which  overwhelmingly support CISPA.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft pitches SkyDrive over iCloud to Mac Office users - Computerworld - 1 views

www.computerworld.com/...ver_iCloud_to_Mac_Office_users

ge Cloud-Productivity-Platform MS-Skydrive MS-Cloud-Productivity SkyDrive-Live iCloud

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 May 12
     
    Interesting article describing a recent press conference where Microsoft introduced their latest SkyDrive alternative to Apple's iCloud initiative.  Having had considerable experience with SkyDrive and the entire "sync-share-store" Cloud category, I left a lengthy comment. Computerworld - Microsoft is pitching its SkyDrive online storage service to Office for Mac users, calling Apple's iCloud offering "not enough" for collaboration, file sharing and anywhere-access to documents. Microsoft released an OS X SkyDrive client preview two weeks ago, adding Macs to the list of devices -- Windows, particularly the upcoming Windows 8, iOS and Windows Phone -- with native support for the Dropbox-like service. On Monday, the Redmond, Wash. developer stumped for SkyDrive on its Office for Mac website. "With the SkyDrive for Mac OS X Lion preview, SkyDrive for Windows, and the release of SkyDrive for iPad, you can save and store your important documents or other files in the SkyDrive folder in Finder and access them from anywhere," the Office for Mac team wrote on its blog.
Gary Edwards

Salesforce.com Professional Edition - Full Review - Reviews by PC Magazine - 0 views

www.pcmag.com/...0,2817,2364740,00.asp

web-productivity-platform salesforce.com contact-project-manager

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 10
     
    Salesforce offers five separate editions of its Sales Cloud 2 product. Contact Manager Edition costs $5 per user per month, and somewhat resembles a cloud-based ACT. It tracks contacts, customer interactions, tasks, and hooks into Outlook and Google Apps, while also offering document sharing and mobile access. Group Edition costs $25 per user per month. It tracks sales opportunities, offers pre-built dashboards and basic reporting, adds the ability to capture leads from your Web site, and tracks Google AdWords performance within Salesforce.com. Group Edition is a good starting point for many SMBs, but Professional Edition is even better. It costs $65 per user per month, and it's is the real SMB sweet spot. It offers full reporting and analytics, custom dashboards, e-mail marketing, sales forecasts, granular permissions, real-time data sharing, and basic customer service tools.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Links Office With Win 7 - IBD - Investors.com - 0 views

www.investors.com/...t-Links-Office-With-Win-7.aspx

MSOffice-2010 OOXML-Interop

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jun 10
     
    In this interview with Microsoft's Chris Capossela, he admits that OOXML is not an interoperable format - that using OOXML will result in a loss of productivity.   excerpt: "The collaboration experience end users are going to have with Office 2010 and the Web applications in the browser and Office on the phone is far superior to anything out there, whether it's from Google or anybody else. And the increase in costs to do what they're suggesting and the decrease in productivity that's going to result is something that customers will see, and then they'll choose Microsoft. The best example of that is just sharing a document. Just taking an Office document that was built in the rich client that has a piece of smart art and a watermark or a header or a footer, and then when I share that with you and you open it in the Office Web app, it looks absolutely identical to what I created. When you make edits to it and save it and I open it back up, I see exactly the edits you made and all the stuff I had in there originally. If you do that exact same thing with Google or Zoho or OpenOffice, you lose stuff. And that means loss of productivity."
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%.
Gary Edwards

Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

Google-Apps MS-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 10 - Cached
  • That's certainly one reason Microsoft still holds a giant lead in market share.
  • An IDC survey in July 2009 shows that nearly 97% of businesses were using Microsoft Office, and 77% were using only Microsoft Office.
  • About 4% of businesses use Google Apps as their primary e-mail and productivity platform, but the overwhelming majority of these are small and midsize organizations, according to a separate survey by ITIC. This puts Google well behind the open source OpenOffice, which has 19% market share, ITIC has found.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The ubiquity of Windows and the popularity of Windows 7 also work against Google, as Microsoft's Office tools are likely to have better integration with Windows than Google Apps does. And since most businesses already use the desktop version of Microsoft Office, customers interested in cloud computing may find it easier to switch to the Web-based versions of Office than to the Google suite.
  • According to IDC, nearly 20% of businesses reported extensive use of Google Docs, mainly in addition to Microsoft Office rather than as a replacement. In October 2007, only 6% of businesses were using Google Docs extensively, so adoption is growing quickly.
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 10
     
    What a dumb ass statement: "That's certainly one reason Microsoft still holds a giant lead in market share." The SFGate article compares Google Apps lack of service to Microsoft's Productivity monopoly, suggesting that Microsoft provides better service?  That's idocy.  Microsoft's service is non existent.  Third party MSDN developers and service businesses provide near 100% of MS Productivity support.  And always have.   Where Microsoft does provide outstanding support is to their MSDN network of developers and service providers.   Google will have to match that support if Google Apps is to make a credible run at Microsoft.  But there is no doubt that the monopolist iron grip on the desktop productivity platform is an almost impossible barrier for Google to climb over.  Service excellence or not.
Gary Edwards

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Upgrade here - 0 views

googleenterprise.blogspot.com/...upgrade-here.html

Google-Apps gDocs MSOffice-2010

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 May 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 May 10
     
    This week Microsoft will take its Office 2010 suite out of beta. If you're considering upgrading Office with Office, we'd encourage you to consider an alternative: upgrading Office with Google Docs. If you choose this path, upgrade means what it's supposed to mean: effortless, affordable, and delivering a remarkable increase in employee productivity. This is a refreshing alternative to the expensive and laborious upgrades to which IT professionals have become accustomed. Google Docs has been providing rich real-time collaboration to millions of users for nearly four years. It lets employees edit and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in the browser from anywhere in the world. We recently made tremendous strides in improving Google Docs formatting, speed and functionality, and a growing number of companies are now using it as their primary productivity software. Of course, you probably already own Office 2003 or 2007 (or maybe Office 2000?), and there's no need to uninstall them. Fortunately, Google Docs also makes Office 2003 and 2007 better. For example, you can store any file - including Microsoft Office documents - in Google's cloud and share them in their original format (protected, naturally by Google's synchronous replication across datacenters). Plus, in the coming months, Google will enable real-time collaboration directly in Office 2003 and 2007, as you can see here. Google Docs represents a real alternative for companies: a chance to get the collaboration features you need today and end the endless cycle of "upgrades". For more information on the choices available to you, check out the summary below. But don't take our word for it - you can try Google Docs and the rest of the Google Apps suite for free. The only thing you have to lose is a server or two.
Gary Edwards

Businesses deploying Office 2010 five times faster than previous version | WinRumors - 1 views

www.winrumors.com/s-faster-than-previous-version

MS-Office2010 SharePoint Live.com MS-Cloud-Productivity

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Jun 11
     
    Not sure what to make of this news.  XP continues to rule the desktop, Office 2003-2007 the productivity sweet spot.  I have used and researched Office 2010 and emphatically insist that it is a honey-trap for SharePoint and Live.com cloud-computing.  The MS-Cloud becomes THE default hard drive for Office 2010, with social networking-Facebook like contagion based on shared documents, crap collaboration and in-your-face insistent Live.com/Hotmail eMail.  Everytime i wanted to do something in Office 2010, there were 20 road blocks and hurdles MS put in the path forcing their Facebook-virus on my associates and myself.  Incredibly anti-productive.  Yet it's the only cloud-productivity solution capable of easing the difficult transition from desktop to cloud productivity environments.  Office 2010 does this by integrating into legacy desktop productivity  systems just enough that users will not realize until it's too late that a mine filed of hurdles and gotchas lies ahead. excerpt: Businesses are now deploying Office 2010 five times faster than they deployed Office 2007. Office 2010 is also the fastest-selling version of Office in history. "Nearly 50 million people worldwide use Office Web Apps to view, edit, and share their documents from anywhere with a browser and an Internet connection," added Numoto. Microsoft previously revealed in October that the company had sold six million copies of Office 2010. The company didn't reveal any additional sales figures on Wednesday but reaffirmed that the software is selling well. Office is currently used by more than 750 million users worldwide according to Microsoft.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Jun 11
     
    I wonder about those numbers. 6 million copies of Office 2010 sold; total of 750 million users of all versions. That makes 0.8 per cent of Office users who had upgraded between June and October of 2010? Five times faster than Office 2007 would make Office 2007 sales in the same period of its release cycle 0.16 per cent of the 750 million, assuming the number of users had remained constant. I suspect there are some apples and oranges in that wood pile, to mix a metaphor. E.g., retail sales that exclude sales to OEMs?
Gary Edwards

As Microsoft's monopoly crumbles, its mobile future is crucial | ZDNet - 1 views

www.zdnet.com/...3454

charts microsoft-monopoly mobile-computing cloud-computing

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Jun 11
     
    Good charts based on Net Market Share Stats.... excerpt: After nearly a decade, Microsoft's reign as a monopoly is over. The consent decree in U.S. v. Microsoft expired last month, officially removing Microsoft from antitrust scrutiny by the United States Department of Justice. And the latest real-world data on web usage confirms that Microsoft's once-dominant position in the world of personal computing is crumbling. For the past four years, I've collected semi-annual snapshots of web usage from Net Market Share. The data for the first half of 2011 tell an ominous story for Microsoft. See for yourself:
Gary Edwards

Build Your Own iCloud | PCMag.com - 1 views

www.pcmag.com/...0,2817,2390307,00.asp

iCloud cloud-computing sync-share-store-collaboration Sync-Share-Store

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Aug 11
     
    Good review of Cloud sync-share-store providers.  Not sure what this hs to do with Apple's iCloud though?  Other than to point out that there are other solutions available.  Like Dropbox, SugarSync and Box.net.
Gary Edwards

Google Wave Operational Transformation (Google Wave Federation Protocol) - 0 views

www.waveprotocol.org/...operational-transform

google-wave operational-transform OT xerox-parc wave-dev OTXML

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Wave document operations consist of the following mutation components:skipinsert charactersinsert element startinsert element endinsert anti-element startinsert anti-element enddelete charactersdelete element startdelete element enddelete anti-element startdelete anti-element endset attributesupdate attributescommence annotationconclude annotationThe following is a more complex example document operation.skip 3insert element start with tag "p" and no attributesinsert characters "Hi there!"insert element endskip 5delete characters 4From this, one could see how an entire XML document can be represented as a single document operation. 
  • Wave OperationsWave operations consists of a document operation, for modifying XML documents and other non document operations. Non document operations are for tasks such as adding or removing a participant to a Wavelet. We'll focus on document operations here as they are the most central to Wave.It's worth noting that an XML document in Wave can be regarded as a single document operation that can be applied to the empty document.This section will also cover how Wave operations are particularly efficient even in the face of a large number of transforms.XML Document SupportWave uses a streaming interface for document operations. This is similar to an XMLStreamWriter or a SAX handler. The document operation consists of a sequence of ordered document mutations. The mutations are applied in sequence as you traverse the document linearly. Designing document operations in this manner makes it easier to write transformation function and composition function described later.In Wave, every 16-bit Unicode code unit (as used in javascript, JSON, and Java strings), start tag or end tag in an XML document is called an item. Gaps between items are called positions. Position 0 is before the first item. A document operation can contain mutations that reference positions. For example, a "Skip" mutation specifies how many positions to skip ahead in the XML document before applying the next mutation.Wave document operations also support annotations. An annotation is some meta-data associated with an item range, i.e. a start position and an end position. This is particularly useful for describing text formatting and spelling suggestions, as it does not unecessarily complicate the underlying XML document format.
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Sep 09
     
    Summary: Collaborative document editing means multiple editors being able to edit a shared document at the same time.. Live and concurrent means being able to see the changes another person is making, keystroke by keystroke. Currently, there are already a number of products on the market that offer collaborative document editing. Some offer live concurrent editing, such as EtherPad and SubEthaEdit, but do not offer rich text. There are others that offer rich text, such as Google Docs, but do not offer a seamless live concurrent editing experience, as merge failures can occur. Wave stands as a solution that offers both live concurrent editing and rich text document support.  The result is that Wave allows for a very engaging conversation where you can see what the other person is typing, character by character much like how you would converse in a cafe. This is very much like instant messaging except you can see what the other person is typing, live. Wave also allows for a more productive collaborative document editing experience, where people don't have to worry about stepping on each others toes and still use common word processor functionalities such as bold, italics, bullet points, and headings. Wave is more than just rich text documents. In fact, Wave's core technology allows live concurrent modifications of XML documents which can be used to represent any structured content including system data that is shared between clients and backend systems. To achieve these goals, Wave uses a concurrency control system based on Operational Transformation.
Gary Edwards

Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog - 0 views

blog.backblaze.com/...w-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage

CAR-MLS-Cloud BackBlaze Cloud-Computing

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Sep 09
     
    Amazing must read!  BackBlaze offers unlimited cloud storage/backup for $5 per month.  Now they are releasing the "storage" aspect of their service as an open source design.  The discussion introducing the design is simple to read and follow - which in itself is an achievement.   They held back on open sourcing the BackBlaze Cloud software system, which is understandable.  But they do disclose a Debian Linux OS running Tomcat over Apache Server 5.4 with JFS and HTTPS access.  This is exciting stuff.  I hope the CAR MLS-Cloud guys take notice.  Intro: At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way-and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867. In this post, we'll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you're welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze.
Gary Edwards

Run iPhone Apps Directly From Your Browser With Pieceable Viewer - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...pieceable-viewer

iPhone cloud-computing

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Apr 11
     
    Developers can publish their apps directly to the service and the Pieceable team will create a web page that displays a fully functional copy of the app. Developers or anyone who needs to share an app can then send a link to whomever they'd like to give the demo to. "It ends up being the easiest way ever to share an iPhone app on the web," CEO Fred Potter tells me. "There's no UDID exchange, there's no worry about the 100-device limit Apple places on dev accounts - it's zero friction and hassle." Using Flash to simulate the app's functionality, Pieceable Viewer works without any code modifications on the developer's side, "It's literally a one line command to publish an existing app to the viewer service," says Potter. But Pieceable Viewer isn't Pieceable's core product. The company itself, in the same space as Mobile Roadie and AppMakr, aims to be a WordPress for mobile platforms, helping people write apps even if they don't know how to code.
Paul Merrell

For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe - T... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html

surveillance-state Verint cellphone-tracking SS7 IMSI surveillance-proliferation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent. The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology.
  • The world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe. But experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation — including the United States — with relative ease and precision.
  • It is unclear which governments have acquired these tracking systems, but one industry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive trade information, said that dozens of countries have bought or leased such technology in recent years. This rapid spread underscores how the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar surveillance industry makes advanced spying technology available worldwide. “Any tin-pot dictator with enough money to buy the system could spy on people anywhere in the world,” said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, a London-based activist group that warns about the abuse of surveillance technology. “This is a huge problem.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Security experts say hackers, sophisticated criminal gangs and nations under sanctions also could use this tracking technology, which operates in a legal gray area. It is illegal in many countries to track people without their consent or a court order, but there is no clear international legal standard for secretly tracking people in other countries, nor is there a global entity with the authority to police potential abuses.
  • tracking systems that access carrier location databases are unusual in their ability to allow virtually any government to track people across borders, with any type of cellular phone, across a wide range of carriers — without the carriers even knowing. These systems also can be used in tandem with other technologies that, when the general location of a person is already known, can intercept calls and Internet traffic, activate microphones, and access contact lists, photos and other documents. Companies that make and sell surveillance technology seek to limit public information about their systems’ capabilities and client lists, typically marketing their technology directly to law enforcement and intelligence services through international conferences that are closed to journalists and other members of the public.
  • Yet marketing documents obtained by The Washington Post show that companies are offering powerful systems that are designed to evade detection while plotting movements of surveillance targets on computerized maps. The documents claim system success rates of more than 70 percent. A 24-page marketing brochure for SkyLock, a cellular tracking system sold by Verint, a maker of analytics systems based in Melville, N.Y., carries the subtitle “Locate. Track. Manipulate.” The document, dated January 2013 and labeled “Commercially Confidential,” says the system offers government agencies “a cost-effective, new approach to obtaining global location information concerning known targets.”
  • (Privacy International has collected several marketing brochures on cellular surveillance systems, including one that refers briefly to SkyLock, and posted them on its Web site. The 24-page SkyLock brochure and other material was independently provided to The Post by people concerned that such systems are being abused.)
  • Verint, which also has substantial operations in Israel, declined to comment for this story. It says in the marketing brochure that it does not use SkyLock against U.S. or Israeli phones, which could violate national laws. But several similar systems, marketed in recent years by companies based in Switzerland, Ukraine and elsewhere, likely are free of such limitations.
  • The tracking technology takes advantage of the lax security of SS7, a global network that cellular carriers use to communicate with one another when directing calls, texts and Internet data. The system was built decades ago, when only a few large carriers controlled the bulk of global phone traffic. Now thousands of companies use SS7 to provide services to billions of phones and other mobile devices, security experts say. All of these companies have access to the network and can send queries to other companies on the SS7 system, making the entire network more vulnerable to exploitation. Any one of these companies could share its access with others, including makers of surveillance systems.
  • Companies that market SS7 tracking systems recommend using them in tandem with “IMSI catchers,” increasingly common surveillance devices that use cellular signals collected directly from the air to intercept calls and Internet traffic, send fake texts, install spyware on a phone, and determine precise locations. IMSI catchers — also known by one popular trade name, StingRay — can home in on somebody a mile or two away but are useless if a target’s general location is not known. SS7 tracking systems solve that problem by locating the general area of a target so that IMSI catchers can be deployed effectively. (The term “IMSI” refers to a unique identifying code on a cellular phone.)
  • Verint can install SkyLock on the networks of cellular carriers if they are cooperative — something that telecommunications experts say is common in countries where carriers have close relationships with their national governments. Verint also has its own “worldwide SS7 hubs” that “are spread in various locations around the world,” says the brochure. It does not list prices for the services, though it says that Verint charges more for the ability to track targets in many far-flung countries, as opposed to only a few nearby ones. Among the most appealing features of the system, the brochure says, is its ability to sidestep the cellular operators that sometimes protect their users’ personal information by refusing government requests or insisting on formal court orders before releasing information.
  • Another company, Defentek, markets a similar system called Infiltrator Global Real-Time Tracking System on its Web site, claiming to “locate and track any phone number in the world.” The site adds: “It is a strategic solution that infiltrates and is undetected and unknown by the network, carrier, or the target.”
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14
     
    The Verint company has very close ties to the Iraeli government. Its former parent company Comverse, was heavily subsidized by Israel and the bulk of its manufacturing and code development was done in Israel. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comverse_Technology "In December 2001, a Fox News report raised the concern that wiretapping equipment provided by Comverse Infosys to the U.S. government for electronic eavesdropping may have been vulnerable, as these systems allegedly had a back door through which the wiretaps could be intercepted by unauthorized parties.[55] Fox News reporter Carl Cameron said there was no reason to believe the Israeli government was implicated, but that "a classified top-secret investigation is underway".[55] A March 2002 story by Le Monde recapped the Fox report and concluded: "Comverse is suspected of having introduced into its systems of the 'catch gates' in order to 'intercept, record and store' these wire-taps. This hardware would render the 'listener' himself 'listened to'."[56] Fox News did not pursue the allegations, and in the years since, there have been no legal or commercial actions of any type taken against Comverse by the FBI or any other branch of the US Government related to data access and security issues. While no real evidence has been presented against Comverse or Verint, the allegations have become a favorite topic of conspiracy theorists.[57] By 2005, the company had $959 million in sales and employed over 5,000 people, of whom about half were located in Israel.[16]" Verint is also the company that got the Dept. of Homeland Security contract to provide and install an electronic and video surveillance system across the entire U.S. border with Mexico.  One need not be much of a conspiracy theorist to have concerns about Verint's likely interactions and data sharing with the NSA and its Israeli equivalent, Unit 8200. 
ma0477758

try it now free demo FACEBOOK AUTOPILOT - 0 views

fb.emautopilot.com

facebook autopilot software share groups comments human api

shared by ma0477758 on 28 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • aa8538722 on 28 Jan 15
     
    Facebook autopilot is a creative software, which can share on Facebook groups and comments just like a real human
  • ma0477758 on 04 Feb 15
     
    is a creative software, which can share on Facebook groups and comments just like a real human no api
Paul Merrell

Is This The End Of Facebook And WhatsApp​ Encrypted Messaging? - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...kdoors2-billion-users-impacted

encryption backdoors Facebook

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A week ago, we saw a procession of nervous headlines after the Times and then Bloomberg reported that Facebook, its messaging platform WhatsApp and others would now be forced to disclose encrypted messages to law enforcement agencies under a new treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. As I commented at the time, these reports were misleading, mixing up agreements to share data that already exists with changes in the law to break encryption. But now the U.S. and U.K., as well as Australia, are set to write to Facebook to request that the company pauses its plans for cross-platform messaging encryption until backdoors can be added, citing public safety and serious crime as its reasons.EFF described the letter as an “all-out attack on encryption... a staggering attempt to undermine the security and privacy of communications tools used by billions of people,” and urged Facebook not to comply. The organization warned that the move would endanger activists and journalists, and could be used by “authoritarian regimes... to spy on dissidents in the name of combatting terrorism or civil unrest.”
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 19
     
    A more in-depth look at the issue. Unstated: this is only the latest round of the Deep State fight against digital privacy that has periodically recurred since the World Wide Web first appeared on the scene. The good news: all previous attempts have failed since Pretty Good Privacy broke the U.S. encryption export barrier beginning in 1991. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#History
Paul Merrell

Mozilla Acquires Pocket | The Mozilla Blog - 0 views

blog.mozilla.org/...mozilla-acquires-pocket

Mozilla acquisitions Pocket

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • e are excited to announce that the Mozilla Corporation has completed the acquisition of Read It Later, Inc. the developers of Pocket. Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and doubling down on our mission to keep the internet healthy, as a global public resource that’s open and accessible to all. As our first strategic acquisition, Pocket contributes to our strategy by growing our mobile presence and providing people everywhere with powerful tools to discover and access high quality web content, on their terms, independent of platform or content silo. Pocket will join Mozilla’s product portfolio as a new product line alongside the Firefox web browsers with a focus on promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content. (Here’s a link to their blog post on the acquisition).  Pocket’s core team and technology will also accelerate Mozilla’s broader Context Graph initiative.
  • “We believe that the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content is key to keeping the internet healthy by fighting against the rising tide of centralization and walled gardens. Pocket provides people with the tools they need to engage with and share content on their own terms, independent of hardware platform or content silo, for a safer, more empowered and independent online experience.” – Chris Beard, Mozilla CEO Pocket brings to Mozilla a successful human-powered content recommendation system with 10 million unique monthly active users on iOS, Android and the Web, and with more than 3 billion pieces of content saved to date. In working closely with Pocket over the last year around the integration within Firefox, we developed a shared vision and belief in the opportunity to do more together that has led to Pocket joining Mozilla today. “We’ve really enjoyed partnering with Mozilla over the past year. We look forward to working more closely together to support the ongoing growth of Pocket and to create great new products that people love in support of our shared mission.” – Nate Weiner, Pocket CEO As a result of this strategic acquisition, Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation and will become part of the Mozilla open source project.
Paul Merrell

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange warns: Google is not what it seems - 0 views

www.dailytimes.com.pk/...ns-google-is-not-what-it-seems

surveillance state internet freedom Google NSA

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Back in 2011, Julian Assange met up with Eric Schmidt for an interview that he considers the best he’s ever given. That doesn’t change, however, the opinion he now has about Schmidt and the company he represents, Google.In fact, the WikiLeaks leader doesn’t believe in the famous “Don’t Be Evil” mantra that Google has been preaching for years.Assange thinks both Schmidt and Google are at the exact opposite spectrum.“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. Schmidt’s tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation. But Google has always been comfortable with this proximity,” Assange writes in an opinion piece for Newsweek.
  • “Long before company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired Schmidt in 2001, their initial research upon which Google was based had been partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). And even as Schmidt’s Google developed an image as the overly friendly giant of global tech, it was building a close relationship with the intelligence community,” Assange continues.Throughout the lengthy article, Assange goes on to explain how the 2011 meeting came to be and talks about the people the Google executive chairman brought along - Lisa Shields, then vice president of the Council on Foreign Relationship, Jared Cohen, who would later become the director of Google Ideas, and Scott Malcomson, the book’s editor, who would later become the speechwriter and principal advisor to Susan Rice.“At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts US foreign-policy establishment, but I was still none the wiser.” Assange goes on to explain the work Cohen was doing for the government prior to his appointment at Google and just how Schmidt himself plays a bigger role than previously thought.In fact, he says that his original image of Schmidt, as a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, “a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast,” was wrong.
  • However, Assange concedes that that is not the sort of person who attends Bilderberg conferences, who regularly visits the White House, and who delivers speeches at the Davos Economic Forum.He claims that Schmidt’s emergence as Google’s “foreign minister” did not come out of nowhere, but it was “presaged by years of assimilation within US establishment networks of reputation and influence.” Assange makes further accusations that, well before Prism had even been dreamed of, the NSA was already systematically violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under its director at the time, Michael Hayden. He states, however, that during the same period, namely around 2003, Google was accepting NSA money to provide the agency with search tools for its rapidly-growing database of information.Assange continues by saying that in 2008, Google helped launch the NGA spy satellite, the GeoEye-1, into space and that the search giant shares the photographs from the satellite with the US military and intelligence communities. Later on, 2010, after the Chinese government was accused of hacking Google, the company entered into a “formal information-sharing” relationship with the NSA, which would allow the NSA’s experts to evaluate the vulnerabilities in Google’s hardware and software.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Around the same time, Google was becoming involved in a program known as the “Enduring Security Framework” (ESF), which entailed the sharing of information between Silicon Valley tech companies and Pentagon-affiliated agencies at network speed.’’Emails obtained in 2014 under Freedom of Information requests show Schmidt and his fellow Googler Sergey Brin corresponding on first-name terms with NSA chief General Keith Alexander about ESF,” Assange writes.Assange seems to have a lot of backing to his statements, providing links left and right, which people can go check on their own.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Sep 15
     
    The "opinion piece for Newsweek" is an excerpt from Assange's new book, When Google met Wikileaks.  The chapter is well worth the read. http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447
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