🌎 Discussion: Online Piracy, AI, Net Neutrality, Killswitch, and Other Internet Issues II

[KevanG]

No, America needs to be able to fight off it's own intelligence agencies from taking over everyones private lives.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

See How Fast Your State's Broadband Is With This Interactive Map

When we last checked in on the State Of The Internet in these United States, things weren't looking so pretty: the average speed was a painful 4.8Mbps, well below the global average. Well, according to this neat graph, things are looking up.

Net Index is a comprehensive breakdown of the data gathered by Speedtest.net, the ubiquitous online speedtesting tool. The map lets you click around to compare your state (or city) against any other.

The graph has been around for a little while, but it came to my attention when Cord Cutter noticed the fact that the average broadband speed in the US has jumped significantly in the last year. 23.9Mbps was the average in April 2014; this month, we're up by 10 megabits, to 33.9Mbps. That's a huge jump to happen in a year.

There's tons of data you can pull out of the graph; one of the most interesting things I noticed was the effect that high-speed broadband availability has. Google Fiber offers gigabit speeds for reasonable prices in a few select cities — something a Comcast exec labelled as pointless a few years ago — and it's fascinating to see the effect. Kansas City, the first Fiber location, has an average of 126Mbps, well above the state average of 39. Austin, Texas is sitting pretty at 76Mbps. Maybe people do want high-speed internet after all.

http://www.netindex.com/download/4,1675/Clearwater/

Click the link to find out your cities speeds

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Facebook and Google Are Locking In African Customers With Freebie Deals

Facebook and Google have grand plans to bring the internet to developing nations, paying Lisa Rinna-sized lip service to altruistic visions of global connectivity. But let's always remember that these US tech giants are also gunning for new customers and the lucrative data that comes with them.

Both companies are rolling out programs in some African countries that give people free internet access—but the complimentary access is contingent on people using their services. Their large-scale world-connectivity projects are tailored to ensure that Facebook and Google become the go-to on-ramps for accessing internet:

Facebook, through its Internet.org program, offers a stripped-down version of its social network and some other sites for free in what it says is an exercise to "connect the two thirds of the world that doesn't have Internet access".

Google, in partnership with Kenyan mobile phone firm Safaricom, is rolling out its "free zone" in Kenya, where email and the Internet are available with no data charges, providing users stay within Google apps.​

Bringing the internet to people without access is a worthy, necessary pursuit, but hooking people into the ecosystems of US-based multinational corporations doesn't have to be part of the deal. The exclusive-freebie move could even potentially damage African tech innovation in the long run, as an advocacy group told Reuters:

"You are giving people the idea that they are connected to this free open world of the Internet but actually they are being locked up in a corporate digital prison," Niels ten Oever, head of digital at rights group Article 19, told Reuters.

"Where will the African Mark Zuckerberg come from when they have no chance to compete?"​

It's hard for companies to compete with Facebook and Google in the US; in Africa, where these tech giants will have a huge leg up on local competitors, it will be even harder. By establishing themselves as home bases for the internet, Facebook and Google are elbowing control over the online experiences of a continent away from would-be domestic entrepreneurs and local startups.

If Google and Facebook successfully shunt the majority of internet traffic through their services, entrepreneurs in countries like Kenya and Zambia could be at a major disadvantage trying to produce homegrown social networks, messaging services, browsers, search—all the things freely dangled by the already-established US companies.

In countries with technological cultures that grew alongside the tech revolution in the US, the products of companies like Google and Facebook have competition from local offerings. In South Korea, for instance, most people search with Naver, a search engine based near Seoul. Not Google.

Relying on the same old exploitative global supply chains to hand out freebies doesn't actually solve much. Good foreign aid is supposed to help empower local people to achieve their goals, not dump a top-down solution onto a desperate population. It'd be an encouraging sign if Facebook and Google started creating incentives for local tech talent to develop alternative, home-grown solutions. But of course, Facebook and Google aren't conducting foreign aid, good or bad. They're doing business.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-africa-internet-idUSKBN0MK10F20150324

I'm really conflicted on this because on the one hand unlimited access to all of the worlds information is great but being locked into Google or Bookface is a crappy way to go about it

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A New Bill Could Help Companies Share Cybersecurity Threat Information

The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee yesterday introduced a new bill that would allow businesses to share knowledge of digital security threats with the government without fears of legal of action.

Reuters reports that the new bill, known as the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, "has significant bipartisan support." Indeed, it claims that it has strong backing both in government and among the wider business community, and suggests it has "a good chance of being passed by Congress." The House of Representatives' intelligence panel will vote on the new bill this Thursday. If it passes—which sounds likely—it will move to a full House vote in April.

Meanwhile a similar bill, which provides businesses with liability protection if they share cyber security information through a civilian portal, is making its way through the Senate. That bill was passed by the Senate's intelligence panel 14-1. If both get passed by their respective chambers, they'll need to be tweaked to work with each other before Obama signs them into law (or tosses them into the bin).

We'll soon see if either or both of the bills,brought about by the rise of cyber attacks on large corporations like Sony Pictures, are turned into law. While privacy activists may worry that increased flow of such information may ratchet up surveillance, it is at least heartening that the government is taking cyber security ever more seriously.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-cybersecurity-congress-idUSKBN0MK1ZM20150324

Well I would imagine that cyber-warfare is only going to get more prevalent as time goes by

 

[redfirebird2008]

My local provider just increased speeds by 4 times. The 50 Meg plan I was on before jumped to 200 megs. Fastest speed available now is 400 megs. One of the other providers in the area is also talking about 1000 megs sometime in the near future. The race is on for faster speeds.

Personally the biggest help is in uploads. I now have a 20 meg upload speed, which makes a huge difference from the 3 meg connection I had until recently. A video that took almost 2 hours now takes 18 minutes to upload. It's exciting to think that the Internet of the future will be instantaneous for everything including uploads. The flip side is Terminator with the increasing artificial intelligence. I'm very much old school when it comes to automated cars and whatnot, but I want to see the Internet pushed further and further. It benefits everyone.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

That's very good. In my area Brighthouse is the big dog but Verizon FIOS has been moving in as well. Having options and making them compete is what will truly benefit us as the consumers

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Feds Want Reddit to Give Up Personal Info of Darknet Market Redditors

Federal agents want Reddit to turn over the personal data of five prominent Redditors active in the Darknet Markets subreddit. IP addresses, names, and other data about five Reddit users active in Darknet Market discussions have been requested.

Earlier this month, the popular drug-and-weapon peddling darknet market Evolution vanished in an apparent scam by its creators. This subpoena, from a Baltimore Department of Homeland Security agent, looks like it's connected to Evolution, since all of the subpoenaed redditors had publicly discussed what went down when Evolution disappeared. One of them, security researcher Gwern Branwen, published a PSA post on the Darknet Markets subreddit earlier today:

Recently (2015-03-25), I was alerted by Reddit that there had been a subpoena for my Reddit account information and they would be responding by 2015-03-30; this followed their privacy policy where they inform all accounts affected by subpoenas if there is no gag order (which is more than most websites will do for you)​

This subpoena may curb discussions that go down on the Darknet Market subreddit, which is a huge community hub for darknet market users. Branwen told Wired he expects some of the conversations to move elsewhere:

Branwen says he expects his revelation of the subpoena to drive many of r/darknetmarket’s conversations to Tor-protected forums like the drug-market discussion site called the Hub. “Riskier discussions will move onto the Hub, and as long as the Reddit admins don’t get spooked and shut it down similar to /r/jailbait, [r/darknetmarkets] will remain a useful discussion place,” he says.​

I asked Reddit if it planned to comply. "Because this a pending legal matter, Reddit can’t provide a comment," a spokesperson told me, pointing to Reddit's privacy policy to highlight exactly what kind of personal information Reddit collects. Reddit stores the IP information on posts, comments, and messages for 90 days, so if it does comply, it's likely DHS will receive the IP info it's after.

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dhs-reddit-dark-web-drug-forum/

Kind of scary they can just go after you for simply discussing it

 

[Tanin]

Feds Want Reddit to Give Up Personal Info of Darknet Market Redditors

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dhs-reddit-dark-web-drug-forum/

Kind of scary they can just go after you for simply discussing it

From what I read they weren't just 'discussing' it, but claiming to know/be the people doing illegal activities. I don't blame them for going after people who claim to be breaking the law.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Well if that's the case it's their own dumb ass fault

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I always figured "the authorities" had access to any forum I manage to find.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ya Reddit may be clogged up with people but I'm sure it's not exactly the place you want to air out your dirty business

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

5 Sad Facts About America's Ridiculously Slow Internet

Anyone who’s ever stared glass-eyed at a Netflix video that won’t load or stuttered through a glitchy Skype call knows that the United States leaves its citizens starving for bandwidth. But the latest data in Akamai’s annual “State of the Internet” report presents some pretty depressing statistics about American’s slow, crappy internet.

In case you’re not familiar, Akamai is a cloud services company that counts giants like Apple, Facebook, and Twitter as clients. Those relationships yield data about internet traffic all over the world, including the details of connection speeds, cyberattacks, and network penetration. The latest report tells a tale of how far behind the US is in terms of upgrading infrastructure and ensuring internet faster speeds. And the US invented the damn thing.

America’s not even in the top 10 worldwide

If you want fast internet, you’d be better off moving to Latvia than settling down in middle America. Or South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Czech Republic, or Finland. The US isn’t even in the top 10 countries with the fastest average connection speeds worldwide.

In fact, Akamai only mentions the US in this part of the report to note that broadband adoption had dipped slightly (a “negligible 0.3 percent drop”) and to point out that “in the United States, 50 million people—or roughly 16% of the population—are not connected to the Internet.” Later in the report, Akamai points out that the global rank for the US is number 16.

The top slots this year, yet again, belong to Asia. South Korea’s internet is probably the best in the world. It ranks at the top of every list, namely the list of countries with average broadband speeds above 10 Mbps. A rollicking 79 percent of South Koreans enjoy speeds of 10 Mbps or greater. The US didn’t even make the list.

Don’t blame size

A lot of people blame slow US internet speeds on the size of the country. The internet does demand a physical infrastructure to carry packets of data from one side of the nation to another, and in more isolated areas, that infrastructure is more sparse, making it tougher to offer high-speed connections. It means that the whole country’s average speed gets brought down by these dead spots.

But the data tells a different story. Ironically, some of the most remote states in the country enjoy some of the fastest internet speeds. Utah’s internet is number six in the nation, followed by Washington, Oregon, and North Dakota. North Dakota!

Meanwhile, Virginia is only slightly larger than South Korea, but its internet is almost 25 percent slower on average.

US speeds are tragically far from “broadband”

Uncompetitive internet speeds is hardly news to US officials. Acknowledging the massive gaps in access to high-speed internet across the country, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently redefined broadband in an effort to compel internet service providers to build faster networks. It used to be 4 Mbps. Now it’s 25 Mbps.

Guess what? Not a single state can boast anything close to widespread speeds greater than 25 Mbps. In fact, none of them can even claim full broadband coverage according to the old definition.

So if you want to move to a state with pretty good internet, Delaware is the state for you. It’s also a great place to incorporate a tech company.

Mobile internet is even worse

So all the above statistics refer to terrestrial broadband. Surely, the US must be better on the mobile front? Nope. Akamai’s findings for the fastest mobile connections in the five major continental regions, ranked:

1. Europe: United Kingdom, 16.0 Mbps
2. Asia Pacific: Japan, 8.3 Mbps
3. South America: Venezuela, 6.3 Mbps
4. North America: United States, 3.2 Mbps
5. Africa: Morocco, 3.0 Mbps

Venezuela’s mobile internet speeds are almost twice those of the US. Venezuela is struggling to feed its citizens, but they can stream YouTube on their phones faster than the average American.

America is home to a ton of hacker activity

Nevertheless, the US is second only to China as the biggest exporter of attack traffic. This isn’t necessarily related to speed, and it’s hard to draw conclusions from Akamai’s data about internet security. But one thing stands out: A sizable proportion of cyberattacks worldwide originate in the US.

China accounts for 41 percent of global attack traffic, while the US accounts for just 13 percent. There’s not really a third place. Taiwan and Russia are neck-and-neck with 4.4 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. The report doesn’t offer much detail about the attacks themselves, but the data doesn’t lie. If you wanted to pick the top two belligerents in the ongoing global cyberwar, they would be China and the straggling United States.

http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/

We won't catch up until we get rid of the monopolies the current cable companies have since they don't give a flying crap about upgrading their equipment since they get your money regardless

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Obama: If You Cyberattack the US, We'll Sanction You

President Obama has a message for foreign hackers: You’re grounded. The president declared a national emergency and signed an executive order today allowing targeted sanctions on anyone who is deemed a cyberthreat to the United States.

Obama wrote about the sanction plan on Medium:

Our primary focus will be on cyber threats from overseas. In many cases, diplomatic and law enforcement tools will still be our most effective response. But targeted sanctions, used judiciously, will give us a new and powerful way to go after the worst of the worst.​

The sanctions include freezing any assets located in the US, and blocking potential threats from entering the country.

Now, this isn’t totally new territory Obama is wading into; he already tightened sanctions on North Korea after the Sony hack. But this executive order applies to individuals and groups of people, not just nations. This means if it turns out one ornery North Korean who hates James Franco was behind the Sony Hack, the US would be able to specifically sanction that guy. (Although, of course, that’s not what happened, and why would a random North Korean citizen have assets in the US, so this isn’t the greatest example, but you get my point.)

The order pushes sanctions on cyberattacks that jeopardize national security, but it’s even broader than that. Anyone who steals trade secrets from American companies or defrauds regular people by stealing their personal info to the point where their actions screw with the economy could now get officially squeezed by the US government.
And companies that profit from those stolen trade secrets could get sanctioned too. So if, say, South Korean hackers steal Apple trade secrets and Samsung uses them, Samsung would be screwed, its US-based assets frozen.

This doesn’t mean that petty criminals like the dudes who are selling Uber login info for a dollar will get sanctioned. Cybercrimes will have to meet a threshold of causing harm to the whole country’s economy, not just the Visa bill of an unwitting scam victim. So if you’re hoping that the US will put the squeeze on the person who hacked your Venmo, this isn’t the bill you’re looking for. But narrowness here is a good thing for privacy: Obama’s previous cybersecurity initiatives have had privacy supporters frustrated that they’re so broad.

https://medium.com/@PresidentObama/a-new-tool-against-cyber-threats-1a30c188bc4

I can support this

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The FBI Has Its Own Secret Brand of Malware

It’s not only digital criminals who like to secretly infect people’s computers with invasive malware. In fact, the FBI likes malware so much, it created its own special brand. We don’t know much about it, but now that the US Department of Justice is pushing for policy changes that’ll allow the FBI to install spyware on citizens’ computers even more easily, it’s time to take a closer look.

Malware is a broad term for malicious computer code like viruses and Trojan horses. It’s called spyware when it’s used to snoop on and track someone else’s digital behavior without their knowledge. Thieves like it because it’s an easy route to gain enough information on someone to leech off their bank accounts or steal their identity. The FBI likes it because it can help pinpoint people crouching behind their keyboards to commit crimes.

The FBI’s bespoke surveillance malware—called Computer and IP Address Verifier (CIPAV)—is designed to track criminal suspects by logging their IP address, MAC address, computer programs running, operating system details, browser details, and other identifying computer information.

As far as spyware goes, it’s unusually circumscribed—unlike consumer keylogging and social media snooping surveillance tools, CIPAV isn’t able to spy on the entire computer at will, just a narrow list of identifiers. That means it’s a weirdly weak invader, but that’s a deliberate, built-in privacy protection, a way to keep the FBI’s spyware ostensibly legal.

Despite limitations, the FBI’s spyware capabilities are hugely powerful. As the Washington Post pointed out:

The most powerful FBI surveillance software can covertly download files, photographs and stored e-mails, or even gather real-time images by activating cameras connected to computers, say court documents and people familiar with this technology.​

Yet there’s been zilch in the news about this government malware since 2013.

The FBI’s basement baby

The FBI keeps its malware deployment on the down low low. The few official documents available that provide spyware details use take care to reveal as little as possible.

“The exact nature of these commands, processes, capabilities, and their configuration is classified as a law enforcement sensitive investigative technique, the disclosure of which would likely jeopardize other ongoing investigations and/or future use of the technique,” an FBI agent’s affidavit reads.

So the FBI says it can’t explain exactly how CIPAV works because then the bad guys will figure it out and get away. If this argument sounds stale, it’s because it’s the same wobbly rationale the FBI uses to keep its heavy-handed cell phone tracking practices secret.

What we do know about CIPAV largely stems from court documents from one 2007 case. The FBI installed its malware on a teenaged bomb-threat suspect’s computer by tricking him into clicking on a phishing message on MySpace by impersonating Associated Press journalists. The FBI created a fake news article that contained malware about the bomb threats and sent it to the suspect in hopes that he’d click on it.

And the first and only semi-confirmed CIPAV attack discovered “in the wild,” before it was documented in a court case, happened in 2013, when researchers fingered the FBI as the source of a malware attack on Freedom Hosting, the anonymous hidden service notorious for hosting child porn. (The FBI later confirmed this.)

Another FBI spyware was used in 2013 to inject surveillance malware into a Colorado bomb threat suspect’s Yahoo email account. We know that the spyware allowed the FBI to see the webpages the suspect was visiting, which means it had a wider range of capabilities than CIPAV.

You may be wondering, who cares about the privacy of bomb threat suspects and pedophiles? It’s not exactly a sympathetic clan. The issue here isn’t that known pedophiles shouldn’t be tracked or that there’s a general problem with the FBI using warrants to narrowly track suspects of terrible crimes—that’s what it’s supposed to do! The issue is that the FBI’s current setup leaves too much room for to violate the privacy of people who aren’t suspects, and too many unanswered questions about its powerful spy tools.

Take the Freedom Hosting case for instance. All of the sites that used the anonymous server, including many that had absolutely nothing to do with child porn, were hit with the FBI’s spyware. In the case of the Colorado bomb threat, the FBI screwed up and originally received a warrant to spy on the wrong email address thanks to a typo, meaning some random person whose only crime was accidentally choosing an email address similar to a wanted criminal had their computer vulnerable to intensive FBI spying. The FBI saw no reason to fess up to spying on innocent people in those cases.

And since the FBI can use spyware to go after “zombified” computers infected with botnets, it could end up putting spyware on peoples’ computers just because someone else had already infected them with malware. This is like the FBI searching your house without telling you because a criminal had already broken in earlier.

We want to know more

What little we know about the FBI’s history with spyware raises questions. For instance, there was internal confusion about how to deploy spyware that suggests that the FBI hasn’t been sure how much it intruded on privacy. While the agency now requires a warrant and a Pen/Trap order to use CIPAV, documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show several FBI agents discussed deploying the spyware without warrants before finally asking for clarification in 2007.

Since we know the FBI has been using spyware since 2001, that’s six years before the FBI cemented its policy. How many other lingering privacy questions are still being debated about legal spyware use internally? And shouldn’t Congress and the general public be able to participate in these privacy debates? Shouldn’t people have the right to know if their computer has been accidentally snooped on, or if they’ve acquired government-issued spyware as collateral damage?

In some courts, the FBI’s requests for spyware warrants have been rejected. A Texas federal magistrate wouldn’t allow spyware deployment, for instance, because law enforcement couldn’t pinpoint the computer’s location. But if the DoJ procedural change on the table goes through, agents will no longer have to pinpoint a location. They’ll also be able to figure out which judges are more lenient on their snooping tactics and go to them with their warrant requests, since the change would allow judge to authorize warrants for these searches even outside their jurisdiction.

The extent to which we’re being kept in the dark about government spyware is not necessary. As is the case with Stingrays, the cell phone trackers used covertly by the FBI, the level of secrecy means no one is able to give the program a thorough look-over to make sure it’s not violating our privacy rights.

Of course the FBI requires some secrecy to keep its tools safe. But there’s a persistent lack of discussion about general and past tactics, which no longer or never did impair federal agents from doing their jobs. That lack of discussion is good for the FBI: They don’t have to explain their tactics or screw-ups. But the public should be able to debate when law enforcement’s phishing expeditions turn into illegal fishing expeditions.

http://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-has-its-own-secret-brand-of-malware-1694821520

Not surprised by this news in the least

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

China's DDoS Attacks Used Unencrypted Websites to Hijack Browsers

Over the past few weeks, China has been using its country’s Internet infrastructure to attack political opponents by turning normal users’ web browsers into Denial of Service tools.

These attacks were a deep violation of the basic trust that allows the Internet to function smoothly, and an disquieting and unprecedented development in the history of state-orchestrated denial-of-service attacks. They exploited the fact that many enormous sites still use insecure HTTP rather than HTTPS, allowing the Great Firewall to modify those sites, and the fact that our web browsers are willing to run JavaScript code on an extremely liberal basis. These facts allowed China to marshal an incredible number of “zombie” systems both inside and outside of China, making billions of requests in an attempt to overwhelm the targets’ servers.

The attack targets code-hosting platform GitHub, and URLs used in the attack point to two repositories, greatfire and cn-nytimes, which mirror GreatFire.org and the Chinese New York Times. As an analysis published by researchers at Netressec explains, this Man-on-the-Side attack modifies the Baidu Analytics JavaScript included by many sites to inject a malicious copy. The malicious version of the JavaScript instructs browsers to make frequent requests to the two GitHub URLs. As long as a browser remained on the Baidu Analytics-including site, it would continue generating traffic at a regular interval. It is important to note that although China is using its privileged access to backbone routers within its borders to modify the Baidu resources, it is ultimately end users anywhere in the world who run the malicious code who are having their browsers hijacked.

GitHub has announced that this is the largest DDoS that they have ever dealt with. Despite the scale of the attack, neither GitHub nor the individual repositories have been forced offline. In fact, due to GitHub’s wide deployment of HTTPS, it would be quite hard for China to censor these specific endpoints without censoring the entirety of GitHub. One of the advantages that HTTPS provides is that it not only encrypts the contents of a web page, but also the specific URL of the page being requested. Unless you have access to the private keys for a given site, it is difficult for an attacker to determine exactly which URL within a site is being accessed in a secure browsing session. And if the attacker can’t determine which requests are for pages they want to block, they are forced to block the entire site if they want to prevent access to certain pages.

This is a big advantage for citizens who wish to access information freely within a censorship regime. In order to mitigate the risk of critical information being censored, content creators can mirror their data on a secure domain that the censors may be reluctant to block for fear of political or financial consequences. It seems that that is exactly what has happened in this situation. Before the GitHub attack started on March 26th, GreatFire.org reported an attack on their own servers starting March 17th. And indeed, blocking GitHub would have injurious effects on Chinese coders and thus the Chinese economy. When China previously blocked the site for days at a time in January 2013, the former head of Google’s China operations Kai-Fu Lee posted on the micro-blogging site Sina Weibo that the act was “unjustifiable,” and that it “will only derail the nation’s programmers from the world, while bringing about a loss in competitiveness and insight.” This time, they’ve gone a step further and actually weaponized Chinese Internet businesses in order to censor critical voices.

We know that China injected the payload at some point between Baidu’s servers and when the traffic exited the country. This was only possible due to the fact that the Baidu Analytics script included on sites is not using encryption by default. Without HTTPS, anyone sitting between the web server and the end user can modify content arbitrarily. This is part of the reason we need 100% deployment of HTTPS for the entire web. At the same time, It’s important to note that HTTPS isn’t a complete inoculation against malicious state action. The government of China could easily have leaned on Baidu to provide their encryption keys to the censors to incorporate in their Man-on-the-Side attack. Alternatively, they could have forced Baidu to deliver the malicious code directly from their servers. And as we have pointed out before, when governments can force web services to fork over their crypto keys or suffer the consequences, an enormous amount of information about end users activities is divulged. In this case, it’s worse: governments can turn people across the world into unwitting partners in assisting censorship regimes to stifle free speech.

China isn’t unique in its technical capacity to inject traffic. Most national governments could apply this same technique, if they host popular JavaScript within their borders and have the tools to modify Internet traffic leaving their country. It has become increasingly common for websites to include utility libraries and ad networks hosted on a diaspora of servers across the globe. Any one of these third party resources can modify page content, divulge browsing habits, or initiate an attack like the one we’ve described.

The solution is twofold: technical and political. As a site maintainer, you can host utility libraries locally. That way, a compromise of one remote resource will not result in malicious JavaScript being executed by your users. In this instance, using open alternatives for analytics would have averted users loading remote attack code. Sysadmins can deploy HTTPS, making it harder for malicious agents to modify traffic in-transit. And citizens can support initiatives such as the Manila Principles, which seeks to establish a clear legal framework around content restriction, one that respects human rights and is grounded in due process and backed by international law. Only a combination of sane policy and technical measures can limit governments’ power to hijack our browsers and use them to censor the Internet worldwide.

http://gizmodo.com/chinas-ddos-attacks-used-unencrypted-websites-to-hijack-1695195138

You have to give them points for ingenuity

 

[hippie_hunter]

5 Sad Facts About America's Ridiculously Slow Internet

http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/

We won't catch up until we get rid of the monopolies the current cable companies have since they don't give a flying crap about upgrading their equipment since they get your money regardless

We're starting to get some progress because Google has changed things for the better. There is genuine competition where Google and AT&T are offering their fiber services. And Comcast will be upgrading their services to 2 Gbps or 1 Gbps to almost all of their customers. The era of cable monopoly is coming to an end dude thanks to all sorts of factors.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

We're starting to get some progress because Google has changed things for the better. There is genuine competition where Google and AT&T are offering their fiber services. And Comcast will be upgrading their services to 2 Gbps or 1 Gbps to almost all of their customers. The era of cable monopoly is coming to an end dude thanks to all sorts of factors.

Don't get too excited about the Comcast announcement. That is going to be a long ways off before they will be offering it for all of their customers. I posted about it in the tech thread. But yes the cable companies monopolies are quickly on their way out the door. What will really help is if municipalities are able to offer their own services as well like in certain states already. In my area Brighthouse dominates the area but FIOS has moved in and is getting a pretty big chunk of customers. The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned, competition will breed better service for all of us in the long run. It's just amazing that we created the freaking internet and we are so far behind compared to a lot of other countries

 

[hippie_hunter]

Don't get too excited about the Comcast announcement. That is going to be a long ways off before they will be offering it for all of their customers.

By the end of next year if Comcast has their way, it'll be offered to almost all of their customers. Honestly, that part I believe, it's the other stuff I question since Comcast was rather weak on specifics. Comcast has a history of unnecessarily dicking their customers and while I wouldn't call them liars for the things they say, the things they don't say always makes me nervous. They have proven that they're not trustworthy, not because of the things they say, but on the things they don't say. For example, how much will they be charging? Will they attempt to impose data caps? Will this expansion of a fiber plan be affected by the Time Warner Cable merger?

That stuff I'm far more wary of than Comcast's ability to actually go through with the plan.

What will really help is if municipalities are able to offer their own services as well like in certain states already.

In an era where local governments are struggling to meet basic needs on things like education and pensions, I think it's better that municipalities focus on other improvements than offering their own online services, which I think would be mediocre at best.

What should be happening is allow municipalities create an environment similar to Kansas City. Kansas City has Google Fiber, AT&T U-Verse with Gigapower, and Time Warner Cable. And with Comcast taking over Time Warner Cable, Comcast will obviously boost the speeds to more effectively compete with Google and AT&T. And they charge it at the Google set standard of $70/month. We should be ending the local cable monopolies to allow these companies to move into new areas and expand their footprints to absorb more customers. Why have local municipalities invest in projects that they don't need to spend on when the private market is more than capable of doing it far more effectively if the right environment is created?

In my area Brighthouse dominates the area but FIOS has moved in and is getting a pretty big chunk of customers. The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned, competition will breed better service for all of us in the long run. It's just amazing that we created the freaking internet and we are so far behind compared to a lot of other countries

Exactly!

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Well the only thing I read on Comcast was that it starts in Atlanta and it will be very limited, basically people will have to be very close to where the lines are. Saying they can get all of their customers on by the end of next year is almost impossible IMO. They would have to have people working around the clock to lay the lines and every customer who wants the services is going to have to at least partially pay for the install/upgrade to their end of things in their house. That is where the big problem is for getting faster speeds for everyone, you have to replace the old crappy lines and connections at every single house. That would be one good reason to have a municipal option because they wouldn't rape everyone to get this done. If the only option to get it is Comcast or any other big company in the area than the customer is at the mercy of said company when they charge them for the install. Also allowing municipalities to be the one to open up the area allows for the fact that no company can claim they laid it so nobody else gets to use. And it would also bring a new stream of revenue to any municipality that does while providing a needed service at a reasonable price that they can make a bit of profit from

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Censorship Order That Threatened Websites and Message Boards Overturned

Our right to express opinions online—for instance, to criticize copyright trolls and their demands for money in hopes of scaring them away—are protected by the First Amendment. The Georgia Supreme Court correctly underscored these protections in a ruling late last week about the state’s anti-stalking law. The panel overturned a trial judge’s astonishing order directing a website owner to remove all statements about a poet and motivational speaker who had a sideline business of demanding thousands of dollars from anyone who posted her prose online—a practice that had sparked plenty of criticism on the web.

The case, Chan v. Ellis, was initiated by Linda Ellis, an author of the motivational poem “The Dash,” which is freely available on her website. When others repost the poem, Ellis routinely sent copyright infringement notices, offering to settle the legal dispute for $7,500. This earned Ellis notoriety on Matthew Chan’s ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI) a website dedicated to providing information for recipients of settlement demand letters like Ellis’ and featuring a message board used to expose alleged copyright trolls and extortion letter schemes. The site included nearly 2,000 posts about Ellis and her settlement demands, from Chan and others.

In February 2013, Ellis filed a petition for a “stalking ex parte temporary protective order,” claiming that some of the posts amounted to stalking and cyber-bullying. (The message boards have been taken down, so we can’t read what the messages actually said.) A Georgia state court held that the online posts constituted “contact” with the writer tantamount to stalking and ordered removal of all posts about Ellis—not just threatening ones—in an overreaching ruling impeding freedom of expression and ignoring the legal protections afforded to intermediary publishers of web content,

The case was appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, where, because of the important free speech concerns, the UCLA First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic and Loyola Law School Prof. Aaron Caplan weighed in on the case on EFF’s behalf. We emphasized the free speech issues raised if “contact” under the state’s anti-stalking law was interpreted to include online statements about an individual. The Georgia Supreme Court, in an opinion that mirrored our arguments, ruled that posting criticisms of the poet wasn’t the type of “contact” the anti-stalking law prohibits because the comments were for public consumption and not sent directly to her.

“That a communication is about a particular person does not mean necessarily that it was directed to a person,” the court said. “The publication of commentary directed only to the public generally does not amount to ‘contact’” under Georgia’s anti-stalking law, it said.

While Ellis may not have liked what people said about her, that’s not enough to stifle publication of opinions expressed to the general public. As the court ruled, “Ellis failed to prove that Chan `contacted’ her without her consent and the trial court erred when it concluded that Chan had stalked Ellis.”

EFF has called for a federal statute that would nip this type of claim against commentary on websites and blogs in the bud. A federal anti-SLAPP law would provide bloggers and website owners with a defense against expensive legal threats targeting legitimate online content, enabling them to file a request in court to get the cases dismissed quickly. At least 28 states already have such laws against strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. A similar law at the federal level would protect bloggers, website owners, and other creators across the nation, and discourage plaintiffs like Ellis from dragging their targets into court.

The Internet has turned into an unrivaled forum for discussion and debate, and people around the world use the Web to share information about people and businesses they don’t think are dealing fairly with others. We are pleased the Georgia court recognized this and protected free speech online instead of dangerously expanding the scope of the state’s anti-stalking law.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/...atened-websites-and-message-boards-overturned

Glad sanity prevailed there, this is also good news for us on the Hype

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Sen. Feinstein Thinks We Should "Delete" The Anarchist Cookbook From The Net

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=31019751&postcount=647

 

[wiegeabo]

The longer she's in office, the dumber she gets.

Doesn't help that most politicians probably don't know how the internet works.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

The longer she's in office, the dumber she gets.

Doesn't help that most politicians probably don't know how the internet works.

I think they do. That's the scary part.

They know and they speak for the powerful.

It's not empty rhetoric.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

I think we just need to reboot Washington DC and going forward set time limits for all positions. This would fix a lot of crap as far as I'm concerned

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I think we just need to reboot Washington DC and going forward set time limits for all positions. This would fix a lot of crap as far as I'm concerned

We need a place.

A place where the founders believe in things like net neutrality and free exchange of ideas.

Screw people who persecute the likes of Edward Snowden and Aaron Swarts.

and screw people who define religious freedom as the right to exclude gays from their business.

Am I being greedy? Unreasonable?

Oh well.