hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0945.txt

Episode: 945
Title: HPR0945: TGTM Tech News for 2012-03-14
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0945/hpr0945.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 05:20:04

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You are listening to Togate to Me News, number 63, record for March 14, 2012.
You are listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition, to get the full podcast
including political, commentary, and other controversial topics.
Please visit www.togateaketme.us.
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And now the tech ground up, from torrentfreak.com by Ernesto Dade March 5, 2012.
It's official, U.S. demands extradition of mega-upload suspects.
Last Friday, U.S. prosecutors filed an extradition request against four New Zealand-based suspects
who were a largely part of the so-called mega-conspiracy.
Kim.com is wanted in the United States alongside other key mega-upload employees on racketeering,
copyright infringement, and money laundering charges.
In the battle to extradite the defendants, U.S. authorities intend to rely on a United
Nations treaty aimed at combating international organized crime.
Previously, a lawyer working on behalf of the United States government admitted that no
copyright offenses are specifically listed in the extradition treaty.
However, he also noted that certain offenses, which involve transnational crime are covered
by New Zealand's extradition act.
In New Zealand, crimes must carry a four-year prison sentence to be deemed extraditable.
Under the country's copyright act, distributing and infringing work carries a five-year maximum
sentence.
Experts and observers are predicting that due to its groundbreaking status, the extradition
battle for the mega-upload defendants will be both complex and prolonged and can even
go all the way to the Supreme Court.
For now, the first extradition hearing has been scheduled for August 20.
Mega-upload program Abram Vanda Kolk recently called on the New Zealand authorities to remain
dignified in their extradition dealings for the United States.
Quote, I really hope New Zealand will keep its dignity and can show that it is a sovereign
state that has its own justice system, unquote, he said, referring to the extradition process.
Talking to Torrent Freak last week, mega-uploadfoundakim.com said that he and his co-definance are
positive that the law is on their side.
Quote, we're going for this and we're confident we're going to win, unquote, Kim said.
A time bomb for civil liberties, France adopts a new biometric ID card.
This post has been authored by Angela Daley, International Legal Fellow.
On Tuesday, March 6, a French national assembly passed a law proposing the creation of a new
biometric ID card for French citizens with the justification of combating identity fraud,
more than 45 million individuals in France will have their fingerprints and digitized faces
stored in what would be the largest biometric database in the country.
The bill was immediately met with negative reactions.
Yesterday, more than 200 members of the French parliament referred to the Council Constitutional,
challenging its compatibility with Europeans' fundamental rights framework, including
the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence.
The Council will consider whether the law is contrary to the French Constitution.
The new law compels the creation of a biometric ID card that includes a compulsory chip containing
various pieces of personal information, including fingerprints of photograph, home address,
height, and eye color.
Newly issued passports will also contain the biometric chip.
The information on the biometric chip will be stored in the central database.
A second optional chip will be implemented for online authentication and electronic signatures,
which will be used for e-government services and e-commerce.
Francois Pillet, a French senator, called the initiative a time bomb for civil liberties,
warning that those interested in protecting civil liberties must stop the creation of
a database that could be transformed into a dangerous draconian tool.
EFF couldn't agree more.
Last year, prior to the international EFF and 80 other civil liberties organizations asked
the Council of Europe to study whether biometrics policies respect the fundamental rights of every
European.
Governments are increasingly demanding storage of their citizens' biometric data on chips
embedded into identity culture passports and centrally kept on government databases,
all would little regard to citizens' civil liberties.
France's National Commission on IT and freedoms, the CNIL, also published a report criticizing
the creation of the centralized biometric database.
France does not have a good track record of initiatives involving biometric identification.
In 2009, it introduced biometric passports, which proved to be a disaster.
Last year, the French Minister of the Interior admitted that 10 percent of biometric passports
in circulation were fortunately obtained, and it is therefore ironic that the justification
for the biometrics bill was that it is needed to combat identity fraud.
To read the rest of the article, follow links in the show notes.
From torrentfreak.com by Ernesto, dated March 9, 2012, leaked police plan to raid the pirate
bay.
In the spring of 2006, a team of 65 Swedish police personnel entered a data center in Stockholm.
The officers were tasked with shutting down the largest threat to the entertainment industry
at the time, the pirate bay's servers.
The raid eventually led to the conviction of four people connected to the pirate bay,
but decided self-remained online.
Today, the pirate bay team has informed torrentfreak that a second raid is being prepared by
the Swedish authorities.
The site's operators, who were well connected in multiple ways, learned that a team of
Swedish investigators is gearing up to move against the site in the future.
The suspicions were also made public by the pirate bay a few minutes ago.
Quote, the Swedish district attorney, Frederick Engblod, initiated a new investigation into
the pirate bay back in 2010, and information has been leaked to us every now and then by
multiple sources, almost on a regular basis.
It's an interesting read, unquote, the pirate bay crew notes.
We can certainly understand why WikiLeaks wished to be hosted in Sweden since so much data
leaks there.
The reason that we get the leaks is usually that the whistleblower's do not agree with what's
going on, something that the government should have in mind, even your own people do not
agree.
The pirate bay team confirmed if torrentfreak, that the announcement is no prank, the authorities
have obtained warrants that snoop around insensitive places, and two known anti-piracy
prosecutors, Frederick Engblod and Henry Rasmussen, are said to be involved, employing a little
psychological warfare aimed at putting the investigators off balance the pirate bay team
has chosen to make the news public to make the authorities aware that they are not the
only ones being watched.
According to the pirate bay team, they aren't doing anything illegal, but nonetheless they
know that the investigation intensified after the site's recent move to a .se domain.
Since our recent move to a .se domain, the investigation has been cranked up a notch,
we think that the investigation is interesting, considering nothing that TPB does is illegal,
they say.
Rather we find it interesting that a country like Sweden is being so abused by lobbyists
and that this can be kept up, they are using scare tactics putting pressure on the wrong
people, like providers and users, all out of fear from the big country in the west,
and with an admiration for their big, fancy wallets.
Behind the scenes the pirate bay team is working hard to ensure that the site will remain
online in the event that serves domain names and internet routes, or cut off.
In this regard, the pirate bay has learned a valuable lesson from its former operators.
Those who are aware of the site's history know that without a few essential keystrokes
in May 2006, the pirate bay may not have been here today.
The pirate bay founder, Tiamo, heard that something was amiss and he decided to make a full
backup of the site before heading off to the data center where he was greeted by dozens
of police officers.
Tiamo's decision to start a backup of the site is probably the most pivotal moment
in the site's history.
Because of this backup, the pirate bay team were able to resurrect the site within three
days if there hadn't been a recent backup things may have turned out quite differently.
It was a close call at the time and a defining moment in the history of the site.
The determination to get the site back online as soon as possible set to the fine tone for
the years that followed today, the site pride itself on being the most resilient torrent
site around.
In recent years, the pirate bay has implemented a variety of changes to guarantee that the
site remains online.
It adds several backup domains, placed serves all over the world, and removed resource-intensive
processes.
Earlier this week, the pirate bay took another important step by removing that torrent
files altogether to become a magnet-linked site.
As a result, the entire site can now be reduced to a few hundred megabytes, small enough
to fit on the tiniest thumb drive.
For the police, this makes a successful pirate bay raid almost impossible, while they can
take steps to put the site out of business briefly.
It's an elbow that it will reappear in a matter of hours or days, or to use the words of
the pirate bay team.
We're staying put where we are.
We're going nowhere, but we have a message to Hollywood.
The investigators and the prosecutors, L-O-L.
From torrentfreak.com by Ernesto Deid March 8, 2012, torrentless pirate bay sees massive
drop in bandwidth.
Part of the pirate bay's decision to go torrentless was to make the site more resilient to outside
attacks, but it also has quite an impact on bandwidth bills.
The pirate bay team told torrentfreak today that after the switch, the site now consumes
30% less bandwidth, while the number of visitors remains stable, despite some annoyances
most users appear to be fine, with the new magnet only site.
Last week, the pirate bay deleted all popular torrent files from its site, replacing them
with so-called magnet links.
This means that instead of downloading a torrent file directly from the central server, they
would be downloaded from other bit torrent users instead.
One of the consequences of this move is that the pirate bay has seen a massive drop in
bandwidth consumption.
The size of the impact became clear today when the site's operas and form torrentfreak
that bandwidth usage has dropped by nearly a third through the rest of the so-called
follow-links in the show notes.
From Venezuelaanalysis.com by Tamara Pearson, Venezuela's scientific achievements aimed
at social progress.
Mi Rida March 7, 2012, yesterday, a range of Venezuela's scientists, innovators, and researchers
met in the Institute of Advanced Studies, IDEA, in Caracas, to share their most recent
projects, including new telescopes, stem cell research, and nutritional innovation with
the public.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also allocated funding to allow for a pay increase for researchers.
A range of Venezuela's research institutes and government ministers were also present
at the exhibition, including the ministers for housing and labor, who hoped to link scientific
developments with social programs under their competency.
The Center of Astronomical Research, CIDA, based in Mi Rida state, presented its prototype
for a telescope that could be manufactured in Venezuela and used in the country's universities.
Elias Sanchez, who is involved in the technical coordination of the telescope project, told
Venezuelananalysis.com that the telescope is the first prototype developed in Venezuela,
and was also developed by Venezuela's first optical instruments factory, which is part
of the state-owned CIDA.
The idea is that all the schools in the country have a telescope, and can experience the power
that astronomy has to awaken scientific curiosity, unquote Sanchez said.
The optical factory hopes to develop the first educational microscope as well.
This revolution needs many men and women to be makers of useful science, he concluded.
The Minister for Food, Carlos Olsario, explained that although the state investigation center
for experimental agro-industrial production, CIEPE, the government has been able to develop
projects for food production.
Due to weaving primary materials with food products, the CIEPE also conducts detailed
food studies, looking at a food's nutritional benefit, studying native foods vegetables,
nuts, and fish as well as ways to best grow food in the country in order to decrease
venom swell as dependency on food imports.
Among many projects, it has conducted a study on how national primary materials such
as sugar cane, rice, corn, and roots can be used to produce biofuels.
The CIEPE also conducts workshops with rural workers, in December it gave a five-day class
to farmers in Marina State, teaching them how to prepare balanced diets for the Kashama
fish, as well as how to process it, and use the leftovers to make fish flour.
At the exhibition, the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research, IVIC, presented its
project for investigating the use of stem cells for tissue renewal, as well as medicinal
studies based projects.
It is also elaborating drug detection kits and has many more projects in anthropology, biochemistry,
ecology, agroforestry, physics, engineering, experimental medicine, and ocean science
among others.
Vice President of Economic Productivity, Ricardo Menendez, said that, quote, only in revolution
can technological advances be at the service of the people.
Finally, we're starting to have our own science and technology system in Venezuela,
President Chavez said, speaking by phone to the scientists, researchers, and innovators
gathered in the IDEA.
He said he was glad to see the many scientific and technological advances for human reasons,
not for destruction, or for capital accumulation.
Also yesterday, President Hugo Chavez approved extra spending of 109 million Brazillos, the
equivalent of United States dollars, 25 million, towards the upgrading of the salaries of
workers in organizations that fall under the Ministry of Science and Technology, including
the IVIC and Venezuela's seismic activity research foundation.
The pay adjustment means that the 1,154 researchers will be paid according to eight pay levels
depending on the training.
A researcher at level one who has graduated from high school but has obtained extra knowledge
will receive Brazilian 2957, the equivalent of $687 per month in U.S. dollars.
While a level eight research with a doctorate and more than 16 years experience will receive
a monthly wage of Brazilian 12,903 or the equivalent of $3,000 per month.
The Venezuelan government launched its science mission in 2006 with the aim of democratizing
the sciences and establishing an independent and nationally fostered model of development.
News from isonreview.com, tech.com, and the Venezuelananalysis.com used under arranged permission.
News from Indybay.org used under permission granted at the website.
News from EFF.org and Torrentfreak.com used under permission of the creative comments by
attribution license.
News from democracy now that org used under permission of the creative comments by attribution
non-commercial nor jurors license.
News sources retain their respective rights.
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