Episode: 960
Title: HPR0960: TGTM Newscast for 2012/04/04 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0960/hpr0960.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 05:38:21

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You are listening to Talk Geek 3 News, number 65, recorded for Wednesday, April 4, 2012.
You are listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition.
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And now the tech roundup.
From eff.org
Did March 30, 2012
by Katica, Rodriguez, and Maira Sutton
French Constitutional Court Banslow Enforcement Use of National Diometric ID Database
Last week, the Constitutional Constitutional, the highest authority on the French Constitution,
declared the provisions of a law permitting judicial and police use of a centralized national ID database
to be unconstitutional.
200 members of the French Parliament referred the law to the Conceal
Fung Laws Adoption on March 6. The Conceal determined that the use of the centralized database
was incompatible with France's fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the presumption
of innocence. The proposed legislation mandated compulsory civilian ID cards contained a chip
designed to store personal and biometric information, including home addresses,
marital status, eye color, and fingerprints. Proponents argued that the biometric ID card
would be used to stop honest folk from becoming the victims of identity fraud.
In fact, the law would have enabled the honest folk database to be used for criminal and judicial
purposes. The Conceal correctly determined that such use has constituted a serious
incursion into the right to private life, disproportionate to the law's stated objective.
Another provision in the law would have allowed for a second optional chip to be used
for online authentication and e-commerce transactions. The Conceal determined that such use
would require too broad a range of personal data to be collected without any guarantees of security
and confidentiality. Furthermore, it condemned the law's vague conditions for authenticating
individuals, especially minors. EFF welcomes the Conceal's decision to strike out substantial
plots of the legislation to protect privacy. Nevertheless, the Conceal should explain the
unmotivated reasoning behind leaving significant anti-privacy portions of the law intact,
namely biometric data collection for the purpose of preventing ID fraud.
The argument for biometrics is predicated on the flawed assumption that a national biometric
ID scheme will prevent identity fraud. Massive databases already invite security breaches,
and a biometric database of this scale is a honeypot of sensitive data vulnerable to exploitation.
Such a data breach is not just costly, it is irreversible. You cannot change your fingerprints
or your irises. To read the rest of the Zaukel follow links in the show notes.
From EFF.log did March 21st by Trevor Tim, NSA chief appears to deny ability to warrant
lessly wiretap despite evidence. The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close
together. We are, like that far, from a turnkey totalitarian state, he says,
quoted from Wired Magazine April 2012. Last week in Wired Magazine, note author James Bamford
reported on an expensive $2 billion data center being built by the NSA in Utah that will house
an almost unimaginable amount of data on its servers along with the world's fastest supercomputers.
Part of the purpose of this new center according to Bamford is to store all forms of communication
including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches,
as well as all sorts of personal data trails, parking receipts, travel attendories,
bookstore purchases, and other digital pocket litter. In the Wired article Bamford interviewed
former NSA official William Binney, a crypto mathematician largely responsible for
automating the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network. Binney further shed light on the NSA's
warrantless wiretapping program first exposed the New York Times in 2005, and the subject of EFF's
long-running suit, Jewel versus NSA, which challenges the constitutionality of the NSA's program.
The NSA claims it only has access to emails and phone calls of the non-US citizens overseas,
but Binney provides more detail to the many previous reports by the New York Times, USA Today,
New Yorker, and many more. That program indeed targets US-based email records. In the 11
years since 9-11, Binney estimates 15-20 trillion transactions have been collected and stored
by the NSA. From the Wired article quote, he explains that the agency could have installed its
tapping gear at the nation's cable landing stations, the more than two dozen sites on the
periphery of the US for fiber optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would
have been able to limited eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the same time
was all that was allowed on the US law. Instead, it shows to put the wiretapped rooms at key
junction points throughout the country, large windowless buildings known as switches, less gaining
access to not just the international communications, but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing
through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room and AT&T building
in San Francisco, exposed by a whistleblower in 2006. I think there's 10-20 of them, Binney says.
That's not just San Francisco. They have them in the middle of the country and also in the East Coast.
The director of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, testifies at a house subcommittee hearing Tuesday
and representative Hank Johnson, Democrat from Georgia, grilled him on the details of the
wired story. He appears to deny the main points of the article, including that the NSA was
intercepting emails, phone calls, Google searches, and phone records of individuals in the United States,
as well as the technical capabilities of the program software described by Binney.
But, perhaps more strangely, Alexander also seemed to claim the NSA did not have the
technical ability to collect American's emails and internet traffic even if it weren't required
to get a warrant. General Alexander, quote, in the United States, we'd have to go through the FBI
process. They weren't to get that and serve it to somebody to actually get it.
Representative Johnson, but you do have the capability of doing it? General Alexander, not in the US.
Representative Johnson, not without a warrant? General Alexander, we don't have the technical insights
in the United States. In other words, you have to have something to intercept with some way of doing
that, either by going to a service provider with a warrant, or you have to be collecting in that
area. We're not authorized to collect, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to
actually collect that kind of information, emphasis had. In our lawsuits, EFF has provided evidence
that the NSA operated a monitoring center out of AT&T switching facility in San Francisco
that has the ability to do exactly what General Alexander says the NSA can't. In light of all the
evidence, it is hard to take comfort from General Alexander's apparent denial. In previous discussions
of the warrantless wiretapping program, the government has used crabbed and unusual definitions of
words to make misleading statements that also seem like denials, but turn out to be largely word
games. In one prominent example, then Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Michael Hayden
said in a 2006 statement, quote, let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not.
It is not a drift net over deerborn or laquana or freemont, grabbing conversations.
End of quote, later when confronted with evidence of a wider drift net program during his
confirmation hearing, he explained, quote, a pointedly and consciously downshifted the language I was
using. When I was talking about a drift net over laquana or freemont or other cities, I switched
from the word communications to a much more specific and unalgurably accurate conversation,
unquote. Notably, the NSA's interpretation of what it means to collect communications seems
to be quite limited. Under Department of Defense regulations, information is considered to be
collected, only after it has been received for use by an employee of a DOD intelligence component.
And data acquired by electronic means is collected only when it has been processed into
intelligible form. So under this definition, if the communications of millions of ordinary Americans
were gathered and stored indefinitely in Utah, it would not be collected until the NSA
officially accepts in some manner such information for use within that component. The illegality
of warrantless wiretapping, however, does not depend on when the NSA officially accepts their
information or processes it into intelligible form, whatever that means. Americans' privacy and
constitutional protections do and should not hinge on word games. We are looking forward to
establishing, in the jewel versus NSA case, a simple proposition that the government can't
spy on anyone much less everyone without a warrant from tectet.com. They had March 30, 2012 by Mike
Massick. Trademark lawyers pushed for crazy new domain rules, making it easy for them to take
away others' domains. IP maximalists now seem to be targeting ICANN as yet another way to
overclaim their rights and block legitimate domains from existing. As we've been discussing,
there have been several fights concerning the new generic top level domains, where we've seen
folks like the entertainment industry demand extra special measures to keep them from being used
to infringe copyrights, but the trademark folks may be going even further. We already have the
somewhat flawed UDRP uniform domain dispute resolution process system for trademark holders to
try and claim the rights over domain. This process lets trademark holders go through an
arbitration process if they feel someone is abusing a trademark in a domain. In the past,
we've discussed how this process is pretty sloppy, but it's still heavily favors trademark
holders. As in many arbitration situations, the big companies who bring back business to the
arbitrators magically seem to win quite frequently. However, that's just not enough for these trademark
holders. Last year, for these new GTLDs, they were also able to establish a separate process
the URS uniform rapid suspension system, which everyone was told would only be used for the most
egregious cases of trademark infringement. The cases where it's so totally obvious that the
domain in question infringes that the whole process can be cheap and streamlined. However,
before this process has even been really tested, trademark holders are trying very, very hard
to basically lower the standards on URS and broaden the reach of it, such that it more or less
replaces the UDRP process. And let's mix it a system that lets trademark holders seize the
domains of those they accuse of infringement very cheaply, with minimal review and to also block
certain words from being registered in domains. Even more incredible, they're abusing an
ICANN comment process to push this plan, which ICANN had earlier rejected. All of this came out
recently in a letter to ICANN's board racing concerns about this effort. ICANN had opened up
a comment period for a specific issue having to do with GTLDs. And the trademark folks went hog
wild asking for all these other things, including lowering the standard for when a simplified URS
process sees domains quickly as questions later. Process can be put in place. Originally the
ball had been set high so that this process could only be used in truly egregious cases,
where there was no question that the domain was infringing. But the proposal sought to lower
the standards such that it's the same as the UDRP standard effectively stepping in and replacing
UDRP. Changing the already agreed upon URS systems such that domains that go through the process
aren't just suspended, but transfer to the trademark holder. In other words, rather than just
shutting down a domain, this fastpass system would simply turn the domains over to the trademark
bullies. Saying that the URS process, which was developed just for these new TLDs, should also be
expanded to cover the most important TLD of all, COM. That's right. That's the goal in all of this
to actually make it much much easier for trademark bullies to completely shut down and gain control
of domains that they don't like others to use and to do it cheaply with very little review.
And they did all this by abusing a comment process that has nothing to do with these issues.
And despite the fact that earlier, hard fork battles over these issues came out with them
on the losing side, but this is how IP maximalists work. They just keep trying every way possible
to get the same ridiculous rules made in their favor. From AMD.com, press release, AMD launches
new platform for dedicated web hosting providers. AMD today announced the latest solution as part of
its ongoing web cloud initiative with the launch of the new AMD Optaron 3200 series processor.
Dedicated web hosting customers seeking enterprise class reliability have a new choice that delivers
great value with up to 38% better price performance and up to 19% less power per core than the
competition error correcting code memory and server reliability features at a low price point.
Fast hardware payback in as few as seven months hosting fees can cover hardware costs up to 14%
quicker than with the competition efficient economics for the cloud with twice the core density
per rack later on the article AMD has delivered on its promise of a low power single socket
solution that brings server functionality with desktop economics. The AMD Optaron 3000 series
platform is targeted to the dense power efficient one processor web hosting web server market
available in either a four or eight core CPU. The AMD Optaron 3200 series processor is shipping
today on platforms from MSI, Tion, Fujitsu and Dell based on the bulldozer core the AMD Optaron
3000 series platform leverages socket AM3 plus and provides customers with the core savings
associated with a desktop like infrastructure yet still offers server class reliability
enterprise class Silicon validation testing security features and server OS certification some
technical details 45 watts to 65 watts TDP 2.7 gigahertz base frequency up to 3.7 gigahertz
frequency 2 DDR3 memory channel supporting ecc memory 1,333 1,600 and 1,866 megahertz memory speeds
up to 32 gigabytes memory capacity up to two dims per memory channel a total cage of 16 megabytes
for eight core and eight megabytes for four core L2 cage up to eight megabytes and L3 cage up to eight
megabytes at 12 comment okay why is this significant because servers are often sold and multi
processor CPUs that is multiple chips each chip having several cores now if you just don't need
that kind of a power in in that particular server for the past few years your choice was to buy a
server class motherboard which is industrial duty and half populated which was a costly proposition
with this move they're going back that making one processor server class motherboards which means
that all the people who didn't need that power for the past few years were forced to use
outside services can now bring those small server needs back into the organization
and of course the usual disclaimer is applied to my knowledge level on this matter
but it's a significant step back to enabling people with low needs to get server class
hardware if they so need it and a total comment from torrentfreak.com did March 27th 2012 by Ernesto
rapid share declared legal in court with a twist in the aftermath of the mega upload shutdown
people have been keeping a close eye on court cases involving other file hosting services
rapid share included during the past several years rapid share has made tremendous efforts to
cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements but this couldn't prevent
the company from getting involved in a handful of lawsuits against rights holders two weeks ago
a press release published by copyright holders claimed that rapid share had suffered an enormous
defeat in court however now the court has published its final decision rapid share is claiming a
victory of its own in the verdict of rapid share's legal dispute against the music rights group
g-e-m-a the higher regional court in Hamburg explicitly recognizes that rapid share's business
model is legal this news is music to the ears of the file poster quote for the first time the
Hamburg higher regional court has filed outline of argument on key points and has conferred legal
legitimacy on our service just as other courts have done over the considerable period of time
this is a significant result for us and of course said rapid share CEO Alexandra Zwingli
the court further ruled that rapid share has no obligation to proactively minor files
that are uploaded by its users instead the company has to monitor external sites that link to
copyright files on rapid share and ensure that these files become inaccessible this is not a problem
according to the cyber locker quote that is exactly what rapid share has already been doing
for many years if the anti-abuse team identifies a download link on such pages which results in a
file that has clearly been published illegally being on the company's service the file and
question is immediately blocked end of quote aside from monitoring forms and linking sites for
infringing links rapid share has made several other adjustments to its service to decrease
unlawful use most recently the company limited the download speeds of free users to drive away
pirates nevertheless rapid share objects the fact that they have to carry out this monitoring
based on a court order and they will therefore take the case to the Supreme Court quote we are doing
this of our own accord because we have a strong interest in ensuring that our service remains
clean we believe that being obliged to carry out such actions is questionable from a legal
perspective for this reason we will appeal the verdict to clarify the issue of proactive
monitoring of external websites at the highest judicial level end of quote zwingli said
the eventual decision of the Supreme Court may have massive implications not only for rapid share
but also for the many other file hosting services that operate in Germany other headlines in the
news to read these stories follow link in the show notes power management of online data intensive
services this is a link in James Hamilton's excellent technical perspectives blog on whether or
not large scale data centers should oversell their electrical usage news from tech dot com audio
of moment of clarity number 126 of at times that log and all of that com used under arranged
permission news from eFF dot log and torrent freak dot com used the permission of the creative
comments by attribution license news from gpny s dot com and AMD dot com all press releases
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