Episode: 1231
Title: HPR1231: TGTM Newscast for 2013-04-16 Bobobex
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1231/hpr1231.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:00:36

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You're listening to TGTM News No. 95, Recorded for Tuesday, April 16, 2013.
You're listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition.
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Hello, it's Poverbex again and now for the Tech Roundup.
From torrentfreak.com by Andy dated April 10, new Pirate Bay Greenland domains about to
be seized.
In anticipation of having their Swedish domain name seized, this week the crew of the Pirate
Bay took avasive action.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning they switched to two Greenland-based domains but
already the plan is starting to unravel.
The telecoms company in charge of the .GLTLD says it will now block the domains after deciding
that they will be used illegally.
Sweden has long been associated with the Pirate Bay.
The site was founded by Swedes, operated by Swedes, not to mention hosted and proxied
by Swedish companies, activists and the local Pirate Party.
Under increasing pressure those links were strained by political and legal red tapes to
the point where the site's only visible connection with Sweden was its .SE domain.
This week even that connection was placed into history when fears over the long-term viability
and possible seizure of the domain led the site to choose an alternative.
Over the course of Monday night and Tuesday morning the Pirate Bay.SE became the Pirate
Bay.GL with the new TLD denoting Greenland, a huge country with a tiny population of
just 57,000 people.
But now, less than 48 hours later, the latest plan to bring domain stability to the Pirate
Bay already requires a plan B.
Exact timing is unclear, but very soon the site will lose use of both its .GL domains
after TelePost, the company responsible for the .GL registrations, so that it would not
allow them to be put to illegal use.
TelePost has today decided to block access to two domains operated by far-sharing network
the Pirate Bay end quote, the company said in a statement received by Torrent Creek.
Those domains are the Pirate Bay.GL and Pirate Bay.GL.
We observed Tuesday that the domains have been activated and therefore immediately contacted
our lawyer the company said. The announcement was short on detail but at the moment
TelePost seemed to just justify their decision based on an earlier Danish Supreme Court ruling
that rendered the Pirate Bay an illegal site. Greenland is a self-governing province of Denmark.
Currently the Pirate Bay's .GL domains remain operational but the site is redirecting to its .SE
domain at least for the time being. A Pirate Bay insider told Torrent Creek earlier this week
that they have plenty of domain names in reserve. With that in mind it wouldn't be a huge
surprise if the Torrent site makes another domain switch in the near future update. Queeries
to the .GL domain registry now confirm that both the domains in question have been officially suspended.
We have another story from Andy at torrentfreet.com this one dated April 8th.
File shareers will not be held liable for piracy. Russia says.
As Russia tries to find a balanced solution to the thorny issue of internet piracy the head of
a government department responsible for communications and information technology says that attacking
internet users is not the solution. Speaking at the launch of a nationwide campaign to promote
legal ebook purchases Vladimir Gregoriev said that the government has no intention of holding
download as liable or having them sent to court. Following ineffective anti piracy campaigns and
continued displays of resilience by file sharing sites the emphasis of copyright enforcement
has switched towards educating the end user in recent years. These so-called strike programs are
continuing to spread and recently landed on US shores. While they are supposedly educational
in nature there is a massive parallel problem with some rights holders choosing to sue file share
as instead. Indeed hundreds of thousands of US citizens have been targeted in recent years.
This situation appears to be something the Russian government wants to avoid. According to
the head of a government department with responsibility for communications his country won't
proceed with holding internet users liable for downloads despite having many millions of file
shareers. Speaking at the launch of the read legally campaign a nationwide initiative to encourage
citizens to obtain ebooks from official sources Vladimir Gregoriev head of the federal service
for supervision of communications information technology and mass media FAPMC for short
said that his country will not be following the more aggressive approaches at play in the US.
We do not plan to hold internet users liable for downloading as they do in the US where owners
of computers can end up in court Gregoriev said. Russia does intend however to take a tougher
stance within fringing sites. As reported in January sites will be expected to conform to
stricter notice and take down standards if they are to avoid trouble. Responsibility for illegal
downloads will be placed on the owners of pirate websites Gregoriev has confirmed adding that
Russian file shareers can expect to be subjected to advisory measures similar to those already
underway in the United States. File shareers will enter an educational campaign he said stopping
short of elaborating on how such a project would be operated. The decision to focus on sites is
something US rights holders will be keen to see in action. In recent years there have been endless
complaints from the music industry particularly over so-called aloe f mp3 clones and vkontact
Russia's answer to Facebook. To date little has been done to stop their growth despite fiery
complaints from the USTR. Our next story comes from eff.org dated April the 9th by honey for
quarry. Can police read text messages without a warrant? Sound Francisco the Electronic Frontier
Foundation EFF urged the Washington State Supreme Court Monday to recognise that text messages
are the 21st century phone call and require that law enforcement officers obtain a warrant before
reading texts on someone's phone. Text messages are a ubiquitous form of communication and their
context can be as private as any telephone conversation said EFF staff attorney honey for quarry.
We use text to talk to our wives and husbands our kids our co-workers and more.
Police should not be able to sift through these personal exchanges on a whim. They must show
probable cause and get a warrant before accessing this information. In this case police sees the
cell phone during a drug investigation and monitored incoming messages. Officers responded to
several texts setting up meetings that resulted in two arrests without first getting a warrant.
Prosecutors have argued that no warrant was required because there should be no expectation of
privacy in text messages as anyone can pick up someone out his phone and read what's stored there.
But in two related amicus briefs filed Monday EFF argues that searching the phone for the texts
without a warrant clearly violates the constitution. The state argues that just because someone can
intercept a communication you should reasonably expect that communication to be intercepted.
That's a dangerous way to interpret the fourth amendment said for quarry.
The prosecutor's theory would eviscerate any privacy protections in the digital age.
We're asking the Washington State Supreme Court here to recognise what's at stake
and to require a warrant before allowing officers to read text messages on a cell phone.
Venkat Balasabrami of focal PLLC in Seattle, Washington served as EFF's local council in these cases.
For the full amicus briefs please follow the link in the show notes.
Next we have another story from EFF.org this time dated the April 12th and by Trevor Tim.
Huffington Post credits internet activists with major victory in stopping bad CFA bill
but good reforms are still needed. We have great news on the last day of our week of action aimed
at congress over the computer fraud and abuse act CFAA for short the draconian computer hacking law.
Huffington Post is reporting that House Republicans put the brakes on an awful expansion to the CFA
that threatened internet rights. Even better Huffington Post is crediting pressure from
internet activists for this major victory. A House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the law
chaired by Republican Jim Sen's Brenner had planned to vote on a reform of the bill next week
as part of the House Republican Legislative flurry they dubbed Cyber Week according to both
Republican and Democratic AIDS on the panel. However the bill was pulled back because of pressure
from the internet community. All week EFF and a host of other groups have been engaged in a
week of action aimed at stopping this bill in its tracks. We started the week with a letter signed
by EFF and organisations from across the political spectrum but it's you the internet users who
have emailed, tweeted and called congress to make sure that your voices have been heard.
As the Huffington Post reported the move to pullback plans to change CFAA is another indication of
the growing strength of the cyber community which first flexed its muscles in a public way to block
SOPA, a bill that would have handed much more control of the internet to the government and its
corporate allies. It's important to remember this fight is far from over and you should definitely
contact congress if you've not already done so. Even though the CFA expansion has been tabled
and there's reportedly no timeline for bringing it back, legislators could revive it at any moment.
The Justice Department has been lobbying for these expansions for years and there's no indication
that it will stop. The Justice Department has also just asked congress for more money to prosecute
computer crimes despite the fact that it's been widely accused of prosecutorial misconduct in
the cases that they've already brought. Notably it's case against the late activist and internet
pioneer Aaron Schwartz. Most importantly we still need congress to pass real CFAA reform that
will definitely state that violations of website terms of service and employee terms of use are
not crimes and that would prevent defendants from being locked away for years for acts that
cause little or no economic harm. We need to protect innovators, activists, security researchers and
everyday internet users from a law that should only be aimed at real computer criminals that
commit malicious acts like stealing credit card information. So please follow the link in the
story, go to an email your representatives to tell them your support CFAA reform then you can
follow up with a phone call telling them the same thing. Let's ensure what happened to Aaron Schwartz
never happens to anyone else. Our final story this week comes from tecder.com dated April 12
by Timothy Geigner. Police search for mugger for three weeks, internet finds him in an hour.
We've discussed before the ways law enforcement groups use social media, frankly the general theme
tends to be that they aren't very good at interneting whether it's mocking invasive vaginal
searches or catfishing music fans with well tread tropes. It seems the wider internet plays the
web game better than the LEOs. All the while you occasionally will hear someone in law enforcement
decrying how awful the internet is and even sometimes attempting to shut down certain sites.
Yet despite being so underappreciated the wider internet sure does love to show how good they are
catching suspected criminals. That capability was on full display in the case of a mugging in New
York City where police had been searching for a suspect for three weeks before deputising the
internet which then identified him in an hour. Within an hour of gorker posting the video of the
crime on the site a helpful comment a link to a facebook page that appeared to show the suspect
wearing the same clothes in photos taking mere hours prior to the crime. The link led to the
facebook page of 21-year-old Aiden Folen who had photos of him taken hours before the robbery.
According to gorker the photos revealed the same sweatshirt the mugger wore in the video
with large fraternity letters on the front. Commenters on the New Year's Day Daily Intelligence
site which also posted the video also linked back to Folen. Folen has since been arrested and
charged with robbery and assault. Internet 1, Stupid Ratboy Crimes 0. But the larger point is
that far from the crime-inducing cesspool claimed by some LEOs the internet is a tool that they should
be using. Many LEOs recognise that utilising social media to put together suspect timelines
but the aggregate of the public internet is also a tool to catch violent criminals.
Social media acts as a timeline of people's lives accounts of their activities and now they
are playing significant roles in helping to solve crimes most notably exposing the stupid
real rape case back in January. It's worth noting that there's a difference between having the
public help law enforcement find suspects and LEOs keeping watch over social media. The lesson
here is that it's the not all or nothing with law enforcement and the internet. You can get the
help you need without invading the public's lives. For some other headlines of the news this week
please follow the links in the show notes. These stories are wiki league strikes again
website publishes 1.7 million documents on US foreign policy. Athens,
Intermedia has been shut down repression in Greek ensues.
This podcast has been started to produce by the TGTM news team, a editorial selection by Deep Geek
whose are the story authors reflects their own opinions and not necessarily those of TGTM news.
News from tech.com, allgov.com, Havana Times.org and RawStory.com are used under a range permission.
News from torrentfreak.com and eff.org is used under permission of the creative commons by
attribution license. News from democracynow.org is used under permission of the creative commons
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copyrights. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this
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