Episode: 970
Title: HPR0970: TGTM Newscast for 2012/4/15
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0970/hpr0970.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 05:47:00

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You're listening to Talk Eat To Me News, number 67, record for April 15, 2012.
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And now the tech roundup from torrentfreak.com, date April 10, 2012, by Ernesto.
Mega upload host refuses to delete user data and evidence for now.
Four weeks, Mega upload has attempted to come to a workable solution with the Department
of Justice, but Mega upload founder Kim.com has just confirmed to torrentfreak that these
efforts have been in vain.
The DOJ and Mega upload couldn't reach an agreement, and as a result, several parties
are now fighting over the data, all for very different reasons.
The government's position is somewhat confusing.
Initially, the authorities argued that they had no interest in the data at all, but when
Carpathia hosting made a deal with Mega upload to sell the servers for $1 million, the
feds backpedaled.
The government does not trust Mega upload with the data and would rather see it deleted.
But Carpathia refuses to do so, as Mega upload the EFF and even the MPAA all believe
that would be a bad idea.
Mega upload has argued before the court that the servers hold important evidence and has
accused the feds of long to purposefully destroy it so that the file host becomes hindered
when mounting its defense.
Quote, In essence, the government has taken what it wants from the scene of the alleged
crime, and is content that the remaining evidence, even if it is a sculpatory, will
otherwise relevant to the defense be destroyed, unquote, Mega's defense wrote to the court.
And Mega upload is not the only party interested in keeping the data intact.
The EFF is representing a user who is demanding the return of his personal files, and the
MPAA wants the data to be preserved for several cases the movie studios may file against
Mega upload.
In an attempt to save the data, all parties accept the government have asked Judge O'Grady
to come up with a solution to prevent Carpathia from having to wipe the servers clean.
In a filing to the court yesterday, the hosting company makes its position clear, without
an opinion from the court, they are refusing to delete the data, as the government is suggesting.
Quote, Carpathia is in no position to decide whether to destroy or keep the data without
guidance from this court, defendants claims are sufficiently reasonable that without
a court order, it would be intrudent for Carpathia to simply ignore them and reprovision
the service, unquote, the hosting company rights.
And while the government claims it's sampling is sufficient, and no further data need be
preserved, other parties have claimed that all the data is necessary.
Mega for its defense, EFF for the return of data innocent users, and MPAA for use in
future litigation, they add.
For now, Mega upload service is safe, but if the court decides that it has no problems
if they are wiped clean, the hosting provider will do so.
If the data is to be preserved, Carpathia wants to know if they can sell the service to
Mega upload.
If the court believes the hosting company should continue to maintain the service, Carpathia
wants to be compensated.
The fate of Mega upload data is now in the hands of Judge O'Grady.
From AllGov.com, dated April 11, 2012, by Noel Brinkohoff and David Wallachinsky, Homeland
Security and Navy award contract to hack into gaming systems.
The federal government wants to obtain the capability to hack into video game consoles,
all in the name of supporting terrorism and pedophiles, obscure technologies, a small
San Francisco based company that performs computer forensics has received a $177,000 contract
from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Navy to create software that can penetrate
the Microsoft Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii and other game systems.
The contract is part of the gaming systems-modeling and analysis project that began in 2008 when
law enforcement discovered pedophiles used video game consoles to find victims.
Since then, national security officials came to the conclusion that terrorists may also
use online games to communicate.
Presumably, the developed technology would allow the FBI or CIA to file chat between players
and access other information stored on the game systems.
The contract was signed by the Naval Postgraduate School, but the tools will be delivered to
Homeland Security.
From TechDirt.com did April 11, 2012 by Lee Beaton.
Breaking, U.S. Sue's Apple publishers over e-book price fixing.
Ever since the Justice Department announced that they were investigating Apple and several
publishers over allegations that Apple's agency model for e-book pricing violates anti-trust
law, we've been waiting for the other shooter drop.
Last night, Royalty's report that a lawsuit was imminent and now Bloomberg has the news
that the government has filed a lawsuit against Apple, Hatchett, Hopper Collins, Macmillan,
Penguin, and Simon Schuster in New York District Court.
Details are still scarce, but sources say Apple and Macmillan refuse to participate in
some of the talks while some of the other publishers are still hoping to avoid a drawn-out legal
battle and may settle soon.
Update, Bloomberg is now reporting that SNS, Hopper Collins, and Hatchett have settled.
It will be interesting to see what kind of defense Apple brings because the evidence
of collusion doesn't look good for them at all.
Despite author's guild president Scott Taroes, self-serving claim that this will somehow
hurt culture.
This is Good News for Readers.
Busting apples in the publishers' eye and grip on e-book prices will likely reduce them
across the board.
From TechDirt.com dated April 11, 2012 by Chris Rhodes.
No, violating your employer's computer-used policy is not criminal hacking.
You may remember a story from last year about David Nozal, a man who was essentially convicted
of computer hacking because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that he exeared
authorized excess on his employer's computer system when he broke the written rules regarding
how data on that system could be used, in this case by accessing said data before leaving
the company for a competitor.
You are not accessing the data, with some other legally actionable offense, its prosecution
under the Computer Foreign Abuse Act, the CFAA, set an alarming present for the rest of
us.
As noted at the time, if breaking any arbitrary rule accompanying places on its IT system
is hacking, then most office workers could be in big trouble.
Did you check your Facebook using a company computer?
You could be charged with criminal hacking if the rules say you shouldn't.
To make matters worse, as Orrin Kerr argued then, prosecutions like this aren't necessarily
limited to desktop computers, since the line for what constitutes a computer is so blurry
these days.
Did you use your company's smartphone to call home and tell your wife that you'll be
late for dinner?
That could be good for ten years in prison, if company policy prohibits making personal
calls from it.
Of course, this isn't the first time prosecutors have tried to abuse the CFAA.
We call, if you will, the infamous case of Lori Drew, who was prosecuted under the theory
that violating the terms of service was also the same thing as hacking, ridiculous to
be sure, but a jury convicted her anyway.
That conviction was eventually overturned by the judge in the case, but others haven't
been so lucky, and given the last decision by the ninth, things were looking pretty grimed
for common sense.
Happily however, the ninth decided to rehear David's case in bank, meaning with all
the judges, rather than a small panel of them, and has now reversed the previous ruling.
The analysis by the always entertaining Judge Kuzinsky makes it perfectly clear where
the line is drawn.
Quote, we can't strew criminal statutes narrowly so that Congress will not unintentionally
turn ordinary citizens into criminals.
This narrower interpretation is also a more sensible reading of the text and legislative
history of a statute whose general purpose is to punish hacking.
The circumvention of technological access barriers, not misappropriation of trade secrets,
a subject Congress has dealt with elsewhere.
Therefore we hold that exceeds authorized access, and the CFAA is limited to violations
of restrictions on access to information and not restrictions on its use.
Since decisions have gone the other way in other circuits, Kuzinsky goes even further
and says that the other courts have failed to apply the longstanding principle that we
must construe and vigorous criminal statutes narrowly, and that they, at the ninth, respectfully
declined to follow our system circuits and urged them to reconsider instead.
Hopefully other courts will heed this message, but for now, this is a win for everyone
on the West Coast.
From peoplesworld.org by Blake Depp, did April 10, 2012, Facebook consumes Instagram, grows
more massive.
Facebook recently bought Instagram, a tiny mobile photo sharing company that employed
thirteen workers and what appears to be a continuous effort by Facebook to maximize
its grip on the internet, as well as its public influence.
The Instagram smartphone app had been rapidly gaining popularity, but was hardly viewed
as a Facebook rival, nevertheless the social network Goliath bought Instagram for $1
billion, and not without making its thirteen employees very wealthy.
In addition to keeping those workers, Mark Zuckerberg has also stated he wants to keep Instagram
as an independent for now unit maintained by the same people responsible for its success
in the first place.
Many Instagram fans and critics of this move are unhappy, however, perhaps for a deeper
reason.
What once began as a small dorm room operated social experiment for students of Harvard
has today become one of the big five companies currently monopolizing the internet.
Its four peers cited as being Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Having carved out its own slice of the web, Facebook expands its outreach more and more
as the years tick by and is now viewed as being so large that it can kill or buy most competitors.
As it stands now, Zuckerberg's juggernaut pretty much writes the proverbial rules of engagement
for social media, hardware software design, and e-commerce.
If in the years ahead the expansion of the Facebook machine continues, it raises important
questions regarding online freedom and corporate ownership versus democratization of the internet.
The critics of Facebook's goblin up of Instagram are agitated because they feel that they
are having less and less areas of the web free of Facebook's stronghold.
This is partially true, for those areas that are removed from it one or more of the other
big five names are most likely involved, and any of these big names have also seen increased
usage by government agencies, some say, and potential violation of civil liberties.
Facebook has also been increasingly asking for more and more information from people under
the guise of new improvements, its new timeline feature stretches back all the way to your
birth date, tempting users to add baby photos and fill in the blanks for their entire life
year by year for the world to see.
As these big companies take measures like this more and more often, those who wish for the
internet to have a more democratic approach grow more concerned.
The remedy it would seem is to stop the acquisition of the internet by private firms, and in the
interest of average working class users, return it to a form in which it may become a
democratically controlled public form for society.
In the hands of corporations, there is the ever growing feeling that social media may
become big brother.
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