Episode: 1061
Title: HPR1061: TGTM Newscast for 2012/08/22
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1061/hpr1061.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 18:09:45

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You're listening to Talk Geek To Me News, number 73, record for Wednesday, August 22, 2012.
You're listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition to get the full podcast,
including political, commentary, and other controversial topics.
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Now the tech roundup from eff.org.
August the 14th, 2012.
Government faces new warrantless surveillance battle after losing landmark GPS tracking
case.
San Francisco.
A federal district court is poised to determine whether the government can use cell phone
data obtained without a warrant to establish an individual's location.
In an Amicus brief filed Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, and the Center
for Democracy and Technology of the CDT, argued that this form of surveillance is just
as unconstitutional as the warrantless GPS tracking the US Supreme Court already shut down
in this case.
Quote.
Location data is extraordinarily sensitive.
It can reveal where you worship, where your family and friends live, what sort of doctors
you visit, and what meetings and activities you attend.
Quote.
Said EFF senior staff attorney, Masha Hoffman.
One of this information is collected by a GPS device or a mobile phone company.
The government should only be able to get it with a warrant based on probable cause that's
approved by a judge.
In US versus Jones, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car and then track its position
every 10 seconds for 28 days without a valid search warrant.
In a landmark decision earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that this violated
the Fourth Amendment.
The case is now back in the trial court where Jones is moving to suppress six months of
cell phone location data that government investigators obtained yet again without a warrant.
In Monday's brief EFF and CDT argue that the Fourth Amendment doesn't allow government
investigators to collect cell phone data to track users' locations over a prolonged
period of time without a warrant.
This right isn't defeated even if cell phone users disclose their locations to service
providers when their phones connect to a cell phone tower.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the Jones GPS Supreme Court decision, the idea that
privacy rights are forfeited simply by giving them to a third party is, quote, it'll suited
to the digital age.
One quote said EFF staff attorney, Annie Fakuri, if the government gets its way here,
it could jeopardize any expectation of privacy we have in our private moments.
From EFF.org, date August 16, 2012 by Julian C. York, Pakistan's internet censorship worsens
again.
Just when we thought censorship in Pakistan couldn't get any worse, it has.
Throughout a joint effort with numerous Pakistani and international organizations succeeded
in putting plans for a national filter and hold, and Pakistan relented after a brief experiment
with Blocking Twitter, we thought we could turn our focus elsewhere for a little while.
We were wrong.
Last Saturday news emerged that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the PTA, has ordered all of the
country's internet service providers to block 15 scandalous websites, including one
hosting and audio recording of a central conversation between two parliamentarians,
and another containing a video of a press conference in which a female television anchor claimed
that she and the government employee are secretly married and have a son.
While Pakistan has been censoring online content for a long time, the PTA's focus has
turned toward pornography and blasphemy, not political scandal, in an article from Pakistani
publication, the news, while Hajus Suraj, convener of the ISP Association of Pakistan, suggested
that the latest censorship was for political gain.
In addition to political intrigue, Pakistan Digital Rights Organization Bites For All reports
that the government froze mobile phone networks in the province of Balochistan on August
14th, Pakistan's Independence Day, according to report from the Open Net Initiative, Balochistan
seems to be the primary target of government censors which have ordered the blocking
of Balochie News, Independence, and Cultural Websites.
A secondary effect of the censorship is that many such sites have closed down purposeless
letter-native audience, in response to the latest crackdown Bites For All wrote that
the ban on communications has been, quote, hugely protested by the citizens in the province and
can eventually end up further widening the Gulf of trust deficit, instigating more violence
and rebellion among citizens.
The EFF is alarmed to see Pakistan moving from its flirtation with stifling freedom of
expression on the internet to a full-blown affair, government-mandated filtering of
pornographic or blasphemous materialist highly problematic for freedom of expression, especially
because of the high incidence of false positives.
But Mubarak-style cutoffs of communications in regions of unrest and censorship of reporting
on political scandal are in order of magnitude more repressive.
We may not be surprised, but we are bitterly disappointed to say that we will have to keep
a close on the situation as it develops.
From Tornfreak.com by Ernesto, dated August 10, 2012, Google starts punishing pirate sites
in search results.
Four years, entertainment industry groups have lobbied search engines to penalize sites
that link to a high number of copyright files, and today Google has given in to their demands.
The search engine will soon take into consideration the number of DMCA takedown notices it receives
against sites to determine the ranking of those websites and its search results.
Quote starting next week will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings.
The number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site.
Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.
And of quote, Google's Amite-Singhal writes in a blog post.
Earlier this year, Google decided to publish all takedown requests online as part of their transparency report.
And they will now use this data as part of their search engine algorithm.
This means that websites for which Google receives a high number of valid takedown requests will be penalized.
The top receivers of these notices over the past year will filestube.com
extra torrent.com, torrenthound.com, bitstube.com, and ISOhound.com.
They can expect to appear lower in the future search results and will therefore receive less traffic through Google searches.
Whether Google will downgrade YouTube where tens of thousands of videos are routinely disabled because of alleged infringements is unknown at this point.
Google stresses that it doesn't know whether content is authorized or not.
So removal of pages from its search results will only take place following a valid DMCA takedown notice.
To read the recent cycle, follow links in the show notes.
From torrentfreak.com, dated August 9, 2012 by Ernesto, new data exposes BitTorrent Thrialing ISPs.
Hundreds of ISPs all over the world limit and restrict BitTorrent traffic on their networks.
Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions.
Thanks to data collected by Measurement Lab, MLAB, the public can learn if and how frequently their internet provider limits torrent traffic.
Among other tools, MLAB runs the GLASNOST application developed by the Max Planck Institute.
Previously, the research has published data up until 2010 and now the results have been updated to include the first quarter of 2012.
This allows us to give an overview of trends and changes that have emerged in recent years.
United States, BitTorrent Thrialing in the US is not as parallel as it used to be.
The main reason for this is the Comcast BitTorrent Blocking Controversy which starred in 2007.
The FCC eventually ruled that Comcast had to stop its targeted interference with customers' BitTorrent traffic.
As a result of this ruling, the Thrialing percentage took a dive from nearly 50% to only 3% in 2010.
The first quarter of 2012 Comcast Thrialing level was still at 3%, which puts the provider among the best behaving ISPs.
Thrialing was also greatly reduced at shorter over the last year, from 11% down to 4%.
Cox is exposed as the most heavy throttle among the major ISPs, but with 6%, this is still rather acceptable.
Worst, Cox, 6%, Best, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others, 3%.
The United Kingdom, in the UK, BitTorrent Thrialing is on the rise, at least among some providers.
BT is the worst offender by limiting 65% of all BitTorrent transfers during the first month of 2012.
This is up from 57% last year and almost twice as much as the 35% in 2010.
At O2 and B SkyB, BitTorrent uses a better off with Thrialing percentages of 2% and 4% respectively for O2.
This is a significant decline compared to the 13% last year.
Virgin Media sits somewhere in the middle after it interfered with 22% of all BitTorrent transfers in the first quarter of 2012.
This is down from 33% during the same period last year.
Worst BT 65% Best O2 2%.
Canada. Canada is not the most friendly country for BitTorrent users.
Nearly all the major internet providers are heavy throttlers and Rogers tops them all.
For more than half a decade, Rogers has continuously throuled within three quarters of all BitTorrent traffic.
During the first quarter of 2012, the provider interfered with 80% of all BitTorrent transfers showing that there has been no improvement.
Bell is a good second with 77% up from 56% last year.
BitTorrent uses in Canada a best off at Code Gecko and Telus with 3% and 0% respectively.
Worst Rogers 80% Best Telus 0%
To read the rest of this article, follow links in the show notes.
From torrentfreak.com by Ernesto, dated August 7, 2012, internet archives start seeding 1,398,875 torrents.
The internet archives mission statement is to provide universal access to all knowledge, which is not all that different from the pirate base ethos.
BitTorrent is the fastest way to share files with large groups of people over the internet.
And this is one of the reasons that prompted the internet archive to start seeding well over a million of their files using the popular file sharing protocol.
Starting today, all new files uploaded to the archive will also be available via BitTorrent.
In addition, a massive collection of older files, including concerts from John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Maroon 5, and the Prellinger collection are also being published via torrents.
I hope this is great by the BitTorrent community as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials,
if an archive found a booster kale told torrentfreak.
There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between libraries and archives world and the BitTorrent communities he adds.
At the time of writing, the internet archive is seeding 1,398,875 torrents, but hundreds of new ones are being added every hour.
The internet archive recognizes that BitTorrent is now the fastest way to download files.
BitTorrent is now the fastest way to download items from the archive because the BitTorrent client downloads simultaneously from two different archive servers located in two different data centers.
And from other archive users who have download these torrents already.
Interestingly, the archives plans for BitTorrent are not limited to providing an alternative download link for their files.
Found a booster kale says that they are also working on turning it into a storage mechanism.
The next step is to make BitTorrent a distribution preservation system for content like ours Kale told us.
Kale believes that the internet archive and the BitTorrent community can help each other and hopes to get the discussion on the preservation ideas started.
I think this whole thing will be awesome and possibly very important he adds.
In the wake of recent news featuring raids, crackdowns, DDoSs and lawsuits.
This announcement from the internet archive brings some very well-compositive news about BitTorrent.
For those who are interested in tracking, how many people are leaching from the archive, here are some fancy graphs.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Talk Geek to Me.
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