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FCC announced on Wednesday that it will spend $115 million in Internet broadband expansion in the next three years to around a half million in rural areas that currently lack it. This is part of the $4.5 billion from the Connect America Fund (CAF) approved by the commision late last year.

Kim Dotcom from New Zealand released a public offensive against the 2012 Obama campaign, with a song and video called “Mr President”. Here are few lines from the lyrics, condensed and without the chorus:

The war for the Internet has begun.
Hollywood is in control of politics.
The Government is killing innovation.
Don’t let them get away with that.

We must oppose, don’t vote for those,
who want to take us back in time.

We must expose, the people who chose,
to turn innovation into crime.

Hollywood marionettes,
taking over our Internet,
don’t let them get away with that,
don’t let them get away with that.

Today, Kim Zetteron of Wired reports that NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander appeared for the first time at DEF CON in Las Vegas. Among other statements said, “In this room … is the talent our nation needs to secure cyberspace. You folks understand cybersecurity. You know that we can protect the networks and have civil liberties and privacy, and you can help us get there.”

Cybersecurity has one week left in the Senate before the August recess, and will either move to the floor or not at all. This bill might not be it, I think what is needed is a bill that makes it illegal for any government office, public official, public institution, or anyone working for the government, to use software that can not be audited, and to make it a requirement to be able to verify that programs, via reading the source code, are not malicious.

Senator Wyden from Oregan sent a letter to the State Department asking for clarifacation on S. 3414, the Cyber Security Act of 2012, and is concerned that it may allow the Executive Branch to establish international disaplines on cybersecurity without the approval of Congress, similar to how the Pro IP Act of 2008 allowed to make agreements with foreign goverments concerning copyright and other similar laws.

Senator Franken from Minnesota, and chair of the “Privacy, Technology, and the Law” subcommittee, is reported to file an ammendment to strike the controvercial Section 701 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (S. 3414), that permits companies greater leeway for monitoring their networks.

Earlier this year, March 30th, he was quoted in an article titled, “Al Franken Warns Facebook, Google Users: ‘You Are Their Product’”, on the Huffington Post, here are some of the quotes:

“The more dominant these companies become over the sectors in which they operate, the less incentive they have to respect your privacy. [W]hen companies become so dominant that they can violate their users’ privacy without worrying about market pressure, all that’s left is the incentive to get more and more information about you. That’s a big problem if you care about privacy, and it’s a problem that the antitrust community should be talking about.”

“Anyone who interacts with these corporations is out on a limb when it comes to legal protections for this very personal information: your words, your likeness, your whereabouts. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to corporations. The Freedom of Information Act doesn’t apply to Silicon Valley. And you can’t impeach Google if it breaks its ‘Don’t be evil’ campaign pledge.’”

For Poobah.com in Los Angeles, California on July 27th, 2012, this is Braydon Fuller logging off.

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July 27th, 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie / ©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.

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The Desktop is the Web! At OSCON on Thursday, Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical presented new features for the 12.10 release for better integration between web and “the desktop”. This is a great signal, and call to action for desktop applications to blur the edge between the web and desktop, such as between Ubuntu and WordPress. As soon as we do this, a whole plethora of opportunity opens, as integrating rich photo editing into WordPress becomes easier than installing a plugin. This will spur upon the revolution into the era of read and write culture. To bring back to life the read-only publishing that has been nearly destroyed by the proliferation of the immutable Desktop interface. Now is not the time to sit back read, watch and listen, but to pick up a keyboard and start building!

Rainey Reitman and Lee Tien from the EFF reported on Deeplinks Thursday night that, “New Cybersecurity Proposal Patches Serious Privacy Vulnerabilities”, the key points of their report include: 1. “Ensuring that only civilian agencies—not the National Security Agency—are in charge of our nation’s cybersecurity systems”, 2. “Ensuring data isn’t shared with law enforcement except in very specific, limited circumstances”, 3. “Ensuring that data collected through cybersecurity programs can’t be used to prosecute other, unrelated crimes.”, 4. “Carve-outs for free speech and terms of service violations”. The bill is quite long, so I very much apprieciate the summary, however they did raise an issue with the bill around the potential abuse around monitoring user data, such exploitation from overzealous ISPs being able to block privacy protecting software such as Tor. Via the hsgac.senate.gov website, California Senator, Dianne Feinstein said: “We have worked very closely with Senate colleagues, privacy groups and industry to strengthen the bill’s privacy protections without undermining the fundamental goal of improving information cybersecurity sharing. I believe the bill is stronger as a result of these changes.” Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington reported, “New Cybersecurity Amendments Unveiled to Address Privacy Concerns”, and in addition to the points from EFF, the changes negotiated by privacy advocates and Sens. Franken and Durbin: 1. “Require annual reports from the Justice Department, Homeland Security, Defense and Intelligence Community Inspectors General that describe what information is received, who gets it, and what is done with it.”, 2. “Allow individuals to sue the government if it intentionally or willfully violates the law.”

On July 11, 2012, Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, “Oversight of the Impact on Competition of Exclusion Orders to Enforce Standard-Essential Patents” including statements from Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, with testimony from Joseph Wayland and Edith Ramirez. The hearing was largely concerned with mobile devices and tables and the recent wave in the “tech patent wars.”

Leahy said: “When inventors and developers are willing to license their technologies to one another at reasonable rates, the cross-fertilization of ideas benefits us all. But I am concerned that the recent trend of seeking exclusion orders from the International Trade Commission (ITC), rather than negotiating and seeking license fees, may have the opposite effect.” To which he previously spoke about encouraging innovation. He then says, “Today’s hearing focuses on the enforcement of standard-essential patents at the ITC. Standard setting is important because it allows different companies to have their products interoperate, giving us important developments like the 3G technology used in cellular phones. To participate in the standard setting, patent owners often agree to license their patents to anyone on reasonable terms.”

Edith Ramirez in testimony says in the section “Intellectual Property and Competition Laws Work Together to Promote Innovation”: “Because the patent system requires public disclosure, it also promotes the distribution of scientific and technical information that would not otherwise occur. Competition stimulates innovation by creating an incentive for the pursuit of new or better products or processes.”

Joseph F. Wayland, the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division, said in testimony, “The [Anti-Trust] Division had concerns about the [fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory] encumbered standard-essential patents because wireless devices, including smartphones and tablets, typically implement a significant number of telecommunication and computer standards—including cellular air interface, wireless broadband, and video compression standards.”

It’s very revealing of the disconnection in this topic, as in order to view the webcast video on the judiciary.senate.gov website of the hearing concerning “standard essential patents” one must have a copy of software that has been granted a patent license over the video codecs around H.264, not to mention the requirement of software that should raise many anti-trust concerns, the Flash player absolutely controlled by Adobe. Luckily the statements are recorded in transcript and made available as text.

Richard Posner wrote in an article on The Atlantic: “There are a variety of measures that could be taken to alleviate the problems I’ve described.” to which he spoke about defensive patenting and patent trolls. He continues, “They include: reducing the patent term for inventors in industries that do not have the peculiar characteristics of pharmaceuticals that I described; instituting a system of compulsory licensing of patented inventions; eliminating court trials including jury trials in patent cases by expanding the authority and procedures of the Patent and Trademark Office to make it the trier of patent cases, subject to limited appellate review in the courts; forbidding patent trolling by requiring the patentee to produce the patented invention within a specified period, or lose the patent; and (what is beginning) provide special training for federal judges who volunteer to preside over patent litigation.”

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July 20th, 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie / ©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.

Today is the second week of July, in the thirteenth week in a campaign against unwarrented surviellance, as defined in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

We have just learned that there have been 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data. This is according to data released this last Monday collected by Rep Edward Markey from Massachusetts after sending letters to mobile carries. There have been responses from AT&T, C Spire, Leap and Cricket, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, TracFone, U.S Cellular, and Verizon.

Mobile phones are very useful and we shouldn’t need to give them up in order to not be tracked, so for those whom choose to knowingly have their information tracked, ACLU recently released a counter-surviellance application called Cop Tape for mobile devices. It can be used to easily record police interactions, and immediantly uploaded to a server. The source code for these programs is available, I made sure to check this out, and you can get more information at openwatch.net. So download and use for any purpose, study, modify, and share!

In an article by Earmonn McCann of Belfast Telegraph on July 6th, titled, “Julian Assange has done us all a service. He needs our support” it reads: “The head of the US Senate’s intelligence oversight committee, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, told the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend that, “I believe that Julian Assange has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the United States … He has caused serious harm to US national security and should be prosecuted accordingly.” If we the people are kept ignorant, then we don’t have the proper information to be able to make decisions, and we are not in control of the country that we are paying taxes to fund. Do not re-elect Dianne Feinstein, or anyone that makes such statements, this kind of encouraged ignorance is completely intollerable! We need people in office that understand the Internet, it’s nolonger okay to brush it off as unimportant.

Thunderbird is dead, long live thunderbird. Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, announced that Thunderbird will be moving to security updates only releases for the desktop email client. The project has been low priority to the team for some time, and is largely maintained entirely by a community of volunteers. Many are claiming that it has lost relevance because of email web clients. However those of us that still use such email clients, it’s very likely that we’re not simply going to give it up, as being able to store email only locally on ones machine has its privacy benefits.

I feel a bigger issue underneath, and that’s the conflicting relationship between Mozilla and Google. Mozilla is in the midst of an identity crisis and is struggling to find relevance as Chrome finds it’s way to popularity. However, what better reason for them to break up with their number one sponsor Google and find their own way with emphasis on privacy. Google may have algorithms and speed, but they have forgotten about the subjective nature of humanity. Every application does not need to run in a web browser, the Internet must be freed! Let’s put “search engines” at every book store, record store, and movie rental shop! The revolution starts with you!

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July 13th, 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie / ©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.