One of these days American Troops are going to pull some of this Black-water style commando BS; and a genie will pop out of a bottle and encapsulate them. and no I am not talking figuratively; because this is not a network comedy. You see, America is in a helluva position being in Afghanistan in the first place.
why is it that the US is there again ?
Right..
isn’t it time the us called a moratorium on anymore foreign troop deployments and war engagements.
I am not thinking that President Obama is incorrect in his assessment that there needs to be some sort of troop involvement in Afghanistan; just not American forces. let the UN handle it’s business. do we remember when the Russians left ? they said clearly that Afghanistan as a war is unwinnable for any outside force. the reason is that this is a Holy War.
When did America become the Keeper of The Worlds’ Rights ? if that’s the case – America start at home FIRST.
Immediately Approve the Health Care Bill and Help These Troops and Citizens get healthy. Do this so that America can again become the worlds’ leader in Democracy and Civil Rights.
Is That Too Much To Ask For ?
America Fix Your Own House First before you start trying to clean up anybody Else’s yard. until Americans stop avoiding the depth of social ills in America; America will continue to be handicapped – and dissolute.
Many believe that America is on the road to recovery – yet we still see unprecedented disrespect for the highest office in the land; as well as a continuous climate of hatred, from sea to bloody sea.
America – Why so much anger in no particular direction ?
Has America finally turned into the Land of the Evil and the Home of the Bullies?
A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants, The Associated Press reports.
The U.S. military said it was investigating the allegation. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan accused the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division of entering the hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, according to the charity’s country director, Anders Fange.
Fange said Monday that the troops’ actions were a violation of the sanctity of medical facilities in combat zones. “This is simply not acceptable,” he told AP. The U.S. troops entered the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night last Wednesday, Fange said. He said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during their search.
When they left two hours later, the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, Fange said. Navy public affairs officer Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military is looking into the incident. “We are investigating and we take allegations like this seriously,” she told AP. “Complaints like this are rare.”
Personally I do not want anyone reading my email, unless of course they intend to file, or respond to that pile of crap. LOL this is not a laughing matter anylonger, because we are the real targets.
either you sit up and read the news here or know that somebody else is gonna make sure you’re observing proper political protocol. BadBadBad..
the Pirate Bay Mess has me wondering when we will be seeing our computers scanned by our isp’s and the contens reported to some special super secret super hacker agency deep inside some blackop of the governments new privacy wing. none of this is a joke, or parody.
Buried in the 150 pages of CIPAV spyware-related documents released by the FBI Thursday is a tantalizing nugget that indicates the bureau’s technology experts have more than one way to hack a suspect.
In early 2007, FBI agents with one of the bureau’s International Terrorism Operations Sections sought hacking help from the FBI’s geek squads. The agents were working a case in Pittsburgh, which is not described in the documents, and wanted to know “if [a] remote computer attack can be conducted against [the] target.”
The FBI’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, responded with two options. One of them was redacted from the released document as a sensitive investigative technique. The other is described this way: “CEAU advised Pittsburgh that they could assist with a wireless hack to obtain a file tree, but not the hard drive content.”
Wi-fi hacking has featured prominently in some big cybercrimes, including the attack on TJ Maxx that exposed at least 45 million customer credit card numbers and other data. In that case, Albert “Segvec” Gonzalez and associates allegedly cracked the retailer’s WEP key and used it to gain entry to the corporate network, where he planted packet sniffers to scoop up the data.
But this is the first evidence that the FBI is using the same tactics. Presumably, suspects using one of the better encryption options — like WPA-2 — are immune.
It’s not clear why the FBI said it could only obtain a file tree — a hierarchical list of directories and files. It could be to avoid the risk of a judge later ruling that the search warrant was unconstitutionally over-broad, and consequently throwing out the evidence. Or maybe the bureau’s hackers don’t want to consume all of a target’s bandwidth while copying his entire porn directory into the FBI van on the street.
in case you haven’t heard, the guys who were formerly the Pirate Bay Admins were just found guilty in Sweeden and sentenced to One Year in Prison; and They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages. . What A Crock..
the internet is so crazy. why do these guys get put in jail for one year for being server operators; yet Google steals your pictures of your house; your prescription data; your work and credit history and they get lauded. this is crazy.
if you’re paying attention, then let your government know that you don’t support internet snooping and invasion of your privacy, by anyone.
From Sweden to London to Hollywood, protectors of copyrights are celebrating the conviction of the four men behind the world’s most popular torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.
The four convicted men behind The Pirate Bay — Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom — say they can’t and won’t pay the $3.6 million in damages and promised the site will continue running. So much for Hollywood’s sweet victory and happy ending.
Hollywood may have won a battle, but the war against piracy is far from over. Unauthorized file-sharing will continue (and likely intensify), if not through The Pirate Bay, then through dozens of other near-identical swashbuckling Web sites.
Of course, The Pirate Bay’s case is nothing new. Eight years ago Napster was shut down after getting sued. It tried a few legal business models, but never managed to even get close to the popularity it had when it was operating illegally. The shutdown of Napster turned its creator, Shawn Fanning, and Napster into a into heroes and martyrs, inspiring others to develop new ways to pirate music.The Pirate Bay site itself is still up and running while the case is appealed.
What Hollywood needs to remember is that sites like The Pirate Bay are like weeds. When you try to kill one, they grow back even stronger. In this case, The Pirate Bay already moved most of its servers to the Netherlands, a change that could keep the site running even if The Pirate Bay loses its appeal.
The bad news for copyright-holders is there is obviously a market demand for this type of content distribution model. And while the entertainment industry seeks compensation via lawsuits, other similar services (which I do not endorse) such as Mininova, Demonoid and Torrentbox to name a few, will continue to thrive. That is, of course, until they get sued into oblivion as well. And then there are always new technologies on the horizon. Hollywood might want to start looking at a budding new peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm that aims to let file-swappers preserve their privacy by cloaking their IP address.
An anonymous reader writes “Due to outrage over the verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than 7 hours. It is now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties represented in the Swedish parliament. ‘Ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world, continues Rick Falk Vinge. We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages.’”
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, speaking on his website: ‘We cannot and wouldn’t pay’
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.
Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.
Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as “bizarre”.
“It’s serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It’s really serious. And that’s a bit weird,” Sunde said.
“It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.
“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”
The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.
Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.
“These guys weren’t making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.
“The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn’t even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.
“There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,” he said.
The Pirate Bay’s first server is now a museum exhibit in Stockholm
The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
Speaking on Swedish Radio, assistant judge Klarius explained how the court reached its findings.
“The court first tried whether there was any question of breach of copyright by the file-sharing application and that has been proved, that the offence was committed.
“The court then moved on to look at those who acted as a team to operate the Pirate Bay file-sharing service, and the court found that they knew that material which was protected by copyright but continued to operate the service,” he said.
A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson, told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.
“That’s outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours.”
Political issue
Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party – which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age – told the BBC that the verdict was “a gross injustice”.
“This wasn’t a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.
Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research says what was different about Pirate Bay
“There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can’t encourage people to break copyright law, I’m not following it and I don’t agree with it.
“Today’s events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we’re going to take this to the European Parliament.”
The Pirate Bay is the world’s most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.
Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.
No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay’s web servers; instead the site hosts “torrent” links to TV, film and music files held on its users’ computers.
By Soulskill on google-trends-should-be-interesting-to-watch
explosivejared writes “Forbes is running a story discussing the verdict in the Pirate Bay case and its implications on file sharing, specifically with regard to Google. The article points out what most people on Slashdot already realize: Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does. The Pirate Bay case may be far from over, accounting for appeals, but the Pirate Bay’s assumption of being unchallengeable was shattered. The article raises the question of whether or not Google is untouchable in the matter. The story is quick to point out how the situation resembles a futile game of cat-and-mouse, but given how the Pirate Bay’s confidence was ultimately broken, is Google beyond reproach?”
By Soulskill on might-as-well-set-up-shop-at-the-googleplex
snydeq writes “The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a 15-page complaint asking the FTC to force Google to stop offering online services that collect data until the presence of adequate privacy safeguards is verified.
The EPIC also wants Google to disclose all data loss or breach incidents, citing several incidents where data held by Google was at risk, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month with its Google Docs.
The EPIC complaint [PDF] also listed other security flaws in Gmail and Google Desktop, a desktop indexing program, and urged Google to donate $5 million to a public fund that will support research into technologies such as encryption, data anonymization and mobile location privacy.” EPIC has raised privacy concerns about Google before, and about Windows XP as well.
Google just got access to millions of prescription records, and most likely, so did you.
GoogleGoogle reviews announced today that CVS/pharmacy, one of the largest pharmacy chains in the U.S., has partnered with Google Health to provide patients online access to their prescription drug history through Google Health accounts. This is in addition to Walgreens Pharmacy, Meijer, Medco, and other national pharmacies.
If you purchased prescription drugs from any of these chains, Google can access that information in its never ending goal to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. But is Google having access to private prescription drug information a step too far?
For those who have not used Google Health, it currently allows you to import your medical records from over a dozen pharmacies, medical centers, and health insurance providers. Once imported, you can review those records and keep them updated, with the help of Google and its partners.
With the CVS announcement, Google now has access to the detailed prescription history information of more than 100 million patients. In addition to allowing users to access their medical history, Google also says that it will use this information and partnerships for patient safety and increasing the efficiency of health care.
This same data is also very sensitive and personal. People with a history of mental conditions and embarrassing deficiencies may now have to worry about Google using that information in statistical analysis or more (prescription drug ads anyone?). And all of this is in addition to the information Google can import from medical devices like heart rate monitors.
Can Google do more good than harm with sensitive medical information, or is this infringing on the privacy of individuals? How Google uses this information is something everyone should watch. Let us know what you think in the comments.
(end of clipped article)
This is all about the bills - S.773 & S.778; that are presently sitting in the Senate now. these are the bills that would give the government virtual carte blanche to Your Private Data.
Now if you are like us, you’ll be watching this closely and making sure your legislators know exactly how you feel about this Government Piracy, of YOUR BOOTY MATES !!!
Stop Privacy Invasion NOW – Say NO To S.773 & S.778
(to read the rest of this very fine and informative article as well as to get to the links to the orgs, click here)
Two new pieces of legislation are causing quite a stir and rightly so. Americans protective of our freedoms and privacy are once again confronted by the constant onslaught against our rights which requires our vigilance.
This new legislation seeks to give even more power to the government to regulate the Internet and, in future, the possibility to regulate content and usage. What begins as a method of defeating terrorism and protecting telecommunications, can quickly become a method to regulate ‘hate speech’ to assign ‘motive’ or ‘intent’ to harm and even to regulate and legislate the flow of information that is deemed by the ‘thought police’ to be inflammatory or counter-productive to their cause.
I believe this legislation to be a framework for future, more invasive legislation. It is a first step to the loss of internet privacy, free speech and the free flow of information. From the same people that would re-instate the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ and continue ‘Hate Crimes’ legislation, what begins as a tool to protect, has the ability to morph into a weapon to silence and control.
Senate Bill 773:
Title: A bill to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen. Rockefeller, John D., IV [WV] (introduced 4/1/2009)]
Senate Bill 778:
Title: A bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor. Sponsor: Sen. Rockefeller, John D., IV [WV] (introduced 4/1/2009)
Before the text, other than the summary, is even released for public consumption (and spin) the public is raising its voice to cry out against yet another ‘death by a thousand cuts’ assault on our liberty.
But this legislation is not the brainchild of its author Senator John Rockefeller of WV. It is the culmination of years of planning by the United Nations (UN) and its agency, the Organization of American States (OAS), in partnership with the Inter-American System and the Summits of the Americas.
It becomes even more urgent, by the day, that all Americans are exposed to the inner workings of these organizations which labor day and night to integrate and harmonize the United States of America into the Western Hemisphere and International Law through the UN.
I have provided you with numerous links throughout this article and I encourage you to follow them so that you can see with your own eyes the planning that has gone into this legislation and the organizations that have planned it for many years. We must understand who is pulling the strings and.. (to read the rest of this very fine and informative article as well as to get to the links to the orgs, click here)
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, currently working its way through Congress, would give the President and a key member of his cabinet unprecedented authority over the Internet, according to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). Introduced by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), the bill would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in an emergency and disconnect key infrastructure systems on grounds of national security. As currently crafted, the legislation does not stipulate specifically when or how the President could shut down all Web activity. The bill also contains a provision that would allow the Secretary of Commerce to gain access to all relevant data concerning Internet networks “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access,” according to EFF. This could overrule current laws such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or the Privacy Protection Act, as well as financial privacy regulations.
A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show.
As first reported by Wired.com, the software, called a “computer and internet protocol address verifier,” or CIPAV, is designed to infiltrate a target’s computer and gather a wide range of information, which it secretly sends to an FBI server in eastern Virginia. The FBI’s use of the spyware surfaced in 2007 when the bureau used it to track e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington state high school to a 15-year-old student.
But the documents released Thursday under the Freedom of Information Act show the FBI has quietly obtained court authorization to deploy the CIPAV in a wide variety of cases, ranging from major hacker investigations, to someone posing as an FBI agent online. Shortly after its launch, the program became so popular with federal law enforcement that Justice Department lawyers in Washington warned that overuse of the novel technique could result in its electronic evidence being thrown out of court in some cases.
“While the technique is of indisputable value in certain kinds of cases, we are seeing indications that it is being used needlessly by some agencies, unnecessarily raising difficult legal questions (and a risk of suppression) without any countervailing benefit,” reads a formerly-classified March 7, 2002 memo from the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.
The documents, which are heavily redacted, do not detail the CIPAV’s capabilities, but an FBI affidavit in the 2007 case indicate it gathers and reports a computer’s IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer’s registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL.
After sending the information to the FBI, the CIPAV settles into a silent “pen register” mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every server to which the machine connects.
The documents shed some light on how the FBI sneaks the CIPAV onto a target’s machine, hinting that the bureau may be using one or more web browser vulnerabilities. In several of the cases outlined, the FBI hosted the CIPAV on a website, and tricked the target into clicking on a link. That’s what happened in the Washington case, according to a formerly-secret planning document for the 2007 operation. “The CIPAV will be deployed via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address posted to the subject’s private chat room on MySpace.com.”
In a separate February 2007, Cincinnati-based investigation of hackers who’d successfully targeted an unnamed bank, the documents indicate the FBI’s efforts may have been detected. An FBI agent became alarmed when the hacker he was chasing didn’t get infected with the spyware after visiting the CIPAV-loaded website. Instead, the hacker “proceeded to visit the site 29 more times,” according to a summary of the incident. “In these instances, the CIPAV did not deliver its payload because of system incompatibility.”
The agent phoned the FBI’s Special Technologies Operations Unit for “urgent” help, expressing “the valid concern that the Unsub hackers would be ’spooked.’” But two days later the hacker, or a different one, visited the site again and “the system was able to deliver a CIPAV and the CIPAV returned data.”
The software’s primary utility appears to be in tracking down suspects that use proxy servers or anonymizing websites to cover their tracks. That’s illustrated in several cases in the documents, including the 2004 hunt for a saboteur who cut off telephone, cable TV and internet service for thousands of Boston residents. The man’s name is redacted from the documents, but the description of the case matches that of Danny Kelly, an unemployed Massachusetts engineer.
According to court records, Kelly deliberately cut a total of 18 communications cables belong to Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and others over a three month period. In anonymous extortion letters to Comcast and Verizon, Kelly threatened to increase the sabotage if the companies didn’t begin paying him $10,000-a-month in protection money. He instructed the companies to deposit the cash in a new bank account and post the account information to a web page he could access anonymously.
When the FBI tried to track him down from his visits to the web page, they found he was routing through a German-based anonymizer. The FBI obtained a warrant to use the CIPAV on Feb. 10, 2005, and was apparently successful. Kelly went on to plead guilty to extortion, and was sentenced to five years probation.
The CIPAV also played a previously-unreported role in an investigation of a prolific computer hacker who made headlines after penetrating thousands of computers at Cisco, various U.S. national laboratories, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005. The FBI agent leading the case sought approval to plant a CIPAV through an undercover operative posing as a Defense Department contractor “with a computer network connected to JPL’s computer network,” according to one document. The FBI linked the intrusions to known 16-year-old hacker in Sweden.
And in 2005, FBI agents on the Innocent Images task force hit a wall when trying to track a sexual predator who’d begun threatening the life of a teenage girl he’d met for sex. The man’s IP addresses were “from all over the world” — a sign of web proxy use. The bureau sought and won court approval to use the CIPAV on Aug. 9, 2005.
Other cases are less weighty. In another 2005 case, someone was unwisely using the name of the chief of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office to harass people online. The FBI got a warrant to use the spyware to track down the fake agent.
Additional cases include:
In March 2006, the FBI investigated a hacker who took over a Hotmail user’s account and acquired personal information. The hacker tried to extort the owner out of $10,000, demanding the victim create and fund an E-Gold account and e-mail the password to the hacker. The FBI obtained a search warrant allowing them to send the intruder a CIPAV instead, to uncover his or her location.
In October 2005, an undercover agent working a case described as “WMD (bomb & anthrax)” communicated with the suspect via Hotmail, and sought approval from Washington to use a CIPAV to locate the subject’s computer.
In December 2005, FBI agents sought to use the spyware to track down another extortionist who sent an e-mail to a casino threatening violence.
In June 2005, an intruder deleted a database at an unnamed company and demanded payment to restore it. The FBI prepared a search warrant affidavit and was ready to ask a judge for authorization to deliver the CIPAV through the hacker’s Yahoo e-mail account. They were briefly thwarted when the intruder stopped communicating with the victim, but after a month of silence the hacker reestablished contact and, presumably, got the FBI’s spyware for his trouble.
The documents appear to settle one of the questions the FBI declined to answer in 2007: whether the bureau obtains search warrants before using the CIPAV, or if it sometimes relies on weaker “pen register” orders that don’t require a showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed. In all the criminal cases described in the documents, the FBI sought search warrants.
The records also indicate that the FBI obtained court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which covers foreign espionage and terrorism investigations, but the details are redacted.
The FBI released 152 heavily-redacted pages in response to Threat Level’s FOIA request, and withheld another 623.
Update: The documents are now available for download here.
in case you haven’t heard, the guys who were formerly the Pirate Bay Admins were just found guilty in Sweeden and sentenced to One Year in Prison; and They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages. . What A Crock..
This kind of longish video, is really helpful if you want to understand why. the internet is so crazy. why do these guys get put in jail for one year for being server operators; yet Google steals your pictures of your house; your prescription data; your work and credit history and they get lauded. this is crazy.
if you’re paying attention, then let your government know that you don’t support internet snooping and invasion of your privacy, by anyone.
From Sweden to London to Hollywood, protectors of copyrights are celebrating the conviction of the four men behind the world’s most popular torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.
The four convicted men behind The Pirate Bay — Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom — say they can’t and won’t pay the $3.6 million in damages and promised the site will continue running. So much for Hollywood’s sweet victory and happy ending.
Hollywood may have won a battle, but the war against piracy is far from over. Unauthorized file-sharing will continue (and likely intensify), if not through The Pirate Bay, then through dozens of other near-identical swashbuckling Web sites.
Of course, The Pirate Bay’s case is nothing new. Eight years ago Napster was shut down after getting sued. It tried a few legal business models, but never managed to even get close to the popularity it had when it was operating illegally. The shutdown of Napster turned its creator, Shawn Fanning, and Napster into a into heroes and martyrs, inspiring others to develop new ways to pirate music.The Pirate Bay site itself is still up and running while the case is appealed.
What Hollywood needs to remember is that sites like The Pirate Bay are like weeds. When you try to kill one, they grow back even stronger. In this case, The Pirate Bay already moved most of its servers to the Netherlands, a change that could keep the site running even if The Pirate Bay loses its appeal.
The bad news for copyright-holders is there is obviously a market demand for this type of content distribution model. And while the entertainment industry seeks compensation via lawsuits, other similar services (which I do not endorse) such as Mininova, Demonoid and Torrentbox to name a few, will continue to thrive. That is, of course, until they get sued into oblivion as well. And then there are always new technologies on the horizon. Hollywood might want to start looking at a budding new peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm that aims to let file-swappers preserve their privacy by cloaking their IP address.
An anonymous reader writes “Due to outrage over the verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than 7 hours. It is now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties represented in the Swedish parliament. ‘Ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world, continues Rick Falk Vinge. We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages.’”
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, speaking on his website: ‘We cannot and wouldn’t pay’
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.
Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.
Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as “bizarre”.
“It’s serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It’s really serious. And that’s a bit weird,” Sunde said.
“It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.
“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”
The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.
Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.
“These guys weren’t making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.
“The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn’t even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.
“There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,” he said.
The Pirate Bay’s first server is now a museum exhibit in Stockholm
The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
Speaking on Swedish Radio, assistant judge Klarius explained how the court reached its findings.
“The court first tried whether there was any question of breach of copyright by the file-sharing application and that has been proved, that the offence was committed.
“The court then moved on to look at those who acted as a team to operate the Pirate Bay file-sharing service, and the court found that they knew that material which was protected by copyright but continued to operate the service,” he said.
A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson, told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.
“That’s outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours.”
Political issue
Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party – which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age – told the BBC that the verdict was “a gross injustice”.
“This wasn’t a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.
Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research says what was different about Pirate Bay
“There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can’t encourage people to break copyright law, I’m not following it and I don’t agree with it.
“Today’s events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we’re going to take this to the European Parliament.”
The Pirate Bay is the world’s most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.
Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.
No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay’s web servers; instead the site hosts “torrent” links to TV, film and music files held on its users’ computers.
By Soulskill on google-trends-should-be-interesting-to-watch
explosivejared writes “Forbes is running a story discussing the verdict in the Pirate Bay case and its implications on file sharing, specifically with regard to Google. The article points out what most people on Slashdot already realize: Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does. The Pirate Bay case may be far from over, accounting for appeals, but the Pirate Bay’s assumption of being unchallengeable was shattered. The article raises the question of whether or not Google is untouchable in the matter. The story is quick to point out how the situation resembles a futile game of cat-and-mouse, but given how the Pirate Bay’s confidence was ultimately broken, is Google beyond reproach?”
By Soulskill on might-as-well-set-up-shop-at-the-googleplex
snydeq writes “The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a 15-page complaint asking the FTC to force Google to stop offering online services that collect data until the presence of adequate privacy safeguards is verified.
The EPIC also wants Google to disclose all data loss or breach incidents, citing several incidents where data held by Google was at risk, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month with its Google Docs.
The EPIC complaint [PDF] also listed other security flaws in Gmail and Google Desktop, a desktop indexing program, and urged Google to donate $5 million to a public fund that will support research into technologies such as encryption, data anonymization and mobile location privacy.” EPIC has raised privacy concerns about Google before, and about Windows XP as well.
Google just got access to millions of prescription records, and most likely, so did you.
GoogleGoogle reviews announced today that CVS/pharmacy, one of the largest pharmacy chains in the U.S., has partnered with Google Health to provide patients online access to their prescription drug history through Google Health accounts. This is in addition to Walgreens Pharmacy, Meijer, Medco, and other national pharmacies.
If you purchased prescription drugs from any of these chains, Google can access that information in its never ending goal to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. But is Google having access to private prescription drug information a step too far?
For those who have not used Google Health, it currently allows you to import your medical records from over a dozen pharmacies, medical centers, and health insurance providers. Once imported, you can review those records and keep them updated, with the help of Google and its partners.
With the CVS announcement, Google now has access to the detailed prescription history information of more than 100 million patients. In addition to allowing users to access their medical history, Google also says that it will use this information and partnerships for patient safety and increasing the efficiency of health care.
This same data is also very sensitive and personal. People with a history of mental conditions and embarrassing deficiencies may now have to worry about Google using that information in statistical analysis or more (prescription drug ads anyone?). And all of this is in addition to the information Google can import from medical devices like heart rate monitors.
Can Google do more good than harm with sensitive medical information, or is this infringing on the privacy of individuals? How Google uses this information is something everyone should watch. Let us know what you think in the comments.
One of these days American Troops are going to pull some of this Black-water style commando BS; and a genie will pop out of a bottle and encapsulate them. and no I am not talking figuratively; because this is not a network comedy. You see, America is in a helluva position being in Afghanistan in the first place.
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A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show.
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