The Trans Pacific Partnership, Obama’s big legacy making deal is signed. Early details about how it handles copyright law, the pharma industry & labor have been leaked. We dig into how the TPP will impact online intellectual property & consumers.

Plus deeper look at Russia’s involvement in Syria, a high note & much more!

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— Episode Links —

• U.S. Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia – The New York Times

CIA Weapons now flooding into Syria since Russian support began.

The American-made TOW antitank missiles began arriving in the region in 2013, through a covert program run by the United States, Saudi Arabia and other allies to help certain C.I.A.-vetted insurgent groups battle the Syrian government.
The weapons are delivered to the field by American allies, but the United States approves their destination. That suggests that the newly steady battlefield supply has at least tacit American approval, now that Russian air power is backing President Bashar al-Assad.
“By bombing us, Russia is bombing the 13 ‘Friends of Syria’ countries,” he said, referring to the group of the United States and its allies that called for the ouster of Mr. Assad after his crackdown on political protests in 2011.

The C.I.A. program that delivered the TOWs (an acronym for tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missiles) is separate from — and significantly larger than — the failed $500 million Pentagon program that was canceled last week after it trained only a handful of fighters. That was unsuccessful largely because few recruits would agree to its goal of fighting only the militant Islamic State and not Mr. Assad.

Rebel commanders scoffed when asked about reports of the delivery of 500 TOWs from Saudi Arabia, saying it was an insignificant number compared with what is available. Saudi Arabia in 2013 ordered more than 13,000 of them. Given that American weapons contracts require disclosure of the “end user,” insurgents said they were being delivered with Washington’s approval.

• ‘MH17 crash’ test simulation video: Il-86 plane cockpit hit with BUK missile – YouTube
• Dutch Safety Board simulates MH17 being hit by BUK missile – YouTube
• Dutch Safety Board MH17 final report (FULL VIDEO) – YouTube

The post What is the TPP | Unfilter 162 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

With the lead up to LinuxFest Northwest Chris takes a moment to reflect on the kick off of the 2016 horse races. Congress gets involved with Iran, Putin has missiles for sale & a Cyberwar take-down you have to hear to believe.

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The post The Rat Race Begins | Unfilter 141 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Github is served with another DMCA takedown, this time for Popcorn Time. Is this the start of a bad trend, and does the open source community need to develop a Github replacement? We’ll debate.

Plus the latest Snowden leaks reveal the GCHQ’s troll like skills, Microsoft launches an assault on Chromebooks, the US says it can have your cloud data & more!

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Latest Snowden Revelations Suggest GCHQ Is Just Like 4Chan Trolls, But With More Firepower

As Greenwald details (and the embedded document below reveals), among GCHQ’s capabilities in its Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) are a bunch of things that sound quite a bit like traditional internet trolling efforts. These include juicing internet polls to vote for GCHQ’s favorite candidate as well as flooding email inboxes or websites and even connecting two people on the phone and listening to the conversation.

Here are the programs Greenwald highlights:

• “Change outcome of online polls” (UNDERPASS)
• “Mass delivery of email messaging to support an Information Operations campaign” (BADGER) and “mass delivery of SMS messages to support an Information Operations campaign” (WARPARTH)
• “Disruption of video-based websites hosting extremist content through concerted target discovery and content removal.” (SILVERLORD)
• “Active skype capability. Provision of real time call records (SkypeOut and SkypetoSkype) and bidirectional instant messaging. Also contact lists.” (MINIATURE HERO)
• “Find private photographs of targets on Facebook” (SPRING BISHOP)
• “A tool that will permanently disable a target’s account on their computer” (ANGRY PIRATE)
• “Ability to artificially increase traffic to a website” (GATEWAY) and “ability to inflate page views on websites” (SLIPSTREAM)
• “Amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)” (GESTATOR)
• “Targeted Denial Of Service against Web Servers” (PREDATORS FACE) and “Distributed denial of service using P2P. Built by ICTR, deployed by JTRIG” (ROLLING THUNDER)
• “A suite of tools for monitoring target use of the UK auction site eBay (www.ebay.co.uk)” (ELATE)
• “Ability to spoof any email address and send email under that identity” (CHANGELING)
• “For connecting two target phone together in a call” (IMPERIAL BARGE)

Of course, this is not the first time that JTRIG has been called out by Glenn Greenwald for its sneaky online practices. Last time, Greenwald highlighted its practice of putting a bunch of false info online about someone to destroy their reputation.

US government says online storage isn’t protected by the Fourth Amendment

A couple months ago, a New York judge ruled that US search warrants applied to digital information even if they were stored overseas. The decision came about as part of an effort to dig up a Microsoft user’s account information stored on a server in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft responded to the ruling and challenged it, stating that the government’s longstanding views of digital content on foreign servers are wrong, and that the protections applied to physical materials should be extended to digital content. In briefs filed last week, however, the US government countered. It states that according to the Stored Communications Act (SCA), content stored online simply do not have the same Fourth Amendment protections as physical data.

From the Justice Department’s point of view, this law is necessary in an age where “fraudsters” and “hackers” use electronic communications in not just the U.S. but abroad as well. Indeed, the Microsoft account in this case is in relation to a drug-trafficking investigation. However, Microsoft believes there are wide-ranging implications for such a statement, and it’s not the only company that thinks so. Verizon also responded, stating that this would create “dramatic conflict with foreign data protection laws” and Apple and Cisco joined in by saying this could potentially damage international relations. In the meantime, a senior counsel for the Irish Supreme Court offered that a “Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty” be pursued so that the US government can get at the email account in question.

Microsoft launches a price assault on Chromebooks | The Verge

At the company’s partner conference today, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner revealed that HP is planning to release a $199 laptop running Windows for the holidays. Turner didn’t provide specifications for HP’s “Stream” device, but he did detail $249 laptop options from Acer and Toshiba. Acer’s low-cost laptop will ship with a 15.6-inch screen and a 2.16GHz Intel Celeron processor, and Toshiba’s includes a 11.6-inch display

Turner also revealed that HP is planning to release 7- and 8-inch versions of its new “Stream” PCs for $99 this holiday season, both running versions of Windows. “We are going to participate at the low-end,” says Turner.

Microsoft to Announce Job Cuts as Soon as This Week – Bloomberg

The reductions — which may be unveiled as soon as this week — will probably be in areas such as Nokia and divisions of Microsoft that overlap with that business, as well as marketing and engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The restructuring may end up being the biggest in Microsoft history, topping the 5,800 jobs cut in 2009, two of the people said. Some details are still being worked out, two of the people said.

Home Depot begins selling MakerBot 3D printers

Home Depot became the latest retailer to offer 3D printers today when it began selling MakerBots online and in 12 stores nationwide. The store is selling three printer models, plus MakerBot’s 3D scanner and filament. The 12 stores are located in California, Illinois and New York. “Imagine a world where you can 3D print replacement parts and use 3D printing as an integral part of design and building work,” MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis said in a release.

Announcing CrossOver 13.2.0

CrossOver 13.2.0 provides much greater ease of installation for Linux
users. With CrossOver 13.2.0, more Windows applications
will run out-of-the box on a fresh installation of CrossOver.

In the Linux version of CrossOver 13.2.0 we have changed our philosophy
about what to install automatically alongside CrossOver. In the past,
CrossOver sought to have the smallest possible footprint by depending
only on packages which were absolutely necessary for CrossOver to run.
Many times, this meant that our Linux users were forced to install
additional packages to get Windows applications running. With
CrossOver 13.2.0, we have made the CrossOver Linux packages depend on
many of the most common packages which Windows applications need.
Linux users can install CrossOver 13.2.0 and Windows applications more
easily than ever before.

For both Mac and Linux, CrossOver 13.2.0 includes stability
improvements for games running with Performance Enhanced Graphics.
Problems installing Adobe Acrobat have been resolved, as has a bug
registering CrossOver for users with non-Latin characters in their
usernames.

Yet another DMCA takedown on Github: MPAA PULLS “POPCORN TIME” REPOSITORIES OFF GITHUB : linux

Aside from the fact that this is a controversial piece of software (let’s not get into it), it looks like that Github is no longer a safe place to work with.

First Qualcomm[1] , now MPAA[2] , I wonder how many projects were taken down which are not big enough thing for media to cover.

The post DMCA Whack-a-Mole | Tech Talk Today 26 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Waze signs a deal to share data with local governments, millions are pirate streaming the World Cup, and we’ve got the details on the company’s whose mission it is to shut them down.

Plus can you hear the difference between hot and cold? We take the test.

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— Headlines —

Millions Watch World Cup Through Pirated Live Streams

Millions of people have tuned in to pirated World Cup streams thus far, with some games getting nearly half a million unauthorized viewers. TorrentFreak spoke with the French-Israeli content protection firm Viaccess-Orca, who sent roughly 2,000 takedown notices to content platforms that host or link to illegally streamed World Cup matches.

“The success rate varies per content platform but overall we manage to get 35 percent of the streaming links disabled before the game ends. I think this is a great success rate, especially compared to direct download sites,” Leporini informs us.

There are still hundreds of thousands of people getting through. The company estimates that between 100,000 and 500,000 people tune in to an average game. Up until last week, Belgium versus Russia was the most-watched match with 471,541 unauthorized viewers.

New Zealand ISP allows its customers to subscribe to the U.S. version of Netflix

Slingshot_, a local internet provider in New Zealand, wants to give its subscribers a little extra perk: The ISP just added a new “global mode”_to its internet plans that allows its customers to access video services like Netflix or Hulu without getting in trouble for coming from the wrong country

Slingshot’s global mode is essentially a VPN, meaning that it reroutes any traffic through servers situated in other countries. Slingshot subscribers using global mode may look like they’re located in New York

Anyone using this type of VPN likely violates the terms of of service of a streaming site, which is why Slingshot coyly suggests that the service is just for customers who happen to house international visitors

Why Google’s Waze Is Helping Local Governments Track Users

What may be especially tantalizing for planners is the super-accurate read Waze gets on exactly where drivers are going, by pinging their phones’ GPS once every second. The app can tell how fast a driver is moving and even get a complete record of their driving history, according to Waze spokesperson Julie Mossler.

Yet this passively-tracked data “is not something we share,” she adds. Waze, which Google bought last year for $1.3 billion, can turn the data spigots on and off through its application programing interface (API).

Waze has been sharing user data with Rio since summer 2013 and it just signed up the State of Florida. It says more departments of transport are in the pipeline.

But none of these partnerships are making Waze any money. The app’s currency of choice is data. “It’s a two-way street,” says Mossler. “Literally.”

In return for its user updates, Waze gets real-time information from Rio on highways, from road sensors and even from cameras, while Florida will give the app data on construction projects or city events.

Florida’s department of transport could not be reached for comment, but one of its spokesmen recently told a local news station: “We’re going to share our information, our camera images, all of our information that comes from the sensors on the roadway, and Waze is going to share its data with us.”

“This is a numbers game,” Mossler says. “We still want all the information we can get so that our app is as robust as possible.”

The Rise of Thin, Mini and Insert Skimmers

While most card skimmers are made to sit directly on top of the existing card slot, these newer mini-skimmers fit snugly inside the card reader throat, obscuring most of the device. This card skimmer was made to fit inside certain kinds of cash machines made by NCR.

The miniaturized insert skimmer was used in tandem with a tiny spy camera to record each customer’s PIN.

The United States is the last of the G-20 nations that has yet to transition to chip & PIN, which means most ATM cards issued in Europe have a magnetic stripe on them for backwards compatibility when customers travel to this country. Naturally, ATM hackers in Europe will ship the stolen card data over to thieves here in the U.S., who then can encode the stolen card data onto fresh (chipless) cards and pull cash out of the machines here and in Latin America.

NPR Listeners Show A Keen Ear For Temperature

NPR conducted an online poll asking listeners if they could hear the difference between cold and hot water simply by listening to the sound of the water being poured. Most listeners were spot-on.

The post Two Waze Street | Tech Talk Today 22 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Samsung’s new Flash file system, WoW’s Exploit, Microsoft’s DMCA takedowns, hard core data center tech, and a ton of your questions and our answers!

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