Tag freedom

A Bill Of Rights

I found this article on EFF to be a very concise summary of many of the issues I've written (and often talked about) in the past, pertaining to the freedom to use the devices you have paid for and own as you see fit, and the increasingly worrying trend of manufacturer lockdowns that largely define what you can and cannot do with them. While Apple with its popular iOS may be the most well-known (and most successful) ambassador of the lock-down platform, the trend has been on the radar well before Apple managed to escape the threat of extinction in the late 1990s; Microsoft, with Windows RT and the Secure Boot flag in UEFI only manages to actually implement all those technologies they initially developed, studied and proposed more than ten years ago with Palladium/TCPA. The cat is still out of the box, but technology ages quickly and the threat is quite real: a combination of a cloud abused by the Valley oligopoly, lack of the computing storage ubiquity and locked down devices would be a nightmare scenario that would strip the computer of its fundamental differentiating quality from appliances of yore: its malleability, the power derived from its programmability and its ability to solve countless problems, to achieve infinite different tasks and not perform a single function, as manufacturers would most likely want.

Bluffdale

According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

[…] The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”

The Three Strikes. EU Edition.

A Fist Full of Euros reports on the crucial topic of ISPs, neutrality, surveillance as manifested through the failed 'three strikes' french law that's now reached the European Parliament.

Εκτροχιασμοί

Προ κάποιων εβδομάδων ο Νίκος Σμυρναίος έγραψε στο blog του σχετικά με το ζήτημα της παρακολούθησης των συνδέσεων του διαδικτύου στα πλαίσια της προσπάθειας, τόσο κρατικών όσο και ιδιωτικών φορέων για τη μείωση της ανταλλαγής πνευματικών έργων μέσω του διαδικτύου. Σήμερα διάβασα από το blog του Ματθαίου Τσιμιτάκη ένα παρεμφερές άρθρο που παραπέμπει και εμπλουτίζει […]

Νομοθετικοί Ακροβατισμοί στον Βωμό του Διαδικτύου

Αναστάτωση έχει προκαλέσει τις τελευταίες ημέρες η προσπάθεια της κυβέρνησης να ελέγξει την έκφραση στο διαδίκτυο, ενδιαμέσω ενός γελοίου, τόσο νομικά, όσο και επιστημονικά ή ηθικά, νομοσχεδίου. Η αναστάτωση αυτή, πέραν της έκφανσης της στα ελληνικά ΜΜΕ (τα οποία δε παρακολουθώ και για τα οποία ακούω από φίλους) είχε ως αποτέλεσμα έναν σημαντικό όγκο σχετικών […]

Ο Μεγάλος Αδελφός

Εδώ και περίπου 40 ημέρες επανήλθε στο προσκήνιο το ζήτημα των καμερών, των προσωπικών δεδομένων, της παρακολούθησης πολιτών από τις αρχές, τη νομιμότητα χρήσης οπτικοακουστικού περιεχομένου από τις κάμερες ρύθμισης της κυκλφοορίας ως αποδεικτικό στοιχείο κατα ατόμων. Είναι σαφές πως αφ’ενός ο παραγκωνισμός της Αρχής Προστασίας Προσωπικών Δεδομένων, τον υπεύθυνο φορέα λειτουργίας των καμερών κατα […]