Free Software Foundation Turns 30

Richard Stallman, recognized worldwide as free software guru, president of the Free Software Foundation and a person who started the development of the free software operating system GNU nearly 30 years ago.

As you know, the GNU/Linux system is used on tens of millions of devices these days. Stallman also established the League for Programming Freedom. The latter campaigned against legal threats to programming.

Richard Stallman explained that it is now thirty years since he started the campaign for freedom in computing. According to his words, since he started, the IT scene has changed dramatically – today most people in advanced countries own PCs and smartphones which can be like computers.

However, he is still worried that non-free software makes users surrender control over their computing to someone else. Actually, the situation has become worse because of Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS), which means allowing someone else’s server do your own computing activities.

This was all highlighted by the PRISM scandal, revealing that non-free software and SaaSS are able to spy on the user, shackle the user, and even attack the user. Stallman admitted that malware was common in services and proprietary software apps because people don't have control over them.

In the meantime, free software is controlled by its users. Therefore, freedom means having control over their own lives. Nevertheless, Service as a Software Substitute leads to the same injustices as using a non-free app.

In case someone uses a SaaSS translation service, their text is sent to the server. Then the server translates it and sends the translation back to the user. In other words, users are entrusting all the relevant information to the server operator. The latter may be forced to show it to the state under the current law. The scheme is simple: if the users don’t control the software, the software controls the users.

Richard Stallman was also talking about another difficulty: non-free software forces other people to use it as well. For example, if you use the non-free Skype app, another person has to use it as well, thus surrendering their freedoms along with yours.

French Watchdog Threatens Google

It seems that the search giant is tired of getting threats from watchdogs all over the world – every day someone barks at Google. Today France’s data-protection watchdog warned that it is going to impose sanctions against the company, after it missed a 3-month deadline to adjust its privacy policy.

CNIL, the French outfit, claimed that it had initiated procedures to fine the search engine after Google failed to meet a deadline to fix its policy on how it gathers and uses information. CNIL pointed out that on the final day before the deadline, the search giant contested the request.

The fine of up to $200,000 is insignificant for Google, which made $10.7 billion in profits last year. However, the fine comes as data-protection agencies in the UK, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are investigating the company’s privacy policy. Google is also facing pressure to adjust its privacy policy in the United States.

A year ago, the tech giant changed its privacy policy in EU to combine over 60 of its services into one. In other words, Google consolidated data collected across the services. This is why consumer groups expressed concern that people might not want the data from those services to be connected.

The French watchdog claimed in June that the company’s new privacy policy was a violation of the local 1978 data protection act. CNIL asked Google to clarify its privacy policy and to modify its data-collection instruments.

Google replied that its privacy policy respects EU law and allows to create simpler, more effective services. The company has engaged fully with the watchdog throughout this process, and is going to continue doing so. The CNIL's move comes in a week when an American judge ruled that the tech giant may violate wiretap legislation when it scans the e-mails of non-Gmail users. This court decision will allow a class action lawsuit against Google, backed by privacy advocates, to move forward.

Judge Lucy Koh also decided that the company’s privacy agreements were less than explicit. She pointed out that a reasonable Gmail user reading the Privacy Policies wouldn’t have necessarily understood that their e-mails were being intercepted in order to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements.

UK to Form a Cyber Army

Britain is going to recruit hundreds of computer experts to create a cyber-army. The unit is supposed to defend vital networks against virtual attacks and launch high-tech assaults of its own. The Ministry of Defense announced that the country is spending increasing amounts on defending the people from the threats they are unlikely to ever face.

Despite the fact that the United Kingdom is broke, it still has the 4th largest defense budget in the world. A large part of this cash is not being spent on cyber intelligence and surveillance. Back in 2012, cyber defenses blocked about 400,000 advanced malicious cyber threats against the government’s secure Internet alone. This shows that the threat is real.

However, the Ministry of Defense points out that building cyber defense is not sufficient, because the United Kingdom also has to deter attacks. The country said that it is going to build a dedicated capability to counterattack in cyberspace and, in case of necessity, to strike. The representatives of the Ministry added that clinical “cyber strikes” could disable enemy communications, nuclear and chemical weapons, planes, ships and other hardware.

It was announced that the British government would recruit a new Joint Cyber Reserve. The “reservists” are supposed to work alongside existing experts in numerous government agencies, including the Ministry of Defense and the extremely unpopular GCHQ surveillance agency.

UK Will Block Payments to Sites Failing to Restrict Children Access to Porn

It seems that UK banks and credit card companies will be asked to hold back cash from customers of sites hosting explicit content if they fail to implement restrictions to stop children from accessing it.

Financial entities and the video services regulator are going to meet in October to finalize the deal. Media reports also reveal that a voluntary deal might be agreed with credit card firms. It seems that government would be prepared to consider legislation, if necessary.

While some online services require users to verify their age, most of them offer free and unrestricted access to any visitors. This is why the authority regulating British websites hosting videos decided to act against services operating in this way. In the beginning of 2013, regulator Ofcom fined Playboy £100,000 for failing to protect kids from porn content. A couple of websites owned by Playboy allowed everyone to access explicit content without having acceptable controls in place to check that users are adults. Ofcom claimed that Playboy’s failure to protect kids from potentially accessing adult content was serious, repeated and reckless.

The UK government supports the work that the watchdog has undertaken, and it will explore with local financial organizations and credit card companies the possibility to decline processing payments to websites operating outside the EU that allow British kids to view porn content.

The authorities also support efforts to encourage the Internet industry to design new effective ways of verifying the age of visitors. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t be appropriate to block outright all online services providing free hardcore porn because they host legitimate content for adults to view.

So, the meeting is scheduled to October with the UK Cards Association, the British Bankers Association, the Payments Council and the leading credit card companies. It is already known that the financial services companies had provided a “very positive response” to the proposal.

As you remember, the UK Prime Minister has suggested a new initiative earlier in 2013 aimed at getting ISPs to put filters in place. Online giants including Google and Yahoo are set to be called back to Downing Street in October to update the Prime Minister on the progress on such measures.

Internet Connections to Sudan Cut off

All online connections to Sudan were abruptly cut off after riots erupted over the ending of fuel subsidies. The government seems to make the move in order to prevent protesters from using social media to organize riots. Although the real reasons are unclear, the Internet monitoring firms point out that it was either a coincidental catastrophic failure of all three independent ISPs and their connections out of Sudan (as well as a terrestrial link into Egypt) or some centrally directed, government action.

In most cases of a failure of this kind which is not governmentally directed (for example, a power failure or a cut cable), ISPs switch to their satellite backups. However, this time it didn’t happen. It was a total shutdown, as happened earlier in Egypt.

Cutting off Internet is normally used by some governments in Middle Eastern countries in order to regain control amid heated protests. As you now, the now-defunct Mubarak regime in Egypt and the Assad regime in Syria have severed online links in attempt to restrict protests. Indeed, cutting international links makes it difficult to upload videos of protests to YouTube, among other things.

The industry observers confirmed that Sudan’s Internet connectivity abruptly dropped to zero. According to media reports, it broke out after the local government removed fuel subsidies, with a number of petrol stations and a university building set on fire. In the meantime, security forces fired teargas to disperse protesters who have demonstrated and set fire to a police station in Khartoum.

Since the protests have gone on for a few days after the country’s Council of Ministers decided to stop the subsidies, the price of fuel immediately doubled. The industry experts point out that the cut in subsidies followed the split of South Sudan to form an independent state two years ago. The latter took more of the main oil-producing territory which had previously been part of Sudan. In addition, the International Monetary Fund has previously told Sudan to cut the subsidies, as they consumed over 3/4 of the government’s total tax revenues. As a result, the people have no access to Internet and are in isolation from the world.

UK Will Block Payments to Sites Failing to Restrict Children Access to Porn

It seems that UK banks and credit card companies will be asked to hold back cash from customers of sites hosting explicit content if they fail to implement restrictions to stop children from accessing it.

Financial entities and the video services regulator are going to meet in October to finalize the deal. Media reports also reveal that a voluntary deal might be agreed with credit card firms. It seems that government would be prepared to consider legislation, if necessary.

While some online services require users to verify their age, most of them offer free and unrestricted access to any visitors. This is why the authority regulating British websites hosting videos decided to act against services operating in this way. In the beginning of 2013, regulator Ofcom fined Playboy £100,000 for failing to protect kids from porn content. A couple of websites owned by Playboy allowed everyone to access explicit content without having acceptable controls in place to check that users are adults. Ofcom claimed that Playboy’s failure to protect kids from potentially accessing adult content was serious, repeated and reckless.

The UK government supports the work that the watchdog has undertaken, and it will explore with local financial organizations and credit card companies the possibility to decline processing payments to websites operating outside the EU that allow British kids to view porn content.

The authorities also support efforts to encourage the Internet industry to design new effective ways of verifying the age of visitors. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t be appropriate to block outright all online services providing free hardcore porn because they host legitimate content for adults to view.

So, the meeting is scheduled to October with the UK Cards Association, the British Bankers Association, the Payments Council and the leading credit card companies. It is already known that the financial services companies had provided a “very positive response” to the proposal.

As you remember, the UK Prime Minister has suggested a new initiative earlier in 2013 aimed at getting ISPs to put filters in place. Online giants including Google and Yahoo are set to be called back to Downing Street in October to update the Prime Minister on the progress on such measures.

অল্টার+কন্ট্রোল+ডেল ভুল ছিল

সফটওয়্যার জায়ান্ট মাইক্রোসফটের সহ-প্রতিষ্ঠাতা বিল গেটস সম্প্রতি জানিয়েছেন, পিসিতে লগ ইন করার জন্য Ctrl+Alt+Del  কমান্ডটি ব্যবহার করার সিদ্ধান্ত ভুল ছিল।

     

সংবাদমাধ্যম বিবিসি এক প্রতিবেদনে জানিয়েছে, সম্প্রতি হার্ভার্ড ইউনিভার্সিটির অর্থ সংগ্রহ অনুষ্ঠানে গেটস এ বিষয়টি ব্যাখ্যা করেন।

Ctrl+Alt+Del  মূলত ডিজাইন করা হয়েছিল পিসি রিবুট করার জন্য। এখনও এ কমান্ডটি উইন্ডোজের পুরনো কিছু সংস্করণে ব্যবহৃত হয়। কমান্ডটি প্রথমে আইবিএম এর ম্যানেজার ডেভিড ব্র্যাডলি উদ্ভাবন করেছিলেন। কিন্তু প্রথমদিকে তার প্রক্রিয়াটি একটু জটিল ছিল। পরবর্তীতে তিনি এটি সহজ করে দিয়েছিলেন।

সম্প্রতি আইবিএম এর ২০তম প্রতিষ্ঠাবার্ষিকীতে ব্র্যাডলি জানান, তিনি হয়তো কমান্ডটি উদ্ভাবন করেছিলেন, কিন্তু এটি বিখ্যাত করেছেন গেটস।

গেটস তার বক্তব্যে বলেন, “আমরা এ কাজটি হয়তো একটি মাত্র বাটনের সাহায্যেই করতে পারতাম। কিন্তু আইবিএম-এর যে ব্যক্তি কিবোর্ড ডিজাইন করেছিলেন, তিনি আমাদের তা দিতে চাননি।”

তবে সে অনুষ্ঠানে অংশ নেওয়া একজন জানিয়েছেন, একটি মাত্র বাটনের সিদ্ধান্তটিই বরং ভুল হত।

Syrian Hackers Attack New York Times and Twitter in Melbourne

Pro-Assad Syrian group was the one who claimed responsibility for hacking Melbourne IT systems with a valid password. Australian Internet hosting firm Melbourne IT suffered a major hacker attack which affected the New York Times website and Twitter.

The Syrian Electronic Army is known for supporting the Assad regime in Syria and it was the one who claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack on the New York Times website, which resulted in downtime of a few hours. The group also claimed that it hacked Twitter’s domain. The affected websites both use Melbourne IT as a domain name registrar.

Theo Hnarakis, the CEO of Melbourne IT, admitted that the perpetrators gained access to the company’s systems using a valid user name and password. It seems like one of the company’s resellers in the United States was targeted and the outfit is now investigating how it could have happened. Melbourne IT is working with a variety of parties in order to trace the Internet service provider in charge and find out who was responsible for the failure. The company had to admit the vulnerability exists and agree it needs to make sure the failure won’t happen again. However, Melbourne IT can’t even confirm at which stage the systems had been hacked.

The company announced that the New York Times and Twitter were both back online and operating as usual, after changing and locking system passwords. Aside from the online giants, four other lesser known services were affected as well. The company holds registrations for major sites in the country.

In the meantime, Twitter confirmed that it regained control of its domain, stating that the viewing of pictures was “sporadically impacted”. As for the New York Times, they said the incident was caused by a “malicious external attack” and recommended its employees to be careful when sending emails. The NYT believes that a domain registrar should be very serious about security, as it is holding the security to thousands of websites. If someone obtains access to the domain registrar, the site visitors can be easily redirected away from a website, while their emails can be read.

A couple weeks before this incident, the Syrian Electronic Army was reported to hack the Washington Post’s website, with the site operators admitting that the service had fallen victim to a sophisticated phishing attack to gain password data.

Smart cities

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Smart cities may be new cities built smart right from the start or cities established for a special purpose (such as an industrial city or a science park) or — most commonly — an existing city made smart step by step.

What is a smart city?

A smart city can be defined as a “knowledge”, “digital”, “cyber” or “eco” city, depending on the goals set by the city’s planners. Smart cities are forward-looking economically and socially. They monitor critical infrastructure including roads, bridges, tunnels, rails, subways, airports, sea-ports, communications, water, power, even major buildings, to optimize resources and security. And they maximize services to citizens, providing a sustainable environment that fosters happiness and wellness. These services rely on information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Structurally, a smart city is a system of systems working together. This interoperation of countless systems demands openness and standardization — key principles in smart city construction. Without openness and standardization, a smart city project quickly becomes cumbersome and expensive. A smart city’s constituent technologies include the high-speed optical, sensor, wired and wireless networks that are necessary to enable such benefits as intelligent transport systems, smart grids and home networking.

A smart city’s relationship with its citizens is what distinguishes it most from a traditional city. The ICT-supported services of traditional cities cannot respond to changing economic, cultural and social contexts in the way that smart-city services can. Thus a smart city is above all a human-centric city, which relies on an ICT infrastructure and continued urban development, always taking environmental and economic sustainability into account (see figure).

Smart cities around the world

Smart cities may be new cities built smart right from the start or cities established for a special purpose (such as an industrial city or a science park) or — most commonly — an existing city made smart step by step. Many of the world’s major cities have embarked on smart city projects, including Seoul, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Amsterdam, Cairo, Dubai, Kochi and Malaga. Considering today’s rate of innovation, it is highly likely that over the coming decade, smart city models will become widely attainable and popular strategies for city development.

Existing smart city projects differ. Amsterdam’s approach is to achieve greater environmental sustainability through smarter operations, employing state-of-the-art technologies in efforts to reduce emissions and use energy more efficiently. Other cities aim to make a broad range of city functions smart, with ubiquitous smart technology playing a role in all aspects of citizens’ lives. Two examples of this strategy are the Republic of Korea’s Ubiquitous City (u‑City), launched in 2004, and Deutsche Telekom’s T‑City launched in Germany in 2006. Smart Seoul (seehttps://itunews.itu.int/En/4148-Smart-Seoul.note.aspx) aims for smarter city management and a better quality of life for its inhabitants.

Cities set their own priorities, but all smart cities display three essential traits. The first is ICT infrastructure. Securing next-generation ICT infrastructure is critical to the success of emerging smart-city services and to anticipating future service demands. Second, the city must have a well-defined and integrated management framework. The many systems of a smart city will work in harmony only through strict adherence to common standards. Third, a smart city needs smart users. ICT are the tools to enable a smart city, but are of no use without technically savvy users able to interact with smart services. A smart city must not only increase access to smart devices across income levels and age groups, but also offer access to education on the use of these devices. A smart city relies on an inclusive network of smart device users, with the city’s inhabitants demanding or creating the services they most value.

Standardizing for smart cities

Given the importance of standardization in creating smart cities, a wide range of activities are under way in different organizations. For example, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is looking at smart city standards through a group focused on “smart community infrastructure metrics”. ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU–T) has established a Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities to assess the standardization requirements of cities aiming to boost their social, economic and environmental sustainability through the integration of ICT in their infrastructures and operations.

ITU–T Study Group 5 — Environment and climate change — agreed to form this new Focus Group at its meeting held in Geneva from 29 January to 7 February 2013. The creation of the Focus Group answers a call to action proposed in September 2012 at ITU’s second Green Standards Week, held in Paris. “Smart Sustainable Cities” is also the theme of ITU’s third Green ICT Application Challenge.

Making the smart city the next stage in the process of urbanization will call for new ICT standards, infrastructure and solutions to ensure that this vision becomes a reality. The ITU–T Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities will act as an open platform for smart city stakeholders — such as municipalities, academic and research institutes, non-governmental and ICT organizations, and industry forums and consortia. Stakeholders will be able to exchange knowledge in the interests of identifying the standardized frameworks needed to support the integration of ICT services in smart cities.

The full report is available at http://www.itu.int/en/ ITU-/techwatch/Pages/smart-city-Seoul.aspx.

China and NSA to Spy on the UN

It seems that the spying etiquette doesn’t exist anymore after failing to deal with a very embarrassing situation in the United Nations.

It turned out that the US National Security Agency has recently cracked the encryption protecting the UN’s internal videoconferencing system, but when it got there it found out China was already there and listening in. It seems that the spooks hacked the United Nations that has its headquarters in New York, a year ago. Within 3 weeks of initially gaining access to the system of the United Nations, the National Security Agency had increased the number of such decrypted communications from a dozen to over 450.

According to the US spooks, there had been numerous data breaches since 2004 to a Chinese military unit in Shanghai. In response, Chinese authorities denied all the claims, while the United States instead made an attempt to arrest the person who catches it and have them shot.

This turn of events is actually a follow up from a story about the NSA spying on the European Union. The report also exposed a “Special Collection Service”, jointly staffed by the CIA and NSA, which exists in more than 80 embassies and consulates across the globe, usually without the knowledge of the host country. Everything was revealed by Edward Snowden – a US citizen and former NSA contractor.