The Chinese state media claimed that the authorities hire 2 million people to operate and monitor its infamous “Great Firewall”. The reports reveal that most of the employees perform keyword searches and check millions of messages being posted on a daily basis.
This huge number of employees shows just how low tech and human intensive the operations are. However, even with the collective being so huge, employees are still unable to prevent comments which are seen by the government as undesirable from being published and reposted.
The “Internet Police” are hired by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government and by a number of commercial websites. The country accounts for over 500 million Internet users, which makes China the largest online population in the world.
In case a western country wanted to carry out a similar operation, it would have its work cut out to justify it. For example, the UK industry observers estimated that if David Cameron wanted to set up a “Great Firewall of Britain” he would have to hire almost 210,000 people to run it. Taking into account the fact that British labor is much more expensive than Chinese one, it might make sense to consider outsourcing such an operation to China.
The Korean tech giant has been outed as one of the major advertisers on the Ukraine’s largest file-sharing websites. The entertainment industry has launched an initiative dubbed “Clear Sky” in Ukraine, which is focused on naming and shaming the advertising antics of such giants as Samsung, Nokia, Canon, Carlsberg and even Coca Cola.
The initiative sees funding of peer-to-peer websites by the major international brands as a core problem. After the Ukraine has been labeled by the United States as one of the top piracy havens worldwide, the anti-piracy groups decided to “counter this image” and established Clear Sky.
Apparently, the task of the coalition is to find ways to fight Internet piracy. First of all, it is going to name and shame global companies who advertise with pirates. A couple of largest local portals, Ex.ua and FS.ua, accounts for millions of visitors weekly and generates a healthy revenue stream via adverts, which are partly paid by multinational corporations.
Indeed, it turned out that almost 10% of all advertisements on those file-sharing services are financed by famous international brands, and almost half of all those adverts belong to Samsung. The report revealed that a big chunk of the company’s advertising budget in Ukraine goes to those file-sharing services. In the meantime, the industry observers found out that both services are rather short on adverts.
It seems to be not enough for the Russian government to make its Winter Olympics a forbidden zone for gay people – in addition to this, the local authorities are ready to mount a spy fest. Media reports emerged that the Black Sea resort of Sochi has been wired to allow Russian equivalent of FBI (Federal Security Service or FSB) to log all visitor communications.
Apparently, any sportsmen and spectators attending the Winter Olympics 2014 in Sochi next February will have to deal with invasive and systematic spying and surveillance. The report, prepared by a team of Russian journalists investigating the preparations for the Games, revealed tenders from the local communication firms describing a phone and online spying capability not seen before.
This move could enable the FSB to intercept any telephone or data traffic and even track the use of key words or phrases mentioned in emails, chats and on social media. The reporters claimed that major amendments have been made to phone and Wi-Fi networks in the Black Sea resort in order to ensure monitoring and filtering of all traffic.
The spies are using Sorm, a Russian technology for intercepting telephone and Internet communications, which is being modernized throughout the country, but the most attention has been paid to Sochi given the enormous number of foreign visitors expected in 2014.
The system will allow deep packet inspection to filter people by keywords. The Russian government has already threatened gay sportsmen and spectators with arrest if they attend the games and protest, so apparently this is how they are going to find out.
The researchers insist that the FSB has been working for three years to upgrade the Sorm system to ensure it can digest the extra traffic during the Olympics. The law requires all telephone and ISP providers to install Sorm boxes in their technology. Once the equipment is in place, the FSB will be able to access information without the provider ever knowing.
In the meantime, the Russian authorities claimed that the London Olympics featured far more intrusive measures – for example, the UK installed CCTV cameras in the toilets, while Russia wouldn’t.
The social network is considering building its own town so its employees never have to leave work. The campus in Menlo Park will include a $120 million, 394-unit housing community within walking distance of its offices. Dubbed Anton Menlo, the 630,000 square-foot rental property is supposed to include a sports bar and a day care for pet dogs.
Media reports admit that the move towards a 24-hour work lifestyle is new, even for Silicon Valley. The social network insists that employee retention is not a major factor in the plan. Instead, it is a great idea to have more housing options closer to campus. Facebook believes that people will want to live there because they believe in the company’s mission.
The sources revealed that there will be many amenities on the site, including cafes, a store, a sports pub, bike repair shop with onsite storage, pool, spas, and gyms. This move may fix some of the company’s accommodation problems for workers. Indeed, a housing shortage is reported in Menlo Park and some employees couldn’t find places to stay near the corporate campus.
In the meantime, the industry experts point out that in many ways the move is turning the clock back. America had its “company towns” at the turn of the 20th century – the US factory workers were living in communities owned by their employer and provided housing, health care, law enforcement, church and just about every other service necessary. But the drawback is that your life becomes the company, and this is why the 20th century company towns died out.
This move means that employees will always be working. Only 10% of Facebook’s employees will be housed on-site. Apparently, there will not be too many families. The housing will go for market rates, with some being set aside for low-income staff.
A recent report, carried out by the advocacy group Freedom House, has taken a look at Internet trends in 60 countries. The results were that despite a pushback from activists which successfully blocked some repressive laws, web freedom still plummeted in 2012.
In 35 of those 60 countries, governments had grown their legal and technical spying powers through the web. A global decline in web freedom in 2012 was determined by broad surveillance, new legislation controlling Internet content and growing arrests of social media users. For instance, Iceland has the most web freedom. On the contrary, China, Cuba and Iran had the least.
In the meantime, declines in Internet freedom were led by 3 democracies - Brazil, India and the US. Apparently, revelations by Edward Snowden demonstrated that changes in online freedom of the United States were eroding extremely fast. Anyway, the United States still made it to 4th in Freedom House’s list.
A number of the governments have acted against the worldwide web because social media was exploited to arrange national protests. Since 2012, two dozen countries have adopted some kind of legislation restricting web freedom. For instance, Bangladesh imposed a 14-year prison sentence on a group of bloggers who wrote posts critical of Islam. Bahrain has also arrested ten people for “insulting the king on Twitter”, while Morocco jailed a teenager for 18 months for “attacking the nation’s sacred values” via a Facebook post which also ridiculed the king. Finally, a woman in India was arrested for just “liking” a friend’s Facebook status.
According to Sanja Kelly, project director for Freedom on the Net at Freedom House, banning and filtering are still the favorite methods of censorship in lots of countries, though the governments are increasingly looking at who is saying what on the Internet and finding ways to punish them. According to the report, law restricting Internet freedom are still sometimes blocked with a combination of pressure from advocates, lawyers, businesses, politicians and the international community. However, this is the 3rd consecutive year web freedom has declined.
The NSA has repeatedly tried to attack people using Tor, a popular tool protecting their Internet anonymity. This is despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the government of the United States itself.
According to secret NSA files, disclosed by Edward Snowden, the agency successfully identified Tor users and then attacked vulnerable software on their machines. One NSA technique targeted the Firefox Internet browser used with Tor and gave the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all Internet activity. However, the files suggest that the fundamental security of the anonymity service remains intact.
Tor (The Onion Router) is an open-source public project which redirects its users’ traffic via other PCs, called “relays” or “nodes”, in order to keep it anonymous and avoid filtering tools. Journalists, activists and campaigners in America, Europe, China, Iran and Syria rely on Tor network to maintain the privacy of their communications and avoid reprisals from the authorities. The network currently receives around 60% of its funding from the American government, primarily the State Department and the Department of Defense.
Despite the importance of the network to dissidents and human rights groups, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart GCHQ have devoted their efforts to attacking Tor. They claim that the service is also used by people engaged in terrorism, trade of child abuse images, and virtual drug dealing.
While it seems that the agency hasn’t compromised the core security of the Tor software or network, the leaked files detail proof-of-concept attacks, including some relying on the large-scale Internet surveillance systems used by the NSA and GCHQ via Internet cable taps.
Foremost among the concerns is whether the agency has acted against users in the United States when attacking the network. The matter is that one of the functions of the anonymity service is to hide the country of all of its users, which means that any attack could be hitting members of Tor’s American user base.
A less complex attack against the network was also disclosed in July 2013, with its details leading to speculation that it had been built by the FBI or another American agency. While at the time the FBI refused to admit it was behind the attack, it subsequently claimed in a hearing in an Irish court that the agency did operate malware to target an alleged host of pictures of child abuse, with the attack also hitting Tor network.
The tech giant hoped that France would forget its sins and let it do what it wants with EU data having been dashed recently. Local press confirm that Google will get a fine after it failed to comply with an order to alter the way user data is stored and used in order to conform to French privacy laws.
The fine comes as a result of an investigation led by EU data protection authorities of a new privacy policy adopted by Google a year ago. Local privacy watchdog pointed out that Google was ordered to comply with data protection legislation within three months, but it just didn’t. It seems like Google just shrugged and refused. The company keeps insisting that local data protection laws can’t be applied to users of certain Google services in France.
Now the watchdog will designate a rapporteur to initiate a formal procedure for imposing sanctions. This is done under the provisions laid down in the country’s data protection legislation. The tech giant could be fined about $200,000 which seems not much. In addition, the company could in certain circumstances be ordered to refrain from processing personal information in certain ways for 3 months. The company responded that its privacy policy does respect European legislation. It also insisted that it had “engaged fully” with the watchdog within this process.
Industry observers agree that the company is in trouble with European laws in an antitrust case for allegedly breaking competition rules. Google recently submitted proposals to avoid fines in that case. In the meantime, in the United Kingdom, Google is finding itself on the back foot over its policy of refusing to pay tax which the government didn’t like at all.
According to the latest Snowden leak, for the last three years, the National Security Agency has been creating sophisticated graphs of the US citizens’ social connections.
Investigating the shedloads of information the agency has collected, NSA is now able to tell who your friends are, your locations at certain times, your travel companions and other personal data.
One of the slides from a leaked NSA presentation reveals the way it uses e-mail and phone information in order to analyze the relationships of foreign intelligence targets. Another file revealed that the NSA was told to carry out large-scale graph analysis on communications metadata “without having to check foreignness of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier”.
The NSA was mix and matching communications information with public, commercial and other sources. The list included bank codes, insurance data, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls, GPS location data, and even property records and unspecified tax information.
It seems that the agency may also know more about foreign citizens than their own government does. The Americans may also have been caught up in the effort. Actually, lots of foreigners might know the US citizens and sometimes send them emails.
Google paid only £11 million in British corporation tax in 2012, despite revenues of £500 million. Indeed, the company made global profits of £6 billion last year, but says that it pays bulk of its tax where business originated – the United States. Its representatives argued that the company made a significant contribution to the United Kingdom through investment and jobs.
Back in 2011, Google paid £6 million while showing a £24 million loss on a £400 million turnover. The US company has been repeatedly accused of failing to pay its fair share of tax in the United Kingdom. In addition, the tech giant has been criticized for designating Ireland, and not the United Kingdom, as Google’s official European sales base in order to benefit from lower company tax rates.
Google’s former employee, who turned to be a whistle blower, handed over documents to HM Revenue and Customs to show how the company’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with UK customers, with cash paid into a British bank account. However, the deals were allegedly booked through Google’s Dublin office in order to minimize its liabilities.
According to the recent Companies House filings, the tech giant also set aside £24 million for taxes associated with shares awarded to staff between 2005 and 2011, in order to comply with new rules from HMRC. In response, Google claimed it was right that the majority of its tax should be paid in the United States. The company’s representatives argued the company made a huge contribution to Britain via investment and jobs.
Google explained that like most multinationals it pays the bulk of its £1.2 billion corporate tax bill where its business originated – the United States. This is a rate of almost 20%, roughly what a Britain-based entity would pay. Google also considers itself a significant contributor to the British economy having created more than 2,000 jobs. The company has invested over £300 million in property in 2013, with tax related to British operations totaled £150 million.
A recent survey has discovered that online piracy is growing rapidly (well, this wasn’t a news). According to the estimations, 432 million people per month used the worldwide web to access copyright infringing material. Within a month, all these pirates consumed 9,567 petabytes of illegal content, mostly via BitTorrent. To put it simply, about 25% of all Internet traffic is attributed to piracy.
The conclusion of the report was also nothing new – despite anti-piracy policies and enforcement actions, piracy cannot be stopped. The researchers admit that the practice of infringement is “tenacious and persistent”. Sometimes the industry succeeds in limiting infringement, but not for long. At the moment, the piracy universe not just persists in attracting more users, but also hungrily consumes increasing amounts of bandwidth.
Among the most visible trends the observers point at direct download “cyberlockers” losing plenty of visitors within the last couple years, while other platforms, on the contrary, expanded their user bases. So, within 2012, the number of pirates using cyberlockers decreased by 8%, and the most obvious reason for this is MegaUpload shutdown. In the meantime, the number of file-sharers using BitTorrent and video streaming platforms grew by 27% and 22% accordingly.
Today most illegal file-sharers use direct download and torrent services, both accounting for 200 million unique users per month. This figures excluded users who never download any infringing content, and their share is only 4% for BitTorrent and 8% for direct download services.
The total bandwidth generated by illegal file-sharers in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific is estimated at over 9,500 petabytes of data – so, you can guess that global traffic far exceeded 10,000 petabytes. Here BitTorrent is the absolute leader, and this makes sense – people both download and upload content, thus generating twice as much traffic. At the same time, cyberlocker users downloaded relatively little data – about 338 petabytes per month.
Talking about regional trends, direct download services are preferred in the Asia-Pacific region, and BitTorrent is popular in Europe and North America. Although there is no clear way these numbers could be translated into losses for the entertainment industry, the latter will undoubtedly leave no opportunity unused to turn the results of the survey to its advantage.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article
