Seven people have been detained for, among other allegations, using encrypted email, a civil-rights group has said.
Spanish cops investigating bomb attacks raided 14 homes and businesses across the country last month and arrested 11 people: seven women and four men, aged 31 to 36, from Spain, Italy, Uruguay, and Austria.
Since then, four people have been released, and the remaining seven were charged with belonging to a “criminal organization of an anarchist nature with terrorist ends.”
That organization has been linked to explosives placed at cash machines, and in the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid and the Pilar Basilica in Zaragoza last year, according to Spanish journalists.
Lawyers defending the accused said investigating Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez partly chose to further detain the seven due to their use of “emails with extreme security measures” – specifically, freedom-fighting RiseUp.net’s email servers.
Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
France Arrests a Comedian For His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West’s “Free Speech” Celebration
Forty-eight hours after hosting a massive march under the banner of free expression, France opened a criminal investigation of a controversial French comedian for a Facebook post he wrote about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and then this morning, arrested him for that post on charges of “defending terrorism.” The comedian, Dieudonné (above), previously sought elective office in France on what he called an “anti-Zionist” platform, has had his show banned by numerous government officials in cities throughout France, and has been criminally prosecuted several times before for expressing ideas banned in that country.
The apparently criminal viewpoint he posted on Facebook declared: “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.” Investigators concluded that this was intended to mock the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan and express support for the perpetrator of the Paris supermarket killings (whose last name was “Coulibaly”). Expressing that opinion is evidently a crime in the Republic of Liberté, which prides itself on a line of 20th Century intellectuals – from Sartre and Genet to Foucault and Derrida – whose hallmark was leaving no orthodoxy or convention unmolested, no matter how sacred.
Faux News
Google Porn Takedowns Carpet Bomb Github
Every single week thousands of copyright holders and anti-piracy companies demand that Google removes links to allegedly infringing content.
The effort required to deal with this deluge is considerable. Google has received as many as 11 million requests in a single week and in 2014 alone the search giant processed some 345 million URL takedowns.
While it’s believed that most takedown requests are accurate, Google still does its best to ensure that erroneous notices don’t negatively affect legitimate online services. Google regularly rejects overbroad and inaccurate notices but like everyone else, the company isn’t perfect.
The latest head-shaker arrives courtesy of anti-piracy outfit Takedown Piracy (TDP). Acting on behalf of porn outfit Wicked Pictures, TDP sent Google a notice containing thousands of URLs targeting dozens of well and lesser-known file-sharing sites.
Sadly, however, the notice also targeted coding site Github – over and over and over again. And Google complied.
“The materials reported in this notice are the copyrighted DVD/videos of Wicked Pictures,” the notice begins.
Not exactly.
What do UK and Iran have in common? Both want to outlaw encrypted apps
Encrypted communications will be backdoored or banned in the UK if the Conservatives win the next election, Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged.
The UK government has always had the power, “in extremis,” to read Brits’ personal post and eavesdrop on electronic chatter, he repeatedly insisted on Monday in a speech to the party faithful in Nottingham.
Roca Labs, Lacking A Hornet Nest Into Which It Could Stick Its Dick, Has Sued Marc Randazza
This crazy litigant goes to 11.
Roca Labs, you may recall, is the weight-loss-goo purveyor that is belligerent, litigious, and sensitive to criticism to a pathological degree. Last month I wrote about how they require their customers to sign no-criticism contracts, and had sued PissedConsumer.com for carrying negative reviews. Yesterday I lit the Popehat Signal to seek help for customers Roca Labs has targeted with vexatious litigation — including, in what no doubt is just a big coincidence, one of the witnesses against them in their first litigation.
Can Roca Labs push the envelope more? Yes they can.
Today Marc Randazza — counsel for PissedConsumer.com in Roca Labs’ frivolous suit — filed an updated notice of related cases in the PissedConsumer case. That updated notice revealed that Roca Labs has now sued Randazza himself for his activities defending PissedConsumer.com.
The Corrupt Philanderer Who Built the CIA’s Black Sites
Bureaucrats love secrets. If they are given unchecked power to create secrets, they will find the temptation to use this power irresistible. They will use it to cover justified cases, for example, to preserve diplomatic and military secrets that are important for national security, or to protect the privacy of individual citizens (the information contained on tax returns, for instance). But at the same time bureaucrats use secrecy to obscure from public sight anything that might embarrass them or reduce their political power and influence, for instance, innocent mistakes, evidence of incompetence, evidence that the policies they have made or implemented do not work or have unforeseen negative consequences, corruption, or even evidence of criminal conspiracies and dealings.
Democratic deliberation rests on the premise that ideas, once exposed to the public—unfolded, challenged, tested, and disputed—will stand or fall on their own merit. The bureaucratic drive for secrecy rests, in many cases, on a need to keep information out of the hands of individuals who could use it to harm the bureaucracy. The bureaucrat will invariably say that an enemy could use the information to harm the country, but more often than not the real concern originates with the bureaucrat personally or the office where he or she works.
The bureaucrat may fear that the exposure of a mistake will damage his chances for promotion or undermine the prestige and influence of the bureaucratic institution where he works, making it vulnerable to bureaucratic rivals. To the extent this is the case, secrecy produces a government that is more poorly informed, dull-witted, and more corrupt than would be the case if the power of classifying secrets were stripped away. This is because information stamped “secret” cannot be tested and challenged in the forum of democratic debate; it goes unquestioned and tends to be accepted as truth. If the secret is nonsense, it will likely be revealed as such once exposed.
Dianne Feinstein, Strong Advocate of Leak Prosecutions, Demands Immunity For David Petraeus
If it wasn’t already clear that the US government was unhappy with National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden—and the feds want him extradited, President Obama denounced him—it is now. Today, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers (R-MI), both emphasized there would be no mercy coming from Washington.
“He was trusted; he stripped our system; he had an opportunity—if what he was, was a whistle-blower—to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,” Feinstein told CBS’ Face The Nation. “But that didn’t happen. He’s done this enormous disservice to our country, and I think the answer is no clemency.”
The lust for “justice” changes somewhat when it’s one of “their own” that is under scrutiny:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged the Department of Justice not to bring criminal charges against former CIA Director David Petraeus over his handling of classified information.
“This man has suffered enough in my view,” Feinstein said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, explaining why she doesn’t think Attorney General Eric Holder should seek an indictment.
Petraeus “made a mistake,” added the senator, who is vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But … it’s done, it’s over. He’s retired. He’s lost his job. How much does the government want?”
Prominent YouTube Personality Locked Out Of His Account After A Bogus Copyright Claim (by Outfit7)
Firing up an app to talk to a bot isn’t copyright infringement. The app will talk to whoever will chat with it (and vice versa, in terms of CleverBot). Recording this interaction doesn’t violate Outfit7’s copyright anymore than someone recording their siblings/kids talking to it. The app exists to talk and presumably Outfit7 would like more people to download the Talking Angela app because in-app purchases is a numbers game. The more people that try it out, the more likely the chance that some of them will start tossing money into the company’s revenue stream.
In 1985, Top UK Government Law Official Knowingly Shared Pirated Document With Prime Minister’s Office; Asked For ‘Discretion’
May I point out that what you are getting is a “contraband copy”, made in this Department, of another “contraband copy” made by the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions, the official responsible for prosecuting criminal offenses] from a copy which he legitimately obtained from the shorthand writers on the usual commercial basis. The making of extra copies in this way is, I think, a breach of the shorthand writers’ copyright and I think that they would be aggrieved if they knew about it. I should therefore be grateful if you would use the enclosures with discretion.
