Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The Federal Election Commission Is About to Partially Shut Down

For years, the Federal Election Commission has been barely functional. But at the end of this month—as the 2020 campaign heats up and unprecedented amounts of money flow to candidates for national office—much of the agency’s work will shut down entirely. There will be no new fundraising rules, no punishments for rule-breakers, no decisions about […]

Johnson and Johnson Was Just Found Guilty of Fueling the Opioid Epidemic In a Historic Trial

In a landmark verdict, an Oklahoma judge ruled Monday that Johnson and Johnson is guilty of fueling the state’s opioid epidemic. The case, the first of its kind to go to trial, is being closely watched to see if a court is prepared to hold a pharmaceutical company responsible for the devastating consequences of the […]

There Are No Magic Words That You Can Post to Change Instagram’s Terms of Service

Every so often, a rash of identical posts starts to take over social media. This isn’t the work of bots, but the result of a number of people believing that these words will have an effect on the terms of service of Facebook, or, in this most recent case, Instagram. In fact, there is nothing you can post online that will change a social network’s terms of service. And currently, Instagram’s terms aren’t even changing in the first place.

Here’s how this goes: people hear there is going to be a change to a company’s terms of service. It usually takes the form of “there’s going to be a new rule that means Instagram owns the copyright of my pictures.” It’s often not even true—there is no new rule. These companies do require users to license—not give—user-posted content to them so that companies can share them. On all of the major social media platforms, users keep the copyrights in the photos and videos they create and upload. No major platform has ever had terms of service that claim to transfer users’ copyrights.  But in response to the rumor, a bunch of people start posting a paragraph of legal-ish sounding words that, talisman-like, they believe will prevent this thing that isn’t even happening.

It happened with Facebook in 2012, when people started posting this:

For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly …allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained in your status updates.

PRIVACY NOTICE: Warning - any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other “picture” art posted on my profile.

You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student or any personnel under your direction or control.

The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE

The law cited there has nothing to do with any of this, but it certainly sounds convincing. This was so prevalent it has a Snopes entry. (Snopes rates it “false.”)

Facebook got hit again with this kind of hoax again in 2015, with one that looked like this, typo and all:

In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc (as a result of the Berner Convention).

There is no Berner Convention. There is a Berne Convention, but it doesn’t do what this notice claims. Sometimes the notice mentioned a “Rome Convention,” which still does not grant the post magic legal powers.

This brings us to 2019, where Instagram finds itself in the same place as its parent company Facebook once did. Here, via Forbes, is a version of this same story floating around:

Don’t forget tomorrow starts the new Facebook rule where they can use your photos. Don't forget Deadline today!!! It can be used in court cases in litigation against you. Everything you've ever posted becomes public from today Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook's privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute. NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tacitly allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates. FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE PHOTOS OR MESSAGES.

This isn’t how privacy or copyright law works. This isn’t how contract law, which governs your relationship with a company’s terms of service, works. And it does not matter that Judd Apatow, Julia Roberts, Usher, or Secretary of Energy Rick Perry all fell for it.

While this phenomenon has been called a hoax, a scam, and a new iteration of the chain letter, it’s also something like a superstition. People are legitimately concerned about the power of giant companies like Facebook, and it’s kind of believable that it’d be able to make these kinds of rules and you, the user, would be stuck with them. Thinking there must be some legal way out of this unequal relationship—that the law wouldn’t let one company act with impunity in this way—isn’t so irrational. And so these words keep popping up and, since there was no change in the first place, they seem to “work” and do no harm—like knocking on wood—so everyone forgets for a couple of years.

Perhaps if there were many competing services, we could choose the one with the policies that best protected us, but, until then, there are no magic words that a viral post can have that will change the terms of service you agree to by using Instagram. Perhaps the influential people who've fallen for this hoax should instead focus on ways to bring much-needed competition to Internet platforms

Before Kamala Harris Soured on Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Bill, She Grew Her Email List From It

Kamala Harris distanced herself from Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill at an event with large-dollar donors two weeks after her campaign ran those ads.

The post Before Kamala Harris Soured on Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Bill, She Grew Her Email List From It appeared first on The Intercept.

The Washington Post: Sanders’s climate proposal is the best way forward
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/25/what-sanders-gets-others-dont-about-our-climate-debate/ #climatechange #climatecrisis

The spy in your wallet: Credit cards have a privacy problem
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/26/spy-your-wallet-credit-cards-have-privacy-problem/ #privacy #security

G7: Trump skips talks on climate crisis and Amazon fires - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/donald-trump-skips-g7-talks-on-climate-crisis-and-amazon-fires empty chair, empty brain

Salt marshes' capacity to sink carbon may be threatened by nitrogen pollution

Salt marshes sequester carbon at rates an order of magnitude higher than land ecosystems. A new study indicates nitrate pollution of coastal waters stimulates the decomposition of organic matter in salt marsh sediments that normally would have remained stable, and can alter the capacity of salt marshes to sequester carbon over the long term.

Beaver reintroduction key to solving freshwater biodiversity crisis

Reintroducing beavers to their native habitat is an important step towards solving the freshwater biodiversity crisis, according to experts.

Making polyurethane degradable gives its components a second life

Polyurethane waste is piling up, but scientists have a possible solution: They have developed a method to make polyurethane degradable. Once the original product's useful life is over, the polymer can easily be dissolved into ingredients to make new products such as superglue.

Urban living leads to high cholesterol...in crows

Animals that do well in urban areas tend to be the ones that learn to make use of resources such as the food humans throw away. But is our food actually good for them? A new study suggests that a diet of human foods such as discarded cheeseburgers might be giving American crows living in urban areas higher blood cholesterol levels than their rural cousins.

Cleaning pollutants from water with pollen and spores -- without the 'achoo!'

In addition to their role in plant fertilization and reproduction, pollens and spores have another, hidden talent: With a simple treatment, these cheap, abundant and renewable grains can be converted into tiny sponge-like particles that can be used to grab onto pollutants and remove them from water, scientists report. Even better, these treated particles don't trigger allergies.

Rules of Attraction

“I don’t want to have sex with you.”

Oh No, They’re Right

It’s problematic stuff, all the way down.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Calls Out the President: “He’s Afraid of Us”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has clearly gotten under the skin of President Trump, who has frequently attacked the first-term congresswoman in starkly racist terms and even lobbied Israel to block her from visiting the country. Now Tlaib says she knows why: He’s afraid. In a recent conversation with the Guardian, billed as her first in-depth interview […]

The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance”

Elbit Systems, which touts its products as “field-proven” on Palestinians, was contracted to build a high-tech surveillance system on Tohono O’odham land.

The post The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance” appeared first on The Intercept.

Welfare Reform Was a Disaster for the Poor. Trump Wants to Make It Even Worse.

This week marked the 23rd anniversary of welfare reform, a law that ripped a hole in the nation’s safety net under the guise of encouraging personal responsibility among poor families. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has marked the anniversary with a look back at how low-income families have fared under the “reform,” […]

Let Microsoft buy Facebook and allow them to "improve" it. Heck, go ahead and convert it to LinkedIn

Telnet Is Not A Crime: Unconvincing Prosecution Screenshot Leaked in Ola Bini Case

Since EFF visited Ecuador three weeks ago, the investigation into open source developer Ola Bini has proceeded as we described then: drawn out, with little evidence of wrong-doing, but potentially compromised by acts of political theater outside the bounds of due process and a fair trial.

Last week — shortly after prosecutors successfully extended the investigation for another 30 days and informed Bini that they would also be opening new investigations into his taxes and visa status — Ecuadorean TV and newspapers published leaked imagery and conversations from evidence collected in the trial, together with claims from sources that this imagery proved Bini hacked the systems of Ecuador’s national communications provider, ECN.

The evidence offered was a screenshot, said to be taken from Bini’s mobile phone. The press reported that the phone was unlocked by police after seized security footage revealed Bini’s PIN when he used his phone in his own office elevator.

Telnet Is Not A Crime

Cursory examination of the actual screen capture reveals that both the leaker and the media misunderstand what the new evidence shows. Rather than demonstrating that Bini intruded into the Ecuadorean telephone network’s systems, it shows the trail of someone who paid a visit to a publicly accessible server — and then politely obeyed the servers’ warnings about usage and access.

Here’s the screenshot (with our annotations), taken from the evidence as it was finally submitted to the court.

Those knowledgeable about Unix-style command line shells and utilities will recognize this as the photograph of a laptop screen, showing a telnet session (telnet is an insecure communication protocol that has largely been abandoned for public-facing technologies).

Command line interactions generally flow down the page chronologically, from top to bottom, including both textual commands typed by the use, and the responses from the programs the user runs. The image shows, in order, someone – (presumably Bini, given that his local computer prompt shows “/home/olabini”) – requesting a connection, via Tor, to an open telnet service run on a remote computer.

Telnet is a text-only communication system, and the local program echoes the remote service’s warning against unauthorised access. The remote service then asks for a username as authorization. The connection is then closed by the remote system with a “timeout” error, because the person connecting has not responded.

It’s the Internet equivalent of seeing an open gate, walking up to it, seeing a “NO TRESPASSING” sign, and moving on.

The last line on the screen capture shows the telnet program exiting, and returning the user to their own computers’ command line prompt.

This is not demonstrative of anything beyond the normal procedures that computer security professionals conduct as part of their work. A user discovers an open telnet service, and connects to it out of curiosity or concern. The remote machine responds with a message by the owner of the device, with a warning not to log on without authorization. The user chooses to respect the warning and not proceed.

It’s the Internet equivalent of seeing an open gate, walking up to it, seeing a “NO TRESPASSING” sign, and moving on.

It’s notable also what was not leaked: the complete context surrounding the screenshot. The picture allegedly came from a series of messages between Ola and his system administrator, Ricardo Arguello, a well-known figure in the Ecuadorian networking and free software communities. The full conversation was omitted, except that that Bini sent this screenshot, to which his Arguello replied “It’s a router. I’ll talk to my contact at CNT.”

If you found a service that was insecurely open to telnet access on the wider Internet, that’s what you might reasonably and responsibly do — message to someone who might be able to inform its owner, with evidence that the system is open to anyone to connect. And under those conditions, Arguello’s response is just what a colleague might say back — that they would get in touch with someone who might be able to take the potentially insecure telnet service offline, or put it behind a firewall.

Certainly, that explanation fits the facts of this screenshot far better than the press reports that claims this is proof that Bini invaded the “entire network” of Ecuador’s national oil company, Petroecuador, and the former National Intelligence Secretariat.

EFF’s conclusions from our Ecuador mission were that — from its very beginnings in a hasty press conference held by the Interior Minister that spoke of Russian hackers and Wikileaks members undermining the Ecuadorean state — political actors, including the prosecution, have recklessly tied their reputations to a case with little or no real evidence. It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that Ola Bini’s prosecution continues to be publicly fought in the Ecuadorean press, with misleading and partial leaks and distractions, instead of in a courtroom, before a judge.

We trust that, when and if this evidence is presented in court, that judge will examine it more skeptically, and with better technical advice, than the prosecution or media has until now.

A Tennessee Republican Accused of Sexual Misconduct With Underage Girls Just Said He Isn’t Running Again

Tennessee state Rep. David Byrd, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women who were underage at the time, quietly told his Republican colleagues in the state House that he would not seek reelection next year due to the controversy. In his comments, made during a closed-door caucus meeting, he also reportedly insisted […]