By Cory Doctorow at 7:00 am Thursday, May 24
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The Space Hijackers' Twitter account for their Official Protesters of the London 2012 Games has been suspended, following a complaint from the London Olympic committee:
Twitter. That harbour of free speech, undaunted by various Arab dictators. However, it seems that a quick word from LOCOG, the unelected body in charge of the 2012 Olympic Games, is enough to encourage Twitter to suspend our account. Apparently there's a danger people might think we're part of the Olympic delivery team. We're sorry if you were enjoying our tweets, we hope to be back up and running again, as soon as Twitter gets the joke. In the meantime, you might want to look at this website to get some background...
Twitter actually has a pretty clear policy on this: parody and protest accounts just have to have some indicator that they aren't the official item (e.g. "FakeCoke" or "CokeSucks" but not "OfficialCoke"). My guess is that Twitter's suspension of the account was on that basis. If so, it should be pretty straightforward to get it back up and running.
Oi! You Can't Protest Here!
(Thanks, LDNBikeSwarm!)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:14 am Monday, May 21
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This weekend, I took my daughter to the Kapow! comics fair in Islington, London, and happened on the Upside Comics booth. Upside is a charitable trust that promotes literacy using comics. They run comics-creation workshops for kids, produce pro-literacy comics, and bibliographies of great kids' comics. They're looking for donations of comics and graphic novels, as well as cash, time and expertise.
Upside Comics use comics and graphic novels to promote literacy for children and young people. We support reading, creative writing, design and illustration.
Upside Comics is a small charity with support from the Big Lottery. The organisation was started by people working in schools and youth charities who love comics. We believe that literacy is the key to childrens' future success and happiness.
Upside Comics
By Cory Doctorow at 2:05 am Saturday, May 19
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Rights Group will co-host a speakeasy event -- a kind of pub night -- in east London on June 14. I'll be there, with several ORG employees, supporters and volunteers, and so will Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal director and veteran of many of the Internet's most important legal skirmishes (she's the one who argued the Bernstein case, legalizing civilian use of strong cryptography -- among many other accomplishments).
Speakeasy events are free, informal meetups that give you a chance to mingle with local online rights supporters and speak with the people leading the charge to protect digital civil liberties. It is also our chance to thank you, the supporters who make it possible. For this round, we are pleased to welcome EFF members as well as all friends and guests. REGISTER HERE!
When:
June 14th, 2012 6:00 PM through 8:00 PM
Location:
The Reliance (upstairs)
336 Old Street
London, EC1V 9DR
United Kingdom
Speakeasy: London with the Open Rights Group
By Cory Doctorow at 3:42 am Friday, May 18
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Leah sez,
Bespoke troublemakers, the Space Hijackers, have announced that they are the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games. To this end, they've launched a site where you can register for tickets for the official protests. They have also outlined the top ten reasons why the Olympics are worth protesting against.
A spokesperson said "accept no imitation, we are the Official Protesters. We shall be taking steps to ensure no unauthorised protest occurs around the London 2012 Olympic Games".
The Space Hijackers stress that LOCOG, the IoC and the ODA should expect protest wherever Olympic legislation and regulation is applicable and enforced. An international network of Olympic protesters have partnered under the Protest London 2012 umbrella and are planning as invasive a campaign as the Olympic Games themselves. However, only those groups authorised by the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games will be allowed to express dissent.
Disclaimer: "Official Protesters", "Official Protester", "Official Protest", "Protest", "The Space Hijackers", "Space Hijackers", "Spacehijackers", "Space", "Hijacker" and "Hijackers" are protected under trademark and copyright. Unauthorised use without express written consent from the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Some background: as part of its campaign to win the games, the UK promised the International Olympic Committee that it would extend extraordinary privileges to it and its corporate partners. It's a criminal offense to use "London" and "2012" or "2012" and "Games" in a commercial context without authorisation. Yes, criminal: you can go to gaol for putting up a pub signboard that says "Watch the Olympic Games here today!" Parliament's Olympic lickspittles also delivered a law that gives the cops the power to enter your private home and remove anti-Olympics posters. And there are 10,000 private security guards on-site who insist that you're not allowed to stand on public land and take pictures, despite assurances from the government and police that they've been trained and briefed.
Here's an earlier Space Hijackers action: "Life Neutral" certification for arms dealers.
Official Protests for the London 2012 Olympics
(Thanks, Leah!)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:47 am Friday, May 18
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Disclosures made by the UK Department of Work and Pensions in response Freedom of Information requests show that over 1,000 civil servants illegally snooped on private citizens' data over a 13-month period. A separate disclosure from the Department of Health showed over 150 illegal breaches in the same period. As Zack Whittaker points out in a piece on ZDNet, these are the same civil servants who will havvess to unlimited amounts of sensitive personal information if the government's plan to require mandatory snooping on all Internet traffic goes through. Who needs crooks breaking into government databases when you've got civil servants stomping through them with impunity?
Between April 2010 and March 2011, 513 civil servants were found to have made “unauthorised disclosures of official, sensitive, private and/or personal information”. The year continuing, between April 2011 and January 2012, more than 460 staff were disciplined.
The DoH on the other hand said it did not log each and every breach of unlawful access to U.K. medical records. It did say there were 158 recorded breaches in 2011. Only four years earlier, there were only 28 cases, representing a fivefold increase.
The FOI requests were made by Channel 4’s investigative series, Dispatches.
UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:12 am Thursday, May 17
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The Met, London's police force, is buying "mobile device data extraction" devices that can suck all the data out of your phone "in minutes" -- that's where you've been, who you know, what you've said to them, what websites you visit, and, depending on your apps, what groceries you buy, when you've called for a cab, what your menstrual cycle is, what you eat, your passwords, and so on.
This is the police force that routinely DNA-swabbed suspects and refused to destroy the samples even after they were exonerated, despite being ordered to after a European high court ruling to the effect that this was illegal.
Does anyone know what technology they're buying, and what its limits are? I'd be interested in knowing if, for example, it is effective against the built-in Android mass storage encryption.
"When a suspect is arrested and found with a mobile phone that we suspect may have been used in crime, traditionally we submit it to our digital forensic laboratory for analysis."
Kavanagh said the new system located within the boroughs themselves will enable "trained officers to examine devices and gives immediate access to the data in that handset".
He said: "Our ability to act on forensically-sound, time-critical information, from SMS to images contained on a device quickly gives us an advantage in combating crime, notably in terms of identifying people of interest quickly and progressing cases more efficiently."
Met Police uses 'quick' mobile data extraction system against suspects
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:28 am Tuesday, May 15
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Tom Watson and Martin Hickman's Dial M for Murdoch is a timely, informative, infuriating insider account of the News International phone-hacking scandal that has occupied the news-cycle, off and on, for several years now (and shows no sign of slowing down). Watson, a veteran Member of Parliament -- and frequent target of the Murdoch press and its hackers and snoops -- was an early and consistent voice of alarm over the scale and illegality of the Murdoch tabloids' investigative methods. He's uniquely well-situated to tell this story. His co-writer, Martin Hickman, is a veteran investigative reporter who covered the story for the Independent. They make a good pair, and the narrative is relatively smoothly told and, at times, is very powerfully written.
The Murdoch papers -- and other UK tabloids and papers -- wield tremendous influence in the halls of British power. Dial M traces the intimate connections between the press and senior ministers, elected officials, and -- crucially -- the police in the UK. As the flagship Murdoch tabloid, News of the World attained the highest circulation of any English-language paper, and seems to have led the world in illegal investigation techniques as well. The early inklings of the scope of the company's criminality were systematically understated by the press, underrated by the police, pooh-poohed by officials (from every party), and buried.
But the story wouldn't die. There were just too many victims, a sympathetic poster-child for everyone -- dead soldiers and their families, terrorist bombing victims, royals, the families of murdered children, and so on. It was impossible for Scotland Yard to maintain its "nothing to see here" posture, not with so many different stakeholders and so many upwellings of outrage. It didn't help that the most senior police officers on the case were doing various kinds of business with Murdoch, or retiring into cushy sinecures as high-paid columnists and consultants. Neither could the impotent Press Complaints Commission maintain the fiction that it had investigated, censured, and cleaned house.
Murdoch's many enemies were willing to bring the fight, risking their private lives, risking their personal fortunes. Vindictive Murdoch executives drew up enemies lists, ordered deep background checks on Parliamentarians and attorneys, sent high-powered lawyers to lean on witnesses, set private eyes to follow Murdoch's opponents in secret, or dispatched obvious PIs to watch them openly and intimidatingly. Watson and Hickman are exhaustive in documenting the slimy depths plumbed by Murdoch's high-placed lieutenants and their thugs in their efforts to maintain the years-long suppression of the investigation.
They were ultimately undone by their own arrogance. You can't defend yourself by throwing your accomplices under the bus forever. Eventually, some of the minions on whom you've pinned the blame will start whispering your secrets to others. Likewise, you can't pin the blame on your fancy lawyers, insisting that they investigated your operation and gave it a clean bill of health -- they won't sit still for it. You can't just hack everyone who accuses you of hacking.
Indeed, the scale and arrogance of the Murdoch companies' illegality was both their undoing, and is the major problem with Dial M for Murdoch. Despite the authors' valiant efforts to be both exhaustive and engrossing, sometimes the sheer litany of the names of the hacked, the officials who participated in the coverups, the bribes and corruption -- well, it gets a little repetitive. This is the banality of evil, 350 pages' worth. The fact that it's hard to keep it all straight when it's delivered in sequence, with the benefit of hindsight, tells you a lot about how this managed to slip off the front pages so many times over the years. The revelations can be so similar that it's hard to remember that this is actually a fresh outrage, not just a re-reporting of last week's lies and crimes.
My other problem with Dial M is its unwillingness to set out an explicit agenda in defense of a free press. For all that the tabloids have gotten away with murder for decades, Britain has one of the most censorious and litigant-friendly environments when it comes to press freedoms. This is the land of the "superinjunction," where corporate criminals can order the news of their misdeeds to be vanished into the memory hole. This is the land where spurious libel claims can be used to silence science writers like Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre, who document the (sometimes literally) murderous quackery of "alternative medicine" gurus. Britain has the unwelcome distinction of being the world's center for "libel tourism," a place where despots can come to punish journalists who reveal their misdeeds.
One consequence of the Murdoch scandal has been a renewal of the call for "press regulation," to rein in the tabloids. But what the tabloids did was already illegal -- it didn't just violate a "code of conduct," it violated the actual statutes on the actual lawbooks. The problem wasn't that they slipped through a legal loophole: the problem was that they had the cooperation of crooked prosecutors and cops, and the collusion of highly placed officials, both elected and appointed. The problem wasn't the absence of a law, it was the absence of legal enforcement.
For example, Dial M paints Max Mosley as something of a hero of the fight against Murdoch. Mosley, a wealthy celebrity who'd been libeled by the tabloids, refused to settle and refused to back off, and spent a fortune bankrolling much of the legal action against Murdoch. For this, he is justly lionized by the authors. But Mosley also proposes far-reaching Internet censorship rules, and advance notice and "arbitration" whenever the press publishes stories about public figures, and an opportunity for those figures to seek injunctions against publication. I kept waiting for the authors to point out that one risk of the Murdoch scandal is that Britain's moneyed and powerful will seize on the opportunity to reverse the trend toward libel reform and other free-speech rules, and to demand expansions to the already onerous censorship and libel regime the country labours under.
Instead, Watson and Hickman walk a fine line between praise and condemnation of the press, without ever articulating what a "good" press should do, or what regulation they favour. There are plenty of opportunities for this, too: after all, the Guardian's Nick Davies was a key investigator of the scandal, and the authors credit him with bringing Murdoch to heel, at real personal risk. I wanted them to explain how they would create a policy or precedent that would let Davies investigate Murdoch at full tilt, but not be so broadly defined as to legalize the investigative techniques used by the Murdoch press. Indeed, the book opens with a quote from Bob Woodward, who brought down a president by publishing illegally leaked confidential material -- what system would protect Woodward and not Andy Coulson?
The other "other shoe" that never dropped in Dial M was a critique of the way that our IT systems are designed to be such juicy and easy targets for scumbags and crooks. It goes without saying that there's no excuse for the Murdoch invasions. But what on Earth are all these rich and powerful people doing sending unencrypted emails? Why do ministers of the government use voicemail servers operated by big, dumb phone companies like Vodaphone, instead of privately maintained Asterix instances run by Parliament's IT department (who, presumably, couldn't be tricked into resetting a voicemail PIN merely by calling up and saying, "It's Bob in tech support, and I'm on the other line with the Home Secretary and she's forgotten her PIN, can you reset it for me, mate?"). How is it that lawyers and clients send cleartext documents to one another, and how is it that ministers and civil servants keep the nation's most important information on unencrypted hard drives? It's one thing for an individual celebrity (or the bereaved parents of a murdered child or a felled soldier) to lack the wherewithal to protect themselves, but when it comes to officials and their staff, it's both inexcusable and inexplicable. Maybe the Murdoch snoops would still have gotten something on them with long lenses and PIs who shadowed them from home to work. But the fact that a crew of creepy dolts were able to sit in their basements hacking thousands of important and official phones and computers at a time is not merely an indictment of their employers at the tabloids. It should be a wakeup call to the establishment to put its house in order, get some training, and use the decades-old technology (that comes stock on every GNU/Linux box) in their official dealings.
Leaving aside those omissions, Dial M is a fabulous and infuriating read. If you have been trying in vain to keep all the crooked dealings straight, here, at last, is the scorecard you've been looking for. It's the perfect background reading for the nightly news, and I can't wait for a sequel once this business has been resolved (however long that might take!).
Dial M for Murdoch
By Cory Doctorow at 9:19 am Monday, May 14
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I wandered into a temporary showroom for Trainspotters in London this weekend; they're a retailer specializing in salvaged industrial lighting, with a lot of crazy, chunk ex-Soviet numbers. Looks like you have to buy direct from them by phone, and the prices weren't low, but I'm still cleaning drool out of my shirt from my brief visit. Lovely stuff.
Welcome to Trainspotters, specialist dealers in reclaimed industrial lighting, decorative salvage and interiors. We are based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where we hold a large stock of industrial and period lighting, salvaged vintage fixtures and 20thC reclamation, from the UK and the former Eastern Bloc. We specialise in sourcing large runs and quantities of retro lighting, making us an unparalleled resource for larger scale commercial projects such as pubs, bars, clubs, shops, restaurants and public spaces. This website is our catalogue and we aim to get all new stock online as soon as it comes into us – we hope you enjoy browsing the site.
Industrial Lighting & Salvage Specialists
By Cory Doctorow at 7:54 pm Friday, May 11
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Here's some of Russell Brand's wonderful, thoughtful, funny, and acerbic testimony to the UK Parliament on the subject of combatting addiction and setting sensible drug policy. Brand is a former heroin addict, and he was questioned by MPs over his views on the subject:
* I don't think we need a carrot or a stick. Both of those things seem to be to be bizarre metaphors. I think what we need is love and compassion.
* Being arrested isn't a lesson, it's just an administrative blip
* Again mate, what we need to identify is a degree of authenticity and compassion in the way we deal with this problem, otherwise you just seem like you don't know what you're talking about.
* You can tell what party they're in from the questions, innit? "What about the victims of the crime!"
* [After the committee chair tries to restore order by declaring that they're running out of time, and without missing a beat.] Time is infinite. You cannot run out of time. Who's next? [Home Secretary] Theresa May? She may not show up. Check she knows what day it is.
You've got to listen to the recording, which starts at about 5:55 in this episode of the BBC's Today in Parliament. It's like a chirpy cockney Groucho Marx discussing drug policy with a bunch of Margaret Dumont-esque Tories, and running silvertongued circles around them.
Russell Brand says drug addiction should be treated as a health matter
By Cory Doctorow at 4:27 am Friday, May 11
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Darryl Cunningham's Science Tales is a fantastic nonfiction comic book about science, skepticism and denial. Divided into short chapters with simple layouts and graphics, Cunningham's book looks into belief in chiropractic and homeopathy; denial of moon landings, climate change and evolution, the anti-vaccination movement, and related subjects. It concludes with a tremendous piece on the forces that give rise to anti-scientific/anti-evidence movements, which Cunningham attributes to the deadly cocktail of cynical corporate media-manipulation and humanity's built-in cognitive blind-spots.
Cunningham has a real gift for making complex subjects simple. If you're a Mythbusters fan, admire James Randi, enjoyed Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, and care about climate change, you'll enjoy this one. More to the point, if you're trying to discuss these subjects with smart but misguided friends and loved ones, this book might hold the key to real dialogue.
To get a taste of Science Tales, click through below for the first five pages of the MMR story, courtesy of publishers Myriad Editions.
Science Tales
Read the rest
By Cory Doctorow at 4:00 am Thursday, May 10
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BrewDog is a spunky craft brewer in Scotland. Diageo is a titanic owner of booze brands, a kind of Wal*Mart of booze. The British Institute of Innkeeping is their mutual trade association.
Last Sunday, the BII's independent judges awarded BrewDog a prize for Bar Operator of the Year. When Diageo found out -- just ahead of the ceremony -- that a company affiliated with them hadn't won the prize, they threw a tantrum and said that they would cease all sponsorship of BII events unless the prize was given to them.
So BrewDog -- who'd been told in advance that they'd won -- sat at their table at the banquet with jaws on their chests as their competitor's name was read out by the announcer, and representatives from Diageo's chosen bar got up on stage to accept an award whose plaque clearly said "BREWDOG: BAR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR." The farce has turned into a scandal, and Diageo has issued a non-apology of the "mistakes were made" sort.
BrewDog is pissed:
As for Diageo, once you cut through the glam veneer of pseudo corporate responsibility this incident shows them to be a band of dishonest hammerheads and dumb ass corporate freaks. No soul and no morals, with the integrity of a rabid dog and the style of a wart hog.
Perhaps more tellingly it is an unwitting microcosm for just how the beer industry is changing and just how scared and jealous the gimp-like establishment are of the craft beer revolutionaries.
We would advise them to drink some craft beer. To taste the hops and live the dream. It is hard to be a judas goat when you are drinking a Punk IPA.
Walk tall, kick ass and learn to speak craft beer.
Diageo Screw BrewDog
(Thanks, Chris!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:55 am Tuesday, May 8
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Martyn Crofts's appearance on Britain's Got Talent is the best thing I've ever seen on TV: he put a pot on his head and did a wicked Dalek impersonation while singing (shouting) a version of Roger Miller's "King of the Road," ("King of the Tardis"). Britain does indeed got talent.
Dalek impersonator Martyn Crofts - Britain's Got Talent 2012 audition - UK version
By Cory Doctorow at 10:48 am Friday, May 4
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Several major UK ISPs began blocking requests for The Pirate Bay this week, thanks to a court order coming into effect. The Pirate Bay reports that it saw an extra 12 million visitors on the first day of the block, and is pleased by all the publicity. They offer the following tips for anyone looking to circumvent a national Pirate Bay block. From TorrentFreak:
“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added...
First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.
These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such as VPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.
Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.
While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.
The UK Pirate Party is offering its own proxy for The Pirate Bay.
Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips
By Cory Doctorow at 4:10 am Thursday, May 3
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The British Council has posted a fabulous trove of CC-licensed, downloadable "cultural propaganda" videos commissioned during WWII to "refute the idea that ours was a country stuck in the past."
During the 1940s, the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner of documentary films. Over 120 films were produced as 'cultural propaganda' to counteract anything the Nazis might throw out and to refute the idea that ours was a country stuck in the past. These films were designed to showcase Britain to the rest of the world, at a time when Britain itself was under attack.
Seen by millions of people in over 100 countries worldwide from the 1940's to 1960's, they present a historic snapshot of Britain, portraying its industry, its landscapes, and its people. The Collection is fantastically varied, covering anything from how a bicycle is made, to how the British spend their Saturdays. They provide us with a unique insight - not necessarily into how Britain actually was, but more into how Britain once wanted to be perceived by the rest of the world.
Alongside basic credits and production information, you can find some fascinating pieces of trivia, photos, and screen grabs, as well as the original synopses that the films were distributed with. Some of the films give you the option to go even deeper, to learn a little more about how the films was made. And, perhaps most importantly, you can not only watch the films online but download them too.
British Council Film: British Council Film Collection
(Thanks, Sarah!)
