Sunday, 9 October 2011

Banksy's latest

leeranaldo Lee Ranaldo

Shit is fucked up and bullshit instagr.am/p/PgbrI/

Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware

The largest European hacker club, "Chaos Computer Club" (CCC), has reverse engineered and analyzed a "lawful interception" malware program used by German police forces. It has been found in the wild and submitted to the CCC anonymously. The malware can not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs. Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet.

Even before the German constitutional court ("Bundesverfassungsgericht") on February 27 2008 forbade the use of malware to manipulate German citizen's PCs, the German government introduced a less conspicuous newspeak variant of the term spy software: "Quellen-TKÜ" (the term means "source wiretapping" or lawful interception at the source). This Quellen-TKÜ can by definition only be used for wiretapping internet telephony. The court also said that this has to be enforced through technical and legal means.
The CCC now published the extracted binary files [0] of the government malware that was used for "Quellen-TKÜ", together with a report about the functionality found and our conclusions about these findings [1]. During this analysis, the CCC wrote its own remote control software for the trojan.
The CCC analysis reveals functionality in the "Bundestrojaner light" (Bundestrojaner meaning "federal trojan" and is the colloquial German term for the original government malware concept) concealed as "Quellen-TKÜ" that go much further than to just observe and intercept internet based telecommunication, and thus violates the terms set by the constitutional court. The trojan can, for example, receive uploads of arbitrary programs from the Internet and execute them remotely. This means, an "upgrade path" from Quellen-TKÜ to the full Bundestrojaner's functionality is built-in right from the start. Activation of the computer's hardware like microphone or camera can be used for room surveillance.
The analysis concludes, that the trojan's developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer...

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@'CCC'

Brian Eno at the Stop The War rally in London on October 8, 2011

Via

kpunk99 Mark Fisher

Watching Eno on Newsnight from a few days ago. He really has got nothing to say of any interest now. Same spiel for about 20 years.

Glinner Graham Linehan

That Steve Jobs thought LSD integral to his success is another validation of the Bill Hicks theory that drugs drive human evolution. #hurray

Glinner Graham Linehan

Not that everyone who takes LSD changes the world, as Ben Folds knows bit.ly/mQC9yr

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Albert Camus

Camila Vallejo – Latin America's 23-year-old new revolutionary folk hero

Netherlands to classify high-potency cannabis as hard drug

Pre-rolled joints at a coffee shop in Amsterdam. The Dutch government plans to classify high-potency cannabis alongside hard drugs. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
The Dutch government has said it will move to classify high-potency cannabis alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, the latest step in the country's ongoing reversal of its liberal policies.
The decision means most of the cannabis now sold in Dutch coffee shops would have to be replaced by milder variants. But sceptics said the move would be difficult to enforce, and that it could simply lead many users to smoke more of the less potent weed.
Possession of cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but police do not prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and it is sold openly in designated cafes. Growers are routinely prosecuted if caught.
Maxime Verhagen, the economic affairs minister, said cannabis containing more than 15% of its main active chemical, THC, is so much stronger than what was common a generation ago that it should be considered a different drug entirely.
The high potency cannabis has "played a role in increasing public health damage", he said at a press conference in The Hague.
The cabinet has not said when it will begin enforcing the rule.
Jeffrey Parsons, a psychologist at Hunter College in New York, who studies addiction, said the policy may not have the benefits the government is hoping for.
"If it encourages smoking an increased amount of low-concentration THC weed, it is likely to actually cause more harm than good," he said, citing the potential lung damage and cancer-causing effects of extra inhalation.
The Dutch justice ministry said it was up to cafes to regulate their own products and police will seize random samples for testing.
But Gerrit-Jan ten Bloomendal, spokesman for the Platform of Cannabis Businesses in the Netherlands, said implementing the plan would be difficult "if not impossible".
"How are we going to know whether a given batch exceeds 15% THC? For that matter, how would health inspectors know?" he said. He predicted a black market will develop for highly potent cannabis.
The ongoing Dutch crackdown on cannabis is part of a decade-long rethink of liberalism in general that has seen a third of the windows in Amsterdam's red light district closed and led the Netherlands to adopt some of the toughest immigration rules in Europe.
The number of licensed coffee houses has been reduced, and earlier this year the government announced plans to ban tourists from buying cannabis. That has been resisted by the city of Amsterdam, where the cafes selling cannabis are a major tourist draw.
@'The Guardian'

Julian Assange at Stop The War Rally London 8/10/11

Stop the War Coalition demo in London marks 10th anniversary of Afghan war

billmaher Bill Maher
Is there anything stupider in the whole world than newspaper cartoons of recently dead famous people meeting god in heaven?

Epilepsy as a door between worlds

Polly Borland’s Indescribably Creepy 'Smudge' Photographs

Who’d have thought that a stocking could make a photo look so singularly creepy? London-based photographer Polly Borland’s ongoing series Smudge employs a series of strange costumes and incongruous props to distort the bodies of its subjects, creating images that are both evocative and disconcerting. They’re all the more disturbing as you never see the faces of the people you’re looking at — they’re hidden behind wigs or make-up smeared stockings or Clockwork Orange-style masks. There’s definitely something sexual about the images, but crucially, they’re never explicit — you get the sense that some strange fetish is being implied or evoked, but you’re never quite sure what it is, and maybe that’s for the best. Borland’s work is well known in her native Australia and her adopted home of London, and the first US showing of the photos from Smudge is happening now at Paul Kasmin gallery in NYC. Click through to see some of the images on show.