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Thursday, 8 September 2011
Peter Hitchens: The War On Drugs
The war on drugs is something often talked about, and for the most part we’re lead to believe our Governments and Police force takes quite a serious stance on their tolerance for narcotics. But is the war on drugs all it’s made out to be? Peter Hitchens from the Mail on Sunday would have you believe otherwise – labelling the war on drugs, at least in the United Kingdom, a sham.
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Wednesday, 7 September 2011
John Young (@Cryptomeorg) on the security of disclosure sites
Cybersecurity wizards often repeat that a race is on between cyber defenders against cyber attackers and the attackers are winning due to the greater variety of attacker swarms against Maginot Line defenders.
A Dutch official said today that online security of government websites cannot be assured, that ordinary paper and mail are much superior. That has been Cryptome's advice for several years -- that online security is very poor and security peddlers and product distributors are concealing this deficiency to capitalize on the popularity of the Internet -- among them disclosure sites.
New cyber defenses become outdated instantly due to a continuous onslaught, some by amateurs having fun, some by competitors, most by criminals who sell their produce to a bevy of purchasers, governmental, commercial, individual.
Attacks are increasing geometrically as youngsters coming into cyber maurading proliferate, in particular in nations outside the major powers who are learning the limits of power in cyberworld they have created and promoted.
This means that any platform which offers disclosure services, aka leaksites, will lag the prowess and multitude of attackers and should warn submitters that the first and most important defense must start on the submitters' end.
And that the greater the risk a submission poses to the submitter the greater the need for for submitter's own defenses and never rely upon the platform's promises of protection. This was put in a nutshell by a National Security Agency paper in 2000 addressing the futility of computer security, "The Inevitability of Failure: The Flawed Assumption of Security in Modern Computing Environments."
http://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/publications/inevitability.pdf
Beyond unavoidable insecurity in computers an networks, submissions may be intercepted in transit, misplaced at the platform end, misunderstood and/or misjudged by the platform staff, or improperly explained and published. Disclosure platforms do
not have sufficient stable, well-trained staff to compensate for the turnover in volunteers with their limited skills ineptly directly by site operators.
You will recall that these are all applicable to WikiLeaks and most of its emulators as well as governments, commerce and the wealthy. OpenLeaks has attempted to address them but it is quite difficult not only for a low-resourced initiative but also
for the well-endowed.
At the moment the well-endowed and those less so are obscuring the lack of online and other forms of digital security, instead engage in what the wizards call "security by obscurity," hoping attackers will not find and exploit weaknesses.
As we see near daily, admission of security breaches are escalating not because the providers want to tell but because insecurity is being exposed by those who wish to no longer hide the truth known to insiders and a growing crowd of outsiders. To wit, DDB and others in the security and hacker world. They are calumnized by insiders who hope to maintain obscurity a while longer.
This means your most distinguished institutional readers in finance, law, government, intelligence and the rest who vaunt their prowess for credibility, authenticity and security, face increasing disclosure of faults in their protection pretenses -- which includes global Cyber Command initiatives.
The petit furor with Wikileaks, OpenLeaks, Anonymous
and newsy ilk portends a grand furor building toward disclosing something wonderful, I hope, about the cost of excessive secrecy and security obscurity,
no matter who lurks beneath the cloak. Wikileaks and emulators are the least problematic compared to the Titanic-grade protectors of the commonweal who are being outmatched by icebergs much more threatening than security-truth-disclosure sites.
Via
A Dutch official said today that online security of government websites cannot be assured, that ordinary paper and mail are much superior. That has been Cryptome's advice for several years -- that online security is very poor and security peddlers and product distributors are concealing this deficiency to capitalize on the popularity of the Internet -- among them disclosure sites.
New cyber defenses become outdated instantly due to a continuous onslaught, some by amateurs having fun, some by competitors, most by criminals who sell their produce to a bevy of purchasers, governmental, commercial, individual.
Attacks are increasing geometrically as youngsters coming into cyber maurading proliferate, in particular in nations outside the major powers who are learning the limits of power in cyberworld they have created and promoted.
This means that any platform which offers disclosure services, aka leaksites, will lag the prowess and multitude of attackers and should warn submitters that the first and most important defense must start on the submitters' end.
And that the greater the risk a submission poses to the submitter the greater the need for for submitter's own defenses and never rely upon the platform's promises of protection. This was put in a nutshell by a National Security Agency paper in 2000 addressing the futility of computer security, "The Inevitability of Failure: The Flawed Assumption of Security in Modern Computing Environments."
http://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/publications/inevitability.pdf
Beyond unavoidable insecurity in computers an networks, submissions may be intercepted in transit, misplaced at the platform end, misunderstood and/or misjudged by the platform staff, or improperly explained and published. Disclosure platforms do
not have sufficient stable, well-trained staff to compensate for the turnover in volunteers with their limited skills ineptly directly by site operators.
You will recall that these are all applicable to WikiLeaks and most of its emulators as well as governments, commerce and the wealthy. OpenLeaks has attempted to address them but it is quite difficult not only for a low-resourced initiative but also
for the well-endowed.
At the moment the well-endowed and those less so are obscuring the lack of online and other forms of digital security, instead engage in what the wizards call "security by obscurity," hoping attackers will not find and exploit weaknesses.
As we see near daily, admission of security breaches are escalating not because the providers want to tell but because insecurity is being exposed by those who wish to no longer hide the truth known to insiders and a growing crowd of outsiders. To wit, DDB and others in the security and hacker world. They are calumnized by insiders who hope to maintain obscurity a while longer.
This means your most distinguished institutional readers in finance, law, government, intelligence and the rest who vaunt their prowess for credibility, authenticity and security, face increasing disclosure of faults in their protection pretenses -- which includes global Cyber Command initiatives.
The petit furor with Wikileaks, OpenLeaks, Anonymous
and newsy ilk portends a grand furor building toward disclosing something wonderful, I hope, about the cost of excessive secrecy and security obscurity,
no matter who lurks beneath the cloak. Wikileaks and emulators are the least problematic compared to the Titanic-grade protectors of the commonweal who are being outmatched by icebergs much more threatening than security-truth-disclosure sites.
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Queen - Live At Wembley Stadium 1986
1. One Vision
2. Tie Your Mother Down
3. In the Lap of the Gods
4. Seven Seas of Rhye
5. A Kind of Magic
6. Another One Bites the Dust
7. Who Wants To Live Forever
8. I Want to Break Free
9. Impromptu
10. Brighton Rock
11. Now I'm Here
12. Love of My Life
13. Is This the World We Created
14. Bohemian Rhapsody
15. Hammer To Fall
16. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
17. Radio Ga Ga
18. We Will Rock You
19. Friends Will Be Friends
20. We Are the Champions
21. God Save the Queen
Uploaded by http://www.freddieforaday.com/ to celebrate Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday
Footprints On The Moon
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 sites, revealing the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored these areas.
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Blasphemous Jazz: The Bitches Brew Sessions (Free Download)
On Thursday June 2, 2011 at The Little Bar in South Philadelphia; Mndsgn, Swarvy, Sir Froderick, Knxwledge, Josh Hey and Stainless Steele came together to play a live show that they called “Blasphemous Jazz”. The concept for the show was that each artist would produce the re-workings of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ album. Each producer played a live set which included their Bitches Brew session. The show was hosted/Emceed by Stainless Steele. This release is the studio version of what was performed live that night.
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Did Conservatives sell out Canada to U.S. copyright interests?
Documents released through Wiki Leaks are painting an alarming picture of Conservative collusion with U.S interests to force through U.S. style copyright legislation.
New Democrat Digital Affairs Critic Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay) says the leaks raise serious questions about the role played by former Industry Ministers Maxime Bernier and Tony Clement.
The documents reveal how a key aide to then-Industry Minister Tony Clement urged the United States to put Canada on their piracy watch-list in order to pressure Parliament to pass legislation that undermines the rights of Canadian consumers.
“The U.S. Piracy List is supposed to be reserved for countries on the margin of international law. Instead it is being used as a bully tool to undermine Canada's international trade reputation,” said Angus. “It is astounding that Tony Clement would tarnish Canada’s international trade reputation by encouraging U.S. efforts to put us on this black list. Conservatives can’t be trusted to stand up for Canadian interests.”
The Wiki Leaks documents also reveal how former Industry Minister Maxime Bernier offered to give the American government a sneak peek at new copyright legislation even before it had been brought to the House of Commons.
“The Wiki Leaks documents reveal a pattern of collusion on the part of the Conservatives to undermine Parliament and sell out Canadian consumers. Canadians expect their government to stand up to unfair strong-arm tactics over copyright” said Angus. “Tony Clement appears to have supported a reckless course that damaged our international standing."
@'Jack Layton'
New Democrat Digital Affairs Critic Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay) says the leaks raise serious questions about the role played by former Industry Ministers Maxime Bernier and Tony Clement.
The documents reveal how a key aide to then-Industry Minister Tony Clement urged the United States to put Canada on their piracy watch-list in order to pressure Parliament to pass legislation that undermines the rights of Canadian consumers.
“The U.S. Piracy List is supposed to be reserved for countries on the margin of international law. Instead it is being used as a bully tool to undermine Canada's international trade reputation,” said Angus. “It is astounding that Tony Clement would tarnish Canada’s international trade reputation by encouraging U.S. efforts to put us on this black list. Conservatives can’t be trusted to stand up for Canadian interests.”
The Wiki Leaks documents also reveal how former Industry Minister Maxime Bernier offered to give the American government a sneak peek at new copyright legislation even before it had been brought to the House of Commons.
“The Wiki Leaks documents reveal a pattern of collusion on the part of the Conservatives to undermine Parliament and sell out Canadian consumers. Canadians expect their government to stand up to unfair strong-arm tactics over copyright” said Angus. “Tony Clement appears to have supported a reckless course that damaged our international standing."
@'Jack Layton'
Michael Parenti - The Face of Imperialism
"Michael Parenti's The Face of Imperialism is a powerful, frightening, and honest book. It will be hated by those who run the Empire, and it will be loved by people who are searching for truth amidst the piles of garbage of Western propaganda. Above all, this book will be like a bright spark of hope for billions of men, women, and children who are fighting this very moment for survival, defending themselves against the Empire and against all monstrous faces and masks of imperialism." —Andre Vltchek, author of Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad.
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JohnFugelsang John Fugelsan
Rick Perry cut Texas Volunteer Fire Dept funding 75%, now asking Federal Gov't for money to fight fires. Any questions?
Rick Perry cut Texas Volunteer Fire Dept funding 75%, now asking Federal Gov't for money to fight fires. Any questions?
Spaceboy - This one's for you! XXX
David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, about an astronaut whose mission goes horribly wrong, doesn’t sound as good bedtime reading, but that didn’t stop illustrator Andrew Kolb from turning the story into a children’s picture book.
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No longer available as a PDF from Andrew's site, but there is a little message:
'Note: This is merely a concept and no physical form of this book will be made until all involved approve of the collaboration.'...with this cover...
...hmmm!
The Catholic Church's Secret Sex-Crime Files
The five co-defendants sit close enough to shake hands in the Philadelphia courtroom, but they never once acknowledge one another. Father James Brennan, a 47-year-old priest accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, looks sad and stooped in a navy sweater, unshaven and sniffling. Edward Avery, a defrocked priest in his sixties, wears an unsettlingly pleasant expression on his face, as though he's mentally very far away. He and two other defendants – the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, also in his sixties, and Bernard Shero, a former Catholic schoolteacher in his forties – are accused of passing around "Billy," a fifth-grade altar boy. According to the charges, the three men raped and sodomized the 10-year-old, sometimes making him perform stripteases or getting him drunk on sacramental wine after Mass.
Heinous as the accusations are, the most shocking – and significant – are those against the fifth defendant, Monsignor William Lynn. At 60, Lynn is portly and dignified, his thin lips pressed together and his double chin held high. In a dramatic fashion statement, he alone has chosen to wear his black clerical garb today, a startling reminder that this is a priest on trial, a revered representative of the Catholic Church, not to mention a high-ranking official in Philadelphia's archdiocese. Lynn, who reported directly to the cardinal, was the trusted custodian of a trove of documents known in the church as the "Secret Archives files." The files prove what many have long suspected: that officials in the upper echelons of the church not only tolerated the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests but conspired to hide the crimes and silence the victims. Lynn is accused of having been the archdiocese's sex-abuse fixer, the man who covered up for its priests. Incredibly, after a scandal that has rocked the church for a generation, he is the first Catholic official ever criminally charged for the cover-up.
"All rise," the court crier intones as the judge enters, and Lynn stands, flanked by his high-powered lawyers, whose hefty fees are being paid by the archdiocese. The implications of the trial are staggering for the church as a whole. In sheltering abusive priests, Lynn wasn't some lone wolf with monstrous sexual appetites, as the church has taken to portraying priests who have molested children. According to two scathing grand-jury reports, protocols for protecting rapists in the clergy have been in place in Philadelphia for half a century, under the regimes of three different cardinals. Lynn was simply a company man, a faithful bureaucrat who did his job exceedingly well. His actions were encouraged by his superiors, who in turn received orders from their superiors – an unbroken chain of command stretching all the way to Rome. In bringing conspiracy charges against Lynn, the Philadelphia district attorney is making a bold statement: that the Catholic hierarchy's failure to protect children from sexual abuse isn't the fault of an inept medieval bureaucracy, but rather the deliberate and criminal work of a cold and calculating organization. In a very real sense, it's not just Lynn who is on trial here. It's the Catholic Church itself...
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Sabrina Rubin Erdely @'Rolling Stone'
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