Disclaimer: The subject of these talks are GNUnet, Secushare, Internet Censorship and Surveillance, and Free Software. While the talks were hosted and recorded by the Pirate Party Berlin, no political statements or endorsements on behalf of the TU Munich or the GNUnet project or its sponsors are implied.

[PJ: This is just part 1. For the full video, go here. - YouTube

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Mr. Wales said the company will always refuse to comply with government requests to restrict information, calling access to knowledge and education a human right.

Since early June, in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, China’s Great Firewall has blocked the encrypted version of Wikipedia where users in China could access the site without filters. Now, users can now only access the unencrypted version of the site, where articles on politically sensitive topics are blocked and keyword filtering is common. - WSJ

Outside the specific hearings, House intelligence committee staff “must rely on the existing committee staff, many of whom used to work for the spy agencies they are tasked with overseeing” according to The Post. Senate intelligence committee staff, by contrast, can select whomever they like once they have adequate clearance. Those committee members and their staffers can only access classified documents in secure rooms and may not bring in outside notes. - Cyrus Farivar, ars technica

[PJ: Listening to this interview, particularly the part about how Watson works in dealing with uncertain data, I couldn't help but wonder why the NSA is using the old-fashioned keyword searching. It made me wonder if technology could solve the metadata collection/4th Amendment issue.] - ComputerHistory, YouTube

For users and merchants, the face verification technology may signal a greater potential for convenience, and operational constraints.

[PJ: Not to mention the surveillance efficiencies.] - Stephanie Taylor Christensen, Minyanville

Obama got $1,000 from Samsung in 2012 (as $250 [opensecrets.org] and $750 [opensecrets.org])

Even disallowing the home team advantage, I really would be surprised if Obama does Samsung the same favour he extended to Apple last week and overturns this ban. - Comment by meehawl, Slashdot

"Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition....

"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

"That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country." - Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic

“We expect to continue to play an active role in speaking up on issues related to Internet freedom, government access to user data, patent reform and freedom of expression,” Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser said in a statement. - Cecilia Kang, Washington Post

Germany has notoriously strong data protection laws—likely the strongest in the world. But those laws do have law enforcement exceptions for security agencies, like the BND, Germany’s equivalent to the National Security Agency. The BND likely can easily access e-mails stored unencrypted on German servers with little legal or technical interference. Clearly, forcing users (particularly less tech-savvy ones) to use SMTP TLS provides a modicum of better protection for data in transit, but it's hardly anywhere close to improved security for stored data.- Cyrus Farivar, ars technica

How does using wget qualify as computer fraud? U.S. prosecutors pointed out that wget was not on the list of “approved” programs for use in facility where Manning worked. They argued that, although Manning was allowed to access the files, using an unauthorized program to do it amounted to a digital “trespass” and thus computer fraud. They also used the fact that wget was not permitted on Manning’s computer as further evidence that using it amounted to illegal computer access. - Max Fisher, Washington Post

There is no way to do encrypted e-mail where the content is protected. No way where the metadata is protected. Assuming that the e-mail is based in the country that can apply pressure to the mail provider… Almost any government has the ability to pressure a mail provider in that country to hand over what it has....We [also] plan to put some servers in Switzerland.

Q: Why Switzerland?

Zimmerman: They don’t have the data retention laws that the European Union have. All of the EU countries are subject to EU data retention laws. In that respect Europe is worse than the U.S. We don’t really have the same data retention laws here, although we seem to be heading in that direction. We’re working on [building servers to base in Switzerland] now. It takes time [due to] complicated agreements with European carriers. [Note: Silent Circle essentially wants to build gateways in Europe to the region's public switch network, so that someone using the Silent Circle calling or texting app outside of Europe, could call into someone without the service in the region.] That’s where we’re getting the customer demand. If you’re doing end-to-end encryption, the servers we have in Canada are just fine for that. - Parmy Olson, Forbes

Any hints that those methods could be undermined must be taken seriously, said Stamos. They are used to protect banking, online commerce, and e-mail, as well as the mechanisms that ensure that updates downloaded by operating systems such as Windows and OSX are genuine. The result of the two encryption methods being broken would be, said Stamos, “a total failure of trust on the Internet.”

[PJ: Quaint. Trust on the Internet. Anyway, if it's so that the NSA retains encrypted email for five years, now we see why five.] - Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review

He doesn’t have the technological capability to decrypt his customer’s data but if someone could intercept the communication between the Lavabit’s Dallas-based servers and a user, they could get the user’s password and then use that to decrypt their data....“I’m taking a break from email,” said Levison. “If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either.” - Kashmir Hill, Forbes

"...Hopwood proves that my sentencing instincts suck. When I sent him to prison, I would have bet the farm and all the animals that Hopwood would fail miserably as a productive citizen when he finally got out of prison. My gut told me that Hopwood was a punk — all mouth, and very little else. My viscera was wrong." - Will Baude, Volokh Conspiracy

This should serve as a crucial reminder that you can’t build a massive architecture of surveillance “just for terrorism” and expect it to remain limited to that function: once the apparatus exists, there will inevitably be incredible pressure from other interests within government to expand its use. Once the data is already begin collected, after all, it seems a waste not to exploit its full potential. - Julian Sanchez, Cato Institute