You may have already heard about CISPA (or CISPA or CISPA at !wiki), if not the simple version is: It's another law/bill/treaty/crap designed to waste everyone's time.

The slightly longer version is that it is a bill designed to allow companies to share data with other companies or governments with less hassle, like the hassle of asking or even informing the person who's data is shared. The full title says it nicely: To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

One interesting thing has popped up in the news, it's that Facebook supports CISPA. Here are some other letters from some brave companies who support CISPA. In Facebook's case I can totally understand their view, their whole business is based on user's data. How could they not support this ?

Now the expected thing to do, if you are interested in privacy and that sort of thing, is to spend hours reading boring legislative crap until your brain starts pouring out of your ears. However, I really don't care this time. This might sound selfish or just lame, but I don't feel very affected by this. I don't have personal data on third party services (or ones I can't trust).

The real reason I don't care is not because I feel covered, it's because many of those that aren't covered do not care. Seriously, so many people believe that the practicality of having an email provider that let's you "star and tag" emails and the convenience of keeping up with friends just by clicking on their name outweighs any reason for concern, since years.

So if you use such services, and again disagree with this sort of legislation then it's your problem to solve now.. You can delete your account(s), write to them or just hope it will go away magically.

The other day I walked by Finsbury Square, I met Marc who is currently occupying the square along with others. I wont comment much, but here are some word from Marc himself.

I am there for justice to oppose the injustices concerning the poor in this country, the power should be with the people and not the government, the banks should be controlled and the bankers that have caused this world situation along with the politicians that watched and allowed it to happen because of their own self interests should be brought to justice and punished.

That is the peoples justice and the justice of truth not the governments corrupt justice. I am not anti capitalism but anti capitalism without integrity and without a eco friendly attitude to making wealth and to spread the generated wealth around to help the less well off to enable the poor to have a better standard of living and not live in poverty and struggle all their lives working for the man.

Bless all, be thankful for what you have, but strive for more in spirit. Spread peace and love and smile.

Marc

Here are some images from Finsbury Square:

Marc in his tent

Update: I've added a few photos. I also heard back from Marc who told me that after the recent Saint Paul's evictions many have moved over to Finsbury Square. He states People in the movement are selfish and egotistical and not working for the big cause. Maybe we need a re-birth of Occupy with clarity and leadership and structure. Let's hope these past events have opened people's minds to what our real problems are and who are the real moochers who.

Today I learned that on March 8 2012 the FBI will be shutting down some surrogate DNS resolvers and that could break the Internet for as much as 500 kilo Americans and many others in the world. These resolvers have been configured on computers that have been infected with some DNSChanger virus.

Wait, what ? Yeah so, this virus would replace the user's resolvers and point their DNS queries to malicious servers that would give whatever results they want, like point people to really fake banking sites and fake webmails etc etc with the difference to usual phishing being that they would have the correct URL in the address bar

So then I searched a bit and find out that the FBI has chased down the bad guys and replaced the malicious servers with one's that provide true DNS results so that no user's would be impacted, that was Operation Ghost Click.

The effect of this is that if you were infected, you probably still are. Indeed those infected had no idea because everything just continued functioning as usual. That was the goal it seems.

The obvious question is, why didn't they just redirect users to a page that explains that their systems have been infected, the FBI just saved the day, and eventually add a few links to help the user find a fix for their systems ? If I was a tiny bit paranoid I'd say it was a good opportunity to gather some user data.. . If I wasn't paranoid I would say that the "ruling class" is afraid of exposing their subjects to reality, fear of panic and all that stuff.

In some coffee shops you can easily get access to the Internet, what they do is just give you the password and voila. Neat right ? Anyway, these other coffee shops, chains to be precise, hire a 3rd party company to do it for them. So the other day I went in to one of them to get a coffee and an IP. This is what I noticed.. images.

And then, just to make sure I could feel the chilling effect of being censored... They blocked reddit.com/r/ACTA !!

Actually they blocked ALL of Reddit.

So there you go, the future of the Internet could be this.

Vic Toews wants to spy on underage children, and all other Canadians. At least that is what I understood from what I read today.

A Twitter user created the account vikileaks30 to enable others to get to know Vic Toews a bit better. It's an interesting demonstration of how it can be disturbing to have your personal life available to people you don't know.

One of the things that if find interesting in this proposal is: Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police. It reminds me of Symantec's dodgy unpatched and perhaps intentional backdoor they let lay around for a few years.

Anyway, it's been hard keeping up with the torrents of laws that are being thrown around these days, but most of them lately are focused on the dying entertainment industry. The other thing being again, that this law seems to want to actively gather information about the users themselves, read their emails and all that stuff. Every Canadian's emails that is, and every Canadian child of course, hence Vic Toews wants to spy on underage children.

Update: This very short clip tells a long story..

If you don't now what ACTA is, search the Internet for ACTA, that should let you find your own sources. If you do know what it's about then you are likely to be against it (unless you are part of the 1%).

On February 11 2012 you can protest against ACTA with us. Get information about your local protest here and join in.

In the meantime, you can also do a couple of things while keep your rear end glued to your chair:

• Send a letter to your representatives(EU)
• Sign this massive Avaaz petition

I'll see you there.

O2, a UK phone operator, seems to be sending along in the HTTP headers of their clients http requests the user's mobile phone number! Lewis Peckover has discovered this and set up a test page for people to see what information their mobile ISP is actually sending to websites.

To test, disable your mobile phone's Wifi and visit this page. There you should see the usual stuff, user-agent, IP, languages, etc.. If you see other things like your mobile phone number you might want to ask your ISP for explanations.

Another thing that Lewis notes is that O2 modifies content, he claims they downgrade images and insert JavaScript links. If true, this is really really bad, this is basically tampering and altering private communications. It's just like if the post office opened your letters, made reduced photocopies so your letters are lighter and then passed that on to you.

I am guessing this shouldn't work using HTTPS, however I would like to ask Lewis what is the deal on this as I do not have a mobile phone and hence cannot test this at all. I also don't have a Twitter account so... . If you do, ask him. Khtxbye : ]

Update: I found this old thread about the same sort of thing affecting other customers on other mobile networks. This is really not new and this is not an 02 issue but rather a mobile phone ISP issue.

How can the USA authorities take down a Hong-Kong based company and arrest people in New-Zealand ? Ars Technica explains, it turns out that the actions are based on the fact that Megaupload's clients were often in the USA, they ran adverts there and interacted with the USA market actively. In a way they are considered to have been running at least part of their business on USA grounds.

Fair or not, it seems that that is how the cookie crumbles, and crumbling it is. Personally I don't care for such websites and Kim Dotcom, aka Kimble Special Agent, seems far from being an angel. However it's still hard to accept that they can be taken down in an instant drug lord style. It doesn't seem like the accusations are half as bad as some towards companies that have either leaked petrol all over the world or have bankrupted families.. ...(insert long list of companies that messed up way more seriously and have in some cases even been bailed out).

In reaction to such news, an other "upload" service provider called Uploaded.to has decided to close it's service to the USA, this should help avoid breaking USA law on USA territory.

This whole abusive world policing attitude could earn the USA some Interweb censorship, but not from SOPA/PIPA this time, but simply from websites that do not want to have to deal with USA law. It's true that this Megaupload takedown happened right after the anti-SOPA strike, the what when why questions have been talked about all over the Internet, but now I am wondering if this isn't exactly what the USA wants, a censored Internet, like China and Iran, but censored voluntarily by website owners in fear of a possible breach of USA law and it's possible effects on one's postal address.

Update: In the past couple of days, many companies that provide the same services as Megaupload have either limited their services, closed their services to the U.S.A. or even just plain closed. Torrentfreak's report on the disturbance in the ecosystem.

A new book to be released in a few hours (I think this is on USA time): No Safe Harbor. This book is released by the United States Pirate Party, it features many interesting people and ideas.... .. and yes, it's licensed under the Creative Commons license. You can buy it or download it. Etc. You can even read it.

I just heard about Global Censorship Checkpoints, it's aim is to document various projects around the world that want to police the Internet. On this site you can see, which polices are implemented or under study in each country, there are also links to local organisations that warn about the dangers and such.

MegaUpload.com was just shut down and executives arrested, data centres violated, etc etc. The FBI it seems has the right to arrest people all over the world (New Zealand, Germany, Canada, etc etc).

At the same time the MPAA, RIAA and Department Of "Justice" websites are also down, I am guessing their websites were hosted on one of MegaUpload's servers. Ha, ha.

More details on TorrentFreak and/or TechLand if you are afraid of links that contain the word "torrent".

Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) speaks about the anti SOPA/PIPA blackout, noticeably about Wikipedia.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Indeed, nobody should be allowed to take down their own website, only MPAA and friends should have that kind of power.