Wednesday, August 21, 2013

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NSA spying is costing big business big money

Posted: 21 Aug 2013 02:33 AM PDT

US politicians are expected to retreat from their obsession with spying on citizens after it was revealed that the biggest losers were actually corporations.

Since the so-called Land of the Fee overthrew its lawful king in a French backed terrorist coup, most of the country's major decisions have been made to prop up businesses and corporate culture.

Snooping on citizens is more of a knee jerk reaction against terrorism which was, in itself, a smoke screen for poor economic performance by the last two presidents, writes Nick Farrell under a pseudonym.

Now it seems that the snooping is getting in the way of the US's number one priority of protecting big business from real life.

It turns out that the NSA surveillance programmes are very damaging for the American technology industry.

A report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said that companies that provide cloud computing services stand to lose as much as $35 billion over the next three years unless Congress takes action to alleviate the fears of American people that they are being snooped on.

Cloud computing and storage companies are being seen as the saviour for business and the economy. The industry is growing fast and is expected to be a $207 billion business by 2016.

But, to the NSA, putting the material on the cloud is a bit like shoving all the personal information in one place where it can be easily collected. While that makes life easier for the spooks, it makes companies less likely to go with cloud stuff.

Big Business is unhappy with the idea of being spied on as much as your average Jill or man Jack.

At the moment it is the US companies that dominate the international cloud computing market. Normally that would mean that piles of foreign cash would be rolling into the US from foreign parts.

However, Daniel Castro of ITIF, is now warning that foreign companies are not trusting American cloud computer companies and he thinks that US cloud companies will lose anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of the market to international rivals.

This will represent a loss of $22 billion to $35 billion.

Already 10 percent of international companies surveyed have already cancelled a project that used a cloud computing service based in the US and 56 percent of companies surveyed are "less likely" to use a US based cloud computing service.

It also seems that 36 percent of US companies surveyed said they have found it "more difficult" to do business outside of the country because of NSA spying.

When you factor all that in, Big Biz firms are almost certain to remind their sock puppets that this spying lark is going to have to stop. It does not matter if occasionally someone blows something up in the name of their terror campaign, so long as US business is not harmed. 

UK government claims it is right to hassle the press

Posted: 21 Aug 2013 02:29 AM PDT

The UK government claims it is doing the right thing hassling the press by holding their family hostage.

In a statement, the British government defended its moves to use anti-terrorism powers to lock up David Miranda at a London airport. Miranda is the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is threatening to provide scoops from the cache of Edward Snowden.

Home Secretary Theresa May said Miranda was held to prevent stolen data to aid terrorists.

Talking to Reuters, May claimed that it was "absolutely right" that if the police believe that somebody is in possession of highly sensitive, stolen information that could help terrorists, that could risk lives, lead to a potential loss of life, the police are able to act - and that's what the law lets them do.

In a statement of the utterly obvious, she admitted that an independent reviewer was looking into the police conduct but said that she knew all about the decision to lock up Miranda.

The United States said Britain gave it a "heads up" but it did not ask for Miranda to be questioned.

The other weak point about May's comments is that if Miranda was arrested because the police were worried about terrorism, they forgot to actually ask him any questions about it.

Miranda said the officers who questioned him didn't ask him one question that could be linked to terrorism.

Yesterday it was reported that the UK government had entered a newspaper offices and destroyed hard drives containing Snowden material. It wasn't disclosed which brand of hard drive was involved.

The British action is surprising the US White House and spokesman John Earnest hinted that it was a little extreme.

He could not see US authorities invading a newspaper and destroying hard drives to protect national security, like the British had done.

"That's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate," Earnest told reporters.

So May should know that she is on hiding to no-where when her actions are being dubbed by right wing nutjobs in the US as being a tad extreme. 

Intel tries to capitalise on late entrance into tab market

Posted: 21 Aug 2013 02:26 AM PDT

Chipzilla is going to launch new tablet platforms, 14nm Cherry Trail in the third quarter and 14nm Willow Trail in the fourth quarter of next year, so demonstrating its complete inability to think for itself.

The heads-up comes from Digitimes  and is far enough in the future to be forgotten when the time comes.

Quoting its usual deep throats, the story claims that there will be a new smartphone SoC, 22nm Merrifield, at the end of 2013, another dubbed Moorefield in the first half of 2014 and a 14nm Morganfield in the first quarter of 2015.

Merrifield will have a performance boost of about 50 per cent and a longer battery life compared to Intel's existing smartphone platform Clover Trail+.

Chipzilla is to unveil its 22nm Bay Trail-based processors with the Silvermont architecture at the Intel Developer Forum in September.

Bay Trail-T are processors for tablets and will support Windows 8.1 and Android 4.2, the sources said.

Bay Trail-T uses the Silvermont architecture and will have a battery life over eight hours when active and weeks while idling. It will have two clock speed specifications, 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz and a Gen 7 GPU, the sources claimed.

Intel will distribute its Cherry Trail samples to partners at the end of 2013 and show the platform off at Computex 2014, in June and announce the CPUs in the third quarter of 2014.

For those who came in late, Cherry Trail features Intel's 14nm Airmont architecture with a clock speed of 2.7GHz and a GEN 8 GPU.  Intel is getting long in the teeth and short in the iconic innovation stakes.

Woz fumes at Steve Jobs biopic

Posted: 21 Aug 2013 02:22 AM PDT

It takes a lot to get Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak upset – after all he forgave Steve Jobs many times over.

However he thinks that the Ashton Kutcher bio pic about Jobs is riddled with inaccuracies and appears to be doing his best to discredit the flick.

But Kutcher said that Woz is just disparaging the film because he's being paid to consult on a different Jobs film. That made Woz even crosser, saying that Kutcher has made 'disingenuous' and 'wrong' statements about him.

The spat, over the newly-released biopic entitled Jobs has played out in the columns of the tabloids.

The newly-released biopic of Apple founder Steve Jobs, entitled Jobs, has resulted in a furious exchange between Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and the film's lead, Ashton Kutcher.

Kutcher plays the tech "visionary" in the film, about which Wozniak has posted his own unsolicited review on the tech site Gizmodo.

The flick follows Jobs from his days as a college drop-out to the release of the iPod in 2001. Woz says it is 'fiction' but the public says it is boring. The film only opened in the US over the weekend, but has already garnered lukewarm reviews.

Ashton claims that since Woz is being paid by another studio to put out its own Jobs movie it is not really his fault. Woz was 'extremely unavailable for us when producing this film'.

Woz hit back that Kutcher's film had already been written - making his consultation unnecessary and he was 'turned off' by the Jobs script.

Woz was miffed by the inference that he would slander the film for money.

He was also cross that an important part of Apple history wasn't included in the film.

Apple decided not to reward early friends who helped, so he gave them large blocks of his own stock. This made it possible for 80 other employees to get some stock prior to the IPO so they could participate in the wealth.

Woz is not the only one who has challenged the film's accuracy. He felt bad for many people who were portrayed wrongly in their interactions with Jobs and the company.

The problem was that the film was too easy on Jobs and played up the myth that he was a tech genius and businessman extraordinaire from the very beginning.

Woz blames everything on Kutcher who is an Apple fanboy and who has admitted that he cried the day Jobs died and that he 'loved a man he never knew'.

Wozniak praised the performances of some of the actors which is the flick's saving grace.

"I was attentive and entertained but not greatly enough to recommend the movie,' Wozniak wrote. 

Assange takes a right wing stance

Posted: 21 Aug 2013 02:05 AM PDT

Julian Assange's Wikileaks Party has decided to back Australia's gun nuts and white nationalists as it tries to get a seat in the Senate.

Assange's party is entering the New South Wales Senate Race and apparently if you want to get elected you have to come to a deal with other parties.

Many would have thought that Assange would head towards the Greens and other left wingers, because, after all WikiLeaks candidates in NSW include human rights activist Kellie Tranter. However Assange has surprised everyone by going throwing in his lot with the far right.

These parties include the Shooters and Fishers Party and the white nationalist Australia First Party who are the sworn enemies of the left.

Australia First's policies include reducing and limiting immigration and ''abolishing multiculturalism'' . Its leader is Jim Saleam, is a former neo-Nazi who was convicted in the late 1980s of organising a shotgun attack on the home of an Australian representative of the African National Congress.

To make matters worse, Assange's party said that it wanted to support the left but made an "administrative error" and backed the right instead, which does not bode well for its competence.

What is more alarming is that the move effectively knifed the Green's candidate, who would have been more in favour of Wikileak's wider agenda and could have put a Shooter's party candidate into the Senate.

High-profile WikiLeaks supporter and former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis told the Brisbane Times that it was a ''major error in judgement'' on Assange's part.

The Wikileaks Party insisted that it was not aligned to anyone but had made preferences to get its name above the line on the ballot paper.

Needless to say, the feeling is that Julian Assange should not give up his day job as he is much better at  that than being an Aussie politician. Last we hear,  Assange's day job was hiding in an embassy. 

Groklaw's Pamela Jones: "For me, the internet is over"

Posted: 20 Aug 2013 07:29 AM PDT

Groklaw's founder, Pamela Jones, has decided to pull the plug on the website, citing surveillance conerns in the wake of the NSA spying revelations.

Jones explained her reasoning in final Groklaw post, opening: "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum."

Lavabit was a secure email service which is thought to have been used by Edward Snowden . Its CEO shut Lavabit down after pressure from the US government rather than continue to run a compromised service.

"The conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad," Jones wrote. "And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the standpont of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this."

Groklaw has been an important community for law and in particular, the close intersection of technology and law.

It sometimes used anonymous tip-offs. Because the United States stores emails sent from outside the country - with encrypted emails stored for five years, Jones writes - readers from around the world could become compromised or exposed.

Jones said she plans to "get off of the internet to the degree it's possible", and that after thinking the situation through, she "can't stay online personally" not that privacy is being proved impossible.

"I find myself unable to write," Jones said. "I've always been a private person. That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours."

"Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the internet is over."

In a tweet, Privacy International said: "The mere threat of surveillance is enough to self-censor".
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