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Submission + - GPG Programmer Werner Koch Receives Over $450K In Donations

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: The man who created and maintains the world's most-used email encryption tools is no longer going broke. A day after ProPublica published the heartbreaking story of Werner Koch, the donations are pouring in. It's a fitting outcome for 53-year-old Koch, whose Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) software has long been the industry standard for encryption.

Submission + - GnuPG Gets Back On Track With Funding

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Soon after the poor state of the GnuPG was unveiled, the online community has rallied to help Werner Koch. He wanted to hire a full-time programmer to work on the project alongside him and to ensure that he's not living on the brink of bankruptcy all the time. Immediately after the article was published, it was revealed that he got a one-time grant of $60,000 from the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Also, the community donated over $150,000, and Facebook and Stripe have each pledged to provide $50,000 per year. All in all, it looks like Werner Koch won't be worried about funding for quite some time. The problem remains: it's very likely that other projects just as important as this one are probably facing the same kind of issues, but it would be nice to hear about them before they get in trouble, and not after.

Submission + - NSA planned to discredit radicals based on web-browsing habits (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by wired_parrot
wired_parrot writes: New documents leaked show that the NSA was not only monitoring suspected radical sympathizers, but planned to discredit them based on their web-surfing habits. This includes not only evidence of porn browsing and online sexual activity, as well as extorsion and blackmail based on innapropriate use of funds. At the same time, the document leaked notes that very few of contacts noted were associated with terrorism

Comment bike safety (Score 1) 947

by proclus (#45225105) Attached to: How Safe Is Cycling?

I've been a bicycle commuter for 35 years. An often neglected safety tip is to slow it down abit. Let the motorists race to work, and save yourself some broken bones.
Google

Submission + - Jill Stein campaign accuses Google of illegally censoring campaign ads (jillstein.org)

Submitted by imortate
imortate writes: U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's campaign says that Google has informed them, the day before their campaign ads are set to run, that they will be censored due to "inappropriate language."

Google has served as the ad broker for placement of the campaign's satellite and cable television ad placements.

According to the campaign, "What Google does not seem to understand is that federal law prohibits broadcasters from censoring ads submitted by candidates for public office."

This is called the "no censorship rule," and is designed to protect broadcasters from liability for the content of campaign ads by forbidding them to censor campaign ads.

Has Google, in setting themselves up as a major ad broker, failed to understand and follow the laws that govern advertising and broadcasting?
Privacy

Submission + - US Justice Dept Defends Right To Record Police (wired.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "In recent times, it seems that many Police Departments believe that recording them doing their work is an act of war with police officers destroying the tapes, phones or cameras while arresting the folks doing it, but in a surprising twist, the US Justice Department has sent letter (PDF) to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department — who have been quite heavy handed in enforcing their "Don't record me bro!" mantra. The letter contains an awful lot of lawyer babble and lists many court cases and the like, although some sections are surprisingly clear "Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances. In addition to violating the First Amendment, police officers violate the core requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process clause when they irrevocably deprived individuals of their recordings without first providing notice and an opportunity to object." There is a lot more and it certainly seems like a firm foothold in the right direction."
Privacy

Submission + - Whistleblower: NSA has all of your email (democracynow.org)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: From DemocracyNow!
National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander’s assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us

Comment Re:Is that legal? (Score 1) 3

by proclus (#39011013) Attached to: Dealing With an Overly-Restrictive Intellectual Property Policy?

An employer makes a claim to what you produce in your free time. Legal or not, it is a wrong and invalid claim. The policy and employer deserves to receive the indicated response.

My advice is to produce on your free time. If your employer has this policy, then withhold the knowledge of if from him. If he asks, then lie. You have a right to your own work.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Submission + - Dealing With an Overly-Restrictive Intellectual Property Policy? 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am very happy with my current job but there have always been a few ideas for things I've wanted to develop on the side. Ideally I'd keep my day job, reserving mornings, evenings and weekends to see if the side-projects could become viable. The problem is: my employer has an IP policy that states that anything I do while under their employ is theirs, even when I'm off the clock. Does anyone have suggestions about workarounds, magic loopholes, false identity for the side projects... anything?
Government

Submission + - Why Didn't Slashdot Go Dark Today? (slashdot.org) 2

Submitted by wjcofkc
wjcofkc writes: Why didn't Slashdot go dark today? Considering Slashdot is at the forefront of intelligent discussion on the SOPA bill, and that users here are at the forefront of concern; why isn't Slashdot going dark today? Was there discussion amongst the ranks? If so, what logic led to the decision to stay live? It's not like there is a play by play to keep up on. Yes, I am literally asking Slashdot.
Security

Criminal Charges Filed Against AT&T iPad Attacker 122

Posted by CmdrTaco from the someone-will-be-sad dept.
Batblue writes "The US Department of Justice will file criminal charges against the alleged attackers who copied personal information from the AT&T network of approximately 120,000 iPad users, the US Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey announced Monday. Daniel Spitler will be charged in US District Court in New Jersey with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud. Andrew Auernheimer will be charged with the same counts at the US Western District Court of Arkansas, which is in Fayetteville. Auernheimer made headlines last June when he discovered that AT&T's website was disclosing the e-mail addresses and the unique ICC-ID numbers of multiple iPad owners. Claiming that he wanted to help AT&T improve its security, he wrote a computer script to extract the data from AT&T and then went public with the information. AT&T said that nobody from Auernheimer's hacking group contacted them about the flaw."

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