The Toronto Coalition to Stop the War-Bring your old shoes NoWar
UNWelcome Bush Rally! War Criminals Not Welcome Here! George W. Bush continues to evade justice and cash in on speaking fees. On Friday, his appearance with Bill Clinton in Toronto will be greeted by protest. *WAR CRIMINALS *NOT WELCOME HERE! *Rally Outside *Bush’s Speaking Engagement! *Live Music! Drumming! UNWelcome Mat! *Shoe Tossing! Guest Speakers! *Friday, May 29 *3pm to 6pm *Metro Toronto Convention Centre *255 Front Street West… From launching an illegal war on Iraq that has killed over one million people, to advocating torture at Guantánamo Bay and secret detention centres around the world, Bush has lots to answer for—and should be held to account. Join us for a city-wide rally on May 29—the day that Bush is slated to speak in Toronto—to demand that he be charged and arrested for war crimes… Don`t let Canada be a haven for war criminals. War criminals not welcome here! Join us as we roll out an UNWelcome mat for Bush! There will be: – live music – a 10 foot picture of Bush for you to throw your shoes at, – an UNwelcome mat, – speakers from a wide range of communities – chanting – placards to wave. We will have latex gloves painted with blood so hundreds can hold their ‘bloody’ hands up to protest the blood of millions on Bush’s hands.Bring your old shoes, tell your friends & co-workers, and come down! Download the poster and leaflet. [Comment: What? No waterboarding for charity? Found via Rabble.ca]

Pentagon denies prison photos show rape Montreal Gazette
The Pentagon on Thursday denied a British newspaper report that photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse, whose release U.S. President Barack Obama wants to block, include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Daily Telegraph newspaper had shown “an inability to get the facts right”. Thursday’s Telegraph quoted retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted a 2004 investigation into abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, as saying the pictures showed “torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.” The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Others were said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine published in 2007, Taguba was quoted as saying that he saw a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee. Photographs of abuse at the jail outside Baghdad that were published in 2004 damaged the image of the United States as it fought an escalating war against insurgents in Iraq that caused deep resentment throughout the Muslim world. Earlier this month, the Obama administration reversed course and decided it would fight the release of the photographs, which the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to obtain through legal action.

UK minister faces ‘torture’ writ BBC
A Briton held on suspicion of terrorism in Bangladesh is to sue Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, alleging she allowed his torture, the Home Office has confirmed. He claimed he made the tape-recorded confessions before being questioned by two men calling themselves Andrew and Liam who said they were from MI5. When he told them the confessions were false, they took a break and he was beaten again before their questioning resumed, Mr Rahman claims. He says at one point his wife was held in the next room, and Bangladeshi officers threatened to rape her. He was eventually released, only to be questioned several more times over the next two years by MI5 and detectives from Scotland Yard, he says.

Critical Windows vulnerability under attack, Microsoft warns The Register
The vulnerability in a Windows component known as DirectX is being targeted using booby-trapped QuickTime files, which when parsed can allow attackers to gain complete control of a computer. Because many browsers are designed to automatically play video, people can be compromised simply by visiting a site serving malicious files. Vista, Windows Server 2008 and the beta version of Widows 7 are not affected, and neither is Apple’s QuickTime player, Microsoft said. Microsoft has offered several work-arounds until a patch is available. The most straight-forward of them involves visiting this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971778 and clicking on the “Fix it” icon. (We got an error when using Firefox, but it worked fine with Internet Explorer.) Several additional fixes are available on the work-arounds section here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/971778.mspx . The installation of QuickTime doesn’t protect Windows users from being compromised. The vulnerability exists in the way a DirectX application programming interface known as DirectShow handles supported QuickTime files. The meeting was held “to discuss how best to support and preserve the traditions of newsgathering that will serve the American public,” according to the Newspaper Association of America, the trade group that organized the gathering. An antitrust lawyer attended the meeting to caution the participants about laws prohibiting collusion or other anticompetitive measures.

Hackers Breached US Army Servers SlashDot
“A Turkish hacking ring has broken into 2 sensitive U.S. Army servers, according to a new investigation uncovered by InformationWeek http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/federal/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217700619. The hackers, who go by the name ‘m0sted’ and are based in Turkey, penetrated servers at the Army’s McAlester Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma in January.

Lost laptop exposes thousands of pension records The Register

A lost laptop containing the personal data of 109,000 Pensions Trust members has sparked the latest in a growing list of information security breach alerts. The missing machine was stolen from the offices of NorthgateArinso, suppliers of the Pensions Trust’s computerised pensions administration system, where it was being used “as a database for development, training and performance testing”. Data on the drive was not encrypted… Data held on the laptop included name, address, date of birth, NI number, name of employer, salary details, name of and relationship to nominees and, for those drawing a pension, bank account details. Members of six of the Pension Trust’s 39 schemes were affected by the breach. The records potentially exposed data from May 2007.

Newspaper execs meet in Chicago to discuss Internet options Associated Press
About two dozen newspaper industry executives huddled Thursday to explore how they might be able to boost profits from their online operations as revenue from their print editions collapses. The meeting at a Chicago hotel is the latest indication that many newspapers intend to become more aggressive about protecting their Internet content and, in some cases, charging web surfers to read the material.

RIM warns over PDF peril The Register
Research In Motion (RIM) has warned of a vulnerability in how BlackBerry servers handle malformed PDF files that potentially leaves the door open to hacking attacks. If corporate users of BlackBerry mobile devices are tricked into opening an email message with a booby-trapped PDF attachment, it might be possible to inject hostile code onto a vulnerable server running the BlackBerry Attachment Service, RIM warns. BlackBerry Enterprise Server software version 4.1 Service Pack 3 (4.1.3) through 5.0 and BlackBerry Professional Software 4.1 Service Pack 4 (4.1.4) are affected. RIM has issued an an interim security software update as explained in an advisory here http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB18327. The Canadian firm is also advising customers to disable PDF file processing on the BlackBerry server, as a workaround, pending the application of a more complete fix.

Swiss Court Halts Non-Competitive Contract With Microsoft SlashDot
“Looks like the challenge to the Swiss Administrative Court concerning the government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding was successful: The court has issued a temporary injunction (note: article in German) against the Federal Office of Buildings and Logistics (BBL), effectively stopping the CHF 14M (£8M; $15M)-contract to deliver licenses and support for software used on government computers for the next three years.

Study Says DRM Pushes Users To Illegal Downloads TechDirt
A new study from a Cambridge law professor says that DRM doesn’t stop piracy, but rather prompts users to illegally download DRM-free pirated content (via Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/27/cambridge-study-drm.html). In short, the study found that users get frustrated by the restrictions put on legally purchased content by DRM and copy-protection technologies. Instead of rolling over and accepting this, they often change their behavior — choosing to download unrestricted, illegal content in the future. This goes along with what’s been pretty clear for a long time. DRM doesn’t work…

Hiding secret messages in internet traffic: a new how-to The Register
Researchers have demonstrated a new way to hide secret messages in internet traffic that can elude even vigilant network operators. The process is a network application of steganography, which is the ancient science and art of hiding messages in documents, pictures and other media in a way that can be easily detected by the intended recipient, but not by third parties. The researchers from the Warsaw University of Technology have found a way to apply the principle to network traffic by exploiting design weaknesses in TCP, or transmission control protocol. RSTEG, short for Retransmission Steganography, works by…

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people’s access to written material BoingBoing
Right now, in Geneva, at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world’s copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners. At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages), introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn’t want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word? The USA, that’s who. The Obama administration’s negotiators have joined with a rogue’s gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.

Australia opposes treaty to enhance access of blind people to copyright material EFA
Australia is part of a group of countries that are opposing a treaty that would ensure that people with a print disability have greater access to published copyright material. The draft treaty … includes several important clauses …

Stolen credit data posted online Australian IT

Victorian police are investigating a massive identity fraud involving the personal details of thousands of Australians that have been available on a blog site for more than a month. The data, discovered by The Australian, includes thousands of Visa, Mastercard and American Express numbers, including expiry dates, together with home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The list was posted on a free blogging site, where it was copied by search engine Google as part of its routine cataloguing of internet sites on April 21.

Blogger jailed for contempt in Smith case Houston Chronicle
A Houstonian who`s being sued by the mother of the late Anna Nicole Smith spent the holiday weekend in jail, making her the latest gossip blogger to pay a steep price for her hobby. Dave Heller, of the New York City-based Media Law Resource Center, said many bloggers are surprised to be sued. They are surprised they can be held responsible for the loose, hyperbolic language often used in private speech that they post on a public platform, he said. His group`s Web site http://mlrcblogsuits.blogspot.com/ features a growing list of lawsuits against bloggers. [Comment: Spotted via theinquirer.net]

Australian Communications and Media Authority censorship demand to Electronic Frontiers Australia over link to US pro-life site, 5 May 2009 Wikileaks
On the May 5, 2009, the Australian internet rights organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) was issued with the attached censorship demand from the national government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), over linking to the US-based pro-life site abortiontv.com. According to the rights group: “EFA’s web hosting provider was today the recipient of a Link Deletion notice from ACMA for an article on our web site ironically entitled “Net censorship already having a chilling effect”.

Marc – p2pnet

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May, 2009