Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

Continues at GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians’ communications at G20 summits | UK news | The Guardian.

Of course I’m not going to open it – at least not yet – and because it comes from Miami medical school rather than the ostensible “Gmail Team”, I am pretty sure it’s low-grade spam.

Just wondering if anyone else has it?

These outrageously adorable baby foxes were born on the grounds of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. They like to hang out in the Zen Garden. And they’re the stars of a Facebook page called “FB Foxes.” Do you like them?

Of course you like them. They are baby foxes. Facebook needs a “Love” button. Mark Zuckerberg was an early fan of the page, which now has more than 8,000 followers.

via Mark Zuckerberg “Likes” Something That’s Awesome: Baby Foxes.

Talk, for example, was built to help enterprise users communicate better, Singhal says. “The notion of creating something that’s social and that’s always available wasn’t the same charter as we set out with when we created Talk.” With Hangouts, Singhal says Google had to make the difficult decision to drop the very “open” XMPP standard that it helped pioneer.

via Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google’s big fix for its messaging mess | The Verge.

Hackers often encounter public uncertainty at their craft’s virtue. With the forthcoming National Day of Civic Hacking, however, their celebration of creativity, collaboration and technical innovation sees its first “national holiday.”Groups leading the June 1-2 event include Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for America and the investment firm Innovation Endeavors. They’re working with government agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau, NASA and the U.S. Dept. of Labor to host activities which invite everyone to join the “civic hacker” community.The weekend’s events will include block parties, meetups and hackathons, where participants will gather to prototype solutions to community-specific problems. “Challenges” will be identified, and made available to the public shortly before the event in each town, with invitations issued to so-called citizen hackers.

via Hackers prepare for first “national holiday” in their honor – Boing Boing.

STOOPIDTALL – CICLAVIA 2013 – LA BIKE CULT from Richie Trimble on Vimeo.

via STOOPIDTALL – CICLAVIA 2013 – LA BIKE CULT on Vimeo.

David Cameron says he backs “good, clean wi-fi” plans to filter public wireless networks from inappropriate content. Apart from this being a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist (hoards of toddlers plaguing cafes with porn watching), the potential problems are obvious.

Most public wifi networks already have content filters in place, however, and as an example of the sort of things they block, let’s look at the “UK’s largest public-access WiFi hotspot network”, The Cloud:

…continues with examples at #yeahitsabithipster • What’s wrong with “Good, clean wi-fi”?.

I recognise that this is an unorthodox approach, so I will be brief and hope you find time to respond.

IBM’s acquisition of Green Hat has given us a leadership position in the service virtualisation and integration testing market. IBM’s service virtualisation solution enables our customers to simulate and model the services that share dependencies with the new solutions they are developing. With IBM Green Hat you are able to work with systems which are:

• Not yet operational, or still under active development.
• Only available for testing in limited capacity or at inconvenient times.
• Owned by a third party or partner, who may charge significant fees for access.
• Difficult or expensive to provision or configure in a test environment.
• Required for simultaneous testing by teams with different requirements.

Through the adoption of IBM’s solution, a major financial institution has saved £30 million in the last 3 years, whilst being able to increase the projects delivered by over 100%. 

If this is an area of current consideration I would like to book some time in your diary to identify areas where IBM would be able to help you to meet your business needs more effectively. 

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

[Name Elided]
Rational Account Manager – IBM

Aquarium, Cage Duplex by Constance Guisset « CubeMe.

The National Police Agency in Japan is apparently asking ISPs in that country to “voluntarily” block the use of Tor, the well-known and widely used system for anonymously surfing the internet.

An expert panel to the NPA, which was looking into measures to combat crimes abusing the Tor system, compiled a report on April 18 stating that blocking online communications at the discretion of site administrators will be effective in preventing such crimes. Based on the recommendation, the NPA will urge the Internet provider industry and other entities to make voluntary efforts to that effect.

This is an extreme and dangerous overreaction. Yes, some people abuse the anonymity of Tor to do illegal things. Just as some people abuse the anonymity of cash to do bad things. But we don’t then outlaw cash because of this. There are many, many reasons why people have good reason to seek out an anonymizing tool like Tor to protect their identity. What if they’re whistle blowing on organized crime or corruption (say) in the police force? As for the fear that it’s being used for criminal activity, that doesn’t mean that police cannot identify them through other means. We’ve seen time and time again people leave digital tracks in other ways when they’re committing crimes. Yes, it makes life more difficult for police, and it means they have to do actual detective work, but that’s what their job is.

via Police In Japan Are Asking ISPs To Start Blocking Tor | Techdirt.

Since the beginning of the cybersecurity FUDgasm from Congress, we’ve been asking for proof of the actual problem. All we get are stories about how airplanes might fall from the sky, but not a single, actual example of any serious problem. Recently, some of the rhetoric shifted to how it wasn’t necessarily planes falling from the sky but Chinese hackers eating away at our livelihoods by hacking into computers to get our secrets and destroy our economy. Today, Congress is debating CISPA (in secret) based on this assumption. There’s just one problem: it’s still not true.

The 27 largest companies have now admitted to the SEC that cyberattacks are basically meaningless and have done little to no damage.

The 27 largest U.S. companies reporting cyber attacks say they sustained no major financial losses, exposing a disconnect with federal officials who say billions of dollars in corporate secrets are being stolen.

MetLife Inc., Coca-Cola Co. (KO), and Honeywell International Inc. were among the 100 largest U.S. companies by revenue to disclose online attacks in recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Citigroup Inc. (C) reported “limited losses” while the others said there was no material impact.

So what’s this all really about? It goes back to what we said from the very, very beginning. This is all FUD, engineered by defense contractors looking for a new way to charge the government tons of money, combined with a willing government who sees this as an opportunity to further take away the public’s privacy by claiming that it needs to see into corporate networks to prevent these attacks.

If this was a real problem, wouldn’t we see at least some evidence?

via As Congress Debates CISPA, Companies Admit No Real Damage From Cyberattacks | Techdirt.