Piffey

Australia finished setting up its great firewall and began filtering their Internet (like much-accused China) this year censoring protests, pornography, and anything else the government-appointed censorship board found to be amoral. The secret, unpublished list has continued to grow as more and more websites are filtered and more reasons to filter are invented. Censorship in the country is becoming increasingly common as it is around the world in many developed nations. Governments seem to think that morals can be mandates and that citizens should be uniform. Surprised yet?

The latest uproar came when the censorship board was found to be increasingly banning pornography with women have an A-cup breast size because small breasts, they say, encourage pedophilia. This brought a steaming reaction across the Internet as it alienated a majority of women, handed out a government-catered sexual aesthetic preference, and essentially made assumptive cultural attacks on small-breasted women. While many supporters of government filtering have been quick to point out: the censorship board isn’t banning all small-breasted women. Are we supposed to be more comfortable with the fact that they are picking on just select groups then? Certain ethnic minorities that are profiting in the porn industry perhaps?

Many ignore the story all-together since it is just porn after all, but the important thing to notice is that in the problem of pedophilia and the Internet we continue to punish the wrong people. No amount of censorship will keep pedophiles away from what they crave. Punishing someone for the size of their breasts, saying that they encourage pedophilia, and then zapping some of their revenue in the process is not the way to catch or even stop pedophiles. Pedophilia starts and can be stopped off of the Internet.

Moving on to the next issue and for some reason much-ignored portion of the press release is the fact that the censor board is banning depictions of female ejaculation during orgasm. Ignoring female sexuality entirely the board is banning these depictions under the grounds that female ejaculation is abhorrent. A quick biology lesson tells us that female ejaculation is entirely natural, happens every time, and while typically only small and adding to typical vaginal lubrication can in certain situations come out in quantity and under great pressure much like the often-heralded male ejaculation or ba-dum-ching cumshot.

Many tracing the trending effects of the Australian censorship board have said that the panel’s mandates have already had massive changes on media this year. Their breast-size rulings have caused the magazines to take a plunge toward large breasted models to avoid hassle. What then will a banning of female ejaculation bring about? The very idea that a natural biological process or that someone’s natural size and shape are considered abhorrent means that the government can mandate proper size and protocol in sexual aesthetics and interaction.

People are quick to jump on the avoidance bandwagon and say that it’s just porn. The fact is that pornography has existed since cavemen figured out how to draw dicks on walls. Pornography, though in the background of society, depicts and defines a generations sexual tastes and preferences. Pornography is often how people come to discover how sexuality should be played out. Whether in written, visual, or spoken form it has a large influence on a generation’s sexual development. Where did your first “pornographic” experience come from? Where were your ideas of sexuality first formed?

As censorship boards increasingly become the norm across the Internet of the free world and not just under oppressive regimes we have to remember that censorship of aesthetics or biology is nothing more than discrimination and can only lead to discriminatory cultural trends. Censors have a vast influence on the shape of the next generation. Just think of children that have grown up with the Internet versus their elders — the difference is vast. Now think of a child who’s grown up under a government that has always discriminated against a certain political, religious, or colored group versus their elders. Censorship destroys the progress and freedoms that all men and women have fought for with a single, conservative, fear-backed blow.

Oh the Apple iPad, how you hearken us toward the sucketh to come. Apple announced its iPad and what is essentially a giant iTouch sans webcam or anything useful. So, in the mode of blogs worldwide, it must be bashed here as well. A lot of hype surrounded the announcement of the iPad on Wednesday and the device unanimously disappointed everyone who isn’t giving Apple a Steve Job — pun intended. The iPad has been referred to as Apple’s final unicorn in their continuous unveiling of “revolutionary” products (AKA old hardware, higher prices, and sub-par implementation of pre-existing platforms with an excellent marketing scheme). Unfortunately the iPad is a lot like a shrunken unicorn, missing its horn — so really more like a diseased miniature pony with a peg leg.

We could take the time to outline the reasons why the iPad sucks, but instead here’s a link to an article from Gizmodo: 8 Things That Suck About the iPad. As you’ll see the iPad lacks Flash support (YouTube, etc), multi-tasking abilities (the main reason the iPhone OS is trash), a webcam, and a closed App store. Never fear though since some real tech companies are releasing tablets of their own running open platforms and usable interfaces. This probably won’t stop anyone from buying the Apple iPad however; as unfortunate as that is.

Apple has built a near-religious following within its tight user base. Where PCs have always failed to build brand loyalty, Apple has succeeded in keeping people coming back again and again for its sub-par products. Many are predicting that the iPad will be the Kindle killer or the eReader/tablet combination of the future. This young and hip with an expendable income user base will undoubtedly latch onto this new product because of brand loyalty and not because of usability, power, or even logic.

Par example: the new eInk technology is capable of staying charged for days worth of reading while the iPad will last a maximum of 10 hours, not even enough time to get through your entire day if you’re continually using it. As Steve Jobs put it: “You’re not going to read for 10 hours.” However since most of the Internet (and computer interaction for that matter) involves reading you won’t be surfing the Internet for 10 hours either, or going through your E-mail for 10 hours, or really doing anything for 10 hours — because your battery will be toast.

While the device’s shortcomings abound there is still a dedicated fan base calling this a revolutionary device. Since thousands of young people already have their lives tied to Apple, with the iPod, iPhone, and MacBooks being as ubiquitous as IBM once was, the logical step will be for many of these people to pick up the iPad to compliment their collection — not because it is more useful, but because they all work together.

Before you put your money into an iPad take a look at what’s around. No LCD screen can compare with an eInk display when it comes to reading. In the end you’re going to want two devices or a massive bottle of Tylenol to clear your LED back-light headache. From one Apple-ex to dozens of fans: don’t let the marketing hype con you away from buying something functional. A Google device might be just as bad, but at least it comes with an open application store and usable hardware. Support technology that works and encourage progress.

It’s a known fact that Google collects, analyzes, and logs all of your Internet traffic and data that passes through them for advertising purposes. As GoogleSharing creator Moxie Marlinspike said: “Google thrives where privacy does not…If you’re like most Internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with.” (via The Register).

The topic has come up on several occasions that people are willing to admit more to a search engine box than they would their best friend or spouse. Why then are we comfortable with this data be logged and tagged with our identity? Do you really want Google to know that you followed that penis enlargement spam link? No, of course not. Especially knowing that post-Patriot US law still allows the government to purchase your data without a warrant.

GoogleSharing is a new anonymizing proxy service that works exclusively through Google. It’s a Firefox plug-in that redirects Google-bound traffic. The plug-in’s source code was also released so it could be poured over for weaknesses and exploits — everything was found to be solid so far. All traffic is encrypted using HTTPS as well so you don’t have to worry about your data being logged by GoogleSharing itself.

Keep in mind that if you choose to don this tin foil hat plug-in you should keep in mind that it only works with services that you don’t have to login for. If you are checking your Gmail, Docs, Reader, or other applications that you have to physically login to then GoogleSharing forwards the request directly to Google since you are identifying yourself with a login.

Amazon announced the details of their new eBook world domination program (via Engadget) this morning. The new system would give authors an incentive to make eBooks fit the Amazon mold, instead of other sites or readers, by increasing the royalties of the authors. It’s an easy choice in a bum writing market of what an author is going to choose, but the catch is that you have to play by all of Amazon’s rules. This new set all falls under Amazon’s coming launch of DTP or Digital Text Platform publishing scheme.

Typically the Kindle marketed eBooks show the author around 35% of the $9.99 or so that the eBook costs. The rest of that percentile goes directly to Amazon. With the new DTP option for authors the percentages would be literally swapped with 70% for the author and 30% going back to the site.

The new DTP option will require that distribution costs be paid for by the publisher (typically $0.15 in data transfer charges), the books must be priced 20% below their print counterparts, and the books must support the Kindle’s humorously-termed “broad set” of features (like text-to-speech). As with many Kindle experiments, this option will only be available for books that are in-copyright and sold in the United States.

As other eBook stores begin to align themselves as competitors with Amazon, the company has no-doubt been scrambling to come up with a way to maintain its customer base. With the popularity of eReaders at CES this year, and eBook sales surpassing print sales this Christmas, we are undoubtedly entering the year of the electronic reader. Stores that offer more open formats, such as Scribd and Powells,  have been gaining in popularity along with eReaders that support these open document formats — such as the Sony or Aztek readers.

Amazon has made an excellent move in targeting the writers since the readers have to join up where the content is distributed. The writing market is in a serious downturn and a professional author will have to go where the royalties are: Amazon.

Of course the problem with this is that a company is going to corner a market into using its standards. This can only spell a lack of progress in the still-developing eBook industry. An open standard is necessary to bring reading and publishing to the next level. The eReader still has a lot of untapped potential — interactive books being just a possibility, something impossible with paper.

Hopefully authors can see the benefit of offering their books on other services and in formats other than Amazon’s DTP option and that other electronic publishers will make the move toward offering competitive royalty rates with Amazon. If 70% was the norm the content industry might actually be able to save itself before everyone realizes that technology has given writers the ability to publish without a publisher.

If you’ve been following the Google Hack by China at all you’ll know that the zero-day vulnerability codenamed Aurora (watch it in action on Praetorian Prefect) in Microsoft’s popular Internet Explorer web browser was the cause of the security breaches. After that information was brought out first Germany and now France has advised its citizens to quit using Internet Explorer for security reasons. It has been over a week since the attack and Microsoft has still failed to release a patch that fully resolves the security issue, instead stating that users should just disabled some of the browser’s functionality. This may be the reason why the browser has continued to see a decrease in market share as Mozilla’s Firefox steams to the forefront of browser preference with most users stating speed and security issues as their reasons for change.

In an interesting announcement however the British government has told its government employees to continue using the web browser and specifically the most vulnerable version: Internet Explorer 6. Blatantly ignoring the security flaw puts a lot of government information at risk since over 300,000 of its desktops use that specific version. Many UK citizens are wondering why the government is refusing to get their act together and is allowing all of their information to be so easily hacked.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is capitalizing on this moment to tell users to upgrade to newer versions of Windows if they want the increased security. They have agreed and confirmed that security flaws exist, but as of yet have neglected to fix them citing that if users were running Windows Vista or Windows 7 that this attack would not have been possible. While this is true it is surprising that a company knowing 61.7% of the world is running Windows XP refuses to release a security update immediately. As always, Microsoft finds a way to profit from its own failure and we ask ourselves: “Wait? What? How’d they do that?”

While the world has been busy examining the hacks, China has implemented a new system of censorship by monitoring text messages nationwide and Google’s Chinese employees still find themselves without work and being investigated for the hacks. Google has yet to release another statement about pulling out of China or whether or not it is going to stop censoring search results in the country — no surprise there since they probably didn’t mean any of it to begin with.

Curiously, Google and the 33 other breached companies have remained relatively silent over the last few days, keeping investigations at a hushed level while the security world continues to find ways to further the exploit beyond the original Internet Explorer 6 proof-of-concept. If you are curious as to whether or not your computer can be affected, take a look at this blog over The Guardian for the scoop. As for me I’m taking a few days off to work on my book — maybe you’ll get a blog out of me, maybe you won’t.

I caught this article over at The Guardian yesterday, a UK paper I only started reading daily last week. It has a great technology section, but on to more interesting matters. The FBI along with the U.S. Secret Service helped to bring down DarkMarket, one of the web’s top 10 cyber-crime shops back in 2008. The website had over 2,000 vendors selling fake credit card machines, fake cards, magnetic strips, holograms, and anything else you might need to be a counterfeiter and identity thief. Along with that vendors were able to sell the credit cards they stole on the site with some people spending up to $325,000.00 a day on stolen credit cards — this shows you the vast scope of this industry. Up until now the creator of the site has continued to run free.

You may remember that I’ve talked about DarkNets before on this blog and plan on writing a whole series where I go through them and show the Internet’s thriving underbelly (if there is enough interest since the research takes time). While many of these sites are used for child pornography, identity theft, illegal products, drug trafficking, and other illicit acts it is important to remember that the dark corners of the web also provide havens for those fighting for freedom in countries like Iran, North Korea, and China. They provide free speech zones to those techno-savvy revolutionaries whose lives would be threatened without these technologies. So before I continue and your views are jaded, keep that in mind.

The DarkMarket was run by Renukanth Subramaniam out of a small Internet cafe in Wembley, England called Java Bean. Membership was by invitation only and to join you had to prove to two separate people that you had stolen approximately 100 working credit cards with over $10,000 credit lines on them. You would then be rated on the site and the more you contributed the more you could access. It essentially worked like many file sharing communities where your note-worthy contributions moved you upwards. Anything you did that negatively affected the site would cause you to drop in the rankings.

What essentially happened to the site was that Renukanth Subramaniam lost his encrypted USB stick (which was actually stolen for evidence) costing several of the site’s members over $100,000.00 in damages and posed a possible security risk — now known as a definite security risk. Even though he was the site’s founder his security status was immediately dropped to mere contributor and he had to work his way up again. This is when undercover agents were able to monitor him and eventually uncover what he was doing as he worked feverishly to gain his way to the top again.

Subramaniam, now in police custody, was also a member of the former crime forum ShadowCrew, busted for the same operation back in 2004. The more recent DarkMarket however had a far larger grasp than ShadowCrew and spanned over dozens of European countries making it fall under many organized crime laws. Even though the site was shut down back in 2008, it ran anonymously with most members never meeting in real life. This means most of the sites 2,000 vendors and thousands of members still run free. Since DarkMarket was one of the Top 10 sites out of 100, there is a lot of work still for the FBI. It just goes to show how unsafe your money really is and just how easy it is to steal your information — keep that in mind every time you think about dropping cash and using only plastic in a future economy.

Here’s a price list of what your information went for on DarkMarket and what it costs on most of the web still:

“Dumps Data from magnetic stripes on batches of 10 cards. Standard cards: $50. Gold/platinum: $80. Corporate: $180.

Card verification values Information needed for online transactions. $3-$10 depending on quality.

Full information/change of billing Information needed for opening or taking over account details. $150 for account with $10,000 balance. $300 for one with $20,000 balance.

Skimmer Device to read card data. Up to $7,000.

Bank logins 2% of available balance.

Hire of botnet Software robots used in spam attacks. $50 a day.

Credit card images Both sides of card. $30 each.

Embossed card blanks $50 each.

Holograms $5 per 100.”

(The Guardian)

Google reported on its blog today that the company has been repeatedly attacked by Chinese hackers, possibly working for the government, over a span of what could be up to two years. The Mountain View company is using this as an opportunity to finally turn back to their “don’t be evil” philosophy and tell China that it will no longer censor results on the Chinese version of its search engine. This comes as a shock to many people in technology since Google bent over backwards to cooperate with the Chinese government in 2006, under much criticism, so the company could gain a share of the massive Chinese market.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

(Google Blog via The Register)

The attacks were reported as “highly sophisticated and targeted” and specifically compromised the G-mail accounts of a large group of human rights activists working in China. Along with these recent breaches in mid-December, Google discovered that more than 20 other companies have been breached. The companies range from technology firms, media outlets, and chemical companies. Each attack seems highly targeted and with the specific intention of either stealing source code, intellectual property, or the data of users that are considered to be working against the Chinese government.

Adobe also reported a similar security breach today that originated from China. No response has come from either the Chinese government or from any of the hackers responsible for the attacks. Google has been talking to relevant law enforcement agencies and has also contacted several of the other companies that experienced a security breach.

Many are speculating about what is going to come of this news since the U.S. nor the Chinese governments can remain silent on the issue. It is a known fact that the Chinese government employs hackers that routinely attack other nation’s Internet infrastructures. Some hopeful theorists say that this will mark the end of Chinese censorship of the Internet. More realistically however is that a digital trade war will ensure or that Google will just leave the idea alone and continue to censor results once everyone has forgotten about the story.

What’s interesting about this story is that Chinese and Russian hackers penetrate U.S. servers, even government servers, almost daily and it rarely makes the news. Why is it that Google suddenly finds it necessary to make some noise about the issue? Is Google thinking it can use this to flex its global political power and make the Chinese government cooperate with an unfiltered Internet delivered exclusively by the company to the Chinese people? Does Google think that making it an issue will provide them with more political sway with the current administration? It will be interesting to see what develops out of the attacks over the next few days and to what extent this announcement will be used.