Jolla, a Finnish startup that develops a mobile Linux-based alternative to Google's Android which has had some take-up by the Russian government in the past, is looking to restructure its business to jettison links to the Russian state. TechCrunch reports: We reached out to the startup earlier this week to ask if it was concerned about the impact of looming EU sanctions on Russia -- given how, since 2018, it has counted Russian telecom company, Rostelecom, as a strategic investor. "We have actually ramped down business and exports to Russia already in 2021," CEO and co-founder Sami Pienimaki told TechCrunch. "Thus, the potential tech sanctions would not impact Jolla's business anymore. In parallel, Jolla is growing in particular rapidly in the automotive sector, and it formed already significant part of our 2021 revenues. In regards the ownership, that is correct, and something we're looking to re-structure during this year," he also confirmed. Sailfish has been certified in Russia for government and corporate use since 2016.

wiredmikey writes: "Twitter will put warnings on tweets sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media, the platform said Monday, as Kremlin-tied outlets are accused of spreading misinformation on Moscow's invasion of Ukraine," reports SecurityWeek. The news comes as Russian troops have launched a major assault on Ukraine and while their forces battle in the physical world for control over various cities and regions, a battle is also taking place in cyberspace with attacks and misinformation campaigns. Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, says the platform is seeing more than 45,000 tweets per day that are sharing links to state-affiliated media outlets.

"Our product should make it easy to understand who's behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are," he added. In addition to adding labels that identify the sources of links, Roth said the platform is also "taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Vegetarians have a 14% lower chance of developing cancer than carnivores, according to a large study that links meat-eating to a heightened risk of the disease. A team of researchers from Oxford University analyzed data on more than 470,000 Britons and found that pescatarians had a 10% reduced risk. Compared with people who eat meat regularly -- defined as more than five times a week -- those who consumed small amounts had a 2% lower risk of developing cancer, the study found. "In this large British cohort, being a low meat-eater, fish-eater or vegetarian was associated with a lower risk of all cancer sites when compared to regular meat-eaters," the analysis found.

However, the authors, led by Cody Watling from Oxford's population health cancer epidemiology unit, made clear that their findings did not conclusively prove regular meat-eating increased the risk of cancer. Smoking and body fat could also help explain the differences found, they said. Their study of participants in the UK Biobank study also found that:

- Low meat-eaters -- who consume meat five or fewer times a week -- had a 9% lower risk of developing bowel cancer than regular meat-eaters.
- Vegetarian women were 18% less likely than those who ate meat regularly to develop postmenopausal breast cancer, though that may be due to their lower body mass index.
- Vegetarian men have a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer while among male pescatarians it is 20% lower. The researchers published their findings in the journal BMC Medicine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch, written by security editor Zack Whittaker: Consumer-grade spyware is often sold under the guise of child monitoring software, but also goes by the term "stalkerware" for its ability to track and monitor other people or spouses without their consent. Stalkerware apps are installed surreptitiously by someone with physical access to a person's phone and are hidden from home screens, but will silently and continually upload call records, text messages, photos, browsing history, precise location data and call recordings from the phone without the owner's knowledge. Many of these spyware apps are built for Android, since it's easier to plant a malicious app than on iPhones, which have tighter restrictions on what kind of apps can be installed and what data can be accessed. Last October, TechCrunch revealed a consumer-grade spyware security issue that's putting the private phone data, messages and locations of hundreds of thousands of people, including Americans, at risk. But in this case it's not just one spyware app exposing people's phone data. It's an entire fleet of Android spyware apps that share the same security vulnerability.

On the front line of the operation is a collection of white-label Android spyware apps that continuously collect the contents of a person's phone, each with custom branding, and fronted by identical websites with U.S. corporate personas that offer cover by obfuscating links to its true operator. Behind the apps is a server infrastructure controlled by the operator, which is known to TechCrunch as a Vietnam-based company called 1Byte. TechCrunch found nine nearly identical spyware apps that presented with distinctly different branding, some with more obscure names than others: Copy9, MxSpy, TheTruthSpy, iSpyoo, SecondClone, TheSpyApp, ExactSpy, FoneTracker and GuestSpy. Other than their names, the spyware apps have practically identical features under the hood, and even the same user interface for setting up the spyware. Once installed, each app allows the person who planted the spyware access to a web dashboard for viewing the victim's phone data in real time -- their messages, contacts, location, photos and more. Much like the apps, each dashboard is a clone of the same web software. And, when TechCrunch analyzed the apps' network traffic, we found the apps all contact the same server infrastructure. But because the nine apps share the same code, web dashboards and the same infrastructure, they also share the same vulnerability.

The vulnerability in question is known as an insecure direct object reference, or IDOR, a class of bug that exposes files or data on a server because of sub-par, or no, security controls in place. It's similar to needing a key to unlock your mailbox, but that key can also unlock every other mailbox in your neighborhood. IDORs are one of the most common kinds of vulnerability [...]. But shoddy coding didn't just expose the private phone data of ordinary people. The entire spyware infrastructure is riddled with bugs that reveal more details about the operation itself. It's how we came to learn that data on some 400,000 devices -- though perhaps more -- have been compromised by the operation. Shoddy coding also led to the exposure of personal information about its affiliates who bring in new paying customers, information that they presumably expected to be private; even the operators themselves. After emailing 1Byte with details of the security vulnerability, the email address was shut down along with "at least two of the branded spyware apps," according to TechCrunch. "That leaves us here. Without a fix, or intervention from the web host, TechCrunch cannot disclose more about the security vulnerability -- even if it's the result of bad actors themselves -- because of the risk it poses to the hundreds of thousands of people whose phones have been unknowingly compromised by this spyware."

In a separate report, security editor Zack Whittaker explains how one can remove common consumer-grade spyware.

The UK is ready to launch cyber attacks on Russia if Moscow targets Britain's computer networks after a Ukraine invasion, the defence secretary has threatened. The Independent: In a Commons statement, Ben Wallace pointed to the "offensive cyber capability" the UK is already developing from a base in the north west of England. "I'm a soldier -- I was always taught the best part of defence is offence," he told an MP who urged him to "give as good as we get back to Russia" if necessary. Mr Wallace also stepped up UK threats by saying sanctions will be imposed for aggression that stops short of crossing the Ukraine border -- amid criticism they have not yet been used.

Russian companies with links to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin's regime will be targeted if, for example, a no-fly zone is imposed in Ukraine, or ports blockaded "Many of these aggressive moves -- like a no-fly zone, a blockade to free trade -- would absolutely warrant a response ranging from sanctions and others," the defence secretary said. "Russia should be under no illusion that threatening the integrity of a sovereign nation, whether that is in the air or on the sea, is exactly the same as threatening it on the land." Sanctions have not yet been imposed in order to coordinate with the European Union, which has yet to announce what its package will be, Mr Wallace suggested.

With people more wary than ever about clicking on suspicious links in emails and text messages, zero-click hacks are being used more frequently by government agencies to spy on activists, journalists and others, according to more than a dozen surveillance company employees, security researchers and hackers interviewed by Bloomberg News. From a report: Once the preserve of a few intelligence agencies, the technology needed for zero-click hacks is now being sold to governments by a small number of companies, the most prominent of which is Israel's NSO Group. Bloomberg News has learned that at least three other Israeli companies -- Paragon, Candiru and Cognyte Software -- have developed zero-click hacking tools or offered them to clients, according to former employees and partners of those companies, demonstrating that the technology is becoming more widespread in the surveillance industry.

There are certain steps that a potential victim can take that might reduce the chances of a successful zero-click attack, including keeping a device updated. But some of the more effective methods -- including uninstalling certain messaging apps that hackers can use as gateways to breach a device -- aren't practical because people rely on them for communication, said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto that focuses on abuses of surveillance technology.

Google is continuing to give its document editing suite a more modern makeover. The latest update to Google Docs makes pageless documents available to all users after the company announced the feature last May. It also adds new features such as AI-generated document summaries, inline Google Maps previews, and the ability to draft emails with other users before transferring them over to Gmail. Most of those features are launching today, while email drafting will roll out in the "coming weeks." From a report: The update may be seen as part of a broader effort to compete with startups such as Notion and Coda, which are reimagining document editing around free-flowing, dynamic pages. Those products have also caught the attention of Microsoft, which announced an entirely new document editing app called Loop last November. While Google isn't fundamentally reinventing Docs in response, it's leaning on its ecosystem of other apps and services to make documents feel more dynamic and less like the printed page.

For most Google Docs users, the most striking change will be the new pageless format, which extends whitespace to both edges of the screen and dispenses with the page markers used for printing purposes. It also allows for a fully-responsive design, in which documents reflow when users adjust the size of their browser window. (Pagination will still be the default, but users can switch to pageless formatting under File > Setup.) Other changes won't be as immediately noticeable, but speak to where Google Docs -- and the Workspace suite as a whole -- are headed. Document summaries created using AI technology, for instance, will appear in a sidebar view where users can accept them or modify their text. When users hover over links to another document that includes a summary, it'll appear inside a pop-up preview window. [...] Google's also adding a way to draft Gmail messages inside Docs, so users can collaborate on messaging before passing the contents off to Gmail proper. And a recently-added Meeting Notes feature lets users pull in contacts, action items, and other details from Google Calendar events.

U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. From a report: The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia. Zero Hedge denied the claims and said it tries to "publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story." In a response posted online Tuesday morning, the website said it has "has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy agencies."

DevNull127 writes: More bad news for Spotify from Conde Naste via their music site Pitchfork:

Last month, in the tone of a band reluctantly summoned from some deep seabed, My Bloody Valentine issued a prickly public service announcement: "Just noticed that Spotify has put fake lyrics up for our songs without our knowledge," the Irish shoegazers tweeted. "These lyrics are actually completely incorrect and insulting." Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde chimed in to report that they, too, had found gibberish transcriptions of their famously elliptical songs on streaming services.

The lyric snafu was not limited to Spotify. Over the past decade, a data platform called Musixmatch has assumed dominion over the world of lyrics, securing sub-licensing deals with the major publishing companies. The lyrics you see on Spotify, Tidal, and Amazon Music usually come through Musixmatch, via a data pipeline that links the platform's enormous transcriber community with a small core of paid quality-control monitors. (Apple Music has a dedicated lyrics team handling most of its transcriptions.)

The affair illustrates tech capitalism's discombobulation when faced with a key element in art, which is the inexplicable. I think the problem, though, is not Musixmatch and its protocol so much as the service's unilateral rollout, with quasi-official imprimatur, on platforms already under fire for flattening artistic identity and repackaging music as scaleable content. Having sub-licensed the rights, Musixmatch is perfectly entitled to crowd-source transcriptions and sell them on. But artists should know whose words are being put in their mouths—and that, should they wish, they have the right to opt out.

Major rightsholders and internet companies in Russia have signed a new memorandum of cooperation designed to make pirated movies, TV shows and other content harder to find. In addition to automatically removing reported infringing links within hours, search engines have agreed to completely deindex all domains that carry 100 or more links to infringing content. TorrentFreak reports: Signed in 2018, a memorandum of cooperation signed by major rightsholders and internet companies including Yandex changed the way infringing content is handled. Following the creation of a centralized database of pirated content, the Internet companies agreed to query it every few minutes in order to remove corresponding content from their platforms within six hours. Over a period of three years, more than 40 million infringing links have now been removed from search results. Since its introduction, the memorandum has been renewed several times alongside calls for the system to be opened up to a wider range of rightsholders, such as those operating in the publishing sector. While that is yet to happen, a new memorandum has just been signed by the original signatories containing an even more powerful anti-piracy tool.

Under the current agreement (which is set to expire early September 2022), rightsholders must submit specific URLs to infringing content to the centralized database controlled by the Media Communications Union (ISS). These specific URLs are then delisted by search engines but rightsholders complain that the same content can reappear under a new URL, meaning that the process must be repeated. To deal with this type of 'pirate' countermeasure, the new memorandum requires search companies to take more stringent action. Any domain that has 100 or more 'pirate' links reported to the database will be deindexed entirely by search engines, meaning that they essentially become invisible to anyone using a search engine. This must be carried out quickly too, within 24 hours according to ISS. Given the number of links to infringing content posted to non-pirate sites, safeguards will also be introduced to protect legitimate resources from deindexing. These include media sites, government projects, search engines themselves, social networks, and official content providers. "Alongside the development of the memorandum a new law is being drafted, with the aim of enshrining its voluntary terms into local law," adds TorrentFreak. "That should allow other rightsholders that aren't current signatories to obtain similar benefits. At the time of writing, however, progress on the legal front is taking its time and might still take a few more months."

Google Chrome is rolling out Journeys, a feature that lets you revisit your old browsing sessions based on the subject matter you were searching for. From a report: If you type a word in the address bar that's related to some convoluted rabbit hole you've been down in the past, you'll see a "Resume your research" option that links you to the related sites you've visited before. So far, it sounds like it could be a much more viable solution than digging through your search history for that one site you kind of remember visiting three weeks ago. If you were knee-deep in research about axolotls, you should see all the related pages you accessed in Journeys whenever you type in the creature's name at a later date. The Journeys page will prominently display the sites you've spent more time on and will also provide suggestions based on what you've searched for.

"Developers reacted with astonishment and anger at Apple's 27% commission policy as a minimal form of compliance with a new antitrust law regarding the App Store," reports 9to5Mac. After being ordered by Dutch regulators to allow developers to opt-out of the App Store payment platform, Apple announced today that it "would reduce its commission by only three percent" from the 30 percent commission it typically charges developers, reports 9to5Mac. Additionally, Apple said it would "impose onerous administrative overheads -- such as applying for permission to use a specific API, maintaining a separate version of the app, and filing reports with Apple." 9to5Mac highlights a number of reactions from disgruntled developers: Macworld did a great roundup of reactions to this by a number of well-known developers: "Apple was blasted by developers on Twitter who took issue with the exorbitant fee. Steve Troughton-Smith called the move 'absolutely vile' [...] Marco Arment wrote that you 'can just FEEL how much they despise having to do any of this.' Others noted that it 'defeats the purpose of the law' and that developers will still need to pay at least 3 percent to the payment provider, thus negating even the small savings."

Steve Troughton-Smith retweeted our story, and commented: "Absolutely vile. This says everything about @tim_cook's Apple and what it thinks of developers. I hope the company gets exactly what it deserves. Everybody on their executive team should be ashamed, and some of them should not be here when it's all over. We all see you."

Marco Arment highlighted the conditions imposed by Apple:

- Separate app, only available in Netherlands
- Cannot also support IAP
- Must display scary sheets before payment
- Website links are all to a single URL specified in Info.plist with no parameters
- Must submit monthly report to Apple listing EVERY external transaction

Adding: "And after you pay your ~3% to your payment processor, Apple's 27% commission takes you right back up to 30%. Glorious. Come on, THIS is comedy. Amazing, ridiculous comedy. I'd be surprised if a single app ever took them up on this. (And that's exactly by design.)"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: One of the world's largest publishers of academic papers said it adds a unique fingerprint to every PDF users download in an attempt to prevent ransomware, not to prevent piracy. Elsevier defended the practice after an independent researcher discovered the existence of the unique fingerprints and shared their findings on Twitter last week. "The identifier in the PDF helps to prevent cybersecurity risks to our systems and to those of our customers -- there is no metadata, PII [Personal Identifying Information] or personal data captured by these," an Elsevier spokesperson said in an email to Motherboard. "Fingerprinting in PDFs allows us to identify potential sources of threats so we can inform our customers for them to act upon. This approach is commonly used across the academic publishing industry."

When asked what risks he was referring to, the spokesperson sent a list of links to news articles about ransomware. However, Elsevier has a long history of pursuing people who pirate or share its paywalled academic articles. [...] It's unclear exactly how fingerprinting every PDF downloaded could actually prevent ransomware. Jonny Saunders, a neuroscience PhD candidate at University of Oregon, who discovered the practice, said he believes Elsevier is trying to surveil its users and prevent people from sharing research without paying the company. "The subtext there is pretty loud to me," Saunders told Motherboard in an online chat. "Those breaches/ransoms are really a pretext for saying 'universities need to lock down accounts so people can't skim PDFs. When you have stuff that you don't want other people to give away for free, you want some way of finding out who is giving it away, right?"

"Saying that the unique identifiers *themselves* don't contain PII is a semantic dodge: the way identifiers like these work is to be able to match them later with other identifying information stored at the time of download like browser fingerprint, institutional credentials, etc," Saunders added. "Justifying them as a tool to protect against ransomware is a straightforward admission that these codes are intended to identify the downloader: how would they help if not by identifying the compromised account or system?"

One of the two administrators of the DeepDotWeb portal was sentenced this week to 97 months in prison for receiving money from illegal dark web marketplaces to promote their sites. From a report: Tal Prihar, 37, was detained in May 2019 in France and subsequently extradited to the US. He was charged with running DeepDotWeb, a website on the public internet that advertised and reviewed dark web marketplaces that sold illegal content such as drugs, firearms, and forged documents. US authorities said that Prihar, together with his partner, ran a kickback scheme where they provided links to the marketplaces in exchange for a commission.

Two days after Ozzy Osbourne's NFT collection were minted, supporters were being targeted by a phishing scam that drained cryptocurrency from their wallets, "playing off a bad link shared by the project's official Twitter account," reports The Verge. From the report: Like the majority of NFT projects, CryptoBatz uses Discord as a place to organize its community. The official CryptoBatz Discord is now accessed through the short link discord.gg/cryptobatz. But previously, the project used a slightly different vanity URL at discord.gg/cryptobatznft. When the project switched to the new URL, scammers set up a fake Discord server at the old one. But neither CryptoBatz nor Ozzy Osbourne took the precaution of deleting tweets referencing the previous URL, meaning that old tweets from Osbourne himself were left directing followers to a server now controlled by scammers.

One tweet from CryptoBatz, posted on December 31st, 2021, received more than 4,000 retweets and hundreds of replies. The tweet was only removed on January 21st after CryptoBatz was contacted by The Verge. On clicking the scam link, the invite panel for the fake Discord showed the total number of members as 1,330, an indication of the number of people who could potentially have been fooled by the scam. Inside the server, a bot spoofing community management service Collab Land asked users to verify their crypto assets to participate in the server -- but directed users to a phishing site where they were prompted to connect their cryptocurrency wallets.

Tim Silman, a nonprofit employee, is one person who lost money through the scam. Silman estimates that around $300â"400 in ETH was drained from his wallet after he visited the fake Discord server through a link posted on the CryptoBatz website. [...] An Ethereum wallet address Silman indicated was linked to the scammers had received a series of incoming transactions totaling 14.6 ETH ($40,895) on January 20th and sent it onwards to a wallet containing more than $150,000. The project had been slow to remove the bad links, even when informed, Silman said. Even as the fake link remained present in a prominent tweet, the CryptoBatz project continued to hype the public token mint. As of January 21st, CryptoBatz NFTs were being resold on OpenSea for around 1.8 ETH ($5,046). Sutter Systems, developers of the CryptoBatz NFT, laid blame for the scam squarely with Discord. "In our opinion this situation and hundreds of others that have taken place across other projects in the NFT space could have easily been prevented if Discord just had a better response/support/fraud team in place to help big projects like ours."

SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is offering to send Starlink internet terminals to Tonga after an underwater volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami cut off communication links. From a report: Musk was responding on Twitter to a Reuters report that full network services won't be restored to Tonga for at least a month after an undersea cable was disabled by the twin disasters. The SpaceX CEO said was he seeking "clear confirmation" from Tonga if it needs the terminals because sending them would be a "hard thing" now as there weren't enough satellites with laser links. There are also already satellites serving the region, he added.

nickwinlund77 shares a report from SciTechDaily: UNSW Sydney-led research paves the way for large silicon-based quantum processors for real-world manufacturing and application. Australian researchers have proven that near error-free quantum computing is possible, paving the way to build silicon-based quantum devices compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing technology. [...] [The researcher's] paper is one of three published today in Nature that independently confirm that robust, reliable quantum computing in silicon is now a reality. This breakthrough is featured on the front cover of the journal.

[Professor Andrea Morello of UNSW, who led the work] et al achieved 1-qubit operation fidelities up to 99.95 percent, and 2-qubit fidelity of 99.37 percent with a three-qubit system comprising an electron and two phosphorous atoms, introduced in silicon via ion implantation. A Delft team in the Netherlands led by Lieven Vandersypen achieved 99.87 percent 1-qubit and 99.65 percent 2-qubit fidelities using electron spins in quantum dots formed in a stack of silicon and silicon-germanium alloy (Si/SiGe). A RIKEN team in Japan led by Seigo Tarucha similarly achieved 99.84 percent 1-qubit and 99.51 percent 2-qubit fidelities in a two-electron system using Si/SiGe quantum dots.

The UNSW and Delft teams certified the performance of their quantum processors using a sophisticated method called gate set tomography, developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. and made openly available to the research community. Morello had previously demonstrated that he could preserve quantum information in silicon for 35 seconds, due to the extreme isolation of nuclear spins from their environment. But the trade-off was that isolating the qubits made it seemingly impossible for them to interact with each other, as necessary to perform actual computations. Today's paper describes how his team overcame this problem by using an electron encompassing two nuclei of phosphorus atoms. The three papers from the UNSW team, Delft team and RIKEN group in Tokyo can be found at their respective links.

The Red Cross has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack and has asked the hackers who broke into the IT network of one of its contractors not to leak the personal information of more than 515,000 of "highly vulnerable people." The Record reports: The data was stolen from a Red Cross program called Restoring Family Links, which aims to reunite family members separated by conflict, disaster, or migration. "While we don't know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we do have this appeal to make to them," said Robert Mardini, director-general for the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world's least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data," Mardini said.

"The people affected include missing people and their families, unaccompanied or separated children, detainees and other people receiving services from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement as a result of armed conflict, natural disasters or migration," the organization said in an email.

To say that Big Tech controls the internet might seem like an exaggeration. Increasingly, in at least one sense, it's literally true. From a report: The internet can seem intangible, a post-physical environment where things like viral posts, virtual goods and metaverse concerts just sort of happen. But creating that illusion requires a truly gargantuan -- and quickly-growing -- web of physical connections. Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95% of the world's international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world's data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet. Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater -- some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet. And until recently, the overwhelming majority of the undersea fiber-optic cable being installed was controlled and used by telecommunications companies and governments. Today, that's no longer the case.

In less than a decade, four tech giants -- Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Meta (formerly Facebook ) and Amazon -- have become by far the dominant users of undersea-cable capacity. Before 2012, the share of the world's undersea fiber-optic capacity being used by those companies was less than 10%. Today, that figure is about 66%. And these four are just getting started, say analysts, submarine cable engineers and the companies themselves. In the next three years, they are on track to become primary financiers and owners of the web of undersea internet cables connecting the richest and most bandwidth-hungry countries on the shores of both the Atlantic and the Pacific, according to subsea cable analysis firm TeleGeography. By 2024, the four are projected to collectively have an ownership stake in more than 30 long-distance undersea cables, each up to thousands of miles long, connecting every continent on the globe save Antarctica. In 2010, these companies had an ownership stake in only one such cable -- the Unity cable partly owned by Google, connecting Japan and the U.S.

Libreboot.org is publicizing an event this Tuesday of "global importance to Free Software projects, and the movement as a whole... If you live in New Hampshire or in one of the neighbouring states, especially Massachusetts, please listen up!

"If you are further away and unable to reach New Hampshire all that easily, please spread the following news anyway. It's important." An important bill is being proposed in New Hampshire, which would enshrine much of what we know as Free Software into law... [H]ere is a paraphrasing of what it proposes:


- Specifically bans state-run websites from serving non-free javaScript to clients

- Creates a commission to provide oversight, watching the use of Free Software by state agencies

- Bans state agencies from using proprietary software — maybe this could include schools, in the future!

- If a person is tried in a criminal case, they have the right to audit the source code of any proprietary software that collects evidence against them

- Encourages data portability (able to transfer data from one program to another)

- Bans certain non-compete clauses and NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) pertaining to Free Software projects

- Bans state/local law enforcement from assisting with the enforcement of copyright claims against Free Software projects

- Bans state agencies from purchasing non-free software if free software exists, for a given task....


At first glance, it may not seem that the bill affects individuals, but don't be fooled; this is a hugely positive step forward for everyone! If the state is using Free Software, that most likely means it'll be used in education as well. Although perhaps not immediately and readily apparent, this is a stake in the heart of proprietary software's current dominance, because it would remove one key element of its attack against us; its abuse of education services. If education services are using Free Software, that means they'll probably have children (the ones being educated) using it too. This is a huge step, and it will result in more Free Software developers in the future. Free Software will become more and more mainstream to the masses, which can surely only be a good thing...!

[I]magine if more states like what they see and start to copy the new legislation. Now imagine that countries besides the U.S. start doing it, inspired by the US's success (and I think it will be a resounding success). Imagine a world where Free Software, free as in freedom, is the default everywhere. Imagine a world where Free Software licensing is required reading material in schools. Imagine a world where any five year old can install a free operating system such as GNU+Linux, and Computer Science is mandatory in schools from a young age. Imagine filing your tax returns with Free Software, exclusively. Imagine not even thinking about that, because it became the norm.

Imagine a world where proprietary software doesn't exist, because it is obsolete; entire generations of people are taught to value freedom, and to staunchly defend it, helping each other learn and grow (and produce better software in the process, with less bugs, because people are now free to do that, without relying on some evil company)...

Free Software is a revolution that we in the Free Software movement have rigorously upheld and fought for, over many years, but we still face an uphill battle because children are not taught in schools about free computing, nor are they encouraged to learn; they are taught to view computers as products to throw away every 1-2 years, that they can run a few apps on but otherwise are not allowed to do anything with. The concept of a general purpose, fully reprogrammable computer is heavily suppressed in mainstream culture. Most people in the world do not run a free operating system; the idea of a computer being a mere appliance is normalized (as opposed to the idea of it being a highly liberating tool for development and the expansion of human knowledge)....

Something is happening in New Hampshire, which could redefine our movement and give free software real power instead.
The post links to a state representative's tweet describing how supporters can testify in person to support the bill. "If this bill is passed in New Hampshire, more states will likely follow," argues Libreboot.org. "It will lead to a massively renewed drive to liberate all computer users, and U.S. laws tend to be copied/pasted around the world too. This bill, if passed, will have a hugely positive impact on Free Software at a global level...

"The proprietary software companies like Microsoft and Apple will also be there, trying to argue the case against the use of Free Software."