Slashback: Indymedia, Starfighter, Mozparty

Slashback, below, brings updates and followups to several recent Slashdot stories, including Diebold's (trivial) financial penalty for copyright abuse, reviews of 'The Last Starfighter,' an inquiry into the best response to the recent seizure of Indymedia's servers in the UK, and the upcoming, distributed Mozparty2 to celebrate the 1.0 releases of Firefox and Thunderbird. Read on for the rest.

An apology might be a nice start. Chris writes "The UK government has broken its silence on the Indymedia server raid and is claiming that there 'no UK law enforcement agencies were involved'; see Richard Allan's blog for the whole written answer. This means that the potential for taking legal action against Rackspace in the UK needs to be explored -- were any UK laws (eg the Data Protection Act 1984 or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) broken? Are there any UK cyber law experts on Slashdot with any suggestions...?"

Is Google private enough for you? XeRXeS-TCN writes "Following on from the recent concerns reported on Slashdot about the Google Desktop, the CEO of Copernic has warned about user privacy. Google Desktop Search allows users to opt out of sending the company back detailed usage data, but it isn't possible to firewall it completely. Much more ominously, Google's product manager Marissa Mayer said she expected the private queries to generate more hits for google.com. Most people, she believed, would choose to combine personal and web searches resulting in more revenue for Google's ad business. More on this at The Reg."

If this is a dupe, then Murphy was right. Vcullen writes "The Formula that scientists recently proposed to calculate Murphy's Law has recently been turned into an easy to use online Murphy's Law calculator. So now you can work out what the probability of it happening on any given situation!"

Nice shooting, kid. Bravo! Jason Scott writes "Inspired by the Slashdot story about the arrival of 'The Last Starfighter: The Musical' off-Broadway, I drove from Boston to New York City and back in one day to attend a matinee. I have written a review of what I experienced on my weblog. As I say in the review, 'If spoilers do not interest you, if you only want the simplest of directions and want to make the next right move, then heed these words: if you live within driving, walking, bus or train distance of New York City, see this musical. Immediately.'"

And ottffs writes with his own impressions: "I was recently in Manhattan presenting at ACM Multimedia 2004 conference. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the premiere of 'The Last Starfighter: the musical' on Friday night. I have posted a review and some pics to my blog."

There goes the next office party budget. JimMarch(equalccw) writes "After losing a major copyright case in which Diebold was punished for exercising their copyright in a wrongful fashion (copyWRONG?), the other shoe has dropped: the court says Diebold owes the ISPs and webmasters who complained a total of $125,000. "

Anyone care to start one for El Paso? loconet writes "Following the success of Mozilla's 1.0 release parties, where Mozilla supporters from all over the world celebrated the release of Mozilla 1.0, comes Mozparty 2 celebrating the upcoming 1.0 release of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. According to the Mozparty site, currently there are 1007 ppl partying in 109 parties from which the biggest party is in Mexico."

Google

[erick99]

The Google privacy issues are not issues if people use it on their home machine with a single user accessing the machine as Google instructs. The software was never intended to be deployed in a business or other multi-user environment.

Mozparty 2.0

[bizpile]

Sign up for the Mozparty in Gainesville, Florida here [openforce.at].

Re:Don't start planning your mozparties yet.

[bizpile]

Firefox is notoriously bad at coming out on the days they say it will. November 6th? Not gonna happen.

Most of the parties aren't being planned on the day of the release anyway, seeing as how it is (I believe) on the 11th which is a Thursday.
From the site:
*Hint* Suggested date for your parties is: Friday, November 19 - Sunday, November 21

Re:Don't start planning your mozparties yet.

[zerdood]

AFAIK the (supposed) release date is Nov. 6th. Somewhat related: the 1.0RC1 was supposed to come out 3 days ago and still hasn't.

Re:How long before...

[cduffy]

You mean the ability to grab information people thought was gone off of places it exists on the hard drive?

They already can; they have been able to from before the Google local search engine existed; and they'll continue to be able to after it's gone until folks actually take good care of OS-level security and permissions.

Re:Google

[BenjyD]

I didn't say anywhere that I believed it. I think that the Google Desktop Search privacy policy specifically states that it sends no data back to google, so they'd be directly lying if some of his statements are true. I also made the dubious source of the statements clear.

I read the article before posting - at the very least, I am discussing the correct issue, rather than knee-jerk posting a response without bothering to check.

Murphy's Law Calculator

[interactive_civilian]

ummm...they seem to have forgotten a very important side effect of probabilities and Murphy's law (at least that I have noticed in my experiences, and Murphy and I have become rather close):

The more improbable that something will go wrong, the greater the chance that it will go wrong immediately and in a big way.

I mean, come on, don't these people read the Guide? The Starship Titanic immediately underwent a massive existence failure because some fool tried to use an improbability field and make it infinitely improbable that something would go wrong with the ship.

So, as a PSA to all: Do NOT trust low numbers from the Murphy's Law calculator. If you get a low score, then duck and cover.

Mozilla party at the south pole!

[ScottMacVicar]

South Pole [openforce.at]
It looks like there is a party on all 7 continents.

More on Indymedia

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some good questions on Spy Blog [spy.org.uk]:

The questions about whether or not Rackspace's UK subsidiary have acted illegally under United Kingdom law, by intercepting "electronic communications" (including emails), disrupting an electronic communications system, export of personal data outside of the European Union to the USA without permission, breach of copyright etc. still need to be answered.

Without the protection of a properly authorised UK law enforcement warrant, which was obviously not obtained in this case, Rackspace UK could be sued for breach of confidentiality by the >Indymedia systems administrators [blagblagblag.org] with whom they have a legal contract.

The contract was with Rackspace UK and Rackspace are a UK limited company... you can look this up with Companies House [companies-house.co.uk] (UK office hours, they don't leave their mainframe connected to the net when they are not in the office!)... so there must be potential for breach of contract action(s) here...

Check term 10 of Rackspace UK's Master Service Agreement [rackspace.co.uk]:

"10 Law and Disputes
10.1 This Agreement shall be governed by English law.

I rang Rackspace in the UK today, their Linux managed servers sales section, I asked them if they would host a box for me in the UK and if it could be exempt from UK laws... I didn't get very far... I asked to speak to her boss but she said they were both out... she said only the US company could speak about this matter...

For more background on this see Jebba's blog [blagblagblag.org] and also please sign the Indymedia Solidarity Statment! [indymedia.org.uk]

PS Isn't it time for a Indymedia topic with a nice (((i))) logo... :-)

chrisc at indymedia.org

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[Yeb]

Rackspace made the following press release:
In the present matter regarding Indymedia, Rackspace Managed Hosting, a U.S. based company with offices in London, is acting in compliance with a court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. Rackspace responded to a Commissioner's subpoena, duly issued under Title 28, United States Code, Section 1782 in an investigation that did not arise in the United States. Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities. The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.

Do you think Rackspace is making this up? The US was clearly involved, unless this is a total fabrication of Rackspace's, which I doubt.

Why would Rackspace want to unilaterally pull the plug, anyway?

-Jeff

Re:Its all about the fear factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the claims that have been made on IndyMedia about IndyMedia (impartial observers, wot?), it appears that the decision to pull the plug the UK-hosted IndyMedia machines was unilaterally made by RackSpace, the hosting company.

Ummmm...

The FBI issued a subpoena, while Swiss and Italian prosecutors have acknowledged interest in getting their hands on the Indymedia servers hosting certain images and messages.

All the Home Office has said is that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved. Clearly, one law enforcement agency from somewhere was involved, because someone took the servers from Rackspace and returned them days later. The exact details of the seizure are being kept rather quiet, and I wonder what other sites would have gone offline had Rackspace refused to comply with the subpoena and seizure.

People read the article

[Chuck Chunder]

And rightly determined that it was almost entirely a bunch of FUD puked up by some disingenuous wanker more interested in pushing their own barrow than 'informing' users.

tHHGttG

[interactive_civilian]

blockquoth the AC:

The Starship Titanic immediately underwent a massive existence failure because some fool tried to use an improbability field and make it infinitely improbable that something would go wrong with the ship.

I hope I'm not alone when I say this, but... what the hell?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams holds all of the answers you need.

On a site like this, I doubt you are completely alone, but I would imagine the majority of /. has read this book.

Re:MozParty2

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: All @'s in email addresses are images!

Google not collecting data

[topham]

Googles search option LOCALLY combines LOCAL data with web search results. It is a feature you can turn off if you wish. At no point does it submit the resulting data to Google.

Google's (web) search intercepts the query and submits it to the web, and to the local search function, when results fromthe web are returned the results from the local search are merged (ON YOUR MACHINE).

How is this a privacy problem?

Re:An even more trivial penalty

[Concerned Onlooker]

Yes, you've been bad, now here's your fine. <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>

Kind of like when GM, Firestone and Standard Oil were found guilty of criminal conspiracy when they systematically dismantled the electric public transportation with bus lines. "The court imposed a sanction of $5,000 on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of PCL when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1.211."

links:
American Ground Transport [66.102.7.104]
The Street Car Conspiracy [lovearth.net]

Long tentacles of Ashcroft

[Doc Ruby]

The Indymedia story [theregister.co.uk] now appears to amount to the US Department of Justice filing a "court order" out of US jurisdiction with a Bologna court under a MLAT, which Bologna passed along in its European legal mutuality with London. So Ashcroft could shut down Indymedia across two outside jurisdictions as readily as he could have in Missouri. Everyone in Europe who wants Bush out of their backyards better start emailing and calling everyone they know in the US, talking some sense into us and getting us to vote for Kerry. If Bush can do this during his last reelection vulnerability, his second term will see every "undesirable" in some Guantanamo gulag.

UK law

[julesh]

were any UK laws (eg the Data Protection Act 1984 or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) broken? Are there any UK cyber law experts on Slashdot with any suggestions...?

The most important one, I suspect, is the Human Rights Act, 1998:

PART II
THE FIRST PROTOCOL
ARTICLE 1
PROTECTION OF PROPERTY
Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.

The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.

So, they can't confiscate property unless some other law specifically allows it. I'm not sure what that law would be.