NYT Endorses Secret Economic and Political Treaty

From the EFF:

The New York Times' editorial board has made a disappointing endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), even as the actual text of the agreement remains secret. That raises two distressing possibilities: either in an act of extraordinary subservience, the Times has endorsed an agreement that neither the public nor its editors have the ability to read. Or, in an act of extraordinary cowardice, it has obtained a copy of the secret text and hasn't yet fulfilled its duty to the public interest to publish it.

Without a publicly available agreement, readers are forced into the uncomfortable position of taking official government statements at face value. That's reflected in the endorsement, which fails to note the myriad ways in which TPP has been negotiated undemocratically, shutting out public oversight while permitting corporate interests to drive the agenda. Given these glaring issues, it is disconcerting that the Times would take such a supportive stance on an agreement that is likely to threaten innovation and users' digital rights well into the 21st century.

Healthcare.gov DDoS Tools Spread Online

From Ars Technica:

Researchers have uncovered software available on the Internet designed to overload the struggling Healthcare.gov website with more traffic than it can handle.

"ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people," a screenshot from the tool, which was acquired by researchers at Arbor Networks, declares. "We HAVE the right to CIVIL disobedience!"

In a blog post published Thursday, Arbor researcher Marc Eisenbarth said there's no evidence Healthcare.gov has been subjected to any significant denial-of-service attacks since going live last month.

Los Angeles Plans Ambitious Broadband Project

Is the internet a utility? From Ars Technica:

Los Angeles is about to unleash one of the most ambitious city-led broadband projects to date, with the goal of bringing fiber to all of its 3.5 million residents and all businesses.

Next month, the city plans to issue an RFP (request for proposals) "that would require fiber to be run to every residence, every business, and every government entity within the city limits of Los Angeles," Los Angeles Information Technology Agency GM Steve Reneker told Ars today. The City Council this morning unanimously voted to move forward with drafting the RFP and will vote again in a few weeks to determine whether it's ready for release, he said.

Lavabit's Darkmail Kickstarter Campaign

From Kickstarter:

The goal is to cleanup and release the source code that was used to power Lavabit as a f/oss project with support for dark mail added.  There is an audible pause in our analog lives; a preverbal squelch on the digital line that defines the very privacy everyone expects, but is rarely guaranteed.

That audible pause, that digital squelch carries with it a subtle promise that someone is reading, or listening, or cataloging and (ab)using every footprint we each press into the digital landscape. No one can guarantee that a third-party is or is not eavesdropping on a series of communications, but Dark Mail can guarantee that when a third-party does gain access, or demands access, the privacy users rightfully deserve is maintained without fail.

The Summer of Snowden may have taken the Lavabit email service offline, but the lifeblood of the service is still alive and relevant to Dark Mail. The goal is to perfect and release its source code as a free and open-source software (F/OSS) project. The "magma" daemon supports access via SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 and HTTP. Magma can be clustered and transparently encrypts user data before storing it on disk. It includes a Javascript webmail system that uses a JSON-based API to provide secure mail access via the web.

Along with preserving existing functionality, the team will build in support for the Dark Mail protocol. Dark Mail, a newly developed messaging protocol, is designed to provide end-to-end encryption of both the message itself and the email in transit. Because encryption will be integrated into the protocol itself, it will be invisible to the user. Dark Mail users will get the security of PGP without the cognitive burden; if someone can use email today they will be able to use Dark Mail tomorrow.

The project will also include building, and releasing as F/OSS, the first Dark Mail compatible clients. We are planning to launch with clients for the desktop (Win, Mac, Lin), smartphones and tablets (iOS, Android).  Provide the funding and you'll get access to the source code and binaries before the general public. Be one of the first service providers to support the new Dark Mail protocol!

Has the Fight for Net Neutrality Already Been Lost?

The corporations already own the parties, and the parties own the courts.  From Wired:

Net neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently — say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes — the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it.

Once upon a time, companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others declared a war on the internet’s foundational principle: that its networks should be “neutral” and users don’t need anyone’s permission to invent, create, communicate, broadcast, or share online. The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.

But today, that freedom won’t survive much longer if a federal court — the second most powerful court in the nation behind the Supreme Court, the DC Circuit — is set to strike down the nation’s net neutrality law, a rule adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010.

iGoogle Goes the Way of Reader

From The Next Web:

RIP another Google service: iGoogle, the company’s personalized Web portal product, finally bit the dust today, some eight months after its shutdown was announced.

iGoogle has slipped into the darkness quietly: there’s no final blog post marking its demise and the URL for the service — google.com/ig — now navigates directly to Google’s regular search page.

While it wasn’t as successful or well-used as Google Reader, the RSS service that went offline in July, iGoogle was popular with some who appreciated the ability to customize the Google search page with news feeds, games, widgets and other information that was easy to glance at and digest over the course of a day.

Coursera to Open Learning Centers Around the World in Partnership with State Department

From Businessweek:

Coursera Inc. will offer free online courses in more than 30 locations around the world, mostly in third-world countries, bringing instruction to students who lack computer access. 

Under an agreement with the State Department, courses will be available at some U.S. embassies, the Mountain View, California-based company said today. All but one of the sites are outside the U.S., including Baghdad; Port au Prince, Haiti; and Hanoi, Vietnam.

Students can take the courses, have reliable Internet access and learn from local course facilitators, Coursera said. Along with the State Department, the University of Trinidad and Tobago and Overcoming Faith Academy, an orphanage in Kenya, are among the groups hosting the space. Of the more than 5 million students who have signed up for the free courses, about 1.2 million are from emerging markets, said Yin Lu, who leads the company’s growth and international outreach efforts.