SOPA Opponents Fight Back And Internet Experts Slated To Testify

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), a major opponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act, announced Monday he is bringing in Silicon Valley experts to hold a public hearing highlighting the online security implications of the SOPA Act that would force changes to internet infrastructure to fight online copyright infringement.

The announcement came three weeks after a markup of SOPA in the House Judiciary Committee was abruptly postponed amid concerns over its blacklisting element, which lets the attorney general order changes to core internet infrastructure in order to stop copyright infringement.

The fight over SOPA is pitting the powerbrokers of Hollywood against their Silicon Valley counterparts. Hollywood argues that millions of jobs are lost a year due to pirate websites, while the tech industry argues that the open nature of the internet has created millions of jobs (jobs such as a humble blogger like me) and that copyright holders already have tools to fight illegal downloaders.

“An open internet is crucial to American job creation, government operations, and the daily routines of Americans from all walks of life,” Issa said in a statement. “The public deserves a full discussion about the consequences of changing the way Americans access information and communicate on the internet today.”Issa is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The hearing is set for Jan. 18.

The legislation mandates that ISPs alter records in the net’s system for looking up website names, known as DNS, so that users couldn’t navigate to the site. Or, if ISPs choose not to introduce false information into DNS at the urging of the Justice Department, they instead would be required to employ some other method, such as deep-packet inspection, to prevent American citizens from visiting infringing sites or in other words censoring the internet and therefore violating the 1st amendments freedom of press by restricting public access to information.ISPs, could, for instance, adopt tactics used by the Great Chinese Firewall to sniff for traffic going to a blacklisted site and simply block it.Among those scheduled to testify are Stewart Baker, the former Department of Homeland Security policy director, who has said SOPA “would still do great damage to internet security.”Also slated to testify is DNS expert Dan Kaminsky of DKH. Putting false information into the DNS system — the equivalent of the net’s phonebook — would be ineffective, frustrate security initiatives and lead to software workarounds and a rise of hackers and hacking software that would just bypass many of the Acts new censorship policies, according to a paper co-signed by security experts Steve Crocker of Shinkuro, David Dagon of Georgia Tech, Danny McPherson of Verisign, Paul Vixie of Internet Systems Consortium and Kaminsky.

Others expected to testify include Brad Burnham, Partner at Union Square Ventures; Michael Macleod-Ball, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union; Lanham Napier, chief executive officer of Rackspace; Leonard Napolitano, director of the Center for Computer Sciences & Information Technology at Sandia National Laboratories; and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com.

On Dec. 16, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who heads the House Judiciary Committee, halted the SOPA markup so the committee could hear from technical experts. However, no new hearing before that committee has been scheduled.The Judiciary Committee, however, did hear from the Motion Picture Industry Association of America in November, but has never called an expert on internet architecture. Michael O’Leary, an MPAA vice president, had testified before the committee that security concerns were “overstated.”In the security context, many internet experts maintain the bill would break the internet’s universal character and hamper U.S. government-supported efforts to rollout out DNS-SEC, which is intended to prevent hackers from hijacking the net through fake DNS entries.

Along with Industry experts up in arms, many are suggesting that websites like Facebook and Google my protest by temporarily taking down their sites, both sites are firmly opposed to the Act. Other sites such as Reddit may be taken down permenantly due to the overall nature of the site. The Act which is attaining little publicity will likely enrage many who patron the internet on a regular basis and would likely cause an immediate backlash against new rules.

The Bill is a continuing fight by many in congress to further strip American's of civil liberties since the start of the war on terror, starting with the Patriot Act which allowed wiretapping without warrant and continued with the recently signed into law National Defense Athorization Act which allows Americans to be indefinitely detained without charges or trial, even if merely suspected of engaging in so-called "terrorist activity." Along with recent discoveries by hackers of the German Government using spyware to literally spy on their people, hacking into web cams, monitoring websites visited, and acquiring personal documents saved to the hard drive of many victims. We as a people should not tolerate our governments, especially in a so-called free society, of taking our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties from us. Though in the days of our founding fathers they did not have the internet or computers many, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, advocated against such future tyrannies. I will leave you with a quote from Benjamin Franklin "Any society that would give up a little freedom for a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Cloaking Device Creates Hole In Light And Time

New research published in Nature reveals that scientists have successfully hidden an object in both time and space even if for only for 40 picoseconds or 40 trillionths of a second . Rather than bending light around the object, their technique creates a temporal hole in light beams where an event can be hidden.

The technique relies on what's known as a split-time lens to create a temporal hole. A beam of light is pushed through the lens, which speeds up the travel of the fast moving blue light, and slows down the comparatively sluggish red, leaving a gap in the middle — a gap ripe for exploitation. The light is recombined on the other side, and for a window of trillionths of a second, whatever goes on in that gap is undetectable.

Whatever's in the gap should interact with the light passing through, but it simply...doesn't. The travelling light beam emerges on the other end of the lens unscathed and untouched, completely oblivious to what happened in that undetected picosecond gap.

So far, the technique only works on periods of 0.00012 of a second - so the police can probably rest easy, as evildoers would have to move far faster than human beings ever could to 'conceal' their actions.
Instead, the 'hidden' fractions of a second could be used for ultra-secure communications.The scientists think that the technique could even be combined with recent advances in optical 'cloaking' - to hide an event in both space and time.

New Tablet From Aakash...Only $41

The Aakash Android Tablet from India is the world's cheapest tablet coming in at only $41. Why is the tablet so cheap? It was a project for the Indian Government to put tablet devices into the education system for students (through subsidies), or any other person who could not afford the higher priced tablets currently on the market like the Apple iPad 2 or Samsung Galaxy 10.1.

The Ubislate7 is the name of this super cheap tablet device which is manufactured by Datawind. The Aakash Android tablet runs Android 2.2 Froyo, has an 800 x 480 resistive touchscreen, with a meager 366MHz Connexant processor, 2 GB of internal storage, 256MB RAM, USB slot, and a MicroSD slot for expandable memory. Also within this little tablet that could is Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g, GPRS modem and a smaller battery giving it around 3 hours of continuous usage. It may not be the fastest tablet around, but at that price...it's hard to complain about what it doesn't have.

The tablet has locked down a reported 1.4 million orders already in only two weeks, and will likely keep momentum going in the next few months as more people find out about it. If you want to check into ordering, they're backed up until March 2012, where you'll then be able to pre-order again.

Geeks Rejoice: SciFi Brothel Coming To Vegas

Easily the funniest thing I've heard lately. Entreprenuer Dennis Hof,famed for his Nevada brothel The Moonlight Bunny Ranch, is planning to open a science fiction based brothel 90 miles outside of Las Vegas called The Alien Cathouse. Catering mostly to Star Wars Nerds and Trekies this new brothel will allow you to live out your fantasies of sleeping with Princess Leia from Return of The Jedi or the Orion Slave Girls from Star Trek, as well as other famous SciFi babes. Hof will even be inlisting the help of famed Madam Heidi Fleiss as the brothels "Chief Alien Design Queen". No word on when the club is slated to open though owner Hof expects the renovation of the property, itself a former brothel, to take only a few months. Let's just say Vegas just got a little more interesting.

China Sets Sights On Moon

China has just unveiled a five-year plan for putting astronauts on the moon, which would make it the first nation to visit since the U.S. last set foot there some 40 years ago.Though China has asserted it's desire to send a manned shuttle to the moon this is the first official statement by the country stating their intent. "China will conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing," according to the state council, also calling for deep-space exploration of other planets and asteroids. Though there is no deadline for the launch the announcement is seen as an official declaration of China's lunar goals. The plans come as the U.S. manned spaceflight program is in indefinite hiatus, with NASA's space shuttle fleet retired and International Space Station missions dependent on Russian rockets. While President George W. Bush called for a return to the moon by 2020, President Obama canceled the program due to high costs but has proposed sending Americans to an asteroid by 2025.
China is also building its own prototype space station, the Tiangong 1, before construction of a Mir-class station. It has already mapped the moon with the Chang'e-1 lunar probe, and plans to send the Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spacecraft to dock with Tiangong-1 in 2012. "Since 2006, Long March rockets have accomplished 67 successful launches, sending 79 spacecraft into planned orbits and demonstrating noteworthy improvement in the reliability of China's launch vehicles." Although the space program is backed by the People's Liberation Army, the government asserts the program is entirely peaceful: "China always adheres to the use of outer space for peaceful purposes, and opposes weaponization or any arms race in outer space."

SOPA: The New Internet Censorship Act

SOPA or the Stop Internet Piracy Act is a new Act in this years congress's continuing battle against American civil liberties. Essentially the Act is designed to restrict access to sites like thepiratebay.org and protect copy righted content on the internet but how they are going about accomplishing this is nothing short of censorship and a violation of the 1st Amendment. SOPA not only will affect our civil liberties but will affect many internet based companies such as Reddit and the internet as a whole. Remember when you shared that video you saw on Youtube with your friends on Facebook under SOPA that will be illegal especially if said video was copyrighted in anyway such as song or a music video. SOPA is an extention of a battle that has long been brewing as lobbyists for the RIAA and MPAA (Record Industry and Motion Picture Industry)have fought to end internet piracy.On the surface, the SOPA seems reasonable, especially considering that "pirates" are afoot on the Web and inroad into the profits of global companies, which certainly must not be countenanced!!!. On the other hand, leveling a court order in a demand to exterminate a website's voice and presence on the basis of the Justice Department's dictum is overarching power. In the wrong hands, in the wrong administration, more amendments could be tacked on to the act to willy nilly obtain even more power to stop the voice and outcry of online American citizens who enjoy exercising their constitutional freedoms.

Coupled with the recent passage of the National Defense Act whose add on provision virtually eliminates habeas corpus for "alleged" terrorists (who might just tweet anti-government slogans) and ends first amendment rights of free speech as we knew them a year ago, this two pronged pincer attack against American civil liberties is beyond anything that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. Various individuals in our political system, appear to show a disregard for the Constitution that they have sworn to uphold. In another day and age, it would not be untoward to level accusations of treason against them for considering the passage of such law . But "pirates" and "terrorists" must be stopped.

I'm Baaaack

Well after extended hiatus I'm back posting all the Geeky Shit that comes to my mind. It's been a busy holiday season with all sorts of Gadgets, Toys, and Video Games out. I hope you enjoy and for all you loyal fans I will promise we will be back to daily posts again thanks for all your support.