American Police Refused To Hand Over Hackers To France

While the American government requires that UK citizens are dragged into one of their courts to face sixty-year sentences, it looks like it is not even reluctant to hand over one of its own hackers over to a more sensible French court.

The US cyclist Floyd Landis had a go at cracking the PCs of the anti-doping lab that found him cheating during Tour de France 6 years ago. He was charged by the court in Paris, which heard how he and his former coach refused to show up in court. In addition, they both were helped by the government of the United States that refused to co-operate against the US hackers.

It turned out that Landis was similar to a UK hacker looking for UFOs or an Australian who published secret tapes of the US helicopter pilots who laughed as they gun down Reuters journalists. Anyway, the authorities seem to be reluctant to hand over American sporting heroes when they do the same sort of thing.

In fact, the French did have enough evidence to convict both Landis and Baker after a Trojan horse spy program was used 6 years ago to poke into the lab's servers to extract data about Landis' file, several months after he tested positive. After this, Landis admitted that he took drugs in his career. Meanwhile, the police explained that they couldn’t turn up who exactly ordered the hacking, thanks to the American authorities sitting on their hands. The data received during the hack was later used in an unsuccessful appeal to sports authorities. It was supposed to prove that Landis was clean and that the lab work was actually faulty. The court decided that Landis' role was limited to the knowledge that he had about the fraudulent origin of the laboratory data used by him and his defense team. The court also ruled that Landis knew that these lab results were really accurate, because he would admit 4 years later that he had taken drugs since 2002.

While Landis didn’t comment the trial, Baker insisted that the charges weren’t true. He said that he had nothing to do with any hacking and as far as he knew, the lab papers he received while serving as an expert consultant to the legal team were received in a legal way. He believes that everything is part of a plot to protect the laboratory, which appears to be a national French institution. As a result, they were both given a year's suspended sentences, which means that there’s probably nothing to worry about unless they ever commit another crime in this country again.

UK Cities Will Get Better Broadband

They have announced a list of cities eligible to bid for super-fast broadband funding. However, the experts think that the cash might make no difference to a lot of British cities.

After the authorities have announced that the 4 capital cities in the United Kingdom will be awarded part of a £100 million fund created for developing high speed broadband, they revealed a list of cities who’ll scrap it out for broadband cash.

The permit to grab the remaining money and find themselves a part of the super-fast broadband project was given to Birmingham, Glasgow, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and Bradford. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is currently taking bids from the towns able to plead the best case for receiving the money, which will involve explanation of how they are going to use the 80-100 Mbps speeds to push growth. Meanwhile, the broadband will be supplied by ISPs BT and Virgin.

As you understand, the competition will mean that some cities will lose out on the cash. However, it still seems to make it easier to allocate the resources more fairly. Industry observers think that there are still doubts about the ability to make a difference to 10 cities taking into account the amount on the table. By limiting the funding to 4 pre-selected capital cities, and adding 6 out of the 10 cities only going to get into the project, the UK will least have an idea of how far the money will have to spread. The authorities pointed out that a lot of cities are already approaching existing targets for 2015, like Cardiff, despite the fact that such steps might have been made prior to any knowledge of further funding.

Mainly, the cities have been working towards improving Internet connection, though it is not clear whether some of their projects were going ahead with the prior knowledge that government funding might be available. However, experts agree that the offered amount is little in comparison to the scale of the task in improving broadband systems, but if the authorities will carefully target the worst served locations, it might make a difference. Nevertheless, the best people can expect is that the project will ensure broadband at speeds well above the 2 Mbps available everywhere.

UK Will Order More ISPs To Block The Pirate Bay

The BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), the voice of the British recorded music bizz, is reported to make desperate efforts of extending its Internet-blocking policy about The Pirate Bay onto other largest broadband providers, including TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Sky, O2, and Orange.

The British Recorded Music Industry outfit officially demanded BT to block access to the “rogue” website known as The Pirate Bay – the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker. This may invoke the MPA against BT case – a well-known and debatable lawsuit which managed to set a precedent in the fight against piracy thanks to the court’s decision to order BT to block access to Newzbin service.

As if it wasn’t enough, now the music industry, with the help of multiple industry trade outfits, wishes that BT would voluntarily restrict access to The Pirate Bay website without court injunction. Meanwhile, if the Internet service provider fails to comply with the requirement, it’s likely that the British Recorded Music Industry would seek justice in the court of law by obtaining the required injunction.

Taking into account the fact that the current censorship system should be extended onto other Internet service providers as well, the anti-piracy outfit has now extended its main objective, that of blacklisting The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker, to all of major broadband providers of the United Kingdom. The outfit issued a statement, saying that it is engaging in further dialogue with the Internet service provider BT on this issue. The organization also admitted that it has written to the UK’s other largest broadband providers – Virgin Media, O2, Orange, Sky, and TalkTalk – to ask them to block access to the BitTorrent tracker. Now the outfit is waiting for their responses.

UK MPAA Pressuring ISPs To Block File-Sharing Services

Recently, BT – one of the largest broadband providers in the country – has been forced to block the famous file-sharing site Newzbin2. However, the story doesn’t seem to be coming to an end with the court ruling: while the service keeps struggling by developing more and more way to circumvent the ban, two other UK’s Internet service providers, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, feel the pressure from the UK’s Motion Picture Association to block the news site as well.

Just a week ago MPA, a large movie industry watchdog, has sent TalkTalk and Virgin Media letters saying that the outfit would obtain the court orders demanding to impose the block and asked such an order would be opposed in some way, according to the local media reports.

As for the recipients of the letters, both of the Internet service providers admitted that they will comply to such blocking order if the court rules so. In the interview regarding this issue, Virgin Media explained that the company believed such deterrents should be accompanied by really compelling legal alternatives, like their agreement with the largest online streaming service Spotify that provided their consumers access to the copyrighted material at the reasonable price. As for TalkTalk, this broadband provider was noticed to fight against the introduction of the UK’s copyright legislation (Digital Economy Act), which imposed very strict anti-piracy rules.

This decision followed the story of the BPI (the British Phonographic Industry) demanding BT to prevent its subscribers from accessing the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, pointing at the Newzbin2 ruling as a precedent.

Intelligence Agency Warned Over Hacks

Iain Lobban, a head of the UK’s largest intelligence agency, has recently warned of a rapid increase in cyber attacks that could jeopardize the country’s economic well-being. He emphasized the increasing problem of hacks on the government, pointing at a considerable attack on the Foreign Office this past summer. In addition, Lobban has noted an increase in the number of cyber attempts to steal sensitive information from various government sources and private companies, including attempts at IP theft on some engineering, energy and defense contract companies.

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, also confirmed an “exponential rise” in the number of attacks. He flagged up the country’s tax database as the one very liable to attack. Everyone is stressing concerns over Internet security ahead of a 2-day conference that starts on Tuesday and will focus on the growing problem. The list of participants includes big names like Hilary Clinton, Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia co-founder), Brad Boston (Cisco vice president) and many others.

Cyber concerns have been increasing on a global scale recently, as the world feared of a close relative of the Stuxnet virus, Duqu, being found, despite the fact that some experts believed the two weren’t linked. Security experts keep saying that the government just needs to make sure that defenses are kept up on an individual level, which can help keep up the constant battle of fending off hacker attacks. They point out that there’s never such a thing as a 100% defense, and there’s always a risk. However, the government is able to take defensible steps like educating users on how to prevent their computers from being compromised. Individual users must realize the importance of keeping security update current. They also must ensure their anti virus software is up to date.

The experts believe that Lobban’s warnings of growing cyber-threat are right, as well as constant attempts to steal sensitive data. Therefore, the government should make sure it is properly defended. There are people out there making attempts to hack into systems, and apparently they could wish to harm the country. However, it might be difficult to learn about the attacks – sometimes it’s hard to see that the information was copied and the hack may go unnoticed. That’s why any outfit must work with assuming the worst in this sense and start from there.

UK Will Enforce Internet Filtering

Blocking access to websites has been widely discussed in the United States with the PROTECT IP act first proposed this past spring. However, with the Senate approving the legislation, it turned out that the US isn’t the only country discussing the possibility of filtering the web.

Some leaked document, labeled “confidential”, has been posted on Open Rights Group website. The document in question details a proposal by the entertainment industry to pressure UK broadband providers to take part in a voluntary website blocking agreement. Such system is described as an approach to preventing access to online services which are focused upon copyright violation.

Meanwhile, for the public there are many reasons to be concerned, the main one being that the proposal is being discussed behind closed doors. In fact, this is the same as when pro-copyright outfits were trying to push for many controversial provisions in ACTA. This time, everything is being planned behind closed doors as well. However, when Wikileaks published the documents relating to ACTA back in 2008, it caused a major outcry from the public and human rights groups, and the same is expected now with the filtering proposal.

Indeed, according to the leaked document, “voluntary” Great Firewall of Britain will be just the same. Criticisms of the current proposal are all the same as well: was the system so bad that the industry decided to hide it from the public?

In addition, there are more reasons to be concerned. For example, the document, whilst mentioning evidence gathering, “prior warning and liberty”, also notes a turn-around time which is quick enough for “live events”, as well as a balance between swift action and evidence. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a technical solution enabling Internet service providers to enforce an effective block within the time scale of a “live event”, regardless of the time it takes a court to act.

The Open Rights Group was the first to express concern for this policy, saying that it sets out a dangerous voluntary scheme involving so-called “expedited court procedures” as well as a “balance” between evidence and speed of action. Meanwhile, definitions of which content should be blocked are quite scarce, and there are no references to exactly how filtering would work. In the end, everyone understands that ISPs won’t be able to really prevent Internet users from accessing blocked services, since all it really takes to access them is the right proxy.