A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

after years of development and many millions of Euro in the drain the Belgian federal police has decided to stop the development of a new software and will go back to the more than 10 year old software that was being used before (and is still being used by the Belgian local police forces)

so where is the cop in this software project

who followed up or didn't

it only shows again that making software 'on demand' is just crazy and that the best thing to do to go forward is to use as much as possible standardized installations and adapt the workflow to use it as much as possible

THis goes together with the problems with the Informatisation of the Justice Department (also tens of millions of Euro going down the drain)

it is not that the technology is not there, it is that they are making too many big projects that will take so much time that they finally will go nowhere and that you promise to do anything for anybody so that in the end everybody is asking anything so that in the end nothing gets done (first)

Keep it simple or be stupid

There was already the request for the official emails of Palin and the Bush White House, but now it is coming down to lower levels of office. The newspaper Mercury News asked and got all the internal emails between the police department and the City Hall of Oakland when they decided to break up the Occupy movement there in october 2011 with nearly military enforcement and riots as a consequence, leading to hundreds to be arrested or detained (and making the international headlines)

After the Freedom of Information request more than 4000 internal recent emails were released to the press who published them on Documentcloud which is a platform used by several newsorganizations (why do it yourself if you can do it better together) where they can host thousands of documents in seperate databases, making it easier to search and archive and connect documents and people.

After the publication a crowd-searching analysis was set up by which people online got as fast as possible through the thousands of documents trying to find the most interesting or astonishing, the contradictions and connections. This was coordinated through Twitter with a special hashtag.

An example of an email who by this way came to the attention of the journalists is here (you have to allow all services in your browser if you have a high level of protection). This example shows that the local economic development manager went to local business after the raid to get quotes the mayor could use to show the "business support" for his intervention.

You may also find the emailaddresses also of the people who protested against this operation with an email and maybe didn't intend to be known as such.

So do we have to prepare our officials to the fact that everything they do during their worktime or that has something to do with their official business (in whatever emailaddress) can and will be public at some time in the future (or much sooner than that) ? I am always so astonished to what people write in emails - as if that is a private and secure conversation. Emails will NOT go away, even if you throw away your own copy.

ACTA: ACTA is an international trade agreement that criminalizes intellectual property theft across borders. Its targets are both those counterfeiting physical goods as well as folks pirating digital content. The U.S. signed it in 2010 along with six other nations, including Japan and Canada. Last week ACTA was in the news as the EU and Poland signed the treaty as well, much to the dismay of some of their citizens and politicians. Other countries have until March of next year to join — and trade groups representing the content industry would dearly like everyone to join.

SOPA/PIPA: The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act were companion bills that were proposed last year in the House and Senate respectively. As of last week, they have been shelved thanks to a massive online and offline protest spearheaded by web giants and communities such as Wikipedia and Reddit.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (or ACTA 2.0): The TPP is currently being negotiated in Los Angles as a wide-reaching trade agreement between Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, and the United States. It includes provisions about everything from labor conditions to tariffs, but it also has provisions on intellectual property, which have caught the eye of consumer-rights groups.
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/30/acta-2-0-is-like-a-backdoor-...

There are worldwide a lot of actions against these new international legal frameworks - even if some of the oritginal most hardest punishments and controls have been retired from the text (or the leaked public version which is no guarantee). In principle there are three main problems

* a law should be set up and controlled by parliament and not like the international free-trade agreements (and the intergouvernmental non-agreements in Europe about the Euro), if there is going to be a new law and punishment you are entitled to have your say in it (through a really democratic parliament)

* a nation shouldn't be 'infected' with bad laws from another country through these secretive international agreements and other nations shouldn't have jurisdiction in or over our own countries (you always know where it starts but never where it ends)

* each individual should have the benefit of the doubt and should keep his privacy and his full democratic rights wherever he lives and whatever he does (even if he is committing a crime, that doesn't make him a person without any rights).

THe basic problem is that the entertainment industry hasn't adapted at all at the new digital environment and isn't willing to adapt and so wants to try to keep things a bit under control with all these controls and new frameworks while they know that it won't change a thing. As long as you can't watch online tv series from the US or other parts of the world at the same time as the home audience and have to wait 6 months to 2 years before you can watch it on your own television, you are creating pirates. As long as you have to pay the same price for the download of a single that has been sold millions of times and has been earned back thousands of times as for a new song that still has to be earned back one percentage of production and marketing costs, you are creating pirates. As long as there are no legal alternatives that are interesting, economical and easy to use, you are creating pirates. And if there is something that is appearing through most of the research is that those who download the most, also spend the most on entertainment but are in fact 'tasting' the free version before buying the full version with all the extra effects and add-ons and so on. Because in the end there is nothing like having the original in your hands.

And maybe there is too much identical crap around that is already boring after having it heard three times or seen once. Which is strange in a connected world where we should have been put into contact with thousands of new musicans, creators, writers and artists inspiring us with different and unexpected emotions and interpretations. The problem here is that the entertainment industry has become sometimes too much of an industry that isn't enough entertaining any more to keep us hooked enough to get out the money.

What people also seem to forget. When I was much younger I went to the library and copied my favourite lp's on those cassettes or I copied the Top of the Pops on the radio, playing it afterwards in my walkman.  It seems easier by now, but even than when I had enough pocket money I went to the store and bought that really good lp of Pink Floyd, ACDC and the rest (and I still have them, the originals).

And maybe there is another thing for the entertainment industry, you can't expect people to pay each time again when you have decided to change the format. You went from VHS to DVD (and some other fucked up formats for people who feel themselves losers now) and now we should pay for Blue Ray or from LP to CD to download ? And that for the SAME price for the same artist for the same title ? For what, some better sound, some better effects ? My DVD-CD's are technically so vulnerable that I have to make backups from them if I want to be sure not to 'lose' them untill you come up with another 'Format'.

It is also surprising that it seems possible to do all these things against copythiefs and that the same thing takes years to do even the most simplest things against international cybercrime (and finance them adeaquatly).

we have for the moment a national strike going on

a big success for the unions, a failure according to others

some thought in the unions that twittering would be a good idea

only they seem to have forgotten that those who are twittering aren't members of unions and mostly don't sympathize with unions and strikes and think they don't need them and will do everything by themselves

so no you should keep away from mediums you will never prevail in

your public is on the workfloor, in the factories and people working too hard to be twittering nonsense all day :)

the left should first build a huffingtonpost like portal and progressive hostingplatform

and not fragment itself in hundreds of different little sites and projects

Most of the servers of Megaupload are still ready to become operational again (except probably for those in Holland and the States, there goes a lot of their business). If they can get the operation back again (that is someone signing orders and checkbooks) the millions of files can become operational again under another name (Google gives us 8 million active links on the domainname). 

Secondly numerous other services and new possibilities are popping up while a whole bunch of other services is under investigation or is closing down or throwing away masses of files (millions in total) has planned meetings with the FBI or is invited to a hearing. This means that the searchengines and the linklists that aren't updating daily have an enormous load of dead links. Links to downloadable content should be not older than a week.

1. FileServe - Closing does not sell premium.
2. - FileJungle - Deleting files. Locked in the U.S..
3. - UploadStation - Locked in the U.S..
4. - FileSonic locked all downloads by third parties  (under FBI investigation).
5. - VideoBB - Closed! would disappear soon.
6. - Uploaded - Banned U.S. and the FBI went after the owners who are gone.
7. - FilePost - Deleting all material (so will leave executables, pdfs, txts)
8. - Videoz - closed and locked in the countries affiliated with the USA.
9. - 4shared - Deleting files with copyright and waits in line at the FBI.
10. - MediaFire - Called to testify in the next 90 days and it will open doors pro FBI (expect it to close or delete everything 'interesting')

Online streamingsites are also under investigation and some have already been closed down. For many youngster this is enough, they don't have to download the movie, they just want to see it (and the real freaks will buy the movie if they like it so much).

Another element that wasn't mentioned in the media at all was that Megaupload was going to change its businessmodel in the coming months (making it hard to pursue an ongoing investigation) in which artists would be paid for their FREE downloads (advertising en premium contracts) and would receive 90% of the sum people paid for other downloads. Hear that Apple and the Music companies, paying the artists 90% of the price. An overhead of only 10%. Okay you would be probably responsable for your own marketing and advertising and so on, but you would be better able to control the costs of that overhead and change marketingstrategy and so on when you aren't happy.

Filesonic (all my links here to filesonic documents have gone dead) has changed itself overnight without warning into an online backup company (good luck with that :) )

You should also read this very interesting article about how the feds found a way to prosecute and scare all the others (it is called commercial copyright infringement)

Scientology finds Brussels and Belgium very important because it is the capital of Europe and it will try whatever means possible to get some European funds for its projects or to participate in such projects under whatever cover.

This is the message

Adress:
Scientology HQ Belgium
100, Rue of Law.
Brussels 

Freedom of assembly and freedom of assembly is a public and political freedom generally regarded as fundamental and under which a group of people has the opportunity to meet temporarily in one place, peacefully and unarmed, in any lawful purpose andcomply with the Act. It is named in Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here's a video   http://anonbelgium.blogspot.com

comment : back to your roots, where it all began ?

if you want to read a bit, this looks like a good Google search 

and especially this internal email from one of the senior clergy who is now disputing the management

compare the prices to your local currency here

the commercial price for the tablet in local currency is 2550 Indian roepies (about 40 Euro)

but some Indian educational authorities are sponsering the sale of it to their students for 50% making it (about 20 Euro)

there are already 1.4 million orders for the tablet made by a british firm datawind with the full help of OLPC (the cheap laptop for every kid project that now in fact needs to change into a cheap tablet for every kid)

it has an 7 inch screen and runs on the old android 2.2 (the android 4 can be compared to the ipad) and works only with 2G (3g is too expensive anyway) and has only one 1 USB bus (buy an extension with USB slots) but at that price (and also the more they sell the better the next models will become)

more information can be found here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_%28tablet%29

http://www.akashtablet.com/

although it looks as if you can only pre-order in the state and that the older model has been sold-out completely

well, at that price my whole family will have one (because you can also do internetphoning so my phonebill will disappear more or less over time)

this also coïncides with Microsoft's strategy to patent a tablet that can be used as smartphone, laptop and tablet at the same time (this will hurt the more expensive smartphones, imagine videoconferencing with your tablet, even an 7 inch). THe problem will be price but maybe as millions of tablets will be produced and everyone will have one (or more laying around) just as we have a mobile phone the prices will go down (you can now already buy tablets around 150 euro's at several chains).

so when people talk about getting more computers in schools, I say, stupid, get many tablets and stronger computers for the bigger and more difficult work

by the way, all higher schools in India will be obliged to put all their educational material online for their students

they are only capable of producing now 700 tablets a day (having sold already 2 million above inventory) and will only be capable to deliver in the coming months, so when you pay one, you only get it several months later (which is a bit risky with currency troubles and other parts and social-political troubles and so on).

the other problem for the public is that the Indian Government will place another multimillion order (they are talking about 10 to 12 million tablets for this year alone) for cheap tablets, increasing the pressure on these firms because they are receiving 100.000 orders at least every day but will by april only be capable to produce 70.000 tablets a day which makes a backlock of several millions of tablets. THe indian government is quite angry that the firm didn't deliver first all of the ordered tablets by them before selling them to the public - probably afraid that some-one else much bigger would copy the idea. But there is no way the firm will be able to do it alone or on its own infrastructure and management (the helpdesk and ordering mechanism is totally overcharged).

the devices should be in the Indian shops also by march or later

it seems that at that price even corporations are ordering them en masse

Yep as a corporation you can win easily your investment back (no paperwork at meetings, the docs are on the server, easier agenda and other applicative contacts and coordination) and I really think there are about a 1000 things I didn't think of (as the owner also said on Bloomberg, you could use it in restaurants for the menu, for visits at museums or shopping guides through malls and so on.....)

connect them to free wifi (hardware identification) and you have a small cost investment for a much better user or guest experience and are client relationships not about experience and mood and excitement

I can also think about those millions that are being spent giving kids and other social programs expensive laptops and computers they probably don't need (or would rather rent or lend when they really need it) and the economies that could be done with changing those programs to cheap tablets (and software and Os companies have to change their business model from software to services and central infrastructure otherwise they will become too expensive for the popular tablet market).

another detail that is important is that it seems easier with those cheap devices to look at video than to do multitasking but didn't we have laptops and desktops for that, do not ask to much from one machine but use each machine at its best potential.

so there are two online applications that will definitely in particular profit from this specific tablet

* youtube

* skype

should I maybe also say that another Indian enterpreneur is building a small citycar for 2000 Euro

It also shows - again - that it is government who is the only one to have the muscle to influence the market and re-organise our economy and way of living.

During the 80's there were several deadly attacks from armed trained groups against customers of Supermarkets just before closing time in Belgium. Delhaize denied that it had to do something with extorsion. The attacks stopped but the investigation has never ended and the real culprits have never been found although there are arguments for each possible venue (criminal, extorsion, cover-up for a series of specific murders and a political campaign to effectively destabilize the country). As a result there have always been a great battle behind the screens between those investigators who believed it was solely criminnal and those who believed it was a political operation.

Now the main investigator who survived all the changes that this investigation underwent (and made it lose several years) has said that after the last 'restructuration' of the investigation cell he wants to leave the investigation "to do something else". No big news here because nobody believes we will ever find these people and the people responsable will not talk before 2015 after which they can't be prosecuted for these crimes.

The most important thing is that in De Morgen I read the following

One of the victims (who was 9 years old at the time) was recently invited to visit the investigation headquarters. He was really surprised that they told him that they were NOW busy with examining documents they found in cases that weren't opened FOR 15 YEARS. They said also that they had discovered new weapons in one of the evidence stores but that those weren't properly described and they didn't know where they were found and to whom they belonged.

"David Van de Steen werd onlangs in Charleroi uitgenodigd voor een geleid bezoek aan de CWB. "De speurders waren er bezig met het bestuderen van stukken van het Bendedossier die ze net hadden ontdekt in een al vijftien jaar niet meer geopende kast", zegt hij. "In een andere kast vond men wapens terug die ooit wel ergens waren gevonden, maar waarvan men niet meer kon achterhalen bij wie of waarom. Als je zoiets ziet, ben je niet erg hoopvol, nee.""
http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/989/Binnenland/article/detai...

We have in Belgium transparency laws. They make it possible to ask the administration for documents which aren’t public yet and which could give more information about a decision that has been taken . You have to file each time a request. Only you have to remember in Belgium, transparency and publicity are the exception, not the rule and the whole working of the administration and  political decisionprocess has been built on that. We have a non-transparant democracy.

Now we have different laws for the Belgian federal administration and the Flemish regional administration (including the communes). Now it has appeared that in Flanders a commune has the right to refuse to answer to questions of transparency of administrative documents when it thinks that there have been too many of them. The question is not if they were acceptable, but it is the number of questions that is important according to the decision by the administration of the Flemish government who refued an appeal to this decision by a commune.
In fact there is a much more fundamental question.

Transparancy should be the rule and secrecy should be the exception (except for critical infrastructure that could be the target of terrorist attacks like nuclear and energy installations, military and international headquarters and so on on – but many of those things you can-could find on the net)

If this would have been the case and the documents would have been available for anyone to see, not only the administrative process of handling those requests would have been cheaper (because absent) but the decisionprocess would have been more inclusive and democratic and the final decisions would have been easier to implement because it would be easier to accept them because there is not that much that happened ‘behind closed doors’.

Retweeted by MartijnK and 100+ others

so our belgian politicians have started tweeting throughout the day, trying to say things the smart way in 160 characters and looking sometimes very silly indeed

this extreme right wing politician said a year and a half ago that he would go and live in Namibia if Elio Di Rupo became prime minister in Belgium

Elio is prime minister in Belgium

so,  now what ?

think before you tweet :)

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164570/occupyusa-blog-special-weekend-edition

the police is now pushing in

all over the US there are now thousands of protestors camping somewhere

this is also movement - online support giving by some parts of Anonymous

everything into place - the riotpolice, the horses, the buses, the helicopters

more live video of events as they unfold - protests going to the parks, police out in huge numbers from all over the state

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mpapaya

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164574/occupyusa-blog-monday-nov-14-frequent-updates

http://www.kgw.com/your-pics/133766893.html

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/j%27tao%27s-webcam-in-cyberspace%21%21%21#utm_campaign=www.thenation.com&utm_source=316210&utm_medium=social  another live video

a new focal point for the movement

and a lesson for the European movement : it is only if the people from different ages, colours, professions and political opinions come together and stay together without organisations imposing their views and strategies that a movement can become influent and develop an counter-offensive against the neo-liberal assault against our welfare state (because we are in bad state because we saved bad banks with bad credit because of the liberalisation of the financial industry)

expect no riots, the goal of the protestors is NOT to get arrested but to stay present and NOT to have their material confiscated

activists should look at wifi connections to use with videocams streaing to livestream.com (how technology is changing reporting, you see a live event from different angels in live even if the tv is not present and not reporting) and the most important are batteries, with such events you will need batteries for hours (6 to 10 hours) and as your stream immediately your film can't be confiscated .... :)

for those who think that hacktivism and activism online is only online this is gone with the occupy movement, it is becoming one big symbiosis - and that is why it is even becoming spreading as it did and does

anonymous has declared war on the local authorities

oh yes, the protestors have their own medical cars and teams standby and lawyers standing by to intervene and help people who are arrested or beaten (without having to go to hospital and get notified)

stream is re-used by aljeera and other news channels from time to time, this is citizenreporting having enormous influence worldwide (this is live - no doctering possible - as authentic as it can get)

what is most funny is that policemen in the US have to be identified by a badge or name and the camera is showing whole lines of US riot police without any identification and filming the faces and telling them it is in violation (but it is a bit of a gray area) and which kind of armor and guns the police have.... as if they are preparing for what ?

oh yes and you have to think about networkconnections, this mediaguy says he got access to three different networks so he can switch

and they are helped by ustream

another important thing : bicycles to be able to get from one side to another....

some are planning to retake the plaza later this day (our night) and there are not so many people for the moment over there because the events unfolded in the early hours of the morning while most went to sleep and their families and the question will be what will happen this afternoon over there (and late at night here)

if they will be able to retake the center plaza or install themselves at another park not far from the center than it will be another message to other local politicians that they will come back and back and back and that it ain't worth it trying to retake all the plaza's all the time to quell the movement

some of the people will now go to sleep or to work to come back afterwards

it has cost the local authorities around 1 million dollars to arrest 20 people and take around as many tents, the war on tents continues (says a mediaguy)

follow the live stream here http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

it is easier to tweet and make websites than to organize a blockade or sit-in

and to keep it going day after day

but what the heck, people from all over the world are paying for pizza's and other shops in shops around the district to be delivered to them to give them a feeling that they are not alone

at a time when behind the big story of the Ubs disaster there is a whole new scheme of speculation and structural risks that may blow up in their minds (and get more money out of our pockets) because it is just the very same thing as in 2008 (inflated and poisoned in exactly the same way)

so they have every reason to be there

at a time when it becomes clear that there are no new stringent rules for the financial sector and that their lobbyists are effectively blocking those efforts

so they have every reason to be there

at a time when that money is most of all needed to invest in real industries who create real wealth for real people with real jobs and families - not some virtual numbers on a global monopoly where only the few gets richer

so they have every reason to be there

they wanted the fame, the money and the content but not the effort

1. statelogs has only 7605 cables out of the total package

classified means that someone somewhere did find it so sensitive that according to him it should be classified

the Us government has been re-classifying millions of documents since the war on terror (which costs enormous sums of money) but at the same time had to give more people access to those classified documents (800.000 people in total) to be sure that no crucial information would be lost like in the days running up to 9/11 where there was FBI information about the hijackers but the people who should have known didn't have access

so this for the meaning of 'classified'

so thousands of documents are being released and yesterday we published a list with interesting Belgian cables (but most of the Belgian media just follows hype or the story of the moment and than forgets about it)

maybe this will shake them up

after all the sidetracks about wikileaks it is getting back to its core-business - releasing documents

because how can you defend an organisation that leaks that information because you defend the publicity of most of the information when it has stopped releasing leaks and is sitting on thousands more - it is as if they were becoming the domscheidt they were criticizing

some journalists declared wikileaks dead

maybe it is a Loch Ness that will pup up from time to time and surprise us all

the best way to keep up with the analysis by the community of the new dump is by going on twitter and following #WLFIND

you can also search in www.cablegatesearch.net and type the word or sentence or name or concept

one of the reasons that releases are now maybe coming faster is that Domscheit has said that the full package of cables was already leaked on the internet by the publication of a password and that other organisations and persons not mentioned have downloaded it at that time. Official wikileaks denies she knows anything about this but this changes the context of most of the cables.

this makes a total of 100.000 which is nearly half

Do you want to know what the prime minister thought of the flemish socialists in his governement ?

"they are against everything"

Do you want to know what De Gucht was doing during his visit to Iraq ?

Do you want to know who was the belgian national arrested in Iraq from 2003 ?

Do you want to know what was the position from Belgium about the adhesion of Turkey to Europe ?

Do you want to know more about the backoffice politics of our Afghanistan presence ?

so yes we have selected a few interesting cables about Belgium

from this release http://wikileaks.org/origin/156_1.html

from the 5000+ that have been released the last 2 days after a long silence (somebody back from holiday ?)

and that you won't find in the Belgian press today

our selection can be found here

http://www.filesonic.com/file/1756172374