Will Saudi Arabia MOVE the remains of Prophet Muhammad? Controversial plan for 'anonymous' burial to prevent the site itself being worshipped

• Plans have reportedly been put forward to move the prophet's remains
• They are currently housed in tomb in mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia
• But some Muslims fear that the site is leading to idolatry, or object worship
• No plans have been agreed but it is reported the idea has been circulated
  
  
  Controversial plans have emerged to move the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam's second-holiest site.
  The Prophet Muhammad, born in 570 AD, is believed by Muslims to be the last of God's prophets to mankind who delivered the religion's final revelation.
  His resting place in Medina, Saudi Arabia is visited by millions of Muslims every year and is seen as the second holiest site after the Kaaba, the famous black cubed building in Mecca.
  But it emerged last night that a Saudi academic has put forward contentious plans to have the Prophet's remains moved from the tomb over fears by some scholars that the site is leading to idolatry.
  
  
  

  
  

  The tomb of Prophet Mohammad at Al-Masjid al-Nabawi in the holy city of Medina. Proposals to move the Prophet's remains threaten to spark discord across the Muslim world
  
  
  

  The tomb of the Prophet Muhammad could be moved from the al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, where it is currently housed, under plans reported today

  
  
  According to the Independent, a 61-page document has been circulated among the supervisors of the holy site proposing that the Prophet's body be moved to the nearby al-Baqi cemetery, where it would be interred anonymously.
  Dr Irfan al-Alawi, director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, told the newspaper: 'They want to prevent pilgrims from attending and venerating the tomb because they believe this is "shirq", or idolatry.
  'But the only way they can stop people visiting the Prophet is to get him out and into the cemetery.'
   
  Idolatry, known as 'shirq' in the Islamic faith, is the worship of objects or saints and is forbidden in the faith.
  There is no suggestion that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who is the site's formal custodian, nor the supervisors of the al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque which contains the tomb have agreed to the idea.
  The Saudi government has previously insisted it treats the development of holy sites with 'the utmost seriousness'.
  
  
  

  
  

  Prophet
  
  
   

  
  

  It is feared any plans to move the prophet's remains could cause anger among some Muslims in the region

  
  
  But it is feared the emergence of plans, which spring from a reform movement known as Wahhabism, could divide Muslims, with both Sunnis and Shias thought to be opposed.
  Dr Alawi told the Independent: 'The Prophet Muhammad's grave is venerated by the mainstream Sunni, who would never do it. It is just as important for the Shia too, who venerate the Prophet's daughter, Fatima.
  'I'm sure there will be shock across the Muslim world at these revelations. It will cause outrage.'
  Violence in Iraq and the rise of the radical Isis, or Islamic State, organisation has already strained tensions between Sunnis and Shias in the region.

  'THE TWO SANCTUARIES': ISLAM'S TWO MOST IMPORTANT SITES

  The tomb of the Prophet Muhammad is seen as the second most important site for Muslims after the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
  The Kaaba - which is said to have been built by Abraham - is at the centre of the Grand al-Masjid al-Haram Mosque, which Muslims always face to pray.
  It is religious duty for those who follow the faith to visit the Kaaba at least once during their lifetime.
  Millions of pilgrims gather to circle the building during the hajj, a huge five-day pilgrimage to the site each year.
  
  
  

  The tomb of the Prophet Muhammad is second only to the Kaaba in its importance for the world's Muslims

  
  
  Many of those visiting the site also take the opportunity to visit Muhammad's tomb, which about 200miles to the north in Medina.
  The tomb dates back to the seventh century, when Muhammad was buried, and also includes the resting places of early Muslim leaders Abu Bakr and Umar.
  It is covered by a famous Green Dome and includes a community centre, court and religious school. It can hold hundreds of thousands of visitors during the busy hajj.

UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza:

http://youtu.be/qMGuYjt6CP8

10 Mind-Blowing Theories That Will Change Your Perception of the World

Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean.

1. Great glaciation.

Great glaciation is the theory of the final state that our universe is heading toward. The universe has a limited supply of energy. According to this theory, when that energy finally runs out, the universe will devolve into a frozen state. Heat energy produced by the motion of the particles, heat loss, a natural law of the universe, means that eventually this particle motion will slow down and, presumably, one day everything will stop.

2. Solipsism.

Solipsism is a philosophical theory, which asserts that nothing exists but the individual’s consciousness. At first it seems silly – and who generally got it into his head completely deny the existence of the world around us? Except when you put your mind to it, it really is impossible to verify anything but your own consciousness.

Don’t you believe me? Think a moment and think of all the possible dreams that you have experienced in your life. Is it not possible that everything around you is nothing but an incredibly intricate dream? But we have people and things around us that we cannot doubt, because we can hear, see, smell, taste and feel them, right? Yes, and no. People who take LSD, for example, say that they can touch the most convincing hallucinations, but we do not claim that their visions are “reality”. Your dreams simulate sensations as well, after all, what you perceive is what different sections of your brain tell you to.

As a result, which parts of existence can we not doubt? None. Not the chicken we ate for dinner or the keyboard beneath our fingers. Each of us can only be sure in his own thoughts.

3. Idealist Philosophy

George Berkeley, the father of Idealism, argued that everything exists as an idea in someone’s mind. Berkley discovered that some of his comrades considered his theory stupid. The story goes that one of his detractors kicked a stone with his eyes closed and said, “There I’ve disproved it!”

The idea being that if the stone really only exists in his imagination, he could not have kicked it with his eyes closed. Refutation of Berkeley is hard to understand, especially in these days. He argued that there is an omnipotent and omnipresent God, who sees all and all at once. Realistic, or not?

4. Plato and Logos.

Everybody has heard of Plato. He is the world’s most famous philosopher. Like all philosophers he had a few things to say about reality. He argued that beyond our perceived reality there lies a world of “perfect” forms. Everything that we see is just a shade, an imitation of how things truly are. He argued that by studying philosophy we have a chance of catching a glimpse of how things truly are, of discovering the perfect forms of everything we perceive.

In addition to this stunning statement, Plato, being a monist, said that everything is made of a single substance. Which means (according to him) that diamonds, gold and dog feces all consist of the same basic material, but in a different form, which, with science’s discovery of atoms and molecules, has been proven true to an extent.

5. Presentism.

Time is something that we perceive as a matter of course, if we view it at the moment, we usually divide it into past, present and future. Presentism argues that the past and the future are imagined concepts, while only the present is real.

In other words, today’s breakfast and every word of this article will cease to exist after you have read it, until you open it again. The future is just as imaginary, because time cannot exist before and after it happened, as claimed by St. Augustine.

6. Eternalism.

Enternalism is the exact opposite of presentism. This is a philosophical theory that says that time is multi-layered. It can be compared to a pound cake (however, unlike the time, a biscuit is not up for philosophical debate). All time exists simultaneously, but the measurement is determined by the observer. What he sees depends on which point he is looking at.

Thus dinosaurs, World War II and Justin Bieber all exist simultaneously but can only be observed from a specific location. If one takes this view of reality then the future is hopeless and the deterministic free will is illusory.

7. The Brain in a Jar

The “brain in a jar” thought experiment is a question discussed by thinkers and scientists, who, like most people, believe that human’s understanding of reality depends solely on his subjective feelings.

So, what is the debate? Imagine that you are just a brain in a jar that is run by aliens or mad scientists. How would you know? And can you truly deny the possibility that this is your reality?

This is a modern interpretation of the Cartesian evil demon problem. This thought experiment leads to the same conclusion: we cannot confirm the actual existence of anything except our consciousness. If this seems to sound reminiscent of the movie “The Matrix“, it is only because this idea was part of the very basis of the story. Unfortunately, in reality we have no red pills…

8. The Multiverse Theory

Anyone who has not spent the last ten years on a desert island, has at least once heard of “the multiverse”, or parallel universes. As many of us have seen, parallel words, in theory, are worlds very similar to ours, with little (or in some cases, large) changes or differences. The multiverse theory speculates that there could exist an infinite number of these alternate realities.

What's the point? In a parallel reality you have already killed the dinosaurs, and you are lying under the ground at a depth of eight feet (because that's what happened there.) In the other you might be a powerful dictator. In another you might never have even been born since your parents never met. Now that’s a memorable image.

9. Fictional Realism.

This is the most fascinating branch of multiverse theory. Superman is real. Yes, some of you would probably choose a different story, for argument’s sake, Harry Potter might be real too. This branch of the theory argues that given an infinite number of universes, everything must exist somewhere. So, all of our favorite fiction and fantasy may be descriptive of an alternate universe, one where all the right pieces came in to place to make it happen.

10. Phenomenalism.

Everyone is interested in what happens to things when we aren’t looking at them. Scientists have carefully studied this problem and some of them came to a simple conclusion - they disappear. Well, not quite like this. Phenomenalist philosophers believe that objects only exist as a phenomenon of consciousness. So, your laptop is only here while you are aware of, and believe in its existence, but when you turn away from it, it ceases to exist until you or someone else interacts with it. There is no existence without perception. This is the root of phenomenalism.

Source: Learning Mind via Endo Riot & List Verse

Introduction to Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam

William Henry Quilliam, a local Liverpool solicitor and resident embraced Islam in 1887 (aged 31), after returning from a visit to Morocco, and took on the name Abdullah. He claimed that he was the first native Englishman to embrace Islam. His conversion led to a remarkable story of the growth of Islam in Victorian Britain. This history is now beginning to emerge and has important lessons for Muslims in Britain and around the world.

After embracing Islam, Quilliam began a campaign of Dawah, which in the circumstances of Victorian England, has to be described as the most effective in the UK to date. He became an Alim, an Imam and the most passionate advocate of Islam in the Western world. In 1894 Sultan Abdul Hamid ll (shown on the left), the last Ottoman Caliph, appointed him Sheikh-ul-Islam of the British Isles. The Emir of Afghanistan recognised him as the Sheikh of Muslims in Britain. He was also appointed as the Persian Vice Counsel to Liverpool by the Shah. He became a prominent spokesman for Islam in the media and was recognised by Muslims around the world. He is the only Muslim in Britain to have officially held the position of Sheikh Ul Islam of Britain. He issued many Fatwas in his capacity as appointed Leader of Muslims in Britain. These fatwas are relevant even today.

He established the Mosque and Liverpool Muslim Institute at No. 8 Brougham Terrace and later purchased the remainder of the terrace, and opened a boarding school for boys and a day school for girls. He also opened an orphanage (Medina House) for non-Muslim children whose parents could not look after them, and agreed to for them to be raised in the values of Islam. In addition, the Institute operated educational classes covering a wide range of subjects that were attended by both Muslims and non-Muslims, and included a museum and science laboratory.

In 1893 the Institute published a weekly magazine, named ‘The Crescent’, and later added the monthly ‘Islamic World’, which was printed on the Institute’s own press and distributed to over 20 countries. The Crescent was published every week and was effectively a dairy and record of Islam in Britain and the around the world. There are hundreds of archive copies of these magazines in the British Library. Without this unique weekly record we would not know of the existence of this native Muslim community of around 200 people in Liverpool, and many other parts of Britain. These offer the first attempt at Muslim journalism in the UK and offer a unique insight into a British Muslims view of events and issues in Liverpool, the UK and the Muslim world, at a crucial period of Muslims living under colonial rule.

He also wrote and published a number of books. In particular his “Faith of Islam” had three editions translated into thirteen different languages, and was so popular that Queen Victoria ordered a copy and then re-ordered copies for her grandchildren. The Institute grew, and at the turn of the century held a membership of 200 predominantly English Muslim men, women and children from across the local community. Quilliam’s dawah led to around 600 people in the UK embracing Islam, many of them very educated and prominent individuals in British Society, as well as ordinary men and women. His efforts also led to the first Japanese man embracing Islam.

Quilliam eventually had to leave England after facing hostility and persecution, the first Muslim experience of “Islamophobia” in the UK. He eventually returned to the UK and adopted the name Haroun Mustapha Leon, and passed away in 1932 near Woking, and was buried in Brookfield Cemetery where Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall and Lord Headly are also buried.

Ramadan 101: Ten facts about the holy month of Ramadan

1. What is Ramadan?

Ramadan, the ninth month on the Muslim calendar, is celebrated as the month when the first verses of the Quran were said to be revealed to the prophet Muhammad in 610 CE. Laylat al-Qadr, or Night of Power, is thought to be the actual day when the Quran was given to the prophet and usually falls within the last 10 days of the holiday.

2. What is the purpose of Ramadan?

During Ramadan, observers are expected to abstain from food, drink, and other pleasures from dawn to dusk. Removing these comforts from daily routine is intended to focus the mind on prayer, spirituality, and charity and to purify the body and mind. Muslims are also expected to abstain from impurities such as gossip and cursing.

3. Exceptions to the fast

Several different groups are excused from fasting during Ramadan: pregnant women, people who are mentally or physically ill, and sometimes women who are breastfeeding. Children are not obligated to fast until they hit puberty, although many choose to observe the fast at least part of the month in preparation for later years.

Sometimes political factors can also get in the way of the fast. In China, celebrating Ramadan has been banned by the government in Xinjian province, where ethnic Uighurs practice Islam. Last month, tensions between Uighurs and police forces led to widespread riots resulting in the deaths of some 35 people.

4. The start of Ramadan is determined by the moon

The exact start of Ramadan is often up in the air until just before the holiday begins because it is determined by a sighting of the new moon. Many places still depend on someone seeing the new moon with the naked eye in order to declare the holiday. As a result, Ramadan’s start can vary from place to place because of weather conditions and other factors that affect how easily the moon is seen.

5. The date changes every year

Islam functions on a lunar calendar that doesn’t quite line up with the solar Gregorian calendar that the secular world uses. So while Muslim holidays are always the same day on the Muslim calendar, they happen on different days on the Gregorian calendar – typically moving 11 or 12 days earlier each year.

6. A month of big changes

In countries where Muslims are the majority, Ramadan has a drastic impact on daily life. Egypt pushes the clocks back an hour during the holy month so that the fast feels like it is ending earlier and the evenings are lengthened. Work days are made shorter during the month to accommodate the additional time spent in prayer and in enjoying festive meals to end the daily fast.

According to bankers and economists in Muslim countries, Ramadan almost always ushers in a month-long period of inflation as people drastically increase the amount of money spent on clothing and food. The prices of certain staples go up dramatically – according to a former Monitor correspondent in Cairo, during Ramadan a cup of tea can cost six times its normal price. However, economic productivity also declines because of the shorter working hours and the general malaise among those abstaining from food and water all day.

Ironically, many people gain weight during Ramadan. They are more sedentary during the daytime, eat richer food than normal at the fast-breaking iftar meal in the evenings, and get the majority of their daily calories at night, shortly before they go to sleep.

7. Traveling during Ramadan

Though it is the holiest month of the year, Ramadan does not prohibit long-distance travel. Many Muslims will still celebrate even while in transit.

This year the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), anticipating the holiday, issued a statement on its website informing travelers of the increase in religious activities they may see in airports, according to the National Journal. Some of the practices include reciting passages from the Quran, whispering prayers, or performing ablution (the washing of the body).

If a non-Muslim wants to wish a fellow passenger a happy Ramadan, they can say Ramadan Mubarak, which means “have a blessed Ramadan.”

8. Charity is an important part of Ramadan

While most non-Muslims know of Ramadan for the fasting, charity is also an important part of the month long holiday.

Muslims are obliged to give charity on a regular basis in the form of either Zakat, which is mandatory giving, or Sadaqa, which is voluntary and meant to go beyond the mere religious obligations. During Ramadan, the rewards of charity are considered greater. As a result, many Muslims will choose to give more during the month.

9. The Five Pillars of Islam

Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, the practices that all Muslims must follow. They are as follows:

Shahada: This is a profession of belief in the one true God. The declaration usually goes as follows: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet and servant.”

Salat: Praying five time daily facing the direction of Mecca. Muslims must practice ablution before the prayers.

Zakat: The giving of charity to the poor and needy.

Sawm: Fasting during the month of Ramadan.

Hajj: The pilgrimage to Mecca that each Muslim must make at least once in his or her lifetime.

10. Eid ul Fitr

The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid ul Fitr, a large festival to celebrate the end of the fast. The celebration begins as soon as the new moon is sighted in the sky. During Eid, Muslims celebrate by putting on their best clothing, attending large processions, giving gifts, spending time with their family, and having a large meal during the day. Muslims must also contribute a certain amount to charity so that the poor may also celebrate the breaking of the fast.

Eid ul Fitr is also considered a time of reverance. Muslims praise Allah (God) for helping them get through the month, and ask for forgiveness for the sins they’ve committed.

But what if…

Salamu alaykom wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

A dear brother and good friend emailed me a very good question. I thought I’d share it to spread the benefit. May Allah reward him:

“It’s extremely difficult to detach oneself from dunya whilst seeking aakhirah, unless you have strong imaan, which is difficult to attain.

Can it be that if one makes a decision solely for aakhira without having strong imaan, that they burn themselves out and thus ruining the decision they had made, therefore making matters even worse than before.

i.e should one act on a whim which is for dunya but not haram, then try to overcome it, because its difficult to know if you have overcome it beforehand?

…hope i made sense…”

So there are a few question or assumptions in this question, lets tackle them one by one:

Is it difficult to detach oneself from dunya ?

It’s as difficult as you make it. That’s not a cop-out answer by the way.

You see, some people will make the decision that it WOULD be nice to detach from dunya without having actually made the decision TO detach. But they kid themselves that they did make that decision and then they wonder why they still have difficulties.

Some reverts, for example, will sacrifice everything – cold turkey – without any ‘side effects’ what-so-ever. Others will make the decision that it would be nice, then act like they’ve made THE decision – they burn out as the brother described it.

There are a few ways in which people try to detach from dunya:

Theory 1: leaving it physically, so they go to monasteries or caves and they ‘meditate’.
This isn’t really detaching from dunya. It’s removing oneself from it.
It’s escaping the stimulus of dunya.
When they return, guess what ? Same old dunya ! AND Same old person !

Theory 2: staying with it physically but cutting it out completely
This is much closer to detachment than the first type
They won’t physically escape their surroundings, but they’ll reject dunya
A lot of homeless people fit into this category – though not all
This is where they shun everything whilst being within society
They only buy or own what they need – the bear minimum

Theory 3: where they are in society, they acquire dunya but it isn’t in their hearts
so they don’t escape civilisation to go to the mountains
and they don’t shun materialism whilst remaining in civilisation also
instead… they see life for what it is. A tool for the acquirement of akhirah
This one is as per the sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh)

Do you need strong Iman to be able to do so ?

I know of people that have detached from dunya that are not even Muslims ! And it’s important to note that whether you’re attached or not is not the sign of ultimate success: Islam, Iman and Ihsan are. (bear minimum being Islam)

It does help to know that there is something infinitely better coming though.

Can one burn themselves out if they over stretch ?

OK… well, now here’s where it gets interesting:

If you follow detachment theory 1 – it’s a game of will power, it’s a little easier because once you’re out there, you get used to it, you’ve got other ‘monks’ with you etc.

If you follow detachment theory 2 – it’s also a game of will power and it’s significantly harder than theory 1 because the stimulus is still present.

If you follow detachment theory 3 – the way of the sunnah, then you detach bit by bit. And it’s true detachment.

Theory 1 and 2 are a rejection of dunya… they are not a detachment from it.

Theory 3 is the only real way of detaching – actually detaching dunya from your heart. With theory 3, a person could be bribed, you could attempt to seduce them, to entice them… it wouldn’t work !

If theory 3 is done properly, releasing one whim at a time, then you will not burn out – EVER. insha Allah. The reason being, each time you detach, you become more free. You have more power to carry on.

With theories 1 and 2, with each thing you resist from dunya, you build up the temptations, you build up the ‘enemies’ that could potentially kill you whilst you’re not looking or at a moment of weakness.

Is it better to take it one step at a time, than to just make one big monumental decision ?

Both. You need to make the monumental decision that you want to be free. Then… one step at a time, you need to release your whims as you go along.

You won’t be able to release them unless you’ve taken the monumental decision, because you need a driver, an aim, an objective.

I hope this clarifies and explains things insha Allah :-)

NOW… to take this even further:

This question is one that almost everyone that hopes to tread this path asks themselves. If not outright, then a nagging feelings unsettles them. So lets analyse what whims this question represents.

Firstly, there’s a whim for security. You’re afraid of failure. It’s a threat. You’re also afraid of your own nafs – the possible back-lash !

Secondly, there’s a whim for control. You haven’t mastered your nafs enough to know how to control it. One of the things that I teach in “Whims-I-Kill Pro” is that you need to test your nafs after you release. YOU find out if you have released the whim, you don’t leave it to chance only then to be disappointed. That would be a lack of control.

Thirdly, you still want to approve of dunya.” It’s not all that bad, if it’s not haram, then surely I can dabble in it a little. It’s not so bad !”

Ironically, once you’ve detached from dunya… you will approve of it even more. You will know it for what it is worth. Up until then, it will continue to disappoint you – which is the opposite of approval.

There’s more to say, but that’s enough for now :-)

—–

I thought that I should share this question because we are only a couple of daysishs away from the month of Ramadan. The month where, if you want to take that monumental decision, well that’s the best time !

Social Media Mass Surveillance is Allowed in UK

The officials have officially confirmed the true extent of the government’s interception of social networks, including private messages between citizens. It was confirmed that searches on Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and exchange of emails abroad can be monitored by the local security services.

British government has finally admitted that communication of its citizens in private channels like Twitter direct messages are considered as legitimate targets that can be intercepted without a warrant.

The document representing defence of mass monitoring developed a legal interpretation,
provoking calls for the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to be overhauled urgently and the allegations that the authorities are exploiting loopholes in the law of which parliament was unaware.

The paper was released in response to a case brought by civil rights groups before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which deals with complaints against the intelligence services. The case was launched in the wake of revelations from Edward Snowden about the monitoring program dubbed Tempora operated by the British monitoring agency GCHQ. This program taps into the network of fiber-optic cables that carry the phone calls and online traffic worldwide, recording up to 600 million phone events daily.

According to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, traditional interception of internal communications within the country requires an individual warrant. The authorities argue that in a technologically-fast moving world, identifying individual targets before monitoring is too difficult. The external one, in the meantime, can be monitored without an individual warrant. The document explains that searches on social networks involve communicating with a web-based platform abroad, and are therefore external communications, not internal. Emails sent or received from abroad could also be intercepted in such a way.

The statement also points out that the issue was raised during the passage of the law a decade ago, implying that parliament knew about the difficulty of distinguishing between internal and external communications when it passed the bill.

Indeed, the Section 8 of the law reads that the internal communications between UK residents within the UK may only be monitored pursuant to a specific warrant, and if there’s a reason to suspect the individual in unlawful activity. But external communications may be monitored indiscriminately under a general warrant.

UK Economists Recommend to Replace Pound with Bitcoin

Professor of finance and economics at Durham University recommended the United Kingdom to privatize the pound and replace it with a cryptocurrency. He says that Bitcoin is not the first example of private money, but the cryptocurrency is the first one that governments are unable to shut down. In result, the authorities should admit that Bitcoin is here to stay, and allow competition between the alternative forms of money.

This suggestion might include allowing taxes to be paid in Bitcoin or Dogecoin, or even fully privatizing the national currency. The economist placed Bitcoin at the pinnacle of a historical trend of government crackdowns on its citizens’ attempts to create private money. It is known that the creators of physical and electronic currency both ended up in court, the former being accused of counterfeiting, and the latter of money laundering. However, those charges were politically-motivated protectionism. Since Bitcoin is decentralized, it is harder to crack down on through the court system. If cryptocurrency does become popular, the governments will have to deal with it some other way.

However, the creators of cryptocurrencies realize that there's a lot of standing in their way before they reach that success. After all, to displace existing national currency they not only have to perform the basic functions of money better that state money, they also need qualities that transcend the way in which state money works.

The advocates of Bitcoin believe that those qualities come in the form of protection from inflation. Indeed, the cryptocurrency will only ever have 21 million coins created to make sure that it will always hold its value. On the other hand, its critics render the Bitcoin economy prone to deflationary slumps.

For some, those qualities come from the purely digital nature of the currency. They describe it as the financial equivalent of the worldwide web, saying that the Internet was a new way to transmit data, just like Bitcoin was a new way to transmit money. Of course, this process will take a long time, but it is a big opportunity. The economist explains that money is a very important issue, so if you can build a new way to deal with it, it's very valuable though time-consuming.

South Korea and EU Will Develop 5G Together

South Korea and the European Union agreed to cooperate on developing 5G wireless network technologies and are expected to come up with a global consensus on standards. The countries have finally come to a conclusion on the need for a harmonized radio spectrum policy in order to ensure global interoperability of 5G networks, along with global technical standards.

The parties will also collaborate with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, a group of telcom standards organizations, as well as with the International Telecommunication Union that sets global policies for spectrum use. The European Union and South Korea have decided to form a joint research and development group and cooperate on developing ICT services for the cloud and the Internet of Things, apart from many other areas.

This move was supposed to ensure a globally agreed definition and standard for 5G telecommunication networks in the future. The Vice-President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda arrived in Seoul a few days ago to sign the agreement, saying that the move would certainly speed up and make sure that the European Union wins the global race to create 5G network. Earlier in 2014, the Commission set 2020 as the goal to introduce 5G networks across Europe.

The new agreement would see the European Union and South Korea launching jointly funded research projects in two years. As for South Korea, the country is planning core 5G wireless technologies to be ready in time for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, while the world’s first 5G network services are expected to be introduced by 2020.

Of course, these plans put Samsung into the spotlight, as the company has already successfully tested technologies considered key to 5G back in 2013. The country’s major carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus are currently fighting for the right to become the first 5G network provider.

Cheap Chinese Smartphone Carries Built-in Malware

Star N9500, a Chinese Android smartphone, which can be bought on Amazon, eBay and from other online retailers, has been found to contain a built-in trojan that pretends to be the Google Play Store. The smartphone closely resembles Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and is manufactured in China. The device is sold online through resellers in Belfast and Hong Kong.

The virus, known as “Uupay.D”, pretends to be the Google Play Store and comes pre-installed on the device, so that the user can’t remove it. One of the German security companies analyzed the smartphone purchased directly from the factory in China.

The trojan steals personal data from the device and sends it to an anonymous server in China. Moreover, it can install additional apps or malware without your knowledge. The experts admit that the options with this spy malware are almost unlimited. Users see nothing else than an app with the Google Play Store icon in the running processes. The malware allows the criminals to track your location, intercept and record phone calls, make purchases and send text messages. Finally, it could be used to break into online banking and similar services.

In the meantime, users are likely to be oblivious to the fact that their cheap and cool device could be stealing their information and live its own life, rating the smartphone five stars on Amazon and other online stores. You can buy Star N9500 across Europe two or three times cheaper than comparable devices from other manufacturers. Of course, the device has sold in the hundreds.

The security experts think that the low price of a device is a criminal tactic to entice users. The criminals may make money from the sale of stolen personal information. In is unclear at what stage the malware is introduced, but the buyers should beware in any case. Although very cheap offers online must make buyers suspicious, for some reason they don’t.

The statistics say that Android accounted for 97% of the malware targeted at mobile devices in 2013, which shows an increase of 20% from 2012. However, the Google Play Store, which is pre-installed on all Google Android devices, can only be blamed for 0.1% of the malware, because the majority of malware is downloaded by the users from third-party app stores like Chinese Baidu and Anzhi. Why do people go there? Just because access to Google Play is restricted in the country.

For Sale: Boneless Pork Rectums (Inverted)

A pallet of delicious pork rectums was spotted outside of a dumpling shop in Taipei, Taiwan. Please note that it is a product of the great republic. Despite complaints to the contary, American workers can still produce goods sought across world.

It appears that pork rectums must be properly deboned and inverted before they become sellable. These can be made into dumplings. Here in the South, we deep fry pork intestines and call them chitlins. Alternatively, we may use them as sausage casings. To my knowledge, these practices do not include the actual rectum portion. Perhaps the people of Taiwan prize quality American pork rectums so highly that they price domestic consumers out of the market.

How many pork rectums are present in this picture? How many would fit into a standard shipping container? W.M. Briggs, a statistician, learned that just one South Korean food company imports 2-3 shipping containers full of American pork rectums a month. He crunches the numbers:

    The 20-foot container is a standard size; we have all seen these containers on the highway. They measure 20′ x 8′ x 8.5′ feet. The volume is 1,360 cubic feet.

    We only need one more piece of information. The size of the average, deboned, inverted pig’s rectum is two feet long, and 2 inches wide. For the purposes of this calculation, we can assume that the rectum is a parallelepiped, which is to say, a rectangular box of size 2′ x 0.167′ x 0.167′ feet.

    A standard rectum thus takes up 0.056 cubic feet. We’ll ignore packing considerations for now and imagine that we’re trying to stuff as many rectums as we can into a container. This calculation, which will represent an upper bound, is easy: we have 1,360 available cubic feet, and each rectums takes up 0.056 cubic feet.

    That makes about 25,000 rectums per container. Using the universal principle “one pig, one rectum”, this makes it 25,000 pigs slaughtered per container. Of course, packaging adds bulk, so that the actual number of rectums that can be transported per container must be less. A figure of 20% to 30% increase per rectum seems reasonable. That is, each dry rectum, considering the plastic, dry ice, cardboard, etc., is like 1.2 to 1.3 packaged rectum.

    This means that each takes up about 0.067 to 0.072 cubic feet per rectum. That gives us a low of about 18,500 to a high of around 20,000 rectums per container.

    Now, those Koreans are importing 2 to 3 of those containers every month. Pick the middle figure. That makes 30 containers a year, just going to this one company. That gives a grand total of between 560,000 to 610,000 rectums per year sailing across the high seas on their way to Korea.

P.S. Shouldn't these actually be labeled as boneless pork recta? I cannot confirm it, but I think that rectum is a second declension noun.

Police & FACT Claim Big Successes in UK Anti-Piracy Drive

City of London Police and Hollywood's Federation Against Copyright Theft are claiming big results in a new government IP crime report. PIPCU say they have suspended 2,359 UK domains and cut off payment to 19 sites, with FACT claiming the closure of 117 pirate sites and the arrest of seven release group members in the past 12 months.

In recent times the UK has become one of the most unfriendly countries in the world when it comes to operating a file-sharing site. Efforts by the movie industry and their local proxies have restricted opportunities, and the addition of government assistance since the summer of 2013 has only made things more claustrophobic.
The two main players on this front are FACT, the Hollywood-affiliated Federation Against Copyright Theft and PIPCU, the City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Both have been very active recently, with the latter doing most of its work in the past 10 months or so.
While there are few big announcements from either group, a new UK government report now provides updated statistics from both. The numbers in the just-published IP Crime Highlight Report 2013/2014 show considerable activity, for FACT over the past 12 months and for PIPCU since September last year.
PIPCU
The headline figure from PIPCU indicates that the unit is currently investigating ‘IP Crime’ to the value of £28,869,991, which in the overall scheme of things doesn’t seem big by industry standards. Music sales alone were worth more than £1 billion in the UK during 2013 and it’s not unusual for the industry to claim piracy rates in excess of 90%.
Still, the police unit is not only about investigation, but also about disruption, and their aim to have the domains of infringing sites suspended has reportedly enjoyed some success. According to the new stats, since September 2013 PIPCU have had a hand in the suspension of 2,359 .co.uk domain names. It’s a significant number, no doubt, but the disruption one might expect from such broad action has certainly not been reflected in the press.
Other figures presented by the government relate to the execution of 15 search warrants. No further details have been provided but the action against a local streaming link site accounted for at least one of them.
The final piece of information from PIPCU relates to the current “follow the money” approach employed by anti-piracy groups worldwide. The unit claims to have suspended the ability of 19 websites to process payments, although no detail is given on the nature of the sites from where the processors backed out. PIPCU do work with PayPal, MasterCard and VISA, so it’s likely they’ll be somewhere in the chain.
FACT
Without doubt, FACT are the busiest ‘boots on the ground’ anti-piracy group in the UK and the most likely to trouble UK-based file-sharing site operators.
According to the report, in the past 12 months alone FACT has managed to close down 117 ‘pirate’ websites. No further details are provided but the group works on a number of levels, from scaring operators via email to physically arriving at their home addresses. When site operators have been brave enough to talk we have reported on a few instances here at TF, but in nothing like the numbers suggested in the report.
FACT also claim to have targeted people higher up the food chain in the past 12 months, after having a hand in the arrest of seven “alleged” release group members. The inclusion of the word ‘alleged’ suggests ongoing cases, but it’s certainly possible that FACT are referring to individuals arrested in the West Midlands last year.
In addition to having another 10 websites blocked by UK ISPs following action in the High Court, FACT secured the first ever UK conviction of an individual streaming live football matches over the Internet. The case involved the operators of a website called FreeLiveFooty, both of which were arrested in 2010 following complaints from the Premier League.
“FACT’s successes in the past year show the benefits of intelligence led, targeted actions against criminal websites and the people behind them,” FACT’s Eddy Leviten told TorrentFreak. “We also help to guide consumers to legitimate entertainment sources online, in cinemas and on TV.”
News-shy
While both PIPCU and FACT do make the occasional announcement on achievements, there is a tendency for them to work under the radar.
For example, while FACT has on occasion pressed the big publicity button, such as when they took the BBC along to the home of a file-sharing site operator, often the only reports to surface are the ones published here on TF with the assistance of FACT targets (for example 1,2,3,4,5)
PIPCU also tend not to shout too loudly or too often about their achievements, action against counterfeit domain names and other sundries aside. Again, word often reaches TF of attempted domain seizures or threatening letters way before the police make any announcement, if they ever do. Why they take this approach isn’t clear, but the fact that some attempts fail, such as recently with torrent index Torrentz, is certainly a motivator to keep things low-key.

Secure Platform for Whistleblowers Launched

The Guardian, a UK-based newspaper known for publishing leaks from Edward Snowden, has launched a secure platform for whistleblowers that enables them to securely submit confidential data to the reporters. A year ago the Guardian posted the first of a series of NSA documents leaked by Snowden, which sparked a worldwide debate on surveillance and civil liberties.

A number of free speech and privacy groups and popular websites are also marking the day with a so-called Reset the Net campaign. They encourage Internet users to do something to secure their privacy on the Internet. In addition, some tech firms are also expected to announce new steps to protect users’ privacy.

The new SecureDrop open-source whistleblowing platform allows those who want to remain anonymous to submit files and data while avoiding online tracking. The platform combines the use of the well-known anonymizing technology (Tor network) and the Tails OS, which was used by the reporters to work on the NSA files leaked by Edward Snowden.

A number of outfits, including The New Yorker, the US non-commercial investigative newsroom ProPublica, and The Intercept startup, are already making use of the SecureDrop system, which was originally developed by a computer genius Aaron Swartz. The latter is known for committing suicide last year after facing pressure from the law enforcement for the mass downloading of academic articles. SecureDrop was finished after his death, and since then has been maintained and promoted by the non-commercial Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The Guardian announced that the page for requests on using the system is hosted on a separate server, includes no tracking cookies, and records no logs. In the meantime, regular Guardian webpages use tracking cookies to serve advertising. SecureDrop system is installed outside of the United Kingdom, as the UK government applied pressure to the Guardian, forcing the news organization to relocate its reporting on the files to the US.

The system was given an extensive security audit by a team of cryptographers a year ago and then updated to address the Heartbleed security vulnerability. However, SecureDrop specifically doesn’t promise 100% security, because its developers admit that there are always risks. Along with just sending classified content to the journalists, the system also allows for subsequent secure two-way communication between sources and reporters.

Microsoft Puts Pressure on American Government over Surveillance

It’s been a year since the first Snowden revelations about the NSA surveillance, and the software giant has finally unleashed its nastiest lobbying hounds into Washington to request for reform. Media reports say that Microsoft is demanding that the US search warrants should end at the country’s borders.

Microsoft faces problem overseas, because foreign countries, especially China, don’t like the US government’s surveillance methods through US companies. Microsoft claimed that the government should better address important unfinished business in order to reduce the technology trust deficit it has built. The software giant is concerned about the US government’s efforts to use search warrants to try and force the companies to disclose the contents of communications of overseas customers which are stored abroad.

Edward Snowden revealed that the government intercepted information in transit across the worldwide web and hacked links between company data centers. This move could literally kill off the chance of the United States to make any impact in the lucrative Cloud trade.

In the meantime, Microsoft is not the only company which threatens to cut off the country’s politicians political funding. Other tech giants, including Cisco Systems, are also jolly cross. Cisco penned a stiffly worded letter to Barack Obama last month, asking for his intervention so that the technology business of the United States wasn’t hit by a loss of trust from customers all over the world thanks to reports of NSA surveillance.

This letter was written after the publication of reports on how the National Security Agency physically intercepted network equipment and planted surveillance tools before repackaging the devices with a factory seal. These devices were then sent to international customers.

So far 8 tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, have asked for a reform of government surveillance legislation and practices all over the world. The corporations are sitting on shedloads of lobby dollars which the politicians definitely need.

American politicians don’t really seem to understand the risk they are facing. Last month, they watered down the USA Freedom Act – this basically meant the spooks can continue to do what they like. While Microsoft pointed out that it never received an order related to mass collection of online information, the company believes the USA Freedom Act should be strengthened in order to prohibit more clearly similar orders in the future.

European Court Ruled Piracy May Be Legal, Sometimes

A court in the EU has recently ruled that its citizens may pirate copyrighted material if they do so in a particular way. It turned out that if an Internet user is streaming the material protected by copyright online, it is legal for the user, as they are not willfully making a copy of that content to view. Although the pirate can not save files and store them on their drives, they can watch them directly via a web browser, streaming from a service that hosts the content. This will be absolutely legal, according to the court of the European Union.

The court ruling was delivered as part of a legal battle between the EU media service Meltwater, which used to include headlines from news stories in daily digests it sent to its subscribers through email, and the news copyrighters. Various copyright holders, including the Associated Press, have sued the media service, claiming that Meltwater stole their content.

Surprisingly enough, the case crossed into strange territory in Europe. The rights owners suing Meltwater argued that recipients of the emails from the media service had to pay license fees for the letters they received. However, the court of the European Union basically decided that Internet users who see the material online, without actually willingly making a copy of it, cannot be held responsible for any resulting copyright violation.

Although Meltwater is not off the hook yet, at least its customers certainly are. In addition, the ruling actually means that if you stream content from the website, you can’t be done for piracy. In other words, Europe got a new rule to follow: viewers cannot be prosecuted. This precedent should be good news for thousands of German users who recently received fines at home for streaming porn content from a site in 2013.

Snowden Claimed NSA Can Spy on Turned off iPhone

The National Security Agency can supposedly exploit the security features in Apple’s iPhone that allows the agency to spy on people when they think the device is completely switched off. According to Edward Snowden, the NSA can get into your iPhone, turn it on and remotely turn on apps.

Of course, Apple dismissed Snowden’s claim as “magical” – everyone knows that the iPhone was designed by Steve Jobs and is therefore completely unhackable and absolutely secure. For some reason, the company didn’t comment the well-known fact that it takes experts less than a minute to break into one.

On the other hand, a group of cunning iPhone hackers claims it is possible. The only thing the spies have to do is trick the user into installing malware before shutting down the iPhone. That malware would make the device look like it is shutting down, showing the user a fake “slide to power off” screen. But instead of powering down, the device would enter a low-power mode which leaves its baseband chip responsible for communication with the carrier on.

The chances are that the NSA could install that malware before you even bought your iPhone. Now everyone knows how NSA intercepted routers from Cisco to install backdoors, so it would just be a doddle for the agency to show up at an Apple store and install their own software before putting the devices on sale. By the way, this may explain the constant troubles with battery life which consumes power for hell knows what in great quantities.

The same hackers pointed out that that you are still able to completely turn off your iPhone so nobody can use it to spy on you (that is if you have something to hide or just don’t like the fact of being tracked). The hacker even specified that their method doesn’t involve a hammer and changing your iPhone for another device, like the Russian government did – not the hammers of course, but they changes all their iPhones for Samsungs in just one day.

So, what is the method for those who still feel they have no spare money to buy another phone right now? They can turn off their iPhones by putting the device into firmware upgrade (DFU) mode. This is a kind of “panic” state, which let the device reinstall its firmware or recover from repeated OS crashes. In DFU mode all elements of the device are entirely shut down except its USB port – that one would be waiting for a signal from iTunes to install new firmware.

Dark Side of New “Right to Be Forgotten”

Some industry experts argue that the recent EU judgment was a dangerous step in the wrong direction. The judgment in question was delivered by the European Court of Justice and allowed anyone to demand that a search engine remove unwanted data from its index, even if the data remains legitimate and publicly available online.

Once this ruling was made, people started to send their individual takedown requests to Google. Among them there were an ex-politician who seeks re-election, a pedophile, and a doctor who seeks to remove negative reviews from his patients. No-one denies that privacy is a universal right that must be protected at all levels, but this judgment may just aid the powerful to rewrite history, rather than afford individuals more influence over their online identities.

The EU ruling in a case brought by a Spanish individual, who wanted links to the auctioning of his home to disappear from search results, allows everyone to petition search engine operators, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yandex, and others. Moreover, the ruling puts companies in a close to impossible position of deciding what data can be deemed irrelevant enough to take it down from search results.

However, the suspicion is that people that have motivation and resources to pursue complaints will largely appear political and business elites who wish to hide their past. As a result, the search engines will face pressure to delete what they want or face the legal costs of challenging illegitimate requests.

The most serious implication of the court ruling is its impact on political speech and processes. Observers predict a wave of potential candidates for public office trying to curate their own bespoke search results to make sure that only flattering data remains readily available. In the meantime, the EU judgment exempts data processed “solely for journalistic purposes”, but this term lacks definition and therefore will fail to protect the practice of journalism.

Worse still, the industry experts point out that the ruling in question will have global implications, because European action is normally borrowed as a model by other countries across the world. According to Google’s content removal transparency report, there have already been some government officials seeking to remove search results and other information which could threaten their position.

People Want Their Details Wiped from Search Index

Google has received hundreds of requests from people seeking their details be wiped from the search index following a recent landmark ruling in the EU. The list includes an ex-politician who wants to re-elect, a pedophile and a doctor.

The recent decision by EU highest court stated that the right to privacy of individuals can outweigh the freedom of search engines to link to information about them. In other words, the information may remain online, but the search results should not show it.

Since then, Google was hit with a huge number of applications to remove links to outdated or irrelevant information: for example, one of them is a former British politician who is now seeking office and wants Google to remove information about their behavior while in office. The next applicant is an individual convicted of possessing child abuse images, who demands links to pages about his conviction be taken out of the search index. Finally, one of the doctors didn’t like negative reviews from his patients and wants them be not searchable either.

Google admitted that the court decision would have significant implications for the way they handle takedown requests. The company is already busy enough with removing millions of links every month from its indexes under requests from copyright holders over infringing content. At least, this kind of work is largely automated. But when people demand removal, the company has to consider each request individually.

The European court claimed that search engines must remove links to “irrelevant or outdated” data, while the original information itself can remain. The problem is that it can cause tensions between the search engines and news organizations, which may argue that links should not be removed. In result, the search engines face a risk of being sued by both the complainant and the original source of the information.

Apparently, all search engines that have operations in Europe, including Bing and Yahoo, will have to devise procedures to accept requests for link removal from people. As for Google, the company may consider offloading the task of taking decision on such requests to the local data protection commissioners – this would add significantly to the commissioners’ caseload.

Apple Took Offence at People Switching to Android

Apple faces lawsuits for punishing its former iPhone users for choosing to continue this life with Android. The lawsuit was filed by an ex-iPhone user, Adrienne Moore, who claims that since she changed to a non-Apple device, she for some reason stopped receiving text messages from her mates who stayed with Apple.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in California and seeks class-action status. The plaintiff claims that Apple’s iMessage system for some reason retains text messages sent from other Apple devices and wouldn’t deliver them to her new Android-running device. At least, this is what Moore said in the complaint filed.

Media reports referred to this incident as the reminder that people who dare to replace their Apple devices with other wireless phones and tablets would be penalized and deprived of the right to get the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts. The problem is that text messages simply get “stuck” either briefly or permanently inside an iPhone’s iMessage system if they’re sent to someone who used to have an Apple device but have switched their number to an Android phone.

Indeed, users have claimed that they noticed their iPhones behave weirdly when sending text messages to non-Apple users – the texts were showing up late, or not at all. For instance, The New York Times’ David Segal also complained that he can’t receive messages from iPhone users altogether anymore. Apparently, this is somehow connected with the fact that he recently dumped the Apple device for an Android. Provided that most of his colleagues continue to use iPhones as part of their function as Apple’s unpaid press office, communication with them and life overall became a bit problematic for Segal.

Tech experts would say this is hilarious – the problem of such type would be easy to fix. After all, everyone else’s device can do ordinary texts without regard to the recipient, while Apple has always claimed that its software is superior. Either this is not true, or there’s just a lack of will on the company’s part. Industry observers are waiting for the outcome of the case, saying that perhaps the precedent would force Apple to stop behaving like a cult and punishing people who chose to leave the cult by breaking communications with their cult friends.

Australian Police Help United States Catch Hackers

The Australian Federal Police (aka AFP) was noticed helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation catch hackers. The FBI admitted that Australians are currently being targeted in a global raid on people who use software named Blackshades Remote Access Tool (RAT).

The FBI confirmed that the malware in question had been sold and distributed to thousands of people in more than a hundred countries. According to their estimates, it has been used to infect over half a million computers all over the world. It is known that the program has already been used by attackers to steal personal information and carry out cyber attacks.

It should be noted that the Blackshades RAT software was uncovered during a previous international investigation dubbed Operation Cardshop. The latter targeted “carding” crimes and offences where the worldwide web was used to traffic and exploit compromised credit cards and bank accounts. The most obvious signs that you have been infected are that a cursor moves erratically without any input from you, a web camera light suddenly turns on, or monitor turns off while in use.

If this does happen to you, it can mean that your usernames and passwords for online accounts have been compromised. In result, there can be unauthorized logins to your bank accounts or unauthorized money transfers from them. Sometimes you can also notice a text-based chat window that suddenly appears on your desktop.

The co-developers of the malware have already been identified; their names are Michael Hogue and Alex Yucel. The latter is also the head of the company that sold the Blackshades. He has been arrested in Moldova and is currently awaiting extradition to the United States.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the malware performs unwanted actions on computer systems – for example, hack into your social media accounts, record the keystrokes, access documents and pictures stored on your PC and activate your webcam. Australian law enforcement authorities have confirmed that they are assisting the US with the investigation, but refused to reveal the extent of its involvement for operational reasons. Anyway, it is known that the Aussie cops have provided significant help to their American fellows.

Streaming App Users Sued by Copyright Trolls

Earlier in 2014, the Popcorn Time app brought easy downloading to the masses, though its sleek interface hid away the way it works. Nevertheless, its presentation made some users believe that it offered legitimate streaming technology – an illusion that recently shattered, with users starting to receive warning letters from copyright trolls.

Popcorn Time is known to many as an app massively simplifying the viewing of videos online through a Netflix-style interface. At the moment, the software exists in various forms, and one of the more successful ones is Spanish version called Cuevana. Now a few German users faced issues arising from its use.

A few days ago, German law firm GGR Law reported that it has three clients who had received demands for cash settlements based on allegations of copyright violation. All of the recipients insisted they had never installed any BitTorrent app on their devices but used only streaming services.

Industry experts confirm that the use of illegal streaming websites came to the forefront in the country last year, when RedTube users began receiving cash settlement demands from a law firm. As a result, a government had to announce that viewing pirated streams is not illegal. This makes some wonder whether the latest settlement demands over use of Popcorn Time is each just another effort of copyright trolls.

The problem is that the approached Popcorn Time users believe the content in question had been accessed through streaming rather than BitTorrent, which is not exactly true. Although the app interface gives the impression of server-to-client streaming, it in fact uses BitTorrent. In other words, while streaming video to the inbuilt player, the file is also being uploaded to other users. This explains why the warnings received from the plaintiffs accuse app users of uploading the file via BitTorrent without mentioning any streaming. Apparently, the law firms do not even know that the download was made over the streaming app.

As you can see, it is very important that you have at least a cursory understanding of how software you use operates. The rules are simple: streaming video server-to-client or server-to-browser is either legitimate or non-detectable in most Western countries, while uploading video to others without permission is normally against the law.

Encrypted Services Developed by US Universities to Protect against NSA

After the American spooks effectively closed Lavabit email service back in 2013, a really secure email system, unhackable by the surveillance agencies, has remained a holy grail for many. Now fresh experts from Harvard and MIT have created a new system dubbed ProtonMail. They claim that their new email service will be even more secure than Lavabit and 100% unhackable by the National Security Agency or other spy agencies.

Lavabit became popular after being promoted by Edward Snowden, who used to leak all the secrets in the world via Lavabit mailbox. However, soon the US authorities put an undue burden on the company and were forcing its founder, Ladar Levison, to hand over the SSL encryption keys. Unlike all other companies who did pass their users’ identities under the government’s request, Levison preferred to refuse and shut down his service. Litigation is still ongoing, where lavabit founder complains that the authorities violate a Fourth Amendment right which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

New service, ProtonMail, is based around using special codes or keys. In fact, such system is known as PGP and has been around for almost twenty years. The problem was that it was too complicated to gain widespread adoption. As for ProtonMail, not only does it offer end-to-end encryption, but is also based in Switzerland. The latter means that the service will not have to comply with US courts’ request to hand over user information. Even if a Swiss court ordered information to be revealed, the email service could only hand over piles of encrypted information because it doesn’t have an encryption key and never sees the user’s password.

ProtonMail launched as a public beta a week ago. Before, it was online for two weeks as an invitation-only private beta. Now anyone is offered to use ProtonMail to a limited extent for free. Harvard and MIT students also add that “power users” will be charged $5 per month to use the service.

According to Jason Stockman, a co-developer of ProtonMail, the service aims to be as user-friendly as the major commercial services, but will differ by its extra security. He explained that multiple users from China, Iran, Russia, and other countries worldwide have already shown in the past months that ProtonMail became an important tool for their freedom of speech. The team of developers is therefore happy to finally be able to provide their services to the whole world.

THE NEXT FIVE YEARS COULD DETERMINE OUR LIBERTIES

There's a European Election coming up. Voting starts in about one month, with the main election days on May 22-25. We've had many victories as activists and concerned citizens in the past five years to defend the net and its liberty, but the main showdown looks like it'll come down in the next five years. Your vote is going to matter.

This European Parliament was elected in June 2009. Its term is coming to an end, and new elections are coming up in six weeks. As a movement for net liberty, we’ve had unprecedented successes holding the corporate forces of darkness at bay during this term – but the next term is going to give us a chance to reverse the trend of bad things and start making good things happen instead.

It’s no secret that I’m the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, and that we’ve delivered during our term in the Europarl since 2009, as one important part of this liberty movement. We stopped three strikes in Europe – most people don’t even remember that it was a real danger that the copyright industry could do something as unthinkable as actually shut people off the Internet en masse by just pointing fingers. Our people on the inside were also critical in stopping ACTA. Our line with strong Net Neutrality, going against the European Commission, just won an important first reading on the European Parliament floor. We managed to get mainline support for a radical copyright monopoly reform proposal that would, as part of the package, fully legalize noncommercial file-sharing and ban DRM. This is not news, just background.

For the past five years, we’ve seen important battles being fought where we – we as a liberty movement and pretty much as a whole generation – have managed to keep dark forces at bay. The next five years will give us an opportunity to go on the offensive and actually start improving the legal state of things, rather than just preventing them from getting worse. I cannot overemphasize how great this opportunity is. However, this obviously requires that we have people in the European Parliament who can outvoice the corporate lobbyists.

Outvoicing lobbyists isn’t actually a very hard thing to do, if you’re a Member of Parliament yourself. Lobbyists have a strong voice when, and only when, MPs and MEPs don’t have a good view of the subject on their own. When people on the inside of Parliament are able to call out the lobbyist bullshit as just that, those lobbyists lose an enormous amount of influence. That’s why it’s absolutely critical to have people – individuals – in office who understand the issues and are able to do so.

The issues for the coming five years will be an opportunity to go on the offensive for liberty. We’ve already had a first reading of strong Net Neutrality in Europe, locking down the fundamental principle of the net that everybody’s an equal, and denying the telcos the right to seek rent for running a business. This is absolutely critical – it’s a matter of whether we want free enterprise in Europe or not. We’ve won in a so-called first reading, but this issue will bounce a bit between the EU institutions until determined, so it will spill over past the election and be finalized by the next European Parliament.

Net Neutrality will be finalized in the next five years.

On an even stronger note, the entire copyright monopoly will be rewritten in the European Union in the next five years. Literally everything is up in the air, and many lobbyists will be fighting for the corporate clampdown on liberty and freedom of speech. But we’ve learned how to outvoice and outcompete those activists now. There is a very real possibility that we can finally settle that freedom of speech, messenger immunity, and the civil liberties we exercise through the net (mostly all of them) totally, unequivocally, and unambiguously supersede the copyright monopoly – a distribution monopoly for a powerful but basically unnecessary entertainment industry.

Legalized file-sharing and a ban on DRM can be a reality in the next five years.

The future of the net is being determined in the next six weeks. And what happens in Europe, will necessarily spill over to the rest of the world – if file-sharing is legal in Europe, no country is able to effectively outlaw it, as it only takes one country to undo today’s ridiculous monopoly. Once file-sharing is completely legal, and I really want to underscore that this is within reach now, any lobbyism from the copyright industry for harsher penalties will be for absolutely nothing, as you can’t penalize a legal action to begin with.

Obviously, I’m not going to use a TorrentFreak column to tell people to vote Pirate. That would be abuse of column privileges, and besides, most everybody know I’m the founder of the Pirate party movement, so people would read it like that anyway. But the reason I founded this movement is because I think there was and still is a critical shortage of politicians who take these issues with the gravity they deserve – no, let’s say there’s a shortage of net liberty activists in office who understand the importance of the net.

So what I am going to do, if you live in Europe, is to ask you to vote in the European Elections, and to do so for a candidate who does take these issues seriously.

It doesn’t much matter what party they’re running for – all the good forces cooperate on an individual level in the European Parliament, regardless of party affiliation, and we need individuals in parliament who understand net neutrality, basic liberty, and the problems with Industrial Protectionism (IP) at a deep level. After all, if you’re reading TorrentFreak, odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you understanding the crucial importance of these issues to every aspect of our common future.

In May, that future is in your hands. What I ask is that you participate.

UK PRIME MINISTER ASKED FOR PERMANENT POLICE ANTI-PIRACY UNIT FUNDING

City of London Police's Intellectual Property Unit has been making waves recently against so-called 'pirate' websites but its current funding is only a temporary arrangement. In an effort to remove uncertainty, the Prime Minister's Intellectual Property Advisor is calling on his boss to commit to the permanent funding of the unit to extend its existence beyond 2015.

Last summer it became evident that police in the UK would be taking a greater interest in the activities of torrent, streaming and other sharing sites. Announcing the creation of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), last year City of London Police said that sites would be pressured to step into line, close, or face the consequences.

The unit, which has already claimed the scalps of several smaller domains, including the forced shutdown last week of a handful of sports-stream related sites, has been active on various fronts. In addition to putting registrars under pressure to close domains, the unit is also working with advertisers in an attempt to cut off advertising revenue.

PIPCU is good news for rightsholders in several ways, not least since the anti-piracy battles of groups such as the BPI and FACT are now being partly financed by the UK taxpayer. PIPCU is currently funded by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills’ Intellectual Property Office, to the tune of £2.56m over two years.

The funding, which was allocated on a temporary basis, will expire in 2015 if the government doesn’t allocate additional finances. It could fall back into private hands, but that would mean a significant loss of ‘clout’ for the companies relying on PIPCU’s authority. However, if the UK Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Adviser has anything to do with it, that won’t happen.

In a letter to David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May, Mike Weatherley MP praised the “excellent work” of PIPCU and urged the funding of the unit on a permanent basis.

“I appreciate that funding for this new unit is not permanent. However, I would like to put on record my support for committing future funding to fighting IP crime and boosting the current level of financial support that is available for PIPCU,” Weatherley wrote. “As I am sure that you are aware, the creative industries add over £70 billion to our economy each year and so it really is in our national interest to protect that revenue.”

As previously reported, PIPCU is currently focusing on cutting off ad revenue to ‘pirate’ sites. Speaking to fellow Conservatives, Weatherley said if that could be done the effects would be dramatic.

“If we stop advertisers from shoveling money into illegal sites, we can stop a lot of the content. Possibly as much as 95 per cent according to the newly formed national Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU),” Weatherley said.

“If you value the NHS [National Health Service], you should also value IP and our creative industries, as together they help pay for the services in this country that we all cherish. If we take the wrong approach, national services that we take for granted will have a huge budget shortfall.”

There are currently no formal indications that PIPCU will get the permanent funding it needs to continue its work but considering the backing it has among the music and movie industries (not to mention the Prime Minister’s top IP advisor) it seems unthinkable that a couple of million a year won’t be found from somewhere.