By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent

In the United States, a massive Internet protest last week led by Wikipedia and Google drove congressional leaders to place controversial anti-piracy legislation on hold.

Polish lawmakers from the leftist Palikot’s Movement cover their faces with masks as they protest against ACTA during a parliament session in Warsaw on Jan. 26, 2012.

But in other parts of the world, another proposal to increase copyright enforcement is gaining momentum, despite protests from opponents concerned about Internet censorship.

On Thursday, the European Union and 22 of its member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA — a major step toward enforcement of the copyright treaty. Eight countries, including the United States, had signed the agreement this past fall.

ACTA has always been controversial because the international negotiations that began in 2007 took place in secret. But now, opponents of the treaty have developed new muscle after witnessing the success of the Internet outcry against the two U.S. bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

In Poland, hundreds took to the streets this week to protest the government’s intention to sign ACTA. Several popular Polish websites replaced their regular content with statements expressing concerns about ACTA, and government websites were taken offline in an apparent denial-of-service attack coordinated by the hacker group Anonymous.

For copyright holders, an international treaty may offer fewer roadblocks to combating digital piracy, critics say. While SOPA and PIPA sought to change U.S. law by forcing American Internet service providers to block domain names of websites believed to be engaging in online piracy, ACTA seeks to implement existing U.S. copyright law in countries where copyright enforcement is less stringent. The Obama administration has argued that ACTA does not require Senate authorization because it’s technically an “executive agreement.”

But U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wrote a letter to President Barack Obama last fall raising questions about whether it was constitutional for the U.S. trade representative to sign on to the treaty without Senate approval.

Sean Flynn, a professor of intellectual property law at American University, said ACTA is not as “draconian” as the pending U.S. legislation, calling the treaty “SOPA light.” Some of its most troubling measures — such as a requirement that Internet service providers suspend service to customers caught downloading copyrighted works, known as the “three strikes” rule — have been stripped from the agreement, he said.

But other experts argue that ACTA is still problematic.

“ACTA contains new potential obligations for Internet intermediaries, requiring them to police the Internet and their users, which in turn pose significant concerns for citizens’ privacy, freedom of expression, and fair use rights,” Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a blog post last fall.

Many of those who support the U.S. legislation are also backing ACTA, including the Motion Picture Association of America. ACTA is “an important step forward in strengthening international cooperation and enforcement for intellectual property rights,” said former U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the MPAA, in a statement last fall.

ACTA is not the only anti-piracy treaty raising concerns. Some experts fear the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) may include intellectual property measures more restrictive than those in ACTA. But public information about the latter treaty is vague because it is also being negotiated in secret, experts say.

“We don’t know what’s in the TPP IP chapter, and that’s what worries us,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote on its website.

Flynn said the impact of last week’s protests against SOPA and PIPA has forced the world to pay more attention to these copyright treaties.

“There have been protests with ACTA, but they’ve never reached this scale,” said Flynn. “The politics seem to be changing on this issue internationally.”

via ACTA Copyright Treaty Sparks Protests In Latest Anti-Piracy Battle.

ANKARA, Turkey — A hospital in southern Turkey on Saturday performed the world’s first triple limb transplant, attaching two arms and one leg to a 34-year-old man, an official said.

At the same time, a team of doctors at Akdeniz University Hospital, in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, transplanted the face of the same donor onto another patient — a 19-year-old man. It was Turkey’s first face transplant.

“Today, we have put our signature on a world success,” Dr. Israfil Kurtcephe, the university hospital’s rector, told reporters after the two operations. “For the first time a hospital has transplanted two arms and a leg on one patient.”

via Turkish hospital performs world’s first triple limb transplant, separate face transplant – The Washington Post.

More : http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/report-turkish-hospital-performing-worlds-first-triple-limb-transplant-also-face-transplant/2012/01/21/gIQABBkgFQ_story.html

• Explainer: a guide to understanding Sopa
• Clay Shirky: Pipa would create a consumption-only web

The US government has closed down one of the world’s largest filesharing websites, accusing its founders of racketeering, money laundering and presiding over “massive” online piracy.

According to prosecutors, Megaupload illegally cheated copyright holders out of $500m in revenue as part of a criminal enterprise spanning five years.

A lawyer for Megaupload told the Guardian it would “vigorously” defend itself against the charges, dismissing the criminal action as “a civil case in disguise”.

News of the indictment – being framed as one of the biggest copyright cases in US history – came a day after major internet firms held a 24-hour protest over proposed anti-piracy laws.

According to a Department of Justice release, seven people associated with Megaupload were indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this month over the charges.

They included Kim Dotcom, founder of the online firm.

The 37-year-old, who also goes by Kim Tim Jim Vestor and whose real name is Kim Schmitz, is accused of heading up a criminal venture that earn Dotcom and his associates upwards of $175m.

These profits were obtained illegally through advertising and the selling of premium memberships to users of Megaupload, the justice department is claiming.

Established in 2005, the website offered a “one-click” upload, providing an easily accessible online locker for shared content.

Before being shut down, the firm boasted 50 million daily visitors, accounting for 4% of total internet traffic, the justice department claimed in its statement on the indictment.

Prosecutors allege that the website violated copyright law by illegally hosting movies, music and TV shows on a massive scale.

Those behind the website have claimed that it diligently responds to any complaint regarding pirated material.

But according to prosecutors, the accused conspirators deliberately employed a business model that encouraged the uploading of illegal material.

They say that Megaupload paid users for uploading pirated material in full awareness that they were breaking the law. In addition they failed to close the accounts of known copyright infringers.

The indictment includes chat logs with conversations between company executives, which include statements like: “we have a funny business . . . modern days pirates ”

Alongside Dotcom, law enforcement officials swooped on a number of other senior members of Megaupload’s staff.

Arrests were made at a number of homes in Auckland, New Zealand, on warrants issued by US authorities.

In all, addresses in nine countries including the US were raided as part of massive international operation.

Three men accused alongside Dotcom remained on the run tonight, the Department of Justice said.

About $50m dollars in assets were seized as part of the massive operation.

Meanwhile, the Megaupload website was closed down, with the FBI seizing an additional 18 domain names associated with the alleged crime.

In response to the indictment, the hacker group Anonymous, which is ostensibly unaffiliated with Megaupload, launched a cyber attack that at least temporarily brought down the websites of the justice department as well as those of the Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, and Universal Music.

If found guilty of the charges, the accused Megaupload executives could face 50 years behind bars.

Ira Rothken, an attorney for Megaupload, said the firm would fight the “erroneous” charges.

Speaking from his California office, Rothken said: “The allegations appear to be incorrect and the law does not support the charges.”

He added: “It is a civil case in disguise.”

Asked why it was being pursued as a criminal case, Rothken replied: “You’d have to ask the prosecutors.”

The Guardian

Reuters in Jerusalem

The Tel Aviv stock exchange was targeted by hackers. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA

Hackers disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv stock exchange, El Al airlines and three banks on Monday, in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel.

The attacks came just days after an unidentified hacker, proclaiming Palestinian sympathies, posted the details of thousands of Israeli credit card holders and other personal information on the internet in a mass theft.

Stock trading and El Al flights operated normally despite the disruption, which occurred as Israeli media reported that pro-Palestinian hackers had threatened at the weekend to shut down the Tase stock exchange and airline websites.

While apparently confined to areas causing only limited inconvenience, the attacks have caused particular alarm in a country that depends on high-tech systems for much of its defence against hostile neighbours. Officials insist, however, that they pose no immediate security threat.

“They have demanded an apology for Israel’s defensive measures,” the deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said on his Facebook page, alluding to the conflict with Palestinians.

“I am using this platform to send a clear message that … they will not silence us on the internet, or in any forum.”

The First International Bank of Israel (FIBI) and two subsidiary banks, Massad and Otzar Hahayal, said their marketing sites had been hacked but that sites providing online services to clients were unaffected. Israel’s third-largest bank, Discount, said it had been spared attack, but that it was temporarily shutting down foreign access to its website as a precaution.

The Tel Aviv stock exchange website could only be accessed intermittently, but screen-based trading was not hit. “There has been an attack by hackers on the access routes to the website,” said Orna Goren, deputy manager of the exchange’s marketing and communications unit. “The stock exchange’s trading activities are operating normally.”

El Al said it had taken precautions to protect the company site and warned of possible disruptions to its online activity.

There was no claim of responsibility for Monday’s incidents. However, the Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza, welcomed the attacks as a blow against the Jewish state, which it refuses to recognise.

“This is a new field of resistance against the occupation and we urge Arab youth to develop their methods in electronic warfare in the face of (Israel’s) crimes,” aHamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.

The Israeli information minister, Yuli Edelstein, told a conference in Tel Aviv that the cyber-attacks were part of a wider move to smear the country’s reputation and “threaten Israel’s economic stability and security”.

“It’s another episode in the war our enemies are conducting as a campaign of delegitimisation to hit our pockets and lifestyle,” he said, in reported comments confirmed by his spokesman.

“Israel must use all measures at its disposal to prevent these virtual dangers from turning into real threats and to prevent with all its force attacks against it and its institutions. Today it’s credit card theft and toppling websites, and tomorrow it could be theft of security information and harm to infrastructure.”

Israel opened an agency to tackle cyber-attacks earlier this month. A founding member of the unit, Isaac Ben-Israel, said the country’s most vital systems were already protected, but that incidents like the ones seen recently would only increase.

“As long as the systems are not guarded, any hacker anywhere in the world can break into them and do damage,” Ben-Israel said on Israel Radio. “I believe that, done right, in a year or two, we will be able to wipe out all these hackers’ threats.”

www.guardian.co.uk, 16 January 2012

Concerns about censorship have risen in Turkey since November when the Council of Information Technology and Communications (BTK) placed blocks on websites that contain the words “Darwin” and “evolution.” This filtering system blocks websites about the theory of evolution, along with pornographic sites, to any Turkish computer user who has the children’s security profile activated on his or her computer.

Websites that remain unprotected include those referencing the theory of creationism, Intelligent Design and anti-evolution sentiments. While Turkey is often considered one of the most secular Islamic countries, it also houses a significant population of Islamic creationism believers. The Telegraph reports that it may be the sentiments of this group that provided the impetus for the evolution website filtering. Journalist Tom Chivers writes: “A 2006 survey of 34 countries put Turkey 34th, just behind the US, in the rate of popular acceptance of evolution.”

Chivers questions the increasing number of Turkish medical and biology students who are rejecting evolution, the very foundation of their studies. He argues that denying evolution is equivalent to denying gravity, and that students sell themselves short if they believe otherwise.

To me, the censorship of any scientific theory unrelated to obscene or inappropriate content is a cause for concern. Internet users can check which sites are forbidden on guvenlinet.org and vote against having sites banned. It is unclear, however, how many votes are necessary to remove a website from the filtering program.

via Turkish Government Censors Darwin, Evolution | Care2 Causes.

Ed Pilkington in New York and Richard Norton-Taylor

Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen. More than 200 of his staff have been exposed by Anonymous 'hacktivists'. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

Thousands of British email addresses and encrypted passwords, including those of defence, intelligence and police officials as well as politicians and Nato advisers, have been revealed on the internet following a security breach by hackers.

Among the huge database of private information exposed by self-styled “hacktivists” are the details of 221 British military officials and 242 Nato staff. Civil servants working at the heart of the UK government – including several in the Cabinet Office as well as advisers to the Joint Intelligence Organisation, which acts as the prime minister’s eyes and ears on sensitive information – have also been exposed.

The hackers, who are believed to be part of the Anonymous group, gained unauthorised access over Christmas to the account information of Stratfor, a consultancy based in Texas that specialises in foreign affairs and security issues. The database had recorded in spreadsheets the user IDs – usually email addresses – and encrypted passwords of about 850,000 individuals who had subscribed to Stratfor’s website.

Some 75,000 paying subscribers also had their credit card numbers and addresses exposed, including 462 UK accounts.

John Bumgarner, an expert in cyber-security at the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a research body in Washington, has analysed the Stratfor breach for the Guardian. He has identified within the data posted by the hackers the details of hundreds of UK government officials, some of whom work in sensitive areas.

Many of the email addresses are not routinely made public, and the passwords are all encrypted in code that can quickly be cracked using off-the-shelf software.

Among the leaked email addresses are those of 221 Ministry of Defence officials identified by Bumgarner, including army and air force personnel. Details of a much larger group of US military personnel were leaked. The database has some 19,000 email addresses ending in the .mil domain of the US military.

In the US case, Bumgarner has found, 173 individuals deployed in Afghanistan and 170 in Iraq can be identified. Personal data from former vice-president Dan Quayle and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger were also released.

Other UK government departments have been affected: seven officials in the Cabinet Office have had their details exposed, 45 Foreign Office officials, 14 from the Home Office, 67 Scotland Yard and other police officials, and two employees with the royal household.

There are also 23 people listed who work in the houses of parliament, including Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington North, Lady Nicholson and Lord Roper. Corbyn said he had been unaware of the breach, adding that although his email address was public he was disturbed by the idea that his password could be cracked and used to delete or write emails in a way that “could be very damaging”.

Nicholson, speaking on a phone from Iraq, said she had no idea that her personal information had been hacked. She said she was very unhappy that private individuals had had their fundamental right to privacy violated. “To expose civil servants is monstrously unfair,” she said. “Officials in sensitive areas like defence and the military could even be exposed to threats. Guarding data like this is extremely difficult, but it’s not impossible, and we should do a great deal more.”

The hacking has had a big impact because Stratfor offers expert analysis of international affairs, including security issues, and attracts subscribers from sensitive government departments.

The British victims include officials with the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) responsible for assessing intelligence from all sources, including MI6 secret agents.

A former deputy head of Whitehall’s strategic horizons unit is listed. The unit is part of the JIO based in the Cabinet Officeand was set up four years ago to give early warning of potential serious problems that might have an impact on Britain’s security or environment.

The extent of the security risk posed by the breach is not known. Bumgarner said officials who did not take extra precautions in securing passwords through dual authentication or other protection systems could find email and other databases they use being compromised. “Any foreign intelligence service targeting Britain could find these emails useful in identifying individuals connected to sensitive government activities,” he said.

British officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were aware of the hacking but it did not pose a risk to national security. Passwords for their communications within Whitehall would be different from any used to access the Stratfor sites. Whitehall communications would also be protected by extra security walls, officials said.

However, they added that their personal communications could be at risk if individuals used the same password as they used to access Stratfor for their bank accounts and other personal communications.

A government spokesman said: “We are aware that subscriber details for the Stratfor website have been published in the public domain. At present, there is no indication of any threat to UK government systems. Advice and guidance on such threats is issued to government departments through the Government Computer Emergency Response Team.”

Stratfor has taken down its website while it investigates the security breach. The company says it is “working diligently to prevent it from ever happening again”.

This is just the latest action to hit the headlines by hackers associated with Anonymous. The group, whose loose collection of members are scattered around the world and linked through internet chatrooms, has previously targeted Visa, MasterCard and PayPal in protest at the companies’ refusal to accept donations for the WikiLeaks website.

www.guardian.co.uk, 8 January 2012

Bell 429 7-22-2010 Bell Helicopter said Thursday that it has been selected by the Turkish National Police to enter final negotiations for a contract for 15 Bell 429 helicopters with an option for five additional aircraft.

“This selection represents the culmination of the efforts of a dedicated team at Bell Helicopter in collaboration with our independent representative, Saran Group, Inc., located in Turkey,” said Larry Roberts, senior vice president for Bell Helicopter’s Commercial Business.

“This is a significant win in the European market for Bell Helicopter. It reflects our commitment and investment in providing the right products for our customers as well as support, training and aftermarket in the region.”

The 429 is Bell’s newest civil helicopter model, a light twin-engine model. It has been in production for a couple of years but has been a relatively slow seller due to a higher than promised price tag and less than promised performance.

via Sky Talk: Turkey may buy Bell 429 helicopters.

Istanbul Technical University (İTU) presented their eco-friendly boat “Martı” (Seagull) reports Hurriyet Daily news.

Turkey’s first hydrogen boat was produced over four years by a student organization and funded by university and other organizations, such as Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

“This boat is able to cruise for 10 hours while using only 5 kilograms of hydrogen, which is five times cheaper than gasoline. But our main aim is to motivate our society to use clean energy,” said project coordinator Dr. Filiz Karaosmanoğlu. The maximum speed of the vehicle is 13 kilometers per hour.

Nearly 700,000 Turkish Liras was spent on the project. The boat’s energy source is supplied by hydrogen tubes and the only waste produced is steam.

İTU Rector Dr. Muhammed Şahin said the boat would be operated in the Golden Horn soon between the Rahmi Koç Museum and main wharfs in the area.

via Balkans.com Business News : Turkey’s first hydrogen boat produced.