From Evernote:

World Press Photo of the Year 2013 claims of fake Clipped from: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/furore-over-awardwinning-photo-20130515-2jlsl.html

Furore over award-winning photo 

Paul Hansen's photo won World Press Photo of the Year. Photo: World Press Photo

A forensic analysis of a photograph that was awarded World Press Photo of the Year has concluded that it was not significantly manipulated, despite allegations that the image was "faked with Photoshop".

Photographer Paul Hansen has also vehemently denied accusations that he managed to "trick a panel of experienced judges" with his photograph, Gaza Burial.

The photograph shows a group of men carrying the bodies of two Palestinian children to their funeral after they were killed in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City on November 20 last year.

The two children, a brother and sister, are wrapped in shrouds with just their faces showing as the men carry them down a narrow street, with pain and anger clearly visible on their faces.

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In February the photograph was awarded the top prize by World Press Photo in one of photojournalism's most prestigious contests, which attracts entries from thousands of photographers from around the world.

But soon after it received the accolade, allegations began to circulate that Swedish photographer Hansen had "significantly altered" the photograph, which was branded a "composite".

"This year's 'World Press Photo Award' wasn't given for a photograph. It was awarded to a digital composite that was significantly reworked," Neal Krawetz posted on hackerfactor.com , a computer forensics website, which claims to have analysed the science behind the image.

His comments were picked up this week by technology website Extreme Tech, which declared that Hansen's photograph had been "faked with Photoshop".

That article , which was re-tweeted and shared on Facebook thousands of times, said the "World Press Photo association hasn't yet stripped the photographer, Paul Hansen, of the title, but presumably it's just a matter of time".

"Basically, as far as we can surmise, Hansen took a series of photos – and then later, realising that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging [brightening] to the shadowy regions."

But Hansen has hit out at the allegations, telling Fairfax Media they are baseless.

"The photograph is certainly not a composite or a fake," Hansen said.

"I have never had a photograph more thoroughly examined, by four expert different photo-juries all over the world."

An independent forensic analysis commissioned by World Press Photo, which awarded the prize, has confirmed the integrity of the photo, the organisation said.

After examining the raw image and the published JPEG image, the independent experts concluded that it was clear that the published photo had been retouched "with respect to both global and local colour and tone".

"Beyond this, however, we find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing. Furthermore, the analysis purporting photo manipulation is deeply flawed," the experts said.

Eduard de Kam, a digital photography expert at the Nederlands Instituut voor Digitale Fotografie [Dutch Institute of Digital Photography], said he could see that some areas of the photograph had been made lighter and others darker.

"But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in the same place in the JPEG (the prize-winning image) as they are in the raw file. I would therefore rule out any question of a composite image," he said.

Rules regarding photo manipulation in the competition say: "The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed."

A statement from World Press Photo refuted in point form the allegations raised by both Dr Krawetz and Extreme Tech.

"The XMP analysis [conducted by Dr Krawetz] reflects an incomplete understanding of the Photoshop metadata and also paraphrases the contents in a misleading way," the statement said.

Hansen explained the process by which he had arrived at his award-winning entry.

"In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning. In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range," he said.

"To put it simple, it's the same file – developed over itself – the same thing you did with negatives when you scanned them."

The Extreme Tech article was later updated to include a few details of the independent analysis.

It said the final photo had experienced a fair amount of post-production, which "probably explains a lot of the seemingly incredible lighting in the image".

 

From Evernote:

Moxie Marlinspike >> Blog >> A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch Clipped from: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/

A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch 

Last week I was contacted by an agent of Mobily , one of two telecoms operating in Saudi Arabia, about a surveillance project that they're working on in that country. Having published two reasonably popular MITM tools , it's not uncommon for me to get emails requesting that I help people with their interception projects. I typically don't respond, but this one (an email titled "Solution for monitoring encrypted data on telecom") caught my eye.

I was interested to know more about what they were up to, so I wrote back and asked. After a week of correspondence, I learned that they are organizing a program to intercept mobile application data, with specific interest in monitoring:

• Mobile Twitter
• Viber
• WhatsApp

I was told that the project is being managed by Yasser D. Alruhaily , Executive Manager of the Network & Information Security Department at Mobily. The project's requirements come from "the regulator" (which I assume means the government of Saudi Arabia). The requirements are the ability to both monitor and block mobile data communication, and apparently they already have blocking setup. Here's a sample snippet from one email:

From: Yasser Alruhaily <…….. .. .@mobily.com.sa>

Date: Thursday, May 2, 2013 1:04 PM

Subject: Re: As discussed last day .further discussion

we are working in defining a way to deal with all such requirements from regulator and it is not only for Whatsapp, it is for whatsapp, line, viber, twitter etc..

So, what we need your support in is the following:

• is there any technical way that allow for interception these traffic?
• Is there any company or vendor could help us on this regard?
• is there any telecom company they implement any solution or workaround?

One of the design documents that they volunteered specifically called out compelling a CA in the jurisdiction of the UAE or Saudi Arabia to produce SSL certificates that they could use for interception. A considerable portion of the document was also dedicated to a discussion of purchasing SSL vulnerabilities or other exploits as possibilities.

Their level of sophistication didn't strike me as particularly impressive, and their existing design document was pretty confused in a number of places, but Mobily is a company with over 5 billion in revenue, so I'm sure that they'll eventually figure something out.

What's depressing is that I could have easily helped them intercept basically all of the traffic they were interested in (except for Twitter – I helped write that TLS code, and I think we did it well). They later told me they'd already gotten a WhatsApp interception prototype working, and were surprised by how easy it was. The bar for most of these apps is pretty low.

In The Name Of Terror 

When they eventually asked me for a price quote, and I indicated that I wasn't interested in the job for privacy reasons, they responded with this:

I know that already and I have same thoughts like you freedom and respecting privacy, actually Saudi has a big terrorist problem and they are misusing these services for spreading terrorism and contacting and spreading their cause that's why I took this and I seek your help. If you are not interested than maybe you are on indirectly helping those who curb the freedom with their brutal activities.

So privacy is cool, but the Saudi government just wants to monitor people's tweets because… terrorism. The terror of the re-tweet.

But the real zinger is that, by not helping, I might also be a terrorist. Or an indirect terrorist, or something.

While this email is obviously absurd, it's the same general logic that we will be confronted with over and over again: choose your team. Which would you prefer? Bombs or exploits. Terrorism or security. Us or them. As transparent as this logic might be, sometimes it doesn't take much when confirming to oneself that the profitable choice is also the right choice.

If I absolutely have to frame my choices as an either-or, I'll choose power vs. people.

Culture Over Time 

I know that, even though I never signed a confidentiality agreement, and even though I simply asked questions without signaling that I wanted to participate, it's still somewhat rude of me to publish details of correspondence with someone else.

I'm being rude by publishing this correspondence with Mobily, not only because it's substantially more rude of them to be engaged in massive-scale eavesdropping of private communication, but because I think it's part of a narrative that we need to consider. What Mobily is up to is what's currently happening everywhere, and we can't ignore that.

Over the past year there has been an ongoing debate in the security community about exploit sales . For the most part, the conversation has focused on legality and whether exploit sales should be regulated.

I think the more interesting question is about culture: what do we in the hacker community value and prioritize, and what is the type of behavior that we want to encourage?

Let's take stock. One could make the case that the cultural origins of exploit sales are longstanding. Since at least the 90's, there has been an underlying narrative within the hacker community of not "blowing up" or "killing" bugs. A tension against that discipline began with the transition from a "hacker community" to a "security industry," and the unease created by that tension peaked in the early 2000's, manifested most clearly by the infamous AntiSec movement .

Fundamentally, AntiSec tried to reposition the "White Hat" vs "Black Hat" debate by suggesting that there are no "White Hats," only "Green Hats" – the color of money.

As someone who also regretted what money had done to the hacker community, I was largely sympathetic with AntiSec. If I'm really honest with myself, though, my interest in the preservation of 0day was also because there was something fun about an insecure internet at the time, particularly since that insecurity predominantly tended to be leveraged by a class of people that I generally liked against a class of people that I generally disliked.

In short, there was something about not publishing 0day that signaled affiliation with the "hacker community" rather than the "security industry."

The Situation Today 

In many ways, it's possible that we're still largely operating based on those original dynamics. Somewhere between then and now, however, there was an inflection point. It's hard to say exactly when it happened, but these days, the insecurity of the internet is now more predominantly leveraged by people that I dislike against people that I like. More often than not, that's by governments against people.

Simultaneously, the tension between "0day" vs "publish" has largely transformed into "sell secretly" vs "publish." In a sense, the AntiSec narrative has undergone a full inversion: this time, there are no "Black Hats" anymore, only "Green Hats" – the color of money .

There are still outliers, such as Anonymous (to the extent that it's possible to be sympathetic with an unguided missile), but what's most significant about their contribution is that they're not using 0day at all.

Forgetting the question of legality, I hope that we can collectively look at this changing dynamic and perhaps re-evaluate what we culturally reward. I'd much rather think about the question of exploit sales in terms of who we welcome to our conferences, who we choose to associate with, and who we choose to exclude, than in terms of legal regulations. I think the contextual shift we've seen over the past few years requires that we think critically about what's still cool and what's not.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion and the bulk of the community is totally fine with how things have gone (after all, it is profitable). There are even explicitly patriotic hackers who suggest that their exploit sales are necessary for the good of the nation, seeing themselves as protagonists in a global struggle for the defense of freedom, but having nothing to do with these ugly situations in Saudi Arabia. Once exploits are sold to US defense contractors, however, it's very possible they could end up delivered directly to the Saudis (eg , eg , eg ), where it would take some even more substantial handwaving to think that they'll serve in some liberatory way.

For me at least, these changes have likely influenced what I choose to publish rather than hold, and have probably caused me to spend more time attempting to develop solutions for secure communication than the type of work I was doing before.

It's Happening 

Really, it's no shock that Saudi Arabia is working on this, but it is interesting to get fairly direct evidence that it's happening. More to the point, if you're in Saudi Arabia (or really anywhere), it might be prudent to think about avoiding insecure communication tools like WhatsApp and Viber (TextSecure and RedPhone could serve as appropriate secure replacements), because now we know for sure that they're watching.

For the rest of us, I hope we can talk about what we can do to stop those who are determined to make this a reality, as well as the ways that we're already inadvertently a part of that reality's making.

• Stay in touch,

 

Khalid Shagari shared an article from Pocket: Google's Larry Page says Oracle among those holding back tech industry

Khalid Shagari shared with you:           Google's Larry Page says Oracle among those holding back tech industry       guardian.co.uk

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From Evernote:

Google's Larry Page says Oracle among those holding back tech industry Clipped from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/15/google-larry-page

Google's Larry Page says Oracle among those holding back tech industry

by Dominic Rushe, guardian.co.uk
May 15th 2013

Chief executive defends Google Glass and slams sector's 'negativity and zero-sum games' in speech to Google I/O

The Google co-founder Larry Page spoke out on Wednesday about the "negativity" he believes is holding back the technology industry, a day after revealing that he has been suffering from a rare vocal-cord condition that has made it difficult for him to speak.

In a raspy voice, Page told the audience at the internet giant's annual developers conference, Google I/O, that he believed a lack of cooperation between tech partners was holding back progress. "Today we are still just scratching the surface of what's possible," he told the conference in San Francisco.

Page blamed a "focus on negativity and zero-sum games" for the industry's failure to achieve its full potential. He said: "I've been sad that the industry hasn't been able to advance those things."

Computers were slow, the web was not advancing as fast as it should be and big technology companies were not co-operating enough, he said. "I think it's kind of sad we have all these computers out there that are connected to each other by a tiny, tiny, tiny pipe that's super slow."

Page named the tech giant Oracle as one of the roadblocks to faster progress. "Money is more important to them" than having any kind of cooperation, he said. The two companies have clashed repeatedly over patents.

Page said he was excited about Google's developments in driverless cars, maps, music and Google Glass, the company's controversial new headset device. He said people had said Google was "crazy" to diversify from its core search product, but he cited the success of Gmail and said: "Every time we tried to do something crazy we made progress. So we've become a bit emboldened by that."

Last year, Page missed Google's annual shareholders meeting in June and a conference call to discuss the company's quarterly earnings in July. He did not appear at last year's Google I/O. The absences had caused concern among investors, some of whom were concerned that Google was not giving them the full picture about his health, in the same way that the late Apple boss Steve Jobs had initially hidden his illness from the public.

On his Google+ profile Page, 40, said his left vocal cord has been paralysed for 14 years, after he had suffered a severe cold. The condition worsened last year, after another cold impaired his right vocal cord.

"While this condition never really affected me – other than having a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny – it naturally raised questions in my mind about my second vocal cord. But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare," Page wrote. "Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself – a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn't fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren't able to identify a cause."

Concerns about Page's condition eased last October, when he took questions during Google's earnings call. Page has spoken in each of Google's three earnings calls since the one he missed. He provided further reassurance in Tuesday's post.

"Thankfully, after some initial recovery I'm fully able to do all I need to at home and at work, though my voice is softer than before," he wrote.

Google's stock rose as the conference got under way, by more than 2% to more than $980 a share on Wednesday afternoon. Google shares have risen by 50% since Page replaced Eric Schmidt as chief executive, in April 2011.

Page, who owns Google stock worth about $22bn, has made a donation to Boston's Voice Health Institute. He did not disclose the size of the donation but said it was large enough to support a "significant" research program that will be led by Dr Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General hospital voice centre.

Follow the Guardian on Twitter for the top stories, special features, live blogs and more from guardian.co.uk

---

Original Page: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/15/google-larry-page

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From Evernote:

The Chip Industry's Little Engine That Could - Bloomberg Clipped from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/the-chip-industry-s-little-engine-that-could.html

The Chip Industry's Little Engine That Could 

By Jordan Robertson - May 3, 2013 2:10 PM GMT+0300

As cars get more gadgets such as television screens and the ability to connect to smartphones, they need more semiconductor chips. This Mercedes-Benz F125 concept car was shown at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on Jan. 10, 2012. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Mobile devices may be the focus of the chip industry, but there's another type of mobile that's driving revenues.

Automobiles.

On a day when Intel dominated the headlines by announcing it promoted its COO to CEO to speed up the company's shift toward mobile devices, Infineon Technologies AG, Europe's second-biggest chipmaker, saw its stock rise the most in almost four years on a higher-than-expected sales forecast.

Why? Stronger automotive production in Asia and North America, CEO Reinhard Ploss said on a conference call with analysts. Neubiberg, Germany-based Infineon got 43 percent of its 3.9 billion euros in sales last year from automakers, according to Bloomberg data.

Another big maker of chips for automobiles -- Texas Instruments -- also forecast sales higher than some analysts expected last month, helped by more orders from car-parts suppliers in the U.S. and industrial-equipment makers in the U.S. and China, as my colleague Ian King reported.

It's not that cars are rolling off the assembly line appreciably faster than they have in the past. The key reason demand for car chips is growing is automakers are increasingly trying to distinguish their vehicles by adding more gadgets to them -- every new feature, such as backup sensors or in-car televisions, needs semiconductors to power them.

Vehicle production rose to 84.1 million last year, while mobile phone shipments rose to 1.7 billion, according to Bloomberg Industries. Meanwhile, two other major drivers of the semiconductor industry -- personal computer shipments and hard disk drive shipments -- fell to 350.4 million and 578.5 million, respectively.

Mobile devices are clearly in the driver's seat, but the steady demand for higher-tech cars is providing a needed lift to an industry trying to shift with the times.