Assange arrives at court for bail fight

Updated 2 hours 35 minutes ago

Julian Assange has spent more than a week in prison. (AFP: Leon Neal )

• RELATED STORY: Assange says jail has strengthened his resolve
• RELATED STORY: Assange granted bail but still behind bars
• RELATED STORY: Assange lawyers ready for high court battle

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has arrived at the High Court in London to fight for bail.

Photographers have swarmed around a white prison van to try to get a picture of the whistleblower.

Dozens of reporters gathered outside the building from 6:00am local time to secure a seat in the courtroom.

Mr Assange was granted a conditional release on $315,000 surety on Tuesday, but Swedish prosecutors are trying to keep him behind bars and will appeal the decision later tonight in the High Court.

He has spent more than a week in prison following his surrender to British police over a Swedish sex-crimes warrant.

He denies any wrongdoing and supporters of the 39-year-old Australian say the charges are trumped up and possibly politically motivated.

The hearing is scheduled for 10.30pm (AEDT).

If released on bail, Mr Assange will have to live at the country estate of Vaughan Smith, a former British army officer who founded the Frontline Club, a media club in London where WikiLeaks has based part of its operations.

The subsequent extradition proceedings could take months.

But before he is freed, his supporters - including maverick US film director Michael Moore, British director Ken Loach and campaigning socialite Bianca Jagger - must come up with the bail money in cash.

One of Mr Assange's lawyers, Mark Stephens, told reporters outside court: "We believe we will have the money today. It appears to be in the banking system.

"We are hopeful, but of course it is a matter entirely for the judge."

The decision to challenge Mr Assange's bail was taken by British prosecutors acting on behalf of the Swedish authorities, but they were forced to defend this decision after the Swedes said they had not been consulted.

"The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) acts here as agents of the government seeking extradition, in this case the Swedish government," Britain's chief state prosecutor Keir Starmer told the BBC.

A spokesman for the CPS said it was common in extradition cases for British lawyers to take decisions on the course of action to be followed without consulting the country which issued the arrest warrant.

- AAP/AFP

Tags: world-politics, information-and-communication, internet, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, united-kingdom

First posted 3 hours 17 minutes ago

WikiLeaks cyber war heats up

By Simon Lauder and staff

The attack came after the firms began blocking payments to WikiLeaks. (wikileaks.org)

• AUDIO: Hacktivists target major companies over Wikileaks scandal (The World Today)
• RELATED STORY: Visa attacked in WikiLeaks protest

There are warnings today that a cyber war over the WikiLeaks cable dump could intensify, after hackers targeted the websites of credit giants Visa and Mastercard.

The visa.com website went down this morning as members of a hackers' group, called Anonymous, launched a coordinated cyber attack announced on their Twitter feed @Anon_Operation.

The attack, and a similar denial-of-service attack targeting Mastercard, came after the firms began blocking payments to WikiLeaks.

And the battle moved into the commercial sphere overnight with allegations the US government is pressuring companies to stop dealing with WikiLeaks.

Online payment service Paypal is the first to admit it froze the WikiLeaks account based on the US government's stance against WikiLeaks.

The Paypal move, as well as Visa and Mastercard's withdrawal of services, are a problem for WikiLeaks because it relies on many small donations to keep going.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson called the block on payments "despicable" and accused the three companies of bowing to US government pressure.

"We are looking at new measures to open up a gateway so people can continue supporting us," he said.

"It is an attack on a media organisation and should be of concern to the general public. And indeed it is, as we can feel by the reaction of the general public condemning the decision of these companies."

Hackers have also targeted the website of the Swedish authority which is prosecuting the sexual assault case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and are reportedly considering attacks on Paypal and/or Twitter.

A man who calls himself 'Cold Blood' says he is a spokesman for the activists behind the attacks.

"There's roughly about 1,000 people taking part in the attacks," he said.

"It involves people downloading a tool and becoming part of what's called a voluntary botnet. So they download the software and run it to allow people to control them and attack the same target at the same time."

Experts say it is extremely difficult to track down the authors of denial-of-service attacks, which are illegal in some countries.

More attacks likely

Deakin University's School of Information Systems head Matthew Warren says it is likely the attacks will escalate.

"A number of organisations around the world are refusing payments," he said.

"And I would expect that those organisations themselves would become victims of these type of cyber attacks during the next couple of days. It actually only needs a few people to coordinate those zombie nets."

Professor Warren says large companies are vulnerable to such attacks because of the "sheer volume of information that floods the server [and] slows down the operation".

"What we've seen with these attacks [is] that some have been successful for only a small amount of time, actually sort of impacting operations, slowing it down rather than bringing the site down," he said.

He says today's attacks can be judged a success because they have attracted more attention to the WikiLeaks cause.

"From that point it's been very successful because questions will now be asked. Why is it that they're stopping payments to WikiLeaks but they'll accept payments for pornography sites or for other services that people may question?"

Institute of International and European Affairs senior researcher Johnny Ryan has just finished a study for the European Commission on how to regulate illegal internet content.

He says the WikiLeaks scandal shows governments may not be able to control what is on the internet.

"We are seeing states and governments trying to get to grips with an entirely new digital order, a new system of communications," he said.

"The state is going to have to adapt. And the same goes for business and culture. There are seismic disruptions happening to all of these actors who are used to the old industrial order, and they're going to have to change in the digital era."

Google TV

5 Reasons We’re Tingly About Google TV

retweet8

By Matt Buchanan on October 5, 2010 at 6:01 AM

The last time the web smashed into television, over a decade ago, it exploded like poorly made breast implants. So why are we so excited about Google TV?

One Word: Apps

A desktop interface doesn’t work on a television. It’s half the reason the web on TV bombed the last time around. But the industry seems to have learned its lesson: TV apps need a TV interface. Check out the apps on the Xbox 360. They’re not a bad start. The same way it took thousands of developers to unlock the potential of the 3.5-inch screens inside our pockets, developers can turn the 50-inch displays in our living rooms into something else entirely. Being able to look at actual stock quotes on CNBC while Jim Cramer’s head turns read and pops like a pimple, or tweeting about how crazy it is that Don Draper’s secretary just said that thing about black people is just the beginning of what apps on a television can be. And Google TV’s the first TV platform to make that a real possibility.

It Plays Real Nice With All Our Phones

AirPlay, AirPoop. Google TV doesn’t have Apple TV’s xenophobia – in addition to letting you control it with your Android phone, it has love for iOS devices as well. And it’s got streaming powers on steroids, like Chrome to Phone, plus Apple’s AirPlay. You can “fling” websites, photos, songs and videos from your phone to your TV instantly. (Though I suspect Android phones will have the most phone-to-TV superpowers, for obvious reasons, thanks in part to things like integration with Google Music.) Like we’ve said before, touchscreen phones are basically the best remotes in the world, since they can display any kind of control scheme and shift to the best one for the task – keyboard, media controls, whatever.

It’s a Platform

Here’s the thing about Apple TV or Roku or most of the other boxes out there: They’re just one box, or a couple at most. Google TV, on the other hand, is a full-on platform. It’s in Logitech boxes and Sony TVs to start. But it’s going to be in lots of other boxes and TVs too. Which means there’s a much bigger chance Google TV’s going to be the first computer/web thing in the living room to have critical mass. (With the exception of gaming consoles, which aren’t trying to do the same thing.) That’s potentially a huge opportunity, which gives a lot more incentive for developers to work on apps and for media companies to bring their content to Google. And if you’ve watched the App Store for iOS devices grow, you know how these things snowball.

It Looks Polished (for a Google Product)

Anybody remember Android 1.0? Google Wave? The permafrost beta label on half the products Google rolls out? Google TV doesn’t look like any of the half-arsed initial efforts Google usually produces and quickly iterates into something better, jerking forward with a crazed momentum. Nope, it looks polished and slick and well thought out, right now. And it looks like all of that stuff is organised in a way that makes sense to anybody trained to use Google – pretty much anybody who’d buy a Google TV. I don’t always know what channel or website Dexter is on; I just want to watch it, wherever it comes from. Google TV makes it so that doesn’t matter.

And If Google can improve the service as fast as it made Android better, rapidly integrating lessons learned from the way people use the product? That would be a serious change of pace from the way the TV business usually works. I mean, hell, it takes a month to get the installation guy just to swing by your place to fix your box. Google could change everything on your box in half a second.

It’s Got a Ton of Content Already

It’s ready to compete with every other box out there, right off the bat (in the US, at least). Netflix, Amazon Video. Specialised content from TBS, Cartoon Network, CNBC, HBO Go. Pandora, Twitter. The NBA. All it’s missing are the major networks and ESPN, and by and large, they haven’t been too friendly with most of the other boxes either. But all that stuff could very well come in time (Hulu Plus is spreading almost as fast as Netflix), especially if Google TV establishes a monster-sized footprint in people’s living rooms.

Google also gets the internet in a way that most of the other guys trying to get into your living roomdon’t. Which means everything that’s great about the cloud – seamlessly moving stuff from device to device to device, pulling your content from anywhere, it’s gonna work better on Google TV than anybody else’s box. Google’s got no reason to keep you inside the box. Google wants you on the web.

Boxes next to our TV don’t make us excited very often anymore. But Google TV is a lot more than a box.

What is Google TV?

What is Google TV?

Good shot Tiger

Around the Solar System - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Around the Solar System - The Big Picture - Boston.com

VIDEO GAMES MAKE YOU BETTER AT LIFE

September 13, 2010
by JAMES TENAFLY

Looks like those four months you spent bingeing on coke and playing GTA IV weren’t a total loss after all! Bludgeoning all those pretend hookers actually made you better at making snap decisions, and no less accurate than those real-life having schmoes:

“Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester have discovered that playing action video games trains people to make the right decisions faster. The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them, and this benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing video games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.”

Ha! See that? Getting rejected from the Marines and subsequently spewing three years of rage, anxiety, and insecurity over XBox Live actually made you a better person. Navigating? Check. Keeping track of heads in a crowd? Got that. Marksmanship? You better believe it. It’s time to show the world what you’re made of, highly-trained potential mass murderers and mercenaries!

Banned Exit Euthanasia Ad

Exit pro euthanasia ad banned by regulating agency CAD from Australian television. The script was approved and a CAD number issued before commissioning the $50,000 project. Screening premission was withdrawn immediately before the first planned screening on Ch 7 Sun12 Sept10 at 8.30pm.

Reasons provided: "CAD has withdrawn the CAD number for the Voluntary Euthanasia TVC on the basis that it does not comply with section 2.17 of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice. Section 2.17.5 provides that a realistic depiction of methods of suicide, or promotion or encouragement of suicide is material that will invariably be unsuitable for television.

We have considered that an advertisement for voluntary euthanasia is a promotion or encouragement of suicide as voluntary euthanasia would be considered to be a subset of suicide."
Alison Lee
Lawyer - Commercials Advice
Free TV Australia

Exit International will mount a legal challenge to this flawed legal reasoning.

Is Apple trying to outdo the Catholic Church?

I rolled my eyes this week as I heard the news that the Catholic Church is banning modern music at funerals but it got me thinking about how the powers that be try to control us. Not much of a leap to draw lines to Steve Jobs and his arbitrary Apple App Store "guidelines".

Is it wrong for an Archbishop or a CEO to lay out what is expected if you play in their yard? Probably not but as a sustainable business proposition - how far is too far? Is the Church just trying to maintain a level of what they deem as acceptable behavior within their walls? Scary hey cause isn't that what Steve is doing? I know it's boring but take the time to read the App Store Guidelines - they are so righteous it makes me squirm.

A funeral should not be a "celebration" of the deceased's life, Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart said in the rules, but a final sacred farewell. "The wishes of the deceased, family and friends should be taken into account ... but in planning the liturgy, the celebrant should moderate any tendency to turn the funeral into a secular celebration of the life of the deceased," the guidelines state.

By now my eye roll had progressed to a full 360 and were getting ready for the next lap. I have no religious background except for Sunday School where my parents took advantage of the fact that the Sunday School bus pulled up outside our house and took 4 kids away for 3 hours on a Sunday morning. I'm sure there were a lot of "Oh God's" coming from our house after we left. So pardon my ignorance but isn't a funeral supposed to be a celebration of their life? Apparently not if you are Catholic and live in Melbourne, Australia. So that's your choice Catholic Victoria - boring funeral in the church of your beloved or use a funeral home.

So will the Apple developers (and users) move to the a new funeral home or are Apple and the Church just clearly laying out what the rules are in their yard? Lots of traffic this week on projected Android sales so it's clear there are plenty of funeral homes for us to go to. Personally I'm not an Apple fan girl anymore than I'm a church girl which is perhaps why I can draw these two together. I understand what both camps are trying to achieve here. There are certain types they don't want in but are those left enough to keep them going?