Taking the Sting out of Stingray

The recent announcement that the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) was authorized to conduct covert surveillance on protestors got me thinking about how one could protect oneself against that kind of mass surveillance both in general and specifically in the context of attending or documenting (or just being near) a protest. It made me particularly thankful that we designed the Librem 5 to have a cellular hardware kill switch and in this post I’m going to give a quick overview of Stingray technology, the implications of its use at a protest, how the use of aerial stingrays (aka “dirtboxes”) extends its mass-surveillance capabilities, and how the Librem 5’s hardware kill switches give you control over where, when and how you are surveilled. Our customers are from all walks of life and as such face a wide range of threats ranging from every-day risks from using the Internet all the way to customers concerned about nation state actors. We develop our security measures with all this in mind and try to strike the right balance between strong security (like our anti-interdiction services and PureBoot) and convenience (hardware kill switches). We also believe strongly that the customer, not us nor anyone else, should be in control of their computers and in control of their privacy, and this along with our commitment to Free Software guides all of our design decisions.

Screencasts/Audiocasts/Shows: Linux Lite 5.0, Ubuntu Core, Linux Headlines, Raspberry Pi OS, LINUX Unplugged and mintCast

• Linux Lite 5.0 overview | Simple Fast Free.

  In this video, I am going to show an overview of Linux Lite 5.0 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Ubuntu Core, IoT and systems-on-(ARM)-chips

  In this episode, we’re joined by two representatives working at Canonical, the financial entity and umbrella company behind Ubuntu. Galem Kayo and Loic Minier work at that organization’s Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu Mobile Embedded projects. With IoT and its much older cousin, IIoT, ever-present as buzzphrases at the moment alongside 5G, self-driving cars and AI, we get the lowdown on what IoT really means in a practical sense. From early days of hobbyists putting together mobile devices and needing an OS to run on them, the Ubuntu flavor of Linux now runs on IoT devices found in installations of every type, all over the world. Modular construction of the software in a series of discrete “snaps” means that the days of having to flash updates via hardware is now a thing of history (one that your host, sadly, can remember).

• 2020-06-03 | Linux Headlines

  Lenovo doubles down on Linux support, Firefox 77 arrives with better extension permission handling, the Tor Browser’s latest release focuses on exposing features to users, Nextcloud Hub 19 includes security and collaboration improvements, and the Linux Professional Institute launches a new webzine.

• Checking out the new 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 and 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS Beta

  With the new Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM, new possibilities are opened and using a Pi as your desktop is now more possible than ever. In this video, I show off the new 8GB Pi with some first impressions of the new 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS.

• Linux Hardware Love | LINUX Unplugged 356

  From the low-end to the high-end we try out both ends of the Linux hardware spectrum. Wes reviews the latest XPS 13, and Chris shares his thoughts on the Pinebook Pro. Plus a really cool new feature in Linux 5.7, and we get some answers to the recent GNOME patent settlement from the source.

• mintCast 336 – Sneaky Snek

  First up, in our Wanderings, Erik gardens, Tony Hughes bakes cars, Moss throws everything up in the air, Tony Watts goes live, Joe fills his brain, Bo fights a snake, and Leo fixes an oven Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on In security, GitLab goes fishing

IBM/Red Hat Leftovers

• The benefits of a Kubernetes-native CI/CD server

  Tekton is a powerful, yet flexible, Kubernetes-native open source framework for creating continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) systems. With Tekton, developers can build, test, and deploy across multiple cloud providers or on-premise systems by abstracting away the underlying implementation details.

• What I learned about goals on the Appalachian Trail

  As a hiking enthusiast, I had always dreamed of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Every time I drove up into the mountain for a day or weekend trip, I'd think of all the Appalachian Trail hikers and the kinds of people who embark on such a journey—the mental and physical exertion, the months away from family, friends, and work, the lack of those "real-life" creature comforts like hot showers and dry socks. I finally got the opportunity to hike the Appalachian Trail in April of 2017, and over the course of four and a half months, I completed the entire 2200-mile trip. And though the experience was a very personal journey, I still found myself learning lessons that I felt applied to other areas of life and that I thought might be of use to others on their own personal and professional journeys. In particular, I thought about goals, and how there are ways to go about setting and pursuing them that set you up for success. [...] I suppose it's easier to grasp in retrospect, but finally realizing a years-long goal of mine made me wonder what other goals I might have put off in my life because they seemed too big or I thought I wasn't enough. It's easy for us all to get discouraged by those kinds of thoughts, but it's also possible to shift your mindset and start thinking of any goal as achievable if you just start working toward it. After all, you can't hike 2200 miles if you don't take the first step.

• IBM continues momentum in AI and trust leadership

  The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is making progress as it looks to improve industries and society. But, while the technology continues advancing, the idea of “build for performance” will no longer suffice as an AI design paradigm. We are now in an era where AI must be built, evaluated, and monitored for trust. IBM® continues to serve as an industry leader in advancing what we call Trusted AI, focused on developing diverse approaches that implement elements of fairness, explainability, and accountability across the entire lifecycle of an AI application.

• The AIF360 fairness toolkit is now available for R users

• The AIF360 team adds compatibility with scikit-learn

• IBM Updates AI Fairness 360 Toolkit

• BMW’s Self Driving Cars And Red Hat Technologies

  DXC Technology used Red Hat software to build a new data platform for BMW Group.