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Is Facebook, a major conduit for political ideas in Kashmir, about to be banned? Since 2012, the internet has been shut down 28 times in the Valley. On April 17, a police order went out, jamming 3G and 4G mobile internet networks. Now, rumours are rife that social networking sites, especially Facebook, may be shut down for months.

Police officials said the measure is being discussed since February. According to a source in the government who did not want to be identified, many in the administration are in favour of such restrictions. However, a decision is yet to be taken.

Both the police and the political executive believe that social media acts as a force multiplier during agitations, causing mass anger by instantly relaying unconfirmed news. In the wake of unrest triggered by militant leader Burhan Wanis killing in July, mobile internet was cut off for nearly five months. Since most Kashmiris rely on mobile internet rather than broadband, this meant restricted access to social media sites. Yet, during those months, people across the Valley largely managed to remain aware of the events.

Over the last few years, Facebook has emerged as an important medium to express dissent in Kashmir, with political cartoons and pictures of protests leading to intense debates and discussions.

For Suhail Naqshbandi, editorial cartoonist at Greater Kashmir, social media has expanded the audience for his work. My job, as a cartoonist, gets accentuated by social media, he said. Its a big forum for discussion and a lot of feedback. It gives me an idea about the direction in which people are thinking. I keep that in mind. And its important to have discussions.

Social media, Naqshbandi said, has helped bridge the gap in the narratives that people outside the state receive about Kashmir. People from outside have a different response, he said. They get provoked, they troll me but somewhere it hits them, makes them write something.

Of late, the youth have taken to relaying live through social media gunfights and stone-pelting. The latest ban on 3G and 4G internet, in fact, is aimed at such livestreams and sharing of videos.

Freedom of expression is constricted in many ways in the Valley bans imposed by the state, political pressures, social and religious taboos. For many, the proposed ban on the internet will be a blow to one of the last, relatively free spaces in which residents could vent their feelings. One of the many destructive effects of the conflict in the Valley has been on mental health, and social media even allowed a means to bypass the taboos associated with counselling.

Arif Khan, a psychologist based in Srinagar, and his associate run a Facebook group that allows them to stay in touch with patients and respond to their concerns. Many people cant go for counselling daily, Khan said. On an average, he responds to 10 people daily. After the internet disruption, they have been unable to respond to those who seek help.

Several Facebook users posted their Twitter usernames, believing that this forum will not be banned, as well as links to their personal blogs. These would become the means to stay in touch if Facebook is indeed shut down.

Khan tried using an internet caf to get around the restrictions. But the caf owner, wary after the recent furore over posts and videos, was reluctant to let him use social networking sites. It was only after Khan explained why he wanted to use Facebook that the owner relented.

Facebook has helped reinforce a sense of community, especially in times of distress, through both public conversations and those in private groups. We cant build a community on Gmail, said a government employee who did not wish to be identified. There are [also] people who do not use it for [political] debates, there are people who use it for keeping in touch with people with whom you cant meet daily. In Kashmir, it flares up sentiments but it also provides a vent to people. If you block this again, Kashmiris will feel choked.

Many people are of the opinion that the ban, if implemented, would be counterproductive and only magnify rumours. According to Naqshbandi, netizens will find other ways to express themselves. You cannot suppress opinion. Its like water, it will find its way, he said.

Still, Kashmiris are bracing for a ban. Several Facebook users posted their Twitter usernames, believing that this forum will not be banned, as well as links to their personal blogs. These would become the means to stay in touch if Facebook is indeed shut down.

There are other ways, too. On April 9, the day bye-election was held to the Srinagar parliamentary constituency, the internet was shut down. For those who wanted to stay updated about the events, it meant a return to phone text messages.

This is not something new, the state government employee pointed out. Earlier [under the Omar Abdullah government] there was an SMS ban when SMS groups were popular. Now if there is a Facebook ban, people will find alternatives to it.

Read more from the original source:
Blank out: Why Facebook may be indefinitely banned in Kashmir - Scroll.in

Social networking is a competition of sorts with your friends. In recognition of that, Zynga is launching a new mobile party game called GIFs Against Friends for you to play with your friends via iMessages.

In this game, up to 32 players submit GIFs, or photos with basic animations, on a particular topic. A judge votes on which one best represents the topic.

The new game is part of a collection of 12 iMessage app games that Zynga has launched, including Words With Friends. Zynga developed the game in collaboration with Tenor, the fast-growing mobile GIF sharing platform. The title is available to play today within Apples iMessage app store.

Its a different kind of game, and it was inspired by all of the ways that people are using GIFs to express themselves.

Above: Zyngas GIFs Against Friends is an iMessage game.

Image Credit: Zynga

As one of the foremost game publishers on the App Store for iMessage, were constantly looking for new ways to innovate on how mobile users are playing and communicating, said Mark Kantor, General manager at Zynga, in a statement. GIFs Against Friends is a brand-new social game thats perfect to play right within an iMessage conversation. Were proud to partner with Tenor, the leading mobile GIF platform, in reimagining how people are connecting by bringing this engaging, entertaining GIF competition directly into the conversations players are already having with their friends and family.

GIFs Against Friends curates the perfect GIF through a deep integration with Tenors full search applications programming interface (API), allowing players to access the entire collection of hilarious, iconic GIFs.

Above: Zyngas GIFs Against Friends pits friends against each other in a photo GIF competition.

Image Credit: Zynga

In GIFs Against Friends, players kick off the GIF gameplay by sending a pre-selected or custom prompt to friends directly in Messages. Once theyve received the prompt, up to 32 players can anonymously submit their choice for the most fitting GIF to the entire group. The group chat judge then selects the funniest, most relevant or undeniably accurate GIF and crowns the ultimate GIF champion. At the end of each round, the winning GIF is shared within the iMessage conversation for the whole group to see.

Messaging is quickly becoming a primary way people communicate and socialize with friends, and Tenor is defining a visual language for this new medium, said Frank Nawabi, cofounder and head of business development at Tenor, in a statement. GIFs Against Friends is a great example of how Tenor helps people communicate their thoughts and feelings, better than words ever could.

The new iMessage app taps into the Tenor Emotional Graph, which is built on our 200-plus million daily GIF searches, Nawabi said.

GIFs Against Friends is available to play for free today on the App Store for iMessage.

Across our franchises, were committed to driving organic growth through social innovation, said Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, in a recent earnings call. Last month, we became one of the first gaming companies to innovate on the App Store for iMessage with the launch of our Words With Friends iMessage app. While its not a major audience or revenue driver for the Words franchise, the experience has created more ways to engage existing consumers and bring new players to our network.

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Zynga's GIFs Against Friends is a big social GIF contest - VentureBeat

ST. PAUL A Wabasha police officer had no right to stop a man he saw driving down a narrow dirt road a stop that led to a DWI charge and the revocation of his driver's license.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals handed down the decision Monday, ruling in favor of David Kenneth Schlicher, 41, of Elk River. It reversed a May 2016 ruling by Wabasha County District Court Judge Terrance Walters.

Monday's ruling sends the case back to district court.

The case began early March 3, 2016, when Wabasha officer spotted Schlicher turn onto a narrow dirt road. The officer knew the private road led only to a commercial business, which was closed at that hour, so he followed Schlicher's vehicle.

As the officer drove down the dirt road, he saw Schlicher's vehicle coming toward him. The officer put his squad car in reverse because the road was too narrow for them both to fit, and he "didn't want to approach the vehicle from the front," the complaint says.

The officer stopped his squad near the end of the dirt road and got out; another squad car arrived about then. Schlicher's car was still moving when the first officer got out of his car Schlicher testified that he only stopped his vehicle because he couldn't fit past the squad car.

After an investigation at the scene, the officer arrested Schlicher for DWI. He refused to take a breath test, and his license was revoked.

Schlicher challenged the revocation in Wabasha County District Court; he disputed, among other issues, that the officer had a "reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity to stop" Schlicher's car. It was, he said, a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

The district court ruled the officer's stop was constitutional, and upheld the license revocation.

Schlicher then appealed to the state court.

The judges agreed that the "seizure" occurred when the officer parked his car, exited and began walking toward Schlicher's car, which was still moving.

The officer didn't reverse his squad car out onto the main road, which would have allowed Schlicher complete access to the main road, the document says.

"Considering the positioning of the officer's squad car on the narrow road; the fact that the officer exited his vehicle while (Schlicher) was still driving; and the fact that another squad car had arrived on the scene, we conclude that the officer's actions constituted a seizure because no reasonable person in appellant's position would have felt free to leave," the judges wrote.

Nor did the officer have a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, they continued; "in fact, the officer testified that his actions were motivated by his curiosity."

The area wasn't known for, or vulnerable to, criminal activity, the ruling says, and the officer didn't suspect some wrongdoing was occurring.

"The only factors to which the officer testified that would suggest criminal activity were the time of night, that he had never before seen anyone driving on that private narrow road, and that the narrow road led to a closed business.

"These factors are insufficient," the justices wrote, "and the stop and seizure were unlawful."

See the original post here:
Appeals Court: Area case violated Fourth Amendment rights - Post-Bulletin

On Monday, the Colorado Senate is expected to consider a bill to prohibit cities and counties from limiting their role in enforcing federal immigration law. Senate Bill 281, the Colorado Citizen Protection Against Sanctuary Policies Act, relies on two fallacies perpetuated by the Trump administration in its campaign against so-called sanctuary cities.

First, President Trump claims sanctuary jurisdictions endanger the public. SB 281 likewise claims that sanctuary policies are contrary to the safety of Coloradans. This assertion is demonstrably false. Study after study has shown that noncitizens regardless of their immigration status commit less crime than citizens. As Michael Tonry noted, high levels of both legal and illegal Hispanic immigration has been credited with a decline in American crime rates.

Other studies demonstrate that adopting sanctuary policies does not endanger the public. Recently, Tom K. Wong concluded that not only is crime lower in sanctuary counties, their economic indicators including median household income, poverty rate, and unemployment are stronger than in non-sanctuary counties. Aware of these facts, many law enforcement officials oppose involving the local police in federal immigration matters. In Colorado, the County Sheriffs of Colorado, Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, and Colorado Counties, Inc., a nonpartisan organization that assists county commissioners, all oppose SB 281.

Proposals like SB 281 suggest that law enforcement voices should be overridden. Instead of local officials making decisions about policing, SB 281 would hand that power to state legislators. That would put police chiefs and sheriffs in the unfortunate position of having to follow politicians dictates over sound policing practices.

SB 281s second faulty assumption is that sanctuary policies are prohibited by federal law. This is a common claim of the Trump administration. There are more than 600 sanctuary policies in place across the country. Not one has been found to violate federal law. In fact, most sanctuary policies were adopted to comply with federal law specifically, the Fourth Amendment. Numerous federal courts have concluded that requests made by immigration officials for the prolonged detention in local jails of persons otherwise entitled to release, called immigration detainers, are rife with Fourth Amendment problems. After two of the most significant judicial decisions in 2014, every Colorado sheriff stopped the illegal practice.

The legal principles that led all Colorado sheriffs to stop accepting detainers are straightforward. The federal government cannot force local sheriffs to hold prisoners on its behalf at Colorado expense. If sheriffs do hold someone voluntarily at the federal governments request, they are financially liable if the detention turns out illegal. Since the detentions requested by federal immigration officers are the constitutional equivalent of new arrests, they must be supported by evidence that would justify a local police officer or sheriff in making an arrest, such as probable cause of a crime, or a judicially issued warrant. Neither is standard practice for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Though a new ICE policy requires detainers to be accompanied by immigration warrants, the policy specifically states that these warrants will be issued by ICE officers, as they always have been. They do not involve review by a neutral judge, like the warrants police in every city and county request daily to pursue criminal investigations, and do not satisfy the Fourth Amendment.

Colorado sheriffs rightly concluded that neither immigration detainers nor immigration warrants withstand legal scrutiny. Colorado legislators should respect their decision to abide by the Fourth Amendment and protect the communities they serve. Sanctuary policies do not threaten public safety, and they do not violate federal law. Coloradans should reject SB 281.

Christopher N. Lasch is an associate professor of law at the University of Denver and co-teaches the schools Criminal Defense Clinic. Csar Cuauhtmoc Garca Hernndez is an assistant professor of law at the University of Denver and publisher of the crimmigration.com blog.

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Colorado sanctuary city bill relies on fallacies - The Denver Post

Enlarge / A script scanning the Internet for computers infected by DoublePulsar. On the left, a list of IPs Shodan detected having the backdoor installed. On the right are pings used to manually check if a machine is infected.

Security experts believe that tens of thousands of Windows computers may have been infected by a highly advanced National Security Agency backdoor. The NSA backdoor was included in last week's leak by the mysterious group known as Shadow Brokers.

A map of affected countries.

Below0day

Countries most affected based on IP addresses returned in a scan performed by Below0day.

Below0day

Partial results of a Below0day scan.

Below0day

Not everyone is convinced the results are accurate. Even 30,000 infections sounds extremely high for an implant belonging to the NSA, a highly secretive agency that almost always prefers to abort a mission over risking it being detected. Critics speculate that a bug in a widely used detection script is generating false positives. Over the past 24 hoursas additional scans have continued to detect between 30,000 and 60,000 infectionsa new theory has emerged: copycat hackers downloaded the DoublePulsar binary released by Shadow Brokers. The copycats then used it to infect unpatched Windows computers.

"People [who] have gotten their hands on the tools just started exploiting hosts on the Internet as fast as they could," Dan Tentler, founder of security consultant Phobos Group, told Ars. "On the part of Shadow Brokers, if their intention was to get mass infections to happen so their NSA zerodays got burned, the best [approach] is to release the tools [just before] the weekend. DoublePulsar is a means to an end."

Tentler is in the process of doing his own scan on the Shodan computer search service that makes use of the DoublePulsar detection script. So far, he has run a manual spot check on roughly 50 IP addresses that were shown to be infected. All of the manual checks detected the hosts as running the NSA backdoor. Once installed, DoublePulsar waits for certain types of data to be sent over port 445. When DoublePulsar arrives, the implant provides a distinctive response. While security practices almost always dictate the port shouldn't be exposed to the open Internet, Tentler said that advice is routinely overridden.

In a statement issued several hours after this post went live, Microsoft officials wrote: "We doubt the accuracy of the reports and are investigating." For the moment, readers should consider the results of these scans tentative and allow for the possibility that false positives are exaggerating the number of real-world infections. At the same time, people should know that there's growing consensus that from 30,000 to 107,000 Windows machines may be infected by DoublePulsar. Once hijacked, those computers may be open to other attacks.

Post updated to add Microsoft comment.

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10000 Windows computers may be infected by advanced NSA backdoor - Ars Technica