The Internet - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification ("The End of History")

" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "

" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

"Recalibration of Free Choice"– Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth, 4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical) 8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…5 - Integrity That May Surprise…

Have you seen innovation and invention in the past decade that required thinking out of the box of an old reality? Indeed, you have. I can't tell you what's coming, because you haven't thought of it yet! But the potentials of it are looming large. Let me give you an example, Let us say that 20 years ago, you predicted that there would be something called the Internet on a device you don't really have yet using technology that you can't imagine. You will have full libraries, buildings filled with books, in your hand - a worldwide encyclopedia of everything knowable, with the ability to look it up instantly! Not only that, but that look-up service isn't going to cost a penny! You can call friends and see them on a video screen, and it won't cost a penny! No matter how long you use this service and to what depth you use it, the service itself will be free.

Now, anyone listening to you back then would perhaps have said, "Even if we can believe the technological part, which we think is impossible, everything costs something. There has to be a charge for it! Otherwise, how would they stay in business?" The answer is this: With new invention comes new paradigms of business. You don't know what you don't know, so don't decide in advance what you think is coming based on an old energy world. ..."
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


German anti-hate speech group counters Facebook trolls

German anti-hate speech group counters Facebook trolls
Logo No Hate Speech Movement

Bundestag passes law to fine social media companies for not deleting hate speech

Honouring computing’s 1843 visionary, Lady Ada Lovelace. (Design of doodle by Kevin Laughlin)

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Facebook joins research on social media impact on elections

Yahoo – AFP, April 29, 2019

Facebook is funding independent research that aims to study and help guard
against manipulation of social media in elections (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE)

Washington (AFP) - Facebook announced Monday it would make its data available to academics studying the impact of social media on elections, part of an effort to prevent manipulation of social platforms.

The leading social network said some 60 researchers from 30 academic institutions across 11 countries were selected under a review process by the Social Science Research Council and the independent group Social Science One.

Facebook began the research initiative last year after revelations of foreign influence campaigns on the 2016 US election and the Brexit vote in Britain.

It began soliciting proposals last year, and on Monday unveiled its first research grants.

"To assure the independence of the research and the researchers, Facebook did not play any role in the selection of the individuals or their projects and will have no role in directing the findings or conclusions of the research," said a blog post by Facebook executives Elliot Schrage and Chaya Nayak.

"We hope this initiative will deepen public understanding of the role social media has on elections and democracy and help Facebook and other companies improve their products and practices."

The researchers will be granted access to Facebook's internal data through a "first-of-its-kind data sharing infrastructure to provide researchers access to Facebook data in a secure manner that protects people's privacy," Schrage and Nayak wrote.

"Some of these steps include building a process to remove personally identifiable information from the data set and only allowing researcher access to the data set through a secure portal."

Gary King and Nathaniel Persily of Social Science One said in a statement the researchers will seek to move swiftly to help social networks improve their security and integrity.

"The urgency of this research cannot be overstated," they wrote.

"Elections in India are already underway, the European Parliamentary elections will take place in short order, and the US presidential primary campaigns have begun in earnest. Concerns about disinformation, polarization, political advertising, and the role of platforms in the information ecosystem have not diminished. If anything, they have heightened."

Some of the research groups cited are based at Northeastern University, Ohio State University and New York University and Virginia Tech University in the United States; France's Institute of Political Studies; National Chengchi University in Taiwan; Italy's Universita di Urbino Carlo Bo; University of Sao Paulo in Brazil; Germany's Technical University of Munich; the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Funding for the research will come from several organizations including the Democracy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation and the Omidyar Network.

Monday, April 29, 2019

”God in a Box” – (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

Kryon.com, March 10, 2019

This live channelling was given in Calary, AB, Canada

Lee Carroll
To help the reader, this channelling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometime information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed page does not. So enjoy this enhanced message given in Calgary.

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. I would like to continue and expand the subject of "connection," which I started earlier today.

There are so many questions that Humans have about this seemingly intangible idea of a Creator, or God, or of a source that is beyond your imagination, yet that's one that somehow you’re directly connected to. It's also very difficult for you to truly believe that there is an entourage, if you want to call it that, or a group around each of you all of the time. This intangible spiritual group knows your name, and not the name you have now. The name is of a soul group, the name is bigger even than you can imagine, the name itself exists in light, and the name is not an identifier, but rather a descriptor of magnificence. It is patterned and speaks of your soul group in this galaxy that belongs to Earth.

God in a Human Box

If I could summarize all of this, let me again say that "God knows you," and this, dear ones, has to be either fully realized or somehow trained into a Human Being. The reason for this is common and obvious and I will go into this yet again. Humans have the perception that everything around them that exhibits any intelligence will echo a Human’s intelligence. When you have a pet, and of course the pet cannot understand your language, you still talk to them as though they understand everything. You project your humanism and emotion on the animal to communicate, even though the animal has no idea what you’re saying or doing. However, that animal can feel the love that you have since love is universal. Human consciousness is not.

In reference to the creative source, I’ll call this issue the "God in a Box" syndrome, and the box is a Human box that you perceive God exists within. The Human projects everything that is Human nature onto the almighty. God is then portrayed simply as a super Human, but with the same dysfunctions as Humans: anger, disappointment, judgment and punishment. I’ve told you that every civilization on this planet has done the same thing yours has done. I’ve also told you that you are civilization number five. You are also the civilization that would be present during the precession of the equinoxes (2012) and would have the ability to see the shift.

Other Civilizations Before Yours

Other civilizations before yours have gone through similar things. We don’t speak much of that yet because most of humanity doesn’t believe it. You are told that civilization is only 6,000 or 7,000 years old. I have told you that you’ve been here more like 50,000 to 60,000 years. Would it shock you if I told you that some of the inventions you have, the basic ones such as electricity, were present early in your civilization (5,000 years old) but also in the civilizations before yours. The common sense reason is that electricity is easily discoverable. Nature produces it and anyone watching and looking and interested with an inquiring mind can discover how to eventually create it. So you’re not the first, and it leads to things which I’ll mention in just a moment. However, the other civilizations before yours also did the same thing with God in a box.

The Dream of Communication

Communication is interesting with humanity. It has always been paramount with you, staying in touch. Let’s talk only about your current civilization and what happened very early. It's so interesting that you feel you’re so technical right now. Actually, your technology is very high compared to your past. However, your ancestors also had high-tech in their own way. What if I told you that long before the telegraph or the radio or the telephone, you had a system of communication at the speed of light, but only about 20 miles at a time? You may laugh, but it's true! Your ancestors did it. All they had to do was climb a mountain and get smoke signals to the next mountain. That's communication at the speed of light, 20 miles at a time. One mountain group would talk to another that would talk to another that would talk to another. The language was perhaps a little inelegant (not many words), but it was very fast communication. It was needed, figured out, and used for thousands of years.

The continuous dream of inventors has always been "instant communication". In a very early time, if you wanted to send a message to a family member in a town or a village that was far away, the system was to write a note, get on an animal of some kind and ride the animal to the next town. That eventually became the mail. Today you laugh at how slow that might have been, for sometimes you would say “hello” in a letter and three weeks later you’d get a “hello” back. That was as good as it got.

In about the 1700s in your civilization, along came a system of the telegraph (based on electricity) where you could then send messages through code at long distances. One hundred years later, this led to the invention of radio and then the inventions suddenly came quickly and you could communicate to another continent in real time. Some thought that was about as good as it would get, and they said so in publications of the day.

Next you did it with pictures, then with video, and now dear ones, the world is yours through simple devices you carry in your pocket. If someone has the correct equipment on the other side of your pocket device transmission, you could talk to the planet and they could all hear you at once. The secret, of course, is "all of you having the correct equipment".

It's interesting, isn't it, that communication to God was always linked to your current Human abilities and invention. In an older energy, when nobody could dream of instant communication with everyone else, you had to approach God in a limited way. Someone else with training and awareness was needed, and you talked to them, and they talked to God. In addition, it was like smoke signals in that there weren't many words. This whole idea is centuries old, but still exists today. So, you limited the "receiving equipment" of God to exactly what you were able to do or imagine as a Human. It was slow, not very clear, and someone else had to go "ride somewhere else" to deliver your message [a metaphor]. Do you see a bias?

Even today you haven't extrapolated your new technological improvement on your "God Box". Did you realize that? You’re still sending letters. Now many might say, "Well, wait a minute. That’s not true. I can pray and I know God hears me,”That is so, dear ones, but you’ve always felt it was one way because you never felt that God could hear you enough to give you an answer immediately. The perception was that God never had the "equipment" because you never did. How quaint of you.

This continues even today. There’s no technology high enough to have a real-time communication with Spirit or God where you could have a back and forth message at the speed of light. it simply is not acceptable thought. Don’t you find this odd, when Humans can do it between themselves? Does that make you wonder what the real "technology of God" might be – one that has no bearing on what Humans have invented or can imagine?

Even today, most of humanity still has to go through some kind of interloper that translates your message. Sometimes it's through an existing living Human and sometimes it's through a prophet who is no longer alive, but it's still "God in a Box". Somehow God simply can't be next to you – only the Human facsimiles can. I told you this morning that it gets even more dysfunctional than that, because this process is often accompanied with steps of achievement or funding in order for you to "receive your message". Humanity still has no widespread perception of an immediate connection to the creative source. By the way, that's what's coming next, with Human evolution of consciousness.

Common to Humanity – An Old Energy Perception

Dear ones, all of this seeming dysfunction is truly understandable because this is the only model of communication you have. That model is yourself and humanity in general, so if there’s an almighty God somewhere, the logical perception is that to get to this source, you must do the same kinds of things you might have to do if you needed to get to any world leader. There might be all manner of steps, procedures and activities that you do in order to achieve that communication, and all of those would be a mirror of what you do as Humans with Humans.

The Equipment is There, Always Has Been

We told you this morning that truly, you’ve got the equipment already inside you for instant communication with the creative source of the Universe – God. You had this equipment even when you were doing smoke signals and sending letters with express riders on horses. You had this stellar speed-of-thought communication at the very beginning of your civilization, but you didn’t understand this because you always applied the process of prayers to God to the process that you communicate together. What’s interesting is that you never updated your God Box! Even today for most of humanity, you are taught that it is difficult to speak directly to the Creator. One person even reported, "The Internet is just a little too high-tech for God."

A Different Energy and Perception

My message is this: You have always had a 100 percent speed-of-consciousness connection to the creative source. The reason? The logic? It's because the creative source knows you and your soul. The Creator made you in the image of love. You are not a stranger to God.

Here is another interesting thing about how Humans have handled their mythology. If indeed a mythological God can hear or see you, then be careful, for you will also be judged for what is "heard". Do you see any bias in this? No matter who you were as a child, Santa Claus could hear all of the requests at the same time worldwide. However, you better be good, or you don’t get a present. See where you go with this? Here is "God in a Box" for you: Even if Humans believe they can communicate with God, there’s still the question, "What does God think about what I said or did? Is it possible that Spirit can be angry or judgmental?” Anger? The answer is no. That is a low consciousness Human emotion. Judgment? No. That is a Human nature reaction. "God in a Box” is God in YOUR box. Understand how this has worked?

Emotions and The Creator

"Kryon, you told us that Spirit has compassion. Isn’t that a Human emotion?” No, dear ones, that is a Creator attribute that you get by being a Human. Listen: Love, compassion, benevolence and the coherence of putting things together are all attributes given to you from the creative source. Humor is also from the creative source. The creativity of music, the idea of harmonies causing emotional effects and sending you into coherence, is right from the creative source. These attributes represent things given to you in light that you have free choice to use or not. They are then balanced with the things you create as a Human in the darkness. That is the definition duality. It is the Human Being's perception of where to place their importance within their own consciousness. It's the balance of light and dark in your world. But make no mistake: What you consider as the emotions of love and compassion are right from the Creator.

Where Do You Go From Here?

So, what's next? Once you get to the place where you realize you don’t have to climb stairs or go through someone else to get to the original creative source of the Universe, it's far easier than you think to proceed with great communication. First, do you really believe all this? If so, you can sit in your chair, know you are magnificent (created in the image of Love) and say, "Dear Spirit, I know you are with me. Dear Spirit, I know you are here. Dear Spirit, I expect benevolent things in my life because that is the plan you have allowed for me."

Once you get to that stage, dear ones, you simply have thrown the switch that was always there. From now on, you begin to get real communication and results. But here is where it also gets difficult. "Kryon, you are wrong. I've tried this and nothing has happened. Kryon, it doesn't work.” I wish I could take you by the hand and lead you to higher consciousness, but I can't. It must be your own free choice, and how you do it is important. You see, the switch you throw isn't done with your linear mind. It's done with your aware, consciousness mind. It's done with faith and understanding, patience and trust in God. Many just "try it" and never understand that it's a full consciousness experience, and not a "I'll try it" experience. However, unless you actually begin to understand and love yourself, nothing much is going to happen. More on that in a moment.

Partial Communication

You are not in a box either. Let us say, for instance, you are a healer, and for so many years you’ve had the gifts and the tools of healing. Let's say for the past years there has been frustration because these past gifts either don’t work all the time, or they work in ways that you haven't seen before, or you feel you cannot control them. For any of these situations, it would be because those gifts are using spectacularly advanced energy that most Humans do not have. Do you know how to work with this? Most do not, due to the God in the Box bias. It even frustrated the shamans of old that sometimes the healings occurred and sometimes they didn’t. That even got them in trouble because those around them expected linearity in healing. They expected the linearity that happens when you cook a meal or make something. They expected a paradigm that is far different from what a healer has. Good communication with Spirit creates good results in your life, but it must be a non-linear communication that creates it. What is that really? It's a "trust me" paradigm. Can you explain love? Can you explain the compassion of God? These concepts are totally out of linear thinking, yet you can use then and trust them.

Most of you are attempting to work with non-linear energy in a linear world, and it's tough. It's tough because thinking in a linear way is an actual habit of reality. If you still think in a linear way about God, your efforts to really communicate will be limited. Metaphor coming: Imagine you want to call God on your cell phone. Common sense says hold it high and get a better signal. But instead you dig a hole and stand in it, since you don’t understand the technology, and people you trust have told you that you must be "grounded" to talk with God. You see? That limits the cell signal, but it's old logic. That's a very simply example of old thinking about a new paradigm.

You have an entourage around you and every single one of those in the entourage loves you dearly. However, they continue to watch you flounder in many of these things because in some ways you still have the bias of God in a Box. Even if you believe you can communicate instantly, you still don’t think God cares enough to work with you on the issue – honest. Free choice allows you to continue this all your life.

"Kryon, I'm fine. I know what I'm doing with Spirit. Don't tell me that I'm still biased in linearity.” Really? How do you think about yourself? Do you feel magnificent or are there some real issues with personal things that you can't shake? Your healing work with others and your own issues will absolutely be affected by how you feel about yourself. Period. That's a fairly new attribute that comes with advanced energy.

Many of you might go a lifetime or decades with an entourage around you, begging you to just ask and work things out because you are in communication and the line is open. However, you can't go any further than the true amount you can love yourself.

There is a new reality I want to tell you about. You really have only gone to first base, as they say. You just threw the switch and now you can talk. But what if God then talks in another language? Actually, you see that it's not a language at all, but a consciousness that needs to be interpreted. What if you need to put some things together that you never thought about to make these communications better?

The Communications Kit

Imagine another metaphor. You are now being asked to help "design" your gifts – this means the healer as well as the non-healer. The gifts are the tools for good spiritual communication for every Human on the planet. God in a Box can't work now, since that is a Human construct. Old habits of thinking about how things work cannot be in your mind. You have to think out of the box to now understand how to do things.

So, now you must design or construct something that has your stamp on it. After all, multidimensional things require the energy of consciousness, not stair climbing or bead counting. So, let's say the pieces and parts of what you must create all land in your lap so that you can design them. Imagine the cook somehow getting all the ingredients falling out of the sky and there they are, with all those parts of the meal around them. But the frustration is that the cook does not recognize any of the new ingredients! Things don't make sense, yet the cook is a good one. But suddenly someone says, "Are the ingredients multidimensional?"

You answer, "Yes. They must be. That's why I don't recognize them."

"Then why don’t you just use your intuition and put them together without using the linearity of the experience of past cooking or having to understand every piece and part?"

You answer, "I can do that! Now I get it!"

So, even though the ingredients that go into the potential meal are a mystery in a linear way, it's okay. Because now when you add the intuition and magic of an advanced consciousness that says, "I don't have to understand things in the way I used to in order to be able to create magnificent things in my life.” The meal starts to cook itself! What guidelines did the master painter follow on the blank canvas? What sounds did the master composer hear when he wrote the symphony? See? It all came through intuition.

That metaphoric meal you cook will be more nourishing than anything you ever made before, but you never thought about cooking those odd, non-linear ingredients, did you? You never thought you were in control enough to design the pieces and parts of the gifts you have, did you? You never thought you were worthy of it, did you?

Perhaps, just perhaps, you are still entertaining the habits of God in a Box. Again, the more you love yourself and trust in your intuitive self, the clearer the communication.

Not too long ago, we gave you a message that if you are a healer or you have any kind of gifts of Spirit, they’re going to increase. We told you that in this new light/dark relationship, suddenly you’re going to find yourself with an increased potential. You may see things you never expected or never had seen before. Results in your work may double, triple or even more. Did it ever occur to you how this is going to happen? Did you think you might actually be involved in the new design of the gifts? Perhaps you just thought they would appear and work? Not a chance. Oh, they will appear alright, but they will be uncontrollable for you. They will just fly around and come out (or stop) any time they want. Frustrating? Yes. That’s what will happen unless you understood the beauty of the design that you have around you, and how you are being asked to work with the new tools in ways you never did before – with no linearity – with nothing anyone has ever told you before.

"Okay Kryon, you got my attention. I’m a healer. Give me something practical. How do I design it? How do I cook the meal?"

How It's Done

Dear ones, you have an open communication with an entourage that knows your name and who sits there when you’re awake or asleep, looking at you. I want you to have a communication right now, like so: "Dear entourage, dear Spirit, thank you for these marvelous gifts. I now realize that it’s time for me to help design the improvement since they have my name on them. Give me the intuition and the energy I now believe in, which helps me to know what to do with them. Do this with me in order to suppress the things that need suppressing and release the things that need releasing. Let me have the patience for the timing of it. Let me do all these things in love and compassion."

Repeat this as often as it takes for you to believe it. It actually only really takes one verbalization, dear ones; however, repeating it lets the linear part of you hear it and believe it. After a while, the process then becomes this: You start to get the intuition you need and you start expecting the results. Then things start to work. Next, you want some more! Then you start expecting more! It’s a process like exercising a muscle, so you practice and practice and soon you realize that with the help of the entourage around you, it indeed is working.

Lightworkers, listen: Spirit knows you so well, however many of you are sitting in this group or listening to these words and I want you to know that there is a custom pattern for each of you to help you drop your fear and to help you get control of your biology. All of these things have your name on them. What this means is that this process is not a generic "take a pill" experience. It's customized for your own consciousness and energy. All this happens through communication.

It’s not too much for Spirit to listen to millions at the same time! That’s the spectacular energy of the consciousness of God. But it's also possible for Spirit to work individually with millions at the same time for a solution, and to create synchronicity that is outside of "luck" and what you think is possible. Don’t limit what you think is possible just because you don’t believe you are in touch to a high degree. You are. That’s the invitation. The invitation is to begin to understand all this.

If you think God is too far away to hear you, there is going to be an issue. That's God in a Human Box. However, if you think you can whisper and be heard and loved by the eternal creative source, then you’re on the right track. You see, it's not linear, is it? It's not the physics you have been taught, is it? It's not the doctrine of spirituality on Earth that you have been taught, is it? What if, just what if, God is bigger than anything you were ever taught? What if, just what if, I'm correct and you are indeed magnificent in the eyes of God?

Are you getting this? Ponder this message in a way that allows for truth to appear to you individually and understand that this is personal and customized energy just for your life. This is the message of Kryon and will continue to be, from the man in the chair.

And so it is.

KRYON
Related Articles:

(Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) (Text version “The Humanization of God”)

"Perceptions of God" – June 6, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Quantum Teaching, The Fear of God, Near-death Experience, God Becomes Mythology, Worship, Mastery, Intelligent Design, Benevolent Creator, Global Unity.... etc.) (Text version "Perceptions of God")

Saturday, April 27, 2019

KPN will use ‘western’ company for core 5G roll-out, Huawei has antenna contract

DutchNews, April 26, 2019 

Photo: KPN

Dutch telecoms giant KPN said on Friday it intends to select a ‘western’ company to work on the critical core of its 5G rollout. 

Earlier reports that KPN was poised to give the 5G contract to China’s Huawei led to a wave of criticism from MPs and the US ambassador to the Netherlands, who said it is ‘very important’ to keep the Chinese firm out. 

KPN said in a statement that it ‘takes into account the evolving assessment of the protection of vital infrastructure and the influence this may have on future Dutch policy’ 

In this context, the company said, it had decided to further tighten its security policy for its fixed and mobile network suppliers. KPN plans ‘to select a Western vendor for the construction of the new mobile core network for 5G’, the company said. 

KPN has, however, signed a preliminary agreements to start preparations on modernising the mobile radio and antenna network with Huawei. ‘This preliminary agreement can be adjusted or reversed to align it with future Dutch government policy,’ the company said. 

Earlier this month, the AIVD security service warned about the risks of using Chinese equipment for crucial infrastructure and said digital attacks and espionage by countries such as China, Iran and Russia pose a real threat. 

Strategy 

The Dutch government is currently trying to develop a strategy to deal with Chinese economic interests in the Netherlands and is due to publish its approach next month. 

Chief executive Jan Kees de Jager told a press conference on Friday that the move is in line with the British government’s decision to exclude Huawei from the core 5G network, and restrict its involvement to peripheral services. 

‘We are not blind to the political discussion about the security of our networks and we do see various potential suppliers for the 5G network in the Europe and US,’ he is quoted as saying by the Financieele Dagblad.

Realted Article:


Thursday, April 25, 2019

British PM approves Huawei role in 5G network: report

Yahoo – AFP, April 24, 2019

Last month, Britain identified "significant technological issues" in Huawei's engineering
processes that pose "new risks" for the nation's telecommunications (AFP Photo/
JOHN MACDOUGALL)

London (AFP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May has given the go-ahead for China's Huawei to help build a 5G network, shrugging off security warnings from senior ministers and Washington, the Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

The country's National Security Council, which is chaired by May, agreed Tuesday to allow the Chinese technology giant limited access to build "non-core" infrastructure such as antennas, the report said.

The decision was made despite concerns raised over May's approach by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.

Downing Street declined to comment but Huawei welcomed the newspaper report.

"Huawei welcomes reports that the UK government is moving towards allowing Huawei to help build the UK's 5G network," it said in a statement.

"This green light means that UK businesses and consumers will have access to the fastest and most reliable networks thanks to Huawei's cutting edge technology.

"While we await a formal government announcement, we are pleased that the UK is continuing to take an evidence-based approach to its work and we will continue work cooperatively with the government, and the industry."

The United States has however banned Huawei's 5G technology from its territory and urged allies in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence sharing collective -- which also includes Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand -- to follow suit.

Huawei is the leading manufacturer of equipment for next-generation 5G mobile networks with almost instantaneous data transfer that will become the nervous system of Europe's economy, in strategic sectors like energy, transport, banking and health care.

The technology titan faces pushback in some Western markets over fears Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical infrastructure.

Last month, Britain identified "significant technological issues" in Huawei's engineering processes that pose "new risks" for the nation's telecommunications, according to a government report.

Police bodycam experiments a success, 2,000 mini cameras on order

DutchNews, April 24, 2019

Photo: Politie.nl

The use of bodycams has led to less aggression against the police and more officers are to be equipped with the mini cameras while patrolling the streets, Dutch police said on Wednesday. 

Experiments using the cameras at 30 different locations have shown their use to be ‘valuable’ in reducing aggression and in collecting evidence, police said. Some 2,000 bodycams will now be ordered for beat officers, the statement said. 

Some 700 police officers in Amsterdam were equipped with the cameras during the experiment and bodycam patrol teams in particular were less likely to face threats and intimidation than those without, the researchers said. 

‘Looking at serious threats, for instance, the percentage of victims among officers in the treatment group dropped from 74% to 57%,’ the report said. 

However, there was no effect on behaviour in situations using people who had been drinking or using drugs. 

The cameras were used by traffic police, security details, dog teams and at major events.

‘In society at large, we are used to filming everything we experience and sharing the images with others,’ said spokesman Theo van der Plas. ‘The use of sensors and image technology is becoming increasingly important in police work.’

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Indian extradited to US from Singapore in call center fraud

Yahoo – AFP, April 20, 2019

Workers in a call center in India: in 2016 US authorities charged five such call centers
with operating fraud schemes targetting South Asians living in the United States
(AFP Photo/AFP)

Washington (AFP) - Singapore has extradited an Indian national to the United States to face charges in a call center fraud that scammed millions of dollars from victims in the United States, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Hitesh Madhubhai Patel, 42, of Ahmedabad, India, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday in a Houston, Texas federal court for his role in a case that was first announced in 2016, charging 60 people with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.

Patel ran the HGlobal call center, one of five India-based operations which allegedly worked together in an operation which targeted mostly South Asians living in the United States.

Callers pretending to be US tax or immigration officials threatened them with arrest and deportation if they did not remit money to the government.

The victims were then directed to people working with the call centers in the United States to collect the "fines" through prepaid debit cards or wire transfers, and the money was quickly laundered out of the country.

"This extradition once again demonstrates the Department's unwavering commitment to disrupt and dismantle the India-based call center scam industry and to work with our foreign partners to hold accountable those who perpetrate schemes that defraud our citizens," said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski in a statement.

Justice officials said that in the past six years more than 15,000 people have been cheated of over $75 million in scams in which callers pose as agents of the Internal Revenue Service, the federal tax agency.

So far, in the Indian call center case, 24 domestic US defendants have been convicted and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, the Justice Department said.

"The remaining India-based defendants have yet to be arraigned in this case," they said.

Related Article:


Saturday, April 13, 2019

Coalition MPs say Huawei must be kept out of 5G network roll-out

DutchNews, April 12, 2019

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Two of the four Dutch coalition parties have said they do not want Chinese telecoms company Huawei to be involved in rolling out 5G networks in the Netherlands, following the FD’s revelations about industrial espionage at ASML, the Financieele Dagblad said on Friday. 

GroenLinks, the biggest Dutch opposition said in February that Huawei should be excluded from the tender process because of security fears. 

‘It is very simple,’ VVD MP Wybren van Haga told the paper. ‘If a company does not keep to the rules, you don’t play with them. China clearly does not respect the international rules of trade and has no respect for the intellectual property rights of western tech companies.’ 

The CDA is also opposed to Chinese involvement in the project. 

On Thursday, the Financieele Dagblad said Chinese spies have stolen a large number of company secrets from chip machinery maker ASML. 

The spies were highly placed R&D workers who were able to get away with source codes, software, price strategies and secret user manuals, the paper said. It bases the claims on its own research and Californian court documents. 

The scandal comes at a sensitive time for the government, which is currently trying to draw up a formal strategy to deal with Chinese economic interests. 

Earlier this month, the AIVD security service warned about the risks of using Chinese equipment for crucial infrastructure and said digital attacks and espionage by countries such as China, Iran and Russia pose a real threat. 

In the US Huawei has been accused of espionage on behalf of the Chinese authorities and the US ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, told Trouw earlier this year that the company should be kept out of the Dutch market. ‘This is very, very important to us,’ Hoekstra is quoted as saying.

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Friday, April 12, 2019

Scientist superstar Katie Bouman designed algorithm for black hole image

Yahoo – AFP, April 11, 2019

The Event Horizon Telescope project provided the first ever image of a black
hole and its fiery halo (AFP Photo)

New York (AFP) - Anonymous to the public just days ago, a US computer scientist named Katie Bouman has become an overnight sensation due to her role in developing a computer algorithm that allowed researchers to take the world's first image of a black hole.

"I'm so excited that we finally get to share what we have been working on for the past year!" the 29 year-old Bouman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, gushed on her Facebook account Wednesday after the image was published.

The term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed that it creates a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. The massive black hole in the photo released Wednesday is 50 million light years away at the center of a galaxy known as M87.

While the existence of black holes have been long known, the phenomenon proved impossible to witness.

In 2016, Bouman developed an algorithm named CHIRP to sift through a true mountain of data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope project from telescopes around the world to create an image.

The volume of data -- four petabytes (4 million billion bytes) -- was contained in a mountain of computer hard drives weighing several hundred pounds that had to be physically transported to the Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

To guarantee the accuracy of the image, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, operated by Harvard University, gave the data to four different teams. Each team independently used the algorithm to obtain an image.

After a month of work, the four groups presented their results to the other teams.

"That was the happiest moment I've ever had [when] I saw all the other teams had images that were very similar, with the lower half brighter than the top half. It was amazing to see everyone got that," Bouman told The Wall Street Journal.

"No one algorithm or person made this image," wrote Bouman, who in the fall will begin work as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).

"It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat," she said on Facebook.

"It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all."

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Assange lawyer accuses Washington of 'persecution'

Yahoo – AFP, April 11, 2019

Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon, defence coordinator of the Australian editor of
WikiLeaks Julian Assange, said there is "evident political persecution" against his
client (AFP Photo/GABRIEL BOUYS)

Madrid (AFP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested in London on a US extradition request, is the target of "political persecution," the man coordinating his defence said Thursday.

"There is evident political persecution which started precisely with the massive publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of cables and very serious information" which Assange had published, including a trove of classified Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon.

"The threats against Julian Assange for political reasons, persecution on the part of the United States, are more current than ever," said Garzon, who also accused Ecuador's president of lying about the reasons behind the revoking of Assange's citizenship of the South American state, acquired in 2017.

Garzon, who has previously described the case against Assange as arbitrary and baseless, is a high-profile human rights investigator who was investigating magistrate when former Chilean doctator Augusto Pinochet was detained in London on a Spanish warrant for extradition to face genocide charges. The British government ultimately rejected extradition on humanitarian grounds in that case.

A video grab taken from AFPTV footage shows WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 
as he is driven by British police to Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London
on April 11, 2019 (AFP Photo)

British police arrested Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he had spent seven years as a recluse, claiming asylum and Ecuadoran nationality, both of which President Lenin Moreno revoked.

A London court hours later found Assange guilty of jumping bail in 2012 while wanted in Sweden on charges of sexual assault which were subsequently dropped.

"We are very concerned because the Ecuadoran government and in particular its president have not told the truth in the published statement" on Assange, said Garzon, adding that Quito's arguments for justifying his loss of citizenship were "false".

The US Justice Department earlier had said Assange, a 47-year-old Australian, faced a federal charge in the US and a jail term of up to five years for "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer".

The indictment alleges Assange conspired in March 2010 with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers.


Chinese spies steal secrets from Dutch chip maker ASML: FD

DutchNews, April 11, 2019

Photo: ASML
Chinese spies have stolen a large number of company secrets from chip machinery maker ASML, the Financieele Dagblad said on Thursday. 

The spies were highly placed R&D workers who had indirect ties to the Chinese ministry of science and technology and were able to get away with source codes, software, price strategies and secret user manuals, the paper said. It bases the claims on its own research and Californian court documents. 

The paper says the theft took place at the Dutch firm’s operations in San Jose in the US and was orchestrated by competitor XTAL, which was established by former ASML workers in 2014. A year later XTAL was able to lure away ASML clients such as Samsung. 

The FD research shows that XTAL’s Chinese parent company Dongfang Jingyuan has ties to the Chinese ministry and had been given subsidies for a project aimed at boosting China’s position in the chip machinery market. ASML is currently world leader. 

The paper points out that the scandal comes at a sensitive time for the government, which is currently trying to draw up a formal strategy to deal with Chinese economic interests. 

Earlier this month, the AIVD security service warned about the risks of using Chinese equipment for crucial infrastructure and said digital attacks and espionage by countries such as China, Iran and Russia pose a real threat. 

However, the FD says, China is an important market for ASML and has enormous growth potential.  Nevertheless, senior company officials are concerned about the Chinese approach to intellectual property, the paper said. 

Neither XTAL or Dongfang Jingyuan were willing to comment on the claims, the FD said. 

At the end of 2018, a court in California ordered XTAL to pay $233m in damages to ASML after ASML took the company to court for the ‘misappropriation of trade secrets’. The ruling has been low profile until now, the paper said.

Saturday, April 6, 2019

World's first 5G phone released in South Korea

Yahoo – AFP, April 5, 2019

South Korea's three mobile carriers held launch parties for Samsung's
Galaxy S10 5G, which costs at least $1,200 (AFP Photo/JUNG Yeon-Je)

Samsung Electronics on Friday released the Galaxy S10 5G, the world's first available smartphone with built-in fifth-generation communications technology, as South Korea seeks to build a lead in the transformative system.

On Wednesday the South became the first country to commercially launch nationwide 5G services, with three superfast networks going live offering data speeds that allow users to download entire movies in less than a second.

Hours later US giant Verizon began commercial services in Chicago and Minneapolis, after rival AT&T made a 5G-based system available to selected users in parts of 12 cities in December.

South Korea's three mobile carriers -- SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus -- held launch events across Seoul for the Galaxy S10, whose base version costs 1.39 million won ($1,200).

Interactive virtual-reality displays and robot demonstrations were on show to tout the capabilities of the latest iteration of mobile internet speed, and new users were excited about the possibilities, especially live streaming of sports games and university lectures.

"I watch a lot of videos often, movies and lectures," said buyer Shim Ji-hye, 38. "I hope faster speeds will help me manage my time better."

Another user said he was most excited about virtual reality content -- which includes games and even "celebrity VR dating" apps according to the country's mobile carriers.

With 5G, said researcher Lee Sang-yoon, VR content "can be enjoyed in real time with no delay... I'll be able to enjoy it in better resolution and speed".

Before Friday's roll-out of the Samsung phone, the 5G service had been restricted to a handful of specially selected users in South Korea.

Rival manufacturer LG is due to launch its V50 ThinQ, another 5G phone, in the South later this month, while in the US, Verizon's network works with Lenovo's Moto Z3 smartphone fitted with a special accessory.

Commercialising 5G gives South Korea the chance to build around the technology, which is crucial for the future development of devices such as autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things.

It is expected to bring about $565 billion in global economic benefits by 2034, according to the London-based Global System for Mobile Communications, an industry alliance.

The implications of the new technology have pitted Washington against Beijing -- whose firms dominate 5G technology -- in an increasingly bitter standoff.

The US has pressed its allies and major economies to avoid 5G solutions from Chinese-owned telecom giant Huawei, citing security risks that technological backdoors could give Beijing access to 5G-connected utilities and other components.

Chinese entities own a total of 3,400 5G patents -- more than a third of the total, according to data analysis firm IPlytics -- with 1,529 of those registered by Huawei.

South Korea comes next, with its companies holding 2,051 patents, while US firms have 1,368 together.

Neither KT nor SK Telecom use Huawei technology in their 5G networks, but it is a supplier to LG UPlus, the companies told AFP.