Every day more people are growing concerned over their right to privacy when it comes to the internet. What sites they go to, what they purchase as consumers (more on that in a bit) and what is said on social-sites can/are being monitored. In some extreme cases, people are required to hand over their passwords to sites such as Facebook through either school officials (12 year-old in Minnesota) or potential employers (growing trend). Internet service providers are often used by government officials to spy on or track person/s of interest. Recently, companies such as AT&T and Verizon have been caught handing over millions of user’s phone records over to the NSA (National Security Agency) while Verizon reportedly gave user data over to the FBI as well without a court-appointed warrant. This was done in 2006 and was made legal through a retroactive bill passed by the US Congress in 2008 (Patriot-Act part deux).

Not being comfortable with the idea of ‘Big Brother’ watching over our online habits, Nick Merrill (who founded Calyx Internet Access in 1994) is set to launch the non-profit ISP Calyx Institute which will provide customers with a secure-level of anonymity for the internet as well as mobile phone service for as low as $20 US a month. The users of Calyx will have end-to-end encrypted web-surfing along with encrypted E-mail services as well as a host of other services. This is of course if he gets the funding he needs ($2,000,000), featured on Indegogo (a kickstarter clone), to get it off the ground. (Combine this with the Hacker satellite, and here comes a budding free digital world.)

The other concern centers around the ever ambiguous ‘net neutrality’ issue which is designed to protect copywriters from having their wares pilfered on the web. Sure, no one wants their hard-earned ideas grifted by shady predators but sometimes this concept travels over to the absurd side of the tracks. For instance, Portugal’s PSP (Portugal Socialist Party) want’s to tax storage devices in the name of copyright protection thereby curbing piracy. This entails consumers to pay 0.2 Euros (or roughly $0.26 US) for every gigabyte of storage up to 1 terabyte ($28.00 US in taxes for 1TB) in capacity. It gets better; devices with a storage capacity of over 1TB are subjected to an aggravated tax of 2.5 cents Euro for each GB over 1 TB (adding an extra $51.2 Euros in taxes for a 2TB hard-drive). It doesn’t stop there as portable drives take the cake with devices over 1TB getting an additional 5 cents Euro per GB, which would make a portable drive with a capacity of 2TB taxed to the tune of a whopping $103.2 Euros. This insane tax initiative would effectively kill the storage industry in Portugal.

While officials say the ‘taxation measure’ would destroy their piracy problem, others suspect it may be designed to hold off a financial melt-down like that of Greece. While these two problems are ‘spun’ as a way to protect us from outside threats that could potentially hurt us, we may only need ‘sensible’ thinking in order to achieve the same result.

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

Photo of MakeIt Labs from the inside caught the local government's eye (via Focusure Studios)

The first Hackerspace government shutdown too place in Nashua, New Hampshire in December 2010. Although, the exact reason for the shut down has not been described past the use of beaurocracy, some vague justifications have surfaced.

“We don’t shut places down unless we’re really concerned about the safety of people,” director of community development Katherine Hersh told the Nashua Telegraph.

“Their business is so varied, with a variety of different industrial processes – a kiln, automotive repair, cutting and welding – and along with each one of those comes a variety of concerns,” the local fire marshal Richard Wood explained.

The jealousy inducing 6,000 square foot MakeIt Labs was founded in July of 2010 by area “hackivists.” Their operation fits into an area of a old 25,500 square foot industrial building near the Crown Street railroad lines. The non-profit Makerspace has a hydraulic car lift, 3D printers, ceramic kiln, a laser cutting, and the standard set of tinkering tools.

The plan now is to get the building up to code. Installing Fixing the electrical system, plumbing, and ventilation will be needed before they can reopen. However, it is the bathroom that has cause the most concern. MakeIT Lab’s founders stated that the bathroom is considered new construction, and has a expansive set of regulations to follow. The Nashua officials stated that they want MakeIt Labs to stay in their town, but they want it to be safe. 

See more about MakeIT Labs at their website.

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

Trackable objects in Low Earth Orbit. One of these may be for communication freedom someday. (via European Space Agency)

At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, an "unsensorable internet" via private satellite was proposed. The concept stems from telecom limitations and government sanctions, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). (SOPA is currently being reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee.) By using a satellite, no government or privatly controlled wires are need. Sidestepping earthly bonds may be the only way from true unregulated communication.

High altitude balloons have been launched with notable success. However, such a device can only handle a narrow slice of the planet's surface, by comparison to satellites. Some amateurs have placed satellites into low earth orbit. At that position, an object would circle the earth every 90 minutes. The only option is geostationary orbit above the equator.

Although outer space is not governed by any country that sits underneath, people are free to attack/disable satellites at will. In most cases, such an action would be taken as an act of war. The "free internet" people would not be able to do much more than hang their heads low after the event.

As a compliment to the satellite system, a ground based network was also proposed by the "Hackerspace Global Grid" (HGG). The vision is to create a "fallback infrastructure in case of natural and economic disaster to stay connected." Their system creates a land based network of base stations that keep a constant contact with the possible satellite, even in low orbit. There are already DIY systems for tracking satellite positions. Now it is just a matter of relaying the data. The goal is to provide these stations at around $130 USD. Cheap enough when everyone willing to host a node, could.

Both endeavors are plagued with the same stopping limitation, lack of funding. If this does come to fruition by some means, how would you feel to use an internet controlled by hackers?

Cabe

http://twitter.com/Cabe_e14

HGG also stated that they would like to place an amateur astronaut on the moon within the next 23 years. I think the Google Lunar X Prize, placing a robot on the moon, should be conquered first.

(Fez Spider dev board with peripherals and Gadgeteer logo via Microsoft)

Microsoft (MS) has just released a platform and toolkit so everyone can build simple electronics projects in a “matter of hours.” The Microsoft .Net Gadgeteer is a toolkit that allows people to build embedded projects using the .Net framework and C/C# Express in an open source environment. Source code and libraries are limited at the moment, but the concept for MS is to let the community expand on the archives. MS stated they will be involved in a very limited way, but they hope partners will help keep it going.

The first board for the Gadgeteer system is from GHI Electronics. The GHI Fez Spider starter kit is a GHI EMX Module with a handful of standardized sockets for different peripherals to plug right in. Going deeper, this Fez Spider starter kit houses a 32-bit 73Mhz ARM7 processor with 16MB ram and 4.5MB flash storage. The ports and features are similar to many ARM based dev kits. The peripheral options are quite extensive and complete, allowing for a lot of different projects right from the beginning. The board lets a user add multiple LCDs, touchscreens, joysticks, buttons, and removable memory jus t to name a few. A 3.3V and 5.0V power supply comes with the kit.

At the moment MS only has 2 projects, but they look useful and fun. One is a desktop arcade console for developing you own games. The other project is my personal favorite, a “flipbook maker,” or a mini animation platform. Both of which are housed in a simple Plexiglas cases.

The whole site placates to the hobbyist and dabber sort, with hand drawn graphics here and there, giving the feeling of being a designer. Note the robot shooting a cloud on the right. I like the idea of there being more options to the hobbyist aside from the popular Arduino world. I also like that the core processors is more powerful than the 8-bit Arduino lot. I can see this becoming popular, it just needs more from the community. It is wide open and looking for people to add to the dev fray.

Eavesdropper