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269 行
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2014-05-05" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - May 2014</title>
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</head>
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<body microformats="h-entry">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – May 2014</h1>
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<h2>Heartbleed and economic incentives</h2>
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<p>You probably heard about the bug in the Free Software OpenSSL nicknamed
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"heartbleed". <a href="/news/2014/news-20140424-01.html">The
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FSFE already welcomed the industry initiative to fund critical Free Software
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projects</a>, and the topic was discussed in several blog articles on the
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planet: <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=718">Sam Tuke wrote about
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his impression</a>, Hugo Roy <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/notes/openssl-tragedy/">shared an XKCD comic explaining
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how heartbleed works</a>, and Martin Gollowitzer wrote about <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gollo/2014/04/13/what-the-heartbleed-bug-revealed-to-me/">what
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the Heartbleed bug revealed to him</a> about StartSSL certificate
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authority.</p>
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<p>But your editor is convinced that the main problem is not OpenSSL. It is not
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Free Software. It is about companies not taking responsibilities and about
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missing economic incentives to ensure security. Security expert <a
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href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/economics_and_i_1.html">Bruce
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Schneier wrote in 2006</a>:</p>
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<blockquote><p>"We generally think of computer security as a problem of
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technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives:
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The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of
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failure."</p></blockquote>
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<p>In a nutshell, if your private data is exposed because your health
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insurance, where it is stored, did not take care to secure it, you suffer to a
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much higher degree than the health insurance does! You are in no position to
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pressure the health insurance to change its level of security, and they have no
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economic incentive to do so. In the article Schneier further explains that the
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liability for attacks is diffuse and that "the economic considerations of
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security are more important than the technical considerations".</p>
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<p>Following the argument, the important question we face is, how can we give
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the right economic incentives to ensure that: security relevant software has
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the proper funding; third parties are auditing code; more people are trained in
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computer security; programmers have time for maintenance and are not forced to
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just develop new features; we have a <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_TLS_implementations">diversity
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of software</a> for different special purposes and therefor prevent <a
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href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/dan_geer_on_hea.html">software
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monocultures</a>; companies run secure software instead of just giving people a
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good feeling by performing a security theatre or by delegating responsibility
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to others (for example the government), so they can be blamed if there is a
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problem, and that also the security interest of private users is fulfilled and
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not just those of big cooperations.</p>
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<p>In the FSFE we thought about how to give good economic incentives for Free
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Software development from the beginning, and now we have to think more about
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economic incentives to increase security. It is a difficult area, so we are
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looking forward to your comments on this topic and invite you <a
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href="/about/contact.html#community">to discuss it on our public mailing
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lists</a>.</p>
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<h2>Internet Censorship and Open Standards</h2>
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<p>Local elections scheduled across the country for the following day, the
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government blocking both YouTube and Twitter, and the usage numbers of the Free
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Software anonymity software Tor doubling during the week. Is there a better
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time for the FSFE's President to go to this country? At the annual conference
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of the Turkish GNU/Linux Users Association in Istanbul Karsten Gerloff talked
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about the relationship between technology and power, and made it to the front
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page of a national newspaper by mentioning who sold the software to block the
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internet. Karsten wrote a <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/04/29/interesting-times-speaking-about-free-software-in-istanbul/">
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summary of his talk and his journey in his blog</a>.</p>
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<p>The talk would not have happened without our Turkish volunteer Nermin Canik,
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who encouraged us to attend the conference. Nermin has been working steadily
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and reliably as a volunteer for a couple of years now. Together with other
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volunteers she organised <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html">Document Freedom Day</a>
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(DFD) events in Turkey. This year, although as mentioned above it was a hard
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time for people in Turkey who care about freedom, they accomplished 7 events in
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Istanbul, Ankara, Çayırova, Denizli, and Adana.</p>
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<p>Have a look at the <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org/news/2014/news-20140424-01.html">Document
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Freedom Day 2014 Report</a> to find out what happened in Turkey and around the
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world during that day. The report includes lots of pictures ranging from
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children celebrating DFD at school, the new leaflets, comic, and t-shirts, as
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well as the very delicious looking cakes. Thanks to our Turkish <a
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href="/contribute/translators/translators.html">translator</a>
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Tahir Emre and our leaving intern Matti Lammi the report and the whole DFD
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website are also available in Turkish and Finnish.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>The German association <a href="https://www.teckids.org/">Teckids e.V.</a>
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offers workshops for 10 to 16 year olds to build robots with different sensors
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(light, sound, or ultrasonic) and program them to do cool things by using Free
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Software. Your editor was delighted to see that in those workshops <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/teenagers-teach-how-to-program-robots-with-free-software/">teenagers
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teach other teenagers how to tinker with Free Software</a>. More news about
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education are covered by Guido Arnold in the <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/04/free-software-in-education-news-march/">Free
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Software education news</a>.</li>
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<li>News from the public administration: <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/galicia-recommends-use-open-document-format">The
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government of Galicia recommends use of Open Document Format</a> and a <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/swiss-school-invests-open-source-savings-education">school
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in Villmergen/Switzerland is satisfied with Free Software</a> as they can now
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invest more money in education.</li>
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<li>143 of the politicians newly elected in France's municipal elections have
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pledged their support for Free Software. They all <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/143-french-politicians-pledge-support-free-software">signed
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the Free Software Pact by the French Free Software organisation April</a>. The
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FSFE congratulates them for the good job. Please notice that this month's "Get Active"
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item, always at the end of the newsletter, is also about the Free Software
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Pact and how you can help us.</li>
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<li>From the <a href="https://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>: </li>
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<ul>
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<li>Ghostery is an browser extension supposed to help users against tracking
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and surveillance on the web. <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/notes/avoid_ghostery-proprietary/">But as Hugo Roy
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reports</a>, the problem is that Ghostery is not released as Free
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Software.</li>
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<li>Guido Günther reports from <a
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href="http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Bits_from_the_7th_Debian_groupware_meeting.html">the
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7th Debian groupware meeting</a> at the Linuxhotel including why the
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participants, of whom all but one are FSFE Fellows, took the decision to remove
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iceowl (calendar) or what they did with icedove (e-mail).</li>
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<li>Our Fellow Number 1, wrote about <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=205">KDE e.V., families at Free Software
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meetings, especially at the meetings in Randa Switzerland</a>, and he <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=224">made some proposals for future KDE
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releases</a>.</li>
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<li>Karl Beecher explains <a
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href="http://computerfloss.com/2014/04/chapter-0-programmers-start-counting-zero-2/">why
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Programmers Start Counting at Zero</a>.</li>
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<li>Carsten Agger gave a <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/10/speaking-about-open-data-and-hacktivism/">talk
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about Open Data and Hacktivism at the hackerspace in Aarhus</a>. He also
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participated at the first International Festival for Technoshamanism. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/18/participating-in-the-1st-international-festival-for-technoshamanism/">He
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explains what Technoshamanism is</a>, what it has to do with Free Software, and
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<a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/25/opening-the-1st-international-festival-of-technoshamanism/">reports
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from the first day</a>.</li>
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<li>Hugo Roy takes a look at the GNU GPL in a javascript outliner: <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/posts/gpl-js-bs/">"GNU GPL, JS and BS"</a> and he wrote
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about <a href="http://hroy.eu/posts/innovation-policy/">Innovation policy and
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Internet liability in courts–beyond advertising</a> with the conclusion that
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"we need to take back control of innovation and technology policy to foster
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privacy and freedom; more than ever."</li>
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<li>Konstantinos Boukouvalas wrote about <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/boukouvalas/?p=546">the OSCAL conference in
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Albania</a> (3-4 May) which is <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/albania-youth-ministry-supports-open-source-meeting">supported
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by Albania's Ministry of Youth and Social Welfare</a>. They keynote there was <a
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href="http://oscal.openlabs.cc/speakers/">done by FSFE's Erik Albers</a>.</li>
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<li>On a technical side: <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/04/key-signing-with-caff/">Guido Arnold
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explains the advantages of using caff for keysigning</a>, which is part of the
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keysigning-party package on Debian based systems.</li>
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<li>Kevin Keijzer's new bedroom is now <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/03/29/my-new-bedroom-htpc-gigabyte-brix/">equipped
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with a new Free Software computer</a> and he documented <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/04/20/acer-c720-chromebook-debian-gnu-linux/">how
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to install Debian GNU/Linux on the Acer C720 Chromebook</a>.</li>
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<li>Jens Leuchtenbörger explains how to do <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2014/04/05/certificate-pinning-for-gnulinux-and-android/">Certificate
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Pinning for GNU/Linux and Android</a>.</li>
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<li>When Daniel Pocock upgraded an Android device he "found out that Android betrays the tethering data", after he received a lot of feedback he
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wrote a follow-up article because people justified the way mobile networks try to discriminate against tethering after his first blog entry. Also read <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=769">Paul Boddie's comment about the
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second article</a>.</li>
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<li>Furthermore Daniel wrote about problems with SMS logins, how his AirBNB hosts wanted to scan his identity documents and passports, and the best
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real-time communication (RTC / VoIP) softphone on the GNU/Linux
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desktop.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Make the Free Software Pact a success!</h2>
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<p>As we <a href="/news/2014/news-20140304-01.html">wrote in March</a>,
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candidates pledging for Free Software is a good way to take them at their word
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after an election. In Future we can contact them whenever there will be EU
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legislation to be passed that might endanger the existence or growth of Free
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Software.</p>
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<p>After FSFE's volunteers did a lot of translations for the pact, April now
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published all necessary information on the <a
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href="http://freesoftwarepact.eu/">Free Software pact website</a> so you can
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get active.</p>
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<p>In Italy our new intern Michele Marrali already contacted 51 candidates. He
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searched for the candidates, used <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/the-free-software-pact-for-the-european-elections-2014/">Erik's
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template</a> (also <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/der-freie-software-pakt-eu">available
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in German</a>) to contact them, and afterwards noted on <a
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href="https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/freesoftwarepact-eu-candidates">our pad
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whom he already contacted</a>. His goal is to contact every Italian candidate
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and get them to sign the pact. So how many can you contact?</p>
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<p>In case you do not have time to participate in this "hobby lobby
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competition", consider to <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">make a donation</a> so
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we can offer the most active volunteers <a href="/order/order.html">some
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rewards from our shop</a>.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
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<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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<!--/e-content-->
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe"><!--
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<h3>FSFE News</h3>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/news/">Press Releases</a></li>
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<li><a href="/news/newsletter.html">Newsletters Archive</a></li>
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<li><a href="/events/">Upcoming Events</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://planet.fsfe.org/">Planet Blogs</a></li>
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<li><a href="/about/contact.html#community">Free Software Discussions</a></li>
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</ul>
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--></sidebar>
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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2014-05-04" />
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</date>
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<followup>donate</followup>
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<tags>
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<tag key="newsletter"/>
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<tag key="security"/>
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<tag key="dfd"/>
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<tag key="ayc"/>
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</tags>
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</html>
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