Algúns “smartphones” Android e Maemo poden instalar xa o Firefox Mobile 4

Xa saíu a versión 4.0 estable do Firefox Mobile, navegador para smartphones con sistema operativo Maemo (Nokia N900) ou Android (esixe 512 MB de memoria RAM e un procesador ARMv7; ver especificacións técnicas e lista de teléfonos compatibles).

DR-TB and pharmaceutical industry: abuse of patients through patents

Copio un extracto de “Día Mundial de la Tuberculosis: urge resolver los problemas de calidad, precio y suministro de medicamentos para las formas resistentes de la enfermedad” (Médicos sin Fronteras, 24 – III – 2011)…

Según la Organización Mundial de la Salud, la tuberculosis resistente a los medicamentos (DR-TB por sus siglas en inglés) va en aumento con 440 000 nuevos casos anuales. De ellos, sólo el 7% recibe tratamiento y la enfermedad acaba con la vida de 150 000 personas cada año. [...]

El tratamiento de la DR-TB depende de antibióticos desarrollados hace mucho tiempo, muchos de los cuales tienen graves efectos secundarios, que van desde náuseas constantes a sordera, y que deben tomarse siguiendo regímenes complicados: los pacientes tienen que tomar hasta 17 píldoras cada día durante largos periodos de tiempo que pueden llegar hasta los dos años. Sin embargo, éstos son los únicos medicamentos que existen actualmente para tratar la DR-TB. El informe de MSF ["DR-TB drugs under the microscope: sources and prices for drug-resistant tuberculosis medicines"; existe versión abreviada en español] muestra que estos medicamentos conllevan múltiples problemas de precio y de suministro que deben ser resueltos con urgencia.

“Los pacientes están atrapados en un círculo vicioso. No se diagnostican suficientes casos y los problemas de suministro de medicamentos, junto con los elevados precios de los mismos, impiden poner en tratamiento a un mayor número de personas”, afirma el Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director ejecutivo de la Campaña para el Acceso a Medicamentos Esenciales de MSF. “La baja demanda de medicamentos para tratar la DR-TB hace que el mercado no sea lo bastante atractivo para los productores, lo que empeora todavía más los problemas de aprovisionamiento y precio”. [...]

Entre o direito á vida dos pacientes e o direito ao beneficio da industria farmacéutica prevalecen o “libre mercado” e a “propiedade intelectual” das patentes. Nesta orde mundial nauseabunda o mercado é presuntamente libre, todos somos iguais, coma quen di. Pero casos coma este demostran que algúns, os oligopolios que posúen os medios de produción e I+D, e os gobernantes que llelo permiten, eses (como na Animal Farm) son máis iguais que outros… :-(

Xa está “na rúa” o Mozilla Firefox 4

Xa está “na rúa” a versión 4.0 estable do Mozilla Firefox. Máis eficiente que nunca (ver as novidades nas release notes) e tan versátil coma sempre (a través das extensións). Se xa usades o Mozilla Firefox, habedes recibir un aviso para descargar e instalar unha actualización. Se aínda non o usades ou queredes descargar un instalador offline, escollede o idioma e o sistema operativo que queirades, porque navegador non o habedes encontrar millor… :-)

Ademais, está a punto de saír (xa vai na fase release candidate) a versión 4.0 estable do Firefox Mobile, navegador para smartphones con sistema operativo Android ou Maemo (ver unha lista de teléfonos compatibles).

Protect the internet from “astroturfing”, aka “sockpuppets” (George Monbiot et al.)

“The need to protect the internet from ‘astroturfing’ grows ever more urgent” (George Monbiot’s blog, 23 – II – 2011)

The tobacco industry does it, the US Air Force clearly wants to… astroturfing – the use of sophisticated software to drown out real people on web forums – is on the rise. How do we stop it?

Every month more evidence piles up, suggesting that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren’t what they seem.

The anonymity of the web gives companies and governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns that create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. This deception is most likely to occur where the interests of companies or governments come into conflict with the interests of the public. For example, there’s a long history of tobacco companies creating astroturf groups to fight attempts to regulate them.

After I wrote about online astroturfing in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them.

Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments. I’ll reveal more about what he told me when I’ve finished the investigation I’m working on.

It now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. Emails obtained by political hackers from a US cyber-security firm called HBGary Federal suggest that a remarkable technological armoury is being deployed to drown out the voices of real people.

As the Daily Kos has reported, the emails show that:

• Companies now use “persona management software”, which multiplies the efforts of each astroturfer, creating the impression that there’s major support for what a corporation or government is trying to do.
• This software creates all the online furniture a real person would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what look like authentic profiles, making it hard to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator.
• Fake accounts can be kept updated by automatically reposting or linking to content generated elsewhere, reinforcing the impression that the account holders are real and active.
• Human astroturfers can then be assigned these “pre-aged” accounts to create a back story, suggesting that they’ve been busy linking and retweeting for months. No one would suspect that they came onto the scene for the first time a moment ago, for the sole purpose of attacking an article on climate science or arguing against new controls on salt in junk food.
• With some clever use of social media, astroturfers can, in the security firm’s words, “make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise… There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to fictitious personas.”

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation is this. The US Air Force has been tendering for companies to supply it with persona management software, which will perform the following tasks:

a. Create “10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent… Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms.”

b. Automatically provide its astroturfers with “randomly selected IP addresses through which they can access the internet” (an IP address is the number which identifies someone’s computer), and these are to be changed every day, “hiding the existence of the operation”. The software should also mix up the astroturfers’ web traffic with “traffic from multitudes of users from outside the organisation. This traffic blending provides excellent cover and powerful deniability.”

c. Create “static IP addresses” for each persona, enabling different astroturfers “to look like the same person over time”. It should also allow “organisations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organisation.”

Software like this has the potential to destroy the internet as a forum for constructive debate. It jeopardises the notion of online democracy. Comment threads on issues with major commercial implications are already being wrecked by what look like armies of organised trolls – as you can sometimes see on guardian.co.uk.

The internet is a wonderful gift, but it’s also a bonanza for corporate lobbyists, viral marketers and government spin doctors, who can operate in cyberspace without regulation, accountability or fear of detection. So let me repeat the question I’ve put in previous articles, and which has yet to be satisfactorily answered: what should we do to fight these tactics?

“Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media” (The Guardian, 17 – III – 2011)

Military’s ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda.

Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain. See also comment by Jeff Jarvis, “Washington shows the morals of a clumsy spammer”

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an “online persona management service” that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The CENTCOM contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.

CENTCOM spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable CENTCOM to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to “address US audiences” with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by CENTCOM was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated Facebook messages, blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

CENTCOM’s contract requires for each controller the provision of one “virtual private server” located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.

It also calls for “traffic mixing”, blending the persona controllers’ internet usage with the usage of people outside CENTCOM in a manner that must offer “excellent cover and powerful deniability”.

The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate’s armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of CENTCOM, described the operation as an effort to “counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard”. He said the US military’s objective was to be “first with the truth”.

This month Petraeus’s successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV “supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities”.

CENTCOM confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts.

Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.

In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: “OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda.” He added that Centcom was working with “our coalition partners” to develop new techniques and tactics the US could use “to counter the adversary in the cyber domain”.

According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than CENTCOM.

Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it could find “no evidence”. The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, saying: “We don’t comment on cyber capability.”

OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior CENTCOM officer told delegates that its purpose was to “communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries”.

Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.

Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of “criminal impersonation” and identity theft.

It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that “a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person’s prejudice”. However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered “prejudice” as a result.

A droga “Ivory Wave”, relacionada con suicidios

Nota: a negrita e os enlaces púxenos eu. As noticias dun xornal ou os artigos da Wikipedia son útiles como referencia rápida, pero “non os supervisa un comité científico”… :-) As consultas sobre saúde e uso de substancias debe resolvelas persoal especializado: médicos, farmacéuticos, psicólogos, et cetera.

“Alerta en Europa por una nueva droga que puede inducir el suicidio” (ABC, 15 – III – 2011).

Camuflada como sales de baño, tiene un enorme poder alucinógeno y crea gran dependencia.

M. J. PÉREZ-BARCO. Madrid.

En inglés se llama “Ivory Wave”. Y en español, recibe distintas denominaciones: «Ola de marfil», «Cielo de vainilla», «Bendición», «Relámpago blanco»… Todas esas etiquetas designan una misma sustancia: una nueva droga sintética que ha irrumpido con fuerza entre la juventud y sobre la que ya han dado la voz de alarma las autoridades de Estados Unidos y del Reino Unido. Su enorme poder alucinógeno y adictivo ha causado ya diversas muertes e ingresos hospitalarios entre los jóvenes británicos, como advierte un estudio publicado en el último número de la revista científica Emergency Medicine Journal. En Estados Unidos, además, se la considera la responsable de tendencias suicidas.

Por ahora, en España no se ha detectado su consumo, aunque sí su comercialización. «Éstas y todas las sustancias nuevas y emergentes son profundamente minoritarias en nuestro país. Solo el 0,1% de la población utiliza este tipo de drogas», explica Nuria Espí, delegada del Plan Nacional sobre Drogas. «Nos preocupa que puedan convertirse en un problema aunque nuestra realidad es bien distinta —señala—. Nuestros problemas son el alcohol, el tabaco, la marihuana y la cocaína. El 80 por ciento de los jóvenes bebe. Muchos niños de 12 y 13 años se toman cuatro copas en menos de tres horas durante el fin de semana y eso perjudica seriamente su desarrollo».

Venta legal

Aún así las autoridades están vigilantes y atentas ante la posible irrupción de este nuevo consumo entre nuestra juventud. Y es que por muchos efectos nocivos que provoque, «Ivory wave» se escapa de todos los controles ya que se comercializa de forma legal como inocuas e inofensivas sales de baño que invitan a la relajación. Así se da a conocer en anuncios en internet. Uno de ellos publicitado desde Valencia. En Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, las sales se venden en tiendas naturistas y comercios que abren las 24 horas. El paquete de 500 miligramos cuesta 35 dólares (25 euros).

«El problema de este tipo de sustancias es que no se venden como tales sino para otros usos. También ocurrió con la ketamina que se utiliza como anestésico de grandes animales, como los caballos, y está prohibida su uso en humanos. Por eso, las drogas de síntesis se venden de forma legal y están diseñadas para engancharse rápidamente a ellas. Son creadas en laboratorio a partir de modificaciones de sustancias naturales e intentan imitar a los opiáceos y a la cocaína con fórmulas basadas precisamente en los principios químicos de esas drogas», dice Espí.

Las relajantes sales encierran un grave peligro. Esta droga contiene metilendioxipirovalerona (MDPV), una sustancia similar a la cocaína y que una vez fumada, esnifada o inyectada, provoca una fuerte dependencia, además de alucinaciones, paranoia y psicosis, acelera el ritmo cardíaco y crea impulsos suicidas. De hecho, en Estados Unidos se han registrado casos de personas que tras consumirla se han herido e incluso quitado la vida; de jóvenes que han sufrido una fuerte depresión, ataques de pánico o reacciones muy violentas. Y los efectos, que se perciben a partir de cinco miligramos, pueden durar desde un día hasta una semana. Motivos suficientes para que la venta de MDPV se haya prohibido en algunos Estados americanos, como Luisiana y Florida y también las sales de baño que contienen dicha sustancia.

La «Ivory Wave» tiene además lidocaína, un anestésico que se utiliza de forma habitual en odontología, en jarabes para la tos y en animales. Muchos adictos ven en ella una forma barata de recuperar la antigua moda de esnifar pegamento.

Tras la mefedrona

Y para muchos «Ivory Wave» es un sustitutivo de la mefedrona, otra droga de síntesis que se vendía como abono para plantas y que ha sido prohibido para consumo humano en la Unión Europea tras comprobar que estaba relacionada con 26 muertes. En Gran Bretaña, por ejemplo, la mefedrona se había convertido en la cuarta más consumida entre la juventud. No es de extrañar que la alerta se haya extendido entre las autoridades británicas ante el temor de que la «Ola de marfil» pueda llevar ese mismo camino.

Estados Unidos y Reino Unido no son los únicos países donde se ha detectado la aparición de esta nociva sustancia entre la juventud. También hay informaciones de que las autoridades australianas se están planteando prohibir su comercialización y consumo tras una alarmante investigación de la Universidad de Sydney sobre sus dañinos efectos.

Sus dañinos efectos

El consumo de «Ivory Wave» puede llegar a provocar la muerte. Se han detectado casos que tras su ingestión ha provocado impulsos suicidas. Otros consumidores se han autolesionado y han tenido reacciones muy violentas. También puede causar fuerte depresión, alucinaciones, paranoia, psicosis, sobreestimulación del sistema nervioso. acelera el ritmo cardíaco, ansiedad extrema, contracciones faciales involuntarias, hipertermia, variaciones severas en la presión sanguínea, problemas renales… Sus efectos pueden durar desde un día hasta una semana y son perceptibles a partir de dosis de cinco miligramos. En su fase inicial induce a un estado de euforia. Se fuma, esnifa o se inyecta. Enseguida produce síndrome de dependencia.