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Google Meet vs Hangouts: Which Video Conferencing App Should You Use – Guiding Tech

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Video conferencing has become a basic need for small and large companies. Most tend to look a Google for options and it has Hangouts that allows users to text and make audio and video calls. To make things a little simpler, or complicated, they decided to launch another video conferencing app called Meet and call it Hangouts Meet. It's a similar name policy that's confusing.

Google Hangouts is more focused and available to everyone with a Google account. Meanwhile, Meet is designed for businesses and enterprise users subscribing to the G Suite family of apps. There are plenty of differences under the hood, even though both are usable to initiate a video call.

Visit Hangouts

Visit Hangouts Meet

Let's understand what these differences are.

Open your favorite browser. If you are signed in to Chrome or Gmail, Hangouts will directly sign you in. The same goes for smartphone apps. The UI is pretty easy on the eyes with contacts on the left and three options to connect with them on the right.

You can chat and make audio and video calls to friends and relatives whom you have added to your Gmail or Contacts app and have Hangouts installed. You can click on the New conversation button to search for contacts. The wallpaper will change every time you refresh the page.

The mobile apps follow suit with a list of contacts on the main screen and a '+' icon to initiate a text or video conversation. Where is the audio call option? You need to open contact to find that. Not sure why they choose to go this weird UI route on mobile apps.

Once you open a conversation, there are other people-centric options like archive, block, create or add to a group, and notifications. There is no way to attach files, even from Google Drive, which surprised me a little. You can send images (device and Drive) or take photos. No audio clips either. But you can send video clips. These are some strange choices.

Overall, Hangouts works well but lacks certain features that you can find in other popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram like attachments and end-to-end encryption.

Google Meet or Hangouts Meet is an extension of the same platform but for business users. Meet is a direct Zoom competitor, and it is apparent the moment you launch it.

Meet focuses majorly on HD video conferencing, but also supports audio calls. Most global companies have employees joining from different regions, and Meet supports real-time captions to accommodate everyone. How does it all work?

Create a room and share the meeting code with others via either a click-and-join link or by directly sending the code. Just like Hangouts, the background wallpaper changes randomly but is much nicer to look at, thanks to the Hangouts Canvas Project.

Well, there are plenty of differences under the surface. Meet supports HD calls and was designed with G Suite users in mind. What this means is that you can only connect to a meeting but can't create one if you aren't a G Suite user. Hangouts is available for all Google users including G Suite.

You can schedule a Hangouts meeting but from the Google Calendar app only. That means you have to use that app, whether you prefer using it or not. The same is also true for Meet. I guess Google wants you to use Calendar, which makes sense if you have a G Suite account.

You will see additional options once a meeting has started. Some useful ones are screen sharing and meeting recording for future references. You can also chat with users, but only after a meeting has begun. That is not a messenger app. That's what Hangouts was developed for.

Hangouts is not end-to-end encrypted. However, Google notes that messages are encrypted in transit. That's quite odd while ther messenger apps like Telegram are focusing on the privacy and security of users. The same is also true for Meet, but Google notes that recordings saved in Google Drive are encrypted.

Google Hangouts support some additional features like adding special effects like hats during calls, status messages, and supports emojis. Meet doesn't and takes a more professional approach.

Both Hangouts and Hangouts Meet are available on the web and have mobile apps for both Android and iOS. Hangouts support up to 150 users in conversations and up to 25 in video calls for G Suite users but only 10 for free users.

Meet supports up to 100 participants in G Suite's basic plan, 150 in the business plan, and 250 in the enterprise plan. Note that up to 100,000 users can watch a live stream, which is huge but also needs a very powerful PC and internet connection. Useful for streaming a live event. Free users can only join a meeting but not create and manage one, as we discussed earlier.

The distinction is pretty clear once you look at the features. Hangouts is for every person who doesn't want to invest in G Suite apps. It is a regular messenger that lacks several features that you will otherwise find in popular messaging apps. Meet is an enterprise solution purpose-built for holding video conference meetings and is geared towards G Suite subscribers which makes a lot of sense. Why go for another video conferencing app when you are already paying for Meet?

Next up:Do you spend a lot of time on video conference calls? Here are some of the best webcams that were built just for that. Click on the link below to find out more.

Last updated on 14 Apr, 2020

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Google Meet vs Hangouts: Which Video Conferencing App Should You Use - Guiding Tech

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children in embassy, partner says – NBC News

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LONDON WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children while he was living in London's Ecuadorian Embassy, their mother said Sunday as she pleaded with British authorities to release him from prison over fears for his health amid the coronavirus epidemic.

Stella Morris, who was a member of Assange's legal team, publicly revealed that Assange was a parent for the first time in a video interview WikiLeaks released on its social media channels.

Assange, 48, is being kept in London's Belmarsh high-security prison while he fights extradition to the U.S., where he faces 18 counts, including conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law.

He was dragged out of the embassy and arrested by British police almost exactly a year ago after his asylum was revoked.

Morris said in the video that she first met Assange in 2011 but that their relationship started four years later, when he was living in the embassy. They deliberately chose to have children to ''break down the walls around him" and "imagine a life beyond prison," she added.

She said she was worried that Assange's life "might be coming to an end" as he remains in confinement amid the coronavirus outbreak.

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In a five-page witness statement, which has been seen by NBC News, Morris said she was going public in support of a bail application for Assange.

Assange's attorney Jennifer Robinson told NBC News in a statement Sunday that Morris had not made the decision to tell her story lightly, having fiercely protected her family's privacy for many years.

"She wanted to speak in support of Julian's bail application given the grave risk to his health in prison during the COVID pandemic and the judge refused her anonymity," Robinson said.

Assange's extradition hearing is scheduled to resume next month. Last month, he was denied bail after his attorneys said he should be released because he was highly vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Morris said she has gone to great lengths to shelter her children "from the climate that surrounds" Assange but felt that she needed to speak up because their lives are "on the brink" and she feared Assange could die in prison.

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In her statement, signed March 24, Morris said she had recently learned that Assange is in isolation "for effectively 23 out of each 24 hours and perhaps longer," adding that she cannot visit him in prison because of the coronavirus epidemic.

She said she has sensed "an increasing fear and panic" in her phone conversations with Assange about the coronavirus situation at the prison.

"I have feared with strong reason for a long time that I will lose Julian to suicide if there is no way in which he can stop his extradition to the U.S.," Morris wrote.

"I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus," she added.

CORRECTION (April 12, 2020, 10:30 p.m. ET): A photo caption on an earlier version of this article misstated when Julian Assange was photographed arriving at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. The photo was taken in April 2019, not last month.

Yuliya Talmazan is a London-based journalist.

Michele Neubert is a London-based producer for NBC News.She has been awarded four Emmy Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award and an Alfred I. duPont Award for her work in conflict zones, including the Balkans, Afghanistan and Kurdistan.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children in embassy, partner says - NBC News

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children during seven years in embassy – National Post

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LONDON WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children with a lawyer who was representing him while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fighting extradition, the lawyer told a British newspaper on Sunday.

The Mail on Sunday said 37-year-old South African lawyer Stella Morris has been engaged to Assange since 2017. The couple have two sons, aged 1 and 2, both conceived while Assange was in the embassy and kept secret from media covering his case and intelligence agencies monitoring his activity, the paper said.

It showed pictures of Assange with a baby, identified as the older son, who it said had been smuggled into the embassy to meet him. Both of the children are British citizens, it said. Assange had watched the births on a video link.

I love Julian deeply and I am looking forward to marrying him

The Australian-born Assange was dragged out of the embassy last year after a seven-year standoff, and is now jailed in Britain fighting extradition to the United States on computer hacking and espionage charges. His supporters say the U.S. case against him is political and he cannot receive a fair trial.

Morris said she had chosen to speak out now because she was worried about his susceptibility to the coronavirus in jail.

I love Julian deeply and I am looking forward to marrying him, the paper quoted her as saying.

Over the past five years I have discovered that love makes the most intolerable circumstances seem bearable but this is different I am now terrified I will not see him alive again.

Reporting by Peter Graff. Editing by Frances Kerry

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children during seven years in embassy - National Post

The Global Quantum Cryptography Solutions Market is expected to grow by $ 2.71 bn during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 39% during the forecast…

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NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Global Quantum Cryptography Solutions Market 2020-2024The analyst has been monitoring the quantum cryptography solutions market and it is poised to grow by $ 2.71 bn during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 39% during the forecast period. Our reports on quantum cryptography solutions market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05483120/?utm_source=PRN

The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the un-hackability of photons assured by laws of QM, possible obsolescence of traditional encryption, and proliferation of download now, decrypt later hacking paradigm. In addition, un-hackability of photons assured by laws of QM is anticipated to boost the growth of the market as well.The quantum cryptography solutions market analysis includes end-user segments and geographic landscapes

The quantum cryptography solutions market is segmented as below:By End-user G and P Defense BFSI Telecom Others

By Geographic Landscape APAC Europe MEA North America South America

This study identifies the emergence of QKD as a service as one of the prime reasons driving the quantum cryptography solutions market growth during the next few years. Also, extending the range of secure communication using twin-field QKD, and increasing popularity of free-space QKD will lead to sizable demand in the market.The analyst presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. Our quantum cryptography solutions market covers the following areas: Quantum cryptography solutions market sizing Quantum cryptography solutions market forecast Quantum cryptography solutions market industry analysis

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05483120/?utm_source=PRN

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

__________________________Contact Clare: clare@reportlinker.comUS: (339)-368-6001Intl: +1 339-368-6001

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The Global Quantum Cryptography Solutions Market is expected to grow by $ 2.71 bn during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 39% during the forecast...

How a girl grasped the Holy Grail of encryption and changed the paradigm for safely sharing data – SiliconANGLE

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Women are a minority in tech, with an average of three men for every one woman. When it comes to cybersecurity, the imbalance is even more acute.

A 2020 report shows that female cybersecurity experts are outnumbered five to one by their male counterparts. Inside the National Security Agency, cybersecuritys inner sanctum, the ratio is anyones guess.So the fact that a woman not only entered, but conquered and emerged victorious, from the NSA andwith the rights to market the ultimate encryption treasureis a feat worthy of attention.

How did she do it?Math, said Ellison Anne Williams (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Enveil Inc. Math and grit.

Williams spoke withJohn Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Medias mobile livestreaming studio, during the RSA Conference in San Francisco. They discussed her time at the NSA and how homomorphic cryptography provides the missing link in the cybersecurity chain.

The treasure Williams carried from the NSA is one that has often been described as the Holy Grail of cryptologists: Homomorphic encryption. Developed within the NSA by researchers wanting to maintain security for data in-use,the technology enables data to be handled securely while remaining encrypted.

This week theCUBE spotlights Williams in its Women in Tech feature.

Data security has three parts: data at rest, data in transit, and data at use, explained Williams. The first part involves securing data at rest on the file system and the database.This would be your more traditional in-database encryption, she said.

The second part is securing data as its moving around through the network, known as data in transit. The third part of the data security process is securing data that is in-use data under analysis or search. This is when the data is both at its most vulnerable and its most valuable.

While there are many security solutions for both data at rest and in transit, protecting data while it is being processed has always been the weak point. Data was secure before and after processing but had to be decrypted in order to be accessed, then re-encrypted. Homomorphic encryption solves that issue.

It means we can do things like take searches or analytics, encrypt them, and then go run them without ever decrypting them at any point during processing, Williams explained.

With her blonde curls and Southern charm, Williams doesnt match the stereotype of a socially awkward cybersecurity specialist. But while her looks may cause some to double-take at business meetings, her intelligence and expertise are indisputable. Williams holds adoctorate in mathematics (algebraic combinatorics) from North Carolina State University and two masters degrees, one in mathematics from the University of South Carolina and another in computer science from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

As an undergrad, Williams was a pre-med student with a plan to study infectious diseases. Instead, she fell in love with math and became an expert in distributed computing and algorithms, cryptographic applications, graph theory, combinatorics, machine learning, and data mining.

After graduating from North Carolina State, Williams joined the research team at the NSA, where she spent 12 years doing a little bit of everything, including large-scale analytics, information security and privacy, computer network exploitation, and network modeling. She also advocated for women to join the NSAs team and mentored her male colleagues.

During her last few years at the NSA, she had the opportunity to work at The John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. It was there that she worked on homomorphic encryption as part of a larger project for the NSA.

Although she had worked in research her whole career, Williams had always harbored entrepreneurial dreams. So when she learned she could declassify some of her research through the NSA Technology Transfer Program, she jumped at the chance to create a homomorphic encryption solution for the marketplace.

The idea of homomorphic encryption is not new. The concept has been around since 1978, but a first-generation fully homomorphic solution wasnt proposed until 2009. Research continued, and second- and third-generation fully homomorphic solutions were proposed. But problems remained with implementing these solutions at scale.

With the launch of Enveil Inc. in 2016, Williams took a bet that by combining the entrepreneurship in her DNA with the results of her years of research at John Hopkins and the NSA she could change that.

Less than a year after founding, the company got the cybersecurity communitys attention at the finals of theRSA Innovation Sandbox. Thats where the conversation really started to change around this technology called homomorphic encryption, the market category space called securing data in use, and what that meant, Williams said.

Williams expected a surprised reaction when the community discovered Enveil had a market-ready homomorphic encryption solution. She didnt expect that big-name early adopters, such as Bloomberg Beta, Thomson Reuters Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., and Mastercard Inc., would be eager to strategically invest in the company.

The enthusiasm is because homomorphic encryption solves the problem of secure data sharing. New technologies such as machine learning rely on ingesting massive amounts of data. Being restricted to just one data source limits the potential for powerful insights, but sharing data resources for analysis is a risky business.

There are also codes and regulations that govern data sharing, such as Europes General Data Protection Regulationand the California Consumer Privacy Act, which limit how data can be managed.Not to mention, people can get upset if they discover a company has a cavalier attitude tosharingpersonal data; as Google discovered withProject Nightingale.

This makes the ability to maintain anonymity and security while sharing data critically important for businesses, especially those in the financial sectors, where the payoff and the risks are high stakes. Say a bank suspects a client of financial misconduct, such as money laundering, and as part of establishing the trail, it needs to verify transactions with other institutions.

[Banks] cant necessarily openly, freely share all the information. But if I can ask you a question and do so in a secure and private capacity, still respecting all the access controls that youve put in place over your own data, then it allows that collaboration to occur, Williams stated.

Homomorphic encryption enables the data to be searched while remaining encoded, so no personally identifiable information is ever revealed and regulation compliance and security is ensured.

Current use casesamong Enveils clients include financial regulation, with banks able to securely share information to combat money laundering and other fraudulent activity. Global transactions are simplified by allowing collaboration regardless of national privacy restrictions. And in healthcare, hospitals and clinics can share patient details to research facilities and remain confident that they are not disclosing sensitive personal data.

After just over three years in operation, Williams is proud of what her company has accomplished. Its really pretty impressive, she said.

It is. Breaking the male-dominated culture of cybersecurity, Williams has created a company that is at the forefront of data in-use security, recently announceda $10 million Series A funding and is looking to expand globally with new product lines that enable advanced decisioning in a completely secure and private capacity.

Were creating a whole new market, Williams said. [Were] completely changing the paradigm about where and how you can use data for business purposes.

Heres the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLEs and theCUBEs coverage of theRSA Conference:

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Wed also like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we dont have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary onSiliconANGLE along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams attheCUBE take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

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How a girl grasped the Holy Grail of encryption and changed the paradigm for safely sharing data - SiliconANGLE

Snowden Warns Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build the ‘Architecture of Oppression’ – VICE UK

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The future may be unpredictable, but global pandemics arent. There isnt a single government on the planet that hasnt been warned, repeatedly, that at some point a viral pandemic will sweep the globe, causing untold death and economic disruption.

And yet most failed to prepare for the novel coronavirus.

Every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming, says famed whistleblower Edward Snowden in an exclusive interview with VICE co-founder Shane Smith. Yet when we needed it, the system has now failed us, and it has failed us comprehensively.

Snowden is the first guest in the new Shelter in Place series debuting on VICE TV on Thursday at 10 p.m. EST, which looks at the global response to COVID-19 and its lasting impact around the world. Smith will discuss these themes, as well as how to survive quarantine, with a host of thinkers from science, entertainment, economics, and journalism.

In the premiere episode, Smith talks to Snowden, who blew the lid off of the National Security Agencys surveillance of the American people in 2012. In the interview conducted from Smiths home in Santa Monica over video chat, the two tackle topics including the lack of preparedness in the face of a global pandemic, how long this will be a threat to humanity, and whether the power were handing to global leaders will come back and bite us in the ass.

Smith: Why does it seem like we're so ill-prepared?

Snowden: There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming. And in fact, even intelligence agencies, I can tell you firsthand, because they used to read the reports had been planning for pandemics.

Are autocratic regimes better at dealing with things like this than democratic ones?I don't think so. I mean, there are arguments being made that China can do things that the United States can't. That doesn't mean that what these autocratic countries are doing is actually more effective.

If you're looking at countries like China, where cases seem to have leveled off, how much can we trust that those numbers are actually true?I don't think we can. Particularly, we see the Chinese government recently working to expel Western journalists at precisely this moment where we need credible independent warnings in this region.

It seems that [coronavirus] may be the greatest question of the modern era around civil liberties, around the right to privacy. Yet no one's asking this question.As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.

Watch the full interview Thursday at 10 p.m. on VICE TV or catch the episode later on VICEtv.com.

Cover: VICE co-founder Shane Smith interviews Edward Snowden for a new show, "Shelter in Place" from VICE TV.

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Snowden Warns Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build the 'Architecture of Oppression' - VICE UK

Barton Gellman Joins The Atlantic as Staff Writer – The Atlantic

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The Atlantic has hired the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barton Gellman as a staff writer, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced today. Gellman, one of the most esteemed investigative reporters in America, is known in particular for his coverage of national-security issues. He broke the story of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for The Washington Post, which was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Gellman, Goldberg said, will focus his early reporting on the coronavirus pandemic and the governments response to the unfolding crisis. Bart is an astonishingly gifted reporter, and adding him to our formidable roster of talent means that our coverage of the biggest story of our time will only become stronger. Goldberg added: As we know from his distinguished career, Bart excels across a wide range of topics, including, of course, national security, surveillance, terrorism, and privacy, and we are excited about publishing great stories from him on these subjects as well.

Gellman has a long-standing interest in subjects concerning infectious disease. In 2000, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his in-depth reporting on the AIDS crisis. In addition to the Pulitzer awarded for his Snowden reporting, Gellman was part of the Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer in the national-reporting category in 2002, for coverage of the 9/11 attacks. And he was awarded another Pulitzer for stories written with Jo Becker about the work and influence of former Vice President Dick Cheney. His book on Cheney, Angler, was a national best seller. Gellmans next book, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, will be published in May by Penguin Press.

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Barton Gellman Joins The Atlantic as Staff Writer - The Atlantic

2 Decades of Dubious Surveillance Will Make It Much Harder To Track COVID-19 Now – Reason

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Would you tell an app on your phone if you tested positive for COVID-19 so that people who had been in close contact with you could be informed?

For many Americans, the answer would be yes, many emphatically so. But deep suspicion about who might see that information and how that information might be used to suppress civil liberties will push thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of Americans to refuse.

Their refusal to participate might make it much harder to track the spread of the coronavirus and protect people from exposure. That's unfortunate, but that deep suspicion of how the government uses our private data from our phones and computers is justified by an entire post-9/11 regime of domestic surveillance that far too many government officials continue to defend.

Andrea O'Sullivan explained here at Reason how location technology on our phones could be used to help trace COVID-19 infections and how apps are playing an important role at stopping the spread in South Korea and China. Apple and Google are partnering up to host apps that will allow individuals around the world to participate. People who discover they've been infected with the coronavirus can inform the app, and the app will inform others who have come into close contact with them recently, letting them know they may have been exposed so that they can take proper precautions and self-isolate.

The way Apple and Google are approaching these tools is admirable, at least on paper. Participation will be voluntary. The tools won't actually collect identifiable information on location data. People who test positive will not be identified to Google or Apple or transmitted to health authorities. (Google explains how the location tracing will work here.)

But there's a lot of mistrustand I don't just mean mistrust of Google and Apple. There's mistrust of governments, both authoritarian and democratic, who might be able to track citizens and collect data via phones. China is already doing this with its citizens. Let's not pretend that this is simply a tool of authoritarian regimes. After the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly implemented the collection and storage of mass amounts of Americans' phone and internet metadata, without a warrant or any real justification other than to search through it for potential terrorist plotting.

Edward Snowden revealed the extent of this surveillance to Americans almost seven years ago, and at the time, a significant number of bipartisan political leaders insisted that this surveillance, despite violating the Fourth Amendment rights of all Americans, was needed to protect us from violent terrorism. It was not. As the years went by, it became clear that this mass surveillance was not making us safer, nor was it an effective tool for fighting terrorism. The USA Freedom Act reformed the system to restrict how the data could be collected and accessed but also brought it out from the shadows and made it official policy. (The USA Freedom Act expired in March since Congress did not reach a compromise over renewing it as attention turned to the pandemic, a mostly unnoticed casualty of COVID-19.)

Now, Snowden warns that the same governments that used the fear of terrorism to justify massive domestic surveillance may do the same for the coronavirus. People may recall that Snowden was initially dismissed as a crank by a lot of people until the government was forced to acknowledge that much of what he'd revealed was actually true.

We already see examples of law enforcement agencies at home and abroad abusing their surveillance tools to try to exert authority over citizens instead of helping them. Drones can be a boon to police when searching for lost people or scoping out dangerous situations. But in England, one police department used them to snoop on and attempt to shame citizens who had gone to a park to exercise and be outdoors (none of these citizens appeared to be violating social distancing rules). In Kentucky, police are using license plate readers to force compliance with self-quarantine orders. This surveillance is not being used to collect information to track the coronavirus. It's being used to control people.

And so, if thousands of Americans (or Brits) refuse to assist public health agencies by opting into these apps, don't blame them. Blame the government officials who have reliably used every single crisis for the past two decades to insist they need to have access to more and more information about our private lives. Will Apple and Google even be able to keep their promises that the government can't access this private data, given that both politicians and the Department of Justice are trying to destroy encryption to make secret surveillance easier?

In all likelihood, I will download and participate in this app system when it's introduced. I live in Los Angeles in a neighborhood with a lot of families with older residents who are especially likely to have severe cases if they're exposed. But I wouldn't judge anybody who refuses to participate. The government already cried wolf. Now that they really need us to trust that they truly need to know where we are, they've already trained us not to believe them.

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2 Decades of Dubious Surveillance Will Make It Much Harder To Track COVID-19 Now - Reason

If Julian Assange is extradited, it’s the end of the rule of law in the West Eva Joly (Interview) – Pressenza

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By Jrme Duval for MrMondialisation

Last March, one of our journalists had the opportunity to speak with Eva Joly, a lawyer and former Member of Parliament, about the details of the Assange case, as she herself knows the main protagonist personally. The subjects of their exchange included the hunt for the whistleblower, his revelations, his conditions of detention and his trial. And in parallel, the questions raised in terms of freedom of information, human rights and democracy. Exclusive interview.

Julian Assange has made a name for himself by exposing damning atrocities during the US invasion and war in Iraq and Afghanistan two wars fought with lies including the publication in April 2010 of the video Collateral murder, in which two Reuters reporters and several civilians were shot at from an American Apache helicopter. In the same year, WikiLeaks, of which he is the founder and spokesman, released hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents relating to war crimes and acts of torture committed by the US military.

In order to protect himself from US prosecution behind a Swedish arrest warrant for rape charges that he has always denied, Julian Assange spent seven years in seclusion in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge in June 2012. The CIA spied on his every move, those of his relatives and defenders within the Embassy via the security company UC Global. On 11 April 2019, Ecuadorian President Lenn Moreno ended his right to asylum. He was arrested by British police the same day and has since been held in Belmarsh high security prison. Charged with espionage and 17 other charges, if the British justice system accepts the request for extradition to the United States, he faces 175 years in prison at the end of an extraordinary trial that began on 24 February.

One of the last images of Julian Assange at the time of his arrest in London

A former magistrate, Eva Joly made a name for herself during her career by investigating political and financial cases such as the Elf affair, which led to some thirty convictions, including that of Lok Le Floch-Prigent. She was an MEP for Europe Ecology-The Greens between 2009 and 2019 and is now a lawyer at the Paris bar.

Eva Joly, you have known Julian Assange for a long time, when you worked in Iceland with this young computer scientist on the project to transform Iceland into a paradise for journalism, for the protection of information. During an evening of solidarity with the whistleblower on 21 February at the Bourse du Travail in Paris, you alluded to a plane full of FBI agents landing in Iceland in 2011 on the pretext of an imminent computer attack against the government. Can you tell us more about this?

Eva Joly: The FBI was following Julian Assange, their agents knew he was in Iceland and they landed. They had contacted Interior Minister gmundur Jnasson, telling him that the Icelandic governments computer system was in danger and that the FBI was offering to help. But gmundur Jnasson understood the manoeuvre and he refused. It went unnoticed, but his testimony is still available on the Internet[i]. The fact that Julian Assange was under surveillance and that the United States wanted to get its hands on him very early on is a fact.

What is the situation of Chelsea Manning, convicted for the disclosure of the Collateral Murder video published by Wikileaks?

Eva Joly: We can see that the perpetrators of the war crime who appear in this video have not been prosecuted and yet they are easily identifiable. On the other hand, the whistleblower who showed this war crime is wanted. Chelsea Manning has been arrested and prosecuted. She is convicted of breaking into a computer system and disseminating confidential information. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, then released by presidential pardon by Barack Obama on the last day of his presidency, she had already served seven years of her sentence. Paradoxically, she is still detained[ii], after being repeatedly convicted of contempt of court for refusing to testify before the Grand Jury against Assange. This shows that Julian Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States, which is one of the conditions for accepting extradition, since the requested country, in this case the United Kingdom, must be certain that the trial will be fair.

Julian Assanges lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said that on the first day of the trial, which opened in London on 24 February, his client had been stripped naked and searched twice, handcuffed 11 times and locked up five times in different holding cells. During his trial, Julian Assange was not seated with his lawyers as is customary, but was confined to the back of the courtroom, locked in a bullet-proof glass cage. Conditions that penalize the accused and seem unfair since they prevent him from following the proceedings, but which do not seem to bother the magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser. Is such a system unprecedented and is all this in accordance with the law?

Eva Joly: Here we see that the British are not treating Assange normally, because he was first sentenced to 50 weeks for breach of judicial supervision pronounced in 2012, when he was the subject of a Swedish extradition request. He had been allowed his liberty but forced to report regularly to the police. Julian Assange understood that he would be extradited to Sweden, he was convinced that it was a manoeuvre to hand him over to the United States, and he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted consular asylum. He stayed there for seven years. When Lenin Moreno, the President of Ecuador ended that asylum in 2017, the police took him out of the embassy in a very violent manner. He was taken to Belmarsh Prison, a maximum security prison. Now, Julian Assange is a multi-award winning journalist, he is not a terrorist. Especially since we know that the arrest warrant behind the Swedish extradition request had a very thin legal basis. We know that it was a manipulation. They sentenced Julian Assange almost to the maximum penalty for failure to comply with judicial supervision, 50 weeks, the maximum being 52, and they made him serve his sentence among those who detonate bombs and kill civilians. This is a signal sent by the United Kingdom, and it is unworthy of British justice. It is clear that the prison administration has instructions to execute his sentence first and then his pre-trial detention in the worst possible conditions.

Credit: John Englart | Support Wikileaks Free Julian Assange | (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In prison, he was placed in solitary confinement, and when he finished serving his sentence, he was remanded in custody, again awaiting trial. The solitary confinement ended only two or three weeks before the trial. There were also movements of prisoners who were sympathetic and asked that he be released from solitary confinement. All of this is abnormal. Julian Assange does not belong in a maximum security prison. The political situation is bad for Assange. We know that he was tortured and humiliated, and the UN rapporteur who assessed him has seen the impact of torture on his person.

At the hearing, when his lawyers requested that their client be allowed to sit next to them, the judge refused. The prosecutors office, representing the State, supported the lawyers request by justifying the customary nature of such a practice. Despite this, the judge opposed it. The whole situation is abnormal. According to the texts, it is the Westminster Magistrates Court that has to give an opinion, but the hearing is taking place at the Belmarsh Magistrates Court. In order to comply with the law, the Westminster staff and judges have been relocated so that Julian Assange does not have to be relocated. Are they open to attack on this aspect, or on the unfair conditions under which the trial was conducted?

Eva Joly: Yes, Assanges treatment is the treatment of a terrorist. He was refused his glasses for six months, which, along with the isolation, is bad treatment.

If the British justice system agrees to extradite him to the United States at the end of this trial, will Julian Assange risk the death penalty for espionage?

Eva Joly: There is a fundamental rule: you dont extradite to a country that practises the death penalty unless you have guarantees that the death penalty will not be requested or pronounced.

But you cant extradite people for political offences either

Eva Joly: Absolutely, its been more than a century since political prisoners were extradited. Otherwise you realize, we would have extradited the Chileans who were fleeing Pinochet, the Kurds who were fleeing Turkey, etc. The world is full of conflicts and political refugees who feel safe because if they get a visa, they know they cannot be extradited. It is true that, in this trial, the prosecution is trying to prove that, even if the offences of which Assange is accused are political, he could still be extradited.

Can extradition not be prevented by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights[iii] which protects freedom of expression?

Eva Joly: All this should protect this multi-award winning journalist, but we see that it does not protect him, which makes us fear the worst for the future. The FBI has been following the case for a long time. Julian Assange was also being watched by a Spanish company working for the CIA while he was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If Julian Assange is extradited, it is the end of the rule of law in the West as we have built it for nearly a century. In the name of the fight against terrorism we are giving up many freedoms because we believe that security is a higher value. We have not understood that we are in fact going to sacrifice freedoms without having security. This trial sheds a stark light on what is happening.

Credit: Pamela Drew | Julian Assange Outside & Hillary Clinton Inside State

Concerning the rape charges against Julian Assange, the Swedish justice system dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. Are you surprised by this drop in charges?

Eva Joly: It was very costly for Julian Assange. We also know that the Swedish public prosecutor was keen to end the investigation earlier, but that she was encouraged to keep the investigation open by the Crown Prosecution Service [the service responsible for deciding on prosecutions in England and Wales]. We have evidence of that. We also have evidence of the FBIs involvement in the case, but the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, destroyed the e-mails she admits to having received from the FBI.

You criticized the media silence after some 60 international doctors tried to alert the world to Julian Assanges physical and psychological state of health in November, when they were seriously considering that he might die in prison. This silence came from a press that has made extensive use of and benefited from the revelations that Julian Assange and his team had brought to it about the abuses and war crimes committed by the allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do you explain such a change in attitude?

Eva Joly: Absolutely. The Guardian, the New York Times and Aftenposten[iv] have won prestigious awards for their work with WikiLeaks documents. Its important to understand that its the CIAs and the FBIs manipulations that have led to this reversal of opinion. The issue was no longer what Julian Assange had been able to prove, but whether or not he had raped someone.

Precisely, how can one sue Assange for his publications, while sparing the media that benefited and disclosed the content? Didnt these media act in the same way as WikiLeaks by disseminating information passed on by a third party?

Eva Joly: In the United States, American journalists enjoy the protection of the First Amendment. This was the case with the Pentagon papers, where the DOJ (Department of Justice) tried to prosecute whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who had them published for espionage. The Supreme Court ruled that he had only been using freedom of speech and that he was entitled to protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution. We therefore know that citizens of the United States are protected by this amendment. However, foreign journalists are not. Julian Assange in the United States would therefore not be able to invoke the First Amendment and, logically, there would be a risk that European journalists could be prosecuted.

Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, says: This is not just about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent that could seal the fate of Western democracy. Are we going to turn Julian Assange into a martyr?

Eva Joly: If we accept the extradition of Julian Assange, we are admitting the de facto supremacy of US law over our own. In Europe, however, it is not forbidden to publish genuine news of general interest, journalists are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. What Julian Assange published cannot therefore be described as espionage in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. Julian Assange cannot be extradited because of double jeopardy and because he would not get a fair trial in the United States. These are two more than sufficient reasons to oppose this extradition.

Source : https://mrmondialisation.org/si-julian-assange-est-extrade-cest-la-fin-de-letat-de-droit-en-occident-eva-joly-interview/

Notes:

[i] Ex-Icelandic Interior Minister: US Tried to FRAME Julian Assange in Iceland! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPQY7cXOIg, Jnasson: The Icelandic Minister who refused cooperation with the FBI, Marta Pacheco, Katoikos, 7 December 2016. http://www.katoikos.eu/interview/icelandic-minister-who-refused-cooperation-with-the-fbi-ogmundur-jonasson-in-an-interview.html

[ii] Chelsea Manning was released on March 12, 2020 after a suicide attempt the day before. The financial penalties imposed to force her to testify against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange remain in effect and she will have to pay $256,000 in fines.

[iii] A guide on the implementation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. https://www.refworld.org/docid/49f17f3a2.html; European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf

[iv] Conservative newspaper in Norway.

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If Julian Assange is extradited, it's the end of the rule of law in the West Eva Joly (Interview) - Pressenza

FBI Expects a Rise in Scams Involving Cryptocurrency Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation

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Fraudsters are leveraging increased fear and uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic to steal your money and launder it through the complex cryptocurrency ecosystem.

People of all ages, including the elderly, are being victimized by criminals through cryptocurrency-related fraud schemes. Developments in cryptocurrency technology and an increasing number of businesses accepting it as payment have driven the growing popularity and accessibility of cryptocurrency. There are not only numerous virtual asset service providers online but also thousands of cryptocurrency kiosks located throughout the world which are exploited by criminals to facilitate their schemes. Many traditional financial crimes and money laundering schemes are now orchestrated via cryptocurrencies.

The FBI advises you to be on the lookout for an increase in the following cryptocurrency fraud schemes related to COVID-19:

Blackmail Attempts. Threatening emails or letters in which scammers claim to have access to your personal information or knowledge of your dirty secrets and demand payment in Bitcoin to prevent release of this information have been circulating for years. With the advent of COVID-19, there is a new twist on this scam. The correspondence claims that the writer will both release your information and infect you and/or your family with coronavirus unless payment is sent to a Bitcoin wallet.

Work from Home Scams. Scammers, posing as employers, may ask you to accept a donation of funds into your own bank account and to deposit them into a crypto kiosk. The so-called donation is likely money stolen from others. Your acceptance and transfer of the stolen money is considered illegal money mule activity and potentially unlicensed money transmission.

Paying for Non-Existent Treatments or Equipment. Scammers have been known to lure customers from trusted e-commerce sites offering products that claim to prevent COVID-19 onto unrelated and unregulated messaging sites to accept payment in cryptocurrencies for products that do not actually exist.

Investment Scams. Criminals often pitch fraudulent investments in a new and developing cryptocurrency, such as an initial coin offering (ICO) or other investment vehicle to take a victims money. These scams typically involve scenarios that seem too good to be trueoffering large monetary returns for a short-term, small investment. The reality is that scammers steal the investment money for personal use and utilize the complexities of cryptocurrency to hide the true destination of the stolen funds.

Although there are legitimate charities, investment platforms, and e-commerce sites that accept payment in cryptocurrency, pressure to use a virtual currency should be considered a significant red flag.

By remembering the following tips regarding finances and cryptocurrency, you can better protect yourself from fraud:

The FBIs Criminal Investigative Division has an entire team dedicated to preventing and combating cryptocurrency money laundering and frauds. If you believe you are the victim of a fraud, or if you want to report suspicious activity, please contact your local field office or visit the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.

For accurate and up-to-date information about COVID-19, visit:

See the article here:
FBI Expects a Rise in Scams Involving Cryptocurrency Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation


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