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Virtru Brings End-To-End Encryption To G Suite – Android Headlines

Posted on July 6, 2017 by admin

Google has partnered up with Virtru Corporation to bring customizable end-to-end email and messaging encryption, on both server side and client side, to all G Suite users. End users and administrators can choose to encrypt any incoming or outgoing message in order to help protect sensitive data. Administrators can set rules to encrypt any message that meets certain criteria, and can take advantage of advanced access controls that can grant or revoke access to a given message at any time, even after its been delivered. The goal of Virtru is not just to add an extra level of security, but to help especially sensitive data circulated in regulated industries like the medical and law fields to stay as secure as possible, making it easier than ever to keep communications compliant with applicable law.

Administrators on Virtru-enabled servers can not only encrypt or decrypt things that come and go at will, but can control the entire process from origination to endpoint, and even after. Starting at the source, administrators can set custom rules to encrypt messages based on a wide variety of criteria, such as sender and recipient, keywords in the contents, and presence or type of attachments, among other things. Virtru allows total end-to-end encryption of all messages across platforms, and for any messages that dont fall under administrator-set rules, users can encrypt them with nothing more than the push of a button in their mobile email client or browser. Decryption keys can be stored onsite, or in Virtrus cloud, or even both, ensuring maximum security for the keys and making recovery a breeze. As icing on the cake, admins will have a personal dashboard, where they can keep track of all communications within their organization, including those with participants on the outside, and can get customizable notifications of anything happening on the network.

Virtru will integrate tightly with G Suite when it rolls out. For now, only communications such as emails will be encrypted, but support for other file and transmission types could come later. Google has not revealed how much Virtru will cost when it hits G Suite, or how users can go about getting it. Instead, Virtru will be hosting a webinar on July 11, at 10 AM Pacific time. The webinar will go over the basics of getting, implementing, and maintaining a Virtru installation over a given instance of G Suite.

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Virtru Brings End-To-End Encryption To G Suite - Android Headlines

Encrypting police transmissions is a blow to transparency and openness in government – LancasterOnline

Posted on July 6, 2017 by admin

By Thanksgiving, the public will no longer be able to listen in on police dispatches in Lancaster County, as LNP reported last week. The Lancaster County commissioners on Tuesday directed Lancaster County-Wide Communications to encrypt police transmissions, blocking the public and media from hearing whats going on in the county. West Hempfield Township police Chief Mark Pugliese, who heads the county police chiefs association, says the change will protect police from ambushes and secure personal information about crime victims and witnesses.

Police officers have a dangerous, difficult job more difficult and dangerous than most of us can probably imagine.

And we wouldnt support any measure that would make life more perilous for a police officer.

But some sort of balance between protecting officers and ensuring the publics right to information must be struck.

We understand the other side of the argument.

We live in a changed and changing world, Commissioner Dennis Stuckey told LNP. Gone are the days when you can talk to a 15- or 20-year veteran who says hes only had to pull his gun out twice.

Pugliese also said there have been several incidents in the county where the public or the media interfered with investigations, in some cases by getting to crime scenes more quickly than police.

As Commissioner Josh Parsons, who supports encryption, said, The fake 911 ambush scenario could happen no matter what we do today. However, he said, encryption does provide some percentage of safety.

Pugliese was off-base when he scolded the media for being in such a rush to get the news out. Thats the medias job, especially when it comes to a public safety issue.

The fact of the matter is and this is not a criticism law enforcement relies on the media when its convenient.

When police are hunting a fugitive, they ask the media to post a photo of the suspect. When prosecutors announce a major conviction, they call a news conference.

When a house exploded outside Millersville on Sunday, people who heard and felt the blast were desperate for information about what had happened. Emergency responders were busy doing what they do best, and supervisors at Lancaster County-Wide Communications had no information. The only way LNP could inform the public about the situation in the moments after the explosion was by monitoring the police scanner.

Come November, when the media wants to hear what police are doing in the community silence.

So, the message seems to be that the media and public are to be kept out of the loop until further notice. We will be informed strictly on a need-to-know basis.

Theres no evidence that radio transmissions have made policing more dangerous or more difficult.

Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, told LNP that media organizations have used emergency radio transmissions for decades without incident to keep the public informed about emergency situations in the community.

As Knapp reported, Commissioner Craig Lehman said hes also concerned about police safety but said officers may become further isolated from their communities if they decrease transparency.

Lehman is correct. Encryption will limit transparency and serve as an obstacle to the media. And, as he pointed out, less transparency breeds mistrust and suspicion. Thats the last thing anyone including police needs.

Lehman suggested a compromise: Encrypt public transmissions, but give news outlets access.

The commissioners and the county police chiefs should give this serious consideration, though we dont believe the public should be shut out either.

From the medias standpoint, radio silence will only make a reporters job more difficult and very well could, in turn, limit the publics access to information.

In an emergency situation, and you can imagine any number of them natural disaster, active shooter, fire the media needs to work with law enforcement to keep the public informed. In such situations, media outlets monitor radio transmissions for information and logistics. Encrypting such transmissions would not be in the best interest of the public.

And Lehman said blocking transmissions might actually make police less safe if public trust is lost.

The decision to encrypt was administrative and did not require a vote.

We urge the commissioners to reconsider this order and, at the very least, seek a compromise.

This is not about getting to the crime scene first.

Were big fans of transparency here because when it begins to erode, were all in trouble.

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Encrypting police transmissions is a blow to transparency and openness in government - LancasterOnline

Ground-Based Signals Measured From Space Could Enable Quantum Encryption Network – Photonics.com

Posted on July 6, 2017 by admin

Photonics.com Jul 2017 ERLANGEN, Germany, July 5, 2017 Quantum-limited coherent measurements of optical signals were sent from a satellite in Earths orbit to an optical ground station over a distance of 38,600 kilometers (almost 24,000 miles). Excess noise was bound. The precise Earth-based measurement of optical signals from a satellite demonstrates the potential for a satellite-based quantum encryption network using equipment that is already in space.

Although methods for quantum encryption have been in development for more than a decade, the technology has been unable to work over long distances because residual light losses in the optical fibers used for telecommunications networks on the ground degrade the quantum signals. According to researchers, encryption techniques such as quantum key distribution will be of increasing importance as current encryption codes based on mathematical algorithms become easier to crack.

A team from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light worked with satellite telecommunications company Tesat-Spacecom GmbH and the German Space Administration to conduct the experiments.

From our measurements, we could deduce that the light traveling down to Earth is very well suited to be operated as a quantum key distribution network, Max Planck researcher Christoph Marquardt said. We were surprised because the system was not built for this.

A satellite-based quantum encryption network would provide an extremely secure way to encrypt data sent over long distances.

We were quite surprised by how well the quantum states survived traveling through the atmospheric turbulence to a ground station, said Marquardt. The paper demonstrates that technology on satellites, already space-proof against severe environmental tests, can be used to achieve quantum-limited measurements, thus making a satellite quantum communication network possible. This greatly cuts down on development time, meaning it could be possible to have such a system as soon as five years from now.

Developing such a system in just five years is an extremely fast timeline since most satellites require around ten years of development.

The researchers are now working with Tesat-Spacecom and others in the space industry to design an upgraded system based on the hardware already used in space. This will require upgrading the laser communication design, incorporating a quantum-based random number generator to create the random keys, and integrating post processing of the keys.

The results of initial experiments indicate that quantum communication using satellites in space is feasible and could open the possibility of a global quantum key distribution network for secure communication.

There is serious interest from the space industry and other organizations to implement our scientific findings, said Marquardt. We, as fundamental scientists, are now working with engineers to create the best system and ensure no detail is overlooked.

The research was published in Optica, a publication of OSA, The Optical Society of America (doi:10.1364/OPTICA.4.000611).

Why Is Open Source Software Important For Business? – Coast Digital (blog)

Posted on July 6, 2017 by admin

Whether or not you rely on open source software in your daily business activities at the moment, its crucial youre aware of it and understand how it can help your business grow.

Open source software is, to put it simply, software made by the public and available for free.

There are so many projects out there being developed right now by volunteers all over the world and its changing the fundamental way businesses operate. Read on to find out more about what this means for your business.

Any software that is made open source by its creators is free for you to use for whatever youd like. This means that if something open source is the perfect tool for you, youll enjoy lower costs than a premium alternative and no contracts or subscription plans holding you hostage to a closed eco-system.

Typically, open source software is licensed under either what is known as the GPL or MIT licenses which gives you the freedom to do what you like without posing any restrictions and terms on you for how and when you use it.

In 2017, security is a big deal and theres no denying that almost anything is prone to hacking attempts.

Open source software can still be affected, but due to the nature of how its made, it means that anyone from the public can contribute to building it. Not only does this mean that you can build feature rich applications, it means you get the security ideas from talented developers from all over the world.

The software is open for everyone to inspect and pull apart which means nothing can hide within the code to give you a nasty surprise later on.

The common adage is if you want something done right, do it yourself. Thankfully, that feature you wanted that doesnt usually exist in the core product may well be available for free for you to add into the system if you so wish.

The idea that something is so easily customisable means that you can reshape the software into anything you want to use it for. It also means that you are able to make your own added extras and give back to the community of the project.

Of course, theres plenty of popular software tools out there that help you get your job done quickly and effectively. However, if youre not using a well-known tool, you may make it harder for you and your organisation to pick things up and get the training to help them get up to speed.

The amount of paid software tools out in the wild is plentiful, and some are popular and well-documented but dont let that fool you. Not all paid for products have helpful resources and support on hand if things go wrong.

Closed off, premium software can sometimes have poor and undocumented tools and features that are hard to understand. With a community of contributors on an open source project, you need not worry. Not everyone is a developer. Not everyone is a server administrator. Some people who want to contribute may be copywriters or even linguists.

Its great having a super piece of software with all the bells and whistles, but not so great if there isnt a help guide to get going or no one to translate it into a common language you might speak.

This touches on some previous points, but its very important to remember that with an open community of volunteers that build and maintain a piece of software can often come a stamp of guarantee that it adheres to current standards. Your data is kept safe and secure, which means you dont have to worry about common hacking attacks. Its audited and put through its paces to make sure its user friendly and works for people with disabilities and different systems.

Theres too many out there to list them all, but to name just a few. There is the ever so popular content management system that is used by millions of people all over the world, every single day; WordPress. The desktop operating system Linux, which is what the popular MacOS is based on! WebKit, built by Apple that is the engine that powers your web browsers like Googles Chrome and Apples Safari. phpBB, one of the most well known communication tools available for forum based communities.

As mentioned earlier, you dont need to be a development ninja to contribute. Regardless of what your day to day job is, you can help in some way and the best way to do that is to just ask and find out what needs doing.

If you want to volunteer your time to learn something new, help out a stranger with a problem or something completely different to fill your Saturday evenings. Jump right in.

As fantastic as open source software is, there are a couple of issues you may find with it. Firstly, open source means its free for people to use. That means you dont get an income from it, but you can sell extras and perks if you want to. For the most part, youll be donating time and effort into something for free.

Secondly, it will take time to manage the project and steer it into the direction it needs to go. With a small team sat next to each other, its easy to get something finished without too much effort. Coordinating people from all over the world in different time zones speaking different languages with varying degrees of experience, youre not going to be able to always get things done just by clicking your fingers.

Lastly, it relies on the will of you and others to keep pushing with the project and keep it alive. A premium product is able to continue due to funding but working on something without an incentive, you might find that the project has stagnated and is no longer worthy of any progress.

Now you know the challenges alongside the positives. If it all sounds good to you, then what are you waiting for? Find a project and get involved.

What are your favourite pieces of open source software? Are you currently involved in an open source project? Let us know in the comments section below.

Baidu partners with Ford, Nvidia, and others to boost its self-driving car platform – The Verge

Posted on July 6, 2017 by admin

Chinese search giant Baidu today announced that more than 50 companies, including big names in the auto and tech industries, have joined its Apollo self-driving car platform. Those companies include Ford, Daimler, Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, and popular LIDAR-supplier Velodyne. The partnerships alone arent a huge milestone. Rather, its how Baidu plans to work with these companies to turn Apollo into a global initiative that can compete with the biggest names in Silicon Valley.

Apollo, which Baidu first announced back in April, arrived with an ambitious goal of putting fully autonomous vehicles on roads and highways by 2020. Baidu, which operates the largest search engine in China, is moving quickly to compete with self-driving car efforts from Western tech companies and automakers, including Alphabets Waymo, Uber, and traditional car makers like Ford, BMW, and GM. Its doing so by positioning Apollo as as an open source software platform that will allow any hardware maker to quickly deploy and customize an autonomous driving system.

Apollo is an important milestone for the automotive industry, Qi Lu, Baidus chief operating officer, said yesterday at Baidu Create, the companys inaugural artificial intelligence conference. It is in essence the Android of the autonomous driving industry, but more open and more powerful. Apollo is not solely Baidus. It belongs to everyone in the ecosystem. And as we and our partners contribute to the platform in our areas of specialty, we all gain more, with the results far greater than just our own.

How two countries helped drive the recent rise in cryptocurrency prices – TechCrunch

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin

Hugh Harsono is a former financial analyst currently serving as a U.S. Army Officer.

Digital currency prices have soared recently, with reports from the past few months showing enormous valuation increases for currencies across the board.

Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum have all experienced exponential growth, with Bitcoin prices rising to $2,588, Ripple reaching a market cap of nearly $10 billion, and Ethereum growing to a total market cap of over $20 billion.

With supply and demand for digital currencies extremely high in both Japan and China, it is no surprise as to why these two countries are helping to fuel the rise in cryptocurrency prices.

Ability to Withdraw in China?

With access to cheap hardware and electricity, China is the prime breeding ground for mining cryptocurencies, with huge mining pools run by exchanges such as BTCC accounting for more than 60% of the bitcoin networks collective hashrate.

However, the beginning of 2017 saw a governmental crackdown of Chinese-based digital currency exchanges, causing a suspension in all withdrawals, causing the market to suffer heavily with China being one of the top bitcoin markets in terms of trading volume.

Recently, Caixin reported potential changes in the governmental regulatory framework to allow withdrawals last month, specifically mentioning top exchanges OKcoin, Huobi, and BTCC. This potential good news has increased consumer confidence in cryptocurrencies, contributing to their associated rise in value.

Japan: Stepping in to Fill the Chinese Void

With cryptocurrency liquidity in China experienced stagnation earlier this year, the Japanese bitcoin market exploded, with demand reaching new heights.

Previously, Japan represented barely 1% of total bitcoin trading volume, but in recent months estimates put this number as high as 6%, with Japan accounting for nearly 55% of total trade volume on some trading days. This increase in JPY bitcoin trading due to the Chinese inability to liquidate has fueled growth in the digital currency market globally.

Solid Alternative Compared to Government Policy

In China, the tightly-controlled yuan is another reason why cryptocurrency prices have experienced their unprecedented rise in value. The Chinese government has total control over the yuans valuation, traditionally devaluing the yuan to give itself an international trade advantage when the government saw fit.

With the growing amount of private independent wealth in China, cryptocurrency has become viable as an alternative asset class. And cryptocurrencies are being seen as more accessible, less volatile, and increasingly stable, contributing to their recent growth in value.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Japans policy of quantitative easing has resulted in very low, and sometimes even negative interest rates, also caused digital currency values to rise.

The Japanese governments QE policy, intended to spur economic growth, has resulted in significant deflation for the yen, causing a similar decrease in investor confidence in this currency. With no end in sight for this form of Japanese monetary policy, digital currencies have and are currently being used as an alternative asset class, driving their rise in value.

Virtual currencies are quickly being seen as a better asset class by local investors, who fear the volatility of government interference in their specific economies.

Institutional Acceptance of Digital Currency

The rise in digital currency values can also be attributed to institutional acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The recent conclusion of the Global Blockchain Financial Summit in Hangzhou saw intense interest from reputable institutions like Peking University, which is creating an Ethereum center to work on direct application use and protocol improvements in China.

The Royal Chinese Mint, a downtrace unit of the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC) dedicated to its electronic banking mission, has even actively promoted the application of blockchain technology, going as far as to allocate resources and developers in experimentation to digitize the yuan.

In Japan, multiple large institutions are now beginning to accept digital currency as a transactional entity, validating its use to the Japanese population as a whole. On the market front,bitFlyer, Japans largest exchange, is currently backed by all three of Japans megabanks: MUFJ, Mizuho, and SMBC.

On the consumer/retail side, influential electronics retailer Bic Camera has partnered with bitFlyer to begin acceptance of bitcoin at its retail locations. Additionally, Recruit Lifestyle, part of HR conglomerate Recruit Holdings, reported a new partnership with exchange Coincheck to use as part of a point-of-sale implementation program. The acceptance of digital currencies by these reputable groups have helped fuel confidence in digital currencies for daily transactions by the Japanese.

This institutional acceptance of digital currencies by powerful organizations in both China and Japan have allowed cryptocurrencies values to rise as a whole.

Governmental Acceptance of Cryptocurrency

It is no secret that the Chinese government has taken steps to regulate digital currency transactions, with their scrutiny and initiatives causing a drop in bitcoin prices to around $1,000 just several months ago.

However, the very fact that the PBoC is seeking to regulate this industry simply proves how viable it is as a legitimate transaction entity, with the Chinese government even taking steps to build their own digital currency.

With the announcement of potential withdrawals of bitcoin on the horizon, the PBoC have just completed a trial run of their own digital currency based on blockchain technology, with participation from major institutions such as the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as well as Chinas first online bank WeBank.

The Japanese government has also taken huge steps in the acceptance of digital currencies as legal forms of tender, with Japan legally classifying bitcoin as a form of payment just on April 1st.

Ahead of China, Japan has already begun licensure procedures for digital currency exchanges, to be operated under the watchful eye of the governments Financial Services Agency, with market leaders such as bitFlyer already announcing plans to apply for said license, further driving investor confidence in the Japanese market and beyond.

Additionally, the Japanese government announced that the sale of virtual currency under the new Fund Settlement Law would be exempt from the Japanese Consumption Tax (8%), further driving bitcoin growth as an investment vehicle.

The acceptance of virtual currencies by both the Chinese and Japanese governments are driving cryptocurrency growth, with China on the cusp of establishing its own currency, and Japan regulating bitcoin as true legal payment.

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How two countries helped drive the recent rise in cryptocurrency prices - TechCrunch

How to Avoid Being Scammed by a Cryptocurrency ICO – The Merkle

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin

With cryptocurrency ICOs taking center stage lately, there will be more attempts to scam people as well. It can be difficult to protect oneself against thesescams, butsome basic precautions will keep most people safe. This new digital craze will need to be regulatedsomehow, as the amount of scamscan get out of hand pretty quickly. Below are some basic tips to avoid getting scammed by a cryptocurrency ICO.

The first step investors always need to take is conducting due diligence on a project. Randomly investing in cryptocurrency ICOs can pay off in the long run, but it also greatly increases ones chances of investing in a bogus project. Any ICO that does not have a detailed whitepaper should be avoided, as that is a basic requirement for any serious project. If the company or project cannot convince you of its use cases, you should not give them your money.

Any project that does not want to make the names of its team members public should also raise red flags. If the names and identities are made public, do some research on the people involved in the project. Do not be fooled by big names working as an adviser for a project either. These roles often lack real influence over the direction and execution of projects. Fancy names mean nothing these days, as a lot of information found on the internet is either doctored or utterly fake.

On multiple occasions, we see people spreading fake Ethereum wallet addresses to participate in a specific cryptocurrency ICO. This mostly occurs on Telegram, butSlack can suffer from the same problem. Never trust an Ethereum wallet address given to you by strangers on the internet. Do not ask for these addresses either, as you are only asking to be scammed by doing so. Only use the information provided by the team itself and the address shown on the legitimate ICO website.

Perhaps the biggest threat to cryptocurrency ICOs and potential investors comes in the form of phishing sites. More often than not, we see clone websites for upcoming ICOs appear on the internet. This can affect both CIO and pre-ICO campaigns, which makes it very difficult for novice users to determine which site is legitimate and which one is not. The best course of action is to links spread on Telegram or Slack, other than the ones provided by the moderators and team members.

Since phishing sites look exactly like the real ICO site, investors would almost need to know the official site before it launches. That is very hard to achieve, as most ICO projects want to keep pre-ICO and ICO links undisclosed until the campaign starts. Keeping tabs on projects through platforms such as Tokenmarket will guarantee users will always find the correct URL for a cryptocurrency ICO. It is by far one of the most trusted ICO websites out there.

Even though TokenMarket does a good job to keep track of cryptocurrency ICOs, we will ultimately need a decentralized registry for these types of projects. Adecentralized registry can provide whitelist services to cull the phishing sites from the real platforms. Ensuring people provide the correct information in the first place can be a challenge, though. For some reason, virtually all cryptocurrency ICOs rely on centralized technology, which is problematic to any such efforts.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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How to Avoid Being Scammed by a Cryptocurrency ICO - The Merkle

How Much Will the Cryptocurrency World Keep Growing? (BTC) – Investopedia

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin

In the world of digital currencies, Bitcoin (BTC) paved the way. The original cryptocurrency has continued to dominate the field, with prices reaching up to $3000 or so per coin at its peak. And yet, Bitcoin is no longer as dominant over the rest of the field as it once was: while Bitcoin used to enjoy a share of the total industry market capitalization around 80-90%, it now represents less than half of the total market cap. Other currencies are racing to catch up with Bitcoin, with Ethereum's Ether token appearing to be the most likely to overtake Bitcoin in terms of market cap. And yet, regardless of whether Bitcoin remains on top or if another digital currency surpasses it, Bitcoin's influence on the industry, and on the world at large, cannot be overstated. The cryptocurrency world is continuing to grow: where will it end up?

Bitcoin's success has spawned over 800 other cryptocurrencies in the past decade. Now, the market for Bitcoins is worth about $40 billion, but the total value of the rest of those currencies is worth even more than that, whent hey are taken together. The next biggest players are Ethereum, occupying about $25.7 billion worth of the total market value share, and Ripple, with about $10.5 billion. Litecoin, Dash, NEM, and many others follow after that. The total value of the industry is hovering just under $100 billion at this point, which is roughly equivalent to the combined values of Weyerhaeuser (WY), Ford (F), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), three of the largest corporations in the United States, according to Business Insider.

One of the reasons that analysts see the cryptocurrency world continuing to grow into the future is Bitcoin's shifting role. For the first time since its founding more than a decade ago, Bitcoin now makes up a minority of the entire cryptocurrency market. For many years the original cryptocurrency completely dominated its competition, but in the past six months or so, Bitcoin has dropped to just 41.6% of the total market. Litecoin, which aims to process blocks at four times the speed of Bitcoin, has been in existence since 2011. Ethereum, launched only in 2015, has ascended through the ranks of digital currencies at lightning speed. And Ripple has made impressive gains thanks to its unique software, which has already been adopted by some of the largest banks in the world in order to increase global liquidity.

At this point, it seems likely that the cryptocurrency world will continue to expand, with more currencies, more customers, more miners, and new technology. Of course, there are also those who speculate that the rapid growth is a result of a bubble, but only time will tell if the digital currency world will come crashing down.

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How Much Will the Cryptocurrency World Keep Growing? (BTC) - Investopedia

Japan Ends Consumption Tax On Cryptocurrencies – ETHNews

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin

News world

Japans end on consumption tax furthers the countrys overall agenda.

As of July 1, 2017, Japanese cryptocurrency holders are now exempt from the eight percent Japanese Consumption Tax (JCT). The exemption is the result of 2017 tax reform revisions which were proposed by the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito Party in December. As per the KPMG Japan Tax Newsletter from December 14, 2016:

It is proposed that transfers of virtual currencies will be treated as non-taxable transactions, since virtual currencies were officially defined as a means of payment by virtue of the amendment to the Payment Services Act which was passed in May this year. The document continues, This amendment will be applied to transactions carried out on or after 1 July 2017.

The proposed amendment was passed by the Japanese National Diet on March 27, 2017. Days later, Japans Financial Services Agency authorized cryptocurrencies to be used as a form of payment. As a result, the country has experienced increased cryptocurrency related activity. Further, the country has also taken steps to capitalize upon this action by securing likeminded partnerships with progressive countries like Australia.

The government of Australia also revealed in its 2018 Budget that cryptocurrencies will be exempt from double Goods and Services taxation after July 1, 2017.

On June 23, both countries announced the co-operative framework that would create opportunities and facilitate innovation within the financial service industries of both jurisdictions. The partnership encourages both parties to share with each other vital information on Innovation Functions like cryptocurrencies. As per The Financial Services Agency of Japan:

The Authorities share a mutual desire to promote innovation in financial services in their respective markets. Both Authorities have established Innovation Functions in order to do so. The Authorities believe that through co-operation with each other, they will be able to further the promotion of innovation in their respective markets.

Dan is a US Army veteran and Los Angeles-based writer passionate about science and technology, current events, human rights, economic impacts, and strategic calculus. Dan is a full time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether.

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Japan Ends Consumption Tax On Cryptocurrencies - ETHNews

WikiLeaks Hits Miami Democratic Operative for Saying He’d Kill Snowden, Assange – Miami New Times

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin

Tuesday, July 4, 2017 at 8:30 a.m.

Julian Assange

Photo by Peter Erichsen / Wikimedia Commons

Evan Ross is a little-known but well-connected lobbyist in Miami-Dade County. He's also fairly active within the Miami-Dade Democratic Party: He's the former chair of the Miami-Dade Young Democrats and is now a precinct captain within the local party. He's used to operating behind the scenes and keeping a low profile in the local press.

But Ross has now gone from backroom lobbyist to the target of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the activist called him out by name on Twitter this weekend, sparking what Ross calls an online "bullying" campaign. Assange highlighted the Dade Democrat because someone sent the Australian computer programmer Facebook screencaps of Ross threatening to kill Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

This past Friday, Assange used his personal account, which has 246,000 followers, to post an image of Ross' Facebook comments, in which the local Dem argued that Assange "exposed classified American secrets that endangered lives." Ross also wrote, "He and his buddy Edward Snowden both deserve to meet their maker. I'd be happy to pull the trigger on both of those too."

Assange ironically tweeted "#tolerantliberal" regarding the statements, which he included in a list of more than 20 examples of online users who have threatened to torture or kill him.

Ross' comments have also upset some people within the Miami-Dade Democratic Party: Two insiders tell New Timesthey're considering filing a grievance within the party.

But via email, Ross did not apologize for his comments and instead compared both men to "terrorists." He then accused Assange of trying to bully him.

Ross was named Miami's "Young Democrat of the Year" in 2011 and recently made some waves when he drew the ire of local political blogger Stephanie Kienzle, who filed a formal ethics complaint against him in 2015 accusing him of unregistered lobbying. But the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics said there was no probable cause to support the charge.

After Assange called Ross out for his Facebook post, an official WikiLeaks account also got in on the Ross-bashing last weekend:

Ross says that since Assange called him out on Twitter, he's received a slew of hate messages. But in an email to New Times, he refused to back down from his comments andimplied that his call to kill both men was an act of "patriotism."

"I believe strongly in the right to free speech, but I won't be bullied into trading my patriotism for political correctness by Julian Assange or his army of Twitter trolls," Ross wrote.

Ross doubled down by comparing Snowden and Assange to terrorists.

"Edward Snowden may have had good intentions, but he and Julian Assange have endangered the lives of countless Americans," Ross wrote. "Assange assisted in the Russian effort to hand our country over to the least qualified and most dangerous man to hold the Presidency in modern American history. Like terrorist leaders, I believe that we have a responsibility to give those that we can their right to our justice system, but when that is not an option, protecting our nation and the American people has to come first."

The spat exposes the divide between centrist, hawkish liberals who support the security state and military-industrial complex, and those to Ross' left, who point out that Snowden is a whistleblower no different from Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to news outlets in the 1970s. Ross' comments are sure to upset populists within the local party, who maintain that mainstream Democrats have moved too far right in the past few decades. (The fight also shows that Assange is apparently so cooped up inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London that he's willing to spend time fighting with low-level political operatives in Florida.)

Snowden exposed the National Security Agency's illegal plans to spy on virtually every single American's communication systems. While the NSA has claimed that Snowden's leaks put American spies in harm's way, the government has never revealed who, if anyone, was "harmed," and the only public impact the leaks seemed to have thus far is pushing the NSA to reform some portions of its spying programs. Snowden now runs the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which protects reporters from danger and fights threats to the First Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have asked the U.S. government to pardon Snowden. (Documents also prove Snowden tried to blow the whistle internally within the NSA before going public.)

The case against Assange is a bit less clear, given his possible complicity in the alleged Russian Democratic National Committee email hack. Trump adviser and political trickster Roger Stone has said publicly that he had "back-channel" communications with Assange during the 2016 presidential election. (WikiLeaks claims the Russian-hacking plot is actually a "Clinton-linked plot to frame Assange as a Russian spy + paedophile," but that's extremely dubious.)

But Assange's WikiLeaks has also published millions of documents in the public interest, including video leaked by Chelsea Manning that showed U.S. forces gunning down innocent civilians during the Iraq War. A report BuzzFeed obtained last month after a long Freedom of Information Act fight showed that Manning's leaks, at least, didn't actually hurt anybody, although the Manning files are a small percentage of what WikiLeaks has published in total.

See the article here:
WikiLeaks Hits Miami Democratic Operative for Saying He'd Kill Snowden, Assange - Miami New Times

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