03/05/2014 Click

here are cautious. They do not want to be taken for a ride. You're

watching BBC News. Now it's time for Click.

Deal boss. Why would you answer my e`mails? It's like you don't even

understand what I'm typing. This week on Clip, we investigate some

real internet enigmas. We will meet a computer and war hero and a movie

villain, at least, according to the FBI. We will lift the lid on the

mysterious shapes taking over the web. And look at the kit that can

send these not so curious signals to your TV. Welcome to click. And

welcome to Bletchley Park. During the Second World War, this was the

home of the UK's Government Code and Cypher School. This is where some of

the world's smartest computer scientists and codebreakers worked

together to crack the codes from the German Enigma machine and helped

shorten the war. Since then, technology has moved on phenomenal

and these days, the internet uses a type of encryption that is so hard

even our fastest supercomputers could not crack it in a reasonable

time. Encryption lets us do lots of things securely online like banking

and e`mailing. It's something that the was a blow at Edward Snowden and

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange both advise using to stop being

spied on by the authorities. And that is what this man is hoping to

do. Kim Dotcom. Yes, that is his real name, used to run a web locker

service called Megaupload, which was used by its users to store and share

a lot of pirated movies. The government came after him. His

mansion was raided and his assets were seized in dramatic fashion.

Since then, he has set up a new service which again allows users to

upload anything they want to it. But this time, all the content is

included on the way up, meaning Kim Dotcom will not know what the site

is hosting. And therefore, he hopes he cannot be held responsible for

its contents. He is still fighting extradition from New Zealand to the

US, where he is accused of being the criminal mastermind behind a mass

conspiracy to commit copyright infringement on a mass scale. That's

the official term, by the way. But we were given exclusive access to

follow Kim Dotcom as he travelled the country on his own copyright

crusade. This is Hollywood's most wanted man. But if he is feeling the

heat, he is certainly not showing it. Kim Dotcom is on a high. His new

storage website is already worth millions of dollars. Now, he's

taking on a new challenge and launching his own political party.

The internet party was born out of this injustice. I was pulled out of

my happy bubble and my life of creation and innovation. I had all

these ideas lined up and all these websites that we wanted to launch.

It woke me up to a whole new reality. Kim Dotcom is out on bail

and he is now using his money to fund the internet party, which wants

to make major changes to the law in New Zealand. We want to bring

internet freedom to the agenda and we want to make sure that high

technology is an economic factor here in New Zealand. All of that is

going to be open sourced. I have been invited to spend some time

behind the scenes with Kim Dotcom and his closest advisers as they hit

the campaign trail. Today, we will meet a breakaway political group. He

wants and needs their support if the internet party is to have any chance

of winning a seat in the upcoming election. The goal is to find out if

there is common ground for us to work together in an alliance. Kim

Dotcom was also hoping to convince the national media that his party

should be taken seriously. He received a traditional Mari welcome

but the feeling of a media circus was not lost on the mana party's

leader. Unconvinced that all of the media in this country is here to

listen to what I have two say. With the formalities over, all Kim Dotcom

had to do now is win their support. This party is about social fairness

and who in his right mind could not be for social fairness? I'm for

social fairness. The day had been a success but some still questioned

when his motivation was really coming from. Kim Dotcom says a lot

of it is down to one man, Edward Snowden. To me, he is a hero. His

sacrifice will be remembered as one of the most heroic things of our

time. He has opened the eyes of the world to injustice and because we

know about it, we can do something about it, so I'm grateful to him.

Have you spoken with him? Yes. I don't want to go into that. People

here have not always liked Kim Dotcom. At first, he was seen as a

rich foreigner using New Zealand as a safe haven `` safe haven but the

raid changed everything. He is a celebrity. We watch him on the news

and he seems like an honest person. The internet party now has more than

1000 members. While I was visiting, he invited them to the mansion. I

don't know much about the dude but in honour of his starting something

like this which seems to have good intentions, I'm willing to hopefully

find out more about it. Even with find out more about it. Even with

all of this enthusiasm and energy, Kim Dotcom's legal problems still

remain in a lot of people 's minds. Those lawsuits keep on coming and a

lot of very powerful people want to see him in jail. It seems to be the

Kim Dotcom Parties starring Kim Dotcom. Today, he did not have any

candidates beating, it was just him. Distancing themselves from their

creator would be something to look into. Kim Dotcom has the support and

the money and his own sense of unwavering belief in his innocence

but if he is forced to go to the US, none of that will matter. He faces

more than 20 years in prison. It is never going to happen. I think the

extradition will fail because copyright is not an extraditable

offence in New Zealand. They added these extra charges, you know, using

the Transnational organised crime treaty to basically sell the court a

story here that we are some kind of Mafia. And that is not going to fly.

There is no evidence to support that at all. So they are going to lose.

I'm happy. I have embraced this site now and I will see it through all

the way. Kim Dotcom describes his battle as David versus Goliath

versus Godzilla versus the dinosaurs. The question now is if

Hollywood will win its fight to put him on trial. If you have any

thoughts on what he had to say or on copyright on the internet in

general, send our way. Afraid of giving away all your personal

information? Well Facebook has unveiled an anonymous login feature

that will allow users to sign into applications without using their

identity. Those applications will then be forbidden from collecting

your personal data. Mark Zuckerberg described it as a way of testing

apps without fear. Microsoft has warned consumers that a

vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser could let hackers

gain access and user rights to their computer. The floor accounts for

almost 50% of the global browser market. Microsoft says it will take

the great action to protect its customers. Google has announced it

has stopped scanning millions of student Gmail accounts under its

Apps for Education scheme after reports of the practice may breach

US privacy law. Google highlighted its use of such scans for

advertising purposes when it's updated its terms and conditions

last month. It also announced it would cease advertisement targeting

business and government Gmail accounts. Finally, if you are

planning a trip to North Korea or you are simply curious about the

most secretive country on earth, you will soon be able to download the

world's first North Korean travel guide app, featuring thousands of

previously unpublished photos, advice from a tour guide with a

decade of experience, a price comparison guide and even the GPS

co`ordinates of various tourism spots. The app will be available for

android and Apple devices from the 7th of May. Of all the people who

worked at Bletchley Park, this man is undoubtedly the most famous. This

is Alan Shearer in, the man who codesigned the machine that cracked

the German Enigma codes. `` Alan Turing. He is widely thought of as

one of the founding fathers of theoretical computer science and

artificial intelligence, whose work was vital to the Allied cause in

World War II and which saved countless lives. And next month

marks the 60th anniversary of his death. He took his own life after

being convicted of gross indecency in a time when being gay was still

illegal in the UK. It was only last year that he received a posthumous

royal pardon against his conviction but his place in computing history

has been known and certain for decades.

And I wonder what he would have made of the latest mystery that has

appeared online? Do not adjust your screen. These are some of the many

strange videos uploaded to YouTube by a single user in the last few

months and when I say many, I mean more than 77,000 of them. Each one

is an 11 second sequence of red and blue rectangles and these screechy

tones. In the last few days, people have started to wonder what they

could possibly mean. Several theories are doing the round. ``

doing the rounds. Could this be a hi`tech version of a number

station? Those mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts of spoken numbers

thought to be coded messages for spies listening in around the

world? Could it be part of an internet wide treasure hunt like the

notorious SIM card 3301 trial of hidden messages believed to be a

recruitment campaign for a secret agency. `` cicada. Are these

automated outputs from a piece of browser testing software that

happens to share its name with this YouTube user? Some have suggested

it's an attempt to talk to aliens. That's aliens who use YouTube, of

course. Anyway, we have been doing some digging of our own and we have

turned up some interesting stuff. Stephen Beckett is not only one of

our researchers, he is also king of his local hacking club and that

means he can peek behind the videos and analyse the code that is stuck

on the back. I was looking for patterns or anomalies in the videos

and there are so many that it's impossible to do it by hand so I

made a programme to do it for me. I found that the user had associated

their account with Switzerland and also that the videos had been posted

throughout the day and night, so it's unlikely they were doing it

themselves. A machine had been uploading it. And here is the

weirdest thing of all. Steve noticed that amongst the tens of thousands

of videos, two of them were very different indeed. Video number one

is only watchable if you pay with a French Reddit card. And it's this.

Video 1182 is this. The Eiffel Tower filmed from a nearby balcony. And

the flash of a screen. Is this the user's Facebook page? And

underneath, this comment from web driver torso itself. What do we

know? Well, there is a lot of French in this mystery. There is the Eiffel

Tower, the French video of the french fries locked behind a French

pay wall. And then there is the rest of the videos, all in the colours of

the French flag. These days, more of us are choosing

to stream or download movies, TV shows and other video content to

watch whenever we want. All this is fairly simple to do on smart phones,

tablets and computers. It's never been as easy as I would like, to get

that video on to your TV. But it is getting easier. We have been looking

at some of the options. They are now a number of small and

relatively cheap devices that can plug into a TV.

As long as the TV screen has an HDMI socket. Firstly, this little fellow.

The Chromecast from Google. But it into the socket, then connected

wirelessly to a smartphone, computer or tablet. The dongle itself does

all of the streaming with the device that acts as a road control,

pointing the box where it needs to go online. Setup is pretty simple

and takes a few minutes. `` remote control. There are two ways to get

content onto the screen. The first is by using apps that support

Chromecast. Hit the icon and away you go. There are overgrown number

of applications like TV streaming and photo sharing apps that support

the device but it is still pretty limited. But it is growing all the

time. Because the Chromecast stick is doing the streaming, the device

we used to control it, in this case at tablet, is left free to perform

other tasks. It is possible to break away from the confines of apps. You

can surf the web using the Chrome browser on your device with results

appearing on the TV. But weirdly this feature currently doesn't work

with mobile devices are not only computers. Cheap, cheerful and an

easy way of bringing some parts of the web, not all of it, to the TV.

Next, the broken stick which does much of the same job as the

Chromecast but does it in a different way. `` Roku stick. It has

this. Remote that doesn't look dissimilar to a normal TV

controller. It is simple to set up. Once that's complete, the viewer is

presented with an interface which lists the apps that the device will

work with, about 500 of them. It all feels a lot more like TV interface

at, unlike the Chromecast, this stick lacks a browser. In terms of

apps the usual suspects are present, `` are present. Searching using the

remote control can be clunky but there is a smartphone app which

makes things easier. `` app. The final device isn't a stick which

plugs into your TV but a little box that sits in front of it. Amazon

Instant Mac Fire TV has a higher specification than the two sticks we

have seen. But with that comes a higher pricetag. `` Amazon's Fire

TV. Currently only available in the US, if you don't already have an

Amazon account Fire TV takes a little bit of time to set up. Once

up and running, the user is greeted with a very slick interface, clearly

labelling the different content available. It is those `` noticeably

faster than other devices on test but that's because under the skin

lurks a processor, two GB of RAM and a dedicated GPU. Searching using the

Chromecast is pretty easy because you can make use of a tablet or

smartphone's keyboard. It is harder using the Roku stick because it has

a traditional TV remote control. Amazon Instant has a solution, which

is voice controlled search. There is a tiny microphone and if I pushed

the button... Breaking Bad. I tell Fire TV what I am looking for and it

has found it! Press OK and it delivers the content. While the

voice search does seem to function OK, at the moment it only works with

certain content providers, so it doesn't throw up every option

available on the device. This is likely to change in the not too

distant future. For an outfit like Amazon, a box that sits beneath the

TV is another chance for the retail giant. It shows promise but its

price codes produced by this thing. Press

a letter here and a pleased they let me touch it. Here

comes Kate Russell and Webscape. Weather reports have been getting it

wrong since the dawn of civilisation but now, thanks to the power of the

crowd, we might be getting closer to an accurate forecast. We zoom ``

Wezzoo is a free up that lets you see exactly what to expect from the

weather by gathering comments and photos from people who are actually

out in it. We do love to talk about the weather. It's part of the human

condition, I think. But recently, especially in the UK, there have

been some very unpredictable weather fronts. Getting the news first`hand,

including photographs of the sky, a `` would help us understand what

conditions are really like before heading out of the door. Another

weather at that uses the power of the crowd is whether is it all for

Andrew. `` WeatherSignal. You can check the conditions where you are,

including cabbage, light, pressure, and if you are using a recent model

even humidity. `` temperature. You can report your findings, building

up a picture of the weather the around world that you can view

through your handset or a browser. Another topic we think about Arlott

in this day and age is how health and there is a booming digital

industry to support this online. Lifesum is the latest act to hit my

desk, allowing you to monitor and track lifestyle to make sure you are

running along a healthy path. I did a round`up of fitness apps and

gadgets on Webscape at the end of last year and I have to say I still

find my fitness Powell, with its extensive database of foods, the

most effective tool for counting calories and nutritional intake.

That said, the Lifesum apps and browser interface have a far more

stylish design. If you upgrade to the professional version, the life

logged and lifestyle plan are for serious people who want to make

changes. Another key feature is the ability to specify a diet you are

following, like low carbs, high fat. Rozic `` pro users can get

integration with other popular apps for tracking and monitoring your

health and fitness. If all that sounds a little too

active, sit back and make sweet music with the online Multi Player

Piano. Actually, don't expect to make anything even vaguely

resembling sweet music in the open broom. It is an ivory bashing free

for all that will have most people, with even the slightest music

inclination, reaching for the earplugs! Instead, make your own

private room and invite friends to collaborate via Facebook or Twitter.

It's a fun way to pass a few minutes at lunchtime tinkling on the old

ivories. Yes, I know, don't give up the day job, Kate.

Those links are up on our website as usual. That's it for now from the ``

from Bletchley Park. Before we go, I thought I would show you something

that has been on the BBC News tech website this week. What do you think

happens when you take a team of flying robots and get them to move

so precisely that they can make sweet music? `` flying hex rotor

robots. I will leave you with the answer. Thanks for watching. See you

next time. With clear skies for many to start

the weekend, it will be chilly. Even a touch of frost first thing. It

will lead to a mostly dry day, with sunny spells that time. More cloud

towards the west. That will continue to build as it moves further inland,

taking grain across Northern Ireland. Perhaps a few spots for

west Wales,