Archive for the 'Social Engineering' Category
Feds Are Suspects in New Malware That Attacks Tor Anonymity
August 5th, 2013Update: Phoned Home to NSA Really?! I find it very hard to believe that this is some sort of screw up. If you don’t know much about this type of thing, you might think, “Oh the government is incompetent, so someone made a mistake and used one of their own IPs for this attack.” No […]
How Hollywood Helped Hitler
August 1st, 2013Via: Hollywood Reporter: Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal’s 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought made Germany look bad, criticized the Nazis or dwelled on the mistreatment of Jews, the studios […]
Behavioral Insights Team
August 1st, 2013Unfortunately, Fox News is the the original source for this one, but it needs to be posted. Via: Fox News: The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there […]
‘Something Very Wrong In The UK’
July 30th, 2013Via: New Zealand Herald: A new law will require ISPs block objectionable online content by default. Although there is an option to opt-out, anyone wanting the filter removed will need to contact their ISP to ask that it be switched off. Censorship proponents argue that the filter isn’t a bad thing – keeping ones family […]
Extremely Compartmentalized Information?
July 24th, 2013Update: 12 October 2014: “Exceptionally Compartmented Information,” or ECI Via: The Intercept: The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also […]
San Jose State Suspends Online Classes Project Udacity After As Many As 80% of Students Fail
July 21st, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times: San Jose State University is suspending a highly touted collaboration with online provider Udacity to offer low-cost, for-credit online courses after finding that more than half of the students failed to pass the classes, officials said Thursday. Preliminary results from a spring pilot project found student pass rates of 20% to […]
Google: Ultimately, “The Goal Is To Insert A Chip Inside Your Head”
July 20th, 2013Via: Independent: Ultimately, as Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have asserted, the goal is to insert a chip inside your head for the most effortless search engine imaginable. … In Building 43 of the Googleplex, Ben Gomes talks with barely concealed excitement about a “new epoch”. A Google fellow and the company’s Vice President of […]
And Now, ‘Smart Plates’: California May Issue Digital License Plates
July 19th, 2013Via: CBS: California may become the first state to issue digital license plates that can be registered electronically and record tolls. Privacy advocates are concerned the plates could become tracking devices for law enforcement. Instead of a metal license plate, the digital plate would be a computer screen, slightly larger than an iPad. Registering the […]
The Case for Abolishing the DHS
July 16th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: On Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano resigned to take up a post running California’s university system. With her departure, there are now 15 vacant positions at the top of the department. That suggests it would be a particularly humane moment to shut the whole thing down. The U.S. Department of Homeland […]
In Iraq, the Bomb-Detecting Device That Didn’t Work, Except to Make Money
July 15th, 2013Step right up, step right up, step right up, Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore That’s right, you too can be the proud owner Of the quality goes in before the name goes on One-tenth of a dollar, one-tenth of a dollar, we got service after sales You need perfume? we got perfume, how ’bout an […]
