Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
December 17th, 2011Via: Network World: As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report. These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements […]
Sprint Orders All OEMs to Strip Carrier IQ from Their Hardware
December 17th, 2011Via: geek.com: In an attempt to distance themselves from the increasingly volatile Carrier IQ situation, we’ve been told that Sprint has ordered that all of their hardware partners remove the Carrier IQ software from Sprint devices as soon as possible. … Sources at HTC have told us that, as a result of the lawsuits targeting […]
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Trillion Dollar Boondoggle
December 14th, 2011Via: Wired: The most expensive weapons program in U.S. history is about to get a lot pricier. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to cost $1 trillion dollars for development, production and maintenance over the next 50 years. […]
Patent for Amazon Big Brother Tracking System That Tries to Guess Where You’re Going
December 14th, 2011We must assume that They are using the full spectrum of surveillance information to try to PREDICT HOW EACH OF US IS LIKELY TO BEHAVE ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS. Where we go. Which routes we take. What we buy. Etc. —Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation Via: CBS: Location tracking has become a […]
Austrian Makes Formal Request for All Personal Information Facebook Keeps on Him
December 14th, 2011Via: ThreatPost: Be careful of what you ask for. That’s a lesson that Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria, learned the hard way when he sent a formal request to Facebook citing European law and asking for a copy of every piece of personal information that the world’s largest social network had collected on him. After […]
MIT Scientists Create Camera That Allows Photons To Be Seen Moving In Slow Motion
December 13th, 2011Via: New York Times / MIT News Office: More than 70 years ago, the M.I.T. electrical engineer Harold (Doc) Edgerton began using strobe lights to create remarkable photographs: a bullet stopped in flight as it pierced an apple, the coronet created by the splash of a drop of milk. Now scientists at M.I.T.’s Media Lab […]
Multimillion Dollar Crowdturfing Industry Growing Exponentially
December 13th, 2011Incredibly, laughably, this piece doesn’t mention things like the U.S. Military’s desire to develop persona management software or Team Themis (HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico): After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of a classified US intelligence programme known as Romas/COIN, as […]
FBI Holding Carrier IQ Data for ‘Law Enforcement Purposes’
December 13th, 2011There’s a shocker. Via: The Verge: When we spoke to Carrier IQ at length about the company’s controversial cellular tracking service, there was one question we didn’t include in the transcript. “Would you say no if the government asked Carrier IQ for a wiretap into user databases?” we asked. At the time, we felt the […]
Internet Piracy Bill: A Free Speech ‘Kill Switch’
December 12th, 2011Via: The Hill: What began as an attempt to restrain foreign piracy on the Internet has morphed into a domestic “kill switch” on First Amendment freedom in the fastest-growing corner of the marketplace of ideas. Proposed federal legislation purporting to protect online intellectual property would also impose sweeping new government mandates on internet service providers […]
Rare Photographs Show Ground Zero of the Drone War
December 12th, 2011Via: Wired: The epicenter of global terrorism, and the CIA’s highly classified drone war against extremist groups, is a black hole on the map — a region of Pakistan off limits to outsiders, and especially Westerners. It’s an area so dangerous that even the Pakistani military avoids it. The CIA may have launched 70 drone […]
