Archive for October, 2012
Britain: National ‘Virtual ID Card’ Scheme
October 4th, 2012Via: Independent: The Government will announce details this month of a controversial national identity scheme which will allow people to use their mobile phones and social media profiles as official identification documents for accessing public services. People wishing to apply for services ranging from tax credits to fishing licences and passports will be asked to […]
We’ve Already Passed the Tipping Point for Orbital Debris
October 4th, 2012Via: IEEE: Since the dawn of the space age, more than 20 000 objects larger than a softball have accumulated in Earth’s orbit. About 1000 of those objects are spacecraft that carry active payloads, serving many valuable missions for mankind. But the rest could best be called junk, the by-product of thousands of launches and […]
‘The Last Pictures’
October 3rd, 2012Via: Computerworld: The problem: You want to send images into space and you want them to last 5 billion years. The solution: A gold-plated disc. That’s the idea behind The Last Pictures project, which is scheduled to blast off in the next few months. The project involves attaching a silicon disc encased in gold to […]
Historical Cell Phone Location Data: No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy, According to U.S. Government
October 3rd, 2012Via: Computerworld: Individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in historical cell phone location data collected and maintained by phone companies, a federal prosecutor said in oral arguments Monday before a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The court is reviewing an appeal from the U.S government in a […]
‘So, who does gain from the drugs trade?’
October 3rd, 2012The private prison scam is a key component of this as well. Via: Al Jazeera: Clearly a small number of criminals make significant sums from the trade. But most people are working for little more than subsistence wages, from the peasants growing coca plants in the Andes or opium poppies in Afghanistan to the dealers […]
‘Fusion Centers’ Threaten Civil Liberties While Doing Little to Counter Terrorism
October 3rd, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: A federal domestic security effort to help state and local law enforcement catch terrorists by setting up more than 70 information-sharing centers around the country has threatened civil liberties while doing little to combat terrorism, a two-year examination by a Senate subcommittee found. The so-called fusion centers were created in 2003 […]
Autonomous Killer Robots More Ethical Than Human Soldiers
October 2nd, 2012Oh sure. Via: CBS News: Drones could soon operate without the help of humans. Agence France-Presse is reporting that the Pentagon wants its drones to be more autonomous, so that they can run with little to no assistance from people. “Before they were blind, deaf and dumb,” Mark Maybury, chief scientist for the U.S. Air […]
Backlog: 860,000 Disability Claims from American Veterans
October 2nd, 2012Via: CNN: The Department of Veterans Affairs said it is on track to process 1 million disability claims this year. With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the VA is sorting through a backlog of more than 860,000 disability claims from American veterans. More than a quarter of those […]
3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith
October 2nd, 2012Via: Wired: Cody Wilson planned in the coming weeks to make and test a 3-D printed pistol. Now those plans have been put on hold as desktop-manufacturing company Stratasys pulled the lease on a printer rented out for Wiki Weapon, the internet project lead by Wilson and dedicated to sharing open-source blueprints for 3-D printed […]
White House Secret Meetings to Consider Unilateral Military Strikes in North Africa
October 2nd, 2012Via: Washington Post: The White House has held a series of secret meetings in recent months to examine the threat posed by al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa and consider for the first time whether to prepare for unilateral strikes, U.S. officials said.
