U.S. State Department Propaganda Office Active on, “Blogs to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, and Others”
May 1st, 2014Via: Ars Technica:
The State Department unveiled Wednesday that it is widely employing social media as a method to counter online violent extremism from Al-Qaeda and others.
Buried in an intelligence report published Wednesday, the government said that the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), established in 2011, last year produced more than 10,000 online postings globally, some of which included one of 138 government-produced videos.
“CSCC’s programs draw on a full range of intelligence information and analysis for context and feedback. CSCC counters terrorist propaganda in the social media environment on a daily basis, contesting space where AQ and its supporters formerly had free rein. CSCC communications have provoked defensive responses from violent extremists on many of the 249 most popular extremist websites and forums as well as on social media,” said the document, Country Reports on Terrorism 2013 (PDF).
The State Department has a global social media presence from Afghanistan to Vietnam. The platform ranges from blogs to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, and others.
As Border Security Expands, Complaints of Abuse Rise Among Americans
April 30th, 2014Via: McClatchy:
A series of lawsuits filed in recent months in federal courts along the U.S. border with Mexico highlight what advocates say is a growing list of complaints against two U.S. agencies that have expanded rapidly amid the clamor to secure the nation’s borders.
In one lawsuit, centered on events in Chula Vista, Calif., a Border Patrol agent is accused of leaping on the hood of a car driven by a mother of five and shooting her dead. She was unarmed. The agent had been fired from his previous job as a sheriff’s deputy for a variety of misconduct.
In a second case, a Customs officer in Brownsville, Texas, violently pushed a disabled woman to the ground. She had a miscarriage the next day. Border officers also had to call firefighters to remove handcuffs that allegedly had bound her wrists too tightly.
For a third woman, her return to the United States was intrusive and painful. She was pulled from a line at an El Paso, Texas, border crossing, apparently on the suspicion that she was carrying drugs. She was handcuffed. Over the next six hours, agents escorted her to a hospital, where they oversaw the probing of her anus and vagina, forced her to take a laxative and then watched as she moved her bowels. When no drugs were found, they ordered her to submit to an X-ray and a CT scan.
When the ordeal was over, the officers asked her to sign a consent form before they allowed her to return to her home in New Mexico. When she refused, the hospital billed her thousands of dollars for the procedures.
Hackers Can Mess With Traffic Lights to Jam Roads and Reroute Cars
April 30th, 2014Via: Wired:
The hacker in the Italian Job did it spectacularly. So did the fire sale team in Live Free or Die Hard. But can hackers really hijack traffic lights to cause gridlock and redirect cars?
According to one researcher, parts of the vehicle traffic control system installed at major arteries in U.S. cities and the nation’s capital are so poorly secured they can be manipulated to snarl traffic or force cars onto different streets.
The hack doesn’t target the traffic lights directly but rather sensors embedded in streets that feed data to traffic control systems, says Cesar Cerrudo, an Argentinian security researcher with IoActive who examined the systems and plans to present his findings at the upcoming Infiltrate conference in Florida.
The vulnerable controllers–Sensys Networks VDS240 wireless vehicle detection systems–are installed in 40 U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, as well as in nine other countries.
The system is comprised of magnetic sensors embedded in roadways that wirelessly feed data about traffic flow to nearby access points and repeaters, which in turn pass the information to traffic signal controllers.
The sensors use a proprietary protocol designed by the vendor — called the Sensys NanoPower Protocol — that operates similar to Zigbee. But the systems lack basic security protections — such as data encryption and authentication — allowing the data to be monitored, or, theoretically, replaced with false information.
Pot Effectively Treats MS Symptoms
April 30th, 2014Via: CBS:
Medical marijuana is becoming mainstream: 21 states and the District of Columbia allow it. But until Monday, little was known about whether it can effectively treat neurological disorders.
Sixty-nine-year-old Gloria Gates has multiple sclerosis. She can no longer walk and is often in severe pain.
“One thing that is just intolerable for me are these excruciating leg cramps,” she says.
Powerful muscle relaxants didn’t help. She now has a medical marijuana permit and uses an extract specifically made for her.
“I tried it as a last resort, and it’s been an absolute blessing for me,” she says.
On Monday, for the first time, the American Academy of Neurology said medical marijuana is an effective treatment for some symptoms of multiple sclerosis. It concluded spasm, muscle tightness and pain can all be helped.
But that’s when the drug is given as an oral spray or pill. There’s not enough evidence to determine if smoking marijuana was equally effective, says lead author Dr. Barbara Koppel.
Firefox Classic Theme Restorer
April 29th, 2014I wish Mozilla would stop pointlessly trying to change Firefox’s user interface. Change for the sake of change is retarded. If I wanted to use Chrome, I would. *groan* Anyway, Classic Theme Restorer goes a long way toward “fixing” the new Firefox.
‘Robin Hood of the Banks’
April 29th, 2014Via: Russia Today:
Enric Duran, dubbed the ‘Spanish Robin Hood of the Banks’, for swindling 39 banks out of half a million euros to redistribute them to organizations fighting against the established financial system, spoke to RT Spanish to reveal his moves and motives.
In hiding for more than a year, and in serious trouble with the courts, he nonetheless recently decided to break his silence and start speaking to the press to explain his vision and how he went about achieving it. Speaking to RT Spanish by Skype from an undisclosed location, he talks of the ingenious and simple tactic he used to cheat dozens of banks out of a half-million euros.
“I realized that loans below 6,000 euro don’t show up in Spain’s bank database,” he says, revealing the first step on the way to accumulating the fortune that later earned him his moniker.
“As soon as I realized this, I started taking out loans of a little over 5,000 euro, accumulating a certain amount over time. Then, having transferred the whole sum to a single account, and having the ability to prove my financial eligibility, I started taking out bigger credit. It was very convenient to take advantage of the fact that Spain doesn’t update its banking database for months on end. That is how, from December 2007 to January 2008 I was able to take out the bulk of the money,” Duran explained.
Research Credit: TR
Pentagon to Destroy $1 Billion Worth of Ammunition [???]
April 29th, 2014Via: USA Today:
The Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition although some of those bullets and missiles could still be used by troops, according to the Pentagon and congressional sources.
It’s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department’s inventory systems can’t share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY.
The result: potential waste of unknown value.
Research Credit: Brassmonkey
Google’s Self-Driving Car on City Streets
April 28th, 2014Via: Google:
Cody Wilson: Happiness Is a 3-D Printed Gun
April 28th, 2014About two thirds of the way through the interview, he talks about Bitcoin, and I’d really like the handful of people out there who continue to think of Bitcoin as some sort of magic, anonymous money/transaction system to pay very close attention. One more time: It isn’t.
Now, do I think his Dark Wallet thing will be able to fix the problems with Bitcoin? I very seriously doubt it. I never have trusted, and I never will trust, anything done in the browser. I salute them for trying, though.
Via: Reason:
“Legal encapsulation is not effectively possible,” declares Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed, makers of the world’s first gun made via 3D printing technology. “So it’s fun to kind of challenge the state to greater and greater levels of its own hyper-statism.”
Hell Hole: The Shocking Secret World Inside the Walls of Brazil’s Prisons
April 28th, 2014Via: Journeyman Pictures:
