Russia Blocks Access to Independent News Sites
March 14th, 2014Via: EFF:
Russia’s government has escalated its use of its Internet censorship law to target news sites, bloggers, and politicians under the slimmest excuse of preventing unauthorized protests and enforcing house arrest regulations. Today, the country’s ISPs have received orders to block a list of major news sites and system administrators have been instructed to take the servers providing the content offline.
The banned sites include the online newspaper Grani, Garry Kasparov’s opposition information site kasparov.ru, the livejournal of popular anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, and even the web pages of Ekho Moskvy, a radio station which is majority owned by the state-run Gazprom, and whose independent editor was ousted last month and replaced with a more government-friendly director.
Cyclone Lusi
March 13th, 2014A cyclone is going to cause havoc in my part of the world over the next day or so. My ISP already sent out an email pretty much telling everyone to prepare to lose Internet access. Never mind that the power goes out here at the drop of a hat. So, if I’m not posting, you’ll know why.
Via: NZ Metservice:
Cyclone Lusi is expected to move southwards today (Friday), bringing widespread heavy rain and easterly gales to the North Island from tonight (Friday night), and the upper South Island during Saturday. Rain is forecast to become heavy in Northland this evening, and 80-100mm are likely to have accumulated there by Saturday afternoon. The rain should spread quickly southwards, totalling more than 100mm in Coromandel, Bay of Plenty and Gisborne by Sunday morning.
Jon Corzine’s Son Dead in Apparent Suicide
March 13th, 2014Remember this?
Jon Corzine Will Not Face Criminal Charges Over MF Global
Via: NY Post:
The son of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine killed himself in a Mexico City hotel, sources told The Post on Thursday.
Jeffrey Corzine, 31, was the youngest of Corzine’s three children with ex-wife and childhood sweetheart Joanne Corzine.
Sources said he had been depressed recently. The cause of death was not released.
His mom and other family members declined comment.
“Mr. Corzine is obviously devastated by this tragic loss,” said his spokesman, Steven Goldberg.
The younger Corzine had a history of substance-abuse problems and had been in and out of rehab, sources said.
But he had been living in California and working as a drug counselor, and had appeared to have turned his life around, one source said.
Both of his parents had recently told friends that their son was clean.
“By all accounts, he was doing well,” a source said.
Drones Will Cause an Upheaval of Society Like we Haven’t Seen in 700 Years
March 13th, 2014Via: Quartz:
The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I’m talking about the coming obsolescence of the gun-wielding human infantryman as a weapon of war.
Research Credit: hongpong
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Flew for About Four Hours Past Last Confirmed Location
March 13th, 2014Update: Plane’s Communications System Was Pinging Inmarsat Satellite
So both the engines and communications systems were pinging two different companies’ satellites.
Via: New York Times:
David Coiley, a vice president of Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications provider, said the missing plane had been equipped with an Inmarsat signaling system that sends out a “keep-alive message” to establish that the plane’s communications system is still switched on.
The plane sent out a series of such messages after civilian radar lost contact, he said. Those messages later stopped, but he declined to specify precisely when or how many messages had been received. Mr. Coiley said Inmarsat was sharing the information with the airline and investigators.
“It does allow us to determine where the airplane is relative to the satellite,” he said of the signal, which he likened to the “noises you might hear when a cellphone sits next to a radio or a television speaker.” He said: “It does allow us to narrow down the position of the aircraft” — at the moment when the signal was sent.
Such equipment automatically checks in to satellites, much as a mobile phone would check in to a network after passing through a mountain tunnel, he said. Because the pings go over a measurable distance at a specific angle to one of the company’s satellites, the information can be used to help calculate the trajectory of an aircraft and narrow its approximate location — though not necessarily its resting point.
“Communications systems are part of the mandatory requirement for operating any flight, and we are comfortable that it would have been operating accordingly,” Mr. Coiley said.
—
Update: Radar Data Suggests Missing Malaysia Plane Deliberately Flown Way Off Course
Via: Reuters:
Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday.
Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, said sources familiar with investigations into the Boeing 777’s disappearance.
Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country’s northwest coast.
This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.
The last plot on the military radar’s tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India’s Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.
Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.
A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight.
—
I didn’t know those aircraft were constantly sending data about the engines back to the ground.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.
Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777’s engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.
That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn’t produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.
U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner’s transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.
…
But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.
At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.”
As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.
…
The engines’ onboard monitoring system is provided by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC, and it periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground.
“We continue to monitor the situation and to offer Malaysia Airlines our support,” a Rolls-Royce representative said Wednesday, declining further comment.
…
The engines’ onboard monitoring system is provided by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC, and it periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground.
“We continue to monitor the situation and to offer Malaysia Airlines our support,” a Rolls-Royce representative said Wednesday, declining further comment.
Fleet of Drones to Patrol Australia’s Borders
March 12th, 2014Via: New Zealand Herald:
Australia has announced plans for a fleet of giant high-tech unmanned drones to help patrol the nation’s borders, monitoring energy infrastructure and attempts to enter the country illegally.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Triton Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which can remain airborne for 33 hours, would be based in the southern city of Adelaide.
A report in February said seven of the US-made drones would be purchased for Aus$3 billion, but Abbott said the details of how many and when had yet to be finalised.
“These aircraft will patrol Australia’s vast ocean approaches, and work closely with other existing and future Australian Defence Force assets to secure our ocean resources, including energy resources off northern Australia, and help to protect our borders,” he said.
Britain: One of Prime Minister’s Closest Aides Arrested, Allegations Related to Child Porn
March 12th, 2014Via: Telegraph:
One of David Cameron’s closest aides has been arrested on suspicion of offences relating to child pornography.
Patrick Rock, who was one of the government’s advisors on policy for online pornography filters, was arrested last month after police examined computers in No 10 Downing Street.
Mr Rock resigned as a policy advisor to the Prime Minister soon afterwards.
No 10 said he was arrested last month “a few hours” after Downing Street contacted police.
The former deputy head of the No 10 Policy Unit has been close to Mr Cameron for two decades. The two men worked for Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary in the 1990s.
In Downing Street, he had the title of deputy director of policy and worked across a wide range of topics, including the government’s policy on child pornography. His seniority was demonstrated by the fact that he was one of only three advisers given his own private office in No 10.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware
March 12th, 2014Via: First Look:
Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.
The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.
The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.
In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.
How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme—Again
March 12th, 2014Via: Mother Jones:
You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation’s impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is brewing.
Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix. In total, these deep-pocketed investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown.
Wall Street’s foreclosure crisis, which began in late 2007 and forced more than 10 million people from their homes, has created a paradoxical problem. Millions of evicted Americans need a safe place to live, even as millions of vacant, bank-owned houses are blighting neighborhoods and spurring a rise in crime. Lucky for us, Wall Street has devised a solution: It’s going to rent these foreclosed houses back to us. In the process, it’s devised a new form of securitization that could cause this whole plan to blow up—again.
Research Credit: ottilie
Watch a Stun Gun Drone Tase an Intern
March 12th, 2014Via: Popular Science:
Research Credit: alvinroast
