Saab Wins Brazil Jet Deal After NSA Spying Sours Boeing Bid
December 18th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing’s chances for the deal.
The contract, negotiated over the course of three presidencies, will supply Brazil’s air force with 36 new Gripen NG fighters by 2020. Aside from the cost of the jets themselves, the agreement is expected to generate billions of additional dollars in future supply and service contracts.
Who Owns the World’s Biggest Bitcoin Wallet? The FBI
December 18th, 2013Via: Wired:
Who owns the single largest Bitcoin wallet on the internet? The U.S. government.
In September, the FBI shut down the Silk Road online drug marketplace, and it started seizing bitcoins belonging to the Dread Pirate Roberts — the operator of the illicit online marketplace, who they say is an American man named Ross Ulbricht.
The seizure sparked an ongoing public discussion about the future of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, but it had an unforeseen side-effect: It made the FBI the holder of the world’s biggest Bitcoin wallet.
The FBI now controls more than 144,000 bitcoins that reside at a bitcoin address that consolidates much of the seized Silk Road bitcoins. Those 144,000 bitcoins are worth close to $100 million at Tuesday’s exchange rates. Another address, containing Silk Road funds seized earlier by the FBI, contains nearly 30,000 bitcoins ($20 million).
That doesn’t make the FBI the world’s largest bitcoin holder. This honor is thought to belong to bitcoin’s shadowy inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, who is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins in the currency’s early days. His stash is spread across many wallets. But it does put the federal agency ahead of the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who in July said that they’d cornered about 1 percent of all bitcoins (there are 12 million bitcoins in circulation).
Woman Who Lives “Off the Grid” Threatened With Eviction – From Her Paid-For Home
December 18th, 2013Via: Daily Sheeple:
Robin Speronis, a Florida woman who lives off the grid, is being threatened with losing her home due to her “alternative lifestyle”.
Last month, Robin’s story was featured on Fox 4 news in Florida. She does not have a refrigerator, oven, running water, or electricity.
No Matter How Hard You Try to Hide, This Professional Skip Tracer Will Find You
December 18th, 2013Via: Wired:
At 4’11” and just over 100 pounds, Michelle Gomez does not look like the sort of person you’d hire to retrieve earthmoving equipment stolen by a peruvian crime family. But in the summer of 2013, that’s exactly what she was doing. Gomez, the proprietor of a one-woman operation in Lockhart, Texas, called Unlimited Recoveries, is one of the best skip tracers in the world. A combination bill collector, bounty hunter, and private investigator, a skip tracer finds people and things that have disappeared on purpose. Gomez specializes in “hard-to-locate recoveries”—she prefers cases others can’t solve. To track down the fleet of Caterpillar wheel loaders taken by the Peruvians, Gomez reached out to the estranged wife of the family’s patriarch, telling the woman that she was pregnant with her husband’s child. The ruse worked: Eventually the wife told Gomez that the heavy equipment was on its way to a construction site in South America.
Facebook Can See What Users Type Even If Status Is Not Posted
December 18th, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times:
Facebook has said that it is within its terms of service to see what users are typing even when the status or comment is never posted on the social network.
The Menlo Park, Calif., company confirmed that it can track users’ unpublished posts after two Facebook researchers disclosed that they had tracked the activity of about 5 million random Facebook users in the U.S. and England.
The researchers’ study looked at how often these users censored themselves while typing posts and comments on Facebook. If users typed more than five characters, the content was tracked. It was considered to be self-censored if it was not published within 10 minutes of being typed.
Facebook said the study did not track the exact words and letters that users typed, but whether or not they typed something. The methodology for the study also kept the tracked users anonymous, Facebook said.
“This is something we looked at to understand to what extent people self censor,” Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld told The Times.
Facebook said it was no longer tracking any users when it comes to unpublished posts. It also has no plans to track the unpublished words and letters that users type.
But Facebook said the study was conducted in accordance to the terms of service that every user agrees to when they sign up for the social network.
Middlebrow Megachurch Infotainment: “We Need to Talk About TED”
December 18th, 2013Via: Benjamin Bratton:
In our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky.
But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?
…
So the conceptualization of possibilities is something that I take very seriously. That’s why I, and many people, think it’s way passed time to take a step back and ask some serious questions about the intellectual viability of things like TED.
Most Ridiculous Government Honeypot Ever? “Meet The ‘Assassination Market’ Creator Who’s Crowdfunding Murder With Bitcoins”
December 18th, 2013Via: Forbes:
As Bitcoin becomes an increasingly popular form of digital cash, the cryptocurrency is being accepted in exchange for everything from socks to sushi to heroin. If one anarchist has his way, it’ll soon be used to buy murder, too.
Last month I received an encrypted email from someone calling himself by the pseudonym Kuwabatake Sanjuro, who pointed me towards his recent creation: The website Assassination Market, a crowdfunding service that lets anyone anonymously contribute bitcoins towards a bounty on the head of any government official–a kind of Kickstarter for political assassinations. According to Assassination Market’s rules, if someone on its hit list is killed–and yes, Sanjuro hopes that many targets will be–any hitman who can prove he or she was responsible receives the collected funds.
For now, the site’s rewards are small but not insignificant. In the four months that Assassination Market has been online, six targets have been submitted by users, and bounties have been collected ranging from ten bitcoins for the murder of NSA director Keith Alexander and 40 bitcoins for the assassination of President Barack Obama to 124.14 bitcoins–the largest current bounty on the site–targeting Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve and public enemy number one for many of Bitcoin’s anti-banking-system users. At Bitcoin’s current rapidly rising exchanges rate, that’s nearly $75,000 for Bernanke’s would-be killer.
Research Credit: EG
Japan Boosts Military Forces to Counter China
December 17th, 2013Via: BBC:
Japan’s cabinet has approved a new national security strategy and increased defence spending in a move widely seen as aimed at China.
Over the next five years, Japan will buy hardware including drones, stealth aircraft and amphibious vehicles.
The military will also build a new marine unit, an amphibious force capable of retaking islands.
The move comes with Tokyo embroiled in a bitter row with Beijing over East China Sea islands that both claim.
It reflects concern over China’s growing assertiveness over its territorial claims and Beijing’s mounting defence spending.
“China’s stance toward other countries and military moves, coupled with a lack of transparency regarding its military and national security policies, represent a concern to Japan and the wider international community and require close watch,” the national security document said.
Japan first increased defence spending in January, after a decade of cuts.
U.S. Weighing Closer Ties With Hardline Islamists in Syria
December 17th, 2013Via: Foreign Policy:
As the moderate faction of the Syrian rebellion implodes under the strain of vicious infighting and diminished resources, the United States is increasingly looking to hardline Islamists in its efforts to gain leverage in Syria’s civil war. The development has alarmed U.S. observers concerned that the radical Salafists do not share U.S. values and has dismayed supporters of the Free Syrian Army who believe the moderates were set up to fail.
On Monday, the State Department confirmed its openness to engaging with the Islamic Front following the group’s seizure of a Free Syrian Army headquarters last week containing U.S.-supplied small arms and food. “We wouldn’t rule out the possibility of meeting with the Islamic Front,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday. “We can engage with the Islamic Front, of course, because they’re not designated terrorists … We’re always open to meeting with a wide range of opposition groups. Obviously, it may make sense to do so at some point soon, and if we have something to announce, we will.”
On Saturday Reuters reported that Syrian rebel commanders in the Islamic Front were due to meet U.S. officials in Turkey in the coming days to discuss U.S. support for the group. A Syrian opposition source speaking with The Cable said that efforts were in place to unite the Western-backed Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front under the same coalition. “There are negotiations planned for very soon between the [Free Syrian Army’s] SMC and the Islamic Front to determine what the relationship will be,” said the source. America’s role in coordinating the talks remains unclear.
Though the Islamic Front is not a U.S.-designated terrorist group, many of its members hold intensely anti-American beliefs and have no intention of establishing a secular democracy in Syria.
The 6,000-Page Report on CIA Torture Has Now Been Suppressed for 1 Year
December 16th, 2013Via: The Atlantic:
It cost $40 million to produce, documents serious wrongdoing, and doesn’t threaten national security. Team Obama won’t release it.
