Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions in October
October 31st, 2013Thank you.
Eileen $104
KL $25
TM $15
MW $25
iWholeSale NZ$5
SSL Added and Removed Here! :)
October 30th, 2013And if they rely on SSL, well, that’s ok for buying a book online, but no tinfoiler in his right mind would bet his life on SSL.
—The Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity
What’s the difference between Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist and I told You So?
About six years.
Via: Washington Post:
The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.
By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.
According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.
The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.
The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.
The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.
…
In an NSA presentation slide on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” however, a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where their data reside. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is “added and removed here!” The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security.
Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said.
…
For the MUSCULAR project, the GCHQ directs all intake into a “buffer” that can hold three to five days of traffic before recycling storage space. From the buffer, custom-built NSA tools unpack and decode the special data formats that the two companies use inside their clouds. Then the data are sent through a series of filters to “select” information the NSA wants and “defeat” what it does not.
Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin to Develop Pod-Mounted Aircraft and UAV Laser Defenses
October 30th, 2013Via: Military and Aerospace Electronics:
U.S. military researchers are hiring two defense companies to develop technology for pod-mounted laser weapons to protect manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR)-guided surface-to-air missiles.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are choosing the Northrop Grumman Corp. Aerospace Systems segment in Redondo Beach, Calif., and the Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training segment in Akron, Ohio, for Project Endurance to develop laser weapons to defend aircraft from missiles.
People Who Live Downwind of Alberta’s Oil and Tar Sands Operations Are Getting Blood Cancer
October 30th, 2013Via: Think Progress:
A new study has found that levels of air pollution downwind of the largest tar sands, oil and gas producing region in Canada rival levels found in the world’s most polluted cities. And that pollution isn’t just dirtying the air — it also could be tied increased incidence of blood cancers in men that live in the area.
The study, published last week by researchers from University of California Irvine and the University of Michigan, found levels of carcinogenic air pollutants 1,3-butadiene and benzene spiked in the Fort Saskatchewan area, which is downwind of the oil and tar sands-rich “Industrial Heartland” of Alberta. Airborne levels of 1,3-butadiene were 322 times greater downwind of the Industrial Heartland — which houses more than 40 major chemical, petrochemical and oil and gas facilities — than upwind, while downwind levels of benzene were 51 times greater. Levels of some volatile organic compounds — which, depending on the compound, have been linked to liver, kidney and central nervous system damage as well as cancer — were 6,000 times higher than normal. The area saw concentrations of some chemicals that were higher than levels in Mexico City during the 1990s, when it was the most polluted city on the planet.
Savile’s Convicted Pedophile BBC Driver Found Dead on Day of Trial for Sex Crimes
October 29th, 2013Via: Daily Mail:
A former BBC driver found dead in an apparent suicide ahead of his child sex abuse trial has ‘cheated’ his victim of justice, a leading lawyer has today said.
The body of David Smith, 67, chauffeur to disgraced DJ Jimmy Savile and other celebrities during the 1980s, was found at his south-east London home, on Monday – the eve of his court appearance.
It has emerged the former driver was a prolific sex offender with a string of previous convictions for sexual offences against young boys, dating back to 1966, on his criminal record.
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Another Google Barge Spotted on East Coast
October 29th, 2013If there was a list of Cryptogon axioms, #1 would probably be: No collapse due to energy scarcity.
I’ve gone into why for many years, so feel free to look through the archives.
Terawatts of untapped energy are just swirling around out there in the oceans, waiting to turn the gears of fascism.
It was just a matter of time…
Via: Cnet:
As CNET reported Friday, it looks very much like Google has been building a floating data center made from shipping containers on a barge in the middle of San Francisco Bay. But it may not be the only one of its kind.
Google has not responded to multiple requests for comment. But the project in San Francisco Bay appears likely to be the manifestation of a 2009 patent for a “water-based data center,” and would likely leverage the fact that wave energy can provide cheap and plentiful power.
Now it seems as though Google may well have built a sister version of the project, and, according to the Portland Press Herald, it recently showed up in the harbor in Portland, Maine.
In both cases, the structures on both barges appear to be made from a number of shipping containers, many of which have small slats for windows, and each has one container that slants down to ground level at a 45-degree angle.
Shocker: Doctors Motivated by Profit Treat Patients as ATMs
October 29th, 2013Via: Mish:
US Healthcare System Explained in Six Succinct Points
1. A constant battle is underway between insurance companies that do not want to pay any claims, even legitimate ones, and doctors and hospitals incentivised to rip off patients, insurers, and taxpayers with unnecessary surgeries and Medicare fraud.
2. Insurance companies demand massive amounts of paperwork out of rational fear of fraud and unnecessary treatments. Doctors perform for-profit (as opposed to for-patient) procedures that guarantee more explanations and more paperwork.
3. Doctors and hospitals have direct personal contact with patients, but insurance companies don’t. In cases where doctors put patients at huge risk with needless procedures and surgeries, it’s easy for hospitals and doctors to point their finger at insurance companies. On the other hand, many sincere, honest doctors have difficulty getting patients the care they should have because insurers believe they are getting ripped off by unnecessary procedures, even when they aren’t.
4. Doctors make needless tests out of fear of being sued for not doing them.
5. The vast majority of healthcare costs occur in final last year or so of someone’s life. Politicians who want to do something sensible about this issue get accused of “rationing healthcare”.
6. Doctors not only have a financial incentive to prolong life needlessly, they also worry about not prolonging life out of fear of being sued by family members unless there is a living will, and perhaps even if there is a living will.
China: The Making of ‘Gutter Oil’
October 29th, 2013Via: YouTube:
Research Credit: RP
Facebook Requiring Some Users to Provide Government ID to Login
October 29th, 2013You betcha.
Via: The Drum:
Thousands of Facebook users have vented their fury at the social media site on Twitter after they were locked out of the site, and were requested to provide “Government ID” to log back in.
Print a 2,500 Square Foot House in 20 Hours
October 28th, 2013Via: IndustryTap:
We have seen huge advancements in 3D printing. We’ve even seen oversized wrenches printed that measure 1.2 meters in length. Now, we can print an entire 2,500 sqft house in 20 hours.
In the TED Talk video below, Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), demonstrates automated construction, using 3D printers to build an entire house in 20 hours.
