Microsoft Reads Skype Chat Messages
May 14th, 2013Via: The-H Security:
Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write. The H’s associates in Germany at heise Security have now discovered that the Microsoft subsidiary does in fact make use of this privilege in practice. Shortly after sending HTTPS URLs over the instant messaging service, those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond.
TEPCO Seeks Permission to Dump Groundwater from Fukushima Plant Into Ocean
May 14th, 2013Via: Japan Today:
Officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) on Monday met with a Fukushima fisheries cooperative to seek its members’ permission to dump groundwater from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.
The contaminated water storage has been a problem since early in the accident. TEPCO officials acknowledged last month that a lack of storage space has become a “crisis.” TEPCO has promised to speed up building more reliable steel tanks and eventually empty the underground tanks.
Runoff from the three reactors melted in the aftermath of the March 2011 quake-tsunami and a steady inflow of groundwater seeping into the basement of their damaged buildings produce about 400 tons of contaminated water daily at the plant.
Justice Department Secretly Obtained Two Months’ Worth of Telephone Records of Journalists Working for Associates Press
May 14th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
In a sweeping and unusual move, the Justice Department secretly obtained two months’ worth of telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press as part of a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot last year.
The AP’s president said Monday that federal authorities obtained cellular, office and home telephone records of individual reporters and an editor; AP general office numbers in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn.; and the main number for AP reporters covering Congress. He called the Justice Department’s actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering activities.
The aggressive investigation into the possible disclosure of classified information to the AP is part of a pattern in which the Obama administration has pursued current and former government officials suspected of releasing secret material. Six officials have been prosecuted, more than under all previous administrations combined.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the AP’s president and chief executive, Gary B. Pruitt, said that the Justice Department sought information beyond what could be justified by any specific probe and demanded that the government return the phone records and destroy all copies.
“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” Pruitt wrote to Holder. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”
Bloomberg Posted Private Terminal Messages Online
May 13th, 2013Via: Quartz:
Bloomberg says it accidentally posted on the internet more than 10,000 private messages that traders sent each other on their Bloomberg terminals. The new revelation, reported by the Financial Times, will undoubtedly escalate the furor over Bloomberg’s handling of data that its customers consider to be confidential.
The messages were related to the Bloomberg Valuation Service, known as BVAL, which sets prices on financial products likes bonds and credit default swaps that are often traded among a small number of investors over the messaging system on their Bloomberg terminals. Customers allow Bloomberg to scan those messages for data about trades, so a market price can be established.
…
According to Bloomberg’s account, the messages that ended up online (and have since been removed) were voluntarily forwarded to Bloomberg by a customer “so that we could conduct internal testing to improve our technology for the client.” A Bloomberg employee uploaded the messages to what he thought was a private website. In fact, it could be accessed by anyone.
Britain: Secrets of 27 Million Mobile Phones Offered to Police, Corporations
May 13th, 2013Via: Sunday Times:
THE data of 27m mobile phone users has been offered for sale to the Metropolitan police, private companies and other bodies, enabling them to track users’ movements.
Ipsos Mori, one of Britain’s biggest research firms, has been caught offering text and call records for sale.
The company has claimed in meetings that every movement by users can be tracked to within 100 metres. This weekend the Met, which has been in talks with Ipsos Mori about paying for some of the controversial data, shelved any deal after being contacted by The Sunday Times.
Documents to promote the data reveal that it includes “gender, age, postcode, websites visited, time of day text is sent [and] location of customer when call is made”.
They state that people’s mobile phone use and location can be tracked in real time with records of movements, calls and texts also available for the previous six months.
The data, obtained by Ipsos Mori in an exclusive deal with EE, Britain’s biggest phone operator, goes beyond anything that the police can get without an application order under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Experts said that it offered a similar level of data access as the government’s proposed “snoopers’ charter”, which ministers shelved after an outcry over privacy invasion.
Police forces, councils, big businesses and Google are among potential clients for the data. Bernard Hogan-Howe, the police commissioner, is understood to have met representatives from Ipsos Mori on March 22 to discuss the data.
Another meeting was held last Thursday at Scotland Yard and was attended by Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner in charge of public order and major events for the force.
However, within hours of being contacted by The Sunday Times the Met said it was abandoning the proposal, even though sources said officers had been enthusiastic about the potential for tracking users of pay-as-you-go phones.
Insanity: U.S. Approves Bee Death Pesticide as EU Bans It
May 13th, 2013Via: Natural Society:
Corporate politics is business as usual inside the United States, as I am once again shocked to report the EPA has sided with industry lobbyists over public health in approving a highly dangerous pesticide that the European Union recently decided to ban over fears of environmental devastation. Not only have neonicotinoid pesticides been linked repeatedly to mass bee deaths, also known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but the continued use of such pesticides threatens other aspects of nature (and humans) as well.
Michigan School District Can’t Pay Teachers; Schools Will Remain Closed Until Further Notice
May 13th, 2013Via: ClickOnDetroit:
A shuttered Michigan school district that says it can’t afford to pay its teachers plans to remain closed until further notice.
The update is posted on the website of Buena Vista School District, located near Saginaw. It hasn’t held classes since May 3.
The district laid off teachers and all but three employees May 7. The district has said it wouldn’t be able to make payroll May 24 because the state put a hold on its funding to recoup about $580,000 for a juvenile detention education program the district no longer operates.
Meanwhile, MLive.com reports Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee of Flint says 91 percent of the district’s students get federal food assistance through free and reduced lunch programs, and he wants to ensure the shutdown doesn’t affect their nutrition.
New Orleans: Mother’s Day Parade Shooting
May 13th, 2013Update: Street Violence?
Via: CNN:
Federal investigators say they have no indication the shooting at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans was an act of terrorism.
“It’s strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans,” New Orleans FBI spokeswoman Mary Beth Romig said Monday.
Such parades — local traditions replete with dancing and brass bands — are known as second-lining. They happen most every Sunday, except during the hottest months in summer
Shots were fired from different guns Sunday, and officers saw three suspects running from the scene, police said.
The shooting injured 19 people, including two children, police said. Ten men and seven women were among the victims.
The children were grazed. Other injuries ranged from minor to severe.
—
Via: AP:
New Orleans police vowed to swiftly track down the gunmen who wounded 19 people at a neighborhood Mother’s Day parade, the latest case of violence flaring up around a celebration in the city this year.
Detectives were conducting interviews, collecting any surveillance video they could find and gathering evidence from the scene where gunmen opened fire Sunday on the parade of hundreds of revelers. Cell phone video taken in the aftermath of the shooting shows victims lying on the ground, blood on the pavement and others bending over to comfort them.
IRS Targeted Groups Critical of Government
May 13th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials singled out for scrutiny not only groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names but also nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and those that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
Crap Cannon: Israel Sprays Putrid Liquid for Crowd Control, Collective Punishment
May 12th, 2013Via: Russia Today:
