Elizabeth Warren: ‘How Many Billions Have To Be Laundered For Drug Lords Before We Consider Shutting Down A Bank?’
March 22nd, 2013Via: Daily Bail:
During Senate testimony Liz Warren asks how much drug-laundered money it takes before banking regulators consider shutting down a bank. Hilarity ensues. And no one ever answers the question.
Witnesses were:
David Cohen, Sec. for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, U.S. Treasury
Thomas Curry, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Jerome H. Powell, Governor, Federal Reserve System
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Google Glass Might Control Real World Objects
March 22nd, 2013Via: Cnet:
You may eventually be able to operate your TV, refrigerator, or garage door through Google Glass.
Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a Google patent application called “Wearable Computer with Superimposed Controls and Instructions for External Device” describes a technology in which a Google Glass wearer could control a real object via a virtual display.
Beyond merely showing you details about an object, Google Glass would present a virtual control panel to let you interact with that object.
As described in the patent, you could “control the target device, provide input to the target device, receive instructions for operating the target device, receive status information regarding the target device, and/or receive other information related to the target device.”
Some of the target devices cited in the patent include a refrigerator, espresso maker, TV, garage door, alarm system, lighting system, and a copy machine. Touching a virtual button on Google Glass’ control panel would then send the corresponding instruction to the device, as the patent describes:
As one example, a virtual control interface for controlling a refrigerator (such as adjusting a temperature set-point) may be superimposed upon the refrigerator surface. In order to control the target device, the wearer may attempt to touch the virtual control interface at the apparent distance of the virtual control interface. For example, the wearer may touch a location on the refrigerator where a virtual button in the virtual control interface appears. The wearable computing device may recognize this touching motion as a control instruction and transmit the control instruction to the target device.
Homeland Security Will Scan More Private Web Traffic and Email
March 22nd, 2013Via: Reuters:
The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.
As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.
Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.
The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program.
By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping.
CIA CTO: ‘We Fundamentally Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’
March 21st, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
The CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday.
Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.
“The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”
Hunt’s comments come two days after Federal Computer Week reported that the CIA has committed to a massive, $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon for cloud computing services. The agency has not commented on that report, but Hunt’s speech, which included multiple references to cloud computing, indicates that it does indeed have interest in storage and analysis capabilities on a massive scale.
How Rich Is the Catholic Church?
March 20th, 2013Via: Slate:
Pope Francis is not just the spiritual leader of one of the world’s major religions: He’s also the head of what’s probably the wealthiest institution in the entire world. The Catholic Church’s global spending matches the annual revenues of the planet’s largest firms, and its assets—huge amounts of real estate, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Vatican City, some of the world’s greatest art—surely exceed those of any corporation by an order of magnitude.*
But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to understand exactly how rich the church is. That’s in part because church finances are complicated. But it’s also because, in the United States at least, churches in general are exempted from the financial reporting and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to nonprofit groups. And it turns out, that exemption may have undesirable consequences.
The main thing we know about Catholic Church finance is that in cash flow terms, the United States is by far the most important branch. America is a rich country with a large population of Catholics. What’s more, America’s Catholic population is a religious minority. That’s meant that, rather than using political clout to influence the shape of mainstream government institutions, as in an overwhelmingly Catholic country such as Brazil, the Catholic Church in the United States has created a parallel state: a vast web of schools, hospitals, universities, and charities that serve millions of clients.
Our best window into the overall financial picture of American Catholicism comes from a 2012 investigation by the Economist, which offered a rough-and-ready estimate of $170 billion in annual spending, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still.
Apple and General Motors, by way of comparison, each had revenue of about $150 billion worldwide in Fiscal Year 2012.
Majoring in Drones: Higher Ed Embraces Unmanned Aircraft
March 20th, 2013Via: Time:
Curriculums and research projects related to drones are cropping up at both large universities and community colleges across the country. In a list of 81 publicly funded entities that have applied for a certificate of authorization to fly drones from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), more than a third are colleges, according to FAA documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Schools — and their students — are jockeying for a position on the ground floor of a nascent industry that looks poised to generate jobs and research funding in the coming years.
“We get a lot of inquiries from students saying, ‘I want to be a drone pilot,’” says Ken Polovitz, the assistant dean in the University of North Dakota’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences. “The Grand Forks region has become a hotbed for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).”
Ye Olde Sneaker Net: Cubans Evade Censorship by Exchanging Computer Memory Sticks
March 20th, 2013Via: McClatchy:
Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Saturday told newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that “nothing is changing” in Cuba’s ossified political system and that “the situation of press freedom in my country is calamitous.”
But Sanchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives known as memory sticks.. The small computer memories, also known as flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access to information.
“Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick,” Sanchez said, “and it is difficult for the government to intercept them. I can’t imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn’t.”
Sanchez said “these little gizmos” have “helped us a lot to pass information.”
Texas: Arlington Police Get Federal Approval to Fly Drones Across City
March 20th, 2013Via: Dallas News:
Two remote-control helicopters could be photographing crime scenes and searching for missing people in Arlington as soon as next month.
Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson announced Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration has given the city permission to get the rotors turning on the project in late February.
Police are quick to emphasize that the 4- to 5-foot-long aircraft aren’t the same as military drones.
“They’re unmanned aircraft,” Arlington police spokeswoman Tiara Richard said. “They aren’t military grade. They’re somewhere in between that and remote-control helicopters that are used recreationally.”
The unmanned craft, which can fly at speeds up to 40 mph, are intended as a more affordable alternative to traditional police helicopters usually employed in search missions.
New York’s Police Union Worked With the NYPD to Set Arrest and Summons Quotas
March 20th, 2013Via: The Nation:
Audio obtained by The Nation confirms an instance of New York City’s police union cooperating with the NYPD in setting arrest quotas for the department’s officers. According to some officers and critics of quotas, the practice has played a direct role in increasing the number of stop-and-frisk encounters since Mayor Michael Bloomberg came to office. Patrolmen who spoke to The Nation explained that the pressure from superiors to meet quota goals has caused some officers to seek out or even manufacture arrests to avoid department retaliation.
Related: Budget Problems? Just Use Prison Labor
Defense Contractor Allegedly Compromised by Honey Trap
March 20th, 2013Via: ABC:
A defense contractor and former U.S. Army officer has been charged with communicating national defense secrets to a 27-year-old Chinese national with whom he had a romantic relationship.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court Monday in Hawaii, Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, who held a top secret clearance, transmitted “national defense information regarding existing war plans, information regarding nuclear weapons, and relations with international partners,” to an email address known to be used by the woman referred to as “Person 1.”
Bishop met the woman during a conference on international military defense issues and according to the complaint, she “may have been at the conference in order to target individuals such as Bishop,” who work with and have access to classified information.
Court records state that Bishop maintained “an intimate, romantic relationship with Person 1 since June 2011,” and worked to hide that relationship from the U.S. government. Bishop was required to report foreign contacts as part of maintaining his security clearance.
